The ruins thinned into gravel plains, and the wind was starting to taste like metal.
Devin walked beside Aquafinn, occasionally glancing over his shoulder like the Borderwalkers might reform and come running. But she didn't seem worried, so he pretended he wasn't either.
"So…" Devin kicked a pebble. "I just realized something."
Aquafinn didn't even pretend to care about what he was about to say, but he didn't care to wait for her validation.
"I feel like we are in a loop," Devin said, but he wasn't prepared to see Aquafinn stop in her tracks. She looked at him with an expression that showed she was surprised. Maybe beyond surprised.
"How so?" she managed to ask in a flat tone.
"I mean, every day we are always on the go. Moving from one place to another," Devin explained, and then he received a slap to the back of his head.
"What was that for?" Devin held the back of his head.
"I actually thought it was a loop that I couldn't perceive, but you did, maybe because of some flaws in the loop." Aquafinn kept moving.
"Haha. Wait, are things like that very common in your world?" Devin's eyes opened wider than normal.
"Not very common, but it is something I've experienced once. But not in my world." Devin noticed the shift in her tone. If he didn't know better, he'd think it was just a normal tone, but he could hear a certain fear in her voice. Maybe it wasn't fear.
"Whoa. So there's someone like that?" Aquafinn nodded at Devin's question.
"From your world. He didn't even look capable of such. It seems he has been a Traverser for a long while. Longer than I have," Aquafinn said, walking forward.
"Wait, and how long is that?" Devin moved closer to her side, but she quickly moved away from him as if she were avoiding body odor.
"Twelve years."
"Twelve years. How did you survive twelve years in this hellhole?" Devin exclaimed without caring about alerting a creature. For some reason, Aquafinn's presence scared off every creature they came across.
"Not on a stretch, idiot. It's called Traverser because you move from place to place. It would be called Migrator otherwise."
"Oh, but a little child in this hellhole? I wonder how you survived."
"I was barely a child. I was eighteen years old then," Aquafinn said casually, but Devin's reaction was far from casual.
"Oh, that makes… no sense. If you have been a Traverser for twelve years, that means... you're forty years old!!" Devin exclaimed while doing simple math.
Aquafinn looked into his eyes for a moment. She didn't say anything as she watched him have an existential crisis. She faced the front.
"Yes. Oh. I keep forgetting your world has quicker growths than ours," Aquafinn said even more casually than before.
"Wait, so you're that old?! You don't look a day over nineteen!"
"What is the oldest person's age recorded in your world?"
"999 or 900 by some Bible dude named Methuselah or something. 120 these days is a stretch," Devin recalled, causing her to chuckle a bit.
"My grandfather is 930 years old. Damn, it's been long since I met that hag."
"Says the old hag herself," Devin's nose wrinkled.
"We're almost there." Aquafinn ignored Devin and pointed at a tall semi-transparent structure in the distance. Devin's eyes mirrored his surprise, and he was too stunned to speak.
Despite how far the pillar was, it was still massive. The field in front of them stretched so far, and the pillar was seemingly behind a large gate far away from where they stood.
They wandered deeper into the field. Then they saw an anthill.
A massive, gnarled anthill—maybe seven feet tall, ribbed with bone-like ridges and glistening in parts like old amber. It pulsed faintly with heat. At its crown, two long and curly fruits jutted from cracks in the structure.
One barely red and the other a faint orange.
Devin pointed. "Uh. So ants here steal fruits?"
"No," she said, walking forward. "It's a natural Link Pod. Linkfruit sometimes grow on old spirit nests or converged rock, maybe even on creature corpses."
"Why not trees?" Devin asked.
"They grow on them too," Aquafinn shrugged.
"And those colors mean…?"
"Potency," she replied. "White is the weakest. Then red, orange—all the way to violet. Black is also a possibility."
She swung her sheathed sword up effortlessly and dropped both fruits down.
"These are yours."
Devin blinked. "Wait, for real?"
"I'm beyond their use," she said, simply flexing their power gap that was almost insurmountable.
He took them. The fruits were in his hands, warm and fleshy.
"I hate the taste, but if it helps me get a bit stronger, fuck it!"
He bit the red one first.
The taste was sharp, metallic-sweet, like biting into a strawberry, wheat, and soap at once. He retched internally after eating the whole thing—and the liquid inside his inner realm expanded.
He couldn't stop at the first fruit. He devoured the second one immediately after the first to get over the taste as fast as possible. To his surprise, it tasted like battery acid, strawberry, and soap. He almost vomited it out but kept it in. Face squeezed.
"Their tastes are different, whyyy?" Devin tried cleaning his taste buds by spitting despite having swallowed the whole thing.
"I don't know. Maybe because of their ripeness?" Aquafinn shrugged.
"How is battery acid considered riper than oat or wheat?" Devin screamed.
They kept walking forward, with Devin complaining along the way. He stopped after he couldn't taste it anymore. They were almost at the large gate.
Devin's fingers twitched against his thumb. Scratched. Rubbed. Twitched again.
Aquafinn noticed.
"You've been doing that since we left the ruins," she said.
"…Yeah."
"Why?"
He was quiet for a while. The wind rustled over rock. Birds—maybe not birds—screeched in the far-off haze.
"Nothing much. Just that I feel an itch, that's all," Devin said while consciously trying to stop the unconscious scratching of his thumb. He had almost peeled off the skin on his thumbs, but he didn't have fingernails to do that.
"An itch? You're almost bleeding." Aquafinn actually used a sympathetic tone.
Devin faked a laugh. "If I had some weed, the itching would stop."
"Weed? Wait, you mean the burnt garbage thing? Why do you keep taking that crap?" Aquafinn's sympathetic tone still lingered.
"Every time I get high, I feel different. It makes the boring things feel weird. It's thrilling sometimes," Devin proclaimed.
