The next thing Gora knew, she was sailing through the air.

Then she hit the ground and bounced once, before coming to rest with her back on the ground, staring up at the sky. Plenty of clouds, but no sign of any blue mist. She was back in reality.

She carefully felt at her chest. It was whole. No sign of the chunk of sword-shaped metal that had been not-so-gently caressing her internal organs a few moments ago. She was absolutely exhausted, and every inch of her hurt like it had been put through a meatgrinder.

Yet, somehow, she was still alive.

She had been ejected from the Tree’s little pseudo-reality just in time. A little harsher than usual, which was just a light push, but given the circumstances, she would take it. Far better than the alternative.

Sitting up and looking around, she quickly found everyone else that had also been given the metaphorical boot out of the portal. Of the portal itself or the monsters that had been bearing down on them before they had gone in, there were no sign.

Ava and Zaxier were on the ground, barely breathing. Looked like they had failed their trials. Damn, sucks for them. They were going to be a bit out of sorts for the next few months while their souls recovered, but at least they were still alive.

Samual appeared to be fine. He was already on his feet and looking around for something. Bob likewise seemed perfectly okay. They had either passed their trials or had still been busy when… whatever had happened had happened.

Which was what, exactly? The Tree had ended their trials early somehow. If it had not, Gora would be dead. But why? She had never heard of that ever happening before from any of the other veterans hanging around the guildhall. Not even rumours from the grizzled old veterans. The Tree always saw its trials through, even if it took days. If someone finished early, they were kept in a sort of… suspended state while they waited for the others to finish theirs as well.

Only when everyone who had entered were done was the entire party released.

“What…” she began, only for a loud rumble to shake the ground under them. Cracks formed in the Otherstone, spreading outwards from the Tree. Gora sprang to her feet as they began to widen, the ground starting to buckle and shift under her. She had no idea what was going on, but whatever it was, it was not good.

“We need to move!” she shouted at the others. “Bob, grab your master! Samual, grab Av…”

Samual came running past her, Rita already in his arms, despite the Arachne likely weighing almost as much as him. She seemed to be out cold, yet somehow was clutching at a spear. Gora hadn’t even realized that she had made it out. The tips of her legs were scraping against the ground as he ran.

“Ugh, forget it!” Gora shouted after him, trying to be heard above the ever-worsening grinding of stone as she scooped up Ava and set off after him.

She risked a glance over her shoulder to check if Bob was following.

He was. So was a cart-sized boulder that had been hurled up by the upheavals in the ground next to the Tree behind them.

“Bob! Duck!”

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Gone were the blue mists. Gone were the staring eyes and alien tree. All that was left was an unending, featureless expanse of white.

Featureless except for two figures, sitting huddled in the centre.

“Rita…” Alice mumbled.

“Shh, you’re going to be okay,” Rita hushed her, rocking her in her arms.

Alice spasmed, her mangled body struggling to move normally. Vicious open wounds marred her skin, running down her front and back, over her arms and across her thorax and abdomen. She had been cleaved open to reveal red muscle, sinew and bone. Three of her legs had been completely severed, yet somehow, they remained in their relative position to her body, as if they were attached by invisible threads. And despite all the damage, not a drop of blood flowed. As if pieces of her had simply been erased from sight.

“Rita… Rita, it hurts…” Alice whimpered, her face contorted in pain. Rita’s face. No, the real Rita’s face, the one she shared with Alice.

“I know… I’m so sorry…” Rita whispered back, gently stroking her hair. “I should never have taken you in there.”

“Where are we?” Alice whispered in a moment of lucidity.

“Safe. The Tree is gone. I broke us loose. I think we’re in here now,” Rita said, tapping the side of her head.

“That’s why it’s so empty,” Alice whispered, a faint smile momentarily playing across her face. Then she coughed and winced. “Shit, it hurts so bad. Can’t think straight…”

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Rita closed her eyes. It hurt her so much to see someone in so much pain. How she wished that there was something she could do for her, but there was no bleeding to staunch, no broken limbs to set. There were just…

Pieces missing.

Maybe there was something she could do after all.

Much of the strange, tingling energy that she had stolen from the Tree was still roiling inside of her, like a vast lake of power she was almost too scared to touch. Just the excess, the bits she simply did not have room for, had been enough to blow away the entire false world that it had crafted and replace it with her own, much simpler one. She could feel it still sucking at the well of power, but it was but a trickle compared to the sheer, sloshing quantity inside of her.

Power was not all she had drained from it, however. Bits and pieces of knowledge and instinct had poured into her along with the power, like letters in alphabet soup and with about the same amount of context. It was all random and chaotic, and most made little to no sense. Factoids about things she had no concept of. Mostly.

She placed a hand to her own chest and dipped into this power. She had no idea how to use it for any sort of healing or comfort, but what she did know, mostly from having seen it used first-hand, was how to shave just a bit off herself to offer to Alice.

She pulled out a thin, white strand, the sensation of it not unlike mildly skinning yourself, and held it out to Alice.

