They'd lost sight of the original figure, but the ripples left in the wake told them exactly what path to follow.

Despite moving faster than the speed of sound, it still took them minutes until landmass came into view and, with it, exactly what they expected to see- a crater.

The entire continent was a lifeless desert, and a glassy streak led into a dune that'd been blown to pieces, melted, and re-solidified into glass from the impact. A cloud of sand in the air fell down slowly, telling Dei they weren't that far behind the original figure. Contrary to what he would expect from such a lifeless and toxic planet though, he saw a survivor at the edge of the blast site. It seemed they were not the first to arrive and investigate the commotion.

'Their quick response must mean they're a guardian of this planet perhaps?'

He remembered the Cosmic Beast, and how that was its exact incorrect train of thought.

'Or they're something else. Best not assume. Maybe they were already in the area?'

The figure in the crater was unmoving and likely dead, so he focused on the potential threat now, seeing pale woman dressed in all white, shaded from the sun by an umbrella of the same color.

When he grew close enough, something shifted in the air, and he felt himself be pulled laterally in space- a feeling he had some experience with. Unlike last time though, he wasn't able to simply shatter the world around him and step out of the cracks.

'This is what it feels like to enter a Madness hallucination. She clearly has more Rights than me, and I will be subject to the environment. She's dangerous, but I wonder if her Rights are so powerful from her constantly flexing them to produce this world, or if she is a genuine figure of note.'

The dunes disappeared fully.

Blackened trees covered the landscape, limbs scattered across the ground, and armies of soldiers climbed over their dead. Groups of people casted ritualistic spells, launching purple morphings bombs of screaming faces off into the distance.

On the horizon, Dei saw three evershifting figures. Three indescribable entities that encompassed everything, ever.

Despite that, they felt almost… lacking. He realized this was because they resembled chaos in some capacity, but he could tell they did not have the infinite potential that chaos did because they encompassed everything that already existed, while chaos resembled everything that could exist. To all others, they'd be as awe inspiring as a collapsing star, but Dei had witnessed the magical equivalent of an exploding singularity, so they felt lacking by comparison.

Seeing the artillery squadrons launching those horrific bombs from all angles at the figures, Dei finally took a moment to study the people and magic system around him. It was clear that the Madness user was some kind of war veteran, and they continued to live out the battle that'd long-since ended. That meant the event he was currently trapped in really did happen, and he was looking through a window to the past.

Aside from the fact that magic was clearly much more prevalent than on Earth, Dei saw that the other main difference in this world was the lack of humans. While they looked similar, he recognized the pointed ears and tall lithe figures of elves, a species he'd heard about but never seen.

Every single elf looked on with pure hate at the three figures tromping across the landscape. Despite the towering humanoids rising past the clouds, the eyes of those charging forward held no fear. Even when beams of magic flew from the humanoids, killing or crippling hundreds of elves at a time, there was no flicker in the resolve of the survivors.

Madness users brought you into an environment they specialized in, putting you in an element they knew well to throw off your balance, and Dei could see the hazard here. Stray spells tore at everything, and he knew that if one of the beams from those figures hit him, he would not be able to simply shrug it off. Though he was powerful, he suspected the three were something he'd already heard of.

Keeping an eye out for anything that might strike him, he slowly approached the only figure he knew was real, dodging the rush of elves who all looked disdainfully at him when they saw he was not fighting.

Eventually, she turned to face him with melancholic eyes. Though there was only death around her, she didn't seem too panicked.

"Who are you? An odd beast-like creature, and a plant entity. Travelers?" she said through conceptual-speak, a spell which appeared one of the most common in the multiverse with how often he ran into it.

He mirrored her attitude, uncaring of the surrounding destruction. "Do you mean like people who travel to different universes? Yea, that's us. What's going on here?"

She looked towards the three figures and frowned, "I apologize for the state of our planet. We're currently in something of a revolution against our overlords. We've been ruled by the Titans for so long, it's almost time for us to be free again… just a little longer…"

His theory rang true, and it was confirmed that the three shifting humanoids were, in fact, Titans manifested into the Physical realm.

