Some time after defeating the opponent Leodore gave to him before vanishing, Jack was found by the others meditating outside of the fortress in ruin. His eyes were as he sat with his legs crossed on top of a large rock.
"So, what are we supposed to now?" Nick asked.
Judy started to reply, "I honestly don't have a clue. I think that we oughta-"
Just then, Jack's eyes suddenly opened and he released a gasp for air that startled the others that were all now looking over at him. "I… I think I-"
"You had another vision during your meditation, I presume," Lord Bogo said, finishing the rabbit's words.
Still looking as if he were still a little bit flustered, the buck replied, "I did. I think I might have seen the place that they took Skye to."
"Tell me what you saw," the cape buffalo beckoned.
Jack tried to give Lord Bogo and the others as good of a description as he could. "There wasn't much too see, really," he said informatively. "It was mostly dark, but I could see that the walls looked like they were formed by rock, almost like a cavern. But in the middle there was the huge circular lockup, and it looked nothing like the ones you would see in quod. And it looked like it was suspended over some sort of chasm, with these large spikes at the bottom. It looked as if someone would be impaled if they fell into the gorge."
"And Skye was inside this lockup you speak of?"
"Yes, Lord Bogo. She was inside of it."
"Did you happen to hear anyone say anything within this vision of yours?"
"Not much. They only thing I remember was someone I couldn't see muttering to the vixen. I heard something that sounded like, 'No one would be able to hear you cry from this far in the east.'"
"So it seems she is being held somewhere in the far east portion of Outworld."
"Okay," Nick chimed in, "so we've already stated the obvious. There's just one problem: Where the heck in the east is this specific place he thinks he's seeing?"
Lord Bogo looked over at the fox, pointing a hoof out something way out in the distance that looked miniscule where they stood. "Do you see that one tall building out that way, Nicholas?" he asked.
Nick looked over in the direction the buffalo was pointing in, unable to see much. "Yeah, but not too well," he replied. "Had I known I was going to spot stuff in the distance, I would have made sure to have my old binoculars from my days in the Ranger Scouts. You mean that steeple-looking thing out there, right?"
"Right," Lord Bogo responded with a nod of his head. "It is a good possibility that that is the place she remains captive. I can see if it is possible to transport us near enough to where we must go, so the venture there is lesser in length."
"Uh, I'm not thinkin' this where we're supposed t' be," Nick said. "You oughta make sure that inner GPS of yours is set to go to the right destination next time."
After Lord Bogo had teleported them all, they ended finding themselves in some sort of dimly-light yet spacious hallway. From the door that remained partially open a few feet away from them, they could see some sort of orangish glow coming from the place the entry lead to. They could also feel heat coming from the other room and into the hall, as if there were sudden strike of humidity lingering in this one spot.
"Where are we?" Judy said, being the first to question where exactly they had teleported to.
"I am afraid I know not the answer to that," Lord Bogo responded. "It seems my abilities of teleportation are somehow lessened here in Outworld."
"We may as well see what's beyond that door," Travis said. "Somebody already left it half-open."
Lord Bogo was the first to walk over towards the entryway, pushing the large door fully opening and gesturing for the others to follow him. One by one, they walked over to where the buffalo was, only to realize for themselves that where the hallway they were leaving behind lead to was a lot more capacious than they presumed it would be.
The gigantic room had worried heat circulating around it, coming from molten metal they could spot in the back. In the left and right corners of the space were a series of weapons, which they could only assume were crafted right here. And one of the walls, right in the middle, hung a large circular symbol depicting a dragon's head.
"What's the big dragon sign over there?" Nick inquired, pointing over to it.
"I've seen that symbol in some historical texts I've read," Jack answered. "I believe it said that it supposed to be a depiction of one of the Elder Gods in his purest form."
"Halt!" someone unknown to them cried out.
From another doorway in the room came a wolf with a gray coat of thick fur, blotched with white and beige. He quickly marched over to where all of them were, glaring at them with a look that told them he was in a dead serious mood. Following his exact footsteps was another wolf, whose fur was purely white from head to tail. He joined up at where the other wolf was standing, and the two of them, almost in sync with one another, took defensive fighting stances.
The one wolf informed, "This area is only to be occupied by the crafters and metalsmiths that work here. You are all trespassing and must leave immediately."
"We'll fight you off if we have to," the white-furred wolf beside him chimed in.
Nick looked at the two canids, and then over at Judy, who had now walked over and joined him on his side. "Okay, Carrots," he said to the bunny, "you take care of the one on the left and I'll handle the one on the right."
