✧ Chapter 65 ✧

As Voltaze watched in awe at the happiness filling everyone else’s faces in the planetarium, he suddenly felt something foreign to himself. It was confusing only because he never experienced being around others like this.

All he knew when growing up was the anger and pain that drove him to hate who he was. In the grand scheme of what was now, the problem didn’t so much come from agony itself since he could no longer feel it.

It was imagining what it would have been like if his familial species hadn’t succumbed to the will of those vampire wizards who invaded their world and renamed it under their own name.

While he did have The Eternal Light Of Time, Reality, and Life, the looming issue of Prism remained. All that deity and its untrustworthy guardians would do, boiled down to taking the life he truly sought after, away from him again.

Touching where his birthmark was, he began to sense a disturbance from the inside upon remembering that he was still a caged being. He wanted to let go of all of it, but he didn’t want foolish omniversal deities making decisions for him after the fact either. There was nothing stopping someone from bringing him back alive when he found everything about it to be unsatisfying. Even Death itself wouldn’t be able to stop Prism’s domineering will.

One conclusion kept bombarding his mind profusely:

Destroy everything so that nothingness could be restored as it was meant to.

To destroy Prism meant sacrificing himself and Eternika in the end to get there, but even then, he also wanted to end The Lucid Light as well out of already not trusting his entire life’s true purpose with anything or anyone completely.

With all of this stagnating his mind, Styra looked at Voltaze whose eyes were beginning to glow while he was staring off into space.

Walking over to him, with Cherry and Eternika following along out of curiosity, they realized what was actually going on.

“Hey Voltaze, you don’t have to worry anymore. You can still fix what happened to you. If you were able to bring back our friends you can bring back—“

“My family? Entire worlds and galaxies that I already destroyed? I’m not so sure about that Styra. Look at everyone around you. These beings are caged. Forced to feel what they are not. Our choices are better suited to ending forces that exist outside of us. They are the ones causing us to be this way. Giving us no choice but to live with our loss. When it’s all said and done, these worlds will fall. If Prism returns and we do nothing to end this undesirable existence, the Omniverse will forever be a prison.”

Styra’s memories started to dwindle back to when she was sitting there against the wall in the Liquatics Laboratory’s drain room. When she attempted to end herself by all means necessary. At that time, she had known what it was like to feel trapped, but it took courage to fix these problems rather than escape them.

The worst was always going to happen if she were to persist with obsessing over the foundation of her choices. Especially if that came with idealizing the end of everything in pursuit of that goal.

“There are better ways we can solve this. While figuring out who we are is conflicting, abruptly ending everything is going to do more harm than good. That would make us no better than Prism pulling a Tetrahedron event.”

Immediately into the discussion, Eternika thought up of an idea that could help them work together to defeat the evil that was plaguing everyone already.

“Wait… Styra has a point. To add to this, what if instead of letting Chaosity infest existence at the cost of complete nothingness, we could destroy the Scroll Of Scarlet Spades? The writing contained within it is where the evil would spawn out of it if Tetrahedron were to occur. This very scroll was stated in myths to have been imbued with the highest power of all Ten Eternal Lights. Hierarchy.”

It sounded interesting to the majority who already knew about The Eternal Lights, but Styra was also questioning Eternika’s logic out of trying to gain more context in order to understand what the weapon was trying to say.

“Isn’t that the same Eternal Light that disabled all of the ones we collected on our previous adventure before we fought Strage? Correct me if I’m wrong, but, would Cherry’s power have the ability to help us destroy it?”

“Yes, but that scroll is guarded by Vladequin’s army. We already know about their beliefs in Prism. Hindsight could suggest that there was something unusual going on behind Amethion’s back knowing Vladequin was resurrected multiple times without any explanation as to why. I suspect Prism could be the cause behind it.”

“You’re basically implying we would have to travel to Deveurx’s Ghastly Mountains so we can destroy the scroll,” interrupted Voltaze.

