Valarie looked up at Yiskah and grabbed her and with her left hand. It was the only time Lyle had seen the two women hold hands. “What will happen?” Asked Valarie.
“I do not know.” Said Yiskah, “But as long as we live there is still hope. Isn’t that what you like to say? And maybe the destroyed world will be better then this awful world that we live in now.” Valarie nodded and her arm glowed brighter and brighter. Instead of seeming to be some dark curse power it shown in maybe hope.
Lyle smiled a little. Maybe this ending wasn’t so bad after all. It was a bit strange but the two woman finally found common ground. Sure it was with him as the enemy which probably qualified this as a bad ending but like they said maybe a bad ending is the right one.
Then his computer sparked. He could still see the scene of the two woman with the floor of the observatory collapsing around them and the lunar eclipse behind them but his computer was making strange sounds. Sounds which were really bad for a computer to make.
Lyle was horrified. Why did it have to happen now of all times. Then the room shook. Lyle could only stand in horror, an earthquake now? Things on his shelf was falling over and the quake was getting worse and worse.
The sparks coming out of the computer were growing too. Lyle scrambled backward toward the door. However the distance between him and the woman didn’t seem to be getting any smaller. In fact they seamed to be getting larger and larger. With the next quake movement the figures of Yiskah and Valarie fell from the shelf.
They began to fall toward the floor but the electricity from the computer arced out and the figures were caught motionless in the air. Lyle had failed backward and could only gape as the images on the screen overlayed what was happening in reality. The figures seemed to merge with the images and then they began to grow larger.
I could see the destruction of the world around me. The observatory was cracked and broken in many places. Through some of the holes you could see the town but in other holes there was just pure blackness. As the sky began to crack around the lunar eclipse I could see His form. It was flickering like static, a strange and surreal sight.
Then the world around him broke and it was light a hole but there was something on the other side. A small room. There was another man in it, he was backing way toward the door. He looked similar to Him but more like a real person.
I looked at Valarie and pulled her onward. We walked through the broke rubble of the observatory. The land was still shaking and we walked toward the hole. I reached out my hand and there felt like there was a solid wall blocking me. One of my hands was pulling Valarie along but the other was holding Shīringuken so I raised it and slashed at the air.
It came apart in a rush an I could feel everything around me contorting. Everything around us seemed to ripe apart like reality was only barely holding together. We lifted from the ground because there was no longer any ground to hold us down. There was darkness all around, at one of the edges I could see our world and at the other I could see the small room.
Then I heard something. Not really a voice but more like thoughts passing through the air.
‘The doors have been unsealed. All that is thought lost will be found once more. Maiden of Order, Maiden of Chaos, your guidance is all that is required. Long has the world waited.’
I looked at Valarie and I could see that she was heading the thoughts too.
“Who are you?”
’Those who have waited. Maidens, seek the world that is truly desired. The perfect world.’
I could see the light burning on Valarie’s left arm and then I felt pain in my right hand. The tools were vibrating, no it was something else. They were changing. However I didn’t have time to pay attention to that. The darkness was contracting and the other world was getting closer.
The room seemed to pulled us in and for a moment in the room I felt like I was a small child floating in the air but then everything began to contract into contract to the right size. There was a shiver through my skin and it felt like my entire body was strange and foreign to me.
When in an instant gravity returned and I landed on the floor of the room. With a whoosh the hole closed behind us. Me and Valarie were standing in the strange room. In front of us was the man. There was similarities in his looks and I knew that he was the real me. The one manipulating me.
I released Valarie’s hand and took a few steps forward before raising my sword and saying, “Now it is time to regret what you have done.” I was about to kill him when Valarie grabbed my arm. I looked back at her.
She had an expression of sadness but there was something else. It was pity, but not toward me. She said, “Look at him.”
I looked at the man and for the first time I saw him. Not at the man who had ruined my life but as this ill-kempt man in a small room. He was cowering in the corner whimpering, “No, don’t kill me.”
I looked around the room seeing it with clear eyes. It was a small apartment room, not unlike the place I had lived in. The place was scattered and disorganized but I saw the games on the shelves and the figures of different characters. I looked back at the man and the grinding gears of my thoughts began to fit pieces together.
