The three of them were making the short walk back to Avery’s house. Avery had just finished recapping his perfectly normal morning…

“I already guessed that you had cleaned your room for me to come over,” Erin wrapped it up. “What happened to the whole being stabbed?”

“So I finished up in my room and walked out to get some milk. I opened the fridge door, when I went flying! I had a dagger in my stomach, leaning against a wall, bleeding on the floor.”

“I stopped by your place and met the ‘lady’ who stabbed you,” Erin said.

“Lady? I was stabbed by some tall and slender man! His skin looked like it was made of some kind of stone.”

“?”

“Yeah, he was wearing a crown and a long skirt. Well, I’m glad you didn’t meet him. Who’s this woman? Oh, is that why you were being jealous?”

Erin blushed. “She was basically naked, looking around your house like I was.” Why was she there, then?

She’s so cute when she’s embarrassed… Avery smiled.

“Made of stone? That is a symptom of immortality in humans,” Nina said. “Otherwise known as godhood.”

“I don’t know his reasons, or anything about being a god, all I know is that I put up my hand and disappeared into another dimension. I think, at least…”

“So that’s why your phone was disconnected? You were out of service?”

“Yeah, I was. For days, actually.”

“You were gone for probably three hours…” Erin said.

“Here I was! In there, I recovered for probably four days before I was drawn a picture back to this world,” Avery took out a painting on a large card he had in his back pocket.

Erin snatched it from him, inspecting the back and front. On the back, it looked like some elaborate playing card, the front was a detailed pastel that reminded her of Van Gogh’s paintings, and it looked like the bleachers of Ume Park. As she stared at it, she began to feel almost motion sick, and the card was getting hot to the touch.

“Don’t look at it too long,” Avery said. “It’ll literally take you there.” He took it from her hand and put it back in his pocket.

“...”

Erin believed it, it was one of those ‘life is stranger than fiction’ scenarios.

They had made it to Avery’s house and the trio walked in unabated, but didn’t leave it at that. They split up and searched the house for intruders, before meeting naturally in the kitchen.

“What the hell happened to my roof!” Avery yelled once he got there.

“That nudist god, the bitch, jumped through the roof.” So answered Erin, more than a little embarrassed still about being fooled.

“I can do that, too…” Nina interjected.

“You better not!” Avery said.

“Speaking of which, Nina, you better investigate. What do you feel here?”

Nina wafted the air into her nose and said: “More than two powers intermingled, crossing paths… Maybe four. One of them is him,” she pointed at Avery… and taking a huge step forward, grabbed his shirt and sniffed his chest.

Erin’s face turned red and she punched Nina, Avery screeched, and Nina put her hands up, saying, “You asked,” in her always even voice.

“I didn’t ask you to smell him! Only I get to smell him…”

“But now I know for certain it’s him, and you can smell him later.”

“Wait, you can follow smells? Like a bloodhound?” Said Avery.

“My whole body is like a science lab, so yes, I can identify smells ‘like a bloodhound.’ Whatever that is.”

“It’s a breed of dog…” Avery tried to explain.

“I’m nothing like a dog, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“No! You know what, nevermind.”

“So,” Erin said, sitting down in the front room. “Why don’t you take a seat and explain to us what happened in those four days?”

The other two took seats near Erin, as Avery cleared his throat, preparing to tell his tale.

“So I raised my hand, and I wished to get out of this place in my head, to be anywhere but here, right? The next thing I knew, I was in a castle, and I looked out the window, only to find it was barred, but beyond that, the sky was purple.

“There was a man there when I turned around, he looked a lot like me… blonde hair, blue eyes. He told me, ‘welcome to my prison!’ But the place was rather lavish for a prison of any kind.

“I collapsed, right on the spot, likely from blood loss. When I woke up I was expertly bandaged by the man. He introduced himself to me as a sort of cousin, a real one. You know I’ve never met my biological family before. I was more than a little surprised, and asked him about my family.

“He drew me up a family tree, and we talked about blood ties while I could practically see myself heal in real time. Erin, he told me I come from royalty in another place, the origins of the universe. Wanna see a neat trick I was taught?”

Avery shimmered, almost like a mirage, quickly and efficiently till he was gone. Erin and Nina looked around, before Avery said: “Boo!” directly behind them. They both jumped. Avery walked to the kitchen and popped open a bottle of wine.

“What the heck… was that…” Erin said.

“You said magic doesn’t exist, then what am I? According to my cousin, it’s only a matter of time before the worlds fully combine, like they have been for twenty years. Like your blade, Erin.”

“What’d you have to do for that…” Erin jested, not fully serious.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“He just gave me this amulet, he says it’s the symbol of my people.” Avery lifted a necklace—no it was indeed an amulet—from beneath his shirt. Inside the huge cut gem hanging from a gold chain one could see a complex spiral of three dimensional symbols.

The girls stared on in shock.

“Have you ever seen a three dimensional enhancement before? No, none has been devised, although many tried.” Avery said.

“Let Nina inspect it…”

Avery hesitated, but finally took it off and handed it to the doll, Nina. She looked at it for a moment, before putting the gem in her mouth.

“What the f—!”

“Shh.” Erin shushed him with a finger to his lips. “Let her do her thing.”

Nina seemed to lick it in her mouth a few times before spitting it out, the gem completely dry—she was a doll, after all. Did you expect dolls to salivate?

“What is she doing with that blank face?” Avery asked, taking a swig of wine directly out of the bottle.

“She’s analyzing. When did you start drinking, and wine of all things…”

“I acquired the taste with that man, in his prison. I never got his name.”

Erin didn’t like the sound of any of this, she felt at that moment that her boyfriend had been spoiled somewhat by whoever this man was… he was acting differently. But she kept silent.

