Once upon an orbit of planet Fait, a playful young girl and her flustered yet resourceful single father must endure sickness, encounter exotic creatures, escape a predatory government, and outwit a wicked wizard to survive just one more day. Having...
That night, with the four stars in their crooked heaven winking down, while the Neathers of all species, all employments, sweated and thrashed in their narrow cots, in their tiny cells, high above the four supertowers, in the fourth of four pyramids-the Jade Pyramid, of North Tower-there sat a man on a jagged throne of black glass.
This man wore a golden helm. Upon the golden helm encrusted six gems, and these gems crackled and hummed with evil power. All around that black glass throne evil spirits-called boggis-swirled and sneered and shrieked of evil victory. In his hands the evil wizard held a black, spiked, scrying mace attached by black chain to his wrist. With what he saw in that black globe, the boggis believed they and their wielder had won. They believed the whole of Planet Fait would soon be theirs to spoil, to plunder, to pollute.
"Tetrapolis is but a single piece of Fait, in which I've captured and kept every kind of creature to do my baleful bidding, and there is perfect order, here. Yet must not my perfect order be brought to the whole of Fait?"
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"Ought not Tetrapolis number its demonical domain at not merely four supertowers, but forty-times-forty supertowers? Four for every city in the Fourth World? Yes, yes. All Fait must be one big black ball, and all its creatures my bossessed puppets. For it is best for them that they should be, and best for me that they serve me. And so they shall be."
Behind the golden helm, General Gorchen opened his eyes. He smiled his lizard lips. He knew what he would do. At last it all made precise evil sense to him. "Tomorrow night I'll hold a Grand Black Banquet, with fulsome feasting, diabolical dancing, frivolous finery, and maximum groveling. And on the next morning my ingenious invasion of Fait's other three corners shall commence. All its beings shall kneel to my wicked will, or die by my heinous heel."
At least that was what, in his deluded vanity, in his foolish pride, the General Gorchen believed. For the General, so blinded by his own foul designs, did not foresee that one champion-from the people, and for the people-of trapped, unfair, wretched Tetrapolis-would soon come, would soon fight, that from the fabled blue fire, Redemptor would soon rise.
At that very moment, while everyone asleep in the supertowers shared that same awful nightmare and heard Gorchen's dastardly declaration, far, far below, in the Neath, inside the modest hut of old stone called the Sylva Dome, a feathery figure stooped over an altar, and cast pieces of colored glass-red, blue, and yellow-into a bowl of boiling water. The pieces melted and swirled as he stirred the mixture with a Mundi Tree branch. The old shinseon intoned,
"To this bad dream, sylvas of Fait I entreat ye, avert disaster.
Interject salvation, first sight of promised hope, Redemptor."
In the bowl, the colored glass pieces combined their colors into a vision. The red and blue made purple, red and yellow made orange, the hero in purple armor, his glowing hands, purple plume, blue helmet, his eyes of fire, flying up, silver cross-lance called Xiphos in his hands. Into the dream, before Gorchen, this hero did appear.
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"Dream ye may of evil things for everyone, but they have not happened yet.
Sent by sylvas, come have I, greedy Gorchen, to crash your Boggi Banquet."
Then, appearing floating in the air before him, a silver triangular shield, the Hoplon of Kal. And all the bad ghosts swirling around Gorchen on his black throne, once they saw Redemptor with the shield, the boggis shrieked in terror and flew away, flew right away as fast as they could, right fast away in fear from the powerful future savior of Tetrapolis and Fait. At the general the hero blasted the Shield of Kal.
Swinging and spinning the black, spiked mace from its chain, General Gorchen stood from his black throne and angrily, arrogantly charged the hero, as the hero charged the villain, the hero blasting his fiery glowing shield Hoplon out before him, and all the boggis fleeing, screaming, while all the good spirits, a living rainbow of angelic powers, charged forward with their champion, Redemptor, in a swell of choir voices, and good versus evil, of light versus dark, and...
***
With those sinister shrieks of the fearful fleeing boggis still stinging in his ears, Rene woke. He could barely see. Everything was blurring. He could hear laughter, from somewhere, from-not the outside, not from any person in the living world-but from inside his own mind. He was bossessed-his body infected by an evil spirit-by a boggi.
Rene groaned. Everything hurt. How could this have happened? He did nothing wrong, did nothing to deserve this boggi infection of his soul. He turned over, clutching his sweat-drenched cloak to himself. So bad was his vision that he could not tell that the cloak was now, since leaving the Takke Store, encrusted green, and the moldy symbols all over the shoulders of the cloak, in Tetrish, read THIEF, THIEF, THIEF. Rene reached for Nariah, who should be snuggled near, but instead found Nariah lying beside him, quivering and shaking, the left side of her face, also crusted with green. Her eyelids flickered and she groaned, "Daddy. Sick. Help."
Strength blasted through Rene and he shook his head. He willed himself to see more clearly, because he had to, and he swooped up his daughter in his arms.
"Daddy's here, strong girl. Don't you worry. Daddy knows right what to do."
