The sun’s soft radiance glimmered over the mountainous horizon. The morning was chilly, the chickens were crowing. A few kids were already out and about, playing with each other. Everyone seemed to be in good moods, but I was groggy as hell. “Seriously, who wakes up people at sunrise?” I complained to myself, loud enough for Pyro to hear.

Yes, the madman certainly did walk in on Donna and I; thankfully we weren’t doing the nasty. When we wobbled out the room, we saw that he and Adrasteia were already up and having a nice chat from the look of things. I somewhat didn’t expect them to get along, but I guess you never really know someone. As I spent more time with Pyro, I found it harder and harder to find even a trace of his former self. As we sat around the living room table and had our morning brews, I wondered just what happened to the guy.

Once I confirmed with Pyro and Adrasteia that their mana would be okay for flight, I joined Donna on Skyer. We thanked the villagers and journeyed through the skies in the direction that they pointed towards. With Hawk Eye, I found a decently sized town. That must be Durhan. With Invisibility on us, we easily landed on the paved road without much people noticing and continued on foot.

I transmuted some arcane-made ice into miscellaneous things we could use as a cover as travellers, and Pyro took centre stage to talk us through it. After he buttered up the guards with his nice wordplay, we were allowed to enter easily on the pretence that we needed to restock our supplies. Once inside, we ditched the baggage and split up after I connected us all with Light Link.

Originally, Pyro wanted to split into two pairs, which would be him and Adrasteia, then me and Donna. It seemed like the obvious pairings, but then he decided to let Donna and Adrasteia pair up instead. He and I explored the southern parts of the quaint town, in weird silence. After he futilely questioned a shoemaker, and I, a leatherworker next door, we joined back up and hit the road again to find people who might be well connected to a varied network of townsfolk.

Next was a nice baker and a spice merchant. The spice merchant kept trying to sell me stuff, but he did at least answer an interesting question. I’d noticed that most, if not all businesspeople were human, so I asked the question and found that beastkin weren’t socially received very well. It was like discrimination against half-breeds in Et Draco all over again. Pyro didn’t exactly learn anything from the baker, but he did notice that the stupendous number of businesses probably meant that magic had a rather minute presence in Rhilstorm. “Maybe it’s only in the big cities?” he posed the question somewhat to himself.

We continued like this for around a couple hours until we eventually met back up with the girls in front of a saloon. Not many people were inside at that time of day. The pairings changed this time, even though we sat at the same table. Pyro seemed concerned about our lack of progress, because there wasn’t much luck on the girls’ end either. Donna told him not to worry, “It could be because they know we’re outsiders. Either way, we can always use mind magic if we’re pressed for time. So just do it leisurely, okay?” Her warm smile put the group at ease.

Adrasteia asked him how we knew each other, and he answered it simply. Then she asked about his position in the Order of Magic. Pyro exhaled, a barely audible sigh, and eventually answered her.

“Is it just me or–”

He’s definitely acting weird. I agreed with the unmentioned latter part of Donna’s question. We had a late breakfast at that point. Donna spoke casually to help lighten up the mood. Since it seemed like talking about anyone’s past at the moment was either unrelatable or just a bad idea, she decided to talk about the elves of Tyrr. Who could’ve guessed it would put Pyro in a really bad mood? He stood up and excused himself.

He flew out of town and into the nearby forests, where he stayed for about an hour. He didn’t send any distress signals through Light Link, so I left him alone.

“Did I, do something?” Adrasteia asked Donna.

The queen chuckled, “Who knows?” She took a sip of juice, “He’s been gloomy like that since you had your tussle with Mandy. I don’t think it’s your fault or anything. Well, he’s a grown man. I think he can handle it.”

I flicked Donna on the forehead, “That’s pretty backward thinkin’. I’m a grown man too. If I didn’t have you, Dawn, and Anjali, I’d have broken down long ago. He has Gabrielle, right? Maybe go ask her to talk to him.”

