Center of Attention

New Game, Old Faces

          The feeling that happened to spark in Smallik's chest was not of malicious intent. He saw an innocence in the old man as he trudged behind him with his strange combat boots from years and years ahead of him. Even if Firstien had only hinted at the idea of what the year 9137, Smallik had wanted to know so much more. He couldn't place why, either. It was like his story was changing before his eyes, and he could do nothing but dance along the words as if they were the ground he was stagnant upon. For once in a long time, Smallik decided that he should smile. For Firstien.
And he was smiling for himself.

The woods seemed to stretch on forever. That's what I thought as sunrise suddenly began to be sundown from the excessive walking. My feet were sore in my shoes. Very sore. The rubber was rubbing into my toes as the socks with too many holes began to fall apart inside, and I almost cursed at myself way too many times as I thought about how stupid I was for not picking a sturdy pair of socks that morning. Now it was nighttime, and I could feel the pain of everything between my toes like it was all livid inside.
The trees started to disappear one-by-one until there was a field at the end of it all. Grass overgrown stretched for miles as small houses littered the landscape like little markers that told you where you were going. That wasn't the main focus, however. In the center of the valley there was a large stone structure with stone houses built to topple each other. Lights cascaded dimly over it like it was all just meant to be put together that way, and yet it was all dim like it was supposed to hide among everything that surrounded it. Smallik pulled me along to the large wooden gate that was guarded by two men that seemed completely out of place. Their complexion was dark, and they held these stares that led deep beyond our approaching figures. My feet hurt badly enough to where I almost tripped into one of them. They didn't notice. Not until they saw us try to get in.
"Where are you coming from?" one of them asked. He had a voice deep enough to shake the earth, but you could tell it was merely for show.
"The forest," Smallik answered. "I live here. My name is Smallik Sorkitimah."
"You don't look like Smallik. Not the Smallik that comes into our city."
Smallik rolled his eyes and sighed. "Allovis nogah taeum."
A glamour. His skin had suddenly become as pale as mine as if one blink had suddenly changed him. He had eyes that were nearly black and hair that was the same color. He had copied a strange style of unmarked robes that seemed to hide his wings that still peaked out a little over his hood, and he seemed to exude a certain type of smoke that went into the guards' eyes. They blinked. They were suddenly looking like they were seeing beyond us again.
"May I pass?" Smallik asked, clearly impatient. "I have business to run with this new recruit."
The guard that was so defensive before loosely nodded and dragged himself to open the large doors. His hands merely slipped over the wood as the doors began to creak into the big city.
And it was huge.
I was intimidated to go any further with my feet hurting and all that, but Smallik refused to keep me from not following as he gripped onto my wrist to make sure I didn't get lost in the crowds. There were people on the streets that were playing with fire, and others gathered around to watch. I saw a man walk by with a bear on a leash and a collar. People were walking on stilts, and there were animals I couldn't place the name of that had walked by with others as they had cargo slung across their backs. I even saw a market with makeshift stands and people with crummy frowns as they waited for someone to check them out. I was baffled. Everything here was lively even if just for a moment in time. Any second you were mesmerized by a man eating fire, you were missing another scream about anything at all. It was chaos.
"This is the city of Ortim. A human city, if you will. It houses a large church and the Queen," Smallik told me. His voice was drowned out by trumpets that people were playing. Trumpets... Those were things only seen in storybooks. "It's lively at night. Very lively. We Faes like to keep an ordinance of peace when the moon is high in the sky, but the human-like races are just full of drunks and parties at the end of the day. They find... solace in it."
I yelled over a tuba. "Human races?"
"Elves, dwarves, and the like. There are different classes of races like monster-humans and animal-humans. The human races themselves are pale-skinned. Others... not so much."
