The whole walk through the village had gone without a hitch, and me and my sister separated once we reached the inverted river. We then continued towards the lair, which wasn’t an issue anymore. We knew the way by heart, and with the cliff having a ladder, the whole thing was much easier.

Rik left us at the bottom of the plateau. Gaëlle kissed him on the cheek, and he left with red on his eyes.

“See you in three days.” She told him as he disappeared behind the treeline.

After one last look, we turned around.

“Ok. Let’s climb.” I announced.

“…Where did this ladder come from?” Vi asked out loud, examining the aluminium of the steps.

“Another world.” I smiled, making a spooky voice.

“Won’t it…explode or bring the end of times?” Vi said, knowing full well it sounded a bit stupid.

“Don’t worry, we shouldn’t be faced with anything dangerous on our trip back. To be honest, Earth is very safe. But that’s not where we’re going at first.” Elle explained as she climbed.

When we reached the door, we had given Vi the basics to prepare her on what she was going to see.

“Hold my hand.” I told the tall elf.

“What are those lights?” She was distracted by the lightbulbs.

“Pieces of our technology, centuries more advanced than yours. It’s the kind of thing that could revolutionize your world for the better or destroy it. Don’t try to understand how it works, please.” I responded.

That sobered her up. “So, what are we supposed to do to get to your castle of metal in the sky?”

“Grab that door’s handle, well, rope. We’ll need to go together, so grab my hand.”

She examined the large castle door covered in jewels. “This is…Oh, yes. Your hand you say.”

She looked at my extended fingers for a short second. I expected her to tease me, but she grabbed them, while also very slightly blushing.

That made me very uncomfortable, especially when Gaëlle gave me a big smile. She was the one who was supposed to grab the rope.

“What are you waiting for?” I asked, annoyed at her expression.

“Me? Nothing. Nothing at all.” And she opened the door.

We immediately appeared in the large Door rooms.

“Oooh.” Vi let go of me, stumbling, and watching as everything lit up, showing the immensity of the dimensional travel area.

“Vi, you okay?” I grabbed her to steady her.

“Ho…Nielle ga furte nie? Bu shi ne.” I couldn’t understand a thing the elf was saying. But could very well spot her swearing.

“Shit.” I echoed her. “Of course, it’s a system skill translating for us. Bonnie? Can you understand Common Overworld?”

“Negative. Language module not installed.”

“Could you get it?”

“Negative.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Get the door to system world 5 back up, Bonnie.” Elle asked.

She grabbed my shoulder, then reteleported us all back to the lair.

“Language skill on: That’s an issue.” Elle exclaimed.

“Oooh. Please, a second. What’s going on?” Vi asked.

“Well, what do we do?” I asked my sister.

The elf looked at her surroundings. “We’re back? How? That room was so huge. It was bigger than the palace of Krists! I need a moment.” She sat down on a pile of junk.

“I don’t really see a solution. Bonnie, you really can’t learn Common Overworld?” I questioned the AI again.

“Negative.”

“Who are you talking to? This Bonnie?” Vi was slightly out of breath.

“It’s the miniature system in our world. We’re the only ones who have it and it doesn’t provide much at all.” Gaëlle explained very broadly.

“Oh, I see.” Vi was giving me a confused look.

I was trying to get through the Quiescent computer, and tried not to focus on the other conversation.

“Negative? So you can learn Common Overworld?”

“Affirmative.”

“For fuck’s sake Bonnie!” Me and my sister exclaimed in perfect harmony.

“How long will it take?” I asked.

“With current data, partial writing translating tool will be available in thirty-six hours. Partial vocal translating tool will be available in six months, seven days and two hours.”

“…Great, well, learn the writing, that could always be useful.”

“Affirmative.”

I turned back to Vi. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes… Yes. I hadn’t thought that there would be someplace where the System didn’t work. It…it really was another world. No, another dimension, like you said. It’ll make things harder for me, but it may be for the better. If I can’t understand you, you won’t be able to explain anything I see.”

“Yeah, but there are things that could scare you in our world, that aren’t actually dangerous.” Elle grimaced.

“Like cars.”

“Exactly my thought.”

Vi looked at the both of us. “I know what a car is.”

“…What’s a car?” Gaëlle quizzed her.

“It’s a carriage drawn by horses or Hogrills?” Vi tried.

“Yeah, no. Well yes, but we’ve gone a bit beyond that. What’s a Hogrill?” Gaëlle asked.

“A water mammal that we use in the Uppserseas Cities to…”

“YOU GO AROUND PULLED BY DOLPHINS?” She shouted in utter amazement.

“My fucking ears!” I screamed back at her.

