The Other Side: A Second Chance

The explosion of fire ripped down the street, burning all who stood in our path. I would have thought that the shrill and muffled cries of the soldiers would have stunned me, shaken me even, and at one point, they did. At least the death cries of my allies. Yet the screams of the invaders—the sight of their kicking and frantic crawling on the ground as they were cooked by the ball of fire I had unleashed upon them—did not frighten me. Instead, something about the horrendous sight tickled me. A feeling of fulfilled vengeance. Perhaps this was the beginning of something dark and twisted brewing within me, yet I did not care. Not now. Later, I could worry about it, but for now, I was feeling some form of sick joy. I had never once killed anyone before, not in this life or the past. It was shockingly easy.

We had pushed deeper into the compound. What was once a large open space we had first charged into has now changed into twisting streets and alleyways made up of barracks, warehouses, and other bureaucratic structures.

To build such an entire facility in just a handful of days was impressive. Yet, what was more impressive was how much power I had gained in such a short period. A power that I was eager to use to bring everything down around me.

Suddenly, a torrent of machine gun fire ricochetted off of my shield, shattering it instantly. "Luna!" I heard Zora shout as we all dove behind the cover. Down the road, I could see a tower with a machine gun nest, its gun barking sporadically as the wielder pinned us down. After my shield had shattered, three soldiers behind me were immediately blasted into a red mist and fell. One I saw had died instantly; his head split into two, yet the other man and woman were clutching their guts.

I cursed and muttered the words to rejuvenate as Gord and Isa dragged them behind cover, and within just a few seconds, I had them getting back up onto their feet.

I glanced at Zora and nodded. "Give me some covering fire, and I'll deal with it." She nodded as I pulled out my wand and began to concentrate on another spark.

As the ruby tip ignited, Zora and the others poked around the corner and began to fire a few potshots at the machine gun, causing the user to hesitate for half a second. Yet it was that slight hesitation that gave me just enough time to poke out and whirl my flaming ball of destruction its way.

The explosion was spectacular. The ground heaved, and the world was blinded as the arcane bomb detonated the machine gun and those within its tower. The sheer heat alone caused the metal around it to glow brightly, soften, and then crumple under its weight as it melted.

"Fuck yeah!" Drach and a few others cheered. "Keep pushing! Drive them to the tower!" Zora smirked, blew into her whistle, and screamed a battle cry as we all rushed down the road, just as I and a few other casters threw a bubble shield around us as we moved.

We were nearing a large metallic ramp, wide enough to drive a tank up. As we began to climb up it, I began to feel weird. It's too quiet. Where are all of the defenders?

"How astute." The voice chimed in. "Get ready. The machines I warned you about earlier are waking up."

The brief bit of confidence I had immediately vanished as the dawning realization of what was about to happen hit me. "Fighting machines!" I screamed just as, over the ridge of the ramp, three quadrupedal monsters stormed over the top. All eighteen of their machine guns opened fire as their ghastly howls deafened us. Within a second, I felt my bubble shield burst as the sheer feedback of their hundreds of bullets hitting it sent me reeling.

Isa grabbed me and dove with me to the ground as we tumbled back down the ramp as dozens of our allies were gunned down and, worst of all, incinerated. The machines roared as their eyes began to unleash their scorching heat rays. Dozens of men and women right before my eyes were incinerated, their agonizing screams silenced as their forms were turned to ashes.

"Retreat!" I heard Nessel scream. "Retrea—iieaagh!" He was silenced as the beam of heated light ripped across the surface of the ramp and burned him alive.

The fear from before swelled within me as my heart began to race, Isa swiftly got to her feet and carried me out of the marching path of the machines. After diving off the side of the ramp with Zora and many others, we landed with a grunt in an alley between the ramp and a building.

Further up the ramp, I could hear even more fighting machines waking up and howling as they joined in on the fray, and once again, the voice of that fucking commissar could be heard over the compound's intercom. I may not know the language, yet I could tell the bastard was smug solely based on his tone of voice as he ranted at us.

"How the hell are we supposed to fight those?!" Mara asked, her voice panicking. "Where is Gord? Where's Drach?" She looked around at the few survivors with us.

"We'll have to improvise," Zora said, the lieutenant trying her hardest to sound calm, though I could see the panicked expression on her face. "Luna, your blast. Are you able to kill one of those things with it?"

I gulped and shrugged. "I-I don't know; I never tried."

Zora took a deep breath. "Well, now seems like a great time to test if you can."

I shuddered at the thought of going up against those things. There has to be a better way; those guns shattered my shield in less than a second. If I get caught in the open, I'm fucking dead. I'd be Swiss cheese. Or worse, melted. There needs to be another… Wait a second.

