Chương 9: Part 9

Anya sat out on a veranda with her pair of newfound friends, sipping a cup of tea. There was a beautiful view of bright blue skies, glass-clear water with the odd fishing boat dotted around, and a perfect and pristine sandy beach. The sound of waves breaking against the beach provided a relaxing ambience. The sounds of the children screaming as they played on the beach were not relaxing, but there wasn't a lot that could be done about that; Jill would get cross if she cut their voice boxes out.

She would just need to ignore them.

"So, to recap, you are a Creature of the Void, and you're on some sort of mission to gather friends?" And Keri, her newest friend, was Taking An Interest. Life was, indeed, perfect.

"Yup. All the other Creatures are boring old farts, and they never want to hang around with me, so when someone from this world did a summoning ritual, I dived right in." Keri nodded at Jill.

"You sure summoned an interesting one."

"No, wait, I wasn't the summoner," she denied, shaking her head.

"She just visited me when I was working as a courtesan, and we ended up kind of sticking together. I blame the diamonds."

"Huh? What happened to the summoner then?" Anya had to answer that one.

"His head exploded," she responded sheepishly. The other two girls stared at her in accusation, leaving her to frantically explain, "it wasn't my fault! I just got the volume a bit wrong when I tried to say hello. I didn't know you were all so fragile!" It was, in retrospect, obvious why no summoner had ever managed to explain to a Creature what it was that they actually wanted.

Maybe one day someone would think to push some sort of welcome pack with handy tourist guide and science textbook backwards through the portal, but until then, heads would continue to pop. Not that any of this mattered; when someone summoned a Creature, what they normally wanted was death and destruction, so explanations were not required. It all just happened naturally. Jill meanwhile was struggling with a bit of déjà vu. Hadn't she heard this story before, just before everything went weird?

Things were still a bit foggy, but she'd definitely heard all this already. And then Anya had told her her name. Not 'Anya', but her other name. The real one. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at Anya. Anya wriggled uncomfortably under her gaze.

"Umm... It really was an accident. Please don't look at me like that. I won't do it again!"

"I don't care about some stupid mage. Answer me honestly. Did you explode my head?" Anya continued to wriggle.

"Umm... No?" Jill's eyes narrowed further.

"Maybe I... umm... melted it a bit? Just a little? But I put it back together as good as new afterwards!"

"So that's why I've felt so strange ever since. I knew it was your fault," Jill muttered, flopping forwards onto the table. Heaving a big sigh, she glanced upwards at Keri.

"You sure you want to stick with us? It's likely to get weird. Weirder. Whatever, you know what I mean." Keri, who was carefully holding her cup of tea between both paws, on account of being unable to grasp the handle, considered that as she took a sip.

"I'm not actually sure it's possible for things to get any weirder. There has to be some sort of ceiling, right?"

"An interesting philosophical question, for sure, but please don't tempt fate." That was when one of the locals, back far too early from his trip to sell the day's catch at Slightly-Newer-Than-Evennewerport-Port, stumbled out onto the veranda, a tall glass of a fiery amber liquid that was most certainly not tea held in a shaky hand, muttering to himself.

"Golems. Hundreds and hundreds of golems. Just standing there. Watching. Waiting."

"Dammit!" The golem scouts had tracked the Creature to a small fishing village, where she had stopped for the night. They'd then set up a perimeter around the area. They weren't being aggressive, just firmly suggesting that anyone trying to leave the village re-evaluate their plans for the day. The perimeter extended all the way around the village, golems marching into the sea to complete the encirclement. Golems did not, after all, need to breathe.

And once they were in position, a magic circle began to take shape. Had they not already been dead by this point, the collection of mages that had put together the previous record holder for the greatest banishment circle would have been greatly disappointed to know how short-lived their record would be. The sigils forming the base of the magic continued to take shape throughout the night. Golems, after all, did not need to rest. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

By the next afternoon, their work was complete. They had built the new greatest banishment circle the world had ever seen, and this one had the additional advantage that the target was on the inside. Jill remained at their table, debating whether to question the fisherman before he got too drunk to answer. On the one hand, she finally had a bit of peace and quiet, and had no desire to spoil it. On the other, this was probably all Anya's fault, somehow, and they should set about fixing it before things got worse.

Alas, she never got the chance to discover that it was actually all her own fault, because at that point the sky vanished. Keri looked upwards with curiosity.

"Okay, you win. Things can get weirder. Where did the sun go?" She looked back down, out towards the sea.

"And is it just me, or does the horizon suddenly look a lot closer?" Jill glanced outwards.

"Nope, not just you. Anya? Any ideas?"

