Haley ached . Twice in the last day, she’d been shot. Twice! Her ludicrous growth rate was affecting her healing- both wounds should have put her out of action for days or weeks, but the second one, the penetrating pistol wound, had already closed after a good night’s sleep. Still, the mind doesn’t catch up as fast as the body. She could feel the soreness in her side, anticipate the burn and protest of muscle with every movement of her powerful wings. And the psychological scars… she could see the flash from the barrel of that officer’s shotgun every time she closed her eyes, the feeling as she closed her jaws on the throat of a helpless old woman- even if she had evaporated like so much smoke. I’m racking up damage in ways I can’t sustain long term.

Then there were the major disappointments of the last day. All this newfound power, this new body, and still- the world refused to turn for her. You could add 100 points to my Charisma, I’d still be incapable of talking to normal people. I don’t know why Sean gets me as easily as he does. Nobody before him ever listened. Not even when it would save them. It was true, she didn’t know there would be trouble with the stadium refugees, but- it’s not a wild guess, either.

But there were compensations for the pain and disappointment. Flying , for example. She’d done a bit of it on the first night, and in combat, but she hadn’t really experimented yet. Her dragon’s body was made for sustained overland flight. She pumped her wings twice and felt the ground fall further away before snapping them back out, holding in a glide, easily ten thousand feet up. None of it obeys the rules . She hadn’t done the math (yet), but it felt like when she was aloft her wings were only working to sustain a body about one tenth of her actual weight. Maybe less. She could glide essentially forever, she didn’t feel the cold, and she didn’t seem to need a substantial amount of oxygen. I’m basically an airliner. Birds don’t work like this. What’s my service ceiling?

She luxuriated in the feeling of freedom that flight brought, trying to ignore all the while that she was splitting the group a second time, and the discomfort of that thought after yesterday’s events. I’m not going to say ‘Nothing will go wrong,’ not even in my head. But- I have to trust that he’ll be okay. She’d left the Vorpal Sword and the infomorph backup with him, and he wasn’t heading toward danger this time. Hopefully neither of them were. She knew better, though. Whatever is to come, I just hope it hits me first.

She scanned the ground from her vantage point. Her vision was far sharper than a person’s. She’d done some rudimentary eye tests while they’d driven yesterday and her estimate was that she could see more than four times as well as a human, at any given distance. Still, from this high up, that was the equivalent of a regular person looking at the ground from half a mile above. Not picking up a lot of detail . She was following the highways north-east, looking for population centers and people she could interrogate. Whatever was happening out there she wanted to know before she saw it face to face. Even if I accidentally terrify a couple of people.

There still weren’t a lot of people out and about. Haley was a little surprised by that, but not much. Usually when disaster strikes, it only hits a small percentage of the population. Even if a tornado hits your town, you personally are unlikely to see it. But this… this hit everyone, all over the world in one night. Very few people escaped the consequences of The Swap entirely. It’s no wonder they’re all hunkering down, at least until they get hungry or the water pressure begins to drop.

But low traffic didn’t mean no traffic. She watched the cars moving on the highway with interest. Police. Road crews. Working surprisingly hard, dragging wrecks and blockages off to the sides. Clearing the way? For normal traffic, or for something else? She didn’t want to talk to anyone with a gun, at the moment. She dropped down, hovered a couple thousand feet over highway 35 until she spotted a work truck way out on its own. Maybe surveying in advance. She tucked her wings in and dove, coming to a perfect four-point landing just a few meters from the road.

The guy in the safety vest and hardhat was looking over a storm drain. He didn’t hear her coming in, but he sure heard her land . He turned, got one glance at her, and let out a yell. “Holy shit!” Haley sighed. Right, dragon. I keep forgetting. She sat where she was, not wanting to spook him further, and let him run for the cab of the truck. I really hope he isn’t going for a weapon. People keep trying to kill me as a first reaction, it’s starting to hurt my feelings.

She called out to him. “Hey! I just want to talk!” This did actually seem to give him pause. She saw him peer over the top of the cab at her.

