Malia rose before me like a serpent from the desert floor. Her hands flowed up like bat wings, trailing sand, made from sand, born of the sands that snuck between my toes and pulled me down into the warm earth. When her wings graced my cheeks, I shuddered. Between rough sandpaper and the cold of a mannequin’s skin was the texture of her flesh. A forked tongue slithered out of her mouth as she leaned down to kiss me. I raised my neck and mouth to her and her eyes blinked sideways. “You were supposed to protect me.”

“I tried.” Dry tears fell from my cheeks, sand from the corners of my eyes.

“You should have tried harder.” Malia leaned over and sank her teeth into my neck and simultaneously injected venom into my flesh and began to draw out the mixture of my dissolving flesh and her own poison.

“Harriet, wake up!” A voice called to me from the distance as Malia drained my body of its vital fluids. I struggled and writhed against Malia’s grip, but she held me fast. “Harriet!”

I woke with a start, unable to fling myself up into a sitting position. For a moment, the constriction was too close to how I’d been bound in my nightmare. Screams spring from my throat as I threw myself back and forth.

“It’s okay sweetheart.” Warm hands clasped my cheeks and a soft voice in a strange tongue reached out to me and soothed the terror of my heart.

Blinking, I could finally make out Yierie’s face and voice as the last of the confusion of my dream faded. “Yierie?”

She blinked at me, her crimson eyes flashing with inner light as she did. “No other. Are you back with me?”

I burst into tear at her question. “I dreamed of Malia. She was… mad at me for abandoning her.”

Yierie brushed my disheveled hair out of my eyes and brushed her lips against my cheek. “You are safe here, and we will set ourselves to finding your… crush at once.”

I nodded, ignoring the hesitation in her voice as she said the word. “Thank you.”

“Of course, my love.” Yierie turned my face toward her and kissed me again, this time full on my lips. Her mouth always tasted of berries, I couldn’t imagine how bad my own tasted.

While Yierie dressed, I studied myself in one of the mirrors in her room. My hair had already settled and fallen into waves over my shoulders. It was straight, straighter than Malia’s hair. But though I hadn’t brushed it or done anything to it since I woke, it had already worked its own kinks and knots out. Everything I knew about hair, which amounted to less than I knew about fantastic monsters, suggested hair was not supposed to work like that. My skin looked pink and fresh in the morning as well, as if the restless slumber had no effect on my complexion. I didn’t have bags under my eyes.

“What are you looking at?” Yierie slid her hands around my midsection and brought her mouth up next to my ear to ask.

“I…” How was I supposed to express the strangeness I barely understood? To acknowledge it might banish it, might render the strange advantage of my new body null. “I thought I saw something strange.”

Yierie looked behind me, her eyes lingering on my posterior. “Nothing strange her. Only something beautiful and lovely.”

“Haha, you’re hilarious.” Roo protected my modesty as usual, covering up my rear and the rest of my otherwise naked form. I didn’t respond to Yierie’s comment, just turned and kissed her by way of thanks.

“I was being sincere.” She pulled her head away from mine. “You are truly beautiful.”

“Thank you.” I could feel the blush. In the entirety of my life, no one would have ever called me beautiful until I wore this new body. Guilt chased the blood from my cheeks. Most people would not consider the new world a boon. Most of my fellow humans had likely died or suffered at the coming of the portals, and here I was marveling at my full-body makeover.

“What troubles you?” Yierie pressed her nose and lips against my collarbone. “Share with me?”

“I… most of my people are dying with the coming of the portals, aren’t they?”

Yierie pulled her mouth from my shoulder. “Perhaps, yes…” She nodded and the corners of her mouth turned down into a frown. “Most likely, yes.”

“You’ve been through this before, you came through a portal, right?”

Yierie looked saddened by my question. “If you mean the Crystal Orchid, yes. Our ship is capable of surviving the transition between worlds in tact.”

“What happens to Earth now?” Guilt threatened to smother me. Months had passed and this was the first time I inquired as to the fate of my planet.

