The will of the universe

Hollow glade

Hollow glade

Muted
Benefactor
Pronouns
They/them
@Asyriel

The air shifted around them, it was almost imperceptible and could be blamed on anything. A strange little breeze that made its way into the bar, the smallest earthquake ever known, maybe a godlike entity's sneeze. They weren't in the same place though, not the same city or the same world. Eventually they would notice. For now though, Sirenhead smiled and thought about Freya's questions before answering.

"I... don't know how they arrived, no. I think there were some dragons? but uh, a lot scarier than you. No offense, but you're on the charming side." He said, looking at their still joined hands and playing with a lock of his hair while the bartender brought them their drinks. He was pretty fast!, dang. Now he did move his hand, to grab his strawberry daiquiri and take a sip. Tasted a little different? but maybe they'd changed up the recipe. It wasn't rare for the people here to innovate often.
 
Freya wasn't really paying enough attention to notice anything out of the ordinary around them. She was a bit disappointed that he didn't know how the monsters had come to his world, but it wasn't terribly surprising either. Her eyes lit up for a moment at the mention of dragons, and chuckled at them being scarier than her. "Well, thank you. You've got some charm yourself." She replied to his compliment about being charming. "Could have been primal forms." She commented, though she didn't elaborate on it.

"Thank you." She said reflexively as the bartender brought their drinks. She took up her own drink, looked at it, and gave it a quick sniff before taking a sip. Her eyes widened a bit with surprise. "This is pretty good." She declared cheerfully before taking a bigger gulp, and shivering a little. "Seems like there's some mysteries to solve on your world." She mused
 
Primal forms?, maybe!, they definitely looked primal, if what the media had portrayed at the time was accurate at all. Which... he kind of doubted. Monsters could be terrifying, but humans weren't any better behaviour-wise. And Ori had run into some ugly ass motherfuckers in his time.

"Thank you too, heh. And I'm glad you like it!" He said, smiling at the dragoness as he took another couple of small sips from the drink as well. Then he nodded.

"There are!, we have no idea about so many different things. At least... we don't. As in, the fighters, the canon fodder. I'm pretty sure governors and military higher ups know a lot more than they let on. You know?. I remember once... hm. It's related to the day I lost my hearing. Most of it anyway. Err... how to begin..." He said, laughing nervously and playing with his hair again. It was, for him, a horror story that he didn't enjoy telling. But it was also so interesting, and it shed some light on why the monsters weren't as bad as they wanted them to think. And the humans weren't so good either.
 
Freya grinned when he was glad she liked the drink. To punctuate the sentiment, she took another larger gulp from it, and it was followed by another small shiver.

The mention of there being mysteries that he felt somebody knew the answers and weren't sharing caused her to frown. She did not like when information was kept secret, especially when the excuse was that 'is for your own good' or 'you wouldn't be able to handle it'. She had the feeling that this was likely the scenario. That or it wasn't being shared because it would make them look bad or erode their power. Either way, it only made her more interested in knowing the answers.

"At the beginning?" She teased lightly, hoping to cut the tension a little, but also to prompt him to tell the story.
 
He snorted and stuck his tongue out at her for a second, because duh!, the hard part was to settle on what exactly was the beginning!. It didn't take him too long to figure out though.

"I was running a radio station out of a tower, in a peaceful camp at the time, and we got bombed. That's how I lost my hearing. Er, most of it." He said, rushing through it because it wasn't a topic he liked to linger on. "So, I don't know how long I spent just... laying around. I was hurt and scared but I couldn't hear myself. My voice doesn't just heal, It can do a lot of damage. And nobody... human, or just human, could come close to me at all." He said, giving her a look to see if she could guess or infer where he was going with this eh, traumatic story.
 
Freya laughed as she got the reaction she'd been hoping for, then grinned. Her grin didn't last through his account of events though. The grin slowly became a slight frown. It sounded like a very unpleasant experience, and she couldn't blame him for being hesitant to share.

She tilted her head a bit as he got further into the story. "So you either healed without help, or got help from someone who wasn't human." She paused a moment. "If I were betting, my money would be on getting help from a monster." She said that last with a bit of a smile. She tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately it had come back to bite her, or more recently, others. She felt she had to at least try though if she could. A part of her also wondered if his people had bothered even trying to get to him.
 
Sirenhead finger gunned in her direction with both hands.

"Ding ding ding!! Right on the money girl!. It was monsters who helped me actually. And nobody else. Magic allowed to get though my broken mess of a voice-self." He explained, taking a couple more sips from his daiquiri. He kind of looked around then, tilting his ear. The ambience had shifted very very slightly. It sounded different?. Volume, tone.

"They taught me a lot after that, the monsters. Including that I didn't need to spend my entire life fighting." He said, bringing a hand to his ear to modulate his hearing aid in case it helped. That was weird though.
 
