Storm Of The Eons - Chapter 7

Fire In The Mist

"You know Nova, I've been thinking... "Meta said as she was gazing down into her stadium, Nova at her side."About what? Master Meta." she replied coldly. "Well... if we keep up our project at the rate and strategy that it's going, it'll be an eternity before we can even infect half of the human scum filled earth." Meta explained. "I understand." said Nova "so what were you planning on doing to speed up this process?" she asked. "Well, if there was some way that would allow us to infect the entire population span of a whole planet in one go, that would be ideal." Meta replied. Suddenly Shiven appeared from out of nowhere and was now hovered next to Meta's other side "you mean something like a powerful laser cannon?" she cut in. Meta snapped her head round to Shiven with a bright look on her face "that's exactly it!" she shouted. "We need to develop some mean of high energy transfusion to infect an entire planet in one blast. ... and speaking of that Shiven, why aren't you back in the test facility finalizing our infection like I told you to be?" Meta snapped. Shiven wasn't too concerned about her aggressive attitude and calmly replied "I overheard the conversation between you and Nova, so I thought I'd just contribute." Meta said nothing, and only nodded. At last she finally spoke "well I think that it's a pretty good idea to build a laser cannon loaded with our infection, to fire down at that puny earth. I don't care if it's not perfect, we can't waste any more time, so let's get to it!" Nova cut in defiantly "but Meta, if it's not perf-" Meta raised her paw, stopping Nova in her tracks. She then leaned in close to Nova's face and spoke strongly "I do not care what unwanted effects it may have. It's the best option we've got so let's go with it!" "But... but... ""Not another word!" Meta shouted. So Nova just kept quiet, bowed her head respectfully to her leader, and began her journey down the corridor to the facility. Shortly after, Shiven followed Nova in her track, without another single word to Meta before departing. This leaving just Meta in the corridor, who took one last quick glance out into the wide stadium on the other side of the glass window before she whipped her red & white striped scarf around to her back and too, took her leave after about a minute. "I hope this works out how I plan it to..." Meta thought to herself uncertainly as she glided down the hall...

