War in Heaven

Jessica was on the verge of a panic.

Martin wasn’t picking up. Timoteo wasn’t picking up. Jagesic had already gone to the other side. And she was all alone, in her office, in the Antioch Complex—the district that, as far as she knew, would in minutes become the focal point of the AssMachenstani invasion.  

The specks of light outside, flashing in the halo of Styx, were coming closer, glowing brighter. She had received nebulous reports already of an invasion in Nilbmah, though those did not surprise her. It wasn’t an invasion—it was a Purge. Based on knowledge she had acquired from the other side, it was what AssMachenstan always did before converting a country into a full-fledged ally: it eliminated all possible stray ends, all possible rebels, prepping the country before turning it into as close to a puritanically AssMachenstani satellite as possible. Anyone left behind after the purge would in theory be fertile ground for the AssMachenstani Common Mind to take hold.

Jessica rose from her desk, beads of sweat trickling down her forehead. She realized her knuckles were sore from being rapped on the desk non-stop for the past half hour. Why weren’t they answering? The moment was too crucial for them to be pulling a disappearing act. Were they scrambling? Had they left any loose ends? Or worse, could they be straying from the plan?

The murmur of general excitement was mounting outside. Jagesic had already informed the Foggistani forces in Attica and Coralende of the impending attack. All ground troops in the Antioch Complex were falling into formation. Support from Attica was on its way. But would it be enough?

No. Of course it wouldn’t be. Jessica stared out her office window, her eyes glazing over the busy city lights, the moving vehicles, the gathering tanks and helicopters. She didn’t understand why, if she already knew what was supposed to happen, she kept on stressing like the outcome could be any different. Death and disaster were inevitable. The general confusion that would befall the planet any minute now was inevitable. The pieces she, Jagesic, Martin and Timoteo had set in motion were the only differences now, and they wouldn’t come into play until most of the chaos had already happened. It seemed absurd—she still wasn’t sure she understood the reasoning behind it—but apparently, it was the only way to save the world. It was the only way to prevent the disaster of Planet Breckinridge from repeating itself. Death and destruction were a necessity.

Suddenly, Jessica felt a soft buzzing sensation coming from her chest. “Shit,” she muttered. It was time. She unzipped her jacket and unhooked the small brooch pinned to her vest—the brooch she never removed, and never lost from sight. It was a small pearl, embedded in the center of a triangle made of white gold. To most people, it appeared to be nothing more than a small, decorative object. To Jessica, it was her ticket to the other side.

Now the pearl was glowing. She couldn’t wait much longer.

And yet, the prospect of shifting to the other side was terrifying. She had never done it before. It was a mission unlike any other, one Jagesic had specifically chosen her for. She knew she should be honored. She knew it was a sort of higher calling. She knew the brooch had come as a gift from a being incredibly more powerful than either her or Jagesic; a being she would be in the presence of in just minutes. She knew she wasn’t the first to go through this process. Jagesic had also done it very, very long ago. But how would things change? How would she change? Would she still be a Psychic on the other side? Or like Jagesic, was she about to become… something more?

Jessica placed the brooch in her desk and pulled at her hair, her hands shaking.

A second later, the city sirens emitted their blood-curdling wail. It was a sound Jessica had always been afraid of—a foreboding sound she associated with thoughts of the apocalypse. In a burst of anxiety, Jessica pulled back the sliding glass doors of her office and stepped out onto the terrace.

The night sky was brilliant. The cold wind caressed her cheeks gently. Had she been blessed with ignorance, she would have believed the approaching AssMachenstani spaceships were nothing but beautiful stars, glowing more intensely due to the seasonal mining gasses pushing their way into the stratosphere. But she was not ignorant.

For the last time she admired the bright city lights… The Foggistani helicopters off in the distance, hovering over the farmlands of Econometric Elation, en route towards the heart of the Antioch Complex… The cool night air, playing with her tightly pulled ponytail. She sighed, released her hair, placed her hands on the veranda and closed her eyes. Would everything still feel the same, afterwards?

A tremor.

