Right after the purple flash, Carmen barely managed to catch glimpse of a golden… something disappear into the hole that the transformed redhead Blazer had opened a few seconds ago.
And as she stared at the hole, worried about the very nice redhead Blazer that suddenly became a monster, and the weird blonde that gave chase, a thought started to creep out from the back of her brain.
…she was stuck.
The more she stared at the hole in the ceiling, the more the realization that she had no way out hit her.
She then remembered what she said to herself when she entered the cave.
“I’ll worry about getting out later” and “If I don’t do something there might not be an out to return to…”
Well, “later” became “now”, one way or another she had to get out, and her measly length of rope wasn’t gonna be enough.
But right as she felt a knot in her throat and the tears welled up in her eyes, she started to notice a smell….
The smell of soil after the rain…
Anger, impotence, anger, frustration, anger anger ANGER.
Enio’s head was no longer filled with voices that weren’t their own, it was just a mess of raw emotion.
The emotions from their own emotional scars, the emotions of every slight big and small since the Meriem Tragedy happened, but the overpowering thing was that a lot of those emotions weren’t their own.
Once the giant crystal exploded, those alien thoughts went right into Enio’s head, bypassing the illusion of words and the pretension of justifications.
It was raw despair and anguish, like the one they felt when they got impaled in that one cave.
And just like in that one cave, Enio felt their body was not their own. It felt lighter, sturdier, stronger, but they weren’t in control. They could feel the movement of every muscle and the intent of every action, but the will was not their own.
The voice of the princess was gone, the nasty voice they’ve been hearing since the cave in Oldsteed Plains was also gone. Perhaps they were there, perhaps the princess was still pleading for Enio to control whatever’s overtaking them, but it was drowned by the… noise…
So much noise…
Anger, frustration, an anguish so big that it cannot come from a singular person but so uniform it cannot be from multiple creatures…
“Fouuuuuuund youuuuuuu~”
Finally one voice cut through the noise.
It was vaguely familiar to whatever remained of Enio’s consciousness, but its source wasn’t.
In front of Enio there was a creature not dissimilar from them, a humanoid in some sort of chitin-like armor. But this one was bright gold, its silhouette looked like a woman of extremely exaggerated curves, and its head gave the vague impression of a beak, like a bird.
“I don’t know how Riftman convinced a Royal Knight to his stupid cause, but I’ve been itching to square against one of you for oh so long…!”
Enio had no time to question what they were hearing, their body just let out a roar and rushed against the golden woman.
“Clumsy.”
She said this full of disdain as she kicked Enio right as they rushed at full speed.
Red clouds gathered over their impromptu battlefield as Enio rushed again with a bestial aggressiveness.
The golden woman, likewise, rushed and Enio had just enough time to avoid her actual attack.
As they looked back, they could feel the bandages of the thing in their back loosen.
Or rather, cut.
The woman’s forearms had split into blades, giving the impression of the wings that her head was missing.
“I’ll cut the chase, kid. Reckless rushing isn’t going to work with me.”
She positioned herself facing Enio as she continued her taunt.
“If you insist on just rushing you’re gonna have better luck using the Appleseed as a bludgeon.”
What’s an Appleseed?
Enio’s body then picked the sword on the ground and ripped all of the bandages with a singular motion.
No… don’t…
The bandages had hidden a really ornate greatsword made of some pure white metal, with gold decorations that reminded one of Enio’s attire.
The golden woman hesitated when she saw this.
“That’s… that’s not…”
As she mumbled this, her stance broke a fraction.
But Enio wasn’t worried about the woman anymore, they could feel their bodies intent on using the princess as a blunt object to rush the golden woman with.
Why wasn’t she glowing? Was she okay with this happening?
Was Enio such a failure that they’d have to denigrate the princess to be used as a weapon twice in the same day?!
“AGH! WHATEVER! COME AT ME!”
The golden woman shouted, her composure gone.
Anger, anguish, grief, ANGER…
Enio’s head was filled with a maelstrom of feelings that echoed the alien feelings in their head as they rushed ahead.
It all felt like a nightmare.
Won’t someone wake them up?
Won’t somebody stop them?
Enio’s body let out a roar as they rushed against the golden woman, but this roar was actually Enio’s, it was the only semblance of autonomy they mustered.
