Chapter 6 - Fragment
::The First Soul Calibur Chapter::
Garlyle didn't expect to be feeling the strong arms again.
There they were, holding onto him, in his strange dream. Strong arms and soft hands, holding him up against a fur vest worn around a man's strong chest, and...
He could already feel the black but lively eyes watching him, softly, calming him, as his lips hummed the sweet sound they made...
But Garlyle had to know. He had to know who this was. He forced his eyes to open, to stare at whoever this unusual man was.
"Who... are you...?" Garlyle asked.
The man reacted to this question simply by smiling, his eyes lighting up. Somehow, just seeing the smile on the man's face made Garlyle feel at peace, and he fell back into the strong grip again, not caring for a moment. He felt, for a moment, as if the man had put something into his pocket, but then the sensation was gone, and Garlyle simply relaxed, blissfully happy.
*****
When Garlyle awoke again, it was to a familiar hustle and bustle that he knew well, the sounds of a city. He lifted his head off of the ground, where he had been lying in a back alleyway, a couple rats skittered away from him as he pushed himself up into a sitting position.
Feeling, to check if everything was on him, he felt at his chest and felt both the portrait and Ceres' fang hanging in front of his heart, calming him. And then, subconsciously, his hand went to the pocket of his shorts where the strange dream-man had given him something. He was surprised to find something there.
He lifted it up in front of his face, looking at the strange red glowing fragment.
"What... is this?" Garlyle blinked, inspecting it carefully.
"I can sense... evil magic around it..." Ceres spoke from within Garlyle's mind.
"Agreed, I don't like this thing at all..." Garlyle shook his head. "But why would he give it to me?"
"Why would who give it to you?"
Garlyle was surprised that Ceres didn't know... who? Garlyle found himself unable to picture his strange... his strange what? His memory was failing him, though on such an important detail... er... it was important, right?
Shaking his head, Garlyle decided to get an idea about where he was, so he stepped into the bustling streets, where there were many people going about their business, stopping in markets all around, purchasing what they needed.
Then, just as Garlyle got up onto a barrel so he could see around him, commotion suddenly stirred through the streets.
"Run! It's a demon!" "Monster!" "Run! Hide! Everybody, quick!"
Immediately, the general reaction of sheer chaos, as parents tried to cover their kids up quickly, and some tried to dive for cover or escape, as far as they could, from the centre of the commotion, just around the corner. Garlyle was knocked off, and for a few moments, his vision blurred. He tried to refocus, but was hit on the head by somebody running frantically, and his eyes blurred once again.
When he finally was able to focus again, he noticed that everybody had cleared away, save the apparent 'monster'. Tall and green, covered in metal armour of a sort and spikes, with a large glowing orange orb at his heart, it definitely filled the role of 'demon'.
Garlyle stood up quickly, trying to back away, but the strange monster's eyes turned towards Garlyle.
"What... are you?" Garlyle looked at it.
"Hurjiinjjuao" it muttered some sort of alien language, its hands reaching for the glowing orb. "MjhgihSoulEdgehiardio" it spoke again, and Garlyle realised that it had spoken halfway intelligible words for a moment... Soul Edge? What was that?
As the monster's hands reached its chest, it withdrew them again, taking the strange orange haze out of it, and it formed into a ball in the monster's hands, like some strange weapon. He raised his hands, and the energy formed into two blades.
"Ceres, what is this thing?" Garlyle demanded, not expecting his inner demon to have an answer.
"The monster or the energy?"
"Both!"
"I don't know about the monster, but... the energy... I can't tell you much at all."
"You're a lot of help!" Garlyle turned, and tried to run, but found the ground in front of him heating up.
Invisible hands held him back, the will of Ceres, and it was a good thing he did. A pillar of flame erupted in front of Garlyle, where he would have stepped, and then that would have done it. It had made a large gaping hole in the scaffolding above it, and the reaction caused it to start to tumble.
Garlyle, reacting fast, dived to the side, rolling. Just barely, he escaped being crushed, but the alien menace was advancing upon him, and it was already just above him, the two swords looming dangerously in each hand...
Garlyle grabbed for anything he could find, and found himself holding a single board from the wreckage. Snatching at it, he lifted it up. It barely held against the monster's energy, but it held.
