Run Around

                            By:

                         Fox Cutter

    Chapter 2

The next morning was cold and dark. The sky was overcast in
a dark grey and it was threatening to rain. It was still
early morning, and Sam and Ryan were breaking camp. The
three of us had stayed up for a few hours as I was given a
short history of the Keep.

Oriana had drifted off soon after we had been brought to
camp. She had told me not to bother with a running
translation and to worry about anything important in the
morning.

Lucky enough the translator works if you're asleep or awake.
So she should have a decent language patch made up for the
local dialect.

Bending down to where she was huddled under her cloak I
shook her gently. She was instantly awake and sitting up,
one paw almost to the pocket in her cloak. Once she saw me
though she smiled. "Good morning." she said as she relaxed
her paw.

"Morning yourself. Come on, they're heading to the Keep," I
nodded my head at the waiting pair, "and we're going to tag
along."

She nodded, standing up and brushing her pants free of dirt.
"How far away is it?"

"They say an hour's light walk. This is just a one night
patrol." I answered her.

"How's your friend doing?" Ryan asked from the other side of
the now dead fire.

"I'm fine," Oriana responded, "Though I'll be back in a
minute." She then turned and walked a short distance off
into the woods.

Both Ryan and Sam were flabbergasted to say the least. I
just chuckled softly. It was a look that I've seen many
times before. "I told you to give her some time."

"How did she do that?" He asked.

"Magic," I answered.

He nodded. The answer gave him as much of an understanding
about how the translator work that I had. Just the fact that
it did.

Sam didn't say anything, she seemed to a quite person. It
wasn't that she was shy, it was more like if you annoyed her
she'll hurt you, a lot. Though from what I was told last
night it was understandable.

Oriana came back from the woods then, adjusting her tunic as
she walked. I smiled to the others. "Lead on then, we'll be
right behind. I want to bring Oria up to date."

The pair started to walk through the woods, though not on
any path that I could see. Oria and I hung behind them a few
feet.

"So," She asked, "what did I miss last night?"

I smiled. "Well, they like you."

She chuckled. "I gathered that."

I shook my head, "I mean that there first reaction was that
you must have been to the Keep before."

She frowned. "Why was that?"

I licked my lips. "The place was cursed," I explained," The
long and short of it is that six years ago, during the
Battle of the Three Gates, a wizard cast a curse on each
gate. One turned everyone inside into pure animals, the
other made everyone inside super bimbos, top heavy and
almost brain dead. The third curse made all the defenders of
the gate into babies."

Oria nodded as I named at each curse, her frown growing
deeper with each word.

"The Keep's wizards were barely able to cast a counter spell
that lessened the intensity of the changes. It also gives
some control over the curse to the person. They can control
how extreme the curse can go. Some better then others."

She nodded again. "So, where does it get worse?"

I chuckled, she knew me so well. "The spells never actually
left the Keep. If you stay there for more then five or six
days you'll end up being cursed yourself."

She shook her head. "The last thing you need is any more
curses!"

I laughed, "agreed, we're not going to be here that long
anyway. I just have to go to the library and find the item
and we can go. We'll be back on Prid before nightfall."

She twisting her ears a bit, but didn't say a word. I knew
what she was thinking. With our track record, there was a
good chance a war would break out before we could get home.
Of course then we'd have to try and stop it. It wouldn't be
the first time that it's happened.

We walked on in silence fore a few more minutes before Oria
spoke up again. "Did they tell you how they came to the
Keep?" She asked, waving her paw forward.

I nodded. "Ryan, the otter, was born here and had just
returned when the battle occurred. Sam had a lay over here
and got hung over one day too long. Apparently she was one
of the greatest swordsman in the country before that." I
added some extra emphases on 'man'.

She thought that over. "I can understand Sam's reaction.
That's not a pleasant thing to have happened."

I nodded in agreement. We both have had some personal
experience in that field.

We returned to walking in silence, in the distance the top
of the Keep was showing above the trees. The place was
massive, it sprawled out quite wide over the land. The stone
it was made off seem to reflect the meager morning light as
the metal that capped the turrets gave off a dull glow.

