Temperance.

Life Seeks Balance.

Choices Define Us.

The Path Begins.

Ondine hated the heat.

It was lovely to be back on Earth, but she hadn’t been so fortunate with where—or when—she’d been transported. Felix had mentioned the first door was about the past, and it seemed he was right: she had been sent back to her vacation to the US. A few years back, during a time of disillusionment and uncertainty, she’d packed her bags and hopped on a random flight out of Vancouver. It had taken her south—very south. Landing in Houston, she’d immediately floundered on where to go, at least until she’d spotted a flashing billboard in the airport advertising the zoo.

Ondine remembered originally retreating to this zoo because entry was cheap and it promised an afternoon of air-conditioned calm amidst the sweltering heat. When the light had cleared from the Path’s doorway, however, she’d already made it past the entranceShe'd wandered through the zoo enjoying the animals, but now found herself walking among the birds in the aviary. It was hot in there. Humid, in fact. But compared to the hellscape that was Houston in May it was practically balmy.

She'd always enjoyed birds. Her job before being whisked away by the system had been at a pet store. It was a small mom-and-pop store called Thurgood’s, and it specialized in two things: turtles and birds. Ondine sighed, leaning against the metal railing beside a babbling brook. It would have been a thousand percent more pleasant to visit old Mrs. Thurgood again, not to mention her many avian friends.

A few waterfowl legged through the shallow brook, bills nibbling at the water. Ondine watched them, wistful. She missed those birds. When she’d been summoned to the Continent after a particularly long shift, there had been a mad moment where Ondine was convinced the Sylphaen and Korvaa she met were her avian friends given a strange new life. Admittedly she hadn’t been in the best place mentally—being hurled into a land of eternal storms and heaving seas had been a lot. The people of Euphonia—her people—were far more than animals. They were her closest friends and the only reasons she’d survived the stormy lands of Sunara. For them, she had risked this Omen Door.

Not much of a risk, she mused, glancing between the babbling brook and swirling pond thick with greenery. Now, as she stood between babbling brooks and swirling ponds, she enjoyed it all. The aviary was massive, at least twice the size of their aquarium. Songbirds trilled from branches, while peacocks strutted across grassy knolls in the distance. Herons and roseated spoonbills waded through the shallows, snatching fish up into their jaws. Even a batch of flamingos crowded around a far corner. The smell was just as impressive: thick and sharp amid the humidity.

After fifteen minutes of contemplative wandering, Ondine knew she should be looking for the way forward, but she was a bit lost on where to start. Her Mind sifted through ideas as much as her Perception filtered the countless moving creatures around her into categories of threat and non threat. There had been that Omen announcement as she’d arrived. What was the purpose of it? Temperance was the Omen she’d revealed upon her arrival, and aside from a few stat points each level it had proven itself mostly useless. What of the cryptic message after? Was it a clue to figure out what this Path required? Life Seeks Balance was a fairly straightforward sentiment, but lacking context meant it was as useful as a puzzle with a piece missing.

Wait. Something nagged at her, though Ondine couldn’t identify its source. Instinct told her to stay still, and she had survived off of less. Many of her past successes had been guided by instinct, so when the far door slammed open and admitted a tall child, she wasn’t surprised.

No, not a child. A young teen.

She recalled this, though the memory was a bit dim. On her vacation in the past, a teen had wandered into the aviary and he—Ah, yes. There it is.

The kid threw something. It pinged off the low wall, catching the sun enough for her to realize they were a fistful of golden dollar coins. The American version of the loonie. She tilted her head, curious that her Perception still worked—she certainly hadn’t noticed that detail in the past.

However, just as before, chaos spawned from that simple action.

A deep, gutteral snapping noise rattled across the enclosure and a massive, five-foot tall bird rose up out over the low wall. It was blue-gray from tail to crest, bore glowing yellow eyes, and a beak big enough to break an arm—a beak that it snapped together to produce that terrible noise that sounded like nothing so much as a machine gun firing.

