The void wasn’t made of vacuum. Felix was sure of that now, because he could barely hear himself thinking over the tirade of swear words spewing from his sister’s mouth. Unlike he, who was soaring headfirst to their next destination, Marcia was tumbling about and flailing her arms like a drowning bird.

“Felix?!” Her voice whizzed past his ears as she rolled above him. “What… the fuck… is going on?!”

“Just hold on tight!” Felix grabbed the helm of her jacket and pulled her towards him. Her small hands gripped his shoulders tightly.

He could already see the next glowing doorway hurtling towards them. Or rather, they were hurtling towards it. Either way, he wasn’t sure if it was possible for someone to be stranded in this infinite void if they didn’t make it through the door. He held his sister tightly. He sure as hell did not want to find out.

Marcia’s scream rattled his ears as the door loomed in their faces. Felix tried to ignore how her voice went impossibly high in pitch, as though it was being sped up through a voice processing device. Something nipped at his ankle as his vision spun with light and colour.

And then soft grass slammed into his face.

Felix was tumbling in every direction like a hyperactive breakdancer. Mercifully, he skidded to a stop before he could puke all over himself. He groaned, blinking his eyes a few times to orientate himself. This trip was certainly a lot more violent than the previous one.

He pushed himself up again, shaking his head to get rid of the light in his vision. It was then he realised that his awareness had been temporarily knocked out of his body, and the lights weren’t just in his vision.

Purple dazzled before him as he tilted his head to the cityscape, finally taking in the sights of this strange world for the first time. Like his own world, purple seemed to be the main aesthetic of this place as well, except it was cranked to eleven this time.

A cacophony of neon lights splashed carelessly over the horizon of infinite glowing metal stretching out below him. Streets weaved between the dense urban jungle, all of them connected by roads curved in all sorts of unconventional ways. Even further lay floating concrete buildings tethered to the ground by intangible magic columns, rudely occupying the airspace with their blocky, brutalist architectural design.

Felix let his mouth hang open in awe as a few miniaturised airships flew just above him. They looked like airships, alright. Except they were shrunk down to the size of an average carriage. The man wasn’t educated enough to even begin grasping the physical laws that allowed that to happen; he could only be sure that this place was a lot more technologically advanced than his own.

A flash of movement rudely interrupted his marvelling.

Felix flinched and jerked his leg away from the disembodied head snapping at his ankle. He furrowed his eyebrows in disgust. Apart from Marcia and himself, Gaius had somehow made it through the portal as well.

Or rather, just his head.

Marcia yelped and scrambled away from the head scuttling towards her. It was presumably cut off when the portal closed on Gaius’ body, but there were already tiny appendages growing from the bloodied neck that looked suspiciously like toes.

The woman charged towards the severed head without warning and kicked it like a football.

Pink flared in Felix’s eyes as he stopped the head dead in its trajectory. He didn’t want to risk Gaius regrowing his entire body and terrorising this world as well. He squeezed his fist.

“Come back from this, psycho.”

Pinkish blood sprayed onto the white-coloured grass as Gaius’ brain burst out from his skull. The golden glow faded from the lifeless eyes just as grey matter plopped onto the ground. Marcia rushed forward and repeatedly stepped on it like it was a cockroach.

Felix flicked his hand casually, tossing the empty, lifeless head into what he could only assume was a rubbish bin.

“You okay?” He gestured to the wound on Marcia’s face, and the woman promptly pulled out a handkerchief to clean the blood away.

Felix grinned. “If that thing scars, you’ll look like a proper mafia boss.”

If his sister was about ten years younger, she would’ve rolled her eyes— And he could tell she was fighting the urge. But as it was, Marcia settled for a simple gangster scowl as she cast her gaze at the choking dazzle of neon lights before her.

“Where the hell are we?” Her voice had also dropped to a barely audible groan. “Why didn’t my portal spell work?”

“Why did you even try to open a portal to Purgatory in the first place? It seemed like Gaius turned his body into a portal as well.” Felix mused. “That’s probably why your spell didn’t work.”

He stared at the golden light coating the open skull. It wasn’t psychic energy, but the magic before him felt remarkably similar to the gateway created by the Summer Solstice. Felix made a mental note in case he somehow needed knowledge of portal creation.

“Looks like we’re in yet another alternate world,” the man commented, turning his attention back to his surroundings.

“How’d you know that?” Marcia asked.

“For one, I travelled through that very same void to reach your world. So I’ve done this before.” He beckoned her to follow him down a flight of steps. “For another, this building looks nothing like Devil’s Gate.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He pointed at the huge signage painted onto the floor. The familiar name stared back at them.

Guardian Council: Home of The Protectors.

~ ~ ~

For better or for worse, the Guardian Council headquarters was deserted. It might have been nice to ask for directions, but Felix didn’t exactly plan on getting tossed into a foreign world, so he was utterly lost as to what to do now.