Yierie ran her knuckles over my temple and her fingers through the side of my head. “You worry for the humans.”

“I’m human, Yierie.”

“After a fashion, of course.” She nodded and plowed on as it to divert the flow of my questions. “But to answer your question” in my experience, humanity survives and eventually thrives. The transition will be hard, many will die. Your institutions will fade, some will never return. But art, science, even history will not truly be lost. They will pause while the world takes a deep breath.”

“And then?”

Yierie poked me in the nose, sending a shiver of memories of Malia through my body. “And then humanity will rise from the ashes of the old world, strengthened by the crucible of conflict with the magical races and with a new tool in the form of magic of their own.”

“You’ve seen this happen before?”

“Not me personally, but our histories are filled with examples of such.” Yierie pulled me over to one of the windows at the side of her room. It over looked the Rocky Mountains, from which electric lights glowed and lit up the early morning light. “Already your people chase away the darkness with technology and the power of their determination. In five generations, ten at the most, humanity will reach again of the empyrean heights and yearn for their former place.”

“You’re so certain.”

“I spoke of our archives to you last night, I could show you the histories of a dozen-dozen worlds and the ways their residents fought against the rising dark.” Yierie held her hand out to me and tilted her head.

“No. I think I should go after Malia.” My thoughts had turned dark from my nightmare. I cared about the rest of humanity but only in a distant way, as if they were hardly my own people any longer.

“We should fetch Garaghan and the rest of your hunting troupe.” Yierie turned back to her door, her golden dress dragging across the floor.

“You’re not… wait, my troupe?”

Yierie turned back to me and bowed. “Indeed. I would be honored to join you, if you have me.” I opened my mouth and shut it like a beached fish. She raised her eyes to me and smirked. “I am a sword maiden and rune dancer, I have seen a hundred battles and my master was Garaghan of the Flashing Blade.” She lowered her head and I choked out a laugh.

“Did you just apply to join my hunting party?”

Yierie raised her eyes and said, “It’s impolite to mock a hunter’s appeal.”

I couldn’t help but smile as I walked toward her. “Of course you can join. I would be honored.” I cupped her cheeks and pulled her up. “Is there some formal way I’m supposed to accept this?”

“You just did, but you would reassure me if you kissed me now.” In her eyes, I could see the lingering pain of her former hunting party as the memories flipped through her mind.

I couldn’t leave her like that, I pulled her to me and kissed her eyes, trailed kisses down her cheeks and found her mouth. We stood like that before her door for a few minutes while I comforted my thousand-year old girlfriend.

My life had become wondrous and strange.

We walked hand in hand down the vine covered halls and I forced myself not to skip. “Are there things I should do now that I have a hunting party?”

“Yes. You want the former Ualno in your group still?” Yierie asked her question without gritting her teeth or frowning, I was proud of her.

“I think so, as long as they want to stay.”

“Then you should formally invite them and ask after their skills.”

“What about your dad?” I winked at Yierie, but I don’t think she understood my meaning.

“He is above hunting now.” Yierie worried the corner of her mouth with her teeth. “He is…independent. You should treat him like an indulgent mentor. I can tell you what skills he possesses.”

“Really?”

Yierie grinned and ducked her head. “He is a master swordsman. In fact, I am not aware of a weapon he has not mastered. His runecraft is top notch, one of the greatest runedancers aboard the Crystal Orchid, though most of his power is directed at destruction. Let’s see…” Yierie tapped the side of her cheek. “He is also a fantastic actor, chef, and poet, but I doubt such things would be relevant to hunting.”

I shrugged. “Maybe we need to perform a monster into submission.”

Yierie flicked her eyebrow up. “It would not be the first time.”

I snorted and covered my mouth as I laughed. It was a very Elven gesture, which sent Yierie into her own shirt fits of laughter.

