Age of Darkness (20 page)

That was when Keimaro saw a small group of
guards huddled in the corner of an alley, sitting on top of boxes and barrels,
playing cards. They were laughing while smoking pipes and cheap cigars. Empty
glass bottles of beer were scattered on the ground around them. He winced at
the very sight of the men that were supposed to be the protectors of this city.
These guards reminded him of the soldiers in Bakaara before it had been invaded—they
were all talk and took advantage of their job position. All they did was lounge
around all day and drink rather than actually protect the average citizen from
danger.

Keimaro sighed as they pushed onward
through the crowds of people. From the looks of it, it didn’t matter if a
couple of people died. The population in this city was huge. There was no room
to even walk. And every street or two, Keimaro would spot a dead body on the
side of the road somewhere. Usually the people seemed to have died from either
starvation or beatings, perhaps from the guards. He looked forward and saw that
Yuri and Lena had disappeared into an alleyway, the shadows swallowing up their
image in a mere instant. The boy stumbled after them, unable to see them. He
blinked a few times, trying to adjust to the thick darkness, but found it hard
to see.

Keimaro looked up and saw that Yuri and
Lena were climbing up the side of a building to get to the rooftops. He frowned,
quite astonished at how they climbed the building with such ease. They simply
grabbed onto windowsills and cracks in order to haul themselves upward. That
definitely took some practice and a huge amount of upper-body strength. Still,
it couldn’t be that hard. After all, during his four-year training while in the
forest with his father and Yata after the Bakaara massacre, he had climbed many
trees in order to stay away from the beasts of the night. Climbing a building
couldn’t be much harder; he just needed grip.

Yuri and Lena sat on the tiled rooftop,
looking down at Keimaro and waiting patiently for him. Yuri was emotionless,
whereas Lena had cracked a smile, knowing that Keimaro was hesitant in
following them. “What’s wrong? You coming?” she teased.

Keimaro glared at her and took a few steps
back from the building.
It can’t be that hard.
He ran at the wall,
planting a single foot on it. He pushed upward and ran two steps up the wall
before slamming both of his feet against it.
Except, I’ll do things my way.
He
released a small jet of flame from his feet that shot him backward, flipping
through the air. He landed on the other wall with his feet and released another
jet of fire that sent him flying upward into the air over Lena and Yuri. His
arms flailed, and his legs were mush in the air, but he was smiling
nevertheless as he reached the peak of his flight. He had a clear view over the
entire city’s rooftops. He landed heavily on the tiled roof and turned to look
at Yuri, who stood up, unimpressed.

“Let’s go,” he said. He walked past Keimaro
and broke into a hard dash across the rooftop. He lowered his body and put all
of his weight down into his feet, kicking off of the edge of the rooftop and using
his momentum to send him flying through the air. He landed on another rooftop,
leaping across the gap between the buildings with graceful ease.

Keimaro raised an eyebrow when he saw Lena
mirror the action. He stood there with his mouth gaping and sighed, taking off
after them. His breath was heavy, and he was nervous, which was rather rare. He
kicked off of the roof and was sent flying into the air over the gap. A moment
of fear shot through him as he looked down at the ground below. He could fall
right now, and he would never see Mai ever again. He raised his head and looked
outward at Yuri and Lena, who were still racing along the rooftops like a bunch
of monkeys.

Will I ever see Mai again? Is Z telling
the truth about her still being alive? I mean, I always wished that she would
be alive, but the reality of it all…. Why would they keep her alive? A mere child?
He landed on the roof with a solid thump and
continued running forward.
The Bounts keep only what they have to gain from.
Why would they keep her?

The boy began to slow down when he caught
sight of a massive tower before them that stretched up into the sky and was
topped with a gleaming, gigantic bell. He scratched his neck when he saw Yuri
pointing to the very top and whistled. “That’s a long climb. I’m assuming that
we aren’t climbing this the manual way, are we?”

Yuri shook his head and pointed down toward
the bottom of the tower, where a wooden door was guarded by two armed guards. “We
are going to break in and place a chip at the very top. Then we will escape
using a zip line.” He reached into the pocket of his black cloak and pulled out
a tiny blue chip that matched the color of the teleporting pad. “This,” he said,
“is the key to our grand entrance tonight. It enables us to particle transport
to the exact location where it is planted. After that, I’ll explain how we are
going to execute tonight’s plan.”

