Chapter 8: A Kingdom in the Sky

Alrighty then. Who is ready for the longest chapter EVER! Dun dun dun….DUN! Sadly, I'm not. After this chapter I have no more chapters written up. Sure, I mean I do have a plot all made out but now I have to come up with stuff creatively and quickly instead of typing it from my notebook. Good golly gosh how is this going to turn out?

Ah well anyways, behold chapter 8!

P.S. – I've changed things up a bit. Whenever a thought is being (….um) thought, all of the words in that sentence (or fragment depending on how well I write) will be italicized. I will still state that it's a character thinking, but I just wanted to make it a little easier on the mind for everyone.


Pit & Tiffany

The portal was different this time. It didn't feel like I was being sucked down. Instead it felt like I was floating up. The higher we got the harder it was for me to breathe. As soon as I started gasping, the angel boy turned around with a blank expression. He obviously had no idea what was going on.

"Are we by any chance *gasp* going up really high? Like *gasp* as high as a mountain?" I asked him while catching my breath every three seconds.

"Actually," he said. Before he could finish we both saw a bright light. The angel ran towards it while dragging me with him. This light was a lot brighter than before. I had to squeeze my eyes shut and look away because it was so intense. My hair twirled around my face as a huge gust of wind blew at me.

"You can open your eyes now." I heard the angel; I just didn't want to obey him. It was still very bright and my eyes had to slowly adjusting themselves. I blinked several times until I could finally see him standing in front of me. As I looked behind him I realized that there was blue everywhere and that we were standing on . . . clouds? I gasped again from the lack of oxygen. "Are you alright?" the angel asked me.

"Where *gasp* are we?" I questioned him.

"Skyworld. Where else? Hey! You never answered my question…. and why are you catching your breath so much?"

"How about *gasp* I put it this way," I began. "I'm only human. My body has *gasp* a hard time surviving *gasp* at these heights," I proclaimed while waving my arms around.

"Hmm, that doesn't sound too good, but sadly this is the safest place for you to be at the moment. So your body is just gonna have to adjust."

". . . well that could take awhile," I mumbled to myself.

"What was that?" he asked.

I began laughing and replied, "Oh nothing *cough*cough*." It was starting to get even harder for me to breathe. "Wow, and this is the safest place for me to be? If Akhos doesn't kill me, the lack of oxygen will," I thought to myself. Now I was starting to feel light-headed. I fell to my knees coughing, while catching myself with my arms outstretched in front of me.

"Whoa! Hey, don't die on me! We still need you here! I have a lot of questions that need answers!"

"You need me? *cough*cough* For what?" Instead of answering me, he made light appear in his hands. Then he shifted it over to his left hand and clutched it, making a closed fist. After a second he opened up his hand again. The light was now brighter and had a soft look to it. In a word, it was pretty.

"Can you roll onto your back?" he asked patiently. I nodded a little and did what he told me to do. I slowly rolled over, falling onto my back with a faint pat against the clouds. Black dots danced around in front of my eyes, so I could barely see what he was doing. He was acting so calm like he'd been trained to do…..whatever it is he's trying to do.

Quickly he got down on one knee and knelt over me. He put his hand that held the light over my mouth and nose, while placing the other one on my forehead. "Now try to breathe normally." His instructions seemed odd to me, but I did what he asked. I inhaled the air under his hand and it felt like water mixed with air going down my throat. After I started to breathe normally again, he took his hands off of me.

"I don't believe it. I'm not coughing anymore!" I yelled with a smile.

"Yep, I just gave you some artificial air to help you breathe until your body adjusts," the angel stated with a returned smile.

"Is that what that light was?"

"Yes, but I had to form it into air because of the…." He looked up at me with a thoughtful expression. "It's complicated."

I stood up gradually and asked, "I won't need you to do that again, right? Because all of that coughing made my throat hurt."

"No," answered. "You won't, but we are going to be walking for a little bit, so you never know." I scrunched my face at the thought of walking again.

"So where are we going?" I asked as we started our long walk. He turned to face me with a look of pure excitement. Whatever place we were heading to, it must be amazing.

"Angel Land!" he shouted.

"Let me guess," I began. "Angels live there." It didn't sound like a question, but he answered it anyways.

"Yep, they sure do! Maybe I'll have time to show you to some of my friends. They haven't seen a human before." He was grinning from ear to ear.

"Alright but before you introduce me to your friends, I think it's only fair you tell me your name first," I said giggling.

"Oh... Hi, I'm Pit. Captain of Palutena's army, or I used to be." He looked saddened but shook it off and continued to talk anyways. "It's a pleasure to meet you." He extended his arm for a handshake. I stood there in shock.

"My name is Tiffany," I replied as I shook his hand. "There's nothing too significant about me," I laughed. Pit looked like he was the one in shock now. "Wonder why that is. Does he know something about me that I don't?" I thought to myself. "So who is this Palutena?"