I opened Garaghan’s door and walked in. He sat in the middle of his apartments with his legs folded. When we walked in, he waved us over to the far wall where the three maidens slept on cots. One of the cots was empty, Two having crawled into Three’s cot where they held each other in their sleep. Yierie and I shifted our gaits and moved as quietly as we could. As we did, I noticed how loud my footsteps were compared to her’s.

Garaghan did too. He pointed to my feet and said, “you walk like a drunken child.” His voice didn’t rise above a whisper. “If we have time, we need to adjust your steps toward silence.”

Yierie rolled her eyes. “Good morning father. Did you have a good night?”

“My meditations were disturbed with the weight of tasks unperformed.” He nodded to me. “Aside from the mess of your training, we need to find your friend still, right?”

“Yes, sensei.”

Yierie smirked at the name and said, “Her name is Malia. And yes, we still need to find her.”

“Are you…”

I interrupted Garaghan’s question. “Yes, I invited Yierie to my hunting group. Apparently I need to ask the three maidens about joining and their powers.”

Garaghan nodded. “I would continue to assist you, if you’ll have me. At the same time, I do not join hunters anymore. I only assist.”

Yierie leaned down to me and whispered sotto voce, “see? He’s old and set in his ways.”

“And I have disrespectful children.” Garaghan harrumphed at us as he stood up from his position in the center of the room. “Now children, do you wish to train or is it time to retrieve your lost friend?”

The second time we flew from the aerie, I clutched Yierie’s hand in my own. Magic, rune phrases I was incapable of casting myself, had pointed the way toward Malia. According to the spells, cast by Three, we would find Malia to the east of the Rocky Mountains.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Dragon flight took less time than I expected, less than an hour to fly from Colorado back to Texas. I was returning to where everything started, and it made my palms sweat.

Yierie leaned into me over the soft sound of wind coursing over us. “You’re nervous.”

It wasn’t a question, but a statement. I couldn’t lie to her with my hands slick with anxiety. “Yeah, what if Malia’s… I don’t know, what if someone’s been hurting her?”

“Then we will save her and punish those would you mistreat her.” It sounded so obvious sitting there atop Olerandera’s back.

We landed near the junction where Yierie and her group brought down a demonic giant. The devastation was still clear in the area. But the snows had receded since the last time I’d been here. Either spring had come in full force or the wendigo causing the snowy weather had been slain.

Smashed roofs and fallen walls had been partially repaired. Tarps lay across the roofs, some of them clear and laden with water as if they were storing it for later. Sheet metal and piled up bricks replaced the devastated walls.

Our group disembarked from the dragon and ran to a set of still destroyed buildings. Yierie’s eyebrow twitched as the two dragons shifted. She passed by her father, who nodded.

“What is it?”

I asked the father and daughter group, but Two answered. “A quartet of young humans spotted us landing and have run away.”

Garaghan sniffed and said, “There was an adult among them. The adult remains watching us.”

Two’s shoulders twitched as if she were scourging herself for failing to notice the lingering observer. We spoke in Elven, so anyone who’d been listening would have no idea what we said, unless they happened to be elves.

I said, “What do we do?”

Garaghan shrugged. “I see no benefit in frightening them. We should wait and see if the children return with more adults. And if they attack, let us remain on the defensive.”

Olerandera and Balminazer shifted into their Elven forms. I would have warned them against doing it while we were being watched, but the two dragons acted like they were invulnerable. For all I knew, they were. But in their place, I would have hidden my nature as a dragon.

When the kids returned from wherever they went, I could hear them crawling over the rubble and almost pinpoint them where they watched us from the shadows. “Did any adults come with them?”

Garaghan shook his head. “No, but I can hear activity in the distance.” He turned to the other elves, all wearing their battle armor. “Sheath your weapons and gather on Harriet and me.”

Yierie complied at once, putting her hand on my shoulder as if to calm me down. The three maidens and the two dragons followed suit and Garaghan led our group out into the street. Exposing ourselves made my skin twitch from the danger of attacks from a distance. I trusted my barrier and the magics Garaghan and I wielded, but the open lines of sight still made me nervous.

