Somewhere in the colliding morass of unreality that washed around Polly, the phrase "It's uncomfortably like being drunk" seemed to go by, just long enough for him to get a good look at it. He didn't have any context, and wasn't sure that context was actually a thing that existed, but he did feel a strange kinship with it as it past.
(Should that have been passed? Polly figured one worked as well as the other)
There were other things strolling on by. "The forces of evil have been dealt a great blow this day." "The cunning of the archmage shall never be matched." "She shall ever be a martyr."
Hang on, cunning?
"Of course. Sacrifice yourselves to bait a devil lord into hurling himself into a void of unreality, removing a great and terrible threat from the universe. To have constructed such a strategy, such convincing bait that even the Heavens could not divine her intentions..."
What on Celestia are you on about?
"You know very well what I'm on... wait, who is this?"
Who is this? Aren't you an archangel? Don't you know?
"Polly, is that you? Are you still out there?"
Pretty far out, I think. Too many of those canned sardine things before my mid afternoon nap again. Messed me up bad last time too.
"Polly, you're not dreaming."
The concept of the color blue is dancing over in the corner of yersterday and the speed of an unladen swallow right now. I'm pretty sure I am.
"Polly, no, that plane, that space beyond the convergence, it... It can't exist. It's the personification of true unreality. If you've somehow managed to maintain a coherent form... Polly, was this part of the Archmage's plan?"
What PLAN?
In an instant, unreality smashed back into him like a torrent of chaos in reverse, conflicting thoughts, physical properties, and natural forces smashing together into concrete reality. Polly opened his eyes to see the ship's galley around him, same as he'd left it. Memories of his dream lingered.
"Plan," he said before checking his food dish and finding it empty. "They think we had a plan. Oh, somebody up there is going to be so disappointed."
----
In their cabin, L'heo waited politely for Chim to stop vomiting before he spoke. The experience of the jump had been deeply unpleasant for him as well, of course, but he was simply more robust that the tiny gnome.
"That was... enlightening," he said. "The first time was too much of a shock to notice, but..."
"Yeah," Chim said as she began cleaning herself up. "It makes you think, doesn't it? Nothing, or at least nothing we have the understanding to even recognize as something, could survive out there. I don't even think the concept of survival could exist out there. There's no higher planes, no order, no structure of any kind. It's true, pure chaos, so chaotic that it's everything and nothing all at once and you can't really tell the difference. They can only pass through it because their ship imposes structure around it long enough to make it through."
"Thus the teleportation spell," L'heo said.
"Yeah," Chim said. "We can't just pop in to that plane and pop out again like we might normally do. Even if we could attune a focus to try, we almost certainly wouldn't make it out. I might have a way around, but if I'm wrong, poof! Whoever tries ceases to exist. Brute force teleportation is the only real safe choice."
"It makes sense," L'heo said. "I have to wonder, though, how could our two realities be so different? I'm not certain which question is more intriguing. How could a living reality come into being without any higher dimensional structure at all, or why did ours come into being with one."
"Ugg," Chim said in response. "That's the sort of thinking that gets me tied to posts and set on fire."
-----
There is a common myth among the uninformed that rats actually cry blood when stressed. This isn't actually true, of course. The reddish discharge is a secretion called porphyrin, and it's not harmful, but it is a sign that your rat is stressed, so maybe try not to be such a jerk to it, you jerk.
Fiendish rats are an exception to this. They actually do cry blood, most likely because Great Modeus, Archduke of the nine hells, figured it would be appropriate to their aesthetic. What this meant was that deep in the bowels of the ship, there was currently a fiendish rat crying tears of blood after having once again glimpsed the abyss of insanity.
"I don't want to be here anymore."
