In the shadows of a lush tropical jungle, a small crab was having a rather pleasant afternoon.

Before a rather strange and personally unsettling series of events, the crab had never ventured beyond the warm, sunny beach that was his entire universe.

However, his universe had recently been expanded… greatly.

He was still not sure how he felt about that.

At the moment, however, he was delighted.

There were so many new things to examine…

…and eat.

That’s how he learned, by consuming little mouthfuls of whatever he nibbled upon, and these days, he could nibble pretty much everything.

He sat happily (Well, he sort of crouched, but you know what I mean.) just under a leaf with a full belly and an even fuller mind as he reviewed all the wonderful things he had discovered.

Did you know there were these big things called “trees”? They were fascinating. He could spend days eating all the various parts of one and fully intended to.

He twitched his antennae.

The two strange people were on the move. They were also moving into the jungle not too far away.

He bubbled with just a touch of irritation. The two beings, once so compelling, were starting to annoy him a little. They knew so much that they leaked that knowledge with every sound, but here lately, they were just leaking about pointless, stupid stuff.

He bubbled angrily, thinking about the latest incident.

He was happily sampling different leaves and learning about leaf stuff while keeping a feeler on them just in case they did something different.

Just as he was exploring the difference between two different leaves, he overheard them talking about the “heart of matter”. Excited, he rushed over for a better listen.

They weren’t talking about the fundamental nature of matter at all. They were talking about the fundamental nature of their stupid “relationship”. It turns out that the “heart of matter” and the “heart of the matter” were two entirely different things.

Not only was it a complete waste of his time, but they were also completely wrong.

For being so smart, they were pathetically stupid where their relationship was concerned.

He bubbled again. They completely missed the point. It was obvious.

Then again, they really couldn’t be blamed overmuch. It turned out that the moon was always telling them it was time to make babies… all the time… poor things. That would drive anyone, no matter how smart, completely insane.

He spared a few moments to feel a little bad for them before returning to his meditations concerning what he had just eaten.

Suddenly, there was a large rustling in the leaves nearby.

The crab turned expectantly. This new world right next to his old one had all sorts of interesting creatures in it.

The crab’s antennae shot straight up in surprise. Shambling into view was a CRAB!

It was titanic, dwarfing any concept of crab he had ever had.

“Fud. Fud. Fud…” the giant chanted happily as it crawled along.

The little crab’s confidence in its newfound powers was shaken just a little as it shot under the leaf litter.

“Fud… (rustle)… Fud… (rustle)…” the giant said as it rooted through the same leaves that now hid the little crab.

“Fud!” the giant exclaimed happily as the little crab heard a crunching and chewing sound. “Gud Fud!”

The giant approached.

“Fud?” it inquired as the little crab had the leaves above it brushed aside and heard, much to its distress, “Fud!”

The little crab raised its gleaming claws and turned to face the giant as he started backing away.

“Hi, Fud, 😊,” the giant said cheerfully as it looked down at the little crab…

…and with a friendly little pulse of emotion, continued on its way.

Both confused and curious, the little crab started to follow the giant.

***

“Burn that!” a knight shouted over the screaming of several soldiers now rolling around on the ground as he gestured to a truly obscene symbol splashed the side of one of the ruined buildings of a completely destroyed and abandoned logging camp.

When all of the camps fell silent a few days ago, he was sent to investigate.

He found…

…nothing.

There was nothing except for destroyed encampments. There was no sign of a fight, no blood…

…it was as if everyone just… disappeared…

“This was not wood elves,” a robed old man said sagely.

“Oh, thank you so much for your insight, Barry,” the knight replied sardonically, “However did you come to such a brilliant conclusion? Truly, your mystical powers are beyond my mundane comprehension.”

“You don’t have to be a dick about it, Horace,” the mage replied as he looked at the eldritch runes and winced. “What the hell is that?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Horace the Brave replied, “Isn’t that sort of thing your job?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Barnard the Wise sighed, “Dude, that is some messed up shit.”

“Do you have anything more, I don’t know… wizardly to say about it?”

