As the night wore on, the Glazier Ball reached its crescendo, the merriment and laughter of the guests mingling with the sweet, melodic strains of the orchestra.
Rigel, Minelauva, Regulus, and Polaris were engrossed in a game of darts, their competitive spirits on full display.
Rigel, with his Telepathic abilities, proved to be the undisputed champion, striking the bullseye with ease, even while facing backward.
Prince Adhara, with his piercing violet falcon gaze, was a close second, his eyes seeming to bore into the very soul of the dartboard.
Xandria, Adhara's twin sister, giggled as she missed the center of the bullseye by a mere millimeter.
"Not bad, eh?" Rigel said, winking at Minelauva, his fiancée. "Your turn, Lauva!"
Minelauva chuckled, her eyes sparkling with amusement and shook her head.
"Pass..."
Just then, a strange, unsettling sight caught their attention.
A young child, no more than five years old, waltzed through the gala, her eyes a milky white, devoid of any expression.
She clutched a teddy bear tightly in her arms, her movements stiff and robotic.
As she walked past Rigel and his crew, the teddy bear slipped from her grasp, falling to the floor with a soft thud.
Rigel, instinctively, picked up the stuffed animal, calling out to the child.
"Hey kid, you dropped your doll."
The child halted abruptly, her head swiveling around with an owl-like motion, her neck bones contorting in a way that seemed almost... unnatural.
Her eyes locked onto Rigel and for a moment, they just stared at each other, the air thick with tension.
Rigel's instincts screamed at him to be cautious, and he activated his Telepathy, his biohazard irises circling with an inner glare.
He scanned through the child's shattered memory, like fragments of a jigsaw puzzle, what he saw chilled him to the bone.
The fatal meteor shower, the infernal explosion, the trickling symbiont... it all came flooding back, and Rigel realized that this child was the daughter of the deceased agriculturist, infected with a Terrestrial virus.
Suddenly, Erica's face contorted in a grotesque grimace, her viscoelastic tongue darting out her mouth like a snake, supple and stretchy.
Rigel anticipated the attack, courtesy of his Telepathic prowess and ignited the tongue into flames, harnessing the true power of his psychic flares – the "Blaze of Seraphina."
The Shadow Terrestrial, the creature that had taken hold of the child, shrieked in excruciating pain as it morphed into a full-blown anomaly of the Night.
The paranormality was a gore sight to behold, gruesomely gargantuan, crashing the celebrations.
Citizens scrambled, pointing in horror at the shapeshifting spawn of darkness.
Rigel unsheathed his Mysterium Double Bladed glaive, its shriek echoing through the night, drawn in a flash of hazily blue light.
"Get back, Reggie!" he beaconed the children and lasses to retreat, his eyes locked onto the creature as he took a firm stance, awaiting the next attack.
The abominable fiend charged at Rigel, its searing talons swiping through the air with deadly precision.
Rigel intercepted the attack, his movements superhumanly swift, his blades clashing with the creature in a dazzling display of light and sound.
The battle that ensued was a blur of steel and claw, the two combatants exchanging blows with a speed and ferocity that defied the laws of nature.
Rigel's glaive sliced through with an unnerving precision, its blades glinting like stars in the moonlight.
Adhara, with his mysterious quantum ability, joined the fray, his fists igniting in violet flames that matched the intensity of his gaze.
The Shadow Terrestrial started at them, fiendishly, its claws swinging with fatal urgency.
As the battle raged on, the severed limbs of the aberration regenerated with an unnatural rapidity, its tentacles replenishing in abundance.
Adhara leaped high in the air, his flaring knife-shaped hand severing the head of the creature.
Yet, instantly, it regenerated with a pair, double-headed, each one head-butting the Prince of Roverhelm miles into the sky.
However, Adhara's Sharp feline instincts fostered a soft descent, perching gently with a moonsault on the icy shards, charging back unto the monstrosity, fearlessly.
Rigel harnessed his Telepathy in a futile attempt to contain the symbiont, but there was not much of a mind in there to hypnotize.
The Telepathic Nightmare resorted to his uniquely untamed Pyro Kinetic technique, igniting the creature in undying flames, azure, once again:
"The Blaze of Seraphina," his signature quantum technique.
As the creature shrieked, set ablaze, wriggling and jolting, conflicted within, Rigel was mindful that the host would bear the injuries once the symbiont had abandoned the body.
Hence, his reluctance to burn it up in an unforgiving inferno.
The Shadow Terrestrial, as anticipated, abandoned its host, leaving her for doom, but Rigel, witty and decisive, put out the flares, quickly.
Slightly burned, the young girl gasped for air with teary eyes, perplexed to find herself at the particular vicinity.
"What was that? Where'd it go?" she asked, her voice trembling with fear.
Guards vehemently combed the arena, in search of the Shadow Terrestrial, while the Monarchs sprung to the scene, alarmed by the uncanny phenomena, worried for their offspring.
Corvus strode to his son, grabbing his shoulders in his gentle hands. "Are you alright, Rigel?"
Astonished by his father's concern for his wellbeing, Rigel nodded solemnly.
The burned child was draped in swathing clothes by the acolytes, taken into Royal custody, while the physicians would examine her to comprehend the bizarre infirmity.
Rigel, overwhelmed by guilt, couldn't help but think of the child's fate.
Archernar embraced his daughter, Polaris, passionately, scared to death.
He could not bear the hollowness of her demise, most especially after losing her mother, the ravishing Empress.
"You alright?" he whispered, his voice trembling with emotion.
All the monarchs scrambled towards their children, each worried to death
"Are you hurt?" they asked, their voices a chorus of concern.
