Once again the journey to and inside the tower was too easy to understand. He was inviting us again to see what has been doing to all the universes he had been fighting against. Here was still many questions to be answered. Confusion about the war and what role he really was playing in it. Chisoutsa, Roger, and Wizard was had noticed from the last time they were in the tower that things have moved around. There was moving images of the war shown in the hall ways as Roger watched the war in his world. A worried look came upon his face seeing a battled and tired looking Levi and Duncan resting against a wall while the Richardson castle was burning with creatures and aliens were attacking from all angles.
“He’s using aliens from my past stories. Lifting them from their words and into real life to use at his will. I’m not sure how he’s doing this,” I replied behind Roger.
“We will find out soon,” Roger answered pushing me out of the way in anger.
Chisoutsa and Wizard watched their worlds falling under the prey of Valentine’s wrath. The City of Demons was close to being defeated as Chisoutsa saw her brother Lucas pushing forward with his allies Jasper and Allegheri the old vampire. Wizard couldn’t bear to watch his world in danger anymore and turned to me.
“My whole life I have spent defending what I have loved and at the end of my life it is still under threat. We have to end this for good. Forever.”
The four of us moved through the tower to the main room as Roger and Chisoutsa pushed open the heavy steel doors and myself and Wizard entered it. Valentine stood by his throne moving down to see him.
“We are here now. You are now cornered and I have the knife here. We want you to stop the war at once,” I demanded of Valentine.
Valentine was silent as Chisoutsa and Roger came to our side and he started to smile to himself pointing to the Author’s War book next to the throne.
“You haven’t really be reading much have you Author?”
“I know that the knife once stuck into the book will stop you in your tracks,” I replied to him.
“The knife does nothing. It really does nothing at all. You see I had to make sure that none of you really knew what to do against me and how to defeat me too. The knife was a fake planted in history to throw you all off my scent. The only way to kill the book is to kill me. That is going to very hard for you all,” Valentine said.
“You are lying.”
“I’m not. The day I cursed you was really the day you started to feel the pressure of the war. You have grey hair now, your ability to walk has become hard for you and your mind is clouded by my voice. I am the author in the war and the original soul breaker. I came to claim Gladus’s soul because he was useless to me. I destroyed the elements of the weather because of what they did to me. Gladus was part of my dark soul. The control of the weather may be back to the ThunderDragon for now but there is an easy way to get that back,” Valentine explained.
“How do you plan to do that?” I asked him.
“Through you. You have been the key to the war the whole time. You are connected to your characters and when I take the soul of the writer, all the good will be taken away, all the hard work that they put themselves through for all these years will be gone. You don’t need to watch, just feel it,” he answered.
He walked up to me as I felt the heaviness in my mind build up again. I fell to down to my knees and hands as he towered over me. The others clutched at their heads and fell down to the ground. Roger moved closed to Valentine when turned around and kicked him down to the ground. I felt the pain of Roger as I reached for my stomach lying on the ground. He leaned down to my face, “I am the dark side of you. The world you have tried to stay away from. The depression, the anger, and the sorrow that you locked away in your soul for so long is leaking out of you and I will drink it all in my desire to have what I really want. You have stayed strong so far but you are weak. Poisoned by the misery you have had in your life.”
He took the knife out from me and placed it in my hand, “Do what your heart desires. Do what your mind has been saying to yourself. Kill yourself”
“I can’t do that. I’ve seen it with my own eyes where that path goes to.”
“You have thought about and have desired it at times. I am only giving to you what you want when no one else has wanted to. Your characters only want you around to save themselves. Listen to me and understand, you will never come out of this darkness. You must understand this and that know that only me can lead to your peace,”
He placed the knife in my hands with one hand touched my face, it was cold as steel. He looked into my eyes, my depression was looking into my eyes and I didn’t know what to do. It felt like forever trying to decide what I should have do or not.
“I have shown you to everyone what you will truly feel. Look at you. The pain and tiredness is there to be seen. I have given to you what others cannot.”
“I can’t do this.”
“You choose to live like this. In total sadness for no one but yourself? What is the struggle for if there is no destiny?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you don’t know then there must be some thread of hope in you by now. Let take me the last of that out of you,” he whispered to me as he stuck the knife into me. My eyes widen and a ball of energy erupted around the two of us. The next few moments I couldn’t remember and the world was blank to my mind. I awoke on the ground on a mat with two figures watching over me. I pushed my body up slowly to give a better look at them and remembered their faces.
“Ice? Alexander? Am I dead?” I asked them.