“Oh yeah? None of you have talked so far. What do you want?” Guess he’s run into some infomorphs then. It made sense- anyone Swapped out on the road, who survived , was probably still hanging around or filtering in one direction or the other down the highway.

“My name’s Haley, I’m- I was- a human. Things got kind of weird, you may have noticed.” He laughed a bit at that but didn’t relax. Good, keep talking. “I’ve got some questions about what’s going on with the roads here.”

“Yeah, we’ve all got some questions” grumped the man. “I’m, uh, Ted. By the way. You don’t look like the bugs, and they didn’t talk, but- why uh, why aren’t you…”

Haley answered the incomplete question. “Human? I don’t know. Not really. Magic? Let’s call it magic. I’m on the lookout for more magic and instead I find you guys clearing the wrecks. Did someone ask you to, or are you just… trying to get back to normal?”

He looked a little wary at this line of questioning. “I don’t think there’s any getting back , lady. But the Army says jump, these days I’m just gonna ask how high. They want all the major access in and out of the city cleared, everything off to the sides. We cleared from the south to the city on 35 yesterday, now we’re headed up north. Lots more of the bugs up here.”

That reminded her. “What are you doing with them, when you find them?” Please don’t be killing them on sight.

He nodded. “Well whatever they are, they can’t talk to us and we can’t talk to them, so mostly I just leave em alone. Orders are to radio for help if we run into any resistance but I kinda got a feeling that if any of them wanted to resist I wouldn’t be around to work the radio , if you know what I mean. Any of us crews start going silent, you better believe it’s gonna be raining lead though. I was just about to check that pipe, see if any of em had holed up in there- you wanna poke your head in?”

Might as well, he’s being very reasonable all things considered. “Uh, sure.” She got up from her sitting position and walked down the embankment to the culvert where the pipe started. Poking her head in, she allowed her darkvision to adjust. She turned to call out- “Nope, nothing in-” when she heard the sound of a door slamming and an engine starting. Ha! He totally suckered me. Get away while the monster’s distracted. You’ll go far, Ted.

Shaking her head, she launched back into the air with a kick from her hind legs and several huge downstrokes of her wings. So the military’s coming in but people still haven’t heard from any civil authorities. Well, if they can clear the roads, maybe they can hold the city, keep the food coming. But… the scale of the disaster was just too big. If it was one town, in one part of the country, sure they could hold on, keep the lights on and the food moving in. But it’s everywhere. Whatever we’ve got here, that’s what we have to use. The military’s just going to use it up faster. She decided to note potential grocery stores on her way back. There was an Aldi’s just down the highway, and- were those cars, in the lot? People out scavenging?

Her sudden interest may have saved her life. As she rolled in midair to look, the black arrow racing for her heart instead caught her in the shoulder. AHH! It sank in a good three or four inches, she could feel the coolness of the metal that had torn straight through scale and muscle. Oh god! She couldn’t fly- her right wing wasn’t responding correctly. Only hundreds of feet up, still arcing upwards, she had seconds before she plowed into the tree line. Might not be fatal but whoever just shot me will follow up. Think fast, Haley.

She Shape Changed into a viper. Time to find out if falling works on Earth rules or Pathfinder rules. The arrow slipped out as her body lost nearly all mass and volume, but the wound remained. Within seconds she was a tiny mass of golden scales. I’ve got to be about a foot long, and a pound or two at most. If this is Earth rules, my terminal velocity should be negligible. If it’s Pathfinder rules… Pathfinder rules on falling were stupid , Haley thought. Basically 20d6 from this height, no exceptions, no matter the size or shape of the person doing the falling. For further insurance she closed her eyes and quickly maxed out Acrobatics, Bluff, and Stealth. Okay, time to Not Die.

She whipped her body in an undulating motion, hoping to convert some of that speed into forward momentum, as she’d seen tree snakes do in a documentary somewhere. The trees whipped around her- her tiny body missed them all, thankfully. The actual landing was rough but not devastating. The wound in her shoulder-now-ribs ached, and she felt bruised and shaken, but it didn’t feel like she’d taken her entire HP pool in one go. Guess it was Earth rules.

