Chapter 5 – Interstellar War
::The Second Perfect Dark Chapter::
The next thing Garlyle could remember was the sensation of strong, powerful arms holding him up as if he was a young child, holding him against a man's strong, almost-barren chest. Garlyle's arm, uncovered, could feel the soft touch of fur covering some of the front, as if some sort of vest. But he found himself unable to give any signs of acknowledgement.
He couldn't even open his eyes, couldn't move his body. The only thing he could hear was a quiet, peaceful humming, almost a 'shush'. It was calming, and Garlyle slowly felt himself calming down, becoming almost part of the strange embrace.
"Don't worry, Garlyle, you're okay..."
The voice was both completely new to the boy, and so familiar to him that it should have clued in immediately who it was. However, it didn't. It bugged Garlyle slightly, but the warm hands and soothing voice wiped most of the worries from his mind.
But a few moments later, Garlyle felt his youthful curiosity creeping up on him again. Where was he? Who was this that was holding him? Was it... his father?
Yes, there was something very familiar, almost as if the voice was family. It had to be...
"Fa... Father...?"
Garlyle slowly opened his eyes and looked up, expecting to see his father's dark, handsome face, with its hard-set brown eyes and rough brown hair that Garlyle had inherited.
It wasn't.
The man holding him was totally unfamiliar to Garlyle, with soft, short, and messy soft white hair, and pitch black eyes that actually seemed to be light with the smile upon the pale face.
"No... who are you...?"
The face simply smiled reassuringly, and Garlyle found himself calmed instantly, knowing that he was in safe hands. He still didn't know whose hands, but...
And then, suddenly, he was really awake, the strange protective sensation totally gone. As he opened his eyes and saw the brown ceiling above him, he wondered where he was this time.
He sat up, to find himself in nothing but a white shirt and a rather baggy pair of blue pants. They were baggy simply because they were a few sizes too large for him. His bandana, everything else, was the same. They had probably simply put him into new clothes.
They? Who was Garlyle thinking of?
Slowly his memory returned. Joanna... the alien... gunfire... gas...
Garlyle pushed some of the white sheets off of himself and stood up, walking around the room a bit. This place, wherever it was, was much more pleasant.
Then he spotted a wooden door in one corner, and walked towards it. It slid open as he approached.
Startled, just outside was a man wearing a blue-and-white uniform, and Garlyle recognized it somewhat. It looked like the one Joanna had been wearing.
"You're awake..." the guard took note and immediately left, walking along something like a balcony lined with glass. Garlyle walked up to it, trying to avoid acting excited. This was a new place for him, yet his first reaction here had been a welcome one...
He looked down, seeing in front of him a large foyer with a single large d on it... or was it a 'cI'? It was hard to tell. Beyond it was a single door, and a couple couches lined the sides of the walls.
"Would you come with me?"
It was the guard. Happily, Garlyle obliged, following him into a small glass chamber. Two panels slid shut in front, and then the ground they were on went down, landing softly, as the panels slid open again. An elevator.
Yet this simple thing did manage to make Garlyle gape in amazement again, though he did his best this time to stifle it. He didn't want to seem as if this was the first time he had seen all of this. Though it technically was...
Turning left, the guard led Garlyle into the room they had just been in. "Joanna has been waiting for you... she was about to leave on a most important meeting..." the guard informed the young boy. "She said that if you were to wake up in time that you were to go with her... we must hurry. They'll be leaving any moment!"
"Coming!" Garlyle responded, as they picked up the pace a bit.
A sudden explosion knocked both Garlyle and the guard off of their feet, sending them flying. It was obviously close by.
Then another clash, and the two halves of the steel door were torn off of their hinges, and something stepped through.
It looked as if it had been brought right out of a nightmare, a long, stone-like bodied creature with two legs and a large body and gaping maw, and two long hands ending in bloodied claws.
"A demon...?" Garlyle gaped.
One hand of the strange creature oriented on the guard beside Garlyle, and Garlyle noticed it was carrying something, a large chunk of metal of some sort.
