ConQuest (The Quest Saga) (27 page)

Q finally got why she kept popping in and out all the time.

And right on cue, Ruby popped out right in front of them.

“
Need my help
?” she asked. She was in full size now. She never grew that big since she never fit anywhere at that size, but here she had a lot of space. To make a quick comparison Taylor was about a quarter her height.

Ruby shrunk down until she was a little taller than Taylor.

“We’re fine right now, though you should stick around,” Taylor suggested. “There might be traps around this place.”

“Nice to see you, Ruby,” the other’s said.

They walked up the passage till they came to a solid stone wall. The wall had an inscription on it. Taylor couldn’t read it but Ruby could, probably since she’s an Egyptian beast anyway.

“It says ‘
Those who trespass beware your lunch money’
” Ruby translated.

“Seriously?” Kai asked.

Taylor wondered how many kids had stolen lunch money from Kai. He was such an idiot.

“She’s just kidding,” Taylor explained to him

“
The truth is that I can’t read this since it isn’t Egyptian.
”

“So it’s some sort of Zyxian language?” Elizabeth asked.

“
Has to be
,” Ruby concluded.

“Look at the pictures!” Kai exclaimed.

They took a closer look at the pictures. They were all drawings of U.F.Os and people from Egypt worshipping them.

Chris seemed to have gone into a trance after looking at those pictures. She went to the door and traced a symbol with her finger.

“Ritulya!” she said and the door exploded to pieces.

Everyone just stared at her.

“I don’t know how I did that,” she admitted.

“Intentionally or unintentionally that was 100% awesome!” Kai said.

They followed the path that the door opened up to. It looked exactly the same as the previous pathway but it was a little bit narrower.

They followed it until they reached another door. This one was made of solid marble. It had a huge metal lock on it. Breaking the lock should’ve been the easiest thing to do, but the locks here seemed to be different from the normal ones.

Luckily for them, Chris came to the rescue again. She walked up to the door. Before she could say anything, Elizabeth stopped her. She pointed to the pictures that were appearing on the door. They were all pictures of the Taj Mahal. It looked like there were humans that were shaping the dome. There were also a few others that were working on the pillars outside. The scenery though, was completely different. It was a desert land, not a beautiful garden.

“So Humans built the Taj Mahal as well?” Elizabeth said.

Chris walked over to the wall and then turned to look at everyone else. She wanted them to approve first. They all gave her the thumbs up.

“Ritulya!” she yelled and the door burst into a fine powder.

There was no path this time, but instead there was a bridge. It was a rope bridge and it was across a river of black water.

“
Powerful acid
,” Ruby said. “
Could dissolve metal in seconds,
” she laughed. Taylor wondered if this was something to laugh about.

One false step and they’d be toast.

“Why can’t Ruby fly us over?” Kai asked.

Ruby stooped to one side to let everyone get on. Once they were all secure she flew them over the bridge.

The pathway curled about a little bit. They went around mountains and hills, until they saw a cave ahead of them.

“
We’re here
,” Ruby told them.

Kai walked into the cave.

“Kai, wait!” Chris called out but Kai didn't listen to her.

They all followed him.

Kai walked up to end of the cave. There was darkness all around him but he could feel something in there. He placed his palm against it. It felt different compared to the other walls. This one was special. He knew it was.

He closed his eyes and focused. Immediately there was a loud explosion and the wall came apart. After the smoke cleared they saw a welcoming sight.

There was a high tech tunnel and in the middle, a glowing portal.

“Energy beings, here we come,” he said.

The others just smiled. They were a step closer to their goal, a step closer to avenging Q.

Palace of Being

They stepped into the portal and emerged in a void of darkness.

“W..Where are we?” Chris asked. She wasn't normally afraid of darkness but this darkness had a deathly aura.

Elizabeth looked around the place but couldn’t see anything other than darkness that stretched on till infinity. Taylor just closed her eyes, trying to feel the presence of any living thing.

