The trumpets and bells of Oblivion rang out in preparation for and anticipation of the birth of the Aquaphoenix. But the only thing running through Zygon's mind was the dream he had had the night before — a characteristic dream that only came in iconic moments. He had dreamed of the Shooting Star and had paid it no mind at the time, but now he remembered it clearly.
Had she disappeared? Had she been kidnapped? What in the world had happened to a giant mythical creature ten meters tall?
Instructed by one of his most trusted masters, who had teleported a handwritten letter from Venus, Zygon and his team traveled in their ship toward the forgotten surface of Earth. Going up was forbidden, something that should never be done unless by order of the Government of the Order of the Milky Way — which rarely happened. The handwritten letter said:
"Hello, Zygon, my beloved Solar Warrior.
I write from the glacial valleys of Venus, carrying the Great Emerald of Venus to the next great master, a mission which I may confide only to you, my lover from other lifetimes.
When you told me what had happened, I understood what had been happening to me all week. I dreamed of the Aquaphoenix, as always, but this time I saw her with him, and that light of hers made me shine. Whether the Star was here or whether these were only the fantasies of an old warrior frustrated with the state of the System, I cannot say for certain. But I felt that breeze of light that surrounded the temple of the City of the Sun while I slept — that I cannot deny.
As a master, I have the duty to tell you that I did not see her exactly as she is, but as a friend I will tell you that I felt her presence. I also saw a boy whom, after the many dreams I had, I named the Boy with the Eyes of the World. His dark eyes carry a brightness like the sky itself, reflecting the splendor and vastness of the stars.
I deduce that this boy is what is called the mirror-soul, a singular anomaly I witnessed three times while working on the ascension of one of Lyra's planets and on three of Drogo's planets. It is the way in which, many times, the souls of the Aquaphoenixes experience simultaneous incarnations in different parts of the globe.
I believe, and can state with great certainty, that somewhere on Earth's surface there exists a boy with Eyes of the World in some situation that may have caused this disturbance in the creature. Something made her feel that she should not come out — at least not yet. Something made the Aquaphoenix feel unsafe. And one more thing: my dreams said that he is found between the Sun and the Sea.
Now, as Guardian of the Aquaphoenixes and as a Warrior of the Order of the Milky Way, I send you with the old team, in secrecy, to seek out this disturbance and neutralize it. Whatever the fate of this creature may be, it rests in your hands for now.
Send letters, and when you cannot, send a signal like in the old days. I only cannot promise I will answer quickly, because in times of war I cannot guarantee where I will find a Solar Flower with which to receive or send you a response.
With love, Thalmyr Velorien of Andromeda"
He knew he should feel some kind of fear at some point along the way, and that there might even be some pain, but at that moment something inside him encouraged him, told him to keep walking down that tunnel and that he would find illuminating answers. Perhaps it was that same impulse that had made him search for more in the whole situation.
To Zygon, nothing was stranger than that desire not to be beyond the most ordinary of things. If life was to happen, then let it happen in the constant movement of his reality. Sofia always joked with him, saying that he was a very wise mage, but one with a tremendous weakness for impulsiveness and total transformation.
And Zygon, now 3,899 years old, knew very well that this had by far been his greatest victory in all those years of exploring Earth and his mother galaxy: the victory of remaining Zygon, the Warrior of the Ages. His name had enchanted people since Earth's Era One. Now, in Era Five, Zygon still possessed the same heart of fire and youthful gaze, the tall and virile body of a warrior, and the golden-platinum hair that contrasted with his bronze skin. The only thing different about him…
The tunnels were like roads that had long gone untouched by anyone. Many parts of them were lined with ancient magic and water. In truth, many of these tunnels had been taken over by pockets of water teeming with aquatic life.
The ship had traveled as far as it could, but when they reached Earth's mantle, the tunnels became narrow like tight streets — some no wider than an alley. For that reason, the ship had been shrunk until it was smaller than a closed fist. Sofia lit the path with her own body, her hair glowing an incandescent pink.
After long walks, the travelers from the underworld reached the surface. A gate bearing the emblems of the Shooting Star separated them from what remained of the world above.
Zygon carried with him the key that opened that gate — a key lent by the government of Oblivion. And the three friends, in that moment, had never felt such excitement.
"Prepare yourselves, friends, for the new world!" said Zygon, like a herald announcing a new age of glory.
When he pressed his face to the opening, the gate — which seemed to be made of silver mixed with mercury — shone with a silvery light, revealing the banner of the Shooting Star and the motto:
ONE EARTH. ONE GALAXY. ONE PEOPLE IN FREEDOM AND LOVE.
The gate fell, illuminating the old cavern. A terrible odor rushed in.
They had just entered the underground sewage system of the city of Atlas. The only thing visible was a circle of light descending from above and illuminating a damp metal ladder.
