Mageblade

Two

            Lourdes was escorted to a vast, luxurious chamber where she was pampered and readied for dinner with Chancellor Zevlios and the Goddess. With her hair elaborately curled and painfully pinned to her head and wearing a red silk form-fitting gown, not unlike the Chinese cheongsam, this was the most formal Lourdes had ever dressed in life.

As beautiful as her rooms were, with their exquisite art and rose gold fixtures, the Chancellor's quarters were simply breathtaking. The whole room seemed to be made entirely out of black marble with intricate silver designs shimmering along the walls and a rich violet carpet running along the floor. A pavilion made up of black marble columns stood in the center of the room where servants scurried to set the large round table. The Chancellor and Goddess were in deep discussion as they lounged in plush purple chairs before rising to greet Lourdes cheerfully while Rhin stood at silent attention just outside the pavilion.

The Goddess took Lourdes' hands and gazed at her with sorrowful eyes. She sighed. "So young and yet you have seen so much. Will you tell us about that which plagued your planet?"

Lourdes nodded grimly though she really didn't have the energy tonight. She didn't even want to get all dressed up and meet these people for dinner but the nuns of St. Jerome's orphanage would turn over in their graves like rotisserie chicken if she was so rude after accepting their hospitality. Besides, she supposed it might help Iutrara to learn about them even if it was too late for Earth.

"The UN officially called them the Spectral Chaos because of the way they just appear out of the darkness and make everything crazy. No one knows where they came from or why they came, many thought it was an alien invasion while others thought it was the apocalypse. Anyway, it started slowly about eight months ago in more remote parts of the world. Whole villages were slaughtered, cattle stripped clean, rivers running with blood. It was crazy but we figured it was just some issue with the locals like a plague or guerrillas or something. Then people started disappearing and mutilated bodies were found in more populated areas.

The weather started getting really weird at this point. It would snow in the desert or a heat wave would hit the North Pole. Egypt had to dig itself out of six-foot snowdrifts in the middle of July for the first time ever! Storms got more violent, tidal waves would appear suddenly and wipe out whole communities. One of my neighbors lost her entire family when Florida and Texas got washed away three months ago."

"And you believe this Spectral Chaos was responsible?" The Chancellor asked.

"It was just one weird thing after another and no one could explain it." Lourdes shrugged. "Then surveillance cameras started catching images of these ... diablos... these creatures just coming out of the darkness to just.. slaughter people!"

The Chancellor leaned forward. "Could it have been an enemy nation controlling them, making them do these things?"

Lourdes gave him an incredulous look. "How could anyone control them? It'd be impossible, crazy, se fue al garete!"

Lourdes shuddered, remembering the sick and violent scenes broadcast by news agencies battling for ratings; the bloodier and most stomach-churning the footage, the better. A troubling thought occurred to her then.

"No one could look directly at them because their head would explode, why I don't know but... I could. Even the news footage would give people migraines and nosebleeds after a few minutes but not me." She chuckled in disbelief. "I stared right at a Mistwitch today, even commanded a Cracklemorph to stop and it did!"