Chapter 2

  “You can’t trust your own father.”

  A voice spoke to 24-year-old Caine Bryer as he looked outside of the few small windows that permitted light inside his father’s laboratory, staring at the five moons that hung in the sky. The largest moon in the sky covered a good portion of it in its silver glow, only to fade barely-visible during daylight and the hues of the colors shine brightly at night.The smaller four moons hung around the bigger ones like marbles next to a watermelon, each of them with the unique faded colors of magenta, mint green, baby blue and metallic gray. The big moon, it was known, was a representation of the goddess Sonova and the smaller moons of her demigod children.

  “So…” Caine eyed his father suspiciously, beginning to unburden the question buzzing in his head for weeks as his father was close enough to take the icy stethoscope to Caine’s chest. He winced as the steely cold touched his chest, but resumed his question. “Why do I have to get married?”

  His father took his time looking from the stethoscope, and then his notepad in the other hand, before his eyes crawled to Caine’s. His father’s silver eyes matched the beard and goatee that hugged his aged face, wrinkles deepening almost every month, or it seemed lately. His father’s eyes shifted slowly and almost bored-looking before he raised a brow, the rest of his face calculatingly stark.

  “Who says anything about you getting married?” his father’s eyes went back to the notepad before he spoke, more interested in the sciences that he spent most of his life involved in rather than whatever it was that Caine ever had to say. But in this case, Caine wasn’t sure if his dad was putting on a poker-face or if he generally didn’t seem to care beyond his work, as per usual.

  “Hmmm, well, let’s see...” Caine started facetiously. “Our 4 moons are about to be full at the same time again, so the Ceremony of the Moon is going to start sometime in the next coming months. That means 16 people are going to be arranged to be married to possibly help regenerate the world.”

  “And what makes you think this has anything to do with you?” his father asked, scribbling on his notepad and looking through various thermostats, beakers, and potion bottles that lined up neatly on a rack of shelves leaning onto one of the walls, from floor to ceiling. It was one of the dozens of racks in his father’s laboratory that were organized and filled with the necessities for the scientific works and medicines his father worked with. Certain shelves were filled with jarred animals or plants, floating in their aquatic domes peacefully, waiting for the day that they’ll be used for something of importance. This lab was one of many that spread throughout the city. The lights were always low-lit, if they were even on at all, to protect some of his father’s materials from light, but giant pods that had harnessed bigger things -such as the boulder-sized bear corpse from the Ghald nation being preserved, among other things of the same size – had enough light illuminating the pod to help navigate through the darkened room.

  “Well, you’re the head figure for the department of Science and Medicine of our whole nation, and I’m your son. I know everybody says that those who are chosen for the Ceremony of the Moon are usually random, and it’s all about the bloodline, and that the gods seem to have the say in the matter to make the decision. But, when I’ve looked back at the last few groups who participated in the ceremony, almost every group has had two or more people of importance involved in their life or lineage.” he waited for his father to reply, but he simply kept looking through bottles, pods, and vials for whatever it was he was working on. “Like the Prince of Paiyi and the daughter of Miizu’s top general were in the group last time. And the time before that they had the leading surgeon of Medicine from another town in our nation of Ryn as well as the Archbishop’s chosen protege from Ghald. And the time before that-”

  “And, again, I ask, what does this have to do with you?” His father said curtly, almost annoyed that this 24 year old “child” was taking up his time and attention, his eyes still on the chart rather than making eye contact with his son as they spoke on something Caine considered rather serious.

  “Well, for one thing, we never see each other.” Caine said matter-of-factly, hoping the cold and calculated tone in his voice would at least make his father see that he wasn’t trying to be emotional about their distance in their relationship ever since he was growing up as a child, all the way into adulthood. “You rarely come home, and you hardly talk to me whenever you do. You never actually make the time to see or talk to me, you never invite me out anywhere, you hardly seem to know I exist. But now, you called me to your laboratory out of the blue and start giving me a physical and looking for all these materials like you’re making a magic potion… and you still haven’t told me what for.”

  “It’s time for your annual checkup and physical.” his father shrugged and went back to searching for ingredients on the many-stocked shelves, his back turned toward Caine as he continued his search for the ambiguous item that seemed to captivate his attention.

  “My annual checkup...” Caine repeated with disdain, not even trying to hide the resentment. “The one I haven’t gotten in almost seven years? You wanna try telling me something a little more believable if you’re going to lie to me?”

  He waited for his father to try and give him an explanation, or perhaps even an excuse, anything to acknowledge that Caine was smarter than an eight-year-old and could tell when something wasn’t quite right. And yet nothing came but the silence. Caine let out a small sigh of frustration as he watched his father pace around the room in a search. What all could he need, and what the hell was he trying to make that was so important to not converse with his son?

  “So...” Caine tried bringing up the subject again. “Hypothetically speaking… if I were to be chosen to get married, is it really all that important that I go through with it? I mean… an arranged marriage?” he said the words with a wrinkled nose, as if he were talking about vomit and dog shit.

  “I thought you had taken your history lessons in high school.” his father said sternly as he continued to look around and jot a few things here and there in his notepad. After all the years of coming into this lab, as rare as that may have been, Caine realized he had never been able to identify most of the things that were laid on the shelves to this day.

  “I have...” Caine wasn’t sure where his father was going with this. “I had the highest grades in my graduating class.”

  “Then I don’t have to remind you about the history of the goddess Sonova giving birth to her five children; two boys, two girls and an outcast with no name, do I?” his father took a moment to actually look at his son to see if he was bright enough to figure out his own question before going back to the shelves.

  “Yeah, yeah...” Caine waved him off casually. “The four main kids wanted the Gift of creating life and magic from their Mother and ended up killing her, but not before she gave her Gift to the Unnamed Child. The Unnamed Child used the magic to create a barrier to divide the entire world into four sections, evenly split, and created an island and a sea in the very center of all four nations.”

  “And, if you were to get married, your marriage would be used to help bring the four nations back together after you, your wife and the other seven couples who are arranged to get married traveled to the Center Island and brought down the barrier.”

  “But how does getting married do all that? That’s the part I don’t understand!”

  “And here I thought you said you got the highest grades in your class. Is folklore not a part of your curriculum, or did things change in the school’s educational process since I last checked?” his father’s voice was icy and dripping with sarcasm. If there was one thing his father hated more than anything, it was the waste of time and effort and that included answering questions Caine ought to know the answers to.

