Chapter Text
Kayne laughed, ringing out sharply in the room.
“Dandelion, are you fucking kidding me?” John said nothing, and Arthur tried not to be too bitterly pleased at that. Kayne took an exaggerated breath in, then out. Possibly in anger, possibly just to mock them. “So!” He clapped his hands together. “There’s been a slight change of plans. Well, I suppose you must be disappointed” He put on a mocking voice “No visiting England for poor old Arthur Lester.”
“What?”
“Well!” Kayne snapped his fingers.
“He’s spun around on his heel, and is walking back towards us.”
“In some way you’ll be going somewhere similar. At least I think. Could be wrong!”
There was a short pause, in which Arthur tried to gather his thoughts. A fools effort as they were sent tumbling the next second when Kayne shouted in his ear.
“Whatcha thinking about? I’m thinking, well. That’s a secret!”
“Kayne…” John growled.
“Ah, I’m just messing with you canary. Annyyywayyss, I’m running to an issue with another world, and I want you too, the dream-team, the indomitable, the undefeated, to go check it out for me.” Arthur felt his anger rising at the nonsense Kayne was babbling.
“Why the hell should I help you.” He snapped. “Why would you even care about some world anyway?” Kayne laughed.
“First answer: because otherwise, you die. The second...hmn. Aha!” Kayne clapped, and Arthur felt the floor change slightly, becoming slightly more slippery.
“We’re in a different room. It’s a grand hall, or at least a small version of one. It’s scarcely bigger than you’re apartment, though it certainly is much more gilded. It’s… It’s empty, aside from a piano. A half opened and disassembled piano.”
“Correct! Corncob, it’s always impressive how well you can describe what infront of you. Very difficult, I’m sure. Now, Arthur, I’m sure that you remember the idea of each universe being a key? I’m the one playing the keys, etc etc. Well, look here.”
“He’s pointing into the piano, at the wires and hammers inside the piano.”
“Ooh, so close. Look closer at the wires.”
There was a long moment of silence. Arthur felt the old bitterness about his eye’s well up again. What good was a visual metaphor when you couldn’t see? The silence was shattered when John exclaimed.
“Oh! Oh, Arthur, there’s so many more wires than there are keys. Hundreds more! It’s hard to tell on the inside if there are missing hammers or if someone’s added more wires, but on the outside you wouldn’t notice that there was anything amiss!”
“Exactly buttercup! Now, English, what do you think that would mean?”
Arthur stumbled for a minute.
“There, if the keys are other worlds...there’s worlds you can’t touch? World’s you don’t even know exist?” He tried to fight down the existential horror that the idea brought up. It was bad enough for humanity to not know of other worlds, but if the god’s themselves didn’t either? Or at least, whatever devil Kayne was.
“Oh wow! Two for two. From two!” Kayne laughed at his own joke “You should be on Jeopardy!”
“What?”
“Anyway, I normally can’t access these worlds at all. They’re like... black holes. Hmm or perhaps, like a spider on you’re back. You feel like it’s there, but you can’t be certain it is, nor do anything about it. You want to take a guess were this is going?” Kayne asked giddily.
Neither Arthur nor John answered.
“The thing is recently, one jussst barely tangled up with one I can reach. Some kind of fiddling by someone else sent it drifting through the ocean, and it collided. Oh, do you want to know the best part? I have no idea what’s in there. Could be anything! Could be full of, oh I don’t know, squid!”
“I still don’t understand why you are sending us.”
“Anything includes everything, includes something that can kill me. I have plans, things to do, fathers to kill, and I do not plan on cutting them short. And you, English?” Kayne’s voice dropped low. “You simply didn’t make the cut. Well, ta-ta!”
“Wait”
“Kayne!”
At once, Arthur was nothing.
---
Then he was again.
“John, what, wh-” He shook is head, trying to get rid of the lingering dizziness. “Where are we right now? What’s our situation?”
“...Right. We look to be in an alley, of some kind of town. Or, maybe a city? It’s all new, but the style feels old. Fancy, too, the kind of buildings the idle rich might design, but practical enough for everyday living.”
Arthur sighed.
“We are going to talk about it eventually. But, right now, we can’t afford to fight.”
“You’re forgiving me?” Johns puzzlement and hope bled through his voice.
“That’s not what I said. I don’t forgive you. We just can’t fight now. We need to be a team, and there’s no way we can do that if we’re at each others throats” Arthur whispered. He then suddenly stood up against the wall, hoping to cut off the tense discussion before it could escalate into a heated argument.
“A city you said? Landing in civilization could be a blessing or a curse. If this world really is so foreign, who’s to say their inhabitants are anything like humans at all, and if they would take kindly to a human crash landing in their city.”
“We can’t stay in this alley forever though. Kayne, that asshole. We don’t even have any water on us. We’ll find out soon enough what this city’s inhabitants are like.”
Arthur turned his head away from the sun, hoping to give John one last look at their surroundings.
“Wait-” John said suddenly.
Arthur steeled himself for a fight “What? John, what’s happening?”
“No, I just...we could actually stay in this alley for a little bit longer. If we wanted. Behind us, it stretches and branches off. The buildings start to block off the light, it seems like its pitch dark in there, and it seems to get smaller and cramped quickly.”
“How small?”
“Small enough that we wouldn’t be able to run if we had to.”