And then…
The moment they were both within contact distance, the moment where Enio could feel their arms readying to swing the princess against the golden woman, a new voice was heard.
It cut through the noise in their head with a single word, a single command.
“STOP!”
And the moment the word registered, something else also did.
The red clouds that gathered over the battlefield coalesced into a giant fist that then crashed over both of them.
And everything went dark.
Regina came into herself dazed and confused.
Her brain was recollecting the last things before everything went dark.
It’s not the appleseed… why is it the original… too late to worry now…
No, that’s not far enough, further back.
Riftman’s lackey… it’s not Riftman’s lackey… but it’s an Alloyed like me…
Alloyed… fight… she was… she was fighting!
She jolted awake, her eyes apparently opening before her consciousness caught up.
Under the unrelenting sun, the Royal Knight was staring crestfallen at… at the thing she thought was the Appleseed.
Regina tried to stand up but realized she was facedown on the ground with her arms tied up.
She looked around and found the silver haired Planet Singer clutching her Fonologium and looking at her full of wariness.
“What… game are you playing here… kid?!” Regina asked while struggling
“THAT’S WHAT I SHOULD BE ASKING!!”
Regina was taken aback as the silver haired girl exclaimed this loudly, her voice cracking while she clearly held back tears.
“You pointed guns at us, wanted to kill my poor esteemed Blazer here instead of helping them, were doing weird things instead of destroying the big rock quickly…”
The girl wiped off the tears of frustration off her face and continued in an attempt at a more level tone.
“You should feel lucky that the worst so far is that your arms are tied…”
Contrary to the image she cultivates so carefully, Regina is not a coldhearted vixen. In fact, she’s a vixen with a huge bleeding heart, as she herself has explained often: “I need big boobs to house a heart as big as mine”.
Which is to say that the sight of a young girl clearly hurt by her actions was hitting her harder than she felt comfortable admitting.
“Okay then…” Regina said slowly to hopefully stall for precious seconds of thinking “Then the question should be: Why remain here with me instead of leaving me in the middle of nowhere to my own luck?”
“Because they asked me to.”
The girl pointed behind her with her thumb and Regina became aware very suddenly of two presences she didn’t notice until just now, and now that she did they were so overwhelming it was hard to ignore them.
One was a woman of soft curves covered in green silk, while the other was covered in red silk and her physique made Regina really annoyed at the sudden competition.
“So… who are the ladies trying to steal my thunder as the hottest creature in the vicinity?”
“I…” The girl hesitated as if she couldn’t believe the words that she was about to say “I think we humans call them Emerith and Blodia…”
“This is such common sentient behavior… out of the millions spreading every day, the three of them with the most aligned goals in their recorded history meet by pure chance and the first thing they do is fight…”
“Cut them some slack, it’s a confusing situation at the best of times. It’s healthy to be on guard.”
Regina didn’t have time to even question the statement that somehow the planets had descended because hearing the two figures speak robbed her of any words.
They didn’t speak with sound, Regina heard them inside her head like an intrusive thought, or rather, like the voice that started living in her head ever since her eye got pierced with Griefite.
“The last one is finally awake, let’s go on with the explanations.”
“Children of the stars, please heed our tale and our plea.”
The woman in green opened her robe, but instead of a naked body underneath there was a black void that enveloped Regina and the other two witnesses.
The three of them floated in the darkness, the woman in red nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, a white orb of light appeared in the middle of the three of them.
“In the beginning there was a white star. She was perfect and powerful, but lonely. To remedy this, she created three daughters to keep her company.”
A red orb appeared near the white one, orbiting it.
“The first daughter, of fiery red, thought herself perfect as is. She refused to let any life sull her perfection, so she stayed near her beloved mother to make sure nothing would manifest on her surface.”
A green orb then joined the budding cosmological model.
“The second daughter, in vibrant green, loved life. Her surface flourished with all manner of microscopic creatures that, although not intelligent, were very much vibrating with vitality.”
A third orb, a blue one, then appeared, orbiting in the opposite direction from the rest.
“The third daughter, of deep blue, was rebellious and ambitious. She wanted life but not just any life, highly intelligent sentient life that would be able to reshape her to their whims, so they could achieve perfection together.”
