Saturday Morning, June 3rd, 2025. Northern Californian Redwoods.
The redwoods were beautiful in the summer. The sun hung high over the trees, shining golden rays onto the tawny wood and heating their deep grooves.
The night rains left the soil soft as he ran the paths.
Winds drifted through the woodland in refreshing warm breezes. He could smell the salt of the ocean out west, past the beaches. Back where the world was.
The redwoods was something else for Darius.
An escape to a different time. A step into a different world almost. A world where he could run and jump and move freely. Away from the pressures and confines of the world— away from the failure, away from tedious jobs that paid chump change and cheating girlfriends that—
"Oof!" Darius grunted as he was hit by a heavy force and knocked off the path to crash into the bushes bordering it.
Whatever it was held him to the ground as he rolled to a stop on his back.
Not a bear— not a wolf, California didn't have those. Not any beast. He could smell her perfume. Tangerine vanilla and honey.
"All you do is run in this forest." She said.
"All you do is hurt people, Glo." Darius groaned as he opened his eyes and came face to face with his sister, Gloria.
Gloria gasped, "No way! I make you happy too, right? Come on, I'm a great older sister."
"You're a great martial artist….. and football player….. and bounty-hunter apparently." Darius replied.
Gloria smiled. Her hair was tied down in long braids— that somehow didn't pick up any dirt. Her black lipstick was also perfectly fine and stood out on her brown skin. "Mom offered me fifty to find you….. since you weren't answering your phone. You're a shitty, son, sometimes."
"My bad."
"Uh-huh." Gloria stood up off him and held a hand out that was connected to an arm covered in tattoos, "Now get up, Dare. I'm taking you home so I can get this money and mom can stop thinking you got eaten by coyotes."
"Three more miles and I'll be good." Darius replied.
"Boy, hell no." Gloria said.
Darius rolled his eyes and reached out for her h—
The ground jolted suddenly, causing Gloria to fall over next to him.
A deafening tearing and thundering sound echoed from the sky, causing Darius to look up at and find hands in the clouds.
Hands made of fizzling and smoky blue energy. In each palm, eyes bordered by bizzare symbols watched the world.
They pushed two forces together that materialized between each hand. Round and marked like planets.
Two planets. He recognized earth— the shape of it and it's continents. The other was larger.
The hands slammed the two forces together.
"What the hell— another earthquake? We've had like six this month." Gloria groaned as she pushed herself up off the ground.
"Not an earthquake." Darius said.
Gloria eventually looked where he was looking to find the magical hands with eyes pushing the orbs together.
As they neared, the air tightened, echoes of foreign sounds grew louder. Reality tore and rippled, causing trees to split and grass to catch fire or grow rapidly. In parts of the forest, the ground split and mountains rose.
The closer the orbs became, the more things changed.
Massive scaled beasts chasing after air-ships faded in and out of flight in the sky like realities were shifting.
Wolven howls echoed in and out of sound.
Explosions rose up in massive multicolored mushroom clouds in the city, flickering in and out of existence, causing skyscrapers to fall and vehicles to pile the streets on fire.
Chaos continued.
Darius and Gloria writhed in pain as pressure rose and foreign energies from the rifts absorbed into their skin.
In their pain, weird semi-transparent screens blipped to life in front of them with a message.
It flickered like the mountains, dragons, explosions and glowing plants, growing more stable as the godly hands in the sky pushed the worlds closer to being one.
DING
[World-Merge Event: 95….96…97%]
[(Earth + Verdant) Planetary Compatibility: 78%]
[Planetary Hybrid Potential Outcome: Hybrid Vigor!]
[Native Species and Flora of each planet gains a boost upon World-Merge.]
[System-Power Absorption to Earth Species: 98….99…]
Darius was taken out of viewing the screen as more of this invading energy and world solidified and caused a pack of green skinned men with bone-white wolf masks to appear in the redwoods. They wielded spears and axes and bolas like a tribe of hunters of fantastical means.
In Darius' pain and stunned state, he could barely move as they stabilized in the world and grabbed hold of his sister.
"GLORIA!" Darius reached for her.
At the same time, the hands in the sky pushed the planetary orbs together, causing a pulse wave of chaotic energies to blind the world as two planets became one.