It was like everything I knew about history was stripped out of my system. What kind of future was I living in where I didn't know anything else other than what humans were? Elves and dwarves... They were myths, too. I heard whispers of their stories throughout the air like they were just like the Faes, but this was so different. Everything was just... tangible, right in front of me as if it had always been there since I was living on this earth. Even if I fixed what went wrong, there was something inside me that longed to stay here in this time. Without my son. Without my wife. It was all lost in translation as I walked behind Smallik to a large inn.
"Smallik! Ma' man! Wanta' play a round wit' us?"
A short man with a beard of red had called from a chair connected to a table with all kinds of races. Elves, the ones with the pointed ears. Orcs, green-skinned and large. Even a Fae with blue skin was present delicately holding playing cards. Smallik answered with a smile. "As much as I'd like to get drunk, I am on a mission for the impossible."
Drunk. At least that word was familiar to me.
"Damn," the dwarf replied hastily as he took a swig of pale yellow beer. "Our spirits'r gettin' dry wit' out ya. We jus' started a new round wit' these guys." He motioned to the table. An elf with pure white hair had waved in our direction like we were strangers just coming in. This was a bar so we were kind of strangers, but then I noticed it. I had worked with Sobollum long enough to know what he looked like from any angle at any time. There were most times the glare from his lab glasses would cover up his green eyes, but I noticed it right away. I noticed everything about him before he could hide behind his hand of cards again.
"Sobollum?" I asked. My voice was still trying to adjust from the booming outside.
Sobollum slowly turned. His ears were the only thing different about him, and they stretched outward much worse than they did before. "Hey."
"Hey? What are you doing here?" I was shocked. "How did you get here?"
The other people at the table perked up as we started to talk. "Firstien, who do you think made that concoction for your son? I had the Fae language on a screen in the lab, remember?"
"But I died and didn't see it the second time! How do you know that?" They were really giving me looks now, and Smallik was trying to drag me away. My hands slipped from him. "Sobollum, are you telling me you're the only reason why I'm back in the past?"
"I'm from the past." He had a steady gaze. "I'm so much from the past that I'm an elf, not a human. I studied alchemy for hundreds of years to make something potent enough to send me that forward in time to grab the new Center to stop the old one. I latched onto your son, the Half-Fae, just so that he would have easy access to give it to you. Look." He took in a sharp breath. "Now isn't the time to be talking about it. Both of you just sit down and have a few beers with us, okay?" The orc grabbed two chairs and placed them between himself and Sobollum. I hesitated, and Smallik wasn't happy about being here at all. He had plans, and I had definitely ruined him. There goes my stupid curiosity.
The dwarf exchanged a few looks between us before shrugging his shoulders and slamming his hand down on the table with a gold coin. The orc and the Fae had done the same while Sobollum gracefully placed his on the worn wood. Smallik placed down two coins for the both of us, and everyone turned to the bar. A few people had sat at the bar and others sat around at other tables. A woman with overly sized breasts waited the tables with her shirt unbuttoned enough to show off her cleavage. The woman behind the bar was in a similar fashion.
"Oi! Salvinah! Fetch me an' my men som' of yer finest!" the dwarf yelled at the woman behind the bar. The woman only put a thumbs up before disappearing into the back room. "Oh. I don' think we've been introduced." He had his eyes on me. "Name's Oligark Vob. This 'ere blight of a monsta' class is Cirta Cibis. An' the Fae is Tiosi Xiss."
I gulped. "I'm Firstien Istinti. Your language... It's colorful."
"We dwarves take pride in ou' accent, thank ya."
I widened my eyes. "I'm not saying it's bad, but I've never heard anyone with a voice like yours. It's very... soothing to the ears."
He blushed. He was blushing from the alcohol, but he was also embarrassed by the compliment. He held a genuine smile. "I... thank ya fo' that. Most people don' care for our voices."
"I've only ever heard humans speak," I told him. "Where I'm from, there are only humans, and I'm starting to realize that's the most boring thing in the entire world."
As I nudged Sobollum, I noticed the stares. They were brief, but they were there from everyone at the table. I ignored it as Oligark had started to shuffle the deck and deal out new cards for a game I had never seen or played before in my life. Man, the future sucked. I hoped I could fix it all to make the world just as lively as it was outside the bar. That's all I wanted.
And that's all my wife wanted to tell me for so long even if I never believed her.