When they entered the portal, the world that greeted them was an oceanic one. They swam through the salty waters almost all the time while traversing the place. As it might be imagined, it was not pleasant. Neither of them talked about it afterward.
The ashen world after that was grey in every direction, the trees charred down to their trunks, the ground covered in a layer of fine powder that rose around their ankles with every step. Whatever had happened to it had happened a long time ago. They found the next portal quickly and left without stopping.
Then they arrived at a forested world again. The portal put them down between two broad oaks. The canopy above was thick enough that the evening light came through in pieces. Finn checked the sky through the gaps in the trees.
"It's getting dark," he said. "We should camp here and look around in the morning."
Ciri had already started clearing a patch of ground with her boot. "Agreed."
They had the tent up and the fire going within the hour, the routine of it familiar enough by now that they barely needed to talk through it. Finn hung the bag on a low branch and started pulling out what they needed for the night.
Ciri sat down on a root near the fire and was quiet for a moment. She was looking around, massaging her neck, uncomfortable due to something.
"I feel like something's watching us," she said suddenly.
Finn handed her a piece of dried meat from the bag. "It's a forest. I always feel like that in forests."
"Hm." She took the meat but didn't eat it yet. "Still…"
"If something is going to come at us, we'll deal with it when it appears." He sat down across from her. "Eat."
She ate.
The feeling didn't go away, but nothing came of it, and after a while the fire settled into a comfortable crackle and Ciri stopped mentioning it. Finn was halfway through his second portion when the ground shook.
It was brief, a single deep thud that came up through the roots and into his boots, and then a noise followed it, something between a crash and an impact, close enough that the trees at the edge of their camp shivered with it.
"What was that?!" Ciri said.
"I don't know." Finn said, "But look."
He pointed at the sky. A column of smoke began rising above the canopy, visible even in the failing light.
They followed the smoke through the trees at a run, pushing through the vegetation, Ciri ahead and Finn a pace behind with the lightsaber off his belt but not yet on. The smoke was coming from somewhere near the edge of the forest, and when they broke through the treeline they found themselves near a dirt road.
A proper one, with wooden fencing running along some parts of it. On the far side of the fence the land opened up into farmland, wheat and barley in wide flat rows, both of them yellowing with the season. Finn registered all of this in about two seconds before his eyes found the crater.
It was on the side of the road itself, medium sized, the edges of the dirt still smoking slightly. Something had come down hard here, and whatever it was had left a clean circular impression in the packed earth.
Finn jumped down into it before he'd made any conscious decision to do so.
There was a man at the centre.
He was armoured, the plate of it was very well made, with a cloak that had been torn apart from the fall across the back that had been turned into hanging strips. The helmet was painted black, the shape of it distinctive enough that Finn's brain snagged on it immediately. He looked at the chest piece next. There was a symbol on it, a bat, and in between the symbol was a stone the size of a shortsword that had been driven through the plate, glowing a faint and sickly green.
Finn's mouth opened slightly, clearly surprised to see the symbol.
"...Batman?" he said, whispering to himself.
He crouched over the man. The armour was medieval in construction, he had no doubt about that, the cowl he'd grown up seeing in comics and films, instead of being made to whatever high tech material was made out of simple yet strong steel, painted black. Same silhouette. Same symbol. Same black paint on the helmet. Same almost everything, except again, of which the design was noticeably medieval.
Ciri dropped into the crater beside him. "Is he alive?"
"I think so." Finn pressed two fingers against the man's neck. A pulse, faint but there. "We need to get the armour off and see what's underneath."
Ciri was already working at the chest piece buckles without being asked. Finn helped from the other side and between them they got the breastplate clear. The glowing stone hadn't gone as deep as it had looked. The tip of it had punched through the underlay but hadn't reached anything vital.
Finn grabbed it and pulled it out.
"ARRRGHHH!!!" The man's back arched off the ground and the scream that came out of him was very loud, and then two beams of red light erupted from his eyes and burned straight up into the air, scorching through the overhanging branches near them before cutting off as abruptly as they'd started. The man was unconscious again after that.
Finn threw himself backward and landed on his hands in the dirt.
"What the fuck?!" he said.
He sat there for a second, genuinely lost. Laser eyes. He ran through everything he knew about Batman and none of it included laser eyes. That was Superman. That was entirely Superman's thing, right? And yet…
"By the gods…"
Both of them turned at the voice.
An old couple had come up the road, a cart horse stopped behind them, both of them with their eyes on the man in the crater. The old woman had her hand pressed to her mouth. The old man beside her had a deep frown pulling at his face.
"Is that… Batman?" the old woman said.
"...Batman? Who's that?" Ciri said.
Finn was still holding the glowing green stone. He closed his fingers around it and put his hand behind his back. He didn't say anything.
"The bastard of the Kingdom of El." said the old man, who was narrowing his eyes. "Looks like it is."
"Then he needs aid." The old woman was already moving toward the edge of the crater.
"You know what he's done, Martha." The old man put a hand on her arm, the frown deepening. "The pain he's caused to this kingdom."
"And are you suggesting we don't help, Jonathan?"
The old man opened his mouth, then closed it. "No, I—" He shook his head and turned to Finn and Ciri. "You two, help us get him to the cart. We'll take him to his palace."
"NO!"
The Batman's eyes opened. He grabbed the edge of the crater with one hand and tried to pull himself up, the word coming out with more force than anything his condition should have allowed. "No… palace…" Then the hand slipped and he went back down, eyes closing, unconscious again.
Finn and Ciri exchanged a look.
Then Finn grabbed him under the shoulders and Ciri took his legs and they hauled him up out of the crater between them, dragging him across the dirt toward the cart.
"Are you still bringing him along?" Finn asked, mostly to the old woman.
"Yes, come on," Martha said, already moving ahead to get the cart ready. "Quickly. He needs proper treatment."
"We're bringing him home?" The old man said it less as a question and more as something he was trying to make peace with.
"Yes, Jonathan," the old woman said. "It's what we do with lost souls." She glanced back at Finn and Ciri as they dragged the Batman across the road. "And who are you two? I don't recognize you from anywhere nearby."
Ciri answered before Finn could. "Travellers. We're rather lost, apart from which we mean no trouble."
"We made camp in the forest just back there," Finn added. "If this is your land we can clear out."
"Nonsense." Martha waved the suggestion away. "Pack your things and come with us. Both of you." She looked at the unconscious man between them, then back at the road ahead. "Hurry now. Jonathan, get the cart moving."