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 lines of light to appear in 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 on 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 sparked the portal. 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, 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 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 smell it gave off.

The sky looked darker too, casting a shadow over the land as if it was overcast, but not a cloud could be seen from here to Paradina. What was worse was that it looked like this was spreading by the second.

Something strange is afoot.

“What the heck is going on, Uncle?”

The last time I was here, this place looked just as teeming with life as any other in Elysium. Even more odd was the fact that Elysium had real deserts, filled with cacti and buffalo scooting around to their heart's content. This just felt dead and lifeless, even when compared to that.

“Impossible!” Uncle 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 of it, as if the spirit energy was simply being blocked from reaching it.

Now that I was looking around the sky, more land around other parts of Elysium seemed to be experiencing a similar fate.

“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, red eyes revealing within them. Sludge covered whatever the creature's bodies were, making it impossible to tell the their form.

A black and red aura began orbiting around it. A horrible smell and fog released into the air as it broke off from the aura.

-WARNING! THREAT SIGHTED!-

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

-Unidentified Creature tagged; Foe-

-Uncle tagged; Friendly- He outlined in green.

- Advisory: Seek protection immediately-

I ran behind Uncle to hide. Based on what my HELP menu was telling me, these IFF tags activated when bad things were nearby.

These weren't animals, they were evil monsters. More appeared next to the first collection, a soft growl rumbled from their hidden mouths as they prepared to attack.

Uncle lifted up his hand, spawning a dagger-like blade of pure blue light in his palm called a stinger. He swiped it at the creatures who dared to pounce. The radiant energy that stretched from the blade frightened the little monster, causing them to scatter from their clumps of sludge and hide in the shadows of the land where we couldn't see them.

Just before one of the last ones escaped to the shadows, I noticed it happened to look a little like a squirrel, but if it were covered in hot barbeque coals.

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

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

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

-☆-

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