Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Where does it all start?

Every end has a beginning, somewhere. Exactly where that delimitation is drawn has always depended strongly on viewpoint, historical context and – of course – the narrative under examination, but there is always one to find.

In this case, perhaps it all began with a glance, met across a room of otherwise unremarkable lives, and the spark of kinship between two souls. Young and yet unforged by the fires they would ignite, but each gaze seeing itself in the other. Or maybe it came from the end of something else; from the fall to earth, the settling aftermath of an abruptly-imposed destiny, and the empty space in the future when a hero's fate is done.

Perhaps it began with the choice, and betrayal, all at once. But however it all started, it ended here – in blood, and darkness, and a world unmade.

I am sorry. And that will never be enough.

---

'System restore. Y/N?'

He shouldn't be doing this.

'Y'

'Backups not found. Restore from archive. Y/N?

Even here, alone but for the faint background hum of the server stacks, Lalna hunched over the keyboard, shielding his own hand from the weight of accusing, suspicious gazes his imagination had populated into the night time shadows.
He really, really shouldn't be doing this.

His gloved fingertip hovered over the key – so simple, so easy – and he felt sweat start to bead under the goggles pushed onto his forehead. He had said. He had sworn that he wouldn't even think about this sort of thing; and so soon was adding whole new layers of making it worse.

I promised. I meant it, I really did.

But if he really had – why hadn't he deleted the deep archive? It wasn't that hard to do, to reduce that to a state that even he wouldn’t have been able to repair, to put it truly out of his own reach. But he hadn't.

No one asked me to. No one thought to check.

If he squinted hard enough, that could almost look like permission, or at least like the wary disinterest that his personal projects had used to receive, before… everything else.

I can't do this again. I can't. Can I?

'Y'

There was a soft increase in the whirring from one of the more distant stacks – a slight hesitation in the command line – and then text began to pour down the back-lit screen, dragging diagrams behind it with blurring speed, and he gripped the sides of the computer terminal, trying to will the shaking out of his hands. Ideas began to rise, the self-imposed barricades across his mind breaking away like cobwebs under the unleashed flow of once-familiar information, again at his fingertips – and he suddenly stuffed the side of one glove into his mouth, biting down until the urge to laugh went away.

I can fix this. I know I can.

This time, he was going to get it right.

Chapter Text

It was a hell of a night for flying. In actual, mappable distance, Lalna's castle wasn't that far from the main Sipsco compound, but even with magic-born speed, an in-your-face headwind made the jaunt seem much longer. Thunder grumbled around the heavy skies and vertical-textured darkness was rolling in from the coast; it was taking its time though, and Sjin intended to be back from his errand and snug in the repaired skyscraper before the rain really set in.

He cut close over the surrounding low hills, then came up short as  lighting cut the back-drop sky, adding a strobed moment of illumination to the castle's towered bulk; and an appreciative grin found his lips. Credit where it was due – Lalna had built himself the kind of castle that handled ominous lightning storms with a suitably lunatic aesthetic.

The scientist didn't seem to have gotten very far with his own repairs, though. Sjin peered down at the wreckage of the small starting-house, a little sad to see the once-neat garden now a mess of dead vines and throttling weeds. He had been having a few thoughts about farming, recently; it seemed a logical extension from refined dirt to premium agriculture, and he'd been idly wondering how to broach the subject with Sips. Maybe he could come back and have a poke around down there later, if Lalna had lost interest.

Another crackle of jagged brilliance darted out overhead, thundering its own echo, and Sjin bit back a yelp as the first scouting raindrop managed to go right down his neck. He shot quickly towards the castle, dropping to a halt in front of the main doors, and peered up at the battlements.

“Hey, Lalna! Anyone home?”

He had a vague suspicion he was being watched, and it came as no surprise when a slightly-crackly voice replied from hidden speakers.

“...the hell... Sjin? What're you doing here?” Lalna sounded surprised – and a bit suspicious – but there was nothing new there. Sjin flashed his most winning smile in the hope of catching whatever camera was pointed at him.

“Taking rum off your hands? For the new première dirt flavour?” He hesitated at the staticy silence that followed. “You were talking to Sips about it last week, while we were trying to put out the cowslug-fire?”

That I had entirely nothing to do with, and wasn't utterly hilarious, at all.

There was a bit more silence, then Lalna sighed.

“It's... not really a good time...” There was strain in his voice, even through the speakers. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to wind him up, so Sjin grinned.

“Just chuck on some boxers and let me in, I promise I'll be quick. C'mon, I just gotta grab your stuff, or Sips'll have my ass.”

“This isn't - ”

“You really want to leave me out here, wet and nearly assless?” He gave a dramatic sigh. “And I thought we were friends.”

There was a half-static mutter that sounded very much like 'for fucks sake', and Sjin's grin widened as the door swung back. He scurried into the courtyard - not much drier, but at least better lit - and glanced around curiously at the barely swept-aside wreckage. Lalna really hadn't been bothered with any sort of clean up, had he?

He didn't have much more time to contemplate that, as the man himself appeared out of the base of the largest tower. He was smiling, but the expression didn't reach his eyes properly.

“Hi Sjin – yeah, I forgot, sorry. Rum? Whatever I've got left is down in the basement - ” he gestured with the narrow device he was holding, which looked like the strange hybrid of a screwdriver and a box of broken crystals “ - you need help moving it?”

“Nope.” Sjin patted the little alchemical bag at his waist. “I came prepared.”

“Good. Right. I - ” Lalna stopped, very suddenly, as the distant sound of an alarm started up, trailing out of the open door behind him. His expression shut down, and he jabbed again towards the sloping stairs at the far side of the courtyard. “Down there. I gotta – get this. See you. At the factory?”

He backed away as he spoke, just a little too fast to be successfully nonchalant, and vanished back into the doorway in a swirl of labcoat. Sjin watched him go, then looked over at the cellar steps, and back to the still-swinging door. His eyes narrowed. His sometimes-friend had never been very good at hiding when he was up to something. Not to him, anyway.

Thunder rumbled, more distant now, and the cool threat of rain pressed even more heavily down on the air, as Sjin slid towards the half-open door, his own curiosity sparking.

What sort of mischief are you thinking up now, you son of a gun?

---

Seasons in the mountains were chimeric. The underlying pattern remained in place – erratically temperate, for the most part – but particularly in the transitional months a week could first see near-cloudburst rain, washing snow from the peaks down into sudden-swollen rivers on the plains below, and then bake ruptured banks into smeared terracotta or freeze them to underfoot treachery before the days ran out.

Blackrock nestled firmly inside the shelter of the valley walls that rose either side, shielding the swamp-edged cove from the worst of the winds that were starting to howl down from the high ridges, as autumn's dying grasp on the land began to weaken – but even there the mismatched residents could feel the changes. Burnished leaves tore from their branches and evening fell more heavily each night, curling fern-like fingers of new frosts up the dark brickwork.

Zoey had barely noticed. There had been a time – not so long ago, if she had cared to think about it – that her nomadic wanderings had left her keenly aware of the rolling seasons, but now it seemed like another life away. Temperature in the wired warren that underlay the castle proper saw little change, as she tracked from room to room like a ghost of herself, cloaked in her own concentration. The changing months only meant one thing, now.

It had been too long.

'I'll come back.' Those words had set up a constant, echoed baseline under her thoughts, weighed down with all the things unsaid around them. They had certainly been dramatic, as far as possible-last words went; tragic, unfulfilled and all those other things, as Rythian's unnatural-bright eyes had met her own. And there were probably – right – literally – dozens of apprentice-mage, sometime-rebel girls who'd be happily unhappy with an ending like that. In terms of world-saving sacrifice, and all.

Gosh though. Wouldn't that be boring?

There would be a way; she just had to figure it out. She was an awesome technomancer after all – not to mention interior design diva and all-round style guru – she reminded herself, as pages of notes had began to run to piles; as she searched through Rythian's personal library until her eyes ached and her throat was sore with the dust of worn literature; as she set her search-codes out into the mushnet and sifted through the scraps of returned responses.

There had to be something. Something she'd missed. There was a hot certainty to that thought, burning at the back of her mind like her own personal pilot-light.

Even now, as she settled back into the soft red upholstery of the Crooked Caber's deepest sofa and stared at the slightly-spinning roof – the thought chimed its insistence like a backbeat, made no less persistent by any efforts of the varying (and occasionally lively) drinks that Ravs concocted.

There had to be a way.

"You're good f'him."

Zoey blinked, as the mutter cut into the soft alcoholic quilt otherwise settling down around her. She straightened up slightly, propping herself up onto an elbow, and blinked down again at the other figure sat on the floor below. Ravs was leant back against the plush arm of the chair, balancing a tankard of something suspiciously-opaque on his raised knee and staring at the mug thoughtfully.

"Huh?" She leaned over a bit further, fixing the barman with the studious attention of the lightly-slozzled. She hadn't exactly intended to end the evening nodding off on a pub sofa, but Tee had dragged her out of the castle, resisting her protestations with his typical fixed silence, and wordlessly chided her along the now quite well-worn track down to the neighbouring bay.

Nilesy and Lomadia had turned up shortly after they had arrived – pink-cheeked and windswept, hinting at particularly rapid flight – and lied with blatant cheerfulness about 'passing by', as drinks had been procured and Zoey had found herself steered into a chair. And then –

There had been a lot of Lever Game. And quite a lot of increasingly-accented debates, which Lomadia declared to be 'sporran-measuring', much to the protests of both men and her own unabashed amusement. No one bothered to keep up the pretence of anything being unplanned, but Zoey found herself grateful for that. The last time she had actually been out of Blackrock – or even out of her own subterranean workshop, come to think of it – was tricky to pin down.

Ravs took another swig.

"Rythian. I dunno if we're supposed t'be really talking about it all, but… you're good for him. I just – wanted t'say something."

Zoey sat back, staring at the roof while thoughts flickered, scattergun, through her fuzzy mind. There was a faint snore from somewhere behind the bar, beyond where the bottom of Nilesy's shoes were just visible.

"…I guess. Not doing so much good now," she muttered, the final words spilling out before she could stop them, and she felt her throat tighten.

"No – " Ravs turned, taking a moment to focus on her. His blunt features furrowed and he swung the tankard emphatically, spilling a little possibly-squidful liquor into the floorboards. " – none of that, y'hear? I dunno what he was like before, but whatever you do…" he trailed off, waving his free hand expansively, as if trying to pull ideal words out of the air by gesture alone. "He's less… weirdly scary. With you about. That's good."

"Less sober with you about, though," she replied, a small grin creeping onto her lips as Ravs snorted.

"Aye, well, I'm a lot lighter in the stock region around any of you lot."

There was a loud, final click, and the sound of someone pounding a stone tankard into the tabletop with echoing-force.

"You don't even have thumbs! How the bloody hell…?" Lomadia cut off at Tee's triumphant growl, and a few moments later there was a cushioned thump, as the blonde woman flopped down onto the neighbouring sofa. She ran a hand through her hair, flattening the messy strands a little, and cast a small glare over at Tee, who was now wearing her owlish hat – badly – and radiating smugness.

"I still say we let the dinosaur drink. Even the odds a bit."

"S'odd enough in here without that." Ravs jabbed a finger firmly into the air, his arm swaying slightly. "My bar. My rules on drunk lizard snipers."

Zoey giggled. She sat back, letting her gaze track back across the room as Lomadia began to correct a muttering Ravs on the technicalities of therapodian classification. There had been something she wanted to ask – from something he had said, what seemed half a lifetime ago now – and the faintest glimmer of an idea winked under her attention, as she stared at the blank darkness of the screen above the bar.

"Ravs – right – about your TV…"

There was something about the TV, something that might be important. Something almost, almost… familiar – but the idea was slippery; her booze-fogged brain couldn't catch a proper hold and she gave an impatient sound. Lomadia made a vague patting motion in her direction, although only managed to reach an ankle.

“There's nothing right about that TV. Doesn't even have an aerial.”

“Y'disparaging my equipment?” Ravs angled round, struggling to look affronted, as Lomadia dissolved into giggles with a muttered 'oh lord', and Zoey gave up trying to think straight. Rain was hammering at the windows, but the pub was warm, and it was good to have company. Whatever her suspicions were trying to tell her, behind the beer, it could wait just for now.

She should probably try and win Lomadia's hat back first, at the very least.

---

He remembered the light.

There had been shouting, too; once-familiar voices raised in desperate cries, but so far away, so… unreal, now, fading like the ghosts of a dream beneath the unleashed brilliance that shimmered all around him. Then there had been falling, or something like it, until even that incandescent aftermath caught and died, whirling away into the unmaking swirl of nothingness – and everything went black.

The word 'malfunction' drifted through his failing mind, a brief wisp of fading concept, gone as fast as it had appeared.

But he remembered the light.

Thunder rolled like a titan's hammer-blow, rattling windows and sending a regiment of extra echoes tumbling down through the factory floors. Xephos hadn't been asleep – not really, tangled up in fitful dozing – but the reverberating boom broke into his drifting thoughts, and he jerked upright, eyes snapping open as his heart combined a few beats into an answering shudder under his ribs. He sat there, frozen in place by the roiling phantoms of old memory, until he managed to get control of his own breathing again, and uncurled his fingers from the sweat-damp sheets.

Rain ran across the sloping windows high up in the ceiling, shedding polka-dot rivulet shadows down into the room in the faint light of the rooftop condensers. Abandoning his attempts at sleep – and, possibly more importantly, the waiting, crowded dreams – Xephos swung the blankets back, sinking his bare toes into the carpet, and let out a long, shaking breath as he straightened up. The dark room was silent, but for the overhead pound of the rain, and he glanced towards the adjoining door.

The top levels of the factory had taken the brunt of the year's earlier assault, and outside the workhuts had been entirely torn apart. Rebuilding had split the penthouse floor in two around the access shaft, with a half-spoken assertion that they couldn't keep sleeping in glorified sheds when there was a good, stone building next door; fully functional even after the setbacks, and there for the using.

They had avoided saying 'finished'. The trucks had started rolling again – their faintly-bemused long distance drivers accepting whatever garbled explanation for the delay that Honeydew had offered, along with a generous bonus 'for the trouble' – and they were, all in all, pretty much back to where they had been. In a way, that was the problem.

Xephos's footsteps were cushioned shuffles, and he stopped under the central skylight, where the golden condenser glow spilled down most strongly. He caught his own gaze in the narrow mirror opposite, as rain-shadows poured down over him, tracing an even more erratic topography across his bare skin. Half-bidden, his fingertips moved down the raised, or pitted seams of flesh, along the gritty feel of the potion-heal scars, down the old shapes of blade and bite, ridged or knotted or healed down smooth. Every one a memory, a bit of historical punctuation rolling back until his own, abrupt, beginning.

So much had happened since that first night; when he had awoken in the snow, with the vaguest hint of a name on his lips and a yawning void where his life should be. The day when everything started – apparently for him, in a more literal sense than for most – and the world had turned out to be a very strange place indeed.

Could you miss a life you never had?

Perhaps more importantly: how permanent was the one you did know – if it all could be lost so completely that even the memory of remembering was a constructed delusion? His fingernails dug in hard enough to hurt, either side of the scars beneath their touch, and he tried to swallow away the tightness in his throat.

Would there be another early-winter day, sometime, when an empty man who wore this face felt the knots of history under his skin, and found them unfamiliar?

The faint creak of the door made him jerk round, suddenly, but he relaxed a little as Honeydew's blearly face peered around the frame; torchlit, and frowning behind the beard.

“You alright there, mate?” The dwarf stepped into the room; Xephos could feel his gaze track onto where his own hands were still tightly gripped against his arms, and said nothing, Honeydew crossed the space between them with his own unexpected turn of casual speed, and peered up at the skylight.

“It's bloody cats and dogs out there. Christ, I'm glad we got the roof back on; thunder damn near gave me a heart attack, I'm telling you.” He glanced back up at Xephos and proffered the torch. “Here, since we're up, you want to give that weird wheat machine of Lalna's a look-over? I swear I saw flowers in the pipes yesterday, and buggered if I can figure it, myself.”

He had never lied well. Right now, Xephos couldn't have cared any less, and he managed a thin smile.

“Alright - “ he hesitated, and managed to meet the dwarf's gaze, concern glittering at the back of the bushy stare. “ - thanks, friend.”

“Yeah, well,” Honeydew waved his free hand, bluntly. “Put some bloody clothes on first, will you? Hell of a night to be prancing around in just your pants.” He stomped off back across the carpet, pausing only to wedge the torch on the back of the door, and vanished back towards the main factory. Xephos rubbed his face, breathing carefully, as he tried to banish the spiralling, cold thoughts. Thunder crashed again with a force that shook the clouds and he shivered, heading for the rough pile of yesterday's discarded clothes.

Everything would look better in the morning; he was almost sure of it.

Chapter Text

When tracking, tagging, and generally monitoring a population of sporadically-migratory giant birds was a major component of your life, you got used to waking up in strange places. The pool table was a new one, though. Lomadia peered groggily down the visible field of green felt, as she tried to decide which nagging insistence was more annoying – the symphony of clanging that was filtering through Blackrock's winding corridors, or the fact that something belligerent and made of drills seemed to be trying to escape through the top of her skull.

As soon as I can sodding remember what I drank, I will never drink it again. Bloody Ravs and his weirdly-specific skill at fermenting things that had no business being a liquid, let alone a mixer.

With a faint groan, she levered herself upright – shedding what might have been a blanket, or a purloined curtain – and tried to remember how her legs worked. As she climbed down, a snore rolled out around her ankles. Nilesy apparently hadn't even made it onto a table, and seemed to be quite happily using a bucket as a pillow, his mouth hanging open and the goggles from Lomadia's own hat pulled skewiff down his face. She decided to leave him to it and headed for the door, lurching a little.

Washed-out light poured in through the castle's odd selection of windows, antisocially bright. The rain seemed to have exhausted itself, although the visible trees were swaying violently and Lomadia tried not to watch their motion, as she began to follow the source of the noise. As it turned out, the source found her, and she had to dodge back as Zoey came hurtling round a corner, a piled assortment of possibly-random objects clutched in her arms, some swinging free and clanging against the walls, or on the light-scattered metal glove that encased her right hand.

"Hi-Lomadia-milk's-in-the-kitchen-alright-I'll-be-right-back-goshsorry!"

The overburdened redhead vanished around a corner and Lomadia tried not to sway, fixing her attention on the important bit of the blurred sentences. Kitchen. There was a kitchen, and she had been there before, so…

She found it eventually. As promised, two large glasses of milk had been left on a countertop and – most importantly – backed up by a familiar flask, rune-labelled in Rythian's narrow handwriting.

Thank god for alchemists with a whisky tab.

She tipped a generous measure of the pinkish liquid into each glass, carefully re-corked the bottle, and downed her drink as rapidly as possible. The faint, sulphurous aftertaste churned a little at the back of her throat, and she grimaced until the sense of thaumic-echo vertigo went away. She left Nilesy's just out of accidental-spilling range in the living room, and went back to look for Zoey, quietly marvelling as her hangover faded smoothly away under the potion's liquid ministrations.

The clanging and its source had ended up in the largest downstairs room, and Lomadia peered inside carefully, a little wary of the obvious magical-workshop nature of the place, with its stepwise shelving in strange materials and gleaming stalactites that never quite seemed to be in the same place after you'd blinked. Zoey was kneeling in the centre of the open floor, surrounded by a flattened strata of things, her face set in concentration.

"So, is it early, or am I just being an embarrassment to timekeeping?" Lomadia leaned on the door frame as she spoke, not wanting to disturb any of whatever mage-logic organisation was in place. Zoey twisted back, tossing a handful of thick black wires into a box, and grinned up at her.

"Mostly the second. I had an idea, right, in the pub? But – er – not so much the right mindset at the time. But!" she held up a hand, waving a sheath of paper, heavy with sketches. "I think I've got it properly. The idea."

"Good?" Lomadia squinted around at the room, trying to see anything especially familiar in the mix. She knew what this was likely to be about overall, of course; Zoey had been unusually single-minded in her focus in the last few months. Not that she could blame her, obviously, but...

She still wasn't entirely sure what Lalna had actually done, in the first place, or what Rythian had followed up with – other than the fact that no one was dead, and he was still missing. She hadasked, but the few times she had managed to get Lalna alone, he had been evasive to a degree that made even Xephos seem casually open, and she had given up. There had been a portal, and some sort of ongoing historical series of catastrophically bad decisions – and that was about it.

There was a good chance that all this was just Zoey's way of grieving, so she had resigned herself to being bemusedly supportive. Her train of thought was interrupted by another, more familiar crash of metal, and an accented yelp from further back along the corridor.

“Nilesy's awake,” she noted, and the redhead nodded back, distractedly, as she stared with furious concentration at a... dried fish?Lomadia decided that she was definitely too newly-sober to try and work that one out, and headed back towards the living room to see if her partner needed extracting from anything again.

By the time Nilesy was upright, detached and detoxified, Zoey seemed to have come to a decision, and lugged a bulging satchel out to the front of the castle. As she was animatedly explaining something to Tee, Lomadia leaned down, lowering her voice carefully.

“When does this stop being healthy?” she muttered. Nilesy blinked at her.

“Er, how so?”

“All... this.” She waved a hand, carefully, trying to somehow encompass everything she meant without actually saying any of it. “This whole... oh lord, I dunno. This – this. Pubs and dead fish and robot gloves.”

“Well, yeah,” Nilesy shrugged, as he made a vain attempt to flatten his bucket-coiffured hair, and they watched Zoey wave her arms, very suddenly, to Tee's possible-alarm. “But I mean, it's going to work, isn't it? At some point.”

And if it doesn't? Lomadia couldn't quite bring herself to say it, as Zoey gave the silent dinosaur a quick hug, and the group started off along the more sheltered track that wound up into the hills.

What then? If there was nothing she could do, after all; if he didn't come back from whatever off-screen, unspecified act of bloody stupid heroism he'd plunged headlong into. What did she do then?

With enough effort, she could almost convince herself she was still thinking about Zoey.

---

It had been too damn long.

Sips peered out of one long windows of the hydro-facility, where he had been pretending to work for the last few hours, and watched the last red tints of sunset fading from the sky. He spun the random wrench he'd been holding a few more times, then slammed it down hard on the window's sill.

Goddammit.

How long could it take to pick up a few friggin' bottles of rum? Sjin had shot off last night, cheerfully yelling some smart-ass comeback over his shoulder, and then – nothing. Sips figured his partner had decided to try out whatever latest rotgut Lalna had cooked up; he'd grumbled, of course, to himself and the walls, but it hadn't actually seemed like a bad idea. There'd been a... tension, between the two of them, something prickly under the slightly-strained normality that had reformed around the neighbouring factories. A bit of drinking themselves blind might do 'em good.

But he hadn't come back. Okay, so it had been just over a day, and that was nothing, really; but this wasn't normal. Sjin didn't just go off – not recently, not since they'd split the company – and Sips was worried. Dumb bastard. Making him worry. Jesus.

He stomped over to the door and out into the falling night. It had stopped raining around midday, but the insistent wind now was bitterly cold, howling through the tangled pipes over the sorting facility like a wild thing, and Sips shivered, huffing into his hands. The lamps were on, but the rest of the compound was dark, and he finally gave up on his own pretence of nonchalance.

There was somewhere else Sjin might be. Or at least somewhere he could figure out if he was going crazy.

The wind was even colder in the air, whipping against his skin like thin knives, and Sips only managed to fly about half way before the clutching ice finally forced him down into the relative shelter of the treeline. He continued on foot, a little awkwardly, hunched and grumbling into his pulled-tight cloak.

Who builds a bar in the middle of friggin' nowhere, anyway?

By the time the faint lights of the 'Creeper were visible around a bend in the track, his fingers had gone entirely numb, and he was starting to doubt the overall place of his nose in the universe. He stumbled in past the low fence, towards windows shuttered and barely leaking glow through adjoining cracks, and he was reaching out to hammer dully on the door when it swung open.

"Sips?" There was measured surprise in Minty's voice. She stood firmly across the half-open doorway, one neatly-manicured hand curled against the frame, and had a thick glass visor pushed up onto her piled hair. Her gaze flicked across him, very quickly, in the assessing way she had. "We… are closed, I'm afraid. Stock-take. What're you about, in this weather?"

"You seen Sjin today?" He hadn’t meant to be quite so blunt, but cold and the gnawing worry had shortened his manners, as he folded his arms tighter against the wind. Minty blinked.

"No. It's not one of my days, you know that…" she trailed off, a faint frown nipping her narrow brows. "Haven't you?"

Sips shook his head.

"I thought he might be – well, y'know," he added, untucking a hand to wave vaguely in the air. "Here."

Minty's lips thinned and she stood back – accompanied by a faint, metallic click somewhere outside the frame, as her other hand relaxed into view – and tilted her head. Sips followed her inside. There was a faint scent of something acrid in the air, although the room was clean, and he edged towards the bright shape of the grate.

"When did you last see him?" Minty asked, as she tugged off her strange visor and tossed it onto a chair.

"Last night. Yeah, I know it isn't all that long – "

"If you think it's long, it's long," she said firmly, re-tying her hair and frowning further. "What was he up to?"

Sips shrugged. Here, in the cheery after-hours warmth of the pub, with tamed firelight gleaming off polished panels and neatly stacked glassware, his own lonely fears from the last few hours seemed almost… silly. Or they would, if Minty's gaze hadn't been fixed on him quite so intently.

"Grabbing a delivery from Lalna – " he stopped as Minty went suddenly very still, all at once, and when she unfroze a heartbeat later she had gone sharp, somehow, as she sometimes did. Her nails clicked a quick pattern against the bar.

"Lalna." She renewed her gaze again, and Sips shifted uncomfortably under it. "They've been… fine? After everything?"

She wasn't looking at his leg. She was very deliberately not looking at his leg, and Sips tried not to find his own entire internal attention swinging back down to the shade of that wound. He shrugged again.

"Well, yeah. Been split between the girlguide factory and proper Sipsco. Lalna's been – y'know – it's been goddamn awkward, but geeze – everyone's dealing. I mean, you're okay, right?"

"Always am." Minty drummed her fingers on the worktop again, then stood back, frowning. "Okay. I don't like this." She pressed something under the counter; there was a series of distant sounds of shifting metal, and a narrow hatch popped out of the boards. With a nod in his direction, she swung herself down into the floor. "See if there's a decent coat in lost property, you look half-frozen."

She vanished, and Sips edged cautiously over to the chest in the corner. He wasn't sure if Minty's response was reassuring or not. It suggested he wasn't just being a weirdly paranoid bastard, or at least no more so than she was – which could mean anything.

There were a few coats in the box; he pulled out one that seemed to have been made from half a bear. When Minty re-appeared she had her sword strapped firmly across her back, a neat satchel across her shoulders, and was twisting a bluish metal band onto one finger.

"Flying's not so much my thing," she added, seeing his glane. "But needs must."

The second flight was certainly a lot less cold, bundled up in the borrowed fur. The huge shape of Lalna's castle reared out of the night soon enough, and they slowed to a hovering halt a little behind the splintered wooden structure that had once been the cart station.

He hadn't been here since before the great fucking-up, Sips realised – or at least not while conscious – but it was obvious that clearing the mess hadn't been high on goggle-boy's agenda. The underlying hillside was still gouged open, raw rock unsoftened where it had been exposed, and the jutting platform of the largest tower was still torn into a weird curve that traced the absent-forcefield line. One of the smaller, inner towers had collapsed completely.

"Jesus," Sips muttered, as they began a wary descent towards the huge doors, half-open and spilling light out across the ravaged hillside. "So untidy, Lalna."

Minty dropped down, landing like a cat, and peered around the angled door.

"Shouldn't be open like this," she muttered and glanced back at him, her expression carefully blank. "I'm going to have a quick look."

She was gone before he had chance to respond, slipping away into the castle's interior, and Sips shook his head.

Dammit Sjin;if you've gone and saddled me with your freakin' wierd-ass ninja barmaid, while you two bastards are just pissed under a table somewhere…

After a moment of jigging around indecisively, his gaze settled on the little door just inside the castle main, half-hidden in vines, and curiosity got the better of nerves. The room inside must have been built directly into the walls, and Sips peered round at the entwined web of assorted cables that coiled around the edges, snaking between narrow computer stacks. Various screens were blinking, flashing their epileptic illumination across the cabled space, and he stepped carefully over tangled spools to the nearest one.

A lot of Lalna's technical shizzle-whizzle was beyond him, but he had a fair start on computers, and the little keyboard clicked responsively under his fingers. There wasn't much to find – what Lalna seemed to lack in password-savvy computing, he made up for in incomprehensible filing systems – but an idea flickered and he tracked back through commands until he located the door controls.

"Well, shit," he muttered, and jumped at a soft footfall behind him, but it was only Minty, ducking in through the doorway with a tight expression on her face.

"What's up?"

"Door's been open since last night, nothing else after." Sips hesitated. "I think Lalna's gone."

"There's no one here, so far as I can tell either." Minty bit her lip, glancing back over her shoulder into the courtyard. "This isn't… I know there're cameras around here; he should have seen us by now." She shook her head. "Right, no more subtlety – let's search the place."

The castle was bigger than Sips had remembered, and scattered with the half-finished components of a hundred different projects, but what it seemed mostly full of was neglect. Dust – brick dust from the fallen tower, greyish layers of general time, and occasional oily smearing from machine or alchemical fug – covered a lot of surfaces, blown in through left-open windows, spreading beneath doors, and the few clear footprints through the grime sketched out a pattern of everyday steps.

It was a very limited pattern. Other than a fairly faint track up towards one of the bedrooms, the main trails were between the storage floors, computer stacks, and a room at the base of the big tower full of pieces of fancy armour – which was the only one that seemed to have seen much recent inhabitation. There was a folding bed in the corner of that room, submerged beneath rumpled sheets, and a pile of spare clothing stacked on a chest nearby.

"He's been living in here," Minty muttered, half to herself as she stalked around the room, running an interrogating stare over the mess of scattered debris. "You recognise any of this?"

"Hell no."

"I'm missing something." She did another circuit, tracing a hand carefully over various components. "There aren't – " She stopped, very suddenly, and looked back up at Sips with a gleam in her eyes. "Cameras. Come on."

The control room was as neglected as the rest of the building, but for the scuffed marks between teleporter pads. The glassy eyes of Lalna's mechanical fish followed them warily as Minty swung herself into the spinning chair, peered at the array of controls set out along the low console, and frowned.

"Has to be an archive somewhere…"

It took them a while to find the right controls – Lalna's labelling was either indecipherable or missing entirely, for the most part – but he also was about as lax on password security in here as on the gate, and finally a thin screen folded out of the wall, chequered with feeds. Sips tweaked one of the larger dials and the displays began running backwards.

"You know your way round a security system better than I'd given you credit for," Minty noted quietly, without turning her gaze away from the back-scrolling images. Sips shrugged.

"You pick stuff up."

"Yeah, you do – stop!" Minty's hand clamped down over his, freezing all the screens, and she jabbed a finger towards the bottom rightmost picture, where a familiar figure was paused, mid-step.

The angle of the camera – covering half of the main courtyard and the door to the used room – didn't show much of Sjin's face, and Sips swallowed a knot in his throat as he carefully set the recording ticking back again, watching his friend track backwards into the door. He had been moving oddly, a weirdly lurching gait even in reverse, and gripped the sides of the frame for a good few moments before the doorway swallowed him back. They sat in silence, watching the time stamp scroll at the side of the display, until Sjin appeared again, walking more normally as he reversed out of the door – and Lalna's goggle-topped face was visible, just for a moment, peering out into the courtyard. Sips stopped the recording again.

"Last night. He came right here."

And what the hell went on when you did? The lurching movement, even in this grainy recording, was burning itself into his mind. There was something… wrong about it.

"Lalna didn't come out." Minty muttered, then stood up very suddenly and headed back outside. Sips lingered for a moment, staring at the screen, and he realised his fingers were pressing hard into the side of his thigh. He felt fantastically useless.

You'd better be alright, y'hear?

By the time he got back outside, Minty had produced a torch and was crouched by the gate, scanning back and forth across the grassy forecourt with a calculating expression on her underlit face. She muttered something and headed back outside, fishing around in her satchel with her free hand.

"I think – I think he went south. The ground's so churned up still…"

"There's nothing south."

"I know."

They shared the look, the silence twisting up around itself for a long moment, and then both broke away into the night, skimming down over the still-healing landscape in an airborne 'V'.

It was damn near impossible to see anything. At least the chill winds had cleared the sky, but the moonlight just served to deepen the shadows around the gouged hillsides. Sips trailed along, pulling the borrowed coat tighter around his shoulders; he tried to think, as the little zig-zagging light that was Minty drew further away in the darkness. He wasn't sure how long he had been moving – long enough the shouts had dried his throat, and any vague hope of keeping feeling in his extremities had vanished – but eventually he came to a halt, hanging over the wide, flatter plain that rolled down to the sea.

He must be a good few miles away from the castle now. There had been less damage overall here and Sips' gaze tracked over the moonlit grass, rocky hummocks, and a few deeper water-cut sinkholes.

Sinkholes?

He drifted lower, trying not to focus too hard on the edge of a thought that ghosted through his mind, in case the attention somehow caused possibility to flee, turning chance to nothing. There were quite a few areas where undercut soil and weak rock had collapsed under the meander of water beneath, and he tried to see familiarity in any of the openings.

I'd fucking best be right.

He landed, and nearly fell over instantly on numbed feet. Swearing quietly, he lurched towards the muddy depression that had caught his eye, and had to bite down on a jolt of hope as he saw the obviously-dug in enlargements around the edge of the water-channel, where the earth had been scooped away to make a crude entrance. Carefully, he lowered himself down into the trench, and peered into the rough opening. There was a tunnel, sort of, and Sips tried to coax a bit more strength into his worn voice.

"This'd better be your hole here, Sjin," he croaked, "Cos I'm comin' right in there; and I'll be real fucking embarrassed otherwise."

He went in on all fours. The tunnel actually got narrower inside; he had to awkwardly shrug off the borrowed coat, and even then his shoulders scraped along the walls. A thin stream of water was still running downwards under his hands, and he followed it grimly as the little circle of moonlight fell away behind him. The stream-channel had cut into some of the older caves that honeycombed the area, and it wasn't long before he found the passage widening out, gravel biting into his palms – and he came to a sudden halt as a sound other than his own splashing and low-grade cursing filtered out of the darkness ahead of him. It sounded like breathing.

Fuck, I'm chancing it.

"Sjin? I'm crawling blind down here, you want to gimme a hint?"

Another sound, and this time there was enough for direction. Sips slid forwards until the breathing was properly audible; he reached out, and his fingers closed on shivering flesh. The owner gave a small, strangled yelp, but he knew that voice.

"Goddamn Sjin!" He grasped down the hidden arm until he found a hand – rough, wet, and even colder than his own, as he tangled his fingers hard into the shaking grip – and shuffled closer. "You really had me worried there, you fuppin' idiot. Christ, I mean, what the hell – "

Sjin made another noise, somewhere between a sob and a cough, and Sips' heart faltered a beat. The sheer relief of finding him was draining away with the hidden water, as everything else flooded back. What the fuck had happened? He shifted again, pulling himself back against the hidden rocky wall that his friend was pressed against, and managed to loop an arm around the narrower shoulders. Sjin was shaking; a low, constant shiver that worried him more than the noise, and he wondered how long he had been down here, sitting in the dark.

"I mean, geeze. I know you were saying back to basics, but god, really? We can't skip the burying ourselves step, just this once? Starting to think you got a friggin' complex here." He tightened his grip and felt Sjin tense against him.

"Sssipss – " the words dissolved in another shiver, and Sips found his fingers again with his free hand. He coughed, trying not to think about precarious mud-stone above them. The cheapest and worst kind of dirt to get yourself buried alive in; he'd never live it down.

"C'mon, Sjin. What's said in a hovel, right? What'cha doing in this new kinda shithole without me?"

For a moment he thought Sjin was going to pull away, then suddenly the other man went limp, slumping back against him in a tangle of limbs and Sips grunted, trying to adjust their position to something more stable; so much so that he almost missed the muttered words – and then he froze.

What the fuck? He didn't think he had spoken, but Sjin repeated all the same, the words spilling out into the damp-chill darkness with a fresh ice, all their own.

"I – I think – I killed Lalna."

There are those strange moments in life, when you suddenly realise that you have – through no intention or plan – stepped into an entirely different reality than the one you had been happily occupying at breakfast; with no warning, no sign, and absolutely no way back. He could feel Sjin tensing up again, starting to pull away into the muddy isolation that had wrapped about them like an wet earthen shroud. But – for fuck's sake, of course – doing anything else was even more unthinkable, and Sips tightened his fingers more firmly against the shaking hand.

"Well – that explains a whole fuckin' lot, I guess."

…I hope you’re wrong, buddy; I really do.

What the hell do we do now?

---

Chapter Text

It was working.

Lalna took the downward steps a few at a time, unable to restrain a thin smile as he skidded to a halt in front of the main console and silenced the alert.  His gaze tracked up, to where the sixth roughly-circular shape had been swung slowly into place, surrounded in its own nest of cables and crystals and everything else he had thought it might need.  There were a lot more to go – he glanced over at the special workbench that sat against the opposite wall of the underground space, waiting for his next round of careful salvage – but it was working.

Two more portal sockets hung in thaumic cages nearby, empty yet but clear of the mess of blast-melted rubbish that had encased them for months.  His old portal lab was still sealed off; the forcefield was on the most secure link to the reactor and backups that he had been able to design, and would probably outlast the rest of the castle, but...

Well.  Never build something you couldn't get out of – or in to – if you really needed it. He'd learned that lesson well enough by now. The remote tunneler hadn't needed to create more than a small passage into the otherwise entombed room, navigating around the still half-molten debris within until it had unearthed the first bit of the portal frame.

He still wasn't entirely sure what Rythian had done in there, as the field came down and Lalna himself had stumbled – exhausted and numb – down the escape tunnel, counting breaths until the grumbling shudder of restrained explosion shook the earth and spilled evil red light even down to where they were. But – bomb or blade or bloody magework – something had separated  the apparently-indestructible stones.

Which really should be impossible. But you're maddeningly good at doing that.

There was a strange static to the air now and Lalna tapped a small command into the console, then stepped aside so he was stood in front of the rigged-up frame, as he watched little lights flicker on in the rest of the webbed equipment. Each stone contained a new Eye; getting his hand back in on their manufacture had taken a while, but enderpearls had been obviously abundant and the other ingredients were comparatively easy when you knew what to do, and the strange-angled pupils twitched down towards him suspiciously as he approached.

The thaumic corona was getting strong now; the rest of his machines tweaked and twitched at angles and power, checking, calibrating, and he could feel the prickle of it dancing across his skin, as tiny motes of dark-violet light began to flicker within the frame.

It was bloody working -

“Oh my god!” The voice broke into Lalna's satisfied revere jarringly hard. He jerked round, unable to suppress the growl of sudden, angry frustration that clawed up through his chest, as he focused on Sjin standing at the top of the stairs, his expression agape.

“Don't you fucking knock?” Lalna snapped – quite aware that there shouldn't have been anything to knock on, and of the damn architect's infuriating ability to spot otherwise perfectly-hidden doors. Sjin was gawking at the setup, his eyes almost comically wide as he took a few more suddenly-hesitant steps down. Lalna's own gaze flicked aside, to one of the other workbenches where his latest combinational laser was sitting snugly in its rack.

“Get out, Sjin,” he said, coldly. “Get your rum, and stop poking around where it doesn't concern you.”

“That's... that's a...” Sjin trailed off again, gawking around rest of the room. With impeccable, undeniable timing, Lalna heard the faint beep from his console, and there was an abrupt change in the lighting behind him as a strange inverted brightness washed out across the floor. He couldn't resist a glance round, to where the familiar smear of impossibly-flat, infinitely deep, shifting darkness held between the stones for a few heartbeats – then broke apart again, dropping a wave of violet motes that dissolved before they hit the floor.

A fresh smile tugged at the sides of his lips. A few more stones in place, and he should have a predictable establishment, and then -

“You're... doing it again?”

Damn. Lalna turned back, to where Sjin had reached the bottom of the stairs, pale with shock, and still staring. It seemed like a particularly gormless stare, right now, and he felt his faint smile twist into a sneer.

“I'm fixing it, actually, so - ”

“Lalna,” Sjin's eyes flicked from the incomplete portal and back to him. “You can't... you're serious? After everything, everyone, you're going to fucking try again?”

“No!” Lalna slammed a hand down on the console, as the portal caught again behind him, and he tried not to snarl. “You have no idea. None. So get out!” He stabbed a finger back towards the stairs but Sjin was ignoring him, wincing visibly as the portal snapped away again. When he spoke, his voice was shaking slightly.

“Sips nearly... if Minty hadn't – if Zoey hadn't –” he muttered, disjointedly, and Lalna rolled his eyes.

This again? Really?

“Sips is fine,” he snapped back, feeling strangely affronted. “I sorted that too, didn't I? You know bloody well I can handle worse than that.”

Sjin took a very visible breath, squeezing his eyes closed, then opened them and finally met Lalna's gaze properly. His eyes were bright in the portal's lightless gleam, speckled with disconcerting reflections.

“You can't do this, Lalna,” he said, in a quiet little voice. “Not again. I've only just rebuilt - ”

Oh, for fucks' sake!

“Really? You're lecturing me on 'collateral damage' now?” Lalna's lip curled against his teeth as he saw Sjin flinch, ever-so-slightly, at the words. “Just... piss off. Go build another big head or something – but don't you fucking dare come over all moral at me.”

He turned back towards the console and flicked another switch, like a bit of physical punctuation to the words already burning hot trails of old guilt across the back of his mind. The hypocrisy was staggering – really – the only reason he could see that Sjin hadn't triggered his own near-apocalypse by now was that stupid bloody dirt factory could only go so far. This wasn't -

He hadn't noticed the movement – a few short, silent steps across the room – but then a hand tightened on his collar, at his belt, and Lalna let out an involuntary yelp as he was slung bodily forward towards the fragmented frame. His arms shot out, reflexively, and he managed to grab onto the sides – the Eyes shivering and unpleasantly-yielding under his gloves – and braced back, as jointed pressure slung into place down the back of him.

The portal surface flickered into existence again – so close, far far too close – and he scrabbled at the floor, debris skidding under him. He wanted to turn, incredulity running just ahead of everything else in his thoughts, but it was taking all his strength at this angle just to hold himself away. The pressure didn't ease, didn't stop, and if anything there was more lift at his hips, giving an unsettling lightness to his skidding boots.

“ - the hell?”

He could hear breathing, just behind him, but the otherwise-silence was... unnerving, adding another layer to the sudden storm of shock that was pounding through his mind, beneath his whirling thoughts.

He's trying to scare me.

Yeah? Well, good fucking job!

One of his boots hit something – a piece of the gantry, just below the frame – and he tried to lever himself away as the layer winked out again, but the grip was unrelenting. Sjin was wiry overall, often verging on thin, but the architect did move a lot of stone for a living. How much did he weigh, compared to a few stacks of bricks? Lalna slipped forward another few inches and gasped, trying frantically to see round the sides of his own face.

“ - alright – knock it off!” his voice cracked, as the portal flicked back and he felt a few strands of loose hair go tight all of a sudden, as they vanished into that nothing-surface as though they had been welded to it partway along. He jerked back and pain flared in his scalp as the strands tore free and sank away.

Transplanar monopole. It means there's no way back.

His arms were starting to ache at the unaccustomed, unaugmented exertion, as sudden adrenaline beat its shivering pulse down his limbs. He wanted to duck back, but if he let go...

“Sjin – please!” His other boot hit the frame, his elbows shaking; his breathing was coming in quick gasps – that didn't reflect back, oh fuck – and panic tightened its coils around him.

He's bluffing. He – he has to be –

Oh god.

“I'm sorry, alright?” his throat clenched on the words, fear-pitched with his ragged breathing, and he finally managed to turn a little. “I – I'm - ”

“You're not.”

The final stand against pure, outright panic broke away at the sound of that reply. Lalna had never – never, in any of their chaotic shared history – heard Sjin sound like that. There was always a lilt, the edge of a joke somewhere, even if it was mad, but that voice was a flat, icy deadpan, empty and terrifying.

“This is crazy!” he managed, but he could feel his grip slipping, as the Eyes writhed and twitched under his hands, and his knees buckled a bit more. The portal flicked out and he half-wondered if he could let go, dart free through the open space – but if it opened again while he was partway...

Why? Why this – why now? The yell was burning in his throat, cut to a gurgle as the portal came back, closer than ever – no no no-nonono – and he could feel it now, the dreadful, grasping gravity of that slice of midnight, a whispering pandora to his own curiosity.

He slipped, just a little, and the end of one finger went dead. Horror clamped down like a vice as his gaze dragged down along his right glove, to where the middle tip vanished without a ripple into the flattened void. Frantic heartbeat hammered in his ears – he heard himself, incoherent now, begging – but he couldn't look away as the portal shivered, shimmered and winked out – and agony burst like a crimson bloom, as flesh and bone severed instantly along the faultline.

This is what it was like.

The moment swam, a fragment of old time stark against the present; when he had stared into another once-familiar stare, widened in the same fear that entwined him now. As he had turned away, as he had stepped back, and Rythian cried out –

“Please!” his own voice cut the thought, wild and raised as his remaining composure peeled away and he thrashed against the unyielding grip, his heart pounding the maddening drums of raw terror against his ribs. “You have to – I'll fix it! I swear – Sjin – please – for godsake - ”

The portal came back, washing across its frankenstein-frame a hairsbreath from his face and Lalna felt every Eye twitch, fixing him with a horrible, hungry stare. Ohshit – nono –

“I don't believe you,” Sjin said softly, as he shifted, kicking Lalna's legs out with a blunt ease – and the nightmare surface seemed to surge up to meet him.

It even took the scream.

---

It wasn't often you heard Minty swear. Sips didn't actually recognise the language – something clipped and foreign – but the inflection was clear enough. She stood up, tightened her fingers for a moment on Sjin's arm, then stepped quickly over towards one of the shuttered windows and rested her forehead against it, breathing fog onto the slits of visible glass.

Sips didn't move. He tried to find his friend's gaze, but Sjin was staring fixedly into the untouched tumbler of random spirits Minty had pushed into his hands earlier, as he'd finally started talking. His face seemed to have shut down. He was still muddy, but they had managed to get him stiffly into a clean robe when they got back to the bar, and at least the shivering had stopped.

Jesus, though. How the hell did you react to a tale like that?

“Fuck, and here I thought my lonesome night of maceration was gonna be the shittest evening,” he muttered, trying to lift the pressure that had settled down over them like a stifling shroud, but his words seemed weak in the thickened silence and he stopped again. Sjin didn't move, so Sips leaned forward, bringing his hands firmly down on the table.

“Well, I hate silence. You know me, Sjin; I'm a loud bastard, I can't help it. So, I'm gonna sit right here and just chat away, chat right away like there's no fucking tomorrow.”

He was gabbling; he knew he was gabbling, but he couldn't shake the horrible feeling his partner was right on the edge of vanishing down into that silence and not coming back. Which was not happening; not on his watch. Whatever the reason.

“Like that film, you know the one – where that guy has to keep flapping his yap over twenty miles an hour, or the bus explodes? Okay, so it's not the finest bit of cinema, but you gotta respect a man for tryin', that's all I'm saying, I - ”

Sjin's lips twitched, somewhere behind the moustache, and his fingers relaxed a little, setting the glass back down with a faint click.

“You don't need to talk me down, y'know,” he said quietly, and rubbed at his half-hidden face, his features furrowing around his fingertips. “I don't – I'm not going to - ” he cut off again, shuddering, and the fingers tightened into a fist, pressed against his own forehead until the skin went white. “Just... Thanks, Sips."

He let out a long, shaking breath. Sips leaned over and dropped a hand onto his friend's shoulder.

“It's not – geeze, Sjin, I wasn't thinking you'd – I mean - ” he hesitated, glancing over at the still-unmoving shape of Minty. When he looked back, Sjin was watching him, his pale stare hollowed within itself, and he couldn't stop the question.

“Why, though?” He regretted the words the second they escaped – what kind of fucking question was that, after all? Sjin sank back, a new, difficult expression twisting up onto his features.

“I... know Lalna,” he murmured, eyes narrowing as he spoke, and just for a moment there was an icy gleam to the stare there. “When he gets carried away in an idea, he isn't going to stop. Not if it goes wrong; especially not if it goes wrong, and I could just... see it, you know? It was – it was only luck, Sips – ” he glanced down, as if he could see through the polished table to the shade of scarring set against Sips' own skin, and his lips pressed into a line. “That we found a portal, that Minty got to us, and... well, you remember.”

He did. He remembered more than he liked to admit – snippets, mostly, like scalded fever-dreams, encased in the black nothing of lost time – and Sips shrugged, a little awkwardly.

“Got me to remember my fucking pants more often.”

“That's not the point!” Sjin looked up, his eyes oddly bright, and shook his head. “He's doing it again, and I can't – not this time, not here, I can't – lose either – ” he cut off as a short, humourless bark of laughter broke through and he slumped into his own hands, eyes squeezing shut. “Was doing it. I mean. He. Was. Oh god...”

Neat footsteps broke into the tension again, as Minty came back. She met Sips' gaze carefully as she sat down again, and gently caught hold of Sjin's wrists. Leaning forward, she dipped down to catch his attention.

“Sjin? Sweetie, I don't think you killed him.”

Sjin looked up very suddenly, with disbelief printed on his face; and the smallest flicker of anger, just beneath.

“I don't know what I meant to do,” he said, thickly. “I just – I wanted it to stop – ”

“I know.” Minty's fingers slid up, winding carefully into his, and her stone-steady gaze never left his face. “But he went in, right? All of him, with no bits left? That means the portal worked. Likely not well, but believe me, you can tell when that sort of thing fails.”

That was another one of those 'things Minty says' that Sips didn't want to think more closely about. They were getting pretty flippin' numerous. Sjin snorted.

“So at best, I pushed him into an inescapable dimension that kills people?”

“To which he was building a door in his basement, under a room full of bits of the weirdest armour I've ever seen?” Minty added, quickly. “Why? The last time I spoke to Lalna, he kept saying he was going to 'fix' things. Which could mean nearly anything.”

“Fucking fantastic job he's done of that,” Sips muttered, but he could see the shape of what Minty was getting at. She gave him a sharp look, then her expression softened slightly and she sat back again, loosing one hand to fiddle with her hair.

“Look, I'm... kinda out of my depth. I can... arrange most things, but this is – well, let's be honest? This is mage territory.”

“So what? Zoey isn't exactly a big fan of either of you,” Sips pointed out, slightly hating himself for doing so, as Sjin slumped back a little more. “Or of Lalna.”

Minty twirled a strand of purple-streaked blonde between her fingers thoughtfully, frowning faintly into the middle-distance. Then she stood up, giving Sjin's hand one final squeeze.

“There're other people with crazy-wizard experience. Not a card I thought I'd be playing now, I'll admit,” she added, half to herself. “But... it might work.” She snatched up her satchel, which clinked slightly, and flashed a sudden-bright smile that nearly reached her eyes. “...look after yourselves for a bit, boys. I need to check something. Don't drink anything with a blue cap on it, and if anything bleeps, don't touch it.”

The door swung closed silently behind her.

---

Nothing worked.

Zoey swallowed her own growl of frustration as she tossed aside the latest unhelpful piece of tech into the rejected pile, which was depressingly large now and starting to sag under its own weight. She dropped down into the nearest chair and flopped forward, resting her forehead against the slightly-pitted wood of the accompanying table, and shut her eyes, trying to chase away the sting at the edges.

Why? She was so sure, so sure there was something here. It didn't make total sense, not quite, but the shape of the idea was there, whirring and spinning through her brain – and she couldn't make it work.

I know this. I just – sorta – I don't really know what I know, yet. She gave a half-smothered sound and tilted her head sideways, glaring accusingly at Fishton's silent shape, propped up on a different table.

"Lot of help you're being," she muttered, then looked up quickly at the sound of footsteps; but it was only Ravs, looking a bit brighter now than when they had arrived that afternoon. He had a large barrel balanced on his arms, and nodded at her around the side of it.

"No luck?"

"…no." Zoey sat up and dragged her hands back through her hair, wincing as some strands got caught on her powerglove, and began to wriggle it free again. "I just, like, I know I can do this, I just don't know how."

"Lot'a effort for one TV." Ravs stepped carefully over the assorted mess strewn across the floor, holding onto his barrel with exaggerated care, and swung himself back behind the bar. "'specially one that's only got one channel."

He rested the barrel down, leaned over, and slammed one thick fist into the side of the silent grey box. Zoey's jaw dropped as – with a faint flicker – a single short white line flashed into life at the top left of the screen. Ravs sniffed and hefted his burden again.

"See? Won't even tune in."

"…how – gosh, you, but – but how – ? " Zoey leapt to her feet, lunging across the bar so fast that Ravs took a step back, narrowly avoiding the cellar steps. She grabbed onto the screen, pressing her face so close to that sudden – impossible – flashing line, as if sheer proximity would reveal its secrets.

She hadn't thought of just hitting it.

"This is like a command line," she muttered, half-believing, as Ravs shrugged again and began his balancing descent downwards. The little line flashed, tantalisingly, and she swept her hands over the smooth grey casing, as if it would have suddenly sprouted an input device of any kind in the last few seconds.

"Okay, okay," she muttered, taking a deep breath, and flipped her visor back down. "Go-od. Good. Right."

Direct interface. She could do that – possibly. Probably. Sure. The little display lit up across her vision as she flexed her fingers, linking the glove and visor again, and held her splayed hand up in front of the screen, opening every channel she could think of – and a few, general ones, for good measure.

For a few, heart-stopping moments, there was nothing, and then she nearly jumped out of her own skin as a little, flashing line appeared in her visor-vision, overlaid on its double onscreen.

Oh my…oh good gosh…

She swiped her shaking fingers across the projected image, as hovering holographic keys swirled out in the air around it the blinking target, and Zoey licked her lips.

"Alright. Let's hack."

And in an ideal world, that would have been it. In a proper, sensibly-arranged world, she would have swept through a legion of code, tossing aside blocks and passwords and all kinds of amazing technical wizardry, and that would have been it. It should have been film-hacking – the kind of awesome, matrix-swizzle she spent so long convincing herself that what she did was like.

Life had literally no sense of style.

When she finally flopped back again, her arm shaking after being held out for so long, frazzled and with her eyes aching from the endless, near-identical tries at every code, command line input and eventually just random numbers she could think up, she had to bite back the threat of exhausted, frustrated tears. Not being able to do anything when you had no idea what to do was one thing – not being able to do something you should understand was a million times worse.

She sank into the bar chair, kicking moodily at the nearest stack of debris. She could hear Ravs moving around downstairs – the clang of pipes, busy in the particular alchemy of brewing – and could almost feel the silent presence of Tee, settled down on the roof despite the horrible weather the falling evening threatened. Lomadia and Nilesy had nipped away hours ago to check on their respective charges, but they would be back.