Jessica opened her eyes. The wind had stopped. The siren’s wail seemed to have grown louder. She looked up at Styx. Something was happening up there. It’s halo seemed to grow brighter… redder… The black band across its surface becoming more defined.

The veranda began to shake. Jessica jumped back, as dozens of dry leaves and tiny pebbles began to rise off the ground around her, floating slowly up into the sky. The grass around the building became erect. Through the darkness Jessica could see the silhouettes of trees in the distant countryside, their branches stretching unnaturally upwards, as if magnetically pulled. Jessica could even feel herself becoming uncannily lighter.

Then everything around her began to rattle. The concrete on the balcony cracked. The glass on the sliding doors began to vibrate with increasing intensity— started to crack—shattered.

A hideous roar of screams then erupted from the direction of the city as the earthquake’s intensity increased. The unnatural brightness of Styx now bathed the entire Antioch Complex in an infernal, blood red light. It was the reversal of gravity.

The attack had begun.

Cars and trees were lifted into the air. Helicopters over the city lost control and whirled headlong into skyscrapers. And just as the earthquake hit its peak, Jessica rushed into her office, deafened at once by the moan of the collapsing building. She could hardly stand straight as she dashed for her desk—reached for the brooch just as it began to float off into the air. She tore the pearl off the white gold triangle, held the pearl between her fingers in a moment of panicked hesitation—

Had she had any doubts before, she now no longer had a choice. In a matter of seconds, the entire Antioch Complex and every one of its inhabitants would cease to exist.

The ceiling groaned, cracked—split off and shot straight into the sky. Jessica herself was lifted off the ground. Horrified, she placed the pearl in her mouth, gave the world around her one last glance, closed her eyes, and bit hard.

Silence.

Gravity returned.

And Jessica’s body collapsed in a dead heap upon the floor, as the wrath of AssMachenstan rained down upon the Antioch Complex.

In the Shadow of the Beast

A burst of smoke signaled Delilah’s arrival into the central courtyard of the LusciousLockian National Palace, an enormous marble building constructed in the classical style, wrapped in a thick coat of ivy in the tradition of most LusciousLockian governmental buildings. Next to Delilah’s fluttering skirt of smoke landed Timoteo, face first into the thick grass that hadn’t been tended to for weeks.

“Well then!” said Delilah, clapping both hands together as she took two steps towards the Palace stairway. “It’s been a while since you’ve been here now, hasn’t it?” She whirled around and stared down at Timoteo, her expression one of vicious amusement.

Timoteo, on all fours, looked up at her. “Oh yeah, years.”

She kicked him in the face, knocking him on his side. Blood gushed from his mouth. “Where the hell have you been?”

Timoteo rose to his feet, glaring at Delilah spitefully. “Somewhere you couldn’t catch me.”

“You betrayed me, Timoteo. You betrayed us. You know how many years you set us back?”

“That’s right,” he spat. “Let’s assume your plan wasn’t to turn me into another zombie all along.”

Delilah’s skin flashed a bright red. “I loved you!” she screamed.

Timoteo wiped his bloody mouth, grinning. “Your colors are showing,” he said.

Delilah looked at her red hands and flushed an even deeper shade of red. With a backhand slap she sent Timoteo sprawling several yards away. “I risked everything for you! I taught you—You were supposed to become king.”

Timoteo grunted, lifting himself up yet again. “A puppet king under the control of a ruler set on draining LusciousLocks and destroying the world. I sure did miss out, didn’t I.”

Delilah glared at him murderously. “Give them back.”

“Give what back?” Timoteo asked innocently.

“I can make you bleed more,” Delilah threatened. “Now tell me. Where are they?”

“In some place in time and space.  They’re perfectly safe, I assure you.”

Delilah stared at him for a minute, her skin tone gradually returning to pale white. “You know it’s either that, or your three precious girls. We won’t stop until we have them.” Timoteo stared at the ground. He would say nothing. Delilah approached him, slowly. “My God, Timoteo,” she said, more softly now. “How old you’ve grown.”

Timoteo looked up into her black, lightless eyes. “You haven’t aged a day.”