We’d tried to leave Tia at home with Alaric, but they’d both refused outright. My hunting party had expanded by two. Tia sat in Alaric’s arms and he pressed his shoulder, the metal one, up against mine.

A group of people with tattered clothing and a post-apocalyptic assortment of weapons marched down the street toward us. At the head of their column strode a man with football gear as his armor and a modified fire axe with barbed wire wrapped around the haft above black electrical tape grip. When they spotted us coming out of the building the group all shook as if we’d threatened them.

After a brief pause, they moved faster up the street, gathering numbers from the surrounding buildings as they did. I looked between my hunting group and realized that I was the best equipped to meet and speak with these strangers.

I raised my hand and stepped away from the elves. The English sounded foreign to my ears — I hadn’t spoken it in well over two months. “Hello. My name is Harriet Yeshe.”

The group froze like I’d brandished a weapon at them. Their leader looked back, fear looking absurd from deep within his football helmet. He yelled from down the street. “What do you want?”

“I am looking for a lost friend. Do you think we could speak?” I wanted to add, “without the weapons,” but I very much doubted I could convince them to drop their arms.

“We can speak here.” The leader dropped the head of his axe to the ground and rested his hand on the handle. The others behind him stopped when he did.

I raised my hands and approached. “I am looking for a friend, a woman with hair like mine who’s been here for a few months. Since the snows…”

Their leader sucked in a breath and the crowd behind him murmured. They weren’t loud enough for me to hear, but I had the feeling I’d said the wrong thing. “That’s a lot longer than a few months.”

Shit. Time may have been acting up again.

“How long has it been since the snows retreated?” As I asked, I had the feeling I could guess. At least a year, possibly two.

“Four years, stranger.”

Fuck. I dropped my head and looked back at Garaghan, who shrugged and spoke in Elven. “There must be a portal nearby. That’s the only way time would be so distorted.”

None of the elves had mentioned this to me before. But then again, I had experience with time dilations myself. I might have guessed something like this could happen. Worse yet, I didn’t know how long the snows had remained behind and stained the land. For all I knew, ten or more years had passed since I left this place. A memory, a need tickled the back of my mind, but I pushed it away as it was only tangentially related to my present circumstances.

“Do you know of any women like I described?” The man shook his helmeted head and looked back at his group. None of them stepped forward to acknowledge me. The elves to my back didn’t spring forward with a suggestion either.

Alaric grumbled and said, “Are we just going to stare at each other in the fucking street?”

“No.” I turned back to the other humans. “We have food and I can heal. May we join you while we regroup and try to find my friend?”

A figured darted out from between the buildings and joined the others. He looked like a madman swaddled in dirty rags, but his stature was closer to a teenager than an adult. Despite the rags, I could tell he was rail-thin. The leader didn’t answer me, he just inclined his head and listened to the runner. At the same time, Garaghan leaned forward and said, “That’s the person who’s been watching us.”

After the leader listened to his runner, he brought his axe back to his hands. “You have dragons among you.”

“We do. Why?”

The leader looked back at his group and then at us. “You can join us, if you can answer a question.”

He didn’t ask, he was waiting for me to speak “Okay, what question.”

“What was the name of Amanda’s wife?”

I sucked in my own breath down. The air was dry and cool, not that either bothered me. The name had been one I’d given little thought to for the last few weeks. “You mean Pearl?”

At my answer, the runner’s knees shook and he hung his head. The leader nodded and said, “Then you may join us, Harriet Yeshe.”

They knew my name which set my palms back to sweating. “Stay on guard, these people might know me from before. And I didn’t exactly leave Amanda and Pearl on good terms.”

Most of the crowd behind the leader dispersed. Their departure was something of a slow crawl; they were still interested enough in us to linger and cast the occasional glance back in our direction. Most of them were adults or nearly so. And as they parted ways with the leader, they retreated into houses along the street.

The leader hung his axe over his shoulder and strode up to us with a smile. “My name is Walter. But most folks just call me Walt.” He held out his hand to me, leaving the helmet on the whole time. I shook his hand, but before I could introduce myself, he said, “you mentioned healing?”

