“What’s going on, Jill?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I guess. How are you, though? It’s good to hear your voice.”

Ah. She’d been worried about us, heading into battle and all. “We won. No casualties.”

“It was totally gross,” Kathy said.

I wondered why Kathy found this carnage so much worse than the orcs. Maybe because it was humans. I hoped she didn’t say that part out loud, so I didn’t ask why.

Jill didn’t ask, either. “Abby, the shit hit the fan,” she said.

Jill was okay, and that was the important thing. “Tell me,” I said.

“Meta went upstairs, saying she had to test a theory. About an hour later Tysiel comes running through, saying that Meta has to be stopped. So then he goes through the gate. I thought about going with him, but I figured they were just having their usual spat, and besides I wanted to stay where I could reach you. The next thing I knew, there was a loud explosion up there and puzzle pieces falling from the sky, and then the computers started acting up and all I could get on the radio was interference.”

“Holy crap,” I said. “But you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I have a little bruise where a puzzle piece hit me. Those suckers are big, and the wood is hard. The cables coming through the ceiling were all cut in two, and so they fell, too. Some of our stuff is dented, but nothing serious. We have no electricity, and since the laptop wasn’t working right anyway, I shut it off to conserve the battery.”

“Smart. We’ve got some marine batteries we can plug into, but essentials only. I’ll just have to get the windmill finished.”

“And we’ll eat everything that’s in the fridge as soon as we can,” Kathy added. “Hopefully someone feels like eating, because I sure don’t.”

“I assume that means the gate isn’t working.”

“Yeah, there’s no gate there,” Jill said. “Just a bare ceiling. Just in case, I climbed the stairs and touched it.”

“And did a gate of some sort open outside, that you can tell?”

“I went outside, in case I could get better reception out there, but I didn’t see anything.”

The whole business resembled what Meta and Tysiel had said might happen if you opened two gates close together, although it sounded like we got off easy. And Meta wanting to prove a theory – that could very well involve making a vertical gate. But, even if Meta had done that, the other end of the gate could be anywhere, most likely in Tartarus. And it might or might not still work. I had some hope that it didn’t, given the explosion. If it had destroyed the first gate, it probably destroyed the second gate too.

Which meant I was cut off from Earth forever. Still, that was better than a gate open in Tartarus, and a horde of demons entering Earth. I’d have to find out which it was, if I could.

“We’re on our way back,” I told Jill. “Just stay in the crypt, keep the doors locked unless it’s us, and we’ll see what we can do.”

I told the first vampire, whose I re-christened Drac, to follow us with the zombies I’d assigned to him. I put Varney in control of the newly raised ones, and gave him the same order, warning each of them not to let the zombies tear up the woods in the process. There was no rush in getting them back to the crypt.

The two sets of guards followed us too, and they were faster than the zombie armies, but still well behind the rest of us, who were on ebikes. I hated leaving Varsho’s men with the demons, because I feared they’d get into a fight, so I asked Talos to keep an eye on them.

We pedaled as much as we could, conscious of the limited supply of electricity. Kathy flew on ahead, and was waiting for us outside when we finally got to the crypt.

“No sign of another gate nearby,” Kathy said.

I nodded. “Alright. Let’s see what we’re working with.”

The crypt was in better shape than I thought. Jill had said some stuff was dented, and I assumed she’d understated it so I wouldn’t worry, but really it was mostly just the cardboard boxes things were in that were affected. The puzzle pieces were big chunks of wood, and they’d rained down with some velocity.

Jill hugged me tight for a moment, and then said, “Alea jacta est, eh?”

“Which means?”

“The die is cast. We have crossed the Rubicon. There’s no going back.”

“Yeah.” All the things I’d left on the other side. I wasn’t close to my parents, but I called occasionally. Sandra. A bunch of friends that I figured would always drop in and out of my life from time to time. I’d intended to send many of them messages just before I closed the gate, and now I wouldn’t get a chance. “Glad you’re on the same side of the Rubicon as me,” I told her. I was. It just wasn’t all I was feeling.

“Me too. It’s sudden, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Abby,” Gren said.

“Hmm?”

“Let me take over. You and Kathy and Jill have grieving to do, and I can manage things, with help from my sisters. Lesseth, I’ll need you.”

What? I was the Queen. It was three in the morning, I’d fought a battle, I’d lost my home planet, but I could keep going, right?

“Thank you, Gren,” Jill said. “I’ve been collecting the puzzle pieces in this bag.” She held up some plastic. “They are really all over the place, and it will be a while until we find them all, but I figured we’d want to at least try.”

“Good thinking,” Gren said.

Lesseth came out and stood by Gren. “Leave the bag,” she told me. “We’ll probably need to put some things in it, and we might need to take a few things out.”

Jill took my hand, and pulled. Clearly, everyone agreed but me that I needed a rest. I put the bag down and let Jill guide me to the annex, and a bed.

We made love, first. And then we cried.

“You know what I’m going to miss?” Jill asked.

“What?”

“Abel. All those yummy muscles.”

“I thought you preferred this body, anyway,” I said. “Whenever I’ve given you a choice –”

She shushed me. “Yes. If I have to choose one. But I like both/and.”

