Core of Confliction Read online

  The team of four nodded to each other acknowledging the situation was better than perfect. If a fight broke out between them and enforcers it would be a no holds barred brawl. It was best to avoid casualties and witnesses. A small ball of light formed in the leader’s hand, they all looked at it to see how far Chardon was from their location. Finding him, they headed in that direction.

  “I’m just having a really bad day, aren’t I?” Charles backed up from the group of enforcers beginning to form a semi-circle around him. “Come on, guys, it doesn’t take this many of you for little old me.” They were a good foot taller or more than him. Advanced group.

  They all morphed at once and Charles saw what the enforcers really were. Their arms turned into various claw like appendages and their faces distorted into monstrous creatures. He looked around and noticed everyone who had been on the streets vanished. So much for someone calling for help. He was in deep trouble. As the enforcers bounded towards him, a bright light engulfed the streets.

  The team of four saw the enforcers a block beforehand and took an offensive position. A surprise attack was the only way to win this fight and get Chardon back safely. It was a brutal fight as the team went toe to toe with enforcers, tearing off limbs and tossing them haphazardly into the street. Their movements were a blur of colors and Charles had a repeat show of the strip mall fight. He noticed their technique was creating a clear path straight for him. Arriving at his side the team swooped in and grabbed him forcefully while collectively creating a vortex.

  Charles had no time to think as his body was pulled through the vortex. He saw the carnage left behind and two enforcers still intact take pursuit. Whoever his saviors were, he was grateful but more confused than ever. All this from one little incident in a strip mall.

  He hated strip malls.

  It seemed almost funny witnessing the gate open but Charles kept his mouth shut. There was no reason for him to laugh in his situation. It was not funny in the least but all the same he wanted to burst out loud. Monsters, vortexes, strange powers and what not. He felt his body slow down as they approached the exit and he could see fields of strange tall plant life swaying in the wind behind a male figure standing at what looked like a console. As his feet hit solid ground, the vortex closed and the male figure bowed down on one knee to him.

  “Now I know something is not right.” He turned to his saviors and saw they too had gone on bended knees. “Please, get up. This is embarrassing.”

  “It is only fitting that we should bow to our leader.” Ganna stepped out from the shadows. “Welcome home, Chardon.” She bowed down low.

  “Leader my ass! What the hell is going?” He felt a twinge of anger. Being kept out of the loop irritated him.

  “Forgive me, I will explain immediately.”

  “You bet your ass, you will! And my name is not Chardon!” Though it seemed to fit him as he heard himself say it.

  “But, it is. Tell me, do you have any memories from before you worked for your organization?”

  “What? Of course I…!” Charles stopped, his eyes wide. He didn't and it never occurred to him.

  “Come, walk with me.” Ganna held out her arm and Charles took it, letting her lead the way.

  “This is some crazy shit.”

  Looking around at the environment, he shook his head. The tall grass was a strange orange color with tiny off-white flowers at the base. Looking up, he saw the murky sky with its weak sun. Something that reminded him of a guinea pig, except with spiraled horns and a long alligator like tail, scooted across their path. This was definitely not Earth.

  People all around him stopped what they were doing and bowed low to him. He was getting annoyed. As they made their way to what looked like a temple, he noticed the scenery did not match. There were newly constructed buildings right alongside clearly dilapidated ones. Once they entered the temple, Ganna led him to the garden.

  She began to tell the story of Lassa’s destruction, giving the short version as he made it clear he had no patience for details. He remained silent throughout the explanation of how the original planet had been destroyed. His brow furrowed with each word. Afterwards, she moved into the garden of cores.

  He stood on the edge of the core garden letting the vast knowledge of what those glowing buds of energy were. It shocked and saddened him to see the embodiment of souls clustered in one place. His feet moved on their own, steering his body into the garden towards the center where he stopped in front of a core pulsing brighter than all the others with a rainbow of energy.

  With trembling hands, he picked it up and held it to his body. It slowly melded into him and his head snapped back, causing him to fall to his knees in the dirt. All of his memories came to him in a rush, mingling with his experiences on Earth, making him whole again. An urge to fall unconscious swept over him and he fought through it, eventually able to stand. His vision changed, with clearer focus.

  Energy swirled around him like wisps of smoke, lighting up the fields. Workers and children stopped to witness the event while Ganna steadily backed away from the buzzing air. A giant orb of light formed from his body outward to engulf a thousand feet radius, tiny sparks shimmering around the edges. He could see everyone staring, mesmerized by the display. When all the energy and lights subsided, Chardon took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

  “Most usually lose consciousness when they are re-established with their core.” Ganna kept her distance as she spoke.

  “I am not most.” Chardon turned to face her. “I feel better already, but mostly I am angry.”

  “Jaron said the same thing. She wanted to be the one to come and extract you from that world.”

  “Is that so? Why didn’t she?”

  “I seem to have not regained my full power.” Jaron came up to the garden’s edge.

  “It will come back soon enough. Are you treating Modas well?” He watched the struggle play on Jaron’s face. “I guess there is a learning curve when it comes to love.”

  “We need to get Sara and Klein, too. I’m sure Halfar is going to have them on a short leash now that he knows we survived.”

