This will be the final chapter posted here from Raven of Dusk: Transcendence, but there will be plenty more where this came from!
Eliza
Eliza stepped outside,
strangely awake considering the lack of sleep she'd had.
Hela began to peek over the
faraway mountain range. The gleam caught her eye, so she used her hand to guard
it and watched the city come to life.
The tips of the triangular
crystal structures twinkled. Hela's rays were reviving them from their navy
slumber to various vibrant hues across the color spectrum. As Hela grew higher
in the sky, its rays slid along the sides of buildings. First the crystal walls
would flash a light of white, and then reveal the lively shades that were
otherwise concealed in the absence of day. The entire city-state exploded into
a rainbow of colors and the small streams of water running along the sidewalks
and alleyways caught their reflections.
Eliza turned away for a
moment, fearing that she'd go blind if she hadn't. She wondered how anyone was
able to sleep through this. When she felt her vision return, she glanced down
at the surrounding houses. There was a series of aqua and lime colored being
lit by the rays. Some of the rooms within them were see-through, but most of
the structures had thick crystals that concealed what was beyond their walls. With
the buildings lighting up, she made note of a few square blocks that remained
white and beige. These were the blocks left uncolored to truly honor the
original city of Ancient Kalia.
She found herself
unsatisfied by the text on Kalian government and decided that a different book
might suit her better. She thought about taking the air shuttle over to the
Ancient Kalian Library, but it was just a short walk away.
Kalian citizens began to
move about and leave their houses. Some walked through the crystal-pebbled
streets in search of markets, while others were on their way to work. The rock
candy streets shot miniature flashes of white, lighting up the roads and
walkways. The people's feet flashed with glints of light, as if they were being
caught on fire.
As she stepped further into
the beige cluster of blocks, she found herself entering a world that other
people weren’t heading toward. There were no businesses that occupied the
space, nor where there stands or tents or homes. Four blocks of the city-state
were purposely left barren so that its visitors could get a sense of a world
that once was—whether it ever existed or not. She always got an eerie feeling
while walking down the streets, being the only hint of color on an otherwise
all-white canvass.
At the original city’s
center stood the only building that actually served a viable public purpose:
the Ancient Kalian Library. The library was much prettier than the structures
surrounding it. Even though it looked just as frozen in time as the rest of the
buildings, the glowing orange and yellow lights from the inside gave it hints
of life.
She was able to see the etchings
in Ancient Kalian on the columns that held the library up as she approached
them and wondered if anyone knew what they meant anymore; the language had been
dead for thousands of years.
Eliza trudged up the stairs
and slipped between the large columns. Much to her relief, the doors were
already retracted into the adjacent walls. She couldn't remember what time they
opened in the morning, but she wouldn't have to wait. Eliza crossed the
threshold of the side entrance.
The interior felt like a maze with bookshelves in columns and rows well
above her head. Air lifts were on the four corners of the library and went up
diagonally to any of the five floors above. Usually she studied on some of the
higher floors because they were quieter, but she had nothing to research that
day. She got the impression that, if she went to start reading, she’d fall back
to sleep.
The echoes of her footsteps bounced off of the walls. She
was used to there being enough noise to mute her steps, but she'd never been in
the library at that hour. Most of the staff must not have come in yet, and she
doubted that they had many other patrons so early in the morning. She continued
to walk along the bookshelf, fast approaching the aisle that would lead to the
center of the room.
“Ugh.”
Eliza stopped.
“Ugh.” It was a low
grumble. It sounded human, but barely.
Blood began to rush to her
face. Suddenly her own footsteps scared her. I’m in a building several thousand feet from any other occupied space. It’s
quiet and it’s early. Still, something wasn’t right.
A hand appeared from the
center aisle and clasped the edge of the bookshelf. Eliza stopped walking as a
woman slumped out into the open. When she removed her grasp from the shelf, she
left a bloody hand print behind. Her other hand clutched a wound in her
stomach. Her paling eyes met Eliza's for a brief second and then she collapsed
face first to the floor.
Eliza dropped the Kalian
government book to shriek, but instead covered her mouth and rushed to the
woman’s aid. She rolled her onto her back, but the woman’s horrified face was
already petrified with death.
The silence in the room
deafened her. The bookshelves that towered over her felt much more narrow. The
way the books were placed on the shelves allowed for her to make out images of
menacing faces of vile creatures when looking at them. They were also easy to
hide behind. Someone or something could have been two feet from her and she’d have
no idea.
