Thereafter Chapter 5: The Strange City
The ground Michael had landed on was strange. If, that was, he had landed at all. Michael wasn’t quite sure. There was every chance that “appeared on,” was more of a correct term. Under his thumb and the heel of his right hand he felt the smoothness of polished marble, but under his pinky finger he felt some sort of rough wood, and the middle fingers, barely smoothed cobblestone. It was a strange puzzle that only became stranger when he opened his eyes and saw what kind of a surface he had fallen on. In flickering light, Michael guessed a torch or an oil lamp, he could see a floor that he could best describe as a mad god’s quilt. The majority of it he could see was the cobblestone, but large fragments of polished marble and even some chunks of wooden flooring broke up the cobblestone, like a calico of textures. No, Michael realized, “broke up” was entirely too rough of a term, they perfectly filled out holes, like some texture-blind giant had put together a floor from spare parts from other building projects. Some kind of glowing substance covered the floor in complex patterns that suggested magic even more so than the strangeness of the floor in aggregate.
“Hey, Mole Boy? You awake finally?” The contralto voice came from somewhere out of his field of view, where it’s owner presumably lounged in some nontraditional pose that underlined their detached coolness.
“Ugh, yes, I think so.” He found himself saying. Whoever was talking had presumably been here while he was unconscious, so if they wanted to harm him they’d had every opportunity to do so.
“About time, you’ve been out cold for hours. I was about to rub one out from sheer boredom, but I see my patience have been rewarded, a-up you go!”
Michael didn’t know how to respond to that, so he concentrated on getting his hands and feet under him and got up. It wasn’t his most elegant gesture, but years of practice had at least allowed him to do so without putting undue pressure on his right knee. Once up, he saw the owner of said contralto voice quite clearly. He had been right about the pose, as they rested on a crate, their back against the wall, one slender foot dangling off the edge, the other on the edge of the crate.
Of the many skills Michael possessed, knowledge of aesthetics and subcultures weren’t among them, and so he struggled to place exactly what kind of style they were rocking. The slight build and traffic light-green short hair made him think somewhere along the lines of “poison fairy punk,” but he would never dare to tell them that to their face. There was something about their pronounced eyebrows and intense brown eyes that made Michael pretty sure that they could punch above their weight class in just about any category one could challenge them in.
“There we go.” The stranger said. “Lex Chlebek, you are pleased to meet me I am sure.” They jumped off the crate, and held out a hand. Incongruous as the gesture was in the strange new place, Michael wasn’t going to say no to a bit of normalcy.
“Michael Sørstrand, it is nice to meet you.” Lex’ grip wasn’t strong, but considering their hands were, unlike Michael’s, quite proportional to their body size, he hadn’t expected much.
“Ooh, look at you shovel hands,” Lex said. “Is it true what they say?”
“Yeah, buying gloves is a nightmare,” Michael bantered, but his heart wasn’t in it. There was just too much weirdness going on to be light-hearted. “Excuse me if I seem distracted but… where are we? What is this place?”
“That’s a big question to answer so early in the day, but the short version is that we are in Thereafter, which is kind of like… oh, how do I say this… where did you go last time?”
“Last time? Oh… yes, I see.” Michael was piecing together some sort of logic from this shamble of a conversation, but it felt strangely alien to Go There. “I went to Caveworld, home of the Molefolk… is that where we are?”
“No, not possible unfortunately. It’s destroyed, smashed to smithereens, not quite annihilated, but pretty damn close. This is Thereafter, what’s left if you will... Anyway, we should go meet the others.”And with that, Lex started to leave. Michael didn’t quite understand anything that had transpired since he went on that first night patrol, but there really was no sense in getting hung up on it, at least it wouldn’t get him any answers, and so he followed Lex deeper into whatever strange patchwork building currently housed them.
Outside the patchwork room, the strange quilt-like nature of the building didn’t cease. For a corridor or two, things seemed almost normal, with a long stretch of uninterrupted stone walls, only for a swathe of chimeric construction made out of every thinkable material, and a few that Michael was sure had to be magic on account of how they glowed and hummed softly. Lex led the way with a focus that made Michael think they’d done this route before, but not enough to make it habit. When they finally opened a door, Michael found himself hoping they were done with shenanigans for today. Once inside, he realized he probably should stop tempting fate like that.
The room was bisected, one half of it was wood paneled, the other made out of rough stone bricks. It wasn’t the most outrageous split Michael had seen so far, but the interior made up the difference and then some. One heavy corduroy sofa lined the back wall, the stone brick one, a couple of simple wooden chairs covered the sides of what looked like a solid glass table. A massive oak bookshelf covered the wood panel wall and at the adjoining half-wood-half-brick wall stood what looked like a medieval throne. A short, athletic-looking man lounged on the corduroy sofa, looking for all the world like a decadent emperor in repose. On the open space in the corner not occupied by any furniture, although a series of drag lines on the wood floor hinted that this had not always been the case, a brown-skinned woman with large hair silently did push-ups. Michael couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he’d seen her before, but it was hard to be sure.
