The act of exiting a gate and starting a new planet off on the wrong foot proved not to be habit forming, and Karen’s bloodstained boots registered barely a stumble before finding their stride. Then they planted, standing firmly on the shattered concrete as their owner took in what was around her.

“It’s not exactly how you advertised it, bud.”

The funnel shaped dome above her had, at some point, been topped by something big. Whatever it was had toppled long ago, smashing down and leaving a gap in the dome’s frame that revealed the only clear view of the blue sky. All else was green; a shell of a city long ago yielding to the encroaching jungle. Even the remains of the dome itself were overgrown with greenery, filtering the daylight out between whatever plants were adventurous enough to climb the framework.

“And I didn’t have to pay a bribe to get in. Doesn’t seem all that bad. Guess I’ll have to pierce my own ears though.”

That hit on a deep level. A relaxing place was better than an adventurous place hands down.

“It’s been a long week. And I’m rich again, apparently. I could stand a little time to rest without arrest. Or having to kill someone, or something.”

Karen had heard this lecture a couple times on the long float. Whatever portion of his personality the spirit had recovered thanks to her expanding her spirit body was definitely the extremely talkative and meticulous part. Maybe that’s all there is and anything else was thanks to her. Poor guy.

“Sure, knock it out. How do we get started? I’ve never ranged a jungle hunting for magic shit, I think you’re going to have to explain that first.”

“What about that?” Adjacent to the portal one wall of a ruined building was clear of growth and painted. ‘GREENSKIN FRONT’ stood out in handwritten block, pointing down the shattered thoroughfare that somehow maintained its lack of flora despite the rest of the city failing to do so.

“What is a greenskin anyway? Is it like a Washington Greenskin? Sounds racist.” Karen set the stars she was holding down on the ground, wanting to inspect the text as it originally appeared. It was a series of slashes, completely unreadable to her but not looking altogether unfamiliar from what might be found on Earth.

“Is that what happened to this city?”

“And the best prize was often what a participant could find in the wild, right. If I had a nickel for every time you’ve said that today then I could buy a go fuck yourself.”

“It’s hard to tell if you’re relevant. I still have a choice to make, do I avoid contact and rely on myself for every little thing or do I check out whatever the greenskin front is and possibly end up in the middle of whatever the hell that means?”

A fair point. A little hermit-in-the-woodsy, but fair.

“People are a problem, yeah, but the time I spent on Mraxis being completely alone was the most miserable of the lot. Even jail wasn’t so bad, at least there I had Jerkins to talk to. Not a bad guy, actually.”

She had. There was no contest. What was the point of becoming superpowered if you aren’t able to buy the freshest new catsuits, eat at the chillest restaurants, and hang out with the hottest guys? Probably hard to get any of those things in a war camp, but even that place had to be better than collecting magic space nuts and singing to yourself to not forget the feeling of a voice hitting your ears.

“Greenskin front. Let’s see if we can find out what it’s all about.”

The trip through the domed city was a quick one, and the slightly lighter gravity was enough to make it feel effortless without completely throwing off her stride. Partway through the escape, a second floraphobic road intersected the first. Wherever it led would remain a mystery. Though the plants were as afraid of it as they were the road she walked, debris was absolutely mad for it. It was stacked in heaps that so thoroughly choked it Karen doubted she’d make it through if she tried.

Whatever design gave the roadway its flora resistant properties continued to persist outside the structure and on down what must surely be its entire length. It continued on into the distance, its condition much better than inside the ruined domed settlement.

The construction of the road itself was wide. Wide enough to open a break in the oppressive emerald canopy and offer a view of what was above.

It was breathtaking. In the literal sense. When she stepped out of the dome for the first time and caught a view of the gas giant she was orbiting, her breath caught in her throat. It stayed caught for a moment, only remembering to inhale again after a breathy ‘whoa’ slipped from her lips.

The bright blue ball, streaked with white, dominated the heavens. The blue of the planet faded away into the blue of the sky where the sun lit hemisphere gave way to the darkened one. As low as it hung, the blue giant was only barely visible above the trees, trying to tease her with its promise of beauty. What was more easily visible were the rings.

They stretched themselves out to be larger than the planet itself. Huge ribbons of greens, browns, and whites that hugged the giant, shrinking to thin belts on the far side and expanding to great sheets on the near side, decorating the sky with color and eventually coyly hiding themselves behind the moon’s greenery.

Karen didn’t respond. Several long moments passed before her steps continued.

---

The greenskin front was much better at hiding than the heavenly features above the moon had been. As the trip wore on, even the novelty of fantastic and alien beauty could not continue to make the run interesting. Karen’s musings on the possibility of owning a magic SUV were rudely interrupted by running out of road. Most upsetting was that her fictional SUV would need to be parked, and only a half hour after she had imagined getting it.

Upon reaching the very edge of the highway, it looked as if whoever had been painting it onto the world had gotten bored of the endless task and left. Leaning over, she could see where the edge dropped down like the highway’s stoop, and count all seven layers of discrete strata in the road’s construction.

Karen was not keen on this. Of course, the spirit commented that she’d been doing it for weeks. This created a respectful debate over the difference between boreal forests and jungle, which reached a mutual and gracious conclusion.

“And I said I’m doing it, ghost ass.”

Continued whacking at the dense wall of green was yielding a spot she could slip through into the less dense interior. The thought of repeating the process from inside the dark of the canopy did not spark joy.

