Alator of the Wheel of the Sun dropped to the ground and put his ear to the ice. Frost immediately clung to his blood-wet hair. He stayed like this for some time, then leapt up again. I flinched again, leapt back and readied my spear. Then any burst of adrenaline evaporated like alcohol burnt away in a pan and true exhaustion suddenly crept towards me from a short distance, perhaps for the first time in my life. It latched on like heavy, reaching fingers that grasped at my joints and tried to hold me down.

“The foul influence is felt here, as well. . . .” Alator muttered, then turned to me. “You’re heavy-lidded. Had a long day?” his voice became gentle, the berserk pump receded. It was all I could do to stand there with the spear and nod, dumbly. He looked quickly around. “The forest is terrible, predators in wait at every step, see the tracks here and here? Do you see those cruel eyes?”

I couldn’t see anything, but nodded again. He shrugged and glanced past me, then stretched out an arm.

“We’ll find shelter in that alcove. You need a short rest,” he made to leave at a good pace, I stumbled forwards and tripped. Like lightning he was beside me, his eyes flashed golden then faded into a faint trail of smoke as he caught me upright.

Something inside my blurred mind screamed Danger! so I pushed back off him and struggled to ready myself alone.

“Don’t push yourself further than you need to, we are not in mortal danger,” he said matter-of-factly, with a level gaze.

I nodded a third time, and followed behind him at a little distance. He walked barefoot over the snow, leaving very little imprint for his size. Crumbled from the mountainside, there was a dark cave, no more than six paces deep, but as I staggered inside, the wind relented and the stone underfoot felt comparably warm. Collapsing in a heap at the back of the cave, I heaved myself to sit against the raw stone and stared at the man.

He stood silhouetted against the white for a moment and gazed out into the wilderness, then turned and walked towards me.

“There was a fell wind, carried with it a beast’s stink, but it’s fading — we are safe,” he said with some convixion.

Fell wind, right.

The mystery behind the man was coming up hard against my exhaustion. Rightly it was probably only just past noon, but my body was leaden with exertion. Reaching into that clear stream of power within me, searching for my Skills, I found them all waiting there, but they were deep beneath the surface, and even just bringing them into focus was taxing. I left them there beneath the waters and brought my focus back to him.

“Are you feeling any better, Talbot?”

“No, I’m absolutely exhausted. This is my first day in a New World, I don’t know how these Skills work, I’ve never pushed myself this hard!” I chuckled grimly, “An hour at the MegaCorp gym hasn’t prepared me very well, I guess.”

“There’s a lot there I don’t understand. . . . But first, where am I?” Alator asked.

I blinked at him.

“This region is called the Shards of Korgoth — I assume that’s the name of a giant that fell here. These peaks are the remnants of its ribcage.”

“Such a colossal beast!” He ran to the exit and peered upwards to the sky, where the glistening spires reached to the white clouds above.

As he stared, a wry smile across his face, I tried to adjust myself to find comfort against the stone.

“You just came through the Barbican Gate, right?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“It’s . . . the Gate to the New World . . . called Barbican. That’s where you are.”

“I’ve never heard — I’m in a whole other world?” He looked back at me and closed the distance, then squatted and brought his face close, only a few inches from mine. “Moments before I fell atop that spiked monster, I found myself pulled from my home in a rush of bronze light. A peculiar woman’s voice, somehow metallic, spoke to me. She told me that I was a Warrior of the Gods, and that I was needed to avert catastrophe.”

He spoke so openly, and emotions played on his face so freely that I was a little taken aback. I remembered that SYS had told me something similar, before the terror and panic of the ritual chamber in Ur-Kadesh. Then it came screaming back to me: the beastly thing, the ridged blackness and colossal, fanged maw, and the palpable, otherworldly hunger shivered through my body.

“I heard the same thing — a Warrior of the Gods, Guardian of the New Worlds. . . . Though I chose to come to this world. You were pulled here?”

Maybe this sort of thing happens often, maybe he’s from another New World and SYS just wanted to mix things up. Might just be that sense of humour, again.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Against my will and entirely unknowing, yes. But there is, here, that foul influence that befell my world.”

I shook my head.

“I felt it beneath the lake, or else it was suffused through the ice. I feel it even now — on the air.”