  “It is!” Caine defended. “It's been said that the only people who can bring down the barrier are people who have the blood of all four nations, and that marriage is the surest way to make sure blood lines are getting mixed well and evenly well-mixed by having children. But it’s the process of choosing who has the right blood that I don’t really get.”

  “There are people in the High Councils and various government branches and outfits between the four nations who keep a track on the descendants of people from previous Ceremonies of the Moon and make sure they end up propagating making children with people who lack the same nations’ bloodline. So, we send one male to the country next to us in a clockwise fashion, and a female counterclockwise. This is the way it has been, every 20 years, for hundreds and hundreds of years.” There was a pause in his father’s movements, dramatizing his next few words with the imbued harshness. "But I’m sure you knew all this.”

  “Yeah, but… why marriage?” Caine groaned. “If I was going to get married, that would mean I would have to marry a woman from Miizu. Can’t I just knock her up and let her raise the kid? I mean, isn’t that what they tend to do in their culture? I’ve read that a lot of men usually help out their mother’s and female siblings- not their romantic partners, even if they have kids. It’s the mom and her family who actually raise and tend to the children. Or am I misinformed?” Caine knew the answer to his own question, but if his father was going to make snarky remarks, he wasn’t going to take it lying down.

  “As little as the education teaches you kids about the cultures and socioeconomic tendencies of the other three nations, yes your assessment is correct. However, marriage helps foster a bond between nations and the Children of the Moon, a special bond between those both inside and affected by the marriage. One who is in the Ceremonies of the Moon can abandon their duties, but you are damning the rest of the world to deal with separation from another as well as continuing the life of the Daemons.”

  Daemons, Caine wanted to scoff. All of his life he had heard about the horrors of the Daemons, terrifying monsters that drift from the Central Island and wreak havoc on any person, city or village they may stumble across. Each nation had perhaps five or six Daemon mishaps per year, which was a smaller number than those who die from tripping and falling down a flight of stairs if you wanted to get the statistics. Yeah, Caine had heard the tragedies of Daemons wiping out an entire village in a matter of minutes, leaving nothing behind but a blood-bath, destroyed and burned buildings, and the groans, cries and screams of those unfortunate enough to get out of the chaos with their lives. A large number of survivors of Daemon attacks stated they would rather have died along with their friends and families than have to live with the memories of those attacks. But as terrible as they have sounded, Caine had never gotten a glimpse of a Daemon attack, nor seen any pictures or footage of the aftermath of an attack. For all he knew, it could be exaggerated rumors at best.

  Based on all the history and biology books that classes would teach, Daemons were created on the Center Island from the Unnamed Child in order to defend the island. Perhaps the Unnamed Child had created more monsters than needed, or perhaps they had no real control over the monsters they made. Either way, the monsters found themselves traveling through the 20 miles of sea to find any part of the continent and search to feed their hunger of destruction. Caine had a theory: despite the Unnamed Child being a Child of the goddess Sonova, perhaps they created the monsters to kill people on purpose. While the other four Children of Sonova had been promised to watch over and protect the humans that resided in their parts of the world, it seemed almost ungodly for a demigod to crave the destruction of human life. But then again, why else would there be so much suffering, hate, and grief in the world, if not created by the gods themselves?

  “When was the last time you had heard of a Daemon attack?” Caine asked his father, half of the question was curious, the other half wanting to prove a point that Daemon attacks were a fairly rare thing as far as day-to-day things happened in Ryn.

  “Last week, up near Chiuha, a city in the north-western part of the Paiyi nation. It was a small Daemon this time, no bigger than a full-grown man, but it was one that doused anything that it touched with fire. Almost a quarter of the entire city was burned down, but luckily only 14 people were killed in this attack, and only a couple hundred injured survived without fatal injuries this time.”

  “Only?” Caine repeated the fact that his father was talking about the number of people no longer existing in this life, gone into the wind. He spoke of it as if it were nothing more than math. It was a part of his father that Caine understood, but a part he also resented and loathed. It truly showed how dedicated his father’s heart, mind and soul were to science, medicine and math… and to science, medicine and math alone.

  “In comparison to the attack in the Ghald nation seven summers ago, where the death count was in the tens-of-thousands, 50,000 injured and almost an entire city is literally nothing more than a giant crater from the explosion when the Daemon self-destructed. The City of Valenski is nothing more than a terrible memory. All of the people who lived there had moved elsewhere, too afraid the location was too close to the beaches that connected to the sea of the Center Island.” His father looked at him, straight in the eyes for once. “The Ceremony of the Moon and all those who end up being a part of it are solely responsible for attempting to infiltrate the Center Island, with the guide and assistance from the government...” his father let out an annoyed sigh at the next few words he had to utter. “...and the churches of the other countries. These chosen ones are the only keys to shutting down whatever magical forces the Unnamed Child might have there and stop the Daemons and the Barrier that separates the four nations once and for all.”

  The way his father was looking at him made him feel as though he wasn’t just talking about those involved in the ceremony… but that he was directly talking to Caine. This was something that rarely happened. The way his father spoke, the way his father looked directly at him when speaking. His father only did this when he had something of utter importance to say. And with Caine getting the creeping feeling he might be one of the chosen sixteen for the Ceremony of the Moon, his father asking him to come in for a physical, and now this speech… it all pointed towards Caine’s suspicions being correct. The gnawing feeling eating away at his gut, telling him something large was at play, and the fact that his father raised no fool fed into the belief that something was up.

  “I get it, I get it,” Caine said, holding his hands up in mock defensiveness. “It’s a super important job, and anybody who is a part of it should feel like they’re doing the world a huge favor, right?” Caine’s voice was more sarcastic than he originally meant, but his father’s stoic behavior always rubbed Caine the wrong way, especially in moments like these where Caine felt something big in their lives might happen.

  His father didn’t say anything to Caine’s sarcasm, but rather picked up Caine’s shirt that lay next to him on the doctor’s table and handed it back, indicating to get dressed again.

  “It seems like everything is running smoothly,” his father said, talking about the notes of Caine’s physical. “I’m going to give you a special prescription to help fight against bacterial and viral diseases for you, it will be ready for you to pick up at the drugstore in a few hours.” His father wrote him a prescription and handed it to him.

