The Desert of Dimensions

Chapter One:


The sand stretched as far as I could see, the sun surprisingly mild for a land so devoid of life. But it was not the temperature that made the land so barren and uninhabitable.

Five lightly-armoured soldiers trudged through the sand with me, all bearing the symbol of the King of Eraenor on their chest-plates, cracked and dented. I had led the team of scouts through the wasteland, a band of veterans the King sent on a vital mission so far South. We were hundreds of miles beyond the Southern front lines, and further still from our homes.

I hand-signaled a stop, the men immediately dropped down onto the sand. The dunes were as large as hills, and twice as steep — good for cover, bad for moving. The ravines between the dunes were deep enough to be cool and shadowed at the bottom, but water was mowhere to be seen. I pushed my head closer to the sand. Group of people ahead, especially rare fauna for these parts.

"Einhart!" One of them called. The sign.

"Tavern!" I called back. The countersign. Of course they were part of our platoon. Humans are precariously endangered. They were Rain's group, I realized, Rain another man that had joined with me, and in my adventures party beforehand, and speculated as an unarmed monk before that, due to his refusal to speak. He was a thin, with man of fair height, windswept and dusty at the best of times, incredibly reliable and inventive. The cloth trick bag over his shoulder contained all kinds of bits and baubles that exploded or melted, cured and enhanced. Any trick for any pinch, it seemed. My squad stood up and moved to meet them, soldiers from each group searching each other for wounds, looking for missing people. There than fifty of us out here so far from home, it's us against the world. There were no supply lines that stretch out that far on this operation directly sanctioned by the King. Even the men who had quarrels with each other had set them aside in favor of working together. The constant fear of death in a largely unknown land is a real motivator.

"Anything?" I ask Rain, the other team leader. He shakes his head. Rain is a mute, a fact he makes up for by being on of the best fighters in our company, especially with bow and arrow.

"The only thing alive out here is us. This place is a deadland." Catcher speaks for him, a stout swordsman. Trust him to start brewing some sort of alcoholic swill if we stop anywhere for more than a week. I never figured out where he got the ingredients. We call him Catcher because he seems to get an arrow stuck in him in every major battle we fight. We are not a particularly sensitive bunch.

"Alright, let's head back to camp. Jace'll be waiting on our report." Rain nods, and forms up his group behind mine. Out of nowhere, the clear sky cracked and opened up as it began to pour rain impossibly. The sky was so seemingly sunny and devoid of clouds until the lightning flashed. Somehow it changed the sky and massive grey clouds cover the landscape like pulling a play curtain. Don't ask me about the logic of this land, I don't think there is any. I looked to the men, began fussing over this or that like a good Sergeant.

"Keep your spacing. Tomlin, tighten up on the left flank. Fox, bow ready on the right side."

"Expecting trouble?" Rain communicated with a system of hand communication I had learned din his days adventuring with Jace and I.

"Just a bad feeling." I signaled back. Something about this desert makes me feel like an ant in a sandbox, like something massive and terrible waslooking down at me from the cosmos. My mind just couldn’t justify why the weather is so different in this land than our homeland not five hundred miles North. But I had to keep my cool for the rest of them, lest panic spread. I flexed open and closed my hand a few times, thumbing the rune cut into my palm to calm myself. Though we might've been prey by the laws of nature, I reminded myself we were prey that fought back, as we had so many times before. Orcs, Minotaurs, vampires, humans. Eldritch Horrors beyond our understanding. I couldn't say won everytime, but we were all somehow still alive through some sly trick or another. Or perhaps just the comedic timing of fate.

On the right of the column, thirty or forty miles to the North-West, Lightning flared around a group of mountains. It was distant enough I couldn't worry much, the lightning appeared thin and weak, nothing like the grand bolts that leveled mountains every once in a while and set entire forests ablaze at once. It struck furiously at the dark granite mountainside, like fingers trying to catch a hold. Fragments of rock exploded where it hit.

