SUGAR CREEK
SHIMMICK RECREATIONAL FOREST
“DUH-DEAR GOD! PLEASE DON’T KILL ME!!!” Crazy Swoon pleaded after Dexius had grabbed him by the neck with his gloved left hand.
Appearing out from within his and Princess Ashanna’s wrecked escape shuttle pod, Dexius had put on his all black oxygen mask to protect himself from the Earth’s ‘possibly’ harmful air and atmosphere.
With Crazy Swoon trapped by his zilitium-hard gasp, the Blue Guardian scanned his physiology using his helmet’s built-in ‘Biometrics Reader’.
Within his helmet, Dexius read off the interior visor’s ‘Heads Up Display’ holo-screen:
RACE: AESHLARAN (Alternative Species Designation: HUMAN).
SEX: MALE.
SOLAR-CYCLE: 33.
MASS: OXYGEN 0.65
WATER 0.57
POTASSIUM 0.4
SULFUR 0.3
SODIUM 0.2
CARBON 18.5
HYDROGEN 9.5
NITROGEN 3.2
CALCIUM 1.5
PHOSPHORUS 1.0
CHLORINE 0.2
MAGNESIUM 0.1
THREAT LEVEL: 0
CURRENT ‘EMOTION LEVEL’: FEAR.
Realizing that Crazy Swoon wasn’t a threat to him or the Lady-Princess, Dexius hurled the drunkard twenty meters away from the escape shuttle pod.
Crazy Swoon came crashing down at the west end of the creek whilst Red barked after his owner.
As Dexius went back down into the shuttle pod to retrieve the still unconscious Ashanna, Crazy Swoon emerged from the creek’s cold waters and immediately gasped for air.
“HUFF… HUFF… RED! RUN!!!!” Crazy swoon screamed.
Red then took off into the woods as Crazy Swoon swam over to the shore.
Upon reaching the shore, Crazy Swoon immediately bolted on into the forest screaming madly in terror, leaving Dexius behind to tend to the Lady-Princess.
After scrounging around in the shuttle pod for a few milli-cycles, Dexius hovered out of it with the use of his ‘Anti-Grav Boots’ with Ashanna now cradled in his arms.
The young soldier flew himself and the Princess to the creek’s shoreline whilst the shuttle pod remained submerged in the water.
Dexius felt a cold breeze brush over his bruised and bloodied body as his Anti-Grav temporarily shorted out due to water damage, causing himself and Ashanna to fall down upon the shoreline.
Dexius landed on his face whilst Princess Ashanna landed on her side.
“URGH… THRACK,” Dexius cursed whilst he laid face down in the dirt and sand as Princess Ashanna’s eyes started to peel open.
The Lady-Princess of Guardinas’s turquoise eyes glowed in the darkness as her long black, silky hair mixed-in with the dirt and sand.
As for the royal gown that she wore, the once beautiful, ‘lavender and pink’ robes were now tattered and dirtied, making her resemble some kind of ‘street urchin’.
“Ugh… Ugh… Duh-Dexius?” Ashanna uttered out as her ‘Guardian Warrior Protector’ pulled his face out of the sand and looked over her to see that she had regained consciousness.
“Pruh-Princess,” the Blue Guardian stammered as he pushed himself up to his hands and knees.
Eyes now fully open, Ashanna looked over at her protector to ask, “Dexius… Wuh-Where are we?”
Having pushed himself back up to his feet, Dexius pulled off his oxygen helmet after witnessing that Ashanna was not harmed by Earth’s air and atmosphere.
Revealing his chiseled, but cut up and bruised bronze-skinned face, glowing turquoise eyes, and sweat-soaked jet-black hair that was shaved on the sides and came down to a point at his forehead’s center, the alien soldier replied, “We are on planet ‘Aeshlara’, Your Majesty… Also known as ‘Earth’.”
“Ugh… Aeshlara? EARTH???” Ashanna groaned in confusion whilst she rubbed the right side of her incredibly sore head, which she had struck inside of the escape shuttle pod’s cockpit during the crash.
“Yes, my Princess… Earth. A planet similar to our own… But not entirely.”
Feeling a little more lively, Princess Ashanna looked around the area as she said once more in a curious tone of voice, “Earth?”
After checking his Pulsar Auto-Rifle and his Pulsar Saber that he had sheathed on his right hip, Dexius said to the Princess, “Here, My Lady… Let me help you.”
Assisting the Lady-Princess, Dexius helped her back up to her feet.
Knees wobbly and feeling dizzy, Ashanna immediately clutched onto her protector’s right arm.
