“Again!”

Four towering Amber Sentinels, each large enough to straddle the gates of Cliffwatch, carried between them a battering ram woven from the light of their auras. They drove it into the cracked white barrier before them with a thundering crash, and the jagged lines spread further across its face.

“It’s breaking!” the pilot of the lead Sentinel shouted in his direction.

“Excellent. Again!” Flyreh grinned, looking down at his men from the top of the massive pit they’d dug. The barrier was wavering, and ripples flowed towards the point of impact, trying to reinforce the cracks that his Willpower-enhanced vision could pick out. The entity within was putting up a fight. But it didn’t matter.

The battering ram, large enough to drive a cart down its length, struck the shield once more and a massive schism opened, a jagged vein of grey that tarnished the white expanse.

“Flyreh!” The nerd they’d picked up - Flyreh could hardly bother recalling his name - was waving frantically, panic in his voice. “We’ve got a problem!”

“For the last starring time, I don’t care if we’re out of cucumber!“

“This is not about the cucumber,” He paused. “Though, whilst we’re on the subject, when are we -“

“Spit it out!”

“Very well, very well. We’re getting spatial anomalies!”

Flyreh rolled his eyes. “This is the Kaiju Coast, I could wipe my ass with a spatial anomaly and not notice. If you have a point, get to it!” He turned back to the battering ram team, cupped his hands to his mouth and hollered, “Again!”

“Abnormal ones!” the nerd protested, his voice almost drowned out by the sound of the ram crashing into the shield once more. “These are excessive! Dangerous!”

Flyreh grabbed the hood of the little nerd’s cloak and forced him to look into his eyes, asking in silken tones, “More dangerous than me?”

“I, the almighty administrator Mahendra, will not deign to take -“

His grip tightened painfully around Mahendra’s shoulder. Now he remembered why he hadn’t bothered to recall the jumped-up middle manager’s name. “Say something of worth or don’t say anything at all, little man,”

Mahendra coughed, but nodded, poorly hidden anger in his eyes. “I think the temple is trying to teleport somewhere else!”

“What?!” Flyreh snarled. “Not on my watch! Again!” he barked. The battering ram smashed into the barrier once more.

“Um. Sir,” The word dripped like bile from Mahendra’s lips. “I really cannot recommend we continue under these circumstances. We should ease off, set up some spatial seals. Do it correctly. If we continue with this brute force approach, it will cause rifts all over the Kaiju Coast!”

“And they’ll chalk it up to bad weather. No one cares! Again!” Another thunderous crash shook the pit around them. Flyreh heard a groan, and one of the Amber Sentinels collapsed, fading into motes of orange energy as its pilot fell to the ground in a pained heap. The battering ram fell out of the hands of the other three, collapsing into dust as it hit the ground, and another fell to one knee, exhausted.

He went to berate them, but thought better of it. He didn’t have the time to waste on belittling his goons. “Gah, fine! If you want something done right, do it yourself I suppose,” He raised his arm, and the gemstones set into his bracer glowed with multicoloured light. His maroon aura swept up the green, red and blue resplendence, stifling the green and moulding the red and blue into the forms he needed.

“Hold on! Flyreh! We need to be precise about this! I Engraved that Battering Ram Core specifically for this purpose, did you forget? You cannot simply -“ Flyreh stopped listening to Mahendra, leaping from the edge of the pit.

As he fell, the red light overpowered the green and blue, merging with his maroon aura into a massive pair of arms and legs that wrapped around his own. His body was swallowed up by an emerging torso, and a helmet formed from Mana to complete the manifestation of an extremely large suit of armour. The blue light was pressed into his hands, focused into a pillar of solid crystal that ended in a wicked double-headed hammer.

The weapon spun in his hands as he fell towards the crack at the bottom of the pit, bringing the blunt end of the hammer to bear. The Mana-crafted muscles in his expanded arms hissed and strained as Flyreh spun in mid-air, putting all the weight he could muster behind the blow.

His engorged feet hit the ground where the battering ram had fallen, blowing the two exhausted soldiers away with the shockwave and making the two who had held out stumble. Flyreh didn’t waste the momentum, carrying his titanic hammer forwards and driving it into the centre of the cracks in the barrier.

“No! You fool!” Mahendra bellowed. “This is going to -“

The world around them broke apart.

Flyreh saw things through the fissures that his strike had torn in the world. Things he could barely understand. There was a sky full of metal birds. An ocean of waving plants. A countryside made entirely of fabric. An endlessly cold, dark void. A monolith of metal and glass. A crystal cavern. A giant eye. Plastic bricks. Trading cards. Confetti. Tentacles. Sand. Roads, jungles, bones, ruins paint stars gold -

And then it was all gone, and he was lying on the ground. Blearily, desperately, he opened his eyes, and found that the barrier was gone. He could see the building within, and there was no sign of the entity that had been keeping them out. Heedless of the ache in his bones, Flyreh leapt up in celebration, crowing, “It worked! We’re in!”