Ice the weather element leaned down to me with Alexander the Knight next to him. He was dressed in a simple white armor and a sword by his side.
“You’re not dead in body that is. Most of your soul has been removed by Valentine the original soul breaker and the man who wrote the Author’s War. His confusion and his power has now become clear to you finally. He is the voice and the darkness inside us all. He is the voice you hear that questions your mistakes, your pain, and your judgment in life. His only fear is the good, the slight hope we hold close to us when all the lights have fallen into the ashes. His power has grown because of your fear and you sadness in your life. That is why he choose you for the war. He knew he could break you and here you are in pieces, in the viol between life and death,” Ice aid to me.
“So I am not dead after all. I am still here but in body only. What is left of me now then?” I asked.
“Only the darkness I think. You know of my journey through harshness of the war of the weather. When the darkness came to me, I looked to the light of Claire, my friend Alfred, and the people who needed me and who willed me on. Through only the darkness you will see the light, but never stay in the one spot. Keep walking and keeping on finding it. It is going to be harder than you will never believe it will be but it will be worth it in the end. Fight for your soul!” Alexander told me.
“I will try,” I said in the clouds of my thoughts.
A shock took over my body and I woke up again on the ground seeing my own blood on the floor and seeing Wizard, Roger, and Chisoutsa on the floor. I turned around to one person standing in the corner.
“You’re alive? That’s good to see. I’ve come a long way to find you,” said the figure.
“Mr. Umezu? How did you get all the way here?” I asked him trying to get myself up again.
Mr. Umezu came over and helped me up from the ground, “I wasn’t about to put the trust of the war in a few people’s hands. If you want something done you have to do yourself. Now the good news is is that Valentine has left his tower, the bad news is that we lost the war.”
“What happened to everyone?” I asked.
“I was confused like you until this guy came into the picture outside the tower,” Mr. Umezu pointing to a shadow who came into view. I stood back in surprise and pointed at him.
“Vulture? You! Weren’t you supposed to be trapped in time?” I shouted at him.
The time traveler smiled and waved his hands, “The time block was lifted and so was all the universe travel blocks too. Valentine has won the war and everyone’s life have been stripped of their souls – like you I hear,” Vulture said.
“I am still very weak and I can’t feel any goodness in me. He took away any of the good and hope in me. I’m trying to understand why you two are here and three of them are gone,” I replied.
“There is a way to even the odds in the war. A way to take back what was ours in the beginning. But I think you’re going to hate it and even I will hate it too and you too,” Vulture said while pointing at Mr. Umezu.
“Come on, tell me what I’m going to hate?” Mr. Umezu asked raising an eyebrow.
Vulture put his hands in his pockets and nodding to himself thinking, “Only what is left of you is the evil, the dark thoughts you have. The only ones standing are the bad guys. Myself, thou I never wanted to kill anyone I have done my crimes and so has Mr. Umezu. I suggest we resurrect a group of evil to work for you to bring the war back and defeat Valentine. Zare, Cenilso and Graford would be the perfect fit,”
“Are you insane?” I shouted at him.
“I am not raising Cenilso back from the dead and there’s no possible way of doing so! Why would you suggest something like that? The war has been lost,” Mr. Umezu snapped back at Vulture.
“I hate the idea myself but while I was stuck in the past I did some digging into different worlds and spent some time researching this idea. Valentine is out there ruling everything. You should be lucky we are still here, because without us you would truly be dead. Now there is a way to resurrect them. Have a look at Chisoutsa over there,” Vulture said.
Both myself and Mr. Umezu wasn’t happy at this idea and we both casually turned around and noticed Chisoutsa had changed completely in form.
“I don’t remember her having wings,” Mr. Umezu gasped looking at her.
Chisoutsa’s hair had turned long black with black wings and was more muscled. She was still asleep from the effects of Valentine’s power.
“How is this possible?” I asked Vulture.
“She’s a full blood demon now and she can resurrect people and have them under her control. She is the perfect person we need to win back what you have lost and that is everything,” Vulture noted.
“So we use these three to explore the dark side and reclaim my soul in the meanwhile?” I asked confused about the issue.
“Something like that. Mr Umezu and I agree it still comes down to you and your war with Valentine. He maybe your mental illness in the fresh but he couldn’t kill you for some reason and no one knows why. So you gotta find that out and before you start asking why I’m helping it’s in my best interest. I can’t rip people off and do my business when people is enslaved or dead. It’s just bad business isn’t Mr. Umezu?” Vulture asked him.
“Yeah I got out of the business of ripping people off but I do like the way you think sometimes,” Mr. Umezu said.
