Lor Mandela - Destruction from Twins (26 page)

Ultara nodded and dropped down slowly into
her throne; her eyes saddened. “So, he sacrificed himself to get
them out.”

Branlor nodded. “Verolite went to Drolana
himself and confirmed it. He saw the atoh swimming in a pond and
recognized her by her hair and eyes. He and Linetal followed her.”
He held out a small figurine and handed it to Ultara. “She had
this.”

Ultara gazed down at the little statue in
her hand. “A Squanki?”

“Yes, Milady.”

“Shadow Squanki don't exist outside of Lor
Mandela, that I’m aware,” she muttered. She sat thoughtfully for a
moment, and then stood and commanded, “Branlor, I want you to
oversee this personally. Go to Drolana. You'll need to take at
least a thousand Travelers with you. It will take five receptors on
each of the Borlocs to bring them back.”

“Five?” Branlor was shocked by her request.
“How can we place that many without being detected?”

“It will be difficult, but not impossible.
Yes, Branlor, five on each. Any less will be unstable.” She stopped
and stared at him threateningly, “I can't trust this to someone
with doubts, Commander.”

Branlor gulped. “Whose receptors should we
place, Ma’am?”

“Mine of course! They must be brought back
to me. I’m counting on you, Commander. I'm sure you understand how
important this is. Do not let me down.”

“Yes, Vritesse.” Branlor bowed
nervously.

The dark wisps of Ultara’s gown flowed
around him as she turned and strode up the slope to the platform.
She lowered herself gracefully onto her throne again. “At last . .
. .” she breathed.

Branlor bowed once more and quickly set out
to recruit one thousand Trysta Travelers.

It didn’t take long before he had a large
group assembled in the main conference room.

“Verolite has informed me that the atoc and
his daughter are alive, and on Drolana,” he enlightened. “We have a
great challenge before us. We must place five of Ultara’s receptors
on each of the Borlocs.”

The room erupted with the shocked whispers
of a thousand men and women. Nothing like this had ever been
attempted.

“Silence!” Branlor boomed over the din. He
was far more intimidating when he was not addressing Ultara.

He continued, “Most of you will be used to
create a diversion with your lights. Torschel, Blansten, Verolite,
Linetal, and I will carry the receptors, as we are able to
penetrate solid surfaces. This will not be easy to accomplish, as I
am aware, but the atoc and atoh must be brought back to
Ultara.”

Many of the assembled Trystas still looked
at him in disbelief. It was one thing to place one receptor without
being discovered, but placing five on two different individuals
would be an unbelievable, close to impossible, feat.

“Are there any objections?” Branlor
thundered with authority. The murmuring and whispering stopped
abruptly. The Trystas were all keenly aware that Branlor was now
second in command to Ultara. This gave him a tremendous amount of
power. Not a soul in the room wanted to risk having him report them
to Ultara for insubordination; a fate like that of Linden Torak
would be theirs if he did.

“I suggest you get over your concerns
quickly. We leave in one hour!” Branlor turned and walked
authoritatively from the conference room.

Again the air filled with mumbling and
complaining. “This is a death sentence!” one man shouted. “How is
such a difficult task to be accomplished?”

“It will be a death sentence . . .” a female
general spoke up and everyone in the room quieted. It was extremely
rare for a high-ranking female official such as this to speak ill
of an order set forth by the vritesse, “if we do not obey!”

One hour later, one thousand Trysta
Travelers took to the air. Small lights flickered and a faint
buzzing emanated through the dusky sky of the Sybran Forest. They
climbed higher and higher until their lights disappeared and the
buzzing ceased. The large group of Travelers bulleted through the
vaporous border of Lor Mandela and headed towards the almost
insurmountable challenge that awaited them on Drolana.

T
he alarm clock clicked from 6:04 to 6:05 a.m., and let out a
sadistic buzz which jolted Maggie from a deep, comfortable sleep.
With great effort and a disgusted moan, she reached out and smacked
the top of the clock, hitting the snooze button for the first of
three routine extra ten minutes. The room was quiet and almost
completely dark; a faint cool breeze played with the sheer curtains
that hung on the open window. In Maggie’s estimation, these were
the ideal sleeping conditions—a fact that only added to the cruelty
of it being morning already.