<=====}—o

The ramifications of one man’s careless strike were felt across countless worlds for brief moments. A tree vanished into a sinkhole in the countryside near Fabrikingdom. Diabella was almost cratered by a meteor that fell from a hole in the sky. For the first time in recorded history, snow fell in Fullhelm. And no one ever knew why the Star Tiger never reached its destination.

None of this was a concern for Mikayla Aiadon. How could it be when such cosmic mishaps were far outside the scope of her existence?

No, her attention was entirely focused on the young woman sprawled across the shotgun seat of her car. Catherine ‘Cat’ Andersen, her disaster of a best friend, was sprawled across the shotgun seat.

Everyone called her Cat. No one remembered that Mikayla had been the one who’d given her the nickname.

They’d just come from the wind-down of a party they’d been invited to. Well, Cat had been invited. Mikayla was roped in as the designated driver. Mikayla lamented the fact that this was a good summary of their friendship.

They’d been best friends for most of their lives. Cat had always been the outgoing, aggressively social one, while Mikayla was the wallflower who was more content with books than people. And, as the years passed, she’d come to hate that about herself, come to envy the ease with which Cat socialised and built friendships.

Which was how she’d gotten here. Following Cat to the latest Friday night party, wasting her evening by failing to talk to people, and watching jealously as Cat drank her worries away and kissed her latest boyfriend over and over again before collapsing into her mum’s car and pleading with Mikayla to drive her home.

And she agreed, because no one would notice that she had left.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Mikayla sighed, and Cat cracked a weary eye open. “Hey, something wrong?”

“Oh, you know. I just wasted another evening failing to talk to people. ,” Her frustrations were no secret from Cat. The blonde partygirl was her best friend, after all, and had been nothing but supportive of Mikayla’s attempts to be more like her.

“Oh, shut up. Miki, you are way too hard on yourself. Everyone loves you!” Cat assured her with a lopsided smile.

Mikayla chuckled. “You’re way too drunk if you really think that,”

Cat blew a raspberry rather than respond, which was exactly the level of maturity that Mikayla knew to expect from her. “Well, maybe ya need a makeover, yeah? A whole new you to get people’s attention!”

“We already did that,” Cat had seemingly forgotten that she had picked out the low-cut shirt and beach shorts that Mikayla was currently wearing.

“Yeah, but now it’s so last month. Time for an update!” Cat insisted, leaning against the window.

“You’re blocking my side-view mirror,”

“Oh, shoot, sorry,” Cat adjusted her seat, reclining it as much as she could and sprawling backwards as Mikayla stopped at a traffic light. “I mean it, though! Jackets’re in!”

“And we’re in Australia. It’s way too hot to wear a jacket,” Mikayla retorted.

“Pssh,” Cat blew her concerns off.

“Are you sure your brain isn’t heat-addled from all that ‘fashion’?” Mikayla teased, side-eyeing her.

“Mostly!”

They both chuckled.

The light turned green, and Mikayla pressed her foot to the gas pedal. But Cat’s eyes widened and she flailed at her chest, shrieking, “Look out!”

Mikayla shifted her foot to the brake, startled. The car’s speed petered out before she could get further than the pedestrian crossing. “What the hell are you -“

A massive truck thundered across the intersection, passing straight through the red light.

Mikayla and Cat watched it with wide eyes.

“. . Whoa. That thing would’ve creamed us,”

Cat shot her a lopsided smirk. “Ya totally owe me your life,”

“Oh shut up,” Mikayla scoffed. “What the hell even was that? That dipshit just ran a red light! Like, god damn,”

“Did ya see his number plates? We should call the police,”

“Nope,” Mikayla cast around. “Don’t see any traffic cameras, either,” She carefully inched across the intersection, then accelerated again once her heart had stopped pounding.

Cat reached over to pat her arm, sensing the need to take Mikayla’s mind off her mortal peril. “Sooo. What did you think of Daniel’s new ‘haircut’?”

Mikayla pulled a face, gratefully accepting the change of topic. “If he wants to wear a wig, he can wear a wig, but admit it’s a wig. Who does he think he’s fooling?”

It wasn’t long until Mikayla had pulled to a halt outside Cat’s house. “Alright, and here we are with plenty of time to spare. You don’t need me to walk you inside, do you?”

“Pssh,” She was already climbing out. “I’m sloshed, not stoned. Just gotta see if dad’ll believe I was studying,”

“He won’t,” Mikayla rolled her eyes.

“Hope springs eternal! Love ya, bestie! Talk tomorrow!” Cat waved as she staggered towards her house.

Mikayla waved back at her, not quite able to return the affection, and watched until she had made it inside and closed the door.

