The ship is unbelievable to Raphael's eyes, it is an utter manifestation of what future spacecraft could endeavor to resemble in the years to come. The area he is in must have been an eatery of some sorts. Three small, silver-like metal tables are scattered around the area in various locations with three times the amount of chairs of the apparent same material thrown around the room like as if a band of mafia men had decided to come in the night before and make the place pay them protection money. The cooking area doesn't look any more tidy, all of the cooking equipment and some bottles of what look like high-grade alien wine are thrown across the eatery.
But no matter what had happened to this area, it is still an amazing sight to behold. The floor looks almost as if it is made out of gold, the color so reminiscent of the beautiful treasury that it nearly radiates the pure awe of royalty. The walls are made out of a combination of the same gold-like material and a silver color that drapes down from the walls and meets in the center in a kind of wavy-manner. The walls themselves are decorated with a beautiful alien pattern that is so magnificent that it could never be imagined by the people of earth. There are brilliant brass lights hanging from the walls that glow a blue, non-hot fire, with such an un-heat to them that they are nearly cool to the touch, another undeniable proof that whatever alien civilization that had crash-landed on his home planet is above his world in terms of technology.
He moves a few feet into the eatery and touches a nearby table. The metal is cool to the touch and extremely slick, showing that either it was cleaned before the attack on the ship or it uses a self-cleaning agent that is completely unknown to earth, or just some material that is not available on his home planet. He pays the table no more mind and examines the rest of the room. Over to his left is a beautiful set of metal stairs that lead up to the second layer of the ship. The pathway up is painted a gorgeous, shinning silver, that or they are made completely out of silver.
At this point, Raphael is starting to believe that this isn't a scout ship. The amount of rare and valuable materials that make up the ship are way too prevalent aboard the ship for it to be for anything other than royalty. There are highly valuable people aboard this ship and it has just been shot down into earth's atmosphere. Earth is in for some deep shit.
Raphael finds nothing in the room that is valuable enough to consider staying in the room and decides that he should continue onward. He walks over to the staircase and climbs the stairs up to the second story.
This area seems to be where the crew sleeps. The area has a sharp T-shaped intersection that has four rooms leading down the middle to the end with two individual areas on each side of the hallway. Raphael doesn't know they are personal rooms until he opens one of the doorways and finds a full bed and closet in one of the rooms with all sorts of trinkets placed around the area. He explores all of the quarters and finds no bodies or living creatures of any kind inside. After he searches the last room at the far right, he let's out a deep sigh and walks away, leaving the door wide open. He walks slowly back to the intersection of the hallway and goes to the right staircase that leads up to the third story. He walks up the stairway with a certain type of concern that can only come from worry.
The third story branches out into the egg-shaped portion of the ship, since it has now become obvious to Raphael that the area is much larger. Once Raphael exits the staircase, he notices that there isn't another set of stairs nearby, and as such, he realizes that he is going to have to search for them. So he sets off, walking calmly down the hallway to his left, looking for any sign of life among the now dimming hallway. The corridor goes around in a full square around the area with apparent rooms in the center. Raphael sees that the hallway is lit with exactly the same lights that he had seen in the eatery from before, but most of them have gone out for some reason.
As he walks to the corner of the hallway he is in, he notices the silhouette of a body laying against the corner of the purple-painted wall through the shadow of the blackened area up ahead. He's delighted to finally find a body among this hopeless search and hopes that he would be able to dispel some clues to his mysteries by whatever this person might be able to tell him.
The body is laying motionless against the side of the wall with the only sign of life being a faint huffing of the person's chest every few seconds, which Raphael can barely make out through the person's body armor. From the nearby light, Raphael can just barely make out the colors of the armor and a slight description of a face through the thick visor on the person's helmet.
The armor itself is made of some kind of thick, plastic-like metal that is placed around the body to provide full protection. The areas that can't be covered with armor are protected by some sort of resistant mesh that looks like it goes in a type of scale fashion down the arms, legs, and body. All of the armor is colored with a primary white and a secondary light blue, which Raphael figures is a military's color.
