by Andrew Jones
"Okay, I won't rush you. You're clearly at a fragile state of mind. Let's just keep pushing forward... Maybe it'll give you motivation again..." Kryptonite said as he jumped on Blaze's shoulder and pointed his paw ahead.
Blaze blinked and watched him plop down on her shoulder, looking forward at the materialized door. It had materialized all of a sudden, out of nowhere, like it was an invitation from Lilith to come to her. She sighed and started her way to the door, shooting a small smile up at Kryptonite.
"You haven't lied to me yet, bear."
Journal Entry VII
To Be Left Behind
Toward the beginning, things seemed normal. There were birds that chirped, waking me up early in the morning. But soon enough, there were no birds to wake me up, and I ended up waking up to the sun setting. The days grew shorter, the heat only increased the world's temperature. The health condition of everyone only decreased, as the risk of dying had only increased day by day.
I was confident that the leader of our group knew what he was doing- what he was leading us to. He was a good man and wanted to do everything just to see his people in good conditioning, to see me smile. But every day another life in our group was lost, mourning another lost soul became a daily thing.
But one day, he grew to not care. He would give a small, and non-passionate mourning to the lost soul before he forced the rest of us to follow him out of the group. The smell of the rotting corpse of the descended would set off alarms of hungry cannibals, so we were cautious of our surroundings. Every little sound frightened me when I was at the younger age, but the leader, my father, would make sure I felt safe no matter what our situation had become.
He'd fight off people who had become infected with the mysterious disease, and every time he fought them off, he'd get bitten by one. We worried as we examined each and every bite that would only leave a scar on his riddled body. But he only smiled, he did not want us to worry.
But one day, I heard a loud scream in the forest just outside our recent campsite. It was dark outside, and our group had fallen from thirty people to just five in a matter of days. We all worried about who was next to die, and even our leader had our coffins already made for when our time to pass onto the New World would come.
He was suffering, he didn't want to live anymore, it was more obvious than he'd like to believe. But the scream in the forest ensured that. It was definitely his scream. He fused with the surrounding darkness, and his rage entwined with it. His screams, however, was his will to fight on and defeat the darkness that was trying to possess his soul. He was being infected with Ruse.
His eyes bled, his face was full of scratches from his damaged and cracked fingernails. He looked to have tried to scratch off his face. Was this an attempt of suicide before he could reach the group and possibly lose control of himself? He did not want that, he wanted to end himself before he could try to end the remaining survivors of the group.
The next days, he was presumed dead and missing by the remaining survivors of the group. They were all older than I was, so I had no say in anything. They assumed that he wanted them to move on without him and protect the rest of the group. But in their acts of controlling the group in equal power didn't exactly plan out accordingly.
They all suddenly lusted for power. And they all got into frequent arguments that often resulted in drawing their blades and dealing some physical damage just to get the other one to shut up. It was an everyday situation, and we had lost our way and meaning of life. The loss of our true leader who guided us only blinded us.
Their lust for power only grew, to the point that each of them contracted the Ruse virus at the same time, during another argument. Their eyes were red, and they had a face only a true murderer would have. It was different, they'd usually draw their weapons to intimidate the other and slightly hurt them. But it got more serious when one of them stabbed the other in the face, and drank the blood being poured from their face.
The other two stood in complete shock, shaken by the sudden bloodshed. But they had to stop him before he could kill the rest of them. Their sense and desperation for power took the battle to another level, and they soon destroyed each other- with me, the young girl, to only watch in horror.
I soon left the group, having little empathy for their actions. Maybe they wanted our true leader to die so they could take control. She had a soft spirit, and she did not wish to fight, but the leader did tell her there were times when you did need to fight- you just need to pick the smartest choice when facing a possible fight. If talking your way out of a fighter is possible, take it.
We all believed in this, in what the leader had to say. But this virus somehow took their ability to think about that away, to take their free will away and enrage them to where they'd kill their friends- their own family. They became so desperate for power, and to take control of what little population they could've had. They were my family.
But it wasn't long until a man found me and told me of his adventures that dealt with this virus. He became my new family, and we shared a goal of restoring Humanity. But our main goal, even if we didn't mention a word of it, was to create a true family- an assuring, safe, protective family that would not kill one another.
Verse XVIII
Birth of a Wish
The materialized door started to fade away as Blaze quickly picked up Kryptonite and rushed through. Beyond the disappearing door, they found a hallway full of vaults. Blaze walked up ahead and turned both left and right to look into the vaults, only finding corpses standing inside them, mere skeletons. They looked like mechanical skeletons, like the Synths that had been resting in the vaults awaited their deaths, as they knew they wouldn't be let out. Ultimately giving up. A sound of a creaking door sounded just ahead of them, where the same two Synth clones of Nova and Atreyu stood, grinning ahead at them. Blaze glared at them as she reached into Kryptonite's pocket and pulled out a sword. The sword looked like it was machine made, as she moved the blade in the air to point the tip up toward the two corrupted Synths, the engine part of the blade that laid between the blade and the handle began operating, giving the blade and extra shine while sharpening it.
