The rest of the trip to wherever Brock was being transported passed in relative silence, broken only by the entrance of the dark-skinned man with grey hair, a lacquered katana sheath covered in cherry blossoms strapped to his hip. He sat down gingerly next to the raven-haired woman in the front pair of seats, who Brock had mentally labeled ‘Cap,’ and began a whispered conversation with her. It featured several weighted glances back in Brock’s direction, along with some clipped head shakes from Cap.
Whatever they were discussing still hadn’t been resolved by the time the vehicle began slowing down, the previous forest environment now replaced by an urban jungle, building after building in a variety of styles sliding past the windows. Many were small, one-story houses, while others stretched up twenty, thirty, forty stories high. Much larger ones with strangely curved lines, as if the mind that designed them operated with an aesthetic sense rotated ninety degrees to humanity, rose above everything else farther than Brock could see. He felt vaguely unsettled by them, but couldn’t figure out why, and put it down to the feeling of general confusion that seemed to be his now constant state of mind.
A few minutes later, the vehicle screeched to a halt inside what looked like a well-lit garage. Cap and the lithe grey-haired man exchanged one last set of whispered words, and then both stood and moved back along the aisle, the grey-haired man in front. As he passed Brock, he grabbed him by the arm, pulling him to his feet. His iron grip was firm, but not so much as to hurt.
“Come along now, and no fuss, okay? My name’s Mikael.” His deep voice, like Fiona’s, was surprisingly gentle. “What’s yours?”
“Uhhh, Brock.”
“Okay, Brock, so here’s the deal. We need to get you properly scanned and processed so we can figure out what to do with you. Cool? Cool.”
Numbly, Brock allowed himself to be led from the bench. As they walked backwards along the vehicle aisle, the sound of sirens approached from outside, and flashing red lights strobed through the interior. Mikael shook his head, expression downcast.
“Let’s hope those new dispeller units work the way they’re supposed to. Verdant should’ve never tried to go head to head with an Overlord-class. Those bastards don’t know the meaning of ‘fair.’”
He slapped his free hand against a panel and the side of the vehicle swung upward. Outside, Brock saw a pair of broomsticks sliding to a halt a few feet away, their slightly curved handles hovering just above the ground, red lights flashing over their bristles. Two women in nurse’s scrubs and long pointed hats scrambled off their saddles and rushed towards them. Each carried a bulging white bag marked with a red cross strapped across her chest. Mikael pulled Brock to the side to clear the entrance to the vehicle, and they hurried past without a word.
“Well, if you hadn’t showed up, she wouldn’t have even had a chance,” Mikael said pensively, “so maybe things’ll work out. Nothing more we can do for her here that the medics don’t have covered. Let’s go.”
The two stepped down from the vehicle, and as Mikael led him around it, Brock took a moment to study the exterior more closely. It had a blocky design, almost as if each part was meant to swing into different positions, and at the front...
“Is that... a lion’s head? Are those paws?”
Mikael rolled his eyes.
“Look, it’s not like it was our choice, okay? Some Sekkie made a couple thousand of the things a few decades ago, and once we got them stabilized and into a work-for-batteries program and off the whole ‘combining our powers together to blow up a random moon’ addiction, they’ve been pretty useful as armored transports.” The lion vehicle turned its head and yawned slightly, as if in agreement, and Brock tried not to let his own mouth fall open in disbelief. Mikael ignored it, still pulling him forward. “At least it’s not a Goondam.”
“What’s a Goondam?”
“A knockoff some other Sekkie with a copyright kink and no sense of craftsmanship introduced. Damn things are everywhere these days, and half of them fall apart if you look at them wrong. Street cleaners are working overtime clearing out all the detached limbs, and the salvage rights lawyers are having a field day.”
Brock shook his head, then sighed.
“Eventually, some of this will make some sort of sense, I’m sure.”
“That’s the spirit,” Mikael chuckled. “C’mon, HQ’s this way.”
