A Journey to a Hundred Worlds

Michelle’s nerves were stretching thin. A night in the inn wore her out and did her more ill than good in the long run. Everybody was a monster. Why was everybody a monster? Why couldn’t they be helping out the fairy instead of…these evil people? It made no sense at all to her. Wouldn’t this just help the world be destroyed?

Vale was infuriatingly cheerful and in such a good mood. Michelle wondered if he were bipolar. Not too long ago he had been grump and annoying, and now he was cheerful and annoying. She frowned at this thought. So no matter what Vale got on her nerves? Why was she traveling with him? And for that matter, why was Ryokou still sticking around? How could he possibly be putting up with all of this?

Some part scaly, part furry thing with part leathery, part feathery wings walked by her, and she shivered. It looked like bad news. The half-human, half-wolf things looked like bad news. The pale people who she assumed were vampires after her earlier encounters with ones looked like bad news. The people who were even paler looked dead and like bad news. Vale blended in with looking like bad news, a malicious joy oozing out of him.

That left Michelle and Ryokou looking like awkward people who had just gotten lost and happened to stumble their way into this crowd of bad news-ness. She could tell that Ryokou was having second thoughts as he recoiled from someone who passed within an inch of him that had rotting flesh and a nearly detached head.

“Can I maybe go get some fresh air?” Michelle asked hesitantly.

“And can I go too?” Ryokou added.

“Sure,” Vale replied, sitting back in a chair, hands behind his head.

Relieved beyond all telling to be able to leave the oppressing inn, Michelle left in a hurry, not even bothering to make sure that Ryokou was following her. Outside it was still dark, which Michelle had learned it always was here. The full moon was perpetual too.

Everything in this word seemed to be made out of black-colored things, it seemed, and generally spooky. The fairy had stuck out like a sore thumb in contrast to all of the gloom, and Michelle wondered where she had come from. The creatures of light had to live somewhere in this world, right? Was where they lived a paradise with plenty of sunshine and brightly colored things?

Something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. A man with medium-length, shaggy, black hair had what appeared to be a wolf-person prone in his arms, his fangs sunk into the flesh of its furry neck. As she stared at the man, he extricated his fangs and faced the two lone humans in all of Synkka.

“Yes…?” he asked the two of them, though not impatiently or annoyed.

Michelle was caught off guard. “Um, are you a vampire…?”

The man gently set the wolf-person down on the ground before redirecting his whole attention to Michelle. “Not everything that has fangs is a vampire. Snakes have fangs, and they are hardly vampires.”

“So are you a snake?” Michelle asked, confused immensely. Anything seemed possible to her

“Some people may think I am.”

“Who are you?” Ryokou stepped up.

“Lucifer, although if I am in certain worlds and wish to keep a low profile, I go by Lucius.” As he was saying this, he slowly changed forms until Michelle recognized him.

“You’re that guy that was standing upside down a tree branch earlier!” she almost shouted.

“Yes, I am glad that you remember me.”

“How could I forget? You popped up out of nowhere! Wait a minute, are you related to a person called Seth in any way? He can transform like you…”

Lucifer grinned in a way that reminded her that he was part of the creatures of the night. “I can only transform into human-like forms, unlike him who can transform into any living thing, or any combination of living things. However, he is but a mere brat. So you have met him?”

“Yeah, he attacked us, but then he disappeared,” Michelle answered. She couldn’t believe how lightly Lucifer talked of Seth. Seth had given them so much trouble, so what did that make Lucifer, exactly? Was he stronger?

“You better keep your eyes peeled for him then,” Lucifer said, bending back down again to pick the wolf-person back up. His words confirmed Michelle’s worst suspicions that Seth was indeed still alive. She had hoped that the spirits had somehow swallowed him and that would be the last she would see of him.

Lucifer sunk his fangs back into the wolf-person and Michelle wondered exactly what it was that he was doing as it seemed to have nothing to do with blood like with vampires. Feeling creeped out beyond her toleration, she walked away, and, after staring a moment longer, Ryokou followed her.