She set her glass down, and gave me a lengthy stare with a faint smile. “I’m really proud of you, you know?” Without saying anything else, she suddenly vanished.

So now, just Adrasteia and I sat there. “Well,” she slouched back on her chair, “this is awkward.”

“Yeah,” I laughed, “it is. Hey, thanks for trying to cheer him up. You’re not as bad as I thought.”

She scoffed again, which she seemed to have a habit of doing, “You noticed? I guess you’re not so bad yourself.”

We chatted a bit, until Donna returned. She found out what happened to Pyro, but it was apparently a private matter so she didn’t reveal it to us if Pyro himself was unwilling to do so. I shrugged.

He joined back up with us as if nothing happened and we continued our investigations until sundown. After I sold some metals to a blacksmith, we got enough coin to stay at an inn. The night was young, but we’d been at it all day, so we were pretty exhausted. I put up some frosted glass walls and transmuted a bath inside the room. It was quite a tricky task to do it with arcane alone because the precision wasn’t easy. Donna and I helped each other to the bath first. Adrasteia went after, and much later, Pyro went. He spent a good chunk of the night writing notes about what he observed and what he was told.

I plopped down into the cosy bed and dimmed the lamp. Because Donna was my woman, I already figured we’d sleep together. I didn’t pay much attention to Pyro and Adrasteia’s predicament. Just as I was about to say something about it, a knocking was heard on our door. Pyro answered it, but there was no one there. “Must be a prank,” he surmised and was about to lock up and return, but he stepped on something. It was a weathered notepad that our mystery knocker slipped below the door. We all looked at Pyro as he read it, “Looks like a time and location.”

I begrudgingly sat up and rolled my eyes, “Shall we go then?”

He walked in closer, and beckoned us in as well so we might speak softly. “Adrasteia, can you cast Clone?”

She nodded, “What about it?”

“We’ll use Invisibility on ourselves and let our clones go in our stead. We will observe from afar. Sound good?” he inquired.

I had no problem with it, and neither did the girls. So, we followed our clones from afar and journeyed west through Durhan’s dark streets, only dimly lit by lanterns. As we toured farther in, the place grew ever darker and quieter. At most, one would hear the incessant crickets, scurrying rats, and only once, the revelry of a pub. There were more homeless people than I expected to see and they were all beastkin. What a horrid disparity. But, since neither of us came here to quell their inner turmoil, since we knew nothing of why things were the way they were, we ignored what Durhan showed to us. I pondered if things were like this in other towns or cities.

Finally, after walking through the slums for some time now, we arrived at a dilapidated flat. “You the ones askin’ ‘bout the portals?” the solemn guardsman asked.

“Yes,” Pyro took front. “Why have you called us here?”

The cutthroat uttered nothing but silence and simply pointed towards the poor example of a door with his thumb. Pyro’s clone left the door open for us. The room was spacious, and there were a few tables and chairs spread apart, almost like an inn’s eatery. These tables had old bottles of booze, playing cards, and ashtrays. Because the place wasn’t lit, no one noticed the man behind the bar. He calmly walked out the area after packing some mugs away, then lit a couple lamps.

At this point, everyone took notice of him. He was dark-skinned, bald and had a bit of a stubble. He was built, not too bulky, but nowhere as skinny as I was, and I wasn’t exactly skinny anymore. His movements were fluid, and looked full of the expertise that a seasoned barkeep would have. His clothes were finely made, clean, pressed, and he generally looked to have particularly high upkeep on his appearance unlike most other folks around here.

Why am I explaining all of this? Because the dude had a jarring longsword holstered on his back. Everything fit extremely well for a barkeep, but he had a damn longsword. I didn’t know if that said more about the man or more about his surroundings. After he rested a lamp on our table, and one on the bar’s counter, he finally tended to us. “Good night, dear patrons. My name is Ebbo. How can I be of service?”

Donna’s clone chuckled, and Pyro’s spoke after, “You tell us. Someone asked us to come here.”

“I see. Might you like a drink to tide you over until the other party arrives, then?” the barkeep asked.

