chapter 41

.

O(I)O(I)

Reading a lot in a hive of books underground and walking up and down the stairs to get a little energy was all Niaz could do while he was slowly regaining his full power. It took eight days of hard work, practice and lots of reading but he finally got to be at his level once more.

"Finally, this world will be mine for the tak-"

There was a quiver in him from feeling a familiar presence in the world. He came back...the baldy who defeated him had returned. All that vigor and felicity exuding from Niaz's bones and eyes had dissipated.

"Well, Sloxigor, what's another ten years in our lifespans."

"For a dragon it's a simple nap. Do I get to take a nap all through it, lord Niaz?"

"If you want."

"Thank you, sir. Thank yo...do you sense that?"

Niaz was too enraptured by the appearance of the baldy with the strong arm to notice something else. He checked again feeling a strong vibe in the world above.

"Something big is going to come to bring an end to the humans and it isn't me."

O(I)O(I)

Kaylyn heard there was a nice old witch in the forest where many cobblestone walls were erected she was currently lee through.

The younger harpy, Phyte, was at her nest with her own kin preparing for the big day—the day they finally get married. Although their time was really short any day in the life of a monster could be his/her last so it was best to strike while the hunters were getting drunk on hot cider.

The house was small with a maple door, black granite roof while the walls were erect with grey boards. Kaylyn knocked.

"Hello, is there a witch in the house?"

There was no response. Kaylyn didn't waste this opportunity to open the door and walk inside, the house gelid with no heat and a wooden spoon on the table but no signs of any bowls awaited her.

All the flotsam thoughts this place might be abandoned dissipated when a shadow skulked through a picture frame.

A shadow acting that way could only be caused by someone using magic. Although Kaylyn wasn't a mage she did have special eyes that could see runes even if they were concealed with invisibility spells.

Sure enough, her eyes sheen pink her favorite color since she escaped the boring green torching maze, she saw runes imbedded in the picture of a woman with her hair tied back chopping vegetables for a silhouette of a colic, sophisticated man wearing a red suit with a blue bowtie. She extended her hand to the picture hoping it would magically take her inside so she could meet the witch of this marble home.

Things didn't go that way. Instead of being sucked in the lady in the picture came out, a stream of tears dripping down her face she wiped off using the palm of the hand holding the knife.

"I don't care who you are or why your here, just let me get to my sink before you ask for something or start threatening me."

Before she made it to the sink the nozzles faced towards her and sprayed her arms. Kaylyn didn't know why she was in such a hurry to have her arms washed until she swiveled back to the picture. Instead of the picture she saw before she saw a lacerated mark over the man who fell down exposing his green eyes and clean gelled brown hair. He had his mouth open so wide it looked pink and wet like human flesh.

She didn't get to look at it very long. Once the lady finished cleaning her hands she picked up the picture before yelling at it like a dog that misbehaved.

"Join the rest of your friends in my cenotaph!"

By that she meant a broom closet with a bunch of other photos in a landfill.

She tossed it in like a frisbee before a broom with a life of its own closed the door with its thistles. Now that whatever delirium she was going through had passed, she looked at Kaylyn with utmost attention.

"Just because I don't eat people doesn't mean you can walk into people's homes without their permission."

"I did seek out your permission; you were in your photo. I'm sorry I walked in but it's for a real emergency."

The witch who she could see looked younger than she was originally told stroked her round chin.

"No it isn't—your going to ask me if I can make a dress for you to get married in."

"You can read my thoughts?"

"No, deary. That's not magic it's intuition. What magic can do though is replay every word you said in my house and reverberate it back to my ears filled with fairy power."

She pointed to her right ear with a shimmer of blue light and a few little white dots appearing and disappearing every second. Since the witch knew what the gargoyle wanted without her trying to make a strong case about it first, Kaylyn felt clammy and sweaty all over thinking about what she was going to say.

"Haven't you ever been in love before?"

"Only a love of killing all things someone else made to make women like me feel insignificant. I can make you this dress but only if you can come up with one hundred-n-thirty-one Smik."

"I can give you something better than that."

O(I)O(I)

Phyte and her sister Xylie were ready for the ceremony. Phyte was wearing a dress so bright it could be mistaken for platinum with a bouquet of flowers in her arms. Xylie was holding a book with empty pages inside taking the part of the priest. They weren't waiting there for longer; the moment Kaylyn arrived seemed like a heartbeat for the two of them. She arrived wearing a dress with a glint of silver, a pattern of pink crab legs and whetstone strewn around her chest, a little blush to help make her face brighter and covering her reptile skin and her neck was teeming with little glowing pebbles. In her hand she carried a boutique of roses.

Xylie began when they were staring at each other all giddy and happy but containing their joy with their smiles.

"I'm not sure how this begins so I'll just speak from the heart. Phyte, you were always different from the rest of the harpy's. Our mother said a harpy that doesn't follow our clans rules would be put in the mountains to starve. I'm not saying our mother would let that happen but her being the queen certainly helped you have the freedom to grow...to meet a wonderful woman like Kaylyn. And Kaylyn, although our time together was brief I will be happy to call you my 'sister'. With that I now pronounce you wife and wife. You may now kiss my beautiful sister, Kaylyn."

They both felt their suppressed jittery come out as they embraced each other in a hug kissing each other as deeply as their mouths could. Xylie had mixed feelings about this marriage but seeing how much affection each one had for the other brought a smile on her face. That smile was fleeting as there was a loud sound going off in the sky.

The sky was arrayed with fluffy clouds aligned like a farmers' harvest, coagulating purple like the miasma that vampires would suck into their bodies.

