Page 41 of Butterfly Effects

Thomas was five or so feet ahead of Sam and me, throwing literal fistfuls of fire at anything that moved. Neither of us was being particularly careful about the risk of burning the forest down. Honestly, while ecological destruction is never a good thing, I was less concerned about starting an inferno than I was about being caught by the people we could hear pursuing us into the green.

Then one of them screamed, high and agonized, and the yelling changed qualities, going from the loud, boastful shouts of people who were certain they were going to win to the terrified shrieks of people who had just been reminded that some things were larger than they were. I looked down at the muddy ground as I ran, reminded of how many things that live in mud and hunt when disturbed can be slow to rouse. We were setting off every trap this forest had to offer, and as long as we didn’t slow down, we might be able to stay ahead of them.

Then something started crashing through the trees ahead of us, and I realized maybe speed alone wasn’t going to be enough to save us.

Thomas seemed to have realized the same. When he hit the next patch of fully solid ground he stopped, hands raised and wreathed in flame. Sam and I pulled up next to him, Sam unwinding his tail and leaping into the nearest tree, where he crouched and prepared to leap for whatever came to attack us. I balled my own hands into fists and lit them, my flames forming a smaller corona but burning much hotter, almost white compared to Thomas’s red. I wanted to hurt fast and hard and end this, whatever it was.

Something flashed through the greenery ahead of us, scything off trees and branches as smoothly as a swung axe, and with far less resistance. A creature that looked like a mantis shrimp, if mantis shrimp came in size super ultra mega large, flowed through the gap this had created, antennae waving.

That wasn’t the only thing waving. Alice, straddling the thing’s carapace just behind its raptorial appendages, was beaming and waving vigorously. She had a firm grip on one of its antennae, and looked remarkably uninjured for a woman who was riding a giant predator.

“Hey, everybody,” she called. “You ready to go?”

Looking affectionately resigned, Thomas shook his hands, extinguishing the flames around them. “What took you so long, dear?” he called.

“I had to find a domesticated troupe, and then convince the dominant male that I didn’t represent a threat. Good thing stromopods are a pretty common draft animal in this dimensional cluster. I know how to talk to them. I was only able to convince three to come away with me, though, so somebody’s gonna have to double up.”

I lowered my own hands, flames going out. “Yes. Riding double is absolutely the issue, and not the part where we’re being asked to ride giant mantis shrimp.”

“Stromopods, please,” said Alice. “Mantis shrimp are smaller, and found in Earth’s oceans. These nice fellows are closer to lungfish in a lot of ways; they have gills and functional lungs, so they do just fine both above and below water. They don’t need to submerge more than once every few days. They can still punch like a cannonball, if you’re worried about predators.”

“I was worried less about predators than I was about the giant-ass stromopods, but good to know,” I said. The creature she was sitting atop was definitely fascinating, with an exoskeleton that clearly said it was close to if not at the head of the local food system. Nothing with plentiful predators could go around with a shell that looked that much like clown vomit. The stromopod was streaked in at least a dozen shades of brilliant neon, all of them blending into one another like it thought it was establishing camouflage.

“Annie please let me ride the giant murder shrimp with you,” said Sam, words quick and staccato. I turned to blink at him. He was staring at the stromopod, the fur on his head and cheeks puffed out in the start of a threat display.

“Afraid I’m going to get eaten?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “Afraid I am.”

Thomas chuckled, walking toward Alice and her mount. She tugged on the stromopod’s antennae, turning it slightly to the side so he wasn’t walking directly toward those striking claws. She smiled as she did it, making it clear that she wasn’t worried.

“I miss anything?” she asked.

“We found some distant relations of yours, who were apparently imported by the Johrlac at some point to serve in a domestic capacity,” said Thomas.

“And how did that work out for them?”

“You mean how did abducting a group of people who can actively manipulate coincidence to turn events to a desired outcome work out? Well, the Kairos we met are living in the deep woods, and seem to have established a fairly permanent settlement there, although it’s unclear how much contact they have with the local Johrlac. The representative we spoke to indicated that their presence might explain the Kairos on Earth, and why they’d have such a small population and such a scant presence in the official records.”

“Extradimensional imports don’t usually have a lot of breeding stock,” Alice agreed. She tugged on her stromopod again, turning it fully away from us. “Come on. We need to get on following Sarah, assuming she’s someplace near here.”

“What do you mean, ‘assuming’?” asked Sam. “She’s on Johrlar, we’re on Johrlar. She has to be near here.”

Alice looked over her shoulder at him, an expression on her face that I could only really describe as “oh isn’t that adorable.” “Sam, how big do you think this world is?”

“I don’t know. The size of a League of Legends map, I guess? I never really thought much about how big other dimensions would be. I’ve never been able to visit one before.”

“The key is in the name,” said Thomas. “‘Dimension.’ Our dimension isn’t called ‘Earth,’ Earth is just the world we’re from. A world that’s in a dimension, one that contains lots of other things, like our entire solar system.”

Sam’s face fell. “Are you saying we might not even be on the right planet right now?”

“No, the transit keys we have are for Johrlar-the-planet, and they’ll have brought us to the right world. But Sarah could be hundreds of miles from here. Annie? You’re the most attuned to her. Do you hear the static?”

“I’m wearing an anti-telepathy charm,” I reminded him. “I can’t hear the static right now.”

“Maybe we need you to,” said Thomas. He paused, looking thoughtful. “We’re all protected from telepathy right now. Why did the mind-mind flowers work on us?”

“The what?” asked Alice.