Catastrophic crashing on the roof of a dilapidated three storey building.
The cause? Anaphol's landing—freshly spat out by a teleportation pole.
"Uh! Huh!" He inhaled, gulping down several breaths. His mind was reeling from the kaleidoscopic travel.
"Nope. Nah. Never! Never again!" He screamed profusely.
Anaphol had survived the demise of his own making. Surviving an angered crowd and letting them trample the pursuers was a genius move.
And his last-minute push to safety handed via his luck. Getting his bearings by climbing had given him exact locations where those teleportation poles were.
Naph sat up. The roof had a crater with him as its epicenter.
Dumbfounded by such a crater, he stared at it for a couple of moments until realization hit him. He hurriedly started checking his entire body.
He swung both arms, and bent them at the elbow. "Arms are good." He was still rattled within throughout.
He stretched and folded his legs next. "Ok, legs seem to be working. The spine is obviously fine I sat up because of that. Didn't I?"
He slowly rotated his head on his neck. "Uh, huh. Head still on me."
He found no reason on himself as to why he was in the center of a crater.
He felt for his pulse, as he began jotting in his thoughts what to do next.
Naph looked thoroughly around the roof. No signs of any pursuers. This was an abandoned building and the reason is the teleportation pole. He himself was the living proof of the why it was abandoned.
Naph was baffled more by the crater than worrying about where was his duffle bag. His scrutinizing eyes found the bag.
The bag and its strap had been separated apart cleanly, more so methodically. "No, the teleportation poles possibly treated them as if they were two different entities." A conclusion of his.
Anaphol's eyes weren't betrayed for he saw two more craters each centering either from the strap or the duffle bag.
"Huh, a quirk of the pole then? These damned caestres! They will just dismember anything!" It seemed to him the air within his lungs was also taken as a separate entity by the teleportation pole.
'But where was the crater for the air?' His curiosity began.
His mind started racing again. "So, the teleportation pole separates entities it can separate easily without minor damages to the collection of entities for a short duration?" He spoke up.
Musing further, his curiosity eating into him, "is this its ability, rule, law, throne, or caveat?"
A familiar humbling saying with a real voice intruded upon him, "Boy, questions later, run first."
Naph jumped up and back. His hands at the ready.
The saying was a favorite one by none other than Don Extea. And he had arrived.
Naph standing upright suddenly, hands ready, was taken aback by this sudden intrusion.
He expected Don Extea to have gone to The Outro Restro after losing his trail of people. "How?" Naph queried.
"Ask questions later, now get back into the teleportation pole and pick that duffle bag and its strap. Take a larger breath before jumping in, understood?"
Extea was vehement to Naph. He needed him to follow his advice word to word. The boy, for him and this city, is now a hope they have to put their faith in.
Naph without wasting did everything except taking the breaths. He asked quickly, as he scanned the tiled broken roof, its one side having fallen down in an avalanche, "what about you?"
"I have to stay. Listen well, do go through all the teleportation poles and keep saying 'Cata'." Extea grabbed onto him, behind Extea another large dark smoke began.
This one reaching higher than the one started on the street possibly belonging to The Outro Restro.
Naph may have started either a revolution, or an intrusion of enemies from the city's underbelly.
"Why!—" Naph inquired, but Extea cut in. "Because Bulwark."
"So, the boy is going through all the teleportation poles? Fascinating." A voice quipped, floating above both Naph and Extea.
It was so indistinguishable that Naph could have mistaken it for his own thoughts.
Naph was about to look up, when Extea covered his hands, wrapped the strap to wrap duffle bag with Naph better. "Go! And don't open your eyes or mouth outside of the pole's space. Breathe in large gulps every time. And Cata!" Extea kicked Naph into the pole.
Anaphol obliged.
Naph was exhausted, baffled, and curious. He wanted to quip in the face of danger.
Yet, Don Extea's words, his tone. That alone taught him a lot.
Naph now knew he was in dangers he hadn't known. He had never seen.
'And I thought I had seen the worst by seeing how massive the ocean is! Damn!' His humour wanted to deluge out, but he was never going to abandon a good advice by that dark navy haired owner-doner. 'Heh, owner-doner. Hehe.' Naph held his breath in.
