Pultine’s mirrored prison was inside of an underground bunker on Bromeran and when she emerged from it, she thought that she was in a larger building, like an aircraft hanger with a ceiling many feet over her head that was domed and extended like a long hallway at a distance from where she had been held. The place was busy with beings from many worlds including the jeris, the large goat men of Bromeran, and humanoid beings with dark skin, dreads on their head, and long talons extending from their fingers. Pultine recognized them as Druintes of Druont and she was surprised at the mix. She didn’t have an extensive history with the beings of this realm, but she had never seen diverse types together as they were.
She didn’t strike Rusa when she emerged from the mirrored prison. He stood to the side and ushered her out to greet her captives.
“You told them how to restrain me,” Pultine said to him while she gazed around at the mostly frightened eyes on her and the space that she occupied. “And they did it too well. I’m not sure that I could have escaped on my own.”
“It’s good to see you back to yourself, my Pristine,” Rusa said with a smile. He knew that she was speaking strategically. He’d spent enough time with Pultine to know that everything she did, every word she said, was deliberate. And why would she want her captors to know that they had devised the perfect trap to snare her? Because they hadn’t, and she only wanted them to believe that they had. “I hope that you can forgive my second betrayal, though I guess the devising of this inescapable trap must have been the third.”
“You have chosen clever allies to betray me to. I do forgive you. You slowed me down just enough to see that my worst habits had risen to the surface and I was too comfortable to resist them. Seeing myself reflected so many times in that box for so long was enough for me to begin to right my way. But,” Pultine said to her captors and she looked around at them with their weapons still trained on her, “threatening my execution was a little much. If I had managed to escape sooner, that would have been the death of all of you.”
“We were told by your companion to give it all we had,” Captain Fhal Truss said as she stepped forward from the crowd to stand before Pultine. “We know that a being such as yourself cannot be felled by our mortal weapons.”
She knelt before Pultine as though she were a royal and Pultine knelt to insist that she stand.
“I am not immortal, just a being of another realm, and I am not deserving of these honorifics. I was reminded of my darkest past in that box and I have no desire to return to it. That all started with the exaltation of me and my sisters. We were seduced by compliments and praise. You have shown your respect for me by listening when you could have met me with the same aggression that has consumed me of late.”
“We understand your anger. We are not affiliated with the Wiis Defense Ministry any longer. We use that as a cover to avoid detection. We are our own coalition, peoples from many worlds who know that the aerphim view the beings of other worlds as nothing more than slaves. I was a captain in the Defense Ministry and I saw how the aerphim and the Hafjeris who worked with them, traveled to worlds and acquired precious resources, only to hoard them and use them to gain even more wealth. We have resisted the aerphim, in complete secrecy of course. We organize attacks on their infrastructure all over the galaxy and even though our efforts started small, they have steadily grown over time. We understand that you are an enemy of the aerphim, specifically Seraphiel. We know that the aerphim use him as their face and their voice to gain popularity around the galaxy and if their most public figure is exposed as some type of fraud or bad actor, that could help to win more support for our efforts. We would like to help you expose Seraphiel…”
“Kill him,” Pultine interrupted. “I mean to kill him. You can expose whatever corruption to the masses after I hang his head from a tree in the forest of Agê.”
Captain Truss was taken aback by Pultine’s frankness. She blinked hard and then looked to Rusa and then back at Pultine.
“Sorry if that sounds harsh,” Pultine said. “Like I said before, I don’t want to be excessively violent, but Seraphiel must die. If he does not, he will bring about the ruin of your entire realm.”
“How do you know that?” Captain Truss asked. “I am not offended by your desire to kill this Seraphiel, only hesitant because it could bring considerable attention to our secret organization if we are tied to the assassination of someone so important to the aerphim.”
