(Assumed ending after Forging the Damascus thread is completed) From beyond the edge of the Semi-Structured, Icarus had been watching while in what one would consider the Unstructured, his home. He noticed a bizarre frenzy taking over the world as he opened a gate to look about here and there. Upon the Plains of Bohar, he found quite the odd situation as he hadn’t been expecting a new war to break out for at least a few years, certainly not of this scale. Alas, he was but mortal and even his calculations were fallible.While he had tested his new weapons on some of the creatures of the Semi-Structured, he had an inkling something about those involved in the incursion had some variance that made his weaponry less effective. After all, if it were easy to use weapons crafted in the Void and layered by using a Gate spell over minute sections during crafting, he would be remiss. He wanted effective weaponry, not a cheat.Still, he was more worried about what was occurring in the Void, and refused to step beyond it to assist in what he considered the real world. The creatures here had changed minutely for the past week or so. At first, his weapons, tempered in the Void, would immediately displace and destroy any of the normal denizens he found within the Semi-Structured. Instead, they now only cut them, as though their very nature had been altered by an external force.

The creatures here were crafted by the imaginations of those living in the real world as collections of thought, will, and nightmares fueled the design. With the insanity that had recently plagued the outside, there were not only more of the creatures, but they seemed fundamentally altered. Icarus didn’t care; the creatures stood between his home in the Unstructured, the Beyond, and the real world. They needed to be at least reduced in number so the mortals and gods dwelling in the real world would have an easier time dealing with whatever was behind the actual threat.

Stepping forth through a separate gate he created within the Void, he came to the edge of his domain, where what others called the Semi-Structured began. He honestly couldn’t figure out why more people didn’t live here, aaand then he saw one of the usual monsters others fled from and laughed. ”Seriously, I don’t know why I even bother sometimes,” he chuckled as he dashed forward and cut it down with the new katana he had crafted.

“Bah,” the old hunter said without a second thought. “This place is far too hot.” He looked around, trying to figure out just how he had managed to get so lost in the battle. The tunnel he had followed had lead into something of an open, winding path that seemed to lead deeper into the abyss that was the Void. Overall, though, Rulne was far from concerned about his location, and much more concerned about the fact that Coryanna was going to kill him for getting separated from the rest of the Guarde.

“Blast that woman…” he said under his breath. “I’d rather roast in the deserts than fight alongside that clumsy bunch. Isn’t that right, Vagrant?” Rulne reached his hand down for his wolf. “Vagrant?” His attitude changed almost immediately. He looked around, his eyes trying hard to find anything in the dark that resembled his companion.

Vagrant!? he called. Silence. The Void was toying with him. He cursed, drawing his blade. The shimmering blue edge helped illuminate some of the ground he walked upon, but did nothing for the overall darkness.

His feelings on the Guarde fluctuated from person to person, and depending on the day, he could even loathe his own sister, but there was always one thing that had stayed constant through his life. His love for Vagrant, and their unbreakable bond. To lose the wolf now would destroy Rulne.

“I’ll be damned if this is where it all ends!” he said as he charged deeper into the Void.

After a few moments of walking, Icarus heard a sound from behind him, back within the Unstructured. From what he could tell, it sounded like a man shouting his defiance at the abyssal darkness others struggled to grow accustomed to. Was it one of the warriors that had traverses the Void in the hopes of staunching the flow of monsters assaulting the Real World? He couldn’t know immediately, but he knew it was an individual separate from this unintelligent horde.

Using aura sight, Icarus could see the magical hum of the man’s blue blade faintly in the distance. The Unstructured was generally safe, but he needed to be cautious not to let his mind wander. The alterable reality of the location could give rise to creatures as real as one pictured them, no less deadly either. ”Halt, traveler!” he called. ”You’re traveling too far! Nothing waits beyond there and I won’t have you getting lost in this endless expanse!”.

It took him a few minutes to catch up to the man who may or may not have heard him, but he was at last able to arrive within a distance he knew the other couldn’t ignore. Icarus pictured an open plain with the sun overhead with as much intent as he could muster. Their proximity to the Semi-Structured dulled the effects of the Unstructured’s subjective reality, bringing a mild dusk overhead and dirt path connecting the two men rather than a road under midday sun. He removed his mask for a moment to show he was a person before replacing it to prevent confusion and incur an attack from the seemingly disheveled warrior.

”By the gods, what are you doing way out here? I thought I was the only fool to tread out this far,” he inquired, catching his breath as he at last approached the other man.

I’ll be damned if this is where it all ends. he thought as he mentally mocked his own statement not moments after he made it. He was an idiot for announcing himself like that. The hunter and tracker knew far better than to do that, but the loss of his wolf caused something akin to a temporary emotional break that he couldn’t quite shake off without a bit of venting.

It was foolish venting, of course, but he had stopped his charge about the same time he came to the realization that he announced himself to the Void. The decision to slow his pace was a smart one; he had no idea where he was, nor where Vagrant was, so it was better to proceed with caution versus haste. The fact that he was now thinking logically was an unfortunate side effect of always playing Demon’s Advocate for Cory and all of her decisions. A calm, rational mind to see through the flaws of any plan.

Still, it was a surprise to the hunter when another approached him from what he could only assume was directionally the ‘exit’ of the Void. At first, Rulne wasn’t entirely sure if he should wait for the being to speak, or if he should just outright attack. But he decided against attacking in the end. It would be better to look for an opening, and exploitation. After all, all was fair when it came to survival.