They were keeping an eye on her, she knew that. She was grateful, but right now, she couldn't face having to explain – to see again the little glances they thought she didn't notice, the slightly-too deliberate nods and smiles, or commiserations. She swallowed hard as she flipped her visor up, rubbing with her bare hand at the dampness on her cheeks, and glared at the infuriatingly unhelpful screen.

Maybe I am just going finally crazy.

Her fingers twitched, half-bidden, as she traced across the touch-type familiarity of her interface, smeared at odd angles in the up-tilted visor, and allowed herself a little moment of anger at the tormenting blip.

"And – boom," she muttered, as she stabbed viciously at the screen, bringing her bare hand round with her fingers held in to a gun shape.

-'SEQUENCE-ACCEPTED'-

Shock hit like a train, and Zoey let out a yelp, trying to leap up and scoot back at the same time, and succeeding only in upending herself into a pile of discarded wires. She scrabbled to her feet and skidded over to the bar as – with a faint click – the entire screen slid aside along fine grooves that had not been there a few moments ago. It revealed another layer of metal, dark and embossed with a pattern of large cogs, but before she could even reach out, that layer split apart as well, folding back smoothly along the sides.

White light spilled out into the evening-shading of the main room, and Zoey gripped onto the bar to steady herself as she stared at the revealed interior. Wires like crystal threads coiled in angular, circuit-like patterns across the inside of the box and over the surface of yet more embossed cogs, nearly obscured on the back wall – but it was the bizarre device in the centre that clawed at her attention.

There were eight small white-metal discs, arranged like the corners of a cube a little wider than Zoey's splayed hands, and attached into the rest of the crystalline circuits by fine helices of silvered glass. The air inside the mapped angles gleamed and shifted, strange patterns seeming to curl around just out of sight, and she found herself leaning forward, squinting into the fractal shimmer of it, and -

"Y'alright up there?" Rav's voice broke her reverie and she jerked back, blinking.

"Er – yes. Yup, yup. I – er – " she trailed off, swallowed, and peered down the stairs as Ravs' face appeared at the bottom, his eyes widening as he looked up past her. "I… don't so much think this is a TV, though. Pretty sure now, actually."

There was a mumbled celtic exclamation as the barkeeper began to climb back up, surprise set onto his blunt features, and Zoey stood back. As she did, her own attention switched back to the screen, slid aside like an opened window, and where a new line of white letters had appeared under her own inadvertently-accurate typing.

-1-3-3-7-

-/tp @CrCa -???-

What the heck does that mean? And why did she find it almost – almost, in that strange nearly-known shade of thought from earlier – almost familiar?

---

Chapter Text

“They built you a statue, you know.”

Xephos jerked up at the sudden voice, catching the back of his head against the next macerator up on the wall with an audible crack. He cursed and swivelled round, clutching the sore spot with one hand and his wrench with the other, and blinked as he focused on the slimline figure now perched on the end of the nearest long crate; sat beside the tray of tar-thick tea Honeydew had plonked down a few minutes ago on his way back upstairs.

“Minty? Er, hi there - ” he glanced around, but the rest of the room was still empty. “Are you looking for Lalna? He’s not here.”

“I know. I need your help, Xephos. No - “ she held up a hand, as he half-made to ask again “ - listen first, please. I need your help. All of you; not just.. this.”

Her fingers flicked from side to side, managing to encompass most of the factory in one swift gesture, and Xephos frowned. Her opening words were niggling at him, the sudden sentence he hadn’t really registered at first.

“I don’t - ”

“They built you a statue,” she repeated, cutting him off, and the next words sent a bolt of unexpectedly-familiar ice down his spine. “In the rebuilding of Icaria.  Pride of place; you can see it from anything higher than heels. It’s stylised, I admit, but when you know what you’re looking for...”

There was another clang as Xephos put the wrench down, very carefully, and slid back to floor level. Minty’s gaze was sharp in the lamplight, fixed on him so firmly he felt she could almost see through him, to where his heart had notched up the rhythm in his chest, and shards of surprise were already prickling beneath his skin. He picked up one of the still-steaming mugs and wrapped his fingers around it, as much to prevent them from shaking as a need for warmth.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he lied, and Minty gave a small laugh as she took the other mug, mirroring his pose as she shifted position slightly. The blonde bartender had always just been... what? A face in the background, a smile and a tray, every now and then with a hint of underlain steel, but he had put that down to job requirements. But he remembered now what Lomadia had said – after everything else on return, as they had stared up at the tree-framed sky, a cool night breeze drawing musing as well as shivers from them both – about her hellish detour and its unfaltering guide.

"Took me a while to figure out, I'll admit," Minty continued, sipping the tea, and watched him trying not to tense up. "You're not… exactly what I expected."

"How so?" The question escaped before he could stop it, and she waved a hand, accompanied by a brief flash of a grin.

"You're an overstrung fop who runs a biscuit factory. Takes a bit of time to align that with Minecraftia's lost living legends."

“Minty...” he could hear the warning, heavy in his own voice, even as his mind whirled, caught up between disbelief and rising panic. Minty made an impatient sound and shook her head, swirling a cloud of half-leashed blonde around her.

“This will go much faster if you listen. I know who you are.” Her gaze cut through him like a knife, severing all the little strands of new excuses he had nearly pulled together. “I’ve known for years, and I’ve never said. Understand? It’s never been my concern before now.” She leaned back and looked up into the ceiling, letting out a long breath as she frowned into the roof tiles.

How could she know? Xephos sought back, tearing through the stacks of his own mind, trying to work out where anything could have been leaked. He – they – either of them – they'd never told anyone; and while Lalna had probably figured something out, ghosts of the past were just about the only thing the scientist ever seemed able to curb his curiosity over. Everyone else was so disparate in origins, this strange-blended group of wanderers and runaways who made their home here, far out into the wild side of the world, it hadn't seemed to be a concern.

Even Lomadia didn't ask. He had felt her gaze, her curious fingertips, tracing along the mapped-out dermal history of him, but she never actually said anything. He'd almost thought he could relax, could put aside the paranoia of recognition after so many years – but now the factory seemed very empty, everything else draining away until there was just him, the suddenly-unknown figure in front of him, and a lot of hungry grey shapes of old memory, never as faded as they should be.

“There's a problem,” Minty continued, and when she looked back at him Xephos felt a new flicker of surprise at the raw worry that spilled down those usually so-controlled features. This was a woman who faced down ghasts and creepers as easily as she balanced tabs, and she was worried.

“Sjin thinks he’s killed Lalna. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t - ” she added quickly, as Xephos started, violently, and slopped tea onto his foot. “ - but he has kinda... banished him. Into the End.”

“What?” There were other words, other thoughts, but everything was suddenly so jumbled up that Xephos swayed, images of thickened blackness and grasping fingers, and the terrible, bone-deep horror of it all, swirling around him like a cloud – and a sharp suspicion pierced his thoughts.

He found a way, didn’t he? Goddammit, Lalna, why can’t you just leave things alone?

He was trying to get the rest of Minty’s words to settle in his mind, but they just bloomed nightmare around each other, and he caught onto the first coherent bit.

“Why?”

“Really?” Her eyes narrowed. “This is entirely a surprise to you?”

“Well, yes!” Xephos swung round and hurled the half-empty mug aside. It shattered into wet shrapnel against a distant block of machinery as he caught his hands either side of his head, dragging his fingers back through his hair hard enough to hurt. This was insane -

He froze as Minty moved, snake-fast to come up suddenly in front of him, and pressed two fingers into his chest just beneath his ribs. She looked up, pinning his gaze, so close that her breath mingled with his own as she leaned forward.

“You’ve seen his scar. Right there,” she said softly, and Xephos found himself nodding, hypnotised. Sjin’s often-erratic attitude to clothes – or the general lack of them – had improved of late, but there had been those awkward early weeks, when you’d had to carefully to check ladders before going up them, unless a loin-cloth eyeful was really what you wanted. He had seen the scar she meant – both sides of it – the pale edges unusual against otherwise exposure-browned skin. He hadn’t asked, of course, but...

“It was a through-strike. A death wound. I think you recognise that as well as I do,” Minty’s fingertips twitched, digging deeper, and he tried not to wince, still not quite willing to back down. “He ever tell you where he got it?”

“...no,” Xephos admitted, but her following answer didn’t come as much of a surprise.

“Lalna. And who fixed it?” Minty stood back abruptly, pulling her hand away, and he untensed enough to breathe again as she tucked a strand of loosed blonde back behind her ear. “Lalna. They’ve got... a history. Not as much as you, maybe,” a faint smile tugged at her lips. “But no one really does.”

Xephos' stomach lurched and he tried not to show it, those words burning an uncomfortable trail back through his thoughts. He shook his head.

“I don’t... you’re sure? This isn’t just a – wrong end of a stick, kind of thing?”

“I’m sure.”

“Jesus,” he muttered, staring into nothing. Minty put her borrowed mug back down, with a faint ceramic click.

“I’m taking them back to the castle,” she said. “I want to see where it happened, if there’s anything obvious we can do. But I’m out of my depth here, and this feels like it’s only just starting to go bad. I could use your help; I really could.”

Xephos swallowed, trying to press down the seething mess of old and new horrors long enough to get something clear out.

“I don’t know anything about the End. Not sure how much help - ” he cut off as Minty rounded back on him. Her eyes were suddenly sharp again, her voice low and faintly dangerous.

“When I say we need your help, I don’t just mean co-director Xephos. Or fuel-manager Xephos, or failed Sipsco dogsbody Xephos.” The litany of almost-titles stung, somehow, but not as much as those that followed. “I need the man who fell to earth; Sky- Ship- Sand-lord, Saviour of Icaria and Israphel’s Bane. I need your help - and I need to you understand that I know what that means.”

“It was luck!” The shout broke his lips apart, as something finally snapped in the maelstrom of thoughts and Xephos lunged forward, grabbing onto Minty’s shoulders even as he caught her gaze, as if he could beam understanding into her through sheer force of stare alone. Breath hitched painfully in his throat and he shook his head, trying not to see the wash of still-burning images, red eyes and white skin and cities aflame.

“It was bloody luck,” he snarled, past the rictus grimace he could feel twisting across his face. “That’s all. Bad fucking luck and no way out, and it was never enough. You want to know why ‘all this’?” He jerked his head back at the half-dismantled machine wall, the lamplit factory. “Because when you make goddamn biscuits, no one goes around thinking you’re a hero for it – and nobody dies.”

For you. Say what you mean, ‘hero’. Don’t get all peculiar about it. Nobody dies for you; for some amnesiac idiot in the wrong place, at the wrong time, on the wrong damn world.

Minty’s fingers closed around his wrists, but the gaze that met his own wild eyes was unexpectedly kind as she nodded, very slowly.

“I know what that means,” she repeated, and her voice was quiet, oddly subdued beneath that piercing sapphire stare. “More than you realise. Please, Xeph, just... meet us there. For Lalna’s sake, if nothing else.”

Lalna. Xephos let go, his hands dropping down into tightened fists, and he let out a long, shaking breath. He managed a nod, even with muscles that seemed to have fused into one tangled mess, and slumped down onto the crate as Minty stepped away.

“Thank you.” She turned and began to make her way towards the door, then stopped as he managed to find his voice again.

“Minty... who are you?” he asked, as fragments of what had just been said fluttered around him like invisible moths, just out of reach. The petite figure hesitated, her polished-tipped fingers tightening for a second against the strap of her satchel, then she smiled. The expression was bright, open, and utterly unreadable.

“I’m just the bartender. See you soon.” The door swung to behind her with a click, and Xephos pushed himself off the edge of the crate, sinking down onto the solid floor as he rested his head back and tried to calm down.

There was a clang of metal boots, quite suddenly, from the ladder side, and he managed to inch an eyelid open, meeting Honeydew’s worried gaze as the dwarf squatted next to him.

“...I guess you heard all that?” he muttered, through lips that felt like they were made of cloth. Honeydew shrugged.

“Aye, well. You really got a way with the ladies, don't you?” He sat down beside him and leaned over, wedging his plated shoulder against Xephos’ arm. “You alright?”

“No. Not really.” Xephos rubbed at his face, trying to scrub away the sharp prickling across his eyes, and sighed. “For petesake... I’m a fuck-up, aren’t I?”

“Yup. But no more than me, eh? Fucked right up together – ” Honeydew stopped, frowning suddenly “ – hold on, that came out wrong – ”

Xephos snorted, and the sound caught itself up into a laugh, punching through a lot of mental chaos with his friend’s ever-present ability to tangle himself in daft words. He laughed, until air ran out and he was just shaking; one hand pressed over his eyes, the other a clenched fist rammed into the cold stone floor, and Honeydew’s armoured weight pushing firmly into his side. It wasn’t much – but there had been so many times when a situationally-inappropriate innuendo was all they had to ground themselves, as the world burned into madness around them – and if it had worked then...

When he finally got his breath back – not exactly relaxed but at least no longer vibrating from the tension – Honeydew shifted and clamped a metal-cased hand onto his shoulder.

“So. Lalna. Mad bastard, but he’s our mad bastard. We’re going after him?”

“Probably,” Xephos muttered. He should really be more worried about that blunt statement, but right now he just felt empty, as if he’d used up all available emotional currency beyond vague resignation. They clambered back upright and glanced around the silent factory. Honeydew smacked his hands together with a clang.

“Right. Bit ‘o payback. Well, I’m taking some bloody jaffas this time; you grab the rest of the usual shit, meet you in ten.”

Xephos nodded as the dwarf stomped off towards the nearest ladder, and made his own way towards the access shaft. He really, really hoped Lalna had left some sort of information about whatever he’d been planning, this time.

And he hoped like hell there was something left of him to find.

---

What did portals need?

Zoey glared at the softly-glowing letters, sliding her splayed fingers along in front of it all in the air, framing different sections as if that would suddenly coax clarity out of the unhelpful screen. She willed herself to remember, first what Rythian had said to her own fragmentary-attention, then what she had read in the castle library's dusty tomes, half-understood.

This wasn't a portal, but... it felt a bit like one, somehow. There was a similar strange sensation at the back of her mind, prickling at her extended senses – like she had felt back in the lava cave so many months ago, where possibility had hung on the edge of a knife, just – just – out of reach, but so close. Back then it had needed fire. Now...

She was stuck. She had poked and prodded every inch of the opened-up mystery box, and got nowhere. Okay, so maybe not entirely nowhere; putting something into the glowing cube of white air made the whole thing hum like an angry hive of alto bees for about three seconds – while the '???' flickered tantalizingly on the otherwise-static screen – and then there was nothing.

Ravs had tried to help, but his own recollection of how the building had ended up in the middle of the bay was shaky at best. He didn't seem to remember much of... anything at all, really, and had seemed believably surprised when she opened the 'TV'. There were implications there, but she didn't have spare attention to consider them too deeply. The place moved, somehow – this this was very likely why.

How do I make you work? How do you aim this thing?

“Obsidian?” Lomadia's voice cut into her thoughts, as the owl woman straightened up from rootling around in her bag, proffering a small, vicious slice of glassy volcanic rock. She and Nilesy had returned within an hour of each other, and joined in with their attempts to get the box to accept something. The net outcome was that while the floor was now considerably tidier, ever surface in the bar was layered with discarded failures, like the cast-off unwanted offering to the world's pickiest cuboid god. They were pretty much down to trying things at random now, out of unwillingness to return to being utterly befuddled, as much as in hope it would actually work.

Zoey took the proffered glass, and her gaze paused, just for a second, on the red-stone ring recently repositioned on her own finger. She had tried that first; her flame ring, the one he had... The thought trailed off and she tried to ignore the gaping space it left in her mind. What had she expected, really? 'There's no place like home – missing Endermage edition'? Only celluloid was that easy.

The little sliver of obsidian was carefully slipped into the glowing space, where it hung, suspended in nothing as she withdrew her fingers and the humming began. The sound did seem a little different, with a couple of things – a little more angry, a little more strained, as if part of the setup was trying to do something – but a few heartbeats later the shuddering stopped abruptly, and Zoey plucked the rejected stone free and set it aside.

“...I guess that's it, then,” she muttered as she stood back, biting down on her lips to try and stop them shaking. “I don't even... I can't...”

I'm not good enough. Not at magic, not at science; not even at this stupid not-logic match-the-box game.

“Zoey,” Lomadia started, her voice carefully controlled in that way – that damn careful, walk-on-eggshells humouring the mad girl way they all had – and Zoey half-opened her mouth to snap back; but the voice that broke in wasn't her own, as Nilesy sat up from digging around in another box of mismatched parts.

“Did we check these out?” He held up a small sphere, like a large marble in unpleasant green glass, and raised an eyebrow. Ravs – already sliding, with a publican's tension-instinct, between the two women – shook his head.

“First thing we tried. Three times; got a whole creepy box of 'em.”

Nilesy's face fell. He looked, sadly, down at the pearl.

“Oh. Right. Of course. Well, one more for the boxing, I guess.” He tossed the enderpearl towards Ravs – badly aimed, and a little too hard – and the barman yelped as it bounced off his ear, deflected, and impacted against the inside of the opened not-a-TV with a small shattering sound and a faint vwip noise.

Several things happened at once. Nilesy, already half-braced for a sudden wrench across the room as he realised his mistake, didn't move – but the display did. A new hum started up, and this one was somehow clearerthan before, as the '???' broke apart, spiralling back into place in rune-like shapes that were clearly writing, clearly something, but in no script Zoey had ever seen before. Silver-white light bloomed inside the box, as the cog-like patterns lit up across its outside – and began to spread, spinning out along the walls in a clockwork fractal. Bricks and wood and metal all lit up with the pattern, pouring out across – through – every surface like, and she felt her hair start to stand on end as a strange, cloying static curled up around her.

What the - ?

Ignoring the surprised sounds from her friends, she dived forward, clutching either side of the metal box as she peered inside. It took a few moments before she could make out anything clear – the cube-space was suddenly full of seething, miniature lightning, cracking from one metal disc to another with escalating frequency – and when she did see it, she was fairly sure it wasn't entirely with her eyes. There was a... sensation hanging in the air, a twist of cold nothingness that writhed and arced against the encasing lightning. If she really concentrated, tightening her fingers against her rings until she felt the magic spark and spill against her skin, she could almost see a line of it – a dark-bright mote of wrongly-violet light, stretched out so impossibly thin that it could cut the world.

That was it. It didn't need something – it needed nothing. Void. A captured sliver of Ender – something to follow.

“Not yet though!” A flicker of panic lit under her thoughts, as Zoey saw the spreading patterns roll out over her hands. There was no feeling to it, not really, but she got the strange impression that she was being mapped, position determined, and she remembered all the other things – back at the castle – everything she had put together in slight-denial preparation for that journey.

So this was how you started it. How did you stop it?

There only seemed to be one option, and Zoey gritted her teeth as she swung forward and plunged her power-glove fingers into the massing silver incandescence, swiping viciously across the void-streak as if trying to wipe out a stain. There was a moment of strange resistance, a deafening whip-snap crack of breaking air, and agony bloomed down her forearm as she was hurled backward - the light peaking - failing - and she landed heavily in a pile of assorted debris as the patterns winked out.

Stars swam in front of her vision, ears ringing, and she was dimly aware of footsteps rushing towards her as she pulled herself up onto her elbows, coughing. There was still pain in her arm and she rolled over, pawing at the glove where little sparks and the strong scent of burning plastic was rising from the suddenly-blackened machine. She managed to get it off and threw it aside, wincing as she looked down at her fingers, where angry red marks like circuit-board scalding traced down the skin.

“...ow,” she muttered, and glanced up into a varied, four-way wall of worried faces. Heat clutched at her cheeks and she shook her head, flexing her still-raw fingers in demonstration. “Nah, it’s okay, no worries. Um, though, for reference – sticking your arm in it? Not an amazing idea.”

There was a general relaxing, and Lomadia glanced back towards the box.

“What was that?”

Zoey scrambled back upright, and let out a sudden burst of delighted laughter as she felt the understanding seem to crystallise – all the whirling, winding possible-thoughts that hurled around her mind like an internalised tornado of half-known things, suddenly swinging together, sealing up around the edges.

I do know this. Now.

“That was it,” she breathed and lunged, grabbing onto Tee's clawed hand and swinging herself around him, nearly-skipping. “That was it! I saw – kinda – just before it blasted me. You need something from there. Something for it to aim for.” She came to an abrupt halt, half-covering her mouth as her eyes widened. “...oh good gosh, it’s actually – Tee – Tee, we can get him back...”

A little of her delighted revere paused as Nilesy coughed, a little awkwardly.

“So, er, do we need another of those pearl things?”

“Yeah,” Zoey stood back, nodding. “But we’ve got loads, that’s not - ” she stopped, and blinked as his wording finally registered. “Wait - we?”

“Well... yeah?” Nilesy shifted under her gaze, and tried a smile. “I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it? Super-ultra friend discount’s gotta count for something.”

“Nilesy - “ Zoey hesitated, pushing a bit of electro-fluffed hair back down again. “I’m going to get him. From there. The End. Whatever it really is. I mean, I’ve read everything I could find, I think, and I still don’t know. You don’t have to -”

He shook his head.

“We talked about it already." He glanced at Lomadia, who had a strangely tight expression wrapped about her features; but she nodded anyway. "Really. Er, not in so many words, but Lom’s picked up all the armour on her way back. Just in case, y’know. And – well, it is the case now. So... yeah. Coming along. Nilesinator, ready to go, and all that.”

Zoey stared at him, wide-eyed for a good few moments, then hit him in such a crushing hug that he yelped, suddenly engulfed in slightly-shaking arms and charred hair. He managed to extricate an arm just enough to pat her awkwardly on the side before she stood back, thinking fast. She was going to need a lot more stuff.

They were going to need more stuff. They. It was a nice word; it really, really was.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll – I’ll need to condense some things. More things. I’ll be right back.” She darted towards the door, froze again as a horrible thought lit up. Had she ever asked?

"Oh gosh – Ravs – I – "

She found his gaze, but the stocky man just waved a hand, somewhat resignedly.

“Get your stuff, lass. You’re all bloody insane; but you’re not taking my pub anywhere without me, hugely outstanding tab or no." There was something else in his slightly-reddened gaze, behind the blunted statements, but Zoey didn't have time to worry about that as she darted back out into the stormy night, running through her well-worn mental list of what-if preparations as the 'Caber's lights dropped away below her.

Even wrapped thoroughly in the near-endless list of things that could go horribly wrong, she couldn't help but smile. Hang in, Rythian.

Operation Enderday was go.

---

The jaffa factory was empty; Lomadia could feel it even before she landed. The huge marble-front monolith was wrapped firmly in a very particular kind of in-drawn silence – the strange, hungry emptiness of a vacated space designed for bustling noise. She went inside anyway, hoping to be wrong, and found her own voice echoing unanswered through the night-lit floors.

Of course. Makes bloody sense, doesn’t it?

Had she been expecting it? The alchemical bag swung gently at her waist, near-weightless in its magically-enhanced way as she rose upwards through the garish rings of the access shaft. She intended to pick up a few things on her way back, and a 'few' had expanded to the new blades, her own armour, and the set of light steel mail she had finally persuaded Nilesy to at least bear in mind. Caution was sensible, right?

Then Zoey had only gone and got her mad plan to work. And of course she would be going along with it, in the vague hope she could divert the huge, towering likelihood that this would all end in absolute bloody tears.

She had known she would, somehow, since all this started; since she'd begun accompanying Nilesy more and more on his mainland visits, extending her eye further and further over the erratic redhead and her half-logical machinations. It was all going to go one way or the other, eventually – so she might as well see this bit through first.

There was just one thing she wanted – had – to do beforehand, and her jaw tightened as she passed through each foiling, tauntingly-empty floor. Machinery thrummed quietly away, powered down for the night, and the occasional soft beep or automatic click followed her up through the perforated ceilings until she reached the penthouse level. Both doors were ajar, and she cleared her throat loudly - just in case - but there was no reply.

Xephos’ living space wasn't so much tidy, as aligned, in that sporadically-fastidious way of his. It made the left-open chest to one side of the room all the more obvious, and Lomadia’s heart sank a little further as she headed over.

There had never been much in here – he had blustered abruptly when she opened it before, making some half-sensible excuse to draw her away – but she remembered the usual contents all the clearer for that: a sword, a blue-metal blade with faint nicks even along its diamond edge; and the simple potion belt. Both were gone, and Lomadia’s fingers tightened against the wooden lid as she stared, unseeing, into the emptied space.

Brilliant timing there, Xeph. Honestly...

She half-went to close the box, then paused as her gaze finally focused onto the folded fabric that was still there. The red and black material was tattered, torn in a dozen places and visibly – badly – sewn back together in many others. She couldn’t ever remember him wearing it, but it looked to have been carefully cleaned, preserved if far beyond actual repair. There was a little shape atop the battered cloth, a bronzed badge like a fat, curved arrow, and it made a faint mechanical clicking sound as she picked it up.

He’s been doing... all that, since long before me. Her own old words echoed, blunt across her other half-acknowledged thoughts, as she stared at the coppery shape, and the silent fathoms of the empty factory pressed down around her. She supposed she could leave a note, or something...

‘Have gone on spectacularly stupid sodding trip to another dimension in a teleporting pub. Possibly doomed. Wish you were here’?

“Fucking brilliant,” she muttered, as she rooted around in her bag, until she found one of the ever-present shed feathers that got everywhere on the island; it was a speckled brown and as big as her hand, and she carefully laid it down on top of the tattered outfit. Before she could change her mind, she quickly tugged off her hat and fixed the little badge into place there, hidden under one socket of her goggles.

She’d give it back, of course. These mysterious jaunts he and Honeydew sporadically vanished on could last a while; he might not even notice it was gone. It just... it was better than...

Yes. Well.

She had better get back, before someone got over-excited and did something ridiculous without her.

---

-
Additional coolness - Catterflyart has drawn a contemplative Lomadia from this chapter! :)

Chapter Text

Awareness filtered back slowly, picking its way across the fragmented landscape of Lalna's mind until enough attention had coalesced to manage actual thought. It wasn't quite awakening; it was more like reconstruction – he felt raw, torn down and bluntly reformed, all his references for himself at slightly-wrong angles to everything else.

There was something unyielding underneath what he had to assume was still his face, and a constant, throbbing ball of pain seemed to have replaced his right hand. And that was it. He lay there for a few more moments, listening to his heartbeat. Soon he was going to have to open his eyes, and when he did, he was going to remember what had happened.

Finally, he located an eyelid and inched it open. The first impression was aggressively monochromatic, as unfamiliar-textured, whitish stone rolled out around him in all directions, layered and flaking like pale slate. He groaned, taking sharp breaths of the faintly-metallic air, and tried to remember how arms worked. A few false starts later and he managed to lever himself up onto one shaking elbow – the left, the one that hurt the least – but success was limited as the limb buckled under him again, sending him sprawling onto his back and staring up into the –

- into where the sky should be. It shouldn't be possible to get vertigo from looking upward, but Lalna's stomach lurched horribly as he stared up into a featureless, fathomless blackness, dotted only with his own retinal noise. The emptiness sucked at his eyeballs in a way that mere darkness shouldn't do, and he gave a little yelp as he sat bolt upright and immediately clung to the floor again, as if he would fall up into the awaiting nothingness. Distraction came in the form of an explosion of agony in his right hand and he clutched at it, his glove unpleasantly slick under his own grip, and he looked down at the opened-out mess where the first knuckle of his middle finger used to be.

I'm in the End.

The retch caught him off-guard, hunching him over as his stomach lurched and flung bitter acid up his throat; he could do little more than squeeze his eyes shut again, to ride out the spasms of violent nausea that bent him like a hinge, as recent memories swarmed angrily about him. Sjin's unrelenting grip, tight as death against his neck, and his own pleading terror as the void-slice portal surface rose to meet him, and – and –

Here. Oh god, I'm here – and I have nothing. Less than nothing.

His free hand scrabbled at his clothes, pretending to hope there was anything in his pockets other than assorted laboratory rubbish and remotes for items so far – so very far – away, now little more than useless plastic. He didn't even have his rings. He hadn't wanted to risk any interference with the budding portal. Managing to press down the now-dry retching, he rubbed his mouth and tried not to panic.

Calm down. This isn't… I mean, you were going to get here eventually, right? So it could be worse.

"How, exactly?" he snapped, angry with his own thoughts in absence of anything else to focus on. Anger was good, it seemed, and he clung onto the sense as he forced himself upright onto swaying legs and had another go at looking around. His heart sank.

Whitish rock flowed away from him in every direction, coming away from itself in varying-size sheets of separating stone. Some distant slabs were the size of houses, lent up against each other like an ancient ritual site at ten times the scale; some were little more than flatted slivers of scree that skidded under his boots; and everything else between. He seemed to be on a plain, with plates of stone scattered out across it like geological scales, and about half a mile or so away the landscape stacked up, massive angular outcrops of the same stone rising into tiered hillsides, and cleaved apart in unflinchingly straight lines down into canyons that sank, sheer-sided, out of view.

There was no obvious light sources, but everything seemed to be lit up anyway, suffused with a strange sourceless brightness that had him squinting, as his gaze tracked over the layered world until the landscape stopped. Just stopped, all the way round – he turned a few times, just to make sure – but it was the same, as if everything simply finished in black void, maybe a mile away in either direction.

That didn't make sense. The sectioned world around him was empty, and there was no way that was possible. He might be woefully under-informed about the exactitudes of this particular dimension, but it sure as hell had inhabitants. So, he was missing something.

He took a step forward, and was nearly sick again as the entire oblivion-horizon moved with him. The land seemed to flow backwards under his feet; a few more shoulders of mountains rose seamlessly out of the darkness far in front of him, as if pushing through an unmoving layer of ink, and he glanced back in time to see the furthest visible edge behind him subsume into nothing. He stepped back and forth a few times, biting down on his tongue to distract himself, and the first sparks of curiosity glittered between his thoughts.

Perception of the horizon here was – what? Spatially variable by individual perception? Hallucinatory? That was… interesting. Perhaps he could –

The sound wasn't loud, but it was audible and not coming from him, so it stood out like a scream; a grating susurrus like sand on glass, getting closer by the moment. Lalna turned, warily, and peered back over the plain behind him. There was no sign of the portal, of course, but he could tell from the pooled blood – and general splattering – where he had landed. The shadows -

Wait.

He looked down, to where his boots remained equally illuminated from all sides, the ground beneath him as unnaturally-bright as everything else. He cast no shade here, but there were shadows building under the rock plates around his landing-point, thickening and shifting as he watched until they began to run like oil from beneath the stone. Faster rivulets of molten darkness raced forward, pouring into the little crimson pool, which started to bubble, and Lalna felt the hairs on his neck rise as he backed away. His own footsteps suddenly seemed deafeningly loud, as he watched the congealing shadows envelop his spilled blood and start to mound up, shivering unpleasantly.

Time to leave. Time to get very, very far away. He set off at as fast a lurch as he could manage, trying to ignore the still-present dizziness, and the faint edge of thirst already tickling at the back of his throat. Nothing seemed to be following him, but it still took an agonisingly long time to reach the start of the canyon-cut hillsides, and duck into the welcome shelter of another tilted slab of rock. There were no shadows in there either and Lalna slumped back against the stone, breathing heavily and blinking at the spots in front of his eyes.

He risked another glance down at the pain-ball that was his right hand, but while blood had pretty much saturated his glove, it didn't seem to be streaming anymore. Okay. Ok-ay.

-vwip-

"Oh – come on," he muttered, as a faint wash of violet motes swirled out across the floor of the open cave. This, at least, was something he had prepared for in advance; he reached up, pulling his new goggles down over his eyes with slightly-shaking fingers. The world went faintly green until he managed to twist the little dial at the side and adjust the colour balance. There was a soft sound from behind him, a rubbery shifting against the thin air – too close, far too close; this had better work – and Lalna turned round quickly, before his nerve could fade.

The enderman was quite a small one, if anything so crude as approximate size could be applied to a half-corporeal creature, but it was very close. Lalna stared at the strangely-angular upper body of the thing, glistening faintly, and waited for it to attack. When it didn't, he looked further up, until he could see the tilted head and the slashed slits of purple fire that blazed in its otherwise-featureless face. It moved, but only with a faint, rippling unuldation of its limbs as it stared down at him, apparently uncaring. No scream; no shaking; no lunge.

It worked. Despite everything else, a faint grin found his lips as he thought back, running through all the careful calibrations, all the meticulous tests. Everyone knew, even before that incident, that endermen hated to be directly looked at – even from behind, or from far away, or even in near-total darkness. It didn't make a lot of sense why that would be, and when something didn't make sense, it suggested the reason would be magical. So he had... tinkered with his goggles. Just a bit, just enough to block a few barely-used thaumic frequencies. And it worked.

Thankgod for that.

He half-made to take a step back, because this was probably something he really shouldn’t chance, when the enderman’s head jerked up and he froze again. The realisation that the creature was looking over his shoulder wasn’t a reassuring one. It gave a small screech like ripping tin, vanishing in another spill of motes as he swung round again, heart in his throat – but of all the things he might have expected to see, a mirror hadn’t been one of them.

The shadows had followed him, but rather than some swarming menace, he stared in surprise at a flatted pillar of shimmering darkness, like a vertical fuel-spill painted onto the air. There was a sheen to the surface, and as he watched – caught between fear and fascination, as ever – the oil-slick layer began to fold back on itself, until it outlined a humanoid shape in the air. It was empty and undefined except for where the fluid outline reached, threaded across with fernlike trails of scavenged crimson. A thin wash of bloodstained iridescence rose up the back of the half-visible figure’s head, crested, and poured forward, features mounding up out of the air as the liquid spilled and slowed, suddenly viscous and oddly reflective.

Lalna stared, amazed, as his own goggle-eyed reflection condensed onto the smoothing-over surface, matching his mirrored features onto the mannequin face beneath. What was this? Of course endermen couldn’t be the only denizen of this world, but he was a loss on this one. The faint thrill of discovery fizzed under his thoughts though, and he watched his own little grin trace onto his reflection. He tilted his head, slightly, towards the rippling figure, seeing it copy the movement, and had to bite down on the urge to giggle.

“...hello there?” he muttered, raising his right hand in a cautious wave – slowly at first, then more enthusiastically as the figure held up its own hand and mimicked him, the liquid sticking remarkably close to the man-shape in the air. He grinned and mirror-Lalna beamed at him too, as he swung his hand upwards and a twinned pair of defiant Vs saluted the horrible missing-sky.

“Okay. You’re not so bad,” he admitted, watching his reflected lips move. There was a bit of a lag, a moment’s delay before the copied action cut in, and he raised his hands again, miming along an invisible wall. Pain burst anew at the motion and he winced, letting out a little hiss as he glared at the swollen remains of the injured digit. His oily doppelganger had even copied that, and was staring equally hard at its own truncated finger.

Then it looked at him. The borrowed face tilted, still smiling, and reached out gently towards his clutched hand, its fingers shivering faintly as more liquid poured down the outline of its arm, until the extended limb could have been entirely solid. More detail resolved: the cut edge of his glove, the folds of his sleeve. Lalna stared, mesmerised by the alien familiarity of the gesture, and his own hand began to reach forwards too, half-bidden.

The enderman ran.

He hesitated as the thought clicked into place, sharp against the strangely dulled blur of his reactions, and he looked up to meet his own reflected gaze. The smile on that copied face was distortedly-wide now, even as it leaned closer, and scarlet patterns rolled down its surface, tracing smears of his actual blood down facsimile features.

- shit-

Lalna jerked away, as the grasping hand shot out, snake-fast, and snapped closed so close that it scraped his glove, leaving smears of oily darkness that writhed against the fabric. He dodged back, soles sliding on loose stone again and the thing screeched. The reflection broke apart as its jaw split open, distending into a yawning space in the air that trailed strings of tarry, bloodstained spittle. It lunged for him, but he had finally found his feet, and plunged out of the back of the cave and into the canyon beyond.

He was running blind, but fear gave him speed as he dodged around huge outcrops of squared-off white stone, trying to concentrate entirely on moving – not to hear the strange-pattern gait behind him, not to hear the sounds that screamed alongside his own rasping breath, not to hear how close it was – as his feet slammed and skidded on the uneven ground and his heart seemed to clamber up into his throat. Blood sang in his ears, the thin air cutting into his lungs like someone had sharpened each breath, tracing stitched-pain down his sides as muscles more used to technothaumic-augmentation suddenly met thundering adrenaline straight on.

If he stopped – if he even thought about slowing down – he was going to fall and It would be on him. The canyon was erratically shaped, with long stretches of otherwise-straight path made an obstacle course by toppled slabs, and cut across by other vertically-hewn valleys. Once or twice he had to make a stomach-churning leap over rends in the ground, that vanished downwards into glimpses of a blackness too complete to herald mere depth. He divided randomly around sharp corners, silently begging any fate that cared to keep the way open, to keep him even just one step ahead of the pursuing nightmare.

Then there was nothing beneath him, his boots swung leaden through empty air, and he crashed down in an ungainly pile of limbs and cursing as the world whirled sickeningly around him. Broken scree and razor-thin sheets of peeled-off rock bounced and smashed around him as he skidded down a slope that only avoided definition as a ‘cliff’ in comparison to its knife-edge fellows. He landed badly and hard, somewhere at the base, knocking the wind from himself. His vision was smeared with blue spots and stinging in the dust, and something slammed into his shoulderblades with a terribly triumphant howl.

He flailed, trying to hit backwards with desperate fistfuls of stone, as pure terror seethed through his veins, strangling the breath from him. Agony bloomed across his shoulders, spreading around his arms as he was flipped over, his resistance slackening as – half-blinded and gagging on dust – he stared up into the split-apart, molten mask of his own reflected face, dripping liquid shadow that burned and spat where it touched him, burrowing into his flesh like an acid. He couldn’t even scrape together a scream as the thing arched obscenely -

- and jerked upright, something like surprise shuddering through its stance, as a pale jet burst through its half-formed chest in a gout of evaporating shadow and boiling steam. Another sound broke the air, but this was a different noise – still strange in the drained-out air, still dancing with echoes of dreadful Else – but this had syllables, and the unmistakable, universal-overtone of swearing. The twisting creature reared back, swiveling bonelessly as something shot past overhead like a black dart and another pass of scalding liquid cut it in nearly in two. The weight vanished from Lalna’s chest as his attacker fell away, yowling.

He couldn’t move, could barely see as the dust and the pain blurred around him. The shed fragments of the thing still gnawed into his skin in a dozen places, and his throat seemed to have clotted shut. There was a final howl, fading away into the distance, and Lalna struggled to breathe as asphyxia-spots swarmed across his fading vision and he tasted metal, welling up against his teeth. Somewhere, beyond the smear of failing vision, he was dimly aware of the double-crunch of bootfall beside him, and a new shadow wavering above his crumpled form.

And there were words – real words – cracked and strained and very, very angry, even as Lalna’s world shut down.

“- the hell are you doing here?”

---

When the world came back, it was trying to drown him. Consciousness burst into life along with the choking; chill water was pouring into his mouth, overflowing to spilling out down his cheeks as he thrashed, trying to dislodge the restraining pressure that was clamped immovably across his jaw. But worse than the personalised flood was the pain – raw, sharp points of scoring agony like red-hot pins and needles, in his throat, across his shoulders, scattered about him like a firestorm under his skin. He choked again, as each gulp brought a new wave of hurt, and tried to claw at whatever was pinning him down, but something tightened on his arm, turning him over, and the assaulting stream fell away as the grip released.

He gasped at air, coughing madly as he tried to suck in as much new breath as he could into burning lungs; but the respite was a lie. Fresh pain washed down his back – writhing, twisting in his flesh like something enraged - and he lost the desperate breath in a yell, as his muscles spasmed horribly, shaking him like a doll.

Then it all stopped. Lalna slumped forward, but there was a new pressure on his shoulders, holding him up, and he peered forward thickly. His focus was a sodden mess, but he could make out a dark shape in front of him – and recognition finally hit, a spike of hot steel through his mind, as the cold-bright stare swam into view and brought cracked sounds along with it.

“ -lna. Lalna - “ the supporting – restraining – grip shook and Lalna made a vague attempt to get free, but nothing seemed to be working properly. “This is a bad time for you to practice shutting up. Lalna.”

He was shaken again, and this time he managed to find his own voice.

“Rith'n...” he slurred, through swollen lips, as he tried to fit that information into the mess that had once been his brain. Rythian. He should have had more reaction to that – should have felt something else but dull, exhausted dread – but nothing was working. There was a snort, and blurry fingers dug into his cheek, pulling his eyelids down as that unnaturally-bright stare hovered in front of him.

“Better; but we're not done. I need to wash it out. Do you understand?”

Lalna shook his head – but that wasn't entirely true. Now he had a moment outside of blind panic, he could feel the... wrongness, the strange sense of acid-hot hunger twisting back into his skin in those half-dozen places, and he saw again the nightmare vision teetering over him, drooling caustic shadows. The ender didn't like water; maybe nothing here did. He shuddered, but managed a small noise – acquiescence or resignation, even he wasn't sure – and blinked up into Rythian's gleaming gaze as the mage brought his hand back up to Lalna's face. He saw the glints of metal there, and the one ring turned in towards the palm, its aqua-blue stone glinting with magical charge.

Even with that flicker of understanding, the following deluge was still horrible; but now he could feel the intent more clearly, agony lessening just a little more each time, as each conjured wave chased more of that writhing violation from his flesh. And then it was properly over; the pain finally, reluctantly, unlatching – and he was just wet, shivering and coughing and utterly exhausted against the soaked stone beneath. He slumped over, curling up as much as he was able, and wrapped his shaking arms around his own knees. His hand still throbbed, and he was fairly sure he had bitten shreds out of his cheeks, but he couldn't coax his body to do much more than hunch and shiver, and he finally gave up, lolling back against the rapidly-drying stone.

He didn't sleep, not really, but consciousness ebbed back and forth like a tide. Every now and then he was more aware, of sounds, of faint edges of movement just outside the wall of his eyelids, but he kept them firmly – childishly – closed. If he didn't see it, he didn't have to think about it yet. There were no dreams, but still memories crashed and broke in black waves: Sjin's grip; his own raw terror at the oncoming unknown; then the following, refined horror at the realised; and older thoughts, firestorms and lavalight and crying voices in the darkness.

The storm calmed a little, and he could have sworn in the following moment of coherence there was a light pressure around his neck, the faint soft prickle of magic against his chest, but when he next came to there was nothing there.

This did seem to be a more stable attempt at being awake, and he caught onto it carefully, concentrating on picking real sensations out of the fading mess of recycled thoughts. He was on his back, flat out on a hard floor, and dry again. His hand still hurt, but most of his assorted aches had lessened down to being merely uncomfortable, and he steeled himself as he cracked an eyelid open – slightly surprised when it wasn't accompanied by an audible creak.

He could see writing. Of all the sights that might have greeted him, that was unexpected enough that Lalna blinked a few times, squinting as he glanced around, but the view was very similar at all angles. He seemed to be in a low cave – angular-sided and lit by itself, like everything else in this damn place – and every white-stone surface was covered in entwined rows of tight handwriting, intermixed with diagrams. Some were vehemently scribbled out, some underlined or circled, trailing arrows and jutting lines across to other parts of the wall.

Carefully, Lalna eased himself upright and peered closer at the nearest bit of wall, trying to track back through the flow of equations and rune-scattered notes until he found some sense there. It was certainly familiar...

“Still alive?”

The sound was sudden enough to make him jolt, and Lalna swiveled round, focusing in on the figure standing further along the cave, in the almost-doorway where another cavern cut across this one. Rythian's voice was rough, harsh-edged with disuse, and his piercing glare was underlined with shaded circles. The mage was thinner than the last time Lalna had seen him too, and there was an overall parred-down look to his angular frame that was hauntingly familiar. Lifestone magic would probably keep you alive even if buried, true, but he had seen that overall look before, as all extraneous biology was eventually trimmed away down to the most efficiently-maintained basics. It wasn't as bad as before, not quite the gaunt specter that had first stepped out of impossibility all those years ago – but it was clear enough to see.

“How long?” Lalna muttered, as the thought spilled over his lips, and Rythian's eyes narrowed further.

“There's no sun, and no real sleep here. Figure it out,” he snapped and turned away, ducking back into the next cave. Lalna was surprised at his own turn of speed as he hurried after the retreating shape, because, right now, anything was better than being alone with his own recent thoughts.

This cave opened out into another, much larger space; a partly roofed-over small canyon scattered with man-high fragments of broken stone, and there was writing here too. It wasn't everywhere – yet – but it curled around some of the slabs, ringing them in calligraphic veils. Rythian had stopped, partway to a rock like a tilted white-stone table which was only half-covered in text. The the words on that one seemed less uniform at a glance, and there was a lot more crossing-out. He was watching him again, tension clear across his drained figure, and Lalna halted.

Other than back in the portal lab – in those few, insane minutes of pivoting history – how long had it been since they had been facing each other, a few feet apart, without walls or forcefields between them? His own answer weighed uncomfortably in his mind, and Lalna swallowed, trying to find something to break the thick silence that pressed down like a tomb. To his surprise, Rythian did it for him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, roughly, and Lalna shrugged. There were a lot of ways to answer that, and he decided to go for the easiest.

“Sjin. Found me messing with the portal again, pushed me through.” He heard the halt in his own tones even as he tried to make light, but if Rythian realised he didn't note it, although his eyes narrowed further.

“Seems fair enough,” he sneered. “You can't be trusted at all, can you?”

It wasn't really a question, but Lalna bristled, as the words cut a little too close to home.

“I wasn't doing it again. Not like before. I...” he hesitated, as Rythian shifted slightly. Metal gleamed under the bandages around his fingers and Lalna glanced down at his own wounded hand. There was a thin bind over his truncated digit, he noticed now, and he looked back up in another jolt of surprise.

“...thanks. For – I mean - “

“Don't.” Rythian's expression twitched, hard to make out under the still-present mask. “I might hate you, Lalna, but if you think I'd just leave you to melt...” he trailed off, tightening the fold of his arms slightly, as Lalna's stomach lurched.

Melt? Seriously? What is wrong with this dimension?

“Why do you hate me?” he asked, and the question was surprising enough to him. Rythian stiffened, his eyebrows jolting upwards as he stared at him, suddenly incredulous.

“Really? You – really?”

“Well, yeah. I mean – recently? I get that. Nukes, and everything, but...” Lalna waved a hand, as if he could somehow encompass all that in one vague gesture. “When you came back, the first time, you'd... changed.” There was the understatement of the century, and he tried not to focus too obviously on Rythian's gaunt frame, or the curling sea of sleepless words all around them. Maybe it was less of a surprise now.

Rythian had gone very still.

“Changed,” he said, flatly, and his fingers twitched against his elbows. “That was enough, was it? The justification you wanted?”

“I wanted my friend back!” Lalna snapped, his cheeks flushing to a furious crimson as he slung his complete hand forward, sweeping a sharp gesture down Rythian's strung-out form. “And I got you instead. How did you think I'd react?”

The blow caught him by surprise; Rythian unfolded with an angular abruptness, catching an elbow into Lalna's chest with force that took the breath from him, and slammed him back into the rough stone wall, with the mage's fingers curling tightly into the side of his jaw. That cold-burn stare was barely inches from his own, so close Lalna could even feel the harsh rasp of breath behind his mask.

“You watched me die; inch by severed inch,” Rythian hissed, and a strange guttural edge tore up through his ragged voice, scratching at him with nails of old fear. He pressed closer, and there was the soft scrape of a blade just below sight. “And then you shot me, and left me to burn. So tell me, my friend – which bit didn't I understand?”*

“I didn't know what to do!” Even the words hurt, biting into his throat like something serrated, as Lalna caught onto the restraining arm with every finger he could still bend. Rythian didn't move, the pared-down wires of his muscles shaking but unyeilding under Lalna's desperate grip. The scientist licked his lips, unable to break the locked stare, half-horrified by his own admittance.

“I didn't know what to do,” he repeated, a little less shrill this time – because the words were already out, he couldn't take them back either way – and gulped against the pressing fingertips. “I didn't know how the portal worked, back then.”

“You stood back,” Rythian growled, his face contorting under the mask, disgust and fury warring across his visible features. “I – goddamit Lalna – I begged you!” He stepped away, just as abruptly, dropping his hold so fast that Lalna stumbled, panting, as the mage took a few short steps across the cave, then turned back towards him. His bandaged fists clenched and unclenched, his eyes narrowed. "And you just watched."

Lalna dug his fingers into the wall for all the support that would give and tried to steady himself. There was anger, sparking just under his thoughts, and he caught onto it, desperate for anything else to feel.

"What should I have done?" he shot back, voice shaking. "You stuck your damn arm in it! Who does that? Then for all we knew it was – was just eating off anything that went in, and you – and I couldn't – " he hesitated, pressing his wounded hand against the side of his head until pain burned in both halves of the contact, as the old, never-forgotten memories oozed up around his thoughts like mental tar. "I tried to pull you out."

He had braced himself against the shifting frame, the taunting stare of those unstilled Eyes like a thick static in the air – as he tightened his grip around the thinner figure in his arms, feeling Rythian's heart hammering the drums of rising terror against his own skin. They didn't speak, not with such short breaths, not through jaws clenched in strained effort; Lalna felt his shoulders screaming at the unaccustomed exertion, his feet rocking horribly against the unstable balance – but it was like trying to pull stone, as if Rythian's arm had fused into bedrock just above the wrist.

Then the gasp, the mistake, the overshot strain of effort, and the mage slipped, finally letting out a cry as he jolted forward, losing traction on the frame. Lalna lurched back, barely catching himself on the moss-chilled wall, as hidden insectile chittering rose, viciously-excited in the thickened darkness below. His gaze swung down, to where Rythian's bent right knee had vanished almost entirely into that ravening surface, the rest of his leg limply propped against the frame, already sliding – and Lalna's world iced over.

A hand? Maybe they could've dealt with a hand, with the little tools they had brought – so few, so pointless now – but this much? No.

He didn't know what to do.

The memory broke as Lalna shook his head, hard, and slumped back against the wall. It had been a very, very long time since he'd let himself think about that night; that one, perfect-horror of a night, when everything went wrong.

"I couldn't do anything," he muttered, looking down at the floor, unable – or unwilling, even he wasn't sure – to meet Rythian's fixed gaze. "So, yeah, I watched. I watched my best friend die, inch by inch, pleading and cursing my name with every breath he had left. I didn't… I didn't want to leave you alone." And those words were like coals in his throat, as the heat in his cheeks twisted its way towards his eyes and he stared, resolutely, up towards the scraps of visible not-sky, blinking frantically.

Damn you. Damn you.

There was a very long, very weighty silence, then Rythian made a strange noise, somewhere between a grunt and a hiss, and Lalna looked down, a shard of confusion easing into his thoughts. That wasn't quite the reaction he'd expected. The thought cut as he saw Rythian hunch over very suddenly, as if he had taken an invisible punch to the gut, and clutch spasmodically at his sword as he stumbled back towards the half-written rock.

"…Rythian?" Lalna edged closer, trying to stay mostly out of blade range – as if that would help – and the mage looked up sharply. His visible face was twisted, this time as if in pain, and he glared at him accusingly.

"You left the damn thing open?" he snarled, and Lalna blinked.

"What – the portal? I didn't exactly have time to – wait – " he stopped, shock stapling his own eyes wide. "You mean, someone else -?" He stopped as Rythian crumpled, sliding awkwardly down the blank stone as he let out a groan, all weird harmonics and horrible strain, and clutched at his head with both hands.

"Oh god," he muttered, and the anger had gone from his voice, pushed aside as a shudder rolled down his limbs. "There's – this is – different."

"What is?" Lalna dropped down, abandoning caution – because, honestly, if the mage really wanted to kill him, he hadn't got a lot he could do about it – and grabbed the shaking shoulders; Rythian flinched under his fingers and tried to jerk away, then went very still. His eyes widened, staring at nothing, even as muscles twitched oddly under his skin.

"There's two," he said, through clenched teeth. "How can there be two? There can't be two!"

"Two what?" Lalna asked, wrong-footed by the sudden shift in the conversation, and trying to ignore the tiny flicker of hope that threatened to catch at the back of his mind. He had left notes, all over the place, and a lot of the tech had been at least half-finished.

Had they come looking for him? When he hadn't come back to the factory?

Into the End? Where they genuinely that crazy?

He wasn't sure whether to wish it so or not, but his half-hopeful musings cut out as Rythian's fingers closed on his forearm, and he realised how much horrified urgency was plastered across the mage's face.

"Two incursion points. There can't – that's not how it works! She is going to notice this…" he trailed off, struggling to get back onto his feet.

Lalna tried to help, but there was a ghost of almost-real pain running down his back now, as if the scarring there was trying to pull itself free from the rest of him by sheer force of memory alone. Rythian had always called the mythical Enderdragon She. He had never worked out why, but he remembered the swipe, the sudden moment of impossible agony as he felt his own flesh dissolving, split away to nothingness as the miss-angled claw had raked down his back. He winced and Rythian glared at him, angry again, as he shoved him away.

"What have you done?" he hissed, and the wrong-echo was back in his tones, but this time Lalna rallied against it.

"Nothing! I'm stuck here as much as you, remember?"

He hadn't been expecting the laugh. There was no humour in it, the broken shards of syllables spilling from Rythian's hidden mouth like the sound was clawing its way out, and his eyes glittered unpleasantly as he stabbed a bandaged finger into Lalna's chest.

"You have no idea," he snarled, as he began to rise into the air, then gave a yelp of surprise as Lalna lunged forward and locked his arms as tightly as he could around his narrow waist.

"If it's anyone we know, I'm bloody coming too," he said, muffled slightly by clothes and sternum. For a moment he thought Rythian was going to pry him off – or stab him – but then the mage gave an exasperated sigh, and when he spoke his voice was more normal again.

"…fair enough. We don't have time to argue, but for fucks sake, stop hugging me." He wriggled out of Lalna's surprise-loosened grip and slung an arm around his chest, wedging shoulders as he took their combined balance. The weightless sense of the flight ring curled around them and they rose, a little awkwardly, back up into the strange-lit darkness outside.

Well. Not entirely dark; not anymore. Rythian cursed inventively, but they both saw the red flaring beyond the hidden landscape, visible somehow even through the shifting wall of thickened black. That didn’t narrow it down too much, but there had probably never been – even for him – a time that Lalna had been more glad to see laser-fire.

---

* (See 'The Tekkit War: https://archiveofourown.to/works/730765/chapters/1357695)

-

Additional brilliant things - there is Art for this chapter! Thank you so much, folks, these are AMAZING :)

End landscape gif from SharkyMalarky.

A fantastic Ender-doppelganger Lalna from Pythosblaze (with bonus chomping animation).

A Lalna fight from Tenlayer.

The Stronghold flashback from Catato.

Ahhh, people have drawn my stuff :D *flails around in a circle*

Chapter Text

“Minty – down!”

The trigger clicked under Xephos’ hand – shockingly responsive, and for one dreadful moment it seemed too fast – but the bartender dropped like a stone, half a heartbeat before laser split the air inches above her and tore half-solid flesh out of the oncoming figure. Minty hit the ground already moving, rolling over onto her back with her shotgun braced upwards against one hip, and her own echoing volley tore upwards as the enderman reformed over her, ripping the creature apart in a firework-burst of lead and violet sparks.

