Every hue of the rainbow existed in this space. Yellows, blues, purples, emeralds, ochers, cinnamons, burnt siennas, mauves, taupes, and magentas all existed in harmony: separate, yet one. Marian could see these colors condensed into a great, upside-down triangle far away. They were translucent, overlaid atop an endless sea of bottomless silver. The triangle gently thrummed its radiance, its hues slowly shifting to different points in the rainbow with no obvious pattern.

The triangle was framed by a ceiling and a floor. Both existed in the foreground of Marian's vision, and both were awash in a myriad of contradicting hues. She saw that the ceiling was a small overhang and the floor a platform that reached several dozen yards before her.

Subconsciously, Marian found herself taking her hat off in quiet reverence, as though she were stepping into a Château of the Divine Lady. With even more caution than she had displayed in the tunnel leading here, her foot slowly lifted, then set down again only a few inches away.

The moment her foot touched the floor, a burst of chromatic light spread from around her boot, racing out around and before her to the edges of her platform. She retracted her foot at once, but the light continued to fan out all around her before fading. Seeing that no harm had come from the strange show, she put her foot down and watched as the phenomenon repeated itself. It was as though she had stepped into a shallow puddle of pure incandescence.

Marian reveled in the wondrous show as she continued forwards. She was struck by how the spectral glow resembled her manifestation of magic: the dancing misty lights that appeared in her hands in that intermediary stage between remembering the power and casting her spell. But the colors in this space were far more intense than any she'd ever seen, let alone made manifest.

"It's beautiful..." Marian feared that any tone louder than a whisper would break the enchantment and return the world to normal. All she could do was take in the ethereal wonder.

A blithe voice broke in. "Guess so. In its own way."

Marian hastily put her hat back on as she turned to see Tracey walking up beside her. She'd been too transfixed by the splendor around to notice the little girl.

Even though she had been kicked out of university years ago, she still held the same hunger for knowledge she had as a student. Reverence was on her voice as she asked, "What is this place?"

Tracey shrugged. "Dunno."

The nonchalant response finally pulled Marian from her reverie. She turned to Tracey, frowning. "You don't know? Aren't you from here?"

The little girl gave an exaggerated shake of her head. "No. Come from another world. Like you."

"Another world?"

Tracey just tilted her head back in response.

Marian's eyes followed the gesture and came to the side of a shimmering chrome bubble. It was over twenty feet in height and emerged from the colorful wall behind her. She couldn't see through the bubble, but she knew it was where the tunnel had been. Perhaps it was the tunnel, she mused; anything could be possible in this strange world. Either way, judging from the size of the bubble, the tunnel must have been much larger than she'd realized.

Over the top of the bubble, Marian spotted some words. The lettering was big and expressive, standing out from the wall of color and the brilliant bubble by their comparative simplicity. In a bold, black, easy-to-read hand, the words spelled out:.

"'Wyvern Hunter... Icks'?"

Tracey looked back at the lettering herself. "'Wyvern Hunter Nine'," she corrected. "'IX' is a Roman Numeral."

Several thoughts raced through Marian's head. What was the logic behind a cypher where two letters equated a single number? How had the strange little girl come to know of this cypher? Why were the numerals called 'roaming' if the letters were standing still? Instead, she decided to start with the most obvious question.

"What does that mean?"

"That's the name of your world."

Marian deftly shook her head. "No, it's not. It's 'Sidhegaard'."

Tracey opened her mouth to say something, then stopped. She furrowed her brows - more accurately, her eyes transformed into semicircles in a manner that conveyed furrowed brows - and reached her stubby arm up to her chin. After taking some time to think, she spoke carefully. "Where you are from, you call your world 'She-Guard'. Out here, your world is called 'Wyvern Hunter Nine'."

"Why?"

She shrugged again. "Something about nine Wyvern Hunters? Are they important?"

Marian shook her head. "There's only one Wyvern Hunter."

"You fight with the Wyvern Hunter," Tracey observed. "How many friends does he have?"

