Chapter 2
“What are the C3,” asked Leo as he stepped towards Maddie. She shakily reached into her bag, pulling out the first two volumes of Magic Blood.
“They’re the three main characters of this manga,” she explained. “It’s, it’s a fictional series about three teenagers in a magical land called Adulia… this can’t be real. You guys have to be cosplayers!”
“What’s cosplay,” asked Kozui with a frown as he grabbed the first volume, staring at it. Then he grinned, holding it up in the air as he flipped through the pages. “Hey check it out, these pages have us all over them! We must be famous in this place!”
“Did you draw these,” asked Sialei as she stared at them, taking the second volume and flipping through it. “And what’s this language? It certainly isn’t Shantari.”
“What’s Shantari,” Maddie asked, having recovered from the earlier shock. “Who are you people really? How did you do that glowy light thing?”
“It was a spell,” said Sialei simply as she kept reading. “I gave you the ability to understand Shantari, because clearly you needed it. Besides, how are we supposed to find the Tower without getting a little help from the locals?”
“Okay, you guys are clearly either LARPing or insane,” Maddie said as she swiped her volumes back and put them back in her bag. “Listen, I’d like to help you and all, but I have animals I need to tend to back home.” She started to get on her bike, but Leo grabbed her shoulder.
“Hold on,” said Leo, “we need someone’s help here. We have no idea where we are!”
“Well you’re in Marston and this is Olive St,” she said before starting to pedal off. “Now I’m gonna go home!” With that, she sped off. Once she reached the crosswalk, she sped across the street to get home. “Well, good riddance to those nutcases.”
“Please,” said Sialei as she flew next to her, green and gold wing beating hard behind Maddie, “we need assistance!”
“HOLY FUCKING SHIT!” Maddie was so startled that she went straight into a fire hydrant and flew right over her handlebars. Sialei gasped in surprise, stopping where she was and gently landing on the ground next to Maddie, who was groaning and holding her head as blood trickled down.
“Are you alright,” she asked, holding out her hands to Maddie’s head.
“I feel like I was just hit by a truck,” she groaned out as she looked up at Sialei. “How did you do that?” She shook her head. “Never mind, I already know. You’re part fairy, right?” Sialei nodded, muttering as golden light came from her hands.
“Yes,” she answered as the blood on Maddie’s head started to trickle upwards, “but from what I know from what Mere told us, our heritage won’t kill us here.” She lowered her hands as Maddie touched her forehead.
“Where’d the blood go,” she asked in amazement.
“I’m an expert in healing spells,” Sialei said with a bright smile as she helped Maddie up. “I prefer not to fight hands on so I just support everyone else. That spell I used puts blood back in your body and closes up the wound, but it only works on fresh injuries. And I mean really fresh.” Leo and Kozui came running up behind her.
“Thanks but… why would you do that,” Maddie asked suspiciously as she went to grab her bike. Thankfully it hadn’t taken any damage that she could see, so she turned her attention back to the group. “I’m sorry, but, it’s not normal, or really a thing at all in any universe for the characters from your favorite manga series to just… pop up out of thin air and ask for help. And why my help?”
“We just need someone who knows the area,” said Leo as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Otherwise we would not be asking for any sort of help at all.”
“I apologize,” said Sialei with an embarrassed expression. “Leo is… very straight forward. After Damien attacked and we were sent here, we were told by Mere that we had to find the Principles of Life. She rattled them off but before she could tell us where to find them the whole world went dark and in a flash of light, we were here.”
“Hold on,” said Maddie as she held out a hand. “This is a little bit much for me to thinking about right here and now, okay? Can we just, go to my house and talk about things? I’d rather do that than just do it out here, in the open. Plus then I can make sure I’m not seeing things. Okay?” They looked at each other before nodding. “Alright, good. If you guys can keep up, then follow me, otherwise you’ll just have to catch up.” She started to get on her bike, but then stopped. “But uh… no transformations or anything. If you’re going to do that at least stay invisible or do something so people won’t notice. Magic isn’t exactly a thing around here.” With that, she got back on her bike and sped off. She was a little scared, but she looked back behind her to see how they were keeping up with her. She was surprised to see that they were just jogging behind her.
“Why are you riding that thing,” asked Kozui.
“It’s called a bike and it makes me go faster than if I walked,” she explained with a roll of her eyes before looking forward again. “Of course you guys can probably go way faster than me.”
“Easily,” said Leo. “I could probably jump over your head right at this moment if I wanted to.”
“Show off,” said Kozui with a grin and a playful shove. “But yeah, you’re super slow.”
“Well I’m fully human,” she argued. “I don’t have magic and creature’s blood running through my veins!” She sighed. “This is gonna be a long day… or life in general.”
Soon they came upon Maddie’s house. She stopped in front of the garage and lifted up the door, putting her bike in. She waited for everyone to get in the garage before closing the door and letting them in the house. The door from the garage lead right into the kitchen/dinning room. Maddie closed the door behind them and then pointed at chairs at the table.
