Star Rebellion (16 page)

              I scoffed at that. “I don't have insecurities.”

              Foreststar looked at me with a smirk. His eyes seemed alight from the conversation, and with the style of his hair it actually looked pretty cool. “Everyone has insecurities.”

              “I don't. You don't seem to. You're always so distant and self-assured. Try explaining that one.”

              Foreststar looked at me like their was some personal joke. “I guess I'm distant and pissy all of the time because of my insecurities. Trust me, it's a flaw everyone has.”

              He just looked out into the landscape without saying anything for a while, and I almost thought he wasn't going to speak again. “Mine? That's a secret for another time, but let's just leave it as the reason I haven't had a girlfriend.”

              I rolled my eyes but decided to drop it. “Okay, Mr. All-knowing. What are mine?”

              Foreststar lowered his knees and fully turned to face me. “Where should I begin? You are afraid of what others think of you.” He was speaking fast enough that I couldn't interject. “You are afraid of losing Dark and Fire, your two best friends. You are afraid of trusting anyone outside of them, of your position being undermined by someone else, especially another girl. That's something I have really noticed at my time in the Rebellion. You really don't like other girls.”

              “That's not true!” I shot back.

              “Okay, name three close friends that are girls. I'm not talking about someone you occasionally say hi to, like Snowstar. I mean friends.”

              I stayed silent, and he knew he was right. “Girls are too much drama.”

              “More like you are. You create as much drama as any of the other girls.”

              I promptly slammed my fist into his shoulder. Foreststar fell backwards, but managed to catch himself before hitting the dirt. He looked up at me with a quirked eyebrow but didn't seem to be mad. I looked away and he stayed silent, waiting for me to speak. “Alright, fine. Maybe I don't want them to get close to me, and through me be close with Dark and Fire. I guess I'm glad neither of them have had a girlfriend, not a serious one. I'm afraid if they do, they'd forget about me.”

              Forest put a hand on my shoulder. “That's impossible. You leave an impression on someone, even if the bruises go away.” I rolled my eyes, but my mouth did curve up. “Plus, you guys are a team. Girlfriends come and go, but teammates can never be replaced.”

              I consented to that and we both sat in silence for the rest of the time until Kuro returned.

FIRESTAR

I don’t know how much later it was that Darkstar awakened me. I was surprised to find that I had actually managed to fall asleep, though the areas where the rocks had been poking me in the back were sore. I slid my fingers through the back of my pony tail, hoping to dislodge any dirt that had found a home there. I walked the few feet to where everyone was sitting in a misshaped circle, passing around fruit that was in a bowl made of wood. It didn’t look like anything I had even seen on Calsh, but I was starving so I took a hesitant bite anyways. Juice rolled down my chin and coated my fingers as I ate with gusto; the strange fruit was strangely delicious. When Forest asked Kuro what its name was, she said there weren’t any words to describe it in any human tongue, so we all just called it the magical fruit of yumminess. Waterstar was the one who came up with the name, which isn’t much of a shocker.

Once the bowl was emptied- no one had asked where Kuro had gotten it- the cat demanded everyone sleep. We would make the journey across the river on the morrow, and she assured us that the path we would take to the room with the Animals would be much shorter than the trip to the river. That enlightened our spirits a bit, and I fell back into an uneasy sleep, my dreams filled with the beast hidden in shadows I had thought I saw earlier. Why couldn't I be a normal guy and dream about sexy ladies?

The morning light that I woke to was no different than the light from a couple of hours ago, messing up my sense of time even more. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked around to see who else was awake. Waterstar was cheerfully whistling over a bowl of fruit though her hair looked like Medusa’s, and Foreststar’s hair was sticking on end. The negative side effect from hair gel, probably. Darkstar looked like he was meditating, which didn’t surprise me, and Icestar looked like he had been awake for a while, except for the yawn that gave him away.

I took out the hair-band that kept mine back and brushed it out with my fingers. Waterstar would sometimes tease me about this one girly tendency of mine, but I couldn’t stand short hair. After I was pleased with my hair, I pulled it back and kept it tied at my neck before joining Water at the fruit bowl. It looked like the same stuff from yesterday, but tasted differently, like it was sweeter. I asked Kuro about this, and she explained that food in the Underworld tasted different depending on the time, which I found to be incredibly peculiar. It seemed like this place was defying all rules of nature that I used to think were unchangeable.

It didn’t take much longer before Kuro was ushering us all to the banks of the Acheron River. I was uneasy about the prospect of crossing such a large body of water, especially since Kuro still hadn’t told us how we would be doing it. It looked to be at least a solid hundred feet to the other side.

“So, how precisely is this going to happen? I mean, Waterstar could probably just swim across by herself, but the rest of us are slightly screwed in that aspect. The water is too fast.” Darkstar voiced the worries for all of us.

Kuro looked over at Icestar, then the rest of us. “How long does it take for you to rest after using a special?” she asked.

Icestar groaned and crouched down at the water’s edge. “Depends how much I need to exert myself afterwards.”

“Not much. Waterstar will be able to feed you small bits of energy, though I don’t want her absorbing too much of the demonic energy down here. Not until it is necessary.” Kuro looked at Water next, almost daring her to argue the cat’s claim.

Water shrugged and looked off to the other side of the river. “Yea, I could manage that.”

Well that was something I hadn’t heard of before. It probably was difficult if she hadn’t shared it with Dark and I. Kuro nodded her head once, the bell around her neck tinkling. She looked over at Icestar until he sighed and rose from his crouched position. Ice held his hands over the water for a few moments and then a silver sheen started to frost over the fast paced eddies. Within a minute, Icestar said that the ice was thick enough to walk across.

