18 – Searching Through Realms Abroad

“Do you know anything about this place?” Erika asked as they slowly drove along the black cobblestone bridge.

Now that they were moving, she had a little more mental space for taking in the new realm they were in. Periodic raised archways stretched high into the red-tinged mist, each decorated with tall, inhuman statues made from polished obsidian. A gnawing unease settled on Erika’s shoulders as they passed one particular statue, feeling like she was being watched by the multitude of eyes peering out over its bird-like beak—recessed in the statue, the eyes gave off the illusion of following her.

At least, she hoped it was an illusion.

“Should I know anything?” Carter asked, caught between staring out the windows of the enchanted van and pressing himself into the seat as far as he could manage.

“You said you liked it better when The Fixer did it, so I thought they might have said something to you.”

Carter shook his head back and forth, eyes latching onto Erika like she was a lifeline in a tumultuous sea. “I’m being sheltered. Nobody talks to me about anything except when they don’t have a choice.”

Erika felt the accusation aimed at her despite the neutrality of his tone. “Hey. I took you to the museum… and when I got the cursed cubes that one time.” She pursed her lips together, steering the van around a strange waterfall that splattered against one half of the bridge. She couldn’t see where it was coming from, but it had eroded away part of the bridge’s barrier, spilling off over the side. “Besides, look at this place. Can you blame me?”

“No,” he grumbled, looking back out the window. He suddenly pulled back, turning to Erika again. “Should I tell you if I see anything move out there?”

Erika tensed, gripping the wheel as she accelerated just a bit, the van rumbling on the road clearly not designed for modern vehicles. “Yes,” she stressed, peering into the fog. She had seen nothing but the monotonous static of the red mist, but her eyes were on the road, watching for any sign that the bridge might abruptly end.

“Okay,” Carter said.

“Did you see anything?” she hissed.

“No. I just wanted to be sure.”

Fighting back a slurry of curses, Erika took her foot off the pedal, letting the van slow back down. They couldn’t just speed through this place, not with visibility this bad. Although the bridge hadn’t had even the slightest curve thus far, any sudden turn would have them flying right over the edge, as would any collapsed portions, holes, or any number of other hazards.

“You remember when we went to the prison and a million dollars appeared out of nowhere?”

Erika took a deep breath, reminding herself that, no matter what she was feeling inside or how stressed she was, she needed to be the calm one. “Yes,” she said, flat.

“That’s what I meant when I liked The Fixer’s version. I think whatever brought us here was the same kind of thing… except The Fixer made a hole that went much, much deeper.”

“Does that help us at all?” Erika asked, then decided to rephrase her question to be more specific for Carter’s sake. “Does knowing that give us clues on how to get out of here?”

“I tried to do that a few times,” Carter admitted, shuffling his legs in his seat. “I wanted to see it again.”

Erika raised an eyebrow at the roundabout way Carter spoke—he was normally fairly direct. “Did you succeed?”

“I… think I would be in trouble if I said.”

“Did you succeed?” Erika hissed, before grimacing and reigning herself in. “I won’t be upset,” she said, making sure to state her words clearly. “And I promise I won’t tell The Fixer or Leah.”

Carter nodded slowly. “I opened a window? I couldn’t do anything, but I did see through it.”

“Okay… Okay. I don’t know what that means, but do you think you can open a portal back home?”

Carter went silent, and Erika chose not to interrupt his thinking. She was well aware that he had a much better intuition for this kind of thing than she did. Everything she could do, she had either figured out accidentally, or Carter had taught her.

Erika focused on what she could do, which meant driving at the moment.

Even that came to an abrupt end as Erika slammed on the brakes, stopping just ahead of a massive gate that materialized out of the mist. Two columns flanked the gate, stretching upward into the mist. Carvings up and down the stone depicted humanoid figures all massed together, each stretching their arms upwards as if trying to climb over them to become higher themselves… or to drag them back down.

The gate itself spanned the width of the bridge in a portcullis style, meant to be lifted upward. Figures hung from the crossbeams from the necks, yet were adorned with large wings to give off an angelic theme. Presumably, when the gate was raised, it would give off the idea that the bodies were ascending while the carvings on the pillars could only continue their useless struggle.

Erika couldn’t tell if the bodies hanging from the portcullis were real or more carvings, and she didn’t feel all that enthused to find out.

Beyond the bounds of the bridge, the metal beams continued, stretching off high, low, and to either side until they vanished in the mist. Erika couldn’t decide if it felt like a prison, or just a container like a birdcage. The metal bars were decorative, curling at points or perhaps even engraved, so she was leaning toward birdcage.

