Laura had been driving when the light blinded her. A coalescence of beams of too-bright light that cast the head-lights into dim shadow. A blare of a horn, the sounds of screeching tires, and the inevitable drop in the stomach as a crash resounded out with the crunch of metal and bone.
Lights. So many that she couldn’t describe. Floating. Everywhere and anywhere was a distant and faded memory -- just a suggestion of something. There were monsters here, gaseous things of horrible suggestion. They watched. Eyes as big as stars, and sometimes even larger.
There were things in the interim, the in between of these lights, that watched.
Then Laura was standing, tears streaming down her face as she patted her body in dazed confusion. Her eyes darted around her, first seeing a massive almost snail looking creature of interlocking machinery, a gas mask that ate into the face, eyes of reticulated apertures like camera lenses set into the sockets. It reached out in a vague gesture of welcome with a hand of steel claws, silk flowing around the limb with a distinctly organic squelch as muscle swelled. The reticulated lenses dilated and watched.
“Welcome.” Two tall and lanky creatures -- vaguely human shaped with sharpened teeth and too-long fingers and ears -- spoke and snapped Laura’s attention to divide among the rest of the creatures here. A man, a boy -- really, sat on a throne casting an enchanting gaze and dazzling smile her way. Their way, now that her peripheral vision caught up.
“Oh [Hero]es.” the twin weirdos intonated with a reverence that felt… off.
“What the hell?” a squeaking grumble of a voice to her side said. She looked over and there was a man around her age (maybe younger) looking amazed. Another, between the two of them, was a boring looking man keeping eye contact with the boy on the throne.
“We realize you must be surprised, shaken, taken aback, and all other synonyms that can pop up in instances such as this -- if there is such a thing where you are from. You have been summon--”
“We’ve been Isekai’d!” the younger of the two to Laura’s side belted out, wide eyes dazzled with all that he saw. “We’ve been summoned to this land to protect the people, to slay the demon king, and to gain awesome powers -- and stuff!” he seemed near-hyperventilating at this point as tears -- tears -- streamed down his face. The twin weirdos simply nodded, confirming his interruption. The boy, big for his age but definitely younger than her, looked like he would explode with unrestrained excitement.
“You have been summoned -- as we were saying -- to do battle against the horrid Eastern Continent and their terrible wars of aggression, savage practices of alchemy and fascinations with the dark arts of cultivation. We bring you here, bless upon thee now, that which will bring you forth to do battle with the Eastern summons -- and their awful acts.” The twin, the one clad in red to the others blue robes, walked and summoned a flame of shifting geometry. A thing of hard angles that mixed and melted into the shape of the next.
“Where am I?” Laura finally managed to speak up, the two twins pivoting their heads from the two they had their attention on -- the great mechanical thing beeping with a flicking mechanical whir spinning up to the sound.
“You are in the converse of the Eastern Continent, the glorious Western Continent. This is a place of the infinite expanse of knowledge, where all things are studied and made ever-more revealed by our hand. You stand in the receiving room of our King -- “ they gestured with their hand towards the boy on the throne who inclined his head and nodded with royal authority -- the bangles dangling from his ears chiming like a clear crystal. Laura had begun to breathe deep, trying to keep all this together in her head.
“What happened to us?” Laura said, but was scoffed away by the boy.
“We died, duh. I saw a light then I got crushed by a crane that had fallen over. I was on my way to class -- this is probably the best thing that’s happened to me all day!” he explained, first with contemptible dismissal then over-excited enthusiasm.
“Young [Hero] Blade is certainly correct -- you all have passed the mortal’s coil. Shed the former skin, and through our intervention we have saved you from The Maelstrom and its swirl. You all must have seen it, yes? The terror of that waiting void -- the void filled with things that lie in the Static In-Between? Rejoice! You were spared! And brought --”
“Brought here, to be [Hero]es of the great Western Continent, under the banner of the Kingdom of Duggaine.” The king on his throne said, smiling and speaking with his eyes silent and still -- barely glinting the light coming in through the arched stained-glass that surrounded them and dappled colored light upon them.
He stood, a simple uniform with hanging golden chains and a cape of a spotted animal sown with a luminescent opalline thread throughout, and stepped forward.
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“Certainly this must be a new transition in your life. It is, in no uncertain terms, a change of a magnitude not seen throughout anyone here on this plane or the one you formerly called home.”
Laura’s heartbeat, her eyes dilated, she felt the tips of her fingers tingle as she watched enraptured.
“Yet I do not doubt that this change will not only be something wonderfully new, but enervating to the soul of each --” he touched the shoulder of the boy, keeping eye contact as his eyes were wide and enraptured, hanging on every single word that the barely-a-man spoke.
