Balaur helped us take proper care of our fallen comrades. We found plenty of cloth in the nearby buildings to wrap the bodies in. The Solomonari were awfully fond of drapery. Balaur grew a couple of leshies from the remains of Adormitzeu that helped shift the rubble away.

Xiphos, Stiletto, and Pike. All three had fallen in our mission. We’d succeeded, but at great cost. Kaiser came up beside me, and I put my hand on his back.

[Can we go home and see the Lorelei and Seth again?] Kaiser asked.

[Soon, buddy.]

[You and the bitch made good puppies.]

[Dude! You can’t just call my ex-wife a bitch!]

[Hmph.] Kaiser groaned audibly into my mind. [I guess she takes care of them while we save the world. She’s not so bad.]

[No, she isn’t. You know, sometimes that’s just the way it is. You love someone, you make great memories, and then one day you start to drift apart. Suddenly you’re different people than you were when you met, and you have to go down a different path so you can both make great new memories.]

[Yes. Except you cannot do that to me. You’re stuck with me until I am old and grey, and my eyes fog and my teeth rot and you must chew my food for me.]

[You’ll get canned mush if your teeth fall out. You need to let me brush your teeth more often.]

Kaiser sneezed dramatically.

[Unless the universe gets rebooted first,] I thought to him. [Then none of us are going to see old age.]

[That will not happen. We’ll make sure of it.]

I rubbed my hand through Kaiser’s thick black coat. [You’re God-damned right, buddy.]

Naginata received her blessing from Balaur before we headed back to the surface. Her blessing was different than my own. Where I had claws of the dragon, she was blessed with the eyes of the dragon.

Naginata activated her ability, which turned her eyes a striking green. She looked me over, and then Kaiser.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“The nature of your anima. Yours is green, Hatchet. Kaiser is purple.”

Balaur smiled at that comment. “Excellent. My blessing is working as intended. Now, we have one final matter to discuss before you depart these lands. Come, sit with me.”

The old dragon held one hand aloft and summoned seats from the cobblestones of the town square. The stone and earth rose at his command, and we sat. Our comrades lay in a row, bound in drapery with balaran vines, just behind us.

“When I was merely an observer of your universe, I could see very widely the shape of things. You no doubt know of my history with Sare’zmei now, and the founding of the Balaran Knights. Previously, I bestowed this power onto champions of healing and mending that I felt could bring the people of the universe back together.” Balaur took a moment then as though searching through his thoughts. “Our conflict had never touched this galaxy until your planet was chosen to be Sare’zmei’s prison. The Architects that Bastard referred to earlier, they exist. They are the ones who decided to imprison Sare’zmei here, on Earth.”

“What the hell are they?” I asked.

“There is a grand design to your universe. One that I am too small and unimportant to see. But the Architects allowed me entrance into your universe to fix a problem they could not. To oppose Sare’zmei and quarantine him from the rest of your reality. If your universe is to be ended and reborn, then they are the ones who will make that choice. I now walk amongst you as a citizen of your universe and have no desire to allow things to end.”

“Our entire planet was meant to be a RAZ,” I said with a laugh.

“What’s a RAZ?” Naginata asked.

“EDGE Force term. Reality Annexed Zone. Somehow they can lock off a section of reality to stop people from entering it. It’s like a field that repels everyone and obscures that location’s existence. Mori Island was a RAZ.”

“That is fortuitous,” Balaur continued. “If EDGE Command has this kind of power, then perhaps we may work together. Ensuring that no-one enters Adormitzeu again will be a step in the right direction. EDGE Command desires to connect with me, after already using my essence to fuel their own designs. I will grant them an audience, but you two shall be the first of my champions.”

“You must grant us the freedom of autonomy,” I said. “I have a family. They’re the whole reason I fight. I have responsibilities there that I can’t ignore.”

“So do I,” Naginata said. “I don’t have my own children, but my parents… they need me, and I have been gone so long.”

“Of course. I do not consider you indentured servants or puppets to my will. I am not Sare’zmei. The hour fast approaches when this universe is destined to end, and we have much to do to prepare. I fear that what has been done here may not be undone, and things may diverge from what I have foreseen.”

“How so?”

“Sare’zmei commanded empires across the cosmos. He still has loyal followers out there amongst the stars, and until now, his location has been a secret. I fear these events may be my fault.”

“How it is your fault?” Naginata asked.

“If I had remained outside the flow of time, my network here in the mountains would not exist. The locks to Sare’zmei’s prison may not have been as strong as they are, but they would have not existed for him to corrupt and circumvent either.” Balaur shook his head. “I could not have foreseen the consequences.”

“We still have time,” I said. “You can absorb and convert aligned anima to unaligned anima, right?”

