Caprifexia was munching on a bit of fried fish as she walked along a seaside boulevard of a dusty city that lacked magic entirely and had a name she hadn't bothered to learn when she heard the shout. She was relatively sure that it was the same place they'd visisted before, and in which she'd been unjustly arrested for breaking a mortal's nose who had absolutely deserved it, but most mortal city's looked alike. They all had pyramids. Mortals loved pyramids. Everyone knew that.

  "Help, help! I'm being robbed!" came the plaintive cry of an elderly mortal woman as she struggled with a thin man with a bandana over his face who was trying to take her bag.

  Caprifexia paused for a moment, before taking another bite of fish and continuing on her way. The sun was shining down from above, hot and wonderful. The streets were filthy and disgusting, but the sea-air went some ways to mask the reek of mortality. It was, all in all, not the worst place to take a stroll and enjoy some nice fried fish. Yes, this new life as a hero quite agreed with her.

  "Err, Capri?" said Einar, gesturing to the altercation. "Aren't you a hero now? Shouldn't you, you know, intervene?"

  "Oh, right," she said, glancing between her tasty fish and the mugger. On one hand, she was supposed to be following in her ancestors footsteps, on the other hand… tasty fish. "Ugh. Fine. Hold this, I'll want it back," she said, pushing her half eaten snack into Einar's hand and moving in the direction of the villainy.

  The thief managed to wrestle the bag away from the woman and broke into a run, helpfully in Caprifexia's direction, and as he passed she stuck out her foot, sending him crashing to the ground. There was a nose-like crack, and blood began to spurt from his face.

  "Hark villain!" she declared in the local tongue, snatching up the bag. "Know that you have been bested by Caprifexia, Savior of the Universe! Do not feel ashamed, for you are but a mere mortal, and never had a hope of defeating me, Caprifexia, Saviour of the Universe!"

  The defeated villain moaned in pain as Caprifexia gave him a kick in the ribs for good measure, before turning to her minion and tossing the bag over her shoulder.

  "Come on minion, let's get out of here before those guards show up again," she said rushing away from her fallen nemesis.

  "For fucks sake," said Einar as he rushed to catch up with her and the elderly woman broke into screeches of outrage. "Capri! Capri! You're supposed to give the bag back!"

  "That's silly, I'm a hero; I need its contents to support my heroing. Me saving the universe is more important than whatever pointless mortal thing she was going to use it for," said Caprifexia, slowing down as the woman's protests faded into the background and they turned into a dark alley. "Let's see," she said, rifling through the bag until she found a coin-purse. "Ah, money – that's what you said heroes needed, right minion?"

  "You're not really getting this, are you?" said Einar. "And my name is Einar, not minion."

  "Oh, yes, Ei-nar," she said, pronouncing the word carefully as she opened the purse and peered inside. "Oh! That's- actually, I have no idea; is this a lot of money, Ei-nar?"

  "Wow, yeah, she was loaded," he said, taking it out of her palm and counting the squat golden coins. "Nice haul Capri."

  "I think they went that way, officer," came a voice in the local language from down the alleyway.

  "Capri, they're onto us," said Einar. "Conjure a portal, quick."

  Caprifexia scrunched up her face.

  "Capri!" he said. "They're going to get us, be more scared!'

  "Dragons don't get scared!" she explained.

  "There they are!" shouted the guards. "It's that horned woman, the one who escape the gaol!"

  "Hurry up Capri," said Einar as the six men armed with rapiers rounded the corner stormed towards them. "They're getting closer!"

  "I'm… not in the mood."

  "Oh, look – there's a spider on your shoulder," said Einar.

  Caprfexia reasonably articulated her dislike of spiders, loudly, and a moment later reality shuddered, although that was obviously a coincidence, and a portal appeared.

  Unfortunately for the guards, the rift happened to manifest in-between Caprifexia and the charging officers of the law. And, as Caprifexia had discovered on her first trip, high momentum and portals to the in-between-place didn't mix.

  "Get it off, get it off!" she said, stumbling through the portal.

  "Relax, there wasn't anything there," said Einar, brushing her shoulder as the tear in reality snapped closed behind them. "See? Nothing."

  "Don't do that!"

