Arias almost as if he had training to be a fighter pilot in the neverending space war was flying through Asteroids and old war space waste and junk without even flinching. Solomon finally tired of the silence, wanted to know where Arias was taking them. Solomon had never been to this part so he was curious.

  “So..where are we going?”

  “Yukatang,” Arias said in a monotone voice.

  “Is that..like a food dish or a fish?”

  “Not exactly…it’s more like an abandoned planet that has some crazy creatures, fish and foliage on it…it’s like something out of an epic manuscript describing fictional animals and fictional places. It was an experimental planet probably 500 or 600 years ago and the experiments got out of hand and reclaimed the planet and killed most of the inhabitants. The only people who go there now are Trophy hunters and occasionally a monk to try and dig up old research from the scientists that died there…”

  “Oh uh…creatures? What the hell do you mean by that?” Solomon said in a pissed off tone

  “Tell me exactly what the hell is going to be on this planet,” Solomon said not even giving Arias a chance to think.

  “Damn it, okay there's giant Lizards the size of buildings, giant hairy monsters that have like four eyes in front and like 6 horns, and smell like a wet rag. There’s fish bigger than passenger ships that jump out of the ocean on the planet and try to eat anything that gets close.”

  “No seriously though. What’s there?” Solomon asked, kinda starting to transition from pissed off to scared.

  “...that is what’s there. It’ll be fine Solomon, I’ve been there like 20 times I know my way around, and for the most part we’re too small for anything to want to eat us there anyway.” Arias said in kind of a half truth half lie. Because there was stuff on the planet that would eat them, but Arias knew they could easily handle them so he kept it to himself so it wouldn’t make Solomon have a panic attack in the cruiser.

  They approached a black smog and a giant planet full of oceans and large continents and they could see giant patches of mountains, green and desert like a painting out of the Church.

  “The planet is the perfect temperature year round, it never gets too cold here and the humidity in the air lets plants flourish here.”

  “Oh like the planet Amelia was camped out on?”

  “No, that’s like a paradise planet. A place where humans could inhabit and make a home. This is like an oversized terrarium where we could tolerate but we’d die, or at least we wouldn’t be very comfortable.” Arias said, shaking his head and he got closer to the planet, he hovered over a beach in the air. Then there was a loud baying sound. One that shook their eardrums. And in a moment a giant blue fish of some sort, with green reptilian eyes and sharp bony spike coming off it’s back jumped very high in the air, so close that Solomon could have thrown a rope and climbed over to it if it didn’t fall back into the ocean.

  “Okay I know that fish wasn’t 60 feet and jumped nearly 2000 feet in the air…”

  “Oh no, it did, it’s a fish we commonly catch on other planets, except they used serums to grow and evolve it to where it’s now like that, the monks estimate there’s thousands of them littering the waters…but something, like some predator hunts them, because we’ve witness something bigger biting into the side of it and dragging it further down in the ocean on this planet, we just haven’t been close enough to get a better look, and none of the manuscripts or papers on the planet suggest they did anything else with anything aquatic” Arias rattled off like he practiced that a hundred times before saying to Solomon.

  “Scientists are always trying to play god..”Howard commented.

  “I think we should leave, there’s no reason to be here.” Solomon said trying to use his charisma to sway Arias.

  “Nah, trust me on this. We should have some time to really figure out what to do next.” Arias said.

  “We can’t just keep running away with Howard, what are we even doing at this point?” Solomon starts to become skeptical of Arias’ choice to come to this horror of a planet.

  Arias moved the Cruiser through a giant tunnel that was on the side of a mountain, he shined a bright light that shined from underneath the cruiser as they floated deeper in this tunnel that seemed to have been made by something intelligent.

  “What the hell is this…” Solomon starting to get perturbed by how creepy going into the side of a mountain felt.

  “This is where the scientists used to do their experiments, they had like a bunker in this mountain..I know of a room in a deep level that should give us some protection from any wraiths, sugen raiders or other weirdo’s.”

  The tunnel eventually expanded into a very large chasm where a giant concrete ledge where ships used to park, with broken down ships and cruisers still parked there as if they were waiting for their owner to come and fly them away.

  “This is creepy, even for me,” Howard claimed.

  “The dead baby in a jar even thinks this is fucking scary…lets leave..”

  “No Solomon, this is where we’ll be safe. It’s good that it’s off putting. We’ll be left alone!” Arias said, trying to not match Solomon's energy.

  “I don’t think Sugen raiders or Sugen militarum in general would not ever come here…there’s not enough people to enslave” Solomon in reference earlier to Arias’ weird addition of claiming he was worried about Sugen Raiders.

  “I don’t know what those assholes do, they literally only leave the monks alone because we have root chutes they buy from us so they can keep growing roots.”

  Arias opened the cruiser and pulled out the energy staff that glowed a dark green and it illuminated a small space around the 3, the green light was a little easier to see in comparison to Howards dim blue hue.