Moving quickly she hid her tiny form in the underbrush of the woods. I don’t know if this would be an opposed skill check, but between the size of this snake bod and my skill ranks I’ve got to have damn near +20 in ‘How Not To Be Seen.’ Settling down, she waited. She didn’t have long. Presently the sound of engines could be heard. 4-Wheelers, out here? But what came into view first was a bit more surprising.

Three children, two boys and a girl, dressed in medieval finery and riding horses . One of them, the girl, held a longbow with a large black arrow nocked. Well, guess I know who shot me . They were wearing tiny gold circlets on their heads. Crowns? Alongside the kids there was a… was that another dragon ? It didn’t look much like her- for one thing it was substantially larger- but for another, it was potbellied and green. From another story source, then. It too was wearing a tiny circlet, and looked abjectly miserable for some reason. Finally in the little hunting party… hold the fucking phone . A regal Lion, clearly intelligent, wearing some kind of war-plate and barding decked with Christian iconography.

Did I- did I just get shot down by the Chronicles of Fucking Narnia?

Behind the children’s hunting party, a retinue of a dozen armed men on ATV’s was hanging back. One of them caught her eye- a man in a black jacket and cowboy boots, with a wicked smile on his face. It might have been a trick of the light, but it seemed like he winked at her when her eyes moved across his. She went still, but he didn’t alert the others. Imagination’s getting to me. All these guns, I guess someone doesn’t trust kids with swords to get the job done. The children were arguing among themselves as they searched, and she strained herself to try to listen in.

The oldest boy was speaking to the dragon, “I told you Skylar, you should have flown after her! You could have seen where she landed.”

The dragon shook her head, miserably. “I could never have caught her, I don’t know how to use these wings. Oh Aslan, I hate this! Please change me back!” It looked pleadingly at the big cat.

Only half paying attention as he scanned the forest floor, the Lion rumbled. “I cannot, child, for I did not transform you. The pendant you wear has expressed your inner self- now you must shed these scales of unbelief. I can only help when you begin the journey.” Of all of them, it was padding closest to her little refuge. It even sounds like Aslan. The question is, in this story, who’s the source and who’s the simulacrum? Sounds like the kids aren’t Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, but if they conjured Aslan, how accurate is he? I can’t possibly stand up to Lion Jesus. But I shouldn’t have to, right? He should be on my side!

The oldest girl spoke to the boy, “Shut it, Hayden, she’s got it hard enough. I know she fell around here somewhere, maybe we can spread out and look?”

The Lion shook his head in negation. “No. The Dragon is a dangerous adversary, far more wily than the White Witch or even the demon Tash. We must not let her get you alone- her bite is deadly and her words are poison.” Okay, confirmation- they are hunting me, the Lion knows my gender, doesn’t want me talking to the kids. How could he know me? If she stayed in her burrow much longer, he was going to step on her. I suddenly feel much stupider, taking the form of a snake. Talk about poor first impressions. The reasonable thing to do was to stay hidden, deny them the engagement, but she had a feeling that wasn’t an option, the way the Lion was steadily approaching. She knew she was going to have to talk her way out of this, combat was not an option. I can’t play into his story. I’m too hurt to fight. And I’m not killing children, not now, not ever.

The youngest boy spoke up, “Aslan, how do you know she’s bad? We hurt her and she never did anything to us. I understand that you had to kill our brother, he denied you and attacked you, but this one was so pretty and we didn’t even give her a chance!” He was so young, couldn’t be more than nine or so. And already more conscience than your siblings. Hang onto it, kid. But it gave her an opening.

Before Aslan’s paw could come down on her, she slithered out of her spot in the brush. Time to sound less like Satan than I’ve ever sounded before. “He’s right. My name is Haley, I’m a 37 year old woman from Blackwood south of here, and I don’t want to fight any of you.” Not part of your story. She shifted back up to her dragon self, slowly, so as not to give offense. They leapt into a war footing anyway, but held their fire. Step one, introductions. “Can I ask your names?”

