The Dark World part.11

     The tournament platform lay in ruins, stone and wood strewn about as nothing more than rubble, as though in the aftermath of a great storm. The still burning remains, as few as there are of Red Kain’s devastated corpse lay about the area. From the nearby hills the few demon spectators who dared to remain despite the carnage peeked into the crater as Rhoan stood in the epicenter, standing as a proud warrior with arms crossed surveying the battlefield. Their minds reeled over this unprecedented event, should they attack? Should they try and defend the honor of their slain master? Or perhaps they should bow down and pledge their undying loyalty to the man called Rhoan

 

    Their questions are short lived as there is a flash of light, at the source of the flash they see a short woman in white robes, a startling sight to most demons, wandering if this girl is a noble or some angel. However many demons would prod the sides of their comrades and point to Rhoan who was holding the side of his face with his palm as a scantly clad woman in a black cape stood there with a black flat object in her hand that couldn’t be seen clearly from a distance. She had to have moved at a speed faster than even their eyes could see.

 

    Rhulan had bent the very fabric of reality around to prevent any drag or air motion to give herself away, and moving faster through the air than any natural creature could had struck the might Rhoan across his face; his left cheek the victim of her impressive strike. Rhoan turned, genuinely surprised to feel a sting on his face, no blood, just a nasty sting. While the demons from afar could not see the weapon and only guess at it Rhoan could see the weapon clearly in the hand of his assailant. It was not a knife, not a mace, not a board; it was in fact…a slipper, a black fluffy slipper. How such a thing could make his face sting when he has been struck dead on in the face by super-humans who could throw trucks like pillow, struck by the fists of rock golems a hundred feet tall, and smashed into the ground by giant robots over four-hundred feet tall and brushed them off as mere annoyances.

 

    He looks up from the hand over the sexy scantly clad body of his assailant, enjoying what he sees, and up to her face bordered by her dark red hair. With a raised brow he looks at the face, looking awfully familiar, “Black Rose?” he says, “or perhaps Litmet this time. If the former you have gotten stronger, if the latter I am curious to know why the mother of the Lit would leave her budding empire on Earth to come here and hit me…with…aaaaa,” he stops in mid sentence something in the back of his mind tugging at him, “a slipper?----a slipper?”

 

    He takes a step back hand back up to his face as the woman just stands there hands on hips tapping the slipper against her leg. He also sees now a second woman, shorter in white robes standing some distance behind at the edge of the crater who is poking what may have been part of Red Kain’s leg, or perhaps charred intestines, with her foot. He looks back at the woman, “a slipper? Why…what the hell is going on?”

 

 

 

    “Rhoan?” says the woman, “Don’t tell me that I remembered you after two thousand years, but you actually forgot me.”

 

    She smacks him again upside his head with her slipper, “now where the hell have you been for two thousand years you bastard?!”

 

   Her second strike takes him as off guard as the first, he now detects a divine aura from her allowing her to break his demonic aura’s defenses.

 

    His fists begin to glow with demonic red fire as he looks at this woman, before he tries to make a move while looking at her face a flash of memory strikes his mind like a lightning bolt. An overlap of someone else right over this woman, a woman with the same face, same hair, same attitude, and also hitting him with a slipper, this woman however was wearing a black skin tight leather like super-hero costume with armored gloves and boots with a split wings like waist length cape on her back.

 

    “Rhu…lan?” he says squinting, a flash back to a massive battle in space comes back to him. A vision of Rhulan in her older outfit in a pillar of light with purple electric bolts coming from her hands while in the core of a massive ship. He himself outside the ship between it and a massive dimensional vortex, in synch with her to guide the ship and its four-million residents to a new home to a new Earth. He remembers the large fleet of ships sent by the galactic corporations to stop them from escaping either to kill them or capture them to learn the secrets of their super-human powers. One ship got a lucky shot sending him spiraling into the unstable vortex sending him to the middle of the desert of Dark World.

 

   “Who else would it be?” she says, “Or did you mistake me for some stripper called Black Rose, or what ever the hell a stoned out met is?” She pauses for a moment thinking, “Black Rose…nah couldn’t be the same person.”

 

   “stoned?” he thinks, “oh…lit…like being stoned.”

 

   “I haven’t talked like that in over a millennium.” He says aloud.

