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“What is your name, little one?” she asked the girl, and the girl’s face lit up like a cloudless sky when she did.

  “You want to know my name?” she exclaimed. “My name is Isobel! Isobel, warrior for Chaos.”

  “Isobel, that’s a pretty name for a very pretty girl,” Alysia said, and the child blushed even more. “Kreples are big lizards, but they only have legs. They are black and shiny; the ones I’ve met bite and run extremely fast.”

  “Ohhhh, zentans! Nasty, nasty, zentans! They are always hungry, and they attack in packs. Don’t worry Alysia Knight, once you defeat Dibolosa, the zentans will fear you, because they fear the warriors of the Bloody Garot!”

  Alysia wanted to laugh at the tiny girl’s gusto. Whenever she would describe her order, she would get intense. She would ball up her fist and raise her voice, and her eyes would narrow into mere slits.

  They ran for another ten minutes, and Alysia was confused at how fast they could move. It wasn’t like she wasn’t feeling it, but a ten minute run on earth was nothing, since she had been an athlete her entire life. Now, with Isobel leading, their run felt like she was moving ten times her speed. Her lungs labored from it all, and when they stopped, her heart was racing.

  They had gone for over twelve miles in their dash, and she had seen a number of strange, exotic creatures along the path. Some of them seemed predatory, but none were fast enough to keep pace with them. When she had caught her breath, Isobel handed her the runed dagger. The runes still pulsated in tune with her heart, and it felt strangely warm and organic to the touch.

  “Now you must defeat the Dra’yr, Alysia Knight. It is a necessary step to complete your transformation. You are a fighter, yes? One that has fought different types before? Then this is no different for you, but it’s not like the other test.”

  “What do you mean; it’s not like the other test?” Alysia asked, noticing a hint of fear in the other’s voice.

  “You only get one chance to kill him, Alysia Knight. If he kills you, there is no coming back. You will die and your friends will die with you.”

  Alysia strengthened her resolve when she heard this. I’ll treat it like the finals in a martial arts tournament, she thought. Isobel ran up to hug her, then quickly scampered up the trunk of a tree.

  Alysia held the knife to her chest, kicking off the tiny slippers so that she could feel the cold dirt between her toes. She waited, but it didn’t take long for her to hear the snapping of branches as something large pushed itself through the trees to get at her.

  Before she could react, a large, green man with thick black fur all over his body burst into the clearing. He lifted her into the air and slammed her into the ground. The wind left her lungs so fast it was as if she blinked her eyes and was instantly on the ground, trying her best to catch her wind.

  The beast had his hands around her throat, crushing her windpipe slowly. She looked into the deep pools of blackness that were his eyes and saw that there was nothing there but wickedness. It was then that her training kicked in and all struggles for life took a backseat to fury. She shifted her weight towards her right side and threw her left leg over his head. He struggled to move his head out of the way, but she was too fast and moved her right leg up to meet the left, isolating his right arm in between them.

  She grabbed the left hand that was choking her and rolled to her back, forcing the monster’s right hand to loosen as she braced backwards with his left elbow resting on her crotch. He was hers now, as he kept on trying to regain his right hand grip. She sat up slowly, holding his arm, and then fell back violently, lifting her groin with a sudden thrust and pulling his arm taut while bracing herself. A loud pop came from where his elbow was and he bellowed out in pain, reaching for his broken arm, thrashing this way and that.

  Alysia rolled over onto her knees coughing, trying desperately to put air back into her lungs, but she knew that to hesitate would mean certain death. She looked for the knife, and saw that it had fallen near where the creature was recovering from his pain. She ran for it but he was on his feet, swinging at her face with a fist from his right hand. Instinctively, Alysia put up a tight guard to cover her entire head. She ducked her face as the blow connected, then squatted down to the knife as he swung again.

  The first blow seemed to rattle every bone in her body, but she ignored the pain as she recovered the knife. Then as the creature moved in to swing down at her, she wrapped her free arm behind his knee and used the knife hand to pull his foot up as he lost balance. She lifted his leg while simultaneously driving into him, and he fell backwards as she raised the knife and drove it home into his abdomen.

