Chapter Three: The Visit

Satyr looked at Beth as they walked down the road. She couldn't believe that, after all this waiting, it was finally time. The shackles would be thrown off and they would ascend, away from here, something Satyr had been waiting to do for quite a while now.

"It is glorious that it is finally time, don't you think?" Satyr asked Beth, who shook her head.

"It is simply the first step on a long road, Satyr; plenty of work is required before we can bear fruit" Beth replied, Satyr sighed and nodded.

"I know, I know. But still, we are setting out on the long road after such a time of waiting, there is just something about that start that...Just...Mmm" Satyr ended with a noise, rather than a word since she didn't have a word for it.

"That is true dear and I am rather ecstatic, but it is not like anything we have faced before. Three walls - that we know of and there might be more. The first has already been broken, and the plan for the second is being worked out. The third, however..." Beth trailed off, staring at the sky. After a while she shook her head. "But, we are at the start and that is something. Better than what was before" She finished. Satyr nodded in agreement. The two girls then began to speak about more mundane things, like the weather and how much they liked Eliot's newest Kitchen experiment, until they arrived at a rather large house. It stood out from all the others with its ornately carved statues of a woman wearing a dress made from leaves and holding a globe that, on further inspection, looked very similar to the Earth. The way the statue's eyes where carved made it seem as if the holder owned, or had created the orb.

Satyr had seen it a few times and knew what it represented, but little other people did. The rest of the house was made from equally large - both in length and width - quarry stones that looked distinctively fresher than the rest of the street, which made it stand out from the rest of the red-brick houses even more. There was a feeling that this house had not existed for very long, or at least not as long as the other houses on the street.

"Never could blend in, could he?" Satyr asked rhetorically as they opened the gate and walked up to the door, pushing it open without so much as a knock.

The Inside of the house was devoid of practically everything, there were no tables, or clocks, or chandeliers that someone would have expected, seeing the outside. There was not even any boxes that would explain the bareness, it was simply an empty hallway, stretching on until it reached a set of stairs, the stairs then went up to another bare hallway, this one dotted with several, unpainted doors. Beth had seen it before, it was obvious considering the owners favourite pass-time. As she walked through the hallway, her footfalls light and hard to hear, she heard a thudding sound, as if something very heavy was moving on the second floor. She smiled and looked up as a bare-chested mountain of a man - easily thirty stone and topping six and a half foot - his muscles were so large that his bare-chested appearance was justified, since there was no shirt or jacket he could wear without his monstrous girth ripping it in half.

His muscles where mainly around the top half of his body, but his leg muscles where well developed as well, if not to a clothes-ripping extent. To most people, the man would be terrifying to an extent that they would probably run and hide from him. Beth, however, had grown used to the bulk of the man and was not bothered by it, much. There was still a wariness of him, but it was suppressed.

"Hello Glee, is Niall in?" She asked, Satyr stayed close to Beth's side, she was considerably more wary of Glee, as she was to everyone or everything that could crush her skull with a single hand and little effort.

"It's Mr. Glee, not just Glee. And yes, he is in, what do you want with him?" Mr. Glee asked.

"I want a book" She replied, obviously not planning on giving much - if any - more than that.

"Fine, follow me" Mr. Glee said with a sigh. Beth and Satyr headed up the stairs and followed Mr. Glee along the hallway and into a room, as bare as the rest. Niall was sat on the floor with two women who were standing, the man was tall, six foot easily and has well-toned muscles, although they were nowhere near the size of Mr. Glee's. Beth explained it to Satyr the first time she asked as concentrated strength, the muscles could exert as much strength as Mr. Glee's, but where a lot smaller. Niall wore a t-shirt and had hair that reached the middle of his back which was the opposite of Mr. Glee's bald, bare-chested look.

"Beth, what brings you here?" Niall asked, upon seeing Beth and Satyr arrive.

"I need a book. A very specific book. It is time" She told him and Niall needed no more. Mr. Glee looked more alert than he had before, and even cracked a grin.

"Finally. Been a while, eh?" Niall asked, getting up and heading for the door, followed closely by Beth and Satyr, Mr. Glee to bring up the rear.

Niall led them to a room that was miles, upon miles of bookshelves. How this was possible would have boggled the brain of a normal person, but Beth took it as par of the course. There were lights hanging overhead, as if it was a warehouse with full bookshelves rather than a room in someone's house. Niall took confident strides throughthe stacks, looking left and right for a moment before striding onwards.

"So, how do you know you way around here? I never really asked before" Beth asked, always one to acquire new knowledge.

"Well, you just have to stroll with purpose, and the shelf you want will present itself. Aha" Niall finished, walking over to one of the shelves and pulling a book from it.

"There you go, one book" He said, beaming widely. "I shall be along later. Good luck with your endeavours" He finished, to which Beth and Satyr nodded and thanked Niall, turning around to see the door to exit the room a few feet away.

"Always love how that works" Satyr commented, before following Beth out of the giant library.

When the girls got back to the house Eliot was playing cushion to Avrion and Nehvna, it was so cute to see him being a cushion but it was ruined a second later by Beth and Satyr barging throughthe door, jolting the two girls awake.

"I'm up" Nehvna squeaked as she sat up, Beth and Satyr went upstairs without saying anything to anyone and ignored all the curious looks. However, everybody followed the two up the stairs after only a few seconds of debating. But when they arrived at the bedroom that had been used to keep Jane's unconscious form - twice - in there was nothing understandable to be nosey at when, Satyr was sat reading the book and Beth was looking at her, the book had a lot of names followed by strange symbols that Jane had never seen, Satyr did not seem to pay them any mind so Jane simply ignored them, passing them off as unimportant.

