Chapter 8: Praxis vs.The True King

Date: October 20, 3657

Location: Wasteland

Sig sat leaned up against a large rock formation as he waited for his beacon to be answered. He'd come out here to report to his King what was going on in Haven City and more importantly to tell his King about Jak and her experience with Praxis. Like Jak had said there had been more information in the Fortress Prison computers than what she knew. A lot more.

He shook his head at the hours of videos he'd watched that had shown Jak as a young man and then the same person days later now turned a woman being tortured, injected with unknown substances, and beaten. The beatings hadn't even been the worst offense, it was that Commander Erol. He'd been sadistic in many experiments, Jak's included. He had tried raping Jak many times and had almost succeeded in one video, but had stopped when Jak had grown long dagger like nails and had taken a swipe at the bastard. Three days later on another video it showed Erol with three long scars down the right side of his forehead going down towards the left side of his face, bi-secting the Commanders face in half at a diagonal. After that the dosages went up for Jak, and so did her screams of pain.

In the dozens folders he'd read report after report that there was no bio-change in the subject and that the scientists thought this was a waste of time. That was until subject XXX had appeared. Jak was found to be a channeler, but that when dark eco had come into contact with his heart that changes down to the chromosome and his very DNA structure had occurred and this was why the young man had changed suddenly from male to female. That and in another note it was found that the dark eco itself seemed to have a DNA structure and that when this had come in contact with a channeler like Jak that a mutation had occurred. In brain scans before the first injection it showed a normal elf brain, but six months later they'd found that the eco had affected his brain chemistry and that he'd have possibility of a alternate personality forming and that this personality could possible become very primitive and thus see them as its enemy. All of this had been ignored and more experimentation were ordered, half of which Jak probably had no memory of occurring.

A mechanical roar could heard in the distance causing Sig to lift his head up and look at the horizon and smiled as he saw the familiar markings on the vehicle indicating that it belonged to another wastelander like himself and not a marauder. A man stepped out of the vehicle wearing a crown made of Precursorean metal and tiny eco crystals at the center of the crown. The man pulled out his staff weapon and approached Sig, who went to one knee and bowed before his King. "Rise Sig and report." The man's gruff voice sounded tired.

"King Damas," he said as he lifted the file. "There are things happening in Haven that I think you should be made aware of."

Damas looked at the files that Sig was holding out and took. Inside the files were little disk packets, which he'd have to watch on the computers hidden in the palace. "What about my son, Mar?" he questioned his faithful friend and servant.

Sig shook his head. "Krew hasn't found anything," he said and as the King went to voice his opinion about the mob boss Sig raised his hand. "I don't trust him either, but I've been keeping tabs on all of the things he's up to, including double crossing the city." Damas raised an eyebrow. "He's lookin' for the Heart of Mar and the Key to the City, both of which have been lost to the tides of time."

"But he'll find 'em." Damas said as he began to skim through the pages of the files.

"Those aren't for light reading." Sig stated and felt his stomach quiver. "Or the faint of heart." This caused Damas to raise his head sharply. "I'd have a very heavy drink ready once you start…if I were you." He added the last part quickly.

"That bad?" Damas asked as he closed the file.

"Trust me, you need to see." He paused. "Also, there's only one survivor of those….experiements." he coughed. "She's tough." He sighed. "Her file is XXX, but heads up. There's a surprise in there that'll make you take a double look."

Damas nodded as he watched Sig walk back towards his vehicle. "Find him." He said causing the larger man to nod as he started his vehicle and head back towards the city of hell.

Date: October 29, 3657

Location: Haven Palace

In the heart of Haven City stood two buildings, one was the monument to the current tyrannical ruler and the second was Haven Palace the place of which the descendants of Mar had ruled for centuries. Unfortunately the current ruler was not of the line of Mar, but had snatched the power fight under the rightful king and his heir during the takeover nearly five years ago. During this time the then General Praxis had killed the Queen, exiled the King and had lost the heir Mar to the streets below the floating palace.

Praxis hadn't wanted to do this takeover; King Damas had been his childhood friend. The two had grown up together within the walls of the palace; the Praxis family had served the Mar family since the beginning of the rule of the founder himself. Damas had married the Lord Henson Vegar's neice, Lady Lidia and the two ruled Haven for ten years until they'd had their son; Prince Mar, who looked so much like his father had when he'd been born. Then the counsel had turned to General Praxis when King Damas refused to send his men to fight the metal head leader and its children. Praxis had, at first agreed with his King and friend, but then when he had been presented with how they could take the metal head nest and destroy the leader once and for all, he'd turned on Damas and his family. The key was to find and use the Precursor Stone; which was hidden within the city itself and not just in the city, the tomb of its founder Mar.

Praxis looked down upon the city and sighed. He could still remember the look of utter betrayal upon Damas' face as Praxis himself carried out the orders of the City Counsel.

"They'll betray you too Praxis!" Damas yelled at his friend.

"No." Praxis retaliated. "Unlike you, I'll see the sword before it falls upon me!" Queen Lidia held their infant son close. The six month old whimpered in his mother's arms as they tightened around him .Praxis nodded at his men and they seized the young Prince.

"No!" the Queen screamed as she pulled her son away from the soldiers and turned her back to them. The child began to cry as the soldier in trying to grab the child grabbed the Queen by her hair, she gave a cry of pain by refused to give her child to them. Damas yelled at them to leave her alone. Then it happened. A young up and coming Lieutenant Erol Valcavich pulled his dagger and plunged it into the Queens back, she fell to her knees and as she fell it began to rain on the outside. However the Queen was not dead. She looked up in defiance and snarled at the Lieutenant and charged him, knocking the man and the men behind him off their feet. Unprepared for the attack the Queen ran out of the throne room.

