“How long is it going to take him to wake up?”

“Do not fret, his recovery is smooth. He pushed himself further than he should have been able to, I would not be surprised if it takes him another day to awaken.”

“I don’t know how much longer we can keep this shield up…”

Grant shifted slightly.

“Hang on, he’s moving. I think he’s awake.”

Grant heard footsteps approaching him. He felt the person kneel, and place their hand on his head.

“Are you okay Grant?” a voice asked.

He opened his eyes.

Pain. Blinding, searing pain.

He slammed his eyes shut, letting out an involuntary grunt as he curled up on his side, trying to escape the fire that had invaded his mind at the sight of the light.

“Easy, easy,” the same voice said, and he felt a small trickle of power flow from the hand on his head, soothing his burning nerves ever so slightly. “Sorry, Fyodor says I shouldn’t heal you too much, or it could do more harm than good.”

Grant cracked one of his eyes slightly. The smallest sliver of light peeped through, enough to cause him to flinch slightly, but not enough to be debilitating. Through his eyelashes, he could see the outline of Kyra kneeling over him, and he realised that it was her voice he had been hearing. For some reason, all the sounds he was hearing had an odd reverberation and distortion. Beyond her kneeling form, he could see the ruins that they had taken shelter in, and even through his blurred vision, he could make out an odd shimmer in the air beyond, almost like the videos he remembered seeing of the aurora borealis.

He licked his lips, noticing for the first time that they were cracked and flecked with dried blood. “What happened?” he croaked. His voice was hoarse and rough, and it hurt to speak.

“You almost killed yourself, like an idiot,” Kyra scolded him, her silhouette moving to block the sun, unintentionally giving him relief from the glaring light. Her voice softened. “But, you saved Fyodor. Thank you for that.”

“Indeed, thank you,” Fyodor’s voice rolled through the ruins. Grant turned his head slightly, fighting through the pain, to see a clump of vague shadows sitting around a small blue fire a few metres away. One of them limped closer, sharpening slightly to more resemble Fyodor. “A rather dangerous and impressive feat, and one that you were forced into performing due to my folly, and for which I am incredibly sorry, and grateful.” Fyodor sighed. “Normally, a spell like that would be a matter of little concern, but I miscalculated the stress that had accumulated from my battle with that beast that attacked Sanctuary. Combined with the stress of teleportation, I rather overdid myself by unleashing an attack like that. A lesson that could have ended in tragedy, were it not for you.”

“Should have ended in tragedy, more like,” Kyra muttered. “I have no fucking idea how you moved like that and survived. You’ve been here less than a week. It’s unfair.”

Fyodor chuckled. “It is not unheard of for there to be variance in the abilities of new arrivals. But yes, you certainly managed to beat the odds, Grant.”

Grant tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry and he ended up coughing and hacking dryly. Kyra shifted slightly, and the power flowing into Grant from her hand changed slightly, becoming more focused and targeted, shifting from healing his whole body to concentrating on his throat and eyes. The pain began to fade rapidly, and Grant soon was able to open his eyes fully. Now that he wasn’t peeking through his eyelids, he could see that Fyodor’s normally robust, stocky form had become shrunken and wizened, as though he had aged 50 years overnight. He was holding a long stick, leaning on it to support his now-frail body.

“Damn, is that what I look like now too?” Grant blurted out, his voice now much stronger.

Fyodor smiled. “No, no. What I am suffering is what we call overdrawing, and this appearance is merely temporary. It is the result of trying to use more power than I had available, and being forced to draw upon my lifeforce instead. But, as my Source recovers, so shall my body. What you are feeling however, is more direct damage, the result of over-imbuing your body. I did warn you about this very early on, that your body is just not able to handle that level of power flowing through it. You will recover quicker than me, but we must both be careful - I cannot draw on my Source without risking further damage for the next day or two, and you must be careful not to imbue yourself at all for at least a week, until your recovery is complete. But you will be able to draw on your Source for other tasks, at least, and Kyra will provide as much assistance as she is able with the healing process.”

“I am indeed the designated white mage,” Kyra said cheerfully.

Grant chuckled. “Good games.”

“Damn straight. When we get back home, hopefully we’ll be able to catch up and play some.”

