Behind us stands a man in a suit of armor that most would describe as a nightmare incarnate. The armor is colored black with gray highlights with many sharp ridges, and inside of those ridges, light is visible. Despite being made of a black material, it still lights up every shadow in the clearing even though the sun is shining.
He tries to say something, but he is interrupted by Thompson's scream and attempt to run off into the forest. If the rest of us were not paralyzed, then I'm sure that we would have followed suit, but we stood silently, rooted to the spot by our fear.
On Earth, fear was something that was normally only considered a hindrance, but in this case, it is something that may have saved our lives. There is a bright flash and only the beast remains. We hardly have time to exhale before we hear Thompson scream again.
He had grabbed him by his right pectoral with one hand, and slammed him into the ground in a fit of anger. This caused Thompson's left hand to fly off into the distance, nearly hitting us, and turned his arm into a pulp-like tendril of muscle, blood, and bone.
The man pauses for a second, probably realizing what he had done, but that only lasted a second. As soon as Thompson's arm starts twitching, throbbing, and reassembling itself, he flicks his wrist. We hear a snap, smell the ozone, and see Thompson go limp.
Smith collapses, and the rest of us lean on the wall for support.
"Mr. Thompson!" Nuñez yells. The man stays still for a minute, possibly thinking about what to do next or contacting someone. Nuñez tries to yell again, but Smith and Akeem yell something about angering him at her. As for me, I sit here, numb.
As soon as Thompson's arm stops regenerating, he tosses him at the beast. Nuñez yells again, and the others yell louder, but there was no reason to worry. It simply caught him in its teeth and placed him on top of the building near its right wing.
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He then turned toward us, held up his right arm and pushed a button on it. It incapacitated us, and that was when he took us to Pulchorous. He called in backup first, of course, as he could only take two captives on his own mount, and that was how we found ourselves to be in the floating city of Pulchorous.
I wish that I knew the power Intofan back then. If I had, then maybe I would have been able to fight my way out of there and avoid capture. Alas, we were forced to live among them; although, we only saw what they were doing afterwards.
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"Are there no results?! Who the hell are they?!", says a richly dressed, short man.
"We don't know, sire.", says a man in a grey lab coat. "They have fewer mental protections than the poorest beggar, but very little of the data is any good if they don't speak any recognizable language."
"You don't have to tell me their names, just tell me where they came from! Who do they belong to?!"
"We don't know that either, sire. The tech that is the most prevalent in their memories is unlike anything that we have. The things that are the most recognizable are touch screens, but aside from that, we don't know much."
"A very small segment of the memories include something similar to our suits of armor, but their version seems to be very small by comparison, and it seems to only be a fantasy. We do know one thing for certain, though."
"They do not originate from this planet. The topography of their own planet is very flat in comparison to our own, so we theorize that it is a very old planet, but we have no idea where it is or who rules it."
The short man interrupts. "What do you mean, 'we don't know who rules it'? It should be their forefront memory."
"We don't know who rules it because it appears to have many different rulers who are almost always at peace and let them have access to most information. By comparison, this one is a war-torn hellscape."
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I wake to find myself in a lavish room, sitting on a bed with a beautiful canopy covering it. The room is covered largely in gold, purple, and red hues with an occasional hint of green and blue. It is also decorated with many items befitting a Persian prince.
I get up to explore the room more, but a man flanked by two guards in black and gold armor enters the room within the minute. He is wearing a white, metallic suit with silver highlights. It is very tight on his body and exposes most of his frame. It covers all of his body except for his feet, hands, and face.
His feet are bare and so are those of the other two men. None of them have a discernible weapon, but there are suspicious lumps on their right hips that make me think of a weapon holster. It seems to be melded into their suits, but if it is a weapon holster, then I don't want to test them.
"Fdeyt zchto nan.", he says.
"What? What language... what? Who are you? Where the fuck am I?", I respond.
He sighs and says nothing. Instead, he motions for me to follow him. As we walk, I realize that I haven't checked out my own apparel. I'm wearing a white cloth suit similar to theirs. It is a single piece that covers everything other than my face, hands, and feet. It is so comfortable that I can barely feel it on my skin.
We continue making our way through winding halls that don't seem entirely straight. Despite the curious architecture it is so luxurious that this place would be considered a national treasure on Earth. It vaguely reminds me of the Taj Mahal.
"Where are we going?" He replies in that same language. We both sigh.
After what seems like forever, we stop, and he turns to his left. It doesn't look like anything is there, but he holds his hand to the wall and thumps his fingers on it in a pattern. This causes it to split open and reveal a doorway into a small room with a small table and two chairs.
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That was where they tried to find out what I knew that my memories didn't reveal. Unfortunately for the man in charge of me, his talent and time was wasted. Of all of the images that he showed me, I recognized none of them.
I couldn't even recognize the food that they showed me. Heh. It's a little comical now that I think about it. They showed me to another room and forcefully taught me language through that dreadful machine.
It took me a week to recover from the mental exhaustion of being taught an entire language in an instant, but it was a necessary evil. I was returned to my room and retrieved for an audience with the Sultan, and later, training after I recovered.