Isabella heard the whistle of an incoming train as Gwen charged at Alistair. She screamed, but the howl of the locomotive drowned it out.

The fox ran past her again, like it was trying to catch up with the train. 

Isabella knew she shouldn’t have hesitated. The kill had been right in front of her, but she’d hesitated, even as the draining feeling of unreality had been building in the back of her mind. Now it was too late for her. Now the Liminal Void was here for her. All sensation slipped away as Gwen and her father met each other with their strongest attacks, as three Destiny Stars collided. 

Isabella hyperventilated as darkness enveloped the land and blood rose from the ground in droplets, each blade of grass coagulating into crimson beads and falling upwards into the sky. Each worm and bug in the dirt gave its blood, each leaf, each blade of grass. Birds and rodents dropped from the trees, while insects rained down from the sky as their blood gathered into spheres and ascended in parallel journeys into the sky. They all pooled together, coalescing into a singular sphere. 

Gravity switched its point of reference, gathering around the sphere. The ground was stolen from Isabella, and she tumbled into the sky, flailing desperately. She was falling

Falling

Falling

Falling.

Frozen.

Everything halted. She didn’t shake- why didn’t she feel it? She stopped, all force of motion, all momentum, all energy gone. She wanted to scream, but found no sound in her throat; wanted to vomit, but found no substance in her stomach; wanted to collapse in pain, but found neither gravity nor the ground.

She looked up, and found two wheels spreading across the endless blackness of the Void. They both had smaller wheels caught in the right and left top sides of their spokes, with wings at their backs that spread over the land like the sunset. Markings, too blurred from the distance to be discerned, decorated the side-wheels, while halos of golden radiance circled the crowns between the wingspans. The two of them sang at each other, and all the world’s noise surged forth from their raging harmony. Between them, four Stars floated into the darkness: one blue, one white, one red, and one purple. The four of them danced in an interweaving tango, a complex web of movement across all dimensions. They flew into the air, past Isabella.

Isabella dug at the empty Void, but found herself stationary. Only one other option occurred to her. She’d never tried this before. She doubted it would accomplish anything, but she had to try. She grabbed World-Carver and swung it through the Void, dove into the portal.

Once again, she fell, and once again, she halted. 

She did not stand this time, but sat. She didn’t stop entirely: she shook, and winced as the edges of the wooden steps beneath her back rubbed against the ridges of her spinal column. She sat up and sucked in a gulp of air. The world came back to her.

Above her was a canopy of stars draped over a full moon. Between her mortal body and that black expanse alight with heaven’s jewels was an overhead awning, wooden and painted white. She looked out from a rise of stairs upon a town square, where old wooden houses lined the left side of the road atop a rolling rise of hills and a stretch of brick buildings decorated the right. Outwards, to the left, the street stretched past a cemetery on a pile of grassy hills, followed by a pizzeria, a liquor store, a jeweler’s, a cramped apartment complex locked in a concrete shell, and a half-dozen restaurants all spilling out before a harbor. A steep drop curved into the beginnings of a bay, a safe enclave dotted with small islands. To the right, another incline launched upwards past a statue of Abraham Lincoln and hugged the waterfront as frigid ocean air raked its hypothermic fingers across the town. Brine and salt and the cold chill produced when the water hit the land hung as scents in the air-

Scents. 

That was certainly different.

She looked down and took stock of herself. She wore a long dress, lemon yellow, and her hair was straightened and soft and smelled like peaches. She felt the waxy presence of lipstick, and a heaviness on her eyelids and in her lashes that indicated more makeup. White gloves encased her hands, while sheer black stockings did the same for her legs, and white high heels for her feet. She brushed a strand of hair from her face, and forced her eyes open wide, and thought, where the fuck am I? This place looks like Massachusetts, or at least like the north east. Feels like it, smells like it, sounds like it. 

 And yet… 

A jolt of shock took Isabella when she saw someone standing at the base of the stairs. Lacy wore a navy blue dress that reached just below her knees, and black high-heeled sandals that gave her an extra four inches. Her lips were red, and her hair was longer, nearly down to her waist. It was lighter than what Isabella was accustomed to, but the same texture. Her eyebrows were thinner, arched and sculpted, while her eyes… 

Isabella choked with shock: this Lacy had black sclera and white pupils. Eyes just like the Elf-King’s.

“Hi there, pretty lady,” the other girl said. 

“Lacy?”

“Maybe one day.”

“What does that mean?” Isabella asked.

“It means the tapir walks the forest with crow’s wings stapled to his back.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Isabella replied. 

“You wonder why the sky eludes you, yet you cannot live without ground beneath your feet. And you worry endlessly, unsure of the simplest rule of all.”