 

   “well?” she says, “where…the…hell…have…you…been?”

 

   He snaps his head back and waves his arms about in a circle, “mostly here. But I did leave here at one point and try to find you and the Ark. I looked through Earth M, Earth P, even went back to Earth Q. Couldn’t find you.”

 

   Her eyes narrow, “Oh really?” she says, “I also looked in those same worlds after leaving Aesperia; didn’t find a trace of you.”

 

 

 

 

   “Excuse me.” says Hollia politely interjecting, “Mr. Rhoan, was it? You mentioned the Ark, which I learned from miss Rhulan is what the Metal Castle used to be called two thousand years ago. Does this mean you’re also and Aesperian?”

 

    “Yes,” says Rhulan for him, “In fact Hollia, this guy who claims to have looked for me in the exact same places I looked for him would be my long lost brother.”

 

    “I am not lying!” yells Rhoan, sending the eavesdropping demons ducking back behind the nearby hills.

 

    “Sorry Mr. Rhoan.” says Hollia, “but perhaps a little back ground would be in order. I mean you two haven’t seen each other in two thousand years. With out a doubt a lot has happened, and you two can find out how you missed each other and catch up at the same time.”

 

     “well, well, well,” says Rhoan in a gentleman’s tone, “aren’t you a delightful positive young lady.”

 

    “She’s mine.” snaps Rhulan.

 

   He looks back at Rhulan then down again at Hollia’s now beat red face, with a curious look on his face he says, “any who, let’s begin. I trust my dear sister here recalls the battle between us and the Galactic Corporate United Army?”

 

   “Yes.” she says arms crossed.

 

   “Well,” he continues, “I was shot by some lucky bastard and fell into the vortex. When I came too I found myself lying down in the desert of this world. In fact it took me a few centuries to find a way out of here. This world has some fancy demon world seal on it preventing general travel. Or at least it did back then, I think, somehow these low level demons here who specialize in teleportation have figured out how to by-pass the still present barrier that keeps the rest of the much stronger ones from easily leaving to Earth-P, the Earth whose demon world this is.”

 

   He notices the thoughtful look on Rhulan’s face causing her to state, “Okay, we missed each other then when looking. We landed on some fantasy world flat Earth, literally it would be Earth if you unraveled it from the globe, except the American continents are on the far eastern end with Europe to the far west. Essentially cut down the Atlantic Ocean. It took me about twenty years of studying the dimension drive to learn how to escape that strange universe and start looking for you. I looked for about two hundred years or so before going back to Aesperia, what we named the world, it had no fully sentient inhabitants.”

 

   “This world,” he asked, “does it have a rocky barren edge and float about in a gas filled universe?”

 

   “Yes,” says Rhulan suspicious

 

   “Other World?” asks Rhoan.

 

   Rhulan stands hands on hips and angry look in her face, “Yes, Other World. Are you going to tell me you have been to Other World and not found us? The Aesperians are major players in that place. They have trade with the Kuhrai, the Hinnen, and numerous others. There is no way you could go there and not have heard of Aesperia and found us!”

 

  “Hey wait.” He says, “The last time I went there I never heard anyone mention Aesperia, or Aesperians, or anything like that. In fact I barely ever go there, my…current occupation...”

 

    “Demon General?” says Rhulan.

 

   “Yes…that.” he says, “it doesn’t have me leave here often, last time was about a century ago, and I spent the last hundred years being an off again on again hero or villain on Earth-M fighting against heroes and villains by some divine plan from the Empress. The last time I was in Other World had to have been maybe five hundred years ago.”

 

   “Well that explains it!” shouts Hollia clasping her hands together, “Miss Rhulan, Mr. Rhoan, the Aesperian people didn’t start becoming big players in the greater parts of Other World until the last few centuries. Which I imagine given the races Mr. Rhoan mentioned means he was in the Makai Cluster, those people didn’t know about us until the exploration team back in 1532 met and started trade with the Stingers of the Galactic Tree.”

 

   “Okay,” says Rhoan taken back.

 

  “She’s a star student at the School of Stratalia, AKA used to be called the School of Strata-Lee.” says Rhulan

 

   She notices his look, “Yes, it was named after my old partner Strata-Lee, and yes before you ask Hollia, AKA Holly-Lia is his two thousand years passed direct descendent.”

