“Wake up, dog, you have something very important, dog.”
The hot and rancid breath of the voice stirred Maeve awake more than its weasley tone. Her eyes opened, and she couldn’t help but gag.
Inches away from her was a face, but not good; the outward layer said ‘bird’ but the hypodermis screamed ‘man.’ Its feathers were dark blue, faded… stained. Its face sported sickly neon-yellow eyes and a bright matching beak. A row of sharp teeth lined a mouth behind the beak – not inside, but behind – in various rotting shades of yellow and green. She could faintly see something that wasn’t a tongue writhe in the dark oral hole.
The monster was hunched over her, talons gripping the armrests, “Ah! Rise and shine, dog, we’re happy to have you, dog, we’re going on a trip, dog, Route 66, dog.” The monster leaped back from the armrests of her chair, its head directly impacting a dropped ceiling that forced its skull into its ribcage as it landed in an undignified heap.
‘Well,’ Maeve thought, ‘that’s that, I suppose.’ She glanced around the moderately-sized room: the yellow walls and a purple ceiling seemed similar to a young prince’s playroom, but the lack of windows made it feel closer to a jail cell. Nearby tables, low to the ground, had on them sketch books with multi-colored sticks laying by. A rotten cake with burnt out candles stuck in it laid on one of the bales. In the middle of the room was a strange box emitting light and noise on its right side, which faced what Maeve could only describe as a ‘wide-chair.’ On it was a large magenta, mass of feathers. With every heave of its body it let out an annoyed sigh, as though it could only barely be bothered to respirate.
Across the room from Maeve was a wooden door, with a few mushrooms sprouted from the floorboards by it, bobbing to a noiseless tune. She leaned side to side in an imitation of their tempo, before realizing she was stuck to the chair. Her limbs were all strapped tight, each tied down with a different material (zipped tied, rope, spider web, something green). It was tight. So tight. She rocked side to side. No luck. She rocked a bit harder. Same as before. Maeve clicked her tongue.
She looked over at the mass on the wide-chair. “Hey.” It didn’t move. “Hey!”
The thing writhed in irritation, “What?” Its voice was shrill and whiny.
“Can you untie me?” Maeve’s tone was casual, with a hint of sweetness.
“Why?”
“So I can dance with the mushrooms,” she really just wanted to stretch her legs. Maeve’s body felt sore, and the grogginess of her head was soon replaced by a dull ache.
The magenta bird raised its head, which was nearly identical to the corpse aside from the color, “Dancing’s too distracting.” It settled its head back down, “You’ll probably break the floor or make the room smell.”
A buzzing noise drew Maeve’s attention. She looked at the blue man-bird’s body, its chest vibrating. Squelching, followed by soft moaning as its head pushed its way out of its neck hole with a pop. The creature rose like a zombie, before whipping its head around with that same grotesque grin. “What a blessing, dog, a gift from above, dog.” It laid a taloned foot on the armrest and tipped the chair back slightly, “Not many Outdoors here, dog,” it leaned in, breath like month old breakfast, “But you, dog, you smell like a living Outdoor, dog. You’re a key, dog, a key with a pulse and sartorius muscles, dog, but a key nonetheless, dog.”
Wizards carried a reputation for being stoic and cold, often stereotyped as prioritizing rationality over feeling. This stemmed from the art of sorcery being frustratingly intricate: “the language of magic” was not an idiom, and idioms were reviled for their unpredictability. Generalities and simple words were easy enough for any untrained thaumaturge to perform, but the more specific the desired result, the more specific one had to be in their phrasing. Syntax, pragmatics, formal semantics: a wizard must be aware of all of these when working. This was why an unfocused mind couldn’t effectively cast magic (as well as the fact that a pissed off wizard is more likely to throw a chair at you than a fireball). Due to this, registered wizards are granted great psychotherapy options by the state.
As Maeve focused on clearing her mind, the man-bird let go of her chair and continued to ramble, “Business has grown stagnant, dog. All our customers have either left or hate us, dog. We need to find new people to hate us, dog.”
