Going back in time, a certain white-winged girl returned to her spaceship in a bad mood.
"Damn, after so long without signs of a silphen I had to find one just today."
Her name was Calitia, a commander in the katryde army. Like many of hers, she had the mission to patrol through the known universe in search of any silphen traces she might find.
It had been a long time since the silphen had given any sign of life, yet the search did not stop. Rather, it caused many katryde to be sent out on patrol farther than they ever had before. This was the case with Calitia, who at a young age had already ascended to the high ranks of the army, reaching the position of commander. Besides, Calitia had never let a silphen escape… until now.
"This will not end here!"
Calitia hit the wall of the spaceship. That meeting ruined his plans, which infuriated her even more. In reality, Calitia was visiting a certain planet unofficially and she never expected that she would find any silphen there. However, as if her own fate were mocking her, she crossed paths with one shortly after stepping on the planet. Obviously, she was not prepared for a battle.
"I should have fought seriously!"
Slowly, her anger diminished as she remembered the battle. Although she defended herself quite well, that girl did not seem like a difficult enemy to defeat, so she decided to hold back to avoid standing out too much in the middle of the night and alert the inhabitants of the world. She had everything under control… until he showed up...
"That boy… those eyes…"
A chill ran down Calitia's spine. She could only see that for a couple of seconds, but that boy's hair turned white and his eyes blood red. At the same instant, a sinister aura filled the place and, the moment her eyes met the boy's, her blood froze. That gaze echoed through her being just before he and the silphen disappeared into nothingness, leaving her with an unpleasant sensation.
"It definitely will not end here! This is already a personal matter!"
Calitia clenched her fist and quickened her pace towards the spaceship's control room.
"Captain, welcome."
One of the soldiers greeted her as soon as she entered. It was not long since she had risen her rank, so her subordinates were still addressing her with her former rank. Not even Calitia knew if they did it out of habit or simply to annoy her, but she did not care much as long as they respected her as their superior.
"Those cockroaches finally showed up again, but unfortunately they managed to escape. However, I never allowed a prey to escape, and this will not be the first time! Now that they have shown their faces no longer will be able to hide from us. We will pursue them to the deeps of every known universe if necessary!"
"Yes, captain!" All the soldiers shouted at once.
"We are not the only katryde on patrol and another fleet may find them. I can't allow our prey to be taken from us, so be sure to follow any trace of dark energy, no matter how small it was."
All the soldiers nodded and rushed towards their standings. Calitia sat in her place and gazed through the glass at the darkness of space.
'Perhaps you can travel from one place to another instantly, but don't think that we are left behind. No matter where you are hiding, sooner or later I will find you. You ran into me at the worst moment, and I will make sure you regret it.'
***
"Specimen with code C56YJ8. Unknown species. It has a body structure similar to ours."
One of these humanoids, who looked like some kind of scientist, spoke in a low voice as he perused some documents.
"I'm not a specimen… I'm a human." I spoke reluctantly from behind a glass wall.
We had been locked up in a place that looked like a laboratory or something similar for two days. Luckily, they had been treating us relatively well. They didn't hurt us and gave us food, but that didn't change the part about being locked up like weird animals. The fear that at any moment they might change their plans was ingrained within me.
"Let us get out of here right now!"
I heard Raidha yelling from the other side of the wall. The rooms were not soundproof and did not appear to be very thick, so we could hear everything they were saying from outside or even talk to each other. Anyway, it didn't matter what we said, that people completely ignored our words.
The same humanoid, momentarily looked up at Raidha, without changing his expression, and then returned to the papers.
"Specimen with code B12RT5. Unlike the first specimen, which has a listless character, this one has clear aggressive tendencies and a bad mood."
"Of course I'm in a bad mood, you've got us locked up!"
And as before, that guy just ignored her words and went on with his work. When he finished taking notes he walked to the back of the room, where there was a strange machine that appeared to be a scanner and, above it, Vurtalis.
"And give me back my sword right now!" Raidha roared even louder.
The machine scanned Vurtalis and printed a piece of paper. That guy picked it up and read it carefully before his face clearly showed signs of doubt.
"Unknown metal. Its hardness exceeds that of any other known material… Nothing like it has ever been discovered before…"
While he was still reading the paper, the door to the corridor opened and three more of those humanoids entered. One wore an elegant white suit. Probably he was someone important. The other two were armed, clearly giving the impression of being his bodyguards.
"What are you doing here?" Asked the investigator, surprised to see them.
"We came to take one of the study subjects. From above they demand it from us. They want to investigate it further elsewhere." The one with the white suit replied.
Without giving me the option to reply, they approached the room in which I was. That guy stared at me through the glass while the other two opened the door and came to me with their weapons ready to shoot if I made any strange movement. They tied my hand behind my back and pushed me to the door.
"What will they do to me?" I asked.
I waited a while for an answer, but nothing but silence answered me.
"Wait, don't even think about taking him!"
I turned my head slightly to see Raidha literally scratching at the glass wall. One of those bodyguards was in front of me and the other behind, controlling my path. The one behind gave me a sharp blow, indicating that I should keep walking instead of paying attention to Raidha.
'Fuck it… I have nothing to lose.' I thought at the same time that I ducked a little and jumped with all my strength toward the chin of the one behind me.
The blow probably hurt me more than that guy, but I endured as best I could and focused on the guy in front, who was already turning toward me with the gun in his hand. Without wasting time, I raised my leg with all my strength, direct to between his legs, with the hope that we weren't so different from each other… and I was right. The guy dropped the gun and collapsed against the floor with both hands holding his crotch and tears of pain coming out from his eyes.