"After her!" yelled Counselor Keadon, the gleam of the man's eyes was caught by the light of a lightning bolt. "Do not let the bitch of a Queen escape!" Erol and his men ran after the Queen, only to find her mere minutes later by a garbage shoot. Her eyes empty of life and blood seeping into the rug around her as she continued to bleed out; however the infant was gone, undoubtedly she had placed the child into the shoot, which would take the child to the basement and dump him out into the room down there.

Erol and his men and gone to the basement, however the child was not there either. However they'd found footprints too small to be a soldier, but the right size for a servant girl's feet. It was obvious, somebody had taken the Prince as soon as he'd come out the shoot and had escaped the Palace with the child and now he was gone, forever lost to the streets of Haven City.

Back in the Throne room Praxis had taken Damas to the rooftop, upon passing the dead Queen's body he'd seen a gleam in the man's eye. One that promised revenge and as the transport air train landed and taken Damas off into the deepest parts of the wastes Praxis was certain his childhood friend would return to Haven and kill him one day.

Now almost five years later Praxis had yet to hear anything about Damas and the young Prince Mar was still missing. Not to be found anywhere in the city or the surrounding cities. The Aeropean Empire near the Brink had yet to report any sightings of Damas near the ends of the world. In Kras City the crime lord Mizo too hadn't heard anything of either Damas or his son, so that left Haven.

Looking down at the reports in his hands he'd read them more than once. It would seem the DWP was a failure, but with only one recipient that had been a success. Subject – XXX a.k.a Jak. He barely remembered the child he'd seen those two years ago. A frightened young man turned woman who had been experimented to the fullest measure and beyond. Every technique had been used to bring on a response to the secondary persona that lived within the recess of that one individuals mind, but it'd been met with failure. It had been like the creature knew they knew it existed and did everything in its power not to make its presence known.

Then came the escape.

Failure? Praxis laughed and had done so when he'd seen the video of the creature in the alley and then had frozen the image when he'd seen the boy that the creature was protecting. Mar. He'd been in that alley and had seen the horror of that battle and yet, as seen in the video, the boy had barely batted an eye at it.

Turning Praxis looked at the other reports on Jak, who'd been very busy. From destroying his only way to flush out the Underground with the water shut; his men had reported in saying that the valve wheel had been broken off and the hinges to it had been destroyed, meaning that there was no way to turn the valve off again; to destroying his robotics factory and the death bots he'd been making that would also flush out the Underground. Then came his most recent reports; these left a bad taste in his mouth. The tomb had been found and many parts of the inner chamber had been destroyed. The area in which the Precursor Stone should have been, there had been nothing there; nothing but tiny pieces of a green crystal, which when they'd examined by their head scientist Vin at the power station he'd drawn up a hologram of what the crystal had looked like and low and behold it had been the fabled Precursor Stone and something had destroyed it.

Upon examination of the claw markings in the inner most chamber of the tomb they'd been able to tell that the metal head leader himself had been there and had battled something or somebody. At finding small pieces of golden-green rooted hair in a giant claw it didn't take a rocket scientist to know who had been the one to fight the monster.

Failure? He thought as he threw the files and reports down on a table. "No." he spoke to nobody but himself. "The program was meant to design the perfect weapon to destroy the perfect enemy and it was successful." He picked up another file, this one with images of a creature dead and body pieces having been dismembered from its entire left side to the giant burn marks from a weapon filled with a large amount of dark eco. The creature was none other than the metal head leader and he was dead. Killed by Jak no less.

The only question Praxis had was how had the metal head leader gotten into the city? After all, the shield wall was there to prevent such an atrocity. So how did the creature get inside?

Praxis was left to ponder this very question and the answer had yet to come to him as day came over the city.

Date: October 29, 3657

Location: Wasteland

The Wasteland was full a secrets, secrets of buried cities, secrets about how its creation had come to be, and even secrets about the dozens of cities hidden within it in the current day and age. One city that was a secret to most of the modern world was Spargus City and within this city laid the power of the wasteland; the wastelanders themselves. Guarded by a strong city gate that encircled around the entire city and broke off at the sea on the other side of the mountain that was inside the city, Spargus was a well fortified city by both man-made and natural defenses.

Ruling the city was the newly appointed King Damas, who'd been thrown out of his own city and exiled for the remainder of his life. Day by day he'd promised himself he'd get revenge on what Praxis had done to him and day by day that promise was unfulfilled. He may have let the vengeance go if he'd never seen Lidia's dead body and the thought of his son possibly being killed; those two things alone were his reasons behind wanted vengeance.

After a woman who'd later died come to Spargus after fleeing Haven had told Damas that she'd been the one to get his son out of the Palace the night of the Queen's death, he'd sent Sig to Haven to spy and find out where his son was. The only thing the woman had said was Kor will protect him and that was the last she'd spoken as death had come to take the only person who'd known where to look for his son.

That night he'd cursed the Precursor's and he was sure they'd cursed him right back.

Now after nearly ten day after reading the disturbing files that Sig had brought to his attention he was certain that if he didn't invade Haven now then there would be nothing left of its people by the end of the decade. Praxis was either killing the people with starvation, murdering them in the prisons or torturing them with sickening experiments.

So tonight he was overlooking his battle plans, because tomorrow he was going to war.

M-Angel: Sorry for the long wait. This was fun to write and rewrite and rewrite again. LoL! Yes I wrote this one three times. I wasn't satisfied with it before and now I am.

xoxoangii: Rewrites are always fun. I love have those a-ha! moments when you realize there's an even better way to write something :)

M-Angel: Just a side note for Mass Effect followers. First chapter to Hero's End is posted and the second is in the making.

xoxoangii: woohoo! *runs to Hero's End*