"Lilith said we should test you out before you can see her- to see if you have any faulty parts in you." Both of the Synths spoke at the same time, both having a deep and high voice synthesis.
Nova and Atreyu turned around and entered a door that flew from the ceiling down, opening just in time for them to walk through. Before Blaze could go through, she looked upward to see more doors were floating around the ceiling. What could be through all these doors? None of them looked like stairs, for sure, so Blaze just had to follow the two and play along with their game until she could spot a flight of stairs.
As they entered through the door, they seemed to teleport to a familiar place- a place that had looked to have been through hell and back. There were machines down on their knees and shaking cowardly as they formed a circle. In the dirt, they seemed to draw an excellent looking picture of someone, who Blaze could recognize right away. It was Siyuri, with a badly drawn crown on the top of her head. The machines sang a song in her honor, as well as crying, all at the same time.
"Why did Queen Siyuri up and disappear!?" One of the machines shouted.
"Do you think she abandoned us? Without her guidance, we couldn't survive. We're nothing compared to Synths!" Another machine shouted as it appeared to be in tears.
"No... She couldn't have. She loved all of us!" The machine child, who recently drew the crown on top of Siyuri's drawn head, cried out.
Blaze and Kryptonite stood just behind the circle of machines. While Kryptonite sat up on her shoulder, he couldn't help but wonder why the machines hadn't discovered them. They were wanted by them after all. Kryptonite jumped off of her shoulder, as she would reach out to him.
"K-Kryptonite!" Blaze quietly shouted at him.
"Hey guys, you know-" Kryptonite was beginning to explain something, just as he tapped on one of the machi
ne's shoulder, not getting a response from the crying machine, "H-Hey! I'm talking here! Don't ignore me!"
"Don't you see?" Both Nova and Atreyu appeared just in the center of the machines, standing over the drawing of Siyuri, "They can't see you. You're just a projection from out the world- or what you two call it, the Dataspace."
Blaze frowned, "So this is how you were able to watch our actions, then? You were basically standing before us all along?"
Nova and Atreyu both nodded their heads, as they both scuffed their feet on the dirt under them, wiping away the image of Siyuri in an attempt to bring panic to the helpless machines.
"The Armagna Network has approximately 90.017% control of the world. Why do you not think the Dragoona have come to stop us and bring the New World? Why don't you think ANYONE has come to try to stop us- apart from you? Because we can easily crush them." The two Synths spoke as they snapped their fingers.
The snapping of their fingers created a dark wave around the machines, mysteriously making each and every machine explode one by one except one of them. The machine quickly stood up as it watched it's friends explode, shaking ferociously in terror.
"N-No! What's going on here!" The machine screamed as it fell to the ground, crying as much as it could.
"Stop!" Blaze shouted as she quickly swung her sword at them.
But as she swung her sword, Atreyu raised his hand and grabbed onto her blade, gripping it tightly so Blaze couldn't pull it away. Blaze tried her best to pull the sword out of Atreyu's grasp but his eyes turned from red to a black color, keeping the disturbing calm look on his face.
"I cannot do that. There is a reason why we have to do this, Blaze. You just haven't realized it." Atreyu said in with that robotic tone, growing more dark and distorted as he continued through the sentence.
Blaze grunted as she finally broke through his grasp and jumped back, looking aside at the machine who laid down, suddenly dying off. The machine's tears must've killed it. At that moment, she wondered why machines were built with the ability to cry and produce tears- and even blood, it those could help kill them. It was a disturbing sight, but she was used to seeing machines crying themselves to death, using their own water source to kill themselves. It was the only way there could commit suicide, and it became a well known way of escaping this world according to the machines.
"You see the torment you brought to these machines by killing off the fake Queen?" Nova spoke as she closed her eyes and looked down, showing much sympathy for the deceased machines.
"I had to! Your damn network would've destroyed them anyway- like you just did." Blaze screamed at them, looking to have become enraged.
A giggle was heard toward Nova, "We were helping them, Blaze. These machines needed a leader, who we've reorganized Siyuri's data so she could lead these machines. And what is a well known female leader of a group? A Queen, from what our knowledge portrays."
"Bullshit! Like hell, you were helping them!"
Atreyu frowned at Blaze as she yelled at Nova, but he did not act in any sort of violence. Instead, he watched as another door fall behind them, opening just as they began to float backward into the door's representation. Suddenly, and out of nowhere, the area around them became white, and all objects including the sky and the ground beneath them became blocks. Blaze began to run after them, but Kryptonite rushed in front of her in order to stop her.
"Blaze, think this through before you go! This isn't a situation where you go full force into battle- this is dangerous, and I can see there is some sort of trickery here. We need to be careful!"
Blaze growled as she kicked Kryptonite aside, "We don't have the time to think, bear! We have to finish this now!"
Blaze stopped just in front of the door, sighing as she grabbed onto Kryptonite and placed him back up on her shoulders. She didn't say a word, but just that little action convinced Kryptonite that she may not be giving into her inner rage as much as he thought.
