The nix’s body jerked—once, twice. Then again.

His fingers clenched where they held her.

Then he let go.

His eyes met hers, disbelief turning to pain and panic.

She tasted blood in the water.

A few seconds later, they drifted apart. Dark, red tinged clouds poured from his skin. He still glowed, but the light was dimming. Instead, a new light was overpowering his. Kodanh’s ice magic, filling seven long, sharp spears of ice that stabbed through the nix’s body like large, otherworldly fangs.

Kodanh’s satisfied growl made the water shake.

He retreated, his bloodlust satiated.

She drifted down.

Everything was cold. So cold. She was losing consciousness.

As the darkness closed in, someone swam up from below and grabbed her around the chest. She blacked out on the way to the surface.

The next thing she knew, she was sideways on a muddy bank and Doneil was shoving warmth and life into her chest.

The prince stood above him, staring down with fire in his hand.

She spluttered, then surged to the side as she coughed up stale, bloody water.

“She's back!” Doneil shouted, then began muttering swears. “Temdin’s great gods, Catrin! You don't fight a nix underwater!”

She couldn't reply, too busy heaving up water.

“She had little choice,” Nales said. “They both went under.”

The prince was defending her?

“Is he dead?” she managed to ask between sputtering coughs.

“If he isn't, we will find out soon enough. Karel's gone back down.” Doneil was breathing hard, as if he'd been running. He stepped forward another pace and pressed his palm back to her arm. Warm healing magic spread through her again.

She tried to pick herself up. The entire world felt like it was sluggish, like the swamp water was filling her brain. Gods, her muscles felt like lead—

Doneil shoved her back down. “You stay there, rnari. Stay right the hells there. Give yourself a minute. You were nearly dead when he brought you up.”

She didn’t so much obey as fall. Her head spun. Suns. If Doneil could keep her down—well, he was probably right.

“If he’s not dead, we should capture him,” she said. “He can tell us if any humans were here.”

Doneil grunted, still working his magic. “He probably ate them. We can search his stomach for the answer.”

Someone shouted. She followed the sound and spotted Matteo’s silhouette thirty paces on, looking at them from the ragged edge of the road. The broken glow of the Portal Seed looked like a lantern next to him.

Doneil yelled back. “She’s okay! Enemy down,” Doneil yelled back. Then he paused and turned to her. “Er. The enemy is down, right?”

She slanted him a look, then sighed and relaxed further into the mud.

“Kodanh,” she said.

“Ah. Definitely down.”

He and Nales muttered to each other. She ignored them, focusing on her body. Her flesh had begun to crawl from the healing. A good sign. Slowly, the leaden weight was leaving.

Water splashed nearby.

She opened her eyes to find Karel stepping onto the bank. Their eyes met, then hers dropped to what he was carrying.

Her knives. And the sword.

He stepped between her and the water and laid them next to her.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Almost.”

Almost?

Not good enough.

She grimaced, then punched her fist into the ground and shoved her up. This time, when Doneil attempted to push her back down, she resisted.

“Go get him, please. We have some questions.”

*****

His name was Fior, and they tied the nix against one of the larger vehicles near the Portal Seed. Doneil had… partially healed him. He’d filled in most of the holes in the man’s internal organs and patched the skin, but he’d left the broken muscle and bone alone.

The nix was no longer actively dying, but he wasn’t about to move anywhere. And Doneil hadn’t bothered much with the pain.

The nix didn’t look very happy.

Neither, she supposed, did she.

Catrin stood a few paces from him, looking down at him with her arms crossed. She’d removed her armor to dry it closer to the fire, but kept her knives. She was no longer dripping with water, but she still felt half-drowned.

Better than fully drowned, however.

And she was betting the nix was feeling half-stabbed.

He stared back at her, expression sullen and tense with pain.

Through their portal connection, Kodanh’s presence felt very satisfied.

“We would like to know if there were any other people in this town,” Nales said. “We would also like to know anything you know about this Portal Seed and the events that occurred on Abiermar. If you tell us, we will let you live.”

Fior licked his lips. “Really? You would let me live? After I nearly killed her?”

He hadn’t taken his eyes off her. He stared, attention honed, preternaturally still.

She stared right back. And, through her, so did Kodanh.

The ice lizard was all too happy to have another go. Especially with the taste of the nix’s blood on his tongue.

“I would,” Nales said.

“Then she can’t be worth much to you. Give her to me. I’ll tell you all I know.”

“No.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The nix laughed, a haunting sound.

