The Call of The Crossroads

Sunny Quartzheart strapped on her pack and made for Shaft #3 – it had the nearest opening to the surface. In the end, she never managed to work up the courage to talk to her family about it. She had left them a note on her bed, promising to write them and send back a bit of any money she made. She couldn't have done it if they asked why she wanted to go. She couldn't explain it to anyone. A dwarf shouldn't want to leave their home and holdings behind. “I simply must” wouldn't do as a reason for setting off alone to Crossing.

Sunny smiled to feel the warmth of the sun on her face as she left the mine and emerged onto the surface of the Abiding Mountains. Perhaps it was the name. Everyone had warned her parents off it. Naming her after matters of the surface – the sky no less - she was sure to end up working as a guide for the tourists, they'd said. They never imagined she'd go further.

She started walking. It would have to be the quiet routes to start with – she couldn't risk a friend of the family spotting her and mentioning it to anyone before she was truly clear of the mountains. They'd send someone to fetch her back. Once she was closer to the Stretching Plains, then she could use the more visible, public paths. For now she stuck close to cliff walls and pulled her hat down, not that there was anyone around to see her.

No regrets, that was the thing. Focus on the goal ahead, not the home behind. It's not as if she could stop, or go back. She wasn't going to Crossing for any good reason, and that meant reason wouldn't stop her going. She just knew, deep down in her seams and deposits, that she had to go to Crossing. So she'd walk half of Verit with no more than a handful of gold pieces and enough dwarf bread to last. Who knows, maybe she'd meet some travelling companions on the way?

All that was sure is that the crossroads were callings to her.

*

Walkabout tightened the knot of the rag around his head. He closed his eyes and dabbed the ochre on his eyelids, then pulled down the goggles. The Dreaming was a hell of a sight to face without protection, and he'd be seeing it when he opened his eyes.

He let himself fall forward and opened his eyes as the solid world around him melted to the million drifting colours of the space in between places. He fell straight through where the ground had been a moment ago and kept pivoting about his feet until he stood on what would have been the underside of the ground. He looked around to make sure all was right – no visible landmarks or landmasses, just shifting, blinding colours swimming around him. Walkabout stepped forward through The Dreaming, walking on nothing.

You wouldn't have seen the Paths if you hadn't been taught. Walkabout thumbed his grandfather's amulet and thanked his memory in his head for the teachings. Little eddies of this hue or that shade coalescing together, or running parallel, just enough to separate it from the swirling randomness of the landscape. Which would he tread today? Which world would he visit? The whole multiverse, open to him through the inbetweens.

He took a step, and turned a corner or crested a hill – The Dreaming laughs at geography – and saw it.

“Unbelievable...” He wiped his goggles with the rag tied around the bottom of his face, and it was still there. Just for a moment, he lifted the goggles and opened his eye for a split second. Just to check.

The oranges and reds and yellows of the cross burned themselves into the back of his head through his open eyes, and he screwed them shut. He jammed the goggles back over his eyes and kept them closed until the cross shape on the inside of his lids started to fade. He dared to peep through his fingers, through his goggles, through his lashes. The Paths, all of them, were turning, orienting towards the blazing point far ahead.

“The Crossroads are Calling.” He commented, mostly for the ceremony of the thing. He would have to go there. There was no other there to walk towards. But that didn't mean he couldn't pick his own Path. Hell, he could pick ANY Path. All roads led to Roam, as it were. He picked a Path at random – he always did – and took the steps. He'd have a heck of a story to tell when he got home, for sure.

And, he made sure not to look behind him. Just in case.

*

Anachrony Station. It'd be a dog-eat-dog city, if you ever saw something as normal as a dog twice in the same week. In practise it was more of a sandworm-eat-chimera city. If we're getting pedantic, city hardly covers the plane-spanning omnimetropolitan sprawl of Anachrony Station.

In the hulking, looming tower that headquartered the Interdimensional Deathmatch League company, the Head of Acquisitions was explaining the situation to Mr Hezzelkeb's personal assistant.

Pouch, the Head of Acquisitions, was a kanvasse, and Ernest Simmonds, Personal Assistant to Mr Hezzelkeb, tried not to hold that fact against him. Mr Simmonds came from a planet called Earth, and used though he was to teleporting to work, getting coffee for a demon, and going home to an elvish wife, he never could get used to talking to a bag.

“Well see, Mr Simmonds, the thing is that it's the portals.” Pouch's straps twiddled nervously. His whole body was squirming. Simmonds wondered if the kanvasse was aware of it.

“Mm hmm.” Mr Simmonds looked across at him from over his clipboard. He really didn't want to make it any harder on poor Pouch, but he really didn't know how to connect with the thing.

“See, half of the natural portals we've got rights to – in fact, half of all the portals – what's happening is we're not getting as many incoming portals, right?” His flap wobbled briefly, “And half of the outgoing portals all go to the same place.”

“And this place has no suitable candidates for the League?” Mr Simmonds prompted.

“Well it's not so much that – It's an Earth it goes to, sir, Earth-5442, and we've got a standing agreement with the various governing bodies. They provide us with volunteered acquisitions on the proviso that we don't seek additional ones on their planet. Not much we can do about it, sir.” The corners of his opening hitched up for a second, and his straps pulled together and twisted around one another.

