Chapter 50: Chapter 50

Syrhahn Syrhahn followed up the rear of the ladies as they entered the wooden house not hugely dissimilar to the ones found on Holy World, although the trees were significantly smaller. They looked tiny compared to the trees on Holy World, but there were really just normal sized trees.

Sat around a large table, there were a number of tiny humans like April and a green tripod person who was significantly lighter in colour than the one in Holy World. Syrhahn assumed this was due to the lack of the dark green pigment in his diet that the green man he had met, so this one must have a different diet.

A cursory inspection of the abode revealed only the occupants immediately visible, none of whom appeared to pose any threat to Syrhahn or his allies, but long gone were the days when bad guys had guns and good guys stayed out the way.

Syrhahn noticed straight away there were a pair of identical twins, both with black beards, one shorter than the other and both with not quite short equally dark hair. They were sat opposite each other at the table, with the green guy at the head, and a short fat older man seated at the other end. A grey haired man around the same age as the short fat man sat next to a twin, and seated appeared to be slightly shorter than the twins. Opposite him was an old man with an interesting hair-cut, like he’d been attacked with garden shears.

The closer one of the pair of twins stood up upon their entrance and took Maya into his arms. Maya struggled free laughing and introduced them all.

Apparently Maya’s twin was called Ka and the other Ke. The even shorter fat guy was Les, the slightly taller one with glasses and a slight paunch was called Rob and the light green guy was called something unpronounceable, shortened to Josh.

They were all in good spirits, holding up their bottles of what Syrhahn presumed to be alcohol, it was hard to tell as the labels were written in glyphs he didn’t recognise.

“Would you like beer?” the fat one offered. He had a pleasant face and Syrhahn trusted him immediately. He had always been an excellent judge of character, in humans anyway. Clearly it didn’t extend to grey snouted cretins.

“Yes please!” piped up April.

“No!” shouted Syrhahn and Xhisara at the same time. April’s face fell and she went into teenage sulking mode that Syrhahn remembered so well with Viskra.

“I’d love one,” Syrhahn smiled at the little man gratefully.

“Likewise,” said Xhisara, surprising Syrhahn greatly. He’d never thought of her as a drinker, but times were black.

“Come in, sit down,” the twin called Ka offered. The twins were of a different race to Syrhahn, with somewhat narrowed eyes found in some places on Earth, where interbreeding of the races had occurred less over the years between the twins respective technological time and Syrhahn. He assumed they were of a previous time due to their height, but they were markedly taller than the man who took his son in the holovis projection.

“Why don’t you come and help me in the kitchen,” Les asked April in a kindly fatherly manner. She grunted in return and walked through the seated men with her shoulders slumped, reappearing shortly after grinning from ear to ear and clutching a mug of what Syrhahn presumed was not water. He decided that a little wouldn’t hurt her and she was now in a very adult world, so in her eyes needed to fit in. He suppressed a chuckle at the horrified look on her face as she tasted it.

As there weren’t enough seats for everyone, Syrhahn gave up his seat to Maya, who immediately refused.

“No, don’t worry, we like sitting on the floor,” she insisted, snuggling up to Ka who had already given his seat to Syrhahn.

There were six seats and ten of them, so Xhisara went to sit on the floor where she was often found seated at home anyway, so Syrhahn didn’t protest. Ke came and sat on the floor, giving his seat to Rob, who had given his to April. The couch remained unused at the opposite end of the room.

So once they were finished playing musical chairs and each drinking a beer, an amicable level of conversation descended on the room.

It seemed so strange being jolly, almost. After what had happened, merriment was the last thing he expected to follow what was all in all a truly horrific day. He slumped back in his hard wooden chair, eyeing the floor people sat on cushions enviously.

He listened as the tale of his day was reiterated to the room by Xhisara and Maya. He was somehow detached from it, like it was just been a bad dream they were telling.

“You pair moved an entire spaceship?” Ka and Ke’s mouths were hanging open, both smiling in awe at the feat the two women had managed.

Syrhahn sat and thought of how the women got more power than the men and how fair that was, given the situation they were in. Were it William who had the greater power, he would not have been sitting there contemplating life, the multiverse and everything surrounded by his new found allies.

“So you two are mirrors?” Xhisara was asking the twins.

“Yeah,” they affirmed, nodding. “Hey, do you know how we managed to find Maya when we were together, but not when apart while in the astral plane?”

Syrhahn’s ears pricked up at the possibility of a real tracker, and also at the men speaking completely in unison.

“Really? That’s most strange. By find her, what exactly do you mean?” Xhisara wondered, her fingers pressing lightly on her lips.