  Nothing could mirror the sound the creature made when she stabbed him, and she felt a strange sensation as its life force drained into the blade and simultaneously mixed with the blood inside her veins.

  She backed up off the downed monster and looked at her arms. They now held luminescent veins, as the change came through fully to her body. She screamed out in horror as an invisible force lifted her off the ground, and as she felt her wounds heal and her bones break to become stronger, she could only cry out in pain as it finished the job.

  The pain became too intense for her to take. Alysia passed out, and when she awoke, she was back in the subway tunnel, with Isobel wiping her skin gently with a warm wet rag.

  “Hello sister,” the little girl said, and Alysia felt a wave of panic at the way she said it. She ran her tongue along the outline of her upper row of teeth and found that her canines had extended.

  “What does this mean?” she asked Isobel. “What does my change mean? You have to tell me. Am I no longer human? Am I dead? Will I ever get to see my father again?”

  “You are merely a part of us. Don’t you worry, Alysia Knight. You fought bravely, killed the Dra’yr better than any of us did. I told Lord Chaos and he is proud. He said, ‘Alysia Knight will be the one to drive the lost back to our world.’”

  “What else do I need to do to be ready for Dibolosa?” she asked Isobel as the girl dried her and began to oil her limbs.

  “Lord Chaos has decided that since you were able to defeat the Dra’yr in record time, you do not need to spend any more days proving yourself. You will be formally trained in our fighting arts, and will be washed and oiled daily by your handmaidens until five days have passed,” she said.

  “Handmaidens? I have handmaidens?” Alysia asked, sitting up so that she could look at the girl.

  “Why, yes, Alysia Knight.”

  “Call me CeeCee. It’s really weird when you keep on using my full name like that,” she said.

  “CeeCee? That sounds awfully childish, but I will obey your command and call you CeeCee from now on. Now, I am your handmaiden, along with Jasmine.” She nodded to a corner where a tall black girl was fiddling with her kimono. “And of course, Koko.” She pointed to another dark corner where the Asian girl from before stepped out and waved to her. “We are responsible for your training and care until your fateful match with Dibolosa.”

  “Did Dibolosa have to go through this same treatment?” Alysia asked.

  “She did,” Isobel replied. “When the lost attacked her home world.”

  “So, the lost, as you call them, have a habit of rushing into people’s worlds in order to build up armies to overthrow your realm. If I’m wrong let me know,” Alysia said, looking at them one after the other.

  “Yes, they have been trying it for over ten thousand years. It is why our lord is building his own army, so that when the lost are driven back and weakened, he can attack them in our own world and wipe them out. That would stop these attacks on your worlds and give us peace. Lord Chaos is a hero in our realm and he has promised our people that he will finish the lost in time.”

  Alysia thought about Isobel’s words and what they meant. Chaos was relying on her to drive out the demons. “Why must I kill Dibolosa?” she asked suddenly, and Isobel looked at her through large, seemingly innocent eyes.

  “The savior of the world is forever
chained to our order, and to Lord Chaos,” Koko spoke up. “Dibolosa has been with us for many years after her world was released.”

  “Okay,” Alysia said. “I still don’t get it. Don’t you guys like her as your queen? Why would she have to give it up just because another world is in need of saving?”

  Isobel and Jasmine started laughing uncontrollably. It was so annoying that Alysia hopped off the stone table and yelled at them to stop. “What the hell is so funny?” she asked.

  “Well, you called Dibolosa ‘queen.’” Jasmine giggled. “There is no king or queen, silly. We all fight for our realm and our lord, Chaos. Dibolosa is trapped here, due to the ritual that allows her to wield The Twilight Sword.”

  “The Twilight Sword?” Alysia asked. “Can you all just give me the whole damned story instead of the bits and pieces?”

