A second.
The smallest time unit that runs faster than a heartbeat. Humans call it the nick of time. Even minimizing further till one begins to wonder what could happen at that short amount of time... Well I tell you a lot could happen.
It all happened in a second, the world was thrown at the brink of extermination.
Flashes of Magic and sounds of explosion. Bodies flying here and there as blood spilled, dying the once brown sand red and filing the air with the pungent scent of blood and sweat.
On one side, a union one had never seen before. Supernaturals and humans working hand in hand to fight the creatures crawling out of the dark night. The look of their faces sent fear on first sight. Bulging fangs, crooked wings, all in all a hideous appearance. No need to sue them, no one ever said there was beauty in monstrosity. Calling them creatures was already a more befitting name one could give.
Guns roared spitting out bullets in dozens, men yelled as they threw their fist against their opponent. The valiant bravery they showed failed miserable in the sight of the gory deaths. The voice shouting 'charge', was swallowed up by the yells of pain, agony and the sounds of breaking bones. Monsters picked them up like clothes, tearing their Kim's apart or breaking their bones with a swing of their hand. Seeing humans treated like meats on a chopping board brought a wave of unsettlement, the Gore so heavy their belly's churned in disgust yet their heart stilled in fear, swallowing back every retch that threatened to emerge.
Amidst the battling crowd, dressed in white robes with her silver hair fluttering under the evening winds. Demigoddess Elara battles, her bloodied dress am evidence of how intense her struggles were, still she fought on. Her body surrounded by a blending wave of Yin and yang energies clear to the naked eyes. A dazzling sight yet no one had the time to admire. Her fist swung fiercely at every creature that charged at her, her actions precise and lethal, moving for their vital points, in one swoop cutting them in halves.
Like an Asura God, the blade in her hand swung dangerously at those Demons, never coming back empty. The bodies of those beast fell at her feet gradually piling as a mountain around her. Her head turns darting through the deserted grounds till it rest on a young man. Olcan, her husband. His prowess almost as valiant as her, still his not on par with her who's almost a god. She watch him take a hit that sends him stumbling backwards with blood splurging out his mouth. A Monster's claw stabs into his stomach from his back, leaving a ghastly hole and what seemed to be his organs hanging out uncomfortable.
Olcan groans in pain. More blood finding it's way out of his lips. The Monster retract it's claw. Blood poured out of of his torn abdomen, the floor under his feet gradually turned to a puddle of blood. His knees lost their strength and soon he fell to he ground.
"Olcan!" Elara yelled frantically. Abandoning her opponent she makes a mad dive towards his location. Her path gets blocked by a bunch of demons, her desperation to be near the fainting man fuels her anger. Her eyes turn pitch black, a burst of black flames wrap around her, extending through her sword. With a swing of her hand, the heads of those things standing in her way were detached from their body, disintegrating into a pools of black smoke before their bodies could hit the ground.
Elara picked up her pace, she arrived at his location and dropped to her knees beside her dying husband. A transparent shield extends from her body, enclosing the both of them in a all circle. She places her hand on his stomach. Her palms shining a subtle bright light. She tried to concentrate but her eyes poured at tears faster than his stomach leaked blood. A Continuous attempt to heal his wounds was made but the hole remained as did his fading breath.
"Why is it not working?" She grumble in a teary voice. Her glowing hands till over his stomach, now her shoulders shivered with her increased sobs.
Olcan groans in pain. He moves his hand and gently brake her palm off his body. A regretful smile finds its way up his lips, his hand extend and brush the tears off her lips. He tries to chuckle but all that echoed was a painful groan and the sound of him choking on his own blood.
Both their eyes watered with tears still he smiled happily. They say you know a man who loved happily when he dies with a smile on his face. If anything he wanted to be that man, caused he lived happily. A life he would not regret if he was to live it over again from the beginning. Unlike her smiling husband, Elara only had tears in her eyes. They both lived well but she wasn't satisfied, they should have lived even longer together with their daughter...
Their daughter!
She turned back regretfully. Her eyes travelled through the distance to a glowing crystal tower miles away from the battlefield. Though it was miles away, she could see this pagoda awfully too well, and as if zoomed in, she could also see the girl standing in the room with her hands pounding desperately on the thick glass walls. The girls face overflowed with tears and her mouth moving a set of inaudible words.
