The wind blows hot and dry through the deserts of Thera, kicking sand up into small, stinging storms and carrying them through the outskirts of West Village. One particularly strong storm blasts by a young man sitting on a rock just outside the town gate, lashing his face with whips of particulate sand. The young man splutters, his concentration on the small, blue-ish sphere of glowing light he has suspended in midair above his hands wavering slightly, causing the sphere itself to wobble and spark in response. The young man forces his mind to steady, slowly returning the sphere back to its previous calm. He closes his eyes once again and lets a slow, deep breath out through his nose, allowing any distractions or stray thoughts to empty out of his mind, leaving just the faint tingle of sensation running through the back of his skull as he focuses the energy of his psyche into this one small sphere.
Slowly he adds more power to the sphere, causing it to grow larger and to glow more vehemently. He struggles to maintain the sphere’s form, but he keeps it balanced in the air nonetheless, doing everything he can to ensure that it remains stable as he continues to pump more energy into it until it grows as large as a kanto melon. He smiles to himself slightly, pleased at how much power he has been able to control, eager to continue to grow his control as he adds even more power to the sphere.
“Peter! We have monsters coming in on the south gate!” A woman’s voice shouts from behind the young man.
“Yipe!” Peter exclaims in surprise, his concentration fully broken. The sphere rockets away from his hands at immense speeds, flying off across the desert until it manages to collide with a nearby cliff, leaving a small but still visible and smoking mark on the side of the beautiful, rust-colored rock face.
“Oh, sorry, Peter! Didn’t mean to spook ya,” the woman says, her voice more subdued in embarrassment.
“Nah, it’s fine, Maria. I didn’t have a good grip on it, anyway,” Peter says, brushing the event off with a casual shrug. Truth be told, he thinks to himself with a hint of hesitation, I probably would’a lost control of that orb and chucked it into the village if I’d been left alone. He shakes the image of a burning crater in the center of town away from his mind and focuses on Maria. “What’s wrong?”
Maria nods her head once, sending her pitch-black hair into a small storm of ripples and waves over her lavender blouse and white crop-top jacket. She removes a stray strand of hair from her liquid-brown eyes, an excited smile slowly creeping onto her face. “Right. We got monsters on the south gate, vollicks by the look of ‘em.”
Peter nods slowly, a bit apprehensive. “Vollicks. Right. Have they sprung Joel’s and Mullen’s traps yet?”
“Not yet, but they’re getting close to the perimeter. Come on, let’s go!” Maria turns and runs off towards the south gate perimeter, leaving Peter behind in a faint cloud of kicked up sand and dust.
Peter looks down at his hand, allowing a small amount of psychic power to flow between his fingers, doing his utmost to ensure the flow stays small. “Right,” he says absently before rushing off to follow his friend.
***
Tucked behind a medium-sized boulder just outside West Village, Peter and Maria watch as a pack of about twelve vollicks sprint ever closer. The vollicks all appear to be healthy and strong, their reptilian armored scales a strong shade of sandy-yellow, their teeth good and sharp, their tails studded with large serrated blades—all of which perfectly crafted to leave any prey they may find cut to ribbons.
The pack continues rushing onward, completely oblivious to the small, barely noticeable mounds in the sand ahead of them. Peter and Maria watch as the beasts edge ever closer to the perimeter, anticipation and dread building with each step.
“Come on, come on…” Maria mutters to herself, her hand resting slightly off to her side on a heavy metallic object. The blueish light from the sun glints harshly off of the sphere of metal, sending harsh, dancing rays of light all over Maria’s olive skin.
Finally, the alpha vollick leading the pack steps on one of the small mounds, and is almost instantly caught in a strong, tangling rope net, leaving it almost completely immobile within seconds. As the alpha falls, many other vollicks also stumble onto these buried traps, leaving only five standing and able to fight after the chaos dies down.