Before us, floated a small pink Latias who was seemingly lost in this thick fog. Laticer hovered forward, "are you alright?" he asked, she just stared back at him and replied "yeah, I think so... thank god you all came and found me. Seems I was badly lost." "Mhmm." Latikaru spoke in "do have a name, by any chance?" the Latias paused for a second, but at last spoke "tell me your names first... I need to be sure I can trust you." "Fine." Latikaru remarked dismissively "my name is Latikaru." "This teal one next to me is called Latiar." Latiar smiled to the Latias and said a brief "hi." in return, she said "hi Latiar." he smiled a little, glad to be known. "This red guy here is called Vamicius. He saved my life." and with that, Latikaru looked me in the eyes again as I turned to look back at her, with another one of her grateful, loving looks. I tried not to blush, or break eye contact but in the end, I sharply whipped my attention back round to the pink Latias who was still floating in the same place, with a tiny smirk "nice to meet you, Vamicius." she said politely. "You too." I replied. And Laticer finished the introducing with a calm "and my name is Laticer. It's good to meet you... what's your name?" the Latias paused once again, then finally saying "my name is Seritya... can I stick around with you please? I don't wanna be left alone out here... ""Absolutely!" Laticer remarked "we'd be more than happy for you to tag along. The more we get; the better." Seritya tilted her head slightly "what are you gonna be doing?" she questioned. I hovered forward to her as I said "I believe you've heard of Meta, Nova & Shiven. Yes?" suddenly Seritya growled "Yes, I know these evil cows... what do you plan on doing?" "Well... we're gonna go back to their base and get rid of them for good. We can't risk them turning more people into latis now, can we?" I explained. "I guess not... but how do you plan on getting back there? You do know that their fort is armed with the ability to warp through dimensions, right?" I was about to speak up... but no words came to me "fuck... you're right... that makes it almost impossible..." I simply said after a bit. Seritya then began to say to herself "wait... has it been 4 or 5 years si-" but she was cut off by the ghostly hissing that sounded a bit  ago... this time it sounded much closer and more spooky, more phantom-like. "Shit! No time to explain!" Latikaru yelped "tell us later okay?" Seritya nodded quickly, also alarmed by the hissing. We all formed a defensive circle together, looking in every direction possible for the source of the hissing. For a couple of minutes, there was nothing... but at last, the hissing sounded again, this time no more than from ten feet! Suddenly Seritya screamed "there it is!! There it is!!" as we all frantically turned our heads to look in her direction, to see a white, humanoid ghost like figure emerge from the fog, it's face horribly misshapen and dripping with blood. "Oh shit..!" I yelled as it came closer... closer, and came to a halt right in front of us. For a second, it only floated, making the same haunting hiss over and over again... its body twisting in the ghostly energy it emitted. Then immediately it charged at Latiar, giving him no time to react as it wrapped its cold thin arms tightly around him, choking him as it buried its head deep into his neck, draining him of energy. Suddenly a large stream of blood began to spew from Latiar's neck, making us all yell in horror. Latiar could do nothing but scream in agony as the spirit drained blood from him. But it didn't quite make sense; there was no wound on his neck, no cut, no gash, no nothing. The blood just appeared to be spewing from him of its own accord, but that didn't convince me he was okay, and without thinking, I charged at the spirit's back, expecting my paws to go right through it to meet Latiar's chest... but no, instead my paws made direct contact with the cold, bony back of the spirit and while it continued to feast on Latiar's blood, unaware of me, I saw the opportunity to grip the phantom's sides tightly, and wrenched it off of Latiar with all my might, throwing it to the ground, where it lay for a few seconds. As for Latiar, he collapsed to the ground, unconscious from the mass amount of blood loss. Laticer, Latikaru, and Seritya could only watch in horror and silence as I turned to them yelling "well don't just float there, fucking help me!" Seritya was the first to react, as she hastily flew down to Latiar who was now lying on the ground in a pool of dark red blood, unmoving. Suddenly we all turned our attention to the spirit who had now recovered, and was floating in the air once again, from where it began to make another charge, this time straight for me! But it was intercepted shortly afterwards by Latikaru, who tackled it from the side violently making it fall once again, where from she climbed atop it, and began to punch and tear it apart repeatedly, growling loudly and yelling as she did so. There was a sickening crack every time she made contact with it, Laticer and me flinching at every blow. At long last, Latikaru removed herself from the spirit to rejoin me and Laticer, while the spirit lay motionless on the ground. After not too long, with one final hiss, it burst into a cloud of purple flame, revealing nothing more than a mere piece of papyrus with some kind of foreign scripture written on it. After floating for a couple of second, it made contact with the ground and too, burst into the same purple flame the spirit had... and it was gone. "Fire in the mist..." I said to myself...
Seritya was cradling the unconscious Latiar, resting him gently in her arms as we all came to inspect. "Is he okay?" Laticer asked worriedly "I dunno." Seritya replied in an equally worried tone "I'm not certain he'll survive for much longer after losing that much blood!" a small tear welled up in the corner of my eye as I floated down to Latiar's level, not wanting to accept to inevitable, I grasped his shoulders, shaking him gently and repeatedly saying "Latiar? Are you okay? Wake up! C'mon, talk to me brother!" at that moment, Latiar's eyes snapped open, and releasing himself from my paws, he sat up and looked around at us, as if nothing had ever happened. "What... just happened to me?" he questioned confusedly. Overjoyed, we all went at him, hugging him tightly; glad to see he was okay. "Thank god... we thought we'd lost you." I said to him quietly. "L-lost me?" he remarked "how so? All I remember is getting attacked by that ghost thing and from there, going to sleep." I shuddered, not wanting to tell him what had happened. Suddenly I turned to look at Latikaru "... and why did you save me from it?" I asked curiously. "You saved me. I thought I'd return the favor." she replied. I couldn't think of much to say apart from a simple "thanks." "You're welcome... Vami." she replied. Seritya giggled "Vami... that's a nice name. Mind if I call you that from now on?" "Nope, not at all." I replied. "c'mon, we ought to get out of here before more of those things turn up" Laticer remarked, "speak of the devil... " I whispered as I heard the hissing of several more spirits in the distance. Panicked, we all came together to form another circle, but this time, facing inward. We seemed to all be thinking the exact same thing, and to my surprise, Laticer said aloud "fly skyward!" which was exactly what I had been planning to do. Assuming all the others had the same idea, I began a countdown "3... 2... 1... go!" and at that instant, all 5 of us were on a direct flight course to the sky, breaking up out circle a bit as we went. What seemed like an eternity finally came to a point where the fog at last, began to thin off. The sounds of the spirits hissing gradually faded away, and the sunlight in the sky began to fill our gleaming eyes "day at last... "I whispered. At last we broke free from the cloud, and rays of sun were spilling all over us... it felt nice to finally feel the warmth of daylight again, as I gave a sigh of relief and immediately shouted afterwards as we all assumed a forward flight position "where do we go now!?" "I don't know!" Seritya called back "we just keep moving until we get to where the fog has cleared!" "Alright!" I yelled back as the 5 of us flew gracefully through the air "you lead the way!" "Okay, everybody stick close to me!" Seritya called back. With that said, we all maintained our flight pattern, keeping a look out for any visible land.
Hours passed, many miles of flying had to be endured before we at last, came to a snow covered mountain that was completely cleared of all fog, by this time it was dusk and the sun was setting. At this point, we began our descent. "Okay everybody stay by me, this is gonna be cold!" Seritya shouted back as we were all on a direct nosedive towards the rocky mountain. The cool blast of freezing air brushing past my face as I flew downwards "looks like we'll have to stay around here for the night!" I called forward "Mhmm!" Latikaru and Seritya said together "we'll have to keep each other warm, if we can't find any decent place to stay!" Latiar shouted through the cold crystal-like wind. Nobody said anything, Latikaru only made a small blush, imagining what it was going to be like.
We were close now, in my head I was counting down as we approached ever closer to the White Mountain. "100 meters... 80... 60... 40... 20... 10..." and we had arrived. The cold wind swirling around us, threatening to cause us chill...

"Storm of the eons...  T - 72 hours..."

(End of chapter 7)