Well. He could probably kill the guy now, but that seems like maybe not actually the best possible call. He picks up Drusilla, who's still unconscious.

"What the fuck did you do now?"

"What did I do? That wasn't you?"

"'Course it wasn't me, you think if I could teleport places I wouldn't have done it long before this?"

"Not to here, you wouldn't have." 

Spike looks around.

" - all right, I'm gonna kill you, but after I figure out what the hell is going on. Dru, pet, wake up."

Drusilla whimpers slightly, but doesn't wake.

           "Mr. Johnson, where are we?"

"Him having just expressed the intent to kill me once he knows what's going on -"

           Right, okay. Where are we. - am I doing this right -

Enemy territory in a war thirty-four thousand years ago. 

           Oh.  - so they'll actually be entirely welcome?

I'm not sure. Depends who we run into. I don't want them meeting the Enemy. If you see an opening to kill them definitely take it. 

           Where's the - friendly side of the war?

A thousand miles from here. There's a less-hostile side of the war, like, a hundred miles from here, though, we're gonna go for that. 

Spike keeps looking around until he's pretty sure this is not going to make him any less confused.

Bugger.

"We're gonna need to find shelter, if it isn't always night here."

"Could go either way, honestly. I ....think there's gonna be a sunrise, but I'll know for sure in two hours. We don't want to wait that long, though, there's not gonna be cover here." He points. "That way."

Spike sighs heavily and follows.

"Faster than that, ideally."

"Well maybe if someone hadn't left me injured and Dru full of holes," he says, but he picks up the pace as much as he can given these things.

"I apologize. It seemed important at the time."

       "Johnson, what -"

"They can't hurt anyone here. If I'd known they were coming here I really wouldn't have bothered."

        "Seems like they could hurt us."

"Buddy I hate to break this to you but we are almost definitely going to die horribly in the next couple of hours even assuming he does nothing at all."

Spike doesn't seem any more concerned about this than he was before. He occasionally checks whether Dru's ready to wake up, but mostly he focuses on moving forward.

They keep walking. The ground is muddy and not obviously evil in any way.

"Probably pushing my luck here but I can carry her if you want."

"No," he says, but it doesn't sound very venomous at all. "I got her."

"What's gonna kill us?" Ryan asks out loud and also over osanwë in case the answers are different.

         "So, it happens that around this time period my folks were having a war. Actually, two at the same time - we were having a civil war, and then we were also having a war with this other species of demons. They started it, they kept dragging us back to their cities to torture for thousands of years in this magical time-dilation setup and also they tried to conquer the continent and also they had their own entire population under magically-enforced loyalty oaths and also they want to purge the universe of everything except themselves and - we were super definitely the good guys in that war. 

       By contrast in the civil war we were the bad guys and I'm not super confident how well it'll go over when I show up at their doorstep. But I think they probably won't kill me at least until they communicate to my people that they have me and get told 'uh, no you don't', at which point if I were them I'd kill me, but we'll see."

        The osanwë version of this is less confident that getting captured right now would be bad for Spike and Drusilla in the slightest.

"Oh, goody, politics and omnicide," mutters Spike. "Never should have come to this damn town."

        "You're - thirty-something thousand years old?"

"I mean, I spent a lot of it dead."

        "Ah. Okay. But you're - alive in this time period?"

"There's about a - fifty year range of times it could be right now, going off the landmarks I can see and can't see. I'm alive in all of them."

        "I can't see a thing."

"Yes, my vision is much better than yours. There'd be a fortress over there, if it were later." He gestures out into the dark. "And there'd be people in this area if it were earlier. They've all been killed."

        "What was the civil war over? - is it unwise to be talking out loud?"

"I mean, don't shout, but if there're patrols out tonight at all we're dead, we're not gonna just walk right past 'em. My vision's better than their hearing, I'll know it's over before they do, if it is. The civil war was over who got to be King, isn't that always what civil wars are over?"

         "Who won?"

"They did."

          "But not yet?"

"No, right now we're in the part where everyone's losing."

Spike listens, but doesn't offer much in the way of commentary.

After about an hour they reach a mountain. Alex starts climbing it. "There's a cave system here somewhere. There'll be orcs living in it, but not ones that report to anyone, I don't think. Best shot here is to kill them all and then sit there all day and then do the same thing four more times for the next four nights and then turn ourselves in to my enemies."

        "- I can't say I love that plan."

"If you want me to kill you instead I will. If your boss Matt were here he'd have killed everyone else and then himself and he'd be pissed I'm not doing the same thing."

       "Calm down, I didn't say no. But - we're just.... killing a bunch of random cave-dwelling whatever-you-called-them who are uninvolved with the war?"

"Yeah. - you know, it's funny, first time round that didn't even strike me as sketchy. They were orcs."

       "...civilian orcs, though."

"Yep. Like I said, this time around, it's funny, it feels very different. I'm still going to do it. You don't have to help. - you probably have to help, Spikey, I can't take them all myself unarmed."

"Yeah, I'm with you. Gotta leave Dru somewhere."

"We can check for somewhere when we're closer. I don't actually know where it is but I'll be able to sense them when we get close enough."

Nod.

"Gonna revise my plan to killing you when we get home, by the way."

"Shoulda been your plan from the start, I've got no issues with people who come after me."

"Yeh, well, the demons in the bar did not offer all of the information a person could have wanted."

"I didn't go after her to get to you, for the record. Went after her because she was eating people in my city."

       There's not much point in talking out your differences with a vampire, Johnson. 

I dunno. Vampires do loyalty, sometimes, some of them.

"Yeah, she does that," he says, fondly. "We'll be in better shape when she's back. Probably. Think these orc things are any good for eating?"

"The blood's black. That's probably not a good sign."

"Ugh."

"She gonna make it?"

"She'll live. Bet she wakes up in another twelve hours. She won't be able to fight in this condition, though, not without blood to help her heal. Doubt she'll be able to walk at this pace, either."

" - all right, they're about thirteen hundred meters that way." He gestures. "I don't know where the entrance is, though, we'll have to look around for it."

"All right. Lead the way."

They look around. It takes a while. 

It's weird for there to be no one out on the plains at this hour. Maybe it's the couple years after they all got slaughtered, or maybe they're here watching - nah, he'd notice that - probably - 

Eventually they find the entrance. 