After Judy responded with a nod, both the fox and rabbit assumed fighting stances. The two wolves stared back at them, ready to face them. With that, both of them ran up to them and individually started to fight, with Nick facing the white wolf and Judy facing the one with the grayish coat of fur.
Nick glared at who he was now going to have to face, swinging his left paw over to try and deliver a jab. This was blocked, however, by the wolf guard, and responded to with a kick to the leg. The vulpine disregarded it, crouching the moment the canid went to send a punch in his direction.
Nick got back up from the stone floor and back on his paws, taking a few steps back. The white wolf followed, managing to clip the fox's shoulder. The tod, though, responded with a powerful kick made with a wide sweep of his leg. Upon receiving it, the guard let out the faintest of yelps and quickly regained a hold of himself.
The wolf ran back a couple of spaces, running back up to the fox two seconds afterwards. As best as he could, though, Nick defended himself from the jabs that came his way. However, he didn't manage to block the low kick he ended up taking.
The vulpine stumbled for the briefest of moments before getting closer to the wolf and hitting him with two powerful jabs. When who he had managed to strike went to send him a high kick, however, Nick huddled down. When the canid's leg was down after not kicking at anything, the fox bolted right back up with an arm bent and hit him with a thunderous uppercut. The force of it had the white wolf stumbling backwards, nearly hitting the floor below him.
"Toasty!" Nick remarked out loud.
"What?" Judy said loudly from the other side of the room, overhearing the fox as she continued to fight off the other wolf in front of her.
"Just a little catchphrase that slipped outta me in the heat of the moment," the tod called back to the rabbit.
"What does that even mean?" she said back.
Nick shrugged his shoulders and looked over at her. Ignoring her inquiry, he continued, "Now that I think of it, I could possibly make that a thing. I could make that something I exclaim after a brutal uppercut or something like-"
"Nick, look behind you!" Judy interrupted, her head turned over towards him and a paw pointing over to him.
Hesitantly, the fox turned around, just in time to see the wolf back up on his paws and ready to wing a punch in his direction. Nick's instincts quickly kicked, and he swooped down to avoid the blow and went to hit the canid with a kick near his chest. The wolf blocked it, stepping a couple paces back.
In the corner of his vision, Nick could see that Judy was successfully managing to take out the other guard with a series of kicks. Turning his attention back to the guard he was facing, he saw that the wolf was staring at him with fists made and teeth bared. The vulpine, however, wasn't scared, and came running up towards him.
As he ran forward, the expression on the wolf's muzzle immediately changed, going from that looked determined to fight to one that indicated he wasn't fully prepared. Only one of the two powerful jabs the fox sent in his direction was actually blocked. Nick then turned in a circular motion and delivered another roundhouse kick to who he was facing.
The force of it had the wolf stumbled right on his back, and he ended up bumping his head directly on the shelf of a nearby stand. On the very top of the stand, a large bowl made out of ceramic teetered where it had been sitting, and ended up falling and landing directly over the white-furred canid's head.
"Ha," he said to himself. "Now I've heard of the Cone of Shame, but never heard anything about the Bowl of Shame."
As he walked over, he saw that the other wolf that the rabbit was just defending herself against was on the ground as well.
"Let's get out of here, Carrots," Nick said to Judy.
The fox and rabbit quickly made their way for the door that the guards previously emerged from. Jack, Travis, and Lord Bogo followed them as they all made their way to another vacant hallway.
"I have a sense that we are closer to where we must go than we think," the buffalo of the group said, informing the others.
As they all disappeared from the large weapon crafting room, the gray wolf guard, from where currently laid called to the other one, "Gary! Get up! The boss is gonna have our tails for this." His voice sounded as if he were a bit tired from what had occurred.
The white wolf got up from where he was, the bowl still over his head. Due to it completely snuffing out his sense of vision, he had his paws out in front of him and was cluelessly tottering forward. Grunting at what had just occurred to him, the white wolf muttered to himself, "I do not like this Bowl of Shame."
"And get that damned thing off of your head!" the canid guard on the other side of the room cried back. "You look like a dullard."
"I don't think I can get it off, Larry. Where are you?"
"Damn the gods," came from the sighing, frustrated voice of the gray wolf. He slowly picked himself up and lifted his head slowly, breaking into a distressed howl.
Some Time Later…
"I'm not liking the vibes this place is sendin' me," Nick said, shaking his head as he continued to walk up to the tall construction that stood a good distance from him.