An idea came to me.

The tower. The voice said the tower was a power source, and it could probably be what was controlling them. If we can turn it off, those things might shut off.

"We do not know that for certain," the voice said. "As mentioned before, this place is most likely a power source."

Maybe, but something needs to be giving them orders. I thought. It's a hail mary, but it's the best I can come up with.

"Whatever that means," the voice muttered.

It was a hunch. It probably wouldn't work. Yet it would achieve one of our secondary objectives.

"What if we destroy the tower? Or turn it off," I said. "Those things. They feed off of whatever is in there, and it might even be what controls them. If we can shut it down, we can probably…. Kill two birds with one stone, or, in this case, six."

Zora took a deep breath and nodded. "Aye, that could work. The problem is, they're blocking the path." Zora gestured up the path. "Not only that, we don't know exactly where to look."

Before I could say anything, Isa said, "I can sneak up there. I know the language. I can read the signs; better yet, if I can, I can maybe even question one of the bastards."

"I can go too," I added. "My spells can protect us."

Without any more questions, Zora nodded. "Excellent, then let's do that. I'll alert the remaining squads to hunker down and distract these fuckers." Zora reached for her breast pocket, pulled out her communication stone, and began to mutter into it.

Isa nodded and pointed to the wall beside the ramp. "Luna, hop on my back; we'll climb up here." Without question, I scrambled onto Isa's back as Zora turned to Mara and the few other soldiers and motioned for them to follow her.

Isa glanced back at me and said, "Looks like it's just you and me, Luna."

"We make a good team," I said nervously, and the feline smirked.

"Stick close; don't do anything out of the ordinary." She hoisted me up to her rear and then rushed for it before leaping into the air. I gasped at how high she was able to jump as she clutched on tightly, gripped into some external piping and vents, and began dexterously climbing up the wall beside the ramp.

I hope this isn't a bad idea.

 

---

 

I gripped Isa tightly as a Heinmaran soldier screamed over our heads and slammed into the building beside us Isa pulled herself up and over the edge. I watched as the now-deceased corpse of the flung man peeled off the wall and fell another twenty feet below where we had just climbed.

They're throwing us around like broken toys. I gulped and shuddered as Isa set me down. We were at the edge of a road, and about a dozen feet ahead was the large prison complex, which was connected to the tower we had learned about in the briefing. The building that contained Mother.

My heart raced at the idea of getting in there, but I knew we had more pressing matters. Mother will have to wait a bit longer. I told myself. Releasing her and the others is too dangerous with those machines moving about. I sighed as Isa silently motioned for me to follow her. The top of the plateau, where the prison and tower lay, was open and sparse. The entire ground was made up of these white metallic plates, almost as if someone had rolled out a metal carpet over the earth, giving it an almost sci-fi aesthetic.

As much as I wanted to sit and gawk at nature as to how such a facility was built, I knew we had to keep moving. I followed behind Isa as we crossed the open road; surprisingly, no soldiers or guards stepped in our way. It was as if they all vanished.

Or, most likely, they've fortified themselves inside the buildings. I shuddered.

We made it across the road, pressed our bodies against the prison, and shimmied along the wall until we reached the end. Isa peaked around the edge before turning back to me with a big smirk on her face. "Metal grate on the wall, most likely ventilation. Do you have a way to open it?"

I don't have a screwdriver on me… I sighed, but I blinked when an idea came to mind. What if I use Spark? Not the explosive kind, but maybe if I can just superheat my wand, I can make something like a cutter of some kind. Or I could cut through it with the water from my canteen, using a water lash.

I nodded at Isa. "Maybe I think I have a few tricks."

"Okay, make it quick; it's immediately around the corner on your left." She motioned for me to go, and with a racing little heart, I quickly rushed around after taking a deep breath.

As she said, I saw the large metallic grate on the wall and positioned myself in front of it. Taking out my canteen, I unscrewed the top and unsheathed my wand. I wasted no time concentrating on the spell I wished to cast and began to mutter the incantation for water lash.

As the stream of water bubbled out of my canteen and began to float in the air, I aimed my attention at the grate, magically thrusting the water forward. The water slashed forward at lightning speed, and like a liquid sword, I slashed left, down, right, and up. I cut an almost perfect square into the grate before letting the small stream of water fall to the ground, knowing I had plenty left in my container.

The metal grate remained standing in place, yet as I came over and kicked it with my small foot, the metal fell back with a loud clang. I nearly jolted out of my dress and looked around, yet no one. No one seemed to have heard it over the sounds of chaos coming from the base of the ramp. At least aside from Isa, who rushed around and smiled.

