The Sun Rises on Good and Evil

A rain of sharp shadows pelted over the people. Not a soul cared.

I cried out loudly, screaming that they’d get to shelter, forgoing the touch of the black sludge dripping onto their bodies.

But nobody listened to me. They relished in the shadows now painting over their flesh.

These shadows entered into them, burrowing deep into their souls. With red eyes, claws of bone, ash trailing from their hair, they turned to me to unleash their pungent ways.

In one unanimous cry, their voices beckoned me to submit to the darkness, to just partake of one bite and be satisfied.

But I said no.

The ire invoked was like none other. I was now an alternate way, a path they couldn’t understand, and they hated me, because I ate of the light.

The sun sided with me, working against these accusers. Together, we made a covenant.

“Take my light,” the Sun proclaimed. “Take it and save man.”

But from the sea, deep within its depths, a great serpent sided with man, allowing them to wield the dark against us.

I asked man, “Why do you hate me that you’d side with the serpent from the depths?”

The serpent had told them how to reply to me.

“You hated us first! Trying to take who we are away!”

And it was then that man cast the first stone.

War had begun. One that would swallow up the world in its clutches.

Even as I was forced to the bowels of destruction, watching mountains fall to idols of darkness, prayers for mankind still left my mouth.

-A Prophecy of the Eighth Star of God-

-☆◇☆-

The Book of Prophecies. Another piece of the puzzle to understanding my future...I suppose.

The humans believe I'm the so-called; Eighth Star of God. A saviour angel who'll protect them from perpetual darkness. If it's true, then I'm a little scared of what I just read coming true.

On that note, let me introduce myself. My name is Yalda Asamo; a seven year old Exceed who's traveling the world to find her daddy. I haven't seen him in years, and he recently sent someone to bring me back to him.

We're not exactly sure why he's looking for me now, but it may have something to do with the prophecy I was just reading. I really really hope it doesn't though. Maybe he just wants to see me after four years of being away?

So, I started reading this book because I woke up from a bad dream. As you can imagine, it didn't really help me relax.

If only I had my stuffed unicorn with me. What I wouldn’t do for just one squeeze of her right now!

Since I was awake and spooked, I wasn’t going back to sleep. I stepped out of my bottom bunk bed and climbed up to the top one. The jitteriness from the train cabin jostling around made it a challenge to balance myself.

Uncle was sleeping in the upper bed. I leaned over him and started whispering in his ear.

“Uncle…” I called to him, quietly trying to wake him up. “Uncle, wake up.”

I poked his face for good measure. He finally started to wake up.

“Hmm?” He hummed, curiously blinking his eyes. “What's wrong?”

“Uncle, I can’t sleep. I had a really bad dream and read a weird book.”

He was super groggy, but sat up and pulled his fedora from the bed railing.

“Bad dreams end when you wake up.” He smiled, patting me on the head. “How about I show you something to take your mind off it?”

He leapt down from the top bunk, then put his hat neatly on his head. I took his hand and we quietly walked out of our room into the hallway.

We were the only passengers out and about. Everyone else on the train was asleep.

“Yalda, can you tell me what a train needs to move across the ground?”

Let’s see…trains run on coal…but he didn’t ask what the fuel source was.

A train has railing on the wheels that make it go CHUGA CHUGA! But I don’t think that was what he meant either…

Oh! Trains need tracks!

“Tracks.” I answered.

“Very good. So it stands to reason that this train would need tracks to move at all, correct?”

Well, yeah. Right? How could a train move if it didn’t have tracks to go across?

If he hadn’t shown me then, I would have thought this train was the same…but things were a little special here.

This train wasn’t running on normal tracks, it wasn’t even on tracks at all. It was flying! Flying high over a huge lake!

“Wow!” I said, Uncle lifting me up higher at the end of the caboose.

I was sitting on his shoulders now, I could see all the way to the frosty blue horizon!

“I can see my house from here!” I shouted.

“How can you see our house from here?” Uncle poked me in the side. "We don't live anywhere near this place."

“Oh yeah,” I snickered. He's so gullible. “Hey, Uncle…” I poked his forehead from above, “how come the train is flying?”

Apparently, once these trains hit a certain speed on regular tracks, they can take off a few dozen meters up in the air using magic air streams.

