Howard found interdimensional travel to be distinctly uncomfortable. He supposed that the experience could be likened to birth as the parting message from Comic Sans flashed through his mind. Not that Howard remembered being born, but it wasn't much of a stretch to compare the two experiences. Howard felt as if he were being compressed on all sides and strangely wet. Howard couldn't conceive as to where said wetness was coming from, and he couldn't move his hands let alone the rest of his body to try and find out.

  Howard had tried initially to move and orient himself in some way. When sitting or standing hadn’t worked, he had tried to wiggle. There seemed to be no way to orient himself or move whatsoever. He seemed to be oriented in the way in which he fell into the hole, that being head first. This left Howard with a lot of time to think.

  Howard tried to think about his past and who he was, but everything before seeming to gain consciousness in the void was fuzzy. Thinking about it, the void was weird. Howard thought that if he was dead he should be heading somewhere about now, somewhere bad maybe? He had a flash of memory involving somewhere hot and perpetually on fire. A land of famine and drought, where desiccated ghouls seemed to run everything from gilded spires overlooking it all. A name floated to the top of his consciousness, California.

  No, that couldn't be right, and even if it was he hoped that this wasn't the case, and besides this didn't seem to match up with what Cosmic Sans had relayed before falling into the interdimensional slip n’ slide.

  Howard seemed to be drawn forward in a series of short bursts preceded by an increase in compression. It seemed at once both fairly quick and an excruciatingly long time before Howard saw the literal light at the end of the tunnel. As suddenly as Howard had been drawn into the hole, Howard was expelled from the tunnel.

  —----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Rel

  Rel watched with bated breath as the portal pulsed with increasing frequency until a loud pop broke the silence. A creature slid through the portal face-first across the ground, trailing some sort of clear viscous goop.

  Rel, as part of his induction to the Order of the Hidden Magi, had had to study the Book of the Tattered Fabric. A tome of forbidden knowledge collected by scholars, mages, and void researchers; the Book of the Tattered Fabric was among other things a collection of descriptions of the entities that existed in extra-dimensional spacetime outside of reality as mortals comprehend. It also happened to be incredibly boring.

  The tome often went out of its way to try and describe the creatures and beings that had been observed and the creature that had come out of the portal matched nothing in the book. Rel figured that the majority of the descriptions were wildly inaccurate or extremely embellished, but most of the descriptions waxed eloquently for pages about the unknowable greatness of these creatures of the void. This creature was not some massive tentacled beast or crab-armed monster.

  The creature looked almost like an elf or Ver, though similar in body shape the creature seemed too tall to be a dwarf but also too short to be an orc, and was most definitely not some unknowable interdimensional entity.

  As a half-elf himself, Rel was fairly certain that this creature could not be an elf. The chest was too thick and the body was not long enough. It’s ears were rounded rather than pointed, while the face was shorter than the longer elvish faces. Also, the creature seemed to have only one thumb per hand like a Ver or orc and dwarf who tended to live on the ground rather than the elvish two-thumbed, five-fingered hands that tended towards arboreal homes. The creature was uncanny, Rel shivered looking at it.

  As the creature slid to a stop at the feet of the Grandmaster, Rel belatedly noticed that the Grand Master had re-donned his mask and shifted his grip on the ritual dagger to one more suited for combat.

  Rel watched nervously as he waited for what the Grandmaster was going to do. Either the grand master would smite this strange creature instantly or this was indeed the Hallowed one that they had been attempting to summon.

  —----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Howard

  Howard slid face-first across what seemed to be a smooth stone floor, finally coming to a stop by bumping his head on a pair of boots. He looked up into the eyes of a masked figure with the visage of a skull holding an elaborate knife as if to stab him. Howard asked the first question that popped into his mind.

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  “Are you my mother?”

  “What?” responded the figure in a deep baritone in the only appropriate response to that question.

  “Well you see, I think I've just been born so you must be my mother. If you are my mother can we go get some food I'm kinda hungry, and don't say we have food at home, that sentence makes me angry for some reason.”

  “ This cweatuwe is NOT the Howowed One!” the masked figure proclaimed as he turned towards the masked throng. The figure it seemed had already written off Howard as a threat and had moved from fear and shock to anger. (This Creature is not the Hallowed One)

  “ Yes, I am. I’m not sure how I got here but I can say with at least 80% certainty that my name is Howard, and therefore the Howard one.” Howard said as he attempted to stand.

  “This Cweatuwe mocks us and has foiwed ouw pwans! Bwothews Seize this vile Cweatuwe!” (This creature mocks us and has foiled our plans! Brothers seize this vile creature!)