Of course, no wizard could truly be a logical entity 100% of the time: they were all people, with their own desires and personalities and quirks. So when put into a stressful situation or one they were unprepared for, wizards default to a handful of incantations they have memorized. These are typically multi-purpose spells, such as shifting the gravitational direction of the caster, or transforming certain parts of their body. One’s body was a constant, so quick-and-ready spelled focus on the self.
Maeve whispered under her breath and her limbs began shrinking and receding into her torso, slipping through the bindings. She had no idea what this thing was talking about, but it certainly seemed passionate. It acted creepy, but if it wanted to harm her then it would have done so by now.
Two blunt, boney slabs swing down and slice the chair in threes. The two sides fell away and left a perfect outline of Maeve’s torso. The blue-bird clicked its teeth together and cocked its head, “Huh, I usually struggle with this part.”
Given how cold her blood became, the sensation of her limbs popping back out felt like a four-way rush of icy water.
“Ah I see now! Sleight of hand, dog, illusory parlor tricks, dog.” It bent backwards and oscillated its head, producing a forced imitation of a laugh. “I’ve met many a magician with fat of ass, but never one who blew gas with such viscosity, dog.”
The fear of death seized her. Any attempt at calculated planning was swept up in the storm of anxiety and instinctual alarm whose runoff dribbled out of Maeve’s mouth as quiet stammering. Focusing on the guided lighthouse that yelled LIFE, Maeve thought of only one word: ‘Back.’
From the blue-bird’s perspective, Maeve suddenly rushed backwards into the far wall with force. From Maeve’s perspective, she fell onto the new floor, with the remains of the chair not breaking enough of her fall. She rolled to her side, groaning as she stood before yelping from the bone slabs impaling the wall beneath her. “Come on, dog, we’re going on a trip, dog, you need to fit in the suitcase, dog.”
She tumbled back – avoiding an upward swing – her orientation shifted again to match her attacker. The boney paddles swung down on the wizard, only to bounce off from striking her new tortoise shell.
Maeve afforded a nanosecond of respite before the alarming pain of talons dug into the shell’s gaps, “I love opening these!” it shrieked. “It’s always so messy, dog.”
Maeve spotted the door and shifted her gravity, shooting like a cannonball that destroyed the TV and embedded itself in the wall. “Hey,” the magenta-bird whined, “I was watching that. Why do all my favorite shows get canceled?”
Maeve poked her head out and found the outside was even stranger. A huge vertical shaft, doors and other holes lining the walls randomly, a patchwork of inconsistent architectural styles held together by melted seams. Floors above and beneath her divided the sections of the shaft, but without any consistent structures for traversing besides gaps in the floors and a melted diagonal pillar of trash ahead of her. The stench of vomit and bad memories made her eyes water.
The blue-bird shook its companion, “Get up, dog, we’re going on the road, dog.”
“Leave me alone. You always do this.”
Maeve rolled out of the wall hole as her body became normal, and sprinted to the trash pillar. She looked behind her to see the blue-bird waddling in her direction; choosing the first spell that came to her mind, Maeve shot large, metal jacks onto its path to slow it. The monster failed to flinch as the jacks pierced its talons; it fell on its stomach and slithered towards Maeve, smiling.
She glanced up at the top of the shaft; a blueish-gray sky looked back down. With a grin, Maeve’s wings grew large as she launched up into the air.
Down below, the twin aberrations stared at their fleeing prey. “We’re fat, dog, much too fat for that, dog.” It reached into the magenta-bird’s rectum, who let out a squawk as a screaming, ossified sea cucumber with a man’s face was ripped out.
“OH FUCK NO PUT ME BACK IN THE OVEN IT’S TOO BRIGHT I’M UNDERCOOKED I’M NOT DONE FUCK PUT ME BACK IN I’M A LITTLE BABY I NEED MORE TIME GOD NO I’M UNDERCOOKED–” A snap of its midsection silenced its cries, as the scent of its body wafted over to a large burrow in the shaft. A white, draconic serpent covered in cloth slithered out, sniffing the air as it smacked its tongue against its scaly jowls, “BONES.”
The magenta-bird’s whines were long and drawn out, “Aurgh, knock it off… I’m 63 YEARS OLD!” The blue-bird dragged the other by the leg as it hopped onto the rising serpent.
