Strange World
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Foreword:
Story is not completed and needs to be edited and polished. Slow chapter updates because I make them like 2k words plus. Chapter 8 OUT! Chapter 9 in like 2 months.
Chapter 1: Strange World
Dark, crimson leaves fell onto the ground as the two of them walked into downtown Trenton. A slight chill hit Sophia back. Why are you here!? She thought glancing back at her grandmother Juliana, who had started following her for no apparent reason. She had just gotten out of school and wanted to go hang out with her friends.
“How are you doing in school Sophia?” Juliana asked. Sophia, with her blonde hair and blue eyes, wanted to ignore the question so she sped up and started to walk fast enough so that she would get ahead of Juliana.
Don’t talk to me! Sophia urged in her mind.
Sophia smashed her foot into a traffic cone, and it sent her strait into the manhole behind it. All Juliana heard was a splash. Juliana screamed and rushed over to where the cover was, but the ground melded over the hole like it was never there. Juliana looked around, searching for some sort of Dent in the ground but there was still nothing. Sophia had disappeared.
Juliana ran over to another open Manhole to see if she had continued down the other way, but that one Also melded over. What the? The ground started rumbling. Juliana raced around looking for a cause for this earth-splitting quake, but nothing. A crack ten feet away from her formed. A hand appeared from the ground, `dark red with boils rolling over its skin, it arose from the ground towering above Juliana. She stepped back as its metallic armor shimmered in the mid-day heat. Juliana was terrified. It looked down at her with hellfire eyes. Juliana started to run but it grabbed her swiftly. She wriggled to get free, but it was too strong, but Juliana had something the ‘thing’ didn’t have. Magic.
“Daveron Hulwicimorpho!” A set of Ancient Runes appeared on her palm each resembling some sort of magical enchantment. The Runes glowed and a flash of light came from her palm, blasting the radiance of the sun into the beasts’ eyes. It ungripped Juliana and stumbled backward. It opened its eyes just a few seconds later to see a massive dragon made of ice rippling towards it. The beast turned to run but its legs were frozen solid.
“HULROS.” She said as more Runes covered her arms and hands. Hundreds of massive swords appeared from the sky in a blinding light and the beast was obliterated in an instant.
“Demons…” Juliana looked around to see where the demon came from. The crack was closing, but Juliana managed to jump in, in time. Another void, she thought to herself as she heard the mechanical beast off in the distance. She had more power than an average human in this world. She moved her hands in a specific motion and then another set of runes, different from the last appeared, a portal opened, and she pushed herself into it.
She landed on the grass with a thump, glancing around to look for Sophia, or her house. In the distance, a large castle like structure loomed. For now, she would head there to start her search for Sophia.
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Sophia fell, and fell, she couldn’t see the bottom and couldn’t see the top. She thinks her eyes are open, but she doesn’t feel anything. She also can’t hear nor breathe; she can move but she can’t feel herself self-moving it’s like she’s something and nothing. There is a light, a very small one, she can’t see where it leads, or how big it is. She hears something, her senses are coming back. She feels her hands and feet but not everything yet.
Grandma? Hello? She thought in her mind as she drifted through the void.
Sophia saw something above her, a large, mechanical beast in the darkness, gears lining its robotic body. Her heart formed inside of her. It started to move, she could hear the robot creaking and moaning as it moved its arm. The robot ignited the infinitely dark space with its radiant eye. She investigates them and thinks she sees something when a gush of wind spins her around and she sees the small light, now large, a hole into another world She didn’t know what was happening, of course, her mind could not understand these vast thoughts in the paltry time she had been in that space if she had spent any time there. Her body flipped around before the hole started to suck her in. She fell into the hole with seeing the robot staring down at her. The hole closed. She was now somewhere no human at least, had gone before.