“I just know. It is like a sense that I have. Rusa thinks that it is disturbing that I feel I can discern good from evil and that I am willing to execute based on those feelings, but being an Fonlander in this realm affords me intuition that is impossible for me to deny. I can feel you all here and when I finally calmed down in that box, I could feel that you are all mostly good and trying to stave off evil. I would not harm anyone here, but I would turn anyone and anything to ash that threatened any of you. That is my imperative, that is impossible for me to overcome. Seraphiel will die by my hand because he must.”
Captain Truss nodded thoughtfully and then she motioned for Pultine and Rusa to follow her. They walked past bunk beds along the walls of the bunker, and beings packing or unpacking in front of them. Some had just arrived and others were preparing to go out on various missions. The captain led them to a door that was obscured by shelves of provisions and they went inside of a small room that was lit by candle light. The room was mostly bare except for a table in the middle of the floor and the chairs that surrounded it. Seated in the chair across from the door was a woman with thick, rough, curls of brownish red hair that hung past her shoulders. Her skin was red-brown and her facial features were similar to Pultine’s, but she had freckles on her wide nose and on her sculpted cheekbones. Her eyes were almost as big and expressive as Pultine’s, but she had dark green eyes where Pultine’s were black. The woman had large, feathered wings that matched the red-brown color of her skin.
Rusa was startled at the sight of the woman, he had expected the room to be empty. When he saw the woman seated at the table, he heard an audible gasp escape Pultine, who looked to be frozen stone still with a look of disbelief on her face. Just as Rusa was about to say something, the winged woman seated at the table stood and she gave Pultine a weak smile.
“What manner of arcana is this?” Pultine asked Captain Truss as she moved quickly to grab the woman’s shirt and lift her into the air. The captain gasped for air as her wings beat wildly and feathers drifted around the small room.
“Put her down,” the woman said. Rusa was dumbfounded by her beauty and he had never seen a female who arrested him so suddenly, not sense Pultine. Standing, the woman was taller than Pultine, taller than Rusa in fact.
“What is going on here?” Pultine demanded from the captain, not looking at the tall woman on the other side of the room.
“Pultine,” the tall, red-brown woman said more forcefully that she had before. “You know what is going on here. You just don’t want to believe it because you want to kill Seraphiel.”
“But you died!” Pultine said with big tears wetting her dark cheeks. She still held the captain suspended in the air. “We saw the chaos, and they said they saw your parts scattered over long distances.”
“It was a lie, Pultine. Seraphiel couldn’t kill me, and you know better. You should have.”
Pultine dropped the captain to the floor, then turned and slammed a fist on the table that shattered the wooden square to splinters.
“Do you think I wanted to believe it! I didn’t, I fought them all until they couldn’t stand the sight of me. Because how could the aerphim even hope to harm you? You are Tracia, of the lightning! But they swore that you were dead and they put it on Seraphiel. What was I supposed to do? What would you have done?”
“I would have brought enough lightning to the clouds of Endla to smite everything hidden underneath, including that Vodun, and our dumb sister.”
“Why are you here?” Pultine asked. “Why did my sisters lie to me? Why did you lie to me?”
“You should have had more faith in me. You should have never doubted and the plan would have worked…”
“What plan!”
“I planned to take Welboas from Endla and the best way to do that was for me to die. I’ve been working with the Supreme Hive to infiltrate Endla and this is what we’ve built. Beings from around the galaxy united in the goal to stop the aerphim. And if you had known better, if you knew me like I know you do and you hadn’t let my death break you, we would be that much closer to saving Welboas.”
“You lied to me and you’re mad that I didn’t see through the lie?” Pultine practically yelled at the statuesque woman looking down at her.
“I was your first companion. We are practically sisters, both born from the flora. You should know me,” Tracia shouted back. “This is why you were not made aware of the plan, you are too angry. You love to be angry…”
“There’s nothing I loved more than you,” Pultine said and she left the room.
Rusa helped the captain up to her feet and then turned to follow Pultine.
“I will go after her,” Tracia said. “You stay here. She will need a friendly voice when I bring her back. And you will have to help us calm her temper. We cannot allow her anger to derail our plans.”
PRL Serials 