Room 456A [diplomatic suite]; Mul’Tarvuh Tower
Te’ev [gold-section], Skies Rim [floating belt-city], Dawma [planet], Elysium [star system]
7 July; 22:13:07 Hours
“<You must listen to me!>” Vhael screamed as she stood across from the head diplomatic envoy of the Sovereign Kingdom of Wendale, Caetor Tael. “<He is coming after my son! He will not be stopped! No one can stop Him!>”
Caetor looked at Vhael with a stone-cold expression while he sat behind his desk, two Lancers flanked him with one to his left and the other to his right. He then let out a sigh before leaning back in his chair, saying, “<Allow me to get these accusations in order if you will…>”
Vhael’s mouth went dry as sweat beaded up on her brow. She looked Caetor in his light brown eyes, only to then quickly glance around the luxurious office where she caught sight of two more Lancers who stood guard at the double doors behind her.
“<… Your family? Yes? You all have been on the run from the Sovereign with your husband, who is now deceased, being a head of the domestic terrorist cell known as the Righteous Glaive? Correct? Numerous acts of sedition have been committed on all of your parts? Am I right? And now you’ve come to the Sovereign seeking its protection because someone is hunting you all down, and successfully doing so as well as executing those who attempt to shelter you? Is that correct?>”
“<Suh-someone? Someone?>” Vhael snapped as her eyes grew large and she stepped up to the desk where she slammed her hands atop it. “<HE is not just someone! HE… is… BEELEZIKA!>”
Caetor raised his left hand as he signaled for the Lancers who all charged their TAK8 rifles to hold, and he then leaned forward with his left eye narrowing. “Beeleizka?”
“<YES! Yes, Beelezika is hunting my son! This is what I’ve been trying to tell you!>”
Caetor’s eyes pinged side to side as realization slowly flowed over him. “<I, I must alert Commander Waelum—” but he whipped his attention back to Vhael as he spoke with a pinch of franticness, “The boy! Where is the boy now? Where?>”
“<My son, Jaes?>” Vhael said as her eyes fluttered and one of the Lancers stepped forward and answered.
“<The boy is asleep in the guest quarters, sir.>”
“<We must secure him, now!>” Caetor then exclaimed. “<NOW!>”
***
At the end of the long hall were double doors to the large guest quarters where two Lancers stood guard. Their white armor radiated a slight aura in the dimness of the hall, their royal blue capes hanging to their knees while they each were armed with a white and silver TAK8 rifle. However, the dimness of the hall began to shift toward a thick darkness that rolled upon them. The left Lancer was the first to notice the change in atmosphere with his head clocking slightly to the right before he took a step forward.
“Yaet mei dun taei?” the right Lancer asked in their native tongue.
“<Do you not notice the thickness, Jaevuh?>”
Jaevuh now took a step forward with the other now several steps in front of him, and he looked around before noting, “<Perhaps we should alert Envoy Tael, Poltaer?>”
Poltaer turned completely so he was looking at Jaevuh and he could feel a thick pressure in their surroundings. He even let out a sigh as he contemplated radioing in the Envoy when the Captain Lancer came over their commlines while simultaneously emerging from the darkness behind Jaevuh was the Goliath Crow, Haertrus.
“<Secure the boy! Secure him now!>”
Poltaer yelled while aiming his TAK8 in Jaevuh’s direction, “<Jaevuh, move! MOVE! Mooooooooove!>”
Jaevuh perked up in confusion but before he could even move an inch away from where he stood, Haertrus violently grabbed him by the back of his head and plowed him face-first into the ground. The silver visor of his helmet shattered while the followthrough force Haertrus exerted squashed his skull before Haertrus slowly looked up with pitch-black eyes that locked with Poltaer’s light brown beneath his visor. Poltaer immediately began squeezing the trigger of his rifle, firing focused charges down the hall at Haertrus but Shade thickened around the Goliath Crow and absorbed each energy-nail before contact.
“<They’re here! THEY’RE HERE—” Poltaer yelled over the commline but from the wall beside him, out of the Shade emerged the Huntress Crow, Gael, who sliced the back of Poltaer’s thigh and dropped him to his knee before she thrust her curve saber through his neck.
