“Alright,” Mikhail said, as they rolled through a lush wooded road. “Let me make sure you’ve got it one last time.”

“Ah, yes,” Camille snarked from the back of the cart, “because in the five minute span since you last asked, we might have already forgotten.”

Mikhail muttered something under his breath that Sam couldn’t make out but sounded uncharitable, then turned to her. “Once you get in there, it’ll be your only chance to get your story straight and make sure Vigdam can’t pull any funny business, so you will humour me, dammit!”

“Alright, alright,” Sam cut in before Camille could respond, “ask away, Mikhail.”

“Hmph, good. Now, what are you?”

“Temple Guard trainees. Having completed our doctrinal formation, we have been sent here to complete the martial parts of our training.” Kaisei intoned with a bored voice, leaning against the cart wall. “Once we have finished, we will be sent back to Tanadelle for our next assignment.”

“What are your duties?” Mikhail pressed, without commenting on Kaisei’s tone.

“Whatever our trainer tells us they are.” Tasha said.

“And why were you sent here?”

“That is for our Hierarch to know and for us to accept.” Camille answered, arms crossed.

“Good enough.” Mikhail turned back to the road. “If anyone starts asking too many questions, you can play the aloof trainee while I handle them. Most of your ‘brethren’ are absolute raving fanatics when they leave that doctrinal formation, and have a reputation for being a bit odd. It’ll let you justify a lot of strangeness if necessary.”

For a moment they stayed quiet as the trees thinned and the landscape opened up around them like the first pages of a book. The valley was wider than the one they’d arrived in, but the mountains that rose above them on either side were taller, sides dotted with dark pines and firs, and snowy tips piercing the thick low-hanging clouds. Off in the distance, the beaten cart path wound its way through the small grassy hillocks that covered the valley floor, its length occasionally marked with small piles of stacked stones.

“Wow,” Sam said, from the back of the cart, “this really isn’t home, is it?”

“Yeah,” Kaisei agreed, “this feels more like Skyrim or something.” Blank faces looked at him. “What, Skyrim? The Elder Scrolls? You guys never played that?”

“Oh, it’s a videogame?” Camille said. “No, sorry, not my thing.” Tasha shrugged when Kaisei looked at her.

“Sam, please!” Kaisei turned to him, pleading. “Please tell me you at least played it!”

Sam smiled, apologetic. “Sorry, Kaisei, never had much time for videogames. But I’ve heard about it!”

Kaisei threw his arms up in exasperation. “I’m traveling with philistines! When we get home, I’m making you all download and play that game!”

“Why?” Tasha asked, cocking her head. “Is it good?”

“Well…” Kaisei hesitated, “Yes? For the time, yes, but now maybe not as much? But still great! Well, it is kinda boring sometimes, and the story isn’t very good, but it’s an important game!”

Camille snorted. “You’re really selling it to us, Kaisei.”

“Oh come on! I swear you’ll like it!” He paused for a moment. “Almost certainly!”

“Alright, settle down back there,” Mikhail called from the front, “we should be arriving at Broken Bridge in a few minutes. It’s just past that hill over there.”

“So, who’s that friend you wanted to talk to?” Sam asked, smiling as Kaisei sulked with arms crossed.

“A mage friend of mine. We used to serve in the same company, down south, and he came here to retire after I pitched the place to him. Myrrin, he’s called. He can be a bit foul-mouthed, but he really is a sweet sort. I’m hoping he can help us shed some light on your problem, and maybe give us some ideas on how to send you home.”

“Myrrin? He really does sound like a sweet guy.” Kaisei chuckled to himself. The others looked at him. “What?” He asked defensively. “It’s a pun! In Japanese! It means… Oh, nevermind, it’d take too long to explain.”

“Thank God for that,” Camille said, before addressing Mikhail again. “So we just go see that wizard friend of yours and hopefully he tells us how to go home?”

“Something like that,” Mikhail answered. “Ah, here we are, we should be seeing the town now.”

As the cart crested over the small hill, they finally got their first sight of Broken Bridge. It really was a small village, maybe a few dozen buildings altogether, all made of wood and stone. A large cobblestone highway came in from the right and cut through the center of the village, where it split in two, one newer-looking branch heading off to the left, and another, more worn-down one, connecting to the Bridge.

Sam’s breath caught as he took in the sight. A few hundred yards from the edge of the village, the floor completely gave way, as if sheared off by a mighty strike from God’s sword, creating a cliff where even the mountains that formed the valley stopped, and plummeting down into unfathomable depths. Sam couldn’t even glimpse a hint of either the bottom or the other side of the vast chasm.

This was where the Bridge began.

The bridge was an impossibly huge construction of weather-stained yellow stone bricks, larger than any bridge Humanity had ever even imagined on Earth, and it made the small town they were coming up on look like a child’s doll village next to it. Several football fields could have lined up across the Bridge’s awesome roadway with room to spare, and its pillars, disappearing below the cliff’s edge, were each as large as skyscrapers.

The Bridge went on for several miles, a mighty road across the void, before it broke. The hole was a nasty thing, perhaps half a mile wide, ragged and worn by the elements, and the stumpy remains of a bridge pillar ended abruptly several hundred yards below the place where the Bridge should have been. On the other side, the Bridge resumed, and vanished out of sight, beyond the horizon.

“Ha ha ha, never gets old!” Mikhail laughed merrily from the driver’s bench, turned back to see their faces. “Welcome to Broken Bridge, my friends!”

