by Prax Venter
“Stay close,” Mark said, as he grabbed Sasha’s hand and then stepped onto the conveyor belt. The sudden change in the floor’s movement almost yanked him off his feet, but all four of them held onto each other and made it easier to stay balanced. The swiftly moving belt changed direction a few times, even ramping upward for a while, and Mark got completely disoriented… not that he was orientated in the first place.
“Their main recall zone is underground?” Mark wondered out loud as soon as he figured it out.
“Strategically sound,” Abby answered from behind Sasha.
He could tell Jezebel wanted to weigh in with both feelings of intellectual excitement and pressing claustrophobia, but she felt as if keeping her mouth shut about anything centaur-related was the right move.
Eventually, the ground below his boots slowed to a stop, and a line of blue light began to slowly scan them from head to toe- or hoof.
“Great,” Mark said under his breath. Scans hadn’t gone smoothly for them lately. He found himself more frustrated over the potential ensuing hassle rather than the danger in being discovered. His stomach gurgled, and he realized that he was hungry again. When was the last time they ate? Thinking back to the night they had been forced to start eating again, he realized he’d only had two pieces of fruit. Was that last night? Awareness of mild exhaustion came to the front of his mind, and Sasha squeezed his hand in the darkness.
The blue laser shut off, and the belt started moving again toward the pitch-black space ahead. Fortunately, the rest of the ride was a short one. The moving floor deposited them into a white, sterile room with a striped zebra-centaur female waiting behind a raised counter, and from what Mark could see, the entire left half of her body had been replaced with metal.
“Right this way, if you please,” she said with a tinge of a robot voice echoing in her words, yet Mark was happy to be met with civility instead of weapons.
All four stepped up to the counter as the woman tapped a translucent display hovering in the space between them.
“Mmm, I see you are unique, Lover. And your Enthralled are also fairly unique…” She moved the floating square of information to the side with her fingers and four more sheets of data faded into existence where it had been, all layered on top of each other. She began cycling through them and tapping a box in the upper-right corner before moving to the next.
Mark could feel Jezebel’s mind overflowing with questions about this insane futuristic tech, but she continued to try and appear to be a centaur who should be familiar with such things.
“I’m going to give your team an S-Rank badge- level one. Do some S-Ranked quests, and you’ll level up your status. Shouldn’t take too long based on what I’m seeing.”
A panel opened in the sleek white counter by Mark’s waist and resting inside the small alcove were four orange rectangles attached to black fabric lanyards. They each had a picture of their face, a large letter ‘S’, and a few black lines that certainly couldn’t be barcodes. The centaur lady continued in a friendly yet monotone voice.
“There is a 10-silver reprocessing fee if you lose or destroy your badge, but all recorded standing will remain tied to your accounts. Please display them visibly when recalling or while anywhere near Orb Fortress. Head inside the outer wall and present your Questing Badge to any Job Database Terminal to receive an appropriate quest assignment. Do you have any questions?”
Mark handed out the identification badges and easily settled on the only questions that mattered.
“Yeah, actually,” he said with a warm smile. “We’re looking for new leather gear and possibly a good meal. Any recommendations?”
“Sure,” she said, leaning on the counter and returning his smile. “The Bottom Breach Zone has a wide variety of shops that cater to non-centaurs, especially for un-cut Purehearts like you.” This striped centaur bureaucrat turned her attention toward Jezebel for that last part, and she held her gaze with one blue cybernetic eye and one normal blue one.
“Thanks…” Mark said, his smile dropping and turned to the only other door out of the room. The door led to a long metal hallway, and all his bonded monster-women quietly followed behind. The people here seemed friendly enough- if a bit militant. And they certainly weren’t the monsters Klax had portrayed them as… so far. He reached into his pocket and ran his fingers over the smooth surface of the magic stone they needed to bring near this innermost door and started thinking of ways to make it happen as they walked. Without more information about the layout and the security, there wasn’t much to consider, but there only seemed to be two ways to go about it.
Do quests for who knows how long and someone might let them get close. Or, abuse the shit out of his ability to jump between dimensions.
Mark’s high-level planning stopped when they walked out into what appeared to be a subway transport station from his old life, only more advanced and utterly spotless. Two perfectly round holes were cut into the walls at either end, and a short line of centaurs and other creatures waited by a metal landing area.
There was a light thump noise as a passenger car in the shape of a hovering glass bullet shot out of the far tunnel and silently slowed to a stop. A section of the pod slid open, and two centaurs with huge packs on their back trotted off through an exit on the other side of this high-tech transport station.
Another pod exiting the nearest tunnel caught Mark’s attention as it slowed to a stop in front of the line on his side. Three creatures with strange block-like human heads stepped into the pod while Mark moved his team to wait their turn behind the others. He watched closely as the passengers appeared to select a destination from a holographic display before it whizzed off into the dark tunnel.
This process repeated several more times before it was their turn to step inside the glass bullet. There were no seats inside, but that made sense if this place was primarily built for centaurs. Instead, grip bars were affixed to the roof for stability.
A simple holographic interface popped up when they entered, and Mark read through the five options.