It started glowing flame red. A few moments later, before the guard had even recovered enough to draw his gun, the strange alien's weapon fired.
The man's chest had been almost destroyed, a large hole right through the center of his body. He fell backwards, so obviously dead it wasn't funny, as his blood and innards flowed freely.
Then the weapon oriented on Garlyle, intending on doing the same.
"Allow me, Garlyle"
Ceres' voice! Finally, a familiar voice!
Ceres was one of two demon brothers who were among the most powerful of their kind. They both took the forms of dragons. Ceres controlled the powers of wind and flame, two of the major elements. Garlyle had, in his youth, been unfortunate enough to have the demon unsealed from its near- thousand-year sleep within a dragon statue, and in the end Garlyle had lost his parents to the demon. They had tried to reseal the demon; instead, they had only succeeded in halting it. The original statue had been shattered, and for Ceres to be truly sealed he would require a vessel to hold him. Garlyle, unknowingly, touched the demon and became that vessel.
Now the demon would protect Garlyle because it had to. Even it was not sure of its future if Garlyle were to die... would the demon dragon be set free again, or be lost forever...?
All Garlyle knew was that, at times, he never would have lived without the help of the same thing his parents had died trying to get rid of... ironic, huh?
As the strange metallic weapon charged again, Garlyle was already up on his feet, dashing towards the alien. It didn't seem fazed at all.
But it did seem somewhat shocked when a long chain of flame emerged in Garlyle's palm, swinging back, then bashing the alien's weapon right out of its hand.
This was his magic at work. Garlyle had been born into a line of the strongest magicians in his home world; magic was second nature to him in his homeland. Even here, where there seemed to be no magic, Garlyle's natural magic was so strong some of it was carried with him.
And it was only enhanced by the pure magical energy that made up the demon Ceres, allowing Garlyle to do what should have been impossible here...
Garlyle prepared to make a single strike to destroy the alien, but he had gotten too close. The alien took a single stomp and was up to him, and Garlyle realized just how tall this menace was.
It reached back, and Garlyle was frozen in fear. He prepared for what he knew was coming: the worst.
And then there was a hail of gunfire, and the alien collapsed, the hard shell of it blasted apart and lying dead on the ground in front of him.
"Garlyle! You're alive!"
It was Joanna's voice! Ecstatic, Garlyle turned towards her, as she ran towards him, a long, new style of gun in her hand. Garlyle could care less about the specifics; at least she had weaponry!
"What the hell was that?" Garlyle demanded, still somewhat paralyzed.
"Skedar... go, Garlyle, run back where I came from" she cried out to him. "Get on board the ship, there, hurry! You'll be safe!"
"But what about you?" Garlyle responded, hastily.
"Don't worry about me!" Joanna cried back, as she hurried towards the elevator Garlyle had just taken. "Just get to safety with the others!"
Obediently, Garlyle quickly followed her instructions, running down a small ramp towards a docking bay. There was a single metallic floating ship, or something resembling one in Garlyle's opinion. Instantly, he knew that was what Joanna meant.
There was Jonathan, on board, waving Garlyle over. "Garlyle!"
Garlyle ran over, jumping into the hull of the ships, crowded in with a couple others, as a battle of explosions and gunfire rang out over their heads.
"What's going on? What the hell... are the Skedar?" Garlyle demanded.
"They're warlike aliens..." a tall, somewhat pudgy but fine-looking man in a white suit responded from beside Garlyle. "We believe they've been trying to destroy this planet for a while now..."
"Destroy... a whole planet...?" Garlyle's eyes spun. He had faced horrors before that would have destroyed a whole continent... but an entire planet!? This was too much!
A few more people shortly joined Garlyle, including a tall man with glasses and a woman with short blonde hair. They were all wearing long gray coats that brushed just above the floor.
Then Joanna came running, from the same entrance Garlyle had taken.
"Joanna! Joanna!!" everybody called over.
"Get clear! I'll hold them off!" Joanna shouted over towards them. "You can come back for me later!"
