by Jake Taylor
A short distance away, Haruka sprinted around her spider with ridiculous speed, hitting every leg as she passed. Right across from her Isabella did the same, but cleaving every leg she passed. As the Death Marks Haruka left behind exploded, severing each leg, both of their spiders hit the ground. Both women darted away from the thrashing spiders and sprinted towards each other. Bella winked at her as she raised her shield and Haruka leapt onto it, being launched high into the air. Isabella charged herself with power, rushing towards the other spider with increasing speed. At the same time, Haruka twisted in the air and came down in a flaming kick that demolished one spider’s head as Isabella crashed into the other one, her blade driving deep into its head. Both spiders writhed wildly before dying, no longer a threat.
Able had cut open his spider’s stomach and removed several legs, making it more or less defeated. He finally managed to get on its back and climbed his way up the thrashing arachnid to its head, driving an energy blade in to kill it. Riding the back of hers like a wild bronco, Freya laughed as it bucked and jolted, trying to throw her off. She stabbed her cutlass in for a more secure hold and put her pistol against its head, blasting a hole clear through and bringing it to the ground. Finally, the girl had erected a wall of fire to keep her spider at bay as she chanted, forming a symbol of fire in the air. When it was finally ready, the symbol shattered and lines of flame surrounded the spider, tying around it like a net made of fire. This ‘net’ then constricted and exploded, leaving a scorched corpse behind; the last spider was dead.
Haruka began heading towards the others, glancing at Isabella, who was still in her golden-haired state; she probably wanted to make sure she remained conscious for the next few minutes. All five of them gathered together and Haruka inspected their rescuer, wondering where she’d come from.
The girl was an elf, just over five feet tall and nineteen Common Age if she spoke the truth. She was a happy-looking girl with crimson hair styled with large curls on either side of her face, but straight and waist-length in the back as was apparent when she lowered her hood. Her eyes were pink in color and she had the slight tan of a traveler. Her appearance was a combination of “pretty” and “cute”, probably a mark of her age. Her cloak, a white one with red accents and designs, was connected in the front by a silver clasp that looked to be expensive. Besides the cloak she wore a sleeveless red cloth vest with a v-cut at the chest and waist. Below that she wore a knee-length pleated skirt of the same color and cloth, and white boots that looked even more expensive than the rest of her clothing.
Given Haruka’s past, she always noticed markings and tattoos more than anything else, as to her they had the most meaning. This girl had one visible: on the back of her left hand was a tattoo of a sun with four tails of fire curving from the center in each direction, probably representing the four cardinal directions. Something else seemed important to her: a brightly-colored red rose that was tucked into a brown wristband with the initials “S.R.A.”
The girl took Haruka’s inspection with a smile, watching as Haruka folded her arms. “You helped us, so you probably aren’t an enemy. So who are you and where did you come from?”
The girl’s grin widened as Haruka spoke. “You aren’t very trusting. But I did just see a creepy woman try to feed you and your friends to giant spiders, so I guess it makes sense. There’s no reason to be so worried, though! You could beat me no problem!”
“I’m not worried, just suspicious. Your appearance is very fortunate.”
“Oh, right. Well then, let me give you all the information I can so you’re more trusting.” She folded her arms and changed her expression to an imitation of Haruka’s, mimicking her serious monotone well enough that Isabella burst out laughing, earning a glare from her girlfriend. “My name is Suria Rose Alarius. I never use all that. Parents and old people call me Suri, dates call me Rose, and friends call me Red. I’m from the Imperial City. Like I said, I’m nineteen Common Age. I’m a Mage, in case the whole fireball thing didn’t make it obvious. As to why I’m here, um…” She shrugged. “Out for a walk?”
Despite Bella’s amusement, Haruka simply raised an eyebrow. “Out for a walk dozens of miles from where you live, in a dangerous unknown forest?”
“I like danger?”
“Try again.”
Suria sighed. “Okay, I ran away.”
Bella blinked, suddenly concerned. “You ran away? Why?”
“Nothing bad, really. I’d rather not talk about it; just know my parents never read any ‘Choose your own adventure’ books when they were little and think everything needs to be written out for you.”
“Ah…” Haruka tilted her head. “I can relate.”
“Really?”
“My father was behind that situation you just helped us out of.”
“I… Wow.” Suria looked around at the dead spiders. “I hope my father would never send giant arachnids after me to get me back. Probably just guards. Or bounty hunters.”
“Well you’re in luck,” Freya said with a grin. “This group already has ‘alf th’ world comin’ after ‘em, so what’s another pursuit?”
Isabella was silent now, staring at the ground in thought. Haruka looked at her worriedly as Able shrugged. “Yeah, you could come with us. We’re heading south, away from the capitol.”
“That would be nice… I don’t like being alone. I-“ Suria trailed off as Isabella walked away. “Um, is she okay? Does she not want me to come or something?”
Haruka shook her head. “It’s nothing to do with you. I’m going to talk to her.”
As the monk followed the knight, Suria looked at the other two. “You guys aren’t gonna talk to her?”