"Umm... I seem to be back home. Someone just teleported the entire village into the Void."

"What? How? Why?"

"How does that even work? Shouldn't all the air drift off? How is there gravity? Why isn't the water spilling out of the sea? How can we still see with the sun gone?" There was a surprising absence of panic. Being unexpectedly teleported to an alien plane of existence was something else that humans hadn't evolved to cope with, and it would probably take a few minutes to work out that panic was an appropriate response.

Things would have been different had the floor and air not been transported with them, but for now there was just surprise and confusion. The fisherman at the next table just stared at his glass in admiration, before muttering what good stuff it was and taking another swig. That all ended when the hole where the sky should be opened an eye. It was a big, lazy eye, stretching almost from horizon to horizon, and it took some time to open, giving plenty of time for everyone to notice it.

There was a tinkle of smashed glass from a few of the other tables.

"Oh, it's my little cousin. Hi! I mean, HI! PLEASE BE CAREFUL AROUND THESE LITTLE ONES! THEY BREAK EASILY!" The eye slowly closed again, followed by a distinct feeling of absence where presence had once been.

"Pfft. See what I mean? Boring. He didn't even bother to say hello." Jill remembered to breathe again, after having more important things on her mind for the prior minute. After a few gasps, she managed, "this is ridiculous. How do we get back home?"

"No idea. It was a summoning, not a portal I made, so I don't know where your world was exactly. There's an infinite number of worlds, all no more than a shadow's width apart, which makes finding any one particular world a real pain."

"But... we can't just stay here."

"Why not?" Jill pondered. Surely there was some obvious, succinct reason? Ah, yes, so there was. Several, in fact.

"Because of the giant floating eyes that might accidentally kill us all? Also, we need food, drink and fresh air?" Actually, quite a lot of land had been transported with them. The circle had been big, to keep the workings out of sight of the village, and it may have been possible to be self sufficient. The fishing industry would be unlikely to survive, given the abruptly cut-off sea, but there was land enough for food crops. Assuming anyone had seeds.

And assuming anything would grow with no sun, even if they could still see somehow.

"Yeah, all in all, I think it's best to get out of here. No offence to your home, but it's not really suited for humans." Anya considered that. This was another option she'd never considered; if none of the natives of the Void wanted to talk to her, could she have brought in some friends from outside? Open air wasn't really suited for fish, and yet the inn they were staying at had several of them, swimming around in a fish tank.

She could do the same thing, and set up her own little human tank, filled with air and dirt and light and whatever else humans needed to grow. But that wouldn't really be the same as exploring other worlds. It would probably get boring too quickly, and then she'd be stuck having to care for a bunch of delicate little mortals forever.

"Okay. Gimme a sec, and I'll try to find a world that's similar enough to drop the village into." Anya vanished with a pop, leaving Jill and Keri alone at the table. They watched a bunch of kids pick up twigs and rush towards the edge of existence, presumably to poke it. Keri was the first to speak.

"Yes, I do intend to stick with you. It's always interesting, and completely stress free."

"Whu? Stress free?" Jill asked with incredulity.

"What part of being thrown into the Void with no way to return is stress free?"

"But I couldn't have done anything about it, could I? Back when I was a merchant, I had to choose which wares to stock up on, and then make a couple of days journey, during which all I'd worry about was whether I'd made the right choice, not knowing if I was going to make a profit or loss at the other end. I didn't have any choice here. It wasn't like I woke up this morning and decided 'I'm going to get teleported to the Void today'.

Not my fault, no forewarning, nothing I could do about it, so no reason to feel guilty or stressed. It's simply not my responsibility."

"That's... an interesting way of looking at it. And I'd say you looked pretty darn stressed after Anya had her tentacles up your nose."

"She just caught me by surprise, that's all. Besides..." Keri trailed off without finishing her sentence, blushing lightly. Anya reappeared with another pop, before Jill could pry open that particular nugget of gossip.

"Right, found a decent one. There's water, land, air, plants and animals, no existing life intelligent enough to say anything other than 'ugg', so they shouldn't protest new arrivals. The air has oxygen in it, and nothing that would be poisonous. Also, no golems that I saw. Not sure why that's important, but for some reason I got that impression it would be appreciated." Jill blinked.

"That sounds... remarkably well thought through. Well done." There's probably a catch somewhere, she thought, but right now getting away from the giant floating eyes was more important. In the logical part of her mind she knew that it had been a Creature, exactly the same species as Anya and theoretically no more scary than she was, but the part of her mind that had seen a frelling giant eyeball where the sky should be was really not interested in logic.

"We should get going." Anya nodded, and the sky turned green.