Ivalié stumbled into a sparse sandstone palace with a perplexed curiosity scrawled across his face. He spun back and forth between rows of hundreds, perhaps thousands of seats, all lined up in strict uniformity, all occupied by beings of unimaginable visages; there were a few men, a few oversized owls, a few things that appeared like catlike alisars or tentacles and things from deep dimensions beyond human recollection…

His face was sunburnt so it hurt even to stand beneath the massive gaping skylights overhead through which the desert heat still bared down upon him. He winced and tried to block it with a red hand but had no luck resisting the pain. He hissed out in disdain and his throat burned.

But he stumbled onward through the hurt, toward one of many counters at the end, where a few people stood in some kind of hobbled, misshapen line. He shoved past all of the people, fell forward to collapse breathless toward the desk—

Two halberds crossed his path and his legs suddenly became stiff like planks as he avoided landing his eyes right onto the jagged back ends of those frightening weapons. The guards, non-humanoid things which appeared like perplexing oozes only a foot shorter than him, gave him distinctly harsh glances. One of them said "여기 가실 수 없습니다. 이 문은 닫혀 있습니다.”

Ivalié’s brows scrunched together. He wheezed between his chapped and bloody lips, “Please… Calamon… I need to go to Cala…”

One of them pointed their halberd upward to the signs which hung overhead. He painfully glanced up toward the skylights again, took in the big wooden sign down the counter from them that read KĀLMØN. Beside it was an arrangement of numbers on mechanical spindles, flicking with life between different abstract denominations.

Close enough, he thought—though it was barely cohesive, barely words—and he meandered his way over to that gate instead. It made his dry mouth ache to even think of speaking again.

The line at that gate was non-existent. There was only one… ‘guard’ standing at attention there, a thing seemingly made entirely of shadow, black and dull purple speckles of void floating just before the window, and an iron helm floating just above it.

Ivalié quickly began in a whisper, “Please, I need to go to—”

Gate’s off-limits right now. There's a warp-wave. It was as if it was his own thought.

“...For how long!?” he exclaimed, exacerbated, then grasped his mouth in pain.

Sit down. You'll know as soon as everyone else does.

Ivalié’s bottom lip shriveled up in despair. He turned back to the cramped seats, swallowed his pride with a great, trepidatious sigh… and fell lifelessly into a chair.

While he hugged himself there, dehydrated, exhausted, sunburnt all over… his mind began to drift again, granting him no reprieve from the everflowing, everpresent hallucinations. He mumbled, “Liara… Liara…”

And then he was fast asleep.

“...You got the book?” asked a young Ivalié of the childish Liara, her legs crossed as she sat upon her bed in the small, unembellished bedroom that was her own. In her hand was the tome they'd stolen from the library. The lock was dangling broken.

“I haven't looked at it yet,” said Liara, “I was scared. I wanted to, more than anything, but…”

He shook his head. “I understand. I felt it too—that book has almost an energy to itself.”

Liara nodded. She reached the book toward him, patted the bed beside herself for him to sit.

Ivalié got up and moved close. He felt his hands began to shake as he sat beside her, held the book tight as she breathed down his neck.

“...How did you get it?”

“I went in at night.”

“You broke in!?”

“No! Well, not really; that dumb girl has a habit of leaving the windows open. I've been sneaking in with some of our classmates recently.”

Ivalié felt his face flush at that. Jealousy? Why the hell would I be feeling that? I hold no ownership over—

He locked his eyes onto her face. Her conviction toward the book had once again taken his breath away.

She moved her head in closer, close enough that he could smell the subtle citrusy aroma bubbling from her hair. He could count her freckles at that distance, could follow those speckled stars across each of her perfect cheeks, over her soft lips…

“Open it,” she finally said, removing him immediately from his trance. He turned back to the book with a sudden security, a calmness. His shaking had stopped—his anxiety toward the tome had not yet vanished.

The binding made a loud crack as he just barely opened the front cover. It sounded like it was breaking. The whole room seemed to get darker, like the book was sucking out all the sunlight gleaming through the wood-framed window behind them.

Liara’s breath shuddered. Ivalié swallowed his fear.

And they opened up the first page.

“Gah!” Ivalié exclImed, launching up from his seat as something touched his arm.

“Easy, it's just aloe! I got you some balm, Ivalié.” The man standing over him used one hand to gesture for him to relax, the other hand was still rubbing against his skin. He hadn't even noticed the pain wracking across his body before, but the aloe had certainly showed him the disparity.

“Hssss!” he whined in pain. His eyes shot up to his assailant—and then they lost their harshness. “Am I fucking dreaming…?”

