Chapter 2
The inside of the stone structure was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Metal appliances and screens covered the walls. The technology was so advanced that I could barely wrap my head around it. It looked more high tech than anything I’d seen even at Bel’s place. Not that I knew much about tech, I could barely even work a cell phone after all.
Nova sat me down at a blessedly normal looking table, apologetic, and then escorted Zanni to somewhere else deeper in the building. I stared, trying to make sense of the room, the building, this place…anything. I didn’t dare think about what was happening back on Meliné. Didn’t want to think about my friends, dead in an instant, about Pykon…who knew what was happening to him?
I didn’t even realize I was crying, or that Nova had come back, until he was rushing to my side.
“Miss, are you— no, of course you aren’t okay,” he said. I heard him say something under his breath that I couldn’t understand, but based on the tone I thought it was probably a swear in whatever his native language was. “Here, let me— hold on—” He left but returned quickly, pressing a soft, folded piece of fabric into my hands that I interpreted to be a towel. Gratefully I buried my face in it, sobbing. Too much had happened too quickly. I felt wrung out, stretched thin, and so tired all of a sudden. I didn’t have the energy to even flinch when Nova put a hand on my back. He was warm, warmer than a typical human would be, I realized. It was…kind of nice.
“Miss Aila,” he eventually said, his voice quiet. “You need to eat, you are dangerously low on anim right now. What kinds of foods do you prefer?”
Before the attack I’d been preparing vegetables for a big hearty stew, I remembered. I huffed out a sigh into the towel. Well, those were going to rot if they didn’t get vaporized in a world-ending explosion. I pulled my face away from the towel. I’d managed to subdue my tears, for now at least.
“Stew,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” Nova said. “In the meantime, I’ll bring you some water. Is that okay?” I nodded.
There was a tall, cold glass of water and a big, hot bowl of creamy, chunky stew sitting in front of me by the time Zanni reappeared. He was wearing clothing very similar to what Nova was wearing, I realized, only Zanni had made some…adjustments.
“Did you rip the sleeves right off?” Nova demanded, annoyed. Zanni grinned.
“Sure did, easier to move around that way,” he said.
“Be grateful he’s decided not to go completely shirtless,” I told Nova between bites of stew. Zanni laughed. Nova was wearing simple white robes that crossed over his body at the waist, tucked into a pair of black pants, which were tucked into a pair of black boots. Zanni was wearing a similar outfit, only as mentioned he had removed the long white sleeves. The white of the robes looked good on Nova with his purple skin, but on Zanni it just washed him out.
“You look better in blue,” I told Zanni. He smirked.
“So do you,” he replied. I thought about the blue training clothes Pykon had given me, still hanging in my closet… assuming my house was still there at all, anyway. I’d never really cared about how I looked in clothing in particular, just about whether the clothing was comfortable and functional. I shrugged in response. “You stopped training with us, Miss Aila. Why?”
“You and Pykon got way too strong for me to keep up with,” I lied. Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie. It was…far, far more complicated than that. “And you’re in high school now, anyway, you’re busy.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Zanni bemoaned. “Still, I’ve missed you, you know! And so has Mr. Pykon.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I’ve missed you guys, too.”
Zanni shoveled a proverbial mountain of food into his mouth while I worked on finishing off my one, single bowl of stew and Nova, sitting beside me and across from Zanni, merely sipped some sort of bright pink tea.
The stew was delicious. More delicious than anything I’d ever eaten in my life. It made sense, considering we were literally in some sort of sacred god world, but still it was kind of…annoying. I was no chef, but I took a lot of pride in my cooking and this guy had upstaged me so thoroughly he probably wouldn’t even realize why I was annoyed!
I felt myself getting drowsy, listening to the conversation between Zanni and Nova. Zanni needed to train, to get strong enough to defeat that Obra thing. There was special training Zanni could undergo here in this realm. Nova couldn’t train him, Zanni was actually much more powerful than Nova. One of the older gods might agree to train Zanni, Nova hoped. Nova also hoped that Obra would be content with merely destroying Meliné and wouldn’t think to come back to this realm. Something about that bothered me, the way he’d phrased it.
“Come back?” I asked. I’d been quiet for long enough, it seemed, that both Zanni and Nova had forgotten I was there, if the looks of surprise on their faces were any indication.
