—So this is what free fall feels like.

That was the first thought when I was pushed out of the window due to the explosion, but that idea only lasted, like, less than a second. The homunculus that got blown out of the building grabbed me, flipped me to his top and tried to become my meat cushion before hitting the ground hard, but only got kicked away by Scathach before she held me in her arm.

—It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Brian flying in the sky!

That was the second thought. Like she could read minds, Scathach gave him a swift kick towards the junk container below, and I laughed looking at him falling. Why doesn’t she join the football team and save Scotland from a football downfall? I thought, but soon the smoke and debris caught up with us and enveloped us with a hug full of dust that made me cough.

The plan worked, I thought and laughed, though immediately took a mouth full of dust and almost coughed my guts out. Scathach looked at me with confused eyes, I watched her lips open and close but couldn’t hear anything but buzzing.

“Fight in the shade,” I pointed upwards.

She landed with her tiptoes like a quiet cat, forced out a smile and raised her shield of void, a technique I also used frequently in the future. Being a Void nature, I opened my eyes wide, looking at the large, reddish rose of the void, each petal shined a stunning light and bounced the falling building debris aside.

I don’t want to be a chosen one now, I thought, from now on I’m working on becoming a Celtic druid like her. A homunculus rushed out from the smoke, probably caught this moment to assault, but a familiar feeling knocked on my spine and the next second, the headless corpse tripped with the momentum, still with the blade raised in his hand.

“Hello there,” Souyo returned his blade to the sheath and rushed to hold me in his arms.

“General Kenobi,” I mocked, “Brian got stuck in the garbage there.”

“Who?” Souyo asked.

I wanted to remind him, but what happened behind him attracted my attention. Looking at 500 magicians simultaneously getting out of their void was extremely similar to an urban kid’s first time lying on the ground of nowhere but wilderness, waiting for the eyes to adjust to an environment without the city’s light pollution, and realise the glimmering starlight are there, quietly blinking their energy.

“Ninety-nine! Souyo! Come to the light if you are not dead yet!”

Hua’s shouting came faster than the roar of four engines combined, he held a flare in his hand, standing still on the opened match when the plane slowly backed up towards us. Like a lighthouse attracting hundreds and thousands of fireflies, these dim lights all dashed towards the flare, with only a few running exactly the opposite direction of that plane— towards us.

“Are you alright? Are you alright?”

That voice was surprisingly familiar, and the figure yelling that fell to the ground when a series of gunshots appeared from far behind her, gave me the idea that she got shot. But she soon climbed up, and ran crazily towards us to the level that one of her broken high heels actually arrived before she could. Her daughter followed closely, I could see the excitement in her eyes burning even with such a distance.

“What are you two waiting for?” Lady Boyle grabbed onto my arm and dragged me towards the plane, “Take the bloody kid to the plane!”

“Wait, Lady Boyle!” I yelled, trying my best to resist, “Brian was still in there!”

Cornelia was a bit slower than her mother but still managed to help the rest of us digging Brian out from a bunch of garbage bags. “do you have any bones breaking?” I asked, flipped and turned his body to check if he had any injuries when he just stood there, panic-stricken, like he left his soul inside that garbage.

“Ninety-nine—” his lips trembled, pointing at the deeper of the dumpster, “—sir—”

I tossed a few more garbage bags away and saw Edward lying at the bottom of that dumpster, with his belly and chest caved into his body from the impact and blood squeezed out from his mouth. The homunculus probably just randomly discarded his corpse and didn’t think even the slightest idea that this guy could help his colleagues one last time, playing as a cushion against fall. “I—I think I felt him moving before I crashed onto him,” Brian mumbled, hands couldn’t even hold his rifle, “did I—”

Lady Boyle slapped him right onto his face. “Whoever killed him doesn’t matter!” She yelled, somehow she gained her Irish courage now, “What is important now is this kid you swore to protect!”

I reached my hand into every pocket of Edward’s, trying to find that letter he tried to leave me but found nothing, so I pulled off his pistol and holster and totted to pass it to Brian. “He needs you to live to tell the stories!” I shouted at him, “Plane! Now!”