The Lion growled and readied himself to pounce. “You know my name, Adversary. I will not give you time to weave lies for these children-” but he was overruled. The youngest got off his horse, and walked between the Lion and Haley, arms outstretched.

“My name is Boden, those are my sisters Skylar and Piper, and that’s my brother Hayden. And that’s Aslan . He says we’re going to be princes and princesses of this world and that it’s the end of times, and that we have to kill you. But I don’t want to kill anyone! Are you really evil?”

Cute kid. She shook her head, still being careful to make no sudden movements. That lion was on a hair-trigger. “No. I don’t think I’m even evil-inclined, my family is all Presbyterian. Aslan, I think there’s been a serious mistake. Why do you think I’m… whatever it is you’re hunting? And, if I can ask, what are you doing here?”

He didn’t relax in the slightest. “You are the great enemy . I know your story as you know mine, and I would recognize you from a hundred worlds away. You know my purpose. The golden age, the children who will be Kings and Queens of this world. This is the end game, Serpent. It is my story, not yours.” That startled her. He knows he’s part of a story? Or was that a metaphor? She made a mistake, then. She wanted to see how deeply he believed what he was saying. Aslan wouldn’t lie, but he also wouldn’t mistake a random professor for Satan. She looked him in the eyes.

Pain. Fire. Human misery on a massive scale, stretching back thousands of years. Madness and inhuman hunger and an overriding will to power. She could see his history, and his future, in those eyes. Oh, no. You’re not what CS Lewis described Aslan as being. You’re what Aslan was. A tyrant and a monster. The kind of god who would create a world and leave its people to suffer and die, as a test of faith. The kind of god who would use children as proxy soldiers, pull them from their homes and put them through torture and hardship for the sake of prophecies you wrote about yourself. The god who never rules, who only returns to dole out judgement and bloodshed. The god of endings.

But that made no sense. I thought Cecilia created her creatures, whole cloth. They had the attributes of wonderland because the she pulled them from the narrative of Wonderland, but they had her mind. They weren’t inherently monstrous, mobs aside. How could children have summoned an Aslan who represents the truth of his story rather than the letter of it? If he was a child’s imagining, wouldn’t he be kind and gentle? This thing is so ready to rip out my heart and eat it that it’s making the kids uncomfortable. Something doesn’t fit. One of my assumptions is wrong.

Wait, did that kid say it killed his brother?

She straightened her spine. “Kids. Did this thing kill one of your family members?” They nodded, reluctantly.

“Hunter tried to shoot Aslan first,” said Hayden, half-defensively. “He had to.”

They’re stuck in his version of events. Gotta break the bubble, get them questioning. “You did shoot me, and I haven’t tried to hurt any of you. Aslan’s way stronger than I am, right? Why would he ever need to kill in self defense?”

That gave them pause. The Lion attempted to pace around the youngest boy, but Haley began repositioning to keep him between them. She couldn’t help but notice that the special forces crowd had spread out as well, and several were drawing a bead on her. The Lion growled, low and threatening. “I did not kill in self defense. To deny me is to embrace oblivion eternal. It is written and must be so.”

Haley snorted. “Not talking to you anymore, big cat. But pretty sure that last bit is metaphorical , you ass. Kids. That Lion is not your friend. And I am not your enemy. Nobody has to get hurt here, but I need one of you to help me. One of you is going to have to take action without him telling you to. Can any of you do that, please? Are you the heroes he tells you you are? Do you know right from wrong, even if he disagrees?”

The Lion roared, “There is no right that is not in my service! There is no wrong that is not in opposition to me!” The children flinched from him. She could see the doubt in their eyes. One push.

She bowed her head, exposed her neck. “You know that saving innocent lives is right. My only hope is that you remember that. This is your test. Stand up now, and help, or watch me die, offering you no resistance. He said it himself- any good you do, ultimately, cannot be a betrayal of him.” That rocked him back on his ass. That’s right asshole, try to tautology your way out of that one. He opened his mouth to protest but the dragon-girl Skylar stepped forward before anything could come out. Heck yeah, scaled solidarity, kid.