“That’s damn good motivation,” Grant said, slowly pushing himself up to a sitting position. His entire body ached fiercely, but he could already feel a huge difference from when he woke up. Looking around, he saw that the shimmering light he had seen above their heads wasn’t a result of his blurred vision, but rather a magical dome that covered the ruins and the clearing around it. Hovering around the edge of the dome were a number of the same giant mosquitos, nippers apparently, that had attacked them in the woods, and the ground around the dome was littered with their bodies. Grant remembered now that as he had approached, Kyra and Tamiko had been casting a spell, and just as he had passed out he had seen the dome spring into being. Lei and Tamiko sat a few metres away around a blue flame that hovered in midair between them, paper scattered across the ground around them. They were talking to each other quietly, occasionally picking up one of the sheets of paper and making some notes of some kind.

“How long was I out for?” he asked.

“About a day,” replied Kyra, removing her hand from his head and helping him to his feet. “Which, honestly, is pretty impressive considering how bad you fucked yourself up.”

“I am pretty impressive,” Grant nodded sagely.

Kyra scuffed the back of his head, making him wince. “I’m not afraid to beat up an injured man. So don’t tempt me.”

“Point well made,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “Where are we anyway? What are these ruins?”

“We are not completely certain,” Fyodor responded, limping towards Lei and Tamiko and gesturing for him to follow. “We only discovered this area recently, and had only just begun working on putting together an expedition to fully explore them. You can see that there are various carvings all around the place,” he added, pointing to the walls, which were covered with unfamiliar runes, “which for some reason are resistant to any kind of magical translations, which we have never encountered before. Luckily, resistant is not the same as immune, and we were able to translate enough on our initial discovery to reveal several mentions of the Final Door, and some kind of special portal building that the occupant had found. Now that we’re trapped here, we’re hoping to translate enough of the carvings to uncover its location.”

“Wait, but who lived here?” Grant asked, frowning.

Kyra jumped into the conversation. “You remember when you first met Ed, and he was speculating on your odd arrival and its possible causes? He said that there was another possibility to explain why you had arrived early. We never actually got around to discussing that, but what he meant was that there is some evidence to support the idea that those of us who live in Sanctuary are not the only people that are around. They’re rare, but there are houses and buildings like this one that have clearly, at some point, been lived in. Whether they all died out eventually and their replacements made their way to Sanctuary, we don’t know, but given that by all indications there is an endless number of doors, it seems likely that not every single person who has been transported here was met by a Forsaken before they wandered through a door and got lost, or even that there were survivors from the settlements before Sanctuary, like that guy that Ed met.”

Fyodor nodded. “Yes, it is important to remember that we are far from the first people to wander these worlds. We do not know how long people have been stolen from their homes like us, and it is entirely possible, and even likely, that there are lost souls wandering a far away world that have lived here for hundreds or thousands of years beyond us.”

“So what, we’re trying to decode a mystical unknown language to try and find clues to allow us to create a map to a special magic portal door that we hope leads to a mythical special portal back to Earth?” Grant asked, incredulous. “Look, I get I’m new here, but is this seriously our best shot at getting home?”

“Sadly, yes,” Fyodor said simply.

Grant stared at him for a moment, before glancing over at Kyra, who just shrugged at him.

“Hey, it makes sense to me,” she said. “I mean, we have magic powers, why the hell shouldn’t we have to decode a special language to get home? It just fits, right?”

Grant sighed. “Well, when you put it like that, I suppose I would be surprised if we didn’t have to solve a bunch of riddles to get out of this place. So… can I help?”

Fyodor shook his head. “While I appreciate the sentiment, you are still injured and in recovery. Fear not, we will be here for many days I suspect, and you will be able to assist at some point in the process I am sure. For now, just relax.”

“I can’t just sit around on my arse while you guys do all this work,” Grant protested. “Come on, at least let me be the stenographer or something like that. Or the cook, I can cook a decent steak if we need.”

“Again, I appreciate that,” Fyodor said, smiling, “but I am afraid we will be rather short on food and water over the coming weeks. Without Maya, none of us are capable of creating enough food to provide the necessary sustenance. We will be relying on our Sources to nourish us, I’m afraid.”

Grant frowned. “Wait, what? We can… eat our Source?”

“Not really, no, but we can use the power it provides as a replacement for food or water. Energy is energy, after all, and it is a simple matter to convert the energy of our magic to a form our bodies can process. In addition, doing so will provide all the necessary chemicals that we require, including water. Magic is useful for more than just flinging fireballs, you know,” he added teasingly at the look on Grant’s face.

“Yeah, I mean I’ve seen people do all kinds of awesome things with magic but… you mean that we can actually just live forever? No food, no water, no sickness, no age? Just… forever?”

