Bab 4: Chapter 3. The Interworld
The fall seemed like an eternity, completed in an instant. With all her strength, the girl crashed into something icy. The floor, covered in intricately patterned marble, appeared before her eyes.
Beside her, with a slight rustle of clothing, landed a creature that outwardly resembled a man, only very tall (in Alexandra's opinion, who was one hundred and seventy centimetres tall), with skin so black that darkness itself would tremble at the sight of it. High cheekbones, a sharp nose and thin eyebrows flanked eyes that glowed white from within. The creature's hair fell like silver threads, drowned in a pale gold robe. The contrast caused her eyes to ripple violently.
The creature looked at her and gestured for her to stand. After waiting for her to stand, it told her to follow it.
They walked along a seemingly endless corridor with no windows or ceiling. It was illuminated only by starlight, and it went off into the vast distance.
Like bells ringing in her head:
"Welcome to the Infinite Abode of All That Is, the Interworld. We are in the abode of the Greatest Chronos, one of the mighty Guardians of Balance, the pretender to the position of Ruler of the Interworld. You have been granted the great honour of an audience with a being whom you mortals personify as a god. You are accompanied by the generous assistant to the Guardian Tempus."
Unable to believe the absurdity of what was happening, Alexandra could only squeeze out:
"I don't understand."
The creature's face showed a fleeting look of irritation. And with a voice like a frosty cold he said.
"At the moment we are at peace over all the worlds -Interworld, the main one here is the Lord of the Interworld, followed by the twelve Guardians of the Worlds, each of the Guardians looking after the balance of the worlds entrusted to them. Though, of course, the main rough work is done by us, the assistants. But we can't use our powers on the entrusted worlds. In general, there was one incident of jealousy and a stranger's hand with a puppet in the form of your brother got into our world, because of which there started a mess and we will be able to even things out only at your expense. That's the short of it, is that clear?"
"Brother? I have a brother?"
Tempus wanted to cover his face with the palm of his hand, how long had it been since he had interacted with a lower being, even a child? He couldn't remember. Maybe never.
"You are the child of two beings that the Chief left behind to keep an eye on the balance, 'on the ground' so to speak. Our powers are limited there, we can only intervene indirectly, through other people's hands. But it happened that two beings who were predestined to be completely opposite suddenly became very interested in each other, and you and your twin brother were born."
"Oh yes, your birth name is Kalor, not the one you had in Titus, the world I took you from. Remember it well, but never say it aloud, no matter how much you are tortured. Remember it, never! The only time you can say it is when you die by your brother's hand."
What nonsense!!! The more the girl listened, the more she became convinced that it was more likely that she had passed out in a fit of pain at the fair, and that she was only seeing all this in a distant subconscious. But she was still fascinated by the story and decided to play along, asking questions:
"Why were we separated, how did we end up in different worlds?"
Tempus was already open to dialogue and continued a little more calmly.
"Of course, because your parents saved you by sacrificing themselves. Although, to be honest, the Guardian and I would have preferred to kill you on the spot, as we foresaw the trouble ahead. They sealed your power with a pulse of True Energy and sent you to the other world, but for some reason you seem to have split up and your brother was found by my Chief's former lover," Tempus grimaced defiantly at the word 'lover'. "There was a very unpleasant history between them and we won't go into detail. "- After a moment's pause, he lightly adjusted the strands of hair that had fallen across his face and continued:
"But it seems he managed to lure him to one of his worlds, where he was raised by one of his minions. Then, of course, he smuggled him back to our world to spite the boss, and now he's underground, upsetting the balance. It's a nuisance." - he sighed and looked up at the starry 'ceiling'.
"But the worst part is that the power marker on him is sealed, and neither I nor Chronos can find his location. By mistakenly eliminating the wrong person, we can doom the world to destruction with our own hands. Your task is simple. You must find your brother. Chronos will tell you the details himself. I remind you to call upon your true name only as a last resort!"
The girl nodded, though she had a million questions she wanted to ask, unconsciously finding herself in some strange epic, and when she had opened her mouth, her body flew up a few metres and out of the corridor like a shooting star.
"What? What the ****?!" - Tempus could only curse as a stream of interstellar profanity spewed from his thin mouth and another beam meteorised into the sky above his head.
"Boss... You take care of that **** over there! "- And he raised his hand to the starry sky.
Meanwhile, in the state of weightlessness, somewhere on the border between the worlds, a real battle was being fought between two super-beings, which our heroine was unintentionally witnessing.
She felt like a whipping boy, thrown around like in a relay race, and began to feel dizzy. She didn't understand who was fighting with whom, whose side she should be on and, in general, what she had to do with it.
At the same time, as she swayed from side to side in flashes of unknown power, she was like a speck of dust wrapped in a cocoon of the finest threads, watching the explosions accompanied by the brightest flashes of sparkling light and the subsequent formation of shock waves with hissing, scattering unidentified particles in all directions.
One of these flashes spun her around so much that everything that had happened before seemed like a gently rocking sea. The next second she was sucked into the abyss, like a black hole created by the remnants of colliding energy streams of immeasurable power.
Everything suddenly stopped, a vacuum of impenetrable darkness entered her consciousness, and she began to fall, but not as she had fallen earlier in the transition to the Otherworld, no, it was a light walk in the cold winter without hat and mittens.
Now it felt like she was falling straight into hell. Her whole body was on fire, it felt as if her flesh was being torn apart by unknown beasts and then put back together again, the cycle repeated over and over again. It was agony beyond comprehension. Meanwhile, countless worlds seemed to flash before her eyes.
"I want to die, to be burned, please make it stop," her scream tore through the space around her and for a split second she saw a light like flame, but it was not scorching, it was soothing, as gentle as a mother to her child. The impulse was too strong and self-consciousness shut down completely.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone