“That’s what you did to Alicia,” Elizabeth’s eyes teared up. “That’s what you did to all those people you kidnapped.”
Q stared blankly, finally realizing why Alicia had gone missing. She had been kidnapped to have her life energy harvested.
“The Getafixian special forces mistook her for a civilian and captured her,” he said. “Once she’d seen everything we knew there was no letting her go, and so we did the most obvious thing. We harvested her life energy. But I have to say, she was a mere test run for the real deal.”
“That kill order,” Q said. “That wasn’t to get all that land was it? You wanted use all those people who would die to harvest for life energy.”
“But sadly your brother ruined that plan,” he said. “So now I have to resort to other resources.”
Q looked at the now broken machine, then at the table. An elvish looking boy lay there, trickles of blood running down his now limp hands.
“That machine takes all that life energy and passes it through the pipes, into the bomb,” Idhren said almost proudly. “Pretty efficient architecture you know.”
“You are no longer sane, Idhren,” Carlos said.
“Sane?” Idhren laughed. “What do you know about who I am, Commander? Do not judge me against the Idhren you knew five years ago. He and I are not the same, and we will never be the same. Do you know even a single thing of what happened in those five years you never came back?”
“You’ve turned into a monster.”
“The only difference between man and monster is that with a monster, you do not know the reasons for his action.”
“Stop this nonsense. You cannot possibly think of killing all those people.”
“Oh, I am past that idea now. I was only going to harvest those meaningless civilians, but you ruined that plan, I’ve decided to act more sane and harvest just one, mere boy,” he pointed to the table. “Meet the Lord of Thanos, Prince Ryul.”
Oh god, Q thought.
This wasn’t good at all. The very guy they’d sworn to protect and save was the guy who had been tortured right before their very eyes.
“You both should be thankful,” Idhren said. “My special force is so furious with you both for messing up the plan that I had to send them away just to make sure they didn’t kill you!” he laughed.
“You asked me to come to Armorica,” Q said. “Why would you want to do that?”
Idhren smiled, “I wanted a safety net in case the Thanonians did rebel against us, and so I brought you and Carlos in,” he said. “Turns out you both made what I feared a reality.”
“Why do you even want the H.U.L.K?” Carlos asked seriously. “You don’t care if Thanos lives or dies do you?”
“Thanos?” he laughed. “You think this is about Thanos? No. This is much grander. Let me give you a clue. What’s the biggest problem the Getafixians have been facing?”
“Ummm, I don’t know? They have a crazy guy for a High Priest?” Q said.
A gust of wind blew past Q again, this time cutting his cheek, “No wise cracks, boy, or the next one hits the Seraphian.”
Idhren cleared his throat, as though he were giving a lecture. “So, as I was saying,” he said. “The biggest problem is our lack of Druids, so I made a modified H.U.L.K to fix all of that.”
“What are you babbling about?” Carlos said.
“There was a young cadet I met a few years back. He saw the problem the Getafixians were having with their sudden loss of life energy. A year of research later, he came with a brilliant plan. He said ‘A bomb uses all its energy at once and explodes. What happens if you slow down its radiation and let it dissipate over time?’ Does the idea ring a bell?”
Carlos’ eyes widened.
Oh god. Please don’t let this be true, Q hoped.
“It was your idea, Commander Carlos,” Idhren said. “It was your nineteen year old self who structured this hypothetical plan months before leaving Armorica.”
“But,” Carlos stuttered, his mind clearly torn apart by that one statement. “That was just an idea. I didn’t mean to…”
Q knew exactly what was going on in his brother’s mind. He was going to blame himself for everything that had happened, and as usual being consoled would not help.
“Well,” Idhren continued. “Now that you’ve become emotional, Carlos, I’ll just go on with my speech,” he said. “So my version of the H.U.L.K. will passively infuse everyone with energy over a period of time and a decade later, lo and behold, the Getafixians will be a proud race of Druids again.”
