Miles opened his eyes to a blanket of stars and a dull ache in his back.
Had he…?
He remembered falling, yelling at Zeena to let go of his tails so he could fly and save them both.
He remembered the eye, disembodied and mobile, following them down, smaller eyes popping from its off-white surface like bursting pustules, a swarm writhing through the air after them…
He didn't remember landing. Had it been seconds? Hours?
Days?
The wind blew over him, far warmer than the frigid gusts of Windy Hill, but carrying a foul stench of rotting vegetation and spoiled meat. Leaves rustled below him, the ache in his back worsening with the movement. No sign of the eye or Zeena. For now.
…. Had he landed on a bush?
Miles groaned, rubbing the back of his aching neck. Sure enough, he felt leaves brushing against his glove.
At least it wasn't water. Would have been better if he'd hit the dirt though. Long falls didn't do much to a mobian - too light and too solid. Why had he even lost-
Wait, now he remembered. He'd pulled Zeena up into his arms, must have landed with her on top of him just before he'd got his tails going.
Probably for the best he hadn't landed on dirt then. Getting crushed did a lot to a mobian, and the Zeti was significantly heavier and larger than him, even if significantly less dense. Not that he was ever going to make any comments to Zeena about her weight. She'd raged hard enough to tear a hole in the universe over her hair.
Miles groaned again. It sort of helped. Not his first dimension sucking vortex to oblivion, but his back really was starting to hurt now. Stomach too, actually.
Miles discovered why when he tried to move and the bush tried to move with him. He craned his head forward to see a narrow branch jutting through his abdomen. He slumped back, staring up at a crescent moon the colour of candyfloss.
Should have left the Zeti.
Still, he'd had worse.
And done worse.
And maybe that eye was coming back.
Miles reached down, snapping the branch with his fingers just below where it entered his back, then creaked his head up, grabbing onto his tails for purchase to roll himself forward with a grimace. Blood trickled out of the side of the wound, but for the most part what remained of the branch was sealing the wound. He could move, at least a little.
Leaves stretched out beneath him in every direction. Hard to tell in the dark, but they looked green, rather than the purple he'd been expecting. Islands of foliage and candyfloss moons. Made at least as much sense as his last interdimensional jaunt, all things considered. Still, he could think about what happened when he was somewhere a bit less precarious.
Miles heaved to his feet, probing at the other injuries he'd incurred fighting Zeena as he limped gingerly towards the edge of the leaf platform. Darkness stretched below far below him, the shapes of trees hinted at by the dull pink of the moon.
So he was on a giant tree? Well, at least that was normal enough. Judging from the foliage it was actually a bit smaller than some of the trees back on Angel Island. Probably not hollow though. From the lack of light pollution there didn't look to be much in the way of civilisation.
Well, unless creepy eyeball monsters were the civilisation. Miles shivered. Hopefully Zeena was alright. If only because she might be able to open a way back home. Then again he'd never seen a Zeti pull off a large scale rupture in spacetime before, and Sonic was way better at annoying them than he was, so it probably had something to do with the chaos spikes.
A distant roar sounded across the night, feeling like it came from all directions at once. Miles flinched. Unknown dangers below and above. Was it better to be stuck up a tree or trapped down on the ground?
In the end, since there was also the known danger that he had six inches of wood stuck through his intestinal tract, and no sign of any rings up here to get to work solving that problem, Miles decided to try "down". He swung over the side of the treetop, grabbing at a dangling vine to slide down into the blackness below. It was far too short, but also solved that problem by snapping under his weight. Miles barely managed to spin his tails to slow his descent before landing with a pained grunt to the earth below.
"Well, that could have gone better." Miles dropped to a knee, panting heavily.
Had worse. Done worse.
He'd been doing this as long as he could remember, after all. Before he met Sonic there had been the kukku, tearing apart enemy soldiers with hammer and fist when bombs and guns ran out, taking their technology and improving on it, an endless arms race until there weren't any kukku left to fight him... The death traps and machine armies of Robotnik had been a relief after that. Until Sonic stopped wanting his help.
That had been worst of all.
Miles pushed himself back up, legs wobbling slightly. Pain pushed deep once more as he took stock of his surroundings.
Darkness. The silhouettes of trees - regular trees - against the night sky. Miles swept his gaze across black hills, ears pricked to hear any sound above the foul smelling wind.
Metallic clanking? Robot?
Miles turned towards the sound, back towards the giant tree just as the wind blew, a flicker of golden yellow momentarily coming into view from the other side of an enormous root before slipping out of sight once more. Miles crept forward, trying to keep his ragged breathing quiet as he slipped through the tangled wood…
Flowers.
Taller than him, with petals of glowing yellow that positively shone in the dark, illuminating a small patch of ground beneath them.
Miles stepped forwards, reaching out on tiptoe to brush a fingertip across a petal. They looked like the flowers on Little Planet, if not for the glow. Just looking at them brought back a flood of happy memories of the time he'd spent there.