Eliza examined the woman's
dull eyes and then the blood stain on her stomach. It was definitely a stab
wound, and from a large knife by the looks of it; possibly even a gunblade. Usually
only Serenity Seekers carried them, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t
accessible to anyone else. Still, why would someone…?
Eliza stood up. The end of
the bookshelf was just a couple feet away. She stepped forward. Her footsteps
reverberated throughout the entire building. There had to have been other staff
around. Against her better judgment, she stepped forward to the center of the
room, blocking from her head the fear that came with the unknown.
The opaque crystal floor
trickled red with the blood from two rows of the bodies of librarians and
scholars that she'd seen nearly every day. They were sprawled out and unmoving,
covering the left and right sides of the floor as if someone had run down the
middle and quickly slashed through everyone in their path. As Eliza stared at
the massacre before her, all she could think about was the silence. None of
them had made a sound, and if someone was nearby, they weren’t making
themselves known.
A square 3x3 tiled area in
the center of the room had always been guarded. Today, its ropes were sliced in
half and dangling on the floor and in its center was a gaping black hole. The
large metal tile that had once covered it had been tossed to the side. The hole
must have led to a passage below. A guard lay face down before the roped off
area. Others were face-up, but still no one was moving.
She once heard that
something was hidden deep beneath the library floor, but she never bothered to
ask what. Clearly, someone else had.
Eliza rushed to the nearest
body with only the sounds of her echoed footsteps to accompany her. The first
body was that of an elderly man who waved at her every time she came in. She wished
she could remember his name, but in the quiet even her own name escaped her. She
checked for his pulse.
Nothing.
She examined the woman next
to him, but her throat was slashed wide open. She couldn't have possibly been
alive. The man next to her looked even worse. This was a slaughter; a very
well-coordinated one at that. She reached for the next body, drawing closer and
closer to the hole before her. Then she stopped herself.
The first woman she saw was stabbed recently. She
was still able to stand before toppling over. These deaths must have been
recent, possibly within the minutes preluding her arrival. If she’d taken the
shuttle to the library, she might have been here when it happened.
The ground rumbled beneath
her like the beginnings of a quake. Something below her exploded. The entire
floor rattled and a book on a faraway shelf came crashing to the ground. She
staggered backward and away from the hole in the ground as the rumbling grew
louder; closer. There were bangs coming from beneath, and clangs, and more
explosions.
“Rexus!” A male voice
blurted out.
Another explosion. This
time a dust cloud mushroomed out from the black hole and dirt scattered on the
tiles surrounding it.
She couldn’t stay there. She
needed to run. Now!
Eliza bolted from the
corpses near the hole back toward the first row of bookshelves. She grabbed
onto the wooden side of it and spun herself ninety degrees. Out of the corner
of her eye she witnessed a man in red with a tattered brown coat leap out of
the hole. The glare of his piercing, shallow eyes paralyzed her. They were far
more pronounced than his unclean face and dark stringy hair. His blood-colored
gunblade was already drawn and in her direction and he shot something from it. A
yellow ball with streaks of lightning came hurdling toward her head before she
could react. She backed up and tripped over the first dead woman she'd seen and
crashed to the ground as the ball flew overhead. She felt the air of the ball
and missed banging her head on a table behind her by mere inches.
“Rexus!” The male voice
still down below screamed again.
Rexus rushed down the aisle
with his blade of death in hand. He held it parallel to the ground and shot a
glowing ball of orange and red flames. Eliza scurried backward underneath the table.
The cold tile counteracted the heat of the fireball as it slammed into one of
the wooden legs, breaking it in half and showering her with an array of sawdust
and splinters. She shrieked and covered her face from the debris as her shirt
was drizzled with wood shavings.
He shot another ball; this
one was aimed at her underneath the table. The heat of the ball felt ten times
hotter and she couldn't move out of the way fast enough. Her whole body tensed
up as a set of red eyes and teeth appeared in the ball of flames and narrowed
in on her. Above, the table began to fall onto her. She flailed herself
backwards onto the chilly tile and kicked it onto its side, knocking it in
front of her. The fireball smashed into the table and made a loud crack as it split in two. The hungry
fire began to swallow the table whole and Eliza watched in horror as her face
dried from the heat of the devouring flames.
