Windston awoke on his back, wincing up at a circular gap in the boughs of tall trees with green needles for leaves. He couldn't move. He couldn't speak.

  As he stared, he heard murmuring. Frem and Bombo, mostly. Every now and again, Agnessa. They were there around him, but he couldn't move his eyes to see them. There were only bright orange embers twirling in smoke, shadows on the brown trunks of old pines, and their voices.

  A shocking tremor erupted in his chest and moved all over his body. It was so powerful he was sure the others would notice, or that he would die.

  They kept on talking. They couldn't sense anything unusual about him. He was going through something unbelievably intense completely alone despite their presence, and all because they simply didn't notice.

  He blanked for a moment. When he came to, he was in the same place but the fire was dying and the night sky was more apparent. The edge of one moon could be seen in the gap. Beside it, to its left, was the red star.

  It twinkled in response to his observations. It… moved.

  It was moving to the left. It did so until it was at the center of the gap. He stared at it and only it.

  His eyes watered, dripping tears that rolled down his cheeks. His eyes burned, felt cold and airy. A shadow stood over him and said, “Nope. Nothing.” It was Frem, but he couldn't hear Windston's cries, didn't notice his raging panic.

  His heart beat rapidly, his pulse thumping all over. With each jolt, the star brightened. There was a rushing sound that seemed as though it would deafen him if it didn't stop. The electric tremors were back. A dread fell over him.

  In an instant, it all stopped. He was still staring at the star, but he was no longer unable to move. He was rising upward, weightlessly drifting. He was moving through the gentle breeze toward the tops of trees.

  He rose above them, flying through the clear sky, alone. His speed grew. He shot from the atmosphere of the planet into the ever-stretching darkness of outer space.

  He flew faster and faster. The lights from the stars stretched. He flew past more and more and more, for minutes, for hours, for days it seemed, ever accelerating toward the star, that twinkling red dot.

  His gaze remained fixed on it.

  Suddenly, he shot right past it, and there was only its trailing red tail.

  As if on a track, he looped back and gave chase.

  When his speed slowed to match that of the star's and he noticed it was right beside him a fear like no other fell about him. Despite the dread, his speed increased so that he slowly overtook the star, this streaming light of pure red fire.

  As he passed, he looked back and saw that, directly in the center of all the red fire was a figure of a man standing, staring, unblinking. It was a molten body, naked, hairless, almost featureless, with only eyes, a nose and a mouth of closed lips. The eyes were open, black whites and flaming centers. Its expression was terrible neutrality. Sparks spread from every part of it. It was human if humans lived in the centers of tiny red stars.

  Or was it tiny? How big was Windston? Was he the point of consciousness he always felt himself to be? The mere focus of awareness behind the vision of his eyes?

  Or was he monstrous, and was this star?

  It looked at him. Its eyes did first, and then it turned its head. It looked at him and he felt its thoughts. A heavy burden, its thoughts. A dull, droning buzzing hum, a pressing dread that squished the he that he felt he was into nothingness. The thoughts...

  You. And them. All of them. All of you.

  There were those words and dread. There were those words and a dread so intensely heavy that Windston lost himself in panic.

  He fell. He fell back to his body. He fell at a rate so fast that his body reacted with a jolt.

  He coughed a long hoarse cough and rolled over on his side. Agnessa was there immediately. She touched something wet to his lips and he fell back into darkness.

  When he awoke, he was floating weightlessly again. The fire was going again, and Bombo and Frem slept on either side of it.

  Rain Gray was there, but he was sitting with his back to all of them, staring at something or nothing in the woods, no sign of his bird.

  And there was a shadow, one that moved through the trunks and onto others; a shadow from another fire moved and swayed, spun and twirled. Windston reached out with his thoughts and knew that it was Agnessa Iadora. She was there, alone in the woods, dancing.

  “You look beautiful,” he told her, as he was there with her as soon as he had thought of her, blurting his thoughts.

  She laughed but didn't say anything. She was still dancing, although there was no music.

  “You're so unbelievably beautiful.”