“Okay you,” she pointed at Sialei then a chair that faced towards the kitchen counter, “sit there. You,” she pointed at Kozui, “sit there,” she pointed at a chair between the table and the wall, “and you,” she pointed at Leo, “sit in that chair.” The last chair was the chair facing Kozui.
“Why should we do anything you tell us to,” Leo asked with a glare. Before Maddie could respond Kozui threw and arm around Leo.
“Come on,” he said with a grin and he poked Leo’s cheek, “this isn’t our house! Not even our world! We should at least sit where she tells us too.”
“Kozui’s right,” said Sialei as she went to her seat. “We’re a guest here.”
“Thanks,” said Maddie with a smile as she went into the kitchen. Leo grumbled but sat down, Kozui following him. Maddie pulled a hair tie out of her pocket and put her hair up, leaving her bangs down and going to a cabinet, grabbing a white and black stripped apron and putting it on. “Alright, so, tell me what exactly happened right before you guys found yourselves here.” She went over to the oven and turned it on.
“What are you doing,” asked Kozui with a tilt of his head and he leaned back in the chair.
“Doing something with my hands helps me process new info that’s pretty hard to believe,” she replied. “I lost my fidget cube last week so I’m gonna resort to my old habit. Baking. Now,” she pulled out a bag of flour from a cabinet, “what happened? I know all about your guild and your backgrounds and all of that, but how did you manage to get to here? I mean, assuming the multiverse theory is actually somehow correct and you guys exist in another universe from our, you’d have to have some sort of reality bridge or something in order to get from one place to another. So how did that happen?”
“We don’t know,” said Sialei as she watched Maddie move around the kitchen, grabbing items. “We were just coming back from a job when the sky started to go black. And I don’t mean that it started to fade like at sunset. It… It looked like someone was sucking the sky, the moon, the stars right out of the heavens.”
“It was bizarre,” said Kozui. “Really freaky.” He grabbed a napkin from a napkin holder on the table, examining it before folding it. “It was like someone was stealing the sky itself.”
“Turns out they were,” Sialei added. “Damien had gathered four powerful relics that allowed him to steal the very universe itself. We don’t know how, but we were spared, kept in this… well it was like a bubble of glowing light and it felt warm. Like a mother’s hug.”
“The only ones of us spared were us three and Mere,” said Leo, “but we have no idea how she was spared at all. But as she spoke the Book of Flight appeared in front of her, and she read a prophecy from it.”
“Well what was the prophecy,” Maddie asked as she cracked eggs into a mixing bowl. Sialei closed her eyes, clearing her throat.
“When ground and sky are gone
When there is no day or night
Seek the tower that brings a song
And gather that which brings all light.
Where truth turns to lie and light to dark
To end this eternal cycle of strife
Journey to find the beginning of the ark
And return the taken Principles of Life.”
Maddie raised an eyebrow at that as she poured some honey into the bowl and turned on the mixer.
“That is a weird prophecy,” she said as she tasted the batter before adding a little more honey and a few drops of lemon.
“It is,” said Sialei as she dug into her bag. “The Book of Flight came with us, but we have no idea just why it did.” She placed it on the table and opened it up, looking at the last few pages with certain interest. “Previously, these last several pages have been empty, but now they’re filling up! I think someone cast a spell on it so we couldn’t see the last few pages until they were actually relevant to our lives, but I wonder why.”
“Because the ancients were assholes,” said Leo. “That’s usually the reason for anything that makes our lives hard. Bitter old dead people who decided we weren’t worth having around.”
“That sucks,” said Maddie, “and it’s going to continue sucking because you guys can’t use your powers here!”
“OH YOU HAVE TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!”
“Magic doesn’t exist here,” explained Maddie as if Leo hadn’t just screamed that out. “You’d probably cause panic. Heck, you guys caused me to panic a bit too. Not to mention magical creatures like fairies, sea serpents, and Nemean Lions don’t exist in this world. They’re just stories. Secret government labs might wanna take you and experiment on you! I don’t know if those things are real or not, but I’m not taking the chance. I’ve heard way too many true stories on unethical practices for science. Although usually it’s fake science but still!” She went and got a cake pan out of the cabinet, spraying it and putting the batter in. “Earth is different from Adulia, and America is different from Constantalia. You won’t see lanterns or horse based transportation or any of that. We’re completely apart technologically. We can send messages instantly with the press of a button. We don’t need men on horseback or carrier birds.”
“How amazing,” said Kozui with an excited grin as he leaned forward and towards Maddie. “What kinds of things are like that?” Maddie pointed up at the ceiling lights.
“Like the lights,” she said before going and putting the cake in the oven to bake and setting the timer. “They run on electricity. It’s… like mini lightning. That light is full of energy that we use to power other objects. It can also make metal so hot it glows from the heat. That’s what makes it give off the light it does.”
“Awesome,” said Kozui as he reached up to touch it. Maddie gasped and ran over, grabbing his wrists.
“Don’t touch them,” she chided. “You’ll burn your hands if you do! We don’t have gas lights these ones are incredibly hot!”
