"Neshy," Naela said.
Neshy placed a finger to her chin. "Neshy? Why Neshy?" The snake girl looked towards Elanore for confirmation.
"She wants to honor her friend. Do you like it?"
"Neshy, Neshy, Neshy," the serpent said, teasing the words on her tongue. A smile graced her face, and she bounced up and down repeating the name over and over again.
Elanore looked towards Naela with a grin. "It looks like she enjoys her new name."
Naela smiled widely. "I am so happy, mistress."
The snake did something surprising. Instead of clinging to Elanore, she slithered over to Naela and leapt onto the wyvern's shoulders. The basilisk placed her small hands on both of Naela's cheeks and squished them. "If you're traveling with my mother, does this make you mother number two?"
Naela chuckled. "My name is Naela."
"Naela? Hmm, I like it. You smell good as well."
Elanore was extremely curious about Neshy's sensory capabilities. Though, she did have a lot of questions to ask of an over 800 year old snake. Moreover, they'd reached a door sitting in the middle of an open area.
The vampire witch's eyes widened on seeing it. "I-I know this door."
"Mistress?"
"Of course, you know the door, mother. You left me here to guard it after all."
Elanore's eyes flickered towards the snake with confusion. She wondered if it was perhaps a misunderstanding. As far as Ella knew, this door wasn't anything she'd seen personally. It was a door she'd examined behind a screen. It was something that would connect two places together. In the game, there were many cases of dungeons like this. Which door was it?
She tried wracking her brain for any possibility. No matter if she'd observed the door before, there was still a problem of realizing which one it was. If one plays a video game, do they remember every door they come across? No, and this door was the same.
Elanore took a deep breath and walked over to the door's frame. Along the way, she took occasional glances back at Neshy to see if she could glean anything from her expression. There was nothing. The only thing that remained on her face was a sort of childlike innocence that came with youth.
The vampire witch pressed her finger's against the door's frame. It was the same appearance as the dunes below. It was a brown dusty color, yet there were words running on the sides. Much like the tablet, they were not any characters Ella had seen before, yet they were readable.
"Only in desolation can the vermin survive. Withdraw to the edge of the world, away from the frailty of men."
The moment she said the words, the glyphs decorating the structure started to light up with a purple light. The hue spread to the door itself, and it started opening with a purple light tunnel inside.
"Mommy Elanore," Neshy said, "does this mean my task is completed?"
Elanore looked between the new light hallway and Neshy in confusion. "Your task was to guard this place, right? Shouldn't you attack us for trying to open the door?"
"I would never attack my own mother."
The vampire breathed a sigh, and she tried to imagine how long the serpent had been waiting in that tunnel. What if Neshy's purpose the whole time was simply to wait for challengers to come to this door? The thought suddenly made Elanore feel pity for Neshy.
"I'm sorry," Elanore said, "I may not be this mother that you want, but you won't have to wait here any longer. It's okay if we go inside, right?"
Neshy nodded with a new bright smile. "Yes!"
Elanore looked towards Naela and received a nod in response. "Let's go in together, then."
The vampire felt a tingle running up and down her spine. For some reason she couldn't pinpoint, she was nervous to look beyond the door. Afraid that she might find something that unravels a part of her character. After all, it would have been abnormal for her to not exist at all until this point. It was strange for her to change worlds and arrive in a place that already had a long history.
Somewhere that was familiar to the game yet different in many ways. The people around her were all living and breathing. Naela had proved that fact and shattered part of Elanore's delusions. She didn't think there was a grand reason for her being dragged here. She'd brought herself across the barrier using energy drinks as transportation, yet what of Elanore?
There was Ella who was painstakingly ordinary, aside from her love of energy drinks and video games. Then, there was Elanore who was powerful beyond belief and the person she always wanted to be. Every time she tried to deny that reality, it came back to smack her in unexpected ways.
Though, if someone as powerful as Elanore did exist in this world, then why has no one mentioned her? She'd never been brought up even once, and when I gave people that name, there was no surprise. Maybe Elanore existed in another world altogether?
"Mistress, is something wrong? You've stopped."
Elanore finally noticed she'd stopped just outside of the doorway, unwilling to take a step inside. Would taking a step forward mean the end of her? She imagined that if she touched the purple light inside, she would become Ella again. Maybe she'd even wake up inside of a hotel room, and all of this would be a dream?
Her heart throbbed, but she steeled herself. "I'm fine. Let's go."
She took a step forward, and they entered a hallway. It was a hallway of purple all around them. It reminded Ella of those tunnels she'd seen in scifi movies when ships fold the universe. She took a step forward, and the universe seemed to fold in much the same way.
Elanore felt a sense of panic when she blinked her eyes open, but she was the same. Nothing about her had changed. Her witch hat remained proudly on her head, and Naela remained next to her with Neshy on her shoulders. Though, the place they arrived at was completely different.
The sky was purple, but it was sunny all around, even without a sun in the sky. The ground was much like the arid desert they'd been in. Only, it was cracked all over. There were not dunes beneath them but dry dirt that was cracked everywhere, and in front of them, a distance away, was a massive volcano running out of the ground.
Lava bubbled over its edges, and creatures in the sky flapped their wings. Elanore looked back towards Naela's face, but the wyvern's expression became mortified.
"How? How did we arrive here of all places?" She looked around the landscape with a sense of familiarity and confusion at the same time.
"You know this place?" Elanore asked.
Naela swallowed. "I was born here...Well, somewhere that looks exactly like this, but there was no purple sky. And those are not wyverns..."
Elanore looked to the winged creature she was pointing at. No, those are not wyverns at all. They are dragons.