Don Extea grabbed and threw the boy into the teleportation pole.
The last thing he heard from that intrusion on their privacy was from that specific voice.
"Oh, Bulwark. How the gods have forsaken you!"
And Naph was once again in the kaleidoscopic space of the teleportation poles. The colors played tricks to the ones who entered this dead caestre's remaining body.
Naph saw. He saw colors yet he knew he had closed his eyes.
For this space, eyes being open or close did not matter. The space intruded on every sense that an entity held.
Naph felt the pull of gravity from all directions, he listened to the colors changing which they were going to be next, he saw voices draining into the depths of the kaleidoscopic backdrop.
In all of that, he spoke it. Aloud, clear and with intent.
"Cata!"
A response met him. He was thrown out. This time air remained within him.
'That's peculiar,' as he followed Don Extea's previously given advice. Naph's eyes and mouth close.
He wondered how will he find this teleportation pole.
He chose to slowly step around a bit. Suddenly an arm grabbed him, the one whose arm it was said, "boy, start using that head of yours! I am throwing you in again!"
'Its Don Extea!' Naph was relieved and startled.
He didn't have time to complete his thought on how could Extea keep up.
Back in into that weird intrusive kaleidoscopic space, Naph cried out, "Cata!"
Over and over.
Repeatedly.
Every single time he was spat out, Don Extea somehow did arrive to throw Naph back in. Telling him repeatedly, "start using that mush of a brain!"
Every time Naph intruded back into the normal world, he would hear one word from that peculiar voice.
"Fascinating."
'Do you dear sir not have any other words in your lexicon that you have collected over the abominable life you have lived?' Anaphol's quips were becoming more and more outrageous for every 'Fascinating' he heard from that voice.
This was his forty-ninth exit from some random teleportation pole.
And for the first couple of moments he waited.
Waited for Don Extea to grab him and throw him in it again. But there was no screaming retorts by Extea. Nor another 'Fascinating'.
He waited and waited. A minute passed.
He wondered what if there was a teleportation pole that spat you out into another world?
Caestres were known for their abominable power. And it is impossible to hunt every caestre.
This was among the advices that he had learned on caestre hunting from Don Extea.
Naph's fear bit into him, and his sense of mockery bit back into that fear. He opened his eyes and mouth screaming aloud.
"What! Have you forgotten to love to humiliate a human!" A badly thought sarcasm. If his soul could shake its head at Naph, it would.
But they shared the same head, and the sense of mockery was strong with this one.
Light flooded his retina, while air scratched against the inside of his mouth.
The boy was standing among the same devastation he had done while fighting Bulwark.
He was beyond the outskirts and the farms of Sevenren. At this moment, he was intruding on his victim's death bed.
Several craters scattered over a large area wide enough for an average street of Sevenren. Each crater was laden with several different effects.
Some had water trying to douse an oil lit fire, a few had ice shards shattered by a metallic ball lying right in the middle, and there was one where lightning circled a pole like it wanted to lick it but just couldn't.
These were the plan's effects against all that included the rumours of Bulwark's powers. He didn't understand how some human could have any kind of such disastrous power.
Today, he was proven wrong with substantial proof.
Don Extea arriving at exact locations where he teleported to, a floating voice above him repeating the same word, and Bulwark.
Bulwark was the strangest.
The fight with her had her saying the word 'Cata', so many times Naph had started interrupting her speech with his cutthroat wittiness.
His hatred for monotony inspired his mockery to level him along. A caveat he had developed into his humour. One he desperately needed to replace his lack of schooling.
Anaphol felt lonely. It was the same feeling that echoed within any time he had stumbled into some graveyard.
The intrusion in his normal life for him was a welcome one he wished. Not this chaotic one that he landed himself in.
Without knowing how, Anaphol sensed the next intrusion before it happened. He felt it was a welcome one for him.
It was by a staff member of The Outro Restro, they had brought his ride to the site.
"Naph, we don't know what happened. But Don Extea wanted to deliver this ride here to you, and to tell you. 'Leave the kingdom and cross the ocean. Think of it as another caestre, you have to survive. For Sevenren and for Bulwark.'" The intruding member relayed the message.
'Why does Bulwark intrude everywhere!' He laughed out loud, hoarsely.