“Sorry, sorry. I got excited.” My sister’s cheeks reddened slightly.

“I don’t know what dolphins are, unfortunately.” Vi responded.

I sighed. “In any case, it’s a problem. We can always come back here to talk and explain some of the things to you, I don’t believe for a second you will be able to stop yourself from being curious, but you’ll have to promise us something.”

Vi perked up. “Yes?”

“No weapons. And do not get violent in any case.” I told her.

“Unless we’re getting violent first, or someone tries to grab your butt in the bus or something like that.” Gaëlle added.

“Well, I suppose I’ll be unable to use my skills and stats, so I would be pretty weak…” Vi lowered her head.

“Skills yeah, stats no. What’s your level?” I realized I had never asked.

“…”

“Sorry, is that too private? I forgot it’s bad manners here but…”

“No, no. I was the one who asked for your levels first. I’m level 187.” She grimaced as she revealed that to us.

Elle whistled in admiration. “That’s…that’s crazy high-levelled, isn’t it? How much experience is that?”

“Almost a billion.”

“How do you…how does someone get a billion experience?” I asked, shocked.

Vi looked at me in the eyes, deep fear ingrained in her pupils. “You live in a city of night surrounded by level five-hundred monsters. I’m strong, but after some point, gaining levels does not make you stronger. Without my skills, the two of you could easily overpower me. And even with my skills, if you were taught how to use yours…”

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“You don’t need to get defensive, Vi. I understand. I suppose that we should keep your level a secret as well? Just like with your class?”

“…If you could, I would be grateful. People would take me for an adventurer. A monster hunting other kinds of monsters. I’d be ostracised, or worse.” She spoke softly.

“Ok. Great. About the skills, it’s true you won’t be able to use them, but stats work everywhere. So you’re probably three or four times stronger than a normal man in our world, depending on your stat distribution.”

Vi blinked wildly. “Oh. Man?”

“There are only humans on Earth?” I supposed I hadn’t used the word sapiens, and that was what she was asking about.

“What!? Did you annihilate…”

“No no no. There have always only been humans in our world.” Gaëlle corrected her hurriedly.

“Are you certain? I’ve seen people in power make the masses believe…”

“Well., maybe the lizard people.” My sister added unnecessarily.

“Lizard people?”

“Stop! Stop.” I needed to put an end to it. “The only sapiens in our world are Homo Sapiens. Elves like you only exist in our mythology, but a lot of people like to disguise themselves as you, so you won’t stand out…Well, you’ll stand out, but it’s LA, it won’t be a problem. People will ask to take a picture with you or something like that. Don’t be violent, act natural and relaxed. Can you do that?”

“With no issues.” She responded almost like an aristocrat. But immediately after, the conversation went on a completely different tangent. “I acted like what you want me to be my whole childhood and teenage years. But, I’m sorry I have to ask, did you call me an elf?”

I hiccupped, making me lose focus. “Oh, I apologize, is that something offensive or…”

“Offensive? No, I don’t think so. I consider elves my friends. Rik is a good sapiens.”

We looked at each other, Gaëlle having her face all scrunched up in confusion.

“Wait, you’re not an elf?” I felt obligated to ask.

“No, of course not, I’m a Frehan.” She stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“A what?” The word hadn’t been translated by the skill.

“A Frehan. Oh, do those not exist in your world?”

“Well, the skill isn’t activating for it, it only does that for new words.”

“Ah, I see. I don’t understand how you’d confuse me for an elf, though.”

I gave her a half smile. “Well, elves are tall, pale, beautiful and have long ears.”

“Oh.” She blushed a bit. “Well, my ears are truilly, not long, it’s very nice of you to say I’m beautiful, and it is true I’m tall, but that’s because I’m a Gris, and my skin was once a beautiful golden tan, not pale. Look at Rik or Kan, elves are small. It’s how they move so fast.”

“…I didn’t understand a few words you said just there, Gaëlle, you have…Gaëlle?”

She was giving me the most ambivalent smile I had ever seen on her face. I cocked my head to the side as I gave her a very suspicious look.

“What’s going on?”

“Whaaa? So that’s how Frehans look, huh? I thought you would be a bit more…muscled.” She told Vi while trying to avoid my gaze completely.

“Oh, well Whites often are, males I mean, and Darks, females, rarely so. But it’s a bit of a fifty-fifty for us Gris.”

“Wait wait wait.” I looked back at Vi. “You’ve got three genders? Sexes I mean?”