They followed these mana stream, using them like a tunnel to fly through. It allowed it to hover right over obstacles that it normally couldn't go through. The catch is that it was a bit slower, and it could only get so high up.

“If you ever have trouble flying,” Uncle started, “just remember…if humans could get this heavy mechanical marvel up in the air, you can do it too.”

Oooh…what wisdom! Uncle’s super smart like that.

Now I was excited to start flying again! My wings needed a little stretching.

“Uncle, can I fly for a few minutes?” I asked.

“I think that’s an excellent idea.” He approved.

One excited jump got me off his back and into the air, my feathery wings spawned and I caught myself off the side of the train. All my momentum stopped, the train continued to race away.

Uncle jumped over the caboose railing and spawned his own wings, but his were more like refined pieces of blue glass, loosely hovering together.

He flew over to me, then pointed to a mountain not far away.

“We’ll head to the spire of that mountain, there’s something else I’d like to show you.”

High altitudes weren’t any trouble for me. This would be easy as cake!

Uncle took the lead, but was going a little fast, so it was hard to keep up.

“Doing alright back there?” Uncle turned his head back, midflight.

“Y…yeah!” I raised a fist into the air.

Flapping my wings so fast just to keep up was making them really sore. My breath was getting heavier the faster I went.

“Uncle!” I tried to shout, but my strength was waning. “Slow down!”

He immediately turned back and caught me in his arms. I snuggled up to his side and caught my breath. My wings wrapped around him.

He let out a chuckle, smiling like this was his plan all along.

“You’ve been doing great so far. I’ll take you the rest of the way up.”

It might have been a combination of my lack of sleep and how I was still recovering from some recent hard battles, but I took him up on his offer.

Now that I wasn’t focusing on flying, I got a look around at the dark land below. Most of this land past the lake was forest plains. There were a few houses and barns. With my night vision active, I spotted a few nocturnal animals finding safe places to hide for the coming day.

A couple of birds were chirping. They looked similar to a robin, but with blue bellies. A few of them flew beside us in a V formation, eventually gliding back down to the trees.

"How were the birds able to keep up with you going so fast?" I asked.

"They were following the draft of my wings," he replied. "It's how birds travel together for such long periods of time without feeling tired."

"Ooh, I see."

Maybe I needed to learn that. Was that what he wanted me to do when he was going so fast?

Uncle finally got us all the way up to the tippy top of the mountain! A few rocks worked really well as seats.

"YEECOLA!" I sang off the mountain, hearing my voice echo forever away.

You could see the curve of the world from up here. Way off in the distance were all sorts of cities and houses just peeking over the horizon. My telescope vision was such a gift.

“I bet you can see a lot up here, can’t you?” he asked.

Being so high up was really amazing. It really felt like I was gazing down at all of mankind, seeing the whole planet that we lived on.

“I can see everything up here,” I marveled at the sight.

“5…4…3…” he was counting down to something. What was it? “2…1…”

A bright light flashed in my eyes from the east. The brightness would have been blinding to a normal person.

That’s the sun. It’s sunrise!

“Uncle, look! Look!! The sun!”

“We're so high up, that we're the first to see it today.”

Even though I could see the sun, the ground was still dark. It reminded me of the dream I had where me and daddy were standing on a cliff, looking down at a sea of shadow.

I don’t like that dream, but for some reason I keep having it.

“Uncle, do you think we’ll find daddy soon?” I asked.

“We have an idea where he is,” he said. “Once we save Yamin’s town from those demons, we’ll get to the capital and find transportation to him.”

This whole journey started because we had to find daddy. But before getting to him, we had to stop demons that were taking over a town.

All this stuff about defeating demons and darkness…it was scary. I’d faced down a few demons so far, and they were all just as terrible as you’d imagine. Like a never ending nightmare.

The nice thing about nightmares is that you wake up when they finish. You can’t wake up from real life.

“Uncle, do you think were ready to fight the demons in Verrenvill?”

He nodded.

“We’ll be ready. I’ll make sure of that. Let’s just worry about getting there first.”

In a few hours, we'd have to find a boat to get to the mainland of Erdreich. It was going to be a busy day, especially with the surprises fate had in store for us.