Inverted World

Among the flowers of the garden were big stone circles that magically spun midair. Finely chiseled swirls gave them texture as they idly awaited activation.

Uncle's hand lit up bright blue as he commanded thin runes of light to appear across the swirls. They quickly spread across the stone surface.

A small bubble of energy formed at the open part of the circle, crackling like white lava, but rippling like water. A magical portal was made. The energy radiating off of it was so calming, it felt like a nice cool mist on a hot day.

"Uncle, this is a Nana gate, right?" I asked.

"Nalnara gate," he corrected me. "We'll be using it to get to Elysium."

Uncle held out his free palm and a little microchip appeared in it. Hexagonal lights blipped on and off at the center of the tiny device.

"This is a Manona crest," he said, knowing I was definitely going to mess up that word too. "Without one of these, you can't use a portal."

I was going to mistakenly call it a Banana crest, so he was justified in explaining that.

Despite me potentially messing up the name, I knew about the Manona crest already. To put it simply, it was like a flint and steel that lit the portal up. I had one built into me, Uncle did too. All of dad's creations should have had one, making it easy for us to use these portals if need be.

It amazed me that such a tiny little thing was the ticket to such wondrous places. I was getting excited to see where it would be taking us today.

Both of us stepped through the Nalnara gate together. An ethereal water coated over our bodies as we pressed forward through the portal.

Once I was sure we were both through, I shook off any moisture that covered me and looked around, my eyes being met with a foresty sight. Tall pine trees, sweet smelling and much higher than I could ever hope to reach, towered well above us.

The moist blur across my eyes let up even more and allowed me to see large mounds of rock and soil rise high up in the distance, creating a valley teeming with wonderful branching flora.

Beyond the mountains dressed with evergreen trees was more land that curved well into the sky. The whole inner world of Elysium wrapped around the air like an encircling dome of water and earth.

At the center of the sky, the very core of our planet, a moon-like object rotated mid air. It had oceans and lush green lands on both its hemispheres, but at the equator was a belt of light that acted as a sun for this magical place. That moon was known as Paradina.

“Wow…” I cooed out in awe. “Uncle, Uncle!” I tugged on his arm. “Look! That’s where we live.” I pointed to paradina.

To be specific, we lived at the northern part of the moon. On really clear days, you could look out and see the surrounding land of Elysium beyond the sky, but things were usually too bright or dark for that depending on the time of day.

“That’s right,” he nodded.

I tried to zoom in my sight as far as I could to see if I could spot The Hive, but my telescopic vision was a bit too weak for that.

Nature here in Elysium was always so exotic in the most pretty way. My mind remembered the land looking like some sort of fantasy painting, like the kinds I’d seen in story books or games. The only thing missing from this picture was a pot of tea and a table to savor the view.

Uncle and I began walking across the trail. Along the way we met a lot of silly animals. Squirrels with glowing tails, birds with strangely angled beaks and alien sounding calls, and I swore I saw a little monkey wave at me!

“Uncle, do you think Samael is from around here?” I asked.

“Ss…” Samael hissed negatively.

It’s funny, because one day when I came back from playing in the flower field, he was just in my hair, and that was that. We've been friends ever since. Sammy was super tiny back then. Gosh, that was three years ago… A little before daddy left.

Now I’m sad, thinking about that…

“I can’t say I know where Samael is from,” Uncle responded. “But I hope I don’t catch you bringing any other animals back home with us.” He had that serious look like he knew what I was thinking.

I mean, I wasn’t going to bring them back with me. It wouldn’t be my fault though if they just happened to follow me around or jump into my arms like I was a fairytale princess…

~☆☆☆~

As we both marched along the vaguely defined path, a white structure came into view. It was long with a big spire at the top and had a bunch of very colourful lights dancing across any dark gray accents of detail.

I’d never seen a church before, but this cartography building kinda’ made me think of one.

Between us and the structure was a metal bridge over a ravine. We crossed it and entered the large white building.

The inside felt even more church like, but with large holographic screens all around, each expressing an overwhelming amount of numbers. Some of the screens were green, others were blue.