Her face approached his face. She placed her hand on his cheek. The years had made him gaunt—almost skeletal. His skin was sallow, sickly. His eyes no longer glistened with that eagerness—that shimmer of excitement she remembered when she used to teach him how to channel the magic from the earth. When she used to teach him of the history she knew, of the link between LusciousLocks and AssMachenstan that had existed since the times of Planet Breckinridge, but had been forgotten after the massacres and the Great Digital Fire.

Delilah touched the lines around Timoteo’s eyes. “It’s unfortunate, what’s happened to you,” she said. “The decisions you’ve made… It’s like you never had anything to do with AssMachenstan. Like you’ve entirely forgotten who you are…”

“I know very well who I am,” Timoteo said icily.

Delilah withdrew her hand, looked at it, then looked away. She had almost forgotten what his breath felt like. “You know I can’t release you until you’ve told us where you’ve hidden them.”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Then we’ll torture you.”

“So be it.”

Delilah pursed her lips. Timoteo observed her carefully. He knew there was still a part of her, hidden behind those cold, lifeless eyes, that still cared for him. He was counting on it.

“Forgive me, Tim,” said Delilah.

She turned away from Timoteo, took a few slow steps towards the Palace stairway, and closed her eyes. Her dress began to shift slowly back into mist… a black mist that wrapped her… hid her entirely from view. A dull droning sound began, growing louder… louder every second, its dull bass reverberating in Timoteo’s chest and stomach. The sound eventually forced him to cover his ears. Delilah was now an enormous cloud of black smoke, swirling, shifting, jerking abruptly like a coiling snake.

She was transforming.

The droning became more animalistic. Like the wail of a large, dying mammal. It continued to evolve. Louder. Sharper. Higher. Timoteo buckled to his knees, squinting with pain. It was unbearable, piercing straight through his skull, jamming his brain.

Tiny specks of blue light began to rise off the ground, sprouting from the blades of grass, from the soil. Timoteo couldn’t even hear himself screaming as the magical blue specks gathered all around him. He felt his head cracking open—his forehead splitting—every blood vessel in his body strained, about to explode—

Timoteo felt the trumpeting sound flood him to the very last pore. He felt the shadow of the hideous monster rise before him, engulf him. He felt the shock of electricity tear through his skin, through his bones—

He felt the world around him explode.

And Timoteo knew no more.

The Heist

It was their third raid. Their third bottle-rocket-injection-of-epinephrine rollercoaster ride.

A few days before Lithuania’s visit to nilbmah, she found a trade road that led to Green City that was just a kilometer from the hollow. More importantly, the road was frequented by Assmachestani hovercraft. Felix had the idea of raiding the hovercraft and everyone agreed to help out.

As the craft approached the jump spot, winfry would write out the machine’s power and once it stopped, isa would blind the troop with a flash of invasive light during which time Marco and Felix would barrage the vehicle with rifle fire. The Starr sisters would then scour the hovercraft for anything informative, while the rest of the crew watched to send out warning when Assmachistani reinforcements approached, which was unusually fast. Then they would all book it back to the hollow.

So far the raids were only marginally effective. They had samples of the basic Assmachestani technology carried by infantry (which extremely strange), a low-level-clearance blueprint of the Assmachestani presence in Green City and eight Assmachestani infantry uniforms, but still no clue to what Assmachestan was doing in LusciousLocks. They needed more information. They needed a prisoner.

However after the second raid, security along the trade road high jumped to a new level. They needed a new plan. They were going to divine an Assmachestani soldier out or at least try.

The hollow seemed to push the Starr sisters’ magic to the surface so they had been practicing or at least Latvia and Lithuania; Estonia feigned disinterest but really she was a little afraid to give it her all. winfry and isa also tried to amplify the sisters power like Timoteo had done. The librem told winfry what explicitly he should do to Latvia, but at least isa had mild success. The day before Lithuania visited nilbmah, they managed to teleport their stick mannequin across the hollow. They were almost ready. But after seeing the devastation of nilbmah, Lithuania thought they were ready.

