The Seventh Act

I don't really expect many to read this, but comments of any nature are appreciated. I may post more considering this is a start of a novel. That depends on if I fall prey to procrastination. Yeah, you'll be confused. It's novel number seven in my own head. :eek:

ACT VII -- Chapter 01 !

That final message from the Moderative-to-Physical relay satellite let loose the skeletons Lord Vann had held inside for eons. She sat hunched on her iconic throne before an empty castle chamber, the red carpet that usually held the weight of a dozen valets left vacant. They knew better. Best to face her wrath from their insubordination than to be present during one of her fits. Even then her frosty eyes shined with a glint of madness. Her long tangled mess of hair and permanent crazed grin acted a beacon to any newcomers to steer clear, not that lord Vann would allow any such filth to draw close enough.

A mechanical messenger in the form of a speaker on wheels imparted the calamitous news.

“Our lord Vann, an urgent situation has dawned. Conduct Satellite Neuterate has determined the Neutralians—“

“Annihilated,” Vann said bored playing with a strand of hair that dangled by her nose.

“The Neutralians still alive have confirmed the cursed prisoner has escaped.”

“My father, then, is it?”

“Sol himself has escaped the stone-armor.”

Vann stretched her legs wrapped tightly in silky robes and cast a look to the heavens. A sort of bright aura surrounded the throne accompanied with a thunderous sound. An eight thousand year old pillar to the left of the royal seat shattered into fragments in the time it took to draw breath. After a moment of silence the messenger continued.

“His location is unknown but the entire Moderative government is in serious danger.”

Lord Vann rose to a stand with hands buried deep in inviting pockets. She tightened her pale lips and glowered off at nothing in particular. This day had once been a point of great fear. It had been an age where all her efforts were pooled to prevent its realization. That had been too far to think about now; an era when her brother, Maro Vengene, still lived some four thousand years ago. She shrugged in some abstract gesture and slid her bare feet along as she strode past the speaker device. Vann had assured herself Moderative had the perfect defense against father should he try any scheme. And he surely would. He would be shot full of pylon-tipped darts the moment he entered the sphere of the angelic city. So, too, would any of Vann’s likeness save herself.

“I crave intestines,” muttered Vann while the messenger scurried behind on its little wheels. “Do gut another prisoner for me.”

“Sir, would you not like to utilize a defensive strategy for the master power crystalline and the general population?”

Vann halted right of the crimson double door that led out of the dusty throne room. She uninterestedly flicked her sight behind toward the two verandas a story above attached on opposite sides. A habit developed after one assassination attempt too many had been plotted against her.

“I would like rabbits to attend the dinner table.”

“Dinner is being prepared as per your usual specifications, but please—“

“Not to eat you bucket of rats, they will be partaking.”

Vann began to ignore the robot nuisance wandering off into a collection of obscure and certainly irrelevant thoughts. When she returned to reality some thirty minutes anon the crackling voice besieged her with an onslaught of profanities. The following static and dark, almost supernatural resonating sound sobered her fragmented brain in an instant. Throwing open the hinged barrier and slipping into the bright outdoors her heart sped up until it was all she heard. All, that is, until a collective scream from ten-thousand pairs of lungs shot up in unison from the bottom of the hill. There the city of glassy pyramids and jewel-laced mansions had been consumed with surging electricity taking the form of a humanoid and towering up hundreds of stories toward the sunless pale heavens.

The lightning man cause Vann’s eyes to water from his sheer luminosity, its laugh then washing through the thick atmosphere coming off as a child’s, a little boy who knew he was up to some mischievous deed. A clock tower by its side toppled over in three parts seeming to degenerate as it closed in to the then burning ground. The leader of Moderative only parted her half-smiling mouth and appeared amused by the sight until some part of her pulled her from the spectacle. Survival had to come first. Sol would wish his revenge for imprisonment having lasted eight millennia.

Revenge he would have.

A light unimaginably brighter than lightning painted all white. The explosion that followed stole all sounds. Lord Vann took forever to realize she was lying on the ground with an aching forehead and throbbing jaw. Her senses flooded back a piece at a time. First she observed the starless sky black like licorice. Ear ringing subsided into silence signifying an unspeakable contrast from the scene that had just transpired. Her castle had been blown away, the city leveled into a sooty wasteland where the lightning man was nowhere to be found. A distance green pulsation acted as the only light source. It came from the direction of the master power crystalline. If Vann was correct, and her father had compromised the crystal, than Moderative wasn’t the only place doomed to be a lifeless junkyard. The planets of the entire universe would not be long in following suit.