“Mm hmm.” Mr Simmonds scribbled on his clipboard at length, “And there's nothing to recruit in the space of this plane?”

Mr Simmonds pretended not to notice the look of sudden realization that swept across Pouch's flap and buttons. He gave him a second to come up with the excuse, “Well, yes, but we, uh, we need permission to source a couple of spacefaring vessels, sir, on account of all the portals opening right on the actual planet, sir.”

“Well, I'll see to it. Thank you for your report, Mr Pouch. You're excused.”

*

“You were right to come to me, Shockwave.” Switch fiddled with several large machines while Shockwave stood awkwardly in the middle of his workshop floor. Switch's head popped out from the side of a large articulate arm as it made a 'bweee' noise, “I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, though.” His head disappeared again as the noise escalated in pitch, “Uh, make yourself comfortable, this might take a second.”

While Switch tinkered, Shockwave ambled to the broad windows that dominated the east wall and looked out over Onmetropolis. It was a bright morning, for mid-February. He'd appreciate the soft sunlight more if he didn't feel so... weird.

He might have gone to a doctor, if he wasn't a superhero, but he knew weird mumbo jumbo when he felt it, so he went to Switch instead. The boy genius had done pretty well for himself since he'd stopped being a boy genius and became a young man genius instead. Well enough to buy him the top floors of secure building, so he could tinker in privacy to his heart's content. He'd taken to independence with aplomb. If anyone could figure out what was making him feel weird, it'd be Switch.

“So...” Shockwave continued wandering and absently prodded a bit of machinery on display in the workshop, “Any, uh, young ladies in your life, Danny?” He heard the sound of Switch bumping his head in the innards of whatever machine he was calibrating.

“Uh, not as such, no.” Shockwave could practically feel the blushing from across the workshop.

The delight of messing with the boy – and Shockwave suspected he would always think of Switch as a boy – temporarily replaced the shifting feeling of unease and displacement in his body. “So what the cape tabloids are saying about you and that young mad scientist girl, that's all just rumour-mongering?”

A panel shut heavily and Switch hoisted himself up to look at Shockwave over the top of a large, boxy machine, “She's just my nemesis!” He pulled tinted goggles over his flushed face, “Now, if you'd like to lie down on the bench, the machines are ready.”

Shockwave looked to the bench, and the tableau of what, if he didn't know any better, he would presume to be a mad scientist's death rays, arranged around it. He strode over to the bench and hopped on to it, reclining with his arms behind his head “Zap me, Doc.”

“Please remain quite still. This may tickle.” Switch pulled a comically large lever, and a beam of green light enveloped Shockwave. The full process, involving several machines and far more visible beams than Shockwave would have thought necessary, took about half an hour, at which point Shockwave sat up and looked to Switch, hunched over a computer monitor.

“Well?”

“I think I'm on to something. Let me fire up the abnormal particle analyser again, I want to test something.” Shockwave obliged, and felt a weightless sensation as Switch turned several dials to maximum. “Okay, let's see if I can isolate...” The lights in the workshop dimmed, and the laser sparked out of existence. Switch pulled out his Voicebox, “Let me just make a call real quick.”

Divinity arrived in short order. He was never far away. Now that he was leaning more towards the adult persuasion, Divinity made Shockwave uneasy. He had a look that implied he knew full well he could claim just about anything he saw as he own with little effort. And his voice, now that it deepened, was unnaturally commanding. And he was so serious all the time...

“Hello, Daniel. David.” Divinity nodded to them in turn. Shockwave waved from his place on the bench, “How can I be of service?”

“I'm just gonna need a lot of power, preferably without blowing the building right off the city grid.” Switch smiled.

“Very well.” Switch directed Divinity, and in short order the demigod had a hand to the machine and it was producing a gentle crackling. Switch flew to the controls and flipped on the beam, began fiddling with dials.

“Right, now, going to locate coherent potentiality...” Switch muttered, mostly to himself, “Yup, right then, if we can scan origin signatures,,, Fascinating...”

“Care to show and tell, Switch?” Said Shockwave from his position, trying to remain still on the table.

“Right, yeah, uh... huh. You've got some... stuff in you that I'm having some trouble pinning down.”

“Stuff?”

“Well, are you familiar with wave-particle duality?” Switch asked as he crossed to a console and starting punching in numbers.

“Uhhh, kinda?”

“I am not going to bother trying to explain. You're full of weird mojo. I'm trying to track down where it's from.” He looped around behind the table and turned another scanner on to Shockwave, “They seem to be interdimensional, and all native to the same universe. Not one we've ever encountered before.”

“Well what are they doing?” Shockwave asked with worry in his voice.

“They're sort of... criss-crossing over you. Here, let me just...” He pulled down a mechanical arm, and flipped a few switches. In orange light, a sort of three dimensional diagram appeared around Shockwave's chest. A pair of bands, wrapped around his chest like a pair of bandoliers, perpendicular so that from the front they resembled an X, made of streaming light, circling around him at speed.

“Huh.” Shockwave observed.

“I think,” Divinity began, his deep baritone sweeping through the room, “I may know of this?”

“Really?” Switch raised his goggles and an eyebrow.

“Just... prophecy. A soothsaying I recall from somewhere. It may be nothing but it feels right...” Divinity looked uncertainly from face to face, then cleared his throat, “The Crossroads are Calling, and The Wave shall follow in The Travellers' wake.”