“Indeed. If we can distract the army while getting someone to enter the domain where it is kept, the one to enter could use their fractal powers to obliterate it. In this case, Cherry is our best bet,” stated the weapon.

When Voltaze heard what their plan was, he started to see an opportunity for him to fulfill his own mission.

“I see. In that case, let’s get a move on.”

Although Styra was keen on getting it done as well, she noticed Flight approaching her quietly while everyone else watched.

“I don’t trust this guy Styra. He may have freed a few of us just now, but something about him holding back on letting the others go is suspicious. I think he has a hidden motive behind all of it,” whispered Flight.

Wondering what to make of this information, she looked back at Voltaze who was facing away from them with his fists clenched. Almost as if he already could hear what was going on.

She realized they couldn’t just go there without keeping Voltaze in check. The strange glare he was giving off that they couldn’t see certainly didn’t make him all that trustworthy to the group.

There was only one way to confirm if his motives he had within him were real.

“Hey Voltaze, one more thing… If you really are helping us, I want you to prove it by giving The Eternal Light Of Reality to me.”

Everyone including Eternika was surprised to hear her demand the power of one Eternal Light. The weapon specifically, wondered why she would backtrack on her promise of not using any of them. Even then, to only ask for one was just as unusual.

“By giving me that Eternal Light, you’ll be helping me out as you promised to. I did this before with Emeraldion to unveil my past through myself. I need you to show me that we can trust you. In return, we will already do the same.”

Silence dragged out the intensified situation that could be felt across the room.

After awhile, Voltaze turned around with The Eternal Light Of Reality hovering in his left hand. Without a single shred of hesitation, he let the light particles enter Styra’s suit for the first time.

A cyan glow emitted itself from the star symbol as she started to feel a more immense sensation of power than before. It was numbing yet tolerable in the same instance.

Before long, the Kosmika form began to show itself as it had previously. However, instead of it stopping there, the scintillating light erupting from her began to reveal something disturbing as Styra had closed her eyes to envision outer space.

She awoke in what looked to be a huge shed of some kind. The rustling of heavy footsteps outside of the door in this dark place caught her off-guard. That was until she heard strange sounds coming from two figures that had turned on the dim lights in this place.

One looked a lot like Voltaze while the other had nearly the same physique, except it was more feminine and even had a certain hairstyle which Styra couldn’t make out too well from how blurry her vision was.

Regardless, her body started to run on its own to the shadowy figures.

No way…

It couldn’t be what she thought it was…

Could it?

Just as she was catching on to the experience, she woke back up in Pearl Planetarium with a purplish smoke rising up from herself. As it began to wear away, she felt different. Looking at her hands, they had a striking resemblance to Voltaze’s, except they were a bit more skinnier and a hot peachy orange color.

There was also a plain purple dress she now wore that matched the original azure robe with the ten stars decorated on it. For what it was, this garment didn’t go above her shoulders. The same could be said for the skirt that went as low as her knees.

Beside this, she felt a lot shorter in height. The long black wavy hair she had was now up to the neck and her eyes were abnormally bigger and more expressive than before.

“Did I just transform into an alien?” she asked in extreme doubt while glancing around at everyone else who were ultimately surprised by what they were seeing.

“You are a female Zethyrian, but not born of the same natural skin or hair colors that they had… I don’t understand how this could be possible. The Zethyrians died out because of UVOCA invading Deveurx. Those damn wizards made a deal and betrayed their messengers for a different way of life. This doesn’t make sense, unless—”

Pausing in-between his words, Voltaze stopped to consider the only other logical explanation.

It was one that made him want to vomit if this was true.

“One other possible event suggests that I was not the last Zethyrian to be alive.”

“Hold on a second. You’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting,” cautioned Flight, as he was already able to piece together the theory being strung together.

Voltaze gave a deep sigh as it was inevitable to see what was going on with Styra.

“Styra is clearly a female Zethyrian who has been experimented on for the sake of transforming her into a human girl.”