A Friendly Voidling

The mayor of Glimmerhome was having a bad day. The week had started so well; the identified primary threat to the city, the Creature, had been sent back to the Void where it belonged. Humans, identified as the second most dangerous threat, had been completely eradicated worldwide. There was still plant life whose roots could chew through stone, and microscopic life forms like mould that could consume the city if left unchecked, but they weren't immediate threats, and now that the more imminent issues had been dealt with, the mayor was expecting a slow but effortless job to eradicate them.

The question needed to be raised of what constituted 'Gimmerhome', as well as the actual tasks and responsibilities of the mayor. One responsibility was to ensure the prosperity of the city, which he had obviously accomplished brilliantly; it was now the only, and hence the most prosperous, city on the planet. He also needed to ensure its safety, an obligation which again had been fulfilled to his satisfaction. As to the question of what Glimmerhome was, that was harder. Most residences had been deconstructed for golem building materials, but without anyone living in them, did they serve any purpose as part of the city? The mayor certainly saw no reason to rebuild them. The same could be said of any other structures; shops were pointless without shoppers, inns without guests.

The old mayor from a few generations back had once opined that a city was its people, but the people of Glimmerhome had abandoned it. There was a city ordinance that explicitly stated golems were not to be considered citizens, or even people, for the purposes of law, yet there was another one that required the city mayor to have been a registered citizen for a period of at least five years prior to election. It was the sort of conflict that a logical and inflexible golem mind was not constructed to cope with, but he had done his best. It had been the previous mayor that had elected him, and therefore he decided that election must have come with an implicit addition that he was to be retroactively declared a citizen. Therefore, since he was the entirety of the city's people, he was by extension the city, and all else was nothing but decoration.

That was as far as his philosophical introspection had reached when an alarm started blaring. He had decided that another possible, albeit unlikely, threat to the city was an invasion from another plane of existence, and as such had ordered the creation of a worldwide barrier to deflect any incoming portals. The alarm that had just gone off signalled the penetration of this barrier. They were facing an invasion from the unknown.

That had been only two hours ago, and already he'd lost contact with the entire northern continent. There had been no communication about what was attacking; contact was simply lost, the golems no longer active. Without information, how could he prepare a defence? Another point of light blipped off on his map, this time on an eastern continent. Whatever was attacking had moved between continents, and at the current rate of progress, it would be here in two to six hours, depending on the route it chose. The city must be defended.

In the absence of knowledge of the attacker, he ordered the creation of a range of magical barriers, in the hopes that they would at least do something. He watched lights continue to blink off one by one. Thankfully, the route taken by their aggressor was the longest one, and he came to this continent last, giving plenty of time to set up more defences around the city. They achieved nothing, shattered in an instant. As he gazed forlornly at the now dark map, a voice sounded behind him.

"Someone has been a very very naughty boy."

So, not content with destroying all that he had built, this enemy was even going to steal his trademark popping-up-behind-people trick? It was truly a bad day.

---

Jill and Keri sat relaxing in their house, which Anya had set up on the outskirts of the village before leaving. She'd even stocked the kitchen with food, in case she was gone for a few days. Jill had to acknowledge that she was getting more thoughtful, or at least better at understanding the sort of things she needed to be thoughtful about. Long gone was the Anya of old, who didn't realise that stuffing tendrils down someone's throat would cause suffocation.

"I have to admit, that trick with the eel was impressive."

"Thanks, but I can't do it half as well as Anya," Jill admitted. "She was the one who taught me in the first place."

"Really? How does Anya have any experience in that sort of thing?"

"She cheats; given how she can probe brains

, imagine how simple other body parts must be."

Had Jill known that she'd acquired at least some information from eating the head of a co-worker, she may have been less sanguine about her skills, but it was still annoying to know that Anya was better than her at her own job. Stupid overpowered interdimensional beings. Was there anything she couldn't do? At least, once it had been carefully explained to her, in completely unambiguous and highly detailed terms. Jill wasn't jealous as such, being the beneficiary of much of Anya's overpoweredness, but she still needed to find something to do other than playing caretaker.

A pop signalled the return of their favourite human-shaped eldritch horror.

"I'm back!"

"How'd it go?" Keri asked, trying and failing to sit more upright in her comfy seat.

"I took out all the golems, but they'd been systematically burning... well, everything. There's not much soil left, no plant or animal life at all, and there's so much smoke around that even breathing the air would be deadly. I couldn't even find any seeds. It's beyond my ability to fix, sorry."

