Worlds War One

xl [Autumn]

Saanvi faced her personal Demon. It looked exactly like her. Small nubs of horns stood out on her head. Her skin color was a deep purple. A pointed tail swished behind her, a prehensile appendage that gave her an extra advantage in fisticuffs. Her eyes were beautiful, violet orbs that seemed to glow under the glare of the Forsaken Land's red sky.

"Callie's death is on your hands, Princess," the doppelDemon taunted.

"She isn't dead," Autumn said. "I can see her soul still shining, brighter than yours."

Then things got physical. Bad got in a good punch, but the evil copy of Saanvi retaliated with a roundhouse fist to the lieutenant's face. The copycat Demon flashed Bad a deadly glare, a blade of some dark matter appearing in her hand. She was going to stab right through the stunned Badia Robinson.

Drill stepped between Bad and the doppelgänger. If entities from this ancient world knew fear, then the doppelDemon gazed upon the giant soldier with genuine terror. Drill hit the Demon doppelgänger with a fist as big as the head of a sledge. It would have split the skull of any mere Human, but it merely stunned the doppelDemon.

Immediately, Saanvi dropped to her knees, her prehensile tail whipping out and sweeping her copycat's legs out from underneath. Big Drill shoved with all his considerable might to topple the copy of Saanvi Laghari. The doppelgänger fell backward, also into the deadly lawn lining the pathway. The carnivorous carpet of death disintegrated the duplicate Demon in seconds.

Quest and Fox handled the doppleGolem as Penina cowered behind the soldiers. She was a navigator, not a fighter, and Quest was her champion. Fox attacked high as Quest went low. They managed to get the copycat Golem off-balance as Penina shed her reluctance for fighting long enough to push the creepy copy of herself off the stone surface. The chopping abilities of the lichen-like lawn were as effective on carbon copy marble as it had been on Demon flesh and Frankensteined lifeforms.

Badia considered the three routes where the doppelgängers had first appeared without a moment for recovery. "Let's go."

"Which way?" Fox asked.

"Wait," Autumn interrupted.

She could feel something—a disturbance in the air. Then a sound off in the distance. Like a sonic boom, Autumn sensed a change in the air pressure so great she could feel it. She checked with Ji to see if he could sense it as well, but he was like her only in one sense. Vision. And she couldn't see anything.

"There's something else out there," Autumn warned. "Something . . . big."

"Big," repeated an unfamiliar voice. "Understatement."

They turned and faced a young woman no older than any of the young soldiers. All weapons were immediately on her. Badia advanced two steps toward the newcomer, the barrel of her pistol inches from the stranger's face. The lieutenant gave no doubt that she would put a bullet right between the woman's eyes if she so much as made a funny sound.

The young woman had skin the color of dusk and was as wide and tall as Drill. Black hair puffed into a mane, unshaven legs and underarms, eyes as dark as the night sky, if the night here in the Forsaken Land was even the same color as home. Autumn was amazed by her clothing, twists of vines, and a veil of leaves. But Autumn could see with Ghost eyes, and she recognized a kindred spirit in the aura of the stranger's outfit.

She wore vegetation, and a Ghost possessed the flora.

"You defeated the Changelings," the stranger observed. "Barely. But you won't survive the Leviathan."

"That sound," Autumn asked. "That was a Leviathan?"

"Some call them the colossi," she said. "Massive creatures capable of laying entire cities to ruin. As tall as...what do you call them? Skyscrapers?"

Autumn pictured Godzilla stalking them, approaching from the other side of the tall tripod trees. She shivered—a Ghost with gooseflesh.

"You're Human," Ji observed.

"I am," the young woman answered.

"From the First World," Ji added.

"My name is Isis," the woman introduced. "My mother was the first Human."

"The first Human was Adam," Saanvi said, stepping forward. There was a hint of doubt in her voice that Autumn had never heard before. The Ghost wasn't sure if Saanvi doubted herself or Isis's story.

"A common misconception. Your chronicles ignore the First World. The first Human was Eve. My mother," Isis revealed.

"Eve had a daughter?" Treyvon gasped. "Your brothers are Cain and Abel?"

The tall woman wearing plants for clothes could've come right out of the creation story. Isis glanced over her shoulder in the direction where Autumn had detected the Leviathan. "I can tell you everything I know, but we ought to get someplace safer. The First World is much more dangerous than where you call home. There are few friendly entities among the original seven tribes."

"We don't have time to waste with tales of a forgotten world," Saanvi dismissed. "Our home is under attack by the forces of Mot."

"Ah, yes," Isis sighed. "The one called Johnny Rotten."

"You know of him?" Badia asked.

"I know he has returned from exile. I watch what happens in your world," Isis said. "My mother's new family, the second race of Humans. Your world is such a sprawling, sophisticated place. I've observed your whole history, wept over tragedies, and marveled at myriad miracles. In many ways, it's a brighter and better place than this. In other ways, it's more dangerous than even this deadly world."

"It's home," Badia said. "We intend to save it. That means we stop Johnny Rotten. As the princess said, we have a tight schedule to keep."

"You have all the time in the world here," Isis promised. "The concept of time itself was not invented until the Almighty forsook the First World and remade it with the fourteen tribes. The entity you call Kālá created the concept of time upon the inception of the new universe. Here, there are no clocks. No aging or atrophy. A minute passes as quickly as an entire millennium."

"What do you know about Rotten?"

"He's using the Forsaken Land to move his army back and forth from She'ol. We are the bridge between there and your Earth."

"Can you help us?" Badia asked. Saanvi seemed suspicious, but Bad commanded the mission. The princess remained silent.

Another one of those implosions of air and a sound in the distance, created by something more significant than Autumn could imagine. Isis was the only other one who noticed it.

"I'll share what I know," Isis promised. "But let's get out of the open. Come with me to Eden."