Bleq’Puhl [town], Genu [planet], Saber [star system]
30 July; 11:45:30 Hours
Creeeeeeeak echoed through the small apartment that overlooked the large center courtyard of the small town, Crystal quickly spun around from the window to the opening door with her hand reaching to the hilt of her saber. Her eyes narrowed and flickered with uncertainty until she caught sight of Alastair who shuffled in and closed the door behind himself. Crystal let out a sigh and let go of the hilt of her blade, “Ay Dios! You didn’t knock like we said!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry about that but,” Alastair chuckled as he lowered the dark blue hood of his cloak, and his tone grew serious, “you were definitely right that he was here… Well, not this town but the city that used to exist a couple of miles to the west.”
“Yuh-used to?”
“Yup.”
“Wuh-what do you mean?” Crystal stammered as she took a few steps toward Alastair who reached to a pouch on his belt.
“Well, from what I could find out from some locals,” he explained while pulling a holo-disc from the pouch and holding it out in front of himself, “The Light… and the Dark… became one…”
He squeezed the disc with it leaving out a chirp before projecting a three-dimensional hologram of what ruin remained of L’ynden. Crystal quickly covered her mouth with her right hand and nearly stumbled back a step as her eyes sunk. She then subtly began to shake her head at the destruction she saw before she muttered, “Nah-nuh-no, what, light? Dark? What are you saying, Alastair?”
Alastair’s left eye now narrowed slightly before he said, “Crystal… They don’t want to say anything about this, this, this Event Horizon, but the one word I did get out of them - and more so a whisper… Beelezika.”
“We, we have to get there!” Crystal frantically told him before she spun around and ran to her white cloak that hung over a chair. “I, I have to see, um, see this for myself!”
“To L’ynden?”
“I need to see…”
“Crystal?”
“This, it, it couldn’t have been him…”
“Wait…”
Crystal finished latching her cloak’s clasp before she turned back to Alastair. “It couldn’t, um, Theo wouldn’t do that! He wouldn’t! He, uh, he, he would neh-never - I have to suh—”
“Crystal,” he cut her off as he gently grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes, “Slow down. Please. I get that you don’t believe your friend would do that, I do, I get it but we can’t just stroll right on into L’ynden. The locals here are already skeptical of us, and well, if we try to get there, I have a bad feeling.”
“A bad feeling?” she softly asked with her head tilting subtly to the right.
“Yeah… I got a bad feeling they’re not so innocent, Crystal, and they’ll put us in the same position as your friend.”
“Let them.”
Alastair’s eyes fluttered. “Let them?”
“Sí, nuestro Padre nos protegerá,” she said before clarifying for Alastair, “Our Father will protect us.”
“Alright,” he nodded before advising, “but let’s make our move at dark.”
Crystal nodded in return before Alastair turned and he slowly headed toward his bedroom of the small apartment, but he stopped as he heard her softly call to him, “I’m sorry.”
Alastair looked back over his left shoulder to her and let a grunt. “Hm?”
“She was kind and she didn’t—”
“We’ll leave at dusk, so we better get some sleep,” he sternly cut her off before quickly heading off, leaving Crystal alone in the room where she gently wiped away a tear, bowed her head, and folded her hands together in prayer.
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***
Later that night…
Zuuu-oooooooom! Zuuu-ooooooooom, hummed through the deep of night as Crystal and Alastair zipped down the empty old, and worn street on their hover speeder-bikes headed toward L’ynden. A blur of resolve and the other honor as they shifted from one side of the road to the other in a blink to avoid barricades and fallen trees. The two were wearing HUD goggles that allowed them to see in a mix of night-vision and advanced-predictive sonar as the road before them was pitch black.
Alastair turned the throttle forward with his speeder-bike kicking a gear higher as he came side-by-side to Crystal, he glanced at her only to find she was locked in on the journey before them, and Alastair’s eye narrowed in a sense of uncertainty. “Hmmm, what aren’t you telling me?”
However, the resolve that pulsated from Crystal began to shift with a spark of uncertainty. She eased up on the throttle of her speeder-bike that then began to fall behind Alastair as she felt a growing change in the aura of the city as they continued their approach. The darkness that consumed the road and the foresight of the HUD goggles blurred with a flicker of powerful luminosity. Voices soon began to whisper past her ears in the blitzing of wind from the speed she was traveling.
