Chapter 1
Disclaimer: I do not own 12 Kingdoms; all characters belong to Fuyumi Ono and the respective right holders. Original characters of this story belong to me.
The humid midsummer air paired with his barely ventilated apartment made him sweat so much that his clothes were already completely soaked by noon. The small room he had holed himself up in for the last week was filled to the brim with multiple scientific instruments, a small tower of empty instant noodle packages and a lone, almost withered plant in a simple, brown pot. As he arranged the last mirror of an apparatus he sat down and let out a huge sigh: „Finally, with this everything should be adjusted just right for a test run..."
Looking down at his drenched shirt, he sniffed lightly and then muttered as if to mock himself: „But first I'll take a shower." With a faint smile of satisfaction on his face he made his way through the thing he worked on for the past 3 months, nonchalantly throwing his drenched clothes on a pile of dirty laundry. Shortly after he left the room, the noise of water droplets falling on ceramic was coming from the door the young man left through.
To understand what meaning lies behind the man's fixation on the strange apparatus taking up his whole living room we have to go back 3 years and nine months in time, when the man had just completed his twenty second year and went on a trip through Southeast Asia:
As a young man who had just finished his bachelor's degree in physics and a bright future laid out in front of him where he could practically chose what further path in his education he wanted to take - not so much due to his academic results but due to physics students being quite few in numbers - he fell into a deep depression. Troubled with what field he would specialize in, his mind was in conflict about what to do combined with a small voice in his head telling him that no choice he could make would really change a thing.
With every passing year of his youth the world became more restricting, new laws in all of the more civilized countries undermined freedom of speech and created a social structure where one could only rise to power by sucking up to the ruling parties and bribery was expected if one wanted to get into a good job position.
To get a break from these suffocating decisions, he decided to go on a trip through Southeast Asia, since it was the only place he could afford that didn't put the same restrictions on him as his own country and wasn't filled with religious extremists. "What a place has this world become since my childhood," was what he thought to himself while he placed the reservation for the flight, knowing that in the closed off world he lived in, there were only two choices for him: Either he would spend his life unable to change a thing and do nothing of importance or he would succumb to the temptations of wealth and power and turn in a wicked existence like those he despised so much at the moment.
Running away from the hopeless truth that would loom in his future he set foot on a plane to one of the megacities on the southern hemisphere.
The tropical heat hit him like a truck when he left the air conditioned plane and the sun shone on him mercilessly as if it wanted to burn all his thoughts about the future away. "I could imagine living here," was what he thought when he stepped out of the airport. He fastened his backpack and setout for his very own little adventure.
But as reality is a harsh mistress, it didn't go as well as the young man had planned. Robbed on the day after his arrival, lost in the vastness of the roaring city, getting distraction from the problems in his future was the least of his problems.
As he walked through the back alleys he had wandered into carelessly, trying to find a way out, he thought about what he'd do next. When he passed a little, spooky looking antique shop that was seamlessly wedged between two tall apartment buildings he decided that after all he had been through today, asking for the way in a shop that looked like you'd find frogs bottled up in alcohol, strange relics and all sorts of occult stuff would complete his hat-trick of bad vacation memories and he could fly home as soon as possible without any regrets.
"Excuse me?" Those words accompanied by the sound of a chime on the door echoed back at him from the dimly lit store as he entered. He only dared to enter after his eyes got used to the darkness inside the shop.
From across the room furnished with several shelves he just entered, an old man looked at him and greeted him in broken English: "Hello, what you looking?"
"The way back onto the main streets," said the young man hoping he could avoid staying in this eerie establishment any longer than necessary.
As he had feared, the old man - he assumed it was the shopkeeper - suddenly looked at him a lot less friendly than before. "I no work for nothing, you buy something, I tell you way."
With a sigh, the young man ravaged all his pockets looking for whatever little money could be inside them. Luckily he found some change he got at the bar he went to last night. "What luck, they only stole my wallet. At least I have enough money to get ripped off by an antique dealer," was the sarcastic thought that went through his disillusioned mind at the moment.
Looking around the shop for almost half an hour, evaluating what of the thing displayed here would make a good souvenir so the money wouldn't be a total waste, or at least for something that would at least pass customs, he noticed a strange white horn.
A horn that looked like it was a mix of antlers and the horn of a rhinoceros, but of a sublime beauty that could almost be called regal. Its peerless white color and the apparent lack of scratches and the like made him doubt that this horn really was an antique. The almost unreal appearance of it made the young man think that this could pass customs easily if he just said that it was just a replica.