The robed woman and possible only survivor of Sol’s quick and precise destructive power crawled on hands and knees down the slope of the barren hill. She would have to reach the master power crystalline and find if there was any hope of saving humanity. It didn’t matter how long it took her, she had to try because it was the only option left. Coming to the former location of Moderative’s residential sector, Vann thought she crawled over a few corpses grafted to the soil and surrounding building materials, but couldn’t be entirely sure. From time to time she slowed pace in a mental lapse: the usual images of bees and cheap cologne that her daughter used to ramble on about when Vann still owned his male body. But that body, yes, that perfect body turned out not so perfect or invulnerable after all.

A gentleman caught Vann’s attention stopping her trek outright and giving the motivation she needed to climb to a stand. The stranger stood at profile beside another man laying unconscious by his fine leather boots. His hair came first to notice seen by Vann’s acute eyesight: long and pure white, drooping down well below the shoulders. Yet he was not old evident from a keen face and sharp vigorous stare. An albino, perhaps? Vann thought the detail irrelevant at present and captured the rest of the curious stranger’s appearance. He wore a dark jacket and jeans and kept his arm crossed before a slim chest. Those shoulders were broad and his eyebrows long though tame. He turned his angular jaw and strong downturned nose in Vann’s direction and took on a hysterical look.

“Where am I?” he said in deep melodious style.

“It isn’t anywhere now,” said Vann, shifting her weight from one heel to another and leaning back a bit. “You remind me of my old body, no, of my father himself. You’re related to him somehow. You’re somehow related to this tragedy that has just befallen us.”

The stranger faced the woman. He took a moment to listlessly stare at the unconscious body by his footing before making reply.

“I am not familiar with your father given I have no idea who you are.”

“I am Frederick Vanhorne.”

The realization hit the light god at once. The hair threw her off, but this was most certainly…

“I cannot believe it,” said General Million after a bout of maddening laughter. “I always knew you were a bitch, but this proves it.”

“Silence.”

“I will not question the finer details of your transformation,” he leaned in close and sealed an excited fist before Vann’s nose, “just tell me, is this Moderative?”

“It is.”

“Then we’re all fucked. This is most excellent.”

Vann’s mind lurched and he couldn’t stop herself from saying “I will own a monument one day.”

Million seized Vann’s hair and pulled her forward, baring his teeth and nailing his venomous gaze into her sweating face. He didn’t question the random comment. He seemed to already know the entire situation. Pointing behind him with force towards the ominous green he then shifted his finger skyward.

“Those who do not leave past the universal wall will perish very soon.”

Vann allowed her body to go limp and sighed.

“One of these days I will own two.”

“Hold your tongue. How would you like being slave to me as I was yours all those years, hm? You don’t have a choice.”

“I also burned your family alive.”

Million smiled and patted his captive’s cheek.

“Of course. I have a very good reason for not being angry about that right now. Perhaps you will be the unfortunate recipient of that information someday soon.”

“Three monuments would be more aesthetically pleasing.”

A slap later and Vann found herself back on the smoldering ground. She curled into a ball and flexed what little muscles she possessed by reflex. Terror seized her. Fear had never affected lord Vann. Not in the past eight-thousand years. She felt then she had fallen to the lowest place imaginable.

“I am mad,” she whispered just loud enough to be heard. “I had a plan. It was all perfectly articulated—each detail systematically aligned. Then that cunning boy but twenty Mukian years into his miserable life tore down the foundation of my empire.”

General Million showed ample disgust but listened nonetheless.

“You were talented, Million. The best my army ever had. You also seem to own eternal life. Where did you run off to? Why did you abandon me?”

“It seems you have forgotten a great deal. You oversaw my banishment into a dead dimension.”

“Is that right?”

“The explosion of Moderative just now opened that dimension. So here I am.”

“I recall now. You are… but, that means, you are even worse than…”

“I am a nightmare compared to Sol. You are in my possession forever.”

Stomping into the woman’s temple Million rendered her bloody and unconscious. He allowed his arms to dangle by his hips and cast a final glance to the eerie glow. Gathering the two bodies and hurling them over each side of his neck the dark force personified vanished in a fury of black energy.

Far away, over an ocean riddled with islands, a bright star descended upon a prism-like formation to begin a long rest. That twinkling object marked the final year of the universe’s life.
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