Chapter 25: Ch65. Same fight - 2
Octavius thought that the glass halls of that strange castle were way too large and tall for those people to have built them.
But judging by how humans had this sense of achieving greatness by building huge structures, it seemed like the Ishir and the humans might have something in common after all.
At the end of the hall stood a doorless threshold through where Octavius and his group walked, arriving in an enormous hall furnished with only an enormous glass table, around which stood fifteen other Ishir, all wearing armors and carrying weapons that at the same time looked very much like the humans’ and not.
"Octavius Blake and the Guardian guild..." The tallest of them, with naked arms covered in red scales, wearing simple but sturdy-looking breast plate greeted them.
"Who are you people, and how do you know us?" Octavius asked, adamant to get some answers this time.
"Ten years from now you’re gonna discover the secret to dimensional travel, and you’ll find us fighting a fight very much like yours. But it seems that the gears of Fate moved in strange directions this time, leading you to us sooner that we expected... By the way, my name is Rhegal, the Commander of the Ishir in this base. It’s a pleasure to meet you."
Silence followed Rhegal’s answer, accompanied by the whole human group’s raised brows and blank expressions.
Octavius sighed.
"We sure seem to be in an alien planet, so I shouldn’t be surprised with such a remark. But if we’re here by what you call ’the gears of Fate turning moving in strange directions’, then what are we doing here, exactly?"
Rhegal’s lizard eyes darted from Octavius to all the other guild members there.
"I think it’s best for you to rest and recover you mana before we speak. Even you yourself look worn out, the battle against the sand Worms must’ve been tough."
Octavius didn’t want to admit it, but he was struggling just to stay on his feet.
"Yeah, I guess we should, but after that, we need answers."
Rhegal nodded, signaling his fellow Ishir to take them to the dining hall.
The food looked like nothing they’d seen before, and even though it didn’t look like human food, the smell was so enticing that all of them began eating ravenously, ravaging through the plates and cups like wild animals, only remembering their manners a bit later, when their bellies were full enough and their tongues weren’t dry anymore.
They even felt their mana fully replenished somehow, and upon looking at the Ishir, one of them, wearing a white tunic, stepped forward.
"If you’re surprised about the sensation of your mana being replenished, that’s because we have a fruit we dry and use as condiment. We call it Esyriah, fruit of the stars."
Nothing that they said made sense, but they felt good after eating and drinking, so they didn’t complain.
Only after eating that Octavius noticed a difference between the outside and the inside of the glass building.
Even though it’s structure seemed to be made of glass, the only thing that trespassed it was the suns’ light. The suns’ heat was blocked in its entirety, leaving the interior of the building with the tone of a fresh spring day.
Octavius told his subordinates that if they wanted or needed it, they could go get some rest.
"I’m going back to Rhegal so I can get the answers we need." He said vehemently, moving towards where they came from.
***
Kurt stood there with his mother in his arms, until Leblanc finally arrived.
The chief of the monitoring division opened his mouth to say something, but after he saw Kurt and his mother, with an unconscious Dr. Lee not too far from them, he fell silent.
"Where were you...?" Leblanc heard the boy’s voice echoing through the waiting room. "What were you doing...?"
Leblanc looked at him, shocked with the rage in his voice, but still shook by how the draconic-like Beast practically wiped the floor with him and his division.
He didn’t know what to say, and Kurt kept yelling.
"WHERE WERE YOU!? WHAT WERE YOU DOING WHILE MY MOM WAS KILLED!?"
Leblanc inhaled deeply and exhaled, sighing in frustration and defeat.
Kurt looked at him as he slowly vanished from his sight.
"I’m sorry kid, but you have to give it to the Beast..."
Before everything around Kurt turned to darkness and he felt his senses fading, he felt Leblanc’s grin in his voice.
"At least it did a good job getting rid of a regular."
***
"Rhegal, would you now tell me what exactly are we doing here?" Octavius asked as he entered the hall again.
"I’m a little worried about your well-being, since it’s your first time in a new planet, but judging by your adamant resolution, I don’t think you’ll join your comrades in rest, yes?"
Rhegal’s tone was friendly, but still, Octavius met his amity with the same determination from before.
"I only ate and drank because I knew my comrades wouldn’t do it if I didn’t, and I knew that they needed a well-deserved rest. But no, I won’t. Not that I don’t need it, but the answers I need from you are much more of a pressing matter."
Rhegal’s lips curled upwards.
"Your first question is what exactly you are doing here, and for that question I will give you a simple answer that will lead you to more questions. The right ones, I think."
Octavius kept quiet, urging Rhegal to speak.
"You’re fighting the same fight as we, the Ishir are..."
"And nudging by how one of yours ran through the... Gate, you know how to take us home, don’t you?"
Rhegal’s eyes widened up a bit and his lips curled up a bit more.
"You noticed Zaval’s movement?" A strange sound came from Rhegal’s throat, and a while later, Octavius noticed that it was a laugh.
"He was invisible, but his mama signature wasn’t. Why did he cross the Gate towards our world? And how do we go back? I have a son I need to see waking up, and a wife who needs me next to her."
"A true warrior, I see..." Rhegal approached Octavius and touched his shoulder with his hand full of claws and scales. "You won’t be away for long, as the time here in Vesta runs faster than on your Earth. Anyways, Zaval had a mission on your Earth, he was entrusted with the mission of finding the new host of Kha’Ur and destroy it."
Octavius tilted his head, squinting his eyes to a slit.
"What is this Kha’Ur and what is it doing in ’our’ Earth?"
Rhegal’s nostrils inflated as he reached inside his breast plate, taking a small transparent sphere with a red crystal fragment inside it.
"I supposed you’re already familiar with this, yes?"