"Ryan, you down to stay here with Drusilla?"

      "I - yeah. Sure. I protest this, by the way. I would stop you if I had the faintest idea how."

"I know. There're ten of them," he adds to Spike.

Spike nods and sets Drusilla down with Ryan.

He's not badly injured, not anymore; he can take a few people in a fight.

Half of them are asleep and they're not expecting a fight and also they obsessively and unstrategically go for Alex. It doesn't take long.

"Great. Sunrise pretty shortly, if it's going to happen at all."

"All right."

He lays Dru out so that she'll hopefully be comfortable when she wakes up. He tries orc blood, just in case, and then spits it out in disgust.

He starts a fire by singing and cooks himself a steak. Ryan looks horrified. 

"Look, I'm a vegetarian when I have a choice about it. - you're welcome to some if you want but I don't know that it's safe for humans."

      "I'll pass."

"Tagalong human gonna have a problem making it four days without food? I guess we could always kill him, be convenient for Dru."

"Some of these plants are safe for humans. I forget which ones but when I eat them I'll know. He's going to be more valuable once we get out of here than any of us, unless you went to college in the last few years."

       "What?" What?

"We, like, haven't invented gunpowder. Everyone'll be really excited to talk to anyone who has a modern science education, which regrettably I mostly don't." I won't let him hurt you but 'I won't let you' is a less compelling argument than 'bad idea'. Okay?

       I am really not sure how far I'm supposed to trust you.

What did Matt say?

       Ryan sighs.

Spike sighs. "Yeah. OK."

"I would say that Dru can have a pint off me but I'm really not a fan of the mind-control nonsense, and if she tries it on our enemies once we get there they'll kill her faster than you can say 'she's crazy and doesn't know what she's doing' -"

"She can't hypnotize you by biting you. Can't do it at all when she's unconscious."

"Yeah but I'm in no hurry to have her recovered. Can you keep her under control or not?"

"Yeah. Can't promise I can keep her quiet, but she's not gonna attack anyone at any very inopportune moments."

"All right." He scoots over and offers Drusilla his wrist. 

Drusilla still isn't really awake, but she can be coaxed to drink for a while. It helps that she really, really needs the blood.

"All right. That's enough for now."

He pulls his hand away and leans back against the wall. 

       What's the justification for that one?

We'll go faster if he doesn't have to carry her. 

        Seems like a bad tradeoff for a dangerous, insane vampire with mind-control powers. 

Maybe. There was nothing out in the field today, so we're probably during one of the years where there isn't anything out regularly, but still, every day we're out here we're running a lot of risks.

        Hundred miles, you said. We must've covered at least eight.

Yeah.

       Your telepathy range is what, exactly?

A lot more than that, yeah. I can talk to everyone here. The thing is, we didn't yet know that it couldn't be spoofed. They'd have to be insane to act on anything sent to them from near Angband by someone claiming to be their relative from the future. I did tell the person who could do the most with it everything he could possibly use, right away. But I don't think he believed me - maybe once more of it comes true - and he's sure not going to send a rescue mission. He didn't answer at all, actually. That's policy, not to answer under circumstances like these.

       Why didn't you mention this earlier?

Because I don't want the enemy to know it and he can scrape it right out of your head.

       But not out of yours?

I might be able to kill myself fast enough. 

        Okay.

I know it's far from it. 

         Ryan is humming to himself and thinking about a girl he dated in college.

Alex closes his eyes.

Drusilla wakes up a few hours later.

" - oh. Ohhh, my head is ringing. This place smells of death."

Ryan is pointedly not making eye contact. Alex keeps half-sleeping.

"I don't like it here, Spike. I don't like it."

"I know, baby. We're gonna make it out. Get some rest."

He starts singing in a language no one speaks. 

Drusilla quiets and listens.

They wait.

Eventually he announces "okay, sun's down."

"Let's head out, pet."

And they walk.

Elsewhere - elsewhen? else-something, Michael pings Karen. 

You should know that there was an incident at the Bureau about ten minutes ago. Alex is missing, as are a staff member, Spike, and Drusilla. We're assuming they did it, but we don't know how.

Missing how?

Fell through the floor and vanished. They have magic sensors and are checking to see if they know more than that. Likely a portal of some kind.

Can me and Wishbone come over?

Yeah.

She grabs Wishbone and tells Azalea she's taking the car and drives to Michael's.

We don't know anything else about the portal?

Nope! In particular we have no guesses on the very important question 'who did it' but also nothing on 'where did it take them' or 'are they still there'.

This is a bad bad week and I want it to stop.

Be there in ten.

He's pacing when they arrive, pacing and singing little verses that sound sharp and dangerous.

Karen immediately heads for the library and starts pulling books out of the English section that she thinks she vaguely remembers might have ever mentioned portals at some point.

"OK, I'm gonna page through these - Wishbone, point to the ones you want in anything you can read - "

When she has piles for both of them she starts scanning for anything useful.

Portals between dimensions happen sometimes. Usually because of the actions of people on one or both sides but they have also ever happened just completely at random as far as anyone knows.

Lovely. She keeps paging through things.

Oooh, ooh, here it is, I thought I remembered this one. OK. It's a retrieval spell, used to return someone who's been magically separated from someone who cares about them. You need at least one anchor, though it's safer with more than one; I'd expect both you and Karen to work fine in this case. We'll also need some materials, but I bet the local magic shop has them. They were pretty well-stocked, last I checked up on them.

It's, ah, a very powerful spell. Pretty serious chance of cosmic backlash, using this one, but this is the tool for the job if you want to pull him back without doing the whole dramatic open-another-portal-and-follow-him-through deal, which in my experience is much more likely to give you lethal results.

He bounces this to Karen. Yeah, we're not doing that. Let's go to the magic shop now.

Onward!

You want us both there? I dunno if it'll actually help, but - I guess if we all go we can split up and get the stuff faster - 

I just don't want to separately deal with whatever random inexplicable occurrence I expect if you are out of my sight for an hour.

That's honestly very sensible. I don't either. Let's go.

The magic shop does, in fact, have all of the required components on hand, though a few are sort of exorbitantly expensive.