"You heard the woman!" the tall man with glasses cried out. A large steel panel began to shut itself along the side of the bay, closing off the ship, as it began to lift in the air.
Though Garlyle would have normally loved to experience the feeling of flying, now was not the time!
He dived off of the ship, landing on the steel flooring, as a couple of the large alien 'Skedar' pounded through the same route everybody had come through.
"Garlyle, what are you doing?" Joanna dived behind some boxes, and Garlyle followed suit.
"I'm not leaving you behind!" Garlyle responded, as Joanna took a couple shots and downed a Skedar. But almost immediately two more were coming in behind him.
"But you aren't even armed!" Joanna cried, as she watched the ship fly off beside them.
"I don't need your fancy 'guns', I'll do this my way!" Garlyle responded.
In their moment of distraction, a Skedar was up in front of them. Joanna fumbled her pistol in surprise, but Garlyle was ready.
He swung a hand forward, and a single boulder of flame launched out, shooting right through the middle part of the alien body and melting it, destroying it completely.
"What the hell was that?" Joanna demanded.
"Joanna, look out!" Garlyle cried.
Another had reached the boxes Joanna was behind, and had knocked them over. Almost immediately the heavy metal crates had buried her.
"Joanna!"
Then he felt a strong, stone-like backhand to his back, and he went flying forwards, skidding to the front of the panel. Consciousness left him almost instantly.
*****
When Garlyle finally did awake, he knew he had once again changed locations strongly. He was locked and bound with a room plated with navy blue metal walls, and there was a single Skedar watching him, seemingly hungrily.
And suddenly Garlyle remembered words that strange 'Elvis' being had told him.
"He's dead. Died in the Skedar wars a long time ago"
Garlyle suddenly recognized this as probably the worst situation for him. It was the Skedar who had killed his alternate self in this reality... but he knew that there was no way for him to fight back, bound like this...
The Skedar stepped over slowly towards him, and opened up its claws. Garlyle closed his eyes.
Nothing happened. A few moments later, Garlyle opened them again. Inside of the claws was something... a sort of food? Was that it?
Yes! As Garlyle looked, he saw it... it was nothing but a simple cookie. He didn't want to take it, but the sight suddenly reminded of the fact that he hadn't eaten in... Well, to be honest, a long while now.
He was hesitant, but after realizing that this alien was offering him, he timidly took it and bit into it.
Chocolate chip, his favorite! Almost instantly it was gone, and somehow Garlyle knew that this wasn't quite the same... but this Skedar... unlike the others that he had seen, it seemed, friendly...
"Hello, Garlyle." A voice seemed to come from the mouth, though there was no movement.
"Who...?"
"It's me, Syiolen."
Garlyle jumped back another couple of steps. "Syi... Syiolen! How..."
"Don't tell me you didn't expect it..."
"Well..." Garlyle had to admit, it was quite shocking, but 'Syiolen' cut him off before he managed to finish off the thought aloud.
"You're lucky to be alive..." the voice was snakelike and it seemed threatening, but it was still the same man who had saved Garlyle before. "I recognized you and convinced the others that you weren't to be killed..."
"There is some kind of civilized manner to your kind then..." Garlyle dully noted.
"At least, that you were so important spiritually to the Skedar that the only one who should have the rights to kill you is our High Leader."
"Your leader?" Garlyle blinked. His spirits fell. So he was just on death row right now...
"Listen..." the alien-Syiolen communicated to him. "You've already realized that you were killed by our kind in this universe... Eventually, one day, you'll be able to come back and get your revenge..."
"What?" Garlyle blinked.
"But now is neither the time nor the place! You aren't strong enough yet to survive..." Syiolen warned him. "But if things happen as they will now, you will be slaughtered! Do you understand?"
Garlyle nodded simply, understanding what Syiolen was getting at. "Then are you going to send me away, to a new land, just as all the others have done before you?"
"Yes" Syiolen admitted. "Are you prepared?"
"Yes" Garlyle nodded.
"Then be off."
With those words, Garlyle felt a tug at his collar, then at every inch of his body, and then he was gone.