'Now or never!'
I ran towards Raidha's door taking advantage of the confusion. Fortunately, the doors were opened by pressing a simple button on its side. Since my hands were tied, I simply threw myself at the one who opened Raidha's door, not caring the least about the damage from the blow. The door swung open in a moment.
"Now, escape!" I yelled at her as I struggled to keep my balance after the heavy impact against the wall.
The bodyguard who I hit on the chin rushed over to me. I also ran up to him and tackled him with all my might. He was much bigger and had more strength than me, so I couldn't take him down, but I kept pushing, trying to buy Raidha time to escape.
"Get off me!"
He pushed me hard. I couldn't bear the blow and stumbled foolishly, falling sideways to the floor as I watched how he would aim his gun at me.
'In the end, I couldn't even buy time…'
I closed my eyes and prepared for the shot. However, I did not hear any explosion, only a loud blow right in front of me. I slowly opened my eyes and found a hole just two fingers in front of my face.
'Has he shot?'
I turned my gaze back to that humanoid, in time to see how he fell back against the floor.
'What happened?' I wondered, not having seen what knocked him down.
Confused, I looked to the other side, where Raidha stood with both hands outstretched in front of her.
"I'm weakened and have barely any power left, but that doesn't mean I can't use my magic at all. I'm still able to take them down!"
"Magic…" I whispered foolishly.
The investigator-looking guy and the other with the suit ran off in terror, leaving everything else behind. Raidha approached me and cut my bonds with her magic. Relieved to be able to move again, I got up rubbing my wrists.
"Vurtalis!"
Raidha screamed as soon as she released me and ran towards Vurtalis, which was still on top of that strange machine. She gently scooped it up as if it were the most valuable treasure in the world as I went through the items carried by the bodyguard Raidha had knocked down. I picked up the gun from him and removed the belt he was wearing, where the clips were.
"Let's get out of here." Raidha rushed me as she returned with her sword.
"One second…"
I ran straight to the other bodyguard, who was still on the ground, holding his crotch. As I approached, he gave me a murderous look… I couldn't blame him.
"I'm sorry… I broke the biggest existing taboo!"
I sincerely apologized to that guy…
"Don't waste time!"
… before being interrupted by Raidha.
"Raidha… this is something between men… Stay out of it, you will never understand."
"What nonsense are you saying?!"
"I empathize with his pain…"
After a grimace of reproach, she took me by the arm and dragged with her. We both ran out the door to find ourselves in a long white corridor with dozens of doors.
"Shit…"
I looked down the hall, all the doors were identical. Knowing where what of them leads to the exit was impossible.
Then, one of the doors opened and another of those humanoids came out of it. He froze after noticing us and his gaze lowered toward my hand before starting to tremble. I also lowered my gaze, finding myself holding the gun. I reacted on impulse and ran straight towards him.
"Where do you get out of here?!" I asked him at the same time I aimed the gun, which was shaking slightly in my hand, at him.
"Over there!"
He answered without hesitation. We had no time to lose, so we went in that direction without caring about whether he had lied or not, but probably he was scared enough to not even think about lying.
"I never thought there would come a day when I would aim a gun at someone," I whispered as I watched the gun shaking in my hand and trying to calm it down holding it with my other hand.
We followed the direction that guy told us, but the place was so big that we just lost again into another corridor. The security of the place was low. Maybe because it was a research lab or something like that, but we did not find any guard. Well, that was great for us, so I had no complaints about it...
"The hell, where is the damn exit?!"
… but Raidha complained.
Out of sheer frustration, we opened one of the doors and jumped inside. Right in front of us, daylight illuminated us through a closed window.
"Over there!" Raidha yelled when she saw the window.
Ignoring everyone in the room, we ran over to it. I shot and broke the window. When I pulled the trigger for the first time, I expected a strong recoil and the sound of gunpowder, but that was not what happened. The gun fired the bullet silently and if I hadn't seen the window breaking, I wouldn't have realized that I actually fired.
'This pistol… how the hell does it fire the bullets?'
Despite being surprised and not understanding how that weapon worked, I forced myself to ignore it and keep running towards the window. We got ready to jump, but we found a little problem… we were on the third floor!
"We can't go down here…"
We were about to go back, but more of these beings began to enter through the door, all of them armed. Seems that this place really had some guards…
"We can! Just jump!" Raidha yelled at me as she pulled me.
We threw ourselves through the window at the same time that the bullets began to fly. My heart missed a beat the moment I was in the air. Raidha gathered a black mass in her hands and threw it below us after forming a large balloon, trying to block our fall. However, under our weight, the balloon began to deform until it finally burst and we plunged back to the ground at great speed.
"Hell, this really hurt…"
The impact was great, but the balloon had absorbed enough to fall down without any real injury.
"It should have held on longer," Raidha murmured, with the same signs of pain as me.
"At least we went down…"
We both got up and, somewhat limping, started running. There were no other buildings apart from that kind of laboratory that we left behind us. Apparently, the whole place was quite isolated from society, which at that time was great for us.
"Here!"
There were some relatively large trees nearby, so we ran straight toward them, hoping we could use them for cover and avoid shots that might come from behind. After a couple of minutes running through the trees, there was no sign of these guys, so we stopped momentarily to catch our breath.
"We finally escaped!"
Raidha yelled with a big smile that lasted barely a moment. One of those strange cars approached us at full speed and blocked our escape path.
"Raidha… why can't you be quiet?"