Keimaro nodded and sat on the edge of the
roof, his legs dangling off the end. He pointed to the guards. “So, we are just
going to bust inside? Are we allowed to kill or…?”

“No, we can’t,” Yuri said. “If we kill
anyone, they will be investigating the area for at least a day or two. That’s
too much time. We need to just bust in and run away. We are going to plant the
chip without them even knowing. Follow my lead, and we will get this done
quickly. Cover my back, Keimaro. Lena, make sure to prepare the zip line gear.”

He leapt off of the rooftop and landed hard
on the street, startling civilians around him. He paused to take in the shock
from the height of the fall before he broke into a sprint forward. He barreled
through the guards and the door before they were even able to unsheathe their
weapons. The door screeched as it was ripped off its hinges from the tackle,
and the soldiers slammed hard into the ground. Yuri was already on them with
his fists raining down upon them with heavy punches.

Keimaro was still sitting there, watching
the scene with his mouth gaping. Yuri had just gone in there so easily and so
fast without even a care for his surroundings. The civilians around him were
already screaming and running around, signaling for more guards to come. He
supposed this was when he came in to support Yuri. He leapt down from the
rooftop as well and landed, wincing at the shock from the fall that burst
through his legs and traveled up through his body. He could see the crowds of
people scattering with armed guards pushing their way through. The boy heard
Lena jump down behind him and glanced over his shoulder to give her a swift
smile as they began to race forward. Keimaro had to make sure that his hood was
always up during the encounter so that no one recognized him. He still had to
conceal his identity as a member of the Royal Guard. After only a day of
getting the job, he shouldn’t be caught fighting guards in the street. 

Upon reaching the door, one of the guards
turned to him, and he responded with a crack of his fist across the man’s jaw.
There was no warning. Just his fist, slamming against flesh and bone. A dribble
of blood spurted from the man’s lips as he crumpled to the ground. Ignoring the
throb of his knuckles, Keimaro had no intention of fighting the other soldiers
that surrounded him. He quickly made his way through the open doorway, stepping
over the unconscious bodies that lay still on the cold marble floor.

The inside of the tower seemed extremely
simple. A table had been knocked over, and poker cards were scattered
everywhere among three more unconscious guards that reeked of alcohol. No doubt
they had been slacking off while the two guards at the front were clearly doing
their job, though not effectively. From the looks of the destruction and
smashed beer bottles, Yuri had been through here. The walls were made up of
simple cobblestone with a winding stairway that climbed all the way to the very
top.

Keimaro gave Lena a guiding push toward the
stairs as he turned around and kicked at a few of the guards, trying to drive
them back. They had already unsheathed their blades and were fully ready to
kill. He winced, remembering that he wasn’t to kill any of them; otherwise, it
could ruin the entire operation for tonight. Without a way to defend himself,
he grabbed a beer bottle off of the ground and hurled it at the mob of guards.
The projectile exploded into a million glittering pieces of translucent glass
that became stained with blood upon contact. Spurred on by the shrill screams
of agony, Keimaro raced up the stairs, avoiding eye contact with the wounds of
the men behind him. He could hear them racing up the stairway, attempting to
catch up to him.

They kept climbing. The stairs seemed to go
on and on, eventually making Keimaro feel exasperated from the strenuous
exercise. He pushed onward, hearing the slowed clanks of armor behind him,
getting closer. When he reached the top, he saw that Yuri was standing there
with Lena, giving Keimaro a nod of satisfaction that the job was complete.
So,
this chip is planted, mission complete?
The only question was: how were
they going to get down? Keimaro had never once heard of a zip line before. Was
it a new type of technology?

“Lena?”

Lena nodded upon hearing her name and
pulled out a massive pistol that was apparently loaded with a harpoon.
A
harpoon gun?
She aimed it high into the air and fired, a long rope
following the harpoon through the air. The projectile lodged itself onto the
rooftop of a lower building, across the street. Lena gave the rope a good tug
to test it before she sliced off the end that was attached to the gun. She tied
the rope against a pillar that supported the roof over the enormous bronze bell
that stood in the center of the room. A cool breeze blew through the tower,
causing the bell to make a whistling noise.

