Volume 1 Chapter 20 the Star Sky

Chapter 20 the Star Sky

I

Everything had ended.

Half the people in this city had been killed by this disaster of locusts and one of them was Professor Fames, the second powerful man in this kingdom.

There were corpses everywhere in the city and some vultures had flown here to consume them. It would be a grand feast for those scavengers.

Mad ones could change the world, because this world was unstable and the so-called civilization could be easily burnt to the ground by the madness inside humans’ heart. Madness was born out of the order, and it could in turn destroy the order one day.

Luke Fames was lying on the ground at the centre of the city square. His brain had been damaged by Floria’s arrow. Since his brain had been damaged, nothing could save him and he would die soon as a sinner.

“Is that what you want?” Aislina walked towards Luke and asked.

“I don’t know … Maybe it is exactly what I want, letting my insanity burn this pathetic city and turning it into ruins. What is your name, elf?” replied Luke.

“My name is Aislina,” answered Aislina.

“Umm … I remember … Aislina … That’s a beautiful name. I always think that this world is hopeless because those who are controlling this world are too strong and no one is match for them, but you are, Aislina. I can sense those power inside you, you can change this world, in a good way,” whispered Luke.

“I know …” murmured Aislina.

“I regret. I know I have done something terrible and I have killed a lot of innocent citizens… And I know that you four are different than me. You haven’t been devoured by anger and there are true kindness and love in your hearts. All of you are pure, unlike me. Living in a world like this, everyone will be dirty inevitably,” drawled Luke.

“Rest in peace, Luke,” Aislina blessed.

“If there is afterlife, I hope that I could live in a pure world, breathing the air of the wilderness filled by the scents of flowers. In that world, I will see stars at night, those beautiful stars, carrying massages from the distance that I never dare to imagine. In that world, everything is mysterious and fantastic. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far, but we have voyaged far,” muttered Luke.

His voice gradually faded into nothingness. Peacefully, he closed his eyes.

The four had ridden their horses to this city and tethered them to a giant pillar at the entrance of this city. However, the horses had already been eaten by those hungry mad locusts.

They had to walk to Infernal Mountain therefore…

II

Sir Bellum had been neutralized, blasted into cremains by Aislina’s magical spore.

Doctor Plague had died too, with his heart stabbed by Floria’s arrow.

Professor Fames had been killed as well, by those crazy mindless cultists of his own beloved son.

Now, of the four ministers of the Grey Factory, only Master Mortis, the strongest one among them was still alive.

After a journey of two weeks, the adventurers arrived at the foot of Infernal Mountain. Though this mountain was much shorter than Svartalfaheim Mountain, there was still a distance between the foot of the mountain and the peak of it.

The temperature on the mountain was rather high, and salty sweats were streaming down the bodies of the four. They could feel that there were heat waves coming from the core of the mountain and penetrating into the air above it.

There are few trees on this mountain, but the weeds were growing madly and mosquitos were everywhere, which could, luckily, be repelled by Aislina’s magic. Hot springs with steams that looked like mists lay everywhere on this burning mountain, and some of the hot springs were even boiling.

Clearly, the power of fire was lurking inside this mountain. Fire signalled the beginning of the civilization of humans. Without fire, there would be no technologies, but fire was not only a power of creation, but also a power of destruction.

Inside the Pocket Dimension, the Cube of Necrus was lamenting. Without doubt, the cube had sense the energy inside this mountain that could destroy it, and the mountain was excited too, because it was going to devour the darkest thing in this world.

Hot wind was blowing, and Aislina’s hair was dancing in the air. However, there was a sign of hesitation in her eyes. She knew that whom she would face was Master Mortis, the most powerful man in this world with unbelievable power.

“Aislina, about Blightess …” whispered Yanni.

“Blightess? Oh, I guess that she is more of a split personality of me,” replied Aislina.

“Like schizophrenia?” pursued Yanni.

“Perhaps … In fact, I think I used to have real depression,” recalled Aislina.

“Depression?” questioned Starsha.

“After my mother died, my world died too. I had lost all of my hope at the moment. Every day, I thought about killing myself, but I told myself that I was the last elf and I might be able to change everything. However, solitude was burning me … I even began to talk to myself, or to be precise, the alter ego of me and she didn’t have a name. I guess Blightess was that alter ego of me…” narrated Aislina.

“You’ve never told us about that …” Yanni pointed out.

“I don’t want you to think that I am a psychopath … In fact, when I met Floria and Yanni, I wanted kill them, and my alter ego told me to kill them too. But I was too lonely and I only wanted to talk with someone,” explained Aislina.

“So the Blightess is not a reversed version of Sylvana, but something inside you?” speculated Yanni.

“He can be the dark side of Sylvana and the dark side of me at the same time. Sylvana is a complicated concept, Floria. She is an entity connected to the mental world of elven wizards and the Spring of Sylvana is made by us elven wizards too … It’s complex, but since I am the last elf now, Sylvana’s essence is somehow defined by me,” explained Aislina.

After an hour, dusk came and they had to spend the night halfway up. They had already arrived into the clouds, inside which the world looked misty. Scholars said that the clouds were in fact composed of masses of water drops or ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere, similar to mists.