 

   Rhoan looks at Rhulan and back at Hollia, “really?” he says, “What’d you do keep their whole family on staff or something and keep tabs on their genealogy.”

 

   Rhulan and Hollia look at each other, “Uh,” says Rhulan, “actually, yeah. Their family used to serve me as my personal elite guard back when I ruled over Aesperia.”

 

   “What!?” he says.

 

 

 

   “Oh…forgot you don’t know any of this.” she says, “Yeah I ruled an empire, when I left they all went prehistoric agrarian civilization on me. I tried to re-establish order, even had to protect the whole planet from the fricken Stingers who were using them as farmer slaves. Of course long story short, power got to my head, one of Strata-Lee’s descendents, kid by the name of Gyro-Lee got his hands on some fancy magical device, oh by the way Aesperia is like some fantasy RPG come to life, yeah the Aesperians can even learn magic now; pretty common practice actually. Well the little bastard turned me to stone, lasted about a thousand years, literally, until Hollia here cured me, by accident, but still. I was conscious the whole time, traveling around like a ghost in astral form. In all a very…educational experience, not one I recommend though.”

 

    “See you two, everything has been a big misunderstanding,” says Hollia, “now you’re reunited, it must be fate, the great hand of the goddess guiding events, guiding long lost siblings, brother and sister drawn back to each across universes.”

 

   “Uh…huh.” says Rhoan, “Goddess hmmm. I wander. First though I have a few questions my dear long lost sister.”

 

 

   “Shoot away.” she says.

 

   “Okay,” he says, “first you two mentioned the Stingers and the Galactic Tree. I know of this place and these creatures. It is the furthest south known land mass, so to speak, in Other World. I trust Aesperia then is beyond it? Which would explain my never knowing, but how far? My…powers of sensory have advanced considerably since two thousand years ago. The worlds of the Makai cluster are fairly close to each in space.”

 

    “Oh,” says Hollia, “I can answer that. Our scientists have determined by the shape and location of the various smaller oceans, and continent worlds that make up the Makai Cluster that if one were to remove the barren borders these worlds would fit together like the pieces of a puzzle to form a single giant world. It’s not known now why they split, or what this might mean for Aesperia at some point in the future given our much larger size. However some theories abound, some related to the fact that each world of the Makai Cluster has its own portal gate implying perhaps some ancient planet that ended up in Other World, our own world also looks to not have originated in Other World, its mystical aura is in fact stronger than that of the Makai Cluster, which has more of a demonic energy to it, and the wild life vastly different, this has come to bring scientists to believe that Other World is a fantasy universe way-station for lost worlds who have ended up there via some mystical or otherwise related supernatural catastrophe. Even the Galactic Tree has a similar aura, save that its aura is of a divine nature. Some theorize that demonic worlds would split apart, fantasy energy ones laid out flat, and divine ones remain spherical. But with out the discovery of other worlds brought to Other World this remains only conjecture.”

 

     “Okaaay,” says Rhoan with a bit of a laugh, directing his questions now to Hollia  “Not really what I asked, but it does give me a few ideas about a certain something. But how far away is Aesperia from say the Galactic Tree? You did say you’re people met the races of the Makai Cluster through the Stingers, which I am curious how you managed that too.”

 

    “Oh, sorry,” says Hollia, “I can get caught up sometimes, studied the texts so many times that I repeat it. Um, well in the two standard Imperial or what we assume was also your ancient method, the first would be about fifty five million kilometers, and the other about thirty six million miles.”

 

   Rhoan stands dumbfounded, “That…sounds like actual distances between planets. In fact it sounds like the distance from Earth to Mars at their closest. Well damn, no wander I didn’t sense it. I wander though…” he stops and strokes his beard, “I wander if there are any other planet sized worlds out there in Other World, with out orbits and suns and stuck in stationary locations whose to say where they would be. Now the other thing; the Stingers?”

