[Episode 169038] [Episode 169038]Dr. Diggers could barely meet his friend's harsh gazes. These were people that he had known for quite some time, first friends of his daughters', and then acquaintances of his after their wedding.
Very few thought Tirga and Sheila would every get together, owing mostly to Tirga's irrepressible womanizing ways. Shortly after Brittanny's first child, however, Tirga had something of an epiphany. To this day, no one knows what changed him, but slowly over the course of several months, he and Sheila had started dating. A very chaste, restrained type of dating as well, which surprised everyone even more.
Eventually, the wedding no one thought would ever take place happened to great fanfare amongst their friends. Gar was ever on the lookout for the return of Tirga's 'wandering eye', and on several occasions warned him exactly how he would castrate him should he stray from his wedding vows. Perhaps it was the warnings, but Tirga never went outside his marriage. Whenever someone teased him about being 'whipped' by Sheila, he'd give them a small smile and refer them to his wife for an object lesson in exactly why you didn't cheat on a member of the Northern Edge Guard.
When their children were born, a set of twins, was the happiest moment in their lives. The boy was named Gaja, to honor their fallen leader, and the girl Aeila, in honor of Sheila's mother. Both had the fiery red hair of their parents, but only time would tell if both or either of them would inherit the birth defect that kept Sheila's strength and speed confined to her human form. But that didn't really matter to them. All they cared about was the two little bundles of joy that had blessed their lives.
It was on a trip to Earth at the Diggers compound when disaster struck. Enemies thought long gone came crawling out of the woodwork, at the behest of a new foe, who dubbed himself Chronos, Master of Time. His boasts held much credence by the fact that he had actually plucked Dr. Peachbody from the early Cretaceous period and set him against his old foes. It seemed everyone was there. Typhon, Rio and Riel, a revitalized Lich King. Even Brendan, shunted a microsecond out of time, just before his death, made his presence known. Lord Talon - or Pee Wee for most - was conspicuously absent and was the only recurring Diggers foe that did not put in an appearance.
Although the Diggers and their allies were all gathered in one place instead of spread out and vulnerable, all their archenemies gathered together proved too much to handle at first. It was only an emergency bulk teleportation that saved the majority of their lives from a slaughter at the hands of those that would kill them just to see them die.
After being hunted to the ends of the Earth, it was decided that the children among them had to be sent away. A slim chance in another dimension was better than no chance there. So it was with a heavy heart that the individual parents gave their children over to Dr. Diggers, Séance and Gneiss for their own safety. Tearful goodbyes were exchanged between those children that were old enough to know what was going on and their weeping parents. The hardest part had been separating those that had no idea what was going on, only that they were being stripped away from those that they loved.
Gaja was the last to go. He had to be magically restrained to keep him in the dimensional portal long enough to be opened. He screamed for his mother and father to help him, to not send him away. Sheila couldn't bear to watch her son be torn from her as her daughter just was, so turned away from her son's wailing.
It was in that moment that the spell, repeated with flawless precision so many times before, went out of control. Ethereal currents surged against the will of the aura magi present, and it took everything they had just to not accidentally destroy the boy in the magical riptide that cast him from his world into another. Exhausted from their mutual exertions, none among them were able to mark the signature of the world to which the boy had been sent.
The war between those that would see them dead and the Diggers plus their allies ended shortly thereafter. Galvanized by the loss, however brief, of their children, the parents fell upon their foes like beings possessed. An apocalyptic battle claimed most of what remained of the old El Dorado's resting place. Not one of their enemies escaped alive.
Not one.
After the carnage had abated, the victors went back to Dr. Diggers and his colleges to regain their lost loved ones. Most of the time, the process was quick and easy. Transport the parents to the world as close to their child as possible, then pull them out once an inter-dimensional 'umbilical' was yanked. Most, but not all. During the end of the sendings, the mages had been getting tired, and had made mistakes. It took Ace and Penny a full year to get little Jamal back from a world where the technology level was similar to that of Victorian Europe. The boy had picked up an odd English accent that he hadn't been able to shake since.
Now they were down to the last child. Little Gaja, who had never really been little at all. It seemed Sheila's birth defect was in full effect for Gaja, unlike his sister, who took after her father genetically. One last wrong to right. But would the boy - no, man be anything like the child he had sent away sixteen years ago?
Dr. Diggers prayed that would be so. "I have finally found him."
"Where?" Sheila asked, desperate to see her boy again. "Where is he?"
"I cannot see the world clearly. It supports human life; otherwise the spell would not have sent him there. Also, he is alive." Dr. Diggers held up a bracelet with a glowing blue stone in it. "This was designed to assist in the location of your son. His aura sample I took... back then... corresponds to one on this world. As no two souls are exactly alike, he must be here."
