Thereafter felt like a different place when Alicia ported back in. Part of it, no doubt, was how tight the crowd was. Sure, there was a contrast to speak of, but there also was a lot of people out, and there was a hush over them that made Alicia think they were here to see her specifically. Rumor, it seemed, had spread that the assumed lost scavengers, or at least some of them, had found their way back. It wasn’t just that, though. Alicia definitely saw the city in a different way. The peace in the city had seemed gilded rather than golden to her before, Alicia realized, like there was only a thin layer of serenity over hopelessness and despair. Maybe it had been like that. Maybe it still was like that if she really thought about it, but Alicia wasn’t so sure.
The reason for Alicia’s shift in perspective was, in contrast with the uncertainty of her old point of view, crystal clear to her. They weren’t alone in the void. They weren’t all that was left. Maybe it was just Camp, or maybe there were more void dwellers out there. Ik believed herself to be the last of her kin, but she couldn’t be sure, Alicia realized. The void was unknowably vast. Who knew what kind of societies and what wild variations of life was out there? The weird part was that this uncertainty was good. It colored Alicia’s perception with saturation and vibrancy. The realms had been destroyed, yes, but there was still room for wonder, for exploration, for a life past mere survival. She saw faces in the crowd, some smiling, some curious, some anxious, but they all had one thing in common. They were glad to see her. Glad to see that she and Lia had survived, glad to see it was possible to survive out there. The wild part, Alicia thought, was that the people of Thereafter hadn’t even heard the best news yet. There was life out there in the void, there were people, people who wanted to know their neighbors, people who wanted to trade, to visit, to invite. She wasn’t sure if the trade with Camp would solve Thereafter’s food shortages entirely, but it sure as hell would help. Alicia couldn’t help but feel her chest swell with joy, with almost-familial love for this city, for its people, for the people of Camp.
“Thunder and Stones, it’s good to be back.” Lia sighed in relief behind her.
“They seem to be glad we’re back as well.” Alicia turned towards Lia. She looked better now, although there was a tiredness in her eyes that extended beyond the physical. They had both dug deep for the strength and endurance to survive the Void, Alicia didn’t need a mirror to confirm she probably looked similarly haggard. “We have, it seems, been missed.”
“Heh, so it seems Mountain Wind… Alicia.”
“You can call me Mountain Wind if you want Lia, at least in public,” Alicia winked. “I mean, uh, we have some things to figure out together but… that can wait, right?”
“Right.” Lia agreed. She reached out her left hand and grasped Alicia’s forearm. Alicia found herself returning the grip. She was familiar with the Tentmate’s Greeting, although she had never done it herself, until now. “I have many tasks to attend to, and I need rest. We will deal with the topic of us and your… other very close friends later.” There was a faint humor to Lia’s tone and maybe even a fraction of a smile to her before she let go and disappeared into the crowd.

