The Final Showdown - The Moon Trilogy - Book 3

Chapter one:

   Clarity finished her bedtime routine by running a comb through her hair a few times. The color had—strangely—morphed into an odd cross between its natural blond, and a pale, silvery-white.

   A similar change had taken place in her eyes, and instead of the marigold-yellow color they had been her whole life, they now held an almost shiny tint of silver. She could only assume that it had at least something to do with her recently-discovered alien heritage.

   It was quick work to change into her pajamas, which she'd only just picked up from her college dorm. She hadn't exactly finished her college courses, but the work she was doing now was much more important.

   She thought about the events of the past week or so as her mind began to drift towards sleep.

   She had fought alongside her friends, and the lot of them had only barely escaped from an underwater facility known as—oddly enough—Atlantis. Her head had been injured during the escape, so she'd been unconscious for two days. One thing led to another in her new home of an enemy haven turned headquarters, and it eventually led right up to just a few hours before, when she'd suggested that they become superheroes in their spare time. Well—she hadn't used that exact wording, but she might as well have.

   She had never really been a fan of comic books or their movie counterparts, but it was still pretty exciting to think that she might become something even close to a hero. Her buzzing excitement kept her up far later than she would have liked.

   When she finally managed to drift off, she had the same dream that had been plaguing her since the downfall of Atlantis, though she didn't exactly know of it in her waking hours.

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  Huge purplish-blue-gray clouds billowed around in the stormy sky overhead, but there was no rain. The very air seemed dark. Everything was impossibly still, as if it was just waiting for the storm to break. She imagined it was holding its breath in fearful anticipation. But though a long while passed, the storm remained within the bounds of its own roiling clouds.

   Clarity was sitting on the damp grass, the chill of the air clawing its way deeper and deeper—through her clothes and down into her bones.

   She had no idea how she'd arrived, but there she was. She couldn't remember much of anything before the wide expanse. Vague snippets of memory swam like millions of tiny, flashing minnows through her mind's eye,  but each one swam by so quickly that she could hardly see it before it was gone.

   There was no one else in sigh. She was alone on the plain with no one to keep her company but the strangely frozen blades of grass.

   She watched the clouds as they boiled within themselves. She had no desire to be caught out in the open when the storm finally broke, but she could see no shelter. She would try to take some sort of action when something else happened, but she was almost comfortable in the numb stillness.

   But it was wrong... something was missing. She couldn't put her finger on what exactly. And it wasn't even the unearthly frozenness that plagued the land. That seemed rather normal, but there was just a strange void that should have been filled with something, but wasn't.

   The thoughts passed out of her head before she was quite finished with them, as if the walls that normally shored them in had been broken, and the contents of her mind were left to stream out like water from a cracked dam.

   Why was she here, again?

   As far as she could see, there was only perfectly level, perfectly green, grass. It didn't sway in the breeze that didn't exist. The clouds, so close yet so far overhead, were the only thing that moved. The atmosphere was thick to the point of being suffocating, while also so thin that she felt as if she couldn't quite get a full breath.