"Good girl!" She beamed. "I'll go in first; follow behind." I nodded as Isa dipped into the vent, and I followed in behind her.

The interior was frigid and cramped—well, not for me—yet Isa, on the other hand, seemed to have to constantly wiggle and shimmy like a worm to move around. However, despite that, she was able to do so quietly, to my surprise, and we continued to move at a quick pace.

As we moved in, the vents began to form an incline, which we clambered up, and the air became colder and colder. It was pitch black, or at least, it would be if I were still human. My elven eyes allowed me to see a few feet around me, and Isa's eyes seemed to shine in the dark and had no issue moving about. Yet what added to the eerieness of it all were the sounds coming within.

The building sounded like a monster as if it were alive. The vents would rumble slightly now and again, and a deep, mechanical groan would come from deep within, followed by a deafening horn, and I swore I could faintly hear the scream of people mixed in with that horrific sound.

"S-Something's happening," I said softly, just as one of the horns faded and I could confirm what we were hearing were the screams of what I can presume to be the prisoners.

"I know," Isa replied in a hushed voice. "We'll come back for them; right now we need to cut through here and get to the tower."

"I-I know, I-I'm just afraid they're going to start executing them," I admitted, a fear that had crept up from time to time.

As we rounded another corner, I could see Isa nodding slightly. "I-I know, I fear for that too." We fully turned the corner, and for once I could see the light coming from another grate, which led to a room. Isa slowed a bit and put a finger to her lips. I nodded as we proceeded to quietly shimmy over it as the sounds of voices from the room below could be heard.

Rusivite voices—as always, I couldn't understand them. Yet I could hear the concern mixed in. Of course, Isa was first to shimmy over the grate; next was me.

Just keep it quiet, Luna. Just go slow, but not too slow. I took a deep breath and began to crawl forward. The room below was blinding white from what I could see—white tables, white floor, white walls. It almost looked like a modern doctor's office, contrasting the stark whiteness of it all with the dark shadows of the figures in the room. One of which began to move under the vent. A pale-skinned human in a white lab coat, a bald man with black, circle-rimmed glasses. He was frustratedly muttering something in his native tongue as I quietly crawled overhead.

Yet as I was nearly over, the vent groaned and whined. Suddenly, the prison shook once again, and the loud bellow startled me, and I tensed up. The moment I tensed, however, I heard a crash and clang before suddenly, there was no vent beneath me anymore.

My eyes widened as Isa audibly cursed as I fell into the room beneath me, and I let off a startled scream and plummeted. My hands and knees cracked against the metal floor, and a striking pain sent me sprawling across the ground. The two lab coat men in the room let off their startled cries as one rushed for what looked to be a telephone-like device on the wall while the other reached for a scalpel.

Isa moved in a blur. In a second, she had dove into the room after me, landing gracefully on her feet before diving forward and tackling the man reaching for the phone. The two of them collided and crashed into the shut door. The scientist tried to scream, but Isa was quick to shove her fingers down the man's throat to silence him, to which he responded by biting down. She let off a sharp curse in the Rusivite tongue and rammed her knee into the side of the man's ribs before taking him by the shoulders, spinning him around, and ramming into the counter along the wall.

The man with the scalpel shakily held it out to Isa and said something, but was cut off when Isa pulled her dagger out of her sheath and threw it into the man's right shoulder, skewering him. He let off a choked cry and stumbled back into the wall, gripping the blade tightly.

Isa then turned back to the man she had bent over the counter and began to snarl at him in their language. The pinned man whimpered and muttered his response, and Isa slapped him across the face and snarled something again.

Meanwhile, the stabbed man stumbled forward, his face contorting from agony to rage as he yanked the dagger from his shoulder with a yelp and quickly began to rush at Isa.

The entire time I watched it happen with wide, fearful eyes, yet when the man began to rush my mentor with the knife, I acted without thought. My hands quickly reached for the handgun Isa had given me. I pulled it out just as his body collided with Isa's, switched off the safety, aimed, and fired just as Father had taught me.

The recoil wasn't as strong as Father's revolver, yet the kick still startled me slightly, thus causing me to aim to be a bit off as I flinched. The sound was deafening in this small room, but it didn't matter as my aim held. The red bolt of energy struck the knife-wielding doctor right in the throat. Splattering both Isa and the pinned man with gore, the doctor's body slammed into the counter, his hand dropping the knife as he slumped to the ground, clutching his throat and choking on his blood.