Satyr flicked throughthe book for a few minutes before pointing to one of the names, Jane did not see it before the book was passed to Beth.

It was at this point that Jane noticed a paint pot next to Beth, a few seconds where spent wondering what she was going to do with it or even where she got it from before she took the brush out and began painting the symbols Jane saw on the book. When Beth had finished painting the last symbol they glowed with a bright light before a holographic woman appeared, but it was a fuzzy quality and Jane couldn't make out any details other than she was a woman.

Satyr however didn't seem to need any detail and said something in a rather confusing tongue that Jane had never heard of. The woman nodded and the symbols stopped glowing, then the woman disappeared.

"You see? Nothing to worry about" Satyr told Beth, Beth looked rather on edge about the whole thing but relaxed when Satyr comforted her.

"I was worried that we would get the wrong one" she told Satyr before standing up and seeing the confused looks on everyone's faces.

"We made a phone call" she said simply before heading past them. Jane and Silverfang looked at Eliot who simply shrugged.

"You expect me to know what she means?" he asked so they all followed Beth and Satyr down the stairs like a game of follow-the-leader. When Jane asked Beth what she meant Beth stared looking rather annoyed.

"You use phones to call people. That is why it is called a phone call" She said, annoying Jane.

"Fine, keep your secrets" Jane said in a huff, returning to Silverfang who had sat on the couch.

"Sorry about your party idea" she said, snuggling into Silverfang.

"Don't worry about it, today has been much more exciting" He told Jane, relaxing so that he would be a more comfortable pillow.

"Yea and much more painful" she said, looking at the bruise on his chin from her vantage point.

While Jane and Silverfang where snuggling Eliot had not given up on finding out what Satyr and Beth had been doing.

"Tell me who you were calling" He said, giving up on asking for the content.

"Rose, I assumed that since she was the one in use then she would be the one handing things around here" Satyr told Eliot, ignoring his gormless look.

"Rose? You mean Scarlet Rose? How can you just call her?" Eliot asked, throwing several questions at Satyr who was beginning to look annoyed.

"Yes I mean Scarlet Rose and I can just call her because I got the phone book from Niall and that allows me to call anyone registered" Satyr said to him, shedding light on what she had just done.

"So you are saying that with that book you can call anyone in the world?" He asked to which Satyr simply shook her head, a slight smile on her face as he mentioned 'the world'.

"No, only the ones registered, but people can opt to unregister them so people can't contact them, don't ask why though" She said before heading into the kitchen, an obvious sign that the conversation was over.

"This day keeps getting weirder. Does that mean I am in there?" Eliot said, scratching his head.

"Give it time, the best is yet to come" Beth told him before following Satyr and leaving Eliot with a befuddled look, ignoring his second question.

After a minute Eliot gave up and walked back into the front room, flopping down on one of the chairs. "What is with Satyr being so cryptic?" he asked, rhetorically but Jane answered all the same. "Because she has a secret and you know how she is with secrets". Eliot was not expecting an answer so it took him a second to realize that Jane was talking to him.

"But she has never been so…secretive" Eliot told her, sighing heavily, Jane - for her part - simply shrugged.

"Satyr and Beth, are extremely greedy for knowledge, they are the kind of people that would destroy half the world if they thought it would give them the secrets of the other half" Silverfang told Eliot like he did not already know.

"I know but that does not mean I am not annoyed about it" Eliot replied.

Jane looked at Eliot and Silverfang before smiling, she had no plans to return after what her father did to her. "So do you want to retry your night or do you think someone is going to interrupt it again?" she asked, the cheeky grin giving more weight to her words.

"Well since we are expecting Satyr's guest whenever I guess we should just wait and not try anything that is going to get interrupted in an hour or so" Eliot explained so Jane simply shrugged and snuggled into Silverfang again.

Shadow's face screwed up as his last wound was stitched up.

"I can't believe you got beat" the man who was stitching him up said with a slight amused tone. "Watch it Doc or you will be your next patient" Shadow growled but this did not stop the man from chuckling slightly.

"I believe we have not given this man the attention he deserves" the doctor said, cleaning the blood off his hands and leaving for the door. He opened it and turned back to Shadow.

"I think you are going to need a better sword, or a new partner, before you go up against him again" the doctor told Shadow who smiled an evil smile.

"I was thinking both actually and it has already been taken care of" his voice had taken on a dark undertone to it.

"So I am to expect an addition soon then?" The doctor asked to which Shadow nodded.

"Always good" the doctor said, leaving the room.

Shadow stood up and rubbed the large shoulder stitching before picking up his tattered coat. "Working for a runaway to chase down a legend. How far can I fall?" he asked himself before leaving the room. This place was a nice haven for the unwanted people of the universe, the only question ever asked around here was 'how much will it cost' and even that one was not really asked that much. Questions around here tended to get you on one of the beds, or in the morgue. Shadow liked that about here. As he walked down the hallway he saw the man he was going to be working with now, he had that same feel, that same aura around him as the man that had cut his chest open and that was one of the reasons Shadow was working with him, but not the only reason. He wanted revenge and power and the opportunity to kill people. With this man, he would have all that.

"Any leads?" Shadow asked, putting his coat on.

"One...you shall investigate" The man - Shadow was not sure it was really a man, just had the look of a man - growled. Shadow nodded and headed towards the main entrance, he wasn't treated with the respect he wanted, but it was better than being with Mark. Here he wasn't underestimated and here he had freedom from Earth at last, that boring one-horse-planet was way beneath him.