DISCONTINUED ---- Iris: Giant Black Widow

DRAFT Chapter Eight: ILKKAA

Many years ago, when the purge started, almost the whole world was being starved, tortured, murdered, or worse, and trillions were looking for an escape from the attacks. Some even commit suicide.

Two of those trillions, looking for an escape, were twins in college at the time, a brother and a sister. Both their parents, their only known family, had disappeared the day after the purge began and were never seen again. Mourning the loss of their parents, the twins devoted their time to creating a safe place for as many victims of the purge as possible.

The brother was a science prodigy and the sister was a prodigy mage, and were experimenting on space pockets in their private lab when the purge started. Looking at their space pocket notes after their parent's deaths, they brought four of their friends over for help making the safe space. Not too long after, the twins and their friends began work on the space pockets at an insane rate.

The twins were half human and half elf, while the others were dwarves and cyborg. With only 4 hours of sleep a day, every day, they cut and experimented and occasionally blew up things, almost causing their neighbors to come over to see what was all the ruckus about, despite the purge.

A few months later, the group had finished their safe space, complete with two portals that would allow transportation between them, but they still faced the problem of getting the safe space out to the purge victims. The next day they decided to send one of their cats out with a digital message that would spread like a virus to the other animals and materialize as a screen in front of the owners, and could be shared.

The message stated that if they wanted to, they could go to a hidden location the next day after the sun set, where they could be safe. Word spread quickly. Hundreds showed up at the twins' set location. They pushed and shoved to get to the front, but they all formed a line at the voice through a loudspeaker.

Murmurs of confusion rippled through the crowd when the sister stepped in front of the line, holding rectangular prisms, one in each hand. She set one on the ground without letting go, then pulled it up, revealing one of the portals. The line fell silent and the sister lifted the second prism, scanning the first person's face.

The prism flashed with complex runes inscripted on it, casting a bright blue light over everyone. The sister nodded and then told the first person to enter the portal. She then did the same to everyone, and the line surged forward with newfound hope, until there was no one left in the line.

Every day since then, the six friends have helped thousands of victims with the safe space, and when the purge ended, they automated the entire process, allowing people to enter and leave without needing one of the six there. They built more portals, and soon there were different portals and different safe spaces for different countries, with their portals dotting the entire world. However, the safe space was still to be safe from crime, and the only way to get to the portals were either following one of the "infected" pets, or going with a scanned person, otherwise called an Ilkkaa citizen, both of which to get scanned into the database themselves.

No one could remember the names of the founders, but there was a board on the wall of a building in the safe space, completely filled with runes inscripted into the digital board. The only solid things or understandable letters spelled out "ILKKAA" in bold script, with live black three-petaled flowers winding around it, and a cat carving sleeping on top.

The letters also were made with a strange crystalline material, fiery red, swirling with a soft edged ash-gray, but when the exact middle of the sun touches the line of the horizon, the material changes into a deep purple, almost black, with a light blue, soft against the background, fading back when it is the same stage during sunrise. Although many have tried to steal some of the extraordinary material, probably to sell, they kept revealing themselves to the security scanner, and getting kicked out.

Soon the space pockets were developed into villages, then towns, then cities, then expanding until it was not allowed further. Small businesses pop up everywhere, some growing huge and almost crashing the economy.

One of the huge businesses is a disgusting salad bar, but nobody could understand how they stayed in businesses, nor how they expanded so much. The only thing they knew was that it lived up to its name, the Wiry Vegetable, although the motto didn't make sense, Ostrich sleds won't yield newts!.

Anyways, many searched for the founders, yet they became unknown to all those who knew them, but not unknown was that the founders had disappeared all at the same time, at the same place, and they were never found, dead or alive.

Even so many years after the purge, the safe space never quieted except for when the sun went underground, revealing the vast stars, and all go to sleep. However, nine days a year, always the same dates, for a minute that starts when the clock strikes midnight, you could head to the river and may find a shard, but if you don't touch it by then, it would disappear.