"I believe I know where we are. How strange… they channel their waste underground," Zygon said in a curious tone.
"Perhaps they do not need to populate the underground because the surface is already very beautiful," said the bear Polaris.
"Prepare yourselves, Sofia and Polaris. We are going up to the surface. And we do not want to cause an uproar among the humans."
Zygon pushed the manhole cover, and it opened directly into a narrow square dominated by a great statue of a god called Hermes Trismegistos — who looked far too much like an old king of Mercury who had ruled long ago. At the foot of the statue, a metal arch read:
ATLAS FREE MARKET FAIR
Zygon climbed out of the manhole accompanied by his friends, and though he looked different, nobody stared at him as much as they stared at the enormous man beside him.
The bear Polaris was now a Black man, fat and muscular, much taller than almost everyone around them, wearing clothing similar to Zygon's — a kind of explorer's uniform — which looked almost comical on him. Zygon and Sofia could pass somewhat more unnoticed, but nothing changed the fact that their faces had an alien air and their eyes carried a shine not of this world. Their clothes looked like Halloween costumes.
The matter-fold necklace was responsible for transforming the bear into a human and the bionic robot into a dark-skinned woman with long, curly hair.
Everything looked quite different from what they had expected.
"Excuse me, where are we?"
"Huh? We're at the Atlas Municipal Fair, old man, the biggest open-air market in the world! Can't you read? It's on the sign."
"No, my dear fellow, let me ask more precisely: what is the name of your nation?"
"Nation? Brazil, of course. This is Brazil!"
That market ran in a straight line, dividing the city in two. On one side stood tall buildings reflecting the sunlight and the clouds in the sky, which the travelers from Oblivion assumed were castles where the royalty of the surface lived. On the other side there were mostly houses or short buildings that climbed upward into hills and mountains. The sky was hypnotic, and a great statue of a man stood atop a high mountain.
The fair was noisy and disorganized. Children ran back and forth selling food and crafts. Zygon was human too, and there were humans below in Oblivion and throughout the Milky Way, but he had never seen humans in the conditions he now witnessed.
Dragging a cart on his back, a short, bearded, barefoot man walked slowly without receiving the slightest attention from the hurried crowd.
In that moment, Zygon did not understand the surface. The feeling of that place was strange and confused. There was a chaos that, though invisible, was deeply felt, and Zygon and his crew could already feel it, difficult though it was for them to understand.
He could not help but notice a man standing beneath the statue of the god Hermes, shouting at all who passed nearby:
"Repent of your sins, the end is near! I saw a great star fall from the sky and the island of Atlas sank, swallowed by the waters of the ocean! I also saw a monster rise from the sea, shining and blinding everyone on Earth!"
On a paper sign he carried were the words: ARMAGEDDON HAS ARRIVED! REPENT NOW!
Sofia understood too quickly. She was capable of seeing much more than human eyes could, which could be even more painful. Though the people seemed careless, the fair vibrated with music, colors, and flavors. The strong smell of fried fish filled the lungs and made one hungry. Especially Polaris the bear.
"The mission is simple," said Master Zygon. "First we connect ourselves to the surface inspection antennas on the Moon. Those antennas were placed there millennia ago to send records and analyses of the surface to the people of Oblivion and to signal any disharmony or danger above. With access to the lunar antennas, we will be able to use the Moon as a radar to track the aquaphotonic frequency — the Aquaphoenix's frequency — which will lead us to the mirror-soul."
"I will connect with the Moon while you, Sofia, gather as much information as possible about the surface and these humans. And you, Polaris, try to understand the technology these humans use on the surface to see whether we can use it to our advantage."
Sofia disappeared into the crowd and set off to better track the population and its structures, while Polaris entered a stall called Technological Supplies.
Zygon put on his long-range vision glasses so that he could see the access points to the antennas on the Moon. Throughout the Milky Way, invisibility technology was very common and had often been used on Earth's surface to hide what could not be seen. One of those things were the lunar antennas, which were like silver panels covering parts of the Moon.
But although invisibility technology was very useful to the societies of the Milky Way, especially to keep secret the missions that had to remain hidden, technology that made invisible objects visible was also quite common — and now present in Zygon's enchanted glasses.
But what Zygon saw on the Moon was truly terrifying. The metal plates were there, but no signal was being emitted from them. Beside the silver plates stood smaller antennas compared to the ones that should have been communicating with the center of the Earth. These antennas surrounded Oblivion's plates and seemed to be communicating among themselves.
The radar in his hand said on its small display: "No antenna found."
But what truly frightened him was not that. It was that he saw more than one ship from the Government of Greid landing beside those antennas, which looked like control centers. Zygon's heart began pounding wildly, and his nerves were on edge.