Yuri took a small bar from his cloak and
positioned himself in front of the rope. He put the bar over the rope and
gripped both ends tightly, bravely kicking off of the tower as he flew out into
the open air, zip lining down toward the building below.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Keimaro
muttered, knowing that he was next.
I didn’t sign up for this.
He could
already hear the clanking of the soldiers behind him. Lena handed him a bar,
which he took reluctantly. He positioned himself just as Yuri had, the bar over
the rope. However, his hands were shaking as he looked down at the hundreds of
meters below to the ground. If he fell now, he would be squashed like a bug.
His breath was heavy as he felt sweat forming on his palms, increasing his
chances of slipping and falling.
Damn, Kei! Why are you being so freaking
negative? Just get it over with! You’ve done worse!

“Hurry up, Hayashi!” Lena snapped as the
men began to stumble up the stairway, panting and coated in sweat. “They’re
here!”

“But!”

“Go!” Lena kicked him in the back swiftly,
and he grunted, his feet leaving the safety of the tower.

Keimaro’s mind went blank with fear as he
looked down and saw his legs dangling through the air, rooftops zooming past
him. He would’ve yelled, but his throat was clogged with panic as he thrashed
and kicked. He heard the bell suddenly ring, and he glanced to see Lena coming
down behind him. The soldiers were plugging their ears in an attempt to block
out the sound. He turned back to look at where he was going and slammed
face-first into the roof. He fell, smashing into a cart of some sort. Dust flew
off in all directions, and he blinked a few times, looking up at the sky,
rather dazed.
Not the best landing I could’ve had. Ugh, at least I’m alive.

Yuri poked his head over the roof to look
down at Keimaro while Lena landed graciously on the ground beside him. She grinned
as she squatted down, patting his head gently as if he were an injured pup. “Not
bad for your first zip line, Kei.” She giggled teasingly and stood up. “Thanks
to you, we have everyone’s attention. Better get up and start running.
Otherwise, your cover is blown.”

***

Yata sighed as he walked through the
streets of Bassada behind Gavin and Noah, feeling uncomfortable with the large
amount of people in the area. He felt as if they were all being aggressive
whenever they bumped or pushed him unintentionally. He had a strong urge to
efface every single human being in this entire city. The way they looked at
him, touched him, spoke around him—they all disgusted him. Nevertheless, he
kept his eyes forward and attempted to repress his fury. He tried to think
about something else, but every time he did, he could only think of his failure
when he had fought Yuri. That white-haired bastard had absolutely obliterated
him in combat. He didn’t even seem to be trying when Yata had been giving it
his all. Yata’s hands were clenched tightly at his side, and he shook his head
in disbelief. Was all that training for nothing? So he could lose in combat to
some random boy from the streets working for a rich old man?

His eyes narrowed as he glared at the back
of Noah’s head. He didn’t dare say such rude and dishonorable things in front
of Z’s son, but he was curious as to how much power this boy contained as well.
All of this seemed so bizarre. The group seemed almost too good to be true,
fighting for the exact same things that Yata and Keimaro had been training for
over the past four years. But, Yata had never really had a reason to want to
kill the king or smash the sovereignty of the crown. He just wanted the man
dead for destroying his village. Revenge. As puerile as it sounded, it was all
he wanted. Selfish or not, Yata had no legitimate reason for wanting Faar to be
eradicated other than his own personal hatred.

Giving him a real reason would just make
him even more determined to destroy Faar. Yata glanced over at Gavin. In order
to convince such a dedicated soldier, Noah would have to show something that
probably wasn’t in the public view—something that would be enough to convince
even the most loyal of soldiers to turn against the government. But, from the
looks of it, they were simply walking in the public streets, not anywhere where
any secret government things would take place.

Noah suddenly took a turn into a street
that looked like a ghost town. The houses were tattered and old with rust and
mold growing all over the wooden structures. Bodies were sprawled across the
sides of the street from starved homeless individuals that had passed but hadn’t
been cleaned up from the streets. Some of their flesh was decayed, with flies
and bugs buzzing around. The very sight almost made Yata want to vomit. Gavin
actually did.

“I know that poverty is a problem in our
society, but that isn’t a good enough reason to convince me to execute the
king,” Gavin muttered, wiping his mouth of sick. “There’s poverty in every
prosperous nation. There is no society where everyone is living high and mighty—”

“That’s not what I came to show you today,”
Noah said simply, walking toward one of the buildings. At the building’s side
was a latch in the ground, camouflaged by a patch of grass. “My father has a
large amount of prototype samples of artificial magic. These bodies that you
see out here are not just from starvation. Would you like to see the truth? It
is a rather sickening sight.” He reached down, grabbed the hidden latch, and
pulled. A wooden doorway came up, some dust entering the air, and absolute
darkness was all that could be seen beyond.

