The Void I

Frost walked on a bed of flowers that stretched as far as his eyes could see. The sun was bright and hot, the wind complimenting the feeling of a gentle summer's day. His body felt light as he moved forward, his legs infinitely strong and carrying him with ease. He was moving towards someone on the other side of the field that was currently no more than a black dot under a bright white gazebo.

He started running.

Somehow it seemed to get further and further away as he moved. The hills went up and down and he gained and lost speed, but he never ran out of energy. Soon, he started finally making progress. It wasn't long before he leaned in the entryway of the gazebo and huffed. He felt as if he should be exhausted, like a sort of phantom pain for physical activity.

The gazebo was looking over a pond that was about half a football field in size. Frost could see fish swimming around, leaping out of the water and knocking into each other. There was a table and two chairs watching over this beautiful scenery. One of the chairs was already occupied by someone familiar to him. Her figure was immediately recognizable to him though her face was turned away, covered by golden hair.

Frost couldn't help holding his breath. "Vera–" He started.

The girl that he'd seen in his dreams every single night turned to face him. Those blue eyes and soft features looked upon him for the first time in many years. Her hair brushed over her shoulders and fell down in the most picturesque way, like a statue by michelangelo. This… He wondered if he was looking at an angel. The most perfect thing to ever exist. He stammered upon his words.

"I… Missed you," was all he could manage to say.

Vera's eyes looked sorrowful, almost like she pitied him. She opened her mouth to speak, and said the last words he'd have ever wanted to hear.

"Your place isn't here."

He awoke with a yelp and immediately reached upward, overextending his scabbed and yet remarkably healed arm towards the ceiling. His muscles stung and he whined out in pain before dropping it back to the bed. He groaned again, sinking further into the mattress. Besides the pain, it wasn't entirely unlike an early school day, hearing his alarm and desperately trying to pretend he didn't…

He was in a bland and unimportant looking room of solid grey palate. That, and he was on a bed that felt deceptively comfortable. This was due to the fact that he'd slept on straw for a month, surely, as the bed actually felt pretty hard. The important fact, however, was that he wasn't chained or cuffed or any of the like. It could've been that the door was locked, but he definitely wasn't going to bother checking for now.

He'd survived the encounter with the wyvern… But how? Was he still on Dragonsfold? This place had a different feeling somehow. All of the questions that arose in his head hurt his brain. That woman he'd seen before falling unconscious…?

[Checkpointer20: Look who's awake!]

[Checkpointer20: The others took a temporary hiatus to check out other connections.]

[Checkpointer20: I stayed here so I could give you the deets.]

"Great," Frost whispered. His voice sounded not entirely unlike the low growl of a puppy. "How did I get here, and where am I?"

[Checkpointer20: The activation of that attribute saved you.]

Attribute?

[Checkpointer20: As for the rest, there's someone on the way who will explain.]

The door rattled at the precise moment Frost read the message like a call and response. He jumped slightly and then settled back down. The door swung open, and two people stood in the doorway silhouetted by the bright lights out in the hallway. Frost shielded his eyes, not having realized just how dark it was in the room.

"He's awake," a woman's voice said.

The two people stepped into the room. One of them was someone Frost recognized. Klein placed his hands on his hips, looking plenty healthy compared to the last time Frost saw him bleeding out in Schmidt's arms. The middle-aged man had a sly grin on his face, and immediately stomped over to Frost's bedside to greet him.

"So you survived after all. You damn idiot." He punched Frost on the shoulder.

"That hurts, you know." Frost looked past him. "And this is?"

"Ah. Right. You and I have some formalities to take care of."

The woman standing behind him took the forefront now. Front couldn't tell if she was fourty or fifteen, but she had long brown hair tied in a bun and eyes that already looked like they were sick of him. She was wearing strange robes with leather armour on top of them in certain places. It appeared as a combat outfit tailored for flexibility, like something a monk would wear. This – if he wasn't mistaken – was the woman that found him on the mountainside.

"Good morning. You owe your friend here some thanks. I was inclined to leave you behind after the trouble you caused us."

"Caused you?" Frost asked. "And you are?"

"You have just the kind of mouth I expected, boy." She reached her hand out to him nonetheless. "Belleram Medeara. Acting Headmaster of the Realmguard… To put it in layman's terms, I'm the one that was in charge of cleaning up the distortion you created."

"Created? I didn't do shit, lady," Frost said.

[Checkpointer20: You did, though.]

Belleram just stood there looking unimpressed. "How long have you been a Voidhunter for, kid?" She walked over and grabbed a chair from the corner. "Your midlife crisis of a friend here is a freshie. He can be forgiven. You, though… You killed that wyvern. Someone with that much power ought to know better than to break the first tenet of the void."

[Checkpointer20: She's dangerous. I would recommend being honest.]

Frost wasn't planning on doing anything else. He was bedridden, and in no position to be telling dangerous tales. "I'm sorry to disappoint, but sometimes real life is stranger than fiction," he said.

Belleram sat on the chair backwards and threw her arms over it. A sigh escaped her lips in a tired sort of way. "Will you maintain that opinion even if I hit you a few times?"