The blast was like an echoing punctuation to their sudden melee, and Xephos swung round cautiously – trying to ignore the distant rippling wall of black horizon, which tugged unpleasantly at the edges of his vision with every movement – and looked out across the alien tundra. The white-grey stone swept out like massive broken tiles around them, somewhat reminiscent of a dried-up lake bed, but now it was empty, except for the occasional still-fading wisp of dying ender.

“You alright, there?” he asked, as Minty climbed back upright, pushing her visor up, and sent her own sharp gaze skimming out across their unwelcoming surroundings. There was a slight flush to her cheeks, but the hands that cracked and reloaded the gun – with that casual smoothness of long-familiar movement – were stone-steady. She nodded.

“Nice shooting.” She glanced up at the empty air just behind them and rolled her shoulders slightly. “Come on now boys; you’re missing all the otherworldly fun.”

Xephos managed a thin grin at that, but it didn’t hold, as he tried to envision exactly where the one-sided portal actually was. If that was even the way you could think about it.

Assuming it’s still working. He banished that thought. From Sjin’s rather awkward description of events, the portal had been flickering on and off consistently for two days, and Xephos hadn’t been able to find anything amongst the assorted monitoring devices to suggest it was likely to do anything else. Lalna had seemed to be a good way into entirely rebuilding the thing.

Why, he was less sure of. His examination of the revealed lab had been confusing enough; he had a reasonable grasp on most of the tech Lalna had set up back at the factory, and a few other constructs he’d explained to Xephos at other times, but the level of kit even in that slightly-makeshift room was beyond him. Some elements were familiar, or at least resembled things he had seen before, but the most unexpected aspect was what wasn’t there.

There was nothing that even looked like the bizarre device that had descended from the ceiling in the old lab – the one all quicksilver-sheen, alchemical markings and vicious hooks – and that seemed strange. After the last time he had managed to get Lalna to fill in a few of his own concussion-blurred memories, and while it hadn’t been the most helpful explanation, he had got the jist of what that original technomagical construct had meant to do: Stablisiation, opening a doorway rather than a sort of valve between planes. But there was nothing like it this time.

What there had been was an awful lot of expeditionary gear. By the time he and Honeydew had reached the castle, the Sipsco retinue had quite thoroughly stripped down the other recently-inhabited rooms, and Xephos found himself staring at the half-completed prototypes of armour, weapons and assorted gadgetry elaborate by even Lalna’s standards.

You were going to come here, weren’t you? He took another step forward, squinting around at the impossibly-lit landscape, and tried to find anything familiar, any hint to where Lalna might have gone. Would he have told them about this? There must have been a plan; he had difficulty imagining anyone making this level of armour-related preparations if they weren’t intending there to be an afterwards.

Given that 'sheer promethean curiosity' was less of a specific driver than simply being Lalna's default state of existence, there was only one other reason Xephos could think for deciding to go through that portal. It was his own reason; the same resolve that had only hardened when he had seen the bloodstained frame – that, simply, he was damned if he was just going to abandon his friend to whatever lay beyond it. And if that was Lalna’s reason as well... then there were elements of the scientist's past that Xephos was seriously under-informed about.

He hadn’t missed the irony of that.

“Incoming,” Minty muttered, as the air behind them stretched, distorting like a melting reflection. The space seemed to suddenly contain much more depth than it should, before it was suddenly full of falling shapes and Xephos had to dodge back slightly to avoid flailing limbs. He caught Minty’s gaze for a couple of heartbeats, giving everything time to resolve fully, then they both ducked forward and caught onto the arms of their respective main focus, hauling both dwarf and architect into clearer area of space.

Honeydew recovered first, retching only slightly, and accepted the help, hauling himself up onto his feet accompanied by a slew of muttered cursing. He was very pale behind the beard, but managed to meet Xephos’ worried gaze, and wave it away.

“Bloody hell,” he exclaimed, his voice gruff with compensation for the faint shaking edge that still clung to the tones. “Y’know – I’d like to say that’s the worst damn thing I’ve followed you through – ”

“Yeah, I know.” Xephos patted his shoulder, trying not to wince at the phrasing, and looked over at Sjin, who was sitting up with Minty’s help. He had gone an odd colour, but he was moving.

“And a merry fuck-you to the lot of you.” Sips was flat on his back, staring up at the sucking void of the not-sky, and was probably as pale as everyone else; although it was hard to tell with him. He groaned and rubbed one nano-gloved hand down his face. “Jee-sus. Guys, I’m an old man, I can’t handle being treated like a goddamn flick book by some creepy-ass door to hell.”

Xephos stifled a laugh and half-went to help the prone man up, but Sips waved his other hand, groaning theatrically again.

“Let me figure out if I’m dead yet, silkshirt. Geeze.”

Giving up on that avenue – and because anyone complaining that much was clearly fine – Xephos turned his attention to their bags, haphazardly scattered from the initial falls of both crossings. Assuming that the portal had at least something in common with Nether ones, they’d had to arrange everything that had seemed like a good idea to bring into holdable arrangements. Most of it seemed to have come through, which was a relief. He’d had quite enough of facing endermen with bugger-all; this time they were at least going to try and be prepared.

“Getting started without us, Minty?” Sjin was upright now, looking down at the little spill of spent casings scattered across the layered floor. Minty had slung her gun back behind her, and was dragging some more of the scattered bags into a central pile. She shrugged.

“Bit of a welcoming committee.” She paused to tuck a strand of hair back under her faceplate and flashed a careful smile. “No worries so far.”

“Had any bright ideas on where we’re going yet?” Honeydew chucked a particularly large bag into the middle, which clanked loudly, and Minty shot him a sharp look.

“I haven’t had chance to – ”

All those months ago, back in the invaded world, they had felt the roar before they heard it, but here there was no distinction; no warning.

The force of it hammered down around them, a sudden unavoidable avalanche-wall of sound – yet not sound, not anymore, because sound wasn’t this complete; barely even kin to this all-penetrating reverberation that poured from everywhere, and to everywhere, all at once. Xephos was dimly aware of the other cries around him, but the tiny mortal noises were nothing beneath the thundering howl that battered at him now, twisting his breath to razors and smashing his heartbeat back against itself.

Impact-shocks danced up through the plates of his armour – at his knees, at his palms – as he went down, hunched in around himself as the seething sonic torrent tore through his suddenly-impermanent frame as if he were little more than fog. Binds of sharpened horror tightened around his heart as he struggled to breathe the clotted air, and his vision swam crazily, darkness spinning at the edges –

– and he went down again, tasting metal behind his teeth. His sword slipped between shaking fingers, and all around the twisted clamor of once-familiar voices rose ever higher, baying and howling for his blood. He could feel that pitiless stare on him, high above, brilliant and burning down like twin punctures into hell.

“What now, Sspaceman?” Israphel's sibilant voice rang out, threaded through with laughter, and his own nickname drew a fresh line of taunted despair across Xephos’ mind, even as he flung himself sideways, barely missing the next slash of half-rotten fingers as they whistled past his face. “What does the lasst great hero of Minecraftia have left?”

Nothing. He had nothing, and he knew it. Xephos rolled again, trying to keep a grip on his weapon as his vision blurred and he cut outwards, half-blind, at the corrupted shape that bore down on him; knowing he didn’t have the strength, knowing his swing was wide, knowing –

– that it went down, yowling, as there was a deep impacting thump nearby and the half-moon gleam of an axe cut the broken thing nearly in half. The second blow took it out entirely, and then there were hands on his shoulders; impossible hands, because Xephos had seen him fall, seen his desperate fingers close inches too short, and felt his own heart plunge away into that ravenous darkness. But the grip tightened; metal-clad, blood-splattered and gloriously – insanely – alive, as Honeydew hauled him upright, back into the confused uproar rising around them from the mobbing crowd.

“He’s got me, yah shitlord! And I’ve got a fucking good surprise for you!”

Any response was swamped under the sudden drum-bass rumble of cannon fire, breaking the charnel-house air apart. Then the dwarf’s arm was round his waist, half-carrying, half-dragging him forward as the ground shuddered violently underneath them. Any chance of coherent thought vanished into the booming cacophony that poured down from the now-descending airship shapes, gunports open and belching fire out across the hellscape colosseum. Honeydew was shouting, urging him on, even as Xephos’ vision blurred again, but he was here, he was alive, and all they could do was run.

“C'mon, come – ”

“– back here, you bugger; don’t you dare wig out on me!”

The world crashed back – alien, Other, but very much the now – and Xephos yelped, finding himself being shaken bodily back and forth by a yelling orange blur. It resolved a bit as Honeydew shook him again, chalk-white under his braids, and Xephos tried desperately to focus on that reassuringly bristly face. The roar was still happening, still ripping through him like nightmare made sonic, but something had shifted, and he managed to nod, gripping back against Honeydew’s arms.

“I’m here, friend,” he managed, past gritted teeth, and the dwarf peered closely at him for a moment – relieved – before they struggled back upright. Both gazes swept the not-sky, but there was still sound rather than actual substance to the threat.

Focus on that.

Xephos swatted at the flickers of old horror that swarmed about him, as he jerked a nod towards the other prone figures.

“Getssips,” he slurred and stumbled away, trying not to bend too far in the very real fear that he might not find his feet again a second time. Minty was the closest crumpled form, her head arched back as she stared wildly up through the slit in her slipped-down visor. Her eyes were as unfocused as he was sure his own had been, but after a few shakes she flinched bodily and finally looked at him.

“Minty. Bartender. C’mon.” He lifted her up, her armour clanking against his own as he took as much weight as he could, without toppling himself. She was muttering, but he was fairly sure he was too, each of them with a sudden unspoken agreement not to hear the other. Honeydew came into view again, barely visible under the two figures half-draped over him, but the dwarf ploughed onwards with the grim unstoppability of a ginger iceberg.

“Where?” he grunted, and Xephos shook his head thickly. He was fairly sure the sound had a source, and it was getting closer, but guessing its direction was pointless. They would have to chance it.

“Shelter. What’vr’s closest. Leave the – the – ”

“Leaving all the shit, gotcha. Come on, you bunch of bastards,” Honeydew growled, hefting at his burdens. “At least pretend you got legs, for fucksake.”

Minty’s fingers tightened on Xephos’ arm, and they lurched forwards. The layered white stone seemed to shift and buck horribly under his blurring vision, but actually closing his eyes would be worse. He knew what awaited him there, and it was little different in practice to the now.

Either way, all they could try to do was run.

---

The sound caught them in the air. Lalna couldn’t help but cry out, as the near-solid noise slammed home. His back lit up in one long stripe of resurging agony along the claw-wound, where the vaporising slash that had parted his flesh like thin smoke, enraged again beneath his skin. Rythian grunted; their already-awkward flightpath dipped, precariously close to the fractured-sheet mountains below, as he shifted in the air, and wedged the strange blade between them. A little of the surging horror fell away, although the pain was suddenly, differently worse, as though a thousand tiny teeth had bitten in along the path of the old injury, and Lalna shuddered.

“What - ?” he started, but Rythian’s ring-hand twitched again and they sped back up, whipping the thin air past too fast for conversation. Lalna wanted to close his eyes, as the liquid curtain of the horizon poured away sickening fast in front of them and rippled like blackened quicksilver either side, but even blinking brought flickers of old, wished-forgotten memories sweeping across his mind.

It was coming this way. He wasn’t entirely sure how he knew, but with the sword hilt digging into his side there seemed to be a focus somewhere within the horrible sound, more like a polarity than a direction, but enough to send ice down his spine – because it was getting closer.

“Rythian - ”

The mountains blurred even faster beneath them as a new wave of tension rippled down Rythian’s wire-strung form. Lalna twisted as much as he was able, peering back over his own shoulder – and the breath caught in his throat as he saw twin points of harsh brilliance, blazing out even through the ever-following darkness.

“Rythian!”

“I know!” the mage snapped, his own eyes gleaming brightly enough to spill weird shadows down his face. Lalna bit into his lip just to have something a bit more normal to feel uncomfortable about, as they crested another stacked outcrop, scaled in half-shattered plates of stone – and the plain washed out below them. The laser-fire had stopped, but Lalna’s heart skipped painfully in his chest as he saw the scattering of darker shapes against the pale sheets of stone, and the handful of figures stumbling away across the open space.

Five of them. That was an extra level of unexpected, but he didn’t have time to think too hard about the realisation, as Rythian let out an odd-syllable exclamation and they shot forward again – and then there was ground under Lalna’s boots, the hovering-grip of the ring abandoning him mid-stumble as Rythian dropped him. He landed badly, skidding on broken stone and failing acceleration, and came to an abrupt, shock-short halt as he looked up, suddenly eyeball-to-barrel with one of his own laser pistols.

The moment stretched, echoed around by the roilng howl, as Lalna’s gaze tracked up the weapon, the extended shaking arm, and reached Xephos’ strained face. The man was half leaning-on, half propping-up Minty – of all people – and was grey-pale. Small muscles twitched oddly under his skin and the blue stare that met Lalna's own was only half-focused, wide and wild and for a very long moment fixed somewhere else. Then he blinked.

“Lalna?”

“Talk later, for godsake!” Rythian swung back round, hovering in the air as he stabbed a bandaged hand towards the nearest set of cleaved monoliths. “That way – go down, and keep your eyes open.” He flickered as he rose, the edge of purple after-images spilling around him as he swept back into the sky, the drawn sword leaving a faint trail of icy brilliance in his wake.

Xephos swayed, then stumbled as Minty detached herself and shoved him – carefully – back towards the other trio of figures, who were still catching up. Lalna barely had time to gawk at the two more-hunched shapes – an odd mix of fear and surprise easing into the chaos that had mostly replaced his mind, as recognition clicked – before the bartender had caught onto his arm, steadying herself again. She leaned up, very suddenly, and Lalna caught a glimpse of her eyes behind the iron visor. They were part-focused as Xephos’ had been, but hers were narrowed, and lacked their usual cool composure.

“If you touch Sjin, I willgut you,” she hissed, a little muffled behind the helmet. “Glad you're alive.”

Her fingers dug painfully-tight into his arm, then she stood down again, wincing as another roll of the sound hammered through the world around them. It was definitely closer this time, in that weird way, and Lalna gave up on anything other than stumbling forward, his heart beating to a frantic tune, and his gaze fixed on the rocky gaps Rythian had gestured to.

They had just about cleared the threshold of the first tilting slab when the roar shifted. The fury was still there, still a shuddering near-physical presence all around them, but the sense of focus within it had changed. Distracted?

Rythian, you nutter – what are you doing?

The ground sloped down quite suddenly behind the first outcrop, snapped and splintered into irregular fissures and scree-dusted plates that cut down through the angular strata of the raw stone, like split pastry on a geological scale. It took all remaining attention of the unstable party to navigate along the precarious ground, stumbling and slipping, and managing a makeshift interlocked balance where individual footing would have failed.

The roar followed them here too, as if it were bleeding out of the stone along with the sourceless light. There was a different feel to it now, a new note to the rage that Lalna felt as rising pressure behind his eyes, sending little points of purple-white pain dancing across his vision. Minty grunted, stumbling heavily against his arm as the pressure peaked – biting down like sharpened claws across his mind – and abruptly vanished. It wasn't a relief but it was a release, and the group finally stopped, sinking to the ground in a unanimous, halted collapse.

The ground was flatter here and more complete: a sheet of relatively unbroken stone, thick with dust. The sides of the fissure leaned drunkenly inwards, far enough to press closed high above them, cutting off the inverted pit of sky. It was almost shockingly silent. There were a few long minutes of little more than breathing, and a bit of shuffling re-arrangements, and Lalna tried to get his thoughts into something that at least resembled a logical order.

They were here. They'd come after him. Even Sjin, who was watching him with an odd look on his face – which morphed into a faint, sheepish grin as their gazes locked. He should probably have been more worried by that proximity, but old memory ghosted across his mind – glazing blue eyes, rising alarms and the clatter of falling coolant cells, half a life away – and he couldn't quite find space for more fear, right now.

They'd come after him.

Honeydew broke the lethargy first, lugging himself into as much as ever passed for upright for the dwarf. He was wearing his armour – they all were – Lalna finally realised, and his attention flicked for a moment to the bluish metal shape strapped firmly across the back of Xephos' nanosuit. That sword was out, too, and he blinked as he felt the faintest rise of heat under his cheeks.

“So. Anyone know the etiquette for needin' to rescue your own rescue party?” Honeydew said, gruffly, as he stomped over to Lalna and stuck out a steel-lined hand. “You mad fucker. Got all your bits?”

“Pretty much,” he replied, accepting the help. He could feel Sjin's gaze track down towards his other glove, but he ignored the look, shifting a fold of coat slightly over the still-throbbing digit. Xephos had righted himself too, a little further along the near-triangular cavern, and was frowning as he fished around in the pockets that hung from his belt.

“We brought... well, probably a load of crap, actually,” he said, casting a look upwards as if he could see through the rock-seam ceiling above. “But there should be some things you can use, when we can get up there again. Thought you might need some of it.”

He succeeded in detaching whatever he had been struggling with and handed it over, as Lalna gulped back a laugh of relief. The revealed device was one of his more basic bits of kit – a simple multi-frequency scanner, mini-trich and basic uplink to the castle mainframe – but the little machine felt like home in his hands. He swallowed hard, fingers tightening on the smooth metal casing, as he finally met Xephos solemn gaze.

“...thank you. Thank you,” he repeated, hearing the faint crack start in his own voice. Sips interrupted with a groan, and staggered to his feet.

“They're getting emotional. Goddammit, Minty, I was promised no friggin' crying.”

“Then you can help me.” Minty had her visor hanging around her neck and was still a bit pale, but her gaze was steady again as she cast a sharp glance first at Sips, then at Sjin's still-silent figure. “We need that gear. If that... whatever it was has gone, and before anything else notices us.”

She shouldered her gun again and started back up the slope, a little more of her usual stalking grace now back in her movements. After a quick exchange of glances, the rest of Sipsco went after her; Honeydew too, surprisingly, with a not-very subtle outbreak of eyebrow semaphore aimed at Xephos. That just left the two of them. Lalna carefully slid the scanner into one pocket of his coat.

“Sjin... told you what happened?” he asked carefully, and Xephos nodded.

“Yeah. He'd freaked out pretty impressively by the time we got there.”

Lalna shook his head. The conjured image was jarringly different his own last memory of Sjin – blanked-out with pitiless determination – but there were other memories overlaid there too. The moment of sheer horror on the architect's face, just before it all shut down, born at his own irritated dismissal of Sips' earlier brush with mortality; and the raw steel that had underlain Minty's unguarded greeting-threat.

Maybe it wasn't such a surprise, now he actually thought about it.

“I never thought I'd really rattle him, y'know?” Lalna muttered, waving his whole hand vaguely in the air. “He never actually cared about anything enough – and I really tried, once.” He shook his head, ruefully. “And then I go and bloody do it without even noticing.”

“You can lack... tact,” Xephos noted, and a faint edge of a smile twitched the corners of his lips. “I don't think – ”

-vwip-

They both swiveled, Xephos' hand jerking down to the pistol at his hip, but the figure suddenly highlighted against the backdrop-stone was a familiar one. Rythian's arms were folded and there was blood visibly welling up through the bandages that encased his hands, but other than that he seemed unscathed. His eyes narrowed as he looked at down them.

“Don't stop on my account.” The sneer was clear even in his cracked tones, as he dropped down to the cavern floor, raising a small cloud of displaced dust around his ankles before the flight magic completely cut out. Xephos relaxed his hand away from the weapon. Mostly.

“Thanks, Rythian. It's good to see you alive.” There was sincerity in his voice – because he was Xephos, after all – and Rythian hesitated, a little of the raw anger falling back as he frowned.

“...yes, well.” He shook his head, then rallied. “What the hell did you do? There've never been two incursion points before.”

“Two – incursion points?” Xephos repeated, glancing at Lalna, who shrugged because the accusation didn't make much more sense this time either. “We... came through in two groups? Lot of stuff to carry.”

“And immediately started shooting? Whose great idea – ?”

“We nearly landed right on a load of endermen,” Xephos replied sharply, and tapped his hand for emphasis. “And you might be swooping about like an oversized bat all fine but our rings aren't working. Anyway – ” he continued, his tone softening as he dragged a hand through his hair, dislodging dust “ – this simplifies things a bit, thank god. We've brought as much of Lalna's equipment as we could carry, and you... got out of here before, as I understand it?”

“Understand?” Rythian rocked slightly, as if he'd been slapped – then his eyes were suddenly burning again, casting angular shadows across his features, and his voice ratcheted back down to the harsh rasp. “You – think you understand any of this?”

Xephos held his ground, even as the slightly-twitching mage advanced on him.

“Well, not yet. I get that it’s difficult, alright, but we’ve got both of you, so – ” he stopped as Rythian laughed. It wasn’t the cracked-contortion of sound from before, but the soft noise was no less dreadful for it, and Xephos' hand dropped, warily, a little closer to his weapon as Rythian snarled at him.

“Difficult? You’re missing the point. Getting out is easy. Getting your whole blasted band of idiot adventurers out is easy. Cut their throats – problem solved.”

“That’s not what I meant - ”

“Yes it is!” Rythian cut him off again, his words whip-crack sharp, as he swung a hand viciously around the cave. “That’s all there is; that's how you get out of here. You have to die.”

Time slowed. To Lalna, it almost seemed to be moving in pieces, every movement trailing a hundred echoes around itself as history welled up through the cracks.

Oh god...

“...but you came back,” he muttered, only half aware he was speaking and even less that he was moving, then Rythian’s arms were under his hands, shaking with all the desperation of the thousand things unsaid that crowded in, pressed breathless-tight around them. The cold-fire stare locked with his own.

And all those years ago he had stared through that gaunt mask of a face, into once-familiar eyes not so bright then, but still so very, very changed. And the apparition had screamed nonsense at him, as Lalna had torn himself free and fled, stumbling down the dark-brick corridors.

'I begged you, Lalna. Inch by severed inch. I begged you.'

“You wouldn’t tell me,” he said, as if putting actual words on the thoughts would help. “Goddamn it Rythian - you wouldn’t ever tell me! You got back, I know you did – you can’t say – ”

The mage’s hands closed over his own, but to his shock Rythian wrenched them up, bringing Lalna’s fingers to press against the thin skin either side of his eyes.

“What did you think this was?” he spat. “What it cost to bring myself back – carving Words of Void and blood into my own life? It took everything I had. More than I had. And I still don’t know if it worked!”

He jerked away, abruptly, folding his arms against his chest, and stared resolutely at the floor as his visible face twitched. Lalna couldn’t move; his world had narrowed down to the blackened tunnel of inevitability that stretched out between them, tightening every moment.

“Of course it worked,” he mumbled. “You – I mean you’re here – you’re not – ”

Rythian snorted, and suddenly he seemed... smaller, somehow, as the rage drained away in that sudden way of his, leaving hollow shadows in its wake.

“You've seen what lives here. You said it yourself, that I’d... changed. And again – worse – after your reactor...” he trailed off as his expression contorted, then he looked back up and Lalna was thunderstuck to see a liquid gleam there, refracting strangely at the edges of his stare. “I don’t know what it cost me. Me, possibly. All I know is I can’t do it again.”

“But you came back to here,” Lalna insisted, desperation curling around his own words. “After I – after it went bad, at the castle. You must have thought there was another way out.”

“I did.” Rythian’s eyes squeezed closed and he unfolded a hand to press against his face, grimacing into his fingers. “I was wrong.”

“Rythian – ” Xephos started, his voice in a careful monotone, but both Rythian and Lalna jumped at the new sound, strangely unexpected in the private universe of drawn-out admission that had clamped down around them. The mage swiveled, as anger lit up again under his features.

“No. Not from you,” he growled, then nodded sharply towards Lalna. “He’s literally incapable of leaving anything alone, but I thought youhad more goddamn sense. Guess I was wrong about that too.”

He twitched his fingers, rising up a little way from the cavern’s self-lit floor, and shot one final glare back at Xephos’ face as he drifted back towards the sloping exit.

“If you wanted to be a hero, this was a terrible place to start.”

---

He kind of wanted to scream. Xephos watched the floating figure rise upwards out of sight, and tried very hard to bite down on a wordless yell of frustration. Just once – once – he wished Rythian and Lalna would manage to have a discussion that didn't seem to half go on inside their own heads.

'You have to die' . It had certainly sounded decisive, but this was magic territory, and the line there between mechanism and metaphor was a porous one at best, so he took a few long breaths of the unsatisfying thin air and tried to calm his heartbeat. He was fairly sure the mage's parting shot had struck home out of snide luck, rather than understanding, but that didn't make it much better to dwell on.

There was a faint click as Lalna opened his scanner, stared down at the revealed screen, and then sat down a little too fast, resting the device on his knees. His underlit expression had gone blank.

“You shouldn't have come after me,” he said quietly. “Really. I didn't - ”

“And you should've told me, Lalna.” Xephos sat down opposite the scientist's hunched form, almost glad of the distraction from his own whirling thoughts. Lalna kept fiddling with the machine, not looking up, and Xephos was about to repeat himself when he spoke again.

“You wouldn't have let me do it.” His voice was very controlled, tight against itself, and Xephos blinked.

“What?” He leaned forward, trying to catch Lalna's deliberately-inverted gaze. “Friend – when have I ever been able to stop you doing anything?”

“This is different.” Lalna prodded at the screen a little too hard, his lips thinning. “It's not... laser ovens or railways, or anything. You said, last time. Not again. You were keeping an eye on me, and I – I did try, I really did; but I couldn't just - ” he stopped, staring down at the device in his hands – then hurled it away, where it skittered and bounced across the cavern's stony floor, kicking up dust. His hands came up, pushing into his hairline as he leaned forward across his knees, eyes scrunching closed.

“I couldn't – leave him. Here, again,” he muttered, his expression twisting at each word as if the sounds were painful. “Christ, Xephos; I fucked it up so badly, so many times, and I can't even – I have to fix this. Even just a bit, I can't – I can't – ”

“Lalna.”

The scientist went rigid as Xephos swung himself into place beside him, carefully sliding his own arm between the shaking bends of his friend's elbows, pushing his fingers away from where they were digging into his forehead, deep enough to cut. The angle was awkward, but Xephos doubled his grip on those frozen shoulders as the other man finally looked up, his eyes reddened.

“Listen to me, friend,” he said, very carefully, as he felt the shake in the muscles under his own, the so-close snap of the tension that lurked just beneath Lalna's surface. “I'm sorry, if I made you think that. Yes, we were keeping an eye on you – but you were half-dead when we got out of that tunnel. You don't sleep, you barely eat, and you strap yourself into all kinds of cybernetic crap so you can do that even less. I was worried about you. Still am, you bloody maniac.”

Lalna laughed. There was little humour in it, and he twitched painfully against Xephos' arm as the sound halted free, petering out into several seconds of heavy silence before he spoke again.

“I didn't want to be the one who gets everybody killed,” he said softly, and Xephos tried not to let the sudden shock of those words show on his face – the horribly-familiar sentiment sinking cold claws into the back of his mind – as Lalna sagged against him, staring blankly at the wall. “But I have. I knew I would, eventually – ”

“That's bullshit,” Xephos snapped, a little harsher than he'd meant to, and Lalna tensed again.

“You're here, aren't you?” he shot back, jabbing a finger accusingly back down the cave. “And you sure heard Rythian.”

“Just because he's unnerving doesn't mean he's right,” Xephos replied, as he caught onto Lalna's extended wrist. “Yes, we're here. We're here two days behind you because you didn't tell me – and if you had, we'd just have been earlier.”

Any response died as the hurled-away machine gave a sudden, incongruously-cheerful beep; and Lalna stiffened. Xephos drew away quickly as the scientist scrambled, half-upright, back across the dusty floor and snatched up the device. He tilted the screen, then sat back, his expression going slack again.

“It’s just picking up you,” he said dully, but Xephos blinked.

“Picking up me? Why me?” He moved to crane over Lalna’s shoulder, as the other man shrugged and tapped at the screen, where a little X was flashing in the top corner.

“Your badge thing. Remember, I checked it out for you, like a year ago? Gives out a weird little frequency and does bugger-all else. I don’t – Xeph?” Lalna stared at him, and Xephos could feel the frown rolling down his own face, as his hand came up – half-bidden – to press against that very empty area of shirt.

“...I haven’t worn that for years. After you checked it, I never even – ” he stopped, abruptly, as possibility broke across his thoughts, sending a terrible jolt spinning down into the pit of yawning dread that had suddenly opened up where his stomach used to be.

Oh no...

But Rythian’s words coiled up against his mind again, black and burning, and Xephos saw Lalna’s eyes widen, clearly shocked at the expression that rose onto his own features.

Two incursion points. Not one, twice. Two.

“That’s Lomadia.”

“Lomadia?” Lalna stared at him in disbelief. “How could – I mean the badge, yeah, with your whole thing, but here? How? She’s not a mage – ”

“No. She isn't.” Their gazes met, and Xephos could almost see the same pieces slotting together back in Lalna's mind, the same name tipped onto each tongue – because there was only one way it made any kind of sense.

As a group, we have really got some communication problems.

“It's Zoey.”

---

-
And there is art for this too! :D So pleased!

What did you think this was? from Entings.

Chapter Text

Lomadia was no stranger to unusual forms of travel. Before the Island, her wanderings had barely touched solid ground for over a year, when home had been the wind-rolled decks of her airship, or the series of suspended camps, set high in the branches of trees that stretched skywards on scales to match their outsize avian residents. She had glided in feathered pillion between wings several times larger than she was tall; soared across midnight skies, gripped with implausible care in the grasp of talons longer than her arms; and more recently she had flown under her own control, sensing the invisible curl and play of ring-bounded magic down her limbs.

She had visited Lalna’s eclectic castle, felt the strange all-over click of the teleporter technology as it swapped her through space like a shuffled card, and she had even visited the hellish firescape of the Nether, riding the portal wave's swirling burn through obsidian tunnels between worlds.

Even by her standards, though – this had been weird.

It had taken a while to get everyone into a general state of 'prepared' – because, honestly, how in the world did you sensibly defined 'prepared' for what they had been about to do? She had her sword, a backup bow folded down and strapped between her shoulders, and she had persuaded Nilesy to actually put on his own armour. She had rope, knotted around her waist like the world's least stylish belt; she had charge for the flight ring nestled against her finger; and she could feel the faint, additional weight hidden beneath her helmet, that was almost entirely in her mind.

Everyone else had… their own ideas. Zoey had zipped back and forth between the castle and the bar so fast she was in a permanent state of being slightly-blurred, tossing inexplicable armfuls onto the already-crowded surfaces; so much so that Ravs dragged a few large chests out of the cellar for some rudimentary filing. There were some explanations, shouted back over the retreating redhead's shoulder each time, but they were generally more confusing than anything else and Lomadia had settled for helping to make sure the floor stayed visible.

The one thing Zoey had wanted left uncrated was a small box full of sunglasses. Each one was identical, in that peculiar way of condenser-copied items, heavy at the sides with glittering crystals and with incongruously thick leather strap stretched between the arms. Lomadia would have wondered more about them, but it had been about that time that Nilesy had revealed his own proudest piece of forward-planning in the form of a box of colourful water balloons, and headed downstairs to abuse the brewery pipe system.

Ravs had donned some armour of his own and begun to work his way steadily down a bottle of something semi-opaque, his face set into an indecipherable frown, and Tee was… well, Tee was Tee. She had to assume that whatever preparation a bow-slinging dinosaur needed to do, had been done.

Finally, they had run out of faffing. Zoey returned, clad in a set of unusually-designed red plate that gleamed in the bar's lamps and sat a little awkwardly on her, as if originally made for someone with a different build. Lomadia had helped her adjust some of the straps, settling the faintly-glinting material a little better onto the mage-woman's tensed form, but she hadn't asked. It seemed like that would be setting a new precedent, somehow.

The not-a-TV box had been opened again. The dark screen slid to one side and lit up to display its weird code – 1-3-3-7 – /tp CrCa ??? – no more decipherable than before – and Zoey had held up a new enderpearl, staring into the shifting interior of the little globe with a look of raw determination.

"Alright, good lookin's," she muttered, and her voice had shaken only slightly as she held the pearl in the centre of the mechanism inside the opened box. "Let's get this thing cookin'."

Her fingers had twitched, accompanied by the faintest sound of breaking glass, before she yanked her hand back and the inside of the box lit up. The screen had flickered as the ??? dissolved again, spreading out across the rest of the display in a swarm of pixels that whirled wildly around each other, and miniature lightning began to surge inside the box itself. Then it had caught, a sudden cage of jagged brilliance clicking into stability, as the pixels snapped into place as strange, runic script, and the whole apparatus shivered.

There was a rising whine, just on the edge of hearing, and Lomadia had watched the cog-like patterns begin to move again, spreading like fractal shadows out from the sides of the box, skimming over surfaces, across the walls, and up them. She forced herself not to move as the flowing pattern reached her, sweeping up her legs without sensation – but an impression had weighed suddenly at the back of her mind; that she was being assessed somehow. Recorded.

Mapped out.

What the hell was this thing? Her gaze had tracked back up to the box, as the last of the pattern folded into itself at the edges of the room. It held there, perfectly still, as the sense of alignment grew heavier and heavier, until she could almost feel the gear-like pressure against her, as the whine had peaked.

Then each half-real cog had turned, just once – and the world vanished. Possibly the effect should have been more disconcerting, but it had almost seemed familiar, somehow. It wasn't exactly darkness, or nothingness, or even a stasis – indeed, if it was anything at all, it was the moment before awakening, before life and light and world clicked into place.

It was waiting.

And then everything had come back – and Lomadia staggered forwards, her breath tight in her chest as if the action was suddenly new, and she looked down. The cog patterns had gone now, and a glance up revealed the screen had gone dark again. Other than that…

"Did it work?" Nilesy asked, as they all looked round warily. Everything seemed to be the same; same bar, same assorted rubbish all over the place.

Except the light outside had changed. Lomadia's hand dropped onto her sword hilt as she turned towards the door, where a constant brightness had replaced the night-time gloom of the lake, and crept cautiously over. She wasn't exactly sure what she had expected the End to be like – although she had thought a more Enderman-like colour scheme would feature – but all that greeted her peek through the little windows was a wall of off-white rock.

Well, we're not in Kansas anymore.

"Can't see much," she muttered and, before her nerve could fade, she grasped the handle. "I'm having a look."

She stepped out, carefully, but all that greeted her was more of the wall, rising up a few meters in front of her. The pub was apparently now inside an angular sort of cavern; the walls formed from huge slabs of flaking pale stone, tilted into each other all around and giving rather the impression that they had turned up in the middle of some half-collapsed, titanic house of cards. Only rock was visible overhead, hiding any trace of sky, yet the whole place was uniformly-lit. Nothing was glowing, but a sort of sourceless brightness seemed to suffuse even the thin air, leaving nothing but faint flickers of deeper shadows at the very edges of the space. Lomadia carefully crept around the outer walls, encountering nothing but more slanted rock until she came back inside, and met the collected, concerned gazes.

“Clear. Possibly buried, but at least we’ve not got company.”

Nilesy gave a slightly-nervous laugh.

"Well, that's a good start, at least?"

"Hopefully." Lomadia turned to Zoey, who was peering out of one of the window and frowning. "Zoey? This is your call, I guess. How're we doing this?"

The redhead bit her lip, glancing across at Tee's silent figure, then set her jaw more firmly.

"Right. Okay – first thing? If there're going to be Endermen around, we're all gonna need to get kitted-out." She darted back across to the box of over-done sunglasses and pulled one pair on, securing the extra strap in place under the looped bands of her own helmet. The combination of plate and eyewear added up to a strangely insectile appearance, and Lomadia blinked as another pair of sparkly glasses were thrust into her own hands.

"Pardon?"

"I tried it out ages ago," Zoey replied, and grinned beneath the bling. "Endermen don't like being looked at, right? Well, if they can't tell you're looking at them – then bam, no more problem."

Of all the things… Lomadia held up the glasses and squinted through one dangling eyepiece. At least with the strange brightness that seemed to be leaking out of the air itself, even indoors, she could see something through the lens.

"I mean… really?" she managed, weakly, but Zoey nodded.

"Sure. I checked a couple of times."

Lomadia glanced over at Nilesy, but he had already got his glasses in place, the strap mussing his hair up in all directions, and was striking a pose against a table. This seemed to be what they were going with, then.

"Okay. Well… let's get out there," she tried to sound more determined than she felt, right now. "There're breaks in the walls, we should see if any of them lead towards the surface. Or we're digging, if – "

She had been told about the roar; the terrible sound that had poured down out of the broken sky as the year's earlier horror really took hold, but she had managed to miss the experience herself – ensconced at the time within the alternative nightmare of the Nether. She hadn't exactly thought the descriptions had been exaggerated, but it had been difficult to work out how much any recounted recollection had been coloured by events.

If anything, it hadn't been exaggerated enough.

Lomadia's knees gave out entirely as the sudden surge of sonic fury seemed to erupt out of the air itself, pouring in around her in a personalised tornado of bone-wrenching cacophony. It was so far beyond real noise, something furious and sharpened and relentless, as if the sound had given up on what was merely achievable by pressure waves and gone right into the realms of fever-dream hallucination without a pause. She was vaguely aware of crumpling back against the wall, sliding down as her fingers scrabbled at the brickwork, and the sound battered up against her mind. It seemed to pry loose every old nightmare, every dark moment; whirling them up around her in a blackened storm that froze the breath in her lungs, and sent echoes of remembered terror chasing through her skull.

Other sounds were happening, close by, but it was an effort to even think as she tried to pull herself back upright. Every heartbeat seemed to send another shivered spasm down her limbs, knocking her back and draining more strength from her muscles. There was a swirl of something pale, just beyond her blurring vision, and she suddenly found pressure on her shoulders, pushing her back against the wall as someone yelled at her. The contact was new – was enough to draw focus around – and Nilesy's face swam into view. He looked pale, and his eyes were overly wide behind the glasses now askew on his face, but he was speaking.

" –adia! Goddammit, don't freak out on me now!"

Nilesy. Focus on him. Pools, and chickens – and cats – and fighting Endermen with buckets.

It… helped. There was something strangely reassuring about her friend, and his inbuilt ability to turn the utterly chaotic into a wobbly sort of success. She could use that, right now. Lomadia gritted her teeth as she managed to reach up, closing her fingers around one of Nilesy's wiry arms, and tried to find words.

"I'm okay – I'm… oh fuck me – " she muttered, but managed to right herself with the extra help, swaying dangerously in the half-real winds of buffeting sound. Nilesy gave a short, slightly strangled laugh.

"Not really the time or place there, Lom."

"Hah-bloody-hah, scrublord," Lomadia growled, as she blinked owlishly – hah – around at the rest of the room. Ravs had slumped against the bar, his forehead pressed into the surface, and was gripping the counter edge so hard his knuckles gleamed white under his skin, but at least he was upright. Zoey wasn't; she was hunched over her own knees, sunglasses torn away, and from the sob-spasms rippling down her, Lomadia was glad she couldn't see her face.

There was no sign of Tee.

"Where's -?" Lomadia started, then cut off as Nilesy shook his head, and she suddenly realised that his disarray wasn't just slipped glasses and her own blurring – there was blood running down his face, his cheek and nose already blooming into a livid bruise, and she followed his gesture to where one of the bar doors hung sadly from one hinge, cracked in several places.

"…well, shit," was about all she could manage. Leaning on each other, they lurched forward as the world seeming to tilt and shudder sickeningly around them. It took an eternity to reach Zoey, and start to uncurl her from the shuddering hunch. They both kept a wary distance from her right hand, where the rings were sparking and spitting tiny curls of loosed magic down her fingers. She was muttering, half-clear things that didn't make a lot of sense when they were coherent – for which Lomadia felt strangely glad. Accidentally overhearing anything that would give rise to the contorted expressions that writhed across the mage-girl's face seemed like a breach of some unspoken privacy, and she concentrated on not paying attention.

"It was this bad before?" she grunted, as they heaved Zoey up onto one of the sofas. Nilesy shook his head as he tried unsuccessfully to mop at his nose with a maile-sheathed arm.

"No. I mean, yeah it was bad, but Jesus no, not like this."

"Aren't we so bloody lucky?" Lomadia blinked, shaking her head as if that would help with the way her vision kept going in and out of focus. She waved her hand in front of Zoey's face, shaking her shoulder gently. "Check Ravs. Zoey? It's Lomadia. Whatever you're seeing, I promise it's not actually happening."

Not right now, anyway, she added, as another scurry of side-glance nightmares slithered past her vision. How long was this going to last? Surely the thing needed to breathe back in at some point.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, something seemed to… shift, in the sound. It was still everywhere, as if the air itself were howling purified fury, but there was a change to it somehow, as if the attention of the penetrating cacophony had turned away. That was… well, 'better' was a loaded word. It did suggest that whatever was making the goddamn sound wasn't actually looking for them, and Lomadia clung on to that thought even as she tried to get Zoey's attention again.

"Zoey. Zoey." Another exasperated growl escaped and Lomadia wrenched off her glove, snapping her shaking fingers together in front of the other woman's several-thousand-yard stare. "Mushroom girl, snap out of it, for fucks' sake!" She shook the redhead again, and this time there was a reaction, as Zoey gave a sudden gasp, jerking as if she'd been slapped, but a little more focus crept into her gaze.

"Wha-?" she started, then winced again, one hand darting up to press against the side of her head, as the same building pressure that was forming behind Lomadia's own eyes seemed to catch up to her, and they both grimaced. Little motes of violet-bright pain were swirling down the sides of Lomadia's vision like asphyxia-pinpricks as the pressure intensified, piercing-sharp against the inside of her skull – and abruptly vanished, taking the sound with it, as if someone had slammed a door on the noise.

She slumped heavily onto the arm of the chair and pressed her palms over her eyes, breathing heavily. The ragged storm of horrible thoughts had gone, leaving grey-ghost trails of themselves across her mind, but she felt suddenly hollowed-out, as if the all-pervading noise had smashed aside any normal thoughts so completely there was little more than scaffolding left behind.

"Good lord," she muttered. "Let's not do that again. Whatever that was."

"It was Rythian," Zoey said, softly, and glanced up as Lomadia swivelled, staring down at her as if she'd grown an extra head.

"Excuse me? I've heard Rythian. Rythian doesn't sound like hell's own brass band."

"I mean when it changed." Zoey pulled herself into a more stable position, rubbing fiercely at her face. "It went after him. I just… know, y'know?"

You 'know y'know' a lot of things, apparently.

… but I believe you, so I'm not sure what that says about me.

"Well… good." Lomadia sighed as she glanced round, to where Nilesy now had a bloodied bar cloth pressed to his face, shaking his head as a still-pale Ravs proffered a hip flask in his direction. "If he's aggravating something, he's alive. That's – "

She didn't get to continue, as another roar cut across the words – but after a heart-stopping moment, she realised the sound was just sound, and much smaller, filtering in from through the broken-open doorway. Zoey sat upright quickly, craning around the room, her eyes widening.

"Where's Tee?"

"He bolted – oh, come on!" she protested as the redhead leapt up and darted out of the tilting door, vanishing out of sight in the few seconds it took Lomadia to pull herself upright on still-shaking knees and lurch back out into the cave. The acoustics were strange in there, and she hesitated as she tried to get her bearings in regard to the sounds of reptilian distress.

"Where'd she go?" Nilesy was just behind her, slightly muffled through the cloth, and Lomadia shrugged.

"I didn't see. You go right, shout if you find them." She hurried forward, searching along the walls of vertical-strata stone. The rockface was split with fissures, some only visible from certain directions, and she peered into the wider ones, staring down narrow tunnels in the stone that tilted at harsh angles, scattered with smaller slabs of fallen rock. The growling was getting closer, clearer, and she finally found the right way – halfway down the left side of the bar, behind an outcrop that folded back to hide the actual passage.

"Down here!" she yelled back, and ducked inside. The tunnel was erratically-spaced, wide enough for two abreast in places, then narrowed down and twisted at increasingly-awkward, broken angles, until she rounded a corner abruptly and nearly collided with Zoey's back.

"What the hell – ?" she started, but cut off as Zoey looked round, and she saw the wet gleam in her eyes. There was another normal roar – very close, this time – and Lomadia craned over her shoulder. The rock strata here seemed to be coming apart like old tiles, slabs and chunks the size of doors detached from the main walls and wedged across the open space. One particular pair of slabs had formed a rough, inverted 'V' of stone a few metres further on, and Tee had clearly bolted right down the centre.

"I don't think he's come back yet," the redhead muttered, and Lomadia bit down on another curse.

She had become used to Tee over the last few months, as he moved wordlessly around Blackrock, or sat in careful guard near to Zoey as she worked; often distant, but in easy view when you knew where to look. She had practised her own archery with him, accepting the occasional nudged headbutt to the shoulder in way of adjustment; and of course, he had joined in with their visits to the 'Caber, the modified wooden tankards that Ravs had made gripped carefully in his clawed hands. Somewhere along the line, the fact of what Zoey's mute companion actually was had blurred into general normality.

Right now, though – there was quite clearly a very, very angry dinosaur wedged into place between the half-fallen rock. Claw-gouges had been torn deeply into the pale surface beneath his thrashing back limbs; tendons like tensile wires stood out under scaled skin, muscles bunching and shaking as he clawed at the ground, kicking up dust and fragmented rock. His tail thrashed from side to side, pummelling the walls so hard it was starting to leave little bloody smears against the stone, and the constant snarl rattling out of that long throat was undeniably bestial, as his pinned arms scrabbled at the enclosing rocks.

"Tee?" Zoey crept forward a little further, pressing herself against the main tunnel wall to avoid the constantly-sweeping tail. There was no reply, although the struggling did seem to increase, and Lomadia took a sharp breath as – just for a moment – Tee twisted back against himself and she caught a glimpse of one eye through the tip of the constricting space. The glare was unfocused, the pupil a primeval slit of rage, and she had to deliberately stop herself from backing away, as very old parts of her own brain gibbered slightly at the sight.

There was a faint crunch of scree as Zoey hauled herself up onto the far side of the tilted rock, steadied, and peered over. The growling increased, along with a periodic, guttural click that was somehow even more threatening.

"Tee, come on," Zoey repeated, and there was a definite quaver to her voice now. "You gotta come back now, alright? We've got to get Rythian home, safe. Not sure I can do this without you buddy." She leaned forward, holding one shaking hand out as she braced herself on the rock with the other. "It's me, it's Zoey…"

"Careful," Lomadia added, trying not to wince as she saw the girl lean down further still. Tee did seem to be thrashing a bit less, and his growl had softened slightly, but he was still struggling, tense against the stone. Lomadia started to unwind the rope from around her waist as she eyed the still-scrabbling hindclaws. She was more familiar with angry-frantic owls, of course, which were also sharp at both ends – but Tee's arms made him sharp in the middle too, and she wouldn't like to have to chance the gutting power of those claws.

"T – eep!"

Lomadia jerked up as Zoey let out a yelp, accompanied by a horrible snickt-snap of closing jaws, and was in time to dart forward as the redhead jerked back, overbalanced, and skidded back down the rock. She stumbled back against Lomadia, who steadied the catch quickly and looked down, dreading what she might see – but although her formerly-outstretched hand was balled tight, Zoey seemed unharmed. The growling ratcheted back up in earnest again, as Tee slammed his tail into the wall so hard it dislodged a small rain of scree from somewhere above, patterning the floor like dusty rain.

Zoey was shaking, and Lomadia let go carefully.

"You okay?" she asked, quietly, and Zoey swallowed hard.

"…yeah. He missed. I mean, he didn't mean it," she added quickly, and Lomadia nodded – glad of the interruption as footsteps echoed down the tunnel and the celtic contingent arrived, both looking somewhat more recovered. Nilesy had lost his bloody cloth somewhere and was still pinching the bridge of his nose, but the bleeding had mostly stopped. His eyes widened as he took in the scene.

"Still freaking out?"

"Yeah. We can probably get him out – " Lomadia held up the rope. "And give ourselves a whole lot of new problems. Better than him hurting himself more though." She winced as there was another tail-slam, and ran an assessing eye over the struggling shape. "Ravs? Give me a hand here. Then all hands to the dinosaur."

It took a while to position themselves right, looping the rope loosely around Tee's thrashing legs without being brained or punctured in the process, and after a silent countdown they yanked hard, tightening the bind in a moment of relative calm. Tee gave another snarl of fury as his knees were pinned together, pulled back against his tail, but the reduction in flailing was enough for their combined strength to draw him back, straining against the dinosaur's own resistance and the wedged press of the stone. It took a few minutes of effort – but then the trap gave, as Tee came free like an angry, theropodian cork, crashing down onto the gouged-up floor as the last yank took his balance.

Ravs darted forward, surprisingly quick for his stocky build, and wrenched Tee's arms up behind him, pinning the claws at relatively safe angles as he wedged himself into a restraining straddle over the snarling shape. Tee tried to snap back, but even his elongate jaw couldn't twist that far, and he let out another guttural snarl. His eyes gleamed in the strange, all-over light, still empty of anything except animal rage.

"It'd be nice t'say this was the first customer I ever had to stop tryin' to eat my face," Ravs grunted as he shifted a bit, strain clear on his reddened features. "Calm down, dino-buddy, this ain't getting us anywhere."

Lomadia finished knotting the rope as Zoey hurried over, dropping down out of jaw-range this time. She looked determined again, and brought both her hands down flat against the scraped-up rock, with a twinned slap.

"Tee Dinosaur! You snap out of this right now!" She faltered slightly as her scaly companion snarled and snapped at the air, his scaled nostrils flaring. Nilesy sat down beside her and eyed the dinosaur warily.

"What's up there, mate? You gonna recognise us?"

"Is there anything else he might know?" Lomadia asked as she stepped back, feeling rather useless. "To remind him? Food that isn't us, maybe?"

Ravs grunted again, as Tee made another attempt to open his ribcage

"His bow? Grab that, and a lever – " another slice, awkwardly-angled, still cut precariously close, and Ravs leaned back " – and whiskey."

"Aren't you drunk already?" Lomadia muttered as she started to turn away, hoping she hadn't missed any side turnings on the way back. The answer echoed after her as she started back down the passage.

"Wearin' a kilt and sitting on a pissed-off dinosaur? I'm not nearly drunk enough."

He had a point. Lomadia hurried back along the angular tunnels – which at least hadn’t seen fit to turn into a maze when her attention had been diverted – and it wasn’t long before she emerged back into the pub-cave again. She hesitated for a moment, glancing round, but nothing else seemed to have moved into the open space, and she headed back inside.

Bow, lever, whiskey. The first was easy enough to find; a little hunting through the dislodged debris around where Tee had been standing before the roar hit uncovered the dropped weapon, thankfully undamaged. Whiskey or similar would be behind the bar, but the lever was trickier. There was nothing immediately visible, and Lomadia sighed as she flipped open the closest chest and stared at the mess of mixed-up items inside.

“Wonderful,” she muttered, setting the bow aside, and began to rummage through the unsorted piles. The bow might be enough, if she couldn’t find anything appropriate otherwise. After a few long minutes of digging around, she moved on to the next chest, chewing at her lip. She wasn’t sure what kind of time limit they were working on here, and -

There was a scrape of footsteps just outside and she looked up sharply, then let her hand fall back from her sword hilt as she caught the gleam of glasses in the doorway.

“I’m coming, Nilesy,” she said, as she hauled the second chest open and glared at the equally-chaotic contents. “Honestly, this mess is making your sorting look ordered, I don’t – “

She couldn’t say what it was that made her stop. Paranoia, possibly – all her senses had been on twanging-alert since she donned her armour, back at the bay. The feeling was cold, the flip-side twin to recognition, and hairs started to prickle on the nape of her neck as she looked back up. She felt her heartbeat notch up as she saw again the familiar figure in the doorway – inside now, looking back at her with a faint smile set into his bruised features. He wasn’t bleeding anymore, but there was a sheen of scarlet smeared down his face, painting macabre shadows around his lips.

Nilesy was a lot of things, more than he often let on – but he was rarely quiet.

“Alright there?” Lomadia asked, carefully, as she searched the silent features opposite for some hint of why her hindbrain seemed to have chosen this moment to start prying open jars of rising panic. It was Nilesy, for heaven’s sake. It was clearly him; his tie, perma-rumpled shirt and hair were all in their usual low level of disarray, and his slight smile was...

Wrong. Suddenly, jarringly, utterly wrong – and Lomadia snatched her sword free, as ice curled into place down her spine.

“Who the fuck are you?” she growled as the figure took another step forward – and now it was visibly moving, she realised there was something unfinished about it, as if detail blurred out towards the back of him. She raised the blade, squaring her shoulders as she tried to map out the room again without taking her eyes off the advancing shape.

“What the fuck are you?” she corrected, and the figure stopped. It bent forwards and her throat tightened as she saw the unformed mess of smeared darkness where the back of its head should be. Nilesy’s face turned up towards her again, the smile stretching horribly wide until his features contorted around the expression, and she watched the reflections run out of his eyes, leaving nothing but darkness and a point of violet light, gleaming in their sudden depths.

Then the thing leapt towards her. Its jaw distended obscenely as it lunged, tearing black cracks up into the distorted features above as the half-solid flesh gave out, spilling trails of clotted oil down over its breaking cheeks – and suddenly there was no more time, even to dodge, and Lomadia's breath caught in her chest.

Oh, bloody hell – !

---

Chapter Text

There was no room or time to dodge, as the split-faced nightmare lunged, so Lomadia didn't try. The shock of the apparition had wrong-footed her, just for a moment, but you didn't spend half your life ranging the wildlands to freeze up at the sudden appearance of horrible things, and she recovered fast.

Her sword jerked up a little too clumsily for a proper swipe, but it put something into the path of the onrushing thing and she braced her other forearm against the back of the blade, so the creature's skinny chest hit the flat metal like a crossbar. Lomadia skidded from overall force of impact, the backs of her knees hitting the trunk behind her – but at least the charge had stopped, and the dripping, distended jaw snapped closed, pushed at arms-length back from her face.

The Nilesy-thing's eyes glittered, bright in their depths with violet malevolence, and she felt her breath catch again as she met the stare. There was something unutterably bizarre about something like that wearing slightly-askew glasses, but there wasn't time to dwell on that. The pressure was strong; stronger than her, probably, if she hadn't been running on sudden adrenaline and bracing back against a full box, and the creature’s arms twitched as they started to unfold.

Shit.

There was one dodge left. Lomadia went over backwards, jerking her knees up towards her own chest as she dropped back down onto the trunk. The copied-thing swung further over her in some twisted parody of an embrace, drooling oily darkness that hissed and spat where it dripped against her armour, and she kicked out hard with both feet, propelling herself backwards with the impact as both boots caught it full in the gut. It shrieked – a wet sound, full of wrong-angled harmonies – and Lomadia toppled over the back of the trunk, rolling back onto her feet as fast as she could.

The wrong-figure was still there as she looked up, standing on the other side of the intervening chest. It was a little more hunched that it had been earlier – and she could swear it was dented where its lower ribs should be, twin boot-prints pushed partway into the shape – and the brightness of the all-around light seemed slightly dimmed around it, as small trails of darkness sublimed from the edges.

