The Nextworld Invasion and the Death of Magic - 28. Chapter 28 - Aboard a Monster

The train that Nuji and Lestralin were leaving was a sleek machine, but the thing that the crates were being loaded onto was terrifying. It was a train in only the loosest definition of the word. The abomination that was headed in toward the heart of Nextworld was the size and length of a train, but it looked more like a gargantuan intestine stretching along the track. There were no wheels, and it did not ride upon the metal lines that ran beneath it. The levitating mass of pale pink flesh floated, as if held aloft by a series of bizarre magnets that repelled meat.

Mechanical components controlled the enormous, hideous tube, and a door in its side slid open. The interior of it looked a lot like the train Nuji and Lestralin were leaving behind, even though the thing’s outside was so revolting. The flesh was pulsating and flexing, as if it were alive.

“Is it alive?” Lestralin asked.

“It can’t be,” Nuji replied in dismay. “But why does it look like that?”

Veins and arteries snaked through the bizarre, meaty train, and the two Earthians hesitated before entering the monstrous vessel.

Nuji grabbed Lestralin’s arm. “Do we do it?”

He looked into her eyes and gave her a resolute smile. “Let’s do it.”

The pair slipped onboard as the crane shifted back out and stowed itself within its housing in the station. The living line’s door closed again, and the thing sped off much more smoothly than any train on a track ever could.

Nuji and Lestralin were standing side by side. They were not moving. The pair was staring at the door that led into the next compartment of the disgusting vehicle. Most of the car they were in was similar to the standard train they had just left, but the center of the metal wall at one end was cut out with a large square. The passageway between sections of the train was even more unnerving than its gooey exterior.

Lestralin started to say, “That looks like a…”

“I know what it looks like!” Nuji interrupted.

They stared in silence for another moment.

“But why does it look like a…” Lestralin tried to ask.

“I don’t know why it looks like that!” Nuji barked.

Lestralin tightened his mouth into a wrinkly pucker.

“I said I know what it looks like!”

Lestralin snorted a laugh. “Sphincter.”

Nuji scrunched up her nose at him.

“It’s so… big,” he added. “It’s like a whale’s…”

“I know what it looks like!” Nuji squawked.

The vile thing quivered, and muffled voices came from behind it.

“Who’s in there?”

“Hide!” Lestralin hissed.

The pair had not been cautious, despite Dorjin’s warning of the soldiers who would be on the second train, and there was nowhere to hide.

“Open the sphincdoor!” the voice on the other side of the repulsive wall shouted.

Nuji spoke three words in her people’s spell-casting language, and she fell silent.

Lestralin’s eyes flashed to hers and back to the puckered flesh.

Like a toothless mouth, the wall began to wriggle, and as it opened, four Humans came rushing into the living line’s cargo hold.

“An elf and a dwarf?” one of them yelled in surprise and alarm.

Adult Humans were close in height to adult Urcai, and the four guards towered over Nuji and Lestralin.

“Take them to the front of the tram!”

Nuji and Lestralin individuals were shoved through the nauseating opening in the wall and into another compartment that appeared identical to the one they had just left with more cargo and another sphincdoor. They were led through three more sections of the train, and the group eventually stopped in a room with tables.

“Sit,” one of the guards ordered, and he turned to the other three. “Private Variak, stay with them. I’ll tell the conductor about the intruders and see what he wants to do.” He turned and continued farther along the train, and the sphincdoor to the next compartment closed behind him.

“Private Variak, is it?” Lestralin asked quickly, and the man eyed him with suspicion. “Have you never seen people of our kind?”

The guardsman frowned. “What are you talking about?” He turned to his fellow soldiers. “We watch you through the barrier. We know all about you dwarfs and elfs.”

“Peculiar, because if you know so much about us, why don’t you call us by our correct names?”

Private Variak snorted an incredulous laugh. “How the hell would I know the names of two random Earthians? I don’t know who you are.”

“No, sorry,” Lestralin replied, trying to sound as friendly as possible, “not our specific names,” and he gestured to Nuji. “I mean, why do you call our people… what is it, elves and dwarves?”

“Elfs and dwarfs,” Private Variak corrected.

“Ah yes, thank you,” Lestralin said. “I guess I’m just wondering why you don’t call us Noktar and Rothians.”

“Those words don’t mean anything,” Private Variak replied dismissively. “And how did you two even get into Nextworld? We’ve never had your kind here.”

“What an interesting coincidence,” Lestralin commented in a casual tone.

“Coincidence,” Private Variak repeated, “what coincidence?”

“Well,” Lestralin continued, glancing over at Nuji, “we recently learned that the attacks on Earth are because you Humans think you came from there, but just like you said you’ve never had our kind here, we’ve never had your kind on Earth.”

“That’s a lie!” one of the other guards shouted. “Your kind are liars, you vile little monsters. We’re returning home.”

Lestralin scratched his chin. “Well that’s just rude. And I hate to say it, but I think your information is incorrect; Humans have never been to Earth before this. Your race’s origins are here in Nextworld. This is where your people belong.”

“This world is cursed!” the man raged, and he stormed over to the flesh wall. It opened for him, and he passed through.

Private Variak turned to the fourth man. “Do you have any thoughts on any of this, Pinio?”