"Hey! Did you see that?" One of the men pointed something out about the lightning. I cat hear what he's saying over the thunderous downpour making its way towards us.

Lightning in the South comes in long streaks that appear to come from beyond the clouds. With such a huge planet such as it was, the sky was proportionately sized. Astronomers had often said we were the largest planet ever sighted by telescope, magical or otherwise. The invisible clouds overhead were typical rain clouds, grey nimbus clouds. Above them, on a bad day, lay the larger grey and black clouds that spout hurricanes and lightning. The bolts come from far up in those clouds, and strike with concussive force where they hit.

"Again! There!" Yelled the same man. Several tired others hush him, annoyed with his contradicting energy. But I thought I saw, just for a moment, a humanoid figure in the lightning.







Chapter Two:


The massive sandy-yellow dunes started to recede in favour of low grasslands as we moved farther East and we were permitted a cool breeze for the first time in weeks. My neck cooled nicely as our mounted column of fifteen made its way through grass perhaps never stepped on before by a living creature.


“Our third scout, Roman, took the lead. Though not a tracker, but his navigation skills were unmatched. He spent time sailing as a merchant, where he learned to read stars and charts. Not only that, but he boasted a near perfect memory. I'd have him look over Tomlins map when it was done. Our other scouts Copper and Hunt followed close behind him, watching the sky for giant birds, lizards, or other terrors that would make short work of us fine gentlemen. A younger Corporal by the name of Fox walked up ahead of me, his bow attached to the front of his saddle ready for quick use. The yellow-brown sheen of the wood shimmers dimly in the morning light.

Tomlin was the smallest of us, both in height and mass. He was also the youngest in the platoon at sixteen years old, though he'd been in the Kings Army with us since he was fourteen. A sword and shield made up his arsenal, the shield a hand-me-down from his fathers days in the military. I didn't like putting him on the frontlines when I could help it, but I needed his mapping skills. Anyway, he had to learn sometime.
After riding in silence for a moment, Roman sniffed deeply. I raised an eyebrow, look at him quizzically. I was too aware of my own stench to bother sniffing much myself.

"Smells like... Salt."

Passing some grassy hills ahead gave us a clear view of the largest water body I've ever seen, the same coastline as Eraenor but far deeper South. The cloudless sea extends out of sight, maybe forever. My guess is there isn't enough time left in my lifetime to make it to the other side. The thought bends the limits of human comprehension. Not even in decades of sailing would a ship reach the other continents some claimed existed, or anything but a few squat islands or rock pyres. There is beauty in the unknown, but also great danger. The leviathan beasts of the sea would devour a ship long before it made it even a year into sailing.

My perpetual headache wentaway momentarily, and the dull feeling in my stomach loosened up. My heart tells me I've lived this scene by the sea already, and I feel closer to the memory then ever before. My head tells me I've never been further from that place, and, most likely, will never see it again.

Sometimes in the depths of ones own mind a man can find solace, with no regard to time or space, no limit to imagination. I closed my eyes for a moment, and lived another life. One smelling of the scent of lavender, far away from the bad things in the world.

Celestia, what the hell did I get myself into?




— — —
-Two Years Prior-

Year 878, Month of Harvest.
Outskirts of the City of Callesus.

Farmers toiled in the coloured fields, and the air around me bore the scent of cooked pumpkin pie. Soon the trees would lose their leaves and the weather would turn cold. Soon I'd be back on the job. My mind was elsewhere, for once. I pawed my collar anxiously --- when was the last time I'd worn formal attire instead of a combat uniform? I couldn't recall. This get-up cost me almost a months salary, but it would be worth it in the end.

