Welcome To Nix

The world spins as if trapped in a murderous whirlpool, slamming discordant scenes of fallen cities, of dark forests, of silent lakes, and of blossoming stars together in a repeating sequence, shuttering rapidly from one to the next — cities forest lakes stars cities forest lakes stars. A ring of these images is projected around him spinning at impossible speed. But no, that is not right. What is actually spinning is Renard. He is like a cotton seed caught and whirling madly on even a mild breeze, the weightless stellar water ghosting its touch over his skin but lacking substance enough to slow or catch him.

It is different from air, in that there is viscosity to it, in which many gleaming lights hold stable, but just as permeable. There is a very strange familiarity in this sensation of being immersed in it. Before Renard can grasp what this could be, what this means, or where he is, his back impacts hard against a level surface. He tumbles, spinning rear over crown, for some meters before the momentum wanes and he rolls to a stop.

Renard spits out a mouthful of mud and grass, the stains of which have now caked his clothes, and meekly raises his head.

He is in a grassy meadow aside a gentle lake. On the far side of this meadow are the distant peaks of tents, quite many of them, which must be the remains of Orpheus’ war camp. Though the Queen mentioned the camp had been vacated, Renard sights with alarm moving silhouettes, hard to make out at this distance, but certainly seeming like people. Perhaps there is a group that stayed behind, or rushed back to collect some lost items, who should be advised to Renard’s imminent monkeying with the rift.

Renard, getting to his feet, first inspects the rest of the scene. Behind him is a ledge that reaches just over his head, the bottom of which is stone and the top of which is sod. The stones are cut as if worked by masons, but make no distinguishable structure, and are stricken through with a gash that must be the spacial rift.

From this side, the rift is not an oily inset tendril but a protruding scar of phosphorescent blue light, haloed by sharp splinters of glass. The air itself screams against the sharp points of the rift and its splinters – exactly as Pleione had envisioned — like a tortured animal ripping open its own flank as the currents of air slide over the rift. Like blood spilling into water, trails of plasma burn into the surroundings following the motion of the air, then these trails smear, fluoresce, and dissolve not into nothing but into a dilute, murky mass that proceeds upwards along the air current.

As Renard cranes his head back to observe the full breadth of this plasmic ‘blood cloud’, dread sinks in his stomach. The cloudy clots of plasma spread so tall and so vast that it is as though he is looking up at a dam, but the space outlined by the presence of this ‘blood cloud’ is not simply a straight vertical wall. It curves, and bends, and spirals, like a massive ribbon, which spreads over a ravine that Renard simultaneously feels he is staring down into, as if from atop a valley, and looking up at, as if from the base of a mountain. As it had been when encountering the pre-rift in Ashurst, his mind shakes off the dissonance of this sensation by simply dismissing it as ‘a little weird’.

No, the more horrifying thing is the way the current of the ‘blood cloud’ moves. Though adhering to its current, it is like it is shifting within its own skin, constrained as if stuck in a tight bedroll. Every time it shifts, the air around the open rift screams and effuses a fat glut of plasma.

Renard takes a breath and steps back. The only other thing of note in the vicinity is the lake. A slight current from a distant river teases it quaintly. If not for the dark sky, the total silence, and the itching sensation in the air of an implacable offness similar to what he once felt in Verdanheim, this spot would be so bucolic as to be eerie.

Renard shakes his head and scans over the area again. But there is only the one rift, nothing else, and no others. Several ropes dangle out of it, anchored under crates and rocks, that serve as guidelines. Flags of different colours are tied on the end of each rope, and upon the flags are written such things as: ‘ASHURST HILLS’, ‘SEBILLES VALLEY’, and ‘SEBILLES CASTLE’. Holding the corresponding rope when passing must be how one reaches their destination reliably, lest the current shift again.

Finally, Renard steps forward and extends his hand aside of the rift. His hand does not contact an invisible wall, but feels to slow and grow heavier the further he pushes it towards this direction, and though he certainly feels this weight and heaviness, it does not become any more difficult to hold his hand aloft. In fact the motion of his arm still feels to follow the momentum of the initial push, even as the actual motion slows so dramatically that his hand no longer looks to be moving. But there is still an impetus of motion, and further to go to complete the arc, so his hand certainly is still trying to move forward as he commanded it, at a ferociously slow rate of one fingertip’s worth of distance a year, or a million years, or more.

Panicking that he may be stuck in this motion, Renard frantically tears his hand back. The effect reverses smoothly as it came and his hand shoots back to impact his chest. He nurses it and huffs a sigh of relief.

