What a strange place... Crip pushed on through the carroty plantation. The dust and orange thick air made it hard to see in distant elevations. This was the forty mile badland that surrounded the palace’s mile high metal walls, wherein there was no gate. Most of the outer and remaining demons never went in, keeping within their cities and communities far from the main castle to avoid interaction.
Crip shuddered to think what it was like inside, being well aware of the sinking mud, the deadly moss forest, and the Demon Prince. As Trixie’s slightly older brother, he jogged across the edge of the desert closest to the castle. This seemed to be the only way him and Grandpa could get in without being caught. His padded shoes sizzled from the hot sand. If he didn’t move fast he feared they would catch fire.
A deteriorating silhouette was in the distance, fazed partly out by the mirages of the empty desert. Grandpa Paka and Crip trotted together, keeping their movement steady. Crip was the only one out of the two lively enough to make it to the gate and climb over. For a brief moment his heart skipped a beat. “Mom!” Huddled unconscious on the coat was a withered thin woman with dry blonde straws in a sloppy ponytail and pallid gaping eyes.
A faded pink long sleeve-T, loosely strum over her limp figure was ripped at the crevice of her back where a deep revolting scar had incised both shirt and skin. To Crip and Grandpa Paka’s surprise her fingers were twitching, a sign of life. As carefully as he could he lifted his Mother.
She smiled wryly. “What happened?” Crip tried to inquire.
“No time to...explain” Trine replied with resignation,“ we.. need to get to the palace soon...” her speaking was strained. She had done her duties, she had as many children as she could to build the angels before the takeover. Her children were now just a liability, and maybe they always had been because they did not reach adulthood fast enough. Love? No, she had these children purely for the power of angelic dominion, and now their weaknesses just accelerated the sting of loss. She knew her marriage had been mismatched, only hoping that her husband’s intelligence could have outweighed his red flags. Trine was dying aware that not only had her own efforts backfired, but the entire planet of Cyber would soon fall too. The image she wanted to so desperately protect, the illusion of their family’s valiance- was falling apart. Their only good- the Tanti gem- used against all of them.
“The ship’s only a few feet back, and we’re already too close to the dark castle” Crip began to jog with his mother lightly resting in his arms, “You should go back and Paka will tend to your wounds. Don’t fall asleep” Crip urged. He then said, “ Mom...they’re both alive aren’t they?” Trine didn’t respond. Her weariness had caught up with her. His attempts to make conversation and keep her awake wasn’t working, and from her wounds Crip realized this was her last time awake.
* * * * *
The door swung open, a tall gaunt figure looming under its frame. Ijin’s long cloak trailed behind in the corridor, the reflective round glass side viewing a calm face. He walked through the cube white chamber of scattered crumpled paper and reeking old furniture, finding a fair light above a treasure chest beneath a glass table. A lamp had been knocked and was now shattered on the ground. Ijin’s assistant, Sekina, had delivered the blow to Trine for him soon after they ended Dr. Jen.
The Emperor crouched down, tossing out the little bottles in search for the right one...he stopped at the sixth jar, a tiny bottle of silver globules. He sniffed, finding that it was the right bottle. After clasping the delicate little glass he perused for any more information on his new found provision, the Tai. He stopped on a notebook of procedures on how to break away from Planet X. “Too bad” Ijin whispered subtly. “I would have never given you the chance. Now I will make them pay for what they did to my people.”
“Not before I get the attention back to me!!” The plastic door was left open, and Siasma exploded behind him. Ijin rotated toward the Siasma’s presence, his long slinking cloak following his swift flow of turn. A dagger was raised in her hand. As always his eyes were blank, uncomprehending. He had changed so much in those years as the angels destroyed most of the demons, locked away in his chamber as if living in a garage trapped with no direction from her actions. He was hardly aware he had even been a father.
“What else can you possibly take from me?” Ijin gestured. Siasma held the knife at her side.
“I will not have my glorious legacy destroyed. I will destroy yours!! I will hurt what is left of your pathetic demons before you ever get any sense of so-called justice!” And with that Siasma drove the dagger into her stomach. Her body slumped and her head fell against his chest, eyes staring into nothing. Ijin held her, watching his own hands and flesh age until there was hardly anything left. The last part of the curse, if one of the two compromising sides died, they would both resume their natural form and age. She had condemned him to a swift incoming death as well.
“Now you are probably saved from all of your crimes, enthused at my destination towards eternal suffering.. Just because of how I was born” Ijin whispered. Gently lifting the body, he carried her out the door and down a long hallway. No one would’ve recognized them for the Queen and Emperor if not for Ijin’s cloak. Passing demons moved to the side and forgot to yield to Ijin, gaping at the awful prospect trumpeting the halls. Ijin stormed down the radiant hallways with the corpse, pacing faster and faster.
Hastily the demons unbolted the metal doors to his throne room, as Ijin paced. They gawked after him and quietly closed the entrance to an edge, peeking in with fear. One of his eyes disengaged from its socket and floated around, still connected by a blood vessel. “Close IT ALL THE WAY!” It slammed behind. He set the body down, backing up, and muttered a mantra. “Cyber will see how you chose to act when called to protect them!!” he stepped back to the door so that the body was between him and the throne.