Failsafe Zone
Skyhub Zone
Arclight Zone
Upper Alloy Zone
Bottom Breach Zone
He tapped the Bottom Breach option and was given a few stations to choose from. They were only labeled with cardinal directions, and he randomly decided on one called West Output.
“We ready?” he asked.
Abby looped her tentacle through Sasha’s fingers while Jezebel provided a sturdy backstop behind them both, and all three gave him a short nod.
Mark tapped on his chosen destination. The screen flashed and then was replaced with a countdown. He had a moment to realize that the ride was going to take five seconds before the glass bullet silently zipped forward into the darkness.
He shot his hand up at the very last second to grab onto one of the overhead metal bars, and otherwise would have ended up thrown into everyone behind him. They caught glimpses of light as they hurtled through the tunnel whipping past at high velocity, but the ride was over almost before it began, and the transport car popped out of the tunnel and stopped above the ground amongst an explosion of neon lights washing out the midnight sky.
The door slid open, and a muffled cacophony of music ramped up to make speaking almost impossible. He led them out of the pod onto the grass, and smells of grilled meat immediately pulled his attention to a nearby outdoor restaurant with an enormous beast roasting over an open firepit. Mark’s mouth began to water. He didn’t know what type of meat it was, only that there was no way that it had been a floppy-eared Lagomorph.
“I love this place!” Sasha yelled, and he saw her tail swaying with music pumping out of building-sized speakers further away. Between the towering black boxes were a group of neon-bright centaurs putting on a concert. It sounded like a mix between new wave synth and hard rock. Behind them was yet another outdoor concert featuring a six-armed giraffe-like woman playing three electric guitars at once.
&
nbsp; Mark spun around in the trampled grass and saw the sprawling chaos of what could only be described as a city-sized carnival. Much further in the distance, he could see a colossal, metallic, three-tiered cake that had to be the walls of Orb Fortress. And their destination.
“It’s too loud,” Abby yelled with one of her tentacles wrapped around her head to cover both of her ears.
He gave her a half-smile and then saw how upset Jezebel was. His love was having difficulty trying to stay positive, and these screaming cheering people having a good time seemed to pull her down. Her luminous green eyes met his, and he saw that her feelings of inferiority within the group were amplified by her inability to shift back into her normal form.
He walked up to her and took her hand.
“Come with me, my love. I have a pile of gold in my pocket to get you geared up for battle. The best we can find.”
Jezebel smiled. “I appreciate it, Mark, but it still feels like a waste. I desperately hope we won’t be needing… that type of equipment for very long.”
“It’s your choice,” he yelled over the music, “but you need more than this cloak- at least for now.”
She lowered her head and nodded, and a glint behind her caught Mark’s magic eye.
“Wait, is that…” he mumbled, stepping past her. Right there in the middle of everything was a pinpoint of purple light accompanied by the silently whistling wind of the Lagomorph homeworld, Lagos.
Jezebel yelled over the noise. “Can you two see what he’s talking about?”
He turned around and saw both Sasha and Abby pull their eyes from the dimensional tear to him, then to Jezebel. They both nodded, and the hornless centaur’s mood dipped even further. His heart went out to her, but this feeling of not being on equal footing with Sasha and Abby seemed as if it were more of a psychological problem and nothing he could ever fix with his cheating magic. Was her own self-doubt so strong that she was letting it affect her physically? Whatever it was, he loved her, and he was going to help her figure it out.
But right now, there might be an opportunity to skip past all this espionage bullshit and cheat right to the goal. He looked around and saw people everywhere, but no one was paying any attention to them as there were a million other things to see and experience in this sprawling party.
They gathered close as Mark coated his hand and carefully pulled open the doorway only to find his perspective suspended over empty air. Far in the distance under the ridiculously large silver moon was the dark shadows of impossible cliffs. Mark spun around the portal to face the concentric walls of the place they needed to break into and saw a floating island suspended over a seemingly infinite drop. Resting in the middle of that hunk of hovering land was a black silhouette of a giant sphere. It was if all the dirt around the structure had been ripped away at some point.
Sprinkled out in the empty space around the floating island were what Mark initially thought were stars, but some were between him and the mysterious sphere- and then it hit him.
The suspended points of light were thousands of dimensional rips linking Learis’s home dimension to their home dimension, all centered around the land of this legendary orb that the Kalorplast and Centaur Technocracy had been fighting over for generations.
He couldn’t be absolutely sure about the distance or the scale (especially with one eye), but by the way the two worlds appeared to line up, they’d need to be inside the Orb Fort’s first wall before they found a crossover point that allowed them access to that isolated island.
Mark let the rip close and faced his Enthralled with new hope that the portals were a possible solution. They just needed to find one that opened over that island in Lagos, yet far enough away from any high-security areas on this end. Then, it was only a matter of finding a point back that opened near that one inner door.
However, they had already done far too much today to start seriously working on that goal, so he grabbed Jezebel’s hand and led her to the flaming barbeque pit.
