Chapter 3 - Listen to your lords

↤Chapter 2 - Quizzical?
There’d been another attack on Nova. A group of Abstracts had infiltrated an apartment complex and brought it to the ground. The news reports had been coming in from ISAT since the early hours of the morning.

Glo was furious as he watched the footage of the building collapsing for what had to be the twentieth time that day. Anger boiled through him at the Abstract’s complete lack of care for anyone that they might have been harming.

They’d planned their moves meticulously and struck late at night, the time when families had been sleeping and security around the tower was lax. The current death toll for the attack was just shy of three thousand, they had injured almost two thousand and a few hundred were unaccounted for in the rubble left from the blast and that just riled Glo more.

He had been relatively happy for a few days, but now he was bordering on taking himself off to Imagination and razing the entire dimension on his own.

“There is now a statement from our Governor.” The reporter on the screen Glo had been staring at piped up before the screen faded to the light blue of a morning sky with an image the Novan crest adorning the middle, a series of concentric circles made up of different colours.

About a minute later, the screen shifted again to show a live feed of the Governor for Nova, Primus. The Governor was a rather young man, feisty and with a quick temper that nobody in their right mind would want to toy with. At the moment, he looked sombre and calm but Glo could see the fury in his body. He knew Primus’ real desires and he couldn’t trust the man at all; He was ravenous for power and would do anything for it, on the other hand, he was a good leader for the empire and fiercely protective of his people.

“I mourn, my friends.” He began with his loud, commanding voice. “I mourn on behalf of all the families that have been struck down by the Animals of Imagination this sorrowful day.”

“What became of our people today was a tragedy of unexpected violence, violence that I cannot put reason to. The people who lived in those apartments and the surrounding buildings were innocent, not soldiers. Hardworking families murdered for the sick amusement of Imagination, Children’s lives cut short for the sick amusement of the Abstracts.”

Glo frowned, the snaky man on the screen was maintaining his calm impressively well for someone who was supposed to be in mourning. Glo had been suspicious about his office for a while and didn’t want to be given a reason to doubt him even more than he already did.

The young man paused for a moment to clear his throat, “It is for this reason that I have decided to ask, no, beg our Nobles to finally join the fight in the name of Nova. I have kept them out of this for long enough, for their duties to their nobility supersede their duty to us. Now I have had enough of this dishonourable level of civilian death and destruction casually being dealt out by the Abstracts.” The Governor bowed his head to the camera before him respectfully. “Please, Nobles, your people cannot go on like this. For all we know, if the people of Imagination are prepared to destroy thousands of families, they would be prepared to destroy billions.”

The broadcast ended abruptly and Glo leant back in his seat as the ISAT returned to the same mellow-faced Novan. She quickly repeated a shortened version of the speech that had just been given by the Governor and began to rattle off the rest of the reports about the rising death toll, Glo didn’t know how many Nobles would go to war with Imagination. While most of the Nobles held enough power to obliterate cities, there was a general consensus between the Nobles that they shouldn’t use their abilities as weapons of mass destruction. It was another thing that Nobles weren’t indestructible, Glo knew of at least three Nobles who’d been assassinated by Abstracts, and more that’d been killed in battles with the sword-wielding creatures.

Glo’s tablet lit up and buzzed like an insect, he glanced at it and his eyebrows shot up. He hadn’t had a call from his parents for a long time.

“Answer.” Glo ordered the machine, it blinked once as it connected the Noble to his parents with a melodious tone.

“Glo?” came his mother’s loud voice through the tablet, “Glo can you hear me?”

“I can indeed, to what do I owe the pleasure dear mother?” Glo replied to her, turning the screen in front of him off.

“Have you seen the ISAT?” His mother asked, sounding frantic.  “The Governor’s asking you to fight in the war!”

“I have seen it, and I’m planning on doing just that.” Glo muttered, bracing himself for the tirade he knew would follow his answer.

“You are bloody well not!” His mother ordered down the device, Glo leant away from the loud tablet next to him. He was lucky that he had turned on the language filter considering his mother’s very flowery vocabulary at times like this, “You could die if you do that! Achro- your father says that it’s always dangerous when you’re dealing with Abstracts!”

