Face of Eternity : The Little Angel

Melpomene was convinced that someone was hiding back at the home, so we started sprinting to the house.

“So, you said the Reaper is still out here?” I asked as we ran. "You sure you're not mixing things up?"

“This evil is not the Reaper, Little One. We’ll deal with that soon enough.”

A spirit blue flew over our heads and landed on Melpomene’s hat. It started chirping like crazy and using its wing to point in the direction of the house.

“Yes, I thought as much,” she said. “The Evil One has been found.”

I was really worried where this was going. Whoever her target was, we were going to definitely have some trouble to sort through.

Mosey was back and he gave us a lift. We were back home in no time. The car was outside, so Marek was home too.

In a sudden burst of energy, Melpomene kicked down the front door and stood there with her hat low on her head.

She looked every which way, but there was no one in here, not until flaming Indena came rushing in from the other room.

“Wait! Everyone just…!” nobody was listening to me.

Indena jumped at Melpomene and attacked her, sending both of them out the front door. Melpomene easily deflected all of Indena’s attacks without even breaking a sweat. A blue aura radiated out of her palms, diverting Indena’s magical fire in other directions.

"You lack temperance, fire mage."

Melpomene snapped her fingers, snuffing out Indena’s fire completely.

“Wha…” Indena couldn't reignite herself, so she jumped back to get some distance. “Shrimp, you alright?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Melpomene isn’t a bad person. She’s here to find an evil women.”

“You little brat!” Indena growled. “Why’d you take her back to me then?!”

I'm sure she'd be breathing fire at me for saying it like that if she could.

“No!” I shook my head and hands in denial. “Not you. Someone else!”

“This is not the one,” Melpomene confirmed.

Indena gave her a look from head to toe, holding a mean scowl.

“You’re a witch.”

Melpomene finally lifted up her hat slightly, revealing glowing purple eyes to Indena. Then she nodded before letting it fall back down again.

I figured she was a witch too with that hat. She was literally putting out Indena’s fire. I didn’t even know someone could do something like that.

“We don’t have any evil person here, witch. So get out of here before I get a big wooden stake and burn you on it,” Indena said.

“Had your heart matched your attitude, I may have killed you in place of the Evil One.”

“Why you…!”

If Indena wasn’t mad before, she was livid now. But, did Melpomene just say Indena had a good heart?

“What’s going on out here?!” Yamin announced at the door. Marek was right next to her.

Then suddenly, Marek shoved Yamin!

A huge gash opened up on his shoulder! Blood was bursting out of him like a fountain!

What just happened?!

Had Marek not gotten her out of the way, Yamin’s head would have…oh my God.

There was a tingle in my mind again, this time it forced my body to shake.

-Human beings a—? i>-Danger.---Fi–s…-

-First Law Protocol failed to activate-

No...I need that power right now. I have to protect them.

I saw behind Marek that a blue hawk was in the house. It must have been what caused his wound.

“Impressive,” Melpomene said. “How did you manage to protect her from that attack?”

So Yamin was her target. It was hard to believe, especially since Yamin didn’t have an ounce of evil in her.

Indena leapt at Melpomene and tried again to attack her, but the witch evaded easily.

A blur of blue swiped across my vision. The next thing I knew, Indena was pinned by her hands to a tree. Two bolts of mana energy were the culprets.

Melpomene had her hands raised, as if she’d willed the mana to do so. Her hat was still down too.

“Gahh!” Indena shouted in pain. “Yalda, get out of here!”

-Melpomene Tagged; Foe-

-Human beings are in danger of mortal harm. Activating First Law Protocol-

-Combat Mode : Active-

My focus tightened on the witch. My environmental awareness increased and my body’s movements became precision quality enhanced.

The witch noticed my sudden change in demenour, but helpless rolled on the ground when I struck her with a quick kick.

As I landed, I bolted back inside to garb Yamin and Marek.

A single tug on her arm brought Yamin to her feet, then I grabbed Marek’s shoulder and ran for the garage.

The hawk that attacked them before came after me next, but I summoned a small amount of stardust to deflect its attack into the wall.

The door to the garage was locked so I yanked it off its handles and brought everyone inside. Then we all entered the recently fixed car in there, me taking the driver’s seat, and those two in the back.

“Wait, you can’t drive!” Marek said, holding a cloth over his wound to stunt the bleeding.

“Watch me,” I responded, gripping the wheel tightly.