“So you finally showed up,” boomed a voice. Everyone looked around them. They couldn’t see anything. What’s more, the voice seemed to be coming from all directions.

A spotlight came on. In front of them sat five orange beings. Their skin was like it was foam. It constantly kept moving, like it was some sort of liquid.

Taylor realized that it was the energy that was giving this effect. These people were the energy beings!

The five of them looked at Kai and the others.

Taylor walked up to them.

“We’re here to ask for your help,” she started. “The universe as we know it, is being destroyed by Apocalypse. We have no option but to seek your help, if you’d ever be so kind,” she bowed. She knew people such as these liked respect and formalities.

The council talked amongst themselves. They must have spoken in another language since Taylor didn’t understand a word that they had said. When they finally finished, they all turned towards Taylor.

“We refuse the offer,” they said, in one monotonous voice. The voice made everyone feel like crawling into a hole and staying there forever. It was this fear that they created that had made them legends.

Kai spoke up. “Why? Why don’t you want to save the universe?” he had personally found these people to be unreliable from the beginning but that didn't mean he was just going to quietly accept it.

“Yeah. What are you afraid of?” Elizabeth asked.

One of them stood up. “What did you say!?” he roared.

“Sit down,” said another one. Her voice seemed sweet and nice, but Taylor knew the real venom lay deep underneath the sweet personality.

“Why will you not help us?” Elizabeth asked.

They remained silent. It seemed like they didn’t have an answer for that.

“Where is he?” one of them asked. His voice was stern and arrogant.

“Where is God?!” he yelled.

The whole room rumbled. Chris was afraid that the ceiling would fall on them. Luckily for them it didn’t.

              Elizabeth was bewildered by the question. She had never thought of who ‘God’ actually was. She wasn’t really into philosophy.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Don’t toy with me!” he banged on his throne “Where is he? Where is Q?”

The whole room seemed to become ice cold. How could Taylor tell these beings that Q had died?

She couldn’t even bring herself to believe the fact. How could she even begin to explain it to someone else?

“He is dead, is he not?” they asked.

Taylor opened her mouth but no words came out. She couldn’t speak. Kai and Chris looked at her. They too didn’t know what to do

“He…he is dead,” Elizabeth managed to say.

All the beings then got up at the same time.

“You cannot expect us to help people who are responsible for the death of the God” the monotonous voice said.

Taylor didn’t get why they called him ‘God’ but their other points seemed to make sense.

“Now wait a minute,” Kai surged forward.

“Ah! The God of the Dead wishes to make a statement? But before I answer that let me say this. Ask yourself who was responsible for the death of God. If not for your acts of stupidity, God would not have needed to sacrifice himself,” they said, in a tone that almost accused Kai of murder.

Kai hung his head. They were right. If it weren’t for him, the Pandora Cannon wouldn’t have attacked them and then hit Q in the process. In a way, it was his responsibility.

“Speechless, I see,” they said.

“
What do you want to do?
” Ruby asked Taylor.

“I don’t know. I guess we have to take care of it ourselves.”

“
Without
Q
?”

“Without Q,” she nodded her head.

“
Well if you’re confident then I guess it’s okay
,” she said.

Taylor smiled. She couldn’t even remember the last time she smiled, but she didn’t need to time-travel to know that it was Q who usually did that.

She turned to the beings. “You think we need to beg you for help?”

“Taylor? Um… What’re you doing?” Elizabeth whispered.

Taylor didn’t take notice of her.

“We’re going to save the universe by ourselves. Who says we need your help.”

“Then why did you come to us?” they asked, a smirk on all five faces.

“That’s because I didn’t know what JERKS you were,” she yelled.

Everyone around Taylor stared at her. Kai wouldn’t have had the courage to say that to even one of the beings and here Taylor said it to all five!

The beings just glared at her. Taylor didn’t bother. She didn’t care about what they did anymore.

