She was right there in front of him. The dragon that had eluded him since the beginning of school. She was a bit smaller than Swordfish, looked the same age, she had 5 scars that looked open, yet they weren't bleeding. Her eyes looked drained, like she had been through something horrible, but they had a sparkle to them. Her scales were still that pale green, and she was shaking, even though it wasn't that cold in the strange darkness.
"I'm Swordfish." Swordfish replied to her in a hushed whisper. "I've been looking for you for a long time." Vine stared at him, still shaking. "You- you were the… d-dragon. You were th-the other one." She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "The visitors li-like- liked you more." She finished.
Swordfish felt like lightning had struck him as all the memories came back to him, this time, clear and crisp. Cassriel had been the one that had things called "visitors" vote to kill either Swordfish or a Rainwing dragonet. He remembered the two hands shoot out of the walls of that horrible, strange room, and stab him. He remembered Cassriel smiling at him. "Hello, main character." Is what he had said. And then…
Swordfish's memory after that went right to getting woken up by Cedar on the second day. He remembered the first day of school, where there weren't any actual classes, but the strange room felt like it was in between those days. Even though that didn't make any sense.
Vine started to close her eyes again. Swordfish shook her awake again. "Do you know where we are?" Swordfish stammered. "N-no." She replied. "I don't know anything about myself except my name is Vine, and that weird… thing. In that room." Swordfish stared at her, searching her ears.
"What are y-you doing?" Vine asked. "Nothing." Swordfish replied, but his mind had made the connection. Not remembering anything other than your name. Isn't that exactly what happened to Mahogany, according to Cedar and Delta? Swordfish had been looking for an earring, like the one Mahogany had apparently worn, and Rattlesnake.
Swordfish helped Vine up. "Are you in pain?" He asked her. "No." she replied. "It's weird, I don't feel any pain. Even though these cuts are open." Swordfish sighed. More questions and no answers, but he wasn't complaining. The pain had been halted.
"Well, I'm Swordfish." Swordfish said. "I've been wrapped up in some weird stuff ever since I went to a place called Jade Mountain Academy. It's like a multi-tribe school." Swordfish was purposefully leaving lots of information out of his story because he did not know if he could trust Vine yet. "I kept hearing about a dragonet named Vine. Like she should have been with me, but she never was." Vine looked confused. "I know it's confusing, but I also think that the world I lived in wasn't even real." Swordfish said, still trying to wrap his head around that.
Swordfish was suddenly interrupted by a voice he recognized. "And you would be exactly right." He turned around to see Abyss, standing on the glass-like floor. His robes were now a dark green, and he wore an amulet around his neck. His face was still hidden. Swordfish backed up. "H-Have you come to kill me?" Vine looked confused again, and stared at Abyss in awe. "A scavenger! As big as a dragon and can talk!" "Don't go near him Vine!" Swordfish called. "He's with Cassriel! He tried to kill me!"
"On the very contrary, Swordfish." Abyss said calmly. "I saved you from death, in fact." "What do you mean? I don't even know where to begin! What even are you?" Swordfish asked in a flurry. "Calm down, I will explain everything. Right now." Abyss said, and then paused. "Well, I'll give you a general idea."
"All of those different balls up there represent different worlds." Abyss began, pointing to the orbs floating around the blackness. He, Swordfish and Vine had met up on the glass floor. "Some are very similar. Some are very, very different." Swordfish began to ask something, when Abyss cut him off. "I don't know why it is the way it is, but that is the way it is. Each world can be effected by beings called Visitors." Swordfish and Vine looked at each other knowingly. "These 'Visitors' are beings beyond any world we can reach. They act in strange ways, and create these worlds. The thing we are standing on is the supreme world. It cannot be altered by any visitor but one. Our word for it is The Console, but others call it The Canon World."
"So, you and Cassriel are Visitors?" Swordfish asked. Abyss chuckled. "No, I am not that powerful. The Visitors have control of their world. They create it, make it as deep and as complex as they want it. They are Gods."