“And he’d be right about that.” Glo muttered, picking up his soldering iron and going back to finishing one of his many mechanical creations. “I’ve just got to be more dangerous than them then. Which isn’t going to be very difficult.”

“I won’t let you go Glo.” His mother said, Glo could imagine her standing at the door to their house, her arms folded over each other as she refused to let him go and meet up with his friends.

“Detail how you will stop me, mother.” Glo answered with a tone of sarcasm in his voice. “I’ll probably have Izzy and Shure with me in the end, if not pretty much everyone else.”

His mother was having none of it though and Glo had to hang up to try to get away from her demands and shouting. He didn’t enjoy doing that, but he knew that he couldn’t focus on what he was doing while she was screeching down his ear canal.

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“Izzy do you know how idiotic that is?” Shure mumbled from behind his cigarette, his raspy voice wavering a little as the nicotine rushed through his body. “You would not only kill yourself, but you would not do with any style! Come on, girl. Have I not taught you anything?”

Izzy grumbled, looking away from the other Noble and folding her arms over her chest.

“Oi, plant-bitch,” Glo shouted from across the table. “Don’t take the piss outta Izzy for no reason.”

Shure shrugged and finished his cigarette, flicking it over his shoulder without bothering to stub the smouldering end out. Shure was one of Glo’s other friends, well… ‘friend’ was a rather loose term that the Noble of time used to stop himself from completely disregarding the Noble of life’s pitiful existence.

Shure was tall, extremely so even for a Novan and always flamboyant, at the moment the man was wearing bright green jacket and trousers.

Somehow that obscene colour didn’t match his albino skin and dual colour, brown and green hair. While it wasn’t outwardly obvious by his lax attitude and copious drug dependencies, Shure was probably the most dangerous man at the table. Being the Noble that dealt with all things living, he could very easily bring that ‘living’ to ‘dying’ with an errant wave of his hand.

Fortunately for most of the universe, the Noble was usually too busy with whatever new narcotic they had released on the market that he could get himself hooked on. At the moment it was these wonderful human inventions that they called cigarettes, they had a wonderful taste and made you feel so very relaxed in whatever situation you found yourself in.

“Thank you Glo.” Izzy muttered, picking up her glass and sipping at its contents. The group had decided to meet in another rather less underground establishment, a restaurant where the bigwigs of Nova would come and enjoy a light meal for a steep cut of their wages.

The group was waiting on some of the other Nobles to arrive for their meeting, among the men and women they’d invited to meet them were countless abilities and trades. Glo knew that the chances of all of them showing up was barely anything, he was hoping for a large enough turnout though, even considering that he was one of the least popular Nobles out there among his peers.

Shure downed his drink and ordered another, this now being his fourth at least, Glo was surprised he was still even vaguely coherent. The man had a liver made from high-grade steel comparable to Izzac’s on a good day.

 Interrupting the festivities, the double door behind them was violently thrust open, and another man entered the room and immediately filled it with his presence. Glo could tell almost immediately that he was a Noble… but he didn’t immediately recognise the figure walking towards them.

“Glo! Izzac and Shure!” He cried, raising his arms as if he was addressing a crowd of millions. “So nice to see you all after so long!”

Now Glo recognised him.

  “Svari.” Izzy said, rather abruptly.

“Don’t be so cold, Izzy, ” Svari purred, sliding like an insect into the seat next to the uncomfortable woman. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

Svari was a rather tall Noble, somewhat like Shure but less lanky. He was built strong and muscular, something desirable but cast aside for his otherwise snaky demeanour. He had white skin like most Nobles but wore contact lenses to change his blood-red eyes to be a dark blue somewhat similar to Izzy. He had also dyed his hair fiery orange, compared to Shure his choice of fashion went very well with his hair. A long leather coat one might see in a dystopian sci-fi film to match a protagonist’s slicked back hair and dark sunglasses. Besides that, Svari was rather plain, he wore long black trousers and a white shirt that seemed to blend into the skin of his neck.

Svari held a rather unique nobility, similar to Glo’s in how old it was. He held power over light and everything that came with it.

Izzy cringed away from the man, looking at Glo for help with the Noble. Glo couldn’t really offer any help to Izzy without jeopardising the already strained relationship he had with the Novan man, so he turned his attention to Svari.

