"There! Gone, Jiho! Gone to the Promise! Happy? Now take the five of you back to the steps and wait for me there," Wonho thundered after shooting his pistol.

It was gone, changed into a vapor that soon dissipated. But before it became a vapor it was food and what about before that? Wasn't it a person who once lived, talked and moved? Yet, when Jiho saw it, it was completely still- an unmoving giant lump of flesh with a grim cavity...

How could Wonho say it entered the Promise in such a state? Didn't he see the gaping hole in its torso? And what about the pieces of the red titan that were now being digested inside the stomach of the goblin? Did those tiny pieces somehow manage to be transported into the Promise as well? 

The squelching sound of guts being chewed, savored by the tongue, the snap of a rib, the sound of bone being ground by the molars of the green goblin cycled on and on inside Jiho's mind. What a disgusting sight it had been, yet one eerily similar to her feasting on meat during dinner, sitting across from the hoary head of her mother.

She was deaf for a minute or two, but not blind, no, nor completely paralyzed. Her fellow tugged on her arm and dragged her back to the other soldiers on standby, at the foot of the stone steps. Had she witnessed something forbidden- a taboo play which not even the wisest could understand? 

Han whispered to her, "This is life- life outside the Motherland where death ades every moment of existence. There cannot be life apart from death, Princess. Understand with what guile the Motherland acts- as to hide something so common, the reality of death..."

 "I don't understand, Han," she mumbled.

 "What did you see?" the crowd asked her. "Why did you scream and shout and freeze up?" "Was it scary?" "The Motherland is near, fellow soldier! Don't worry!" "You saw wrong! They were eating a nasty looking platter but not another person..." "Yeah, you saw wrong!"

 "I don't know what I saw," she said in slow tones, "but that it was ugly..."

 Wonho came back to his men after twenty minutes or so, his face stern behind the slitted visor. His presence alone settled the commotion amongst the Rocketfellows.

 "Men, be at the ready! It seems I insulted the Kraht, as they are called, these small aliens. Nothing left to discuss but to send each and every one of them into the Promise by means of our pistols! I just finished sending a group of six there, and now we must send the rest! But we must be careful for I cannot detect a heat reading from these aliens, and I am beginning to think they are not natives of this planet..."

The Rocketfellows commenced their onward march to the cities below this upper level while Wonho lingered to have a word with Jiho. He dropped a reassuring hand on her shoulder, prompting her, in turn, to stand stiffly. She was trying to emulate the proper stance of a ready soldier but couldn't have been farther from that... She was a child that desperately called out for a mother that would never respond.

 "Be strong, Rocketfellow, and stick by me. What you saw there, how I wish for you not to have seen that... But such evil, such hate, exists in those worlds where the Motherland has not yet claimed peace. It is evil illusion."

 "Yessir."

 Jiho cradled her pistol, bringing it close to her bosom, but so shaky was her grip that Wonho knew she had lost sight of courage. He ordered her to ascend the stairwell and wait for the troop by the ship. It was against procedure for him to do this, to have her alone retreat, but so pathetic was the sight of her that he couldn't bring himself to take her along, even if he had planned for her to stick by his side.

 "Can't say why I'm doing this," he mused aloud, "Never have I regarded my Rocketfellows with such a heart, but I feel such pity for you. It's a feeling familiar to me, and I know I felt it in times past but cannot remember exactly when. Who was he- nevermind that now. But as for you, Jiho- why can't your faith in the Motherland be as strong as your peers?"

 The sight of Wonho walking ahead, fading in the distance as he entered an elevator that would join him with his soldiers in the level below, remained forever imprinted in Jiho's memory. Alone, save for Han residing inside her mind, she flew up the stairs by means of her rocket pack. There was no need for caution now, as opposed to her first journey through these stairs; Wonho shared that he was told by the elder Kraht how the rest of its brethren were in the cities below the first underground level. It took her less than an hour to finally greet the ghostly blue of the sky above. Then, as opposed to heeding orders, she took a seat on the summit of the mesa.

