The scaffolding creaked around Orlondo as he climbed its steps. It didn’t matter how lightly or firmly he set his feet. The chilly air within didn’t help with his shakes either. The brightly-painted drapery around the platform’s exterior hid him from the pale, overcast sunlight. It also hid him from the plaza’s crowd, but he still heard their waiting clamor outside, rising as the herald on the podium above addressed them.

Finally, he emerged. He willed himself up the last step, through the platform’s opening, and into the open breeze. As he did, high, brassy clarions sounded on both sides of him. Then the herald resumed with her bellowing introduction, and his trembles rippled all the way from his fingers up his sides.

The Precipice intersects with countless worlds, but its interactions with each one are unique. Read on to find out more about the way the realm beyond manifests across a number of worlds!

Orlondo swept his right leg back and elevated his poleaxe’s butt end above his head in his overhand grip. As he did, his foot harness’ plates softly clanked together. His stance angled the weapon’s head toward the ground, rather than levelling it up toward his opponent’s throat. But he much preferred the poise’s other advantages—defense and leverage. It interposed his weapon’s haft between his open left side and her sword. It also kept his left hand forward at hip level, ready to pivot into several strikes.

What is the Precipice? Explore this strange interdimensional realm in today’s Fiction Primer!

If you haven’t yet had a chance to read these stories, now is a great time to get started! So, what has been going on in these two very different worlds?

Maris, safe in the control sphere at Komodo’s heart, surfaced a few moments after the faun’s head. The transition from murky ocean depths to stark, hazy light forced Maris to blink away the ghosts that had swum in her periphery, moving in the impenetrable black of the water.

She had never felt their direction change. Despite her efforts to coax Komodo to turn back, to return to shore or even just swim closer to the surface where she could connect to Deniz in Zilant, the faun had continued to descend, deeper, deeper. She’d tried pulling on the control gauntlets with all her strength, but they barely moved, and when they did, the faun did not seem to care.

Maris splashed through another shallow pool, submerged nearly to her knees. Grime and sweat matted her dark hair; the messy bun she’d started the day with was thoroughly compromised. Dirt from the nameless faun’s grotto streaked her pants and jacket. Water flowed in through the tops of her boots. Even after climbing out of the pool onto uneven, sharp-rocked ground, each step squelched and dragged with moisture.

Maris remembered the night after she’d found the nameless faun. The petals were slowly closing as Antillia drew toward nastic night. Each of the bloom’s five petals were a long ovate shape, narrow where they met at the central pinion, broadening several kilometers up-petal, then tapering to a point over several more kilometers.

The thump and tremor of the passing mechafauna rarely woke Maris anymore; once every week for five years gave her plenty of time to learn to tune out the noise.

“The trail that led me into the Icano Disaster Area was rough and bloody. I don’t think anyone who died on the way down there deserved it. Not Borread, not Vedos, not the enemies who we never identified.

Now that I know a bit more about what motivated the mission in the first place, I think maybe there are some other people who do deserve it. Regrettably, right then, none of them stood between us and survival. The people who deserve it usually don’t.”

-Excerpt from In the Serpent’s Maw: The Secret Conflict on the Icano Peninsula

“The things down there just aren’t accounted for. Not in our military doctrine, not in our legal framework, not in our laws of physics, and certainly not in our social contract. It’s all jagged and uncertain. But people still have to make choices, and I have to believe that I witnessed choices that mattered.”

-Excerpt from In the Serpent’s Maw: The Secret Conflict on the Icano Peninsula

“‘And there are monsters,’ he said. I didn’t know what Tahl had seen on his last trip in The Serpent’s Maw, and he didn’t elaborate that day. I thought he was trying to rattle me. Maybe he was. And maybe it should have rattled me more.”

-Excerpt from In the Serpent’s Maw: The Secret Conflict on the Icano Peninsula

Less than a day into the scouting mission, the Varallen Irregulars were half way into the crater, stuck atop a teetering platform, and engaging an unidentified enemy. As I lay flat on my face from the blast, I remember thinking ‘This cannot possibly be a routine operation.’

“This story began with a question that nobody wanted to answer. ‘Are we at war in Varall?’ When my old friends in the brass got evasive, I sharpened my inquiries to ‘Who are we fighting?’ and ‘If the Astiagen Coalition isn’t at war, why did the Council approve sending so much advanced military hardware half way around the planet?’