::The Second Perfect Dark Chapter::
The next thing Garlyle could remember was the sensation of strong, powerful arms holding him up as if he was a young child, holding him against a man's strong, almost-barren chest. Garlyle's arm, uncovered, could feel the soft touch of fur covering some of the front, as if some sort of vest. But he found himself unable to give any signs of acknowledgement.
He couldn't even open his eyes, couldn't move his body. The only thing he could hear was a quiet, peaceful humming, almost a 'shush'. It was calming, and Garlyle slowly felt himself calming down, becoming almost part of the strange embrace.
"Don't worry, Garlyle, you're okay..."
The voice was both completely new to the boy, and so familiar to him that it should have clued in immediately who it was. However, it didn't. It bugged Garlyle slightly, but the warm hands and soothing voice wiped most of the worries from his mind.
But a few moments later, Garlyle felt his youthful curiosity creeping up on him again. Where was he? Who was this that was holding him? Was it... his father?
Yes, there was something very familiar, almost as if the voice was family. It had to be...
"Fa... Father...?"
Garlyle slowly opened his eyes and looked up, expecting to see his father's dark, handsome face, with its hard-set brown eyes and rough brown hair that Garlyle had inherited.
It wasn't.
The man holding him was totally unfamiliar to Garlyle, with soft, short, and messy soft white hair, and pitch black eyes that actually seemed to be light with the smile upon the pale face.
"No... who are you...?"
The face simply smiled reassuringly, and Garlyle found himself calmed instantly, knowing that he was in safe hands. He still didn't know whose hands, but...
And then, suddenly, he was really awake, the strange protective sensation totally gone. As he opened his eyes and saw the brown ceiling above him, he wondered where he was this time.
He sat up, to find himself in nothing but a white shirt and a rather baggy pair of blue pants. They were baggy simply because they were a few sizes too large for him. His bandana, everything else, was the same. They had probably simply put him into new clothes.
They? Who was Garlyle thinking of?
Slowly his memory returned. Joanna... the alien... gunfire... gas...
Garlyle pushed some of the white sheets off of himself and stood up, walking around the room a bit. This place, wherever it was, was much more pleasant.
Then he spotted a wooden door in one corner, and walked towards it. It slid open as he approached.
Startled, just outside was a man wearing a blue-and-white uniform, and Garlyle recognized it somewhat. It looked like the one Joanna had been wearing.
"You're awake..." the guard took note and immediately left, walking along something like a balcony lined with glass. Garlyle walked up to it, trying to avoid acting excited. This was a new place for him, yet his first reaction here had been a welcome one...
He looked down, seeing in front of him a large foyer with a single large d on it... or was it a 'cI'? It was hard to tell. Beyond it was a single door, and a couple couches lined the sides of the walls.
"Would you come with me?"
It was the guard. Happily, Garlyle obliged, following him into a small glass chamber. Two panels slid shut in front, and then the ground they were on went down, landing softly, as the panels slid open again. An elevator.
Yet this simple thing did manage to make Garlyle gape in amazement again, though he did his best this time to stifle it. He didn't want to seem as if this was the first time he had seen all of this. Though it technically was...
Turning left, the guard led Garlyle into the room they had just been in. "Joanna has been waiting for you... she was about to leave on a most important meeting..." the guard informed the young boy. "She said that if you were to wake up in time that you were to go with her... we must hurry. They'll be leaving any moment!"
"Coming!" Garlyle responded, as they picked up the pace a bit.
A sudden explosion knocked both Garlyle and the guard off of their feet, sending them flying. It was obviously close by.
Then another clash, and the two halves of the steel door were torn off of their hinges, and something stepped through.
It looked as if it had been brought right out of a nightmare, a long, stone-like bodied creature with two legs and a large body and gaping maw, and two long hands ending in bloodied claws.
"A demon...?" Garlyle gaped.
One hand of the strange creature oriented on the guard beside Garlyle, and Garlyle noticed it was carrying something, a large chunk of metal of some sort.
