A Fraught World of Singular Purpose

The landscape blurred underneath Ol-Lozen and Mouse into oceans of alien color, their winged passage taking them over hills and valleys, peaks and ravines, rivers, lakes, and lands once green. The barrier of bent light cast by Mouse granted them complete invisibility, allowing them to fly through the night undetected, sneaking past the Incursion swarms converging on the expeditionary force they’d left behind, each swarm boiling with hundreds of bodies, if not thousands, painting the situation a shade more grim.

They thought of Joshua and Charan, Edrickt, Jackbee, and Daigay, of course – though each for their own reasons. They tried not to dwell on the red-painted chance that neither of them would see their allies again.

Ol-Lozen glanced over the compass-like device that currently directed him southeast, the supposed location of Norisis. Judging from the density of bone-like spire forests they had passed over, the city had to have been just on the horizon.

“How are you holding on up there?” he called, once no Incursion were close enough to hear, hoping to be heard over the air roaring in his ears

“Wind and your smelly hair are making my light bending hard to maintain,” she yelled back.

“You’re not exactly a rose yourself.”

“Sorry. Hard to get a bath when there’s not water. You could have fetched it for me, you know?

“I would have, had you spoken with me more than four words each day. Violence will be key to surviving here, girl. I’ll have my use.”

“You’d better. Violence is what you’re good at.”

“And don’t you forget that fact.”

In the distance, a burial ground of vine mounds had swollen up like pox in the earth. Ol-Lozen had a sneaking suspicion it was Norisis. The architecture suggested this had at one point been a city; one of the mounds drew a snaking line around the others, and impressed the image of a wall; Daigay’s map had listed no other cities between the expeditionary force and their destination. The mammoth, scintillating portal of violet energy was also a dead giveaway.

Tendrils with the girth of lighthouses squirmed from the tunnel, denoting the portal’s borders like fingers stretching a rubber band. At their tips they unfolded, and vines spewed out in every direction. Clouds of Incursion were pouring out at a steady rate, most heading the direction Ol-Lozen and Mouse had come from. Those flying elsewhere assumedly did so for expanding the reach of the lostlands, finding new territory to convert into an alien landscape.

“Take us in, demon.”

Though he had reservations over diving straight in, Ol-Lozen had no choice but to obey, hitting the tunnel at full speed. He imagined he was diving into a clammy swimming pool.

---

They dove from the sky into a frigid, sunless world.

As Ol-Lozen had thought, the massive tendrils reached from their world into Mouse’s, stretching across miles from the surface of the planet below. The tendrils may have played a role in keeping the portal open; but, not invading for purpose of investigating wriggling protuberances, the two were unlikely to learn their true functionality in the Incursion ecosystem.

Bone-textured spires sprouted up from the ground below made a forest of white, root-choked trees.

The two invaders weaved between Incursion demons streaming upwards on their way down, taking in the desolate layer devoid of life. The surface looked made of raw, broken stone, given a violet tint by the portal high above – the sole light source in the vicinity. The vine’s grasp here was strong, as expected, being their home world, and they grew unabated over structures familiar to Ol-Lozen: light posts on the roads, burned carcasses of vehicles, skyscrapers folded over under their own weight and devoid of whole glass windows, window washer elevators, sunken bones where a convenience store once sold cheap meals and nightcaps, decrepit signs depicting foodstuffs held by cartoon merchants. Mouse had to slap his cheek to break him away from a flat, featureless billboard that may have been neon, pointing at a sight that churned both their stomachs.

A bulbous yellow growth, pulsing like a misshapen heart, dwarfed the smaller buildings around where it had sprouted, tree-like roots growing around and through the blocks it resided in.

Dropping down to its base, the two were able to get a better idea of its scale. Their estimations put the main root feeding the organ at approximately ten meters in diameter, with a smattering of others at similar or smaller sizes.

Ol-Lozen placed his hand to the root. “Tankbuster can make short work this. A couple of swings, maybe a couple more. Will definitely be loud.” His wings of pale magic fluttered with every thought. “Opinions, Mouse? Think this is the brain Daigay spoke of?”

“We’ll only find out be bringing it down. Swing away.”

