“What do you mean I have to help?” Theo asked, arms folded as he looked at Alise.

The woman let out an exhausted sigh, burying her face in her hands. She had approached him after the alchemist returned to the mortal plane, coming with big plans about the arena and the start of the games. While those games didn’t have a name, they hardly needed one. They were the games to be played at the end of the world. The one thing to link all the nations before the inevitable end would be a competition.

“I need prizes,” Alise said, grabbing fistfuls of her hair. “I have a few, but I need something big. Something for the grand prize of each category.”

“Okay, I might be able to help,” Theo said, nodding. “How many categories?”

“Athletics, combat, cooking, and crafting. Those are the big ones,” Alise said. “Each prize needs to be related to those things, and I don’t know if you can make potions that reflect those ideals.”

Theo rubbed his chin. This was the perfect excuse to stop worrying about the end of the world and make some extremely powerful potions. As things drew to a close, he found himself without the same spark of urgency related to his alchemy. Everything he had done up until that point was driven by a need. He needed to gain access to better potions, because he needed to fight off some threat or enrich the lives of people in Broken Tusk. Now the Southlands Alliance was running on its own, providing everything everyone needed without his intervention.

A big fat overpowered potion would provide him with a much needed distraction. “Four potions,” Theo said with a nod. “I have a few ideas. If it works, the potions would be insanely valuable. We’re talking priceless.”

“Well, that’s perfect!” Alise said. The smile dropped from her face. “Wait, are you messing with me? Is this just a ploy to get me out of your hair?”

“Absolutely not. I thought you wanted me to organize something with the games. But if you just need stuff, I’m happy to provide it.”

“Thank the gods. That’s a relief,” Alise said with a sigh.

This was the kind of thing one needed to sleep on, though. Theo had a decent idea of what he wanted to do, but sourcing the items he required would be tricky. “I might also have some additional administrative work I need help with,” Theo said, stealing a glance at Alise’s face to gauge her reaction. She raised a brow instead of scowling. He took that as a good sign.

“What kind of administrative help?” she asked.

“Well, we’re going to be moving a lot of people between many planets, and we’re predicting that it will be quite complex. It’s not something I feel comfortable doing, so I wondered if you would be interested in the job.”

“Just to be clear, we’re talking about a job after the switch, right?” Alise asked. “If that’s the case, then fine. I’m happy to take over as your administrator in the sky, even if that concept still seems weird to me.”

Theo would have loved to iron out the details then and there, but the truth was, he was lacking information. His goal was simply to establish the avenues to get things done when they needed to be done, rather than waiting to figure out the command structure while it was happening. This was the kind of paranoia that had served him well over the years, and he was happy to embrace it now. After chatting with Alise about the details for a bit, the alchemist headed out to enjoy his evening.

Instead of having dinner in the usual manner, Theo brought Sarisa, Rowan, and Tresk to the Marsh Wolf Tavern. They found their familiar booth reserved, as always. They had a seat and waited for the dish of the day to be served. The alchemist took the opportunity to consider the best place to start looking for his ingredients, and, of course, the others were eager to discuss the matter.

“So, do you have a plan or not?” Tresk asked, shaking her head. “You always go into these kinds of things half-cocked. I feel the thoughts bubbling in your brain. Do you remember how you need to level your Herbalist core? Just gonna ignore that?”

“I haven’t forgotten about my herbalist core,” Theo said, waving the marshling’s concerns away. She was just trying to get under his skin, as always. “But this is an amazing opportunity to push my skills to their limits. I learned a lot about how these potions work together when I was creating the ablate solution.”

“That isn’t even a word,” Rowan grumbled. “What in the hells is ablate, anyway?”

“A property on a reagent,” Theo said. “But that doesn’t matter. I think I can combine properties on reagents, and if I do it right, the resulting potion could be extremely powerful. Although I’m not willing to talk about specifics quite yet.”

Tresk dug into Theo’s mind, grasping at the information she wanted. But he hid those things deeply, unwilling to grant her access to spoilers just yet. She had to work for those. What she managed to glean still made her excited, though, causing her to jump to her feet and pump her fists in the air.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“We’re going on an adventure!” Tresk shouted. “To hell!”

The confused looks on everybody else’s faces were cut short when the server brought their food. It was a dish Theo wasn’t sure he had seen created before in Broken Tusk. Sitting in the center of each plate was something similar to a hamburger patty slathered with chunky brown sauce. On a second plate was a stack of thin flatbread covered in something that smelled like garlic and butter. To the alchemist’s surprise, it was incredibly delicious. The bread paired well with the unusual hamburger.

Rowan smacked his lips after eating a large bite of hamburger. “So, you’re going to one of the hells?” he asked.

