"Are you okay?"

The lady made some light and looked down at me. I was lying on the ground, unhurt. We were cushioned with magic, I guess.

I shook my head:

"Life is such a comedic theater and we are all clowns. Oh, and the mind is a trap! Stranger, I feel no strength left! My heart is so empty!" I howled.

"Has Belial gotten to you?!" The lady gasped, wand at the ready, and not in a magic way. In a stabby way. I hastily rolled to the side and got up.

"What do you mean, Belial "gotten to" me?"

"Mind-control." She said. "Follow me."

I would have followed her anyway. I had nowhere to go. Maybe back into the fortress where my beloved Lovecraftian monster was?

Everything hurt. My body, my heart, my self-confidence.

That aside, mind-control? I never knew he could do that, but when I thought about it, maybe one should expect that from a demon. I'd heard of possessions and all.

I mindlessly followed the lady to join up with her people. They all used little magic balls of light to see in the night. Once we were with others, the lady suddenly turned around and threatened me with her wand:

"Who are you? What world did you come from?"

I was taken off-guard. My brain went blank and my mouth opened:

"Earth?"

"Earth?"

"Blue planet. Filled with humans. Terrible place, no magic?"

The lady looked confused. A middle aged mage of ambiguous species stepped in and said:

"Wait. I think she's talking about the Kirdu."

The mages nodded, they seemed to understand that reference, whatever that was. The old mage stared at me, stern and inquiring.

"However. You claim your kind has no magic, but only us who have magic power were able to escape Belial's infestation of the mind."

He's already infested my heart, don't make me open the wound, old man! I wanted to lament. Instead I just raised my leg and pointed to the tattered bundle of grass still somehow attached to it:

"Mother's Hair grass? No? It worked against the undeads, so it might have fended him off… Oh well…" I lowered my foot. "Forgot to mention, I already died. I came here after escaping from Irkalla on Charon's boat. And then I seemed to have been revived…"

They all looked at me as if I was a talking elephant, and I felt secretly pleased. I had made it through some pretty crazy things. I could write a book about them.

"You came back from the dead? You came back from the End of the world?" The lady sounded thoroughly astounded. "While having no magic?"

Her "having no magic" sounded like pity and it pissed me off.

"This is… indeed Tiamat's hair." The old mage picked up a grass leaf. "I have not seen one in a long time."

A rumbling from the fortress startled us all. From where we were standing I could still see the fortress flashing in the night, like lightning.

"What's… going on back there?" I asked.

"It's sealed. For now." The lady said. "Come, we need to get back to Enmerki."

"Excuse us, miss." The old mage and a few others followed me. "May we please have your shoes?"

"Oh, Kaddash! Not now!" The lady grunted.

"Here, I'll give you half of them." I got them off my feet - they barely resembled anything wearable anymore, but I just felt stingy now that I knew the grass was rare material. Who knew when I'd need it again. I wish I hadn't thrown most of the grass away back at Erech's house. Kaddash was extremely grateful, he was so happy I thought he nearly forgot there was a monstrosity behind us.

Apparently not. All the mages had used most of their power to seal off the fortress and they were quickly reminded how exhausted they were when it came to the way back. Many of them used transportations that required magic. I had hoped I would get to sit on some kind of vehicle as well, because my feet hurt. Eight of us ended up getting ram-packed inside a single carriage and all, excluding me of course, joined hands to operate the thing in shifts. People, this is why Earthen technology is superior. I really missed a car.

I was the least sleepy among us, so I tried to keep people awake. I kept them entertained, telling them about Earth, and what I saw after death. The Reapers and their rides, the Charons, THE Charon, the undeads behind Namtar Gate… I left out Erech, that one felt… personal. When they asked for my name, for whatever reason I said "Lucida."

"But…" Eann, the lady who ran with me, still had questions. She had an intense gaze and always a lot of questions. "I don't get it, why were you so desperate to run away from Irkalla?"

I couldn't avoid this question after all, could I?

"I… er…" I tried to think of something but then gave up. "I… wanted to see the world of demons. I was curious, and I was already dead, what was there to lose?"

They stared at me, and then Eann sighed.