Bzzzzz. Smack!

Wrapped in her favorite blanket and
surrounded by a mountain of pillows, she wandered back and forth
between awake and asleep—one moment aware of her surroundings, the
next, slipping effortlessly into the beginnings of nonsensical
dreams.

Bzzzzz. Smack!

She pulled herself upright and sat, still
half asleep, on the edge of the bed. Her eyelids dropped, and her
head bobbled around as she nodded back off; a sudden falling
sensation brought her instantly back to life with a jolt. Her eyes
popped open, but then, once again, blinked slowly shut.

She had just started to doze back off, when
she realized that she had seen something in between blinks.

“What in the . . . ?” she mumbled as she
forced herself to wake up. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and
squinted toward the other side of the room.

There, outside her second story window, two
bright white lights—no bigger than a dime—darted around behind the
fluttering curtains. They zipped to the right, stopped, and held
still for a second, and then spiraled down together to the left.
They made a faint but peculiar noise as they jumped from place to
place, like a cross between static on a television and chirping
crickets.

Maggie had been a little skittish since the
break-in, but at this moment, curiosity was stronger than fear, so
she stood and started toward the window. As she walked, the
floorboards of the old house creaked ominously beneath her feet,
causing her confidence in the situation to rapidly decline. By the
time she was half way across the room, she was forcing herself to
stay calm.

“C’mon, Maggs! Don't be such a wimp!” she
scolded under her breath. “It's probably just lightning bugs!”

She reached the window and lifted her hand
to pull back the curtain for a better look. All at once, two more
little lights zipped up and joined the first. Maggie jumped and her
breath caught in her chest. Her heart began to race as an uneasy
feeling stirred—the feeling that she was being watched. She inched
her way backwards.

“It’s okay,” she breathed. “They’re just
bugs.”

The four tiny illuminations whizzed around
in formation for a second or two, and then the lights started to
multiply. Out of nowhere and everywhere all at once, hundreds and
hundreds of bright, piercing, white orbs whirled and buzzed outside
her open window, creating a riotous screech. Maggie slapped her
hands over her ears as the volume of the bizarre noise grew. . .
and grew. . . and grew. Blinding flashes, like bolts of lightning,
burst in through the window and ricocheted around the room,
creating a turbulent strobe effect. They crashed into the walls and
the floor, making the whole room convulse violently.

Maggie’s fear grew to sheer terror! She
turned and tried to run, but as she did, the floor bumped hard,
knocking her to her knees with a painful smack. She screamed, but
her voice was drowned out by the horrendous buzzing of the chaotic
little lights.

Horrified, she curled up into a ball on the
floor—hands clasped tightly over her ears, eyes squeezed shut—and
begged, “Oh please . . . oh please . . . oh please! Someone help
me!”

Just then, her bedroom door swung open.
Within a split second, the multitude of lights vanished; the
quaking stopped, and the dreadful noise came to an abrupt halt. All
was as it had been before.

“Smaggs?” The familiar voice of her dad
caught Maggie off guard, but she was, nonetheless, very relieved to
hear it.

Nathan expected to find her still in bed,
not in the fetal position on the floor. “Whatayadoin'?” he
half-chuckled. “Have you lost something? Are you okay?”

Maggie sat up shakily—tears streaming down
her cheeks—and turned toward her dad who was standing in the
doorway. She tried to speak, but was completely unnerved. A shaky
“Wh-aat was that?” was all she could manage.

“Um, Princess, you all right?” Nathan asked
again. He walked over to help her back to her feet. “What was
what?” he asked, puzzled by his daughter’s peculiar behavior.

Maggie couldn’t believe that her dad was
messing around with her like this when she was obviously
traumatized.

“
Dad, come on,” she
pleaded as she took his hand and pulled herself to her feet. “Why
are you playing with me? That was totally freaky!”

“Smaggs . . . look at me. Are you sick?” Her
dad put his hand on her forehead to see if she had a fever.