“Urgh… Ugh… I… I feel like there’s a ‘grand weight’ bearing down on my shoulders,” Princess Ashanna grunted and groaned.
“Not to worry, Your Highness,” Dexius replied as he kept Ashanna from falling. “Tis only the ‘Earth’s’ Gravitational Field. I felt it too, at first. Tis shall fade soon.”
“Duh-Dexius, do… Do you hear it?”
“Hear what, Princess?”
“Nothing… Absolutely NOTHING. No screams of terror. No cries for help or even explosions. Just… Silence.”
After taking a few milli-cycles to admire the peace for himself, Dexius said, “Come now, Your Grace. We must keep moving.”
The Blue Guardian then pulled away from the Guardinian Royal as he went to pick up his oxygen helmet.
Holding it at his side now, Dexius brought down his Pulsar Auto-Rifle from his back whilst Ashanna asked, “Wait a moment, Dex… What about Guardinas?”
Dexius kept his eyes focused on checking his advanced alien firearm’s ‘pulsar energy cartridge’ as he bluntly replied, “Think of it only as a memory from now on, Your Majesty… For we can never return.”
“WAIT. What do you mean we can ‘never’ return?”
“I MEAN WHAT I JUST SAID, MY PRINCESS. I am sorry, but we can never go back to Guardinas… FOR IT IS LOST.”
“But… But what about our people? MY FATHER??? Dexius, they still need us! They need you! They need the Guardians!”
“THEY ARE GONE, ASHANNA. Everything and everyone that we once knew and loved is now gone because of this thracking thing.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Pulling out a tiny, ‘golden Pyramid jewel’ that was placed in one of the compartments on sides of his black, leather-like combat pants, Dexius held it out towards the Lady-Princess in his left palm.
As Ashanna stared at the pint-sized Pyramid of Power, it instantly grew to the size of a basketball.
“Tis because of the Pyramid why we must never return to our home world, Your Highness,” Dexius stated whilst he now held the ‘Unlimited Power Source’ in both of his hands. “For if we do return then the Vexans shall and WILL do everything and anything in their wicked power to take control of the Pyramid. If that were to happen, then not just our world, but every single world throughout the Known Twenty-Four and beyond would all cease to exist.”
Lowering her brow now whilst she glared at the Pyramid, Princess Ashanna snarled, “Then why don’t we just rid ourselves of the accursed device and end this thracking madness once and for all???”
“Because, Your Majesty… Tis invincible. Tis simply cannot be ‘destroyed’ by any weapon… Any MORTAL weapon. This ‘infernal device’ was forged from the mystical and mysterious ‘godly’ powers of the High-Elders themselves. Mortals, like you and myself, cannot harm or destroy ‘god-made’ things. Only the ‘ascended ones’ who created them can.”
“But there must be a way to destroy it! LIUETENANT SOLAS, I command you to destroy it!”
“Princess Ashanna… I CANNOT.”
“AS DAUGHTER OF THE LORD-KING AND LADY-QUEEN OF PLANET GUARDINAS AND AS LADY-PRINCESS OF THE PLANET GUARDINAS, I command you, Blue Guardian, to DESTROY the Pyramid of Power so that it may never be used to cause harm to any form of civilized life again!”
Dexius did not reply.
Gritting her teeth, Princess Ashanna shouted, “DESTROY IT!!!”
Dexius still said nothing… Making the Princess even angrier.
“URGH… DESTROY IT, DEXIUS! THRACKING DESTROY IT!!!”
After her rage had subsided, Princess Ashanna immediately burst into tears.
Feeling sorry for her, Dexius placed the Unlimited Power Source back in one of his pants pockets after ‘mentally willing’ it back down to ‘jewel-size’ before saying, “My Princess… ASHANNA… Forgive me, but…”
“Urgh… No,” Ashanna grunted. “No, Dexius. Tis... Tis fine. I just… Urgh... I just…”
“Wish to return home?”
Princess Ashanna nodded.
“I do as well,” Dexius continued. “But our world… Lives not.”
With glowing teardrops running down her cheeks, the bronze-skinned royal asked, “But… But what of my father? Mother? What of Lanteus???”
Dexius’s ‘multiple hearts’ tightened within his strong chest after hearing the former Red Guardian’s name escape the Lady-Princess’s lips.
Looking up at her protector once more, Princess Ashanna asked, “Where was he after you fled from the battle in the Barren Outlands, Dexius?”
