ISSUE #2 (January 2020)
Written by Emma Woods Featuring: |
"SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAIN: PART 2"Graxos IV…
Years ago… He wasn’t coming home. Arisia didn’t want to believe it, not as the skies opened and unleashed a storm upon her home, she couldn’t, the truth that she had learned refusing to find purchase in her mind. Fentara Rrab was dead. Her father wasn’t coming home. She held it all inside, the feelings that threatened to overwhelm her, the immensity of the truth too much for the teenager to grasp as she placed one hand above the other and continued her climb. The mountainside was treacherous, the ascent ill advised, and yet she continued on regardless, the howling of the wind threatening to rip her from the rockface at any moment. She defied it all, the storm, the night, the mountain, the truth, all of it as her tears intermingled with the rain, she defied it all and kept on climbing. She was numb, from head to toe, her limbs trembling with exhaustion even as she exerted greater effort, dragging herself one handhold after the next towards the peek. It couldn’t be true, she told herself over and over, it wouldn’t be true, Arisia would find her answers if she could just reach the top. With a scream that was almost primal, she grasped the very cusp of her destination and, with a heave that threatened to tear ligaments, Arisia hauled herself up and over the edge, reaching the very summit with one last surge of will. He couldn’t be dead, she reminded herself, he was coming… There was no-one waiting for her at the summit of the mountain, no-one to greet her with open arms and regale her with tales of wonder. He wasn’t coming home. Arisia Rrab fell to her knees and screamed, her voice lost somewhere in the storm… …it was only then that the Green Lantern ring found her. Now… Graxos IV was every bit as mundane as Arisia remembered. It was all pleasant enough, she conceded, the city that she had grown up in quaint and friendly, the citizens courteous as they all went about their business. The market was busy, as it often was, but there was no bustle to get from here to there, vendors and patrons exchanging well wishes as the cycle of prosperity cycled through the motions as it always did. Today as it was yesterday as it was tomorrow. Everything that she had been glad to leave behind. She put on a brave face, Arisia determined to do so as she spent her medical leave on her homeworld, if only for the benefit of her family. It wasn’t easy, but there was little a Green Lantern couldn’t do when they put their mind to it. “Something on your mind?” Aerilaya questioned, her mother beside her as the two of them wandered through the market square. She carried a basket full of fresh produce within the crook of one arm, and had waved off all offers from her eldest daughter to carry it for her. Arisia’s immediate reply was to blink several times before she realised that she had indeed been drifting and, as she repressed a deep sigh, she put on her most blaze expression before answering. “No, just, nothing seems to have changed.” “Some people might find that comforting,” Aerilaya surmised. “I guess,” Arisia shrugged, at least trying to not sound rude. She wasn’t wrong, nothing had changed as far as she could see, and that just didn’t sit right with her at all. “MAMA!!” Alexxia exclaimed as she ran over, the youngest daughter of the Rrab family beaming with glee as she carried a handful of brightly coloured flowers in her hands. “I found them!” she revealed her discovery with a flourish, holding them out to both her big sister and her mother. “Really,” Aerilaya smiled back down at her daughter, accepting one of them from her grasp before tucking it into her basket. “Where were they today?” Arisia resisted the urge to say ‘the same place as every day’. “Over there!” Alexxia motioned vaguely in some manner of direction, clearly having not really committed the location of her discovery to memory. “I got one for you!” she went on to explain, holding the brightly coloured petals in her elder siblings’ direction. “Thank you,” Arisia accepted the gift somewhat reluctantly, although she did reward her little sister with a genuine enough smile. She paused for several moments, looking the exotic fauna over, the smile that then twitched the corners of her lips a little sincerer. “I know someone who would love this.” “Who?” Alexxia perked up, her curiosity insatiable when it came to stories from off world, “a Green Lantern?” “No,” Arisia smiled a little more, warming to the subject as the trio sauntered through the market, “but she’s still pretty great. Her name is Kara, she helped me out of a bit of a bind.” “Really?” Alexxia’s eyes went wide with interest, there would be no dissuading her from the tale now. “Tell me everything. Does she have any powers?” “Powers?” Arisia perked her brow, making it look as though she were thinking the matter over, “One or two.” When Bleez arrived in the planets