“If it takes this much effort to get through, it’s probably been ages since someone has traveled down this road, yeah?” She spoke between grunting swings.

“Then what are we chasing? Whatever was going on out here when the sign was written has long since passed. And the sign writers lost, right? Or else they would have changed it at some point.”

One of ‘meals’ left behind in the cache had already been sampled. It was a lot like chicken curry, if the flavorless rice were only half cooked and the chicken were made out of literal strips of cardboard. There were exactly ninety-nine of those left. And nothing else. Old Vandy either had particular tastes or a particular lack of taste, and the spirit was much too sensitive on the topic to try to confirm which.

The fifth shower since she’d headed out started to pour the moment she passed through the break in the green wall, providing a bonus layer of darkness to the gloomy interior, as well as soaking her once more. Welcome to the jungle, Karen. You’re gonna die.

The interior was much less crowded than the exterior wall of green would make it seem, and the features were content to hide themselves in the dark. The relentless assault of raindrops on the trees was even louder than the din she was still working on getting used to.

As if she needed a warning. Whatever it was had been screaming from the branches the entire time she’d been whacking.

“Neat.” After a moment of charging and fiddling, she figured out the light. With a thought, It floated above her softly illuminating the area.

“Are you guys related? Is this your cousin?” She made the magelight do a couple quick zips around her head.

The spirit started on a story about how he chose his glowing orb visualization, and Karen quickly tuned it out to inspect her surroundings. From the outside, the jungle looked like a green wall. From the inside, it didn’t look too different from every unmanaged greenspace she’d ever visited.

Little differences like what looked like a nine-foot morel or a pitcher plant that might swallow a glargl really illustrated that all of this was alien ecology, but for the most part it might have fit on Earth in any of a number of places Karen would have avoided, but claim to support through the purchase of ‘environmentally sustainable’ yogurts. Four percent of the proceeds go toward the Nature Foundation®!

With the spirit still talking, she carried on. It was a very short trip downward before the ground leveled out, and it was all uphill from there.

The shower ended by the time she’d whacked it out and onto the road again. The relief of being back on the road was soured by seeing it ended again far too soon.

The second gap in the road was not unlike the first, with a steep drop that hid its depth behind a green wall that had built up along the road’s perimeter. She stared at it, unsure of how to proceed.

What happened to the victors is what I want to know. She turned, heading back the way she came. If they were going to set up shop doing it near the gate was preferable.

And it wasn’t abandoned yesterday.

With the wind taken out of Karen’s sails, the return trip was taking longer than the trip out. The spirit filled the time by meticulously listing the things they’d be looking for and their various uses.

You’re listing a lot of animal parts.

You go out and kill space rhinos to rail powdered horn and cure your magic ED. People are animals, do I have potent bits?

Have you ever been involved in one? Bonded with a member, I mean.

Does everyone you know die violently? Have you ever–

The world shifted green. It was already green, but it had gone greener.

Wow. Are you seeing this?

The sun was dipping behind the planet’s rings, and light filtering through was coloring the planet like stained glass.

That didn’t feel fair. She was supposed to have superpowers. Not only that, but she was definitely the first person from her entire planet to watch a see an eclipse from a foreign planet’s moon. How unfair was it to not be able to watch? Still, she conceded. As impressive as this was it was no use if it was the last thing she’d see.

Couldn’t I just, you know, watch a bit and heal them up after?

But what if it doesn’t though! What if it’s rings only! I won’t get to see anything.

With nothing else to do, the journey continued. A series of discreet peeps were her silver medal to using up limited healing resources on repairing permanent blindness. The stained-glass window effect of the rings eventually passed as the star passed through gap between the belts and the planet.

It felt like she’d lost something. Something beautiful had come and gone and it was something she’d never get to experience it again. The feeling started to ease as the day began to darken, and her shadow began to sharpen as she ran. The anticipation was almost too much to bear, and counting steps to fight the urge to blind herself could only help for so long. She did not have to resist forever.

As the light continued to fade the peeps increased, until the final, flaring bead of sun was gone.

In what felt like a very, very long time ago, Karen, recently widowed and recovering from surgery, had driven ten hours to rural Oregon to watch a total solar eclipse. Something about the majesty of a celestial event had a certain romantic appeal, even though she had never taken an interest in astronomy at any other point in her life. Karen had considered it at the time to be a sort of mystical, transformative event. It was, comparatively, an absolute joke.

It’s so bright.

The rings glowed like a lamp, with each color standing out starkly against its neighbor. That lamp illuminated the face of the planet, and the entirety of its blue and white surface was revealed for the first time. It was lit like a stage, with the moon as its darkened theater, and Karen held the only ticket. But it was only the stage, and the players began their show.

A perfect halo of sunlight, thin and glittering, blazed around the blue world’s outer edge. Intermittent flares of light danced and disappeared, only to reappear elsewhere based on its own unknowable choreography.

As a backdrop for all of this, the stellar corona extended out its insect wings of tulle and gossamer, giving the impression the performance was itself a living thing. At any moment it would flap those wings and be gone, leaving her to wonder if it had ever been there at all.

It feels like the entire world has stopped to watch.

The jungle, which had been blasting a constant background noise only minutes ago, was now blanketed in a deathly silence. The moon really was a theater, lit only faintly by the stage lights and respectfully quiet.

A rude theatergoer roared somewhere in the distance. Hundreds more responded all around.