Kara Zor-El of Krypton was drowning, a tidal wave of blood sweeping her world away.
Panic overwhelmed her, light piercing her vision as she desperately tried to scream. She was trapped, confined inside a coffin, the teenager hammering out with her fists and striking nothing but obstructions. Fruitlessly she smacked her palms against the glass mere inches from her features, as black as the void itself.
Suddenly...
...relief!!
The sound of deadbolts slamming open accompanied the hiss of escaping air, life flooding into the tight confinements of her imprisonment. She continued to thrash against her confinements, Kara fighting to escape as the lid of her capsule sprung open, the small compartment flooding with fresh oxygen.
Kara Zor-El surged, inhaling deeply with a painful gasp as her eyes shot wide open. She tumbled over, every one of her four limbs fragile, the girl from Krypton almost weeping as she escaped from one hell and fell into another.
Almost hurling herself free from the suffocating confines of her tiny pod, Kara almost immediately fell onto the waiting granite. Her bones cracked as she landed harshly, blinded by dirt and struggling to take in the sight of the abyss around her. Her fingers gripped the unforgiving and rigid landscape as she pushed herself slowly upwards, every muscle protesting and her head spinning.
Kara blinked, now on her knees as she swallowed hard, pain running down her throat as she shielded her vision, the blue sun above not one that she was familiar with, dominating the skyline with oppressive heat. She struggled to remember, but the memories were fleeting, broken glass refusing to fit together and causing her only further misery. This world, this place she found herself in, Kara could see nothing but desolation for as far as the eye could see.
She mumbled, words incoherent as she struggled to make sense of her surroundings, the red granite she stood upon stretching beyond the horizon, mountains and ravines surrounding her like a vice. This wasn’t Krypton, this wasn’t...
Kara clutched at her own temples as the pain resurged once more, misery compounded by endless horror blocking out the truth of it, her mind running from the sight of cataclysm. She screamed, silent and yet overwhelming, Kara Zor-El cast out into the void and sent spinning into the abyss. She blinked...
...and when Kara opened her eyes, she knew that time had passed.
She had been asleep, this child adrift amongst the stars, exhausted, traumatised, escaping into slumber on an alien world. She blinked again and Kara almost felt serene, the young women looking about herself, lying upon the ground barely a metre from her pod, a tiny, space faring vessel she had once seen drawings of on her Uncle’s workbench.
Kara inhaled, slow and steady, tears staining her cheeks as she struggled to find her feet, staggering like a fawn learning to walk.
“Mother?” she called out, her voice a dry rasp, a lost child crying for her parent, “Mom?”
There was to be no answer, nothing but the abyss of silence.
“...Dad?”
She swallowed, pain accompanying the creak of parchment that was her throat, and it was with a pressing need that she returned to her nearby pod, the life raft that had ferried her from home. The hull was a tapestry of disaster, pockmarked, torn and stripped away entirely from the fuselage, the final voyage of Krypton ending here, limping its way into the grave.
The interior proved to be scarcely better, barely room enough for its passenger to lay in slumber whilst a smaller compartment catered for provisions. She found food, tasteless, bland, lifesaving and water, precious water the life lost teenager immediately began to gulp down without a single thought of consequence. She felt nauseas, she didn’t care, pausing only to inhale deeply and almost collapse, slumping against the capsule as she struggled to find focus.
She did, finally, Kara blinking as she rocked back and forth before forcing herself to seal the bottle, setting it aside as she searched franticly for whatever else had been stored away to ensure her safety. With a pause, the young women pulled free a crystal, one that fit within the palm of her hand and no doubt carried within it much needed answers and close to it, a bracelet...
Kara put all else aside, stepping back as she held it within both hands, the sun above glinting off the yellow stone at its centre. She knew what it was, the teenager had seen its like many a time, a device worn by all the Guardians of Krypton, a symbol of office, the means through which an ordinary man could become exceptional, to be imbued with power both humbling, and unimaginable.
One that had been worn by her Mother...
The memories, the memories returned and threatened to overwhelm her, memories of Armageddon and the tower that split right down the middle, the cries and the horror and the shards of broken thoughts that stabbed and stabbed and STABBED...
Kara screamed, lost, alone and cast out amongst the stars, the last girl of Krypton could not bring her reality into stark focus, not until the yellow stone bracelet fell from her trembling fingers and she heard shout...
