Nick and his friends followed the Black Witch down the long corridor of the imposing stone citadel. With the Crown of the Gallows firmly on his head and the soldiers of the Black Witch standing at perfect attention on either side of them as they passed, part of him felt like royalty. But he also felt uncomfortably powerless. He couldn’t help but notice how strong the soldiers and knights looked. Omni-Trainer’s Insight and the strength of some of the knights’ aura made it clear that the groups of soldiers and mages Nick had rescued on his way to the citadel hadn’t been the elites. Rather, as he’d suspected, they had been the mere rank and file.
The elites were here, and they were the ones that had managed to hold off tens of thousands of enemies from overrunning the witch’s gates for weeks at least, potentially even months. It was like he was surrounded on all sides by members of the Crimson Crusaders, but he kept his chin up and kept walking deeper into the citadel.
“Is it too late to change our mind and just leave?” Reggie asked quietly over Nick’s shoulder. Nick was surprised that the Black Witch had been so accommodating as to let his entire party follow, but he knew they were still outnumbered if things took a turn for the worst.
“It was never our choice, only our fate, to meet. From the moment your realm, like ours, became the target of the dragons, you were destined to be here,” the Black Witch answered Reggie from the head of the group, just ahead of Nick. She didn’t even bother turning around.
Seo-ah rolled her eyes at the woman’s TV psychic manner of speech. “Please tell me she’s not going to be this cryptic the entire time.”
“You should treasure every word she utters,” Malcolm insisted from his place at the witch’s side, but his words only drew ire from the rest of the group.
“I’ll treasure a good canister of napalm in your gut the moment I get a chance, you freaking traitor,” Topaz threatened before Nick was able to put a hand on her shoulder, letting her know to calm down.
He understood her anger. The name Malcolm called the Black Witch, “Ingenga,” had been the same name of the cult that had more than once created devastation and destruction on Earth by attacking cities with bombs and, more recently, causing dungeon breaks that had killed thousands.
“I can tell you are angry with me,” the Black Witch said, addressing the rather obvious state of things. “You see the trouble that Malcolm and the others have caused as wounds upon your people. You think they are nothing but losses, suffered for no reason as agents of chaos ran amuck in my name. But that’s not the case.”
They reached the end of the corridor, and two of her knights stepped in front of her to open up a pair of doors to reveal a large throne room.
Overhead, the vaulted hall seemed to stretch endlessly into an unknown abyss above, the ascending arches adorned with intricate carvings and shimmering jewels that caught the light and sent prismatic rays dancing across the polished marble floor. The walls were lined with magnificent tapestries, each depicting an epic battle or mythical creature with vivid colors and delicate stitching that brought them to life.
As the group stepped farther into the throne room, their footsteps echoed against the smooth floor. A faint scent of incense lingered in the air, adding to the mystical atmosphere.
The Black Witch glided towards her throne, a menacing structure situated on a raised dais. The back of the seat was ten feet tall and adorned with sharp protrusions. The arms were formed from twisted metal claws that grasped sparkling jewels the size of baseballs.
As she sat, her hands rested on the throne’s arms. The jewels flared with a bright magical light. She looked down at Nick and his friends, Malcolm separating himself to stand near her, and said, “You see my agents as having killed your people, but I see them as prophets, sent to wake them up to the inevitable. You knew what the future held. Even when your nations were aware of the dangers—aware of the dragons—so tell me, how many died?
Nick swallowed down his anger at the mere mention of the dragons. There was no love lost between him and those reptilian monsters, the vile dragonkin, the fiends that had rounded up his people and shepherded them like cattle to the slaughter.
“Governments fell, armies were crushed, every dungeon broke, and the monsters spread everywhere. Eventually, we all died,” Nick replied. “Every last one of us.”
“Indeed, and that is even with my help.” The Black Witch’s words felt convincing, like she meant it, her sincerity coming through every syllable she spoke.
“But you could have just told us what was going to happen. If you found a way to reach out to our realm, why didn’t you just warn us?” Nick asked, wanting resolution.
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“I did, at first. Malcolm may have been a violent hammer, meant to nail down the truth, but the first messenger I sent was a peaceful oracle, and then when that continued to fail, I tried financial methods. I tried dozens and dozens of different methods to save your people and mine. Then I found that your world, much like my own, responded much more actively to direct threats, and I changed tactics. Malcolm was only my latest try at this . . .” She spared a glance at him before frowning. “Though he and the people he rallied still failed. It seems loss is inevitable.”
“What do you mean by ‘failed’? We’re here, we saved your people, and we’ve defended our world so far. We haven’t failed yet,” Nick pushed back at the accusation.