Then Garlyle kicked upwards, towards the beast's chest. He focused his energy as he did, his foot becoming a missile of flame, and he slammed it into the beast's gut, pushing him off.
Garlyle discarded the board, and instead reached for the only weapon he would never remove, pulling off the chain that held Ceres' fang, and holding it out before him.
Garlyle had retrieved the fang after his home was destroyed, back in his home dimension, from a group of thieves who thought they could just steal the one immortal, unbreakable family heirloom from the wreckage. After all, it was the only completely physical aspect of the demon Ceres, and it served excellently as a dagger. It had never even fractured, and seemed to cut through armour with ease.
So Garlyle had never gone anywhere without it, and now he was ready to use it again.
As the strange monster righted itself, it slammed the two energy blades together to form one large sword that it needed both hands to wield. Surprised, Garlyle barely blocked it with the fang in time, before kicking up again to knock the strange attacker back again.
What did it want with him? What was 'Soul Edge'?
Garlyle scrambled backwards, preparing himself for the next attack. The alien being switched weapons again, this time opting for a strange sword. As he swung it, Garlyle parried it, dodging to the side, and he saw it lengthen, separate sections of it splitting off connected by a wire in the middle, becoming a whip.
Surprised, Garlyle couldn't react in time as the alien swung it about, and the collision sent Garlyle flying from his light weight, and he crashed into a merchant's stall, the shoulder where the whip had cut him was bleeding.
"How...?" Garlyle's eyes unfocused and refocused, and the monster moved quickly closer. This time, as it swung, Garlyle was ready for the attack that snaked along the ground straight towards him, with more mind then that of any normal whip.
He blocked it, by pinning the final segment down with the dagger, then his foot.
But he should have realised this couldn't possibly this simple, as the sections of the whip fragmented, and flew at him, intent on impaling him.
There was no time to dodge. Garlyle shouted, and raised his arm to protect his face...
Only one hit, just barely scraping one of his elbows before embedding itself in the wall. A silhouetted figure was standing over Garlyle, and the boy could see a long red staff in the man's hands, still spinning.
"Necrid! Go away!"
"kijihsdfiniboSoulEdgeshiibssk" 'Necrid' shouted towards the protector.
"You know Soul Edge has been destroyed! Give it up, Necrid!" Garlyle's protector, with his long staff, answered back.
Garlyle slowly peeked out from behind his protector, and could finally see who it was. A tall man with fine brown hair, chestnut eyes, well-built, with a long red jacket that almost looked like a cape, with the front open, as well as leather pants and a sash for a belt. "Who are you?"
"My name is Kilik..." the man responded. "Get out of here..."
"What is Soul Edge?" Garlyle demanded, not moving.
"The Evil Sword... it was destroyed... and it doesn't matter to you! Get out of here!" Kilik shouted towards Garlyle, and normally it would have worked, but Garlyle was intent on fighting.
"I can fight, let me help you" Garlyle raised Ceres' fang in front of him again, pointing it towards Necrid, as the alien reformed his weapon. Garlyle gulped, but stood courageous, as Necrid's strange energy became claws upon his hands.
"No, get out of here..." Kilik growled to Garlyle, as Necrid attacked. He pulled his staff backwards, then shoved it forward into Necrid's chest, the impact sending the alien monster backwards a bit.
Garlyle responded with a growl, before putting his hand behind him. "Care to aid me, Ceres?"
"Do it yourself"
"Fine!" Garlyle muttered a few words under his breath, and a ball of fire erupted in his hand. Like a star pitcher, he whipped it towards home plate – the orb on Necrid's chest.
As he struck it, Necrid's weapons returned to their basic form, returning to the glass, and the alien mysteriously disappeared.
"Did we win?"
"No, he ran away..." Kilik growled. "Who are you, kid?"
"My name's Garlyle Wilds!" Garlyle smiled. "And..."
Then, suddenly, he a flash of realisation. He reached into his pocket. "Wait... Soul Edge... does he mean this?"
Garlyle grabbed the metal fragment, and showed it to Kilik.
The man gasped, backing up, and readying his staff. "How... where did you...? That weapon was destroyed, I swear, we..."
"It was given to me..."
"By whom?"
"I can't remember" Garlyle shook his head, and he looked up at Kilik. "Why...?"
"That sword is evil! It's the seal that prevents 'The Catastrophe'... it was rebuilt, and a beast of flames emerged, but it was defeated again..."