“You can sod right off,” she snarled, more to reassure herself with the more normal sound of her own voice than in any hope it would listen. The screech was still echoing, although that may well had been inside her head, and she tightened her grip on the sword until her knuckles creaked. It was going to come at her again and this time she was going to stab it right in the fucked-up face –

It looked at her. Then the gaping mess of jaw drew back together, the split-open features sealing smoothly as detail condensed back onto the shifting form – and suddenly it was Nilesy again. His expression had shifted, no longer that strange smile but something softer, now contorted up in pain as the light in his eyes died and dragged an agonised confusion into place behind the fading gleam. He hunched forward, violently, both hands suddenly gripped shaking-tight on the edges of the trunk. Lomadia took another step backwards but stopped again, unable to look away as the so-familiar eyes widened towards her.

'Oh m-y god – please – Lom – '

Had that been words? It was impossible to tell – the lips had moved, and she heard the fading echo of speech against her recent thoughts, but had it actually spoken? The shape hunched further, slumping down until he was kneeling half-collapsed against the chest, and a horrible shiver ran down his body as muscles spasmed strangely under the skin. There was nothing else in the stare now, just Nilesy's wet-bright eyes, rumpled at the edges with raw pain, and Lomadia hesitated as a new, dreadful possibility bloomed at the back of her mind.

It wasn't him. It wasn't; there hadn't been time... but time for what? It wasn't like she knew anything about this goddamn place, or anything that might be here. Her throat tightened and she felt the cold void of uncertainty yawn open beneath her, as another tortured grimace twisted onto Nilesy's face. 

It was not him.  It couldn't be.

' – it – it hurts –'

“...the hell have you done?” Lomadia muttered past dry lips, and the new-rising horror clawed down against her. If it – if it was... She took a step forward again, her heart skipping another few beats as Nilesy's pleading eyes slid closed and he crumpled further down against the wooden lid.

Oh good lord. Where the hell was a mage when you needed one? Lomadia looked up, towards the hanging-shape of the door, as if she was going to see anything useful there; indecision and denial warring across her thoughts.

The glance up was momentary, the merest flick of attention – but even then, suspended in her own faltering heartbeat, Lomadia realised her mistake and a curse was already on her lips as the sudden impact slammed home. Pressure rammed into her shoulders, across her chest, as Nilesy lunged bonelessly from the otherwise-awkward crouch and hit her with the force of a small train, sending them both crashing backwards against the bar. Her sword went flying, clattering away somewhere to her right as she was bent back against the counter; invasive fingers scrabbling at the plates of her armour, baring her down as that pale face loomed over her again, and the eyes blazed in twin points of black-violet inferno.

' – it hurtsss - '

The Nilsey-face disintegrated, splitting down impossible seams that peeled the facsimile features back against themselves; semi-solid darkness bubbled up through the widening cracks, spilling writhing coils of darkness out around him like a rotten halo. Hands twisted around her throat, digging into the armour and Lomadia tried to wriggle back, to keep her own bare skin away from that touch, but the shifting strength was unrelenting. She shoved up at the figure with her still-gloved hand and back behind her with the other, trying to find anything she could use as a weapon while her heart hammered in her chest, paired drums of fear and fury keeping ragged time to her whirling thoughts.

“Get – off me – “ she choked out, clawing at the unyielding bind.  The thing's jaw split apart above her like gaping mandibles, roped together with tarry lines of oozing blackness, and Lomadia's desperate fingers finally closed on something solid. There was no time to think, barely chance to aim – but even through the paralyzing-horror of the corrupted figure above her, a particularly vehement kind of anger lent her strength.

How fucking dare you?

She brought her improvised bludgeon round in an arc, punctuated by a glassy nova of impact, as the bottle slammed into the thing’s temple and exploded into a shower of shards and faintly-squidlike beer

The creature screamed. It jerked back and Lomadia took the moment to drive her armoured elbow deeply into where its throat might be. The blow made no difference to the sound, but it did knock the shape further away and she was able to tear herself free, dropping into a scrambling hunch as she dived aside for her missing sword. She scooped up the blade, closing her fingers around that reassuring weight and turned again, still-backing up, to look back at the source of the shrieking.

It really hadn't liked the beer. From the chest down, the thing still looked like Nilesy – although details were starting to blur again, like wet ink – but where the copied face had been was now suppurating shadow, boiling darkness that cast coils of inky fog out into the air as the creature thrashed around itself, shaking violently with what was left of its head. The shriek was continuous; a long, serrated sound like steely claws on ice, sending prickles of translated pain dancing up and down her, and Lomadia backed away. She didn't want to take her eyes off it – not again, for fucks' sake – and it seemed to take an age before her groping hand found the door frame behind her. She was in time to see a remaining sliver of complete-feature slide back around, a sunken point of cold-brightness fixed back on her – and she ran.

She burst out into the cavern, slamming the door – accompanied by a satisfying, if too bloody close, crunch of wood against shifting solidity – and pelted across the cave, as the pursuing shriek rose another notch. Aiming for the other crevasse, she swung around the corner and came to a skidding halt as a new figure stepped out from behind the angled stone. For one heart-stopping moment she tried to swerve and back away, all at once, and only managed to keep upright in a sliding crouch, catching herself badly against the floor.

Zoey – possibly Zoey; oh hell this is going to make me paranoid – gawked down, her eyes widening as Lomadia struggled to get her balance back.

“What are – ?”

“There's a – man – “ was about all she could manage, tangled thoroughly between doubt and relief, before the redhead's expression shifted to one of raw shock and Lomadia heard the pitch change in the ongoing screech as the thing rounded the building. Zoey let out a yell. Her hand snapped up, and Lomadia flatted herself back to the ground as magic caught around the extended fingers and sent a surge of crimson thaumic plasma out across the cave. The shriek became a howl, very abruptly, then cut out entirely in the roaring crackle of cooking air, as Lomadia focused very, very hard on staying still, gritting her teeth against the threat of her own yelping, until the fire cut out.

“What was that?” Zoey's voice was high, and shocked, but normal enough – plus the odds of something that could barely keep a nose in place managing to mock-up a magical firestorm seemed low – and Lomadia took a few breaths of slightly-singed air before she turned round. The bricks at the back wall of the pub were glowing faintly, marred only by an indistinct sooty outline. Other than that, the cavern was empty. She grabbed Zoey's arm, urgently.

“Nilesy's back there, right? With Tee, and Ravs?” She could hear the crack in her own voice and ignored it, even as Zoey gawked at her as if she were gibbering. The moment stretched, poised on the knife-edge of that unthinkable possibility, as she waited – and then the redhead nodded, puzzled.

“Well, yeah. He's telling Tee about babyJim, I don't – whoa!” she exclaimed, darting forwards to catch her as Lomadia slumped against the wall, feeling as if someone had just cut all her proverbial strings, and raw relief took her balance.

“Thank god. Fucking hell. Fucking hell!”

She accepted Zoey's confused help, staggering back upright as she looked at the charred wall, which was making little plink sounds as the bricks cooled, and her jaw tightened.

“Right. New rule – no one goes anywhere on their own. Christ.”

“What happened? What was that? I didn't just, like, fry someone who actually lives here – did I?” Zoey sounded worried, but Lomadia just snorted, shaking her head as she started back towards the bar again.

“Very glad you did. Help me grab the stuff; I'll tell you on the way.”

---

In the end, it was some combination of Lever-game and exhaustion that seemed to do the trick. By the time Ravs warily released Tee's pinned arms, the dinosaur had been quiet for a while, his slit-narrowed gaze pinned fixedly on the back-and-forth flick of the stick. He extended one hand forward as Ravs let go, carefully swiping a claw against the proffered lever – repeating a few times, until he slowly climbed back to his feet, disentangling himself from Lomadia's rope with a distinct air of embarrassment.

Zoey gave it a few seconds – giving Lomadia time to gather up the rope with as much tact as you could something like that, and Tee to move away from the gouged stone under his previous position – before she hurried forward and caught a hug around as much of the scaled chest as she could, sliding her arms underneath his, and pressed her face onto his slanted shoulder. Tee stiffened for just long enough for her heart to start to sink, then he gave a low snort and there was soft pressure on the back of her own shoulder as his head tilted down, resting the soft scales under his jaw against her.

“S'up, Tee?” Zoey managed, squeezing her eyes shut so the prickling heat there wouldn't spill, and tightened her hug a little more as Tee leaned into her carefully. She could feel the low reverberation in his chest – not a growl, this time, more a sort of apologetic rumble to match the embarrassed tension down his limbs. She nudged her forehead into his long neck, gently, and got another rumble in response.

“Don't worry about it. Glad you're back.”

“You missed a real party,” Nilesy added, with somewhat-exaggerated cheerfulness. “Ravs' weirdly good at dino-buckaroo, and the ladies beer-brained and barbecued my own evil twin. It's all fuckin’ go in the End, am I right?”

“I'll brain you in a minute,” Lomadia muttered, still winding the rope back around her waist, but there was no real threat in her tone as she aimed a faint smile in Nilesy's direction. The woman was still pale, Zoey noted as she pulled away and let Tee get on with donning his bow again, and she kept glancing sharply towards corners. Zoey herself wouldn't be able to swear on what she had seen – by the time the doppel-thing had come into view for her, it had been little more than a twisting mess of screechy darkness. She was a bit concerned about her own apparent-Solo 'shoot first' reaction, but the expression on Lomadia's usually composed face had been enough of an incentive, and when she’d described what had happened...

Operation: Enderday had been going five minutes, and all this had already kicked off. On the plus side, there were some things about Rythian that were starting to make more sense. On the minus side, some of those were things she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know. And they hadn't actually found him yet.

So we find him; and get the heck outa Dodge. No biggie – right?

Right.

They restocked again, retrieving their various armaments and accessories from where the unwelcoming welcome had scattered everything. The only particular problem seemed to be with the rings; neither Lomadia or Nilesy were able to get theirs to function at all, and Zoey's were... odd. Ignition had worked well enough earlier, in that moment of horrified magical surge, but actually getting a controlled flame to rise seemed to be unpredictable; the same focus of intent generated a few weak sparks or a ceiling-scorching jet of crimson heat, apparently at random. Flight was strange too – something happened, but it was more like trying to swim through sharpened treacle than the usual gravity-defying grace, and she couldn't manage to do much more than hover, badly, a few awkward inches off the ground.

All she could hope was that they didn't have to rely on it.

And how likely is that?

Trying not to dwell on all the possible ways that this could go wrong – or all the ones she hadn't even thought of yet – Zoey lead the way through the surrounding maze of chasms and tunnelways between the weird white stones. Most of the ways they tried lead to abrupt walls of rock – or worse, to sheer-sided voids in the ground, splintered downwards in great, angular punctures that vanished into an eyeball-aching darkness far below. Sometimes they were able to look up through these chasms, but the view upwards might as well have been a mirror-image, and that particular curiosity soon lost its novelty. Several times they just found themselves back at the pub-cave again, through a different crack. Lomadia marked each path they took with waxy blue marks, noting where they had turned left or right at junctions, and how often they met a double-back route or when a path stopped dead.

Just as the sinking suspicion they were going to need to dig their way out was settling, leaden, across her thoughts, Zoey realised that the path they were following had started to slope upwards sharply, heading towards the angular chunk of skyward-darkness visible above. A few more minutes of scrambling – and a bit of wedging against each other and the stone, as they tried to get dinosaur, bucket, and assorted weapons to assist with rather than impede progress – and Zoey felt the lip of the tunnel under her hands. She pulled herself out onto a sloping ledge of the same white stone, straightened up, breathing a little heavily in the thin air, and half-turned to call back over her shoulder.

“It's a way out! Kinda, I mean, we're on a mountain I think, but – “ she cut off, as her attention finally caught up with her tongue, and realisation slammed home like a hammer-strike.

Oh my good gravy.

Zoey looked down into the End.

They had indeed emerged on the side of a mountain, a similar size to the larger areas of Blackrock's own flanking landscape, but this looked like it had been designed by someone who had never got the hang of curved edges. Huge outcrops of the off-white stone veered out from the hard slope of the hillside, jutting out from the sketched skin of broken strata and sheer-faced crevasses as if thrust through from beneath. The incline rolled down in blunted tiers, merging at harsh angles with its sibling slopes until it hit the plain below, and there things got weird.

The whole landscape down there looked like an impact-site; a huge sheet of raw white rock, cracked and crazed inward towards its centre, and roughly ringed with huge pillars of midnight-black stone a few hundred metres apart. Each pillar was several storeys high at least – although actual scale was hard to judge; everything seemed too clear and yet oddly refracted, at the same time – and rose up, sheer-sided towards the absent sky. Their surfaces were alive with crawling patterns of reflection, from both the all-around brightness and from the pyres of violet-edged flame that blazed atop each one like a crown. Where the pillars should have met the ground, cracked moats of open chasm around each snaked inwards to the centre of the space, like the spokes of some massive engraved wheel, and the glimmering skin of the black stones themselves vanished down into the opened void without visible support.

The cracking got worse towards the middle, with holes and fracture lines in the surface meeting and crossing and splitting each other further and further, until the centre was little more than a shifting, drifting mess of broken white stone, floating on the blackness beneath. Even the void there wasn’t entirely empty, and the churning mass of rock was wreathed about with a brightness somehow outside of light, set apart even from the weird illumination of the world here – a coiling, alien coruscation that stirred itself up implausibly around the drifting stones. There was something threatening about the whole slowed-down maelstrom, and Zoey had to push away an urge to dive back into the tunnel, even as she heard the crunch of righting footfalls behind her.

There was another moment of contemplative silence, and a sharp hiss of breath.

“Well, this isn't alarming at all,” Lomadia muttered, and Zoey tried not to hear the faint shake under her determinedly-sarcastic tones.

“Well, that's very nice.” Nilesy was out next. “Really scenic, got loads of tourist potential. I wonder why we've never come here before?”

“We need to go down there?” Lomadia asked, ignoring him, as she glanced over at Zoey. One of her difficult-to-read expressions was firmly in place. Zoey finally managed to tear her eyes away from the distant mess of floating rocks, and shrugged.

“Hope not? I can't... I mean, I guess I thought I'd be able to – y'know – get a feel for where he is, but...” she trailed off, as her stomach gave a lurch and she tried not to think about earlier, not to dwell on that storm of black thoughts that had battered up against her mind during the horrendous noise.

There had been moment when it changed, when the focus of it all had shifted, and she had had a sudden, sharp sense of Rythian. It had definitely been him, as she had said later, but what she hadn't recounted to the others was that it hadn’t been her own sense of him. It was... more like she'd been listening at a keyhole, peering through a crack, and had overheard it – something that was only-slightly a bit like words, that still sounded its echoes at the back of her mind.

Where do you run to, Enderborn? We are this place; we are the bones of it; we are the soul of it. We have all the time of this world. And we will find you soon enough.

Zoey’s fingers tightened against her rings, as she turned herself back towards the unpleasant landscape.

Not if we find him first, creepy not-really-a-voice. And we will, ‘cause we're awesome. So. Yeah. Put that in your end-pipe and smoke it.

“We're too open up here,” Lomadia said, squinting down. “And there are a lot of Endermen down there.”

There were indeed a lot – thin, angular shapes like scattered filings against the pale landscape, flicking erratically in and out of view. Their numbers seemed to be greatest on the plain and they looked to be avoiding the cracked-up area, but they might just be hard to see against the hillsides. Zoey shivered as she reached up and pulled her sunglasses back down onto her face. Everything was still bright, even through the coloured glass, and she just had to hope the glasses would work here as well as they had done in her tests back at Blackrock.

How did you really go about searching a whole dimension, anyway?

After a bit more careful scouting around – trying not to look up into the in-vertigo sky, or at the way the blackout horizon seemed to roam with you, which made Ravs groan and mutter unintelligible things with his hand over his eyes – they found a pathway downwards that didn't involve crashing face-first down a mountainside. It should also be possible to get back up again, with a certain amount of standing on someone else’s shoulders against jutting bits of rock.

There was an unspoken agreement to head away from the pillars, as much as was possible. The land either side stacked up into more angular hillsides, and they aimed their cautious descent towards a set of interlocked ridges that ran jaggedly parallel with the edge of the plain. It was impossible to get much of an idea of what might lie beyond the hills to the other side, and the slowly-receding horizon revealed little else but more erratic landscape.

Something was wrong.

Zoey missed a handhold, biting back on a small yelp as she skidded slightly down the dusty slope, and caught herself on another edge of rock. There was a concerned rumble from Tee, currently at the party head, and he arched round to look at her as she gripped onto the pale stone tightly. Something was flickering at the back of her mind – a sudden, small but insistent alarm, set tightly into her rather less-conventional senses – and she reached up, tightening her fingers around her kleinstar as she tried to draw focus from the little point of condensed magic there.

What was this? She could feel the star itself; she could feel the echoed channels that ran down into her rings like an extra, hidden set of veins beneath her skin; and she could feel again the yet-unrealised patterns that curled through the borrowed armour, set to a magic not her own. The warning sense was there, sparking like a bit of sunlit glass against her more familiar magical senses, and she tried to hear it. Hearing things that no one else did was usually easy for her – words running smoothly into the spaces she opened for them in her own mind – and she tried for that, sinking her attention down into the whisper-thoughts.

She is coming.

“Move!” The shout burst free before Zoey really had time to process her own voice, but she swung round anyway, waving frantically up towards the more trailing end of the group, who were carefully picking their way from angled ledge to ledge above her. She could almost hear the questions rising, and cut them off with another shout. “The dragon's coming this way! We gotta get down now!”

For a few dreadful heartbeats, she thought there would be more questions – and she was never sure how she could explain that sort of thing, not if someone really asked – but then there was a sort of grim collective mutter, and they sped up. Careful ranging of a back-track path was abandoned as the objective changed to purely down, and the start of the little canyons of the ridges below got closer and closer.

They were still so exposed. Five darker figures scrambling so, so obviously down white rock that suddenly seemed more like a background, like a highlight – and Zoey's breath caught in her throat as the proximity pressure notched up again, bursting a new jolt of pain at her temple.

“Go!” she snapped, wincing, and there was a rattle of debris below her as Tee shot forward suddenly-fast, hunched like a skier as the scree skidded past under his claws, kicking up a trail of dust and fragments. Zoey gritted her teeth as she looked back up, seeing Ravs and Nilesy slipping and skidding down behind her, Lomadia swinging herself fairly smoothly from handhold to handhold at the rear, occasionally glancing up at the empty sky.

Closer – closer. When can she see us? Closer now –

Tee came to a stone-rattling halt, just inside the tilted overhang of a half-split slab, and drew his bow instantly, sighting up back the way they'd come. Zoey grabbed onto the wall beside him, slowing her own descent, and reached out to grab onto Nilesy as he skidded past – then Ravs; then Lomadia – and then the pressure slammed down over them like a leaden shroud, as they dragged each other back under the cover and flattened against the stone, not even daring to breathe.

It wasn't as bad as the sound had been. Zoey did hear Tee make a strange growl at the back of his throat, although a quick glance round confirmed his narrowed gaze was focused enough – but for a few very, very long moments the air itself seemed to be clawing down at them; searching, seeking, and Zoey pressed further back, clamping a hand over her own mouth to make sure. Hidden as they were, she couldn't actually see up into the nothing-sky and there didn’t seem to be any normal shadows here, so there was only the pressure to go on, and the horrible sense of something being right there.

Then, so suddenly it was like a slap, it passed. Zoey let out a sharp breath as the prickling magical warning flared and died at the back of her mind, and she leaned back against Tee, who grunted.

“Okay,” she breathed. “Okay, we're good. It didn't see us.”

“Thank go-d,” Nilesy muttered, as the little group disentangled themselves again and looked around gingerly. The ground did indeed flatten out here, leading off into split-plate canyons behind the ridge that weaved through each other at erratic – although horizontal – angles. Lomadia carefully made another mark on the stone behind them and glanced back up the slope.

“I think it's scalable. With a bit of time.” Her hand went down to the rope at her waist again, as she frowned and met Zoey's gaze. “But if we run into – “she stopped, her frown deepening, and looked around quickly. She had gone pale again. “...did you hear that?”

Zoey blinked. She listened carefully and just before she had to wonder if her friend was letting worry get the better of her, the distant torn-metal screech came again, closer this time, and sent shivers dancing down her neck. Everyone went tense and Lomadia's hand dropped further to her sword.

“Enderman?” she asked quietly, and for the briefest of seconds her gaze flicked back to Nilesy, who was gripping his bucket of sopping balloons grimly. “Or – not?”

“Not sure.” Zoey listened as the noise came again – bouncing oddly down the angled canyons, scattering weird sonic harmonies that might once have been part of the sound, now impossible to tell. Lomadia looked back up the slope, exchanged a glance with Tee, and set her jaw.

“Right. Well, given our bloody luck, we're going to walk right into it anyway.” She drew the sword and hunched down, managing to move remarkably quietly for someone in armoured boots, as she crept along the canyon wall. Tee fell into step, his clawed feet tilted a little awkwardly for muffling effect. Zoey bit her lip as she followed, a weird discomfort tightening in her stomach.

“Glasses, Lom,” she hissed, and motioned to her own sunglasses as the visibly-tensed woman glanced back at her, looking a little more incredulous than Zoey would have liked. She tapped her headwear again, and continued in a firm whisper. “We're on a rescue mission, right, but this is like their house. Let’s not hurt anyone, if we can.”

Lomadia half-looked as if she was about to argue – quietly – but Tee gave a small snort and reached into one of the pouches strapped to his sides, and pulled out his own version of the glasses. It hadn't been possible to actually wedge normal sunglasses onto his saurian head, and even Zoey had to admit that her rigged-together pair of rejigged monocles would never be the height of fashion – but he put them on anyway, and looked silently back at Lomadia.

“Oh, for goodness sake,” she muttered, but fished around under her helmet for a moment, and pulled the glitz-rimmed shapes into place. “Alright. Fine. Happy?”

“Stylin'.” Zoey nodded. She did feel a bit better about the situation – at least they’d tried, anyway.

“...right.”

The group moved off again. Zoey twisted her hands together as she walked, shivering with the overlay of tension and stealth, as she strained to hear anything other than her own quickened breathing. Even without the dragon-sound, shadows of memory were flickering at the sides of her attention – the lava caves, the shifting wall of darkness that had wrapped around the world, disgorging screaming shapes; grasping, clutching at them all with those corrosive fingers that missed too, too narrowly. And that moment the madness had just – stopped, just ended like it had never been, and she knew, right then, right in the heart of her, that it had been him...

There were many horrible sounds that she might have expected to hear down there – the vwip-shift of ender movement, the rending-metal screeches and rubbery howls – but the muted sound of voices wasn’t really one of them. There were no clear words, as the sound bounced and reflected into strange harmonics down the angled walls of stone, but their own group froze as the mutterings reached them. Zoey frowned, and tried to push aside the twinned swirl of surprise and disappointment that swept through her as she listened.

“That’s not Rythian.” She might not have been able to hear proper words, but what accent there seemed to be was wrong, although it was vageuly familiar. The thought cut out as Lomadia took a sudden, sharp breath, her gaze flickering towards Nilesy again for a moment – before her features suddenly twisted up in raw anger so completely that Zoey took a step back.

“No.” She snarled, going very still, and very tense all at once. “Oh, no, don’t you fucking dare!”

“Lom – ” Nilesy started, but the armoured figure had lunged away, stealth abandoned as her boots slammed a furious beat into the stone. Tee gave a worried growl, then plunged away after her, Nilesy close behind, and the two remainders just had time to share a look of confusion before they hurried after the retreating figures. A few heartbeats later and Zoey heard a crash from up ahead; the sound of voices very abruptly turned into refracted yelling, and she coaxed a little more speed out of her legs as she stumbled around a sharp corner – and stopped dead.

The canyon here widened out, the rock walls splitting apart into a wide field of isolated, narrow stacks, and there seemed to have been a fight. Chunks of torn ender were strewn out onto the flaking floor – already dissolving, fading away to dying motes at the edges – and a few somehow-stranger traces of oily darkness were sinking into the ground, writhing unpleasantly even as they faded. But the main focus, the sight that caught around Zoey’s attention like a vice, wasn’t the impossible-familiar figures scattered between the pillars, or Tee dropping into a wary firing crouch. It was Lomadia, visibly trembling as she held her sword up, hairsbreadth-close against the throat of one of the unlikely shapes, who was rammed back against the nearest pillar.

It looked a heck of a lot like Xephos. Zoey missed whatever was said, first, as she tried to hear anything over her own suddenly-thumping heartbeat, but Lomadia’s response was clear enough – even as her voice caught and cracked, shaking in time to the shiver in her hands, and Zoey heard Tee’s bow stretch back another notch.

“Prove it.”

-

Artistic imaginings for this chapter too :)

AMAZINGLY creepy Ender!Nilesy from Pythosblaze.

Chapter Text

Sweat stung across Lomadia’s brow, prickling sharply against her skin, and she could feel her own held breath coiling inside her chest. Actual breathing seemed to have frozen entirely when she had rounded the corner into this impossible scene. There was Honeydew, axe in hand and weighed down by lumpy sacks; Sips and Sjin, shoulder-to-shoulder and with swords at covering angles; and even an armoured swish behind a nearby pillar that seemed to be Minty, of all people. And him – right in her path – as she had lunged, carried forward by adrenaline and raw nerves.

Here . They were here, or it sure looked like they were. Lomadia’s grip tightened against her sword hilt as she stared into those so-familiar blue eyes, barely inches from her own, and waited for it all to go wrong.

How did this work?

Her thoughts were unravelling at their edges now, spinning away into the swirling mists of dreadful confusion, dragging doubt across her mind. How did this work? She had been expecting Nilesy, before – always half-expecting him to turn up behind her, as he so frequently did – so had the formless horror just stepped into that expectation, then? Or was it something else?

She hadn’t expected this. Xephos – but not Xephos, how the fuck could it be Xephos? – had spoken, had said something as she’d borne him – it – back into the stone, as she had pressed her own shaking sword to the weak point in that black-plate armour, but she’d barely heard him. Even if there had really been words.

Had the nano-armour always been black? That black?

She wanted to believe it, she really, really did – but the too-close memory of Nilesy’s tar-molten visage was branded across her mind, and she gritted her teeth, putting as much effort as she could into keeping the sword still. Xephos was clearly trying not to breathe too hard – or at least looked like it – and she struggled for words in her own closing throat.

"Prove it," she managed, as she heard the clatter of arrival behind her, the collective gasp and a low reptilian snarl. There was an answering snort from Honeydew. Possibly Honeydew.

"This is fucking mad – "

He even sounded right, and that was so much worse.

"Tee, put one right through his goddamn eye if he moves," she snapped back, and the maybe-dwarf went silent as there was a soft sound of re-notched arrow from somewhere behind her. Lomadia stared into the blue gaze opposite, trying not to see the shock on that face, trying not to watch the faint wash of breath fogging against her sword. Her brain rebelled, spinning up memory around them both, until the world narrowed down to a tight cave of weirdly-blended pressure, ghosts of laughter cut through with the echoes of that shriek.

"Prove it," she repeated – and she knew she couldn't keep the desperation out of her voice; because she truly, honestly, wasn't sure what she would be able to do if he couldn't. Just stand here, possibly, while the strength drained out of her arm, waiting for the first sign of failing detail. If it was another of those things, if she had to see his face splitting apart down liquid seams, peeling back on itself into tarry desecration, she wasn't sure – even then – that she would be able to –

"I don't know how," Xephos started, his maybe-voice cracking ever-so-slightly – but before either of them could move, footfall clicked beside their frozen tableau and a blue shape swung into view, delirium-bright against the tension. There was a small, wet explosion as Nilesy leaned in swiftly and rammed the balloon hard against Xephos’ helmet. He yelped, and Lomadia managed to jerk out of the way as the liquid washed down his face, chasing bits of torn rubber into his beard. Spitting water, he looked back up, as disbelief and surprise chased each other across his sodden – but still very solid – features.

Damp. Dithering. And definitely him.

You bloody great idiot – what in the world are you doing here?

"Oh, you're welcome," Nilesy said without rancour, as Lomadia's sword clattered to the ground and she lunged forward again, catching herself against the other armoured form as sheer relief threatened to take her balance. The plated embrace was awkward, but Xephos returned it with equal urgency – and she heard him give a snort of laughter over her helmet.

"Thanks, for that."

"Fucking hell, Xeph," she growled, shaking at him slightly even in the embrace. "You do realise I nearly –?" She drew back, unable to finish the hovering words, caught somewhere between the still-peaking relief, and a weird, wrong-footed anger. Her fingers couldn’t be persuaded to let go completely, and left her at a pinned arms' length as she caught his gaze again. "I thought you were off on one of your – your bloody not-very-secret adventures! What are you doing here?"

Xephos looked a little dazed – although not as surprised as she might have expected – and he wiped at his face with a gloved hand, succeeding only in smearing whitish dust into wet trails over his features.

"Lalna rebuilt the portal." He glanced back, to where Sips had now re-positioned himself between a softly-growling Tee and the wary figures of Sjin and Minty. "There was… some trouble."

“Crazy bastard got himself chucked through.” Honeydew appeared beside them in a faint clang of boots, and Lomadia didn’t miss the slight glance towards where her hands were still locked onto Xephos’ shoulders – then back at the rest of her party – and the dwarf’s bushy eyebrows furrowed slightly. “We’re de-chucking. Surprisingly popular stupid idea, I see.”

Xephos’ lips twitched, almost at the start of a smile – and then the remaining colour drained very suddenly out of his face as his expression sobered and a new, worried urgency poured across his features.

"Lom, how did you get here? Is there a different portal, or something?"

Lomadia blinked. I’m missing something. Which isn't worrying, at all...

"We came after Rythian."

"I got that far,” Xephos cut in, and there was a strangely sharp edge to his voice. “How? Because we can’t - "

"Teleporting pub, mate." Nilesy had been hovering, awkwardly, behind them, and seized on a bit of recognisable conversation. Xephos boggled and looked up quickly; a similar expression caught onto Honeydew’s face, somewhere behind the beard, and Lomadia heard another mutter from further into the cave. She had definitely missed something.

"A what?"

"Teleporting pub," Lomadia repeated, and she could almost hear Nilsey giving a slightly-nervous grin behind her. "Yes, it is as ridiculous as it sounds."

She had been expecting a reply, but not the voice that suddenly floated back, bouncing echoes from some point further back down the chasm, blocked from her view by pillars. It was a little muffled, but recognisable enough, and she started at the sound.

“They've got a what? Why don't we have one of those?”

“Lalna?” Lomadia looked back at Xephos. “You actually found him?”

“Found both of 'em,” Honeydew said, then added with a shrug. “Or, they found us, anyroad.”

Lomadia heard Zoey make a small noise, but didn't turn round as she kept her gaze on Xephos' face. He didn't look as horrified as before, but there was still heavy concern sketched out across his features, and she hadn't missed the glance between him and Honeydew as the dwarf had spoken. Lomadia's own eyes narrowed.

“...it's not that easy, is it?”

“Never is,” Honeydew snorted, and craned back into the cave, where the other group had mostly collected back into view. “You want to explain, Tall, Thin and Brooding, or - ?”

-vwip- -vwip-

The creaking-shift of displaced air broke behind them – there was a cut-off gasp from Zoey, and a growl from Tee, although it sounded more annoyed than afraid – and Lomadia swivelled round to see a fading spill of purple-light motes, and a distinctly empty space where the redhead had been. Ravs rolled his eyes.

“Well, tha's pretty damn rude,” he muttered, and Honeydew gave a guttural sigh of irritation as he shouldered his axe and stomped back into the main space between the pillars.

“ - or we can keep waiting while everyone has emotional moments in the horrible dimension of fucked-up planning. Fine. Whatever. Which bag has jaffas?”

Lomadia picked up her sword, clipping it back at her hip, and took a slow breath. The air was still thin, still tasted faintly of tin, but it was something to focus on as she lined up thoughts, very carefully. She was missing something. Several somethings most likely – and she was getting sick of that.

“What – exactly – is going on?”

---

They congregated further back down the other path, where there was ceiling to the chasm again. With Tee taking his usual silent point and weapons in easy reach, it felt comparatively more defensible, if not exactly safe.

Actually comparing notes took some time. Some things made more sense than others – which wasn't entirely unexpected – and there were a few aspects to one or other part of the story that were clearly being glossed over. Lomadia didn't miss the way Sjin and Lalna positioned themselves at opposite ends of conversation, for example; or the steel gleam in Minty's eyes as she otherwise-airily described the Castle events; or the several-way avoidance of gazes that seemed to be running within the group, at different points.

It boiled down simply enough. There was no way back through the portal; Rythian had apparently been aggressively adamant about that. Zoey had seemed fairly sure that the pub would manage a return trip, and she had been right about most things so far – but Lomadia couldn't ignore the niggling point at the back of her own mind that there were a lot of things that Zoey seemed fairly sure about. She had certainly been on a winning run recently, but was that the kind of certainty you wanted to bet your life on?

Of course, it wasn't like they had an awful lot of choice.

So now, it was down to waiting on mages. They settled – although 'settled' was probably too relaxed a word for the agitated clustering around the cave – divided down the various lines of wariness that seemed to be in place. Distant sounds of Ender filtered through the pillared space; sometimes not so distant, as dark figures flickered into existence like the world's missing shadows. Generally they were ignored – when sunglasses, goggles, or simply not looking towards any new source of noise did their respective jobs – and the Endermen didn't seem overly interested in their presence, although that was very far away from being truly reassuring.

Lomadia left Nilesy and Ravs muttering about something accented as they kept Tee company in his vigil. She had a quiet word with Minty, seeking a bit more clarity over exactly what had happened back under Lalna's castle, although if the bartender actually had any more understanding she was smoothly good at covering it up. Lalna himself was half-hidden behind a pile of wires, bits of electronics and armour plates that seemed to have been the contents of most of the bulging bags they had been dragging; he had a very intense expression on his under-lit face, and she decided to leave him to it.

Which meant that when she reached the other end of the cave, hesitating by a pillar just behind the second watch-post, she had run out of reasonable excuses to use on herself. The faint crunch of her boots on the dusty stone seemed intrusively loud as she approached the remaining pair of sitting figures, and Honeydew stood up as she got closer, making an over-elaborate show of stretching his arms.

“We brought something to drink, right?” he said, a little more loudly than it needed, and nudged Xephos hard in the shoulder as he turned and headed back into the main cave, followed by a sharp flick of gaze in Lomadia's direction. “Unless Lalna's built it into a gun, by now, or some fuckin' thing.”

Then he was gone, clanging away, and Lomadia eased herself forward into the space he had left. Xephos was leaning back against the pillar, with his helmet by his side and the little laser pistol resting in his lap. He looked tired. Lomadia sat down too, shuffled along until she was out of view of the main cave, and drew her knees up as far as they would reach in her armour. She leaned on them, peering out down the bright canyon towards the tiered hillsides beyond, and tried not to look at the sky.

“Sorry for pulling a sword on you, back there” she said. It wasn't the most elegant of openers, but nothing more diplomatic was presenting itself, and she had to start somewhere. Xephos shrugged.

“Don't worry about that. It’s been a rough sort of day for everyone.”

“Yeah.” Lomadia looked down at her armour, at the greasy black smears that still remained against the plates in some places, and shivered. “Is Rythian alright?”

“I don't know.” Xephos leaned further back, resting his head against the stone, and looked up at the roof. “Looks like hell warmed up, but he's alive. I guess that's pretty good for here.” He hesitated, then turned his head until he was looking over at her, and a wry smile crept onto his face. “You know Honeydew's never been very subtle.”

“Oh, really?” Lomadia rolled her eyes. “Because decorating a factory with a giant version of your own face always seemed such an understated thing to do.”

Xephos laughed, which bounced its echo oddly around the pillared stone.

“Should've seen some of the early designs.”

“I'm fine here in my blissful ignorance, thank you.” Lomadia met his gaze, as the same grin found both their lips – but too quickly the moment faded and Xephos glanced away, as she felt her own expression sobering again.

There was a... space between them. It had been there before – more so than she had liked to admit, in recent months; like a weight in the air, drawing down until every action, every word seemed to roll away into that hidden void, and it made her stomach churn.

It hadn't been that long since they'd seen each other, had it? She had been busy, true – fixing the damage to the Island and handling the slow, wary influx of returning owls from the year's earlier chaos; and increasingly hanging around Blackrock. Equally, he'd had a lot of repairs to make on the factory, and it wasn't as if they had ever been comfortable living in each other's pockets.

But that gap seemed wider than ever, right now.

“And I'm sorry about the badge.” She hadn’t quite meant to bring that up yet, but the words slipped free anyway. After their earlier sharp reunion, and after Lalna's preoccupied reveal that he had been tracking them by the pin, Lomadia had given it back. She couldn't shake the strange sense of guilt that had cast in her mind as she had undone the bronzed shape, or when Xephos pocketed it, wordlessly but with an odd smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. The expression was back again now, and he shrugged.

“Don't worry about that,” he repeated, and the faux-casual tone to his voice made her stomach lurch again. Then he frowned. “...why, though?”

Lomadia looked up sharply, as the question sent a dart of sudden, smarting irritation across her thoughts.

“Because. You weren't there, and I was coming here.” She swung a short wave around them, jabbing accusingly at the visible strip of empty sky. “I didn't know if I should leave a note or a sodding will.”

“I wish you hadn't done either,” Xephos muttered. Another distant creak-snap of Ender sound reverberated down the canyon towards them and his gloved fingers tightened against the pistol grip. Lomadia rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, well; at least we brought a way out.” She hesitated, then reached over and laid her own hand down over his. "Look – you know that I like this.  What we are, like we are. It's just…" she trailed off, feeling a faint prickle of heat at the edge of her eyes, and blinked a few times. "I don't ever know, y'know? What you’re about to hurl yourself into. For fucks' sake, we didn't even realise we were both heading into the End. How screwed up is that?"

"I don't think this is a good example."

"Doesn't matter." The words were right there now, pushing up like sharpened bubbles against her thoughts, and she let them rise. "This, or something else – but one day you're just not going to come back, and I won't even know why."

“Neither will I,” he replied, then winced slightly as he drew his hand free and ran the fingers hard through his hair. “I don’t know what to – there’s so much I’ve never said, about me, and now...” he trailed off again, looking away, and Lomadia felt her jaw tighten a little.

‘Neither will I?’ Really? There was only so much cryptic she could deal with in one sort-of day, and Zoey’s half-coherent explanations had already used up most of that. She leaned round, dropping one leg flat so she could turn properly in her armour.

"I have seen you naked, and you scream in your sleep," she said bluntly, as he looked back up so fast it was nearly a jump. "How much d'you think I don't know?"

Xephos went very still. For a moment the eyes that fixed on her were suddenly a stranger’s, twin points of sapphire in a face that seemed suddenly so much older, so much more tired – and once again the somewhat-haggard figure she had met all those years ago, offering ridiculously generous payment for discreet passage out into the Wilds. She hadn’t asked then – hadn’t wanted to – but one dwarf, one nervy scientist and a drawn-out man who stared too long at shadows hadn’t seemed too risky a deal, for what they had on the table.

After that, and after everything else, they fell into that same pattern so easily. She hadn’t asked. Maybe she should have done.

Then Xephos blinked and he was himself again, although the tiredness remained, casting hollow shadows around his eyes. He let out a slow breath and when he spoke his voice was flat with careful, manual control.

“What have you heard?”

“Clearly? Mostly names,” Lomadia shrugged as she replied, and was surprised to find a flush of heat curling under her cheeks. Now she had started, now she actually had to put words around her own suspicions or recount half-overheard things, it was strangely embarrassing – as though she had been spying, sneaking a peek at something terribly intimate that she wasn’t supposed to know about. Now she was speaking though, the words were like a slope, and all she could do was skid down and try to keep some semblance of balance.

“Honeydew’s one. Daisy, another I think, and something about a strange night. And... Israphel.” She stopped again as she saw the shudder that swept him at the name, his hands jerking unconsciously towards armour-hidden scars before forced control swung back into place. Lomadia swallowed. She felt like an intruder now.

“I didn’t mean - “

“Please.” Xephos moved, shockingly-fast after his previous stillness, and gripped onto her arm. His eyes were bright, with an edge of liquid mania to the stare, and a grimace wound across his features.

“I – need to know what you see when you look at me. What – who – you think I am. I can't – ” he cut off, shaking his head almost violently, and Lomadia dropped her hand down over his own, tightening against his fingers until she could feel the shaking. She was out of her depth, but he seemed to be too, and she couldn't just leave him there.

“Well, even I know that last one,” she said; and it felt like a confession. “It didn't really reach out here – out there, I suppose – but everywhere knows about the War of the Sands. You fought in it.” She didn't wait for a nod, ploughing on before the words could catch in her throat. “You and Honeydew, though I don't think there were many dwarves who didn't, after the Khaz fell. I... I mean, it's pretty sodding clear you were there when Icaria burned. And you handle yourself better on an airship than someone who's only ever had his feet on the ground.”

The silence bore down like a physical pressure, strangling-thick, as difficult expressions twisted across Xephos' face.

“What does that mean?” he muttered, and his eyes were only half-focused on her. “What do you see?”

“I don't know, Xephos!” she snapped back, reddening again as she gritted her teeth. “You're you. What do you want me to say? You're bearded? Older than you look? Have a hopscotch board where your chest should be? What?”

Xephos stared at her – through her, his over-bright stare twitching faintly from side to side as if fixed on a scene playing out about three inches behind her left eye – then slumped back, cut-string sudden as he let go of her arm, and turned away.

“...sorry,” he muttered, and there was a shake to his voice that set a tight lump rising in her own throat. “I don’t... I say the wrong things. I just – sorry. Not the right time.”

“Is it ever?” That came out sharper than she had meant it to, and Lomadia tried not to flinch at her own word-choice as she clasped Xephos’ hand again. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t look back at her either, and her heart sank.

There didn’t seem to be a non-awkward way out of this.

“I’m not so good at asking,” she said, quietly, searching the visible side of his blank face for any sign of reaction. “Even when I probably should, when something’s so bloody obviously wrong... But you don't talk about anything. The war, yes, I can see that, but before?” she hesitated, and shook her head. “I know you, Xeph, but I know sod-all about you. Even the basics. I mean, where is – was – home for you?”

He had gone still again. Then he blinked, very slowly, and his free hand went down to a pouch-pocket, and pulled out the little copper badge. He ran a thumb over the smooth surface, staring at it, and his lips twitched.

“I don't know.”

“I mean - ” Lomadia started, but Xephos gave a snort of odd laughter, cutting her off.

“I'm not being dramatic. I don't... remember who I was,” he said, very quietly, as he rolled the badge between his fingers. It clicked, then he put it down, resting his palm over it protectively. “Or what this even is. I just woke up, in the snow, with nothing in my pockets or in my head. If Honeydew hadn’t found me, I’d have died right there. And then...”

He trailed off again, and then pulled his other hand free and reached down, adjusting a few hidden catches until he was able to dislodge most of the flexible plating around his left arm. Setting the armour aside, he rolled up the underlying sleeve, and ran his fingers over the patchwork scarring that wound across him; the keloid runeworks of eventful life.

“Then it all got complicated.” He pinched in either side of one scar – a long, curving mark, the smooth edge of blade-bite, deflected down his forearm away from a more vital target – and a thin smile found his face. “I remember all of these. I remember where I got them, who we faced. Who we saved, and who we lost – and who they thought we were.”

Lomadia reached out – hesitated – but Xephos brought his arm up and she traced her fingertips gently again alongside his. She knew the mark, but the sudden focus on it seemed to light the ridged skin in unfamiliar ways, while the memory of old contact shivered against her thoughts; intimate or accidental, caress or just a light touch through his clothes. He shivered slightly and let the sleeve fall back.

“I remember all of it. And a hundred bloody convoluted ways to make Jaffas in the middle of nowhere, to boot. Sometimes I think I forgot how to forget things properly.”

“And nothing at all before that?” she asked, her own voice low. Xephos pinched the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyelids closed as he frowned sightlessly.

“I remember... light. And falling, I think. Then nothing until the snow.”

Silence folded back. There were other sounds, outside the muffled space that pressed down around them; occasional mutters from the cave behind, creaks and clicks of movement, but nothing really seemed to get through. Lomadia was painfully aware of her own breathing, heavy in her throat, and the strange sense of vertigo that was pooling beneath her thoughts. Some of this was familiar, some unsurprising, but the sheer release of pent-up words was unbalancing, and she had no idea where the flood would leave them.

“What happened? Did you ever find out?” she asked, carefully. Xephos shook his head, as his lips pressed into a humourless line.

“No. Nowhere to even start.” He looked down at his hands, curling his fingers a few times, very slowly, and when he spoke again there was a tremble in his voice. “Maybe it’s happened before. Maybe I never get to keep anything.”

His hands clasped together, tightening again until they shook, and he made a small sound, a choked-back cough that bounced back off down the canyon, scattering echoes.

“And that fucking terrifies me, because sometimes I don’t want to.”

Lomadia’s heart skipped a beat.

“What?” she couldn’t stop the incredulous question blurting out, and Xephos looked back at her, his expression strangely small, coiled up tightly, as if he were hunching inside himself somehow.

“Nothing fades,” he said, softly. “Not like I wish it did. The war, everyone we lost; everything I‘ve done, and everything I couldn’t. It’s all... here – ” he pressed his hand to his forehead, grinding the heel of his palm into his skin and grimacing slightly. “It never really goes away. I get so tired of it, y'know?”

“Not... really,” she admitted. It wasn’t as if her own life was particularly uneventful, and she had had more close calls than she really cared to think about herself, but this was something else entirely. Xephos sighed as he dragged his hand back down his face.

“Then I look at everything, now – and all I can see is how I'll lose every last moment of it. The war, the factory; even Honeydew.” He looked away again, his eyes screwing closed. “Or you. If I found you all again, if I got back, I wouldn't even know what I was looking for – and I won't care. These will just be weird scars.” The little badge clicked again as he picked it back up, staring at the small coppery shape with wet-bright eyes. “As empty as this.”

“You don't know that'll happen,” Lomadia said, but it sounded weak even to her. Xephos didn't move. “You said you don't know what happened the first time – that time,” she corrected, quickly. “Who's to say it's a pattern?”

“That's not the point.”

“It’s not – ” she started, but any continuation cut off as a sudden, very loud electronic whining sound burst into life back behind them – followed almost immediately by a small, crackling explosion, deafening in the otherwise-silence. They had both leapt to their feet, hands on weapons, before Lalna’s insistent follow-up reached them:

“It’s meant to do that, I just need to tweak it a bit. Chuck me that - no, not that one - !” the words were punctuated with a tinkling crash of something falling over, and Xephos gave a faint growl as he clipped the pistol back at his hip.

“Oh for pete’s sake, what’s he done now?” He took a step forward, brushing against her shoulder with a faint scrape of armoured contact, then stopped very suddenly, almost rocking in place, and a half-finished sound died in his throat. Lomadia swallowed.  She could feel all the broken edges of the interrupted conversation pressing back down against her, and searched for words that wouldn’t come.

“We should check,” she managed, eventually, and tried not to wince as she saw Xephos’ eyelids slide closed. Flickers of a dozen different expressions – all horribly complicated – danced across his face, before weary determination settled back onto its usual place, and he nodded.

They headed back into the cave, towards the increasingly-busy sounds of an argument breaking out, neither quite able to meet the other’s eyes.

-

Art! <3

A lovely storyboard of Lomadia / Xephos from Catato.

Chapter Text

I miss you.

It had been a long time since Rythian had actually noticed what it was like to move with the Void ring. The sensation was different to an enderpearl – that was more abrupt, somehow, trailing a faint sense of angry displacement as the world lurched forward – but the ring had always been different. Easier, more... natural. To him, anyway.

I need you.

Now though, he felt it, even as he tried very, very hard not to focus on the sudden presence beneath his hands. His fingers were closed tightly against his once-armour, now settled a little amateurishly onto Zoey's form. Doubling the load for transport was one thing – and the alchemical calculus of adding in another, very different point of power into the mix was very far away from simple – but he could handle that easily enough.

It was the connected shift in awareness of it all that wrong-footed him now, as the world blinked closed around them, and suddenly he felt a bled-over, claustrophobic terror as everything went dark. There was a moment of unsettling disconnection as the twist of nearly-tamed void sliced across thaumic anchors, followed by the alien vertigo of being severed out of the world – even for one fragment of time – as oblivion's maw yawned open around them.

I -

Then the snap-back of restoration, as white stone broke back into existence either side and the abrupt return of sensation had Rythian stumbling back, grip loosening as he caught himself against the wall and felt the lifestone buzz against his suddenly-risen heartbeat.

I -

Even in his own mind, even within the comparative privacy of his thoughts – as much as he ever had there, anyway – the words caught against themselves, tangling and coming up short before he could really put something as crude as language around them.

I really wish you weren't here.

Lalna's appearance had surprised him. Maybe he should have expected it, eventually, with the damned scientist's complete inability to leave anything the hell alone. In a terrible way it had almost been satisfying – let him see how well he liked it here. But then he had felt the next arrival, so soon after; the same splitting pain of entry dragged across his other senses, wreathed in disbelief.

Someone had followed Lalna. That seemed... strangely unfair, on top of everything else, and as for who it had been? Sjin, maybe, wasn't so unexpected. The two of them certainly had a history of saving each other from their own attempted murders – and if Sjin, Sips wouldn't be far behind, for whatever damn reason they had going on.

But, Honeydew Inc? Rythian's first thought had been basic incredulity – the pair made biscuits for a living, and while he knew they were close to Lalna, tossing yourself into an unstable portal between worlds seemed remarkably short-sighted kind of friendship; but then he remembered before, back at that blasted castle. They had got there alone through pitch-thick darkness, over several miles of Ender-infested landscape, armed simply with two torches and a pair of blades that Rythian would have assumed to be family antiques if he hadn't seen them held. And here, the dwarf had handled his first full hit of the Queen's own Voice like he were shrugging off a stiff breeze, and Xephos –

Xephos wore the face of a man who had clawed his way out of hell and was still standing. It was unnerving, and Rythian had really, really thought he was past even being able to be unnerved, by now.

But none of that mattered. Not really, not after the two of them had burst back out of the temporary-shelter caves, waving Lalna's infernal machine, and brought what world Rythian had left crashing down around him. They might have been mistaken, true enough, but the moment he heard it, he had known.

Zoey. What have you done?

They moved soon after, dragging all their stupid bags infuriatingly slowly; grounded and creeping across the tier-stacked stone of this place like frightened insects, following the little flashing screen. He could have flown, could have snatched that damn device from Lalna's truncated grasp easily enough, and made his own way – but denial and a black joy that he didn't want to acknowledge warred across his thoughts, staying his hand, and he had followed, lost in himself.

How many times had he dreamed of this? Not in sleep – never sleep, not here – but he had dreamed anyway, carefully unwrapping each bright point of memory, gossamer-fine against the darkened wires of his recent thoughts. He had imagined her there, lazing back against broken-stone slabs as his calculations spun out across the pale surfaces; darting around the labyrinth of his cloistering caverns, singing to the echoes and filling the silence with chattered nonsense. He had even found himself talking softly, in the half-idle way they had fallen into, explaining the simpler parts of his formulas and tutting quietly at imagined responses and jokes; until he would turn – adrift, for a moment, in the warm swirl of memory – and reality broke down over him like icy tar, as his gaze met nothing but empty stone, the laughter faded into the distant snap-shift of Ender movement; and he was alone.

He had chosen this. He had chosen this, he would remind himself – even as he sat back against the ever-bright stone and his eyes burned, as he screwed them closed against his hands and tried not to choke on his own thin breath. What else could he have done? There had been no time, and now there was nothing else.  His fruitless calculations wound further and further around the caverns, testing, checking, searching endlessly for a hope that was suddenly as brittle and distant as those few little moments of bright imagining.

It means there's no way back.

And now they were all here too. She really was here, standing so still in front of him that she seemed paused, frozen in this terrible – incredible – moment of whirling impossibility. There was no other way in, but she had found one. Rythian felt torn apart, as a relief so deep that it seemed burned into his bones held him upright, while the sheer horror of that self-same realisation bore down on him like the falling sky, and his own furious words clawed great, black-bloody gouges across his thoughts.

That’s all there is; that's how you get out of here. You have to die .

She was here. The one thing he had desired and feared beyond all else; wanting it – and wanting anything but that – so hard that it twisted his tainted soul back against itself every time he had chanced at the thought. It wasn't possible; but it had happened anyway.

It felt like his fault.

Zoey still hadn't moved. Other than the initial stumble from their reappearance, she might as well have been a statue, but for the tiny shivers of tension that were running up and down her arms. There wasn’t much room for extra concern in Rythian’s mind right now, but there was an edge here, wrinkling itself past his storming thoughts. What – else – was wrong? Had he... had she...?

And then the memory flared, bright and sharp and so utterly mundane that it was like a slap to the back of his head.

House rules, Rythian.

He coughed lightly, nervously; the soft sound almost foreign in his throat after so long now, but it was as if he had cut a string somewhere, some stretched-out wire that gave with a near-audible snap. Zoey turned round, and he forgot how to breathe.

She looked... different. Admittedly, his last image of her was of a worried, torchlit face, vanishing beneath him as the End-night had swallowed his ascent, but there was something shifted about her now. Physically, not so much – maybe her hair was shorter, singed and cut in equal measure, and sticking out erratically from under the scarlet-sheen rim of his former helmet – but he had barely been bothering to pay attention to more standard vision in these past months.

She still wore rings – gale, ignition and the harvest band, three points of magical focus against her hands – but where before he had always been able to see the fractal channels of his creation effort in those binding stones, now the foci blazed with her, the crimson fire of her own thaumic signature wound tight around every twist of magic there. The connections had completed, tracing unseen pathways between her fingers and her heart where the twinned gleam of star and stone hung, bright even beneath the armour.

Never tell me you can’t do this.

It wasn’t change in her, as such; it was more like a resolution, as the mimicked magic of early-stage magery settled into the shape of the wielder.He wondered if she had noticed, if she had felt the borrowed constructions rework and remake themselves, aligning more completely to her power – brilliant and burning and so very different to his own.

The lifestone was shivering against his chest, nagging him to breathe, but he could barely remember how you even started with that, as Zoey’s gaze finally met his and she grinned like a catching flame.

“Hey there, Rythian.” Her eyes were over-bright, her face still patched flush and pale from the earlier mess of encounter and shock, but the long-imagined voice was the same as ever. “You look kinda terrible.”

“You... don’t.” That was about all he could manage, still reeling, still teetering on the knife-edge between delight and despair, as the terrible gravity of each one drew down against him. She has a lifestone, some dark flicker at the back of his mind whispered, winding the possibility around him, seductive and vile. Even if no one else has a chance. It could work.

No. He couldn’t think like that. He would not think like that.

Zoey glanced around, looking at the spiraling trails of writing that covered the canyon walls, and tilted her head.

“I guess you’ve got limited stuff to work with, in here. Kinda stylin’. Bit wordy.” She leaned in closer, pushing the slightly over-large helmet back into place as she peered at one tangled knot of equations, and pulled a face. “We got the castle fixed up, though, no worries. Mostly. I mean, the kitchen leaks from somewhere and I think some of the library books are trying to escape, and I really don’t know if the condenser is meant to hum – but we got jammin’ so that’s fine.”

