Shadowmere Swamps was met with a reception he hadn't expected. Instead of the small group of companions who had been waiting for him when he entered, he found himself facing what looked like a small army.
Quendor was there, of course, but his rainbow scales were showing stress patterns that suggested he'd been extremely agitated. Yulia stood beside him, her usually perfect elven composure showing signs of strain. Borin was pacing back and forth with nervous energy, while Titania fluttered around the group like an anxious butterfly.
But they weren't alone. King Thorek had brought a full contingent of dwarven warriors. Seraphiel was accompanied by a squadron of angels whose wings created a canopy of white light overhead. Even Vex'thul, the demon lord, had arrived with what looked like an honor guard of his own people.
"Evon!" Yulia called out, relief flooding her voice as she spotted him emerging from what had been an impenetrable barrier just moments before. "Thank the stars you're alive!"
"Of course I'm alive," Evon replied, confused by the overwhelming response to his return. "I was only gone for... what, a day and a half? Maybe two days?"
The silence that greeted this statement was deafening.
"Evon," Quendor said gently, his massive draconic head lowering to eye level, "you've been gone for two months."
"What?" Evon stared at them in shock. "That's impossible. I was in that void place for maybe half a day, then I met..." He paused, the memory of the beautiful woman in the black dress still fresh in his mind. "Then I found the fragments and came back out."
"Two months," Borin confirmed, his dwarven practicality cutting through any possibility of misunderstanding. "Sixty-three days, to be exact. We've been taking shifts watching this swamp, hoping you'd come back."
Through his connection to the four goddesses, Evon felt their own surprise and concern.
"Time moved differently in that place," Naia said in his mind. "Much differently than we thought."
"The dimensional distortion must have been more severe than any of us realized," Veyra added, her analytical nature trying to process the implications.
"Two months," Evon repeated, the full weight of the revelation hitting him. "What's happened while I was gone? What about the world's ascension to the middle realm?"
King Thorek stepped forward, his expression grim. "That's why we're all here. The ascension has accelerated. We estimate maybe four months remaining before the transition is complete."
"And the middle realm powers are starting to take notice," Seraphiel added, her angelic senses picking up disturbances in the dimensional fabric. "We've detected scout vessels probing our reality's boundaries. Nothing aggressive yet, but clearly reconnaissance."
Vex'thul's demonic growl added a darker note to the conversation. "Three separate world-master fleets have been spotted in nearby dimensional space. They're waiting for the ascension to complete so they can move in and carve up our world."
"Four months to find six more fragments," Evon said, doing the math in his head. "That's... tight."
"It gets worse," Yulia said softly. "The Arbiter has been trying to contact you for weeks. When we told him about the time distortion, he said the remaining fragments are likely in the most dangerous locations. The merger process seems to have sent the most unstable pieces to the places that would challenge them most."
Evon pulled out the seventh fragment he had just retrieved, its golden light pulsing gently in his palm. "This one was stable when I found it. No corruption, no environmental adaptation. It was just... waiting."
"That's unusual," Titania observed, her fairy nature allowing her to sense the fragment's emotional resonance. "The others were all struggling against their environments. This one feels... peaceful."
"Like it was being protected," Quendor added thoughtfully.
Evon thought about the woman in the black dress, her gentle touch and mysterious words. "Maybe it was."
They had set up a full command center at the edge of the Shadowmere Swamps, complete with communication equipment, supply depots, and housing for all the various species representatives who had gathered. The sight of angels, demons, dwarfs, elves, and dragons working together would have been remarkable under other circumstances, but the urgency of their situation had forced unprecedented cooperation.
"Show me the remaining locations," Evon said, studying the enhanced map that the Arbiter had provided.
Six red dots still pulsed on the three-dimensional display, scattered across the merged world in locations that looked increasingly inhospitable.
"The Singing Desert," Thorek read from the tactical analysis. "A wasteland where the sand itself is alive and hostile to any form of life."
"The Inverted Mountains," Yulia continued. "A range where gravity works in reverse, and the peaks extend downward into the earth instead of upward into the sky."
"The Temporal Maze," Seraphiel added with obvious concern. "A region where time flows in loops and spirals. People who enter often age decades in minutes, or find themselves repeating the same hour forever."
"The Nightmare Gardens," Vex'thul said, his demonic nature giving him insight into darker realms. "A place where thoughts become reality, but only the darkest, most feared thoughts. Most visitors drive themselves insane within hours."