The winding path took me to the source of the pumpkin smell, a small farmhouse on the edge of a primeval forest wrought with massive-growth trees, mushroom circles, the whole lot. I spent a portion of my childhood here after my uncle was employed elsewhere by the King, and I found a job guarding a certain Baron's daughter. Some of the fields were bare, rotating the fielda to allow for the soil to regain its nutrients while others sprouted corn and wheat and barley. I passed a scarecrow on my way to the house, rocking gently with the breeze. The trees around the fields did the same, giving birth to an ambience of rustling leaves and the chirps of birds, ravens and song birds fighting for acoustic dominance. If there were sights like this on the Southern frontlines, or the Western frontier colonies, or the Northern ice fields, there'd be no wars.

I knocked on the front door. A face looked through a side window, followed by excited footsteps before the doors burst open. A slightly older women with grey hair stood on the other side. She was covered in what looked like cooking attire — an apron and slippers and the works. She wore a broad smile radiating warmth and surprise. I bowed curtly, entirely sure I looked ridiculous with my stiff soldier posture.
"Good morning my Lady." I said, and immediately realized no formalities were necessary. The elder lady was greatly pleased to see me.

"Griff! Is that really you? Oh come in! Come in my boy. Percy! Griff is here!"

Heavier footsteps came towards the door. The womans husband stood two feet taller than me, but always wore an expression of kindness and caring.
"Thank the King you're alright." He smiled just as broadly as his wife. "We were told you were coming, Luna made your favourite meal just for you."

"Pumpkin pie?" The smile felt odd on my face, but I wore it geniunely. These people were family, in essence. They cared about me like I was their son. My mind didn't — and still dosen't — quite know how to process and accept that. My own parents had passed shortly after my birth, and I'd been largely on my own ever since save for monetary support from my uncle, though as an esteemed scholar and professor he was constantly employed elsewhere by the King.

"You know it." Luna, the wife nodded proudly. "You've got a good nose for food. Now come in! Come in!"
I followed close behind while they talked of the latest harvest, their new-born calf, and all the excitements of the last year. We sat in the living room, which bore a rocking chair and a couch padded by homemade cushions. When Luna left briefly to check on the pie, Percy leaned in a little closer from his chair. He spoke in a quieter tone.

"The frontlines — has it been bad?"
I nodded solemnly, my voice changed as if I was briefing a Commander of the situation. Percy was in fact a retired Captain of the Kings Cavalry. "They're not raiding as clans anymore, these are deliberate attacks. We haven't seen anything like it before."

"What does Damien think?"

Damien, my uncle, is the only legitimate blood-family that I have. He took me in after my parents were murdered on the Western frontier, cared for me and educated me. He's also the smartest man I know, a scholar of the University of Rygen. His papers help build new theories and test our knowledge of previously accepted facts. His main focus as of my latest deployments has been the Orcs.

"He's not sure. The month of the Red Moon is too far away for it to be connected with the mutations. They're moving strategically all of a sudden, like they actually have a plan. It's — "

He hushed me with a finger. Luna entered the room not five seconds later with the soul-warming pie between crocheted oven mitts. She placed it on a dark wood plate on the living room table in front of me, its tendrils of steam wrapping themselves around me lovingly. I might have drooled.

"Eat up child! You must be hungry from the walk here."

I was. I ate happily, filling myself while we talked until I was full, and then some. I leaned back on the couch, nourished and content. So content was I, that I didn't notice the light footsteps coming in through the door. I heard the soft voice before I could see the girl. She spoke like an ocean breeze, setting me at ease when she spoke. I will not deny that when I suffer the shakes in combat, I imagine her voice in my head.

"Aunt Luna, have you seen my..." Her voice trailed off when our eyes locked. I was dumbstruck, though I had expected her to be there. How can a girl disarm me more easily than an army of Orcs?
Her long golden blonde hair fell around her head, a few hairs straying away with the Harvest-breeze. Her eyes were blue like mine, but where mine were a weak pale hers radiated with life. Her skin was light and faintly sunkissed on her neck, arms and legs. Lady of a Noble house she might be, but she worked the field as well as any farm hand.