“A proud race of druids that caused genocide,” Q said.
“That’s it,” he flicked his wrist, and a gust of wind pushed past Q, this time coming from behind him and heading towards Elizabeth.
Q charged in, forcing himself to focus on the image of a spear forming in his hands. His energy seeped out from within, converting to the Elementa of light and solidifying into a spear. He threw it in one fluid motion, getting Idhren to move away from Elizabeth, and distracting him enough to cause his wind attack to dissipate.
Elizabeth herself was still in shock, her eyes looking down at the ground. Q realized she’d been through a lot more than she could handle, but he knew now wasn’t the time to be worrying about her psychological state. He focused on his Elementa of fire and melted her cuffs by summoning a flame.
“You’re okay now,” he said and turned around, ready to face the Getafixian High Priest.
Idhren stood next to the machine above the table, a wide smirk on his face. He swung his staff upward, and a gust of wind shot to the ceiling above him. The pipe connected to the machine cracked a bit, and something that looked like pixie dust flew out. The wind around Idhren grew stronger, collecting the continuous spill from the pipe and creating a sort of pixie dust storm.
A glow of white light started to emanate from within the vortex, and Q could feel the raw power surge from within, a power that was far beyond anything he’d felt before. He went into an attacking stance, summoning a large flame in one hand, and a spear of light in the other.
“You shall never beat me, boy,” thundered Idren’s now-omnipotent voice. The vortex cut off, and at the centre stood Idhren, his eyes glowing with a bright white light.
“For I am a Druid of light.”
***
5-4
Q watched as the air danced around Idhren. Well, it usually danced around him, but now it seemed like it was alive, as though it had its own mind. A stream of raw power emanated from Idhren, and unsettled Q.
“We need to be careful,” Elizabeth said. “He just infused himself with Prince Ryul’s life energy.”
“That’s like being on god-level performance enhancing drugs,” Carlos said, his face looking a little less emotional that it was a few seconds ago.
“Ugh,” Q said. “He’s way tougher than before, then.”
That just made his job a lot harder to pull off. He could feel his breathing become strained and difficult, as though a weight were pressing against his lungs. It took him a second to realize that Idhren was sucking the air around him, leaving him with nothing to breathe.
He threw his spear of light at the guy, and charged in, hoping to use the spear’s distraction to land a direct hit.
“I said Druid of light did I not?” Idhren said, and sliced up the spear with a light sword he materialized on his own.
“Oh no,” he said. Unlike Q, Idhren was born into a race that traditionally controlled the Elementa of light. All that he lacked was the life energy to use it, and now that he had it, he’d taken Q’s trump weapon, made it way stronger, and more importantly, made it his own.
“A Druid is not a druid till he masters the Elementa of light,” Idhren twirled his staff and ten swords materialized in the air above him, each one glowing with a heavenly aura. He thrust his staff forward, and the swords shot towards Q.
Q focused hard, tracking their paths and getting ready to dodge. The ground rumbled and a wall of stone shot up in f
ront of him, separating him from Idhren.
“He won’t get past me this time,” Elizabeth stood next to him, wincing from the stress she’d undergone to raise that wall. All said and done, the wall still crumbled right after the swords hit it, but the swords dissipated as well.
“Your light Elementa still isn’t strong enough,” Elizabeth chuckled.
“On the contrary,” he held his hands apart and a dark glob started to grow in the middle. “That was merely a test run.”
Antimatter, Q realized. He was converting the light he materialized into pure antimatter. If that projectile came in contact with anything else…
“Idhren, listen to yourself,” Carlos said. “You’re not okay. You’re acting like a demon.”
“I’ll tell you who the demons are,” he said as the glob kept growing in size. “All those people who laughed at us, who laughed at a race that was now powerless, who said we were all worthless to the universe, who said investing in such a race was like investing in trash.”
“No one is saying that,” Q said, desperately trying to calm him down.