  Chardon nodded in agreement, contemplating how to get his other cabinet members out of the demon’s stronghold. Halfar was not to be underestimated. There was no way he would turn them over without a fight and Chardon was not ready for another at the moment. His wounds had healed instantly when his core was returned but he could still feel them. Enforcers were nasty creatures who obeyed Rass and Kur more so than Halfar. He speculated it was because Halfar didn’t like getting his hands dirty these days.

  “For now, they are safe. Halfar would not jeopardize a potential meeting with me by harming one of my kind. No, he sees this as a second chance.”

  Sara and Klein

  Sara and Klein walked accompanied by guards to the throne room, yet again. That room had such a horrible feeling to it despite the pure white interior, throne included. White symbolized purity in most cultures but Klein knew the boss had somehow bastardized it. As they entered the room, Rass greeted them with a slow bow and a sheepish grin. To the left of the room, were two men, on their knees wearing disheveled clothes, looking scared shitless.

  “Good morning, my little traitors. I thought you would appreciate some entertainment before breakfast.” The boss lounged on his throne as usual. “Rass, what have we got today?”

  “Two dealers who were not only insubordinate but, they tried to make a profit off the merchandise in the tune of a quarter million.”

  “Is that so? Hmm.” The boss tapped his index finger to his temple for a moment.

  Klein had a bad feeling about what was about to happen. He always wondered how the room stayed so white. Someone had to clean it on a daily basis, but why? The answer became clear. “Sara, close your eyes,” he whispered urgently.

  “No! You will both witness my judgment.” The boss had heard him. Leaning further back into his throne, he declared, “Skin them,” with no emotion or fanfare.

&nbs
p; Rass’ hands grew into talons two feet long and just as the first man started to scream, one of the talons pierced his chest running down it like a scalpel. The other man screamed and cried, begging for mercy as blood from his partner splattered on him in waves. The skinning was done slowly and when the screaming had gone on too long for everyone’s taste, the boss’ arm became a huge claw reaching across the room to snap the dying man’s head clean off. His partner stopped screaming out of sheer terror, defecating himself. Rass continued the skinning of the now decapitated dealer with utter delight.

  Sara vomited on her own feet, slumping to the floor as she slipped in it. Klein could not move to help her back up. His mind had unhinged looking at the boss, who watched with an expression of disinterest on his face. Klein’s eyes burned with such hatred, he felt ill.

  Halfar stepped down from the throne, stood in front of the traumatized dealer and punched through his ribcage with the claw. Tilting up, he snapped the claw shut, cutting the dealer from sternum to head in half. Only the lower body remained. Halfar returned his hands to human form and sat back down on his throne dripping blood down the armrest.

  “You see, I do have some sense of mercy. Don’t you think?” A smile crept on his face.

  “Monster,” was all Klein could utter.

  “Humph. Go, you will be late for morning roll call, and breakfast.”

  Two enforcers picked Sara up from the floor, her body limp in their arms. The other two yanked Klein away to the exit. The left side of the throne room lay covered in red. He felt sorry for whoever had to clean that macabre scene.

  “Bring in the horde.” Rass instructed the guards.

  There was no need for Klein’s pity. The double doors to the right opened to reveal a cluster of hideous monsters salivating from the smell of blood. Upon seeing the carnage, they rushed for it, slopping up blood and pieces of flesh. The sounds were horrifying to the human ears and Halfar again showed mercy by letting the human guards leave the room. A handful of enforcers stayed to join the festivities. Klein conjured up every grain of his sanity so he could remember this day.

  Halfar stayed until the end, hating every moment of it. It was a barbaric ritual at best and it did nothing to entertain him anymore. This was a lashing out on his part for losing Chardon. He should have known a team would be dispatched to get him and now Halfar was down eight enforcers in one fell swoop. Deep in thought, he did not notice Kur enter the throne room. When he did, Kur was staring at him, questioning. If there was one who didn’t need to know what Halfar was thinking it was Kur. He averted his eyes in a weary sort of way to signal that he was bored and nothing more.

  Kur was not convinced. He felt something was amiss with his ruler since the destruction of that backwards world he favored. Keeping the only known survivors was not Kur’s choice, preferring the entire race be extinct. Not knowing why Halfar wanted to embrace them, he had a hunch the key was Chardon. Kur left the room, also bored of the bloody scene whose screams had lured him to investigate. There was no finesse at all in Rass’ punishment.

  **~**

  “We have to get out of here,” Sara hissed her words like a snake. She paced the length of her tiny room the organization supplied to low level runners and dealers. “He’s going to kill us!” Her face, still pale from vomiting, was now clean and she had changed her shirt.

  “I don’t think so.” Klein stood legs wide apart, his right hand cradling the side of his face.

  “How can you think that? Did you see?”

  “Of course I did!” Her tone irritated him. “Do you remember what he said about us?”

  Sara stopped pacing and stared at him in confusion. He sighed. She was not too bright to begin with so probably wasn’t listening to the boss. “If what he says is true then that means Charles and Jared are going to try and rescue us. We can be free of him.”

  “That was just some bullshit he was spouting to scare us.”

