Ellis Company

This is all a dream. I'm still dreaming it now. I don't know where it's going.

Beginning

Unexpected dragon

It was a simple in and out.

The two mercenaries moved quickly. Alise took point as they got into the village, dealing out the bulk of the firepower to any of the alini frog-folk who got in their way, pushing aside wet vegetation and tribal decorations in the same motion. Martel had her back, making sure nothing followed, checking the map. They hadn't had a lot of time to prepare, but the idea was, with a mission like this, it wouldn't matter.

The morning was wet and muggy, the coolness of the water itself a strange contrast with the air around them when it dripped on their faces, and Martel shook it off the map as they got past the last of the huts. This was the part they were after, the broad, open area before the water, with two fenced and gated enclosures a several dozen metres across, a few metres high. According to the map, they wanted the one on the left. The one with the reinforced gate, the moat, and the spikes.

Alise gave him an enquiring look and he gave the gesture to verify which one they needed to hit. The look was replaced with an irritated one.

"Nuke it?" Martel suggested, finally breaking the silence. It wasn't like the alini didn't know they were there; quite a few were watching from behind nearby huts, and it was likely even more were in the water. The way Alise had been blasting them with her magic, their target would have had fair warning, too. There would be no element of surprise here.

Alise shrugged, then smiled slightly and began the summoning. This was her favourite part. The part where she could fly, or at least experience the flight, no downsides, no danger. Martel was a more traditional mercenary, combining sword with sorcery, but Alise preferred a more specific approach, focussing on one powerful summon, and studying everything she could about the related engineering fields in order to keep making that one single summon better.

The summon was a drone, fashioned after its technological equivalents, and as she finished the building motions, she cast it up into the air, linking her mind with its guidance, seeing what it saw. This was the hardest part, of course, getting it flying properly in the first place, and amongst the trees and foliage dripping wet with rain, it was particularly difficult, but after it automatically dodged the first few trees, crashed right through another, and tore up a whole grove's worth of leaves, she got it under control, bringing it back towards the frog-folk village with its silent, deadly glide.

Next to her, Martel tapped his foot impatiently.

"It's coming," Alise said.

He raised an eyebrow.

The drone, only about a metre across, clipped out of the trees and soared overhead, disappearing again almost as suddenly as it'd appeared, and the two mercenaries made ready for a fight. Martel drew his sword. A moment later, the missiles it had dropped exploded on the gate, sending it flying.

They ran toward the explosion, not even waiting for it to subside. Their target was the chief, and the intell had said he would be here today, and so here they were too, small party, quick mission.

As a result, they didn't expect the dragon that exploded out of the smoke, grabbing onto the wall and perching, flapping its admittedly somewhat singed wings. Alise was nearly knocked over by the powerful beats, and Martel just stopped in surprise before throwing up a shield to block the force of the wind.

"That's not an alini!" Martel yelled, only somewhat at Alise.

"Ya think?" she yelled back, recovering her footing.

They dodged to either side as the dragon threw a plume of acidic flame at them, and by the time they were up again, the dragon had taken off, rising into the trees.

Martel frowned. "Fireballs, then?"

"We should have had a full squad," Alise said. "We're not at all prepared for this."

"Yeah, well, we're here," Martel pointed out. "So our best bet is to just kill it and not die first."

"Oh, I'm not arguing," Alise said. "Just pointing out the obvious!" In the back of her mind, however, she was doing calculations, bringing the drone back around, trying to think how to hit another flying target. It wouldn't be easy, but if she just aimed it right, she could predict how the dragon might dodge their more traditional fireballs, and fling a pair of high-energy ballistic explosives right into it...

Martel started a fireball as the dragon swooped down for a pass at them, and Alise began to do the same, though the odds of her fireball succeeding when she was this distracted weren't very good.

The first fireball the dragon dodged without effort, but not the second, probably because the second was Alise's and completely crappy. It fizzled upward half-heartedly before finally exploding in the dragon's face, seemingly completely at random, throwing the dragon off its course and causing its own spat fire to miss as well.

With the time this bought, Martel threw another fireball up at the dragon as it winged its way back up, and this one hit with proper force.

"I'd say 'nice'," Martel said, "but that wasn't nice at all."

"Oh, stuff it," Alise said. "Next pass, I'ma drone it. Just fling the fireball straight on and it should hit."

"'Kay," he said, and as the dragon came down at them again, he did exactly that. The fireball missed completely, the drone flew by on its silent wings, and a moment later, there was a great explosion in the air above them, then raining down on their heads, then sitting smokily on the ground around them. There was also, conspicuously, no more dragon.

Martel nudged one of the smoking bits with his foot. "Mmm, dragon bits," he said.

Then there was another explosion in the woods and he jumped.

"Er, sorry," Alise said, wiping sweat off her face. "I might have slightly lost control of the drone."

"Slightly," Martel said, his hand on his heart. "Only slightly?" He looked around worriedly, but all the alini were still hiding.

"Was that it, then?" Alise asked. She was shaking slightly.

He shook his head with a shrug, and trotted off back to the enclosure the dragon had come from. Alise followed at a walk. Somehow, even with all the adrenaline, she was too exhausted to move any faster.

The enclosure was basically empty, and somewhat on fire. What looked like a huge nest was shoved against the far walls. Bits of pottery and broken bones were all about the ground.

Martel shook his head. "So the chief was a dragon?" he said incredulously.

"I... maybe?" Alise said.

"Well, there certainly isn't anything else here," he said. "Let's move out, then."

She nodded and followed closely as they made their way back out of the frog-folk village. This time, none dared get in their way.

Motto I

Later, once they were back in the open jungle, Alise asked, "How the fuck did we even survive that?"

"That should be our motto," Martel said.

"I think that is our motto," Alise said.

Payment for an assignment done

When Martel and Alise got back to the Great Hall at the grand citadel of Ateris Malor, they went straight for the assignments office.

Alise cornered the clerk who had given them the assignment, getting between him and his desk, and glared down at him in his chair.

Martel said, sidling in to also loom over the clerk, "You sent us to kill an alini."

"So?" the guy said.

"The alini was actually a dragon," Martel said.

"Eh?" the guy said.

"Like it was disguised," Alise explained. "A dragon disguised as an alini, so everyone thinks its an alini, like a dragon in a pond doing a duck impersonation," she went on, flatly. Then she just glared at the guy for a moment and added, "Except this dragon wasn't disguised at all. Or doing a duck impersonation."

"It was just a dragon," Martel added helpfully.

"It tried to kill us," Alise went on.

"We killed it," Martel finished.

"We expect to be paid for this," Alise said.

"Dragon," Martel said.

"For this dragon," Alise agreed.

Meanwhile the clerk was looking quite uncomfortable, having completely given up on getting in any words edgewise with these two mercenaries who were standing entirely too close to him. Then, realising they'd finally finished, he said, "Er."

"We expect to be paid," Alise repeated. "You gave us a job, we did the job, turns out the job wasn't quite accurate in its description, so we expect recompense for that too."

"It's not rocket science," Martel pointed out.

"I know rocket science," Alise said. "It really isn't."

"Look, guys, it doesn't work that way," the clerk said, waving his hands defensively.

Alise and Martel exchanged looks.

"But I can give you for the contract," the clerk added hurriedly, "and a bonus for the dragon, since those all have standing warrant anyway. That good enough?" He held up a pair of bags.

Alise made a show of thinking about it.

Martel watched her for a moment, then said, "No."

"Er," the clerk said, what little colour he had left draining out of his face. It's not that mercenaries would normally beat up the folks in the office, but it did sometimes happen. And some of the particular companies could get quite creative about it, too. Not that he was entirely clear which company these two belonged to. He didn't recognise any sort of insignia on them at all.

"It'll do," Alise said finally, handing over the confirmation and then deftly plucking the bags out of his hands. "Next time, make sure they get the description right, yes?"

"Right," the clerk said shakily. "Before you go, what company did you say you belonged to?" he asked, then added hastily, "For the records."

"We're Ellis Company," Martel said, pulling Alise back out of the narrow desk space.

"Oh," the clerk said. He'd never even heard of that one.

Martel smirked. That was the fun of it, really. Nobody ever had.

