Across the breach between dimensions the other passengers fought to keep themselves on board the interdimensional vessel, unaware of what had occurred merely feet away. Harvel struggled under the weight of what may have been miles of stone and fungus. It was about time for him to fulfill his own prophecy.

On board the team hung from railings, seats, engine mounts and more. Parker had wrapped her arms around the bolter embedded in the deck, still gripping both pistols. Lemmy tried to coerce the engines forward yet Harvel was again acting as an anchor. He’d kept a firm grip on the hull of the boat through his meal of a thousand tons of stone.

Harvel started to reverse the collapsing of his cells. Try as he might, he couldn’t escape the pillar and they were losing time. He’d run all of the predictions he could. It wasn’t a pleasant choice to make.

Harvel began the expansion of his cells, pulling what energy he still had from his main body and pushing it into his arm. He’d need to right the boat and get the damn thing across the threshold before Boris could pin them too.

As more and more of his energy worked its way down his arm he could feel what was left of his body compressing under the extreme weight. He’d have to keep going. He didn’t have a choice. He was no longer scared of death, for he knew what lay beyond. He continued pushing.

Parker, whom at this point had pulled herself up and was standing on the bolter, realized what was happening. She could see the long orange rope-like appendage losing slack as the boat started to right itself. She braced herself as the ship leveled out and the rest of the team slammed onto the deck.

“Get this thing moving!” Telio shouted at Lemmy, who was busy pushing all of the blood back into the left side of his body.

“What about Harvel?!” Lemmy shouted, hand hovering above the throttle. He had gotten them all down here, and he’d intended to take them all back. Telio pushed Lemmy’s hand onto the throttle and shoved it forwards.

“No time. We wait for him, we all bite it.” Telio stated, cold calculation in his eyes. He needed to get to Boris, no matter the cost. Even if he had to do it by himself.

“Hey! Why are we moving? Where’s my brother?!” Yiddek yelled, shaking his sister awake. Dibbuk blinked, pulling her consciousness back from the dark corner it had been shoved into during her time in the sea. Her eyes immediately faded again as her brain hiccuped.

By this point the ship had been nearly halfway engulfed in the portal between dimensions. Yiddek let his sister down onto the deck and quickly made his way towards the aft of the boat. He reached down and grabbed Harvels arm, pulling with all of his might. Harvel released his grip on the boat and used what little dexterity he had in the appendage to grab Yiddeks shoulder.

Yiddek glanced behind him at the approaching portal. He didn’t have much time. He felt like he had just found his brother. Truly gotten to know him for the first time since they were kids. He shouldn't be leaving him here like this.

Keep going. I’ll catch up.

Yiddek felt another hand on his shoulder. Parker had helped Dibbuk crawl back to them, placing their hands over his own. Then, before he, Dibbuk, or Parker could respond, Harvels hand pushed them backwards and through the rip in dimensions.

What little Yiddek could see of his brother became a wall of indistinct purple light, the dimensional portal enveloping the rear end of the boat. The trio landed between the wastewalkers and slid along the deck. The push had been just enough.

Across the dimensional boundary another pillar of stone slammed into the pipe, missing the rear end of the boat by a few millimeters as it disappeared into the space between dimensions. The ants stopped their swarm, and the darkness that had engulfed the ceiling dissipated. The single fungal appendage jutting out from under the first pillar went limp.

* * * * * * * * * * *

As Yiddek stared into the purple abyss that they had slipped into Aldon and the wastewalkers took stock. Everyone seemed to be fine, no missing limbs or bullet holes. Selby sat stock still, his arm hanging over the railing next to him. Aldon looked around for Wicksomme.

“Where’d he go? What happened? The fucked up one, where’d he go?” Aldon asked, angrily grabbing Selby. The young man had still been in his care.

“I don- I don’t know. When the boat tipped he went over the railing…” Selby coughed, his breathing still heavy. Sweat practically poured from his pores. Aldon would have been more investigative, but he couldn’t tell if Selby was lying or just unwell. Then again, he wasn’t being paid for this, so he let the man down onto the deck.

“Hey the uh-” Aldon looked at each of the wastewalkers, he didn’t know a single name. “The uh, young one went overboard.” Aldon finished, forming his own assessment of the teams general dynamics. Mary rubbed her jaw solemnly.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“He what?” Telio asked, not taking his eyes off of Selby. He quietly slipped the nearly empty magazine out of his rifle, and replaced it with a loaded one.

“Sweaty here says he went over when the boat tipped.” Aldon answered, jabbing a thumb towards Selby. Selby tried not to make eye contact with the rest of the crew.

“That so?” Telio murmured, keeping his rifle at the ready. He could just kick him off the side of the boat, but without an explanation he was pretty sure he’d be the next one to go. His little stunt with Lier hadn’t done him any favors.