orbit, it was too little fanfare. As tiny as a person was in the universal scale, she appeared as little more than a meagre, passing blip on the planetary network of Graxos IV, the sleepy world unaccustomed to hostile intentions. The Red Lantern skimmed the surface of the planet’s atmosphere before diving deep beneath its veil, a crimson comet scarring the sky and drawing a few curious, yet passing glances. An angel of bone, the herald arrived unannounced, blood trailing in her wake as she descended, and yet the message that she carried, the boon within her grasp, spoke with a million voices. All of them were screaming. Arisia wasn’t hungry, but she ate regardless, if only to appease her mother’s fretting concerning her weight. They sat together on the balcony of a quaint café, evidently one her family visited often as her sister played a little way off with her friends. With mild amusement Arisia watched her little sister dash this way and that, pausing only to point out her big sister, proudly explaining that she was member of the Green Lantern Corps. It was obvious what she was talking about. Some of the children didn’t believe her, others were in awe. “She adores you,” Aerilaya imparted, sipping from her tea. Arisia shook her head at the implied sentiment, “She adores the idea of me. I’m something different on a world that’s always the same.” “Do you really think so poorly of your home?” her mother questioned, albeit without the expected tone of judgement. In reply, Arisia groaned deeply. “I don’t think poorly of it,” she insisted although, if she was honest, she didn’t think fondly of it either. “I just, there’s a whole universe out there, and it’s all far more interesting than here.” “It’s your home,” her mother prompted. “I know,” Arisia conceded. “And if it’s any consolation, I’ve lost count of the people I’ve met who would give anything to trade their lives for one lived here. Just not me.” “I know,” Aerilaya looked at her tea before sipping it, her manner infuriatingly calm. “And then there’s this Kara…” Arisia groan was even deeper than before. “Moooooom!” she protested, “it isn’t like that.” “Like what?” her mother perked her brow innocently. “Like what you’re thinking,” Arisia narrowed her gaze suspiciously, “nothing happened, don’t meddle.” “I’m not meddling,” Aerilaya shrugged as though it were of no great concern, “only observing a little wistfulness in my daughters’ eyes. Besides, she sounds like a marked improvement on that, what was his name, Jordan?” “Moooooom!” Arisia buried her head in her hands, mortified beyond words, “can we not talk about…” She paused, pulling her head back from her palms and turned her hand over, the young women staring intently at the ring upon her finger. It pinged a second time, confirming that she hadn’t imagined it. She blinked, intrigued beyond all measure as she heart skipped a beat, the Green Lantern ring supposedly inactive while she was on medical leave. It pinged a third time and Arisia stood swiftly to her feet, a grin flashing across her features as it became obvious that her ring had been reactivated. Something was going down, and if it was important enough to override Salaack’s mandate, then it had to be something important. “Sorry mom, got to go!” she insisted, although without a great deal of regret, “duty calls!” Without a second thought, an emerald nimbus of light flared about her lithe physique, and the elfin Lantern took to the skies of her homeworld in a flash. Her mother, flat footed, could only look up in worry, concerned by the look of excitement upon her daughters features as she hurled herself towards danger. The emotional spectrum was a lie, it’s light blinded them from the truth. There was but one life that they were meant to live. With wings of bone outstretched, the fallen Angel knelt upon the ‘barren’ soil of Graxos IV, her gaze upturned as she muttered words with silent vigour. With her arms held out before her, she cradled the seed within her palms, red and pulsing with the same purity of purpose as her own Corps. There was but one truth, we were all ruthless at our core, to deny it was imprisonment, to ignore it was a folly. A darkness was coming, and only one light could lead the way. Fire… Reverently, she placed the seed upon the earth and, with a slash across her exposed palm, she gorged its insatiable hunger with her blood. It pulsed with crimson light, fibres spreading from its surface to dig into the soil, stabbing deep into the ground as its roots twisted and multiplied. Bleez grinned with rapturous approval as she stepped backwards, her arms outstretched as the blind would soon be allowed to see, the Seed of her master’s creation boiling as it grew and expanded, convulsing as it cracked the surface of a world, growing and contorting at an experiential rate. It screamed, as though it were a new born babe witnessing the horrors of creation. It screamed, and soon, an entire species would scream with it… |