An alarm blared through the cave. Idhren’ face dropped, as though he couldn’t believe this was happening right now. Nonetheless his vortex started up again, covering them in wind, and cutting off much quicker than before, probably because of his new found energy.
When the world stopped spinning, Q noticed the red lights flashing all around, with loud alarms piercing through the air. They were in some sort of cave-corridor, with a glass wall behind them, and the room on the other side of the wall.
“Prince Ryul!” A Thanonian man ran behind Q and towards the Prince, who was lying on the floor, still unconscious.
“What is going on?” Idhren thundered, and the cave rumbled.
“Sire, the H.U.L.K is out of control,” a man in a white cloak came close.
“Then try to control it.”
“It’s not possible, Sire. We recorded a wave of energy being expelled a few minutes ago from somewhere within the cave. That wave set off a chain reaction within the H.U.L.K.”
The glass wall cracked, and the cave ceiling crumbled a bit.
“It was you,” Carlos glared at Idhren. “You infused yourself with energy and caused the wave that set this off.”
Idhren completely ignored him, “How do we stop this bomb?”
“We believe a powerful enough force can reverse the polarity, or energy flow, of the bomb and let it naturally stop the chain reaction,” he said.
“Very well. We shall give it a powerful force,” Idhren said.
“I’ll help you,” Q said. “As much as I hate a certain group of people on this planet, I don’t want to see it destroyed.”
“You cannot, boy,” Idhren said. “This bomb’s containment unit cannot be reached through any physical door. Only the art of teleportation can get you inside, but the energy density in there right now is so high even that is a hard feat. As it stands, I cannot teleport the two of us.”
“You need power, and I can help you,” Q said.
Idhren swung his staff and the vortex surrounded him.
“Ryul! No!” A voice came from behind.
The elven boy ran ahead of Q, with this Avon guy hot on his heels
“What are you doing?!” Avon yelled.
Prince Ryul stopped right outside the still spinning vortex, “Idhren needs help. I cannot let the people of a planet die. It is not the Thanonian way,” he said, his eyes cold and piercing.
“He can’t take you along with him,” Q said. “He just said he couldn’t teleport two people.”
“He’s a Druid. Of course he can teleport two people. He said that only to protect you.”
Q sat down stunned. Protect. The guy he was fighting just protected him.
“Please don’t go,” Elizabeth looked at the Prince.
Ryul smiled, a pure melancholy on his face, “Do not stop me from entering a portal this time as well, Seraphian,” he said and jumped in.
And as though Idhren had been waiting for this all along, the vortex disappeared, reappearing on the other side of the glass wall.
Q turned to Carlos, “We can’t do anything now can we?” he asked.
His brother, who seemed to have regained his composure, shook his head. “For once, we cannot change the outcome with our hands.”
The vortex inside expanded, shrouding the room in dark winds. Q could see two shadows move about here and there, as they shifted around the dark outline of the H.U.L.K.
“I can’t take this anymore,” Q said. “I need to try to teleport,” he said and summoned his inner energy. If Idhren could teleport with wind, he could teleport with light. All he had to do was use the right sort of imagination, and summon a large amount of life energy.
At that very moment, a light sparked inside the dark shadows and the room exploded. Glass shattered, and parts of the cave wall collapsed. Q used the energy he summoned to create an overhead shield of light and protected everyone from the falling debris. The bright radiance lasted for a few seconds before completely dying down and making everything visible again.
“We’re going in!” Q yelled and jumped in, covering himself with a small skin of light just in case.
The H.U.L.K. lay dormant in the center of the room, its green metal surface now rough and corroded. Collapsed on the floor were two figures, High Priest Idhren and Prince Ryul.
“Prince!” Avon jumped in and rushed to his side, followed by his Thanonian compatriots. Elizabeth came down as well, spreading her wings and gliding down towards him.
Q looked at Idhren. The High Priest had a wide smile on his face, one of satisfaction, and his eyes were closed.