She froze, the young woman holding her breath as she swore she heard another voice. She turned, questioning her sanity, the soles of her bare feet protesting as granite sliced into her skin. Kara swallowed again, blue eyes wide as she searched the empty horizon, nothing to witness save desolation and hardship.
With a single step, she moved forwards, her heart skipping every other beat as she strained her senses, desperate to believe that she had heard someone.
“Hello,” she whispered into the abyss. “...please.”
Nothing...
...until the scream returned to her lips unbidden, erupting from her slight frame as her world was plunged into renewed darkness, a bag both snapped and tied over her head whilst a multitude of arms embraced her. She thrashed, Kara Zor-El at the mercy of predators unknown, voices, guttural and alien barking harshly as they bore the small girl into the dirt.
She cried, confused, afraid and utterly at the mercy of those she didn’t know, the Last Flight of Krypton ending in disaster.
**********
Time soon became abstract, whilst despair became equally mute.
Before long, Kara had fallen silent; her misery constrained as she lay without word, bundled into the back of some manner of vehicle and left to her own thoughts. She was blind, the hood rendering her vision entirely useless, while her wrists were bound behind her back, rope digging into her skin. She could hear them, pungent and raw, unwashed as they spat curses and exchanged short, blunt phrases. It was easier to become passive as she was abducted to parts unknown.
When they came to a stop, it was without warning, a jarring halt slamming her into the side of her compartment and, before she could regain her senses, several hands grabbed her once again, hauling the teenager to her unsteady feet. What was to follow was a pretence of walking, still bound she was all but dragged towards her next hell, unkind barks demanding that she pick up her feet as she was hauled bodily against her will.
For so long Kara Zor-El had imagined herself already an adult, and only now did she realise how far she still fell short of her own estimation. She wanted nothing more than to be returned to her waiting family, this foray into the universe nothing more than a dark memory, and the safety of her home secured once more.
It was an empty hope, slipping away with every stride she took.
They were now inside, of that much she was certain, the oppressive heat from the sun above replaced by the heavy taste of iron in the stifling, humid air. The walkway was metallic, the grating rough and corroded, clanging beneath the heavy feet of her captors and accompanying the distant clangour of endless industry, the haphazard grating seeking to trip her at every turn.
Finally they stopped, Kara dropped heavily as she landed on her knees. She fell to them without hesitation, weary beyond words, numb to the thoughts of fresh horrors. She blinked, several times and fiercely as the bag was ripped off her features, the teenager suddenly able to see and try to make sense of her surroundings.
After a short, parched swallow, the young women could finally make some sense of her new world. She was underground, the room she knelt within burrowed into a cave, the cavern red lined and uneven, echoing threat and oppression. Civilisation had been burrowed into the mountains marrow, iron and steel stabbed into its veins to create a floor and supports, a brutal effort to enforce order onto the natural. A desk, cabinets, signs of office and privilege lay before her or, at the very least, an approximation of them, an attempt to recreate an echo of more humane places.
Around her stood her captors and their disparity was almost startling. Aliens, each and every one, the first the girl had ever seen in person, and no two were alike. From half a dozen different species did they all come, each following a different path of evolution, all of them drawn to this place of desolation and declaring themselves it’s master, attired in overalls with wicked tools hanging from their belts to enforce their authority.
There was only one now who would speak, one who was referred to by the others as Vartox, one who was Lord of the Mountain.
“Well now,” the giant muttered, some seven feet tall, laced with muscle and taunt with threat. With hands tucked into his belt he tilted his head sideways, his scalp bold and eyes sat too close together. “So you’re the star who fell to earth? Caused quite a stir, got people talking, most unproductive.”
He knelt, falling sharply, Kara resisting the urge to recoil as the girl feeling his eyes wondering, the teen unable to repress a cold shudder. Just as quickly, Vartox grabbed the teenager by her jaw, forcing her to look up as he studied her every perfection. Slowly, crookedly, a grin spread across his weather beaten features. A laugh came soon after, gradual in building, beginning as a murmur before his lungs burst with merriment.
“As I live and breathe,” he declared as Vartox turned her head left and right, just to be certain, “Gentlemen, we have ourselves today a Kryptonian! Behold,” he raised his voice to dramatic effect. “The living embodiment of futility. To think, everything for naught.”
The others joined him in his amusement, Kara Zor-El, lost, alone, did not.
