The zombie queen, Dieana, had come on a visit to the palace, after receiving news of my accomplishment.

She claimed to be exceedingly impressed with us. Somewhat awkwardly I received her. From the time I had been buying seeds from the zombies, I had always felt uncomfortable in her presence. There was something in her eyes that I did not like–a hint of desire.

Desire for me.

Even though Dieana had helped me immensely, yet I preferred keeping my distance from her. But here I was now, walking two feet from her, uneasily aware of the lust in her undead gaze for me.

The day was dragging at snail pace. Kiara was busy at her job in the real world, or else she would have been furious at the zombie queen’s obvious attempts at invading my personal space. A few too many instances our bodies had rubbed against each other, much to my displeasure.

“Why don’t you come over to our village to stay for some time?” Dieana said with a charming smile. Her flirtatious behavior was really getting on my nerves.

“Eh, I will think about it,” I said, focused on keeping my replies as brief as possible.

My mind was computing ways to ask the queen to depart from the castle without coming off as rude. I was not having a lot of success.

“I must say, it took us, the zombies, far longer to achieve neutrality compared to you,” Dieana continued, not discouraged by my reluctance to continue conversation with her. “I must say, I really admire you!” She had repeated a variation of that line no less than ten times since her arrival.

I didn’t respond but made a small smile.

“It’s odd, isn’t it?” she said with a quick wink. “I am the queen of the zombies without a king, and you are the king of the ‘neutral monsters’. Neither I have a king, nor you have a queen!” And she laughed airily like she had made a great joke.

Okay, this was too much.

“I have a queen, actually, a would-be queen,” I said. “And her name is Kiara.”

“You do?” the zombie queen said, rolling her eyes and looking away. “I never knew! I am so surprised.”

To think about it, I had never taken Kiara to the zombie village. Maybe the queen wasn’t aware I already loved somebody? She just had an innocent attraction for someone who had achieved neutrality.

But a second glance at the queen’s face made me doubt my thoughts. Perhaps she knew about Kiara all along? She may have asked some of her undead followers to spy on me. No big deal for her.

“May I ask where she is?” Dieana queried good naturedly.

“She is in the real… she is in a different world,” I said to her, not sure if the queen knew about the real world.

“In a different world?” Dieana said with some genuine surprise. She might know Kiara was frequently away from me, but probably didn’t have much information regarding where Kiara went.

“Yes, she has got her own work to do,” I said. “But she comes to me every night.”

The queen winced with jealousy at these words.

“Very well,” she said, sour. “Do let me meet her someday.”

It was then that a monster hurried into the castle.

“Vicky!” he said, hardly able to contain his excitement. “We have found something. Something strange!”

“Something strange?” I said.

“It’s in the new farm we were setting up in the east of town,” the monster said. He was bathed in sweat. I wondered why one of the speedy Mantures had not come with the message instead. But then, Mantures could fly but not speak. A mind message definitely could have been used though. But the monsters generally hesitated from intruding on the privacy of my mind.

Dieana and I went with the monster.

When we reached the new farm, we found a crowd gathered around it. There was a big metallic sphere at least five times the size of a soccer ball in the middle of the farm.

The monsters informed me that they had been ploughing the land when they had found the metallic object. Runic symbols were inscribed all over its surface.

I went closer to the sphere, the zombie queen following in my wake. This time she was more drawn to the metal ball than me.

I knelt down next to the object. The giant orb possessed a white button on one side that I realized was a small clock. The hands were ticking.

“What could it be?” Dieana asked from behind.

“How can I know?” I said somewhat irritably, and then regretted my rude tone. I was indebted to the queen for all her help and ultimately I didn’t want to disrespect her.

I tapped the small clock with a finger. There was a ‘click’ and the timepiece was drawn into the sphere.

A blue rectangle blocked my vision.

You have activated one of the Time Bombs of Dharti.

It will now explode in… 10… 9… 8…

What the hell! This was a bomb? All the alarm bells went off in my head.

I turned to my monsters and screamed.

“RUN! It’s going to explode!”

I took to my heels, so did the confused zombie queen. The monsters too rushed to save their skin.

If I had better sense during that instant then I would have become a manture and flown away or perhaps I would have become a Stone Giant and leapt to safety. But the suddenness of the moment impaired my judgement.

The bomb exploded.

The powerful shock wave threw me on top of Dieana, and a split second later, we were all enveloped by a blue light. I was confused, for I had thought the bomb would incinerate us.

Soon, I became aware of something peculiar–I could not move my body at all!

The blue light had frozen us. I couldn’t even move my eyeballs and as a result the horrified face of the queen was stuck in my vision. Yet, I was still conscious.