“That’s Blackstar?” Sooyoung asked as she swerved to avoid a cloud of golden dust.

The “planet” she was referring to was unmistakable. Aside from the random floating satellites that seemed to be everywhere in the Astral Plane (Sooyoung liked to call these things “cosmic garbage”), it was the only celestial body nearby. It was smaller than she’d expected it to be, roughly half the size of Earth. At its exterior was a ring of sickly crimson, revolving around the planet, stretching and pulling in specific directions as if it were searching for something. The planet’s appearance was difficult to make out despite its proximity. A heavy fog of darkness hung over the surface, drifting around it to form a second layer that mixed and mingled with its burning red halo.

    “Yes,” Joohyun said from beside Sooyoung. “It exists both on the Astral Plane and in your reality. Do you see that red ring around it?”

    “Yeah.” Sooyoung said, “That’s the corona, right? We have to stay in the Astral Plane when we pass through it.”

    Joohyun smiled. “You remember that. Good. Do you recall what we need to do for the fog of the eternal night?”

    “We jump back into reality when we touch it, so it doesn’t entangle us,” Sooyoung said, thinking. She continued to fly through the Plane, her body and Vis working as one, reflexes developed both from time spent traveling and from Joohyun’s instruction. “Or, whatever word you used to describe that. And we can do that because the entire planet is technically a Touchpoint.”

    “Good,” Joohyun answered. “The two layers are not symmetrical, nor are they in order. The corona and eternal night may come at you in rapid intervals. Do you think we’ve practiced enough for you to do this alone?”

    Sooyoung chuckled and ducked below a floating piece of asteroid. “I got it, Joohyun. But if I do need help, I’ll let you know.”

    Joohyun gave a frown that was so comically maternal that Sooyoung had to stifle a laugh.

    They’d made excellent time traveling from Earth to Blackstar; it had been just over a week since their departure. During that period, Joohyun had provided Sooyoung lessons on how to control her Vis and how the mechanics of the Astral Plane worked. She’d even tried to explain how to shape and utilize a sword made of Vis, but they both quickly realized that fighting with punches and kicks suited Sooyoung much better.

    Sooyoung was surprised by how fond she’d grown of Joohyun. Their personalities didn’t really mesh well - Joohyun was too formal and stiff - but that didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy one another’s company.

Joohyun spoke of her past life, the years spent at Eodum’s side, enduring his abuse and tyranny in isolation. She’d only been able to travel independently in the past three-hundred years, when Eodum was convinced that Joohyun had been indoctrinated enough to trust. Obviously, that was a grave mistake on old Geulim Ja’s part. Joohyun had, apparently, been planning his downfall all along. It was a loose plan that pretty much involved the Representation finding Seulgi and figuring it out from there, but still a purposeful, conscious effort to take her husband down.

    The idea that Seulgi was a sort of cosmic messiah was, honestly, insane. Sooyoung could barely grasp it. Seulgi Kang? The girl who was afraid of her own shadow? Who threw up twice before her first tutoring session? Who couldn’t speak in public without having a panic attack? She was going to save the world? According to Joohyun, Stardust - who was, allegedly, very confident - was created in order to help fully realize the role of the chosen one. The idea that Seulgi could create her own Representation while Sooyoung couldn’t made more sense now. Of course the chosen one could perform such an endeavor. She was… well, the chosen one.

    Sooyoung spoke of life on Earth. She ran through the experience of grade school, college, and growing up in America. She left out certain details - a certain accident that had derailed her childhood - but didn’t fit the narrative of a “normal” person’s life. Joohyun showed genuine interest in the topics that were brought up, asking many questions and allowing Sooyoung to talk freely in between. At first it was weird to educate an ancient being on what life on Earth was like, but Sooyoung got over it. Normalcy wasn’t something that Joohyun was familiar with.