“Well, you could say that. Or four, if you count the children. Our bodies decide when we reach twelve or thirteen. Some go fully female, some go male, and some, like me, grow both. I was fortunate to keep most of my feminine looks, it would have truly brought a hard Yontipurr if I had suddenly grown muscles and switched from heiress to heir. Dresses are so much more colourful.” She had a nostalgic look on her face. But then she looked behind me, with a bit of surprise.

“Both…” Things began clicking in my head.

What if it wasn’t cat girls that made my sister decide on this world?

“Nielle? Your sister just teleported away? Is that a problem?”

I turned back to where my sister had stood seconds before: She had fled like a coward.

“GAËLLE COME BACK HERE YOU MASSIVE PERVERT.”

The three next days went without a hitch. It was hard to communicate with Vi, and she had been blown away by almost everything she saw, especially when we brought her on Earth to eat and buy her a bed. It was annoying seeing my sister look at the elf, no, the frehan, with bad curiosity in her eyes, but she was making herself scarce since I had given her an earful about taking decisions with what was inside her pants. Vi had found it all very funny, not that she had understood anything I was saying. We had gotten one awkward conversation about how we should call her, or him, or something else. It took almost fifteen minutes to realize that there were no gendered pronouns in Common Overworld, and Gaëlle mocked me saying I had tried to be too politically correct.

Which, coming from her, made mewant to beat her up.

After thirty-six hours, Bonnie had managed a translation language for Common Overworld, and we bought a digital reader for Vi so she could read some of our fiction. Now, it was a very dumb idea if we wanted to keep her as clean as possible from outer dimensional influence, but when she had told us she loved to read but hadn’t had the opportunity, not even once, in four years, we had taken the executive decision that: fuck the world, get that girl something to read. We gave her fantasy at first, but she hated it citing it was completely ridiculous. Then we gave her historical romance and we lost her for six hours. She loved it, citing it was completely ridiculous.

We spoke with gestures in the station and on earth, and communication happened, with difficulty. We had set up a dining table in the lair though and ate in the damp area as we shared what we could to the Frehan, explained and exchanged about the things she had seen that day.

And…it was great. It was fun. Vi forgot about her worries, and so did we. For three days, it was everything that me and Gaëlle wished for.

Except for the last night.

I woke up in the middle of our sleeping hours, hearing something on the other side of the room. We had put up curtains all over the large living area to make something like bedrooms with one private shower area. Vi had been fascinated by the black hole and had asked if she could sleep in front of the windows. She had gotten a simple bed but also a lounge pug, to read in front of the forever lights. The weird sound came from there. I got out of the large double bed, not without checking on my sister one second: She was sleeping peacefully. I rose to my bare feet. I walked on the rug me and my sister had placed there until I reached its end and the cold metallic floor. I wasn’t cold, the ambient temperature perfect, even in the loose shorts and t-shirt of my pyjamas. I passed next to the dining room cluttered with empty Ikea boxes we hadn’t yet thrown into the incinerator and arrived in front of Vi’s curtains.

She was crying.

With a soft voice I asked: “Vi? Is everything ok?” I hoped my tone would make her understand my words.

The sobbing stopped.

“Elle? Nielle?”

“Nielle.”

“Ho. Ga ii.”

It sounded like authorization, but I hesitated.

She opened the curtains, her eyes red, the shine of the eternally lost lights lighting her back.

“Nielle… so mouïlli. Mata mata.” She sat back on her bed. She was gazing at the most beautiful view in the universe.

Or maybe I was looking at it right now.

I remembered to breathe and sat down next to her.

“What is it?” I asked.

She handed me her reading tablet. I instantly recognized what it was.

It was Benedict’s list of experiments.

I stared at it in shock. Why did she have that? Why had Bonnie allowed…No, that question was dumb, why wouldn’t it?

Vi grabbed my arm with both hands. Seeing something in my eyes that broke her. “Suli. Suli. Suli.” She cried again. It was one of the only words of Common Overworld I knew: Sorry.

“No, it’s okay. I don’t really…It’s okay…”

The next morning, while we should have prepared to meet with Rik, Bonnie’s drone in the air showing us the mostly intact village, Vi had asked us to come to the lair to talk for breakfast.

She still had red eyes and was staring right at me.

“How did you manage to find the document, by the way? You don’t even understand how a trackpad works.” Gaëlle asked.

Vi lowered her head. “I went for a walk at night, and…it was on the bright image in the room full of empty bookshelves. It’s like it was waiting for me. I’m so sorry.”

“Fucking Bonnie. She’s going rogue.” My sister exclaimed in shock.

“Maybe not…that’s how we left it, didn’t we?”