"You don't know her?" he asked very loudly.

"No! Why should I?" I yelled back trying to mimic him.

"I suppose not. You're not from around here." He turned away from me and looked down at the…clouds. "She is, er, was my Goddess. I was a part of her royal guard so I protected her most of the time. Whenever I was given a quest or mission, she was guarded by the others in the squad."

"Royal guard? You must be either pretty high class, or very important to this Palutena."

"I suppose so. That's what this gold pin means anyways," he said pointing at the shiny piece of metal on his toga. It didn't have too much detail to it. It was just a circular pin with a gold rim and red center. "So!" Pit broke the silence. "That move that you did against that demon was amazing! Where did you learn how to do that?"

"In Tae-Kwon-Do class, but it only lasted two weeks so I didn't learn much." I laughed. For some reason Pit was looking at me with a serious face.

"Good thing you learned that move, or else you wouldn't be here right now." He was right. When Akhos threatened to kill me, Pit looked defeated. "I had completely run out of ideas once he held that knife to your throat. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to save you. My mission would have been a failure." His mission? "His goddess Palutena must've sent him to come get me… but why? Why am I so important to an angel and his goddess?" I thought to myself.

"So since we are heading to Angel Land does that mean I will be meeting this goddess of yours?" I asked curiously. Pit was taking his time to answer me.

"….No, you won't. A few years ago she was killed by a demon named Ahriman. He was negotiating with her. It was over who would take control of Angel Land. Of course he wanted to, but Palutena wouldn't let him. Then he had to bring that human child into it."

"Wait, a human?"

"Yeah, a little girl. I still remember what she looked like too. She had light brown hair with a bow tying it partially together. And she had this little black and white polka dot dress with yellow and pink bows on one shoulder. Her eyes looked so big and sad. She was scared. Scared of what Ahriman would do to her. Then Palutena talked to her and got her to calm down. Palutena asked her for her name, but I'm having such a hard time trying to remember that one detail. Gah! Why can't I remember?" he yelled to himself.

"It's okay, I'm sure you'll remember."

"Yeah, I hope so." We continued to walk forward after our long conversation.


Pit & Tiffany

Things were starting to get awkward after a while due to the silence, but then I saw something up ahead.

"Hey Pit, where does that path go?" I asked while pointing at the white brick path leading to a tiny dot in the distance.

"That is the path that we need to follow," Pit explained. "Yep, we are only 5 minutes away from town." As we continued walking, the little city in the distance got bigger. A lot bigger. It looked like it had a golden gate, kind of like Heaven, as the entrance, along with being surrounded by tall brick walls. I suppose it was to protect Palutena, but I could be wrong.

Ever since I met Pit, I'd completely forgotten about the burn on my wrist. By now, it had turned into a scar that went from my palm to my wrist. "Hey Pit? What was that thing you shot at Akhos?"

"Who's Akhos?" Oops, I'd forgotten to tell Pit about him.

"The demon that kidnapped me and then tried to kill me," I answered right away since I knew he was going to ask me that.

"Oh! Okay, well it was just a light arrow," he said matter-of-factly. "Why do you ask?"

"I was just wondering….could your light arrows do anything other than cut people?"

"Hmm," he began. "All I can think of is it could also kill people if shot in the right area of someone's body like the -" He wasn't able to finish due to my interruption.

"Heart?" I finished for him. "Dude, I think everyone knows that," I said giggling. "What I really meant was, could your arrows…. burn things?"

"Oh yeah! They can do that!" he yelled as if he'd just forgotten something and remembered what it was. Then he mumbled to himself saying, "How could I forget that?" He looked down and put a curled finger up to his mouth; the symbolic sign of a person in deep thought. After a few seconds of pondering to himself, Pit looked up at me and narrowed his eyes. "How did you know my arrows can do that?"

"Umm, lucky guess." I didn't want him to know he'd burned me, so I lied. His eyes were still narrowed at me.

"Akhos was holding onto your left wrist, right?" Crap, this guy is a lot smarter than he looks.

"Y-yes," I stuttered. "Why do you ask such a silly question?" Boy did I feel nervous. Now I knew how ants felt when they saw an anteater.

"May I see your wrist?" Pit asked sincerely. I looked behind him and saw that we were right in front of the main gates to Angel Land.

"Hey look!" I exclaimed while pointing at the big city behind Pit. "We reached the gates." I smiled, hoping that he would forget the questions that he had asked me earlier.

"Halt! Who goes there?" shouted an angel from a tall lookout tower. This angel was a tall, muscular guy. Pit turned around abruptly and stood up straight and tall.

"Pit! Leader of the Angel Land Military, and chairman for the army. I am returning from a mission that I had gone off to complete." He continued to look up at the man in the watch tower, showing no fear.