Marian decided against pointing out the inaccuracy of this observation. "There are four of us right now, but there were two others who used to travel with us." She thought, then added, "I guess you could count Sergeant Lynx, but he was only with us for a little bit. Even so, that doesn't add up to nine."

"Dunno," Tracey admitted. "Just know that the words above doors are the names of different worlds."

Once again, Marian was presented with a lot to dissect. This time, she focused on the girl's grammar. "'Worlds'? Plural?"

Tracey nodded as she swept her arms out in a wide arc in front of her. The gesture looked strange coming from the small girl, as her short arms couldn't indicate much. Still, the intent was clear enough.

"This place is a world-between-worlds. It's connected to your world, 'Wyver-'" She hesitated, then gave Marian a deferential look. "-She-Guard. But it's also connected to my world." She gestured - probably her attempt at pointing while wearing mittens - to a path that wound downwards.

Before Marian could ask about Tracey's world, the girl gestured in the opposite direction, indicating a path that wound upwards. "...and ten worlds that way."

Marian's eyes bulged at this. "Ten?! That's... twelve different worlds here?"

Tracey shook her big head. "Twenty."

The implication slammed into Marian like a sledgehammer on an overripe pumpkin. Twenty worlds. Twenty worlds. Sidhegaard - that massive, expansive land of magic and mystery; of unknown secrets and mortal peril; of humans and fairies and beasts and monsters; where entire civilizations lived and died in an eternal struggle to eke meaning for their brief time in the sun - represented a twentieth of existence.

Staring at Tracey, Marian could only wonder what life was like in this stranger's world. It was obviously different, judging by her strange appearance. What forms did other creatures take there? Did the cats still meow? Were the owls still employed for carrying mail? Did the slime monsters still taste like limes? What was magic like in Tracey's world? What was magic like in any of these worlds?

The idea of having twenty worlds' worth of magic to learn was enough to make Marian drop to her knees. She couldn't see through the tears welling in her eyes. She caught herself shaking, with equal parts nervous uncertainty and elation.

"Twenty..." she breathed.

"On this mountain alone."

Marian was overwhelmed by redoubled wonder.

This faded a second later once she realized she had no idea what Tracey was talking about. Marian's eyes refocused as she turned to her companion, a quizzical look forming. "'Mountain'?"

"Each mountain connects to many worlds," Tracey explained. She turned and indicated across the expanse. "See over there?"

It was the great incandescent triangle that had first enraptured Marian. "Yes?"

"See the doors?"

Marian squinted her eyes. As she stared, she came to notice bursts of hued light shining through the luminous collage before her. They appeared to move in tandem pairs, tracing lazy waves up the sides of the triangle.

...rather, up and around the sides of the triangle. Following the light pairs' twain loci as they described a path along the shape's surface, Marian gradually became aware that what she was staring at approximated a cone, spiraling up from a single point. She followed one pair of lights as they lethargically wended upwards along the cone, dancing ever further apart in a double helix.

"Marian?"

She blinked, having forgotten about Tracey. I'll have time to gawk later, she thought as she resumed her search.

Try as she might, all she could spot were dancing colors, racing lights, and the odd patch of shimmering silver - no doors. She shook her head in the negative. "No."

Surprise was obvious on Tracey's face as she turned back to Marian. "No?!"

Now it was Marian's turn to shrug. "Sorry."

"They're all over!"

Marian peered over again. "What do these doors look like?"

"Like your world's door."

Something clicked in Marian's head. She cast a glance behind her, then at her companion, still earnestly indicating the faraway cone.

"Tracey..." She pointed to the shining bubble behind her. "...that doesn't look like a door to me."

Marian hadn't thought it possible for the girl to look even more surprised, but she'd managed quite nicely. Her mouth expanded from a small circle to a huge oval that engulfed the entire bottom third of her face. "Really?"

"I think we're seeing different things here," Marian reasoned. "I see a big grey bubble there-" she pointed again "-but you say you see a door?"

Tracey nodded enthusiastically. "Big wooden door."

"As if this place wasn't strange enough already..."

