(A/N: Made a bunch of late-game edits to this one. If anything looks wrong to you, there are probably a few lingering inconsistencies from earlier drafts. Please tell me so I can fix them. :/ )

I move out of one forest and into another.

The woods here are coarser, not as thickly packed as the magical forest but denser than the slope near my home, and there are assorted pines everywhere. I still notice several native species, so we can't be too far, unless I'm in another dimension, in which case, all bets are off. I flex my hand. Claws glint back at me, reminding me that I'm no longer defenseless and I'm no longer entirely human.

Did I choose this?

Despite the general vagueness of my conversation with the deer, I'm definite that what I chose was my friends. I couldn't regret that no matter what happens next. "Who's otherworld is this?" I ask the sky, which is hardly visible between two trees. "Can I take the next exit over to Amy, or is that not an option?"

A red wolf stands in the distance, fur bristling. I recognize the ears first, which finally fit on the head they're affixed to, and then the eyes.

"Olive," Of course. "Olive!"
Her tail waves like that of a big dog as she springs back into the woods, leaving me to follow. It becomes apparent after a few seconds of running that I'm not going to make wolf speeds on human stamina. Gritting my teeth, I surpass human stamina into something stronger, although it still pales in comparison to the speed or agility of you know, an actual wolf. I'm just a dumb kid running through the woods at slightly-faster-than-human speeds. Of course, humans are supposed to have better stamina, but with my luck, I bet Olive is a magical wolf with human powers. We run for a period of time I can't give words to, until she leads me to a riverbank. She pauses, looking blankly ahead at a darkness downriver, over a small, foot-high waterfall. She backs away up the bank, watching me with unrestrained animal malice.

"Olive. We're going that way," I tell her.

She snarls.

"Olive. Come on. They need us over there," This isn't eliciting a response. I hear her whimper. "Look, why do you have to be so-- you can't possibly be this selfish! We don't get to dick around in a forest while the wood ends, living out whatever weird fantasies we want. What you want. Our friends are in danger and you're being--"

That's around when she lunges for me, jumping over the banks and throwing herself at me. I manage to strike her back with one instinctive motion of my hand, but at this point my whole body has gone rigid. I take the full impact of her body anyways and my entire face is stiff, the two of us facing off on the banks as I attempt to wrestle a wolf almost my size off of me. She's not trying to bite me, which is an improvement, I guess, but I'm all adrenaline and fear right now, and I manage to throw her off into the water through sheer adrenaline. She yelps as she hits the rocks on the banks, and my heart jolts again, my whole body shaking.

"Shit," I whisper. "Olive, you good?"

She lifts herself up out of the river and shakes herself off, although her head is lowered a little like she might be in pain. Regardless, she's at least standing, and the water barely goes up to her... the weird backwards knees wolves have. Those.

"Not going to attack me again?"

I get a blank stare.

"Are you looking for someone out here?"

In the most humanlike gesture I've gotten out of her yet, she nods.

"Great," I hiss. "Just so you know, my parents weren't here, so I'm guessing your family, whatever you consider that... they might not be here either. Or maybe they are. I can't really promise you anything. Look. I'm going to go my way. I wish I could help you, but I can't, and if I don't go, someone's going to get hurt. My pack. My family. They need me."

She approaches my leg. Slowly, she looks right up into my face, and though it's hard to gauge what her expression is right now, I can almost detect human sadness in her expression. Slowly, she travels downriver, to where the waterfall is, the one that descends into nothing. She lowers her head, as if to say, You coming?

"Thanks," I say, approaching the edge. The water curls around my feet. I summon my courage and leap into the depths.

I come out in another forest, which is to say, whoever creates otherworlds or whatever divine entity randomly generates our fates must get a real kick out of generic European and North American woodland settings. This one in no way resembles home, and all the trees look like they might want to mug me in a dark alley. I'm appraising them as Olive bowls me over, slightly less furry than the last time I saw her. I mean, she's definitely still a furry, but at least she's not an actual wolf. Her shirt is shredded and she's bleeding across the face, where she must have hit the riverbank, but she's still smiling.

"Are you..." I ask.

She grins. "I'm fine! How are you?"

I sigh with relief. "What was that about?"
"I didn't really want to leave? I feel kind of empty right now, but also, no one else was there, until I found you. So maybe I was supposed to leave? I don't know. Does your head hurt? My head hurts. Where are we?"

I bite my lip. "No clue. Probably in someone else's story?"

"Oh. Who's?"

