Chapter XXXII

Umbras

Adria had fell straight into a trap and was now surrounded. From the only tunnel that remained open, eight umbras emerged. They were radicals, followers of Gorbat, just like Meida, Timor, and Ghara. She found herself at a disadvantage, encircled by dictadurians about whom she knew nothing, heightening her concern for her chances.

A tall figure wearing a long, dark orange coat broke the circle and approached her. An sentinel made a umbra. She wasn't surprised.

"So, you thought about coming to our headquarters, breaking our security lines, torturing Ghara, our guard, getting in here, and then expected to do what, exactly?" That umbra was seething with anger, while the others positioned themselves around.

Adria ignored the questions, staring straight into the man’s eyes.

"Is she a rat trying to steal?" A woman with white hair insinuated.

"No. This little dove is searching for something. I can see it in her eyes; she is using a crystaphere tracker and night drops to dilate her pupils. Aren't you a resourceful one? How cute," the umbra with orange coat analyzed her.

"I do what I can," Adria mused, wondering if the man had visual enhancements.

Another figure laughed with irony.

Her mind raced, formulating exits from the situation she had found herself in.

A different woman, donning blue eye shadow, stepped closer. "A bold one! I'll give her that. Is she here for Corven?" she pondered before addressing Adria. "Are you? What's your name, furkana?"

"Elia," she continued with the lie.

"Wonderful. Well, explain to us. What are you doing here, Elia?" the evident leader, empowered by his orange coat asked with a veneer of politeness.

By then, Adria realized she was in an all-or-nothing scenario. "She’s right. I'm looking for Corven. The mother furkan owes me twenty thousand gatvits, and there's no way I'm leaving for Capitalia without collecting those debts. I don't care about your activities here; I'm sure you can understand my need to find him. It's strictly business."

The umbras exchanged glances, their suspicion evident. "Ah! We both agree on that, Elia," the man remarked, standing atop fresh blood. "Corven is gone, and there’s no return ticket from where he went; you'd be better off forgetting those gatvits."

Adria glanced at her path, marked by the blue particles. He was still alive; her fingers still pulsed through the ink, now faster than before. She had to feign ignorance. "Why? What did you do to him? I need that money!"

"You are in no position to demand anything," the leader laughed at her questioning.

She remained silent, fixing her gaze on him.

"What are you going to do, Yistel?" Another man, adorned with a vest made entirely of golden chains, interjected.

Yistel turned to him, irritated. "Tell her your name, Wuzan. How about that? Furkan idiot."

"We’re going to kill her anyway, aren’t we? She already saw our faces," Wuzan remarked, as if she were invisible.

Yistel ignored him. "Excuse my colleague’s lack of tact; we don’t educate umbras in the art of manners," he said, his apology dripping with insincerity.

"You didn’t have to announce it like that," he hissed to Wuzan before flashing a dreadful and sinister smile at Adria. "Goodbye, Elia. Don't assume you're innocent; this is retribution for Ghara."

If only he had known.

Adria was ready when some of the umbras lunged at her; she dodged their onslaught by propelling herself away with her ingraviboots. She threw a brown marble, retrieved from her pocket while Wuzan distracted Yistel, landing it right between them.

"Crystaphere!" an umbra shouted in a high-pitched voice.

Unlike their expectations, it didn't explode but vibrated mid-air.

It shattered. A buzzing whistle disarmed Yistel, Wuzan, and three others with a frequency intolerable to their ears. The rest tried to comprehend what had happened. Adria seized the moment. She hadn't had the opportunity to practice with her cane, but wielding it felt instinctive. The tool, made from borophene, featured adaptive weight, enhancing both strength and speed.

First, she sprinted towards Yistel, who was trying to alleviate the agony in his ears by covering them, a rookie mistake. She brought him down, striking the backs of his legs, throwing him off balance, and pressing a vital point in the solar plexus with her index finger, leaving him unconscious.

Adria then charged at Wuzan, who had managed to shake off the pain and assumed a defensive stance. The borocane struck his stomach from far away, knocking the wind out of him. A second later, he was downed with another blow to the face. Adria's crosier reverted to its standard size after employing its expanding and retractile features.

"Furka! My nose!" he wailed as a kick smashed into his face, shattering his nose further. Around her, bodies began to stir. Three remaining umbras advanced, weapons ready: two swords and a crossbow. The latter fired an arrow at her, which she narrowly avoided. As both blades aimed for her, and another projectile flew away, the dictadurian blocked them with her retractile staff, pulling it back, contracting the weapon before throwing it back at their legs.