Freya smiled for a moment at the fact her guess had been correct. She nodded thoughtfully as he revealed that magic had been the key to getting to him. It had her thinking how she would have gone about it. She figured she probably would have used a silence spell, or it would have been her first thought to try at least. By virtue of what she was, she typically had the luxury of disregarding the small changes in the background to focus on, in this case, the person in front of her. That being said, she didn't notice the change in ambiance.

She smiled and gave a soft chuckle at the admission that the monsters had taught him that he didn't need to spend his life fighting. "Sounds like not spending lives fighting was their desire as well." she commented "Did you go back to your own, or did you stay with the monsters?" She asked, still quite interested in his story.
 
Ahh the eternal question. He hesitated, a bit uncertain on how to answer it. "I... hm, neither." He said, quickly, because he needed another moment to organize his thoughts. He stopped messing with his hearing aid because the sound, although different, seemed to have stabilised. Maybe they were failing. Using magic as a source of power made them glitchy sometimes.

"They let me stay, the monsters. Their leader Ayshel, a cervitaur... that's like, a centaur? but half deer instead of horse." They explained quickly. "She was very kind. They healed me to the best of their ability, but I still lost most of my hearing ability without outside aid. They also helped me get hearing aids and a new leg and all. The rehabilitation from that was long enough. But once I was well enough to continue my path, as in life path, I decided to skip universes. The monsters had the means to jump verses, even if they didn't use them. I kept doing that, until I ended up here I guess. With you, for example." He didn't actually know how long it had been, maybe he was older than he remembered. Just like Freya, he had had many other people listen to him, help him out, fight alongside him. But in the end, he always left them behind.
 
Freya tilted her head a bit at his initial answer to her question. Did he travel to where they'd met after the monsters rescued him? She wondered to herself. She watched as he took his hand away from the device in his ear. She was a bit curious about it, but he began speaking again.

"Sounds like they did quite a bit. I wonder if your own would have done the same." She commented. She nodded as he explained that once he was well enough, he left his home world entirely. The mention of the monsters having a way to travel to different worlds had her wondering again if some of her own people were amongst the monsters on his world. She gave a small chuckle when he mentioned he kept going from world to world. "What drove you to keep jumping?" She wondered aloud. She had her own motivations for traveling, but was always interested in hearing what drove others to do the same.
 
Siren head had spent a big part of his life telling himself that even if they wanted to, his voice was too powerful for any human to come near. So it was very likely that they had eventually stopped trying. But… they had bombed them, monsters didn’t use that kind of weaponry at all, so humanity had bombed them. If they had actually suspected that there were survivors, they wouldn’t have gone to try and help. They would have dropped another fucking missile. But he didn’t say anything to Freya. There were good humans, just not calling the shots in the war council.

“I am… not sure? Not every time has been intentional. Like when I came here to Tempus. But sometimes when I have tried to settle I just, um, get an itch in my brain eventually. To know what else is out there? And I always have ended up jumping, at least so far. I’m a shitty friend I guess, hardly ever even say goodbye… in person.” A bad friend and a coward. But he had made relative peace with it. During the day at least,
 
Freya hadn't really been thinking as much into it when she commented as she maybe should have. She was more worried about just how that had effected him, than the implications of terrible humans. Most if not all sapient species she'd had contact with had their good individuals, and their terrible ones. She always tried to keep an open mind, and an open heart.

She chuckled knowingly at his explanation for continuing to jump from world to world. "Got those wandering wings, as my mother would have said." She replied with a grin. "When the wanderlust strikes, it's time to go." She agreed. "Shitty for leaving, not so much. For not saying goodbye, maybe a little." She teased. "Friends come and go, and good friends understand, or try to at least." She added. "Have you ever thought about going back to check in on them?" She asked.
 
He sighed and nodded, telling her a little story about how that had gone. He was shit at making portals on purpose and had arrived in a timeframe where his friend hadn't even known him! But at least he could laugh about how he had made an ass out of himself. Freya was fun and interesting, he was glad they hadn't started outright screaming at each other earlier. It was later, when they finally decided to leave and say their short term goodbyes, hopefully hang out soon, that Sirenhead and the dragoness got separated.

Reality seemed to stretch and be torn appart as they stepped out of the bar. Sirenhead would no longer be by his side. The buildings looked modern, for a 2024 Earth. There were people, humans who saw Freya appear very suddenly. They screamed, a woman pointed at her and screeched for someone to call the police.

The only quiet human was a short young person with pale skin and long white hair. They had the bluest eyes, strangely glowy, and they were looking at the dragon woman with curiosity and surprise, but not fear. If one was capable of feeling it, this individual had a powerful aura.
 