“Which is?”

“You cannot know.”

Isabella’s eyes narrowed. “That seems contrary to what you just said.”

“Only because fish jump from the river and reach the sea above, and prove not their value in doing so.”

“Okay, seriously, what the fuck does that mean?”

Lacy shook her head and sighed. “You still don’t get it.”

Isabella reached for her side-scabbard, but found she was without it. She fumbled around her, searching for her sword, for any kind of weapon, but found none beneath the pale moonlight. High heels clomped up the wooden steps as the flowing blue train of Lacy’s gown whipped past her. Lacy’s hand reached out, brushed over Isabella’s cheek and through her hair. The hand wasn’t right- Lacy’s hands, while small and nimble, were rough and calloused from regular use and frequent shocks and pinpricks, not soft and smooth and pristine as porcelain. 

And yet still Isabella found herself rising to her feet and following Lacy into the church. It was a tall, white affair, an old building in the classical New England design of a Catholic house of worship. Inside was a red-patterned rug over a wooden floor with dark finish, and three columns of equally dark pews ran towards the altar. Stained glass of the Stations of the Cross decorated the walls at the sides, while the golden crucifix at the center loomed tall and proud. Isabella bowed her head and crossed herself reflexively, and was somewhat saddened when this copy of Lacy didn’t burst into flames at the sight of it. 

Then again, this didn’t feel like an ordinary church. This wasn’t an ordinary town, no matter how much it looked and sounded and smelled like one. 

“Shall we dance?” Lacy asked. 

“And why would we do that?”

“Opposed to dancing in a house of God? What are you, a Puritan?”

“I think they’re called Congregationalists now.”

“Oh, are they?” Lacy (?) asked sincerely, cocking her head to the side. “It’s so hard to keep track of all that these days.”

“These days?”

“Oh, you know.”

“No, I don’t think I do,” Isabella said, inching forward. Her own shoes weren’t much shorter than Lacy’s, and this was on top of the already-present height disparity between the two. She felt like a mountain looming over a hill. 

A raindrop shattered on the stained glass, soon accompanied by another, and another, and another. “I love this song,” Lacy (?) said. She began to waltz on her own, moving to the beat of the raindrops. She hummed a tune to go along with it, then began to sing a song in a language Isabella did not recognize. Her low notes turned higher and higher with each moment, and her waltz became faster and more composed. She danced around Isabella, then grabbed her by the hands and pulled her into the waltz. 

Isabella fell into the orbit of the smaller girl, who buried her face in the crook between Isabella’s neck and breasts. Isabella’s heart fluttered, and she melted into the dance, feeling the beat of the rain and the alien song Lacy sang through every inch of her body. 

The beat slowed, and the air chilled inside the church. Outside, the rain had cooled to snow, and piled higher and higher all around, congregating on the roof until it collapsed under the weight of the frozen water. Everything fell, and Isabella was crushed and frozen beneath.

The fragile facsimile of reality ripped apart, revealing only the Liminal Void once more. She fell through the empty blackness, the smaller girl wrapped around her. Everything stopped- the sounds, the smells, the sights, until finally the sensation was gone as well.

With that, the darkness faded and the world returned, and there was death all around them. Everything was ash and dust: the trees, the grass, the bushes, the river, the birds, the insects, the rodents, the buildings of erstwhile school- everything reduced to black and white powder. At the center of it all stood two necromancers: one was a young woman with short hair, wearing a tattered leather jacket and faded jeans. Her hair had blanched from dark brown to the crisp white of fresh-fallen snow, and she stood with her arms hanging limp at her sides. 

The other necromancer barely looked human. His face was elongated and warped, his jaw protruding and fangs surging from his mouth. His skin was rotting gray, and his extended claws kept him from squeezing his hands into a proper fist. He raised a hand, held up his claws at the ready to bring them down and cut open Gwen’s throat. 

Isabella nearly forced herself forward, sword in hand, but she hesitated. At exactly the same time that Alistair did. 

An arctic fox, full-grown, fur even whiter than the hair of the Albrect family, darted between them. It stood in front of Alistair and looked up, tilting its head to the side. 

Alistair withdrew his hand, then turned around and lumbered away into the wilderness. 

Isabella lurched forward, readying World-Carver, but she felt a hand on her wrist. Lacy’s eyes were barely opened, and her chest heaved up and down with her heavy breath. “Don’t,” she said. “We need to call this one a draw. You can barely stand.”

Her grip loosened as she fell unconscious, but her hand remained around Isabella’s wrist. 

Up ahead of her, Gwen fell to her knees and landed on her face. Quentin rushed over to her, while the fox darted away. It ran past Isabella, looking directly at her as it rushed into the woods.