“Rush ‘em!” Maria calls out to Peter, leaping up from behind the boulder, using her own psychic power to drag a heavy iron ball about the size of her head behind her like a floating club. As she starts swinging the heavy metal ball into the oncoming monsters, Peter leaps out from behind the boulder as well, charging up a sphere of psychic energy and throwing it at the closest vollick.
The vollicks, with their thick armored scales and tough hides, shrug off most of the damage dealt by the two psychics, continuing their mad rush forward, their long teeth and vicious claws grasping and slashing for any open skin or fabric they can find. One vollick manages to latch its claws onto Peter’s shoulders, its gaping maw gnashing and thrashing at its victim’s face. Peter lets out a pained cry and shoves back against the beast, causing its claws to tear against his skin, but preventing it from landing any bites on him.
“Peter!” Maria shouts, fending off an attacking vollick herself. She shoves the monster back with her telekinetic grip, then smashes it upside the head repeatedly with her metal orb, breaking its forehead scales and leaving it dazed. With the split second opening she has before another vollick pounces on her, she uses her telekinesis to grab the monster attacking Peter and throw it across the field.
“Thanks…” Peter says, his voice gruff with pain. He spots the vollick charging at Maria a brief instant before she does. “Duck!” He shouts as he throws a wild psionic shot. Maria barely manages to duck in time to avoid the oncoming projectile, which immediately crashes into the vollick, sending it flying back with a powerful explosion of blue-and-purple flames. The monster twitches slightly before letting out a single, wheezing breath as it dies from the impact. The two exchange a wordless glance before continuing to fight off the oncoming vollicks.
Peter, deciding to allow more of his power flow through his psion orbs, starts leaving massive impact craters in one of the vollicks as it rushes him. The beast comes within inches of lacerating his legs before he manages to sidestep it and thrust an orb directly into the back of its skull, completely eviscerating its head.
“Oh, god, that’s disgusting…” Peter mutters under his breath as he pulls his hand away from the cracked bone, trying to ignore the viscous black liquid running down his fingers.
To his side, Maria grabs another vollick with her mind and holds it suspended in the air while she pummels it with her own orb, leaving it unconscious in the process. She chucks the monster aside and begins to rush the last standing vollick as it lets out a piercing war cry, a sound somewhere between a reptilian hiss and a mammalian howl. The sound coupled with the sights of their packmates being demolished galvanizes the alpha vollick and the rest of its pack. Using their axe-head-shaped tails they slice open the nets containing them and pounce on their prey.
The alpha guns straight for Peter, who only barely manages to dash away from its gaping maw, but his leg does get nicked by the beast’s tail. Peter lets out a pained grunt and goes to fire off another psion orb, but he is interrupted by three more vollicks as they gang up on him. He stands between the circle of stalking vollicks, eyeing each one carefully, just as they eye him angrily, hungrily. Peter inhales deeply, centering himself and his psyche, causing a small, barely noticeable swirl of wind and dust to gather around him. The alpha vollick lets out a shrieking call as it and its packmates all pounce on Peter. Right as their claws are about to sink into their prey, Peter lets out the energy he had been drawing in with a single, loud cry, causing a storm of telekinetic energy to burst out from him and sending the beasts flying away at immense speeds.
Peter falls to one knee, the effort of containing and then exerting that much energy momentarily weakening his physical body. “On your six!” Maria calls out as another stray vollick bounds away from her and attempts to kill Peter. Maria holds the vollick in place with her mind, its body covered in a shimmering golden glow as it slashes and thrashes wildly and uselessly at the wind. Peter takes a second to breathe before standing up, charging a powerful psion orb in his left hand, and chucking it into the beast with all of his might, causing a massive explosion of blue flames to erupt from its soft gut and killing the creature. As it goes limp, Maria tosses it behind her with a flick of her hand, sending it tumbling into one of its packmates, launching both beasts into the dunes outside of town.
