In the Realm of Chaos, a sublayer of the world that was beneath three other layers and only afterwards would it touch the Prime Material, a being composed equally of flesh and motes of infinite potential, crouched by a tiny crack. The crack was barely larger than an eyelash…though the comparison only made sense if it had lashes at the moment. It peeked inside, frustrated at the Elemental mists. Its Chaos body tried to push through, but could not go past the filters. Only a tiny, tiny tendril, thinner than a human hair, could make it through, and only long enough to touch someone standing within a couple of paces from the crack.

The tendril so happened to be connected to one of its Acolytes, who was currently attempting to subdue…food. And converts, hopefully. More minds would be welcome to add to the collective, and the being could continue to grow. Maybe it would grow massive enough to brave the barrier.

One moment it was peacefully watching, the next, a wave of destructive force slammed against the crack hard enough for the energy to pass. The golden light burned worse than anything the being ever felt before, but it also contained a hint of something long forgotten.

The being growled. The crack had suffered from the blast, but instead of growing bigger, it had instead been coated in the same golden light that was slowly closing the gap between the Realms.

Lawgiver. The being recoiled. There was something in the Prime Material that was attempting to claim the Ancient Throne. It shivered in both anger and…fear. But also…desire. The tantalizing scent that accompanied the golden light was nearly irresistible. It must have more of it! It must taste it…and perhaps through that, it would finally grow strong enough.

___________

The trek through the Chaos Fount took days. Braxxon Ruin was deceptively huge, and Gwendith was honestly tired of it. She wanted to go home. She wanted to sink into Yuriko’s embrace, she wanted to eat something other than ration bars!

They had been attacked by more Ashen Elementals throughout the journey. Not all of them had an Ashen core. In fact, they only had two. The rest had been a profitless pain in the neck. The walls of the ruined city were still ahead, taunting her with how close it looked. It felt that they had not moved an inch closer, actually, that they had been walking in circles. How that could happen and still give them a view of the walls was daunting, but she had an inkling that was what had happened. When they turned around a couple of days back, it didn’t take an hour of trudging to find the walls back in front of them again. They were being herded towards the city but had not been allowed to approach.

Saki had reported that neither the Xothans nor the Ishodirians were nearby, but she had seen some fresh tracks a while back. But since they were mostly walking on a broken road, tracks were sparse anyway.

They crossed the courtyard of a broken home. Gwendith thought that she saw some greenery, but the garden showed only bare branches. They needed to stop for the night anyway and needed rest. This expedition…why had she left? She could have stayed home, with Yuri, or…no. She needed to leave the Empire if only to get away from the troubles there. This was how she could help her beloved. Find Ambrosia, accelerate her growth, and then they could find a way home.

“Do you want to camp there?” Heron asked doubtfully, nodding to the roofless farmstead.

“It hadn’t rained since we got here.” She pointed out. Most of their water had come from the condenser canteens as there was barely enough ambient Chaos to make the runescript weaving work. Heron knew a Create Water spell, too, and so did she for that matter, but using spell and canteen in tandem made for better-tasting water. The stuff that came from the spell tasted too flat.

The three of them went into the house. Gwendith cleared up the debris, while Heron and Saki prepared the meal. Wood was collected from outside, and piled into a central pit. An iron tripod held the pot above the campfire, and a couple of ration bars and water would make a filling porridge. Well, they also had hardtack and meat jerky, but those would be for breakfast.

The porridge was done after a few minutes and Gwendith ate quickly. The Chaos Fount didn’t really have a day and night cycle, but they relied on their innate timesense to know. Granted, they could have pressed on, but without knowing how long it would take, there was little sense in getting to the walls exhausted. Plus they weren’t sure if the walls were where they would find the keys to leave.

She took the first watch, and after four hours passed, she woke Saki to take the second watch. Afterwards, breakfast woke her up. Heron presented the meat jerky and hardtack for the meal, but he did make tea to go with it.

They trudged towards the wall. Nothing much changed. Close to evening, she saw an ash cloud billowing from behind a farmstead. Gwendith growled and rushed towards the likely Ashen Elemental, Ice Daggers already materialising around her. Once she found the creature, she flung her weapons and kept blasting it with ice until it dissolved.

“Ancestors…” She panted as the other two arrived beside her.

Heron patted her shoulder and she didn’t flinch.

“There’s something there,” Saki said as she approached the dusty remains. She prodded it, and out popped an elemental core. “That makes three.”

“Should we stay for the night?” Heron asked.

“Let’s go for a couple more longstrides.” Gwendith sighed.

“Alright.”

