Chapter I06.VI.2022
Tayne laid in her bed, mindlessly staring at the clock on the opposite wall. Single ticks merely resonated with her heartbeat while she desperately tried to breathe like normal. It wasn't going well at all.
After several minutes passed, it began to rain outside. Tayne took a deep listen to the sound, slowly calming down. She should probably get some extra sleep before breakfast…
"Hey, you alright up there?"
Tayne stretched and looked down over the edge of her upper bunk. Surely enough, her sister was awake, as she probably was for the whole night writing her stories. A rectangle of dim light sat near her, leaking through covers.
"It's just a nightmare," – she whispered, leaning back.
"Hey, it's not the first time I hear you like that. Wanna talk?"
"Wanna sleep!" – Tayne fell on her pillow and cuddled under the covers.
The same images haunted her for the third night in a row. Alien-looking, yet humanoid creatures, looking up to the sky in terror. Blasts of red, a dark silhouette of a cloaked person, flashing rainbow-colored lights. And what felt like millions of screams all pressed in one instant… This was one hell of a messy dream that she always woke up from in cold sweat. It returned from time to time, but three nights in a row was unusual… and too much.
When Lua had finally risen in the sky, Tayne was already back asleep. She woke up deep into late morning, far beyond breakfast, grabbed a few snacks, and stepped outside. Caithe sat right there, weeding the flowers while the soil was still wet.
"Morning, sis!" – she smiled. Tayne took a deep breath.
"Where do you get your energy from is beyond my understanding."
"From Lua, of course!" – Caithe winked. – "Hey, I was sleeping. Just woke up for a couple of hours to write an idea down. And how's your night?"
"I'd rather forget about it," – Tayne turned back and went to the water collector to brush her teeth.
A jingle interrupted her midway, though, coming from her knee. She detached her scrollphone from there and unrolled it, revealing the flat surface of pure light. A hologram of an Archon appeared from it, growing in size until landing on the ground. Naia.
"Mom, couldn't you find another entrypoint?…" – Tayne started to complain but was quickly interrupted:
"Tayne, Caithe, this is serious and we need to act fast," – Caithe caught attention from across the garden bed, looking surprised. – "An unknown cosmic object approaches, we should evacuate," – Naia took a second of silence. – "Wish this was a joke."
Archons lived in a world that knew no enemy, external or internal. They studied their universe down to the last asteroid and were masters at scanning space. Thus anything alien was never expected and never accounted for, left only in fantasy books alongside magic. Not even in far realms deep in the Metacosmos have Archons found other signs of any, let alone sentient, life. Until this day.
Tayne whispered something unholy and ran back to the bedroom to grab a few things, most importantly a backpack she never fully unloaded. Caithe was with her, furiously looking for her music and graphic scrolls as well as a paper notebook, and in two minutes they jogged towards the village center. Naia hovered behind, carrying a gigantic bag full of seeds and Lua knows what else afloat. In another five minutes, the village became completely devoid of sentient life - one after another, everybody left through the village's wormhole tower.
And in another three and a half minutes, a fifty-meter-long cruciformed ship descended from the sky. Spitting out jets of steam with ungodly roars, it slowed down and eventually stopped, hovering just above Naia and Komi's house.
It emitted five long, powerful pulses of high-frequency electromagnetic noise in a futile attempt to shut down anything there was to spy. After that, a mechanical creature dropped out of its bottom hatch, landing on all six paws right into one of the garden beds. A small humanoid in a top hat dismounted from its spine and sniffed the air.
"Sir, is this where the Creatress resides?" – groaned the creature in clear Archon language.
"It should be," – said the top-hat person. – "However, I don't feel anyone around here. What about you?"
"I feel... something. People were here recently, but already left."
"Good for them," - laughed the top-hat person. - "Shall we eradicate the place?"
The creature nodded, the top-hat person raised one hand to the sky - and a missile was shot from a ship, blasting the whole house in a million pieces.