Holy hellfire! Vortex’s group catches the attention of us esteemed casters again with that spectacle!

We’re a little far away from tornado valley, aren’t we?

She brings it with her wherever she goes, it seems. Although, it looks like they’re in a bit of a tight spot.

A platoon of soldiers have begun establishing a perimeter around the maelstrom before us.

And the nearby teams have elected to let them! Smart?

Or ruthless?

Or- Oh! Look at that! They’re off.

A bit worrisome, that trajectory. Did that move save them or make their situation worse? We could be looking at shattered bones.

--

There was a few seconds where Lyssa couldn’t breathe. The sheer force of the wind, like a solid sheet of energy, yanked her into the sky like a ragdoll. Her eyes watered. The acidic tinge of burning rock clawed at the entrance of her nostrils, eventually clearing as they flew. She opened her eyes.

Vortex sat at the eye of her own storm, teeth grit in the fervor of concentration, immersed in the mental calculus it took to manipulate herself and multiple people of different sizes and shape in the air. Ironhog was flailing about in a panic, shouting something about vertigo.

“Goddamn it, David,” Vortex uttered.

“I got my own landing covered,” Burnout said. “Focus on the big lummox.” He aimed his hands and feet downward and shot jets of hot flame.

His figure shot above them. Seeing him do so established relativity; it reminded Lyssa to turn her head and look down. They were falling at terminal velocity towards a blue hole in the ground. She was beginning to see the tops of trees with definition.

“Don’t. Move. Ironhog,” Vortex said, swirling her wind beneath his back.

“D-Don’t worry about me! Watch her!”

Vortex turned her head towards Lyssa.

“Shit. Lyssa!”

The trees looked like the spikes of a trap. In that very moment, Lyssa knew no greater fear. She screamed. Then she escaped. The world through her eyes warped like the view of a fisheye lens. She floated, incorporeal, numb, on a green-blue marble reflecting the ever-expanding ground beneath her. Dying became her only thought. Then it became her second. Her senses left her volition as she came to a jarring stop on wet earth.

Her eyes opened to one eyeful of green grass still slick with dew, and the other on dark blue sky, but not the one which canopied the real world. This one swirled and spun like a slurry of oil and thick color, a smeared pointillist heaven.

She sprang to her feet and looked about herself for anything broken. She saw a body made of dotted pale and pink, blending into the dark colors of her clothes. She flexed her fingers, and watched them leave dotted trails of color before reforming where she had stopped. Each motion was languid, like a stalling computer game.

“What on earth…”

--

A wave of water splashed further onto the shore of the pond than usual, motivated by the mass that suddenly fell into it like an overlarge stone.

Ironhog sank all the way to the bottom with enough momentum left to displace mud and stone. He fumbled about for a moment before finding his footing and walked on the floor back up to the surface.

“I’m okay,” he said as he cleaned his ears with a finger. “Did you catch Lyssa? Vortex? Oh…”

The others were already ashore, staring. He followed their gaze above the circular region of flattened trees. A figure hovered there, fists clenched, teeth bared, familiar yet wholly strange at the same time. It was hard to see her face behind the streams of light that covered her entire form.

“Lyssa?” Vortex said. “Please come down from there.”

“You nearly dropped me,” Lyssa replied. The voice sounded off, each syllable left a wake of echoes, as though a set of siblings decided to say the same lines one after the other.

“I’m sorry,” Vortex said. “I’ve never done something like that be-”

“I should love you. You’ve no idea what it’s like. Stuck in potential, in non-existence, to then wake with thoughts and memories already there.” Lyssa took a deep breath. “Ah this is liberating! It’s hard to retrospect on that which never had been yet.”

“What?” Burnout said.

“What was it like before you were born?”

“Uh…”

“I know what that’s like, to a degree. But I can’t describe it. The human language lacks the words.”

“Just come down from there,” Vortex said.

Lyssa lowered, but she maintained a foot above the ground.

“Lyssa, you- you could do this the whole time?” Ironhog said.

“I think I am called Eury,” Lyssa said. “And this?” She raised a hand and aimed at a tree. A stream of white light erupted from her palm, wavering like fire but devoid of heat, blasting a nearby tree off its foundations. Its roots tore from the earth and it snapped where it had been struck. “I think this is novel.”

“It’s force projection,” Vortex said. “How many gifts do you have?”

“Just the one,” Lyssa said, tilting her brow at the odd question. She began to hover away. “Come, friends. Don’t we have a destination to make way towards?”

Ecto rose out of the ground, exhausted and out of breath.

“Sorry,” she said between breaths. “I panicked and made myself intangible. Had to move here myself.” She noticed the light, squinting. “Who is that?”

“Best save our questions later,” Vortex said. They continued on their way.

--

Lyssa surmised this was a lucid dream. If she peered hard enough, she could make out glinting in the sky; edges that separated the pieces of the sky-dome like shards of broken glass. The grass by her feet felt cold. Each step was reluctant to let her go. But she felt the compulsion to move. There was a piece of rock—an island—floating in the air. A low-hanging cloud of earth upon which the rooftops of a house could be seen poking past its border. A spire could be seen beneath it, made of brick and stone, or whatever solid meant here in this space.

She stumbled towards the base of the spire. She walked for a long time. Or however time passed here. The island seemed just barely closer. But she was close enough now to see the batch of dead, tangled trees that surrounded the bottom of the spire, the boughs like serpents of dark brown dots. In the distance she heard the fluttering of wings. Lyssa raised her arms apprehensively.

“Here again?”

She whipped around and fell onto the ground.

“What the hell are you?” Lyssa sputtered.

The raven furled its two pairs of wings. It stared at her with pure black eyes. Her eyes. Her face. Her lips. But its toothy smile was far more endowed in the dental respect.

“Such is the nature of dream,” it said. “You scarcely remember most. But this one is ongoing. Is life the dream and this the reality?”

“I’m not fond of this awfully German fairy tale.” Lyssa picked herself up and continued her way to the spire. “I have to win.”

“Yes. Winning is ever so important here.”

Lyssa stopped. “Here?”

The creature extended a wing, pointing. Lyssa followed the direction and saw another young woman, stumbling between the thicket and dead trees. Someone who looked identical to her. She was not the only doppelganger. The forest was full of the sounds of rustling of branches and footsteps. She saw two more of herself in other directions, all making their way to one destination.

“What is this?” Lyssa said. She turned to the bird. “Answer me!”

“Synthesis. Natural selection. Good luck!” It flapped its four wings and set out deeper into the wood, towards the base of the spire.