Yata truly didn’t want to go down there.
Perhaps it was a personal fear about entering catacombs. Well, not just
catacombs. It was any type of underground activity, for that matter. He gave a
smug look, but Gavin and Noah didn’t seem to quite catch it because Gavin
followed Noah forward, rather curious as to what the darkness held. Yata gave a
small shiver as he inched his way over, dragging his legs until he fell stagnant
at the entrance of whatever this opening led to. “Well, it’s your call, Gavin.
I’m going to hate the government, no matter what, but this is to convince you
to join our side, right?”

Gavin shrugged. “I’ll see what he has to
show me.”

Damn it.

Noah nodded and flicked his wrist,
summoning a glowing red stick that appeared in his hand. Such conjuring magic
truly seemed like a very useful trick, fit for many different types of
situations. He gripped the stick and pointed to the darkness, revealing a descending
staircase that led into the abyss. He began to walk downward and conjured a
glowing stick for Yata and Gavin to use as well.

Gavin went second, and Yata followed after.
Being in the back of the group was something that he didn’t favor at all. He
definitely wasn’t afraid of the dark since he had embarked on his short trek
through the Forbidden Forest. But the moment that they stepped down into the
dark corridors of this underground facility, he was overwhelmed with a
disconcerting feeling. Perhaps it was the clamminess or even the scant light
that radiated from the small sticks they held. Other than that, it was
pitch-black, and Yata followed the shadowed image of Gavin, who walked before
him. The corridor was extremely narrow and scarred with some type of markings,
carved delicately with deep incisions into the stone walls, as if they were in an
ancient burial ground. Seldom was he this uncomfortable, yet here he was. His
heart pounded as it had when he was a child whenever he felt fear. Nothing had
happened, yet he already felt this foreign feeling—how cowardly of him. He
blinked when he found the narrow hallway opening up into a massive room filled
with blackness, their tiny glow sticks lighting up only a small percentage of
the abyss that engulfed them.

“How does your magic work?” Yata asked Noah
curiously.

“Anything that I imagine in my mind becomes
a reality. I can create any type of shape or form using creative magic,” Noah
said, clicking his fingers. A large glowing set of green tracks began to set its
place in the air, spiraling around the room, illuminating the darkness a bit.
But what fascinated Yata was that Noah conjured a train next, supposedly a
dwarven model of underground transportation. The magical train followed the
tracks, lighting up the entire room as it spiraled until it reached the very
top of the ceiling and exploded in a burst of green light that attached itself
to the wall, fighting back the darkness.

“If anything,” Gavin said, looking at the
magic in awe, “wouldn’t your type of magic be the strongest type? Since it is
essentially fitting for any situation and also allows for the creator’s
imagination to form as a weapon to defeat his opponents? It seems that it would
be even more powerful than Keimaro’s flames.”

“Ah, it is very strong. My magic is
tactical and can be helpful when I can’t utilize my surroundings. It is also
quite a defensive power. But in terms of strength, it is not optimal. The magic
can be shattered by someone as strong as Keimaro—and with such rowdy and angry
flames, he could easily overpower my defenses and defeat me,” Noah said and
then pointed forward to an enormous curved archway that led into yet another
large room. “This is where you will find the truth of what the Faar government
has been doing behind the backs of the people.”

Yata watched as Gavin began to walk forward
into the next room and gasped. The boy followed the soldier and found many
large tubes filled with human beings in odd, glowing, colorful liquids. Tables
were filled with different types of bubbling fluids of a variety of colors in
vials and flasks. A giant lab.

Yata moved closer to one of the tubes and
gulped, realizing how skinny this human being was. It was a girl—an ordinary
girl with long jet-black hair and slender arms, probably from being left here
to starve. Small tubes were attached to her skin and seemed to be pumping odd
fluids into her body. Immediately, Yata regretted coming down here. He turned
away, ready to empty his stomach.

“What is the meaning of this?” Gavin
snarled, looking at the hundreds of massive glass tubes that contained humans
inside of them. His eyes were wide with disbelief at what he was seeing. His
hands were shaking as he looked all around, taking in his surroundings. “What
the hell is going on?”

“The Faar government has been trying to
develop a way to give artificial magical power that is on a whole new level of
strength using merely chemicals rather than natural substances from the world.
They intend to create an army of magicians in order to give them the upper hand
in war against the Spartans or Athenians so that they would be able to conquer
the land,” Noah explained. “These test subjects are humans that were taken off
of the streets of the lower district. Poverty. No one would miss them, so the
government kidnapped them and performed sick tests on their bodies to see if
they could create the ultimate weapon.”

