All of them came when I called. All of them stepped out of their own narratives to save someone else. All of them are staring at me.

“Uh,” I begin auspiciously. “Thank you all for coming.” I’m banking on the fairy tale logic of this world to let them understand me. “I think you’re all—well, I think we’re all versions of the same story, retold in different realities. The universe is like a book, see, and telling a story is like writing on a page. And if a story is told enough times, the ink bleeds through.” Charm makes a small, pained sound at the scientific absurdity of my explanation. The other beauties stare at me in unblinking unison.

“So we’re … the ink? In this metaphor?” It’s the space princess, whose expression of skepticism has deepened by several degrees.

“Yes?”

Charm rescues me, as usual. “Don’t we have a wedding to stop? A princess to save?”

“Oh, right. So there’s another one of us here. She was cursed to prick her finger on a spindle’s end and fall into a hundred-year sleep”—a series of grim nods from the other beauties—“except it turns out the curse was supposed to save her from a shitty marriage”—at least two grim nods—“and she’s probably standing at the altar right now. I was hoping you could help me bust out of here and save her.”

A painful silence follows while they exchange a series of glances. The ’90s heroine-type cocks her head at me. “And afterward you’ll send us home?”

“Or wherever else you want to go.” Assuming I can arrange another moment of sufficient narrative resonance, but I elect not to alarm them with the sketchy details of my sketchy-ass plan.

The Viking woman gives a wordless shrug, tosses her pale braids over one shoulder, and turns to face the barred door. She wraps her scarred fists around the bars and muscle ripples across her back. Ropes of tendon twist down her arms.

I have time to think no fucking way before the iron gives a long groan of submission. The bars are warping beneath her fists, bending slowly inward, when a blue bolt of light streaks past my ear. It sizzles through the iron like spit through tissue paper, leaving nothing but a ragged, faintly smoking hole where the latch used to be. The Viking lets go of the bars. The door swings meekly open.

We turn collectively toward the space princess, who is holstering something shiny and chrome that’s probably called a blaster or a plasma arc. I hear Charm whisper a reverent hot damn.

We ascend the stairs in single file, boots and tennis shoes and bare feet tapping against the stone. A pair of guards wait at the top, hands slack around their spears, entirely unprepared for a legion of renegade princesses to descend upon them like a set of mismatched Valkyries.

In less than ten seconds Brunhilda and the girl with the sword have them kneeling, disarmed, and gibbering, their own weapons leveled at their throats. I lean down and give a small wave. “Hi, sorry. Where’s the chapel? We’ve got a happily ever after to stop.”