Mark 2.0

by Prax Venter

  The advisor bowed his head. “As you command.”

  Once Lord Orvamello’s tail had vanished behind a curtain behind the ruby thrones, they were now alone with a handful of guards and the guy who’d suggested the ones Mark cared about most be immediately destroyed. The advisor held out his three-fingered hand, palm up, and vibrant pigments faded into existence that reached upward to coalesce into a jaw-dropping animated image. The perspective of the shifting colors began on a bizarre black hole twisting in the red, Wrongside sky then panned downward to follow the flood of bones falling through it and onto an entire mountain range of rotting dead.

  “To the north west of our domain lies the Bone Rain,” Urtanion continued as if extruding a free-floating oil painting from his twitching fingers was something he did every day. “This unfathomable portal of darkness has existed for eternity, and below it, you will find every skeleton of every creature known… and unknown.”

  Mark tried to hold his questions until the end of this mesmerizing presentation, but Jezebel’s mind was so alight with curiosity he was finding it distracting. The magical pigment smoothly reshaped itself into a new image and the glowing white tree made of melted skulls pulled his attention back. They looked like they were in constant motion and always screaming. Near the bottom, the phantom elm’s roots twisted in, through, and around the ribcages and pelvises and the millions of mixed bones surrounding it.

  “It is still debated whether the Ghost Ent monstrosity was ejected from the dark portal as part of the Bone Rain or if it is an ancient evil drawn to this abhorrent feature of our landscape. Regardless, it has existed for as long as the Blazar have dwelt in their dome.”

  The two-dimensional plane of magical paint swirled in on itself and with a flick of Urtanion’s wrist, it reformed into an action scene with one of the ruby-armored Blazar in a slow-motion battle with a man-sized beetle creature with shiny red wings. At first, Mark thought that insect’s head was colored white, but as it moved it became clear that this beetle was part ghost.

  “Up until twenty years ago, we hunted the wandering husks brought to unlife by the Ghost Ent. There are many, many that wander, but we only culled those that held valuable skeletal remains.”

  As the image smoothly panned sideways and the paint slid into other forms of skeletons being worn by translucent ghosts, Mark’s truth-seeing eye began to tingle. The creatures he was seeing were not lies, but his words were.

  “Then one day…” The advisor paused to twitch his thick fingers again, and the scene shifted to a continual stream of monstrous skeletons marching straight from the black stormy area called the Bone Rain toward the Blazar’s red dome. It was a sight Mark had seen for himself from the outside. “…the reanimated bones of the dead unanimously turned their hate toward us. And, where once they wandered aimlessly out into the unknowns of the vast wasteland, the full brunt of their unending numbers now lay siege to our domain.”

  The image pulled back to showcase the majesty of the enormous red dome against the dark-red sky, under the luminous blood-orange sun.

  “Our great dome has held for these last twenty years, and it would endure for countless many more, but…” The image vanished as Urtanion snapped his hand closed. “We would prefer the option to come and go as we please.”

  “You want us to destroy this Ghost Ent?” Jezebel asked and Mark was glad that the first question to leave her mouth was relevant to their immediate situation.

  “It’s what you Enthralled do, correct? Destroy monsters?”

  “And you insist that no Blazar action drew the ire of this tree spirit?” Abby said, pressing the lie they all detected through his bond with a smidge too much aggression.

  The court advisor narrowed his glowing green eyes, and Mark felt Urtanion’s anger rise at her insinuations. In that moment, Mark felt the sharp creature’s mental barriers slip and became one repeated thought.

  Stupid girl.

  He was sure the girl in question was not Abby, but someone this salamander knew very closely. Before Urtanion could respond to the petulant little Enthralled, Lord Orvamello returned with a black-and-green female Blazar in a ruby wheelchair. She wore a beautiful white dress that tucked under her torso in such a way as to make it clear she had no legs.

  “Strangers!” she said and used her strong arms to propel herself down one of the ramps to either side of the steps leading up to the throne dais. “The supposed destroyers! And as unique as you said, Father! My name is Princess Verrelle, what’s yours, and where are you from? Why are you wanted dead by such a powerful entity? How did you get past the husks and our great dome? My father said it was through divine intervention!”

  Mark already knew he liked her. “I’m Mark, and this is Sasha, Jezebel, Abby, and Angel. And yes, I was given the power to open dimensional doorways by one of the most powerful beings out there, He Who Judges.”

  To demonstrate, Mark held up his hand and coated it with the dark, crackling energy that allowed him to travel between worlds. The white sparks that resembled his ability to jump somewhere else in the same dimension was still inactive, and he was more sure than ever that it would be closer to a once-a-day type of ability.

  The royal advisor gave her a complex look- his eyes showing pride, yet the corner of his mouth also pulling into a barely noticeable grimace of disappointment.

  “The princess is my most gifted student,” he began, “in both logics and mind forms, but since she outranks me, I cannot stop her from her theology hobby.”

  Verrelle came to a stop in front of Mark and his team, her head bouncing from one to the next as if she couldn’t decide who was the most interesting. Although the Blazar he’d seen were all very similar to the Awysai in their appearance, this princess had more defined lips at the end of her short snout.