The man smirked confidently. “I almost wish, for both our sakes.”

“You’re that bastard who was with Cedric—Rithi, was it?”

“Bastard is a bit harsh, but otherwise, yes. I am.” Rithi grinned his gentle, caring smile, in stark contrast to the grey cracks all around his mouth and cheeks, his glowing purple eyes.

“What are you doing here? You died—Falskar killed you.”

His smile faded slightly. “...He did. And I was trying to escape the deadworld.”

Ivalié reached to push up his spectacles but forgot their absence. He cleared his dry throat into a fist instead. “How's that going for you?”

Rithi turned back to the counters littered with dissenting customers and frowned. “Not very well. I think I got caught, too.”

“Caught? Who's looking for a dead Calamonian man all the way over here?”

“The Mirror Men…”

Though Ivalié found the name childish, stupid, unintimidating… it still sent a shiver up his spine. “What the hell is a Mirror Man?”

“Chroniclers of our timelines and dimensions. They're the things who prevent paradoxes from happening.”

“Paradoxes such as existing in a universe where your body is already rotting away?”

“...Something like that. If they catch me, they'll destroy my soul too.”

“Is that why the gates are shut down?”

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

Rithi shook his head. “That's because of the Warp. This dimension is failing because of all the traffic it takes on. They're not opening the gates until they're sure there's no other way to save this place than a mass evacuation.”

“...I see. So there's still a chance that we get out of here.”

“Mhm. But… if worse comes to worst…”

“What?”

Rithi didn't answer. He continued to massage the aloe into Ivalié's flesh.

“Is there another way?”

“There is. But let's wait and see first.”

Ivalié slouched deeper into his chair. He let the massage take his mind as the weary dreams came through again…

The boy woke with a stir one dark night. It felt as if something were wrong—deeply wrong. He stood out of his bed in his hollow-tree home, quickly pulled layers of soft fall clothes over his pajamas—a sweater, a scarf, some woolen gloves—and left his home. His parents were too deeply entrenched within their sleep to be roused by his sounds—he made sure of that with a simple flick of his fingers toward their bedroom door.

Then he was out into the night.

The grass beyond his home was tall and full of big bugs, some of which would take a great liking to his flesh and blood if he should pass too close. He lifted up from the ground onto a sudden breeze summoned by his extended hands, hovered himself over the blackened foliage in a rush. That swelling of anxiety only rose as he approached.

And then he was there, outside of Liara's home. His hover ended and his feet dropped down with a soft click onto the stone before her front door. Liara lived alone, and she always had as far as he could remember. Her parents had been summoned to Calamon on business some millennia ago. He always wished he'd been so lucky.

The things I'd be capable of if only I could be rid of their ceaseless babbling and annoyances for good. Complete silence—were I granted that, a spectacle of magic I'd unleash. I'd be double the man I am today, and no victim of the relentless bullying, the chiding I face instead.

His knuckles cracked twice against the door.

If only I had her luck.

“Liara? Are you well?” he asked. There was no reply for a long time, only the scratching of cicadas and crickets, lottins and bilms, the occasional soft pop of a chirub.

“Liara? What's…” He pressed his hand into the doorknob and the whole door creaked open slightly. Ivalié stood in tumultuous consideration before eventually taking his first cautious step into the house. He clicked his fingers and a bulb of glowing light appeared over his head, delicately illuminating the narrow hallway.

“...Liara?”

He began into the home. Her bedroom was at the very end of the small shack. There were two doors on the right, just one on the left.

He passed the first one the right, Liara's own bathroom, and—

Under the bed.

“Wh…what?”

The bed. Under the bed.

He crept forward slowly. His shaking voice asked, “What about the bed?”

He began past the door on the left. It was shut tight. Her parents' room. Forever sealed until their eventual return—if ever they would.

Don't look under the bed.

He heard something shuffle and fall at the end of the hall, like a stack of books.

“The bed… Liara, don't… Don't look under…”

A few more steps and he was passing the third door, the last one before the shut one at the end of the hallway. He peered inside—was it a toddler’s room? He thought he saw a crib in the shadow, a black and white mobile above it, a few toys scattered along the floor…

Two red bulbs of light—something watching from the shadow—

Liara's blood-curdling scream cut the suspense like a guillotine. Ivalié let out a gasp like he'd forgotten how to breathe, turned and slammed his shoulder through her bedroom door, flung it open with all of his might.

Liara was on the floor beside her bed. She was clutching her cheeks, staring up at the back wall with dread ingrained in her features.

