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Meals within the restaurant — so long as they were kept to a reasonable size, according to the signs on the walls — were free.

It seemed not everybody had been able to play by those rules. As Alex and Claire sat at a table while he ate a plate of mystery pan-fried fish, he found his gaze drifting to just below the signs.

A piece of paper had been pinned into the wall by a dagger driven in all the way to its handle. Someone had drawn a sketch of a large, greasy looking man with a stubbly beard around his neck on the paper. The artist was clearly talented. Alex could almost make out the smug amusement within the man\'s beady eyes.

At the paper\'s top, written in large, filled-in letters, was the word BANNED.

I wonder if they had the food limit rule before that guy rolled up. Can\'t blame a player for playing.

Alex finished off the rest of his plate. The food had been surprisingly good for being free, though it might have just been that he was hungry. He and Claire both rose and headed out of the small restaurant, slipping past the other people eating. As they left, the stark difference between the people here and the ones that had been back at Towntown made itself even more apparent.

Towntown had been full of survivors. They had been scared, trapped, and ill equipped, and it had shown.

But the people in Valley Ford couldn\'t have been farther from that. There was little fear in their stances. They spoke and talked with the casual ease of those who had come to terms with their lot in life.

Calling them survivors almost felt like a misnomer. These people were prepared. Alex wasn\'t sure exactly what to call them, but the shift in atmosphere was so stark that it was palpable. It had already been somewhat apparent when they\'d been at the Ocean\'s Tide, but it had become impossible to miss once they\'d sat down to eat.

I wonder how things are going in Towntown. I really hope Ben and some of the others survived. It would be beyond tragic if they made it all this way only to get killed by a meteor instead of an actual monster.

They stepped out of the restaurant and into the streets of Valley Ford. Sunlight filtered through the flowing streams of water churning far above them and sent beams of light swaying across the ground in an endless dance.

"Is it time?" Claire asked. "Or is there anything else you need to do first?"

"It\'s time," Alex said with a small nod. There was no point delaying any longer, and he didn\'t know how long it would take Orchid to figure out where that Town Token was. There was always a chance she found it earlier than expected. The faster they could pay a quick visit to the Mirrorlands, the better.

Maybe I can even get my hands on a core from a Mirrorlands monster. I don\'t know what that would sell for. I don\'t think I\'d want to show it to the Great Tide family anytime soon. I saw the Starfallen family\'s name in the Mirrorlands. That means there\'s a possibility they could be there too. And if they are, I don\'t want to give away that I can access the area until I figure out who might take offense to that.

He drew on a sliver of his power and activated Riftsense. Slivers of faint blue smokey energy gathered on the ground before him and formed into a line that led out of the city and into the desert beyond. It was — quite fortunately — visible only to Alex.

"Here we go," Alex said, turning the ability off to avoid wasting energy. They had their direction. "Let\'s get moving."

***

The trip back out of Valley Ford lasted for just around fifteen minutes. It was in the exact opposite direction as the one they\'d gone the previous time, and it took them straight toward the nearest of the mountains looming over the city.

Alex periodically reactivated Riftsense to make sure they were on the right track, but his need for it soon ran out. He and Claire came to a stop at the very base of the mountains, in the shadow a flat sheer cliff in the towering stone.

A crack ran up the side of the mountain, no more than a few feet wide at its largest point. It rose so high that Alex couldn\'t even see where it stopped, and it was deep enough that the only thing he could make out within it was darkness.

The two of them stared at the vertical crack.

"You can\'t be serious," Claire said.

Alex activated Riftsense. The line led right up to the crack.

"This hole was made for me," Alex muttered under his breath as he approached the crack and peered inside it.

"What?" Claire asked.

"Nothing." He took a step into the crack, turning his body sideways to avoid touching the rough stone. He edged into the darkness, squinting.

His efforts were rewarded by a tiny flicker of dim purplish-pink energy. It was nestled deep within the makeshift cave, but it was unmistakable. A portal.

"Is now a bad time to say I don\'t like tight spaces?" Claire asked.

"You\'re welcome to stay back if you don\'t want to come. I\'m sure there are some monsters that you can fight out here that will eventually get you halfway through Initiate by the time I\'m an Adept."