Haertrus arose with the Shade retracting from around him while Gael pulled free her blade and pushed Poltaer’s corpse to the ground in front of her. Then, ascending from the floor through Shade came Daemus, as if he were climbing stairs. The Third-eye Crow stopped and looked around at the death his fellow Crows reaped, only to turn to the double doors while he let out a sigh of disappointment. “<My, how the Shims that Laes deploys have… heh, diminished since the Blaque was torn down.>”
However, Caetor, Vhael, and a unit of Lancers charged down one of the halls in an absolute panic. Vhael was panting, her vision shifting in and out of blurriness, and she felt a powerful surge through her chest as they rounded the corner. There at the end of the hallway, Vhael and the others saw the Crows entering the guest quarters with the thick darkness rolling into the room amongst them.
Vhael uncontrollably let out a shrieking scream just before the Lancers opened fire. “JAAAAAES!”
Hmmmmmmm roared before the loud booms of the energy-nails ripping down the hall at the Crows. Boom, boom, boom-boom, boom. Streaks of bright blue lit up the now dark hall, but the Crows never turned their attention from their prey and instead, the Shade thickened at the entrance of the quarters where it intercepted every single charge. Vhael felt her chest growing tighter and tighter as she watched the energy-nails hit the darkness mere seconds before dispersing through it, fading out like the flames of candles in the cold night. Then in an explosion of terror as she heard her son let out a scream, Vhael’s eyes ignited bright blue with Shine surging through her veins before she shot down the hall in a blaze of intensity and through the Shade into the guest quarters.
Time appeared to slow down to Vhael as she found herself in the guest quarters, a shimmering white aura wafting off her, and as she looked around she saw Haertrus holding Jaes as Daemus and Gael stood to the Goliath Crow’s sides. Her heart dropped as she watched her son fighting the monstrous Pitch to let him go but his attempts all were in vain. She then witnessed the thick transmorphic Shade, like rolling smoke, begin to fold in on the four which caused Vhael to lunge for them. Everything started to go cold for Vhael as she found herself spinning in an inky darkness that grew blacker and blacker, but then in a blink, she felt her body hit the ground where she rolled across the roof of one of the thousands of skyscrapers on Te’ev.
“<It’s Shim mother managed to tag our trail,>” Gael hissed as her black eyes locked onto Vhael.
“<She is of no consequence,>” Daemus chuckled while Vhael was on her hands and knees thirty feet from them where she was throwing up and gagging from her body rejecting the jump. “<She is poisoned by the essence of her Goddess.>”
“<I don’t care!>” Gael barked as she glanced at Daemus before turning back to Vhael who she stepped toward. “<I want to extinguish her light! One light at a time, and cleanse this universe of the blight they are! Return it to its true glory! Return it to black!>”
“<NO!>” Daemus snapped and then he pointed to Jaes who continued to struggle with Haertrus. “<One fading Shimmer is NOTHING! Her light snuffed out will not bring us anything compared to what will will bask in with that flare!>”
“Let me go!” Jaes screamed, and the Goliath Crow obliged by throwing the boy to the ground where he smacked his head before drifting into unconsciousness.
“<Gael is right!>” Haertrus cawed. “<We should just snuff them both out, ourselves!>”
Gael simply licked her fangs with a smirk.
Daemus, however, was prepared to explode at his fellow feathers but his eyes pinged around before they fogged to complete inky blackness. “<It’s time…>”
Haertrus rolled his shoulders forward as he positioned himself just beside the unconscious Jaes while Gael scanned the rooftop, which became thick with a foggy Shade. Daemus briefly closed his eyes only to immediately reopen them with the inky blackness gone, and he found himself taking a step backward as the sound of thunderous footsteps echoed in their bubble of darkness. What felt like an eternity to the three was in reality only a few seconds as the colossal Shade armored Being approached from the black, His burning white voids of eyes locked on not them, but Jaes who still remained unconscious.
“Kae’oo laek’tei mayhnuk baesh’tae nhoaw,” bellowed from the Being in the most deep and reverberating sense possible.
Daemus’ eyes narrowed as the tongue the Being spoke reminded him of the one the Being they encountered on Otebah had briefly - an ancient and long-since forgotten tongue. It was at that moment that the pressure had become so thick that even Haertrus found it difficult to move. The Crows noticed, one by one, that the Shade itself had begun to move differently as it bent to the will of the Being who began to now approach them.
Boom. Boom. Boom erupted with each heavy pounding step He took. The roof shook with such power that the building itself appeared to tremble, it was then, that Haertrus let out a thunderous roar as he clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles cracked. The Goliath Crow then charged forward, moving not quite as fast as he normally would as the pressure continued to thicken around them.
Haertrus had closed half the distance between the two, but that was the moment when Gael’s eyes opened wide as she caught sight of Him before her fellow Crows - before Haertrus.
