Skyworld Book I

Chapter Two - The Hell Below And Above

Dent hit the ground hard and rolled into a massive rock. So this was the other side of tunnel, he thought painfully as his shoulder slammed into the boulder. Not much of a barrier to stop the pygmies. Still there had been that sensation of falling and the ensuing nausea. Crawling to his knees, he saw daylight beyond the two giant rocks situated to either side of the electric blue curtain. It still remained a mystery. Yet he seemed none the worse for having passed through and he ambled quickly to the exit.

Stepping out of the opening, Dent immediately knew he was wrong. He had traveled a very great distant, if the vista he beheld was real and not some hallucination. He was standing on a wide plateau at the base of a granite mountain. Before him was a jungle valley the likes of which he had never seen before. What was bothersome was it almost looked perfectly normal. Almost exactly like the African setting he had left behind. But not quite. The differences were subtle, but they were there for the trained eye to see.

The grass at his feet was a dark green hue totally alien to any that existed on earth. The same for the massive, leaf and vine covered trees stretching out as far as the eye could see. They were trees, that was clearly evident. But not one was familiar, and Gideon Dent had spent the better part of his adult life traipsing through the jungles of every major continent.

The biggest difference was the sky, or what passed for the sky. It was a light gray substance completely devoid of clouds, as if the entire heavens were lost in a translucent mist. Walking down the plateau, he could feel the moisture on his face and it felt good. Strange, but good.

Dent was beginning to feel like Alice and this was the Wonderland he had fallen into, thanks to the wall of blue light. He turned to look back at the cave just the three pygmies who had been following him, emerged. They seemed slightly disoriented themselves. Then they spotted him and in unison raised their long spears.

He was too tired to run anymore. Oh hell, that's it. Even in this fairy kingdom, they just keep coming. Fine, throw your bloody spears and lets get it over with.

He and the diminutive trio heard the roar at the same time. Perched atop the tunnel's entrance was a massive, blue furred tiger with huge fangs and a spiked barb at the end of his long tail. He pounced on the pygmies before they could move, taking one in his maw and swiping the a second with his claws. Dent's eyes widened in disbelief and horror. Both men were dead instantly, while the third didn't need any further inducement to flee back into the cave and disappear.

Watching the blue beast chewing on the two dead bodies, Dent thought vanishing was an excellent idea and he too got the hell out of there. Only he headed downward into the exotic jungle of the valley.

A blue tiger! One twice the size of the biggest Bengal he'd ever seen! Oh, yes, he was convinced now that he had left the familiar behind and entered a very different place.

Man, how do I get myself into these things?

He kept moving as fast as his feet would take him. Thank God it was downhill. After his race of the past few hours, any kind of climb would have been impossible. His stamina was nearly depleted and he knew he was going to have to stop and rest soon.

As he moved further down the grade, Dent wondered about the weird gray sky and lack of clouds. The sun, wherever it was up there, remained completely hidden and he had no sense of real time. It could have been morning or night and he wouldn't have been able to discern between the two. It was if this place existed in an isolated twilight.

Twenty-five minutes later, huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, the archeologist-explorer came rushing out of the trees into as yet another life-or-death struggle. He found himself on a beach of soft, yellow sand fronting an azure river. Floating, which was the only word that fit, some ten feet over the ground was a wooden boat with metal plating that reminded Gideon of an old Viking galley. It was centered by a long mast and its sails were rolled securely to the crossbeam.

The craft was odd enough but it wasn't the focal point of Dent's attention. A wooden ramp extended from the bizarre hovering boat to the ground. On it were people garbed in leather harnesses and pleated skirts that looked like Roman legionnaires. They even wore plumed metal helmets painted with bizarre symbols. Each carried a short-sword at his hip and their feet were encased in leather sandals that tied to mid-calf.

A trained scholar of antiquities, Gideon's eyes were used to absorbing details quickly. As he continued to watch, still unobserved, his mind was near the verge of a complete break-down.

These people were golden in skin color. Not the tan hue of the Japanese or Chinese, but a true, rich yellow shade.

Four of these soldiers were busy dragging a fifth off the ship. The person being manhandled was fighting fiercely against the others and managed to kick one of them on the shins. The injured fellow cursed and punched the kicker in the face knocking his helmet off.

Correction. Her. For as the helmet tumbled off, a mass of blue-black hair swept free around the soldier's shoulders. At the same time Dent was altering his perceptions, another figure appeared at the top of the ramp charging down upon the group. This new participant was slightly smaller than the others and attired neck-to-toe in a purplish robe. The character also wore a white Halloween-like mask that hid the entire face. What was not hidden was the huge wooden club the figure was swinging about wildly as it fell upon the soldiers from behind.

The robed dude was trying to save the woman. Dent, unaware his feet had started moving again, had the sinking feeling the rescuer was both outclassed and outnumbered. He was quickly proven right. One of the soldiers wrestling with the captive, looked back over his shoulder in time to react. He released the woman's arm, whipped out his sword and easy blocked the club's blow. With a flick of his wrist he deflected it away. This caused the masked warrior to lose his balance and go tumbling head first off the ramp. The falling figure flipped over in midair and landed on his posterior in the shallow water.

