“What are you staring at?”

The empty courtyard looms in the never-dim light, and the squared stone steles that edge the square loom like mismatched, tightly fitted teeth against the vanta-black of the missing sky.

There are people in Todd’s corner. He is surrounded by them; six hundred human beings who’d been shunted out of their lives and into a lunacy. That number was important. And they were all bunched up in this corner of the square, that was important too. Because of... because of…

“What? Oh, hey Randall,” Todd catches himself spacing out and turns back to join his friend.

“You wandered off,” the big guy scolds him. The [Nettle Salve Skin Mending Pill] has had a marked improvement on Randall, his cheek flush with the biliverdin-green of a bruise on the fade. His mood has improved too, with a pinched, barely restrained smile.

“I’m just, I dunno. Thinking. Feel like I’m missing something obvious,” Todd shrugs.

“It’s been a long day,” Randall offers. “I think?” Then hedges. “Phones are down. Like zero battery.”

“Anybody got a watch on?”

“Naw. All batteries are down, man.”

...

“Mechanical watches.”

“Right,” Randall blinks. “Right. That would make sense. I’ll uh, I’ll ask.”

Todd isn’t alone here, standing on the shore of habitation. There are a hand’s worth of others, at contemplative watch and a few yards between each. Todd meets the cloudy grey of elder Walter’s gaze. The old man opens his mouth like he’s got words for the saying, but then he turns his face back to the empty of the plaza.

The only things that mark the floor are a single woman’s heeled shoe, and far in the corner a blurry red spill mark. The splotch spreads at a glacial dwindling pace, then is still.

“Come on Todd,” Randall says, with a worried side-eye to Walter. “Weirding us out here.”

“Yea.”

Todd turns away, following Randall back through the group and towards Joe and Candra. He waves hello to ‘Kid Nicotine with the hat’: Jingshu. He replies he’s well when Business Jennifer inquires. He puts a hand on Elena Ortiz de Landazuri’s shoulder. He can’t understand her reassurances but he’s glad she’s well. He even nods to Teo, who’d proved his brass by refusing to fight Elena.

It helped ease Todd’s ill impression of the two that the old woman had pulled off a leather boot and whooped Teo’s ass halfway to Sunday to conclude their match. Little blessings.

Randall waves to Candra, who returns a distracted, pensive wave at waist level as her tapping foot speaks without music. Joe stands further away with the impromptu leadership council, though he is doing more listening than speaking. Ranger Drew is there, Officer Bernice and Dr Chowdhury too. Marketing Mike has been edged out in favor of Soup Kitchen Nina, and Fireman Ian is running instructions to and from the circle. Alderman Donnellson is off talking to Aefore and it doesn’t look good.

Todd sighs, filled with a woolscratch-want to be helping and having no outlet to empty it. Instead he watches as a figure from the group wanders off to a community designated alley to do their business. He grimaces.

“There’s no point to staring off in the distance you know.”

Todd recoils, pivot-twist, turn and guard. Ciforre floats idly and purple in the space where she’d snuck up behind him. Her expression is painted in far away regards and long-way thoughts, her soft voice bare with ruminations.

Todd slowly, suspiciously lowers his hands. He realizes she is facing off towards the far empty corner. “Yea. Yea I guess you’re right.” He laughs weakly, looking to Randall and Candra for support. “Live in the here and now.”

Ciforre turns to Todd. “No. I mean you need a Wisdom score of at least fifteen to pierce the illusory array. Now come along and gather your fellow primates. We have a presentation, and then we will be allocating your rooms.”

The pixie floats away, acknowledging Candra and Randall before approaching the small group Todd calls ‘the Vietnamese Delegation’.

“So cool,” Randall croons.

Todd chooses not to argue. Instead he sets to his task, with a resigned enthusiasm like a Bourbon raising his own Guillotine. “Ah, okay,” he clears his throat. “I’ll go get Walter and squads hillbilly and teenangst.”

Candra sighs. “I’ll get mahjong and the trust-fund brigade.”

Randall gives them a confused look.

“Dude. Go over there,” Todd points at the wall-side clockwise corner. “And just get people warned. The pixies are up to something again.” Randall plods off reluctantly, and Todd turns to slow jog towards his chosen section.

He picks his way carefully around seated, recovering people. He negotiates language barriers, and resentful fight-battered faces. He cajoles tired groups to their feet, and he postpones a few vendettas.

A small clear crystal gleams against the pastel turquoise of the ground. Reaching down, Todd palms it and then thrusts it up into the air.

“Who dropped their Cultivation Manual?” He calls out. “This was a quest reward, people! It’s GOING to be important!”

The owner comes to Todd with an embarrassed apology and takes back his crystal.

“Didn’t you read the description? [Root of the Limitless Promise Cultivation Manual]. Seriously buddy, it’s got Cultivation right in the name.” He shakes his head in constern. “Don’t frickin’ lose that.”

Walter comes along last and easily enough, merely grunting his assent and following the tide to a gathering assembly.

At the fore-and-corner and ten-foot in the vertical, the Pixies hang in patient formation. They wait while the crowd collects and quiets. Finally, Aefore appears satisfied and pulls closer and forward from her sisters.

“Thank you for your patience, noble Earth warriors,” she begins. Her streaming hair sways out above her, and her mail gleams below. She is a living pillar in black, gold and white. “We understand that you must be weary. That you are hungry -”

“We forgot that mortals need to poop!” Befor chirps helpfully.