“Okay,” Barry replied as he stroked his long white beard, “Truly, this has an aspect of an otherworldly presence of a fell nature, possibly demonic or even eldritch nature… It is written in a language not of this world, and that may be a blessing, for if the true knowledge contained within were known to minds of man, it would truly drive them insane…”

He looked over at Horace and smirked.

“In other words, I don’t fucking know, just like I said the first time.”

Just as the wizard raised his hand to obliterate the horrific message from another world (actually just some finger-painted doodles), a glowing portal appeared.

“Great,” Horace groaned, “Champions… Just what we needed…”

“Stay your hand, Wizard!” a muscular man in golden armor called as he rushed through the portal accompanied by a shapely woman in enruned robes and another champion, clad in black and silver plate, as well as a masked man surrounded by a cape that appeared to be made of the shadows themselves.

“Gods!” the golden warrior exclaimed. “What manner of dark sorcery is that?”

“I shall divine the truth of the matter,” the woman said as she stepped forward.

“Ooh,” Barry said, “That’s really not a good…”

“Appraise!” the woman said as her hands and eyes glowed.

She recoiled in horror, clutching her head.

“Yeah…” Barry said, wincing, “we already tried that,” he said, gesturing towards one of the screaming people.

“Evie!” the golden warrior shouted, rushing to the stricken sorceress who slumped, conveniently falling into his manly arms.

“I’m… I’m okay…” she sighed, resting her head on his chest plate, “Thank you, Rod. You pulled me from the black abyss…”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Horace muttered as Barry smirked.

“What did you learn?” the golden warrior asked.

“It…” Evika the Dark Sorceress gasped as she clung to his arm, “It has an otherworldly aspect of an evil nature, possibly eldritch or even demonic… It is written in a language not of this world, which might be a good thing…”

“She doesn’t know either,” Barry whispered.

“All I know,” she said, “is that this is not from the wild elves that plague these woods.”

“Astounding,” Horace said as he rolled his eyes under his helm, “How fortunate we are to be graced by champions as insightful as you.”

“The area has been completely scoured of any trace of the attackers,” the shadow-shrouded figure said as he crouched and placed his hand on the ground. “And all traces of the defenders are gone.”

“Wow,” Horace replied, “How astute…”

A few hundred yards away, a tiny pixie… sorry… faerie giggled from inside a bush.

“Hush,” a horned demon woman, clad only in her scales and a few bits of mail, now only a few inches tall, said as she hung upside down by her tail right beside her.

She pulled out a walkie-talkie from her demonic fanny pack.

“Hey, boss,” she said quietly, “the marks are here. Over.”

“Great!” Pantsu’s voice crackled, “I’m in position. This is going to be fun! Pantsu out.”

“Why are you using that?” the faerie asked. “Can’t you just magic like we do?”

“On a magic world, you use tech,” the demoness quietly replied, “On a tech world, you use magic… or for us, tech, just another kind of tech.”

“Another kind?”

“We aren’t actually magical,” the demoness said.

“Well, you look pretty damn magical.”

“When you get down to the most basic of principles, magic and technology are pretty much one and the same. It’s just two different ways of manipulating the world around you. At their highest levels, it’s very hard to tell them apart… and completely pointless, for that matter. You manipulate energy and reality with only your will, and so do we… We just do it a little bit differently.”

The demoness paused to observe the champions.

“We are all just bundles of thought bound in little wads of matter drifting through time. What exact form we take at any particular moment doesn’t change that fundamental truth.”

“You guys are weird.”

“You have no idea,” the demoness chuckled as a pair of soldiers emerged from the woods along with a pretty girl, in her early teens, with beautiful long blonde hair wearing a ripped and tattered skirt and a badly ripped shirt that almost but not quite betrayed her modesty.

“Oh, we are in for a treat,” the demoness said happily. “We are about to see a master of the game.”

“Panties?”

“Pantsu,” The demoness replied, “Princess Pantsu, queen of the dragons, mistress of the Underdoom, Head Administrator of Asteria Prime, employee number five, member of the board, charter member, veteran of the first age, the jailbait goddess…”

“Is this going to take very long?”