"I want to say Finn's, but--"

A wave of earth hurtles towards us. Olive pounces on me and bowls me over, so that we just avoid the impact, especially when that earth erupts with spikes of ice. I look around Olive to see a hulking beast impaled on the rocky terrain, not too far off in the distance, and Brittany strides atop her creation, crushing crystals with her boot. Her face curves into a frown as she looks down at what I now recognize to be a dragon, bleeding out where she impaled it. She thrusts earth all the way through its backside, so it comes out the other end, and the creature lets out an ear-rending screech. It drops to the ground as she withdraws it, lowering herself down, and trees fall away in its wake.

"You went through your portal, too?" Brittany asks.

Olive and I nod, dumbfounded.

"Great. I know where we are. Follow me," she says.

We step around the downed dragon. Brittany clears us a path through the trees by parting the earth on either side, which is overkill, but the way she watches the forest around us indicates that she thinks we're not quite out of the woods. "Problem?" she asks.

"No. If you do know where we are, though... where are we?" I ask. "I'm new in town."

Brittany sighs. "You're about to find out." A gloriously nondescript castle emerges on our horizon. It's as beautiful as it is generic, of particularly fine stone and topped with several spires that seem to ascend all the way into the sky. Brittany troops over the moat, where the drawbridge is conveniently down, and into the castle proper. The entrance hall is massive and ornate, kind of like a cross between your average grandfather's house and a medieval throne room (that is to say, nice carpets, animal heads everywhere, some of which are decidedly not earth animals), opening up onto a huge staircase and two halls to the left and right. There are two people there, neither of whom look particularly noble, guarding the staircase with spears.

"We're looking for Prince Arthur? I guess? King Arthur?" asks Brittany, approaching the nearest guard. "Arthur."

"You mean the servant boy?" he asks, condescendingly.

"What! He gets real people?" asks Olive.

I pat her head sympathetically. The guard's lip curls up, disgusted by this terrible gremlin from the woods with wolf ears.

"They pull this a lot," says a familiar voice. Arthur walks down the steps, glittering in armor and wielding a massive sword at his side. "Yep. I'm here. Ready to go now," he says, "Guessing you slayed the dragon already?"

"Yep," Brittany says. "Took me all of two seconds."

"She slayed the fell dragon of the Obscurus Woods?" asks the other guard. "Who might this dame be? A sorceress?"

Brittany smirks. Arthur rolls his eyes. "A friend. We'll be leaving now, thanks," he announces, and without much fanfare, escorts us, with a gentle if aggressive hand around us, out of his castle. When we're over the drawbridge, he says, "Thank goodness. You have no idea how easy my quest was. It's the one dragon, which my armor is invincible to, and my sword is like boiling acid for. Getting the sword isn't hard either. It's the most unfulfilling quest in the history of quests."

"Why, because your parents and grandparents have already done all the work for you?" I ask, fully expecting to be knocked dead with the sword.

"See, that's a theory. They probably set me up," he says. "Well, at least you guys get some character development out of your quests. The experience has never been anything but empty for me. Now, are we going to go save the others or not?"

"That's the plan," I say. "You know where the exit might be?"

Arthur points to an ominous cave. "Probably where I got Excalibur. It's 'fraught with monsters'."

"You've got three monsters right here. I dare anything to get through us," I tell him.

Brittany puts a hand to her face. "Derrick, please."

"What?" I ask. They're already walking away, leaving me with Olive. "Seriously. What?"

Arthur kisses Brittany as they face the entrance of the cave. I can see several pairs of light-refracting eyes, more like those of cats than the ones that have been tracking our every move, shine in the dark. "Light 'em up, babe," Arthur says.

Ice fills the cave before exploding into a thousand shards, propelled upwards by a torrent of stone and earth. Brittany gives the rest of us a go-ahead, and Olive and I follow behind.

Man, it would have been nice if we had a quest so mind-numbingly easy. Forget learning lessons, facing hardships, and emotional trauma. I want good looks, a nice sword, and the ability to blast all of my problems out of the way.

Sure enough, the portal is waiting for us at the back of the cavern, atop a pedestal that must have once held the sword. It does look like the resting place of Excalibur, from Extra-related stories I've heard (oh, you better believe Spienwells have children's books and merchandising deals), but now it is a fountain of darkness.

"Ladies first," Arthur says, gesturing us through. Brittany gives him a sarcastic look, but she jumps to the next world.

"You're free to go," I tell him, once Olive and Brittany have passed through.