Oh, so there was something she couldn't do. That was reassuring. Jill had been half expecting Anya to snap her fingers and bring everyone the golems had killed back to life or something. So, they were stuck here for the rest of their lives then. Or the village was, anyway. The three of them could go travelling anywhere. Literally. Anya could hop between universes the same way as one would visit a neighbour. One human lifetime would be nowhere near enough to see it all.

"I'd need to reverse time around the entire planet or something," Anya added, unhappily.

Jill blinked. What was that last part? "Wait, you can just... undo everything?"

"Of course. It's not complicated."

Jill peered suspiciously. That was far too convenient, and besides, why was Anya sounding unhappy about it? "What's the catch? You don't sound like you want to do that."

"Of course not! You made that golem the city mayor before we left Glimmerhome, long before we met Keri. I'd have to lose a friend! Not to mention you'd lose all of your memories since then too."

"You'd get to rescue me from the bandits and make friends with me all over again then," Keri answered. "That isn't so bad, is it?"

Jill was flabbergasted. Was Anya really rating a few weeks of memories as highly as the entire planet? Flattering, but no. Even without the niggling sense of responsibility that came from the knowledge that she was responsible for all the death in the first place, it should be obvious which was more important. It seemed she would need to act as caretaker for a little longer.

"There were millions of lives lost to the golems. That's worth more than some memories. If you can fix it, you should."

"But... they weren't my friends! They aren't important."

Maybe friends were more important than strangers, but not that much more, Jill thought. It was another common sense thing, and Jill had no idea how to put it into words. Fortunately, she didn't need to. "Anya, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but shove those tendrils of yours up my nose and look at what I'm thinking."

"Oh, right! Of course! I'm glad I've got you around to tell me when I'm being silly. I can just read your memories now, and then give them back to you in the past!"

"What? That wasn't what I was..." Jill managed to start, before her ability to speak was crippled by a suddenly enthusiastic Anya.

Keri grinned, knowing full well what both of them had been thinking. Misunderstandings could be inconvenient things. Even putting her original slavery misconception aside, it hadn't been until they'd made it to that nameless little fishing village that she'd realised that Jill wasn't some monstrously powerful hero, but was a completely ordinary girl. Jill and Anya were friends, not servant and master, or employer and guard. Or more accurately, friends-with-benefits. And Anya had been completely genuine when she had invited Keri into the group. When she'd invited everyone into the group. Keri had originally only said yes due to fear, but she was glad that she had. All the other idiots who'd turned her down had no idea what they were missing.

Finished with Jill, Anya started on Keri, who accepted her with open arms, and only a small amount of thrashing around and screaming. As much as she wanted to relax and let Anya do her thing, having tentacles thrust into her brain was still traumatic.

---

A five metre square basement somewhere below the Institute of Inadvisable Incantations suddenly contained about one and a half metres of naked human girl. If she was going to reverse time anyway, she might as well undo all of her own mistakes too, starting with the first one.

"Hi! Do you want to be my friend?"

The summoner stared at the diminutive being now standing in centre of his carefully laid out pattern of blood, candles, mystical sticks and single confused-looking duck. This was not how he'd expected things to go. Where was all the screaming? The death and destruction? Why was there a girl? Why was she naked?

Anya, wondering why the summoner was staring so hard at her chest, looked down. Drat, there was always something. The dress she'd been wearing hadn't been something she'd made herself, but came from a shop on this world, so it had been caught up in the time reversal. She sighed and sprouted a pretty reasonable copy.

"So, is that a no then? Can you at least tell me what it is that you want? People keep summoning us, but they never tell us why."

"Whu? But... You're not..." the summoner stammered.

"Fine, let's try something easier," Anya sighed. "How about your name?"

"But... But... What?"

"Fine. I give up. We'll just have to do this the easy way."

Anya stepped over and violated his face, found out that he'd summoned her in the hopes of killing everyone in the university, then splattered him all over the walls. Apparently her first 'mistake' had been the correct course of action all along. Also, his name had been John. How boring. Still, at least this time the university hadn't been destroyed, and no-one knew she was here. There was no reason to evacuate the city, Jill would never end up the accidental mayor, and they could all take it easy. Well, except for the Rudellian army. They'd need to do something about that at some point, but it shouldn't be too hard.

With a smile, Anya stepped out of the basement and leaped over the wall.