Chapter 26：Lost in space and time

James slowly opened his eyes and adjusted to the bright light coming in from gaps in the ceiling. He was in a smallish room that could provide enough space for one person to live comfortably with a door and some storage. James felt his right arm and found a makeshift brace made out of sticks and vines that held his arm securely. There was a creek of floorboards out side, the door opened, and in walked Edward wearing a dark cloak. He placed a wooden cup of water on one of the storage boxes beside the bed and sat down on another.

"I have many questions." started James. They both laughed and Edward took a sip of water from a cup of his own.

"I'm guessing you were sent through a portal like I was?" asked Edward. James nodded.

"On earth, people with all new abilities have been appearing more and more so me, William, and Jack decided to round them up and help them. Me and Jack were chasing after a woman with some type of teleportation ability when something happened to her and she sent through a, what I'm now understanding to be, portal. What happened to you?"

"Similar story actually. I was exploring other planets to see if I could use my abilities to help people recover from the war. Turns out that we could choose to be any element or type of ability but we had been taught we could only be out father's element or our mother's element. But then this guy appeared out of a cloud like portal. He wearing a full-body pitch-black fabric like armour and his face was covered with only purple rectangles for eyes. He called himself 'The Jumper'. I tried to fight him but he kept making portals and sending my arrows who knows where before making a portable below me and sending me here. I quickly took down the wolves you met earlier and now they protect me for some reason."

"Huh, you seem pretty adept with survival skills." said James he glanced around the room and at him brace.

"Yeah. From what it looks like, your arm dislocated after the first branch them proceeded to be shattered and snapped by the branches that followed. Quite brutal. Even with your accelerated healing it's going to take another seven or so months from you to at least use it. Another two months to fight with it."

"Damn. I need to get back." Jack stood up and chugged the water.

"There is one way but ... it's not the easiest." said Edward.

Edward walked out the door and James followed. The view from the tree house was magnificent. Birds of all kinds flew across the sky and the forest made a green line across the horizon as if it was painted by a seven year old. Edward grabbed a vine, jumped from the platform they were on and zipped down to the ground. James found a spiral staircase leading to the floor and began to descend. Once at the bottom James found Edward feeding the wolves carcasses of unknown, small animals. When they saw James they growled but Edward motioned and they scampered off.

"So where are we?" asked James.

"So? Where are we?"

"We're in another universe. Similar to our's in the sense of physics but with some noticeable differences." Edward grabbed a fruit from a tree. " Think of this fruit as a universe. All those other fruits are the same but all differ in one way or another. But now think of them as dimensions." he split the fruit in half and showed the seeds within. "These seeds are the universes. This fruit is a dimension. All similar universes follow a timeline. Each universe represents a slight change in that timeline. A dimension groups them all into one ... technically area but dimensions are so big that any laws of physics can't apply to them. Theoretically, you could jump from one universe to other that follows the same timeline but ten seconds earlier. You'd feel like you'd travelled time but you've just replaced the 'you' in that universe. Any changes you make would thrust you into another universe where the change you made was what had actually happened. It sounds complicated but It's actually quite simple."

"So dimensions contain universes which are the same timeline just with minuscule differences?"

"Yeah, and we've arrived."

James looked and saw a small, technological pillar with a button on top. It glowed purple with black lines running up and down it.

"If you press that button, The Jumper will take you to his champion. If you defeat them then he'll take you anywhere you wish. I've faced the champion before but his abilities rely on a different set of physics to ours. I think he's from another dimension." said Edward.

"Then lets do this!" shouted James. He went to press the button but Edward grabbed his arm.

"What are you doing?! Your arm is basically just flesh with bone shrapnel scattered around inside! You have no energy left and you can't even use your celestial weapon. You're gonna die!" James looked him in the eyes and pulled away from the button. Edward let go.

"But it's better to die trying than to die after giving up." James punched the button and was instantly taken to a long, golden hallway with large windows either side. At the other end was a short person wearing a blue hoodie. A voice echoed.

"Let the champion battle begin."