The Ender was sprinting down an alley, following right after Dr. Mercury whose battle armor allowed her to move quite quickly. Apparently the woman they had seen was what caused the readings. Now they were following Dr. Mercury's scanner to the location of yet another reading. Whoever that woman was, she definitely was powerful, how powerful exactly was left to be determined. In the best scenario this simply was a case of them discovering a new type of magic, in the worst… the Ender didn't know.
"Over here!" Dr. Mercury called out and turned a corner, then abruptly came to a halt.
The woman was there, right in front of them, just casually leaning against the wall next to a door. Dr. Mercury wasted no time and fired a warning shot from her energy cannon, which impacted only a hand's breadth away from the woman's feet, who seemed to be entirely unfazed.
The Ender positioned herself in a way that the woman couldn't run, admittedly a futile gesture seeing that she probably could just teleport away again.
Dr. Mercury immediately began questioning the woman: "Who are you and what world are you from? Answer!"
After a tense silence of a few seconds the woman replied: "My name is Shadow and I am not familiar enough with your dimensional cartography to reliably answer the second part."
Dr. Mercury groaned. "I don't have time for cleverness. You certainly aren't from one of the closer ones, if Dimensions is to be believed you are from somewhere outside of our sensor range." She paused, then continued in a different tone. "But since you don't seem to be scared of us, you won't mind if I run a few more scans, right?"
Shadow replied: "Sure, sure, go ahead. Whatever you think will help you."
The Ender exchanged a concerned look with Dr. Mercury. This woman's calm was gradually transitioning from odd to unsettling. Dr. Mercury began entering commands into the device mounted on her left arm, then once again pointed the scanner at Shadow.
While the scans ran, Shadow seemed to deem it appropriate to strike up a conversation with the Ender. To her surprise, not in the human tongue, she spoke Ender, fluently at that.
She said: "So, the Ender. How do you like it over at the Tower?"
The Ender didn't reply to her question and instead asked one of her own: "How does a human learn to speak ender?"
Shadow chuckled. "I mostly stopped being human a few thousand years ago. As for the language, my brother taught me."
The Ender looked over to Dr. Mercury who was intently staring at her monitor and seemed to ignore the fact that there was a conversation going on. She looked back to Shadow, who seemed to have a talent for opening up more questions than she answered.
The Ender asked: "And how exactly would your brother know Ender? If you were human at one point then he should be as well."
Shadow shifted her head as if to catch a glimpse of Dr. Mercury's sensor readout, then said: "I believe you two met already."
That was when everything clicked, or would have clicked if Dr. Mercury's scanner hadn't started beeping. She grumbled: "Alright… according to the scanner you don't exist. The scanner isn't showing any life signs and I might as well have been scanning air."
Shadow said: "Correct. In this plane I have no energy to speak of."
Dr. Mercury said: "No, I believe you are only masking your presence. You aren't an interdimensional being, either. You lack subspace resonance and that isn't something one can mask."
Shadow said: "I would suggest to be a bit more open-minded when it comes to new possibilities, you are a scientist, are you not?"
Dr. Mercury replied: "Enlighten me then."
Shadow pushed herself away from the wall. "Simple, I am something you haven't seen before and can't explain with any of the theories you know. You'll have to break new ground. Exciting, isn't it?"
The Ender usually was not good at reading human speech but that tone certainly spelled danger.
Shadow suddenly looked up at the sky. "I think by now enough time should have passed. Goodbye, greet the Entity from me."
The Ender sighed. She'd disappear again and there was nothing either of them were able to do against it. Perhaps some of the mages of the Tower might have been able but not them. Her assumption was right, Shadow was gone before the Ender was able to say anything. Only this time something was different.
In the first moments it didn't properly register with her that there was now something in the place where Shadow had stood. Something like a crack or maybe a wound that opened into an emptiness. Then, the longer the Ender looked at it the more and less she was able to see. There definitely was something but the more she tried to focus on it the more it refused to be observed. It reminded her of home, when she used to stare off the islands' edge into the Void. It brought solace, before getting ready to launch an assault on the humans. But even that seemed inadequate. This was somehow less than the Void she knew. Dr. Mercury seemed to have a different perception of whatever it was the strange woman had left behind, the scientist seemed to be in a daze, her hand raised to clutch her head but stopped halfway.
The Ender picked the scientist up and carried her a few steps back, facing her away from the thing. Dr. Mercury slowly regained her senses, she said: "We… might have a serious problem here. Take me back to the Tower, on foot if you can, I need some time to process this."
With those words Dr. Mercury's eyes closed, slipping away into a deep sleep. The Ender sighed, she definitely had imagined her return trip to the Tower to be a bit more dignified, carrying a human in her arms definitely was not one of her preferred activities.
As she walked back to the town square she took a minute to think. What was that? Having met the brother already? Then she finally realized it. The colors, the age, the origin in a far-off world, the knowledge of Ender, the secrecy… Fire.
"Gah, damn these intrusive thoughts, I need to focus on the task at hand. I'm on the job for the ancestors' sake!"
She heard teleportation behind her. An underling with a curved sword stood amidst the swirling particles, panting from exertion.
"The escapees are here!" he rasped. "The wizard, the General, the demon-child. Possibly others."
She teleported up and loomed over him: "Send for reinforcements. Humans, artillery. Whatever's necessary."