He apparently either doesn't notice or doesn't care. They get their ingredients.

Then they can return to Michael's and Wishbone can tell them how to arrange things for the ritual.

You're sure you both want to do this? I've seen this one work correctly before, but I've also seen spells of this caliber leave the caster comatose afterwards. Much safer with two than with one, but still - 

Is it safer with ten? Because I could get more.

Yeah, as long as they're all at least as on board with this as I expect the two of you are. It's still not actually very safe, but I like your odds better.

Alright. Then we're going to Vegas, and doing this tomorrow morning.

All right.

"I guess I'll call Azalea and let her know I'm taking another day off school?"

"Sounds good."

She calls. She stands by for operation Get Alex Back From Wherever The Heck He Is Now.

They drive to Vegas. They get a penthouse suite in a fancy hotel that has a casino in the lobby. 

The room is full of Quendi. "So this is Karen," one says when Michael walks in. 

"Karen, these are, uh, Telufinwë," gesturing at a half-transparent man who is sitting on a king-bed playing with a thread that keeps slipping through his hands, "Pityafinwë -" a twin, apparently, but more visible, "Fëanáro," taller man who is reading a book, "Robert Andersen, Raja Anand, and Matt you know already of course."

She's not sure she's going to remember all of that, but she's going to try her darnedest. "Hi."

"All right, let's do this."

Then Wishbone will again explain which objects need to go in which places and which words need to be said at which times and remind everyone that this will probably work but it could also backfire horribly and they can't say he didn't warn them.

We're not going to retaliate if it fails. If we were the sort of people who'd do that we wouldn't have any help, would we?

I just don't want you to be shocked if one of you spontaneously bursts into flame.

All right. Let's begin.

The spell is complicated and requires incantations in three different languages. They do everything right, he's sure of it, as right as it can be done, or at least if they make any mistakes they are not mistakes that he could have been reasonably expected to catch based on the information he has. He double-checked it all in the car.

At the critical moment, a rip in the air opens. It should give them Alex.

It doesn't. A bolt of energy surges through it and engulfs Karen, then leaps to Wishbone.

The rip closes.

The room contains seven Quendi and no one else.

"Eru."

"That would be my bet, yeah."

"Well."

Karen lands on her butt somewhere that is probably neither Vegas nor Kansas. Wishbone gets spit out beside her a moment later. He whines when he hits the ground.

....Michael?

Half a second later there's a sword at her throat. 

Don't move. What are you?

Uh. Uh.

My name's Karen Teller and I'm a human and a vampire slayer and a second ago I was in a room with seven Quendi and I don't remember all of their names because I met them like half an hour ago and we were all really busy because we were all trying to get you back because you'd disappeared and I guess I found you but I think the spell went very very wrong somehow because I think it was supposed to bring you to us and not me to you and also oh crap you don't remember me at all do you that's terrifying I'm so sorry.

From what would I be expected to remember you?

Uh, the last year of spending like every day training me to kill vampires?

What is a vampire?

Oh man.

OK. OK. I can do this.

A vampire is a demon that's possessed a human body and sustains itself by killing other humans and drinking their blood, and also it's evil so it just kind of does terrible things for the fun of it, which it why we have to stop them.

Is there nothing better to do in - wherever you're from?

Than stop vampires? Um, I guess probably, but I'm sort of like sixteen and in high school and can't really do most important things and I have a magical destiny or something and it - seems like someone has to stop all the murder and stuff.

Um - is it - I know you get to ask the questions because you're the one with the sword and stuff, but do you know where we are?

Yes, I do. What's a human?

Oh man.

OK. Humans are - how do you explain - the ways we're different from Quendi, OK, um, we only live for about a hundred years and then we die, and we don't ever come back - well, really almost never - and we can't do the thing where you make an oath and then you get held to it forever, and - man, I just had a conversation with you like two days ago about how maybe we're attached to our spirits differently, but I don't super understand that and I guess you definitely don't remember it. Uh. Where I come from almost everyone's a human, and I guess there are some Quendi still but not very many at all - I mean I guess there are other people too, but like, the cities, the countries, all of those are run by humans and most people don't know that there's anyone in the world who isn't a human.

I'm not sure how much that helps.

What are the minimum conditions to keep a human alive indefinitely while people figure out what's going on here?

Uh, I need food and water and air - I guess I have air, this air is fine, and uh I guess I need to be in a certain range of temperatures but this temperature is fine too - and I need to be allowed to sleep and I guess that's all really unless someone like cuts my throat or something because I'm pretty sure I will die if that happens.

Oh, also my dog, he needs those things too. If he's OK. Man I hope he's OK.

How much space do you need? What does it need to look like? Do you need company? 

You said minimum to keep me alive. I'm not gonna die if I'm kept in a small ugly space, but I guess it'll make me sad if it's really terrible, and if it's too small for me to move around then I guess it'll be pretty bad for me psychologically and maybe eventually cause health problems, and I don't think I'll literally die if I'm kept in solitary confinement but I think I've heard that that can cause psychological damage if it goes on long enough and also the being terrified and confused is probably not super helping on that front. Uh, I guess I really also need a place to go to the bathroom, but it probably wouldn't literally kill me if I didn't have one, it just would really really suck.

It'd be cool if I could stay with my dog but I guess he probably won't literally die on his own, as long as people can hear him ask for things over osanwë and, like, give him food and stuff when he needs it.

Is it safe for other people to touch you?

Should be, as long as there's no stabby touching. I guess some kinds of touching would be upsetting? But it's not gonna kill me.

He does not quite say 'I really really don't care about upsetting you' but she's known him for long enough that she might be able to read it off his face a bit. 

The door opens. Some people come in. Some of them scoop up Wishbone, carefully. Two others take Karen's arms and press her back against the wall and frisk her for weapons and then hold her against the wall with painfully tight grips.

At that point, he sheaths the sword. 

Someone removes his personal possessions from the room. It's clearly a study or something; there are maps and tapestries. 

You and your dog can safely remain here indefinitely, with food and a chamberpot?

Yeah. Should be able to.

They back out of the room. They close the door. There are banging sounds from the other side of it.

Inform me if you need anything.

OK. Thanks.