Freya shrugged. “Haruka’s plenty. They’re together. We’d jus’ be in th’ way.”
“Oh! Okay. So the one with the mask thing is Haruka?”
Freya laughed. “Oh, right! You don’t know us. Yeah, an’ ‘er girlfriend – th’ glowy one right now – is Isabella. I’m Freya, an’ th’ kid in th’ suit is Able.”
Suria looked at the last one, tilting her head. “I noticed your suit. It’s really rare to see that kind of clothing outside of the Imperial City. Are you from there, too?”
Able nodded. “Sort of. That’s where I got the suit, anyway. I lived there for a while, but I don’t think I’m from there originally.”
“You don’t think?”
“My memory has a lot of holes in it.”
“Ooh, mystery?”
Freya chuckled. “This should be fun.”
IXH
A short distance away in the forest, too far for the others to see or hear, Isabella stopped and sheathed her sword with a sigh. Her power left her and she stumbled as weakness hit her full-force until two solid hands caught her arms from behind, steadying her. She had known Haruka would follow her; of course she had. She turned around to look into concerned green eyes. She wondered what she should say, but it turned out she didn’t have to say it. “This is about Faust’s son, isn’t it?”
Isabella nodded, looking down. “I never thought about him. I can’t believe he’s after me. He was only a baby when I… I didn’t expect him to be working with your father, at all…”
Haruka shrugged. “It doesn’t matter; they’re the same thing. We’ll just keep either of them from getting either of us.”
“But working together they’re so strong…”
“Working together, we’re strong.” Haruka gestured behind her. “And we have allies. Freya says her nephew’s mercenary company is two thousand strong. Two thousand! They can’t reach us through that.”
Isabella sighed, looking up at her. “I hope you’re right. I just… I have a really bad feeling about this. And Haruka, I only have a year at most…”
The monk looked away. “I know. Believe me, I’m never not thinking about that. I don’t want to spend most of that time running, either. There’s so much you haven’t done or seen that I want to do with you and all of this running seems like they’r
e wasting our time. But we have to deal with this.”
“You’re ruining the rest of your life just for this year. I just… I just want to make it worth it.”
Haruka smiled at her. “It’s already worth it.”
Isabella returned the smile before averting her eyes. “This is still better than anything I could’ve hoped for… This situation. But it’s still my fault.” She silenced Haruka with a look. “You can make me feel better, but don’t lie. We’re all in this situation because of me, and I keep pulling more people into it. First you, then Freya, then Able, and now this girl. So when I worry about this new threat… It’s not just because of me.”
Haruka sighed and leaned back, running a hand through her hair. “You’re worried you’re going to take someone with you.”
Isabella nodded. “I have nothing to lose, but the rest of you do.”
“You and I could leave to protect them, but honestly…?” Haruka shrugged. “These are people who get into danger anyway. Freya actively seeks danger; she’d be angry if we left her out of it. Able… Who knows what he gets into? And Suria ran into us because she was traveling alone through a dangerous and unexplored forest. And what’s more, all of us have our own problems that we’re leaving behind. As a group we’re stronger against all of them. I don’t want to go back at all.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Bella fidgeted with the edge of her cape, looking up at her. “I just don’t want more to feel guilty about.”
“Then don’t. Focus on how you’re helping.” Haruka reached up to brush a few strands of hair from Bella’s face. “You helped me to get away from my father. Your strength is what keeps us all going.”
“Was it really that bad?” Isabella gently caught the monk’s wrist, bringing the hand down to take it in her own. “I know what he was like, in general, but… only that.”
Haruka let out a sigh. “I did promise, didn’t I…? Tell you what, we’ll trade stories.”
Bella smiled. “You owe me like, seven stories, then.”
“Alright. We shouldn’t leave the others just standing around, though.”
“Right.” Isabella paused, looking around. “Okay… We can’t stay in this spot, we have to move. We can’t set up camp again. You can tell me while we walk. It’ll be just like when I talked while we were walking in the forest, except this one’s a lot creepier and there are giant fucking spiders.”
Haruka laughed, turning to follow Isabella as they headed back to the others. “It sounds odd hearing you swear like that.”
“GIANT. FUCKING. SPIDERS, RUKI.” Isabella waved her hands above her head. “It’s like someone raided my nightmares for ideas!”
“Is there anything else you’re afraid of? I want to be prepared when it appears.”
“Don’t even joke like that!”
“Who’s joking? You got scared of sea zombies and those appeared. You’re scared of spiders and we’re caught by half a dozen giant ones. Obviously, whatever is coming next will be from another entry in your nightmare catalogue.”
“Then I should keep it a secret.”
“Think of the safety of the group! Is it dragons?”
“Everyone is afraid of dragons.”
“Oh, right. Ghosts?”
“Again, who isn’t scared of ghosts?”
“Okay… Snakes?”
“No.”
“Wolves?”
“They’re just slightly angry dogs.”
“Tigers?”
“What’s a tiger?”
“That’s a no… for now.”
“Please don’t add to my list of fears, Haruka.”
“Bats?”
“Nope.”
“Undead?”
“Please.”
