Editing Dantega:Volume 1 Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The map to the Gates

(PART 1)

“Gehhh! It’s so damn hot!!!” shouts an irritated Daey.
The entire group is feeling the same heat as well, that is except for Ubica who is cold blooded, for him this heat is welcomed. Ubica is comfortably wearing his hoody and long sleeved v-neck shirt that makes the others hot just by looking at him. Not to be outdone, Rage, who is walking in the front of the group is still clad in his heavy black coat that nearly drags to the floor. These two are so oblivious to heat one can’t help but be envious in this situation.
Daey is progressively becoming more frustrated with each passing step in this heat “Hey! Rage! Can’t we just fly around on your cloud thing? Why do we have to walk all the time!?”
It has been four days since they left the large Italian like city. Heading north, along their walking trail they have passed through a small village or town each day. It is quite convenient that they find these so close together, but the catch is that each of the stops are at least four to five hours of walking distance away.
“I can’t do that, my cloud is where I store the souls of people before I send them off to their rightful destination. If a normal human stood on it for too long your soul would be sucked in as well.” Rage replies. Daey doesn’t look too convinced until he finishes his statement off with “That means you’ll die.”
The group was a little creeped out by this because they remember riding that cloud for a decent amount of time when this whole thing started. Rage’s cloud is truly something remarkable, the majority of souls that leave people’s bodies when they die are not taken personally by Rage himself, unless it’s a soul like Ubica’s, or someone who has an abnormally strong will are the only times he uses his scythe to obtain souls. They automatically gather directly into the cloud, while there, they are in an open view of the Angels that control the judgment branch of Heaven, and the Demons that work the salvage area in Hell who pick and choose who they want and where they rightfully belong. In a basic form you can say that the cloud is somewhat of a flask, and its contents are drank by both sides of the afterlife.
“Ehhhh!? Why are you giving me that ‘I wanna ride on your back again’ look!?” shouts Ubica who is being glared at by the wide eyes of Tsubiri,
“ Oooohhh! How did you read my mind!? A-Anyways please!!! Just once more! I’m dying here!” replies Tsubiri who is now clinging to Ubica in a desperate fashion.
The two are shouting back and forth at each other in the view of a jealous Trojia, it’s not just her who is feeling this way, the rest of the girls are also filled with envy. They think ‘Why didn’t I think of that too!’ they know that Ubica is so kind that it would be an impossibility for him to say no to such a request.
All that was needed was a few moments of 'convincing', with that Tsubiri is now resting on Ubica’s back with a contempt look on her face. Ubica on the other hand is wearing strained smile until he feels something soft pressing on his neck, his face drops “ Oaahhh! They’re on my neck!!”
“ Huh? What’s the difference between your neck and your back? It shouldn’t matter where I put them! Besides I can’t see if I’m too low.” replies Tsubiri.
Ubica looks in Trojia’s direction and feels like he can see a killing dark aura surrounding her while she looks back at him. ‘I’m so dead….’
Daey is looking at Ubica’s direction while walking beside her little sister Niera, “Hmmmm, that Ubica guy really catches my interest.” says Daey who is pressing her finger on her cheek.
“Really? Well, he is really cute.” shyly replies Niera,
Daey looks surprised “Huh!? I didn’t know that you even thought of things like that!”
“W-Well I-I am a girl after all.. But I’m too young to worry about these kind of feelings.” says Niera while twiddling her thumbs in an adorable way.
Daey grabs her “Awww you’re such a cute little sister! I really just wanna steal him away from Trojia, but if it's you I’d be fine with that too!”
“W-What?”
“Ehh? Can’t you tell that she likes him? Oooh the look on her face will be so funny when one of us gets him!” Daey says with a large smile on her face.
In an instant, a shadow is cast over the heads of the two sister princesses.
Their conversation halts and their faces turn cold, a frightening voice is sends shivers down their spines,
“I HOPE I JUST MISHEARD THAT.”
“Ahh Trojia!? That evil aura is coming from you!? Niera run!”
