I opened my eyes and flexed my arms, already feeling far better than I had minutes ago. Nowhere near as good as I’d felt talking to The End and The Custodian, but that was some sort of spatial bullshit that I didn’t even pretend to understand. I tried to push myself to my feet, but my legs weren’t quite up to giving me back the use of my knees just yet.

Jun slipped an arm under mine and hefted me to my feet. “I’ve got you.” She said gently, as if I was going to shatter if she spoke too loud. “So what is this place, grand warden? And how are we still here?”

Okeria gently rubbed the gun on his hip, then clenched his other hand around a small oval of metal that was engraved with a honeycomb pattern of electric blue. “The Dredged Switchport. And you’re here because this is one of the very few hazards I’ve come across that has a zone of absolute safety. As long as you stay within the protective aura of the main station, you’re safe.”

“Is that a thing?” Jun whispered, then shifted so she had a better grip on me. “I thought, you know, we’d get kicked out if the hazard level was too high. Because this place is level twelve.”

I raised an eyebrow and looked around the hazard. From what I could see, it looked like an abandoned railway switchyard, completely with overgrown tracks on the ground and dilapidated buildings, but it was wrong somehow. The tracks weren’t the steel with planks in between I was used to, but three rails of semi-opaque material that a thick black liquid constantly flowed through. Like the oil that had created the hazard’s opening in the first place.

When I looked a little closer, I saw that what was overgrowing the tracks weren’t plants at all. They were small stones, stacked on top of each other like little inukshuks, and held together with yet more of that thick oil. The stone fixtures swayed in the breeze just like grass would, and every now and again, a tiny spurt of black would burst from a leaf and coat another pebble.

I shook my head and looked up at the buildings, the architecture of which was completely foreign to me. They flowed strangely from jagged ends to smooth and pristine curves, almost as if there was something that had smoothed down the middles, yet left the edges untouched. They reminded me of a mixture of lighthouses, waterfall bluffs, and birdbaths; except the centers had been bloated outwards to be far less tall and skinny.

I swiped over to my map screen, but before I could get a look at it, a warning plastered itself over my interface.

“Warning: hazard level exceeds current tolerance. Time until expulsion: 2M 11S.” I read aloud, waiting for the countdown to, well, count down. But it didn’t budge. “What are we supposed to do? Wait until Endra gets tired and leave?”

Okeria snorted. “If ya think the Embodiment of Endurance is going to get bored, then you’ve got something muddling your mind. No, I need ta raise the both of ya up to tolerance ten so ya can clear this place.”

The grand warden grabbed hold of a ladder that led up and out of the sunken tracks and hoisted himself up with one swift yank. “Ya might want ta get out of the way. Trawlers don’t really care if anyone’s in their path when they come in.”

Jun helped me over to the ladder, and my hands weakly grasped the flaky yellow bars for whatever handhold I could get. They felt solid under my fingers, even though everything else seemed to have withered away, and they didn’t so much as budge while Jun eased me up onto the platform. They were so yellow against the muted colours of the rest of the hazard that I tucked away that specific colour in the corner of my mind. It had to be a hint.

“‘Trawlers’.” Jun mused as hefted me up once more. “Do you mean like back home? Like how the needlemaws came through too? What’s happening here?”

“A twisted perversion of everything you used to know.” I muttered.

“He’s actually really close to the truth. Everything in the part of the all-world that was made for our people is based on a combination of the native all-world and our home. That’s why you get a mixture of colourful forests and needlemaws; a pest from our world and a wonder from this one.” Okeria explained.

That was exactly what I’d experienced, but in a much smaller dose. Maybe ten percent of everything I’d seen in my last life could’ve been from Earth, or a facsimile of it, but ninety percent of it was completely foreign.

Okeria gestured for us to follow him to the main building, a mass of abandoned metal and stone that was far larger than any of the other shacks around the switchport. My eyes immediately locked onto a coil of metal that was the same colour as the ladder I’d just climbed. Okeria grabbed onto the far end and pulled, the thin strip of yellowed metal shrieking and coiling in on itself from his powerful yank. And when he let go, it emitted a sound that couldn’t possibly have come from that small piece of metal.

It echoed through my bones like the deepest bass; a combination foghorn and warning siren that felt like it could’ve been heard for miles. It then cut into small parts, like the clanging bells that accompanied the lowering of a railway crossing’s gates. As if there was both a ship and a train about to come in.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“I don’t think I have ta tell ya this, but yellow’s the key in this place. And the hazard knows that, so be careful which yellow ya trust.” Okeria warned, stepping under my arm to let Jun take a little breather. But he was so tall that I had to stand on tiptoes just to stay upright.

He didn’t notice.