She looked around at the vast scenery, she was amazed, it was like a scene out of Willy Wonka. Trees grew to abnormal heights, the grass smelled like roses, the rat was as big as a horse… Wait what!? Sophia stood up and started to run, she ran as fast as she could down that hill because the rat was close behind her. She dodged rock after rock not trying to trip when she tripped. Over a root. It was hidden next to a rock where she couldn’t see it. She went flying and then landed back on the ground, with a thump. She was now rolling down the hill, fast, very, very fast. Her body smashed into everything imaginable, rocks, stumps, other smaller rat things. Until she hit a rock that functioned as a ramp. She went sprawling in the air trying to stick a landing when she suddenly stopped falling.
HELP! She screamed in her head, and so she got some.
“All you alright up there?” A voice said down on the ground. Sophia looked down and saw an old man wearing a suit and carrying a suitcase. Sophia didn’t know what to say, what was going on? Where was she?
“I’m letting you down!” The bubble slowly descended until it popped when it reached the grass. She looked at the man in confusion.
“Uh… Wha… Eh…” She still didn’t know what to say, after all everything was unimaginably new to her. The man put his hand out for Sophia, and she reluctantly took it. She could now see the man much closer; he had a cool black suit on and a pair of prescription glasses, which sat atop his sharp nose. His black fedora fit snug onto his head, bolstering his already professional look. His dark brown hair seemed greasy and unkempt, which contrasted with his well-dressed, and maybe we’ll mannered self.
“Now, now, I’m no butler. I still have at least a hundred years as a school janitor.” The man chuckled and continued.
“I can see that your confused, what’s your name?” finally, a question for her to answer.
“I’m Sophia...” She said while looking at him. The young, but strangely mature man’s eyes lit up. His motive was unclear to Sophia, but she trusted him more due to his civil behavior.
The man looked at her more closely and asked. “Does your grandmother happen to be, Juliana perhaps?” The man said it with questioning eyes.
Grandma!? Who- She stopped thinking when the man spoke once more.
“So, it seems… Come with me, I will show you where your grandmother is.” The man turned around and started walking.
“Wait, aren’t you going to tell me your…. name?” Sophia Asked.
The man looks back at her and says one thing. “Marco.”
Sophia followed the man up and down. Sophia realized that this part of the land was covered in strange little hills, with a flower, on top of most. Some had three or four petals while some had eight or nine. It was strange, but Sophia didn’t mind it, the problem was this old man. She had been walking for only around five minutes, but he hasn’t said anything. She knows he can read her mind, but he won’t say anything.
A stream trickled in front of them, curving left and right, in every direction the man stared into the water, looking at the reflection of his face. “Hmm, I need a shave.” And he continued walking. Sophia walked over the stream, suddenly falling over, and blacking out. She felt a slight pain in her foot before she fell unconscious, but nothing else.
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A rock whizzed by Ildy’s head as he ran. It didn’t matter where he went, Mya, the School bully, would find him. Last time he was in the janitor’s closet when the vent opened above him, and Mya dropped a bucket of ice on him. It had been like this for years, or at least since he was five. Ildy’s mother was named Ameera, she was the principal of the school. Even though telling her many times about the bullying, she deliberately ignored him, it also was like this since he was a child. His mother never cared for him, well at least since his father died. She must have blamed it on him, though Ildy doesn’t remember how he died, and his mother won’t tell him.
Ildy was close to the exit of the school when Mya grabbed his shirt from his back. “Taste this, Ildy!” Mya yelled. Though about to be splashed with leeches or slugs, Ildy couldn’t shake the feeling something bad was going to happen. He looked up above him, to see no Slug, nor Leech, but a fireball floating right above him, but it seemed to not be moving. Ildy fell to the floor and backed away quickly. At the door that leads outside is a woman carrying a staff, made of a strange red oak. Her cloak symbolizes the house of Aether, embroidered as a red bird carrying a sword, meaning the gift of power. Only a few were in the house of Aether. Her staff was aimed towards the fireball.