Rexus flew through the
fire. He leapt high into the air and she gasped her last breath as he held his
gunblade over his head and prepared to thrust it forward. He came crashing down
on her.
Everything went white.
Eliza blinked and stopped
moving. She couldn't see him over her, nor did she feel the pain that she
expected to endure if he had stabbed her. Even the heat of the flames had
diminished. She could no longer hear him, or the sounds of the other man whom
she’d yet to see. It was as if she’d suddenly been transported somewhere else,
though that made little sense.
What?
My… My hands are glowing. No, my whole body is glowing.
She froze in fear of what
was happening. She felt paralyzed for a few seconds or maybe minutes. She
couldn't tell how much time went by. She still felt Rexus’ eyes on her, and his
blade had to have hit her by now, but if so why didn’t she feel anything? She
cocked her head, puzzled. There was nothing surrounding her in this white
vastness. She didn’t even feel the ground at her feet, but she didn’t appear to
be floating either. Her hand reached out to grab something, but there was only
air to touch in this white space that went on forever.
She stopped glowing and
suddenly she could see just fine. Everything returned to normal.
Rexus stood over her with
his gunblade in hand. His head was tilted and his mouth was open just enough
for her to see that he was just as bewildered as she was. What just happened?
“Rexus!”
Rexus spun around with his
gunblade in hand as another man jumped out from the hole in the ground.
Eliza rolled over and
examined the man that caught Rexus' attention. His clothes were torn in some
places and dirty in others. His black hair was unkempt and his right cheek was
bruised. He bore a brightness in his blue eyes and had a youthfulness about him
despite looking twice her age. He thrust his gunblade forward and an icy blue
blade extended from it.
The two men stared each
other down from across the room with their gunblades in hand. Eliza took the
opportunity to slink backwards out of Rexus’ immediate range. She didn't know
what caused the glow or who the man distracting him was, but both were the only
discernible reasons for why she was still alive.
There was a brown knapsack
attached to Rexus’ back. It wasn’t buttoned all the way, and she noticed a
large threaded book within it. She wondered if it had come from the ground below
them. Could that have been what all of these people had died for?
“It's over,” the man said. He
raised his gunblade parallel to the ground.
Rexus did the same.
The blue-eyed man bolted
toward Rexus, shooting balls of ice from the barrel of his gunblade. Rexus
swiped his blade at the first one and incinerated it, then charged the
blue-eyed man as he cut through one ice ball after the next as if they stayed
in place for him. Rexus swung his blade as the man shot a yellow orb his way. Rexus
hit it before having time to react. The ball shot a quick wave of electricity
through Rexus’ blade and attacked him with lightning-like streaks, so he dropped
it before he could get shocked.
The blue-eyed man jumped
onto the nearby table and took a swing at Rexus, who ducked and retaliated with
a spinning kick that knocked the man off of his feet and sent him crashing back
first onto the table. Eliza swore that she heard bones break against the hard
wooden surface. Rexus grabbed his blade and thrashed at the blued-eyed man, but
he quickly rolled off the table and got to his feet.
Rexus punched him in the
jaw with his quick-hitting fist and the blue-eyed man fell backward into the
side of a bookshelf, which rattled against his weight. He appeared dazed and
shook his head as if all he could see were blurs. He’d been knocked in so many
directions so quickly that Eliza would’ve been surprised if he knew which way
was up!
Rexus jumped over the table
and flung his blade in an effort to decapitate the man, but he ducked just in
time and rolled away around a bookcase.
Rexus followed and the two
disappeared from Eliza’s view. She heard their gunblades clash several times,
but couldn't make out who was winning. Her instincts told her to run. She
didn't.
The blue-eyed man went
flailing over one of the bookshelves and landed on top of it. A ball of fire
slammed into the wooden shelf directly beneath him and sent him flying into the
air. He retracted his blade and reached for the next shelf. Impressively, he
grabbed ahold of it with his hands and dangled a little bit. Rexus ran around
the shelves as the blue eyed man hoisted himself on top of it.
The man withdrew his
gunblade again. His eyes were bright and alert, like a small animal finally
aware of a nearby predator. Balls of fire and ice were shot in his direction. He
split the ice ball in half and two shards flew passed his shoulders. He side
swiped a fireball and it evaporated upon contact. He spun his blade and it
caught the gleam of the lights around it like a glacier capturing the eyes of
dawn.