“Exactly,” Fyodor confirmed.

“How exactly did you think Maya was making all her meals?” Kyra smirked at him. “You think she actually just found all the ingredients anyone could ever use to cook with on Earth in Sanctuary? I did tell you she had food magic.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you meant she was just making food! You said that she would use the magic to cook the food, not make it out of thin air. And when I asked her, she refused to tell me what she could do!” Grant said indignantly

“Well yeah, she does,” Kyra said, shrugging. “But she has to make the ingredients to cook it in the first place. To be fair, we do have some normal food around, like we have some chickens and wheat and stuff - but not everything. A lot of it she just has to summon. The rest of us technically can summon food, but it’s just temporary and we can’t really use it to cook proper food.”

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“Damn, we really can do anything, huh,” Grant muttered.

Fyodor raised his eyebrows. “I think our conditions are proof that we most decidedly can not do anything, don’t you agree?” he asked pointedly.

Grant flushed. “Fair point,” he admitted.

“Regardless, just relax. As I said, we will be here for a while. You were unconscious for more than a day, no need to push yourself. I suspect that you are far more exhausted than you are letting on.”

“I’m fine, really,” Grant protested. “But fine, I’ll go relax. Let me know if I can do anything, though.”

Fyodor waved him off, and Grant walked awkwardly around the corner, his muscles still protesting with every movement. Finding a soft patch of grass, he lay down and closed his eyes.

Grant opened his eyes. The light had faded from the sky, and the nippers that had been flying around the dome had mostly dispersed, apparently giving up on penetrating the magical protection. He rolled over and stumbled to his feet, stretching his still-aching muscles and yawning. Despite his earlier protestations, the nap had actually done him a world of good, both in his physical recovery, but also allowing him some time to process the revelations of the previous night.

At this point, Grant was almost used to having his mind blown and his conceptions shattered on a daily basis, but this most recent memory had revealed a huge amount of information that he was having trouble processing all at once.

To start with, the Forsaken. While he had known for a while now that they were hosts to malevolent, powerful gods, he hadn’t fully appreciated their role in the larger scheme of things. As it turned out, that role was… nothing. They meant nothing. All of the dozens, maybe hundreds over the years, of people that had been sucked into this ‘Vault’, they were just sacrifices. A necessary evil, intended only to serve as a distraction for the Numen before being slaughtered wholesale to reset the cycle all over again. Grant felt the anger beginning to bubble up inside of him once more, picturing Kyra or Fyodor or any of the people he had come to know over the past week, being led around on a merry goose chase across worlds before being killed. Not just killed, but betrayed.

I wonder if they knew who was killing them, he couldn’t help but think. All those people that Muirenn killed over the years, I wonder if they knew. Could she face them? Could she look them in the eyes as she took their lives? God, no wonder she went mad. How could they not think that being forced to do that would take a toll on her? Although, I guess she was already ancient by that time… who knows how many people she had killed over her centuries of fighting a guerilla war against the gods. Still though…

The truth behind the meaning of the Vault, at least, he found easier to grasp. While Grant was far from being called a genius, he was a bright enough student and enough of a nerd to not be entirely unfamiliar with some of the concepts that Ki had talked about. He didn’t fully comprehend it, of course, and doubted he ever would, but the general idea was enough.

They built a zoo of magical creatures as a shield to block the Numen from reaching into our world, but now that zoo is gonna break soon. So, to stop it breaking… I need to break it first. And try to build a better zoo. A zoo dimension. With magic. Probably with the help of magicians thousands of years old who have lived undiscovered on Earth for their entire lives. Sure, why the fuck not?

His brow furrowed. But… we didn’t really talk about how things have apparently gone of the fucking rails. Like that thing… Typhon? That thing broke the door to Sanctuary, and… someone was watching me. That mind I felt, that hate… that… was Muirenn? But I didn’t get the sense that they were scared of Typhon? Or angry at his appearance? I mean, I’m not an expert, but it seemed like she only got angry when Ed managed to cast the spell, fucking up her plans. So… her plan… was Typhon? But Ki said that destroying the door like that has destabilised the entire Vault, so why would she do that? Ki said she had been driven mad, but is she really just blowing the whole thing up?

Grant walked over and leaned against the outside wall of the ruins, glancing around before peering around the corner. He saw his companions asleep around the odd blue fireball, with the exception of Fyodor, who was fervently studying a number of pages that were spinning around him slowly, occasionally shuffling around to form a new order, or flying off to be placed on top of one of many stacks that surrounded him.

