House of the Celestials: Crown of Stars Rewrite

Sam-

Yesh University, Students Dorm

Terra, Gaea Solar system

Milky Way galaxy, Charlie Sector

Neutral Free Zone

January 15th 2019

 They say that time heals all wounds. Even through trauma one gains from past experiences. At least that was what Sam had been told after her Dad died. As she grew up, she realized that it was a lie. Time had nothing to do with healing or anything to do with trauma. Instead, she would say that time was a warden to it. Trauma was a cage that kept one bound to time. It was either the past becoming the present or the present becoming an endless loop. That was how Sam felt on the train ride back to her dorm. She kept on relieving what she saw in Dr.Dingle's office. Sam wanted it to be her mind playing tricks on her. Anything but the truth. She wanted to take it all back. But she couldn't. Sam had never seen the insides of a person's burnt eyes before. The experience of relieving it felt like a long time. She was unaware of the passage of time or her surroundings. She wondered for the fourth time what the hell Dr.Dingles had been involved in. She was so deep within her trauma that she had no clue when they arrived at her stop.

"Hey! Lady. Hey! Missus." Time returned to normal and Sam was suddenly aware of what was happening. A conductor was standing in front of me. "This is the last stop for the red line. You getting out or what."

"Sorry," Sam muttered to him as she ran out of the train. She hugged her stomach tightly so the files wouldn't fall out of the insides of her jacket. There were few people at the train station, so she didn't care about how freaky her appearance looked. It was raining a little when she stepped out of the station. Not much natural light from the moon due to the clouds covering it, though the lights from the street lamps were enough for her to find her way back to the dorm. Sam had reached her residence building when she saw a familiar and unwanted figure waiting for her. She stopped as Henry put his cell phone away after he noticed her. 

"Sam! Where have you been," Henry said. "I've been calling you..." He stopped as he noticed the blood stains on Sam's attire. "What happened to you?" Sam didn't have the patience to deal with Henry nor did she want to so she ignored his questions and pushed past him. When he tried to grab her by her arm, Sam jerked up, jumping away from his touch. Henry's eyes flashed in pain when he saw it. Throughout their relationship, Sam had a rough time with physical intimacy. She was extremely anxious when it came to people touching her, something that Henry had tried his best to be patient with. And even now, he was trying his best to maintain himself. He noticed that people were already muttering and whispering, and it didn't help not with the way Sam looked.

"It's something wrong," A voice said. Sam and Henry looked up the stairs of the Residence building to see Rosa staring at them. Rosa's eyes were on Sam and there was a great look of concern on her face as she stepped over to them. 'Sam...what in God's name happened to you..." Sam opened her mouth but just at that moment, the ground beneath them began to rumble, a wide burst of tremor cracked through the ground. Sam lost her footing, falling downwards but Rosa showed astonishingly sharp reflexes, catching her before even Henry could attempt. He was still getting his bearings as the entire ground was shaking, the trees across the campus courtyard swayed back and forth, and glasses from the building's windows shattered, raining down everywhere. People were screaming, trying to get to a safe place. Sam noticed Rosa's hand on her arm and before she could shove it off, she was assaulted by a barrage of emotions, though not the type she was expecting. A calm sense of control oozed into her, from Rosa's to Sam's, altering her emotional state. The duress and anxiety from everything Sam had gone through today washed away as a tranquil sensation steadied her mind. Sam was confused upon getting this emotional response from Rosa. Rosa noticed it but said nothing. Her eyes were looking up at the night sky which made Sam look up to. At that exact moment, a darkish violet dot extended over the entire campus, across the sky of Chicago, and then it fell upon the city, a violet pillar of light.

***

Bodies! Bodies! Bodies! There were so many bodies across the battlefield, clashing against each other, warriors risking their lives as each reaped their enemy's life in front of them. It was a chaotic scene, similar to a marketplace during rush hour, where people are rushing and pushing against each other, a sense of disorder and confusion marred around, only with this situation, the sound of death, the clashing of weapons as blood and gore spread through the land. Cries of pain and glory were the language of this marketplace, and the vendor selling goods was an emerald armored girl with green hair and a long broadsword, and the goods she was selling were life and death.

Gaea System interface initiated. Enlightened must awaken and walk the path of ascension!

"Sam! Sam! Sam!" 

When Sam opened her eyes, her body lay on the ground, her back resting against a wall. A was face hovering in front of her. Sam's vision cleared, and she noticed the person looking down on her was Rosa. Rosa's appearance looked different. Her black hair was tied in a bun, and clad over her tall, lithe body was black armor. On the chest of the armor were the symbols of Golden Dawn: a rising sun with two sabers formed as an X. She grabbed Sam's hand and pulled her up just as a scream tipped her off to her environment. Sam looked around, noticing she was no longer on her campus, but in a strange glowing crystal blue cave. And around her was another chaotic scene. People were running past Sam and Rosa, students of Yesh University, as giant red ants grabbed a handful with their mandibles, and then like in her dreams, Sam watched as scarlet drops of rain fell with the presence of death. 

"What the fuck? What the fuck?" Sam yelled. Rosa grabbed her, trying to calm her down.

"We have to leave Sam, now," Rosa said trying to drag Sam away. Sam felt the strength in Rosa's grip as she pulled her away from the scene of her fellow students being killed. She didn't even think to question how Rosa had the strength to pull her. She painfully took her eyes off the scene as they passed through people running, trying to find a safe place from the monsters behind them.

