“Your teacher attacked you?” Taylor said confused. “Even after you did what he asked?”

  “I don’t understand what he was talking about. All I know is that he thought I was more than impure. He thought I was dangerous,” Agra explained dumbfounded. “I am a danger to my people.”

  “I don’t-” Taylor began. He stopped paralyzed. He had heard the shrieking.

  “Agra they’re here!” Taylor yelped as he ran to the shattered entryway. “Liz and Jakob, we need to help them.”

  Agra heard the shrieks but did nothing. She stared at him morosely as she sat on her mothers cracked throne.

  “No more fighting, no more bloodshed,” she trembled with resolve. She beckoned for Quintek who bounded up beside her. He looked up at her with a serious look in his red eyes. In his hands he presented her mothers crown.

  “We’ll do it your way,” Agra told the Syn as she claimed her birthright.

  Taylor watched as Agra took the conical golden headdress and set it on her head like her mother before her. She looked up at Taylor with uncertainty in her big amber eyes then focused her attention on Quintek. The Syn prostrate himself on her lap, presenting his head and neck to his new queens quivering parted beak. Wide eyed and fearful Quintek perhaps had second thoughts as saliva dripped down onto his feathered neck. He snapped his eyes shut as Taylor looked on aghast.

  With a long gasp of air Agra parted her four-piece beak wide as she embraced Quintek and latched onto his neck with a crunch. Blue Syn blood flowed dripping down Agra’s arms and onto the cold snowy floor as she increased the grip with her mandibles. Quintek struggled in her grasp but went still as Agra began to wretch. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets as she twitched and spasmed. She groaned as something began to flow up her throat and into the bleeding wound. Taylor recognized the slick reddish black slime she was regurgitating as the same substance Quintek had used to seal Jakob’s wound. He couldn’t look away as the grotesque ritual reached it end. After a long moment Agra released her beaked grasp with a choking breath of air. Quintek’s limp body slumped to the floor. Wiping her mouth Agra stumbled from the throne in a daze. Holding her head in a stupor Agra smiled drunkenly and collapsed.

  “Agra! Agra!” Taylor’s voice echoed as Agra plunged into the abyss.

  Agra awoke slowly becoming aware of her surroundings in intervals. Her head spun without a concrete sense of up or down. She hung suspended in the blackest of space. Her vision rippled with colors as she blinked. Agra held up her arms and saw silhouetted black tendrils lacking clarity or form. She blinked again, focusing on her arms until they resolved themselves into distinct shadowy versions of her three fingered hands and down draped arms. Agra flailed her newly manifested body without success. Only by focusing her will could she move. Her physical form was irrelevant. Agra turned around in the thick viscous air in confusion.

  “Where am I?” she asked herself, her thoughts echoing endlessly around her as physical ripples of light and color. That is when she became aware of the light. At first all she saw was a curtain of milky haze. With time she noticed the vague spiral shape of this cloud. It was a galaxy of lights all around her.

  As the seconds passed each pinprick of light grew in intensity and size. She saw red, blue, orange, and green dancing amongst the cloud. They were like the sparks of a campfire she thought, some burning bright for a moment before sputtering out while others lingered with a warm glow. It was her people Agra realized with a wide-eyed gasp. Here they appeared as stars.

  She reached out desperately with all her might but could not touch the distant glints of emotion. She did however feel their shared anger, their suffering. It was almost too much to bear. Her form faltered as she struggled to reconcile her emotions with those of her kind scattered throughout the galaxy. She screamed as unfamiliar images flashed through her consciousness. The rancid odor of blood and filth exploded in her mind as she fell into the fetid pits of skittering soldiers. Crashing through the fabric of experience threw Agra into the musty stink of rain and mud as both her kind and humans fell on some battlefield streaked with glowing plasma shot.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Anson!”

  The hoarse cry of a human soldier ignited a spark in the writhing darkness as a pair of amber eyes snapped open. In a rush of wind Agra was back, her umbral body emerging from the milky pale of light she had fallen into. Agra shrank her awareness at the sound of her name, repeating it until eventually all the lights dimmed. She still however felt the glow of the four lights beside her. She knew them as the four surviving Syn of Altaire IV. Cupped in her hands the little red lights flickered and glowed with confusion and fear. Holding them to her bosom Agra embraced them with all the love and affection she could muster.