A burst of black wind encircled Siasma’s body, till it enclosed upon her and blew into tiny nothingness, taking itself and the body away. Ijin now had the power and Tai he required to enter Cyber, and to annihilate it. But he wouldn’t assail yet. He stormed out and slammed the stone doors, his minions returning to their posts just in time. Siasma’s corpse was now on the largest city’s wall of Cyber. A precursor of the coming destruction.
* * * * *
If Ijin even thought for a second he could reach Cyber and annihilate the planet before Carris got to it, he had another thing coming. A dramatic change was imminent. Carris crept behind the metal doorway, scrutinizing Ijin. The force of the gusting black wind nearly threw Carris back. It intensified, then swooped in upon Ijin and a body that Carris could barely discern. With inhuman speed the Prince rushed in at the same moment, just far enough for the warp to consume him as well. They would be on Cyber in seconds.
* * * * *
Crip heard the far door slam shut and heavy footsteps echoing through the interior hallway until they were gone. Quiet followed. The only sound now was the rustle of spring water.
Scores of halls and flights passed, scenes changing every next corridor; scarlet hangings with golden sashes and silver plaited rugs, skylight windows of artificial sun beams and amethyst rugs, painted curls of crimson, hoary, and blond interweaving over crushed pearls that made up solid walls.
The expressions on ghoulish faces were no longer statues in boredom, they began to crumple like a child’s expression in fear and worry. “They’re running away.. from something...” Crip detected. The three dimensional sphere windows quivered. Dreary gasps and shouts followed.
A tremor gurgled beneath the long cluttered hallway, and the high windows shuttered again with its jilts. A vehement shudder followed a more violent one that threw half the nobles to their knees and shoulders. The threaded ceilings had begun to crack.
Crip began to run. He was not sure his sister or Dad would be found. Outside was dark and polluted. The towers of crystals had shattered as the whole palace tilted to its side, and internally collapsed, landslides bursting out over the muddy lake. The external structure remained unmoved beyond the tilt, though the blocks and debris from within flailed about in a burst. A slashing uproar of mud and debris flew up and scraped the sky, before raining down for hours until the last chunk had fallen. Crip had barely made it out. The escape ship was within sight, and Paka was gaping at him in shock.
That is when a wild flash jerked their necks and they found themselves from beneath a falling sky, taken to a stretching patch of diamond grass threads. Ice woven feathers fell like snow around them. Trine was gone, and now Crip and Paka were in an endless field of crystal colored grass. They stood scarcely miles away from the Fire Sand desert that encompassed what was left of the palace. Even from this far, the burning could still be heard and seen like the wonder of an exploding white star.
The two glanced up to see a mystic violet eyed girl with dark curls, bare shoulders and skin dotted with tattoo needle pricks and freckle marks. Her face was dappled with stardust, and she wore a thin, shimmering sleeveless silver gown with a cut-out half moon. Nearest to them was a boy about the same age, chopped hair tied back with straight across bangs. A lilac cloak covered half his body where the other half wore a long silver white tunic. A shining rod that sounded like pennies was propped in his right hand. It appeared that these two had relocated them. Not only that, but the young man was holding Crip’s sister in his arms. Trixie was unconscious, but she was alive!
“You’re Angel” the woman said.
The sandy blonde Crip eyed them doubtfully,“As long as you don’t plan on hurting us, we’re Angel!”
The one with the staff laughed softly. “I’m Mikel. This is Zoy,” he gestured to the girl, “and this is Vercida.” The third figure emerged from behind them, a boy with long purple hair around Trixie’s age.
“I found this girl and quickly put her to sleep,” Mikel began, “She seemed very shaken, and it did not seem like anything I could say would make her snap out of it” he added, noticing Crip’s concern.
“You’re demons, yet you are dressed like.. Some kind of priest and priestess.” Crip observed.
“We ARE a priest and priestess,” Zoy interjected calmly. “Where we come from, it is who you choose to be that makes you who you are.. not how you were born.”
Crip decided not to reply. He was well aware the angelic Queen Siasma had caused the onslaught of all demon people. These two already radiated with the magic of wise practitioners.
“We should depart this place without hesitation,” Mikel stated, changing the subject.
“My powers are not all that accurate, and I’m nowhere near as accomplished as my master was…But I can take us there with all of the Spirit Energy (Ki) that I encompass right now.”
“Alright” Paka replied. This introduction and agreement had happened far too fast, but there were not many options on the table. Trixie was alive, and Crip and Paka could focus on that.
Mikel’s chant rose in a strange and resonant remedy, an outlandish hum unbefitting his own voice. The long woven strands of grass shuddered momentarily, and in a sudden whoosh there was not a single feel of movement, breeze, or air....the oxygen had been drained.
The two chinking silver rings on the steel rod jingled like pennies in the breeze. An uproar of a blaring tornado swirled around them, closing in quickly. Mikel’s voice wavered through the blinding wind, “Zoy, cover the angels!” Laser white light sheathed the group just as the tornado closed in. The air rushed through their heads, pulling hard against their bodies until the group evaporated with the blur of the wind into nothingness.