  “Stop that,” she said, and he suddenly felt his mouth where before he'd felt nothing. “There. Use that to keep your thoughts to yourself.”

  He didn't say anything.

  “Already an improvement.”

  He was floating but hadn't noticed. When he noticed, he landed, sat on a nearby rock facing a brook that bubbled just beyond it.

  “You've been out for days, you know,” she said to him, still dancing.

  “I know,” he said.

  “You kept popping out of body. I don't think you're used to all the energy you picked up from the Haathuud.”

  “The Haathuud,” Windston said. It was a weird name. It was even weirder that-

  “That you sucked him up?”

  Windston nodded and looked at her. Before he could ask whether the Haathuud lived inside him now, she said, “Live is not the word I’d choose. Your energy and his energy are bound.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She shrugged. “You sucked up the energy a higher portion of his had devoted to the physical.”

  “So, it was just energy,” Windston said.

  She stopped, looked at him rather than the fire, which she had been staring at most of the time while she danced. “You sucked up his entire life essence. The energy he would've used throughout his entire physical existence. His thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears. They're inside you now. Though… I believe they must be dormant. For I feel them not.”

  “I feel stronger,” Windston said.

  She shrugged again.

  “I feel different.”

  “You are.”

  “I feel like I know more than I did.”

  “You do.”

  “About… everything.”

  She didn't say anything.

  He didn't either for a while. He looked up at the moons, and then at the star again, but only for a moment. He was afraid of it. “I saw the red star,” he admitted to her.

  She glanced up at it. “There it is.”

  “I mean up close. I flew over to it.”

  “I've done that.”

  “It was terrifying.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “It scared you too?”

  “Yeah. It still does.”

  “Then why are you so calm about it?”

  “I'm not being calm about it. I'm just… busy doing something.” She stopped dancing and looked at him. “Did you forget that we don't really know each other?”

  He shrugged.

  “There's a reason why I do this out of body. I don't really want anyone watching me.”

  “You're really good at it.”

  “Yeah, well, I practice all the time.”

  “You'd probably be even better with music.”

  She stopped and briefly chuckled. Suddenly, there was music. It was everywhere, as if everything was it. It was heavy with bass, very rhythmic, and the singer was female.

  She laughed. “I thought you could hear it all along. Sorry. That's really embarrassing. I must have looked so dumb.”

  He just smiled. “I've never heard music like this before.”

  “You like it?”

  He nodded, still smiling. “How do you do that?”

  “I'm projecting what I'm hearing,” she said.

  “How do you hear it?”

  “I channel it,” she said. “From another world at another time.”

  “That's so cool.”

  “I've been doing it since I was, like, twelve. I usually light a fire and project the singers and the dancers and the stage. The musicians. Even the crowd. Wanna see?”

  He hopped up from his rock and headed around to her side of the fire. At first it just looked like a fire. But then there was a glimpse of what looked like a woman dancing. There definitely was one; she wore braids bound tightly against her head, and she was brown, like Bombo, and dancing similarly to how Agnessa had been. “She's really pretty,” he said.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “Yeah. I love her. I made this outfit I'm wearing because…” she looked down, said, “Oh,” because she wasn't wearing the outfit she'd thought she was wearing; she was wearing what she'd been wearing before they fought the Haathuud. In an instant, her outfit changed.

  “Oh, wow.”

  “You like it?”

  “It looks exactly like hers.”

  “It is. Everything I wear is from different places. Well, almost; there's some Galsian stuff I like – old Galsian, not present day. And Cor has decent fashion, but only the underwear.”

  “Oh.”

  “I just think maybe we should be more open with our bodies. At least sometimes. Well, I am all the time.”

  Windston nodded, staring at her. He hadn't not stared at her, really, but he was doing so now.

  She laughed and the fire changed, as did the song. There was a woman with purple eyes and silver hair, almost like Agnessa's. The song was like the one before, only with a more staggered, rather than steady, beat. “This song comes from a world within this one we're on. It's a less physical world, with less rigid physical laws. That's why she can change her shape like that. Look.”