It started glowing flame red. A few moments later, before the guard had even recovered enough to draw his gun, the strange alien's weapon fired.
The man's chest had been almost destroyed, a large hole right through the center of his body. He fell backwards, so obviously dead it wasn't funny, as his blood and innards flowed freely.
Then the weapon oriented on Garlyle, intending on doing the same.
"Allow me, Garlyle"
Ceres' voice! Finally, a familiar voice!
Ceres was one of two demon brothers who were among the most powerful of their kind. They both took the forms of dragons. Ceres controlled the powers of wind and flame, two of the major elements. Garlyle had, in his youth, been unfortunate enough to have the demon unsealed from its near- thousand-year sleep within a dragon statue, and in the end Garlyle had lost his parents to the demon. They had tried to reseal the demon; instead, they had only succeeded in halting it. The original statue had been shattered, and for Ceres to be truly sealed he would require a vessel to hold him. Garlyle, unknowingly, touched the demon and became that vessel.
Now the demon would protect Garlyle because it had to. Even it was not sure of its future if Garlyle were to die... would the demon dragon be set free again, or be lost forever...?
All Garlyle knew was that, at times, he never would have lived without the help of the same thing his parents had died trying to get rid of... ironic, huh?
As the strange metallic weapon charged again, Garlyle was already up on his feet, dashing towards the alien. It didn't seem fazed at all.
But it did seem somewhat shocked when a long chain of flame emerged in Garlyle's palm, swinging back, then bashing the alien's weapon right out of its hand.
This was his magic at work. Garlyle had been born into a line of the strongest magicians in his home world; magic was second nature to him in his homeland. Even here, where there seemed to be no magic, Garlyle's natural magic was so strong some of it was carried with him.
And it was only enhanced by the pure magical energy that made up the demon Ceres, allowing Garlyle to do what should have been impossible here...
Garlyle prepared to make a single strike to destroy the alien, but he had gotten too close. The alien took a single stomp and was up to him, and Garlyle realized just how tall this menace was.
It reached back, and Garlyle was frozen in fear. He prepared for what he knew was coming: the worst.
And then there was a hail of gunfire, and the alien collapsed, the hard shell of it blasted apart and lying dead on the ground in front of him.
"Garlyle! You're alive!"
It was Joanna's voice! Ecstatic, Garlyle turned towards her, as she ran towards him, a long, new style of gun in her hand. Garlyle could care less about the specifics; at least she had weaponry!
"What the hell was that?" Garlyle demanded, still somewhat paralyzed.
"Skedar... go, Garlyle, run back where I came from" she cried out to him. "Get on board the ship, there, hurry! You'll be safe!"
"But what about you?" Garlyle responded, hastily.
"Don't worry about me!" Joanna cried back, as she hurried towards the elevator Garlyle had just taken. "Just get to safety with the others!"
Obediently, Garlyle quickly followed her instructions, running down a small ramp towards a docking bay. There was a single metallic floating ship, or something resembling one in Garlyle's opinion. Instantly, he knew that was what Joanna meant.
There was Jonathan, on board, waving Garlyle over. "Garlyle!"
Garlyle ran over, jumping into the hull of the ships, crowded in with a couple others, as a battle of explosions and gunfire rang out over their heads.
"What's going on? What the hell... are the Skedar?" Garlyle demanded.
"They're warlike aliens..." a tall, somewhat pudgy but fine-looking man in a white suit responded from beside Garlyle. "We believe they've been trying to destroy this planet for a while now..."
"Destroy... a whole planet...?" Garlyle's eyes spun. He had faced horrors before that would have destroyed a whole continent... but an entire planet!? This was too much!
A few more people shortly joined Garlyle, including a tall man with glasses and a woman with short blonde hair. They were all wearing long gray coats that brushed just above the floor.
Then Joanna came running, from the same entrance Garlyle had taken.
"Joanna! Joanna!!" everybody called over.
"Get clear! I'll hold them off!" Joanna shouted over towards them. "You can come back for me later!"
