Snake Skin: worlds apart I

Raventown had a lot more to offer than Eliza had expected. For one, most of the townsfolk had collectively decided to single her out. Another thing: rumor has it, Raventown never stays in one place for long. She learned that quickly when she noticed the entire village was suddenly surrounded by water.

 

Raventown was an unusual place. A lively world full of orange rays, the lingering smell of woodsy smoke, and the loyal residents with empty pockets. Nothing Eliza hadn’t seen before, but the real peculiar thing was the foundation this town chose to build itself upon. 

 

Whatever was happening here, Eliza could feel it. She could feel the shift in the cracks, the movement of their world, the twist in their roads. She wondered if everyone else felt it too, or if they had stayed in their little confinement for so long, they became numb to it.

 

What made Raventown so peculiar wasn’t its people, nor streets, but the amount of raw power that she could feel restless in her bones, adrenaline sinking into her veins. She wasn’t sure if it was something sinister, or jolly, or something out of her hands. All she knew was that it was like a clock. The bells in the distance gradually get closer and louder. It pounded in her ears and rang through her soul. It wasn’t just distant. It was underground.

 

A week had gone by and Eliza had found a crack at the edge of their settlement. She had nearly fallen into it too. The crack itself illuminated with a rainbow glow and was wide enough to swallow her whole had it not been for her incredible reflexes. As interesting as it would be to see what was inside, she, for one, had enough of adventure. Alas, mother nature had other plans. The opening decided to conveniently create a rift where she stood, and this time, her amazing reflexes weren’t enough.

 

She was probably screaming. The crevices in the ground had led her to something of a slide, dragging her deeper underground. Her magic proved faulty, as if something were blocking it. No, not blocking; it was being overloaded. The ground rumbled as electric flames sparked out of her necklace. Her throat felt hoarse, probably from screaming, as she began to tumble, reaching out for something to hold. Yet every time she reached for something like a stalagmite, it would move out of her reach. She hoped, truly, that mother nature would go through a global warming. The rainbow lights became pure white, blinding her vision. The last thing she saw was a drawing, like a rune. Then, she saw the sky.

 

***

 

She was staring at the sky for a while. She wasn’t sure if she died or passed out or if this was all a dream. There were no clouds, she noticed. Just the sun beaming down on her. She found her breathing to be disrupted and irregular. She couldn’t tell if it were the nerves or something in the air.

 

It took her a minute to pick herself up. She felt her palms graze across the surface of what seemed to be metal. She patted it before suddenly realizing that she was not in the village and that she was in fact on a ship. A ship… in the sky.

 

“SALUTATIONS!” A metal man suddenly came into view. “WELCOME ABOARD THE ‘MATILEAR’ UNIDENTIFIABLE STRANGER!” She was pretty sure she was screaming this time. The metal man appeared unfazed. He was more of a bronze, dressed in a blacksmith’s attire with a large crate in hand. As she looked around—her vocal chords probably nonexistent now—she realized most of the passengers wandering were metal men. They all turned to stare at her as she began to retaliate. She shifted to the edge of the pedestal as the metal man advanced towards her, his movements stiff.

 

“I SEE YOU ARE IN DISTRESS. FRET NOT. I RECOMMEND DRINKING SOME WATER. FOR US, IT’S TO DIE FOR!” Several voices of laughter erupted from the man despite him having only one strange mouth. At least, she assumed it was a mouth. He had little holes scattered into a smile which seemed to project the sound. “THAT WAS A JOKE. WATER IS LETHAL TO MOST CONSTRUCTS.”

 

“Constructs,” she repeated coarsely. “Matilear.” Her head began to spin again. This was either a dream or a hallucination. She slumped to the floor again. It was just a very realistic dream. “I SEE THERE IS FURTHER CONFUSION. ALLOW ME TO TAKE YOU TO A FORMAL INFORMATIONAL PROVIDER!”

 

At this, she bolted upright. “Like a captain?” She asked suddenly, praying for some regular discussion with a regular person. “FOLLOW ME!” Was all he responded with before gently placing the crate down and walking towards a stairway downstairs. “Wait,” she said, staggering to her feet. “Wait!”

 

The stairway led to a fork. She took note of what she saw around her as they made their way down the far right. Contraptions and machines lined neatly against a wall whilst across from it was a view, and her breath got caught in her throat. She leaned against the golden railing as she saw the clouds, the sky, the ships, the world.

 

“PLEASE DO NOT LEAN ON THE RAILING! WE LEAVE THIS AREA OPEN SO THE MACHINES DO NOT OVERHEAT,” the construct precautioned. Eliza paused for a moment to watch the other ships drift away.

 

There was a door at the end of the hall. Redwood and carved with numbers, sequences and other math related stuff she could not grasp. On the other side was a large room full of boards, books, and papers littered around everywhere. The place looked lived in, but that was just about the only “good” thing she could say about it. Charts and documents piled to the sky with a single, cluttered desk in the middle. Buried under works of literature and heaps of papers was a scrawny figure wearing spectacles. He looked somewhat young and anxious, dark, brown hair like a commoner's and clothes even more so. She cringed, slightly, thinking back to Raventown.

 

“LEAD RESEARCHER CRAWTZ,” the construct called. The man jumped right out of his seat. “Oh… Junior Junior, hi,” he smiled shakily, averting his gaze from the robot to Eliza then back to the robot. “Who— who’s this?” he asked, gesturing in her general direction. Per habit, she waited for someone to introduce her before realizing nobody knew who she was and she knew nobody. 

