I know some of you don't go to the Bored Board, where I've already announced this, but this thread may go on hiatus and I may disappear for a while, due to family drama.
I don't know when I can post the next chapter, the one after this short one.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
And The Thunder Rolls . . .
Cloak appeared in the Fractured Nexus void. He was starting to get really irked by Malice. He scanned the portals, discounting the portals to Pyrosun, Hyvect, Atlanhydrias, and Florest. He saw a fraction of a cloak whip into one, and follows it without a question.
He glanced around this realm, and saw high mountains, and electrical storms predominated the sky. This must be Thundelectro. Of course, he realized that he was in a Thundelectroan human city. Like the other realms, they possessed a vast array of eye colors, and everyone possessed blonde hair. He noticed that a group of preadolescent kids were literally playing with electricity. Then he remembered that electrokinetics here were called electromagi, and it was somewhat magical in nature. Not all Thundelectroan humans were electromagi, though they all had potential to be.
Cloak sneaked out into the forest, as he saw minute thunderbirds nestling beneath the eaves of a house. He dashed around the forests behind the city, stopping occasionally to sniff the air. He had Malice's scent, and he was afraid of letting it go cold. He received a shock when an large ampiguanodon (an iguandonoid creature with electrified "thumb" spikes, glowing eyes, and a livewire tail) crosses his path, but he knew well enough that ampiguanodons are herbivorous. He leaped over the lumbering beast, which startled it enough to swing it's tail, just missing Cloak. Then it charged at Cloak, who thought,
oh, perfect, THIS I have time for.
But, after a few yards, the ampiguanodon gave up or lost interest. Cloak wasn't entirely sure which, but it mattered very little. Cloak was quickly becoming accustom to the rolling thunder and the striking lightning, but that didn't mean he
liked it. Cloak looked to his right, and saw an unusually pale girl with wispy hair, and her head bowed, limbs limp. Cloak, quite forgetting his mission, thought this was highly odd.
Cloak began to slowly approach the girl, who's head snapped up and began to motion and gesture in a beckoning manner. Cloak, being a cat, was curious about this. He approached but even more cautiously. If he had used Earthsight, he might have realized what was going on . . . but it was like he was mesmerized, mesmerized with sheer curiosity. Cloak approached closer . . . and closer . . . and closer still . . .
The girl's face briefly took on a supernatural grin before going slack, and being flung aside as a monstrous beast lunged forward, which Cloak easily sidestepped. But his cloak had brushed against the creature. The creature appeared to be like a rhinoceros beetle, but it's horns possessed six flailing, wire-like tentacles. Cloak cursed himself for being so stupid. It was a wire-horn beetle -- they would take a poor victim, impale those wire tentacles, tie into their nervous systems, and then are able to control and even speak with the freshly-dead victim. They have to change these grotesque lures every so often, but Thundelectroan humans make up a bulk of their diet.
Cloak blasted the beast with a powerful pulse of air. It just knocked the beast off its feet and onto it's back. It was having trouble righting itself, but Cloak would be long gone then. Cloak glanced at the girl it used as lure, she must have just been made into a lure, because she didn't seem all that deteriorated. Cloak could not help but feel a twinge of sympathy and grief for the girl, though he had never truly met her.
As if to put the thought out of his head, he plowed onward. He was striving to forget that, but, in the end, he never would. He stormed onward, looking for Malice, discovering her nearly at the peak of one of the tallest mountains. Cloak, using his energy disc, easily scaled the mountain, and found that the air wasn't as thin as he'd thought it would be at the top.
But he found that, once again, he was too late. Malice was clutching a jewel that had lightning bolt-shape within it. Malice was smirking, as if she were merely waiting for him to show up simply so she could gloat some more.
"Poor widdle kitty cat," she sneered.
Suddenly, lighting hit the area between the two. Malice didn't look alarmed or concerned at all. Must be nice have such complete and total confidence. Cloak wouldn't know -- every decision he's ever made he always had serious doubts about. Lightning struck the same spot again -- so much for that addage . . . okay, so it was a millimeter off.
"Give it up, child," she laughed gaily, "you'll never beat me."
"I've done it before," Cloak countered menacingly. Suddenly, lightning struck at Cloak, but he stuck his right index and middle fingers at it, forced it down to his arm, down to his stomach, across his stomach, and out the other arm, via the same two fingers, at Malice. But Malice had already swirled her cloak and had vanished. Cloak cursed loudly, and swirled his cloak as well.
