In which we meet the New World.

South of a crystal desert and north of the ruins of what used to be El Paso, there was a big hole in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere is a frightening place to be, especially when you’re in the middle of it, and this particular hole was no exception. Walking up to it you couldn’t tell, but it was a volcano. The only sign of this from afar was the way that even the air quivered in its presence. If you were to tap on a very specific place on a very specific rock in a very specific way, you would find a door. Enter that door, and not only would you find that you’re in an elevator, but your fate would also take a very unlucky turn. Under the hole, under the lake of rolling magma, was a city. And in that city, a plan was just beginning to unfold.

Down in the deepest chamber of the city, a man was hungry. His incompetent servant had gone to get him a bite what was like ages ago, and he was far past being surly already. The man’s beard resembled a midnight waterfall in an underground cave. It cascaded from around his mouth, which was frozen in an ironic sneer, and shined as it trickled down his white robes. His nose was abnormally large and hawk-like, but no one who saw him would ever have the guts to say so. But the strangest thing of all was how his eyes were closed in deep concentration; trance-like, almost. The man stroked his long black beard slowly and tapped the arm of his stone throne, habits beaten into his brain through years of thinking without anyone to talk to, years of putting thoughts in order.

A new order. That’s what the world was centered around, really. Reality, now that could change without much consequence, but the world craves order, even if it doesn’t know it. Order was lost in this new reality, and it was up to him to put it on the right track. They were so close the last time…

“Rey Yaga, señor*?” A deep, gravelly voice interrupted his thoughts. Standing confidently in the regal doorway of his chambers was a dark man built like a bull with hair tied in a tight bun at the back of his head. He sported an impressive black cowboy-style mustache that covered nearly all of his solemn lips, and his expression looked as if it was made of steel.

“Я думал, что сказал тебе обращаться ко мне на моем языке, Мастер Ортиз.*” The man with the waterfall beard uttered, his words slurred and head moving slowly from side to side. He did not open his eyes. That voice had been cultured in the cellars of silence for ages, and it was sour with age. The bull-man bowed his apology and was just beginning to repeat himself in jumbled Russian when the black waterfall rippled in sync with its owner’s laughter.

“Do not worry, friend.” The man in the throne spoke English without the halting and chopping of a tourist, but like a collected academic, but he continued to slur as he had in his own tongue. “We are, after all, brothers in our cause. What is it you have come to tell me, Master Ortiz? Has the German finally succeeded? Or did he fail yet again?”

Master Ortiz bowed in thanks. “A thousand thanks, my King, you are, eh, most gracious with my impotence.” Ortiz didn’t have the awesome elegance of the king but stumbled over his words like a newborn fawn. “The German, Señor Luitpold, is, eh, dead. Experiment was almost complete when that Old World pest, Moon, killed all at the Atlanta lab and escaped with the subject and her, eh, (Estupido Ingles*), uh, D-N-A donor, si? The forces there tried to stop them but, eh, mm…” Master Ortiz’s voice stumbled to a halt. The king was gripping the arms of his throne, skin whitening on top of his knuckles, neck tightening around taught tendons. “But?“The man growled.

Master Ortiz swallowed. His face didn’t show his nervousness, but the rest of him certainly did. “But… they escaped. But my King, I assure you-” He got no further. The robed king stood up at lightning speed with eyes flickering and bellowing louder than a beast. Master Ortiz’s steel face became as shaky as a block of jelly, and knowing what was good for him, turned-tail and ran swiftly out of the chamber. The king became still. His eyelids were motionless. He pressed his fingertips together and sat. He opened his eyes.

There weren’t any.

---

Nearly a thousand miles from the hole, Hunter, Marie, and misfit they had come to call, “The Girl” were still half walking, half carrying. Marie wasn’t great at directions, but she was certain that they had walked at least twenty miles. When she asked Hunter about this, he had time and time again replied that they would “get there when we get there.” This was most unhelpful, and Marie would have yelled at him if Hunter wasn’t so… leader-y. She looked up and took mental notice of the two strange characters beside her. Marie always took mental pictures of people who had potential friend material. He was carrying The Girl on his shoulders with apparent ease, though she wasn’t sure if he was just trying to look tough or not. The Girl, who had finally stopped crying, had taken a strong liking to Hunter, and she thought it the funniest thing in the world to take his hat off and put it back on again, or to look over his hat and yell nonsense. Hunter tried not to smile at this, but he lost this battle against his instincts. It was apparent that he liked her just as much as she did, but not in the way a boy usually likes a girl his age. He took to her as a person takes to a baby, and this was reasonable because The Girl acted more like a toddler than a preteen. Her hair was enormous and wild, and from behind you would think that Hunter was carrying a giant ball of fuzzy black hairball rather than a girl. her face, though an exact image of a younger her, was unmarked by any interaction with the world. Her skin was the same light coffee brown all over, and she had none of the freckles Marie had had at her age. When The Girl smiled, new dimples appeared at the edges of her mouth and disappeared when she stopped. The tight black jumpsuit they had first seen her in showed her outline perfectly: ripped. That kid was the devil to carry, and all of it muscle. You could actually see the abs underneath the skintight suit, the biceps, deltoids, triceps, and countless other muscles Marie would know the names of if she had worked out. From all this, Marie concluded one thing: This girl was out of the ordinary.

And then there was Hunter. What could she say? He was quite thin, but there was no question about his strength. His face wasn’t all that impressive, other than his bulbous nose, and his hair was the color of a maple leaf at the end of autumn. His ears large, his eyes solemn, his lips full-ish. He wasn’t short but he wasn’t too tall, and all material things considering, he really didn’t stand out among any other boy you might find. But what made him feel like he knew what he was talking about, what made him feel like a leader like he could be trusted, that was all on the inside, and Marie couldn’t take a picture of that.

Notes:

*Spanish: “King Yaga, sir?”

*Russian: “I thought I told you to speak in my tongue, Master Ortiz.”

*Spanish: “Stupid English.”