Perhaps an hour or so after coming across Eloi and the mercenary, Reiav was still combing the city with the two almost complete strangers. Logically, they were looking for other people who might be awake.

  It was still terrifying, but the fact that Reiav wasn’t entirely alone gave her strength. She watched from the corner of her eye as Eloi continued to get more and more… out of it. He was likely going into shock, but Reiav had never heard of it, so it wasn’t like she could be expected to do what was needed.

  That mercenary led the procession with an enthusiasm and grit that was honestly rather respectable, even a bit spectacular; it truly is a shame that wouldn’t last long. Reiav remembered talking with the woman a few times about the various types of aircraft, but it was irking Reiav more and more that she really didn’t remember her name.

  The woman was bold though, and she had plenty of practice with yelling for long periods of time, so while Reiav’s voice had long since given out, the mercenary was still going strong. “Hello!! If you’re awake please respond!!!” The boisterous woman shouted again, her voice still strong.

  Reiav instinctively summoned a wing when something fell out of the sky, the spectral light caught it and narrowly prevented the small object from smacking Eloi in the face. Reiav reshaped the wing into a bowl-like shape to keep it from rolling off. She lowered the wing with a mental command a second later, frowning at the round object.

  She easily identified it as a cloud snail. Yes, the same sparking things I didn’t even know about at this point in the story. I swear that the slimy things have it out for me.

  Reiav glanced at the sky. Everything else around them was still completely frozen, and several niortak that Reiav didn’t recognise were just… hovering in the air ominously with their wings halfway spread. How in the world had the snail even gotten here if the whole world was frozen?

  She rolled it from her wing onto her hand and frowned at it, watching as the slimy little creature emerged from its shell, its two long eye-things peering up at her curiously. It regarded her for a moment before slowly crawling its way across her hand. She felt it start to get lighter, the flotation mechanism activating. Reiav clapped a hand over it to prevent it from escaping.

  “This snail isn’t frozen!” Reiav exclaimed, holding it up to show her companions, “Do you think that means people outside of Teisel might be awake?”

  The other two blinked at her, glancing at each other and then at the sky like dullards, “Perhaps,” Eloi said, “But we’re in the middle of nowhere right now. Besides, all the aircraft and people in the sky are frozen just as still as everything else.”

  “And the airships won’t work if the fuel won’t move,” Reiav remembered after a moment, “Even if we use spectral wings to make them go upward they won’t get more than a few feet without being made lighter with snail mucus.” She frowned to herself at the problem, wondering if the fuel would move, but clearly it wasn’t just people who were frozen either. The clouds didn’t seem to be moving, and the city had stopped shaking.

  She could certainly make large enough wings to fly even Ruirel’s ship if they had fuel, but she doubted she could get even a small fighter off the ground without it. There was always the possibility to fly herself, but she felt that there were definitely too many variables there at the moment. Who knew, maybe if she got too far away from the others, she’d freeze just like everyone else.

  Reiav sighed. “We’ll keep thinking. Our first priority is to comb the city for others. After that we’ll hole up somewhere or try to get down to the surface. This has to stop eventually, right?”

  The other two nodded their heads, one with a thoughtful frown and the other with an ominous gleam in her eye that Reiav couldn’t say she liked. Something about an earlier point had the mercenary pausing though, “Do you think maybe someone in one of those airships up there is awake?”

  “I…” Eloi started, frowning, “Well maybe,” he conceded, “but they wouldn’t stay up there.”

  Reiav hesitated, it was probably possible. She moved her gaze up toward the various aircraft and she had to admit that if anyone was up there they’d probably have gotten back to Teisel by now. Any niorta was fully capable of getting down from there after all. “Yeah…” she agreed, “I can’t see anyone staying up there for hours just hoping this will stop.”

  “So,” the mercenary started again after a moment of silence, grinning, “This is certainly interesting. I’ve had some weird stuff happen to me but never anything this odd! Why do you think we’re moving and no one else is?”

  Reiav was silent, considering that. However, Eloi had some ideas, he usually didn’t share those ideas, but today was going to be a really weird day. “Maybe it’s one of the safeguards on Teisel.” He wondered, “The ancient suiki could do a lot of impossible things.”

  That would make sense if so, besides, hadn’t that suiki Ruirel had found insisted on trying to interface with the city? Maybe this was his doing. However, Reiav couldn’t for the life of her figure out how any of them would still be awake.

  She shook her head, overwhelmed by it all. She was doing great though, all things considered.

  --

  “Hello! Is anyone out there! Is anyone else awake!?”

  “...Here…” A soft voice replied.

  Reiav’s eyes snapped away from examining the wall, the color of it had begun to gray as she’d watched it. She wasn’t sure what that meant but it certainly seemed like something the universe would decide to heap onto her for no reason.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  It’s interesting how quickly people blame something divine for things like this. In Reiav’s case, she would much prefer to blame the universe than Rendai the goddess of Prosperity or Atharian the god of Sacrifice, she wouldn’t even blame Astral the god of Balance. Though I find that usually this kind of thing is his fault in one way or another.

  “...I’m… here…” The voice sounded again, using a different language from the one they’d shouted in; it was the predominant one most of the niortak tribes spoke, but Reiav was surprised whoever it was hadn’t used the same dialect. Reiav stood up as the rest of the group moved their gazes in the direction of the voice, which was already becoming stronger. “...I’m here!”

  The mercenary shouted back finally, “We’re over here!” and motioned for everyone to get up. It would be faster if they met this stranger halfway.