Most companies had specific requirements and purposes, taking on very specialised assignments and growing in size and power as they found more like-minded individuals interested in doing those assignments, but Ellis wasn't specific at all. Their entire company was a hodge-podge of complete randoms, with everyone there for all manner of reasons. As a result, they did pretty much everything, from the simplest of jobs to the most important assignments. Martel liked it for its unpredictability, and had joined for exactly that reason. Alise had apparently joined because it had been the first one she'd seen and she'd figured 'good enough'. And others... had other stories.

As they headed back out into the main commons, they relaxed a bit, back in normal company, in normal times. It was a vast hall, awash with chatter, where many of the different companies congregated, mercenaries coming and going, others loitering about, and even a few other folk coming in for various reasons. A few stood out, either for particularly bright attire, or particularly fancy, but beyond that it was all sorts and all styles.

Martel nodded to a few folks he recognised.

The job done and paid, so too lazy to do any maths or arguing, Alise split out half the monies and dropped them in Martel's hands, and he didn't feel like arguing either. They'd both contributed. They'd both even survived, somehow. Good enough.

That done, Alise scuttled over to a stall and bought a pie, and when Martel followed, bought him one too.

"Food," she said contentedly, taking a deep bite into her pie. She didn't complete the thought. That was perhaps all there had been to it in the first place.

"Food," Martel agreed, then added, "Thanks."

As they headed back to the Ellis hall, he asked, "So you doing anything later?"

She shrugged. "Got exams. Was just going to go loiter by the Shimmer for now, unless there's anything too interesting to pass up in the books."

"The Shimmer?" he asked. He knew exactly she meant, of course. She meant the Shimmer wall, the ruined wall in the Serin swamps that wasn't a wall at all, but instead a portal, a thin place between realities. The Shimmer was the one place in the world where the living could pass into the dead realms without any magic at all.

Why in the world would she want to go there?

Perhaps she read the real question on his face, because she said, "I like it there. It's nice."

"Nice," Martel repeated flatly.

"For certain definitions of nice," Alise said. "Look, I go through, people leave me alone, and I can actually get some work done."

They ducked into the Ellis hall and the noise level dropped almost immediately. Their headquarters was basically just a room full of sofas and tables and some mats for sparring, with another room with snacks, and another with beds and crap. Some folks glanced up as they entered. A couple waved.

"Hey, Bob," Martel said to one. This only narrowed it down slightly; they had something like five Bobs.

"Martel, you're mercenaries," Alise said, much more quietly now that they were out of the noise of the commons. "You folks get better by practising your magic and swordplay and all that, but for my stuff to get better, I need somewhere I can sit and think and do calculations. I go to the dead lands, nobody bothers me."

"Why?" Martel said. "You're a merc too. A sorcerer, aren't you?"

She grinned and shook her head. "Naw, I'm an engineer. I just cheat via sorcery."

He gave her a confused look and she just laughed and plopped down on a sofa. And then fell over. And then fell asleep.

"Right, then," Martel said, and wandered off to the showers.

Motto II

Later, Martel asked someone who ought to know what the company motto actually was.

"I dunno, wasn't it 'We do stuff' or something?" the guy, a certain Merrow Tilsa said. Merrow was one of the company leaders, mostly due to a technicality. Granted all the leaders seemed to be leaders due to a technicality. It wasn't entirely clear what had even happened to the original leaders, and despite the resulting fuzzy hierarchy, nobody had bothered to do anything about it since. If they ever needed a true leader, they could worry about it at the time.

"Oh," Martel said. That wasn't a very satisfying motto at all. "Maybe we should change that."

"Probably," Merrow said.

"How about 'Doing everything'?" Martel suggested, and only as soon as he said it did he realise this was hardly an improvement.

"Sure," Merrow said.

The Shimmer

The Shimmer consisted of about 50 metres worth of old stone wall jutting out of a tract of relatively dry swamp that, for all intents and purposes, simply wasn't there from one side.

Instead, there was a window to a roofed-over walkway, supported by dark stone columns, that just so happened to be shoved right up against a bunch of swamp. The lighting from this side seemed wrong enough to give most a considerable headache.

Alise lingered at the end of the wall and watched it for a moment, looking down the Shimmer's length, absent-mindedly pulling bits of tape out of her hair. It was a marvel, really, this hole in reality, a reminder that the world was simply not so simple as it seemed on its surface. That there were other worlds, too, and other rules, other realities.

They had magic, of course, which had always hinted at that, but this was so much more obvious, just staring anyone who saw it right in the face.

It was like a window, fuzzy on the edges, the other side so unreal from here, but so real once there. But unlike a window, one could walk right right it.

Alise did this now, stepping about and walking through the Shimmer wall like it was the most ordinary thing ever, going from slightly spongy moss to hard dry stone in the space of a single stride.

The other side was cold and grey, dark, but vast. Beyond the pillars was a plain of dry, dusty hills rolling off into the distance. Trees, alien and old, thrust inky blackness against a stormy sky. The air, if it even still was air here, felt electric.

There was no colour this side of the shimmer. Everything was blacks and greys.

Alise glanced back, just to check. It always threw her a little off, but the walkway itself was next to a wall on this side, too, with the shimmer forming the same 50 metre window looking out on the suddenly alien colour of the swamp. But here, the wall was complete, snaking off into impossible distance, the walkway all along its side. It was that distance that got her. That sheer length of wall.

Looking back out on the dead lands, she smiled in spite of herself. One of the columns had a sign affixed to it. The sign said, in large text, "THESE ARE THE DEAD REALMS," and in smaller text under that, "Home to the Dead God. Do not bother the Dead God, who does not like people, and you will be welcome here."

This had always amused Alise, perhaps in large part because she didn't much care for people either. "Hail the dead god," she whispered. She wasn't entirely sure who that was, or if it even was anyone at all, but it didn't really matter. She just generally avoided everyone here. It was a good place for that.

She headed for the table she kept under an old black tree, leafless and ancient, growing twiggage in squiggles. There, she laid out her drone designs and got to drafting some changes, committing them to its crystal as she went.

A few hours later, it occurred to her that she did also have exams and should probably work on those, too. Unlike most, Alise had elected to go through schooling on top of joining a company - normally it was an either-or arrangement, in which folks did one to get out of doing the other - and this meant coursework as well as jobs and assignments.

So she did some of that, too.

A few hours after that, she went back to working on her drone. She tested some general spells, just for kicks, to see how the environment changed them. She wondered how the drone's performance would be affected here, and did some calculations to try to account for what it would take to fly purely on magic, building the results back into the main design for the time being, not bothering to test them.

Quite a few hours later, it occurred to her that perhaps she should go back and eat and sleep and do all the things living people tend to do, as well as find out what day it even was at this point. Being in this place with its strange physics and rules and life seemed to put her needs on hold, she had found, but it still seemed like a good idea to get back and eat. And sleep properly, without tape in her hair. And everything.

When she passed back through the Shimmer, the day was fading into dusk.

Exams

Alise handed in her exams without incident.

After, they provided a decent excuse to spend a night pretending she was normal and partying with the other students, though at the end of that it had become pretty clear that she wasn't normal at all among them, either.

Especially after the fireballs.

Stronghold

After the pineapples had been cleaned up and the witness statements taken, Alise went back to the Ellis Company hall and hid in a closet.

The closet was full of fireballs.

She hastily vacated the closet and went to pick up an assignment, instead.

She wound up with a stronghold job. They would assault it in a team of six, take out the folks hiding out there harassing the citizen-class, and generally check the place out for oddities. None of the six really knew each other that well, but they all had someone who would vouch for them saying that, yes, this guy knows what he's doing and shouldn't get you all killed. Nobody was particularly worried.

The journey was a few days, first by train, then cart, then foot.

The stronghold was a fortress halfway up a mountain, full of rock folk. They set up camp on a hill opposite the mountain with a good view, and better cover.

Martel was along again, as well as a healer named Jessa, two guys named Bob who were, unhelpfully, also doing the same thing as each other (they were gunners), and a heavy blade by the name of Amalia.

Amalia never said much. Jessa wouldn't shut up. Every time someone tried talking to a Bob, it got confusing. The unofficial team leader wound up being Alise just because she kept coordinating things on the way there because nobody else would do it.

