The wind whipped Willow’s face. She leaned towards the open side door of the helicopter. No roads led to their destination.

“Arrival in five minutes.” The helicopter crew member shouted to be heard over the wind. With Willow’s and Xavier’s stats, it was completely unnecessary, and Rose had a headset on.

“Would’ve been faster just to run here.” She half shouted.

The footprint of the base was minuscule enough that a regular human wouldn’t be able to see it from this distance. To an Awakened’s perception, the disturbed sand was obvious, even from this distance. The entrance was little more than a building big enough to house a service elevator. Light from the sunset painted the world in rich strokes of purple shadow.

“The base’s location is a well-guarded secret!” The crew member replied sarcastically, as if an entire guild of Awakened couldn’t find a way back here if they wanted. “We’ve been told to debrief you now to save time on landing. We had a research base — went dark almost a week ago. Days passed in earth time, no distress signal until it cut off entirely.”

“Days in real time?” Xavier leaned forward, concern on his face. Like Willow, he had no headset on. Makiel clung to his arm, wrapping his tentacles around it and leaning to stare out the open door. “So how much time passed inside? A month?”

The crew member tabbed through his laptop screen.

“Says here… approximately five months.”

“1 to 30…” Willow whistled.

“What?” Rose asked. “I’m not following.”

“These blacksite gates function with time dilation. Last I heard they’d gotten Gate Key’s to worlds with as much as 1:3 time dilation — 1 day passes out here, 3 in there.” Xavier said.

“But this is 10 times that…” Willow said. “How long has the government had access to these?”

“In earth time?” The crew member said. “No, seriously though. I don’t even know. Outside of my classification, probably.”

“When did they achieve 1:3?” Rose asked.

“That was… 3 years ago?” Xavier said.

“What’s the environment inside? Better not be an arctic research base again.” Willow said.

“Temperate forest biome, standard atmosphere. Water and atmosphere are clean and healthy. Stable, non-resetting gate. No known world boss.” The crew member read off the computer.

“If its such a stable gate… why do you need a whole guild to clear it?” Xavier asked.

“This is a dual mission. Search and rescue, as well as clearing out any fauna that’s moved in, in the last few months. Thing is, there’s nothing inside that should have wiped out the research base. Not even a lot of aggressive fauna.”

“That can’t be the whole story.” Xavier said. “There’s someone important? VIP inside.”

“The names and backgrounds of all personnel who were on site are redacted.”

The three of them shared a conversation through facial expressions. There was more going on here, and they were hiding it. They would find out soon enough.

“No aggressive fauna, my entire ass!” Willow shouted, sprinting through a forest of trees that showed iridescent sheen when the wind and sun made their way over them. The earth was dry — it was summer here, and the sun probably hung high in the sky. A few hundred feet ahead of her, the forest abruptly ended in a cliff.

Makiel blotted out the sky, expanding to his true size. A beam of mana fell from the colossal summon, raining down behind Willow. She felt the heat blow over her back; the world erupted in crackling noise as trees caught fire. For a moment, purple light bathed the world, and then it was over.

The world shaking thumping behind her didn’t stop. Neither did Willow as she approached the end of the horizon. A great hole opened in the world, the size of the Grand Canyon, and when she stepped towards the edge, a golden shield appeared below her. She jumped across them one at a time, moving hundreds of feet over the void, each disappearing behind her, until she stopped, hovering in midair. The distance between her and the ground made her queasy, even if she knew falling a few hundred feet wouldn’t kill her.

She didn’t have to wait for the monster following her to exit the forest to see it. It towered over the trees, stomping on six legs and smoothing its gait with the motion of four tremendous wings that cast shadows over the forest. It had no face, no eyes or mouth, just brown fur that covered every inch of its body.

Despite lacking any visible mouth and being, for the most part, on fire, it could still somehow scream, and its voice reached a fever pitch as it tore through the forest and over the edge. Uprooted trees and earth poured over the edge of the cliff like a landslide. The monster stamped its feet and flapped its wings to slow its charge, and, after failing at that, flapped them to slow its descent.