“I’d forgotten how infuriatingly perfect your breed was,” Vartox went on to murmur, the black of his eyes too large. “Perhaps we could clean you up, there’s always a place for...”
Kara thrust her head forwards as far as her restrictions would allow her, the sharp motion accompanied by an ignition of her temper, some spark buried deep within the young woman desperate to be acknowledged.
Instinctually, Vartox pulled back and, following a moment of concern from his followers, a chuckle soon followed as reality was reasserted. She was no threat, she was as he said.
Futile.
“Perhaps not,” he conceded, releasing the girls chin and standing, his unrelenting gaze without compassion, his amusement without end. “Though you will come to change your mind.”
**********
Where Kara was to be lead, there was to be no dawn.
Their decent into the mountain lead deep into the bowls of the world itself, the conveyance of chains and rusted metal plunging them beneath its crust. She stood with her chin down, the last Daughter of Krypton beside the uncaring Vartox, the oppressor to her oppressed. Like drums, the sounds of industry grew ever louder, the clang of hammer and pick, the squeals of wheels and gears and the thrum of endless humanity driven towards endless toil. From a faint murmur to a deafening crescendo, it was a tidal wave just waiting to break, before the wall of granite before her slipped away to reveal Hell made manifest.
She inhaled, the sight of it stabbing straight into her soul, the caverns encompassing her vision and littered with hundreds, thousands of species scrambling over one another to reach rock and ore. Voices, so many voices echoing misery and despair, so many lives forgotten by the uncaring cosmos, slaves uncounted and unloved toiling in the name of masters who did not remember them.
It was too much for her, the sheer scale of it, the utter absence of simple dignity, a world built upon the bones of the abused. Slavery on an industrial scale.
“I cannot imagine what it must be like,” Vartox intoned, oblivious to the horror, the heat and saturating stink, “to be so unique, to be so utterly alone.”
Kara looked up, feeling those first seedlings, learning what it meant to hate another creature.
To feel the poison in her veins.
“To be the last of your kind,” Vartox looked down, failing to appear benign.
Kara didn’t answer, her jaw clenched, so few tears left to shed even as he gave voice to her worst fears.
“But fear not, Kryptonian, down here,” Vartox motioned to his kingdom, a pit beneath the world, “you’re as nameless as everyone else...”
To Be Continued...
Panic overwhelmed her, light piercing her vision as she desperately tried to scream. She was trapped, confined inside a coffin, the teenager hammering out with her fists and striking nothing but obstructions. Fruitlessly she smacked her palms against the glass mere inches from her features, as black as the void itself.
Suddenly...
...relief!!
The sound of deadbolts slamming open accompanied the hiss of escaping air, life flooding into the tight confinements of her imprisonment. She continued to thrash against her confinements, Kara fighting to escape as the lid of her capsule sprung open, the small compartment flooding with fresh oxygen.
Kara Zor-El surged, inhaling deeply with a painful gasp as her eyes shot wide open. She tumbled over, every one of her four limbs fragile, the girl from Krypton almost weeping as she escaped from one hell and fell into another.
Almost hurling herself free from the suffocating confines of her tiny pod, Kara almost immediately fell onto the waiting granite. Her bones cracked as she landed harshly, blinded by dirt and struggling to take in the sight of the abyss around her. Her fingers gripped the unforgiving and rigid landscape as she pushed herself slowly upwards, every muscle protesting and her head spinning.
Kara blinked, now on her knees as she swallowed hard, pain running down her throat as she shielded her vision, the blue sun above not one that she was familiar with, dominating the skyline with oppressive heat. She struggled to remember, but the memories were fleeting, broken glass refusing to fit together and causing her only further misery. This world, this place she found herself in, Kara could see nothing but desolation for as far as the eye could see.
She mumbled, words incoherent as she struggled to make sense of her surroundings, the red granite she stood upon stretching beyond the horizon, mountains and ravines surrounding her like a vice. This wasn’t Krypton, this wasn’t...
Kara clutched at her own temples as the pain resurged once more, misery compounded by endless horror blocking out the truth of it, her mind running from the sight of cataclysm. She screamed, silent and yet overwhelming, Kara Zor-El cast out into the void and sent spinning into the abyss. She blinked...
...and when Kara opened her eyes, she knew that time had passed.
She had been asleep, this child adrift amongst the stars, exhausted, traumatised, escaping into slumber on an alien world. She blinked again and Kara almost felt serene, the young women looking about herself, lying upon the ground barely a metre from her pod, a tiny, space faring vessel she had once seen drawings of on her Uncle’s workbench.
