Many days passed since their first battle against the jinn—over three weeks according to Kendrick’s time. Their travels eastward across the continent of Kanthos, toward the site of the Rift, brought them through many modest towns and tiny villages in different stages of conquest. Some were crawling with shades, others were plagued by imps, and still others were in disarray following demon attacks, though the trio still had not yet seen a live demon in person. Kendrick witnessed several humans, elves, and orcs who had died in the line of battle against the invaders. It was his first taste of death in this universe; it only fueled the fire in his heart to press onward into battle.

More experience in the field and meditation afterward honed their skills and increased their strength—physically and magically. Kendrick had the aura and the physical endurance to take down a small horde of shades all on his own. That proved useful when Bellara and Sahni were forced to contend with imps at the same time. Now that Kendrick knew that his lens would tag any nearby jinn, he checked it frequently; his vigilance allowed them to get the upper hand on two more jinn across their travels, secretive creatures that otherwise may have continued their infernal espionage undetected.

“I guess I should ask you straight-up,” Kendrick said one day at a tavern, “about what kind of creatures we should be on the lookout for here. I’m pretty sure I saw that jinn that was following us, but I didn’t know what a jinn was.”

“The hierarchy of the Underworld is a mockery of the Overworld that came before it,” Bellara explained. “Both have seven levels of power, each occupied by a different species. In order of ascending power, there’s the shade, the imp, the jinn, the demon, the archdemon, and...” She exchanged a glance with Sahni.

“What?” Kendrick asked.

“Well, beyond that, no mortal in recorded history has ever seen it with their own eyes. I believe my old professor Zorgen intends to be the first. Long ago, when the Ecumene was born between two warring realms above and below, mighty and terrible beings roamed the ancient plane. Entities of unimaginable power... From above came the Great Virtues, embodiments of all that is good and right in the universe. From below came the Prime Sins... It is said that the Ecumene was once home to a single continent in a vast ocean, but that the battles of the Great Virtues and the Prime Sins carved the land into the four continents we know today.”

Kendrick slurped from a bowl of soup and looked up expectantly. “You said there were seven. What’s the last one?”

“The Dark Lord,” Sahni answered. “Urobius. Legend has it that when Aldiel sought to create the universe, He was plagued by His own dark intentions and impulses, so He expelled the evil from his being, banishing it to the newly forged Underworld. He was able to create the Ecumene after that, but His evil survived in the form of the Dark Lord Urobius. Urobius later created his own loyal minions, the Prime Sins, the demons, and all the others. Some say the Light God Aldiel is still stronger. Others say they are an even match. Either way, their battle would likely destroy all three realms.”

“And the Dark Lord, that’s who Zorgen is trying to bring through the Rift?” Kendrick asked. The others nodded. “Fantastic.”

“There’ll be no hope left for the Ecumene if Urobius crosses the Rift,” said Bellara, sipping her wine. “Urobius could lay waste to the realm easily. It would belong to the Underworld. Or, if Aldiel chooses to intervene, it would mean certain destruction for everything. Imagine two full-grown bears fighting to the death in a house made of paper...”

“That’s why we need to get to the Rift and stop Zorgen before it’s too late,” Sahni explained. “In all honesty, we were hoping someone else would have done so by now...”

“That means continuing your training. Loading up every crystal we can get our hands on with as much aura as it can carry. Rounding up anyone else who might want to join us.” She looked around the sparsely populated tavern, and then Kendrick followed suit. He saw the empty booths and tables where patrons now dead may have sat. The other tavern-goers were far from festive, nursing their ales and spirits in near silence. “From the looks of it, everyone has their hands full enough battling the invasion at home.”

Sahni slumped into her seat. “The eclipse is foretold to happen 89 days from today. That doesn’t leave us much time.”

“It’ll be enough,” said Kendrick. “Has to be. Where is this Rift exactly? How long would it take to get there?”

“It’s in the eastern region of Kanthos past a town called Havon, in the Dawnfall Valley,” said Bellara. “On foot? I would say we could make it there in...” She scrunched up her lower lip in thought. “...60 days. Perhaps 40 if we made excellent time or had other transportation.”

Sahni suddenly sat up in her seat. “Speaking of foot travel, don’t you think we should be on our way soon? The barmaid told me they don’t have any rooms available in this village tonight.”