  "I'll stop doing that when you learn how to make a portal without nearly pissing yourself," he said, coming to the edge of the platform and looking down at the six guards as they hurtled downward, screaming in terror as they fell. "Poor bastards."

  "Hah, take that villains!" said Caprifexia retrieving her fried fish on a stick as she basked in the feeling of yet another successful bout of heroism and watched the guards get smaller and smaller.

  If they were lucky, they'd hit another platform or bridge sooner rather than later, although speed and the impact of collisions did seem to be a funny thing in the in-between, since she hadn't been hurt in the least. Then again she was a dragon, and therefore obviously better at everything, falling included.

  Caprifexia wondered idly, if they survived, if they'd find their way back to their home world, or step through another portal and become stranded on a different world.

  She munched on her fish as she mulled over the problem, before eventually deciding that since they were just villains, she didn't really need to worry about it.

  In fact, wasn't people being punished for villainy part of… what had her minion called it? 'Just-This?'

  Yes, that was it. Instead of getting rewarded for their villainous behaviour, they got 'Just-This.'

  Whether that was just-locked-in-a-cell, just-hit-with-something-hard, or, if they'd been particularly naughty, attempting to frustrate legitimate heroing and the like, just-thrown-off-a-cliff-in-a-pocket-dimension-between-worlds.

  Something like that anyway. She hadn't really been listening when Einar had tried to explain it, so the concept was still a bit fuzzy. Regardless, they weren't her problem anymore.

  "Capri, they weren't villains."

  "Nonsense, I am a hero, like the Black Dragons of old; it's in my blood, it's what I was born to be," she said, finishing her snack and tossing the stick after the villains. "People who are opposed to heroes are, by definition, villains. Honestly minion, do keep up."

  Einar looked like he wanted to argue. But then he just sighed and shook his head, no doubt because he realised how foolish it was to argue with a genius like herself.

  "Well, we didn't sell everything, and I'm not sure we should head back there until things, err, settle down," he said, clearing his throat. "Why don't we try another world?"

  "An excellent suggestion minion, perhaps there will be more villains to defeat there."

  "Einar, I'm called Einar."

  "Ah, yes, I keep forgetting, I'm-" she said, before biting her lip and trailing off. "What am I supposed to say next?"

  "'Sorry.'"

  "Oh yes: 'I'm sorry.'"

  "You know, that's almost progress."

  ***

  "What about this one?" asked Einar as they came to a particularly ruined platform, which was mainly rough baked dirt, sand, and elegant but eroded ruins constructed from some kind of sculpted sandstone. "Looks deserty."

  "Huh?" she said with a tired yawn.

  "Well, there platforms represent aspects of that world – right? Like, there are Nord, Aldmeri, and Cyrodillian construction styles on the platform that leads to Nirn; and that place we just went to, that didn't seem to be anything but forest and bugs, it's platform was just dirt and rocks and trees. This one has a lot of sand, so it should be desert-like, yeah? Maybe the locals are like the other desert place, no magic – a perfect place to dump our junk."

  They'd ended up stuck nearly twelve hours on the 'forest and bug' world, despite the near constant state of a certain emotion, that definitely had not been terror, that Caprifexia had been in from being near so many creepy crawlies.

  She also felt exhausted. She wasn't sure why, but it was an effort to trudge after Einar as he ran on ahead, sketching a map and making notes and generally behaving like an excitable mortal fool. It was the longest they'd been in the in-between place, and they had passed dozens and dozens of stars. Caprifexia hadn't been sure why they'd been passing by them, but had been too tired to ask.

  "They might have crafts we can sell elsewhere," he said, gesturing wildly as Caprifexia yawned and lent against some sandstone masonry, watching some dark sort of fog swirl ahead of them in the void. "Just think about the profit- hey, you OK Capri?"

  "Tired," she said, rubbing her eyes.

  "Yeah, you don't look so good," he said with a frown. "But why? We haven't done anything really strenuous. We just sat around for hours in that forest once you'd scouted. Are you sick or something?"

  "Dragons don't get sick."

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Of course," he said wryly. "But just, hypothetically, if you were sick, we could head back to Nirn, it wouldn't be a problem."

  "No, I'm not- I'm not 'boasting,'" said Caprifexia, using her minon's term for her entirely accurate assessments of her immense ability. "Dragons don't get sick. Ever. We're magical creatures. We can get cursed, but not sick."