“Can’t the van drive through walls?” Carter asked, averting his eyes from the gate.

“I saw it drive through walls, but I don’t know how it works. Maybe it’s always on, maybe you have to push some button, or maybe it needs some magic words. I’d rather not risk crashing if we don’t have to.”

Carter accepted the answer with no questions, simply nodding his head. “Okay.”

It was something she hadn’t thought about when first commandeering the vehicle; she didn’t know how to use any of the magical effects, or even what the van was fully capable of. Even touching the radio or air conditioner felt dangerous, like The Warrior might have enchanted the volume dial to some flight spell’s altitude control, or the left turn signal to a ‘teleport twenty feet left’ lever.

Everything in the van had some magical film around it, she could feel that much, but it was too much to easily understand what all the little pieces were for. Perhaps, with more time, she could have broken it down and figured it out, but not now.

“Stay here,” Erika said, hoping the seatbelt unbuckle button wasn’t tied to an ejection seat. “I won’t be far.”

Successfully leaving the van, Erika stepped up to the gate. Despite its morbid appearance, it was, at its core, simple metal. A light knock against it sounded and felt right. She could probably break a wide enough chunk to get the van through, probably without destabilizing the entire thing and crashing it down around them. There was a thin film around the bars, but it felt sicker, weaker than the things The Warrior produced. Feeling out the film a little more, and she was mostly sure it had something to do with lift. Either a spell to raise the gate or some weightlessness to make it possible to raise.

“Are there lights on the other side?” Carter called out, leaning out the van’s open window.

“Don’t touch the window controls! What if it’s a… self-destruct button or something?”

Carter stared blankly, then looked down at the van window before giving Erika his muted version of rolling his eyes. “It wasn’t.”

With a huff, Erika turned to the gate and looked through it. She had been so focused on the obstacle that she hadn’t noticed, but Carter was right. Regularly spaced dots of lights gleamed through the fog, looking distant, almost like she were looking at a city. A creeping dread started to worm its way into the back of Erika’s mind, albeit one tinged with curiosity.

A city here felt like a trap. Her mind conjured memories of the Mother of Maggots’ den. That had been nestled inside a tight, cramped little cave, sealed away from the rest of the realm, whereas this was out and in the open, but that didn’t make her feel much better given how little she knew about the situation.

Unfortunately, they didn’t exactly have better options. They were already in the trap. Unless Carter figured out how to open a portal back home—and Erika wasn’t going to count on luck smiling on her with that—their options were forward or backwards, and there was no guarantee that the other end of the bridge would be more welcoming.

If she had to claw her way through whatever waited in those streets, so be it. Cities meant people, and people meant answers—maybe she could find an exit right into the museum. If nothing else, she could treat it as practice for what she would have to do to stop the maggot apocalypse.

First, the gate loomed before her, barring her way. She could break it, of course, and she had her watch at the ready, but even that felt like tempting fate. For all she knew, the act could call The Mummy’s agents in a heartbeat.

Erika paced back and forth, looking for any lever or button that might open the gate. It took three back-and-fourths before she realized just how silly she was being: The Mummy already knew where she was—they sent her here. There was no sense hiding.

Pulling a hammer from her armory, Erika gave a firm tap on one of the portcullis rungs. It snapped off on both ends, clattering to the ground.

Erika held her breath, waiting, ready to run if that was a load-bearing part of the gate. When nothing happened after several seconds, she started moving around, tapping out more of the rungs until she made a large enough hole to drive through. After tapping out a few extra for some wiggle room, Erika returned to the van.

An amber flare slashed through the fog, throwing Erika’s shadow long and sharp across the cobblestones. She spun, heart pounding as she raised her hammer in one hand and bat in the other, but the mist swallowed everything, sucking away that yellow light before she saw where it came from. She waited, tense, a little worried that she had broken some security system that triggered an attack on the bridge, but nothing came.

“The hell was that?” Erika demanded, breathless as she ran back to the van.

“Light,” Carter answered, deadpan. Erika shot him a glare, but he focused on the fog, humming and rubbing his chin. “It came from somewhere higher than the other lights. Maybe a lighthouse beam slowly spinning around? A beacon? Or a searchlight trying to find us?”

Erika didn’t think that was the case; the light came far too fast and went away just as quickly, so it wasn’t some regularly spinning light, and a searchlight would have stayed on them. “Maybe something like a bomb going off,” she said with a frown.

“I didn’t hear an explosion,” Carter said, voice tightening as Erika put the van in gear. “Should we even get close to it?”