  Windston watched and saw her stretch briefly like a snake as she danced, and then she looked like she was on fire, though the flames were clear and docile, purple like her eyes.

  “A world within this world?”

  She nodded. “Mm-hmm. It's just a hair less physical than ours. It’s right here. We just can’t see it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You can't see it unless you focus on it.” She paused. “It means… what it means.”

  “How do you focus on it?”

  “Well, you have to be either dreaming or out of body, which we are, so that's a start.”

  “Okay,” he said, but he really didn't even know what she meant by out of body. He didn't really think about it. He never had.

  “And then,” she said, closing her eyes. “You just…” She reached out her hand and he hesitated before taking it into his. “There,” she said, opening her eyes just as everything changed; the fire was gone, and the woods weren't there. There were puffy shrubs all about, and these green stalks that rose from the ground like spikes from which dangled, at the end, green clusters of what looked like berries, but no trees. “Here we are,” she said, smiling.

  Windston was looking around; nothing looked the same here, not even the grass. Everything was different, even if only slightly, but mostly majorly; and the air felt very cool here, and very light, as if you could ride it higher and higher, and you could.

  “Look up at the sky,” she said, already doing it.

  Windston did. He looked up at where the red star should be, but it wasn't there. There were the three moons, only they looked a bit different; they were all dotted in clusters with patterns of what looked like lights.

  “Are there people up there?”

  She nodded. “It's easier to branch out in this reality. Everyone can fly here, and outer space isn't as harsh. So, most people move about wherever they want, and there's more of them, so that's probably a good thing.

  “Do you wanna see what people look like here?”

  He nodded and she took him by the hand again before rising with him into the sky.

  She flew him up to the larger of the three moons. There was no major difference between the night sky within the atmosphere and the expanse of outer space. The moon's atmosphere didn't feel any different either.

  They flew toward what was the brightest patch of light in the largest cluster. As they drew closer, it became apparent that they were nearing a vast city of skyscrapers, parks, stadiums, concert halls, bridges, and other great structures. Nearer to the ground, people could be seen walking and flying about in groups. They were well-dressed, for the most part, and most of them were young, maybe a little older than Agnessa. There were also cars in rows on the roads, though they had no wheels, and Windston had no idea what they were.

  “See?” she said as they stopped just shy of landing on a sidewalk outside of what was a cafe.

  He looked around. Most people wore either skirts or jeans, depending on their gender, denim jackets over shirts or simply sweaters. Their skin came in all varieties of colors, from typical shades of brown to less typical colors like purples, greens, pinks, yellows, oranges, reds and blues. Their hair was varied too, but always seemed to at least go with whatever was the color of their skin.

  One passed very close to Windston, and looked as though he was going to bump into him, but he didn't; he stopped, looked at him curiously, and stepped around him.

  “They can see us?” Windston asked.

  Agnessa shook her head. “Not really. He could tell you were there, but he didn't know what you were. They're…” She paused. “I guess they're, on average, more intuitive than the people where we're from. That’s because they’re more evolved. So, their senses are a little more receptive to ghosts.”

  “Ghosts,” Windston chuckled. “Wait – what do you mean by more evolved?”

  “Well,” she began, “we're all here as people to grow and connect, right? To grow despite the difficulties and connect despite our individuality. They've done that more than what our general bunch has done in the more physical counterpart. And there are perks to that, like… they can fly, and they can sense the non-physical, because they're simply more intuitive.”

  “Oh,” Windston said, but all of that had gone over his head.

  “It's complicated, but I think that's a good way to think about it as a start.”

  “I'm just happy there's more people than just us,” Windston said, smiling as he looked about. He was really enjoying the sights, sounds and smells; the people were almost all beautiful, the music playing was very good, and something nearby made his mouth just about drip with what he guessed wasn't really spit, but something else, as he wasn't exactly physical now.

  “There's way more, you know,” she said. “Even this is just one probable version aside from ours out of what's an infinitely growing number. There are countless people living within this system, and there are probably an infinite number of systems like this one, just as there's an infinite number of ours. And then there's all the others with their infinite variations. It's really mind boggling.”