She sighed to herself, staring up at the dark sky. All her life, she’d felt like a background character. A hanger-on, someone who orbited around the people worth paying attention to. She was always just a face in the crowd, part of the scenery. If her life were a novel or a TV series, Cat would be the main character and Mikayla relegated to her supporting cast

It would be nice to be the main character, the one in the spotlight, right? Just once?

“Meh, whatever,” Mikayla banished the melancholy thoughts. Moping never got anyone anywhere. All there was to do was to keep going. And tonight that meant getting home before curfew. If she wasn’t back by ten, she would be grounded and banned from using her car.

Indicators and headlights painted the tarmac as she cruised out onto what passed for the main road in this rustic neighbourhood. Unkempt grass and trees lined the road, and she swerved around a pothole. Mikayla winced as she remembered how much it had cost to replace the tyres after a stray nail had punctured one. That had been painful.

It wasn’t like she disliked her lot in life. She had loving parents, a good home, an annoying little brother, a best friend. If anything, she disliked herself. Herself, and the fact that her attempts to better herself just weren’t working. Like there was a hole of some kind inside her, some fundamental need that she didn’t even know how to start filling.

But that was fine. There was no magical fix to her problems, and she didn’t need one. If some portal fantasy fairy popped up in front of her and offered to whisk her off to Narnia for a journey of self-discovery that would leave her a stronger, nicer, better person, she’d probably just say “No, thanks,”

She just had to keep trying. Eventually, she’d find something that would make her feel complete.

There was a change in the blackness of the road in front of her, and Mikayla squinted. It almost looked like - a pit! She slammed on the brakes as quickly as she could, and the car screeched to a halt.

Rubbing her eyes and squinting, she popped the door open and peered at the hole in the road. It was huge. It looked as though the ceiling of some underground cavern had collapsed and everything above it had fallen in.

Mikayla couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. “That was close. Would have been a goner if I’d plunged into that,”

Strangely enough, such an abrupt brush with mortality had been just the thing to focus her mind and drive away the ennui. She took a deep breath of the cool night air before sliding back inside her car and flipping it into reverse. A thought struck her, and her phone came out of her pocket. Best to text her mum and tell her she’d be delayed.

Her phone was dead.

Crap.

“It’s nine-forty. I can find another route and still get home in time,” Mikayla muttered to herself.

She hesitated. There was no way her mum would believe she was late because of a sinkhole and not because Cat had lured her into drunken debauchery.

The other side of the road looked intact, and there weren’t any cars coming.

“. . . Screw it,” she nodded to herself, reversing and flipping the indicator on, then sliding across the road to skirt around the edges of the sinkhole.

She knew she had made a mistake when she felt something shift. The ground shook in a way that it really shouldn’t and sent tremors through the car.

Cursing, she slammed her foot down on the accelerator, hoping to get off what was clearly unstable ground before it collapsed. The car leapt forwards, then tilted, and she slammed her weight against the side of it to keep it balanced. The front wheels passed the far edge of the sinkhole and she felt like cheering, confident that she had made it to safety.

And then a bolt of multicoloured lightning came down from the heavens, a fissure in reality that her car was already charging headlong into before she could think to slam on the brakes.

Everything went very, very colourful, but then everything went very, very black.

<=====}—o

The barrier was gone.

The escape attempt had failed.

The temple was compromised.

They needed a way out.

They only had one desperate plan. Though it pained Them, They drew on the power of the Enemy, the power that was everywhere now. Only a little bit. Only enough for one last chance.

Enough to guide the rips in the world for just a moment.

They had cast a net without even glancing at the waters, trusting Their fate to faith and luck because all else had been exhausted. They searched desperately through a thousand holes in reality.

They needed a host. Surely there would be a viable option somewhere in this scattered web? But untempered mortals could not endure the rifts in space. The very act of reaching for a host destroyed the target on the spot. They mourned the half-dozen that They had unknowingly killed before realising this.

It mattered not. They needed a host, one who was strong, or who was protected. And They needed this host now.

They had to escape before the ones who were invading breached Their sanctuary. The pawns of the Enemy would not have Them.

They found something. A human. Shielded from the ruinous magic by a wheeled metal vessel. Her mind shut down to protect itself from the things it knew it must not see.

She was raw. Weak. Adolescent. But there were no better options, and They were desperate.

They reached out. Never before had they put so much of Themself into an action. They lamented having to leave their home behind, but it was no longer safe for Them. They could only hope that the host would be understanding.

They were almost there.

But something stopped Them.

There was a hand on Their Core. They were being gripped by maroon mana. Words reached Them, though They had no ears to hear.

“Not so fast, little god. You belong to me now,”

Their essentia was drained away, pulled back from the host. Pulled back towards the temple, but not into Their altar. The host slid from Their vision.

They had failed. And soon, They would be lost.

Mikayla, collapsed over her steering wheel, never knew anything of the entity that had tried to make her Their own.