Chapter XIX
"You already know who I am. Don't you?" The fox said, staring at Eric. It definitely was a fox.
"I've already guessed. But that's impossible, you're-"
"-Dead?" He laughed heartily. "Yes. I was. But considering that this is as you would say, 'just a dream', how can you be sure?"
"I've seen enough in the last few weeks to not be sure anymore, James."
"I was right. You do know who I am. And, seriously, Eric, you've grown up. In the last few weeks you've seen things that have only been fantasy. Now, it's your reality. You've been thrust into a world that up until now hasn't existed. How can you be so sure that a way to raise the dead?"
"Of course – the resurrection alters. But how by Fate's hand-basket did you come back? Fox told me – if the recipient is dead too long, it won't work. And if it did, they'd be crushed under their own weight from the weakness effect."
"Yes. But where do you think the dead souls go?"
"Uh… reincarnation?" At this feeble attempt at understanding, James laughed again.
"There is a place called the Outer Plane, where dead souls go. Some places, it is as happy as the stereotypical land we call Heaven. Others, it is as dark and depressing as the place we call Hell."
"An uplifting thought."
"Come with me, Eric, and I will show you what happened. Your unanswered questions shall be answered. And you will know of your title in our first encounter." At that, the seemingly-late James McCloud stepped backwards through a previously-nonexistent portal. Left with nothing else to do, Eric followed.
As soon as Eric walked (floated?) through the portal, a feeling not like being on a roller coaster pulled from him behind his back, like he was on a fishhook through his middle. He was flung forward and came to a skidding stop in front of James, who looked amused.
"From what I've seen, I wouldn't have thought you'd be the kind of person to bow to people."
"Har har." Eric said crossly. "You know, I'm very interested in how you survived."
"If you want to get really technical, I didn't."
"That's impossible."
"Stop thinking about impossibilities! You just did several things that were impossible! Think about what can!"
"Okay. I'll shut up now."
"When my soul arrived in the Outer Plane, I wasn't sure what was worse. The pain I went through to get here, or the fact that I could no longer see Fox. Some of it was lifted when I met up with my beloved again, along with several old friends, but there was still something, like –"
"-An open hole." Eric finished for him.
"Exactly. So when I heard that some scientists were planning on infusing an item with life, something which you can tell, is in short supply there, Vixy and I immediately signed up as volunteers. The plan was to get a material which had different properties in the Material Plane –"
"Material what? And who's Vixy, again? Refresh my memory."
"The land of the living, and my dead wife, Shroud."
"Oh yeah, I –"
"Knew that, right. Keep listening, try to keep your mouth shut." Eric looked full of mock hurt. "We found materials usually only found in what you would call fantasy. Tirar!"
"Pretty stupid name for a material," Eric commented.
"That's not one of the materials, it's a command word for your blade."
"My what?" Eric said and ducked to avoid being skewered by Murasma, which had come flying through the air. A coat of arms could be seen on a wall where the blade was set. The other side seemed to have held a bow, but was empty now.
"'Tirar,' is the command word for, "come here," for your sword."
"So you set the diamond blade up there!"
"It's not diamond. If you look closely –" He pointed at the blade, which, while glowing, wasn't on fire. "It has a different tinge and GLOWS. The name of the material is dracocite, found in trace quantities only on the Outer Plane."
"So I've been using a sword flimsically constructed from the land of dead people. Haley Joel Osmont has nothing on me!"
"Silence, knave!" James bellowed, then cracked up. "We recently found a dracocite mine just on the other side of explored territory," he said, still laughing. "You can't really say on the edge of the Outer Plane, because it's effectively limitless. If you 'die' in the Outer Plane, you vanish back to your home, which you will see examples of when you follow me into there, with one of three tries gone. Use all three, and you get reincarnated back into the Material Plane, a.k.a. the land of the living, mindwiped."
"Uh… bit harsh, no?" Eric didn't even want to go into the details on how one could die while dead.
"Using the rip in planes created with the perfected construction of the first resurrection alter, we were able to take our dead souls and infuse them into the items we made with the dracocite. I got put into your glowing blade, but I haven't heard from Vixy yet; she had to wait a while longer." James continued.
