Her tense body slumped over, previously despairing eyes now growing hazy and distant. It was almost as though she had fallen asleep with her eyes open. But her head remained in his hands.

It wasn’t a skill he enjoyed using, but at this moment, he had no choice.

Softly, he spoke the word that would begin the process, “Awaken.”

Her head rose slightly, half-dead eyes still stained with mud and tears rolling to meet his. “Hello,” she said in a monotone voice.

“You are my sister. We need to get home to our brother and parents.” He paused for a second to gather his thoughts. “We… are quite close.”

She blinked once, closed her eyes, and gave a mechanical hum. When she opened her eyes again, they were full of life. “Huh? Kreig? Where is-,” she angled her face to view the eternally red sky. “-Whoa!! How in the-,” And then she must have noticed that Kreig was holding her face. “Uh, dude-?”

He let her go, slightly taken aback by her attitude.

Eyes and mouth wide open in awe, she tried to stand up, only to almost instantly slip on the mud. But before she could fall into the mud for the fifteenth time, Kreig caught her. Ordinarily, if he touched her, she would freeze in fear. Or she might get so shocked she’d tumble out of his grip. This time, she didn’t do anything like that. She just let out a breath and smiled wryly. “Phew, thanks for catching me. Then I won’t have to get all mu-,” Her eyes fell on her completely stained uniform. “H-, hey! How-, when did…”

Then she suddenly groaned and bucked over, clawing at her temples.

“Take it easy,” Kreig said. “Everything will be alright.”

She drew a raspy breath before standing up again and smiling. “Sorry, I just… My head feels kind of weird, you know? Like someone put cola in it, but…” Shaking her head, she seemed to pull herself together, puffing her chest out. “-But I’m okay! I just-, well, got a little shocked, that’s all. This place is…” She craned her neck to watch the sky again. “...This is where you came from, right?” He only nodded at her. “And-, and I brought you here…” Her smile faltered into a regretful frown. “Man, I really-,”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kreig said in a voice he hoped was soothing. “We just have to focus on getting back.”

The smile he gave him was one he hadn’t seen in many, many years. It was, simply enough, grateful. To him. “Thank you. Getting back home might be a little hard, but if it’s the two of us, I’m sure we can get through anything!” Her smile developed into a confident grin and Kreig was assured that he had made the right decision. “Hmm, where to start…” Lost in thought, she began to thumb her lower lip, letting her eyes run over the entire battlefield in search for clues. The only thing she found were a hundred or so newly-slain bodies, alongside a few hundred thousand long-since dead corpses. “A-, aaah! Wh-, wh-, what is-,”

She froze, clutched her hand, and then shook her head. It took a few seconds, but she did regain her smile. “Y-, you had a good reason, right? I mean-, I’m sure they were trying to kill you, s-, so…”

With nothing else to say, Kreig nodded.

“R-, right! Exactly! I mean, it’s not like you wanted to kill them, so, it’s… Self-defence. Yeah, that’s it. Okay.” She took a deep breath, averting her gaze from the nearest corpse. “If we stay here, will more people arrive?” He nodded to her. “O-, okay, that might be a problem, erm… In that case, all we need to do is get out of here, right?”

Kreig supposed so. But where could they go? Going back to Earth had been a flunk the first time. Portals didn’t just open wherever you wanted them to.

“I think our best bet is to try and find the Earth bases that they’ve got here.”

“...Bases?”

She turned to him, her face lighting up in surprise. “You haven’t-? Oh, yeah, nobody told you anything cuz’ they didn’t want you to catch onto this mean scheme. Erm, in order to research this place, they previously sent in a bunch of military people and sorcerous Fighters. With the help of the Fighters they were able to set up these two military bases. If I remember right, they were sent in here like two years ago, so that would mean they’ve been here almost 30 years?”

…Military bases? In here? Somehow, the idea that the forces of Earth would go so far as to set up military bases in another world was not an especially unthinkable one. “And these could help us… How?”

“Oh! Well, that’s…” She shrugged. “I’m not sure. They don’t really have any contact with Earth, but since they’ve been here for so long, isn’t there a chance that they’ve had enough time to research how and why the portals open? If nothing else, we might get a direction on where else to go.”

At the moment, it was their only lead. They really didn’t have anywhere else to go. “Very well then. Where is the closest base?”

“Huh?” she said. “Where?... Oh, um. I dunno. N-, not that anybody knows, for that matter! People just went in, and… Their reason is mostly research, you know? The only reason we know anything at all about this place is that we sometimes get soldiers who come from the portals, but even in that case, there usually isn’t anyone who knows the geography of the entire world. Some might have a map of the local area, but the whole world? Nuh-uh.”

In other words, they would have to find the base on their own. Just two Earthlings trying to comb an entire world. This might have been possible if it wasn’t for the fact that Sam was mortal and would age as any normal person did. Kreig could imagine scanning the world for a hundred years or so, but by that point, Sam would’ve died by natural causes.

“In other words, we’ve gotta go and ask people if they’ve seen anything weird.”

“...Ask?”

“Well, yeah! These are otherworldly military bases we’re talking about, right? Somebody’s gotta have heard about them! Maybe not a peasant farmer, but a king or something has to have heard something about some weird sci-fi looking military base, right? Heck, if we’re lucky, we might even hear that a kingdom has formed an alliance with the base! After all, we’re not here to fight or anything.”

It was a logical course of action. “Then, how could we convince them to aid us?”