  “I never expected to see anyone from the outside,” she said with restrained glee. “Much less someone who says they’ve been imbued by a deity. And the words, ‘one of the most powerful’, implies that there are more than one! I knew that had to be true given the ancient anecdotal records from the Seventh Cross period of the third Evermier Court.”

  “Slow down, Peapod,” her father with the ruby crown said with a relaxed smile as he joined the group standing in the hall. “Give them a chance to keep up with you.”

  “It’s quite alright,” Jezebel said with a bright smile on her face. “I’m sure we’ll have much to discuss.”

  Mark pulled in a big sigh before focusing back on the details.

  “Before we continue with the fun stuff, I want to make sure we are all on the same page with what we both need. How many Crystal Heart shards do you have and are you willing to part with them all?”

  The princess gripped her chair tightly before giving Mark an answer.

  “I hungrily dove into otherworld legends of the Crystal Heart directly after we received the intense message from Lady Maliah. According to archived Red Questing records, ancient heroes acquired at least two objects that match the description of these mythical pieces of a broken heart near Ring City. I found the full tale both woefully incomplete and utterly spellbinding! How much some celestial being must have loved someone else to have formed an artifact so central to the universe’s existence, and yet also be hurt so savagely that the same artifact was shattered into jagged splinters.”

  Sasha moved close to Mark and he felt her fingers brush against his. She was overcome with emotion for a moment and wanted nothing more than to squeeze him tightly, but she got herself under control quickly enough and was able to avoid making a scene.

  “Romantic stories,” Urtanion said with a wave of a dismissive hand.

  Princess Verrelle gave him a frown over her shoulder then turned back to Mark and continued.

  “The next day, when it was time to move through the Saturasphere, I remained inside for hours looking for our two jagged shards of pulsating crystal, but the promenade of items contains more gemstones, rubies, and crystal shards than you could possibly imagine- oh you d
on’t know anything about the core of our city, do you?”

  Lord Orvamello cleared his throat and crossed his arms.

  “The short answer is we have reason to believe two such objects were obtained long ago but have been since lost to time. If you solve our persistent husk problem, I’ll allow you access to the hoard to search for what you seek. You each can take an armload of treasure if you wish.”

  Mark gave the king a twisted smile then pointed to his blind eye.

  “My Lord, I have more talents than I know what to do with. One of those talents is a kind of truth seeing, so I know about the beam of light you tend to within the gemstone sphere, and I also know that I do not have the full story about why you are under attack by the Ghost Ent.”

  The pretty salamander princess appeared to be mildly confused while both the Lord and his advisor grew concerned, even terrified that Mark would expose some calamitous royal scandal.

  “Shortly before I was born, the husks all turned their attention on our dome,” Verrelle said with a shrug. “I don’t know if anyone would ever be able to understand the reason why that bizarre entity would- oh I but suppose you could, Mark. Especially with that truth-seeing ability you mentioned. If you go and see it, please, please, please come back and tell me what you learn!”

  Over her head, he saw Lord Orvamello subtly shake his head back and forth. Whatever this was, he didn’t want his daughter to know the truth.

  Mark shot the Lord of the Blazar a glance and then bowed his head to the bubbly princess sitting before him.

  “Your ways are new to us,” he said instead, fully intending to get a real answer before rushing off to murder an undead skull tree in the middle of some nightmare, skeleton junkyard. “I must have been mistaken,” he continued. “However, Princess Verrelle, you were brought to us to help with reestablishing the Awysai’s connection to Goddess of Oral Sex. Once we do that for them, we can decide how to move forward.”

  The cute, green-patterned salamander blinked her glowing eyes multiple times, clearly at a loss for words.

  “Whose connection to the… Goddess of what?!”

  - 15 -

  Mark, his Enthralled, and their new Lunar Combat Drone were escorted out of the royal throne room and into the Blazar city to rejoin the Sovereign and the Awysai. He’d gotten a peek through the doors before but standing under the Great Dome with unobstructed view was a whole other experience. Ruby spires, sweeping arches, and pulled-taffy walkways all glistened under the blood-red sun streaming through the sanguine mists above, and the full brunt of its beauty was beyond breathtaking. And ridiculously complex. Some paths looped around themselves while others split apart to connect the many levels of this immense metropolis in a network of cherry-red splendor.

  “How did you build all this?” Jezebel asked, awe slowing her speech.

  “Gem Benders!” Princess Verrelle said. “I haven’t seen any references to anyone but us with the ability in the archives- not that that means someone doesn’t exist somewhere who knows how to shape specific minerals, but anyway, we Blazar have learned to melt and reshape ruby gemstone. Mindshaper architects then provide the template, while many bender teams work in tandem. Working together, we can do anything!” She let momentum pull her chair forward as they walked along a downward-sloping path and shot her arms over head.

  The wheelchair-bound scholar was almost too cheerful, but Mark could tell her whole body was thrumming with excitement over interesting things finally happening after a life of only reading about them- but it seemed like there was something she heard that sent her beyond what was normal for her. There was an unfiltered genuineness about the Blazar princess that appealed to Mark, and the connection snapped open an unintentional submersion into her mind.