"I was originally intending to give the sword to Fox, but after a seemingly endless period of time, I was unable to find his exact soul signature. Then, another one came up – nearly identical. I mistook it for Fox and had the sword Murasma bind with it. It was later when I found that I had not chosen Fox. I was disappointed –"
"Let me guess - that's putting it mildly?"
"Yes. Let me continue." James said. There was no trace of anger in his voice; his experience with death must have made him mind-bogglingly patient. "I was disappointed, for I thought that since you were in another dimension than Fox was, that I would never see him and the whole project would be a total and complete waste. But then, they offered to take an item and give it inter-dimensional properties. Layman terms, the ability to switch dimensions. I kind of figured that, since I had mistook you for Fox, that I would be correct in guessing that you would be attracted to things that make you look better in style. Was I correct?"
"Depends. Whose style?"
"Yours. Anyway, I got my first glimpse of you and already had my doubts. Your personal life was a mess and you had no experience of the supernatural. How could he have been so close to my son?"
"Hey, I have to correct a statement there. I have no experience of the supernatural ACTUALLY HAPPENING TO ME. All I know of the cool things that you take for granted are magnificent things on what I call optical disks."
"Ah, yes, your little video games. I was a bit shocked when I found out that the majority of my life was invented by a bunch of programmers, but then again, so were the dozens of other people who came from your reality who found the fantasy things that they had either neglected or never thought was real, only for entertainment. Back to the subject, I left the newly-enchanted shades, mainly to see what you would do. And there is where I saw one of the reasons I mistook your soul signature for Fox's. Curiosity. A standard being would have thrown them away, but you put them on and came back when you saw a world of fantasy that to your age you had only dreamed of. Isn't that right, Eric?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
"Then came your first fight-or-flight instance, which you showed a courage I wouldn't have thought from your lifestyle in your reality." James cocked an eyebrow. "You seem to have many surprises to you."
"That's me."
"The events unfolded, and now you are here. In our world. Off to stop Venom from destroying everything that we have held dear."
Eric made a motioning with his hand, as if expecting James to continue his sentence. When James merely gave him a quizzical look, Eric finished the sentence for him. "Destroy everything, again."
"When you put it in that perspective, you're kind of right. Come with me, Eric, into my world. The last of the experiment is nearing completion, and I want you to be present."
"This wouldn't have anything to do with the title you gave me on our first encounter, would it, James? 'Soul-carrier?'"
James only smiled and backed up into a portal that had just appeared. Left with no other current options, Eric walked through as well.
Eric awoke on his back, staring up at didn't exactly seem to be sky. It was a swirling blue vortex, constantly either sweeping stuff up or spitting stuff back out. Some of the stuff that went in seemed to be loose odds and ends, the stuff that came out looked like the barest food resources. The middle of a walkway, with swirling clouds of sapphire mist with a plain, simple wooden door in the center bottom with a name written on it. The "street" between two rows of the house-mist were teeming with transparent beings of so many different races, ethnicity and appearances that Eric immediately saw – there was not just these two dimensions. Oh no- there were so many more that it wasn't even funny anymore. "Crazy neighborhood, huh, James?" Eric asked to the fox, who was standing maybe twenty feet away.
"Yep. You haven't seen nothing yet, this is the good side of town. If you head over there-" He pointed in a direction where a faint red glow could be seen. "You'll find yourself fighting for your very existence over there."
Eric took a few moments or so to check on some names, to see if he could recognize him. Van Zan, The Magic Taco, Shmi Skywalker, Sparda, Rose Marie Chaykin, Green… "James… who the hell ARE these people?! Magic Taco?!?"
"Yeah, we're all a bit worried about him…" came James' response. Rolling his eyes, Eric followed. He recognized a few, but James seemed to want him somewhere, so it wasn't exactly like he could complain.
After walking, floating, moving across the mass-less world of the Outer Plane, James brought Eric to a large, solid building. Carved from stone, it looked like an old Roman library. It was also easily twice the size of said library, and etched in stone read Hall of Champions.