 

    Rhulan puts out her hand in front of Hollia, “I’ll take this one. Like I said Aesperia went agrarian after I left; four million people or so scattered about the face of the Earth, Aesperia, doesn’t make for much population density even after two centuries or so. They were and might I say still are basically divided up into many kingdoms and armies. Granted they are much more advanced now both in magic and science than back then. Which is rather funny to think about given what we had before then and during my reign, but I digress. The Stingers found Aesperia thanks to the fact that as soon as we arrived some of the ships docked decided they wanted to take their chances in the void rather than settle on the surface. Some of these guys got near the Galactic Tree and were shot down; we had no idea about that at the time. The Stingers systematically searched further and further south in the void. But being bug people and using their own wings and having to set up long distance supply relay stations in the different directions they searched it took them a very long time, like I said, two centuries, to find Aesperia. They sent out small groups all over the planet and demanded tributes, a protection racket, from every farmer on the planet. Hell those damned fools back then didn’t even know the Stingers came from space and were doing this bit to the whole world.

 

   Now I came back, turned out the damned weapons systems of the Ark had gone haywire, building weapons with the nanite system and attacking anyone not part of the control staff on sight. So I took control of the weapons and pushed back the Stingers, had a lot of massive battles in space for the safety of Aesperia. In the end I drafted a none-aggression pact with them. Which they still hold true today, which their not being immortals is really impressive to do after two thousand years. Funny thing, after all that Empire stuff I mentioned before everyone burned the damned books about my empire, wasn’t till some dick a few centuries ago found some lost book.”

 

    “It was in the year 1500, in the city of Hanalan.” stated Hollia, “It was a history book that dated back to before the Rhulan Empire that spoke of the Stingers.”

 

    “yeah, that.” said Rhulan, “well any who, humans being humans even with magic and super-powers to boot got curious and went searching for them. Heh, they were a lot quicker about it than the Stingers and found the Galactic Tree in only like thirty years. Well long story short, my pact was still in place and they set up trade relations with the big empires on Aesperia and now we got adventurers for the last few centuries and settlers exploring Other World. And I think that’s everything important really.”

 

    Rhoan strokes his beard, “yes, yes, it all makes sense. But one other thing, why do you have a celestial aura? The aura of a deity from the Celestial Worlds.”

 

   Rhulan eyes him, “probably for the same reason you’re giving off a demonic aura. I’d guess given the fact that every Aesperian was evolved by the mystical energy of Aesperia into being able to learn magic, granted limited usually to anything really useful to being related to their natural powers, which they started to call specialties, and our powers working on the quantum level affecting reality its self our first exposures to more mystical worlds had something of a permanent change on us locking us into these states.”

 

    “I had thought of something like that before,” stated Rhoan, “what with my now demonic aura and darker powers amplifying my own. I doubted it at times, what with my powers always having this somewhat darker nature to them, just thinking I was getting stronger, but my very essence is now demonic. And yours, hmmn, was, well, I guess just a little less dark. I see, and even traveling out of those worlds, we are locked via that first jump in evolution. Very interesting.”

 

    Hollia holds her hands up to her face and looks almost about to cry, “Its too sad,” she says, “brother and sister united at last and one is now a demon and the other a goddess.”

 

    “Celestial.” corrects Rhulan, “I had enough of that goddess crap in the past, lets just let idiots like that Black Kain guy talk like that.”

 

    Hollia looks down, “sorry.”

 

   “oh,” says Rhulan grabbing her around the shoulders and pulling the smaller blushing girl in close with a friendly hug and a broad smile, “Don’t worry about it. Besides some of our best friends are demons, or angels, or what ever the hell Cookie Clean and Betty are.”

 

    “Black Kain?” says Rhoan in a serious tone, “Well all this catching up done with lets get back to business. How exactly did you two get here? I trust, what with the face slap from before that you are not some weakling able to slip through the holes that seem to be in the seal. So how did you two get here? Not that I’m unhappy about it, but it is a bit of a coincidence; especially since it seems to have something to do with the last of three little bastards who seem to have death wishes.”

 

 

 

    Rhulan and Hollia look at each other, “well,” says Rhulan, “I have a theory about half of that, more on the how, but not really the why, the coincidence is a bit much, but I think I got the mechanics of it figured out.”

 

   Before she can finish a sight in the sky draws their attention, a flying black coach with thorn like spiked columns pulled by two flying black horses with crimson fire for manes, about their hooves, and snorting black smoke was approaching with a thunderous sound as though the hooves of the dark beasts were striking stone as they moved through the sky.