Leo rolled to the side, pain lancing through him.

His lungs struggled to fill with air. When Leo finally dragging some in, his reward was explosive coughing.

He was lying inside a huge, stone room decorated with ornate statues. Abstract geometric patterns were carved into the floor, walls, and ceilings, each beautiful and intricate. Multiple glowing gems hanging from iron chains, providing light.

There was a single wooden door leading out of the room.

Two thin individuals, both with strange metallic-gold hair, held the door shut. They grunted as they leaned against the thick wood, their thin arms shaking.

The woman Leo had seen in the mirror circle was next to him, and another seven of the individuals were around the room. Everyone was so thin… Especially the woman. Who was she? Were they all elves? Maybe cosplaying as elves? Leo found himself struggling to speak.

He was on the stone altar slab he had seen before. An altar, he thought. At the end of the altar was a purple crystal, floating in the air, threads of energy lancing down from it in glowing lines around the altar that defined the fifteen-foot radius. A single drop of blood had been smeared across the purple crystal’s surface.

Inside the beautiful gemstone were seven tiny souls. One of them was Audrey, her face distorted with pain and confusion.

Audrey!

Leo started to reach out, but caught sight of his hand.

It wasn’t his hand at all.

Right then, he realized he wasn’t in his body at all. He stared at the pale skin of his thin wrist and the long, golden hair running down his shoulders. I’m in the body of that elf that lay down on the altar a moment ago. What the…?

The woman leaned over the altar and grabbed Leo, her face breathtaking but speckled with blood, as was her pale-bronze hair.

She spoke to him in a melodious language Leo hadn’t heard before. It reminded Leo of a beautiful Ugandan accent or someone speaking something close to Chinese, as near as he could parse it. Somehow, Leo understood it.

“In the religious tone, position of inferior addressing a high superior, most formal: My deepest and most sincere apologies: which is bourn from necessity regretted: o’ Star-Guided Champion. The situation is untenable: regret at failure to control: due to the unfortunate presence of our enemy outside this chamber: ancestral, deservedly hated, victorious:”

Her language used sentence prefixes to indicate the context of the conversation—in this case, for some reason, a church conversation. It also used word suffixes to indicate the comparative authority of the speakers, and this woman had indicated that she thought Leo was far, far above her. And lastly, it used words to modify the meanings of adjectives and emotions, giving them subtle clarifying alterations.

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Leo knew, somehow, that she was speaking something called High Averian, a most complicated but expressive language.

But after a mere heartbeat, his mind translated the words to his English thought patterns.

She had said, basically, “I’m sorry but we need to run because enemies are outside.”

Leo coughed and spoke—in a language neither English nor what the lady had spoken. “What are you telling me? I need to rescue Audrey!”

There was the sound of something heavy striking wood. Leo rolled to his feet.

“They're breaking through!” one of the elven men yelled.

The woman spoke again in the same language Leo was using, which Leo realized was Middle Averian, trying to pull him away from the altar. “I’ll explain later! Kravahk Rockbreaker, a demon-orc, that is chasing me to finish me off, likely at the bidding of his dark god. We cannot hold here. Please.”

“I’m not leaving Audrey!” Leo reached for his sword with an instinctual movement he had never possessed before.

The elf woman held her hands up. “Please! If I don’t use Asnandi’s Key—” she pointed to the purple stone “—to open a portal from here, we will all be slaughtered, and your woman lost.”

Before Leo could formulate a response, the door slammed open, pinning the two elves beneath it.

A massive being stepped into the room, his hideous appearance a harsh juxtaposition to the beauty all around them.

The man was nearly ten feet tall and muscled like a Greek god. He had green-gray skin, four small tusks around his mouth, and he carried a massive sword nearly as long as the creature was tall. The weapon radiated dark energy in visible black waves.

Behind him were…

There’s no way around it, Leo. Those are orcs.

The elves opened fire with arrows. Twenty orcs, seven feet tall and with gray-green skin like the big one, but only two upward facing tusks each, entered the room. A small, four-foot-tall green goblin carrying a staff entered after them.

The tableau held for a moment.

“Kravahk Rockbreaker,” the woman said, her voice filled with terror. “I can’t fight him. We need—”

Kravahk stepped forward, his massive sword held in one hand., and pointed it at the woman. “Bahk do!”

She half turned to Leo and whispered, “There’s no time left. He cannot have the Key, or the whole continent will be bathed in blood.”

The woman ran for the purple crystal, and Kravahk howled.

Everything dissolved into chaos as the orcs charged the outnumbered elves, cutting the remaining five down almost instantly. One orc charged Leo, and Leo caught the club swing on his arm, which broke.

A translucent box appeared over his view, like a message in a computer game.

System not connected. Attempting to calibrate. Remain still, please.

Like hell I’ll remain still! And get out of my face, whatever you are!

The box obliged, disappearing.

Leo dodged the follow-up swing from the orc. He watched as Kravahk threw his ridiculous sword at the female elf. She dodged, but the sword slashed into the crystal, black energy flaring. A small cracked appeared across the gem.

Leo watched as the souls inside fled the crystal. Audrey’s flew into the elf woman’s body, who gasped and turned toward Leo. “Leo?” she managed.

The remaining souls flew into orcs, or in one case, the goblin. But Kruegar’s flew into Kravahk, who briefly froze.

A wave of purple energy expanded from the gem.

Leo briefly saw worlds, plural.

Alternate Earths, where people wore strange clothing.

A world where dinosaurs roamed.

A hellscape of fire and molten metal.

A vast void filled with unknowable beings that looked like cephalopods large enough to swallow the sun.

Audrey, in the body of the elf woman, reached for him before she spun off into nothingness.

Then everything exploded.