Drawing the onyx-frosted blade, Ol-Lozen delivered the first mighty swing, sawing through a considerable amount of root and splattering the ground with milky yellow fluid. The blast echoed through the graveyard of a civilization.

“Number two!” A second swing tore further in, and he was forced to stand on the root flesh in preparation to land the third, which put him roughly halfway through severing the plant structure. More fluid spilled out from side channels in the root exposed by his cutting.

He was about to strike the fourth when Mouse cried out.

“Incursion! Coming down from the portal!” She pointed to a cloud that had separated from the stream, and was barreling towards them at full speed.

He cleaved his fourth time, biting deep, and glanced at the Incursion with their speed and number unchanged. On the fifth cut with no difference, the notion occurred that maybe – just maybe – this wasn’t the brain he was hacking, but by then the Incursion’s buzzing told him they were too close to safely make a sixth.

“Mouse! Can take what’s left with your wind?” The girl swiftly nodded, and on his descent from atop the root he tossed her up to finish what he’d started.

Placing himself between the girl and the oncoming horde, he willed the sunless world sapphire. On wings of magic, he cleaved the first onslaught from this world, blowing through yolky bodies and scabbed shells easily as money.

He was about to go to town on the next when Mouse screamed. Turning, he saw one demon had split from the clouds, flanked them, and now lunged at the girl. In a flash of sapphire, the threat was paste.

Strange, most others come on mindlessly.

“Demon, I need you to stand near me.” Mouse’s shaky voice reached his ears, and runes glowed with her command.

He looked down at the girl, sighing as he lessened the gap between them. “That one was close, I’ll admit.”

“It was more than that,” she argued, cutting into the root with a slicing chop of her hand.

At the girl’s side, he was forced to wait until the swarms were closer before diving into his battle high. As he slipped out from a successful foray, a shadow crossed his brow, and buzzing exploded into being.

He grabbed the girl by the back of her clothing, shoving her behind him as another singular Incursion attempted to land a blow, this time with a clawed foot, landing on the root. Ol-Lozen drew back, winding up for a mighty cleave, and let swing into empty air.

I missed?

Buzzing overhead alerted him, and he delved into sapphire again to deliver a strike the demon could not avoid. He was forced to fly upward – the demon was just out of his reach otherwise.

He slipped out into Mouse screaming his name. Distracted by the singular one, a new buzzing cloud had flown too close for comfort.

“I told you it was different!”

I believe you now, he thought with a grimace. “Mouse, brace yourself.”

From the girl’s perspective, Ol-Lozen was there one moment, gone the next, and reappeared to a chorus of rapid-fire explosions with the musicality of revving of a chainsaw. The air instantly free of Incursion rained golden, and he had cleared them breathing room.

As he did, Mouse delivered the final cut, and the air groaned in anguish. Severed from its root, the golden organ ceased pulsing and keeled over crushing the buildings it once lorded over. Dust and debris of ruins were kicked up into the air on impact, and Ol-Lozen was forced to use his power not to fight, but to drag himself and Mouse out of the suffocating cloud to higher elevations, affording them a view of the yellow plant organ withering into a shrunken black mass. He cast a glance to the root system visible over the clouds, and noticed the one they’d severed was bleeding the same milky fluid.

A light bulb lit in his head; a foul, milky lightbulb.

“Mouse…how fine a control do you have over that wind of yours? Could you repel liquids using wind?”

She gave it a few seconds of thought, kicking her feet against his back while doing so. “Don’t require too fine a control to blow things away.”

“Fantastic. Keep us clean like your life depends on it. We’re going for a swim.”

He descended from the sky, aiming for the channel of fluid inside the severed root. True to her word, Mouse repelled the liquid from their bodies, though it did nothing for the stench of rotting meat. The tunnel was properly Orkan sized, with a bit of extra maneuvering room. Through curve and corner they flew deep into the earth, following the root path wherever it would take them.

---

“Mouse…” Ol-Lozen asked, gaping in awe.