“Zoey – ”

“Anyway, I still hold we’re winning at the rescue thing – because we brought a whole pub, so there’s probably even sandwiches somewhere – “ She was talking fast, filling every space in the air with rapid-shot words in that way of hers. Rythian tried to follow the veering threads of conversation, his ears already half-ringing from the sudden flood of sound after the silence and whispers of this place. Finally, she took a breath, and he grasped for one of his remaining clear thoughts, unpleasant though it might be.

“What are you doing here?” The words came out harsher than he had wanted. He hadn’t cared with Lalna, had taken a cold satisfaction at the scientist’s wincing under at his own grating tones, but she was like a spotlight, shining fiercely down on all the shadows around him until he felt entirely exposed – and suddenly, stupidly, so very, very... human.

“What – really?” Zoey turned back towards him, quirking a brow. “We came to get you back.”

“I didn't want you to.” And those words burned, acid-hot, as lie and raw truth writhed around each other in poisonous duality. Zoey blinked, looking slightly surprised, but when she spoke there was a sharpness in her voice, an edge that hadn’t been there before.

“You didn't exactly leave a note. Actually, for next time? Leave notes. In better handwriting. Your library is frustrating.”

“Zoey – “

“I'm not your sidekick, Rythian," she continued, not giving him the time to protest at word-choice. “I’m your apprentice, but you’re my friend, right?” She was suddenly in front of him again, so close he had to tilt to meet her stare, and he stiffened in shock as she reach out, catching his bandaged hand gently. The grip wasn’t closed – he could pull away, could snatch his fingers free if he had to – and she squeezed carefully as she sought out his eyes again.

So close. So close the cold-bright light of his own stare spilled down, casting faint violet shadows across her face as she swallowed, then set her jaw firmly.

“I... want you safe. Everyone safe; Tee, Ravs, Nilesy, Lomadia, the golems, the wolves, people we don't even like – everyone. Everyone includes you; it’s not everyone without every one. That’s just – I mean, that’s just how it is.”

His hands were shaking and Rythian fought to keep them still. Where was the icy composure of a few short hours ago? Where was the hollow sneer he had felt wrap around his face as he cut back at Xephos’ attempts at diplomacy? Where was -?

Lalna, gasping and choking at his knees, and the hitched-up desperation tight in his own chest as he poured more and more power into the ring, prying those ravenous twists of void-kind loose with frantically-conjured streams. He hated him. He hated him, but it was a mundane hatred, born of mortal things, and this was so much worse, in a thousand ways he could never truly understand.

Don’t you dare die. Don’t you dare , you utter, utter bastard. Not like this, not here –

Rythian’s shoulders hit the wall hard as he jerked back, pulling himself free again, and he fought to focus, to get his vision back to now. Memories swirled like a blackened tide, pouring in either side of him – as if sensing his weakness, sensing the give in his so-careful shields – and he was dimly aware of his grip tightening against his rings, the faint spark of magic tugging him upward and scraping his jutting shoulderblades along the stone.

The first time. Oh god. The first time, as the sheared plains spread out to either side, his reforming vision finding nothing but stark rock and clotted-midnight horizon, and the horrible, all-pervading feel of Ender around him. As he had clawed frantically at the empty air for the other side of that sheet of seething darkness that had swallowed him whole – as the sound of his own voice had failed and even the echoes of Lalna’s final, dull mutters faded – and he couldn’t breathe -

“Rythian! Hey, hey - ”

It took a good few moments before the voice could actually pierce through the wall of invasive recollection – and several more before Rythian remembered it was real, this time. He gasped at air like a drowning man, tangling fabric against his teeth, and clutched at his mask – a lifeline, as it ever was.

Finally, he managed to get at least nominal control back over all his limbs. He could feel the stone thrumming – almost chastising – against his chest. He dropped back down manually, forcing his feet back into contact with the ground as he opened his eyes again. Embarrassment was starting, somewhere deep beneath his hollowed-out cheeks, but he had had little use for that emotion recently, and it was taking time to get going. In its stead, he just felt... numb.

“There’s no way back,” he said, dully, as the undertone-thought made another of its constant mental circles . “I thought there could be, and I was wrong. And even if there was...” he trailed off, glancing up again towards one particular wall of curling writing, following the tauntingly familiar script. Zoey slid back in front of him, a little hesitantly, and waved a hand in front of his eyes.

“I said though, we’ve got the pub. I’m... ninety-nine percent sure we can go back that way. Ninety nine. And a bit. Practically a certainty, all things considered.”

There was so much that needed to be said – or buried forever, here – but Rythian just had to ask about that one.

“I don’t – how did you bring a pub?” The words were as ridiculous spoken as they had been in his head, but Zoey grinned in reply, and another sliver of encroaching shadow peeled away under her expression.

“Eventfully.” She swung herself round, leaning on the wall next to him, and sketched a rough rectangle in the air. “Ravs' bar. You said there was something weird about it – that it'd just sorta appeared? Well, it did. We figured out how. Not so strong on the why, but you were right.”

“I was...?” A different sort of memory rose – fuzzily – out of his mind, and Rythian frowned. He vaguely remembered something; ranting, possibly, as yet another bizarre occurrence added itself to the baseline chaos that surrounded them. But he was pretty sure...

“Zoey – I was drunk when I said that.”

“Yeah, probably.” She shrugged. “Doesn't mean you were wrong. Gosh, I mean, Ravs is drunk right now, and he's doing pretty well. Anyway,” she continued. “The way I see it – no one's ever tried getting to the End in a pub. So no one's ever tried getting out in one, either, and we're already here so that's one step closer already. Bam. Gotta be worth a try.”

“That's not how it works.” He was speaking as much to himself as to her, he realised, as the tiny, treacherous gleam of hope flickered behind his own iron certainty – a will-o-wisp glint of impossible chance, tantalizing close, and all the worse for how much he really, really wished it could be true. Memories were leaking through the cracks in his shields again; simple, everyday things that burned ever harder where the thoughts touched, with the unreachable normality of each one. Zoey shrugged again.

“Lalna said it was impossible, but you did it before, so shows how much he knows, right?”

Say it. Say it, Rythian. You could tell bloody Lalna , but you can't tell her? Why?

Rythian gritted his teeth, turning away again, and shook his head.

“I... can't.” One hand dropped back to his hip, fingers twitching against the sword. “Not again. Not like that.”

“Why?”

He hadn't intended to do it at first, but his other hand moved and his fingers slid under the edge of his mask, tugging at the fabric. He froze when he realised, but Zoey's eyes were already widening, her mouth open in a small 'o' of surprise – and then the immediate future was hurtling towards him, heavy with a strange inevitability, and there was suddenly nothing else he could do.

Because why not?

A hundred reasons – but it certainly makes the point. Thin air washed against his cheeks as he untangled the familiar folds of dark material, unhooking, adjusting, and then drew it aside before his mad nerve could fade.

He could feel Zoey's gaze moving across his exposed face, a tiny reflection of himself glinting in her eyes. He knew his own features, of course, but seeing someone else really looking at him – all of him – was uncomfortably bizarre. Her stare moved down; across the faint tan-line that still marked equator across his face, even after this long, and down again; past the scatter of stubble that the lifestone hadn't been able to prevent; past the long deltas of fine, pale lines that spread back from the corners of his mouth. Her attention crested his chin – and he knew it was coming, knew it would happen, but still couldn't push aside the cold lurch in his stomach as her gaze swung home.

Silence poured in, stiflingly heavy, and Rythian half-made to reach back to the dislodged cloth, but Zoey spoke first.

“What happened?” she asked, quietly, and the concern in her voice grated down against him. Then he did reach up, but past the mask, and he pressed his own fingertips to the first welt of knotted tissue sunk into the crook of his jaw. No sensation came back from the touch. It never did.

“I got out,” he replied, and the words were like lead in the air. His fingers traced along, following again the path of the old wound – starting at the twisted mess below his left ear, the first point of impact of that beyond-desperate slice. The scarring continued across the top of his throat; a gnarled, sealed-over canyon of severed flesh, thinning and more erratic in edge as it crested the line of his neck again, curled to a shallow tip below his right earlobe. He couldn’t see it, obviously, but the reflection was branded as surely into his mind as the wound was into his skin; red-purple like a still-livid cut underneath, but mottled as though it had been sealed with a smeared oil.

He had plenty of scars – and had had many others – but that one remained against any of his alchemical attempts to par it down. Marked. Stained. A permanent reminder of what he had done; a lasting mockery carved into his flesh, winding its echoes through the core of him.

And I still don't know if it worked.

He felt like something under glass – exposed, on display – and had to grip onto his own elbows to resist the urge to yank the mask back up again. Zoey bit at her lips, nervously, but didn't draw her gaze away.

“Well, Nilesy was betting you had a really bad beard under there, so that's... I mean, it's not better, but it's a least not a crime against fashion.”

Her attention flickered, up and down, between the blade at his side and the strange-angled scar and she knew, he could see it – the little, terrible spark of understanding in the depths of her stare.

“It was... luck,” he muttered, a half-whispered admission that opened out around him, the wings of a question barely asked. “And desperation, and the kind of old magic I don't want you to even imagine. I can't do it again, there's – not enough left. And even if there was?” He glanced down at the sword, cold-bright even in the sourceless light of this place, and swallowed the acid in his throat. “She knows I'm here. She'll follow me. I got away once, She won't let that happen again.”

“Why not?”

“Because – “ he stopped, and shook his head, squeezing his eyes closed until he could almost pretend they were dark again. “Zoey... If you can leave, you have to. Get the others, take the pub back. Take bloody Lalna out of here before he can do anything else,” he added, unable to keep the snap out of his voice, then. “I – I might be enough. If She knows I'm still here; that this is still here, they might let you go.”

He laid a hand carefully against Enderbane's hilt, feeling the stir of the sword beyond its surface. The words clung to his tongue, but he forced them out anyway – because what else could he do? “I have to stay. Until I finish this.”

“No.” The statement was whip-crack fast, sharp against his own, and Rythian let out a small growl.

“Dammit, Zoey, I'm not - “

“No.” Her eyes were suddenly alight. “No, Rythian. I will not leave you here. Understand? No. Not gonna happen. No.”

“This is my choice!” he shot back, but she shook her head violently, whipping rough-cut ends of scarlet hair back and forth across her face.

“Then it's the wrong choice! I get it; you want us safe – me, safe – but I won't be. Because I'll keep coming back. You think Lalna's persistent? I'll be worse.” Now there were definitely tears in her eyes, but they glittered diamond-hard. “Your Enderbabe is gonna try and stop us? Then we get right back in her way. Trick her, fight her, negotiate, whatever – we are getting out of here, and you're coming with me.”

“This is crazy!” He hadn't meant to snarl, but the oft-muttered words boiled up his throat, trailing serrated memories behind them; every time he had dismissed her antics, her slanted way of looking at the world as just crazy. But she was stood here anyway, thirteen kinds of impossible all on one place, and more than anything else, right now he wanted to believe her.

Zoey glanced away. In that drawn-out moment she seemed somehow... smaller, wincing back from his words.

“Maybe. You always say I am,” she muttered. Rythian froze, ice and guilt tightening in his stomach as the world seemed to yawn apart between them – and then she looked back up. The tasteless sunglasses slid down onto her face, wedged somewhat askew between nose and helmet, and a wide grin burst into life beneath them.

“But it's my kind of crazy, and I am rockin' it.”

She struck out a hand towards him, shaking a little but determined. “So, I have literally no idea what we're gonna do, but we got everyone sitting around waiting, and there's gotta be a plan in there somewhere. I just need you to trust me, Rythian.”

He stared at her hand, feeling impossible futures opening out around them like a fan; half-seen in the drained-out air, and his lips seemed to make their own decision.

“...okay.”

It wasn't, of course. There was no plan, no calculations to be made here, no certainty of anything, other than that there were so very, very many ways that this could go wrong, and probably already had. But this was Zoey, right in front of him – the talking, singing, programming, mushroom-wrangling anthropomorphic personification of an unexpected variable.

That might even work.

-

Chapter Text

-vwip- -vwip-

The double screech of displacing air cut across the pillar cavern, accompanied by a dozen harsh-drawn breaths and movement towards weapons; a moment of tension that broke away again as the figures fully resolved, immediately replaced by a litany of sudden irritation.

“You quite bloody finished waltzing off now?” Honeydew growled as he stomped forward to glare up between them both, before the splashback motes of dark violet had even finished falling.  The dwarf's caterpillar brows crowded together angrily, but Rythian ignored him – for now – and took a quick look back around the temporary camp.  Everyone was still there, in sight of each other, but spread out now by convention if not actual allegiance.

Xephos was a few steps behind his partner and looked, if it were possible, even more tired than he had done earlier. Sjin and Sips were on the other side of the cavern, sat shoulder-to-shoulder, and both were lowering their hands away from the lasers at their sides. Minty was beside Sjin, legs crossed, arms folded, and if he didn’t know better Rythian might think she was asleep. The other knot of more welcome – and therefore, in a terrible way much less so – figures were already moving towards the re-arrivals, and Rythian felt a hollow spike of dread dig home at the sight, even as he returned Ravs’ nod and Tee’s silent, acknowledging glance.

They were all here. Even Nilesy, loitering at the back alongside his armoured friend – who was giving Rythian an unreadable look.  He tried to call back the strange confidence of a few moments ago, when Zoey’s own determination had caught like a flame in his mind, and for those few heartbeats he had been able to believe it. Facing the rest of them now, with the ridiculous juxtaposition of this assorted group of misfits just standing here in the End, was… difficult.

Xephos broke the silence first, his voice tight with a very careful – and very obvious – diplomacy.

“Right. We’re going to need a plan, friends.” He looked between them and Zoey offered a small smile as the blue stare met hers. A little twist of discomfort curled in Rythian’s stomach at the unexpected familiarity there.

The last time, when he had returned – raw with disbelief, black-bloody by his own desperate hand – he had been shocked to find that, despite it all, despite everything, the bright world was objectively no different than when he had left. It had no right to have stayed the same, when there he was, clinging to the last warped fragment of his humanity with slipping fingers. Yet it had remained impossibly, mockingly constant, as if to highlight all the more the shift in him.

But now the End was familiar. And everything else had changed.

The stares that were fixed on him now seemed to catch on his skin, half-accusing glances that caught and snapped against him – and he remembered the look, the sheer horror on Lalna’s face all those years ago, as the man had backed away down those dusty, winding corridors.  As Rythian had advanced, with half-sensical words of distilled rage breaking over his cracked lips, pent-up in his chest like something darkly alive, writhing and sharp and so very, very angry -

Who are you trying to fool, Enderborn? Them – or you?

Then there was a pressure against the back of his fingers; soft, but sudden as a shock, and he had to bite down on his shortened breath as Zoey gently squeezed his hand.

A little of both, maybe.

“How much of one do you have?” he asked, finally. Xephos snorted, shaking his head as a thin, somewhat-rueful smile slid across his face.

“About as much as ever.” He glanced up, as if he were trying to look through the sheets of whitish rock above. “Which is to say, not a lot.”

“I’ve seen you have worse, though.”

Lalna’s voice was a little muffled and Rythian finally looked over to where the scientist was sat, surrounded by opened-out bags at the other side of the cave, with a screwdriver in his mouth. His labcoat was spread out on the floor in front of him, covered with wires and circuits and other scientific rubbish – and the sight of that, here, seemed to grate a painful disconect down across Rythian’s mind.

"And what was your bright idea for getting back?" he snapped, but Lalna didn’t look up.  He pulled a web of components further into place around his arm and began tightening connections, frowning at it, as attention turned towards him too.

"I… hadn't got that far." He shifted uncomfortably under the sudden focus, then rallied. “But if I can get this working, I should be able to – ”

“You don’t think you’ve done enough?” Rythian couldn’t help it, couldn’t keep the rise from his retort, and he felt a shiver at his hand as his rings reacted to that so-familiar anger. “If it wasn’t for you – ”

Lalna did look up then, his eyes narrowing, and the sudden surge of defiance in his voice was actually a little surprising.

“Oh, yeah, because your ideas’ve never ballsed up? Run out of things to stick your arm in, this time?”

He hadn’t meant to move, but the snap-close jolt of shifting void broke around him instinctively anyway. It was only a split second, but Lalna was already dropping back into a braced crouch as the mage resolved again, his wire-covered arm jerking up – and the cold brightness of Rythian’s own glare spilled down into an answering light forming above Lalna’s palm, where a few coins of silver metal now hung, lit up, and accompanied by a high-pitched whining sound.

Rythian’s teeth ground together as he glanced down at the technological mess scattered out across that temporary carpet. He had taken it for junk – Xephos had been vague enough to what the ‘equipment’ entailed – but now he was close enough to look…

“You’re very prepared for this,” he snarled, trying not to squint through the brilliance that was still pointed directly at his chest. “For someone who got pushed through a goddamn portal by accident.”

Lalna didn’t move. He looked tired, but there was an edge of manic gleam at the back of his stare, and a sneer twisted up across his face.

“I never said I hadn’t got a plan,” he said, and his gaze flickered back behind Rythian, in the rough direction that Sjin had been earlier. “I said I hadn’t got that far yet.”

“Knock it off, you two,” Xephos’ exasperated tones made a valiant attempt to break into the exchange, but the sound seemed to be coming from a long way away, somewhere far past the grating susurrus in Rythian’s ears. He leaned further forward until he was looming right over the still-crouching scientist, both of them underlit by charging plasma.

"I know when you're lying, Lalna," he spat. "I can see your lips move."

"Well, that puts you at the advantage, doesn't it?" Lalna shot back – but before he could continue, an explosion of sound like a localised thunderclap shredded the air. The balled light winked out as Lalna jumped, and Rythian nearly slumped back – something cutting loose inside him at the shock of it; swept away like a coil of black smoke in a sudden gust – and he jolted round, accompanied by a general outburst of distracted surprise and the sound of falling stone chips.

Minty was standing now, with the smoking barrels of her shotgun angled towards the new hole in the roof.  Her slim fingers rested with incongruous delicacy against the weapon, tapping gently, as she smiled.

“Boys. Let’s try and keep it civil, shall we?”

“Look,” Xephos seized the moment of aftershock-silence, striding back into the centre of the room, and swept a look around at the assembled faces. “This is hopeless if we keep arguing. We’re here – for whatever reasons – and we all want to get the heck out again. So – ” he turned back to Zoey. “Our way in was one-way. Yours… isn’t?”

Zoey gave a small nod. She glanced around as she did so, hesitant, then her jaw tightened and she nodded again more firmly.

“Sure. Totally sure. Almost entirely sure.”

“And there’s definitely no other way back?” Xephos’ voice was tight as he looked back at Rythian – and there it was again, the slight shift in the face opposite, where for a moment that sapphire stare seemed as haunted as his own. Then it was gone, back under the weary worry, and Rythian found himself shaking his head in reply.

“No. Not the way you’re asking,” he added. Little flickers of their last exchange seemed to dart in the air between them, threaded with a peculiar edge of guilt that he tried to ignore. It had been nothing but the truth. Maybe he could have been a little more tactful about it, but that was hardly his main concern right now.

“So.” There was a clang as Honeydew rammed his axe into the ground and leaned on it, smiling mirthlessly out from behind his sea of beard. “The giant fuckin’ elephant in the room’s the scaly, fire-breathing sort, I’m thinking?”

There was a general ripple of glances upwards again – unseeing – towards the roof, and what it might hide above the layered stone. Acid curled a little way up Rythian’s throat, herald for actual words, as he struggled to recall what he had said last time he had even tried to explain anything to do with this. To do with Her.

He couldn’t remember. Even to Zoey, it had been a half-dismissive thing, relying on the kind of in-built misconceptions his chosen words trailed behind them. He gritted his teeth, glad that the mask still concealed most of his actual expression.

“She’s about as much a true dragon as the Endermen are men. But, yes,” he conceded. “The dragon is a problem. The problem.”

Xephos looked down at Honeydew again.

“It’ll… stop us?” he asked, carefully, and Rythian shrugged.

“Probably. But she’ll certainly follow us. Everything here – everything about this place,” he waved a hand, a little vaguely, tracing his own thoughts in the air. “It’s all connected, all part of one… thing.”

“Y’mean it knows where we are?”

“Think about it." Rythian shook his head.  "You’re one thing, but could you be really sure where each strand of your hair is at any one time? She knows I’m – we’re here generally, but not exactly where.”

“You sound pretty damn sure of that,” Sips cut in, from where he had moved in a little closer to the discussion. Rythian spared him a short glare.

“I’m still breathing. I am damn sure.” He took a slow breath, trying not to feel the pressure of any other eyes. “Leaving marks a path, and she will follow it, this time.”

“Is that so bad?” Xephos glanced over to where Lalna had returned to fiddling around with his stupid armour. “I mean, it’d be on our turf then…”

“She comes, and the End comes with her,” Rythian snapped, looking back up, and caught the taller man’s gaze as he tried not to sneer. “You remember how much fun that was? That was just shadows, nothing more, and I don’t remember you coming off too well. Now imagine everything you’ve seen here, back out there.” His hidden lips curled a little. “So, yes. That would be bad.”

Xephos’ eyes narrowed. Just a little, and just for a second, but there was a glint behind his stare, some gleam of old fire that sent a faint shiver down the back of Rythian’s neck.  Then he turned away, pressing his fingers over his eyelids, as he shook his head.

“Brilliant,” he muttered, and the comment seemed to pull a muffled dread aross the cave behind it, barely broken by the continuing clinks from Lalna’s single-minded endeavors. There was a hollow feeling to the air.  No one wanted to say it.

If I never had come back…

“Can we kill it?”

The silence fragmented again, cutting shock-sharp across Rythian’s darkening thoughts, as every dulled gaze jerked up to fix on the petite figure; her words much quieter than the earlier shot, ut no less shocking for it. Minty slung her gun back behind her again and spread her hands, her expression a mask of careful calm.

Rythian stared at her.  There didn't seem to be an appropriate reaction available.

“...you have no idea what you’re asking,” he managed, at last, as if that even came close to the enormity of the statement. Minty didn’t blink. She brushed a few crinkles out of her dress, and smiled.

“True. It’s why I’m asking.”

“You really think I haven’t tried that?” Rythian snapped back, an odd combination of annoyance and offence sparking under his thoughts. His hand dipped down towards the sword at his hip.  He had tried everything already – that was the whole blasted point.

Minty shifted position slightly, adjusting the bag on her shoulders, and raised one narrow, thoughtful eyebrow.

“I’m not all that interested in what you can’t do. Look around you, Rythian,” she continued quietly, but with each word lined with iced steel. “Really look. Between us, I wonder if there's much we couldn't bring down.”

“You’re insane.” It was about as much as he could come up with, through the reeling mess that suddenly ensnared his thoughts.  Minty just laughed. There was little humour in the sound.

“That wasn’t a ‘no’, was it? It sounds to me, like no matter what we do – we get out. One way, or another.”

There was another long moment of silence, heavy with doomed calculation. Honeydew broke it again.

“Well, this is the worst fuckin’ plan I’ve heard in a while.” He shook his head. “But ‘everyone starve to death in a cave’ is pretty shit too – so, on balance? I’d vote for gettin’ killed on our own terms.” He swung one gauntleted hand in to the air and looked around at the ill-matched group, his caterpillar-brows twitching upwards. “What’cha think?”

For a very long moment, no one moved, as the internal storms of impossible decisions raged, playing out their patterns beneath each face. Then hands began to rise.  Each movement was shadowed by muttering – a distinct ‘jesus tapdancing christ’ from Sips; something less intelligible but possibly more invective from Lomadia; Ravs’ low grunt; and a nervous half-laugh from Nilesy, who nearly dropped his bucket on his foot in the process – but they still happened.

There was a strange buzzing in Rythian’s ears, and he tightened his grip against his rings, drawing as much focus as he could from the power there. He felt strangely light-headed.  Everything seemed to have shifted around him - again - in some way he didn’t quite understand.

Lalna’s hand rose, further swathed in wiring, even as he continued to root around in the spare components. He didn’t look up.

“You might get out,” Rythian snapped, spitting the acrid words before they had a chance to fade. It was one final try, one last chance at deterrence.  He heard Zoey make a small noise behind him, dragging a wince down his spine, but he continued anyway. “If you took the pub. Left me. It might – ”

“One way, or another,” Xephos repeated firmly. “We all get out.”

He raised his hand.

“Now – what did you try before?”

-

The pillars were the key to it; that’s what Rythian had said. Back over the flattened spines of the mountains that rose above their temporary shelter, the landscape ran down into a broken-up plain, punctuated by obsidian spires and underlain by a seething brilliance that was disconcerting to look at, even by the standards of this place. Spirals of violet-white fire blazed at the top of each pillar, casting the only shadows that seemed to exist here, spilling down the glistening surface of the stone and out across the chasms and shifting chunks of rock that made up the uncertain ground.

Each spiral was a small storm of crystal. It was difficult to see clearly, even in the over-emphasised vision through the thin air here. Xephos hunkered down a little more firmly, as he adjusted the thin monocular that folded out of his helmet and squinted across at the nearest tower. Angular slices of bright purple were just about visible through the swirling flames, spinning in an erratic pattern that made poor geometric sense, and the sight started to pull unpleasantly at his eyeballs after a few moments of watching.

A hand clamped onto his shoulder and tugged at him firmly, pulling him back into the half-shelter of the local erratic topography.

“Get yerself back in here, y’pillock,” Honeydew rumbled. “You stick out exactly like a lanky bugger with a bright green hat.”

The dwarf sounded nervous, which was reasonable enough. Xephos glanced back down the hillside behind them, where a few other figures were just visible, edging carefully along the rough tiers, staying low. He wasn't sure how long they had been moving for now; creeping along the gullied stone, making their way around the edges of the plain as best they could. It had been slow progress, not least because avoiding line of sight with endermen was getting progressively more difficult as they got further into the relatively-open space.

Lalna had been leading their group at first, with his sight-shielding goggles firmly in place, even if the rest of his strange armour was still rather on the wobbly side. Xephos remembered seeing schematics back at the castle, and the results of the scientist's fiddling around with all the bits they had brought looked a little like the plans had, but a lot of it was hanging loose, or simply tied on. He had since fallen further and further behind, now trailing somewhere between Honeydew and the next following figure, and Xephos was trying very hard not to be exasperated with him.

Sometimes he forgot that… well, that this sort of thing wasn’t something that everyone was familiar with. It worried at him, at times – how easily his fingers found their old grasp on the sword-hilt, how he would occasionally realise how he and Honeydew were moving, each covering the other’s blind spot, even as they bickered their way across this unwelcoming landscape.

How close the past suddenly seemed, and how brittle the thin shield of his possibly-delusional present actually might be.

Which was probably a very stupid thing to be dwelling on, when that same immediate present involved planning to take on a dragon head-to-head.

One way or another.

Honeydew prodded him in the back, breaking his trailing thoughts.

“Buck up, mate,” he muttered, as the soft crunch of catching-up footsteps reached them. “Staring into space ain’t gonna get this over with any quicker.”

Xephos nodded, swallowing at the lump in his throat, and glanced behind them again. Lalna was mostly caught up, with Lomadia and Nilesy just behind him. The Sipsco triumvirate had peeled away from their group a while ago, heading for the pillar they had been assigned, and Xephos glanced back down the hillside, just able to pick out the occasional snatch of movement, the reassuring green-on-black of Sips and Sjin’s nanosuits behind chunks of end-stone. There was no sign of Minty, but she probably blended better and was… Minty, after all.

So.  A dozen pillars, eleven with the strange crystal fires still spinning at their apex. Four groups; four careful divisions of Honeydew’s determinedly-packed bag of TNT – and a very tense half an hour while Lalna and Zoey had doled out and installed the handful of miniature grapples that had been included in the scientist’s prepacked bags of equipment.

‘You’re very prepared for this.’

Xephos looked down at where the little augmentation had been added onto his own armour, and bit his lip, wishing there had been more time to actually try these out, other than the few minutes of awkward swinging about in the pillar-cave. But time was something they were definitely running out of. No one had specifically said it, but he could feel the grey fingers of exhaustion starting to curl down at the back of his own mind – not serious yet, not weighing too heavily against his thoughts, but if Rythian’s barbed descriptions of this place were as true as they seemed, that would only get worse.

How long could you survive without sleep? Really without, minus even an on-your-feet shutdown, or few moments of fitful unconsciousness snatched between sudden, bloody moments?

One disaster at a time, Xephos.

He looked down at the rough map sketched onto the back of his glove – little more than circles and lines, a few highlighted emphatically – and then down the rest of the hillside. It was a few hundred metres, sloped, down onto the plain, and more than twice that again to the start of the uneven ground. Angular ender-shapes flickered in and out of existence all across the open space. They seemed more frequent near the base of the cliffs, but thinned as the cracking increased, and there were none at all in the centre of the area, where the inverted light seeped out menacingly around the shifting stone.

Guess there was something enough like common sense, even in Endermen.

“This our stop, then?” Nilesy’s voice was faux-casual as he leaned over Xephos’ shoulder.  The glitter-edged sunglasses that the other group had brought with them were strapped firmly over his own specs, giving him a strangely-layered appearance. Xephos nodded.

“Yes. Wait for the – ”

“ – signal of Rythian doing something fantastically fucking stupid?” Nilesy laughed nervously and threw a wry salute. “Aye, I got that far. See you on the flip side, then, I guess.”

Before he could say anything else, there was a sudden, sharp metallic sound and a yelp behind him. Four pairs of hands were already on weapons as the group spun round, but the only greeting sight was Lalna pulling a piece of trapped hair out of his abruptly-animated helmet.

“Got it,” he said brightly, as the metal plates and webbed components began to shift across him, snapping up and clicking together; a sped-up technological timelapse that swept each of the half-connected parts into seamless place. He flexed his right hand and little lights caught into life along the completing-exoskeleton, shimmering at his palm.  For a moment, a genuine grin broke across his face.

Then he frowned, as everyone else relaxed a little, and glared at his boots.

“It’s supposed to fly. Why doesn’t -?”

“Good lord,” Lomadia growled, batting Lalna’s extended hand back to his side, as she shoved the still-frowning scientist towards the downward-slope. “We are out of tinker-time. Let’s get this over with.”

The other two began to descend, warily, but Lomadia hesitated as she drew level with Xephos.  There was a faint crunch from behind them as Honeydew moved away, in the clanging-boot failure of subtlety that he usually employed, and Xephos tried to focus on that sound, rather than the tightening echoes of his own so-recent words.

“Lomadia – ” he started, and stopped again as she turned towards him, and her gloved fingers traced – hesitantly – across the grapple fixed to his arm.

“Just… be careful, alright?” she said quietly, but her eyes were sharp-bright under her helmet, seeing to bore into him, and Xephos’ breath caught in his chest.

How I’ll lose every moment.

“Aren’t I always?” he managed, forcing a smile that he could barely feel, and he went to drop his hand down over hers but Lomadia drew back, a little quickly.

“No,” she said, her voice heavy. “You’re not.”

“I don’t… I mean – you too,” he finished, but it sounded lame even to him. Lomadia gave a brief nod, then pulled her own ridiculous sunglasses into place, and set off after the others. Xephos watched her silvery figure vanish into the rocks below, then turned back, following Honeydew’s trail. The dwarf fell into wordless step beside him as he caught up – they moved a little faster now, increasingly aware of the difficulty of timing somewhere where clocks didn’t work, and that lacked a sensible sky.

The creaking-groan of ender-sounds crackled down from above them, somewhere within the mazes of caves and angled stone, and occasional falls of scree skittered past, dislodged from unseen footsteps. As far as Xephos could tell, the scattered Ender didn’t seem all that interested in them yet; which was a relief. Groups of the sinister figures seemed to be more aggressive than any one individual, but he didn’t hold out much hope of that situation continuing. And then there were the other things, bleeding out of unnatural shadows like hungry tar, but at least they seemed less common outside of the caves.

It was probably too much to hope that this place had anything that even resembled a predictable ecology.

“Here?” Honeydew muttered, nodding down at where another pillar was jutting out of the uneven ground below them. Xephos checked against his rough map. This wasn’t quite the furthest one out, compared to where they had started, but it was the only of the two most distant spires that still had a flame atop it. His gaze lingered on the other, bare pillar. It was much further away, set more outside the erratic circle of its fellows, and was surrounded by a much thinner moat of empty air. If you were on your own, having to make that choice – it would have been the most logical one to go for. He shivered.

“Yeah. Let’s get down there.”

Descent wasn’t too bad, given that it mostly involved controlled falling from one protruding slab to another – although Xephos didn’t want to dwell on how they were going to get back up again. Or if that was even going to be a concern.

One way or another. His own words span up around him again, and he didn’t realise he’d been muttering until Honeydew looked over at him, frowning.

“Y’want to be a bit more depressing? I don’t think I’ve got the whole fuckin’ idea yet.”

“Sorry.” Xephos shook his head, trying to push away the invasive prickles of black thought. “I just… Y’know. Lot on my mind.”

The ground beneath was starting to flatten out, and they both froze at another ripple of wrong-sound movement worryingly close.  A moment later it was gone and Xephos loosened his grip on the pistol again. Honeydew made an unimpressed noise.

“I’m starting t’see why Rythian’s got such a stick up his arse all the time. Damn screeching’s givin’ me a whole set of heart attacks. And – ” he looked up, at Xephos as he opened his mouth to reply “– this ain’t a cue fer you to say anything that even sounds like ‘could be worse’ or any of that asking for trouble shit.”

Xephos managed the edge of a smile.

“Just like old times,” he said, trying to push a little more confidence into his voice. Honeydew’s brow furrowed.

“This ain’t old times,” he said shortly. “And it weren’t when it was, either.”

“What?” Xephos frowned. “I don’t – ”

“We never let not knowing where shit was goin’ stop us before. Christ, you think we’d have done any of that if we’d known where it was gonna end up?” The dwarf tugged idly at one beard-braid, shaking his head. “Ain’t a reason not t’try.”

Xephos stared at him, as realisation clicked and brought a strange sort of wrong-footed anger with it.

“Really? You want to talk about this now?” he hissed through clenched teeth, jabbing a swift gesture at the alien landscape around them, but Honeydew just shrugged.

“Reckoned I’d get my turn in. ‘Sides, ain’t anything I haven’t heard before.”

“Honeydew…” Xephos trailed off. This was really, really not the time. “You don’t – well you do, but not like – ”

“You ain’t the only one who lost stuff, mate.” Honeydew’s voice was suddenly quiet, his own frown deepening as he glanced down, shaking his head. “And you ain’t the only one that remembers it all, neither. I took every fuckin’ step, same as you. There’s them I’d do differently now, lookin’ back – but that’s what lookin’ back’s for. Least we can.”

“There’s no point going over all that again,” Xephos retorted, reeling slightly and trying not to let it show on his face. They never talked about this. Not for years. Old ground. Old wounds.

Old scars.

As empty as this.

He shook his head, as if that would help, and took a slow breath. They were running out of time. He was running out of time.

“Look, friend,” he tried a smile, or at least to pull his lips back from his teeth, which might manage to pass for one in poor light. “I’m just… I’m tired. That’s all. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Honeydew snorted.

“Like hell I don’t.”

“Why?” He hadn’t meant to shout, hadn’t meant to send fragment echoes of his own voice scattering across the ominous plain before them, and Xephos tried too late to bite down on his words. “We don’t have time for this – ”

“‘Cos it’s fucking eating you, that’s why!” Honeydew’s fingers were suddenly latched into the collar of his suit, yanking him down until they were eye-to-eye, and shock jolted its icy bolt through Xephos’ mind as he saw the damp gleam there. There was a faint quiver beneath the mass of beard, even as Honeydew set his jaw.

“I ain’t losing you to him,” he said, softly, as he tightened his grip a little further. “Not then; not now. Y’got to let us in, Xeph. We never did any of it alone, y’know that.”

“...I know.” Xephos squeezed his eyes closed, settling his own hand down over Honeydew’s slightly-shaking grasp. “I know, friend, I really do. I just – I can’t – ” The words wouldn’t come, clinging to the back of his throat so hard he felt he would choke, and he gritted his teeth as the world seemed to shift even more unpleasantly around him -

- and the explosions started. His eyes snapped back open as he swivelled around – still holding Honeydew’s arm, locked together in some half-crouched, awkward tableau as they both turned. They looked up, to where the top of one other distant pillar was suddenly an expanding ball of violet-white light, struck through with crackling points of inverted darkness; a coruscating backdrop for the thin figure hanging in the air, surrounded in his own faint corona of purplish magical haze.

Honeydew cursed loudly.

“Rythian, you weird-eyed bastard, you have the worst fucking timing!” he hollered, unheeded, into the thin air. Xephos snorted – because it was either laugh or cry or something worse – as they braced themselves against each other; waiting, suspended in a shared heartbeat as time seemed to lurch violently forwards around them.

Then eyes opened in the blackout sky above, twin slashes of blazing fury that cut across the hanging void and the roar began again, the titan-wave of sonic nightmare that hammered down across the landscape like a storm of blackened knives. This was it; there was no way back now.

One way, or another.

We all get out.

Chapter Text

Look familiar, Enderborn?

The grim thought was mockingly loud, twisting through Rythian’s mind as he rose in the air; his silhouette a dark speck against the backdrop mountains, and not even that before the raw Void that yawned open overhead. Magic crackled and danced around his fingers, the rings’ controlled thaumics vying against the otherness just below, and he tried not to look at the shifting mess of shattered stone beneath him. The pieces moved constantly, sliding past each other at angles that had no place in reasonable geometry. The sight wrenched painfully at even his vision every time his gaze strayed down, towards the inverted brilliance that underlay the heart of this place.

He was right in the middle of the plain; or at least, at as much of a direct centre that the erratic arrangement of spires actually had. The others were spreading out below somewhere, hidden to varying degrees of stealth-success, and heading for their assigned goals.

His own role was to be a little different.  Trigger.  Decoy.

Bait.

‘This is the worst fuckin’ plan I’ve heard in a while.’ Honeydew’s words echoed again and Rythian tried to hold onto the dark humour that had laced the dwarf’s tones. It was a terrible plan; but it was at least a plan, and the possibility of doing anything at all was maddeningly attractive. Even with all the ways that this – any of this, all of this – could go so utterly wrong, he couldn’t ignore the realisation that, whatever else, he had felt so much more alive in the last few probably-days than he had for months.

I end this. One way or another.

It might even work. But before there was any chance of that, he had a job to do. Getting the Queen’s attention was one thing, in that strange cat-and-mouse play that had become almost habit between them, enough even to tempt Her away from the new incursion of before. Keeping that focus, particularly once it all really started, was going to be trickier.

He rose further, through webworked power that spread out above the bleached-bone bedrock, each line of it drawn like formless silk from the spiralling crystal foci. He could feel the alien awareness of this place all around him, coiling unseen through the razor-thin air. Loose power earthed against his skin, in a violet haze that prickled and burned and exhilarated, all at once.

His gaze strayed out further, flicking from pillar to pillar until the furthest one, the empty obsidian spire that still jutted starkly upward, bared like an accusation. His grip tightened against Enderbane’s hilt, cold under his fingers, and for a moment he could see it again – that old moment – as if from outside himself.

Back then, crumpled against damp earth and gasping at the unaccustomedly-thick air, as he had stared at the impossible slice of cold-burn ice beside him, stained with the living heat of his own blood. Even as his sundered flesh had sealed closed again, crudely bound back with both his own magic and the dreadful caress of something else – the oil-sheen shadows that curled down into his core – and the endless barbed susurrus that had started up against his thoughts. Never silent; never relenting; with the mark of it stitched into his throat and the feel of it pressed in closer than bone.

Once, he had thought he could escape. Cage the nightmare that prowled under his heart, banish its memories beneath the broken fragments of an almost-abandoned life – yet here he was again, staring out at the swirling, icy violet of crystal storms, and the whispers in his blood began to swarm.

Denial, Rythian. It’s not one of your best traits.

His fingers tightened yet again. The battered bandages creaked and pulled against his skin, and he took a slow breath for all the calming that it could offer.

“All right. No more running,” he muttered, tilting his head back to peer up into the fathomless sky, and extended one hand out to the side. Magic sizzled anew against his knuckles as the twist of intent sank into place. “You want me? You come and get me!”

His shout was punctuated by a vicious gesture, and a blast of scarlet erupted from his fingers, streaking out towards the nearest pillar in a seething ball of thaumic plasma. He felt the loss, the dip in his reserves as a flicker of spite added fresh effort into the coiled flame. It hit home in a small nova of ruddy light, almost dark against the spinning brilliance.

The strange geometry of crystal shivered – hesitated, almost, as the ripples of interrupting force vyed with existing momentum – and Rythian braced himself, before the spiral blew apart in a whirling, expanding cloud of black-laced light, accompanied by a sheared-glass screech that he seemed to hear with his skin. For a moment, there was an odd serenity to the scene; degrading fragments of crystal glittered like a diamond rain as they scythed outwards, but the shiver of it raced along the web of hidden power, amplifying his own hollered challenge with suicidal emphasis.

When the roar came – the replying titan’s howl of accosted fury – and eyes like the death of stars snapped open overhead, he was almost glad of it.

“Come and get me,” he muttered, again – and fled.

-

There were dragons in the more familiar lands, of course. They were rare – and getting rarer, not least in part due to the accidental efforts of two worn figures below, crouched against each other near the mountain’s base – but they are more than merely myth, and many of the commonly heard stories are even half-true. Dragons are big, for example; huge creatures with chests of furnace-heat and claws like finest swords. Dragons are drawn to treasure, to value and vice and especially gold, and this goes some way to explaining their status as both monster and metaphor in dwarven tales.

Dragons are legend, and warning, and glory – and a hundred other things between.

But the Queen of the End is something else entirely.

-

They saw the eyes first. Twin slashes of raw purple brilliance, gouged into the darkness above, and for a moment it was unclear how the angles of them fitted together or what might extend back from that – but then there was movement, rippling behind the sky like something writhing under a cloak, and shape struck forth, resolving against the Void as if some masking surface had drawn away. She was there, abruptly, pouring down from the blackout sky and trailing shadow in her wake.

It was undeniably a dragon; and yet, in so many ways, it was clearly not. The form of it – all of it, the lines of those angular limbs, the curves and cuts and sharpened links where scale and flesh bound together across the underlying frame – was wrong, even to those who had lain only the mind’s eye on a true drake.

Great wings tore into the air, cut through with blackened membrane patches that traced fractured patterns along the length of each one, spilling smoke-stain vapour as the creature surged forwards. Violet lightning crackled across her body, earthing and sparking from the spines that punched up through the petroleum-sheen skin, while the surrounding flesh twisted and cracked as strange muscles worked underneath, splitting open momentary fissures that bled ink-twist shadows before flowing closed again. Uneven scales like pieces of sickly-iridescent slate traced their broken, half-runic patterns along the scythe-angled limbs, and the soured lustre continued down onto the creature’s claws, bleeding disturbing reflections into each vicious curve.

And the roar – that sheared-metal scream of elemental rage, which shook the ground, which reverberated through the stone and the air of this place with undiluted ease – the roar poured down in a solid, sonic tide; spilling out over interlocked rows of vicious fangs, darkly translucent like fragments of oiled glass, and outlined in the inverted light that bled from between each shard. Another wingbeat and the creature swivelled, twisting, serpentine against itself as its barbed tail cut whipcrack-slices out of the air – and then it was gone, surging away after the terribly small dot that was Rythian, back towards the midnight horizon.

“Je-sus chri-st!”

Sips hunched down reflectively as the impossible shape swung past overhead, pulling that weird-ass wall of fucking nightmare sound behind it, and rammed his hand into his mouth, biting down into the softer underside of the nanoglove. The extra bit of focus was useful, something to centre himself around, as the called-up moment of memory caught and snapped under his attention, spilling the ghosts of ash and whiskey across his tongue. But it was…more familiar this time, the horrible racket at least something he could recognise; he dug his free fingers firmly into his thigh, rubbing at the hollow feeling that suddenly swirled in the flesh there.

“That’s one real good fuckin’ way to get its attention, twinkles,” he muttered and gritted his teeth as he straightened up again, casting a worried glance around at his companions. They were all half-concealed behind a block of white stone, which looked to have been tossed up like beach debris against the side of the eyeball-aching canyon to nowhere. The black pillar rose up out of the emptiness below, as if the darkness had got its own ideas and folded together into a solid thing just out of sight. The too-smooth surface had a sheen to it, reflecting the light in even weirder ways, and its freaky crystal crown spun on top like some sort of pink-hell nightlight.

“Let’s just hope he can keep it,” Minty replied. There was a sharp strain in her voice, even as she fiddled with her grapple-enhanced gauntlet. She was pale and sweat was visibly beaded out across her brow, but there seemed less shake in her fingers than in his own, so Sips just shrugged. Minty swung her bag down, resting it against the jutting stone with a faint clink, and flipped it open. A moment of rummaging later and Sips suddenly found a bottle being thrust into his hands. He blinked at it.

Crimson liquid curled up against the glass, slightly more animatedly-viscous than you might expect. He knew what it was, of course, but he quirked an eyebrow anyway.

“Ain’t really a cocktail sort of guy, Minty, I gotta tell you, even in these dire straits. Sjin’s more for the fruity side of life – ”

Minty shot him an unusually unguarded glare, her composure still not back to pre-dragon levels, but her expression softened a little as she handed another small bottle to Sjin.

“Just a bit of insurance. And this is the good stuff, believe me.” Her gaze flicked down to Sips’ leg, under his own tensed grip, and focused there for just long enough to make the point before she continued. “Won’t regrow a limb, but it’d stop you bleeding out all over the nice clean dimension.”

Sjin cleared his throat, glancing nervously skywards again.

“Th-thanks Minty,” he managed, and then a bit more of a usual grin found his lips. “Put it on the Sipsco tab, yeah?”

“It’s not like you’ve ever paid it,” Minty retorted, as she slid a third bottle into a small mesh strap at her hip, next to the orange-red cylinders of Honeydink’s dynamite. Eyes narrowing, she aimed the device. “Wish me luck, boys.”

There was a sharp, hydraulic noise, and Sips jerked back slightly as thin wires shot from both ends of the raised barrel – one set of sharp metal claws snapping down into the stone near his foot, the other vanishing with an unreeling whip sound and the faint scent of something chemical. A moment later the line went taut and Minty tugged carefully at it, testing the link to the ground, and the unseen attachment somewhere at the top of the pillar.

It looked a fuckin’ long way, on a wire that thin, but she gave a short nod anyway, and flashed that searchlight-smile of hers as she reached up and locked her free hand firmly around her opposite forearm. She tapped another button on the grapple, swung forwards – then accelerated, accompanied by a sharp electronic whirr. Sips shook his head, turning away from the vertiginous sight, and tried to ignore the giddy feeling in his stomach.

– as what little awareness he’d had left plunged away, the breaking-bone cracks of the shattering netherrack all around him, sharp as the shards of it that peppered his scalded flesh; and there was cracking and pressure and a thundering crash of falling stone, and nothing but the owl-girl’s cursing-grip between him and a brief plummet to molten hell – and he was slipping –

He shoved the half-memory aside, but it snaked up yet again, boosted by the unrelenting pound of dragon hollering, and he growled under his breath.

“Getting real tired of this, Sjin,” he muttered as he stepped carefully around the shivering grapple-wire, to where his partner was peering out over the cracked-up boulder. “This is officially the worst company outing I’ve ever had. Goddamit. You couldn’t have picked somewhere with a bar, at the very least? Next hell-dimension, I’m gonna demand a bar.”

Sjin grinned. He also looked drawn, behind the beard, and he gestured out across the plain with his own laser. The figures that flickered back and forth across the open space were undeniably more numerous now, more stable, and drifting more clearly towards the centre.

“I dunno Sips, it’s getting pretty lively out here.” He sighted down the weapon, tracking the nearest angular shape at knee-height. None of them seemed to be very focused in their advance yet, and the faint background sounds were agitated, but not the familiar torn-rubber screech of anger. Yet.

Familiar, huh? Well, goddamn – that was something he really could do without being familiar with. Sips hunched down again, overlapping their potential lines of fire, and glanced back at the pillar, up to where Minty’s silhouette was highlighted against the crystal glow. He nudged Sjin.

“Well, what’dya think then? There’s a sore lack of quality sod out here; we could send out some advertising materials, get a foothold in the market. These fuckers are keen enough on dirt back home.”

Sjin laughed quietly.

“Quite the sales pitch there, boss.”

“I’m all about customer service, Sjin, you know that.” Sips checked the charge gauge on his laser again. Lalna was a mad bastard, but when he made a weapon that didn’t fire fucking squirrels or some shit, it was fairly reliable. “I got my samples right here, I’ll service the shit outa these jokers, you see if I don’t.”

“Well, I – ” Sjin started, but cut off as there was another rapid zip sound, and a faint crunch of boots as Minty landed back behind them again, dislodging the grapple.

“Down,” she hissed, catching hold of both of their shoulders as she ducked into the rough cover of the rock. “There’s only a short fuse on – ”

There was a creaking-shift in the air in front of them, and suddenly the gimlet-gleam of Ender-stare bloomed in the thin air. It was almost a relief, after the layered tension that had been building anew ever since the cave, and Sips’ finger tightened on the trigger with barely a thought. Scarlet bolts tore into the looming figure, punching through the half-solid flesh, and the Enderman vanished again with a creaking scream.

“That’s payback, y’skinny bastards,” Sips snapped, even as Minty and Sjin each grabbed onto one of his elbows and yanked him down behind the rock – a half-heartbeat before the dynamite blew, sending a short-lived disc of shimmering debris spinning out around the top of the pillar, and the shockwave slammed down over them, scratching horribly in a way that mere pressure shouldn’t do.

-vwip-

“Next one! Go!” Minty lunged forward, ducking under an angular lunge that flickered in above her. She grabbed her shotgun again, rolling back around to send a cloud of hot lead up through the nearest figures, and scrambled onto her feet, backing back up as she moved. Sjin was already laying down covering fire as the dark shapes began to distort and surge towards them.

Sips glanced towards the next pillar on their list – the one that had seemed so close just a few minutes ago, but now the distance seemed to stretch open, and he could swear that the various cracks and chasms down below the white stone were wider than they had been.

“Sh-iit,” he muttered, and started to run.

-

She could do this. Zoey adjusted her helmet again, tugging the straps of the borrowed armour a little tighter under her chin, and tried to draw whatever comfort there was from the faint echo of power there, set deep into the red metal. She nodded and braced herself, tightening her ring-fingers once more until the little bands dug into her skin.

“Okay, Ravs, good to go. Lift off!”

There was a grunt from below her – where the barman was stood, legs braced apart against the stone and with his hands cupped together, his thick brow furrowed in concentration.

“Ye aren’t exactly a standard sort of caber, y’know,” he muttered, but accepted more of Zoey’s weight as she lowered herself into his combined grip. She still hadn’t been able to get flying to work properly – something about the magic here, she guessed – but she could hover, and float about at whatever height she did manage to get.

Lalna had offered her one of the grappley-doohicks, and she had been tempted – because they were cool little things – but she had seen the look of Rythian’s face as he had watched her help Minty with hers, and she couldn’t… quite justify it, really. She could get up to a pillar without one, and she hoped that might’ve reassured him a bit, because good gosh did he look in need of it right now. A faint shiver danced down her neck as the recent memories swirled, and she saw again his drained-out figure, gaunt and pale like something boiled down, and her heart skipped a few beats.

This was… really close, wasn’t it? Getting here. Getting to him.

‘I got out.’

Zoey shook her head, banishing the worries – like she had used to be so good at – and concentrated on the task at hand. Right. She had a stick of dynamite, some tape, a fire ring, and a willing Scot to play at being a human catapult. She could do this; she was sure.

Totally sure.

“Caber me up!” she said, as brightly as she could manage, and Ravs nodded. Muscles stood out across his shoulders, and for a moment Zoey wondered if Nilesy had just been making up his explanation of what a ‘caber toss’ actually entailed – but then she was suddenly accelerating, slung upwards as Ravs gave a grunted yell and hurled her, two-handed.

There was a horrible moment of dizziness as she rose, losing track of exactly where the liquid-horizon ended and the overhead void began. She could feel something skimming past her, ghostly tendrils of drifting power that twisted just at the edges of her vision, half-hidden, as she shot upwards. As momentum faded, she concentrated on staying up here, trying to feel the feather-light sparks of her more usual magic. She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated.

Enderborn; we will find you now. Bright-heart defiler. We will FIND you.

Zoey swung round wildly, but there was nothing behind her. Puzzled, she looked past the tips of her boots, to where Ravs was waving. Tee was hunkered down behind him, staring out across the plain and only twitching occasionally. He had taken the hit of the roar much better this time – although Ravs had rather deliberately let the dinosaur go first as they made their way down here. When you knew what to expect, the roar was… well, alright, it was beyond horrible, really – digging sonic fingers right into your brain and searching around for all the worst bits – but at least it was a recognisable kind of horror now.

But this other sound was different, like ice water down her neck and gone just as fast, but it had nearly been words. Zoey frowned as she carefully glided forwards, trying not to look down at the yawning nothingness that surrounded her goal. The crystal was very close now, nothing between her and it except empty space – but it seemed to her that the air was getting… not so much thicker, as more crowded, somehow. Whispers caught and tugged against her, a thickening hiss that rasped along the sides of her attention even as she tried to focus on the task.

Dynamite. Crystal. Just gotta -

Did you think to hide them from us?

Zoey bit down on a yelp as the next trail cracked across her mind. She blinked as she looked down, at where little red glimmers were dancing under surface of her glove. This was Rythian’s armour, Rythian’s magic armour, settled through with the feel of his power like layers in a stone. There was that strange sensation again, like she’d had before – as if she were overhearing something through a distant keyhole, all snatches and half-heard words, and not really even for her. Not really.

Later. Later. She tried to ignore it as she reached the edge of the pillar and carefully got her footing against the smooth stone. The slices of crystal – violet-white, slightly translucent, and very, very familiar this close to – orbited each other within their encasing fire a few feet away but there was a narrow ledge of clear space before the first flames began, and Zoey balanced herself there. The dynamite stick seemed strange in her fingers; somehow crude, blunt against the razored spiral that hung in front of her.

There were other disturbances, she realised, other ripples in the coiling fractals of power that spread out between the pillars. The others must have reached theirs. She had to keep up. Couldn’t let anyone down.

The tearing of tape seemed shockingly out of place here, but she hunched down quickly, attaching the explosive as close as she dared reach to the base of the flames. She snapped her fingers, trying to ignore the way they were shaking, and finally a small red spark burst into life between her fingertips and transferred quickly to the end of the fuse – which seemed a lot shorter, now she was standing over it.

Okay. Okay.

“Good. Good-good. Go-o-od,” Zoey muttered as she kicked off backwards into the air, only looking down when she was sure she was over solid rock again. Her heart was thumping, so hard she half-wondered if the armour wouldn’t echo with the sound of it, and she searched around for a good spot to descend. Ravs was waving at her again, more frantically now, and her breath caught a little as she looked further out over the plain and saw the deepening crowd of dark shapes that were definitely getting closer.

