The journey's last leg

[Amaterasu]

“OKAY!” Amaterasu exclaimed out of the blue , making Oki and Fiara almost jump from the surprise. Even Urist who had somehow managed to find his way back to them in the meantime was startled. “I think I have this figured out.”

“You do?” Oki asked. She noticed how all three of them were actively avoiding to look at her. Weird.

“Yes. If my calculations are correct I have resolved the correct leyline path. Now we just need a test subject to ensure that everything goes correct…”

“I volunteer”, the warrior offered up without hesitation. “I trust your judgement on this and out of the three of us I’m the one who you can re-summon with most of my memories intact.”

Fiara was about to raise her voice but Amaterasu cut her off. “Thank you, Oki. Now, here’s what you must do… navigate along the leyline you are standing on, never put your foot anywhere but on the line, and if possible keep your arms to your sides. If you see a portal, don’t go through it, but rather stick your sword through first, and if it comes out unscathed try your hand, and only then your head.”

Though his mask concealed his face she could tell that he was grinning involuntarily. “You told us not five hours ago that the portals could open into a hole far above the ground. I feel like that’s made me scared enough to not jump into a random portal.”

“Right, so then… wait, five hours? Have I been sitting and calculating for this long?” She looked back at the chaos-geometric sphere drawing she had drawn and the calculations next to it and found that Oki was right: she had completely lost track of time during the process and written several hundreds of lines. “Huh… I guess I must have been. Anycase, yes. Just try to be careful. I’m pretty sure that I can replace a severed arm or a broken sword, but if you die that’s a whole different matter.”

“I’ll be careful. So what do I need to do?”

“Go along the leylines and don’t stray for them for any reason, even if you see a portal within arm’s reach that is near one of them. You should…” She turned to the sphere, rotated the painting and eyed the surface. “... encounter a crossing with three branches, pick the middle one, then when it branches to two left and right ones take the left, on the next crossing the right. That should lead you to a portal. If it’s the wrong one, keep going and stay with the system: middle branch, then left, then right. If you accidentally pick the wrong way don’t go back even if it’s just one step, just keep going forward.”

“Got it. I’ll be careful.” With that he began to walk along the leyline, his back turned to them. At first he moved normally, then suddenly he zoomed forward despite not breaking his walking pace, putting enormous distance between the others. Before long the black void swallowed him, just as he was starting to move upwards.

“And now?” asked Fiara.

“Now, we wait… there’s nothing we can do other than that.” She sat down once more and crossed her legs.

“Oki might not make it back, you know!” Fiara exclaimed with an angry glare. “You might have sent him to-”

“He knows that as good as everyone, Fiara”, Amaterasu snarled. “Why do you think he offered to do it so fast? So neither of you would get in the awkward situation of having to stay silent because you can’t.”

“I could’ve gone!”

“I couldn’t endure you dying twice in such quick succession”, she noted with a bitter tone. “And even if I could, resummoning you would have wiped most of the second-hand memories that you got from watching those videos of yourself in Dante’s Abyss.”

The girl huffed. “What about… what about summoning a random secondary and having them do it?”

“Ah don’ think tha’ would be okay”, Urist interjected. “T’summon some poor sod whose only purpose is t’be used as a guinea pig.”

Fiara glared daggers at Urist. “It’s still better than to send one of US to their potential death!”

“Hold it, you two!” Amaterasu interjected. “Someone’s coming.”

“Wha? Where?”

Indeed, a shape was forming in the distance, in the direction opposite to where she had sent Oki to. A humanoid figure… with red and blue clothes, walking briskly and- it was Oki?! How could he be back so fast? There was no doubt that it was him though, even from that distance she could tell. As he came close he stopped for a moment, then covered the remaining distance with hesitant slow steps.

“I’m back”, he said. “I have no idea how, but I’m here… again.”

“How did you cover so much distance in just a minute?”

“I’ve been going for way longer than that… no time to tell in this place but it felt like hours.”

