HELLO FRIENDS! This is everyone's favorite narrator, Goliath D Pyroson comin to you from somewhere in the Breach (those of you nerds who know what i'm talking about, a cookie for you) to tell you more about that timeline where there's some halfas popping up all over the worlds! by the way, when I say "world" in this fic - or any of my other ones - i mean the dimension that's being referenced, as each dimension spans the same amount of space, but in sepearate folds of reality. with that out of the way
IT WAS DESIGNED TO VIEW A WORLD UNSEEN
"I only need it for a bit. I'll mark the location with one of my probes and then come back, ok?" Danny offered. "More halfas are going to be made and I need to find a place to train them." Frostbite was a forgiving spirit, and had a great deal of faith in Danny, but the yeti was aware the teen had plans that were far easier said than done. Those tended to be the simpler plans. "I swear on my name and my blood, both red and green, that I shall return the map to you, Frostbite of the Far Frozen." The blue robed spirit nodded and gave Danny a pat on the back that nearly toppled him over.
"Then I suppose I shall see you later today, Great One. however, I would advise that you not swear such oaths lightly. The Spirit World does not take them lightly." The serious expression on his face reminded the young halfa of Pandora who had said something rather similar. "Safe travels, Great One."
Danny nodded and took a deep breath, reaching into his pocket to check and make sure that there were three probes with him, and opened up the infimap. "Take me to a safe place for halfas." an aura of silver and green enveloped both the map and its holder before he was zooming off.
Frostbite turned to the humans that had stayed behind with a raised brow and friendly grin. "And what can I do for you, friends of the Great One?" They always had some strangely specific thing in mind when they stuck behind.
"If it's not too much trouble, can I take a look at your labs, Frostbite?" Tucker held up the project he had been working on with a grin. "I've been working on something and hoped that Freeze might be able to give me his opinion on them, and maybe a bit of help."
"I was actually hoping to take a look at your library again since Tucker hardly needs my help on his project and I was hoping to get a bit of research done." The yeti chief nodded and the goth walked off on her own, knowing the way well.
Sand, warm and gritty and all over the place. This was the first thing that registered to Febe, along with the feeling of something ...else. It was everywhere, like the sand but more so, and it was alive and powerful and alien and so different from what she knew. Opening her eyes, the teen saw golden sands and an orange sky. In the distance, she could see hazy, golden structures. Looking down at herself, she screamed. Dark brown flesh had turned light blue. She prodded it; yes, her hand. Her white clothes had turned black, and surrounding her body was a dull purple light. Getting to her feet, she saw the only splash of color in her outfit, the red shoes that her father had gotten her, was now a glaringly bright green.
She started to hyperventilate only to realize no air was coming into her lungs, not even the dry, dusty hot-enough-to-burn oxygen of the desert.
She couldn't breathe.
Her chest was tight and motionless except for a frantic beating in the center of her chest where her heart wasn't. Her fingers pressed into her wrist deep enough to bruise but no throb of life answered. No pulse. She checked and checked and checked until her wrist should have been blue and black and didn't find one.
She couldn't breathe-
Febe opened her mouth wide and tried gasping in as much air as possible but it didn't work, nothing came in, her lungs were still and motionless in her chest. Speaking, that would help, it had to! "Can't breathe, why can't I breathe, how am I talking if I'm not breathing? My chest is too still there's no air going in." Perhaps it didn't help. Now she was hyperventilating without the ventilation, and that thrumming in her chest sped up. "That's not a pulse, I don't have one anymore," she whined, head in her shaking hands. "I can't feel my heart anymore… do I even have one anymore?" That was the perfect question to ask herself, of course.
"This doesn't make any sense, there's no blood flow, my heart either isn't there or it's moved to where it's not supposed to be, and I'm talking but not breathing!" Febe could feel tears flowing down her cheeks, but she didn't care. Taking the mental equivalent of a breath, she tried to focus. "I'm not breathing, I don't have a pulse, every color on my person has become its opposite and I feel physically fine. What's wrong with this picture?" Turning her gaze to the golden structures in the distance she tried to inhale, but upon failing that she screamed. The sound was continuous and filled with all of her worry and despair and the longer it lasted the worse she felt.
Time passed, minutes, hours, she didn't know. Finally, when Febe's throat burned, though her lungs didn't, and her scream turned to sobs. "I… that damned book and those stupid scrolls!" She had finally and truly run out of luck, her curiosity had proven to be as lethal most said it could be. "I'm in the Duat... the land of Spirits and Gods. I died." She sobbed into her hands for an endless moment. purple light reflecting off of the golden sands that twisted and churned around her like the sea before a storm.
