The Multiverse War, Part One

Chapter 8

AN: That's Westfall, with the vortex in the background on the right as well as Sentinal Hill, that little castle thing to the left. Westfall is, as implied by its name, a region similar to the Great Plains of America, but in extreme poverty. There is a large and growing underground rebel force known as the Defias Brotherhood in the abandoned mines deeper into the region.

Erin fell to her knees, mouth open, the warm breeze flowing through her hair and tugging at her clothes. The weight of her handguns suddenly felt like too much, and she barely noticed as her limp grasp failed, letting the burden drop to the ground with a soft thud.

She didn't know whether to cry or scream. The one person she trusted in all this, vaporized in a stupidly futile attempt to save some girl.

She hardly noticed as a hot tear escaped her left eye and rolled down her cheek, finally dropping from her chin to the soil beneath her knees.

Suddenly she felt very weak. The world began to tip, and strong arms scooped her up just as she was swallowed by the darkness.

                                                                                                    ⇋

The auburn-haired rogue floated in a vast misty abyss that she had been in several times.

The Twisting Nether.

A limbo of sorts, for all sorts of thing. Items lost in alchemical processes and spells, souls that have yet to find peace but cannot anchor themselves to the mortal plane. Summoned demons and elementals and other beings are pulled through the Twisting Nether as a sort of crosswalk of magic.

And immortal souls are suspended here for a time before being reconstructed at the graveyard nearest to their place of death.

After all, she wasn't even really here. Her soul just kinda floated around in a sort of surreal consciousness.

She turned - metaphysically, whooo - and surveyed her surroundings. Near her were several other vaguely humanoid forms, some limned with green, or blue, or white. Some souls were so distorted and confused and tormented that they were just shifting blobs of energy.

One soul in particular was the one she searched for, however. A translucent purple, floating, night elven head with ethereal, wispy eyes. In fact, the somewhat physical manifestations of night elf souls were known as wisps.

As she searched, she spotted a magical anomaly in the distance. Well, there were magical anomalies everywhere in the Twisting Nether, but this one was big, at least as large as her own manifestation. It was a convulsing, pulsing, pearl-colored orb that seemed to be forming a hole in its center.

Not like a donut, though. Like a space-time hole. A wormhole.

Suddenly there was a gut-wrenching shriek and the pulsing bubble shifted in color for a moment. It turned an angry shade of red, and then burst, vaporizing some of the twisted souls caught in its blast. Those souls were gone forever. No heaven or hell or afterlife beyond the Nether.

From the magical fallout of the explosion, a green cloud of malevolent vapor coalesced into the vague shape of the head of a beast.

Its "eyes" glowed with an evil purple, and it directed its gaze toward her.

Despite the fear she ought to be feeling, she instead felt a warm sense of safety. She also found she couldn't move.

The cloud of evil flew toward her, opened its macabre jaws, and in a moment, new surroundings began to coalesce around her.