  “Okay CeeCee,” Isobel said, and then handed her a black kimono as she spoke. “The only way an outsider to our realm can wield the Twilight Sword is to take on the life force of Xatas. It is a mystical energy that can only occupy the soul of one individual and that individual happens to be Dibolosa.”

  “So when the earth is saved then I will be trapped here as well.” Alysia said. “Trapped and awaiting another heroic girl to come along and best me in a fight to take on this life force. I’m not doing it. It’s all so stupid. What if Dibolosa was to beat me? What happens then? What does she get out of the bargain, and what will happen to your holy war?”

  Jasmine pointed to the slab and Alysia sat down. She then knelt, oiled her feet, and placed a pair of soft leather boots on them. She looked up at Alysia while she did this and her eyes were sad and distant. “You would die a dog’s death if Dibolosa kills you, CeeCee. You will vanish from your world. One of your friends that Lord Chaos asked us to hide will also die, and he will simply find another girl that is better than you to become his champion.”

  “What does Dibolosa think of this whole arrangement?” Alysia asked.

  “Why do you care so much?” a strong, but sultry voice intoned as the girls scattered to one side of the room and bowed.

  Dibolosa walked in, all white legs and grace, and she nodded to the girls to let them know that it was okay for them to rise. Alysia was in awe of her looks. She had removed the spikey armor in exchange for a long, black, silk gown; and she looked human with the exception of her alabaster skin color and hair that favored the sea. She had light-green eyes and her tiny, button nose floated above lips that were full and ruby red, which completed a mask of hard, high cheekbones, and a neck that kept it miles away from slender, muscular shoulders.

  “For a non-queen, you sure do look like one,” Alysia said to her, trying hard to swallow but unable to look away from her. The beautiful woman walked up to her until she was in between her legs and whispered into her ear.

  “Worry not for me, sweet Alysia. My death will allow me to return to the wasteland that my world has become, but your death will allow me to live on as a revered warrior in this, the world of Chaos. Once you cross over and have the Xatas, life and death become less absolute, my dear.” She stepped back from Alysia with a smile on her face and then walked out, letting her gaze linger on the three cowering girls that stood in the corner.

  “Okay, that woman is absolutely frightening,” Alysia said once a few minutes had passed and the girls were back to their normal selves.

  “Dibolosa is a phenomenal warrior, CeeCee,” Isobel said to her, as she strapped her old sword to her waist and stepped back to make sure that she looked the part. Koko had begun to do her hair, so she couldn’t get up off the slab, but the girls seemed pleased at what they had managed to do with her.

  “Where are you girls from?” she asked them. “You took the trials too?”

  The girls exchanged glances when she asked them the question, and they seemed to struggle with an answer for her.

  “You’ve all been lying to me haven’t you?” she asked them next, and Jasmine stood still with her hands fidgeting uncontrollably.

  “You will become like us,” Isobel said sadly. “Trapped, fighting for the worlds.”

  “So, all the stuff you’ve been telling me about this fight is a lie?” Alysia asked. “I won’t die if I lose, I just lose my humanity. Awesome, girls,” she said, shaking her head and sighing as she looked around. There goes my other parent, she thought. “Thank you for the bath, and for oiling me up to be a slave. So, is anybody ready to tell me what really happens if I win?”

  “You won’t win,” Koko whispered as she walked out from behind the slab, finished with her hair.

  “I won’t win because you think that she’s better than me, or I won’t win because of something else?” Alysia asked, motioning with her hands for them to spill the beans.

  The girls stood tight-lipped and Alysia realized she was asking them to answer a question that would get them in trouble. “Never mind,” she said. “You’ve told me enough already and I’m grateful. Look, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I know what you’ve given me is probably enough to have you punished, but you did it anyway. Let’s go ahead and start with the training, rituals, or whatever it is we need to do. I want to be ready for Dibolosa, and I know that you all will do your best.”

  4

  They came upon an old station and climbed the stairs out of the subway to the mostly vacant streets of New York. It was midday but shadows flitted this way and that in the distance, and a few desolate, hungry people shambled by, looking at them as if they were hopeless.