Bellara downed the rest of her wine in one go and wiped her chin with her sleeve. “Good idea. Shall we, then?”

Kendrick tried to do the same with his soup, but two gulps in, upon realizing there was far too much left to finish, he clumsily choked on a piece of potato and set the bowl back down. “Sorry,” he announced between coughs, “just gonna... leave it here.” He coughed all the way out of the tavern and intermittently for a while on the path out of the village.

The sun was directly behind them now on its way down for the day, and the shadows they cast ahead of them stretched a hair farther with each step they took. Kendrick asked them how they measured distance besides days of foot travel, and Sahni described the two competing systems of measurement in the Ecumene: the traditional system used by most humans and orcs and the more “civilized” elven system starting to be adopted in cities and by the learned folk. “We learned as children that a stride is about the distance a human takes in one step. A grandstride is three strides, and a sunstride is 2,514 strides.”

“The Rift is nearly 700 sunstrides to the east, to give you perspective,” Bellara chimed in.

“Whereas the elves use their own system created in their native land and brought to others. The length, the span, the ken, and the reach... A length is a little bit shorter than a stride. A span is one hundred lengths, a ken is one hundred spans, and so on, all by hundreds...”

“Huh,” said Kendrick. “Neat.” And neat it was.

They walked for what Bellara estimated to be another two sunstrides until they found a suitable spot to camp for the night. The witches consulted the aurimeter and determined there was nothing worth warding against nearby. “We’ll save ourselves a lot of aura spent on warding if we simply sleep in shifts throughout the night,” Bellara contended. The others agreed; they'd already done it this way a few times during their travels, and nothing ever came of it.

She volunteered to take first watch that night, and voluntold Kendrick to join her. He understood her logic; he certainly wasn’t about to stand watch by himself armed with nothing but the Psysword. This way, Sahni could sleep first, and he and Bellara could get some rest later in the night.

“The Ecumene has stars, too,” said Kendrick, gazing up in wonder at the night sky.

“You’ve been here how long, and you’re just now noticing stars?” Bellara chuckled. They lay next to each other in the grass, with her holding a crystal in one hand and the aurimeter in the other, and with Kendrick’s hand on the hilt of his blade.

“I’m just now remembering stars,” he corrected her. “Well, maybe that’s not the right word. I’m just now... thinking about what they mean. So, the Ecumene is an entire universe, too, isn’t it? Not just one planet.”

“Planet? What does that mean?”

“You know, a world?”

“The Ecumene is our world, yes.”

“But there are other worlds out there, too, right?”

He could hear her shifting in the grass quizzically. “The Overworld and the Underworld. There are no others.”

His head swam trying to understand the physics of this place. “So, wait, is the Ecumene a sphere?”

“Of course,” she snickered. “Why?”

“The stars, aren’t they all suns that are just far away, then?”

At this, Bellara sat up straight. “Suns? Overworld, no. They’re merely balls of aura. They’re all at different distances, some larger, some smaller, but none on the magnitude of the sun or moon.”

“What’s out there, then? Just aura?”

“The sun is aura, and so are all the stars. The space between them is empty and cold. The moon is thought to be the leftover remnant of the Ecumene that Aldiel no longer needed once this world was complete. So, He fixed the remainder in the sky to remind us that all we shall ever need is at our feet... That’s the story we’re told as children, anyway. It’s precisely the same size as the sun, so I think it must have been intentional.”

Kendrick felt questions flooding his mind, new ones sprouting up as quickly as the others were answered. “So, what’s out there, then? The sun, moon, and stars? That’s it?”

“That and the empty space, yes.”

“How far does it go?”

She shrugged. “Oh, ten million sunstrides or so. Wizards had it calculated a long time ago. I think an elven astronomical council announced recently they’d recalculated it by a few thousand sunstrides... I forget the exact number.”

Kendrick sighed deeply with the realization that the scope and scale of his own universe dwarfed this one so many billions of times over. Strangely, the Ecumene felt empty and claustrophobic all at once. He stared up at the night sky and it was as if he could reach out and touch it with his own hand. He wanted to tell Bellara of his own universe, the vast reaches of space, galaxies upon galaxies of stars just like the sun, larger, even, gigantic in comparison, and clusters upon clusters of those galaxies, the nigh immeasurable distances that made him feel so very small and insignificant, and yet comforted that his life had such a small impact on it all.