Uncle went over to the biggest screen and began to interface with it until a holographic globe of Elysium appeared above us.

“So that’s where we're going,” Uncle nodded as he pointed to a destination. “The person we are looking for is in sector 83.” a little arrow appeared over that particular area on the inside out globe.

“Do we really have to walk all that way?” I asked, noticing it was a few kilometers away.

Uncle had a good laugh from that, then tapped on the screen a few times until a Nalnara gate opened up at the end of the chamber.

“We won’t be walking. Although, there’s something preventing us from teleporting into the center of that sector, so don’t think your feet are going to be completely spared.”

I was having a fun time hiking around here, so I didn’t mind going a little more. Especially if whoever we were going to see could save my tree, it was all the more worth it.

~☆☆☆~

We exited the second portal and once more were soaked in that weird water stuff. I rubbed it away from my eyes quickly, but couldn’t believe it when I saw desert looking surroundings.

For about a kilometer in every direction it seemed like all of nature had just dried up and disappeared. The sands were so loose and dark, almost like ash. A clump of it in hand slipped right through my fingers. Once the top layer was breached, a black and sludgy looking substance was underneath. It was so gross that I didn’t even want to look at it, much less smell that foul sulfur scent it gave off.

The sky was getting darker too. Thunderous clouds were slowly rolling in and cast an ominous shadow over us. They almost appeared to be twisting like a funnel cloud.

Something strange is afoot.

It remind me of when daddy and I were last here. Things were dark and the land was flooded by that evil water. This couldn't mean that...

“Uncle...?”

I turned to see him vissibly frustrated by the sight.

“Impossible...” he immediately spawned his holographic tablet, sifting through dozens of pages of data. “This sudden degradation of the biome should have been reported to me. Why wasn’t it?”

He turned his gaze up to a tall towering structure a few kilometers away. From memory, that tower was supposed to have rainbow lights and a big waterfall coming out of it. I’m pretty sure there was a lake here too, which might have been the big crater not far ahead of us.

“That tower shouldn’t be offline…” Uncle commented, brushing his chin.

“What does it do?” I asked.

He explained that those towers were responsible for infusing water with mana, which would saturate the land with life energy and encourage wildlife to grow. Elysium would otherwise have a hard time being as lush as it was, since this wasn’t a naturally made environment.

But he also made note that even without those towers, there would still be some mana left in the air. This whole place was completely dry, as if the spirit energy was simply being blocked from reaching it.

“It’s like nature is dying,” I commented.

“Or being suffocated,” Uncle said. “Let’s get moving. I think when we meet our target, she’ll have some light to shed on this.”

There was a glowing cave not far from us. Surrounding its maw was a small oasis of shriveling plants. Whoever we were looking for lived inside that cave.

Before we could enter, mounds of ash soil began to rise up around us, red eyes revealing within them. Tar covered creature's clawed their way from the tar like muck and gurgled.

-WARNING! THREAT SIGHTED!-

-Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) tags activated- The strange creatures outlined in red in my FOV.

-Unidentified Creature tagged; Foe-

-Uncle tagged; Friendly- He outlined in green.

- Advisory: Seek protection immediately-

Why do they look like...?

I ran behind Uncle to hide. They looked like those demons daddy and I saw before. The ones that almost took over Elysium.

More appeared next to the first batch. Their gurgling turned into soft growls and screeches. Sharp teeth showed in their devious smiles.

One reeled back to pounce.

*Scree!*

Uncle lifted up his hand and spawned a dagger-like blade of blue hardlight known as a stinger.

Then he threw me over his back and swiped quickly at the creatures coming at us!

His swipe cut the demon thing in half. It wasn't dead though, because it's two halves quickly reconnected back when they hit the ground.

It was scared though. So were the others like it. Uncle took that moment to sprint for the cave and get some distance.

“Scary…” I commented, burying my head in Uncle’s pant leg.

“Always stay close to me,” he said. “Elysium can be as scary as it is beautiful.”

I hardly considered that part of Elysium, but he would have known better than me…

-☆-

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