My dog can talk but he can't talk out loud because he's a dog and I guess it'd be good if I had some materials to use to talk to him when he wakes up because - I think he probably has a much better idea what went wrong than I do.

What materials do you use to talk to your dog?

Usually he either types on a computer or we have someone bounce stuff between us with osanwë, but a pen and paper works too, I can write letters and he can point at them.

What's a computer?

She pets Wishbone, gently.

She sends an image of her computer. Computers are machines that have a screen and a keyboard and a part of them that does math, and you can type commands in through the keyboard, and the computer does math and makes lots of different things happen. It used to be that you could only use them for doing calculations and typing up documents and running programs that came on disks - she sends the image of a floppy disk - but now we have the internet, which is when a whole lot of computers send things to each other from far away, and people put information on the internet and then anybody with a computer and an internet connection can access the information and read about things.

Other people would explain it better but I guess you don't have other people.

Sure doesn't look like it. Do you know why we have you?

Yes. Sort of.

So - this will sound stupid, but where I come from you and me are friends. We've been friends for a year; you showed up when I told your brother that I was a vampire slayer and he said that I needed someone to protect me and teach me how to be better at fighting things. So we've been doing that. A couple weeks ago a couple really strong vampires showed up, including one with mind control powers, and they almost killed me but, uh, obviously I'm still here, and last night - earlier tonight - maybe six hours before the thing happened - we finally took down the mind control vampire. And you went to drop her off in the place where we keep vampires, and - then your brother told me that a portal had opened up in the floor and dragged you and the mind control vampire and the other really strong vampire and an American soldier through it.

And so we had to get you back. So me and my dog and your brother went and got the supplies for a spell that was supposed to get you back, and my dog said it'd be safer if we had lots of people who cared about you to help us cast it, so we went to a different city where there were some other people who cared about you, and then me and the seven Quendi cast this spell, and my dog told us it might backfire and not work right, but we had to get you back, see, and so we cast it anyway, and then this rip in space opened up and it dragged me and my dog to - wherever we are now.

I guess we're pretty bad at rescuing you. So, uh, sorry about that.

Luckily for you, I don't need rescuing. My brother? Who, in particular?

He calls himself Michael but it's not his real name. Sometimes you call him Cáno. He's - oh, right, pictures, I can send pictures. She sends a picture of Michael.

I see. 

Can you describe your society of origin? Where is it? What's it called?

I can try. Um, my country is called the United States of America and I live in the state of California in a town called Sunnydale, and it's - uh - I don't know where I am so I can't say where it is in relation to here, if it's anywhere in relation to here, but - 

She sends an image of a globe and spins it and zooms in on North America and then California and then Sunnydale, as near as she can picture these things.

There. That's where I'm from. And we're mostly humans but there are also other things that mostly hide from the humans, and we have a president and a congress to make laws, and we have schools and roads and hospitals and - you might need to be more specific in terms of which things about it I'm supposed to be describing.

Why's the world - spherical?

I think that's kind of just how worlds are.

Not any I've ever heard of.

How many've you heard of?

Just this one. I guess.

OK - well - I know there are other universes but I've never been to any, although I think I might be in a different one now, but where I'm from -

Image of the solar system, planets circling around the sun.

This isn't to scale, because actually the distances between planets and stars are really big, too big for me to picture properly. I live on Earth, the third one, that's the only one we know of in our universe that has any life on it. And then there's also Mercury - image of Mercury - which is small and very very hot during the day and very cold at night, and then there's Venus - image of Venus - and it's very very hot all the time because it's covered in poisonous clouds that trap the heat inside, and it rains acid there, and I think we've sent some probes there but it's not our favorite place to send probes because it's hard to see anything under all the clouds.

And there's Earth - Earth again - and it's nice - nicer than anywhere else, anyway - and it has oceans and forests and mountains and snow and volcanoes and lots of plants and animals, and - you told me it was where Quendi were from, actually, and that then most of the Quendi went to Valinor but then something bad happened and a bunch of them came back to Earth to try to stop it, and that's where humans are from, too.

And, uh, then there's Mars - Mars - and that's our favorite place to send probes, we've sent lots, we know all about what Mars looks like and sometimes we think about sending people to live there, except it'd be really hard to live there and it'd be really expensive and so then the government doesn't do it, even if we maybe know how. 

And there's Jupiter, which is huge and made of gas and which has lots of little worlds spinning around it, all its moons - there are lots and lots but the biggest ones are Calypso and Ganymede and Io and Europa, and then there's Saturn, and it's big and gaseous and it has rings and it has Titan, where sometimes we think there maybe might be life, if we could get to it and see, and there's Uranus, which has less interesting rings and spins on its side doesn't have any cool moons, and there's Neptune, which has Triton, which is all frozen but it's cool because it has these geysers that I think spout liquid nitrogen, which is really really cold, and then way far away there's Pluto and its moon Charon, and then there are maybe other worlds even further away but we don't know much about them. And there are worlds that orbit different stars, too, but I don't have any of those ones memorized.

And that's all the worlds I know about. Unless you count the hell Lurconis is from, I guess. I went there once but I don't know how it's shaped.

Did the guy you know who looks like me say how he got there?

No. Sorry. We were having a conversation about something else and he didn't really infodump at me about the entire history of -

- how old are you exactly?

Like two hundred forty. Why?

The guy I know who looks like you is thirty thousand years old.

Huh.

I would not have expected to make it that long.

He did say he died a few times along the way.

Also wouldn't expect Mandos to let me come back.

I dunno what that means. Really wishing I'd asked more questions about history now but stuff that happened thirty thousand years ago did not really seem like the most pressing possible concern last week.

It's fine. I'm gonna talk with some people and then they'll probably have a lot of questions for you and then they'll figure out what to do, okay?

Yeah, OK.

Fits with the transmission from Angband earlier.

Well, then we can rule out Enemy action, both sending you information and materializing a girl with consistent stories is clearly beyond him.

If the Enemy can do that he could do a whole lot better with it.

Yes, he can.

Look, I'll just - learn the language, talk tech, ignore it all entirely for a century. Okay?

Go ahead.

The journey out of enemy territory takes them four days, as promised. He finds plants Ryan can eat. On the fourth night after six hours of hiking he pauses and says, "okay, folks, now you're gonna stand really still and look like it's not going to be a hassle to hold you during negotiations with my family at all."

