Chapter Five: Anyone Out There?
When Starla pulled Saiyin out of the forest, Kaleb and the others quickly came to her side and helped take the burden off of her. Kaleb pulled her aside and she collapsed when she had finally been relieved of Saiyin’s weight.
“Starla, are you okay?”
“Alicia…” said Starla, “It did something to Alicia…”
“What are you talking about?”
“The demon. The demon has done something to her!”
“You found your friend?” asked Kaleb. “She is alive?”
“I shot her!” shouted Starla. “She attacked Saiyin!”
“Starla, I need you to stay calm. I need you to…”
It was too late. Starla had already passed out.
Starla didn’t know if what she was experiencing could really even be considered a dream anymore. It was more like a movie of her memories, of moments that she could not recall when she was awake. They always came in such a strange fashion.
She found herself standing in a damp room. There was no light; there was no heat. It was the old abandoned temple and the six soldiers were crammed within the doorway.
“I can’t hear them anymore,” said William.“We still can’t risk going out there for a few days.”
“Are you suggesting we stay in here?” asked Alicia.
“Just for a little while,” replied Robert.
“Why don’t you and Anthony go check this place out and see if there is somewhere a little more comfortable in here?”
“Seriously?” asked Anthony. “No offense but I don’t want to…”
“Fine,” said Robert. “Starla and Jeremy will do the scouting.”
“Great,” added Starla. “Just what I always wanted.”
Jeremy and Starla had started sliding down the entrance tunnel just a minute after Robert had issued his orders. They were careful about each step they took since they were both aware that the Zetrani had been master craftsmen when it had come to setting traps in their temples. Eventually they arrived at the end of the tunnel and found a large empty room.
“That’s odd,” said Jeremy as he flashed a light around the room. “Why would they build a temple then not bother putting anything inside of it?”
“Maybe the Kujaens already took it?” she suggested.
“No way, Emperor Kujah has been strict about the temples. If anyone took something from this place they took it a long time ago. I guess we’ll never…Oh cool, check this out over here!”
Starla turned and came over to where Jeremy was standing. There were dozens of lines on the wall that seemed to be carved out in ancient Zetrani. As she recalled the memory; Starla immediately recognized many of the symbols as the ones she had seen on the stone pillar.
“Well,” said Jeremy, “I guess it’s clear in here. We’ll head back and tell the others that they can get some rest. This room should be big enough for all of us to sleep.”
He stepped back toward Starla and when he did there was an odd clicking sound.The next thing they knew they were both showered in a strange blue light and their feet had left the ground. They could still barely see anything but there was a sudden feeling that hundreds of people were looking at them. It felt as though they had suddenly become the center of everyone’s attention. When Jeremy froze up and stared out straight ahead, Starla feared something had happened to him but before she could do anything she too felt a wave come over her. There was a sound of whispers coming from all around. Her heart felt like it was pounding its way out of her chest.Then, she felt a blinding light and a strange warmth.
For a split second, she felt comfortable.
Before she could see what came next, Starla felt herself being stirred from her slumber. The warmth and comfort faded away and she suddenly felt the surface of the cold bed and the voices of the guards that were frantically moving just outside her hut.“Starla, are you still with us?” asked Kaleb.
“Starla?”
“K…Kaleb?”She opened her eyes and saw the man sitting at her side. He had her hand in his own and when he saw her look up at him he smiled wide.
“I’m glad to see that you’re okay,” he said. “We were all worried.”
Starla turned slightly and saw that all the commotion was coming from a short distance away. There were nearly six women and two guards on the other side of the room and they were all huddled around a single bed.
“Who…is Saiyin okay?” asked Starla.
Kaleb turned to look at the women and then shook his head slightly.“I’m afraid the demon has done its worst.”
Starla was reminded of what she had seen in the jungle. She thought of Alicia and how she had fired on her several times before making a run for it. Everything that had happened in the woods in those few brief moments had changed everything for her. No matter what had happened, Alicia was right; Starla didn’t belong on this planet. She needed to get the crystal into the GPS and try to find the other survivors before any more people suffered. It was clear that their presence on this planet was causing this chaos.
“I’m leaving,” she said as she looked to Kaleb. “Too many people are getting hurt because of me. I’ve got to try and use the GPS to find the others and then figure out how to get off this planet.”
“Starla, we’ve been losing guards for weeks. What makes you think any of this is your fault? Even if it is, what do you think leaving will do?”
“Kaleb, that demon did something to Alicia. It turned her into something terrible. How do I know that it won’t do the same thing to me if it gets the chance?”
Kaleb sighed. “What if this was all just part of the prophecy I showed you?”
“The prophecy?”
“It says that the four gods will come to Deibren. Maybe Alicia has taken her place as one of the four.”
“Are you saying that she became Morda?”
“It is possible that she has accepted her fate.”
“It isn’t fate,” said Starla angrily. “If anything, it was forced on us. I have memories of our lives before this place. We weren’t all planning to drop down on your world and become gods. We were just doing our jobs as soldiers.”
“Sometimes, our fate isn’t exactly what we plan for.”
“No, the Alicia I knew would never willingly do what she did in the woods.”