Kara inhaled, slow and steady, tears staining her cheeks as she struggled to find her feet, staggering like a fawn learning to walk.
“Mother?” she called out, her voice a dry rasp, a lost child crying for her parent, “Mom?”
There was to be no answer, nothing but the abyss of silence.
“...Dad?”
She swallowed, pain accompanying the creak of parchment that was her throat, and it was with a pressing need that she returned to her nearby pod, the life raft that had ferried her from home. The hull was a tapestry of disaster, pockmarked, torn and stripped away entirely from the fuselage, the final voyage of Krypton ending here, limping its way into the grave.
The interior proved to be scarcely better, barely room enough for its passenger to lay in slumber whilst a smaller compartment catered for provisions. She found food, tasteless, bland, lifesaving and water, precious water the life lost teenager immediately began to gulp down without a single thought of consequence. She felt nauseas, she didn’t care, pausing only to inhale deeply and almost collapse, slumping against the capsule as she struggled to find focus.
She did, finally, Kara blinking as she rocked back and forth before forcing herself to seal the bottle, setting it aside as she searched franticly for whatever else had been stored away to ensure her safety. With a pause, the young women pulled free a crystal, one that fit within the palm of her hand and no doubt carried within it much needed answers and close to it, a bracelet...
Kara put all else aside, stepping back as she held it within both hands, the sun above glinting off the yellow stone at its centre. She knew what it was, the teenager had seen its like many a time, a device worn by all the Guardians of Krypton, a symbol of office, the means through which an ordinary man could become exceptional, to be imbued with power both humbling, and unimaginable.
One that had been worn by her Mother...
The memories, the memories returned and threatened to overwhelm her, memories of Armageddon and the tower that split right down the middle, the cries and the horror and the shards of broken thoughts that stabbed and stabbed and STABBED...
Kara screamed, lost, alone and cast out amongst the stars, the last girl of Krypton could not bring her reality into stark focus, not until the yellow stone bracelet fell from her trembling fingers and she heard shout...
She froze, the young woman holding her breath as she swore she heard another voice. She turned, questioning her sanity, the soles of her bare feet protesting as granite sliced into her skin. Kara swallowed again, blue eyes wide as she searched the empty horizon, nothing to witness save desolation and hardship.
With a single step, she moved forwards, her heart skipping every other beat as she strained her senses, desperate to believe that she had heard someone.
“Hello,” she whispered into the abyss. “...please.”
Nothing...
...until the scream returned to her lips unbidden, erupting from her slight frame as her world was plunged into renewed darkness, a bag both snapped and tied over her head whilst a multitude of arms embraced her. She thrashed, Kara Zor-El at the mercy of predators unknown, voices, guttural and alien barking harshly as they bore the small girl into the dirt.
She cried, confused, afraid and utterly at the mercy of those she didn’t know, the Last Flight of Krypton ending in disaster.
**********
Time soon became abstract, whilst despair became equally mute.
Before long, Kara had fallen silent; her misery constrained as she lay without word, bundled into the back of some manner of vehicle and left to her own thoughts. She was blind, the hood rendering her vision entirely useless, while her wrists were bound behind her back, rope digging into her skin. She could hear them, pungent and raw, unwashed as they spat curses and exchanged short, blunt phrases. It was easier to become passive as she was abducted to parts unknown.
When they came to a stop, it was without warning, a jarring halt slamming her into the side of her compartment and, before she could regain her senses, several hands grabbed her once again, hauling the teenager to her unsteady feet. What was to follow was a pretence of walking, still bound she was all but dragged towards her next hell, unkind barks demanding that she pick up her feet as she was hauled bodily against her will.
For so long Kara Zor-El had imagined herself already an adult, and only now did she realise how far she still fell short of her own estimation. She wanted nothing more than to be returned to her waiting family, this foray into the universe nothing more than a dark memory, and the safety of her home secured once more.
It was an empty hope, slipping away with every stride she took.
They were now inside, of that much she was certain, the oppressive heat from the sun above replaced by the heavy taste of iron in the stifling, humid air. The walkway was metallic, the grating rough and corroded, clanging beneath the heavy feet of her captors and accompanying the distant clangour of endless industry, the haphazard grating seeking to trip her at every turn.
