Groaning, Topher awoke.

His body felt like a sack full of hammers which had been heated in a forge; dull, bleak pounding reverberated through his skull and his spirit. Like a man probing the socket of a missing tooth with his tongue, he groped at the jagged, torn edge of his soul where the Wyrd had been; the emptiness he felt, exactly like the time before, told him without a doubt that it had already been destroyed. He went limp with relief as another anxiety he hadn't known he'd been shouldering eased out of him; at least I won't have to hunt down and smother that one too. His mind empty with grief, he lay there a while, staring at the insides of his eyelids and knowing that whatever he saw when he opened them would just hurt him more. I'm so tired.

Then, unexpectedly, a soft hand slid across his face, startling him; with a gentle, loving touch, it caressed his brow and lips. But he could still feel the viscid, throbbing echo of Sahlerra's soul against his, and recognized her too well now to be fooled. "Haven't you had enough of touching me by now?" he growled, forcing her hand away and sitting up; scowling against the pulse of pain this produced, he forced his eyes open and regarded her grimly. "This is getting old."

She pouted, affecting wounded innocence; "I was only trying to help you. All that must have been rough on you -- you certainly bruised me, after all." She rubbed her backside, and Topher flushed, realizing her meaning.

"Yeah, well, don't mistake friction for interest. I would have thrown you off me right away if I could've." Clambering to his feet, he glared around; they seemed to be in a long, low cavern, lit by a low glittering luminescence which shifted and flowed with time. "Where are we?"

"We'd have all died if you had broken the connection," the Archmage pointed out, ignoring his question. "We very nearly did anyway, after whatever you did with that red thing; but I don't know if you saved us or nearly got us all killed, so I'll be charitable and assume the former." Mockingly, she bowed very deeply, giving him an eyeful of her cleavage as he did so; she smirked with a slight blush as she caught him looking, then they both looked away. "But somebody rescued us, or so I've been led to believe. I woke up here, just like you."

"Just us, all alone?" He crossed his arms, glaring. "Sounds a little suspicious."

She shrugged, the picture of blamelessness; the results of this motion upon her anatomy made him break out in a sweat all over again. "I can't help it if the situation tends to work out to my advantage. So, are you going to give in to the inevitable yet?"

Topher stood there, gritting his teeth, while various responses surged and crashed against the inside of his teeth; finally, he swallowed his protests and closed his eyes. "You know what? Fine, but let's make it quick. Take off your pants."

"Really?!" she beamed, hands flying up under her skirt to take hold of her undergarments as she began to wiggle them down over her thighs. "You're serious?"

"No," responded Topher curtly, and he turned and ran. Her mocking laughter chased after him as he fled into the darkness, but no shadows followed him; as he sprinted away from the light, he almost crashed into a stone wall, then ducked behind it to break line-of-sight. Murmuring the runes for a Mage Light, he hurried onward, trying to get as much distance as possible; at first, he merely rushed forward into the gloom, but after a minute or so, he slowed down and began to listen very intently. Murmurs of conversation were coming from up ahead, and he quieted his motions and began to seek them out, stepping softly so as to avoid giving Sahlerra a clue to his location as well as fouling his own hearing of his quarry. After a few twists and turns of what seemed to be a tight stone tunnel, he emerged into a circle of firelight.

Some of the people there he recognized -- Hana, Zanasha, and Rudo, who were seated around a small campfire -- along with a blonde boy whom he recognized as Tetsuo Okano, the Sun Prophet from the Strathmore castle dungeon (though the bionic arm was new). On his other arm was a girl about his age, with glasses and a long black braid that reached nearly to her waist; she was covered with jewelry and accessories, all of which seemed to incorporate shimmering gems and very tiny gears as a motif, and she clutched Okano's bicep possessively as she chatted amiably with some of the other six people that Topher didn't know. They all seemed to be Otherworlders, all of them girls; he recognized one from Haruko's class as the girl who had very gently corrected her runes, and felt a surge of delayed discomfort at the memory. Well, doesn't matter now.

"Ah, Mister Bailey," said Rudo lackadaisically as Topher emerged from the darkness. "We were worried when you did not awaken. The Archmage prevailed upon us to give you space and quiet for rest; I trust her ministrations were effective?"