The Sky Saunterer cuddled Minelauva, to the dismay of Rigel and his crew.
"I'm okay, Father," Minelauva replied, her answer triggering a chorus of astonishment.
"Father?" Rigel's eyes narrowed, his mind racing with questions.
"What was that?" Alioth, the Vulcan king demanded the truth with askance in his eyes.
"Shadow Terrestrial!" Prince Cervantes teleported into the scene in a ferocious golden sparkle, bearing the Gemrainian Princess, Morava in his hands.
"They crashed into a farmland, faraway, a cataclysmic meteor, depriving both plant and animal of life, her family, inclusive," he gestured to the scalded child as the golden hues faded into the moonlight.
"I have had recurrent dreams, recently. They speak of a fiendish race that seeks to usurp ours," Morava groaned.
"That is preposterous!" Archernar objected, his golden brow furrowing with suspicion.
"What exactly do they want?"
With the Emperor stuck in a debate with his Reagent and Mage, Rigel spotted Regulus and Polaris whispering intelligibly in suspicion.
Soon, he realized they were hoarding information.
Abruptly, he pulled the kinglet gently by the shoulder.
"You're hiding something," Rigel narrowed his gaze in a stern glint.
Regulus stuttered in fright, beating about the bush, skipping important information on his encounter with Polaris at the labyrinthine depths of the catacombs.
The Telepathic Nightmare could tell he left out vital details.
"Reveal your secrets," Rigel's gentle voice reverberated through Regulus' cerebrum, his irises flaring up once more with the biohazard symbol.
Scanning through the specters of Regulus' memory in a split second, Rigel witnessed events as though he were present, himself.
The crypt, the guardsmen, the ancient inscriptions on the walls. Soon, they both gasped back to reality.
"You knew?" Rigel's disappointment was evident in his tone, squinting at Regulus.
Yet, instinctively, he was moved to protect the secrets of his little brother, amidst the trials.
"The guardsmen, was that why they apprehended you... both of you?" Polaris' powerful mind could not curtail the Aethorian Prince's imposing Telepathic interrogations.
His voice, echoing like a soothing whisper in her mind, left Regulus and herself guiltily speechless.
"They were considered an ancient myth, these aberrant creatures of Night until only moments ago," came in a frail voice.
The Vicar of Gemrain graced the scene, levitating in midair, his cape fluttering gently in the wind.
"I remember the tales of the Shadow Terrestrials from my youth, foretold in my vernacular.
And now, in my immaculate maturity, they manifest before my aging eyes."
"I ask again, What do they want?" Archernar inquired, growing impatient.
Acrux sighed disturbingly. His tongue unable to utter the words.
"They want your daughter," Tadmor chimed in, bluntly, breaking his long-lasting silence with eyes following the little blonde princess, Polaris.
"Are you out of your mind?
What is the meaning of this?" the Emperor of Lunarfrost exclaimed, grimacing at the Lord of the Tempest.
"It's true," the Vicar of Gemrain conceited, with a fallen countenance.
"According to Legend, the daughter of Light must appease the Shadow Terrestrials," he paused abruptly, exchanging a nervous stare with Morava, his daughter.
"The daughter of Light in this context signifies the princess of the Empire of Light."
"Madness!" Archernar protested, fiery-eyed.
Cervantes unsheathed his Vulnorox Blades, triggering an impulsive response from all the Monarchs, Betas, and warlords who also unsheathed their relics in a chorus of shrilling metals, saturating the atmosphere.
"Put down your sword, Archie," Tadmor affirmed, hands steady on his golden forty-inch scepter — the "Storm Ruler," the most feared relic in all Cedarlake.
"You shall not lay a finger on my daughter!" Archernar commanded, frightening as he wielded his crystalline Great Blade, forged from Vulnorox gems, glaring in the night.
"Do not forget who the adversary truly is. The Shadow Terrestrials," Corvus admonished with his grip steady on his chained blades, nestled across his girdle — the "Blades of Havoc."
"Perhaps, this prophecy is flawed," Acrux acknowledged, his words easing the grips of the warlocks on their relics.
"It neither bears the ambiance nor morals of the Sober Sprite."
A historical record of dispute and ancient rivalry resurfaced, a royal ball, spalled by cultural diversity and unknown forces.
"We must hunt them down, burn them to ash, if they are Pyro-phobic," Phecda suggested, her emerald eyes fading into the auroral evening.
One of the few to not conjure a weapon.
"Dark or divine, prophecy is prophecy," Algor, the lord of the Tech Mages proclaimed.
"To us who are quite fortunate to be cursed with immortality, it is only customary for the Daughter of Light to be offered once in every hundred years.
However, legitimacy does not necessarily imply morality. I shall have no part in this."
"No part in this?
What shall your withered corpse say, after it is vehemently devoured by this symbiotic parasite?" Alioth, the Earl of Suncrest aimed a dig at the Lord of the Sanctum of Technology who frowned softly and exited the scene.
Archernar and Tadmor exchanged a lethal glare, grimacing ferociously.
A serene planet, on the brink of hostility, shall both superpowers clash.
Cervantes glowered at the Lord of Seacrest, Taurus, the Sky Saunterer who fiddled with his infernal mace.
An adversary of his family, an antagonist in his perspective.
"Withdraw your swords, Gentlemen," Acrux beaconed, his palms flaring with Quantum energy, in the form of trigonometric Runes.
A tense moment, heated by love and fear, a world war, at the verge of sparking.
Suddenly, an abominable sound saturated the sea, a nightmarish tsunami birthed from the abysmally Cerulean icy deep.