The helmet that adorns the person's head completely blocks out all ways of identifying the person with it being equipped. The large, black visor permanently attached to the front of the mask is blocking the view. The screen comes out from the top of the helmet and bends down over the person's face and clicks down into the chin strap. The helmet completely encompasses the soldier's cranium and nullifies even the ability to tell what their skin color is. As far as Raphael can tell from the body he has just found, however, it is almost exactly human.
Almost because the body, somehow, looks different then it should, at least from Raphael's perspective, Raphael can't quite place his finger on it, but something about the parts of the skin that he can see just seem incredibly strange, but in a way that he can't understand why. Intrigued, Raphael starts examining the body for a way to possibly pull off a piece of the armor. He tries the helmet first, but it doesn't budge. He starts examining the rest of the body further from front to back and eventually finds that he can pull off the gloves, which aren't clamping onto anything. He lays the person back against the wall and grasps the person's wrist, pulling it up for him to view. He puts one of his hands over top of the other and grasps the armor sleeve, while his other hand grasps the glove, and pulls in opposite directions. As he pulls, his eyes widen at the sight that he is now beholding.
The person's hand is animated, like from a cartoon, almost reminiscent of being hand-drawn, but yet they are real.
He can't believe his eyes. There is a living, breathing cartoon laying unconscious in front of him. Even more, they've just flown down from outer space! Raphael shakes his head repeatedly to make sure that he isn't seeing things, but he isn't, it's real. He sits down in front of the body and slowly attempts to regain control of his senses.
Slowly, he starts to calm down and is able to make sense of what is in front of him. “Okay okay okay, Raph, calm down. These people are aliens, of course they're going to look different from us, they're from outer space! Whoever this person is, they look like they're a soldier and they seem injured.... I wonder what gender they are?” Raphael thinks. Raphael looks down at the now-bare hand and examines it a little more closely. The person has bright pink skin and their hand is slender, yet muscular, like the hand of a female warrior. “Okay, I think she's a girl.” Raphael concludes in his mind. He let's out a worried sigh while looking down one of the nearby hallways. “I'll come back for her, but I need to check the rest of the ship before I leave.” Raphael picks up the female soldier and leans her as comfortably as he can against the corner of the wall. Raphael says lightly “I'll be back” before continuing to walk down the corridor.
Luckily for Raphael, the staircase isn't far away. It's only halfway down the hallway that he is walking through. Raphael's happy to see it, he knows that he needs to get the ship search done before he gets caught. The stairway is quite easy to see through the dark hallway. Both of the blue lights that are built into the sides of it are still functioning, but none of the other nearby lights seem to be working, so it basically looks like a beacon. Raphael doesn't believe that he can waste anymore time, he needs to get through this as quickly as he can. His leg's catch hold of his worry and begin to increase their speed, eventually going from a slow walk up to a slow jog and then into a sprint up the stairs.
Raphael is now on the fourth floor. This area seems relatively small compared to the third floor. It's a narrow hallway with two mechanical doorways leading to two separate rooms in the center of the hallway. Raphael goes to the one on his right first. From what he can see from just looking at the door, he knows it's too heavily damaged from either the crash or from another type of attack that has occurred to the ship for it to be opened. “This must lead to the engine room, which must be why the door is destroyed. There might be someone in there, but I should search the other room first, then I'll see if I can open this door.“ he thinks.
Raphael pulls himself away from the door and then goes to the door exactly opposite of the engine room.
From what he can remember, the window portion of the ship is in the center width area of the egg-shaped area of the ship, which means that it is on the fourth floor, and Raphael is in that area. All of this information flows into Raphael's mind and he concludes that the room behind the door he is at must be the cockpit. Raphael examines the door quizzically for any possible way to open it. The door is made out of some kind of cool to the touch, deep blue metal with a vertical metal double X going through the door.
