They approached him calmly with their hands visible in the air at their sides. The man was surrounded by this air of confidence, even though he appeared unarmed and ragged. His slight adjustment behind the rock did take back a little of the ragged description that Max would use for the man.
Max could feel the waves of nervousness coming off of the man, even if he displayed something else. It was quite palpable actually. As the two groups got to within easy conversational distance, Max addressed Pelos, “I seek out sage advice from one of the Scions. Rumor has it that you visit with one fairly regularly. I was hoping you might take us along with you.”
“Yes, you see, well there is a problem with that. There might be men hunting me, but the things that stalk the place that my Scion friend lives, well, they are far worse than anything that exists or is natural here on the Old World.” He adjusted his jacket and tilted his head as he finished his words.
“We can escort you all the way.” Phaedra said with confidence.
The man sighed, “I don’t think you quite understand the gravity of what I am telling you. The city of Spire used to be the domain of one of the wisest races of beings in the known cosmos. They have been banished from that place and now travel as refugees, trying their best to earn some kind of existence. The things that live there now are not easily trifled with.”
Max fed off of Phaedra’s confidence, “You don’t know quite what you are looking at. She is a highly trained warrior, and I have skills that few possess, because they are natural and cannot be learned.”
The man cocked an eyebrow and his head was still slightly tilted, “A man with a natural talent. It sounds a bit like a bad joke. If I do not have any records of this talent you possess, I would ask that in exchange for me taking you to my friend, you allow me to study you, if what you say is indeed true. You have until we walk the distance to the steps of Rotheburg to convince me or accept my offer.”
“Look. I come from a small place that believed the outside world didn’t even exist.”
“A sheltered farm boy? Fantastic.” Pelos said in his sing song, pitchy voice.
Max’s cheeks heated and just before letting into Pelos, Phaedra softly touched his arm. Max realized that some of Pelos’s annoyed energy flowed into the open conduits of himself. “Okay. Look, yes I am from a backwater. I’ve learned a lot about the world by force. You’d probably never have met me or me you except that external forces specifically pulled me into the Old World beyond. Maybe I would have rather stayed home.” Max paused, “No, no I would not have wanted that. I have a curious mind, and now all this business about me having a destiny I have to fulfill is getting my head and my heart all tied up in knots. It’s now that I’m a part of this world at large and apparently need to be a part of something. I want to pick the right thing, and I’d like to have my own choice. I’ve been informed you might be able to help.”
Just as they were hitting the first stone step that they used previously to descend into this place, Pelos pivoted and stopped. “I did hear you utter the word prophecy and destiny at some point in all that, didn’t I?”
Phaedra blanched and Max reluctantly nodded. Would such words doom them to this man of apparent logic?
“Those are words that I find interesting. They always come up on the cusp of great change, even if those great changes have nothing to do with any divine will or predestination. Actually, no one has been able to prove or disprove these things.”
“Does that mean you will help me?” Max stood tall and proud.
“I have been trying to understand the attackers that invaded my home for my entire journey from it. I thought they were the usual jealous noble types, but those words do get me thinking that perhaps we are coming to that very cusp.” He shrugged, “It’s not that I want to take you there or get myself killed in some far off place without the comforts I enjoy, but for the purpose of returning my life to normalcy, I will take you.”
“Yes.” Max leaped into the air with boyish excitement.
“We need to find a place where we can crossover. Spire is a good distance from here. It orbits in the most fragmented of the planes, the Astral Field. Walking there is no good at all. Fortunately, we happen to be in one of the easiest places to travel from. Sure, it’s dangerous here, but it’s also convenient in a lot of ways.” He confidently stepped back down into the ground and left the steps behind.
Even with the shape that Max was in now, compared to before, when he lived in the hamlet, his back still ached from the large pack he carried.
That pack held food and other supplies for him and a good amount that he volunteered to carry for Phaedra. Pelos did not have much in the way of supplies, but he seemed to be making do.