She wasn’t entirely sure how long dynamite took to go off, and she didn’t want to be near it when it did, so she dropped quickly. Ravs caught her arm before she had even had time to get her balance, and gestured back up at the pillar.

“Ye got it?” His brow was knotted in a concern that didn’t seem much alleviated by her confirming nod. “Right, we’d better – ”

The explosion wasn’t as loud as she had expected, and it took a moment for Zoey to realise that it hadn’t been her bomb that had gone off. On the other side of the glowing crazy-paving that made up the central space, an accretion of harsh light and crystal fragments was spinning out from atop a different pillar, and she winced as the shock of it whipped across her, setting her teeth on edge, and the background whispering rose in intensity again – close, frustratingly close, and she could – could almost –

She had only half-intended to do it, but the action was such habit now; setting her awareness back into herself, down to where she usually heard the other voices – echoes of purpose that folded her own thoughts around them into something new, for mushrooms and swords and, well, pretty much anything, really, if you listened closely enough. So, instinctively, she reached out.

We hear you.

The sensation was like iced static, unfurling behind her eyes with a dreadful clarity that the eavesdropped-snatches of speech hadn’t had, and Zoey couldn’t suppress a yelp. It was lost behind the sudden creak-scream of angry Ender as the advancing shapes surged forward, jaws distending, and the answering scnit of Tee’s bow as he loosed his first arrow into the flickering pack.

Ravs swore, as he raised the pistol that he’d nabbed from Lalna’s stash.

“Let’s go – this isne a party we want to be joining!”

Zoey barely heard him. The crash of shifting stones from the maelstrom seemed louder than ever, blending with Ender-scream into a cacophony that plunged into her mind and twisted itself up into more sharpened syllables with terrifying ease.

Where do you think to run to, Brightlands sparks? We see you now.

“We didn’t come here to fight you!” she gasped, swaying a little. “We just want to leave! If you let us go – “

Little burning creatures. You came to us.

“I know – right – and we’re sorry we broke in and – and everything!” she tried again, although how anything could hear her over the rising chaos was a mystery. “But we want to leave, honestly, get right out of your hair, but – “

Her own words cut out as the crystal above her blew, scraping a howling shockwave down around her – and brought something else with it. Not laughter, not really, but a black mirror of it; a harsh, broken-edged sound that drew ragged claws of interference down the mind directly. She could hear something else too, just behind it all; an echo that might have been Rythian – no Zoey, no! Don’t – crying out as he felt the change in his pursuit, as the Queen’s rage found a new point of focus and She turned – and then Zoey gasped as the crushing attention was on her, baring down like a blackened glacier.

She was dimly aware of her knees buckling, of the metallic impact as she slumped forwards to catch herself on hands that suddenly seemed so numb, so far away in comparison to the Voice. It wasn’t true sound, but the shape – the intent – of words, plunging yawning holes into her mind until her thoughts ran together into the form of it, forcing speech from the whirling mess of her own hijacked awareness.

We wait. We watch. We see. When there is no more fire, when your burning seas run dry and your lights fade, and all is ash and Void and the clear-cold dark – we shall bring an End to it.

But you have come to us now. You look at us. You would steal from us, with your minds of flame and water and blinding lights.

No.

You do not leave.

-

Chapter Text

The feel of the intervention was like a match striking, a sudden, hot-bright burst of crimson that seared across Rythian's attention, and brought his dire focus crashing open around him. He came up short, spinning on a knife edge of air as he saw Her turning too, banking with an alien grace that went against any normal laws of aerodynamics, and he heard the echo of it – the so-familiar burst of malefic interest as the feedback attention of the Ender swung home.

“Zoey, no! Don't – ” he started but it was too late, as the Queen wheeled around against ink-thick sky, shedding vapour like a cloak of dying storms, and plunged back along Her own trail; back towards where the harsh glitter of the End spires' hearts could be seen even through the liquid horizon behind them.

What had she done? The thought whirled up, sharp with sudden anger – she never left things alone; she never thought about anything – but just as fast was the shock-short of recognition, of remembrance; and the tightening coils of guilt.

No less than you did, Enderborn. Do you forget, or do you deceive even yourself now?

He had listened too. Back – so far back now, it seemed – when he had first heard the bubbling whispers of alien voices in the night air. He had looked closer, listened closer, poured over books and scrolls and all manner of arcane records of ancient magery; as fascination had bled hunger, as obsession tightened its dizzying coils around his heart... and eventually he had found something. Locked away, hidden behind riddles and cyphers, runic and protected and firmly sealed from idle interest, but his curiosity was only heighted, only encouraged by every antediluvian attempt to deter one such as him.

Such as them.

Different lives and very different minds, but the same thirst had been there, the same simple desire to take the world apart – strand by strand, equation by equation, every trail and trace, until they could run fingers through the understanding of it all, and stir new patterns into the unpicked threads of everything. Two mirrors, set to face, and together they would hold infinity in their eyes.

I started this. We started this, before it all went so wrong.

And now Zoey had followed him too, in more ways than one. Rythian's fingers tightened again, his mind running at frantic speed, and he felt Enderbane's eager bite as the damned blade sank its hidden fangs into his skin; readying itself.

He should have told her. Something; anything, and the guilt writhed in his stomach like a live thing. He had underestimated her, almost every time. And now she was here, reaching right into the same darkness that had so nearly claimed his own tattered soul. It would not take her too.

Rythian swung round, the surrounding air burning violet as power flared anew, and he shot forwards even faster than before, aiming grimly between the wings of the massive shape in front of him.

This was going to hurt.

-

Don't worry about it.

The grapple shivered and whined under Xephos' fingertips as he steadied his extended arm again, blinking sweat out of his eyes. He felt the far end of the line snap into place near the top of his second pillar and tugged at it carefully. It seemed solid enough, although the occasionally-dubious reliability of Lalna's hastier designs was another thing not to think about. But these seemed to work.

He glanced over to where Honeydew was standing guard, legs apart and axe in hand, glaring out across the plain with a look of ginger determination. So far, there hadn't been many Endermen heading their way. Yet. They had both seen the change in the movements of the dark figures when the first set of pillars had blown, as the howls of unearthly fury increased in response, but most of the activity seemed to be further away, back towards the high-mountain end of the plain.

Exactly what was going on over there was... well, it was yet another thing not to think about. Xephos shook his head, as if that would push aside the shards of broken thought that snapped and stabbed across his mind, or the way his heartbeat was keeping a dread rhythm in his chest.

“Y'alright, friend?” Honeydew glanced back and the concern in his eyes felt like a punch. Xephos nodded, turning away so the dwarf wouldn't see his expression. This meant he was starting down over the edge of the cliff, and had to bite down on a fresh surge of nausea.

The canyon here was wider than below their first pillar and more uneven, as if something had torn its way up through the sheets of whitish stone from underneath, leaving a gaping wound in the rock surface, with the pillar hanging in its centre like a last failed suture. Broken ledges and splintered layers stuck out from the walls, giving the plunge into oblivion ragged edges. Xephos looked back up quickly, fixing his wavering attention back to the spinning brilliance above.

Right.

He hit the grapple mechanism again, bracing himself for the lurch that came as the gears bit down, and it yanked him forward and upwards, shooting across the inverted sky like a very guided sort of comet. He brought his legs up, getting ready to cushion his impact against the vertical obsidian ahead.

The second roar hit when he was halfway across. This was a new sound; still boiling with the terrible fury of before, the wounded malevolence that had poured out of every sliver of this world in a poisoned, sonic tide – but this one had a new edge to it, something altogether much worse. It held triumph.

Xephos twitched, a violent shiver that wrenched him hard against his airborne pose, and rammed his gloved fingertips back into the unfortunately-sensitive grapple control. Gears screeched, choking out an acrid metallic smoke as the little machine clamped to an abrupt halt, sending him jerking to and fro with aborted momentum. As he tried to steady the swaying, as the horrible sound twisted fresh coil of whispering darkness into his mind, he twisted – and he saw the dragon coming back.

Don't worry –

The sound bore down like a tidal surge, spilling out ahead of the oncoming nightmare, and Xephos froze. He had to move, had to move, as the huge shape dived towards him, its wings scything out like their own horizon; but all he could do was clamp down, tightening his fingers around the grapple-line until his gloves creaked. Breath curdled in his throat, then broke apart in a wordless yelp of disbelief as the dragon suddenly swung upwards, letting out a fresh howl – and this time there was something like pain in the sound.

Xephos saw the smaller form, highlighted against the vicious-violet sparks that sprang from the creature’s skin as Rythian shot across its back and down along the scythe-crowned spine. The mage twisted this way and that as the titanic shape rolled beneath him, dragging the bright sliver of his strange blade between the scales. Dark clouds boiled up into the air as the dragon swiveled, snapping back at the assaulting figure, and the spinning battle was so close now that Xephos could see each movement with a horrible clarity.

Then the crystal above him erupted in howling brilliance, and Xephos couldn’t hold back a scream. He ducked down between his own arms as the spiraling beam thundered out overhead – close, so close, why was he so close? Oh god – lighting up a new corona of purple fractals that snaked across the dragon’s chest, following the marks of Rythian’s frantic slices, and the oil-slick flesh drew closed beneath it.

Spillover magic sent freezing, electric prickles scattering across Xephos’ exposed skin, clawing at him with a much less benign effect than it had for the roaring monster overhead. He gritted his teeth, trying to focus on the pain there, the real pain, but memory was swarming around him like blackened flies, and the now of it was so hard to find. The endless, hungry fall of Void beneath seemed to drag down against him, pulling at the tiny grapple that shook and shivered on his arm. It would be so easy to fall – so easy – with the screaming incandescence blazing out overhead and oblivion reaching up to claim him back.

He remembered the light. And then darkness. Not this light, not this darkness, but the difference was suddenly so very, very small…

And then the bright beam winked out, the dragon swept past above him, and the bottom dropped out of Xephos’ tentatively-hanging world, as the creature’s barbed tail sliced through his line like it was little more than string. He held on tight, more through terrified instinct than any actual intent, as the alien gravity tighten its fingers in his stomach and there were several long, horrible moments of swinging weightlessness – before he slammed into the side of the pillar with pendulum-force and tried desperately not to throw up.

He was running out of time. The thought spun in his mind, whirling up every other attempt at coherence into its ever-tightening embrace, even as he tried to feel the grapple under his shaking fingers, untangle the fragment of him that was still in the present.

Focus. Focus.

Painfully slowly, Xephos managed to raise his head up and force his eyes open, squinting up into the ominous brilliance above him. He was barely a few feet below the top of the pillar, which did made sense, when he could push aside panic long enough to think about it. The grapple was making a strange whining noise against his arm, and the line was quivering in a way it hadn’t done before, but his grip was reasonable enough and he began to haul himself upwards.

One hand after another. If he didn’t allow anything else to exist, if he filled the whole of every second side-to-side with the inching repetition –

– how I’ll lose every –

– then it wasn’t so bad. One step at a time. As they’d always done, when everything had seemed worst. Just one step at a time.

His fingers grazed the clear space atop of the pillar, just as the grapple mechanism gave a high-pitched scraping sound, accompanied by the scent of burning metal, and he felt the grip of it start to give. Xephos lunged, pinning the line tight between his feet as he thrust himself upwards, and managed to get a hand clamped fully into place – before the metal teeth of the device failed entirely, falling slack against him, and blood screamed in his ears. He was suddenly, silently, immensely thankful for the augmented attributes of the nanosuit; strengthening his hold as his extended arm shook madly, almost in time to the slam of his heartbeat.

Breathe, Xephos.

His entire world seemed to have narrowed down to the pressure on his left wrist, and it took a remarkable effort to figure out where his other arm was – hanging loose at his side, with the limp thread of the wire still gripped in his shaking fingers – and even longer to remember how to move it.

Come on, man. Hup.

He’d done worse than this. Much worse than this – maybe not over Void, but over enough lava that it might as well count, clutching Honeydew’s equally-battered form against him, stumbling as they kept each other upright and the ground had bucked and cracked underneath them. Or leaping from one precarious footing to another in the vertigo-inducing mazes of the Skylords, with his heart in his mouth and the dreadful depth beneath yawning its invitation. Or clinging to fraying rope in a cursed storm, hauling his own half-frozen body up the degrading rigging as Isabel shouted frantic instructions at him, her words whipped away in an instant by the hungry winds.

In comparison, hanging by one hand from a glassy pillar, over an endless drop into eternity was… well, certainly not better, but at least on some kind of horrible par. Xephos gritted his teeth and swung up, groping until he managed to get another point of purchase on the polished stone. His shoulders were screaming even beneath the suit but – accompanied by his own muttered litany of curses – he eventually managed to pull himself up. He lay flat for a moment, precarious again on the edge, as the slice and shimmer of the spinning crystals whirled by a few feet from his head.

Okay. Ok-ay.

The dynamite was gone. His fingers scraped at the empty space at his belt, but while his borrowed pistol was still there, the awkward wedging of that red cylinder hadn’t survived the last flailing moments. After a few false starts, he managed to pull himself upright, shivering with tension as he tried to keep his footing against the slick stone surface beneath, and looked up through the glowing haze. Even in the strange over-magnification of this place, it was difficult to make out exactly what was happening overhead anymore, but the bright slices of impact came again and again, behind the shadows of twisting wings.

Rythian was fighting it. Xephos reached up, jamming his fingers under his helmet, and tugged at his hair until the roots stung. Memories skipped and broke open around him, suddenly so close, so real, and he tried not to be sick again. What kind of plan was this? Rythian was fighting it now, and the sword at Xephos' own back seemed to be pulling against him, echoing a strange, hollow itch down into his fingers.

The dynamite was gone. He’d failed. They were out of time, and it was his fault. Again.

If he had only been faster; if he hadn’t spent so damn long worrying. Always worrying, and what was the point of that; the point of him? He was always just too slow – and people always died.

‘Heroes - !’

An old cry, cut off abruptly by his own whimper as the crystals flared again, hurling another dazzling spiral beam up towards the battling shapes, and nearly taking his balance entirely. He could feel the nanosuit’s tiny mechanisms straining as he had to lean into the wind of it, angry magic spillover biting into his skin, scattering his breaking thoughts.

‘What now, Sspaceman? What do you have left?’

The sword was so heavy at his back. He was only dimly aware of himself reaching round, of his fingers tightening into their long-habitual grip, as the world began to fade away around him, leaving nothing but that screaming, searing pillar of twisted brilliance, inches from his face. His cheeks were wet, but right now he couldn’t remember why.

I’m sorry, friends. This was the best I could do.

Xephos swung his sword – and there was light.

-

“Head’s up!”

Lomadia landed smoothly, flipping the release on her grapple a few moments before her boots hit the flaking stone. She caught her weight on her hands and continued the count, as Nilesy dropped down next to her. A few long heartbeats later, the crystal blew out and they matched stares as the aftershock washed down. Lomadia gritted her teeth at the extra flickers of chill memory that danced under her thoughts, in reply to the shock of it, and she focused on Nilesy’s reassuringly-steady face.

Then the pressure released again, back to the almost-familiar background horribleness, and she relaxed a bit. Nilesy nudged her shoulder.

“All right there?”

“Yeah.” Lomadia nodded, a little shakily, and grimaced. “Thanks.”

He held out a hand and she grasped it gratefully; they pulled each other back upright, and Lomadia tried not to sway as she glanced up at the stark shape of their now-empty second pillar. To give Lalna his credit – the little grapples were good.

She just wished his focus was as good as his technology could be. Another crack-whine of discharging plasma broke across the plain as she turned back, to where the third figure of their troupe had set up a position behind a chunk of jutting rock. He had his gun-arm resting across the top of the stone, little wisps of plasma rising from the palm, and there were smears of half-evaporated darkness fading away in front of him. But he wasn’t even looking up, his gaze fixed firmly at whatever he was fiddling with in his twisted-upwards boot, and those dark motes were very close.

“For fucks’ sake,” she muttered. “Stop mucking about!”

As if to emphasise her snap, another angular figure blinked into existence a few metres away from Lalna’s distracted form – shaking furiously, its jaw distended as it lunged – and was hit in the face almost immediately by a bright blue shape; the creature and balloon broke apart in a scream, a shower of blackened steam, and a few bits of falling rubber. Nilesy gave a tight whoop of triumph, punching the air with the arm still extended from his throw.

“Oh yeah, take that y'bastards.” He caught Lomadia’s gaze again, and grinned a little sheepishly. “I practised, alright?”

“I can tell,” Lomadia started, but her words died on the tongue as the roar came again. She swivelled, looking up towards where the distant gleam of blazing eyes were suddenly visible again through the wall of horizon, and icy horror poured down her neck. They weren’t finished. She’d been keeping track of the other explosions and they were only halfway done.

“Oh shit,” she muttered and glanced around quickly, scanning the rest of the plain for the other still-active towers. Their assigned pillars had been fairly close together, and when Lalna was paying attention, the combination of his canon, her own bow, and the occasional wet-grenade explosion of Nilesy’s carefully rationed water balloons had managed to keep the massing Ender at bay rather effectively.

It helped that the elongated figures seemed to be confused by the multiple sources of detonation – flocking this way and that as different towers went off – and she was pretty sure that being this close to the swirling mess at the centre of the plain was doing something to their opponents’ teleporting. There was certainly less 'appearing just behind you' going on than the lanky sods had managed before, and she could swear she had seen at least one overshoot and vanish downwards with a deflating-shriek.

Which meant that their most defensible place was backed up against the Void. Which was fucking brilliant, naturally, but it was technically better than nothing when you were dashing between grappling-locations.

But the next nearest pillar was back towards where the dragon was coming in from.

“Of course it fucking is,” Lomadia muttered to herself, then stopped. Lalna gave a snarl behind her and unleashed another round of fire, but that wasn't what was suddenly hammering for focus at the edge of her attention, as she squinted in the over-magnified air here. Something else was happening, just in front of the returning boss-monster.

The scene resolved, with a suddenness of realisation that wrenched down through her in horrible succession as her insides lurched violently.  She couldn’t see the grapple wire, too thin even for this weird vision, but there was definitely a distant figure hanging partway between the next pillar and its canyon edges – and nothing else here was green. Dread bloomed, even ahead of the sickening surges of old darkness prompted by the ongoing roar, and Lomadia’s breath came up short.

“Xeph!”

She was running before she even realised she had started to move, followed first by surprised cries from her partners, then the thud of footfall as they came after her. She heard Lalna swear, heard the crack of plasma going off somewhere behind her, and the bubbling swish-snap of Ender movements – but they were running right on the edge of the central area now, and she could feel the wrongness to the air here, even beyond everything else of this place.

The ground shuddered underfoot more that it should, and a few times she had to jump over narrow chasms that plunged into black nothingness; or worse, in some cases, when there was a glimmer of the alien brightness beneath, right at the bottom edge of her vision – but she wasn’t going to look down, wasn’t going to look away from that distant point of incongruous green. So when the dragon burst out of the horizon, all wings and smoke and the horrible violet brilliance of a gaze like an alternative-spectrum hell, she was looking right at it.

The too-thin breath congealed in her throat, clamping her chest down on itself and she stumbled as she saw the creature sweep forward. Saw a beam of twisting light spear into it as it passed over the pillar, saw the huge tail slice through where Xephos’ line must be without even a pause – and she couldn’t even manage a cry as the suspended figure began to fall.

No. No, not here; not like this –

And he stopped, swinging to slam hard into the side of the pillar, but he stopped. Hands grabbed Lomadia's shoulders, pulling her up and back; she barely had time to realise how close to the edge of one of the smaller chasms she had been, as Nilesy’s voice blurred around her and her own heartbeat hammered deafeningly in her ears.

The grapple was still attached. At one end. It was still attached.

Fucking hell.

She straightened up, gripping Nilesy’s arm tightly in reply or reassurance – she wasn’t sure which – and they started running again, towards where Lalna had veered away from their initial direction, skirting the edge of that pillar’s splintered canyon. He had headed for where Honeydew’s distinct figure was now surrounded by a closing knot of Ender, a little further ahead. Reactionary plasma tore holes the axe hadn’t managed to reach yet, and by the time the pair of them caught up, the rest of the attackers had been dispatched.

Honeydew nodded to them grimly. The dwarf was pale, bleeding in a few places, and there was a gnarled print of Ender-grasp running across his chestplate like a sunken sash.

“Going about as fuckin’ well as ever,” he grumbled, but there was strain under his voice. “If one of you buggers’ve got another rope?”

“I’ll fly up,” Lalna replied firmly, and flipped another plate open near his thigh. Lomadia didn’t miss the way his hands were shaking though, as he glanced up at where Xephos was pulling himself awkwardly back up onto the pillar top. “I’ve nearly got it connected, just need a minute.  I think I know – ”

“Look,” she cut in, brandishing her arm. “As long as these things can take two, we – ”

Her interruption failed as the crystal flared again, hurling a second brilliant ray out to where the dragon had spiralled upwards over the middle of the maelstrom-space, snapping and twisting at the airborne figure that was harrying at it. Closer-to now, Lomadia could hear the beam; it made a tearing-glass screech that set her teeth on edge, and she winced as she ineffectively tried to shield her ears, and squinted up at the crystal. She wasn’t sure exactly what the beams did – heal the monster, or something, Rythian had suggested – but getting rid of them would good idea even just to stop that noise.

Xephos was standing up now, backlit against the shivering light, and… what the hell was he…?

“Lom,” Nilesy’s voice was tight as he followed her stare, to where the distant figure had adopted a braced stance, reaching back towards the sword still strapped to his back. “Lom, oh this is bad – !”

“Xephos!” Honeydew’s shout rolled out like a thunderclap and the dwarf half-lunged forward, waving his arms in frantic ginger-topped semaphore, but Lomadia could hear the sudden cold desperation in his voice. “Don’t you fucking dare! Don’t you even - ”

There was only one way this was going. And she was not having it.

She was already running as the distant figure drew his blade. Her boots slammed into the stone and each footfall was a statement, each thump a furious scream at whatever sodding excuse for fate was trying to pull a fast one right now.

Oh no you fucking don’t!

Her hands curled tighter inside her gloves and she gritted her teeth. She couldn’t be sure, couldn’t be quite certain of the faint – so faint – prickle of something against her skin, tracing the faded patterns of magically-scarred flesh that ran the length of her middle finger, from where she had overloaded the first flying ring in that moment of sheer, nether-minded determination. It hadn't worked so far, but now would be a very good time for it to start.

There was fire above her, a deafening crack-swching of out-flung crystal shards, and she looked up – then down, and up and down – as her mind whirled with frantic aeronautic calculation. Xephos’ outflung figure arced backwards from the detonation, hurled out over the yawning gap, and Lomadia’s boots cleared the edge of the chasm in a headlong launch. There was a definite shiver at her clenched fingers now, and the raw insanity of it all howling in her ears – but she had matched collision trajectories enough times before, from a dozen types of airship, owl-backs and variations on dimensionally-malfunctioning magical flight, and this time had at least started from somewhere static.

The weightless moment stretched out, momentum and gravity vying for dreadful favour, snatching at the gossamer threads of thaumic lift that danced across her, drawn out from the ring by sheer determination, if nothing else. The world seemed to be held in a breath, struck through with all the hungry shades of what could go so utterly and completely wrong.

Come on. Come on .

Then she hit the plunging Xephos square in his stomach, wrapping her outflung arms as tightly as she dared around the other plummeting shape, and the impact jolted a hard-shock down the length of her. She felt the ring shiver again, failing once more under the sudden increase in weight, but the accelerated deflection had been enough, and a moment later there was another rib-slamming jolt as they crashed into the tilted top of one of the broken slabs jutting from the opposite canyon wall.

Lomadia clung down hard, wedging her ringing head against Xephos in a vague attempt to hold on with her neck as well, and had another horrible moment of sliding, scraping weightlessness – before her gloves scored to a standstill, splintering dusty fragments around her grasp, and she rammed the tips of her boots into the rock below.

“Oh good lord,” she gasped. The razor-thin air scraped her throat and for a good few moments she concentrated just on breathing, half-deaf from her own heartbeat, and stared dumbly at the stone under her nose. She could feel a faint rise and fall of Xephos’ chest beneath her, feel small twitches in his cheek next to hers, and finally she managed to pull herself together enough to lean back slightly, raising up so that she could look at him, and not run the risk of dislodging either of them from their precarious shelf.

He was staring. Not at her, not even now she was right over him, but through her somehow, his sapphire gaze stretched wide.  She shifted slightly and tried to find her voice.

“That was really stupid,” she said quietly, and wasn’t entirely sure which one of them she meant. Xephos shivered. His fingers twitched, scratching down against the rock as he blinked a few times, and then the stare settled back onto her a little more securely. He looked battered; his armour was laced with hairline cracks in a few places, and his exposed skin was peppered with small cuts. But he was alive.

Another blink, and his lips moved like a question, although no sound came out. Lomadia shrugged. She should say something. Anything.

"Well, I could have managed not to catch you with my fucking face," she muttered. Xephos kept staring at her, looking dazed.  Lomadia adjusted her grip again, and tried to put a bit more reassurance into her tones.

"I've got you. Bloody hope someone with a rope gets a move on, but we're okay. Kind of." She craned up, trying to see anything useful past her own helmet and the edge of the endless crevasse, but all she could make out was the open-void of sky. Xephos opened his mouth again, hesitated, and finally managed to speak.

"I was… falling again. I thought it – I was – " his voice caught, halting in his throat and he half-turned away, expressions chasing each other across his features too fast to be clear. Lomadia bit her lip, hoping like hell she hadn't hit him harder in the head than she had thought – but he seemed focused enough now, just shocked. No, not exactly shocked, that didn't quite go far enough…

A memory stirred, rising past the grim slick of recent horrors, and Xephos’ earlier words echoed back across her mind,

'I remember light; and falling. And then nothing.'

"I've got you," she repeated, more firmly this time, and now all the other meanings welled up either side of those words and Xephos' fingers curled a little tighter against her arm. She held his gaze, blue-on-blue, and all the things they'd said – and so many more they hadn't yet, twisting at the edges of spoken words – wove a moment of softened silence around them both.

"If you fall, again," she said quietly, into the strange little private universe that seemed to have formed there. "We'll catch you. Me, Honeydew, Lalna even, all of us. And if that's not enough, if you do forget – then we will find you, bring you home and show you who you are, all over again. A hundred times. However long it takes."

There was precious little room on the ledge as it was, but Lomadia shifted as much as she was able to make space as Xephos' hand rose up, trailing shakily down her cheek, and a faint glimmer of reassurance sparked in his eyes. She tilted into the touch, and managed a small smile as his fingertips traced her features – as if he was making sure she was there, that he could trust his vision.

"I promise," she murmured, and was just trying to find a sensible continuation of the sentence when there was a sudden soft roughness against her chin, as Xephos pushed himself up on his elbows and their lips met. It wasn't the most idealised kiss, nor some bright celluloid-swirl of mid-battle passion; not with Lomadia herself still awkwardly braced against crumbling stone, and Xephos battered and shivering with close-brush mortality – but there was understanding in the moment. It wasn't new, not entirely, but now it had been stated, and seemed to brand itself into the air around them.

I've got you. All of you, right now; everything you are or might have been. And I will find you, if you need me to, even if you've lost yourself.

With or without the teleporting pub.

-

Chapter Text

He should be able to fix this.

Sweat stung against Lalna's face; damp, dusty trails that prickled sharply beneath his hastily-assembled armour, as if this place were making another literal-attempt to get under his skin. He blinked a few times, squinting in the exaggerated illumination of the open plain, and tried to keep his focus. Dark shapes were massing, swarming like oversized ants against the layered stone, and they all seemed to move at once every time his eyelids twitched.

The nearest lunged, strobing across the broken ground towards him in stop-motion menace. Lalna tracked its now-familiar, interrupted movements, and felt the jolt as his extended fingers twitched and he sent another ball of scalding plasma skimming out across the space between. The Enderman winked straight into its path, and there was a brief screech as the creature flew apart in a dissipating cloud of dark motes, and Lalna had to try not to slump back.

His head ached. His eyes ached. Everything ached, and his breath went short again as he heard a crack of stone behind him – accompanied by a snap of dwarven cursing – but his panic-speed glance back showed nothing more than Honeydew readjusting position. Muscles stood out on the dwarf’s arms as he hauled, one hand over another on the rope, inching the interlocked figures up the chasm’s ragged edge. Nilesy hovered around behind the dwarf, occasionally shouting possibly-encouraging things, but Lalna could barely hear them. The air was too thick with Ender-voices, and his own mind was buzzing just as loudly.

He hadn't been able to do anything. Even – even Nilesy had managed to catch the sword, as the diamond blade had arced away on its own dropped trajectory, before bouncing and teetering against the cliff edge, as if waiting for the Scot’s flailing lunge. But he had just watched.

The impotence of it all was acidic, sharp at the back of his throat, and Lalna swept his hand around viciously, letting off a series of smaller plasma blasts that blew out a distant cloud of stone and spilled odd-moving dust into the air. His attention flicked back to the circuit board, still gripped in his free hand, still trailing wires back into his chest-piece like electrical viscera, and his lips thinned.

It should work. How many times had he done this? He could built a basic repulsor unit in his sleep, for godsake! And yet...

He couldn’t unsee that explosion, the after-image bright even through his goggles; less like a detonation than a deliberate highlight for Xephos’ falling figure, hurled backwards from that damned – damned – damned blow – because why couldn't he just leave things alone? Why did he have to get involved all the time?

Every time. Every time Lalna had been awoken by some late-night return to the factory, to find his sporadically-absent companions trying to put away dented armour silently; or stumbling in, beyond battered, with each only held upright by the other. Every time he'd bitten down on his own curiosity, and started keeping prepped medical kits within a short dash from the main doors. Every time he'd eased shards, arrows or claw-tips out of Xephos' skin, cleaning and sealing yet another addition to the violent patchwork that lay just under his clothes; every time he'd asked and every time he hadn’t – and all answered with the same small, tired smile, the same wry mutter of 'old habits', and never anything more than that.

And they had come after him.

Lalna's jaw creaked and he shook his head, as if that would help, but his thoughts were slipping away from him again, dragged back down into the yawning darkness that was his own too-recent past.

They'd come after him. Both times. Now, and a year ago, during the Ender-siege of his castle, when Xephos had put himself right into the firing line between Lalna's own weapon and Rythian's readied magic – Honeydew barely a step behind, irritatedly chastising – as if they weren't right in the path of enough hair-trigger technothaumic firepower to reduce both to greasy plasma. They’d been there still, even later, after his agony-misfire had hurled Xephos aside, and the sheer extent of his own failure became so very, very clear.

Failure. That word was a hot, black coal in his mind, burning through his other thoughts with a furious humiliation, and Lalna's extended fingers twitched hard.

'Just – don't kill him – friend.'

He had to fix this. It was his fault, and he had to get it right, this time. He had to –

There was another outbreak of stony crunching, another wave of grumbles, and Lalna swung round to see Lomadia climbing up over the lip of the cliff, grabbing Nilesy's extended hand for support. She muttered something to the skinny Scot and shot Lalna a glance – which was difficult to read properly, but there was something akin to relief in her eyes, and he felt his knees sag slightly even inside the armour.

Honeydew was fussing around Xephos like a grumbling ginger hen, tugging him more upright and brushing him down, making little tsk noises as he flicked away a few bits of broken nanosuit. Then he straightened up suddenly, grabbing onto his friend’s forearms, and looked hard into Xephos' too-pale face. There was one of those moments – impossibly heavy, as the two gazes locked – and the air between the pair of them was suddenly full, run through with tangles of history so thick that Lalna felt like an intruder just watching. Then Honeydew’s brows crinkled, and he grunted.

“You okay?” There was a faux-casual tone to his voice, but Lalna didn’t get the impression it was for his own benefit. Xephos looked down and blinked, dazed, as a frown traced onto his features.

“...no.” He looked at Honeydew, almost quizzical for a moment, then gently pulled one hand free and pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a very long breath. “I’m not. But… I could be. I think.”

He glanced back at Lomadia as he spoke and, like a curtain lifting, the focus was suddenly back in his face. Not perfect, not even very well pulled together just now – but that old diamond edge was there again, and Lalna didn't miss the faint shift in Lomadia's expression either, even as Nilesy jabbed an elbow into her ribs and muttered something under his breath.

Honeydew’s grin was a beacon; he leaned in and slapped the taller figure on the mid-back.

“We can work with that,” he said gruffly. Xephos looked up, managing a wobbly smile as he met Lalna's gaze, and the sight lit a tiny, treacherous spark of warmth in the back of his own mind. There was no real time for relief – the air was still full of the sounds of furious Ender voices, the  last crystal beams still cut out starkly across the blackout sky, and something was happening above them, all swirling darkness and crackles of hard brilliance that he didn't dare think closely about yet – but right then, just then, it didn’t seem as hopeless.

We're not okay. But we can fix this. I can –

And then a lot of things happened at once. But it was the screaming that came first.

-

Enderbane burned like a frozen star. Theoretically his fingers were still there somewhere, and Rythian had to assume that they were still attached, but his right arm felt like nothing more than a shredded mess of ice below the elbow now; and the sense was steadily creeping further and further upwards as the sword’s price bit into him, deeper with every slice. If he’d even had time to look, he wouldn’t have done so, but his entire world had narrowed to this knife-edge of time as he cut and weaved across the sinuous angles of the Queen’s body, dodging and striking and blinking back and forth as Her own attacks became harder and harder to avoid.

Each teleport shift was worse than the last, close as he was now to Her, with the seething heart of this place just beneath them. Each shadow-step heartbeat jolted him violently, as the Void ring dug into his altered nature and wrenched him a few feet either way, so that claws or wing-talons missed him by hairsbreaths. He struck back, and the sword echoed its crushed-glass scream up through his blood, its edge drawing smoking lines down Her scales; cutting ragged rents in wings wider than he was tall.

How long had it been? The lifestone vibrated at his chest, clamping down into the skin as he felt its magic pour out, draining stored etheric potential from the klein star beside it and folding it back around him. He felt his skin pulling closed, over a dozen near-miss wounds and the sharpened invisibility of Enderbane’s bite, as the magic fought to keep him whole. One of them would wear down first, and Rythian knew with grim certainty which one that would be.

Explosions were still going on erratically across the plains below, but he had lost track of how many had actually happened as soon as this pursuit had started, when the Queen had twisted in the razor air and swung back down her own path. She was searching – still, still, even as they spiralled upwards in this deadly dance, despite everything he could throw at Her – for the new voice in this blackened chaos.

It’s me you want, damn it!

He missed Her eye by inches, tracing a thin wound up the elongated jaw, and overshot. Panic was hammering on the walls of his anger, and he could feel the glow bleeding out down his cheeks as he met the Queen’s blazing stare with his own.

“It’s me – ” he half-repeated, but the words cut out in a sharp intake of breath as another of the beams of crystal-born brilliance lanced up from the nearest intact pillar, striking home in a crackling corona that swarmed across the Queen’s skin, sealing his meagre efforts with horrible ease. Her gaze weighed against him, dragging old shadows across his thoughts, and Rythian tried unsuccessfully to block out the shape of the meaning there.

We know you, Enderborn. Lightburn thief.

We are you.

“No!” His own snap of reply seemed to catch against his teeth, denial and disbelief struck hard through his own words. Magic flared at his left hand, crackling between the rings there as the black-bile panic surged up again, but the grating susurrus of Ender-voice dug deep into his mind, bubbling all the old horrors back into the fore.

I don’t know what it cost me. All that I had. More than I had.

No.

“I am Rythian,” he snapped, as if anyone was listening, as if the words would be enough to quiet his own doubts – because how would he know? Really know? Staring as he was now into those massive, blazing eyes, which suddenly looked so very, very much like his own.

I am Rythian. I am – I – I have to be.

The air was getting thinner and thicker at the same time, and he couldn’t breathe. His free hand swung up to clutch at his throat, pushing aside the shrouding mask – and he froze, part in horror, part in revulsion because the scar was writhing now, slick and shivering beneath his fingertips and pulsing with a heartbeat only half his own. The dragon’s wings slammed another shockwave into the churning air and an answering spasm ran down Rythian’s arm, his fingers shaking and slipping against the sword-hilt – and he let go. Sensation flooded back as the sword fell away and he jerked after it, breaking the imprisoning stare as he grasped ineffectually at empty space.

The Queen let out a new howl and the world seemed to speed up again as She shot forwards.  The plunging sliver of ice that was Enderbane glinted like a highlight against the scales below for a moment, and then She was gone, sweeping back across the cracked-open space. Back towards the knot of figures, crouched right at the edge of the broken aground; little glimpses of scarlet and green and discordant tartan, stark against that monochrome landscape.

Back towards Zoey.

“No,” Rythian growled again, but there was defiance in the word this time. There was ringing in his ears as the world slammed closed, grating frozen nails down against his mind – but he was lunging even as he resolved, catching the falling blade, and he bit down on returning pain as the sword settled back into his torn grip. No. Whatever else – he could be sure of her.

Magic poured off him like a slipstream as he forced everything he could spare into speed, and shot forward, a streak of tattered lightning against the empty sky.

“We aren’t done,” he snarled, and swivelled aside as the razored end of the Queen’s tail swung back towards him. He rolled, still accelerating, and took the chance, bringing his sword down on the tip as he spiralled past – and the dragon screeched. The sound split the air, fresh and furious and battering against him, but even that couldn’t get past the giddy edge that darted through Rythian’s mind as he watched the end of one clawed fin fall, shedding motes of shadow.

The Queen turned, and her eyes were violet hell. The massive jaws latched open and Rythian shot upwards, tightening his grip against his rings again, as he saw the flickers of purple brilliance start in those yawning depths. Dragonfire. He’d dodged this before; once, admittedly, and it had been more luck than judgement, but every nerve felt suddenly alive now, crackling with the spillover power that surged around him like a personalised storm; because he had hurt Her, really hurt Her, and maybe they actually could -

- and the bright moment died as the Queen swivelled on wrong-angled joints, twisting in the air like living smoke, and spat a bolt of of fractal destruction down towards the clustered figures below. An answering scream burst in Rythian’s chest, catching on his lips as the blast of dragonfire hit home and he felt the impact, jolting back up the layered trails of power that were webbed out around him. A plume of dust and shattered stone belched up into the empty air and the temporary mushroom-shape of the cloud was a mocking taunt in his vision, before backwash wingbeats tore even that aside.

...oh god.

The dragon arced back around, almost lazily, as another beam from the crystal below speared up and the bleeding smoke began to fade from the end of Her tail. Rythain could feel that gaze on him again – watching, goading – and there was laughter in his mind now, his own horror-frozen thoughts pouring into the space of it, spilling icy venom down his limbs. He had to move. He had to move, but he couldn’t even remember how that worked. He – he had to -

Crimson gleamed, alien and sudden against the drained-out landscape, as wingbeat winds stirred the debris again and Rythian’s gaze locked, not even daring to hope, on the churning clouds. A huge hole had been torn into the cliff-edge, cracked and crazed with burning violet angles and shedding fresh scree down into the Void.

But she was there. A few scant metres further back from the destruction, with the ground beneath her scuffed and scarred from a three-way, headlong tumble; prying herself out of Tee’s grasp and releasing her own hold on Ravs. She was looking up, looking directly at him, dazed and pale and alive and Rythian’s shock-stilled heart was suddenly dancing to the sight; a restored rhythm that trailed unaccustomed warmth out into the cold caverns of his thoughts. She was alive. Still alive, still here, and he felt again the ghosts of her touch against his fingers, saw again the gleam of her eyes as she had looked at him – all of him, right here, where illusions died – and smiled back anyway.

He loved her. It wasn’t a realisation – because of course he had known, with every fibre of his ragged soul, for so long now – but it was the first time that the thought had managed to get past unguarded, since he had stepped back into this nightmare. He hadn’t allowed it, had forced himself not to dwell on anything but the reality of this place; living on the ends of his stretched nerves in every second. But now, right now, the thought bloomed like a rose into his mind; bright and fresh, and utterly, wonderfully human.

And it had the worst possible timing.

It was barely a moment, a heartbeat-pause in his aerial manoeuvres, but it was a moment he didn't have. The Queen’s roar rose and broke again, crashing down like a blackened wave, as one elongated limb unfolded, and the tip of a massive claw gouged across Rythian’s shoulders.

Pain exploded in his back as the dissolving touch bit home and he felt his skin give way, subliming into nothingness and smoke and he jerked aside in a thrashing-shudder that cast agonised spasms down his limbs in response. Shock-born power flared around his fingers, elemental instinct but still too slow, still a fraction delayed by his earlier hesitation – and the Queen bore down again, Her jaw gaping open in a distended mass of smoke and sharpened shadows. She was suddenly so large, so close, and there was no more time, as the Void ring sparked at his hand, and failed entirely.

Too close; too close to Her and to the whirling, unmaking maelstrom beneath. The little gem of tamed Void crackled and died, trailing a final, fading whiplash of sudden horror across his thoughts as the monstrous jaws cut down – and teeth like oiled glass plunged into Rythian's chest.

-

The scream was inhuman. It wasn’t a true sound, no shiver risen into that thin air by pierced lungs, but the force of it poured down across the landscape anyway, slashing into the mind directly as blackout brilliance erupted around the entangled shapes above. It was Rythian's voice; yet not him, a twisted contortion that swept out across the fractured plains as the Queen thrashed back and forth and lightning crackled around Her jaws, wrapping the convulsing figure pinned there in a web of blackened, broken fractals.

Thief. Deceiver. Enderborn.

There were no words, not really, but the voice sank in uninvited and forced language around itself, warping any thoughts into the seething sense of meaning in that roar, as the saurian nightmare reared back – triumphant – against Her empty sky.

You think you know how to End us. You think to steal yourself away again, with little words of Void and blood and trickery.

You are wrong.

All you have done, we have watched. All you have held, we have touched. All you are, we have allowed.

Now we take it back.

-

“Rythian!”

Zoey knew she was shouting, could feel the tear in her throat as his name burst free, but everything else seemed so far away as the dragon swung around above them, trailing its terrible lightning and that howl. She was moving, somewhere outside herself, tearing out of Rav’s desperate grasp as she lunged forward; a strange inversion of a few moments ago, when all her extra senses had gone off at once – even through the deafening, icy pressure of the Ender’s will – and she had grabbed onto the barman, as Tee had hit her in a full-body charge and she added her own magic-boosted speed to the dodge, seconds before the ground detonated in purple fire.

They'd made it. They made it and she’d looked up to see Rythian there, staring down at her through a whirl in the smoke – just as dragon had turned, a shifting nightmare made altogether too solid, and snatched him out of the air like it was easy.

It felt like her fault.

She was shouting, diving forward – and up, as the shackles of the strange gravity here bent even further – up and then up again, properly this time, and there was one thought racing ahead of all the others, like a pilot-light to the rising flames that were storming through her mind.

How dare you?

Not my friends. Not him; not here, not like this.

How dare you?

The chaos above was peaking now; the hell-scream crescendoed and even the light of it shifted, violet to purple to the blacked-out iridescence beyond even that, until the brilliance itself was a weight on the air and the world seemed to distort around it.

And a fireball like the vengeance of comets slammed into the dragon’s flank, with impact hard enough to send ripples through the half-solid flesh below.

“Let him go!” The cry was punctuation to the cacophony and the dragon's attention shifted, to where Zoey burned now. Crimson flame spiralled up about her and she brought her hands round again, magic blazing like the heart of a star between her fingers as she wound it up for another surge. Her eyes were coals of rage, and they flicked between the pinned figure and the shadow-sheathed demon that held him there.

How DARE you?

The thought was a mental pyre, blazing with the anger that spat and seethed through her thoughts, and Zoey knew it now. She had felt this before, or something like it, back at babyJim's caldera as the Endermen had torn into RedFive. It should scare her – it had done then, as the inferno had unfolded in her heart, rising up to meet the sudden furnace of her fury – but there was no space for worry now. She had done this before; she could do it again. Besides, fire was kinda her thing, after all.

'Never tell me you can't do magic.'

The dragon seemed to pause, considering. Then, with an air of almost lazy finality, it slung Rythian aside, his limp form sliding unceremoniously free of the now-dismissive maw. The enshrouding light died as he dropped like a broken doll, and vanished down into the whirlpool-avalanche underneath.

Another fireball streaked free, accompanied by Zoey’s next yell – but the dragon rippled again, bending back along itself, and the burning mage had to dodge as a set of huge claws scythed down towards her. The blow missed by inches, passing into the rock below in an eruption of sharded stone; Zoey kicked back and up, sending herself spinning into the air even as her frantic gaze swept the jostling stone, searching for any sign of the fallen figure in that uncertain space.

He was there. He had to be there.

Hold on, Rythian. Just – just hang in there, alright?

She dodged the next blow more by luck than instinct – her heart hammering in her chest so hard it must be breaking – and Zoey dodged again, as a volley of Tee's arrows skimmed past her and rattled against the dragon's scaled side. Some hit home, sinking into the oilslick flesh, but the creature didn't seem to notice as its searchlight stare swept out, weighing like lead even against the fire of her.

Little spark with borrowed magic.

"I don't have to listen to you," she hissed through gritted teeth, as she felt the chill of it press down, curling frozen claws into the sides of her awareness. "Sorry, Enderbabe, but we're gettin' out of here, right, whether you like it or not."

Brief candle. What will you do now?

Zoey tried to think and not think about so many things, at the same time. The rage was still burning, but she could feel it changing, spiralling tighter and tighter even as the corona faded back; but the star at her chest blazed ever brighter under her borrowed armour. She could feel it now, and a glance down confirmed it wasn't just her mind playing tricks on her.

Little crackles of thaumic discharge were starting to whirl across the surface of the suit, sparking motes of gold-edged crimson that bloomed over her heart and swarmed about each other like agitated wasps. Her star was shaking, insistent against her sternum, and the raw-magic sparks were spreading further, pulsing out across the scarlet plates and tracing half-seen patterns in the material of it.

She could feel it, as the odd metal seem to cling down more forcefully; the unfitted armour settled itself against her as she rose, backing up under the path of the shimmering beam that thundered out overhead and painted the advancing titan with brilliant shadows.

The dragon roared and Zoey screamed back, a wordless cry of anger and loss and defiance, all rolled into the scarlet burn of her now. Her hair was standing on end, rippling in the heat-haze of her own power, and she felt her shoulders hit the surface of the intact second pillar. The cold crystal light streamed out from above, casting strange reflections in her armour, even as the bright points within its crimson surface began to swell.

“Go away!” she yelled and the dragon reared back, bathed in violet lightning that cracked and danced between its outstretched wings, as it brought the obsidian blades of its claws down towards an unmoving, shouting target.

Then the Infernal armour detonated – and even that world went white.

-

Chapter Text

The shockwave rolled out across the plains like a judgment, a scouring scald that hammered burning echoes up against the surrounding mountains. Sips’ own heartbeat faltered as the sound and the impact hit him together, taking his balance and sending him stumbling – half-blinded – against the figure beside him. He couldn’t even find the breath to swear, barely managing to grab onto Sjin’s shoulder to steady himself as he tried to get a handle on what the hell had just happened.

There had been screaming. Rythian, screaming – and Sips couldn’t say with any kinda honesty that he much liked the bastard, but fuck, that’d sounded like a whole new sort of hell going down. He blinked, trying to get the after-ĺmages out of his vision, but the dragon was still roaring, still howling away like some fucking nightmare way out of anyone’s control, even over the ringing in his ears.

“ – wn there!” Sjin’s voice was higher than usual and he had gone sheet-white, staring wildly back across the mess of glowing rock and god-knows-what that made up the middle of the plain. Their earlier pathing between pillars had brought them out onto this wide outcrop, which jutted out like a shelf over the shoreline of shifting stone. It wasn’t that high, but was raised enough to mean that they were looking down onto the chaos. Or Sjin was, anyway – Sips’ eyes ached enough without staring into satan’s glowing anus for no good reason.

A much smaller explosion went off behind them, as Minty took out another of the advancing endermen. At least this close to the centre, the skinny bastards didn’t seem to be able to actually teleport around very well – so that brought their advantages down to weirdly-extending limbs, being half again as tall as even Sjin, and there being hundreds popping out all over the damn place.

“Could use your help here, boys!” the bartender snapped over her shoulder, scattering spent shells as she dodged back and ducked under another elongated grasp that snatched out at her. The Enderman received a neat boot in the crotch for its trouble, although that didn’t seem to bother it as much as Sips’ own sympathetic wince might have expected. He took advantage of the pause to aim, then fired, taking a line of laser-cut wounds out of the creature’s shoulder – enough to send it flickering away backwards with a pained screech.

Minty did something complicatedly-aerobatic as she swung up towards them in a blur of skirts and plate, and landed with her opened gun out across her knees. She glanced around as she reloaded, fingers moving with unconscious speed to slot more shells than seemed plausible into the weapon.

“Anyone see what that was? Other than trouble?” Her voice was tight, and Sips couldn’t help but fixate on the worried edge to her tones. He wasn’t used to Minty being worried; he really wasn’t.

“Rythian’s down. And – shit, I think Zoey just blew up.”

Saying it was worse, and Sips’ tried not to feel quite so sick as he saw the remaining colour drain out of Minty’s face. Her fingers faltered for a second, sending the final cartridge bouncing away down the short cliff, accompanied by a small curse.

“He’s down there.” Sjin’s words cut into the drawing moment of horror and Sips turned quickly, silently grateful for any excuse to distract himself. Sjin was right up on the edge of the shallow cliff now and craning forwards precariously, his hands cupped around his eyes like a child’s pretend binoculars.

“What?” Sips half-moved to pull him back, but Sjin was faster, one hand snaking out to catch onto Sips’ own arm with that surprisingly strength of his. He gestured sharply, urgently, down into the glowing mess.

“He’s down there. I – I can see him, right underneath the dragon.”

What kind of goddamn directions are ‘right under the dragon’?

Sips squinted, following the line of his friend’s arm – and there was something, dark against the bright mess. If you were really looking, it might have been person-shaped. It sure as hell wasn’t moving, although the broken ground roiled and bounced around it in eyeball-aching instability, and the huge lizard above was still flying in ever-decreasing, searching circles. Sips wasn’t sure whether to hope it was Rythian or not – because a sense of inexorable sliding, the memory of failing body and grip and the unrelenting interest of gravity and depth was back in his own mind, and nausea swirled up anew at the recall of it.

Another blast went off just behind them, and Minty was on her feet again, her armoured shoulders digging into Sips’ back as she steadied herself for another round. The creak and shriek of Ender voices was so damn loud now – and a quick glance over the armoured blonde head behind him just added more confirmation to the dread tightening in his gut.

We’re dead. We’re so fuckin’ dead.

“Bright ideas, anyone?” Minty muttered, through clenched teeth. “Because we’re running out of everything.”

He’d got nothing. Sips swung the laser over her head, lining up on the advancing wall of angular shapes, and tried not to look at the already half-empty charge bar on the weapon. How many rounds did he even have left?

“No-o…” Sjin replied, and there was a strange edge in his voice now. “But I’ve got a really stupid one.”

Sips whipped round again and saw the calculating twitches in Sjin’s face as he looked towards the distant limp shape, then back across the ever-shifting floor. Somewhere behind the moustache, his lips thinned – and Sips knew that look, even in his own thickening despair.

“Christ, Sjin, tell me you’re not – ”

“It’s just a jumping puzzle,” Sjin muttered. A hundred different fragments of expression crowded in across his face, as his fingers twitched down towards the glassy shape at his belt. Sips felt Minty stiffen against his back, and he could practically hear the same mirrored litany of thought, racing through both their minds.

“You crazy fucking bastard,” he growled, then tightened his grip on his gun and braced himself better against Minty’s tensed form, feeling her shoulder dip as she adjusted her own stance, and they both nodded. “We gotcha covered, ya sonovabitch.”

“Go,” Minty added, grimly punctuated with another round of lead-shot. Sjin grinned back at them – somewhat madly – as he scrambled over to the very edge of their precipice.

And jumped.

-

No-no-no no no...

He was running – and others too, next to him – but Lalna barely noticed. The scream slammed its repeated echoes up against his mind, scattering any attempts at coherent thought away into the howling void that seemed to have opened up inside his head.

He’d heard that scream before. In those last horrible seconds, a lifetime ago, just before Rythian’s desperate grip had failed entirely on the portal rim; before he had sunk so far into that slice of devouring darkness that even sound had died, choked out of severed lungs – temporarily, as he knew now, but that didn’t dilute the memory. In those final few heartbeats, when the mage had stared into Lalna’s own backed-away gaze, and broken down completely.

I watched my best friend die.

And it had sounded so much – so much - like that.

They had already been moving when it started, heading for the rising cloud of dust where the dragon’s breath had torn the land apart; propelled by the sheer lack of any other option as much as any idea of something they could actually do. There had been circuits under his fingers, his own attention half-diverted between the baseline worry and his more personal frustration that the suit still wasn’t behaving, and Lalna had a vague impression that Xephos shouted something.

But then the screaming began, and part of him tore apart in symphony to that sound.

Running now. There were cries around them, Ender-voices, angry and attacking and cut down viciously by axe or sword or laser – grazing a hit here and there, catching twisting fingers into armour-edges, but there were enough of their own group, just enough, to force the grasping darkness back. And then the whiteout; the brilliant burst of raw thaumic fire which hit all of Lalna’s senses like a volcanic fist, taking his balance along with his vision and sending him crashing to the ground. He could feel it, the burning spike of magical potential that powered the blast, and even the air around him seemed to boil for a moment.

Oh my god.

Zoey. Rythian’s erratic apprentice, so very different to him in all the ways that seemed to matter; the girl they had both underestimated utterly at one time or another. Half-cocked plans, cobbled-together technology, and working with such a slanted view of magic that, by any reasonable thaumic logic, the things she did should at best blow up in her face ninety percent of the time. She named things repeatedly Jim; she used unstable etharic components for interior design. She talked to mushrooms.

And she’d almost succeeded, in every way he had failed.

The taste of ash hallucinated its way down Lalna’s throat as he tried to pry himself upright – managing little more than rolling onto his back to stare up into the void of absent sky. His eyes burned, beyond even the magical-feedback of that blast, and the edge of a cry strangled itself in his throat.

I started this. We started this.

“...I don’t know what to do.”

He hadn’t intended to speak, but the words crept free anyway, spilling like cold blood from his lips. Admitting it to himself, in the private corners of his own mind, was one thing – but saying it was worse; the sickening black-bile chill of despair that twisted and writhed through his thoughts like something tormented. This place would be the last thing he would ever see, that any of them would ever see, and it was his fault.

“No one ever fuckin’ does, friend.”

Strong hands clamped onto his shoulders, hauling him abruptly upright, and Lalna let out a gasp at the suddenness of it, breaking into his moment of dark revere. Honeydew dropped him back onto his feet, and slammed one armoured hand into his shoulder hard enough to send a numb shock down his arm. The dwarf’s face was pale, but the eyes that gleamed out of those bristly features were diamond. “Take it from me.”

Lalna swayed slightly, and realised he was clutching hard at his own elbows.

“But I – I have to – I’m supposed to – “ he cut off as Honeydew snorted.

