Our purpose was renewed as we made our way to pylon tower 83. We needed to find out who the heck was sucking up all the mana out of the air and what it was going to. Whatever the answers, Uncle and I wanted to get to the bottom of it as soon as we could.

  Actually, we needed to get to the top of the tower, because that’s where the control center was.

  The sky above us was turning darker. It almost felt like night time. Even the outer lights of the tower were having a hard time lighting things at this point.

  We approached a big door at the front of the pylon. It was so tall and wide that it made me wonder how tall my ancestors really were if they built things like this. I wouldn’t get this tall, right? Uncle just laughed when I asked.

  Seven glowing symbols were on the face of the door. Each of these symbols were inside of a different coloured circle and looked fancy. Those symbols were part of a complicated puzzle to open the door.

  We linked our heads directly to the door and interfaced with the lock mechanism. A big math equation appeared in our minds.

  “Do you want to try and solve this?” Uncle asked.

  “No,” I plainly shook my head.

  “Why not?” he sounded disappointed.

  “Too many numbers.”

  That alphanumerical soup was well beyond my skill. I may have had a computer brain, but that didn’t mean I was ready for this kinda crazy number work. For goodness sake, I just started learning calculus!

  At least let me learn the basics first…

  Unlike me, Uncle attempted that puzzle and solved it in mere seconds. As he was progressing through, the symbols on the door would disappear, breaking the lock on the door. It finally began to open at our command. An eerie howl blew from the sliver of a gap in the door, growing louder as it fully divided and let us pass. I took Uncle’s pant leg and held on tightly.

  “Spooky,” I commented, having second thoughts about going in.

  “Hmm…” Uncle hummed as he kneeled down to my level. “Why don't we get you back to the tree? It'll be safer there. I can take care of this on my own.”

  Was he suggesting I stay out of danger? Like that was going to happen!

  He didn’t realize how much I wanted to solve this problem too. It became personal when my favourite little tree became a victim. If we didn’t stop this soon, all of nature would meet the same fate. And if that happened, there'd be no world left to protect.

  Of course, feeling that and conveying it were two different things.

  “I want to help. If there's bad guys in there, you'll be in trouble too,” I told him while in a power pose, still unsure what we were up against.

  “I can handle myself,” he claimed. “You are too little to be in a fight.”

  Little or not, if I didn't at least try to help, this world might have been in even more danger. It needed both of us to fight for it, increasing our chances of success.

  “Uncle, if I don't help and the world dies out, it wouldn't matter anyways.” I leaned forward, cupping my hands and holding them close to my crystal heart. “Please please please... Protecting the world is what I was born for.”

  Uncle's bothered expression told me that my pleas were losing him ground.

  “Alright… But if anything goes wrong, I want you to prioritize getting out of there. understood?”

  “Okay, Uncle,” I nodded.

  Once the door was fully open, a lobby awaited us. The walls were white and metal, peppered with pretty blue lights. A few different paths branched out from this lobby which led to different gravity lifts, each connected to a different part of the tower.

  We were going to go to the control center, but Uncle wanted to inspect the mana collection machinery first. That was up one of the lifts on the left. To make it more obvious that something was up with that part of the tower, the whole hallway leading to the lift was bathed in red warning lights.

  Both of us stepped into the gravity lift and were hoisted up along a physics defying tunnel of empty space. Our bodies were made to withstand incredible G-forces, so we went up super fast.

  Reaching the top, the lift slowed our ascension until hitting the floor with all the mana processing machines. There was a lot of space in this chamber, and there was a huge slot that fed into the depths of the machine. Uncle and I needed to make our way to a terminal there in order to repair any haywire systems.

  The chamber felt far too quiet. Even with the machines active, a constant breath of air coming in from the giant turbines to our left and right, it felt empty. I couldn’t put my finger on what that emptiness was, or why it was so stomach turning.

  Accompanying that strange emptiness was a dimming of the lights, making it significantly darker. It almost felt like what happened in the desert outside.

  I clung closer to Uncle, hoping clenching his pant leg would relieve a little of my nerves, but it didn’t work.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” I said.

  In response, Uncle gave my head a rub.

  We reached the terminal. Uncle tapped away at the screen until strange star symbols entrapped in circles appeared.

  “Hmm?” he initiated an emergency override, but the system locked him out. “How is my priority being overridden? We should have administrative access here.”

  A shriek of static rang through the comm channels. Each of the speakers around the room nearly blew out from the sudden terrible noise.

  The static got louder until finally stopping all together. Then a man’s voice came through.