This is bad, Dent surmised, as his pace picked up. This time he was wrong. Although the woman had not been saved from her captives, the momentary interruptions had diverted their attention. Enough so for her to kick a second time, this time under his skirt where it did the most damage. Then she broke free of the others with a hard shove backward. As the man holding his personals doubled over, the raven haired beauty pulled out her sword and ran to the beach. There she moved to an open area and there spun about in a crouch to await her tormentors.

That was she was indeed a beauty was now dazzling clear to Gideon Dent as he moved in closer. Tall, with a lithe, voluptuous figure, the woman's face was one of chiseled perfection from her ripe, red lips to her mesmerizing dark eyes set beneath long, slender lashes. Dent almost tripped at the sight of her. She was a warrior goddess.

She could also fight. He watched in awe as the remaining three warriors, swords out, fell upon her simultaneously. Without retreating so much as a half step, the golden skinned amazon parried every one of their attacks with deft ease, all the while offering them a cold, fearless smile. She exchanged words with the center swordsman, none of which Dent could interpret but the tone and emphasis of the words was enough to know she also matched them in the nerve department. God, what a girl!

Fortune was smiling down on Dent as he was coming onto the beach from behind the three men and they had yet to see him. Good. But first he needed a sword of his own. This was easily accomplished by going up the wooden ramp to the still hurting fourth man. When he looked up and saw Dent rushing him, the fellow had no time to do anything but go down under a hard right cross to the jaw. As Dent was pulling the unconscious soldier's steel from his scabbard he looked down at the first rescuer. Through the slits of the ivory mask, two eyes grew at the sight of him and Dent brought a finger to his lips. The masked head nodded in understanding.

Meanwhile the princess-in-leather was still holding her own against the determined trio. The one on her left suddenly came down over her arm and his sword ripped across her tunic. She grunted angrily and then before the swordsman could relish his strike, she pivoted on her left foot, dropped down and drove her point through his abdomen.

"Holy shit!" Dent mouthed, as he moved in on the remaining two from behind. These guys were playing for keeps.

"Okay, gents, time to back off!" he said aloud, not wanting to stab either of them in the back. Best to give them a chance to surrender peacefully, which is what he hoped they would do once they saw the sides had evened up.

No such luck. The two soldiers looked back over their shoulders, not for a second forgetting the she-cat they were battling, and then the one on the right gave his full attention to Dent. That meaning, he lunged without any further preamble. And just like that Gideon Dent was in it up to his riposte, as his old Harvard fencing master would have said.

It had been many years since Dent had hefted a rapier and dueled but fortunately he had a natural affinity to the sport and the moves came back easily. Not that exchanging blows with military sabers was anything like sports fencing, but the principals were the same. Attack, parry and riposte. Over and over again until one deciphered his opponent's strengths and weaknesses and avoided the former while exploiting the latter.

In this instant, Dent, who was fighting for his life, began to wonder if his enemy had any weaknesses at all. The man, a muscular type with a rough, plain face, was a bulldog in his attacks, always pressing forward and giving Dent little opportunity to do anything back but keep warding off blow after blow. His defense was admirable, but without any offense, it was inevitable he would eventually make a mistake and being skewered.

At the same time, the woman herself was having an equally difficult bout with her remaining opponent. The ripped shirt had exposed her bosom and a long, thin blood line traced over her right breast. But this beauty seemed only incensed to greater fury by the cut and was bringing the fight to the soldier.

Continuing to move backwards at the same time as fending off vicious stabs, Dent stepped into a depression and his left ankle twisted. As he fell backward, holding the sword up, his left hand instinctively reached back to brace himself against the sand. The sand! He scooped up a palm-full and hurled it into the brutish face. The man gagged as he was suddenly blinded and his sword froze in mid-lunge.

Dent drove his blade straight up into the man's heart and killed him. The fellow's eyes squinted; he peered down at the sword sticking in his chest, coughed, dropped his own weapon and died on his feet. As blood seeped through his tunic onto the blade, Dent felt his own insides sour.

I've just killed a man. The swordsman toppled over and Dent rose to his feet pulling his sword out of the corpse.

There was an ugly yell and he looked up as the deadly damsel, no longer in distress, cut two huge gashes into her foe's torso, the last being across his windpipe. The man went down spraying red everywhere on the sand and the woman's feet. She looked down at them for a second and then actually smiled.

Stepping over her defeated advisory, she went to Dent and slowly brought up the tip of her blood caked sword. It was aimed at his heart. On her beautiful face was a look of curiosity and something more. Gideon studied at her, clothes torn, golden breasts naked, breathing heavily from exertion and he knew right there and then he wanted her. More than anything he had ever wanted before. And he would have her, or die trying. Her eyes were pools of passion that dared a man to conquer them. To be her equal... in all things.

"Pedo mollen es monni.." she said with a voice as thick as natural pure honey.

He shook his head in bewilderment of her language.

"Holy shit. Now there's a marvelous curse I haven't heard in quite some time."

The man in the purple robes, most of which were now wet, sauntered over and removed his mask. Dent looked down at the familiar, wrinkled face and snow-topped head of his mentor, Professor Thaddeus Romaine.

"Hello, Gideon. So very good to see you again."

End Of Chapter Two