Arthur laughs. "I like you, Renard. You're funny. Get in the portal." He slams me through, and I fall into the void.

We've finally exited the realm of generic forests and are now in the belly of a ship. Half the lights are broken, the halls are pockmarked by blaster fire, and at the end of the hallway, where a huge window reveals the infinite cosmos in all their star-strewn glory, is Alya at the front, pressing buttons frantically. Maris has her hands on a generator, and several people (I use the term people very loosely) are strewn across the floor.

"What happened here?"

"I was a portal-class," Alya says, "and they're... they can't be my crew," Her voice cracks with hurt as she rises from the control panel. "Everything here is an awful imitation of what everything used to be like. I thought I was finally home and they all turned their blasters on me. I should have realized I couldn't go home."

One of the bodies on the ground, a figure with thousands of tentacle-esque tendrils of hair coming from her head, twitches. "Alya..."

Alya's voice is colder than the dark side of the moon. "I know it's not you."

Arthur clears his throat. "And, erm, Maris?"

"I think I might have killed one of my brothers again?" Maris says, brows knit with concentration as she channels all her electricity into a giant port in the center. She shakes her head. "I um, got ambushed, and then they were trying to restrain me... something about letting the rift come to fruition. It was not good. I'm sorry."

"Again," Brittany mutters.

"Killed one of your brothers?" I ask.

"Are we in space?" gasps Olive. "I really like your ship, Alya."

"Not my ship, but I digress." Alya says, "Maris, do you think you can power the main core? Otherwise, we have... three minutes of life support. Give or take."

I double take. "We've got what?"

Maris shakes her head, lifting her hands. "This thing is fried, Alya. We're going to need to find another way out."

"Alright, nobody panic, that wastes oxygen," Arthur says. "Do you know where on the ship we'd find an exit?"

"No," Alya laughs. She looks down at the burnt bodies around her, and her eyes narrow to slits. "Maris, you've got the main interface. Big blue button is comms. Use that if you need us. Brittany, if anyone gets up--" Alya chokes.

Brittany looks down. "I understand."

"Olive, Arthur, search the left wing for a portal. Derrick, come with me down the right one.If anyone else jumps us, I want you there," she says.

"Ay aye, captain," I tell her with a quick salute.

She leers back at me. This is apparently a bad time for a joke, which is the only way I know to cut the tension.

Alya leads me down a hallway, her hair gleaming under each of the lights. Most of them are regular LEDs, but I'm more than a little surprised when a sudden strain of red or blue blossoms across her hair under blacklight. She is a hologram that belongs to this place as much as the psuedo-futuristic furniture in the empty rooms that open on our arrival or the sweeping architecture. She navigates it with grace, jamming fingers into security pads, a blaster at her side. She halts at a thin slit in the wall and waves me back.

"Garbage chute," she says, opening it with an upwards movement of her hand. The smell is disturbingly sterile, which irritates my fox nose (I missed my enhanced senses for all of ten minutes), but when she leans down into it, she jolts back up with a shake of her head. "No. Okay, so once we had to escape through the chute during an evacuation... space pirates."

That opens more questions than it answers, but she's already onto the next hall. The exit pods are all dormant, and when she slides her fingers across them, they don't respond. The ship whirrs out around us, announcing that LOW-POWER MODE IS ENGAGED, and a deep red glare settles over the hallways, bathing them in near-darkness.

"One minute?" asks Maris. "I can start counting down, but--"

Alya screams. "Okay! Fine!" She turns back the way we came. "I think I know one more place--"

The door opens, unsteadily, on a room with a uniform on one of the chairs. Her beacon, or at least, a similar one to the one she's been carrying around, lies on the shelf. A dark figure stands in the room. "Alya," whispers an uneasy voice, repeating endlessly.

Alya sniffs. She makes an indescribable growling noise deep in her throat, and all the tentacles on its body stand up. She holds the blaster up, arm trembling. Maris holds it steady, reaching her own hand out to join Alya's. "I know it's over," Alya says, "But I kept waiting. I spent every day at the office hoping you were still out there, that someday, we'd show the whole world how big and wonderful the universe was."

"It is," says the being, "and you're going to show everyone that. Even if our story together is over."

Alya embraces it-- her-- and she drops the blaster to the floor. Overhead, Maris is counting down from ten, and I look around the room for some sort of suspicious comms button. Sure enough, there's a blue one, which is great, because Alya is sobbing, which is relatable, but not terribly helpful at the moment. The rift opens up behind her, but Alya's not letting go.

