A Friendly Voidling

Archmage Christoph channelled his mana into the divination rune, reaching out between worlds to view his former home. He had no regrets about running away, but he really would like to return at some point. While perfectly liveable, the emerald-green sky here was starting to grate on his nerves, not to mention all the weird floating eyeballs. Friendly and cuddly as they may be, they were still freaky. Besides, as much as he loved his children, home schooling was starting to get old. He was really missing the hours of peace that a regular school day brought, and surely the Creature must have got bored and left by now.

His scrying found the city of Glimmerhome easily enough, but all that was there was a mess. Barely any of the city seemed to be intact, and the divination revealed a complete absence of human life. He zoomed out, but every other city he found showed the same devastation. In something of a panic, he scanned the entire continent, and then the whole world. Not a single human life remained. Well... so much for going home. What idiot provoked the Creature badly enough for it to wipe out all civilisation, for goodness' sake? Now he was really glad he'd taken his family and fled.

His divinations were interrupted by a knock at the front door. He'd made it halfway down the stairs before remembering that he'd relocated the house to a completely different dimension, and one that contained no intelligent life. Who would be knocking? In a brief moment of panic he thought the Creature may have followed him, but if that were the case it probably wouldn't bother being polite. Maybe one of the floating eyes had bumped into the door, and he'd mistaken it for a deliberate knock?

With alarm, he heard the door opening. It can't have been his wife; she would have more sense. It must be one of the kids. He accelerated desperately down the stairs, stopping again when a voice shouted, "dad, it's a door-to-door fish salesman. Do we want any fish?"

Keri petted the eyeball, stroking the sclera gently. It was bigger than her whole head, and was just kind of floating around her. If she ignored it for too long, it would start gently bumping against her. "Well, aren't you a needy little thing," she purred.

Jill was also petting one, far more gingerly. "Why eyeballs? Why friendly eyeballs? I mean, they are so very Anya, but even so... How can something like this even exist? How does it eat or breath or have babies?"

"It's another world," Keri answered with a shrug. "Our common sense may not apply."

"Wow. This must be how Anya feels all the time. Maybe I've been a little hard on her."

"Really? I thought you've been very understanding."

"As I mentioned before, humans don't speak aloud everything that we think, and believe me when I say I've thought some very rude things indeed."

Keri looked over at the aforementioned Anya, who was watching the proprietress, a large, friendly, no-nonsense woman by the name of Sarah, with riveted attention. She was making cocktails, up to and including the little fancy umbrellas. It was odd how life seemed to just go on. Fishermen had gone back to sea, and had started coming back with catches that had far more whiskers than sense. The children, no longer able to poke the infinite Void, were poking the floating eyeballs instead. Out in the distance she could see a couple of men evaluating a three metre high transparent blue crystal as a building material, the local plant life having already been deemed not tough enough for buildings or boats.

Admittedly, the first day had involved a lot of running around shouting and generalised not getting anything done, but after that they'd settled back down. Just because they were all in another universe didn't mean they didn't need to eat, whatever arrangements the local wildlife seemed to have made. Oddly, no-one had tried to eat the eyeballs. It made some sort of sense; plenty of people didn't enjoy food that stared back at you, and while you could cut the head off a fish, that wasn't an option here. Or maybe they thought they were relatives of the earlier eye in the sky, and didn't want to risk antagonising it.

Jill wondered if she should admit to the poor villagers that her party was probably to blame, but decided against it because there wasn't anything anyone could do with that information other than yell at her. It certainly wouldn't help anyone. Besides, while she was reasonably sure everything was somehow Anya's fault, she had no actual evidence. No point going around taking blame without evidence. It may have just been a coincidence.

That trail of thought was interrupted when she spotted someone in expensive robes, looking completely out of place for the village, whose clothing tended towards cheap and practical. He was walking along the beach, or at least, along the strip of land that joined land to sea. Beaches were generally sand or pebbles, in Jill's experience, but if someone has described this new-world's beach as 'golden', they wouldn't have been speaking metaphorically. Some of the villagers had chipped a few pieces off, joked about how rich they were, and then tried to buy some drinks with it. Sarah had punched them in the face, in a friendly, no-nonsense sort of way.

The enrobed individual was looking around the village in interest, but when his eyes met Jill's, he immediately changed direction. "Hey, Anya," Jill called, "looks like we might have trouble."

Anya walked over, looking disappointed that she was going to miss whatever it was Sarah had been about to do with the pineapple. Keri was peering down to the beach. "Isn't that Christoph?"