“Don’t you dare leave me behind in this world,” Ryokou whispered to her loudly once he thought he was out of Lucifer’s earshot. “I think I’d die if I got lost here. Besides, we should stick together being the only two sane people in this world, if you ask me.”

“I agree, but it was your fault for being so absent-minded and lagging behind,” Michelle remarked, “Now come on, let’s go try to find someplace better to relax at.”

“Does that even exist?” Ryokou wondered aloud.

“Yeah, and hopefully we’ll be able to find it,” Michelle replied; she planned to find the part of the world that the creatures of light lived in.

It didn’t take too long for her to come across it. Just as she had suspected, there was a bright sun shining over in the light creatures’ half with a field of bright green grass, brightly colored flowers, and a nice green, leafy forest. In other words, it was the polar opposite of the dark half of the world that they were in at the moment. Michelle could have wept with joy and relief.

She picked up her pace a bit, not being able to wait much longer having to endure the horrible atmosphere over in the dark creature’s part of Synkka. Ryokou ended up breaking out into a sprint, passing her. Deciding to try to race him, Michelle sped up too, and together they burst into the bright sunshine, blinking as they were temporarily blinded by the brightness of the sunlight. Michelle felt like a lizard laying out on a rock, soaking up the sun’s rays. She had missed it. Both her and Ryokou burst out laughing, and they felt good.

Attracted by their laughter, a curious fairy zipped its way over to them from the long grass near the forest. It had a bright red hue and was a guy. “Who might the two of you be?” he asked them politely when he had reached them.

“I’m Michelle, and this is Ryokou,” Michelle replied automatically.

“Do you like it here?” the fairy asked.

Too engrossed in the pure ecstasy of no longer being in a dark, forbidding world, Michelle didn’t find the fairy’s manner suspicious at all, and neither did Ryokou.

“Yeah,” they both answered at the same time.

“Glad to know,” the fairy said. “I always knew our side was better than theirs. Oh, before I forget, I want to introduce you to someone real quick.”

“Okay,” Michelle agreed.

The fairy flew off into the forest. As the two of them waited, Michelle commented to Ryokou, “It’s too bad that all of Synkka isn’t like this.”

“’Synkka?’ Is that the name of this world?” Ryokou asked her. “I thought I had heard it when we were in that middle-space, and I was wondering what it meant.”

“Yeah, it is the name of this world,” Michelle replied. “Now that I think of it, it sounds versatile enough to suit both this half and the other half. Weird, huh? And then your world, Mujunku, fitted in with your words, you know like ‘kitsune’ and ‘chikusho.’”

Ryokou winced as she said “chikusho.” “Just because I say things like ‘chikusho’ and ‘kuso’ doesn’t mean that you should. Especially ‘chikusho.’ They don’t really suit you.”

“Oh, sorry, although you just said ‘chikusho’ twice,” Michelle pointed out.

“Yeah, I did, and before the collective count of us using that word in the past minute reaches five, let’s stop talking about it.”

“Right. But I guess the world’s names are just suited to fit whatever culture there is on the world that is the majority. It makes me wonder what my world’s name is…” As she was saying it, Michelle found herself thinking about home yet again. She wondered if they would be lucky enough to end up going to it on their journey. But then again, maybe it would be unlucky to end up back in her home world since that meant that it could end if they failed and people could get hurt or even killed, especially if Seth showed up.

At the same time, she wondered why Vale was journeying around between worlds helping them out if he seemed to loathe it so much. Why had he left his home in the first place? He kept mentioning his family, and not in a bad way or in a way that suggested that they had died.

The red fairy returned with a blue one that Michelle recognized as the one that had turned Vale into an elf. She snickered a bit at the memory. Even though she had never even heard of an elf before, the dramatic change in Vale’s outward appearance and mood had been quite entertaining for her, and she knew also that it was true for Ryokou.

