As if two stunning women wanting to turn Silas into a baby daddy weren’t enough, a third entered the picture—Lana Kalestian, from one of the most powerful peak families of all. To demonstrate her devotion to the forerunner, she invited him to the Bizarre Bazaar, one of the most prestigious and mysterious markets in the entire multiverse. On that hot and sandy planet, Silas acquired his forever weapon, a soul-bound spear capable of cutting through the fabric of reality. It remained unnamed, but Silas was certain the weapon would choose one that suited its immense power.

  The other systems made their presence known as well—the dragons, the cultivators, even the demons from the bowels of Hell. But Silas didn’t have time to deal with them, because he and his crew got thrown into a vision that transcended time and space, in which they became aware of a new threat from the depths of the Void—with the planet Galen in its sights.

  Dispute

  Welcome To The Multiverse - Book Eight

  The aftermath of the vision left Silas wondering how best to approach the situation, but he knew it needed to involve getting as many people off Galen as possible. He would need resources—portal scrolls, protection spells, teams of mages. These didn’t come cheap, but luckily, he had three women from some of the multiverse’s richest families vying for his attention.

  But on the way to the universe’s hottest auction, Silas was attacked by the Malfon Matron, a fearsome queen of werewolves was of the mindset that if her daughter couldn’t have Silas, nobody would. Silas barely escaped with his life, but managed to secure most of the items he needed for the evacuation of Galen.

  This, of course, upset the Malfon forces, who launched an all-out invasion of Earth. Thanks to some new allies, including dragons who had bonded with several of Earth’s own, Silas quelled the incursion.

  But Lilly had other plans. Possessed by a demon from the Hell system, Lilly captured Cece and Vex. Silas saved his sister before the hellish corruption could spread, chopping the head off her demonic captor. But Vex wasn’t so lucky. They took her back to her Sacred Root, hoping to find a cure.

  The evacuation plans were in place, but Silas still had no idea how they would deal with the Abhorrent that threatened Galen, and the biomechanical Forlorn which had followed it out of the Void

  Divergence

  Welcome to the Multiverse - Book Nine

  All wasn’t well on earth. The Humans-Only Alliance, or HOA, were quickly gaining a following across the globe, due in large part to the not-biased-at-all reporting of Annie Dungeon. She had to be dealt with, but Silas had other issues to deal with, namely the evacuation of Galen.

  Meanwhile, Vex, the Thumper of Earth, lost her fight to the taint that claimed her, but not her light. Silas found a way to integrate her into the tree that protected Sanctuary, ensuring that she would always be there to look after them.

  Silas finally made a decision regarding his love life, proposing to Selena Kalestian, with the blessing of Lana and all his friends. She said yes, of course, but no date had been set yet, and the full ramifications of his decision had yet to be realized.

  In the end, Silas turned back the abomination that threatened Galen, foiling the plans of fellow Architect Gallarosa, with help from the soul of Lilly, who was still contained in the amulet he wore around his neck. Before she could exact her revenge, Silas, Selena, and Samvek step into a portal, taking them to an unknown corner of the multiverse.

  Prologue: Change

  Freydis, Queen of the Winter Court, looked across the small table at her two counterparts. They were all deities of the Fey System, and none of them looked like they wanted to be in the same room. Still, Simari, Queen of the Void Court, was as cool as ever. Freydis appreciated that about the woman. The Void Queen’s dark eyes had always hidden secrets, but now they were framed with thin stress lines. That was new.

  Then there was Ajasanna, Queen of the Summer Court. The Summer Queen had her own indicators of stress, but as usual they were hidden behind emotion and bluster. Everyone always assumed that the three queens hated one another. But while they certainly held a certain degree of animosity toward each other, they were all necessary, especially considering the vast array of worlds the Fey System covered.