“Geez,” he said as he pulled his hands away and rubbed his wrists, “you could’ve just said that. Man you have a tight grip, that hurt.”
“Well how else am I supposed to react,” she asked as she sat down across from Sialei. “You could seriously burn yourself! If you guys want to touch something, ask me first! Otherwise you could end up really hurting yourselves!” She sighed before looking at the Book of Flight. “Alright, what does Ceteha’s personal parchment say? I can’t read any of those symbols.”
“It’s in Shantari,” said Sialei as she read the book. “You don’t speak it, so I used a spell that made you understand it when we spoke it. Unfortunately, there’s no spell that can teach you to read another language. You can’t even speak it, you just understand what we’re saying and we understand you, but you can’t actually speak it. We’re both speaking our native languages.”
“Wow,” said Maddie as she tried to figure out the different symbols, “that’s pretty amazing. I don’t remember a spell like that being used before.”
“I used it to communicate after I left the reserve,” she replied as she flipped through pages. “I grew up speaking Naralian. I learned the spell in order to communicate with others. They thought I spoke Shantari, and I heard them in perfect Naralian. Of course, once I properly learned Shantari this no longer happened.”
“This isn’t related to the task at hand,” Leo reminded as he tapped the book. “We need to figure out what this all means.”
“I know I know,” said Sialei as she flipped over a page, looking at a page with nothing but a single small symbol. “I do not recognize this symbol here though. It is so strange.”
“It looks like this thing,” said Kozui as he poked the eighth note hanging from Maddie’s choker before she promptly smacked his hand.
“Don’t just touch people without their permission!” She gave him a glare before looking back at the note. “He’s right though, that’s an eight note. It’s made for music. It tells musicians how long to play a note for.” She reached forward. “That’s odd though. If you guys don’t recognize it then either you’ve never seen a musical score before or you guys have a different way of playing music. If it’s an Earth only thing I wonder why it’s there.” She carefully reached a hand over and touched the symbol. It felt smooth under her skin, like glass instead of like paper. “It feels weird.”
“Well this book is supposed made from skin,” said Kozui. “Not like it’s gonna be normal in any way.” Maddie shrugged.
“I guess you’re right,” she said as she pulled her hand away. The moment she stopped touching it, the book erupted with different colored light. They all moved back as they watched the lightshow, power radiating from it that made Maddie feel like it was pushing her.
"This symbol shall appear only in the hour of need
When Adulia's world is all but gone
In order for this world and all others to be freed
Search for the shattered Tower of Song
The pieces once broke and scattered on Earth
Hiding until their power can grow
Collect them and bring them to the hearth
And with the rest bring end to the foe.”
With that, the glowing faded away, leaving behind a map in place of where the symbol had been, detached from the rest of the book.
“I’ve never seen a prophecy read itself aloud,” said Sialei in wonder and amazement as she picked up the map, looking at it with wonder.
“I’ve never seen a map like that,” said Kozui as he moved to stand behind Sialei, looking over her shoulder. “The heck is up with those land masses?”
“Let me see,” said Maddie as she moved around. “It’s… a map of Earth.” She pointed at a glowing green dot. “Look, that’s where we are right now.”
“What kind of map is this,” asked Leo as he looked at it. “It’s not made of paper or parchment.”
“I don’t know,” said Sialei, “but the prophecy said we had to search for the shattered Tower of Song. I think they’ve lost power, so when the pieces have regained enough power to be useful then they’ll show up on the map! At least, it seems like the logical conclusion.”
“Makes sense,” agreed Kozui.
In the ruins of an ancient castle, a hooded figure watched the moon from a broke tower window, smirking in the moonlight.
“It seems Ceteha’s prophecy has finally been revealed,” he said with a small chuckle. “I never expected them to get here after I broke it, nor did I expect there to be a map that would show them where the pieces are. I may not have been able to completely destroy the Tower, but I can at least keep that pitiful ragtag group from putting it back together. General Spring.” A woman with long emerald green hair and matching eyes with a glow stood behind him.
“Yes my lord,” she asked.
“I want you to fight the founders of the Magic Blood guild,” he informed her. “Make sure to get that map from them. They can’t collect the pieces if they can’t find them. Do you understand me?”
“Yes my lord,” she replied with a bow. “How do you want me to fight them?”
“It’s too risky to send you as is,” he reasoned, “so I’m going to create a servant for you. I can make as many as you need, but I would prefer just one at a time. I will give you something so that you can have direct control of them from a distance. That means if they fail general, it’s on you. You failed as a strategist and a warrior.”
“I will not fail you,” she swore as she straightened herself up. “What will this warrior be?”
“A warrior of earth,” he said as he held out his hand. It was like liquid earth seeped from his gloved hand. He watched as it fell and separated from him, hovering in midair and it turned into a creature made of it. “Here.” He held his hand out to her and showed her a green gemstone. “Any creature of Earth that I make you’ll have complete control over by using this stone. Just place it on your forehead and your will will become theirs. Any questions?” She shook her head.
“No my lord.”
“Good. Then do as I asked and destroy the leaders of Magic Blood.”