“It could,” the demoness chuckled. “We are about to witness an ancient terror, older than the stars themselves, perform the task for which she was originally created. Prepare yourself for perfection and the bane of any adventurer…”

The demoness smiled, her eyes burning with a hellish light.

“…the escort quest.”

***

“…and, after rescuing my little sister,” Evaraxxus, the mighty dragon, said as he continued his tale, “I came here to seek your counsel, oh mighty horned one.”

“All I can say,” Evangeline said, “Is that you really outdid yourself this time, Faun.”

“At least it turned out well,” Faun said, staring up at the magnificent dragon.

“I am honored that you believe so,” the dragon replied. “I have only tried to live up to the shining example of kindness and mercy you gave me, perhaps the greatest of all of your gifts.”

“I… I just planted a tree…” Faun stammered, “But, thank you. I’m glad that you found peace at last.”

“I did,” Evaraxxus smiled, “It took age upon age to free me of the evil of my line, but time always prevails in the end.”

“That it does,” Evangeline smiled. “And, speaking of time, you need to get gone, dude. You are a huge paradox just waiting to happen… which would be much more in keeping with what we are used to from the mighty horned one.”

“Oh, shut up,” Faun replied and then smiled up at Evaraxxus, “What counsel can we provide, gentle Evaraxxus? She’s not wrong, though, for you now exist both here as a mighty dragon and slumbering as a tree in a quiet grove.”

“A fact of which I am keenly aware,” Evaraxxus replied, “However, in all my travels, I have found no gods other than you… and your friends, it seems. I do not have the hubris to place myself among your number, and yet…”

“You want to know what comes next,” Evangeline smiled, “And it isn’t hubris to acknowledge that you are now something different and have been for some time.”

“Evangeline is far wiser than I, kind Evaraxxus,” Faun said, “and one whose counsel I value highly.”

“And she even actually follows it every now and then,” Evangeline smirked.

She smiled at the single-fingered gesture Faun had learned.

“Okay, dude,” Evangeline said, “Here’s the deal. It isn’t hubris. You have become an entity, the word we use to describe people like ourselves and a decently powerful one. I don’t have your full measure yet, but you are engineering solar systems and seeding worlds for kicks. That takes some serious juice. I am also delighted that you don’t call yourself a god or some bullshit.”

“I am no god,” Evaraxxus replied, “though many have tried to call me such. I have always tried to dissuade them, but people can be very… insistent…”

“Yeah, they like their gods, don’t they? They can be real pains in the ass.”

“You sound just like my wonderful teacher,” a laughing voice said.

“Faun, I’m going to slap the shit out of you.”

“You have a teacher?” Evaraxxus asked with surprise.

“And little Miss Armageddon needs one. Trust me. Just ask the pixies.”

“You were the one who created the fae?” Evaraxxus asked with wide eyes.

“I didn’t mean to,” Faun wailed, “It was an accident!”

“And a most fortuitous one. For it was the fae who…”

“No spoilers!” Evangeline shouted. “Not one fucking word! If you so much as take a piss here, it could absolutely wreck this timeline. You should not be here, not for another bajillion years!”

“Actually, I was here until the sun aged to the point that moving the world was not enough to save it. Then I moved everyone to the first world that I crafted in preparation for that day.”

“No shit?” Evangeline asked, quite impressed, “Damn, dude, that’s kinda badass.”

“I could not allow them to perish if I had the power to prevent it. To do so would be to betray the kindness and mercy of the great horned one.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Evangeline snickered.

***

Zvaxus leaned against a wagon, mug in hand.

“You don’t look happy,” Veelanora said.

“They are doing this all wrong,” he grumbled as he watched some handmaidens train a group of orcs. “Their ranks are too widely spaced. And the armament is a poor choice. Those beings are just begging to be heavy infantry, and they are arraying them as if they were elite skirmishers.”

He paused to drink deeply from his mug.

“It pains me as much as using yarn as twine pains you.”

