The night before school trips was perhaps the most exciting night of a child's life. The anticipation and fear of missing out kept most awake all night, and more often than not, ironically they missed the trips just because of that.
Well, for Isra, this wasn't the case. She was up, but not with excitement. For the past hour, she had turned her room upside down trying to find that one little damn cricket that would not stop cussing and hurling insults all night like some grumpy old grandma.
Ever since this new window to her power opened up, she had been understanding all that the bugs and birds had to say. More often than not, they said some really harsh things about each other and humans. Ironically, only the bats were extremely polite and nice; other than that, almost all the birds were a kind of their own.
And now this cricket, he had been hiding somewhere under the shadows, hurling insults at her for the past two hours. She had decided to do something about it.
"Ugly horrible grey-eyed monster, look at you, oh my god, what is that face?" the cricket said, further irritating Isra as she rolled over the cushions upon her sofa. It wasn't there. She looked between the cranny space of the bathroom door. It wasn't there either. She looked at the window frames. Still not there.
"Dumb cannot even find one tiny insect, how will she find purpose or anything meaningful in life, dumb and ugly?"
The insults were top-notch, and they were working, boiling Isra more and more. But before she would explode, the bedroom door opened.
There, crawling upon the floor in a beastly manner, was little demonic Isra. Her hair was completely electrified, baring her teeth. Miraaj had seen this all before a million times; she knew her little sister was feral.
She calmly walked in and pinched Isra's ear.
"What is it this time?" she asked.
"A bug is... insulting... me," Isra said with short pauses between the words. The sentence sounded too weird.
Miraaj looked around. The room was a mess. Even the wall clock was taken off. The worst thing was, the fresh paint had handprints in places.
She sighed. There was a sound of a cricket coming from somewhere extremely close though, but it was too easy to pinpoint.
"Turn around," she said.
Isra did.
There, on the back of the black shirt, was the little cricket. It giggled when it looked at Miraaj and lifted two hands up. Of course, she could not hear him. Isra did.
Miraaj lifted it up with her hands and threw him out of the window.
"I will be backkk," the cricket said as he flew away.
Isra looked up at her elder sister, big innocent grey eyes.
"Go to sleep," Miraaj said. Then she left, closing the door softly.
"Ok sorry," Isra replied. She laid down on the bed. The calm was amazing, no more pesty cricket, no more insults, and a whole six hours of sleep remaining until the school trip. Things had fallen into place all on their own.
She closed her eyes, and exactly two hours later, a sinister voice came from outside the window.
"I am back."
But Isra was already snoring. The cricket tried really hard to wake her up, but she didn't care anymore. He got disheartened and left.
********
The beautiful, everyday calm of the earth was in a stark contrast with another world elsewhere, hidden behind the constellations of imagination, a world that was on brink of imploding due to a catalysmic battle that was happening on its surface,
Shargh suffered, the stones cried and wailed, begged and were thrown around in a violent storm, but to liberate the planet this was necessary,
Lara was immersed in an intense battle against the demoness, the two forces, one made of purity and brilliance and the other was simply opposite, made of hatred and blood, clashed with each other.
With the recovered artefact the Queen of Luminaaras was almost evenly matched with the sovereign but lacked a crucial step,
Still, Wasl was not taking any chances, abandoning the usual combat style, she had decided to wield an amazingly bizarre weapon, it was a two edged long sword,
The sword continuously demanded to be nourished with her blood and in exchange the power it gave her could slice off even the mountains, she called it 'Desire', it talked to her in loud whispers.
A huge cloud of dust and debris surrounded them both, continuously swirling around the battle, making it difficult for Lara to predict the direction of the strikes.
She suddenly ducked and a slash, made of brilliant flowy crimson, stroked past her neck barely a few inches away, the darkness engulfed it rapidly,
A second later a series of thunderous sounds resounded in the air, as if the whole planet was getting plucked out slowly,
Lara shifted her stance not wasting even a second, out of two of them she was more agile and faster, but another blow came, she detected it only in the last second, it was a vertical slash aimed directly at her head,
Lara dodged,
The strike slashed the land in two, the stone rumbled together as tectonic plates moved ever slightly, promoting a vicious cycle of earthquakes, making the gap from the strike even wider than before.
"Amawas!" Lara shouted then turned into brilliance and flew up, suddenly darkness shifted between the crack and the rumbling slowed down, then stopped alltogether.
***********
The crow sighed and sat before the tombstone-like structure, the gateway of the long-departed Inara. It was huge compared to his size, with old stones adorned with runic symbols and the room drenched in darkness.
Beside the cryptic runes were a series of lazily carved drawings depicting a family of four: parents and two daughters. One daughter was holding the mother's hand, and the other was holding the father's.
The crow lifted into the air and brushed his feathers against the drawings, as a teardrop rolled down his beak and fell onto the slick floor below.
He sighed. Why were the hardest tasks always his to complete, he wondered, but something snapped him back.
He sat upon the floor again, right in front of the gateway, spread his wings upon the floor, and then whispered something.
Out of thin air, a blue flask, the same one he had obtained from the hot springs, popped up and fell onto the floor, making a clanging noise.
He whispered again and the cloth lid upon it came undone, making a stream of glowing blue liquid pour out. The liquid slithered between the crevices of the floor, hissing and whispering as it slowly advanced towards the gateway, drawing a huge line of blue brilliance in the crow's dark eyes.
It crept up the wall, then entered the runes and kept entering them until they were all filled, making the whole entrance glow subtly.
The crow had done this before; he knew the process. But this time something else happened. The liquid kept flowing into the runes and then crept further onto the illustration upon the wall, reaching the parents and the daughters.
A loud whisper and a wail were heard in the entire castle. This was the crow's cue. He settled himself upon the slick floor just before the still-closed gateway.
Outside, the storm was raging, trying to break in by banging against the citadel's walls.
The crow whispered again and held his breath, then closed his eyes, as the bricks upon the adjacent wall gave in to the storm, they moved aside letting it barge in.
Suddenly, a concentrated thick stream of water crashed into the crow, turning everything black.