Grudge shook their head. It wasn't the people. It wasn't quite the people. It was also the people, sure, and there was also every living being with them as well, but it wasn't about just what breathed. The World was that and the stones, air and water, fire and metal and wood and flesh and lightning and void. Still, details mattered very little if the world that surrounded them, the one where they walked at that moment, was not their own.

"All must exist in balance – matter, magic, energy, and even void. Somebody attempted to change that," Grudge explained calmly. Their feet made a sloshing sound as they trod mud on the trail. The hem of their jute robe had turned an earthy brown as it dragged. "And they succeeded. The World was grievously wounded as a result, and when it swore vengeance against the culprit, it created a champion to exact it. Me."

Grudge looked up as the young woman also shook her head, and wondered in silence if she succeeded in her purpose, and whether she was also pulled away from her birthplace as soon as her mission was over. Once again, it didn't happen very often that they found any sort of commonality in the people they met, especially not when it came to one's own nature.
One day they even met a group (a pack? a community? a lounge? maybe a shoal) of Tonberries, and discovered they could barely talk to each other. It was always meant to be a solitary mission. Perhaps, they considered, they were never meant to survive for much longer past it. But their mission was to defy Fate. As a result, it should not surprise them that they failed to meet Fate's expectation.
Some time in the future they would work that out.

"Yes," they repeated, and then gazed at the treetops as they thought about an answer. With no knowledge of that place's geography, it took them half a minute of pondering and humming to come up with, "One is from the city. He would head for the closest one there is, and walk its streets. He would look for food and information. One wanted to go back to her family as soon as everything was over. I cannot imagine where she would go now. One will want to see this world to the fullest. He once told me he doesn't like to stay in one place for too long."

Grudge fell silent when the temperature in the area seemed to drop by several degrees. Droplets of newly condensed water glistened off their skin and the blade of their knife, only for the forest to turn a few hues darker. Every creature except for the two of them had disappeared from the boughs and the trunks and the shrubbery. A pair of stick-like arms, white with the pallor of something that had been long dead, shot out of the gloom and clawed at the woman, who for some reason did not resist and allowed herself to be dragged away.

"Do you need help?" Grudge asked. Another figure materialised in front of them. It towered over Grudge, which in itself was not much of an accomplishment. Its arms reached down to the knees and ended in long talons, and upon closer inspection Grudge realised they could still see the shadows of the surrounding vegetation through coal-coloured skin. Golden eyes locked into other golden eyes. Then: "Are you going to fight me?"

There was a roar and a clatter of nails hitting metal. "I see."
A streamlet of faint orange-red light spiraled around their arm and reached their knife, a caress lighter than that of a chick's feather. The blade flared cinnabar. Grudge raised it to eye level and watched it with what might have passed as an absorbed expression. Then he calmly stepped forward. Again. Again. Again. At the third pace, the creature realised it was trying to maintain a distance, and its expression distorted (well, further, anyway) with horror when it saw that, despite its strides being much longer and much quicker, the distance between them was narrowing by the second. It slashed at Grudge again. This time, the strike connected – it could tell by the warm liquid that now dripped from its fingers, and the three marks – one for each talon – on its target's robe. Yet, Grudge kept on walking, unbothered.
A shriek signalled the end of the fight. It pierced the air and grew fainter by the second, until all that was left was a soft hiss not unlike that of water being poured on a fire. Grudge patiently dislodged the knife from the creature's body, landed on their feet, and watched the remains scatter into ashes. Finally, they turned to check on the young woman again. And started walking once more.

Grudge acknowledged the denial – or, better yet, the confirmation of what they already knew – with a polite nod, the slow type when the eyes closed as the chin moved downwards, and opened again as it rose back up. It was nevertheless unfortunate that she could not brief them on their new purpose, but that was to be expected from somebody who had nothing to do with their presence there. Even the last time, the first time, it was not some bystander met by happenstance that announced them their mission; no, it had been the World itself, it was a dream, it was a vision, it was an instinct, it was a command, it was a compulsion.