“She is chosen,” one voice whispered before a soft woman’s followed.
“The Word guides her…”
“But she is clouded,” a deeper firm voice rebutted the others, “She is connected to it…”
“We must trust completely in what He has planned,” a final voice noted just before Alastair pulled directly beside Crystal and stopped her with the two drifting to a stop alongside the road.
“What the hell were you doing?” he barked at Crystal as she shook her head as if snapping out of a trance, then stammering to speak to him.
“Wuh-what, what, wuh-what are, are you talking about?”
“Crystal! You were flying! You slammed down the throttle and were practically on a death mission!”
“What?” she gasped.
“I almost couldn’t catch you,” he bellowed as they idled on the side of the road with Crystal’s eyes pinging around in confusion.
“The Word will guide her,” again whispered past Crystal’s ear, this time causing her to quickly look in the direction of L’ynden with eyes now large and sweat beading up on her forehead.
Alastair’s eye narrowed as he saw the concern wash over Crystal as she glanced to her right, and he quickly reached out grabbing her shoulder. “Hey! What is going on?”
“Maybe,” she breathily said as she still looked out into the distance, “this, heeeh, this was a bah-bad idea.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Crystal?”
“Nuh-nothing,” she quickly answered while turning her attention back to him.
“Don’t you lie.”
Crystal didn’t say anything as she looked him in the eye.
“What is going on?”
“Something is out there, Alastair.”
“Your friend?”
“Nuh-no,” Crystal shook her head and said, “Their pressure is nothing of the sort similar to Theo’s.”
“Their?” Alastair’s voice grew deep and low.
“Yes, I don’t know what they want but—” she explained only for him to cut her off.
“Well, let’s go find out!”
Alastair didn’t give Crystal any time to stop him as he turned, threw the throttle forward, and zipped off down the road in a blink. She gasped in disbelief while watching him speed off, only to hear one of the voices again as it emanated all around her, “Do not be afraid…”
***
Moments later…
The soft hum of Crystal and Alastair’s speeder-bikes bellowed through the silence to what remained of L’ynden. The two looked around at the darkened silhouettes of crumbled buildings like haunting shells of the life that was. Crystal’s heart rate was ticking up as there was a growing realization with her coming to a stop twelve feet from the very spot Theo stood during the Event Horizon.
Shakily, Crystal dismounted her bike and slowly she took step by step closer to the spot. Eight feet from it, she heard an unfamiliar woman’s voice, “Why do I feel like I know her, yai Emoor?” and Crystal stopped with her eyes narrowing.
“Hey?” Alastair called as he looked over to Crystal from his bike. “You okay?”
“Yuh-yeah,” she said, only for her to close her eyes while placing her index and middle fingers on her right temple with more voices, but familiar ones, coming to her.
“SARA! We have to get out of here now!”
“They took her from us!”
“Sara…”
Crystal’s eyes shot open wide as she witnessed a massive blackened void before her with a shimmering blaze of light orbiting it. Bloodcurdling screams filled the growing silence that grabbed ahold of the once lively city around her. Within the darkness were two, one blackened silhouette that she knew the pressure of all too well while the other burned bright, and her gut turned.
“Crystal…” she faintly heard at first while the unholy images of destruction and massacre continued before her, only to feel Alastair yank her from the vision as he yelled, “CRYSTAL!”
Like the air being sucked out of a sealed room, what Crystal bore witness to pulled away from her eyes as she now set them on four before her and Alastair. Her eyes pinged from left to right at them while her hand moved toward the hilt of her blade, with Alastair already holding his snub claymore, Ramghrut out in front of him. He softly asked her while refusing to take his eyes off those who stood before them, “Are these the ones you sensed?”
Subtly, Crystal nodded her head as she continued to eye them up and down; each adorning white survival-chainmail suits with gold armor-bands, and they stood as if the threat posed to them were of no concern. “Yuh-yeah.”
“Do not be afraid,” the voice Crystal heard earlier reiterated, as now the man adorning a white cloak of the four spoke and stepped forward as he pressed his palms together and looked up to the above. “For we are Imago dei Latores.”
“Imago— What?” Alastair hissed, though Crystal clarified in a calm tone as she placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Bearers of the Image of God.”