I'd Give Up The World For You

Juliet left Veronica's house with her head reeling. Zel. Aveleen. Wind and water mages. All of these things were sounding hauntingly familiar.

They had been areas first mentioned in Down in Flames but more detail went into them for the prequel, Throne of Fire, since she had to write about Rukelion Blaze conquering all of the surrounding nations. Was she really inside the world of the novels she had written?!

She didn't have enough evidence to be positive of that since Veronica had unintentionally changed the subject to her military superstar husband. It seemed like she had a really happy childhood with him. No wonder she missed him so much.

Hearing about him hadn't been helpful though because all she knew was that he was a major in the royal army. She hadn't even caught his name.

Which royal army? What country was she in? She needed to know!!

'Where' was important information but so was 'when.' If Juliet truly was in the world she had created she needed to know where she was in the timeline. Obviously, Rukelion Blaze hadn't taken over the world yet but she had no way of knowing whether or not he had begun his revenge.

It had been rather meticulous in the prequel she wrote and took many years to accomplish. He started as a mercenary, went around gathering allied mages and other mercenaries from all over the continent, then turned on them once he had what he wanted because he was paranoid about being betrayed.

He razed their countries to the ground the way his had been razed after he accomplished his goal of destroying the king of Mirea in a madness-induced power trip. Writing his mental decline in a realistic way had been a challenge.

He went from a boy set on avenging what he loved to someone so twisted with hatred that he had become the thing he hated most. She was sure the readers would eat it up.

Or they would have if she hadn't ended up here. She had no idea what was happening back home. Had anyone even come looking for her? She didn't exactly have any close friends she saw regularly and her family was out of state. Maybe her editor would come pounding down her door for not turning in the manuscript like she was supposed to.

Juliet sighed. She needed to know if Rukelion Blaze was on the warpath yet. If he was…she needed to get to Ripore Academy and find the protagonists. Stopping him was paramount if she wanted to live peacefully in this fictional world.

The last thing she wanted was to be a nameless casualty inside her own novel! None of this was supposed to happen. If she knew where Rukelion was on the path toward his downfall that would help her out so much.

The problem was she hadn't written about there being wars with either Aveleen or Zel in her books. She couldn't even use that as a reference point for where or when she was right now.

Juliet was afraid to ask anyone what country she was in for fear of being a) accused of being crazy or b) accused of being some foreign spy and kicked out of her job at the castle. She still felt a bit guilty about taking the place of whoever was actually supposed to be the new laundry girl but she needed both the money and the place to stay.

If only she could find the other (potential) transmigrator! She knew that they had to live somewhat near Veronica. She had been surprised to find her friend's house on that street when she followed the directions she had been given.

She briefly wondered if Veronica had been the one singing the Bruno Mars song but after hearing her talk earlier she sounded like a native of this world. A simple farm girl who happened to move to the big city to be near the one she loved. It couldn't be her; it sounded like she had lived here her whole life.

Her husband was her cousin (totally weird to her modern sensibilities but it happened a lot in books set in the Regency era of England) and she had other relatives who had died here. That wouldn't be possible if she had come from Earth.

Juliet was disappointed about that but still liked Veronica and wanted to spend more time with her. She seemed the most normal out of all the people she had met since coming here.

Her motives weren't entirely altruistic though. Originally she had wanted to get out of the castle for a while and take advantage of decent cooking. Now that she knew where her new friend lived she could use this as an opportunity to potentially find the mystery singer as well.

She had wanted to find who that was anyway but now that she suspected she was inside the world of her own novels she really needed to have a safe person to talk to about her concerns. They might not have read Down in Flames but at the very least they should understand her urgency.

Juliet had to get out of here and she didn't even know where 'here' was! Wars were a perfectly natural occurrence in fantasy settings like this…she might have come to this world before Rukelion Blaze had set out on his revenge. Even before he was born! But she needed some sort of timeline for reference.

Her protagonists set out on their adventure to defeat the villain, widely known as 'The Flame of Punishment' or simply 'The Flame', in the year 1184. By that point in time Rukelion had already been sitting on his fiery throne for nearly three years.

Throne of Fire began in 1171 and ended in 1181 when he found himself alone in the ruins of the castle in the capital of Mirea laughing, shortly after destroying the majority of the known world. He was twenty-two years old at the time.

She desperately needed to know what year this was! And she got her answer in a rather unexpected way three days later with talk of the New Year's celebration being cancelled this year because of the crown prince's disappearance. Gossipy laundresses could be surprisingly useful.

Juliet hadn't written about any crown princes disappearing. The countries Rukelion took over or destroyed happened rather straightforwardly. He had been a cunning character at first but as time and continual killing robbed him of his sanity he simply torched everything that got in his way. No one was powerful enough to stop him.

That didn't tell her where she was…but she did find out what the new year would be. 1179. Meaning it was 1178 now.

Two and a half years. She had two and a half years before everything was destroyed, meaning her mad villain was out there right now collecting allies he would later betray. Was that going to be enough time?!

She didn't know if the protagonists were strong enough to defeat him yet but wouldn't it be better to do it before thousands of people died? She had to get to the academy and gauge where they were at in terms of magic but she would need money to get there.

Juliet sighed. The fate of this world was on her shoulders and she didn't like it one bit.

Why, of all possible fictional worlds to end up inside of, did she have to be inside her own? This place was such a mess! Doomed to be almost completely destroyed by a madman so the people who remained at the end of the story had to come up with a new form of government that involved electing officials rather than having kings and queens since that was (in a roundabout way) the whole reason everything started.

The king of Mirea was a rather despicable character the way she had written him. Instead of trying to negotiate or even waging war the traditional way he completely destroyed Katalya because he wanted access to their ports to expand trade and his own wealth.

After the slaughter took place he cleared a straight path through the wreckage to the ocean wide enough for caravans to pass through but left the rest in ruins. The few survivors that remained escaped to other countries to live in secrecy. No prisoners were taken; everyone else was killed.

Rukelion's desire for revenge had been somewhat justified at first, at least in his mind. But rationalizing away everything he did led to something inside of him snapping. Eventually he reached a point where he actually enjoyed killing rather than thinking of it as a necessary evil.

Juliet didn't feel sorry for him though even after she wrote his backstory. She had only done it at all because it was what the fans wanted. And what the fans wanted, the fans got.

He was a villain. You weren't supposed to feel sorry for him.

Maybe coming here was her punishment for not caring about all of her characters equally, though that was a pretty bizarre concept. What sort of fickle cosmic being powerful enough to make this happen would care about something like that?

No. More likely she was sent to save this world before it was destroyed after being the one to create it. She was strangely responsible for the livelihood of everyone here.

Amaya. Mitzi. Elaine. The other laundry room girls. Veronica and her husband. These were all people she hoped to save from the wrath of Rukelion Blaze.. There had to be some other way she could make money. With her wages she was never going to be able to make it to the academy before the world came to an end!