Connor was surprised at his landing. For the first time, he had landed sit. His mind was a bit foggy and their flight had left him groggy. In Holy Robert's name, what's going on in here, it is so noisy!
"Fucking lamb fucker, move out!" shouted someone right beside him, startling the young man out of his daze. He opened his eyes to impending doom and stretched his hand forward in protection against the high-speed projectile that was running at blazing speed toward them, only to pass them by, barely a meter beside them. His sitting and the whole box he was in rattled at the passage. His mind ran at thrice the speed trying to make sense of his current situation.
Boxes, or carts, whatever these were, were faring at untold speed, all next to one another but in some sort of orderly lanes. Some seemed to change for no apparent reason. There was some glass protection just in front of him, where rain splattered against it. Regularly, a black shape swatted it aside, allowing him to witness all this madness. Beside him, Xander was seated, passed out. SHIT! He tried to reach for his friend but was prevented by some lashes. He couldn't even stand up nor move to the side. He tried to summon his knives, but couldn't, as he just remembered that he had lent Takeo his Spatial Ring. He looked around trying to find something to free himself and saw an elderly man in blue overall, a strange cap on his head. He was grumbling again, as if in discussion with another voice that talked loudly enough to be overheard despite the ambient noise.
"Mother fucking sons of whore can't work to save their own life and prefer to bleat like the sheep they are!" he pestered, and spat right in an ugly goblet that was already half filled with the disgusting liquid. The old man had a strange wheel in his left hand that was connected to the rest of their current contraption, his right was busy alternating between puffing on a smallish cigar and maneuvering a stick right next to Connor's left leg.
"What's going on here?!" shouted Connor, trying to catch the attention of the other man.
"What's going on, he says. Ha!" the grumpy old man shouted back, not bothering to look at Connor. "Youngsters nowadays, pah! Weaklings that never had to deal with wars and scarcity. All they can think of is their miserable phones!" He spat again, "And the government just lean well forward to be fucked by the so-called 'triple A companies'. What's so fucking great about them, they're just massively rich!" He ranted on and on. Connor left him be and looked some more. He tried not to look at what was happening outside, but every few seconds he could hear blaring zipping by, light flashing in white, orange, or red. Madness!
Xander moved, coming back to himself. Oh! Thank you! Thank you, Lady Jessica! he silently prayed. "Xander?!" he ask-shouted. "You alright?"
"MMhmm," replied groggily his friend. "W-What's going on?..." and probably some other words but he wasn't speaking loud enough for him to catch any of it.
"Hell if I know," he replied. "Please, try to grab your sword and cut our binding!"
"What are you talking about?" grumbled the old man, and for once his head turned in their direction. "Don't you unfasten your seatbelt, I don't want to be fined AGAIN because of you, dipshit!"
He looked back forward and gave a sharp turn on his wheel, the whole box they were in wavered on their lane, and nearby another box blared in retaliation. "Fuckers, all of them." He spat. "And you little shits, stay seated and pray we don't get fined for speeding or I'll take it out of your salary!" He grumbled, "Damned customers, believe they know it all and everything in the world is their due. 'Hurry, come and fix my golden toilet!'," he pantomimed, "'I can't take my mighty piss under the shower like a peasant!'"
"What the hell is he talking about?" asked Xander, this time a bit louder. He was just as afraid as Connor, who was barely getting a hold of the situation. Whatever the thing they were in was faring very quickly, and the madman beside them was responsible for probably both the direction and the speed. He tried to tell that to his friend-
"Holdfast!" shouted the cranky old man. Another box had changed lanes, right before them. The old man definitely tried to reduce their speed, but they barely had time to process what had happened that their box met the other one in a frontal collision. As if in slow motion, Connor witnessed the front end seeming to fold on itself, while the back end of the other one blew apart. He lurched forward but was held firmly against the seat by the bindings. The noise was even more deafening than previously. Metal, Glass, everything seemed to come want to scream along. Multiple small explosions tried to compete for audibility, a cover of something almost flattened his nose then a big white bag seemed to fill his field of vision. He was thrown back in his seat, and the whole thing seemed to spin around. He felt a sharp pain in his head, then everything went black.
----------------------------------------
Xander woke up, once again in noise. But this time it was of a different kind. More than the noise, it was the air was full of caustic smoke. He coughed, his throat hurt, everything hurt. He opened his eyes to a mess of metal and fire. His heart rate spiked. He was still bound, but it seemed that he had some more leeway than before. So he tried to force the issue. Beside him, Connor was out of commission, and a trickle of blood matted his head. Shit. He redoubled his effort to get himself free. His hand quickly found a hold on his sword, and with some effort and perilous positioning of the blade, succeeded at cutting his strange binding that disappeared right away. He pushed himself a bit and tried to break the window to his right. As it was already breached, it clattered easily, but in a very strange fashion. He didn't care. He couldn't maneuver his sword safely enough to pry out his friend without cutting him. So he decided to get himself out of the box first. Outside, wasn't any better than the inside. The box in front of them had been squished to probably half its original size. Theirs had fared better, but not by much. He was surprised they still had legs honestly, a few more centimeters, and their box would have been their coffin.