“Uh-g, Who the…” The fireball disappeared into nothing, and Mya stumbled backward onto the floor. “N-no what… I…” Mya went silent as the woman approached her.
“Things have taken a turn for the worse since I’ve been here.” The woman spoke, in a slightly angered voice, but Ildy feels as if he had met her before.
“Mya, how DARE you!” A burst of wind came from the staff, blowing dust around the entrance hall. The woman grabbed Mya by her coat and tore it off. “You. Don’t. Deserve. THIS!” The coat, with a silver dove sitting on a branch, was burned to ashes.
Mya looked at the woman in fear. She was breathing hard. The woman pulled another coat out of her pocket, it had a light blue crab on the seashore embroidered onto it. She threw it onto Mya. “Your now in the seashore dorm.” Mya sat there and started crying.
Footsteps clacked into the hall. “Ah, Juliana… You’ve come. And now you’re demoting my students. You realize you don’t have the-!” The woman came into the hall but soon after talking, Juliana silenced her by throwing a knife by her face, cutting her hair.
“Silence. I do not need your dirty tricks Ameera. Someone has summoned demons into the human realm. I need help from him.” Him? Ildy was confused, he was also estranged to see Mya crying. Now that Mya is in the Seashore dorm… Wait, she’ll be with him!?
Juliana walked past Ameera brushing against her shoulder. After Juliana passed, Ameera scowled and then walked over to Mya. “Don’t cry Mya, I’ll get this solved right away.” Ameera had a suspicious grin.
“Uh, yeah, I don’t want Mya in my dorm…” Ildy said. Juliana looked over at him. With a disappointing sigh. “Ildy, leave.” Ildy scooched outside of the hall and then ran off to his dorm room.
Ildy climbed up the stairs into his dorm room quickly. Closing the door behind him. His room was in one of the outward towers that stuck out of the strangely shaped castle. His room was filled with gadgets that he, and him alone, had made. His room was away from most of the other dorms in the area. He barely knew his classmates, but he didn’t mind it, no one would annoy him… Accept Mya.
Ildy sat down on his bed fidgeting with a cube with randomly colored sides. He was estranged from the device and tried moving it around, the sides moved. He had tried to match the colors before, but he could only get one side. What was this peculiar object? Ildy wondered as he fidgeted with it more.
A knock came on his door. He yelled “Who is it!?” and a voice replied, “Lunch is ready.”
Ildy thought it must have been staff. But why did they knock? They could have just yelled through the halls. Well, it didn’t matter right now, it was lasagna today, so he better get moving.
In the lunchroom, Ildy grabbed his food and walked to the outdoor patio. He walked over to the farthest seating area and sat down, chomping down on his lasagna like he was starving. Other kids came outside but sat closer to the door. Ildy looked off into the fields nearby and sees a figure with someone on his back. The man was coming over a hill… too fast. His speed was phenomenal, he raced past the single tree that lined the plains, but then suddenly disappeared. Ildy looked around but couldn’t see him anywhere. Where could he have gone?
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Ameera sat across from Juliana and Mya with a ticked-off look on her face. She stared at Juliana, and Juliana just sat calmly studying the room.
“I know why you’re here… but I didn’t expect you to show up out of the blue…” Ameera said, glaring.
“Well, now I’m here, and, well…” Juliana sighed.
“What is it?” Ameera said sharply.
“I want a battle for ownership.” Juliana looked at Ameera with intent.
“A battle for ownership huh… So, you don’t like how I’m doing things here? Fine. I’ll fight you.”
“Oh, and Mya.” Mya looks over at Juliana, “Were going to need to do some talking with your parents about that boy Ildy.” Mya gulped.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Juliana turned around and opened the door with her wand. “Come in.” In the doorway was an old man with a girl on his back.
“I have returned master. Sophia is safe.” Ameera looked concerned and was confused. The old man set the girl down and mouthed some strange words, and the girl woke up.