There is a key-card scanner to the right of the door with a plastic key-card halfway through it. Apparently whoever the card belongs to must have been about to swipe it when the ship was attacked and then left in a rush for some reason. Raphael thinks to himself that it might belong to that person he found in the hallway earlier. Raphael takes his worries off of why the key-card is there and just decides that it is just a lucky miracle. Raphael grabs a hold of the half-slid key-card and pulls it out of the slot. He moves the key-card in front of his eyes and is surprised to see that the card is written in his domestic language, American-English.
The card has a picture of an adult woman as the profile. The woman has bright pink, animated skin and shinning black hair going down behind her back. From what Raphael can remember about the body he found earlier, it has the same skin pigment, which means that unless all the aliens have the same skin color, this is a picture of that very person. Raphael looks to the left of the picture and printed in bold, silver letters is the name 'Sherah Yulir'. Raphael figures that that must be the name of the owner of the card. Above the portrait are the words 'UMA Military ID'. “That must be the civilization that this ship belongs to.” thinks Raphael.
Suddenly Raphael hears a gun fire outside of the ship followed by even more gunfire. It startles him and makes him flinch. He looks around repeatedly as he is unsure of what the sound was, since he has never heard a gun fire before.
The gunfire increases outside of the ship, with apparently there being some kind of battle going on in the forest. This pushes Raphael to rush forward. If anything, he is going to hide in the cockpit until the gunfire stops. Raphael swipes the key-card quickly across the scanner and begins to freak out when nothing happens.
Fortunately, he is able to figure out what the problem is in a few seconds. The card is being slid the wrong way. Raphael flips the card in his hand and slides the card again. There is a small clicking noise as the card slides out of the slot and a green light bleeps on above the door, with it sliding back a few feet a second later. The metal blockade stops and slides to the right without turning, tucking it neatly up against the wall of the cockpit.
As Raphael walks into the cockpit, he notices exactly how massive it is compared to the room that he was in before. It looks about half the size of the fourth floor, he imagines. The cockpit is filled with computer consoles that are meant for everything from monitoring the ship's velocity to monitoring it's core temperature to monitoring the gravity plates on every floor. The cockpit is built in a half-oval shape that rolls around the room and stops at the back wall. The ceiling isn't in any kind of oval, however, and flattens out at the top. The room is very large and is painted, or made out of, a sleek silver color or material. The console's snake around the round portion of the room and stop halfway to the end of the wall, with more consoles positioned in the center of the room in a 3x2 line.
Raphael rushes into the room and attempts to shut the door behind him, but the key-card slot in the cockpit is malfunctioning. He pays it little mind and runs to the front of the room where two unconscious bodies are sitting on sliding chairs positioned in front of the multiple consoles of the cockpit.
Raphael stops a few feet from the bodies and begins to worry if everyone from the ship was knocked unconscious from the impact. He examines the person to his right first. The person is animated, like the person he had seen before, but he does not have pink skin. He isn't unconscious though...
Because he is dead. There is no sign that he is still breathing, and at the current time, Raphael knows of no other way of checking on the man's life. From what Raphael can see, the man must have smashed his head against his console when the ship crashed and his temple was impaled on one of the stick switches, with his head being forced away moments later. Despite being slightly frightened by the sight, Raphael is able to move on and examine the other body.
The other body is a much more chilling sight. The man lays slumped over his computer console completely limp with a pipe going straight through the back of his head and exiting out the his forehead. Raphael reels back in fright as soon as the realization of the horrid sight is fully clear to him. He almost doesn't want to go near the body, but then he sees the man's lip's moving. Raphael instantly knows that somehow the man had survived the impaling and knows that he is in the room, and now is attempting to communicate with him. With a still-beating fright emanating in his heart, he creeps towards the body with a single step at a time.
When he is a foot away from the body, he stops and listens. He attempts to hear the man's voice over top of the lasting gunfire outside, but it is to no avail, the voice is too silent for him to make out what he is saying. Raphael takes a deep breath before leaning in closer to the body, placing his left ear next to the man's mouth to try and make out what he is saying.
Past the violent thumping of fear from his heart, he can just barely make out the silent tone of the man's voice. So quietly and repeatedly, like a secret message left in a recording, the man says in a light, silent tone “Pull it out...”