“No… that’s not possible, an antispace doesn’t have time-bending properties. And you shouldn’t be back here… are you sure you followed my directions?”

“Absolutely. There was a fork with two paths though, so I took the left, then there was one with four ways which left me confused…”

“Four ways? No, that’s…” With the largest frown she turned towards her painting. Had she missed a crucial detail? There were no four-directional forks in this system! There could only be between one and three ways to follow, otherwise the antilaws’ reverse rule of causality would have been disrupted! Had she made an error in her calculations? No, everything fit together perfectly… why then had Oki encountered a fork with four paths?

That was when an idea formed in her mind. A very worrying one.

“Could it be that… this whole place isn’t an Abyss?” she asked herself aloud. “Did I mistake the properties of the space we’re in and… make an error? Oki, are you certain, absolutely certain, that there were four ways? That all four of them were leylines?”

“Absolutely certain”, he confirmed. “I have triple-checked because of what you told me.”

“And my calculations should have been correct if this was an Abyss, I can’t find any errors in it either. So then… I’ve messed up. This isn’t an Abyss, and… I have no idea where we are. Or how we can get out of it.”

“Ah, yer overthinkin’ it”, said Urist with a cheerful smile. “There ain’t nothin’ we can do about figurin’ out which way ta go, aye? But we can follow tha layla-... the law… the lines an’ see where it leads us. Worst case, we get stuck fer a while, but we’ve got a Prime with ye.”

Fiara nodded. “I agree with Urist. Sitting here and wondering about how to find the exit will never let us go forward. We’ll just have to do what you told Oki to do about sticking a sword or a hand through a portal to make sure we don’t end up somewhere bad.”

“Let’s at least give it a try”, offered Oki. “If we don’t succeed, you can always use what knowledge you gather as we walk to figure out where we need to go.”

With a laugh Amaterasu raised her arms in a surrendering stance. “If you’re ganging up on me like that I’ll follow. The big question is, where do we go?”

“I volunteer”, Fiara spoke up. “I’m tired of sitting around and playing it safe. Urist, could I borrow your pick?”

“Mmmh? Aye, sure.” The dwarf nodded and handed over the pickaxe, which Fiara grabbed by the metal part so she could use the stick as a cane. They stepped onto the leyline and, as the phoenix girl tapped the ground in front of her like a blind person, they advanced.

Amaterasu soon felt the distortions of time around them. It was clear that they had some sort of spatial restriction because the four of them felt time pass equally, but she shuddered at the thought that years or even decades could pass outside. There were people out there that might be gone by the time she returned. Kushi might be an old woman with grandchildren… the thought made her smile a little, but she kept it to herself. And not just that one.

If they found what they were looking for, they would be happy, but it would be the end of their journey together. Urist had his proof: living memories of what he had seen and two witnesses to support the story. It was of course possible that nobody would believe him despite it all, but at least he had some comfort in knowing that he was right. Fiara and Oki had no wishes except to accompaign her on this journey, and that part of their tale together had been told. Now it was time to part ways. It was time for them to return to Earth where they could live happily, and it was time for her…

“Ama, is something wrong?” a voice asked. She blinked and noticed that Fiara had stopped and Oki, who was walking in front of her, had stopped and were looking at her. It was Oki who’d asked. “You looked like you were far away in your mind for a while.”

“Oh, no. It’s fine, I was just remembering the length of the journey we’ve had so far, and how it may soon come to an end”, she replied, skirting around the bigger part of what her thoughts revolved around without lying to him. Even so the Oina warrior looked unconvinced, but nodded.

“Okay, but if you feel tired just say the word and we’ll take a break.”

“No, it’s fine, let’s keep going.”