With something to his liking found and knowing the way back to the airport, he could find his hotel and spent his last night in the tropical paradise exhausted in his room. His sudden wish to return home and his persistence resulted in a heated argument with the personnel of the travel agency the next day and added more to his dissatisfaction with his trip, although he knew that this part was definitely his own fault.
This was how he ended his vacation and flew back, not knowing that this trip would be influencing his future in ways he couldn't even dream of back then.
Refreshed from the cold shower now clad himself in a way more befitting of his profession: A white lab coat over the set of normal clothes, a pair of safety goggles and sturdy shoes, because things falling on your feet always hurt. Slipping once again through the maze of gadgetry he headed for a box placed on what could have once been called a table, but seems to be no more than a dump for documents right now. The little casket was made of dark brown wood and carefully engraved with realistic picture of a one-horned creature.
Gently caressing the precious item he just picked up, the young man spoke to the box in anticipation: "Let's see what you can do."
Even with the little casket held in both hands he still could move quite easily through the jungle of cables, instruments, little mirrors, and tubes to reach the middle of his room, the center of the giant apparatus he had built. In the heart of the machine that he had put countless hours of work in was a pedestal just about the size of a saucer. In front of the pedestal he carefully opened the small casket that he held as carefully as if was made of glass with one hand.
"Now I'll get you to spill all your mysteries," the man said to the white horn inside the box, unable to hide the smirk on his face.
After taking the horn out of the box he placed it gently on top of the pedestal, took special care that it wouldn't fall of and break, retreated away from the center of the apparatus to a computer near the table, and sat down in front of it. After booting the computer and starting the programs for data acquisition he stood up once again, put on his goggles, and set his experiment into motion.
At the flip of a single switch several of the gadgets in the room began to buzz and bits of scattered light rays shot out of the apparatus. "Seems like everything's working fine," was the reaction of the content man to the successful activation of his device.
"Let's get to the measuring." With that, the man sat down in front of his computer once again and started to feed the machine instructions on what the apparatus behind him should do.
Hours later the man was still illuminated by the light of his screen when he looked up happily. "Now, just one to go and so far it went as expected: The results don't make any sense at all."
Outside his window the humid midsummer had brewed a rainstorm of devastating intensity. Not paying the weather outside his room any special attention, the man looked in the air a little while longer. With a shrug he returned to staring at the data filled screen and typed in the commands for the last experiment he wanted to do today, trying to get any form of response from the horn that made sense in a scientific way. In this case it meant shooting the horn with the biggest Laser.
"At the end of the intellect it still comes down to raw power," was the thought which represented his opinion of what he was going to do as well as what he thought of the world.
Pushing the enter-button with closed eyes, hoping it would somehow help getting results that make sense, he awaited the reaction, the sounds of capacitors discharging and data flowing into his computer. Silently a minute passed. After he felt the rush of stupidity for sitting down a minute with closed eyes and waiting for something to happen assault him.
Slightly angered by the failure he decided to look for the error, just something not plugged in correctly, was what he cursed himself for at the moment, forgetting to turn of the apparatus before entering it.
"There you are," was what he could utter in the crouched position between all the cables, trying to reach the back of one of the devices. His fingers found the culprit that ruined the flow of his last experiment for today and immediately pushed him into the socket.
The moment the plug's pins connected, a bright ray of red light shot out from one of the many box-shaped appliances and hit the horn.
A roaring sound filled the small room in seconds easily drowning the sound of the rain outside, a glaring light illuminated every corner of the room and even with his goggles on the young man couldn't see a thing.
The next moment everything went silent but the light didn't fade. He couldn't even see his own hands and neither could he hear himself shouting, he just floated in a space of silent white. The devices, cables and all the other stuff that was around him seconds ago were nowhere to be felt and he wasn't even sure where was up and where down.
After floating like that for around a minute the sound suddenly came back as loud as it was before and the light faded. What he could now see that he was falling towards the starry sky. Seconds later he felt like he hit a wall and lost consciousness.
The sound of waves.
As he slowly opens his eyes, he can see the line where the waves are breaking on the beach and feels the tide trying to drag him out towards the sea again.
Hastily he stands up and staggers away from the jet-black ocean. With his mind still in a daze the young man makes his way along the coast to a couple of rocks.
Trying to climb the rocks in his condition almost killed him once, but it was worth it, since he now knows that he has no idea where the fucking hell he is.
Note:
This is my first story, so I don't know how good it will turn out. I hope that I can tell a good story and maybe contribute to the image of world of the 12 kingdoms in some of your heads.
I will try to improve what shortcomings I have, but to that I have to know what they are. That's why every review I get would probably help me a lot, so if you like or didn't like what I wrote please review it.