Drusilla whimpers.

"It's OK, Dru. Just gotta be quiet now is all. Can you do that?"

Drusilla holds a finger to her mouth and hushes.

Horses ride up. They're almost twice the size of human horses; it's startling. They're singing, at first, and you can hear it before the hoofbeats, but they stop singing as they get close. They encircle them. 

Someone dismounts. 

There follows a long conversation in Quenya, pretty but incomprehensible, in places quite heated. 

("...so you've grown past all this and can't be bothered with it anymore. Well, that's an angle. Not one of the ones I was expecting you to take."

       "You really couldn't have expected any of this, I wouldn't beat yourself up over it."

"Oh, I'm not. I'm absolutely going to beat you up over it, though. Will that panic your friends?" 

        "I think they're about as scared as they're going to get. I'd be embarrassed on behalf of our species, though."

"You're unbelievable."

        "It's - most places, most people, most everything, sucks, enough that things sucking isn't even really a reliable marker that the circumstances are extreme, does that make any sense? If you hit me, now, and some Mithrim Elf who's been staying out of politics sees it, they'll figure I probably betrayed your family to their deaths or something because obviously it's something like that, if we're moved to violence over it. These people - my friends - they'll just figure you could, and you felt like it. Because that's enough, most people, most places. And I keep wanting to tell Karen that Quendi are better and then not being sure if I'm just drawing these imaginary lines."

"I don't think the years have improved you, Turko."

        "This isn't experience talking, it's sleep deprivation, and ugliness, you have no idea how unbearably ugly everything has been. You can hit me if it'll make you feel better. I'm sorry about Elenwë. I'm sorry about everything."

"You're really determined to take all the fun out of this, aren't you."

        "Sorry."

"Wow," she says. "All right. You want to speak to the King?"

       "Yes, please."

"Nolofinwë, King of the Noldor in Middle-earth -"

       "I would like to speak to Nolofinwë, King of the Noldor in Middle-earth."

"...all right. Keep walking.")

"We're okay," he says out loud in English. "For the moment, anyway."

"Did they grow the horses in the Earth?" asks Drusilla. "All sunk beneath the ground."

Rapid-fire question in Quenya.

"No, they didn't," he says. "They were born in Valinor, where I was born."

("It's not from Angband. There are definitely some similarities and it was caused by torture but it wasn't Angband, just this - guy who felt like it.")

They keep walking. Eventually there's a castle up ahead of them. They get led in through a stone tunnel. 

"Oh, uh, you can't leave that one with these two, they might eat him."

"Charming friends you've made here."

"I know. Just lock them up separately, it won't hurt them. He can eat most stuff we eat but you need to cook it thoroughly first, and boil the water. They drink blood."

"Why boil the water?"

"'s full of tiny things you can't see that'll kill him."

"I'm giving it even odds my father says to kill you all."

"I take it that if this occurs you will not throw yourself between me and the executioner."

"I don't know what you are but what makes the most sense is -"

"Yeah. Just - stay outta that forest, right? Just in case?"

"Sure."

They leave Ryan and Spike and Drusilla in adjacent cells with Quendi looming over the doors. 

"What are they?" Ryan asks Spike when Alex has left.

"Fuck if I know. Whatever he is, I guess."

"His species isn't in our big official book of demons but I thought maybe demons knew other demons or something."

"Fairies from beyond. Hello, fairies. Did you like it better in the other place?"

"I do, lots of 'em, but not these."

"Did you tell him where Drusilla was?"

"No."

He bites his lip and nods.

Drusilla sings to herself and murmurs in some other language. Sounds like it's maybe Italian.

They are entirely ignored for a few hours. Then someone brings Ryan a plate of food. The guards change out. The new ones start singing something quiet that makes the air smell like flowers and springtime instead of stone tunnel.

Drusilla starts screaming.

"Daisies and roses, red and white, I can't - I can't abide it - no, no, no -  not here, can't hear, no - "

"Hey! You out there! Knock it off!"

"I don't think they speak English," Ryan says.

Maybe they will respond to SUDDEN VIOLENT RAGE.

"HEY! Shut it, bastards, a little peace and quiet gonna kill you?"

It turns out that if you don't know English you still don't know English when the person yelling it at you is really mad but they mostly stop anyway because now the prisoners are screaming and this is pretty concerning. 

The screaming subsides and Drusilla falls back to quiet whimpering.

"I don't like it here. I don't like it here at all. It clings to my skin and won't stop buzzing."

"I'm sorry, baby," whispers Spike, holding her. "I'm sorry. It'll all be clean very soon."

And he cries, because he really doesn't know whether it will be.

They start singing again once the prisoners have calmed down. Different song, though.

Dru doesn't seem to hate this one quite as much. She goes on quietly whimpering.

Eventually Alex comes back. He shooes the guards. “Good news! My family wants me.”

"Lovely. Your family say you could bring a - well, an acquaintance and a few mortal enemies, I guess."

“Probably depends on whether that’s in any respect more complicated than not doing it, but I’ll try. Why were you yelling at the guards?”

"Songs were hurtin' Dru."

“Well that’s an inconvenient allergy.” He sits down and sticks his arm through the bars. “There were no volunteers to feed either of you. Admittedly that’s not as unkind as it sounds since it’s because they’re all deathly malnourished and they’re deathly malnourished because we betrayed them to their deaths. But anyway. This is what we’ve got until we get to my family.”

Drusilla drinks until Spike stops her; she pouts about it when he does.

"I should be good for another few days yet. Can't have you collapsing on us, can we."

"One could do a lot worse for a mortal enemy." He pulls his arm back and leans against the wall. "God, I hate politics."

"Lot to hate about it. Any idea when your chums'll pick us up?"

"Probably this month."

"Can't make it that long without blood. I do hope yours grows back faster than a human's."

"If I'm eating enough and I focus on it, yeah. They might come sooner, they're just doing some combination of finding the logistics complicated and not wanting to come running the instant this King says so and genuinely being kind of far away." Sigh. "I have been called a deeply unconvincing impersonation of myself a few too many times today."

"Old dolly's paint's all come away. Will his friends recognize him at all?"