  “Prescription? For Bacterial and viral diseases?” Caine repeated in blank misunderstanding. “What for?”

  “Go to the drugstore and they’ll tell you everything you need to know,” his father said, gathering his book bag after placing his notepads and pens inside, and picking up his briefcase. A sure sign that his father was done in the lab and with the appointment with Caine, and was leaving almost without a second thought... as he usually did. No good-bye or “see ya later” or anything of the sort, and that’s how it had always been between the two. But today, to Caine’s surprise, as his father stepped out the door, he stopped and turned around, looking at Caine. It took him a moment to speak, which wasn’t like his father, but when he did speak, his face was just as emotionless as usual, but his voice was warm. “Caine… I just want you to know that I do love you, and I’m proud of you, even if I don’t…” his father sighed, his demeanor seemed to collapse as if a heavy weight had fallen off his shoulders. “...even if I don’t know how to show it all that well...”

  “Dad…” Caine was caught off guard by the small surprise of emotion from his father. Anybody who didn’t know his dad would say the words sounded too stiff to be taken lovingly. But Caine knew his dad, and this was the equivalent of breaking down into tears and proclaiming love if it had been any other person in the world.

  But Caine couldn’t get another word in before his father turned back around, leaving the room and closing the door behind him. And just like that, whatever special moment that was about to take place between father and son had vanished. But it wasn’t anything new for Caine. He knew that his father’s whole life was dedicated to progression for the betterment of the people of Ryn, his nation. And that type of dedication wasn’t free, it came with sacrifices. But Caine wondered from time to time, if his father would be any different if he wasn’t single-handedly one of the most influential minds, would he have been more loving and affectionate? Or was this robotic man of science who is father was deep in his core, despite his occupation? Caine decided thinking about it any more wasn’t worth wasting his time, not any more than he had when he was younger.

  Caine put on his shirt and took one last glance around his father’s lab. It was funny to him how, as a child, he thought this lab was one of the most magical places he could have ever dreamed. All of the vials and canisters and pods filled with gods-know-what. The way his father effortlessly and knowingly created and blended with medicines of both modern and ancient knowledge. The way he had tinkered with robotics and other mechanical technologies like the well-trained mechanic. The way every one that his father worked with would look at him with such admiration and splendor. But now Caine had grown up, and he could see that there isn’t any magic like how children like to see when they’re young. Like his father had shown him over the years, everything is cold, meticulous, and something science could calculate and explain. There was no time for magic.

  Caine left the lab, and walked up a few flights of stairs and went through a few security doors before exiting into the main hallway of one of the government buildings near City Hall of the city of Vern. He had seen his father’s secretary, Cindy, at her desk, talking on her phone headset and typing away at her computer effortlessly. Her eyes turned a shade harsher when they saw Caine for just a brief moment, but she had forced a polite smile before returning to her work, not saying a word. Caine knew that Cindy wasn’t the biggest fan of him; in fact, most of his father’s workers were as distant and polite as Cindy. Caine couldn’t blame them.

  In the last seven years, Caine had gotten interested in small-time programming and computer sciences as a teen, which quickly turned into the urge to learn how to not only create, but to hack as well. Even after the few years of his studies, he was only able to gain access to ill-secure computers, phones, and old and outdated security systems; nothing of importance. It was his teachers, schoolmates, but mostly his father’s employees, who had been the subjects of his hacks, whether they were successful or whether it ended up badly enough for half a year’s worth of folders and data to end up missing. That was the last time Caine had decided to try to hack people from the government, and not just because of the almost-lawsuit he and his father barely avoided. He was trying to have fun, not ruin and wreck the work him father and colleagues’ work and reputations.

  Caine left the building as the late-afternoon sun shone on his face, shining brightly and playing around a broken sea of clouds. The city was filled with a sidewalk sea full of people, as was normal during all hours of the day. Despite there being plenty of service cars and hover-bikes ready to deliver people to nearby destinations, – as well as teleportation pods if you wanted to travel a few miles instantly,-- a lot of the common people walked to save money. He could smell the hot, greasy smells of cheap food vendors mixed with the rich aromas of the restaurants that littered the street he was currently on. The sounds of honking swirled with the various music that poured out of the hip and trendy clothing stores, one of the stores repeatedly playing a commercial that had Caine in it, promoting some random cologne.

  “Hey, Caine!” a friendly stranger greeted as they passed him on the street.

  “Hey,” he returned the welcoming gesture, faking the amount of enthusiasm the stranger had shown.

  With how often he spent his time alone, he had forgotten how many people had known who he was. Not only was he the father (son?) of the Head Department of Sciences and Medicine, but he was mostly known for his model work and times he’s played in small commercials for the times he really needed money. He was a good-looking guy, something he was told almost all of his life growing up. With his mid-cut silver hair that met half way to his shoulders, styled bangs that hung over one eye, and his sharp cheek bones and jaw along with his deep, rain-cloud gray eyes, the ladies seemed to swoon over him. When clothing companies needed to sell their product, why not have their clothes shown off by a good-looking man with power and influence behind his name? It was something the people of Ryn could get behind. It took Caine almost his entire life, but he had come to realize that the people of the Ryn nation cared about two things, and two things only: furthering the expansion of education and hedonistic entertainment.

  A part of Caine hated that the education side of their society had cared more about progress and pushing further of what their community had known as far as technology, philosophy, medicine, and other general applications of life, but it may have stemmed from the distance all this knowledge had put between him and his father. If it wasn’t progressive, it would at least be working on something to make life easier and more convenient. If you didn’t have a job in pushing the progressiveness of society, then you were usually someone who worked the menial jobs that needed to be done, but rewarded with low-rent, decent pay, and a world of entertainment and pleasure for you to dive into with the free time you had. Drugs, whether medicinal or recreational, were sold and taxed with certain laws to keep the general public safe, and the public drinking age was 15. Even prostitution was legal and morally just in most cases, even in most monogamous marriages it was socially accepted for a brothel visit from time to time, so long as it didn’t become habitual. The latter half was the reason Caine loved being lucky enough to not only be raised in Ryn’s laxed laws, but that he was lucky enough to live in one of the major five floating cities in Ryn. Big cities always meant better options for women, drugs and foreign booze.