    Occasionally, they talked about Yeri. Joohyun’s relationship with the blonde was unique. It was like they were mother and daughter rather than sisters. That made sense; Yeri was several centuries younger than Joohyun. From the stories, it seemed that she was mainly responsible for Yeri’s upbringing. Sooyoung wondered how Joohyun had managed to raise her sister as efficiently as she did. Sure, Yeri’s knowledge of mortals was deficient in some areas, but it was pretty thorough when compared to that of other Representations Sooyoung had met in the Lounge.

    By the time they arrived at Blackstar, Sooyoung found herself actually liking Joohyun. And to think, all it took was an inappropriate outburst in front of dozens of strangers.

“Alright,” Joohyun said as they hovered above Blackstar. Shadows curled around the jagged edges of the corona like sinister hands trying to take hold of the two tiny motes of light above them. “Are you ready?”

“Probably not,” Sooyoung said, “But if Yeri’s down there, I need to be.”

Joohyun nodded in what looked like understanding. Which, Sooyoung supposed, it probably was.

“Follow me closely. If you lose me during our entry, continue on and wait for me where you land. Stay hidden. I will find you.”

Sooyoung wanted to say that she could fend for herself, but she knew better. Joohyun had experience dealing with this hellish planet, and it was best to follow her judgement. So instead, Sooyoung nodded and began gathering Vis, aligning it with her consciousness in order to prepare herself to utilize it.

“And, there is one final thing,” Joohyun said, a terse note in her voice. “My daughters.”

“Your… daughters?”

Joohyun looked up, strands of her hair tossed in front of her face by cosmic winds, eyes weighed down by such heavy emotion that Sooyoung had trouble meeting them.

“The girl who helped to kidnap my sister,” Joohyun said quietly, staring down at the planet below.

“That was your daughter?” Sooyoung said, holding her arms out to her sides. “What the ? Why? How?”

“I apologize for not telling you earlier. It has been a difficult fact to face,” Joohyun said. The earnestness in her words caused Sooyoung’s flaring temper to shrink slightly. “Her name is Jennifer. Her sister, Jisoo, lives here on Blackstar as well.”

“You have two daughters?”

“Indeed. For various justifiable reasons, they side with my husband on many things,” Joohyun said. “Including this disagreement.”

“I’d call this a little more than a disagreement,” Sooyoung said, shaking her head. “So we’re going to have to fight your kids to save your sister? From her… nieces?”

“Don’t make it sound so odd!” Joohyun said defensively.

“Right, sorry. It’s my fault we’re in this situation.”

“In any case,” Joohyun said, taking a breath. “They are very powerful. We must avoid confronting them. Our focus should be to bring Yeri to safety with as little interaction with the planet’s residents as possible.”

“Your biggest concern about fighting your daughters is how powerful they are?” Sooyoung asked, cocking an eyebrow. After it became apparent that Joohyun wasn’t going to answer, she continued in a softer tone, “What do we do if we don’t have a choice but to fight them?”

Joohyun met Sooyoung with a steely gaze. “Then we do everything in our power to get Yeri, and ourselves, off of this planet alive and unharmed.”

The corners of Sooyoung’s mouth tightened, and she gave a short nod, returning her attention back to gathering Vis.

“Shall we?” Joohyun asked.

“I’m ready when you are.” Sooyoung said, inhaling deeply, bracing her core.

Joohyun and Sooyoung shot toward Blackstar. They crashed through the Plane like hawks swooping through treetops. A curve of the planets corona swiped at them, and together ducked out of the Astral Plane.

Sooyoung took in her surroundings - a storm of spinning black around her, the pressure of whooshing air against her eardrums, streamers of sickly yellow light tracing harmlessly across her skin - then ducked to avoid being taken by the eternal night. She briefly saw Joohyun before the Representation threw herself back into the Astral Plane. Sooyoung did the same, dodging the spurt of deadly darkness that shot toward her.

    They broke into the Astral Plane again, where the lack of gravity had to be fought against with Vis. Sooyoung propelled herself toward Joohyun’s rapidly retreating figure. Another ring of corona swooped in from her right, and she tumbled out of the Plane. The boom of thunder quaked through the sky, and the smell of ozone filled Sooyoung’s nostrils. She flinched, opened her eyes just in time to see a tentacle of black hurtling toward her, flung herself into the Astral Plane.