Frost shrugged. "If you hit me I'll tell you whatever you want… But it won't be the truth."

"He didn't have any strange powers when he arrived at the mines, other than his mouth that is," said Klein jeeringly.

"I've noticed," Belleram said dryly. "Even so, I believe you. If you're lying, I'll have no problem throwing you from the nearest cliff, alright?"

"I've never been much for skydiving." Frost heaved his whole body and managed to sit up with excessive difficulty.

"Skydiving. That's a trendy thing on Earth, isn't it? Never really caught on commercially anywhere else, though."

"Earth?" Klein asked. He was rubbing the stubble on his chin thoughtfully.

Belleram and Frost just glared at him.

"Right," she said, "I've got a lot to catch you two up on, I suppose."

"To say the least," Frost groaned. "So that please we were before really wasn't Earth, then?"

"What in the hells is Earth?" Klein asked again.

[Translation service active.]

Belleram put her hands out to shut both of them up, closing her eyes and looking agitated already. "Let's start with where you are right now." She gestured around. "This is the Void. Some call it the Realms Between, which is probably a more apt name."

"And what's it between exactly?" Klein asked. He was more clueless about the scenario than Frost.

"You can think of this place as a waystop between worlds," Belleram continued. "All of the Doorworlds can be accessed from here. Recall the door I brought you through to get here, Klein?"

Or the 'door' I fell through, Frost thought.

"I do," Klein affirmed.

"Like a bus stop that leads to different planets?" Frost asked.

"Bus?" Klein asked.

Frost was growing silently agitated with his friend's ignorance.

"Just imagine a platform with teleporters leading to wherever you could possibly want to go," Belleram growled, sharing Frost's emotion.. "The void is huge in its own right, though. It's not a 'planet' in the scientific sense, but it has the size of one."

Not in the scientific sense, huh? What does that even mean? Frost shifted to dangle his feet off of the bed. "Right. And about this one's planet? Dragonsfold, right?" He gestured to Klein. "It was… Pretty old fashioned. No offense."

Belleram launched into a well-rehearsed explanation. "We refer to planets in technological brackets one through three, with three being spacefaring or at least extremely advanced on the surface. Dragonsfold is class one, but mainly because their dustlings can't help nuking themselves back to the stone age once every few millennia." She paused at Frost's cluelessness, and then explained further. "Some people there have the power to utilize Void dust, the most powerful of which far exceed your nuclear bombs in devastational ability."

Klein – who was acquainted with the latter information – looked shocked for a different reason. He was leaning into the wall for support now. "Space-faring? Some of these planets can go to space?"

"Indeed, and with technology alone, no less." Belleram turned to Frost. "As for Earth–"

"Class two, I presume," he said, relatively unimpressed. "I don't suppose we have any secret superhumans on Earth?" 

Belleram shook her head. "Void dust has many uses. Voidhunters use it for their own powers, and some planets have their own unique powers based upon it, like Dragonsfold. Earth, however, is what we call 'dustless'."

"Lame," Frost groaned. To think that the sci-fi and fantasy they wrote about on Earth actually existed, but Earth itself was exempt from participating. It made Frost wonder just where the ideas of magic and such came from. Perhaps a trip to the Void had been in order for the likes of Tolkien or Pratchett. He only hoped that he wouldn't have to encounter Sauron anywhere…

"You should be thankful, actually. Dustless planets tend to be higher on the peace index." Belleram shrugged. The meaning of peace index could be inferred. Frost didn't doubt that planets with special abilities and wizards tended to be less peaceful. Earth was hardly peaceful at all, and all it had was guns and bombs. What would it be like if the soldiers could shoot bombs from their hands? Desolate, he assumed.

"She's probably right," Klein doubled down. "Dragonsfold has been engulfed in war for the better part of a century." He leaned further into the wall and moaned. "Still… I'm going to need a minute to digest."

Frost agreed with that assessment. Indeed, he could think about this circumstance for a whole week and never properly grasp it. One thing he knew for sure, though. "Better than being enslaved, right?" He asked.

Klein removed his head from the crook of his elbow, sighed out with a quick laugh, and replied in the obvious affirmative. "When you put it that way–"

Belleram was sat in the middle of them, looking utterly uninterested like a child watching her parent run into a friend at the grocery store. "Digest while we take a walk. My legs are getting stiff." She looked at the indecisive Frost, "and that includes you, cripple."

"Did you heal me?" Frost asked in response.

"Yes," Belleram nodded. "But it's not an exact science. Your wounds are gone, but your body will still be in quite a bit of phantom pain for awhile."

Frost grunted as he practically threw himself out of bed, stumbling forward and only stopping himself when he hit the opposite wall. Belleram groaned, but shot up and was immediately at his side to catch him as he was falling. Only one of her arms was enough to pull him up. This woman's strength was unnatural, and enhanced by that same 'void energy' Frost had felt the guards using back on Dragonsfold.

"Don't do that so suddenly, you dumbass."

Frost was breathing quickly. "I thought I could outrun the pain."

Belleram sighed. "That's not how that works at all…" She looked at Klein, who just shrugged. "Will you be alright?"

"I can make it," Frost assured her.

"Great. Let's take a walk."