Chapter 14 Destination Mars, Seventeen, Tiriel, and Merry Christmas
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The cerise sands of Mars unfurled like a desolate sea, whispering secrets beneath the boots of Seventeen and Tiriel. Their silhouettes, stitched from shadow and hope, danced against a bruised sky swollen with secrets. The air, thin and sharp with a tang of iron, clung to them—a spectral tapestry, wrapping their every step in the hush of ancient longing. This was not just a voyage; it was a pilgrimage across a world where every rust-colored grain spoke of the planet’s tumultuous past.
Once a beacon of life, Mars now held the echoes of cosmic betrayals and forgotten wars, drawing the eyes of those who sought its relics. As they trudged toward the Face of Mars, a monolithic relic whose weathered visage gazed out with silent wisdom, Tiriel broke the reverie. “We have only six hours before nightfall,” he said, urgency cutting through his voice like quicksilver and electric. “The machines and Enlil will seek Alalu’s resting place first. We must uncover his hidden secrets before they do, for within lies the key to either our salvation or the sealing of our doom.” The monument loomed, a sentinel over the history that had scarred yet emboldened this world.
Seventeen’s brow furrowed. His breath was a faint mist in the frigid atmosphere. The armor’s glint was a testament to battles waged across time’s fragile strands. “Why him?” he asked, his voice low and edged with suspicion. “Why Alalu before all others?”
Tiriel vaulted over a jagged outcrop, his mantle pulsing with an alien rhythm. His eyes smoldered, galaxies of secrets swirling within. “They’ll spill his blood to weave fate,” he intoned, voice thrumming like a storm about to break. “Enlil and Gadreel, heroes in a shadow play, plotting to scourge life. But it’s all a masquerade. Gadreel is the hand inside the machine’s glove, Enlil his puppet king.” Tiriel’s gaze snapped to the horizon, as if reading Tiamat’s fate in the dust, another Anunnaki bauble adrift in the star-washed void.
Seventeen pressed on, voice lowered. “Where is he?”
Tiriel’s eyes lifted to the Face, its weathered features stark against the amber-streaked sky, a monument to truths buried deep. Pointing to the monument, he declared, “There, in the crypt beneath its gaze.” Turning away from the monument to face Seventeen, he asked directly, “How many soldiers march with you?”
Seventeen’s lips curved, pride glinting in the taut silence. “A hundred march with me,” he said, voice steady, tempered in the crucible of endless conflict. “We wield mercury-forged weapons and laser guns to shatter AI’s steel hearts. War simmers in the marrow of every moment. I’ve seen it: my timeline a tapestry unraveling, consciousness drowning in shadow. The architects of power unleashed nightmares. But we’ve learned: the soul’s vibration bends reality, conjures healing, fire, and ice. This power demands a steady heart, lest we peer too deep and lose ourselves.”
Their boots carved a resolute path through the wasteland. The Face grew ever larger, its hollow maw a gateway to fate. Seventeen, Tiriel, and their silent legion drew near, shadows stretching across the crimson dunes. At the threshold, they peered into the monument’s depths. Enlil and Gadreel stood inside, flanked by gleaming machines. Their metallic forms glinted with menace, optics pulsing with cold will. Alalu’s fate hung unspoken, a palpable weight in the air, his crypt’s secret poised to unravel the stars.
A shimmer tore through the stillness—a portal ripping open like a wound in reality. The Time Warrior emerged from a storm of paradox. His scepter glowed, vibrant energy pulsing, a beacon in the dark. His voice rumbled, unyielding as the tides of time. “Let them,” he declared, his eyes blazing beneath his crystal-diamond mask. “It is fated.”
Seventeen and Tiriel froze, shock and awe coursing through them. Seventeen’s eyes widened, recognition sparking from dreams not too long ago. “You,” he whispered, voice trembling with reverence and excitement, “the one from my dream appears…” The words hung, fragile as stardust. Mars braced for a clash that would echo through the ages, binding their fates to a reckoning yet to unfold—a moment history would lose forever.
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