  “Alright guys, follow me” Arias said as he walked into an open

  He lead Solomon and Howard down a long hallway that was overgrown with moss and it smelled very moist. There was no sight of the end of the hallway and Arias walked slowly and then came to a full stop and turn back to Solomon and Howard.

  “Okay, i’m going to be honest here for a second, there might be some…inhabitants that might be coming up, they’re not harmless and we will have to kill them probably”

  “Okay…care to…explain further?” Solomon was tired of Arias’ withheld knowledge.

  “No, I’m not quite sure how to describe them..they’re kinda like if a cactus from the sugen deserts, a dog from the courtyard of the church..had like a baby? But the baby was bigger than us.”

  “What, what the hell does that mean!” Solomon started waving his arms and hands around frustrated.

  Two sets of red catlike eyes appeared further in the tunnel in the direction the party was walking

  “Oh great…is that them?”

  “Maybe?” Arias said unsure, since he couldn’t see anything but the eyes. Then a deep and loud baying sound of a hound bellowed deeper in the dark. Then a moment went and another baying sound came from the other side. Then the sound of heavy feet and growling came from both sides. One giant green dog creature came from one side and revealed itself in the light. It looked to be about waist height to Solomon, it was a very built and very green animal. It’s eyes glowed red and it had a snout that was long and filled with razor sharp teeth.

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  “Damn it, damn it all.” Solomon said as two other green creatures came from the other side of the hall closing them in and preventing escape forcing a fight.

  The lone hound lunged at Arias, but Arias swatted it away with his staff and the hound yelped in pain as the energy staff burned into the animal's organic hide that smelled horrible when burned. Solomon then drew his energy revolver and shot at the other two hounds, Solomon missed the first one but got off a head shot on the other hound that exploded into a green slime. Howard, trying to help, used his ability to hold down one hound to try and give Solomon a chance to hit it with his revolver, but Solomon caught on and shot the other hound. Arias finally sliced the head off the other hound with his staff and the three looked at each other like they had just heard a bad joke.

  “Okay, Monk…what the hell is this?”

  “Fungus Hounds. The scientist here grew a fungus that mimicked what we know as a species of hounds, but that's just what they look familiarity wise. They are actually just plants, nothing more. So we’re gardening” Arias said with a crooked smile.

  “Fuck you, why did you bring us here?” Solomon said getting close to Arias in his face

  “Oh I just thought it’d be funny to make some Sugen orphan relive his days being a slave by making him garden for the greater good!” Arias shoved Solomon away from him trying to not let the Solomon's old Sugen Special Force training intimidate him.

  Arias continues to walk down the hallway toward the room that he knew wasn’t too much further away. After about 5 more minutes of slow walking they came to a metal sliding door that was sealed shut with vines and moss, but Arias used his staff to burn the vegetation away and used the staff to pry the door open long enough to get howard and solomon through and Arias jumped in behind them as the door snapped shut again.

  “whoa” Howard resonated

  Arias flipped a switch that caused a bunch of giant light strips to turn on revealing a giant room the had giant computer and tablet modules that were overgrown much like the rest of the subterranean base Arias brought the party to.

  “Alright, now that we're here we both have to take these…it's so the fungus here doesn't grow in us and essentially turn us into organic matter..” arias offered 2 capsules to Solomon who took them without hesitation.

  “Organic material?..”

  “Yeah those hounds were people at one time, the fungus here takes organic material and changes it into different things..it's almost super natural but the scientists that were once here wrote extensive research papers supporting that it was naturally occurring and not super natural” Arias said

  “No this is super natural” Howard said

  “Whatever it is I don't want to be plant food..” Solomon said gazing around all the overgrown vegetation.

  “how is it supernatural?” Arias pressed Howard for his explanation.

  “This nature, is super. So therefore it Is super natural” Howard hummed.

  Arias didn't entertain the thought of responding to that being pretty sure Howard was being a smart ass.

  Arias walked up to a computer and set his tablet into a docking station and all the computers began to turn on and a wall that Solomon thought to be glass windows, started appearing surveillance footage of the island “alright, if something, someone or whatever in the hell comes for us, we'll know about it.” Arias seemed pretty confident that he found a place for them ro hide with Howard as long he needed to figure out what the next step would be.

  —-

  Days had passed and Arias had been awake for days resting for moments in-between sessions of reading and calling other monks, Amelia, and his Dad bouncing ideas and just in general talking.

  Solomon grew tired of hanging out in an abandoned bunker and began to explore around the base to see what was around. He had figured out that most of the Fungus monsters that were around were deathly afraid of fire, so he had begun to use a small torch to make the fungi flee away while he searched other rooms and chambers of the mountain. Solomon had began to feel like Arias was holding back a lot of information and it was beginning to frustrate him. He understood that he wasn't a monk but he had accompanied Arias on so many journeys and had never felt this way. Maybe the weight of the situation was worse than what Solomon could even guess. Solomon had made his way to an observatory bubble that stuck out the side of the mountain, it was originally placed there so the scientists had a place to gawk and appreciate all the different creations they had made on Yukatang. Solomon looked out at a rainforest canopy that was only broken up by other mountains and the massive ocean the giant fish flew out of when they had originally come to the planet. Solomon would venture here often during the next few days to meditate and reflect. Solomon was sitting on the ground in the bubble, eyes closed and he was taking deep breaths.