It was an impressive sight nonetheless.

Entering through a side gate I found the place to be even
more massive then I had first thought. The courtyard just
inside the walls was huge, expanding out and around the
Keep. Smaller building littered the grounds, some large even
to easy accommodate a crowd.

We only gain a few passing glance from the local population,
most of them going back to what they were doing without even
a reaction. This was an interesting place.

As we continued to walk forward Sam split away from Ryan and
headed off in a different direction. I took a few long steps
until I was next to the otter. "Where's she off to?" I
asked.

"To check in with Jack," He answered still walking, "He's
the master of arms and assigns the patrols. I'm going to
show you two around."

"How about the library first?" I asked.

He gave a soft chuckled. "The library? I know people here
who never have been near there. Why would you want to see
it?"

I decided to be honest at this point. "We've been sent to
retrieve something left there a few years ago. By a tall
albino man, totally bald."

He taped the tip of his muzzle with one finger. "I seem to
remember seeing a man like that a some years back, after the
curses. Why are you interested, what exactly did he leave?"

I shrugged. "Not much, you can take a look at it if you want
to."

He nodded as we entered through a covered archway. From
there in we were inside the Keep itself. The stone passages
were light by a series of mage lights clinging to the
stonework.

Ryan led us down a series of passage ways, at each
intersection he stopped to think for a few seconds before
going on. After a few minuets of travel we stepped through a
large wooden door and into the library.

The room was huge, it looked to be five hundred feet square
or more with three levels rising above us. The rows of
shelves, each a dozen feet tall, cut the room almost into a
maze. Shifting and turing in mind wrenching pattern. Above
us floated a dozen mage lights, each to bright to look at
for more then a second. This resulted in not a single corner
of the library being in darkness, though a few were in
shadows.

Ryan looked around the front of the room. "Fox is around
here someplace, he's the librarian. He almost never leaves
here, or at least it seems like that."

I nodded walking over to the small desk that sat at the
front of the room. "Is this the main entrance?" I asked.

He thought for a second, "Yes."

Digging into my pocket I pulled out the instructions from
the PADD. "Good," I looked up and counted the shelves in
front of us. "We need to go down that one, five shelve
lengths." I said, pointing in the direction we needed to go.

Oria walked quickly past me, moving down the hallway between
the shelves, counting them as she went past. Ryan and I
followed her lead. Once we had gone to proper distance she
looked around. "Which way now?"

I pointed left. "Seven in that direction."

Once again she lead, counting the shelves until we reached
our destination. "Up two more," I said before she could ask
the question. She smiled and walked the proper distance.

We were now at the correct bookshelf according to the
instructions. So I started counting the books on the second
the last shelf. The book my finger landed on when I finished
was huge. Sliding it off the self I was amazed at the size
of it. It had to have been at least a thousand pages.

"Can you read this?" I asked Ryan, pointing at the long
title on the cover.

He shook his head. "It was never my place to learn to read.
Fox can though, I'll go get him." Then went off to find the
librarian.

I dusted the cover off and chuckled. "I don't think anyone
has touched this book before us."

Oria nodded, crouching down a bit to look as well. "Do you
think Grasion bobbie-trapped it?"

"No," I answered, opening the cover. "He was planning on
getting this himself, a trap would have been against his
thinking."

She nodded again, taking my word for it.

Flipping thorough the pages I watched the text go by. The
form of the letters wasn't something I knew, and the
translator couldn't learn written languages without a lot of
help.

About half way though I finally came to a shallow cutout
inside the pages. Inside of the depression was a spool of
thin wire that twinkled with the light of the room.

I closed the book with a smile.

"Ryan said you need my help." A shockingly familiar voice
said as it approached us from behind.

I dropped the book and spun around to look at who was
approaching us. It was Ryan in the company of the librarian.
The man was true to his name, a fox-morph. Standing about
five and a half feet tall he seemed shocked to see me once
he registered my face.