I stood up to face her. I was positive Luna and Percy were smiling behind me. Jace wasn't the only one who wanted me to marry Celestia. It's strange, a half-educated military dog like me being pushed to marry a noble daughter like her. I guess life gave me a lot of luck all at once to account for giving me shit in everything else.

"You two catch up. Percy and I will gather the crops." Luna laughed knowingly, then walked out. Percy patted me on the shoulder, then followed his wife. It was just Celestia and I now. She wore the surprised look still. In my hindsight, which is always flawless, I probably should've written ahead.

"Hey." I offered. It'd been a year and a half since I'd seen her last and hey was the best I could come up with. Clearly I am a scholar in language studies.


She clung onto to me instantly, head buried in the groove of my neck. I wrapped my arms around her and leaned my head onto hers, smelling her flowery scent. She was silent for a moment, then buried her head further and took a few deep breaths. I could feel moisture running down my neck.

"I'm so sorry." I whispered. She sobbed even harder. I held her for some time before she recovered and we sat down on the couch.

"I thought you were..." She sniffed and didn't finish her sentence.

"I promised you I'd come back." I reminded her.

"I know." She smiled. We both blushed slightly as we realized how close proximity we were to each other. Officially speaking, we weren't dating, but neither of us had courted anyone else in the time we'd known each other. Or ever. It took me too long to realize that her reason for that was the same as mine. Still, neither of us had made the move. Between my deployments and her traveling around cities with her father (when she wasn't staying at her Aunts) we didn't have a lot of time together. She sat back and looked at me. Her eyes could have melted steel.

"How've you been? I've heard terrible things about the South."

"It's been bad." I admitted. "They could make a big push soon, it's got everyone on edge." I looked away instinctively.

"I can tell." She said quietly. She could read me better than I could. Sometimes I think she can read my mind.

"Sorry." I offered geniunely. The battles we'd fought and people we'd lost hadn't left my mind. I doubted they ever would. There is Orc handiwork I've seen that I will remember for eternity.

She put her hand on my chin and made me look at her.

"You're back now, and I won't let you leave until you absolutely have to." She was serious. I knew she was, but my mind lingered on ways she'd make me stay. Call me a pig. I'd been isolated from civilization for a year and a half, and she had always been stunningly beautiful, since she’d walked into that tavern and introduced herself to me all those years ago.

She recognized the look in my eye, and giggled as I blushed. I smiled at her. How did I deserve something like this in my life? She could have some rich noble boy who makes a hundred times what I make and has an estate. Nope. Instead she settles for a troubled soldier who only comes by every so often.

Jace says I have the problem of only appreciating what I have in hindsight. I know he's right, I just can't accept having a good life. Maybe when I'm an old prune I'll find peace in the quiet life.

"Want to go for a walk?" She asked. I nodded. I could hear Jace's voice in the back of my head asking how two twenty-three year olds like us haven't kissed yet.

Yeah. I'm pretty much the master of procrastination.

We walked along the fields until we came to a deciduous forest trail, and took that path until we came to a small lake. Large stones protruded around parts of the lake, a sandy thumb of beach touching the half of the shore closest to us. We sat on the sand as we had a hundred times before, as we had in our childhood when we lived nearby. Albeit that was considerably different than current times. I had grown from a cursed child into a hardened soldier, and she had become one of the fairest nobles in the land. She was kind and thoughtful to her people, a spitting image of her mother. Her father advised the King on matters of state, though he too approved of their relationship by some strange gods whims. Griff had always looked out for her, and saved her life a time or two as well. Celestial once did a stint as an adventurer too, they had met when she joined his party on some frantic adventure. His life had been much improved ever since.

"How's Jace?"

"Good, he hasn't changed much. What about you? Your uncle Percy told me you'd be here for Harvest."

She nodded, shrugged. "Just got bored of the big cities. It's no fun alone."