“What did she do?” asked Kaleb.
“She used the demon to attack Saiyin.”
“That leaves me little choice but to believe that she is Morda, fallen to this world and here to stay. The Ca’oDu has always referenced a time when she would try to claim the world of light.”
“I gunned her down,” said Starla. “I killed Alicia. She wasn’t Morda.”
“What?” asked Kaleb with confusion weaving in his voice.
“She’s dead. I killed Alicia in the woods. If she had been Morda, that wouldn’t have worked. If you guys want to claim responsibility for that demon out there that’s fine with me but my transport did not bring down a few survivors to take up some holy mantle on this planet.”
“Is there nothing in you that wonders why you crashed here?”
“I will never stop wondering,” replied Starla. “I’m just not going to let my mind drift off to thoughts that are simply impossible. I’m not Vorda; Alicia wasn’t Morda.”
Across the room the guards suddenly had to hold down Saiyin when he began to scream wildly, causing many of the women in the room to back away.
“Morda!” he screamed. “I have seen Morda! Her evil is alive and well! Her hatred flows in the darkness! We must all run and hide! We must go to the Holy Plains and call upon the power of Zata to save us!”
A moment later and the young guard had fallen into a coma.
Finally, unable to sit and watch any more of this, Starla threw herself out of bed and left the hut with tears streaming down her face. All she wanted to do was escape this world. All she wanted to do was remember who she was and find away to escape this nightmare that she had been livi
ng since she woke up in the crashed transport.She made her way to the center of the village and then turned to the hut that held the GPS and quickly went inside before Kaleb came running over to her. When he got to the doorway she had already picked up the device and was coming back his way.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m getting my things together,” she replied.
“Starla, you can’t just leave like this.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Why don’t you reconsider? Maybe there is a way we can help you understand.”
“There is nothing to understand!” she shouted angrily. “I’m not Vorda!”
Kaleb turned away from her for a moment and then shook his head.“Fine, you’re not Vorda. I got it wrong. Does that somehow make it any smarter to run off to find your friends when one of them has already been attacked by the demon? You don’t even know if the others are alive.”
“That’s exactly what I plan to find out,” She replied. “Now give me the crystal.”
Kaleb stared at her for a moment and then reached into his pocket and pulled out the perfectly formed crystal that Starla had gotten from the pillar. When she slipped it inside the machine it started to power up so she quickly flipped it over and shut it off.“I need to get high up somewhere. I need my signal to go pretty far.”
“Okay, I’ll take you to the hills to the West. Perhaps there you’ll find something.”
Starla waited for Kaleb to gather some supplies and while she was standing there she saw several women leave the hut where Saiyin was staying. They were crying and had blood all over their arms. When Keket, the head nurse, finally came out of the doorway she looked straight ahead at Starla’s questioning eyes.
She simply shook her head.
Feeling her emotions well up inside, Starla suddenly took off running. She ran past the guards, out of the village, and she ran as fast as she could for any high ground she could see. She wasn’t going to stop running again until she couldn’t see the village and she couldn’t see the forest where her ship had crashed. She would run for days if it helped her get away. All she cared about was running.
She didn’t belong here.
Her running eventually turned to a jog and her jogging eventually turned to a crawl. By the time she had reached the hills she was exhausted and surprised to find that the area was quite rocky. She quickly moved to the largest formation she could see and clambered up to the top. When she looked out to the West she saw large grassy plains and a single dirt road that seemed to stretch on for miles. In the North she saw another forest and just beyond the hills was a large river where she could get a drink of water.She reached down and pulled the GPS out so that she could see it and then activated the device and waited patiently as the circular screen was searched by the positioning signal. She stood there nervously, waiting for something to show. The longer the time dragged on the more she realized she wouldn’t find anything. The feeling of failure was starting to come over her and she looked back to the East but couldn’t see anything.
Everything was going wrong.
“Why am I here?” Starla suddenly shouted. “Why did I crash us here?”The wind whipped by and it sent a shiver down her spine but did not weaken the anger that she felt bubbling up inside.
“What do you want from me?” she screamed now. “I’m not a god. I’m just a soldier. My name is Starla Knight and I’m an Alliance soldier! What am I doing here? Why did you take Alicia? What do you want?”
In all her anger Starla threw the GPS down and it smashed against the rocks as it rolled down the hill for almost twenty feet. She looked down at it and then shook her head and turned back toward the village.
Then… she heard it.
BLIP…BLIP…BLIP.
She turned back to the GPS device.
BLIP…BLIP…BLIP.
She slipped down the edge of the rocks and slowly turned the device over. There, on the edge of the circular screen, the device had picked up a signal.
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About the Author:
Joel Stephens is a young Technical Writer working in Orlando, Florida. He runs BearSock Books and has published several other ebooks that are available for readers. Readers can discover other titles at BearSock.com
Once and Again – https://bearsock.com/crusader-chronicles/once-and-again/
The Pain Beneath – https://bearsock.com/crusader-chronicles/the-pain-beneath/
The Dark Horizon – https://bearsock.com/crusader-chronicles/dark-horizons/
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BearSock Home: https://bearsock.com
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