"We found the rift. Like the eighth door on the right? Open door. Others are closed. Guys, please get over here," I yell.

Arthur dashes into the room, Olive, Brittany, and Maris at his sides, and Olive and Brittany are in before you can say "death by asphyxiation in space". The lights flicker off around us, and I see Maris, lit up by her own power, pulling Alya, sobbing from the body of something growing stiff and unreal, and I think I catch a kiss illuminated by the stuttering red-and-blue lighting of Maris, the dying ship, and Alya's glowsticks. Gravity starts going. The room gets cold. We are all definitely going to die.

Yet for some reason you tell yourself you'd rather go down with the ship.

I don't know what you're going to look like when I get to you, and that scares me.

I finally let myself through the portal, already feeling guilty for intruding on a private moment, but I feel so much worse when I land. Hot sun blazes overhead, and I know, without ever having seen a picture or heard a description, where we are.

A small village of lopsided buildings of trees looms over us, everything perfectly intertwined with nature. People pass between streets with animals at their side, unspeaking, ghosts of their former selves, or whatever they were in the real otherworld-- if this is a false otherworld. Golden grass billows around the streets like fire, springing up around the paths, and it whispers what I already know. "Mikayla's here," I say to Maris and Alya, who have just emerged, still wrapped tight around each other in a way that makes me intensely jealous. "Mikayla?"

"Derrick," Arthur says. "Slow down. Should we ask the--" He turns a person around, gripping their shoulder, and an animal mask glares back at him, complete with holes where the eyes should be. "On the other hand? If you know where to find her, lead the way."

"I don't," I say, "But for the record, I know Mikayla. You should stay back. This could get ugly."

Olive has already run off after someone with a wolf familiar, yelling something that almost passes for human language. Brittany sighs, "Guess we're babysitting."

"Okay, you can be a little nicer to her than that. Seriously," I say. "Look. I'll just-- I'll--"

I can feel the sun pressing down on me. The whole world is trying to compress me like a soda can until my ribcage collapses on itself. I rush out of the city, down a trampled path, and find the town disappeared behind me. The brush is alight with the same dancing golden flame, but this time, I can smell smoke. As the deer were flesh and bark, the grass has taken on a tangible heat, and on the wavering horizon line I see a familiar dark figure alongside a slimmer one, with a mess of ginger hair.

A fox and a cheetah turn in the grass. The latter has its fangs bared.

"Nice kitty," I say. "You're Mikayla's spirit animal?"

"You're here to take her back?" it asks.

"Well, I don't know. Are you here to spirit her away?"

The great thing about being jumped twice in one day is that I'm expecting it the second time. When it goes for my neck, I practically leap into it, which would be suicide for any human. Thank goodness I'm not a human, I'm a freak of nature with a deathwish! Admittedly I still get a faceful of terrible carrion breath as I bite its side. (It was not expecting me to bite back, trust me.) The beast recoils with pain, hissing furiously, and in seconds it lunges again, this time knocking me to the ground. It stands over me, seething, its fur vibrating with noise and heat, and I can smell death on its body. Its unsheathed claws dig into my arms, but it remains in that position, waiting. We lock eyes.

"Mikayla!" I yell, both arms smarting with pain. "Mikayla, damnit, I--" I think I'm going to black out, but we're not talking about passing out-- we're talking frenzy mode kind of blackout. I squeeze my eyes tight. Bullshit science is not going to get the best of me here. I'm not going to start reacting to my own blood like a shark. That makes no sense in any foreseeable realm of logic, especially when the reaction of foxes and most other canids is to run away from danger, not to tackle it.

Mikayla is overhead, right next to her large cat (I'm not going to make the joke. I'm not going to make the joke. Bad Derrick.). She's holding hands with another human. "You shouldn't be here," she warns me, as the cheetah leans against me. I'm well and truly stuck now, and I feel like, now that I have her attention, biting her astral beast is probably a bad idea.

"Neither should you. It's a trap," I say.

She laughs dryly. "Oh, sure. You've got something to go back for, don't you?"

"No."

The cheetah's claws dig in. I suppress a whine of pain.

"Yes! Okay!"

Mikayla asks. "What makes you think that's any different?"

"Everyone's forgotten what I'm missing, that's why." I say. "Someone out there is doing this specifically to me. If I can figure out why, then maybe I can... alright. It's all stupid. Just trust me on this."

