The Sandman shoves the brainless corpse from the chair, allowing a red-masked Sandman to assume the spot. Hovering over another chair, a Sandman with a mask milkier white than ivory arrives. A third black-masked figure pushes past the ivory-masked Sandman and assumes his place to the right of the head table position. A pale-masked Sandman takes position at the head of the table. The ivory-masked one hangs back from the gathering, awaiting a command from one of the creatures at the table.
The steaming liquid in each cup boils like acid, leaving Reynard to question the edibility of the toasted tea cakes. He lacks hunger but knows he needs the food at least to quell the stomach gurgles. He reaches for the grilled bread. As each of the four Sandmen sip, the swimming figures in their masks contort and thrash about as if on fire. They retreat from each mask’s surface.
“What are you?” Too vague, but it’s the question plaguing him since he was stolen from Summersun.
“We do not explain the sun to an ant.” The voice, hollow and frozen in tone, pushes gooseflesh over Reynard’s arms.
“Simple humanoids lack understanding of the physical dynamics of the Multiverse,” the pale-masked Sandman says.
“Cosmological inflation is beyond their simple minds,” the red-masked Sandman adds.
“If you’re going to munch on my brains, do so.” Reynard tosses the sword on the table, spilling the tea. “But don’t patronize me.”
The bubbling liquid eats at the cloth cover.
“What would you have us explain?”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Reynard, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”
“Misquoting Hamlet. End me or return me. I must serve some purpose, or I’d have been destroyed on Summersun.”
“You’re here to service your gods,” the pale Sandman chortles.
The revolver barrel locks onto the center mass of the pale mask. “You. Are not. A god.” Spittle showers the table as the wood smolders from the tea.
“No harm will befall us here. Nor are we able to harm you.”
Lies. I destroyed a Sandman upon arrival. Shouldn’t they know?
“Then I’m leaving.” Reynard rises from his seat, gun pointed at the monster he considers the leader.
“You have no means to escape.”
Reynard grips the hilt of his blade. “I’m no toy. If bringing me here served a purpose besides to feast on my brains—explain!”
“Even across realties, the universe holds a symbiotic relationship with all in existence.”
“You’re beings from an alternate reality where all infinite possibilities have played forth. I guessed so when I met Eymaxin.”
The four Sandmen nod.
“I’m no Stephen Hawking, and I don’t doubt my experience, but why bring me to your world?”
“The planet you escaped was not our world. Nor is this cosmological horizon.”
“You might as well stop. Quantum physics was a theory barely theorized upon in high school. Why am I here?” If this is some sort of viewing platform to reach other realities, how do I pick mine?
More ivory-masked Sandmen gather around the edge of the meeting table.
“Why leave your own reality? If you get sick in an alternate one?”
Of the gathering Sandmen, one floats toward him. Boney fingers peel back the mask. In the void forms a face. Reynard stares directly into a mirror without any glass.
“You’re not me!” Reynard swings the revolver toward his ghostly reflection.
Sandmen grab at him.
The four tea-sipping Sandmen scatter many of the ivory masks. Reynard’s doppelganger remains. “I am Archimago—keeper of falsehoods. I’ll not dine on your mind just yet—I thirst for the power you will give me.”
“Never!”
Reynard struggles to keep his grip. The discharge splinters the ground. Sandmen whip away. Through the crater, he peers into emptiness. The void between Multiverses. He contemplates the jump as an escape.
“Trust that I am your reflection—a dark reflection.” Archimago reaches for him.
“Even the Devil has the power to assume a pleasing shape.” Reynard steps off.
A Sandman collides against him. The bullet shatters its mask, but the impact with the ground jerks his trigger finger. A second round discharges and smashes through the wall of this reality. The sky splinters. Each crack spiders out into more and more cracks. Shards fall away, leaving infinity beyond the darkness.
“If you return home without knowing, you’ll never defeat—”
He ignores the rant of the black-masked Sandman.
Floating—
Falling—
Suspended in nothing.
Light grows in the void.
Seven identical orbs suture a gash in reality. Near the center, where an eighth orb should maintain the seal, the wound has split and now gushes light.
Simple guess—the Hex Darmight fits in the disjointed gouge. Why would the Sandmen want me to learn how to prevent them from entering my reality? None of these creatures’ actions contain logic.
As he falls through the laceration, an ivory-masked Sandman catches his heel.
ENCOUNTERING A ZAYAR outside their home world causes even Maxtin to do a double take. His species has a natural isolationist nature.
“An embassy constructed to Zayar standards within the UCP will allow thousands of our people to staff it. I opened up Academy positions to our people, but only one accepted the appointment,” says Maxtin.
“I’m too old to attend the Academy. More will apply as the government uses this awakening to exile those they deem undesirable.” The effeminate voice may have been one of the only clues that this humanoid was woman. The Zayar military uniform lacks any insignias of rank or reward and barely a pair of protruding mammary glands. Grizzled and hard with the laugh lines and ancient skin accompanied by a gray-white mane, she appears as all other Zayars. “You’ll get all the free thinkers the UCP will handle.” She rubs the coarse facial whiskers decorating her chin.
Maxtin’s own instructor, Professor Emuukha, inspired him with the disease of free thought, and he joined the Osirian Coalition and a self-imposed exile from Zayar. He wonders how much of a radical Zeelie has become.
She stands at attention without a salute. No such procedure developed on Zayous. “I’ve been discharged. I request
