I stood on the edge of the pier. I’d gotten a haircut from Guinevere using one of my spearheads I’d created. I wanted to have a proper haircut this time I entered Talba. The wind rustled my hair and over my clean shaven face and skin. I’d put my armor and cloak back on, the heavy fur only bending slightly in the wind. I could see dark clouds on the horizon spread out as my pupils telescoped and looked at the flashes of lightning.

Guinevere walked down the pier slipping her cellphone into a pocket.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with this in a few hours,” she said. “I checked the weather, three storms just converged together, some scientists are calling to make a new category of storm to classify it as. Now everyone’s going crazy, I even heard a Walmart got looted.”

“It's Florida,” I scoffed. “A Walmart is always getting looted; it's like their thing.”

“Not very sensitive to the plight of the masses,” Guinevere said, taking my arm.

“A billion dollar corporation doesn’t really qualify as ‘the masses,’” I objected, pulling her against me. “Besides, they are the reason I’m leaving. I can either do some property damage with a storm or start killing millions of people to generate enough mana to make this world survivable.”

“What?” Guinevere asked in shock.

“Something the Shadow suggested,” I said. “It’s why I don’t listen to him.”

“You're forgetting the third option,” Guinevere said.

“I’m not,” I said, my voice as hard and unmoving as a mountain. “Self-sacrifice has never been my thing, and it wouldn’t be just me, it would be our daughter. How many people would you kill to keep her alive?”

“All of them,” Guinevere whispered, she pulled against me tighter. “Your wrong about one thing.”

“Just one?” I asked.

Guinevere laughed. “Maybe more, you are very self-sacrificing. You just have to know them first to care enough to sacrifice for them, but you always put yourself between them and whatever comes their way.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you know the man you married,” I said, shaking my head.

“Someday I hope to introduce the two of you,” she said, looking up at me with a big grin on her face.

The wind picked up and I turned, walking down the pier with her hand in mine.

“Hey don’t you people know there’s a storm coming in!” a police officer shouted as the last of the beach goers fled to their cars.

“Trust me, I’m well aware,” I said. “Go home officer.”

“You need to get out of…” he yelled, I could understand his frustration but I also didn’t have time for this.”

“Go home officer,” I said, activating Voice of the Chasm.

He stumbled back his face paling.

“I’m not in any danger here officer,” I said, my voice going back to normal. “Me and the storm are well acquainted.”

“The Storm-man,” he said, running for his vehicle.

“I hate that name,” I said with a sigh.

My cloak went wild in the wind and the land was cast into pure darkness. A brilliant flash of light broke the sky, striking me. I shivered as the jolt went down my spine and I felt the power grow within me, my internal mana jumping up. Guinevere stepped away, giving me space but staying within a dozen yards; we had no idea how long I would be able to hold the portal open for.

Another bolt of lightning struck me, then another. Again and again the sky hammered down, most storms I’d absorbed lasted for at most ten minutes, this one kept going.

“Everything good to go?” I asked.

Mana is nearing capacity, but of course your capacity is also rising, Voidra said.

Start the spell now, Karnen said. You still don’t have near the mana capacity to do it all in one go. Pace yourself and hope this storm lasts long enough to cast this. Once you’re halfway through…

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“There’s no going back,” I said, finishing the statement. “The spell will continue to take mana until it’s completed or it has to use my lifeforce to complete itself.”

You still don’t think it was a good idea to not tell Guinevere about that? Ares said.

“No point worrying her, and she might have tried to make me do something else,” I said. “This is about my daughter. Even if I die… she needs to go to a world where she’ll fit in, and that rules out this one.”

I began the chanting. It was a painful use of mana but I compressed a circle of sand and carved the runes for the portal on it. I smiled, imagining what the government would make of the alien artifact I was about to leave behind. More and more lightning hit me, my mana not recharging at the rate it was being expended but it was slowly going down.

It kept going and going, the mana flowing in with every strike of lightning only to be spent just as soon as I got it. I did my best not to keep track of time and just focus on the spell, but when your brain is the equivalent of a supercomputer, you forget how to block stuff out.

Spell at twenty-five precent complete, Voidra said.

Mana is at sixty-eight percent, Karnen added. At the rate its getting replenished, there isn’t going to be enough to complete the spell.

