Jirtu lifted his head, gasped up at the breathtaking sun. His body was thin, starved, slick with sweat. His bulbous black eyes swelled under his contorted eyebrows, those eyebrows that spelled out desperation. He lifted a hand up through the thick of tall, overbearing trees. Jungle trees.

“In some universes,” he spoke aloud to himself… “these are called… Kapok Trees…”

He was bare, his torso was free from the black robe which he'd now tied around his head like a bandana. He still had his damp undershorts on, constantly falling and requiring his attention. Damn things…

“Cassius… Did I ask too much of you?”

…A young Cassius Clearheart held his golden goblet high, put his shimmering silver boot onto the wooden table between them in the dingy tavern. “To high hopes and valor! We've felled the warlord Charon, we've brought evil to its knees!”

“Huzzah!” cheered his troupe of adventurers. They knocked their tankards against his, splattered sticky ale and warm beer all over themselves.

There was the short blonde one, Cosmo, and the short shrub of green leaves named Fig. Then there was the tall green oaf Clarook, an orc they were called. Then the elder mage Neferito, with his bald head and sharp gray beard.

And Jarus himself — a mage in black robes, a soft pale face with kind features, a delicate smile like a flower. His eyes, a brilliant blue.

They took their seats, though the stupored Jarus lingered on his feet the longest.

“Huzzah,” he muttered then grew more sprightly, “Charon is defeated! Dead. In a grave below us. What, then, are we to pursue next?”

They all looked to him blankly. Some mouths moved in slowly stuttered speech.

“Well? We've many more adventures to pursue, haven't we? Where are we headed on our next adventure?”

Blonde Cassius began, “...I must still make an excursion to the jungled Expanse. My deities demand tribute for what happened in the rift.”

“Your pact with a daemon? Well… I wish you luck—”

“Still haven't found me horse,” said Clarook, “I'll be off to Sudor. I'll find ‘er there.”

“Rightly so, and that leaves…”

Cosmo said, “Fig and myself are plotting to take Ciessa by storm with our musical bravado. Our hands will be plenty full with that.”

“Then that leaves…”

…Just me.

Cassius stood around the table, threw his arm over Jarus’ shoulders. “We'll be back in due time. Consider it a break — we've certainly earned it after such a harrowing accomplishment. Gives us some time to each pursue our own goals.”

“...Right. Yes, I understand.” He feigned a smile. “It's not like we won't be friends for the duration. And then we'll come back together.”

“Yeah. We'll come back together.” Cassius held out his tankard.

And Jarus clicked his goblet against it.

He laughed at the memory, almost maniacally. “You blame me. You blame me for the frostwarp!”

I should note at this point, despite my ravings, you who may discover this desperate journal, that there are numerous types of warp: frostwarp is when the rending of a universe causes a sickly frost to coat everything until that universe is frozen out of existence. The opposite of a heat death, I suppose. The frost takes with it the magic, the sanity, and the lives of all within… and then that universe sublimates into all the adjacent ones.

“I didn't cause that…”

Cassius’ words echoed through the trees: “We all left for our own goals… It was your own goals which were dark, twisted. That line of magic which you hunted was unruly. It never should have been permitted.”

“I founded the library of Shogal-Bäz, Cassius! I've seen countless universes! You should see where I have been! I am a voyager of worlds unending, worlds undying!”

“...And yet you killed our own.”

Jirtu stopped walking. His mouth fell open, limp.

“There's no way back from here. The libraries are…”

“Where there is a plane, there is a door.” Jirtu clamped his fist shut tight. He looked down at it. “The cost this time,” he said to himself, “will be your life.”

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And the voices stopped. Then there was only the chattering of birds, the sound of distant waterfall some hundred paces back. Peace. Serenity. Something he hadn't witnessed since before Rykaedi.

Some dark shadow landed before him, obscured the view of the sprawling nature. He looked up, and there towered an owl at over at double his height. A brown-feathered barn owl, standing just within reach.

“I think I'm going to faint…” he whispered.

The owl cocked his head. “Not yet, Jirtu. Do not yet surrender to this challenge.”

“Ah,” he pointed, waved his hands dismissively. “You must be working for the fucking Mirror bastard. Go on, get out of here. Leave me alone.”