Marian looked back in time to see Tracey produce a wire-bound book and a strange white pen. She flipped open her book, turned several pages, and began writing in it. Her expression was fixed into one of concentration.

"What does this mountain look like?" Tracey asked.

"Is that what we're on? A mountain?"

Tracey looked up from her writing and blinked. She made several indistinct noises as she surveyed the area before finally saying, "Yes. You don't see mountains?"

Plural, again? Marian let her eyes explore the world around her. She saw many more cones of light, much like the first she had spotted: complete in their spectrum, gently awash in their illuminated splendor.

However, Marian was forced to shake her head in the negative. "No mountains."

At this, Tracey looked back down at her book and started writing something. She said nothing, but her "Hm..." was of vague consternation and interest.

A sudden wave of light beneath them caught Marian's attention. The very platform upon which they stood had started to glow. After a few seconds, the light raced away, following the slant of the surface to Marian's left. She looked up in time for the wave of light to pass overhead, running up the ceiling from the right and vanishing to her left. She realized that the surface onto which they had walked must be yet another cone: their own island amid an archipelago of endless colors.

She looked back at Tracey. The girl had paid the lights no mind and was concentrating on whatever was written in her book. Marian couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at this.

"Say," she said, catching Tracey's attention. "What do you see when I do this?"

Marian picked up her boot and slammed it down. An aurora surged forth from around the boot, bathing the two in color. Marian could only marvel at the strange way the shadows played on the little girl's round head as the burst of illumination retreated.

"You stomped your foot," Tracey stated.

"No, no. Well, yes, but... didn't you see all those lights?"

"'Lights'?"

"Yeah, you know. All the lights I kicked up?"

Tracey shook her head as she made another note. "You kicked up a little dirt. No lights."

"Oh." For some reason, Marian felt disappointed.

"Hard to talk about this," Tracey said. "If what we see is different."

"Maybe we should agree upon names?" Marian suggested. "That way we know what we're talking about, and we don't have to remember what the other sees." She gestured at the cone. "So, maybe that's a 'Spire'."

Tracey shook her head. "That's a mountain."

Marian fixed Tracey with a look that was equal parts baffled and pained. She couldn't help but think of the many times the Wyvern Hunter had made this expression, usually when Sandra had casually insulted a local official in the process of negotiating a contract.

After a couple seconds, comprehension appeared in Tracey's eyes. At least, that was what Marian took it to mean when white starbursts briefly appeared in the middle of Tracey's solid black pupils.

"That's your name suggestion. 'Spire'."

"Y... yes."

"It works. We can call them Spires." Tracey jotted the suggestion down.

Lady preserve me... Marian thought.

Tracey finished, then took a couple steps away. She indicated the air above them with her writing implement. "How about that?"

Marian followed, craning her neck so she could see what the little girl was indicating. Eventually, her eyes arrived at the very top of the cone - or "Spire", she reminded herself. The Spire came to a natural terminus, blending into a single surface far above. It was vast, opaque, and - like the Spire - aglow with every color in existence.

She stared, but try as she might, she could tell little about the surface overhead. Whatever its shape was, or how big it was, or what it was made of eluded her. All she could see were the colors.

"I... don't know what I'm looking at," she admitted. "What do you see up there?"

"A hill."

Not for the first time, Marian found herself staring at Tracey.

The strange girl shrugged. "Upside-down hill with upside-down mountains sticking out. Lots of grass."

Marian gawked back at the tangle of colors far overhead. She tried squinting and shifting her big stupid glasses as she strained her eyes, searching for any detail she was missing. She... supposed she could see the curvature in the surface above? Maybe?

Tracey must have noticed Marian struggling, because she suggested, "How about, 'Dome'?"

"As good a name as any," Marian conceded.

"What about below?"