"Yeah, sorry about that." I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly. I never liked leaving her alone, father's goons guarding her or not.

"Don't apologize. You're busy saving the world." She reassured me. "I'm not a fragile little girl anymore, you know..." I suspected she was implicating more than just reassurance, but like I said: days in the field will null a man’s social mind.

"I just feel bad leaving you all alone. It's my fault for signing up for all these deployments anyway, I... What're you doing?"

She'd taken my left hand and pressed it over her heart. The blood rune tingled as it made contact with the skin through her shirt. She locked eyes with me, but not in a fierce way. She wasn't challenging me — it was to prove a point.

"If I thought you wanted to hurt me, would I let you do this?" She pressed my hand against her chest. I cleared my mind.

"No."

"And if I didn't trust you completely, would I give you the chance to take my life like this in an instant?" She was right. From that position it would take almost no effort for the blood rune to stop her heart. All I'd have had to do was think "push", and use maybe an ounce of my own blood, instantly taken.

"No, you wouldn't." I was uncomfortable with the rune touching her. I had killed many things with it, and now held it against my greatest treasure. Celestia didn't seem to care how many lives had been taken by the red script, she'd treat itas a part of me, which I guess was true to some extent.

She nodded, and leaned in closer to solidify her point.

"Then don't be sorry. You're a goddamn hero Griff. You're my goddamn hero. Don't be sorry for doing your job." She spoke firmly but softly. She wasn't angry, she was determined. She was right too, and I knew she was.

"You're right." I moved my hand and wrapped her in a tight hug once more. Should I have kissed her then? On the lakeside? Under a beautiful afternoon sun? Yeah. Did I? Not a chance. That pretty much sums up our whole relationship: us giving ourselves hardship for no reason other than to make it easier on the other when one of us leaves. Fate is a cold-hearted bitch.

But I can't put her through the pain of loving an active-duty soldier. The pain would be too much if I was killed. No. At least this way she can love another, someday… Gods, I can't think about that.

My head hurts again. What's that? Who's calling me?





Chapter Three: The World-Bridge


"Boss, you hear me?" Fox nodded at me from his horse. I broke my trance to listen.

"No, what was that?"

"I said there's tracks down the beach. Big tracks. Coming from the water."

"From the water? Fuck. Alright I don't want a repeat of Millondrias, twenty meter spacing facing the water. This might be what we're looking for." We had lost a quarter of our company crossing the Bladed Sea off the Millondrian coast, all seasoned vets wiped in almost an instant by an infuriated magic creature. Things I don't want to recall. Too gruesome and fresh in my mind.

Our thirteen men stand behind Rain and I in a staggered line formation down the beach. I look at Rain and nod. He pulls an arrow black as charcoal from his pack. Some thin tube is attached to the bottom of it. He notches his bow towards the sea and looks at me again. Ready? I nod. Time to lure out what we’ve come all this way to find.

The arrow whizzes through the air until it’s almost out of sight, then explodes magnificently, setting the clear sky ablaze with indigo fire. I don’t know where Rain gets his ‘ace in the hole’ supplies from, but they sure as hell aren’t issued by the military — they work far too well. Better not to ask, I decide. Most of the troops don’t like to reveal too much of their lives back home, the military is where you go if you have a troubled past and need a new life. That or become an adventurer or explorer, but they have an even higher fatality rate than soldiers, if you can believe that.

The dancing indigo flames reveals egg-shaped orbs floating in a gigantic half-oval above the water, forming what I can only assume to be a portal, or some sort of gateway. It was the size of a mountain, big enough for a hundred horses riding abreast to fit through it, and a thousand times as tall. The feeling of being an ant returned.

The expression on Rain’s face told me I was right in the portal guess. A yellow line of light began to connect the orbs as it activated. Catcher clenched his sword more tightly, his face a mess of emotion. His parents were killed by werepyres, who appear via portals like this, albeit much smaller. He voiced his opinion in a voice somewhere between fear and awe at the great magical construction before us.