Where did he get the paper? Grant wondered for a second, before feeling like an idiot. What am I talking about, he probably just poofed it into existence.

Grant leaned back against the wall behind him and slid down it, arranging himself in a comfortable sitting position, before closing his eyes. He sent his awareness deep into his mind, trying for the first time to access his mental fortress while awake. It was… odd. He could feel himself sinking through a thick, black ooze, almost like he was submerged in viscous oil, before it suddenly vanished from around him and he stood in the middle of the great hall. His appearance apparently actually startled Ki, who was seated at a table, examining some kind of crystal shard.

“Grant!” he exclaimed, standing up and vanishing the shard with a wave of his hand. “What- how did you do that? I was unaware that you could project yourself here while conscious.”

“So was I,” said Grant, brushing off his entirely clean arms and legs. Despite the lack of any residue, he still felt as though the odd liquid that had surrounded him lingered somehow. “It was… weird. But hey! I’m here, and we can chat.”

“Indeed we can, but I am uncertain why you find it necessary?” Ki questioned, cocking his head ever so slightly. “Surely being here will be suspicious to your party?”

“Nah, they’ll probably think I’m still asleep,” Grant said dismissively before tilting his head, listening to something. “In fact… huh, that’s cool. I can still hear what’s happening in the real world. I can hear the fire, and the wind… huh.” He shook his head. “What a weird feeling. It’s kinda disconcerting, actually. Like having two videos playing at the same time. In fact… you’re right. This is a bit shit. But, at least I know I can do it! I’ll talk to you in a sec.”

He willed himself out of his mental space, opening his eyes in the real world once more.

That kinda sucks, it’s easier to talk when face-to-face I reckon, he said to Ki. But whatever, this’ll do. I needed to talk to you about everything that’s happened.

Understandable, said Ki, the complexities of intra- and inter-dimensional spaces is confusing even for the most capable-

No, no I think I got that stuff, Grant interrupted, or at least got enough of it for now. I don’t need to write a paper on the subject. No, what I wanted to talk about was Typhon and Muirenn, and how everything has gone to shit the last day or two.

Ki was silent for a moment, before Grant felt him sigh. Truthfully, I am uncertain I have much clarity to offer on that subject. Things have certainly developed in unexpected and unfortunate manners, yet I do not believe that it changes our goals, ultimately. If anything, our schedule has merely been accelerated by the destruction of the door to Sanctuary and the resulting instability in the Vault’s inner structure.

Yeah, that’s what I figured, but surely it’s still something we need to discuss? I mean, for starters, just who exactly is Typhon? And how is he so powerful? I know you said that some of your creations were more powerful than you, including that Kammapa thing. But Typhon wasn’t just a random monster, he was intelligent, and way, way more powerful than I feel like anyone else realised. I mean… I saw him. The true him, behind that humanoid form. I felt his presence, and he was… terrifying.

Yes, he is, Ki agreed, before pausing for a moment. Typhon is… special. If you recall, I mentioned that separate from our experiments creating new, powerful beasts, there were a few exceptional occurrences where such mutations came about naturally. Typhon is one of those creations. While all of those semi-natural mutations were powerful, Typhon, he… well, he eclipsed them all. He was born a snake, several hundred years after our arrival on Earth, but even as a newborn, he was fully sapient. He struggled for many years, trying to make his way in the world, confused by his existence. Not an animal, but not a man, he wandered the land trying to find meaning. Through this time, he discovered that he was growing far more than his species normally does, soon reaching metres in length. It was during this wandering that he stumbled across one of the Numen, a being who at the time was going by the name of Zeus. A name I see that you recognise.

Yeah, of fucking course. Who wouldn’t know Zeus? Wait, Grant said suddenly, sitting upright as realisation dawned, I only just realised… your name is Ki. Ki, as in… Loki? The evil norse god? Who brought about the end of the world?

Ki chuckled. Yes, Loki was one of the names I was known by. In that part of the world, my brethren only made their appearance well into the period of my struggle to undermine them, and unlike their older bases of power, they decided to, from the beginning, spin a propaganda campaign against myself and the Magi, casting us as the villains in the story. It worked disappointingly well, and we were never able to establish a significant presence in that corner of the world. But I chose to use that name as another of my identities, the name I chose to adopt when I first met Imhotep, was Enki. A name far more favourably viewed than Loki, though in examining your memories, I saw that it is a name you are unaware of, which saddens me. If any of my aliases survived the trials of history, I would have wished it be that one.

