Chapter 2: Arrival (2)

He fled just in time to avoid the mustache woman and her colleagues. With this ability, he could probably escape most danger.

It wasn't long before he found another hideout. No dustbin, but it was dark. He found a corner and curled himself up, hoping to avoid notice. But it didn't work: thirty minutes later the police found him again. So he rewound to the time before they came and left to look for another hideout.

He went from one street to another, spending time in every place before the police chased him out. He spent the night on the run, eventually finding his last hideout at around five o'clock in the morning. He stayed there expecting the police to show up like they had been doing but they didn't. At around six o'clock in the morning, his tiredness overpowered his sense of fear and he fell asleep. When later he woke up, it was already five minutes to 10 am.

Gaus woke up with a jolt. Heart pounding he looked left and right and at the street in general for any threat and when he couldn't find any, he let out a sigh of relief.

The first thing that drew his attention was the buildings. It was dark when he came, so he didn't see it. The houses were built from some kind of glowing stone - some blue, some red, and some even white. They all looked the same to him. The size, the design, and even the painting. He might have a difficult time finding his way back to that hideout.

A few people walked on the streets talking about things Gaus didn't understand. He wasn't in his village anymore. When he was little, the nanny running the orphanage had told them stories about spirits, djinns, dragons, and other mysterious things. The dragons and djinns supposedly could use magic and travel thousands of miles in just a minute. If those tales were true then he would have assumed it was a dragon that brought him there. But those tales were all lies concocted to scare children into behaving.

As he stood there in thought, a young woman passed by his side. She was short, dark in complexion, dressed in a long, white gown (like a monk), and was in a hurry if her fast strides and anxious face were any indications. After a short debate, he ran and stopped her. "Hello."

She turned around and looked at him.

She didn't have a mustache.

"Please, ma'am, can I ask you a question?"

"Quick. I'm in a hurry."

He forced a smile. "I'm new here. If you can help me with something... anything, I would be grateful." It wasn't the best choice of words, but he wanted to be as bland as possible so as not to say something he wasn't supposed to.

She frowned and shook her head. "Why are you people coming to the pilgrimage without attending a course? Is it because of the little extra charge?" She rolled her eyes at him dejectedly and sighed. "Have you prayed?"

Gaus remained silent. He was getting increasingly confused about the whole situation. First, curfew, and now pilgrimage and prayers.

"I guess not," she said, interpreting his silence as a no. She glanced at the wristwatch on her right hand and sighed. "It will close in half an hour. I'm heading there, you can come if you want."

Gaus was surprised. The young woman's wristwatch looked exactly like his own and she spoke the same language albeit with a very strange accent. Something of interest was the pilgrimage, both the woman and one officer that almost arrested him had mentioned it. What kind of pilgrimage was it? Was he in Saudi Arabia or Jerusalem or somewhere similar?

"Okay, thanks. I'm Gaus." He decided to follow her.

The young woman remained silent for some seconds, hesitating. "Ummi."

Gaus followed her into the city in silence. They reached an open field hundreds of meters wide. It looked like an ordinary football field only larger. It wasn't strictly enclosed either, just demarcated by a shallow pit that was cemented by the same glowing stones that were used to build the houses in the city. Instead of the Caaba or the Temple, he saw a giant stone two hundred meters in diameter floating in the air at the far end of the field. Several officers stood guard around it. Nobody was allowed anywhere near the floating stone and the closest you could get was a hundred meters from it.

Gaus had never seen a rock so smooth in his entire life. It shone and glowed much better than every other stone he'd seen so far. A few maids wearing white dresses collected water from the spring beneath the rock and poured it over the stone. A thousand men dressed in the same white gown bowed down beneath the stone in worship.

The young woman called Ummi knelt, just like the rest of the crowd. At one point, Gaus was the only person still standing. He followed suit and fell on his knees to avoid any unnecessary attention.

There was something that got his attention ever since he entered the shrine. Out of the roughly five thousand people crowded in that place, nobody spoke a word. It was silent as a grave. Some came in and some left, yet nobody said a word. It was disturbing.

After about ten minutes, Ummi left the ceremony, and he followed her behind.

After making sure they were far enough, the young woman inhaled deeply as if getting rid of a heavy load. "It's all over now, till next year." She turned to Gaus. "Are you going to the auction or directly to the arena?"

Pilgrimage, auction, arena... Gaus didn't know what was going on. He would like to see the auction and whatever was going on in the arena but there was something more pressing at the moment.

"Hey, if I'm looking for information about Multiverse, what's the easiest way to get it?"

She looked at him with narrowed eyes like he was an idiot for asking that. "Did you come here to wander? Look, I know there are lots of distractions but this is a lifetime opportunity. You can't miss it."

"Don't worry about me. Just tell me where I can get such information."

She shrugged. "Check out the library." Then she left.

"Hey, where can I find the library?"

Silence.

The library was a popular place and everyone knew where to find it. The next person Gaus asked took him directly to the place before he went on to his shop.

A majestic building it was. Tall and glorious. The stone used to build it was dark brown, reflecting the sunlight as a dim glow. Countless glass windows on every floor of the building shone brilliantly in the sunlight.

Gaus walked to the entrance where a guard sat on a wooden chair, taking note of every person that went in or out of the library in a register.

"Your name?" Asked the guard without raising his head from the book.

"I'm Gaus."

The man put it down at the lower left of the front page, tore it, and handed it to him. "That's your permit."

That was strange, Gaus thought, but he took it and went inside. He went directly to the silver-haired woman sitting on the reception desk facing the entrance.

She scrutinized him for a moment and then looked away like he wasn't worth her time.

Gaus cleared his throat to get her attention.

"What do you want?" She said without raising her head.

Gaus frowned mostly at the lack of manners. All the receptionists he'd met in his life were fairly nice. "Can you at least direct me to the books section?" He said after a few seconds of silence.

"Head straight into that door." She pointed at the next door without lifting her head.

It was the only open door in the direction. The 'first floor' was written boldly on the entrance.

As he stepped inside, he was faced with rows of seats and even more rows of bookshelves extending as far as he could see. Each shelf had at least a hundred books and there were more than fifty shelves lined together. If all these books were on the first floor, then how many more books were on the second floor and the floors beyond that? A million probably, maybe more.

The shelves were categorized into different fields of study and were labeled clearly. The one by his right had 'alchemy' written boldly on it, indicating that all the books on the shelf would be on (or at least related to) alchemy.

He carefully selected any book with a title related to the words: world, Multiverse, pilgrimage, auction, arena, tournament, magic, magiwatch, skills, and so on, and drop it on his table. He spent the next few minutes doing that, slowly building a collection, and then he read.

A couple of hours later, he closed the books and stared into the distance. It was clear he was no longer on Earth. He had seen and read it. But how did he end up there? And more importantly, what would he do about it?

His stomach growled. He was hungry.

That wouldn't be a problem if he'd some money on him. But he'd somehow managed to leave all his savings on Earth. He would probably have to find another job all over again.