“Wing it.”

“...what?” Lalna stared down at him, curiously wrong-footed by the sheer bloody nonchalance of the statement. Honeydew shrugged. There were evaporating smears of darkness trailing off the edges of the dwarf’s axe, and he hefted the weapon grimly as he turned back towards the rest of the group.

“Wing it,” he repeated. “Just pull whatever y’got outa yer arse and go nuts. Amazing what y’can get away with when you’re dead no matter what y'do.” He grabbed Lalna’s arm again and tugged hard, yanking him out of his startled stupor, and they began to pace to the others.

Nothing had really changed, of course. His ears were still ringing from the explosion, the world was still a nightmare made solid around them, and he was still utterly, totally out of ideas. But the dwarf was right. He was right, and Lalna could feel laughter starting up, as he looked down at the circuits hanging from his chest. If he couldn’t get it to work properly – then maybe he could get it to work wrong.

Safeguards. Fuses. Operational parameters.

Fuck it all.

He’d run entirely out of things to lose.

-

The water balloon sailed into the air, incongruously-cheerful against the vicious monochrome of their surroundings. A sharp burst of laser fire cut through the rubbery shell and it exploded wetly, showering the Ender-horde with little fragments of blue and damp splatters that burned where they touched. Lomadia struck out and up, driving her sword through the distending jaw above her as the creature screamed – smoking from the moment of artificial rain – and flickered away in a cloud of fading smoke. A few metres away, Xephos loosed another round of fire from the neat pistol in one hand, and brought his sword around with the other, slicing a punctuating gash into his own opponent, before it too vanished.

Lomadia steadied herself, trying to ignore the dragging edge of exhaustion in her muscles, and sucked in a few deep breaths in the moment of balloon-born respite. A few seconds to think, to work out the most reasonable – hah – path to take; that was all she needed. Take more than that, and she could feel her thoughts already sinking down, echoing screams and explosions and -

Focus. She wasn’t ever entirely sure what the magic set were up to at the best of times, and right now? Whether it was better or worse than she could guess, there was literally no point in dwelling on the outcome. They had a plan – and it was still the only plan they had.

Focus on facts, known facts. There were two crystals left – one on the other side of the goddamn alarming mess of shifting floor in the centre, which there was absolutely no way of getting to; and one closer, between them and the still-smoking crater that the earlier dragonfire had torn into the landscape. The fact that it happened to be in that direction, over towards where the whiteout after-image was still fading from her vision, was…

Well. It was another fact.

Right. Right. As long as they could get closer; as long as the rippling disorganisation that seemed to have affected the Ender horde after Zo – after the explosion – continued; as long as the twisting, vicious shape of the dragon itself kept spiralling around over the maelstrom, searching or gloating or whatever; then they might -

She had heard the sound of repulsor-flight before. It wasn’t even that loud, but the technological whum-hiss of rejected air was unexpectedly distinctive. Lomadia swivelled round, mouth dropping open somewhere between surprise and a shout, in time to see Lalna’s armour-plated form shoot up into the empty sky, shedding after-image contrails.

“For fucks sake!” The shout burst free almost independent of her actual intent, and Lomadia had to bite down on the following string of obscenities that jostled against her tongue – because really? Now? Right now, Lalna chose to get his sodding super-hero suit airborne?

Perfect timing, you utter bloody lunatic.

There were more sounds behind her, more creaks and screams of Ender advance.

“Don’t you dare die!” she shouted, and heard Xephos snort off to one side, as she swung back towards the reforming fray.

Get to the crystal. Then worry about everything else.

-

Ow.

Right at that moment, that was the closest thing to a coherent thought that Zoey could pull together. Every inch of her felt strange, a half-imagined scalded feeling that prickled and stung through her skin, and her vision seemed to have vanished into a smear of smoky after-images.

What happened? Her own burning fury had peaked, sunburst-brilliant, and then she had felt the armour react. Felt the tracks within the metal open, her own magic pouring down new channels in a surge of raging incandescence. The armour wasn’t hers but it yielded to her – and then every pathway had tasted of fire.

Ow.

There was uneven pressure on her limbs now, as far as she could tell from the real-nerve impulses managing to get through the thaumic comedown. A few bits of her were being pinched at funny angles, even more sections seemed much lighter than they had been earlier, and there was a definite sharp pressure on her shoulders.

Sound. Sound, very nearby; a low, halting growl that she knew…?

Tee. Tee, and it was a grip on her shoulders and there was the rattle-slide of moving ground beneath her and oh gosh she really, really needed to be able to see now...

Her hand swung up automatically, grasping at her chest; she felt a few pieces of something break away under her touch, and then the lifestone’s shivering shape was smooth in her unexpectedly-bare fingers. She clutched it, pushing at her own confusion.

“...mm’oky,” she managed. A familiar silhouette arched for a moment across her slowly-clearing vision – snorted – and the dragging sensation intensified. Zoey tried to tilt her head further, feeling stone scrape at the back of her scalp – she had been wearing a helmet, she was sure she had – and another furious round of blinking brought enough clarity to see Tee’s scaled jaw bobbing overhead. She tried again.

“Am l’rite,” she mumbled, but the restoring clarity had reached the stage where recent events began to coalesce out of the scalded blur – and she remembered. Zoey sat bolt upright and Tee jerked back, his claws digging sharply into her shoulders before he lost his grip as she lurched further up, and a cry broke over her lips.

“Rythian!” She overbalanced immediately, but a thick arm swung in to steady her, and Ravs grunted slightly as he took her weight.

“Easy. We gotta – ” he started, but Zoey was in no mood to listen.

“Where’s Rythian?” the words raced free with their own urgency and she automatically clutched at the half-supporting, half-restraining arm; then she hesitated as Ravs winced, and looked down. The skin under her fingers was reddened, scattered across with scalded welts and tight curls of charred hair, and as she looked up again into the barman’s blunt features, she was sure he used to have more eyebrows.

“What -?”

Ravs didn’t reply, but his gaze flicked over her shoulder and Zoey turned, a few seconds ahead of her own whirling thoughts, to stare back down the path that Tee had been dragging her. They weren’t all that far from the edge of the maelstrom still, and there was a smoking crater gouged into the cliff. It glistened with strange glass at the edges, and she could just about make out fragments of still-glowing crimson scattered around the impact.

“...oh.”

That answered the helmet question. And the gloves question. All of the questions that she didn’t even care about one little bit, in fact.

“He ain’t come back up yet,” Ravs said, finally, and there was a tension in his voice that sent Zoey’s stomach lurching again. The last few minutes of recent memory were looping tighter and tighter around her thoughts, and she shook her head hard, trying to waggle some sense back into herself.

He’s not dead. He’s not. That – I mean – that would be ridiculous. Just – no. Nope, no, nope.

She looked up, through the dusty smoke that was still tracing strange patterns in the air, and her eyes narrowed as she focused on the circling shape of the dragon. It was visibly damaged; even from here, she could see the corkscrews of smoke rising from shiny, raw wounds that dripped oil-slick trails down the creature’s side, with tight patches of paler skin and scale scattered across the whole front of it – where her own augmented flames had cooked the monster’s skin.

Not enough, though. Her fingers twitched, shedding a few more of the final fragments of broken armour – cracked and crazed like broken tile where it even still clung to her – and Zoey bit down on her lip as she saw the dragon sweep around again and another beam of healing brightness lanced up from further along the centre’s rough perimeter

“She’s lookin’ for something,” Ravs muttered. “Else we’d be fried by now.”

“...okay. Okay. Right. So, we’ve – we’ve gotta – ” Zoey mumbled, half-to herself, trying to bully her thoughts back into line. The beam was still happening, still washing away the signs of her attack. There were Endermen coming – she could feel them, like a grating hiss at the top of her spine – but she could feel their alien uncertainty too, the disorientation that her explosive outburst had sent through their ranks. Just for now, and it wasn’t going to last, but they were confused.

“We can’t leave him,” she said, and stopped again, as Tee’s blunt head pressed firmly into her shoulder and the dinosaur gave a low, rumbling growl. Wet heat prickled at the sides of her eyes, and Zoey swallowed hard.

“We can’t…” she repeated again, softly – but that wasn’t true, was it? She hadn’t even properly seen him fall; wouldn’t even know where to start looking amongst the seething mess of half-solid light and jostling rock below. And he had a lifestone. Her fingers clutched back towards her own, feeling the little shiver of repairing magic just under her hand. How much could that hold off? He’d been here so long, and it – it had kept him alive this far.

Taking out the crystals. That was the plan – his plan – their plan. If… they could do that...

Pinned between decisions, Zoey was still trying to find words when the unexpected shape shot up like a flare, sudden-bright against the dark sky, and her breath caught in the swiftly-dashed moment of cold hope. She felt Her surprise too, as the erratically-hovering figure came to a swaying halt, dangerously close to the dragon’s gaping maw.

Lalna. Lalna, with his faceplate hanging half-open and his feverish grin visible even from here, in the over-clear vision of this place. Shorting and spitting repulsor pads flickered madly across the length of his armour and he bobbed oddly in the air, jerking from side to side like a cork in a river. He swung out an arm anyway, plasma glove gleaming with technological malevolence – but that wasn’t all that was there, now. Zoey caught glimpses of different metal, white against the rest of him and weird – and then a recognition not her own burst painfully-hard across her mind, and an answering roar of violated fury broke out above them.

Silvery metal, wreathed around with blue-green alchemical markings. Familiar - familiar from eyes that were not hers, as her awareness darted outwards again, snatching at the enraged realisation that danced down every webwork angle of this plane.

They had been fooled. The quicksilver fangs that had sunk into the skin between worlds, ripping a forced intrusion with shining, burning claws – threatening to bring it all here, that place of vicious amber light and burning rain. They had gone to tear it down – that defiling insult, that burning wound that dug deeper and deeper into the bedrock-bone and the living dark – but they had been fooled.

It was not the Thief. Not the Enderborn, bound and loathed and wanted all together. And not the new, the listening Fire, wreathed in crimson and such strangeness. Another.

It was you.

“Hello!” Lalna’s voice was manic, curls of laughter spilling either side of his words, as the light between his extended fingers began to swell rapidly. “Remember me?”

Plasma flared, brilliant blue like a ball of conjured sky, and he darted backwards as the point-blank blast hit home, tearing into the dragon’s burned jaw with a localised sunburst. The creature screamed and lunged forward, its patrolling circle forgotten as it missed Lalna’s already-weaving form by inches; he shot away, veering and wheeling like a drunken firework, and the nightmare-form plunged after him.

“Well, that’s one way t’get it’s attention,” Ravs muttered from behind her, his comment followed by a deliberate glug, and the clink of an emptied flask being tossed aside. Zoey realised her mouth was hanging open.

“Everyone’s got their own kind of crazy.” She looked back down at the melted crater of her landing again, and bit her lip. Lalna seemed to be heading – erratically – towards the other crystal, on the far side of the maelstrom. He was taking the dragon with him, so for now it was out of the beam.

We’re getting out of here We are.

Zoey set her jaw.

“Alright. We gotta take out that crystal.” Because if they didn’t, then this was all for nothing, and she wasn’t gonna let that happen. They broke into a run and her fingers tightened again, pressing against her rings.

I know you’re still there, Rythian. Just… just hang in, okay? Just a bit longer. We’re coming back; I promise.

-

It was difficult to breathe. Thin air cut and dragged against Lalna’s lungs as he swerved, his repulsors stopping and starting unpredictably as different circuits overheated, shut down and rebooted in no sensible order, dragging him this way and that with violent shifts in personal gravity. Any breath he did manage spilled out again almost instantly in the laughter; great wracking bursts of pulsing hysteria that sent aftershock-spirals twisting out through his mind.

This was a terrible idea. There was an incarnate nightmare snapping at his heels, roaring with the kind of sound that came with its own tectonics, thundering along just behind him and sending echoes of remembered agony down his back, where the restored muscles seemed to writhe under his skin in response to the noise. This was a terrible, terrible idea, and right now he felt more alive than he had for a long time.

This was where he always lived, really. Hurtling along, reckless, on the edge of oblivion – and as much as he might sometimes try and deny it, part of him would have things no other way. Let him plan. Let him worry, and prepare, and think things through in a thousand different ways, and sometimes just let that all blow away like smoke, until there was nothing but the knife-edge of frantic possibility, and his own laughter dancing like a fire in his chest.

It still meant that he had to aim though, and that was getting increasingly tricky. On the other hand, if he couldn’t predict his own trajectory with any reliability, the dragon certainly seemed to be having similar problems. The huge jaws smashed closed behind him again, accompanied by another strange-pitched shockwave that sent serrated chills prickling up through his legs. Lalna dipped down abruptly – half-planned, but fortuitous – as proximity kicked in and a fresh beam of spiralling brilliance shot out above him, seeking out the scorched wounds that scattered the creature’s body.

The spillover feel of the magic was unpleasant, snapping and prickling around him like iced static, but he gritted his teeth against the sense of it and focused on the light ahead. Closer – closer – closer and he veered again, corkscrewing away in the air with a few frantic kicks. He brought his power glove up and gritted his teeth as he took aim. Timing. It was all about timing.

Plasma flared, a tiny additional star that shot forward with lighting-acceleration – then elation and horror bloomed in the same moment, as Lalna realised he had aimed perfectly, and that he had absolutely no way of changing course.

Oh shit -

He threw up his arms, crossing them protectively across his face, as the crystal detonated and his world vanished in a searing, white-purple shockwave. Sharp pain flared in a dozen parts of him and a dozen more pinged with the tiny reflections of impact, fragments of shattered crystal bouncing off his armour and cutting into the weaker sections. Servos screamed, repulsors flickering madly, and by the time he managed to get past the after-images what there was to see was mostly ground, approaching fast.

Shit-shit shi-it!

His fingers scrambled at the suits controls – some of which had fallen off, or been sheared away entirely – as he frantically dumped energy from one failing sub-system to another, coaxing and cursing at his malfunctioning creation. He lurched in the air, slowing a bit but thrown into a dizzying spin, and swallowed nausea as he reached round, wrenching at the emergency overrides just behind his shoulders. That would fry most of the remaining circuits in less than a minute – but, on the bright side, he probably didn’t even have that long. There was a jolt, a series of high-pitched whines, and the repulsors finally all kicked back in.

Stone shot past far, far too close to his nose, then Lalna lurched upwards into a wild arc, taking the opportunity to kick a rearing Enderman in the face as he shot past. He swiveled, glancing back to see if the dragon was still following him, and felt a dart of satisfied surprise. The creature was spinning in the air, just over the empty spire of that last pillar, and it was howling in what looked like a weird facsimile of actual distress. Bits of crystal gleamed across the front of it, sunken into the already-damaged flesh, and there were strange sparks of fractal lightning dancing from one fragment to another.

Lalna’s eyes narrowed. One down. And that meant he had to drag the big bastard back over to where the others were, but maybe a concentrated attack could -

Then burning eyes focused back on him, and he felt the malevolent attention slam home. His heart skipped a beat, shaking in his frozen ribs as he willed himself to move, to break the mesmerising gaze as the creature’s ragged wings snapped open – seeming so very, very large, all of a sudden, and bore down on him again. He dodged, just, as blue spots swirled in front of his eyes and he tried to remember how lungs worked.

“Fuck off!” he gasped, pummeling at his own chest, and that seemed to break a bit of the spell, as he angled himself like a rocket and shot out back across the shifting stone beneath. The dragon didn’t so much turn as flow after him, elongating in all the wrong ways, and he had to dodge again, losing acceleration to height as he jerked upwards and a claw like an obsidian scythe cut through the just-vacated space beneath with horrible speed.

Not far. It wasn’t far, but as he covered the halfway point, passing over the eye of that void-buoyed whirlpool, his attention wavered. It was interesting, after all – and then it more than just that, and he blinked as he tracked his gaze back through the churning brilliance and towards the oncoming shoreline. There was something down there. Not quite at the cliff edge, and still shrouded in the glowing mists below, but there was definitely something there -

- as electronic warnings suddenly screamed in his ears; a technological banshee of injured mechanics, unleashed as the dragon’s grasping claws finally hit home. Lalna didn’t even have time to yell out properly as the blow dragged across the back of him, accompanied by a splintering, sheared-metal sound, and a third of his systems went instantly dead.

Conserved momentum kept him hurtling forwards anyway, boosted by the dying flickers from his flight systems. He cleared the edge, still a few feet above the ground, and managed to swivel enough in the air that the inevitable impact slammed home across his shoulders rather than his face. Still, the landing tore the breath from him, sending explosions of pain through his battered form as he skidded and bounced like a thrown doll, scattering fragments of stone as he cut a trail into the splintering rock beneath.

He felt the armour coming apart. It had taken enough of his momentum that the landing hadn’t just ripped him to bits, even if his vision was spinning and he seemed to be breathing dust and bloody flecks, but he heard the crunch and ping of torn sections coming free, felt the wrenches as plates tore away, dragging underlying webbing painfully tight until it broke. There was no respite when he finally slid to a halt, no time to pull his thoughts back together – as he felt something hit him in the side with a crunch, and a white-hot ball of pain burst into life where he was sure he should have had ribs.

There were no real shadows here, but Lalna’s imagination provided one nonetheless, looming down, as the shudder of nearby impacts bounced up through his spine. He looked up through the blurring, watering mess of his vision, and saw twin slashes of violet hell hanging over him. Pressure poured down with the sight, purple-edged darkness swelling and pooling at the side of his eyes – and even the laughter ran out.

When you’re fucked no matter what y’do...

“Oh yeah? Well, eat this,” Lalna gasped, with as much defiance as he could summon. He swung his power-glove up, tiny flicks of his battered fingers disengaging every remaining safety, sending each charging bar soaring well up past the red, as the whining-hum of the building bolt rose to a dancing, fevered pitch -

- and the dragon's jaws came down to meet him, sinking its oil-glass teeth through the remnants of his armour like it was little more thin ice. Before the reality hit home, before the raw-agony howl took his breath and his mind, all at once, he felt it. The horribly-easy crunch of failing metal; the spluttering discharge of unfinished plasma, crisping against his skin; and the snap-back, splintering echo under his flesh as those glistening fangs severed tendon and bone with equal ease, as though he was barely there at all.

Then his mangled arm tore away at the elbow, taking his coherence with it. The final flickers of failing electronics vanished down the dragon's throat and he could do nothing else but scream.

---

Chapter Text

"Concentrate your fire!"

It was even hard to yell here. Any sound that Xephos made seemed to be whipped away almost immediately, or subsumed under the constant grating-screech of Ender voices that swarmed around their little beachhead. Beside him, Tee was lining up another arrow, his pupils slit-narrow in concentration and gleaming in the flickering light, as another fireball bloomed above Zoey’s outstretched hand.

Behind the three of them, the rest of the group were spread out in a half-circle, keeping back the massing Ender by a combination of desperate melee combat, sheer luck, and the fact that they had all managed to get to this spit of white rock just ahead of their various pursuers. The last pillar speared skywards, jutting up out of another sickeningly-empty chasm that started far, far too close to Xephos’ boots. The crystal swirled above it, tauntingly-clear in the strange air, but in actual practise it was frustratingly far away, and bloody hard to hit.

Even if anyone had still had a working grapple, he wouldn’t hold much hope of them reaching out that far – and anyway, just the thought of it seemed to replace most of his insides with churning nausea. So they were left with this; this bizarre fairground sharp-shoot, where he tried to force his occasionally-blurring vision to focus on the target, Tee tried to get arrows to go that far, and a thankfully-alive Zoey aimed fireballs, with half her attention wrenched down into the glowing centre every time there was a more solid shift in the brilliance there.

All the while, the Ender were catching up. When they had all been spread out, the horde seemed to have difficulty picking targets to focus on, but there was no such problem now.

A yelp rang from behind him and Xephos swivelled, heart in his mouth, in time to see Ravs stumble back as the elongating-grip swept towards his face – then Lomadia’s sword swung out sharply, biting deep into the half-solid flesh, and the creature flickered away again with an injured shriek. Relief was treacherous mid-fight and Xephos bit down hard on the sudden surge of it. He caught Lomadia’s gaze as she helped Ravs back up – her cheeks flushed from exertion, but with iron in her eyes – and waved a vague gesture.

"You alright?”

To her left, Honeydew swung round in the pendulamic-horizontal way of a dwarf with an axe half his own size, and cut out the knees of the next lunging figure. It toppled, howling like shearing metal, and he finished the arc with a decapitating strike.

“We got this,” the dwarf grunted back as the defensive line reformed, and Nilesy hurled another corrosive balloon-splatter into the massing crowd. “You get that.”

"We’re trying!"

"Well then, try better!"

The mid-battle bickering was interrupted by another wave of horrible roaring, and Xephos’ teeth slammed together painfully as he tensed up. He tried to call back the grounding of a few short minutes ago, but it suddenly seemed a long way away and the pistol began to shake in his over-tight grip.

A hand closed on his arm, and he looked down into Zoey’s face. Her features were pinched-in, deep with exhaustion, but she set her jaw anyway as she held his gaze.

"Hang in, alright?" she said, quietly. Xephos swallowed, focusing on the feel of the touch – the slight shake to her fingers, even through his damaged armour; a tactile reminder that it wasn’t just him so offset by that sound – and managed to nod. Zoey flashed a short smile.

"We’re good. We’re okay," she muttered, half-to herself, as Tee gave a rumble further along the line. "We just gotta…" she stopped, blinked, and turned to stare sharply back along the maelstrom-shore. "Hey, heads up, we’ve got incoming – "

Xephos turned again, squinting, and caught a glimpse of more movement, skirting the chasm edges and rapidly getting closer. Two shapes, running hell-for-leather; he caught a glimpse of crimson light as one fired, shredding laser into the first figure that lay between them and Xephos’ own group. But there were a lot of the angular bodies in the way, even more behind, and he bit his lip.

We all get out.

"Covering fire, on my left," he shouted, waving a bit wildly with the pistol’s stubby barrel. "Make some room!"

Tee was notching a new arrow before his first target had even had time to fall. Zoey’s shots were less accurate but tended to explode violently on impact; between them and the advancing figures’ own lead-and-laser combination, they cut a path through the Ender. Not long afterwards Xephos was staggering under Sips’ weight as the stocky man half-collapsed against him. He was even greyer than usual, and panting heavily.

"Fucking – hell – " he managed, staggering free only to hunch over again, pressing the back of one hand to his mouth as he grimaced. "Goddamn, I’m – an old man – Minty. What the – kind of hell – barmaid sprints like – her ass is on fucking fire?"

"Bar-tender,” Minty corrected, briskly, but even she was holding her side and breathing hard. “And my ass is my concern.”

"Hey, where’s the Sjinster?" Nilesy craned round from his nervously-hovering position of occasional-artillery. The light tone did little to hide his worry, and ice sliced down Xephos’ spine as the words hit home. There were only two…

Sips spat loudly, but there was an edge of a smile underneath his scowl as he replied.

"Running about after magic-boy, down there." He jerked a thumb back towards the maelstrom. Zoey perked up, but she cut off as impact suddenly shuddered through the ground beneath them all. The monstrous shape of the dragon was all-too close again, landing further along the central edge, with wings sweeping great clouds of dust as it reared back.

Had Lalna lost its attention? He had certainly managed to draw the creature’s ire well enough earlier, even before he’d blown out the other crystal…

…oh no…

Horrible possibility unfurled around him, panic twisting up around his thoughts again and Xephos turned sharply, aiming back up his own extended arm, trying to get his eyes to focus again on the spinning crystal shape.

They had a plan. They didn’t have any other choice.

“Concentrate fire on the crystal!” he shouted. “While it’s distracted!”

He tried not to think what the distraction might be. Tried to push away the choking fingers of raw dread that clawed up his throat. Hold on, friend. Please hold on.

“’Concentrate our fire’?” Sips quoted back, grumbling as he straightened up. “What is this, some kinda – ?”

“Not now, Sips, for petes’ sake! Just shoot the damn thing!”

He couldn’t aim. The throbbing blur of threatening concussion was like a hammer against his mind, and he could feel desperate heat rising in his eyes – even before the scream rang out, and Xephos’ stomach plunged straight into the waiting Void.

Too late, hero. Always too late.

Memories swarmed as the scream echoed, bouncing back and forth inside his skull until everything seemed to ring with it – and then someone was pulling his arm down, firmly, and he blinked as Minty’s icy stare resolved out of the blur. She was saying something, very deliberately, and he struggled to hear it. She lifted the pistol from his numbed fingers and twisted it, popping open the grip to expose quite a lot of complicated wiring, and several mysterious parts that were glowing in worrying ways.

Honeydew’s gruff tones finally managed to pierce the ringing fog in his ears.

" – gotta go, before that mad bastard gets himself bloody eaten!”

Minty fiddled about under her sleeve, undoing straps, and detached one of her arm-guards – the one with the grapple, still attached – and set about wedging the pistol into the fastenings.

"Minty, what the hell – ?" Lomadia appeared at Xephos’ other side, sheet-white, as she caught hold on his elbow and tugged insistently. Minty shook her head, loose ringlets swinging, and jabbed viciously into the workings of the little laser.

"Improvising." She added another strap, shut the case and swivelled, sighting down the dislodged grapple for a moment before she fired. The rear hook snapped into the ground near her feet, as the fore line lanced out across empty space. There was a tense moment of waiting, Minty’s thinned lips the only visible sign of concern on her face, until the line went taut and she pressed the grapple motor control again. The little barrel shot away, much faster than it had before with only the pistol-payload and the bracer’s weight to propel up the line, and a small part of Xephos’ mind noticed that a rising-pitch whine – which had been happening beyond his panicking attention – vanished along with it.

"Just got to hope that thing’s as unstable as the schematic suggests," Minty muttered as she watched it go, and slung her satchel back onto her shoulder, the clink of its contents almost like punctuation. It was strangely reassuring. And then there were other noises, suddenly loud as Xephos’ focus poured back and he realised that the roaring had changed. The nightmare sound was still thundering down, yes, but it sounded almost confused now, behind the rest of its horrible harmonics. He turned, in the same moment that Lomadia’s elbow drove into his side and she gave a hiss of surprise.

"Xeph – they’ve stopped.”

She waved her sword back at the edge of the Ender-crowd, past where the rest of their group had hesitated, because the angular figures were just… stood there. Even the howls had faded, and each pair of harsh-bright eyes seemed smaller, somehow, half-lidded without the actual lid.

Xephos caught onto her other hand, infinitely glad of the sensation as she tightened her fingers against his own. Something had happened, and pretty much anything was better than where this had been headed.

"Let’s go," he said carefully, trying not to hope, as they started to run again.

-

There was no sleep here. No soothing escape into Morpheus silken embrace, no relief but the last. Here there was only light, and Void, and splintering stone that rocked and buckled against the unfathomable currents beneath. And a gaunt figure, crumpled against the ill-tempered ground like a broken shadow; dying, with a mind full of echoes.

Enderborn. We know you. We are you.

The lifestone vibrated against his chest, frantic magic curling down across the ragged wounds, but it was not enough to turn aside the damage from the clash of oil-glass fangs. Broken open, flesh and bone alike, sliced, splintered, while Her will tore through his insubstantial form like a blackened storm surge. She had pierced into even the twisting darkness that wove around the core of him – and ripped the Ender out.

Now we take it back.

It hurt. It hurt, and the physical agony had been only a part of it. The loss screamed out still, a personalised banshee-wail that raked across his eviscerated soul, where something that had become more a part of him than blood had torn away. That dark susurrus which had coiled and danced beneath his heart; which had saved and sacrificed him in equal measure so many times.

Gone.

Everything you are, we have allowed.

No. No, because there was something still here. Something – someone – here; yes, torn open, crumpled and bleeding and slipping, slipping as magic strained and snapped against the ravaged body in its charge, but there was something. He was something.

I – I am –

Not enough. Not enough, and he was dimly aware of the slow, inexorable downward slide of his own limp form; the stained, shivering ground beneath jostling against itself, inching him closer and closer to oblivion’s final grasp.

The lifestone’s shiver was slowing now – or he was, the distinction hardly mattered – and the shifting mess of brilliance that bled up around him swirled feverishly. Strange eddies rippled across his vision, half-seen shapes and twisting shadows that teased at his failing thoughts with the edge of waking dreams.  Perhaps… if he could see her, even like this, it might be enough. Scarlet and green and eyes like the last glimpse of far-away sky; but it was hard, it was so hard to make sense from it all, and there was so little of him left to try.

Let him see her. Just once – as the lifestone stuttered and stilled against his skin, as even the brightness began to dim – just one more time…

And for the briefest moment, the universe complied. Blue eyes opened above him, sudden and sharp; but they weren’t right, and some tiny flicker of remaining self, hunkered away at the back of his shredded mind, was almost angry. Even now, even right now, he couldn’t manage more appealing final hallucinations. It seemed unfair.

Then there were solid hands on his shoulders, skimming down across the mess of his chest; hesitant but determined. The image swam again, coming into better focus as it came even closer, and suddenly there were words there, filtering past the hiss of blood in his ears and the resonating echo of so many screams.

“- come on, you son of a gun – don’t tell me you’ve gone and given up now?”

Sjin?

It was entirely possible that, in that moment, he was just too surprised to die.

There was a faint pop, just on the edge of hearing, and then wiry fingers were gripping his chin, tilting his head back until his jaw lolled open.

“Bottoms-up, Rythian.” The grin around the worlds was audible, slotting into place like an edge of sonic smirk – and then there was glass against his lips, liquid fire surging down his throat, and it was swallow or choke or both as the potion’s unforgiving crimson unfurled inside him.

He had been a student of alchemy longer than he had been a mage, and he knew the methods very well. There were limits to what an individual concoction could achieve, dependent heavily on the skill of the brewer, and even he would have been hard-pressed to craft something that would restore his current condition. But it was not only potion-work at play here.

He was torn open, half-crushed and exhausted beyond measure, yes – but the lifestone knew him, had shaped and supported every fibre of him even before this abruptly-imposed exile. It knew what he should be, and now the over-stretched maintenance had something to use, boosted by sudden influx of alchemical force, as Sjin pulled the bottle away and upended the last of it directly into the worst wounds.

Magics surged, vying up against each other for a moment as the two very different thaumic signatures squared off, and then melded, so suddenly that it was like a hot shock that hit every inch of him at once. Direction began to pour from the lifestone’s now-blazing ruby, and started to drag him back together.

It wasn’t pleasant, by any measure. His flesh shivered and stretched, gone liquid at the edges to flow back across reforming muscle; sewn closed by the threads of reanimate blood that crawled back up his sides, taking up the echoes of a just-lost pulse. His heart slammed anew, shuddering back into a restored rhythm, chasing numbness from his limbs, and complicated sensation bloomed through nerves that sparked and screamed under new-tight skin.

There was a strange snap-crunch of re-aligning ribs, and he jerked violently as his chest spasmed, sucking in an agonising breath as he felt his lungs push back out, and a yelp finally broke free.

“Je-sus!”

“Nah, only me.” One of Sjin’s arms snaked around his shoulders, taking his weight before he could fall back again, and pulled him further upright, followed by an all-over symphony of raw aches. “Pretty rude, Rythian, giving everyone a fright like that.”

Rythian.

The tone was light, but he was shaking – Sjin, was shaking – and there was an odd edge to his words as he braced them both against the unstable stone below, hoisting Rythian up onto his feet. Being upright didn’t seem like a huge improvement. He could still feel parts of himself realigning, and even quite shallow breaths were accompanied by an unpleasant creaking from somewhere inside his much-maligned ribcage.

Sjin shifted position as the ground under them rocked violently, and sought Rythian’s gaze.

"How – how d’you feel?" he asked, not even trying to keep the weight of that question out of his voice. Rythian hesitated.

He felt…?

Hollow. Disorientated. Too small and too large, all at once, as though his skin didn’t fit anymore. The world seemed disjointed, bruised – the once so-close whispers that had bled into his own thoughts were muted, but there was something else there now; something that pressed up against his shaken awareness with a strange, distanced familiarity. Another echo, perhaps, but this one was…

"…different.“ That was the best he could do. Words didn’t fit well either. Sjin was still watching him, cautiously, and the grip on his shoulders tightened just a little at the reply.

"Good different, or bad different?" he asked, carefully, but Rythian just shrugged.

"Not that simple." He stopped again, because the reality of now was at last pressing back through the layered shock, with memory and urgency rushing back to meet him. It must have shown in his face because Sjin nodded and began to guide him onwards.

"We’re still in the game," he said, "Just gotta get you out of this hole, and –"

"Why?" The snap was sudden, nearly spat as it broke free, and Rythian jerked one hand upward – realising only as he did so that his fingers were still clamped in place around a sword hilt. Enderbane shimmered in the alien light, reflected patterns moving strangely on its surface and casting shifting copies of themselves onto Sjin’s face, but he didn’t blink.

"Why, Sjin? Why this – ?” Rythian repeated, teeth clenched at the ridiculous understatement of his very question; as if it came close to encompassing any of this. He was still alive, against every odd, standing in the heart of the End, and leaning on a man whose scars he still wore – who had once so easily laughed and smiled, and left him to bleed out into the ashes of his old world. “Why you?”

Sjin shrugged, and gave a nervous giggle.

"Well, fair’s fair, right? Reckon I owe you one by now." And then he hesitated, just for a moment, as his voice dropped and something very different ghosted past behind his eyes. “Guess I’m not so much with the… dying, thing, after all.”

Perhaps that should have meant something, should have explained – but before Rythian could make any sense out of the crypsis there was a distant rumble of explosion and the world contracted around him, the lattice-threads of power that underlay the thin air catching around his raw awareness like a cat’s cradle, and everything shifted.

"Holy –!" his curse cut off partway through, vanished into a sharp intake of breath as he saw it: a very familiar figure, dark against the highlight of still-burning plasma, crashing headlong through the centre of the crystal explosion. Then the vision broke, as the shockwave reached them even down here and Rythian lurched, blinking, and odd echoes of pain burst across his body.

Well, that was new.

He met Sjin’s gaze with unspoken understanding, and they started moving. It wasn’t easy going. The stone bucked and lurched violently with each step, pitching and tilting as if the ground was trying to shake them off. Too often Rythian found himself swaying on the edge of suddenly-opened chasms before being dragged back to stability by Sjin’s quick hands. Or it was him, yanking the architect aside as another thread of awareness snapped a warning, half-a-heartbeat ahead of plunging, underfoot stone.

It couldn’t have taken long, but it felt like a lifetime. Slipping, jumping and desperately trying to keep their footing, and when Sjin grabbed his arm, waving forwards at the shape of solid stone rising up ahead of them, Rythian nearly sagged. Almost there. Almost –

The sudden sweep of huge wings overhead was visible even through the brilliant fog, a black-violet silhouette against the Void, but it was the streak of erratically-careening silver just before it that snagged hardest on Rythian’s attention. Beside him, Sjin swore.

"Shit – oh shit, I think he’s going down!”

Rythian had started to run before he had really realised what he was doing. His heart pounded as he shook his free hand violently, snapping the fingers back and forth, seeking the feel of his own magic; pushing intent down splintered thaumic pathways and willing it to catch. The strange, threatening brilliance in the End’s heart obscured so much, dragging against him as much now as it had when he’d fallen, but the fog was thinning, the pressure fading a little as he neared the maelstrom edge. He cleared another wavering chasm and the footing vanished under him – but he didn’t drop, skimming like a hurled stone as gravity’s grip began to fail against the electric-shiver of the Gale at his fingers.

He leapt – and an echo of horrible triumph poured across his thoughts, his jaw spasming and clashing as intention not his own fizzed across his nerves – and the magic caught.

Rythian tried not to gag as he shot upwards, and echoes of heat and metal and blood spilled down his throat. His own etharic corona blazed into life around him as he burst out of the shrouding mists, into the endless midnight above. The End swept out on all sides, and the razor air was full of screaming.

Oh god, no.

He knew that sound. How long had he dreamed of it, in the private darkness of his own rage? As he had turned the promise of it over and over, until his heart ached with black desire, and potential inched towards possibility of retaliation; retribution.

Revenge.

He hated him. Had made a life out of hating him, when he had had nothing else to hold onto, nothing else to ground himself in a world so changed. Now, as the Queen reared back, her wings sweeping out either side like a final exclamation, and her sinuous neck arched for another lunge down to the broken shape between her claws, he knew – knew, right in the tatters of his soul – that this was it. This was what he had wanted.

Perhaps a part of him still did; but nowhere near enough.

Enderbane’s crystal shrieked against the air as he shot forwards, the flight ring already burning on his finger and his teeth gritted in anticipation of the pain. The Queen was focused on her target and Rythian cleared the space with desperate speed, to swing down hard across the brow of one blazing eye.

Several things happened at once. The Queen roared, an injured howl of rage and surprise that seemed to mound up behind him in its own shockwave as she launched upwards, wings shredding the air – but it was secondary to the pain that exploded in his own face: a sharp, sudden agony that cut down his forehead, taking his focus and his breath. Shock sent him plunging, the half-controlled magic at his fingers catching erratically, and he landed with a jolt that shook his bones. Enderbane slid from his aching fingers as he reached up, gripping his forehead hard, and the split skin burned under his touch.

What the hell?

No time. He lurched half-upright, still hunched under the rising roar and tornado of wingbeats, and staggered over towards the other fallen figure. Lalna’s scream had died but he was gasping horribly now, crumpled and twisted back against the slick of glistening crimson that had already formed underneath him. Rythian dropped down and tried not to be sick as he stared dumbly at the ragged stump of the scientist’s right arm, trying to force his exhausted brain to see anything familiar in the mess.

He’d never been a healer. He had nothing like that to use, not even potions, and the lifestone seemed to hum warningly even as his thoughts grazed it. Not this time. Lalna’s eyes were wide, rolling, and his intact hand grasped frantically at nothing as he gave a strangled whimper. There was no sleep here; no unconsciousness, no relief, and there was no more time. Rythian gritted his teeth and reached out before his nerve could fade.

“Good thing you already hate me,” he muttered and incandescence bloomed between his fingers as he set power into the other ring, and gripped down hard. Lalna howled, fresh agony twisting his already-battered features into dreadful parody, thrashing against the cauterising grasp as the harsh scent of burning meat filled the air. Rythian forced him down, as best he could with his own stretched-thin form, and tried not to breathe.

“Stay still,” he snarled, his voice cracking around the words as Lalna convulsed under his hands and bile surged in his throat. “You don’t get to die like this. Not now.”

After a few dreadfully-eternal seconds, he let go and looked up quickly, as much for lookout as not to have to see the blackened result of his handiwork, but the Queen was still wheeling above them, swinging her jaws back and forth as if trying to dislodge something. There was confusion in the sound – and anger – and he could feel that, the mirror of it, echoing back through his own mind as the realisation dawned.

She had ripped him open, torn away the alien darkness that bound his heart as easily as she had taken Lalna’s arm. But that blackened whisper had been a part of him for years. Deeper than blood, invaded then invited, welcomed in his darkest moments and frantically denied in others, but a part of him nonetheless. It might never have been wholly his own, but it wasn’t hers either, and Rythian clutched up at his forehead again, feeling the reflected wound throb beneath his fingers.

You’ve been in my head for years. But now I’m in yours, aren’t I?

"…Ryth-ian…"

There was a grazing pressure against his side and Rythian automatically batted at Lalna’s weak grasp, his attention still fixed on the circling nightmare overhead.

"Shut up," he snapped, but there was no rancour in it now. Lalna grunted and made another grab for him, succeeding in getting hold of the trailing edge of his dislodged mask, and Rythian growled as it came away completely. He swung back round, habit stooping him over as he snatched for the falling fabric – and the scientist’s remaining hand was suddenly clasped against the back of his head, tangling fingers into his hair as he dragged Rythian down with surprising force, to press his bloody forehead against his own. Lalna’s pale stare was unfocused with pain, even this close, and he shuddered violently as he took another laboured breath.

“I – am – sorry,” he gasped, a weird, wild desperation dancing just ahead of the agony on his face as the impossible words halted free. “And that – will never – be enough.”

The words were like a brand, searing shock-sudden across his spiralling thoughts, and Rythian felt his own fingers grip just a little tighter against the stained stone beneath. The world seemed paused, crystalline in a frozen heartbeat, as a thousand fragments of history broke apart around the pair of them like sharded rain.

We started this. Both of us.

“Stay down,” he managed. “Just… stay down, alright?”

Lalna looked like he might have wanted to say something else, but it came out as a hacking cough, tinged with red, and he slumped back. Rythian rocked onto his heels and stood up. There was a weird calm spreading out across his thoughts, and he didn’t even blink when Enderbane’s hilt appeared in front of him. Sjin’s gaze flickered away from the proffered weapon – first down to Lalna’s mutilated figure, then up to Rythian’s bare face – and his lips twitched into something like a smile. It was a strange expression, only getting stranger as he laughed softly.

"So, we’re pretty much screwed,"

Rythian took the blade and shrugged a reply. Above them, a fresh roar thundered out as the Queen swung round, shredding the air with furious wingbeats – and she was the sky now, Void and violet and vengeance, whatever shock she had felt at Rythian’s connected blow shaken off. He tightened his grip on the sword and the blade shivered in hungry anticipation.

"Going out easy, then?" Sjin continued. One of his eyebrows arched as he winked and brought his laser up, the red glow of the weapon’s charge only adding to the imp-grin spreading across his face. Rythian snorted.

"Like hell we are."

Alright. Time to see if he was dead right about this; or simply dead. He took as long a breath as he could manage – trying to ignore the sparks of half-finished healing still sharp in his chest – and released it as he swung his awareness out, spreading away from his body in time to the exhalation. Opened himself – again, anew – and felt the power of this place pressing in around him, webwork leys of icy darkness that cut the air like razored wire; felt the strange connections that wove between it all; the constant, blackened whispering of Ender that had transfixed and terrified him in balance since he had first heard them.

He could feel Her, high above. The Queen, the nexus, the pivot-point around which this place turned, and he could feel what lay beyond that, what bled up from the churning heart of unquiet stone, wreathed in a brilliance beyond light. He’d had no idea – neither of them had – back then, of what it was they were playing with, and he knew, even more keenly, that he had only the barest understanding now. Yet he had to try.

He could feel Their attention on him, even as his lungs started to burn, somewhere back with the battered physicality of him. This was very old magic, breath and blood, and he would only get one chance.

I am Rythian

And I am sorry.

They were listening. Whether it was curiosity, or contempt, or something else, it didn’t matter, because they were listening. The collected attention of this place, focused down on him through those blazing violet eyes overhead – and Rythian opened his own, like tiny, twinned mirrors of that burning gaze, and stared into the fragment of himself that now looked back.

He took the chance.

"STOP."

-

It was Rythian’s voice; and yet not him. It was barely a word, and certainly not a true sound, but a burst of Intent that rang out like a shout nonetheless, swept from his throat with the last of his breath. It echoed out just as suddenly from that stolen shard of self; taken back and taken in, torn free in a moment of assimilating rage, and settled into the heart of the End like a splinter – and for a moment the sharpened threads of the world sang with it. A sudden calm, a second of pause to the roiling black fury that pulsed out across the empty skies.

But it was only one breath. Small, and mortal, and little more than desperate hope.

And it would never be enough.

—-

Chapter Text

Every end has a beginning, although the first seed of it may be small. Some here had begun in falling, in shock, and sunlight and the loss of all else. Some began in wandering, born from the twist and twine of chance encounters, and the search for adventure or for home. Still others had had their start in darkness; in fire, and sacrifice, and choices made unrepentant.

Every end has a beginning, and the knotwork path of history has so many leading to this present – but right now the one that mattered was the tiny, erratic flash of a warning light, strobing in electronic desperation against the obsidian beside it. The overloading laser was still held in a grapple's grip, pressed up tight against the edge of the final pillar, and its straining countdown had just run out of time.[[MORE]]

The explosion wasn't huge, but it didn't have to be; not now, not with so much of the Ender-focus on that last crystal spire, already shaking with the strain. Detonation was a thunderclap,an eruption of broken powerthat cut across the fractal-weave of magic here, as that last nexus failed and the severed force of it all slammed back against itself.

With one sound, the Endermen screamed. They had been frozen, still and silent in the moment of invasive command that had rippled outwards, part suggestion, part plea, spilling up from the misplaced figure who stood in their centre; the prodigal thief so strangely tangled with the heart of this place. Hesitant, waiting – but now the split-open agony of shattered magic cut out across each connected mind.

And the towers began to fall.

-

Rythian’s knees hit the ground hard, rattling a twin-impact crack all the way up to his spine, but he barely noticed. He had been too open, his displaced awareness stretched too thin, and the howling black storm of the Queen’s will crushed down around him. Too far, too much, because it – he – his tiny tattered spark of soul, set against the alien brilliance of this place – could never be enough.

And then the shattering, screaming impact of the final crystal-fail tore into Them all, and there was nowhere to hide. He felt it; felt it with his own skin and the half-solid hide above, as slivers of embedded crystal there burst into reverberating agony, cutting into the oilslick flesh and biting even deeper with shrill feedback. It wasn’t his skin, but even the echo was razor at the edges, and he felt his own surface giving way again under the sharpened reflection. The Queen screamed, a sound like ripping iron, and Rythian’s own nerves shrieked as the broken power sparked and earthed across Her body.

The towers were falling, listing in their cradling chasms as the Void's hungry gravity stretched upwards, dragging against the splintering web of magic that wove around each listing spire. Unseen fissures crackled out behind the air, sending waves of discordant howling through the shifting, panicking Ender as the first tower teetered on its axis, caught between whatever wounded power had held it up and the plunge of raw inevitability below.

And failed. Debris burst skyward as the toppled monolith slammed down, hurling up slabs of stone that broke apart like chipped wood. The Queen howled as the resultant shockwave rolled out, battering and buffeting, and tore into Her already-smoking wings. The second tower followed in moments and this time even the dragon's movements faltered, lurching drunkenly against the sky, spiralling and sinking as the pillar fell. He could feel it, every impact, every snap and shatter of stone, and his – her – wings were bleeding, shaking, unable to maintain even that enhanced lift, and they landed hard even as the third tower tilted towards oblivion.

The maelstrom stone was uneasy under her – his – claws, shifting and buckling over the brilliance beneath, but they could brace here, in the heart of it, bleeding and torn and so very, very angry. They – She – no, no, it was him, him here as well. There was rock under his fingers too, and other sounds around him, but it was so hard to hold onto the sense of that, to find his own wavering self in the roiling tempest of it all, and he was just echoes and fragments and drowning in the storm.

I – am Rythian. I – I am…

The words swirled, unfocused across his fraying mind, but he needed – he needed –

Warmth. Warmth against his freezing skin; hot and human and there, a scarlet burn against the black-ice world, and he clung for the sense of it. Something. Something real, and here, and repeating back his name as it spilled from his own numb lips.

"Rythian – Rythian c'mon, look at me; look at me, alright?"

The voice. Her voice; tight and worried, and so familiar it was like coming home.

"– Zoey –" he managed, choking on the name – because his lungs were empty, his heart was drumming a staccato-beat in his chest, and the feel of his own body – his own edges, his own shaking limbs – slammed back hard as his awareness finally drew together.

Everything hurt – again – and there was a pervasive smell of burning hair, but at least he seemed to be mostly back in his own head. Zoey made an odd noise, somewhere between a sob and a grumble, and Rythian realised her arms were wrapped around him, taking a good amount of weight from his slumped crouch – and despite everything else, he felt his cheeks colour slightly.

'I'm okay' - he started to say, but the enormity of the lie caught in his throat and he shook his head, patting awkwardly at Zoey’s sides in muted assurance. She moved back, staring at him as she helped him up, and he tried to get a rapid grip on the new situation. The slightly-bloodstained area of rock around them was suddenly rather crowded.

Tee was hunkered down nearby, tail braced hard against the ground, with an arrow already notched as he swept from side to side, keeping as wide a field of shot as he could. Ravs was visible just beyond him, saying something to Nilesy, who had his bucket wedged onto his head in a rudimentary replacement helmet. Lomadia was stalking back and forth, flanked by Honeydew's stocky shape, their weapons drawn, and everyone else was either spread out in a defensive crowd, or part of the little group clustered around Lalna.

And there was Zoey. Right there, staring at him with unguarded relief.

“I thought – I mean, I didn't know –” she reached out again, hesitantly now the immediate urgency had gone, her fingertips trailing through the air just above his arm. "You're okay..."

The word was a spear, breaking apart the warm moment of reunion like thin glass, and Rythian’s stomach lurched violently. He was so suddenly very, very aware of the burn of severed flesh against his hairline, and the ongoing echoes of distress and fury not his own that were hammering against the so-thin wall of his thoughts.

"I'm not," he managed, with the admittance catching in his throat. "I'm –”

Too late, he registered the sound of electronic warm-up, the edge-of-hearing whine that accompanied a beam-weapon setting change. He looked up just in time to see Sjin and Sips – broken back apart and standing shoulder-to-shoulder – with their guns raised and the tail-end of some half-gibberish bravado on their lips.

"Wait -!" he started, but not fast enough. Paired blasts of crimson shot out, lancing through the fog and churned dust at centre of the maelstrom, aimed at the shape still within, still tangled in the convulsing web of injured power. The unearthly miasma whirled unpleasantly as the Queen’s movements tore at the air, but She would have been a difficult target to miss blindfolded at this point, so the shots hit home and an answer in hot pain burst across Rythian’s right thigh. His warning shout turned into a cry and he grasped down at the two strips of sudden agony that scored themselves into his skin.

"Rythian!" Zoey darted forward, catching his shoulders as he stumbled, his leg spasming with reflected pain before the lifestone could focus. He slumped against her, panting, and gritted his teeth.

“The Queen," he muttered, trying to find the right words. "She did something – took my – ” he stopped, and pressed a hand to his forehead. "I'm... linked. To her. I can feel it, different to before. When she's – hurt, I get – I – "

"It hurts you too?" Zoey asked, with more understanding than question in her voice, and she was wheeling round to shout back at the rest of the group almost before he had managed to nod. "Hey! Stop firing – Rythian's getting hit too! "

A general puzzled exclamation rose, and the second salvo was halved; Sips dropped his aim abruptly, accompanied by an inventive curse, but Sjin was slower and a few bright bolts sprayed out again before he swung the weapon aside. His mouthed ‘oops’ was almost believable and Rythian bit down on a hiss as another scalded wound bloomed, this time along his bicep. The pain was… less this time, somehow, but he barely had time to dwell on that as Zoey gave a yelp of shock and snatched back her hands from his shoulder.

She wasn’t wearing armour anymore, and a sudden scarlet line was burned right across the angular tattoos that crept down from under her tattered sleeve. Rythian stared dumbly at the wound then back at his own, perfectly matched, injury.

That’s…. that’s not possible…?

Zoey’s fingers tightened around the scorch, which was already fading under her own lifestone’s attentions, and looked back towards the Queen’s indistinct form.

“You can… share it?”

She had gone even paler, but there was a realisation in her eyes, racing into place before his own had finished reeling. Rythian blinked.

“What?”

“Share it,” she repeated, gesturing in a sharp motion that sailed above the bloody bandages on his arms, to finish in a hover at his forehead. Her eyes met his, bright and bedrock-determined, and she jerked her head back at the maelstrom.

“This place, it’s all one thing, you said? The whole of them, all of them, all against us? Well then they’re not doing it alone. Not ever, y’know?” She shifted a little. “And – and we said. We promised. One for all, right, that’s just how it is.”

“Zoey, I can’t – ”

“We are getting out,” she said firmly, and there was only a slight shake to her voice as she continued. “Not – not you, then us. Everyone. Same time, same way, same deal.”

“Oi! Team wizard!” Honeydew's shout barged into the exchange with a typical lack of subtlety. The dwarf waved his axe back at them, shedding fading motes of Ender from whichever of the randomly-flickering figures had got within range. "Whatever yer yapping about, get a bloody move on!"

"Just… wait, okay?" Zoey insisted as she darted away, grabbing at Nilesy's arm to pull him closer as she started to speak frantically. Rythian tried to work out what she was saying, but he couldn't persuade his brain to focus on something as mundane as eavesdropping.

There was a... pressure building up again, something rising and furious and stretching out tighter and tighter, as the persistent echoes of his strange shout finally began to die away. He could feel the Ender, flickering erratically across the landscape, disorientated and enraged. Their collected attention had been split by the feedback chaos of the breaking crystals, dragged and snagged like hooks in twine, but it wouldn’t be long before they got some sort of coherence back.

Think, Rythian.

He could still feel the Queen, of course, the strange ghost-echoes of her movements mapping bizarrely against his own body. He could feel the places where shattered crystals had bitten into the substance of her, crackling their damaged power out into the surrounding half-flesh, gouts of injured smoke rising everywhere they touched. She was down, and She was hurt, and he tried to draw some confidence from that. Maybe, just maybe…

I can get myself killed in a really dramatic way?

Great.

He stooped down, reaching for the fallen shape of Enderbane for whatever masochistic comfort the weapon would bring. As his fingertips grazed its hilt, for a second – just a second – the embedded sister-shards sang out, an alien pitch that was all angles and sharpness, and so much worse than even the crushed-glass scream that he felt in his bones whenever that damned blade bit home. Rythian froze, and it was as if his own history was suddenly crowded in around him. all fragments and flickers like images in a broken mirror, but so similar at their heart.

He remembered teeth in his chest, and the blacked-out horror of that monstrous will ripping his mind apart. Felt the tremble behind Sjin's steadying hands, the still-sticky catch of Lalna's blood against his own fingers, and the macabre echo-taste of it still on his tongue. Saw Zoey's upturned face, vanishing in a brilliant impact of fractal-fire, and the memories skipped, further back, until it was the torn-rubber screech of Ender movement, hidden to every eye but his; when he had plunged out of the shredded sky, frantic, towards that little pool of light atop the castle, heart in his throat and Enderbane screaming in his grip, as old nightmares made themselves newly real.

He remembered all the fear, and where it really started.

There was another crash, more distant, and Rythian looked up as the Queen reared again, massive against the sky. Her shaking wings swung open, spilling smoke and violet fractals, and their gazes locked. He could hear the echo, the mirror of what might have been thought in that alien mind – flickers of curiosity, indignant pain and loss, and a deep, malevolent rage. Her eyes were an inferno as She rose, a little unsteadily at first, and began to thunder forward.

Rythian tightened his fingers against Enderbane's hilt, shifting his weight, and magic started to catch and snap around him, bleeding out of the star at his chest, his rings shivering back into life. He could feel the lifestone straining, anticipating, as he stared unblinking into the white-purple fury of the dragon's oncoming gaze, and was strangely calm.

I feared I was you. Every day, since the first time, I looked into myself and didn’t know what I was even seeing.

Now I know. I’m still here. I might be tainted; I might be scarred; and I might ever be Enderborn.

But I am Rythian. And that's enough.

The Queen was so close now that the ground shook with clawed footfalls as she surged up over the edge of the maelstrom, shedding smoke and trails of unreal brightness. Her mouth yawned open, lightning crackling between the teeth, a black incandescence blooming in that cavernous throat – as a hand closed on Rythian's shoulder, and suddenly there was more than his own magic in the air.