“But in exchange, we would be far less likely to run into a person at all.”
“Yes.”
Arthur tried to think it over. The static-y feeling from when he wasn’t still clung to him, and his limbs still seemed to lag behind him.
“Let’s go out into the city. I fancy our chances more in a wide crowd, and if these buildings look like something from Earth, maybe they will be more human than we expect.”
“That’s true. These buildings do look shockingly human for something like-”
“Like squids?” Arthur shook his head at the idea.
“Like squids” John finished, primly.
Before moving, Arthur started to fiddle with the fastener around his neck. “Before we leave, we should take off this cape. If they are human, it can’t make a good impression to be wearing some cults cape covered in blood.”
“Should we just leave it here?” John asked, similarly disgusted.
“Let’s keep it. There’s space in the bag, and in a situation like this, we should keep everything we have on us.”
“The situation of being sent to another world?”
“A survival situation.” The cloth cape was finally bundled into the bag. “Ready meet the world?”
John grumbled, “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Walking out of the alley let the sun hit Arthur, feeling like spring after a harsh winter. Chatter and footsteps became louder, meaningless babble washing over him.
“Well?” Arthur whispered to John. “Are we going to be killed by squid?”
“No, they’re...human. Completely. They dress strangely, old fashioned and sumpuous, but they’re definitely human. We seem to be in a well off part of town, everyone is wearing ridiculous amounts of fabric, and they’re practically sparkling in the sun. Some people have turned to look, but I believe it is due to the fact we are…”
“Not so presentable.”
“No. Luckily, it seems that the majority of the...er, blood, stained only the cloak. Hiding it in our bag was the right call.”
“Under dressed is certainly better than looking like a murder victim.”
No one started calling for the guards, so Arthur started wandering through the crowd, whispering to himself.
“Strange.”
“What is?”
“I can understand these people. Shouldn’t they be speaking some kind of, of, alien language?”
“They are.”
“What?”
“Listen closely. There’s some kind of...film between us and them, that’s letting us understand them.”
Arthur paused, letting the revelation wash over him, the same as the babble of the crowd. At second listen, the snippets of “Did you see the newest opera?” and “Aw, darling, it’s not that” and “Newspaper, cigarettes and candy!” were indeed in a different language. It resembled a mix of Latin and German, if a comparison could be made.
“Kayne.”
“Kayne.”
Arthur sighed.
“Let’s not look gift horses in the mouth. Let’s just be glad that we have the ability to communicate with these people. At least we won’t have to resort to charades.”
“Sure.”
“We should talk about what we do now. I hate to say it, but out of the two of us, you have a better chance of understanding Kayne’s next move.”
“I’m not Kayne. I know that, that madman no better than you do.” Irritation bled into John’s voice.
“I know that John. But if you were to take a stab in the fucking dark, what would he do. Are we getting out of here anytime soon?”Arthur hissed back, matching him.
John paused, and Arthur had a second to think that he might be considering the question. Those hopes were dashed when John exploded.
“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know Arthur! I am NOT Kayne. I’m not the King anymore, I am trying to be someone else, but you can’t wait push me back fucking in.”
Arthur kept walking in silence. He didn’t bother to respond to John’s tantrum. It was slightly harder to dodge the people walking on the same path without John warning him, but he hadn’t forgotten the skills gained those first tumultuous weeks.
Listening into the conversations filled in Arthur on the city they were in.
“Buckland really is going, isn’t it?” He overheard someone whisper, presumably about him.“Elisa, stop! That’s rude!” Someone else giggled back. He tried not to feel offended. Another conversation mentioned southern colonies, and that weather there was apparently far better that of Loen kingdom.
Knowing where they were was better than nothing, even if the majority of the conversations were small talk.
John eventually broke the silence begrudingly.
“...he wouldn’t pull us out. We’re disposable. He was interested in us, but he doesn’t care enough to risk himself.”
“He’s gambling the entire world and himself on his “Blackstone” plan, but he wouldn’t risk himself for the investigation into this world?”
“No. No I don’t think he would. After all, this world isn’t his problem. If it is useful, he’ll be happy to use it, but if it’s dangerous?”
“He can just ignore it, can’t he?.” Arthur sighed. “Well. If we aren’t getting pulled out and are here for the long haul, we need a job and a place to live. Is there a shop or something nearby where we can ask for directions?”
“To your left, a little further. It’s a dry goods shop, seemingly doing well for it self, despite being shabbier than it’s surroundings. Age and wear cling to this shop, but despite that, the walls is practically gleam. The wooden sign hanging next to the door reads ‘Thomas Dry Goods.’ We don’t have any money Arthur, what are we going to do at a shop?”
Instead of answering, Arthur entered the store. A small bell ring above the door.
“It’s just as well off and aged on the inside. A man sits behind the wooden counter, chatting with a women holding a broom. She isn’t sweeping at all, leaning against the counter rest.” He continued.
“The store is filled with items. Colorful fabric is bundled in the back, behind what looks to be household appliances. Near the door, near us are barrels of food and some small knickknacks on the other wall. Behind the man are dozens of jars, with candies, flour and others in them.”
Arthur hummed in acknowledgment, before stepping forward into the shop.
“Excuse me! I’m new to town, would you be able to point me in the right direction to get a job?”