“Boss… This is way above our paygrade. We ain’t have the manpower or the weaponry to grind this out.”

The men mumble ldnawed agreement as they stared in shock. Damn it. We should have heeled and toed it back to camp to get the rest of the men before taking this on. Poor judgment on my part. The kind of mistake that you only realize is wrong when it’s far too late to fix it. I looked back to the men. Jace and the other half of the platoon were only about a half hour's walk away, if he’d met his waypoints on time.

"Tomlin, Copper, go and get Jace and his men over here." The two youngest of the platoon. Not all of us have to die a gruesome death. They reluctantly nodded and left, leaving only the eleven soldiers and a gargantuan, granite and marble gateway.

With a creak and a groan, the inside of the portal began to shimmer grey and emit a pale, transparent smoke from its edges. Iron weapons and bows materialized quickly in the hands of my comrades. I removed the white bandage that had been wrapped around my left palm and drew my sword with my right. Too late for regrets now.

The portal emitted a wavy grinding noise that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once, near-mechanical in nature. Our surroundings flickered from light to dark as the sky itself rapidly changed back and forth from day to night in the blink of an eye, marking the end of logic like dwindling candlelight. The low grass below us had come alive, slithering in and out of the ground like thin worms. The water of the ocean had begun to boil, simmering in the flashing light and dark. What lies beneath I dare not guess, but the smell was enough to revolt me. The grinding stopped. A faint banging sound replaced it, slow and constant. The portal became transparent just as I had calmed my horse via scented and potent herbs.

I looked at the gateway dead on, incredulous that my own eyes could deceive me so, but they weren't. Someone behind me vomited loudly. Through the gate lie a realm of pitch black illuminated only by the glow of fires… And those fires revealed bones and dark creatures feeding on them. Even further back were humanoids with pink skin, the size of massive trees. One caught a look at us, and it’s eyes glowed with hunger. Rather than alert the others, it bounded towards the gate with alarming speed, arms bouncing up and down previously as it threw itself off one two toed foot and then another. Its hands were a mess of wire-like material like metal whips, clusters of them protruding from where the fingers should be. Corpses of indeterminate species spilled loosely from its mouth.

There was nothing any of my blood magic could do to a creature of that size. I looked at Rain, who had notched another arrow, but shook his head to confirm my worries when I looked at him. Catcher stepped forward.

“Guys, get the hell out of here. Tell Jace we found the gate.” None of us moved, and then the creature stepped through the portal and screamed so loud that I could not hear. Secondly it formed a conical funnel from its mouth, and somehow sucked a cloud from the sky through its lips. The cacophony of sounds that followed was somewhere between bird calls and orchestral horn. The gate closed behind it and we rode off, to save our skins. Catcher stayed behind, true to his word, and I looked back just in time to see him crushed into a puddle of bones, and the creature kneeling greedily over the remains, forgetting about us entirely. That didn't sit right with me. I felt like a coward. And so without a word to my comrades I slapped my horse onwards and jumped off, landing with a roll in a crouched position. I placed a hand on the cool dirt below me and freed myself of any limitations I had placed on my power beforehand. Sorry Celestia. I bade my love farewell and closed my eyes. 'These people are my responsibility.

The ground beneath the creature twisted in to itself and shit up as crystallized glass spike into the creature, which paid them no mind even as one pierced it's stomach. It would not stop eating. Another spike. The meal was gone now, and the creature licked at the remains quickly as though anxious, and groaned in some form of deeper hunger or perhaps pleasure. Griffs sight became red. Three more spikes shot up and pierced the creature, who only moaned once more as Griff fell over and began to shudder from blood loss. The last thing he saw was an explosion from some arrow at the creature as Griff lost consciousness.

“Celestia.” He croaked one last time. “I’m… Sorry…”