“You want to walk?” Mikla asked with a raised eyebrow. “You do know that it’s almost a four and a half hour walk back to your apartments?”

“You shouldn’t have to open portals for us all the time like this. We know that it’s very taxing on you, yeah?” Heath said with a smile. “We can walk just fine. And if it’s four and a half hours, then we can make the trip in no time at all if we run.”

“At these distances, and within an area that I know well, I’m okay to do it. Don’t worry about it.”

“Actually,” Sonja hurried to say. “I’m honestly just a little shaken up by all this. I would really rather walk back if that’s okay.”

Mikla glanced at Atla who regarded the Earth team with a steady gaze and was silent for a few seconds. She offered a small nod. “Of course, that’s just fine. We’ll walk back instead.”

“And I know a nice restaurant half an hour away if that’s something you’re interested in. Some food can do wonders,” Mikla added. “Then we can walk back afterwards.”

“I’m starving,” Eik said.

“Perfect.”

They ate in a nice little restaurant situated on the edge of a park filled to the brim with vibrant flower beds in a wide range of colors. A couple of gardeners made their rounds to check on the flowers, carefully cutting off any branch sticking out.

Eik ordered a steak of… some kind of animal. It was the juiciest piece of meat he had ever sunk his teeth into. And the sauce — buttery, savory, heavenly. The carbohydrates were some kind of boiled chunks of dough. It wasn’t quite like gnocchi, but it was the closest thing to it that he could think of.

For drinks he picked something that turned out to be a fizzy drink. It was tart. Very tart. Like a plain yogurt. And it tasted like it had added salt. It didn’t work for him at all but he saw a little girl eating with her parents a few tables away and she threw down two of them without batting an eye. Maybe he was the weird one here.

“By the way, guys,” Atla said as she took a bite of her own meal which was some kind of thick, extremely aromatic vegetable stew. Eik’s Scandinavian eyes almost started running just from the spicy fumes. “As you know, the Nidafjeld Alliance is hosting a tournament for its members a little over a month from now.”

When she paused they nodded.

“I already told Travis Lockwood about it, as well as that fat guy from the meeting. What was his name again?”

“Merchant Lord Greggers,” Eik said.

“Right, right. Merchant Lord Greggers. I told them, but I think it would be best for the four of you to go home for a little bit to talk to them and find out if they’re on board,” she said, looking at each of them in turn. “They’ve had some time to think about it and discuss it now. The Championships is a great opportunity to integrate further into the alliance if that’s something Earth is interested in. And if you do well there are rewards in it for you as well. We like to motivate the individuals to participate as well.” she finished.

“I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for us to go home again this quickly. We don’t even really know what happened after we left. We kind of just disappeared on them,” Sonja said.

“We could go with you,” Mikla suggested as he sipped an alcoholic beverage that somehow also seemed to be spicy.

“Wouldn’t that just make us look even more treacherous in their eyes?” Heath commented. He’d ordered a rack of ribs the length of his own arm. “I mean, showing up there in Central Square like that, flanked by troops from an interplanetary super alliance is not exactly a subtle move, is it?”

Eik nodded his agreement. It was difficult territory to navigate.

“I’ve been to Eik’s house now,” Mikla said. “I can simply send us there instead of the square.”

“Yeah, okay. That’s definitely better,” Eik acknowledged. “We can go straight from my house and find Travis Lockwood.”

“Do you know where that is?” Sonja asked.

“Yeah, I was paraded around the offices of every Tom and Jerry worth five dollars in this place before they decided that they also wanted a go at me all at once. I went to his office as well back then. It’s close to Mission Central.”

Michael pursed his lips as he thought. “Is there any anybody else we can go to? Just Travis alone seems like not enough people on our side.”

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“I think lots of people see it our way, but many of the people who have a say don’t want to share their power with a bunch of aliens, even if it’s for the good of all of us. They don’t trust us. Or them — no offense,” he said with an apologetic gesture to Atla and Mikla. They just nodded.

“I’m not sure who we can go to for support on this kind of—” He paused as a thought struck him. “Hold up, wait a minute. There was someone at the debrief. A woman. She seemed different. She was, uuh. She was…”

“What’s her name?” Sonja asked.

“I don’t think I ever heard it. I can’t recall Merchant Lord Greggers ever addressing her by name. He didn’t seem to like her very much. But she was blonde and pretty young. She was… willing to listen. I think she might see things our way.”

“Then shall we go to Earth in a few days?” Atla asked.

They nodded.

“I can go see my mother as well then,” Michael said.

They finished eating and went back.