Peter hears a low growl from behind him and turns to see the alpha vollick and a few others still standing, hunched over themselves in pain, but still ready to strike at any second. Peter lets out a small breath and begins charging up two psion orbs in each hand, ready to throw whenever the monsters attack, but strangely, no attack comes. The alpha’s head perks up slightly and cranes to the side so that its highly sensitive ear holes are facing vaguely in the direction of the dead corpse Maria had just thrown aside. It stands there listening for some time before suddenly going stiff, letting out a single ear-splitting hiss, then turning tail and running away, its fellow vollicks following closely behind.
Peter watches on in confusion as the monsters rush away. “What the heck was that about?” Maria asks, still holding her metal ball off to her side, as if expecting something else to jump at her any second.
Peter turns back towards his friend, looking just past her and at the dead body weighing down a second vollick as it thrashes against the weight, clearly desperate to escape. The dune beneath it begins to writhe and shift, and not just because of the vollick’s movements. The images barely have time to register in Peter’s mind as a warning before the dune bursts open, a giant serpentine monster leaping out of its previously unknown hiding place and devouring the two vollick bodies in one massive bite.
“Maria! Get out of there!” Peter shouts as his legs finally react to his mind’s urges to run towards his friend.
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Maria barely has enough time to turn around and see the giant frillback serpent as it rapidly descends on her, its mouth held open to devour a third victim. With a shriek of genuine fear, Maria dives away from the beast, her exposed calf just barely grazing against its large outstretched fang as the frillback dives back into the sand. A small trail of tainted blood oozes out of the thin slash in her olive skin. Maria stumbles and falls flat on her face, but she does manage to pick herself back up with some pain.
“Maria! Are you okay?” Peter asks as he slows to a stop before his friend, his eye focusing on the tainted blood that’s now flowing out of her calf.
Maria staggers slightly, feeling suddenly lightheaded. “I… I’m fine… Just… catching my…” Her words begin to slur as the venom from the frillback makes its way through her body and into her nervous system, paralyzing her and rendering her unconscious. She collapses onto her face once again just as the serpent rises from the dunes, its eyes locked solidly on its next meal.
Just before it can strike, however, a sphere of glimmering blue-and-purple energy crashes into its open maw, sending the beast cowering back in pain, its jaws smoking and leaking blue flames. “Hey, ugly! Come and get me!” Peter shouts, throwing another psion orb at the creature’s open head frills, leaving a large hole in its flimsy flesh and flaming red patterning.
The frillback shrieks with rage and slithers towards Peter at unnatural speeds. Peter, surprised by this sudden burst of speed, yelps in fear as he dives out of the way of the serpent’s attack, but he never allows his concentration on the energy he has flowing between his fingertips to waver. He collides shoulder-first with the ground and manages to roll onto his back and do a leaping leg kick to get himself back onto his feet. He watches the frillback right itself and swing around for another attack. He makes a gun with two of his fingers, focusing as much energy as he dares into just those two fingertips, causing them to glow with a blindingly bright orb of blue light.
“Psion…” He says softly, slowly, remembering the name of his father’s most devastating technique almost reverently. The frillback draws closer with each passing millisecond, its fangs proudly displayed and dripping with saliva and unused venom. Peter puts his left hand over his right wrist, like one would if they were steadying a revolver to be shot. The frillback leaps at Peter, ready to consume him in one bite like it had the vollicks.
Peter quickly lifts his hands up, takes aim, and… “Can—woah!”’ He fires a single, massive blast of violet energy from his fingertips, but the recoil from the shot is too much for him to handle. Even as the beam envelops the oncoming monster, Peter is launched far away, colliding with two slat fences, startling a whole herd of grazing cattle, before he finally lands flat onto his back, sending the beam careening off and upwards, far into the distance where it collides with a distant mountain range.
It takes a second for Peter to recover from the physical toll and the dizzying headache his blast had given him before he can manage to sit upright. When his vision finally stops swirling, he is able to make out the frillback—or, rather, what little is left of it. Only a small portion of the once-massive creature’s tail remains, its charred flesh still smoking with little blue-and-purple embers slowly drifting off of it. His gaze then travels upward and finds the distant mountains—-or, once again, what little is left of them. One mountain in particular is left with a large, perfectly circular hole tearing its midsection clean in half, while another mountain just off to its side is left only as a pile of rapidly collapsing rubble as its base has been lacerated by the wild beam.
