Neitra stood over Artyom, a painful glare on her face. Her world was crumbling before her very eyes and the man responsible for it still dared to keep his own secrets. She’d followed him through hell back by trust alone, but with the events that had transpired, that trust was wearing thin. Now was the time he redeemed himself on pain of having that trust broken forever.

“The truth is, I’m also from Earth,” said Artyom.

“Earth?” asked Neitra incredulously. Some of the pain underneath her face eased up slightly but was replaced with confusion.

“It’s the place Tommy’s from.”

“I thought it was California.”

“Yeah, that’s a particular place on Earth. I’m from somewhere else in the same nation, a bit further away, though.”

Neitra looked at him apprehensively. “Alright, prove it.”

“Uh…” hesitated Artyom. “Well, there’s not really anything I have on me in the way of explicit proof.”

“I’ve travelled with Tommy for a pretty long time and remember a lot of the things he’s said about California and Television. I’ll quiz you.”

“Alright, shoot. But hold on a second, first.”

Artyom eased himself back down to the floor and took a seat, legs crossed, as he took another bite and began talking again. “Hey Rugul, why don’t you keep watch on that crypt in the back and let us know if anyone’s on their way out. I’d hate for us to all get killed in the middle of a round of Jeopardy.”

“On it, boss man,” replied the assassin nonchalantly, as he stealthily made his way to the cave entrance Tommy had entered earlier. Artyom was sure he wasn’t too happy about missing out on the juicy drama.

“Ok, what kingdom is California part of?” began Neitra.

“The United States of America. And it isn’t a kingdom, it’s a democratic republic. We fought a king for our independence, for crying out loud!” replied Artyom indignantly.

“Yeah, he made a big deal about how it wasn’t a kingdom either. Who was the first king… er,”

“Jorge Washingmachine.”

Neitra narrowed her eyes.

“George Washington. And he was president. Sorry, maybe this isn’t the best time for humor, I’m not used to being put on the spot like this.”

“That’s alright, I guess. But you still have to answer my questions.”

“Yeah, that’s fair. I’d complain about all of the very specific history questions, but it’s better than pop culture stuff. Not even because Tommy’s knowledge is 20 years out of date, but because I don’t trust Disney’s and Viacom’s lawyers to find a way to this World just to sue us.”

Neitra’s look once again turned into confusion.

“Oops, I did it again. Sorry!” said Artyom, sheepishly.

Neitra sighed. “Alright, last question. What’s the greatest ‘show’ on television?”

Artyom looked at Neitra with a stupefied expression. Best show on TV? How was he supposed to answer that? “Uh… that’s a bit hard to answer.”

“And why is that?” she asked.

“Well, it’s completely subjective. Ask anyone what they think the greatest book is and you’ll get completely different answers. And a 10 year old kid is probably going to answer something completely different than a 28 year old adult! But if I had to guess what he’d say, I’d say Spongebob. That show has been considered a classic for decades, despite Tommy getting thrown here only a while after it came out.”

“Well, the answer he gave is South Park.”

“South Park?!” sputtered Artyom. “There’s no way he was old enough to watch that!”

“Alright, you pass,” replied Neitra.

“Wait, what?” Artyom jerked his head up at Neitra, trying to piece together what just happened.

“Yeah, you pass. Tommy said it was Pokey-something, but he mentioned South Park as something his parents didn’t let him watch because he wasn’t old enough. So consider that extra credit!” Neitra replied with a cheeky grin, albeit a superficial one hiding what she was still feeling deep inside.

Artyom sighed in relief. “Alright, you caught me there. So do you trust me now? Can we get out of here?”

Neitra’s smile morphed back into a neutral expression, but one with considerably more levity than before. “Nope, not yet. You being from the same place as Tommy doesn’t explain anything, except for why you’re so interested in him. So what’s the full truth?”

“Alright Neitra, here it is,” he began. “Something like 10 years ago, me and a bunch of other kids from Earth were summoned by seven different kingdoms and convinced to fight for them against the others under the guise of a false prophecy. I gave you a pretty vague overview of it back in the last dungeon we trekked through, so there isn’t much that you don’t already know.”

Neitra, mildly captivated by the story, simply nodded in affirmation, urging him to continue.