 "Listen, Princess. It does you no good to stay like this- bewildered as a child... What will it avail you? Pity? As your superior, Wonho, dealt unto you?"

 "Why was it eating the other alien?" she asked Han, ignorant of his counsel.

 "Because it was hungry," Han retorted without deliberation. "It's the cycle of life where through death another attains sustenance. Just as the wolfmen your group killed, which sought the reptilian men as food in order to live... They did no wrong; it was you and your kind which killed and interrupted the cycle. Or maybe it is some grim ritual these green four-armed creatures undertake, to devour your enemies after victory..." 

 "I'm scared. Either way you have it, I'm frightened. How often does this occur? That cycle of life?"

 "All the time... Before you killed my body, before I lived with the wolfmen in the burrows, I saw it everyday..."

 "How much do you know, Han? Why would the Motherland conceal such secrets? Does Wonho know more?" 

 Jiho saw the signal to accept an incoming transmission. After pressing a button on her helm, she heard Wonho instruct her to have the pilot prepare the ship for immediate takeoff. Without further ado, she jumped off the mesa and banged on the struts of the aircraft.

 "Get her ready," she yelled through her mic.

 "Roger!" the pilots replied.

 Jiho accepted another transmission from Wonho. He spoke through a cacophony of shrieks, yells, the blasting of pistols and rifles, and the clash and shearing of metal. "Is it ready?" he panted.

 "Yessir!"

 "Board the ship and tell the pilots to shoot a missile at the entrance to the stairwell as soon as I and the remaining men exit the mesa! Quick!"

Jiho rushed to carry out her mission. It was the least she could do for disappointing him earlier. Soon, she was standing inside the ship, by the exit hatch, opened to accept Wonho and the rest. 

There was first a quiet pause as the ship hovered over the mesa, then from the abyss, a phosphorescent specter shot out into the nighted sky. A group of five or six other phantoms chased after Wonho.

The lot of them flew backwards, shooting their pistols and rifles at the entry to the lower realm, the underworld. It was a grand spectacle, a fireworks show for the ages, a visual orchestra of electronic lights. The recipient of their fusillade was an olive green tempest, an emerald flood which crashed at the rim of oblivion, the opened stairwell. 

 "Shoot!" Wonho barked as he and the six Rocketfellows clambered aboard the craft.

The hatch closed, and then loud thuds were heard banging against the door. It was a non-stop percussion that sped up its tempo with each strike. A booming sound, the missiles launching from the ship, momentarily reduced the percussion to a tiny white noise. Then it restarted.

 "Get us out of here!"

 "Roger that, Wonho!"

Thunder broke out, the heavens crumbled, when the ship blasted off into the atmosphere. The peal of thunder repeated, one, two, three more times. It was a ball of fire that shot into space, one haunted by witch lights at its tail.

 "Speed her up! My hunch was correct! They were not natives! The green goblins are aliens to the planet and they had beat us here! They have their own ships!"

 "Roger that, Wonho. Just in case, it was nice meeting all of you. See you in the Promise."

 "Wonho!" Jiho cried, aiming her pistol at her commander.

 "Shoot, Princess! Shoot if you want to save him!"

The Rocketfellows were all exhausted and aching with pain. Their armor was wrecked, sparks flying from every crevice of their body and especially from the machine which powered their armor, the Source. Some had taken off their helm, cast it off to breathe in as fresh a breath of air as they could get within the confines of their ship. Wonho was one of these, his rich blue-black mop of hair glistening from sweat and blood. This very act was his folly. 

Jiho shot several times, missing her target with every blast.

 "Calm down and shoot! You have the advantage! You have the high ground!" she told herself. "Her peace the Motherland bestows to the weary, the downtrodden, the weak."

 "Calm down, Jiho!" Wonho ordered, perplexed as to the reason he was shot at.

 "Behind you!" "He's on you, chief!" "Quick shoot it! Send it into the Promise to be purged of its evil!"

 "I'm trying!"

