Divided by Hostilities (Chapter 15)

[jiminee]

 Chapter 14

“You’re in danger?” Pause questioned, his heart thudding in the back of his throat. Aureylian nodded and brought a finger to her lips. She had gone uncharacteristically silent, and Pause wondered why. The story was beginning to piece together in his mind, reconstructing his view of Aureylian. There was someone or something watching her, he knew. She was like the emerald in the story. She had unfathomable knowledge, but if she told them too much a dragon or something would come after her. At least that’s what Pause thought she meant. He still didn’t understand why any of this was happening.
“I’ve put myself in even more danger by telling you that,” Aureylian said in a whisper, “But you need to know.”
“Why?” Beef said.
Aureylian was still whispering, her voice so quiet that Pause and Beef had to lean in close to her face to hear what she said. Pause wondered why.
“I think it’s time I show you something. I need to take you somewhere we can talk safely.”
“Okay,” Pause said, still confused. He allowed himself to trust Aureylian, despite how afraid she seemed now.
“I need to talk to Zisteau first, and you’ll have to stay here,” Aureylian said. “Actually, make sure you have ,” – her voice dropped even quieter – “Food, armor and weapons.”
Pause glanced at Beef, but nodded. “When will you be back?”
“Soon, depending on how long it takes.”
“How long what takes?” Beef asked, but Aureylian was gone.