I didn’t have the keys, and my legs were too short to reach the petals, so I remotely started the engine with my hacking abilities and also used it to manipulate our speed.

With a quick calculation, I predicted the car would be able to breach through the garage. The steel on the front bumper should be able to take the heavy plaster door with ease.

“The garage door is down!” Marek yelled out. “What are you going to do?!”

“Ram it.”

CRASH!

I went full throttle and burst through the garage door. Plaster and wood splintered scattered all over the place, but the car took less damage than I anticipated. That was optimal.

“Ahhhhh!” Yamin and Marek both screamed at the top of their lungs.

Indena was the last one I needed to rescue. She’d managed to get herself unpinned from the tree, but the witch was between her and us.

I sent out a signal to Marek’s car parked next to the house. It turned on and full throttled right into the witch to make sure she wouldn't be in my way.

“Oh my God!” Yamin screamed, motioning her hands in a figure eight formation around her head and chest. “What is even going on!?”

Our car stopped right up next to Indena, and she got into the left side passenger seat. Then we drove off into the forest to get some distance from the witch. I could still feel Melpomene's aura was only getting stronger by the second. No doubt she’d survive getting hit by that car.

“Ayo, the Shrimp’s cracked!” Indena pointed to me. “Where’d she learn to drive?”

“She just started acting like this all of a sudden!” Yamin replied.

This conversation was pointless. Marek was bleeding out. We had to get that under control.

“Yamin, stabilize Marek’s wound! I’ll instruct you on the procedure,” I said.

“Uh…uhhh…”

Her stress levels were clearly elevating. I needed her to calm down before she could do anything.

“Yamin, please relax. I’ll instruct you on how to preform first aid,” I told her. “Just describe to me what you’re seeing, along with items around the car.”

Yamin gave details on Marek’s shoulder wound, albeit vaguely. It sounded like he had a fractured clavicle and was hemorrhaging blood. She then described all the materials around the car, even reached back into the trunk to gather up some things to bandage him up.

“Er…Um…what am I supposed to do with duct tape and wooden boards?”

I specified exactly how to break up the thin wooden boards, adding in some cloth and duct tape to create a sling. Then Indena used her fire magic to cauterize the deep cut, and we pampered his arm with the sling. It was sloppy, but it would hold until I could perform healing magic.

As soon as he was out of danger, the next person who sustained damage was Indena. She had holes in her hands about 1.6 cm in diameter.

Her pain tolerance must have been incredible if she wasn’t out of commission with those wounds.

This would be a tricky patch up. The shafts of her middle metacarpal bones were dust. For right now, we had to stop the bleeding. Then healing magic could repair the damage.

Unfortunately, because she doesn’t have the ability to burn herself, we couldn’t burn the wound shut.

“Indena, apply pressure to the wound and seal it up with tape.”

“When did you become a doctor?” she remarked. “Fine. Hand me that.”

I would have preferred she didn’t do it on her own, but her stubbornness was not to be contended with.

The ground had largely been bumpy and full of uneven paths. That made driving difficult, so we were slow.

“Yalda, there’s a road just a little north.” Marek noted.

I fact checked that on my map. He was right.

We finally made it to more stable ground on a smoothed concrete road. The immediate difference was jarring.

Suddenly I felt a spike of mana radiate through the air. It was so powerful that I shivered.

Everything started to shake like there was an earthquake. I looked into the side mirror to see something big stampeding this way, leaving a trail of destruction and dust in its wake.

“Yamin, identify what’s chasing us!”

“Um…” She turned around to see through the back window. “It looks like a cow, but with rock skin and one big horn on its head! It’s huge!”

I tried to search my database for whatever that might have been…match found.

“A rhinoceros,” I announced.

“A what?” Yamin asked.

None of the others seemed to know what that was either. Irrelevant.

The rhinoceros was hot on our trail, charging across the road quickly. The smooth terrain offered it little resistance.

I drove off course into the forest again. Using my map, I was able to plot a safe path for our car, while also taking into account the rhinoceros’s single minded stampede. All it was doing was following us, not taking the safest route.

To both our fortune and misfortune, the rhino charged through trees and rocks to reach us. It was getting slowed down, but not enough for this to have been optimal, since we also had to take a more careful route.

The rhino was definitely another of the witch's spirit animals. I had to assume she’d bring forth other beasts to impede our progress soon.

As predicted, once we hit a large clearing in the forest, dozens of massive hawks swooped down and pelted the car with razor sharp beaks.