“Alright you perverts, our fourth and final colleague has arrived,” Lex proclaimed.
“Pervert? That’s rich coming from you,” the emperor on the couch snickered, taking his sweet time getting up, he reminded Michael of a cat getting up from a comfortable spot in a sunbeam to go assert his authority. “Hey New Guy. Did she ask you about your dick yet?”
“Why is it always dicks dicks dicks with you?” The push-up woman said as she got up, the contrast with the couch emperor couldn’t be clearer. She was methodical, disciplined, made sure to lock out the final push-up before raising one leg to step into a deep reverse lunge she then rode to her feet. This lady worked out, and she worked out regularly, even discounting her clear muscle definition, there was a solid and plainly obvious strength to her core. As she turned to face them, the pieces fell into place in Michael’s memory. “It’s seriously getting old.”
“Dicks are fun and funny and I’m sorry you have no joy in your heart… or other parts.”
“Eat me Espino, you’re a living desiccant.”
“Oooh, desiccant, that’s a good one,” Lex interjected, “A devastating retort from a devastating woman.”
“Keep it in your pants,” Alicia dismissed the ambiguous compliment.
“What? Is it because I said you could step on me the other day? Because you could. Wouldn’t even be hard for you I think.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do pardon my, well our colleagues. I’m…”
“Alicia Thorn?” Michael finally put a name to the face, he had been so focused on remembering that the banter had gone entirely over his head.
“Shit, yeah.” Alicia said, “I take it you’re familiar with my work.”
Michael shrugged, suddenly very self-aware of the situation. “A bit, yeah. I followed you back when you did tutorials.”
“Oh, those ol’ things? You’re a StrongThorn Nation veteran then.”
“Yeah, I’m not on instagram much these days though.”
“It’s always fascinating to see meat-heads meet, but I really must interrupt,” the couch emperor said. Now on his feet he had a lightness to his bearing that also spoke to a certain degree of athleticism, although it was a different kind than Alicia’s tightly controlled strength. “Felipe Espino, am I being too bold if I assume you’re already familiar?”
“Uhm,” Michael hesitated. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage there. I’m Michael Sørbek.”
“Now that won’t do Mike, how about now?” Felipe struck some kind of a pose, although Michael couldn’t identify what kind.
“No, sorry.”
A small shift occurred in Felipe’s bearing, like he was steeling himself in some small way. “Three time Olympic medalist? The Mexican Hotshot? Heartthrob Magazine’s Top Ten Hottie for years 2009-2013? The Cupid of Guadalajara?”
Michael shook his head.
“Well, my name is Felipe Espino.” Felipe looked like Michael had just announced the cancellation of Christmas. “I’m a professional archer.”
“The name does ring a bell...” Michael said. He didn’t pay attention to most sports, but he did remember some rumor mill hubub about a Mexican archer at some point.
“My god,” Felipe mumbled to himself, clearly not assuaged.
“Felipe doesn’t like it when people haven’t heard of him,” Lex offered as a way of explanation.
“I do not like uncultured bandits, it is a different problem.”
“I never should have told you I’ve heard of you,” Alicia interjected.
“But you did! You have, in fact, heard of me.”
“I have heard about you too,” Michael said, Felipe dismissed it with a wave of his hand.
“Nothing personal, Saint, but you’re on the uncultured bandit list?”
“Saint?”
Felipe only shrugged as Lex appraised Michael anew.
“Hey Michael, are you speaking English?”
This question took Michael by surprise. There was something so incomprehensible self-evident about it that he started doubting himself.
“Yes? Is that not the language we’re speaking right now?”
“In a way, it’s complicated. Try just speaking your mother tongue for a second.”
“Uhm, like this?” Michael said. “Wait that’s not right, hold up a second.” He blinked, his apparent inability to speak Norwegian was disturbing to him. How far had he fallen, and how hard had he hit the ground? “Fuck,”
“Don’t worry about it, the magic works a bit weirdly with us earthlings.”
“The magic?”
Lex waved her hand at the totality of the room.
“The spells they wove together to create this place. It’s mostly tying all the different bits and bobs together to a whole thing, but there’s also a language enchantment in play. It’s supposed to automatically translate to your language, but on us Earthlings it seems like the idea of English as a Lingua Franca kind of interferes with it. I call it the Babel Field.”
“So because the idea of communicating internationally in English exists in our minds,” Michael frowned as he attempted to parse what Lex had said. “The spell, this Babel Field, translates what we hear into English in my brain?”
“That’s close enough for jazz as the Americans say,” Lex said.
“Do we now?” Alicia asked, sounding slightly amused by the prospect.
“Do you not?”
“I guess old folks do say it. I’m more of a “close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades” kind of gal myself.”