"Again?"
"Listen, kid, don't ask, just hand it over. You shouldn't be messing with this kind of thing!" Kilik reached for the fragment of the Soul Edge.
Garlyle backed up, and raised his dagger. "No. It's mine. What will you do with it anyway?"
"Destroy it, just like Xianghua did with the others!"
Garlyle looked down at it. "Take me to this... Xianghua... I want to see this through..." Garlyle looked up at him. "Don't expect to get it off of me until then!" he tucked it into his pocket, and seeing Kilik seem to give up, he replaced the chain around his neck.
Then he realised the other chain around his neck was no longer there. The one that had held the portrait of his family...
"It's gone! Where...?" Garlyle looked around, and saw it, lying down on the ground, beside them, right by where he had drawn off the fang's chain... he must have whipped the other one off by mistake! It was a good thing he had noticed!
Garlyle reached for it quickly, and it fell open in his hand. Kilik look over his shoulder, and blinked.
"That's me..."
He pointed. The second youngest of the people in the image was certainly Kilik. They looked too old to be Garlyle's family, if those were his parents in the back, well, they looked as if they would have been his grandparents, and his brother...
Wait a second...
Garlyle turned to face Kilik. "What's your last name?" he asked.
"I never found out. I never knew my parents."
"How do you know Kilik is even your real name, then?" Garlyle demanded.
"I don't" he responded.
"Then I know your true real name..." Garlyle smiled. "This is your family... Your true name is Garlyle Wilds."
"But that's you... What kind of trickery is this?" Kilik brandished his staff again.
"Hear me out!" and, once again, Garlyle explained, quickly, about the 'Dimensions'.
It took Kilik a moment, but he understood. "Then, my true name is Garlyle? I... I don't know, I prefer Kilik..."
Garlyle shook a bit, but shrugged. "Do as you wish..."
There was still something that bugged him, though. How could Kilik be him? The man was at least 15 years older than him! How could that be?
"Come, I'll take you to see Xianghua..." Kilik looked down at the younger boy, before walking along. "It'll be a fair travel, but..."
"I understand" Garlyle smiled, following Kilik's steps obediently.
::The First Soul Calibur Chapter::
Garlyle didn't expect to be feeling the strong arms again.
There they were, holding onto him, in his strange dream. Strong arms and soft hands, holding him up against a fur vest worn around a man's strong chest, and...
He could already feel the black but lively eyes watching him, softly, calming him, as his lips hummed the sweet sound they made...
But Garlyle had to know. He had to know who this was. He forced his eyes to open, to stare at whoever this unusual man was.
"Who... are you...?" Garlyle asked.
The man reacted to this question simply by smiling, his eyes lighting up. Somehow, just seeing the smile on the man's face made Garlyle feel at peace, and he fell back into the strong grip again, not caring for a moment. He felt, for a moment, as if the man had put something into his pocket, but then the sensation was gone, and Garlyle simply relaxed, blissfully happy.
*****
When Garlyle awoke again, it was to a familiar hustle and bustle that he knew well, the sounds of a city. He lifted his head off of the ground, where he had been lying in a back alleyway, a couple rats skittered away from him as he pushed himself up into a sitting position.
Feeling, to check if everything was on him, he felt at his chest and felt both the portrait and Ceres' fang hanging in front of his heart, calming him. And then, subconsciously, his hand went to the pocket of his shorts where the strange dream-man had given him something. He was surprised to find something there.
He lifted it up in front of his face, looking at the strange red glowing fragment.
"What... is this?" Garlyle blinked, inspecting it carefully.
"I can sense... evil magic around it..." Ceres spoke from within Garlyle's mind.
"Agreed, I don't like this thing at all..." Garlyle shook his head. "But why would he give it to me?"
"Why would who give it to you?"
Garlyle was surprised that Ceres didn't know... who? Garlyle found himself unable to picture his strange... his strange what? His memory was failing him, though on such an important detail... er... it was important, right?
Shaking his head, Garlyle decided to get an idea about where he was, so he stepped into the bustling streets, where there were many people going about their business, stopping in markets all around, purchasing what they needed.
Then, just as Garlyle got up onto a barrel so he could see around him, commotion suddenly stirred through the streets.
"Run! It's a demon!" "Monster!" "Run! Hide! Everybody, quick!"