Hey, just cause I don’t know it, doesn’t mean no one does, Grant pointed out. I’m hardly a mythology buff, but I’m pretty sure there were literally tens of thousands of ancient gods across all the numerous cultures that existed. We can check when we get back, if you like.

I would appreciate that, actually. It would bring me joy if that name is viewed positively. Back to Typhon, however. He encountered one of my brethren, Zeus, while he was wandering the wilds. At the time, Typhon was, despite his confusion and struggles, a trusting, kind being. Seeing that Zeus was more than just a human, he approached him, hoping to make a connection, and possibly find answers. Sadly, while Typhon was kind, Zeus was most decidedly not. Seeing this new, unique creature, Zeus was fascinated beyond anything. He trapped Typhon, bringing him to his home, and began to spend nearly every waking minute he could experimenting on the poor being. Typhon was, even at the time, a remarkably robust creature, and provided an outlet for Zeus to truly run wild, performing every test his twisted mind could dream of. Typhon… he was captive for hundreds of years, endlessly suffering. Eventually, a group led by myself and Imhotep raided Zeus’ home, freeing many captives and destroying much of his research. Among those we freed was Typhon. We brought him to our base of operations, and spent several years trying to rehabilitate the poor man - he had, by this point, learned how to take humanoid form. Sadly, as you may recall, the Magi were not immune to the plague of betrayal. One of our number was a spy for Zeus, and he broke into Typhon’s cell and tried to kidnap him once more, to return him to Zeus. But, unbeknownst to any of us, Zeus’ experiments had in fact, wrought Typhon into a being more powerful than even he had anticipated. Typhon killed the traitor, and, convinced that we had all betrayed him, rampaged through our base. We were able to expel him before any more casualties resulted, but that merely meant that he began to take out his suffering upon the surface world. Hundreds, thousands fell to his rampage, and he grew more and more powerful. Soon, he turned his sights towards the architect of his suffering - Zeus. By this time, Zeus had gathered as many of the Numen as he could to face the threat, but even they failed to stop him. Typhon had, somehow, massively increased in power, and he fell upon the Numen. He batted them aside as if they were nothing, and soon reached Zeus. He… to this day, I do not know how, but he reached into Zeus’ host, and ripped his mind from the human shell he inhabited. And then… he vanished. Both of them did. Zeus was ripped from the dimension where our minds reside, never to be heard of again.

Damn, Grant said after a while. So… Typhon actually managed to kill one of you? But you don’t know how?

Correct. We spent many years trying to replicate the feat, elated that we had discovered a possible weapon we could use to win our war - not Typhon, he hurriedly clarified, I do not mean to refer to Typhon as a weapon, but the ability he used. Typhon… before that rat betrayed us and tried to kidnap him, I would like to think that Typhon and I would have eventually ended up as friends. But, the Typhon I spent time with and the Typhon that attacked Zeus’ city… they were different souls.

So why did he attack Sanctuary? Grant mused. Obviously, he was trapped in the Vault just like anything else when you made it, but how did Muirenn manage to convince him to attack us? By the sound of it, once he killed Zeus, he was satisfied.

I truly do not know. You are correct - Typhon exacted his revenge, and Zeus is gone forever. She must have offered him some form of payment, but I cannot imagine what. Not to mention locating him in the first place - there are near-infinite worlds, after all, and he could have been placed on any of them. Although, given that she helped create the Vault in the first place, I suppose she could have some insight into the locations of various creatures. Regardless, there is some comfort in the fact that he did not seek to kill any of you when he attacked. He, or they, must have another plan in mind…

How do you know he didn’t want to kill us? Grant asked, confused.

Because you live, obviously. The combined might of the entire pantheon was not enough to stop Typhon, do you really think hosts with a fraction of our power could do so?

I guess not. Not sure if that’s exactly comforting though, I mean… what if he has something worse planned?

Grant heard footsteps approaching, and started to rise just as Fyodor turned the corner. “Ah, good, you’re awake,” he said, pleased. “And how are you feeling?”

“Better, actually,” said Grant as he got to his feet. “You were right, those extra few hours helped a lot.”

“Good, good,” Fyodor exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. “That is very pleasing to hear, as I believe I have uncovered our destination, and we are best suited to move at night, while the nippers sleep. Come, let me show you what we have discovered.”