"Run faster," Rosa said amid the yelling and screaming. Sam quickened her pace as they turned around a corner. She tried to freeze upon seeing people being eaten by huge horse-sized red ants, the creatures ripping bodies apart and swallowing them, but Rosa pulled her along as a black spear appeared out of thin air in her right hand. She skillfully spun the spear, like she had done it so many times, and with just one fluid movement, the heads of the three red ants flew in the air, cleaved from their bodies. They kept on running as they tried to reach a hole in front of them. A screech from behind them alerted Sam to the fact that the giant ants were chasing after them, done with feeding off the students from behind them. Some students were running towards the hole, pushing each other off as they tried to get out of wherever they were. Rosa's sense tingled, her sense picking up danger as she swirled her spear backward, cutting apart the pincer that had gone for Sam's head. Looking at the group fighting to escape, Rosa released her Spiritual aura.

"Get out of the way," She yelled. The students in their fright stopped their fighting against each other, making it possible for Rosa to pull Sam towards the hole. Sam covered her eyes from the blinding light, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the new environment. She opened them to see that they were on the edge of a platform that was part of a crystal wall. Sam turned back to see others running out of various holes in the wall. She glanced at the hole she came out of, with some of the students running out of it while giving Rosa a wide berth. Sam watched in horror as some of the students waited to get out of the tunnel. But it was too late as the giant ants devoured them all.

"They can't get through," Rosa said dismissing her spear. She looked so different from the Rosa Sam knew. The one she had gone on dates with. "There's a seal that keeps them inside. We just happen to transport inside their territory. Come on." She directed Sam to walk down what looked like a staircase that seemed to be snaked around what looked like a mountain. They were inside what looked like the interior of some kind of underground space, the ceiling made up of the same glowing crystal substance, and very large and wide. Sam observed the people waking out of the cave, some of them with traumatized expressions, their eyes blank and devoid of any light. She noticed that it wasn't just her fellow students from her school, but there were other people in various outfits, some in pajamas, some in work attire, and regular outfits. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, Sam finally noticed more people seated on the ground, resting across large crystal rocks, their bodies torn and wounded, filled with blood. So many various people were here that Sam had no idea what was going on. It was like the entire city of Chicago had been displaced here. 

"Sam! You're alive," Henry's voice came from in front of her. Sam was surprised to see Henry running towards her, looking alright for the most part, though there was some blood stain on his clothes. When he reached her, he tried to grab her but Rosa stepped in front.

"It's you," Henry said. His eyes widened when he saw the armor Rosa wore. His mouth opened but was interrupted by another scream from behind him.

"This is crazy! This is insane...Stay back!..." A woman in a police uniform was having a breakdown. She was hysterical, shoving her gun everywhere in fear. "This doesn't make sense-"

"Enough," Someone quickly grabbed the gun from the cop, kneeing her in her guts so fast that Sam barely saw his movement. She recognized him as Callum Ayida, her classmate who was a close friend...No..maybe an acquaintance. She hadn't been that close to him. She was surprised to see him take down a cop and then bend the gun like it was nothing. He threw it away like it was trash and scowled at the cop. "I'm sorry for what happened to you, but you have to accept reality. This is real."

"Callum," A girl next to him grabbed his arm and then pointed towards Sam and the others. Callum looked up to see Sam approaching them. He was surprised to see Sam alive and well. He wasn't close to Sam even though he had tried to befriend her so many times in the past. He had invited her so many times to hang out with him and his friends but she would always refuse. He was glad that she was alive, though, from the look on her face, it was just like the other expression of the many Mundanes that had been teleported here. He turned to Rosa, noticing the armor on her, and then frowned.

"Rosa," Callum said.

"Callum," Rosa said. They were all from the same class and though they were all the same age, it seemed that there was a large difference between them.

"So you're a Mystic too," Callum said.

"Yes," Rosa said. He saw the symbol on her armor and recognized it for what it was. Even the girl beside him was shocked to see it.

"You're a Guardian," the girl said. "Is Golden-"

"Hey!" Sam cut in. She glared at Rosa, and then to Callum, realizing that he too seemed to calm for the situation that they were in. It was obvious that they knew what was happening. She pointed at Rosa's appearance, a quiet kind of rage that she had no idea was coming from.

"What the hell is going on?" Sam said.

"Sam.." Rosa began but Henry jumped in.

"She's right. How the hell did we get here? And what is this place," Henry said. He had opened his eyes to see himself inside this underground space with other people, and then the screams had happened, people running from the large walls with numerous holes in them. He had watched as people ran out in fear, some wounded, missing body parts and in fear. He had assisted some of them, forced to stop a man from bleeding to death but the man had ended up dead anyway. He had learned that Callum and the girl, Trynr was her name, was the one responsible for some of the survival of the others who came out of the tunnels.

"This is an Echo field," Rosa said. "The pillar of light transported us here,"

"Echo field," Sam said. "What the hell is that?"

"An Echo field is a type of pocket space," Rosa said.

"Pocket space," Sam said. Rosa sighed as she tried her best to explain what a Pocket space is. It was a complicated process, with lots of jargon that she didn't know how to explain it.

"Think of it as an extra space within the planet," Rosa said. "An extension of the Hidden World of Terra."

"Hidden world," Henry said. Rosa sighed as she pulled Sam towards a rock for her to rest against.

"This is going to be a long discussion," Rosa said.