“I…well,” Nova stammered. He looked nervous. Worried. “It was before my time, so I don’t know the details, exactly, but Geyros came from here, originally.” Zanni looked shocked, and I just nodded.
“He was a god, like you?” I asked. Nova shook his head.
“Well, yes and no,” he said. “Obra…well, let’s back up. When you looked at him, Miss Aila, what did you see?”
“A pale person with red hair but also, some kind of black…thing?” I hazarded. I didn’t like thinking about it, actually. Dwelling too long on the memory was giving me a headache.
“The black thing you saw is the actual Obra. Obra is a parasite, we think, that came out of something in the center of space called the Void. That body you saw was Geyros, and he was like me, one of the gods, before Obra…infected him,” Nova explained. “He…slaughtered many of the gods living here. Thankfully, my parents were among those that were spared during his rampage. The older gods were able to trap Obra and seal him away, but they couldn’t separate the parasite from Geyros. They locked him away in space, but evidently something or someone let him out a few days ago.”
“And he showed up on Meliné? Near my cabin?” I complained.
“Guess you’ve just got all the luck, Miss Aila,” Zanni said around a mouthful of bread.
“Swallow before you talk,” I grumbled at him. He laughed around the same mouthful of bread. “Ugh. Same as you always were, you gross little creep.” Nova looked between us with a confused but amused look on his face.
“You two are a bit like…siblings?” Nova asked. It was clear he was trying to figure out just what the relationship between Zanni and I was. I shrugged.
“You could say that, I suppose,” I replied. I gestured to Zanni. “Pykon trained both of us when we were younger. Since I’m the same age as Pykon we always had a kind of…” here I hesitated. I truly didn’t know how to exactly explain what there was between Pykon and I. I hadn’t known for a very long time. “...well, a kind of roommate situation? But with Zanni it’s always been more of a sibling type thing.”
“I see,” Nova replied. Zanni nodded. He actually waited until he’d swallowed the bite of food in his mouth before replying. I was a little proud of him.
“So, what do we do now, Sir Nova?” Zanni asked.
“We train. Well, you train, at least,” Nova said. “I don’t think Obra will fall for another trap and let himself get sealed up again, and even if we could seal him up that isn’t the solution to this problem. We have to separate Obra from Geyros first and then figure out how to deal with Obra somehow.”
“And how do we do that?” Zanni asked. Nova threw up his hands.
“I don’t know!” he admitted. “I’m too far out of my league here! I don’t even know who to ask!”
I’ll admit it, I felt bad for him.
“How long ago was that rampage?” I asked.
“Around three thousand years ago,” he said. I lifted an eyebrow.
“And…how old are you?” I asked.
“Well…three hundred,” he admitted, sheepish. “In human terms I would be in my twenties, I think?”
“Would you blame me for not knowing about something that happened at the dawn of civilization, Sir Nova?” I asked. He shook his head. “Well, alright then. This isn’t your fault. You weren’t even remotely close to being born when this all went down.” He blinked at me, nodding. “Now, do your people keep records?”
“We do, but they aren’t…exactly in great shape. The older gods that survived the rampage don’t want to maintain them, and there have been so few new gods born since the rampage that there aren’t enough of us around to spare doing things like maintaining libraries,” he admitted.
“But they do exist,” I said. He nodded. “Maybe we can find some information about Obra in some of those old records while Zanni trains?”
“It’s worth a shot,” Zanni said, giving a cheerful thumbs up. Nova looked at me, brows furrowed.
“We…?” he asked. I felt myself blush.
“Oh, um, sorry, I didn’t mean to include myself there,” I said. “I just thought, you know, since I’m here I might as well try and do something to help. I sure as heck can’t train with Zanni.”
Nova gave me a long, long look before nodding.
“Alright. I would appreciate the help,” he said. I couldn’t help smiling in relief. “I’ll need to get you some new clothes too, though. I doubt we’ll encounter any other gods on the way to any of the libraries, but if they see you wearing human clothes you’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Sure,” I said, looking down at my t-shirt and overalls. They were filthy, anyway, so a change of clothes sounded nice. “Do all of your people wear robes like yours?”
“The women here wear something similar, though they typically do not wear pants,” Nova answered. I frowned. “...some of them do wear pants, though. Would you prefer that?” he asked. I nodded vigorously.
After finishing up the stew I felt a lot better. I suspected that there was something about the food that helped whoever ate it regain their strength, because Zanni was back to his normal, healthy self too. It wasn’t long until someone else arrived, apparently after having been contacted by Nova.
