The Acolytes of Crane Updated Edition

by Tew, J. D.

  Then, the ZF-Targine rose up past the palace walls and hovered into our view. I squinted in an attempt to identify its navigator.

  Mariah jumped up from her position and yelled, ‘Nilo!’

  The cannons on the ship charged, and rapid automatic fire of plasma burst upon Kurod’s weakened position. Knowing the end was near, he bowed to us out of respect for our efforts. The blast incinerated him, and in a pink puff of mist, his body ceased to exist. Nilo safely landed the ship in the nearby hangar, then jumped out to rescue us.

  Several beacons of light swooned in from the horizon. We recognized the make of these ships. These were the Urilian ships that belonged to Zane!

  ‘Zane’s sent ships after me!’ I yelled out to my team.

  The Urilian vessels, however, were having a laser battle with the Dacturon warships. Explosions riddled the forest around the palace as the two sides traded fire. One turret near us blew clear up, leaving behind a smoldering inferno.

  ‘Let’s go, before a Dacturon warship decides to stick around,’ Nilo yelled, using the exterior speakers of the ship.

  Mariah looked up at the sky. ‘The Dacturons are retreating!’ The battle had grown much more quiet.

  ‘Great!’ I hollered from underneath my trap, ‘Now Zane’ll be after me! Let’s go, quick!’

  Mariah and Dan lifted the support beam that pinned me down, and ran up the ramp of the ship.

  ‘Nilo, thanks so much!’ Mariah hugged him.

  ‘Yup,’ Nilo boasted, ‘My target is done. King Trazuline ‘s gonna be tickled so pink, he’ll wrestle with a Cliguire if I ask him to!’

  Dan and Mariah were stunned.

  ‘You’re the assassin?’ Mariah asked, incredulous.

  ‘You were in the stalbrux chamber with Trazuline?’ Dan stared at him, gaping.

  ‘I was hired to assassinate someone alright, and my job was complete. You thought I would get paid a million shorques to take out a human boy. My target was Kurod! I was hired by King Trazuline.’

  Shots rang out near the ship’s bow. ‘We gotta go!’ Nilo yelled, and he ran to his captain’s chair.

  ‘Just a second!’ I yelled as I heard loud drumbeats and marching band music. I peered out one of the portholes of the ship, and my heart leapt for joy when I saw a huge procession, in front of the palace.

  As hundreds of Elons cheered, I saw Jezra, resplendent in flowing purple robes, sitting firmly upon a throne, which was part of an apparatus that would have easily passed for an old sedan chair in Queen Victoria’s time. It was basically a carriage of splendor hoisted by loyal subjects, in this case her fellow Elons, grasping horizontal poles as they walked step by step. I too saw Pike, raising his fists in the air, full of jubilation. He was marching in front of his majestic wife.

  The reality struck home into my heart. Jezra, actually Queen Jezra now, was assuming her rightful place as Queen of Tritillia. The deafening cheers reverberated through the ever-closing door of our ship before it firmly shut.

  In less than a few seconds, we were out of orbit, as Tritillia loomed below us as a greenish-blue ball in the cosmos.

  Once she realized we were all safe, Mariah ran to one of the cabins of the ship to devitalize. There was a void in her life now—a loss of love—and consequently, an absence of faith. I had to speak with her alone.

  ‘Mariah, is it okay if I step in,’ I asked, dreading the moment to come. She was curled-up, bawling her eyes out. ‘Mariah, I’m really sorry about Lin—’

  ‘You don’t have a clue! Lincoln and I were in love!’

  ‘I know,’ I muttered, my voice shaking. I began to cry too, and she hugged me back.

  ‘The only reason we went to Tritillia was that he talked us into it. It was for you!’

  She hit me in the chest with her fist. It hurt, but I knew the pain would go away in a few minutes. ‘I’m sorry, I really am—’

  We both were crying, and we each wiped away tears. She snapped angrily at me, ‘You’re always talking about trust, honesty, and integrity. You! You betrayed us! You left us behind!’

  ‘I was under attack. I still don’t know who took over my mind… it wasn’t me!’ I shouted back.

  ‘Well, you have screwed everything up! You bring us to this godforsaken place, and we’ve lost Lincoln, and Liam!’

  Self-doubt pulverized me, and worse than Travis’ first blow that smashed me, left me utterly desolate.