“<WAIT—” she tried to warn him, but Haertrus was struck from the side by a colossal blackened wing which sent him tumbling across the roof where he stopped just at the ledge.
The slender Being’s back was to Gael and Daemus, however, His head slowly turned one hundred and eighty degrees so He was looking at them with His burning white voids. His head twitched side to side, in a way of sizing the two up, as the colossal Being stopped just behind Him. It was then as the last footstep’s booming echo faded into the nothingness where to the colossal Being’s right arose out of the ground into the thick of Shade, was the petite Being.
“<Daemus…>” Gael whispered as they stared down the trio. “<This, this was a mistake. We must leave now!>”
Daemus’ eyes grew blacker than black as he tapped into the Shade, in an attempt to decipher what they were. “<They are heresy! Whatever He has done, clouding the Shade from my eye!>”
“<Daemus…>”
“<The Shade, it whispers in that tongue while in their presence!>
“<Please, Daemus…>”
“<They are not of the Deep! No!>”
“<Daemus! Daemus, this was a mistake,>” Gael snapped as she inched her way closer to him while her hands moved to the hilts of her sabers. “<Whatever they are, He will have them kill us! We must get out of here! We must! We cannot stall any longer!>”
Daemus’ left eye, however, began to twitch as the blackness again started to spread out from his eyes. The Shade not only clouded his ability to see through it but now was exerting upon him, which forced Daemus to drop to his knees and grab the sides of his head while he winced. Daemus growled, “<I will not allow Him… ERRRRR… to, to, to contort… UGGH… our birthright!>”
“RRAAAAAAAHHHHH!” Haertrus roared as he now charged the colossal Being, which drew Daemus and Gael’s attention but none of the three moved an inch.
In a blink, Haertrus was within striking distance where he unleashed all the force he could muster in a shockwave ripping right hook. It was like sound was sucked away from them all before a thunderous crack boomed across the roof and then Te’ev in totality. However, Haertrus groaned as his fist was stopped by one of the slender Being’s six wings.
Again, the deep reverberating voice of the colossal Being bellowed, “Taesh’lae byt kaer’l Shihaem,” and then nearly impossible to perceive, the slender Being moved on Haertrus.
The Being practically retracted in His wing’s direction as if it glided across the roof, and then there His head returned to its proper position while simultaneously the top right wing thrust down at Haertrus. He gasped and coughed briefly before glancing over to Daemus and Gael, who saw the Being’s wing plunged through Haertrus’ chest. Before he could look back to the Being, He retracted His wing and then used both to swat Haertrus away with the force launching him across the roof where his body tumbled and rolled directly off the ledge.
“<Noooooooooo!>” Gael screamed after watching her fellow feather killed before them, but Daemus immediately grabbed her arm as he ordered her.
“<Get the boy! Get him and I’ll meet you back at the nest!>”
Gael’s face contorted with a sense of knowing, but then she glanced for Jaes only to find he was gone. “<Wuh-where is he? He, he’s guh—”
“MOM!” Jaes’ voice yelled, and Gael immediately turned to see him kneeling beside Vhael who still had not recovered from the jump.
Shade pulled around the petite Being and she then folded in on Herself within it. Daemus saw this and barked at Gael, “<Get him now! Go!>”
Gael didn’t hesitate, she charged straight for Jaes while Daemus struggled up to his feet with the two other Beings now sizing him up as he threw his arms out to his sides. “<He has what is OURS! You perversions will not stop us,>” and Shade pulled toward his hands where it congealed into blades of darkness that Daemus then twirled around.
“Juh-Jaes,” Vhael stammered as she now lay on her back with Jaes holding her hands while he looked down at her with tears in his eyes. “You, you have to run! Please! Please run!”
“But Mom,” he cried. “I can’t leave you! First Dad! I won’t lose you too!”
Vhael shoved her son’s hands away as she screamed, “RUN!”
Jaes nearly jumped up to his feet. His heart was racing, his eyes grew large, and his bottom lip quivered as he couldn’t believe what just happened. Though behind him where Shade bloomed out from a central point, the petite Being apparated. Shade now pulled from the air around Her before congealing into a blade that She took and was prepared to swing down on Jaes when Gael blocked it, and threw the boy to her left.
Jaes rolled several feet where he stopped on his back and quickly looked over to the two, who were twirling blades around with deep clangs of Kalber and Shade connecting that left a hollow feeling deep inside him after each clash. Jaes’ eyes, though, began to narrow as something caught his attention across the roof. The Shade was thick like a ghost fog that shimmered on the ground, but yet on the other side of the roof from him and the others, lingered a faint silhouette. The longer he stared at it, the louder the whispers on the Shade became to him, “Rael’tihaev buhlrym tae Shihyrm gaes’tu’odaem,” but Gael interrupted his perception as she came tumbling across the ground in front of him.
