LUCA’S WILDEST NIGHTMARES HAD COME TRUE. The Lady of the Sunless Land was at his doorstep, intent on claiming him for her own, and he was helpless; his father lay ill at the other end of the palace, and Luca was left to fend for himself. But Luca was also now a changed boy, and he had a certain confidence swimming inside of him. He quickly took charge of the situation and rushed up to the window to climb out, grabbing onto the rope attached to the desk. He climbed down to the ground as fast as he could, and as he did so, he heard a loud scream coming from his room, and then a loud crash, as if the door to his room was abruptly destroyed. He quickened his pace and rushed downward.
Touching ground, he pulled the rope all the way down towards him, dragging the corner desk so that it pushed up against the window. Using all of his might, he forced the rope to break off from the table leg and fall down. This way, Malasorta would not be able to use the rope to come after him—so he thought.
He wrapped his travel bag around his back and secured it tightly to his waist before taking off, running into the heart of the darkened moors. In all fairness, because of his wooden leg, Luca could only do so much running before his leg failed him. Unfortunately, being disabled was a hindrance in his ability to run as fast as the average human being, so Luca, though making a valiant effort, could do no better than a brisk jog. When he was close to about thirty yards from the palace, he had the urge to look back, and so he did.
Staring back at him was Malasorta, peeking out of his window to see where he had gone. A strange surge of energy came upon him, and his pace grew instantly—not much, but enough for him to feel a difference. He felt the urge to look back one more time.
Malasorta was at the window, crouched on top of the ledge like some type of animal. Fearlessly, she jumped to the ground, effortlessly landing on the hard dirt. Standing up, she appeared to have grown in size, much taller than she was, and her hair had grown out so long that it reached the middle of her back, swaying back and forth like a triumphant flag of evil. She contemplated things for a second and then screamed at the moon. “Come to me, creatures of shadow,” she said.
With that command, the ground in front of her began to move, swirling like a whirlpool of dirt and rocks, until suddenly the earth was swallowed into a huge hole, and out of this hole, moans began to escape. Following the moans, humanlike creatures soiled from top to bottom began to crawl to the surface of the hole and out into the open air. Once they were exposed to the night, they screamed and howled at the moon. The creatures had awoken and were ready to feed on the people of the land, for you see, that was their sole appetite. These things that came from the ground, humans who were overtaken by shadow, who were animated not by life but by a central, sinister force, an evil not readily known to men, thirsted only for one thing—the human desire for pleasure. Vice in its purest form was what kept these creatures alive, for they sought to eat those who lusted for the things of the earth and sought to vanquish all who opposed them. Because of this, they were henceforth known throughout Esterra as the “visreh,” or the “kings of vice.”
Hundreds appeared from the ground with faces of black mist, waiting for Malasorta’s command. The front halves of their bodies were completely engrossed in shadow; this was the most interesting fact about the visreh.
“We have a prey to catch, children of the moon,” cackled Malasorta as she jumped across the hole and began to pursue Luca. Like a pack of wild animals, the visreh followed her.
She ran as speedily as a comet flying across the stars. In just a few seconds she had gained a great amount of space between her and Luca. The fallen jubahn tried harder to increase his speed but failed miserably at it. He felt helpless as he looked back and saw that Malasorta ran like a rabid beast. He could hear growls of rage coming out of her as she grunted with heavy breathing. Every second she pushed off her massive legs, the more ground she gained between her and Luca.
Alas, she reached him, but instead of pouncing on the young jubahn, she kept at his heels, sporadically falling behind him, moving about his right and left sides in order to taunt him while he desperately tried to run. Glancing back at her, Luca saw a blackened, featureless face, and a sense of horror came over him.
“You can’t run away forever,” the lady-beast mocked with a guttural voice. She kept on him and would surpass Luca only to fall back once more, riding his back and breathing down his neck. She reached out with her claws, tearing at Luca’s flesh, forcing the young prince to scream in horror. “Run, little cripple, run!”
And that’s just what Luca did. He ran and ran but could not get away from the woman who had come to claim him as her own.
“My dear nephew, you will join us! And you will help us bring about the death of the sun!”
“No!” Luca said, swatting at her with his flailing arms.
Malasorta kept at his heels, taunting him like a cat would do to a little woodland critter. She growled and spat at Luca with her vicious monstrosity. And so too spat the visreh, slapping him across the face, taunting and degrading him.
The enormity of Luca’s desperation was eating away at his strength, and he began to lose feeling in his one good leg. His soul reached out of his body, to something indescribable and unfathomable, wondering what could come of it. At that instant, he remembered what his father had taught him earlier. So with nothing else left to lose, he closed his eyes and spoke the words.
“Umbrador, guardian of my light, come now in my hour of need.”
He opened his eyes and waited as he ran, yet nothing happened. He looked to the right and left, to the ground and to the sky, but saw nothing. He glanced back at Malasorta and witnessed a horrific form of a woman, with hands bigger than her head, with legs that were more muscular than those of a horse, and a face that was covered in darkness, with no visible features.
“Embrace me, nephew,” Malasorta said, reaching out for him.
But just as she spoke her words, Luca felt a gust of wind come from the east. He heard the sound of something that was like a tornado, and he sensed an immense object moving towards them at an incredible speed. The force grew stronger and louder, until finally, an unseen fury crashed into the lady-beast like a massive boulder smashing through the foundation of a sturdy castle. She was knocked off her feet and instantaneously thrown out of sight and into the air.