This also told him that The Champion was not as necessary to the continued existence of the Dragon Realm as the Leviathans were to the Realm of Leviathans (though he couldn't actually confirm if other dragons existed somewhere out in deep space). He'd already suspected there was no Champion here when he was not greeted upon arrival, but this practically confirmed it. Earth was born with The Mother, a Leviathan, and The Champion, but no Titans. Their spatial neighbor, this world, was born with only Titans, which were not good leaders if a world-wide rebellion said anything about it.

He didn't want to provoke her, so he went along with it. "I understand and don't blame you, may I ask who you are?"

She nodded. "I am Thadria, the last surviving leader of the elves. You are?"

"I am Dei, and this is my traveling companion Perumah. We were-"

He ducked under a beam that hit the earth a few feet away, causing cancerous growths to form and pop, releasing acid into the air and forcing him to quickly move away from it.

"Ah, I apologize," Thadria said, "I've been rude. We should not be sitting on the battlefield. Here, allow me to guide you to the command tent."

Dei looked around, seeing nothing but death and despair. Even the ocean was gone, just an endless sea of blackened landscape.

Before he could ask her where they'd go, they were already there.

He didn't feel the world shift this time, but it clearly had changed. He felt, instinctually, that they were somewhere else, and that it'd taken some time to arrive there. When he tried remembering the details of their travel, they were conveniently there in his memory, though he had to tell himself that those memories were not real. He flagged them for removal after this was over.

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The explosions were muted, and Thadria sat at a small square table with two chairs on the other side and a couple of drinks in the middle.

"Please, take a… take a…"

She frowned, and turned to face a random corner in the tent. Dei looked in the same direction, and saw the issue, as one of the bodies had moved with them.

"What's…? Who?" Thadria grabbed her head, muttering. "Who is that? They aren't supposed to be here…"

The face was obscured. Looking back, Dei realized that everything in the background was obscured. The moment his focus slid off something, it almost ceased to be. But this person felt… different. Despite looking directly at them, it almost seemed like they didn't exist at all. They were white noise to everything else and easily tuned out, but something about them grew louder.

He focused everything into seeing them. Into understanding what he was looking at, and something in him finally clicked.

A dissonant feeling threatened to split his mind in two, so Dei used Overmind to purposefully separate the clashing perspectives. Half of him saw the tent, and nothing strange behind Thadria, while another saw desert sand, and the person in the crater.

Dei felt his jaw drop when he recognized who he was looking at.

"Jacob?"

For whatever reason, the man had not been pulled into the vision of Madness, and it gave Dei's mind something to anchor itself to. With it, everything fell away like some kind of optical illusion, and he was free from Thadria's world.

"No… What…?" Thadria whispered, lost. She shook her head and glanced around. "Where am I? Where is…"

Memories danced on the edge of his vision, of a figure skidding to a stop in front of him. Jacob's face appeared, and Thadria saw everything clearly for the first time. She remembered their victory over the Titans, but in the aftermath, there was nothing left. With the death of three Titans, their corpses scattered across the world, corrupting the mana. The residual elf-based mana clashed with the Titan-based mana, and their differences led to an environment too dangerous to support life.

Thadria was the only one strong enough to keep existing. She watched her people, the victors, waste away slowly, and she could do nothing to stop them.

She fought against it, but failed in the end. Her fight turned into something else, and she convinced herself the battle was neither lost nor won. As long as she kept going, as long as she kept fighting, the elves would continue to exist.

Travelers appeared, but she didn't know what they were or where they came from. They spoke of other worlds but she didn't understand. Elves were the only thing to ever exist. There was simply nothing else, so she tuned out their words, not truly hearing them.

She subconsciously believed she was the last person in existence, and everyone else being part of her illusion only supported that.

Now, Jacob refused to fall into that reality, and she could not reconcile his existence with her own. He was irrefutable proof that this was not real.

Without the vision to obscure his perception, Dei realized Jacob was, in fact, still alive. His heart beat rhythmically and his breathing remained steady, showing he was simply unconscious.

"Oh…" Thadria said quietly, slowly falling to her knees.

"Are you… okay?" he asked, though he knew the answer.

She ignored him, and the remnant domain of madness told him why- she still didn't actually think he was real. She thought he was another part of her vision, because he'd fallen into his world, just as all the other Realmwalkers had.