  “Have you been to a lot of them?”

  She shrugged. “A lot for me. But I haven't scratched the surface of how many there are. There's so many. It would probably get old after a while.” She paused. “Want to see another one?”

  He nodded and she closed her eyes again so he did too.

  A moment passed and he opened his eyes. They were standing in the middle of what was a busy commercial district at the center of an island of tall, tall buildings. It was cold there, too, and everyone milling about wore jackets and long pants. They weren't all pretty like the people where they had just come from; but some were okay, he guessed. They were all shades between his and Bombo's, though some of them had hair of brighter colors, like purple, green, blue, pink, and so on.

  “Where is this?”

  “This is where that first song you heard came from. It's in our version of the physical system, only very far away in physical terms.”

  Windston looked up; there was no red star, and only one small moon.

  “The people here can't see you,” she said as a man pushing a cart pushed his cart right through her and proceeded to follow it through. “Only very few on the whole planet would notice you. They're like most people where we're from, less evolved – clumsy, rash, brash and rude.”

  “Less evolved,” he repeated.

  “Very much so. But the music is good.” She paused. “Let me see if I can find where she is,” she said, closing her eyes.

  While she stood there, eyes closed, Windston looked at what was a prostitute headed their way. She wore a jacket lined with fur, but that was pretty much it other than a red thong, matching leggings and black stilettos. She was a blonde, like Windston, with heavy makeup, and looked to be not much older than Agnessa.

  As she walked through him, he felt an intense feeling of… arousal, but also nausea, and a horribly heavy sadness.

  As she walked away, the feelings faded, and he stared after her curiously.

  Agnessa opened her eyes and chuckled. “I think I went to the wrong one. She isn't even alive in this probable system. At least not as her, the singer.”

  Windston chuckled back, but he didn't really follow what she was saying.

  She shrugged. “Oh well,” she said.

  “I wish I could do this,” he said as the prostitute rounded a corner. “I would do this every night.”

  “You can,” Agnessa said. “Everyone can. And guess what; it would help them evolve. But almost no one knows about it or believes that it's a real thing.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  She shrugged. “Probably not. Rain and I will be gone before you wake up. And you'll forget everything I tell you by the time you do.”

  “Can you at least tell me how to do it?”

  She tapped her chin for a minute, thinking, as he looked around at all the ad billboards, the TV's. “You’ll figure it out,” she said.

  She said other things as well, but Windston couldn’t hear her as they kept appearing in slightly different versions of the exact same place.

  She eventually found the perfect probability. Her favorite singer existed in this one. It was a lady with bright orange hair that moved around like flames. It wasn't within their reality system, or even that one just slightly less physical than theirs.

  They watched for a little over an hour, dancing and drinking a steaming cool drink that frothed and then froze in the mouth before thawing, and all in a matter of a second. It didn't make them drunk, but it altered their thinking in other ways that made Windston wish he could drink it every day.

  When they were done, she taught him how to fly on his own, and they raced back through the universe at faster than light speeds, dropping in here or there on various planets where she sensed intelligent life.

  On one stop, an imperial superpower in a galaxy two galaxies over from theirs, in what must have been the emperor's tower, she suddenly froze and stood between Windston and an entourage of uniformed men and women dressed all in black. In its center was a tall man with long black hair. He glanced at her, and Agnessa glared back at him as they passed.

  She turned to Windston when they were alone again and let out a heavy sigh. “That was close,” she said, walking in the direction from where the group had come.

  Windston hurried after her. “Who were they?”

  She shrugged. “Not exactly sure, but one of them has a definite history with the man who made your sword.”

  “My sword?”

  She nodded. “Yup. And if he had read our thoughts any further than he immediately had, he'd know just where to find not only him, and us, but the stones lying about in Gorrals, which are rare in any galaxy.”

  “He would?”

  She nodded.

  “Could he get there?”

  She nodded. “Oh yeah. You probably didn't notice the fleet of ships all around the planet here as we flew in. There are thousands of them, and all of them could reach our planet within hours.” She shuddered visibly on purpose to stress the seriousness of the situation. “Not to discount the sheer power of what I guess is the emperor here, which is immense.”