Flying seemed like the optimal choice to Maeve in the moment, but after not even a minute in she was reminded of the painful reality that she did not work out enough to actually do this. As her arms grew heavy and her stomach tightened in nausea, she made a side dive maneuver and crashed into a nearby lawn ornament shrine.
Gasping for breath, as well as coughing from the dusted cloud, Maeve failed to notice the heavy breath above her until she looked up. Had she been born in the timeline where Horse Pharoah Tim failed to assassinate Luther Abraxas before he could invent the first automobile, Maeve would have identified the metal beast looming over her as a zombie car. Its undercarriage was disemboweled, revealing a razor sharp tungsten ribcage. The muscles attached to the spokes sported a gangrene coloration. It stared down at the wizard, dimmed headlights an eerie tone, before glancing over at the then ruined shrine; the gnome-like skeleton of the previous car-owner toppled out from the dust.
The undead automobile tossed Maeve a car fob, and popped open its driver’s seat door, “Street… Law…” it croaks.
None of these subtleties registered for Maeve, so she assumed this was some esoteric dueling code and promptly backed away before it could engage. A pale, scaly wall flashed in between the two, dragging out a clump of plastic flamingos in its maw and swallowed. The sight of the blue-bird perched atop the serpent’s head was like that of a bargain bin Veðrfölnir and eagle.
“Look there, dog, that’s the ball, dog. Try not to eat too much, dog, or we’ll have to cut you up, dog.” It swayed side-to-side mirthfully as the serpent poised for another strike.
Maeve felt a rush around her, a moment after she blinked and found herself in the driver’s seat of the car, the sound of crunching trash behind her. The car rode up the walls, digging into the miscellaneous material with spiked wheels and biting through the floors with ghostly teeth. Swerving left to right as the serpent smashed into its path.
Upon recognition of her new companion, Maeve took a moment to formulate. She was in someone else’s hands, so it was only right to help out with her own somehow. Presets. Practiced. Offense: summoning slimes, fired lightning, frost…
Fireballs. A bomb.
She held a hand out the window, mentally repeated the words before focusing on what they actually meant. Flames curled out from her palm, twirling above the skin, a ball of hot energy. With a turn of the wrist she released the payload on her crazed pursuers– and an explosion of several times more magnitude greeted her back. The car blasted upwards from the force, shooting out the hole like a projectile turd.
It landed on the slag-like ground with a jostle, soot coating the hull and Maeve’s arm. She sat stiff, letting the seconds of the preceded event catch up to her spinning mind. “Was… am I bad at math?”
Driving on the open road is often a transient affair, leaving plenty of room for the mind to wander and self-reflect. Maeve’s memory was blurry, but grew clearer as she focused. She was working on her thesis project: recording the geology of the Feywild to compare with that of her world. Her friend Alcina was there. Alcina was helping out with the portal since her major was Heavenly Logistics, so she had more experience with these things.
Maeve and Alcina recited the incantations, defining the aspects of the dimensional gate. Portal magic was like a question rather than a statement: the destination was the answer, and so you made your query as specific as possible to get the answer you wanted. Maeve’s recollection was hazy on the specifics. Alcina knew what she was doing so she followed her lead. Glyphs placed, spells spoken. Some of the meanings flew over her head, but Alcina’s understanding would make up for them. The portal shimmered. She walked through the gate and…
The large bruise on her head told the rest of the story quite well.
The car made a sharp turn as one of the ruined buildings crawled into its path. These skyscraper mimics served as good warning systems for the fired vents littering the ground; they seemed to know when a vent was about to flare up, and moved to sit on them, letting the flames travel up their concrete intestines and out their windows and mouths.
The zombie car wasn’t the most knowledgeable source of information, all things considered: its memories consisted mostly of what maneuvers or turns it performed in the past, however it had picked up on a few things while eavesdropping. 1) If crossing into other realms was traversing an established road, then this world was where you go when you march off the beaten path. Serving as the dreg heap of countless other universes, all manner of lost and unwanted things have ended up here. 2) Fire was a constant here. It billowed up from the core of this world, shaping the land and granting life. When asked what the source of the fire was, the car replied, “Some guy who died I think.”
Maeve sunk into her seat as she realized she was the one who messed up making the portal.