“One day, I fought against another kingdom’s ‘chosen one’ and after some banter featuring our own pop-culture references thrown about, we both realized the other was from Earth as well. We stayed in contact, and over the course of even more battles, realized that each of the other kingdoms also had chosen ones, and that they were also from Earth. Honestly, there are so many details that I could write a book about it, though I don’t know who’d want to give that a read.”

Artyom took another bite of his nutrition bar before continuing, trying to choke back the awful taste. “Rugul, could you get me some Sparkle or something sweet to wash this sawdust down? Don’t killers always carry around something good to drink, or something? I had this other party member who brought along a bottle instead of trail rations this one time.”

“I’m an assassin, not your servant! Get some yourself!” he shouted back.

He turned back towards Neitra, an irritated look on his face. “Tch. Anyway, long story short, we all ended up getting together, defected from the kingdoms who brought us there, and swore to stop them from ever doing the same to anyone else from Earth. And we succeeded. We formed a little organization, stole the source of their summoning ritual magic, and used it to travel to other Worlds to make sure that nobody there wasn’t abusing summoning rituals either.”

“Wait, other Worlds?” asked Neitra.

“That’s right. This and Earth are but two of them, at least whatever version of Earth I’m from. I’ve been to hundreds of other Worlds so far, and there’s probably an infinite number of them out there too.”

Neitra’s eyes were filled with wonder at the statement. Thoughts of the infinite multiverse and its many Worlds helped to distract her from her own. “So what are you doing here?” she finally asked. “You said you joined us to make sure that Tommy was being treated well, and despite the others around him treating us badly, he’s happy at least.”

“That part wasn’t the most accurate, but to be precise, there was just more to it that I didn’t say back then. I was sent here by the same organization on a mission to investigate why there are signs of Earth culture here, like that puzzle in the cave and the talks of California and Television, when there was no summoning ritual used to bring Tommy here.”

“But he was summoned here. By the Goddess,” replied Neita.

“Yeah, but not in the normal way via a rune magic portal. He was reincarnated here apparently, and from what we know about souls, it should be impossible for any god or goddess to pull a soul out of another World’s afterlife. Souls are immutable, and they can’t be touched by anyone or anything outside of their World because of some natural law or another that transcends universal boundaries.”

Artyom, having finished the meal substitute, fished into his bag for a canteen and took a deep, long swig of sweet sweet water. After what he had just eaten, anything would taste sweet by comparison. One he was finished, he put his drink away and got back to his feet. He walked over to some of the serpent’s feather projectiles, which had now softened up again.

“Anyway, I was planning to get some backup by way of my friends after realizing that this Goddess was way too much trouble to be a simple benevolent deity, but after those priests summoned that oversized snake, my only way of getting in touch with them is no longer working. So as it is, I’m stuck here. I’m sure they’ll send someone to come look for me once they realize that I’m no longer reachable, but I’ll have to disable the tracking feature on my phone. I doubt they’ll be able to find me before the goddess does.”

Artyom began to fiddle with some of the feathers, attaching them together into longer tubes using their hollow centers, and then into circles.

“What are you doing?” asked Neitra, once more befuddled by the strange man.

“When the summoning ritual went off, my phone, that is the thing I’m using to talk to my friends back home, got covered in that spotted white glow the goddess seems to be so fond of. I can’t risk her using it to track us down, so I’m going to do something about it. These feathers were a great conductor of the goddess’ magic during our fight, but if I wrap them around my phone like this… it should act as a sort of magical faraday cage that’ll keep any of that magic inside, or out. Only problem is that it’ll probably disable any of the phone’s own built-in tracking that’s also based on rune magic.”

Neitra nodded again, not really sure of what a faraday cage was, but she understood the gist of Artyom’s explanation. The Goddess’ magic was acting on the object he used to travel and communicate across the multiverse, and he was going to wrap it in something that would keep that magic in and any new magic out so it wouldn’t be able to be tracked. The problem was that his friends wouldn’t be able to track him either.

“Ok, so that’s who you are and how you got here,” began Neitra, feeling somewhat more comfortable, but not yet entirely satisfied. “But I also want to know how you came to your conclusion about the Goddess and her prophecy. And don’t just tell me that the priests tried to kill you, there could be more to it that I don’t know about.”

