Akash remembered that his tanker was parked close to the front door to the house. He unlocked the door, and flung it open. Thankfully, the shadows hadn’t made it to the front door, but there were a couple of strangers trying to break into the tanker. Akash tried to call out to them over the pouring rain.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Get away from that thing!” For a moment, he thought to offer them a quick trip in the tanker to get away from the monsters, but he was only offered the time to think that because they didn’t respond.

“Can you hear me?” said Akash. “Let me in, I can-”

“Let...” said one of the strangers. “Me...”

Red lightning and thunder shook the sky right as they turned around revealing soulless white eyes and gaunt faces devoid of life.

“IN!” they shouted, lunging at Akash. Akash struck one of them with the grip of his toy blaster, which, while it didn’t do much, was enough to distract one of them for long enough for Akash to break out between the two of them. He jammed the key into the door and hopped inside. As he tried to close the door, one of the gaunt men had gotten himself caught in it as he grabbed Akash by the shirt. Akash kicked at him repeatedly, though the stranger was stubborn and wouldn’t move. The soulless eyed man tried to pull Akash out of the car, so Akash put his foot on the inside of the frame. In spite of the strain, this bought Akash enough time for him to strike at his attacker’s hands with the toy blaster’s grip. Doing so caused him to let go with one arm, and Akash seized the opportunity to slam the car door on the attacker’s other arm. They quickly recoiled, so Akash kicked him the rest of the way out and shut the door for good.

Akash quickly pulled the lever and threw the car in reverse. After the next strike of red lightning, Akash turned the car so he could drive it forwards, taking the most direct route to the market that he could. The pouring rain and slick yet sticky sands were still causing trouble, and now Akash jumped in shock at any silhouette he could make out in the rain. None of these silhouettes turned out to be regular people - or survivors, or his friends... So many questions and fears were racing through his mind all at once. What happened to those people? Could something like that have happened to Jagjit, Mira, his dad-

He just realised that he had left his dad at home, alone, in an extremely dangerous situation, without the tanker. But Akash was already so close to the market that if he turned around now, well... he didn’t know. Akash drove up to the entrance to the market, unsettled by the sight of it without any people around at all. He had every intention to speed down the market street to reach the landing area for the starships, but he had to stop the tanker when he saw that there was a person in the street, who noticed the tanker car and called out to it. Akash was about to turn on his high beams when he noticed that he still had a death grip on the photographs. So he put them in his pocket before he flipped the switch. And, lo and behold, the newly blinded survivor in front of his car was Jagjit. Akash felt a wave of relief wash through his body, and he hopped out of the car, toy blaster in hand.

“Jagjit!” Akash shouted, running down the street. Jagjit had to take a step back and out of the light in order to get a better look at Akash.

“Where’s Mira?!” Akash shouted.

“There’s no time for that!” shouted Jagjit. For some reason, his response had made Akash uneasy.

“What do you mean?” asked Akash. “And where’s our ship?”

“We won’t need a ship!” said Jagjit. “All we’ll need to do is step into the light.”

Right on cue, a bolt of red lightning had come down and struck the ground nearby. Mysteriously, this one had struck the ground and stayed, forming a column of red light that dimmed out the tanker car’s high beams. Jagjit offered his hand to Akash.

“Jagjit, no!” said Akash. “What about the monsters!? What about Mira!? Or - ”

“That’s you to a T, isn’t it, Ash?” said Jagjit. “Afraid of everything, as usual.” Jagjit grabbed Akash’s wrist and ran towards the pillar of light in one fell swoop. Akash tried to fight against Jagjit’s grip, but there was no overpowering him. But once Jagjit had fearlessly charged into the light, Akash had found it within himself to resist with all of his strength. Despite this, Jagjit had dragged most of Akash’s body into the red lightning; he could feel his arm burning, his eyes watering as his vision was obscured by blood red haze.

And then black.

And then, Akash saw something very strange. Blue text began to flow across his vision.

DEFENSE PROTOCOL - ERROR

RUNNING BACKUP - ERROR

RUNNING ATTACK PROTOCOL AS PROXY

ERROR ERROR ERROR

ATTACK PROTOCOL DISABLED

RUNNING EXPLORATION PROTOCOL AS PROXY

And then, Akash’s vision returned to darkness. He tried to turn his head, but he could feel that he wasn’t moving. Though, he didn’t feel anything holding him down, as if he was in suspended animation. Was this the end? All of that, for him and Jagjit to go out like this? He thought of Mira, and his father. If he could think, still, then there had to be a way out of this. There had to-

SMACK!

The sound of Akash’s quivering body hitting the wet sand had made a rather anticlimactic noise. Though Akash was disoriented from his experience, the first thing that he tried to do was look around for Jagjit. There was no sign of him, no trace even of a body, or anything. He was just gone. Akash struggled to stand, fearing what could have happened to his friend. As he propped himself up, he noticed that he was holding a rather large spyglass that seemed to materialize in his hands. It had glowing blue engravements, giving the outer casing the appearance of a circuit board. Akash couldn’t help but marvel at it. The casing itself was made out of a silvery metal, and the lenses seemed to be made out of a special type of crystal. As he stared into one of the lenses, a flash of cyan light streaked across his vision, which closely resembled a standard issue scanning device. It took a couple of rounds scanning Akash’s body, before the lens lit up with text.

