Relight

  Relight

  Mana World Girls Book One

  Dave Qymlore

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Want to Read More?

  Prologue

  We were one of the first couples to be strapped into a pod. Sarah, my wife of almost six years, was suddenly looking nervous. She'd been so gung-ho when we'd been chosen in the lottery to be a part of this program. Now her face was pallid, like she wanted to be sick.

  "Are you alright?" I asked her again.

  "Of course. I just, it's all so... wow..." She looked around the football field-sized platform where the pods stood. The platform had a rooftop at the moment, but the techs had said it would entirely lift away when it came time to start the launch. That was one of the few morsels of information they'd seen fit to give us.

  "Do you think they resent civilians being part of this?" I asked her, knowing the answer.

  "Well, they're acting that way anyway."

  "Is that why you're nervous all of a sudden?"

  Her mouth closed and she let her gaze slowly lower from the impressive structure all around us. "I didn't say I was nervous."

  "Please, baby, you don't think I can tell after almost six years being married to you? I'm nervous too, if that helps."

  "Okay," she conceded coyly. "I can't help but think this thing could fall down and crash back to the ground. It's one hell of a long way to fall."

  "We'd still be luckier than half the world right now to get off so easily," I tried to joke. It was a half-hearted effort, attempting to make light of the morbid state of the world far below us.

  "They really managed to build it..." she said, with eyes again moving upward in a state of hushed rumination. Like someone had died. Fitting, seeing as so many had already been killed by the magic. I internally shrugged away that line of thought. This wasn't the time to dwell on it. I didn't want to scare Sarah right when we were about to embark on such an insane journey.

  "A fucking space elevator," I said, half to myself

  "...fucking space elevator," she parroted. We each looked up at it, then back down and at each other. Then we laughed at the silly way we'd mirrored one another's actions, and I took her hand in mine. It was hard not to imagine that this might be the last time I saw her. Either one of us could die during launch, or during the journey, or just never reach a destination to land on.

  "I know you don't think there's anything out there," she said in a hushed whisper, like saying it too loud could jinx us.

  "Sure there is. All kinds of stuff."

  "What?"

  "Sure. Stars and space rocks and the like. We'll have a great time exploring."

  "Oh, you ass," Sarah laughed. "You know what I mean: other life. What if we never find anything. Of the human race I mean. What if this last hope is just that ... hope, and nothing else."

  My wife always had a way of saying what I was thinking deep down but didn't have the nerve to say out loud. "They told us the chances were slim."

  "Slim to fuck all," interrupted the tech who'd seen us to our pods. "Did you miss me? I'm back to get you lucky contest winners strapped in." He was looking at a clipboard with information hidden from our view. Something made him smirk. "Erik and Sarah Johnson? You really married a guy with that name, sweetheart? I guess you got luckier by the time they drew this lottery, huh."

  "Do you have a problem?" I asked him plain and simple.

  "Yeah I do. If it were up to me I'd be sending two more qualified military personnel out there, to give us as much of a fighting chance as possible. But hey, the president wanted to win some PR by letting a couple of fucking civilians take up a pod."

  "Excuse us?" Sarah replied indignantly. I could see that she was crestfallen by the guy's candid opinion.

  "Oh, you're excused. Now sit the fuck back so I can harness you in, sweetheart."

  "You wanna watch yourself, pal," I said flatly. The last thing I wanted was to start something right here on the New Hope Space Elevator, but this jerk was pissing me off.

  He just chuckled and shook his head dismissively. The way the guy was leering at my wife's chest was also annoying. I bet they didn't act like this around their superiors. It just goes to show that people will turn into savages when there's no one to stop them. I have always thought my wife was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. That still held true to that day. With her flowing blonde hair—now tied back in a tight ponytail ready for the pod—and her gorgeous face, she looked like a million bucks even in the unflattering flight suit that couldn't hide her perfect curves. If the tech wasn't being so rude, I wouldn't have blamed him one bit for sneaking a too-long peek at her.

  As it was, I wanted to slug him in the face. "Anyway," he continued," this is where I'm meant to brief you and check that you know your mission. Since I'd rather spend time making sure my military buddies are taken care of, I'll just say this: I hope you read the instructions you were sent."

  "You're fucking serious?" I challenged. My wife's face was full of worry, and I was starting to wonder if he was going to ensure we even launched safely. I didn't have time to argue with him and make him go through our pre-launch briefing like he was meant to, though. The platform shuddered in such a way that that everyone on the launch pad must have felt. It barely made any sound, so it must have been the effect of a collision or explosion not too close to us. I hoped like hell it wasn't close, anyway.

  "Fucking magic's getting worse every day," the tech spat out as he hurried to the next pod. The platform was starting to shudder more now, sending vibrations through the pod my wife and I sat in with slack-jawed disbelief.

