Chapter 3: Elder Gau

Abnormal! If James were asked to describe his present experience travelling under the arm of a middle-aged man skip-jumping through the sky, he would start with that word. Closely followed by uncomfortable, not solely because of the lack of any safety restrictions to prevent his death from falling and not even so much because bugs kept hitting him in the face and the wind burned his cheeks, but mostly because this powerful but amiable-seeming middle-aged man was constantly rubbing his nipples in flight.

Now, James has never said any bad words against gay men, but being abducted and molested in mid paranormal flight was definitely one of the most uncomfortable moments in his life. The only saving grace was that while molesting him the man was also rubbing and squeezing the taught ass of the unconscious Jessy.

At this juncture, James could only take solace in his hope that this older man was gentle because he had the strength of 10 men and his arm didn’t even budge an inch no matter how hard James struggled. He was starting to wish he’d passed out along with Jessy. At least she wouldn’t be having nightmares about this in the near future.

Even more aggravating than this was that it seemed all the wind just parted like the red sea as he travelled, leaving his clothes almost entirely unruffled.

James, of course, thought this ability to be of the greatest use in skip-jumping flight. Regrettably, either by the lack of ability to, or for childish amusement, the man’s wind splitting technique seemed to have no effect on James. So by the time they’d travelled across the kilometres wide patch of grain he’d swallowed bugs in the dozens and was pretty sure his nipple had a blister from all the rubbing.

To make matters worse he couldn’t even complain or beg mercy because by coincidence or the flying man’s design, every time he opened his mouth he’d end up swallowing something he wished he hadn’t. Curiously despite these bugs looking like abnormal hairy skin growths that snapped off a sick man’s body and grew wings, every time he was forced to swallow one a strange warmth spread through his abdomen like he’d just swallowed a shot of strong Russian vodka.

It got to the point at the end of the trip over the grain field that his entire body felt like it was aflame and not in a kinky bedroom kind of way, more in rubbing your whole body with hot sauce kind of way.

Little did he know this was his first actual step into the world of cultivation and at this moment the man dragging him through the sky had a baffled and curious expression on his face. After all, he owned and administrated this grain field and every grain field for 30km in every direction and being said owner, he’d never seen so many Golden Grain Fly’s in a single area in the last 20 years he’d managed them.

‘Just catching five or six in the time span of a year is miraculous, but since the moment this kid entered the grain field with me they’ve been flocking to him, and he’s eating them like lollies. This kid’s got the luck of the gods.’ Was Flying Man’s first thought watching James being forced to swallow these flies.

He knew full well that these Golden Grain Flies were incredibly difficult to catch being fast as a bolt of lightning and he generously decided not to try to interfere in this boy’s fortuitous encounter. He also knew if he tried to grasp one he’d spend half a day chasing it through the fields.

Never would James have imagined that the assortment of painkillers and pills he took back in the sea-lab would be the cause of the grain bugs fanatic desire to dive straight into his mouth. Needless to say, none survived his stomach acid, but the feeling of swallowing them and the burning feeling spreading through his body remained unwelcome by James.

It took not even 30 minutes to travel nearly 30km to a nearby city surrounded by grain fields in every direction. The grain filled landscape was marred only by an occasionally rocky hill and the rivers and streams cutting along like the tracks of a giant serpent.

The city itself was rather odd because it appeared to consist of thousands of grain silos reaching into the sky with only a few tens of thousands of houses varying from shanties and shacks to villas and mansions with small areas of forest or extensive gardens growing various strange and obscure looking plants.

James judged them to look a lot like herbs and shrubbery with the occasionally glowing plant sparsely separated throughout and what seemed like a feeble bluish mist hovering over them. James couldn’t help think these gardens appeared bizarrely big for a personal herb garden.

All in all, James judged this city to more aptly be described as a grain silo township covering only two or three hundred odd square kilometres in total. Most of that being divided by the private forests and gardens of the handful of palace-like villas.

Having finally arrived the flying man suddenly stopped in mid-air. James immediately resumed his poker-face not knowing how to process this development.

Previously the flying man had always been in motion while flying, so James had assumed he needed to maintain momentum to remain airborne, to his surprise the man just stood in the air unmoving. Occasionally strange distortions spreading out from the base of his feet like ripples on a lake.

James didn’t have to wait long to find out what the flying man was waiting for. He could soon faintly hear the rapidly approaching cussing and screaming of old man Skay coming from the grain fields.

Although this brief moment of respite was nice, James’ body was growing even more uncomfortable, as he was starting to turn red faced. Undoubtedly it wasn’t due to the nipple rubbing, but from his agitated nerves that felt like they were on fire. He wanted to start asking the flying man some more questions when just as he opened his mouth the man took off again in the direction of one of the bigger mansions in the city.

Noticing the boys plight the man skip-jumped his way to a large well-maintained garden in the back of the mansion and threw James into a rock pond covered with slushy ice, saying only “Stay there and adapt” before shooting off into the mansion.

Almost immediately James felt a refreshing cooling feeling flow through his skin into his body, slowly comforting his emblazoned nerves. After this immediate release from the intense discomfort, James felt a dizzy wave before falling into a deep sleep leaning on the edge of the pond.

When he finally awoke, he was lying on a marble bed staring at a strange ceiling, and despite everything he’d been through recently, he felt unusually great.