It landed with a sickening crunch and splat hundreds of feet below. Blood leaked from it in a quantity so vast it was visible from where Willow stood, sliding down the open canyon into the winding rivers below. With the monster dead, the forest near Willow was calm.

The creature represented a rank that would normally be immune to death from such a relatively minor fall. Its prodigious size granted the fall much more lethality, instead. Still, it writhed where it landed on the ground, trying and failing to rise to its stumpy legs.

A shadowy portal appeared beside her, a gaping hole in the air surrounded by spiraling black shadows that poured around the edges like smoke from a burning hole in the world.

“That was the last one.” Rose said, speaking from the other side.

With a grunt of acknowledgment, Willow hopped through. She paused for a second on the other side, catching herself as she nearly fell over. She took a second to wait for the dizziness to pass.

“All done. Three monsters lured off a cliff! How’s your end?” Willow said at last, standing up straight. They were closer to the entrance of the gate, standing in a man made clearing. Equipment sat out in the open — a large radar dome, beside an array of raised solar panels. Xavier stood by the entrance, staring at the locked bunker door as if willing it to open. His eyes shone blue — literally. Pale blue light lent an eery vibe to his face.

“There’s something blocking the door… I’m trying to get Shadow to remove it. The manual override for opening the bunker isn’t working.”

Makiel hovered far above, staring down. His eye twitched, tracking the movement of various monsters in the forest. He cast the entire area in a light shadow, which made the forest even more liminal under the flickering lights affixed to the solar panel installation. The bunker entrance looked like the entrance to a basement; a diagonal double door slanted downwards through thick concrete, concealing what lied below.

“Here.” Willow said, walking up to the door.

“It could be dangerous if there are survivors.” Xavier said.

“There are no survivors.”

Willow’s fingers dug into the metal of the door. It creaked as she gripped, grunting, and then pulled. There was a screeching noise as the metal tore apart, and Willow ripped one of the two doors free. The other was more easily liberated. Shadow bubbled up from inside, a summon that was more liquid than solid. It was a black iridescent puddle that swam around the barricade blocking the door like it wasn’t even there. It pooled at Willow’s feet until two eyes bubbled to the surface of it, looking up at her curiously.

“Move aside, buddy.” She said, and Shadow parted, repooling behind her. She kicked the barricade aside, sending piled equipment and tables sliding across the floor. “Well, it looks like no one made it out of here alive.”

Two golden shields materialized at either side of Willow as she made her way into the facility, moving slowly and observing the room one piece at a time. This outer lobby was a dining and entertainment room. Cupboards along the wall held hundreds of DVDs, books, and magazines. Cheap furniture sat in front of televisions with accompanying headphones. Through an adjacent doorway, Willow could see an espresso machine and refrigerator.

The walls only featured speakers and a clock, otherwise bare. The lights still worked, strong and steady, and the room hadn’t been unoccupied long enough for the dust to settle down. Ventilation hummed steadily overhead, a constant rattling buzz.

Besides the scattered remnants of the makeshift barricade blocking the door, the only thing that showed anything was wrong was the body on the floor. And partially splattered across the wall. And the smell.

Rose and Xavier entered the room.

“What the hell killed him?” Rose asked, stepping forward to assess what remained of the body. It looked like a bomb had gone off on its chest, scattering it, but the floor and wall were undamaged.

“Don’t touch him.” Xavier said, causing Rose to stop. “We don’t have any idea what they were up to here.” His eyes scanned the body, and he stepped around it, looking at it carefully.

“Well?” Rose asked.

“Nothing. Not even a trace of mana.”

“Couldn’t have been a bomb, right?” Willow asked, stepping over. She summoned her spear to her hand with a flash of golden light. The two shields at her flank lined up to the front of her, floating between her and the path downstairs.

“Doesn’t look like it.” Xavier said, standing.

Rose frowned, looking at Willow’s shields. “I thought you said you sensed nothing alive in the facilities?”

“I didn’t.” Willow replied, stepping down the darkened stairs that led to the unknown depths of the complex.