Freya was sympathetic to his troubles with portals, they weren't the easiest bit of magic. She shared a couple stories of portal mishaps of her own in hopes of making him feel better about it. She was also happy they had been able to sort out earlier miscommunications rather than continue escalating. She left their meeting with a happy grin.

That grin quickly changed to confusion as she stepped out onto the streets. Everything was different, the buildings, the streets, even the air around her was different. Humans were something she'd gotten used to seeing, but being seen with fear was something that didn't happen to her often. The screams brought her back to the present reality facing her. She was so confused by it that she crouched a little out of surprise, and looked around as if something was going to attack her out of nowhere.

She noticed only one person seemed calm, and she guessed that had something to do with the aura about them. "What's going on, why is everybody screaming?" She asked, still looking around as if something was lurking nearby.
 
Their general vecinity was vacated very fast, and soon police sirens were blaring through the city streets.

The individual looked at her with... pity? or maybe thinly veiled amusement. Their eyes seemed to dance with flame, full of light and shadow. The clothes they wore though, were nothing out of the ordinary. They looked like a teenager or close to it, probably a student. They wore warm leggings, a white hoodie, sneakers and a light pink beanie.

"Why wouldn't they run? you're a big scary monster." They said, clearly repressing a smile. The sirens kept getting closer.
 
Freya frowned, and her ears laid against her head in an attempt to dampen the sounds of sirens. She looked around again before the individual spoke, and brought her attention back to them. "Big scary monster?" She asked incredulously. "I'm hardly big." She assured, and while she was tall at six and a half feet, she was a far cry from big among her own kind, and only above average for a human. "Most people wouldn't call me scary. You don't seem to think I'm scary." She insisted. "And monster is a very broad term." She added. She wouldn't call herself a monster, but she knew she fit some definitions of the word.

The sirens were growing unpleasant, but she wasn't sure what to do. She didn't know if it was safe to take to the air, and she had the feeling that it would just cause more panic if she did. "Why are you not running?" She asked them.
 
The being watched her with growing amusement, as Freya basically confirmed that she wasn't native to their world. Because otherwise, she wouldn't be here in the middle of Rhonda, and she would have also given a different explanation.

They extended a hand to the dragoness, and grinned, their eyes lighting up even brighter than before.

"Because I'm a monster too, and I want you to come with me before this gets ugly in about ten seconds." They said, their voice taking on a slightly musical tone. The local authorities had very low tolerance for anything that varied from human with two arms and two legs. The sirens were louder and louder, the red and darker blue lights could be seen from where they stood already. Voices, loud and demanding started asking questions less than half a street away from their position.
 
Freya looked around again, torn between waiting for whatever was happening to finish playing out, or going with the individual offering their hand to her. Neither option was particularly appealing at the moment. The loud voices approaching didn't sound particularly friendly, and she had no idea of the intentions of the individual before her. Being a monster too, wasn't really much to set her at ease either, she'd seen members of plenty of different groups do harm to each other.

The sirens were making her head hurt, and that wasn't helping her focus any. After another moment or two of debate she decided on what she hoped would be a choice she wouldn't come to regret. "Okay, I guess, let's go." She replied. She took the offered hand, waiting to see where they were going to go, and how they would get there.
 
Their hand was warm, soft and smaller than hers. Until it wasn't a hand, and the world around them blurred. Freya would feel like she was being pulled in several directions, by a vice-like grip. They were moving, extremely fast and possibly not even in their solid forms. How that was possible was a mystery on its own. It didn't hurt. But it was like turning into pure energy, to feel every atom of their body separatedly and mingling with the universe before coming back together. The same, but new.

When they resurfaced from that sort of teleport induced fever dream, they weren't in the city anymore. Instead, the tall skyscrapers could be seen in the distance and there were only smaller buildings around them. At most three floors high.

"Welcome to the outskirts, I'm Abee, what's your name?" Asked the stranger, letting go of Freya's hand. The sky was dark and there was nobody out, walking around or otherwise. But the lights in most houses were on, always white or blue lights, never yellow or warm. And it did look like a residential area.
 
Whatever form of travel this 'other monster' was using, Freya wasn't familiar with it. The strange sensations of being conscious, yet without physical form. Somehow there was a sensation of movement at speeds she'd never experienced as they traveled. Then it was all over as they arrived at their destination.

She couldn't help but look down at herself, gently touching her own side with her free hand to verify that she was solidly present. "That was new. Nothing like any portal or teleportation I've experienced." She commented quietly. She looked at Abee as they introduced themselves. "Thank you Abee. My name is Freya." She replied as they let go of her hand.

As the shock of the whole situation began to wear off, she looked around. "The Outskirts." She echoed gently. She looked at the smaller buildings, lit from within, then the large city in the distance. "Is that where we were? How far did we travel?" She asked curiously as she pointed toward the distant skyscrapers.
 
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