The empty train tracks snaking their way through the desert ended where long dead spires jutted out from beneath the sands like a claw built of metal and wire and halted from reaching the edge of the sky. The sun was setting to the west and on the far eastern side of this landscape, the lights of conflict were blazing. Eruptions of blue flame and wispy sparks of purple lighting blew through the abandoned structures. Within the landscape of the dead buildings in concrete streets, yet to be ground away, no clear side was evident. It was a desperate plight of survival for any individual.
The younger Cherry had longer hair but was still wearing white gloves and a bag tossed over a white shirt and black slacks that was all covered in dust and blood. Her sleeves rolled up, she held a pistol fast to her chest with her left hand and a thin sword with her right. Running to catch up to her was a woman with long black hair, a patch over the right eye, and a black cloak. She slid through the sand beside her for cover, sticking a rifle out into the open and firing a spark of blue fire towards the first set of glowing yellow eyes that made themselves known.
The dark-haired woman motioned to the empty floor of one of the taller buildings. They both ran inside where Cherry hastily put her weapons away and began smashing buttons on the wall until they lit up with a slight white hue. Several of the yellow-eyed creatures with sinewy gray flesh had rushed into the building before a much larger creature stepped in front of them. He wore a leather jacket and a brimmed hat. Standing almost seven feet tall, with a two-handed sword with a blade bluntly crafted from stone or bone. His eyes were also slightly yellow but with focused pupils, while his revealed flesh was more pale than gray. He cleaved several of the other creatures before nodding back at the women. “The time to flee is now, ladies.”
Two metal doors slid open, and they made their way inside while slamming buttons in a flurry again. It trembled before beginning a slow descent. Cherry took a deep breath. “I need a cigarette. Also, who the hell was that?”
The one eyed woman said, “That was Tukrit. Also a fallen, but a coherent one. They hate the feral fallen as much as we do. He was a prisoner here voluntarily. He told me the story one night about how he followed rumors and half truths to this place in order to find some fairy tale queen of the Fallen.”
The woman clad in black then kicked the wall before ranting, “This is only your second day here. You and that crazy guy show up and this docile camp turns to shit within hours. They told me that Cherry was an agitator when the Lux hired the Black Wings to sit here, wait you’re your arrival, and help you escape this prison. They didn’t tell me you would show up with him. The hell was he thinking? Desdin lost everything when the Wardens of the Farland fought with the Oldest Ivalic, and only then to show up here with the mind to have a go at Ouren, another one of the Oldest. I’m suicidal for taking this job, but he wants to die in the most over the top way possible.”
Cherry rolled her eyes. “Yea, well, I spent the entire train ride here stitching him back together. The chaos Desdin brought here made it possible for us to leave. Whatever he did threw Ouren into shock, which shut down the prison. I’m going to take him with me to the Lux. His father was kind to me.” She held herself as she seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. “Jonah was beloved by the Lux. Desdin inherited his will.”
The woman with dark hair pulled her hood over her head. “The loss of the wardens is huge. His safety is not my job though. Queen Emeralas is offering sanctuary in Dragonshead for Union dissidents. I could help you stay low there until the Lux comes to get you, but now that the Warden King Jonah is dead, big cities will be off limits to Desdin. Even though his name may not be known, people are bound to recognize him in a hub that had videos and images of the wardens. By siding with the Union Esthea helped spare his life, but that was the extent of the Union’s mercy for him.”
“Thanks Loril. I won’t forget your help.” Cherry slumped in the corner as a musical chime sputtered on and struggled to remain, playing as they stood in silence.
Loril didn’t acknowledge her gratitude but said, “When we hit the bottom, we will have to split up. Desdin went north to the center of the prison, where no one could get close to before he strolled in. Only to wake up Ouren somehow and piss him off. I’m heading west towards the train yard. They smuggled me a Union keycard to a train car there. Everyone imprisoned here thought running out of the prison was smart when the turrets went silent and the metal guards opened the way out to the desert. As soon as those fallen monsters started spilling in from the outside, I would have thought we’d have some competition escaping this way. But I guess they would rather face them out there than one of the Oldest down here.”