Raphael pushes his head away and can barely think what his next choice should be over his overwhelming fear. The man obviously needs his help, but pulling out the pipe would most likely kill him. He's heard of situations like this before, a person is impaled on some kind of sharp object while still being alive and begs for it to be pulled out, but in reality, that very same implement is the only thing that is keeping them in the world of the living, and without serious medical attention, they would die if it is removed. But then again, this is an alien that is requesting this, an unknown life form that may not even have any vital organs in it's head. But he looks human enough....
Raphael eventually concludes that if the person is awake enough after being stabbed through the back of the head that he can communicate, then he would probably survive having the pipe removed. “Alright alright alright, I'm going to have to pull this thing out fast and straight, if I don't, then I probably will damage his brain. Fast and straight, fast and straight.... This guy better live through this....” Raphael thinks. Though having immense fear at the time from both getting close to the grievous injury and the possible chance of killing the man by removing the object itself, Raphael slowly takes up a position behind the body. With his body trembling, he grabs a hold of the bulky end of the pipe with both hands. He closes his eyes, not wanting to see what the outcome would be of removing the thick metal rod. With all the strength in his body, he reels back with all the might he has in his young arms.
The pipe slides out with a slight scraping noise, but it comes out clean without a single jolt on the way. The man's head jerks back from the force used to pull the pipe, but his head then falls back down to the computer console.
The man falls completely silent, making Raphael think that he might have just killed the man. He throws the pipe down in frustration and cusses in anger.
He wanders to the other side of the room while thinking over what to do next. He has already done everything he could think of, explored every part of the ship and found only a few aliens, with all of them being either unconscious or dead. He slumps his head down and sighs out of admittance. “Well, I guess I have no other choice, I'm going to have to wait until all that noise outside stops and then I'll just head back home. Still, I did... just... kill....”
Suddenly, as if it is some kind of minor miracle, Raphael hears a great gasp come from behind him. He spins around to see that the man he just pulled the pipe out of has now reeled his head back up to eye level. Raphael can't believe it, the man is somehow alive. The man let's out a slightly scrappy and rugged voice over the gunfire. “Damn, that was frightening, first time in a while since I got hurt that bad. Hey! Whoever pulled whatever that was out of my head, can you come over here? It's urgent!”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Raphael walks over with joy in his heart. The man somehow survived what happened to him. Raphael calls out as he walks closer “It was me, I did it!”
The man can't turn his head entirely around to see Raphael, his chair has bent from the crash and pinned his lower body in between it and the ship's consoles. All the man can do is attempt to roll his head toward the disembodied voice as best he can. “Well whoever you are, could you hurry it up! Judging from the noise outside, I'd say that time is running out! The Nes. Demu must have already landed!”
By the time the man finishes his sentence, Raphael is already at his side. At this point, Raphael is both confused and amazed. Confused at the odd name that the man had said, and amazed at what happened to the man's head.
The man's head is completely healed, not leaving a single mark or scar where the pipe had been. Raphael is utterly and positively amazed. He wonders to himself what possible reason there could be for why the man's head has healed at such a remarkable rate. “Your head, how-”
“That doesn't matter right now.” the man interrupts as he looks at Raphael “Wow, it must have taken a lot of guts for a kid your age to be able to pull whatever that was out of my head. Unless your race's body ages a lot more slowly than your minds.”
“Um, no, I don't think that-”
“I guess that I was wrong than,” says the man with a hint of haste in his voice “but that isn't important right now. Listen to me closely, and I mean Very closely! On the third floor of this ship, there's a square-shaped assortment of rooms, I need you to go to one of the rooms down the right corridor, it will be right in the center of the hallway and you've probably passed it while you were on your way up here. There is a very important person in there that is codenamed 'the Key'. You're going to need a key-card to get into the room, here take my...” The man grabs at his pant's pocket desperately, but to no avail, his lower body is pinned and getting to his pockets is neigh impossible. “Damn. This is bad.” The man looks past Raphael and towards the other pilot's body. “Fuck, we lost Huro. I told him to get the treatment, but he just wouldn't listen....”
