Chapter 7
“Who am I going to kill first?” roared a dark, angry voice. It was Resh, who had resumed his own appearance. He was closely followed by Sirek, firing his weapon wildly. Resh had apparently started controlling the army as they moved in behind him.
Elise suddenly felt angry about the hundred-odd guns that Resh, Sirek and the drone army were carrying. However, instead of displaying that anger she vented it inwards and toward the weapons that Resh and Sirek were carrying. Guns were such an evil and unnecessary instrument. They had become extinct on Earth.
She imagined Resh and Sirek’s guns becoming extinct. The Oracle became cool, and there was a roar of surprise and anger. The weapons had become very hot and melted into a pool of metal on the ground.
Resh was so enraged about the loss of the rifles that he pulled out a hand gun from his suit and started firing aggressively at Elise.
“Die, you bitch!”
Elise held the Oracle, which absorbed the death rays. She threw it at Resh, which sent the weapon flying, the Oracle returning to Elise’s hand. In a rage, Resh charged at Elise.
Elise stood her ground without fear and imagined she was standing inside a protective aura which could not be penetrated. Her allegiances had concerned looks on their faces this time, but said nothing as they could feel that Elise was now standing in the fortress of truth!
“Arrrr!” roared Resh. He raised his hands ready for his attack, but was suddenly thrown back after touching a positive energy force, which was indeed surrounding Elise. The Planetary Oracle’s powers were starting to activate.
Shaken, Resh turned to the awaiting drone army and began enforcing his power over them. Unlike Shadow Lords, Centurions had more direct control over the minds of drones and in close proximity didn’t need non-corporeal drones to send the dark orders. Like the Master, he could also take them into his being as a way to increase his evil collective power.
Now that his powers had increased, he could easily penetrate the positive force around the Oracle. Resh, Sirek and the drones began marching in.
“OK,” said Elise. “Let’s get our collective act together.”
“We’ve got company,” warned Marie, looking toward the army of Shadow drones.
“Take up your positions on the Planetary Oracle,” said Elise. “It will increase the powers of your rings and protect you from their weapons.”
Just as she uttered the words, the drones began firing at the Keepers, who held up their rings, thus forming a protective shield in front of them.
Suddenly, for everyone present, the whole scene changed, as if they were in a virtual reality. Elise knew this was the Essence. Instead of looking like a large group of people standing at specific points on top of a large stone disk, they were now immersed in a dream-like state, as if they were inside the Oracle itself. They had entered the realm of innocence at the beginning of the right way in a bright clockwise spiralling energy, while the Shadows entered in an anti-clockwise dark, spiralling energy. Now, Elise, Sean, Resh and his drone army were all within the same realm. Elise looked around and noticed they were somewhere in the countryside of New Zealand.
While everyone was momentarily distracted by this occurrence, Elise fired a large spiralling bundle of energy at Resh, which lifted him up and pushed him toward where Sean was standing. Resh’s arm shot up from where he lay and grabbed Sean on the right arm.
Sean experienced flash-backs of Resh’s past atrocities, with visions of countless wars, scandals, crimes, tortures and sexual perversion. Stated simply, Resh was a monster.
Sean blocked the visions right there. If Resh could affect Sean with his darkness, then Sean could use his enlightened power to turn this around!
With his will, Sean brought back all his memories of when he first received his transformation and how that had turned him into a peaceful, loving person. He thought of all the people he’d passed this knowledge on to and how it made them feel. He remembered, through the transformation, how so few had become so many, in such a short time.
Shadow after Shadow was vanquished.
Resh pulled away and stumbled to his feet.
“You can’t use that mind control rubbish on us!” snapped Elise, staring at the rattled Shadow Lord. “Our collective faith is far more powerful.”
Resh glared at Elise. “We’ll see about that!” He suddenly directed his attention to collectively exhume powers from his closest drone army. As a few of the drones started falling to the ground around him, he also grabbed hold of Sirek at the top of the head and pushed him onto his knees. Sirek started shaking uncontrollably and also fell to the ground. Then, Resh’s body started to transform.
***
As Resh’s body began re-shaping, the drone army started to attack with their energy weapons. Elise fired large spirals of energy, knocking over large numbers of drones, while Sean used his ring to hit the ones getting too close and use it as a shield to deflect fire.
“Oh, dear,” said Sean, looking at Resh’s new form. “As if he wasn’t already a big enough monster.”
Elise turned to look at the tall, winged beast that was once Resh. This beast was also in the Oracle vision. It had horns on its head, eyes that were blood-red and wings like a dragon. Resh was a Shadow Angel, one of the Centurions of the Shadow Master.