Near the back of the boat, Lemmy input the proper coordinates Harvel had given him. He had a general idea of where they would come out, but he didn’t like it. Why the top?

Parker tried to console Yiddek, busy mourning his brother for the second time in a night. She could do what she could, but she had never been good with these things. She would have left it to Dibbuk, but her mind was still slowing down from her time under the fungi’s control.

“Everyone! Everyone, grab onto something, quick!” Lemmy shouted, bracing himself against the helm. He hadn’t noticed the timestamp for the new coordinates. They had about twelve seconds.

Telio quickly wrapped his arms around the closest railing, and pulled Lier and Mary along with him. He didn’t bother with Selby. As far as Telio was concerned Selby could save himself or not. Preferably not.

Parker grabbed Dibbuk and threw her arm over the side of the railing. She hadn’t come all this way to lose the person they were supposed to save. Yiddek lethargically followed suit, barely hooking a claw into the railing by the time the singularity generator had spun up.

The color purple shifted around them and they passed through the gate, and out of the space between dimensions. In an instant they were no longer floating through the warm fuzzy, and somewhat sinister atmosphere of the space between. The biting cold of the Boris-Valkan winter wrapped around them like an unwelcome wet blanket.

Lemmy’s eyes grew wide. Wider than they had ever been. They weren’t going to land on top.

“Shit! Shit! Shitshitshitshitshitshit!” He yelled, trying not to look over the side of the boat. All he would have seen were the tops of other, less affluent buildings beneath them. All he could do at this point was keep the helm steady as the bow of the boat slammed into the massive window at the end of Asha’s office.

The trip boat crashed into the 113th floor of Meadows Tower, carrying nine souls shivering in the subzero temperatures. Asha watched as the boat traveled at approximately four miles per hour over the top of her former desk. The hull split the solid amalgamation of steel and technology in half and screeched along the floor.

In what was most likely considered the slowest aeronautical collision in Boris-Valkan history, the trip boat plowed its way down the middle of the office and into the hallway. Its hyper-cooled superconductor hull coerced an ear splitting scream as it pulled all heat from every atom of floor that it touched. The boat began to spin.

Asha stepped into the AV bay door, just in time to see a jet black AV pull into its assigned bay out of the corner of her eye. That would be Cerise. She readied her pistol.

Lemmy shut the magnetic field generator down and held on for dear life. No longer being suspended on the strings of the universe the vessel's weight added to their drag, slowing their death spin to a death wiggle. Dibbuk, Yiddek, Lemmy, Parker, Aldon, Telio, Lier, Mary, and Selby, held on for dear life as the boat slammed bow first into the elevator doors, jolting backwards with the rebounding momentum.

As the dust began to clear Asha opened the bay doors and waited. She kept her eyes on the AV, and her gun on the hull of the boat. It was going to be one of them. She was pretty sure it would be Cerise. Asha glanced at the ruined elevator.

“Well, it wouldn’t have held them all anyway.” Asha muttered, focusing her attention back on the AV bay. Cerise had fully docked, and would be either greeting her or shooting her at any moment.

“Asha! What the hell is going on?!” Lemmy shouted angrily. He would have pointed, but he was too busy unbuckling his harness. Lemmy began helping as many of the other unfortunate passengers off of the boat as he could, still glaring at his wife.

“From here on out? I have no idea!” She answered, smiling. For once she wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Perhaps this was what real excitement felt like. Asha had been intrigued or amused at most in every other moment of her life, but this? This must have been what excitement felt like.

Dibbuk opened her eyes for the first time. She’d told them to open approximately four minutes ago, but they had only now answered. The rest of her nervous system began to sync back up to her brain, giving her the strength to stand.

“Dibbuk, let me have a look at you.” Yiddek said, motioning her to get down off of the boat. She shook her head. She scratched at the spot the little orange growth had been. It wasn’t exactly gone, instead it had pulled back into her skull.

“I’m fine. We’ve got work to do.” Dibbuk said, grabbing the bolter by its massive leather handle. She yanked the ancient weapon from its resting place and turned towards the AV bay. For some reason she couldn’t explain, she had never felt so rested, focused, or oddly hungry for fish.

“Well, what about Harvel?! We have to go back and get him!” Yiddek yelled, frustration coating his words. Dibbuk let out a little chuckle as she turned the bolters crank start.

“”He’ll live.” Dibbuk answered, leveling the weapon at the jet black AV in the docking bay.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Deep in the depths of the sewer, a withered arm jutted out from under a pillar of stone and fungus. The stone pillar shifted slightly. Under the obelisk life stirred on the atomic level.

Under this city laid secrets the universe over. The fungus was just the beginning. He needed to go down. Deeper… Deeper still.