But this time they couldn't hear its voice. Grudge searched their thoughts for a message that may have got lost to the slumber, but found silence instead. They weren't used to it, silence. Even when there was no need for a voice to guide them because they were already doing what they were supposed to do, Grudge could always rely on some distant, echoing whisper to remind them of their duty. Walk that path, stab that creature, ask that question. There was always something.

"I see," they said calmly, but with a hint of ice. "I did not consider that possibility. So this is not the same World where I was born. I suppose this explains why I cannot hear its voice anymore."

There was a slam of a scaly, fish-like tail on the muck, and the resulting droplets stained Grudge's garments with russet. If their World had allowed this one to suck them into itself, then their World must have discarded them, for they had already exhausted their raison d'être. However, in that case, wouldn't it have been much easier to erase them entirely? Alternatively, their World had next to nothing to do with their current situation... But if their existence was bound to that of their World, did that imply they would end up disappearing soon? For the latter option, only time could tell them. Another possibility was that this place had a different modus operandi entirely.

"I am–" they paused and contemplated the necessity for a change in tense. "I was needed because the World, my World needed to avenge its suffering. I was the instrument through which vengeance was carried out. I was the World's Grudge, as some commented. If, as you said, this land calls forth creatures from other places, then it might need all of the souls it summons, even if the reason may not be readily apparent."

It was with the last plural that realisation dawned on Grudge and, with it, an idea struck like lightning as they walked along a path that didn't look like it was there before, gravel crunching beneath bare feet. They weren't the first creature to happen upon there, and it stood to reason that not being the first also meant that not being the only one. So who else was brought there?

"I find myself curious. What about you? Were you born here, or did you arrive the same way I did?" Then they added, "Did you also happen to meet a young goblin woman, an old dog who can speak the language of men, or a tall skeleton with a long beard in the past?"

It took the cracks mere minutes to grow in both quantity and size, and moments for water to gush out of the crystal in spouts, as if piercing through a dam, as a result. As the pressure increased, so did the number of crevices and holes, and even more water forced its way out, which in turn contributed further to the strain placed on the crystal in a frenzied vicious cycle that resulted in the crystal finally shattering. However, instead of being flung in every direction like shrapnel from a bomb, its shards stopped harmlessly in mid-air, turned into light, and rose up in the air for a few inches before disappearing entirely.

Hatching from that unfamiliar egg was a Tonberry. Shrouded in an ethereal white swathe of pure energy and somehow free of moisture, it floated down gently to the muddy pool that formed where the crystal once was. The veil scattered and vanished into thin air as soon as the creature's feet touched the closest thing to solid ground that their position allowed. Then the Tonberry opened its eyes, blinked rapidly while scanning their surroundings, and checked their hands (or front limbs, for those who espoused a very conservative definition of the word ‘hand’) for their lantern and their knife.

Grudge gave a low hum of half-acknowledgement and half-relief, and turned to face the only visible presence that they assumed to be sentient. It was a young woman with blond hair and blue eyes, short but not shorter than them (that would have made them a young child), and she appeared to be human in every aspect except for a simian tail that they had never seen in anybody they met before. Moreover, the forest felt just as unfamiliar, though there was still the possibility that they had simply ended up in an unchartered portion of one they had already visited in the past. Still, that necessarily begged one question: how? They remembered the crystal forming around their feet all of a sudden, freezing them in place, and then enveloping them whole before their consciousness drifted away in a dreamless slumber... But this was not where it happened.

"Where am I?", they asked the stranger calmly. It was the second of the three questions that were currently dominating their thought processes like a choir of tyrants. The third was: "When am I?"

Both answers, Grudge realised, were nothing but the keys to free even more questions waiting at the backdoor of their mind in the same way ambitious princes waited for their turn on the throne while they whispered plots. Nevertheless, they were questions that had to be asked.