“HEY! COME BACK HERE!”
The three princesses are running around like school children, somewhat reminiscing on past events when they were younger, but perhaps now the roles are reversed.
After a few minutes of chasing Daey and Niera in the intense heat, Trojia is worn out and gives up. Breathing rather hard she says to herself “Damn they’re fast!”
Trojia regains her breath and is about to continue the chase when she feels a hand grab her shoulder, she turns around and sees the concerned face of her precious bodyguard Niomyo.
“You don’t need to be so worked up over a monster like Ubica.”
Trojia frowns and replies “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t you get it!? That man is the Anti-Christ! You should not get yourself involved with some one who is nothing but evil like him.”
Trojia slaps Niomyo’s hand off her shoulder and shouts “THAT IS NOT WHO HE IS!!!”
Niomyo, taken aback by the sudden surge of emotion begins to explain “You… You didn’t see what I saw. You didn’t hear what I heard… Please princess, If you have any kind of trust in me you will listen. Unless you distance yourself from him… He will be the death of you.”
A silence falls over the two, Trojia is furious, but is speechless while looking at the dead serious face of Niomyo. Trojia’s frown shifts into a gentle smile as she says “I trust him with my life. If that is truly the case, then I’m prepared for it.”
Trojia walks away toward the rest of the group, Daey and Niera are still in hiding somewhere around the rocky desert area so Niomyo is standing alone in silence.
Niomyo clinches her fist and grits her teeth “It looks like I don’t have a choice… I’m sorry princess, but in order to protect you. I must kill that monster myself.”
“C-C-C-COLD!!!! It’s so cold!” shouts Ubica.
Being cold blooded, the cold weather instantly saps his strength and awareness. With in a few seconds, the weather shifted from the hundred degree heat of the desert to the freezing bitter cold of a tundra.
“Woah! It was just hot a second ago.” says Tsubiri who is still riding on Ubica’s back. She can feel that her weight is now affecting Ubica, where as before he was so sturdy and strong. “Hey.. Are you okay?” she asks with a clueless look on her face, the two of them are lagging fairly far behind the rest of the group.
Ubica is shivering quite a bit, his whole body has somewhat of a comical expression “ I-I’m not good with the cold.”
“Hahaha whaaaaaa!!?”
Before Tsubiri can find the words to make fun of him, Ubica stepped in a rut and falls awkwardly to the ground with Tsubiri in tow.
“Ouch! Sorry about tha- eeehhhh!?” shouts Ubica when he feels his hands are touching something incredibly soft. Ubica is on the ground flat on his back with a stunned and blushing red Tsubiri on top of him, his right hand is pressed firmly onto her chest, and his left hand is grabbing the right side of her butt.
“Kyaaaaa! Y-You really are a pervert!!” she screams as her face is becoming more flustered.
Ubica tries to calm the situation “What!? No I’m not! This is an accident!!!”
Tsubiri is now frowning, she is not buying his excuse, Ubica begins to panic, and with a nervous smile he continues “And besides, didn’t you say it doesn’t matter where your chest is!? There is no difference whether it's my neck or my hand!”
By all means this method in calming her down is an utter failure on Ubica’s part.
Tsubiri is so hot headed it's as if steam is coming out of her ears like a train. “T-T-There is a huge difference you idiot!!!” with those words come a thunderous slap noise.
“Nnngggyaaaahh!!!!!”
Ubica and Tubiri are now walking side by side, the hand print on Ubica’s face is more outlined due to the cold weather. Ubica looks absolutely miserable as they walk and Tsubiri begins to feel a little bad about the situation, trying to put on a cute face she says with a smile “I’m sorry about that Ubica, I know it was an accident but I’m just not used to being groped ya know?”
After being patted on the back rather hard Ubica slowly turns his head to her and gives her a bitter glare "You make it sound like I am the bad guy here.”
“Well you are a pervert.”
“Huh!? That again!? Gimme a break!”
