Amorlia: Age of Wonder

by Chris Wichtendahl

  Post-Crisis: Year 1000

  Lunara crouched in the small cave, checking her gear one last time. Everything was in place and secure, down to the last explosive charge. Her scar itched and she scratched her face. It had been four hundred years since the Occupants had cut the triple-moon off her face, but the damn thing still itched like crazy, especially when she was nervous. She was plenty nervous now, that was certain. She'd been so nervous the night before, she'd worried she wouldn't fall asleep. That would have been disastrous, as sleep was the only thing that recharged her sorely diminished powers. She set about cleaning the ancient revolver she wore on her hip, letting her mind drift back nearly five hundred years... They'd come from nowhere. One moment the sky was empty, save for a few wisps of cloud, the next, they were there. Those wretched saucers that still crowded the sky and blotted out all but a few meager sunbeams. Lunara shook her head, trying not to think of what her beloved Amorlia looked like after five centuries of the barest minimum of sunlight. Only the most hardened, rough and pernicious weeds grew anywhere. Everywhere else was naught but rock and lifeless dirt. Those few bands of humans still living clung to their existence as the last of their world's vegetation gripped the rocky soil. The early battles had gone well. The Occupants (the only thing the invaders ever called themselves) were experienced conquerors, but they were not prepared for the ferocity and power of Amorlia's defenders. Those first years immediately following the razing of Vega were full of hope. Kel Vega and his Adepts Legion took the fight straight to the invaders, rocking them back on their heels and nearly forcing them off-world. But then the Occupants discovered the Spark, and found a way to cut it off. To call what followed disastrous would be the gravest understatement. After the horrific slaughter of the now-powerless superhumans, the Occupants set about eradicating all but the merest remnant of humanity. Most were put to work constructing the Occupants' many factories and power stations. Amorlia was an industrial world now, providing raw materials and hosting the production facilities for supplying their extensive intergalactic empire. A massive reactor was being built over what was once the Valley of Mystery. Lunara's spies informed her that the Occupants seemed intent on actually tapping the Broken Hells themselves to provide motive power to their factories and equipment. In the aftermath of that most tragic battle, Lunara discovered she still possessed some small measure of her powers and abilities. She was descended from gods and mythical beings and the Spark was part of her in ways only one other shared. As the Spark was actually integral to her physical make-up, she could not be completely sundered from it. However, with only that amount of Spark her body could generate on its own, Lunara was severely weakened. She took grievous injuries in that last battle, some of which were still healing five hundred years on. As a result, it was the only time she'd ever been captured by the Occupants. They'd wanted her execution public, as a means of breaking what little will remained to the ravaged populace. They'd only just carved out her symbol, and were about to slice off her wings, when the last tattered remnant of the Pacifica rescued her. And so, down through the centuries, Lunara Vega and a dwindling handful of rebel humans fought a losing guerrilla war against their alien overlords. Of Kel, Lunara's father, there had been no sign since the Last Battle. She believed him long dead. Until today. Today she'd learned the Occupants had been holding her father for the last five centuries and today his daughter was going to rescue him. Then Kel and Lunara Vega would wipe the alien stain from Amorlia for good. After that... Lunara finished cleaning and reassembling her gun, loading the six chambers carefully before sliding it back into its holster. After the Occupants were finally destroyed or chased off, Amorlia was going to need healing on a nigh-miraculous scale. She thought of her mother then and grit her teeth. Not now. After, maybe, but she would not think of her now. She knelt and closed her eyes, drawing deep slow breaths, exhaling evenly. She sought connection to the Spark within her, that guttering ember of divine energy that was all the weapon they had left. She prayed. "Mother Moon, radiant Luna, shimmering Goddess of the void..." she smiled. "Great-grandmother," she sighed, "grant your child the strength and courage to persevere over our enemies. Grant me the will and the power to vanquish this blight upon the world." Her smile grew and she continued her slow meditative breaths. Prayer to the old gods had come back into fashion among the people. Though legend told that the gods had abandoned Amorlia, faith was all anyone had to sustain them any more. Some even prayed to Lunara's grandparents, Artemis and Kael, who had left on a quest through the myriad dimensions of the multiverse shortly before the invasion and had never returned. Many had come to believe that in their travels, the legendary heroes were elevated to a place of divine prominence. This faith, more than any others, sustained the most for the longest. The family Vega had always saved Amorlia in all her darkest hours and many lived for the day when they'd see all the generations of the venerable family united as one against the Occupants. Truth be told, their faith sustained Lunara as well. They all believed in her so deeply. For as long as anyone living could remember, the Occupants controlled their barren world and Lunara Vega strove endlessly to stop them. She was more than a hero to her people, she was a living legend. A near demi-goddess in her own right. She stood and stretched, buckling on her gear belt and flexing her wings, their once brilliant white feathers now a dull grey. She left her small cave and crossed the village square toward the jagged mountain of rock that grew up toward the Occupant ship above them. The ship was larger than the others, and the Occupants' tyrannical master was said to dwell there. It was where her spies had told her that her father was being held. As she walked toward the mountain, the gathered throng of free humans cheered, wan faces and thin bodies barely able to support such an outcry. Lunara walked taller. She always had more fight in her when the people gave her a send-off. She climbed quickly, saving her strength for the flight from mountain-top to spaceship. Once at the top, she launched herself, mighty wings pushing her toward the hatch on the underside of the hovering ship. Flying was so hard since the Last Battle. She rarely did much actual flying any more, limiting herself to gliding and long jumps. To fight the pull of the world with nothing but the muscles in her wings and back drained her Spark very quickly and she would need that strength once inside. Lunara gripped the edges of the hatch, careful not to fall from her precarious position. With one of her small explosive charges, she blew open the hatch, swinging herself inside. She walked quickly from her entrance, unerringly following the directions she'd memorized earlier. Finally, she found the door just where it should be. Cautiously, quietly, she opened it. She closed her eyes tight against what she saw, though it would be burned in her memory forever. Her father was strung up by chains, his impressive blue wings had long since been sliced away and he was shaved bald. Extensive wiring ran in and out of his ears and directly through his skull to his brain. Tubes brought the barest nutrients to him and every now and then a quick jolt would shock his body. "Father?" Lunara whispered. Kel slowly raised his head. His face was heavily lined, his eyes sunken and glassy. He blinked and stared at his daughter in disbelief. "No," he whispered, "no this is another hallucination. You aren't real. You're dead." He began to weep. "They told me they killed you." "Father..." Lunara rushed forward, gently taking Kel's face in her hands. She kissed his forehead, her tears mixing with his on his face. "Father, all this time... I..." An alarm sounded and Kel looked up sharply. "You must be real," he said, "if you just tripped the sensors they've placed around me." He looked at his daughter. "You have to go. If they find you here..." "No," Lunara argued, keeping one eye trained on the door. She heard soldiers running through the ship, but none had reached them yet. She prayed again, quickly, for time. "I'm here to rescue you," she told her father. "Together we can find what's blocking the Spark and--" "It's me," Kel said. "They're using my body to siphon the Spark from Amorlia, keeping it from its proper flow." He shook his head. "They use it to power their ships now, much as we used to use it in our own technology. And it all flows through
me." "All the more reason to get you out of here," Lunara said. "Once you're out of all this, the Spark will return and we can--" Kel shook his head. "No, Lunara. There is no escape for me this time." He looked her in the eye. "My sword," he said, "the Sword of Vega. They took it from me, but they keep it close by, to torment me, I suppose. It's in that cabinet over there." Lunara went and retrieved the Sword, returning to her father. "I still say I just need to free you and--" "No," Kel insisted. "To remove all of these wires and tubes from me without killing me will take time you don't have." The approaching footfalls were growing louder and they both looked toward the door. "Take the Sword and flee this place," Kel told Lunara, "but leave me one of your charges." He smiled, a pale shadow of his old grin. "There's an idea I've been comforting myself with these long centuries and I am just dying to try it out."