Peter grimaces at the destruction he had caused before the last few seconds finally catch up to him. “Maria!” He exclaims, bolting to his feet and rushing off to find his friend. He spots her lying right where she had been. He dashes up to her, kneels down carefully, and slowly lifts her head up from the sand and turns her so she is lying on her back. “Maria? Maria, can you hear me?” He asks, listening carefully for signs of her breathing.
Maria lets out a faint groan as she slowly comes to. “Peter?” She asks, her voice distant and woozy.
“Maria? Are you okay? How many fingers am I holding up?” Peter asks, lifting his off hand to show her three fingers.
Maria squints at Peter, her eyes not really focusing on him, or anything at all to be honest. “There’s four of you…?” She asks groggily, her head starting to loll to one side.
“Right. I’m getting you to Doc Felix right now. Just hang in there,” Peter says, doing his absolute best to keep his voice calm and soothing for Maria. He gently scoops her up in his arms, nearly dropping her as he struggles against the burning pain in his slashed shoulders and leg, but soldiering on despite the pain. He slowly makes his way through the gaping hole he had left in the mushew field, heading in the general direction of the town square.
“Michaels! You the one who blasted my fence?” An angry old farmer shouts after Peter as he desperately tries to keep his livestock from escaping from their pens.
Peter winces in both pain and embarrassment, but he keeps marching on. “Yeah. Sorry, Mr. Dickson. I’ll be back to help patch up the fence here real soon. Just gotta get Maria to the Doc.” Mr. Dickson mutters something profane-sounding but Peter just ignores him. He has much more pressing issues to handle at the moment.
He keeps on marching for a few more minutes before he finally makes it to the town square. As he enters the center of West Village, he is greeted by his friend Joel, who manages to somehow notice, understand, and compute both of his injured friends’ situations in a fraction of a second. “Here, let me help you get to the Doc.”
Peter lets out a sigh of relief as he gently turns Maria around and slips one of her arms around his own as Joel slides the rest of her weight onto his shoulders. “Thanks, man.”
“Don’t mention it,” Joel says, blowing a stray lock of messy blond hair from his eyes and examining Maria’s infected calf and Peter’s bleeding limbs. “What happened out there? Did the traps not go off?” He asks, his voice taking on genuine concern, worried that his hard work had failed, causing this much damage to his closest friends.
“Nah, they went off. We got attacked by a pack of vollicks, then a frillback that was hiding in the dunes,” Peter explains, the strain on his bleeding leg finally starting to catch up to him. He stumbles and falls to his good knee, but he manages to keep Maria standing upright with Joel’s help. Peter groans in pain, but manages to gather enough willpower to stand back up. “They’re all gone or dead now, so it’s no big deal.”
“Yeah, I’ll say. We all felt the blast from here,” Joel says, a small smirk forming on his face. “Went for the ol’ ‘Psion Cannon’, eh? The old man would be proud, P.K.”
Peter stifles a chuckle, knowing that the motion would only cause him more pain. P.K. was an old nickname Joel had given him when they were toddlers. It stood for his first and middle names: Peter Kirk. The fact that Joel was using that nickname and not his full name was a sign that Joel thought everything would turn out fine, and if Joel can be calm and optimistic about the situation, so can Peter. And besides, Joel’s right; Peter’s father would be proud.
The two finally make their way to Doc Felix’s place and leave Maria in his care. The Doc says that he should be able to remove the toxins from Maria’s system with relative ease, but he tells Peter to stay behind for a while so his assistants can stitch his vollick wounds up. The process of getting Peter’s wounds properly cleansed, numbed, closed, and bandaged over takes so long that Maria is able to recover consciousness and become coherent well before Peter is done in the hospital.