"So that's a stronghold," Jessa said, peering out over the cover they'd set up.

"Yup," Martel said.

"It looks really strong," Jessa said.

"Have you ever done this before?" a Bob asked.

"Nope!" Jessa said cheerfully.

The Bob sighed heavily.

Amalia, cleaning her swords off to the side, glanced over with an unimpressed look on her face.

"Shouldn't matter so long as she follows orders," Alise pointed out.

"I'll do whatever you say," Jessa said.

"Stay alive and heal the rest of us if we need it," Alise ordered.

"Right!" Jessa said.

A Bob snorted.

Assault

They spent the next two days watching, noting patterns.

They struck the following night, at the opening and changing of the guard outside. First they rammed an uprooted tree into the gate before the rock guards could close it. Then they killed the guards outside with a great clashing of swords, fireballs, and bullets. All the guards outside.

Then they moved inside.

It was a direct assault, brutal in its simplicity. All who stood against them died. A few surrendered and Martel told them to leave. They ran for it, fleeing into the night, melding into the mountains around.

The few times it was needed, Jessa did just fine.

Each room was cleared, one after the next. Each floor was cleared, each after the other.

Amalia took point on the way to the command chamber.

"Wait," Alise said, stopping in the hallway before what seemed to be a major door, fortified more than any they had come across previously.

Amalia glanced back.

"Looks like they'll be waiting for us. We'll need some sort of cover," Alise said.

"What's this, a plan?" Martel asked, smiling.

"My sword can block," Amalia said.

"Sure, sure," a Bob said, "but what if they're doing more of the blocking than you? Your sword's better killing than blocking."

"Set up an ambush, draw them out?" the other Bob suggested.

Alise nodded, and gestured for the Bobs to round the corner, then put Jessa vaguely behind them.

"Martel, got any smoke spells?" she asked, sidling over to where Jessa was, eyeing the angles.

He nodded, stowing his sword. "Definitely. Amalia?"

"Ready," the blade said, positioning herself at an angle behind the Bobs.

Martel danced up to the door and hurled a smoke bomb over it.

Back behind the corner, Jessa asked, "Aren't they rocks?"

"Er," Alise said. She'd completely failed to consider this.

"They still need to breathe," a Bob said. He was above; the Bobs had their guns pointed around the corner, waiting, one above, the other kneeling below.

"But they're rocks," Jessa said.

"Walking, talking rocks," the above Bob said.

"And they need to breathe for energy," Alise said, finally figuring it out herself.

A muffled explosion sounded around the corner, followed by Martel running back to them and a cloud of smoke billowing out overhead.

A moment later, the Bobs opened fire. Martel threw a fireball. Not to be outdone, Alise ran up and threw another fireball.

Amalia hacked at a rock guy who got through, knocking him down into bits.

A few more fireballs and hackings later, the smoke was clearing and everything was fairly still. Amalia shouldered her enormous sword and glanced back at the Bobs.

The Bobs straightened up and came around the corner in full, guns still at the ready, but much more relaxed.

The door was hanging open, smoke still drifting out in wisps.

Martel sketched out a shield and headed over and pushed open the door entirely with his foot. He pushed his way inside, looked about quickly, then dispelled the smoke and gestured the others over as well.

The room was clear. There were desks and tables and a few chests, and quite a few weapons. Bedding had been piled into a corner. On the main table in the centre of the room, a large map of the surrounding area had been laid out and annotated.

"This is it, then?" Jessa asked.

"Looks like," Alise said.

"Organised, for bandits," a Bob said, looking over the map.

"For rock folk, too," the other Bob said.

Martel frowned at him. "What are you saying?"

"They're rock folk, right?" The Bob said. "Rock folk don't do this. Rock folk... live on rocks. They do rocks. Why are they holing up in some ancient citizen fortress using citizen weapons on citizens? They have no use for citizen stuff."

"But these were," Alise mused.

"Farming equipment? Food? Livestock?" the Bob asked.

"What use could they have for any of that?" Martel asked.

Jessa nudged the bedding in the corner with her foot. It had flakes of rock in it. "Do they bed? Normally?" she asked.

"No, not at all," the first Bob said. "Rock folk just sit and boulder."

"What, like..." Alise began, then realised she had no idea what she was even asking.

"Like they hunker down and look like boulders. And that's how they sleep."

Looks were exchanged.

"Well, this isn't weird at all," Martel said.

"They think they're... us," Amalia said. "They don't understand."

They cleared out the rest of the rooms, finding more oddities and no answers. Most of them were abandoned, empty. One was full of old shadows, and older laundry. The shadows attacked; the laundry didn't.

Martel made sunlight and the shadows fled into the walls in terror.

In another room they finally found another rock warrior, and instead of killing him when he tried to fight, they bonked on him until he surrendered. It took a bit, but even rock grows loose.

He dropped his pike and rumbled, holding up stony arms, gesturing for them, from the look of it, to please stop hitting him.

Alise put a hand to the rock guy's head and placed a spell between them. It was like the link she used to fly her drone, but in this case she hoped it would allow some form of communication. Maybe.

Through this link, she got thoughts, ideas, images. She thought she felt words floating around, too.

"Say something," she told the guy.

He rumbled, but in her mind she heard the words as if he were indeed speaking them. Please don't hurt me.

"He's trying to speak," she said, looking back to the others.

"Rock folk don't speak," a Bob said. "They can't. They don't even have mouths."

"They rumble," the other Bob said. "Like avalanches."

"Who are you?" Alise asked the rock guy.

It doesn't even matter, she heard behind the rumble.

"It does," Alise said. "I hear you. I want to help you. Please, tell me what you know."

The rock person stared at her. Then he rumbled. My name is Tarnis. I don't know what's going on. I only know this is all we have, the only thing we can do.

"What is?" Alise asked.

Here. This place. The others wouldn't accept us back, they didn't even recognise us anymore. And when we tried to explain, we tried to tell them what had happened, they turned against us. The words came with images, memories of the events. The feeling of coming home, of finally seeing his wife and daughter after so long away, and having them only run in terror. The swords, the torches. The people who wouldn't even sell them what they needed when they tried to pay in coin. Having to take it by stealth, by force. Not being able to use it. The confusion. The hunger. The fear.

The rage.

"Who were you?" Alise asked. "Before they forgot you, who were you?"

The feeling of loss and longing was incredible, washing over her in a wave, almost carrying her away before she could focus on the voice he couldn't get out. Merchants. Travelling the mountain roads, passing home only when we could afford to. There was a memory there, too. Something in the mountains, something terrible.

"You found something," Alise said.

The memory solidified. The ruins. The crumbled building. The room. The glowstone. The explosion. The pain.

The rock man screamed, rising in pitch and volume, filling the room, rattling the walls, horrible in its intensity.

Alise managed to break off the spell a second before Amalia clove the rock man in two with her blade.

In the sudden silence, Alise said, "They were citizens. Something they found turned them to rock folk, but they weren't really, so they still tried to be citizens."

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say it didn't work," Martel said, looking down at the shards of the dead rock man.

"Yeah," Alise said. "You could say that."

"And what'd they find?" a Bob asked.

"Some sort of glowstone," Alise said. "It was in some ruins, probably on a trade route."

"Are we going there next?" Jessa asked.

"Should we?" Alise asked.

Martel fished out the assignment and checked the exact wording. Then he nodded. "That falls under 'resolve the underlying problem, if any'," he said.

"Whoops," a Bob said. "Shouldn't have identifying the underlying problem, should we?"

The other Bob rolled his eyes.

"We're investigating! This is awesome." Jessa said.

Ruins

They returned to their previous camp opposite the now once-more abandoned fortress for the night.

The next day, Alise sent out her drone to locate the ruins the rock-turned merchants had stumbled upon. She laid back and soared on the mountain gusts and rises, spiralling out, drifting from pass to turn. Only a small part of it was search pattern. Most was simply her sheer love of flying, and most especially places like this, the brisk air, the high skies, the texture and distance and variation of the land below.

She didn't focus on looking. She figured if it was there, she'd see it eventually.

Then she did, spotting the shapes even before she knew what they were. The odd rectangles were a sharp contrast with the random variety of the rest of the rock and trees, not mountain at all, but stranger.