  “The emperor?”

  “The man with the black hair,” she said. “He was… yeah – powerful is an understatement.”

  “Powerful like you?”

  She laughed a forced chuckle; but then she stopped, wheeled him by the shoulders and pointed a finger in his face. “This is your fault,” she said.

  He didn't say anything as he stared back at her.

  “I was just dancing. You egged me on to go and show off. Now we've gone and found where the Gorralians went.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  She laughed. She was looking up at what was an elevator door. The elevator was rising, and she could tell by the indicators above, as she was familiar with what was the universal concept – almost everywhere physical that was anywhere had elevators, and they were pretty much always the same.

  The doors opened and she headed inside and leaned against the back wall, beckoned Windston with her finger to do the same. The nail was longer than his, glossy and bejeweled, and he liked it.

  She sighed. “It’s difficult to measure his power at a glance, even out of body. As he stood, I could possibly take him one on one,” she said, finally responding to Windston's question. “But who knows his true potential. He's the emperor of the Gorralians. He’d be wise to hide it. Not that any of that really matters.”

  Still thinking aloud, she said, “If he were to follow us back, he'd quickly realize he’s better off anywhere else, stones or no.”

  “Are you sure he saw us?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “No doubt.” She paused, continued her initial thought. “He'd realize he’d be better off anywhere else because he’d very quickly meet my brother.”

  “Your brother?”

  “My twin brother, Clement.”

  “Wait – is Clement Rain?”

  She laughed. “Rain,” she scoffed. “As if he could do anything. No, my brother, Clement Armassi II.”

  “Clement Armassi,” Windston repeated; why did that name sound so familiar? “Is he stronger than you?”

  She let out a single chuckle. “He's stronger than everybody.”

  “So, he could beat up the emperor.”

  She laughed. “He probably wouldn't even have to. He'd probably just look at him with that piercing gaze of his. He'd probably just stare him down, him in particular despite all the ships. That would probably be enough. The emperor would try to read his thoughts and Clement would probably let him. The emperor wouldn't risk anything further. He'd be a fool to, and he's no fool if he survived a fight with the madman.”

  “The madman?” He was really struggling to keep up.

  “The man who made your sword. Clement Armassi I, Vicarious King. Ring a bell?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Hold on; your brother made my sword?”

  “No, my brother is Clement Armassi II. The one who made your sword is the guy he named himself after – Clement Armassi I, the millennia aged deity. AKA, the madman in the tower.”

  “Your brother named himself?”

  “We all choose our names, if you want to know the truth. But I suppose, like everything else, that’s over your head as well.”

  “I don't remember naming myself. If I did, I wouldn't be Windston.”

  She shrugged, the elevator dinged, and the doors opened. “You'll figure all this out one day, I guess.” She headed out with that same carefree walk she'd had when he first saw her, the one that said she was everything and everyone else was nothing, though she didn't realize her walk said all that. “Not sure why I’m wasting my breath explaining it.”

  She carried on with that attitude for the rest of the night. Still, she took him to more and more places, and they had more and more fun without any more close calls. They took part in races, observed battles, watched more concerts and drank more delicious and/or exciting drinks. They found primitive peoples and people so advanced, they had no bodies. They went to a universal library containing the history of every individual ever, every thought ever thought, which could be summoned with a thought simply by thinking of it as a concept. They investigated the past of their planet, looking all the way back to the beginning of its time. It was boring back then, as there was almost nothing there.

  They did more and more and more. But somewhere near the halfway mark within their journey, Windston's crystal clear consciousness faded gradually until everything to him seemed more and more like a dream. And then it was a dream. Everything they had done together, starting from the beginning, faded until, by the time he awoke, he remembered none of it. He only remembered he had had a very good dream about Agnessa Iadora, and he really liked – no, loved – her with all his heart. In fact, he was certain he would marry her.

  He was as certain of that as he was that a tangerine had fallen from the sky and smacked him square between the eyes as he was first opening them. Only, when he looked around, there was nothing there.