One sky became three. The heaven that hung above Argus’ mountains, plains and forests was split into three.

A yellow sky, a silver sky, and a blue sky. From these skies fell many things most of them trash, rubble and refuse, some of them not.  It was from the blue sky that the youth fell.

A youth with wings where his ears should have been. Dropping like a bomb and hitting the ground below with enough force to create a brand new canyon  at the point of impact.

Flattening a few forests, and erasing one small town that happened to be in the area. It wouldn’t be till a few hours passed that the man awoke. Sitting up, with a look of confusion on his face.

The wings he had instead of ears flapped weakly, as he looked around and found an army, staring down at him from the the top of the canyon.

*****

Elsewhere on Argus there was another hole being bored into the sky.  First it started as a single crack, then that crack began to spiderweb.

Then the sky shattered and from the unknowable beige depths that lay behind the sky, emerged a creature of metal and muscle and thunder and flame.

Gigantic in scale though, whether it was man, or spirit or otherwise, was impossible to know. It’s number of limbs and heads constantly growing and shrink.

The sky healed after the creature came through. Healing as it fell towards the earth. Mid-way through the fall the creature began to fly, its acceleration decreasing as it resisted gravity’s pull.

When it landed, though the world did indeed shake there was no other sign of its entry. There were no witnesses and no one would have known of its trespass into this world had it not announced itself.

Shouting towards the heavens and the earth and the various spirits and gods that governed and observed from the background. Shoutings its name “Alectryon”. Shouting it over and over and over.

With each bellow echoed by a peal of thunder and a flash of lightning. The giant hovered a few feet above the earth and then it turned in the direction of the nearest kingdom.

Unlike anything else that may have fallen that day, any devastation that followed  ‘was not’ an accident.

*****

Notably, for once the suffering wasn’t evenly dispersed across the Argus Continent.

In certain areas that were either large enough or wealthy enough, or simply luck enough to be cared about by certain influential people, the devastation was witnessed but not experienced.

Though the buildings and bodies still rained from the sky like meteors, near the roads and over the cities, towns and villages, they would either bounce off like a bug off a windshield, or be consumed.

This and the prior weeks of relative peace, due to the monolithic structures that all these areas had in common, were just another thing, that added to the Bone Tree Company’s rising reputation.

In the coming weeks even more settlements and kingdoms would be ordering Crystal Keepers and a certain company’s fortune’s would continue to climb.

With associate groups like the Thousand Ghosts and the Maynard Family also enjoying a sizable portion of profits as they helped to with installations and negotiations.

*****

“Tch...it’s winter already. I thought the invaders were only supposed to come during the summer.” said Elena.

She and two others stood on a Mountain top, overseeing a mass migration of Stone Mammoths.

The creature’s were relatively peaceful as far as demonbeasts went but the Kingdom Ors was paying to ensure that nothing set them off into a deadly rampage. Paying for S-classed personnel, to ensure that things could handled if the worst were to happen.

A task that had grown much more difficult the moment it started raining rocks and people. Fortunately the creatures were hardy and slow to react, every now and then one would grow enraged and need to be put down, before it set off the others.

“That’s Monde for you...Just when you think things are starting to make some semblance of sense, some random bullshit happens...besides, Billy said these aren’t invaders.” said Edna.

“Really? If these aren’t invaders then what the hell is this shit?” said Matthew.

Using a dome of shadow to keep the refuse and litter that rained from the sky from striking their position. His aether stores and the strength of his shadow manipulation powers growing once he’d broken through the first realm.

Stolen story; please report.

A feat that all the senior staff of the thousand ghosts were able to achieve thanks to a certain cultivation boosting serum. Sure, it’d make later growth a little more difficult but then again, this was a height that most never dreamed of reaching.

“I asked and he said that world just ended above our own.”

“What?” said Matthew.

“Yeah...I know, right? But apparently there was literally an entire parallel dimension or whatever, that existed just a few miles above the upper atmosphere. That world went bye-bye and everything that was left ended up being dumped into our space for some reason.”

“Really? You’re not just fucking with me again are you?” said Matthew.

Edna shrugged, but Elena chuckled.

“Nah...that sounds just stupid enough to be real and think about it, what else is Monde but a great cosmic dumping ground.” said the Tyrant Queen.

Her tail lashing out like a great bolt of black thunder. Striking down a stone backed Mammoth before it could strike its neighbor and start up the melee, that would lead to a stampede.

Matthew, formerly the Matte-Black Tangent, now named Tangent Lord, stood listening to pebbles and rocks and ‘bigger’ things bouncing off his shield.

He wanted to argue about how nonsensical that sounded, or how depressing that would be if it were true, but then he watched a woman's charred body smash into his dome and slide over its surface like a piece of refuse, and found himself fairly speechless.

“Shit...Fucking Monde.” said Tangent

*****

Hours later Edna and Elena returned home, their new home, or at least the temporary one. Billy’s hut in the hinterland.

For various reason they no longer lived in Gene, maybe a certain someone was lonely, maybe the ease of using the N-Doors made not commuting seem silly.

Maybe the mayor of Gene had politely asked them to leave for fear of the danger they might bring to his city.

Their sudden notoriety  and fame making them ‘hotter’ than your average nuclear warhead. In any case, no one was complaining.

Billy’s spatial abilities and the use of the n-doors made location a non-issue. Enough so that Edna wondered why they hadn’t done so before.

The house smelt of spices and warmed cider. Edna wandered in, shrugging off her jacket and hanging it on the rack. Elena trailed her, simply leaving ‘her’ jacket where it was.

Brattily trusting that it’d be on a rack the next time she needed it. It was late by the time they were done with babysitting the mammoths.

Comparatively speaking, it was a small potatoes gig, one that they’d taken for the sake of good PR and making some new connections.  

The house was dark by now, with the lights turning on as they drifted through the rooms.

Elena flounced off to perch in  her favorite seat in the living room and watch her favorite channels on the scrying cube.

Mainly watching a mixture of live plays and old world sitcom recordings. As for Edna, Edna had decided that she’d go straight to bed.

Being an executive for a company had been hard enough when the company was small.

Now it was positively massive and if it weren’t for the fact that she now had people from the Thousand Ghosts and the Maynard Family helping, she’d have likely gone mad, or just run herself done from exhaustion.

That didn’t mean she didn’t need more help. It just meant that for now she was managing. Just barely holding it all together.

She wasn’t sure, if she was getting better the more she got used to things.

Sometimes it seemed like she had it all in hand, other times she could feel everything getting ready to fly apart..

All the same this was a happy kind of burden. A weight that affirmed her existence and how far she’d come from just being a maid.

A poor relative, and ex-invalid, who was hired on, and pitied.

In slightly more than three years time, she’d gone from being no one to being powerful, to having control.

She still wasn’t sure what to do with it, what it meant, or what would come of it, but she didn’t hate the feeling. She didn’t hate this life.