#
Not long after the three set foot to trailblazing across the foreign landscape, Pelos stopped and stared off in the distance. He pulled out flat piece of glass and stared through it, squinting hard, showing some apparent signs of age.
Phaedra impatiently asked, “What is it? We’re not headed that way.”
Pelos removed the eye piece and passed it to Max. “You’ve not spent much time here? Look over that way. Look high on the horizon, you’ll see the Eastern Spine Mountains that hold up the Old World, as the commoners say.”
Max looked through the glass, finding himself also squinting until his brow pushed hard, almost painfuly into the glass. The distant horizon looked like a wall of stone with no sky. Jagged, unpredictable rock faces jutted out toward Max. He panned down and couldn’t even see where the rock met the ground, so far beyond the edge of the horizon of the surface. “Woah.”
Pelos quickly snatched back the eye piece as soon as Max relaxed his brow. “Lots of fascinating things to share see? For one like me that’s traveled so far.”
The pads of Max’s feet ached by the end of the first day. The ground here pushed hard into his feet, pebbled stone, boulders, and even shiny glassy looking surfaces. He slept soundly, tucked into a small tent, obscured by how well the tent blended with the local ground.
Max summed up the second day of his travels on the War Plane to a shower of meteorites that filled the sky and lit up the darkness with the streaks of fire that filled the skies after the sun set to the west of the more and more distant Old World.
The third day, Max experienced large steaming crevasses in the rock below his feet. Without nimbleness and various skills, the three of them would have turned back there.
The fourth day involved climbing up and down piles of boulders still so hot to the touch that without gloves and full body attire, they would have been severly burned. That day was the most miserable of all thus far. He sweat so much that his clothes stuck to him and he wished to walk in the nude, except that the heat would have his skin sticking to the landscape and then ripping off. Fortunately, by nightfall, they made it past the Boiling Stones and an often used campsite with a hot spring bath gave them refuge. Max marveled at the lack of need for a fire to keep warm or lit up at night.
The fifth day ended with Max wishing for the brilliant greens and golds of the scenery from the hamlet. He never knew he could miss blades of grass so much.
Pelos stood there next to Max, pointy elbows protruding with his hands on his hips, “all the planes or moons as some call them are quite stark in contrast to the Old World. When you learn them all, you’ll never truly be lost.
You’d like to know of them all wouldn’t you?”
Max nodded, “Indeed I would.”
“Well there’s the Wild, a moon, can I just be one that calls them moons? Good, it’s a moon that’s always in flux, falling apart to be remade by the great machine. Foothold, which is an underground Labyrinth moon with an unlivable surface. The Blessed March is a moon enveloped in clouds, some of which have taken form, and that is the place the most devout says has a stairway of clouds leading to Highcourt, or the heavens. The Astral Field, which is once was more a moon and now is but rocks on the horizons, but still close enough to each other to be associated. Harvest is one of the most hospitable places. You’d probably find that one the most like home, and it’s probably the hardest to distinguish, though the growth there is beyond imagining. Then there are the dark places, they orbit closest to the Underworld, my mind can’t even fathom what that means. Burtox Den, which is an ordered place, but don’t see that as a good thing. Eternal Shadow, which in some ways is as close to the Old World as you can get, but the societies and even the land itself seem to shape to match. Then, the Nether Storms. Now that’s a place I’d not like to ever return to. It’s like an ancient primordial world, there are few bastions of safety on that moon.”
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It all became a bit much as Pelos launched into deeper explanations. Max paid more attention to wondering onward.
The explanations distracted Max as they walked long into the fifth night, only to finally arrive at a structure that must have once belonged to civilization. It looked mostly intact, even though it also appeared severely cracked, as if dropped from a great height and allowed to rest awkwardly and unintentionally on the boulders.
“That looks comforting, though really, it does not look safe in the slightest.” Max stood on one foot as he frantically rubbed the bottom of his more achy foot.
“That’s our destination for the night, nonetheless. The storms out this way can get rather intensive.” Pelos lazily explained, as if Max should already have known.