After a sorrowful few minutes that felt like forever had passed, realization struck her. "Mom, dad, Amir… I can see them again…" that was a good thing, right? Sure she was… but she could see her family again! Rising to her feet, Febe brushed the sand out of her hair, which had also gone from the darkest brown to an almost arctic blue.
Looking up Febe saw that it was not as the legends told of, though various depictions might have warped the reality of the situation over millennia. There was still what looked like a large settlement in the distance, and while no sun was visible in the sky just yet, it was just as hot as the real desert. There was no point in letting her soul burn in the sands of the afterlife, so Febe got to her feet, steeled her nerves, and marched on, the brush that she had been holding in her death now waiting almost weightlessly in her pocket.
Danny found the sensation of being dragged along by the infimap exhilarating the first time he had done it, but this time was different. Almost as if the map's mindset had changed. When he noticed the trip was slowing down, he looked around to see he was nowhere near… anything. It was literally the middle of nowhere Only a purple island floated in the distance that he was being pulled towards. After a moment, he realized it was less an island and more of a continent.
He sailed over a jungle of purple leafed trees the smallest reaching over three stories, bright blue bushes and red grass where he could see between the giant leaves, and the ruins of what looked to be an ancient city or three, all about as large as Skulker's island. The buildings were made of stone, metal, wood, and crystals. Rivers cut through the land and fell over the edges of the continent, or flowed along the channels to other rivers, going around the land mass like blood vessels. Looking forward the halfa saw tall black mountains with violet clouds surrounding their peaks, various colors of flora. A flock of birds, huge compared to what he normally saw on earth, soared through the sky like they owned the land - if so Danny wondered where the map was leading him since any place inhabited by potentially hostile ghosts would be unsafe for new halfas.
When he looked again, he could see animals roaming around everywhere. The sound of monkeys howling filled the air every few minutes. Snakes and sloths covered the trees he was flying through, jaguars and panthers ran after antelope and other animals Danny couldn't identify even after watching that documentary Sam had him watch.
Finally, Danny noticed a large drop in speed when he was brought over the largest of the cities yet. Everything was ivory wood or ebony stone, metal and crystals twisted in as though all grown at the same time naturally, into the shapes of buildings with windows everywhere, most likely since all of the inhabitants could fly. There were buildings with architecture from nearly every culture in the human world and several other things about it all he had never seen before. The city had gates at twelve points of the huge wall encircling it, though one gate had it's doors ripped completely off, and he assumed the others were in similar states of disrepair.
In the center of the ancient metropolis was a domed building that looked older than he could even begin to guess. More than half of the building was in ruins, the intact half leading up to a castle. Castle was the simplest way that Danny could put it. A Greek acropolis stood tall at once side, one section of the building made from stone so dark green he assumed it was black at first glance roofed with silver ingots, hammered bronze doors big enough to fly a helicarrier into easily, a palace-like structure that Danny recognized as Egyptian in style from the time Tucker had been possessed by the staff of his ancestor and so many more styles of ancient architectural styles blended with ages thereafter.
The map pulled him down to massive front doors of the castle fit for gods and curled itself up as soon as his boot touched the golden pavement. At first, the young halfa stood there in awe at the marvel of construction and monument to whoever had once lived there before noticing the less than glamorous damage. It was still awe inspiring in its diversity and grandness, but there were obvious signs of its fall as well. There were cracks along the walls, pieces of stone and marble and metal that were missing or scattered about the lawn - which stretched out for around three hundred meters if the young scientist were to guess - and the gates of the very building itself were in pieces on the inside.
"Okay," Danny muttered to himself as he floated forward, not wanting to set off any traps that might be on the ground. "I'm in the dead husk of an ancient city of spirits from what could be ten or twelve thousand years ago, if not more, in the middle of nowhere so far from my neck of the Ghost Zone that I wouldn't be able to find it without the infimap. This probably counts as safe as far as being hidden counts."
When Febe made it to the settlement she had seen from miles away, she found distance truly did make a difference. Even though she was still at least a mile away, the teen could see buildings rising easily three hundred meters in height, probably more. The bricks building them were carved from carnelian, glowing in the sunless daylight. Mosaics covered the walls of each building, which resembled a cross between an ancient temple, and a modern mansion. Her father would have been so excited to see such a marvel. "He probably was when he came here… lovely, I'm depressed again."