Alicia stood briefly flummoxed by the Steppefolk Elder’s tone and implication before the topic at hand embraced her, literally.
Something hit Alicia’s back, about at her seventh thoracic vertebra, then (probably a different) something at about shoulder height. The somethings, Alicia recognized after a split second of confusion, were people, embracing her.
“Hey… you two.” Alicia grunted as she tried to right herself. The lower set of arms, Lex, hung on like they were concerned Alicia might vanish into thin air, and while Felipe’s arms weren’t quite as frantic in their clinginess, there was earnestness in the embrace that Alicia just wasn’t used to from the Mexican Olympic athlete. “I… you’ve missed me, I take it?”
“Hush,” Lex’ voice was muffled by the tightness of their embrace. “only hugs.”
“Mhm, heroes who get lost in space get hugged.” The way Felipe said “heroes” made it pretty clear he meant “idiots” but didn’t want his word choice spoiling the occasion.
“I’m sorry about all of this, but I have…” Alicia started.
“No,” Lex interrupted. “Only hugs.”
“I… yeah OK.” Alicia put a hand on Lex’ arm. It wasn’t so bad, she realized, to be needed in such a primal way that holding on to her was the only possible way of fulfilling that need. “Only hugs.”
“Oh we hugging?” The brash-sounding alto voice of Ade gave only a second of warning before a massive pair of arms embraced the entire group and lifted them off the ground in a hug that could most accurately be described in terms usually used to describe the power of mechanical equipment.
“Oof, yeah Ade,” Alicia could breathe in the tight embrace, but just about. “Glad to see you made it out OK.”
“You’re one to talk,” Ade grunted. “Leave it to Hero Girl to do the impossible.”
Alicia was about to point out that she did have help. Felipe’s complaints beat her to it, though.
“Hey massive crushing woman, I do not believe we’ve had the quote-unquote pleasure.”
“This is Adeyemi,” Lex explained. “She’s Alicia’s metamour.”
“What the fuck is a metamour?” Felipe asked. Alicia was relieved he did, she didn’t know herself.
“I’m gonna put you down now, OK?” Ade said.
“Thank you,” Lex said as they were let down, in turn unhanding Alicia, Felipe followed suit. Lex cleared their throat before continuing. “A metamour is the partner of a part of your polycule, or in layman’s terms, Alicia’s girlfriend.”
“Oh we haven’t, uh, talked about that yet.” Alicia found herself flustered. “I mean I don’t mind the… uh, that is to say.”
“Metamour’s good,” Ade said with a shrug. “No offense to the two of you,” she motioned for Lex and Felipe, “but I’m this thing mostly for Hero Girl here.”
“None taken,” Lex chirped.
“Maybe a little offense taken…” Felipe mumbled, but made no further comment on the topic.
“Anyway, word on the wire is you and Deepspeaker Lia found something out there,” Ade said. “Now you know me, I’m no gossip, but…”
Alicia couldn’t but laugh. “I’ll tell you all about it,” she looked around, as if recently aware that there were a lot of people around, most of them trying hard to not stare or listen too conspicuously. “Let’s… go somewhere a bit private first maybe?”

As she turned to head away from the port, Alicia found herself stopping, noticing one particular set of eyes, and a face she mostly recognized to go with it.
Michael was standing on the next pier over, leaning on his cane while observing them. To Alicia, it seemed like he had changed a lot, but when she looked closer, she wasn’t too sure. He had lost some weight, especially in the face and torso, him not getting new clothes to fit his new weight made it seem more dramatic than it was, though. Normally, Alicia wouldn’t think anything of it, but there was a gleam in Michael’s eyes that she found unnerving. It hinted that the weight loss was the result of some other concern taking the primacy food should hold. She had seen it in weight loss influencers on speed, zealous promoters of fad diets, and occasionally in the profoundly depressed. She did not like it. The scruff on Michael’s face was pushing through the Five O’ Clock Shadow barrier, but wasn’t quite a full beard yet. He wasn’t quite unrecognizable, but the beard and the weight loss and that strange look in his eyes made him seem like a man in the middle of change, and not necessarily change for the better either.

The truth was, Alicia was worried about Michael. She was worried about what the discovery of Camp would have him do. He had connections in the Scavengers still, and it was entirely possible he’d want to get in on the nascent trade network. Alicia wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop him if that was the case, hell, she wasn’t sure she’d want to, but there was, as had been the case for a while, the Fear. She knew Michael, she was pretty sure he was a decent man, albeit doing some shady business at the moment. Maybe it was transitional as he claimed it to be, and he was just playing the role to tame the Organization, or maybe that was a convenient lie he told the world, maybe even one he told himself. It could also be it was true, but even that wouldn’t guarantee anything. Michael could become the mask, either by choice or accident, and that would make him every bit the potential enemy that Nih-Ka had been.
Michael nodded at her. It was a brief acknowledgment. All he was going to give to let her know he was glad she’d made it back. Alicia nodded back. Recognition. That’d have to do for now.
“Hey girl, let’s get out of here,” Lex said. Alicia wasn’t sure if they had clocked her little moment with Michael, but the suggestion was sound either way.