  Freydis could only wonder if the rumors of the tryst between the others’ children were true. Even a queen could enjoy a bit of salacious gossip from time to time, but that wasn’t why they were here now. So she continued to press home her point. “His overreach knows no limits. I know why we called for a truce. The potential destruction was going to be too hard to come back from—I get that. But the human doesn’t know the meaning of restraint.”

  Simari sighed. “We know this, sister. All fey know it. The question is, what shall we do about it?”

  Ajasanna snorted and stood up, undoubtedly to go off on one of her emotional diatribes, but then her sun-bronzed skin went white. Freydis would have asked what was wrong, but there was no need. She felt it, too. The words slipped out of one queen’s lips, but the Winter Queen couldn’t say who. “By the infinite.”

  It must’ve been Ajasanna, because Simari responded, “After so long that even memory serves no purpose.” Then the sensation passed, and another took its place. “Outsiders,” she hissed.

  Freydis let the sensations roll over her. It was not unheard of for adventurers from other systems to travel to a world under the umbrella of the Fey System. Yggdrasil spread its roots wide. Who was to say it was limited only to their system? They certainly sent out fey from time to time to explore other worlds—other systems—in the hope of bringing back new knowledge.

  The thing is, she would have never felt the appearance of four… no, three outsiders. Not unless it happened within her Court itself. They weren’t gods, nor even lesser immortals. It was only that initial flash, perhaps from a remnant of Eternity, that had drawn her attention.

  “It had to be on his home world, didn’t it,” Simari said.

  “Perhaps it will keep him occupied. Maybe we can reclaim some of the other worlds or finally push back a few of his incursions,” Ajasanna offered.

  Freydis sat back in her chair and nodded. Winter was good at waiting. That was half the purpose of the season, to make the world wait for the promise of a new spring, which, if she had her way, would never come. She could wait, but she would also look into this matter. The location made it tricky, but she needed to be informed.

  Far away in another part of the multiverse, in a great pool, a being rested—one who was about as diametrically opposite a Fey Queen as one could get. The pool wasn’t full of water, or magma, or anything else so mundane. This was the source pool. It was the great collection of the mysterious energy that had elevated the modrons. Once, they had been relatively weak, but then the source pool appeared. The energy was known as Psi, and it was nothing like the mana that made up the Divided Realms.

  Primus had been nothing like his current lofty form when, as a simple drone, he had stumbled into the source pool, purely by happenstance. The power had saturated him. It had changed him. He hadn’t been alone that day, but only he had adapted and embraced this new power. He grew, crossing the thresholds to assume complete control of his peak. From there, he set laws in place to make sure that none on the other peaks, especially those in the mortal realms, could rise to match him.

  It wasn’t a desire for power, but a yearning for order which drove him. He could no more have tolerated a disturbance in what he had built than he could a direct confrontation. Both were an affront. As a result, his modrons had been gifted with enough of this power to bring order. But holding true to its nature, the power spread, allowing celestials and demons to develop Psi-based abilities. They were always lesser than the modrons, though. None were a threat to him.

  But now, he was trapped in his pool. Whether modron, demon, or celestial, all beings in the Divided Realms had to absorb Psi from the atmosphere. They couldn’t generate it as some could mana. Leaving his home to hunt down the anomaly had weakened him greatly, and he would have to spend considerable time in the source pool to fully restore himself. There was no other place in the multiverse where he could absorb Psi so quickly.

  For now, he would wait. The anomaly would return.

  Chaos always did stupid things.

  Part of Asmodeus’ mind listened to the dukes bickering. It was inevitable that he had to put up with such nuisances, but that didn’t mean he liked it. This was what separated devils from demons. The letter of the law always had to be adhered to. It was a self-restriction baked into their souls, but it made life more entertaining. It was too easy to mindlessly kill. How much more delightful to slowly reel in a mortal—and right now, he had the biggest fish on his line he’d seen in a long time.

