Prelude to a hideous scheme in making

The unique, one in a kind, eye twitcher crow, who was once again, definitely on some deep mysterious objective, soared through an ashen filled sky. It was littered with countless fiery sparks that rose from a scene of horror from the ground below.

Just some hours ago, Aatish, along with the prince of Luminaaras, Rohaan, had fought against a sovereign called 'Wasl' here, completely obliterating an entire village in the process.

Their battle had ended in a draw,

In recent months, the northern side of Sehray-e-shargh had become a battleground, with sparks of resistance scattered across the planetoid by Field Commandress Aatish, bestowed her rank by Empress Golden. These resistance forces clashed with various factions of mercenaries aligned with the sovereign, Wasl.

However, today marked a significant departure from the norm. Out of sheer surprise, Wasl herself had chosen to directly engage Aatish.

the crow spared a glance below at the destruction, fire and blood mirrored and distorted in the reflection of his blank empty eye, then with a grim expression, propelled forward, trying to leave it all behind, but nomatter how fast he flew, there would always be someone yearning for help, crying from below.

Most of soldiers, he recognized, they wore the colors of resistance, shining red with golden.

It pained him, perhaps to an extent that no other creature had felt. But despite the groans and cries, he adamantly left the area and advanced, passing by large gathering of villagers who were slowly converging on the battleground below, they had been evacuated in advance, most of them at least.

He would twitch and tremble, then regain his consciousness all of a sudden, the strings of his mind had slowly started reforming on their own.

After a whole day of flight, passing through various unknown lands and encountering creatures of all sorts, he finally reached a long stretch of land. It was carpeted with extremely tall shards of mirrors, protruding outward like spikes.

Just on its shoulder was an ocean completely inverse in nature, calm and slate, not a single wave rose or fell above its deep purple surface, it was an odd phenomenon considering that Shargh had three large moons that gravely impacted the overall gravity.

The crow circled around, and landed on a particular spot among the spikes that looked like a spherical altar made of purely reflective glass, it had beautiful runic engravings on its edges.

He then closed his eyes and sighed, wisps of condensation rose high into the air from his tiny beak.

He felt exhausted, tired, but the feeling was nothing new, he had been that way for centuries, for as long as he had existed.

A few seconds later the entire surface of the ocean slowly reverberated, but he kept his eyes tightly shut, then from the far corner of the ocean a massive procession of fin wakes emerged, slowly advancing towards the tiny crow, who sat humbly at the altar.

"How long has it been Azdaha" the crow said as he smiled, his eyes were still sewn shut. The waves parted and a behemoth dragon's head slowly emerged from the water, not displacing even a single wave outwards, instead around its body, enormous whirlpools formed.

The moonlight reflected off the dragon's skin which was as reflective as the glass, and danced between the thousand of spikes on the shore, taking the entire world with a blinding light.

"Long it has been indeed" Azdaha, the Seer Queen replied.

*****

Slow drizzle carpeted a fire ravaged piece of land that had some resemblance of a village left to it.

Hundreds of Vermillion and golden tents were laid on its outer boundary, stretching as far as eye could see, bearing army flags with a majestic simourgh bird painted ontop.

In one of those tents, an owl like creature smashed some glowing herbs together in a pot, instead of being round and fluffy like usual owls, it was tall and had two tiny horns protruding backwards, indicating his lineage with the demons, one of the most formidable and cursed creatures of the entire sehra. They rarely mixed with other beings.

Its attire was composed of drenching robes as that of an apothecary or a Sagacious medic, falling upon the wet ground below, and wore heavy barnacles.

Outside, the thunder roared with a ear-splitting blast.

But it did not bother the owl demon at all, his investment in preparing whatever evil looking paste he was preparing was so great, he simply did not care to give two damns about rain or destruction, sky parting.

Soon, a slick and glittery slime was formed in the bowl, the slime seemed conscious of itself and as soon as it was formed, it tried jumping the bowl and escape, but the owl demon non-chalantly caught it in mid-air.

Upon this, the slime started cursing the owl, its voice was shrill and stingy. But the owl simply remained indifferent although some insults were directly about his parents.

Detached from the whole choir of insults, he mumbled a charm and blowed it over the bowl, in the next second an invisble cap sealed the top, muting the slanderous slime once and for all, then turned around and placed it all above his table, it was riddled with scrolls and trinkets of all sort.

For some thirty minutes after that, the slime kept trying to escape, changing its hues to violent red, cursing and crying, and after it was done throwing its tantrum, it simply settled down, the owl demon kept looking at it with tired eyes, once it was calmed, the demon got up and walked to the bowl, whispered another enchantment, this one took off the magical lid and then scooped out the slime with his feathery hands.

No curse or complaint was heard after that, he poured the bad mouthed slime into a tiny glass tube, filling it to the brim, then like a thief looked around, although completely alone, he manically grinned to himself, and saved the tube within his long flowing robes.

But his luck of keeping whatever he had made, to himself, was shortlived as in the next second a massive bolt of lightning illuminated the whole tent from within, and from the wildly fluttering tent flaps, a figure walked in.

It looked on the verge of death, riddled with scars from head to toe, the figure limped across the floor and with each step, gritting it's teeth in pain, linings of yellow and orange radiance danced upon it's skin.

The demon quickly scurried and arranged a stool as the figure dropped upon it resignedly.