“You didn’t know.” My voice was flat. All my emotions were beginning to drain from me. All that hate and suffering might never fully go way but the infection was gone. Whatever he had been doing to me, to him it hadn’t been real.
I had a strange surreal feeling. Hanging on the wall near my man was a poster. It was a picture of me and Valarie. The likenesses were too similar to be anything else. I looked at Valarie and asked her, to see if she hand any more idea then I did. “This picture? Is it us? How?”
She shook her head, “I don’t know.”
The poster read, ‘The Forbidden Domain’.
I looked at the man who was still cowering. “Come on Valarie, there is nothing in this room that holds value for us anymore.” She nodded and I opened the door. We left the man behind, the one whose name we truly didn’t know and never had.
The world we entered seemed very similar to the one that we came from, at least on the surface. It was still night in this world but the lights outside showed us that we were in a city instead of the town that we were in before. I wondered what strange sights would welcome us in this new city.
Project Mayfly was supposed to be a joke organization. Nobody knew this more than Miss Marilyn Linson. She was the project director of Project Mayfly. Officially the governmental project existed to debunk supernatural phenomenon. Unofficially it served the purpose of allowing the government to piss away its money to dispose of troublesome employees that were too effective just to fire. The civil servents were sent to Project Mayfly with a low wage and no opportunity to ever advance and were pressured into quitting the job.
Miss Linson was the current exception. After all, Project Mayfly needed somebody to man the main desk and to subtly pass out the retirement slips. It was her job to make sure that she was the only employee at Project Mayfly.
And Miss Linson was excellent at her job, although for very different reasons then her governmental dictators desired. However being excellent at her implied job meant that when she was called on to do the ‘official’ job of Project Mayfly she had to do it alone.
She had used to be a police detective however when her report said that the only possible explanation to the case was that her suspect used magic to kill the victim. The chief detective politely told her that she was insane that she could either quit or get transferred to Project Mayfly to prove her case.
She accepted the transfer and when she came in for her first day at the job she had been greeted my a tall friendly man. That had been quite in contract with Miss Linson who was a short stout woman. She was too fit to be considered fat but her body type was not what you expected when you heard ‘Former Detective’.
The tall man had shaken her hand, thanked her for becoming the new director of Project Mayfly and then handed her his two weeks notice, which had been backdated two weeks. The man then grabbed his hat and walked through the door and Miss Linson had never seen him again.
Since then she had been the director of the Project, for four year now. She had seen many employees come and go. Some determined to continue their career, some only staying there until they could get a different job. However they all always left, not that she particularly minded.
“Now would you repeat again what happened to you, Mr Clarke? This time using words that I can understand.” Asked Miss Linson.
Lyle Clarke took a deep breath, “As I was trying to say. I was playing a video game. During the game there was an earthquake and during that time a couple of the characters from the video game appeared in my room. Yiskah even threatened me with a sword.”
“And this Miss Yiskah is who?” Asked Miss Linson in a calm voice.
“She was a character in the game but not she is real. There was some sort of electrical fire and somehow she and Valarie come into my room through the screen of my computer.”
“Is that so?” Asked Miss Linson. She had been called a few hours ago by the local police department. They had been receiving complaints from this man who was demanding that supernatural events had happened to him. Rather than having to deal with him they had passed him off to Project Mayfly. Government buck passing at its finest.
So Miss Linson was here at the home of Lyle Clarke in the attempt to find an explanation that would convince him that nothing supernatural had happened. There had certain been an earthquake last night when the Mr. Clarke claimed the event to have happened. It was fairly minor and localized.
The room itself still showed signs of the electrical fire. Miss Linson looked around the room trying to find signs on anything strange. She knelt down near the floor and examined the markings. The room had unfortunately been disturbed too much for her to be able to learn anything about what happened her too much.
From what she could tell Lyle had was an avid video gamer as was evidenced by the game and paraphernalia what was on the shelves. The disturbance from the earthquake was still noticeable though. Things were knocked over and everything was badly organized. Although she did not know how much of that was because of Lyle’s lifestyle.
“So, these two women that broke into your apartment last night. What did they look like?”
“As I said..” Lyle was exaggerated and that much Miss Linson could tell from his voice. However Miss Linson didn’t want to give him any reason to think that his case might be special or real. That always just ended in disappointment.