“I’ll help you.” She looked over her shoulder at Aslan, who had finally relaxed from that attack posture. He gave her a look of deepest sorrow and disappointment, and shook his head.

Haley nodded, and shifted again until she was a weasel, damn weird options you got there, Pathfinder . Don’t you allow any loyal animals? She scurried across the ground and up onto the great red back of the young girl. “Thank you, Skylar. You’re a better person than you know. And braver. Please just back us away from this clearing until we’re out of sight.” Anyone shoots me, they’ll hit her. I’m really hoping they don’t want to do that. Their boss seems reluctant at least.

He stood and watched her go. “Child, you do not know what you have done. I will see you again, before the last battle.”

Skylar waddled back, and back, and they held their places. Haley breathed a sigh of relief- they didn’t want to hurt the kid. Eventually they were out of sight. Haley relaxed marginally, on her shoulder. “You’re a pretty amazing kid, to stand up to him like that.”

Skylar shook her head. “Shut up, you. We’re not friends. But… I don’t think he’s always right, either. He gave me the pendant that turned me into this.” She gestured at her scaled body.

“If it’s any consolation, I’m not used to being a dragon either. Looks like you got the Eustace Scrubb treatment from the books.”

The girl cocked her head to the side. “Who? What books?”

“Wait, how can you not know? Aslan, the outfits, all of it- it’s from a series of books called The Chronicles of Narnia.”

“Oh yeah!” Skylar bobbed her head brightly. “Boden kept mentioning and I didn’t know what he was talking about. The Bible’s a book too, I just figured it was like that.”

So maybe the youngest is the source? But then why did the Lion let you go if he didn’t need you- her heart nearly stopped. “I’m an idiot. ” Distantly, she heard the sounds of engines starting. Heading this way. Not letting me go at all.

“Why?”

Her mind was racing now. “In the book, the first one. One of the kids betrays the other three. To the White Witch. He does it for some dumb candy, little jerk, but the principle is the same. ‘My story, not yours.’ That’s what Aslan said. I think we’re still inside his narrative somehow. I was supposed to escape that encounter with one of you in tow, to give more authenticity to whatever comes next. My lack of understanding about the rules is swiftly becoming a serious liability. Honey, you’re going to want to pick up the pace if we mean to outrun those 4 wheelers, I think we’re being hunted.”

Skylar laughed, beneath her, but began to lope along at a pretty astonishing rate. It felt like an earthquake. “I haven’t got the slightest clue what you’re talking about.”

“When I met the girl from Wonderland yesterday, the animals were all springing from her mind, some kind of magic power in the shape of critters from a story, but without their own brains, just a bunch of behaviors to ape. But Aslan is a story that knows he’s a story. He just played us, you and me both. That shouldn’t be possible if you made him up .”

“Oh no, we didn’t make him! We brought him here.”

Uh-oh. “Elaborate please.”

“Boden said he went somewhere, in the attic. To Aslan’s world. And Aslan asked him to get the rest of us, and help him cross over.”

Uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh. “Then… assuming that’s true. Cecilia was making copies, Wonderland through an imperfect lens, but you… brought something back with you. From wherever he came from, outside our world.”

“What does that mean?”

“I told Cecilia yesterday that there are no monsters, just people. But… I think your furry friend might be a cosmic terror from beyond time and space, sweety.” And if he is, our timetable for averting the end of the world just shortened considerably.

Neither of them had anything to say to that, so they ran in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, the slow pace started to chafe. The engine sounds were growing louder, through the forest. “Skylar, how about we teach you how to use those wings?”

The dragon-girl bobbed her head. “Okay. I mean I can jump and stuff, but I flap and flap and just kind of waggle up and down.”

Haley patted her with one weasly paw. “It’s harder than it looks. Draw in on the upstroke, push out on the down…”

Minutes later, they were soaring above the treeline. The wind threatened to dislodge Haley from the young girl’s back. “Wheeee! Miss Haley, I’m flying! Oh, I take back everything I said about this body!”

Ice broken . And hopefully, trail broken too. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. We’ll still help you out of it, if that’s what you want. Turn to the South, there’s a whole bunch of people I’d like you to meet.”