She focussed the scan as she approached, first doing a quick fly overhead, then coming back, lower, for a more careful look, swooping about in lazy ups and downs that were the slowest she could go without the drone falling out of the sky.

She wished she could have it hover, but this would have to do.

The ruins weren't remarkable. Similar were scattered throughout the land, and many in far better condition than this; the stone was crumbled, the metal twisted and corroded, the roads and walkways cracked and broken, with trees erupting between the chunks. Shatter lay amidst the detritus, standing out in strange glints and hues against the grass and needles. Broken poles punctuated the corners.

No signs of oddities stood out, but the problem with proper oddities was that they never did.

She swung the drone around for a few more passes over the ancient city, broad and about, looking for anything, anything at all, enjoying the joint feelings of speed and inertia, before drawing back up to plot a path back out of the high mountains.

Path

"It should take about two days," Alise told the others once the drone had re-located them.

She led the way, drone scouting their path ahead.

Ruins proper

They came into the ruins on an old road, grey and cracked, not stone at all, but a strange substance that seemed as though it had been poured, then broken up later from the plants growing up through its clefts.

Jessa kicked at some chunks that had broken away completely. "They say the ancients weren't even from this world," she said. "That their cities only showed up after, and we got them as a hand-me-down from some other world entirely."

"Some other world?" a Bob asked. "Why would we wind up with their stuff?"

"Maybe there was only so much world to go around, so we all got the same bits," Jessa said.

"Or maybe it all happened here," Martel said, "without any other worlds involved at all."

"But they're the same," Jessa said. "They're all the same, underneath their futures, perfect copies, every one."

"What worlds are these?" Alise asked.

"The other ones!" Jessa insisted. "The ones I see in my dreams, the ones where the ancients lived on, where the Minstrel never conquered. Worlds without classes, worlds without people, even worlds where we would have covered the lands in cities, or lived in the sky, or destroyed it all such that only death remained. Worlds where everything is different. But the same."

Alise eyed her curiously. Sometimes they had folks who dreamed of truths, but most dreams were just that - dreams. "Have you ever seen any of these waking?" she asked finally.

"Once," Jessa said. "I messed up a spell, it came out as something else, and when I came too, it was all... different. Nobody knew me. Everyone talked funny. Everyone had... personal carts. Like the trains, but not. They kept asking for my identification."

"Yeah?" Martel said. "Did you give them a slice of bread?"

"No?" Jessa said. "I just... cast the spell again and then I was back. And then I never cast it again. But I still see them."

"Interesting," Alise said.

They were passing a few old carts now, collapsed into rusting lumps of metal and wood, but more than that, they were at the outskirts of the city itself, with the remains of walls jutting out of the forest floor, maybe going up a metre, or two metres, but rarely any more.

Martel cast a tracking spell, highlighting the paths of those who had most recently passed through, even showing the very memories of their passing in this space. Wildlife, hunters, various travellers. Those who came looking for resources to scavenge and sell.

They found the merchants quickly enough; they had passed through last, and cast the brightest silhouettes against the backdrop of the spell. From there, the spell played back their passage in bright shadows walking along, replaying events. The party followed behind them, not hearing the words as the figures conversed in silence, stopping and waiting while the figures explored various ruins, poked various poles, picked up various invisible items.

Jessa yawned.

Amalia led, carrying her heavy sword on her shoulders, dull-side down, looking around for signs of anything amiss. Behind her, the Bobs had their guns at the ready.

Alise's drone soared overhead, though from it the spell's effects were invisible. From her drone, she saw only the party as they passed through the ruins, stopping seemingly at random, following an ambiguous path. And deer. She saw some deer, too.

She nearly tripped a few times. Being in two places at once was hard enough when she wasn't moving on the ground, too, though after the past two days she was finally getting a bit better at it. Sort of.

The figures led them to a building, more intact than any of the others, this one built of crumbling stone and covered in lichen and moss, with even a second floor and a roof. They seemed excited, and stopped. They seemed to argue.

Amalia walked through their bright shadows and peered inside through the grand doorway, but the inside was uninteresting, just tumbles of rocky rubble, bits of sticks and leaves and detritus carried inside by elements and animals alike.

"This is it," Alise said. "They went inside and... whatever it was, it happened here."

Amalia looked back and shrugged, ambling back toward the others.

"In there?" Jessa asked. "It was in there. They got... stonified in there?"

Alise nodded, then frowned. This didn't fit. There weren't enough of them, for one. How many had they fought in the fortress, some fifty or so? But here only eleven odd shadows lingered, replaying their final events.

She dismissed the drone in order to better focus, calling back the memory, but the memory was still so confused. They'd gone inside. They'd split up and explored, just generally checking the place out, guessing at what it had meant. Three of them had happened upon a room with a display case on a pedestal, perfectly intact. Inside, the glowstone.

She tried to recall what had happened, but all she kept getting was the scene as they had filed in, looking on the glowstone. Not what had happened after. Not what they had done?

"What happened?" Martel asked. "Exactly?"

The glowing shadows of the memory-figures were still milling around, arguing, clearly excited. Perhaps betting on what they would find, joking about the possibilities. It was unclear.

"I don't know," Alise said. "I can't remember. It's there, I just can't..."

He gave her a skeptical look, then said, "Well, there's the obvious."

"Go in and check it out?" a Bob said.

"Yeah," Martel said.

"We'll do that," Alise said. "But just me and Jessa first. Rest of you, stay here in case... something happens."

"Me?" Jessa asked, clearly surprised.

"You're the one seen the other worlds," Alise mused. She wasn't sure why that mattered, but it felt right. "Let's wait and follow the spell, though," she added.

"If they ever get a move on," Martel said.

A Bob snorted.

Inside

The spell's shadow-figures finally got a move on a few minutes later, and Jessa and Alise followed them inside, then, when they split up, followed the three Alise had picked out from the memory as they explored room to room. It wasn't organised at all. They clearly weren't looking for anything in particular, just spending an afternoon in curiosity. A vacation of sorts for the citizen class. A mountain hike. A trip down history.

Jessa found something glinting amidst the rubble in one of the rooms, and picked it up - a necklace, dulled by time, in twists and spirals.

"Careful," Alise said. "You don't want to set anything off."

"It's fine," Jessa said, holding up the necklace to examine it in the oddly dusty light. "It has no magic."

"Good," Alise said. "Still, mind what you touch. Point it out first so we can both give it a look."

Jessa nodded, looking a bit ashamed. She would learn, though.

The shadowy figures turned into another room. Broken furniture, crumbing filing cabinets, and bits of grass decorated the floor.

The figures spent a time going through the filing cabinets and Alise waited, and Jessa yawned.

Alise juggled some balls of light.

The next few rooms were even less interesting.

Finally the shadows headed for the stairs, and Alise finally realised where the room, where the thing itself, had probably been.

"This way," Alise said, breaking away from the path of the shadows. Everything was oddly hushed. Their magic lights threw sharp shadows against the crumbling masonry and dirty ground.

Gaping hole in the plot

...

Later

Past the borderlands

Once through the Shimmer, Alise didn't wait to see if Sargayen would stop following. If he didn't, it wouldn't be worth the cost, and given that he had followed this far, she rather doubted that the simple wrongness of the dead realms would slow him down any. So she didn't slow herself, instead sprinting out across the open grey hills, looking for anything, anywhere, that would not just provide cover, but perhaps outright mislead. She didn't just need to get away, but disappear.

Nothing near the wall would do. Trees wouldn't do. She needed buildings. People.

Passing by the squiggle tree, she glanced back in time to see Sargayen's burly figure lumber out of the walkway's cover, and drove herself to run faster, further. It was possible here. Here, she couldn't tire.

And neither could he.

The plains were boring, but straight-going, she was the faster, and the distance between them lengthened. The hills rolled. The not-grass shivered in the trembling of the air.

Alise kept going.

Sargayen kept following.

At one point she saw a building, but passing by, it was old, abandoned. Still, it hinted that they were finally leaving the borderlands, passing into the true dead realms, where the dead walked, and the mythical armies fought and clashed under the gaze of the Dead God.

It was a disturbing thought, but a battle, if that truly was what happened out here, might be exactly the place she could lose Sargayen.

