Tournament of Darkness: From beyond the Threshold

   In the center of a very white room is a massive circular platform with four white obelisk like devices pointed inwards from the ceiling down at the center of the platform. At the center of the platform is a silver coffin like device with a green scaled lizardman chained and sedated in the center. It would be uncomfortable for him awake due to the crocodile like ridges and tiny spikes down his back.

 

  Beyond a one way mirror looking down at the platform a man speaks into a recorder, “Subject: Yoshi Yamata, Age twenty three years old. Subject first mutated during Dimension Mist incident number thirteen. During said incident subject’s high school was exposed to the dimension mist, approximately thirty too forty percent of the student body mutated into a wide variety of forms. The majority of which either killed each other, or were killed by authorities, of those remaining only seventeen are known to be at large, fifteen others were captured by authorities. Of those captured over the next six years four regained their intelligence. Unfortunately of those four, three have relapsed, as well as mutating further into stronger more violent forms. In accordance with the humanity for the once human act of three years ago, subject Yoshi Yamata will not be put down,” *click and the sound of rewinding*, “subject Yoshi Yamata will not be euthanized, instead he will exiled. The Dimension Rift device is designed to locate and send subjects to the source dimension of the Dimension Mist, a place we know via Rift Analysis Research to be filled with lush environments fit for the mutations the mist causes. Subject Yoshi Yamata will be sent to a jungle location.”

 

 *click* the recorder is off.

 

  “It’s such a shame,” says a female scientist behind the man who was speaking, “Yoshi was making so much progress.”

 

   The man flips the switch just as Yoshi is starting to come too. He struggles with the chains, and a muzzle preventing him from speaking, staring wide eyed at the one way mirror, his lizard eyes able to see the doctor, and the female doctor who looks away as the white electric bolts send him, but not the chains or muzzle into another dimension.

 

  If the male scientist could smile or laugh right now he would as he thinks, “lush jungles for this monster, feh, here’s another one for you Professor Frad.”

 

    ******

 

   Across the multiverse Yoshi is sent, a whiteness blinding him. When he comes too he is standing a dirt floor covered in dead grass, dead trees and shrubs around him. It’s like an enclosure at the zoo, except the door is busted open and the window is missing. He climbs from the window onto a tram trail and follows it upwards. It ends a wall made of beeswax. He feels around it with his claws, so glad he can see in the dark with his eyes. He cuts the beeswax and steps into the giant hive. As he hears the very loud buzzing of bees he turns invisible, not sure if bees could also smell. He silently steps through the hive following the sound of water.

 

  He stops a moment hearing a woman shouting, “fuuuck meee, miiiiieee, valllleennnntiiiiinnnne.”

 

  His eye twitches and he nearly loses his invisibility for a moment, long enough that something notices him, a giant wasp the size of a house cat. He makes a run for it as the giant wasp follows the sound of his running, joined by a few others. He leaps through a window, down thirty feet into the sea of an enclosed cove. Holding his breath he escapes the insects and makes his way out the cove, past some old busted underwater gates and makes his way around to a beach, where he *huffs* for breath.

 

  “Another…world…” he breaths, “must…have…been….damn.” *deep breath*, “must have been an insect mutation…damned doctor, I’m perfectly fine now, asshole…I mean…”

 

  He looks at his hands as he sits on the beach, “I mean he saw me transform, but I was fine right after I even showed him my cool new invisibility and plasma breath powers…so why’d…I could have joined that Project Demon team…asshole.”

 

   “Whose an Asshole?” comes a woman’s voice.

 

  Yoshi turns and jumps up, before him is a white woman with dark hair, except she has no legs or really hips, instead her lower body is replaced by a giant red ridged shelled crab body including claws, the shape however seems oddly spider like though.

 

  “Something wrong?” asks the woman, “I havn’t seen you before?”

 

  “I…just go here,” says Yoshi, “I…”

 

  He thinks to himself, “Do I tell this lady the truth, sure, she’s probably in the same situation I am.”

 

 

  “I was just sent here by this asshole scientist, jerk totally must of tricked everyone into thinking I was dangerous and…”

 

  “So people are dumping monsters on the island now?” asks the woman, “I…”

 

  She looks around, “I didn’t see any boats…how’d you get here?”

 

  “Island?” thinks Yoshi, “wait they have boats…this is good…maybe…I mean yes, that means they at least have some kind of technology here.”

 

  “You okay?” asks the crab woman.

 

  “Sorry,” says Yoshi, “I was sent here via…a…”

 

  He studies her, “a…teleporter…you…”

 

  “Wait,” says the woman pointing towards the hill, “does this mean you were sent into the lab?”

 

  “Of course,” thinks Yoshi, “of course they have technology that was all obviously a lab…so is this still my world?”

 

   “Yeah,” says Yoshi.

 

 “and B. Mai Valentine didn’t catch you?” asks the woman, “wait…if others are sent there…we have to tell the goddess, so she can make a deal with B. Mai Valentine not to attack anyone who just shows up there and…wait…how did you escape?”

 

   “I can…turn invisible,” says Yoshi.

 

  “Oh,” says the woman accepting that as a full explanation much to Yoshi’s surprise.

 

  She holds out her right hand, her right claw follows.

 

  “oops, sorry,” she says, “still getting used to having four sets of grasping limbs.”

 

  She puts down the claw and offers just her hand.

 

 “So I’m still someplace that shakes hand,” thinks Yoshi, who is a bit hesitant to get in range of those claws and politely bows his head instead saying, “My name is Yamata Yoshi but you can call be Scale, everyone does, it is a pleasure to meet you miss.”

