by J. J. Egosi
“Some memories are more difficult to dig up than others.” Lucifer moved his king piece forward again.
Lucifer’s words startled Michael.
“Did I frighten you?” Lucifer asked. “Or did you remember something truly chilling about yourself?”
“Quiet.” Michael gritted his teeth. To shake off the frustration, he glanced at the chessboard and the peculiar move Lucifer had made.
“That strategy has a major flaw, don’t you think?” Michael focused on moving his pawn pieces forward as a few turns passed.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Lucifer with sarcasm, as he moved his pawn pieces forward, as well.
“So much for not copying moves,” said Michael.
“My moves are nothing like yours. Not when I still lead with my king and you sacrifice your pawns for an early game advantage.” Lucifer grinned, taking Michael’s third pawn piece in a row.
“A true player of the game knows his pawns are just as valuable as any of his other pieces. I know you’re aware of this, so how about you stop holding back?” Lucifer said, capturing Michael’s fourth pawn piece.
Michael took a deep breath and did as Lucifer requested. He moved the pieces at the back forward, and Lucifer copied him, while still leading with his king piece. The two of them started capturing each other’s pieces, one by one until half the game’s pieces on each side were captured.
Suddenly, Michael moved his queen piece out into the open field. Lucifer raised his eyebrow. “You wish to place your queen in such a compromising position?”
“Yes, I do. I believe in my queen. As the king’s right hand, she’ll lead me to victory by ensnaring your army and leaving your king defenseless,” said Michael.
“The queen? A king’s right hand?” Lucifer turned towards the single painting of a silhouette depicting a young girl. He sneered, then shook his head before turning towards Michael. “Not if I block with my castles and bishops.”
Michael captured a series of Lucifer’s pieces, leaving him with the king piece alone. His confidence grew as he cornered Lucifer’s king piece with his. Lucifer grinned.
“Oh, how the arrogant have fallen.”
“What are you saying? You’re the one without your strongest”—Michael started. He looked down at the board, realizing its current state.
“You say you believe in your queen, and yet where is she?” Lucifer asked.
Michael’s eyes widened. “My queen”—He exclaimed in total disbelief.
“That’s right. You were so busy chipping away at my army, you didn’t even see me snatch your queen off the board. And with a pawn, of all pieces,” said Lucifer.
“No, that can’t be.”
“Oh, yes, it can. And with only our kings left on the board, it leaves us at a stalemate. A state where neither of us can win nor lose,” Lucifer said.
“A stalemate?” Michael looked at the almost empty board with a smirk. “It seems you don’t care about your soldiers as much as you said.”
“But I kept you from winning, did I not?” Lucifer asked. “And that, somehow, a victory. Because it means you didn’t win, either.”
“So, that was really your plan.” Michael scowled.
“Indeed. It seems we’re evenly matched. However, if you’re looking for a change of fortune, I have another for you,” said Lucifer. He pulled out a deck of cards from the drawer of the table beside him.
“A card game?”
“Yes, and I’d like for you to do the honor of shuffling. Do so well. I’d hate for you to be dealt a bad hand. Or another bad hand, I suppose.” Lucifer grinned.
“Fine, I will! I don’t trust you, anyway.” Michael said, shuffling his deck and placing it on the table.
“Here’s how the game works. To settle who wins the chess game, we will each draw one card from the top of the deck. Whoever draws the higher card wins,” said Lucifer.
The pace of Michael’s heartbeat increased with suspense.
“Feeling nervous, are we?” Lucifer began. “Would you prefer I go first? Maybe that’ll ease the tension.”
“Fine, you go first,” said Michael.
“With pleasure.” Lucifer revealed the top card of his deck to be the king of hearts.
Michael’s eyes widened. “No way! You drew a king!”
I told you we’re evenly matched. If you want to beat me, you’ll have to draw something quite impressive from the deck,” said Lucifer.
Letting him go first didn’t help at all, Michael thought, And I’m not even sure I know how to play this game … Or do I? Just what the hell is going on? Where are these memories coming from?
“I’m waiting, Michael,” Lucifer said.
Michael bit back his confusion and fear. That’s not the point! I can figure this all out once I get back to my friend. That’s all I really care about. Not beating this masked lunatic. I just want to get out of this nightmare, already!
Lucifer frowned. “Are you going to draw a card or not? I’m growing bored.”
“Very well.” Michael’s hand inched towards the deck, struggling to pick among the stack until he picked one at random in the center. He trembled as he pulled out the card and slowly turned it towards himself, revealing it as the ace of spades. He looked at his card with outrage. Lucifer grinned.
“No! It’s a one. That’s the lowest card in the deck.”
Lucifer chuckled. “Quite the contrary. The ace is an incredibly diverse card in that it can either act as the lowest card or the highest card, depending on the outcome you desire,” said Lucifer.
“Depending on the outcome I desire?” Michael asked.
“Yes, your destiny is in your hands. You can call a victory right now by calling your ace a high card, defeating my king, or you can call it a low card, handing me the victory instead. You drew the card, so only you can decide. Will you choose to defeat my king of hearts or will you choose to see what awaits you behind the door of defeat?” asked Lucifer.