  "Then why are you so tired? Are you cursed?" he asked.

  "No," she said, shaking her head. "There was virtually no magic on that world, I would have noticed something attacking me."

  "Maybe creating portals to this place takes it out of you?" said Einar speculatively. "You've done three today, and it took you ages to get that last one working, even though you hated being around all the bugs."

  "Maybe," she conceded grudgingly. Sometimes Einar wasn't a total fool, despite his mortal shortcomings. All magic did come at a price, and she didn't really understand her amazing power entirely. At least, not yet.

  "Come on, let's head back to Nirn – we can get some rooms in the Bannered Mare and-" he said, pausing. "Capri, is that fog getting closer?"

  Caprifexia followed his gaze to where she had been looking before he'd started worrying over her, and blinked in surprise. The fog was coming closer, and not in any kind of happenstance way, but rather streaking across the void directly at them and rapidly gathering speed.

  Even as she watched the fog grew more solid, and within it she caught a few flashes of strangely colourless lightning, and what might have been a large vertical pupil.

  Then she heard it; the faint, clammy, slithering Whispers like the ones she had grown up with. They were somehow removed from the oneness with her she remembered, and she didn't have trouble distinguishing her own thoughts from them, but they were unmistakably the same.

  Einar gasped, clutching the side of his head, and adrenaline coursed through Capri as she realised not only what she was looking at, but where she actually was.

  The 'in-between' wasn't some kind of pocket dimension between planets. This realm hadn't been constructed by some deranged wizard.

  The structures around the stars that lead to worlds reflected the elements of reality within, as Einar had articulated in his foolishly roundabout mortal manner, but they were decaying, twisted mockeries of reality, a mishmash created by non-beings that didn't and couldn't comprehend mortal, or even immortal minds.

  She was in the Void.

  The creature chasing after her?

  Either an Old God, or one of their servants.

  The portals to different worlds?

  Beachheads.

  As soon as the realisation struck her it was like a veil had been peeled back from her eyes.

  Somehow before she had realised what she was looking at she had missed all the fleshy, twisted tendrils that sprouted all over the platforms and bridges, the impossible shadows that writhed in the space between the platforms, the streams of energy that bled from the stars wherever the tendrils touched them, the hundreds of eyes that sprouted from the void infestations, blinking at her and Einar and leaking yellowish goo, the terrible, all consuming Maw that lay directly above her, devouring streams of energy and power from across the vast, shrouded expanse.

  "We need to go minion," she said, grabbing his hand and dragging him towards the star. "We need to go right now."

  L???ê??a???v?????? ???h???ì??m???,??? ???h???e??? ???ǐ??s???ń??'???t??? ??????????r???t???h??? ?????????u???r??? ???t???i???m???e???.???

  "What is going on? There is this buzzing in my head," said Einar, digging his heels in. "Something is wrong."

  ???e???'???s???? ???j???u???s???t??? ?????? ???p??????????h???e???t???i???c??? ???m???o???r???t???a???l??? ???w???o???r???m???.???

  "Minion!" she said, pulling at his arm ineffectually. "Minion! Listen to me we need to leave! We need to leave!"

  N????o?????????? ????????d??????????????????????'????????????????? ?????l???????????????????????????v??????e????????? ??????????h????????????i?????????????????,???????? ??????????????????????????????l????????l????????? ??????????h????????i?????????????m??????!????????

  "I can't- I can't-" he stammered.

  ??????????i?????l?????l?????? ??????????????????????????m??????????? ??????????????i????????????????????????????? ??????h????????i????????????m???????????? ?????????????????????????i????????l???????l???????????? ?????h???i?????m??????? ????????????k??????i??????l??????l??? ????????????????í????????m????????!???????????

  "Minion! Minion! Snap out of it you pea-brained mortal," she said, wrenching harder and kicking at his shins. "We need to get to that star or we are both going to die, do you understand me? Minion!"

  Perhaps the tenor of composed and articulate reason in her voice shook him from his stupor, or perhaps it was because his arm was at danger of being pulled from its socket. Whatever it was, he finally started to move, and Caprifexia pressed her hand against the star just as the fog overtook them.

  They both collapsed onto sand, panting as the Whispers finally receded.

  "What the fuck was that?" said Einar. "What the fuck was that!?"