  “When will we be leaving?” Howard chimed as he floated into the observatory bubble.

  “No idea. Ask Arias.”

  “I have tried talking to him, but he’s locked himself into the computer room and refuses to answer me. I know he hears me, but his silence is very loud.”

  “He does that, when he gets stressed out he tries to get all the information he can get to make sure he’s prepared. Now if only he knew what he was preparing for.” Solomon said as he picked himself up and turned around to look at Howard.

  Then Arias walked into the observatory, he looked at Howard and Solomon with bags under his eyes and no enthusiasm in his voice.

  “They know.”

  “Who knows?”

  “The wraiths. They’re here. I saw them on the surveillance on the north side of the mountain. They’re trying to figure out a way in. I also found out more information on the church of Zona through the old archives of this laboratory” Arias said.

  “Well, do tell then” Howard pressed for information

  But then with a loud thud Arias fell down from pure exhaustion.

  ____

  “Damn it, wake up” Solomon was shaking Arias awake, but there was no use, he was out. They had dragged him to a room filled with bunk beds and weird uncomfortable chairs that looked like upside down triangles attached to the concrete floor. Solomon began to pace back and forth worried about Wraiths being close on the mountain, the most experienced monk and repository of knowledge out cold and a world ending omen in a jar floating around. Howard had become quieter and more reserved as he began to understand Solomon and Arias’ lingo and subtle body language.

  “He just needs to sleep” Howard said, stating the obvious in hopes it would lure out some conversation out of Solomon.

  “Yeah, but we need him to be awake, because there’s like…40 or 50 wraiths..just hanging out trying to find their way in here.” Solomon said, staring at a screen mounted in the upper right of the room they were in. The wraiths had some of knowing or tracking Howard and it seemed hopeless trying to outrun them planet to planet.

  “Holy shit…what the hell is that?” Solomon looking at the surveillance screen saw what looked like a portal, ripped into the jungle growth, it was a red flame that was a 6 foot tall being, cloaked in a black suit with a brown cape. And they had a sphere of glass that had a very similar look to the blue substance in Howards jar, the head of the being was like a mummified skull, he looked like he had a permanent pissed off expression. He stepped forward and more wraiths came behind from the portal, Solomon was unsure how many because the dark being turned to look at the camera and he held out his arm and the surveillance cut off.

  “I know…him?” Howard said confused

  “How. how the fuck do you know him?” Solomon said in a gritty panicked tone as he jumped up and threw Arias over his shoulder in full evacuation mode.

  “I…I don’t know but he’s speaking to me telepathically in my old…my old world's language. “I am here you…” is what is ringing through my head right now” Howard said

  “Well, we need to get out of here either way I’m sure you don’t want to join that asshole”

  “Yeah, something tells me he’s not here to play with me”

  Solomon with supplies in one arm and Arias slumped over the other he began to run to the cruiser to try and make an escape to somewhere else. It had been forever since Solomon had flown the Cruiser, since Arias was the one that knew how to operate it best, but Solomon had no choice. Solomon threw Arias and the backpacks in his usual seat and he hopped in the driver seat. Solomon looked around trying to find the ignition module, Solomon hit that and then he tried to find the combustion switch, he guessed the red one was the one to flip. And with that the cruisers jets red with flame darted down the tunnel they came in just a few days prior. The only difference being that Solomon was hitting a bunch of red goggles and smashing them as the wraiths were floating down the tunnel. They would fall off to the side because of how fast they were going but Solomon let out a loud scream because of how many wraiths he saw the hundreds of wraiths floating around the mountain as they darted out of the side of the mountain, Solomon jerked up on the steering wheel and immediately flew straight up into the planet's atmosphere and began to run away from all the wraiths and the dark being that summoned them there. Solomon flipped every switch on the launch panel and they went very fast and very far, Solomon didn’t stop the cruiser until he was collected enough to read the directions in the cruiser's manual on how to land it. Solomon decided that they needed help from the church, even though Arias would have fought him to the death on not going back until they knew what was going on. Solomon knew the three of them couldn’t get what was happening under control.

  Solomon roughly landed back on the top church, but Solomon noticed there was a lot of ships there. Sugen warships parked on top of the church and next to the church lining the clear landing pads of the city that surrounded the church. The Sugen government wasn’t permitted on Masart, so whatever was happening either had to be peaceful or an act of war.

  “Well this isn’t good,” Solomon said as he jumped out of the cruiser.

  “Guess we’ll find out,” Howard said. He began to levitate Arias behind them as they walked into the Church.