2025, Caretaker's Cottage, All Saint's School

  Valerie Campbell woke up at five in the morning, as usual, with a vague sense of impending doom and general malaise, also as usual. Her mood did not improve when she read the apologetic text she'd received from her colleague, Thomas.

  > Good very early morning, Val! Sorry but Gen and the kids have been up all night with bad stomachs, so I've been relegated to baby-and-dog-sitting duty. I've already messaged Carol. Are you okay with doing my afternoon shift?

  Valerie had had plans, actually, this afternoon. Had those plans involved curling up under a blanket and then the newest release in her favourite fantasy novel series? Yes. Could those plans be arranged for the next day or the weekend? Also yes. It was the principle of the thing.

  Thomas was, unfortunately, a really nice bloke. So, Valerie swallowed a bitchy retort and replied with a vague affirmative and a hope everyone feels better soon, threw on her uniform and trudged over to the main school building to unlock for the day.

  As is always the case when one finds themselves working a sudden double shift alone, everything went to hell. One of the boy's toilets sprung a leak. The unnecessarily large industrial fridge in the canteen (honestly, All Saint's only had five hundred odd students. Why did the school need a fridge big enough to service an army?) had decided to conk out and had damn near flooded the kitchen. Three of the windows and five of the blinds just spontaneously broke somehow. Valerie's right eye started developing a twitch. Every radio call sent her slouching further and further down in her chair until she was nearly on the floor.

  And, just to make an already shitty day just a smidgen shittier, about five minutes into Valerie's lunchbreak, the head teacher (James Walton, also nice enough that Valerie couldn't be shirty with him) knocked gently on the doorframe of her office (read: cleaning cupboard with tiny desk and ancient desktop computer squeezed in the corner) .He gave her a look that translated as please don't be mad at me these children are demons. Valerie tilted her head, raised her eyebrows – What have they done this time? She set her ham and cheese sandwich down and waited.

  'Afternoon, Miss,' he started, taking a step to the side. Behind him was a group of year nines – Valerie was rubbish at remembering the kids' names, there were a lot of them – with decidedly sheepish expressions. Her eye twitched. 'There's been a bit of an accident with a football. Ben, can you tell Miss Campbell where it's ended up?'

  Ben, Booter of the Wayward Ball, shifted from foot to foot. One of his mates rolled his eyes. 'It's on the roof of the old sports hall, Miss. Ben accidentally went a bit mental with a kick and the ball went flying.' He jabbed his elbow into Ben's side, and the lad jumped and then bobbed his head.

  'Sorry, Miss. Wasn't on purpose, swear down.'

  Valerie shrugged. 'I can get it for you, Ben, no worries. Give me five minutes to finish my sarnie. I'll drop it into your year office?' Ben and his friends thanked her profusely and headed to their lessons. James watched them go and sighed.

  'Sorry, Val. I'd have got one of them to get it down themselves, but...' he trailed off.

  'Don't want to be liable for one of the little sods falling off and ending up with a traumatic brain injury?' she finished, dryly, and James laughed.

  'You've got a way with words.' Well, I do have two degrees in literature, Valerie thought for the umpteenth time since she'd started working at All Saints. If I didn't, I would be shocked. 'Anyway, I'll leave you to your lunch. Ta, Val.' And then he was gone again.

  Val finished the rest of her lunch blissfully uninterrupted, then went over to the old sports hall building, armed with the one ladder on the school premises that wasn't a hairsbreadth away from falling to pieces, and set it against the wall.

  She looked up at the distance she'd have to climb, said a quick prayer to whatever deity happened to be within listening range, and started up the ladder. She got nearly all the way up before her brain realised that she was, in fact, nearly ten meters up in the air, and decided to throw a hissy fit. Val inhaled, tried to ignore the shakiness in her hands, and hurled herself up and over onto the flat roof.

  'Okay, Val. You're fine,' she told herself firmly, 'you are a strong independent woman. You can handle being a little further off the ground than you're used to.'

  It wasn't like she didn't have to brave her fear of heights often anyway, what with teenagers having a penchant for aiming their footballs, basketballs,whatever-sport-they-were-playing-at-the-timeballs at the highest nearby surface, but she struggled regardless. Two things scared Valerie shitless: being more than her usual five foot nothing off the ground, and the innate knowledge that she would eventually die, cast off into the ether of existence. The fact that falling from heights was one of the leading causes of death was a neat reminder of both of said fears, and Valerie found herself sitting down with her head between her knees, breathing shallowly.

