Pre-Edit Count – 1,290 Words

Song I listened to for this chapter: Battleships by Daughtry

Previously:

Humanity and the rest of the inhabitants of Earth are about to get a rude wake-up call if Godric isn’t soon found for things are getting more complicated.

Now:

A tall man about the height of Eric is walking around a shorter man bound in chains kneeling on the floor.  “It looks like the news has somehow gotten out that you are alive.” The man watches his guest, smirking at the sight of the so-called Ancient on his knees in front of him.  He had loved every moment of the vision of the pain that the man before him and those who cared for him went through.  In fact, it had only been since his son had disappeared that the fun had been diminished.

Like always, no response comes from the bound man.  He has learned not to talk and he gets more information this way.  And while he has no idea what he can do with the information, as he has always told his children, knowledge is power.

Giving a kick into the side of the teenager as he goes by, the man complains, “You have gotten to be so boring now.  It was more entertaining when you were first here.”  The laughter ringing out has an impression of madness that is contained…barely.

Nothing comes from the man. Not even a grunt from the kick.

“Eh.  Either way I win.  I liked the other way better.  Much more suffering for everyone and no one realizing you are still alive!  But, this will work.  It will make my goals of terror much greater.  Imagine if the good people of the earth are caught in a war between the supernaturals?  And just think…all over you!” The madman starts laughing harder, enjoying the suffering that he is unleashing.  It will match his own suffering from his separation from his own child.  Until they are returned, or even given more information on if it were a boy or girl, he will continue this trend.

The man clenches his jaws, trying to reach his child again. He felt the pain when Nora’s bond disappeared, but he is holding the one with Eric with all his might.  Only after the lunatic is gone do his green eyes snap open, glowing with his anger.

On Earth, Eric is sitting in his chair in the office of their new headquarters.  Frowning, he tries to think of how they could have cut his tie to Godric entirely.  He wishes now that he talked to Nora about the bond, but they had her fighting their suggestions by the time he had thought of it.  They had tried to save her, but leaving one fanatic would only delay the inevitable.

He had hated the thought of ending his sister, but Salome had her talons into her too deeply by then.  She had her addicted to whatever was in that vial before Warlow poured bleach into it.  Sad, but then, she probably would have fought his mating with Sookie more so than Pam or worse: the two of them might have joined together against Sookie.  They would lose, but he would hate that burden falling on Sookie.

No, while his mate is being trained by the Assassins, he is trying to not burden her hands with too much blood. However, Eric is not perfect.  No one is.  And hindsight is always 20/20, according to his mate.  In fact, if she knew he is stewing over this yet again she would literally hit him. But right now, he is determined to make the calls for vampires to meet the True Death, such as the ones in the Authority.

Sookie has no issues with looking over the errors of the past, in her opinion it is how you learn.  But she claims Eric broods over them too much. He second guesses his actions and if there was a better result he could have achieved, especially when decisions have ramifications beyond what he could have imagined. He never seems to learn that he can let go of it, going over the ideas as well alternatives.

Right now, he has allowed some more of their subjects onto Earth, hoping that their abilities will allow some insight into what is going on.  Niall right now is their prime suspect. Well, that and both Sookie and Warlow want to get their hands on the man since he handles some of the issues Sookie had in her childhood from what they could find.  He had also required that the contract with Warlow for Sookie be…rewritten.  Even that is incorrect, but if anyone but Warlow read it, it seemed Warlow wanted Sookie for himself.

Yeah, Niall had a lot to answer for, and with the suspicion that he is the one holding Godric, everyone is looking for him.  There has not been a case of world-hopping in a long time as the one being undertaken from the ones able to do it.  A lot of the dragons, from the different worlds, are the ones leading the world-hopping.

However, Sookie and Warlow had both visited all the pockets of the other worlds or as Niall had called it, the alternate pockets of realms, that they could and even took care of Mab as needed.  Sookie had been overjoyed to find her grandfather.  She had personally taken her grandfather to their planet, then showed him the possibilities that he has to live.  To say he is thrilled doesn’t cover it but he is sad that Adele is gone. The grief he felt from that alone was almost enough to overpower the man, but knowing that his grandchildren are still alive, as well as Jason needing him, has him looking forward to learning more.

Once he had Jason there, he gave him a talking to about things he should have known.  Sookie had smirked for a week after hearing the ‘come to Jesus’ Earl had given his grandson.  Family is important, but respect for the woman in the family is a bigger part.

Needless to say, Jason is learning a lot on how he should treat his family.  He is also thriving in the new worlds and all the options he has available to him.  Without anyone willing to let him be lazy, he had shown he can be intelligent.  His opinions on the three worlds had been one of the times Eric had realized how much he had changed.

The three worlds are as different as can be from each other.  Why they had been kept that way had puzzled them at first.  Then Jason pointed out some people like the simpler life, aka the world of Magic.  It is the world that gave birth to them all and remained the closest to that way of life.  The world of Magic and Technology, as well as the world of Technology,  seemed to have been colonized at the same time.