Maggie stared at him in disbelief. His face
was concerned and serious, and she realized that he really didn’t
have any idea what she was talking about. But how on Earth could he
have not seen the lights, or felt the ground shaking, or heard that
awful noise?

She felt faint and leaned into him to keep
from falling down again.

“Whoa! Hey, c’mon, Sweetie! Come sit down.”
Nathan walked her over to her bed and sat next to her. She was so
shocked that she couldn’t speak at all. As strange and frightening
as the lights had been, her dad being oblivious to them put her
into a stupor.

“Maggie,” Nathan spoke softly, “what is it,
honey?”

“You . . . you didn't hear that?” she
tried.

“Hear what, sweetheart?”

“Did we, um . . . maybe have a tornado or
something?”

Nathan chuckled, but then realized that she
was being completely serious. “Smaggs, I think maybe you mighta
just had a bad dream, or somethin’.”

“B . . . but I . . .
there,” she stuttered, “It . . . I mean, it was
really, really real
,
Dad!”

“Oh . . . well, sometimes dreams feel that
way, Sweetie,” he replied. “Maybe you just had a doozer!” He wiped
a stray tear from her cheek.

Maggie stared at him. She knew she hadn't
been dreaming, but her dad had obviously experienced nothing. After
a few silent moments, she whispered a resigned, “Okay.”

Nathan sat with her for a while to make sure
she was all right but after about fifteen minutes, he stood and
kissed her on the forehead. “You feelin' better now, ‘cause we'd
best get goin', or we'll be late.”

Maggie nodded and her dad backed out into
the hall. She glanced around her once again normal room and got up
and walked to her dresser; she ran her hand over the top of it and
sighed. She really wanted her hiding seeker right now.

As she stood staring at the top of the
dresser, Maggie’s thoughts drifted back to the odd little lights
and her own personal tornado.

The harder she tried not to think about it,
the more the images flooded through her, until finally she found
herself reliving the whole crazy incident all over again. It wasn’t
like she was just thinking about it, either. It was as if it were
happening again.

She saw and felt every detail.

First, she watched as two little lights
started bouncing around outside the dark window. She felt herself
stand and walk, but she was not moving. She heard the floorboards
creak and then watched two additional lights join the first,
followed by thousands of them zipping around with ear-splitting
volume. She felt the ground shake and her knees smack against the
hard floor, even though she remained on her feet. Then, just as
before, it stopped suddenly when, in her mind, she saw the door
open.

She'd no sooner come out of this trance,
when the whole thing started again. A nauseating fear swelled in
the pit of her stomach, paralyzing her movement, and with it, her
ability to think about anything else other than the pictures
flashing vividly before her eyes.

This episode ended and she managed to make
her way across the hall to the bathroom.

Once more, she found
herself watching the scene again…and again…and again. She was
caught up in what she now knew was
no
dream for about the tenth time,
when Nathan called from downstairs.

“Smaggs! We have to leave in fifteen
minutes! If you’re gonna eat breakfast, you’d better get down here
and do it!”

“Oh . . . breakfast . . . yeah . . . .” Her
dazed response was hardly audible.

Suddenly, she snapped back into reality.
“What? Oh, no!” she shouted, jumping as she realized that she
hadn’t even started to get ready for school yet.

She took a couple of quick steps toward her
room, but was instantly tugged back by a strange, inexplicable
force. Her insides lurched and a sickening, paralyzing fear washed
over her.

Again, she saw the lights, heard the noise,
felt the ground shake, and felt the burning pain of her knees
slamming against the floor. She was cold, but sweating profusely.
Her head was spinning, and she was sure that this time she was
actually going to pass out.

“C’mon! Stop it!” she scolded herself. “I .
. . have . . . to . . . get . . . ready!”

Every word was a struggle to get out.

She took several deep breaths and with great
effort, haphazardly lifted her long black hair up into a curly,
messy ponytail.

Again, the lights danced before her in her
window.

“No!” she insisted, taking three or four
more deep breaths and spastically flinging herself into her
bedroom.