“Maybe it’s not about getting them on my side. It’s about learning my past, learning why I created these characters and specially their connection to my life. Cenilso and Graford were during my adulthood struggle but Zare was in the core of my childhood. Something I never wanted to touch again,” I said out loud thinking about the three of them.
“You have to deal with the past to work out your present and to have a future. If you figure out the core of your problems we might actually have a chance and your soul will be returned to you. You gave away your soul in a moment of weakness but exploring your dark side and conquering it will make you stronger than Valentine. You only have us to work with now and that’s the only way you are going to do it now that Valentine controls everything,” Vultures told me.
“Won’t he be watching me?”
“No. He won the war and he thinks that you died too. Which is great for us and can use the time to resurrect them and find out your answers. Let’s wake the demon girl over there and get out of here.”
Mr. Umezu walked and gave her a nudge with his foot and he lit up a cigar while waiting for her, “Wake up, we haven’t quite lost yet.”
“Kick the demon, that’s a smooth move,” Vulture noted.
Chisoutsa slowly awoke from her state and quickly noticed her new form. She cracked her neck and stood up looking at Mr. Umezu and Vulture and then me.
“Why am I looking like a demon? What’s happened?”
“In short, we lost the war but only the bad characters are alive,” Mr. Umezu quipped.
“And I’m now one of the bad guys?” Chisoutsa asked.
“Well no I don’t think so. Part of you is still with Censilo the demon lord and that means you are connected to him hence you are still here. Valentine has removed all the good and now I have to face some of my past to save the present. Now how do we do this?” I asked Vulture.
“I’m going to sound like one of the Cyber family members with you two not knowing anything. We have to go the area where they died.”
“The Second life world was destroyed. It’s impossible to bring back Censilo,” I explained to Vulture.
“Right that idea is canned. We could use one of the large hall rooms in the tower to do this. Seeming this tower is a massive universal portal like the one you had at your old home and the one you kept in your company headquarter that is highly illegal that I heard of,” Vulture said looking at Mr. Umezu with a grin.
“Illegal but harmed no one. It brought Cody Cyber over. That can’t be said as a bad thing. I was quite disappointed I couldn’t make the profits off it as I had planned,” Mr. Umezu replied.
“Can we get this moving now? I’m going to end up as a villain myself if I keep on standing around here,” I said to the three of them.
“I was enjoying the idea of having the world to ourselves. To help bring back the Cyber family. They will never let hear the end of that one,” Vulture said dreaming of the moment.
The four of us walked out of the main room and headed for the large hall room where needed to turn back the tide of the war.
The four last figures in the war had walked into the hall room where the library walls was filled up of books and the papers once again was floating around. The candles that lit around the area was turning purple and I was in the middle of the room with Chisoutsa where Mr. Umezu and Vulture was standing in the background.
“The world of the dead can feel Chisoutsa’s movement. She is powerful now and we have to use that to our will. This is the only way is to find our past and find out what you are seeking Chris. Come now with Chisoutsa and we can start this,” Vulture explained with a boom of his voice.
“To work with someone I fought for years is very strange. Chisoutsa do you know what to do?” I asked her wondering how she felt about her form and everything that had taken placed.
Chisoutsa spread out her wings and her hair shone in her darkness. Black eyes appeared over her and was feeling the new desires of a full blooded demon. The very thing that she had been trying to avoid for many years had taken over her.
“It feels so good. This amount of power inside me is incredible. Why would I have wanted to keep this inside me for so long? I have to release it, to feed my desires,” Chisoutsa softly said.
“Channel that desire for the resurrections and only that,” I warned her.
“It would be my desire to do so,” her eyes widen fully black and unleashed a black magic all around the room as the tower started to shake. Mr. Umezu and Vulture held on to the side of the walls to stay upright. The heavy movement knocked me to the ground and I looked up to see to see the three ghosts coming into focus to the ones alive in the great hall room. The ripped story papers of time flew past my face as I saw Zare, Censilo, and Graford’s ghosts coming to the ground watching us all.
“I am the author in the war. I have resurrected you to ask of you of my past to save the future. You have all been conquered in your time and in your lives and you must answer your author these questions in the Author’s War. Listen to me, my soul has been taken and only the darkness now lies inside of me and I wish to seek the light. Something that you never have found yours. Tell me why you never seen the light. Tell me where you fell so I may know what lies ahead for me,” I asked of them three.
Graford turned his head to me in a red ragged clothes of the old wizard he used to be. He was serious and seemed unhappy about his resurrection. He stared at me and boomed his voice, “You think you can resurrect us for your own sport and fun? I feel the body of the barbarian lifeless on the grounds of this haunted tower and it please me most. Why do you think I would help you bring him to life? The same man who took my life?”