“Alright, that’s fair. Sort of,” replied Artyom, still tinkering with the feathers. He finished the next ring and turned back to Neitra, giving her his full undivided attention again. “Honestly, there were a lot of things that led up to the big revelation. When I first arrived here, almost everyone I met was an idiot. There was this one kid who was carrying some grain with a donkey who rode the animal with the grain still tied to his back, saying that he didn’t want to further burden it. And even the farmer he worked for thought it was a good idea!”

Neitra looked at him for a second before her eyes flashed in realization. “Then the donkey would be carrying both of those weights while the kid would be unnecessarily carrying the grain. He could just put the basket on the donkey’s back to save himself the effort! Neither of them realized that?”

“Nope,” replied Artyom, reminiscing about the two and trying to hide the sadness he felt for Chey’s fate. He quickly recovered and continued. “I thought there was something going on with all of that, but meeting a nature spirit confirmed it for me when she told me that there was this ‘taint’ that was affecting everyone except for me. The only other really smart people I’ve met are you and Tommy.”

Neitra nodded again appreciatively. “So why aren’t we affected by it?”

“Well, for me it’s probably because I’m not from this World so it hasn’t taken root in me. I think it was starting to, but a spell to keep psychic effects away dispelled it from me. Too bad it doesn’t work on others. And for Tommy, he mentioned being blessed with the ‘gift of knowledge’ by the goddess or something, and I think that’s what’s keeping this taint off of him.”

“So the Goddess is keeping the taint off of Tommy? Wouldn’t that be a point in her favor, then? And what about me, why doesn’t it affect me?”

“I was thinking that the goddess is the source of the taint, and that her gift of knowledge is just selective immunity to it. Can’t have a Great Hero if they’re as dumb as a bag of bricks,” Artyom chuckled. “But as for you, I can’t think of anything. Maybe you are affected by the taint but are able to compensate for it?”

Neitra paused for a second, realizing the implication of his last sentence. She glared at him with a pout, before asking him to continue. “As crazy and interesting as that sounds, that’s not much to go by, and it isn’t even evidence. Anything else?”

“Oh, plenty. So you know the other book at the library I was trying to show you but you couldn’t see, feel, hear, or even comprehend existed?”

“I remember you acting strange when we were there, if that’s what you mean?” she replied, recalling her past frustration.

“Well, it was filled with the names, history, and rituals of a plethora of other gods and goddesses from a time before this goddess. The timeline abruptly ended about 600 years ago, which is also when the records of the current goddess began, according to the other library book. I know I can’t prove that part, on account of you not being able to see it, but that’s only one more piece of evidence. Wait, maybe the magic faraday cage can block out the amnesia effect? I swear, that also has to be the goddess’ fault!”

“Alright, I’m willing to give it a try,” replied Neitra, trying to hide her smirk at the idea of getting to wear a crown of feathers. “Do you have the book with you?”

“Uh…” said Artyom. “I left it back at the hotel room. In my old room that’s being guarded by the police.”

Neitra crossed her arms and sighed. “Well, we’re not going back to get it now so whatever you have next had better be good, or else you might want to double check if that taint is affecting you.”

“Alright, fine. I always save the best for last.”

“Oh, but I can’t?” sounded Rugul from the far end of the building.

“Not when I’m hungry, Rugul!” shouted Artyom back in reply. “Everyone here’s finished eating now, so it’s fine.”

The duo could hear the assassin grumbling, but Artyom continued once the noise subsided.

“It really dawned on me that something was going on when I began trying to find Tommy and the rest of you. One of the goddess’ priestesses said that you’d all be headed to Crystal Kobold Crossing next, so I got there before you to switch the key piece for the party invite. When I was making my way through the dungeon, the place was still under construction. There were literally dozens of Kobolds running around with pickaxes and shovels, still digging out the tunnels. The pedestal where the key piece was placed was still being carved, with a hammer and chisel right next to it! When I fought them for myself, they were much more intelligent than the ones in the last dungeon we delved through, and fought using team tactics and high-level Skills.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely weird, but what about it?”

“The goddess was still building the dungeon for Tommy!” exclaimed Artyom. “Their leader, this huge snakey lizard-like guy, was even in the book about the goddess, let me show you.” He took the book from Neitra and flipped to the chapter featuring the foreman. “This guy, right here. He was there, another one of the goddess’ servants.”

“Alright, that’s definitely something big,” replied Neitra. “But do you have any proof of all of this?”

