Realm of Darkness | Volume One

Different Heaven: MADNESS!!! (Part 2)

The Duchess boomed in Tritanide, her voice a chilling echo that reverberated through the ruined cityscape. "Daki, wukurumk."

Kyle awaited his doom, but it wouldn't arrive, opening his left eye, he saw the Duchess staring downwards. When he stared down, he saw liquid dripping from his pants, causing to blush furiously as an awkward smile played on his lips.

The Duchess' crimson gaze narrowed further. A flicker of something alien, perhaps amusement, crossed her features. In another guttural rasp of Tritanide, she spoke a single word. "Wirokza."

The contempt in her voice was unmistakable. With a disdainful hiss, the Duchess ripped the tractor beam free. It had tossed Kyle with enough force to jar his joints, sending a jolt of pain through him as he landed with a thud on the ruined cityscape. Dazed, he lay there for a moment, his gaze locked on the Duchess.

Then, the unmistakable crackling and warping sound of Tritanide travel filled the air. Asal had arrived. The being materialized next to the Duchess, orbiting her slowly. He spoke in the harsh, digital language, his voice laced with amusement. "Wezawrikel," he said, circling her. "Wirokli wrik shannazadiki, dasatirzatekz?"

The Duchess' response was a guttural chuckle, a sound that sent shivers down Kyle's spine despite the playful tone it held. "Wezakuk," she replied.

Asal's single eyelid, a bizarre feature on his otherwise featureless form, seemed to contract, a gesture Kyle interpreted as something akin to pleasure. In another burst of warping noise, Asal vanished. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by Kyle's ragged breaths.

But the silence wouldn't last. The Duchess, her crimson gaze still fixed on Kyle for a single, unnerving moment, winked. A wink. From a being that defied human comprehension. Then, with a series of metallic clicks and groans, her strange form began to reconfigure. Armor plates shifted, the powerful guns that had nearly been Kyle's end retracted to the back. In her body's place, a sleek, aerodynamic craft emerged - a spaceship unlike anything Kyle had ever seen. With a final, chilling hum, the Duchess turned and warped away, leaving Kyle alone amidst the ruins.

Kyle had survived, but survival felt like a cruel joke. The acrid tang of ozone and burning metal filled his nostrils, a constant reminder of the fallen city around him. His comrades, the ones he'd fought beside with desperate camaraderie, were gone. Each deafening boom of the Tritanide carrier's energy blasts echoed their final screams in his mind.

Smoke plumed from the smoldering ruins, blotting out the once-familiar skyline. In the distance, the alien armada loomed like mechanical leviathans, their cold, metallic forms casting an oppressive shadow. A sickly green mist, a harbinger of annihilation, crept across the landscape, choking the life out of everything it touched.

He was alone, a lone ember amidst the ashes of his world. The human resistance network, once a vital hum, had sputtered and died, leaving only an unsettling silence. The human race, once a teeming sea of life, was rapidly receding, becoming a hunted species on their own planet.

Kyle furiously groaned in disappointment, the sound muffled by the thick rubber of a scavenged gas mask. He forced himself back up, the ruined cityscape a labyrinth of jagged concrete and twisted metal. The air, thick with smoke and the acrid tang of burning, was turning a sickly green at the edges – the telltale sign of the expanding toxic mist.

He scanned the ruins, his eyes narrowed against the swirling smoke and the distorted view of the gas mask's visor. Escape. That was the only thought hammering in his skull. Escape this crumbling city, escape the suffocating mist, escape the relentless alien advance. Somewhere, there had to be others. Pockets of resistance, hidden survivors, a flicker of hope to fan his own dying ember into a flame.