    Sooyoung’s stomach churned, nauseous from the constant shifting and flipping. She swallowed the rush of saliva that flooded , turned her head about in the crimson-hued fissure of sky that she now stood within. Her heart plummeted as she realized that Joohyun was no longer in sight.

    Focus. Just get yourself to the-

    Sooyoung dropped, barely missing the cutting edge of Blackstar’s corona. The scarlet blade managed to catch the tips of her hair, slicing them clean from her head and them into its massive wake.

    Emerging into reality (or was she still in the Astral Plane?), Sooyoung shot downward, intent on getting to the surface as quickly as possible. Pulse thudding in her ears between peals of thunder, eyes darting back and forth to track signs of her impending doom, hands and feet glowing with teardrop-shaped bursts of Vis.

    As she fell, she shifted between the Astral Plane and reality. It began to happen by instinct, a reflex elicited by rapid visual clues. When she saw red, she took refuge in reality. When she saw black, she fled to the Astral Plane. It became a mantra, bursts of disorientation followed by clarity, alternating at three- to five-second intervals.

There was no time. Sooyoung’s reality, from beginning to end, became an elongated splinter, a moment stretched so thin that she barely had enough room to exist within it. She knew that didn’t make sense - it was the kind of flowery poetic stuff that Seulgi would have come up with - but it was the best way for her to describe it for herself. It was like the time she’d taken too much acid; her mind felt as though it were a separate construct from her body, tumbling through endless color and racing thoughts.

    And then it was over. Sooyoung broke from the Astral Plane one final time, ragged breaths puffing from her spittle-flecked lips, hair whipping around her head, shining with Vis as she prepared to evade an attack that never came. She found herself drifting in the sky. Exhausted, she fell into a controlled descent, curves of Vis at her feet slowing the drop.

Above, thunder continued to grumble, but it seemed far away now that she wasn’t in the heart of the storm. The wasteland below was as desolate as Joohyun had described. Shadows dominated everything in sight, stretching across barren plains with little variation in elevation. Utilizing her Vis was the only way for her to see; the eternal night blocked all light from entering the atmosphere. Warped forests of leafless grey trees sprouted up, jutting from the land like invasive tumors. Rivers of yellow-green fluid trickled through ruts and pooled in depressions where rivers and lakes had once been. Unnatural, grotesque shapes dragged themselves across the land; the remnants of the original inhabitants of Blackstar. At the horizon were mountains, so drastically spiked upward from the earth that couldn’t have occurred naturally. They had no peaks; each was a slab of rock that leaned to the west, supported on their eastern side by a massive, perfectly-shaped cube.

Attempting to avoid landing too close to any of the monsters, Sooyoung touched down atop a hill. She fell to her hands and knees and vomited. She allowed herself to breathe, trying to stifle the tremors that had begun to run up and down her body.

Sooyoung opened her eyes. The dirt was cold and grassless beneath her palms, packed tightly enough that she was unable to rake through it with her fingers. She sat up and tried to get a proper view of her surroundings. This hill was one in a series of many, protruding from the ground, swollen and puckered like pimples. Flashes of scarlet seeped between gaps in the cloud cover, bleeding and spreading into any open space available. The air tasted stale, thick with a heatless humidity.

    Sooyoung drew her robe around her (a gift from a patron of one of the last Galactic Lounges they’d stopped at). She could use Vis in order to warm herself, but Joohyun had advised her to conserve as much energy as possible. On Blackstar, Representations had trouble accessing Vis from the Astral Plane; reserves of Vis didn’t replenish themselves automatically as they would on other planets.

    Catching a flash of movement from the base of the hill, Sooyoung jerked her head to the right. A woman with long black hair, opaque shift fluttering around her. The glow she gave off at baseline made her stick out against the bleak surroundings.

    “Joohyun! Up here!” Sooyoung called down.

