In the fight against Morris, Nora goes hogwild with the Mantlepiece and Merlin lets rip with tenth level witch bolts, doing damage in the hundreds to Morris. Morris screams, and in doing so lets loose a wave of magic that immediately drops Ursa. He also fires a necrotic bolt off that drops Merlin.
Brynner arrives, and gets Ursa back up by granting her the Neutral Mantle of the Iconoclast, letting her counter stuff. Which she uses to keep Morris from Imprisoning Nora, as well as healing up Merlin, who gets to his feet and has his arms crack to fuck from using way too much power. Nevertheless, he casts one more tenth-level witch bolt, losing his arms in the process.
This blows Morris away, leaving him slumped against the vault door. He sputters up some oil, and says ‘I just wanted us to be friends. I wish we could have been friends…’
Then everything is normal and fine, they’re in school like always, just Nora, her pal Ursa, and the most popular guy in class, Morris! Nora and Ursa flee the room, Nora vomits on Mr. Terence’s shoes, and they go to check Ursa’s phone contacts, but find nothing weird in the slightest. Back in class, the new exchange student is introduced – it’s Merlin, who still has all his memories and can see the source code of this wished-up pocket reality. He chases Morris through the corridors, leading to a confrontation with all four.
Morris rants a bit about Nora losing touch after meeting Merlin and Ursa, and how he just wanted to make friends with all of them. He tried to move on with Lopodite, but all he really wants is to fit in. ‘This isn’t how you make friends,’ says Ursa. Nora just decks him.
Morris wishes up another scenario, since the school one didn’t work; one where it’s life and death and all four of them can really rely on one another! It’s a traditional fantasy setting, and they’re in the guild hall after defeating the Golden Beast with Morris, the armor-clad leader! When the three of them poke and prod at the feasibility of all this, things ripple around them and begin to glitch. Nora decks him again too.
Morris begins to cry, sort of, saying that they were supposed to be friends, and that *she* killed him. That at least if he gets Lopodite what she wants back in the vault, she can make him a new body. They’re a bit worried by the ‘back in the vault’ implication, but again, Ursa tells him this isn’t how to make friends. Merlin says it’s sad and a bit pathetic. Morris says ‘you’re right. This is a lost cause.’ And runs Nora through. And disappears, back to the vault room, leaving them behind in the pocket dimension.
As Nora bleeds out, the other two look for ways to save her, but healing magic doesn’t work. Merlin, pulling on the Mantle’s power again, realises he could dismantle the order of the dimension they’re in and maybe get them home, but knows that to do so would mean the mantle fully killing him.
Ursa, following his example, manifests the mantle of the iconoclast again. She says ‘I might have an idea but it might also lead to all three of us dying. But better we all go together right?’ and before anyone can answer that, she uses the mantle to erase the wish.
They find themselves in an unreal place. A void? The only magic that works is that granted by the mantles, and the iconoclast one can only negate stuff. The only way out, Merlin comes up with: he can banish the other two. Get them to their home planes, and from there they stop Morris. After that they can come back for him, he says. It doesn’t sound like he believes it.
Neither Ursa nor Nora say goodbye. They ARE getting him back.
Merlin does as he said he would, and stays behind in the empty void-dimension.
Back in reality, when they get there, the vault has opened. Morris staggers towards the contents of the vault on limbs borrowed from his wished-up selves. But he collapses before reaching it. Nora and Ursa rush in, and drag him out before he can touch anything.
It’s a table with a spinning top spinning away.
They learn from Brynner, in a bubble of frozen time so the Watchtowers can’t observe, that that spinning top is the thing that creates humanity’s perception filter; it’s not something innate to humanity. Without it, it’d be like auditors all day every day. He leaves, citing lots of cleanup.
Morris, with his last breaths, wants Nora to come closer. Hesitantly, she does, and he says he could wish for Merlin back, but to do so would kill HIM, not just the server body he’s in. That Nora has to choose. ‘Him or me,’ he says.
‘Thank you for always being there, Morris… but I can’t just leave him behind,’ says Nora. ‘I want you to wish him back.’
‘Then… I guess we were never really friends.’ And the Morris Worm leaves the server body, saving himself and abandoning Nora.
Ursa and Nora briefly talk about calling Kojak, but it’s nearly 10 in real life at that point so it’s bedtime.
Roll History 