Finally they stopped, Kara dropped heavily as she landed on her knees. She fell to them without hesitation, weary beyond words, numb to the thoughts of fresh horrors. She blinked, several times and fiercely as the bag was ripped off her features, the teenager suddenly able to see and try to make sense of her surroundings.
After a short, parched swallow, the young women could finally make some sense of her new world. She was underground, the room she knelt within burrowed into a cave, the cavern red lined and uneven, echoing threat and oppression. Civilisation had been burrowed into the mountains marrow, iron and steel stabbed into its veins to create a floor and supports, a brutal effort to enforce order onto the natural. A desk, cabinets, signs of office and privilege lay before her or, at the very least, an approximation of them, an attempt to recreate an echo of more humane places.
Around her stood her captors and their disparity was almost startling. Aliens, each and every one, the first the girl had ever seen in person, and no two were alike. From half a dozen different species did they all come, each following a different path of evolution, all of them drawn to this place of desolation and declaring themselves it’s master, attired in overalls with wicked tools hanging from their belts to enforce their authority.
There was only one now who would speak, one who was referred to by the others as Vartox, one who was Lord of the Mountain.
“Well now,” the giant muttered, some seven feet tall, laced with muscle and taunt with threat. With hands tucked into his belt he tilted his head sideways, his scalp bold and eyes sat too close together. “So you’re the star who fell to earth? Caused quite a stir, got people talking, most unproductive.”
He knelt, falling sharply, Kara resisting the urge to recoil as the girl feeling his eyes wondering, the teen unable to repress a cold shudder. Just as quickly, Vartox grabbed the teenager by her jaw, forcing her to look up as he studied her every perfection. Slowly, crookedly, a grin spread across his weather beaten features. A laugh came soon after, gradual in building, beginning as a murmur before his lungs burst with merriment.
“As I live and breathe,” he declared as Vartox turned her head left and right, just to be certain, “Gentlemen, we have ourselves today a Kryptonian! Behold,” he raised his voice to dramatic effect. “The living embodiment of futility. To think, everything for naught.”
The others joined him in his amusement, Kara Zor-El, lost, alone, did not.
“I’d forgotten how infuriatingly perfect your breed was,” Vartox went on to murmur, the black of his eyes too large. “Perhaps we could clean you up, there’s always a place for...”
Kara thrust her head forwards as far as her restrictions would allow her, the sharp motion accompanied by an ignition of her temper, some spark buried deep within the young woman desperate to be acknowledged.
Instinctually, Vartox pulled back and, following a moment of concern from his followers, a chuckle soon followed as reality was reasserted. She was no threat, she was as he said.
Futile.
“Perhaps not,” he conceded, releasing the girls chin and standing, his unrelenting gaze without compassion, his amusement without end. “Though you will come to change your mind.”
**********
Where Kara was to be lead, there was to be no dawn.
Their decent into the mountain lead deep into the bowls of the world itself, the conveyance of chains and rusted metal plunging them beneath its crust. She stood with her chin down, the last Daughter of Krypton beside the uncaring Vartox, the oppressor to her oppressed. Like drums, the sounds of industry grew ever louder, the clang of hammer and pick, the squeals of wheels and gears and the thrum of endless humanity driven towards endless toil. From a faint murmur to a deafening crescendo, it was a tidal wave just waiting to break, before the wall of granite before her slipped away to reveal Hell made manifest.
She inhaled, the sight of it stabbing straight into her soul, the caverns encompassing her vision and littered with hundreds, thousands of species scrambling over one another to reach rock and ore. Voices, so many voices echoing misery and despair, so many lives forgotten by the uncaring cosmos, slaves uncounted and unloved toiling in the name of masters who did not remember them.
It was too much for her, the sheer scale of it, the utter absence of simple dignity, a world built upon the bones of the abused. Slavery on an industrial scale.
“I cannot imagine what it must be like,” Vartox intoned, oblivious to the horror, the heat and saturating stink, “to be so unique, to be so utterly alone.”
Kara looked up, feeling those first seedlings, learning what it meant to hate another creature.
To feel the poison in her veins.
“To be the last of your kind,” Vartox looked down, failing to appear benign.
Kara didn’t answer, her jaw clenched, so few tears left to shed even as he gave voice to her worst fears.
“But fear not, Kryptonian, down here,” Vartox motioned to his kingdom, a pit beneath the world, “you’re as nameless as everyone else...”
To Be Continued...