Jason had also pointed out that it had been someone like Sookie and Warlow that had probably made the first jumps to the planets, thence the colonization started.  As he had mentioned, even he can make the jumps to the other planets once he drank from the pool.  Why bother building towns and cities to the levels that would destroy the peacefulness of the world when the other ones could do it?

There is proof to back him up: the planet of Magic and Technology has ruins that show the progression, and again, Jason pointed out that they only knew Magic.  Their ancestors had to learn science to be able to function in the last world.

In fact, that planet that Sookie calls Techno, while empty, somehow kept power to empower their buildings to remain fully powered and working as if the people had left only minutes before they walked the halls again.  And the technology involved with the planet itself is amazing.  How did their people devolve from that to banging on rocks on Earth?

Jason is determined to find out, and Eric and Sookie had been glad to name him head of the department to research the question. There is more to this than anyone knows and Eric is getting tired of all the questions and no answers.  Not even Shadoe can remember what happened.  He was there, and then he remembers being on his home planet.

No, there are more questions the more they all look into it.  And even their advisors are starting to ask even more questions as they look back at what they thought was the real history and find gaps when the High King and Queen question them.  Jason, for all he acts the simpleton, is using his brain, now that he is being respected for it.  And he is genuinely curious about the results, especially after talking to those who had been there, along with Sookie and her divers into the Database that consisted of the core of the planet.  As much as they can determine.

Eric smiles as he remembers the awe that he, Sookie, Warlow, Jason and her Grandfather Earl had when they visited the world and saw the ribbon city in the sky, with the two planets seemingly colliding in the sky.

“How?” was the awed question from Earl. Jason just stared, and Eric is sure that sight had been the start of when Jason started changing.

Eric is watching it all, and answers him, “No one knows.  The sky here is different from the one on the other two.  But the energy that powers this city, hell, the entire world comes from that. The ones that had visited before the wars say it is a reality distorment.  They don’t remember if it is the future or another system, but the two planets are locked like that, and the power from them colliding is enough to power this city.  It is millions of years old.” He had been as much in awe as the first time the three of them had seen it.  And frankly, each time he sees it, he stops to stare amazed that his ancestors made that happen.

It had been only one of those things that they all stared at in amazement and what began the questions of how they made this possible. This planet had more impact on them since they know the technology level that they are at on Earth, yet there is no other sign of their power over technology.  Or even magic.

His own respect for nature and the knowledge the Earth had suffered and changed since he was alive made his mind up seeing the worlds as they are now. He highly approves of the idea of the city in the air, not damaging the surface of the planet.  There are bands of the towns around the world as well as others that crossed them at intervals.  The power needed to keep the cities in the air is amazing since there are no columns holding it up.

Sookie and later her brother had been very interested in it and had spent a lot of time on the planet when she has free time.  He has found the two of them in their quarters on the planet pouring over the information from the Database that she has painfully learned how to operate.

A far cry from his mate not even having a cell phone on Earth.

She has told him that they had found the right balance to have the cities on the planet, but high enough that they maintain the height with minimum power. Something about how they are always falling up but the gravity of the planet keeps them in place.  But she always backs it up with amazement of how that their ancestors found that right point.  The sheer amount of knowledge they had, along with using substances to help maintain the brilliance, is mind boggling.

As Jason had hypothesized, the planets had been separated into what the people liked best.  This planet was the more technological minded ones and is heavier in ores and such that support it.

The main planet is magical.  Literally.  It seems to seep the magic out of the very atoms in the air.  The third one is a balance between them.  But it is more of a struggle to live on that one than using Earth once they had found it, with the poorer atmosphere than the other two. Not that it was the only reason they used Earth.

Most impressive is that the magic in their home world combined with the ores on the other planet that allowed all three to maintain their close orbits.  Otherwise, the titanic collision of planets in the skies of the Techno world would be a reality.

In fact, the most telling information they had found is that Earth is another place where the magic and science are both possible and evident.  But it is richer in resources while being weaker in magic.  They had wanted to settle it as an alternative to their own third world, and none even now can blame them.

There are hints of other worlds, and again the archives of their allies fail to tell them what happened to them. A lot of those worlds had been joint colonization with their allies. And nothing remains of what had been the people on those planets.

Could they all be what is left of their race?  And not one of them are pure back to what they had originally been?  Or are they all pure but, just as what happened on Earth, where they lived made the differences come about?

Will it be as Jason has put forward, that as they live here, they will revert back to the originals?

Leaning his head back, Eric thinks again on all the questions they have, and no answers.  He wants to know who instigated it all.  Because from all he read from Sookie’s dives into the database along with their Allie’s archives, there was peace before whatever took them from their home occurred.  Thousands of years of peace in fact.

What had happened?

Because Eric is afraid that the lesson humanity has yet to learn is about to be shown to be older than them.  History repeats.  The timing, the things happening around the world, seem to be building up to another clash between the types of beings on Earth.

And who knows if anything will be left over?

Final count: 2,427

Fairfarren~