"Who is she?" said the girl angel in the other watch tower just across from the first one. She nodded her head towards me so that Pit would know who she was talking about.

Pit turned to me, smiled, and said, "She is my mission." My cheeks began turning red at his comment, making me smile. Then he turned back to face the two angels and continued. "Julius had shown me an image of her being attacked by a demon so I went to help." The watch tower angels looked over at one another and nodded.

"You both have permission to enter. Welcome back to Angel Land Pit," the girl angel stated cheerfully. When they weren't busy doing business, angels seemed to be very nice and welcoming around here. I could get used to this. As Pit and I approached the entrance to the town, the gates slowly opened, unveiling a beautiful white and gold city. I couldn't believe my own eyes. It was so pretty I had to blink several times to make sure it was real instead of some mirage, even if we were nowhere near a desert.

"Amazing isn't it?" I looked up at Pit to see him looking at me with a smile.

"Yeah it sure is," I said speechless. I looked back at the city in front of me and tried to take in as much of it as I could. There were old fashioned buildings that looked like they were built back in Greek times. There were also many angels flying and walking from place to place with smiles on each of their faces. As Pit and I started walking through the town, I noticed a statue of a woman with long hair holding a large scepter and shield in the middle of a plaza. She looked beautiful with her sensitive smile and long dress that had many intricate patterns on it. "Hey Pit, is that Palutena?" I asked him curiously while pointing at the statue.

"Yes it is," he responded with a straight face. "This statue was built in honor of her death. It's a way for us to say thank you for her sacrifice to save Angel Land." He looked forlornly at the statue for a few minutes, and then started to cry.

"Oh, I see." I gave him a few minutes to himself. In the meantime, angels were looking at me with weird looks. What? Had they never seen an angel grieve for his goddess? Or was it me? Surely they've seen a human before…..right?"

"We better get going. I know someone that may want to meet you." He sniffled a few times and began walking towards a large building just a couple of blocks away from the statue.

"Okay." I didn't know what to say to him at the moment. Instead I just followed him through the crowd.

As we approached what looked like the main hall, there were potted plants lining the pathway. This place was huge. It actually looked like a church more than a normal town hall. Stained glass windows rested in the white marble stone walls. They had pictures that depicted different people and battle scenes. The people looked like they were gods and goddesses due to the glowing outline each of them possessed. One of them even looked like Medusa from those old Greek legends that I'd learned about in my world history class. The doors were huge and made of this dark, smooth looking wood. Everything here was so well crafted. When Pit and I reached the huge doors, I didn't even notice the soldiers standing off to the sides.

"Halt!" one of them yelled.

"Ahh!" That guy's yelling caused me to scream and jump at the same time. All of the angels looked over at me with scared and questioning eyes.

"Is she alright?" one of the soldiers asked Pit.

"Yeah, she's fine. She just didn't see you guys," he answered with a laugh. Clearly he was over his dramatic moment.

"So Pit is she the human that Julius has been talking non-stop about?" the angel that shouted 'halt' asked. "He's been marching around in here ever since you flew down to the Overworld."

"Yes she is. May we go in?" Pit asked kindly.

"Of course!" both angels chorused. They turned around and opened the big, heavy looking doors to reveal a very large room decorated with potted plants, sculptures, and paintings. The lighting consisted of three large chandeliers holding what looked like 50 candles each. "That must take a long time to get this room lit up," I thought to myself. As Pit and I walked in, we heard mumbling coming from a corner in the room. Way down at the far end was an angel, looking out into the plaza of Angel Land.

"Ahem," Pit said trying to get the angel's attention. Immediately the angel turned around and saw both Pit and me. His eyes got big when they landed on me. "I take it this was the guy Pit said wanted to meet me?" I thought.

"Pit! You have returned! And you have brought the human with you. How splendid!" He was yelling so loudly that I swear all of the angels outside heard him and looked up at the main hall. The angel quickly ran up to me and stopped just a few feet away. I was afraid he was almost going to run me over.

"Amazing," he stated. He was acting as if though I was a science experiment.

"Can I help you?" I asked with a smile.

"My dear, my name is Julius," he replied while holding my hand with two of his own. "I am in charge of the education department of Angel Land. It is wonderful to have finally met you."


Okay I admit it! I had fun writing this chapter. I know several of the instances don't make sense. That's what I was actually going for. And yes, I ALSO know that I use "…."a lot. That's just how I write. I use them to prove my point that people are either thinking of what to say next, or something is just so significantly awkward that it has to be said in that format. Whew! Long explanation!

Lastly, please review! I would say R and R, but let's be practical here. If you've made it this far in the chapter, you have undoubtedly already read it. So….. (Hehehe)…..REVIEW! Please.

Next chapter: Evil Is Rising

See ya next time (which I hope won't be too long of a wait from now)!