Balaur nodded.

“Then all is not lost. If those energy waves you saw in your vision moments before time stops were anima waves, then maybe there’s something you can do about them.”

“Yes, perhaps there is. Though our time is running short,” Balaur said.

“Luckily EDGE Force has resources and a will to oppose this fate. To that end, Kaiser, Naginata and I need to get topside and reconnoitre with EDGE Force. Once we deliver our dead, we’ll debrief with EDGE Command, and then we’ll set up a meeting.”

Balaur smiled. “Tell them I will be waiting for them at their facility under the ski resort.”

Kaiser nudged me, so I put my hand back on his neck.

[Ask him if I can be a dragon knight too,] Kaiser asked.

“Kaiser wants to know if he can be one of your knights,” I asked with a grin.

“Your mother would not be very happy if I claimed you as my own,” Balaur said with a warm chuckle. “I believe Altrighus still has a part to play in this before the end of all things.”

Kaiser whined, but his tail wagged. [He’s probably right, but I was hoping I’d get to breathe fire or something.]

[He’s not that kind of dragon,] I thought back.

Kaiser snorted derisively. [Who ever heard of a dragon who heals things? They’re supposed to hoard gold and breathe fire. What a lame dragon.]

[I can hear you,] came Balaur’s voice into my mind.

Kaiser must have been able to hear it too, because his tail stopped wagging at once. He cast his eyes down at the ground, then walked slowly over to Balaur with his tail held between his legs.

To my surprise, the giant black warg plopped over on his side like a puppy and offered his underbelly in a show of supplication. Balaur chuckled at this and knelt. He rubbed Kaiser’s belly, which sent Kaiser’s tail into a violent slap slap slap against the cobblestones.

“You have no need to be sorry,” Balaur said. “You would make a fine knight, but like Bastard, you have another fate in store. I am sure of it.”

Kaiser used his newfound size to help us take our fallen back to the surface. We bound the bodies to Kaiser’s back using balaran vines, which seemed to secure themselves together with their own force of will. We found the mirror that Bastard mentioned, and it was exactly where he said it would be.

We stood in front of the mirror, which looked in every way like a normal mirror should. It was our reflections that looked different. Our features were blurred, and our outlines indistinct. Almost as though Kaiser, Naginata and I were spirits trespassing in the mortal plane.

“So who’s going first?” I asked.

Kaiser snorted, then headed straight through the mirror without any hesitation. The surface rippled as he passed through it like liquid silver. The moment he passed through, it returned to its perfectly flat state.

“Ladies second?” I asked.

Naginata headed through, and I followed soon after.

Walking through the mirror was like walking through a doorway, except here the room beyond opened into the cold morning air of the Carpathians. Snow-capped peaks stretched out ahead of us through the window, utterly indifferent to the conflict that had raged beneath the roots of this mountain only hours before.

We followed Kaiser through this old castle and headed towards the roar of helicopter rotors. This castle was completely deserted, although there were signs that it had recently been used as a tourist destination. It was one of the fanciest bed and breakfasts I’d ever seen.

Someone in EDGE Force gear rounded a corner. In their terror at the sight of my harbinger of doom, they pulled a gun on Kaiser.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said. “We’re EDGE Force, and that’s my partner!”

“Hatchet?” the other EDGE asked. He had a sword in a scabbard hanging from his hip, so I mentally started calling him Swordy McSwordface.

I’d never seen him before, but he obviously knew who I was.

“That’s me. Although I might need a new callsign after all this is said and done,” I said.

“Where’s Xiphos?” asked Swordy.

I pointed at the body bags strapped to Kaiser. “That’s Xiphos, Stiletto and Pike. We suffered heavy losses, but we’ve brought them back for proper burial.”

Swordy’s face went white. “Oh, wow, okay. That’s – wow. Xiphos was a legend.”

“Yes, she was. Right up until the very end,” Naginata said.

“We’ve got a chopper waiting. Follow me and we’ll get you all out of here as quickly as we can,” said Swordy. We followed him through the winding corridors of the castle, and towards the waiting helicopter.

When we arrived, the bodies were stowed, and the rest of us loaded into the helicopter. Kaiser was too big for any of the harnesses, and the other EDGEs sent to collect us didn’t want to get too close.

If I didn’t know that Kaiser was actually just a big fluffy marshmallow, I probably would have stayed away too. They closed the chopper doors, and Kaiser curled up by my feet as we took off, like I would somehow be able to keep him safe.

As the Carpathians stretched out beneath us, I looked over at Naginata who sat opposite from me. The most I could muster was a relieved smile that it was all over, and she offered the same back.

Her eyes flashed green, and a spark of mischievous excitement spread through her smile.

For better or worse, we were both in this together now.