She was quicker and more agile than the three umbras combined. Had it not been for a second wave from the sonic crystaphere reaching them, Adria would have dispatched them with ease.

They doubled over in agony. This time, she didn't wait for them to approach; she charged, spinning the borocane in her right hand while the umbras writhed in pain. Using her speed to unleash the force that sent her weapon hurtling towards her adversaries. The stick expanded, striking each target in succession three times with a flick of her wrist, like a whip.

The nameless umbras collapsed on the rock floor, one after another. Adria reached them and pressed vital points, rendering those minions unconscious. She took a second to breathe and assess her situation. Only three umbras remained. The challenge was far from over. Adria smiled; most hadn't seen her coming, except, of course, those who were now opposing her.

"Abrante, do your thing," commanded the only woman left standing.

The shortest one approached with caution; he held a chain between his hands, spinning both ends. Adria noticed that as they spun faster, their temperature increased, shifting from silver to orange in instants, with sparks and fire erupting from them. That umbra hurled the metallic whips towards her, which she narrowly avoided by a centimeter after activating her boots once more. The fiery chains returned faster than expected, forcing her to swing around, jumping before they land again. Abrante maintained an extreme focus on her movements.

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Adria knew she had to create a distraction before a chain reached her with those continuous movements. Sweat dripped from her forehead as she turned offensive and struck one chain with her staff, jumped while it wrapped around the borocane, and landed right before him.

He was too slow to retract the other chain before Adria ensnared his body with the one she had captured. Abrante yelled in pain, burned; along with his chains, he collapsed to the ground as they returned to their original silver color. Two umbras remained.

If she was correct, these two must outsmart the rest; they had kept to themselves, quiet, studying her movements while she dealt with the others. They advanced.

A man, the tallest among them, drew a long black sword encrusted with red crystals and marked with a beautiful, sacred pattern from a scabbard behind his shoulder.

The umbra beside him stared at Adria with a devilish grin. "That was just my apprentice. You won't be so lucky from now on," she taunted, similar to Abrante but far more intimidating. Two golden ropes wrapped around her arms, ending in two thin, dark silver spearheads.

Before Adria realized it, she launched them at her. She deflected them with swift movements of her borocane, charging towards her enemy while dodging dark flying needles. She leaped and landed opposite where she had been.

"Olia, behind you!" a voice from her right side warned.

The man raised his sword towards Adria, attempting to protect his partner; he aimed straight at the outsider’s head with a swift move.

She met his black blade halfway with her borocane.

The force created by the borophene clashing with graphene sent shivers through their bones. Adria pushed him with all her might, raised a knee, and struck the man straight in the testicles. It worked.

He emitted a pained "Furkana!" gasping for breath. She struck him once more, right in the ear, sending him tumbling to the floor. This gave her crucial time to turn and prepare before Olia's new wave of attacks reached her. The woman deflected those dark spears for the third time; now, having studied Olia's movements, she anticipated her next actions. When the golden ropes retracted back to their owner, Adria's dark silver cane extended, reaching Olia's forehead unnoticed and striking her with such force that she fell backward.

The borocane reverted to its standard size as Adria charged at her; the umbra stood up before the intruder reached her and spun those spears around in circles. She halted before advancing any further; those stings seemed lethal.

"Silvan! Stop whining and kill this furkana!" Olia shouted at the man behind her.

Despite his pain, he obeyed and advanced.

Adria didn't squander this moment; she slid to the floor and rolled, allowing her to close the distance to Olia just before she threw her golden ropes again. Adria failed at evading the attack, and one of the spears gashed her arm.

It was a deep cut, and blood seeped out, but instead of tending to it, Adria pressed on. She activated her ingraviboots to rocket towards Olia, wrapped around her legs, and caused the umbra to fall headfirst to the ground.

With one umbra left, the circular room fell silent.

"Who are you?" Silvan stared at her, seething with rage.

"No one," Adria responded as she caught her breath and stood up, leaving Olia grounded.

The last umbra waited, mindful of his opponent's abilities. Disregarding her wound. Adria ran, stopped, and darted in a different direction, then sprinted and halted again, returning to her original position. She repeated the zigzag motion while Silvan watched, attempting to discern her strategy.

Once more, she used her borocane as a whip, pointing at him. Out of nowhere, the dictadurian felt a sudden pain on her legs and fell to the ground, dropping her weapon and breaking her nose as she hit the cave floor, too slow to cover her face. Something pressed both of Adria’s legs and prevented her from moving further; she turned and saw the golden ropes wrapped around her legs. A mistake, she realized, Olia was conscious.