  Upon the utterance of this proclamation by the masked figure, Howard couldn't help but laugh. The lisp contrasting with the seriousness of the statement just made the whole situation ridiculous. It didn't help that Howard kept slipping in the extra-dimensional goop.

  “ I don't mean to be Wude but what's with the lisp, is no one else going to talk about this,” Howard said, exaggerating the figure's lisp. Howard thought he heard one of the robed figures chuckle at his exaggerated lisp, but the vast majority edged forward menacingly.

  As the masked figure stepped forward raising the sacrificial dagger over the prone Howard, with an enraged grunt.

  A loud pop echoed through the subterranean chamber. The portal seemed to have activated once again, as a miniature VW beetle the size of a small cat came flying out of the portal.

  The Beetle careened through the air as the shocked throng of masked figures watched in horror. The miniature beetle as if aimed flew directly into the face of the head cultist. Colliding with a loud painful sounding crack, the figure's mask cracked and was knocked over, apparently unconscious.

  Howard, who had been in the process of scrambling to his feet to avoid the dagger-wielding figure as the beetle slammed into the masked figure, once more lost his footing as he doubled over in laughter. For a brief time, the cavern was silent apart from Howard's cackles of hilarity. Eventually one of the figures with a more ornate mask and robe shook itself out of its stupor.

  “You heard the grandmaster seize the creature!” the lieutenant roared as he charged forward.

  As the shock broke from the throng, the Figures were seized with anger and charged forward after the lieutenant to seize the profane creature that had ruined months of preparations.

  “ oh shit! “ said Howard as he finally realized that these people did in fact plan to kill him.

  By this point, Howard had finally managed to maneuver into a somewhat upright position. Howard realized that he needed to make a break for it and tried to start running towards the far end of the cave. The little beetle that had followed Howard through the portal was once again at his heels, beeping its tiny horn merrily as he ran for the far end of the cave and the only visible exit.

  Howard felt something grab his arm as one of the figures in a gilded robe remembered its magic. A web of sticky silk had shot from the hand of the robed figure attaching itself to Howard's upper arm slowing his escape. Howard quickly looking back realized that the figure was standing roughly where he had initially sled to a stop at the feet of the man with the lisp. Remembering how difficult it had been for him to initially gain his footing, Howard jerked his arm forward, severing the webbing and yanking the cultist off of its feet and onto the ground directly in the path of the pursuing horde.

  Howard couldn't help laughing again as the cultist in a bid to avoid their downed lieutenant skidded in the goop that had presumably come from the portal and spread with Howard’s skid across the ground.

  The majority of the cultists eventually fell into the goop as they tried to avoid their fallen lieutenant. The cultist who had shot the webbing, while unsuccessful in completely stopping Howard, had slowed him down enough that a handful of cultists had made it to the far end of the cave, effectively cutting off Howard's easy escape. The cultist at the cave mouth began moving forward to further box him into the cave.

  Howard began to look around for a new escape route as the majority of the cultists continued to struggled to get up from where they had sprawled out on the ground in the slippery goop. Looking around the chamber Howard scanned over the remains of the array and settled on the massive pillars and stalagmites that climbed to the ceiling. Howard briefly considered climbing the pillars but was distracted by the beetle running into his shin and beeping. Finally gaining Howard's attention the Beetle flashed its lights as it turned towards the waterfall and beeped again.

  “You want me to try the waterfall?” Howard questioned the little car.

  The car beeped again in seeming affirmation and started accelerating away from him. Howard looked around again desperately looking for any other way out. But the rapidly recovering cultist, now covered in goop, convinced Howard that he had to try something.

  The little car had already reached the waterfall and had begun maneuvering its way up the rocks, miraculously the car had no issues negotiating the slippery rocks above the precipitous drop.

  Howard ran past the engooped cultists and dived at the waterfall clinging to the slippery mossy stone. As Howard began ascending, following the path of the little car clinging to what scarce handholds he could find. Howard could see the top of the waterfall and the sparkle of stars in the sliver of night sky narrowly visible above the waterfall.

  Howard could almost taste the fresh air as the little car beeped impatiently. The slippery rocks were difficult to handholds to climb on so the going was slow, despite the added pressure of the cultist's rapid approach.

  Howard had all but reached the top when he felt something latch onto his back. Looking back Howard recognized the figure of the gilded-robed Lieutenant. The lieutenant had once again shot webs that had attached to Howard's mid back, right between his shoulder blades. The Lieutenant began to tug on the webs. Howard desperately clung to the slippery rocks as the Lieutenant continued to tug at the ropes as the Lieutenant called for more cultists to join him.

  With one massive tug from the Lieutenant and cultist who had at this point recovered from the goop and grabbed onto the web line, Howard found himself plunging rapidly into the dark chasm below.