Corbin became aware of the other side of the portal (the nexus, as the delegate had called it) when the screaming and shouting started. No one was shouting at him, of course, he was an overlooked corvid in the middle of a… oh, a battlefield. Yes, he’d do well here.

He had the presence of mind to look around after a few moments, only because the sensation of going through the ‘nexus’ had been so bizarre and nearly painful. It was as though someone had filled his body with thumbtacks and rattled him around as he passed through, so tiny pinpricks hit him again and again. He’d fallen, nearly smashed into the ground, but got the air under him and glided to safety amid a number of bodies and other ravens.

Behind him, an inverted color portal stretched up nearly forever. Where the other one had been mostly pinks and purples, this side was a sickly yellow and deep green, like a nasty bruise just getting going. From this side it felt unhealthy.

Prissy didn’t fare as well as he. As soon as she stepped through, she fell to her knees and had armed men rushing at her. The cat girl heaved up her lunch, shakily got to her feet, and was bowled over by two armed and screaming soldiers. She engaged the Shadow Clone, only to have another three guards with magic spears come and level those spears at all her chests. Those spears had embedded gemstones in the tips, which glowed with menacing frosty blue, and menacing sparky yellow.

The three versions of her that weren’t held down by the two soldiers all bolted, only to have one of them frozen and vanish, and the other electrocuted. That one was the real her. The other two clones vanished, and left her shuddering on the ground.

“Stupid felinian,” the one soldier snarled. “Where did you think you were gonna get, huh?”

The soldier stood nearly seven feet tall, a fae with flawless pale milk skin, long pointed ears swept back, and a bloodred cloak over his gilt and forest green armor. The other two were humans, and together they rolled Prissy over onto her belly so they could clamp manacles onto her wrists.

“Give me the card,” Corbin told her. “I’ll find someone, and we’ll come back and get you.”

“Hell no!”

“If they kill you over and over again, they’ll end up with my card, and that’s not okay. Give it to me. I promise I’ll be back for you.”

She swore at him in her filthiest kindergarten-teacher-after-a-hard-day, which was as raunchy as Corbin could remember hearing. Granted, he only half-remembered his life before becoming a raven, but he was almost completely sure this was among the vilest cursing that existed.

“Priscilla, I held up my end of the bargain again, and again, and again. You, however, kept making promises you failed to keep. One of us is the trustworthy one here.” It could be argued that he was only trustworthy because he’d been compelled, like a slave, but nobody had forced him to help her. He could have annoyed her and attempted to hamper her progress the entire way, and hadn’t. “I’m telling you now, there’s no way I can take out these five guys, and definitely not without the rest of their soldier buddies coming to figure out how a raven suddenly became a serious badass. Please, Prissy, this is your last chance.”

She glared in his direction, trussed up as she was, closed her eyes, and nodded.

“Wait for my signal,” he said, and took off into the sky.

A handful of seconds later, he dove down at her, gave her the signal, but the card failed to appear in her manacled hands. He cursed. All the soldiers cried out in surprise, and one of them shouted that he must be a shapeshifter or a vampire, to kill that blasted bird, but he was up and well away before their gem spears started in with the lightning bolts or frost rays or whatever else they had.

“I’ll come back for you,” he told her, and realized she wouldn’t be able to understand him.

This new land was not in the slightest similar to the world he’d left. This portion of the world should’ve had a gigantic freshwater lake just to the north, Ontario, but the north stretched into gently rolling hills practically forever, except for distant purple spires where a lightning storm was presently under way. He circled back south, to see whether by some weird trick of magic that this world and earth were fusing together somehow, but again, no… south of him should’ve been Niagara Falls, the castle belonging to the Four and One-just-missing-for-now. Instead a pair of rivers coalesced into a marsh, which turned into even more wetlands further southeast. The kind of wetlands he’d seen once upon a time in the south of Florida: where the earth is just below sea level, so plants and trees and animals were just there, in the swamp, and people could barely exist. It was an Everglades of sorts. Further out, the land must’ve dropped away beneath the water, because he spied a blue horizon with a couple of large islands further out.

He was no longer on earth, that was for sure.

Quest Complete! – Discover What Lies Beyond

It’s a whole new world.

Magic and mystery and wonder and history! And BBEG style monstrosities.

Reward: Now you know. And bonus item: +1 skill point

He swooped down toward one of the fringes of the battlefield, and noted a group of several soldiers in a fight with a woman who had the same horns, tall stature and hoofed legs as Stephie of the Five. She was bedecked in a fur-lined cloak, wielded a pair of short swords, and also had a bow slung over her shoulder. Her companions were an assortment of races: a dwarf, a human, and another felinian. Interesting.

These four fought the soldiers in their red cloaks back against a large series of rocks, including slinging spells at them, flaring large colorful aura circles around them, teleporting beside them, and stabbing them, and the human straight up taking all the punishment while the felinian channeled soft healing magic into him from behind. They clearly outmatched the soldiers, and soon had them, one by one, slain.

Corbin landed a little ways off and watched events unfold. The goat-lady and her crew were quickly inspected:

Human Shield of the Vanguard

Level 13

More information is not known. Why not level up your Perception or your Inspect skill?

Felinian Acolyte

Level 12

More information is not known. Why not–

“Shut up,” he told the prompt, and inspected the dwarf.

Dwarven Skirmisher

Level 13

More information is not–

“Ugh, yes, fine… wait.”

He opened up his character sheet and added his skill point to Inspect. He’d used it an absolute ton, though he was grateful to Luck for keeping him alive against Stephie the dervish of pain. He vowed never to get down on Luck ever again, and to save one of his two level up points for it going forward.