“Assmachestan is launching their attack right now. We need answers. We have to act now. Today!” Firmer even than ever, Lithuania shoved the group toward her opinion.

“I’m not, well, I’m not sure. We were very close to the mannequin yesterday; I’m sure it will be harder with distance. We need more practice,” was winfry’s timid objection.

“We don’t have time to practice. The people across Coralende are dying as we speak. I saw it. We have to find out what they are doing now. We can do it.”

So swayed by Lithuania, two hours later they set their plan into action. The sisters and isa hid by the side of the road and Marco, Felix and winfry watched from a group of trees behind them where they could give them cover fire if needed and where they could knock out and drag off the infantry that the ladies sent them. Waiting was like the Christmas Eve when you were six right after watching your first horror movie.

And then the hovercraft slid down the road. They ladies were ready. With the craft 100 meters ahead, isa grasped the quilaire around her neck like a rosary and within seconds the sisters glistened pale blue. Holding hands, the sisters focused on the driver, just like the stick mannequin in the hollow, and sent out their magic to swallow him, just like they had done in the hollow.

It didn’t work. The hovercraft was heading right for them. The Assmachestani troops knew where they were. They were going to be run over.

But no sooner had the craft swerved off the path than Marco and Felix opened fire and winfry started scribbling. Craft on fire. As it turned to the left to avoid gunshots, it burst into flames and crashed into a tree. The sisters and isa dashed back towards Marco, Felix and winfry and as they did, from out of the smoke of the hovercraft, the mist lady arose.

The Beginning of the End, Part 2

“Maia,” Peter said aloud. “Maia, can you hear me?” Foggistani soldiers were being destroyed left and right, and one by one, Peter sensed their fear extinguished by death. “Maia, are you there?”

“Peter,” came Maia’s voice, echoing inside his head. “Peter, AssMachenstan is toying with us. They’re not even using magic.”

“And yet they’re still whooping our asses,” said Peter. He dodged a purple energy beam from an enemy ship. “Maia, have you felt their minds?”

“Yes. No. I’m not sure. They all seem to… not be thinking.”

“They’re all in tune, somehow,” said Peter, maneuvering his ship around to get a better view of the battle scene. “At least as far as emotions go, they’re all feeling the same exact thing.”

“You can feel all of—?”

“Yeah,” Peter interrupted. “Something in me just kind of snapped. But Maia, listen. I need you to psychically amplify my emotions.” An enormous explosion, and the seventh wing of the Platinum was blown apart. Peter quickly told Maia exactly what she needed to do, and a minute later he was flying into the thick of battle.

“Alright,” he said, releasing the controls and closing his eyes. “Let’s see if this works.”

Despite the laser beams, energy blasts, spaceship shrapnel and careening space crafts, Peter slouched into his seat and shut everything out.

He focused on what he felt. A brave soldier 200 meters above him… A determined pilot below… A dozen terrified soldiers dodging beams all around him… The focus and zeal of every AssMachenstani…

Eyes closed, Peter selected what he needed, and let his emotions expand. Out from his mind… through his hands… onto the glass windshield of his StellarFighter… out through space… out into one soldier… two soldiers… five soldiers… twenty soldiers… He felt every one of them as he made contact, flooded them… Replaced their own emotions with his…

Peter opened his eyes. “Now it’s your turn, AssMachenstan.”

A second later, every AssMachenstani was overcome with an inexplicable wave of blind terror, and every Foggistani filled with a surge of courage and an irresistible urge to kick ass. “Kill them all!” Maia yelled into their minds, and in mere seconds, the tides of battle shifted.

The AssMachenstani fleet lost all coordination; exploding left and right, they shot the wrong ships, smashed into each other, fled into the darkness of space—they were lost in pandemonium while the Foggistani forces attacked, pushed them back, pushed them away.

“We’re doing it!” cried Peter. “We’re winning!”

