Adhara's Sonder

Chapter 10: The Alchemist

Cyrus woke to someone incessantly ringing his doorbell.

"Goooooood morning!" Donny grinned, leaning his elbow on the doorframe. "So, uh...what did YOU do last night?"

"I stayed up really late. And it's really early, you horrible morning person," groaned Cyrus.

"I prefer 'morning lark,' but even you will wake up for this, my friend." Donny pushed inside, his sister Aliyah in tow.

"Hi, Cyrus!" she cheered.

Donny turned on the news and boosted the volume loud enough to give Cyrus a headache. A reporter was standing in front of the charred husk of the warehouse.

"I'm standing in front of what's left of an Acryogen Industries paint warehouse which was mostly destroyed in a fire early this morning," the reporter announced. "Though most citizens have grown to expect occasional fires, this one—some are claiming— was especially unusual!" The reporter turned to one of the people the Grimlords had been terrorizing last night. "I'm here with Aubrey Campell, who witnessed the fire first-hand. Aubrey, what can you tell us about the events last night?"

"Well, I woke up because I heard some explosions outside my window!" said Aubrey, nervous but visibly excited. "I'm on the neighborhood watch, o'course, so I went downstairs to see if anyone needed help or if we needed to evacuate the building."

Maria joined them in the living room and picked up the remote to turn on the subtitles.

"But after I went outside, this horrible monster came after me!" Aubrey continued. "It was like a skeleton with a body made of, I don't know, black paint! It came over to me, and just as I thought it was about to do me in... it melted into goop! I was saved! By three strangers!" she gesticulated wildly to accent her embellished anecdote.

"That sounds terrifying. You must have been very scared!" said the reporter. "What did these strangers look like?"

"One was wearing an old-fashioned gas mask and a hood, and he had these strange doo-hickeys strapped to his arms! I think he was the leader. The other two carried these weird guns that looked like horns...or, um...trumpets? They told me to go back inside where it was safe, and I ran back up to my room and watched from my window. They walked right towards the fire, and they were surrounded by hundreds of those skeleton monsters! And they fought them all off! It was amazing!"

"That is amazing!" agreed the reporter. "What did these three mystery individuals use to fight the monsters? How should we be arming ourselves to feel safe?"

"Well, I'm not sure." Aubrey furrowed her brow. "I couldn't see so well from the distance, but it seemed like...well, it seemed like they could control fire and ice! They were shooting it all over the place!"

"Thank you, Aubrey. Her report may seem incredible to some of you watching at home," the reporter turned back to the camera, "but her testimony is not the only one of its kind that has surfaced since last night!" The scene cut to a recording of one of the other victims they had saved.

"One of those creepy things cornered me. I was sure I was done for, but then those three showed up!" he breathed.

"One of them had glowing eyes, and she shot it with some sort of invisible energy, and it just turned into a black puddle!"

"It's necromancy!" The camera cut to an interview with a fanatic. "I watched them fighting with those demons. They're toying with forces they don't understand! They're mad with power and they can't control it anymore, so they tried to destroy the evidence of their dark experiments!!"

"I don't know what happened last night," the camera cut to the other woman they had saved. "There's all this talk of mad science, or...the undead...all I know is that I thought I was going to die, and those three saved my life. They're my heroes."