Marian looked down. She was at the edge of the Spire landing, shimmering colors beneath her feet. Beyond the edge, the Spires tapered to points, resembling chromatic torches. Their efforts were admirable but in vain as they tried to illuminate what was below them: a well of the single most profound shade of black Marian had ever seen in her life. An overwhelming sense of vertigo seized her as she realized she couldn't see the bottom. More to the point, she wasn't sure there was a bottom, so absolute was the nothingness below. Even the silver that colored the space around the Spires gave way to thoroughly empty darkness.

The surprised witch yelped and stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over her cloak as she retreated to the safety of the Spire's open landing. "'Void'. Definitely 'Void'."

Tracey peered over the edge. She squinted and positioned a hand over an indistinct point, as though blocking out a mighty light Marian hadn't seen. "No good. Too dark."

"No? Well, how about 'Inescapable Pit of Despair'? Or 'All-Devouring Black Hole'? Or maybe 'If You Jump Down Here, You'll Die Of Starvation Before You Hit Ground'?"

Tracey gave her an odd look. "Marian, I see sky down there."

"Oh, well, good for you. I don't."

Marian saw Tracey sigh more than she heard her. Nevertheless, as the strange girl stepped away, she said, "I'll write 'Pit'."

Marian took a couple seconds to shake her head to dislodge the fear, much as Vanguard liked to shake water out of his fur after walking through the rain. Once composed, she looked back to the tunnel she'd exited. "What about that bubble? Err, or the door, or...?"

"'Door' doesn't work for you, 'Bubble' doesn't work for me..."

Marian rubbed her forehead as she thought. "Maybe... 'Portal'? It's kind of an old word for 'Door', anyway."

"That's fine." Tracey wrote this down.

"Anything else?" Marian looked everywhere but down, searching for any other hidden things in this place. "What about that humming?"

"'Humming'?"

She'd been so focused on the sights that her mind had pushed the sound to the background. Now that she was concentrating on it again, she could hear the faint, heavenly song that underlined the mysteries of this space. Marian strained her ears to learn anything of the song, but it was sourceless and all around her. No words broke through the surface of the melody, which rolled formlessly like a sigh.

"Well, maybe not humming?" Marian shrugged. "I hear something..."

Tracey grunted. "Just us and the wind."

Marian blinked a few times at this comment. She pulled off a glove, then wet a bare finger on her lips. She lifted the finger to test the breeze, but the only sensation she felt was her heartbeat. "No wind for me."

The sound of Tracey's writing implement on parchment broke the song as the little girl mumbled, "So many differences..."

Marian carefully placed her glove back on as she took in her surroundings once again. She felt an odd sense of comfort in being able to apply labels to the wondrous things she saw, even if they were names they'd just invented.

In her head, she was now standing on a landing in the middle of a Spire, comprised of every color in existence. She could spot other translucent Spires, all attached to the chromatic Dome overhead. Each of those glowing Spires was teaming with at least twenty silvery Portals, each linking to a completely different world. Each of those ethereal Spires was suspended precariously over the ominous Pit. This is how she understood the strange new place she was in, called...

"Hey, what is this place called?"

"Emucave."

Marian wasn't sure what she'd expected from Tracey, but it certainly wasn't that. "'Ehmyew-Cave'? I thought this looked like upside-down mountains to you."

Tracey shrugged. "Not my name."

"Well, whose name is it?"

It was in the middle of this automatic response that Marian realized the implication of Tracey's answer. "Wait, there's other people here? What are they like? Are they from your world, or somewhere else? Are they from here? Do people naturally come from here? Do-?"

"Too many questions."

Marian took the implicit hint to shut up.

Tracey's voice cracked as she audibly searched for an answer. Finally, she said, "Complicated. There's writing in the Dome. Talks about the worlds. Calls this place 'Emucave'. Best name I got."

"There's somewhere that explains what all this is about? What are we waiting for? Just take me there!"

Tracey gave her an odd look before shaking her head. "Later. With your friends."

Marian wasn't sure why Tracey was being so cagey, but she was at the strange girl's mercy in this place. If Tracey said they weren't going to see it, there was nothing she could do about it. "Fine... 'Emucave', huh...?"