It was fleet commandress Aatish, she had suffered a horrible wound that almost took her entire left arm apart from the shoulder in today's battle.

The owl demon's eyes widened as he twitched, his gaze fixed on the severity of the wound, then panicking, he quickly knelt beside the stool, the wound was too deep and bloody, he could only think of one thing that could relief the Commandress of her pain now,

The demon did not waste two seconds to decide further, as he took out the paste he had just prepared from the inner pockets along with a bundle of radiant thread and a needle.

Aatish arched her eyebrow, and the demon grinned sheepishly, then clenched her teeth together and nodded, they did not need words, the demon knew exactly what he was supposed to do.

He poured a drop of the slime over her torn shoulder as it greedily started covering the wound, until her shoulder was entirely black, then after some ten minutes it completely evaporated, leaving her bones completely renewed.

The demon then carefully stitched the wound together by a radiant thread, completing the procedure, and settled back on the floor. Lightning struck outside illuminating both of their faces, Aatish looked visibly tired, her eyes were hollow.

A year had passed since Queen Golden had declared to lay strategic conquest upon the shargh, Aatish along with the prince of Luminaras, were tasked with its northern Quadrant, their task was to discover one of oldest and biggest interplanetary gateway somewhere hidden under these villages.

They both possessed companies of local resistance groups, numbering to some five thousand soldiers each and were commanded to search and secure the gateway so the armies from shomaal could pass through.

Out of the two sovereigns that ruled over shargh, only Wasl had decided to engage and put on a semblance of defense, and had started hunting the resistance groups with hired mercenaries, a proxy war was under way.

Aatish stood up from the stool as her vermillion cape unfurled and fell upon the mud, then looked at her demon squire for some long moments and strode out. There was no time to waste.

Outside, heavy flames tried to extinguish remnants of the catastrophic battle, she had lost almost half of her force today, one of the most deadliest days since the start of the campaign.

Due to lack in discipline and proper army training, the rebellious leaders under her command were always on the verge of fighting each other, living barbarically, It did not bother her at all. She had out of the course plans for them.

Currently two factions were on the throat of each other, blaming for today's failure, that was until one of them spotted Aatish, they all quickly stood up and tried their best to give a salute, by raising their fists or limbs to their chests. She had gained quite a reputation to herself, successfully transitioning from the 'butcher of shargh' to the 'hero of shargh' during the recent years.

She passed through the camps, asking for details, assessing the damage, her presence lifted badly hurt morals of the troops.

"Any response hootchie?" She asked the demon squire who was following her,

"None yet my lady" Hootchie spoke, his voice was grim and serious.

"Send Rohan a glider to wait until tonight then,"

The squire nodded then rushed off,

She walked until she reached the edge of the camp, her silk cape trailing behind, it was torn and frayed at places but still served its purpose.

Aatish closed her eyes as raindrops fell upon her fiery skin, she did not bother to vaporize it at all and on the contrary, let the drops seep through the fire and enter her body, not permitting it to touch them, to hurt them at all,

it pained her but she did not give a reaction,

Just by her feet was a small puddle of water, she looked at it for long moments, looking at her reflection, her left eye was no more, a long slash ran from the forehead to the middle of the face.

amidst the slow falling rain, right in the middle of the puddle, her eyes spotted a black broken arrow, rain drops trickling down from its fletching.

Years had passed since the girls had left the Sehra, but she still missed them.

she sometimes wondered about them.

*******

Several days had passed since the girls returned back to the earth, despite the freshness and joy they had felt before departing from the grove, despite the amazing memories and gifts, they felt extremely fatigued from the whole adventure.

They did not discuss the Sehra at all among them after returning.

The life was empty at times, but it was peaceful.

At precisely the sixth day since they came back the same recurring dream occurred once again, Isra dreamt herself floating endlessly yet again. Her consciousness swam freely, darting and covering distances of miles in milliseconds in the white plane.

The corruption, a black seething mass that chased after her in the white world, yet again tried to seduce her spirit with the prospect of attaining a physical form.

But this time something felt different, either the lure was too strong or her spirit felt weak somehow, It lept at the bait but just before it touched it, a third force pushed them miles apart, the black mass completely disappeared beyond the horizon.

"NAIVE CHILD OF THUNDER!" the whole world rumbled and shook, as thundergod, the entity that had protected her before in the realm spoke. She had named it thundergod herself.

"DEPICT YOURSELF STANDING!" it said,

Isra's spirit deeply obeyed as the primal instincts of greed and resistance were moved backward, and instead, something minuscule took priority.

It was a faded memory of her face in the reflection of the golden bangle; the features were washed-out, but as the memory took more space, covering a huge chunk of her spirit.

Something crackled in the empty expanse, a few streaks of lightning came to being and danced around each other, a few more joined, until a tiny ball of luminescence hovered in the air.

"WELL DONE, CHILD OF THUNDER," the stormy voice spoke.

Isra woke up panting; thunder shone deep within her silver irises. She looked at her hands and then touched her face; nothing felt different, but something felt out of place at the same time.

Miraaj, her elder sister, walked into the room and screamed.

Upon this, Isra quickly got up and looked at the mirror; nothing had changed. She followed Miraaj's gaze and looked at the bed, and the mattress was burnt to a crisp where she had laid just moments ago.