Emerald and firelight, twisting up like a flare as his extra senses jolted in synaesthetic exclamation – but still more beyond that, strung out behind him like a chain of sudden lights, burning against the Void. Steel, and earth, and the shriek of wings in clear sky; shadow and tide and aching starlight, and a hundred other fragments of strange-translation sensation that whirled across his awareness as the chain lit up, anchored to his own battered etheric aura by that point of contact.

We all get out.

There was shouting behind him; instructions, timings, all unimportant to his own personal universe, which had narrowed down to the onrushing form, the shake and crack of stone beneath his feet, and the weird dozen-way heartbeat pulsing undercurrents in his mind. Laser cut the air again, accompanied by the deeper boom of more conventional firearms. He felt the echoed impacts – lines of pain across his face, against his sides – but they were quickly swept away, poured back down the open thaumic channel, divided and distributed, muted amongst the pooled connection there.

Again – again – again – and the ground was shuddering, leaping under his swaying balance, the sound and the pressure and everything hammering down around him, crushing the air from his lungs, black ice racing down his veins. Enderbane was screaming in his fingers; a discordant, terrible harmony turned back on itself, twisted by his own blood as much as he had been by Theirs, and the embedded shards shivered to the tune as the Queen was there – all shifting darkness and sharpened angles and the roar as She filled the world, side-to-side in all entirety and there was no space even to strike.

Sudden firelight bloomed, a match in the darkness that swelled into coiled inferno. The heat of it washed back across Rythian's face – from both actual proximity, and feedback-sense as the thaumic meteor slammed into the Queen's snout – but there was the twinned swirl of Ignition's ruby heart and the phoenix-burn of Zoey's own magic, curled around him like a shield, and the seething impact didn't catch them. The Queen's jaw jerked aside – just a little, just enough – as the blaze hit home and Rythian lunged, with everything he had left and everything he could borrow, and a little more than even that.

Enderbane was a slice of white-out brilliance against the scales above, the shard-edge of chance and choice and tangled fate, and it plunged into the dragon's chest with a scream that crackled like sheared lightning. Raw agony exploded in Rythian's own ribs, shock and spasm loosing his grip as he went rigid, split-empty lungs contracting violently around the too-solid ghost of a blade. He could feel the distress behind him as the backwash of impact swept down the chain, as connections faltered and slipped, and he heard Zoey give a horrible wet gasp, the rattle of lungs too empty even for a scream.

But she held on. Even as Rythian crumpled backwards, each edge of breath a serrated agony and with metallic dampness rising on his lips. Even as the dragon twisted above them, contorting back at an angle that had no place in reasonable geometry, with the blazing-bright hilt of the sword like a star against Her midnight scales. The scream hadn’t stopped, hadn't slowed, and if anything it was getting louder, reverberating up through the shaking stone beneath as if it were rising with the very light of this place. Fractal lightning pulsed between the embedded fragments of crystal, but whenever a line crossed Enderbane the lightning seemed to freeze in place, held bizarrely solid against the smoking flesh beneath. More, and more, until there was a crackling cage of hard brightness wrapped around that massive chest, loosing darts of it up the unfurled wings, to even the tips of those jet-shard claws, spilling more smoke everywhere they touched.

The dragon howled. One huge wing jerked and swung downwards in violent spasm, slamming into the churning heart of the maelstrom. A plume of boulders and brilliance fountained upwards at the impact, raining down to pin the wing and the dragon's roar took on a different pitch – and then there was a new strain running through the huge form, as the frozen lightning bit down and the trapped wing spasmed, twisted at angles unpleasant even by Her standards. Her tail whipped round, shedding smoky blood and tearing new gouges into the rock beneath, as there was a shift in the underlying chaos, and one of her legs broke down through the stone below. New chasms radiated outwards as she scrabbled for footing, trying to get purchase on the breaking ground.

" – uggers are legging it!"

The sound of a human voice seemed terrifyingly mundane and Rythian blinked as he suddenly found other hands under his shoulders, hauling him painfully upright and swinging him away from the scene. His head lolled, his vision blurring, but even he could see the widening area of open plains, as the massed Ender flowed erratically away, a distinct pattern of panic carved into their movements. Zoey's grip finally dislodged, but he could still feel the press of the connection, the chain of bright motes blurred and fading but still present, as someone pulled his arm over their shoulder.

It was Sjin, again, breathing heavily and with his spare hand pressed to his chest. He looked pale, and nodded grimly at someone outside of his eyeline.

"Time to blow this popsicle stand," he said, and Rythian sagged against him. He tried to speak, but there was no breath to use, and he was starting to have trouble remembering where his limbs actually were. There was another thud of bootfall, another grip on the other side of him, and a rasping rumble in his other ear.

“Buck it up, magical-Mary,” Sips snapped, as he added his own shoulder into the stumbling tableau. “I’m fucked if I’m having ‘died from friendship-chain voodoo’ on my goddamn gravestone.”

They started forward, unsteady on the shaking ground, with Rythian hanging between them, deadweight. He wanted to focus, wanted to say or do something, but there was nothing in his chest but an ice-burn furnace of pain, and he couldn't even feel his hands anymore.

The roar was a shriek now, high and sharp and horrible. Both his lifting escorts were maintaining a low, constant litany of cursing and it blended strangely with the Queen’s distress – although even that was starting to fade now. Everything was dulling, dimming around him, his vision blurring in and out of focus.

And it was going dark.

-

It was going dark. Lomadia had been trying not to notice, as the group lurched across the plain, heading back towards that ragged peak that she hoped – really hoped – still housed their tavern-transport. She had marked the path as clearly as she could, so if they could just find it…

And if it works.

She cut the thought, because it wouldn’t help, and focused on staying upright, gripping onto the arm slung across her shoulder. Zoey wasn’t especially heavy and was managing most of a stumbling gait, even if she was sheet-white and sounded like she was trying to breathe through a throat full of wet gravel. She kept clutching her free hand to her chest, and every time she did the pounding ache in Lomadia’s own sternum seemed to rank up in sympathy. She wasn’t entirely sure what had happened back there, during that fever-dream moment of pain and bizarre echoes – but Rythian was at least still twitching, the dragon wasn’t flying around anymore, and something back in the mess behind them was definitely escalating.

And she felt like she'd been hit by a sodding train, but there was always something.

As if in commentary to her thoughts, an earth-shaking crack broke the thin air and Lomadia risked a glance backwards, just in time to rapidly wish she hadn’t. A second plume of off-bright fog had jetted up from the central chaos, and at this distance it was clear that not all of it was falling back again. Huge trails of brilliance twisted further and further skyward, moving at strange angles as if the mists were spiraling up through an unseen, crumpled helix.

The indistinct shape of the dragon was still visible, thrashing about in the middle of it all like a wounded thing – good lord let it be a wounded thing now – and the thundering howl of rage lashed into the back of her as she turned away, rising half-real slashes of translated pain against her skin.

Zoey muttered something, half-muffled by the shoulder of Lomadia's battered armour, and tightened her grip a little. Lomadia's frown deepened.

"What?"

" – c'n see – " the redhead managed, and gestured weakly forwards. Lomadia followed the motion, and nearly bit through her tongue. The horizon – that personal-perception layer of tar-thick nothing that had become weirdly familiar – was drawing in, running down the distant slopes of broken-slab mountains, now less a wall than a falling torrent. Lomadia glanced down even as the first wisps of darkness began to swirl around her boots, moving like ink in water, rising and thickening even as she watched.

"Oh fucking hell," she snapped, sharp with exasperation – because it was that or terror, and she was long out of patience with this bloody dimension. "It's doing the shadow nonsense thing again, watch out!"

This shouldn’t be familiar. Lomadia's teeth ground together painfully hard as she orientated herself as best she could, trying to make sure she was pointed in precisely the right direction for when that lot hit. Darkness like a soup of blacked-out nightmares, flowing down across the landscape in a wall-wave of disorientating, malevolent midnight – in what kind of reasonable reality was that a thing you could recognise?

It was moving fast, ankle-deep around them now, and she saw others in the group bracing themselves. Shallow rivers of flowing shadow merged and melded together across the plain, rising seamlessly around rocky outcrops as if the Void were bleeding up from below, taking everything it touched into liquid oblivion. Lomadia tried not to look down, at where it looked for all the world like she had just abruptly stopped at the shins. Her toes curled a little, tight against the inside of her boots, as she reminded herself that she could still feel them.

The mountain was barely visible anymore, sunken back through the advancing, erasing surface, and it hardly seemed any closer. Another tectonic sound broke out from the rearward chaos, where the now waist-deep tide had washed up against the edges of the maelstrom. The shadows paled and frayed where they met white-out brilliance, but didn’t stop; lining chasm edges with a blackout veneer that swept down, pouring into the swirling currents churned up by the dragon’s movements.

Black threads started to race upwards, tracing a spreading delta of cracked lines around the half-real shape, and there was sound, again, even beyond the ongoing roar – a grating, twisting, wrong noise that clawed itself down against Lomadia’s mind, sickening and disorientating and like a serrated pressure all at once, and it was getting louder with every step.

Oh for goodness' sake –

She swallowed a cry, hunched forward into the inevitable, as the mountain vanished and whatever the bloody fuck was happening in the centre of this nightmare finally went off.

It wasn’t bright. Nothing here was really bright, not properly, but whatever the inverted darkness was that bloomed now in the centre of the tangled, breaking spiral in the End’s heart – it burned. Beams of white-edge violet burst out in all directions, plunging down through the stone as if it were nothing, and speared up into the empty Void overhead like endless searchlights. A shape writhed at their centre, less a form now than a shadow cut out of the brilliance there.  Limbs twisted back against their own strange angles, half-solid flesh failing in the not-light that consumed it, as the massive wings broke apart, fading into fragments like paper under a flame. The massive body convulsed and twisted, slivers of crystal detonating along the length of it, and the scream was everything, in her heart and bones and mind and Lomadia could do nothing else but hold on to the shaking figure in her grasp, as the torrent of collapsing sky finally caught them up – and even that sight went dark.

She might as well have been falling. There was still hard pressure under her boots and Zoey’s tight grip on her arm, but even they seemed uncertain in the complete erasure that was the tar-thick night. The thunderous crack of breaking stone wasn’t slowing down, and closer than that there was muttering and speech and swearing, but all the sounds seemed sourceless, directionless in the utter darkness, and Lomadia tried unsuccessfully to bite down on her own surging, sightless panic.

Then firelight bloomed, a sudden point of flickering warmth that carved a gilden globe into the emptied world. Barely a few feet away from her, revealed so close she could have touched him, Xephos held his little torch up overhead. The tiny delimited-universe around the glow crowded in, with everyone shuffling together quickly, and the relief was palpable, if transient. Lomadia met Xephos' gaze, turned to mercury in the flickering light, and she managed half a smile. Walking blind was one thing, walking blind in a group was a little better. Now, if they could work out some way of actually navigating…

“...thattaway…”

Zoey’s voice was still ragged, still horribly thin compared to her usual alto-enthusiasm, but there was a surety in there. Lomadia blinked down at her.

“What?”

Zoey managed to raise one shaking hand, and jabbed it forwards hard enough that a tiny ember flicked from the tip of her nail.

“Thatway,” she said, strained, and Lomadia stared at her friend. The mage-woman’s eyes were half-rolled back in her head, but her expression was hardening, and she could see the glow of the busy lifestone pulsing through her shirt.

“Good enough fer me,” Honeydew declared, cutting across any hesitance, and grunted as he took the whole of Lalna’s weight across his arms, cradling a figure nearly twice his size with practised ease. Xephos moved over to link Zoey’s free arm, holding the torch above them like a beacon. “Follow us,” the dwarf added firmly as he fell into step. “We’ll lead the way.”

The instruction was punctuated by another rumble of falling stone, and an unpleasant echo that ran through the rocks beneath. The group started moving again, with every shuffling step a leap of faith, as déjà vu and vertigo twined tight around them. Lomadia found her exhausted mind adding in the remembered crunch of leaves underfoot and the swish and creak of hallucinatory branches, blending horribly with the pursuing sounds of tectonic distress. Something very big was collapsing, and she really didn't want to dwell on what that might be.

Progress seemed agonisingly slow, with each of them expecting any moment to find a sudden emptiness underfoot, but eventually the unseen ground began sloping upwards, and the first chunk of stacked white stone reared out of the torchlight wall. It took some doing to get their various prone companions hoisted up onto the cliffs; Zoey was at least able to cling onto helping hands, but the other two were deadweight. Lomadia swapped out with Nilesy for a while, taking a minute or two to try and bully some more engagement out of her aching muscles, and looked back the way they had come, out of nervous habit more than anything else.

So she saw the eyes. Her heart skipped a beat as the first smears of cold-violet opened in the darkness, and she jolted, grasping for the sunglasses that hung loose at her neck – but the Enderman didn’t move. Another pair of eyes opened, and another, and far too fucking soon there was a cluster of unblinking stares around the base of the cliff, bright just beyond the edge of their firelight.

“We’ve got company,” she gulped, warily as she found her voice. “They’re… not moving.”

“Well we fuckin’ are,” Honeydew muttered back, accompanied by a quiet ‘hup’ from Xephos as he scaled another layer. Lomadia backed up, keeping the Endermen in sight as best as she could, but they really didn’t seem to be moving, and even those eyes faded out as their little universe of light moved further upwards.

Climb. Pause – adjust, as the few of them that had actually come this way in the first place tried to get what barings there might be – pause and adjust again, following Zoey's muttered instructions. The rock shivered unpleasantly under their fingers and hidden avalanches of bouncing, breaking stone hurtled past, unseen, yet close enough to spit dust and fragments into their torchlight.

And they were being watched. Lomadia couldn’t tell if the brilliant eyes that snapped opened in the darkness around them were the same ones as before, and the strange illumination made it difficult to tell how close they were. The shaking-static noise of Ender anger was there, but seemed muted, somehow, and there was no attempt yet to get into the firelight. Small mercies.

“Hey – there's chalk here –” Xephos said, suddenly, and Lomadia looked up. He had scaled the next outcrop and for a moment the flickering torchlight shifted as he swung it around.

"...s'coming..." Zoey muttered, and Lomadia nearly lost her grip as the redhead swiveled sharply, staring back down into the hidden nothingness of the mountain slope. The fire’s light gleamed brighter in her eyes than perhaps it should have, casting strange shadows across her features, but there was no mistaking the alarm there now and the underfoot rumbling seemed to increase in response. "We're – running out – "

"Running out of what?" Minty asked, turning around warily at the back of the group, holding her emptied shotgun like a club.

"Everything," Zoey’s exhausted voice was as close as she ever came to a snarl, as she swung another accusatory finger outwards – downwards – and Lomadia realised that the ominous galaxy of staring eyes was going dark at the edges. Rythian’s earlier words seemed to echo for a moment, now laced with fresh dread.

'It’s all connected, all part of one… thing.'

And if we break it…?

They ran. As much as they could do, scrambling up onto the ledge, dragging the less coherent figures as gently as could be spared, and plunged into the first of the sloping tunnels. Lomadia went first, tracing her shaking fingers across equally-unsteady stone, following her own marks and fiercely hoping that she had done them right. Torchlight flickered over the walls, a fading strobe that danced dizzyingly before her eyes – but the crash of breaking stone was right behind them now, and the creak-screech of Ender voices crowded in around that, pouring out of every shadowed crevasse – so close now, all of it so close -

And then there was space open out in front of her, a horrible, yawning moment of raw emptiness before the torch caught up, and brickwork melted back out of the darkness. There wasn’t time for relief, but it swirled treacherously in her gut anyway as she swiveled, gesturing frantically at the exhausted figures emerging behind her. The air was thick with dust, angular fissures snaking up through the flanking walls and the ground bucked violently under their feet as the group dived for the doors.

The pub interior was a mess, but no more so than when they had left it. Rythian and Lalna were dumped unceremoniously down onto the largest sofa as the party spread out, automatically training the few weapons they had left on the windows. Lomadia came in last, pulling at the broken remains of the door behind her – and nearly swallowed her tongue as eyes opened just behind the crack-crazed glass.

“Oh fucking hell!” She leapt back and the shifting digits of Ender-fingers pressed tight against the window, as if grasping at her. “Barricade, now!”

“Let's get this place going, already!” Honeydew lumbered past, hauling a half-empty chest, and rammed it into place. Lomadia dodged around Xephos – one-handedly dragging another piece of bar furniture – and scrambled over to the still-open face of… well, whatever the hell Ravs’ “TV” actually was. The softly-glowing cube was still inside its shell, strange code still blinking on the folded-out screen, and she ducked down, snatching up another enderpearl from inside the box on the bar, and brought it into place. Bracing herself, she closed her still-armoured fingers hard around the little globe. It shattered, with that strange, oily-sharp sensation the breaking pearl had, and she caught a glimpse of a flicker, dark against the brightness of the cube.

And nothing happened. The screen kept blinking, the smooth rhythm a terrible contrast to the shaking, erratic chaos outside, as more and more Ender-shapes pressed up against the building’s windows, and their howls began to blend with the rumble of falling stone.

Blink. Blink.

-/tp CrCa ???-

Blink.

Heart plunging, passing the cut-sharp edges of broken hope on the way down, Lomadia stared around at the chaotic mess of chests and boxes, at the spilled tangle of innumerable objects that littered every surface. It had taken them ages to find the right combination before, and there was no more time.

“...fuck me.” She sat down heavily against the bar top. There was another crash as Ravs added an extra chair to the frontmost barricade.

“What’s the hold up?”

“It doesn’t work,” Lomadia managed, bile-burn rising in her throat as she tried to remember what Zoey had disjointedly explained, a lifetime ago. “It needs – something to follow, I think?”

“There’s a whole box of pearls,” Nilesy added, from where he was wedging a shutter back against itself, but Lomadia shook her head as she stumbled back over to the crumpled redhead and snapped her fingers in front of her face.

“Zoey, we need something else. The pearl didn’t work, and you – you know this, you said – come on, we need something else.” She knew her words were blurring, knew she was getting frantic, but Zoey barely moved, her eyelids fluttering just a little.

“...home,” she muttered, thickly, and Lomadia swallowed a scream. She grabbed the other woman’s shoulders and tried to shake her gently.

“Yes, Zoey, home. We’re nearly there, we’re so nearly there, we just need you to...”

“This is your fancy-ass box of tricks, then?” Sips had moved over to the opened screen and was peering inside, a frown creasing his blunt features. “I gotta say, I’ve never been all that keen on this teleporting shizzle. Few weird weeks as a dog, puts you off.”

“Sips, don’t,” Xephos’ voice was cracking, panic lacing through his tones, but the grey man gave a rumbling grunt and began to fish around in a pocket under his armour.

“Seems to me, what this piece of shit needs is a bit of an incentive.” He pulled his hand free and rammed it back into the box. Lomadia caught a glimpse of something crumbly, spilling from between his fingers –

– and the machine lit up, shockingly-bright in the fading torchlight. Fresh sparks began to swarm, the screen read-out breaking apart back into the rune-fractal nonsense as Sips drew away, shaking an emptied paper packet with a garish company logo emblazoned on the front. He looked up, a grin splitting his face as he brandished the packet, where ‘13 secret herbs and spices!’ exclaimed out in over-enthusiastic font.

“I keep telling you bastards – show me a problem that can’t be solved with some good old fashioned Sipsco dirt, and I’ll call you a fuckin’ liar.”

Cog-like patterns began to spill out across the surface of the box, crawling up the shaking walls and dragging a heavy, cloying static feel along with it. Lomadia steadied herself against the sofa, as the impact and crunch of falling stone hammered down onto the buckling roof, and watched the patterns creeping up across her hands. The strange aligning-pressure of it was bearing down, but it was difficult to judge the progress beyond all the chaos outside and she gritted her teeth as the whine of impossible machinery rose up around them.

Abruptly, the cogs turned, the pattern shifting against itself – and there was strain there, more than before, a strange sense of tearing running through the shift-out moment – as everything vanished; light, sound, shaking, screams, everything cut away all at once. It was falling, and floating, and waiting, eternity in a frozen moment – and she knew, suddenly, and with a thought that was very far from being her own, that something was ending here. In blood, and darkness, and a world unmade.

And behind that, so close that the line between was so thin, so sharp, that it would cut the world and never really be there at all, something else was starting. A new thing, if anything can ever be said to be truly new – or one so old that its time had circled back again. Born in breaking, caught between destiny and miracle; to take the next turn on the ever-spinning wheels of history,

Because in the true duality of all things, the end is only ever the beginning.

Then there was light, so sudden and bright and sharp that the strange moment shattered as Lomadia shied back in pain, letting out a short yelp. She snatched down for her glasses, then froze as her brain actually caught up to events, because there was sunlight outside the window and a faint, confused sound of clucking filtering in past the barricade.

She just... stared. Stared at the gleam of midday on water, just outside. Stared from face to face as they reanimated, as shock and disbelief and hesitant-hope chased each other across very different features; as Nilesy broke the revere with a hollered whoop of delight, followed swiftly by half a dozen variations on the theme.

They were back. They were back, as unbalancingly abruptly as they had left – and Lomadia’s mind immediately spun away in the sudden, swirling list of everything else that needed to be done. Food; sleep; application of an extremely stiff drink to anyone still upright; keeping Sjin and Tee apart now the immediate, unifying danger had swapped out. Medical attention, and lots of it, because she had no idea what sort of shit the mage-set had just pulled, but they were damn lucky they hadn’t been brought home in a fucking jar.

She turned, already trying to pry loose the memory of how close her airship actually was, and stopped as her eyes locked with Xephos’. He was crouched next to Lalna, practised fingers checking the makeshift binding on the groaning scientist’s arm, and looked as exhausted as she felt. For a moment, though, the turquoise stare met her own – open, and there, somehow, in a way he hadn’t been for a long time, and a faint flutter of warmth passed across her busy thoughts.

Then part of the roof fell in. But you couldn’t have everything.

---

Chapter Text

Say whatever you like about the slightly-barmy architectural choices, they did make the Jaffa factory easy to find. Lomadia docked her airship against the side of the building, convenient landmark and mooring that it was, and was just tying off the final line when a hatch banged open in the roof and Honeydew’s helmet appeared, followed shortly by the rest of him. The dwarf clanged over to her and looked up, peering at the bobbing bulk of the gas bag that hung above the ship’s deck.

“I remember this wi’ sails?”

"Alternative rig up," she replied, looping a last few coils of rope around the hitch. "Sails need more of the assorted magic bollocks in the keel to be working, and I want to get that properly looked at before I rely on it again."

"Seems fair," Honeydew nodded, and scratched his beard thoughtfully as he nodded back down at the roof. “We did alright. Condensers packed up and some of Lalna’s weird machines imploded, plus a whole load of pipes turned to sand – which gave me the collywobbles for a bit, I can fuckin’ tell you."

Lomadia laughed, as she stepped away from the mooring and slung her small pack over her shoulder.

“Yeah, some of the stuff he set up on the Island has gone a bit funny, but Nilesy’s determined to figure it out for himself. Magically, apparently – he’s stuck some gold stars on a hat, and everything. Want to bet if he’ll still have eyebrows when I get back?”

Honeydew chuckled and shook his head.

“Never put money against a Scotsman; old dwarven proverb. C’mon, we’re set up downstairs.”

“Set up…?” Lomadia blinked, but the dwarf was already heading back towards his entrance hatch. She followed him, a small frown nipping onto her brow, under the goggles. What was this about? Everything had been very busy since they’d got back – and if she’d thought that reality might have built in a little down-time after a crisis like that, she’d have been mistaken.

Getting back to the Island on an increasingly-malfunctioning flight ring had been tricky enough, and getting everyone onboard and ferried to somewhere actually medical had been yet another race against time; with half the group barely-conscious and Rythian fitting violently as the tangle of magic that was keeping him alive glitched and shifted. They’d got there though, and the combined negotiating forces of Sips, Xephos, and the appearance of Tee had cut through administrative chaos remarkably quickly.

Lomadia herself had got away with a few rounds of stitches, some vials of particularly unpleasant-tasting healing potions, and passing out on a sofa – until she’d been woken by Minty, with lowered voice and a hand-sketched map, and had grudgingly agreed to pilot for what amounted to a night-time raid on Lalna’s castle. It also had the bonus strategy of thoroughly stranding everyone else in the hospital village, under the formidable ministrations of the testificate staff – so they would take a bit of bloody time out to get put back together again.

The double-standard hadn’t escaped her attention, but she chose to ignore it.

When they got there, the portal room had been ridiculous – some strange hybrid of mad-science logic and weird engineering, bizarre even by Lalna’s standards – and the on-and-off frame itself was unnerving, but there had been something very satisfying about crowbaring the stones apart and watching that sheet of too-deep darkness dissipate. They’d split all the sockets they could find between them, including the empties. She had no idea what Minty had planned for hers – and the petite figure just smiled in an annoyingly serene way when she had asked. Lomadia had hidden her own half of the bargain in various roosts around the Island, for now. When she had a bit more time, sinking the damn things very far into the ocean sounded like a good idea. In very heavy boxes. With weights on.

After that, it was a lot of back-and-forth, and a certain amount of exhausted tears of relief when the messages came through, one by one, when the more battered members of the group were given all-clears. Zoey, Lalna, and – well.

“Rythian’s stabilized,” she remarked between her feet as she started to climb down the hatch ladder. “Potions started working – must’ve finally shed all the knackered magic.”

Honeydew gave a humph, but it was a relieved sort of noise.

“Aye, good; about ruddy time. Skinny bugger’s a hard one to take out, I’ll give him that.”

“It’s a mage thing,” Lomadia replied, lightly, but Honeydew stopped beneath her quite abruptly, and when he spoke next his voice was soft.

“Not always, lass.”

There was silence for a second, then a clang as the dwarf dropped down.

“C’mon,” he called up, with the odd tone almost gone. “You go through, I’ve got a couple of things to grab.”

Lomadia climbed down, still puzzled, and stepped out into the small corridor that adjoined the two penthouse rooms of the factory. Xephos’ door was open, and Honeydew’s had just shut firmly behind the retreating figure.

What was this all about? She hadn’t had much time since they’d got back to talk to Xephos, and certainly not about some things. Her own words – far away now, simultaneously very real and almost dream-like, in that literal otherworld – danced at the back of her mind, and her stomach tightened as she raised a hand and tapped lightly on the doorframe.

“Xeph? You there?”

At the affirmative, she stepped inside. Xephos was sitting crosslegged on the floor underneath one of the large skylights, with his sword across his knees. He looked less tired than he had last time they’d spoken, but there were still dark circles under his eyes, and a tight hunch to his shoulders. Still, the most obvious change was in what he was wearing, and Lomadia frowned as she approached, taking in details of the very-patched red and black outfit. The little bronze arrow was pinned to his chest, and several of the repaired sections were like fabric shadows of marks she knew lay underneath, scored into his skin.

It looked a bit like a uniform, although admittedly one that had gone through a blender.

“Hello,” he said, quietly, as he watched her approach. Lomadia dropped down in front of him, mirroring the pose as she shrugged off her bag, and hesitated for a moment before she reached out to run the back of her fingers down his cheek. It was damp, but he didn’t flinch, and leaned slightly into the contact.

“Hi,” she replied, equally softly, and dipped forward to catch that slightly over-bright gaze. “You alright? What’s with all this?” She waved her other hand up and down across him, and his lips twitched.

“I’m – well, I’m fine. For me, I mean.” He shifted position, rolling the flat of the blade back and forth, and the reflections played across his tensed features. “This is for… reference.”

There was a determined expression in his eyes, and Lomadia’s breath caught slightly as realisation dawned.

'I know you – but I know nothing about you.’

“Xeph, you don’t have to – ” she started, but he shook his head and managed a serious kind of smile.

“I know. But I want to; I want you to know who we really are; what I am. As much as I know.” His fingertips drummed arrhythmically along the sword. Lomadia let her own hand drop, and matched the rhythm on the blade.

“I already do. Details, I’ll admit, are a bit sparse,” she conceded, and Xephos gave a small snort of laughter.

“There’re quite a lot of details.”

“Aye, and there’s no getting started on ‘em without me,” Honeydew’s voice cut in, and Lomadia looked up as he appeared, half-visible behind a large tray stacked high with his habitual cakes, bottles of dark beer and several still-steaming mugs. He shuffled inside, kicked the door closed with a surprisingly-coordinated boot, and stomped over to them. The precarious tray was set down near Xephos’ feet, and the dwarf dropped down heavily on his other side.

“Gotta make sure we get it all right, an’ I swear he weren’t paying attention for half of it,” he said. For a moment the stare that met Lomadia’s hardened, and she remembered when they had first met, how protective Honeydew had been over his friend. How long it had taken the dwarf to trust her – not out of malice, not with the sort of worried looks she had seen cast towards the taller of the partnership, but from caution. There was the flicker of it again here, an echo of the blustering, angry dwarf that had once stormed up in front of her, and demanded to know 'what she thought she was bloody playing at'. It had been a long time. But still...

“Sounds about right,” she said, carefully, as she leaned over to pick a jaffa out of the pile and nibbled at the edge. Honeydew watched her for another few heartbeats – then he winked, very quickly, and grabbed his own biscuit. Xephos looked between them both, once eyebrow raised, and the edge of an exasperated grin twitched at his lips.

“Everyone finished being symbolic with baked goods now?” he asked, amusement threaded through his words, and Honeydew snorted in response.

“I’m plannin’ on being symbolic on at least two packs, smart-arse.”

Lomadia failed to stifle a giggle as Xephos rolled his eyes.

“For pete’s sake – ” he started, but cut off when Lomadia slid her hand forward, and dropped her fingers over his own. There was another weighted silence, thick with unfocused possibility, as Xephos looked down at the diamond edge of his sword.

“I… remember light,” he said, finally, and it felt like the world had released a held breath; a strange tension that had been hidden behind the air, now starting to unravel with his words. “And falling, and snow. Nothing before that. Not where I started, not what these clothes are, or what the symbols mean. To be completely honest, even my name’s a bit of a guess.”

His fingers twitched up towards the little badge, which clicked softly under the touch, and he let out a long breath.

“And then it all got really complicated.”

---

It was quiet here.

Realisation condensed very slowly into Rythian’s mind and the thought seemed strangely sluggish, blurry, as if having to come in from far away. It was quiet. Not silent; not the yawning emptiness of nothing around him, but quiet – a warm calm, threaded through with soft noises. A few faint, unintrusive beeps; the careful brush and shuffle of measured footsteps; the shift of fabric. He couldn’t remember the last time things had just been quiet.

What he did remember was…

Darkness, pouring over him in a smothering surge of liquid-black; inescapable, rising, clawing down his throat as the scream howled through every shredded fibre of his being; because it was all failing, falling, as oblivion stretched out and all they could do was run -

Then something wet, cold, and breathing pressed abruptly into his ear, and the sheer disconnect between sensation and remembrance jolted him awake. He jerked half-upright, rigid in the sudden paralysis of confusion, and it took a good few seconds of staring before the bizarre mosaic of grey and white resolved, and recognition hit like a hammer.

“…Ghost?” His own voice was a croak, creaking and underused. The dog seemed delighted anyway, letting out a joyful whine at the sound of his name, and made another attempt to clamber up onto the bed – mostly just succeeding in getting even more tangled in the sheets.

Bed?

He was in a bed. Rythian stared down, disbelieving, at where his fingers had bunched into the sheets, at the disarrayed green blankets marking miniature hillsides around his legs. Green was a common colour – long verdant curtains made a small private space around him, and there was a vase of lush flowers sitting on a small wooden table nearby. Sunlight filtered in sedately through a thin white curtain, taking the edge off the glare, and Rythian blinked. Everything seemed strangely, intensely colourful after the violet-monochrome he’d been so used to.

Where was he? This wasn’t Blackrock. And it certainly wasn’t the End.

Maybe I’m dead. The notion flicked across his thoughts, but he dismissed it just as quickly. He may not be entirely certain in considerations of an afterlife, but he doubted it would come with a faint background scent of disinfectant. Ghost made another assault on the bedframe, managing this time to scramble up enough to start licking furiously at Rythian’s face and he found himself laughing underneath the resulting splutters, as he failed to ward off even a little of the enthusiastic affection.

His body felt strange – very weak, heavy and too light at the same time – and it took a while before he was able to get the dog shoved around into a less awkward position. He dug his fingers into Ghost’s thick fur, rubbing at the long head that pressed into his shoulder.

“I – missed you too, boy,” he managed hoarsely, voice catching a bit in his throat as he realised the weight of that statement. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to think about anything – anyone – he had left behind. Sometimes he hadn’t been able to stop it, as bright wisps had darted across his sleepless mind, but those had been nothing but phantoms, a taunt as much as a memory.

There was something very real about a large dog endeavoring to lick your ears off. He ran his hands down Ghost’s back and the dog whined and flopped down, pinning his legs to the mattress and wagging hard enough to beat a dull rhythm from the nearby curtain, then Rythian hesitated as he looked at his own raised hands. Seeing his arms bare, minus the stained and cracked bandages that had become more familiar than his actual skin, was strange. His eyes tracked across the fine scarring that all but cross-hatched his forearms, tracing patterns of old pain from nearly his shoulders down to his fingertips.

Bare fingers too. He flexed, haltingly, and watched the long-etched lines where his rings should sit move uneasily with the motion. Different. He reached up, half-consciously, to trace across the long welt of old scar that crowned his neck. Something felt different there as well, but he couldn’t quite put the sense of it into words.

Something lost. Something gained.

His nails scraped skin, missing the tug of chain as they descended, and he realised with a start that there was nothing hanging around his neck either. No power-gleam of star, or its ruby-hearted partner, usually so bright even against his closed eyelids and weighing like paired lead against all his other senses. There was nothing there now, and that was particularly unbalancing. Those little pieces of careful alchemical craft, balanced and formed under his own hands, had been the only things keeping him alive for…

…for…

He stopped again, because his fingers had reached his chest, and the sensation there was new. Looking down, wedging his head at an awkward angle, Rythian stared at the fresh scar that stood out there, pale against his skin. Sealed edges of ragged tears trailed out around a sharply-defined centre. The mark of a blade cut deep and twisted.

He stared at it, framed between fingers that trembled only slightly. He felt…

Smaller. Sharper, in some ways; terribly blunted in others. The sense of loss was still there, a black-bloody gash on his soul that he doubted would ever truly close, but at the same time he felt… lighter. In several definitions of the word.

And it was quiet. Inside, too.

“Willow! You’re not supposed to be in here either!” A new voice cut in, half-hissed, and he turned around as quickly as he could manage with muscles that felt like wet cotton, as Ghost perked up even further at the sound. The curtains burst back in a flurry of brown fur and Rythian gave a whuf of his own as another four-legged shape launched onto the bed and made a damp assault on his chin. Slightly trampled, he looked up as the curtain swished back and an achingly-familiar figure ducked quickly inside. Zoey was already muttering some soft admonition as she turned, and saw him.

There was a very long moment, which might have seemed more poignant if there had been less barking in accompaniment. Zoey’s eyes widened.

“…hey,” she managed, hurrying forward and shooing Willow back into the floor – although Ghost refused to be budged – and sank down rather abruptly onto the edge of his bed. Warm hands closed over his own, tightening, and all Rythian could do was stare.

She held on. Through everything, everything, as the backlash of a magic he still didn’t truly understand had hit, had torn its ravenous price from his battered flesh – she'd held on. Lifeline. His own nexus, in that place, the joining link in the chain of offered lives, spreading his death between them all until it wasn’t quite enough anymore.

A wide, slightly-wobbly smile spread across Zoey’s face as she looked at him, and it was like the sun rising.

“Hey, good-lookin’,” she muttered, and to Rythian’s surprise reached over to brush a lock of hair from his forehead, smoothing it back gently. “You back with us now?”

Ghost barked, happily, and Rythian couldn’t suppress a snort of laughter as the dog nearly wagged himself off the bed.

“We… got out?” he asked, when he could persuade words to happen. Obviously they had. Obviously – but he needed to hear it. Zoey nodded.

“Sure. Operation Ender-day? Total success.” She stopped, shrugged, and continued. “Well, I mean the pub’s a writeoff really, after most of a mountain came down on it, and I don’t think anyone managed to bring much stuff back, plus it all went a bit dicey at the end there and Sips has already started trying to fit that into adverts. But – well – even this is kinda cool, right?”

She reached up and rather suddenly yanked down the neck of her shirt; but before even Rythian could go pink, he saw what she was referring to, and embarrassment died under the jolt of shock. His hand jerked back up to his chest, pressed against the new scar there, as he stared at the same shape, sketched in a still-angry red against Zoey’s skin.

He remembered the feedback echoes; sharp enough to hurt.

Zoey let her neckline rise back and shrugged again.

“Tee’s got one too. Kind of, bit weird with the scales, and Ravs’ gone all bleached in the chest-fuzz, but yeah. Think it was a bit too spread out after it got past us to leave anything permanent. Bit of a Blackrock Crew badge, see?” There was a deliberately-airy tone to her voice when she spoke, a careful lightness that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“I’m… I’m sorry, Zoey,” Rythian started, past the lump tightening in his throat. Marked. Scarred, by that place, because of him – but Zoey made an impatient sound, and swatted at his tensing hand. She dipped down, meeting his gaze again, and now her eyes were diamond.

“None of that, alright?” she said; softly but firmly. “We’re fine. It’s not the first scar I’ve got, and most of them’ve got nothing to do with you. No one did anything they didn’t want to.”

“But – ”

“But nothing.” She caught his hand again and shook it, emphatically. “We all got out. Everyone, like we said.”

“I don’t – ” Rythian stopped, frowning. “I remember. Sort of. It’s all a bit…”

"Blurry?" Zoey finished, and gave a small smile as she shook her head. "I know, right? I mean, I didn’t get hit as hard as you, and I wasn’t dragon-chow at all, but it’s not real clear to me either." She tapped her forehead. "Lom made notes outa all the jabbering, I think; on the way here."

A very, very brief shard of memory lit up – the creak of rigging, lurch of a deck beneath, and the howl of wind in the clouds either side – and Rythian blinked as he looked around again.

"Where is ‘here’?” he finally asked. Now he was listening, he could hear faint snatches of testificate speech drifting in around the curtains, low and careful. “A… village?”

"Sort of. Paul did the directions – he came to find us when everything went weird, and Lom’d already gone to get the airship, so it was easy enough. We’ve been calling it Sick Bay, cos we’re near the sea and it’s like a hospital, and we really needed – “

"Wait – ‘went weird’?" Rythian hadn’t missed that little vocal note, amongst everything else. "What went weird?"

Zoey hesitated, then reached into her pocket and held out a fistful of metal.

“…magic, I guess. Not long after we got back,” she said, and her voice dropped again. “Blackrock’s… messed up, Paul says. All the – all the spells went wrong. At the same time. I mean, they all got well out of dodge, and he says it was pretty dramatic to watch, but… yeah.”

Rythian barely heard her. His attention was fixed on the sad little shapes in her hand. Their klein stars. Once brilliant coils of crafted magic, but now dull, cataract-glazed; more like wax-yellow marbles than anything else. He half went to reach out, then carefully nudged the dead stars aside, staring at the pair of lifestones. One with its heart dulled to a clotted brown, the other an empty hole, littered with tiny shards of reddish glass.

He picked up the broken one – his, the slightly rougher of the two – and felt the runes as little more than raised ridges under his touch. No shiver of power, sparking against his skin, and now he had thought about it, realised, his less-standard senses as a whole felt numbed. Distant – blurred, almost, and he shifted awkwardly, as if that would shake the misaligned feeling.

It wasn’t just him that had changed.

“It was… well, it was a bit bad. Just after,” Zoey continued, “I mean, you weren’t exactly… you were a bit reliant, I guess. But we got here, and – and you’ve kinda been in and out for weeks, but you’re okay now. So that’s fine!” she finished, bluntly cheerful, but there was a shake in her voice and she hadn’t quite managed to get her expression to fit around the tone.

Rythian rubbed his thumb across the lifestone again and tried not to shudder. He was under no illusions to how reliant he had been on the maintaining magic there. If it had failed?

“Thank you,” he said, quietly.

"I figured you’d want to see."

"No," he swallowed and put the stone down, where Ghost sniffed at it curiously. "No, I mean… Thank you, Zoey. For… just for everything. Before all this, I never – I never told you enough."

He stopped again; not because there were no words, but because there were too many, rising and knotting around each other with a sudden urgency. So many things unsaid, so many times he’d brushed her away. So many almost-truths, diverting and dismissing under the awkward mantle of ‘protection’, and yet…

She'd held on; to him, and to everyone else. Thirteen kinds of impossible and the heart of an inferno, and looking at him right now with open curiosity in her eyes. He swallowed hard.

“Not about anything. Magic, my past, what I’ve done or how I – how -“

Come on, man! The words, those words, the ones that burned as bright as she did across his thoughts – they were right there, pressed against his tongue and even now he couldn’t -

Zoey leaned forward and squeezed his shaking fingers.

“You love me,” she said, in such a matter-of-fact way that it took his tangled brain a few moments to realise what he’d heard, and her grin widened at his thunderstruck expression. “I’m still not an idiot, Rythian. Plus, y’know, not to dilute the Moment or anything, but you spent the first two weeks here right up to the eyeballs on a lot of painkillers, and you’ve declared affection for two nurses, Paul, the alchemist-guy topping up your meds, and a lamp. Like, twice on the lamp.”

Heat flared under his cheeks, embarrassment catching hard and he went to pull away – stupid, stupid – but Zoey held on, and her smile didn’t falter.

“And me. I guess I couldn’t be your apprentice anymore…?”

“You’re not my apprentice,” Rythian replied and continued quickly at her faintly-hurt blink. “Zoey, you found your own way into the End. Fought the Queen. Did this – “ he gestured between their chests, touching his own scar “- and got us back out. Most mages won’t manage even a tenth of that in their entire lifetime. I didn’t. There’s nothing I can teach you anymore.”

Now it was her turn to blush – but pleased – as she ran a hand back down one side of her hair.

“There’s loads I don’t know, though. And it’s all changed, now,” she nodded down at the broken lifestones, “I mean, potions still work, and Lalna was saying something about thoumattognomic flex, but I don’t – “

“Magic changes.” Rythian shrugged. “It always has. We can find out how. Together, if – you want that.”

He couldn’t do much to disguise the raw hope in his voice – didn’t dare even dwell on it too much, in case reality caught up and his luck turned back down its more usual path. Zoey held his gaze, just long enough for worry to start circling under his thoughts, and then she smiled.

“That… sounds pretty awesome, actually.” She hesitated, then a flash of grin broke across her face and she leaned forward, bringing Rythian’s hand up to press a short kiss onto his fingers. For a moment there was a very different spark there, bright beneath his skin, then Zoey drew back and winked at him, a pink tinge weaving between her freckles.

"We can work with that. All of that, I mean."

Before either of them could say anything else, Ghost yawned loudly, and Zoey giggled as the dog flopped back across Rythian’s legs.

"Okay, okay. Criticism accepted. Gettin’ mushy. So!" She bounced up, beaming. "You want to go for a walk? There’s a bay, and Fishton’ll be glad to see you up and rollin’."

The thought of actually standing up sent a knot down into Rythian’s stomach, a note of physical uncertainty that intruded rudely on his otherwise elated thoughts

"I – don’t think I can stand all that well yet," he said, a little awkwardly, but Zoey waved a hand.

"I said rolling. They’ve got chairs, so long as you don’t mind me pushing?" She glanced up at the window as she spoke, and looked so hopeful that Rythian decided his stomach could just take it.

"Alright."

"Cool-cool; I’ll go grab one – come on guys, give him some air."

She swung back out through the curtain, followed eagerly by the pair of dogs, and Rythian let himself flop back onto the pillows, trying to ignore the way his arms were shaking. He needed some time to process this. The world seemed to have shifted in so many ways, and he felt that he was teetering, like if he moved too fast or thought too hard on any of it, something would snap. He glanced down and the ruined lifestones gleamed dully up at him from a hummock of blanket, as a little twist of fresh uncertainty began to worm its way to the front of his mind.

Magic did change, that was true. The wax and wane of etharic potentia was a common – usually frustrated – discussion in many texts, running through a hundred different reasons as to the why of it, again and again, and there really were no satisfying conclusions. Just that, every now and then, all the rules would shift around, and some element of how it all worked would change.

It could have been about to happen for years. It could be purely a coincidence – but that moment was rising again, that half-remembered memory that had managed to hang on, even through the beyond-exhausted mess his mind had been in after the Queen went down. When the ruptured power of the End’s heart folded back against itself. He had felt it, as past and potential and the sharpened edges of future pivoted around the, and the sheer impossibility of what they had just done, shockwaves rippling outwards beyond even what he could see. They had ended something, back in the unmaking midnight of an utterly alien world.

But there was balance in everything. What had they started there?

The curtain drew open again and Rythian looked up quickly, a smile rising onto his lips before he had time to focus – and then the expression froze, when he saw who it was framed in the fabric green.

Lalna.

The scientist was pale, his face was scattered with the still-fading edges of bruising, but he looked considerably better than the last time Rythian had seen him. He wasn’t wearing his habitual labcoat either; clad instead in black and grey with obnoxiously colourful laces in his shoes, and Rythian’s gaze was drawn to where the right sleeve of his shirt was pinned up, folded like punctuation a few inches below his shoulder. The ghost of scent and sensation passed across his senses and his throat clenched slightly. Of course, more of the arm would had to have been removed. With his fire basically cooking the wound, along with the ragged damage from the Queen’s jaws – honestly, it was remarkable there was anything saved below the shoulder at all.

That almost helped.

Lalna met his gaze. Tthere was a heavy moment before his expression changed, and an only-slightly forced grin appeared.

"Saw Zoey pretty much skipping towards the nurse station," he said, jerking his thumb in the direction she’d gone in. "So, figured you were back in the land of the living."

"Hello Lalna," Rythian managed, going for cold civility in the hope that might drown out the memories of screaming. "You look… well."

Lalna chuckled and dragged his hand back through his hair, shoving the blonde locks into a different disarray.

"Yeah, well. Discharged myself a few days ago actually. All zipped up – " he patted the stump of arm, cheerfully, although Rythian didn’t miss the way his fingers shook slightly as they touched the folded fabric there. "Was going a bit stir-crazy in here. Honeydew kept bringing me jaffas, and Xeph flat refused to smuggle in any decent beer. Gonna convalese a bit."

"Any part of ‘convalese’ involve ‘get the fucking End portal out of your basement’?” He hadn’t entirely meant to snap, but the words got out anyway and Rythian felt a strange twinned twinge of satisfaction and guilt at the wince that shot across Lalna’s face. The scientist shook his head.

"Don’t need to. Minty and Lomadia already shifted it, apparently. Minty just flat out won’t tell me what they did. And Lom hit me with a spanner when I asked."

"She's a sensible woman." Rythian sat back again, very deliberately, but Lalna just came further into the room. He was carrying a satchel under his arm and shrugged it down into the crook of his elbow as he came over to the bed.

"Mind if I sit?"

"I’m glad you’re not dead, Lalna," Rythian growled. "Don’t push it."

Lalna laughed. The sound seemed remarkably genuine. He sat down anyway, nudging the bag between his feet, and peered over – and there was another of those unsettling moments of assessment, as the grey stare tracked between details. Rythian could almost feel Lalna’s attention lingering, along the scar on his neck, at the new mark on his chest, and he folded his arms – if more achingly-slowly than he might have liked – and tilted his chin down, summoning as good a glare as he could manage. Lalna didn’t seem to notice, and infact leaned in even further, his eyebrows nipping together.

“D’you know your eyes’ve gone greenish?”

“…yes,” Rythian lied. Lalna sat back and cocked his head.

“Does it feel different?”

“Does that?” He nodded sharply towards the stump, and Lalna’s gaze dropped as he went quiet, just long enough for another flicker of guilt to skitter across Rythian’s thoughts.

“Well… yeah. But I’ve got some ideas,” he added, rallying. “Been meaning to do some more neural-interface stuff with the power-armour anyway. Bit robocop, y’know?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t want an arm that might explode at any moment?” Rythian replied, sarcastically, but Lalna just grinned again.

“I know, right?” He raised the truncated limb, and made a great show of sighting down it. “Pew-pew.”

His hand trembled, just a little, as he let go again, and fidgeted with the hem of his shirt.

“…thanks, by the way,” he continued, quietly. “I know you didn’t – have to.”

“You know perfectly well I wouldn’t just – “ Rythian stopped, swallowing at the weird knot in his throat. “… what do you want, Lalna?”

“I brought you a thing.”

Lalna hoisted the bag up quickly and wedged it between his knees, flipping it open so he could rummage around. A couple of blue-and-orange packets slid out, rolling onto the floor, but he ignored them and he pulled out a thick, flat shape, wrapped in paper. He held it out and Rythian eyed him suspiciously, before taking the package. It was heavier than he’d expected – or his arms were really weak – and he dropped it into his lap almost immediately.

“What is it?” he asked, fiddling hesitantly with the wrapping.

“My old thaumonomicon.”

Whatever answer he’d been expecting, that hadn’t been it. Rythian frowned as he pulled back the thin paper and looked down at the rune-inlaid cover it revealed. The book was rather battered, and there where imprints in the leather, like it had been pressed under a lot of other things for a long time. Lalna bit his lip, and when he spoke there was a distant edge to his voice.

“You lost yours, right? Back in the village, when me and Sjin – “

“Yes,” Rythian cut in, sharply, but Lalna just shrugged.

“It never worked all that well, this stuff, when we tried it. Compared to your alchemy, I mean.”

That was true enough. Rythian ran a finger across the cover, odd sparks of old memories lighting up. Another lifetime ago, in many ways.

“There wasn’t much we didn’t try,” he pointed out. “It wasn’t reliable.”

Old magic, he thought; so old he had sometimes wondered if it had worn out, somehow. The stories were there, the tales of great Thaumic achievements and terrible perils, but the reality had always proved disappointing.

Lalna’s lips twitched again. It was a strange half-smile, that tugged odd flickers of expression across his face as he stood up, tapping gently on the book’s scuffed surface.

“Yeah, well. Give it a go again, sometime, alright?”

He hoisted the bag back onto his shoulder and gave a jaunty salute as he ducked back around the curtain. Rythian heard his footsteps vanishing off back down the corridor, waiting until they were definitely gone before he turned his attention back to the old book in his lap.

The cover creaked as he opened it, gingerly. Lalna’s cramped handwriting spilled out across the thin parchment within, and his stomach gave a small lurch as he noticed a few bits of his own writing mixed in there, around the diagrams in the centre of the page. Correcting. Suggesting, discussing. Back when discussion had been something they had done; so late into the night that it would become early again, trying to puzzle out a way of getting those frustratingly-uncooperative runes to work. It never really had, and their paired attention had waned, drifting towards the next idea.

And they all knew what that had been.

Rythian reached down, towards the carefully-drawn spell-pattern, trying to remember what this one had meant to do. His fingers brushed the paper, rough under his touch with ink and age – and it was like a door opening, as power crackled up through his hand. Not the dusty, worn-down echo of a faded ancient, but live magic, young and hot and hungry, and surging up the dulled pathways of his thoughts like a burst of fresh lightning.

It wasn’t the same, so very much not the same as the alchemical balance he had been so used to – but that didn’t matter. His muted awareness flared, the moment of connection like a shock to his soul, and he gasped at air that suddenly seemed to taste of a lot more than disinfectant. Magic had changed, but so had he. Whether that was for the better or worse, he was yet to find out – but as he raised his still-shaking hand, and watched the air start to shiver around his fingertips, he found he wasn’t too worried about the technicalities right now.

He could hear footsteps approaching again, accompanied by Zoey’s soft whistling and the faint squeak of wheels, and a slow smile began to spread onto his lips.

He was still Rythian, after all.

And it was going to be interesting to find out what that meant now.

--

Chapter Text

It was about time he did some remodeling.

Ravs repeated the thought, trying to force a bit more enthusiasm into the idea, as he made his way down the short dock towards the battered shape of the bar. Squaring his shoulders, he eased the remnant front door open and tried not to sigh as half of the wood came away in his hand. He tossed it aside, where it was instantly subsumed into the chaos of the floor, and stepped into the Crooked Caber.

Or, what had been the Crooked Caber, anyway.

He hadn’t exactly been avoiding coming back, but with all his actual clientele in the hospital, it had seemed kinda rude to leave them there. The village had been so lively that returning to the wrecked shell of his bar – in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of a lake even there – hadn’t been all that appealing. He supposed it could have been a worse location – all things considered – but from the glimpse he’d got of Blackrock, it’d be a long time before the neighbourhood was habitable again.

If anyone even came back at all.

Something crunched underfoot as he made his way further inside, casting increasingly-dejected glances around at the wreckage. Even more of the roof had collapsed, rain had soaked everything underneath the yawning holes, and there looked like something was starting to nest in the rags of curtains.

He wondered if the Sick Bay village needed a pub. He hadn’t found one, when he’d been wandering around. Could be an opportunity there.

There sure didn’t seem to be that much of one here.

He slung his pack down on the bar top and glared at the featureless black expanse of the not-a-TV, which had closed itself as soon as they had re-appeared. Lalna had been talking about it. Zoey had been talking about it. Hell, even Sjin had made comments, in his own way – and while Ravs would freely admit he didn’t have the slightest idea what the damn thing actually was, he was pretty sure that anyone poking around in it was a really, really bad idea. He ducked round under the bar, tossing a few things back onto his bag for later, and searched around until his fingers closed around the cool metal of his crowbar, still thankfully in place.

Right then.

The box was firmly bracketed to the wall, and turned out to be impressively flush with the uneven brickwork behind. The actual brackets came away easily but he tried out every angle he could reach with the crowbar after that, and there there just didn’t seem to be a way to get purchase. How the hell had he installed this thing?

…why had he installed this thing? Ravs hesitated, brow furrowing, as he glared at the smug blank surface in front of him, and tried to remember the wall without it. The TV had never worked, but he’d just assumed… something. Something important, maybe? Some reason he hadn’t tried to get rid of it before. The memory was slippery, dropping out of his attention as he grasped for it, and he gave an irritated growl as he turned around.

And stopped.

There was a man sitting at the bar, and Ravs would swear blind he hadn’t heard him enter. He looked supremely out of place in the disarray of the room – clad in black-and-gold and a painfully-crisp shirt that looked like it had come out of a really clean museum – except that the rest of the bar seemed suddenly faded in comparison, as if everything else was merely background to the new figure.

“Hello Ravs.” The voice was smooth, lightly accented, but there was a strange feeling to the words. They seemed heavy, somehow, weighing down against his mind, and Ravs couldn’t quite shake the impression he hadn’t heard them in the normal way. The man smiled. His expression was wide, faintly unsettling, and… slightly familiar?

Ravs rallied. He was a Wildlands barman, f’fucks’ sake, and there was no way some stealthy dandy was going to unnerve him. Not after the last month, certainly. He put the crowbar down, very deliberately-like, and met the smile with his own.

“Bad timing, mate. We’re a wee bit closed right now – ”

His voice died in his throat as the new man laughed softly and leaned forward, lacing his long fingers together in front of him. Brocade glittered at his wrists and his eyes gleamed with the same dark-gold light, as the hairs on Ravs’ own neck began to prickle alarmingly.

“Oh, I know. But I think you have something that belongs to me.”

---
-end-