I was almost ninety percent sure the staff at Joe And Benny’s Pizza wouldn’t be cool with us dining there ever again.

Running between the tables, I slashed my sword in a wide arc at one of the cloaked lizard guy in front. He was faster than I thought. The reptile speed was something else, he ducked and weaved in record time, reaching to grab me with his weird three-finger hands ending in wicked claws. I’d seen how he’d bodied the customer though. I wasn’t going to be next.

“Warrick!” Auror shouted at me, slicing at another lizard guy. I could barely hear her over the screams of the staff and customers, rushing to leave, but I could understand her enough to hear the urgency in her voice. “Burn them to the ground!”

“I’m not doing that!” I yelled back, finally landing a cut on one of them. Blueish-green blood appeared, streaking down his arm and he hissed. I shook my head and dove in, working to fight these guys, even if they were coming in all the while. “If I bring out fire here, I could burn this place to the ground!”

“Good! We will burn them to victory!”

“Not good! I’m not burning down my favorite pizza joint!”

On other days, Auror’s simple view of right and wrong, black and white, burning down a pizza parlor and keeping it intact, was a huge turn on. She wasn’t bloodthirsty, per say. The warrior just knew what she wanted and she didn’t care how she got it.

Her silver hair whisked around her as she drove her sword into the gut of a cloaked lizard man. She yanked it back, breathing heavily, in the form-fitting armor that reminded me of the times where we’d made our new personal armory in the castle extra cozy for the two of us.

But at this moment? I wasn’t taking her advice. We needed another plan.

Something flew between us, a silver pizza dish, and whacked one of the lizard guys right in the face. He stumbled back and hit the wall.

Byrid emerged triumphant next to me, with another stack of silver dishes in her hand and thick knives that she threw without warning.

I kicked down another lizard guy and stabbed him in the side. “Nice one, Byrid!”

“Thank you!”

“These are the ellelah!” Keeose brought to our attention and took her place next to me.

She started unloading her magical items, and I knew what she wanted, she wanted to give them a power surge that these lizard assholes had never felt before, but that wasn’t happening in the middle of downtown Chicago.

“We’re going to beat these guys back to the sidewalk!” I told all my girls and rushed to thrust my blade between a lizard man’s throat. “Keeose, you need to build a portal in the alley. We need to get back home, now!”

“But I can help!”

“If time passes every time a portal is opened, what’s to stop someone else from moving us past our time!”

Keeose swore in a different language than I recognized. “By the time we get back - it could be hundreds of years in the future! Oh, gods!”

“These are the ellelah,” Maeve stammered behind me. I couldn’t look back at her, I was too busy kicking lizard ass, but I could hear the shock laced in her words. “They are the chaotic minions of the Coiled God. Wait, Warrick—!”

I didn’t hear her warning until it was too late. I reached out to grab one of the lizard men’s arms, to yank him forward and end his life, but the moment I touched his hard, scaled skin, my eyes rolled to the back of my head.

The delicious pizza smell of the restaurant melted away.

I was bathed in a warm light. It reminded me of the first taste of mead, the first taste that I could do anything, the first jolt of energy.

A woman sat at a table. She smiled at me.

Chocolates waves cascaded down her shoulders. Her dress was pressed tight to her body. It accented her full breasts and they had an enticing, natural hang to them. She wasn’t like any of the other girls I traveled with, all in their twenties, this woman was older, mid to late thirties maybe. She reminded me of every sexy professor I had in college.

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

With a jolt, I realized what her dress was. It wasn’t fabric that held it together. It was almost like…smoke. Smoke curled around her, keeping her breasts covered and draped over her thigh, giving a hint of skin. Glitter shone on her cheeks, but it was a little blurry, like I was looking at her through an empty glass. Gnarled horns erupted from her hair, thin and curled, not frightening, but more…dangerous.

Power rolled off of her and she knew it. This was a woman who could beat a motherfucker down and wouldn’t sweat it.

I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew.