“Demons?”
“I’m half one.”
“More of yourself?”
“Multiple Bella’s? Okay, that’s a nightmare.”
“Oh, not for me,” Haruka grinned. “For me that’s a fantasy.”
Isabella shook her head, laughing softly. “Your mind sure gets dirty fast.”
“Only when it comes to you, Bella. Only when it comes to you.”
IXH
“So,” Bella said, looking at Haruka. “Talk.”
They trailed behind their three allies by a good distance as the group walked through the forest, heading south at a fair pace. The three up front were talking but Isabella wasn’t interested in their conversation; she had dropped back with the hope of learning more about the woman she loved, a proposition that excited her as much as it scared her. When she really thought about it, it depressed her how little she knew about Haruka’s past. She had a general idea, but she didn’t know any more than the others did. She wanted to change that; she hoped to eventually know more than anyone.
Fortunately, Haruka seemed willing. She was looking up at the trees in thought, trying to decide what to start with. She had Bella’s hand in hers and would run her thumb over the knight’s fingers every so often, a habit she’d developed that she would subconsciously do while thinking, which Bella enjoyed far more than she would have expected considering what a simple thing it was. The monk finally nodded, looking to her girlfriend. “Alright… I’ve got a story that will give you a good idea of my life in the monastery. We’ll start with that, because it’s a good basis.”
“Okay,” Bella said with a nod of her own, preparing herself to hear it. She had a good idea that controlling her anger would be important soon.
Haruka looked at the others to make sure they were still out of hearing range before taking a breath and launching into the story.
“Again,” Kazuki said sternly, his voice amplified by the loudspeaker.
In the room below, Haruka did her best not to glare up through the observation window at her father. This was the thirteenth time she’d heard that word in the past several hours and it was getting old. The thin green vest and shorts she wore were drenched in sweat and her hair clung to her skin annoyingly. Various parts of her body were wrapped in bandages, mostly her limbs; every time she took an injury, she would simply wrap it there in the room and keep going.
The room she was in was built specifically for intense training. In theory it was there for everyone, but Haruka had spent hundreds of hours more in this place than anyone else did. She knew the room better than she knew her own face. She knew all the varied arrangements the room could take with the moving columns, boxes and platforms it was filled with. She knew what challenges she would face in it. She knew how to move around the room and take down all opposition. She even knew the exact number of steps from any point in the room to any other point in the room. From that tall black platform to the red column? Seventeen steps walking, six steps in a full-out sprint. From the horizontal blue bar to the mass of red pipes? Twenty-two steps walking, nine steps running, watch out for the pit six steps in. And that was just for this current arrangement; all the platforms and objects in the room could move into different arrangements, but she knew them all.
And still none of that was good enough for her father. Still he had her remain in this room until she collapsed, and he would always give her that disappointed look when she did, as if he expected her to be tireless and unrelenting like some sort of automaton. The room began moving and Haruka tightened the bandages on her blistered hands and feet, leaping up to climb onto a higher platform as it moved past. A whirring sound hit her ears and she went into a roll off the side of the platform, catching it to hang off the side as a turret sent a hail of gunfire across the platform. A blade flashed up from the floor and she tucked herself up and kicked over it, landing in a roll and coming up in a run.
Finally her opponents appeared. Sometimes they would be other monks from the monastery, sometimes they would be captured bandits or hired mercenaries. This time it was bandits; she could tell by the crazed look of the first man she spotted. Kazuki would set them loose in here with a weapon of their choice; she could hear his voice over the loudspeaker telling all in the room that
if they killed her they would be set free and given a large sum of gold. The one she was sprinting towards had apparently chosen a cutlass and licked the blade to intimidate her as she ran at him. She’d seen it plenty so she kept running. He grinned and stepped forward, hacking horizontally. In theory it was a good move, it would make it more difficult to dodge in this narrow space between tall platforms.
Haruka ran up the wall to her right, coming up above the sword and sending her foot into the side of his head. He hit the other wall with a grunt and Haruka landed behind him, gripping his hair and pulling him away only to slam his head back into the wall. He crumpled and Haruka immediately ran up the platform, gripping the top and pulling herself up onto it as fire filled the makeshift hallway behind her. An arrow flew at her and she dropped to let it go over, spotting the archer perched on a platform a short distance away. A whirring sound made her eyes narrow and she shoved herself to her feet, beginning to sprint across the tops of the platforms as a turret tracked her, outrunning its line of fire just enough that it trailed a bit behind her.
The archer fired another arrow and she caught it this time, having no time to dodge with the turret’s line of fire almost catching her already. She sprinted past the wide-eyed archer and heard him scream as the bullets tore through him behind her. She then dropped between platforms, causing the turret to barely miss her. A spear-wielding bandit found her there and thrust his weapon into the narrow opening. Haruka knocked the spear point to the side before gripping the shaft and shoving it into the man’s stomach. She created a fulcrum by shifting her leg beneath the center of the spear and then smacked the head down, sending the bottom into the man’s jaw and putting him on the ground. Haruka flipped the spear and impaled him before she began running again.