“Let’s go, guys.” She walked up to the portal. Everyone followed her.

“I’m warning you mortal…” the voice said.

“Shut up,” Taylor said.

And with that Taylor and co. were back in the Orion. She didn’t know how they’d got back there but it had saved them some valuable time, so she wasn’t complaining.

“I can’t believe that you said that to their faces!” Kai said, excitedly.

Taylor wasn’t feeling exactly proud of herself. She didn’t know what she was going to do know. All she knew was that they had to go beat Apocalypse.

“Plot a course to the centre of the universe,” she told Kai.

“Yes ma’am,” he saluted her, a smile on his lips and ran to the pit.

Chris was looking at the space outside. She recollected all the adventures that she had had, all happy ones, all up till….. up till Q. And now they were heading for a suicide mission.

She knew it was suicide. Everyone knew it was. They just didn’t say anything about it to each other.

“I wonder where Q is now,” she said. He was probably far away, only part remaining being a colorful ‘prana’ that searched for a host.

Elizabeth looked at her feet. She had stretched her wings out a bit. She had been so stressed that she had forgotten all about her wings. Pretty ironic, but that was the level of responsibility that they carried.

She looked out to the window. She saw a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. She looked again, but didn’t say anything.

It must’ve been my imagination, she thought.

“
That was anything but your imagination
” Ruby told her.

She couldn’t see Ruby anywhere nearby.

“
I’m out here.
” 

Elizabeth looked closer and saw Ruby in space, gliding gracefully. Elizabeth remembered Taylor telling her something about griffins being able to fly in space.

“What was that?” she asked. She also realized that she was communicating purely through thought, which was the first time she had done so without Taylor.

“
It
was
a
black
hole
,” she said.

“So that means…...”

“
We’re coming closer to the centre of the universe
.”

Elizabeth kept quiet. Every second brought them closer and closer to Apocalypse and they still had no idea what it was they were supposed to do.

All their powers combined weren’t going to be enough to stop a rampaging black hole.

Suddenly the ship tilted to the left. Elizabeth flew straight to the wall and hit it hard.

“Ouch!” she said. She didn’t know what was going on, but it couldn’t be any good.

She picked herself up and ran to the pit. Taylor and Chris were alongside Kai.

“You’re finally here,” Taylor said, her face full of seriousness.

“What’s wrong?”

“That is,” Chris said, pointing ahead of them.

Elizabeth couldn’t see it at first but she was able to see the outline. It seemed to be a dark cloud, a dark cloud shaped like a man. It seemed like a nebula.

“
It isn’t a nebula
.” Ruby walked into the pit. Elizabeth wondered how Ruby had got there in the first place.

Probably teleportation, she thought.

“
That is Oragon, the dark matter being, the only dark matter being in the universe
,” Ruby said.

Though the name didn’t exactly strike fear into Taylor’s heart, she felt that she should be afraid of it.

As if on cue, Oragon retracted his fist and punched into the ship. His hand punched right through the ship, destroying everything. The passenger area was completely destroyed. When he retracted it, the emergency seals, sealed off the hole completely.

That didn’t seem to make Oragon very happy. He clenched his palm into a fist again, but this time he went straight for the pit. Elizabeth stared at the giant fist advancing towards them, she couldn’t move. Her legs weren’t obeying her.

Taylor ran towards her, Kai got up from his chair hurriedly, Chris was telling Kai something. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion for Elizabeth.

Then suddenly a blast came out of nowhere. Everyone got thrown to the floor. Elizabeth struggled to get up. When she finally did, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She rubbed them once or twice to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

Taylor had got up as well. “It can’t be,” she said.

In between them and the fist stood a warrior. His white suit shone brightly in the darkness of space.

He held onto the fist. Oragon threw more force into his fist but the boy had a kind of force field that kept pushing it away.

“You’ve just messed with the wrong guy,” he said.

“Wait…..how can we hear him in here?” Kai realized that he could hear the boy speaking.