  "That's that, then," Sarah said with such a small voice that I felt a cold rush move over me. Her fear was infecting me, so I reassured her.

  "Don't be crazy. Like he said, we read all the material they gave us. We watched all the instructions videos a hundred times, too. We came to the orientation day. Baby," I said as I took her hand and squeezed firmly, enough that it almost hurt, "We’ve got this. Say it."

  "We've got this." Her eyes told me she actually believed me too, at least partly.

  "We're going to make it to somewhere safe out there, a place where we can get all Adam and Eve and save the fucking human race."

  She let out a sharp exhale in lieu of actual laughter and smiled at me. "You always knew how to make me feel safe ... even when logic told me I wasn't."

  "Logic can take the day off today. Don't forget about the survival tool in your zip-up pocket." I checked that mine was there too; government issued and sure to be as useless to me as any other multi-tool I'd ever been gifted. "Are you ready?"

  "No, but let's go."

  I pulled the pod's overhanging door down and it latched with a metallic thunk. Nice and secure, nothing could go wrong, right? That's what I was hoping, until the sky elevator's roof began to open. The expanse of space opened up before us, all that empty nothing, or at least that's what we used to thin
k. Now we knew there were other planets in Goldilocks zones. Each of these pods was aimed at one of them. Hopefully we'd make it, along with others targeting at the same planet as us. If this worked, even the destruction of life on Earth couldn't stop the human race from continuing.

  "It was a one in five billion shot we won the lottery to get these seats," I said to Sarah. "Do you really think we're unlucky enough to die now?"

  "Maybe not. Erik, I want you to know, if I don't make it for some reason, and you do--it's your duty to keep going on. If you can continue your bloodline, do it. Do it for me, and do it for those cheekbones of yours."

  I couldn't help but laugh. "The same goes for you. Not to mention that perfect butt." Our pod began to tilt back so it was facing upward, ready to go. I hoped there wasn't anything the technician had 'forgotten' to prepare. For all I knew we might wind up sitting on the launchpad while everyone else rocketed up into the great black beyond.

  A gentle breeze began to flow through the pod. It was the sleeping gas the military had developed to put people under. The pods were designed not only as transportation, but also to keep people preserved in deep sleep. I guess the tech would have gone over all of this if he wasn't keeping a chip on his shoulder about two civilians being given a place in this program.

  "One last thing," Sarah said, just before I passed out.

  "Anything, my love."

  "I wish you wouldn't swear so much..." And she went under.

  "Oh? Shit," I said before things went black for me too.

  When I woke up, my wife was dead.

  1

  My eyes felt like slabs of cement when I regained consciousness. It was a struggle and a half just get them open. It might have been minutes, maybe whole hours, that I lay there in a state somewhere between being awake and asleep. I knew I wasn't still in the drug-induced coma because I was able to dream. The type of dreams where you know you're dreaming, which I've always found to be the most frustrating. And then when I finally woke up and opened my stinging eyes, it was all gone in a flash.

  Whatever I'd been dreaming about had left me shaking and drenched in sweat. The pod was warm inside, but not hot enough to account for my skin being slippery wet. My body felt like it was still asleep, and moving was a concentrated effort. Looking up I could see dents all over the pod. It was like being in an oversized tin can that someone had half-assed the job of crushing for the recycling bin. Maybe we didn't even launch. Or maybe we'd hit something, or malfunctioned and crash landed.

  "Sarah!" I had forgotten myself, and it had taken some time to remember my situation. With what felt like all the effort it would take to push a boulder up a hill I shifted my head over to look at my wife. She was strapped in safely, good, and there weren't any marks on her body. If we crashed, the impact had not visibly harmed her. I couldn't say the same for my aching head that was now ringing from turning it.

  "Sarah? Baby, are you awake?" Adrenaline pumped through my veins and I forced my arm to obey me, moving my hand to touch her. Her skin was cold to the touch. My heart dropped to my stomach and I had the urge to hurl.

  I shook her gently, trying to bring her around. The process that had put us into deep sleep had reversed for me, and we shared the same pod, the same air. There was no reason I could fathom that she would still be out.

  Something in me knew there was one very definite reason she was failing to awaken, but my head wouldn't let me turn it into a conscious thought. "We made it, honey, we're okay now. Everything is going to be okay if you just open your eyes and see."

  The pod's hatch let out a prolonged hissing sound as air seeped in from outside, and then it slowly opened. I felt the sun's heat before its light hit my eyes. Covering them to shield me from the intense brightness—these eyes hadn't been used for who-knew-how-long—I eventually adjusted to the brightness. This was not Earth, it couldn't be. The pod was in the middle of a massive lake, and primordially thick water oozed down from the pod on all sides. There must have been one hell of a splash when we landed. For some reason we were only partly submerged though, not enough for the eerie green water to seep into the pod. The water wasn't very deep then, I assumed. That would make it easier to get to land. There were trees surrounding the lake on all sides, like some kind of jungle. Trees that looked almost like the ones I'd known on Earth inhabited the local area, but they were unfamiliar to me. I had never spent all that much time outdoors, preferring to stay in and surf the web, read, and play video games in my time off work. Still, even I knew that this was nothing like what you'd find in a nature documentary back home.