“Dang. They really did a number on ya, huh?” Maria remarks casually from a bench to Peter’s side.
“Well, considering he didn’t have to get dragged in half-drunk by his arms into town, I’d say he fared pretty well,” Joel replies from beside her sarcastically, giving Maria a slight nudge and a playful smile.
Maria just chuckles and shoves him back. “Fair enough. Thanks for taking out that frillback back there, Peter. You really saved my skin.”
“Don’t mention it,” Peter says through gritted teeth as one of Felix’s assistants finishes stitching up the last of his shoulder wounds. “Seriously. I’m half-sure just thinking about those monsters is gonna tear me open again.”
“No need to be so dramatic,” the assistant, a kind young woman named Chelsea, says in a mock-severe tone. “You’re all patched up and ready to go. Just take it easy for the rest of the night, Peter. Give those lacerations time to heal.”
“You got it. Thanks for all your help, guys,” Peter says to Chelsea and Felix as he gets back onto his feet and follows his friends out of the door and into the town square. By now, the afternoon sun has started to set, casting long, indigo beams of light through the town, signaling the end of the day. “Well, I’m gonna head back home, guys. You should get some rest, Maria,” Peter says.
“Hey, I’m fine. You’re the one in pieces,” Maria says with a callous smile. “In all seriousness, though, thanks for your help today. I woulda been snake meat if you weren’t there. Sorry you got so banged up.”
“It’s fine. There were a lot of things to fight against today. You couldn’t see everywhere all at once,” Peter replies with an understanding shrug, which only sends a stab of searing pain through his back and shoulders.
Joel shakes his head sadly, his hair flowing wildly with the motion. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, guys. I shoulda been backing you up from the frontlines, not just hanging back and letting some old traps do my job.”
Peter seems surprised by this, not sure how to take his friend’s apology. The thought had never occurred to him. Joel had always done his best work from the sidelines. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up, man. Those old traps kept us safe for a long while. You did good.”
Joel smiles slightly, but he’s still not convinced. “I promise, next time you guys get into a battle, I’ll be right by your side.”
“Knowing our luck, you’ll have your chance soon enough,” Maria says with a laugh. “Welp, I’ll see y’all tomorrow.” With that, the trio breaks up, each heading their separate ways, Peter and Maria off to their homes, and Joel off to Mullen’s blacksmith shop to talk details of stronger traps and weapons.
As the blinding blue sun continues to set, the town is bathed in one last beautiful wash of fiery blues and watery purples, one last glorious flash of light from the powerful star before the moons rise to take its place, heralding the end of another long, tiring day in the quiet town of West Village.
***
As the sun sets, its blue light casting long shadows through the distant Riverside Town, a different light begins to rise in the night sky: an angelic silhouette, a woman bathed in the blood-red light of her own psychic aura. A sinister smile creeps over her face, her eyes narrowing into predatory slits as she summons a large, scythe-like construct of crimson energy in her outstretched hand. The citizens of Riverside all look up to see the woman as she floats in midair, all terrified of what she intends.
“I am the Harbinger of Death…” The woman declares in a loud, regal voice, a voice that sounds at once beautifully human and horrifyingly inhuman. “Death demands a sacrifice. If any of you wish to have the honor of facing your demise by my hand…” She draws her scythe-wielding arm across her chest, readying herself for attack. “...Then you must first survive my blade…” She finishes, her voice an almost cat-like purr and she gleefully slashes her scythe through the air, causing a massive bolt of cutting energy to tear through Riverside, rending the entire town in two with one stroke. Buildings collapse, people scream in protracted agony as they fall, cut into pieces. The villagers barely have time to register the attack before they too are carved up by the Harbinger’s blade.
Burning flames of crimson-red wash out the blood that stains the sands, the roar of the fire drowning out the cries of agony as the villagers of Riverside perish before the Harbinger’s hand. Through it all, the woman smiles, her predatory gaze never once flinching, her conviction never once wavering. Clearly, this town is too weak to challenge her.
They must all perish for their weakness.