“With the paltry force of a single city?” She let out a deep breath. “Your numbers aren’t even impressive by my world’s standards, yet you tout them as great despite your own world’s excess? I’ve seen through your eyes the towers that stab into the heavens, piercing the clouds as if mankind were trying to slay God, yet all you could muster was this tiny, pathetic force? There are more teachers in your city than you’ve brought soldiers here, and you say you haven’t failed?”
Nick remained silent at the accusation. It was actually a major point of frustration he’d felt in his last life. He’d lived in a city with a million people, where half the schools taught people to function within their class, yet not even a thousand had mobilized to fight at the first rift.
“Until the world falls, we haven’t lost.” This time it was Maria who spoke, the hero of the group, who had fought to the bitter end with Nick in his last life.
“With how many times your world has already fallen, forgive me for being skeptical,” the Black Witch replied with a shrug from her throne. “Either way, I am only pointing out that even now, without my help, you might have had peace for a few more years, but then you’d have faced an army greater than any you’d ever seen before. I can tell you now that when they invaded, they with their magic would have only taken half a day to cover the world and destroy every stronghold and living creature in your realm.”
“Be that as it may, you still murdered people,” Maria continued, putting her hand on her hilt, prompting the knights around them to do the same.
“Killed who? They were already dead. I watched it myself. Just ask your friend. He’s seen it as well.” She pointed at Nick. “I killed no one who hadn’t already died a hundred times before.”
“But they—”
“Maria!” Nick snapped. He put a hand on her shoulder and collected himself. “Let me handle this.”
“Okay . . .” She moped for a moment as Nick tried to give her a reassuring smile. He then stepped forward, ahead of his group.
“You may be right, but that is not what we’re here to discuss. I need to know the exact details of what is happening and why our world is being overrun. I need to understand what is going on, or we’ll never have a chance of stopping it,” Nick insisted as he moved closer to her throne.
With each step he took, the knights around the witch grew more agitated. He could see from the white knuckles on their sword hands that they were ready to defend their saintess with deadly force at the slightest provocation. He didn’t care. He needed answers.
“It’s as you have been told, as you have seen through my eyes before: your realm is but one of an infinite number. In almost all worlds that have life, mankind is the winner of the evolutionary skirmish, and history repeats itself endlessly. However, on the world we stand now, the dragons did not die out, mankind never rose to power, and the horde of monsters that came to rule in our absence continued to grow more and more powerful.
It was then that the first cataclysm occurred. Two separate realms, or as your people call them, different dimensions, crashed into each other as their paths intersected. The effect of such an event causes bending and warping in the fabric of reality. First, the energy becomes manifest as aura and magic, seeping into the soil, the water, the air, and all living creatures. Then, as the aura and mana continue to grow out of control, mirrors or shards are formed, glimpses of the other side as one realm fights the other for its space on the final tapestry of existence. Finally, as these mirrors continue to grow and explode, the two realms become one . . . or at least, that’s how it should have happened. The dragons saw what was occurring, and they used their magic to control it.
To stop their own people from dying, they created the rifts. The rifts act as pillars between the realms. Think of them as ropes and anchors meant to tie down a ship so it does not crash into another vessel in the waters. However, once they saw the pillars they had created could be used to travel from one side to the other . . . they leapt at the opportunity. They charged across the rift and plundered the other side, enslaving or eating every human they could find,” Ingenga explained.
Nick frowned. “And once they were done, they found another realm with more victims?” He knew the story roughly, but hearing it spelled out so clearly caused a little anger to build up within him.
“Indeed. There are an infinite number of realms, so they plan to spend the rest of eternity feeding off of them,” the Black Witch said. “They will take advantage of the near immortality of the ancient dragons in their ranks to grow stronger with every victory, to make their army larger, their generals more powerful, and their slaves more plentiful until humans across every realm are nothing more than cattle to serve them.”
“Do we even have to worry about the dragons though, with where we are?” Nick asked. “Aren’t we in some frozen place? Not their land?”
“We’re in the equivalent of the north pole of your world,” Ingenga answered, “which has bought us time as the dragons hate this land, only venturing up here to occasionally enslave, farm, and reap the growing ursine and other monstrosities that call this part of the world home. Then the dragons return to the warmer, sunnier parts of this world. However, it will not be long until they discover us. We have at most months before their scouts, sent to see if there are enough of these furred beasts to make an excursion worth the effort, come and discover our rifts.
Once they do, they will send an expeditionary force and then their full force after. There will be no stemming or stopping the tides of destruction they will rain down upon us. That is why all we can do now is prepare for that inevitability. We must stop their scout, hide our existence as long as we can, and prepare for the inevitable. We must make time our ally in this coming conflict.”