 Wonho felt talons bury into his throat. His air was gone, his vision fading. Yet still, he was stronger than this, his faith in the Motherland was a flaming torch, not a waning candlelight. His heavy arms reached for the cretin behind his back and hammered it down at the space besides him. The dwarf four-armed alien changed from being a menace into being a puddle of green mush and black ooze, its blood spurting out its body just as Wonho's spurted out his neck. The target, frozen, unable to move, became an easy bullseye for Jiho. But it was too late, even though the alien became a vapor, its victim still suffered.

 "Shoot me, Jiho. I won't move for you, but quickly," Wonho slurred between gasps. "I'm fading. Send me into the Promise so I can join... Here," he gestured for Jiho's pistol and dialed a set of commands on it, an act Jiho would never forget. "Now your pistol is able to- friendly fire. Hasten!" he gasped as he waved her pistol at her.

 "Princess, you'd be killing him, handing him over to death. But you will also be cutting short his anguish."

 Jiho squeezed her gun and one, two... He disappeared, the only trace of him left was the Source that once transfixed his navel.

 "Alright, Rocketfellows! We're now homebound. The aliens lost our trail. This has been your pilot," the cold voice spoke through the intercom.

The dizzy girl shook off the dust of death and proceeded to help her comrades into their seats. A long travel of two weeks awaited them till they would touch ground again, plenty of time for brooding, questioning and seeking. It was as the words that once were written a hundred? two hundred years? a millennia ago? say, "... a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour." 

 "Am I a Death dealer?" she mumbled, quietly, silently, pensively, "Is Death a substance one hands out like food or pleasures? Or else, Death a monster? Like in the story my neighbor told, an entity which comes to horrify?"

 "Princess, you already know," Han replied softly yet sternly, "Death is a thing which comes to all in their time, an external force, an irrepressible force which cannot be stopped. When it visits, who can deliver from its (I speak figuratively) hand? The Motherland? It eliminates Death by keeping it a secret. You live without knowledge of it, but is that really living- to be ignorant of what is plainly known to all of existence, except to those of your country, your world? To be oblivious to that which might frighten or make you uncomfortable, disturbed? I have known worlds and worlds beyond worlds, and in all death does not fail to visit, nor does beauty, ugliness, hatred or love."

 "The Motherland. 'Peace, serenity,' they say bestows on us, her children..."

 "It is fake peace, synthetic, like the meat you eat; created with the utmost scrutiny so that it cannot be distinguished from the real, the truth. I reckon, I know, that you have been fed this meat all your life, and if you- then most likely all your kind, Princess. From the memory of your books, the words inscribed in your inner, that layer which is beneath your waking consciousness, I have known to what extent the Motherland has meddled in the lives of its people. Did you choose this job, Princess?"

 "No."

 "Were you truly happy to take this job, Princess?"

 "No, I think I hate it."

 "Then, is that bliss? Can you say you have peace? Or will you blame it on your lack of faith toward the Motherland? Think, Princess. Know for yourself and make your own decisions. I'll provide the questions, you provide the answers. And I will share truth."

 "What answers? What do I know? Truth?"

 "Exactly, Princess. This is the way."

The lights of the cabin had dimmed. Some of the Rocketfellows forgot to switch off their glowing function so that seated, they remained a light fixture. One of these got up and passed around the ship, stopping here and there to look up at the ceiling, penetrating the metal ship with his mind's eye to gaze at the void of space. He was frantic now, tapping his foot constantly while fidgeting with the switches, dials, knobs, and buttons on his casque. 

 "They had no heat readings, those aliens! That's why they beat us! And there was so many! Why did the Motherland send us?"

 The Rocketfellow turned to Jiho. He took one small step and then lunged himself at her knees. 

 "Why weren't you there? Why did Wonho send you and not me or the others back?! Can those we left behind really enter the Promise?"

 Another soldier aimed a question at Jiho, this one a girl, "You said you saw a person being eaten?"

 "Yes," Jiho said while pulling her legs up into her seat, that the one on her legs might relinquish his hold.