The teen took two steps backward, hands raised defensively, as the shoebill stork landed on the path before him.

Where did that come from? Captive shoebills were rare, and more than that, they were usually kept isolated in their own habitats. That wasn’t here last time.

“Easy,” said the teen. “I don’t want trouble.”

The stork wasn’t interested in communicating, because it spread its wings wide and lunged. The teen leaped aside and smacked the bird in the wide beak, forcing it to gurgle a surprised cry. Darkness swept from its feathers, trailing in the bird’s wake as it circled the kid, head low and feathers aggressively ruffled.

Silent as shadow itself, two other creatures flew in behind the boy, their eyes burning with a strange but familiar madness.

“Behind you!” Ondine was already running, but before she reached the boy he’d somehow crushed the two birds that had flanked him. Ichor splattered across the path, and their bodies flickered unnaturally.

The shoebill snapped its beak and the air rippled. The kid was thrown back, slamming into the glass doors, and Ondine’s forward momentum was stymied entirely. The stork spread its wings, those streamers of shadow unfurling from its primary pinions in an arc of fitful fury. The dark scintillated, scattered with stars that burned too bright, and the path became awash in static.

Not electricity, but the fuzzy grain of an old television. Around the shoebill stork, the world lost its definition. It unraveled, and that clacking machine gun sound swelled to incredible new heights. Ondine winced, hands lifted to her ears.

The boy shouted something.

A wash of brown-green material flowed around the bird, clamping against the unformed chaos like a tourniquet. It was firm, half-glossy, and utterly familiar. The shoebill gave a gutteral squawk, slashing its talons at the construction. The hard surface was marred, but it only layered over itself again, growing thicker by the second.

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The teen had stood up, his left hand raised as blackened-green energy pulsed in a halo around him. “Get back, lady. I got this.”

The stork disagreed.

It blurred forward, those dark streamers lashing outward and unmaking the boy’s construct.

Ondine moved. Her Agility flared as she sped forward, hands outstretched as the boy fell backward beneath the stomping claws and snapping beak.

“Calamity’s Cavitation!”

The creature screeched in pain, its back curving up and wings curling inward as an implosion of air tore chunks from its glitching flesh. Eyes of burnished gold stared murder into Ondine’s—and went dark.

A chitinous spike had rammed it through the skull.

The corrupted stork fell the moment the spike dissolved, feathers and bone thumping to the ground amid the wet squelch of pooled ichor. Immediately stone sizzled and a puddle of water boiled as the ichor intermingled. Ondine stepped back, sleeve over her mouth. The same flickering instability they'd seen outside in Amaranth filled these creatures.

She glanced at the boy, who was sitting on the ground and staring at her. “That was impressive. How did you do that?”

“How’d you do that?”

Ondine straightened her blouse, ignoring the question. "Are you all right? They didn't hurt you, did they?"

The familiar teen laughed.

She reached out and helped him to his feet, but was surprised when she had to engage her Strength. "You're heavier than you look. No wonder you stomped those creatures."

“I woulda used a hammer if I had one.” The boy grimaced as he looked around. The pools of ichor made little pillars of smoke that were dissipating quickly. “Hope we don’t run into any more. I think I ruined these shoes.”

Ondine turned, scanning the aviary for any more threats. She spotted none. “We are fine. For now.” It seemed that whatever the Echo's influence was, it was affecting the path. Ondine feared how that would influence their progress, but she couldn't worry about that. Not while this boy was still here. "Where are your parents?"

"Oh, they're back—" He cleared his throat. "They're in the aquarium."

"Michael!"

Ondine looked up just as a woman with brilliant red hair charged through the cracked glass doors. She saw him standing amongst a spray of feathers with wet all over his clothes, but at least the ichor had dissolved into nothing.

"Michael, my god! Are you—what are all these feathers from? I'm so sorry, was he causing trouble?"