***
The Resh-beast glared at Elise and Sean as the drone army waited. Its newly transformed senses slowly searched for any sign of an opening or weakness in the realm. He was looking for a way to move up the realms.
He suddenly flew off into the air and toward the edge of the realm. An anti-clockwise spiral of darkness enveloped Resh, and he disappeared. The portal stayed open for a while as the rest of the drones made a dive for the opening. Elise and Sean began to knock down as many as they could, but many of them got through.
Elise ran in the same direction and formed the Guardian version of a gateway between the realms. A beautiful clockwise, spiralling mandala suddenly appeared. She smiled back at Sean and walked through.
***
“The Martian Oracle has been breached,” said the Guardian of Caldon. “The Centurion has entered the realm of pure knowledge.”
“Very well,” replied the Tenth Guardian. “The Centurion will soon make it to the Juncture. Brother Darmas, prepare to land.”
The huge saucer-shaped spacecraft descended rapidly toward the Temple.
***
Resh entered the realm of pure knowledge through an anti-clockwise spiral of darkness, closely followed by his remaining drone army.
When Bernard felt the heat of the Shadow’s approaching negativity, he seemed a little annoyed, as he was creating one of his finest masterpieces ever. The Oracle had put him in the beautiful countryside of France, just as he’d imagined. His painting was unusually large, too, blocking Resh’s path through the right way, although it was being manifested as a village lane.
“Get out of my way!” snarled Resh. The painting, which captured the beauty of the Martian landscape, darkened dramatically.
A pang of anger hit Bernard’s stomach, but he ignored that and instead focused on the painting. There was an exciting power about him, and he realised he could fix this without his paint brush. He meditated and thought about his painting before Resh tainted it.
Sure enough, when he opened his eyes the painting had been restored. Not only did it have its original lustre, but there was much more; it was almost like it was real. It was radiating the essence of the power that was within the scene he had painted.
Resh sensed something threatening about it. It was literally pulling him into the painting!
Behind them, Elise materialised in the French scene via a bright, rotating mandala. She summoned a burst of energy from the Oracle, which began knocking down more of the drones, as the drones responded with their energy guns.
“Arrr!” he roared, frustrated by the painting and Elise’s arrival. As he was being quickly drawn to it, he frantically darkened it, and the pulling sensation stopped suddenly. In a rage, he destroyed the painting with his sharp nails.
Bernard waved his hand, and a maze appeared in front of them. Instead of hedges, the walls were made from paintings!
“Good luck making your way through that,” said Bernard, running toward the maze.
Elise raced toward Bernard, grabbing his arm. She fired a blast of energy back at the Shadows.
“We’ll ambush them in the maze.”
***
Resh studied the entrance of the maze and decided the best way to make it to the end was to send the drone army in smaller groups, with each going in a different direction. With his connection to the drones, he would immediately know which group had been successful.
With Elise’s mastery over the Essence and with Bernard’s rapid improvement, the two found that they were able to alter the whole puzzle by rotating individual works of art in different places. In that way, they were able to use the element of surprise to quickly dispatch the drones without getting caught in cross-fire.
Once Resh found out what the Guardian and Keeper were doing, he was so furious he tried to crash through a particular painting posing as the wall, ending up inside that particular scene.
Resh howled inside the static scene of Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background. He quickly recalculated his entrance point, falling back inside the maze.
“Split up into smaller groups!” ordered Resh. “I want that Guardian dead.” He sent the same message to the other groups, which were substantially smaller in number than when they entered the maze.
***
“I think we’re close,” said Elise. “Look.”
Bernard saw that the paintings around them were of archways and gates. The Shadows suddenly appeared around the corner. Elise and Bernard fired on them with a rotating blast of white energy and quickly spun a few paintings around to get away from the returned fire.
But the drones were waiting there, too. They quickly did the same again. And again the drones were there firing at them. They shielded themselves with the Oracle and ring.
“They’ve worked out a counter plan and are surrounding us,” said Bernard.
“Quick, I’ve got an idea. Follow me,” said Elise.
They flipped the paintings in front of them one after the other, doing a wider clockwise rotation around the cluster of drones that had converged on them.
They kept doing this, getting faster and faster, creating a kaleidoscope of rotating artwork around the drone army. Eventually, the artwork exploded everywhere, with a lot of the drones being vaporised in the process.
As the confetti showered down, Resh and the remainder of his drone army made their way into the next realm through the only gateway artwork that remained.
***