I nodded. “This world has plenty of variety for you,” I told her.

“Yes,” she said. “And I’ll take advantage of that someday.” She paused. “No more thrift store finds.”

“No more online video games.”

“No more –” she named a news outlet we both despised, and we laughed.

Naked, and cuddling, we went on like that. Things we’d miss, things we wouldn’t. When we fell asleep together, the light was starting to filter through the window, and my last thought was, rather incongruously, to hope my vampires were okay.

I didn’t sleep long. I slipped out of bed, managing not to wake Jill. I was used to getting stuff out of my bag to get dressed, and I didn’t want to put the same clothes back on. It was rather kind of Jill not to say anything, but last night’s outfit smelled of corpse, and I wondered if I smelled much better or had just acclimated.

I had some clothes in a dresser in the crypt itself, so I headed in that direction. Valeria, Lesseth and Lysandra were there, still hunting down puzzle pieces. They didn’t look like they’d gotten any sleep.

They looked at me, and stared.

“What, you’ve seen me naked before,” I said. “Is something wrong?”

Valeria recovered first. “Um, for some reason, I just – I dunno.”

“I just wanted to look, and look,” Lysandra said. “It’s part of the spell she cast on all of us.”

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Lesseth said.

Ugh. Maybe Stunning Beauty was going to be a pain, after all. I quickly put on a black dress. “Not that I’m not glad to see you three, but where’s Gren?”

“She’s out,” Lesseth said. “We put the vampires in the coffin table. A little bit close quarters, but they said they’d manage. The guards are back, and Bapho found a little book Meta left behind. After Gren read it, she went looking for something in the woods, and left Val in charge. Kendala’s outside, setting up a fire to cook with.”

Ah, right. No oven. And lots of mouths to feed. With the demon guard included, we’d empty that mini-fridge in one meal. “We’ll need more food.”

“Already radioed Inka and Gruush,” Valeria said. “They’ll be giving it to the zombies. You just have to start them on their daily circuit.”

“I don’t want the zombies touching our food.”

“They’ll put everything in boxes. We have lots of boxes, Abby.”

I nodded, and went in search of a wight. They were hard to distinguish from the zombies, but I called out, and three shambled forth to answer my summons.

I ordered one to accompany the zombies, outlined what I needed doing, and he nodded. I guess he understood well enough.

“Can you talk?”

He made a growling sound, and then shook his head, and shrugged.

“Ah. But you understand me?”

He nodded.

“And you can communicate with the zombies?”

He nodded, and whacked one on the side of the head to demonstrate. The zombie scurried off. Whether that was what the wight told him to do by whacking his head or not, I couldn’t be sure. Still, it was better than nothing I supposed.

Gren came cycling up to me. “Abby, you better see this,” she said. “And this.”

She handed me a little book. I opened it, and saw flowery handwriting, most of it formulas and such. “What is it?”

“Meta left it in plain sight in the tent. Bapho saw it first thing when they got back, and handed it over to me. Most of it’s pretty technical, but there are bits that are understandable. And the last few pages, well, I think she meant for us to read it.” Gren took the book back, and flipped until she found the spot. “This page.”

“Abby is super hot,” I read aloud. “I keep thinking about how it would feel to have her big thick cock inside me, even though I’ve been celibate for ten years.”

“Not that,” Gren said. “Plenty of time to read that stuff later.” She pointed. “Start here.”

I read silently. There was some technical stuff, but much of it was plain enough.

The only way to show Tysiel that he’s wrong and that I’m right is to create a horizontal gate to replace the current one. For the sake of sorcerers everywhere, we can decide this matter for once and for all, whether the difference has practical applications or not. If the gate is simply destroyed, a valuable opportunity will be lost.

It is tempting to open the gate to my chambers in Tartarus, but if I succeed, Abby will be furious with me. Not only would this be politically inadvisable, but I respect her. I have found a spot two miles north of here that has a small clearing, and have studied it thoroughly, so I have prepared another end of the gate there. I think it’s far enough away, although of course the proximity of the two gates on Abby’s home world cannot be avoided. The situation presents a singular chance to advance the cause of magic studies. If you are reading this, Uber Archfiend, I hope you approve of my choice and understand it was chosen with your interests in mind as well as the unholy pursuit of knowledge.

Since it is possible that I will not survive opening the second gate, or that I will be trapped on the other side. I am leaving details as to how the gate was constructed behind, so that any knowledge I gain is not lost.

The bit after that got technical, but one part was not. It was a map of the forest, showing the location of the clearing.

“So?” I asked. “Is there another gate?”

“I could show you,” Gren said.

“Gren. Just tell me, please.”

She shook her head. “I thought I could soften the blow during the walk. I’m sorry, Abby. No, there’s no other gate. And no mistaking the place, either. There are deep burn marks on some of the trees, and a lot of fallen branches. The trunks were still standing, but the trees themselves are dead, and will have to be cut down. Xyla is going to be pissed.”

“So that’s it, then.”

“That’s it. I’m sorry, Abby. You know I’ll do everything I can to make your life here wonderful, and so will the rest of us.”

I did know that, and I didn’t resist when she hugged me.