The steel frame of the car wasn’t strong enough to prevent piercing, but the hawks couldn’t get in past their beaks. At least, I assumed until a hawk dematerialized and reformed inside the car in the form of a raccoon.

“Ahhh!” Yamin screamed.

Yamin and Marek were fighting it off. Two more raccoons entered the back trunk. Then one more pierced through the windshield and got in. I counted four spirit raccoons.

“Crap!” Indena began wrestling with the one in front of us.

With luck, Indena managed to defeat the raccoon by tossing it out the window. The others did the same with the other three. They took on some severe scratch wounds, but they’d live for now.

Meanwhile the rhino was still chasing us, and the hawks kept coming down like arrows. The hawks started to land on the hood of the car, pulling it off and pecking at the engine.

It wouldn’t be long before the car would break down at this rate.

I lifted up my body and charged the mana cannon, shooting each of them with a small beam from my crystal heart.

BWOOOV!

They kept coming though, doing a little more damage each time.

We wouldn’t last long at this rate.

The car was starting to slow down, and the rhino was catching up.

“I got an idea!” Indena stretched her body out the window and lit a fire in her hand.

The fire burned away the tape, then formed into a ball of flame that she tossed behind the car.

BOOM!

An explosion blasted behind us. We only felt the shockwave. A huge crater was in the ground.

“Did you attack the rock cow?” Yamin asked.

“Nah. I blew a hole in the ground and got the thing stuck in it.” She smirked, trying to rebind her wounded hand.

Her attack bought us mere moments to get distance. At this point we’d traveled a few kilometers, and I could see signs of civilization on the horizon.

“What is that city?” I commented on the tall buildings.

“Heck if I know.” Indena said.

Yamin spoke up, saying “That looks like Urnan. That building there is the church of Saint Kensington.”

“Goddamn human geographer, ain’t you?” Indena glared at her.

I marked that city as our destination using a navpoint arrow, then sent out a distress signal to them with our predicted geographic location where we’d break down. I didn’t know if they had radio, wifi, or any other form of primitive communication, so I sent out something in every type of wireless communication I knew of.

My distress signal was received, and someone on the other end tried to contact us through radio.

“This is Cpt. Anderson of the Urnan guard. Who am I speaking to?”

“My name is Yalda Asamo. We are currently being pursued by a hostile witch using mana created constructs.”

“Who the hell’s she talking too?” Indena commented.

The car had a radio built into it, so I broadcast the chatter there.

“Asamo…eh? Is this some kind of joke? You sound like a little girl.”

“That information is irrelevant. Mayday code 29901. There is a tier 5 hostile in hot pursuit.”

“Sir, we shouldn’t ignore this. She knows a high priority code.”

“You wanna’ be the one to tell command why we answered a prank call from a little girl?”

If this wasn’t going to go anywhere, I already had others trying to contact me. They weren’t official authorities, however. Responding to them would be far more difficult.

“So let me get this straight. You’re saying a tier 5 witch is chasing after you in the forest 3 kilometers away to the east?”

“Affirmative, Cpt. Anderson.”

“If you know the mayday code 29901, what is your authorization number?”

“My serial number is 282-475-249.”

“Copy…wait, did you say 282?”

“Affirmative.” I replied.

The radio was quiet for a moment, then I heard some chatter on the other end.

“God almighty…that’s…roger that. We’re contacting church officials. Inquisitors are inbound to your location.”

“What’s up with that?” Indena questioned. “Why’d 282 change this guy’s mind?”

I wasn’t sure either. I figured since all these codes here matched up with The Hive’s emergency procedures that I definitely held high priority in some official capacity.

“Inquisitors…” Yamin clawed at her seat. “Why’d they have to send those…?”

Indena looked back at Yamin, watching her distress. “You don’t like them either? Don’t you guys like watching sinners get tortured by inquisitors?”

“No. Inquisitors are ruthless, only sent out to cause pain.”

“Huh. I guess we finally agree on something.”

The rhino had fully recovered and managed to catch up with us. Our car was starting to stall, just as I predicted.

Finally we were coming to a stop, and I ordered everyone to leap out of the car as quickly as they could and get out of the way.

“Jump!”

We all dove out of the car, then the rhino plowed into it and sent it flying. A giant bird, much bigger than the hawks, flew into it and blew it up.

“Christ!” Indena shouted as shrapnel rained down on us.

Everyone was pelted with tiny bits of metal, but nothing fatal from what I could see.