Serra blinked in the light, smoke billowing from her mouth and nostrils. With a heavy sigh, she fell back onto her butt, seated on the hood. Her tail flicked out happily, slapping the windshield, “still alive, Autumn?”

“Ask me again five minutes ago,” Autumn’s speech sped up and slowed down at random, shaking and twitching painfully.

“Ow…” Roxie blew gently on her scorched fingers, twitching and shaking, “apocalypse averted, mission complete.”

“I’m not–”

“Blasphemers!”

The shout shook the weary group from rest. The King, stood proud upon a battered buggy, a handful of surviving Knights at his side, raced towards them.

“Infidels! Cowards! Bastards!” he screamed, “cut them down! Kill them! No mercy! Fight to the death!”

“Son of a bitch!” Serra exploded from her seat, blades flashing out, slicing the damaged buggy in two.

The Knights and King tumbled into the mud and rolled to their feet, blades in hand to rush the group. Roxie whistled an off–kilter tune, peppering one of them with sonic blows.

Staggering to their knees, Autumn got a hand on the hood and drove their rapier into the ground, fiery cracks splintering like a web through the mud and erupting as geysers of flames that incinerated another three.

Serra clashed with the King in a furious battle of blades, while the last Knight circled around, rushing her back. Serra deflected a blow from the King and sent it wide, cutting the Knight down with a slash of pure force. The King abandoned his blade and grabbed her wrists, smashing his helmet into her forehead. Unable to utilize swords at this range, Serra dropped her own blades, claws flashing.

The King grabbed Serra’s horn, smashing his gauntlet repeatedly into her face, and she grabbed at his helmet, getting her claws into the vents.

“Oh yeah, she’s got him. What were you saying?” Roxie asked Autumn, as the brawl continued beside them.

“I’m not certain this is where it ends,” Autumn shook their head, looking up. The threads were returning to normal, swirling endlessly above, “who else was practicing chronomancy today?” their eyes turned to the limp, lifeless body of the Primordial Reckoning, “how did the Knights know where to awaken Terminus, or how?” then to the two halves of the buggy’s engine block, “and who upgraded their vehicles to keep up with an adventure grade car?”

“Four months of investigation and we’re still not done,” Roxie sighed, “how many people could want the world to end?”

Roxie jumped a little as the King was thrown into the car, grabbed again and thrown against the ground. Serra seized her katana and sunk one into the King’s neck, finally putting the zealot down.

“Lotta folks got a problem with our world,” Serra pointed out, “question is, who’s got the resources?”

Autumn’s eyes scanned the environment, but found no Knights left alive they could question, not after the chaos of the last battle, “Serra, could you retrieve the halves of the engine? The construction could yield some answers.”

“Right, course.”

The trio gathered themselves slowly, stowing the halves of the engine in Roxie’s trunk, clambering into the car with heavy limbs and sore bodies. Roxie, unable to play her guitar at the moment, hummed a quiet tune that filled the space and soothed their wounds.

A gentle breeze blew through, swirling and twisting with Roxie’s magic. Their wounds began to heal themselves, a few hours old, then a few days. Roxie flexed her fingers and smiled. They were scarred, marred by the white shape of the lightning, but they didn’t ache anymore. She shifted to the driver’s seat and took the wheel.

Autumn quietly collapsed across the back seat, still recovering from the effects of a chronomantic feat, unconsciousness soon overtook them.

Roxie turned the car around and started back the way they had come, down the now muddy path amongst the trees.

“What’s the plan once we get home?” she wondered, “Autumn can pick that engine apart, but I’m fresh outta leads.”

“Gonna see my girlfriend,” Serra huffed, settling uncomfortably into her seat.

“It’s been four days, don’t act like the world is gonna end.”

“Won’t anymore,” Serra smiled a little, “I’ll reach out to Ama n’ Frosch, see if they turned anything up.”

“Smart. I’m gonna submit the payment forms; Terminus, the King and the Knights should make us all plenty of cash,” Roxie smiled, but it sank quickly, “ugh, but that’s so much work… forget that, you got plans with Seren?”

A devilish smile crept across Serra’s face, “Well…”

“Ew, nevermind, I don’t wanna hear about that,” Roxie waved her hand as though wafting away a foul smell, “I’m probably just gonna sleep when I get home.”

“M’sure we’ll get some sleep eventually.”

“Gross, Serra!” Roxie threw an old cup at the laughing demon, the fairy couldn’t help but laugh a little herself.