Claire grumbled a curse under her breath. "You\'re being petty now."

"Yes," Alex replied, reaching out toward the portal and activating Riftwalk. Power buzzed within his fingers as he dug into the portal and started to pull on it. For a moment, he was worried that there wasn\'t enough room within the cave for him to pull the portal into existence.

His fears turned out to be fortunately unfounded. With a grunt, Alex ripped the portal open. It was definitely getting easier to control his powers — or perhaps he was just getting stronger.

"Bleedin\' hell," Claire muttered before squeezing into the cave after him and grabbing his wrist. "Just get us in there already, would you?"

He chuckled, then pressed into the portal, dragging Claire with him as they were ripped away from Planet 274-50.

***

Familiar blue grass materialized beneath Alex\'s feet as he emerged from the portal, energy sloughing off his body like dripping water. He managed to avoid tripping over himself and stepped to the side in time to keep from getting bowled over by Claire as she arrived beside him.

He wordlessly held his wrist out to her. She drank from him, then released his hand and gave him an appreciative nod.

"Thank you," Claire said, licking her lips and scanning the air for any signs of a Riftwarped monster taking form. "Portals are very unkind to me. I don\'t know why they drain so much of my power. It\'s not fair."

"Maybe it\'s because Riftwalking is part of my class, but I\'m bringing you along with me," Alex replied, summoning all three of his monsters with a thought. They were in a new area. He didn\'t know how powerful the monsters here would be.

The Mirrorlands were silent. Crackling magic twisted through the air above, but no portals were taking form beside them. That didn\'t mean an attack wasn\'t coming — but the portal back to Earth hadn\'t gotten a glossy sheen over it either.

A small frown slipped over Alex\'s features. "Is there nothing this time?"

"Is it always guaranteed for a monster to notice our arrival?" Claire asked.

"No," Alex replied. "It\'s just a chance. I was just getting used to it, I guess."

They waited for another minute, their attention completely focused on the immediate area around them.

No monster arrived, and it didn\'t look like one would be.

"Huh," Claire said. "I guess we got lucky this time around. Damn. I was kind of hoping for a big fight that would push me the rest of the way through Initiate."

Alex started to nod, but the words died on his lips as he lifted his eyes away from the immediate area around them and to the distance.

They\'d been so focused on preparing for a Riftwarped monster attack that neither of them had raised their eyes past the rolling hills of blue grass and up to the massive city looming just a few minutes\' walk away from them. Its buildings were twisted like breadsticks and structures were ripped apart at the seams, held together in the midst of their destruction by invisible forces.

A massive tree of white bark loomed above the entire thing, suspended by massive roots that curled down around the city like a cage before burrowing into the ground. A single, massive face was embedded within the center of the tree bark; eyes closed in sleep.

A city was nothing new, but the rivers of water that flowed up and twisted around the tree as they traveled into the sky, vanishing within the churning energy far above… those were unmistakable.

Even as twisted and warped as the city was, there was no mistaking it.

This was Valley Ford — or, at least, a version of it.

As far as Alex could tell, the entire city was there. It hadn\'t been broken apart into chunks and mixed together with other things. It was just a version of the city that looked like it had been through a few world wars and a curse from a furious nature mage.

But his eyes could only linger on the city for a few seconds before they were drawn up to a glistening silver construct embedded near the top of the tree.

Déjà vu prickled against Alex\'s skin. It was an enormous silver ship — or possibly a squid.

Silver tendrils wrapped around the tree. They cracked the white wood and burrowed deep into the trunk, causing rivers of blue sap to pour down the bark\'s surface. Purple flesh pulsated between the gaps in the ship\'s silver exterior, inflating and deflating like a huge alien lung.

The ship\'s pointed tip was pointed straight into the air, and a dull beam of blue light rose up from it and vanished into the sky. For a moment, Alex thought it was the exact same one that he\'d seen before — but he quickly realized that wasn\'t the case. This ship was far smaller, less than half the size of the previous one.

His thoughts were confirmed a moment later when a single name shimmered in the sky at the request of his gaze.

Disruptor [Great Tide Family]

"What the fuck is that?" Claire breathed, her eyes going wide.