Slowly I stood up and walked over to this man who had my
voice. He was shaking slightly, but the closer I got to him
the more composed he looked. Finally, once we were a few
feet away he smiled a bit. "You must be the third one."

I blinked as I processed that. "Third one of what?" I asked.

His smile widened. "Of us. You're the third Fox Cutter."

* * *

"All right," Oriana said as she pulled out a chair. "Would
the two of you please explain this?"

My double and I looked at each other and I shrugged. "Yes, I
would love to hear about this as well."

Ryan took his own seat, he still looked as much in shock as
he did when we left him in the library an hour ago.
Currently we were in a back corner of one of the Keeps bars,
named, interestingly enough, "The Deaf Mule."

Fox had promised to explain exactly how he had come to
decided I was the third me. I was also curious how he had
come to be here at the Keep, there was no way he could be my
double and be a native of this world.

The local Fox waved over the barkeeper. "Ryan will have what
ever he usually haves. I'll take some red wine. You two?" He
looked at Oriana and I.

I shrugged. "A little of the wine I guess."

"I'll have the same." Oriana said.

The barkeep was back an a few seconds with the drinks. A mug
of beer for Ryan and three wine glasses for the rest of us.

Fox took a quick gulp of the wine while I only sipped it. It
was a sweet wine, but did nothing to hide the bitterness of
the alcohol.

He noticed the look on my face. "Don't like the wine?"

I shook my head. "No, just don't like the taste of alcohol."

He raised his eyebrows. "You can taste it?"

I nodded.

"I can't," He said with a smile.

"We're different," as I spoke the worlds I felt myself
relax.

"Fox," Oriana said, "and Fox. Would one of you please
explain how there can be two of you, let alone a trio?"

I smiled. "It's kind of simple really, the Multi-Verse is
large enough that it's possible to have a two universes with
the same world in each. In fact they could be perfectly
duplicates of each other. In that way it's possible for two
versions of the same person to exist at one time."

"Ah..." the other me said, "so there are three Earths out
there that the three of us are from. Interesting."

I nodded. "Yes, though how did you come to be on this
world?"

He took a longer gulp of his wine. "By accident. It was five
and a half years ago."

"The sixth of January?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No, the fifth. Either way, I was in my
room when I got this pulling sensation at all the hair on my
neck. I turned to look at where it seemed to be coming from
and in a blast of color a hole appeared in the corner of the
room. It started at blue but then turned into a sharp black
and seemed to pull me inside. I woke up a few miles away
from the Keep."

I nodded as he spoke. The same thing had happened to me the
first time I opened a fold.

He licked his lips. "I waited there for a day shy of a week,
hoping it would open again, trying to go again what I had
done back home. Eventually I had to give up, I found a
caravan on it's way back to the Midlands and hitched a
ride."

"So that's you're your from," Ryan mumbled, finally starting
to sip at his drink.

I frowned, thinking over his story. "Was there any fearing
at the spot where you landed?"

He nodded. "Yes, it seemed distant, more like a sound just
out of hearing then anything else. Interestingly enough
though, I ran into the spot again on one of the short
patrols last year. It feels just the same as it did at home,
but much more subdued."

I chewed my lip slightly, a bad felling growing in the pit
of my stomach.

"What's wrong?" Oria asked as she saw the look on my face.

I looked accost the table at my vulpine double. "How long
will it take us to get there, leaving now?"

He shrugged, "Almost an hour and a half, why?"

I stood up. "Right then, we need to get there, now."

Oriana grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back down. "Fox, what
is going on?"

I bit my lip softly. "I think the fold maybe an
intermittent. If it is I need to find out how long we're
stuck here."

"Worried about the curses?" Ryan asked with a smile.

I shook my head. "No, I'm more concerned with the one I
already have."

Ryan took a long drink from his mug as both Fox and I ran
out of the bar.

   To Be Continued...

-----

This story is (c) 1998 by Fox Cutter, hardcopy reprints
limited to one a person, all other rights reserved. This
story may not be distributed for a fee except by permission
of the author, and this copyright notice may not be removed.
"Metamor Keep" (C) 1998 by 'Copernicus' all rights reserved.