  ‘Liam. I knew something was up. Tell me about him,’ I pleaded. I did not want to hear any more, I could not—in fact—take any more bad news. But I had to be strong—for Mariah. And for Dan.

  Dan walked in our conversation, dejected. ‘I’ll tell you, Ted. Mariah needs to grieve.’

  While tears streamed down all our cheeks, Dan recalled Liam’s braveness. As soon as it was over, Mariah stood up. She grabbed a panel on the wall that shielded a storage space, ripped it right off its hinges, and threw it to the floor.

  ‘Really, how selfish can you be? How dare you? This conversation is over! Come back when you are ready to apologize,’ she fiercely whispered to me, trembling all over.

  She pushed me out of her way, and stomped away to a private room to be alone. As the automatic door slammed, I felt the air forced from the motion of it.

  Dan sighed. All the emotion had drained from his face. ‘I’ll go too,’ he said, and walked away.

  Now I was truly alone. Dan was right. When Jason died, people let me mourn in peace. I realized that I was such an insensitive twit the entire time I had been aboard the Uriel. I was so caught up in a whirlwind to save Sephera that I didn’t even think twice about losing my grandparents. All of a sudden, Sephera no longer seemed worth it—for now.

  There was no time to sit and feel sorry for myself, not even a moment to heal mentally. But I knew I had to channel my anger into doing something good, like I did when I reported my parents to the police. Maybe that was why Travis was so entranced by evil: he knew nothing else but hate. Instead of confronting his hate, he became it.

  They used him to find something that my grandpa discovered about the Dietons. And the secret was still safe with Zane. And with me.

  I was just a teenager, out in space. I did not know what to do. At once, I was both the most useless warrior ever, and still the most important link to saving Sephera. I stared straight ahead, not thinking, not feeling. Liam. Lincoln. Marv. Laverne. Jason. My thoughts drifted in and out into nothingness.

  Something alerted me out of my fog.

  ‘Theodore,’ a sensual voice from behind me called out from a speaker on the dashboard. I turned to look. With one glance at the lovely visage, my useless, sterile thoughts dissipated. My hardened warrior exterior shed off in less than a split second. I was now the happy boy that Theodore Daniel Crane had once been.

  ‘Tez!’ I exclaimed, my heart fluttering.

  ‘Oh, Theodore, You have really shaken things up around here. Please tell me you are okay, tell me the boy I met in the halls of the Uriel is still fighting for the right reasons,’ she said.

  ‘That is just it. I realize more than ever today, what I am fighting to save. I am not fighting for Zane. I am not fighting for me, and I am sure as hell not fighting against the enemy just for the sake of fighting. I hope you can believe me. This battle is for Sephera and life. With Travis defeated and a Driad too—we are shaping up to be an awesome team.’

  ‘Theo, please don’t get swept away by your recent victories. The deaths of Travis and Kurod are really just a fraction of the war. Odion wrenches his grip on our multiverse, he just wastefully discarded them upon your blade,’ she said. She was absolutely right.

  ‘Tez?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Theo?’

  ‘Don’t give up on me.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘What about your Dad?’ I shouted through the intercom, although the loud volume wasn’t necessary.

  Tez sounded apprehensive. ‘He was in the battle on the planet. Is he still alive?’

  ‘Wow!’ I nearly f
reaked out. So Trazuline was after me too—or was he? ‘Yes! All the Urilian ships survived. They chased the Dacturons away.’

  I could hear a long sigh of relief from the other end. ‘Ted, that means a lot to me. I know he’s one-hundred-percent behind you…’

  Fear gripped my heart. ‘Tez! I forgot!’

  There was silence at the other end. ‘Oh no! How stupid of me…!’

  I worded her immediate concern, agreeing that we both had been very, very careless. ‘They can hear us… Zane can hear us.’

  ‘My father!’ Tez shrieked. ‘I said his name!’

  ‘Tez, Tez!’ I hollered into the speaker, ‘Maybe they’re not paying attention.’

  I heard a male voice, ‘Tezmarine Halperin, daughter of King Trazuline, you are hereby arrested for the act of treason!’ There was a loud, blood-curdling scream at the other end. It overwhelmed me, as if my body had suddenly been exposed to liquid nitrogen in a chamber.

  ‘Tez! Tez!’ I screamed.

  Silence.