All around half a dozen other such boxes were in a similar state of squishedness. Everywhere, metal was jagged, glass blown, and stuff was burning with black clouds, despite the rain never stopping. Xander tried to search himself for a smaller knife, but he had given most of his equipment to his friend's Spatial Ring for the fishing party. Except... he had an emergency blade, barely a finger long, hidden in his boot. He took it out and started to cut the bindings of his friend. He was still out of it, but he was breathing. Soon enough, the belt-like cord was sawn through, and just like his, the remnant seemed to be dragged back to some hiding place. He then gripped his friend's shoulder and dragged him toward his window. They needed to get out of this hell, to somewhere with cleaner air, and see to their injuries.
As his immediate predicaments and fears were assuaged, the world seemed to clear itself. He suddenly noticed the moaning, the screaming of other people, probably trapped and or injured in their own boxes. Blaring noises came from everywhere, but mostly behind them and across some metallic ramp that separated them from another such carnage. He grabbed his friend in a princess carry, navigated through the wrecked boxes, and soon reached the front of their wreckage. There he could lay his friend down on the strange stone ground. He sighed and tried to calm himself. There wasn't much he could do right now, as most of their belonging had been safely stored away in Connor's ring.
Connor still has his jacket, so maybe he has some of his emergency supplies on him? He deftly checked one of the leathery pockets. Both knew each other's habits, for exactly such situations. He found a small waxed pouch, carefully closed to prevent water from infiltrating its content. But it wasn't meant to support full immersion.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
"It seems like it happened days ago and not just several minutes..." he muttered as he unfastened the pouch opening and extracted several little paper envelopes. He didn't know what was wrong with his friend, but head wounds weren't to be messed about. Besides these Powders were safe to consume, even without any injuries, unlike some of the Potions. He carefully opened the paper container, and with a wet finger took some of the fine whitish Powder and put it on his friend's wound. He repeated the operation several times and fed him the rest of the Powder. He himself wasn't in the best of shape, but these were mostly bruises, along with a few cuts and scrapes. He was also weary from their flight, and this whole new situation. He checked the envelopes and opened one with a little green dot. With a finger, he took some of the blueish powder and swallowed it. It wouldn't help with the wounds, but it should help recover some energy.
He sat beside his resting friend, his sword on his knees, his eyes toward the wreckage, and wondered how they would get out of there. He wasn't quite in his right mind either after all, as he had entirely forgotten about the third member of their party.
----------------------------------------
Takeo woke up to a world of pain. It was different from his previous predicament. He absentmindedly noticed that it would probably be easier to manage on a day-to-day basis. He hurt, he was probably screaming, but he felt somehow disconnected from his body. His eyes opened to a not-so-unfamiliar sight.
Before him revealed itself his body in its gold wireframe aspect. He faintly remembered his battle against the silver blob, and oftentimes wondered what truly had happened. It was mostly the same as before. Three little stars, one golden in his head, one silver above his heart, and a blue one below his stomach. Yet, this time something was different. It wasn't some silvery liquid death that invaded him, but a long thin golden tube that had been thrusted into his abdomen. He tried to move, and only his point of view moved, the shape of his body didn't change. So he tried to get closer, to have a better look.
The thin tube grew in size along with his body. What seemed to be something almost insignificant was, as a matter of fact, almost the size of his arm. And that thing... Urgh, he shrugged disgusted. A faint reddish mist was now visible as he hovered near the offending protrusion. He got closer, and now the tube was the size of a building. Irregularly, waves of golden power reached him, and just like water waves when he stood in the lake without footing made him move a bit until he got his footing again. He got closer to the tube, and the red mist. The tube was composed of dozens of golden lines, spiraling and crossing each other. Waves of foreign golden energy thrummed both within the tube and just outside. The red mist emerged from his breached body, where the golden frame of his belly had been broken. The bubble that had been there the last time, hovering a centimeter above his skin was nowhere to be seen. He wondered what this could mean.