Marian stared at the closest Spire, far across the Pit. She was enraptured by the dancing colors, ever-shifting, ever-changing. It was hard to believe that such a strange sight, so visceral in its impossibility, was invisible to the person immediately beside her. She wondered if she was the only one who'd ever seen what she was looking at. The thought made her feel a little lonely.

With a sigh, Marian shook herself from her reverie. She looked back at Tracey, who had finished writing in her book and was watching with her big, curious eyes.

"This is incredible," Marian began, "but I don't know what you wanted to show me. I don't know if it matters, since I can't see what you see."

Tracey turned away and walked towards the edge of the platform. She looked out into the Emucave in her own silent contemplation.

It was a long, quiet minute before she spoke up. "The worlds are disappearing."

Though she couldn't detect the breeze Tracey had described, Marian still felt a chill overtake her. "What?" she breathed.

The girl leveled her arm at the Spire across the way once again. She indicated several distinct points in the indistinct radiance. "See those door- ...those Portals?"

It was hard for Marian to tell what to look for amid the swirling, saturated sea. Remembering the Portal for her world, she was eventually able to find what she was looking for by picking out the places where the color didn't shift. From the Spire's myriad hues arose a simple column of chrome dots. "Yeah. Yeah, I see them."

"Used to be more of them. More are missing every time I come here."

"Where did they go?"

"Dunno."

Marian looked to Tracey, feeling her expression faulter with uncertainty. "Maybe they'll come back?"

Tracey shook her head without returning the look. "Hasn't happened yet."

"Maybe they're supposed to just disappear sometimes?"

"Been coming here for a long time. Just started recently."

Marian gave the little girl beside her a dubious glance. "...exactly how long is 'a long time'?"

Tracey's sigh wasn't audible, but the heave of her shoulders and bob of her head was unmistakable. She flashed Marian a withering look and, in a sharp tone, said, "Focus."

Only then did Marian realize that most of the odd looks she'd received from Tracey were ones of impatience. "Okay, sorry. Geez," she grumbled, more embarrassed than anything.

Tracey grunted, then looked back across the Pit. "Thought I was seeing things. Wasn't sure what was going on." She gestured at a space in the middle of the Spire across the way. "But one time I saw something coming out of a Portal."

Marian did her best to see what her pink-haired guide was indicating. Try as she might, though... "I don't see anything."

Tracey nodded and lowered her arm. "Portal vanished right after the thing left it."

She looked back at her smaller guide, three parts worry to one part confusion. It all sounded so strange to her. "What did this 'thing' look like?"

The little girl made some indistinct noises as she groped for the right words. "Complicated," she finally said. "Dark. Pointy. Flew without moving. Big hole in the back."

Marian couldn't wrap her head around the vague description. "Are you sure you saw something like that?"

Tracey's head turned, an incredulous expression on the simple face. "You don't believe me."

"What? No! No, no, just..."

Marian wracked her brain for how to phrase her thoughts. The more the right words eluded her, the more frustrated she got. "Look, work with me here, Tracey. I have no clue what's going on. Thirty minutes ago, I thought I had a pretty decent idea of how the world worked. Now I'm in the middle of some crazy place that I'm pretty sure is messing my mind. I'm seeing things no one else can see. I'm talking to some strange little girl-"

"Not a little girl."

"-oh, whatever! I'm talking to you, and you're telling me that there's all these other worlds out there! But just as I'm getting used to that idea, you tell me that something's making those worlds go away! And even though you refuse to take me to the place where I might actually learn something, you still want me to go along with all this, even though you yourself have no idea what any of this is! I want to believe you, but you gotta understand where I'm coming from when I ask a damn question!"

Tracey glowered at Marian. Despite the stranger's cute appearance, the intended challenge was plain.

Yeah, well, not my fault you're bad at explaining things, Marian thought.

Tracey broke her glare after a few seconds and closed her eyes. She took in a deep breath, inhaling through her pinched nose and exhaling through the grid of teeth that appeared for her mouth.

"Sorry. Hard for me. Never had company in the Emucave. Forgot how many questions I had my first time."