Avery handed her the bottle, and feeling pressured took a drink of it. She was surprised it was so sweet, yet still bitter. She took another drink.

“It’s not magic,” Nina interrupted. “But it’s near enough to not matter. If anything, this paints a larger target right on your back.”

“Who cares? I had enemies before, apparently, and now I can basically teleport. What did you analyze?”

“I can reproduce a few of the symbols inside my head, but copying the totality of it would be impossible. You stumbled across the solution to a twenty year old problem. What now?”

What now was their personal million dollar question. What now? Rang in their heads like a gong with its significance.

“Well… what are our options?” Erin asked.

“I might be able to find one of them,” Nina said. “No telling which one it is I find.”

“Hold up, why’d you say you couldn’t reproduce all the symbols? There’s more than one in there?” Avery asked.

“That amulet can do more than teleport. I can’t reproduce all of it because it’s too powerful as a whole. I could recalibrate the symbols to come up with something more… useful.”

“How do you do that?” Avery said.

“I swallow it. The pit of my ‘stomach’ runs through my core, which is an alternator for curses and blessings. New powers could easily be unlocked that way.”

“You're a weird one, you know that? Fine… Do it.”

So she did, removing the amulet from the necklace and swallowing it. She handed the gold necklace back to Avery, who put it back around his neck.

Erin looked out the window. It was getting dark, the sun setting on the horizon. “Maybe we should rest on this, come back to it tomorrow?”

Nina nodded, yes. “It’ll take me twelve hours to ‘digest.’”

Avery said: “I’m starving so that’s probably best. Nina, can you still track them if we wait till tomorrow?”

“Easily. I’ve already got their scent,” answered Nina.

“Let’s go already,” Avery said. He stood and gave Erin his hand, and hand in hand the two—plus Nina, following behind—walked down the road in a peaceful silence to Erin’s house.

What has gotten into him? Erin thought.

- - - -

Pillow talk—in Erin’s bed, the lights off, door locked.

“I guess my luck actually did increase… Ouch!”

Erin pinched him. “It had nothing to do with luck… It’s just been awhile.”

“We always see each other everyday, so being away from you for four-or-so… I missed you so much.” Avery leaned in and gave her a kiss.

She blushed. He isn’t usually this intimate, she thought. “It seems like… you changed a bit, in those days you were gone there.”

“I say four days, but if I understood my cousin correctly it may have been closer to six or seven. Something about time moving faster in his prison, which I believe because of how well healed my wound already is.”

“He must’ve made a big impression on you.”

“Very. I think he may have been lying though, I think he isn’t my cousin but a direct family member. We look too much alike, and I got the feeling he was hiding things from me. There were a few things I left out, I didn’t want to tell the doll.”

Erin sighed. “Can you two get along already? Please?”

Avery ignored her comment, saying, “One thing he wouldn’t tell is if I had used unknown powers of my own, or if something else moved me to him. Think about it, even if this was some power I had, why would it activate right as I was stabbed, and move me directly to him? I think there was some sort of trigger, probably the close death experience, that activates and moves me to wherever he is.”

“Sounds like you’ve got an idea…”

“Yeah, you’re right. I think he’s my biological father, maybe an uncle. Why else did he help me so much? Any way you look at that amulet, it’s a big gift.”

“I’m more curious about how this guy was in a prison, had such a powerful enhancement, but couldn’t leave the prison with it…”

“That’s another thing, I think he was just saying that. I don’t think it was an actual prison, but that he was being held there. The place seemed more like a hospitable than anything else”

“Too many mysteries… I was never fond of mysteries. Because what’s a mystery if not begging to be solved, only to lose it’s mysterious status?”

“Says the girl who’d make a great detective. How many people have you helped solve mysteries?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s different when it’s happening to you, though.”

“Erin, want to go look at the moon with me?” Avery got up out of bed and pulled on his clothes before taking a drink of wine from the bottle.

“When did you become so romantic?” Erin pulled the covers off and went over to her dresser, putting on pajamas.

“Near death experiences will change a man,” Avery said.

Together they walked to the backyard patio and took seats near each other, looking out from the awning, up at the sky. The moon was a crescent with the new moon in it’s arms, the sky brilliant with stars.

They took turns passing the bottle around until it was empty. As they stared at the moon and stars, an outline began to form in the sky. A silver outline, like it was made of moonlight, as the clouds cleared their view.

“Can wine make you hallucinate, Avery? Do you see this too?”

“I was hoping it was just me.”

Erin got up and moved over to Avery, carefully sitting down on his lap. He wrapped his arms around her waist, and the two of them looked up at the sky change before their eyes.

“See that?” Erin pointed up. “That looks like a fountain, and around it seems to be roads of brick.”

“It looks like a medieval city, is what it looks like…”

“A silver city… up in the sky.”

He kissed her neck, she sunk down to put her face next to his. He kissed again, and again, she took his hand and moved it up underneath her top. She doesn’t have underwear on?! He thought, and caressed her smooth skin, she let out low moans.

But Erin was looking up at the sky still, and noticed something she couldn’t unsee. Three men climbing an invisible staircase straight up into that silver city.

“Wait, Avery. No, really, stop for a second! See those guys in suits?! Those are the FBI agents that kidnapped me earlier today!”

“What? Kidnapped?”

“Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that. Where do you think those stairs start? I… want to follow them, I think.”

“Why should we do that? We’ve got enough problems already!”

“And you think this silver city is a coincidence? It just happened to appear at the same time that everything else is?” Erin admonished him, making up her mind. “We’re going, alright?”

“Going where, sister dearest?” A flat voice called out from the doorway.

“Nina, you stay here and get some binoculars from the garage. You’re gonna keep watch, just in case…” Nina saluted her and turned tail. “Let’s go, Avery.”

- - - -