    Joohyun glanced up, gave a short wave, then began to scale up the craggy hillside. A week ago, Sooyoung would have assumed that the prim Representation would never have been able to get up there without using Vis. Now, she knew different. Joohyun climbed with the balance and strength of a world-class athlete, barely inconvenienced by the loose fabric around her.

    Though the Representation didn’t really need the help, Sooyoung pulled Joohyun up the final few feet. Joohyun didn’t even seem winded as she calmly dusted off her palms and turned in the direction of the mountains.

    “How was the entry?” Joohyun asked as she tied her hair behind her head.

    “It felt like I was being pulled into two dimensions at the same time,” Sooyoung said, rubbing her abdomen. Her stomach still hadn’t fully recovered yet. “So not great.”

    Joohyun turned and looked Sooyoung over, briefly glancing at the puddle of vomit behind them.

    “I apologize for not waiting for you,” Joohyun said, sincere regret in her voice. “I did not realize it would be so disorienting for a mortal.”

    Sooyoung cocked an eyebrow.

    “Ah, I forgot about your problem with the… ‘m’ word,” Joohyun said, shaking her head. “In any case, when we leave the planet, Yerim and I will carry you with our Vis. Are you amenable to that?”

    “Only if it prevents me from throwing up again,” Sooyoung said.

    “Um… sure,” Joohyun turned, pointed at the cube in the distance. Against the darkness of the eternal night, it was a tint of violet on a sheet of black. “That is where Yerim is likely being held. It is my husband’s private prison. That is the back of it; the entrance is on the other side.”

    Sooyoung stared at the building on the horizon. Somewhere, locked away within those undoubtedly terrifying hallways, stuffed in a dank holding cell, was her terrified, stolen angel. What did she look like now? Were her delicate cheeks stained with grime? Were her little wrists chained up in handcuffs?

    “Then let’s go,” Sooyoung said, gathering her Vis.

    Joohyun placed a hand on Sooyoung’s arm. “We will be going there on foot. We must conserve our energy, remember?”

“How long do you think that’ll take?”

“Twenty-six hours, roughly.” Joohyun said.

“You’ve gone this way before?”

Joohyun fell silent, then took a step toward the downslope of the hill. “It is the easiest way to avoid contact with my daughters.”

Sooyoung followed Joohyun, carefully tiptoeing over crumbling chunks of shale, marveling at how easily the Representation navigated such difficult terrain. “What are you daughters doing hanging out by a jail, anyway?”

Joohyun turned. There was an indiscernible, distant expression on her face. “Well, they are the guards, of course.”

***

    Sooyoung quickly realized that the strain of traveling through the Astral Plane was far from the most arduous part of their quest. They had hopped from Lounge to Lounge, talking with other Representations, resting for short periods, and moving on. Because their Vis was replenished by simply being in the Plane, the biggest hurdle they had to conquer was boredom. That could be alleviated through conversation and - in Sooyoung’s case - training with her Vis. While the near-unlimited supply of energy had been useful, it left Sooyoung with a reliance on external power. This was made apparent within five minutes of slogging across the surface of Blackstar.

    From above, the land had seemed relatively uniform, filled with wide plains and open spaces. That wasn’t the case. There were subtle dips and rises in elevation, formed by fissures and uneven depressions. There were small collections of “trees” that sprouted from the same roots, actively defying the laws of physics by growing at impossible angles and snaking around rocks. Joohyun advised specifically to stay away from the branches, as they tended to try skewering anything living that got too close. Aside from the trees, they didn’t come into contact with any of the monsters that Sooyoung had seen when she landed.

Sooyoung’s forearms started to burn an hour into the hike, and her calves felt as though she’d been walking on the tips of her toes for a year straight. There were several times where she had needed to use her Vis to slow a fall, or give herself an extra boost of strength. She ignored Joohyun’s disapproving looks; it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have millenia to train for this nonsense.

    Thankfully, Joohyun was a bit more considerate about her leadership now. She frequently checked back to make sure that Sooyoung wasn’t falling behind, and conceded to short rests after the tiring stretches.