“Yes, I can heal.”

“Good, please, come with me.” Walt turned around and walked with purpose back to the rows of houses. I looked back at the elves and they gave a collective shrug and followed. Alaric glowered; I suspected he could remember the last time we’d heard Amanda and Pearl’s names as well. He didn’t say anything though, he followed us through the streets with a wary swipe of his head.

One of the larger buildings that had suffered the least damage over the years, housed a good deal of people under its roof. The smell of the building was a mix of rank human sweat and mold. I held my breath as much as possible, mourning the loss of sanitation. My mourning soon shifted to the loss of hospitals and regular medical care.

Twenty bodies shivered and ached in this dank room. Every one of them was closer to death than any human should have been, considering their ages. Yierie gasped beside me as I let my vision sink into the void.

Spirits hovered with thin filaments barely connected to their respective bodies. I rushed to those first, Roo set to motion before I stopped. Her fabric caressed and soothed where she touched. In a flash, I knew what ailed the patient: pneumonia in the first one, gangrene in the second. A black shadow, like the shape behind a clothesline, hung from the second patient’s knee. I trembled to consider how young they were, only a few years older than Tia, and therefore born after the world changed.

Nothing I did here would regrow the deadened limb. And apparently no one among the residents possessed sufficient medical knowledge to amputate. Heck, amputating in these conditions might have been more likely to kill the patient than anything else. Then again, the infection in their necrotic leg would manage just fine without help.

With nothing further to do, I moved onto my third patient. A virulent infection ate at their kidneys, liver, and pancreas. Old high school health classes came to the forefront of my mind and I could identify the sickened organs at a glance. But between Roo and I, the third patient was a goner. She would die in weeks if not days.

By the time I reached my fifth patient, tears poured from my eyes. So far, I’d treated one case of pneumonia and… nothing else. The fourth patient had a similar growth in their lungs as the third. I worried about infection and the possibility of spreading the disease, but I lacked the medical sophistication to know whether that was the case or something else was going on.

My fifth patient was a child even younger than Tia. He’d suffered a traumatic brain injury. Rather than risk my sanity and check with my real eyes, I’d forced myself to stay in the void and look on with a certain detachment. Something had been jammed in this child’s head far enough to pierce the skull and brain matter within. How he managed to survive was beyond my meager knowledge.

With fifteen more patients to go, none of them as critical as the first quarter, I stumbled back into Yierie’s arms. “What happened here?”

My ministrations had not taken as long as they’d felt to me. Walt’s face paled and said, “We got an infestation of goblins coming out of the caves nearby. Little buggers never stop coming at us.” He’d removed his helmet revealing a bare head lined with jagged scars. Wiping a tear from his cheeks, he said, “can you save any of them, healer?”

“I think so.” I’d saved the first patient’s life, though I would never know how much of the damage from the lung disease was permanent. “Not all of them though.” I met Yieire’s eyes and begged her for help.

She turned to Walt and said, “let me speak with you about these goblins? Perhaps we can help in this regard?”

Alaric’s back twitched as he followed them, but Garaghan caught my eye the subsequent nod and remained back while the others walked out. “What are you thinking, apprentice?”

“How much do you know about medicine? If I share my findings with you, can you give me some advice?”

“I’m no physician, but I know enough.” He squeezed my shoulder and walked with me back to the first patient. Seeing them like this, frail children laying on cots and slowly dying, I had to swallow down my bile to keep the contents of my stomach on the inside.

I shook my head and forced my vision into the void. “She had an infection of the lungs. It’s out of her now, but she may be weakened for her whole life…” Garaghan noted my words and suggested a series of Earth-bound herbs and possible treatments for her.

The girl who’s foot had become necrotic looked pallid and still on death’s door. “She’ll need the limb removed. And quick, before the infection takes over her body.” Garaghan minced none of his words. “I could help, but perhaps we should wait for Walt to return.”