Regret filled her heart to know the girl would see this scene. She bowed her head and tears poured out of her eyes. A cold palm once again stretched forth and wiped the tears of her face. She looked back to the man in her arms. His eyes fluttered in determination as he mouthed in his last breath "Save our daughter"
His face stilled simultaneously as his hand dropped to the floor lifeless. He had breathed his last with his eyes still looking at her firmly. Time seemed to paused in this moment. Elara stared at him stricken in shock. The sound of her own heartbeat ringing in her ears like the sound of a running train. The thin string of hope in her heart snapped and then came the flood of tears.
She held him close to her heart, crying her eyes out in agony. Out of her body poured out fierce waves of energy, they acted like sword qi slashing through the bodies of creatures around her in a few meters. Her hair flew in the wind, her clothes rumpled but none of these made any difference to her. All in her head was the now lifeless man before her. No one could get close, human got blown away by the surging winds while demons and monsters got torn into shreds.
She stayed like this but time had a trait of never waiting. Without her help the battle around her slowly began to turn sides. The battlefield no less became an annihilation ground, of course for the humans and supernatural.
Slowly she opens her eyes and looked around her. Like falling leaves the bodies of the people she once called family laid bare for her eyes to see. Some of them died in way she could not bare to look at for long. Her heart clenched and shattered even further to see their gory deaths.
It was never supposed to end like this. Where it had all gone wrong, no one knew. Perhaps this was the end or rather...the beginning of the end.
"Mother!" A fleeting voice echoed in her ears from the distance. She turned and that little girl was now dashing from afar on the back of a huge brown wolf. Her eyes dimmed.
"Raaya" Elara called out gently, tears rolling down her eyes as it did down the girl's facsy. A reassuring smile crawls to her lips. She nodded slightly at the girl and looked away to the man in her arms. His snow pale face still holding that smile and his determined eyes brought back his last words to her head, 'save our daughter'
Her body began to shine. A bright light growing out of her chest, gradually growing into a huge ball of light by the second.
"Mother!" That frantic voice still echoed in her ears. It called even more as her body was enveloped by the bright light. The light shine over the whole battlefield, illuminating the sky till it exploded, sending that light across miles and miles.
Hello dear readers. I hope you love AKEL DAMA: The age of Demons. I promise this would be a fun read and a rollercoaster of twists, so share and comment let me know what you feel through out the book. love you guys!
"mother!" Raaya jolted up from her sleep. Her clothes soaked in sweat and her chest heaved up and down hurriedly. Her sleep was cut off once again by the same dream she has had for the past decade. Having seen that scene over and over again, days in roll, and then weeks and then years. She should have been use to it by now and perhaps should have gotten over it, everyone else have, but it wasn't so for her, moreso her heart pricked even more, the pain she felt never dulled rather it multiplied, till she could barely breaths when ever she dreamt of it.
It was as if it was happening right before her eyes. Her eyes welled up in tears. She shouldn't be crying, she knew better but couldn't help it. She could hear those yells and screams, the blood flying through the air as were human body part. The Gore tore her mind and took her back to that field that day. She looked around and slowly the images began to fade. Once again her post traumatic episode was coming to an end. Eventually she was back to where she had been for the past ten years.
Ten years...
Yes it has been that long. That long since the world took a new turn. It wasn't a turn for the better, instead for the very worst they could never have imagined. Ten years of increasing bloodshed and world extermination. One could literally call it the blood years, not that it had come to an end. Things were still as they had become ten years ago, with only one last thread of saving grace.
Raaya sits up and push a strand of her half black and half white hair behind her ears with an exhausted smile. Doing something that girlish was not her nature, so she Yanks a purple band from the bed side table and binds the whole head of long white and black hair into a short tight bun. She finishes just in time to welcome the guest that walked in.
The door pushed open and a red haired girl saunters into the room with a boyish walk. Her lips folded into a smugy smirk followed by an air of masculinity that came with her cowboy hat, baggy military regalia, tank top and high pads boots. If it wasn't for her slim waist, perfectly curved hips and the pair of soft moulds bulging on her chest, one could really not have taken her for a female.
Raaya groaned and rolled her eyes at the lady "seriously you pick the right times to come see me. Everytime"
The girl shrugged and chuckled "I can't help it. I'm a perfect timer"
"yeah right, says the girl who went late to her boyfriend's burial" Raaya mocked
"It's not my fault, they were just too many, it took me a long time to know which died. It's ex-boyfriend by the way" The girl shrugged nonchalantly. Not an iota of sympathy on her face as she spoke about it. Surely the face stills when the heart sleeps.