Luca kept running with that one good leg and a fierce limp that increasingly tested the fortitude of his wooden limb. Malasorta had vanished, yet the hideous visreh were still on his trail.
And just as he scraped the depths of despair, his running, or to say, his movement, unexpectedly gained speed. As a matter of fact, it seemed as if he was being pushed by a gallant wind. Seconds later, he was running so fast that his feet lifted off the ground, and it took him a while to realize that he wasn’t running at all but being carried by the wind, with his feet dangling a few inches from the ground. He was being pushed along, helped by some invisible force. He could feel it around his waist, as if this force had arms that grabbed and embraced him.
He turned to his right and saw a visreh gaining ground, but before it could reach for him, the creature was taken away, like if it was picked out of the air by something.
Luca glanced at his left and saw another visreh with his arms lunging at him, but then saw the creature lifted off its feet and pummeled to the ground, as if being picked up by a giant hand, like a toddler playing with a stuffed animal and pounding it on the floor with all its strength.
He looked to his rear and saw three visreh on the verge of pouncing on him. One was instantly crushed into pieces by a force of wrath, another was stretched from the arms and legs until it broke completely, and a third was flung into the air so far up it could not have been less than a mile high.
All of this happened, until no visreh were left, and though all of the visreh had been taken care of, Luca’s speed increased with every second. Whatever pushed Luca meant to push him faster and faster, so he kept running with the unseen force, and he
could see up ahead the edge of a cliff.
“Wait!” he screamed to the invisible force. “There’s a cliff coming upon us! What are you doing? Stop pushing me! Please stop! We need to stop now! Let go of me!” But Luca’s pleading was useless, for he kept rushing towards the cliff’s edge, and it appeared to him as if he was going to go jumping off the cliff and to his death. There were only a few yards left, and at the speed he was going, he was sure to be doomed.
“Stop pushing me!” he said. “We’re going to fall over the cliff!” And as Luca came upon the edge of the cliff, he instantly saw that the cliff went down at least a couple hundred feet, and to the opposite edge of the cliff, it must have been a crossing of half a mile or so, but as he feared for his life, he heard a voice whisper in his ear, “Jump, Luca.”
Jump the cliff? How could he jump half a mile? “Are you mad? I can’t make that jump!” he said to the faceless air.
“Jump. I’ll make the jump with you.”
Left with no other choice, Luca reached the cliff and made the jump, and with the help of the unseen force, Luca leaped over what seemed to be hundreds of feet, and his silhouette crossed the image of the moon, making the half-mile jump with ease.
He reached the opposite edge of the cliff, landing softly on the ground, and he felt the embrace of the force leave him. He stayed upright and motionless for a number of seconds before falling to his knees and onto his back.
Luca felt lightheaded, having a hard time taking in what he had just experienced. His eyes opened and closed, drifting in and out of consciousness, but he fought it as best as he could. He sensed things around him that he had never sensed before, spiritual things, something otherworldly. He felt an overbearing presence, feeling a sort of pressure throughout his entire body, but it did not feel painful to him. Rather, he felt warmth, a supreme heat, yet it did not burn him or give him discomfort. But what it did give him was fear, but not a fear of death or of pain, but of immense beauty stemming from an immensity of reality, as if his whole world had been extremely amplified or doubled in size.
Again he went in and out of consciousness, desperately trying to focus on his surroundings. Mysteriously, the fog around him had completely disappeared, and he could see clearly into the night and across many yards of the moorish landscape.
“Don’t be afraid,” he suddenly heard. And with that spoken verse, all of his fears vanished as sudden as the torrential rains die in the eye of a hurricane. The voice seemed to have come from nowhere and everywhere, so it made it hard for Luca to pinpoint the exact location of the voice, and he struggled to turn his sights on whoever sounded off in such a way. But he need not look for the voice any longer, for a new world was about to be introduced to him.
As he was losing his battle with consciousness, slowly fainting into a deep sleep, his head, as if reacting automatically and without his permission, locked and honed in on the space in front of him. He saw what seemed to be a sparkle of light, like a firefly hovering in front of his body, and the sparkle grew bigger in form and appeared more like a bright star filling up the cosmos surrounding him.
The star grew in mass and took on a humanoid shape, and it kept growing taller until it reached and surpassed around eight feet of height. The grand being walked up to the young jubahn as he steadily drifted off into unconsciousness, and before the being reached Luca’s feet, it became transfigured into something remarkable.
The brightest plated armor happened upon the tall figure; it was of a metal that could outshine all that was in the land of Esterra. The armor covered the whole form, sparkling and glimmering in the shadows of the moon, and it was form fitting and flexible. The star-being walked up to Luca’s side, and its starlit eyes shone through the armored helmet, and Luca’s eyes could not bear looking at them much longer. Nonetheless, he felt the safest he had ever felt in his entire life.
“Are you a star?” he said, faintly.
“I am more than star, I am Umbrador,” the being answered.
“An Umbrador?” Luca repeated before fainting into unconsciousness, and while he drifted along, he heard the star’s last words.
“Rest now, my sweet prince, for tomorrow will be your last day in Bune.”
***