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"Hmm." Kaiser pondered that as he walked. "It may be that our afterlives are the same, but they have different manifestations according to the ways and customs of each dimension. When I return home, I shall research this further."
Mike had stopped listening and was watching the trees carefully. Now, he spoke again. "Hey, does anyone else feel watched?"
Pluto looked up at the trees. "Maybe..?"
Kaiser paused, glancing warily around. "Be still. Don't make any sudden moves until I say it's safe."
Pluto made an attempt at standing still but fumbled, accidentally snapping a few twigs. "Crap…"
Mike briefly put his hand on her shoulder to steady her, then let go. He was staring intently at a sunlit clearing several yards away. "Look," he whispered.
There was a young girl in the clearing, asleep in a bed of grass and flowers. Her curly black hair had fallen in her eyes, and there was a fine layer of fallen leaves and pine needles covering her jacket. Standing over her was a large canine–maybe a dingo–with thick golden fur and white markings on his chest. He pricked his ears at the group, his green eyes calm but alert. Everything about the pair radiated power.
"That doesn't look good," Pluto said, wings bristling
"Careful." Kaiser's voice was almost impossible to hear. "Don't look in his eyes. Just come this way, very slowly. We don't want to–"
The dingo suddenly stepped towards them through the grass. Every time its paws touched the ground, it left tiny white flowers behind in its tracks. The air got warmer and thicker as it approached, and the silence pressed against the ears almost painfully. Kaiser tried to speak, but couldn't. Mike tried to step back, but his feet were rooted in place.
Pluto's eyes widened, and she did her best to look away. She tried to take a step back and found herself stuck in place. Her ears had started to ring, and an inky black shot up her hands, through the veins all the way up to her elbows. Her body seemed to be caught between fight or flight, and her powers couldn't properly manifest
The dingo stopped at the edge of the path. He was much taller than he had seemed from a distance. His eyes were so hard to avoid–they glittered like sunlight through young leaves. He stared at each member of the group in turn, quietly and deliberately. It felt like he was staring at their souls.
After either a heartbeat or a century, he blinked. The pressure was released, and some of the unnatural silence receded. The dingo seemed more ordinary now, and he turned and padded casually back to the girl. He lay down next to her and closed his eyes, seeming to be relaxed again.
Pluto gasped and hunched over, an inky black substance spattering from her hands before slowly receding. Her ears still rang a little, and she looked at the dingo's feet. "What is it?" she muttered quietly
Kaiser moved stiffly, beckoning. "I'll tell you in a moment. Let's get away from here."
Pluto nodded, black still flashing through her veins around her hands and eyes. "Lead the way."
They walked carefully along the path until the clearing was well out of sight and the sound of birds cad returned. Then Mike spoke up.
"All right, buddy, tell it to me straight. Was that Urth back there?"
Kaiser stopped again. "No. That was merely one of his servants. Urth, unlike the other gods, does not cloak his power. Simply being in his presence would have driven us mad. As it is, we got lucky. The watchdog did not consider us a threat."
"Yeah, that's great and all, but what if we stumble on another one of his servants. What if they consider us threats?"
"In a forest, what one tree sees, all the trees see," Kaiser replied. "Unless we do something to threaten this realm, we will be left in relative peace. But we must not outstay our welcome." He turned and continued down the path. "There are many lesser creatures who would gladly do mischief to slow us down."
(I gotta go, and I won't be back until tomorrow sadly. seeya!)
(k, see ya)
(morning~)
(hello) Pluto nodded. The sooner they were out of the forest, the better
They walked for quite a while without incident. The forest around them shifted in an almost dreamlike way, From pines to oaks to maples to the tall, tangled tress of the jungle. Animals began to show their faces more often, and the birds were more vocal in this part of the realm. At one point, a figure that looked almost human darted away as they drew near, but when it came back into the light it proved only to be a deer with slender legs and twitching ears.
Finally, the forest ended, and they stepped out onto a fast plain of grass and low hills. The only sound here was the wind. Far in the distance, blue mountains ringed the horizon, and a river snaked through the valley below. The path kept going straight, now only a dusty trail without a single foot or paw print on it.
"Are we almost out of the realm?" Pluto asked
Mike shaded his eyes and stared out at the plain. "Sure doesn't look like it."
Kaiser kept walking. "Looks can be deceiving. We just traveled through a hundred miles of forest in only an hour, and this terrain will be no different. Only the path makes this possible. Many years ago, when there was no path, almost no one dared to travel through Teppa. It was Lord Zhan who convinced Urth to make a safe passage through the realm, and that took a lot of doing. Urth is not the most cooperative god."
"Sounds like Samandriel before he grew up. He used to be as snobby and rich as they come. Now he's just grumpy," Pluto chuckled
"What about that girl, the one the watchdog was guarding?" Mike asked. "Was she a Metsanpeitto victim?"
"No, that was Brooklyn. She is going to marry Urth, when she is old enough."
Mike frowned. "Wait, what?"
"It may seem strange to you. But she was born different from other humans. She will not go mad in Urth's presence, and already she loves him very much. There have been others like her before, and some say that they are all reincarnations of the same spirit that fell in love with Urth at the beginning of time. Their half-god children are the guardians of the Earthly plants and animals."
"Man. Reminds me of the paeans. Lots of them would do stuff like that. Ostaros was famous for building body after body for the same girl he fell in love with millions of years ago so she would stay with him forever."
"Hm." Mike seemed unsure what to think of this information. "Well, at least he's faithful, I guess." He sighed. "The more I hang out with you guys, the more I feel like like an uneducated backwoods savage. My sphere of knowledge doesn't contain anything like this."
"You are a backwoods savage," Kaiser said casually. "But that's only to be expected. The rest of us have lived much longer and seen much more than you by a great deal."
"Thanks for rubbing it in."
Pluto chuckled. "Don't feel too bad. You're just like the majority of the multiverse's inhabitants."
"I figured. It's not like I've ever needed to know any of this before, anyway." Mike glanced up at the sky. "Oops, buzzards are circling. We'd better pick up the pace."
Sure enough, several of the large birds were wheeling overhead, watching the group carefully.
"Don't they only follow dying things?" Pluto asked. "I have barely any experience with birds, but that doesn't look right."
"For once, I can't tell you," Kaiser said, shrugging. "Mike?"
Mike glanced up at the birds again. "They circle if they think you're going to die. Way up there, they can see the land much better than we can. They might know something we don't. Maybe there's no food or water for miles, and they think we'll starve. Or maybe…." He slowed down, looking ahead. "…there might be some danger coming up that we can't see."
(I gotta go to class now, seeya later)
(k)