Spike sighs and sits down against the back of the cell.

"Think it'd kill 'em to give us a deck of cards or something?"

"Hasn't been invented yet but you could ask for paper and make your own."

"Have half a mind to. - can't, actually, but if you could that would be just swell."

"Oh, yeah, right." He passes this along. "Ryan, you need anything."

          "Technically I am a prisoner of a hostile foreign power at this point," says Ryan after a second. "There are regulations about that."

"They're not hostile. - I guess they might kill us all, but - uh, they're not hostile towards America, they just don't super believe it exists."

          "Mmm."

Someone brings Spike and Drusilla paper.

It isn't a month. It's the better part of a week, though. Alex leaves during the day and the Elves mostly only sing songs that bother Drusilla a little and the food is fine. 

He can make it most of a week. He makes a little deck of cards for himself and mostly fails to get Dru to play anything with them. He writes poetry. It's all terrible. He keeps telling Dru that it's going to be fine, and she only sometimes snaps that he ought not lie to her.

And then the guards show them all out, through the stone tunnel and through a muddy field where two tense groups of soldiers are watching each other, and they walk through the mud and are in different custody, without any immediately obvious differences. 

"Do any of you know how to ride a horse?"

"We used to go riding when the moon was full. I didn't like the farmers. Too much gristle."

"We know how. Normal-sized horses, though, and I don't know that we should trust Dru to ride alone."

"I don't," Ryan says. 

There's a conversation. 

"Okay, everyone's sharing with someone. Drusilla's sharing with one of them if you think she can be trusted not to bite them, and otherwise she can share with you but they're going to hella overreact if you two get out of line."

Spike considers.

"Dru's with me."

"Okay."

They head out. 

These Elves sing a magic song for speed and concealment.

Drusilla whimpers unhappily but doesn't scream. She really does hope they can go back to Italy soon.

Spike rides. Takes some focus - he hasn't done it in a while, and when he did he didn't have a giant horse - but he manages.

We found someone claiming to be Tyelcormo from thousands of years in the future. He's accompanied by a human and some vampires, he reports to Karen about a week after she arrives.

(Her immediate response is an impulse to tear at her hair and yell about various aspects of the spell that sent her here. She succeeds at not doing this. Wishbone sees that she wants to, though, and whimpers at her. "S'not your fault," she tells him. "You did the best you could.")

Is he OK?

He doesn't appear to be injured.

I guess that's something.

What do you know about the people traveling with him?

Uh, almost nothing about the human. Michael said there was a staff person taken through the portal so I guess that's him. I figure he's an American soldier but I guess I don't know for sure. Someone who works for the government, anyway.

The vampires'll be Spike and Drusilla. Spike's the man. He's good at fighting. He beat me once, I'd've died if the government people hadn't saved me. I realize that probably doesn't sound very impressive, but it is, if he and Tyelcormo fought I don't really know who I'd bet on. Probably Tyelcormo but the odds wouldn't make me smile. We captured him a couple weeks ago - well, a couple weeks before I got here - and he's been in a government containment facility ever since. Or, well, he was until the portal happened.

Drusilla's the other one. She's even more dangerous than he is, I think. She, uh, also almost killed me, and I realize this is starting to make me sound very lame, but whatever. She has visions of the future and she's able to mind control people by looking at them and waving her fingers. She's very powerful but she's also insane, which makes her kind of bad at executing plans. She got tortured into insanity about a century and a half ago by this other vampire, back when she was a human, and I guess the insanity stuck. We took her down the night the portal thing happened; Tyelcormo was dropping her off at the facility and then didn't come back.

Kinda surprised to hear that they're all traveling as a unit, but I guess weirder things've happened.

Is there any reason we should be taking these dangerous vampires alive?

There's theoretically a way to restore their human spirits and make them not-evil but I know basically zero things about it other than that it exists. But I figure Tyelcormo has his reasons for whatever he's doing.

That's not something I hear people say about him very often.

I mean I'm not saying he makes good decisions a hundred percent of the time, but I'm not gonna assume he's not just because one of them sounds weird from here. He probably has a better idea what's going on here than I do.

You want to meet them when they come in?

Yeah. 

Does he know I'm here?

No. Travel's not that safe, no one in the escort party knows. We'll tell him once they're nearly here.

OK. Cool.

He'll probably be upset about it.

Why?

I think he's getting kind of stressed about the number of absurd dangerous situations I've gotten into over the past few weeks. But I guess he probably has bigger problems right now, so maybe he'll already be too stressed for any extra stress to matter.

This is really the safest place you could possibly have landed, if you were coming through at all.

I was really really not supposed to come through, but I guess it's good that the spell dumped me on the wrong Tyelcormo, then, if it was going to insist on dumping us here.

We can look into ways to send you all back, but my current instinct is that that wasn't a coincidence and efforts to get you back should not be expected to go any better.

Yeah. I guess.

It's a week of riding. 

"Hey. You all full of blood again?"

"You know, technically I'm royalty, I should be able to make someone else do this." He doesn't do that. He offers Spike his arm.

"Technically I'm a soulless demon who should be able to kill as he pleases. Ain't life weird."

He drinks. 

"It honestly just seems like it'd get old, killing people all the time. Maybe it'd take more than a couple centuries."

"S'one of the things that makes eternal life worth living, mate. S'like - sex, like poetry. Things get dull without it."

"There's a god of hunting, here. Hunting isn't really hard if you're a god but he loves it anyway, never gets tired of it."

Spike chuckles. "Well. If he knows what he likes."

"Growing up I thought I was like him but then we went to war and that was better, it was real, you could lose, and then we did lose and when we came back war had gotten worse, just stupid children all around, trying to do the right thing. And then I come back here, where war was good, and - it's still just stupid children all around."

This is really sort of an unnerving thing to say, given that Spike feels like he is probably the sort of person who really appreciates - not war, war is all uniforms and ranks and rules and reasons, but fighting, violence, the uncertainty of having your back against a wall and knowing that you didn't rig the odds in advance and that if you get out it'll have to be because you're actually just that good.

"Seems that way."

The new Quendi castles look much like the old Quendi castles. Maybe a little less pretty and a little more utilitarian, but only if you're looking very hard for a point of comparison. 

