It was sunrise. Or sunset. Lee had no idea. But the first thing he saw after a brief dizziness was the dimly shining sun. And then there were moons, several of them.
'This will be good!' Lee sarcastically said to himself, 'Maybe the bitch was right and this is THE Netherworld!'
After the wagon with children was pushed in the dark-purple hole, they instantly appeared on the other side of it as if stepping through a door. But the world they arrived at was nothing Lee had seen in his lives.
It was a bright afternoon a moment ago, but now it was twilight even though there was a sun sitting above the horizon. And it was chilly, but there was no wind. And the air felt … empty?
"Fffff …" One of the scourge soldiers took off his helmet and deeply inhaled, enjoying the fresh breath of air, but the children in Lee's wagon that were scared stiff a moment ago began to scream in panic. The guy had a slightly greenish skin and a single eye in the middle of his face.
And then the rest of the soldiers began to take off their helmets and the loud panic transformed into a silent horror. The faces around were … terrifying, at least to the children.
While the scourge were more or less similarly built, although few were really short while others were buffed as if they had lived on steroids, the faces and hands were anything but normal. Some had only three fingers, but really fat ones, some had hands that resembled claws, some faces were covered in bird feathers while others had inadequate numbers of eyes – like one or three, or even more.
The upside was – they all kind of looked humanoid.
The children were horrified, but Lee quickly guessed that these people most likely were abducted from their home worlds similar to him and the rest of the kids in the wagon. But he couldn't care less about the looks of his abductors or their origins – he stood up and tried to locate Victoria's group.
Unfortunately Lee couldn't see much. The dark-purple hole was gone as if it never was there in the first place. At one side there were flat one story buildings resembling large warehouses, next to them were cages full of desperate children, most likely recently delivered from Sunwell.
And then there was a wide road along which groups of scourge soldiers were pushing and pulling large wagons filled with wares. Those weren't the ones they confiscated in Sunwell – these were triple the size and looked much sturdier. The ones they arrived with were trashed to the side in one huge pile.
But everything felt too depressive. Not because he was a captive, but the dark sky, the gray ground and … right! Only now Lee got it – there was a complete lack of vegetation! Not a single stem of grass grew anywhere, to not speak of trees! There was nothing but rocks, sand and dust.
Lee's train of thought was interrupted by one of the boy's jumping out from the wagon and rushing away, up the slope next to the warehouses. While it was no wonder someone would sooner or later try to run away, Lee was baffled that the kid who seemed to be around his age could jump several yards high and every step he took was over three yards long.
As expected the escape didn't last long. One of the soldiers caught the boy in a blink of an eye and carried him back by the neck like a dead chicken. Surprisingly he wasn't punished though, but registered at the table next to the large cages and then thrown in one of those.
The rest of Lee's group were also carried to the table to go through registration, and to avoid the inconvenience, he jumped out and walked over by himself. There was no telling if the soldier carrying him would have claws or maybe by an involuntary twitch of his had would break Lee's neck.
Now he understood why the kid earlier could jump like a grasshopper – every step he took was far too light! The world he was brought to had a completely different level of gravity compared to the previous one and the Earth he was born on initially. This world was much smaller!
Lee couldn't figure out whether it was good or bad when it was his turn to get registered. The man at the table, judging by the gray fur on his cheeks and the deep and dim eyes, was most likely an elderly and had only one arm. Probably he once was a soldier and lost the other arm in a battle, and now did a clerk's job.
Before the man at the table did anything, one of the soldiers that picked Lee up, pointed at him and said a few worlds. The clerk was seemingly surprised, thought for a bit and said something to one of his assistants.
The newcomer looked surprisingly human, except had a very pale skin, took Lee by the shoulder and guided to the side. There he picked up four large metallic items, somewhat resembling shackles, except there were no chains connecting them, and put it on Lee's extremities.
At first Lee got upset that he was the only one chained up, but soon he realized that the shackles he had were heavy, so heavy it made difficult to walk, to not speak about jumping and running. It reminded him of the weights Prides put on him during the training and indeed, he was brought to a smaller group of children who were similarly shackled. Most of them were girls though.
Everyone in this group was clearly half Lee's age and the children were dirty, and been crying for a long time. In comparison Lee with his careless expression stood out like a white pigeon. He didn't care though and sat at the side to meditate.
Of course, to not stand out even more he didn't sit in a meditative position, but hugged his knees and pretended to fall asleep.
The large cages with the children were quickly brought away, one after another, and at some point Lee's new group was loaded in another wagon. It was at least twenty five feet long and nine feet wide and was driven, or rather – pushed and pulled by four men.
Two pulled the wagon at the front and two pushed it from the back, and the shocking thing was – they continuously ran all the way. Their speed exceeded the fastest horses and it didn't seem like they got tired one bit.
Even though they were tall and well built, the sight of them managing the wagon full with children so easily was surreal, but Lee guessed it also had everything to do with the lover gravity at this place. He was even curious whether he had enough strength to substitute any of them.
The first several miles of the trip were actually interesting and while most of the children kept sobbing, Lee curiously observed the surroundings. The place the scourge soldiers arrived at was next to a city. From what Lee could tell, its size was not smaller than Sunwell's except all the houses were only one story high and built of stone.
There were no lights, or at least Lee didn't see any, and no horses or other domesticated animals. And not even birds. But there were quite a few people on the streets.
Similar to the guys Lee observed after the arrival, there were myriad of races present, but all were more or less humanoid. He did see a few giants though, towering above the others at the height over nine feet and there were some pygmy-like characters he initially took for children that were shorter than four feet.
But all these people wore the characteristic armor and carried similar weapons.
And strangely enough there were no disturbances. Everyone seemed to be polite, no one argued or fought, or maybe they did it, but with no witnesses present. Lee also couldn't point out any guards or police-like officers who were responsible for maintaining the order. It seemed strange.
With how quick the wagon went, they were soon outside the city. Unfortunately the rest of the ride became incredibly boring and even depressing – apart from few occasional cliffs at both sides of the road, there was nothing to see, not even a dried patch of grass.
Lee went back to meditation, while most of the kids fell asleep or passed out from exhaustion.
It was hard to tell how long the ride was. The sun was still in the same position – slightly above the horizon, but the moons had changed their positions and currently there were two of them, right next to each other high above in the gray sky. That brought up the question – how in the world people could tell the time around here?
But before Lee could get an answer, or any answer at all – he had to learn the local language first.