That is the spacial barrier.

Pursing his lips, Renard unwraps Kingslayer from the linens and secures it on his belt. His hand rests on the pommel, the blade tilting in its scabbard. He could strike at the barrier now, if he wished…

Moved by a hint of hesitation, he backs away and turns toward the distant campground, curious to know who is there. No! Kinglsayer hisses on his hip. You fool! You missed it again! Even as guilt tightens his throat, his stride to the camp remains steady.

The grass underfoot drags strangely, as though it is a carpet being pulled behind Renard, not in a way that disturbs Renard’s balance, but in a way that dramatically shortens the distance he must travel. Indeed, what had looked like trek of minutes over the meadow ends within only seconds, and the sudden sprouting of tents all around him disorients Renard so utterly he must pause.

“Oh, hellllo!" A merry voice calls. “Now who was expecting it’d be you! Sir Ren-arrrrd!"

Struggling with the whiplash of his arrival to camp, Renard is slow to locate the speaker.

“That’s a tinge more exciting than another gaggle of porters. I hope it bodes well, sincerely, to jiggle this lock. Sir Renard."

Called again, the voice comes from a short ways behind him. There upon a crate aside a tent sits a man who must be Renard’s age, but who holds himself in such a casual manner it gives him the air of someone much younger, and not in a way that compliments him. His grin is so white and wide it is like a knife slashed into his otherwise handsome face, and his dark eyes are tinged with slight madness.

Around his neck hangs a pendant, which carries a rock black with witchbane.

“Oh! Do you remember me? You’ve only seen me like this, haven’t you?" He smiles and waves shyly, muttering, “hi, hi, hi."

“Lord Verdan," Renard says tiredly. “You?"

“Ah! No your grace? No hello? Just ‘you!’ You, Verdan! Heavens, heavens, Sir Renard. Is it that wrong to see me? My boys are gallanting ‘round all down here, now how do I watch when I’m waiting upstairs? I hhhate that! Let me get involved, and mud up my elbows!" He wails and beats the crates like a little boy throwing a tantrum. In a fashion Renard remembers is typical of Verdan, the man’s erratic attitude then snaps into unnerving clarity. “And we’ve got envoys coming in and out of that portal, like you."

Renard presses his palm to his sweaty forehead. Indeed, all the men about camp that Renard can see are Verdan’s men, dressed in the crimson military uniform of Verdanheim, and all busy transporting crates and barrels about. It seems they are packing up, too.

“You don’t happen to have an army marching in right behind you?" Verdan asks.

“—Nay," Renard refocuses. “Lacren is dire. We need…" his tongue catches. What does Lacren need?

“A shame," Verdan murmurs. Staring down at the crate, he runs a blunt penknife back and forth over his fingers.

“—Regardless," Renard continues, “I will be our last envoy, and deal now to that rift. You have no messages?"

“Nope," Verdan glances away from his men to Renard. Awkward silence holds between the two, when Verdan abruptly laughs, shrugs, and tosses his head in indication that Renard should proceed.

With a complicated sigh, Renard turns on his heel to depart for the rift. Though he glimpses Verdan resume fiddling with his knife, once his back is turned, Verdan’s gaze settles upon him, distantly watching.

“Wait," Renard turns, “Lord Verdan—when you came into the, ah, condition you had during our first attendance, what had you stumbled upon that conferred it to you? May it be something that can be seen and avoided?"

Verdan’s brows shoot up. “Well, Sir Renard, that is why we’ve accessorised with these little black baubles. If they won’t hold for you… you’ll quickly find out!" He grins, slipping the stone of his necklace over his palm. “Because my granpawpaw thought he was just taking a walk. Why do you ask that?"

Renard thumbs the pommel of Kingslayer, struggling to find appropriate words to explain anything.

“Are you going further down!" Verdan exclaims, shooting off the crate to grab Renard’s hands and bob them about like an excited puppy. “Oh well, well, that changes a lot! Hold on, Sir Renard. Let me fetch more than this silly—" he throws the penknife to the dirt, “—junk." And disappears into the tent to loudly rummage through what sounds like a crate of supplies. “One moment," Verdan calls, “one moment."

Renard rolls his eyes and departs to the lake. It was only a brief detour to the camp, and everything at the lakeside remains exactly how Renard left it.

A wrongness tweaks Renard’s chest. Where is Orpheus?

‘Brief’ does not mean ‘nonexistant’. He should have come through by now.

Renard sets Kingslayer aside on the grass, and, holding the rope to ‘Sebilles Tower’, peeks his face through the rift.