  “Good afternoon, player 1 and player 2!” The man’s voice was full of enthusiasm, hyping up the moment significantly. A great amount of fear was suddenly dispelled, replaced with a frenzy of confusion. “I’m very happy that we get to play co-op today!”

  Music began blaring over the speakers, a synthetic type that sounded like it belonged to some sort of virtual game show. It only added to the weird hype, and made me want to dance a little.

  Of course, I couldn’t forget that whoever was causing this clearly was the intruder.

  Gotta’ give him credit… He knows how to start a party!

  A maintenance tunnel above the center of the room slid open. Normally bees were supposed to use those shafts as means to travel around the tower, but this time a large mass of pixels came down from it. The pixels were a variety of colours, shooting light in every direction like a disco ball or something.

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  “Uncle, this is crazy!”

  He wasn’t as amused as I was. In fact his glare became deathly serious. Once more he spawned his energy stinger blade and stood alert, awaiting things to go south.

  “Without further ado, we’d like to introduce ourselves…” the intruder sounded like he had a reverberated tone just then, “…you’re host for the evening, Mr. Janus!”

  The mass of pixels began fizzling away like bubbles in a bath, revealing a man in dark red robes with gold trim, wielding a corded microphone in hand. His face was still masked by pixels, but I could just barely see the vague outlines of a mouth and bright red eyes moving underneath the ever shifting mask of tiny coloured squares.

  Uncle pushed me behind himself, stepping forward and bracing for whatever this Mr. Janus had to throw at us.

  “You aren’t authorized to be here,” Uncle said in a strong tone. “I’d suggest you quit the games, or I’ll have to deal with you myself.”

  Mr. Janus raised one of his hands high, pointing a finger upwards and causing the lights to shift all sorts of colours.

  “Come on, old timer. Have a little fun while you’ve got life in those bones.” His voice suddenly sounded far less enthusiastic then it once did. It was drab and tired, but also aggressive.

  Then he motioned his hands as if attempting to perform some sort of magic trick, but Uncle didn’t wait another second before spawning glass-like wings at his backside and flying in at crazy speeds. His stinger blade was drawn, blazing through the air and leaving a blue contrail behind him.

  Uncle’s incredible… His bee wings in his human form look so cool.

  “Oh, looks like player 2 is the first to step up!” Janus’s enthusiastic voice remarked.

  “What a loser…” his depressed voice added.

  Janus attempted to evade using his hovering platform, but Uncle was quick enough to spin around and slash once at the pixel enthusiast. In retaliation, Janus took hold of the cord of his microphone and swung it around a few times, clashing the mic with Uncle’s stinger.

  *CREEE!*

  A loud shriek ripped through the air as the distinct tools collided.

  The mic somehow took the hit. Janus threw it into the air and caught it again, floating back on his platform to evade Uncle’s follow up strikes.

  “Not bad, old timer…” Said Janus’s downer voice.

  “But this party is just getting started!” Said the uppity voice.

  Why did he have two very different voices? Something about that didn’t seem right. Was he human? I sure hoped humans weren’t like this guy.

  Janus twirled his mic around by the cord and attempted to hit Uncle with it like a whip, but Uncle wasn’t going to be battered up that easily.

  With a good swing of his energy blade, Uncle slashed right across the cord and cut Janus's mic from its connection.

  Janus dove off his platform and caught the mic before it hit the ground. His platform flew forward and caught him before ‘he’ hit the ground. Then he turned and faced Uncle, holding his mic at his side, almost like it was a sword hilt.

  “If you’re trying to cut the party short, let me reignite the fuse!”

  From the very tip of the microphone spawned a voxel sword, something like I'd seen in a video game.

  “Woah…” I cooed out, seeing the virtual looking weapon.

  Janus extended his arms out, then pointed the sword toward Uncle. “I think this will even the odds!”

  “I'm not interested in even odds.” Uncle replied, summoning several bumble bee constructs from the ceiling.

  The bees flew at Janus, racing in at high speeds to slam right into him, but at the snap of a finger, Janus caused all the bees to shut down and fall flat on the ground.

  “How'd he do that?” I asked in shock.

  In the chaos, Uncle was just behind them and surprised Janus with a strike, hitting his cloak and cutting away a chunk of it, revealing a portion of a tech suit underneath.

  Janus was on the back foot. A hazy cloud of red pixels erupted from his open hand, forcing Uncle back and making distance between the two of them.

  “Now now, player 2, did anyone say you could phone a friend?” his uppity voice said. “Besides, player 1 is right there. Why not ask her for aid?”