  This one had promise, and Asmodeus was very pleased with the returns for such a small investment of his divine power. There was much still hidden from his sight, but he could never complain about that. It made life interesting. The boy had left his home, but Asmodeus had a good idea of where he’d gone—he was quite a distance off. It wouldn’t be worth the trouble to check on him now, but he could send a spy. Now, he had more immediate concerns. He needed to deal with these two fools in front of him.

  There would be blood.

  The thought brought a smile to his lips.

  Chapter One: New In Town

  I staggered when I stepped out the other side of the portal. The mana saturation hit me before my eyes even had a chance to register my surroundings. I blinked twice and allowed it all to wash through me, starting with my eyes. This definitely wasn’t Earth.

  We stood in a narrow cut between buildings, where damp stone bled chill into the morning. The walls were close and old. Timber ribs had been set into the limewashed plaster, their beams swollen and dark with centuries of rain. The smell of salt hung heavily in the air. We were near the ocean.

  A trickle of runoff crept along the uneven cobbles, metallic with tannin and ash. As my ears recovered from the mana saturation, I heard waves in the distance, and the sounds of a city soon to wake up. The wee hours of the morning were a multiversal constant.

  Beyond the alley, the town spread in textures rather than monuments as my senses continued to unfold and the momentary queasiness from the portal passed. Rooflines leaned at stubborn angles, thatch beside slate, patched where smoke had gnawed at eaves and birds had stolen straw.

  Streets bent around themselves in cramped loops, stitched together by low arches and sagging balconies that never agreed on a straight line. In the distance but closer than the waves, I heard boots striking the street in rhythm. Undoubtedly a city patrol. No, this wasn’t Earth, or at least it wasn’t my Earth. I knew in the multiverse, there could be an infinite number of Earths. For all I knew, there could be one where the dinosaurs had never died out and had instead evolved into a civilized society. As for my current situation, ‘medieval’ was the first word that came to mind, but there was more to it than that.

  That was because of the power of the magic that flowed through everything. I was used to assessing mana concentrations, but my eyes shot open when I realized the mana here was denser than anywhere else I’d ever been. I was surprised I couldn’t see it hanging in the air, mingling with the salt for pride of place. There had only been two other settings that had come close to this level of density—the Temple of the Sect of the Veiled Infinity and the Bizarre Bazaar. But here, there was another quality to the magic which I hadn’t sensed anywhere else, at least not in this way.

  It was to the point that the term ‘mana saturation’ didn’t really cut it here. It didn’t just permeate the atmosphere. It was woven into everything. I bent down on instinct and picked up a cracked piece of slate that I took to be from one of the nearby roofs, cupping it in both my hands while Samvek and Selena watched. I snapped it in half, but it wasn’t easy. That was weird. There was no way something made of stone that thin should have been able to resist me in the slightest. My biggest inconvenience on Earth was not crushing everything I breathed on.

  But the mana here added to the durability of, well, everything.

  Selena stared at the broken pieces where I had tossed them on the ground, then looked to me. “You sense it, too.”

  Samvek made a gesture, drawing our attention to the alley behind us. It was covered in shadows, but that was no bar to my eyes. They came in a shuffle rather than a charge. There were six of them. No, seven. Six men and one woman. They stepped out of the dark, acting as though they had gotten the jump on us. Something about the smug look on the face of the front man made me want to slice it off with a well-placed force construct.

  Their boots were a scavenger’s catalog, cracked leather alongside bare ankles wrapped in twine. Patchwork jerkins bulged with old repairs, and the metal they carried was roughed up so as not to be shiny. Rust scabbed along knife spines and the ring of a chain hung loose at one belt, more threat than restraint.

  Faces told a harder story. Broken noses set twice. A lip that had split and never healed smooth. Eyes rimmed red from cheap drink and bad sleep. Stubble bristling in uneven fields around missing teeth.