Another homunculus rushed out from the mist of dust, his eyes got penetrated by half a broom handle tossed by Scathach, but three more figures could be seen faintly through. “Go,” Scathach’s voice sounded calm, “the gunshots come from the airship terminal, there might be survivors there.”

“Did you set coordinate?” Souyo asked, connecting the handle of his rapier to another needle-like blade after throwing the blade towards one of the shadows in the mist.

“Aye. Don’t worry,” she smiled at me like she could read the worries in my mind, “in any corner of the world you may find yourself, upon your call, I shall emerge at your side, as constant as the stars above.”

“There are no stars in the void,” Souyo pointed the sharp blade at his chest, “cut the childish bullshit, just come to the plane once we took off. Are you ready?”

“Souyo, what—”

He stabbed the blade into his heart before I could stop him, even frankly dragging the handle downwards like a lever of dam’s gate control. “Enough?” he asked, twisting that blade up and down so more blood would splash from his heart into a bath of blood on Scathach, “I need to save a bit, too.”

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“Aye, thanks,” Scathach replied, Souyo’s blood dyed her pale skin to the similar colour of her hair, but I quickly noticed that it wasn’t only blood that was on her skin— some kind of armour, shining red, was growing out from the surface of her skin when I sensed strong energy whirling around her. “Sorry if this scares you,” she said, before that armour could grow to cover her mouth, “wait for me on the plane.”

“You heard her,” Souyo pulled the sword out and held me in his arms, “We need to go.”

“But Scathach—”

“Professor Scathach will catch up on the plane, dear,” Lady Boyle held my hands while following Souyo’s pace, and dashed into the smoke with me. I was worried that the smoke caused by building demolition would last shorter than smoke bombs, but turned out it both lasted longer and expanded to a larger range to cover up half a colony, except the small area around the C-17 plane when smoke was dispelled by the vortexes created by the engines.

“Are you injured? Are you injured?” Hua rotated me around like he was a customer checking a rotisserie chicken for its completeness, “Thank god. Where are these CIA guys?”

Souyo shook his head with him and put on my safety belt for me. “Where is Scathach?” I shouted, it was hard to make him hear me when I was surrounded by hundreds of refugees. And again, like she could read my mind, a door of void opened right next to me and a figure flew out, I grabbed onto her excitingly, only to see she grew a head of grey hair instead of red.

“Who the fuck are you?” I held her collars and shouted to her ears, “Where is Scathach?”

“I—I’m the pilot of that airship— Professor was behind us—”

Two more figures got thrown out from the void, I didn’t even bother to check them since both were male, and then another two after them. “That’s all! That’s all the flight group of an airship!” The pilot I grabbed suddenly shouted in madness, “Take off! Take off right now!”

An arm reached out from that void and waved in the air, but it was definitely not Scathach’s arm. The portal of void closed up sharply faster than a wildfire burns through an autumn forest, cutting the arm in half and leaving people to scream with fear when that thing fell to the ground.

“Fuck! Get us up to the sky, now!”

Hua shouted at the intercom, punched into the switch and the hatch started to rise slowly and steadily. I immediately felt the force pushing me to my seat, almost squeezing out everything in my stomach. Three homunculi ran after the plane once it dashed out from the smoke, only got tripped when the passengers tossed everything they could find in the plane towards them.

“God damn it, fuck!” Hua roared, “That was my Irish Whiskey barrel!”

“If we can survive this, the entire Old Boyles Distillery is opening for you for a lifetime!” The thrower of that barrel shouted back.

These homunculi raised their hands simultaneously and shot out these golden energy chains towards the plane, but seemed like they were too short to reach even the lowest part of the hatch. The plane jumped fiercely when the nose raised, and one of the copilots stretched half of his body out of the cockpit, almost felling into the crowds when the plane was angled up.

“Captain! Left landing gear failed!” he yelled, “We probably hit a chunk of building or something!”

“We can land with one landing gear and fix the plane afterwards!” Hua shouted back from the other end of the plane, “But you only live once! Full throttle! Charge the fucking Void Jump Drive!”