 "I saw it too! I saw many like that- some bodies just left on the ground with big holes in them, some were missing body parts- did I see wrong?"

 "I- I don't know. I wasn't there with you."

 "I disobeyed orders and touched one," another girl remarked.

 "I sent as many of those small aliens to the Promise as I could!" a male exclaimed. "But what about those of us that left for the Promise without a head or an arm? A leg? In the Promise, will they be made whole? How can they walk to the Iacobus Gate without a leg or, how can they even see it without a head?"

 "I don't know," Jiho answered, her body twitching.

 "Where's my peace? I lost it?"

 "Why were we sent there in the first place? What does the Motherland have to do with a planet so far away?"

 "To spread her peace."

 "But what about mines? Wonho!"

 Slowly, as the group began to lose their composure, Jiho felt herself slip away from the present. She felt cold, separate and distinct, estranged from the ongoing chaos. She was there yet not there, a cosmic observer detached from existence whose sole raison d'être was to simply watch. Her existence was now situated in a twilight realm apart from the entropy of the visible world...

 "Princess!" Han called, and his voice was like an echo that sounded across a cave. The yell split the silence into a million y fragments! She awoke from the twilight state!

 "Yessir, Wonho!"

 "Wonho has gone into the Promise, Rocketfellow. You sent him there."

 "What?!"

Jiho looked around. She was no longer standing aboard the spacecraft; rather, she stood inside a brightly lit room, one white, pure white. Her Metal Skin, her armor, was still engaged and she recognized herself as the only one to have it still in use by stealing glances at her peers. They, all six, sat in comfortable looking couches, undersuit still on, with the face of one who had known the pleasure of intimacy. They were dumb, aloof, but with smiles of satisfaction clinging to their faces. Their milky eyes gazed, perhaps, into clouds of dreams, a myriad of hues, gay and enthralling.

 "Disengage and take the pill," the gentleman in the Inner Circle uniform told her. He was tall, exceedingly, pale and middle-aged, seemingly around his fourties. His pupils were unnatural, larger than they ought to be, and his voice was like soothing rain. His words were pleasant to listen to.

Jiho felt a compulsion to obey. She pushed the buttons on the device transfixing her belly and poof! The armor disappeared, leaving the man to extend the pill over to her.

 "What's it for?" she stuttered. 

 "To make all the pain go away, Rocketfellow. No more worrying over memories that are distasteful; only peace will fill you. Take it."

 He offered the pill to her but when she would, of her own initiative, not take it, he pulled up her hand, opened her clenched fist and dropped the tablet into her palm. Her eyes opened wide, rolling to peer at the man who would not leave and then at the pill.

 "Take it."

 Jiho glanced at her compatriots. 

 "Don't swallow it, Princess. Unless you would rather live in an artificial paradise, tinkered to perfection by an entity which isn't even totally disclosed to you, which lies to you- don't take it."

She popped the pill into , but kept it lodged under her tongue. The official stood smiling. Then Jiho coughed. Her hand swiftly moved to cover and in the subterfuge, she hid the pill between her fingers as the official apologized and moved to get her a cup of water. "You have chosen well, Princess. This is the way."

 "Swallow it with this, Rocketfellow. They sometimes go down too dry without a drink- something we still need to improve on."

Accepting the glass, Jiho moved the vessel to her lips and gulped down the water. Her trick had worked. The worker turned and walked away from the room into an adjoining booth that was partitioned by a clear plexiglass. He continued his own daily affairs as Jiho moved to sit on the couch. She fidgeted in her seat and finally got up to sit on another one that lay further into the back. Her peer had opened with some drool running down her chin as though she were a helpless infant and the sight had made her feel uneasy. 

From her new seat, she darted her eyes across the roomy lobby, circling back often to look at the trash bin that for some reason stole her attention. There was an object that glinted there, catching light from the rods in the ceiling that provided such intense clarity to the room.  

 "Is that?"

Jiho gingerly raised herself from the upholstered seat and walked to peer at the trash bin, half doubting what she saw. It was Wonho's Source, broken and abandoned without a care.