Raphael now has a look of utter confusion painted across his face. He has no idea what this alien's dialogue has suddenly branched off into. “Treatment? What are you-”
“It doesn't matter...” speaks the man. “Just search his body for his key-card and go to the room I told you about.”
“Well you aren't going to have to worry about that,” says Raphael as he pulls out Sherah's key-card from his pocket and lifts it up to his face. “I found this sticking in the card slot next to the door.”
The man's face suddenly brightens with hope as he raises his head to look at Raphael. Seeing the key-card risen in the air is enough to brighten up the current situation, it seems. “Boy, you have no idea how lucky we are right now. Get down to that room as fast as you can, get the Key and run, run and don't look back, run as fast as you can, Now!”
Raphael is about to run back out the door when a thought rushes through his head. He turns back around to look at the pinned-down man. “Wait, what about you?”
The man is now getting slightly mad at Raphael for not listening. He billows out angrily “I don't matter at this point, just go!” and with that, Raphael runs as fast as he can out of the cockpit door and back down the staircase he had come from.
He stops for a split second once he has gotten to the bottom of the steps and looks back and forth between the hallways, since in his haste he almost forgot which way he was told to go. Raphael runs back down the way he had come once he remembers the directions and stops for a second to glance at the body he had passed before. As far as he can tell, she is still unconscious. Raphael decides that there is nothing he can do for her at the moment, since what he needs to do right now is more important then she is.
Raphael begins to walk away when he suddenly feels something grasping his leg. He looks back to see that the unconscious body has now awakened and is holding his leg with her right hand. He eyes the person as she coughs before speaking. “You don't look like a Demu, but than again this visor is hard as hell to see past when it's powered off. Do you mind helping me up?”
Raphael is now completely sure when he hears the person speak that it is a female. He grasps both of his hands around her right hand and wrist and lifts her off the floor and to her feet. She sighs as she reaches behind her helmet and presses some button that Raphael did not see before. The borders of the helmet noticeably decompress and loosen, like as if it was suctioned to her head. She grabs a hold of the bottom of the headgear and lifts it over her head, revealing a near-maidenly face of a young adult female. Her face is the same color as her hand, bright pink. Her hair is sleek black and shiny, leading down the back of her head and across her back in a ponytail. Earlier before, Raphael had noticed on the key-card that there was some kind of marking on her cheek, but now that he is seeing her in person, he can clearly make out that marking is actually a tattoo of a tribal-like phoenix. There is no doubting it, this person is Sherah Yulir.
“Damn, that helmet gets hot when the A/C system is shut off. Well anyway, do you mind telling me where we landed at?” asks Sherah.
“Well, you're on earth, I can tell you that,” answers Raphael. “but we need to go. That pilot guy said that the Demu are here and-”
“What!?” screams Sherah in response to Raphael's answer. “Damn, fuckers got here fast.... Listen, I left my key-card near the cockpit, did you pick it up along the way?”
“Yep,” says Raphael gleefully as he flips Sherah's key-card out of his pocket and presents it to Sherah. “It was still in the slot-thingy when I got up there. I kept it with me in case I might need it later, and I guess that I need it right now, as it seems.”
Sherah snatches the key-card from Raphael's hand and places it in her uniform pocket. “Thanks, going to need that later once I get us out of this mess. Now come on, we need to get June out of here!”
“June?” asks Raphael. “Who's June? Can I have that card back for a second so I can go get that 'Key' person?”
Sherah slaps her hand to her face and sighs. “Listen kid, we don't have enough time for us to sit down and discuss everything, so all you need to know right now is that June and the Key are the same person.”
A look of realization spreads across Raphael's face. “Oh... alright, I got it!”
“By the way,” speaks Sherah as she starts walking down the hallway with Raphael following close behind her. “what's your name? We're probably going to be seeing a lot of each other for the next few days if the Demu are already here. I'm Sherah, by the way.”
“I know,” speaks Raphael honestly. “I read it on your key-card. My name's Raphael, Raphael H. Danteo.”