“Turning back isn’t much of an option.” Erika massaged her temples, stress sticking around despite her futile attempts at rubbing it away. “I doubt we have any good choices no matter—”

A jagged streak of crimson tore through the mist, ricocheting off unseen surfaces before dissolving into the gloom. A sharp crack accompanied the light, not like an explosion, but the unmistakable report of a gunshot.

Realization hit Erika upside the head at just how familiar that effect was. Pulse hammering in her ears, Erika slammed her foot down. The van lurched through the gap, metal rattling beneath the tires as they barreled toward the lights. The bridge ended at a large cliff face, turning into a wide, gravely road that wound up a short hill. At its peak, the fog thinned as the van reached the city.

The van rattled up the gravelly incline, tires crunching on stones that shimmered faintly with veins of red and gold. The bridge before hadn’t been designed for cars, but this was on another level entirely. Squeezing between a strangely rounded building, she wasn’t even sure if anyone had designed the road for walking. Thankfully, the road opened up—or the buildings parted—to a heavily sloped mound of gravel.

As Erika crested the hill, the city unfolded before her—a labyrinth of plateaus, suspended in the mist. Impossibly thin bridges and archways connected them, all of which seemed to twist and fold in on themselves the moment Erika wasn’t looking directly at them. Buildings, if they could be called that, clung to the plateaus, not just built on top, but they clung to the sides and underneath, looking more like grown fungus made from glassy obsidian. Long perches jutted out from the lit doorways, giving the impression of massive birdhouses.

Erika spotted no sign of life. The perches and hanging buildings were deserted and nobody walked the ground-level street. Only statues, draped in tattered robes and familiar masks, dotted the sides of the road. Some of the statues had cracked, broken, or missing masks, letting Erika see the smooth, faceless heads underneath.

“Are they like the museum statue?” Carter asked, staring at a closer one as they passed.

“Or the museum statue is like them.”

“Not appearance,” Carter said, shuddering slightly. “I think that one looked at me.”

Erika flicked her eyes to the side mirror, but the statue remained perfectly neutral as it shrank into the fog behind them. Another bright flash of light kept her moving forward—it was higher up, but some mind-aching twist of the road made it feel like they would reach it soon enough.

“I mean,” Carter continued, “if they’re like the museum statue, maybe they can open doors back home.”

“I think the mural hid the portal, actually, but it is something to try. First—”

“Are… Are we upside down?”

Erika paused, slowing the car as she looked up, only to find the road they had just been traveling on beneath them. The van was still on the road—she hadn’t accidentally flipped on the flight spell—and she didn’t notice them turning upside down, they simply were. “What is this Inception-ass bullshit?” she muttered, refocusing on the road in front of her.

“Try not to notice it,” Carter said, sitting back in his seat.

“You pointed it out. I’ve noticed it. How am I supposed to not notice it now?”

“Just try. Cartoon characters never fall until they realize they should be falling.”

Erika shot Carter a look. He didn’t even watch cartoons as far as she knew.

The sharp report of a gunshot came from Erika’s left, but a flash of light came from the right. A fork in the road approached, not stopping even as Erika hit the brakes. Trusting her eyes more than her ears, Erika swerved to the right, where the road opened to a wide plaza at the… edge? of a plateau. One of the obsidian glass buildings had shattered, but the pieces didn’t fall. Instead, they hovered in midair, each shard frozen just beyond the building’s former shape, as if balanced on the surface of a giant, invisible bubble.

Beings occupied the plaza, surrounding the exploded building. All were birdlike, some gliding in circles overhead while others stood hunched on taloned feet. Sharp scythes tipped each of their wings, colored in a dull, brushed bronze. A dozen dark holes dotted their faces, just above uncannily humanoid, lipless teeth stretched out into a beak. Their patchwork bronze feathers didn’t cover their bodies entirely, leaving pale, gangrenous flesh visible underneath.

Another bright flash erupted from the building, aimed almost straight at the van. The orange light ripped apart two birds caught in its wake, sending metallic feathers deep into the ground and walls of other buildings. Erika barely had time to react before The Stalker appeared where the birds once stood, mid-sprint toward the van.

Another bird swooped from above, its wing scythes streaking through The Stalker as she ran. The Stalker froze an instant before the wings connected, turning into a staticky, still image that rapidly dissolved on contact.

“Drive!” The Stalker shouted from the back seat, already lowering the window to level her oversized revolver at the birds.

Erika wrenched the steering wheel, barreling over one unlucky bird as she floored it back the way they had come. The Stalker fired shot after shot, but Erika couldn’t see how much effect she was having. Dozens swarmed the skies around them despite the occasional beam of light taking a couple down.