He winced.

“I can abide this no longer!” he exclaimed as he drained his mug and started striding towards the field.

“Now run forward!” the handmaiden shouted.

“Excuse me,” Zvaxus said as he approached.

“Hey!” the handmaiden said brightly, “How are you surviving ‘Evangeline’ duty?”

“Better than Flopsy,” Zvaxus smiled, “Can we speak privately, away from the men?…”

“…Alright!” the handmaiden shouted a few minutes later. “This is Zvaxus, a no shit god of war. He will be supervising all training from here on…”

“Typical,” Veelanora snorted a short distance away as she shook her head.

She looked over at the tower of reality defiling technology at the valley’s center.

“Well, since we are here…”

***

“It’s okay,” Evika the Dark Sorceress said comfortingly, “You are safe now.”

The young teen, now wrapped in a blanket, just sat there silently, her eyes staring blankly forward.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“P… Petunia…”

“Petunia,” Evika said gently, “can you tell us what happened?”

“I… I was visiting my father… because I missed him…”

“Petunia” broke into tears.

“I brought him muffins!” she wailed, “Oh, daddy… daddy!!!”

“There is no way they are going to buy this,” a small faerie whispered from a bush at the edge of the forest.

“Just watch and learn, Tinkerbell,” the demoness snickered.

“…and then what happened?” Evika asked as everyone listened, with rapt fascination, to Petunia…

…or tried to.

Evika gently reached down and arranged Petunia’s blanket. Somehow it had shifted, revealing the poor girl’s underwear.

“T-then it got really cold… A-and all the stars went away… A-and there were these… things… flying around…”

“Can you tell us more about the things?”

Petunia shook her head violently and pulled the blanket over her head, once again revealing her panties.

“The eyes… The eyes!!!”

“I think she’s had enough for now,” Horace the Brave said. “Considering the vile sigils we have seen, it is fortunate that she can even speak.”

“They said that we had freed them!” a quavering voice said from beneath the blanket as she kicked with fear, flashing her underwear with every kick. “T-that we had chopped down the grove that was sealing them and…”

“Someone find a bigger blanket,” Horace whispered.

“Save my daddy!” Petunia cried as she cast the blanket aside, and lunged at Horace, what little remaining of her top almost but not quite popping open. “You have to save my daddy!”

“Save him?” the champion in silver and black asked, “Isn’t he dead?”

Petunia dropped to the ground and started wailing.

“David!” Evika snapped as she whacked him with her staff.

“What?” David asked, “The chances of them…”

“David!”

Evika knelt next to Petunia who, her clothing askew, was uncontrollably crying on the ground, her small chest heaving with each heartbreaking wail.

“What do you mean when you say you want us to save your father? Can he be saved?” she asked.

“(sniff) He told me to run…”

“And it was a good thing that you did. I’m sorry, Petunia, but I have to ask. Was your father taken instead of killed?”

“The last thing I heard before I ran away was the biggest of the… things… say to grab the woodcutters so they could free everyone else.”

“Oh, Gods…” Barry gasped.

“You have to be kidding me,” a small faerie said incredulously a few hundred yards away.

“Told you,” the demoness said. “The secret is in the panties.”

“What?”

“Cognitive dissonance,” the demon said sagely. “She’s spiking their consciousness with a combination of lust, embarrassment, and just the right amount of shame while titillating them by almost revealing what they secretly, or not so secretly, want to see. It’s short circuiting their critical thinking and triggering a paternal or maternal protective instinct at the same time. It’s her secret recipe, perfected through the aeons. You can also bet that each victim is getting a slightly different view, tailored to hit them the hardest.”

“Wow,” the faerie said as she pulled up her little floral skirt and looked down. “All from just her panties?”

“Yep,” the demoness said, “Why do you think I dress like this? Any male adventurer is going to be distracted at least a little, and one wardrobe malfunction at the right time can tip the balance at a critical moment.”

“Huh.”

“You notice how the males keep getting distracted around the handmaidens and us demons?”

“Yeah,” the faerie said sourly.