    “The going will be somewhat easier once we cross that ravine,” Joohyun said after their fourth break. She gestured toward a giant gash that ran perpendicular to their path. “We pass through a city here, and the roads are easier to traverse than the wilderness.”

    Sooyoung frowned, turned her gaze up to the apocalyptic sky. “There are cities on this planet? Civilizations?”

    “They are ruins,” Joohyun said without turning around, “Blackstar, like Earth, was once a thriving planet. When my husband was born - long ago, long before even I was created - this was the first planet he conquered.”

    So this is what’ll happen to Earth if we don’t stop him, Sooyoung thought with a shiver. She worried for her home planet. Though she and Joohyun were moving at a good pace, a lot could happen in the roughly three weeks they’d be gone for.

    As predicted by Joohyun, the opposite side of the ravine (which was simple to cross with a tiny burst of Vis) curved down and became a paved road. It might have been made of blacktop or cement, but Sooyoung couldn’t be sure; everything looked the same on this uniformly depressing planet. However, the road was smoothened in the sections that hadn’t been torn or cracked, meaning that walking was no longer a chore. And for that she was infinitely grateful.

    “There will be creatures in the city,” Joohyun informed as they headed downward. “They are not my husband’s minions, but rather the warped remnants of those he has previously possessed, and subsequently abandoned.”

    “Are they aggressive?” Sooyoung asked. She thought the question was dumb, but worth asking.

    “Some are, some are not,” Joohyun said, “It depends on how hungry they are, likely.”

    “Great. Well, that whole ‘conserving Vis’ thing goes right out the window if they attack us.”

    To Sooyoung’s surprise, Joohyun nodded in agreement.

    Sooyoung noted the clipped, abrupt nature of her recent conversations with Joohyun. The Representation was clearly unnerved, and Sooyoung had a feeling that it had nothing to do with the monsters they might have to fight. She tried to think of a way to comfort Joohyun, anything to say that might make her feel better about the messy situation they were walking into, but Sooyoung couldn’t. Matters like these weren’t really her strong suit. Sooyoung remembered the shock and hatred on the young girl’s face - the one named “Jennie” - when she saw Joohyun. What had Joohyun done to earn that kind of reaction from her daughter?

    The pair crested the hill, and a group of buildings came into view. Short, one-story homes with bulbous frames, sides bent in a way that made them seem stretched out. Further down the road, towering above but appearing miniaturized due to their distance, were larger structures, arranged in a bunch that reminded Sooyoung of New York City. Even the tallest of the buildings were curved in weird configurations: globes with notches on the sides, doubled arcs that looked like the McDonald’s sign, and even spirals that swirled toward the sky. Sooyoung wanted to ask Joohyun how these buildings stayed standing, but decided against it. The Representation probably wasn’t in a talkative mood.

    As they drew nearer, the state of the neighborhood’s houses became apparent: shattered windows, caved-in roofs, yards filled with rubble. Very little organic matter. For the first time since they’d landed on Blackstar, Sooyoung saw signs of Eodum’s mark on the planet. Slime dripped from broken rafters, pooled in depressions where gardens had once been. The wind was cold and biting here, carrying with it an undertone of the sweet stink of rotting meat. The most disturbing part of that haunted neighborhood was the sense of being surveyed, glared at by things from the shadows. It felt as though eyes were boring into her from every direction, making her skin crawl, her heart race, and her muscles twitch.

Reflexively, Sooyoung reached for her Vis. Not only was the energy comforting to hold, it seemed to partially alleviate negative emotions like stress and anxiety. She held it briefly - less than a second, really - the thrum of its golden sheen flashing across her skin.

Joohyun spun, twin blades forming in her hand. For a terrifying moment, Sooyoung thought the older Representation was just that mad at her use of Vis. Then Joohyun yelled:

“Duck!”

Sooyoung dropped to the ground. A burst of white passed over her, and something cried out, a warped, distorted noise that nearly made Sooyoung scream in terror.

