Daylight and the sound of birdsong woke Liana, and she found herself lying outside on some sort of moss bed under a huge oak tree. All around her she saw a vast wood buzzing with life, with beauty and goodness and all the other things she'd missed so much for the past few days. She took a deep breath and sat upright on her bed. She saw Inaya lay beside her on a second bed of moss, motionless and even paler than usual, with a bandage of sorts about her chest. Liana's heart almost stopped in panic, but it quickly began to pound back when she noticed a calm breathing. So her friend was only sleeping, and in the safety of this oak wood all danger and threat seemed distant and almost unimaginable. This place radiated an unparalleled calm, an assurance that everything was going to be okay, which was a stark relief when coming from the dark, destabilising atmosphere of Kavanderra.
But what had happened again? Her head was almost clear now, but her memory was still blurry. A lot had happened for sure, but what exactly escaped her for a moment. It seemed like her brain was taking longer to start the needed programs than usual, so she looked around more closely to take in her surroundings better. She lay outside in sunlight filtered by oak leaves, but it was a normal sun again, even if it was Nuanderra's. Majestic giant oaks dominated the area, hosting an abundance of life. Different types of butterflies and dragonflies danced through the air and all kinds of birds whistled, and she felt that there were bigger animals in the area too. And it wasn't just animals, she suddenly realised: a few humanoid figures were busy here, although Liana kind of missed what they were doing. The closest one of them almost looked like an Elf Queen and she was kneeling beside Inaya now, holding her hand tenderly. She was taller than a human, dressed in a very bright white robe, and had long dandelion-coloured hair that felt completely wrong for "blond" hair as she knew it from her own species, and a pale yellowish skin with a pearly teint that looked even less human. She radiated life and wisdom. For a moment Liana thought she was dreaming again, but she couldn't be, because everything here was too real for that. It felt more like her ordinary life had been a dream in comparison… When the Nummerfil realised that Liana was conscious, she looked at her and Liana himself suddenly felt very shy, because this person was a lot more impressive than Inaya, Lun, and even Andira had been. But her urge to get answers outweighed her shyness in the end.
"What, what happened?" she asked, thoughtlessly in Dutch. The Nummerfil looked at her lovingly and answered in her own language, and Liana apparently was able to understand it quite well this time, now that they both used thought communication simultaneously. “Welcome back, Liana-dinn é from Oranderra. You must rest now.” She looked at her calmly, with almost golden eyes that held deep peace in them. “The war for Kavanderra is over. The Onnobolda have been betrayed and killed by their allies from the Superior Tech Corp. But you are safe here now.” She put her hand on Liana's forehead. “Rest just a little longer, girl from the old world. You overdid yourself with that rescue. Dimensional bending without aids requires a lot of energy, especially if you’re inexperienced. You have done things few could have done, and the council is very grateful! But most of all you have to recover now!”
Liana stared at her. She had finally regained her memories, and she saw in a flash her last moments in the old alien world back: the ugly gate was opened and then closed, the dark bomb that was about to count down to zero, and Inaya, shot down and lifeless, lying next to her in a world that consisted of a clash of darkness and blinding artificial light. She had questions, so many questions now. “How is Inaya?” she asked, still looking concerned at her nearly motionless friend. “She is healing and she will be better. But she needs a lot of rest now. The magichemical weapon that she was shot with was quite powerful, but you managed to bring her back just in time, and luckily the members of the council are all skilled healers.” Liana breathed a sigh of relief.
“What happened to the Onnobolda?” The councilor was silent for a moment before answering. “The explosive weapon your kind used was more terrible than we knew was possible. It destroyed everything, the whole ziggurat as you called it, and the whole base, and also the Onnobolda themselves. All that’s left is an enormous crater. Such a senseless killing. Not one living soul remained.” She paused. She seemed to be having a hard time with the whole idea. “But something like that won't happen again. The portal technology that your kind took to travel between the worlds will no longer work, no matter what they try. The council will take care of that.” She paused, and Liana had no doubt that what she'd said was the truth. “Everyone who belonged to the Onnobolda has died in the explosion, we suspect. All Nummerfa and Drotnira are dead, including Andira and the other leaders. All of them, except for Marah and Frest.”
Hearing that second name, Liana looked up. She could remember grabbing Marah's hand at the last moment before the explosion, but hadn't realised that her gloomy colleague had also hitched a ride. The council member continued: “Yes, Frest has come with you too. But he hasn't said anything since he got back and he has closed off his head completely, even to Marah. We will continue to monitor him closely.” Liana sighed while her thoughts raced through a closed part of her head that wasn’t shared through kah-yito. She already had some answers, but she still found the explanation far from satisfactory. The war may have ended for the people of Nuanderra now that the Onnobolda had been wiped out and the portal technology of the STC was incapacitated, but the misery was not over for her own world. She herself had witnessed the entire exodus of the STC agents with all their strange vehicles, boxes and equipment through the gates, to somewhere in her own world, she was sure of that now. There certainly had been enough dangerous new weapons with unknown effects that could be used in horrible ways on Earth! Didn’t her world have enough terrible weapons, needless violence and completely pointless conflicts already? Was the council aware enough of that? Or did they not care what happened in the world of the Gorchbolds?