Upon closer inspection, pock marks of various sizes littered the roof of the structure. They had to crouch to get through door way they took, it stood cocked looking like a misshapen triangle, partially concealed by rock.
#
After resting in the long abandoned shelter, Max awoke to find Phaedra was gone. Pelos sat, reading from a small manual that he found in this shelter. “Don’t worry, your friend has not gone far. She wanted to check out a hunch before we moved in on the astral train.”
Max yawned and stretched. The sleep this night was the most comfortable since they set out on the War Plane. After a few minutes of sitting in the cot and rubbing sleep out of his eyes, the door opened. They both jumped from surprise but saw quickly that it was Phaedra. “It is as I had feared. We are being tracked. A man with giant’s footsteps is somewhere nearby and has been following us for some time now.”
Pelos gulped. “Giant’s footsteps? Interesting...”
Max stood up and started to dress for travel. “Then we better get moving to get to this astral train before this man catches up to us.”
The three quickly got ready for travel. As they stepped outside, Max looked back at the shelter. The roof had taken a beating from all the years of its existence. It served them well for their solitary night. He was not surprised that no one wanted to live there on the long term.
The three of them walked with a determined pace, and before long, they arrived at their destination. They crested a steep ridge to get a look on what they were approaching. Max was blown away as the ridge was actually the outside of a very deep crater. Down within the crater was a complex that was surrounded by bubbles of shimmering energy. He watched as a meteorite impacted the shimmering energy and simply vanished in a fizz and a flash.
Beyond the complex of bubble shaped buildings that were connected with tubes was a massive solitary structure. It ran the whole length of the rest of the facility, also surrounded by the shimmering energy. It was a path with a set of cars sitting on one far end of it. The other end of it pointed up to the sky, high up, but not higher than the lip of the crater. It was easily the first bit of this place that anyone would see from a distance.
“Shall we?” Pelos headed down a ledge of the crater that he was obviously familiar with. He kicked up a bit of dust and slid in a few spots. It was not an easy path, but he definitely mastered this one. The two of them looked at each other up on the ridge. They both started the descent, trying to follow the path that Pelos took. There were a few nearly catastrophic slip ups, but together they made it most of the way down the crater.
A large booming sound from up ahead caused them all to falter and almost stumble. It was the booming sound of acceleration. One set of the cars, up ahead were moving quickly towards the exit ramp. Pelos kept moving, the other two stopped to marvel as another boom announced the departure of the train off of the distant tracks. It flew with great haste along a predetermined path up into the sky.
Max could not help but reach out for a moment to feel for the emotions of those on the distant train. The feelings that were reflected back to him were unsettling. It was not an exact science, but he could not help but feel that those people were somehow connected to everything that was going on.
Pelos looked up from deep down below in the crater, “Come on! No time to waste. We’ve got to make that next train, it is the only one left here until another returns.”
It was hard to make out his words over the booming sound of the distant train and the distance that was now between them.
Phaedra grasped his shoulder, “We better get moving. There is no telling what to expect, but it is best to listen to the experienced one here.”
Finally, dusty and dirty, they arrived at the bottom of the crater. The shimmering energy bubble was just in front of them, and just beyond that, the complex and the railway.
Pelos started to pat the dust and dirt; it fell off of his clothes nicely. Almost like magic. “This place has been abandoned for a long time. Only occasionally do people...”
Sizzling energy flew past him and exploded against the side of the crater, pulverizing a rock. It flew right through the shimmering barrier. He ducked down and held his head.
Phaedra went quickly into action. She started to run forward without the hesitation that Max and Pelos showed. She came to the edge of the bubble and as she moved through it, the thing shimmered around her.
Following her lead, Max moved forward. He locked arms with Pelos and gave him the momentum needed to move forward through the bubble. It shimmered around them as well.
There were figures taking cover amongst some of the supports that held up the strange modular buildings. A couple more were concealed behind one of the tubes that came down to ground level and connected up to two of the buildings. More energy blasts came from the defensive positions and fortunately missed them.