Tsubiri giggles and latches on to his forearm, sticking it right in the center of her chest, thinking that he is being teased Ubica freezes as he is expecting another slap. But to his surprise Tsubiri rests her head on his shoulder and seriously speaks “ Being touched…Only If it’s you… I-I don’t mind.”
Oblivious to this sudden sexual advancement, Ubica thinks to himself ‘Man, she really likes to tease me… Oh crap! If Trojia sees this I’m screwed!'
The temperature is dropping with each minute, and with it lowers Ubica’s health. “Hey… You seriously look bad.” Tsubiri says with concern.
Ubica is rather pale and his eyes are half shut. Ubica looks her way as if he is trying to say something but no words come out, he moves his head closer to hers, so much so that the warm stream from his breath softly beats on her face.
“U-Um your getting too close..”
Her words fall on deaf ears, Ubica and Tsubiri’s foreheads are now touching, Tsubiri is completely flustered by this and her mind is floating around blankly until she grabs a random thought from her brain. Tsubiri grabs Ubica’s face and gives him a long kiss on his lips, when she finishes her blank thought process returns ‘Eh!? Why in the world did I do that!?’
Ubica’s head slides from her face down her neck and her shoulder.
“D-Don’t get cocky just because I kissed you! T-That was just a waaaaaaa!!!!”
The entire weight of Ubica presses against her body and forces her to the ground
“Uaahhhh! Again!?”
There is no reaction to her words from Ubica, she was expecting him to say this was some kind of joke but judging by his silence she believes he is truly serious.
“S-Stop. That was my first kiss…I-I don’t know if my heart is ready for something like this so suddenly…”
Still no reply, she is fully expecting the worst and her face is bright red, but much to her surprise he remains completely still, rather than that, he is completely limp.
“Ubica? Hey…Ubica!?”
She shakes him but to no avail, it is obvious that he is unconscious. Tsubiri struggles to get out from under him and puts him on his back, she shakes him repeatedly and begins to frantically shout “Wake up! Wake up! UBICA!!!”
“This is some kind of drastic climate change.” says Napoleon.
Rage replies “You’ll find that this will happen a lot in the near future. There isn’t a set weather environment like on Earth where there are four different seasons.”
“That’s odd.”
“It's because the sun and the three moons, and everything else in space for that matter are all artificial.”
Napoleon looks somewhat confused as to how or why that is and is about to ask Rage when the scream of Tsubiri is heard about a hundred yards back.
“HELP!! THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH UBICA!!”
“What!?” says a frightened Trojia, when she hears this her face turns pale, the group rushes to his aid and once there they see a downed Ubica.
“What did you do to him Tsubiri!?” shouts Trojia as she grabs Tsubiri’s shoulders.
“I didn’t do anything! He just collapsed all the sudden!”
“Calm down you two.” says Rage in his usual monotone voice “This is simply his body's natural reaction to the cold.”
Trojia grabs his ice cold face to try to keep him warm, his breathing is spotty and slow. She knows that he is cold blooded and is literally freezing to death right in front of her eyes, she looks at Rage with an afraid look and asks “W-What can we do to help him?”
“……” Rage is silent as he ponders her question.
The surroundings are spotted with bits of snow, the foliage that lay around the tundra like area seem flammable but actually aren’t. “This isn’t good, it seems like it is the beginning of summer here. The plants around here can’t be burned because the permafrost, so we’ll have to somehow get out of here quickly.” he says as he clicks his tongue.
The temperature is around 40 to 45 degrees, not enough to harm a regular unprepared human, but for something that is cold blooded this kind of weather can kill. The tundra is a bleak and treeless place. It is cold through all months of the year and summer is a brief period of milder climates when the sun shines almost twenty four hours a day, thus the reason it is called ‘Land of the Midnight Sun’. But even the sun can’t warm the tundra much, the short summer lasts only six to ten weeks. It never gets any warmer than fifty degrees. The warmer weather causes a layer of permafrost, ice that never goes away in the ground to melt, creating bogs and shallow lakes that don’t drain. But since it is so early in the summer here the permafrost has not completely melted yet, so the breeding of dozens of species of stinging bugs have not yet arrived. The winter climate on the other hand has a temperature averaging between negative twenty and negative thirty degrees. If the group was unlucky enough randomly stumble across this tundra during a random winter season, Ubica would not have made it even ten seconds without freezing to death, for that matter , the deaths of the rest of the group would shortly follow.
