A dog barked. Chai was the first to run towards the sound. He was fairly large for a dog, with a thick rug-like coat of off-white hair that trailed into his eyes. His ears flopped as he romped towards them, wagging his tongue.
"Just what we needed," said Lucien, "Time to get you out. Or is there someone else down here you want us to rescue?"
In answer, the dog barked again, ran around them in a circle, then leapt at Chai and bowled the petite woman over.
With a long-suffering sigh, Kitty scooped up the dog and lifted him off the ground, holding him at arms' length in order to thwart his attempts to lick her nose. This turned out to be a greater feat than she had predicted, even with his co-operation, as the dog had not exactly been off its food lately, and she grunted with the exertion.
"Trust it to be the Dog," she said, "I have to give one of my Lives to you. I've half a mind to refuse. There's no use giving me puppy eyes either, they don't work on me and I can't see a damn thing under all that hair anyway!"
"He hasn't undergone the process yet," said Lucien, looking around him for any signs of trouble. A faint light source, artificial-looking, bright orange, not at a level with any walls, ceiling or floor, cast strange square outlines onto rocks that seemed almost to pulse organically when the light flickered. It was still difficult to see anything, even to spot the exact beginnings of surfaces or entrances to tunnels. Kitty almost cut her foot when she stepped on a patch of rock that suddenly turned jagged. Of what shapes they could make out in this forbidden, profane place, everything looked like a monster about to pounce on them. They heard sounds, too, over the drips and weird echoes of the creaking rocks and the howling wind. They definitely weren't human but they were unmistakably sounds of life.
"I don't think there's really anyone else here," he continued, voicing his inner thoughts out loud to break up the silence that was beginning to turn into imaginary threats, "Doesn't that strike you as odd? Did the dog just turn up late, or is something different about him that he didn't follow the others? Maybe you won't need to give him your life after all."
"We can't get people out to the new world without it," said Kitty, "It's one of this world's most important rules."
"But this is the dog," said Lucien, reaching a hand out to pet the excitable living woolly carpet with legs, "He's kind of important too, to all the worlds. Anyway, there's so much magic floating around, we don't know if the same rules are operating any more."
"He's right. We might not be in the same time period, for one," said Chai, who had picked herself up, smoothed her dress down and recovered the pages that had been knocked out of her notebook, "The Fortune-Teller's magic didn't always land her in the right time period."
"So, do we even have any clue how we're going to get out of here?" asked Linus.
Kitty shrugged, "You two got us in here. I assumed you could get us out. Don't tell me you didn't think of it already!"
"I guess we kind of got caught up in the heat of the moment," said Linus, "Besides, Chai suggested it first. I thought she was supposed to know what's going on."
Bernadette gave the dog a pointed look, "And aren't you supposed to be the beast that guides? Come on, then, show us where the hell we're meant to be going!"
Letting out a loud bark, the dog wriggled out of Kitty's arms and jumped to the floor. Then he ran straight in one direction, nose to the ground, before stopping at a tunnel mouth. He stared at it for a while, whined, then ran around the room some more. Every time he found a tunnel, hole in the floor, interestingly shaped big rock or anything else he deemed to be of significance, he turned to Bernadette and whined, disappointment and confusion increasingly showing in his big, heavily obscured dark eyes.
"He's trying to tell us he's as lost as we are," she translated, "We're probably screwed..."
Just then, the dog's whine became a sharp yelp that turned into a series of terrified barks and growls. His teeth bared, he ran back to the group and stood between them and an unseen threat that appeared to be on the ceiling. Chai whispered a warning to them as well. She looked queasy, her face suddenly pale and exhausted. With an effort of will fueled by understanding that the situation was serious, fire and smoke wreathed Bernadette's hands, intense cold caused a frost-rimed mist to stream from Linus'. Lucien drew a combat knife from a pocket nobody had seen him place a weapon into - for that matter, Bernadette hadn't even realised that set of pockets existed. She had been absolutely sure that weapons didn't even exist in the new world - she only found out that implements of violence existed from seeing them in her vision-dreams, mostly in the possession of the celestial dragon who haunted her at night.
The radiant golden light streaming through the previously invisible hole in the ceiling, the expression on the face of the individual who descended from above, emerald-hilted, golden-bladed shining sword in hand, all reminded her of those dreams. Behind the Corona, the Goddess' Crusader, came the Light of Heaven Herself. She frowned at the people below her.
"How did you find this place? Where did you obtain those relics?" she demanded, "Do you not know why this place is forbidden? How much damage you could do to your entire world just by being here? What did you do to this poor dog?"
As if in answer, the dog growled louder and backed away as the Goddess landed and approached them. Chai whispered something reassuring and private.
"I don't expect this kind of thing to happen in this new age," she told them, "If something broke in that storm, if you fell through here, I deeply apologise. I will see to it personally that you are healed, that this poor animal's soul is properly guided from one world to the next, and that this hole is filled in."