Just as Oki and Fiara turned around however, a white figure flew over their heads. Draped in what looked like white silk robes and emitting a bright white glow, it was a more than welcome change from the otherwise impenetrable darkness. Amaterasu made out what seemed like huge spreaded wings but the figure was rapidly flying away from them, paying them no mind. Something that Fiara did not take to well. “Hey! HEY YOU!” she yelled, flames shaping on her wrists as she activated the Phoenix Blasters and began to run after the mystical creature. “WAIT UP! DON’T YOU RUAAAAAAAHHH!” Her last words were interrupted when she fell over an invisible edge, down and out of their sights. Her surprised then panicked scream was swallowed by the darkness, then the sound of something splashing into water could be heard far away.

“FIARA!” Amaterasu yelled and ran as close as she dared to where she presumed the edge to be, before leaning over. Everything was absolutely black. No, no, no… Fiara couldn’t…!

A light flickered far away, then another. More sounds of splashing water. Someone was swimming, and the two lights moved forward, then stopped. “Hey! Are you up there, guys?” the girl’s voice then rung up. The two lights, evidently the flames of her Phoenix Blasters, formed an archway as the girl waved both her arms at them.

“We’re here! Are you okay?!” Please tell me you’re okay…

“I’m fine! Just drenched in some sort of black water. You can jump, it’s safe! The leyline continues down here!”

It was a very strange experience to jump over an edge you couldn’t see down a precipice you couldn’t see the walls of, into a body of water you couldn’t distinguish from the surroundings. Amaterasu held the need to scream as the woosh of air blowing past her ears told her just how fast she was falling, before she was suddenly engulfed by water. From such a height it should have hurt far more, but nothing of the sort happened: it was as if the water was purposedly soft to catch the fall. Next to her she could hear Oki and Urist splashing into the water. She paid them no mind for now, focusing on swimming towards Fiara. There was the leyline… that accident had led them to discover a path they may otherwise not have taken. Whether or not it was the correct path was not yet clear.

The water was neight cold nor warm, but when she climbed out onto the edge of the… lake? Puddle? her clothes felt heavy and indeed, drenched with a black liquid that looked like oil, except it dripped as freely as water. She was about to say something to Fiara when a tirade of words that would’ve made a sailor blush were yelled by the dwarf. Oki rushed to his help, but Urist could swim just fine, it seemed. Even so, he cursed until he arrived at the shore. “Bruenor’s beard, tha’ fall almost stopped me heart dead in me ches’... wha’s this you found, Fiara?”

“A new way, it looks like”, the girl answered. “Let’s see where it leads.”

“Won’t have to look for long”, remarked Amaterasu and pointed forward. There was a portal there that looked exactly like the one they’d come from, but rather than opening into a verse its inside was completely black. She moved closer, careful to stay on the leyline, and examined it. Firat the pickaxe, borrowed from Fiara… when she pulled it back it looked fine. She reached her arm through and found it caressed by a salty breeze Was that… a sea? She finally dared to stick her head through to look. Below her were little ripples of waves , foam on their crests, and blue water as far as the eye could see with not the slightest hint of land. She withdrew her head. “I don’t know what this is”, she told the others, “but it’s definitely not where we want to come out. There’s just water everywhere, it looked like an ocean.”

“Maybe t’is Omni’s water supply fer the Omniverse”, remarked Urist and chuckled.

“Who knows… let’s keep going though.”

And so they continued, along the leyline yet again, and walked for what seemed like hours. Urist began telling a dwarven tale to pass time but just as he got to the point where the evil troll was about to clash with the heroic dwarf in a swordfight the leyline split into a U. And between the two forks was another portal, this one letting them see through. It led into some sort of cloud staircase, but they could not see beyond that.

Amaterasu knew, without a doubt, that this was where she was meant to be. The place she had aspired to arrive at all this time. It was the entrance to Tamagahara.

“There’s no need to test this one, Fiara”, she said, walking past the girl before she could poke her pickaxe through the portal, and stepping through it without hesitation. “It’s the right one.”

“But it doesn’t lead into the Nexus, does it?” Fiara asked. But by that time Amaterasu had already traversed the portal and stood on the cloud on the other side, beckoning for them to join her.

Their journey would soon be over.