Thankfully, it was silenced by a dull, heavy thud.

Sooyoung sprang to her feet. The monster that Joohyun had skewered lay dead on the pavement, a pool of chunky, foul-smelling blood surrounding it. The thing looked like a collection of limbs and features from a lobster, an oversized beetle, a dog, and a human dwarf. A gaping hole in its midsection revealed a mess of unidentifiable, bright blue organs.

“Holy ,” Sooyoung said, unable to tear her gaze from the twitching monster. “Thanks Joohyun, I-”

“The danger is not over,” Joohyun hissed, “Prepare yourself.”

Sooyoung snapped her head up, fully drawing Vis into her body. She could feel the empty spaces where the energy would normally have refilled. For the first time, Sooyoung stores of power had a palpable limit.

In the rubble of the homes, shadows shifted, creeping just out of view. Dozens more of the monsters, their snouts and pincers and trunks honed in on the two women.

“Well, ,” Sooyoung said, turning. She reversed slowly, and Joohyun did the same, their backs meeting. “Was this because I used Vis?”

“I do not know,” Joohyun said, summoning another blade. “I have never been attacked for using my Vis here.”

The circle of beasts stalked forward, gradually, sniffing and snorting at the air. Sooyoung tracked the ones nearest to her.

“Maybe it’s because I’m a mortal?” Sooyoung whispered.

“You can use the m-word, but I can’t?” Joohyun asked incredulously. “How is that fair?”

Despite the impending danger, Sooyoung couldn’t contain her laughter. To think that here, on a planet hundreds of light years from Earth, surrounded by unholy abominations of nature, she and Joohyun were having this conversation… well, that was just too funny.

The monsters decided to attack at that moment.

Sooyoung stood, using the momentum to drive an uppercut into the jaw of an approaching monster. She felt the thing squish from the force of her blow, stifled the urge to gag, and turned to grapple another of the beasts. This one was larger - but not stronger - than her, and she slammed it down onto its back, giving Joohyun the opportunity to stab it through its half-formed face.

The monsters came in waves. They weren’t fast, and their attempts to assault the pair were lazy, almost half hearted. Contact with Vis only burned the portions of them that were covered in Eodum’s slime, while the actual force of Sooyoung’s strikes shattered their bones like twigs and tore their skin like paper. She modified the way she used her Vis, funneling it in bursts rather than keeping a constant screen of it within her. This was a dangerous way to fight; it left her unprotected from the monsters’ attacks, and she didn’t have Yeri to heal her. For now, though, the risk was acceptable. These slow, lumbering creatures were not what Sooyoung had in mind when she pictured the terrible monsters of Blackstar. Besides being ugly and gross, they were relatively easy to fight. There were lots of them, sure, but they lacked coordination… or even motivation, really.

A pile of bodies formed before the two girls, obstructing the remaining monsters from approaching in large numbers. The final few kills were anticlimactic; the slash of a blade, the blunt thud of a right hook, and it was over.

Sooyoung released her Vis, motes of tangible golden light drawing themselves back into her body. “That was… easier than I thought it would be.”

“These creatures are not the same as my husband’s minions,” Joohyun said, tone heavy. “They are a race long conquered, the bonds of organic slavery released, allowing them a semblance of awareness. To us they are still drones, dumber than most animals, but they are intelligent enough to understand that they were robbed of something vitally important. Something so precious that to know and experience its presence, and then to have it taken away, leaves them with a loss so strong that they desire only death. Perhaps they sensed your Vis, recognized it as an opportunity for salvation, and came to us for help.”

    Joohyun turned and continued their march toward the prison.

    Sooyoung suffered a lingering glance at the pitiful mess of mutants at her feet, then followed without a word.

-------------------------------------

Didn't expect to finish this chapter as quickly as I did, so I guess it's kinda a surprise release haha. Pretty straightforward stuff here, just Sooyoung being introduced to Eodum's planet and some development of her relationship with Joohyun. The next chapter will, of course, have all the action and the "important" stuff.

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Thanks for reading!