The transition through the portal was nothing like the smooth, instantaneous travel the Gustave ghost had promised. Instead of a hallway or a garden, the Legends were thrust into a kaleidoscopic tunnel of screaming colors and warped geometry. The air felt like static electricity, and the smell of ozone was thick enough to choke on. Then, with a sudden, sickening pop, the magic released them.
"Wait, where's the floo—!" Kirian's shout was cut short by the sudden absence of anything beneath his boots.
They weren't in the Hidden Reach. They weren't in a mansion. They were three hundred feet in the air, framed against a bruised, violet sky, plummeting toward a jagged canyon. Below them, a dark, churning river snaked through a valley of skeletal, white-barked trees.
"DIANA!" Emilia screamed, her hair whipping upward as gravity took hold.
Diana, despite the sheer terror of the freefall, remained the only one with her wits intact. She reached into her hidden pouch and withdrew a heavy, sapphire-encrusted amulet. "Brace for impact!"
She crushed the gem in her palm, and a shimmering, translucent dome of kinetic energy expanded around the five of them. The shield hit the water's surface like a skip-stone, absorbing the lethal force of the impact before bobbing to the surface. The dome hissed as it dissolved, leaving them soaked and gasping in the freezing current. They dragged themselves onto a bank of sharp, obsidian-colored pebbles, coughing up river water.
"Is everyone… alive?" Gaius wheezed, lying flat on his back and staring at the sky. There were two suns—one large and pale, the other a tiny, angry red dot.
"I think my soul stayed in Fareday," Kirian groaned, shivering violently. He immediately looked at Lili, who was sitting up and wringing out her damp socks with a look of profound annoyance. "Lili! Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
"I lost my biscuit," Lili said quietly, staring at the empty pocket of her apron. "This place is terrible."
As they took in their surroundings, the "greener pastures" Alistair had mentioned were nowhere to be seen. The valley was a graveyard of withered, calcified trees and jagged rocks that looked like broken teeth.
"The portal malfunctioned," Diana said, her voice tight as she inspected her cracked amulet. "The magic in the mansion was too unstable. We didn't reach the Hidden Reach. We're… somewhere else entirely."
"Somewhere else?!" Emilia's panic finally bubbled over. "Is 'somewhere else' near a bank? Does 'somewhere else' have a map? Diana, we have a dinner deadline!"
A shadow suddenly blotted out the pale sun. A screech, loud enough to rattle their bones, echoed off the canyon walls. From the crags above, three massive birds—creatures with four wings and beaks like serrated scimitars—dove toward the riverbank. They were the size of small houses, their feathers the color of dried blood.
"Giant birds," Gaius deadpanned, scrambling to his feet. "Of course. Because why wouldn't there be giant birds?"
"Run!" Diana commanded.
Kirian didn't wait. He scooped Lili onto his back, her arms locking around his neck. "Hang on, Lili! Heroic retreat in progress!"
They scrambled into the nearby rock formations, wedging themselves into narrow crevices as the massive predators swooped low. The birds didn't give up; they landed with heavy thuds, their talons scraping against the stone as they tried to peck through the gaps. One serrated beak snapped inches from Gaius's face, but Diana lunged forward, hauling him back by his collar just before the mandibles could claim him.
"There!" Emilia shouted, pointing toward a dark cave mouth further up the slope. "Go, go, go!"
They made a desperate break for it, the sound of heavy wings beating the air right behind them. They tumbled into the darkness of the cave just as a beak slammed into the entrance, sending a spray of stone shards flying.
Gaius leaned against the damp wall, his chest heaving. "Is this… a normal occurrence for you guys?" he managed to ask, his voice trembling.
"Not usually at this scale!" Emilia snapped, trying to smooth out her ruined clothes.
Diana gestured for them to keep moving. "We need an exit. These caves could lead back to the surface or deeper into the canyon."
Kirian finally set Lili down, and the group pressed inward. The tunnels branched into three distinct paths. Gaius, eager to find a way out of the claustrophobic dark, rushed ahead toward a glimmer of light.
"I see it! It's an exit!" he called back. He reached the ledge, but his face fell. It wasn't a path out—it was a sheer drop behind a small, trickling waterfall. "Wait, watch your step, it's a—"
SCREECH.
The massive bird from earlier had been waiting. It lunged at the opening, its beak filling the entire exit. The force of its strike shook the cave, and Gaius lost his footing. With a terrified shout, he tumbled over the edge and disappeared into the mists of the waterfall below.
"GAIUS!" Emilia lunged for him, her fingers brushing his sleeve, but the bird snapped at her, its beak narrowly missing her arm. Diana tackled her back into the tunnel just as the bird's weight caused the weakened cave entrance to buckle.
Boulders began to groan and shift. The ceiling was coming down.
"Back! Get back!" Kirian yelled.
They ran, but the collapse was faster. Massive stones thundered down, creating a wall of dust and debris that sliced the group in half. When the roar finally died down, the silence was deafening.
"Lili? Kirian?" Emilia's voice muffled through the wall of rock.
"We're here! We're okay!" Kirian shouted back, his hand gripped tight around Lili's. He looked at the mountain of rubble between them. "What about Gaius? Did you see where he went?"
"He fell," Diana's voice was grim. "And the bird is blocking the ledge. We can't get to him from here."
Diana tried to activate one of her sensory accessories to find a way through the rock, but the device just sparked and went cold. The strange mana of this dimension was suffocating her tools.
"We have to find another way around," Diana called out. "We'll look for an exit on this side and try to loop back to the river. Kirian, take Lili and find a way out on your end. We meet at the bottom of the waterfall!"
Kirian looked at the dark tunnel behind him, then at Lili, who was holding his hand so hard her knuckles were white. The Link between them felt frayed, flickering like a dying candle.
"We'll find them, Lili," Kirian promised, though his own voice shook. "Come on. Let's go find Gaius."
The group had been fractured. As Kirian and Lili disappeared into the deep dark, and Emilia and Diana headed the opposite way, the "Legends" were officially alone in a world that wanted to swallow them whole.