Now he inspected the woman with the twin swords.

Tiefling Ranger

Level 14

Inspect 3: There are rumors that tell of a sharpshooter and wilderness guide out of the mountains north of The Parley, from the wild tribes of rock runners. It has been said that she allied herself with the Fellwroth for coin and a chance to make her name in battle.

Pro tip: Rangers don’t need to be holding a Familiar card to understand animals. Finally, someone you can freely speak to!

Fascinating. Skills had seemed like a joke earlier. Corbin made a mental note to seek out quests wherever he could, to accept the ones with skill point rewards, and to pursue them… drat.

He had to go save Prissy.

That meant befriending this Ranger. Well, that would be easy, given he had a Charm of 3 and no skills with which to drink her under the table or make friends.

It was worth a try. He had no other options, honestly.

He flapped his way over to where the group was crouching over the bodies. Loot items had appeared and they were divvying up whatever the soldiers had had on them.

“Greetings,” he said. “I want to apologize for sneaking up on you and coming up unannounced.”

The ranger didn’t respond, but the other three perked up. The human even laughed. “Heh, you got another friend, Kyessy.”

“This one clearly has much to say,” the felinian remarked, and settled into a meditative trance. His whole white tiger body began to glow with a soft blue aura. He also, by the way, looked nothing like Prissy. Priscilla was ginger colored, her fur stuck out at every angle, and she had white splotches, like a housecat mixed with a person. This new one had purple-black stripes against a snow white body, and bright orange eyes instead of yellow. He also didn’t wear tattered, filthy rags and have matted fur, but that hadn’t exactly been Prissy’s fault, nor her preferred method of living.

Still, he wasn’t too pleased with her right now.

“I used to be a human, and I’ve been…” what? He’d been what exactly? He couldn’t quite remember. “I’ve been transformed into a raven. I was told you could understand and speak to me.”

“No,” the ranger said.

“You haven’t even–”

“I’m not in the mood to be talking at all,” she said, “Much less to you. Take your sad story elsewhere.”

“Harsh,” the dwarf said, and produced a pair of rapiers. He studied the both of them briefly, before one vanished. “Still can’t get used to that. Appearing and disappearing items. Utterly bizarre.”

“I think I know how the inventory and appearing items came about,” Corbin tried. If they didn’t know much about the game system, he could–

“No one cares!” the ranger snapped.

The other three stared at her a moment, then went back to their business.

“Hear me out, please,” he said, and was notified he’d failed a Charm (Sway) check, but that luck was with him and she wouldn’t attack as a result. But further attempts might just piss her off royally, and she was a lot higher level than he was.

He hadn’t wanted to do this, but he fluttered down into the middle of the encampment and used Mimicry again. “That’s the bird Stevie was telling us about,” he said in Stephie’s voice. “First, we’re going to murder this bird–”

Now all four perked up in his direction, and glances were shared about.

“What do you think?” the dwarf asked, while getting a sightline down the length of his parrying dagger. “This bird is trying awful hard to get your attention, Kyessy.”

“Animals always try to do that.”

“I will murder every single bird I see until I kill you!” Corbin roared in Stevie the nellwynian bard’s voice. He remembered that line perfectly.

“Well that clinches it,” the human said. “We don’t want a familiar with enemies. I vote we don’t take him on.”

“First of all,” the ranger, Kyessy, said, “we don’t know if it’s a male or female.”

“That was uncalled for,” Corbin said. “You know by the sound of my voice that I’m a guy.”

Kyessy the tiefling ranger, who could talk to animals and apparently really didn’t want to, bowled on as though he wasn’t even there talking to her. “And second of all, Hale’s right. We don’t need any more trouble than we already have. We’ve got this mercenary contract, and that’s enough.”

A new prompt appeared before Corbin.

Would you like to initiate a quest to rescue your companion? Y/N

He pecked at the large Y button, and watched as the four of them reacted as if they’d been slapped.

“I will never get used to that!” the felinian said. “So annoying. And you all keep breaking my focus. I need my mana regen to get going so I can heal our big dumb shield wall here.”

“That’s big dumb effective shield wall to you, squishy healy person!”

“That’s highly effective squishy healy person to you!”

If Corbin had had a hand, he would’ve facepalmed himself. “Kyessy, your people are adorable and I love them–”

“What’s this about a captured felinian in the custody of the Denspire infantry?”

“My… companion. She holds my familiar card and refuses to give it up.”

Kyessy shook her horned head. She’d pulled back the cloak’s hood after their victory over the soldiers and revealed green face paint, and stark white, no… glimmering white hair. He was pretty sure Stephie of the Five had purple or black hair.

“Well you’re in luck, bird–”

“My name’s Corbin.”

“Don’t interrupt. You’re in luck, because our job is driving off the Denspire army. Isn’t that right, team?” She’d raised her voice in a rallying cry, but only got half-hearted moans in response. She snorted. “We’ll accept your quest, but know this: I have no interest in taking on your services as a familiar. I am in league with these three, and they are all I need.”

“Aww,” the dwarf said. “Hear that, Rinna? Kyessy has everything she needs in us. So wholesome.”

“I’m trying to get back my lost mana!” Rinn the felinian groused. “Shut up!”

“We understand one another?” Kyessy asked him.

“Sure.”

“Neither is your felinian welcome. She will not be joining us just as you will not be joining us.”

“Let’s not be too hasty!” the healer suddenly exclaimed. “Felinian, you say? Does she have black fur, by any chance? Black fur with white stripes?”

“And very low standards?” the dwarf chimed in.

“Gross, dude. Keep your weird Yveldrian fetish out of this,” Hale said.

This time it was Kyessy who facepalmed.