HELLO WORLD

STORIED SCOPE

V 1.16

USER: AKASH

HOMEWORLD

AGNI KARMA

EXPLORATION PROTOCOL

STELLAR PIONEER

The text vanished as soon as Akash was done reading it. He took a quick look around, and realized that four more monsters had surrounded him. Two shadowy ghosts, and two of the seemingly deranged humans. Akash spotted the tanker car between the two groups of monsters, and made a break for it. As he did so, all four of them attacked him at once. Without thinking, Akash swung the spyglass at the charging shadows, in a desperate act of self defense. As soon as the larger lens was pointed at them, however, a blast of blue energy shot out of the telescope. The closer shadow was quickly reduced to dust, and the one behind it suffered significant damage.

Akash couldn’t help but pause and take in what had just happened. His hesitation was just long enough for him to get caught in the grip of the two insane people. Akash proceeded to strike one with the telescope, and his assailant was burned by its touch. In response, the other one released its grip and stepped back in fear for its life. Akash seized the opportunity and ran into the tanker car. He slammed the door shut, and sped off towards the starship landing area.

Though he had just lost Jagjit, he didn’t feel any grief for him. He didn’t understand why. That sense, perhaps, was replaced with a desperate urge to save whoever else he could, though his current lack of empathy for Jagjit’s unknown fate was bothering him.

As Akash drove over to the landing area, he noticed more tracks from a vehicle. Considering the way they cut through the wet sand, he had quickly come to the conclusion that this was a hovercraft, and Mira was one of the few people in town who owned a hovercraft. The craft went away from market, towards the canteen. Akash quickly turned the tanker to follow the hovercraft’s tracks.

The market was on the edge of town, and the canteen wasn’t far from it. Akash showed up in no time at all. His headlights revealed that Mira’s hovercraft; easily identified by its blue and white coloration- was parked right outside. Akash jumped out of his tanker car, spyglass in hand. He rushed into the canteen, taking the stairs down two at a time.

What would normally be a bustling hangout for all of the town’s teens and young adults looked like a ghost town. The atmosphere was completely different, and much colder. Akash couldn’t even hear the rain. And yet, standing right there in the middle of the main lobby was Mira.

“Mira!” Akash shouted.

No response.

Akash ran up to her to see if she was all right.

“Mira?” said Akash, worried. He reached out to touch her shoulder, but the moment before his hand made contact, there was a flash of red light. Akash backed off, covering his eyes with the telescope. Once it faded, Mira was gone.

“MIRA!!” he cried out in disbelief. What had just happened? He didn’t understand anything that was happening. And now, his friends were gone.

Akash collapsed on the sandy floor of the canteen. He could have been there on the ground for 10 minutes or 10 years. His moment of grief was compounded by a deep, hideous laughter. Akash turned around, trying to see who was there, if there was any vain hope for answers in this chaos.

Though the laughter continued, he saw nothing. Akash picked up the blue spyglass, and ran towards the door with righteous fury. He ran up the stairs in pursuit of whoever’s voice he had heard, but as soon as he went topside, he had to stop in his tracks. There was no rain anymore, and the sky had turned to a dark red spiral of clouds. The ground itself was trembling. Something was very wrong.

Akash turned to look for his tanker car, but it was gone. There weren’t even any tracks going away from where he left it. He turned to see that Mira’s hovercraft had also disappeared. Rage, confusion and grief flooded his mind, only to be interrupted by the sound of an explosion coming from the canteen. The canteen collapsed in on itself as a bolt of red lightning came down on it. Sand and dust blew around him as the building was reduced to rubble. Akash’s heart was nearly beating out of his chest. He looked up, and he saw what appeared to be a large serpent. It was ghostly, and clear - just like the shadows. But there was something on top of its head. Akash put the telescope up to his eye.

The view from the scope was clear, complete with a technologically enhanced Heads Up Display that clearly communicated that the shadowy serpent and the figure atop its head were two different entities. Akash twisted the larger tube, to try and get a better look. The spyglass’ HUD told him:

TARGET 01

LOST SOUL type OMEGA: OREBOROS

TARGET 02

UNKNOWN ENTITY

The serpent lunged at Akash.

DEFENSE PROTOCOL:

USING EXPLORATION PROTOCOL AS PROXY

A laser hot out of the larger lens of the telescope and struck the serpent. The light nearly blinded Akash. The figure atop the serpent jumped off of its head.

“Impressive...” Akash heard him say. When he looked up, he saw that the mysterious person was not only suspended in the air, but was wearing an all too familiar brown robe. Akash called out to them.

“Who are you?!” he shouted. “What’s going on?!”

The hooded figure simply floated there in silence. Akash was furious. He pointed the telescope at them, which proceeded to fire a beam of light. Almost at the same time, a bolt of red lightning came crashing down on top of the mysterious merchant’s head. Once both lights faded, he was gone.

Akash didn’t know how to feel... right up until he heard the robed man’s voice right behind him.

“They’re both going to be all right.”

Akash snap turned to catch just a glimpse of the hooded figure, before he disappeared.

Akash was alone, surrounded by clouds of sand and dust. He desperately looked around, believing that his adversary couldn’t have gotten very far. Unfortunately, he had forgotten about the giant, shadowy snake, hoping that the blast from the telescope would be enough to bring it down. In a flash, the snake had lunged down, trapping Akash in a circle. As a reflex, Akash tried to aim the blue telescope at the snake’s head, but it was too late. The snake had quickly wrapped a single, massive coil around his body. As much as he struggled, he couldn’t move his arms to aim the telescope at anything that wasn’t the ground.

Akash looked up to see the snake rear its head at him. He could hear the all too familiar sounds of starcraft engines, as red lightning arced across the clouds. The ground rattled and quaked once again, Akash heard voices from beside him, and then a bolt of red lightning came down from the sky and-