"She wishes," Topher snorted, moving to sit down between Hana and Zanasha; gotta keep my cover. "She keeps trying to get into my pants. It's super gross."

"Uncomfortable, isn't it," Hana murmured, to which Topher could only nod. Zanasha's brow creased lightly with a tiny frown, but it disappeared almost so suddenly Topher wasn't sure if he had really seen it. The young Japanese woman sighed and leaned forward to poke at the embers of the fire with her Flux Blade (currently in the shape of a stick). "We've been here about two hours, I think. My underclassmen seem to be content to talk amongst themselves of school days past; I still don't know how we got here."

"Me either," grunted Topher, warming his hands at the fire; they seemed cold, even though the rest of him was sweating. "Last thing I remember was trying to steer a big shadow dragon around while Slut-Pants the Archmage was trying to grab half my brain and you guys were fighting off demons all around us."

"Hardly all she was grabbing," muttered Hana blackly. "But that's all we remember too. You and the Archmage collapsed after that red light went everywhere; we were trying to keep the demons from getting to you when the darkness covered everything. And then the next thing we all knew, we were here."

"Well, if we don't know anything, I know a pretty easy way to get an answer." Topher stood up, his beard fluttering a little in the air from the campfire, and gestured at Okano. "Hey, future kid! Did you bring us here?"

Okano, who had been dreamily gazing at the woman holding his arm, turned languidly to look at Topher and nodded. "Indeed, Bailey-san. A mobile portal, constructed by my brilliant wife..." -- here he nodded his head at the bespectacled girl, who blushed -- "...gathered up all we could from the battlefield before the explosion."

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"Explosion?" Topher's jaw dropped open. "What explosion? Did I somehow...?"

"Not your fault," the young man assured him, patting the air calmingly with his metallic hand. "Archmage Aumraham's gambit, I believe. But you may rest easy; the war is over, at least for now. Everyone is out of immediate danger."

"You've got to be joking." All eyes turned to behold the figure of Sahlerra Siukh, hopping slightly as she wrested her panties back up over her hips, entered the cavern and emerged into the light. "How could the war be over? I would have known..." Frowning, she swirled shadows around herself, grimly examining tiny points of flashing multicolored lights in their depths as her dewy lips parted in shock. "Gods above. This is...!"

"Devastation," Okano agreed, squeezing the girl's (his wife, I guess, Topher corrected himself) hand. "Quint's plan worked too well for his execution. But, every cloud has its silver lining; all three of the armies have been destroyed, and we shall have a brief détente while things shake out. Until, of course, the next horror." His eyes swiveled back to Topher. "You, in particular, are doubtless confused, for you have none of the additional information possessed by your companion; furthermore, certain actions that we..." -- he paused, grimacing, and soldiered on -- "...that I have taken have upset the balance of power in the realm somewhat. As a result, there will be.... unpleasantness."

Topher's heart skipped a beat. "What do you mean, unpleasantness?!" He turned, in exasperated confusion, to the Archmage. "We won! We defeated their army! Wasn't that what all this bullshit was about?!"

"It was never about their army," she murmured sadly, still fixated on the flickering lights within her cloak of shadows. "The demons could have destroyed us anytime they chose. They still can, so long as even a handful of them remain; and I can assure you that they do. The few sources of intelligence I have within their camp are telling me a great deal even as we speak; in particular, that the Demon Lord is still alive." She jerked backwards, narrowly avoiding an arrow of flame which shot out of a tiny mote and missed her left eye by an inch. "And wroth with me for my betrayal."

"Your what, now?" Topher narrowed his eyes. "Are you telling me that you were in league with the Demon Lord?"

"With full knowledge of the other Archmages, yes," she agreed, banishing her shadows and coming to sit beside Okano and his spouse. "I was a triple agent for some weeks during the most crucial moves of the campaign." A slow, lascivious smile split her lips. "Many challenging tasks were required of me to prove my loyalty."

"God, you're disgusting," sighed Topher. "So, if I'm getting this straight, almost everybody but us is dead, the Demon Lord can still win the whole war by himself, and now he's gonna do what, take the kid gloves off?" He flopped back against the stone he'd been sitting on, throwing up his hands in frustration. "This is fucking ridiculous. None of this makes any sense anymore."

"None of this made sense from the beginning," agreed Okano's wife. "Saiki-sama was frustrated with everything almost from the minute we were summoned. She kept saying none of this was logical, that the demons were playing a game no one could understand."