After a few more moments of walking and doing her best not to think about her death or her family - they had to have made it to the city, there was no way that her parents wouldn't make it there and her brother never left their mother's side - Febe was hit with a realization. she was now a spirit. Spirits could fly. Facepalming, the teen closed her eyes and thought about the alien force she felt still flowing all around her and the aura of purple light covering her form and imagined the latter as an extension of herself. The power around her intensified, senses the teen was not used to having lighting up and a tingle ran over her body. She felt the force around her and pushed away from the ground in her mind.
At first, nothing happened. That was something she expected, no skill was learned on the first try. So, she pushed harder, reaching out with her new senses towards that purple light and willing her body away from the ground. A moment later cold fire spread over her brain, the ground fell away from her feet, and Febe opened her eyes to see herself floating five meters in the air. Leaning back, she floated in that direction and had an idea. She did a flip, and a laugh bubbled out of her nonfunctional lungs. "I'm flying… I'm flying!" Febe cheered and threw her arms in the air, going a bit higher and backward before she steadied herself. "Right. To the city I go." Tilting forward, she pushed against the air and sailed towards the walled city of golden stone in the distance.
The castle felt even larger on the inside than it had on the outside. The floor was nothing but mosaic after mosaic of events and ghosts that Danny could only wonder about, though after the first few hundred hallways and intersecting rooms, the halfa found a pattern to everything. And so, he followed along the path of destruction. The whole of the place was somewhat intact but also decaying from the millennia it must have stood uninhabited, yet there was a clear difference between the natural wearing of Time and the signs of a battle. If he looked closely at the walls, Danny saw some dark green spots that didn't match the designs. Upon realizing what those splatters most likely were, he stopped looking at the walls.
The further in he went, the more precise the signs of battle were. Lines cut deep into stone, sand littered around the halls, puddles and even still frozen ice around the edges of doorways, scorch marks that never faded. The battle had to have lasted hours, if not days with how large the place was. As Danny flew in faster, following some unidentifiable tug on his core, the walls were less stable, the air felt thicker and the ceiling even had holes in it. A sickly sweet scent, like lemon scented cleaning products but stronger, filled the air mixed dust.
It took him half an hour from the point at which entire rooms could be seen through collapsed walls, filled with debris, but eventually Danny got to where the feeling in his core was strongest. A soft humming sound emanated from the center of the room with no visible source. Floating up to the actual center of the huge room, large enough to hold his, Sam and Tucker's houses with yards included, the halfa saw the room had to have been the last stand.
Bones, pools of ectoplasm, scorch marks, claw marks, ice, sand, cracked and crushed pillars and columns, dead plants, broken weapons, a statue with a wild, frightened look on their face, body contorted in a way no sculptor would have carved, likely a spirit turned to stone. This room had seen the last fight of the country or at least the biggest. Danny was glad he didn't have to see that fight. Upon closer inspection, he saw one thing that hadn't been touched.
Carved into the floor in the middle of the room was a ring of symbols, untouched. There were twelve total, outlined with a perfect circle and separated into differently colored sections of stone. Above the electric blue gear symbol floated a familiar face, and Danny descended to Clockwork's level silently. Neither spoke for a while, as Danny took in all the information around him and tried to figure out what could have caused all of this.
"Two hundred thousand years," the Timekeeper finally spoke, and the half ghost turned all of his attention to them. "After all of this time, Boreus' ice still hasn't melted. He did say that he could make sculptures that would outlast him…" they trailed off and gestured to the ice Danny had noticed but said no more.
After another thirty seconds, Danny could take the silence no more and gestured at the room in general. "What is all of this? What happened here? Where am I? What does this have to do with halfas?" Those and a million other questions were racing through his head, but Clockwork offered him a cookie, and he knew that the spirit was going to only answer the questions they wanted to.
"In order, this is the palace of the Council, a war, the sovereign nation of Alomora, and I'll get to that at the end." They waited for Danny to take a bite, a small smile on their face, and waved a hand, transporting them above the ginormous palace. "This continent you have been guided to was once the home to almost every spirit who interacted with the human world. Most of the ones who survived the aftermath of the war were seen as gods and titans by Humanity, some were called angels, and others primordials.
Daniel, do you know the difference between a Spirit and a Ghost?" They turned to the halfa with a raised brow, blue face full of wrinkles. "Or have neither Pandora nor Frostbite told you yet?" Danny shook his head in confusion.
"Aren't those the same thing? Spirit, ghoul, specter, ghost, apparition, poltergeist. Different words for the same entity?" That's what his parents had always told him, and the ghosts that he had encountered had never said anything about there being a difference. His brows furrowed in concentration as he tried to remember any instance where spirit and ghost were terms used as differing terms. "Most ghosts I meet call this dimension the Ghost Zone, but Pandora, you and Frostbite have all called it the Spirit World. Why?"