He knelt down next to the High Priest, “You’re an idiot you know. Creating a weapon that you would go to such extents to tame.”
The smile remained on his face.
“He will not reply to you,” Ryul croaked from beside him.
“Well, I’ll talk to him when he wakes up.”
“He will not wake up again.”
“Oh god,” Q’s face dropped.
He looked at the Getafixian’s eternal smile, his still and silent body. Prince Ryul was right.
Idhren had passed on. Q held the man’s wrinkled hand that was still gripping his wooden staff. The crystal orb glowed a faint shade of pink, as though it were mourning the death of its wielder.
“He was happy at the end,” Ryul smiled. “He said he finally got to do something for his people.”
Q’s heart wrenched with feelings of confusion. He did not know what to feel anymore. There were too many conflicting emotions welling up inside him.
“Ryul don’t you dare!” Elizabeth half yelled, half sobbed. “I’ve let too many people die on my watch.”
Q’s eyes shot towards the Prince. Oh please, not another one, he thought.
The Prince’s face started to lose color, and his hands trembled as he put them on Elizabeth’s shoulders. “You did not let me die,” he said. “I chose my fate myself.”
“You can’t,” she buried her face in his chest.
“On Thanos we have a saying,” he said quietly. “Death marks the end of a man’s destiny.”
He coughed, his voice growing hoarser with every second.
“I have fulfilled my destiny. It is my time to leave.”
Prince Ryul’s eyes looked at all of them one last time.
And then they closed for all eternity.
***
5-5
Q sat on the grassy field, hands pressed among the cool blades. The river in front of him was clear and mistless, revealing the Vlar Mountains in all their glory.
He lay back and looked up at the night sky.
“Beautiful isn’t it?” Elizabeth lay down next to him.
“We have an extra star in the sky tonight,” he smiled and there, right next to the rising full moon was a bright orange point of light.
The Thanonian home planet, under its new leader General Za’ad (who had to be f
orced into the role), chose to illuminate every single of the twenty billion houses on the planet, turning their dark world into a shining star as a memorial for their beloved Prince.
Elizabeth was quite torn apart by his death as were the others. A day after the incident she told Q all about what happened with Alicia, and to be honest, he almost fainted from just hearing the story. He didn’t know how he would have reacted if he had seen it all through his own eyes.
Carlos had regained his composure in the day’s rest he had. His team were able to convince him that all he did was make plans for the bomb, not what would be used as an energy source to fuel it.
The special force, Idhren’s personal Project ZeQuest team, lost their will to fight as soon as their leader died. They went to the Armorican high council, the same council Q and Carlos had had a meeting with, and revealed the contents of Project ZeQuest.
“He was right you know,” Elizabeth said.
“Prince Ryul?”
“No. Idhren,” she said. “There was a time when Getafixians were the Dark Knights of the universe. When they lost their niche of strength they were humiliated time after time, with many of their best allies cutting off all connections with them. Imagine enduring this for centuries on end?”
Q lay silent, his eyes still fixated on the orange star.
“To them, being a Druid wasn’t about power,” she said. “It was about being a hero. It was about regaining their lost legacy, it was about rediscovering what it meant to be a Getafixian. Imagine what you would feel like if you lost all your powers one day.”
That hit him hard. He couldn’t imagine it. Rather, he didn’t want to imagine it.
“The weirdest thing about all this is that Idhren and the special forces weren’t the only ones who felt this way,” she said. “This entire race was ready to go to any lengths to regain their legacy. Idhren and the special forces were the only ones who were brave enough to turn into monsters to do the dirty work.”
“But now these Getafixians have someone to look up to, someone who isn’t as strong as the Druids of old,” Q said. “It was nice of Carlos to immortalize Idhren as a self-sacrificing martyr. He said Idhren stopped a nuclear attack from decimating the planet didn’t he? That’s true when you think about it.”
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