Jaes looked at her as she struggled to get back up before he slowly panned to his right where he met eyes with the petite Being, who now locked sights on him and began Her march upon him.
“ERRRRR-AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Daemus roared as he struggled to hold back the slender Being’s top two wings with the blades of darkness, but he found himself blindsided by the colossal one.
Daemus was rocked by a shoulder strike that dropped him to the ground where the blades he wielded dispersed back into the Shade that now coiled into blackened tentacles.
“<More perversions!>” Daemus hissed at the tentacles that now retracted beneath the haze.
Yet as the darkness now appeared to close in on the Crows and Jaes, with the two looming over Daemus while the petite Being stood atop Jaes who looked up at Her with tears running down his cheeks; Vhael lunged at Her and screamed as she tackled Her to the ground, “RUN, JAES! RUN!”
Jaes didn’t hesitate now. The young boy shot up to his feet and took off toward the stairwell door. Each step Jaes took, the louder the whispers on the Shade grew, “Hael’taer de O’taer,” and now less than ten feet, “Gaer’tek behlt yaeh’maer,” Jaes slammed into the door before he frantically grabbed the doorknob and twisted it, then in a blitz, he yanked the door open to find hundreds of pitch-black three-eyed owls exploding out of the stairwell at him, “Aem’Shihaev…”
Jaes screamed in confusion and fright while he swatted around at the owls, only to in the panic feel a sharp sting. The entire rooftop then went silent and cold, as Jaes’ eyes slowly panned to the source where he found the the owls piecing together and forming the slender Being. The burning white voids looked deep into Jaes’ glowing bright blue eyes that dimmed back to light blue, and Jaes let out a gargling groan as the Being further thrust one of His wings deeper into Jaes’ chest.
“JAAAAAES!” Vhael screamed. “Nooooooooo! No, no, no, no, noooooooo!”
Gael who had crawled over to Daemus, reached out to him as he did her, and with their hands grabbing the other’s, the two folded in on each other through Shade. Yet Vhael panted and cried as she ran to her son, despite the Beings, with the slender Being having yanked his wing free and allowed Jaes to collapse dead to the ground. Not even a second after his body hit the concrete, Vhael was on her knees at his side, cradling him in her arms.
“Wake up! Jaes! Jaes, honey, please wake up! Please,” she begged him, despite there being no life left in his eyes. “Don’t do this! Please! Pleeeeease come back! Pleeeeease!”
Vhael’s eyes now ignited bright blue with the subtle blue veining through her face and body intensifying before she glared around, looking for the Beings but nothing. The trio were gone, as was the thick pressure of Shade that they carried. Vhael threw her head back in anger and frustration and sorrow as she belted out a thunderous scream that ripped through what felt like the universe, “Errrrr-AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
***
A shrieking scream ripped through the pitch-black alley as the thumping sound of fast footsteps followed, and a woman came running around the corner toward the other end. She glanced over her shoulder every several steps but then found herself smacking into the dead end where she slammed her palms off the wall three times. She rested her forehead on the concrete and let out a breathy sigh before frantically spinning around to the sound of whispering that rolled in. Her eyes narrowed as a thickness came over her and the surroundings, and the darkness grew darker.
“Buh-bay-Babe? This, it, it, this isn’t funny!” she called out, though the whispers became clearer and the pressure felt nearly unbearable.
“Rael’tek shael’tev myr’muor Shihyrm gao’dyb…”
The woman’s eyes grew large as thunderous footsteps echoed down the alley toward her, with a colossal silhouette of light-eating blackness came into view. Her head started to shake and then beside him unfolded six gigantic blackened feathered wings, and she muttered as a petite woman arose from the ground, “Oh, oh God!”
Burning bright white voids of attention locked onto her as she felt the wall to her back, allowing her to only scream in terror, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” and Sara shot up in bed with sweat pouring down her face, panting and struggling to catch her breath.
“Sara? Sara? Are you okay? What happened? Sara?” Drake frantically asked as he sat up beside her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.
Sara couldn’t begin to fathom what she dreamt as it felt more real than nearly anything she had ever experienced awake. Flashes of the three’s burning eyes glaring into her soul hit her over and over again. Sara could still feel the lingering pressure that preceded the Beings. Her body shook like she was out in the frigid cold, and all she could bring herself to do was turn to Drake and bury her face into his chest, crying.