  “Well, we’re back in the city,” James said. He held on to Tracy’s waist as they stepped out of the subway. Jaime came up behind him and began to look around frantically.

  “You mean we’re back in the middle of hell,” he said. “Except this time, we don’t have the guns to hold those things back. We’re all consumed with finding CeeCee, but we can’t even survive our damned selves if we don’t find a set of guns and a whole lot of ammo!”

  James knew he was right so he merely nodded. They hadn’t gone very far from the house that they had commandeered, but he wondered where the creature had taken his daughter and how much of a fight they would have to go through in order to get her back. He looked down at Tracy, who looked pale and emaciated, as if poison wracked her body. She had wanted him to lance the wound, but he refused to do it since they had no medicine, and he didn’t want her to get a worse infection and die.

  “Mr. Knight, she’s starting to smell,” Jaime said, and James looked at him as if he wanted to rip his jaw off to prevent him from talking.

  “We’re on the strip, and there are stores literally everywhere, Jaime. Listen, we can go in this hotel. I’ll clean her up, and you go scavenging for something to help her out, man. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, I can do that for Tracy. She’s gonna be all right, right?”

  “She’s a fighter. She won’t go unless there is absolutely no other option,” James said.

  They kicked in the backdoor of a seedy motel and found a room on the second floor to call their own. They heard a few more people in the adjoining rooms but with the apocalypse upon them and owners abandoning their places left and right, anywhere was fair game. Having neighbors in an abandoned motel was pretty much par for the course.

  Jaime took note of where the room was located and took off as James filled the bathtub with cold water. He then removed Tracy’s clothes and sat her in it. The cold brought her back to life almost instantly, but he held her down so that it could do the job and whispered words of encouragement into her ear. He washed her to the best of his ability, taking his time around the bites. He saw that she had many scars and he knew most of them were new, due to the creatures they had fought.

  “I bet you were just a young, feisty officer that gave your coworkers hell, weren’t you Trace?” he said to her, squeezing the water over her head and grabbing the shampoo to wash her hair.

  “It hurts so bad, Jimmy,” she managed to say. “You have to cut them to let it drain out. That thing put somethin
g in me; I know this is not from those old bites.”

  He thought about what she was saying and looked closely at the three black and blue bruises. He thought about it for a while, and then went back to washing her hair quietly.

  “Got you a bunch of stuff from the convenience store,” Jaime said as he came through the door. He slammed it shut and dropped a large paper bag next to Jimmy. “Whoa! That’s way more of Tracy than I would ever expect to see … man, she sure is built … wow, and those bruises look nasty!”

  James closed his eyes to summon patience, and then eased his breathing to keep himself calm. “Jaime, can you give me a few minutes with her to do what I have to do? I don’t think she’d appreciate you gawking at her when she’s this vulnerable.”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course, Mr. Knight. Was just thinking out loud is all. I’m gonna go back out, see if I can find us some guns. You know how it is. If a demon don’t get us, those spice heads next door probably will. You hear them in there? They must be shooting up to stay high during this whole thing; I can smell the burned glass through the damn door. We need to watch them close, they like to steal. You know how it is.”

  When he was finished rambling he looked around awkwardly, then he snuck another peek at Tracy’s breasts and then exited the bathroom, closing the door.

  “This is going to hurt worse than anything else you have ever felt, Tracy, but we—”

  “Just do it, Jimmy, just do it,” she said without opening her eyes.

  He reached over, grabbed one of the towels, and stuffed it into her mouth. She lifted her hand out of the water to help him get it in and then took a firm grip on the edge of the bathtub. James pulled out one of the razors from the package Jaime had brought him, and removed the blade. He brought out a lighter and used the fire to heat the edge and sterilize it, and then he made a small incision under the highest bruise mark. Black blood jumped out of it as if it needed to escape, then a stream of pus that came out thick and disgusting, followed by pure, red blood.