"Now, you've come to the right place then. This country might not be the world of demons, but they have been taking over. Welcome to Kirush."

"No, welcome *back* to Tiamat." Another said. "Before the gods abandoned us for your Earth, this was the home to all. Or so the legends say."

"I have no idea what you speak of, please, do tell me more." I said. Although, I knew the name Tiamat. She was a dragon, who, according to mythology, was killed and made into the earth.

"It's a story passed down from our ancestors." Kaddash explained. "That this Tiamat we lived on was once the place where gods and mortals lived together. Then the countries warred against each other and Tiamat was deemed uninhabitable by the gods. So they took everyone and left, creating a new world, one without magic. Yours."

"Why then were your ancestors still here?" I asked.

"They thought it was dumb." Kaddash laughed. "Take away magic? What's left when you take away magic? How do gods themselves even fare without magic?"

I don't know about gods, but there's an awful lot left without magic, you know. We have cars that drive themselves now. I thought.

"Whether or not it was a dumb idea, the fact remains that Tiamat is a crappy place to live." Eann commented. "Kirush used to be much larger, but it keeps shrinking and evil beings pop up everywhere."

"Relax! It's always been this way!" Kaddash brushed it off. "We just need to find a good bubble, and collide with it… We'll fix our land, we will..."

"Bubble?" I was going to ask, but suddenly something pulled the whole carriage down and my word became a "Buaaarghh!!"

My head hit the ceiling. We were free-falling.

"Heave!" Eann yelled, lifting her hands trying to halt the carriage with a spell. Other mages did the same. "Did the bridge break?" Someone asked.

"We're falling down the Gala rift!" Another yelled.

"Uh, hang in there! Please!" I crawled back up from the floor. It was so crowded. We seemed to slow down and slowly rise again.

"Thank goodness! Yes, keep at it!" I cheered them on.

"I think… wouldn't it be better to slowly descend… to the bottom?" One of them whined.

"What? No, we don't exactly know what's down there!" Eann protested.

"But I… can barely…" The mage looked very sick, and it was not long until he passed out. The carriage wobbled and sank a little. Everyone stopped talking. They were at their limit. The carriage struggled to rise up, but we finally saw the broken bridge. All it took now was to bring it over to the cliff.

And all it took was one more mage passing out for the whole thing to tumble down again.

We screamed. We spinned around like laundry in the tumble wash. The door flipped open and I fell out. Eann grabbed my hand but what good would it do, we were all falling. For a split moment a thought flashed in my mind, maybe I should have stayed back at that fortress if I were going to die anyway… But then I saw the darkness approaching us down this seemingly bottomless rift, and I remembered Erek's voice:

Don't fall into the Abyss.

Pretty sure this wasn't what they meant, but something flipped and I was so mad. I was so mad. There must be more. Much more than this bullshit. I've had enough. I was never going to die here.

"I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING DIE!!"

In my anger everything around me felt so dense. The air was so dense I could grab and throw it down the depth as if shooting a bomb. The impact sent shockwave through the air, pushing the carriage upward, and the winds that gushed back up were also so dense I could step on them. I sprang up and guided the air to bounce the carriage, wrapped in an air cushion, safely to the top of the cliff. Before my feet slipped from the last gust of winds I gave the air one last push from my hands and propelled myself onto safe ground. Everything was as natural as a dream.

The mages crawled out of the carriage. Eann's arm was hurt badly, maybe broken, because she was holding my hand when the carriage shot upward. As soon as I felt less dazed I rushed to check on her. But apparently her injury was the least of her concern.

"How did you do that?" She looked at me in disbelief, and then some sort of anger. "You lied about not being able to use magic!"

I stared back, not knowing what to say. I didn't know what to feel. I felt empty, but in control. Excited, yet calm. All-knowing, yet clueless. What cliché, I was now staring down at my palms, marveling. Should I say this was my new-found power, or that I rediscovered it?

"...I can fly." I muttered.

I remembered, nights after nights, trying to glide through the air in my dreams. Dreams after dreams, flailing around to keep balance while I floated atop the winds, and wishing that I could do the same once I woke up.

Gods exist, don't they? They'd heard me.

Finally, I could fly. Finally, I was free.