"James… where the hell is this?"
"The greatest minds, warriors, and talents reside in here. Like every other building here, it is effectively limitless once you go inside, but we made it like this to impress people more. You can go first." James said.
"Age before beauty." James laughed heartily. He walked up the stone steps, Eric close behind. He could see several semi-transparent people behind him of various physical appearances. A red-haired human woman said, "Hey, James, is this the kid you found?"
"Yep. I have to go, Rose, gotta show him to Winfred." "You know, James, for a world with multiple dimensions the Outer Plane must have some of the worst names EVER." Eric said when they were inside the building.
James laughed. "I fail to see what's so much better about, 'Eric Shroud.'"
"I'll concede that part," Eric grumbled.
Eric continued to follow James through the Hall of Champions. He was in a long hallway with big rooms off to the side that led to what looked like coliseum rooms. Up on top, there were big signs that gave several names of incredibly powerful fighters. Two that Eric saw were Inu-Yasha and Smaug, but James bade him to hurry up, which Eric did.
After walking what felt like the depth of the Mariana Trench, Eric finally found himself in a room with several scientists. One came forward.
"Winfred, this is Eric. The one Murasma chose."
"Interesting. Such a naïve human boy, gaining the respect of the first dracocite blade…"
"Hey, I'd watch what you say about me. I can get VERY angry…"
"Congratulations for proving my point. James, are you ready for the final process?"
"As ready as I'll ever be."
"Great. Eric, you can watch this…" Winfred had an ulterior motive for this; one that would ultimately benefit all of mankind.
As James started to walk to a piece of machinery that looked like those spherical cages they use to train people to go into space and see how it feels like to be drunk, one of the scientists came up to Eric. A gray vixen in (as they all were) a white lab coat, with neck-length brown hair. She looked at James as he went into the machine, and then looked at Eric.
"So, you must be the kid he found?"
"The one and only, I guess."
"Hey, could you do me a favor?"
"Uh… sure, okay…"
"As you and him are going back into the Material plane… could you say hi to Fox for me?"
"Uh… ooookay… dare I ask who from?"
"Vicenzia Hohleren. Just say Vixy."
"Are you his mom or something? I remember a Vixy…"
Vixy laughed, while James, who was in but the power wasn't turned on, said, "Not everyone here is Fox's mom, Eric." Then started laughing uncontrollably.
"No. His fiancé."
"I'm not sure whether to say, 'that sucked,' now that you're here, or, 'okay, yeah.'"
"How about both?"
"Yeah. That sucks. Okay, yeah." Vixy chuckled heartily and then said, "Okay, Eric, you'd better head over there. Almost done." The machine that James was in was starting to hum and the building was reacting like the San Andreas Fault to a Richard Simmons marathon.
"Uh… doesn't this put me closer, rather than furthur away? I feel like my existence is threatened."
"Don't worry, Eric." Winfred said. Not very reassuringly, but he said it. "Everything will be fine."
"Fine?! Look at James, he's sprouting white light and yelling like his wife died." He turned to Vixy. "No offense." He got a questioning look.
The white light was now almost completely engulfing James and the viewpoint was shaking uncontrollably. Scientists were grabbing onto things, and Eric was about to follow suit when Winfred bade him to stay there.
"To hell with this!" Eric never got the chance to move. Suddenly, with the white light in full swing, James vanished. The blob of colorless luminosity suddenly lurched at Eric, consuming him and wrenching his consciousness from this plane of reality. The last thing he heard was, "Success!"
About an hour later, Eric groggily got to his feet. Funny… He felt about fifteen degrees hotter than he did before going to bed. Opening his eyes, his vision was neither dim nor blurry. The sunglasses were tossed off to the side, probably overnight. Whoa… this is too weird. I don't even have my contact lenses on and I can see! … wait. I got killed overnight, didn't I? Eric's ears felt rubbed raw after heaping around a piece of plastic for almost a month now. He was about to get up and leave his private living quarters when he walked by the mirror and nearly died of a heart attack.
The reflection was not his, but James McCloud's!
"Pretty cool experiment, huh?"