  “Umm, did you not see Jared’s pet dog turn into a huge creature and some old lady make a vortex they all disappeared in?” He raised one eyebrow.

  “But, we caused our world to be destroyed? He said that, didn’t he?”

  So she was listening to some degree. Klein shook his head to clear out the numbness in his head created by her absent-mindedness. “They don’t know we are the reason. We’re traitors, right?”

  “So,” Sara walked closer to him, “we can get to our world, get our cores back and then high tail it out of there before anyone finds out what we really did.”

  “You are assuming we would know how to create one of those black holes. And go where exactly?”

  “Oh.” She looked like a deer in headlights, her mouth slightly open in the shape of her word.

  Klein now saw how their supposed plan had failed and an entire race nearly wiped from the universe. This was his partner in crime? Holy Toledo. He decided to make amends, if possible. There had to be a reason why the two of them had sided with the boss, betraying their own kind. To figure it out, they needed their original cores. It would be easy to play dumb for now because they really just had the boss’ word regarding their treachery, and he took that with a grain of salt.

  “Don’t say a word.” His mind made up.

  “About what?” Sara’s head cocked to one side.

  Klein rolled his eyes. “To Charles or Jared, do not say anything about what we may or may not have done in our original lives.”

  “Oh.” Again, that deer in headlights look or had her expression not changed from before?

  “We have chow, let’s go.”

  “I am NOT eating!”

  “We still have to go, genius.” He pulled her along out the door.

  **~**

  Chardon was not happy to see the core count for the garden. So many of his people died on a tyrant’s whim. Entire families were wiped out, the planet scorched black. He could see it in his memories as the last thing known. A creak from behind alerted him to another presence in the room and he turned to find Modas silently entering. For such a massive beast he was quite stealthy, and dangerous.

  “Is Jaron being unreasonable again?”

  “She’s just frustrated that she has to work so hard to regain her power.”

  “Did she really think it would be that easy?”

  “And there is the loss of our children.”

  Chardon looked away. He had heard about what remained of their litter. How heart breaking it must have been to learn that. His wife, Sestis, was also among the dead, her core destroyed with the planet. Luckily, he had no children to mourn.

  “I believe this is a perfect time to start over until most of the vessels are found. We can create new ones for the cores left without one. If you play your cards right, she may be willing.”

  “It’s not about if she is willing or not. That will happen regardless. It’s that she’s full of vengeance, her actions seem desperate.”

  “You can’t blame her for that.” Chardon faced him. “I also want justice for all this and knowing I was a tool, a play thing, for Halfar on Earth makes me angry.” Modas nodded in agreement. “I have never known you to speak this much, Modas.”

  “Only when it’s necessary.” The manbeast left the room just as silently as he came in.

  Chardon turned his attention to the sky. The weak sun spoke volumes to the condition of their new home. Chardon knew his race needed to adapt for a century or two before they found a new world to inhabit. A not so great planet trumped a dead one. He still didn’t understand how the planet destroyer got through the gate. It bothered him as he checked his memories seeing how the blast came rushing across the land, disintegrating everything in its path, spreading like fire. How did the gate get opened from the outside? Did Halfar figure out how from his last visit to their world?

  For now, Chardon had one mission: to get Sara and Klein off Earth and back to this world. They had to be a little frightened by now since he and Jaron had not reappeared. This time he would go with a team of six knowing Half
ar would not be naïve to send just a handful of enforcers again.

  **~**

  “Any luck?” Ganna had crept up behind Jaron who was practicing making orbs of energy in her hands.

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Showing proof, she expanded a ball of light sent it outwards, letting it go wide. It splintered a tree off in the distance.

  “Did you really have to destroy that tree? It meant you no ill will.”

  Jaron laughed. “I will have another one planted and matured.”

  “It may take more time on this planet with its weak sun.”

  “I had forgotten.” Jaron felt a twinge of regret over the former tree. This was not their home world. She glanced up at the sky noticing how it did not harm her eyes. “We can’t stay here.”

  “It will do for now. Come, we’re ready for a meeting on how to get Sara and Klein back.”

  “Excellent! I want to try my hand at eliminating some enforcers.” She went around Ganna and together they headed for Chardon’s chamber.

  The Return of the Traitors

  Halfar sense the vortex opening almost instantly and summoned Rass to handle the situation. His henchmen were in the process of locating Sara and Klein who had skipped out on an errand and were currently on the run. Chardon’s team would get to them first but it didn’t bother him in the least. Those two had to face a very angry council of their people. Halfar smiled a little at that. Would Chardon forgive them? ‘Of course he would because he is merciful’, Halfar thought to himself. It was a trait he himself had learned about some time ago. Ten enforcers were dispatched with Rass. He had a feeling only half would come back intact.

  It was like a scene from a sci-fi horror movie on the now vacant streets of the inner city. Colored lights blazed across the sky along with bloody pieces of unknown origin. Some of it rained down on a few pedestrians still in the process of taking cover. No screaming was heard, just the sickly wet sounds of a massacre. Large cavities were blown out from nearby buildings, sidewalks sunk in towards the middle of the street and blood splattered everywhere.