Swordfish stared at Abyss, perplexed. "What are you talking about? I think someone would have figured something like that out before!" "Sometimes they do." Abyss answered calmly. "In some worlds, the inhabitants are fully aware of their creator. It's not common, but they exist."
"So… what are you?" Vine asked quietly. Abyss looked down at her startled. "No need to talk so quietly." Abyss said, and then looked back at Vine's wounds. "Oh! That's right! You two are injured! Let me just fix you up." Abyss pointed at both Swordfish and Vine, and their wounds and injuries disappeared. Just like that, the slash Cedar had given Swordfish had healed, and his wing was back to normal. Even Swordfish's back talon was back. Both Swordfish and Vine stared at Abyss in awe. "How did you do that?" Vine asked, and now that she wasn't dying, Swordfish could hear the personality in her voice. "Luckily for you two, injuries are halted in The Void." Abyss said.
Abyss pulled back his scavenger-hand into his cloak again. "Because I am something called a Demon. It is our job to make sure that these worlds stay intact and don't collide with one another. Some of us are more powerful than others, and we each have our own jobs and abilities. I am Abyss, Lord of Chaos." Abyss held up his paw and an effect like glass cracking spread throughout Swordfish's vision. Swordfish looked down, worried the floor was breaking, and Abyss laughed. "Oh calm down! I'm just messing with you." And the weird cracking stopped.
"In all seriousness though. Most Demons are very dangerous. Our duty is a good one, but most of the Demons have followed in the King's corruption." Abyss finished.
"The King?" Swordfish asked, worry immediately flooding through his head as he remembered the large, powerful being in his dream. "Yes. The King. The Demon King. He is our leader. He gives us orders. But not all of us like him." Abyss suddenly pulled an apple out of his cloak, and Swordfish watched as it rotted and multiple worms slithered out of it. What perplexed Swordfish even more was the fact that Abyss didn't seem to particularly care if either Swordfish or Vine saw him do it. He wasn't showing his power.
"I don't really care for the King's agendas, they are too orderly for a Lord of Chaos, but he'll kill me if he finds out." "So you're a rouge." Vine stated. Abyss sighed. "There are others like me. Few and far between. There are many Demons, so you have to watch yourself if you're going to be messing with all of this."
Abyss suddenly paused again. "Actually, I think you two are already wrapped up in it. Cassriel took you two, right?" Both Swordfish and Vine nodded. Abyss took a long sigh, and then began talking again.
"Cassriel's full title is 'Cassriel, The Poet.' One of the powers he has is to create entire aspects of a world, as if it were created by a visitor, but it's not." Swordfish stared at Abyss. "Do you mean like… a fake world?" "Yes. I mean that. That's what you were in, Swordfish. A fake world."
Of course, Swordfish had already considered it, but now he had full confirmation. The whole world. All his memories, everything. Even Rattlesnake. It was all fake. Swordfish was staring into the glass floor, looking at the Rainforest deep down below, for five minutes. Nobody talked.
Everything I thought I knew was a lie. Cassriel made it all up. Everyone. Everyone back home, everyone at the school, Cedar, Rattlesnake, everything. Lies. I've lived my whole life with dragons who aren't even real. If my parents weren't even real, what does that make me? Am I fake? What am I?
What am I?
"Cassriel has a… problem." Abyss suddenly started again. "He likes to experiment with this sort of thing. He creates fake worlds, messes with visitor power, and he says everything he does is helping the King. He got you two, had the visitors vote to kill one of you, and inserted the others into the perfect story." Abyss stared right at Swordfish. "That world had all the elements. Rattlesnake was the perfect love interest. She was flawless. She was made for the visitors to support a relationship between you and her. There was even competition, wasn't there?" Swordfish felt his body trembling. Everything was fake. It was a story. I was the protagonist, Rattlesnake was the love interest, and Savanna was the competition.