The metal box came to a stop and slid open. The tunnel that traveled down looked like a pillar in the open for at least a hundred feet into the darkened ceiling. A sprawling cavernous space pulsed with flickering lights in any direction. Loril said, “Get Desdin and hurry to the train yard. I can’t wait there forever. If you don’t show up before I get antsy, I will have to leave without you.”
Loril looked back at Cherry and pulled something from her cloak and placed it in her hand. “Look, I’m not leaving you empty-handed. I only care about living through this now, so I don’t care if they pay me or not. The Lux wanted me to use this to let them know where to find you if we made it out. You can use it with any hub device within the range of another hub. The device will broadcast a signal that will ping all the hubs with an encrypted message so that they can come find you. You can use it to fake documentation for yourself and Desdin as well. You seem terrible at the whole espionage thing and he sticks out like a sore thumb, so try not to die, okay?”
Cherry nodded, and the two dispersed. Cherry took off running towards a distant light that she could see was spitting out purple sparks and red bolts of light the closer she got. Her legs were growing numb at the growing steep incline she jogged. As she moved up, the road was getting closer to the ceiling. She noticed vines along the concrete floor. They led to an opening. Two metal doors had slid partially open, and a sign was blinking red in some unknown language above her. An airy mist drafted over the vines which had overtaken the room. Several glass cylinders and square chambers rose from the floor bathed in white, flowing light.
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In the distance, she could make out red jolts tearing through the vines. A towering giant of a man with flowing red hair and glowing red eyes was struggling to contain the massing branches threatening to overwhelm him. His size and red glow seemed to grow the more he struggled. It was then that a dark purple force of light slammed him in the face. It knocked him back, and he slid across the floor almost to the entrance. He looked up at Cherry with wide eyes that caused her to step back. Undeterred and uninjured, he stood back up and raced back to the fight.
Cherry thought she could see a smaller figure in the direction of the purple flash. She could also just make out someone folded on the ground before the wielder of the light. Cherry pulled a vial from her pocket. “No syringe, so I’m going to have to take this to the head. If that giant is really Ouren, this won’t save me. But I can’t leave anything to chance.” She downed it and shut her eyes. A moment later, they slammed open in a violet haze of their own. Before her, the massive room danced with colors of varying intensity. She looked bewildered as the reds and purple waves of lights raged like translucent rivers. “What am I seeing?” She questioned, seemingly hopeless for a moment. “I don’t have time to waste!” Firmly gripping her determination in her mind, she shot through the room like a blue fireball.
She bounced towards the prone person. She burned the ground wherever she landed and she could tell from the armor and the sword he gripped tight that the figure on the ground was her target. Cherry snatched his helm and grabbed him up by the neck of his collar, sliding to a stop behind this past version of Demalyn, dressed in lavender rags. Covered in slithering vines, Demalyn wielded a thick branch with a pulsating purple and black orb at its head. She looked back at her with black eyes bejeweled with regal purple pupils. An unearthly raspy voice that was did not sound like Demalyn but came from her said, “The current owner of this body wished to save this man who freed her. However, this one has slept for far too long. Much too long to hold off one of the Oldest. Does the burning one have a way out?”
Cherry stood frozen, trying to grasp everything that had just been told to her, while also attempting to comprehend the massive aura Demalyn was emitting. Cherry snapped to, and replied, “Yes!”
Desdin coughed and pulled himself to his knees. Blood covered him almost head to toe, and the stitches across his chest in an exposed area of his body dripped with crimson. He looked up at Cherry and said, “You may think I’m crazy, but I think Ouren wants us to leave.” His hand had a faint red gleam. “He handed me something after I tried to kill him in his sleep. The violent walking, talking tree there reflexively attacked him. Well, to be honest, I did too, but I think we have an understanding now. If he wanted me dead, he could have done it.” Desdin turned to the person who was defending him. “Hey, can you let me have Demalyn back? I don’t trust Ouren completely either, but we are leaving to go on an adventure.”
