Before the fight with Edward ever began, around the middle part of Dei’s training session in Aloran’s cave, he was running a particularly confusing Void experiment, trying to teleport and link space. To transport himself a few feet in any direction. Fendrascora had gone out to the great river, and Perumah sat off to the side, partially in a trance state.

  Clever, bored with his own training, decided to watch Dei go at it, even telling Dei to form a line of Connection between them so he could watch Dei’s Void training more easily.

  “Link your hand to that plant” Clever told him.

  “Clever, buddy, I appreciate your attempts at advice, but I already told you that I’m trying! You’re not offering very different advice.”

  “Hmm… Link it to infinity.”

  “Infinity?”

  “Yea, try infinity.”

  “Literally how am I supposed to do that? Flood my hand with Void and squeeze the area between it and the idea of everything ever? How would that help?”

  “Because you’d only be close to infinity, never at it. You’d approach a limit of infinity, exiting quantifiable possibilities and potentially skipping over a metaphorical asymptote. Whether this helps you teleport or not remains to be seen.”

  “You sound like my college calculus teacher, did you pull those words from my mind? I don’t even know if that makes sense.” He sighed. “But I’ve tried everything else I guess. Sure, let's approach infinity.”

  Again flooding his finger with Void affinity mana, he tried to squeeze the gap between that finger and the concept of endlessness. Weirdly, it did something, so he tried to connect it with something else in the garden, but there was no luck. No response at all. He just had a finger with infinite possibilities, but wasn’t that normal? He could move in any direction he chose, each minutely different and infinitely impossible.

  It didn’t help.

  “Nope, nothing.”

  “Hmmm… let's do something else. I think what you’re doing is working, but its connection with the rest of you slows its approach to infinity. It’s not approaching it fast enough.”

  “How can you know this?”

  “I’m a korgonda, a lava reptile.”

  “No way can reptiles just understand infinity.”

  “Prove it!” Clever shouted, then laughed at him. “Cover us both in Void, it’ll work, trust me!”

  “That sounds like a monumentally bad idea.”

  “Yea, how are your good ones coming along?” Clever said casually, and Dei’s face fell. Clever again laughed at him, now for his sulking.

  “Fine! Let’s take a trip to infinity.”

  Clever vibrated with excitement as he felt the transitory mana flow through his body, making him feel completely endless.

  Much to Dei’s chagrin, he finally got a response from his Void mana. More than that, the knowledge granted to him by Void told him that the result wasn’t dangerous.

  Sighing, he activated the teleportation, expecting to appear mere feet away.

  To everyone else though, him and Clever were simply gone.

  In the emptiness of Aloran’s garden, an old, fallen God spoke with disbelief. “That shouldn’t have worked.”

  * * *

  When Dei found himself surrounded by jungle trees and sitting on soft grass, he cursed. On his shoulder, Clever shouted his excitement to the world and mocked Dei.

  “Clever! Can we stop with the celebration for a moment?”

  “Nuh uh, I’m right! I’m smart!”

  “Alright smarty scales, where are we?”

  Dei’s words brought Clevers attention to their surroundings, and understood their predicament.

  Around them was a silent wall of dense foliage, with a thin gravel path leading deeper in. Looking behind them, Dei sighed as he saw a wall of pure black, extending far in either direction.

  More than that, it extended over them too. He reached out to touch it… and found that nothing was there. No wall to block him. They weren’t enclosed by walls of shadow, they were in space.

  He took a step back from the starless expanse, again looking at the winding gravel road. Peeking out over the treetops, he could just barely see the edge of what seemed to be a low-build castle.

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  “Dunno.” Clever belatedly answered his question.

  Dei thought it would be smart to try and do the same thing again, maybe teleport back, but he had to admit that his curiosity got the better of him.

  “Let’s go check out that castle in the distance, see if anyone is here.”

  * * *

  The jungle was completely and utterly silent as they went through, not the smallest critter or animal to break the eerie atmosphere. Eventually they broke into a clearing, the stereotypical gray stone walls of a large keep showing itself. The drawbridge was up, even if the mote seemed like it would be easy to jump with his Physical attributes.