“ Be assured. You will shortly be provided with personal accommodations. Ciforre will provide you with the appropriate details in a moment” She indicates her sister, who affirms with the same gesture.

“But I fear that some among you are unconvinced, that you do not yet imagine the enormous opportunity to which you are beneficiary.”

“Those of you who have tasted the first rewards of this Tutorial: know that they are nothing, table scraps, compared to what lies ahead. You can be stronger, live longer,” Aefore reminds them.

“You’ll get rich,” Befor interrupts, as she starts to drift.

“And what if I’m already rich?” Calls out an exasperated voice from an expensive gold watch with a man attached.

“Oh yea?” Befor kicks up her feet and puts her hands on her hips, then swoops down to face him. “How many planets do you own?”

The man frowns. “Planets?

Giggling, Before spins and swooshes back to her sister’s side. “If your answer is one or fewer,” she cries out, throwing her hands into the air. “Then dream BIGGER, friend! Because the sky is no longer your limit!”

Aefore raises her hand to preclude further questions. “It is time we stop telling you what is possible, and start showing it. Behold! The power of being Limitless.” 

Todd notices the oncoming fog of the pixies’ mind numbing technique, and the square begins to dim. The three sisters spread out, then weave their hands in a complex, circular gesture that finishes held high. Three trails of white mist spill from their fingers, pouring upwards and twisting into a thickening braid.

Then the mist binds and blooms, and swells until it blots out the sky.

An iron-ochre world flares into view, vaulted by a thousand-mile stratosphere. Stern, arid clouds block any view of the local Star, and the sharp mineral shale of red stone stretches for ten and ten thousand miles in every direction.

Vertigo shakes loose a bolt in Todd’s stomach, as he looks up and to the center of the impossible view. There is a woman here. Not a woman at all, she is a refracting mirror in a human shape. Nine hundred miles tall, her crown scrapes the low bound of heaven. An unreadable, omniscient gaze regards Todd, and he gets the irrational impression she just skimmed through his DNA for a bit of light reading.

Turning away, she raises elegant spindle arms up towards shimmering distortions in the air around her. Two arms, no four, no eight. A thousand, twenty four arms, marking a thousand and eight sacred mudras. They dance with exacting precision, both existing and not as the Queen of Mirrors multi-tasks through probability itself.

At her feet is a great, shining silver city, rising like needles. Cries of exultation toll in a hundred million voices, rising up in a chorus from its towers.

Her power reaches out through gates in space and time, and she, through her mirrors, reads the history of nations with a casual detachment of her million year reign.

Then the vision is gone.

A mighty mountain appears in its place. But it is not a mountain, it is a stepping-pyramid; a gargantuan ziggurat which has pierced the white clouds and proudly towers into the flawless clear blue of a new horizon. Trembling, Todd sees that the mighty structure rises so high he cannot see its bottom, just the hazy green outline of a continent below. His view starts to move, panning upwards to follow a central stairwell towards the apex. Each tier is built from ten foot tall blocks which gleam with the color of gold metal. Hundreds, thousands of servants and attendants lounge at every level; on the steps and at the lintels of secondary rooms inset into the tiers. Platters of sumptuous food and drink overburden long tables and long trailing silks.

The steps too glitter with lustrous gold, and Todd realizes that every ounce of tower is indeed made of the precious metal. How is this possible? There isn’t enough gold buried in all the planets of the Solar system to built a tower this high.

Finally, the view rises to a simple, open throne room with a mother of pearl roof. Hundreds of beautiful bronzed bodies lazily splay across richly velvet cushions, and in the center of the room sits a plain looking young man on an unadorned wooden chair. His legs hang to the side off of the arm of his simple throne, and he wears a bored sideways grin, while in one hand idly twirling a short rod made from shining amber.

The vision blanks out again, and instead Todd sees a wild eyed crone. Her white hair trails out in an unruly riot, and her body is clothed in rags and bones. Her face contorts in an ecstatic madness as she drifts. Drifts because the woman isn’t standing on top of anything, she is swimming alone in an inky black and lit only by the pinprick constellations of space.

Because it is Space; and the witch woman dances through it as easily as Todd might walk through a living room. Cackling, but without sound or air, the witch crosses ten million miles with each step. Then she clutches her clawed hand to peek around the edge of a passing gas-giant world, before darting further and deeper forward.

A sudden calamity of activity bursts out from a nearby world, a hundred thousand rising steel vessels afire with glowing fractal symbols of energy. But the witch leaps past them with a speed slanderous to Einstein, avoiding the frightful beams of their weapon energy with scornful contempt.

Where space does not carry her laughter, the atmosphere of the inhabited world does. Terrible disasters shake their earth and sky, but their fate means nothing to the witch. She reaches into her pocket and withdraws a colorless napkin then, at reaching the edge of a nuclear inferno she throws out the kerchief and folds the local star neatly into it. Suddenly, the light winks out and a dozen worlds spin out of control as the gravity holding them in orbit vanishes.

Far too late, the battle ships arrive in the empty heart of their system and fire on the woman who extinguished their people. Already streaking away, the crone evades a blistering web of attacks and makes a rude gesture behind her. Her toothless gums gape wide in mania as she threads between thousands of glittering narrow lines until she outpaces one of the rapidly freezing outer planets and the range of the pursuing weapons.

Finally she pulls out a yellowed piece of paper and a sliver of bone tipped in ink. Satisfied, she strikes off the final ingredient on her formula for the [Fruit of the Z Bozon, Atom-Threshing Furnace Pill], and then rockets off into the dark and distance.