A period of wordlessness rummaged throughout the bar. “If you’re intent on wasting our time, we’ll just leave, Ebbo,” Pyro warned.

“Oh, that would be most unfortunate,” he said, quite unconvincingly. “But you don’t seem like knights or officials, so I suppose you’ve wasted my time as well. It appears misfortune has befallen you to have seen this place. Men,” he said and stepped back.

About a dozen armed men stepped out the shadows and surrounded us. Donna quickly told Pyro and Adrasteia not to do anything. She was of the same mind as me – their spell books were rather flashy as far as we knew. We’d rather avoid the attention in order to smoothly advance our investigations. I stood up and Donna protected Pyro and Adrasteia with some dense water.

They all looked shocked at the water, which definitely concreted our suspicions that magic was rather rare in Rhilstorm. I believe the fact that I wore robes made them hesitate on attacking me because I might’ve been a mage. “Worry not, I won’t use magic.” Well, that was a flagrant lie because I used Timedial to give me a 20% time-dilation advantage. I pondered about activating Avatar of Lightning, but that wasn’t exactly an arcane spell.

The first man feinted me whilst the real attack came from someone behind me. I caught the blade and smashed a kick into his stomach. My victim flew several metres away. Ah right, the attribute enchantments are percentage-based now instead of static numbers. Plus copying those dwarven cells reworked a lot of my bone and muscle density. Not to mention the crystal shard transformation. I’m not too bad of a fighter, am I? I gloated in my head, because I knew I hardly put any real strength into that kick.

“You, aren’t a knight?” Ebbo asked.

“Never was,” I confirmed.

He was convinced, but still remained cautious. “Then, you’re not working for the royal court?”

I raised a brow, “Never was. Dude, we’re not even from this world. The reason we’re here is because some portals appeared in ours and big ass monsters came through and began to mess shit up.”

His eyes almost looked like they popped out of their sockets. “Stand down, men.” He invited me to sit again, “Can you describe these monsters?”

I shrugged, “Sure. Since I don’t feel anymore hostility, I’ll be gone now,” my clone said and dismissed himself. The real me came out of Invisibility and my companions followed. The gaping mouths didn’t let up from the other men. Before I began explaining anything, I healed the fellow who I kicked.

I put two fingers up, “Two monsters. Instead of legs, they have what looks like an upside-down tornado. They have a shield and sword. The shield’s made of skulls, and it has a huge sword in the next hand. Hmm, let’s see, huge shoulder armour, horned helmet, and it almost looks like a mix of mist, water, and fire, but the colour looks either orange or light brown. Sound familiar?” I asked. “There’s a world I’ve been to that called it the Avatar of Chaos.”

“So, we were talking to fakes all this time?” one of them muttered.

“Forget that!” Ebbo gave me quite the serious look. “What did you do against it?”

“What did we do?” I repeated. “Well, the first time I saw it, I just banished it. Second time around it appeared in my world, well, a group of people defeated them before I had the chance to do anything.”

Ebbo quivered and stepped back. He took deep breaths and leaned against the bar’s counter. “You killed titans?!”

I understood their disinclination to believe me. They didn’t seem like anything special. They were nothing more than normal humans with some training under their belt, probably. If these guys were similar to this world’s best, then there’s no way they would be able to do anything against the ‘titans’ as Ebbo called them. “Yeah. We asked about the portals and stuff earlier today, so why did you think we were officials of the royal court?”

He looked annoyed by that question, “Those capital pansies have been comin’ around to smaller towns and framing people, so we get rid of them quietly. They always make the beastkin their scapegoats for their own shortcomings. And recently, Old Castle has been acting weird according to reports from the nearest village there, so we assumed someone from the capital interfered with it and came to pin the crime on the beastkin.”

“I’m a little confused,” Pyro put his hand up to stop Ebbo, “so let’s backtrack a little. Did something happen in Rhilstorm in regards to the titans?”