Once again, Artyom was caught in the same terrible trap. That of the burden of proof. His toothy smile told Neitra everything.

“Of course,” she sighed.

“And now for part two of the finale,” stated Artyom, trying to salvage what was left of his argument. “You know the other ladies in the party and how strong they are, right?”

Neitra nodded with a look of light disdain.

“Well, they’re keeping their real power mostly hidden. With the superficial force they showed against the Kobolds earlier, I can tell you they’re stronger than even the kill team we just took out. Xerica’s casual fireballs were hotter than Jica’s and melted larger holes in rock, Daisy slashed much harder and faster than that barbarian without even breaking a sweat, and Ecole’s poison pretty much made every single one of her ranged attacks as insta-death as that archer’s coup de grace!”

“Alright, so they’re stronger than the Dark Lord’s greatest forces. Aren’t they supposed to be? Wouldn’t that be why the goddess made them members of Tommy’s party?”

“They’re strong enough to walk over to the Dark Lord’s castle right now and bring the entire place down on his head if they wanted to. And besides, the goddess literally made them party members. As in they were created by the goddess herself, and probably didn’t even exist before joining Tommy.”

“What does that mean?” asked Neitra, once again confused by Artyom’s lack of including the necessary context behind his extraordinary statements.

“On my day off, I went to each of their hometowns to dig up information on them. I was expecting to figure out how they fought so I could use it against them if it came to a fight, but I found something scarier. There were no records of their existences beyond peoples’ memories of them. Lensa was taken in by a church that sends all of the babies that come their way to the orphanage, Xerica had no student records, the scars Ecole had supposedly left on the guys she wrestled with were never there, and Ecole’s parents would’ve had to have had her when they were 5 years old for their ages to match up!”

Neitra’s eyes widened at the ridiculous statement. Whether it was surprise, incredulity, or both, only she knew. But she kept on listening nonetheless.

“Whenever I brought up any of these things, people would just get a headache and change the subject. You could head over there right now if you wanted and see for yourself. Those sirens even threatened me today with the fact that I’m not from this World, and I was only able to get them to back off by threatening them in retaliation with this info.”

Neitra sighed, having absorbed the entire story. “That’s a lot to take in, and a lot to simply believe.”

Artyom held his breath, not daring to utter a word.

“Your story is consistent at least, and all of its parts add up. Even if you don’t have any direct proof with you.”

“I could find you the proof, a few quick teleports and I can gather everything by the end of the day,” Artyom quickly added. “Though you said earlier that you wanted proof here and now. Why would I bring that kind of incriminating evidence with me to one of the goddess’ churches?”

“I did say that. And I guess you have a point,” replied Neitra, beginning to realize the full weight of the burden her request for immediate proof put on Artyom. “I didn’t want to jump into another adventure until I was satisfied.”

Artyom opened his mouth, ready to say something, but chose to close it instead. He didn’t want to interrupt her now.

“But for the entire time I’ve known you, you’ve never done anything to hurt Tommy or let anyone else try. You really care about him, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Artyom nodded, his throat heavy. “He’s just like me, a poor kid who got dragged into something way beyond him by some asshole with an agenda. I promised myself to stop it wherever possible, and even if he is happy and doesn’t realize it, it’s still the same thing that’s going on. I’m going to stop it.”

Neitra closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her eyes opened back up slowly as she exhaled, flooded with melancholy as they gazed ahead at the floor. As if weighed down by a heavy burden, she turned her head to Artyom’s, staring right into his soul. “But you can’t stop it here, can you? Not with those… jerks… keeping a close eye on Tommy. Not when you’re the most wanted man in the world, at least to the goddess.”

“That’s right.”

“So what are you waiting for?” asked Neitra, her lips beginning to raise. “Let’s get out of here! We might not have a holy weapon or divine armor, but we have our wits. We can still fight for Tommy and the Kingdom!”

Artyom looked up at her, his eyes wide. Maybe he had gone soft since coming here, but right now, Neitra’s friendship meant the world to him.

“Hold on, don’t think I’m completely convinced with just your story. I might be ready to ditch Tommy and those bullies because of that giant snake, but I’m not going to fully commit myself to what you’re saying until you show me some real proof. And once we get out of here, we should have plenty of time for that.”

Artyom’s smile weathered the simple caveat. He opened his mouth again to reply, but was instead unexpectedly interrupted.