Light began to surround the car, and Roxie pressed a button on the console, summoning a hardtop roof that guarded the weary adventurers from the elements. The car pulled out of the trees and emerged into a gorgeous city, a fairy metropolis of marble spires combining flawlessly with the nature around it. The forest behind them was now a small grove of golden foliage, one of many portals to the endless wilderness they left behind.

Roxie merged with traffic and slowly brought the car out of the city, reaching a road that stretched out into a meadow of beautiful flowers, then to a rolling green plain, leaving the city of Nixielogue behind.

Many hours passed and the sun now hung low in the sky when they came to a bridge, three miles long it stretched across a huge ravine with flowing ocean waters at its bottom. To clarify our story, we leave our adventurers momentarily, crossing this great bridge, to lay out the shape of their world.

Exicara, a world very dissimilar to our own. Forty-four landmasses, known as plates, dot the blue globe, each with a history too long to recount. They are connected by grand bridges built in ages past as a show of great cooperation. Of the seventy original bridges, twelve had fallen into disrepair and collapsed after their plates were abandoned following great changes in the world, four had been severed by the natural shifting of the plates and another ten had been destroyed in conflicts too petty to name here. This left forty-four bridges to match the forty-four plates, a number of some note, for reasons we will now explore.

This world turns now in its 4,444^th year, a very auspicious number; a coincidental figure known as a repeated digit and referred to colloquially as the year of four fours. The number had caught the attention of much of the magical community, who already had made the connection to the forty-four plates and forty-four bridges. The records of the last repeated digit, the 3,333^rd year were dredged up and examined; an increase in coincidences, swings in luck and an increase of great feats and changes in the world were discovered and theorized about. Never before had the repeated digit lined up with other such noteworthy numbers and many scholars and magicians had excitedly laid out their plans for the year with this coincidence in mind.

All this now weighed heavily on Autumn’s dreams. A respected figure and the foremost authority on chronomantic knowledge, they too were aware of the year of four fours. They now felt as though they were picking at the edges of some manner of conspiracy, the Knights had not acted alone, but who or what had guided them was beyond their means to divine.

These worries battered the automaton’s mind as they slept. They saw great figures looming in the mist of their drifting conscious, long dead heroes and the ancient evils they had slain. Their thoughts rose upward from the mire of history and they felt, for a moment, a sight beyond their own. Up, up above the car, above the clouds, to look out over the forty-four plates and catch a glimpse of the curving horizon, beyond which the sun had begun to sink.

The stars awakened. They twinkled a tale in the heavens above and the automaton felt, for a moment, at peace. Their consciousness sank, deeper and deeper into darkness, and the true comfort of sleep overtook them.

Turning away from the slumbering machine, their companions rested in the front seats. Serra traced her new wounds with a finger, healed as though days old after the magic workings of Roxie and the forest. Roxie found her grip tightening on the steering wheel, a sort of aching was beginning to work its way up her hands, she found her vision being drawn to the stark white lines now arcing across the pitch black skin.

“Let’s pull over,” Serra’s voice was deep and rumbling, like the purring of a great engine. Roxie had always found it comforting but now it cut through her distraction like a knife. She started gently and followed the demon’s gaze to the fuel gauge. The needle dipped ever closer to empty and Roxie pulled the car into a small gas station along the road.

She opened the door and was struck by a frigid wind as she stepped out, shivering in surprise.

“You are distracted.”

Serra held a blanket close to her chest, breathing deep, then pulled it around the little fairy’s shoulders. It felt as though it had been freshly taken from the dryer and Roxie pulled it close against the cold.

“It’s my hands,” she smiled, sliding her card into the terminal, “went a little hard back there. Think I fucked something up.”

Serra set the gas pump filling the tank and knelt gently on the cold concrete, taking Roxie’s tiny hands in her own. Roxie didn’t resist, feeling the demon’s warm skin against her own. Infinitely gentle, Serra turned her hands over, rubbing her thumbs against the scarred palms.

“Aye, they’re a bit fucked,” she blew gently on them, warming them. A sharpness set in as the numbing cold faded. Roxie drew her hands back quickly.

“Doesn’t matter. Get some cheap coffee?” She returned the gas pump, offering the demon her card.

Serra took the card and gently patted Roxie’s head, leaving the fairy to the task of cleaning out her car, which had become somewhat cluttered over the course of their journey. Roxie glanced to Autumn in the back seat, sleeping peacefully beneath a blanket, and smiled.