“Did they succeed?”

“I’m not sure,” Noah said. “These humans
seem to be mostly dead, and the place is pretty much abandoned.”

Yata was watching the girl in the tube once
more. She had been taken from the streets and used as a lab rat by Faar’s
alchemists and chemists. His hands balled into tight fists at his side.
I
won’t forgive them for this atrocity.

The girl’s
eyes
snapped open and flashed a brilliant red. The two of them stared at each other
for a brief moment before Yata yelped with surprise and staggered backward,
bumping into a table. Glass vials and flasks exploded into glittering shards as
chemicals spilled off of the table. She was alive! How was that possible?

Gavin dashed over to Yata and grabbed the
hilt of his sword. He quickly drew his blade, whirling his weapon before him as
he looked at the girl in the glass tube. “She’s … alive?” he said with surprise
and grunted as he swung at the tube. A single slash was enough to shatter the
glass completely, raining shards down onto the ground. Odd fluids that stank of
waste poured out onto the ground from the shattered tube.

Yata rushed forward and grabbed the girl as
she fell before she made contact with the sharp glass. He blinked as he held
the naked stranger in his arms and quickly pulled the cloak off his body and
wrapped it around her. “She’s alive,” he said, reaching out and touching the
girl’s throat, feeling her pulse. It was subtle but there. Her eyes were now
closed, her breathing normal, but she was definitely unconscious. They had to
get her out of here. He lifted her into his arms and looked at Gavin and Noah. “We’ll
bring her back to the mansion and help her. Are all of these people alive?”

Noah shook his head. “No, most of them are
dead. In fact, they should all be dead since they were left here for such a
long time without any food or anything. It’s a miracle that she’s alive.”

“Well, let’s get her out of here as soon as
possible.” Yata turned to Gavin. “That enough to convince you?”

There was a sudden bang, and everyone went
down, ducking behind the same desk in unison. The sound of footsteps echoed
loudly in the hollow laboratory room. The metallic clanking sound that
accompanied the footsteps of at least a dozen men indicated that these were
armed guards.

Gavin gripped his sword tightly, now
knowing that this was definitely a government project—a government that he no
longer respected if this was how they treated their own people.

Yata was still holding the girl in his arms
and examined her before he looked away. Her flesh had caved in after the small
tubes had been detached from her body, making her look like a deflated
skeleton. Nevertheless, she was still alive, though not for long at this rate; she
looked as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“General Mundo,” a man said, clearly
venerating the higher position as he saluted the general. “It seems that
Project X has escaped. No, rather, someone was down here and broke her out.”

“How recent?”

“Only minutes ago, sir. The preserving
fluids are still warm. Someone must have bumped into the desk nearby as well,
for there are shattered vials and flasks,” the soldier said. “Shall we perform
a search, sir?”

“As soon as possible,” General Mundo said. “I
want whoever was down here caught and executed immediately. I also want Project
X to be captured alive as soon as possible. No doubt whoever these people are,
they were humane enough to try to free her. They’ll probably keep Project X
alive until we get our hands on her. Get the tracking dogs on the job.”

Noah, Gavin, and Yata all looked at each
other in despair. Tracking dogs? There was no doubt that they would be caught
with this odd smell. Preservative fluids, was it? It smelled more like urine.
They had to get out of here.

“When I use my magic,” Noah whispered, “we make
a run for it, got it? We destroy as much stuff as we can and close the tunnel
so that they can’t follow us. Yata, I’m leaving that part up to you. Gavin,
take hold of the girl and take point.” He flicked his wrist, and a burst of
green light shot up into the air, exploding, sending streaks of energy outward
and attaching to soldiers. The attack smashed bottles and glass tubes
everywhere, causing chaos as Yata and Gavin began to make a mad dash for the
exit, Noah following closely behind.

Yata’s heart was pounding heavily.
All I
have to do is destroy the tunnel. Easy enough.
When they reached the
corridor, Yata’s fleshy arm morphed into pure metal. He began to rapidly smash
it into the wall, causing dust to crumble down from the ceiling and the wall
itself. Cracks began to split around the archway as Yata grunted, putting more
and more effort into his punches, digging deeper into the structure as he
slammed it with more force.
Harder! More power!