“Hey boss, there are footsteps coming from the crypt. Whoever it is, they’ll be out in a minute!” exclaimed Rugul, running towards the duo.

“Oh shit,” mumbled Artyom, before raising his voice to address the others. “Now the challenge is to figure out where to hide before gathering that proof. Neitra, do you have a map of the country you could give to me, along with a pencil?”

She reached into her bag and handed the items to Artyom.

“Perfect, thanks!” He took out his phone again and out of the cage. The disturbance immediately reasserted itself onto the magitech device, scrambling his connection back to headquarters. After pressing a few buttons, the top of the screen began to show additional diagnostic information in the form of a number.

“Alright, everyone,” continued Artyom. “You might not be able to see it, but my phone should show me how much disturbance it’s facing. Right now, we have 54.3625% and right over there we have…” Artyom mumbled to himself as he began marking points on the map, drawing lines between them, and roughly measuring angles.

“And with that there, and some basic trigonometry, the source of the disturbance should be riiight… here,” he concluded, drawing a pair of lines that intersected right next to the Dark Lord’s castle.

“So what’s over there?” asked Rugul.

“The source of whatever’s messing with my phone and keeping me from my friends,” replied Artyom.

“If you think you two can hide there, you’re sorely mistaken,” said Rugul. “The place is disconnected from the Kingdom’s teleport network, and there’s no way they’ll allow anyone, let alone you two, across the border.”

“That’s why we’re not going to hide there. Instead, we’re going to the last place anyone will think to look for us and the literal last place Tommy will be headed to himself. There, the final settlement in the Kingdom before the Dark Lord himself, Ironheart Fortress.”

The other two looked at him in surprise, quickly coming to the same epiphany themselves.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” asked Artyom, rising from the ground with the map in his hands. He put his phone back into the magical faraday cage and placed them both into his bag. “Let’s get out of here before that pyromaniac dommy mommy and her sadistic thot squad show up! Oh, you probably don’t know that bit of slang, don’t you?” awkwardly added Artyom at the end, ruining the overall effect.

“Wow, you really are bad at banter under pressure, aren’t you?” whispered Rugul, as they made their way out of the ruined cathedral.

“Only under pressure,” replied Artyom.

“You sounded much more charismatic when we were still trying to kill each other.”

“We can get back to that now, if you’d like,” replied Artyom.

“...I’m fine, thanks. Consider it a small sacrifice for the greater good,” said Rugul with a low chuckle.

They all quickly made their way out of the ruined cathedral, leaving the rubble and corpses to clutter the floor. There was nothing they could do about it in the few seconds they had left, and honestly none of them wanted anything to do with cleanup either.

“Hey Neitra, give me your dagger if it isn’t poisoned,” requested Artyom.

She handed it over, curious at what he had in mind. Artyom lifted the blade to his hair and began to cut at it, trimming his already short hair even further.

“Why are you doing that?” she asked.

“They’re probably going to announce to the kingdom that I’m an apostate and don’t believe in the goddess. There’ll be actual people looking for me then, and I don’t want to be recognized and killed.”

“Apostate? That’s not a thing, nobody goes around killing people for not believing in the goddess,” replied Neitra, once again perplexed by Artyom’s strange statements.

“Wait, what?!” he exclaimed. The obvious was finally beginning to dawn on him. This was a fairytale World after all, why would there be lynch mobs and religious inquisitions here? “Those bastards, it was all a bluff! Still, they know what I look like and I’m sure they’ll be sending their agents to search for me.”

“Well, a haircut’s probably not going to be enough, then,” added Rugul. “I might know a guy who could do a bit more, but it’ll cost you.”

“Don’t worry, I can do it myself,” replied Artyom, as he channeled magic into his hands before touching his face. As they made contact with his cheek bones and his fingers moved across his visage, his entire bone structure began to morph. Within seconds, Artyom was gone, and an entirely new figure stood before the two. The chiseled jawline and soft cheekbones gave way to a sleek and slender face of an effeminate supermodel.

“Why do you know a spell like that?” asked Neitra, finally accepting that she would always be in a state of befuddlement when around this weirdo.

“Body modification spells are just something I happen to have a talent for,” he replied. “And a long time ago, I had to learn this spell when I needed to look different.”