The next cluster of buildings didn't look to be abandoned at all. Jutting out of the ground with severe austerity, thick and tall and dark and without doors, they seemed almost like a maze. Shiny bits glinted along the edges, a silvery line there, a not-quite-golden one there, marking odd lines through the stonework.

The last hill blocked her sight of Sargayen completely. It was perfect.

Alise darted in the opening into the tomb-like interior, and around the corner, and around the corner again. This was what they had instead of doors. Corners.

Another corner put her in a vast room of tables and chairs and, for the first time since she had fled here, people. They were sitting and standing about. Some were talking in whispers. All were wearing dark robes trimmed with one or two lines of silver or not-quite-gold. A few looked at her in surprise as she stumbled in and stopped, but there was little alarm. She wasn't very alarming, was she? She didn't think she was.

There was a table around the immediate corner from the corner-doorway, and she dropped into the chair as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It wasn't natural at all and it was completely stupid and she didn't even expect it to work, but she was also really tired of running, even if she wasn't now physically tired at all.

The people in the room went about their business. Those who had looked over went back to ignoring her.

They were grey, she realised as she waited. All grey. Was she grey? She'd never even thought about it.

She held up a hand and looked it over. She looked more white than grey, here.

As she sat, she wondered who these people were. Were they dead? What was this building for? What were they waiting for? What did the lines on their robes mean? How did they make them so shiny?

Sargayen burst around the corner-door in a whirlwind of noise and smell. Dead leaves blew in with him as he came to a stop, staring down the room, disturbing the people in it as they looked back at him disapprovingly, as he eyed each one in turn, looking, looking, looking for Alise.

But Alise was behind him. That was the trick. Her little corner was slightly behind the door, and if he just didn't turn around...

Sargayen turned around and marched right back out the way he'd come.

Alise sat in utter shock. Her heart was practically in her throat. He should have seen her when he turned around to leave. How had he not seen her? What the hell had just happened?

A few long moments passed as she waited in utter terror, fully expecting Sargayen to come marching right back and take her, but he didn't.

And the people in the room went back to how they'd been. They relaxed, they resumed their positions, their conversations, their general air of calm anticipation.

One of them took the other seat at the table, just sitting with her, not saying anything. His presence was oddly comforting, and slowly she calmed down, the realisation sinking in.

She'd won.

She'd escaped.

She'd lost Sargayen, and for all intents and purposes, she'd disappeared.

Even so, she didn't bother to get up. Even if she was finally free, if it was all over, she still had nowhere to go. She couldn't go back, not with the phylactery, not without. Not yet.

Not while the Harrow month still lingered.

But she was safe here. The folks didn't seem to mind. The man who'd sat with her didn't seem to mind, just giving her a reassuring smile when she'd stared at him for too long.

She could wait. They were all waiting anyway, so what difference did one more make?

Waiting

At some point, Alise lost herself in the waiting. It was the same as losing one's self to sleep, really, but instead of drifting off to sleep, she drifted off into dream, a strange waking insanity that gave her every feeling of being completely ordinary and utterly sane, but had she been anywhere else, had she had any concept of how much time had really passed, had she any inkling at all, it would have filled her with utter terror.

Instead, she simply went mad, and remained entirely calm in the doing.

Through it all, the man with her never moved.

The waiting waited on.

Ending

The waiting ended when the dark figure turned the corner in silence. He stood at the entrance, robed and hooded, taller than all the others, darker than any, no lines marring any aspect of his form.

"It is time," he said, in a voice like death.

Alise startled out of her madness and nearly fell out of her chair, and the guy with her helped her up. Throughout the room, all the people were getting up, gathering up weapons and bags, putting away their miscellaneous puttering objects.

"What's going on?" she asked quietly. Her mind felt like butter. "What time is it?"

"Time to fight," her guy said.

Fighting. She liked fighting, didn't she? Fighting was a time to fly, to kill, to dance with fear and death, the only time to truly live. "Can I come?" she asked.

The dark, tall figure at the entrance turned slowly, coming about to face her, his darkness looming above her. There was no face under that hood, no form under those robes, only blackness and power. Only death.

Alise just stared.

"You would be welcome," he said. "Join us, then."

The figure lingered for a moment, then swept about and left as suddenly as he had appeared.

"Was he... is that..." Alise tried to ask, pointing hesitantly after him.

"Hmm?" the guy next to her said.

"Er," she finished.

"You'll need robes," the guy said, ushering her toward somewhere else in the building. "For identification. We'll set you up with a squad later."

"Right," she said, and followed. She was starting to be able to think straight again, and as a result, she was starting to worry a little as to just what she was getting into. Still, it seemed safe enough at this point.

Safe by Ellis standards, at any rate. Ellis standards would probably be regarded as suicidal by most other folks.

"Whee," she said quietly.

The guy got her fitted into some robes with a not-quite-gold line around the edges, matching her to the bulk of the room, with lumpy insignias that also matched everyone else in the room. She wasn't quite sure what they were supposed to be. Then she raised a baggy sleeve and swung it around a bit experimentally. It was quite loose.

"That fit?" the guy said.

"Mmm, I think so," Alise said. "I dunno, I don't really do robes much, even if I am a sorc. T-shirt sorc, that's what I am." She paused, then added, "Don't really do insignias much, either. You lot'd probably hate my company. So disorganised. Not like this at all."

"No?" he said. "Then how do you recognise each other on the field of battle?"

"Guess we don't really do battles," she said. "Always smaller things. Smaller groups. And if there is a battle, we'll be the ones slightly off to the side looking on wondering what the hell everyone's thinking."

He frowned at her. "Are you really up for this?"

Alise grinned. "What's the worst that could happen?" she said.

"There are a broad range of possibilities," he said.

"I know, I'm over my head," Alise remarked, "But that's fine. I'm at my best when I'm over my head. It gives me something to strive to. And not die. Usually nobody dies. Except that when those two Bobs and Kerna fell off the roof. They died."

The guy regarded her for a moment.

"Sorry," Alise said. "I'm babbling." And she stopped.

He nodded, then turned, leading her out, around the corner doorways, back onto the vast grey plain of the dead the dead lands. Groups were forming, the grey soldiers gathering around their commanders and readying. Readying for war.

There were thousands.

Passing among them, in the distance, was the Dead God. She was now fairly certain that was who that had been. The Dead God. This was the warring. How far out were they? How far had she run?

How long had she been sitting there? Probably long enough, at least. The month would have ended. She hoped.

Group

Alise wound up in a group indistinguishable from most any other. They were thirteen, their leader with silvery lines in triplicate, giving orders, arranging everyone. He asked her what her status was. She said she had no idea.

He nodded, and went onto the next.

They moved out as a block. Alise fished out a bag of fireballs and tied it to her belt, her fingers sifting through the ashes. Half full. Good for maybe a few hundred. She hadn't bothered to restock for the Sargayen assignment. Hadn't seemed worth it.

On the other hand, most folks usually only had maybe five or ten fireballs on them at any given time, but they weren't Ellis. They weren't insane. They didn't try to plan for all the worst possible situations, because they didn't make a practice of winding up in all the worst possible situations.

Ellis Company tended to survive everything, but there was a reason for it: practice. Practice, and, subsequently, preparation. Bring as many fireballs as you can, even if you're just buying cantaloups. Bring heals even when you're on an assassination job. Bring a blade even when you, personally, can't use it; the heavy blade in the party might need it, and they can use it to save your arse.

It helped that fireballs in bulk were actually pretty cheap, so the company would just order a few thousand and leave them in the closet.

Maintenance didn't appreciate this, of course, but Maintenance wasn't about to argue with a band of 50-some mercenaries armed with several thousand fireballs, either.

Alise wondered vaguely if there was any particular reason individuals couldn't carry around several thousand fireballs, or if they just didn't because it seemed excessive. It didn't feel like it'd be excessive here.

They passed from plains to hills to plains again. Forests of squiggle trees reached for the stillborn storm overhead. Strange rifts erupted forth bursts of hissing substance.

The leader asked Alise what her thing was and she said, "Fireballs." Then she focussed a moment, realised what the question had actually been, and added, "Also I've got this drone thing I like to fly around. Good deeps, but a bit slow."