The intruder tried to remove them, but they tightened when she did; pain crawled up her thighs as the spears attached to her with tiny metallic thorns. Adria bled through her pants. Silvan walked towards her, while Olia stayed in position; a small pool of blood had formed where their enemy had tried to stand back on her feet, feeling goosebumps all over her body.

The man sheathed his sword with red glows and knelt next to her; he grabbed Adria by the neck, choking her, and lifted her up to his eye level. “You thought you could handle us by yourself, didn’t you, furkana?” he spat in her face. She forgot about the pain with a rage that boiled inside her. She took Silvan’s head and smashed hers towards it using both hands. The impact was so hard he lost his grip on her neck, disoriented. They both fell to the ground; everything became blurry for a moment.

Crawling on the floor, Adria found her borocane before Silvan could recover. She extended it and struck him under the chin, making him fall back—another umbra with broken teeth.

With every bit of strength she had left, Adria pulled away from the chains Olia held on her legs and activated her ingraviboots. It was enough to catch her off guard. The woman fell and hit her face in such a way that made Adria confident she had broken a few bones.

She stood, pain in her legs, and took her cane. Silvan was halfway through getting back on his feet when she slammed his face with the whip, making him fall on his side, knocked out.

Blood dripped from her thighs as she returned to Olia, who was surrounded by the menacing golden ropes. She turned the woman’s body around to reveal a bruised and bloody face. There was a broken cheekbone, a bleeding nose, and three cracked teeth. The umbra seemed far from being aware of anything anymore.

Adria took the handles of those chains from Olia’s hands and deactivated the splinters attached to her thighs; they lost their grip, but she still had to pull them out by force, one by one. She almost fainted. Around her, eight bodies lay unconscious, scattered across the circular chamber; within the last twelve hours, Adria had fought eleven of Gorbat’s umbras and had come out victorious. She had defeated them in combat, something that, if she were back in Malkuth living amongst the Sephirot, would have been praised. Instead, Gorbat would put a massive bounty on her head.

When those umbras regained consciousness, they would remember her face and how one dictadurian ridiculed their mighty strength.

Before worrying too much about it, her mind started planning. Adria stood, bruised and bleeding, but proud of having survived that situation.

She brought out her leftover bits of tracker crystaphere and went to the small pond of blood that had caught her attention earlier. It remained almost intact, between two unconscious bodies.

Savoring her victory, Adria took the longest shard from those smoky dark violet pieces and threw it into the scarlet liquid. It glowed blue right away, just like the fingerprint on Corven’s glass. The stains on Adria’s fingers gained intensity; she could feel his heartbeat with more clarity. It beat with more vitality than before. The blue particles in her eye gained consistency and color, showing her the path to the prisoner.

Victorious and worried, she left the battleground and entered the dark depths of the only accessible hallway. Moments later, the woman arrived at a chamber that resembled a sort of kitchen. At its end, a lonely ladder led up to a hatch. The dictadurian activated her graviless boots once more, pulling her way up from the rails and avoiding unnecessary pain. She had to take care of her wounds outside that umbra lair. Adria ignored the pain, trying not to faint.

The hatch opened with ease. A dimmed down moonlight shone through Dictaduria’s pollution. Logic told her she was on the opposite side of Ghara’s outpost. Behind the mountain facing H section. It was 2:15 am, maybe 2:30 am, according to Malkuth’s natural satellite. She had three hours left before sunrise, then things would become a lot more complicated. Adria had to find Corven before then.

She wouldn’t give up on him or the alters, not after what had happened with Gorbat’s minions.

The woman looked down onto a dead forest behind the mountain; the trees were dry and petrified. To her right, an active construction site was building a new section of blocks in the distance, following the dry mountain range covered by streets soon to be inhabited by new dictadurians.

Before descending, Adria took a minute. There was enough space between her and the umbras; she closed the hatch behind her and, without wasting a second, pulled down her now ruined deniyon pants, enduring the pain of fabric detaching from her wounded skin, and sat on the cold ground. The chill of the rocks against her skin made her shiver.

She snatched her bag and brought out the leftover curaten she had used on Corven the day before. She cleaned the wound with another piece of cloth, which she discarded after removing most of the blood; Adria spread the green slime on her arm and thighs, cauterizing them. It burned.

With a quick move, she snapped her nose back into place, hoping it would stay aligned. In determination, after deciding to leave her physical pain for later, Adria stood up and pulled her bloodied pants back on, ready to continue in search of Corven.

****

That's it for Chapter XXXII!

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