Raaya gave her a judging look and looked away "You're here because we are being summoned right?"
The girl nodded and winked" you guessed it right. Kaiser wants us in the meeting hall in five minutes. He says no flunking or you get the scrub duty as punishment"
Raaya groaned grudgingly. Despite the obvious warning, she throws herself back on bed and close her eyes. "Is there a difference? Even if we go, we still end up with the boring duty after all, like city order. It's no different from the scrub duty. Perhaps this one might come with some dignity" she complained.
Alia laughed to her complaint. She picked her hat and toss it at Raaya. Raaya catches it just before her head with her eyes still closed, casually she arranges it o er her face and remained there.
"Indeed City order sucks. But I think it's something different this time. Perhaps something serious too"
A pair of thin black fingers extend and take the hat off. Raaya took the cap away, her eyes opened partly like a crescent moon and she stared at Alia with a questioning look.
"How do you know?"
"It wasn't only us called back. It's the whole Jaegers association. Right from the bottom to the top, even the Shadow Ace Jaeger team is in attendance.
"Shadow team?" Raaya rose a brow. She snorted and sat up "That's more reason I shouldn't go. One look at those Buffoons and I just might snap their neck. Who do they hunk they are, looking down on us and acting like a bunch of undefeatable gods"
"in a way they are. They have a minimal damage record and also madeany recognisable achievement than we do. You know they got they've drafted a clear map for about 15 milles around the dome. No other group that tried that came back but they did and only lost four of their members before they came back" By the time Alia finished her statement, she met a long-faced Raaya. Looking at her with blazing eyes. She could only swallow back whatever words she had intended to say next.
Raaya scoffed "only that and they already feel entitled. They only got a chance because we never had the chance to accept the job and we couldn't because Kaiser refuses to give us any important job. Only putting us in City order duty and making us patrol the city like a bunch of phonies"
A complicated smile appears on Alias face. She moves to say don't but Hesitate. In the end she smiles and said lightly "I believe he means no hurt"
Raaya growled "but our reputation is taking hurt! We are seen as weaklings, people no longer respect us and they treat us as spineless bastard that isn't even able to settle a stupid pedestrian scruffle!. How does he even rest easy knowing he sends those weaklings on important duties? They're just a bunch of highly armoured... Xyzzy. Trusting them with our lives is an unreasonable thing to do".
"xyzzy? What does that mean?" Alia asked genuinely curious.
Raaya shot her a skeptical look, incredulously asking with her gaze 'is that what you should be concerned about?'. Under Raaya's skeptical eyes, Alia's cheeks flamed in embarrassment. She cleared her throat and changed the topic.
"We should really go, else we the cloud team would really be nicknamed the loser team"
"Cloud team? Is that what we're being called now?" Raaya inquired in unwillingness. Her unwillingness turned to frustration when Alia nodded.
"The notice was passed last week. How come you didn't know?"
" Ugh! You think I knew and then I agreed to such a tacky name? It's such an insult that we are the cloud team.... While those winnies are the Shadow Ace. It makes my blood boil" She complained continuously as she stood up and followed after the Alia out of the room.
Outside the room is a vast world. Houses built with woods and a few special ones with stones, colourful stone like crystal or ice bricks. The modern infrastructure was no where to be found, buildings were clustered together in a way that made it look like ancient China, nevertheless, the population of this city outnumbered any there ever had been in history. The first of it's kind and probably the last too. It was a given, as in this city was all that was left of humanity and life on the planet once called Earth. At Least, this was to the best of their knowledge.
Above the sky. A white lucid shield-like sphere spread across the sky, covering not just the city but the large mass of unmeasured land underneath it. The Dome ran for miles and thousands of miles, till it's edges could not be seen like an endless tunnel. This Dome was heat had kept this city and it's citizens alive for the past five years. As much as it did, it had cut them off from every communication outside itself. Not that anyone wanted it otherwise. The world outside was a death zone. Now a field of blood crawling with monsters and fearsome demons. The Green lands no longer existed and even if it did, it was no safe place to be at.
Ever since the Dome came on, no one knows how far the world outside had changed. They never even got the chance to know. Everyone one person that had being sent outside the Dome either never came back or didn't go far. Every of their trials to explore had proven to be a death sentence. As last they stopped trying to know.
Ignorance is bliss.
What good would knowing do for them anyways. Help them reclaim their lands? Or change it? Obviously neither. It was best if they abstained from knowing at least then, they could hold unto the hope that the time is coming when they would be able to take back what they had lost.
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