He realized now that her ability to pull him in was a combination of a truly powerful Madness affinity combined with her being a somewhat noteworthy figure on a multiversal scale, and having supposedly remained in her own mind for the last… millenia or two? It was difficult to estimate how much time had passed after her descent into insanity based only on the warped perception she broadcasted.

She didn't cry, only looking apathetically at the unconscious figure.

Dei sighed, he'd need Jacob to talk to her if he wanted to get anything through. He walked onto melted path and followed it closer, when she finally turned towards him.

The whispers of madness at the edge of his mind spiked, and he was nearly pulled back into her pseudo-world.

"Do not touch him," she commanded, then shook slightly when she realized she was returning to her fake world.

She focused on him again, and the whispers quieted slightly. Not as much as before, but enough that he knew Jacobs presence was her only anchor to sanity.

An incessant muttering pushed its way into his mind that he could not tune out, only saying "He'sRealHe'sRealHe'sRealHe'sReal."

Thadria stood once more, and slowly trudged over to Jacob's unconscious figure. He was ready to step in if she tried to hurt him, but knew she wanted him safe. He was only worried about any accidents.

Knowing Jacob had lived after hitting sand hard enough to melt it though, Dei felt he didn't need to worry as much as he might've with a regular Earthling. Jacob hadn't been an Elite before, he'd clearly gone through some insane stuff if he had enough rights to shatter such a powerful Madness illusion.

Dei frowned, 'There's absolutely no way he was able to get more Rights than me in two weeks, there must be something else going on here. I want to Identify him and see… but I also really don't want to provoke her into a fight if one is avoidable. I'll just ask him directly later.'

When she finally reached him, she studied his entire form, and Dei wanted to laugh when he imagined the blush Jacob might've had if he were to wake up and realize he was naked right now.

"Why don't you have any clothes?" she asked airily, and Jacob, of course, did not respond. "I will… get you some."

She cast a spell of some kind, and Jacob was lifted up on a cloud mattress. She took off into the air, with Dei and Perumah following behind. The moment her eyes were off Jacob though, he felt the whispers strengthen.

She stopped, and changed the spell to cover his private area, then brought him around front so she could always keep him in her periphery, even when she moved.

Over the landscape they went, passing half-buried remnants of shattered buildings. She clearly had a destination in mind as she skipped it all, but Dei wasn't hopeful if this was the state of the world at large.

Some hesitation appeared in her body language, and it was clear she was having the same thoughts as him. This was her first time seeing the world, and she was no-doubt dealing with the grief of loss, only staving off mental collapse with the knowledge that there was at least one other person in existence. If she stopped here, she might return to the place of absolute loneliness she'd just escaped.

"If anything in the world still stands… it will be there," she muttered to herself, and on they flew.

* * *

Broken buildings slowly became more prevalent, until she finally landed in the heart of a city, seeing a trapdoor on the ground.

He wanted to question what it was, but knew he wouldn't get an answer. So he simply watched her cast a spell, and the handle-less wood let out a loud thunk.

She frowned and cast another spell. With a scream, the trapdoor was pried open, its hinges resisting every step of the way. Still, the interior condition of the building she'd chosen made her smile, as even Dei could see it looked much more intact than anything else he'd seen so far.

She didn't bother closing it behind her, and Dei followed, floating past a ladder without bothering to touch it.

When she reached the bottom, she set out along some predetermined path until, eventually, opened a door to reveal a well-furnished bedroom coated in dust.

Another air spell, cleaned everything, coating Dei in dust as he'd been standing behind Thadria, directly where she'd thrown it all.

He sighed and went intangible, letting the dust fall down. Thadria looked towards a wardrobe and opened it to reveal surprisingly intact outfits made of a silky, shiny material. She started to dress Jacob in undergarments and pants, but Perumah gripped his arm tightly, and he was forced to look over to her.

"Dei," she said with suspicious monotony.

"What?"

"Can you see souls through walls?"

"Um, no I cannot."

"Extend your lines of Connection in all directions. Through the walls, the items, everything."

He felt a pit open in his stomach, but followed her instructions and saw what she was trying to get him to see.

Every surface in the room, every item, wall, board, and even the lamps were imbued with souls. Worse, he saw that not a single one was dormant, and all of them now turned their attention to the new interloper.

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