“Reloading!” The Stalker shouted, leaning back from the window. She wrenched a drawer open that couldn’t possibly have fit in the door of the van and grabbed a fistful of bullets from the compartment, slotting them into her revolver.

The birds punished the opening, flocking down to the van. Sharp claws punctured through the van’s ceiling, grazing Erika’s shoulder as she swerved from side to side to throw them off. Anyone else might have had trouble, but Erika broke through the horde, running over and flinging off every bird that approached with only a small crack in the windshield.

“Got it,” The Stalker hissed, holding up a bullet. Its tip didn’t look like The Warrior’s usual colored metal pieces, but more like someone had taken a small chunk of the Sun and crammed it into the shape of a bullet. Slamming the sunny bullet into her revolver’s well-greased chamber, The Stalker spun her barrel, leaned out the window, and laughed.

Erika’s eyes burned. She didn’t see light as much as she saw pain. Metallic shrieking cried out around the van, while impact after impact struck its front. Erika felt the van break through something far more solid than a bird, but blinking her eyes as rapidly as she could barely helped. The van crashed into something, then something else, then nothing. The ride turned smooth, so smooth that Erika couldn’t even feel the road underneath.

The stomach-turning weightlessness of freefall hit a moment after.

“Parking brake!” The Stalker shouted as loud as she could.

Erika continued blinking, fumbling about as she saw shapes more than controls. Carter’s hand reached out, hazy in her eyes, and grasped hold of a long lever in the center console. A ratcheting series of clicks echoed in the van, each one pushing back against the feeling of freefall until, with the final click, Erika felt everything stop.

She blinked, then blinked a few more times. The vignette around her vision slowly receded, leaving her head still swimming, but able to see once more.

Ahead of them—above them or below them, Erika couldn’t tell—one of the hanging plateaus of the city had turned into more of a crater than anything resembling the fungus of obsidian it had been before. Long trails of blackened smoke wafted in every direction, as if each particle were affected by a different localization of gravity. Towards the edges of the crater, melted husks of birds still moved around, some even trying to take flight.

Erika didn’t know where the rest had gone, but as her eyes drifted over the faintly glowing crater, she could guess.

The van hovered, stuck in the middle of the air. Regardless of which way gravity was pointing, the ground was far away.

“Agent,” The Stalker said, voice calm again—for her, anyway—except for the odd, almost breathy quality in her tone. Given the chaos, Erika easily believed that she was panting from exertion. “You don’t know how glad I am to see a friendly face.”

“Yeah, I—”

The warm barrel of The Stalker’s revolver pressed up against the side of Erika’s head. “You are friendly, right, Agent?”

Grinding her teeth, Erika knocked her head against the gun, aiming to break it out of The Stalker’s grip rather than break the gun itself. “Do I need to beat you down again?” she growled, twisting in her seat to face the woman. “The fuck is your problem? I show up and rescue you, I get us away, and I haven’t even seen The Hanged Man since Christmas.”

The Stalker’s eyes flared, ignoring her fallen gun. “What were you doing with him on Christmas?”

“Is that really what’s most important right now? I—”

“Yes,” The Stalker stressed, though she still didn’t go for her gun.

“I visited a prison with The Fixer. The Hanged Man showed us inside. That was it.”

The Stalker narrowed her eyes, searching Erika back and forth. “He didn’t mention that to me…”

“Maybe you should find someone…” Erika stopped herself, deciding that speaking ill of The Hanged Man was liable to lead to a fight that she didn’t need right now.

“Okay. I’ll trust you.”

“Thank you.” Erika didn’t try to hide the sarcasm in her tone. “Is the rest of The Puppet here?”

“I got split up, but they’ll probably have seen that,” The Stalker said with a thumb aimed at the crater. Her eyes shimmered a little as she looked around. “Either they’ll try to make their way here, or they’ll run in the opposite direction. I’ll know which is which once they decide, so we can either wait or hunt them down depending.”

“Great. Fifty-fifty odds.” Despite The Stalker being The Stalker, Erika was ecstatic to have met up with someone who wasn’t a Mummy cultist.

“Hello,” Carter said. “I’m Carter.”

The Stalker’s eyes shifted as her lip curled. “Oh.”

“I have a question, if that’s alright?”

The Stalker threw a questioning glance at Erika, who sighed and said, “You don’t need to ask about asking a question, just ask it.”

“How do we get down? Or up? I’m not really sure. I don’t think I like heights.”

“Carefully,” The Stalker said with a tooth-filled grin.