“That sounds a lot like you’re going to let us try to solve this on our own.” Jun worriedly pointed out. “You said yourself we need tolerance ten to clear this place, and I don’t know how that works, since it’s a level twelve hazard.”

“And I also said that anywhere under the main building’s protection is safe for ya. You’ll see what I mean in a few minutes, but until then, let’s take a little breather. The human needs ta learn a little more about us if he’s going ta blend in.”

I grunted and skipped along the ground as Okeria led Jun and I into the main building, which was just as deserted on the inside as it was on the outside. A huge gemstone dangled from the ceiling like a chandelier from a mass of thin threads, tiny stones dangling from the main mass on those same threads and dripped thick oil to the ground below. Other than that, there were a few metal benches that seemed mostly untouched by time and a whole mess of stone-oil foliage that had overtaken the vast majority of the room.

Okeria gently set me down on the bench and gestured for Jun to sit next to me. She nodded and took a seat, then we both watched in curiosity as Okeria waded into the stone-oil plants in search of something. He came back a handful of seconds later with a stone column that looked like it had come from one of the corners of the room and sat on it like a stool.

“Before I say anything, I need ta know your opinion, miss Keratily.” Okeria said to Jun while his helmet stayed locked on me. “Is this one going ta endanger us?”

“If he was going to, don’t you think he would’ve abandoned me a long time ago?” Jun said defensively. “Don’t you think he would’ve let Nia die and sided with Endra? Don’t you–”

“I just wanted ta make sure ya trusted him.” Okeria said gently. “For example, if he might have control over your interface…”

“You mean like you do to all the new recruits?” Jun spat.

Okeria nodded. “Exactly like that.”

Jun stared at Okeria for a long moment. “No. In case you didn’t get it, the answer to everything is no. I trust Seb more than I trust anyone else in this world, and maybe more than anyone back home. You know how it is back there.”

Okeria couldn’t hide the wince that Jun’s words brought on. “It hasn’t changed in the decades I’ve been gone?”

“It never changes.” Jun muttered.

“Drowned politics.” Okeria chuckled mirthlessly. “If ya trust this ‘Seb’, then I trust your judgment. How much do ya know about our people, mister Seb?”

I shrugged. “About as much as you know about humans.”

“Absolutely nothing?” Okeria said with a tone that I imagined came along with raised eyebrows. But Staura didn’t have eyebrows, so maybe not. “I thought Juniper here would’ve told ya some things about our home and people.”

“Pretend I know nothing” I said as I spread my hands. “Give me the short version.”

Okeria blew out a long breath and leaned back, pressing his elbows against his stomach as he looked up at the ceiling. I wasn’t sure if he was considering how much to tell me, or where to start. Hell, he might not know that much about his own people at all if he’d been on the all-world for most of his life.

Jun cleared her throat when it was obvious Okeria was having trouble talking. “I can start with what I learned in school, if that helps?”

“Thank you, yes.” Okeria said without lowering his head. “I’m having a hard time making us look good while also telling the truth.”

“Then just tell the truth.” Jun said flatly. She tapped my leg to get my attention, then began speaking when I locked visors with her. “We weren’t the first people to inhabit our planet. All twenty-four of our gods are the last remnants of those people that came before us, and even though they look like us now, they apparently didn’t to our oldest ancestors.”

Okeria groaned theatrically. “I didn’t think ya meant that far back. It’ll take hours if ya start there.”

“Whenever you want to cut in, be my guest.” Jun said with a turn of her head and a gesture that I assumed was rude. She turned back to me and resumed speaking. “The Staura plant was the hardiest weed on the ruined planet those people left behind. It could survive on barely any water, produced beautiful flowers that seemed to be from many different plants, and was as tough as stone. The gods worked together to create us from that plant, and the Staura as a people were born.”

“That’s just a theory, ya know.” Okeria cut in. “We’ve got plenty of hardy plants and animals left on our planet, so there’s a good chance we just evolved from one of them. We are named after the Staura weed, though. The All-Flower.”

Jun let out an exaggerated sigh and planted her hands on her hips. “Are you thinking or talking right now?”

“A bit of both.” Okeria said with a shrug. “When did you grow such a spine, little miss?”

“The same time my own people abandoned me and I was saved by a human.” Jun cut back. “The point is, our people have always struggled to survive. Three-quarters of our planet is nearly uninhabitable, and the only clean water we get is from rain. Of that three-quarters, one third of it is completely destroyed and leaks rocks into our orbit that rain back down on us in Celaura, so almost anything we build has to be strong enough to survive a meteor rain. Everything is utilitarian, built to last, or underground. And we have so many earthquakes that living underground is somehow just as dangerous as living above ground.”

I nodded along to Jun’s explanation, which sounded more like a backstory than a history lesson. I didn’t know how this would help me fake being a Staura, but there had to be a point she would eventually get to.