“Hiya there! I didn’t have the chance to properly introduce myself last time because of that evil demon you were with. My name is Tina!” the blue fairy introduced herself. “Timothy told me that you are Michelle and Ryokou. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Same here, Tina,” Michelle replied, feeling overly generous in all this light and bright things.

“But you know,” Tina said, “you were hanging out with that demon, and he never did change over completely. So, I guess we’ll just have to use you as hostages.”

Before it could click in either Michelle or Ryokou’s mind, they both felt something knock them over the back of the head. Vision blurring, Michelle fell to the ground, catching the briefest of glimpses of something human-like, probably an elf, standing behind her. Then everything went black.

* * *

Michelle woke up with a pounding headache in a room that appeared to be made out of wood and that was devoid of any windows except for a small, round one that was about two feet above her head when she stood up, so basically seven and a half feet up the wall. Luckily her hands weren’t bound or anything, and Ryokou was sitting up next to her, staring at the far wall blankly.

“What are you doing?” Michelle asked him.

Ryokou blinked, returning back to where he was mentally. “Figuring out a way to get out of here.”

“Any ideas yet?” Michelle questioned hopefully.

He shrugged, making a noncommittal sound.

“I can’t believe that fairies and elves would do this to us,” Michelle said, voicing her thoughts. “I mean, they are the ones that are the creatures of light. We didn’t even get attacked at all by any of the creatures of the night. Isn’t that like mixed up?”

Ryokou made another sound that Michelle couldn’t quite interpret as either being affirmative or negative. She wasn’t even sure if Ryokou was paying any attention to her at all right now.

“Is Vale going to come and get us now? If he does, he’ll probably summon the dead and kill all the people over here…” Michelle muttered.

The sound was made again, and Michelle decided not to talk anymore.

Time passed, and Michelle started feeling sleepy. She was really bored just sitting there, doing nothing. When Ryokou pulled out a knife, she suddenly grew alert and watched him with her total attention. Ryokou used the knife to start sawing away at the wood. Michelle looked at him in disbelief.

“It took you that long just to think to use your knife to try to cut our way out of here?” she asked, not believing what she was seeing.

“Well, not really,” Ryokou replied defensively. “I just couldn’t remember where it was. I wasn’t sure if I remembered to bring it along ever since we left Murashisu.”

“I can’t believe it. Besides, it’s probably not going to work anyways.”

“Well, why don’t you come up with an idea then?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a ninja?”

“Yes, I am,” Ryokou said, “and I just thought of something. Hang on.” He ran his fingers across his skin, and Michelle saw him collect some bright blue dust on his finger. It was hardly noticeable, there was so little of it. Ryokou stuck his finger in his mouth and instantly he began to change. His ears elongated to a point, and he became more handsome. Ryokou was now an elf. “Now you do the same too,” he told Michelle.

Michelle ran her finger across her skin until she came up with around the same amount before she stuck it in her mouth. She could feel her ears grow until they were like Ryokou’s and she could tell by the way he looked at her, her appearance had improved to perfection too.

“Wait, how are we going to go back to normal?” she asked after thinking about it for a minute.

“We hardly got enough to change into elves, and it feels like it’ll wear off in a bit because of that,” Ryokou said. “Now let’s hurry and get ourselves out of here before we return to being humans.” He paused for a moment before asking, “How do you think elves act?”

“Hmmm? How should I know?”

“Fair enough. Well, I think I can sort of feel how we’re supposed to act, so try to focus on that if you can feel it.” Ryokou then knocked loudly on the door of the room and shouted in a musical voice, “Help us! Get us out of here!”

Michelle heard some light footsteps coming towards them. She stood up and focused on trying to act like an elf, which she found out to be pretty easy. It was practically instinctual for her.

An elf opened the door and his eyes widened in surprise when he saw the two of them standing there as elves. “How did you get in here?” he asked.

“We were mistaken for someone else,” Ryokou replied easily.

“Well then come on out,” the elf said, opening the door wider and beckoning them on through.