The hatch closed. I looked right and left, when the people around me looked back, but never found someone with an oval face and crimson hair and started to wail my guts out.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay,” Ms Josephine jostled out from nowhere and fanned my face while Lady Boyle was busy wiping my tears with her handkerchief, “you saved everyone, right? You are a big hero now.”

“I don’t want everyone!” I wailed, “I want Scathach!”

everyone screamed when a dent burst onto the hatch, then another dent, then another, until a red head appeared on the hole and made a terrifying grin which almost paused my heartbeats. I drew the revolver, tried to shoot this homunculus that couldn’t even be killed from an explosion to her face, but the hammer of that gun stopped halfway, jamming before it could knock on the bottom of the bullet. Her two hands held the sides of the hole, pushed the metal hatch open like it was just curtains, when people cried and rushed to the front part of the plane, like surfs pounding against a cliff, desperately escaping from the submarine earthquake.

“Hey there,” she turned her head to me, shooting two chains out from both hands towards different directions, “where is Scathach now?”

The chains slithered in the crowds but never attacked them, instead, aiming at the auxiliary fuel tank and Void Jump Drive simultaneously. “Souyo!” I shouted, watching him initiate his nature for half a second before the chain hit its target and swung a destructive blow on the chain to guard the drive from finishing jumping, with the cost of the other chain crashing onto the fuel tank, penetrating it and leaving a leaking hole in it. The homunculus grabbed Hua’s neck when he tried to shield me, tossed him to the bulkhead, and gently put her hand on my shoulder.

“Where is Scathach?” She kept that terrifying smile on her face, “Let her open a portal for us to leave.”

“Hey, don’t shoot!” Souyo pushed Brian to the ground right after he raised his rifle, “The leaking fuel, you bloody idiot!”

It was moments like this that people realised they were born with a certain kind of skill to survive like someone fell into the water and suddenly could keep floating. Subconsciously, the scene of that void portal cutting someone’s arm off flashed across my mind, my hand covered by a layer of void, and jabbed towards her face, only for her to catch with her bare hand. The skin on her palm was peeling off by the void like she was holding a spinning razor blade, yet she didn’t seem to mind.

“Oh, that’s adorable,” she said, twisting my hand into a broken angle and grinned even harder when she heard me scream, “Where is your Demi-Immortal friend?”

“Scathach!” I cried in fear, “Help me!”

“I’m here,” my Valkyrie replied from behind. The homunculus’s arm fell onto my shoulder, with her hand still wringing my hand and the fall gave my hand gnawing pain. I fell to the ground and Ms Josephine dragged me into her bosom, while I stared at the person in scarlet armour who pierced the homunculus’s heart with the silver-white spear made of bone, and tossed the body out of the breach of a hatch like she was a piece of brisket on the tips of barbecue fork.

“Scathach! Scathach!” I pushed Ms Josephine away, staggered towards my friend and yelled her name in a tearful voice. The helmet part of her armour melted as the morning mist lifted away, and my friend’s face showed up, but she raised her hands and stopped me from jumping into her arms.

“Hi, good boy, you are so brilliant,” she rubbed my hair and smiled, “I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry, I have thorns on this armour and no clothes under. Can you please be a good boy and give me a minute?”

I stood away and let Brian check my hand when my stomach cramped a little but I didn’t put too much thought onto it. Scathach raised her hand and seawater came from her void portal, washing down the leaked fuel before her body was covered in the mist of void and dressed herself. She squatted down, and reached out her arms, with a smile showing me that now I can get a hug.

“You are my hero,” I squeezed myself onto her, my chest had a tingle but I just thought I forced myself onto something sharp on her clothes.

“I saved five, you saved five hundred,” she rubbed my hair and kissed my forehead, “you are the hero here.”

“Speaking—of that, I actually don’t want to—be a hero now,” I felt short of breath, and my nose and throat turned moist like I was in a swimming pool, “I want to be a Druid like you—”

The next thing I saw was puking blood onto Scathach’s freshly changed clothes. The world flashed bloody red, and my mind fell into the void.