Before they separated in the hallway of their apartments they agreed to the plan. They would go back to the prison again in a couple of days, but this time with a bit more information at their disposal which they could hopefully use to get their hands on the information they wanted.

Once he was back in the apartment, Eik sat down on his bed and thought. What the hell had that aura been that had leaked from his skin when Menka’s fury had rattled him back in the cell?

He leaned back against his pillow and did what he had spent the past weeks doing for hours every day. Searching for any trace of the multiversal matter, he dove into his head. Like a cheeky cat heeding the irresistible, metallic call of a can of tuna being opened, the mysterious energy rushed into his consciousness with an ease that couldn’t be compared to any of his past attempts to connect.

There it was, swirling obediently around in his mind, suddenly eager to to be of use. Eik tried to cautiously guide it through his body from his head and down through his mouth and into his neck. Through pure will he made it stop and simply circulate. It was seamless.

Sending it through his elbow to his wrist and into each finger he felt the strange energy almost vibrate in excitement. How the hell did it make sense that a cosmic power behaved this oddly? Was it even actually the energy and not simply his brain anthropomorphizing his own excitement?

At this point he had opened his eyes but control hardly seemed to have slipped at all. From the tips of his fingers he let it flow out. If he hadn’t been looking for it it would have been easy to miss. Like smoke it curled around his digits. Unbidden it crawled up his arm and he could feel it brush lightly against the hairs on his skin.

“What are you?” he asked, watching the smoky aura for any sign of recognition. “Can you hear m—”

A gasp escaped him when a thin tendril of Profound Toxin jetted out of the back of his hand, sending a jolt of surprise through him as it crashed across the manifested energy like a breaking wave. Anywhere the toxin managed to touch the aura it sizzled and burned in a furious erosion of its components.

“What the hell!” he shouted, almost falling off the bed. The Profound Toxin wiggled with apparent satisfaction as the remnants of his aura faded into the air. Once more Eik grabbed hold of the energy inside of him and pushed out, this time through his other hand instead.

Immediately, the appendage of poison eradicated any sign of the aura again.

“Stop that, you annoying little shit! I’m trying to get something to work here!” he hissed and stuffed the toxin forcefully back into his body with a mental muzzle. “And don’t come out again until I tell you to!”

Eik side-eyed his own hand for a while, just waiting for the clingy bastard to make an encore. When nothing happened he leaned back against the pillow again and dove back in into his mind to start the whole thing over.

This time the cosmic energy wasn’t quite as easy to locate as it had been the first time. Deeper and deeper he went as he felt around for it, descending into the gradually darkening depths of his own mind. It was cold and bare down here. Was this the universe jabbing at his intelligence…?

Wasn’t this actually a little too deep? Eik tried to pull up and drift back towards the surface but he simply kept falling downward. Even when he tried to vocalize his voice just wouldn’t come out down here.

With his mind’s eye he looked upwards where a tiny pinprick of bright light represented the physical world outside. It was as if a powerfully spiraling maelstrom pulled him down toward a black nothingness.

Just as he thought he had been caught in an endless loop, his back slammed hard against something that gave way to his weight with a hollow thud. Besides that first impact it was still quiet here and it was dark.

Or rather, he had initially thought that it was still silent and dark but as Eik took a few seconds to regain his bearing, that turned out to not be entirely true.

As he looked around, the darkness was actually pierced by thin slivers of light streaming in all around him. And the silence was broken by a mild, rhythmic gurgle of shallow water. Strange to say the least. Eik wasn’t quite all there yet, but at least he was quite certain that this wasn’t what his mind was supposed to be like.

He inhaled sharply as the skin on his back was suddenly overwhelmed by the sensation of cold. Water had flowed in all around him and he jerked up into a sitting position only to ram his forehead hard against a rough surface that gave a brittle crunch as his entire head and neck went through.

The first thing that hit him was the stench of stale swamp water, seeping into his nostrils like harpoons made of rotten farts. Sudden brightness blinded him to the surroundings.

Before being able to properly open his eyes he peeled away the pieces of what felt like dry, half-eaten wood that he’d broken with his face. He was sitting in lukewarm water but judging by the gruesome stench he’d have preferred a shower, or even just a towel.

Blinking tentatively, Eik looked around. He massaged the bridge of his nose as it became evident where he had ended up. Again. When he climbed to his feet, the rotting wood of the custom made coffin broke as he put a hand on the edge for support.

“Ah, crap…” he sighed. With a glance down his body he could confirm another thing with absolute certainty.

He was back in the swamp where he had seen that looming and hypnotically enchanting mountain. And he was, in fact, not wearing pants this time either.