"The Void Citadel," Quendor rumbled. "A fortress that exists partially outside of reality. It's said that the laws of physics are merely suggestions there."
"And finally," Borin concluded grimly, "the Heart of Entropy. A region where the very concept of existence is breaking down. Matter, energy, even space and time are slowly dissolving back into primordial chaos."
Evon studied each location, his Eyes of Fate providing glimpses of the challenges that awaited him in each place. None of them looked like somewhere a person could survive, let alone complete a complex magical retrieval mission.
"Six locations, four months," he said quietly. "Some of these places will take weeks to navigate safely."
"Which is why you're not going alone this time," the Arbiter's voice suddenly came through their communication system. "I've been monitoring your progress, and I've made some arrangements."
The golden-eyed mediator materialized in their midst, his black coat rippling in a breeze that touched nothing else. But this time, he wasn't alone. Six figures stood beside him, each one radiating power that made the assembled representatives take step back.
"Allow me to introduce your guides," the Arbiter said. "Each one is a specialist in surviving the type of environment you'll be facing."
The first figure was tall and gaunt, wrapped in robes that seemed to be made from crystallized starlight. "Chronarch Valdris," the Arbiter announced. "Master of temporal magic. He'll guide you through the Temporal Maze."
The second was a woman whose form seemed to shift between solid and liquid states. "Lady Miraleth of the Ever-Changing Courts. She specializes in realms where reality is fluid."
Each introduction revealed another expert: a being made of living sand for the Singing Desert, a gravity mage for the Inverted Mountains, a dream-walker for the Nightmare Gardens, and finally, a figure wrapped in shadows so deep they hurt to look at directly.
"And Null the Voidbringer," the Arbiter concluded. "One of the few beings who has entered the Heart of Entropy and returned to tell about it."
"Impressive," Evon said, studying his potential guides. "But why help us? What do you get out of this?"
The Arbiter smiled, an expression that somehow managed to be both reassuring and unsettling. "Preventing a dimensional war serves everyone's interests. If the middle realm powers fight over your world, the collateral damage will affect multiple realities."
"Plus," Chronarch Valdris added in a voice like wind through ancient libraries, "some of us have personal interests in seeing certain fragments recovered safely."
"Six teams, six fragments," the Arbiter explained as they gathered around the tactical display. "Each guide will take you to their specialized location, help you retrieve the fragment, and return you here safely."
"How long will each mission take?" Evon asked.
"That depends on the location," Lady Miraleth replied, her voice shifting tones like water flowing over different surfaces. "Some places, like the Inverted Mountains, follow normal time flow. Others, like the Temporal Maze, might take subjective years while only minutes pass in normal reality."
"Or the reverse," Chronarch Valdris noted. "Time is... flexible in some places."
Null the Voidbringer spoke for the first time, his voice like the absence of sound. "The Heart of Entropy exists outside of time entirely. We could spend centuries there, or no time at all. It's impossible to predict."
"Then we need to prioritize," Evon decided. "Which locations are most likely to cause problems if we delay?"
"The Nightmare Gardens," the dream-walker guide said immediately. "The fragment there is already starting to manifest physical nightmares in the surrounding area. Entire cities have been evacuated."
"The Singing Desert is expanding," the sand-being added. "It's consuming normal desert at a rate of several kilometers per day."
"The Heart of Entropy..." Null trailed off. "Let's just say that the longer the fragment remains there, the more reality around it ceases to exist."
Evon looked around at the assembled beings—friends, allies, and strangers who had all come together for this desperate mission. Two months had passed while he was lost in that strange dimension. The world's ascension was accelerating, and somewhere out there, middle realm powers were preparing to claim his home as their prize.
"We start with the Nightmare Gardens," he decided. "If it's actively threatening populated areas, that's our first priority. Then the Singing Desert, the Heart of Entropy, the Temporal Maze, the Inverted Mountains, and finally the Void Citadel."
"Ambitious schedule," Thorek noted. "But doable, if everything goes according to plan."
"When does anything ever go according to plan?" Borin asked with characteristic dwarven pessimism.
"Never," Evon admitted. "But that's never stopped us before."
As they began preparations for the first mission, Evon couldn't shake the image of the woman in the black dress from his mind. Her words echoed in his thoughts: "Continue your journey. I'm waiting to see you again."
Who was she? And why did he have the feeling that finding the remaining fragments would eventually lead him back to her?
Six fragments left. Four months until the world's ascension. And somewhere in the darkness between realities, a beautiful stranger was waiting for him to unravel the mysteries that connected them all.
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