Neitra nodded, letting the vagueness of the statement go. Besides, she was more focused on getting out of there. A quick stop by a clothing store to purchase a pair of inconspicuous brown cloaks to cover their battle-damaged clothes, and the trio made their way to the town’s teleportation crystal.

“Alright everyone, I think I’ve seen enough. Let’s get the fuck outta here,” said Artyom, as the magical blue light of the lapis-colored stone enveloped them, carrying the three to their next destination away from the chaos of conspiracies and death.

The lights in the office were dimmed as footsteps echoed on the metal floor. Trepidation filled the man as he paced back and forth in front of his desk, massaging his head while waiting for the phone to ring. As soon as it did, Gus jammed down the answer button, turning on speaker mode, and finally getting the response he was waiting for.

“Everyone’s mobilized, Gus. All squads are ready to deploy,” came the urgent voice of the current acting Captain of the Terran Defense League.

“About time,” replied Gus, his voice terse and gruff. “Hrm,” he cleared his throat, before forcing himself to settle down. “I’m sorry to have you all redeploy so quickly, but I wouldn’t do so if it weren’t an emergency.”

“Don’t worry, we all understand. So Artyom’s really in trouble, then? Are you sure you didn’t accidentally send him to a gilded or grimdark World?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure anymore. Looks like the case of a single malicious deity ruling over an otherwise innocently fairytale population, so classify that however you’d like.” He remained silent for a moment. “I’m going to tell you what I told Artyom; stay out of trouble. He probably got too involved and had to go into hiding, and disabled his connection with us because he thinks that they can track him through it.”

“That’s a pretty optimistic assumption you have there. What makes you think it’s that over… the worst case scenario?”

“I’ve made it a habit to always know if the worst case scenario is coming to pass. We’d still have a connection to his phone if it was still intact, otherwise it’d give off a very specific final alert if it were destroyed. Neither of those are true, so we can only deduce that something is just blocking it off. And unless high-tier rune magic is in play, Artyom is manually blocking the connection himself.”

“In that case, I think I’ll believe the same, if just to have some more hope.” A choppy-sounding sigh resounded through the speaker. “No point wasting any more time. Talk to you later Gus, we’re taking every precaution we can with this rescue operation.” He hung up the phone.

Gus walked over to his chair and threw himself down onto it, exhaling in a terribly exasperated sigh, wishing that the action would relieve at least some of his stress. Or his guilt. He knew it wasn’t logical to have any, he was acting entirely within the parameters of his own job and prioritized TOAL’s resources how they were meant to. Even Artyom agreed Gus was doing the right thing by sending troops to rescue the Earthers held hostage in a gilded World instead of having them nebulously help Artyom out instead. But then why did he still feel it? Why was remorse still clawing at his mind?

Unable to take the pain, he placed his head on his desk and pressed another button on his desk. “Have someone bring me some coffee, please. I really need it.”

Gus sighed. “You’d still better be alive, Artyom. For all of our sakes.”

Runic portals opened over a grassy meadow, depositing over two-dozen armed troops across the verdant field. They quickly lined up in formation, the ones carrying or chaperoning heavy equipment gathered in their own corners around their sleek, metal packages. A final pair of figures emerged from the portals before their transport winked out, making their way to the front of the assembled platoon.

“Attention, troops!” shouted the first of the duo in front. He was a man in his 30s, clean shaven with pale skin and light brown hair in a simple military-style buzz cut. His green camo fatigues matched that of the other soldiers, but the beret shielding him from the noonday sun indicated a position of leadership. With a grim expression to match his gruff voice, he quickly obtained everyone’s fearful attention.

“I know what you’re thinking. We’ve deployed to a fairytale World of all places to rescue one of our best. You must think this is some kind of practical joke. Well it’s not. April fools is still far away, according to TOAL’s calendar.”

He gave the soldiers a chance to let out a nervous chuckle before continuing. Well trained as they were, he heard not a peep out of them.

“Good. The brief of it is that Artyom was sent to this World in a now declassified mission to investigate the presence of Earth culture here without any summoning rituals. Turns out it wasn’t just a coincidence, and Artyom was able to locate someone from Earth, a 19 year old man who goes by Tommy or ‘The Great Hero’. He states he was ‘reincarnated’ here after dying on Earth, but according to everything we know about the immutability of souls and various afterlives, that should be impossible.”