Topher raised an eyebrow. "Did she know the demons were really humans?"

At this, there was a rustle of murmured confusion; but the bespectacled girl shook her head. "I do not know, Bailey-san. Saiki-sama did not share many of her thoughts with me; only her perplexities and requirements. I myself do not know of what you speak."

"We saw it," Hana interjected, "in the Lava Mountains. The demons are just ordinary humans, who grow shells of living flesh to look monstrous. We didn't really understand it, but..." she shrugged.

"From what I can gather," Topher elaborated, "they do it to evade detection magic. If they take off their disguises, or grow a little false flesh to adjust their appearances, they won't trigger any spells to detect disguises or shapeshifting. At least, that's our theory."

"It is likely correct," mused Sahlerra, hugging herself; Topher looked away to avoid watching the motion of her décolletage. "But now that we know of their methods, it is probable that the Demon Lord also knows that we know. Thus, he plans to take further action; but how? And why now?" She frowned, then climbed to her feet, patting her pert bottom primly to brush off the dust. "I need to be going; Kelfir and Quint have to be warned. Okano, I'll be in touch." Shadows swirled around her, and in an instant, she was gone.

"Thought she'd never leave," muttered Hana, poking at the fire again. Zanasha turned to face her, an eyebrow raised.

"Hana-chan," she began, uncertainly, "why do you dislike the Archmage? She has saved our lives on more than one occasion."

"She's shameless", Hana complained, bitterly shoving her Flux Blade into its scabbard. "She dresses like a... a... loose woman, she acts with impropriety, she...!" With a deep sigh, Hana buried her face in her knees, drawing her arms around her legs. "She's everything I hate about what people expected of me," she mumbled. "When I got my C-Rank Charisma..."

There was a brief silence; eventually, she got up and walked away from the firelight into the darkness. After a moment, Zanasha nudged Topher. "Friend Topher. She waits for you to comfort her."

Topher's broken, scarred heart quivered; but he sighed and nodded. "All I can be to her is a friend," he protested, heaping another half-truth on the pyre beneath himself, "but I'll try." He stood, aching; but as he began to turn and follow, a clear thought flickered through his mind, and he paused. "But first, come with me." He held out his hand to the half-orc.

Eyes glimmering with confusion, she stood, reaching out to take his fingertips; he exulted silently in his heart of hearts. Pulling her to her feet, he led her into the darkness a way, away from the others, then turned to face her. "Zanasha," he said, trying his best to keep his voice level, "I need to tell you something."

Her eyes, her beautiful golden eyes that always made Topher's knees weak, held his gaze with confident strength. "I am here, Friend Topher. What is it?"

It took him a long time to gather his will; but she waited, patiently, throughout. Finally, he raised his hands to her shoulders and took them; it felt like they would burn his hands, but her skin was cool and smooth. "I'm not in love with Hana."

She returned his stare, confused; her hands clutched at each other like a drowning woman's. "I do not understand. Master Muchenje said --"

"That I 'pursue the affections of the woman I love'. That's right." Topher's grip tightened on her shoulders; he longed to pull her into his embrace, but he resisted. "But that person is somebody else, Zanasha. It's somebody that I can't tell about my feelings, because I've been too much of a coward for too long, and because neither of us can afford distractions right now. It's somebody that..." -- Topher choked -- "...probably won't ever love me back, because I'm not good enough for her. But I see you trying to push me and Hana together, and..." he shook his head. "It's not like that between us. In addition to being old enough to be her father, I'm in love with someone else, and always will be."

"Always?" she whispered, her voice tight. He could see tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, resolutely suppressed and blinked away; her chest heaved with rapid breaths. "Always?"

"Always," Topher agreed, and as he said it, it felt incredibly right; that sense of things clicking into place, of a deep vibration like a struck bell ringing throughout his body, flooded through him again. "But I owe it to you, and to Hana, to clear this up. Before I can be a good friend to her." He turned to go, but the half-orc's hand flashed up and caught his own; he turned back, surprised, to see her trembling with emotion.

She started to speak; stopped, swallowed, and shook her head. Finally, she mastered herself enough for words. "Then we have a problem, Friend Topher." She raised her golden gaze to his again, eyes full of pain. "Because I believe she is in love with you."