“I can’t give you more than this. But maybe this will at least help ease the pain.”

The strand split, flowing seemingly under its own power as tiny bits of it slipped into the worst of Alice’s wounds. It was not remotely enough to fill the ghastly, ragged holes in her body, but it was enough to form a thin layer of white in the depths of her injuries.

The agony on Alice’s face subsided, replaced by relief.

“Thank you…” she whispered, before her head fell limply to the side.

She had fallen asleep.

Rita gently eased her to the ground and stood up.

It was time for her to wake up. She just hoped it was not going to be to some monster looking her right in the eye.

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The first thing Rita saw when she opened her eyes was a horrific blue and purple face, the colour of a fresh bruise.

She screamed. Just a little.

“Yep, she’s alive,” Gora said from where she was sitting by the fire. “Give her some space, Bob.”

Bob, having fallen backwards at Rita’s scream nodded sheepishly and crawled back to the fire. He looked like his face had been used as a punching bag. His head and jaw had been wrapped in bandages.

Rita sat up as she tried to get her hammering heart under control. They were in what looked like a partially collapsed parking garage. One side had collapsed, leaving the roof a slanting concrete slab of dubious structural integrity. Gora and Samual were sitting around a small campfire – just a normal one, judging by the broken table legs that Gora was feeding it. Samual was holding some kind of fancy looking spear.

“What happened to Bob?” Rita asked.

“Idiot turned to look back instead of ducking like I told him,” Gora grumbled, accompanied by more nods from Bob. He looked suitably embarrassed, but in good spirits.

“And Ava and Kitty?” Rita continued. “Are they okay?”

“Depends how you define okay,” Gora said and nodded towards the wall next to her.

Ava was propped up against the concrete, barely illuminated by the faint light of the fire, eyes staring at a fixed point in front of her. She was idly stroking Zaxier, who lay limply in her arms with half-lidded eyes. Ava looked ashy pale, with dark rings of exhaustion around her eyes, while Zaxier just sagged like a lethargic, boneless mass. Both looked like they had been through hell.

“What happened to them?” Rita asked, aghast.

“They died in their trials,” Gora explained. “Before the tree kicked them out. Got a chunk of their soul eaten in the process. Half, if my father is to be believed.”

Shit, that was right! Gora had run into her father! Rita fully intended to poke that topic at a later point, but right now she was more worried about Ava and Zaxier. They did not look so good.

“Are they going to be okay? Is it permanent?” Rita asked, crawling closer to the fire. She wanted to go check on them, but the fire’s warmth called to her first. Besides, they did not seem to want to be disturbed.

“Their souls will recover, in time,” Samual stated flatly, still inspecting his new spear closely.

“We won’t know for sure until we get back to the Outpost,” Gora explained, “but they should be fine. Ava’s still young and Zaxier… well, he’s at least a little magical in nature. That usually helps.”

“And the three of you? You didn’t… die?” Rita asked, sitting next to them.

“I passed my trial,” Samual said without looking up, a puzzled expression on his face.

“And we have no idea what happened to Bob,” Gora added.

Bob nodded and made gestures as if he was sweeping the floor. Then he waved his arms in the air, pointed at the sky, pointed at the ground, then nodded again. Then he shrugged.

“… right. See what I mean?” Gora said. “As for me, I barely managed to hold on long enough until… well, we’re still not quite sure what happened. We were hoping you could shed some light on that, actually. I assume it was you that did it?”

Rita suddenly found three pairs of eyes staring intently at her.

“Erm… probably?” Rita said, fighting to suppress a smile. “I sorta… bit the Tree.”

Gora stared at her, shocked, for a few seconds. Then she laughed. “Well good work! You may have put me out of a job, but you saved my life at the same time, so I can hardly complain!”

“Thanks… wait, how did I put you out of a job?” Rita asked concernedly.

“Why don’t you go see for yourself?” Gora chuckled, gesturing towards the silhouette of daylight at one edge of the slab.

Puzzled, Rita got up on shaky legs and headed over. Surely her little bite had not been enough to kill the Tree?

When her eyes adjusted to the bright daylight outside, she gasped. Where the Tree had once stood, less than five hundred metres away from where she was standing, there was nothing but viciously torn up earth and asphalt, and just the tip of something that looked green and organic peeking out from below the ground. It had almost completely sunk away into the earth.

But that was not what had left her speechless. Along with the Tree, the ever-present mist that had hung over the remains of the city had disappeared. In its place, bright, happy sunlight lit up the world and revealed, in the distance, the horizon.

Or rather, the lack of one.

Instead of blue sky meeting the land at some indeterminate point in the distance as the curve of the planet took it out of sight, the world curved upwards. She could see green continents outlined by shimmering blue oceans, far in the distance, as if she were looking at the photograph of an earth-like planet plastered along the inside of a bowl.

Her eyes followed the curve of the world as it rose higher and higher and grew more and more blurry and indistinct, until it disappeared behind the bright glare of the noon sun, far above.

She was standing on the inside of a sphere that went all the way around the sun.

Where the FUCK was she???