Immediately, the general reaction of sheer chaos, as parents tried to cover their kids up quickly, and some tried to dive for cover or escape, as far as they could, from the centre of the commotion, just around the corner. Garlyle was knocked off, and for a few moments, his vision blurred. He tried to refocus, but was hit on the head by somebody running frantically, and his eyes blurred once again.
When he finally was able to focus again, he noticed that everybody had cleared away, save the apparent 'monster'. Tall and green, covered in metal armour of a sort and spikes, with a large glowing orange orb at his heart, it definitely filled the role of 'demon'.
Garlyle stood up quickly, trying to back away, but the strange monster's eyes turned towards Garlyle.
"What... are you?" Garlyle looked at it.
"Hurjiinjjuao" it muttered some sort of alien language, its hands reaching for the glowing orb. "MjhgihSoulEdgehiardio" it spoke again, and Garlyle realised that it had spoken halfway intelligible words for a moment... Soul Edge? What was that?
As the monster's hands reached its chest, it withdrew them again, taking the strange orange haze out of it, and it formed into a ball in the monster's hands, like some strange weapon. He raised his hands, and the energy formed into two blades.
"Ceres, what is this thing?" Garlyle demanded, not expecting his inner demon to have an answer.
"The monster or the energy?"
"Both!"
"I don't know about the monster, but... the energy... I can't tell you much at all."
"You're a lot of help!" Garlyle turned, and tried to run, but found the ground in front of him heating up.
Invisible hands held him back, the will of Ceres, and it was a good thing he did. A pillar of flame erupted in front of Garlyle, where he would have stepped, and then that would have done it. It had made a large gaping hole in the scaffolding above it, and the reaction caused it to start to tumble.
Garlyle, reacting fast, dived to the side, rolling. Just barely, he escaped being crushed, but the alien menace was advancing upon him, and it was already just above him, the two swords looming dangerously in each hand...
Garlyle grabbed for anything he could find, and found himself holding a single board from the wreckage. Snatching at it, he lifted it up. It barely held against the monster's energy, but it held.
Then Garlyle kicked upwards, towards the beast's chest. He focused his energy as he did, his foot becoming a missile of flame, and he slammed it into the beast's gut, pushing him off.
Garlyle discarded the board, and instead reached for the only weapon he would never remove, pulling off the chain that held Ceres' fang, and holding it out before him.
Garlyle had retrieved the fang after his home was destroyed, back in his home dimension, from a group of thieves who thought they could just steal the one immortal, unbreakable family heirloom from the wreckage. After all, it was the only completely physical aspect of the demon Ceres, and it served excellently as a dagger. It had never even fractured, and seemed to cut through armour with ease.
So Garlyle had never gone anywhere without it, and now he was ready to use it again.
As the strange monster righted itself, it slammed the two energy blades together to form one large sword that it needed both hands to wield. Surprised, Garlyle barely blocked it with the fang in time, before kicking up again to knock the strange attacker back again.
What did it want with him? What was 'Soul Edge'?
Garlyle scrambled backwards, preparing himself for the next attack. The alien being switched weapons again, this time opting for a strange sword. As he swung it, Garlyle parried it, dodging to the side, and he saw it lengthen, separate sections of it splitting off connected by a wire in the middle, becoming a whip.
Surprised, Garlyle couldn't react in time as the alien swung it about, and the collision sent Garlyle flying from his light weight, and he crashed into a merchant's stall, the shoulder where the whip had cut him was bleeding.
"How...?" Garlyle's eyes unfocused and refocused, and the monster moved quickly closer. This time, as it swung, Garlyle was ready for the attack that snaked along the ground straight towards him, with more mind then that of any normal whip.
He blocked it, by pinning the final segment down with the dagger, then his foot.
But he should have realised this couldn't possibly this simple, as the sections of the whip fragmented, and flew at him, intent on impaling him.
There was no time to dodge. Garlyle shouted, and raised his arm to protect his face...
Only one hit, just barely scraping one of his elbows before embedding itself in the wall. A silhouetted figure was standing over Garlyle, and the boy could see a long red staff in the man's hands, still spinning.
"Necrid! Go away!"
"kijihsdfiniboSoulEdgeshiibssk" 'Necrid' shouted towards the protector.