Pelos dove for the ground behind a couple of small rocks and shielded his head with his hands again. Max shrugged and started to maneuver with speed to some supports that he could use for cover. He found Phaedra there, bow drawn and a unique looking arrow, nocked. “We’ve got to work together here. There are a lot of them. Feed off of my energy. Time to use that ray gun of yours.” He drew the thing and viewed all the switches to make sure it was properly set. He glanced around the support at the enemies that waited for them. This would be the first time he would use this thing to take a life. It would also be the first time he was forced to kill since learning to expand his empathic powers. He would have to be careful not to let the flood of pain and fear that his victim would feel affect him.
He and Phaedra both turned the corners of their cover opposite each other at nearly the same time. Both also fired shots with bow and ray gun to cover their advance. The fight was over much faster than Max expected it would be. The two of them moved farther apart, but he strained to reach out and feel her emotionally state and feed off of it. Their new positions after each maneuver made it so that the enemy could not find cover from them. Max shot and killed his first man and Phaedra followed suit with the bow. They turned to fight the others that were hiding behind the tube.
Those few appeared to not have ranged weapons. They used the engagement with their allies as a chance to get themselves into position to fight. Before they could engage though, they were overwhelmed from behind. A familiar figure wielding a great axe bull rushed into one opponent. Then that same great axe was swung, one handed in a wide arc. It made a strange accelerating sound and smashed both of the men down in the ground. They groaned in pain and did not move from their prone positions.
It was The Brigand! Pater! With the enemy defeated, Phaedra drew and arrow and aimed for Pater. Max leveled the ray gun on him as well. There was something different about the man. He was missing an arm!
Phaedra spoke matter-of-factly, “I feared as such. So you are the one who has been following us?”
He nodded and dropped the great axe. “I’m not here to fight. This will be hard to understand, but I must try to explain. Hopefully those empathic...”
“Silence!” Phaedra took a step forward with the bow aimed mercilessly at the now unarmed one armed man. He fell to the ground and the look on his face was pained, “I was not of my own mind. Phae, we used to work together. I know I did something terrible to you that will be hard to make up. Give me a chance.”
Pelos walked up to the scene, “Everyone should calm down. Let’s speak like civilized people here.” He started to approach Phaedra. Max lowered his weapon.
Before he could close the distance to Phaedra, she spoke, “stand your ground and don’t come any closer.” Her voice was strained, a tear slid down her cheek. “You cannot understand the horrible ways in which this man has changed my life.”
“Does not everyone deserve a second chance? An opportunity to correct their mistakes?”, Pelos asked.
Max reached out carefully as the others spoke. He felt into the energy of the prostrate giant. He felt pain and he felt sorrow. He also felt a strange sensation that this man was almost new to him, as if they were not encountered and introduced in the past. “Phaedra, there is some truth to his words. He is sorry. More than that, he does seem like a different man from before. Please put the bow down.”
“You are lucky I didn’t kill you before for what you have done. I told you to go far away, I never wanted to see you again. Yet here you are! Why tempt fate like this?”
The man fell to his elbows and held his hands together as she advanced on him. “Max, you, the world. I owe you all. I’m here to pay my debts. Let me fight for you. Let me help you.”
She advanced so that the arrowhead was almost in contact with his head, finally Max had enough. “Stop this! You are all here because of me. Now listen to me. We have a direction to go. Let us go together. He speaks the truth!”
She pulled back on the bow just in time to let the arrow twang out into the distance. She strapped the bow on her back and without looking at any of them, she headed for the train.
Max understood, at that moment, the pain Phaedra bared and that it did have some association to Pater. He couldn’t let this go without at least finding out something. He’d get Phaedra’s side later. Now he needed to know not just that he could trust Pater, but he needed knowledge. “Pater.”
“Yes?” Pater lunged up to his feet with great bulging leg muscles.
“Who were you working for? Who did you try to sell me to?”
Pelos looked on curiously.
Pater’s face contorted as he cringed, and he spoke hesitantly.
“The man’s name was Daefindel.”