Michael’s heart raced with anxiety. Panting heavily, he looked down at the card and back up at Lucifer. “I call neither.”
Lucifer grinned. “Neither, you say? Does that mean?”—
“Yes,” Michael said, cutting Lucifer off. “You said my destiny is in my hands. Well, I’ll decide how this game will end when I’m good and ready. For now, I have more questions to answer. How could I be the archangel? Who is the Legion of Morningstar? And what are the dimension titans really all about? It’s too early to win or lose when I don’t even know what’s on the line.”
“How right you are. I think we’re finally done here,” said Lucifer.
“You mean?”—said Michael with surprise as the doors behind him flung open.
“You and I will meet again soon. Until then, protect your new pieces and grab your victory before someone else does,” said Lucifer.
“My new pieces?”
Suddenly, Michael woke up in his tent. He frantically scanned his surroundings, covered in sweat.
“I’m back?” He took a sigh of relief, recognizing the piles of clothing and liquor bottles laid across the floor of his tent.
He quickly threw on some clothes and stumbled outside. The surroundings of their new campsite were a lush and open field surrounded by a ring of trees in the distance, spread in the very center of the Twilight Forest.
“Yes. It’s all coming back.”
In his moment of a very vivid and foreboding dream, he nearly forgot the discussion he had with Julianna and Isabella a few days prior.
“Why are we leaving the outskirts again?” Michael asked.
The three of them hiked their way out of the Light Realm with all their belongings, bound for where both the realm of Light and Dark touched.
“I told you last night, or did you forget?” Julianna said.
“Sorry. Mind telling me again?” Michael asked with a nervous smile.
Julianna sighed. “We can’t be seen by either of the two major surrounding kingdoms. Two demons and an angel, I mean.
”
“That would be a problem for a lot of reasons,” Michael replied.
“Yes, between the light realm that hates demons and the dark realm that hates … well … you.” Isabella began.
“Thanks,” Michael said with a dim eyed look.
“It just isn’t safe,” Isabella said.
“Will you two be alright? Leaving your homes, that is. And your businesses. I don’t wish to be a burden,” Michael looked down with a downhearted stare.
“You’re not a burden. We’ll be fine as long as we’re careful,” Isabella answered.
“Besides, an assassin can run her business anywhere,” Julianna said.
“I should be fine, too,” Isabella added.
“If you say so,” Michael replied. “Twilight Forest, it is.”
“And days of intense training, here we come,” Julianna stated.
Michael nodded as she stood in Twilight Forest, remembering with half a smile the discussion.
They care a great deal about me. Enough to leave their homes behind and join me, he thought.
Michael watched Isabella and Julianna train just as they had planned. Isabella practiced with the new ax she claimed from Hecate, while Julianna practiced new dual-wielding strategies.
Those two are fighting rather early in the morning, he thought.
He approached them to get a closer look, then stopped.
Wait, he thought. That was just a dream, but I know that was really him: the demon king, Lucifer. The guy we’re after. I need to inform them of this fast.
With a confident breath, he stomped forward with his hands balled. Meanwhile, the girls battled with grins of exhilaration on their faces, moving swiftly through the wind as their weapons sliced the air.
“You’re not half bad for a jewelry heiress.” Julianna smiled, slashing at Isabella’s ax with her swords, one after the other at a ferocious pace.
“Don’t act all surprised.” Isabella quickly locked both her swords in place with the edge of her ax, staring back with a smile. “All aristocrats are taught the art of weapon-wielding at a young age. Though I have no fighting experience aside from my plight with Hecate, you’ll find I’m a fast learner.”
Julianna smirked. “Don’t get cocky. I murder for a living and these swords have shed a great deal of blood.”
She pulled both her swords out of the hold of Isabella’s ax, slashing them in a single movement like a wave of gleaming iron under the sun.
“Is that a threat?” Isabella grinned.
“Perhaps it is.” Julianna grinned back. “You’ll have to fight a lot better if you want to win Michael’s heart.”
“No problem,” Isabella refuted.
The two of them continued to spar, sending sparks against one another’s blades when they noticed Michael approaching.
“Speak of the angel,” Julianna said.
“I thought you were going to give me lessons in duel-wielding,” said Michael as he walked over to them.
“So, you finally woke up, I see. It’s almost noon, you know?” said Julianna.
“Sorry, I had this really weird dream,” said Michael.
“You tell us that every day,” said Isabella.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” said Michael. He paused and thought back to his dreams over the past couple of weeks.
“Anyway, I’m busy getting Isabella in shape. Between her lack of familiarity with her new weapon and her weak healing magic, she’ll be easy to beat,” said Julianna.
“Oh, fuck off! You know it was my healing magic that won me my battle against Hecate,” said Isabella.
“That and your new etherial form,” Julianna began, “I still can’t believe you could achieve such power. I must admit I’m a bit jealous.”
“Remember that the next time you try talking down to me,” Isabella replied.