  "An Old God," replied Caprifeixa sprawling on the ground and staring up at the twin moons above her, shining brightly even in the desert twilight. The air was cool and dry and dusty, and there was barely a hint of wind. "The beings that corrupted my dragonflight; or something like them. Don't you listen min- Ei-nar?"

  "How- how did they get to the in-between place?" said Einar. "Oh Divines, what if it comes through!?"

  "That isn't a pocket dimension, that was the Void. And if they could enter as easily as us we'd all be dead," said Caprifexia, contemplating telling him about what she had seen once she'd peered past the mental compulsion.

  That would really scare him, she thought with a smile, and opened her mouth when another thought struck her.

  She had grown up understanding the horrors of the Void, they had guided her, moulded her – and she had recovered herself despite that. But that was only because she was a dragon, possessing a mind labyrinthine in its complexity compared to Einar's. It had taken centuries before her father had succumb to the Whispers, before the Old Gods had gained a foothold in her dragonflight.

  If she revealed what that place was really like, then it was very likely that his fragile mortal sanity would snap immediately. She'd seen it often enough in the mortal cultists who had served her flight. Especially if they ventured there again, which they'd have to if they wanted to get back to either of their homes.

  She shut her mouth quickly, feeling queasy.

  'I don't want to lose Einar. Einar is my friend,' said a small voice in the back of her head.

  It might already be too late, she realised with a start. He had seen one of them. His sanity was probably already slipping.

  "Divines, the Whispers," said Einar, shivering despite the balmy afternoon air and drawing his knees to his chest. "They're so… so cold."

  "Ei-nar," she said seriously as she realised what she had to do, taking his head in her hands. "I need to burn out part of your brain."

  "What?" he said. "No fucking way. I'm not letting you mess around with my head!"

  "If I don't, you'll go insane. Mortals are not equipped to deal with the true nature of the Void," she said. "I need to remove your memory of the Whispers, and I need to do it now, before they spread."

  "Do you even have the slightest idea what you're doing?" he said, pulling her hands off his temples and shuddering and glancing across at something that wasn't there. "No, no… get out of my head. get out of my head!"

  "Einar. You must let me repair your mind; I've read how to do it in a book. I can do this."

  His hands trembled around her wrists. Caprifexia rolled her eyes, he was such a drama queen.

  "Akatosh, you heard these from when you were a baby?" he said. "Divines."

  "Yes, until very recently. If I don't get rid of them for you, they will never, ever, ever go away. I've seen what they do to mortals," she said, before her voice cracked under some strange kind of emotion that ached in her chest and she which found she didn't care for in the slightest. "Please,Ei-nar, please trust me. You- you- I don't know why, but you matter to me, I don't want you to die. Every moment we delay they infect more and more of your mind."

  Her cheeks burned with shame at engaging in such touchy feely mortal nonsense, and she was glad that if she succeeded he wouldn't remember her being so weak.

  Einar scrunched up his eyes, before releasing her wrists. "Divines, just do it, make them stop."

  "You cannot resist me, understand? If you do, I might damage your mind – well, more than otherwise."

  "OK, OK," he said with a gulp.

  "The book I read said the spell inflicted more damage if the victim was agitated. So try doing the opposite of that," she said, before placing her hands on his temples and closing her eyes.

  "Victim!?"

  "Just shut up and relax, Einar," she said, running through her head how to do the spell properly again and drawing on her magic. "Mentus."

  Immediately she found herself swimming in a sea of thoughts. Despite what she often said, Einar wasn't a fool, and his mind showed it. There was a constant stream of ideas, bubbling away in the back of his mind. New plots, new ploys, hopes and dreams for the future.

  There were also regrets, and anger. She caught a flicker of a memory of a towering man she somehow knew was his father, and the sharp pain associated with his image. She saw a flash of a small girl with the same hair as Einar, lying in a pool of her own blood, the anger and the rage and the deep sorrow and the thirst for revenge…

  Caprifexia drew away from his mind, feeling embarrassed for a reason she couldn't quite identify.

  No, focus, she told herself. She needed to get rid of the Old God Corruption before it spread further.

  She drew closer to the stream once more, working slowly and methodically to identify the places where Void energy was leaking into his mind, removing every last memory of the Old God's appearance, double checking she had caught everything before she withdrew from his mind and centred herself back in her body.