“That’s definitely the brain,” she whispered

After what felt like days, they emerged from the root into an immense cistern filled with the same fluid, passing valves pushing in the opposite direction of their progress, and what hung in that plant-walled tank beneath the earth could only be described as a brain. It was round, wrinkly, bore two easily discernible hemispheres, and trailed nerves and stem-like components. There were no guards, no defenses, not even white blood cells.

“Maybe it never thought anyone would manage to find it,” Mouse supposed.

“A comforting thought, demons becoming overconfident,” he replied.

They flew up to the organic bridge between the hemispheres, hovering over the brain so as to not accidentally draw notice. The organ overshadowed them, maybe a hundred meters across lengthwise and seventy-five widthwise. Ol-Lozen considered puling his sword, but breaking through this would take even longer than the root, and would draw far greater attention in a chamber not easily escaped.

Mouse pulled from her pocket the ampule Daigay had given her. With a quick burst of magic, her eyes lit up white, and the ampule combusted becoming a wide ritual circle, runes upon runes in black script decorating its edges. Ol-Lozen gave it a cursory once-over, as if I’d recognize anything, he thought, and was quickly slapped by the familiar Orkan type included in the gramarye. They were nonsense words, broken verbs, and strings of consonants, but their meanings became clear at the sight of the miniscule drop of liquid emerald in the circle’s center, and Mouse’s hand upon The Tankbuster’s sheath.

“There’s truly no other way, is there.”

When Mouse shook her head, his hand crept to the hilt, clenched, hesitated, and he drew the onyx-frosted blade for the final time. It never occurred to him until just this moment: the sound of drawing a blade, how similar it was to a kiss. A kiss goodbye. A kiss hello. The kiss of a friend. The kiss of the sword that took him to bed. He placed the sword in the ritual circle, ignoring Mouse’s proffered hand; if anyone was going to end her, it would be him.

He watched her go, never looking away, as the green vivisecting light stripped the blade of Orkan ingenuity and returned him a shell that slid back into the sheath devoid of the life it was drawn with.

Mouse’s arms stretched around Ol-Lozen’s neck, and they flew back up the root as the ritual commenced, drawing the Tankbuster’s essence into itself, compressing it down, down, down into an amount that would fill a thimble; doubles it, doubles again, and again and again and again one hundred times over –

– and ignites it.

Halfway back up the root path and still Mouse and Ol-Lozen heard the eruption of force as though it had occurred in a neighbor’s apartment.

“Demon, fly faster!”

Sapphire enveloped Ol-Lozen as he bounced around through corner and curve, pinball noises in his wake, staying barely ahead of a roiling gout of bone-munching force. From the root stump he burst, dodging left as the root exploded, milky fluid sloughing off Mouse’s magic, and continued on into the night-stricken sky that rained Incursion bodies.

The clouds had broken, the swarms fell, limp, and the portal beckoned –

– beckoned them leave before it closed.

The tendrils forcing it open slid bonelessly from the sky. Ol-Lozen pushed his magic for all it was worth, Mouse encouraging him faster, to dodge around the rain of yolky, black-scabbed corpses.

And then one grabbed his ankle.

The demon worked its way up Ol-Lozen’s legs, grab by grab, sinking talons with progress. He tried to kick it off, but the demon’s grip was iron. Mouse turned, saw the creature, and her eyes went wide. She pointed at the demon and shouted for Ol-Lozen to kill it.

He saw the light before the noose had a chance to cinch. His wings bent on their own, going off course as the portal once dominating the sky shrunk down to the size of a hovel door. Just a few more meters, that’s all Mouse needed – just a few – his vision already darkening from oxygen deprivation. His wings were falling, the latent power was was failing, their wills were out of alignment.

Gritting his teeth, he bucked his shoulder to roll her into his arms, took aim, and slung Mouse at the portal little more than a sewer drain, the girl passing through just as it slammed shut; the magic flickering across his body shattered like sugar glass. In the nanosecond frozen in air – not falling, not rising, unmoving – Ol-Lozen closed his eyes to the sight that would follow.

I’m ready, Mother, Father; with pride, I can face you again, in the Endless Dream.

Like a meteorite, the demon fast to his ankles, Ol-Lozen fell.

He was falling, falling.

Falling.

Falling…