Marian felt her eyebrows lift with surprise. "It's okay, just..." she trailed off, not sure what she wanted to say.

She finally shook away the attempted sentence and took a different approach. "Let's just cut to the chase. What do you want from me?"

Tracey nodded to herself, then looked at Marian with a serious expression. "Don't know what's going on, but it's bad. Need help from as many heroes as possible to figure out what it is and how to stop it."

"Why heroes, specifically? If all you want is to figure out what's going on, why not get... I dunno, the smartest people in the world...s?" Marian asked, belatedly remembering the pluralization. She'd have to get used to that.

Tracey shook her head. "Don't know them. Just the heroes."

"How do you know that?"

"That writing in the Dome." She waved her hand ambiguously. "Complicated. I'll explain another time."

Awful lot of things are complicated for you. "Still, why are the heroes important for this? Why not just hire the toughest sellswords you can find?"

Tracey crossed her little arms and tilted her head down in contemplation. A droning hum betrayed her lack of a prepared answer. Slowly, she replied, "Need people willing to save other people. Don't know that the smartest or toughest people will do that. A hero might not be the smartest or toughest, but they are always willing to risk their life for others."

It was a woefully naive stance, but it probably made sense to an innocent little girl like Tracey. Marian knew it was best to let children keep their faith in their heroes. "So, what you need from me is...?"

"Need to meet the Wyvern Hunter and all your friends. As soon as possible."

Yet another reminder of how little Marian herself mattered. She sighed. "Like I said before, they're out on a mission right now. I can go find them for you, but I can't promise the Wyvern Hunter'll want to come."

Tracey's expression made it clear she wasn't happy with this response. "Marian."

"It's the best I can do, okay? I'll find you your hero, but it's up to him if he wants to help or not."

Anyway, she mentally added, if heroes work the way you think, what do you have to worry about?

Tracey stared at Marian for a couple long seconds, then nodded her head curtly. "Understood."

The two turned back to the Portal labeled 'Wyvern Hunter IX'. It was still strange for Marian to think that just on the other side of that shimmering silver barrier sat an entire world. Everything she had ever known was secured behind the gossamer-thin wall of a 20-foot bubble.

"So, how's this work?" the witch asked. "I just walk on through, head back down the tunnel, and wind up back in that alley?"

"'Tunnel'?"

"Um." Was the tunnel Marian walked through something else Tracey hadn't seen? She corrected herself. "The Portal?"

Tracey shook her head. "Won't be where we left. Portals lead to a specific place from this side. For your world, it's on top of a hill at the edge of a forest."

"Greenbriar Copse?" It was a stab in the dark on Marian's part. In Sidhegaard, there were many hills near forests; Greenbriar Copse had just been the first one to come to mind.

Nevertheless, Tracey's single nod told Marian she'd hit the nail on the head. "You know it," the child murmured with surprise.

"Yeah, that's where Wendy's from. Why there, though...?"

Catching a quizzical glance from Tracey, she explained, "Ah, Wendy was one of my companions long ago. Actually, she and the boss first met outside Greenbriar Copse."

"'Boss'?"

"Err, the Wyvern Hunter."

Tracey looked confused. "You call him 'Boss'? Aren't you friends?"

Marian was not interested in having that conversation. As she started forward, she curtly said, "Well, he is my boss." She pushed through the Portal before Tracey could ask any further questions.

Marian felt only slight resistance and a vague humidity on her skin as she passed through the glimmering chrome bubble, though when she checked, no condensation slicked her neck or clothes. Then, all was dark. The resounding echo of her boots engulfed everything as the Emucave's light and song ebbed away.

There was, once more, a brief falling sensation as Marian lost track of the ground beneath and the walls around her. The experience was far less terrifying and unpleasant as it had been that first time. There was no cacophony, no inferno of malfunctioning nerve endings - just a pervasive moisture that eventually gave way to a stark cold burn.

Despite the breath-taking wonders she'd seen and the impossible phenomena she was experiencing, all Marian could think was, What have I gotten myself into?