  Caine walked aimlessly through the streets of Vern, taking in his hometown with a sense of nostalgia as he thought about how much time he had spent in this city. He cruised along with a sea of people on the sidewalks as he walked past movie theaters, shopping malls, grocery stores, electronic department stores, whatever it was you could need had been located there. There were only a few family-owned shops in the entire country of Ryn, and it was mostly specialty or niche items. Everything that was common and of everyday use had some sort of department store that sold said items, store windows filled with large and colorful ads for sales they were having. Some of the older and more desperate shops had hired teens to dress in costume or shouted at anyone passing by while handing them some type of ad or coupon.

  When people didn’t walk the sidewalks or ride a hover-bike, people usually took the speedy railway trains that zipped quickly though the town or the buses that hovered just as well as the bikes in the city. The buses looked like standard buses, but the bottom of the bus had a long, electronic strip, a light blue hue glowing from it. Caine didn’t know the mechanics, but he knew the blue strips had been where the levitation had been active. The body of bikes had resembled closely to jet-skis, with the same blue strip down the middle of the bottom of each vehicle. If Caine could remember correctly, it had been almost a hundred years since wheels had been outdated in Ryn.

  Caine continued to walk down the road, soaking in the liveliness that surrounded him, people-watching at the random faces and variously aged people. Something that Caine heard rumored, and he was just now noticing, was that most people in Vern (and from what he’d heard, most of Ryn), had either light, straight hair of jet black, snow white, and various silver hairs. He’d read somewhere that people in other lands had other colors. It was common knowledge that Miizu had the various shades of blue hair, Ghald had the various shades of green, and Paiyi and its shades of reds and purples. He had heard rumors of special types of people from the Central Government that had golden strands of hair known as “blondes” but Caine hadn’t heard of anyone actually seeing one that wasn’t a wig.

  He continued down the street, his mind wondering on the crowd, until his eyes spotted a teleport station. There were five rows of ten, metal and plastic, porta-potty looking pods with a small window to look out of, and a handle on the inside. Caine had seen people casually stroll to one of the pods, pull a card out of their wallets, swipe their card on a card-reader with a keypad next to the handle. The person would punch in a code for their destination, and step inside before a bright light shone quickly with a loud zap! After that, the door would open automatically and anybody who needed to teleport could use that pod right away. Most pods had a limitation of traveling only a maximum of 20 miles, but if you needed to go farther, you could usually chain-teleport, or use several stations back to back to get just about anywhere in the nation. Caine remembered how scared he was to try teleporting his first time when he was young. Nowadays, he’ll be on his headphones, talking to someone on his phone, not even thinking twice about the split second of darkness that came with the travel. The best way he could describe it was like holding on to a blink just a hair longer than a second, and a friend gently shaking you quickly, only to be somewhere else entirely when your eyes are opened.

  Caine grinned as he made his way to one of the teleporters, removing his identification card that was needed in order to travel. While he was roaming around without a place to go a moment ago, he had finally selected a destination: the Red Light district. Dad might not have told me what’s going on, Caine thought. But if I am getting married like my gut is telling me, then I deserve to have a little bachelor party, right? He swiped his card, punched in the coordinates, and felt himself shift with ease. He stepped out of the pod, to see his favorite side of town, not only due to the entertainment, but because the Red-Light District was one of the six districts that were laid next to the edge of the city.

  One of the most amazing things about Vern and the people of Ryn was the fact that 5 of the major metropolises in their nation were literally floating cities, usually with a cloaking device to make the cities appear to look like large clouds. While there were plenty of cities on the ground in Ryn with just as much technological advances, most people who lived in the sky rarely had a reason to come down. Caine had visited only a couple of cities below for a photo shoot here and there, but they were only for half a day, and he wasn’t interested enough to go venturing about in the localized towns that didn’t have the hustle and bustle of city life. The peace and quiet was too eerily still, almost creepy. But in the moments before coming back home, he could see the giant cloud structure that resembled Ryn. That was the nice thing about the floating cities: at least they held the same shape, just in case you were ever lost. Caine felt like Vern’s cloud shape looked like a lopsided castle.

  Caine looked at the entrance to the Red-Light District before turning around and heading towards one of the lookout points at the edge of the city, an area made with binoculars you paid with some change in hopes to get a view of the whatever ground they were floating over at the time of day. Some people came here simply for the view during the day time, but at night, he knew this was a place people liked to do heavier drugs, and the whores of the brothels might sell their bodies off the clock, and without the proper paperwork. It was definitely illegal for that type of prostitution, but at least the women were able to set their own prices if they thought they were worth more than the brothels were giving them.

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  Caine remembered reading in a history book that it wasn’t until about 50 years ago that prostitution was accepted almost as casually as pornography. Hell, porn was for those who weren’t old enough or too broke to pay for a brothel visit. The brothels were well-kept, clean, and vied for positive comments, and competed with each other to outdo one another in terms of customer experiences. Not only had the women who worked the brothels been obligated to get regularly tested and checked by doctors to ensure minimal disease – and nasty rumors spreading, but the johns also had to come with results from a doctor saying they were disease-free as well before entering the brothel. There were dozens of brothels all in the Red-Light district, which laid on the western side of town, each one holding a different theme than the others. Some had night-club themes, some had outdoorsy and rugged themed lodging and the same type of women to go with it. Caine knew all of this thanks to the experience of being a regular member of almost half of the brothels in town.

  Caine took out a small glass pipe and a small container of Lush, a calming and relaxing drug that also acted as an aphrodisiac, and began to pack himself a small bowl. It wasn’t the strongest drug, nor his favorite to use, but drugs of that degree required that he was in the safety of his home. Once ready, he flicked his lighter to light it as he prepped himself against the railing that was placed several feet from the actual edge of the floating city. While the edge was feet away, the view beyond the cliff was easily seen. The specks and patches of neighborhoods and downtown sections of cities were sprawled out on the green blanket that covered the earth as far as his eyes could see. He could see enough airplanes and other flying vehicles to be able to tell where the flight paths had been, big specks of random colors flying between Vern and the ground below. He took a huge drag and let the smoke sit in his lungs for a few seconds before releasing the smoke, coughing as he exhaled. Ryn had been a fairly flat and forested nation in comparison to the other three, – or so the rumors had been said. There had been very few people to travel to any of the other countries, and even fewer outsiders were allowed to travel to Ryn. The barrier that divided the four nations had only been half of the reason so few people had traveled. While it was true only a small number of people could physically be allowed to pass through the small gates that Ryn technology had been able to offer only in the last 80-something years, it was also pain and hatred and fear of differences, as well as political differences, that held the four nations so far apart.