  A minute or so later, the static in her mind had ebbed enough that she could pilot her meat suit more or less proficiently again. Val looked around and found the cursed football almost immediately; it was fluorescent orange, with the signature of some famous player or other printed on it. Val was about to lob the thing off the edge and start preparing for the climb back down to sweet, sweet terra firma when she heard a scuff behind her. Please be a seagull. Do not be an idiot child.

  She turned, tucking the orange ball into the crook of her arm, and almost fell off the damn roof when she saw what was before her. It was a person, annoyingly, but she couldn't tell how old they were, or even what gender they were. It was like their face was constantly changing; one moment it was smooth and young with brilliant blue eyes and a warm smile, and the next it was wizened and old, with sad brown eyes and an unhappy frown. The only thing that didn't change was their hair and their clothes; both of which were long, flowing things that were such a bright shade of white that Valerie had to squint to see them properly.

  'You are Valerie Campbell,[Custodian],' the person said. Their voice, much like their appearance, was layered. Husky and deep, but somehow also light and airy. Valerie made a mental note to see if the vitamins she'd ordered online contained some kind of slow-release hallucinogen, because that was the only logical explanation for this vision trip she was currently having. Either that, or she'd already plummeted off the roof and was slowly dying, having obtained the brain injury she'd joked about with James not even fifteen minutes earlier. Irony, thy name is Valerie Campbell.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Valerie turned her squint from the person's clothes to their face. It was weird to look at, yes, but it was less likely to cause her a migraine. Probably. Then she thought about what they'd said – more specifically, how they'd said it. Custodian, but with an air of...authority? Weird.

  'You are Valerie Campbell,[Custodian]?' they said again, this time with enough of an inflection that Val recognised it had been a question the first time, too. She felt the urge to stand up straight, properly, for the first time in her adult life, and couldn't help but wonder what the hell was going on here.

  'Um. Yes. That's me. Though I'm officially a caretaker, not a custodian. Bit different in terms of responsibilities, I think?' she stuttered.

  The being (a god? Val had sent out a vague prayer just before she started climbing, hadn't she? Typical, innit, the atheist having an actual, proper conversation with a shapeshifting deity, rather than some monk in a monastery somewhere in northern France) eyed her carefully and then nodded.

  'We see. Where we are from, the Class of [Caretaker] belongs to those who look after children or the infirm.' They paused, something in the air seemed to stutter, and then their face settled on the old, frowning option. Their robes and hair dulled from nearly blinding to a still unnatural but less retina-damaging off-white. They shifted awkwardly, much like Ben theBooter of the Wayward Ball had earlier, and then said, 'Valerie Campbell, we need your help.'

  'Beg pardon?' Valerie found herself saying before she could stop herself. The being – almost definitely a god of some description, though Val was still hedging her bets on either being absolutely off her tits on shrooms or actively dying from a brain bleed – all but collapsed onto the roof, crossing their legs. They looked expectantly at Val, who copied them.

  'We are Nin. We are what you would recognise as a god, though not one of the ones from your world,' they tilted their head and scrunched their nose, 'although there seems to be one named after our home planet. Interesting. Dimensional bleed, perhaps? Hmm.' The last part was all but muttered to themself, and the deity shook their head when they noticed Val looking at them blankly. 'Ahem. We need your help. Something is coming to destroy our world, our home, and someone from your world may be our only hope.'

  Valerie didn't laugh, but it was a damn near thing. 'I'm sorry? Mate, I spend my days cleaning up puke and fixing leaky loos. I am not the person you're looking for.' Nin's face flickered again, then, shifting into something not human and absolutely angry. Val may or may not have pissed herself, just a little. Nin took a breath, and the old visage was replaced by the younger, smiling one.

  'Apologies, Valerie Campbell. That was not aimed at you. We are having the same conversation with fifteen other people from your dimension, and not all of them have sat down for a chat. We knew that humans are prone to violence on this planet but are they always like this?' they asked, and Val raised the arm not currently cradling the football to tilt her hand in a more-or-less gesture. Luckily, it seemed that was a universal (dimensional?) signal, and the god sighed through their nose. 'As much as we loathe to admit it, the violent nature of this world will be beneficial.'