  "Ugh," said Einar, blinking rapidly and shaking his head. "What's going on? Where are we?"

  "Some kind of desert," said Caprifexia, wiping away a non-existent tear from her eye and looking around at the rolling dunes cast orange in the light of the rising sun. It was rather pretty, and would be a good place for a nap.

  "But- we were- you'd just saved that lady's bag..." he said, trailing off as he stared down at where it was slung around his waist. "What in Oblivion is going on? Why do I have the bag?"

  "I took an executive decision and accepted it as a mandatory donation," she said.

  "Stole you mean?"

  "Heroes don't steal. They redistribute. Heroically."

  "Whatever," he said, opening it. "Hey, nice, there is loads of money in here… but hold on, why don't I remember any of this? Did I get hit on the head?"

  "No. I needed to burn out part of your brain to stop you going insane," she said. "It seems that I may have destroyed a bit more than I intended."

  "You did what!?" he shouted.

  "Calm down Ei-nar, everything is fine."

  "You- you- you little-" he said, glaring at her. "Who said you could mess around with my head!?"

  "I don't like your tone, minion," she said, glaring back at him. "And you did, you silly hairless ape."

  "That doesn't sound like something I would agree to," he said. "I don't remember doing that."

  "That is rather the point," she said in an exasperated tone. "Perhaps I should have let your tiny little mortal mind snap? Let you turn into a gibbering wreck? You certainly wouldn't be so lippy."

  They glared at each other for a few more moments, before Einar sighed and rubbed his temples.

  "OK. Assuming I believe you, what happened?" he said. "Last thing I remember we were in Astapor."

  "We were in the Void, and were attacked by something called an Old God," she said. "I saved you."

  "Are you sure you didn't just do something silly and don't want me to remember it?" said Einar.

  "I do not do 'silly things!'" she said, balling her hands into fists. "And I did save you! I did! I did! I did! I did!"

  "All right, all right" he said holding up his hands in surrender in the face her overwhelming rhetorical skill. "Thanks for saving me I guess."

  "There, that wasn't difficult was it minion?" she said, before clearing her throat and adding in a slightly lower voice. "I'm just amazed it worked at all, I've only read a chapter summary on offensive mind magic for use in torture. I was mostly making it up as I went along."

  "Moving quickly on from the terrifying implications of that, can you tell me anything at all?"

  "The Old Gods are creatures of the Void so terrible that they drive people to madness simply by being observed," she said. "The memory of them acts like a kind of foothold into the mind, from which they can spread their corruption. You saw one, not a fragment or a tendril, a fully realised Old One. That memory let it begin to whisper directly into your mind. You were perhaps minutes from being consumed."

  "The… Void?" he said. "What's that?"

  "The thing you foolishly call the 'in-between' place," she said. "The realm of non-existence that lies between the various realities of the multiverse."

  "Since when are we calling it the Void?" he said.

  "Since I deduced it's true nature with my cunning and genius," she said.

  "Was this something from the part of my brain you 'cauterised?'"

  "Yes."

  "And are you OK?" he asked.

  "Of course. I am a dragon."

  "I thought you said that they drove people insane simply by looking at them."

  "I am a dragon," she clarified for a second time.

  "And?"

  "That means that my mind is almost infinite in it's complexity compared to your own limited and generously termed 'intelligence.'"

  "That's nonsense. I mean, you're smart, but you're also not nearly as clever as you think you are," he said. "And hold on, didn't you say 'Old Gods' corrupted your people a while back?"

  "Over the course of centuries. We are not fragile little mortals, we are dragons – the apex of life in not only the universe, but the multiverse. Immortal creatures of magic so powerful as to be beyond anything your limited mortal mind could comprehend-"

  "Riiiight," he said, cutting her off mid sentence. "Just tell me if your going all axe-crazy again, all right? It's pretty difficult to tell apart from your 'heroic' persona – I might not notice."

  "You are not very good at humour minion," she said with a huff.

  "I wasn't joking."

  A.N. If you like my writing, you might be interested in my fantasy adventure novel – – which is entirely pre-written and with chapters released every Friday!

  Mishka the Great and Powerful that isn't up on Royal Road yet!). However, I don't monetise or time-gate my fanfiction though (plz no sue!).