Lux Locus: Fractured Family

A small boy played around in the dry grass of some alien planet with two larger boys; their faces blurred.

Ah. I remember this well. The first day of the first week where it all started.

The smaller boy looked on to see a young girl in a dress letting her legs hang over an overbuild of concrete.

And her. The dear sister. Always so studious and observing, yet never devious with it. She was far too timid for that sort of approach.

The two boys approached the little boy and picked him up with one arm each and raised him high in the air, pretending he was a plane.

One melancholic and depressive, always thinking about the bad things rather than the good; and the other with a raging bloodfury in his heart when it came to protecting his family. All four of them were so...happy, it seemed. Such good friends.

Just before the faces became clear, the vision switched back to the chaotic towers of fire and the people screaming as loud as they could as they fled further into the city. The small boy and the young girl fled alongside them, but many found themselves...

Chopped down by their own. Were they possessed? Were they envious? What did they want? Why would they kill their own? I'll never know the reason behind it, and for one to witness such depravity first hand would tear their mind asunder, yet I recall something more horrific. Something more terrifying than that: The humans of white. The Afol Anda.

A group of crazed people in tattered clothes blocked the passage of the two children and spouted random gibberish as they raised random tools above their heads, but they had no chance to do anything else. Their muscles seized up and they looked at something, their eyes practically bulging out of their skulls while they screamed at whatever horror they could see.

Giant, white, armored hands grasped carefully around one's head as he sweat the blood from his body and dried up like a fish in the sun. It was almost as if a banshee were screaming as he dried up. The others suffered a similar fate, and when the bodies were dropped down--

There it was. A pillar wrapped in blinding white and filled with as much holy essence as possible. While that affected me more than anything, what truly horrified me was the brief glimpse of the so-called 'god' they follow: Administrator. I keep the charade of praising it for good reasons, but no god that wishes to purge the horrors of mental influence upon the unwilling would do such horrors...

The young boy watched as the white pillars crushed the skulls to dust and had no qualms in crushing anything else around them using the 'holy' power at their disposal. Even those with just a fraction of 'bad thought' would find ethereal chains erupt from the ground beneath them and hook to their souls, only to drag them back to a realm unknown for whatever purpose.

Indiscriminate. Uncaring. Unloving. Ironic that a man who fears no god would fear humans; the very same her aims to protect and see prosper and grow. They didn't care what they were killing. If it offended the Administrator, then they had to execute the offender or send them directly to that abomination.

The giants turned their gaze to the two young children, intent on killing them as well.

There was no purity nor innocence in their eyes, and you know their apathetic to their actions. Even with a pillar, you know what they're thinking behind their helmet. Like any human, they just have that 'sensation' to them. Their body movement, the way they move their heads. It's all very understandable to one aware of them or seeing the 'emotions' sub-consciously, but the sanctified ones have no such thing. Every movement is for the purpose of killing and obeying. There is no emotion towards it.

"Don't kill them!" a voice ordered the afol anda.

"Prosecutor. Prosecutor! Wake up!"

"What?" Zenith awoke to bright lights shining in his eyes and instinctively shielded them. "What? What is it?"

"Your repairs are complete."

"Oh?"

"We took the liberty of reinforcing your left arm so that it had a semblance of the weight of the right. It will still need to be replaced if you find this new limb satisfactory."

Zenith sat up and rotated his right arm, verifying its functionality. He nodded and forced himself out of the capsule rather than wait for it to reposition itself correctly.

"Sir?" One of the bio-mechanics looked at the prosecutor with a perplexed expression.

"Any news on that worshiper of Blumarak?"

He shook his head. "No, sir. No one has come forward with her whereabouts, and the few that we did capture who had potential information were tortured then killed by the afol anda."

Zenith clenched his right hand angrily. The sounds of new metal being put through a stress did all but comfort the engineers in the room.

"What about the initial reason I was brought here?" Zenith asked. "Any news on him?"

The bio-engineers coughed, averted their gaze, or turned around.

"WELL?!" the prosecutor bellowed.

"Um, well," one started. "When you mentioned how he could be connected, your guide mentioned this to the security detail on the planet before your bodyguards...and..."

"And? Out with it!"

The engineer gulped then readjusted herself. "They sent a group their to detain him, but when they entered the building, um..."

"There were dead people everywhere and no sign of the man in question."

Zenith cocked an eyebrow. "Dead bodies?"

"Yes. They all showed the signs of Blumarak worship, but there were others that were...strange."

"Strange how?"

"They were covered in yellow paint." The engineer remained silent for a moment as he tried to understand the situation, then it hit him. "OH! They took a picture." He started fumbling through the pockets of his air-tight suit and stomped the ground angrily. "Where did I put it?!"

"I have it." The woman shook the picture held between her fingers tauntingly. "Here you are, sir."

Zenith took the picture carefully then brought it forward. He looked at it and hummed pensively. The bodies were indeed there, and this chapel was far superior to the raggedy tribal totem he had seen. It actually had the appearance of genuine chapels complete with a statue of an unknown, clothed figure and stained glass with no real image representation...or did it?

There were five of them, and each had a bizarre etching of two red lines above and below a solid white line in the middle, or, at least, as solid as stained glass permitted. The shapes had no connection to the next, but Zenith had an idea. He crossed the images in his mind and worked on that, and after a few minutes, his eyes focused angrily.

"The smiling grin of Mumbass," he hissed. He did his best to contain his rage. "Not only Blumarak, but Mumbass as well? I thought he was preoccupied trying to acquire the entirety of the puwandese."

"Moom-bass?" an engineer repeated.

"Never you mind!" Zenith roared as he tucked the picture into his coat. "I need direct contact with the heads of the Magus Imperators here. This is max level security risk, and they mist know."

"What? What's going on?" Zenith's caretakers asked.

"Something that could rip this planet apart," he warned.

The prosecutor stormed out of his chamber and towards the bridge.