Master Shan was a very, very, very tall man with the same dark eyes, pointy ears and purple skin as Nova. Unlike Nova who had fluffy white hair tied into a short ponytail, Master Shan was bald. He wore a very similar outfit to what Nova and now Zanni and I were wearing, white robes with black pants and boots. His belt, I noted, was a shimmering bright gold, while Nova’s, I hadn’t even registered, was white. He’d also given Zanni and I white belts. I wondered if that denoted rank here in this realm? Or, perhaps, it was the amount of anim the person possessed? Because, Master Shan had so much anim contained in his form. More than myself or Nova or Zanni, certainly. Zanni only looked up at Master Shan, who was a little bit taller than him, with a big grin. Zanni loved training, much to the delight of Oryz and the despair of his mother, who would have preferred him to grow up to be a diplomat or a scientist or something.
Master Shan was, fortunately for us, willing to overlook the fact that we were mortals and not tell anyone about Nova bringing us to the sacred realm. He understood the true gravity of the situation, being one of the few surviving gods from Obra’s original rampage thousands of years ago.
“Geyros was a good man,” Master Shan said. “It was a big shock to all of us in this realm when the attack began. It was the bloodiest event in our entire history. We Observer gods are very difficult to kill, and he slaughtered thousands of us within moments. It was through the concerted efforts of many of the survivors that we were able to seal him away at all.”
“And… you think the same thing won’t just happen again?” I asked. I’ll admit it, I was scared. Scared for Meliné, scared for all the people that were still left, scared for the people of this realm, too. Master Shan shook his head, looking grim.
“I think we need to make use of the time we have, and we have to do everything we can to try to stop him,” Master Shan replied. I nodded.
Zanni and Master Shan were already doing warmups when Nova and I left to head for one of the libraries. It became very apparently, very quickly, that while I could fly fairly fast I wasn’t anywhere near Nova’s speed.
“Will you permit me to carry you?” Nova asked. I sighed. I didn’t really like being carried, but there wasn’t really any other option. If we flew at my speed, who knew how long it would take to get there? I had no idea how big this place even was or how far away the library was. It wasn’t a big deal, anyway. Many of my friends had carried me due to various circumstances. Pykon, mostly. This was no different, I told myself.
I got the distinct impression that if I said no, Nova would fly slow for me, though. That was… nice. Sweet, even. No, wait, that was…polite! Yes. Polite.
“Go ahead,” I finally agreed. Nova nodded and without preamble he scooped me up into his arms (his surprisingly muscular arms) and we jetted away at a speed that was so much faster it made my head spin a little.
We didn’t encounter anyone in or around the library. Nova wasn’t kidding, either, the place looked like it hadn’t been visited in a long time, let alone had any maintenance or upkeep done to it. Dust and spiders still existed even in the sacred god realm, I guessed, because every surface was covered in dust and there were spiderwebs on top of spiderwebs in the corners of the ceiling. The books themselves looked like they were one step away from crumbling into powder if we so much as looked at them wrong. Nova touched down outside of a set of big glass doors, carefully setting me back onto the ground.
“Hold on a moment,” he told me, stepping up to the doors. They didn’t automatically open, so with a frown Nova was forced to pry them open. He stepped inside and chanted a quick spell in a language I didn’t understand at all. A ball of anim floated out of his hands and up to the ceiling before dispersing as sparkles in a thousand directions. In front of my eyes the dust and cobwebs faded, the books started to look more substantial, and lights flickered on around the library. He motioned for me to follow him.
The books were, of course, in a language I couldn’t read. Nova wrote down a few words for me to look for in his language — “Obra”, “void”, “parasite” — and together we poured over books. It was an entirely fruitless endeavor, neither of us finding any sort of useful information or even a mention of Obra at all. The purple sky had turned dark when we left. We had missed sunset, Nova told me, and I marveled at how light it still was even at night. It was more like the world was dim, rather than dark. There was also, I realized, no moon, no sun, no stars. What was this place? Where was this place?
We returned to that stone building from before, which I realized was Nova’s house. He lived alone, so he didn’t have a spare bedroom for us. He did, fortunately, have couches. Zanni and I slept, though it was fitful for both of us. I kept waking up, shaking with fear over what was possibly happening back on Meliné.