  Caine had learned in school that thousands of years ago, the four nations were able to pass and travel freely between worlds. And as peaceful and free as that had sounded, it had been reported that a majority of that time, two nations were constantly at war, if not three, or even all of them. There was rarely a time for peace between the four nations. Some believe it was due to the four children of the goddess Sonova picking and choosing favorites and building societies out of those chosen people, all with the rules and influences of the demigods themselves. But no historians had found solid proof of this theory; in fact, the proof and evidence of the demigods interacting with the human race was very small and limited in general. There was enough proof to show the world that Sonova and her children existed, and even their general personality types, but there hadn’t been any new evidence in a few hundred years. Over that amount of time, any hard truths can become myths and legends.

  He wondered what the other nations may have thought of Ryn. He knew not all of the things he had heard about the other nations could possibly be true, especially since hardly anybody left the nation to go find out themselves. And anybody who had gone out into the world never had pictures or footage of other places, partly because there’s no service for phones outside Ryn, but also because some people have said the locals had different opinions about the idea of photographs and filming, but none of them positive or forgiving.

  The Ghald nation was the most advanced behind Ryn, but even that land had been in a time of rustic machine and factory work, steam and coal their main source of energy. A land that was ruled by over-working, industrial people who spent their whole lives slaving away or giving their lives to The Church. While they had early styles of railroads and trains and poor automobiles, they had barely invented electricity not even a couple decades ago. But at least they had all of that, compared to the other two nations.

  The Miizu people were said to be a nation that was run entirely by women, and that men were the expendable and submissive ones. They lived in a land ruled by honor codes, stoic perseverance towards a noble cause, to aiming towards nothing less than excellence. He had heard people would commit suicide rather than have a negative image on their name, or if they were caught doing something mildly disgraceful. They rode around on horses and carriages, had to use candles and torches to guide themselves around the darkness. They were set in very old ways, and Caine found this nation to be the one he was least interested in ever visiting.

  Not too much was known about Paiyi, other than the land itself was diverse. While the coastlines on the boarder of the whole nation had been tropical, and the inland was very forested, the center of the continent was a large, deadly desert. It wasn’t just the heat, lack of food and water and the quicksand that would kill you. There were rumors that the sands carried some of the stealthiest, craftiest, and deadliest of animals in the entire planet. But as far as the people who lived there, it was said most of them were farmers and miners, made to help create enough food not just for the people who resided in their land, but to trade to the outside world whenever able. Caine learned in his middle school religious studies class that the demigod Adriel almost wiped out his three siblings and all the humans outside the nation of Paiyi, but the realization of his horrible actions caused him to withhold his people from ever being a superpower ever again. It was no wonder why they were taken advantage of and never advanced much in technology outside of book writing and basic mathematics. The overly-simple lifestyle for these people had them living in huts made of adobe, and their bigger cities, everything was red with brick in the richer districts, while adobe continued to fill the poorer sections.

  It was hard to believe that not only had the countries been separated for thousands of years, but also that within that time, the four nations had grown so vastly different. Caine prided himself in being lucky enough to live in the nation that had air conditioning and ice cream on insanely hot days. He didn’t know how the other countries must have dealt with weather conditions like that. Or what it must have been like to deal with, what did people call it again? I think it’s… snow, Caine remembered. What it must have been like to deal with snow and the utter cold that never touched the lands of Ryn, or at least none that Caine had spent time in. It was just as outlandish sounding as dragons and witches.

  Caine tossed the ashes from his pipe onto the ground and stamped out any potential embers. Why was he spending so much time thinking when he had a good time waiting for him in the liveliness of the Red-Light District behind him? He watched a small breeze kick the small pile of ash beyond the railing and eventually off the cliff until it left his eyesight. Once it was gone, he cleared his throat and made his way into the wide alley way that had a series of red lanterns lit up on the gates.

  Caine walked around, peering at each one of the whorehouses, and the occasional food or liquor store that was sandwiched every few brothels down. He was tired of the nightclub themed one, where there it was dark and had good dancing music and girls waiting at the bar for you to hit on, dance with, and take into one of the many bedrooms located in the back, past a door that had a cashier and customer service attendant for you to pay for your time, and accessories such as lubrication, alcohol, legal stimulants for those who had a hard time getting it up or for those who paid for marathon sessions. They even had a program for the extremely wealthy who could rent out the entire club for the night to give the illusion of being a highly successful business owner, giving you access to any number of the girls you desired at any time, with unlimited drink and drug service until the rays of the first light of morning. You didn’t even need to use the rented bedrooms, which was usually the rule for standard customers. Caine had seen too many old, rich men have their way with women on the dance floor, not giving a care to who might be watching. And since they had purchased the imaginary title of “owner” of the club for the night, nobody could say anything, and anybody who did would have security called on them to have the complainer removed.

  Nah, Caine decided. I’ve spent too many hours and money there. It wasn’t like they didn’t provide excellent service, Caine just needed something a little more… refreshing. He kept walking and saw the All-Natural brothel, the largest brothel in size, appearing to be the size of half a stadium and paused. It promised that the building had six underground floors, each floor a different outdoor scene. One was a forest with a running creek installed, another a warm tropical beach with shallow water to wade in. There was a hot and humid jungle, a scorching and sandy desert, and an uneven and rocky mountain terrain with small caves. The last one was a likeliness of downtown Vern, for those who didn’t necessarily want to be in nature, but wanted the thrill to have their fun outdoors and be seen by the “public”, who were paid whores who could join in on your fun if you had the money, or could simply watch for those who were voyeuristic.

  Again, Caine had mentally declined and moved on. Not only did he know the women in there to be more tough, rugged, and rougher than most women in Ryn had acted, he also knew that they didn’t shave...anywhere. While that might have been something other men might find fascinating, Caine was not one of them. If anything, masculine behavior in females was a total turn-off, especially hairiness. Caine always believed it was more lady-like to be slender yet full-figured in all the right places, hairless as a baby seal, and to be submissive and courteous. And most of the population of Vern, if not most of Ryn, had agreed with his sentiments as well.