My eyes widened and blurred with tears as I held the gun in my trembling hands. Already today, I had scorched maybe over a dozen people and felt nothing. Yet here, as I sit on the floor, watching the pale-skinned man twitch and choke on his blood, his brown eyes turn to look at me with surprise and fear. This was different. Much more different than those masked soldiers.

Outside the room, we could hear movement. A muffled voice shouted from behind the door and pounded on it.

Isa turned to me. "Luna, give me the gun," she said, and I didn't say anything. I got to my feet and stumbled forward, yelping when my feet slid on the doctor's blood and I fell onto his body. The man, still alive and bleeding out, let off a gargled groan as I slid the gun to Isa.

Isa then turned to the trembling man in her arms and hissed a phrase at him before bending down to pick up the handgun as another round of fist-slamming came from the door. She then pointed the weapon at the man's chest as she walked towards the door.

"Luna, step to the side, there." She motioned towards the desk and medicine cabinet. I obeyed and moved over to the desk, taking cover behind it.

With the gun still pointed at the doctor, she went over to the side of the door, staying just far enough out of the way, and opened it. My gut twitched as the door flew open, covering Isa. The doctor let off a startled cry, possibly a warning to whoever just came in, as Isa aggressively slammed the door forward, hitting whoever just came in with it and knocking them into the counter and doctor.

The man who had entered was a Rusivite soldier, wearing black body armor and a face mask like all the others. The soldier turned to Isa with his rifle, yet she was quick to grab it by the barrel and aim it upwards just as the soldier pulled the trigger, deafening everyone in the room as the bullet struck the ceiling and ricocheted around, causing me to scream and duck.

Isa then kicked the man in the knee, causing him to buckle under her before pistol-whipping him in the neck, though this seemed ineffective. The doctor cried out and tried to charge Isa to help the soldier, but was immediately stopped when she aimed and shot him in the right arm. Sending him pathetically screaming to the floor, clutching the gunshot wound.

The soldier, however, lunched forward, ramming his full body weight into Isa and sending them tumbling into the gory puddle of the now-dead man on the floor. Both of them grunted and cursed as they rolled through the gore and threw punches at each other. Isa yowled and hissed, her claws scratching at the man's gas mask-covered face and armor while the soldier tried to kick her away and draw his sidearm.

He rammed Isa in the gut, visibly knocking the air out of her, and rolled away, leaving his rifle on the floor as he tried to get up. Yet, to my surprise, Isa was quick on her feet, already recovered, and dove at the man just as he drew his pistol. Not expecting this, the soldier gasped when her body rammed into him, slamming him into a cabinet that sent glasses and beakers to the floor, which shattered. Dropping his pistol, the man swore and grabbed Isa by the throat, and she choked and gasped before kicking him in the leg once more, causing the man to cry out as I watched his right knee twist in an unhealthy fashion. She then twisted with the full weight of her body and slammed the soldier into the ground, causing him to release her throat as she dove on top of him.

With a primal fury, Isa's slitted eyes were filled with a bloodlust I had never seen from her as she aggressively tore the mask off of the soldier's face, who I could see was a young, clean-shaven boy. The boy kicked and screamed as he tried to raise the arms Isa pinned with her knees, and what I saw sent a chill through my body. Isa grabbed the boy by the sides of his head. He screamed and fought with all his might as she angled her clawed thumbs over his eyes…

I turned away and cried as I heard her jam her thumbs into his skull. The shrill screams and spastic kicking made me vomit in the corner. This went on for what felt like an eternity. However, in the end, everything fell silent, save for Isa's heavy breathing, my whimpering, and the sobbing of the doctor who was shot in the arm.

"Luna," I heard it's shallow voice. It didn't sound like the woman I knew—the one who taught me how to read and write and how to survive in the wilderness. "It's safe now."

I wiped my mouth and shook as I turned to see her. From head to toe, she was caked in blood, her clawed hands were nothing but crimson. She wiped them off on the dead soldier, whom I dared not look at, and picked up her handgun and the one he dropped.

She slowly stood up and turned to the man in the corner and spoke to him, to which the man aggressively began nodding his head, as I assumed he began to tell her everything she wanted to know. After a few minutes of them talking, Isa backed away from him.

"Wh-what now?" I asked her.

Isa turned to me with a blank expression. "We need to save your family first." Abruptly, she raised the pistol to the doctor, who let off a shrill scream.

"What the fuck?!" I cried out, but it was too late as Isa fired three shots into the man's chest, killing him. "Wh-why?!" I asked, shaking.

"Because everyone here is irredeemable," was all she said. "Let the fisherman decide what to do with them."