  The moments passed as the three of them finally started in that direction; Reiav found herself exhaling slowly as she felt something… strange. It wasn’t bad, not really, but there was something nearby—though she wasn’t sure what direction—that just itched her mind oddly. She examined the sky again for any signs of life, a habit when anyone could just pop out of the air like a sparking bird. Her steady heartbeats felt like they were impossibly long, each beat almost painful in their small eternities.

  “Where are you?” the mercenary shouted again, her face toward the heavens.

  “...Over here!” the voice shouted, and that strange sense returned. Something was… happening? Reiav continued to frown at the sky, her head tilted. They’d sounded pretty far away both times, but…

  Something shot past them in the sky, a streak of color barely recognizable as a person. Reiav shouted in surprise and pointed upward, but they’d moved so quickly. Eloi and the mercenary followed her gaze, slowing to a stop and peering upward with curiosity and confusion.

  After a moment someone simply… fell out of the sky. That on its own wasn’t particularly noteworthy, Reiav knew plenty of people who could do that. Reiav blinked in bewilderment though.

  It was a suiki?

  The girl who landed nearby looked young. Reiav wasn’t entirely sure if aging worked differently for the people of the night, but she couldn’t be more than twelve. She had white hair and large white antennae. Her skin was fairly dark, though nothing close to the tan that came from simply living on Teisel. Reiav hadn’t envisioned the suiki as a race exactly this way, and some things seemed off, but what else could she be?

  The girl landed nearby, and then they just sort of… stared at each other.

  Reiav cleared her throat awkwardly—which she really should be a professional at by this point, but I find I’m just as good at making things awkward. “Ah… you’re a suiki?”

  The stranger glanced down at herself, noting something before glancing back up and giving Reiav an unamused look. “No, I don’t think so, I still don’t have four arms. While we’re asking stupid questions, what in the name of Astral’s balanced space-time is happening?! Last I checked, no one on this planet had the ability to randomly put people in different realms!”

  “Different…” the mercenary started.

  “Realms?” Reiav finished, watching the stranger with wide eyes. That might make sense, if this was a different place entirely then she wouldn’t have to worry about all the horrible connotations that had been tumbling through her mind. If this was a different place, that would explain the horrible wrongness she’d felt ever since things started going… down.

  The stranger watched Reiav and the others with an annoyed expression, thinking for several moments. Reiav noticed though that her eyes never met anyone else’s for more than a few seconds, she wasn’t sure why but it felt noteworthy for some reason.

  On top of that, the stranger held herself a bit like how the mercenary did; her stance was wide and stable, her hands occasionally straying to her pack even without visible weapons. The apparently-not-a-suiki tapped the strap of her bag several times in thought as the staredown continued.

  No one seemed particularly inclined to break the silence.

  Reiav wondered absently once again where this suiki had even come from. She glanced at the mercenary and Eloi, and finally blinked as the stranger began to speak. “Is there any reason you guys can think of why color is disappearing?” She asked, but her tone didn’t really say that she cared much for the answer. She was annoyed about something and didn’t seem inclined to explain it.

  They glanced at each other and one by one each shrugged. Reiav had noticed the problem. Why was it happening? Well there could be a number of things, most of which Reiav hardly even knew the math behind, let alone the actual concept.

  “I was thinking it might just be the universe deciding we needed more problems.” She admitted, but most of her was wondering how light acted when there was no time. Perhaps that was the problem.

  The stranger smirked, “That’s as good an explanation as any, I suppose.” She gazed off into the distance for a second and winced for some reason. After a moment she turned her gaze to each of them in turn. Her gaze felt… strange, like she could see into Reiav’s very soul.

  I do know that I was looking at their souls. I wasn’t really thinking about it though, I’m not really sure if I was thinking at all. You wouldn’t be doing anything differently if you found yourself randomly tossed into the between with no say in the matter. I’m used to being the one to do this kind of crap.

  The mercenary folded her arms, annoyed. “Who the stars even are you? You don’t get to just appear and start acting all high and mighty.” Her gaze was no-nonsense, but the stranger barely reacted to it, simply blinking slowly at the accusation.

  “I’m Fora.” She finally said, “I’m an expert on dimensional magic and I’m probably the only one here who has a chance at deciphering what’s happening.” I wasn’t having a good day either, okay?

  The mercenary didn’t seem amused, “So? What’s happening, ‘oh so mighty expert?’”

  The suiki’s eyes flashed toward the sword strapped at her waist—with an exoskeleton a hammer or mace would have been more threatening, but I still didn’t like swords—she rolled her eyes though, “Well whatever’s going on is centralized over there,” She waved in the direction of the center of the city, “I think it’s beneath that biggest tower. Someone put us in the ah… I think you guys call it the dream realm? I’m not sure why or how, but at the moment I can’t really get back to the real world.”

  What?

  Reiav followed the motion with her eyes, frowning speculatively at the central tower. That’s where her father had set up most of his operations, it was also where most of the metalfolk lived. Reiav nodded slowly with acceptance, “Alright, so it seems like we’re going to the central tower then.” She paused, having forgotten to start introductions, but that was significantly more important to Reiav than anyone else. I doubt we would have even learned each other's names at all if she hadn’t been there. “I’m Reiav.”

  Eloi had been mostly silent thus far, but he seemed happy to follow her lead, “Call me Eloi.”

  The salty mercenary sighed dejectedly, “I’m Pleseln.” Reiav felt her eyes cross at the name, this time filing it away behind a steel door and refusing to ever let it go.

  But she couldn’t help but think that it was a really stupid name.