 

“Elizabeth Lowery the Second.” She straightened her posture and tried to look decently respectable. “From the House of Lowery.” His mouth made a small “o” before clearing his throat. “I’m— uh— Vector Crawtz. Lead rewercher— lead researcher, and, uh, only researcher, aboard the… the uh… Matilear,” he smiled, extending a hand. She glanced at the ash that covered his glove and raised a brow. “Sorry,” he said, retracting it awkwardly. “I didn’t know we were… receiving visitors. The um, captain just left so if you wanted to talk to him he’s… yeah, he’s gone.”

 

“Unfortunate. May I speak with your second in command?” Eliza requested. “Well, I mean— when he’s gone, y’know, I’m kind of like the next best guy, uh,” Vector chuckled awkwardly. “Very funny. Now is this second available? I’d like to have a word,” she pressed on. “No— I mean, like, he put me in charge… so… yeah, sorry…” he let out another nervous laugh. “If— if you have a problem, Beth—can I call you Beth?”

“You may address me as ‘Your Grace.’”

“Oh! Yeah, okay, Your Grace. Is there a problem? Do you, like, need a tour? Is Junior Junior bothering you because I could… decommission him…?”

 

The construct let out a panicked gasp. “Grandpappy, why?” His mouth suddenly spun around before clicking into place. Where once a smile was replaced by a frown. Like a comedy and tragedy mask. “Sorry, sorry. Er— Junior Junior, could you leave us for a moment?” A brief expression of guilt washed over his face as the construct sadly exited.

 

 Eliza hummed as she gazed around the room. Vector’s desk was surrounded by what appeared to be a moat or a stairway, gradually descending further down. Instead of being filled with water, it was filled with black board with white writings. The writing itself can only be described as “foreign” to her. “What exactly have you been researching?” She muttered slowly making her way to the edge of one of the moats. “Oh, it’s fascinating!” Vector’s eyes lit up. “It’s only a theory, of course, but I’ve been researching the noticeable increase in molecular structures arranged in ways that shouldn’t be possible in our world. If the existence of such molecules wasn’t bizarre enough already, an increase in them is just talking crazy! And it seems to stem from areas full of major latent magic like the one we just passed by—”

 

“Stop,” she said. “Repeat that in English.” The shine in his eyes dissolved. “I— I am researching the existence of portals to other worlds.” She snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “Are you one of those crazy people who believe in superstitions?”

“I believe in physics,” he said sternly, before sighing. “Sorry… I just… am having a rough day.” He slumped down in his seat. “I– well, I ran a, uh, test earlier over a magic magnet—that’s what I call places with high latent energy levels— and… it didn’t really work, so now I’m worried the captain’s mad at me because we did come all this way…” he began to choke up. He glanced up at Eliza, waiting.

 

“Hm? Apologies, I only listen to interesting things,” she shrugged. “Yooooou…” He balled his hands and let out a sharp exhale. “...are the worst. You’re the worst,” he spat, and Eliza was slightly surprised. No one ever told her that to her face! “Sorry, sorry. Just came out… of my mouth… um… Please don’t tell the captain.” She rolled her eyes, and as she did so, she caught a glimpse of a familiar picture. A rune. “You said you researched other worlds?” She swiftly questioned. “I thought you only listened to interesting things. Wait— sorry… Why?” He perked up. “Are you interested?”

 

“Yes and no. Give me a concise--concise—” she emphasized. “—explanation of that thing.” She pointed to the drawing. A rectangular box with a circle in the center. The box was enclosed in a circle with four triangles lining the rim. Triangles she recognized.

 

“That? Oh— every magic magnet has this drawing at its center. It’s, uh, I think it’s important, so—”

“These look like alchemy symbols,” Eliza said, pointing at the triangles. “Earth, fire, water, and sometimes known as air but mostly known as ‘sky.’” She drew closer to the rune. “I thought about that, yeah…” She heard Vector rise from his chair again. “But I considered it to be more of… more of a key of some sort.”

“You said you ran a test.”

“Yeah, maybe, like, half an hour ago.”

“And it didn’t work?”

“It’s… complicated. I thought I could make my own portal by drawing this symbol on the deck.” He fiddled nervously with his gloves. “All it— All it did was set the deck on fire. Cap told me to clean it… and, um…” He looked down at his feet. “Yeah, it— my research hasn’t been working… that much. Tried waiting for results while cleaning… Nothing happened…”

 

The two stood in silence, one looking down, the other looking up. “You’re wrong,” she said. “I’m— sorry, what?” He gave her a perplexed look. “You waited for something to happen. Only waited. Clearly you did not look further.” She suddenly shot out of the room, briskly making her way to the deck. She bumped into Junior Junior, who was waiting directly outside, and did not bother to stay as he stumbled to the floor. “Wait!” Vector called from his study. He helped Junior Junior back to his feet before trailing behind her steps.

 

She was back where she started, but at least with a better perception. The woodboards looked clean enough, but in the center was a pedestal of stone. The same one she had first found herself on. Around it, the floor was charred, taking the form of a circle with four triangles. She swallowed harshly.

 

“What do— what do you mean?” Vector managed to say through his gasps for air. It was the first thing he said when he finally caught up to her. “What do you mean I’m wrong?” She turned slightly to face him. “I have a thought,” she began. “And I think you’ve stranded me in another world.”