"This is the place Lord Bogo believes matches the description of my vision," Jack replied. "If that is what he says, I believe we must listen to him. He is a god, after all."
The vulpine continued, "Regardless, though, you gotta admit that this place gives you at least the tiniest case of the creeps. I mean, the building we're approaching looks like it would go to ruin if there was a bad enough storm, and there's probably mammals for us to arrive so they can try to kill us." He let out a deep sigh. "It's like this one sci-fi movie I was in called The Distracted Globe. It was about this huge virtual reality world with a whole bunch of-"
"What does this show you were in have to deal with these circumstances, fox?" the striped rabbit interrupted.
"Well," Nick replied, "if you would have let me finish, I would have said that this place looks like the one dark part of the movie. Also, I have a name other than just 'fox', you know. It's Nick."
"I would advice that we keep our voices down as much as possible right now," Lord Bogo said. "We may speak but not too loudly. It is more than possible that there is someone hiding to keep intruders away from this place."
Nick nodded as he and the others kept walking forward. In the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something shadowy skitter by. He turned his head in that direction, but nothing that was capable of casting a figure was present. The only thing on his side was a partially-fractured statue that depicted a gargoyle with a frightening face. The fox remembered reading somewhere that gargoyles were supposed to offer protection, but the look of the one carved in the stone looked like it would do the opposite if it were a living creature.
He quickly put concerns regarding something following them away. Probably just my imagination, he thought.
A few spaces from the carving of the gargoyle stood an effigy that was a bit larger. Depicted in weathered stone was the figure of a thin feline with some sort of mask shielding his face. Underneath it was a block that had a series of symbols engraved upon it. What they said was beyond Nick.
"Who is he?" the fox muttered to himself. "It's good bad I can't read whatever that says."
As Jack walked up to where the vulpine was standing, he paused a moment and started to read the symbols. "I understand what was written here," he said. "I was taught to read and write a second language at an early age. It says, 'Within this territory a cougar once stood. Shielded by the mask he wore was a disfigured face, so frightening that it scared the soul out of any mammal that gazed upon it. And there's a name down below that writing; it looks like the cougar's name was Clawbal."
Nick shuddered. "Good thing he's not around now," he remarked. "I wouldn't wanna have a run-in with that guy. I'd prefer my soul to stay in my body, if ya ask me."
They continued to walk along the path, approaching the construction Lord Bogo supposed who they needed to rescue was being held in. Just then, the fox swore he saw the same shadowiness sprint past his field of vision a second time. He turned to get a glimpse, but nothing was there. Just like the previous time.
"You okay, Nick?" Judy asked from behind him, making him turn around.
The tod replied, "Y-Yeah, I'm fine. I just thought I saw somethin', but I guess my mind's just playing tricks on me. Y'now, it's kinda-"
He was interrupted by a thick cloud of black smoke that unexpectedly puffed up before them. He jumped back after being startled by the sudden occurrence, and the others behind him looked at what bracingly appeared before them with looks of shock.
The cloud disappeared like a vapor, revealing a slender female lion dressed in a flowing blue cloak. What she was wearing, in Nick's mind, looked like she was straight out of an advertisement for an international vacation.
"Who are you to wander around these parts without invitation?" she boomed to them.
I knew it, Nick thought. I knew that someone was stalking us when I was seein' those shadows.
After only receiving silence, she bellowed, "Answer my question! Who do you think you are stumbling down this part of the land?"
Nick turned away from the feline and over to the others behind him. "Guys," he said, "you go and help who you need to free. I'll take care of this."
Lord Bogo, Travis, and Judy, who had a look of concern on her muzzle, all teleported away from where they stood behind him and over to the entrance of where they needed to go.
Turning his attention back to the lioness, Nick saw that she had an angered expression written across her face. However, it quickly changed to a neutral smile.
"Alright, now who are you exactly?" the fox asked. "And just why are you snoopin' around these parts?"
"I am Maura," she snarled sternly in reply, "and I was sent by Leodore to keep sharp-tongued mammals like you away here. You have no business strolling here or anywhere near this steeple."
"Yeah, well I'm already here, so…"
The lioness grunted under her breath. "You are nothing but a fool to speak to me with such a disrespectful attitude. You are unaware of the supernatural abilities that I-"
"So let me get somethin' straight," Nick interrupted. "You're a witch?"