Hardly five minutes had passed before every AssMachenstani ship had fled beyond the Platinum’s airspace and out of reach of Peter’s influence. Yet as soon as they escaped Peter’s hold, Maia noticed they redirected, all in perfect coordination, away from the Platinum and, contrary to what she expected from a retreat, resumed their route towards Coralende.

“You seeing that, Peter?”

“The spell’s been broken. They’re moving like a swarm again,” he said, noticing the individual jets of light from the enemy spaceships above him shift at oblique angles as soon as they left his influence to merge into a single, cohesive fleet headed straight for Coralende.

The AssMachenstani coordination was impeccable, but there was nothing Maia and Peter could do from such a distance to stop them.

“Peter, that was incredible,” said Maia.

Peter smiled. That had been pretty awesome.

“All forces, return to the Platinum,” came Maia’s voice. Peter veered his StellarFigher around with the remaining survivors, and sighed upon sight of the Platinum. The ship was in a pretty sorry state. Still, the crew had evidently done a good job at keeping the damaged areas in isolation, as the fires on the sixth and seventh wings had not spread. “And Peter,” Maia said, in Peter’s mind only. “Meet me as soon as you can on Bridge C. You and I have got to explore Styx as soon as possible.”

Peter unconsciously touched the burn mark on his chest, the little souvenir left behind by Latvia’s quilaire. It seemed he wouldn’t be seeing Latvia for quite some time. 

The Beginning of the End, Part 1

Peter emerged from his tank, pale and exhausted, to be greeted by the wailing of an alarm reverberating incessantly through the Egg. “Maia,” he said, as she approached him, mopping herself hurriedly with a towel, her expression grave, “Maia, they’re coming.”

She nodded. “I read your anxiety. I sounded the alarm. We need to move.” She tossed Peter a towel. “Dry yourself up. We’re off to our battle posts.”

“Wait, what?” He followed Maia as she walked briskly out the Egg and down the corridor towards the Platinum’s bridge. “Maia, I fly helicopters. I’ve hardly been trained for—”

“Peter,” she said, stopping dead in her tracks and turning to face him. She grabbed his head with both hands, closed her eyes, and before Peter could take a guess at what she was doing, sent a jolt of electricity through Peter’s skull that knocked him flat against the corridor wall. “Don’t second guess yourself now,” she said seriously.

“What the hell—” he cried, confused.

“You now know how to man a Foggistani StellarFighter, at least as well as I do. Let’s go.”

Peter stared after her wide-eyed as she turned around and continued down the hallway. “You can do that?”

“I’m Head Psychic Officer. Of course I can. Now hurry.” Peter followed, puzzled by Maia’s sudden change of character. Her sweetness and casual tone had been replaced by the strictest sense of business and urgency.

“The Space Disk is evacuating as we speak,” said Maia as they stepped into the Starship Platinum’s bridge. It was abuzz with the anxiety of dozens of bustling crewmates, and Peter instantly felt the pang of general tension overwhelm his mind. “Jagesic himself should be on his way to a safe post. As for us, we’re too close to Styx to make a run for it. We have to defend the Starship at all costs. Richard,” she said to a nearby officer manning a control panel. “What’s the estimate?”

“They’re moving fast,” replied the crewmate, his fingers sliding full speed over the touch-screen control panel. “I’d say they’ll be reaching us within ten minutes.” Peter could sense Richard was scared out of his wits, though he was putting on a mighty good show of hiding it. Again Peter felt the growingly familiar tinge of guilt he got every time he sensed something someone was evidently trying to hide. Then he felt a pang of fear, brief but clear as day, come from Maia.

“We’ll have to move faster, then,” Maia said, placing her fingers against her temples and closing her eyes. The purple stripes of her cat suit flashed brightly and immediately Peter and everyone else aboard the Platinum could hear Maia’s voice echoing through their heads. “Everyone to your posts,” she said. “Soldiers, man your StellarFighters. Arrival of enemy forces imminent in nine.”

Maia opened her eyes and seized Peter’s hand. “Follow me.”

She led Peter down numerous corridors flooded with the flashing red emergency lights, until they reached what Peter figured was the launch pad: a circular room lined along the walls with transparent cylindrical pipes like test tubes, just large enough to fit one person each. Maia slid the door to one of these open and shoved Peter, still dripping wet, in.