  Valerie squinted. 'Nin. Um, your holiness? If you need violent people, I am not your girl.' Liar, liar, pants on fire, a voice in her head whispered. It wasn't wrong, but Nin wouldn't know that, right?

  'Valerie Campbell, we have been watching you for nearly two decades. Just because you chose not to punch us in the face does not mean you have not done the same to many other people who have angered you in the past.' Nin replied, stark white eyebrows arching with mirth. Val swore under her breath, and the deity chuckled gently. 'Do not misunderstand us, Valerie Campbell. As we just said, we need one with at least some kind of propensity for violence to aid us. You are one of a few who have both the inclination to give someone a black eye and also the capacity to give that same person an ice pack not five minutes later. As it stands, there are only two others still conversing with us.' Nin, even with the happier version of their face on, looked worried.

  'Decades?' Val asked. Nin shrugged, and seeing a gesture so casual threw Val for a loop. She fidgeted under the god's gaze, still unsure of whether or not this was happening or not.

  If it was, she had two options: tell the god before her to bugger off (the god who was both capable of crossing into a different dimension in multiple bodies without much sign of wariness and desperate enough to contact the humans from Earth, which was hilarious, if not massively concerning. Because if a literal god, who could cross dimensions in multiple bodies without tiring was incapable of dealing with whatever was affecting their home planet, Val wasn't sure how she would be, personally) or to agree to be transported away from her life here. Her admittedly shitty, dead-end life, but that was neither here nor there.

  Nin twitched ever so slightly.'Make that one other.'

  Now, Val hadn't always been the best at reading people; emotions in general threw her for a loop. Even being sat down by a police officer when she was six to be told her entire family was dead hadn't really affected her until she was old enough to pass for eighteen and could drink away her tears via bottles of cheap corner shop vodka. Despite this, or perhaps as a result of it, she could see the grief tinged around Nin'seyes. Whatever was happening – would happen? – to their world was devastating, and that was reason enough for Val to roll her shoulders back straight and nod, once.

  'Okay. I...want to help. Of course I do, I'd be a right bellend otherwise. But I need you to prove that this is real. Prove to me this isn't just some brain-death-induced dream.' Nin shrugged again, and suddenly Val was standing back in her cleaning cupboard/office. The foil from her sandwich was still sitting on her desk. The clock (the only one of five in the office that worked, because neither Val nor Thomas could find the time to fix the damn things around fixing everything else that broke in the school) stated that it was thirty-five past twelve. Exactly twenty minutes had passed since James had asked her to retrieve Ben and the gang's football.

  Valerie took a heavy seat behind her desk and tried not to throw up. Nin cast a look around the cupboard, then reached out to grasp the dustpan and brush set that hung from the wall. 'You use this to remove filth, correct?' they asked, and Val grunted an affirmative.'Take this with you. We do not know how much you can bring; our mana does not...agree much with your atmosphere. It will be taxing enough to send just you and a few small items. Remarkable that your people have survived as long as you have, really, without it.'

  Val took the proffered dustpan and brush, then blinked up at the god. 'Sorry. Mana? Like, magic? Hocus pocus, witches and shit, magic?' Nin gave her a look, and she shut up.

  'Do you wish to take anything else with you?' they turned to Val, and she had to think for a moment. 'Ninurta, our planet, is not dissimilar to your own in terms of climates. Unfortunately, we have no way of narrowing down where exactly you will end up.'

  'Well, I've got a fleece, polo and jeans on, so I should be okay for most weather, no?' Nin nodded sagely, inching over towards her. Then her brain caught up to what they'd said. 'Hold on, wait – do you mean I could rock up to a rainforest in monsoon season, or I could end up in the magic-planet equivalent of the Sahara? Great.' Val almost bit her tongue at her insolence. Whether or not Val was religious, she'd read enough fantasy novels to know you don't sass a god. She winced, waiting for a smite, or something, and was shocked when Nin started honest-to-goodness giggling.

  'Oh, Valerie Campbell. We hope you never change, dear [Custodian]. Never.' Before Val could respond, the god stood fully over her, hand pressed against her forehead. There was a brief sensation of being pulled, and the last thing Val saw before the world exploded into stars and blackness was Nin's face – the inhuman one, no longer angry, but instead very, very concerned.

  Something told Val that that expression wasn't entirely aimed at her.

  ~