"The long and short of it," Clockwork said, gesturing to the continent around them. "Is that a spirit was born in this world, this dimension, without any pre-existence beyond their preincarnations." Danny opened his mouth to ask about reincarnation but opted for taking another bite when Clockwork held a finger to their lips. "A ghost, regardless of what world or planet they came from, is a being that died traumatically and was given a second chance at life by the Spirit Mother. Some cannot remember their past lives and deaths, like skulker who was blown to bits by the land mine of his greatest rival." The image of a man with the same build as Skulker flashed through Danny's head, the following image making him regret the cookies in his mouth. "Others cannot forget, no matter how hard they try."
"The relevance it has to the situation at hand, Daniel, is the fact that halfas are not a half ghost as most believe them to be." Danny quirked a brow at that, slowly putting down the third to last cookie on the plate. "You are a half spirit. This is why you are able to grow in power so quickly, and why you can deviate from a path provided by an obsession. Even Vlad can rise above his inner demon if pointed in the right direction.
"What better place for a new race to rise than in the place where the first Spirit kingdom fell?" Danny took a step back and sat down on air, taking a few breaths to help digest what he was being told. Clockwork, being rather polite in their revelation, waited patiently for Danny to speak up.
"So, I'm supposed to bring the halfas here so that they can learn about their powers in a safe, abandoned environment while trying to avoid knocking down all the nice scarred history around here? Clockwork, this place is miles away from my place alone, how am I gonna convince these people to drop everything in their lives and fly through an alien dimension to a continent torn away by a war to learn about powers that were thrust upon them?"
"Search the halls Daniel, you shall find the answers in exploration." They held up their staff and cobalt light covered the artifact. "I shall point you in the right direction, since you've been so polite while I told my story. Ex tempore. Redde." Those last words echoed with power and as the end of the staff met the ground, blue light burst outwards, sweeping over the whole room and out through the palace. When Danny opened his eyes, the room was different.
The damage from the ancient battle had been erased, the only sign that it had been there at all the ice that had stood for millennia, apparently untouched by Clockwork's power. The floor and walls were smooth, seats lined the circle of symbols and a table stood between them. The walls were six rich colors that blended seemingly at random all throughout, forming captivating patterns. Above the doors that lead out of the central room were symbols like the ones on the ground, and Danny found a blue holographic arrow pointing towards the quill symbol, but no Clockwork. "Well, that's a clue if I've ever seen one…" Picking up the arrow, since there was little chance he couldn't, Danny trekked further into the palace that still echoed the wear of war.
Once she had gotten down how to stay on a relatively straight flight path, Febe made it to the city walls within around fifteen minutes. She thanked the gods that she had found the gates as well, because with how large the city was from above, it couldn't have been less than two hours worth of searching if she had to check the whole perimeter. Apparently, thanking the gods woke up lion statues, since a pair of seven meters tall, bronze statues resting at the sides of the golden gate doors opened their eyes and rose to their feet. Both roared at the young spirit and one strode closer to sniff at her, Febe's body froze. That paralyzing fear shut down her muscles, mind and flight control sending her falling onto the sand which felt slightly more comfortable than hitting a brick wall. The lioness' twitching nose loomed over her head.
Whatever test they had been giving her, she must have passed. The lionesses sat back on their haunches and the golden gates slowly swung open. If she was still breathing, Febe would have sighed in relief. The moment of calm was brief, however, as a pair of violet furred cheetahs that were the size of a pickup truck with blue dots padded out and stared down at her. After a full minute of staring, one cheetah leaned down with its maw open, and as Febe turned to run away, snatched her up by the back of her collar like a mother would her kitten. The pair of felines turned into the city and started walking, the one with its mouth free rumbling out words, officially freaking Febe out. "You shall be presented before lady Seshat."
Invader Johnny: I'm not sure why you felt that way, but thanks for tellin me friend.
KingStarfire: As i said in The Summoning, my clockwork is genderless unless you count Time as a gender. as for all those halfa suggestions... one of those people i chose, but i'm not saying whom. i will say that i'm not using any of those but i like your ideas.
OK SO, Febe isn't dead dead, she's a halfa. but, ya know, Danny fell back into the human world, and thus went back to human form defaultly. Febe woke up on the other side, with ectoplasm surrounding her. I have fun things to do here in this story, and I've already chosen the people who will be halfas. some of them anyways.
HAIL TO PHANTOM, THE HEAD OF HALFAS!