Jeff and the master made their way to the center of the plaza.
“Jeff!” I called out to him.
His jumped and looked my way.
His legs stood frozen. His eyes opened up wide.
Our eyes met. Those bright blue eyes. They were beautiful enough to elicit a deep sigh. And what those sparkling beauties were gazing at was, of course, me. Me and me only.
And then Jeff called out.
“Yuri!”
Wha—
Shock. Off the scale. It was like my head had been broken open with a hammer. All the energy in my body poured out my toes. I had lost all willpower, too. Consciousness was fading.
“Kei!”
He then quickly called my name. But it was too late. I had already died. Stupid jerkhead. It’s not that easy to revive the dead.
Jeff glanced to his left at the master. Then, as if he had made a difficult decision, he set off running in our direction.
The master’s robe stretched out toward Jeff.
“Jeff! No!”
Seeing the scene play out, I was completely resuscitated. I needed to know what the master was up to. Jeff didn’t need another death to add to his problems.
A finger extended from the master’s robe.
Aimed at the running Jeff’s back, the fingertip glowed brightly.
Electricity shot from his finger. It was different than the electric net that trapped Mugi. It was more like the pulse of a laser gun. Intermittent bursts reached Jeff.
“Gya!”
Jeff bent backward as the light blue bolts struck his spine.
The muscles in his back forcing him to stand on tiptoe, both his arms shot forward. His fingers wiggled, trying to grab something that wasn’t there. His arms went into convulsions.
“Jeff!”
I twisted in my bound position atop the cross. Really, this couldn’t be more annoying. I wanted to break these bonds and run to Jeff. Dammit. Dammit. Why did he have to be so hot?
Jeff’s body went stiff. The convulsions had stopped. He wasn’t moving at all. He stood there as if he was frozen. Because of the obvious pain, his gallant expression faded, yet his arms reached out longingly in my direction. His stance reminded me of a statue of a warrior from an ancient age.
The master lowered his hand and the robe returned to normal.
He passed in front of the frozen sheriff. There was nothing Jeff could do. He still appeared to be conscious, as his lips were trembling. His eyes were also blinking.
The master came to the edge of the plaza. Directly across from us. He stood about twenty meters away. He had completely ignored us. As loud as I had been yelling, he hadn’t even glanced in our direction. Standing in front of his five hundred followers, he raised his arms out. Again, the robe grew and spread out wide.
“My children…,” said the master in a clear and booming voice. “The opportunity has come. The sacred battle against the heathen from a faraway land has begun. The leaders of the foreigners don’t believe as we believe, and they sent Gods of Destruction to our sacred land. But we have dropped the iron hammer of justice on them. The symbol of the intolerable foreign heathen, the mines of Gautama, have vanished for eternity. Unfortunately, the leader of the heathen slipped out of our grasp, and the Gods of Destruction smashed our iron hammer.”
“Hmm,” I nodded to myself. Now the pieces were starting to fit together. The accident at Mine #4 had been the bait. It had been a lure to bring in the owner and the mayor, along with the two of us, and then nab us all in one fell swoop. But the mayor had escaped, and we’d been late in getting there. That’s when the armored warriors were called in.
“But look! The Gods of Destruction are sitting in our hands.” The master’s speech wasn’t over.
“Furthermore, the most powerful of those demons we have bound up here.”
The master turned and pointed in our direction. The gaze of the followers followed his finger. There must be something behind us that we hadn’t seen. I turned my head around as far as I could to see what he was talking about.
There was something there.
Something black and round and surrounded in some kind of lightning net.
This.
Isn’t this Mugi?
He must have been tossed there so that we wouldn’t be able to see him. He was still trapped in the electric net, slumped over on the ground. Poor Mugi! Trapped by his own energy, it was too hard to watch.
What’s that? I looked closely.
Out past where Mugi was. A dreary rocky mountain range surrounded the flat plateau where we were.
In one of the hills was a hole.
The entrance to the tunnel.
A plate was affixed above the entry way. The number 16 was engraved into the plate.
Mine #16.
So this was one part of a mine. Okay, so the master met Boralura in a mine, and then received his weird powers, and built the temple. Showing off his powers to the miners created a growing population of believers. The dead old man, Galbaldy, must have been getting ready to double-cross or betray the master.
The true tragedy was the owner. All this was happening on his own mining grounds, and he had no idea what was going on. And these followers truly believed in what the master was saying.
“The fate of the pagans has been decided. They will be crushed under our feet. They will cry out of shame for their sins.” The master’s voice grew noticeably higher.
“When we offer up the sacrifice of these Gods of Destruction, then Absolute God Boralura shall descend to this world and become one with his Absolute Children. Then all of space will be ours. Mankind is on the path to destruction. We have grasped the future. Now we shall be the leaders of all of space!”
The believers gave a collective cheer. Here and there the Children of God spoke out Boralura’s name.
“The blood of the Gods of Destruction for the Yaksha!”
The master yelled as he looked up to the sky.
“The flesh given to the cursed beasts!”
“Yuri…”
I looked over at my partner on the other cross. The two crosses were lined up close to each other. So close, in fact, that the edges of the two crossbeams were almost touching.
“Kei…”
Yuri looked back at me. I could tell by her eyes that Yuri had come to the same conclusion that I had.
This was not a good situation to be in.
We had no weapons. Mugi was out of commission. We were strung up on crosses, and our last ray of hope, the sheriff, was frozen stiff. I couldn’t see any way out of this.
“It was a rough life, huh?”
I stretched out the fingers of my right hand as far as I could. It would be my version of a goodbye handshake. Even if it was only the tip of one finger, I wanted to touch Yuri’s hand. The shackles had my wrists clamped down pretty tight, but I thought I might be able to reach her.
“It’s times like this I wished I had taken my diet more seriously.” As Yuri spoke these bizarre words she also stretched her pointer finger as far as she could.
And then at the same time our bodies shook as if suddenly hit by an electric shock.
The energy pushed through my body with a powerful force. Right when I thought this was it, there was an explosion. Without thinking, I shut my eyes. The bright flash exploded into the back of my brain. That. This was that.
Clairvoyance.
It often happened at times like this. Why always at the most inconvenient moments?!
Everything went white. The floating sensation had come. A feeling of ecstasy flowed through my body. Every cell in my body grew warm.
White. Everything was white.
To the white world.
An ashen-colored stone.
A strange shape. A person, an animal.
This was not a rock. Not a rock, but metal. I’ve seen this before.
Angel of Chakra.
That’s it. It’s the Angel of Chakra. At the mayor’s mountain retreat was where he showed it to us.
Another vision appeared. Ugly. A creature. A living creature. A beast so ugly it almost made me nauseous. It was big and round and its skin was a slimy pink. It was covered in splotchy black specks. They formed a pattern. It was a dirty and unattractive pattern.
The ugly beast opened its mouth.
Half of the creature’s body was mouth.
It got even uglier.
It came closer.
This giant creature with a huge gaping mouth came closer to us. In front of us was the Angel of Chakra, but the creature didn’t look at all concerned.
It slammed into the Angel of Chakra.
There was an explosion.
The white world turned red with flames.
The flames quickly got darker.
Then they turned completely black.
The black flame spread.
Consciousness…
The darkness engulfed us.