On light feet, Michelle and Ryokou left the wooden cell and entered a wooden hallway with big windows on the left side of the wall allowing them to look out onto the beautiful scenery of the outdoors. Blue roses and vibrant violets lined the walls of the building they were in and a nice big oak tree gave shade. So basically it still looked like a paradise on the outside.

That’s when Michelle noticed a white figure off in the distance, back towards where the dark half of Synkka was, and she heard shouting. ‘Vale,’ she thought, knowing instantly it was him, coming to get her and Ryokou.

She burst into a sprint as did Ryokou and the two of them found the exit and went outside. Michelle lifted her hand up to shield her eyes from the sunlight, and just barely, she could make out the form of Vale in the distance, terrorizing fairies, elves, and multi-colored horses with a single horn on their head.

Michelle started off at a run again, and Ryokou ended up passing her by and made quick ground, reaching Vale in less than a minute. As always, Michelle took longer to reach Vale. When she did, Vale didn’t appear to recognize them and at the moment Ryokou was stuck fending off a skeleton with his knife. Michelle desperately stared at Vale, hoping he would recognize her.

“Vale, it’s me!” she exclaimed, running away from a skeleton. Suddenly she felt herself changing slowly back to normal. “Vale! I’m Michelle! Stop attacking me, I’m not an elf!”

Vale paused in the middle of grabbing a fairy out of the air. His head slowly turned to face her as the skeleton continued chasing after her with the intent to kill. “Oh, why didn’t you come back to the inn earlier?” he asked.

“We were held as hostages!” Michelle shouted, running towards him.

“What, these puny creatures actually bested you?” Vale laughed, waving the fairy in his hand around for emphasis.

“We were caught off guard, now get rid of this skeleton!” Michelle cried out desperately.

“Whatever,” Vale said, making a motion with his hand. The skeleton, in response, starting chasing after a horned horse instead.

“Why are you still attacking them?” Michelle asked as she watched as a skeleton tripped an elf before jumping on it and beating it up. “Me and Ryokou escaped from them already. Shouldn’t we just go back to the other half of the world?”

“I still haven’t found that blue fairy yet,” Vale answered.

“Tina?”

“You know her?” Vale asked eagerly.

“Yeah, she was the person we talked to right before we were knocked out,” Michelle explained.

Vale’s lips spread up in a dark grin. “Then shouldn’t you also be eager to get revenge on that fairy? It seems she orchestrated the whole kidnapping you for hostages thing.”

“Does it really matter now that we’re out?” Michelle stated. “I don’t really feel like we should just attack the creatures of light.”

“I don’t care, I need to deal with Tina and teach her a lesson about messing with demons,” Vale growled.

“Isn’t this an abuse of your power, though? Using it for revenge like this?” Michelle questioned.

Vale rolled his eyes. “I think that it is a worthy enough cause.”

“Hey! Call it off of me!” Ryokou shouted, causing both Vale and Michelle to look over at him. A skeleton had knocked him down and was getting ready to stab him.

“Oh, sorry, forgot,” Vale drawled, redirecting the skeleton to an elf with a flick of his finger.

“Stop that!” Michelle said, watching in horror as the chaos continued around her.

“Like I said, why?”

“This isn’t what we’re supposed to be doing! It feels really wrong. If you continue attacking them you might cause this world to end,” Michelle replied hurriedly.

“Fine, but if I see Tina I can kill her on sight,” Vale conceded.

“Well then let’s hurry and leave. We can figure out what to do later,” Michelle urged him.

Vale signaled the skeletons to return to the earth and he sharply turned and headed back to the dark half of Synkka. Hurriedly, Michelle followed after, not pausing to look back to see how the elves and fairies were. Ryokou was already ahead of them, going at a dead sprint for the other side. Michelle saw the irony in all of this. At first they had wanted so badly to be over on the light side, and now they were running to the dark side as though all of its residents were chasing after them with a thirst for blood.

‘Well, I guess you can’t judge something by appearance alone,’ Michelle thought grimly.