"And what are you missing?" asks the russet-haired man, the fox by his side. The resemblance is truly uncanny, although his skin is darker than mine, his voice thick with an accent that might be British but could truthfully be just about anything. I look like a poor copy of him, and the sun only serves to accentuate his radiance.

"That's Jack," I say. "He's dead, Mikayla. Everyone there is dead."

I expect for the cheetah to kill me.

Instead, it steps off me. Jack watches me with blank, milky eyes, and the fox mask begins to conceal his face from view. Mikayla looks out at the village in the distance, still holding his hand. I stand next to her, on her other side, and all I can see is fire. She pulls her arms together, shivering, releasing Jack from her grip, and he doesn't react. As he stands there, silently, his head tilts up to look at the sky, and Mikayla looks right into the blazing sun. "We were right here when I ran out of time," she says. "I've been here since I got back. Took Jack to the edge of town, asked him what he remembered. If there were some miracle... well, whatever this is, it couldn't bring his wit back from past the grave. The worst part was..."

"...knowing it was all fake, and wanting it anyways?" I ask.

"No," Mikayla says. "The worst part was that I was thinking about you."

She leans in, and I can't accept this, not yet, possibly not ever. I give her the biggest hug I can, instead of a kiss, and she leans into that harder, the sun setting overhead in a blaze of fire. When we pull away, Jack's gone altogether, and the village is obscured from view by a wall of grass. The scent of smoke catches in my throat.

"What happened next?" I ask. "In the actual story?"

"The villain's forces moved on the city, and we were missing the last totem animal we needed to summon forth the Ancient Beast... look, it was a quest, so obviously it was stupid. I was watching the city burn, along with everyone I'd spent a year growing to care about like a family, when I woke up." Mikayla shrugs, like she's not holding up the weight of a world on her shoulders. "I'm sorry I projected all that onto you. Kind of a dick move."

"I'm sorry I couldn't help," I say.

"Yes you can," she says. "You always help. Even when you're being a complete tool, just speaking with you... it helps. Any time I was too focused in my work, you'd be there with some stupid comment, trying to remind me that life where I was was worth living again."

The world burns around us. The sun sets in the distance, behind fields of gold, the red sun peeking through the trees of the village as it falls. Mikayla reaches for my hand and grabs it, and I drag her forwards. The cheetah tenses at her side, and Mikayla's eyes widen.

"I appreciate the talk," I say, "But the group needs us. The group needs you, Mikayla. You guided us all here. However we end this, it has to end with you. Otherwise? Arthur's going to get all the credit, and that's going to drive me rabid."

Mikayla cracks a smile. She moves to plant a kiss on her cheetah's forehead. "Sorry, sweet. Help bring me home, won't you?"

For a second, I believe the ghost of the thing almost understands her.

Mikayla dashes ahead, cheetah at her side, and her speed kicks back into the gear. I can see both sides kicking into gear now, the two of them sharing energy, and it all makes sense. How much must it suck for her to draw all that energy out of herself when she uses it back in our world?

The others, thank goodness, are safe, although the burns on a few of them indicate that we did miss a real fire.

Yikes!
Mikayla folds her arms, looking over the group with absolute confidence as she returns to its head. "Two holes," she announces, "Two ends of the city. Gone into both, ducked back through both. One goes to a factory of some kind, Derrick, that's definitely yours, one back into a whole mess of medieval city. That's Finn for you. He's going to take a lot more than any of you to come along with us, and no doubt past there are several other members of our class. We're still missing most of the party. We want our heavy hitters on Derrick's front, for whatever he apparently can't tell us because we'll all forget."

"That just sounds like lying, Derrick," chides Brittany. Arthur nods.

"Thanks, didn't fucking ask," I tell them. "You can come or not. I bet I need to do this alone."

"Fine. I'll go with Mikayla, gather the group, and once we're all together, we'll figure out how to penetrate this. Brittany, Maris, you're with Derrick. Make sure he doesn't pull anything outrageously stupid."

"Can I come?" asks Olive.

"Why the hell not?" asks Arthur.

"I'll keep them together," Mikayla promises.

"You've been doing a great job of that," Arthur says. "Britt, are you sure you're okay with going your own way?"

Brittany slaps Arthur on the back hard. "Are you sure you can keep up with Mikayla?"

Arthur admits, "No."

"Are you sure you can handle this, Derrick?" Mikayla asks me.

I shake my head, but I'm already practically bolting for the other side of the town, back to you, even though I know I'm heading towards the worst kind of lesson.