“But why was it written in Common Overworld then…”

“Bonnie does that automatically? I don’t know.” I sighed. “It’s okay Vi. I told you. We didn’t really want anyone to know what happened to us, because…well because it’s easier that way. But maybe it’s good you know. We’re friends now, you deserve the truth. Me and Gaëlle are not identical twins, and I wasn’t born a woman. You told us about some of the things that happened to you up there, it makes it even.” I pointed at the ceiling of the lair.

“I didn’t tell you shit.” She retorted in shame. “I’m…I had to kill so many people.”

“We know, you pretty much admitted that, it’s the same.”

“No. It’s not the same. What you went through…I can’t imagine. Just thinking about it is making me sick. But I understand that you don’t want to talk about it. I’ll never ask.”

I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. “Thank you, maybe one day we’ll be able to face what he did to us, but…”

“So, what’s the problem? What did you want to talk about?” Gaëlle asked.

“It is about Nielle. Or should I call you Daniel?”

“I don’t care, don’t call me shitface, that’s all.”

“Who would do that!?”

Gaëlle coughed loudly.

Vi gave me and her a look. “Ah, siblings, I see.” I saw water in her eyes, then she refocused.

“Nielle has what we would call the Toree.” She began explaining.

“A Toree?” Gaëlle immediately asked.

“Shh. Let her talk.” I reprimanded her.

Vi gave me a small smile, and she continued.

“When a frehan child grows, as I told you, he becomes either White, Dark or Gris. We never choose, and sometimes, that can hurt someone so badly, make him feel so estranged in his own body that they…they just slowly die. That is why we have the Yontipurr. It brings balance. Now, of course, what happened to the both of you is so atrocious, I don’t believe anyone can claim to be able to heal you from what was done, but I believe a frehan clan can help Nielle with at least that. Your Yon was the most horrible Yon imaginable, compared to ours where it happens naturally, but that’s exactly why I’m certain you’re suffering, or you will be suffering from the Toree. And a Yontipurr could cure you from that.”

“So…” I began. “You’re saying that you can make me a man again?”

Vi immediately denied it.

“No. That is outside of what I thought was possible, until I read what happened to you. The Yontipurr is there to make you accept yourself in whatever body you inhabit. It helped me. I wanted to be a Dark, my father’s little princess. Instead, I was to be trained in court games and political marriages. The Yontipurr helped me become Vi.”

Gaëlle grabbed my hand. “That sounds great. It’s exactly what you would need, those are people that have always grown with suddenly different bodies. They could help you. You need help.”

“I think I’m managing fine.”

But my sister shook her head. “You can’t see yourself when you’re getting dressed, or when you’re in the shower or when we took baths in the tower… Please.”

I opened my mouth, ready to refute her, but her gaze stopped me.

“Fine.” I decided. “As long as this Yontipurr doesn’t kill like half the participants.”

Vi laughed gently. “No, of course not. It is a very private affair, and we would need to find a Dark elder so that she can teach you. My City is gone, and I need to convince the Sea of Hope, but after that, I’ll come back and help you look for a good frehan clan for your Yontipurr.”

“How would you find us?” Gaëlle asked, intrigued.

“Well, as long as you’re in this world, I have the [Target] skill. I can pretty much find anyone I’ve ever met, as long as I remember their name.” Vi freely explained.

I was lost in thoughts, was it really that bad? Maybe it was.

“Well. Thank you for going that far for me.” I nodded sideways to thank the frehan.

“Don’t. I owe you a lot. When we faced the [Ground Drake], I convinced your sister that you were dead, so that I could survive to pursue my mission. I…you two are important, I like you, now I see it, and I was ready to give up on you in a second to accomplish my mission.”

“That’s normal, Vi.” Gaëlle nodded in reassurance. “What you’re doing is essential…”

“No.” Vi cut her off. “I’ve lost myself a lot those past few years. Abandoning friends and family is not something I do. Those few days…It made me see that the world is a big place, our Blue is only one of them. Maybe it isn’t worth sacrificing everything that makes me Vi to save it.”

“…It’s always right to take care of yourself. How can you save the world if you can’t even save yourself?” I echoed words I had been told a long time ago.

“That…that is beautiful, although I’m not sure it is true.” Vi smiled sadly.

“It is for Nielle.” Gaëlle responded.

The frehan grew silent for a moment. “You did not lie about your daughter, did you?” She asked me.

“No.” I answered. “Although I am Lila’s father, not her mother.”

“…I hope you will tell me about Lila one day.”

“If you tell me about your own family.” I smiled at her.

She closed her eyes and bowed her head “Yes. That is a fair exchange to make.” Then, after a few seconds, she raised back her head.

“Let us prepare.” She said.