  I ran to the cockpit, yelling out. ‘We gotta get out of here! King Trazuline’s cover has been blown.’

  Nilo broke away from the steering helm, his eyes blazing. He grabbed my collar and nearly punched me. ‘What! He was helping us, did you blab on him?’

  ‘No. Tez called me on the intercom. We leaked his secret. Then Tez was screaming or something. Then it went dead.’

  Nilo smashed his fist into the palm of his other hand, then shoved me backwards with such force that I nearly fell to the floor. ‘We gotta rescue him!’ he roared.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Mariah, frantic, as she rushed into the cockpit, with Dan close behind.

  Sullen, Nilo and I explained our predicament. Our two companions visibly sagged as we revealed the awful truth. ‘We gotta do something!’ Dan shouted. He appeared as if he was ready to dart off somewhere.

  ‘This battle is not over! We have just begun! We will find Tez, and we will rescue her!’ I boomed, silencing everyone, who looked up to me with awe.

  They all glanced at each other, then Dan smiled and said, ‘Yeah, we got Tritillia free!’

  Mariah lovingly gazed at me, ‘And we got Ted.’

  Nilo piped up, ‘I carried out my duty to Trazuline. He would be so pleased with us.’

  I seized the moment of euphoria. ‘Remember Lincoln!’

  Mariah burst out in tears. ‘Yes.’

  Dan bellowed with pride, ‘Remember Lincoln!’ I could see it in their eyes. Even the new chap we recruited, Nilo, rallied in my words, and we ended with a triumphant yell. It was a tribute to Lincoln, and with our hands bound to the center of our huddle we shouted in unison:

  ‘For Lincoln!’

  ‘And we’ll find Liam, too,’ Dan added.

  I felt it in my gut. Although I had just heard a second-hand account of what happened to Liam, I believed he was still alive. ‘If Trazuline was helping us, he would have done what he could for Liam.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mariah agreed. ‘Let us not give up hope.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said, as my body clearly showed a shift away from the group, toward an exit door to another room.

  Dan looked at me with a roll of his eyes, and stated, ‘I know that look.’

  ‘I will be right back, I have an idea. I think I know where we can find help,’ I said.

  ‘What are you doing, Theodore?’ Mariah asked, smiling.

  I said, ‘Trust me on this.’

  21 lincoln: abomination

  “My eye lids were weighed down with the advent of death, and my armor was saturated with dark, red, and soupy blood. Ted took one last look back at me before he led the charge up the stairs. I only saw his lips move because the sounds of battle and explosions muzzled his voice.”

  He said, ‘Thank you.’

  The pain and regret draped over me and shrouded my senses. I thought if I just shut my eyes once, and rested, I could embrace death. The fatal loss of blood was crushing my spirit to hold on to life.

  I coughed into my hand, and blood painted it. I watched as Theodore ran up the stairs with the crew.

  Visions of my life sped through my mind, flashing across the backs of my eyelids, and my life-reel ended. I was left with a defeated Travis and pinch of life in my pocket.

  That piercing look on Dan’s face as he realized I was just about gone. I think I was the first loved one of his to die before his eyes. I regret that my death may have hardened him. I hope he will always be the carefree lad I always have known.

  And Mariah—my Mariah. She held my hands as I lay dying, and she looked at me in the eyes. Oh, these eyes. I knew. We both knew.

  With that vision of the lovely Mariah dissipating, with the battle sounds fading away, all was blackening between blinks. What happened after was difficult to explain, even for me. A tiny light appeared. It was the size of a tip of a pin. The pin grew to a large circle. The light gleamed into my eyes. I felt different. I felt weightless, as if there was no effort to raise my hands to my eyes.

  Then I heard a familiar sound: it was cool rhythm and blues coming from my radio next to the bed. The artist’s deep voice was pounding my eardrums with his smooth vocals, but it was so loud I smashed the snooze button to stop it.

  I jumped out of bed hurriedly, stepped onto a cluttered floor, and stretched my T-shirt up over my head. I rubbed my chest and looked frantically in the mirror for a wound, but nothing was there. There was just olive skin and a puny flat chest.

  ‘Is this heaven? It can’t be,’ I said to myself. ‘Dad!’ I yelled from within the frame of my bedroom door.

  There was no response, just the sound of a fan blowing air around the room. I walked up to the fan and hummed into its blades. I always enjoyed doing that; it made my voice sound fluttered and funny. I walked outside. The sun felt soothing and the warmth made me smile.