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“But the Superior Tech Corp has gone back to my own world? With all the weapons and technology. I've seen them disappear in that portal!" The councillor nodded in agreement, but stuck to her earlier point. “They can never come back again here. And everything that they left behind, and everyone of the Onnobolda that was left, has been swept away by the explosion together with all those lost lives. They were so bitterly betrayed by their allies. What did Andira hope to achieve by working together?” Liana probably had an answer that would bring the conversation more to the point. “The people of my world are better with technology than the Nummerfa and the Drotnira. They were able to reproduce and use some of the inventions of the ancient Kavanderrans. They used various weapons that we did not know what they were for when we were there, and which were also carried by the Nuanderrans too.”
The councillor looked dark. “I saw Frest's weapon. We’ve analysed that demonic thing. Weaponry from a cursed dead world, made to conquer the world under the shadows. And I've seen the effect of it on Inaya's body. How deluded were they?” She paused. “The fools, they thought they could make everything better with their silly plans. That they could free the worlds from the shadow of Oranderra. And then they themselves fell under the shadow long before they realised it. And then their new friends stabbed them in the back, as an expression in your language would say.” Liana suddenly saw Andira standing in front of her again, with her pompous words about purification and making it better for all worlds. “It was better for the STC though. No-one could have won. She would have killed them too herself anyway, along with all the people in my world. She had revealed that to us just before the Americans took over.”
The councillor paused and looked away, as if slightly embarrassed, Liana felt she was shocked at the very idea of such a genocide. It was already difficult for Liana to understand the Onnobolda, but the Nummerfa themselves had known no war or deadly violence in their world previously. She was much more shocked than she ever could have been by such things. She was very familiar with all kinds of evil from the news, from fiction, maybe just from growing up in Oranderra. “Both sides were traitors and murderers. The plan to leave the base and blow up everything including the Onnobolda must have been made long before they learned about Andira's plans during our interrogation." The councilor nodded. “Marah said the STC had been moving their stuff all day, although no one wanted to notice it. Everyone was just happy to get rid of the strangers without further ado. It’s clear that Andira didn't take them seriously as opponents. She thought she could use them.”
Liana nodded. “Andira's plans must have been guessed long ago by the STC. Andira only sped up the timing by her speech to us in which she revealed what she wanted to do. One of John’s men understood her when she was speaking Dutch with us. But whatever you think about Gorchbolds, my kind is not really that stupid. We arrived right at the moment that they had gathered what they wanted, and had collected all the technology they needed. Kavanderra isn't fun for humans to be around with its weird daily rhythm and orange sunlight, so I suppose they left it as fast as they could, taking everything they could use. And the rest they just blew up, so they didn't leave any traces." The councillor looked at her questioningly, clearly confused. “Is that normal behaviour? Does that way of thinking make sense for your species?” Liana was silent. She didn’t have an answer for herself. She straightened up a bit and raised up her hands in the air hopelessly as if surrendering.
“Sorry, humans suck.”
The councillor corrected her immediately. “Don't be so condescending, Liana-dinn é. You are a hmana-orr yourself. You are on the side of the Good, the real, Life itself, and you have been a great hero. You also gave Marah, who was your enemy, a chance to come along, and in doing so you brought her back to reason. Your people can be very proud of you. You are a great woman. Shame belongs to my own people now, and to our world’s council that remained so passive. And Andira was one of us too, the one who started it all.” Liana got up but faltered a little. “I’m not who you think I am. I am just a nobody among my people. Nobody sees me. And I am tired now.” And with that, she ended the conversation and lay back down on the moss bed.
The councillor realized that Liana was still tired and went on with her business after giving her some unintelligible blessing , leaving her deep in thought. The whole adventure had been a series of incredulities, of which she had the feeling that she hadn't seen the end yet. All that whole STC exodus she'd seen meant that they were now building an army somewhere in her own world, possibly ready to start a conquest, and otherwise ready to make every war in her world from now on even worse, she was sure of that. As for "the shadow" that hung over her world, surely those Americans were also deeply infected with it. All the nawa of every word were apparently capable of great evil, and they became even worse if they found each other across the borders of the worlds to make up evil plans.
She stared at the leaves of the giant oaks above her for a while, laying on her back, and saw the birds and insects that played around in it until an oak leaf whirled down and landed on Inaya's face. Liana sat up again, snatched it away and looked at her sleeping friend, who looked very serene now. She had some sort of bandage over her chest that remained visible under the light tunic she was wearing, but otherwise she didn't seem injured. The weapon of the ancient aliens that hit her near her heart must have been powerful indeed, but fortunately Nuanderra's healers were very skilled too. And Inaya was strong, much stronger than she herself could ever be. In certain cultures a being with her powers would certainly be considered a little goddess, and probably even be worshipped as such. Maybe people would make all sorts of uncanny sacrifices to get something from her, or just to get her attention. And yet she had just chosen her to be her friend, as an equal.
But she couldn't think for long about things like that now. Her brain stopped working. All the emotions from what had happened in Kavandarra would have been a lot to process already, but the dimensional travel she’d done all by herself had left her even more exhausted. She closed her eyes and fell back asleep.