“Push ethereal into it,” I said.

You know that risks altering the final result, Ares cautioned me.

If he doesn’t, he’s dead, Voidra said.

I winced as my flayed soul burned, the ethereal mixed with the mana flowing through my veins. Soul damage was a real son of a bitch, but the pain helped me focus.

I kept pushing mana and ethereal out. The winds picked up even faster as the storm reached its extinction event, its violence precipitating its final moments. I had maybe a minute or two left.

“Current status?” I asked.

Spell is at ninety-percent complete, Karnen said. Provided that the ethereal energy didn’t significantly alter its effect, it should complete just before the storm ends.

I nodded and continued. The air began to shimmer and twist above the compressed circle of stone. It stabilized and compressed into a black shimmering circle of energy. It twisted the mind to look upon, somehow being both two-dimensional and three-dimensional. A touch on my arm signaled Guinevere’s presence.

“Are we ready to go home?” she asked.

I breathed out a heavy breath. “Yes.”

I swept her into my arms. Guinevere kissed me and I stepped through the portal into a vortex of black with swirling lines of silver and white.

We spun about in the vortex going around and around, end over end. I was glad my first teleportation Kalesa had sent me through had been instantaneous, or at least that’s how I’d experienced it. She’d probably just wiped my memory of it so I wouldn’t go insane or knocked me out for the entire process. Now, at least, my Endurance kept me from hurling the contents of my stomach out, but I was worried about the baby. I held Guinevere closer while I tried activating Storm Fall to fly but I couldn’t activate it. It wasn’t that I didn’t have mana, it just didn’t work; none of my abilities did.

A white light appeared before us, the end of the portal.

---

Kalesa’s eyes snapped open atop her ziggurat. Something was trying to enter Talba and pierce the wall.

“System, what is that?” Kalesa asked.

Subjects Mordred (former champion, humanoid/human, Rank: Hero) and Guinevere (humanoid/human, Rank: Hero), Unknown (humanoid, Rank: Mortal) are making their way through a portal

“He’s still alive?!” Kalesa snapped.

A subject must be alive to pass through a portal

Kalesa sighed, the System had not been made to deal with jokes, sarcasm or really any emotion.

“How did he open a portal?” she asked.

Subject outside of System zones, speculation… Subject Mordred used ability Storm Soul to turn lightning to mana.

“It’s been months,” Kalesa said. “How would he have survived without mana for that long to even get to a storm?”

Subject Mordred had cymanthia berries in his inventory. Taking them would have enabled him to suspend mana needs indefinitely as long he had a supply of them.

Kalesa grit her teeth. The System had granted him a title called Ghost Path that made him immune to scrying by divine entities, even her. Only her connection as his patron had let her get immediate updates to any changes to his Status sheet, but now, it was irrelevant.

“He is a champion no longer. You know the protocol: no outside entities can enter Talba, put up the Wall.”

---

The light approached faster and faster. I closed my eyes as it grew too bright to bear and then, the light went out. I opened my eyes to see a semi-translucent wall of prismatic energy. It was still bright but nowhere near as bright as the other light had been. We were still headed straight towards it and I knew instantly we wouldn’t be getting through it. I curled around Guinevere and rolled, turning my shoulder to impact first.

Wham!

Bones which were stronger than any substance on earth cracked and broke, but I cushioned Guinevere from the worst of it. When I touched the wall, it was like an electrical jolt to the brain

Entrance to the world of Talba has been denied by its local gods, any attempts to enter will result in immediate annihilation…

The message cut off as I rebounded off the barrier, we were still spinning but we weren’t moving forwards now. We fell out of the vortex, my bones beginning to knit back together, but the state of my body wasn’t my biggest concern right now. The lights disappeared, everything going dark. Going dark didn’t do it justice, there was nothing; we continued to fall into a black abyss.

I activated Storm Fall and this time my abilities did work, whatever had blocked them was now gone now that we were out of the portal.

. . . We were out of the portal now. My mana was regenerating, not like in a storm, but my normal rate, I could feel it.

“Where are we?” Guinevere asked, her voice seeming so small as it just went on and on not bouncing off anything.

Home, Voidra said.

We were lost in the Void.