"The author's writing our words right now, isn't he. We don't need to ask you to tell him anything, we can just—tell him. And he knows what we'll tell him, and how we'll react to all of it, and he's still not actually doing anything other than just have us here."

Ceiling examination occurs.

"He says, and I quote, 'tell them I said I don't have nearly as much control over all of this as they may think I do and they have very often surprised me by coming up with ideas I hadn't anticipated or acting in ways I didn't expect, and tell Glam the Siberian was entirely his idea, I didn't see it coming at all.' I did mention you do have a degree of free will? You might not have a meta instance yet, though, if you can pull that off it might help - that's the version of you that lives in your author's head rather than living in any particular world, and knows everything he knows and can talk to him more directly about things." (The kobold grins slightly and nods at this last bit.)

"Um. I'm not sure if the Siberian idea being mine is reassuring or not. Was it even mine? I don't remember if Lorica—Bella or I came up with it. Anwyay, did I derail the plot? Am I actually going to be able to kill Endbringers with it? Shit if I'm fictional I bet that'll fail in some really horrible way."

"How are we supposed to pull off a meta instance? And his question was interesting, do we still exist while we're not talking to you?"

"Siberian might not've been your idea in-world, but there's a sense in which it was your idea that it was a thing you could do? Like, you could have had the idea and then not been able to, if it was something that didn't fit with who you are, but it did fit with who you are and that's not actually something we can just arbitrarily decide. But, no, you didn't derail the plot - things like that happen all the time, we leave things loose enough to accommodate it. As to the Endbringers, I'm not sure if you... no, what am I thinking, of course you want spoilers. The Endbringers aren't your biggest problem and if your authors are sticking to the original details of that setting killing one will actually make things worse, it gets replaced by a worse one. What you actually need to worry about is Scion, he's some kind of freaky alien and in... well, actually the timeline's probably different, but at some point probably within your lifetime, he's going to flip his shit and try to kill everyone."

Sparkles gets a 'wait' gesture, this is presumably going to take a minute.

"What."

"Yeah. The endbringer thing might not be the case in your particular world - the setting is taken from another author again, who isn't actually someone we write with; your author is much nicer and that's not really Alicorn's style - but the Scion part basically has to be, the only question is whether you're going to be involved with it. It could just be that you get to successfully take out an Endbringer or three and leave the omnicidal near-deity for someone else."

Sadde rests his head on his hands, propping it up on the counter.

She pats him on the back.

"And of course there's no way to convince him to maybe not have Scion go rogue? Author, you're writing these words somewhere, can you make that not be a thing?"

"However sentient we may be, I'm pretty sure a fiction author isn't going to convince themself to stop writing by having a character they created ask them to via whatever medium they're using to actually instantiate that character."

Sadde groans.

The kobold goes to hug a Sadde.

"That, and a world where that wasn't already set up to happen wouldn't look like yours. It's definitely winnable, though, the original story had a basically-happy ending and I fully expect yours to have a better one if it goes that far."

"Thanks. I'm so reassured," he mumbles dryly, and accepts the kobold's hug.

Think think think. "I mean, there's also the part where you've got a Bell - this won't be the first deity-grade entity they've taken down, by a long shot. It's kind of a thing, with them, that and overthrowing governments that don't meet their standards."

"...beg pardon?"

"It occurs to me the Empress Regnant is called Isabella."

"...not Swan by any chance?"

"Oh dear. You're dating another version of the Empress?!"

Chuckle. "A younger and differently superpowered version, yes. She's one of the longest-running character templates."

"...what's she like?"

"I can totally see her as empress of the world, that's what she's like. She's great and fantastic and amazing and..." He sighs.

"You sound like a mated vampire, and you somehow managed to not give me any information."

"Well, you see how he wasn't surprised about her being empress. I expect he also won't be surprised that she's making a decent attempt at solving death - really in general she's intensely practical and hubristic like that - not driven exactly, but it's pretty hard to have big problems and a Bell in the same world for a long period of time. Goes after the malaria eradication and the mass resurrection, too, when she can, or other problems of that nature. I wouldn't say she's very social exactly but she's good with people, too - one of her themes is that most of the time she personally doesn't have the power that's being used to stop the big bad, but she's leading or supported by the person who does - not always, there are some significant exceptions, but it's a pattern. Smart, too; no-nonsense, strategic... tenacious; there are a couple other characters who are more tenacious than she is but she still is."

"Yeah I can totally see how another me would fall for that."