  The first thing he saw was her deep-rooted sadness as a young child. She’d been born without legs yet had always been treated fairly. She was royalty after all. But it took her a while to come to terms with why she had to miss out on certain things.

  Solitary reading consumed most of her pre-teen years, and she eventually passed her hungry mind over every bit of history stored in even the most hidden royal libraries.

  When she’d hit her nineteenth birthday, she became available for royal courting, and a fellow scholar seeking her favor had gifted her a book about the philosophy of self-control. It captured her attention as no other book had. She’d been through tomes of taboo knowledge in the archives all skirting the edge of logic and reason, but this was a one-of-a-kind, handwritten work and opened her to the idea that she’d being operating her own mind wrong her whole life.

  When once ‘choosing to be happy’ sounded like sappy nonsense, the concept that she literally had total control over her own thoughts took root and she became a changed woman.

  And where once she felt shame for her missing parts, hiding herself away, she chose to let those persistent, self-generated doubts fall away from her mind. Princess Verrelle fully embraced her desire to enjoy her existence.

  And she was not ready to choose a mate just yet.

  Flashes of many, many glowing Blazar cocks suddenly flashed past Mark’s perspective in an instant. She savored the scent of male musk as it filled her nostrils and their smooth rigidity on her tongue- deep into her snout. Their guttural moans and whimpers of ecstasy drove her wild and led the reclusive, stifled Princess to brazenly make a deal with the Captain of the Guard. She would please him whenever he wanted if he was quiet about her spending every other night moving from bunk to bunk in the barracks as the soldiers slept. Soon enough, a leg draped off the cot became the signal- the offering- that they were willing to be visited by the legless princess.

  Mark sucked in a breath as he snapped back into his head.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered to himself and all his connected Enthralled tried not to react to what they’d all just experienced through him. None of them were expecting that from this bubbly princess, but it was easy to appear shocked at the work of art they strolled through.

  No wonder she had become so excited.

  “Collector.”

  He looked down to see Urtanion’s thick fingers resting on his arm. Once the advisor had his attention, he continued. “Please allow me to speak with you alone a moment.”

  Mark gave a nod and they both slowed their steps until they were lagging behind the group a bit. All his bonded monster-women noted the change, but the princess and Jezebel were each distracted by firing questions at each other.

  “I don’t know what you are,” the older Blazar began quietly, “but I want to make it clear that we have an understanding. Your abilities have exposed knowledge that I might do drastic acts to keep secret, yet, I am no fool. You held your tongue when asked, and given your powers and small army, it would be a mistake to… overreact.”

  “We have an understanding,” Mark said, glad this guy wasn’t going to be a problem. “I have nothing to gain by disobeying your wishes under your roof. I also want you to understand we aren’t murderers or mercenaries. If you don’t tell us what you did to trigger this attack, we might not be able to work together.” Mark shrugged. “All this being said, if it’s a monster, it’s a monster, and we’ll kill it no problem. If you people- oh, I don’t know, stole its child or something evil and this eternal assault is it fighting back… I’d probably have issues with your request.”

  “How can you gaze on that abomination that infests the bones of the dead and not think of it as a monster?”

  “I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit, and it is my damn destiny to make things right in your world. That is my priority.”

  They walked quietly for a while before Urtanion turned his glowing eyes toward Mark.

  “The world is a big place, Collector.”

  “Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.”

  The Blazar advisor nodded to himself. “I will speak with the Sovereign. I don’t know if she will give you what you ask, but I will repeat again that I appreciate your discreti
on, Truthseer.”

  A few more twists brought them further down, and it became apparent that the Blazar had removed massive chunks of the dirt-like Wrongside wasteland under their dome to make room for more grandiose architecture. Like his own defensive dome ability, their protective shell was not really a dome at all and turned out to be complete sphere.

  Thinking of breathable air, Mark felt the first twinges of mild claustrophobia- but it passed quickly. How they got in and out of this thing was a question he put on the pile at the back of his mind.

  In the center of their magnificent city was a glowing cluster of titanic ruby shards, and Abby called it out when she saw it. Mark had to chuckle when he wondered how many rubies they’d find tucked into her small bikini bottoms after they left here.

  “That’s the Saturasphere!” Verrelle said. “The core of the Blazar.”

  Mark had seen flashes of this place when he’d been peering into Sovereign Fayllencia’s mind, but it was abstract and from the inside. Now that he had this perspective on the orb suspended in the middle of their sphere-like city, he could see the red sun beaming straight down into this place they called the Saturasphere.

  “And that’s where the shards are?” Abby continued.

  “That is correct,” the princess said. “I can take you there later if you wish. Oh, but I can’t wait to see otherworlders summon a goddess!”

  Sasha’s tail lifted and started to sway with her hips. “Mmm, I bet you can’t.”

  Her overly sultry tone pulled Verrelle’s attention instantly.

  “I’ve never met a succubus,” the princess said. “Is it true your kind has certain… enhanced appetites?”

  “She does,” Jezebel answered quickly.

  “Sasha’s sexual skills are inspirational,” Abby added.

  The blue-eyed succubus put her hand on the princess’s shoulder.