Beyond the door, there was the height of the Colosseum. Though, the building was being materialized from pixels, unlike the surrounding area which was still a sea of sand. However, the sky above materialized a dark purple, similar to the eyes of Blaze. Blaze didn't bother looking around- she just began walking up the stairs and into the building. But the inside of the building looked different, as the only room in the building, in this world, was the battlefield. The rows of seating for the audience was full- it was being seated by Synths who appeared to look damaged. Some of the skin were peeled off of the Synths, or they're objected eyeballs were dangling from their eye holes. They all looked so lifeless while they watched the fight that was occurring down in the battlefield.
In the battlefield, there was a swarm of Humans with weapons. They were shaking, and they looked like they had no experience in fighting. They had no armor on- they had nothing on period, they were nude. But before them, the Human-Eater had been devouring all of the helpless Humans in the battlefield. The screams of the Humans as they were eaten without any sense of mercy echoed through the rows of seating, affecting the Synths with their shrieks. Blaze watched from the bottom edge of the rows, overshadowing the battlefield and noticed that Humans kept being forced to go into the battlefield and fight the Human-Eater.
"Pretty many sums up the battle between the Humans and the Machina, right? Both Nova and Atreyu say as they appeared behind Blaze, standing on the top of the row of seats. "Even if the Humans were to die off, the machines would be running out of machinery the Humans were nice enough to create and make into scrap. In some point, everything will die off."
"Hmm?" Blaze looked back at the two Synths as she noticed all the damaged Synths suddenly looking over and staring right at her.
"Again, we have full control. We were even granted control of ancient technology."
The two Synths snap their fingers again. A black mass appeared over their hands, which formed a black leash that would wrap around the Human-Eater's neck on the other end. They softly tugged on the leash, which forced the Human-Eater to roar and charge a powerful beam, casting it down into the Humans. Afterward, the Human-Eater continued it's roaring, as it fell to the ground. The tugging the two Synth's did with the leash became more tightly, and one heavy tug shattered the Human-Eater into a million or so mechanical pieces that flew all around the battlefield, and even the rows of seating. The damaged Synths who were seated immediately turn toward the battlefield and cheer. Their voices sounded malfunctioned, as it kept going from quiet to loud, and sometimes even letting loose a static sound.
"We've controlled every aspect of what you have gone through, all for one purpose you must come to your own conclusion." They spoke again as another door flew down behind them, as they began to once again float back into the doorway.
"T-This is seriously messed up! This can't be an illusion- or even a hallucination... A conclusion, what can that mean!?" Kryptonite shouted as he panicked on Blaze's shoulder.
Blaze shook her head, "I don't know, but we have to keep following them to find out."
The picture that was projected from the doorway looked familiar, once again. It looked like the area that made up Tilda- Amaya's village. The sky gazed a faint red coloring like it was going to storm acid rain. But could weather be reconstructed into this world? The sky roared loudly, as it materialized a lightning that had the power to enlighten the area. Blaze and Kryptonite stood in the marketplace, where the city had remained in the ruins- the way Blaze had left it the last time she actually visited the area without Amaya. Kryptonite let out a soft gasp as he looked at the destruction. But to differ from Blaze's memory, the bodies of all the Humans and machines had been stabbed into a stick that was poking out from the ground. The sticks that had the people stabbed in them hung their heads low, letting their blood drip from their slightly parted lips.
"Are these people dead?" Kryptonite asked, as his voice had been weakened from the sight.
The dead bodies had been secretly guiding them toward their destination- which was just d
own the trail that had spots of blood everywhere along it. Blaze ran down the path, for quite a long time. The trail seemed like it would not end, and the body count had only increased the quicker she made her way down the trail.
"Blaze, look!" Kryptonite shouted and pointed forward at a figure who was down on their knees. They were facing the opposite direction from them, and toward a large black tower that seemed like it had hundreds of floors. It gave a dark aura, and it oddly made Blaze feel an assortment of different uncontrolled emotions as she stared up at the building; a switch that would include fear, hate, paranoia, and anxiety.
Kryptonite jumped down and walked forward, just to the figure. It was like he recognized the figure and knew them very well. But as they turned toward him, a glimpse of light shined brightly. It was bright enough to temporarily blind them. But when the light faded, Amaya was on the ground and she was riddled with blood and wounds. Kryptonite gasped and tried his best to pick her up.
"A-Amaya!" Kryptonite screamed as he tried his best to make his little paws pick her body up.
Her body had no support to it. It was like she was in a deep sleep, and all of her natural weight had been tossed downward, making her weigh twice as much. Kryptonite struggled, his paws successfully lifted her body just a little bit- but the result of it was that both of his arms had torn from them only being supported by thread and cotton. Some of his fluff had spilled out of his open wound on his arms.
"Blaze, please help!" Kryptonite screamed toward her.
He was screaming really loud, and more dramatic than she had seen from him. He was usually such a positive person. But seeing that a close friend of his was on the floor, possibly dead, looked like it cracked any kind spirit he had left inside himself- deep in his heart. Blaze sprinted up toward them, but she fell back as she hit an invisible barrier. At her impact with the barrier, it made a strange magical like sound and shined a mixture of all colors.