At the moment, Kreig was pretty sure most countries at least had a sense of what he was. He’d seen soldiers of all possible nationalities coming for his head, so they must at least know what he looks like. That would mean that the most effective way is to use this to their advantage by threatening them with the death of them and their entire countries should they not give them the information they wanted. Quick and easy, and if they didn’t know anything, he could just make an example out of them.

Sam looked him up and down. For some reason, going by her facial expression, it almost seemed as though she could read his morbid thoughts. “W-, well, we don’t want to harm anyone, so our best bet is to pretend not to be… You and me.” She glanced at one of the corpses on the ground, and despite the obvious aversion on her face, there was a light of innovation in her eyes. “You don’t happen to know where these soldiers came from?”

He hadn’t actually thought about that before. He hadn’t recognized the language, but he did understand that it was one he had at least heard of before.

Crouching down, he picked up a decapitated corpse. The uniform was simple and dark blue, made mostly of cloth. Gloves and boots were made of leather, likely from some low-class monster. If he looked about the battlefield, he could find an officer wearing a fancier outfit, alongside under armour of strong leather. Considering that all of these were rather sturdy, they probably came from a northern country.

Kreig was never the type to learn much of anything about other countries, but he did take the time to remember what uniforms they wore. You know, to make sure he didn’t kill his own soldiers.

“Pawinia,” he said after a few seconds of consideration.

“Paw-what-now?” Sam answered intellectually.

Kreig nodded. “A northern country. Not as high up as here, though close. Its borders begin right where this northern area ends, though the capital is quite far.”

“Hmmm…” Sam rubbed her chin. “D’ya think it’s viable? Like-, could the two of us get there?”

“I believe so, yes.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “Alright then! I gots me a great idea of how we can do this. If everything goes okay, we can enter that Paw-place like heroes!” Despite having no idea what the hell she was on about, Kreig couldn’t help but feel just a little excited as well. “Now, all we need is a pair of uniforms and your helmet.”

“My helmet?”

“Well, yeah!” She beamed at him. “We need proof that you got slain, right?”

For a moment, he almost asked her if he looked dead to her. But then he got her drift. “Ah. I see.”

“Hehehe, that’s right!” Grinning like a lunatic, she approached one of the dead officers. Her smile faltered a little, but after steeling her spirits, she was able to loot him of his outfit. “I’ll be the proud officer, and you’ll be the dashing soldier who finally brought the monster down, okay?” He could do nothing but agree. “Alright! Shame there’s no not-muddy outfit, but it’s at least a little less muddy than what I’m wearing now…”

Turning his back on his undressing sister, Kreig wandered about the battlefield, searching desperately for any outfit that might fit him.

Not that he wanted to take off his armour. Unlike Earth, this world could certainly hold creatures of his own rank. Willingly weakening himself, even if it was for the sake of his returning home, felt wrong.

How lucky he was, then, that he could find no outfit that fitted him. The largest guy there had still been more than a head below Kreig, and his outfit had been soundly torn apart in the battle.

Only slightly dejected, he turned back to find his sister dressed in an officer’s outfit that fit surprisingly well. She hadn’t been able to affix it perfectly since she was unfamiliar with the clothes, but Kreig could easily help with that.

“Let me guess, none fit you? Darn it, I should have expected that… Well, assuming we find our way into inhabited regions, it wouldn’t be too strange if we could find ourselves a tailor, right? There was a pouch of coins in the inner pocket of this thing, alongside a love letter and a harmonica, so we should be fine for a little while. I think.”

Not replaying, he stepped closer to her. The old Sam might have stepped back or jerked away from him, but she only watched him curiously. Reaching to her lapel, he adjusted it until it was proper and neat.

She smiled at him. “Thanks!” Everything felt right, for once. “Now, which way to that paw-place?”

After a few seconds of thinking, Kreig pointed to the east. No other words needed to be shared. They began walking.

Considering all the mud, Kreig would certainly have liked to fly them where they were going, but if anyone saw them, their plan would’ve been a bust.

Walking side-by-side wasn’t so bad, either. It gave them plenty of time to talk about this-or-that, and it was honestly quite pleasant. Although Kreig didn’t say much, Sam seemed to find the prospect of actually being in the otherworld to be a cool one. After all, it was supposed to be some sort of awesome fantasy world, right? She had read plenty about it in her classes, but actually being there was something else entirely.

On that note, why was the sky red? Where was the sun?

When Kreig told her that it was actually nine in the evening, Sam blanched. This was understandable, but still pretty interesting to see.

And soon, the temperature grew colder. Sam seemed positively surprised by the change, especially so when they fully exited God’s Light and entered Pawinian territory. Sam might have expected greenery and life or something like that, but what she was instead met with was a vast expanse of white snow. It was the far-north, after all, but going from the pleasant warmth into pure wintertime was harsh. Even worse, it was the middle of the night, so it was even colder than otherwise.

Combined with their mud-drenched clothes, Sam was on the brink of freezing to death within a minute. But Kreig couldn’t have that.

Fire Dragon's Heart (X)

“Huh? Wh-, whoa, it’s warm!”

With that blessing, anywhere she stepped melted. Furthermore, her clothes dried. This might be seen as a good thing, but it really wasn’t since it just caked the mud into her clothes, making them no less uncomfortable. Kreig didn’t really mind it. He enjoyed the black sky and bright stars far more than he did that ever-red sky.

Walking by Sam’s side, it was even more pleasant.