“He is not the problem .The original soul breaker has arrived with his book the Author’s War. Your own life would be even more of a defeat if the man who killed you was killed himself. Do you know of him?”
“Valentine Blackburn. He was the original who crosses time and space. He lurks in the minds of those who have been blacken by their thoughts and then he takes their lives. He is the depression who is in a psychical form to all that sees him. For you, my dear writer, the only way to defeat him is to have a strong mind and will and only you can find that yourself. Not me!” Graford shouted back towards me.
“How do I find the strong mind and will when I failed against him in everyone’s darkness moment. Where do I find the strength in that?” I shouted back at him.
“Chisoutsa, you have become everything that I wanted. All through your author’s failings you can through and become the full demon that I dreamt of so long ago,” Censilo said.
“This new found power. It does feel good to me,” Chisoutsa answered. Her mind was clouded in her demon state.
“You failed yourself to win against us and we defeated you twice! You can’t harm us now! What can you tell me at all about this war?” Mr. Umezu shouted from the background.
Censilo nodded with his white gown while he adjusted his silver glasses, “You must walk through the dark to see whatever light you seek. We must have failed because there was a part of us that feared the end. My silver machines, the ones who are used by Valentine – yes they are really them and not the aliens that you thought they were .He does not characters of his own because of his pure darkness and evil. None of them would ever work for me and be his ally. We had a slight of goodness in us. I created Chisoutsa in the hopes of a new world, Graford wanted to control his kingdom and bring it forward from the world of castle knights and magic. We had good causes but yet the way we did it was in the form of evil. I cannot say much for ghost in the middle.”
I stood forward as Chisoutsa eyed off Censilo in his ghost form. I laid eyes on a person I haven’t seen since the final struggles of the Legomen. The battle that finally brought peace to their world until now. It was Zare.
“You have grown since the little boy that I met. You were always nervous around me but now I sense you mask it better than you did in your young youth. You and your wizard was the strongest connection that I ever knew of. I sense pain inside you and your struggle to come over it.” He said to me.
“My life has been a struggle and I want that to change. For me. Zare, you knew my childhood, you saw it unfold it during the battles. How do I defeat Valentine and bring about the peace?”
“Find your soul through the desire to live. When you look in the mirror you will notice there is nothing there. You must create your own strength if you wish to win against him,” Zare told me.
“It is easier to say then to do. It is the journey to the light that weights me down,” I replied.
Zare moved closer up to me and whispered to my ear, “Her death, it still haunts you to the core at times. You know what will happen if you did the same thing. You walk your mother’s path and all there will be and all what could be will be lost.”
“I know that all too well. It was her decision in the end. I have to fight Valentine but I know it’s going to be hard.”
Zare look beyond me towards Vulture remembering him from years ago, “I see that you lived past the battles and not me. You ran when you could have had the chance to rule LegoLand with me.”
“You were going to lose and I jumped the ship. There was no point in working with someone who was too stubborn to see their repeated failings,” Vulture reminded Zare.
“You dare to say that to me after the years of protecting you from the Legomen and the Time Cruisers?”
“Protection? Ha! If it wasn’t for me you would have been defeated years earlier through your flawed ideas of thwarting them!” Vulture shouted.
Zare sailed past me towards Vulture when Chisoutsa blocked his path unleashing some glow of black magic upon him. His anger grew knowing there wasn’t much he could do to Vulture or to anyone in the great hall room.
“There is nothing you can do Zare. You couldn’t beat me when I was young and you won’t be able to do it now I’m older,” I warned him.
Zare didn’t take no for a reason and become charging up a shot from his hands towards Vulture. Chisoutsa flashed another charge of black magic energy at him while he dodged it. I moved up in front of raised my arms and hands at him for some unknown insane reason wanting to push him back.
“What was that?” Mr. Umezu asked in wonder looking at my hand glowing blue and a sonic boom roared at Zare slamming him across the room while he fell onto the ground
I quickly put down my arms in a confusing manner and turned back to Mr. Umezu and Vulture. Zare carefully picked himself up from the ground and looked straight at me.
“So you discovered that you do have the same type of powers that of Valentine. The power of force and ability to awaken a life.” Zare boomed at myself.
“I now have ability to awaken lives, as in turn everyone back from their fallen state?” I asked Zare.
“Yes but don’t think it will be easy to walk back into your worlds. Valentine owns everything. It’s his empire now. You have come to get what you wanted from us. Your past is your past and let me rest in peace. Thou I do wish I would be there to see you fall,” smiled Zare.