When they're nearly there someone tells Alex that there's a girl and a dog here claiming to know him.

Why didn't - never mind. I want to see her.

The version of Tyelcormo you know wants to see you.

She stops writing notes. (The floor has been absolutely covered in notes, about what's happening and about what she remembers Alex saying about this place and about a bunch of random science concepts she's been trying to draw back out of her brain, in addition to the prayers and the not-panicking and the things Wishbone has said and the doodles that she drew when she got bored.)

OK. Am I coming out or is he coming here?

You can come on out.

Oh. OK.

She doesn't know that she looks super presentable, after two weeks of no showers, but she redoes the bun in her hair and gathers her notes into a pile so that the study doesn't look like a crazy person's been living here, and she tentatively attempts to open the door.

There are Quendi to escort her out to a courtyard. And there is Alex, looking exhausted, and a human she doesn't recognize, and Spike and Drusilla, and a lot more Quendi.

Karen.

So for the record I didn't mean to come here, we were just gonna do a spell to get you back, except it didn't work and it dragged us here and now I have no idea how to get any of us home and I guess as rescue missions go I would classify this one as not super successful.

- I'm really glad you're like alive and stuff.

I really wish you weren't here. He does not hug her like he feels that way.

Hugs hugs hugs. She's so glad he's alive and so glad she's not alone.

Yeah. Sorry about that.

I'm OK, though, apart from the being stuck here.

's good. We're okay too. Made it out. Spike's - friendly, turns out, when he'll obviously die if he annoys you.

Huh.

Well. Weirder things've happened.

Hug hug hug hug. Are there prospects of getting you out of here?

Very enthusiastic hug.

Not so far. Michael and the others don't seem to have been dragged through, so I'm sure they're trying things on the other side, but obviously no dice so far. Wishbone knows about some portal spells but he doesn't have the materials he'd need and he doesn't remember the specifics of how to do any of them anyway.

I'm sorry.

It's that bad here?

It's real bad here.

Hug.

I'm sorry. I'll keep asking. Maybe Wishbone'll remember more at some point. I've remembered lots of stuff I didn't know I knew while talking about cellular biology and subatomic particles and stuff, so - who knows.

It won't really get that bad in your lifetime anyway, but - yeah. Keep trying.

There also might be no way to tell for sure from here whether there is a 'back'. If this is really the past - and it might not be, it might be, I dunno, a different universe that's like ours but running behind - then, uh, we might've already messed things up enough to rewrite the timeline such that - I mean it might all be fine but I'm not actually a hundred percent certain that the world we came from actually exists anymore.

- Sorry. I can be more cheery if you think that'll help more.

That occurred to me too but it makes a lot less sense if you came through hours after we did, why wouldn't things have changed immediately? 

Yeah, we empirically didn't all immediately cease to exist. I don't really know how time travel works in real life, though.

Maybe the others'll get us back.

I'm not going back. If they know where I went by now they'll figure that out. I do hope they get you though.

Ah. Gotta fix things?

This is - uh, to the extent I have a destiny it's to be here.

To die here pointlessly, but, like, I can't leave.

Ah.

Well, if that's how it is.

Any idea what you're gonna do right now?

I'm going to hug you until you make me stop.

'S gonna be a while then.

So. Feel OK about telling me anything about what's going on? I kinda spent the last two weeks in a room by myself mostly answering science questions. I have basically no idea what anything is.

This is - this is the world as it was a very long time ago. I was assuming we'd travelled in time, but now I'm not sure because it wouldn't have made sense for you to make it too. Matt - Maedhros -- he's my brother too, I have six brothers, we weren't advertising it back in your timeline because it didn't seem useful for everyone to know - Matt explained the war at one point?

Vaguely. Or maybe clearly and I just don't remember. I remember that the Quendi were on Earth and then - Melkor? - showed up and something about a race of captive people and lots of torture and he was stopped once and then he was released and something about a king dying and a bunch of terrible things happening on Earth and then a bunch of you coming back here to fight him.

- I didn't really have my notebook at the time, most of the things you've told me I remember way better than this.

Melkor, yes. He's the Vala of - evil and suffering and imprisonment and power. He killed the King in Valinor and came here and tried to take over the continent and we came here and stopped him. The war lasted another four hundred fifty years, last time, but in the end we lose badly and almost everyone on the continent dies and then the Valar come and sink it entirely.

Ah. Fun.

I don't - think it'll go much better, the fundamental problem was that he was much, much more powerful than us, but I can't just leave them to it.

Yeah.

Don't suppose Wishbone has any spells to slay gods.

I'm sure that comes up all the time.

I guess not. It's a big multiverse, though, I dunno.

There might be something less dramatic than that that'd be helpful too.

Yeah. I'll ask him what all he knows how to do.

And who knows, maybe you can nuke him.

Yeah, I'm sure a C minus in high school chemistry is gonna get us that far up the tech tree in no time.

Ryan knows his stuff. - Ryan's the human who came through with me.

Oh, cool. I mean it'll be kind of vaguely concerning if you can take people from swords to nukes in a reasonable amount of time on one random guy's chemistry knowledge, but - cool.

I mean, we have four hundred years. Probably.

Yeah. I guess you do.

It was - it was okay for most of the interim. We kept people safe, most of the fighting was up north around Angband.

Yeah. 'S just - vaguely depressing that I'm never gonna see anyone else I know ever again, I guess. I don't know if that's really sunk in yet.

Mmmhmm. Hug.

Wonder if Azalea's gonna be mad at everyone.

I bet. I'm so sorry.

'S not your fault. And I still have you and Wishbone, that's something.

And Spike! And Drusilla! ...I'm not helping, am I.

She laughs, weakly. 

Think you can convince them to move me to a room that has - I dunno, maybe a bed? I'm a fan of beds.

Yeah, of course. They should've - but they're scared we're a present from Melkor, aren't they. Ugh. I'll talk to them.

Thanks. - not that I'm complaining, they gave me lots of paper and ink and they haven't been rude or anything. It was kind of disorienting to be dropped here and immediately be greeted by the other you holding a sword to my throat, but like, I guess if random people started materializing in my room this would probably be pretty alarming for me, too.

Yeah that's probably what I'd do if an interdimensional stranger showed up in my bedroom. Sorry, though.