“Well that was fast,” Foreststar said, hesitantly putting pressure on the slick surface. Icestar only grunted in return, the edges of his eyes wrinkled with the effort. After a few moments, Forest judged the ice solid enough and walked out toward the center. Waterstar briefly touched Ice on the hand before she too journeyed across the frozen river.

I watched as Icestar seemed to regain his energy and also made the passage. That left just Dark and I, since Water had ferried Kuro in her arms.

I studied the frozen expanse of river. It was only ten feet wide and at the two end points, the ice reached out like a finger until it was as thin as the edge of a dagger. The most solid part was obviously in the center, and I looked with concern at the rushing water at either edge. This wasn’t something I was going to enjoy.

As if realizing this, Darkstar said, “Come on.” My comrade grabbed me by the upper arm and dragged me like that across the frozen waves. My feet threatened to slip out from underneath me at any moment and I dreaded the prospect of what would happen if the ice suddenly caved in. Tormenting thoughts of drowning beneath the surface of the dark liquid plagued my mind, but before I even realized it, I was back on solid ground once more.

“Pansy,” Waterstar joked as Kuro leapt from her arms and continued down the path, her tail flicking in the air.

I punched Water lightly on the arm and the procession of semi-mutants followed the cat. I tried not to think about how silly we must look; a band of teenagers following the black cat, as if we were some cult.

DARKSTAR

I had tried not to humiliate Firestar too much after he looked at the ice as if he were about to have a panic attack. I knew Waterstar would give him enough grief about it once we were all back on the surface instead of in this half dead, half living state of being.

This place was starting to creep me out. The lighting never changed, and I bet I would have a difficult time trying to make it dimmer in this cavern. I didn’t know where the light was coming from anymore- we were far from any wall that would hold the mysterious, flameless lanterns. There was no sun, and I still couldn’t make out the roof of the cavern. It was like the light just existed in the particles of the air, never moving, never changing. It made shadows look peculiar and threw off my depth perception.

It was with relief that Kuro finally announced that we were about to enter the hall that would lead to the chamber for the animals. She hadn’t lied when the cat had said that it wasn’t far from the Acheron to the next pathway. I doubted that we had been walking for longer than half an hour, so thankfully we were all still pretty refreshed when we reached it, except Icestar. From my position in the group, I could see that the tunnel we were to enter was even dimmer than the outside. Light still permeated the area, but it was so faint that I could only see mere feet into the entrance.

“Let’s stop here before going inside.” Kuro said, already sitting.

“Why? We might as well go in there and get the Animals
now
so then we can get home sooner,” Firestar was normally the one who’d question every order, but there was something different about him this time; he seemed on edge.

“Because something may be lurking in the shadows.” Kuro shot back. It was clear that she wasn’t going to be persuaded on this sense. The shadow cat probably needed time to revise the plan she had in store for us, for we would be relying on her past knowledge of Lucifer. It was a risky thing to trust her, but we didn’t have much choice. If her loyalties proved false, then I would bet almost anything that we would be falling back onto one of Waterstar’s improvisations.

As Fire angrily stared at the tunnel, I edged my way over to him. I pitched my voice low enough that I doubted that anyone besides Fire could hear me, not even Kuro. “Fire, did you see anything?”

My friend gave me a look that said that he couldn’t say it for everyone to hear. I nodded my head since he was like Water and didn’t posses the skill of quiet. “Foreststar, Icestar, and Kuro,” I looked each of them in the eye as I said their name. “Would you be so kind as to not think about the rest of us? Think about your favorite place, dream about what you would rather be doing right now. Ignore what is happening around you, just for a few moments.” They’d be pretty confused when they woke up, but it was necessary.

Waterstar watched in anticipation as I put the rest of the group into a trance. I wasn’t sure what Fire’s motives were for wanting them kept in the dark, but I would respect it. He waited a few more moments and we all kept an eye on the others. Not even their eyes so much as twitched as they stared off into the same space, daydreaming about who knows what.

Firestar coughed to clear his throat, and then started. “I didn’t want them to hear, because I think Kuro is traitorous.” Waterstar gasped but Fire ignored her. “And for the other two, I think it best to keep this between us. I don’t know how well they could act as if they were unaware, and I’m not about to let something as simple as poor acting reveal what we know.

“Lucifer will be waiting for us inside there. I couldn’t see how the battle went, or anything after he appeared, but we will have to face him. Kuro is practically leading us into his hands, and we can’t do anything besides watch it happen. He has a horde of demons waiting on the other side of the river for us should we try to run. It’s either that we give up and try to make it out alive by running, or we face Lucifer head on and at least try to come out victorious.

“Does Lucifer know that you saw this?” Water asked, getting the important things out of the way first and foremost.

“No.” Neither of us questioned why he was so sure about that. We all understood our powers very well, even if Fire had some issues with his at times, but I trusted Fire’s judgment. If he was wrong, then we could just blame him later.

“So it’s up to us then?” I asked grimly. We had the fate of Icestar and Foreststar to look after, but then again, they had made that decision back in Vladimir’s cavern when they had decided to accompany us to the end.

“I don’t see any reason to change tactics. It’s not like we weren’t aware that this could happen, so why completely reform to something that was already possible?” Water looked at both of us, licking her lips in a nervous tendency.

Fire looked at me, waiting for my say. I considered this for a moment, going over what we knew and what we suspected. Only one of us had an advantage over Lucifer and that was Waterstar, though her power had proved futile against Vladimir. We would be relying on numbers to overpower him, not skill. According to Firestar, we couldn’t count on Kuro’s help in the fight, but I doubted that she would fight against us. I wasn’t even sure if she was capable of fighting.

That would leave five of us against what would commonly be referred to as a god-like entity. While that was troublesome in thought, many people in legend have overcome such feats. It wasn’t impossible; everything had to die eventually. But if we could do it was questionable.