"You know Soul Edge has been destroyed! Give it up, Necrid!" Garlyle's protector, with his long staff, answered back.
Garlyle slowly peeked out from behind his protector, and could finally see who it was. A tall man with fine brown hair, chestnut eyes, well-built, with a long red jacket that almost looked like a cape, with the front open, as well as leather pants and a sash for a belt. "Who are you?"
"My name is Kilik..." the man responded. "Get out of here..."
"What is Soul Edge?" Garlyle demanded, not moving.
"The Evil Sword... it was destroyed... and it doesn't matter to you! Get out of here!" Kilik shouted towards Garlyle, and normally it would have worked, but Garlyle was intent on fighting.
"I can fight, let me help you" Garlyle raised Ceres' fang in front of him again, pointing it towards Necrid, as the alien reformed his weapon. Garlyle gulped, but stood courageous, as Necrid's strange energy became claws upon his hands.
"No, get out of here..." Kilik growled to Garlyle, as Necrid attacked. He pulled his staff backwards, then shoved it forward into Necrid's chest, the impact sending the alien monster backwards a bit.
Garlyle responded with a growl, before putting his hand behind him. "Care to aid me, Ceres?"
"Do it yourself"
"Fine!" Garlyle muttered a few words under his breath, and a ball of fire erupted in his hand. Like a star pitcher, he whipped it towards home plate – the orb on Necrid's chest.
As he struck it, Necrid's weapons returned to their basic form, returning to the glass, and the alien mysteriously disappeared.
"Did we win?"
"No, he ran away..." Kilik growled. "Who are you, kid?"
"My name's Garlyle Wilds!" Garlyle smiled. "And..."
Then, suddenly, he a flash of realisation. He reached into his pocket. "Wait... Soul Edge... does he mean this?"
Garlyle grabbed the metal fragment, and showed it to Kilik.
The man gasped, backing up, and readying his staff. "How... where did you...? That weapon was destroyed, I swear, we..."
"It was given to me..."
"By whom?"
"I can't remember" Garlyle shook his head, and he looked up at Kilik. "Why...?"
"That sword is evil! It's the seal that prevents 'The Catastrophe'... it was rebuilt, and a beast of flames emerged, but it was defeated again..."
"Again?"
"Listen, kid, don't ask, just hand it over. You shouldn't be messing with this kind of thing!" Kilik reached for the fragment of the Soul Edge.
Garlyle backed up, and raised his dagger. "No. It's mine. What will you do with it anyway?"
"Destroy it, just like Xianghua did with the others!"
Garlyle looked down at it. "Take me to this... Xianghua... I want to see this through..." Garlyle looked up at him. "Don't expect to get it off of me until then!" he tucked it into his pocket, and seeing Kilik seem to give up, he replaced the chain around his neck.
Then he realised the other chain around his neck was no longer there. The one that had held the portrait of his family...
"It's gone! Where...?" Garlyle looked around, and saw it, lying down on the ground, beside them, right by where he had drawn off the fang's chain... he must have whipped the other one off by mistake! It was a good thing he had noticed!
Garlyle reached for it quickly, and it fell open in his hand. Kilik look over his shoulder, and blinked.
"That's me..."
He pointed. The second youngest of the people in the image was certainly Kilik. They looked too old to be Garlyle's family, if those were his parents in the back, well, they looked as if they would have been his grandparents, and his brother...
Wait a second...
Garlyle turned to face Kilik. "What's your last name?" he asked.
"I never found out. I never knew my parents."
"How do you know Kilik is even your real name, then?" Garlyle demanded.
"I don't" he responded.
"Then I know your true real name..." Garlyle smiled. "This is your family... Your true name is Garlyle Wilds."
"But that's you... What kind of trickery is this?" Kilik brandished his staff again.
"Hear me out!" and, once again, Garlyle explained, quickly, about the 'Dimensions'.
It took Kilik a moment, but he understood. "Then, my true name is Garlyle? I... I don't know, I prefer Kilik..."
Garlyle shook a bit, but shrugged. "Do as you wish..."
There was still something that bugged him, though. How could Kilik be him? The man was at least 15 years older than him! How could that be?
"Come, I'll take you to see Xianghua..." Kilik looked down at the younger boy, before walking along. "It'll be a fair travel, but..."
"I understand" Garlyle smiled, following Kilik's steps obediently.