Finn crouched over the charred skin the monster had left behind. A crinkled pale patch on the ground. He touched it, smelled it, turned it over in his fingers.
A White Martian, he thought. That was definitely a White Martian.
Ciri came up behind him. "Do you know what it is? It looked like a Katakan to me."
Finn stood up. "Katakan? The vampire creature from your world?" He paused. "Yeah… but Katakans can't transform into other people, can they?"
"A Nosferat, then?" Ciri said.
"...I don't know what that is."
"It's like a Katakan. More intelligent, more dangerous, can turn humanoid, and can mingle amongst nobility very easily." She paused. "At least, that's what I read about."
"Right…" Finn turned toward the battlefield. The dead and wounded were spread across the field in numbers that made him grimace. "But… can a Nosferat make three armies turn against one another using treachery and disguise?"
"Well…" Ciri muttered. "They can deceive many people… but I sure hope not on this level."
They walked toward a hill. The armies that had been fighting were resting around it now. On top of an old ruined castle at the hill's peak, Beast Boy lay in his dragon form, the banners of the three kingdoms surrounding the hill below him.
Near the entrance of the old ruin, a crowd had gathered.
Queen Diana stood near a broken fence. Tied to it with a golden rope was Alfred, green-skinned, his alien face visible to everyone present. Surrounding Diana were Kal-El, Batman, Queen Annisa, Queen Lara, and John Constantine.
Diana had her sword in hand. Whatever scuffle had happened before Finn and Ciri arrived had been stopped. Alfred knelt in front of all of them, the golden rope wound around him.
"I swear that I held no ill will towards the kingdom of the storms, or the Amazonians, or any citizens of the world," Alfred said. "Kal-El, I swear that I am loyal to you, to your sister, and to your mother. I could not love Bruce more were he my own son."
Constantine clasped his hands behind his back. "That sounds quite definitive. I suggest we should take a breath, and assess the situation. Let's not let our anger lead us further into this already messy debacle, shall we?"
"Suggest?!" Diana turned on him. "Do you not see what your suggestions have brought us, Constantine?!"
She pointed her sword at the armies below, at the dead and wounded spread across the field.
"Look what your damned prophecy has brought us!"
Everyone nearby turned to Constantine. He lowered his head and frowned and said nothing. There was nothing to say. She was right. His prophecy, his interpretation of it, his push toward this war. He had no words left to say.
Queen Lara stepped forward. "My queens. We clearly have much to discuss. And much more to mend. But let us first tend to our wounded and the fallen. Your soldiers will be welcomed here in our city. And then… I will invite you all to discuss the true enemies in our midst."
The crowd began moving after that, dispersing toward the city walls.
Finn settled against a section of ruined wall, pulled out his notebook, and opened it on his knee.
Ciri noticed and came over. "You're not going with them?"
"The city gates aren't going to be closed the moment those nobles walk through them," Finn said, already writing. "We can enjoy the scenery for a moment."
Ciri raised her brow and turned to the view below. The armies were setting up encampments on the field, the three sides spread apart.
"I hate the sight of armies…" she muttered.
Finn said nothing for a moment and turned back to his notebook.
Ciri sat beside him. "It reminded me of… terrible memories."
"Cintra?" Finn said.
Ciri hummed.
Then she noticed what he was doing in the notebook. Not writing. Drawing. The ruined field below, the encampments, the hill.
"You draw?" she said. "I have never seen you draw before."
"Aside from the maps, not really." Finn kept the pencil moving. "Normally I would just take a picture. But the camera I brought has been broken for ages and I haven't found a replacement. I was going to buy one in the Pokemon world, but I forgot, and then the Wild Hunt showed up and we left in a hurry." He shrugged slightly. "I rarely draw these days cause I couldn't care less anymore to draw these sceneries. seeing it with my own eyes is enough. But this world is so strange to me that I want to make sure I remember it properly."
"A memento, of some sort?" Ciri asked.
"For research too, I suppose." He turned to a fresh section of the page and started drawing the Green Man from memory, the ruined face, the ring. That view was probably the single most weird thing he saw today. "Someday I'll compile everything I've found about world travel into a book. This world in particular feels important for that."
"Because of that… 'same characters but different world' anomaly?" Ciri said.
Finn nodded. "My theory is only one for now. I thought of it on the way here. I kept thinking about the trees and the animals."
Ciri raised her brow. "The trees and animals?"
"In most worlds, animals and plants are very similar to each other," Finn said, continuing to draw. "There are exceptions, the Pokemon world being the obvious one. But in most worlds, horses are still horses. Bears are still bears. Humans are still humans."
"You're wondering why worlds are always so different from each other, but what's living inside them is more or less the same," Ciri said.
"Exactly. Every door I've gone through has led to a completely different world. Different continents, different history, different people. But deers are still deers. Horses are still horses. And while some worlds have elves and some don't, the ones that do still have pointy ears. Still arrogant cunts. Humans are the same everywhere. Cruel in the same ways, impoverished in the same ways. Of course there are probably invisible differences beneath the surface, but in terms of appearances, mostly the same."
"And why is all of that connected to world travel?" Ciri said. "Did you find an answer to why that is?"
"It's a theory," Finn said. "Convergent evolution. A concept from my world. The idea is that completely separate things, evolving independently with no connection between them, will still arrive at the same solutions if they're working with the same conditions."
He kept drawing. "A bat and a bird have nothing to do with each other. Different animals entirely. But both evolved wings, because wings are a good solution to moving through air. They arrived at the same answer from completely different starting points."
Ciri said nothing. Finn kept going.
"So if worlds share similar enough conditions, similar atmospheres, similar geography, similar pressures on the things living in them, those things might arrive at the same solutions regardless of where they started. A horse is a good solution to moving fast across flat ground. This world's people with powers correspond almost directly to characters from a story I know in my world. Same names. Similar abilities. However, a different setting, a different history, but the same people turning up anyway. As if the world naturally developed toward them."
He turned to a new page. "Which also raises the possibility that somewhere out there is a world almost identical to mine with only small differences. Though the odds of two worlds converging that precisely are very small. I might travel the rest of my life and never find it."
He kept sketching. "Then again I'm not a sage. Could be completely wrong. It's just a theory. Something to test against the next world and the one after that until it either holds up or falls apart. Four years of this and I feel like I know considerably less than when I started, which is either a sign that I'm learning or a sign that I'm getting stupider, and I genuinely cannot tell which one it—"
He stopped.
"Ciri?"
Nothing.
Finn turned his head.
Her eyes were closed, her breathing softened.
"Huh, yeah?" Her eyes opened partway. "Sorry… I was quite tired with all the flying…"
Finn chuckled and tucked the notebook away. "Come on. Perhaps we can find an inn back in town."