The signature lead them to a non-living tower half sunken into the ground. As the car waited outside, Maeve delved into the interior. Its construction was reminiscent of the gothic style popular during the Age of Turmoil, and the layout supported that observation. Full of snaking corridors and broken traps, it invoked the sensibilities of the shogun-warlocks of that era. The corpses littering the building echoed signs of conflict, climaxing in a band of petrified bodies within a ruined armory. Normally, the warlock of a tower made their residence at the very top. The massive hole in the ceiling, traveling several floors up, illuminated why the former-owner was located here.
Arms raised in defiance, face a mixture of shock and anger, the warlock’s corpse stood as a testament to his demise. Black crystals jutted from his eye sockets, his skin a hardened gray. Maeve noticed the figure bore a striking resemblance to Markus the Butcher from that era, though the details of his death differ greatly from what was shown here.
The signature directs her further down. The placement of the portal felt odd, but everything in this world felt odd so it was likely par for the course. Afterall, Maeve woke up in a deep shaft, so the two bird monsters might’ve moved her to another section of the underground. But if that was the case, and the “Outdoor” they mentioned referred to the portal, why did they move her so far away from it? Actually, given all their talk of “roadtrips” and travel, Maeve thought it was safe to say they just found her and were planning on heading to the portal.
As the lights spilled out from the cracks in the walls grew less plentiful, Maeve cast a large candle light to illuminate her way. The soft flame crackles — and twin streams of fire shoot out from the mass. Maeve stumbled back with a yelp as she dissipated the snaking flames.
Footsteps from down the hall grew louder. Like a child not wanting to be caught awake, Maeve scrambled and hid in a nearby locker as two unfamiliar figures entered the room.
One wore a thick, white coat that reached his ankles, and gripped a metal staff with an odd catalyst of circles and semicircles. This was actually the second thing Maeve noticed through the keyhole, as her eyes were immediately drawn to the metal box in place of the man’s head. On its, maybe, forehead were the words “AC Unit, 40% off.” Behind them was a figure bearing exact resemblance to the classical Grim Reaper. Red eyes glowed from the darkness of his hood, skeletal hands holding a scythe. Though something about their weapon cried fake, and their movements were punctuated by a soft whirring sound.
The AC magi stood in the doorway, scanning the room with a tense posture; the reaper unsubtly broke the silence, “We will own… the Nights! (Find something?)”
The magi’s shoulders slouched in irritation, a cold sigh blew through his vent, “No… but it would serve us well to be diligent while we’re here. We don’t know who, or what, else received the ping.”
“Your soul is mine. (Realistically, probably everyone important in a 3 horizon radius.)” The reaper moved past him, “We shall roam among the living. (Like, everytime this happens it’s a free-for-all.)”
Maeve mentally reviewed her spell. None of the words were fumbled, she had done it the exact same way she had always done it, so why did… oh, of course. Fire is literally baked into the fabric of this realm. That’s why her fire magic kept acting strange.
“Yes, but I doubt people like the Orange Band or Trixie Staves know how to track the signal of an Outdoor. Realistically, the majority are headed where the Outdoor was, not where it is.” The magi inspected the petrified heroes.
His companion leaned on the far wall, “Hurhurhurhur. (Yeah, that’s true. What did King Sam say he wants the Outdoor for?)”
“If possible, an avenue for trading. Assuming the natives are non-hostile.”
That was probably also why her lightning spells kept missing the manta ray that attacked the car; lightning used heat and could birth fire. This world had a different system of magic: the reason her spells kept being misinterpreted is because it’s a different language.
“We shall roam among the living. (And assuming we can even separate the Outdoor from this place.)”
“It’s only drawn to this tower because it shares a similar universe frequency. It’s different enough where it’s not terribly strong.”
She could try experimenting with different spells, to see what they did and take notes of patterns. Though that ran the risk of them harming her. Well… the bomb was the only one that almost hurt her, and the candle just startled her. As long as she stuck to small utility spells, the chance of her getting hurt was probably– The cabinet door opened, the reaper squatting in front, “Your soul is mine. (…Hi?)”