“Jirtu, you do not remember me?”

He paused midway through his turn. Then he rotated back to face the creature again. “Theotodus?”

The owl’s face made some mockery of a smile. “That's right. It was I who showed you the planes. You've forgotten me so soon?”

“Well, I… How long has it been?”

“For me? A month.”

It's been decades in my timeline… I hope, then, that my time here does not accelerate time in the Etherian world too hastily… I've still got revenge to exact.

Jirtu said, “Theo, you've got to send me home, and fast. I must go to Caloria.”

“Caloria?” He trilled. “Someone's shut all access to that realm. I'm afraid you'll have to find another way.”

It'll be that fucking Mirror Magus… “Right, then. What about Shogal-Bäz? That can't be cut off, can it?”

The owl cooed again dejectedly. “Silenced by our senate. There is no way to Caloria from here.”

Jirtu pointed up at the bird with ferocity. “You'll take me to your damn senate, then, or gods help me, I'll…!”

The bird cocked his head.

Jirtu pulled at the ley… It did not respond. And he lowered his hands in surprise. “...The warp… There's warp here, too?”

“Our universe has been heating up for centuries. We warned you when you arrived.”

“I don't remember…”

“Jirtu, we told you. Our expansion into the multiverse cost us everything. It was more a matter of how soon we would lose it all.”

“Then, the library…”

“...Closed in an attempt to cut ourselves off and save what we can. There is no way back. There is no…”

Theo’s eyes widened. Jirtu held in his hand a glistening, sharp shard of ceramic plate. It was still slick with Cassius’ blood.

“There is… There is a way. There's always a way.”

Theo flapped his wings, lifted up from the ground.

But Jirtu easy resisted the gnashing wind, grabbed Theo’s foot and dragged him back down in a sudden burst of strength. Up went the blade…

…And Theotodus’ fur became painted red.

There is a deadworld beyond all of them. It's a chance, it's a gamble… But you can ride a soul. You can ride a soul on its way to the deadworld to an adjacent universe, and it may end you. But it may just work!

The world twisted. Jirtu grasped the soul's energy as he would have grasped the ley. He almost lost it in the flood of nausea which overtook him, but he held on more tightly than he'd ever held anything in his life.

And reality slipped. Things became a blur until a verdant green, bright and full of vigor, coated everything. A swirling chasm, a vortex, a black hole into the deadworld.

And he cackled madly as he leapt from the owl-shaped spirit, fell sidelong and slipped from the vortex’s grasp...

X

The door to the tavern cracked open with a pop, creaked as it swung in.

Pek stepped in first, the big-headed brute. Okella stirred on his shoulder. He began down the tall steps.

Then came Elos, letting his cape wave in the draft behind him.

“Now this is a cozy place. Nice and warm, probably the warmest place in the realm. Barkeep—would you get an ale started for me? No—I'd prefer a wine, actually.”

“Uh, Elos—” called Pek from below, “—think you'll have to fetch it yourself.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows raised, and down the steps he came.

The barkeep was slouched atop the counter in a pool of dark blood. An old man was dead in the middle of the floor, his long hair slick red. The hearth had begun to leak flames out onto the nearby counters, the embers quickly growing out of control.

Elos winced, stuck out his tongue. “Yeesh.”

Pek lifted the barkeep’s head by his hair. His face was incinerated, evidently destroyed by a blast of raw magic.

“And I thought there to be no lines. It's a linear plane after all.”

“Are there other types of planes?”

“Yes. But let's not get into that here.” He stepped aside, crouched down to inspect the old man’s body. “Ah, I see the secret.” he said, and he fingered the jagged cut in the man's back.

Pek walked around the counter to the two of them. Then he saw what Elos meant: there was some sort of green ectoplasm in the wound, still glowing with some kind of foreign magic.

And Elos grinned. With no time to waste, his fingers pulsed a spark into the slime — a wind rose up from it like a vent, blew their hair back. “Looks like the door is still open.”

“We're close.”

“Close indeed. And our prize… I imagine it'll be insurmountable.”

Elos was sucked through the rift and gone in an instant.

Pek did not hesitate to follow, to dip his hands into the windy slime… and he, too, was gone in a flash.