  There had been brothels that supported a sports-theme, where both the ladies and men were dressed as various sports players and cheerleaders. Another hard pass from Caine. He saw another one that had their whores had dressed and played the stereotypes of the other nations, but the idea of being with somebody who might’ve been overtly religious or industrial (like the people of Ghald), or someone too dedicated to honor and the warrior spirit (like those of Miizu), or just a dirty… peasant (like the primitive people of Paiyi) was more than Caine could stomach right now. He needed something that was both familiar, yet something he hadn’t experienced before, or at least in a long time. No, no, no, no, no... he kept thinking as he kept walking down the street and turned a corner to make way down to another row of pleasure houses and love hotels.

  “Don’t run away from your wife, asshole!” a voice shouted, echoing, almost as if it were right behind him, loud and clear as day. Caine swiveled around quickly to see who it was talking, but there hadn’t been anybody near him, and everyone else on the road seemed preoccupied with choosing a place to rest their head for a night of ecstasy, stumbling in gleeful drunkenness while being guided by a friend or call-girl, or just plain uninterested in Caine or anything near him. It also didn’t seem like anybody shouted, and nobody else was looking around as if they heard the voice either.

  Goddammit, am I going crazy? Caine had to ask himself. He peered around one last time to make sure nobody else heard the shouts he heard. This wasn’t the first time this had happened to him, in fact, it had been the third time and it all started at the end of last weekend. The first time he was sitting in his room, listening to music. The voice was much quieter than the shout he had just heard, so quiet he barely even registered hearing it. He remembered the same youthful male voice saying, “Your marriage isn’t a bad thing.” It was like a gentle whisper that floated past his ear. He took off his headphones and searched his empty room for a computer or television he had left on by accident; something that would have made sense for a random voice to come through his room. But there was nothing. He shrugged it off and went back to his music, not thinking anything of it. But then three days later, during the tail-end of one of his photo-shoots for some magazine he didn’t care for but paid well, he heard the voice in a louder tone, saying, “Your marriage is too important to give up.” Again, he looked around, looking for the cause of the voice. He even asked one of the interns who were setting up lights if they heard anything. They did their best to not look at Caine as if he might have been crazy or possibly messing with them, but it still showed. Caine waved it off and said he was just kidding and turned around to make as much space between him and the intern as he could while still being in the same room.

  Now he heard the same voice for the third time. The first time he heard the voice, he thought almost nothing of it. The second time, it made him realize that the Ceremony of the Moon was approaching, a time where there was supposed to be 16 arranged marriages at the same time. Caine wasn’t sure if that was the reason he had been hearing these voices, but he looked up information about the past Ceremony of the Moons, and noticed that almost one-third of every person who had entered these ceremonies for the last few hundred years had been someone, or related to someone, of political, diplomatic, educational or militant importance. He was the son of the Head of Sciences and Medicines, somebody who could be classified as important, but what else was it that made the chosen 16 people so… chosen?

  Caine forced himself to snap out of it, realizing he was standing in the middle of the narrow roadway like an idiot. The voice had thrown off his concentration enough for him to not really care what type of whore he bought that night. He decided to head into Service!, a brothel that had men and women play the roles of people who were a service to the community. Police (as little as they existed in Ryn, the land of pleasure), firefighters, nurses and doctors, teachers, babysitters, food-market cashiers, whatever you would come across in a day-to-day life. When he walked in, it looked like the waiting area of a restaurant, a cashier behind a table with a few chairs for people to wait, and two big black doors which were guarded by two, bulky and intimidating bouncers. The bouncers kept their eyes forward, stone-like until they were called into action, while the cashier glanced up at the sound of the door opening.

  “Welcome! And how are you doing this- oh, Mr. Bryer!” the cashier’s voice was teeming with familiarity. “How are you doing this evening?” she eyed him up and down, not being modest or shy when her eyes fell onto his crotch, which made her grin when her eyes met his again.

  “Uh… good, and you?” Caine answered without much thought. He scanned her face deeply as he could without coming off as creepy. Her soft round face and large doe-like eyes were more than appealing for Caine’s taste, and as he looked at the rest of her, he saw that her body had met all the requirements he could have ever asked for. Her breasts, while modestly covered, were booming beyond her tight stomach, which spilled out into thick and curvy thighs. The odd thing about her was the neon-pink hair, which didn’t throw Caine off until he realized that it wasn’t dyed and it wasn’t a wig. He had never seen her before, and pretty sure he hadn’t come to this brothel before for her to know his name with such familiarity. But, he knew there had been a handful of times he had celebrated with peers, gotten too drunk and made his way to the Red-Light District without much memory of what happened that night.

  “I’m good now that you’re here.” the pink-haired vixen purred with a flirtatious wink. She hadn’t been wearing a name tag like most of the cashiers at the brothels do, but perhaps that was one of the things that made this brothel unique. Perhaps anonymity was part of the fun they were trying to start to introduce here. “So, what can I do you for?”

  Caine smiled at her and her loveliness as he took a look at the checklist and pamphlets the voluptuous flirt slid to him over the counter. Every brothel had a checklist of the things you preferred in what you were looking for that night, as well as things you wanted to avoid. A certain type of man or woman you were interested? You could use vague and general descriptions you could check off to best match what you might be looking for. Sexual acts and positions people craved, and a place to write it down if your choice didn’t exist in the group of check-able items. He looked over the digital screen that hung in the air, and it looked almost the same as every other brothel he visited. He looked back at the cashier with a mischievous grin.

  “Well, now that I think about it… I was wondering how much it would cost to get someone like, oh I dunno… you for the evening?” he said coolly.

  “Oh, honey, you know the rules...” she sucked on her teeth for a moment as if she were about to say something painful. She feigned a grimace before it turned into a playful smile. “It’ll cost you double the amount of the most expensive person here.”

  “Well, then...” Caine said, flirtatiously playing along with her tone. “If you really did know who I was...” he pulled a credit card from his wallet and slid it over to her on the table. “You know that money is no issue.”

