The Star Plume Read Free

“It doesn’t feel
right.”
    Wrangler Zav stared hard into the distance.
He could see nothing. But the pressure was unmistakable. “I feel it
too. This is not good.”
    Without warning, the Time Fiend fired the
second charge at the white star. Its starlight burned fiercely for
several seconds. Such a young star would have lived for ages. Then
with a final flare of light, it fell still and dark. The huddled
stars made a collective low tone.
    Princess Cressida’s face was scrunched up
with despair, her eyes red. She turned to Wrangler Zav. “But at
least now the others are safe? Right?”
    The pressure all around continued to
increase. Wrangler Zav looked through a single ocular night scope
into the distance, to better see the light wavelengths. But where
he would normally see a full spectrum, all he could see was
darkness. He looked more carefully. The darkness, a slightly deeper
shade than the night, was moving towards them.
    He dropped the scope, his mouth open in
shock.
    “It’s a whole dag-burnt army. What in the
blazes do they want?”
    Princess Cressida peered into the night but
saw nothing. “What army? I can’t see anything.”
    “An army of Heat Leeches.  You can’t see
‘em exactly, only the outline. But they’re dense, so you can feel
‘em. That’s what you felt.” He looked again through his scope at
the approaching shapes. “There must be thousands of ‘em. They
invade a star like a virus and quench the light.”
    “Why are they here? Where do they come from?”
Princess Cressida longed to be back home, with her horse Flyer and
her hummingbirds.
    Wrangler Zav’s face was dark with worry. The
twinkle in his eyes had gone, extinguished by fear. “I don’t know
why they are here. But I know where they come from. They come from
the Dark Spectrum, his emissaries. Which means the rumors I heard
are true.”
    He looked back at the approaching mass of
Heat Leeches, which took their place by the Time Fiend. The stars
shifted uneasily, not knowing the true danger they faced. The sky
was filled with blue light.
    “What rumor did you hear?”
    “That a Night Prism has been found and the
Dark Spectrum has come to claim it.”
    Princess Cressida knew about prisms. She had
several herself. She used them to measure out colors. But a Night
Prism? That was new.
    “What’s that?” she asked.
    Wrangler Zav said, “The way I understand it,
darkness has wavelengths, like light.” He nodded at the bag of
colors Princess Cressida carried. “When darkness passes through the
Night Prism, the Prism breaks the bonds of darkness forged to keep
the universe in balance. The Night Prisms were locked away long ago
to prevent this.”
    Wrangler Zav stopped to watch the Heat
Leeches. All around them, one by one, stars went dim, as the Heat
Leeches bled them of light.
    Zav turned to Princess Cressida. “These Heat
Leeches will take these stars hostage. They can be recharged but
only by an internal infusion. There is nothing we can do to help
right now. We must try to find the Night Prism before the Dark
Spectrum does.”
    “If the Dark Spectrum finds it first, it will
break the darkness into wavelengths. “
    “What will happen then?” asked the
Princess
    “It’s only on the longest wavelength of
darkness that true evil can travel. If the bonds of darkness are
broken, the Dark Spectrum will come. And if that happens, the
universe will have no chance.”

Chapter Three
    The three traveled toward the realm of the
Dark Spectrum. They rode the Star Plume for what seemed like hours.
It was dizzying, the speed at which Blaise could gallop. Cressida
clung to the cow’s rough coat.
    It was quiet on the Star Plume, no other
travelers. Princess Cressida had never known such silence. It grew
colder the deeper they went into the pitch. Princess Cressida
gladly took the heavy silver coat Wrangler Zav offered to her.
    As Princess Cressida peered into the darkness
zooming by, looking for something, anything, she felt vaguely