He led Brock through the parking garage, past several more of the lion-looking vehicles in a variety of rainbow hues, eventually stopping at a non-descript silver door set into the gleaming white wall. After several seconds, a pleasant chime sounded, and the door slid open, revealing a small chamber with blank black windows and a slate-tiled floor. Brock stared at it, unmoving, until Mikael nudged him.
“You do know what an elevator is, right?”
Brock sheepishly stepped inside the small box, ignoring the hot flush spreading through his cheeks. Yeah, maybe things were beyond strange here, but of course he knew what an elevator wa-
The surge of acceleration pressing him down towards the floor was nothing compared to the sight revealed as the elevator shot up above the earth. All Brock could do was stare out in wonder.
Hundreds, no, thousands of the oddly curved, pale white super-structures he’d seen earlier stretched their way up from the ground, twisting towards each other like the roots of a giant tree. As Brock’s stare wandered higher, his mouth dropped lower.
The buildings were the roots of a giant tree, the beginning of its trunk barely visible below the cloud layer above, roots stretching towards it from farther than his eye could make out, joining each other in twining lengths whose width shaded city blocks. As he gazed around, Brock realized the elevator they were riding was attached to one of them, scaling its side in a sinuous back and forth sway, and that there were thousands upon thousands of the elevators visible, scuttling up and down like ants.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
In fact, when he looked closer, he could see a blur of legs stretching to the sides of each box, and waving feelers extending past the roof and floor.
“Uhhh... Mikael?”
“Yeah?”
Mikael seemed lost in thought, his right hand absent-mindedly worrying at the bright blue tassels hanging from his katana hilt. Brock suddenly decided he’d be okay not knowing if he was riding in an ant the size of a large car.
“Nevermind.”
Brock continued drinking in the unbelievable vista. Below and between the roots was an orderly grid of streets stretching for what looked like miles, creating pattern in a chaotically immense urban metropolis of endless houses, shops, office complexes, industrial factories, and other, stranger shapes, many of which stretched hundreds of stories high, but paled in comparison to the gigantic roots. Frequent collections of greenery broke up the squares of buildings - some wild and untended, others manicured into lush parks and fields. Maybe they play sports here too, Brock thought to himself, seeing what looked like a crystal stadium dome a mile wide, but then his attention was drawn by the esoteric collection of conveyances trundling along the ribbons of smooth stone road like blood cells through arteries.
Nearby, several of the lion-like vehicles were jogging away from the building in a convoy, their primary colors vivid in the bright sunlight. Farther off, the road widened into more esoteric forms of movement - cars shifting into robots as they entered walking lanes, robots shifting into cars as they entered driving lanes, spider-legged cabs crawling sideways along skyscraper avenues, and a bus that Brock swore was actually a giant cat. On the sidewalks were crowds of figures moving from place to place in shifting surges, and Brock blinked several times, wishing his hands were free so he could rub his eyes. Many of the figures didn’t look like they had human proportions. The sounds of the various horns, clanks, shouts, and meows was quickly left behind as the elevator continued its rapid ascent.
Further up, past the tallest skyscrapers, the sky was filled with lines of hovering craft of various shape and size, ranging from barely visible broom-drawn chariots up to massive battleships that looked fully capable of interstellar flight. Each line appeared to have its own docking platform leading into one of the massive root clusters, but they weren’t what drew a startled gasp from Brock’s mouth.
Swooping in and around them were an eclectic variety of fantastic winged creatures, one of whom dove over to the elevator, serpentine form racing against the ant’s gently rocking scramble up the root. In awe, Brock stared into an eye as tall as himself, curved teeth the size of scimitars grinning out from a scaled mouth. After a few seconds, the dragon peeled away and back over to the waiting traffic, shaking its tail like a dog as it left. Brock barely even noticed the train-like series of coverings strapped to its back, small green figures within hooting and cheering at the unexpected diversion, several barely hanging on to the edges of open windows, feet dangling in the breeze.