“You Americans are a strange breed,” Lex observed, Alicia shrugged. There was only so much one could say to something like that.
“Ok, so the magic… uh… Babel Field translates for me,” Michael said once he found an opening in the conversation again. Felipe had slumped down on the couch, and Michael took the cue to sit in one of the wooden chairs, if only to confirm that they were indeed every bit as uncomfortable as they looked. “And it ties… this stuff together,” he waved at the room. “But what kind of a place is this? And why are we here?”
“Well, the why is simple,” Alicia said as she sat down on another of the wooden chairs. “We’re here because we’re heroes. If what the Magus said is true we’ve all saved a world as children, and now they want us to do it again.”
“The Magus is one of the guys who summoned us, I’m sure you’ll meet his pompousness soon,” Lex offered as a mean to explanation as they sat down on an unoccupied piece of couch and then, slowly but inexorable like a glacier started forcing Felipe to withdraw his legs from the sofa cushion. By the looks of it, it had already turned into a habitual struggle for the two of them.
“Ok,” Michael said, “but where are we? What kind of a place is this, and why does it look so…” He gestured at the perfect, but jagged and unpredictable seam line between the wood room and the stone room. “Incongruous? Oh, that’s what that means?” The babel field had taught him a new word today, that was a nice side-effect, Michael thought.
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” Alicia said, “It’s probably better if you see for yourself.” She motioned for the hatch on the wooden wall. Felipe nodded in apparent agreement as he shifted up into a sitting position from his decadent sprawl.
Michael got up and approached the hatch, he could feel three pairs of eyes on him, the invisible pressure of observation making his limp slightly more pronounced. He expected the hatch to resist his attempts at opening it, it looked like it might jam easily in the surrounding wood, but much to his surprise it swung open like it had waited all day for the chance. What he saw behind it defied description, but try as he might, he couldn’t stop himself from trying.
A city sprawled outside the window, and as much as Michael wanted to take in the totality of it, it was just impossible. There was no totality to take in. Everywhere he looked in the sprawling cityscape he saw collagic chaos of the same variant that made up the few rooms he had seen so far. A tower would start as a brick and mortar construction only to continue onward as stacked limestone before terminating in untreated logs making a rough watch-nest. A nearby store of some kind was part Victorian urban building complete with skylights and part rough-hewn longhouse. Cabins that looked like stationary yurts adjoined marble temples merged with large wattle-and-daub buildings. There was a certain level of logic to the chaotic process, Michael found himself thinking, whatever or whoever had joined the city together had attached the pieces according to their original size more than any aesthetic or purpose of said buildings. He could see a small pyramid and some sort of roman pantheon merging into one, and something very similar to a protestant church or a temple of some description merged with a handful of other buildings with radically different styles. Did their parishioners share the space peacefully, he found himself thinking, or were there strife. The totality of it all didn’t make itself known to him, there was no totality. He didn’t register the sprawl of the patchwork city, if he even saw the sky he didn’t see the humanoid figures flying there, or the larger shapes, and he certainly didn’t see the vast black void that made up the sky, with only a faint flicker of some sort playing across the nothingness that seemed all-encompassing.
The shutters slammed closed ahead of him, the clatter slamming Michael back into reality. For a brief moment he had no idea what had happened, and for some time after he couldn’t help but notice he hadn’t shut the shutters, and yet the shutters had shut.
“That’ll be enough for now, I think.” Lex said. “No need to go all the way crazy right away, it is too nice of a job to rush.”
“This place is incredible,” Michael found himself saying, as much as he wanted to seem cool and collected he could not keep the dreamy daze out of his voice. The city was visually and conceptually chaotic, but there was beauty in it, a vertical slice of humanity, no, sapience, and all the weird shit human-like intelligence puts you up to.
“An incredible mess, more like.” Alicia said from somewhere deeper in the room. She didn’t sound dismissive as much as wearily aware of some mollifying fact.
“It does look rather chaotic, I will admit,” Lex chimed in. “But at least it is a disaster in a new and interesting way, no?”
“I’m with Lex on this. I don’t really know what’s going on with this place exactly, but if they need a hero I’m it.” Felipe said, Michael could hear his cocky grin before he turned around to confirm that yes, he was indeed grinning like his shit didn’t stink. Michael still didn’t know if he found Felipe’s confidence charming, deeply annoying, or both.
A knock at the door brought the speculation to a sudden halt.
“Come in.” It was Alicia who took ownership of the situation. Michael felt like it could have been him, he tried not to examine why. The door creaked open, and a very important-looking man entered the room.
Author’s Notes: And we have touchdown in the fair city of Thereafter! This chapter is a pretty beefy one, as I figured meeting the rest of the cast and getting our first good look at the city proper could do with a tiny bit of breathing room before we launch into the exposition. Make no mistake though, the Man Who Knows What’s Going On is about to arrive.