"You heard the woman!" the tall man with glasses cried out. A large steel panel began to shut itself along the side of the bay, closing off the ship, as it began to lift in the air.
Though Garlyle would have normally loved to experience the feeling of flying, now was not the time!
He dived off of the ship, landing on the steel flooring, as a couple of the large alien 'Skedar' pounded through the same route everybody had come through.
"Garlyle, what are you doing?" Joanna dived behind some boxes, and Garlyle followed suit.
"I'm not leaving you behind!" Garlyle responded, as Joanna took a couple shots and downed a Skedar. But almost immediately two more were coming in behind him.
"But you aren't even armed!" Joanna cried, as she watched the ship fly off beside them.
"I don't need your fancy 'guns', I'll do this my way!" Garlyle responded.
In their moment of distraction, a Skedar was up in front of them. Joanna fumbled her pistol in surprise, but Garlyle was ready.
He swung a hand forward, and a single boulder of flame launched out, shooting right through the middle part of the alien body and melting it, destroying it completely.
"What the hell was that?" Joanna demanded.
"Joanna, look out!" Garlyle cried.
Another had reached the boxes Joanna was behind, and had knocked them over. Almost immediately the heavy metal crates had buried her.
"Joanna!"
Then he felt a strong, stone-like backhand to his back, and he went flying forwards, skidding to the front of the panel. Consciousness left him almost instantly.
*****
When Garlyle finally did awake, he knew he had once again changed locations strongly. He was locked and bound with a room plated with navy blue metal walls, and there was a single Skedar watching him, seemingly hungrily.
And suddenly Garlyle remembered words that strange 'Elvis' being had told him.
"He's dead. Died in the Skedar wars a long time ago"
Garlyle suddenly recognized this as probably the worst situation for him. It was the Skedar who had killed his alternate self in this reality... but he knew that there was no way for him to fight back, bound like this...
The Skedar stepped over slowly towards him, and opened up its claws. Garlyle closed his eyes.
Nothing happened. A few moments later, Garlyle opened them again. Inside of the claws was something... a sort of food? Was that it?
Yes! As Garlyle looked, he saw it... it was nothing but a simple cookie. He didn't want to take it, but the sight suddenly reminded of the fact that he hadn't eaten in... Well, to be honest, a long while now.
He was hesitant, but after realizing that this alien was offering him, he timidly took it and bit into it.
Chocolate chip, his favorite! Almost instantly it was gone, and somehow Garlyle knew that this wasn't quite the same... but this Skedar... unlike the others that he had seen, it seemed, friendly...
"Hello, Garlyle." A voice seemed to come from the mouth, though there was no movement.
"Who...?"
"It's me, Syiolen."
Garlyle jumped back another couple of steps. "Syi... Syiolen! How..."
"Don't tell me you didn't expect it..."
"Well..." Garlyle had to admit, it was quite shocking, but 'Syiolen' cut him off before he managed to finish off the thought aloud.
"You're lucky to be alive..." the voice was snakelike and it seemed threatening, but it was still the same man who had saved Garlyle before. "I recognized you and convinced the others that you weren't to be killed..."
"There is some kind of civilized manner to your kind then..." Garlyle dully noted.
"At least, that you were so important spiritually to the Skedar that the only one who should have the rights to kill you is our High Leader."
"Your leader?" Garlyle blinked. His spirits fell. So he was just on death row right now...
"Listen..." the alien-Syiolen communicated to him. "You've already realized that you were killed by our kind in this universe... Eventually, one day, you'll be able to come back and get your revenge..."
"What?" Garlyle blinked.
"But now is neither the time nor the place! You aren't strong enough yet to survive..." Syiolen warned him. "But if things happen as they will now, you will be slaughtered! Do you understand?"
Garlyle nodded simply, understanding what Syiolen was getting at. "Then are you going to send me away, to a new land, just as all the others have done before you?"
"Yes" Syiolen admitted. "Are you prepared?"
"Yes" Garlyle nodded.
"Then be off."
With those words, Garlyle felt a tug at his collar, then at every inch of his body, and then he was gone.