"A summon?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, getting out the crystal. "I mean, I think it'll work here."

He nodded.

"Jut let me know when you want me to pull that out, and I can cover our heads like a biiirdy," Alise said. "Or something."

"Can you stay your feet while it's out?"

"Sure," she said. "I can fight and flee and everything! Lots of practice."

He frowned.

"I'm Ellis Company," Alise explained. "We make a point of versatility. It keeps us alive when everything goes horribly wrong."

"Does that happen often?" Someone behind her asked.

"Oh yeah," Alise said. "It's not even that we're not prepared. We generally are prepared. That's how we survive it. Take too much firepower for everything, then when everything explodes, hurl entirely too many fireballs at it and not die after all." She smiled slightly and added, "If we had a real motto, it might be something like 'There's no kill like overkill'."

"So what is your motto?" One of the others asked.

Alise frowned. "You know, I don't really know. It keeps changing. Something about Bobs, maybe?"

The leader smiled and moved off to the head of the party.

"We have a lot of Bobs," Alise said.

"I'm a Bob," A Bob in front of her said, turning back with a wink.

"Hi, Bob," Alise said.

"Hi," Bob said.

Battle

Later, they got to fighting. Alise's group wound up pushing through the lines, ushered forward by those around it, then out the side to take on a secondary objective. This was, she later learned, due to fireballs. Fireballs were not a primary attack among the dead legions, but where they had them, they could use them.

Had she known this at the time, she might have pointed out that fireballs weren't really her primary attack, either. On the other hand, considering she didn't really have a primary attack in the first place and when things went bad she usually just hid behind someone else, she might not have mentioned it after all.

The bulk of the battle erupted behind them as the armies clashed in noisy combat, direct and confrontational, and, largely, without terribly complex tactics. But that was the distraction, the front. The two sides yelling NO U at each other with their bodies while trying to surreptitiously sneak hands around the back.

Their group was a hand. Their target was a small fort with a possible heart kept inside. Nobody explained what a heart was.

"Now," the leader told her.

Alise nodded and began the summoning, starting small, drawing the pure energies into the crystal, then casting it up as she always did and, like she had so many times when she had first been testing the thing so long ago, fervently hoped it would fly at all.

This time, however, it was not an aerodynamic design that would make it fly, but the magic she had never even gotten around to testing.

The drone flew into the sky and then drifted lazily off to one side into a cloud.

Okay, not quite what she'd had in mind.

It was up there somewhere, she knew. Her mind's perception placed it in a whop of grey, still drifting, highish maybe. Possibly rather deep. The pressure was all wrong. She had no idea what to make of the readings and thus ignored most of them.

She made to move it forward and it continued to drift, adjusting sluggishly to its new course, and she realised the controls were now nothing like what she was used to. It was like driving through sand, and at once, like momentum didn't even apply. She didn't understand, and so shoved it around almost at random in an attempt to get her bearings.

On the ground, she realised the leader of the group was looking at her expectantly, and she said, "I wouldn't rely on this for anything. I'm not used to these physics."

He said, "Target fireballs at groups. When we get there, buildings are good collateral."

"Aye," she said, and made a point to pay a bit more attention to the battle around her as well as the oddity of the sky.

She dropped the drone out of the cloud and sent it ahead to scout, and as a result, she saw the ambush well before they ran into it, and also nearly crashed. An illogical spiral right into what should have been the gravitational force instead sent the thing back up into the clouds.

"Ambush," she said, pointing to a ridge that from where they were, looked exactly like any other.

They adjusted their heading accordingly, and while they couldn't turn the ambush about, they clashed on equal footing as a result.

Alise hid behind a bunch of swords, including the group's personal Bob, and used lasers to take out several nearby enemies with pinpoint shots while they blocked the swords.

A large fireball thrown at the ranged part of the ambush sent several of them flying, and the group made short work of the enemy forces overall.

Meanwhile she was starting to get the hang of the drone, and deciding that she might not ever entirely get the hang of this. It flew. It stopped. It did exactly what she told it. It drifted exactly as much as she told it to. It spiralled exactly how she specified. Opposing forces were just not a thing.

Except when they were and the drone went skidding in completely random directions for no apparent reason.

They pressed on. They ran into a few more groups of enemies, avoiding the larger ones, ploughing into the smaller ones with deadly certainty, leaving no survivors.

"Save your magic," the leader told her at one point.

"Aye," Alise said. "Don't worry, fireballs are cheap." Lasers were more so. Simple triggering event, and pow. But how to explain that, she didn't even know. It'd taken her completely by surprise when she'd finally done the calculations, and she'd even understood the maths.

He looked skeptical, but left it at that.

Another group of hostiles put them in a circle, fighting outward. Alise and the leader and two others were at the center. Alise bounced ashes to gauge the wind. Instead of doing anything meaningful, the ashes hovered uncertainly above her hand until she grabbed them manually. She pffted at them.

Then she had the drone come in and laser the enemies from the outside, instead.

A moment later, she was thrown back, the blow knocking the wind out of her. Several of her companions were thrown as well, and as she tried to recover her breath, she directed the drone back into the clouds, away from the fight, out of the... what had even hit her? None of her senses saw anything. The drone had seen nothing. She had seen nothing.

She had a fireball in her hand without even realising, and pulled herself back up quickly, looking about. The whole group was scattered, but whatever had smashed into them, it had been indiscriminate - the enemies were also scattered, many outright dead - and they quickly began to close ranks once more, reforming.

Something grabbed her, drawing her off the ground, and Alise threw the fireball in reflex, but it bounced and nearly hit her instead before she could quench it. In the flicker, she saw an outline of a form looming over her, gigantic, impossible, its hands drawing her upward into its depths, and then depths were all there were. She felt herself losing consciousness, light-headed and not all there, and then the vastness of the form before her was not just without, but in, pressing on her mind, taking it for its own, taking her, becoming her...

She fled into the drone. This had happened before. Psychic attacks, designed to subvert the will of the target and make it no more enemy than friend, or even take over entirely, replacing everything it was with something new, but this... this was so much stronger than anything she'd encountered previously. Others could have been fought. This... this left no room at all. This was simple and absolute, too vast for anything at all.

It felt like a god in the same way that flying here didn't feel like flying at all. It was just what it was.

She dropped out of the clouds for another look, and now she saw it. The thing that had hit them was a true giant, a hundred metres tall, towering over the scurrying soldiers at its feet, their colours made indistinct by the sheer size of its presence. Veering closer, her instincts instilling a pattern of flight even when the lack of drag and pull mandated nothing, she even saw herself, so tiny, so helpless in its hands. She saw it hold her body to its face. She saw it focus all upon her.

She saw her allies throwing everything they had at its feet, and going completely unnoticed.

She felt her mind, even here, slipping slowly, unstoppably away.

The ballistic missiles would follow the same laws of trajectory as the fireballs, but hit with a far greater impact. It was time to use her real magic.

The drone passed by and flew around, as unnoticed as the mice at the thing's feet. She made her run directly, dropping payload, passing by, but her target was not the giant that held her, the god trying to take her over, but only her herself. An easy target, held still and defenceless.

The missiles struck true in fire and darkness.

And then there was nothing.

More

The next thing she knew, Alise was lying on the cold, dusty deadgrass, and one of the non-blades of the group and peering down at her.

"Buh?" she said, not understanding.

"You're alive," the woman said. "Where does your allegiance lie?"

"Uh," Alise said. What? She had to stop and think about that one, really. Ellis Company never made much of allegiances. They never did much where it mattered, somehow. "My friends and allies, always," she said finally. "Those who stand at my side... you lot?"

The woman nodded. "You speak true." She turned back to the group leader. "Her mind is sound."

He looked genuinely surprised.

Alise looked genuinely confused. Finally, she asked again, "Buh?"

Someone was pulling her up, and she nearly fell over before retaking her feet, but the someone stopped her. It was Bob.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realised the drone was still up, just sitting in a cloud, waiting. A quirk of the location. That certainly wouldn't work back home.

...would it? Maybe she could make it work. When she got back.

The others were all standing and sitting around amidst the bodies of the last fight, mostly hostiles, but this time there were friendlies among the fallen, too.