  ***

  Lunara raced down the hall toward the broken hatch. She came across a few soldiers, a secondary group sent after the initial group that was investigating the alarm. She blasted them with her revolver and kept running. Reaching the open hatch she dove out into the foul grey air, opening her wings and gliding swiftly toward the ground.

  ***

  A troop of soldiers burst into Kel's prison. He smiled at them around a mouthful of explosive charge. Then, winking at his captors, he bit down on the detonator.

  ***

  The surge of pure Spark rushing through every nerve in her body hit harder than the shockwave of the explosion, which she rode rather easily now that her powers were at their peak once more. As the great mother ship of the Occupant fleet slowly fell from the sky, a broad shaft of sunlight shone down on Lunara, who hovered in mid-air, Spark crackling along the sword in her right hand. In the human village, a young woman stumbled as she walked, then suddenly shot forward at incredible speed, racing toward the downed ship and the survivors that staggered from the wreckage. Almost instinctively, she knew what she was. She also knew how to use what she was against them. A middle-aged man in the village hefted a massive boulder over his head, hurling it several miles where it flattened a few of the survivors as they fled their ship. Then he bounded off after the speedster. Meanwhile, a little girl sat down on the ground, reaching out to touch it with her hand. All at once, a scattering of vegetation grew up around her and the first tree anyone had ever seen thrust itself up out of the ground directly behind her. The lone shaft of sunlight glittered on its leaves. Lunara observed this, as well as the scene by the ship. She reached up to scratch her scar and smiled when she found it gone. She knew without seeing that her triple-moon was back. She angled down toward the pitched battle being waged among the wreckage of a tyrant's ship. She'd help them put down those few survivors left, then she would lead them to the next ship, and the ship after that. She glanced back at the little girl beneath the tree and smiled. And when that was done... Lunara Vega laughed for the first time in centuries, hurling herself headlong toward battle. And the Dawn of a New Age.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Chris Wichtendahl lives in New Jersey with his wife, daughter and two cats. He is the writer of the graphic novels Mystic for Hire, Ironstar, The Defender, Meet the Haunteds and Warrior’s Honor as well as a short story collection, The Spontaneous Manifesto. Amorlia is his first novel.

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