He skipped the man in the middle, whose eyes never left the boy yet were not nearly as enraptured as the kids. He looked distant, as if he were in shock. That was understandable, Laura could understand that at the least, but how could he not be completely captivated? The voice of the king was… so soothing.
It was cool and calm and it had everything one would need to feel relaxed, bands of icy electricity ran up and down her spine as he turned her way.
“--And everyone of you. You will see. Now! Grand Technic here shall bring each of you to your baptism. Destiny awaits you, The Weaver of Threads awaits you all -- and so shall you be granted the glory which awaits you.”
“Come with me [Hero]es. Greatness is this way.” the machine-man said with a voice of smooth synthetic grace that did not match his outer appearance.
All thoughts had left Laura. All concerns were melted into a sea of content wax. She nodded, tears blinked from her eyes as she smiled with a swell in her heart.
All while the boring man in chinos watched with too-neutral an expression. Like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
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“Those things up there, the flying smudges, they usually wouldn’t mess with us. Well, not often. But those cave creatures back there? They would most certainly mess with those things. So…” The black smudges Guiro talked about had begun to turn in their circuit, long tales trailing behind them and soon descending with declarative screeches.
“I would start running -- maybe to one of those nice abandoned buildings. I used to love that one, was a nice center of learning once.” Guiro pointed with detached observation towards a squat cubed rubble, small shadows picking at the ruin.
Thomas looked behind him, seeing the approaching horde of creatures arrive, look up, and begin to panic at the sight of the quickly descending monsters. The descending winged horrors dive bombed towards the crowd, paying little attention to the whole of them with their knife-like-claws glinting in the concrete-skies light.
“Jesus christ!” Thomas shouted as while he ducked below the talons, raising his arm for a deep cut to carve a gouge into his arm and leek green blood. The wound shot hot agony up and down his arm and he stumbled back only to see another set of great outstretch claws coming for his face-mask.
“Defend yourself, fool!” Guiro chided. Thomas punched out with a frantic swing, connecting to the great beast and making it crash into the ground with a confused whine. He stood, surveying the bloody massacre that was arrayed before him as the larger cave creatures struck out against the winged lizards with varying degrees of success, and the smaller ones predation by the same lizards as they tore into their gangly flesh in stringy strips of musculature and very little fat. They screamed.
Thomas looked up and saw that the errant lizard had become its own horde to descend upon them all, sharks that smelled blood in the water -- or land as it were -- and became incensed with the stench of it all.
Thomas began to run, knocking the face of another of the lizards -- teeth shattering out of its mouth and caving a scaled snout into powdered bone and exposed flesh. One foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, and soon enough the land passed him in long-strode bursts. The screams of the cave creatures, their efforts to defend themselves in their horde-style and the screeches of the lizards became background noise as a spot in the distance -- the aforementioned rubble -- became Thomas’ target to end this nightmare and sit. To think. To connect strings on the board and figure out why he was here and what he was doing, who Guiro was and what his purpose in summoning him from those who were chasing him.
But Thomas had larger things to worry about at the moment, more immediate concerns as the gray mono-cloud began to part with the descent of something monstrously huge. Another predator, another thing of bound muscle and terrible strength came. It had the wings of a bat, the face of some horned devil and eyes of reflective lenses like sunglasses. It was hairy, with each hair being at least the size of Thomas’ now already oversized forearms. And the mouth, by God the mouth, it was a thing that made up at least half its body as it lazily opened and descended ever-quickening and expanding to be a tunnel of approaching toothed pink flesh.
In the wake of its parting there were many more shapes, many more creatures that darted and lumbered ponderously in the great sky above. Behind that gray hole punctured by the bat thing was a darkness punctuated by strips of gaseous color, like a galaxy or a nebula, and made all the more terrible as it reminded Thomas of the mad things twinkling in the stars.
“Don’t look! The Eight will see you!” Guiro commanded, but it was too late. What Thomas thought were stars soon pivoted to look upon him and take his measure. They were great eyes, things that spanned larger than the Earth and more awful in nature.
Then the unfocused eyes of the bat shone, the lizards that had been darting away became similarly possessed with the same shining light -- and all across the sky the same thing happened. Lights blinked and lit into existence trailing the circuitous and lumbering and slyly agile trails of all those beings that held the heavens as their domain. And something shifted in the gaseous streak.
It turned, looking like a hand pointing at Thomas. And the eyes turned with it.
“Run.” was all that Guiro commanded, and this time with the terror of survival Thomas did all he could to comply.