  A few wore charms on string or gut, bone chips and river glass that held no power at all. Sweat, ale, and old smoke swirled off them in the alley’s trapped air, and underneath it I caught iron from fresh blood not their own, still tacky on one blade’s fuller. The woman wasn’t much better, although she smelled like she might have bathed in perfume.

  But something was incongruent about them. They were straight out of Les Mis or some other movie showing street ruffians from a similar time period, only rougher than that. I was hardly a historian, but on Earth, I’d place them closer to fifteenth-century Europe rather than the Victorian era. Yet for all the magic around us, so thick that it practically choked me, I couldn’t sense a single bit of magic coming from any of them.

  Their movements were loud, despite what they obviously thought. Cloth rasped against cloth, grit rolled under heels, and tendons creaked in wrists about to tighten. Heartbeats told more than faces. One raced ahead of his bravado, another thudded slow and steady with the patience of someone used to waiting out a mark. A copper coin clicked against a thumbnail in a nervous tic, and a breath whistled through a scar in a throat that had nearly been opened once and never forgot. Behind them, the town kept breathing, unaware or uninterested, and the mana in the air went on humming as if nothing at all was about to happen.

  “Well, what do we have here?” The man who spoke was near the back, but he was the largest of them. I pegged him as their leader, but a bully of a leader without any real talent for it.

  The shortest one gave a ratty laugh, then squealed, “Trespassers who ain’t paid the toll!”

  The woman shook her head. “Nah, they ain’t from around here. Look a’ her skin. And that’s to say nothing about the furry one. I never heard of any lion beastkin. Maybe they’re monsters, escaped from the dungeon.”

  With those last words, five of the men started to pull back until pushed by their leader. “Are you daft, woman? Monsters don’t walk around all dressed up like a lord playing at a warrior. No, I’m thinking that this isn’t a situation for a toll, but more for silence money. As on edge as the Lawkeepers have been, I’m betting they would love to know about these guests.”

  Samvek was about to pounce—I could feel it. He was decisive if nothing else. The question that raced through my mind at the speed of a Forerunner’s thought was whether I cared. I had no idea where we were. “No, not yet. We might need to question them.”

  The fact that Identify hadn’t gone off gave me pause. They felt common tier, and not that far into it, but this place felt so off that I wasn’t sure which of my senses to trust. I didn’t want to kill until I had a better feel for what was going on. Unless I had to, of course.

  I reached out with one hand like some wannabe Jedi. The gesture wasn’t strictly necessary. Then I willed a circle to appear large enough for a human body to enter. It was a tangible connection to Save for Winter-Spatial Heart, and represented how the ability had evolved. Then I tugged with spatial mana. It never occurred to me that the mana here might be different, or that it might not react the way that I wanted to.

  I immediately felt something was off, but the ability still activated. The two men in front disappeared into the portal, sucked in before their cries could escape their mouths. There was a moment of resistance. Notifications popped up, but I paid them no heed. Instead, I pulled with more mana. The woman disappeared into the portal as well, then two more of the men. The resistance continued to make itself known, but it was barely a feather brushing against my mind.

  The leader pushed the remaining member of his crew forward, as if he was being chased by a bear and simply needed to run faster than the slowest of them. His disregard for his team didn’t do him any favors in my book. A second later they, too, were all stashed safely within Save for Winter. I closed the portal.

  Samvek grunted. “That’s new.”

  “Yeah. We haven’t exactly been able to go over what all I gained with the evolution. There’s plenty to talk about when we have the time.”

  Selena’s eyes darted around. “How long can you keep them in there?”

  “One second.”

  She scowled. “That’s not very long.”

  “What? No. I mean… hold on.”

  I opened the most recent notifications. From what I could see, the next six were all variations on the same.

  You have absorbed a sapient being against their will into the spatial storage connected with your soul. Their resistance has been crushed, but will continue to place a small amount of pressure against your Will, based upon the difference in your stats. A single point of mana will be spent every minute to keep them alive, multiplied by every unwilling sapient you pull in.