“To answer you,” Rulne stated so matter of factly, “I travel as far well as I please. Your concern is noted, and quite well ignored.” While he felt no hostile intention from the being, he kept his guard up, his sword idly in hand, but ready. “If you have any other tidbits of universal wisdom, I suggest you keep them to yourself. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a wolf to find…”

It wasn’t that he hated people. In fact, he quite liked people. Just not most people. And not anyone outside the Guarde. Well, not entirely true. There was that one woman in the Sun Kissed Inn. On second thought, not. She tossed him out the next morning after Vagrant pissed on her fashionable rug.

So yes. Rulne hated people. Except the Guarde. Well, half the Guarde was unbearable..

“If you happen to see a wolf named Vagrant, please tell him that I’m looking for him. He’ll understand.”

Although the man was mildly belligerent, Icarus could tell it mostly originated from concern for his animal. It was an attitude he could sympathize with. What the man was doing by traveling out here without any knowledge of where he was going was haphazard, to say the least. With an audible sigh, Icarus proceeded a few steps away from him as he was continuing onward despite his warning.

”Fine. I, too, have a wolf and would be in a fluster if he were lost in a strange land. I’m familiar with the terrain and will accompany you until he’s found if you have no objections,” he declared, activating his aura sight in conjunction with his hunter’s senses. The issue wasn’t tracking the wolf, it was ascertaining which direction it had tread. It seemed unlikely a wolf, with its own instinctual advantages, would become lost in a black expanse such as this. Instead, it was far more likely that the man had left the wolf behind if he had never watched the wolf run off from him.

Rulne took a moment to glare at the obstinate man, but decided against saying anything else against the offered help. It wasn’t as if the hunter had much of a choice. He couldn’t force the help to leave. Well. I could. But it wouldn’t be worth it.

“Fine, fine,” he said waving his sword hand. “Just don’t slow me down.” And with that bit out of the way, Rulne found himself delving deeper into the Void, step by step. Vagrant must have come this way. There was no other explanation needed. Their connection, though weak, would not snap from something such as the Void, and he was more than confident that the current stretch of Void was narrow enough that he would feel the wolf should it try to get past.

Not that I would understand on why Vagrant would act in such a way. But this is the Void. Mayhaps it does a thing to the beasties that I don’t quite understand myself He looked back to see if the man was still following. “You keeping pace?” Despite his older appearance, Rulne was well defined when it came to his physical prowess.

“What are you doing down here, anyway?” he finally asked. It wasn’t often that one of the Guarde ended up in the company of someone who wasn’t either an escort, or a trader. And the occasional odd job. Other than that, they tended to keep to themselves. So Rulne wasn’t entirely sure what they should be speaking of. If they should even be speaking at all. And while Rulne did prefer the silence overall, the situation felt as though it demanded speech.

Icarus didn’t even waste his breath arguing with the man. It seemed he had a general distaste for people, probably explaining why he had ventured out here all alone with only a faithful animal joining him. With them now progressing together, the pace increased to a fast jog for a considerable distance. He was fortunate that he had never slacked in his training, often running in large circles while out in the Void.

”Don’t worry about me. Mind your step because there’s often fragments of reality blended in with the environment, making it really easy to stub your toe,” he called out as the other man nearly snapped his ankle like a twig if he had stepped to his left only a few paces prior. Despite being a vast, open expanse, the terrain was uncertain, as he had determined over the past three years.

 ”Me? I’ve lived here for about three years now. After a while, you start developing a bond with it. I was gifted in Void magic previously and it seemed as though my own magic blended with this atmosphere, in a way,” he explained. It was difficult to describe his form of magic. He’d learned it decades ago and only refined it over time. To him, this was not truly the Void as he knew it. The Void was an imaginary space one essentially found themselves in if they did not complete teleportation or gate travel. 

It was, in a way of speaking, a place where everything that never existed could be found if one traveled deep enough. In truth, it was at that very edge of this realm’s reality one could find those hypothetically impossible that Icarus strayed from. The possibility of inadvertently coming across paradoxical anomalies was too great and any interaction could possibly bring them to full realization. If something like that got out, gods could be fighting copies of themselves diametrically opposed and the entire world could be jeopardized.

Alas, it was rare for others to tread here, even the creatures now laying siege to the world. In fact, he had a sneaking suspicion that one of those anomalies had been contacted by a creature and that was how this entire situation began. He couldn’t prove it quite yet, but it would explain several of the inconsistencies among the creatures of the enemy army and how they seemed specifically varied as a direct assault force with ground troops, aerial units, and siege monsters. It was almost as though the creatures were directly selected and crafted by a tailor.

”There are one thousand, seven hundred, and twenty-eight possible exits from the Semi-Structured to this untamed darkness. Let’s hope you wolf departed one of the nearby ones. It should be around two hundred meters ahead at a slight left,” he stated. He knew this by simple mathematics and by having counted nearly a thousand as well. The Void operated in series of 12, expanding in complexity and scale the further one ventured. There were technically 12 true entrances to the Void, with 12 exits from the Structured for each entrance, and lastly, another twelve exits for every entrance to the Semi-Structured. 

”Any way to determine if he’s close?”