The far wall exploded inwards, as a cacophony of raspy voices cackled through the dust. Winged simians with wiry bodies made of castlestone, their heads great fireballs that wore unwelcome expressions. “This is an eviction notice,” one stepped forward, “there’s been a fire in the building, and you’re looking at it.”
The magi’s throat whirred as it coughed out the dust, “What are… wait, you’re part of BrambleBeard’s old crew. Wasn’t your leader devoured by a chimera?”
“‘Devour’ is too narrow when it comes to these beasties. We consider it more of eh…” The stone floor cracked under new weight. Fiery heads casting a towering silhouette. A pair of hoofprints stamped into the ground as it marched forward. Body upright, leonine fur transitioning into the scales of its massive pangolin claws. Scales reached down the back to a serpent-headed tail. Its terrible wings batted away the dust, revealed a man-beast faced silhouetted by a lion mane. A saiga antelope head rested on the nape of the neck, spewing fire from its nostrils. “Upgrade.”
“Ah. That explains how you were able to find the Outdoor.” The magi stamped his staff on the floor, a gust of chilled air blew around him, “But I’m afraid that’s where your escapade ends.”
Another monkey stepped forward, “Aw, poor widdle death wardens, thinking they’re hot shit. Heheheheh. Well, more like frozen turds.”
“We will own… the Nights! (Did you read that from a comeback book?)” The reaper assumed a fighting stance, his plastic scythe dripped with frost.
In a flash the two parties rushed one another, exchanging claw and blade. Frigid spectral slashes struck at the steaming bodies, returned in kind with an inferno of heat.
Seizing this opportunity, Maeve hopped out the cabinet and scrambled towards the dark stairway like a dog on ice.
“Opp, we got a runner!” A trio of monkeys swoop down the passage in pursuit. Their flaming melons lit the stairs just enough for Maeve to know that she had to run faster.
The stone creatures called those other two “death wardens.” And if fire in this world means life…
Maeve slammed into the wall with a sharp left turn, the monkeys crashing into it as well. Maeve spun on her heels, “How about you guys… chill out?” Maeve sprayed at the group – and produced sleet from her fingers which evaporated upon contact.
Ah.
She barreled further down, gaining on her. ‘What about a campfire?’ She laid one behind her while running – ‘Wait shit’ – it erupted in an inferno, enveloping the monkeys. Their laughter distorts, halting their chase. Maeve continued running, then slowed down to observe. ‘Huh,’ she thought, ‘I guess all it took was a little-’ A long monster bursted from the flame, the monkeys connected ass-to-neck like a human-centipede as they sped down the stairs.
Maeve toppled over the railing in surprise, before curling into a ball with a rubber shell to break the impact. She landed and bounced in the air, before releasing and falling with a splat. She got up and looked around: the hard dirt beneath her was a section of upturned ground surrounding the base of the tower, which hung precariously in the air. Above her was the solid dome of the sky, the lowered portion of the tower stuck out from it. Strange detritus orbited the building: the head of a dragon skeleton; a screaming man covered in grease; and her goal, the portal.
A crash sounded behind her. The stone monstrosity creped towards her, its head a blank ball of orange and red. Suddenly a thing like a blue missile launched headfirst at the creature’s side, flinging it off the edge. The thing rose to its feet, charred feathers ruffled, “Hello again, dog, fancy meeting you here, dog.”
“I…” Maeve moved her hands around herself, struggling for an accurate expression, “Who even are you!”
“Eggs Benedict.”
A louder crash sounded behind it. The chimera bounded towards them, covered in black marks and its antelope headed frozen solid. With this placement, Maeve invoked a technique her father taught her many years ago: she manifested a giant frying pan and smacked the bird-man into the chimera’s mouth.
Flames vomited from the snake’s gullet, the chimera’s body glowed and swelled – culminating in an explosion of blinding fire. The smoke cleared, and revealed a pair of reptilian cat-men with upright horns.
One picked up the bisected corpse of the bird-man. “Is this food?”
“No, that’s a cigar,” the other replied.
Neither noticed the wizard girl plunge off the edge and into the portal.
Maeve launched out the gate, which closed behind her. She landed with a pose, covered in dirt and sweat.
“Are you okay?” Alcina asked, worry in her voice. “You were gone for a while.”
“Fuck my thesis, I'm taking a bath.”