“But her dream was never achieved. Millenia after millenia, epoch after epoch, life would manifest but it was always bestial and simpleminded.”
“Despite this, we supported each other while keeping our mother company, our existences were pure bliss.”
“Were… until ‘it’ invaded us.”
From underneath the cosmological model, a pale purple shadow appeared.
“It headed towards our mother, we wouldn’t be making it in time to defend her from whatever it was…”
“But our sister’s rebellious path allowed her to get in the way of ‘it’…”
“…at the cost of herself.”
The pale purple shadow collided with the blue orb. The orb’s quick orbit slowed as it started leaving behind fragments of itself on its path.
The model continued until it became the familiar image of the Khanon Belt, Valvion at the head of it and the Western Belt creating a tail like a comet’s.
“We have watched your kind and protected you since you arrived. You are what our sister wished for more than anything, and we would watch over you where she cannot.”
“Yet there are those of your kind that would presume she still lives and wish to rouse her. But she is gone, they’re trying to rouse nothing but a revenant.”
The cosmological model faded away and the darkness coalesced into the shape of the woman in green, who closed her robe.
“That’s… that’s so much to take in…” The girl with silver hair muttered.
“The purple stones, they are the remnants of the alien object that collided with our sister. Those that have deluded themselves that they can hear our sister’s voice like you can hear ours now are only hearing the echoes left within the purple stones.”
“Children of the stars… we do not presume to force you into any action, but know this: Should you walk on this path, you would have our blessing.”
And then, without saying a word, the woman in green and the woman in red vanished in the wind like they were never there.
Everyone stayed quiet trying to process what just happened… except Regina. She was quiet because her head was in turmoil.
Regina was never a religious person, she was never one to pray to her ancestors because her parents were already a useless pair and she didn’t think anyone beyond them would be any better.
But even she has prayers she’s kept to herself, hopes that she dared not even entertain because they would be a waste of time.
How her mind must be spinning as these unspoken prayers weren’t just answered, but in ways she didn’t even expect.
For the last 10 years of her life she only wanted one thing: At least one more person that would understand the risk that Professor Riftman Jimenez posed for everyone… but how could she? The general public only knew him as a charlatan that talked up the benefits of Onyxglint and had vanished long before the Meriem Tragedy.
She had friends, sure, but she would be mixing them up in business they didn’t know the risk of. The only people that would in theory understand her woes and its stakes were those under Riftman’s sway and she knew firsthand those were a lost cause.
And yet here she was. Blodia and Emerith themselves descending from the heavens to talk about Riftman’s Gaia Cult in all but name, saying that the three people present had the same goal, and that they would bless them all if they followed that path.
This was already too crazy to even imagine, it wasn’t just an indulgent fantasy, it was a delusion… but then she had to consider the other two that supposedly align with her.
A Planet Singer, young; with an authentic, organic Fonologium. Powerful enough to invite the presence of the planets themselves and stop Regina so swiftly she didn’t notice it.
Then… the Royal Knight. Regina thought they were carrying the Appleseed but no, they were carrying the Original Sin, which would be crazy on its own but if they have the Original Sin it means they must come from Meriem.
A Meriem survivor.
An Alloyed Meriem survivor.
Regina’s skeptic instincts wouldn’t let her believe this all. This was too good to be true, and yet the proof was in front of her, it all added up too neatly to ignore.
A Planet Singer that calls forth the sister planets, said planets say everyone present has the same goal, the only other person is a Meriem survivor who would have reasons to prevent the chaos that Onyxglint causes…
But it was too…
Eh? Since when do you doubt yourself like this, you bitch? Isn’t it a bit too late and aren’t you a bit too old to start that now?
Right.
That voice in her head was always right.
She didn’t get to where she is in life right now by doubting herself and there was no reason to start now.
But no theatrics, no obfuscation. Her usual facade already spoiled their first impression of her and there were no second chances.
While everyone else was still quiet trying to process what they just saw, Regina took a deep breath that was too shaky for her own comfort and spoke.
“There are three things that need to be done right now. The first is to return this to you.”
Regina sat up and handed the length of rope that her arms had been bound with until moments ago to the silver haired girl, who stared shocked at the feat of escapism.