Demalyn’s blazing purple staff dulled, and the vines retreated from the room back to her. She raised the black orb to her eye. “This one will sleep with one eye open. If you die, she will be sad. If she cries in my world, I will drown this world in her tears.”
Across the room, Ouren stood tall, watching the trio. His words bellowed through the chamber. “Such an interesting group. I wonder if Dragsil foresaw the chance of this meeting with all of his wisdom. If you survive the journey and if you find what remains of my dear brother, then you will no doubt come to find me again one day. Tell Dragsil we should have listened. We may not look like it, but time does flow for us.” Ouren then raised his hand, summoning an opening up the back of the room. A large transport painted red ascended from a panel in the floor beneath pointed towards the road exiting the chamber.
Ouren pointed to Desdin. “What I placed in that man’s hand is a key. To your escape and a great many other things you may need on your journey. The knowledge and understanding of how to use that key will come to him as he faces trials and risks no other man should. She, who is not there, nor here, but everywhere, will also watch him from now on. Be afraid of her. Do not challenge her. Do not speak to her. You won’t be able to run or turn away from her.”
As the black faded from Demalyn’s eyes and the glow dimmed, the vestiges of her possession said to Ouren, “The Oldest one shouldn’t be more cryptic than this one.” She stuck her middle finger towards him before turning away.
The group made their way into the transport, with each of them carrying Desdin by his arms. When they entered, it sprang to life, illuminating the interior. Demalyn laid Desdin out on the floor outside of the main cabin as Cherry sat down in the seat before the helm. She punched at the controls before saying, “I need the windows to open and I need a map display and I need to drive us out of here. I didn’t even know vans worked this far out in the world. Any help here?”
Demalyn was peeling the armor from Desdin with blood sticking to it as it came off. Her eyes filled with concern at the wounds. Desdin grasped her arm and nodded, as if to let her know it was okay. “Cherry, we’ve got this. Sit tight.” He raised a trembling arm up while mumbling, “Ignition.” The vehicle shuddered into motion at a speed that pushed Cherry all the way back into her chair. Demalyn braced herself at his side.
Cherry, with some wonder, said, “Everything about this prison is crazy shit. Then again, I was also a leaping blue flame a few moments ago.” She then looked back at Demalyn and Desdin. He had gone limp. Demalyn had the orb hovering above his body, humming with a purple iridescence, drawing glowing characters over his wounds.
“I’m marking him to try to keep him alive. But he needs an actual doctor. I don’t know if I can save him. Please help me,” Demalyn said as she let her long brunette hair fall over her face.
Cherry placed a hand on her shoulder and took a knee beside him. She pulled supplies from her bag and began tending to his wounds. His breathing became less erratic the longer they worked on him.
It wasn’t long after that they hit something solid and the van violently shook. Sparks emitted from the exterior to the inside. Cherry braced herself against the wall. “It has to be the Glass Road. I didn’t think about that. We wouldn’t be going to the Farland and any place leading into the Union would have to pass it. The train tunnel is the only opening.”
Desdin, clinging to consciousness, stood up, struggling to raise an arm. Ouren’s voice then bellowed throughout the vehicle from an unknown source. “The key gives you access to my hub that has the greatest aptitude for travel in all of history. You should be able to go anywhere. Your first trial is here. Once you burst through this gate, there is no closing it. The Glass Road will be no more. What do you say? Do you want to die here?”
All three then responded, “No!” The van then stopped shaking, and they were all sent sliding back into the van. The metal covering the windows slid back, revealing the Glass Road breaking around them like electric glass. The three were being tossed around the cabin when Cherry came to a sinking feeling while looking out the window, putting her hand over her stomach and mouth as if to keep from getting sick. Wisps of cloud and mountain tops blurred past.
“What the hell? Were we just fly---,” before she could finish, the van tumbled through a grassy field before coming to a stop in a heap of dirt.