He didn’t remember much of his old life or his old world outside of these cold, impersonal facts. Still, he felt compelled to share them with her. Part of him wanted to take her there with him someday and show her around. Don’t be ridiculous, he scolded himself. You’ll be lucky if you make it back alone and alive. There’s no revolving door between universes...

“Do you know what a constellation is?” he asked her.

She chuckled again quietly. “Of course I do. A grouping of stars. We have those here, too.”

“Really? What’s your favorite one? Can you show me?”

There was a long pause where she didn’t say anything. Then, quieter, she replied, “That’s a bit awkward. I don’t know about the rules where you’re from, but here in the Ecumene, asking a girl her favorite constellation is somewhat flirtatious, so...” A shorter pause this time. Then she gesticulated wildly to him. “Just to be clear, I do not think of you in that way. I don’t want to give the wrong impression—”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that,” Kendrick assured her. “Not at all! And me neither. I was just curious.”

“So, you think you’re too good for me, eh?”

So point-blank, he thought. He was glad it was too dark for her to see his face flush. “No, it’s not like that either! I just mean—”

“Kendrick, I’m kidding.” They shared an uneasy laugh.

“As friends,” he prefaced it, “I have to say, I’m glad we’re getting along better than we did at first. It’s nice.”

“I agree.” They lay in the grass in silence for a while and enjoyed each other’s company. He thought about asking her about the next town they’d pass through, if she was worried about the state of the settlements that they’d encounter as they ventured farther east, but he didn’t. He let the silence hang there and opted not to spoil it. “Well, judging by the moon, it’s roughly midnight. Time to wake her.” She stood up and shuffled through the grass to their roomy tent. “It’s the Archer, by the way.”

“Huh?”

“My favorite constellation. The Archer. I’ll have to buy you a star map in some city that sells them someday.”

“Oh.” He sat up. “I’d like that.” Once Sahni was roused and got situated at her post, the two of them retired on their own sleeping mats at opposite ends of the tent. Kendrick felt more relaxed this night than on many of the nights they had beds at inns. He was more at peace, and that granted him a deeper sleep than usual.

***

Another memory washed in from the sea of his subconscious onto the shifting sand of his dreams. He was lying in bed. Gentle, silent snow tumbled in fat flakes from a serene white sky, blanketing the world outside a sliding glass window. This room was stiflingly quiet.

He heard only the slow swishing of a sheet, the crinkling of a comforter, as someone rolled over in bed next to him. Another anonymous face shrouded in oblivion. “Let’s not go anywhere today,” they said.

“Sounds good to me,” Kendrick replied.

The world outside was pristinely cold and pretty to look at, but the bed was a cozy sanctuary of warmth. He longed to stay in that moment.

He could already feel the urgency of wakefulness birthing him from that womblike comfort into the harsh air of reality.

***

He woke up in the tent. Something felt wrong.

When he opened his eyes all the way, he could see Bellara lying next to him. Right next to him. In their sleep, they had rolled off their mats and onto the canvas floor, close enough to embrace if they reached out their arms. Close enough that he could feel the warmth of her exhales against his collarbone every few moments as she breathed slowly in her sleep.

He rolled back over, away from her, and back onto his mat. He tried to return to his dream.

He already knew that it wouldn’t work.

***

“Obstrae!” cried a voice.

Kendrick sat straight up before his eyes were even open. He heard Bellara move next to him.

“Sahni,” they said in unison.

Running out of the tent, they scanned the dark forest clearing for any sign of their friend.

“Ald,” Bellara whispered, igniting a light in her hand.

“Where’s the sword?” Kendrick hissed. “Where is it, where is it... Ah, here!” He retrieved it from the bag that Sahni had been guarding, but the blue-haired witch was nowhere to be seen. Kendrick panicked deep down at the thought of a demon snatching her in the dead of night, lying in wait for them to take a wrong step, running them through with its monstrous horns...

Wait, he thought. That spell she used—it was the binding spell. Not the barrier, just the ring. They’ve only ever used that on imps.