As the dragon departed, a layer of flashing lights caught his eye. Advertisements for oddness floated everywhere, held aloft on balloons, drones, lazily flapping birds, pulsating purple octopi, and other, even weirder things. Almost all of them were engaged in a slow, low-scale war against each other, various factions banding together momentarily to drive weakened prey into the clouds before falling apart and turning on each other, while others tried to spray various substances to obscure their competition’s signs and placards.
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As they shot up into, and then above the cloud layer, revealing a tree trunk so vast it covered a quarter of the sky, Brock shook his head in disbelief.
“What is this place?”
“Earth,” Mikael replied somberly. “Our Earth, which seems to be a bit more porous than your own.”
Brock leaned his forehead against the cool glass, completely stunned. He was pretty sure he’d have heard about catbuses, or continent-spanning trees, or elevator ants, or, or, well, any of what he was currently witnessing if it existed on Earth. At the very least, he thought one of the professional sports teams would have jumped at the chance to have a real dragon as their mascot if it could have been arranged.
“Wait, what do you mean, ‘porous?’”
The elevator began to slow, and Mikael placed his hand against a pad set into the wall. It beeped softly, causing their ant to jump over to another parallel track with a slight lurch, where it sped back up. He stared out at the vista as he spoke.
“It means we’re similar to the Earth you come from, but here it’s a little bit easier for certain things to happen. Things that don’t happen in your world. Stuff like magic, strange skills bestowed by ethereal voices, inventions that poke holes in reality - the usual. Our mathematicians have some fancy equations they think describe what’s going on but the wizards don’t agree with them at all, the philosophers don’t agree with anyone, and the alchemists are too busy blowing themselves up, so no one’s quite sure why it is the way it is.” He shrugged. “It’s just the way it is.”
The elevator began to slow again, and Brock realized they must be thousands of feet in the air. A dirigible surrounded by fluorescent blue jellyfish drifted lazily by, the words ‘MERSK SHIPPING’ emblazoned on its silver skin. It was as big as a skyscraper laid on its side, but looked like a minnow next to the tree trunk.
“What you need to know is that sometimes we get things crossing over that threaten us. Monsters who view us as things, not people, and this world as a playground they can do whatever they want with.” Mikael pointed up, towards the unimaginably huge tree looming over them. “The Yggdrasils, that was one of the things the monsters did. Damn near broke the entire world before one of them decided to stabilize it so they could keep ‘playing.’ They created the elves and goblins too, along with the dragons. Lots of other stuff.”
Mikael pressed something on the panel, and the elevator began shifting sideways - into the tree, Brock figured. The azure sky was replaced by striated white walls, fungus-lined in a soothing green glow. The dark-skinned man’s face went distant.
“They did it because they could. Made entire races of slaves because they were bored, then brought destruction down on them to amuse themselves. Catastrophe after catastrophe, like kids stomping an anthill. It lasted for thousands of years.”
Brock shivered.
“That sounds terrible.”
The elevator slowed to a halt, another chime announcing the opening doors. Mikael grabbed Brock by the upper arm again, leading him out.
“It was terrible.”
Two guards snapped to attention as they exited, ominous looking barbed weapons held across their chests in not quite threatening positions. Brock tried not to gawk openly at them, or the bizarre mixture of medieval armor and futuristic energy shields covering their bodies. One of them looked like she was about to offer a greeting, but her mouth snapped shut on seeing Brock’s restraints.
Without stopping, Mikael led him past the guards and onto a lush red carpet, ebonwood walls stretching down the hallway. The sound of their boots echoed back muffled and faint, as if coming from deep undersea, and Mikael’s firm hand propelled Brock inexorably towards the large double doors at the end of the hall. They were carved in exquisite detail, and all the scenes were of horrifying figures laying waste to vast swathes of cowering creatures. No two apocalypses were alike, except in the revulsion they evoked. As they approached, Brock could see that at the very top, in ornate script, were two massive words.
‘Cataclysm Squad.’
Below them was a smaller addition, burned in like graffiti.
‘Know Your Limits.’
Mikael paused just before the doors, looking over at him.
“And that’s the problem. You’re one of those monsters.”