Mikhail didn’t drive them into town right away. Instead, he led the cart near a larger house on its outskirts, built so as to overlook the village without being too far from it. Built with a stone base and strong wooden pillars, it was one of the tallest buildings in the village at three stories high, looking more like a small manor than a house.

“Well, here we are. Let me go in first, alone, with this.” He retrieved a long and thin wooden box from a sack that had ridden next to him during the trip. “A gift,” he explained. “GIft-giving is an old and important tradition… but this is mostly to make sure he’s in a good mood and agrees to help. I’ll give you a signal once the necessary politenesses have been exchanged, and you can come in too.”

“What kind of signal?” Sam asked as he regarded the stately building.

“Oh, don’t you worry about that my boy, it should be easy enough to tell.” He heaved himself off the cart, box under his arm. “I shouldn’t be longer than a few minutes,” he said, and headed towards the manor’s door.

“Hey,” Kisei asked, after a while. “Do you guys think we could do magic, too?”

“I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about it,” Sam answered honestly. “But we couldn’t do magic back home, so I’m not sure why we could now.”

“Well, I don’t really think magic is this purely innate thing here.” Kaisei answered, adjusting his glasses excitedly. “I mean, the impression I got was that there are regular wolves, so for there to be a ‘Fallwolf’, that means it would have to be magically changed somehow, right? So maybe magic is this external thing anyone can influence if they know how. And then we could do magic too!”

“I’m not really sure why you’d want to make another one of those things, Kaisei,” Camille answered. “We met one and that was enough crazy magic wolf for me forever.”

“No, no!” Kaisei said. “No! Not making those things, I meant like fireballs! Lightning bolts! Flying!” He leaned forward earnestly. “Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

“Well,” Tasha said, “we are here, so you can ask the priest’s friend about—”

Her sentence was interrupted by the sound of an explosion coming from the building, and the front door flew back open with a black charred hole burned right through it.

“Mikhail you son of some nameless whore!” a voice boomed from within. “You come back here after dragging me to this stinking freezing pit of a village, and then you barge in to mock my work? I’ll finish the job that Ulfvar started and cripple you all the way!”

“If you can call prancing about with bottles and fumes work!” Mikhail’s voice answered. “I’ve seen farriers with more imagination! I’m going to beat what little magic you’ve got left right out of your lazy ass!”

Sam and the others looked at each other, then set off running towards the door. When they burst into an elegant and tastefully decorated entry hall, they saw Mikhail, sword drawn, blazing with flames, facing the man who must have been Myrrin. Sam had expected a reedy, bearded fellow, wise and dignified, but instead of Gandalf he saw a finely dressed shorter man, plump and heavyset, with a ring of graying hair around his pate, a thick mustache on his lip, and lightning flickering around his fingertips.

“And who the hells are you, then?” The man turned to glare at them as they burst into the manor, jowly cheeks beet red, “Can’t you see we’re busy here?”

“Myrrin, those are my students,” Mikhail cut in calmly, flaming sword casting a fierce light over his face. “I came here about them.”

“You? Students?” Myrrin scoffed. “Thought you’d sworn never to take more, said they were too much of a pain in the ass. So much for consistency, eh you fat fuck?”

“The situation demanded it, and you’re no Billanian belly dancer yourself. You’re looking more like a banker than a warmage these days.” Mikhail answered with level eyes, adjusting his stance.

“Oh you’re asking for it!” Myrrin growled, cracking his knuckles, which made small popping and snapping noises of static electricity. “Are we going to fight already, or just whisper sweet nothings at each other all day?”

“I would love to,” Mikhail answered, sword still held at the ready, “but I don’t have much time today for this.”

A tense silence stretched for a few seconds as the two men glared at each other, broken only by the sound of crackling flames and electricity. Sam’s heart humped in his chest, but he didn’t dare make a noise for fear that it would provoke the two into violence.

“Ah, damnation. Well, that’s what it’ll be then.” Myrrin said, finally, and the lightning arcing around his fingertips winked out of existence as he relaxed his pose. “We’ll pick this up tomorrow then. You are out of shape though,” he said, in a conversational tone. “You could have absorbed that fireball entirely instead of deflecting it. Now I’m going to have to repair the damn front door.”

“It was intentional, sorry about that,” Mikhail shrugged as he stuck his sword, flame and all, back in its scabbard. “I promised I’d give the kids a signal when they could come in.”

“Uh… what the hell’s happening here?” Camille asked, looking from one man to the other. “Why the hell were you just trying to kill each other?”

“Kill!?” Myrrin said, sounding offended. “From that? Mikhail, what the fuck have you been telling them?”

“Ah, don’t mind it,” Mikhail said. “Oh, right, before I forget, I got you this.”

He picked up the small box he’d taken with him from the spot on the floor where it rested and tossed it at Myrrin, who opened it and looked inside. “Oh-ho, a bottle of Velin’s best, eh?” he withdrew it, discarding the bottle as he studied the label. “And 682, too?” His eyebrows rose. “Well then, Mikhail, I take back every bad thing I’ve ever said about you, you’re a true friend and a saint among men!”

“Heh, never thought I’d see the day I of all people would become a saint.” Mikhail chuckled. “And don’t thank me just yet, I need your help. Or rather, they do.” He motioned for the small group in the doorway to approach. “Myrrin, let me present Sam, Tasha, Camille, and Kaisei. They come from another world and they need to go back.”

Myrrin dropped the bottle on the ground.