“Terrifying,” she said. “Who knows what you might have found on the other side, David? What if I’d dropped you into a world where the atmosphere was different, and you suffocated?”
“It was like our world,” I said, rubbing my side and looking around. “Ildithia was there, except in the distance.”
“What…really?” she asked. “Are you sure? I specifically picked a world where this region was empty, so I’d have a good view.”
I settled down. “Yeah. Can you reach out to the same world again, on purpose?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The things I do, they just kind of happen. Like bending your elbow.”
“Or eating a bagel,” I said, nodding.
“Not…actually like that, but whatever.” She hesitated, then settled down on the floor beside me. A moment later, Cody peeked in on us—apparently she’d been too loud when she’d cried out to me. Megan’s veil of dark fog had vanished, and he could see us.
“Everything all right?” he asked, rifle in hand.
“Depends on your definition,” Megan said, lying back on the floor. “David convinced me to do something stupid.”
“He’s good at that,” Cody said, leaning against the doorframe.
“We’re testing her powers,” I said to Cody.
“Ach,” he said. “And y’all didn’t warn me first?”
“What would you have done?” I asked.
“Gotten up and eaten some haggis,” Cody said. “Always nice to have a good haggis before someone accidentally destroys your hideout in a burst of unexpected Epic power.”
I frowned. “What’s haggis?”
“Don’t ask,” Megan said. “He’s just being silly.”
“I can show him,” Cody said, thumbing over his shoulder.
“Wait,” Megan said. “You actually have some?”
“Yeah. Found it in the market the other day. Guess they believe in using the whole animal round here, eh?” He paused. “The stuff’s nasty, of course.”
Megan frowned. “Isn’t it like a Scottish national dish or something?”
“Sure, sure,” Cody said, sauntering into the room. “Being nasty is what makes it Scottish. Only the bravest of men dare eat it. Proves you’re a warrior. Like wearing a kilt on a cold, windy day.” He settled down with us. “So what’s up with the powers?”
“Megan sent me into an alternate dimension,” I said.
“Neat,” Cody said, digging in his pocket and pulling out a chocolate bar. “You didn’t bring me a mutant bunny or something, did ya?”
“No mutant bunnies,” I said. “But Calamity wasn’t there.”
“Now that’s even stranger,” Cody said, taking a bite of the chocolate bar. He grimaced.
“What?” I asked.
“Tastes like dirt, lad,” he said. “I miss the old days.”
“Megan,” I said, “can you bring up an image of that world again?”
She looked at me, skeptical. “You want to keep going?”
“By the measuring stick of Epic powers,” I said, “this doesn’t seem too dangerous. I mean, you dropped me into another world, but I popped back in under a minute.”
“And if that’s a result of lack of practice?” Megan asked. “What if, in doing it more, it gets more dangerous?”
“Then that means you’re learning to affect things more permanently,” I said. “Which is going to be a huge advantage to us. It’s worth the risk.”
She drew her lips to a line, but seemed persuaded. Maybe I was a little too good at getting people to do stupid things. Prof had accused me of that on more than one occasion.
Megan waved at the wall she’d changed before, and it vanished, once again providing the view of an empty plain of grass.
“Now the other side,” I said, pointing at the wall with the doorway Cody had come through.
“That’s dangerous,” she warned. “Trapping us between two shadows means that the other dimension is more likely to bleed into…But you don’t care, do you? All right. You owe me a back rub for this, by the way.”
The opposite wall vanished, and it now seemed like the three of us were in a solitary building on the plains, with two walls cut out. The new perspective gave us a view of what I’d seen before: Ildithia in the distance.
“Huh,” Cody said, standing up. He unslung his rifle and used the scope to inspect the city.
“The city is in a different place in this dimension,” Megan said. “Not surprising. It’s easier to view dimensions that are similar to ours, so I should have guessed.”
“Nah, that’s not it,” Cody said. “Ildithia is in the same place in that dimension. But your window isn’t opening where our hideout would be there.”
“What?” Megan said, standing up.
“See those fields? Those are the eastern side of Ildithia, marked by that stand of trees. Same as in our dimension. The city’s in the same place; we’re merely looking at it from the outside.”
Megan seemed troubled.
“What’s the problem?” I asked her.
“I always assumed that my shadows had a direct location connection,” she said. “That if I pulled something through, it was because that was what was happening in another dimension, right where I was.”
“We’re talking about altering the shape of reality,” Cody said with a shrug. “Why should location matter, lass?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It just…it’s not what I’ve always thought. It makes me wonder how much I’ve been wrong about.”
“No Calamity,” I said, walking as close to the invisible wall as I dared. “Megan, what if the shadows you grab are always from the same world, a parallel one to ours? I keep seeing Firefight during moments when you use your powers. That seems to indicate that the shadows you’re pulling are always from his world.”
“Yeah,” she said, “that or there are hundreds upon hundreds of different versions of him, and each world has one.”
Cody grunted. “This sounds like a headache.”
“You have no idea,” Megan said. She sighed. “I’ve done things that your theory can’t explain, David. Though perhaps there is one similar parallel world that I reach into most often—but if my powers can’t find what I need there, they reach farther. And right after I reincarnate, they go anywhere, do anything.”
I stared at that distant Ildithia for as long as Megan kept the shadow active. A world parallel to our own, a world without Calamity. What would it be like? How were there still Epics, if there was no Calamity to give them powers?
Eventually Megan let the images vanish, and I gave her a neck rub to try to deal with the headache all of this had given her. She kept glancing at the candle, but didn’t reach for it. Before long, all three of us returned to our beds. We needed sleep.
Tomorrow we would dig into Tia’s plan and try to figure out how to save her.
I rubbed my hand along the
saltstone shelf, disconcerted to find that my fingers left gouges. I dusted my hand off, sprinkling pink sand to the floor. As I stood there, the shelf on the wall split in the middle, crumbling away. Salt ran down like sand through an hourglass.
“Uh, Abraham?” I said as he passed.
“We have a day left before we need to leave, David,” he said.
“Our hideout is literally disintegrating.”
“Accessories and ornaments crumble first,” he said, ducking into our third-floor spare bedroom—the place where Megan and I had experimented with her powers the night before. “The floors and walls will hold for a time yet.”
I didn’t find this very comforting. “We’ll still have to move soon. Find a new hideout.”
“Cody’s been working on that. He says he has a few options to talk to you about later today.”
“What about the caverns?” I asked. “Under the land the city is passing over? The ones made by Digzone? We could hide there.”
“Perhaps,” Abraham said.
I followed Abraham into the room, where Cody was whistling and sweeping salt into a pile. Apparently the saltstone we’d grown disintegrated at the same rate as the stone around it. Soon this entire region would collapse, and the salt would vanish.
Morning light shone through the thinning saltstone roof above. I settled in on a stool, one of the ones Cody had purchased during a scrounging mission. It was strange to be in a city where there wasn’t trash to pick through; Ildithia just moved away, leaving behind anything people discarded. It left a sparseness I hadn’t seen in Newcago or Babilar.
Megan came in but didn’t sit. She leaned against the wall, arms folded, wearing her jacket and jeans. Abraham knelt by the wall, fiddling with the imager, which he’d calibrated earlier. Cody lifted his old broom and shook his head. “Ya know, I think I might be making more salt than I’m cleaning up.” He sighed, walking over and settling down on a stool beside me.