AGE OF INFERNALS: THE UNDERWORLD THREAT

PROLOGUE

Marcus takes in a deep breath and gets to his knee besides his wife's bed. He twists his lips into a smile and puts his palms over her hands. With a sigh, his wife opens her eyes. She smiles back and struggles to caress him with her thumb. It makes Marcus sad to see her like this. She looks sixty years older than she actually is. That is not the major reason for Marcus. Sadness however, it's the pain she sees in her eyes, the suffering. She tries to hide it but she's not very good at it. Neither is he; pretending is a trait the people of this world, Craltus, never honed.

His world! Did he love it more than his wife? It was a difficult decision but one that he had nonetheless made. His wife. She was dying and he had found a way, against all odds, to cure her. The price was too high and went against the good will of his universe, after all, it was going to be destroyed if his wife was too live. It helped assuage his guilt that his world was doomed either way. Even their gods had abandoned them, scared of what was consuming their planet. A being called Von. If it scared the gods, what chance did mere human beings stand? Their magic was no match compared to the threat. In any case, magic fueled it.

Marcus's wife was frail, dying from within. Her skin clung to the bones and sagged, loose from the loss of the extra pounds of weight in terms of muscle. His wife didn't support the idea. She was against it with every frail fiber of her being. She didn't believe her life was worth that of others. She had hope that her planet could be saved, that there was still hope for her but they had run out of time. Perhaps if it wasn't Marcus alone who was looking for a cure, there would have been hope. But all the scientists and geniuses had declined, claiming to be busy finding a way to save their reality from doom. Marcus was alone and he found a way to save his wife but what was the point of saving her just so she could perish with the rest of them in a year. So, Marcus had found a way to save her once again but he kept it from the rest of the people. What was the use. Telling them would mean saving them and that would mean dooming his wife.

Every way , it seemed to end at the same point, it was either his people or his wife. He'd slipped up celebrating his success and let his guard down. He'd slipped up, either mentioned that he had found a way to save his wife from both her illness and that of her world or it was plucked out of his mind. He had been drunk at the time and any could have happened. Now, they were coming for him and he had to speed up his plans.

"What's wrong Marcus?" his wife asks capable of reading him like always. His smile turns real and he strokes her arm.

"It's all going to be fine. I may have found something..."

He lets go of her and reaches for a syringe. There is a liquid inside it and the moment she sees it, despair enters her eyes. She knows what it means but she is too weak to fight Marcus.

"Don't do this!" she pleads.

"It's all going to be okay honey," he says ignoring her then jabs the needle into her skin and releases the anesthetic into her system. It will be better for her if she has no idea of what's going on. Marcus pats her hair as unconsciousness claims her. Her eyes close and Marcus sighs, it is time to get to work. He picks up his wife and carries her to a machine he created. He puts her in it then after planting a kiss on her forehead , shuts the lid on the device. He calls the Machine a Savior. One of the lasts creations of his planet. The Device though of the highest technology on the inside, it looks like a Sarcophagus on the outside. Like the coffin of the gods of where he will take her. Three empty transparent cylinders line one side of the Savior. They're the batteries that are soon to be filled with magic.

Marcus has discovered and learned more in the last year than he has his whole life. He pushes the device into another device that he built. The savior fits in it perfectly and is locked in place. He calls the second machine an explorer. The first and last machine of its kind. Marcus figured out that the only way to save his wife was to send her somewhere that wasn't going to cave in on itself. He had thought, Von hadn't always been there and it fed on magic so it had to have come from somewhere. Because it was old and it grew with every bit of magic it consumed. It had to have come from somewhere that wasn't Craltus, that wasn't in the universe – dimension, reality – that Craltus was in. so Marcus had looked. And he found countless realities out there. Ones destroyed by Von, some filled with magic and some without an ounce of magic. He had looked through the dimensions trying to find one where his wife could survive. One without magic which Von would have no reason of visiting. He found it and searched through all the planets where she would thrive, not die of loneliness, where someone would release her from the savior.

A knock sounds at the door and Marcus tenses, they've come for him. " Open up or we're breaking the door!" a voice says outside like they mean it. Marcus shrugs. Let them break the door, he wasn't going to need it anyway. In a hurry, he keyed in the co-ordinates then put in a timer for ten seconds. A thud on the door then a second one. The door fell and men walked in, oblivious to the number of seconds they had left to live.

"Marcus! You are under arrest for the..." Marcus doesn't pay attention to them. He activates the savior then closes his eyes and lets the wave that follows drain all the magic from his being. The wave spreads claiming the lives of those who came to lock up Marcus then from the whole planet. It all happens in under ten seconds and the universe, without its framework, starts to come apart. The timer reaches zero and the savior vanishes in sparks of electricity. Its destination, earth.