Strangers of the Forsaken.

Chapter Four: Part Four.

Chapter Four: Part Four.

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The seemingly forever doomed inhabitants of planet Straleruta blinked bright red dust from just below their eyelids, squinting as they gazed upwards at the blazing sun; a threatening ball of intense fire. The bare, plain-looking stone of the hardened ground, was burning hot to the touch. The usually wet grasses were now also a great deal drier than they had ever been. The entire planet as a whole was looking as if it was in absolute dire need of a great downpour. However, there was not a cloud to be seen in the overly desolate, beautifully orange-pink sky. Not a promise of water to be seen for what seemed like miles around, which was both extremely ironic and also not surprising in the slightest. Ironic because Straleruta is typically quite the rain-filled planet; but also hardly surprising because the scorching flames of recent forest fires, will have most definitely contributed towards the bitterly harsh dryness of the sky. The permanent presence of a thin covering of smoke all across the planet's surface, was at times not the easiest of terrains, for the planet's inhabitants to have to get used to. The surface itself was quite the interesting colour, a mixture of deep red and a violet purple. In rather a lot of ways, planet Straleruta bore a quite close resemblance to the much more well-known planet; Mars. Only, the skies of this planet were more similar to pastel colours, and human beings also had the ability to breathe freely on Straleruta. As far as the weather conditions were concerned here, this planet was always either scorching hot or pouring with freezing rain. Rarely was there ever a happy medium here, which would often lead to a lot of great discomfort among the inhabitants. Still, all who lived here were of a happy temperament regardless, most of the time at least. The people used what they had to get by and a happy, friendly face was never very far away.

There were a great many whom had first made the long journey to this planet, in search of the possibilities of perhaps discovering new forms of life. All that there seemed to be here so far however, was nothing but seemingly endless scores of dust and rocks. The humans had absolutely no prior knowledge of the Underwater Guardians, which meant that they were not able to count these creatures in their discoveries. The only ones here who truly knew anything of the Guardians' existence, were those humans whom had been so relentlessly captured by these horrific, nightmarish beings. That was the one thing the Guardians truly excelled at – keeping their very existence extremely well-hidden from just about any other species. They simply couldn't afford for their grand, newly built city to be discovered until the time was right. In order for them to be truly able to accurately pull-off their magnificent plan, the Guardians had to pull out all the stops, to ensure their secrets would not be uncovered by anyone.

Laylah considered herself to be among the luckier ones, as she was born on Straleruta and had lived here her whole life. She could scarcely imagine what life must have been like, for those whom had made it here because they were forced to evacuate their original home planets. Sadly enough, this had been the exact case for Laylah's mother, the Queen of the vast kingdom of Khuneadora. She had first met Laylah's father a great many years ago now, as he was a natural born inhabitant of planet Straleruta. Queen Katharina had herself been born an Earthling originally. However, there unfortunately came a dark and unforgiving time, when she and scores of other humans were made to up and leave Earth. There were not nearly as many humans on Earth at that point as there used to be, but certainly still a great number nonetheless. Katharina had been among the lucky few, who knew already about the very existence of planet Straleruta, even before moving there. This had been information she had chosen to keep close to her chest at the time – and with very good reason. The more Earthlings who knew of this other planet, the more at risk it was of becoming just like the Earth.

The sheer amount of time that the humans had spent on completely and utterly destroying the Earth, was nothing short of mortifying. It was almost as if such a planet as Straleruta was far too precious, to be simply left in the dangerously evil hands of such wrongdoers. It was always going to be a mere matter of time, before the Earth soon became totally uninhabitable. It was during such a time, when the humans had first begun the long, arduous process of planet evacuation. It had most definitely taken some getting used to, but Queen Katharina had soon managed to find ways, to make her cosy little area of Straleruta feel just like home again.