Above the clouds, the blue sky came into their sights. In a world where the air was contaminated by smokes from factories, the four had never seen the true azure colour of the sky, because due to the air pollution, the colour of the sky was always bluish-grey when seen from below.

From above, the sea of clouds looked like some sort of marshmallows. In the distant, the sun was sinking into the clouds, which soon would disappear. The falling sun was rough on eyes, but it was beautiful.

No one knew what the sun really was, and the scholars said that it was a giant fire ball circling the earth while some said that the sun was in fact a huge star seen during the daytime.

Anyway, emanating twilights, the sun looked like an egg yolk.

“Wow, this is my first visit to somewhere above the clouds. That’s wonderful!” exclaimed Starsha.

“Yeah, it’s my first time too, and it is also the first time I see the blue real sky. Because of those factories, the sky beneath the clouds is always bluish-grey. My mother always told me that my hair was as blue as the sky, but I didn’t know what she meant, because in my memories, the sky was always grey or white… Now I understand her,” drawled Aislina.

“That’s a beautiful colour, both the sky and your hair …” whispered Yanni.

“But is it the real colour of the sky? Or is the sky so distant from us that it’s even connected to the blue infinity? The sea is blue too, but the water that composes it is colourless, just like the cerulean sky, which is, however, comprised of colourless air. The sea is connected to the distant infinity too. No one has ever gone to the deepest places of the ocean yes,” breathed Aislina.

“Maybe after this journey, we can be explorers to adventure in this world. Humans are nothing compared to the greater infinite cosmos. We’re too small, so are Sylvana and the world of nature,” suggested Yanni.

“But will we really survive after this? Will we really succeed?” questioned Aislina.

“That depends on you, Aislina. You’re the strongest one among us. If there’s anyone who can defeat Master Mortis, it’s you,” encouraged Floria.

“You’re pressuring her, sis …” complaint Yanni.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” apologized Floria.

“That’s OK, Floria … No matter what happens, I will try my best, because all of you are my friends, so I will protect you until the end of my life,” promised Aislina.

It was dinner time now. Aislina conjured the portal to her Pocket Plane. She reached into the portal and took out some foods from it. However, to her surprise, most foods had decayed and rotten. Obviously, it was the power of the Cube of Necrus that corrupted those foods.

Anyway, it meant that they had to act more quickly because they were going to run out of foods soon.

After a brief dinner, the night finally came.

Because they were at the western slope, they couldn’t see the moon rise. However, something strange happened. Some small dots of light began to appear on the black sky and the number of those bright dots kept rising.

Soon, the whole sky was brimming with those white dots, which illuminated the whole world.

“What are those bright dots?” asked Yanni.

“I don’t know … Maybe … They are the stars,” guessed Floria.

“The stars? Right, we’re above the clouds now, and thus we’re above the necrological smoke emitted by humans … We can see the stars in the sky, like what the ancient people do,” commented Starsha.

“They are beautiful …” purred Aislina.

It was the first time they saw the stars, the beauty of which was rocking their hearts. The stars shone, like some messages over space and time.

Besides the stars, there were also fantastic cloud-like things glowing far on the Milky Way. Perhaps those clouds were so-called nebulae in the fairy tales. Those nebulae seemed to be composed of light itself which was weaved in the outer space by some greater powers of endless energies.

At that moment, everything in this world was drowned in absolute silence, beginning to look at this fantastic scene of the star sky quietly. Compared to stars, humans were nothing, after all, those stars were delivering their lights from those farthest corners in the cosmos, where humans could never be to.

Where did those stars came from? Some said that they were celestials living in the other end of the cosmos, and some said that the sky of the earth was in fact some sort of veil wrapping the earth, and the stars were its hole, outside which was a space of infinite lights.

Anyway, all the scholars knew that, having lived for aeons, most of the stars might be unimaginably older than the history of humans, and even the history of the whole earth. Maybe they had already existed when the earth was still in a chaos of raging elementals.

Bathed in the starlight, the adventurers had fully forgotten why they were here and what their purpose was, because those secular stuff meant nothing compared to the endless universe itself.

“Humans are no more than dust and ashes compared to the stars, and what we do is nothing too,” sighed Yanni.

“No, what we do is not nothing. My mom, the Witch Doctor once told me a story …” retorted Starsha.

“What is the story?” queried Yanni.

“Once upon a time, there was a star on the sky watching the earth. The earth was a small planet full of wars, lies, violence and hatreds, which were too small and ugly compared to the immense universe. However, the star loved watching the earth, because out of the ugliness and wickedness, love and hope were born.

“The star saw people falling in love, fight for their believes, buried in tombs, and turned into cremains … One day, she even came to the earth as a mortal to experience the life of us, giving up her immortality as a celestial star.

“What we’re fighting for are meaningful, friends. They’re the most beautiful things on this earth and even in the whole universe. Burning in our hearts, they’re more precious than the infinite space and time across aeons,” narrated Starsha.

“Wait, Starsha, your name means stars in human language, right?” inquired Aislina.

“Bingo. You’re a clever girl, Aislina. My mother believed that even the darkest nights could be illuminated by the shining stars, and thus she gave me this name,” Starsha nodded.