'S cool. No real harm done on that front.

I'll tell them to set you up somewhere nice. Once I've convinced Maedhros that I'm useful enough in the worlds where I'm not a trick of the Enemy that he should keep me around.

All right.

I... guess I'll help Wishbone wrack his brain for spells and other useful info. Maybe see if I can dredge up any other scientific knowledge out of the forgotten corners of mine. Not super sure what else there is for me to do here, besides be a source of infinite hugs. Which is doubtless a very important function.

It sucks, but yeah, you shouldn't do too much probably. Riding horses into battle is a bad use of you and if you were captured it'd be pretty disastrous - same goes for me, there. Maybe I'll do diplomacy.

It's whatever. I was planning to be useless forever anyway before I got hit in the face with the magical destiny. I'll live with it.

Everyone here has been useless their entire long immortal lives, that's - what life is for actually when everything isn't horrible.

I guess. I've never been to a world that wasn't broken, so I guess it makes sense that I'm - shaped the way you end up shaped when everything's broken all the time.

Well, I wish we'd landed here a couple centuries ago but - we didn't.

Yeah.

You really are gonna have to be the one to stop this hug if you want it to end before dinnertime.

Why would I want that?

Eee. Then this hug will go on for a long time.

Really really glad you made it here. Partly because I don't actually want anything to happen to you and partly because I'm selfishly really glad to not be - I mean I had Wishbone, but - I missed you. A lot.

I wish you weren't here but if you're gonna be stuck here I'm glad I'm here too. 

Eventually Karen makes up for all the hugs she's needed and hasn't gotten, and a while after that she gets hungry and bored and ends the excessively long hug.

"OK. So. Any idea what you're gonna do now."

"Get you settled in somewhere nicer, get the other people settled in, talk to my sorta-brothers, I guess. I can bounce things if you want to talk with Wishbone about whether there's magic that'll be helpful."

"It'd be convenient. We have a system where he points to letters on a sheet of paper and I write them down and then I can see what he said, but it's a little slow. We might not be able to come up with anything super useful without knowing what you guys need, though."

"Teleportation would be super useful, magical concealment would be useful, anything relevant to building infrastructure or growing food faster or magically shielding locations or people from attack, obviously anything useful for killing gods..."

She squats down beside him. "Well, boy? Got anything?"

There is. Uh.

There is technically a spell to kill moderately powerful gods that we might theoretically be able to cast under these conditions.

I won't tell you unless you swear not to, uh - to tell anyone about it or cast it or make any attempt to gather materials in preparation for casting it without Karen's permission.

I do think it might work.

I - really can't do that, if there's a way to get the Silmarils and Karen won't give permission then I'll just get shredded. If you want you can tell me it and lie about one of the ingredients.

I - augh. I think I prefer that to anyone doing it if she says no.

We shouldn't be discussing this here. Get us a room and I'll tell Karen and Karen can determine what to tell you.

" - sure, okay."

Karen's new room is much improved over her old one; for example, it has a window and a fireplace and bookshelves. (They don't contain books).

"Ooh. Neat."

- if I know a thing that might help you get the Silmarils - are there live Silmarils in this time period? - are you gonna have to - what is that gonna require you to do? Because this is kind of really stressful and the last time I had relevant information on this front it didn't go so well.

There are probably Silmarils in Angband. I - it depends on a bunch of stuff. If it's time-sensitive, like, the only way to stop Melkor is to do something in particular in the next week, then telling us is going to make things messy because we don't have that much latitude to explore alternatives. I told Wishbone he should fail to mention one ingredient or something. If it's not time-sensitive, then I don't think the oath complicates the situation any, we're not restricted from really thoroughly checking our options unless they're about to run out.

...OK.

Wishbone paces irritably.

All right. You know what? This is how it's gonna be. I'm going to tell both of you, and then you'll know why I really really really don't want to be dealing with this, and if at any point anyone EVER hurts Karen in ANY way because of this information, without her permission, under circumstances that could be reasonably considered your fault, at all, ever, then I won't tell you how to complete the ritual, ever, out of spite, and if that means that you can't slay your hellgod and that means that this entire continent turns into a hell on earth then I WON'T CARE.

Okay.

OK.

He jumps onto the bed and snuggles Karen.

There is a ritual that I believe I remember how to perform. It can be used to seal a god inside a human infant on the day of the infant's birth. Once the god has been sealed away, killing the infant will kill the trapped god.

But we don't have a -

- oh.

Wow.

- has to be human?

Yes.

Whimper.

Karen pets him.

"What's going to happen?" asks Karen, very quietly. "If you guys don't stop Melkor."

I mean - the thing that happened last time, probably. There'll be four hundred fifty years of skirmishes with a couple really big battles which we'll mostly win, and then he'll have built up his power enough to take the continent, and he'll kill everyone within a couple hundred miles of Angband with a volcanic eruption except I guess we'll know about that and can make sure most of them get out, and then he'll destroy all the cities one by one, and then overrun the continent with enslaved orcs, and then the Valar will come and sink it and stop him.

What's an orc?

So, Melkor can't create actually conscious life himself - only Eru can do that - but what he could do was forcibly breed Elves, and if you torture Elves all the time from when they're conceived for several generations you get something else. They're - ugly and don't have osanwë and they hate Elves and hate beautiful things, because that's how he wanted them, and when they're little they all swear to serve him forever and hate Elves forever - so they're stuck, see. There are millions of them. He sends them out to fight sometimes, if he wants a fight or if there're just more in Angband than he wants to have there. They breed really quickly, starting when they're still babies by Elf standards.

Ah.

So - so I can do it. I don't want to, but I can, you know, if I decide to. But I think - I think if I decide to, then - there are things that aren't OK to do, not ever, no matter why you're doing them, and - the things that'd have to happen to make this happen are in that category. And - 

- if I decide to do it then I think it'll be wrong, but I don't think I'll ever regret it, if I did it to - to help people? And if I don't regret it then I'll never repent of it, and then I won't get to - then I won't be absolved of it. Not ever.

You don't - uh, there might be other humans in the world. I know there will be in a couple hundred years and I don't know when they start but they might've started by now already, and I know approximately where we'd have to go to look for them. We can - 

- do this to someone else.