Okay, NOW no theatrics for real…
“The second is to give you two my deepest apologies. If what the blasted planets themselves said is true, my treatment of you two today might be the worst mistake I’ve made in my entire life” She then pulled back her hair to show her covered eye while talking “Which believe you me, is saying something.”
“And the third?” The girl asked with a bit of wariness still in her voice.
“An explanation, and how what happened today is partially my fault.”
“I’m Doctor Regina Tempest. 14 years ago, my path towards said doctorate led me to cross paths with one Professor Riftman Jimenez. He was the world’s foremost scientist in investigating Onyxglint.”
“Onyxglint are those purple rocks, right?” The silver haired girl interjected.
“Yes. Onyxglint, or Griefite as it’s known scientifically, has baffled scientists since we arrived in the Khanon Belt. It was believed to be a useless mineral, suspiciously useless even. Centuries were wasted trying to find any practical use for these purple rocks that were so ubiquitous everywhere.”
Regina looked at the Royal Knight across from her. She recognized that face, it was the face of someone that had beaten trauma but the scars and pain remained, scars and pain exacerbated by this particular topic.
“Onyxglint has very unique properties that put it beyond any other mineral or known compound. With the right stimulus it can transport thoughts the way cables can transport electricity, and if it’s part of a bigger organic system it can mimic a missing part and its functionality perfectly.”
Regina tapped her right eye directly into the part that looked like her eyeball to prove this point.
“It can also react in ways where it transforms matter or even seems to somehow create mass.” Regina let out a small, bitter chuckle “It was so miraculous that sometimes you felt a bit fanatical about it.”
“And then someone DID become fanatical about it, right?” The girl with silver hair added.
Regina looked at her for a moment. She was smart, very perceptive… if she could keep her nerves in check…
“Professor Riftman started to claim that he could hear the voice of the planet.” Regina added, looking away when the girl caught her staring at her “He started saying that Onyglint was the means to revive the planet, that ‘Gaia’, the Blue Planet was just dormant. In those days I believed him so blindly… after all, the rocks in front of me were acting so weird, was it that hard to believe?”
She then took a deep breath to push the bad memories away before she talked about a particularly nasty one.
“My doctorate was in Griefite Resonance Theory. I believed that there might be a frequency or some sort of radiation that was how Onyxglint could transmit thoughts, and if it was true then maybe they could be conveyed across two pieces that were disconnected from each other”
One more breath, this was the actual start of the cumbersome part.
“During one experiment, a piece of Griefite flew out from a sample and pierced my right eye, across my brain, almost ended up at the other end of my skull…” She covered her eye at remembering the pain “Next thing I knew I woke up in the hospital, but I was bound. They showed me the security tapes and on them I had become a golden… thing and went berserk on the equipment until I got exhausted.”
“Um… was this before or after you had your degree?” The girl meekly asked “I don’t want to ruin the mood but-”
“Oh, it was after. I wouldn’t have been able to finish it with the damage I caused to the lab.” Regina replied in a surprisingly good mood, welcoming the small levity.
The smile vanished, however, as she remembered what came next.
“Professor Riftman and his… his followers, they came to the hospital and helped bail me out. But when they spoke to me it wasn’t like they were talking to a person.” Regina hugged herself to restrain a shiver as the memory came to her “‘Revered Alloyed’ they called me, saying I was ‘The Firstborn of Gaia’, that I was living proof that the planet wanted warriors to wake her from her slumber… I wasn’t Regina Tempest, their colleague, I was some inhuman creature worth revering…”
To Regina’s surprise, the silver haired girl’s face twisted in sympathy.
“Long story short, Riftman and his cronies vanished to follow their cult-y goals of waking the planet up. Parallel to all this, Riftman had blueprints for a device called Appleseed which was a replica of a Meriem relic called Original Sin.”
The Royal Knight perked up and looked at Regina with their eyes wide open.
“I’m so sorry again for how I treated you.” She said to them directly “When I saw the thing on your back it was the exact shape as the Appleseed and when you transformed I just assumed you were one of Riftman’s Alloyed lackeys… and then I actually saw what you were carrying and instead of stopping-”
The Royal Knight raised their hand indicating it was all fine with a reassuring smile that made Regina feel even worse than she already did.
“And how is this all your fault?” The silver haired girl asked.
There it was again, so much information being thrown and yet she keeps tabs on all the open threads of information.