They trudged through the forest clearing where they’d set up camp in search of any sign of her. A short while later, he noticed a bush rustling and bolted to it. Prying apart the leaves, he found Sahni lying on her back... with five imps attached to her. Feeding.

He would have vomited if it weren’t for his surge of adrenaline.

“Disgusting monsters!” he shouted. Thuuum! Gleaming white aura shot forth from the Psysword’s crystal. The blade instantly decapitated one of the imps. He slashed at the others with a pinpoint precision that avoided harming Sahni, while methodically ending the wretched lives of the parasites that had made a feast of her.

In the melee, however, one of them escaped.

“Sahni!” Bellara gasped, sprinting over to the two of them. The aurimeter’s mechanical parts clanked with every footfall. “Sahni, talk to me. What happened?”

“Must have... dozed off,” Sahni said softly. Her eyes were wide with the fright of it all, but creased underneath with exhaustion. “My aura... I can hardly... feel it...”

Bellara pointed at her with the aurimeter. “Oh, Sahni, you’re down to... {14}. Aldiel above! It’s over now, friend. They’re gone.”

“One got away,” Kendrick sighed. He stomped at the dissipating dark aura from the slain imps he’d managed to get. There wasn’t a single light aurum to be found in the remains. “Little bastard.”

“It’s fine,” Sahni murmured. Her eyes were glazed over now, her lids falling in slow blinks—whether it was from tiredness, the aura loss, or both, Kendrick couldn’t tell. “I’ll be... fine... Sorry I... messed up... watch duty...”

“We’ll sleep one at a time from now on,” Bellara assured her. “We’ll just budget more time for it. And... and we’ll get your aura back before it’s too late. Come on, Kendrick. Help me gather our things.” She laid Sahni down in the grass and rushed to pack up camp.

He was hesitant to leave Sahni’s side. “Wait, we’re going after the imp?”

“Before it can corrupt her aura. You didn’t see any light aura from the ones you killed, did you?” Kendrick shook his head. “That means the one that escaped took it all. She needs it back. It’ll take her days to regenerate in her current state, and we can’t spare that time.” Bellara narrowly dodged the tip of the Psysword. “Hey, will you watch where you point that, please? Wow...” She held up the aurimeter. “{149} aura. Utilization of {101}… And it’s sharp! Kendrick—”

The very moment Kendrick looked at it, the blade went out again. “Dammit, why does that always happen?”

“No matter. Save your aura. We may need it to help retrieve Sahni’s. Come on, let’s get moving.”

They packed in a rush and then helped their weary witch friend to her feet. Sahni was barely able to walk with Bellara’s help, but they moved with the greatest speed they could muster. Kendrick used his lens to track the fleeing imp until it escaped his range, at which point Bellara handed him the aurimeter to make sure they were still headed in the right direction.

“Whoa, it’s pulling to the right,” said Kendrick. Dawn was breaking over the horizon now—they'd been trekking through the woods for some time. They crested a hill overlooking a steep slope into a valley. A village sat nestled in the heart of that valley... and that village was on fire.

“No,” Bellara whispered. “No, we... we can’t... Kendrick, what’s the reading?”

“F-, uh, {500}-something. It’s in the 500s.”

She hung her head with remorse. “We’re close enough that it would be able to pick up anything on the scale of a demon. There are no other readings in the vicinity?”

Kendrick swept the aurimeter around him in all directions. The needle swiveled at Bellara and Sahni put together, but it only quivered ever so slightly as he traced it across the circumference of their surroundings. Then, pointed at the burning village, the needle jumped back up past the {500} mark. “It’s gotta be down there,” he concluded. “It must be masked in the other aura, right?”

“That lone imp drained over {100} aura from Sahni. That means there won’t be much else in the village. Maybe a jinn, but it looks like whatever was here has already fled elsewhere. I’d wager there are imps, shades... hopefully some survivors...”

They began the long descent into the village, and Kendrick feared the horrors they were about to witness. He was no stranger to death in this place, not anymore, but this... this was different.

Please, don’t let there be anything too dangerous down there, he prayed silently, to no one in particular. We need to get Sahni’s aura back. If we don’t, then we might not survive another day here.

The light of the early morning sun gave him no comfort in the shadow of what they were soon to face.