"You seek thrills? Is that it?" Aquafinn was more blunt when she said this. Either she was hiding her sympathy or done feeling sorry for him.
"Kinda. Adds some fun to this pointless life." Devin lowered his head slightly. It wasn't noticeable, but he did so.
Aquafinn, on the other hand, didn't give him a judgmental look. She was back to her plain old self, not caring about him.
"You're technically a Traverser. You can come back to this 'hellhole' if you're that desperate for thrills," she said.
"Guess you're right." Devin laughed weakly, but his fingers still scratched his thumb.
They finally reached the gate, and Aquafinn pushed it open with just a single hand, which would naturally be impossible for others, but she wasn't normal, not by a mile. As the gate creaked open, Devin saw something he'd never expected.
Devin didn't know what to expect when Aquafinn said "pillar." Maybe a temple. Maybe some ancient stone pillar glowing with mystical runes. He didn't expect a town.
A real one this time.
Built around a massive, semi-transparent structure that pierced the sky like a divine lightning bolt frozen in time. Dozens of buildings clustered at its base—makeshift markets, crooked stalls, tents of shimmering fabric, and even concrete shops that looked like they'd been dragged out of Earth, circular buildings that seemed to defy human architecture, and weird buildings in the shape of statues. The town was alive with movement.
In fact, it was more like a marketplace than a town, as it bustled with people from various worlds moving up, down, left, right, and up again.
"What the hell…" Devin muttered as they stepped into the town. His gaze didn't stay in one place as he darted his eyes at everything, everywhere all at once, trying to take in as much information as possible.
Creatures of all shapes, sizes, and colors passed them. A massive lizardman hauled a wagon full of steaming barrels.
"Those are Reptilians. From Urokk." Aquafinn briefed him like she was an underpaid tour guide after noticing his surprise and excitement at the place.
A large glowing bubble bartered with someone whose skin looked like shifting chrome. And then—Devin stopped mid-step.
"The bubble person is a Guppy. From Belunder. There are several intelligent species in Belunder. The shiny dude is from Lumine; he's a Hue-man," Aquafinn continued as she watched his eyes.
He was genuinely surprised at what he saw everywhere. He was looking at the weird architecture around him, and then he saw someone.
A bipedal cat in a sleeveless vest and baggy pants strutted past, eating what looked like a cheeseburger.
Devin didn't wait for Aquafinn to brief him. "Furries are real?! That's insane. People of Discord and Reddit would be shocked about this," he whispered, as he didn't want to draw unwanted attention to himself or be called a racist since he didn't know if the word 'Furry' might be a slur to them.
Aquafinn didn't respond. She marched forward, head down, hand never straying far from her swords. Devin tried his best not to get distracted—tried—but a headless person was juggling his own head along with some balls.
They reached the base of the pillar after cutting through the crowd. It wasn't what he expected. It wasn't made of stone—it was translucent, almost crystalline, with shifting lights dancing inside it like the aurora trapped in glass. Symbols flickered at its base, rotating slowly.
And standing in front of it, arms crossed, was an Inchoid.
Unlike the Borderwalkers they'd fought before, this one was older, bulkier. His armor was more ceremonial—ribbed with bone plating and draped with cloths from different worlds, flexing his influence. One of his eyes was cracked, revealing an amber glow beneath. He held a metal rod that buzzed faintly with power.
"You again," the Inchoid said, clicking his tongue. "Didn't expect to see you return, swordswoman."
"Shut it, Crock. This idiot wants to use the pillar," she replied, tossing a pouch that hit the Inchoid's chest with a heavy clink.
Crock caught it and opened it. His tongue clicked rapidly out in amusement. "Still overpaying? Must be desperate."
"It's a custom of my people to overpay to show generosity," Aquafinn said flatly, and Crock's tongue clicked in laughter that almost sounded like someone was gasping for breath.
"In my world, it's called tipping. Netizens find that rude sometimes," Devin remarked.
He stepped closer, eyeing the Inchoid with suspicion that he was just like the Borderwalkers. Then he looked at the pillar once more. "He didn't build this thing, right?"
"No. He just found it. And no one's managed to take it from him," Aquafinn said.
"I'm stronger than I look." Crock smiled in pride.
Devin looked up at the glowing monolith. "So I just… walk into the solid wall?"
"It'll handle the rest," she said. "Try to focus on where you came from. The cleaner your memory, the closer the exit."
Devin hesitated. He turned to Aquafinn, unsure of what to say.
"I don't do this much, but thanks, I guess?" he offered. "For… saving me."
"Ew. So that's all it takes to make you soft? A simple goodbye?" Aquafinn smiled, making fun of his awkward goodbye.
"Shut it, old hag! I'm just glad I didn't have a crush on a granny like you." Devin laughed.
"Dodged a bullet. I'm glad I didn't get the crush of an idiot." Aquafinn shot back. This was one of the first times in three days that Devin had seen her smile genuinely.
"See you around then." He took his first step, and his leg entered flawlessly into the solid crystalline wall.
"I hope not." Aquafinn responded, then pushed Devin playfully into the pillar completely.
He landed back on the curb. Same spot. Same city. Same dirty, graffiti-lined wall behind him. The sun was barely out, traffic rolled by in the distance, and someone across the street yelled into a phone. It was like nothing had happened.
He simply smiled. It was great to be back home.
Unexpectedly, tears welled in his eyes. Not because he missed the place. But because it was still here. Real. His old world. His old rules. Safe, boring, numb.
He remembered Aquafinn. The liquid in his chest. The bug-eyed people. The sprinting. The taste of that godawful Linkfruit. He remembered Sandra. He remembered that he didn't want to remember Sandra.
"Dumb city," he muttered. "I'm back… huh."