  “And is your Clean Card still in effect?” she asked. The Clean Card was a paper from the doctor saying the patient had recently been checked and cleared for diseases. It had to be reissued after it had been stamped with the date on it at a brothel, making it void the day after the stamp was issued. Someone could visit several brothels in one night, but if you didn’t visit your doctor and get a new Clean Card by the next day, the only place that would accept you were the shady, sketchy and gross whorehouses people tend to avoid unless they were desperate, poor, or heavily dosed on the wrong kind of drugs.

  “I’m as clean as my card, baby.” he said slyly, pulling out the stamp-free card with his name, photo and basic information on it and handed it to her.

  “Perfect.” she grinned as she scanned both his credit and clean cards. She handed both back to him and stood up as he put them back into this wallet. She gave him a key and turned to leave, saying, “Go ahead to room 14 and I’ll be there momentarily, handsome.” she blew a kiss his way, which he playfully pretended pierced his heart along with her good looks.

  “Don’t keep me waiting too long.” he raised his eyebrows as they both smiled at each other. She left through a door behind the desk, and the two bouncers opened a door each, letting him enter into the dark abyss that was the brothel hallway.

  As He walked down the hallway, loud dance music was thumping so hard that he could feel the bass in his chest. He figured the music was so loud to distract you from hearing what was going on in the other rooms. He knew the rooms were sound-proofed as best as they could be, but he also knew some people like to get extremely physical or loud, and not everybody wanted to be a part of that noise. He caught himself taking steps to the beat as he scanned the room numbers. 6...7…8...10...13… He finally got the door and slid in the key smoothly into the keyhole, imagining that he would be doing the same to the pink haired lovely he was about to meet up with in just a few moments.

  He entered the room and closed the door behind him before feeling blindly for the light switch. When the lights shone, he saw a large heart-shaped bed in the left corner of a fairly large room. Large enough to fit a small Jacuzzi-spa for up to four people in the other corner. There had been a bathroom attached in another room with a large bathtub, and a separate shower. Caine was about to wonder why the bath and shower were separated until he realized that different things can be done in a bath or shower that couldn’t be done in the other, and some people might want the option. The bedroom had five cabinets, a large screen TV and a sound system to hook up any type of music player.

  Caine looked around aimlessly, waiting on time to pass for his lady of the night to arrive. He had first checked the bed sheets and blankets for any visible stains, but he could feel and smell that they were recently washed and cleaned. He ran the water in the tub for a moment to see how long it took the water to warm up before turning it off and made way back to the room. He found the remote on the table stand next to the bed and turned on the TV, only to be met with loud moaning and the slick, wet slapping sound of pornography turned up much louder than Caine imagined. He fumbled in surprise with the remote before he was able to turn it off as quickly as he could, forgetting he was in a sound-proofed room. He went to check out what was in one of the cabinets, and saw a line of sex toys of all types filling up one of the cabinets, accessories such as ball-gags and whips and handcuffs filled another. He opened a third cabinet to see various latex-suits line up next to each other. They had everything between a full-body latex suit that even covered the face to a suit that only covered the crotch and nipple area in an X-shaped fashion. Caine closed the door to cabinet, getting the sense that each cabinet held kinkier and kinkier items, and he didn’t see himself going beyond the latex phase.

  “Sorry I took so long.” he heard a seductive voice behind him. He turned around to see his pink-haired beauty closing the door gently behind her, surprised that he didn’t hear a sound of her opening the door and walking in. She had changed into nothing more than a bikini top that propped her bust even more than her work shirt and jean short-shorts that hugged her full and alluring backside. Usually Caine like his women in high-heels when they performed for him, but the barefoot look had done the cutie before him a great service. Caine had a feeling he wasn’t going to forget this night anytime soon.

  “It’s all good,” he smiled at her, not shying away from staring at her best assets. “The way you look, you could have taken all night and it would be worth it.”

  “Shh…” she hushed him with a smile, bringing a finger to his lips as she walked effortlessly to him. Her bouncing breasts pressed up against him when she was close enough. She pressed into Caine hard enough to make him walk backwards with her until she pushed him gently back to sit on the bed. She stood in front of him as he sat, breasts directly in his face, begging to be freed from their clothed prison. She took one of his hands and slid it around her waist, placing it so he had a handful of her ass. “If you keep saying corny things, I’m gonna have to charge you extra.” she joked while guiding his hand to rub over her entire butt.

  “Something tells me you’d be worth it.” Caine grinned while appreciating everything he was feeling and seeing. Pink Hair slid onto her knees in between his legs, spreading his legs before undoing his pants, but didn’t take anything off of him. She saw him eyeing her breasts, looked down at that before giving them a gentle sway back and forth, showing just how full they were. She laughed when she saw how mesmerized Caine had been, and slid her bra straps off her shoulders, exposing the small, pink nipples Caine had starting to grow hungry for. She started to rub the outside of his crotch with the other hand at the same time. Caine felt the blood rush to his loins, his manhood stiffening, and he wasn’t sure if it was her looks or her touch that he loved more.

  “So, you’re really the Caine Bryer, right? “she purred, her hand gently gliding over his hardness, sending shivers down his spine. Caine watched as her other hand unsnapped the button of her shorts, and heard a zipper slide down.

  “As far as my birth certificate says.” Caine joked lazily, his mind too preoccupied with everything else this woman was doing to him.

  “Good, because I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I saw you on the cover and in that fashion magazine three months ago. I thought you looked like a sex god.” He felt her fingers wrap around his manhood hungrily at the mention of a sex god. Caine could feel his toes start to curl in anticipation.

  “Oh, yeah?” was all he could muster to say with a throaty sigh.

  “Yeah, I mean…” she slid her free hand into her pants, her hand clearly in her own loins. He saw her hand stir for a moment before she brought it out and he could see her fingers glisten with wetness. “Look at what the thought of you does to me.”

  “Well, if that’s what only a thought does, you can’t imagine what I’m going to do with you in reality.” he growled playfully.

  “Mm, baby, you’re making me so...” she didn’t finish her sentence as her hands traveled both into his pants and her own pants, one hand each. Caine felt the first skin-on-skin contact as her warm hands found him. He leaned his back and let out a sigh of relief. He took a few deep breaths with his eyes close as she stirred in his pants like the professional she was. Everything was going amazing until Caine had heard an all-too familiar metallic clicking sound.