  When they were halfway through the clearing though, a head peeked over the wall. Contrary to what he expected, the woman looked positively average, with cherry blond hair, blue eyes and a narrow face, and the light skin tone of a Prime Human. She wasn’t ugly or gorgeous, she seemed like someone you’d simply pass on the sidewalk and make no note of whatsoever.

  “WHO GOES THERE?!” She shouted from the top of the wall.

  “Heya! I’m Dei, this is my buddy Clever.” Clever waved his tiny clawed hands. “Who are you?”

  Standing up to her full, unimpressive height, she said “Sarah, which is nothing to you considering you are about to die, knave!”

  ‘Who says knave?’ he thought, and saw what she was wearing. A t-shirt that said “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my madness” with a laughing-crying emoji in the middle and a pair of loose grey sweatpants.

  “Why kill us? I’ll just leave if you want.”

  “Nay! None leave unless they answer me my riddles three. If you fail at answering any of the riddles correctly, then you must pass the ultimate trial. OR DIE!”

  “Uhhh okay, lay em on me I guess.”

  “Riddle one! How did you get here?”

  ‘That’s not a riddle.’ “A failed Void-based teleportation experiment.”

  “Riddle TWO! Did you intentionally invade my pocket dimension?”

  “Your riddles suck! No! It was an accident.”

  “RIDDLE THREE! What is my last name?”

  “How am I supposed to know that!?”

  “HA! You can’t answer my riddles, you’re now bound to pass my ultimate trial.”

  As she spoke, he felt invisible chains bind his soul in place, and knew that he couldn’t leave unless he passed the trial.

  ‘It’s gonna be something stupid.’

  “Okay what’s your trial.”

  “A battle of Rhyme! Using my magic of Rules and Rhyme, you must describe how you would break into my keep if you could, and I will respond how it would not work. You must find a path that would allow you to win. Should you fail to answer my questions in rhyme, you DIE.”

  “A rap battle?”

  “Rap is more rapid

  And flowing with sound,

  We speak now in poems

  for rules we are bound.

  “So speak now your ways

  For how you would end,

  A siege on my castle

  By tool, spell, or shend!”

  ‘Nothing to do but get right into it I guess.’

  “I’d leap past your moat

  And scale up your stones,

  My claws will find purchase

  And break all your bones.”

  “But fail that you would!

  My moat can pull, see?

  You’d slide down my walls

  A dome protects me!”

  Enunciating her words, Dei started feeling a strong pull into the moat, and a barrier glittered past the top of the walls.

  “Magic may shield you

  But what of the trees?

  Id start up a fire

  And smoke you out, bee!”

  “I needn’t the plants

  My bubble has air,

  I’d feel not the heat

  Not a singe of my hair!”

  “And what of the food?

  You need to eat,

  We’d set shifts to take watch

  My friends have you beat!

  “Starve out my fortress?

  Let your attempts go on!

  Endless food I’ve stored

  Even now I cook bacon!”

  “I admit, you are versatile

  But perhaps not so strong!

  My friend can break your shield

  We will test if I’m wrong.”

  Knowing his cue, Clever opened his mouth and fired a beam at the walls. Sarah had a smug look on her face but time seemed to slow, kind of, as the beam went at a snail's pace towards the wall, giving her time for her retort before it hit.

  “A little fire beam?

  What a tale you wove!

  It’s hardly strong enough to-

  Wait, did I ever light my stove?”

  A brief look of panic overtook her face as a faint smell hit them both. At the halfway point between Dei and the keep, Clevers beam seemed to light the invisible gas on fire, resulting in a massive explosion that knocked Dei off his feet.

  Getting back up quickly, he realized that the chains binding him to her game were gone, and he was free to leave. The entire keep was gone as well, leaving behind a perfectly flat blackened area where it once was. The only thing left of Sarah was a pair of smoking shoes.

  “I wonder where she got that bacon. It must’ve been from somewhere beyond here,” Clever said.

  “Clever I don’t think that’s the important part out of all this.”

  “But I mean it really saved us because she forgot to light the stove after putting the bacon to cook. Thank goodness for her bacon.”

  “Okay sure but why are you saying it like that”

  “Her Bacon from Beyond.”

  Fin