This was unusual because his second biggest vice only marginally falling behind sex was sleeping. He felt so good in fact it almost felt unnatural, like he wasn’t even in his own body. James seized this first quiet moment he’d had to try and figure out what in the hell was going on exactly.

‘Firstly ... portal? Wormhole? Surely something of this nature. Although I’ve had no experience of such things and in fact had never even heard of any factual or theoretical evidence from so-called theorist and physicist experts on Earth supporting any such things, but I’m sitting right here, and all those experts are currently ashes amongst the nuclear holocaust. For now, I’ll just forget about what I can’t know and think about things I know for certain.’

‘Secondly. This is definitely another world. As the multiple Suns can attest to. Also, the exotic plant and insect life can be some supporting evidence. Strangely everyone is wearing weird clothes. Initially, I took no notice of this anomaly as it was surely the most insignificant thing I had on my mind immediately after arriving here. But now that I think back to the flying man and his gang they all wore robes of monks or priests.’

He suddenly realised this was why his original notion of a clan was a cult of some sort. After all, isn’t it common knowledge that cultists wear robes.

‘Returning from that random deviation, I need to think about the people here. More specifically what they could do. Although they looked and sounded exactly like regular humans, they could do astonishing things that looked and can only be described as ... magic.

‘For starters, the flying man running on air. That unexplainable pressure these people could exude at a moments notice, and also dispel if I remember correctly. The flying man dispersed the pressure of that despotic dick with a wave of the hand.’ Clearly, James had some aggrieved thoughts of the ass-hat who tried to pressure him and knocked Jessy to the ground.

‘Also odd was them speaking English ... a whole different world and they just happened to speak a language developed on Earth from thousands of years of it evolving and mashing together with other languages. After all, most of English was based off a brutally butchered Latin and God knows where Latin evolved from. Probably grunts and squeals if I were guessing. Something is definitely strange about the nature of language in this world.’

James then briefly paused his inner monologue as a terrifying thought struck him.

“Mind reading?” He mumbled to himself aloud.

‘No, impossible.’ Returning to his inner monologue, he tried to reason with himself. ‘There’s no way mind reading could just learn an entire language from my head in an instant. There must be some other paranormal phenomena at the root of this.’

Back on Earth mind reading was James’ greatest irrational fear, with zombie apocalypse coming in as his close second. His list of rational fears was even fewer with only one fear, and that was bread from the biological imperative to reproduce. The fear of being alone.

As he sat up on the bed to start organising all these rapidly occurring thoughts, the door to the room opened followed by the entrance of the constantly enraged at everything and always mumbling Dr Skay and a youth who’d accompanied the flying man he’d met on the day they arrived.

For the moment it seemed that Dr Skay was far calmer than when James first met him. He was almost shocked to see him not cussing at something whether living or inanimate.

“You’re awake that’s good. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions so let’s go see Elder Gau.” The youth noticed James sitting up and with that brief sentence he turned on his heel and walked back out with Dr Skay in tow muttering something about ‘gods?’ ‘heavenly laws’ and other unintelligible words and phrases.

James, once again lost in the situation, could only follow along as the youth travelled a winding and confusing path through the mansion.

Along the way James encountered few people, and of those few they passed in the halls most were wearing the clothes of servants and only moved aside bowing their heads silently as they passed. Dr Skay seemed completely disinterested in this matter, but James was secretly a little shocked inside.

His mind spinning as he tried to figure out just how rich and powerful this ‘Elder’ was to have such a huge mansion with so many servants attending it.

After a few minutes of confusing travel, they came to a large hall lined with tables and seats enough to fit a few hundred people. More interesting was the tables and seats were in the style of a Chinese like setting, with cushions on the floor instead of chairs and the tables sitting only a few feet off the ground.

Sitting at the main table in the hall was an old and wizened looking man with a full white beard reaching down into his lap. His snow-white eyebrows were so long as to droop halfway down his face almost looking like bangs. The rest of the hair on his head was shaved gone, and he wore a set of purple robes embroidered with a red anvil and hammer.

Most shocking was his eyes. When James first met those eyes, he felt like he was staring into the clear night’s sky containing endless shining and flickering stars. Now he really felt as if his mind was being read as a shiver ran up his spine, and a cold sweat broke out on his back.

Although he felt no apparent pressure like when he first met the flying man he felt a profound and penetrating psychological pressure. His face immediately become impassive as if he noticed nothing.

Contrary to James first impression and reaction Dr Skay almost couldn’t contain himself as he ran up placing the odd glasses with fifteen inner lenses on his face and flicking through the lenses as he stared directly into the old man’s eyes.

Standing behind the Elder was the flying man wearing casual grey robes with a blue embroidered hammer and anvil. Accompanying the flying man and the elder was that brash arrogant young man, whom at this point James was assuming was flying man’s son or some similar relation.

He also wore grey but had a sword crossing over the anvil instead of a hammer embroidered on his robes. Seeing the pair’s reaction to the Elder, one looking disinterested and the other looking like he was about to dissect him, the lad’s face began to turn red, and he was trembling as if any moment he would erupt.

Before the chance came however, Jessy finally arrived in the main hall. She had changed clothes into something resembling a black Chinese Cheongsam with her long red hair hung in a wavy style down her back.