The Forbidden

by CMDR Kovacs

Chapter 02

The night was chill, and not a single star was out. The clouds were thick, and covered up the starry sky from view below, and only the barest hint of the full moon peeked through the cold blanket of condensed vapor. There was a light drizzle, the air bringing in a mist from the sea to veil the land in fog. It was a wonderful night, if one were to listen to the ponderous patter of rain on the earth below, the noise of crickets and other nocturnal creatures, and watch the way the clouds wisped across the moon. It was a perfect night.

A perfect night for me, that is.

With a movement so faint and quick, I leaped from my perch on the roof of a barn, landed and rolled in the soft, wet grass below, narrowly avoiding a rather damp pie left by one of the cattle in the farm. Rising to my feet, I hefted a rather large and sleek rifle in my gloved embrace. I bounded across the wet pasture, making not a sound amid the white noise of the rain.

---

[/HR]

“What’s a ‘rifle?’ ” Armet interrupted Mr. N, confused by the new word.

He shook his head. Of course the lad wouldn’t know what a rifle was; they hadn’t been invented. “It’s like a crossbow, but it doesn’t have a drawstring.”

“Then how does it shoot arrows?”

“No no no, a crossbow fires bolts, not arrows,” Mr. N corrected him, waving his hands dismissively. “A rifle is what you’d call a ‘firearm,’ in that it uses a small explosion to propel a small metal object faster than sound.”

Armet’s eyes dawned in realization, “Oh, so it’s like a cannon, but also a crossbow?” the image that was created by the small griffon was rather comical to see.

“Yeah, kind of, but probably not how you imagine it looks. Anyway, I all but flew through the night towards my destination...”

---

[/HR]

...I leapt atop the fence of the old pasture, and stepped off onto the road just a few centimetres from the fenceline. The gravel crunched and rolled beneath my feet, but I barely noticed it, save for the sound. I lowered my stance somewhat, and treaded more carefully along the path. The effort lessened the sound I made to the point that it couldn’t be heard over the slight wind and pitter-patter of the raindrops.

After about half an hour, I reached the rendezvous, which is a point where two or more people are supposed to meet to complete a goal of some sorts. In my case, I was meeting one of my comrades, another member of the Stalker Corps. Where I’m from, Stalker is one of the elite members of our military, extremely stealthy, smart, strong and most of all, deadly. The last part is in the job description, so we didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

“Ready, Nikhilus?” my partner, Ottenok, asked over the local comms frequency as I pulled myself up the grotto.

“Good to see you too, Otto. Shall we dance?” Otto looked almost exactly like me. Same clothes, same armor, same weapon. The only differences were our body builds and the twin bars on each of his epaulets, signifying his Captain rank.

He shrugged, “Tango’s in the city, penthouse of the Storona Hotel.”

“Vector?” I asked Ottenok how we were going to get there.

“Now now, Nicky, don’tcha think that you should take me to dinner first?” Personally, I didn’t find it all that funny. He thought it was hilarious. “Well, Colonel, if you insist. We’ll be taking the high road in, skipping stones along the way. After that, we knock nicely, and meet our guy.”

I nodded. Taking the rooftops was a good idea, especially in the metropolis of New Saveta. “Well, in that case, ladies first,” I lazily flipped my hand towards to towering city.

Otto mimicked the motion, “Age before beauty.” I gave up the banter, and just pushed him forward. “Okay, okay! I’m going!”

---

[/HR]

The bell chose that time to ring, marking the end of lunch. “Aw, man! You didn’t even get very far!”

Mr. Nikhilus chuckled lightly, “Well, I suppose time flies rather quickly, especially with a good enough story. Although, I still haven’t gotten to the part where I wound up in the Dragon Badlands…”

Armet balked. “The Dragon Badlands?! How did you survive?” the young griffon queried, the fact that lunch was over completely forgotten.

“Well, I suppose I could tell you, but I’ll have to skip over just how, exactly, I got taken from my world, and into yours,” Mr. N kicked his feet onto his desk, the remains of his lunch disposed of and tidied away. Armet nodded with an energy that is heir only to small children his age. “Okay, but you’ll miss out on quite the adventure.”

Armet thought about this for a moment, and decided on a nice median. “How about you tell me from when you got to that ‘Stone Hotel,’ or somethin’, and then the Badlands!”

Nikhilus shrugged, and conceded, “Okay, that seems like a fair deal. You’re missing out on a few other things from the way to the Storona Hotel, but alrighty then.”

---

[/HR]

We were on the roof of a building directly next to the hotel. Our skyscraper only came up to the nineteenth story of the hotel, piercing the sky with almost thirty stories of its own! “So, how do we get up there?” Otto asked, standing on the ledge of the office building we were on. While he sat there wondering, I was taking a few steps back.

“We’re gonna have to climb, but where from--whoa!” I ran past him, jumping off at the right moment and I activated my jump thrusters, their jets propelling me forwards and upwards into the air. I sailed about ten metres, which was the distance from our building to the Storona before crashing into the plate glass on the other side. Looking behind me, I watched Otto shrug before pulling the same stunt as I did before land next to me on the glass, both of us holding onto the frame of the window.

Using our boosters, we leap-frogged up to the penthouse of the hotel. Once there, we smashed through into the apartment using our sidearms, spreading broken glass all across the carpet. The reason why we had broken into the building is another long story; one I might tell you someday, if either of us remember to ask.

The two of us dropped our stance, pistols at the ready, and crept through the room, keeping our scanners looking and our eyes and ears open. Neither of us spoke, but we did use visual signals, like hand gestures and moving our heads. The penthouse was dark, which our intel told us meant that our target was either not home, or he knew we were coming.

Most likely the latter.