Which… was actually very worrying, since he didn't have happy memories of the time he'd spent there. Were the flowers exerting some kind of mind control? A self-defence mechanism against predation? Or... some kind of lure? Miles tore his eyes from the flowers with a frown, stumbling back as happiness dulled into safe, familiar numbness. He was going to have to be careful in this place if even the flowers were memetic hazards.
The clatter of metal, momentarily forgotten, drew closer, a human sized silhouette lumbered into the light of the flowers, purple metal casing barely reflecting their glow.
"I come in peace." Miles spread his hands wide, showing the figure he was unarmed. "I hope you're friendly."
The robot didn't so much as slow down, swinging a metal fist towards Miles, or towards where Miles had been.
"Yeah, figured as much." Miles looped a tail around the automaton's leg, spinning around to send it crashing into the trunk of the tree. "Nothing-" He straightened with a wince, clutching his side. "Nothing's ever friendly."
The robot heaved itself back to its feet without a word, lunging at him once more. Miles pounced, slipping behind its attack to grab the thing's head between his hands and heaving backwards. The metal separated easily, leaving Miles to drop to the floor before it, holding its metal head.
"Too ea- yah!" A metal foot punted him across the grass, sliding into a tree with a thud. The head fell from his hands with a hollow clatter.
"Guess you don't need your head then." Miles shuddered. Felt like the stick just splintered inside him. "Well let's see what else you can do without." He forced himself back to his feet once more, raising his fists as the vastly larger robot bore down on him.
"Watch out!"
Tiny silhouettes, barely visible in the darkness, hurtled across the darkness, slapping into the robot en masse. Its advance slowed as it tried to tear the projectiles from its body.
"This way! While it's distracted!" An arm waved from the shadows at the base of the great tree, a flash of green just visible in the flowerlight.
Miles slipped past the robot, easily slipping below its clumsy attempt to stop him despite his reduced speed. A hand - or maybe a tentacle - slipped out of the darkness to guide him in, and there was a clatter as a door slammed shut behind him, extinguishing what little light there was.
Huh. Turned out the tree was hollow after all.
Something gripped Miles' wrist, leading him through the darkness as a sweet voice - definitely not Zeena - spoke to him from beside his ear. A sweet scent of perfume tickled his nose, infinitely preferable to the foul stench outside or the smell of his own blood.
"Don't worry. It can't get through the door tonight. You're safe."
"Thanks for the help."
Would Sonic have said "but I could have handled it"? Maybe? That sounded like a hero thing to say. Bit late now though. Miles settled for smiling into the dark. Given his luck his saviour was a renegade creepy eyeball person and could totally see him right now.
"I don't know why you came here, traveller. You know there's no hope for us."
"Where's here? What's going on?"
The voice gasped,
"Wait, you're not human, are you? It's started again. Watch the stairs."
The warning came a moment too late. Miles jarred against the step, sending fresh agony throughout his abdomen.
"...What's started again?" Miles managed to grate out, blinking tears from his eyes.
The voice sighed once more.
"I can't explain very well, traveller. The one who would have been able to help you is dead. They burned him... And then they died too."
The stairs ended without warning, another painful jolt for Miles. The speaker continued.
"Soon this world will be gone, and the cycle will begin again. The wall between your world and this one must already be wafer thin if you have arrived here."
Miles didn't respond. Just walking was hard enough right now, and eyeball-monster girl was doing a fine job with the exposition already.
The mystery appendage left Miles' arm, leaving him to falter to a halt as a latch was lifted ahead of him. Light flooded into his eyes once more, though only a single flickering candle atop a wooden bench.
His saviour stepped into the room first. He'd already guessed some of her anatomy, a few inches taller than he was, female, and, surprisingly, not an eyeball monster. Long green hair - leaves? And two red flowers bloomed on each side of her head, framing a delicate, furless face with two large, expressive blue eyes and slightly yellow tinged skin.
A Maginaryworlder? She sort of looked like Lumina, an otherworldly beauty that, like the Zeti, fell somewhere between human and mobian.
Well, admittedly all the Magins that Miles had seen wore clothes. The girl's lithe frame was sparsely wrapped in simple vines and leaves, save for a crimson gem mounted on the centre of her chest that bore a strong resemblance to the one Lumina's counterpart Void had borne in the same place.
Miles frowned. If this was the world of dreams, something had gone very wrong indeed.
"Are you coming in, traveller? You need not fear me." The plant-magin smiled faintly, her green tinted hands spread wide in an echo of the pose he'd made to the robot just before. "My name is Cosmo the Dryad."
"Sorry, I space out a lot." Miles rubbed the back of his head with a grin as he stepped into the light. "My name is-"
The Dryad's cheerless smile turned to outright disgust as she looked down at the twin tails swirling behind him.
"You?!"
