Bell crawled across the floor, covering
his mouth with his sleeve in an effort to avoid breathing in the thick cloud of
debris. "Out... 'cough' OF... The 'cough cough'...
LAB!" He barely managed to call the command as he struggled to his feet,
shielding his face from the flames and acrid smoke consuming the room.
As
the troops mobilized and trudged through the lab, the smoke from one of the
storage cabinets was making them feel really dizzy, toxic substances were overwhelming their senses and before
they had moved more than a few feet past it, Bell and his soldiers collapsed
onto the floor.
How long he was unconscious, Bell knew not. When he opened his eyes, the cloud of smoke was so thick he couldn't see anything except swirling smoke, swirling into subtle hues… Rainbow hues... It felt like it was lifting him up into a spiraling tornado, twisting him, turning him like a serpent, as if sailing through a kaleidoscopic light show. As his body drifted upwards, Golden Goddesses floated towards him in glowing light, golden hair swirling in magical beauty, beaconing… A sensation of bliss filled him with desire, tempting him to rise higher and higher through the flowing silken sheers of illusion...
Reminded
suddenly of his duties and feeling intoxicated, Bell gazed down from his lofty
paradise in the clouds, only to see his own body laying in the ashes
below... Lifeless… Had he died? Was
this the Promised Land?
Beyond
his fallen body he could make out the other soldiers, they too seemed
lifeless… Were they all dead too?
Orius
gazed out the window across his new landscape with feelings of hope, warming his heart.
Dell’s sudden arrival in Ebar hadn't been entirely unexpected, he just didn't expect him
to arrive so soon. Dell too had seen the light and had secretly approved of his
New Lemuria, helping him establish a trade route with the empire. Ebar was
beautiful, still an untamed paradise, the ancient Solarian tribes that had
migrated by ship long ago were thriving, peacefully, everything was falling
into place.
The
Solarian tribes in Ebar celebrated Netu's Light, an ancient tradition, expecting them to
worship Medel, willingly, was a joke. Unbeknownst to King Atalon, Orius had arrived
with every intention of violating orders to convert them. There were to be no
sacrifices, no dogon stories, no unnecessary fears spread about Aquilla, no sp-called 'aribu'. Here
they were families, families that would be protected by the Phoenix Flame, protected by Crystal Energies
which they would learn to harness, before the Crystal Program destroyed all
trace of the original crafts. So dedicated to his mission of colonizing a New
Lemuria, he had the pyramid plans revised and converted them to Crystal temples
by replacing the top section with an authentic quartz miniature of the Crystal
Temple in Anur.
With no
one to fight except Atlan itself, Orius had let the soldiers go and encouraged
them to start their own families and build farms, to grow businesses and dream of trade
with Lemuria, urging them to grow a strong tribe, to mine the gold in
humane ways, to teach their children the ways of the Solarian Kings and help
him rebuild the Lost Golden Empire, this would be the New Lemuria, this strong
tribe. This way they would be strong
enough to keep the New Empire at bay.
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