Unlike the previous world, his soul was not resonating with anything. There wasn’t even the slightest indication that the other book was in this world. So why the hell did the Summer Solstice bring them here?

After climbing down about five hundred steps or so, Felix gave up and resorted to simply flying down instead.

The siblings found themselves smack in the middle of a neon city. Bits of the night sky poked through the cloud of lights, but most of it was obscured by the sheer colours decorating the celestial canvas.

“What time is it here?” Felix squinted, trying his best to avoid knocking into the crowd walking in his direction. The people here were walking at a strangely uniform pace— Hell, even their sense of fashion was almost identical.

Felix’s mind raced to formulate a plan.

There was no point searching for The Winter Solstice at the moment since it clearly wasn’t in this universe. He could ask Marcia to open another portal with The Summer Solstice, but there was also no guarantee that they’d travel to a world that contained the other book.

The only viable plan was to search for someone who knew enough about inter-world travel to analyse The Summer Solstice’s polarising energy and pinpoint the location of its twin. But where to begin searching—

“Felix, watch out!”

The man’s body jerked backwards as someone yanked him away from a roaring carriage. He turned back to his sister who was staring at him wide-eyed, before turning his attention to the traffic intersection.

“What the hell are those?” He gestured at some sort of lamp posts with different coloured lights.

“Looks like some kind of signal for traffic,” Marcia mused out loud, also staring at them. “These different colours seem to indicate when we can cross the road.”

“What? You mean the carriages don’t stop on their own at intersections?” Felix cocked an eyebrow as people began to bustle around him. “Don’t these vehicles have life-detecting charms imbued in them?”

“How would I know? Move, move, move!” His sister pushed him lightly before the crowd trampled on them. “Green means ‘Go’. Red means ‘Stop’. Gotta keep that in mind…”

The other side of the street was no less bright than the rest of the city and looked surprisingly down to Earth. Not a single potion or spellcraft shop was in sight, and none of the residents were wielding their staves. If it wasn’t for the recognisable technomagick aura choking the air, Felix could’ve sworn he was in a world where magic somehow didn’t exist.

“Hey, where exactly are we going?” Marcia pulled on his arm worriedly. “The charms on the feeders in my room can only last so long. We need to find a way back before my animals starve.”

“I don’t think time is a factor here.” Felix shrugged. “We can travel to any point in time in the multiverse anyway.”

“Okay fine, but what is the plan?” his sister insisted. “Do you sense the other book?”

“No.”

“No?!” Marcia shouted, attracting the attention of a few pedestrians. “What the fuck are we doing here, then?”

“Hey, you’re the one who cast the portal.” Felix rolled his eyes. “Don’t pin that on me.”

“And you don’t have a plan to get us where we need to go. What happened to ‘I’ve done this before’, huh?” the woman huffed. “Great. This is just great. Now we’re stuck in this neon world with no way back—”

“Hey, hey, hey. Calm down, lady.” An overly honeyed voice cut in abruptly.

Marcia swung around violently and promptly widened her eyes at the chocolate shoved in her face. She stared at the stranger, whose lips were contorted into an unnaturally wide smile.

“What the— Who are you?”

“Life is good, my friend,” the stranger continued without regard to her question. “There is no plausible reason to be upset. Let’s all contribute to global happiness.”

“Hear, hear!”

“Praise the universe! Life is good!”

Felix whipped his head around at the small crowd agreeing with the strange woman. Like her, every one of them harboured an intensely happy expression, as though their smiles were literally plastered onto their faces. He stole a peek into their memories.

And almost reeled in shock.

It had nothing to do with their memories. In fact, he couldn’t even look into their memories. The intense joy at the forefront of their thoughts was practically blinding his telepathy. It was as though all of them were brainwashed to feel nothing but happiness.

Felix flinched as another stranger offered him a honeyed apple. He backed away slowly until his back met his sister’s. The crowd of people had formed a circle around them, chanting away happily.

“There is only love, peace, and happiness in this world. Everything else is an illusion!”

“It is our duty as citizens to propagate happiness!”

“Be considerate, have a chocolate!”

The chanting grew louder as more and more people surrounded the siblings, oddly obsessed with driving away their ‘spirit of unhappiness’.

“Everyone, leave these two to me! Worry not, I’ll make sure they understand how happy they can be in this world!”

Like hell, you will.

Felix swung around to the source of the voice, whose face was still covered by a shadow. It showed itself soon enough, his every footstep emphasised by the clanging of his staff against the gravel floor.

A flush raced up his spine and settled into his cheeks as Felix stared at the familiar-looking man approaching him.

“Come with me,” the robed man said, offering his hand. “I’ll explain everything on the road.”

Felix nodded awkwardly, following Orpheus Caesar’s lead out of the crowd.