“Good luck,” she said. And without another word, Maia slid the door shut in Peter’s face and he was siphoned off down the pipe. A moment later he fell unceremoniously into the pilot’s seat of a Foggistani StellarFighter, Foggistan’s smallest and most nimble aircraft designed for close-range space combat. Peter gained his bearings, scanned the controls, put the knowledge he had just received from Maia to work and brought the StellarFighter to life.

A moment later he was hovering through space around the Starship Platinum alongside hundreds of other Foggistani soldiers, nervously anticipating the imminent arrival of the AssMachenstani forces. A minute later he had a visual.

“Ready for combat,” Maia’s disembodied voice rang in his head. “Hold your positions.”

In the distance, coming straight from Styx, Peter could see them, tiny red specks growing larger, brighter. There seemed to be hundreds… thousands… Enough to make Peter’s stomach lurch uncomfortably, affected by his own emotions as well as those of every soldier around him.  “Steady,” came Maia’s voice. “Steady.”

And then it came. In less than a second, a speeding beam of light from afar transformed itself into a massive explosion, setting the entire sixth wing of the Starship Platinum aflame.  

“They’ve opened fire! They’ve opened fire! Go! Go! Go!” came Maia’s voice.

Peter’s heart plummeted. As the glare of the explosion bathed his cockpit in a shivering, orange glow, in his head everything went silent, and for a moment Peter felt like time was standing still. All the anticipation… the questions… the general anxiety… The legends of old of the malevolent, magical race that was AssMachenstan…

The climactic moment had arrived. AssMachenstan did, in fact, exist. They were attacking him. They were attacking everyone. And while the magnitude of the moment seized Peter, he couldn’t help but wonder a million things at once: Why were they here? Why now? How strong would they be? How would everything change? All of Coralende would finally come to the realization that AssMachenstan was more than a legend; they were a reality, a terrifying, apocalyptic, historically significant reality. A thousand years ago, AssMachenstan had rendered Planet Breckinridge uninhabitable. What would happen now? What would happen to Coralende? What of all the civilizations on the planet that had nothing to do with AssMachenstan and Foggistan’s ancient feud?

What about Latvia?

A second later Peter was jolted back to reality by the overwhelming terror of hundreds of different Foggistani minds. Peter gripped the controls—closed his eyes tight—tried to shut everyone out. The soldiers were terrified. The AssMachenstani fleet was fast approaching—already firing. Small, chaotic black ships wrapped in intricate patterns of glowing red stripes, hurdling through space like webs of hair and metal. Their fleet was huge. Vast. They were everywhere. Peter felt his mind about to explode. He could scarcely dodge enemy fire.

He needed to focus. He needed to focus. Emotions rushed into him from every direction. He felt drunk—dazed—cluttered—blind—

 “LATVIA!” he screamed.

And then he could think. He was clear. Whether it had been the force of the echo of his own voice within the cockpit, or whether he had blown a fuse for the better, whatever it was, he could think. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he could access everyone’s emotions. Everyone around him—Foggistani and AssMachenstani alike—he could access them, feel them, pick and choose and dip into them—dip into their excitement, their terror, their determination, their focus. It was like the chaos of puzzle pieces had all fallen perfectly into place—like Peter had suddenly been flooded with a wave of perfect, uninterrupted lucidity that extended everywhere.

He gripped his controls, straightened the craft, whirled around and dove straight into the thick of battle. He had realized the emotions of every AssMachenstani he sensed were the same: an obsessive, focused, fanatical sort of zeal, mixed with excitement, determination, and rage. The Foggistanis, on the other hand, were a jumble of surprise, fear, anxiety and confusion.

“We need to focus,” Peter said. “We need to focus!”

Foggistani StellarFighters were exploding all around him. One by one, he felt soldiers, the sources of particular sets of emotions, vanish. The AssMachenstanis were winning, and the Starship Platinum was being destroyed.

And then it hit him. Peter knew exactly what to do.