"You know we didn't fall," said Kitty, "Just as you know it wasn't a storm. Tell me... why is a dog that knows so much, so angry at you?"
"The poor thing is traumatised," said the Goddess, glancing at the Corona, "And I think I know why. You - you did something to this dog, didn't you? You interfered here. You broke in. What's more, you never should have entered into this world in the first place. You somehow managed to break the rules. Well, this is why I have a Crusader..."
She snapped her fingers and the Corona darted forward. Faster than Bernadette's eyes could process, he was in front of them, dog grabbed by the scruff of the neck, blade flying from his hand towards Linus. The sword curved through the air like a boomerang, a sparking, shrieking trail of magical energy following behind it. Bernadette and Linus both cried out as they were sliced across the arms by the blade, its light searing their flesh. Linus' spell fizzled out, his concentration dropped, but Bernadette only looked more enraged. Her face screwed up in pain, she screamed in rage, throwing her emotions into the spell seconds before she threw herself at the Corona, releasing a formless gout of fire into his face. Yet more pain flooded through her system, too much for her to tell the details, but she heard his cry too, along with the dog's yowl, and knew she had succeeded in her goal, even though it may have killed her. She had set the Crusader on fire, as well as possibly the dog, hopefully not the dog, and maybe even without getting herself stabbed in the process. She knew she hadn't done him any serious harm, only put him off guard for a moment.
Enough to lose his hold on the dog.
Enough for the dog to bite him.
Once the dog's jaws closed around his wrist, the pointed teeth somehow finding the one weakness in his divinely blessed plate mail, it was enough for Mac to reveal to the world what he had been trying to say about this Paladin, this embodiment of Soleil. Writhing, twisting, hissing in agony and frustration beyond anything that Bernadette felt, the Corona seemed to unravel in dark strips of matter and magic. There, on the floor, mostly looking small and ashamed, was a Raccoon Dog. Before anyone could react, he had already scurried away, hissing and bearing even sharper teeth than the dog's.
Mac, meanwhile, had lost interest in his earlier opponent and was now growling at the Goddess. She looked strangely emotionless, her face as cold and hard as her statue in the town square. Her lips moved in a silent chant, her feet hovered above the ground and the aura of golden magic around her steadily grew brighter. As the dog leaped, a ball of raw surging power the colour of the morning sun enveloped him. Another flew towards the rest of the group.
"Retreat!" yelled Lucien, helping Kitty to grab and safely lift Bernadette's unconscious form.
"To where?" screamed Linus, his face white as he saw the horrible burns, the stab wound through his friend's chest. He couldn't see the dog through the blinding light and the roaring of static interference.
"This way!" replied the Camellian boy. Linus couldn't see where he was going in that direction either but he followed, running blindly through the darkness, terrified that he might trip and fall on spikes, or down a hole, or not be fast enough to evade the luminous death barreling towards them. There were steps - cold, slippery steps that squelched with a damp, acrid smell and a noise that brought up further unpleasant mental images - then he was in complete darkness. The light was gone, as was the screaming. He carried on running until he ran straight into Chai and Lucien told him to stop.
When his eyes next adjusted, he was outside, in a forest, in the dead of night. The first thing he noticed was that the place didn't resemble anywhere he had ever been to or even remembered from a vision before. The second thing was that the dog was still alive and still a dog.
"Chai, what the hell's wrong with the..." began Kitty. The smaller woman shushed her with a harsh intake of breath.
"I don't know what's wrong with the anything," she whispered, "There are a lot of questions, but we mustn't break the peace any more than we have. We'll be able to rest, soon."
"What peace?" whispered Kitty, "What rest?"
"Don't you recognise where we are at all?"
Linus looked around, suddenly curious. The forest was ancient and wild, the trees tightly packed, small, snaggled, with a strange, almost fossilised purple hue. Clumps of toadstools sprouted in hollow trees and dark, damp grottoes, the dens of creatures that he saw dart through the shadows, snuffling, skittering, flapping, the whole forest buzzing with their myriad tiny, chaotic voices. Although there was no deliberate malice, some of the shapes were large, had claws and teeth, and the clear, sweet-smelling night air was absolutely saturated with magic, enough to make his hair stand on end.
A bubbling, bouncing, splatting noise started to grow louder and closer, and as he looked around him at the ring of raindrop-shaped green gelatinous creatures that jumped around him, trailing goo, he at least knew what he had stepped on and what was now all over his shoes.
"This place was in Medium Lily," said Kitty, "I remember visiting it with Ramsey. They wouldn't let him have a shop. They didn't like outsiders all that much."
"Chai, those are monsters," Linus breathed, "What happened to us this time? Why aren't we back?"
"We are back," said Chai, "I don't know how this place survived either, but we were rescued by these people and we're being led somewhere."
"We should really get a move on," said Lucien, "Bernadette doesn't look at all well."