A centaur with a huge, soot-covered fork for an arm was more than happy to rip off massive slabs of charred mystery meat for one silver each. With a grin splitting his friendly face, the big horse-man pointed them to an array of troughs where a crab creature with a tall chef’s hat stirred mixtures of strange sauces. Other patrons stood around these communal troughs, and they were apparently intended to just dip their slab into their sauce of choice with every bite.
With a shrug and complete disregard for the existence of any type of health code, Mark and his Enthralled dove right in. Everyone’s spirits lifted with some food in them, and Abby commented on how strongly she felt that animal flesh needed to be a central part of her nutritional intake. Even Jezebel’s mood spiked as they each dipped their hunks of meat similar to pork into the flavorful condiments and debated which was the best.
They enjoyed the experience so much that they all went for seconds. Abby, however, quickly grew disappointed when she realized she could no longer pack away food indefinitely. Mark and Jezebel helped her eat most of her second hunk as she watched with a scowl and her green tentacle massaging her over-stuffed stomach.
He was still amazed at how quickly messes would just fade into the background in this world. There was a spigot of clear water to rinse off the thick coating of dipping sauce and grease he’d acquired, but one quick splash, and he was squeaky clean.
Mark then grabbed Jezebel’s hand again and led them all through the flashing lights, performers, restaurants, knickknack stands, and multi-species partygoers until they reached a part of the Zone that felt more like a city than a carnival. The sounds of celebration faded to a light murmur behind them as they wandered between more permanent stores and metal structures that appeared to be warehouses.
More armed and armored centaurs patrolled in this area, and Sasha quickly flagged a pair down before they got too lost. Despite appearing as something out of a science-fiction horror movie, most of the cybernetic centaurs seemed like normal people. One of the guards smiled and pointed them toward a place he recommended that sold leather centaur gear.
“A Druid…” his partner said, clicking his tongue with a grimace. “Bad luck on your birth class, little doe.”
The friendly one crossed his metal arms.
“Shit, Varek. Wasn’t it you who once insisted you make your own luck in this world?”
Jezebel only nodded.
Mark thanked them for their help, and then led his team toward the armor shop called Fidda’s Tannery. It must have been late in the evening, but it seemed like this whole place was active all night long. Mark took a moment to wonder if centaurs were nocturnal in this world. It didn’t seem right, but he had long ago tried to stop assuming anything.
They walked for a while in the direction indicated by the guard, and the muffled sounds of the raging party behind them faded to silence. They passed a baker, a few blacksmiths, many implant and repair shops, and several inns and pubs. But they didn’t see any place that sold cloth or leather, and he was about to suggest they were lost when he crested a small hill and finally saw the edge of the city.
There were only single-story buildings nearby as reference, but encircling the whole place was a thirty-foot fence covered in thick, potent arcs of blue lighting.
“Now that is one seriously electrified fence,” Sasha said next to him.
“And that’s the tannery we’re looking for,” Jezebel said, pointing to a shop to their right.
They didn’t stay long, as Fidda the centaur tanner was asking far too many unanswerable questions about his fellow unmetalled Pureheart. Jezebel picked the first set of leather armor that fit her, and 1 gold 50 silver later they were back out in the quiet streets near the edge of centaur-controlled land.
It was strange seeing Jezebel with no horns, but now a helmet pressing down on her wild strawberry-blonde hair only seemed to drag her back toward that dark pit growing in her soul. To her credit, Mark watched the resilient woman shake it off and force herself to focus on the
here and now.
“It’s getting late,” she said, pulling the helmet off to hold under her arm. “I think I’m done with today.”
Abby stretched her tentacles up to coil over her head and exposed her bear trap of a mouth as she yawned toward the sky.
“I concur.”
“Alright, ladies,” Mark said, “let’s head back to that inn we saw up the street. We’ll see what we can do about our quest situation tomorrow.”
The walk back past the few blocks of metal buildings was longer than he remembered, and he was beginning to crave the deep darkness of sleep. Perhaps he would even try and dig deep into Jezebel with his magic eye. Maybe if he could help unlock her ability to shift back into her satyr form, she’d kick off this funk she’d settled in.
They arrived at the place they’d passed earlier called “Good Night Mare” and the large metal door lifted into the ceiling like a whisper-quiet garage door. Inside was a smooth metal counter, a hallway to the right, and a larger hallway to some sort of courtyard behind the building.
As Mark stepped up to the counter, an elderly centaur with most of his torso replaced with metal came out from a back office to greet them.
“Mmm, the four of ya?”
“That’s right,” Mark said, reaching into his pocket. “How much for the night?”
“That depends,” he said, rubbing the white whiskers on his chin. “Is the young miss going to be spending the night in our luxurious stable or in the confines of the room with you three?”
Mark glanced back at Jezebel, who was clenching her jaw so she didn’t cry in front of everyone.
“Of course she’s going to-”
“Mark,” she said quietly, cutting him off. “I think I’m going to go for a walk. I’ll sleep outside tonight and meet up with you three in the morning.”
Without waiting for a response, the leather-armored doe-centaur turned to leave. Mark shot a look to both Sasha and Abby before going outside after her.
“Hey,” he called out when he realized she was already twenty yards down the street. She trotted to a stop but didn’t turn around.