“Oh, hero, you have found me,” she whispered, a coy smile on her lips. Even if she had that though, I had a feeling she was genuinely glad to see me, if not a little surprised.

“Who are you?” I tried to say, but as pleasant as the warm liquid felt over me, I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t say a word.

She gently shook her head. “You cannot speak clearly and neither can I.”

Leaning closer, she studied me. She drew a finger along the glass and I felt a shiver run up my spine.

Her voice was soft. “What is found is not recovered and I can uncover more than what you’ve found. Come seek, come find. You must begin again where you began.”

A sad look washed over her eyes, a stunning swirl of pink and green, before I felt something hook into my back. It didn’t hurt, it sank more into my mental self than my physical one, but I was dragged back through the air and woke again, not grabbing on to the ellelah anymore, but being hauled back by Auror.

“Warrick!” Her eyes were wide with panic, one of the rare times I’d ever seen it. “You—”

I couldn’t explain, I couldn’t say anything in reply, all I could do was shake off the remains of the smoky tavern that felt too real to be a daydream. At the bare minimum, I told the girls not to touch the ellelah and went to work, beating back at them until we spilled out to the sidewalk and Keeose could finally do her job.

And I could do mine.

The sorceress scurried away to the wall and started up painting the runes, muttering words under her breath all the while. Now that we were away from the sidewalk and the people and the pizza parlor, I could unleash my power. Sheathing my sword, I stepped away from the others.

Warmth seeped from my fingers. I’d been training hard with my fire power but it was the kind of power that hard to wrangle in. Fire bolts burst from my hands and threw back some of the ellelah, torching them to the brick wall.

“Wars!” Maeve shouted, shocked. “How—how—?!”

“You can join in!” I threw over my shoulder, bringing an arc of fire overhead, laying waste to the cloaked lizards. It felt so damn good letting the power unleash without worrying about forests burning down.

Maeve ducked behind me and I had the weirdest feeling she was hiding. “I—I don’t have powers anymore!”

“What?!” I exclaimed and tried to temper it down, throwing a wild fireball at an ellelah. “How? These are the ones you bestowed on me!”

“But I didn’t give you any powers.” Maeve yelped and hurried away from one of the ellelah. “I couldn’t!” she continued. “They were taken from me, how could I give them to you?”

“But you marked me!”

Maeve’s shock was audible. “No, I didn’t! I wouldn’t do that to you! It’s like putting a target on your back!”

In my entire time in their fantasy world, I’d been declared as the champion of Moruun, the only one marked from the lost goddess. The idea that the goddess hadn’t even meant to claim me had never occurred to me. If I had Moruun’s powers, a god’s powers, what the hell did that mean?

My thoughts tugged to the sad, gorgeous, older woman in the tavern, looking at me with a sweet smile.

Oh, hero, you have found me.

“I have it!” Keeose danced back, with her runes in a circle around her. “Everyone needs to gather close! With a swiftness!”

Auror and Byrid instantly followed suit and I kept everyone back with wild fire as the girls and I roped close together, but Maeve was another story. She hugged the brick wall, staring with fearful eyes as the lizard men descended closeby.

“Maeve,” I barked. “You need to come with us.”

“I was banished, Wars!” Maeve said, all too unlike her.

It was a nervous, anxious side I’d never seen from Maeve, not in all my years of knowing her. I’d never seen her running away from a challenge. Or…maybe I didn’t know my best friend as much as I thought I did.

I drove a firebolt into another ellelah. “They’re going to keep coming!”

“The gods banished me, Wars. I’m banished! They’re my family, I can’t go against them again!”

“If you don’t leave now, you will die.”

The runes of the portal begin glowing that familiar shining color and it cast new light on Maeve’s face. She gave the lizard warriors a long look and reached for my hand when I reached for hers. Like it or not, we were tied together. And we had to figure out what was happening in my new world and the world she’d left behind.

You must begin again where you began.

The air whooshed over us and left my lungs. In an instant, we were hurled through the portal together, all five of us connected, racing off towards the unknown that’d come to us.

It was time to return home.