“That’s not by accident,” the demoness snickered, “Besides, there is nothing wrong with a little fanservice. Our males do something similar, but it’s a little more subtle.”

“I’ve noticed!”

“Have you now?” the demoness smiled.

“Especially that one in the blue…”

“Yeah, hands off of that one.”

“Why? He’s dreamy!”

“He also belongs to Lady Watchlist down there. You do NOT want her to get jealous. Trust me. Besides, he’s…”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” the faerie said, “Is there something… wrong… with him?”

“That’s a long story… a very, very long story,” the demoness replied. “Time always wins… Ooo! She’s setting the hook!”

“We must warn the king!” Horace shouted. “We need to find those woodsmen before they can free the rest of those things. And notify the Guild. We need as many Champions as we can get!”

“And now we are going to get oodles of idiots wandering around in the woods,” the demoness chuckled, “right where we want them. God bless the panties of doom.”

The faerie giggled and started trimming her skirt.

“There you go,” the demoness smiled.

***

Everyone in the logging camp rapidly prepared to leave… immediately. They did not want to be there when the things returned.

This was definitely one for the champions.

Petunia clung to Evika as everyone mounted up.

“Please don’t leave me!” she wailed as she buried her face in Evika’s robe, a bit too close to her breasts.

“We won’t… um…” Evika said uncomfortably as she gently tried to shift Petunia away, which only made her pull even closer to her.

“Um… Petunia… dear…” Evika said as she firmly pulled the darling little motorboater away. “Ahem… We need to go to the nearest guild hall to report this and prepare.”

“Why wait?” David the Slayer protested. “We’re platinum rank!”

“The guild still needs to know,” Roderick the Golden replied, “and we don’t know exactly what we face. Besides, we don’t know where to even look. We’ll waste more time just wandering around than we will by going to a guild and getting scrying or divination.”

“And while we are wandering around being stupid,” Stephan the Silent Death said, “Another party will find them, and their treasure, first. Besides,” he said, trying not to look at Petunia’s exposed thigh, “We need to get Petunia home. Where do you live?”

“The town of Outhouse.”

“That’s right on the way to Halltown, the closest guild,” he said, “We can drop Petunia off along the way.”

“Oh, thank you!” Petunia said, her innocent eyes sparkling happily.

***

“Fud, Fud, Fud…” the giant crab said as it trundled happily through the jungle, occasionally looking back to see if the food was still following it.

It wasn’t sure why, but he liked the little bit of food. It made it happy. Well, it made it even happier than usual. (It was pretty happy most of the time.)

As it moved along, it happily chatted with its new traveling companion.

“Fud,” it said, pointing at a snail. “Fud,” it said, pointing at a dead bug.

It was the most engaging conversation it ever had!

The little crab followed along, fascinated by the giant.

“I’m food?” he asked.

“Fud!”

“And you aren’t going to eat me?”

“Fud!”

The little crab bubbled a bubbly sigh. The really sad thing is that this giant was a genius compared to his species.

The giant crab paused thoughtfully, trying to rally its thoughts.

“Fud,” it said, gesturing towards the little crab.

“Yes, we have established that I am food to you.”

“Fud!”

The giant then swept its claw around.

“Fud!”

“Oh, are you saying that there is plenty of food, so you don’t feel the need to eat me?”

“Fud!”

The giant was in awe. It had never heard such big thoughts before. It had never even thought that there were thoughts that big before.

It wanted the food to be around for a bit longer.

It pondered for a short while. It knew! It knew what would keep the little food around.

“Fud!” it exclaimed, “Fud, Fud, Fud!”

“You want to show me food?”

“Fud!” the giant exclaimed as it crawled a short distance and then looked back. “Fud!”

The small crab quickly checked on the two idiots. They were just looking at some water falling into some other water and leaking about how pretty it was.

It was water, just like any other water.

He looked over at the giant, who was eagerly waiting.

It was an easy decision to make.

“Let’s go!” the little crab said and crawled towards the giant.

“Fuuuud!” the giant enthused, absolutely delighted.