“As for you, Michael, I told you we’d be sparring this morning at seven. Would it kill to get up in time?”
Michael remembered the last two training sessions he spent with her, both of which ended in his quick defeat; his sword was tossed through the air and he fell against the ground, back first and aching before slowly rising to repeat the same experience against his better judgment until the sunset.
“Actually, it just might.”
Julianna groaned. “Your lack of resolution is your problem. You grew up a servant, so you never felt you could achieve much. Well, that changes now, do you understand?”
Michael took a deep breath, recalling his encounter with Lucifer. Every second left him chilling with despair but also filled him with the resolution she spoke of. To change his destiny for himself.
“I understand,” Michael began. “And there’s something I’d like to tell you. Both of you, actually.”
“Really?” Julianna asked.
“Must be pretty serious for you to be wearing that stoic face,” Isabella said.
The two of them snickered in amusement, as Michael took a deep breath, ready to unfurl the findings in his dream.
Suddenly, the sky warped, changing colors into a distorted grid-like appearance. It was like nothing they’d ever seen before, stopping them all in place as something tore its way through.
“What’s going on?” Isabella asked.
“My vision. Of something from another world,” said Michael. “It’s just like what I saw in my dream with him. But what is it? What does it mean?”
“Your what?” Julianna asked, confused.
The cacophony brought by the fissure forming in the sky blocked out their conversation. They watched in awe as a strange golden aircraft plummeted like a meteor towards the ground. Its impact created a massive crater.
Lost for words, Michael and the girls cautiously approached this otherworldly phenomenon. A feeling of dread consumed him, certain that what laid before him did, in fact, come from another world.
Chapter 2
Unexpected Visitors
N
one of them had ever seen anything like this before—the sky tearing apart. A strange object plummeting down in a bit of smoke and quaking the ground was all as strange as it was unsettling to them.
Julianna slowly approached the crater as it filled with steam from the unidentified object.
“What do you think this thing is?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said a bewildered Isabella.
“I think that Hecate woman may have been telling the truth about the existence of multiple dimensions,” Julianna replied, her eyes fixated on the clearing steam emitting from the object to reveal its golden shade.
“You think this thing came from another dimension?” Isabella asked.
“I do. As for which dimension, I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” said Julianna.
Dimensions?” Michael thought. “Other worlds?”
He nervously gulped, startled by the touch of Isabella’s hand on his shoulder.
“Whatever you were telling us before, I think it’ll have to wait.”
Michael was lost in bewilderment. He nodded with hesitation. “But, can it?”
The three of them watched in amazement as the entirety of the golden aircraft came into view, revealing its disheveled state.
Suddenly, the doors on either side of the object opened before two figures made their way out. The figures came in the clear—enough to be apparent as women. One of them had jagged chin-length blue hair, and the other had straight elbow-length pink hair, each covering their forehead with bangs and a set of golden goggles.They took a proper gander at Michael and his friends, who responded with unnerved looks.
“Unreal. There were people in that thing?” Michael said.
“Yeah, people…” Said Julianna.
Her response completely flew over Michael. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Women are just fucking falling from the sky to be with you, aren’t they?” Isabella pouted.
“Well, I don’t know about that…” Michael replied with a nervou
s laugh.
The two women dusted themselves off and then climbed out of the crater to the same level of ground as he and his friends. The woman with pink hair darted towards Michael and stopped a few inches from him.
“Hey, haven’t you ever heard of personal space?” Isabella shouted.
“Calculating,” the woman instead replied with an unusual device in her hand.
“Excuse me. When someone talks to you, the decent thing to do is make some damn eye contact,” Isabella said, growing more annoyed.
“I don’t think she’s listening,” said Julianna.
“Is there anything we can help you with?” Michael nervously asked.
He inspected the woman. She had on a pair of black leather boots, pants to complement the dark theme her low-cut top also embraced, and a black trench coat. He’d never seen anyone dress like that before. Still, he could tell by her crimson gaze she was a demon.
“Calculating,” the pink-haired woman repeated.
The blue-haired woman moved around Julianna and Isabella, sniffing them like an animal. She was also clad in all black—flatter shoes, shorts, a low-cut top, but no trench coat. Her eyes were an equally deep shade of red to the other woman’s.
They’re both demons? Michael thought. Just where did they come from?
“Hey, what do you think this is, you freak?” Julianna said to the blue-haired woman.
“Yeah, if this is your way of communicating, you’re just as much of your weirdo as your friend over there,” Isabella said, now frustrated with both of them.
“Done calculating. This man doesn’t have what we’re looking for. He’s useless,” said the pink-haired woman, looking callously in Michael’s eyes.
“Hey, who are you calling useless?” Michael said, annoyed.
“I am calling you useless. You do not have what I am looking for. Must I repeat myself?”
“What a piece of work this woman is.” Isabella scowled.
Julianna whispered, “Hey, look at their eyes. They must be demons like us.”
“And potentially dangerous,” Isabella replied, almost losing herself in their gazes.
“They could be working with the Legion of Morningstar,” Julianna said.