 

  “Oh,” says the crab woman, who dips her head, “I’m Frankie, I don’t seem to remember my last name for some reason, and I don’t have any cool nick names. But please come with me we have to see the goddess at once.”

 

  Scale looks around as they walk along the beach, at the many colored flowers at the top of the mountain.

 

  Frankie sees him looking and says, “Mary looks beautiful, but be careful, if she thinks you’re food she’ll gobble you up. If you want to meet her you have to be careful and bring an offering, a basket full of fish or a goat usually works, and I’d stay away from Valentine’s hive, she took over that old lab and doesn’t want anyone near it.”

 

   Scale is surprised to see a normal looking human village by the beach, inside the temple however he is flabbergasted. There is a woman with the lower body of a blue shark, smooth blue skin, a dorsal fin, short flat almost blade like fins where hair should be that she clearly can manipulate, and she is wrapped up with and making out with a giant pink octopus woman with way more than eight tentacles.

 

  Frankie walks him in, “Goddess Paramalia, we have a new guest on the island.”

 

  Paramalia turns and Scale would blush if he could and looks away as he sees a long tentacle pull out from the shark woman and spill semen into the sea. The shark woman dives into it and swims around before leaping from the water. Her lower body morphs into legs, she is still blue and her legs have tiny fins on the back of her calf muscles. The shark woman runs over and hugs Frankie and plants a deep wet tongue wrestling kiss on her.

 

  “It’s been too long,” she says.

 

  “It’s only been three days Liz,” says Frankie.

 

  “You know I miss my crab cake,” says Liz.

 

  Scale just stares off not sure where to look.

 

  “Welcome back Frankie,” says Paramalia, “feel free to join Liz in my tentacles anytime my dear, you need not worry about your body harming either of us.”

 

 

  Frankie is embarrassed, its exactly what she has been worried about, ever since she gained the ability to take on this crabtaur form she’s had a hard time not shifting into it when she gets even a little bit emotional.

 

  “Pride,” says Paramalia, “if it is your wish to learn to control it on your own, I won’t interfere…”

 

  She smiles wickedly, “however I might just swim along the beach someday and ambush you right there for a good fucking and….”

 

  She looks past them, “oh right, you brought another monster here…someone new to the island? Step forward boy so I can get a good look at you.”

 

  Scale *gulps* and steps a little closer, watching over the side of the walkway as her long tentacles wave about in the water.

 

  “closer,” commands Paramalia.

 

  Scale obeys and walks clear over to where her stone throne, which he can clearly see is what it is meant to be from here, meets the walkway.

 

  She leans over and says, “I see, a human mutated by the solidification of astral essence. However I am told that is no longer possible on this world, not with the nine obelisks in place.”

 

  “I…” says Scale, “the scientists said…they were exiling me to another….world…”

 

  “Open your mind,” says Paramalia looking intensely at him.

 

  He *roars* startling Frankie and Liz as he hunches over holding his head, images of his highschool, the nightmare, being like an animal in a lab, learning, becoming like his old self again, his recent second mutation, and the machine.”

 

   Then it stops.

 

  “What was that?” asks Scale.

 

  “Psionic Viewing,” says Paramalia, “much quicker and far more efficient than relying on minced words from one unsure of his current circumstances. I will tell you, this is Earth.”

 

  Scale goes *whew*

 

  “but,” says Paramalia, “not your Earth.”

 

  “What?” asks Scale.

 

  “You are on a very different Earth I’d take it from the one you came from. Liz and Frankie here can help you find the differences between this world and yours, as well as Alana…she’s the one that resembles what they call a dragonfly, she might be able to help you as well. However from this day forward you are a subject of my island, feel free to move around as you wish, but be careful.”

 

  Paramalia turns to Liz, “go and meet with Valentine if you would my dear and invite her to come speak with me as soon as possible about the intruder in her hive, as well as the possibility of humans sending others who would enter their without intent too.”

 

  “At once,” says Liz leaping into the water her lower body becoming mershark again, and swims off at incredible speed.

 

   “I…I’ll show you around,” says Frankie turning.

 She *yelps* and Scale leaps back as tentacles fly from the water and wrap around Frankie pulling her into the sea.

 

  “Not so fast,” says Paramalia, “it has been three days my dear,”

 

  Frankie is wrapped up and brought against Paramalia’s body, she runs her hands through Frankie’s hair, “softness is in the heart,” says Paramalia, “let me teach you please,”

 

  She kisses Frankie tenderly as her tentacles wrap around and caress her crab and human body parts.

 

  “I…I’ll just see myself around,” says Scale leaving the insane scene of cephalopod person on crustacean person sex.

 

   As he leaves the temple a young red haired woman carrying a tray with two milk jugs stops in front of him and dips her head, “thank you for bringing Frankie back sir, the goddess was growing anxious about only having one of her two head priestesses by her side.”

 

  Scale forces a laugh, “no problem,”

 

  He looks back as the woman walks into the temple with the tray in hand.

 

 “I…” he thinks as he looks around at the beach, at what look like black fur covered wolf children playing in the surf and up at the mountain covered in a rainbow and more of giant flowers, “I’m in a very weird place.”

 

   “It gets weirder,” says a dragonfly woman landing silently beside him and startling him.

 

  “Nice to meet you,” she says, “I’m Supreme High Priestess Alana of the goddess Paramalia. She told me all about you.”

 

  “When?” thinks Scale who *shrugs* giving up on today making any sense, “A pleasure to meet you miss Alana.”