He looked around at the soldiers’ reactions before continuing. Still no verbal reaction out of the disciplined lot, as it should be. There were several shocked faces, but only from those who barely skimmed the pre-mission dossier. “When Artyom tried to find out more information about this event, he learned that the supposed goddess, who was responsible for bringing Tommy over and sending him on his quest, is acting with malicious intent and not above underhanded actions to achieve her goals. The details of which are in your briefing documents that you hopefully had a chance to look over.”

He took another moment to breathe in, before concluding his part of the speech. “Now, I could go on about how I plan to have us shoot and burn our way across this godforsaken World to find and rescue our targets, but I’ll hand it over to the one with the real plan, our Logistician Prithvi.”

“Thank you Captain Michaels,” replied the woman standing next to him, momentarily turning her head to answer back before addressing the crowd. She had dark brown skin covered in what could only be described as a camo-patterned business suit, medium-length black hair tied into a rough bun, and the same baggy camo pants as the others. “While our acting captain here is in charge of managing the minutiae of troop movement and strategy, I’ll be in charge of deciding what you all do.”

The soldiers continued to look ahead at attention. They mostly knew the drill.

“As Captain Michaels already said, our primary mission is a search and rescue, but you might be wondering why there are some discrepancies between that and your loadouts? From Artyom’s reports, it only took about a week of him snooping around before he drew the goddess’ attention to himself, and subsequently her wrath. We are not going to do that.”

She took a deep breath before continuing. The soft and rounded features on her face contrasted her now sharp expression. “Instead, we will be striking hard and fast, and most definitely drawing her immediate ire. We will then respond with our own wrath in the form of overwhelming firepower. Artyom’s reports detail that the enemy forces should be manageable in direct confrontation, and most definitely so in an indirect one, but I want nobody to be making any unnecessary risks. That means you, Captain Michaels.”

The captain tried to hide a grumble, but everyone could tell by his pout. Prithvi continued.

“Starting out, you’ll be splitting into teams to take on various missions, some quicker than others. Tech teams, you’ll be setting up runic teleport beacons. Team 1 will set it up at base, and team 2 will follow Delta Squad to the nearest settlement and set up another there, before placing more across the kingdom via their own teleport network. Artyom’s phone was disconnected from headquarters by a direct magical attack according to the diagnostic info we were able to obtain, so setting up multiple exit points is of the utmost priority in case the same is done to us.”

The tech teams nodded affirmatively. While not trained as stringently as the combat squads, they had the discipline to allow her to continue without interruption.

“After that, combat squads Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie will be tracing Artyom’s steps, trying to find out where he and the Earther are. They will travel alongside Delta and the tech teams and use the same domestic teleportation network to get to their destinations. Once Artyom is found, he is to be extracted as soon as possible. If you locate the Earther, do not engage. The party members he is travelling with are each apex-level combatants and will require a team effort to take down. To put that into perspective, most of you have fought Dark Lords in your own personal adventures and know what to expect from the ‘big bad.’ Any one of these party members would be capable of conducting a successful one-person raid on such a big bad’s fortress and kill everyone inside. And I know even the strongest of you needed some kind of help. So if you find them, simply observe and report, and Captain Michaels will handle the rest.”

The captain smiled to himself, before quickly showing a scowl. “One last thing before you all get going. Your gear is padded with psychic dampeners, and you are under no circumstances to remove them for an extended period of time. If you want something comfortable to sleep in, we’ve included headwear and badges enchanted with Psionic Barrier. They’re not cheap, so don’t lose them. A worldwide magical effect is making everyone here dumb as a bag of bricks, and it can even affect us unless we’re properly protected. I don’t want to have to beat the stupid out of you, so don’t give me that trouble by keeping your gear on.”

He regarded his troops, who were beginning to look antsy. “So what are you all waiting for? Get moving! Captain Artyom isn’t going to rescue himself!”

The soldiers scattered, some forming into their squads, and others unpacking and setting up tents. The leaders looked at their charges with unease as they went about their methodical tasks. They’d informed everyone of everything they knew about this World and their orders demanded their troops take no undue risks. Still, what they didn’t tell their soldiers was how much they didn’t know, as measuring out ignorance was impossible. But what they did know was that it was too much to be happy about. They just hoped that they would be in and out of this World before they really found out how much there was to learn.