1 A Father and a Child

"Speed of the Divines, in the name of thy master! Obey, ye tech of no worth!"

These were the words of Father Esteban, riding a tech-chariot whose velocity was now reaching around 320 kilometers per hour. In the thin arms of the father was a small boy, with agony and weakness pervading his eyes. As the boy tried to talk to his father, a soul, instead of a word, was escaping his mouth; Esteban hushed the child to speak no more.

Along with the racing chariot there was a shadow speeding in pursuit of its prey, a form seemed to be made out of the dark emptiness the vicious woods near the road possessed. Tirelessly shifting between one side of the way and another, it reeked of sentiments from which people found horrors, and left the marks of bad omens as it was gliding, with some distance, behind the chariot. The shadow was not visible to the father and the chariot's sensors alike, though the boy somehow seemed to recognize its presence.

The ill child couldn't just take his eyes away from the shadow, no matter how it was a foreboding sight to see for any man or woman. As if it seemed to acknowledge the boy's awareness of its being, the shadow soon changed its shape into something that looked like a clown.

"Come, child. Come and play with me, for I have so much of toys and treasure to take delight in."

Hearing such whispers in his ears, the child sought his father's attention. Clinging onto his protector's robe and crying with all the strength he could muster, he said to Esteban.

"My father, my dear father! There is a spirit in the clothes of clowns wishing me to play with it!"

The father looked into the child's eyes and soothed him.

"My child, don't you ever worry. The thing you have just seen is not real; you were just looking at the thin air."

"I do hope that's true, my dear father. Yet it was there, calling out for me amidst the woods next to us!"

"Hush now, child. Save your precious breath, for there are so little of it left for you now."

Despite the firmness within his voice, Esteban, too, began to be worried about the shadow's presence. No matter how hard the father had tried to set free the boy from his misery, no matter what means he had used just to cure this fatherless child, everything around him at the present seemed to prove the inevitability of his boy's death.

He sped up the tech-chariot further, with an ambiguous feeling that the shadow was getting closer. While at it, he constantly checked up the sensors for any pursuers. The boy was once again looking into the woods beside the road. The shadow emerged, and then changed its form into that of a generous nobleman.

"My lovely child, do come join us. Come take part in our banquet where my beautiful daughters are dancing along with fairies."

"My father, my father! There is a nobleman who now wants to take me to his party. Now look; I even see his pretty daughters, waiting for me to join them!"

"My foolish child," with gentle firmness in his voice, "The vision you are seeing is not real at all. It is just one of the illusion in your head, a symptom of your illness affecting your mind!"

"Yes, father. I abide by your words. Yet, I cannot get these images off from my feeble mind and weary eyesight; do please pray for my soul, for there is so little strength left now."

Despite the yearnings for prayers, Esteban said nothing to the boy. He kept on minding the control panel of his chariot.

The shadow grew impatient, still craving for the child's soul and body to be his possession. It then shifted its form once again, this time into that of an ambitious conqueror. The boy became terrified at his vision; battalions of foot-soldiers with fearsome cavalries were approaching him.

"My beautiful, and yet rebellious child, since you would not accompany me by your will, then I shall take you away with force!"

Upon hearing commands of their warlord, soldiers, first among them being cavalries, approached the chariot to take him from the feeble arms of his father.

"Father, my father, I am so terrified now! There come the fierce-looking men-at-arms to take me away from you!"

"My child, you bastard, illegitimate son of mine," Now with anger in his voice he said. "Thou shall not die unless I say so, for you are the only son of Father Esteban, one among the cardinals serving 3-Divines and only!"

"But, my dear father, the evidence of my upcoming death is now everywhere; even alarms of the chariot are telling us my death is near." Said the child, in the midst of the alarms ringing loudly.

"You tell me any more of such nonsense, then I shall chastise you with the whips!"

With the warnings given to his illegitimate son, Esteban rode the tech-chariot even faster. The goal was near; he could feel it. Nothing would stand between them and their destined salvation, a cure for his only child.

The cardinal's chariot finally reached his apothecaries on the expected time. In feelings of bliss and anticipation, he approached one of his doctors waiting to cure the child.

"Here is my ill child. He is now in my arms, still being tormented by the accursed fever that is surely the vile product of evil."

"Pray you forgive your humble servant, my lord, but I do not see nor perceive your child anywhere in this place."

"Why, you dare tell me the nonsense just as my boy did many hours ago, too?"

"I beseech your mercy, but I still do not see even a single hair of him."

Esteban looked down the blanket he was holding. As soon as he loosened his arms around it, the blanket fell on the floor with no sign of his beloved son. The shadow already took the child away even before reaching the apothecaries. The cardinal collapsed with sorrow.

"Ah, my son, my soul, the treasure I only got in this world, you are now forever gone! You have been taken away from me by the hands of this evil land, its name being Gaia-Seven!"