  ‘Good morning Lincoln,’ a sweet female voice said, ‘Oh my! I don’t think you have ever hugged me that hard. Let up, or you might break a rib!’ My mother stood before me as a tangible apparition and she seemed so full of life.

  She was carrying laundry up from the basement. She was just as beautiful as I remembered her. The sun striped her black hair with a highlighted tone of blue. Her eyes twinkled and glistened from the light. Her touch was extremely reassuring.

  ‘Mom, is it you! Is it really you?’ I asked.

  ‘Honey, of course, are you okay. Did you have a bad dream?’

  ‘But you are, you are—you died!’ I shouted.

  ‘Now just relax, Lincoln. We will figure this out. Where are you going?’ she asked.

  ‘I have to go. I will be back. I just have to check something!’ I said in a rush.

  ‘Hurry back, I am making buttermilk pancakes for breakfast!’ she yelled, as the sound of her voice grew quiet from my distance.

  I needed to know. I sprinted. The sneakers on my feet flopped, as if my feet were exhausted. They slapped the ground like clown shoes.

  As I ran, oddly my shadow was behind me, I wasn’t completely sure why. If it was morning, the sun should have cast a shadow in front of me, not behind me.

  There was a hill leading up into the cul-de-sac; it was my last jaunt before his house. I ran up it like a marathon runner on the last leg of a race.

  My heart didn’t pound, and I raised my arms over my head to fight a cramp that wasn’t there. I ran up the stairs and stabbed the doorbell with my finger.

  I was breathing heavy while I waited, but I wasn’t tired. Oddly, I didn’t feel anything at all. I wasn’t sure why my breathing was heavy if I wasn’t even exhausted, or why I was slapping my feet up the hill. I thought I should have felt gassed and weakened by my run.

  Theodore’s grandpa came to answer my dinging. I could see him through the white segmented window of the storm door. When I saw that he was there, I began to think that I was really back home, and all was well.

  ‘Good morning, state your name and business, boy,’ Marvin said over the ringing of a phone behind him.

&
nbsp; ‘I am Theodore’s friend, Lincoln—you don’t remember me?’ I asked, and he turned from our encounter to answer the phone.

  ‘Just one second, I have to answer this damn phone. Laverne, this phone isn’t going to voicemail like it is supposed to! Hello, speak up, I cannot hear very well,’ Theodore’s grandpa yelled into the receiver of the phone, ‘Lincoln? He is at my door right now. It is for you. I think it is one of your friends,’ he said, turning toward me, with the phone held out for me to grab.

  ‘Who is it?’ I asked.

  ‘He said his name is Theodore.’

  I snatched the phone. I could not help but realize his grandpa was acting as if he didn’t even know me, or Theodore, for that matter, and the confusion set in.

  Marvin was rambling loudly in my ear about someone calling me on his phone and who the hell was I. His voice just drifted into the background, and I focused my senses toward the speaker on the phone.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Lincoln, it isn’t over bro. Are you hearing me? It isn’t over! Look up! Trust me, just do it. You should see a sun and two moons, right?’ Theodore asked.

  I looked up and saw the sun, emerging on the horizon. Lo and behold, at opposite angles above the solar giant, were two moons, grey and distant.

  ‘Yes, what is this all about,’ I demanded, for fear of my current state.

  ‘Don’t worry. We will get you out, Linc.’

  ‘Out of where?’ I asked.

  ‘Sephera!’

  The phone call ended. Departing the house, I tore off along the road, marching down the middle of the street to my house.

  I shouted, pretending to speak like Ted, ‘Oh by the way, you are dead, Lincoln . . . It is okay though, because we are coming to get you.’ I scoffed to myself. ‘To think I jumped in front of that golden pitchfork for you, Ted! I was fine with the thought of dying. It’s over, right, baby? Oh, but look up, he says. Sephera, he says!’

  Theodore’s grandpa Marvin tailed me shortly, because he was bewildered by our interaction. At least he wasn’t shoveled an absurd Sepheran reality.

  ‘Welcome to Sephera!’ I yelled through my unfiltered state of brash insanity as I turned back to the sight of this old man huffing as he ran behind me. Oddly, his frail looking body was easily absorbing the pounding of his feet upon the road.