  He turned his head and gave me a good look, then his head motioned as if shocked. The red eyes beneath those pixels turned wide as saucers.

  “Wait, no way… Is she a…?”

  While Janus was stunned at my appearance, Uncle came in for a flurry of slashes, but Janus evaded by a hair's breadth. Toward the end of the onslaught, Uncle managed to get a few good cuts on Janus.

  Janus used his voxel sword to catch Uncle’s blade when he finally got his footing, but Uncle simply sent a punch toward Janus, hitting his head with all his might.

  Janus went flying, landing on a terminal with an explosion!

  *BOOM!*

  Sparks went flying like fireworks! Janus was down, but not out.

  “Dang…” Janus’s downer voice attempted to catch his breath. “You’re not the pushover I expected, old timer…”

  “Keep the kid out of this...” I’d never seen him so serious. His eyes had a murderous look to them.

  Janus was shaken by Uncle’s alpha presence in this battle. Rightfully, because there was no doubt he’d beat this intruder without any trouble.

  “Calm down!” Janus shouted with both his voices. “I’m not going to hurt her… But I know a few people who’d be very interested in meeting an exceed. Might just have to bring her home with me! Ha ha!”

  So, he knew what I was? I always assumed people would just think I was a human, like them. I didn’t look that much different, bar most of my body looking like it had some tech suit over it.

  Wait, I couldn’t let that distract me from the fact that he wanted to kidnap me… No way!

  “You can tell your friends to buzz off!” Uncle grabbed one of the disabled bees and swung it at Janus like an improvised weapon, smacking the pixel man and sending him flying once more.

  “-Critical damage received,-” said the bee as Uncle tossed it to the side.

  Janus was back to being on the floor, once again put in his place by Uncle’s superiority. Was I worried about this guy anymore? Heck no. Uncle was as boss as they came, and he could beat anyone into a pulp!

  “Yeah! Get ‘em, Uncle!” I cheered him on.

  “Don’t applaud violence!” Uncle yelled back to me.

  I couldn’t help the excitement. He was so cool, and we were winning this after all.

  Janus was still kicking, slowly rising back up from his clash with Uncle. “Fool…” Janus’s downer voice said. “Why are you still playing around?”

  “Should we really pull our trump card this early?” The uppity voice said. “Leader might not be too happy if we use it all up…”

  He was talking to himself? What a weird guy.

  “Do it! If we die here, it won’t matter. Besides, leader will be much happier if we bring home an exceed.”

  “Alright then… This party’s about to get kicked up a notch!”

  He clenched his fist tightly. In the midst of his hand was a red glow, rays of light snuck through the tiny gaps between his fingers.

  -Warning! Darkness Levels Rising!-

  “Darkness…?” I uttered, seeing that message appear in my vision.

  A red aura built around Janus like fire. His red eyes burned just as brightly as his aura, piercing completely through the mask of pixels.

  “It seems this game has turned against me! Oh my! But you know, you're not the only one who can phone a friend…”

  He opened up his palm, releasing the red energy that had been building in it. It began twirling up into the air with less than graceful motions, much like a fire fly with a wing missing.

  The scarlet lights burst and scattered across the chamber, landing on the walls and painting them with blood red circles. Stars began growing from the center of the circles, taking up the whole thing. Each point of the star was filled in with symbols I didn’t recognize.

  One big one appeared in the center of the room, stretching across a huge portion of the floor. Mana from the machines began phasing through the metal and collected inside that big circle star and turned red along with it.

  Uncle attempted to attack the strange circle star markings, but a burst of energy repulsed out and forced him back.

  Sludge began to take the place of the glowing red symbol at the center of the room. It swished and swashed until becoming a small gross looking pool of black. A sinister bubbling began to froth on the surface, visible gas was released with each pop.

  Finally, the sludge lit ablaze and a skeletal hand clambered out until its sharp claws dug into the floor. With that leverage, a creature climbed from the pool, covered in the slowly dripping tar like substance.

  In the wake of the burning sludge came tattered fur and flesh. It shook off whatever remained, revealing some ugly cross between a goat and a man with beady red eyes.

  A teeth grinding anger spilled across his expression and he turned upwards. His body twitched and convulsed several times before he stomped a hoof down, creating a thunderous quake across the chamber.

  Then it screamed in a blood curdling voice. The sound was layered with the most unholy of tones my ears had ever been cursed with.

  Black fog fell upon the chamber. Red static popped in and out all over, providing a new and more spooky strobe like effect.

  Through it all, a harrowing message appeared in my FOV, causing me to freeze with suspense.

  -WARNING! DEMON THREAT SIGHTED!-

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