This was a point that needed clarification. Theo had heard people use expressions about hell before, but they were completely unfounded. The closest thing to a hell this world has experienced was the void. The hell dimensions he was thinking about were among the many pocket dimensions he had become aware of after falling into the paper one. He explained as much to Rowan, who’s eyes went glassy about two words in. The alchemist shrugged.

“So, no one wants to go to hell with me?”

“Not even a little,” Sarisa said. “Have fun with that.”

“After you told us how horrible the paper one was?” Rowan asked. “Yeah, screw that.”

“Hah! Cowards!” Tresk shouted, jumping onto the table and thrusting her chest out. “We’re going to hell. We’re gonna blow hell up! Gonna drink from the skulls of demons!”

Theo pointed a finger in the air. “I’m a demon. You’re mixing Earth lore with Iaredin lore.”

“Shut it! Before I drink from your skull!”

The only reason Tresk was excited about this was that she knew Theo had an exit strategy. When he had been trapped in the paper dimension, things were different. He was unfamiliar with the way things worked down there and couldn’t defend himself against the time dilation. He expected that to still be a problem but understood that his increased willpower and better understanding of how his aura worked would see him through. What he was after were objects that were conceptually heavy, just like the world anchor. He sought something that he could use as a binding agent between two potions to create one that was even more powerful. It was the same concept as the suffuse potion, only cranked up to eleven.

He only had an idea for the combat and athletics potion for now, but he was almost certain something would come to him for cooking and crafting. Knocking out two of the four potions he needed to craft wasn’t a bad idea either, and he figured he could make something for first, second, and third place. Why not give all three winners something cool?

There was a second factor in this next delve into the hell dimensions that wasn’t present during the last one. Theo would have Tresk with him. Discounting her marshaling abilities was easy, but it was their bond that had brought him to such heights in the first place. He didn’t doubt she would be useful. Her connection with the Dreamwalk was deeper than his. No matter how much he increased his willpower, she still had an innate connection to it, which he was certain would be beneficial.

After finishing dinner, the group went to have a revitalizing bath. Both Theo and Tresk could feel Alex’s dismay that she hadn’t been invited. When they were all done and cleaned, they took large tubs of bathwater out behind the bathhouse and scrubbed the dragon goose down. This gave Theo a chance to see just how much her form had changed. She still had feathers, but they had gathered near her wings and tail. Day by day, she was becoming more like a dragon, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her as that little gosling peeking out of the egg.

The dragon-goose was at least happy, and they put her to bed in the barn before heading back to the manor. Theo had a few things he wanted to show Tresk for tomorrow, and they rushed to the bedroom to fall into the Dreamwalk. There they met Alex, who somehow looked slightly cleaner than before, even if her form here was just a mental projection. He was certain she could make herself look however she wanted. Perhaps she just felt cleaner.

“Here’s the problem,” Theo said, shifting the sight of Broken Tusk into one much less inviting. The group floated in the void, but it wasn’t a true representation of the space.

The alchemist had imagined the void in a way that made sense to those with visual senses. They floated near the lower plane of the mortal plane and could see a clear row of planets above them. That represented the middle plane, and beyond that was the Sun and the heavenly plains. However, if one were to gaze down far below the planet on which they currently inhabited, they would see an endless row of seething dots of various colors.

“I don’t know what to call them,” Theo said, gesturing to the dots. “But those are the ‘hell worlds’ I detected. Each is a pocket dimension of unknown origins.”

“So, what’s the issue?” Tresk asked. “Weird dimensional spaces in the void. Sounds normal to me.”

“Truly it isn’t,” Theo said. “I can’t say if this is a problem for the reset, but come on. That ain’t normal.”

“Hold on,” Tresk said, looking around. “Is this accurate?”

“No. Because I’m representing four-dimensional stuff with three,” Theo said. “The dimensional spaces are more like layers. They’re inside the void’s void.”

“The void’s void? Next you’re gonna tell me the void’s void has a void. When does it stop, Theo?”

“Yeah, the void has a void space,” Theo said. “It isn’t weird if you understand the void.”

“Ugh. Okay, whatever. Explain it like I’m a big stupid.”

“Iaredin, Tero’gal, Kahak… All of them exist in void space,” Theo said. “I don’t know what it looks like outside that void space, but you just gotta think about it like layers. Our worlds are in a big ball. Inside that big ball is another big ball. That nested ball has all these little dimensions.”

“There we go. I got it now,” Tresk said, giving the thumbs-up. “So, which one are we going to?”

“Dunno. They all look the same on the outside,” Theo said. “We’ll just have to pick one at random and dive in.”

“Every good plan starts with no information and a whim,” Tresk said. “Anyway, wanna watch me do a backflip and kill a dragon at the same time?”

“Absolutely.”