What welcomes Renard is a wall of cacophonous, shrieking chaos. The entire room of the tower he left barely three minutes ago is seizing in the throes of another violent earthquake, raining more cobbles and making it questionable how long the tower will even keep standing. But even more urgent than these vibrations that rock Renard’s heart, as if he were affected just by proximity despite touching no surface, is what he sees. So massive that its girth takes up the entire far side of the room, and indeed so large that it has broken the doorway from the stairs just by entering here, is a giant, screeching ghoul.

Winged like a bat, and with the posture of a vulture, a mess of intertwined, slimy tendrils extend from its rear end that encircle the room. It has five ratlike heads that are all ravaging Orpheus — who is pinned on the floor, bleeding, under its taloned forelimbs, and using every inch of his strength to ward off the many gnashing teeth by holding his silver sword perpendicular across many of the beast’s maws. Familiar with such melees himself, Renard knows that if Orpheus surrenders one grain of focus, lets even one muscle in his straining biceps fall slack, he will be overpowered and consumed immediately.

And even more urgent than that is—

“—Fidel!" Renard screams, extending his arm through the rift.

—Fidel, who stands at the threshold to the balcony, between the ghoul and the rift. But he is not facing, or running for the rift. Bristling with hatred and fury, he is facing the ghoul.

And though he startles at Renard’s call, this judder does not interrupt him from what he was doing — which is hoisting up a brick from the tower’s broken walls, and lobbing it violently at the creature.

“—Fidel, just come though! I will handle—" Renard insists, too slowly.

The brick lands square in one of the monster’s skulls. A wet ‘crack’ resounds even through the rumbling of the quake, piercing as a dagger. Though the ghoul shrieks and convulses, it does not stop its assault on Orpheus — but the interruption is just enough that the ghoul is the one to surrender its moment of focus. In an opening as brief as a blink, Orpheus smoothly slashes through three of the monster’s ravening jaws and rolls out of its grip, onto his feet, in one motion.

But a blink is only a blink. The ghoul rears instantly to rake its talons down Orpheus’ back, and the only thing that stops this attack is Fidel, who darts in and catches the ghoul, as it crashes down, on the point of his sword instead. In this opening, Orpheus dashes — to Renard, and the rift.

Hatred freezes Renard as he looks down upon Orpheus. When Orpheus looks up at Renard, and sees his expression, the coldness of his own gaze reciprocates the sentiment fully.

How dare he, Renard thinks. Try to escape minus Fidel! Certainly, Orpheus is wounded. He is hunched with his hands to his stomach and his whole body is slathered with blood. And certainly, Fidel is not wounded at all. These facts do not affect Renard enough for him to, in these slow two, three, seconds, pull Orpheus through the portal, but only glare and be glared at in turn.

A yell sounds from the fight. Renard’s gaze jerks back to Fidel. The ghoul’s mighty forelimb is reared back to swipe — and though Fidel adroitly jumps back, time itself slows down as the trajectory of the blow becomes clear. These massive talons, each as big as Fidel’s torso, will imminently catch the boy, ream through his stomach, and slam him against the tower’s stone walls to turn him into a large smear of blood. Renard’s throat tightens, sweat burns from every pore, and yet…

And yet, minutely, the ghoul’s angle recedes. The entire ghoul is slanting backwards away from Fidel, in a very unnatural motion, because it is not the ghoul that is moving — but the floor on which the ghoul stands. Renard’s projection of the oncoming strike adjusts to this shift. He sees the talons whizz, by barely a millimetre, straight past the tunic of the retreating Fidel. With a gasp as if breaking from water, time snaps back to its usual pace. There comes the crash of the ghoul’s wicked blow missing — Renard hastily yanks Orpheus through the portal — and then the ferocious cracking thunder of the whole tower breaking in twain.

The quakes have finally felled it. With a horrific shriek, the ghoul disappears from sight as its side of the spire-top shears away and tumbles far, far down. Equally, though, is Fidel quickly disappearing, as his own foothold upon the balcony is also dropping straight into open sky.

With time enough to only sprint a single step, Fidel leaps for the rift, hand outstretched and straining for Renard’s own. Already the rest of him has fallen out of sight, and the desperate face of his palm with outstretched fingers is dropping—

—Contact.

Stretching himself to his limit, just as it dips below the rift, Renard catches Fidel by that hand. Sparing only a single relieved sigh, Renard tightens his grip on Fidel, who is now dangling in the air above a long, deadly freefall, and pulls him in through the portal.