She gritted her teeth. It felt like it came from inside her head. Similar to how he was talking to her earlier.

“Then why should I tell you?”

“Why should I keep you alive?”

“Why would you keep me alive, anyway? Suppose I did tell you what I know—what guarantee is there to stop you from killing me?”

“You would have my word.”

Fior scoffed. “And what good is that? I can smell your demon blood from here.”

“Smells better than yours,” she muttered.

“And you, little rnari?” he asked her, his eyes dancing. “Do you keep your word?”

“You are lucky,” she said softly. “Not only do I keep my word, I keep his word, too.”

Fior stared at her.

Then he smiled.

“How does that feel? To be leashed by a human?”

“Better than being kissed by you.”

In the background, Doneil stopped what he was doing to look around.

“You kissed her? Temdin, no wonder she nearly killed you.”

Fior flashed a grin. Her fingers twitched, tempted to rub it off his face with one of her blades.

He noticed, and his grin grew wider.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me, little rnari?” he said, his voice dropping into a seductive purr. We could have so much fun together.

She narrowed her eyes. Then, with barely an exhale, she sent a pull to Kodanh.

Cold traced the air. A second later, a spear of ice slammed into the road next to Fior’s foot. Pieces of it shattered on impact, dropping to the ground like broken glass.

Kodanh’s power coated the nearby ground with frost.

Fior’s grin widened. Then he turned to Nales.

“Fine. There was only one human here, and she did not come from this place.”

*****

Matteo’s head was swimming.

He had no idea what that naked dude’s problem was, but he’d nearly killed Catrin. She, apparently, had nearly killed him back. Then she’d gotten Karel to drag him back up to the surface, ordered Doneil to heal him, and held him for questioning.

God, she was a badass. He might be in love.

Well, not really. But he was definitely in love with her technique.

The bigwigs on the other side? Not so much.

They were the ones responsible for Matteo’s currently-swimming head.

So. After a very long time spent waiting around for the higher ranks to finish interrogating his experiences—and for them to decide he was neither insane nor untrustworthy—and then waiting for a bunch of scientists to show up and repeat the whole process… he was finally receiving some answers.

On the same night he (and a bunch of others, it turned out) were recorded AWOL, the entire world got smashed. Like someone had cracked a giant bottle of whiskey across the universe’s prow, except the whiskey had been made of dimensional-smashing glass and the liquid inside was actually portals to other worlds.

Wherever a drop landed, a new tear in reality formed. And a whole bunch of stuff began coming through those tears.

Or so he understood.

His team hadn’t even had time to plan his funeral. They’d been too busy rounding up, or killing, the things that had come through the gates.

And… it got weirder than that.

Through one of the portals—no, through many of them—they’d found other Earths. Alternate Earths. Earths that looked and smelled like his, but were slightly different. Others that were wildly different.

Some of them even had fucking dinosaurs in them, apparently.

God. What the hell?

He tried to explain that to Nales, but then the naked dude—who, at that point, looked like a fucking horse—had attacked them.

Now, he wasn’t sure which part to start at.

His head wasn’t so much swimming as drowning.

They had also downloaded another update to his HUD, so that might have something to do with it. He, in the meantime, had downloaded a crapload of informational things. Everything he could think of that could help him, from wilderness survival guides, geology, electronics, radio signals, edible plant guides, poisonous plant guides, venomous animal guides, a hundred and fifty language packs, three translator apps, and how to make penicillin.

He was going to need some external storage soon. Thankfully, he’d seen a few at the pawn shop.

His HUD also needed a restart, but no way in Hell was he going to do that and risk losing the connection.

He was still waiting for a response from his friends, family, and neighbors. And from his team.

The group running things on the other side didn’t know—which was logical. They were not part of his direct command structure, and it would take time for them to confirm things. Even longer for the word to trickle down to where it needed to go.

The attack, however, had put a damper on proceedings. He’d recorded the incident and sent it over through the break. He’d also recorded Catrin’s ice spear.

They were poring over that.

Then, someone asked if he could possibly kidnap her and somehow shove her across the tiny dimensional break for them.

They hadn’t been serious, but the idea threw him into a roaring fit of laughter.

When he managed to stop laughing, he dug into his HUD storage, found the clip from when Catrin and her giant ice lizard friend had created a tsunami of ice to crunch up an army of the demonic undead, and sent it to them to accompany his ‘No.’

While they pondered that, he considered the naked man.

The guy’s skin had similar markings to Karel, which made him significantly reassess Karel’s danger rating, and he swore the dude had been glowing earlier, which made it all that more bizarre.