  At the exact moment Caine opened his eyes and looked down at his seductress, he felt her hand squeeze around his manhood and something dull, hard and heavy pressed against his balls. When he saw what was happening, he saw that his whore had a small handgun that she had slipped out from underneath the bed, pressed against his balls. Idiotically, Caine’s first thoughts were that this was some sort of random role-play scenario, but her face said otherwise.

  “Don’t move or make a sound or I will blow your balls and brains all over these walls.” she muttered darkly.

  “Wait, what-”

  “What the hell did I just say?” she said, pressing her gun into his crotch to send a more physical type of message. Caine felt his manhood shrink almost immediately as he sat up straight, not trying to move or do anything that might set her off to pull the trigger.

  “You’re Caine Bryer, son of Adam Bryer, leader of Science and Medicines?” she was whispering now, and Caine felt it was wise to follow her lead and do the same.

  “Well, Head of Sciences and Medicines,” he corrected without thought, but realized it was the wrong time for corrections when he saw her face. “But yeah, I’m him.”

  “And you know about the Ceremonies of the Moon and how it’s coming up shortly?”

  “Am I supposed to be one of the 16 people who are getting married?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Well, I’m glad I don’t have to fill you in with too much,” she said, sounding still semi-annoyed. “But what I’m not sure they told you is how quietly, secretly, and unknowingly you must travel to get to the Ceremony Grounds. The Central government goes through a lot of painstaking methods to get information on you to be able to send a messenger like me in a scenario that doesn’t look out of place to your day-to-day life. Your friends and family can’t know where you’re going or why or when. Nobody can know of your movements.”

  “Why is that?” Caine asked.

  “Have you heard of the Phantoms, branch of the Central Government that deals with assassinations and other dirty work the government wants no ties to? They’ve found and neutrilized dozens of assassins in the previous years to kill those meant to get married before they reached the Ceremony ground. Word travels fast and effectively in the right networks. If the government could find out enough about you to have me fondle you at gun point, imagine what a real threat could have done if they got to you first.” Caine already knew he didn’t want to think about it. Just the fact that she had the gun pressed against him was a turn off, he didn’t need the mental image of his brain splattered against the wall.

  “So, what happens now?” Caine asked.

  “What happens is: you gather a small bag of clothes. Don’t over pack, and don’t bring anything you don’t need to stay warm. You shouldn’t look like you’re packing or leaving anything. We need to meet at the teleport station outside the Red-Light District at exactly ten minutes past midnight. Exactly ten minutes after 12 o’clock.” she repeated slowly and harshly, as if he had a hearing problem or learning disability. “If you’re even a minute late, I’ll be gone, and you’ll probably be killed off by some backwoods assassin sometime next week, and nobody will care, because there are other candidates that can fill your shoes. If you show up even a minute too early, people might see you standing around and that can tip off spies that might be in the area. Once we’re on the go, we’re not stopping for anything you understand that? The life you had and knew before is over now, get it? You’re now an instrument to help save the world, and if you were to make anything else in your life more important than that, then you deserve to get hunted down, because how selfish would you have to be?”

  Caine sat there for a moment, letting all this soak in. So, he was one of those to get married. Was the voice he had been hearing over the last few days been some divine voice trying to guide him? While history had shown that the Goddess Sonova and her demigod children did exist, it had been nearly ten thousand years since anybody had heard from the demigods, and over three hundred years since anybody had records of any type of god-like voices speaking at the ceremony like they used to. Other countries might have belief systems that their gods are working in mysterious ways, but the scientific people of Ryn didn’t believe even the demigoddess Martell, the one who had chosen the people of Ryn when the goddess Sonova created mankind, was capable of doing anything in present day reality if all the gods had been missing for so long.

  Caine also came to realization that his father did know about him and the Ceremony, or at the very least had his suspicions. The random check-up he had, and the way his father said he was proud of him for the first time in his life, as if he was looking for some type of closure. He was semi-government, Caine figured. He was sure his dad had heard whispers and mutters about his son, if they didn’t tell him flat out what was happening. And if what the pink haired beauty was saying was true, then his father couldn’t let Caine know what was happening no matter how much he might have wanted. Not just for national security, but for his own son’s life being at risk at one of the Phantoms.

  Caine also didn’t know about going on a trek to get married to a foreign stranger. First off, he didn’t have a steady girlfriend for the exact reason that he liked to mess around with multiple girls, and he doubted that a wife was going to be okay with that. What if she was bad in bed? Was he supposed to just suffer bad sex for the rest of his life? And leaving Ryn where he had his big and comfy house, his big and comfy bed, and his big and comfy life. None of it really seemed worth it to him, but the world and the government was demanding it.

  Caine looked at a clock. They were supposed to meet ten minutes passed midnight, which meant they had a little more than three hours. Even if it took an hour for Caine to find everything he needed for the trip (when it would realistically take about ten minutes), it would only take ten minutes to walk from his house to the right teleport station. He still had more than two hours to kill.

  “Hey, so…” he started. “It’s not gonna take me too long to gather my things, and we have a few hours left to kill… and you did charge me extra for your time...” he hinted.

  “I am not really a whore,” she spat, clearly insulted at what he was suggesting. Caine gave her a look as he nodded towards her exposed breasts and the pants that were almost half way off. To Caine’s surprise she couldn’t help but laugh at the contradiction between her words and her appearance. She checked the time herself, and Caine could see thoughts running through her head. “I’m not really, a whore,” she repeated. “But it would look awfully strange to a spy if you came to a brothel and left only a few minutes after being here before leaving, if they truly knew your brothel track record and time spent around here...” the sense of flirtation had returned to the pink-haired seductress’ face. “We wouldn’t want anybody to get suspicious, do we?”

  “No, we don’t.” Caine said playing along.

  “Besides,” she said, slowly sliding off her pants and exposing her hairless, sleek and inviting entrance. “You’re getting married. You deserve some type of bachelor party, don’t you?” she teased as she walked up to him, her nakedness filling both his eyes and her scent filled his nose. He loved the scent of her, and he could feel his hardness returning.

  “You know, I was thinking the same thing earlier...” he agreed.

  As she got on her knees and helped remove his pants, he couldn’t help but think about the voice he had been hearing over the last few days, and the time it had told him, “Your marriage isn’t a bad thing.” As he felt the warmth of her mouth enclose over and engulf himself, he couldn’t help but think, Nope, this marriage isn’t a bad thing at all…