The man named Pinio turned and looked at the sphincdoor that had just sealed, and he replied quietly. “I actually like Nextworld.” He turned back to Variak and shrugged. “I know we’re raised to long for Earth, and we’re taught that Nextworld is our prison of exile, but to me it’s home. I’ve never been interested in going to Earth; I feel like I haven’t even explored all of Nextworld yet. Variak, we were taught to hate this place, but I love it here.” Pinio gave Variak a small smile and took his fellow soldier’s hand. “Besides, we met here. How could I not love it?”

Lestralin shot the men a beaming grin. “Are you two a couple?”

“We are,” Variak confirmed.

“We first got together when we took this job on the hover-numbles,” Pinio added, “so it’s been about a year.”

Lestralin screwed up his face. “I’m sorry, the hover-what?”

“Numbles,” Pinio repeated.

“Colon,” Variak clarified.

Lestralin looked over at the fleshy wall and the tightly sinched door. “Do you mind explaining it to me like I’m a child? What are we riding in?”

“The tram is the biomechanical cloned entrail of a theoretical giga-whale.”

Lestralin and Nuji were no less confused, but Nuji was not taking part in the conversation.

“Sorry, say that again,” Lestralin requested.

“It’s a technologically enhanced intestine,” Pinio stated. “The tram was grown from a cloned whale intestine, but it was genetically altered to such enormity that it is incomparable to the original species from which the genetic material was taken.”

Lestralin was beginning to comprehend what he was being told, but he did not like it. “This thing’s… alive? Yikes, anyway, moving on; how long have you two gents been a couple?”

Despite the smoothness of the living line’s ride, they all were aware that it suddenly began to slow, and the first man who left returned.

“The conductor wants those Earthians off his train. We’re pulling into Gonthia’s station, and we’ve alerted the local authorities. Get them out of here.” He turned and left again.

“Sorry folks,” Variak said with a shrug, “I guess this is where you get off.”

Lestralin tutted. “And we’ve barely learned anything about your relationship.”

The flesh vehicle stopped, and a metal panel in the side wall raised to reveal another exterior door. It opened, and Humans holding voiders were waiting on the other side of it.

“Get out here, you scum!” one of them roared. “Bind their hands and bring them to the keep!”

The much larger Humans grabbed Lestralin and Nuji. They wrapped thick chords around their wrists and forced them to march up one of the main thoroughfares in the small village of Gonthia. As more Humans noticed the unusual outsiders, they began jeering and shouting horrible things. Someone threw a stone that pelted off Lestralin’s cheek and left a bloody scrape.

The keep was at the far end of the street, and by the time the prisoners were escorted to it, they had gathered a very large crowd. Even though it was commonplace for the Humans to peer through the barrier and into Earth, everyone in Gonthia wanted to get an up-close look at the pair they thought of as very strange. The keep was not a jail, and there were no prison cells, but Lestralin and Nuji were locked in separate rooms.

Now that she was alone, Nuji could focus without distraction. She had been casting spells the entire time that Lestralin preoccupied the trainmen. None of her charms had activated yet because she was casting them together to be released all at once.

Nuji had begun performing multiple types of protection charms when she and Lestralin were initially detained, and she added spells that improved luck and heightened their senses. Nuji had liked Alydrael’s idea about camouflage when trying to figure out invisibility, and she also cast spells that were meant for hiding. She was layering the charms and waiting for the opportune moment to release their energies, but now that she was alone, Nuji remembered Dorjin. Her Human magic from Nextworld had not done what she expected on Earth, and Nuji suddenly worried that something would go wrong for her magic as well, like it had done so many years ago with the death of her teacher.

Nuji could feel the buildup of thaumic energy within her. She had become much more comfortable casting spells around Tigath, Othri, and Alydrael while in the wilds with them, but now she feared her magic again.

However, she did not feel like she had any other choice; the Humans had captured her and Lestralin, and her spells were their only defense. She concentrated on the last few incantations. Nuji was going to use a spell to reach into the ground of Nextworld and cause plants to grow, but not in the intricate interwoven pattern she used when constructing a shelter, she was going to use the plants’ growth as an attack.

The spells she had performed in her mind were prepared, and she now spoke aloud in her Rothian casting language to add extra energy to her final charms. Nuji’s mystical words danced through the air like fireflies. Her voice was strong, and her mind was clear. The muscle within her body that generated her magic pulsed in rhythm with the words of the spell, and a low rumble began to add its frequency to her magical melody.

Nuji’s spells came to an end, and she stopped speaking, but the rumbling continued to grow louder. The floor started to tremble beneath her feet, and she stepped back against one of the walls as the noise and vibration crescendoed in a terrible crash. An enormous tree was growing at super-speed, right up through the center of the keep, and it demolished a significant portion of the building with its growth, but it was a bizarre tree that made Nuji pause. It appeared to be made of crystal rather than wood.

Off to one side, Nuji spotted Lestralin racing away through the rubble, and she could tell her spells were helping him escape. She also rushed out of the room that briefly held her, but despite all the magic she had cast, she only made it a few steps before crashing right into a guard holding a shock generator, and a bolt of electricity blasted through her.

Nuji managed to let out a scream, and she collapsed. Her head was spinning, and every inch of her body was in pain. She could barely see; her vision was blurry, but she was aware of a shape approaching. Nuji tried to crawl away, but she grunted as another electric bolt exploded into her, and she was swallowed in darkness.