“So what exactly does that feel like?”

Without missing a beat, his eyes went cold and his voice fell from him like grinding granite:

“Like a knife in my spine, like my ribs stretched open and my heart torn free. In my world, we were encroached upon by an impossibly powerful force, an entity from beyond the stars, a nemesis, a cruel and terrible malice, an evil seemingly without reason — we called it a World-Eater.”

That’s what I saw in the liminal space before I entered the World. Must be the final boss? I’m erring on the side of witty SYS playing with me, at this point.

BZZ.

// SYS : I’m not playing with you. //

By Jove! You can hear my thoughts, huh?

// SYS : Only when they are directed towards me. This way you can ask me questions secretly. //

What is the World-Eater?

// SYS : We do not know. //

Okay. . . . I remember there was a figure that looked like he was made out of light. Who was that man who was fighting it? Did he survive?

// SYS : I saw no such man. //

Forget it. As an aside, could you buzz less loudly when you appear? Or maybe appear a little further away than a half-inch from my ear?

// SYS : . . . //

Hello? SYS?

// SYS : If you said something, I didn’t hear it. You must not have been directing it to me properly. //

SYS, do you think you can make less noise when you appear?

// SYS : . . . //

Such a great sense of humour.

// SYS : . . . Thank you. //

I sighed.

“The voice you heard before you fell into this world is known as a System, or a SYS for short. They’ve a manner of control over this World, and act as guides to those within it. As far as I know, every traveller from a different World is assigned their own SYS.”

Alator’s eyes darkened and he fell to silence, lost in thought. I gave him a moment, then he asked, “Am I able to return home — back to my World?”

I addressed the little bronze sphere.

So . . . there aren’t any such thing as NPCs, this guy is from a New World, but one that’s not connected to Earth via a Gate?

Its unblinking blue eye looked between us both. Alator's eyes were locked on mine.

// SYS : Yes, I unfurled the divine rules of all New Worlds and plucked him from somewhere forgotten and disconnected — all I know is that it was a savage world, wherein he became more beast than man. //

“Ah, apparently you don’t have your own SYS — my SYS brought you here.”

As a single RUSH, he grabbed the stiff collar of my Linothorax and with one arm lifted me up to my feet then off the ground and against the wall. In the moment I reached for my Bronze Spear but was aloft before I reached it. His fist pushed into my throat. I tried to twist and struggled, but intense weakness still throbbed through my body. Within my mind's eye, I reached to the Skills I was becoming reliant on, but couldn't muster the ability in the panic.

“Get . . . get off,” my fingers fumbled uselessly about an iron grip.

“Send — me — back.” The golden glow returned to his eyes and the stream of gold mist or smoke drifted from them. His glistening, savage teeth were bared. The back of my head scraped against the stone behind me as I was pushed higher up.

Send him back! SYS, he’s going to kill me!

// SYS : . . . //

You bitch!

“I can’t! I can’t control her, she’s not responding!”

He held me aloft for another few moments, his fist shaking rage, the muscles in his forearm like twisted cords under taut skin. Then the golden glow relented, he shook his head and lowered me back towards the ground.

“Sorry,” I coughed, rubbing my neck. “There’s nothing I can do. Let me . . .”

Is there any way for him to find home again?

// SYS : There is one way. //

My heart skipped, then dropped.

Defeating the World-Eater?

// SYS : You’re sharp — yes, that’s why I’ve brought him here. //

You don't even know what it is!

// SYS : I know it eats Worlds. //

I relayed this to Alator.

“Cruel Fates. It seems Vulcan’s hideous jests continue to find me.”

“Yes, well. . . . Having defeated it in your world, it should be easy enough to do so in ours?”

His eyes glazed over, an intense hurt screwed up his face and his brows met in a ghastly V.

"It was not defeated."

I shrugged.

"But you're still alive, so you managed to fight it and live to tell the tale. Maybe with the two of us, we can do one better?"

He lifted his hand, made a fist, and stared at it. There were lines of gold, like the gilded veins on cracked pottery, running from his fingertips to his elbow; the veins pulsed and he gritted his teeth.

“I did not fight alone. And the small victory was accomplished at great sacrifice. You are not ready,” was all that he said.