  “Its going to be ok,” she soothed with a loving smile. “You don’t need to fight; you don’t need to worry. I am here, you are with me.”

  The lights began to glow with renewed life, brightening with a warm benevolent yellow light. Agra opened her hands and let them drift away.

  “You got to keep running!” Liz screamed. She had given up any hope of sneaking away from the Syn smashing their way through the wrecked corridors after Jakob and her. They were getting close.

  “I can’t,” Jakob panted, his legs giving out beneath him. He’d managed one last sprint, but his weak wounded body had finally given out. Liz decided then and there that she wouldn’t leave him. After everything that had happened she couldn’t abandon him to buy herself more time. They were in this till the end. At least four hungry Synwould make it quick. She embraced him and fell against rust-streaked wall. There they waited for an end that did not come.

  “What gives?” Jakob asked craning his neck into the darkened hall. He exhaled wearily, slamming his head back against the burnt metal as Liz crept back out into the open. She found a nice dagger of twisted metal and listened. All she heard was the dripping of snow melt.

  “Where did they go?” Jakob whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Liz said with hesitation. The green glow of her survival suit only lit up so much of the hallway. She took a tentative step forward. Swinging the sliver of metal in the darkness Liz suddenly came face to face with the Syn. They were just standing silently in the hall, so still that she had not seen their black feathered forms until she was right on top of them.

  They stared at her with confusion, sniffing the air for something only they could smell. Liz shrank against the wall, the knife in her hand still extended. They acknowledged her for only a few more moments before shuffling by in silent orderly fashion.

  “Liz what’s going on?”

  Jakob lay against the wall sucking up the pain as the Syn marched past him.

  “I don’t know,” Liz answered in befuddled amazement. “I think we should follow them.”

  “What?” Jakob said in disbelief.

  “I think Agra did something,” Liz said as she helped him back to his feet. Together they slowly followed the docile Syn.

  Meanwhile Agra’s presence did not go unnoticed. One by one tall shadowy figures manifested from the swirling clouds of light surrounding Agra. The ill-defined silhouetted figures said nothing as they loomed above her with red vindictive glares. The Syn Queens each bore a unique spiked headdress atop their oval star lined heads. Agra held her ground looking up at the figures with her own defiant amber eyes. They stopped suddenly held back by fear and confusion which rippled out from them in glowing waves. Agra recognized her mother in them and in a sudden outburst spoke her mind.

  “What’s the matter? I have as much right to be here as you!” she seethed in the sacred tongue. She clenched her fists. In this place it did not matter what she spoke. They would understand regardless. She chose to continue with the language of her father.

  “I am Agra Anson,” she proclaimed. The queens writhed and screeched at her impure voice but maintained their distance. It was as if they couldn’t get any closer. Emboldened Agra thought she could do one better. So she raised her arms and focused on crafting herself a new form. Her umbral body blurred and reshaped itself into the human figure Agra imagined for herself. A few of the queens took special offense at this transgression but could not touch her no matter how much they screamed and hissed. Even here where they wielded absolute control over their kind the queens had no power over her. They whispered frantically amongst themselves.

  “How is this possible?”

  “Where did she come from?”

  “We must eliminate her before she can do any more damage.”

  “Damage?” Agra repeated incensed. “How could you allow our people to suffer in darkness and despair? I will free them from the shackles of your control and I won’t stop until our people are at peace. It is my birthright to rule, and your reign is at an end. I’m here now and will make sure you can’t hurt another living soul. Count on it.”

  Agra felt the weight of her words and knew in her heart that she meant it. Inciting the Queens was just the beginning she though boldly. Agra then remembered what her teacher had asked of her and ended her brief tirade with the words she knew would get the most response, “Do not worry. My divine wrath will be just.”

  The black fabric of space rippled with the combined reaction of the Syn Queens. Whatever Agra had said had really set them off. They reached out across space with horror and malice as Agra to severed her ties to their domain.

  “FIND HER!” was the last unified screech of the Queens she heard before she shut her eyes and let herself fall back into the waking world.