It took a few minutes to notice that the walls looked closer all of a sudden, and another ten minutes to actually reach it.

“Rotter,” Gwendith muttered.

“Yeah, we needed the Ashen cores to enter,” Heron said with a snort. “I wonder what’s in there that those two groups would fight for the cores.”

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Gwendith said.

The wall, though broken, was still a formidable barrier. It was at least thirty paces high, taller than the walls of the Watchtower back home. The top part, the battlements, were broken and jagged. To their right, the wall had crumbled down enough that the top was only a dozen paces from the ground. The wall ahead of them was whole, however. Ah, and there was a ditch in front of it. Across the entire wall, she assumed. It wasn’t deep at all, owing to the fact that the walls probably eroded down. There was no water in it, but when she pressed her perception into the ground, she found what looked like old spikes nearly a pace underneath. It had a gentle slope and was only three paces deeper than the ground before.

Seeing as the shortest portion of the wall was a bit more than a hundred paces away, and seeing as it was as easy to climb over the battlements from here as it was there, Gwendith simply jumped up. She didn’t bother casting any spells and used her Animakinesis, which had finally grown strong enough to support her weight, to secure herself against the wall. She used that connection to jump up higher, though a moment later, there was a whiff of displaced air by her side, and the fading sound of laughter as Heron leapt to the top in a single bound.

Saki followed behind her, climbing easily since the wall had a lot of handholds from the eroded rock. After a couple more bounds, Gwendith finally reached the battlements. The wall was broader than she expected. It was twenty paces wide, long enough that the broken bits would have shown it. But inexplicably, she had been left with the impression that the wall was less than a quarter of that width.

Heron was already on the opposite side, and from his stiff countenance, there must be something wrong. The two women hurried, and as soon as they stepped up to the crenelations, the world around them stilled, and shifted.

When she came to, Gwendith expected to see into the city. Perhaps there would be more buildings, a central keep or castle, as well as roads, alleys, and canals. Instead, she found herself staring at an open plain, fallow fields, and a moat underneath the wall. It was dry too, but was in better repair than the ditch on the other side.

“Why build a wall here?” She muttered in confusion. A wall to defend against both sides? She could even see farmsteads in the distance, not quite as tumble down or ruined as those they passed by before. She could see a thick forest nearly a couple of longstrides away, a meandering river that separated that forest from the farmlands, and rolling hills in the distance. She looked back towards the other side and gasped.

There was the castle after all and the city, but it was to their backs. It was as though they had been in the city the entire time and got turned around. The wall stretched on either side of them for longstrides, before turning a corner. There was a watchtower there, one that stretched up for a hundred paces, and looked disturbingly like the Watchtower back home. The wall continued at a right angle and probably enclosed the city. Four longstrides to a side, making it sixteen longstrides square. Pretty big for a walled city, actually.

“Ah, the things Chaos does to the senses.” Heron finally laughed. “I’ve no idea how we’ll ever get back home though.”

Gwendith shrugged and all three of them turned around and walked back to the side they came from. As she surveyed the walled city, she spotted quite a few notable landmarks. There was a market square, with empty stalls, a grandiose building that looked like a place of worship, the castle which was at the very centre, and residential buildings and inns. She also noted that there were already a few delvers walking the streets, each one looking more than a bit tense. Xothans and Ishodirians, for sure. And not the same people they encountered too.

At the square in front of the castle was where most of the people gathered. Surprisingly, the two factions weren’t fighting there but gathered in front of a large bulletin board. Then, there were what looked like Elementals standing next to some buildings that the delvers skirted around. Each was a being made of a mixture of two or more elements, humanoid in shape, but were clearly not hostile. She saw a robed Xothan talking with one too.

“Well, shall we see what this place is about?” Gwendith said.

There was a set of stairs not far from where they stood. It conveniently led to a street. Directly down from where they were was a slanted, slate roof, so it was better to use the stairs than hopping off. Also, there was someone who spotted them from the nearest square. A Xothan from the blue robes. They were already heading towards the stairs.

“Trouble, you think?” she asked Heron.

“We’ll see,” he rumbled. Saki called upon her Shadows and disappeared.

By the time they climbed down, the Xothan party was at the end of the street. The space where the stairs let them off was between a pair of two-storey buildings.  The alley was narrow, barely wide enough for the two of them to walk abreast.

Still, both of them walked towards the Xothans with a confident gait. If they sought trouble, then they would find it. If they were peaceful, then so would they be. It didn’t matter that they practised slavery.

No. Hmmm. It actually mattered to her. Then perhaps this next interaction would show her if they were worthy of further thought, or if she would cut them down arbitrarily.