Refraction | Part 2 | Multiverse
11) A Box is Opened
The Ninja walked through the abandoned streets of what once was one of the mightiest cities on the planet. As he made his way through the now abandoned metropolis he remembered his first terrible passage through these streets, the city whisking by outside the limo, watching as bustling business he would never shop at closed, saloons he would never drink at dropped their shutters. He never glimpsed the city in its full flower, but even now, walking through the ornately carved, crumbling archways and overgrown gardens he could feel the majesty that had been and was still present here. It was a bright sunny day, visibility was good, the air clean. A nice day for a walk through a haunted city.
He made his way through ruined houses and over the occasional collapsed wall, once he came across a mass grave of stunning proportions. In what had been a community swimming pool lay the bones of hundreds of dead souls. It gave even a man of such an eclectic skills set as the Ninja reason for pause. The last vestige of the greatest brewers of beer to have ever lived. All of them gone now. The race of the giants, Ol Jagganata, had been reduced dust.
Still, The Ninja had given his word to his employer, and he would find the Prince, or he would die trying. He turned away from the anthropological carnage and began working his way uphill, toward the former seat of power. Three times he came across unexploded ordinance among the piles of rubble, so he moved slowly and carefully when he was forced to climb over them. Progress was steady, but slow. It was at the end of the first day that he saw the first fissure open.
The Ninja was walking through a darkening alleyway toward a plaza where he planned to pass the night. Through the course of the day he heard little noise save for those he made himself, it seemed even the birds and the insects had abandoned this place. He paused in the shadow of the arch and surveyed the plaza, looking for a likely place to rest. The wind did not stir, and he heard no noise, yet he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. The fissure suddenly opened itself in front of him with the sound of a canvas sail being torn. It was about a meter off the ground and sat at a canted angle, like a picture frame on an uneven table about five meters directly in front of him. He unsheathed his kitana and approached. It was daytime on the far side of the gap, he looked through and was facing up toward the boughs of trees swaying in the wind. Sunlight light filtered through the leaves and he could feel its warmth on his skin. He reached his hand through and felt the heat of the day. A small white moth fluttered to a stop on the Ninja’s outstretched fingers, rested for a quiet moment then stumbled off through the air to find something better to do. The Ninja withdrew his hand, knowing these fissures did not remain long, and he had seen what happens when part of a person is through the gap and the other part isn’t. The amputations were more surgical than even his near molecularly sharp swords could produce.
The fissure closed without a sound, and immediately after ripped back open, salt water gushed through, knocking The Ninja off of his feet. The muscled body of a shark thrashed against him caught in the suction as its part of the ocean rushed to fill the empty space it found beyond the fissure. It snapped its jaws in a frenzied panic, it gills heaving as it threw its body about in the shallow pool forming around the gushing, multidimensional waterfall. With a flick of it’s tail it slid it bulk across the smooth floor of the plaza toward The Ninja. He had rolled to his feet and was crouched facing the fissure, his kitana held in a low guard. He leapt into the air and let the shark slide under him, twisted in midair and shoved the blade through the shark’s head and into its tiny brain. It’s shiny black eyes clouded a milky white as it opened and closed its mouth once, twice, then died.
Shark fin soup for dinner, but better to find a place other than the plaza to camp in, decided The Ninja. He butchered the fish for its delicacy, working quickly, as the area appeared to be in a state of almost constant flux. Fissures of various sizes and durations continued to pop open and silently close up. Night skies, a desert landscape, the sucking vacuum of deep space, a swirling yellow cloud that leaked noxious smelling gas into the air. These worlds and many others had appeared before him as he prepared and packed his bounty, then moved quickly across the square and into the shelter of the narrow streets beyond.
For two more days the Ninja traveled through the dead city. He witnessed the occasional fissure open and close, but nothing like the density of events he had seen in the plaza on his first night. He encountered no other living thing.
The Ninja had only a vague idea of where his destination lay. He knew it was in the Royal Apartments, and he set his mind to the task of data retrieval. Where had the child disappeared? It was his only clue left in this world. If the fissure repeated, as it had been discovered that many of them often did, opening and closing like the yawning mouth of an invisible colossus, The Ninja would pass through. If it did not reveal itself to him, he would meditate, and then he would find another route, and then he would find Charles Xavier V, and be released at long last from his duty to the dead king he served.
On the evening of the his third day The Ninja at last made his way through the Palace to the throne room. Silent motes of dust drifted through the once opulent chamber, covering the marvels of art and engineering in a soft gray blanket of disuse. Closing his eyes, the Ninja thought back to that fateful day. He watched with his mind’s eye, as the fat nursemaid, shaking with fright, came running into the room, as the Royal Gaurdsmen poured through the door in a sudden panic. There, that one, the second on the left of the dais. Eyes still closed, the Ninja began to follow his memory, he twisted and turned blindly through the corridors, only his intense training and skill keeping him from stumbling over rubble and body shaped piles of armor, like turtle shells discarded by their owners. He began a slow jog, reliving the moment, following his memory like chasing ghosts down the empty, dark halls. The soldiers barged through a door and came up short in a large, beautiful nursery. Sunlight poured in through the windows, a singular beam shining on a ornate wooden chest, it’s lid open, it’s interior empty. A small crowd of agitated soldiers and nobility searching the room, interrogating a weeping giantess in one corner. Explosions from the city below.
The Ninja opened his eyes. The Nursery was a shadow of its former self. Silent, cloaked in darkness, save where the blue white light of the rising moon glowed through the gaping holes in the walls. The wooden chest was before him, it’s lid still propped open onto the foot of the bed. He stepped forward and peered inside, polished wood hidden beneath a two centimeters of dust. Undisturbed. The fissure had not repeated. In all likelihood it would not. The Ninja felt a rare wave of frustration and impatience wash over him. Had he not had such great respect for his tools, he would have reduced the chest to kindling with his swords. He grabbed the edges of the box and drew a great breath, preparing to unleash the “Fuck you!” of all fuck yous.
He leaned forward and stopped short. The Key had jumped in the strap of his gunny, as though plucked by invisible fingers. It seemed to gain weight, pulling the Ninja down. The closer he came to the box the greater golden key’s unprecedented activity, until at last it slid out of its snug little pocket and clattered into the bottom of the wooden chest. It vibrated and danced in the dust, it’s movements spinning it counterclockwise like a coin coming to rest. With a sudden final jerk it made a half a revolution and stopped. The Ninja reached out to retrieve the key, his hand shaking slightly in a way it hadn’t since he was The Refugee. The frightened child utterly alone in a mysterious and dangerous world. His fingertip sensed the energy coming from the metal of the key some ten centimeters away. He touched the ancient gold. Closed his fist around it. It felt like a lump of ice in his hand. Bose-Einstein Condensate. Sub-atomic Magic.
The fissure into which the Child Prince had so long ago disappeared, revealed itself to the Ninja. Green steel replaced carved wood. The Ninja adjusted his gunny, climbed into the chest, and closed the lid behind him. He would never see his home world again.