All three of them had a very bad feeling about this, but all they could do being monsters was get as far away from human civilization as they could before monsters started descending in a wisp of smoke or something from an adventure the hero's of old went through.

O(I)O(I)

Not much to say about the vampire who had Darily in his claws even when he was a ghost. He wasn't responsible for this bizarre turn of events but he was sitting nice and comfy-legs stretched out with a glass of wine he swished back and forth watching all this happen right before he finished preparations for absolute power.

O(I)O(I)

Atraafire looked out seeing dark, nigrescent building that came right out of eerie stencil pictures not knowing what she was seeing wasn't Ravenbreach Valley. She was on her way down when she noticed the same purple fluffy clouds moving slowly like soldiers being frayyed on the battlefield.

With just one step, the clouds turned pink but also dark and sordid like the breeding grounds of goblins. She raised her legs even higher and picked up the pace.

O(I)O(I)

With no ideas on why he was brought back to this strange world of magic and fantasy as well no one telling him what should be done, Saitama had nothing to do but lee his back against a wall looking up at the clouds. The sky was a peaceful cerulean color with only minimal amounts of clouds unlike the sky in his world which was nothing but clouds.

He was about to get up and explore the city when something familiar was put infront of his face: a hard shelled taco. His eyes swerved as far to the right as they could until the glower of an elf's always cleansed and beautiful skin came into focus. The young even to human standards dark elf Kathienne was here. He stared at her—drifted his eyes to the taco and started eating it in the blink of an eye-wondering something he knew he had to ask.

"How did you get here?"

"Remember Mr. Genos telling you I was flowing with energy all throughout the hospital but it soon stopped after a prophecy was told in a very eerie, foreboding way? A glimmer of that same energy came out of my chest the moment after you left which brought me to the front gates of Yakime."

"And you just happened to show up with a taco in your hands?"

"I didn't know if the energy was going to take me back to the world I was born in or if I was going to self-destruct like those buildings in all those action manga's you let me read; all I knew was I wasn't going to let it happen without some food onhand."

Saitama's original plan was to stop sitting on the ground and walk around the kingdom looking to see if an exciting event would happen, instead Kathienne sat down next to him with her arm squeezing his. Although Saitama no longer felt anything in his heart after defeating hundreds of disastrous threats he knew right here was where he should feel like a proud guardian watching over the smart, kind dark elf child.

And then—purple clouds meshed with the cerulean sky before they eventually overtook everything up there. He wasn't sure what colors the sky in this world could change into, but he knew something wasn't right when it looked like the stuff the vampires like to swallow.

He had to go . Leaving Kathienne alone in a city that discriminated demi-humans wasn't wise, but he couldn't take her with him either. Even always winning his fights with a single punch didn't mean he could watch her all the time; most of the threats here came in hordes.

Fringed along the street were a variety of different stores like the strip malls of his world—that's when it came to him. He picked up Kathieene bridal style, looked front and back, and then he dashed at the speed of three attoseconds around the kingdom.

Much like in his world it caused a lot of distress to the citizens the way he moved so fast a whirlwind was thrashing out: cats and dogs with feathers or scales of every different color of the rainbow getting riled up, vendors losing their wares, or the way the woman's garments nearly flew off some of their shoulder straps falling down revealing their corset's.

Saitama managed to make it to the front door of the florist shop without being caught as the one responsible for the strange gust of wind, knocking on the front door while still carrying Kathienne. Like a ghost opening a windowsill the door turned without a turn of the knob. First thing he saw when the door opened was a shuddering rabbit wet all over his fur, fear-induced, trapped in a cocoon of silverware. Looking down he saw the asparagus tangled web that was Tatsumaki's hair before making direct eye contact with the pint sized city destroyer herself.

Both just stared (her more of a glare with puffy cheeks) until he put Kathienne upright next to her.

"If you see the nice florist shop owner I went on an adventure with to the vampires' nest or her husband, tell them to make sure she gets a good walk and reads a nice storybook while I deal with the impending disaster in the sky."

His legs were vibrating to leave before she could give him an answer, "Okay, thanks."

Like a bullet fired from the weapon of their own world he zoomed off. Tatsumaki squeezed a hinge in the door while she lee out to shout like a banshee.

"Who says I'm not the one who can handle it?!"

Her shouting daunted a white cloaked sorcerer flitting towards the shop she was staying at, but fell on deaf ears to everyone else-especially Saitama who it was made for.

Without any other choice she slammed the door. When she walked back to the rabbit the dark elf came alongside her.

"I guess you can help with my interrogation."

O(I)O(I)

How Kathienne got through the front gates perplexed Saitama-when he got to them it was blocked by a meshed wall of iron. It may've been a question of how she managed to get in but for the bald hero it was a simple leap. He soared over the bridge full of dozens of guards; one waiting for an onslaught of them to venture through one open door barely reacting seeing a man in a bright yellow light-armor hurtling over their stronghold.

That man landed on the ground barely feeling more than a driver hitting a pothole on his knees, and then he ran northward trying to find a spire of energy or a looming creature or castle. He found instead a blackhole the clouds were swirling around like a whirlpool.

From that black hole emerged a hand all shimmering blue with a big dark green vine coiled around its wrist. It seemed to be a god-definitely related to Ghephine—and it seemed to have some bad intent with the people of this world. All Saitama had to do was jump high and deliver a powerful uppercut to the hand disintegrating its body, maybe letting the dead skin evaporate when the clouds dissipated...

Out of nowhere, a wolf with a dogs facial structure pounced at him howling with excitement.