Alicia spent the rest of the day recuperating and telling her friends and lovers about the discoveries in The Void. The tales of Camp, perhaps not unexpectedly, drew much excitement from everyone. Ade, in particular seemed just about ready to pack a knapsack and go there right away.
“Communication is a bit awkward since they don’t use a translation field like us,” Alicia explained. “But they were working on making the runes they use to borrow our translation field available to the entire population when we left, so I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”
“Translation field, schmanclation field,” Ade bragged. “I’ll go there and learn that weird language of theirs. I’ll be the best at it, I bet.”
“Says you,” Lex rose to the implicit challenge. “I’ll be writing poetry and puns in that dang thing within the month.”
“I don’t think they have a written language right now,” Alicia didn’t correct Lex as much as she offered the observation. “They’re big on elders keeping knowledge.”
“Well… then I’ll be composing poetry, and telling puns,” Lex corrected. “Doesn’t change nothing!”

The banter went back and forth like that for a while until Lex offered to use an X-Ray spell to check out the hand Alicia had broken at the start of her adventure. Alicia had her reservations, even despite Lex’ insistence that while the spell did what an X-Ray machine did, it did in no way emit any X-rays, or “any other particularly carcinogenic catawumpus,” to quote Lex directly. According to the spell, that briefly made the flesh of Alicia’s hand translucent, there was a bone fracture just past Alicia’s middle knuckle. Fortunately, according to Alicia’s entirely amateur opinion on the matter, it seemed to have set properly, and would heal fine. Alicia was decently sure of this estimate, but she did not decline when Lex offered to check in with Eltern if there were any known experts on healing, be it somatic or magical, in town. A second opinion could only be a good thing.

With these matters settled, and a familiarly tedious bowl of oat-based pottage consumed, Alicia started to feel really sleepy. It wasn’t yet dark, but Alicia met no resistance when she suggested turning for the night, even if it was early. If anything, it seemed that Lex, Felipe and Ade had been waiting for it to happen. Alicia hated the thought of them cutting the day short just because she was tired, but it didn’t seem like they’d broach any debate on the topic and besides, Alicia was VERY tired. As she snuggled up in the pile of bodies, for the occasion also housing Ade’s head and part of her upper torso, as the rhinofolk woman seemed reluctant to trust Alicia’s bed with her full bulk, Alicia felt sleep, or not quite sleep but a near-sleep doze that would slip over into full sleep when she least expected it, envelop her. It had looked damn scary for a while there, but she had survived the void. She had survived the void with Deepspeaker Lia, and not only had they not tried to kill each other, they had grown closer, fonder of each other. Lex and Felipe had both claimed to have seen this development coming, but Alicia wasn’t so sure of the veracity of those claims, hindsight being 20/20 and all. It didn’t matter much though. Things were the way they were, and for the first time in a while things seemed to be looking up in Thereafter. Alicia was glad to be home, she thought as her consciousness slid into the blessed oblivion of dreamless sleep.

Author’s Note: And thus ends the story of Voidhearts! It feels kind of funny to me that despite my accelerated release schedule, it took me just about exactly a year (well, 360 days but who’s counting) to get this thing out. Granted, book 1 took a month longer and is almost half the length, so it’s not like the accelerated schedule did nothing. Anyway, originally the plan was to end on the previous chapter, but once I got close I realized I felt the story deserved to get back to Thereafter proper before it was over, and thus the little denoument back with what remains of the Exalted Heroes and also my dear Adeyemi.

When it comes to practical concerns, I plan to do the same this time around as I did after ‘The City After The End’ with a few modifications. First, I plan to release two short stories in the Thereafterverse during my 2-ish month hiatus (exact length will be announced once I get my bearings.) First up, there’s Hearts and Hearth, which picks up as a bit of an epilogue as we meet two supporting characters from this book that I don’t have the heart to leave hanging. I’m planning to have that one out by the end of the month. Then, there is the Management And The Art of Brutalizing People (working title) that works as a bit of a lead-in to the next book in the series, Souls of Stone. That one’s going to come out closer to the end of my hiatus, so mid-late august if my current estimates survive contact with the heinous devil known as Real Life.

Other than that, I want to thank you, the reader, for following me along on this story I’m telling. I’m enjoying writing this thing so much that I probably would keep it up even if no-one were to read it, but it’s nice to be appreciated all the same.

Catch you all next time for more Thereafter

V.S.D