“The Appleseed was perfected with my research. It’s a device that can transmit a frequency that awakens dormant Onyxglint. After Riftman vanished, the Western Belt started having more and more Onyxglint deposits awaken. There were already some known active deposits before then…” She gave a knowing look at the Royal Knight “But they just multiplied afterwards.”
Regina then stood up, feeling the fire that has kept her alive ever since then crackle in her chest with an intensity she never allowed it to.
“I gave Riftman his means of attack, I also provided the whole idea of the Alloyed for him to make his lackeys mightier. He’s out there somewhere gathering strength and I need to stop him.” She looked at the other two near her who had their eyes glued onto her “I’ve made the worst first impression one can make, but if what the planets said is true, and rusted teeth I want it to be true, you two are the only ones I can trust in, the only ones that might help me make actual progress in my mission.”
The Royal Knight then stood up, took their jacket off and lifted their vest and shirt enough to reveal a wound in the left side of their chest, it had the same effect as Regina’s face, as if something was missing and a replacement was carved out of smooth dark purple stone.
It was a show of sympathy, their way of expressing better than any words that they knew the pain and the stakes.
With this wound visible, the Knight stood to attention and put their fist over their heart as if in some sort of oath.
“Would you really…?” Regina asked, unable to hide the trembling in her voice “Even after all I’ve done today?”
The Knight looked at the Original Sin, let out a small chuckle, then looked back at Regina smiling with a firm nod.
“Your name is Regina Tempest, right?” The silver haired girl asked, still sitting down.
“You got that right, nice memory.”
“What happened today in Station 51… What almost happened… You’re saying it could happen anywhere?”
Regina and the knight nodded in unison.
“Especially in the Western Belt where the terrain is less scouted. My worst fear is that Riftman will find just the right area to bombard and it will cascade, activating every dormant deposit of Onyxglint all the way to Valvion itself.”
“That would suck…”
The girl stood up, helped with her Fonologium. Shook away the dust in her dress, and got close to Regina. She was short, she had to look up and over Regina’s breasts to make eye contact.
“Saying you didn’t make the best first impression is an understatement, but having the self-awareness to admit it is either reassuring or infuriating…” The girl shook her head as if to not get derailed by complaints “I don’t know how much of everything that’s happened I can trust, but you have more answers than I do, and that’s more of a start than I’ve had in the last couple of weeks…”
Regina smiled. The kid was a skeptic too? Why, she would be falling in love if she was like five or eight years older.
“I’m Carmen Carmine, from station 35. If casting my lot with you means I can do something about today’s madness, then I hope I don’t regret trusting you.”
Carmen extended her hand for a shake but Regina gently turned her around towards the Royal Knight.
“It’s not just you and me.” She said, guiding her forwards.
The Knight had by then adjusted their shirt and vest, and put their jacket back on.
“Haven’t caught your name yet, fellow Alloyed.” Regina said approaching them with Carmen.
“Royal Escort Second Class…”
The Knight said in a voice that was a loud whisper and didn’t reveal the real timbre of their voice
“Enio Herald of Meriem.”
The three of them gathered close and Regina put her hand, palm down, forwards in the middle of them.
Enio immediately understood and put their hand on top of hers.
Carmen then looked at both of them and meekly piled her hand on top, only for Regina’s other hand to pile further up, Enio following suit and then Carmen to finish the hand pile.
“You two… I promise you this.” Regina told them regarding both equally. “From this day forward you have the full support of Regina Tempest. The planets might bless us when it comes to this mission, but I will look after you on anything even outside of that mission.”
“Likewise.”
“Let’s protect everyone.” Carmen said with determination burning in her tongue.
An oath was made under the burning sun, under the white star, under the mother of the planets that tasked them.
An oath to prevent people from inviting chaos in a misguided attempt to “revive” the planet.
But Regina’s oath went deeper than that.
Even if for some reason they broke away right after today, she would still keep her word to the grave and beyond.
Enio and Carmen gave fuel to a fire that Regina was getting tired of trying to keep ablaze on her own.
They gave her hope, a hope that she thought useless long ago.
And to Doctor Regina Tempest, to The Lady That Death Forgot, this alone was worth more than her own life.
Forsaken Gaia – Chapter 7: Oath under a star
Written by: Fernando Damas (@ironiclark)