For millennia, nobody from Oblivion had gone up to the surface, both to protect humans and to preserve their path of isolated development. And those antennas had apparently been sending reports to the central stations of Oblivion and the Lunar Nation — the dark side of the Moon — repeating the same message: that humanity was undergoing a slow and steady process of evolution and showed very few signs of disturbance. None of that was true, because Zygon had already found many problems on the surface in a very short time.
Then those antennas and control towers fired a beam against Oblivion's silver antennas. The silver plates burned orange, and suddenly an orange, chaotic thing fell from the sky into the Atlas fair at that very moment.
Zygon turned pale at the sight of that strange creature. It was made of light, but its energy seemed to produce the opposite effect of sunlight.
"What an abomination… Surely it cannot be what I think it is."
Then Zygon touched his Moonstone ring and declared: "Iluminato abbo oculto luminé!"
And the hidden revealed itself in the middle of that fair. Many of those orange creatures were attached to nearly every person in that place. The one that had fallen from the sky was perched upon the old barefoot man dragging the cart. Another clung to a uniformed guard, and another to a woman nursing her baby. Curiously, the baby was free, because a blue light coming from its heart surrounded it.
The children running around had one of those creatures on their trail too, and theirs were the strongest and brightest of all. The creature that had clung to the old man carrying the cart left him quickly and attached itself to the man shouting prophecies of some kind of end of the world.
Zygon was afraid, and a darkness haunted his heart in that moment, for he had not felt such a thing since the fall of the Shooting Star, when Earth burned in darkness for unending years, and the only creatures capable of stopping that darkness were the Solar Phoenixes.
Zygon knew exactly what those creatures were. They were popularly called Dark Phoenixes. It was a phenomenon that had occurred with certain phoenixes that refused to sacrifice themselves by throwing themselves into the sea and instead chose to fight the darkness until the very last moment. Because of those rebellious phoenixes, many citizens of Oblivion and the Lunar Nation now lived freely throughout the Milky Way, but the constant exposure to chaos and low energy had turned them into parasites of light.
Those phoenixes had been subdued and taken to Oblivion, where they now lived incubated, waiting for the moment they could become Solar Phoenixes again — a moment that had not yet come, since magic had still not found a way to mend broken phoenixes.
Today, few phoenixes still existed in the Milky Way, and they were difficult to contact. It was easier to find them near the center of the galaxy, defending it tooth and nail.
The mystery of why there were so many Dark Phoenixes on the surface remained a mystery, even though Zygon could tell it was the work of the Dark Fleet and the Government of Greid.
At that moment, Zygon called his friends through their crew watches:
"Friends, I fear I have found the possible reason why the Aquaphoenix's mirror-soul is in danger."
"It is a global epidemic," said Zygon when his friends arrived. "And I believe one of them is interfering with the Aquaphoenix's birth."
"Now I understand why she is so afraid to be born," said Polaris, who was listening and speaking while remaining fixed on a rectangular device that everyone there seemed to have, even babies.
"I flew over the entire city. We are on an island at the mouth of a great river. We are not far from where the City of the Sun once stood. I imagine that is what Lord Thalmyr of Venus was referring to," said Sofia.
"Though that is an excellent interpretation, Sofia, we still do not know exactly how to find the mirror-soul, especially now that the lunar antenna plates are being used to launch Dark Phoenixes onto Earth."
In only a short time on the surface, they had found many revelations, but even more questions kept arising.
"There is a way," said Polaris, "but Sofia isn't going to like it very much."
Sofia already knew what he meant, and her expression showed it. Living Antenna was the name of the maneuver in which Sofia transformed her bionic body into a powerful antenna. If they did that, they would easily be able to track the aquaphotonic frequency throughout the city of Atlas and beyond.
But then something even stranger happened.
Suddenly, the radar in Zygon's hand began detecting Aquaphotonic Resonance. The small antenna started glowing aqua-blue and blinking incessantly.
Zygon turned up the sound control, and a watery sound invaded his ears — an echo of water and fire vibrating together — cutting through the human noise of the market.
Sofia looked at him instantly, sensing the same intersection. Zygon, whose skin was normally bronze-gold, lost all color and turned pale.
"The Aquaphoenix's frequency," Sofia whispered.
They ran to call Polaris, who was still distracted by the rectangular device.
"You paid for that?" Sofia asked.
"Of course. I gave him a gold coin," Polaris replied proudly.
"You gave a gold coin to a stranger?" Sofia blinked slowly, nearly offended. "We do not even know what currency they use here. I only hope ten grams of gold counts as 'enough.'"
Polaris shrugged, satisfied. Zygon was no longer listening.
The signal pulled them through the crowd until they came face to face with a mini truck with a beautiful Sun and Sea painted on its side. On the truck were the words:
SUN AND SEA — THE BEST BOARDING HOUSE IN THE SOUTH ZONE
A boy stepped down from the mini truck. Unlike everyone else in that place, a blue light glowed around a thin young boy.
A boy with bright, dark eyes.