Just the confirmation that their son was alive after all this time brought immeasurable relief to the faces of Tirga and Sheila. Tears of joy threatened to burst from the petite werecat's eyes at any moment. Tirga wasn't too far behind her.
Dr. Diggers began to speak again, but in a more relaxed tone now that he saw his guests were calmer. "The spell I am going to cast will send you to the planet, and to his general location, but he might be several hundred miles from where you appear."
Tirga cocked an eyebrow. "Huh? You can't send us right to him?"
Dr. Diggers shook his head sadly. "I am sorry, but as I said, I cannot see the world clearly. That means it is a place far removed from this. Be prepared for anything." He handed the bracelet over to Tirga, who took it and fastened the device to his wrist. "The jewel will glow brighter the closer you get to Gaja. It's not the best way of navigating, I know, but I had to make certain allowances for the amount of naturally-occurring chi on the world, which seems abnormally low. This is probably why I can't get a clearer picture of his whereabouts."
"Low chi?" Sheila questioned. "What would cause that?"
This was the question Dr. Diggers had been dreading from the beginning, and he was almost sorry he had told them about the planet's chi at all. But they needed to know what they were in for, and the only way that would happen is if he furnished them with all the information he had. "There are many hypotheses on why a particular world would not have much chi. Low ambient magic, weak connection to the ethereal stream-"
"Get to the point, doc," Tirga fairly growled.
Dr. Diggers sighed. "But in this case, the world appears to be dying."
Both parents gasped. "Dying?" Sheila said with trepidation in her voice. "How could a world be dying?"
"The world itself may not be dying, but the life upon it is. Some calamity appears to have scarred much of the land and killed many of the plant life necessary for a stable ecosystem."
"So what you're saying is," Tirga growled menacingly as he advanced on Dr. Diggers, "is you sent our son to a death world, am I hearing that right?"
"I am sorry for your predicament, but I was not in control-"
"SORRY?!" Tirga roared at the top of his lungs. "SORRY DOESN"T GET ME MY SON BACK! SORRY DOESN"T TAKE AWAY SIXTEEN YEARS OF NOT KNOWING WHETHER OR NOT HE WAS ALIVE OR DEAD! SORRY DOESN'T TAKE AWAY THE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS OF DOUBTING THAT WE HAD DONE THE RIGHT THING!" His anger spent, Tirga turned his back on Dr. Diggers and stomped back to his wife. "So stuff your 'sorry'."
Once he was back beside Sheila, the short red head rubbed his shoulders to relieve some of his stress. No one could deny the past sixteen years had been rough on them, but they had to soldier on the best they could, if for no other reason than their daughter Aeila. Now that she was grown up and they didn't have to put on a brave face for her every day, they could finally show their emotions in full.
It hadn't been pretty. Though they had moved to Earth shortly after the victory against their foes and worked alongside the Diggers, the full measure of their loss hadn't really hit them until they allowed it to. For several months, they had locked themselves away, two perfect examples of self-loathing and misery. Eventually, they had allowed themselves to heal with the assistance of friends, but until now, there had never been any real chance of closure.
Now that there was, they planned to hold onto it with everything they had. "When do we go?" asked Sheila softly.
"Do you have everything you'll need?" Dr. Diggers asked in return.
Both of them nodded solemnly. Traveling across Jade was a survival course in and of itself, and they had packed accordingly, with several bags of holding and the like stuffed to the gills with things they might need. Goodbyes had all been said, and although everyone hoped the trip would end successfully, realistically something could go very wrong.
"Very well." Dr. Diggers took up a position behind a bookstand and began to focus his energies. A bright blue glow filled the dark room, and an insistent tugging was felt by the two werecats. Before long, Dr. Diggers, in fact the entire room, seemed to be getting farther away from them, but they rationalized it as their being sent into the dimension door. "Good luck, my friends!" he called out as they sped away.
The blue light fled as fast as it had come, and Dr. Diggers was again alone in the room. He closed the book he had open and read the title. "Who ever heard of a Garden of Eden Creation Kit?" he mused to himself.
"OH, $#!+!!!" Sheila screamed as she fell through the air and landed roughly on the ground some twenty feet below where she started. "Owie..."
"Gangway!!!" WHAM! "Ohh... sorry, honey."
"Ghy oofa mre."
"Huh? What'd you say?"
"GHY OOFA MRE!!!"
Tirga hopped up to his feet. "Oops. Heh heh... you ok?"
Sheila picked herself up and brushed off the clothes that had gotten quite dirty in the fall and subsequent flattening by her husband. "Peachy," she grumbled. "Where are we?"
Tirga looked around. "Um..."
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(Posted Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:14)
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