The tube itself seemed to be dumping some sort of orange fog within his body, and another stream of fog was sucked out of his body to wherever that tube ended. I don't like that at all... he muttered. He tried to follow the incoming fog throughout his body. But it seemed to quickly dissipate, or getting assimilated? What the hell do I know about bodily fog anyway... And just as it dissipated, the outgoing fog seemed to condense right before the tube's opening. As he got closer to the opening he was suddenly grabbed by the strange current and his viewpoint tumbled along the tube only to be stopped hard. He still felt the current trying to drag him away, but it was as if he was fastened to his body from his belly button by a cable. God, why does it hurt so much, gah!
He tried to focus on where he hurt, and slowly his viewpoint shifted again. Like a camera changing its focus, he caught sight of a little pin of light thrown about by the current. Empowered by his success, he applied some more Will toward his goal, and now had a clearer picture. It was a miniature self-representation. Almost an SD representation of himself, without any details, but the vague shape of his face. And just as suddenly, as if he had come to some revelation, his view shifted toward that little character's point of view. He could extend his hands and see faint outlines of golden energy. But he wasn't wholly golden, and where his body was meshed and filled with hundreds of veins of multiple colors, this current avatar was a simple bubble of golden waves given a slight shape of himself. Within, blue energy and whitish fog hung and churned.
He was indeed tied by his belly, as a very fine golden tube ran back toward his body, along with a blue and white cable. He was still dragged toward the unknown end of the foreign tube and he needed to do something about it. He moved his hands, and his avatar's hand moved in kind. His foot responded just as well. He tried to rotate himself so that he could grab his lifeline. But he wasn't helped by the current and so it took him several attempts before succeeding. He grinned, Let's get back home!
He focused on his fake hands, which looked more like mittens than hands honestly, and grabbed the cable. He pulled. It truly felt like pulling against the current. He could feel the wisps of fog going around him. Hmm, why am I dragged only in that direction? Wasn't there some fog coming from here? he wondered. But first, he tried to pull himself onward. The more he pulled the more his little body glowed from the dozen of little golden waves that followed the cable back to him. It seemed to both harden the cable and his hands. He pulled harder, and he got himself a little further on the cable. Yeah! Again! he tried to motivate himself and not focus on the why of everything.
A few handholds further, he tried to get a better sense of his flying abilities. He tried to tie the remnant of the cable to itself, so that he wouldn't be propelled away again, without much success. So he would have to keep a mitten on the cable. He was thankful that his current body was much more flexible than his usual flesh-and-blood one, as he doubted he could perform the move he was currently doing. With a foot, he grabbed another hold of the cable and transformed himself into a kite. The pressure almost tripled and he lost his foothold. But this little one was strong-willed, and so he tried again, and again. Up until his foot glowed just as much as his mitten and then his hold was rock-solid.
Kiting with one own body wasn't something you've got to experience every day. I honestly don't recommend it, he commented, as he tried to keep at bay the pain that came along with the pressure. An idle thought wondered how he could feel pain as this wasn't a true body, No nerves, no pain, right? And he let it slide, both the thought and the pain. He focused on feeling the pressure made on his shiny body, and with a twist of will, rotated his body in an attempt to guide the flow a bit more smoothly than with his previous blob format. The pressure lessened somewhat but it drove him at a very high speed toward the interior wall of the tube where he crashed himself. He felt the wall give, as if it was rubbery, before being thrown back. In his haste and surprise, he lost control of his body shape, which made him zig and zag around some more.
He became quite intimate with the walls by the time he mastered the flying technique. Mastered might be a tad a powerful word... But it was a sufficient control for him to explore the rest of the tube. Besides the wall, there was this strange little membrane, which to the touch seemed like a wall, all rubbery, but unlike the wall, there was nary a wave of golden energy flowing around. Takeo's blobbish avatar mused some time right there. With his hand, he could push. But he couldn't pierce. His right hand, compared to the left one was dim, and only a few waves were ever present on it, unlike his foot or his left hand which were positively glowing bright.
He focused on his right hand, and the strain was beginning to be too much for him to bear, as he also had to maintain his focus on all his other activities... But I just need to pierce through! he thought. He focused on his hand, and the golden waves grew in intensity. He pushed, and the membrane gave way. He pushed some more, and with a slight pop, the membrane pierced and the whole pane of the wall just disappeared, creating a little vortex of conflicting pressures. He was so surprised, that he was suddenly grabbed by the other side and thrown back toward his body. But the cable that held him still went through the other part of the tube. And he could see it, across the membrane, a very bright white line. Of course, the waves come from there... he mused. He felt some minor discomfort as he was catapulted back home, each time the cable met some structures that were supposed to hold the membrane in place and broke them by the cheer accumulated speed and hardness of the waves' pressures.
By the time he reached his body, the tube had ceased operating and seemed to shiver. Everything around him dimmed, to the point of becoming black.