Napoleon is carrying Ubica on his back and is running as fast as possible to escape through the tundra. Rage would have carried him away on his cloud if it weren’t for two different reasons, the first is that it would be far too dangerous to leave the rest of the royals alone without the strength of himself or of Ubica, and the second is that Ubica’s soul would quickly be sucked into his cloud since Ubica is unconscious and weakened so he has no control over his body or soul.
Napoleon begins his trek, he recalls doing this kind of thing numerous times before, all be it through training when he was a teenager or helping injured comrades in one of the countless battles in which he fought. But no fewer than a thousand yards away from the rest,
BOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!!
An explosion rips through the ground only a few feet in front of him. Napoleon flies back by the force of the blast knocking Ubica to the ground.
“What the hell was that!?” Napoleon exclaims to himself as removes the shards of ice permafrost sharply sticking out of his legs. He unsheathes the sword that he carries on his back and is waiting for an enemy to appear out of the hazy aftermath of the blast when the unfamiliar voice of a man and woman is heard.
“ Geez Aria! What’s the point of planting these mines if they just blow the people we are supposed to rob into bits!?”
“Oh shut up! It works doesn’t it?”
“No it doesn’t, your stupid mine blew up five feet before the guy even got there!”
“Whatever Strauph… Lets just rob the guy like we planned and get the hell out of here.”
Napoleon was always trained to take the incentive in ambush situations, so he charges toward the sound of the voices. He wildly swings his long sword through the dust cloud, and the girls voice is heard “Woah! Looks like we got a feisty one on our hands!”
Napoleon points his sword and thrusts violently at the mocking sound of the woman’s voice.
“Haha no kidding! Well its not like it’s gonna matter anyways.”
This sound comes from the man, now focused intently on sound he senses something and moves towards it. Out of the corner of Napoleon’s right eye he sees the flow of the dust cloud change slightly. With it comes a blade closing in fast on his face, Napoleon quickly ducks underneath the attack and reaches out his right arm as if to grab whatever is behind the sword.
He feels a soft object and instantly recognizes this as a human arm, from here his natural battle instincts take over and he throws who ever he is holding downwards into the ground and with a large ‘thud’ noise the mans voice is heard “Gruaaahh!”.
He knows for sure that he has taken the advantage of this situation and twists the enemy’s arm violently while he slams his knee into the enemy’s back. In a normal occasion, Napoleon would have stabbed his sword into the back of the mans neck, but before he could he remembered that certain lad is lying defenseless on the cold tundra floor.
By now the dust has cleared, Napoleon can clearly see the man who he is on top of, the man looks like he is in his early twenties and has odd colored light turquoise hair and orange eyes. He is dressed warmly wearing some kind of purple get up with black boots, a thick black scarf and head band.
“Uh-oh, I sure have got my self in quite the pinch here.” says the man with a wide smile.
“WOW! This guy is really cute!”
Napoleon shifts his attention to the woman’s voice and sees a girl with apple red hair with the same colored orange eyes standing over Ubica while pinching his cheeks. She on the other hand looks like she is in her late teens and is dressed rather skimpy, especially considering the cold weather. She is wearing a lightly clothed white skirt, with golden circular designs over black nylon undergarments that stretch from her waist down to her brown and gold boots, the skin of her belly is seen as there is a gap between her skirt and her small white long sleeved shirt.
Napoleon clicks his tongue while confirming the fact that he knew this would happen, It is virtually a stalemate between the two because both can instantly kill the hostages they hold if needed.
With a monotone voice, Napoleon tells the apple haired girl who is holding a large broadsword to Ubica’s neck “How you want this to end is entirely up to you woman.”