  Renewed by the fact that we had actually done the impossible, I decided Sarah had to be alive. I unbuckled myself and proceeded to do the same to her. Except something had damaged her buckle. It was jammed and wouldn't even budge a hair's width. This wasn't going to come undone without some kind of tool to help me, and the supplies for our so called "New Hope" pod were all in a storage compartment on top, behind the occupant hatch.

  As I looked around, I noticed a strange new horizon with layers of orange, blue, and an alien purple hue. The sun was in the sky but looked like it was getting ready to sink in the next few hours. If it ever actually set on this planet. There was too much to think about and I just wanted to get my wife out of this pod.

  "Come on, you stubborn son of a whore!" I shouted at it. The effort was making me work up even more of a sweat, and I had to work to calm myself down and catch my breath. This could not be happening. We'd gone through so much to get here, and now Sarah looked very much like she was dead. I'm not a doctor, but she wasn't breathing.

  Checking her pulse, no matter how much I felt around I couldn't find anything there. "Baby, you have to wake up. Come on, please!" I pulled hard at the buckle that trapped her lilting form, so hard that I slipped on the wet edge of the pod and went ass-backward into the lake below.

  It wasn't far to fall, but I didn't hit the bottom. Treading water was a losing battle with this bulky flight suit on, and my legs frantically whirled around in an effort to stay afloat. Finally my feet hit something solid below me, but it had a little give to it when I put weight down. It was soft and mushy at first but firm in the centre. It could have been a fallen part of a tree. Of course there would be debris in such an ancient looking lake. That was what the pod was resting on, and I was thankful I hadn't accidentally dislodged it and sent the whole thing to the bottom.

  There were logs in the water all around, as well as several things jutting up that looked artificial, like chunks of buildings or machines. Maybe another pod had crashed in the same lake, but not been as lucky as us to stay in one piece on entry through the atmosphere. A breathable atmosphere, I was only just taking note of.

  One of the logs was moving, like it was adrift but oddly coming toward me. There was more than one. Several large objects came closer to me from around the edges of the large, fairly circular lake. "No, no, no." I scrambled back onto the pod just as one of the moving objects reached almost right up to me. As I spun and let myself fall back into my seat, something I could only describe as a gigantic alien crocodile crossed with some kind of hippopotamus shot up out of the water. Its jaws were easily five times bigger than the crocodiles I remember from the zoo when I was a kid. Luckily for me it was also five times slower, probably because it was so muscular and wide.

  All I could think about was how the thing nearly took my leg off. I didn't have much time to think about that now though. I began to lower the hatch, moving as slow as I could to avoid making any noise or alerting the water monster to my presence. Hopefully these things were as stupid as they were terrifying. They wouldn't know what a human was, so maybe they would go back to their own devices if I remained still and out of sight. Yeah, I could just sit in here with the pod hatch shut and wait for the right time to swim ashore.

  Sit here... with the corpse of my wife, who had been dead for an unknown amount of time. It might have been years, decades, maybe even centuries. Or more. The pods were designed for some he
avy duty deep space travel, without the occupants aging at all.

  I eventually got the nerve to open the hatch back up. The feeling of being stuck in a coffin was getting too great and boosted my anxiety to a greater level than my fear of the water monsters surrounding the pod. I could still see them, looking like segmented tree trunks nestled just slightly above the surface of the water. They had gone back to the edges of the lake. Maybe they weren't designed to stay in the deeper water for long. I didn't get a chance to see if the one that'd attacked me had feet or some kind of flippers. If they had feet, it stood to reason that the beast had only been able to launch itself out of the water like that because it was getting purchase on the debris.

  "I promise I'll come back for you, Sarah. I love you..." I had to get out of here if I was ever going to find a way to get Sarah out. Sarah's body... I was coming to terms with the fact that she was really gone. And I wasn't going to give up, her final words to me echoing in my mind.

  Not the part about swearing less. The part about continuing on no matter what, even if she didn't make it. Well, maybe I could make an effort to swear less too. Is that really what she would have wanted though? I chose to believe it was a joke. She always found the lighter side when others were ready to give up. One day I'd be laughing about all this.

  "You're fucking losing it, Erik," I warned myself. And now I was talking out loud to myself. Shit. I stood up and looked around again, this time peeking out from behind the raised hatch of the pod. The shore was a lot closer on the rear side. There was a length of moldering wood the length of a tree trunk sticking up out of the water. Above that were overhanging trees growing in the shallow water. If I could only make it through the water and get footing on that trunk, I might be able to grab onto the vine-like over-hangings.