Dangerous monsters trying to kill him? Yeah, he expected that.

Dangerous glowing naked dudes who also apparently shapeshift into horses? Not so much.

The good people on the other side had translated ‘nix’ for him—and to look it up. Apparently, it was an actual thing from folklore?

Christ, there were some strange myths around.

But, given he was currently existing in a land full of elves, Fey, and demons…

Yeah, maybe magical naked dudes who turned into horses and liked to eat people weren’t all that out of line.

Hell. Maybe he should be worried about La Llorona showing up.

At least he’d had the question of ‘is this all one big, weird VR experience’ put largely to rest. A small piece of his mind still niggled about it, but talking to people from his own world and getting news about everything…

It helped.

He wasn’t alone in experiencing this. He might not even be alone in this world. Other Guardian Force members had gone missing, likely into those other worlds.

Maybe even into this one.

He needed to look. See if he could find them.

He brought up Maybe Friend’s contact. With the update, he might be able to triangulate the person’s location. If they needed help…

Well, he’d try to get it to them.

Until then…

What had happened to the people of this town?

Sure, the World Shift Event (as the bigwigs were apparently calling it) had only broken part of his world off into this one, and it had happened in the evening, when pretty much all of these businesses had been closed, according to their hour listings… but he found it difficult to believe that five blocks had been completely empty of people, especially with residences around.

Then again, Millerville did seem like a small, sleepy place. Maybe everyone had driven off to play Bingo or something…

Still, to have a place completely empty?

It didn’t sit right with him.

Plus, there’d been what the nix had said. One person had been here, though apparently they hadn’t been from his world.

How the creature would know that, he had no idea.

Maybe he should find out.

There was a lull in communication from the other side—they were all still arguing about Catrin’s magic, it sounded like. He stood and stretched, then glanced around. Everyone else seemed gathered in the vicinity of Fior, the naked dude—all except for Karel, who was sitting a little way off, examining some of the stuff they’d pulled from the stores earlier while keeping out of Fior’s sightlines.

Spotting the bottles of juice they’d rescued from the pharmacy’s refrigerator, he bent down, scooped one of them up—orange—and walked over.

Fior had been snitting something at either Catrin or Nales, he wasn’t sure which, but his attention snapped to Matteo as he approached.

“We have stories of nix in my world, apparently.” He tilted his head, regarding the man. “Can you understand what I am saying?”

He’d said all that in English as a test.

There’d also been stories of Fey being extremely multilingual. Able to understand anything with the ‘Gift of Language.’

By the pinned look of confusion on the man’s face, he didn’t have that gift.

Damn. Oh well.

He sighed, then squatted down and engaged his HUD’s jury-rigged translation software.

“What can you tell me about the person that was here?”

The nix’s lips peeled back from his teeth.

That depends, human. What can you offer to me? An arm? A leg? A few pints of blood?

Oh, good. Another voice to add to the mildly-sorted cacophony in his head.

He flinched, but otherwise forced himself not to react. He’d already heard about the telepathy from Catrin—she’d ranted about it—but hearing and experiencing were rather different.

He held out the orange juice. “A juice blend from a type of plant you have never experienced. It contains vitamins that help a person recover from blood and nutrient loss and is also a good source of sugar.”

The nix’s eyes narrowed.

Then Catrin said something—not in Janessi—and Fior recoiled with a grimace.

“She was a woman. Taller than you. Dark skin. She wore strange clothes and had a firearm.” Fior’s eyes met his, suddenly focused. They seemed to gleam unnaturally, an echo of that glow he’d seen on the man before. “You have an ability to talk to others? Like I can, without speaking?”

“Yes. But not like you. I use a machine you can’t see.”

Fior’s head tilted and his eyes narrowed further. “She had that, too, I think.”

Hmm. Perhaps Maybe Friend was a ‘she’.

“She is from different world than me?” Matteo asked, stumbling over the words in his translation. “How do you know?”

Fior smiled. “She smelled different.”

“Did you kill her?” Catrin asked in a dangerous tone.

The nix gave a wistful sigh. “No. The women around here—you are all too dangerous, it would appear.”

At least, that’s what he thought the nix said. The Fey spoke a lot of words he didn’t quite catch, but he was pretty sure that was the gist.

He said something more to Catrin, and the elf’s expression darkened, teeth baring.

The nix laughed.

Matteo’s HUD pinged, summoning him back to the break in reality.

Wordlessly, he rose, handed the bottle of juice to the nix, then walked back to the dimensional break.