The look on Maura's face gave evidence that she was not going to be tested by the fox any longer. "I have been gifted with capabilities your mind cannot handle. And for years I have laid six feet under the dirt before my resurrection by-"
"So you're a zombie witch?" the fox remarked. "How'd they bring ya back to life, then? Did you have to wait a couple hundred years for a virgin to light a black candle? 'Cause I believe I've seen a movie on this-"
"That's enough!" Maura exclaimed at the top of her lungs. She flung her paws in an outward motion, causing the stones on both of her sides to shatter into bits.
Nick flinched and put his paws over his face, shielding himself from any potential fragments that might fly in his direction. "Okay…" he said with a now-frightened tone. "That just happened."
"Your imbecility has left me no other choice but to ensure your lesson is learned," Maura said. "And I know what to do."
The female lion slowly stepped forward, making a motion with her paws as she crept closer towards Nick. Appearing in her left paw was the bloom of a lavender-colored flower. "Does this have any significance to you?" she asked.
Utter shock overcame the vulpine as he looked at the flower she was holding. An aster flower, he thought. Those were my mother's favorite. How does-
"How do I know that?" Maura muttered, putting on a grin.
"D-Did you just… hear my thoughts?" the fox said, stunned. "H-How?"
"Did I not mention to you that I possess abilities you cannot understand? I can see into the mind of anyone, and so far I can see that you're tormented by some very oppressing moments that have occurred."
Nick didn't want to hear about it. Taking a fighting position, he said to the lioness, "I'll take you down if I must."
Maura chuckled under her breath. "Is that so? If that is what your wish to do, then I must say that you will be making a terrible mistake."
The vulpine ignored her words. Grunting under his breath, he went to send a kick to the sorceress, but she blocked it before it could reach her. She made the motion of swatting something away from her with a paw, and as she did so Nick found himself being flung to the ground a few inches to the right.
He quickly got up and brushed off the dust he got on him. He tried to get a running start, but Maura suddenly vanished in a smoky cloud before he could reach her. She reappeared unknowingly behind him and ended up nearly knocking him down to the ground again.
She went to deliver a high kick to him, but he got down to avoid it in time. Just as he went to deliver an uppercut, she swiftly ducked away. She teleported herself away from Nick, and he went over to where she currently stood, anticipating him to come forward. As he sprinted up towards her, she stiffly held out both paws and boomed some sort of phrase. Right then and there, the tod found himself being blinded by darkness.
The blackness quickly faded, being replaced with new scenery. He wasn't anywhere near the steeple anymore. In fact, where he was seemed quite familiar to him. There was green grass surrounding him, and to his left were some garden boxes constructed from some old wood.
Wait, Nick thought. Is this my old backyard from when I was a kit?
He turned his head to the side to see his father, seated at a small table with a newspaper in one paw and a wooden pencil in the other. Nick remembered him always doing the crossword puzzle inside the paper they got on occasion; he always said that it was to keep his brain sharp, unlike some other folks in his family.
Turning back to where the garden ones remained, he saw an image appearing before him. On bent knees was his mother in gloves and a sunhat, digging a small hole into the soil. Following that was a kit who looked no older than the age of six running up to her. It was him, and this was all a memory of his replaying before him. Like all of this was on some life-like film projector.
"You miss her dearly, don't you?" the voice of that lioness echoed around him.
"What's the meaning of this?" Nick muttered, looking around for where Maura was. She wasn't there despite him being able to hear her.
"This is your memory, and I am merely showing you a manifestation of it. You wish you could see your mother again, happy and healthy like she was here. I sense that you still carry the load of the day you learned the illness that plagued worsened."
The scenery of his old backyard faded, being replaced with somewhere entirely different. Where he now stood was another familiar location: a filmset. And one that was quite recognizable, to be exact.
Nick saw himself walking over to a green screen, wearing a headset, a gray flight jacket covering up an orange jumpsuit, and tanker boots. To the right was another actor, a wolf who had a white line of his fur cut in a mohawk style. The otter with a clapperboard came over to where they were standing, and they soon started to recite their lines. But when it came time for Nick to recite his next one, he paused midway and suddenly walked off of the set. The wolf actor asked if he was doing okay, and the director of the film in progress pondered why he stormed off in the middle of that take.
Nick remembered this moment, and he watched it all unfolding in front of him once again. Prior to that moment, he had gotten negative news about his mother's condition. Her condition was getting worse despite the efforts from the doctors.
The memory playing in front suddenly shifted, the views changing to blank white room. The hospital room Nick was in when his mother was reaching her final moments of life. The vividness of what he was observing made it look as if he were reliving that sad point in life all over again. The beeping of the monitor next to the bed his mother rested in sent a shiver down his spine. He remembered, in that moment, giving his beloved mother one last hug, which started to weaken as she told him she loved him. As her breath came to a halt, that was when his tears could no longer be contained.
