The Day the Sky Got Stupid
The first thing Kael Ironborn noticed when he woke up was that his ale mug was floating three feet above his head, spinning slowly and dripping yesterday's beer onto his forehead.
The second thing he noticed was the screaming.
Lots of screaming.
Kael sat up on his bedroll, squinted at the floating mug, then reached up and grabbed it. The moment his calloused fingers touched the pewter, it stopped floating and dropped like a rock. He caught it with his other hand and grunted in satisfaction.
"Stupid magic," he muttered, wiping beer from his beard. "Can't even let a man sleep."
Outside his tent, the screaming was getting louder. Something about "dimensional cascade failure" and "reality breach protocols" and other fancy words that made Kael's head hurt. He pulled on his leather boots, grabbed his trusty battle-axe—*Skullsplitter*, though he'd never been creative with names—and pushed through the tent flap.
The sight that greeted him would have driven most men to madness.
The sky was *wrong*. Instead of the usual boring blue, it looked like someone had shattered a mirror and stuck pieces of different worlds behind each fragment. Through one crack, Kael could see a desert with purple sand. Through another, an ocean that flowed upward into clouds. A particularly large fragment showed what appeared to be a city built entirely on the backs of flying whales.
"Huh," said Kael.
Around him, the merchants and travelers he'd been camping with were in various states of panic. A wizard in star-spangled robes was frantically drawing glowing symbols in the dirt while chanting something that sounded like he was trying to cough up a hairball. A well-dressed merchant was stuffing his valuable into a bag with shaking hands. Two scholarly types were arguing loudly about "trans-dimensional stability matrices" while consulting a book thick enough to stop a charging bull.
"—completely unprecedented!" one scholar was saying. "The Seventh Dimension is collapsing into the Sixth! The magical framework of reality itself is—"
"EVERYBODY SHUT UP," Kael roared.
The camp fell silent. Even the wizard stopped his hairball chanting.
Kael pointed Skullsplitter at the fractured sky. "Is that thing gonna try to kill us?"
The wizard blinked. "Well, I mean, the fundamental forces of magic are destabilizing, which could theoretically—"
"Yes or no," Kael interrupted.
"...Yes?"
"Good enough." Kael hefted his axe and started walking toward the largest crack in the sky.
"Wait!" the scholar called out. "You can't just—what are you doing?"
"Fixing it," Kael said without turning around.
"You can't fix a dimensional collapse with an axe!"
Kael stopped walking and looked back at the scholar with the patient expression of a man explaining something very simple to a very slow child. "Have you tried?"
"That's not how reality works!"
"Reality's been working fine until today," Kael pointed out. "Something broke it. I fix broken things."
He resumed walking. Behind him, the wizard was frantically explaining to anyone who would listen that dimensional barriers couldn't be physically damaged, that magic required precise ritualistic—
Kael reached the spot directly under the largest crack, planted his feet, and hurled Skullsplitter straight up with all his considerable strength.
The axe spun end over end, climbing higher and higher until it struck the fracture in the sky with a sound like breaking glass. There was a flash of light, a rumble like distant thunder, and suddenly that particular crack sealed itself with an almost audible *click*.
Skullsplitter fell back down. Kael caught it by the handle.
"One down," he said, looking at the remaining fractures. "How many more?"
The camp stared at him in absolute silence.
The wizard's mouth was hanging open. "That's... that's impossible. The theoretical framework alone—"
"Worked, didn't it?" Kael shouldered his axe and started walking toward the next crack.
"But the magical principles—"
"Don't care."
"The dimensional mathematics—"
"Still don't care."
"The fundamental laws of—"
Kael turned around. "Look, fancy robe man. I don't know anything about your sparkly magic nonsense. But I know that thing up there is broken, and broken things need fixing. You can either help me fix it or get out of my way."
The wizard spluttered. "You can't just ignore the laws of magic!"
Kael considered this. "Watch me."
He turned back to the sky and started calculating his next throw. Behind him, he could hear frantic whispered conversations about "dimensional anomalies" and "theoretical impossibilities." He ignored them. The sky had holes in it. Holes were bad. Therefore, he would un-hole the sky.
It really wasn't that complicated.
As he lined up his second throw, Kael reflected that this was probably going to be one of those days where people asked him a lot of stupid questions. He sighed and prepared to fix reality the only way he knew how.
One axe throw at a time.