“I’m guessing that you know why I’ve called you here, Svari,” Glo asked him, leaning on the table to get the man’s attention.

  Svari sneered, waving his hand at Glo as if to dismiss him, “Of course I do Glo. Primus asked us to destroy Imagination, and that’s what I intend to do.” He answered, pointing at Glo.

  “We were asked to help fight the war, not commit genocide. We cannot let ourselves fall to their low of killing innocent families.” Glo told him harshly.

“Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do with my nobility, Prizmatica?” Svari purred, making Glo flinch with the use of his family name.

  The Noble of time didn’t have an answer to that, he just resigned himself to sitting back in his chair and waiting for more of the Nobles to join them for their meeting.

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The gathering went relatively well, Glo had found that most of the Nobles weren’t sure about going to fight against Imagination but a great number of them were rearing to go. They were the ones who had lost family and friends to the Abstracts; anger and need fuelled them for vengeance. Glo only wished that less of them wanted the Abstracts to be wiped from the universe.

Glo was walking back to his apartment, the surrounding city a dark maze of buildings, alleys and streets. While Nova itself wasn’t known for a great deal of crime for the rather extreme nature of its policing, there were pockets where the dark side of the planet’s population showed itself.

Glo could hear the struggle stark as it marred the silence of the night, so he picked up his pace towards where the sound was coming from. Down one alley, Glo spotted a group of Novan men pounding the life from a woman on the ground. Acting almost on instinct, Glo bellowed for the men to stop and back away before he hurt them.

  The group all turned to look at the Noble and immediately underestimated him, Glo was very short for a Novan so usually was picked on rather readily by his taller peers within the Noble community. It meant that he was regularly underestimated when it came to street-fights like the one Glo could see brewing in the men before him.

“Come on then, make us.” One of the Novans jeered before breaking away from his group and taking a swing at Glo with a piece of pipe.

  Glo ducked and slammed his fist into the man’s jaw, he could feel bone cracking under his swiftly bruising knuckles before the man screamed an obscenity and threw a second wild blow at the Noble. Glo easily deflected the pipe with his elbow before breaking a few ribs in the other Novan’s chest with a heavy thrust of his other arm.

The man went down, gasping for air. This sparked the fight in the three other men who all came at Glo, weapons being revealed as they moved.

Glo rolled his shoulders and concentrated briefly, to tap into his nobility, blue sparks erupted violently from his forearms and he lifted his hands to the men. They barely had time to take a breath in before Glo made his move, time slowed to a crawl around them, droplets of moisture hung in the air around them and the noises of the city at night stretched and deepened. The Noble began to pick his targets.

It took a great deal of effort to keep time in this state, so Glo moved fast. First off, he punched the Novan closest to him hard in the throat, there was no reaction from the unfortunate soul. Glo next moved onto the next victim and drove his elbow down on the man’s outstretched forearm, there was no give, but Glo knew that the bone would snap cleanly in two. Finally, he swept the legs out from below the third man and slammed his boot into the side of his head.

Glo let his concentration drop and time around him returned to its normal speed, everything he’d done played out in less than a second, the man before him flipped sideways with a shocked cry before falling unconscious mid-air. The other two dropped, one clutching his arm, obvious agony wracking his face as the snapped bone grated under his bruised skin. The other was choking on what Glo had left of his crushed throat.

Glo let his power fade away, and the sparks vanished from around his arms, he walked over to where the woman was still lying to check if she was all right. She had been bloodied, beaten badly by the group of Novans, bruises pock-marked her arms, legs and face. He touched her hand, trying to have her wake up.

He succeeded, the woman groaned and opened her very foreign eyes. It was a little surprising for him that Glo was now kneeling next to an Abstract woman, obviously a little more surprising for the Abstract as she made a scared squeak sound before pushing Glo off her with a puissant strength considering her size and the state of her arms. She scrambled to her feet and took off out of the alley and down the street before Glo had the chance to take hold of her hand and stop her. He walked out of the alley to where he had deposited the four Novan men and looked down the street where she had run, nothing could be seen beside the asphalt of the road and tall glass buildings either side of the street.

Chapter 4 - A Poltergeist's Work↦