"Who's Rattlesnake?" Vine asked. "Nobody important. Nobody even real." Abyss said off-handedly. And that last comment made Swordfish cry. Abyss and Vine watched Swordfish cry for a few seconds when Abyss whispered to Vine, "He kind of loved her." "What about Cedar?" Swordfish asked through the tears. "What purpose did he serve?" "He and Rattlesnake were meant to work in harmony. Rattlesnake was never supposed to get killed by the killer, and Cedar's split personality was made so that the killer would be untraceable. Even by Darkseer, who was also put in this story to appease the visitors. All popular worlds have the over-powered character." Abyss patted Vine's head for some reason, and she gave him a confused look.
"It was supposed to be that you would get so wrapped up in trying to protect the perfect dragon from a killer you could never find and would never expect, you would be in there until the day you died. The world itself worked to cover Cedar's tracks. Like Darkstalker's scroll not working. Of course, you started to go down a path Cassriel didn't expect. You noticed some of Cassriel's sloppy work. Like Rattlesnake simply 'appearing' in class, Webs acting like Vine was there, and other stuff you thought was 'odd'. Cassriel slipped up, and allowed Cedar to attack Rattlesnake. When Cedar was defeated, and you told Rattlesnake what you thought, Cassriel used the world itself to attack you. He eventually came to kill you himself, and I convinced him out of it. I told him to let the world itself try to kill you, because I knew you're smarter than the average bear, and could survive mindless dragons. And that's how I saved you."
Swordfish couldn't believe it. He had been seeing through the lie since he got to Jade Mountain. He had just never put two and two together. Swordfish managed to stop crying. He had to get more answers. "Abyss! What about Rainfall? What about that scavenger monster? What about the hooded dragons in Rainfall's cave? What's that giant thing in my dreams? What-" "Some questions are best left unanswered Swordfish, at least for now. What Blizzard told you not too long ago still is good advice, real or not. Don't go digging too deep."
Swordfish couldn't believe it. Here, in front of him, was someone who KNEW answers, and he wasn't going to tell Swordfish what he wanted to know! "WHY? WHY DO I HAVE TO ALWAYS BE LEFT IN THE DARK?! WHY CAN'T I KNOW WHAT I'M WRAPPED UP IN?" "Hey! Calm down!" Vine commanded, but her voice didn't fit the commanding tone. She was scared. She had no idea what she was thrusted into.
"The scavenger monster, I can answer that. But if I tell you too much information at once, the other demons will know someone informed you, and it won't take Cassriel long to figure out it was me."
Swordfish just stared at him. "The 'scavenger monster.' That is Adnachiel, The Huntress Demon. Her arrows kill anything they hit." Swordfish flashed back to Rainfall's death. The arrow had hit Rainfall in the arm. Swordfish had thought that a single arrow in the arm shouldn't kill an entire dragonet, but Abyss had been right again, he had figured something out.
"Her job is to kill things that are messing with the order of the worlds, but she is corrupted as Cassriel is." Abyss suddenly pulled a round, flat object out of his cloak, which made a ticking noise, and had three small rods stemming out of the center and pointing to numbers, which were in a circle around the edge of the object. "And pretty soon, she will be coming to kill you two."
"WHAT?" Swordfish yelled, and Vine stared at Abyss. "Well what do we do?" She asked him, panicked. "Well, do you two know how to world-jump?" Abyss asked. Swordfish and Vine stared at him again. "Ah, no time to explain. Here." Abyss pulled out the rotted apple from earlier, and then covered it in his scavenger paws. He pressed on it, and when he opened his paws again, there was a simple green necklace in place of the apple.
"To world-jump, just wear the necklace, and imagine a rift opening in front of you. Like this." Abyss put on the necklace, held out his paw, and a crack opened in the air. Through it, Swordfish could see Jade Mountain nearby.
"What's through there?" Vine asked. Abyss gave Swordfish the necklace. "Why don't you two find out?" Abyss said, laughing, and suddenly, Swordfish was flying toward the rift, out of his control. He passed through the rift.
Swordfish crashed into the ground, and heard Vine crash down near him. He turned around and the rift was gone. He was in a new world. Swordfish opened his claw and saw he was holding the necklace, and a bit of paper. He uncurled the paper to see what it said.
Only trust those you are absolutely sure you can.
Swordfish groaned. "Do you know where we are?" He asked Vine. "No." She said. "But I smell grass."