Rexus ran around to the
center of the library and darted toward Eliza again. She got to her feet and
prepared to run just as the blue-eyed man rushed across the top of the
bookshelf toward them both. He used the edge of it to propel himself off,
jumping down onto Rexus with his ice shard outstretched and was met with a
blade of solid fire.
Clang! Swirls of crimson and blue danced with one another
as the blue-eyed man spun around and flailed his blade at
Rexus’ side with a wave of fury. Rexus had ducked long before the man could make
contact and then retaliated with a swift kick to his face. The blue-eyed man
was knocked toward the floor but landed on his hands and flung himself back to
his feet. Rexus kicked him a second time, much harder, and sent him sailing
across the room.
The man with blue eyes
wasn't getting up this time. He squirmed a little but Rexus was approaching him
too quickly for him to get away; he licked his lips at the sight of his wounded
prey.
Eliza looked down at the
remnants of the burning table in front of her, there were three wooden legs
were left in the wreckage. Whomever this man was, he just saved her life. She
couldn’t let him die. She snapped one of the legs from the table, spun around,
and launched it at Rexus’ head.
Rexus turned just before it
could hit him and slashed it away. Right behind it another leg spiraled toward
him and hit him square in the face. As it hit the ground he looked dazed, but
saw the third leg hurdling toward him. Eliza rushed behind the nearest
bookshelf while he took the time to dodge it. She hoped it was enough of a
distraction for the blue-eyed man to hide. She could slow Rexus down, but she
couldn't do any more than that.
She broke out in a run
toward the exit. She heard Rexus chase after her, but she was fast and he had a
heavy book on his back. The rows she ran between felt like they were getting
taller and narrower. The entrance to the library grew closer.
Rexus had reached the row
she ran down and rushed after her. She increased her strides. Her hair flew
behind her ears as she took giant leaps in the air and flew past the end of the
bookshelf.
The blue-eyed man appeared
from the right and grabbed her hand. The two crossed the threshold of the
library together. She wailed, but kept up with him as they rushed down the
stairs three at a time and bolted for the nearest alley.
Rexus flew out of the
library behind them. Once she saw his silhouette she couldn't look back again. She
clutched onto the blue-eyed man's hand and tried to keep up with his pace down
the clear alleyway. He spun around a corner and nearly dragged Eliza off of her
feet as she was swung around to keep up with him.
He broke his grasp on her
and dashed toward a nearby air shuttle. He grabbed a key from his pocket and
pressed a button, unlocking the shuttle before they reached it. The glass dome
retracted into the doorways. He jumped into the driver’s seat and turned back
to her.
“Come on!”
Eliza didn't want to look
back and see Rexus behind her. She didn't see another air shuttle nearby. She
ran to the blue-eyed man's shuttle and jumped into the passenger seat. As soon
as she did, the man revved the engine. Once he got his air shuttle to hover a
few feet off of the ground, he took off as quickly as he could.
Eliza was pushed into the
passenger seat as the wind smacked her in the face. The blue-eyed man finally
put up the glass dome and increased his speed to the point where the buildings on
both sides were just blurs of the past.
Although she could barely
make out the buildings, she identified one of them just from the sign of the
globe with two gunblades forming an ‘X’ over it. She turned to the driver. “We
just passed the Serenity Seeker headquarters.”
The man nodded multiple
times, but he didn’t slow down.
“Why didn’t you stop?”
“We’re not going to the
Seekers.”
For the first time in her
life, Eliza had to feel her heart to see if it was still beating. Her eyes
narrowed on him in disbelief, and she spoke in the sternest voice she could
muster. “What do you mean we’re not going to the Seekers? Where are we going?”
The air shuttle engines
revved again and several more blocks flew by. Eliza caught a glimpse of her
home for a split second, and then it faded into the past. She faced the
blue-eyed man, but he seemed so focused on the road that he might not have
heard her at all.
“Where are we going?”
The air shuttle went
faster—dangerously fast! She couldn’t imagine an air shuttle gliding by at speeds
any higher. Before she knew it, they were looking at the boundaries of Kalia
itself.
He still wasn’t slowing
down.
Eliza gasped and spun
around and saw the city she had temporarily called home quickly fading away. “Help!”
She screamed. She started pounding on the glass dome that encased them, but she
knew that it wouldn’t do any good. “Help!!!"
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