"No!" Nick exclaimed as he watched the moment unfold once again.
Within a flash, the memory of he lifeless hospital room dissipated, and he found himself back outside the steeple again, the damned lioness staring back at him.
"Life is a cruel, cruel creature," Maura said. "It can cast troubling things in our direction that make us question why it happened to us. I am no anomaly to this standard. But that is in the past, and now I am in a new time where I can alter the course of life for an entire realm." She broke out into laughter and pointed towards the fox, making him shudder. "The dawn of a new era will commence when Outworld takes over."
"No!" Nick exclaimed, determined once again to take down this member of Leodore's team of mammals. "I can't allow that to happen!"
"Enjoy your time while you have it," the lioness beckoned with a tightened fist. "Your hourglasses will soon be running out. I'll be back."
With that, Maura lifted her paws in an upward motion. As she did this, a vigorous gust of wind suddenly blew in the vulpine's direction. The force of it was so strong that it ended up knocking him down. In a cloud smoke the lioness had vanished, leaving Nick feeling perturbed but determined to fight off the evil forces that were threatening the existence of the world as he knew it.
I pray that who the heck they're lookin' for in that steeple is in there, the fox thought. Hopefully one more mammal on our side gives us a better chance at stopping this whole "threat to the world" thing. I better join the others and see what's happening.
Much to Jack's surprise, the spot where Skye had been imprisoned matched the details of his vision completely. For the briefest of moments, he had ensure that what he was seeing was in the waking life and that he hadn't been part of an extremely large vision he was having.
The sound of someone struggling made his ears perk up, and he gestured for the others to follow him as walked over to where who he had been searching for was. The arctic vixen was inside of the circular lockup, and it truly was suspended over a small sea of spikes that would easily puncture anything that fell upon them.
"We're here to get you out of this awful place!" Jack cried.
The vulpine looked up with an expression of great concern. Shaking her head, she said, "It's a trap! The guards will kill you if they get a hold of you!"
Just then, an unusual snarling sound arose from the jackrabbit's left. He quickly turned around just as a large figure jumped out of the darkness and made itself present. What he saw was unlike anything that the buck had ever seen—or probably would ever see, for that matter—in his life.
The figure's body was large and broad, with grayish-green coloration and bony scales upon him. It had a long, rounded snout, stocky webbed feet with claws upon them, and a long, powerful-looking tail.
A fear-inducing grunt came from the right, and Jack turned away from what he was seeing and to where he had heard the noise.
"Watch out!" Skye shouted. "They'll get you!"
Emerging from that corner was a creature just like the one his left. As it flickered its tail, he saw that it had some sort of spiked metal mace attached to the end of it.
"Lord Bogo?" the striped buck asked, turning over to the cape buffalo that was also now ready to defend himself. "What are these things?"
"They are reptilian," Lord Bogo replied. "Their kind is only existent here and not in any other realm."
The bovine produced an energetic bolt, ready to cast at the guards that were now approaching him, Jack, and Travis.
"Whatever they are," Jack said, "we must fight them off."
Author's Note: Hey there, readers! Sorry about the cliffhanger I decided to end this chapter with. Hope you enjoyed it nonetheless, though. I'll admit that writing parts of it was a little bit tough, especially the fight scene that took place in the weapon-crafting room.
Anyone who's played the Mortal Kombat games might've been able to spot the little "Toasty!" reference I threw in that part. Another reference made to the games was when they were reading the plaque of the statue of Clawbal, who is the Zootopia-fied (if that's even a word) version of a masked fighter named Kabal.
There's also a few more references hidden in here as well. If anybody managed to catch the little nods made to Up, Ready Player One, and Star Fox... excellent... *muttered in the deep, ominous voice of the Mortal Kombat announcer*
There's another one that I didn't mention, but that I will leave to be deciphered.
Also, I know that reptiles don't exactly exist in the Zootopia universe, but because our characters are in Outworld, an entirely different realm, I decided to throw them in there near the end. Ergo, the guards keeping watch over where Skye was found are crocodiles.
Anywho, that's enough jibber-jabbering out of me! As always, let me know what your thoughts were on this. Your thoughts, good and bad, are always gladly appreciated. Also, want to give a big "Thank You" to every single one of you who have been reading this and my other stories I've written. It means a lot to know y'all are enjoying them! :)
'Til next time, everyone! :D