“Like, we were together,” the twins started at the same time, before Ka continued.

“And we could feel her, then we went and saw you guys on the canyon.”

Xhisara pursed her lips pensively while Syrhahn realised that they weren’t twins but actually the same person from different universes.

, he thought. Not for the first time he wondered where his mirror was, whether he was long dead. It was better left and forgotten.

“Have you tried to locate William or your lost friend?” Xhisara’s response caused Syrhahn’s ears to prick up so far that the noise behind him faded away as he awaiting their response.

“Yeah, nothing,” they both said glumly. The tone in their voices and the identical speech was somewhat disconcerting to Syrhahn.

“We think,” Ka paused, making sure he was the only Ka speaking, “it is just my connection to Maya, I could also feel her mirror when she was in the astral plane.”

“Perhaps both of your connection to Maya and your connection to each other, I cannot be sure,” Xhisara murmured softly.

“Have you ever met two mirrors that have been to the astral plane?” asked Syrhahn, thinking of the Estrali’s. Everyone turned to look at him as he spoke, as they hadn’t realised he had joined their conversation.

“Yes, but they have no tracking ability beyond being able to track each other, and only on the astral plane.” Xhisara replied thoughtfully.

“But they can track each other?” Maya asked, looking up at Xhisara with her large dark eyes.

“Well yes, could you not track your mirror?” Xhisara countered.

“Of course, yes I see, she was never outside of the astral plane so I never had to seek her outside of it,” Maya frowned thoughtfully.

“But she found you,” Xhisara looked down at the girl kindly, smiling serenely in that way she did.

“Doh!” said the Ka’s, each doing what Syrhahn was later told was termed ‘face palming’.

“Didn’t think of that,” Maya laughed as they had all overlooked the obvious.

“So basically, people can find their mirrors and if with their mirror someone they love,” Syrhahn summed up, leading up to his point, with Xhisara deftly intercepted.

“I’m sorry Syrhahn, your mirror passed on many years ago,” Xhisara informed him with her head bowed, making his world turn upside down as the fleeting hope vanished. Again.

Despite not being able to find Viskra with his mirror, Syrhahn was nevertheless determined to keep his emotions in check, and return to the state he had been in prior to the flash of light in the dark corridor of his emotions.

“There’s no lights,” he suddenly noticed, thinking out loud and also abruptly ending the deathly silence that had overtaken their end of the room. Les, Rob, Joe and Josh were oblivious, sat around the table drinking and being merry.

“No lights?” wondered Ka and Ke as they eyed him curiously as Syrhahn pointed to the ceiling and around the room.

“There’s no lights. Or window hangings.” he pointed to the bare windows, causing all the floor sitting people to craned their necks to see.

“He’s got a point,” mused Xhisara, probably glad of the distraction.

“There are two suns, and we are on the pole of the planet.” A translator’s voice came from his left. He turned to see the green guy joining the conversation.

“You mean it never gets dark?” wondered Syrhahn, thinking of life without darkness.

“Never,” Josh affirmed. “The rest of the planet is a desert, too hot to teleport into at any time, you would burn up.”

“It’s hard to think of this planet as a super-heated furnace,” Xhisara looked around again at the absence of lights and switches.

“There is no electricity here, as there is no need,” Josh continued, watching Xhisara’s eyes sweeping at skirting board height. “It is warm enough and light enough, and fire is not permitted, the forest will become angry.”

Xhisara nodded genially in agreement at the slightly bizarre statement while Ke looked at the floor. Syrhahn got the feeling he was trying not to laugh.

“Hang on,” Les interjected genially. “How long have we been awake for?”

They all looked at each other, he had a point, it had been a very very long day.

Ka leaned into Maya putting his head on top of her head. Syrhahn thought that Ka had to have two and a half decametres on her in height, it was rather sweet, he could lop his head over onto hers. Syrhahn then rebuked himself for thinking it was sweet, What had he become? That was a good question. He went from killing people to reading bedtime stories to killing people to watching a young couple and thinking they were sweet, the latter two events happening while his son languished in some prison created by a sociopath who wanted to take over the multiverse. And what was worse, that was the best case scenario. Syrhahn couldn’t even think about Viskra no longer being alive, but the thought kept trying to slip in sideways despite his attempts to not think about it.

In all the things Syrhahn had done in his time, he had never waged a war on an invisible opponent, nor had an opponent ever had something he really cared about. He was so far out of his depth he was drowning, and there were only the people surrounding him between him and the bottom. So he decided to locate the bottom of his beer bottle, at least he could find that.