"You'll have to be a bit more specific. Is that someone I should know?"

"The famous arch-mage? From Glimmerhome, same as you? How can there be anyone from Glimmerhome who doesn't know him?"

"Oh, that Christoph. Yeah, I've heard of him, but it's not like I've ever seen him. In my line of work, I saw more of the people who weren't in happy marriages."

"Ah, right, fair enough. What do you think he wants?"

"No idea. We'll have to wait and see. How did he even get here? Was he in the village too?"

It took a couple of minutes for him to reach them, needing to walk around the whole building and enter through the front door to reach the veranda. The wait was somewhat awkward. They knew he could see them, and he knew they could see him, so should they walk to the edge of the veranda and call down? Jump down themselves? Walk out and meet him part way? Just sitting here unmoving seemed rude somehow, but then it was him who seemed to be aiming for them, so presumably the onus was on him to do the work. It was the sort of situation that made Anya complain about how complicated social interaction was.

"So, would you care to explain?" he inquired the second he stepped out of the inn, still breathing heavily from the brisk walk.

"Umm... Explain what?"

"Don't play games. You're obviously involved. How did this village get here?"

"What makes you think we have anything to do with it? It could have been anyone. Besides, how did you get here?"

"Bah. I know protagonists when I see them. You may not have the stupid hair or the ridiculous swords bigger than you are, but you've got the completely nonsensical outfits down perfectly."

"What? That's... that's... clothist! You can't judge someone based on what they're wearing!"

"I'm judging you based on what you're not wearing, missy. And there's her over there wearing enough black lace to weigh down an elephant and yet somehow still walking around normally, and then there's member number three who seems to have decided that opposable thumbs are overrated. All three of you are completely impractical."

"Look, we really don't know much," Jill insisted. "We were enjoying tea in this inn, completely innocently, when someone teleported the whole village into the Void. We have no idea who or why, aside from one of the fishermen mentioning something about golems, and it was only thanks to Anya over there that we could get back out."

Anya gave a happy little wave, and Christoph looked over at her. Not an inspection of her clothing, or a glance at her face, but properly at her. He saw her for what she was, he screamed and he fainted.

"Well, that was odd," Jill commented, poking Christoph's prone body with her toe. "What did he do that for?"

Jill was seated in a reception room of Christoph's mansion, looking incredibly sheepish. A couple of burley fishermen had given them a hand in carrying his unconscious body back here, which was surprisingly not far at all from the village. Anya could have just carried him herself, or tucked him away into a pocket, but while Jill had no objection to letting her do that with houses, treating an actual person like that seemed wrong somehow.

Nursed by his wife, a beautiful lady by the name of Alice, he'd woken up quickly. They'd managed to give a slightly more detailed explanation of events back on their home-world, during which time he managed not to scream or faint once, and then he'd shut himself away in a study for a bit to do some more divination. Then he'd come back out, angrily proclaimed the entire thing Jill's fault, and shared with everyone the story of the lost continent of Fooh.

So... It hadn't been Anya's fault at all. Jill had caused a golem apocalypse, and wiped out all human life on the planet. And they'd banished Anya on account of being the one thing there that could stop them. Well... that sucked, but she couldn't make herself feel too guilty. There should have been an instruction manual, or big warning signs, or something. It could have happened to anyone. It wasn't as if the correct operation of golems was on the syllabus back at school. But that did mean there wasn't any point in going home. With Christoph's help, finding the correct universe was easy, but with the whole place overrun by golems intent on the destruction of all intelligent life, this place was looking like a far more feasible living space, floating eyeballs or not.

"So... now what?"

Keri was the one who asked, but it was what they were all thinking. The village would need to become completely self sufficient before their existing supplies ran out, and plan for a future in which they were the only intelligent inhabitants of the planet. Christoph's presence would help, adding the considerable weight of his magic to their efforts. It really was an amazing coincidence that he happened to be here, right on the same world Anya had found them.

Alice wore an expression of mild confusion, thinking the answer was obvious and wondering why no-one else was mentioning it. "Since Anya can hop between worlds so easily, why not ask her to pop back to our original one to collect seeds, tools and maybe some livestock, if there's any left alive? Or find a world that has humanish inhabitants who wouldn't mind taking in some refugees?"

Christoph recoiled from the thought of asking a favour from a Creature, but Anya perked up. "Oh, yeah. I could totally do that. Or I could just get rid of all the golems."