“The next two kids have some kind of virulent…”

“They have the genetic consumption.” Garaghan looked into my eyes and sighed. “I believe you call it cancer.”

“Shit.” I didn’t care what little ears heard my swearing. Besides, none of them spoke Elven.

“Indeed. I am not aware of a magic capable of curing such an affliction permanently. Not to the extent these children are affected.” His eyes glowed like beacons in the void and I clung to them.

“Is there anything?”

“I am sorry Harriet. If they were Elves somehow touched by this disease, I would suggest they prepare themselves to rest with the Ancestors.”

“What about him?” I pointed to the boy with the head injury, regretting that I’d let myself slip out of the void. His brain had a hole in it, like something medieval and cruel had been done to him. The fact he lived spoke of an enormous stamina or will, either of which would have been better preserved and nurtured rather than gutted and left to seep out with his frail memories.

I raced out of the sick hut and vomited over the wall. Stains from dozens of such eruptions told me that at least my stomach wasn’t especially sensitive, or that these people were not dulled to the realities of human suffering. Outside taking in deep breath and avoiding the former contents of my stomach, I heard a rustle and shift of stones as someone scurried away from me. Rather than follow, I scanned the horizon and retreated back into the makeshift hospital.

Garaghan laid his hands over the fifth child’s eyes. The ghostly echo of his body left an impression on the boy’s skin in the void, like the heat trail followed by some alien monster.

“Anything we can do?”

Garaghan shook his head slowly, his voice constricted as he answered. “No. We could make him more comfortable while he awaits the end. I know some useful herbs in that regard.”

“Fuck!” People stirred in the building, conscious of the conversation we held in strange tongues. None of them cried out, but based on their void bodies, that was because they lacked the strength to. “Let’s get the rest over with as soon as we could.”

My instincts had led me to the five worst cases in the room, as I’d directed them. After a few more patients, less dire ailments greeted me. Many of them involved some kind of bodily trauma, a man or woman with a secondary infection from an old stab or slashing wound. Many more were malnourished or simply frail from a hard life. Based on the condition of the people in the room, the sick either healed on their own here or they did not. The latter meant certain death.

Shaking my head, I wished for penicillin and chemotherapy now far more than I wished for sanitation. “Walt said something about goblins?”

Garaghan nodded and led me out of the room. Fewer than half of my patients walked out of the hospital after I’d tended them. But that was twice as many as would have survived without my help. I knew I’d done something good here, but it was hard to see it among the sea of injured, sick, and dying.

As if he could smell our group over the filth in the camp, Garaghan led me to Walt and the others. They gathered in a room featuring a crude parchment map on the wall. Whoever had made the map had done a surprisingly good job curing the hide for writing. But the map itself was barely serviceable. A few lines represented the streets of the camp and a few boxes occupied houses.

Walt pointed to the north on his map, which I wasn’t certain corresponded to true North. “We’ve tracked the goblins back here. We don’t try to pursue them through the wreckage now.”

I bit my lip lest I ask why. The answer was obvious to the others and I could imagine what it was.

Garaghan studied the map and said, ‘point us in the direction of your problem?”

Walt took a few shambling steps out of the building and pointed in the direction of the setting sun. “They come at twilight, dawn or dusk. We’ve put out traps and post guards, but sometimes both go missing by day break.”

Shit. What had happened here?

Garaghan said, “In exchange for assistance locating our lost friend, we will eradicate the goblins from the area. Agreed?” he held out his hand and spoke in elegantly accented English.

Walt looked up at him, his body trembling with uncertainty. “And if we do not know anything?”

“Then we will leave you in peace and move on.” Garaghan inclined his head toward his hand and Walt finally accepted it.

“It’s a deal, sir.” If not for what I’d seen in the sick building, I might have laughed at Walt calling Garaghan sir. He turned from the leader of the camp at once and motioned for the rest of us to follow. Walt stumbled toward us. “Where’re you folk going?”

Garaghan shrugged. “As I said, to handle your goblins. We will return by morning.”