Knowing that Lanteus had fallen in battle against the Brothers Vexas and their bloodthirsty armies in the Barren Outlands that resided outside of the Royal City’s walls… Along with the rest of the Guardians, Dexius informed in a grief-stricken tone, “He… IS GONE, Your Majesty. I am… not ‘certain’ of what became of the Royal Queen Andridia. She was away on ‘diplomatic talks’ with the Arch-Warden of Radandia City… BEFORE THE INVASION. As for your father, he told me… He ORDERED me to find and take you off-world here, to Aeshlara, whilst he remained in the Royal Palace… TO FACE THE BROTHERS VEXAS ALONE.”
Princess Ashanna continued to sob into Dexius’s chest as he stated, “I understand your pain, Ashanna, your sadness. I feel it too… But we have no time left for tears. As the LAST free remnants of our race, we must KEEP MOVING.”
“Where?” the Lady-Princess tearfully demanded. “To ‘where’, Dex? Where do we go from here? We have nothing… Nothing but the robes on our backs now and the cursed memories OUR RAVAGED WORLD burned into our minds and thoughts.”
“Before our departure from Guardinas, your father ordered me to find a Guardinian man on Earth named Castron Lakarias.”
“Castron Lakarias? Who is he?”
“Lord Castron Lakarias was one of the most brilliant minds on Guardinas. Cycles ago, the Lord-King Luxor had him sent off into the far reaches of the Grand Void to discover other ‘unexplored’ and ‘uncharted’ worlds for our race to possibly inhabit one day-cycle in case we ever had to leave our own. Aeshlara… EARTH was one of those worlds.”
“I remember now. Yes… Yes, I do recall this… BUT WAIT. I thought that Lord Lakarias was pronounced ‘dead’ after he ‘lost contact’ with us?”
“I thought this too, but he must have survived and ended up on Earth. Your father must have known too and secretly kept in contact with him after all these cycles whilst he studied this world to see if it was habitable for our race… And it must be since we have yet to suffocate to death.”
“Alright. So, say we find this ‘Castron’... What then?”
“We start anew,” Dexius replied as he strapped his Auto-Rifle on his back once more. “We assume ‘new identities’ and ‘blend-in’ with the Humans.”
“So that’s it? We do not even try to avenge our race and world?”
“Tell me, Your Majesty, how are we to stop a merciless race of ‘planet-decimating’ heathens like the Vexans when there are only ‘two’ of us?”
“You are a Guardian Warrior, Dexius. You alone have the power to stop them.”
“I thought that as well… BUT I WAS WRONG,” Dexius said distastefully whilst looking down at his ‘Guardian Energy Shifter’, which his armor and ‘special guardian power’ hailed from. “We all were...”
Looking back at the perplexed Lady-Princess, Dexius continued, “I am no longer a ‘Guardian’, Your Highness. I am only a ‘lowly commoner’ now… AN URCHIN. Just like I was when your father found me and took me in after the first ‘War for the Pyramid’ ten cycles ago.”
“No longer a Guardian? DEXIUS, tis your ‘holy duty’ to ensure the ‘safety of Guardinas’ as well as the whole Guardinian Race!”
“Ashanna… Open your thracking eyes! Guardinas is lost! Our race is lost! Tis gone now… ALL OF IT!!! We have lost the war!”
Seeing the fear in Princess Ashanna’s glowing eyes, Dexius calmed himself before continuing in a more ‘controlled’ voice, “Grandest Apologies, Your Highness… But there is no hope. Not for our people, our world, and, unfortunately… Not for your father, either. Now, we must ensure our own survival for we truly are all that remains of the Guardinian Species… As well as Lord Lakarias… If he still lives.”
Lowering her brow in anger at what Dexius had just ‘crudely’ and ‘truthfully’ told her, Princess Ashanna demanded, “Where is Lord Lakarias?”
Heeding to the conversation switch, Dexius pulled out a small, silver rectangular device from one of his side pants pockets.
Pressing a small button on the device that caused a ‘holographic map’ (holo-map) to appear in the air, displayed a complete, three-dimensional layout of Keokuk, Iowa in a span of just two milli-cycles.
“This Holo-Map shows the ‘Genetic Signature Readings’ of every single species that exists upon these lands,” Dexius informed as he looked over the holo of Keokuk. “These several ‘blue blips’ that you see flashing are Aeshlarans… Humans. The two ‘green blips’ you see bunched together are both you and I, my Princess.”
“And what of that one?” Princess Ashanna asked as she looked at the ‘lone’ green blip that was flashing not too far away from her and Dexius’s current position.
With his eyes now steadied firmly on the lone green, ‘flashing’ blip, Dexius gritted, “LORD LAKARIAS.”