I turned to Chisoutsa and nodded at her, “Close them all off and send them back to where they belong,” I told her.
Chisoutsa closed her eyes and her wings stretched out wide while Zare, Censilo, and Graford look at the small party. She opened them again and once again a bolt of black magic sprayed across the room and three old souls disappeared from the great hall room. Chisoutsa turned around to me shook her head.
“That was pretty good I suppose. That took some power off my shoulders. What the hell do we do now?” she asked me.
“We should go and awaken Roger and Wizard first and see where we go from there.”
The four of us returned back the main room where Roger the Barbarian and Wizard was still lifeless on the ground. Mr. Umezu and Vulture kept watch for any troubles around the tower hallways when Chisoutsa and I stood next to the fallen people.
“I guess you will get the effect of this and return to your previous state before Chisoutsa. Are you ready?” I asked her.
“Well you know now that I know how to transform into the full demon. I might stay in this state for a while to go. I think you might need it,” Chisoutsa smiled.
“Suit yourself. Let’s try this one out, “ I said.
I stretched out my arms towards the two bodies and went into a deep thought and the blue spray of energy came out over Roger and Wizard. The two of them started to wake up and with Roger sitting on the ground looking around the place while Wizard woke up in a hurry and got up quickly unsure what had just happened. He dusted himself off and then noticed Vulture in the room.
“What is he doing here? Of all the people to be helping us this is terrible,” snapped Wizard upon seeing Vulture.
“You be quiet old wizard. I have been helping them out quite nicely. You and that barbarian weren’t so useful against Valentine were you? Besides it’s time for me to leave anyway, I just came here to fix your mess up,” Vulture answered back.
“Our mess, we were going perfectly well and I see Chris is still here so not all is lost,” Wizard reminded him.
“All of our worlds have been conquered I’m afraid Wizard so we have to win them back and that’s not going to be easy,” I said to him.
“Are they all dead? Is that what you are telling me?”
“No, they are in the lifeless state that you two were in. We have to find out where they are and possibly a way to beam his energy across the world. I’m just not sure how to do this,” I told the group
“I’m going now and I hope you sort out this war and remember that I did help you all out when you needed it. My time machine is in one of these rooms so I better get down there and hope that no one has played with it. Good day,” Vulture said heading off into the shadow when Wizard rolled his eyes and turned back to me .with Roger and Chisoutsa looking around the room.
“Is it me or this tower not what it used to be,” Wizard asked me.
I looked around the room and didn’t quite notice what he was talking about, “No I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Chisoutsa walked over in her demon form to the other room and looked outside the window and her face went blamk, “I can my home from here,” she told the others.
Wizard started wandering over tossing his head, “I don’t know what you are talking Chisoutsa at all but I… don’t believe it but I can see it too.”
Roger and I dashed over to where Wizard and Chisoutsa stood shocked at the image and then I saw it. All three planets of where Wizard, Roger and Chisoutsa lived was in the space area of Earth. Somehow Valentine had moved the entire planets into my own universe.
“How is this even possible?” I asked Wizard.
Wizard turned back and pointed to the main room where the Author’s War book was, “Valentine has drained all the power he has taken from our universes and moved the planets here. I don’t understand why he has done this. This tower was used as a way to collect power and transport massive things around it.”
Mr. Umezu directed everyone to come into the main room as he jogged up to the stand where the book was placed, “You know I wish I has thought of this earlier but the stand is really like a staff of magic. The book itself that Valentine uses is powerful but requires a person or object to use its power. If you place your hands on the stand and because the planets are in your universe you can awaken everyone in one hit. Come try it now.”
I walked up to the stand and as he said placed my hands on the stand. The stand begin to glow blue, “I just have to think on what I’m doing and I can do it. I think,” I said to myself. A large blue globe of energy grew from the stand in an instant covering everything and pushing out into space. I felt that a fair bit of me was taken out and sat down to have a breather.
“If they’re in space then how are we going to get there?” Chisoutsa asked.
“Haven’t you forgotten we are in a tower that moves?” Mr.Umezu reminded her.
“But this tower won’t be moving for long. The traces of power left by the book is very low. We might be able to reach the planets but getting back here on Earth might be impossible. But we have no choice now, we have to do it if we like it or not. There’s no turning back,” Wizard told the group.
I looked towards the stand knowing that was how to move the tower. I placed my hands over the stand as it started to glow, “We go to the City of Demons first. There’s someone I need to speak to,” and with that the tower started to slowly disappear as the war raged on.
