Nadjela looks back, waiting for the horror. From the bottom of the flat top, a muscular figure appears and, with a long arm movement, throws a lump. The lump traces a parabola and hits the earth, rolling and bouncing to a stop.

It is a burned head.

Chester's boot crushes the blackened skull and turns it into little more than dirt.

"Chester" Nadjela muses, hope lighting his face.

The Lancaster flashes a grin and then throws the survival knife. Neddin reacts, pulls out from his cloak an elongated bone blade with a bloody blade, shakes it, and with one blow blocks the blade that was flying straight at his face. He wraps his free arm around the princess's neck, pulls her close, and plants the blade against her throat.

"Stop, or the traitor dies!"

Chester, who was running towards her, stops in his tracks. Nadjela looks sideways at her father.

"Father, I beg you, put an end to this madness. You are sick, or possessed. I know we can help you. Just... Think of the tribe, of our family"

Receiving the compression, and even pity from his daughter, rather than calming Neddin upsets him even deeper.

"Think of the tribe?" His mouth twists and his right eye twitches. "I always think about the tribe!"

He presses the blade even closer to Nadjela's neck, a drop of blood slides down to the young woman's sternum.

"La Cuna is me! And I will do whatever it takes to keep everything the same!"

Chester, worried that Neddin is losing it, takes a step, then another. The leader notices, becomes nervous, and in panic thrusts the blade in his hand. One cut, and the princess's neck would spill. It would end this story... But the sudden pain stops him.

A small but strong jaw digs into his leg, and rips off a chunk of his ankle. Neddin screams, looks down, and with a kick sends the little pig a meter away from the gorge. Nadjela takes advantage of her father's slackening grip to duck under his arm and run.

"Bitch...!" Neddin, his eyes bloodshot, reaches out to grab the long black hair. But at the same time that his fingers grasp the mane, a katana separates the hand from the forearm through the wrist. Neddin lets out a scream and falls backwards, his festering stump staining the top.

Chester walks over to Neddin until he is two paces away, and raises the katana over his head to deliver the final blow. But before the blade comes down, Nadjela steps in with outstretched arms.

"Enough!"

"Nadjela, get out of the way"

"No!"

They meet each other's gaze, one furious, the other trembling.

"He's a bastard. Tried to kill you!"

"I know... But he's still my father!"

Even though her gaze drops, the girl doesn't move out of the way or stop protecting the fallen leader.

"I'm not asking you to understand, I don't understand what just happened either... But..."

She raises her face.

"He gave me life. Under his wing I built my character and my values. Maybe his love was a lie, I don't know, but I refuse to tarnish our history, my family's history, with more blood and intrigues"

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"Nadjela..."

The girl clasps her hands close to her necklace and begs him.

"Let him live, Chester. La Cuna... We'll... We'll see what to do with him. Maybe we can cure him. Maybe we'll-"

She shudders.

A sharp gasp escapes from Nadjela's half-open lips, followed by a trickle of blood.

The young woman slowly turns her face, with great effort, to her father. Neddin's hand is outstretched, and the bone blade sinks to the hilt in Nadjela's side, rising to her liver.

"I spit on you and your mercy" the leader says and drops the weapon, leaving it wedged in the princess. The man stands up and steps back.

Nadjela's legs lose all their strength. Chester screams, drops his sword, runs and tackles her before the girl's body hits the ground. He cradles her in his arms, shakes her, repeats her name.

Her eyes, though they move, seem lost, covered in mist. The pallor that second by second paints her complexion, makes her look like a helpless child.

"Chester, is that you? I can't see..."

Nadjela raises a trembling and weak hand.

"Yes, it's me! You have to hold on!"

Chester takes the small hand with his own and clasps it against his cheek. A faint smile appears on the young girl's stained lips as she feels, between her increasingly cold fingertips, the warmth of her hero.

"You saved me... Again...Thank you"

Chester's face changes and twists every second between fury, confusion, anguish. The words come out broken.

"Don't be silly... It was you who saved me"

Nadjela loses her smile, and instead her countenance is seized by a sudden realization that she has little time left. Looking to where she believes Chester's face to be, the princess gathers her last breath and hurries on.

"Chester, I love..."

The Lancasterian waits a while, but the girl's lips don't move any further. She doesn't blink either when a couple of the man's tears fall on her face. The girl trembles, though Chester doesn't take long to discover that it is he who shudders.

He falls to his knees with Nadjela still in his arms. Pulls her closer, and screams. He roars until his lungs ache. And the wail is heard by the beasts and tribals. Down below, those who slept, come out of their beds and peek over the top. The screams go on for a minute until suddenly they cease.

Chester is left crestfallen with the limp girl. The piglet scurries over to them both and curls up on her side, laying her snout on the dead princess's leg. Chester half-opens his eyes, his gaze falls on Nadjela's necklace, white and intact. He grits his teeth, takes the gem in his hand, squeezes and his voice thunders.

"Come on, you piece of shit! Save her now! What are you waiting for! Bring her like you did me!"

But the princess's lethargy remains. And instead of a glow, a voice. Chester, surprised, looks up at the apparition.

The mother consort Nadjela, in her black cloaks, and with her feet covered by the mist, appears an inch away and sentences him in an ethereal tone.

"Understand, Lancasterian, that a violent and battered heart like yours will never be able to use this treasure of heaven" It is the same voice that charged him to protect the girl who is now dead in his arms. "Only he who recognizes the faces of good and evil, and yet keeps his spirit straight and neat, would be fit to manipulate the transformer"

The longing in Chester's eyes gives way to deep regret, his jaw slackens, so does his grip on the necklace. He hugs Nadjela closer, and in murmurs, begs her forgiveness for failing him.

"This burden never belonged to you" says the apparition seeking to comfort him, approaching and leaving her translucent hand on his shoulder. Chester feels only a cold breeze. "If all of us had possessed greater initiative, noticed the problems, and acted instead of waiting for a messiah, maybe this conclusion would be different. Perhaps in another galaxy, we did have a happy ending"

Chester gives a small, humorless smile.

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" The Lancaster says, but when he looks up, the ghost is gone.

Chester takes a deep breath and then blows. He plants a leg, bends down, and lifts with the princess in his arms.

Something explodes.

A powerful breeze blows behind him, stirring the lion's gangly mane and Nadjela's hair.

From the base of the mountain shoots out a pillar of light of considerable width, growing, scattering the clouds, and overloading the satellite circuits with unholy, ultra-earthly power, leaving a circle of perfect darkness in the sky.

Chester, bathed in the red and purple light coming from the pillar, acts calm. He pulls Nadjela's eyelids down with two fingers, kisses her on the forehead, and slowly turns to face the last great challenge of the night.

Below, men, women, old men, and children watch in awe the infamous glow that is also seen in the rest of Australia.

The pillar startles the beasts and the tribes; the slaves in their cages and the slavers in their lairs; the burned man and the hermit of Pine Gap; the foreign warriors and Lord Enslaver on the balcony of his thorny keep; even Lord Edmund Musk himself, from the bridge of the sidereal castle, is intrigued to locate a point of purple light, among the tides of junk that cover a continent known for always being almost in complete darkness.