Ivalié looked—”No…”

It was giant. Like a demon from a nightmare, with a torso like a long, snaking spine, thousands of human ribs for legs like a centipede from hell. Where it's antennae poked out from wasn't the standard head of a centipede, but a massive human skull, as if stolen from a giant. It was locked in perpetual scream, its eyes and mouth both entirely pitch black.

He couldn't even manage a scream at the thing. He thought he might faint. He could barely manage to even grab at the ley in the face of this… thing.

Seven feathers. A giant, spindly, bone-forged centipede with seven feathers, each protruding out from seemingly random places, like the long, twitching wings of dragonflies…

…and were those eyes bulging out all over its body?

“Liara…” said the wall-bound demon as its legs began to click rhythmically, lowering itself onto the bed nearby her. It looked like something black was drawn upon the wall, some giant ring, symbols strewn randomly about its circumference. A pot of ink, no, a dozen were beside the bed in disarray. “I've come for you at last, my siren.”

“NO!!” Ivalié ripped his staff out of thin air, shattering reality like glass. He spun it wildly and slammed the base to the floor with a burst of raw ley which illuminated the whole room, made his clothes hover theatrically. It took all of his courage just to shout, “You'll begone, demon!”

The head turned to him. It spoke with a dozen strained voices. “Such courage for a mortal man. But you are not yet my quarry, young Ivalié. Not yet.”

And then it lunged—

“GAHH!” Ivalié gasped awake.

“Shhh…” Rithi held his shoulder, offered a mug of water.

He quickly snatched the mug away and quaffed it.

“Nightmare?”

“Why's that suddenly your business?” His mouth hurt much less then, and he almost felt like exercising it at Rithi in a show of his pent-up frustration.

Rithi shrugged. “It's not. I was just curious.”

Ivalié wiped the drooled water away from his lower lip with his forearm. He clicked his tongue in frustration. “You should have brought a bucket.”

“I think we'll be okay, actually.” He nodded ahead to the counters again. The otherworldly guards were conferring. A couple of seemingly human men in lavish golden robes overlooked the station through expressionless masks of steel, exchanged words again, then departed through his quarried passenger curtains which likely led to the gates beyond—Ivalié felt strangely paranoid at that, almost as though their hollow eyes had looked right through him.

Then voices boomed overhead through magical bugles every hundred feet, all speaking simultaneously in hundreds of different languages.

“How can anybody have a clue what's happening here with all the damn noise?”

“Our gate is open. Calamon awaits.”

Ivalié's frustration faded. Finally. A way back. And we can leave this whole damn happening behind us.

He let Rithi assist him in standing up, accepted his help in shuffling over to the counter as well. No guards blocked him this time. The owl at the counter said, “Kalmon?”

Rithi nodded with only a smidge of reluctance. “Yes. For two, please.”

And the bird splayed his big wing toward the curtain beside the desk.

“Thank you.”

They both shuffled through into the dark corridor beyond.

"I've never traveled interdimensionally before. At least, not intentionally." Ivalié admitted.

"I've only done it once, half-accidentally."

"Better than doing it without any knowledge at all. Do you know how harrowing it is to wake up in another world?"

It was pitch black beyond the curtain, but there was a faint glimmer of light at the very end where another curtain blocked their path onward.

"It's a lot like waking up dead," said Rithi.

"What should I expect?"

"A little bit of nausea. A lot of—urkh!"

“Hey!” Ivalié struggled against a sudden grapple of his arms. There was a harsh pop of flesh against flesh over his shoulder and Rithi fell away. He felt something warm drip onto his shoulder. “What the fuck are you doing!? We’re heading to Calamon, we’re natives!”

There was a glint as the last scraps of light from the curtains illuminated the blade of a dagger ahead. Ivalié reared his hands up to protect himself…

But it was Rithi who gasped and gagged as the knife penetrated his lower gut, as he threw himself forward, before Ivalié.

“Rithi!” Ivalié swung his hand over the boy’s face, incidentally pulled on the ley in a frenzied effort to protect them both. Rithi’s purple eyes suddenly flared green, the whole tunnel fell into the eerie light of a spirit passage.

Ivalié turned forward and back to his assailants just once; none of them were recognizable. He’d expected it to be Kogar’s lackeys, Algirak’s lackeys… somebody’s lackeys… But who had it out for him? Who was trying to send him, now, to an early grave? Two men with steel-plated masks, green-hued armors like glass... who were these people?

Perhaps they only intend to kill me because of my nativity to Calamon. Then good riddance. I haven't the time to discover your motivations...

And he flung himself into Rithi’s opening gateway, fell away into the bright glowing swirl that was the great beyond…