The penthouse was a big place, spanning the entire top floor. These kinds of things are usually reserved for big wigs and a megacorp CEO or two, which made sense, considering who we were after. Although, a question that was on both my and Otto’s minds was why Damon would reveal himself in such a public way after everything he had done.

“What did this Damon guy do, anyway?”

“I’m getting there, calm your feathers, shorty.”

As we stepped into the apartment’s kitchen area, we found it converted into, whaddaya know, a trap! Damon was there, gun in one hand, the other fumbling around with the machine he was working with. “Don’t come any closer!” he yelled. “If you do, this thing might get a bit cranky!”

Of course, we stopped in our tracks, trained to take threats like this seriously, especially with what he had done.

“Oh, come on! What did he do?!”

“I’ll tell you when you’re older, but you gotta let me finish.”

“Come on, Damon! Give up! You know that if that thing blows, you’re going with it!” Otto tried to reason with him, but I knew how futile it was.

Damon shook his head, laughing to himself before raising his gun in response to us shifting our aim. “Yes, I suppose so. But isn’t that a fair price for salvation? The debt that all men must pay?” He grew even more crazed as he shook his pistol at us, “you must think me a fool! Well, a fool I may be, but I’m doing what is right!

“For the good of existence, humanity must end, and I with it!” He was all but foaming now. He faltered for a moment before reaffirming himself. “Yes, I’m going to save you...I’m going to save you ALL!!” He began laughing maniacally before the machine clicked and glowed blue.

Reacting, I charged at him before he could activate the device, and I tried to turn it off. Maybe if I was lucky, I could disconnect the wires.

However, before I could even touch the bomb, it sparked once, and blinded us all with its light. I reacted more than act, and shot the damn thing, and it detonated.

---

[/HR]

“And then what happened?!” Armet bounced with excitement.

Mr. N chuckled to himself and looked at the clock. “Well, I guess that part of the story is for some other time,” he told the very smart young lad, smiling behind his faceplate. “Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow, maybe when you’re older.”

The young griffon’s face fell at that, “aww, you always say that…”

“Well, that’s because I will. Also, I’m getting replaced this year,” Mr. N said, seemingly changing the topic.

“What?! Why!” Armet grew upset that he won’t be seeing his favorite teacher again.

“Well, I have been asked by the Board of Education to start teaching high school physics classes, so you’ll be able to ask me for the rest of the story then.”

Confusion crossed Armet’s face as he heard those words, “But, I thought physics was mostly balloney. My mom says it is, and she’s always right!”

Mr. N laughed a bit as he started to grade today’s pop quiz. “Well, I suppose that you shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” Nikhilus paused before continuing, “well, some things. But if you don’t believe what someone tells you, just ask somebody else to make sure, okay?”

The boy’s grey-feathered face ruffled slightly, before settling back down. “Sure thing, Mr. N,” he said before heading back to his seat when his classmates began pouring through the door, chattering amongst themselves about random things, like what movie somegriffon went to last night, or somegriffon thinks that so-and-so is really cute. You know, stuff that elementary kids, er, gryphons say.

Mr. N shuffled the quizzes back into order, then stood up to return them to their owners, each one graded amazingly quickly. “Alright, everybody! Go grab a book and go back to your seats, we’re gonna learn Cyrillic!”

Every single child, except for two or three, groaned in response. “Oh, come now, it’s just like the gryphon language Starrian, just older and a bit different!” Stares were given. “Okay, a lot different.”

An airplane soared into the airspace of the classroom, accompanied by a few laughs. “Hey, if you’re gonna make a paper plane, at least make it look cool,” Mr. N said, snatching it from the air, refolding it into a Hornet-pattern with one hand before throwing it back at Vernon Redeye, a larger griffon.

Soon after, Nikhilus dove into the lesson, teaching the students each of the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, and each sound they made.

Author's Note:

Hey, guys! It's me, the mean green writing machine that you all know as Terminal! I said that I'd update this thing in two weeks and decide my update schedule based on the statistics I've accrued, but seeing as how some of you guys like it so much, I'm putting out the next chapter much more quickly!

In here, we get to see bits of two different worlds! The universe I created for dear old Nicky to come from, and bits of lore for the gryphons! we already know their country is called Yadrolev, which translates from Russian, or this story's Cyrillic, into "heart of the lion," or, more accurately, "lionheart." What I intend on describing Starrian, which is a bit of a lingual mutilation of the Russian word for "old," is as a phonetic mix between Slovenian and Ukrainian, but using the Greek alphabet instead. My reasoning for these connections is because the Cyrillic alphabet is based off of that of Greek, and all slavic languages as a consequence. So, I called it Starrian as areference to it being an old language. Logic!

Anyway, I'm sure that you're bored of me already and want to move on to other stories, or better yet, another chapter in this one! Well, for the last part, you'll have to wait awhile, what with the school board deciding to change my schedule into something else, and Air Force brass getting ready to discharge a bunch of people, and so I gotta shift in to replace them, and as a consequence, won't be available as often as I'd like. I will, however, try my best to have a new chapter out every Wednesday or Saturday, depending on how fast I churn these out. So, I'll let y'all get back to what you were doing before this, and peace out!

Also, "bud' zdorov!"

Comments

[Arya Stark]

...you are going to have more, soon, right? RIGHT?? :D

[CMDR Kovacs]

4882589 Eventually. I might have to add the Sad tag for the next chapter, though. That's all I'm saying in regards to what I have planned. I'm going to work on it once I finish my homework, though. Well, once I'm done checking on FiMFic...You'll be seeing the next chapter no later than Wednesday, that's for sure.

[drkirisame]

Yadrolev? YADROLEV?
I kek`d.