Unparallel Worlds

Today, Gurvo, the lowest of the king's subjects, was working for one of the King's sons Leonard. All but one of King Zalion's sons scared him for they had been created by the King using different species plants, animals, birds and insects, the best of these species' genes combined and implanted into their cells when they were unborn children being carried in the bellies of surrogate mothers the King had kept in his Palace.
The King had bred four out of three sons to terrify all within his Empire. They had violent tempers, frightening appearance and freakish strength. This, however, was not true of Leonard, the King's oldest son. He was the only son born without experimentation. There was rumour that he had a beating heart, which gave him compassion, he did not torture or kill his slaves for fun like his brothers, he was known, to the disgust of his father and brothers, to care for them.
Gurvo was tall and lean. He was built to climb with long strong limbs and oversized hands and feet. His nails were thick and curled like claws to help grip rock walls.
Gurvo looked up; there was only a hundred meters or so to climb before he got to the place that had all the plants his master desired. The trip climbing up had taken eight hours so he was nearly half way through his shift.
Climbing the last few meters, Gurvo noticed that something was very wrong. First, the air around him started to shimmer, and then the mountain he was climbing started to vibrate. Gurvo, not wanting to loose his grip on the rock wall and fall from this mighty height to his death, in one mighty last push, flung himself up the last few meters and landed on the mountain top.
This, he soon realised, was a mistake, for at the top he saw a hole in mid-air, shifting from side to side approaching him and before he could jump off the mountain the hole sucked him in
It felt like a year's sleep but Gurvo managed to slowly open his eyes, the light instantly hurt them so he closed them tight again. He sat there for a while with his eyes closed, his body, not accustomed to the warmth that surrounded him, sweated. After several further minutes he opened his eyes again, this time it was not so bad, his eyes had become a little more accustomed to this bright light. Gurvo closed them again, instinct telling him to repeat this exercise several times before he became accustomed to what he would later discover to be the light of a sun.
Multiples of Gurvo's generations had spent their lives in internal night and their eyes and senses had adapted to this. Gurvo's eyes were large and all seeing and now that he had accustomed them to this new world Gurvo was both shocked and awed by the colours around him. He had never seen light so pure in the Empire of Darkness and never before seen a sight like the one that lay before him. He was looking at what he believed was a pond, rather like Murk pond that Scabga, his sweetheart, wanted to swim in. But this was different for instead of containing water so murky that you could not see through it this water was clear and it was reflecting light.
Gurvo strangely found comfort in this sight so sat down, shading himself in the branches. He did not know where he was or what to do he needed a plan so he started to think. 'Water.' Gurvo needed a drink in this heat he was not accustomed to, so he moved towards the pond, but as he did so, movement on the other side of the pond caught his eye. The most hideous creature he had ever seen was standing there half undressing.
The more Gurvo looked at the creature the more he realised it was not of this environment for its long golden hair would not give it camouflage in this forest, its glowing skin would also make it easy to see in the Empire of Darkness where you were better if not seen but hidden in the darkness...

Dettagli