“Ah, right, you’re not from here,” Ebbo remembered. “Two centuries ago,” he began explaining that the original castle that housed the royals of Rhilstorm were where the genesis of something they called Armageddon occurred. The word was no understatement; according to history books and stories passed down, titans suddenly appeared around Old Castle and levelled the place. There were dozens of them, and little that the inhabitants of Rhilstorm could possibly do to survive. It was a heinous culling of all kinds of beings.

Rhilstorm, a single, massive continent with a population past twenty billion people dwindled to no more than one hundred million, according to the estimates of the surviving scholars who assessed the land-reshaping damage. Because of the titans’ huge size and power, the land was reshaped, and many natural disasters finished what they couldn’t. There was no real safe place for anyone, and you just had to pray to god that you would survive. Even if they hid and hoped that the titans went back to wherever they came, it was in vain. The titans stayed and continued havoc for days.

By all means, it really was Armageddon for them.

Until, two brave souls bested the worst conditions and made their way to Old Castle, where they managed to seal the portal, and in doing so, the monsters miraculously disappeared. From that moment on, no one was permitted to step foot anywhere close to Old Castle, not even royalty. The only people allowed remotely close were guards who made sure that no one else would enter, not even investigators.

“We couldn’t risk it happening again. We had to start rebuilding civilization first. But the population was so low that we didn’t know what to do. One of the two men who saved us had a really crazy idea,” he said, almost laughing. That man in question was a doctor, a scholar, and a mage. “He found a way to crossbreed humans and animals. Things were progressing well when we got the beastkin. They matured fast, lived longer, were stronger and faster, and they still retained the same level of intelligence as humans. They basically rebuilt Rhilstorm and their numbers were soon overwhelming. Humans became scared of revolt,” he sighed.

Ebbo explained that the systematic oppression was because of that fear. They began to twist history and removed all documentation of the miracles that the doctor performed, and all the hard work of rebuilding population and structures in Rhilstorm that beastkin were responsible for.

“Well, you’ve rebuilt Rhilstorm now, right?” Donna questioned. “Was Old Castle ever investigated?”

“Not that we know of,” Ebbo admitted. “Even after two hundred years, we still don’t know what caused Armageddon.” He clenched his fists, “But I have my suspicions…”

“About?” Pyro spurred him on to continue.

Ebbo’s eyes raised up at the ceiling, “Someone must’ve interfered with the seal, so there’s high chance a traitor lurks amongst the Old Castle guards. Well, that doesn’t explain how the titans ended up in your world though.”

“Can you point us in the direction of Old Castle?” Pyro asked.

Ebbo flinched and stared at him for quite a while before answering with another question. “What do you plan to do?”

Pyro looked at me and Donna. “You’ve had experience with this stuff before, right?”

“Well, yeah. I’ve found my fair share of world artefacts. There’s a large chance these portals are because an artefact that leads to the titan world is being activated in Old Castle,” I explained.

Ebbo rubbed his stubble, “What will you do if it is and what will you do if it isn’t?” He was cautious, and I couldn’t blame him. The thought of twenty billion deaths was astronomical. Even with crossbreeding, the fact that they rebuilt Rhilstorm was a miracle. Even after the titans were sent back to their world, I’d imagine nature would have its way with the remnants of Rhilstorm’s population, but they persevered. It would’ve taken insane mental resilience to make it through that.

“If it’s an artefact, there are a couple options. We could seal it and hide it elsewhere,” I shrugged. “Or, we could take it back to our world. If it isn’t an artefact, then perhaps it might be someone doing it and so, we eliminate that person.”

“Hmm,” Ebbo contemplated. “Is what they say true, Fatima?”

“Yes,” a woman’s voice sounded from the darkness of a corner.

Hmm? Mana Perception? Interesting.

“Alright then,” Ebbo looked pleased. “No one wants the titans to come back, so let’s join hands to make sure that doesn’t happen, outworlders. Let’s meet at your inn tomorrow morning to start our journey.”

With that, we dispersed. I pondered if I should let a clone shadow this Fatima person, but decided against it.