"What happened?" she asked finally.

"Mahalist," Bob said. "He came right at you, tried to take you over. Probably saw you as the biggest threat, since your magic is so focussed relative to the rest."

"Yeah?" Alise said. That didn't really answer the question.

"He didn't count on your drone," Bob said.

"Right," Alise said. Nobody ever did. That was kind of the point. But she's hit herself with a full payload. She said, "I know my drone. That should have killed me. Why am I not dead?"

"He was trying to take you for his own," the woman said. "In doing so, he shared his defences with you, but the severity of your strike was so much that he had to let go and recover his form."

"Oh," Alise said, somewhat disappointedly. "Did it even dent him?" she asked. As happy as she was to be alive, she couldn't help but feel slighted. That had been her best attack.

"He is a god," the woman said by way of dissent.

This didn't make Alise feel any better. Not that she'd ever taken on a god. They didn't tend to get those where she was from.

"Group," the leader said, "we still have a job. Move out."

They did, now numbering nine.

Their leader reordered them to account for the new number.

Alise marched with the others, her head in the clouds, focussed on her drone. It felt faint, here, range uncertain, all around it only clouds, grey and shifting, roiling with nameless light.

She dropped it down, straight toward ground, following the quasi-force that held them all down. Gravity didn't entirely apply, and for a moment she wondered if she, too, could ignore it here. After all, it wasn't real. The drone could use it if it wanted, but only if it wanted.

She hopped experimentally and fell back like normal.

She hopped again, this time deciding she didn't want to come down. It was almost like the beginning of a spell, but only almost, directed, conceptualised, and completely lacking any of the usual force they usually put into it.

This time she didn't come down.

The guy next to her gave her a curious look, wondering why she'd stopped. So she drifted forward, still hovering, keeping pace.

Interesting.

The drone, meanwhile, was still dropping. The clouds were thick, or perhaps deep, and not of anything she recognised. The sensors said they weren't there at all, but couldn't see through them, either. It seemed the drone had been drifting the entire time she'd been out. Not just waiting.

Then it cleared the clouds, coming out over the open plain, the battle still raging, the forces clashing. From here, it looked like waves at a shore, except the waves were respectively black on one side, glowing on the other. Dark robes versus those with flames. The dark seemed to have the advantage, but seeming only meant so much.

And there was the Dead God, looming out of the field of dark, directing, ordering, pushing on.

The sensors placed him as not quite there. On the other hand, they also gave him an odd aura, some other energy she could maybe pick up on. She calibrated, focussing closer on this, and then suddenly he seemed solid, flickering back out, then solid again as she narrowed it down.

Suddenly other figures were visible, too, scattered about, swooping through the skies, hovering, drifting, and skulking about the plain. People on the ground walked right through them, legs carrying them through the incorporeal without issue, but up here, directed by magic alone, the effect might be much greater. Had this been the problem before? Beyond not just being used to flying here, had she been hitting these?

For now it didn't matter. She panned about to try to relocate herself, and while she got a sense of direction, the distance was vast. Closable, certainly, but daunting.

For now she panned back around the main battle, looking for anything new, anything important, flying high, skating on the edges of the storm. Almost dancing.

When they got to the fort, Alise's feet were still drifting a few centimetres above the ground, and she was only half paying attention.

They stopped at rifle range. Two casters put up a shield to cover the entire group, then they resumed their advance, right to the gate, as projectiles and explosions rained down about them. There was a lot of fire. Whoever these folks were, this enemy, they seemed to like fire.

An anomaly threw the drone off course and she corrected, skidding about, then remembering there was no need to skid and just stopping outright. She turned about, and realised here was another glow, similar but different, and as she twirled through the lawless sky like a leaf on the wind, evading whatever, again she recalibrated.

The woman who had awoken Alise went to the gate directly, put out her hands, and pushed, a pure concussive force that blew it off its foundation. This was proper magic. Force magic. Something that took strength and resolve. This was what they had been saving it for.

The anomaly almost hit her again and she evaded once more, flying erratically, intentionally patternless, in spurts and jogs, utterly uneven. It was a figure behind her, then in front, large, hard to triangulate. The readings didn't make sense. The lines were an unusual spread, like...

They went in as a group, shield still up, and fought any and all who got too close. Alise threw haphazard fireballs, setting random things that weren't them on fire. Buildings. Crates. Piles of weapons. Enemies.

Her mind wasn't really in it.

The lines looked like the focus of elements, each one throwing its own colours. But this was a whole different scale, merely mimicking the smaller effect, mimicking it macroscopically and disappearing? She calibrated the separate chunks and suddenly there it was, the size of a giant, flying after, tailing her, trying to get ahead of her, getting ahead of her as she suddenly veered to the side, being in completely the wrong place as she darted down and about.

"Got you," she said, off in the fort.

"What's that?" the leader said, looking back.

"The god's tailing my drone. Or trying to. I'm very good at random." Everyone always said the only thing truly random was reality. Just mimic reality. She knew a lot of reality.

The guy frowned. "You see it?"

"Aye," Alise said. "It was the dead god what gave me the key, not being quite there either. Just need to change how you look. Simple."

"You're floating," he said.

"Change how you exist," Alise murmured. She was dreaming again, she realised. Not good. Not here. That was madness. Why was that madness?

The god on her tail was getting closer more often, predicting better her quasi-random motions. Of course he would. It wasn't possible to make true randomness, certainly not on her scale, but maybe she could use that. Maybe she could pull him somewhere else?

What would the Dead God do with him?

They got to the heart of the fort, coming around a large enclosure of stone and steel and glowing magic, and Alise finally dropped back to her feet, pulling out a whole fistful of fireballs, still not entirely paying attention.

"The heart is there, if it is," the leader announced as they spread out around it. "Mages, hit on my signal."

He gave the signal. Alise floppily lobbed her fireballs at it, several dozen all in hand, and the other casters threw their own powers at it, full force, a broad explosion, bright, white, and empty.

The explosion faded and nothing happened.

She pulled the drone down and about, zig-zagging at intervals, following a simple arithmetic series. The god caught on almost immediately and she turned back, pulling it forward, toward her own god, indirectly, seeing if it would catch on.

"It's not here," the woman said.

"So be it," their leader said, gesturing the group back into formation. "We're done."

"What's the heart for?" Alise asked as they moved out once more. She was hovering again. It was easier.

"Take that out, and Mahalist will be unable to recover himself," the woman explained.

Alise nodded. "So one of the other groups gets that, and... then what?" she asked.

"Then the armies of the Dead God will take down the destroyer once and for all."

"You do this a lot, then?" Alise asked.

She flew the drone in a corkscrew around the god's head. She was running out of ideas, not that she'd been entirely sure to begin with. She didn't do this very often. Usually if she was flying around distracting, she'd use explosions.

There wasn't any particular reason she couldn't use explosions here.

She dropped some explosions on the opposing army. They exploded nicely, bits flying every which way. She scissorsed about and threw a missile at the god for good measure, directing even the missile to come about for another try when it initially missed. It jigged around a lot before she finally just gave up and detonated it at random slightly off the god's ear.

The physics here were bloody strange. There didn't even seem to be any physics here, just the idea of physics, and the strength of wills.

"It's different every time," the woman said.

Alise nodded. She was definitely getting an idea how that could go.

As she came around another loop approaching, the Dead God held up a hand in the drone's direction, signalling for her to hold.

She did, stopping suddenly, then rammed the drone up the pursuing god's nose, just to see what would happen, and was genuinely surprised when it actually worked and the drone got jammed in a horrifying cavern of formless flesh.

They marched over the open plain, back toward the main battle. Along the way, they stopped to clean up stragglers, taking out various hostiles and bringing a few friendlies into the group to replace their lost numbers. When entirely too many had been replaced, the new folks split off as a separate group.

Alise tried to pull the drone out of the god's nose and realised it had no propulsion from this angle. Then she realised it didn't matter and gave it a general magical yank and pulled at it that way instead. It seemed good and stuck.

She yanked again.

She refreshed the summon with some new missiles.

She shot the missiles up the god's nose.

The god's nose exploded.

The drone dropped out and fluttered about like a butterfly, just out of reach.