"No, he wasn't," Ondine said. "In fact, he was very brave.”

The woman wasn’t really listening, however. “First the giraffe, now this, Michael. What are you doing? Are you provoking these animals?"

"No, I'm not—"

The woman seized her son's arm and started to yank at him. "Come with me."

"Where's dad?" The boy didn't move. His surprising weight certainly startled even his mother. She looked down at his arm as if she'd never seen it before.

"Your father went to get the car. We're going home."

"Oh, are we, mom? Or am I going home and you're going to San Francisco?"

The woman paused and Ondine felt distinctly uncomfortable. The nearest exit was past the pair of them, unless she wanted to wade back through the aviary. This smelled of family drama and she had no interest in being involved. Yet before she could turn away, the woman had gone cold. Ondine had expected screaming or threats, but the boy’s mother simply released his arm, dropping him as if he were garbage.

"I'll tell your father to come fetch you." She turned and marched out of the door. It slammed behind her, the cracks spreading like a spiderweb.

The boy sniffed, the faint tremulous sounds of a sob firming up in his throat. Ondine frowned at the door. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm... I'll be fine.”

“So we should get you out of here before more of those birds come after us, Beef."

"Beef—?" The boy looked up. His eyes widened. "Ondine?"

“Indeed.”

He gave her a once over. “How didn’t I notice? You look just like before.”

“You are much smaller,” she said with a smile. “And less fuzzy.”

Beef blushed. “I wasn't born a Minotaur. I noticed you don't have wings."

"Yes, I miss them.”

“And I miss how big I used to be.” He stared sourly after his mother. “She wouldn’t have tried that if I’d been Beefhammer.”

“You seem quite strong regardless."

"Yeah. Still got our stats, right?"

“It appears so. Skills too, to a lesser extent.” Ondine wished she could check her Mana stores, but she didn’t think she had much left. “My Cataclysm’s Cavitation ate up most of my reserves.”

“What that what that was?” Beef’s eyes were wide, childlike awe writ large across his features. “All I saw was an explosion of feathers and this whump! Air hit me in the face like an invisible mattress.”

“It is an effective Skill, and not normally so Mana hungry.”

“Yeah, my chitin shaping is weird too. But it doesn’t use Mana—” A small bird alighted on the boy’s shoulder. Ondine almost attacked it before she realized it was covered in blackened green facets. It was a bird made entirely of crystal. It hopped up onto Michael's tousled head.

"You found the disturbance,” the bird said. “Hello, Ondine.”

She inclined her head. “Hallow.”

“We killed the thing. It looked like a monster got into this memory somehow.” Beef scratched his jaw. “That didn’t happen in the past. What is this Path suggesting?”

“I am unsure,” the crystal bird piped before gesturing with a wing. “But it looks like it is time to go.”

Two doorways where there hadn't been any before materialized beside them. There was no door, only the frame made of some sort of twisting stone. From the top, a curtain of starlit shadow hung heavy, rippling with an unfelt breeze. Ondine immediately knew which one was hers. It beckoned at her, a voice groaning in her ears.

Ascendant.

Take The Door Or Be Lost.

"Huh.” Beef squared his shoulders. “Freaky.”

"Michael, Michael, where are you?" a voice called out.

Ondine tilted her head. She recognized the voice. “Is that the Lizard?”

Beef smiled. “Not yet. But he will be.” His smile vanished. “I hope all this wasn’t real.”

Ondine shook her head. "It can't be. There were no monsters in Texas when I was here.” The Lizard’s voice kept getting louder. “He sounds scared.”

“He’s fine.” Beef cleared his throat. “But we’re gonna be talking when I’m outta this place. Let’s go.” He walked up to his door and she sidled up to hers.

"Hey, princess.” She looked back at him and the crystalline bird on his shoulder. He gave her a shy smile. "Thank you. For…just thanks."

She smiled. "Of course, Beef."

Ondine took a single step into the darkness and was transmuted into light.