As soon as Aureylian was gone, Beef relaxed. He noticed Pause still looked tense and confused.
“We can act normally now, I think,” he said. “She’s gone.”
“What do you mean?” Pause asked.
“Did you understand the story?” Beef asked, rummaging through his inventory to make sure he had food, armor and weapons.
“Um, I think I did,” Pause said. “Well, I understood that she’s in danger. There’s something watching her.”
Beef nodded, trying to sort through his inventory and his whirling thoughts at the same time. “The… the emerald was a metaphor, I think. I think she was using it so the thing that’s watching her wouldn’t understand what she was telling us.”
Pause began looking through his inventory too. “What about the kingdom? And the girl?”
Beef shrugged. “It was intentionally vague. But the point is, the monster or whatever can see through her eyes. So it can only see where she’s going and what she’s doing. It can’t see us now.” Beef hoped he was right. He thought he understood how Aureylian was communicating. She couldn’t say anything too obvious or the thing might understand. Still, if he was right, and the creature could see through her eyes, couldn’t it hear her, too? That would mean whispering wouldn’t stop it from hearing what she just told them. Had she been intentionally putting herself at more risk to tell them that?
Pause still looked troubled as he stood up. He was watching the sun set, his eyes squinted against the red light as he occasionally swept the area with his eyes to check for monsters. Beef watched him from where he sat. It was nice to have this moment of peace between the chaos and confusion Aureylian was throwing them into, and Beef was glad to have a moment alone with Pause. Despite the fact that neither man said anything, there was a gentle affection in the air between them that was quite comforting. Beef allowed himself to enjoy the calm as the sun slowly left the rim of the world, until Aureylian finally returned in the dying light.
“Come on,” she whispered and Beef jumped up, following Pause as they hurried across the wasteland. As they went Aureylian began tossing out items surreptitiously behind her back. Beef saw Pause picking up a shining diamond chestplate and realised he should do the same. Aureylian left a trail of swords, potions and armour and Beef and Pause picked them up. It was clear now she was trying to equip them without the thing seeing, which strengthened his theory that it could only look through her eyes.
Soon they were in the city of Abattia, that place Beef had only seen once, and very briefly. They were walking quickly down the main road, straight to the heart of the city. Beef felt sick when he passed the prison, recognising it instantly even from the outside, but he soon realised they were headed straight to the half-built palace. Beef was growing more confused by the second, and a quick glance at Pause’s face told him that he felt the same.
Since the city was beginning to fall asleep, there were no builders working on the palace. It was quiet and dead, with only a few torches to keep away monsters. Aureylian led them straight under the doorless main arch into the centre of the palace. Beef watched her frantically pace around until she stood right at the centre of the floor.
“We don’t have much time,” she whispered, he voice echoing around the hollow walls. “Quickly.” She was bending down to do something, and Beef couldn’t quite see what it was, but she was whispering strange words to the floor. Suddenly there was a spark and a rush and a whoomph as the floor in front of her burst into flames. Beef stared at the column of fire with an amusing thought that this was the second time the palace had been on fire in a very short amount of time without realising that there might be a reason for that.
“Quickly!” Aureylian was saying, and beckoning Beef. Pause was already standing by her, and she was whispering “Go, go go!” at him and Beefdidn’t know what to do until he saw Pause step hesitantly towards the fire and then Aureylian pushed him into the flames and he was gone.
“Pause!” Beef screamed on instinct, before Aureylian gestured frantically to him and he finally realised he should step into the flames too. He stood before the flickering column and took a deep breath, breathing in heat and the taste of smoke. Before his mind could stop him, he stepped forward into the flames.
Searing heat for a second, almost unbearable pain, then a rush of cool and the feeling of terror. Aureylian appeared beside him in a whoosh of flames which vanished as she stepped out of them. Beef realised he was standing on a small outcrop of huge, shining crystals. They were translucent and white but with a faint shine of different colours  - pink, green, blue, gold – when he looked at them from different angles. Looking out over the world he, Aureylian and Pause now stood in, he could see it was covered in these crystals. There were paths cut through here and there and there were plants, ones he’d never seen before. Colourful mosses covered some of the crystals and statuesque trees rose up here and there into the pale pink sky. There were animals too, small birds high in the sky, butterflies dancing around the colourful flowers, and a creature he’d never heard of before with its offspring, drinking from a clear pool of water. He’d only ever seen a butterfly in a book. He looked to Pause and saw that he too was staring around in wonder at this world, this paradise.
“This is where you’re from?” he asked Aureylian. He could talk normally now, couldn’t he?
Aureylian nodded. “He can’t see me now. I can tell you everything, but we don’t have time. He saw us go through the portal.”
“What is this place?”
Aureylian smiled, and sat down on a jutting crystal. “Ancor.”
“What? Ancor?” Beef asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Nobody has, aside from those who come from here,” Aureylian said.
“Is this heaven?” Pause asked, following her lead and sitting down. Beef did the same.
Aureylian laughed.“No! There’s a lot to tell you, so let me explain. This is Ancor, and it’s a place in-between worlds. It’s where I was born, and it’s a safe place for me to speak. He can’t see me in Ancor because this world doesn’t exist as a physical state.
Beef, you understood my story pretty well. I had to tell you something so you understood I was being watched, but something he wouldn’t understand. I chose the metaphor of an emerald because you would be able to fill in the gaps for yourselves. I do have superhuman knowledge and powers, but they come from a creature that can see through my eyes like a window to everything I do.”
“Why did you come to our world then? Why put yourself in danger?” Beef asked.
“It really is my job. I have to tell you where I come from to explain that. A long time ago, Ancor was the only world that existed. Well, it was the only world anyone knew existed. It was ruled by nobody, and was a perfect haven for every creature that lived here. Many people lived here too.
One day, a man living here made a fire. Everybody used fire here for cooking and warmth of course, but something about this fire was different. He could see a world in the flames. He thought he was hallucinating, but the same image of the same world stayed there. He even tried lighting fires in different places. Only that particular spot showed the image. Eventually, he told a friend. He showed her the image in the flames one night. She was reckless, and wanted to try to touch the image. Putting her hand in the flames made it clear that this wasn’t ordinary fire. It burned for a second and then was cool. She wanted to try more. She guessed the fire was a portal to the world.
So, when nobody was there, she snuck out to the spot and lit a fire again. She took a deep breath and prayed it would work, and stepped into the flames. She was right; it was a portal to the other world.”
“That person was you!” Pause breathed excitedly.
Aureylian shook her head. “No. Many people used to live here, and I was one of them. I’ll come into the story soon.
So the girl found herself in this strange world. She stepped out into this world of grass and blue sky and green and trees. She realised the fire she had stepped out of – in the middle of the woods – kept burning. Whatever this world was made of burnt and caught easily, unlike Ancor. She quickly put the fire out with some water and marked the spot she had stepped out into, just in case. She began to explore the world. It was so much different to Ancor; the sky was light blue in the day and dark blue at night and red, yellow and pink at sunrise and sunset. They got their light from the ball of fire in the sky. In Ancor, the sky is always pink. There is no night or day, no sun or moon or stars.”
Beef looked up at the sky and saw that there was nothing, no sun or clouds, just endless pink.
“There were so many new plants and animals and there were people. They spoke and wrote a different language, but they were welcoming to the girl all the same. She soon realised there were hardships in their world, though; suffering, death, fear, loss, greed and evil. They were things she had never experienced before. She wanted to help them, but there was no way she could.
Eventually she returned to Ancor. She lit a fire in the woods in the exact spot she’d come through, and came back to Ancor safe. Everyone was relieved to see her, and she told us all of where she’d been and the things she saw.
So, life went on, but eventually the girl became aware of something. She kept returning to the place where the fire-portal to that other world could be lit, and noticed she could feel an energy pulsing there. Once she noticed it, she realised she could sense it in other places too. In fact, all of Ancor was riddled with patches of energy. She began to think that maybe there were even more worlds than just that one other one. So she lit a fire in a different energy spot, just to see what would happen. She was right about there being more worlds. The fire opened up to show her a view of a completely different world. Again she stepped through the portal into the world.
She came back and told everyone. Soon, everyone in Ancor would look out for different energy spots, and soon anyone could find them. People were lighting fire-portals all over the place and going into the hundreds of thousands of different worlds that previously, we never knew existed. We soon found, that while no two worlds were the same, they all looked the same, had all the same plants and animals and biomes as each other one. We found that they, too had portals to other worlds; the hell-world called Nether and the place with the dragons called End. We couldn’t get to those places through our fire portals.
Although we couldn’t help those suffering in the other worlds we left our marks; sometimes scribbling notes in our language, Ancora, that we knew those people would never be able to read. But we liked this secret existence of ours. We thought that to help these people we should try giving them things of ours that they didn’t have. We tried it with the enchanting table, bringing in our own and showing those in other worlds how to make them. But something strange happened; after a while, we found that those in other worlds forgot about us and forgot where the enchanting tables had come from. To them, that item had been in their worlds forever.”
Beef breathed out. All this information was swirling around in his head like a whirlwind. “Ancora? That’s your language?” It felt like everything he knew was being turned upside down.
Aureylian nodded. “One day, disaster struck. I was in a different world, exploring. I had been there for a long time, too long to remember how many months it had been. I’d gotten a little addicted to exploring it and interacting with the people whose language I knew little of.  I decided it was finally time to head home, realising with guilt that my friends would miss me. I spent weeks finding the spot I had come through – by then we had started calling them intersections – and lit the fire once again. As soon as I returned here, I knew there was something wrong. There were no people in sight. They were all gone.”
“Aureylian, Beef!” Pause interrupted urgently. He was standing up and pointing across the crystalline valley in front of him. Beef stood up and turned as Aureylian took out her bow. Far off he saw a column of flame shooting up in the air with a great red dragon flying out of it straight towards them.

Comments

[gummy53]

Now THAT is a cliffhanger! Ohmygod.

Lovely as always, can't wait for the next one! :)

[jiminee]

Glad you like it <3 <3