Alise giggled. "Exploratory nose surgery," she said to no-one in particular. It occurred to her for having nearly died just a few hours ago, she was having entirely too much fun. It occurred to her that she didn't really care.

They marched on, or in Alise's case, floated vaguely on.

Even the exploding nose didn't dent the god. Again, Alise couldn't help feel a bit disappointed, but this time she had sort of expected it. It didn't matter. She skittered about and soared, flying forward at impossible speed, breaking all manner of imagined barriers.

Behind her drone, the god still followed, soaring after, breaking the same and more.

The group was nearing the main army now, a breaking surge of grey spreading around a dwindling group of the opposition. The Dead God was there too, at the innermost edge, blocking escape.

She caught the signal at the back of her mind a moment before the group leader said, "Alise. Now."

The Dead God was ready. She was out of time regardless. She didn't even try to evade as she sent the drone hurtling down, trajectory past the Dead God, battling wills with her pursuer to simply not be grabbable. That was all. Focus.

He knew what she was doing, of course. And he was stronger, of course. And he, of course, knew that too, so there was no reason, no reason at for him not to follow closely and fight her for her drone, fight for the path, the magic, the purpose.

The path ploughed Mahalist into the ground directly at the Dead God's feet, and the drone into the ground a few metres past.

"I win," Alise said happily. The drone was totally trashed, and would take a complete re-summon at this point, but it didn't matter. It had served its purpose. It detonated with a dirty spmmph, deep enough that even those above it hardly noticed as the dirt collapsed slightly underfoot.

As they pushed forward through the massive army, she summoned a new one just for the view. It would have been exhausting, but she didn't care. She wanted to see this.

It wasn't even exhausting.

The drone took off in a jagged rise, pulling itself back up above the armies and drifting lazily back toward centre of the lot, where the action was.

There was a large, mostly empty circle there. A small group of hostiles had their weapons down in surrender. Far, far more were dead.

The Dead God was at the head of the circle, facing inward, facing the prisoners, facing the bulk of his army, which looked on (those few who could) and waited in suspenseful silence. Before him was Mahalist, on his knees, looking about to try to get up, but out of options, clearly the loser.

"You attempted the unconscionable," the Dead God said. They all heard it, though it was clearly directed at Mahalist. "The sentence is silence."

"No, please," Mahalist whispered.

The Dead God raised a scythe, blacker than black, and brought it down on Mahalist's form, shredding it to nothing, which drifted lazily into the grey.

The silence was horrible and ghastly. Though they had all fought against Mahalist just moments past, they felt his passing cut into them, a loss more profound than the worlds. This had needed had to be done, but the cost was huge.

Something that had been was now missing.

As one, the armies bowed their heads in mourning, and the Dead God did the same, the hush emanating outwards.

Alise bowed her head, too, feeling the loss, mourning with the rest, but as she did, she still soared in her drone above it all, looking down. From there, it was even more significant. This much feeling, this much sorrow.

It lasted for a long moment, then the Dead God drifted away in whispers, leaving the rest behind on the battlefield. Groups broke off slowly, almost conversationally, the deadly purpose of before replaced with casual commiseration.

They were done. They were returning to their... places. It was over.

The next would be whenever it would be.

In her mind, Alise heard the Dead God's voice.

"You will be welcome among my own, always," he said, and she was all at once reminded of the sign by the Shimmer wall. Welcome.

"You should get home," the group leader told her, pulling her back to the moment as they, too, began drifting back the way they had come.

"Yeah," Alise said. "Thank you. For this. It was interesting."

He bowed his head slightly.

Then she stopped and looked up, finding her drone against the silent chaos of the clouds.

Flying

It had been an insanely stupid idea. She hadn't wanted to walk, however. She didn't want to try hovering that long of a distance. Attempting some sort of teleportation just sounded like a really bad idea.

So she'd tried her darnedest to simply not think about how stupid she was being, climbed onto her drone, sat down on the flat triangular top like it was the most ordinary chair ever, and flown away.

It had perhaps only worked because the sheer insanity of it never quite hit her.

On the other hand, in this place, it wasn't insane at all.

As she soared over the dead lands, the strange black trees and weird hills and empty ravines, the hissing cracks and shivering grasses, the dusty ground the same but different throughout it all, she thought about the nature of physics, and the significance of a lack thereof. Here, the laws of nature were entirely their own, and, as it seemed to turn out, entirely optional. She could fly without resistance or momentum if she wanted to. She could fly without flying at all. She could, perhaps, do anything, if only it occurred to her how; the problem was, that also would mean anything could happen if she should mess up. The potential for testing was huge, and she wouldn't know where to begin.

But one thing seemed to hold. Cause and effect was based on expectation as much as anything else. People expected to stay on the ground, they stayed on the ground. They expected their swords to swing and block, and they did. They expected to win, and perhaps even that shaped things.

The moment they changed their expectations, let them go entirely, all bets were off.

Alise wondered if this was what gods were, that if what she had found to be the power of expectation was, perhaps, their existence as a whole, even in realms where hard laws did otherwise apply. Was that perhaps what made them gods?

If it came to it, how could anyone ever fight them, then?

But how could anyone fight anything?

Why did it need to come to fighting?

Watch the view, you idiot, she told herself, and watched the strange, grey, alien landscape pass her by as she made her way back to the Shimmer.

Then she saw the wall.

From here, she could see it properly. Higher, gliding beneath the clouds, their violent wisps only a couple of metres above, from time to time licking down to almost her own height exactly, she could see the wall in perspective, not just a length of black stone snaking into impossible distance in either direction, walkway all along its length, but also something with another side.

Something with another side, with absolutely nothing on that other side.

It was black, just black. No land at all beneath the clouds, though the clouds went on. Just a black emptiness, and that she could see from here, nothing in its depths. Just nothing.

Alise slowed as she neared. It would be so easy to simply fly over the wall, see what was on the other side, but the very prospect felt wrong, striking fear into her heart. That was the boundary, and beyond it nothing, and what if the nothing reached up and grabbed her, even if she was above it, suspended on this tiny drone, so tiny and so utterly impossible and idiotic, nothing at all to protect her.

She didn't stop, however, simply slowing ever more as she neared, passing over the last of the ground, over the roof of the walkway, up to the edge the wall, looking down, down, down into the black.

It was empty.

Completely empty.

Even the clouds this side seemed empty, thinning out, fading.

She almost stopped. As she passed the precipice, the thought struck her, what if there was simply nothing from the other side too, what if as soon as she passed over the edge, she was gone, no way back, one-sided world, one-sided reality.

She glanced back immediately after, but the Dead Realms were still there. From here, however, over the black, they were a huge mass rising out of the depths, sheer on the edge, topped with a wall. Going on almost forever, but only almost. If they ended on this side, then there must have been other sides too...

Alise hurriedly glided back over the wall and set down on the solid ground, quickly retaking her feet, losing them, hugging the dirt, the wonderful, brilliant, solid, real dirt. Her relief was immense.

She got up, later, and trotted over to the Shimmer, unsummoning the drone with a quick wave.

When she passed through, the swamp was the most unreal thing. It wasn't just the wetness or the colour or the life or the feeling and sensation of reality, the laws of physics and maths crashing in and retaking their hold on her being, the time that had passed that had hardly been much time at all, the memories of all the things she needed to do this side of the wall, but all of it. All at once. Hitting her like life hits the newborn, like magic hits the apprentice the first time when he finally breaks through, like food for the lost, dying of starvation.

Then the feeling was past.

As she hiked her way back to citadel, it occurred to her that she was still wearing the robes and insignia of the dead legions. The trim on its edges was the most vibrant golden colour she had ever seen.

Story

Do you think there is a story here, that if you keep turning the page, it will all become clear?

Perhaps there is.

Return

Alise dropped the dead legion insignias into her pocket as she passed through the citadel gates, the broad archway high overhead, not feeling quite at ease wearing them home. Citizens and mercs alike milled about, passing from the day-to-day activities that made up the majority of their lives. A few nobles lingered at a street corner, chatting.

For all its brightness, she felt like she could see the black behind it all, behind every object, every motion, every splash of colour. That same horrible blackness that had lain beyond the wall.

The voices, too, all sounded wrong.

Perhaps she was just tired.