“You got that wrong, ya know?”
“What do you mean 'I got that wrong', How could I get my name wrong?”
“No, not your name, I meant how you said it. You're supposed to tell your last name first, and then say your entire name right after, not your first name first.”
Raphael shrugs his shoulders as he walks. “If you say so....”
By the time they finish speaking, they are already at the door. The frame itself blends seamlessly with the walls surrounding it. Being exactly the same color and design, the only way of differentiating the door from the rest of the hallway is the slight change of the design and a slight discoloration in it's surface. The fact that the light's around the doorway have dimmed from the crash and nearly all the other hallway lights have been blasted out also helps the door's camouflage. Finding the door eventually ends purely on Sherah's memory of where the room entrance is at, which is just enough for the two of them to find it.
Sherah slides her key-card through a barely visible key-card scanner right as the gunfire outside dies down and comes to a complete stop. Sherah looks toward where the sound of the firefight was taking place moments ago and frowns as the door's part and slide away. “That can't be good...” comes out of Sherah's lips smoothly and silently before a soft and pained voice calls out Sherah's name from inside the room.
Sherah spins around and looks into the now opened room and sees the source of the voice. There is a young girl, around the same age as Raphael, laying with her back against the right most wall of the room and holding her left foot in a wounded fashion.
Sherah runs as fast as she can into the room while calling out June's name. She kneels down beside her and places a hand on her back while looking at June's apparently wounded foot. “June, what's wrong with your foot.”
While holding back tears of pain, June chokes out the words “I don't know! All I remember is that I got thrown by something and then I fell asleep. When I woke up, my foot started hurting.”
Sherah grabs June's foot as gently as she can, but the pain is enough for June to let out a yelp of anguish. “June, you need to stay calm so I can see what's wrong, okay?”
June, with a quivering lip and a tear in her eye nods her head.
While Sherah checks on June, Raphael looks around the room that he has now entered.
The area looks like a very regal bedroom. The entire room is decorated in red rubies and white pearls dotting around the ruby-red painted walls. The flooring is made out of beautifully-made marble slabs that are colored pure white. At the center of the room is a king-sized master bed with exquisite white shrouds going down each side of the bed from the ceiling of the room and ending about halfway down to the mattress.
The rest of the room is decorated on all sides with any possible type of furniture, all of them being made of some kind of thick wood that is painted a beautiful gold color that could almost be considered natural. Raphael only realizes that it is not modified when he moves to touch a vanity and discovers that there is no trace of paint of any kind on the furniture. Whatever planet that these people are from, they have trees that are colored gold, and probably many other kinds of regal colors too. “Hmm, June must be really important if her room is made out of such high-quality stuff.” Raphael thinks.
Sherah stands as Raphael thinks to himself, picking up June in the process. She turns to Raphael as she lifts up June and speaks worriedly. “Hey Raphael,” almost unnoticed by anyone at the time, June's eyes flash and she gasps as she hears Raphael's name being called. “we have a problem. June's ankle was sprained when we crashed and there's no way that she can walk, and with the war that was happening outside moments ago, that really limits our fighting ability. Judging from how your muscle's look, I don't think you are strong enough to hold her up, so I'm going to have to hold her. That's really bad since I'm probably the only one here with combat experience.... I guess we have no choice, we're going to have to try to make a run for it from whoever is waiting for us out there, your people or the Demu. Do you know any place that we can hide out at for a while?”
Raphael considers the situation for a second and concludes that he needs to help these people out, keep them safe from the government or whoever else might be coming after them. “You guys can stay at my house for a while, it's the safest place I can think of staying at and my parents are gone for the week, so there shouldn't be any problems with you two staying there until they get back.”
Suddenly the young girl in Sherah's arms speaks out to Raphael. Her voice is almost like a ray of hope to their situation. There's something about her tone of voice that makes the situation seem better. “I'm sorry, Raphael, but I can't stay at your house. There's a really important person that I need to find on your planet, and I need to find him really soon. That and the Demu are here too, so if I stay with you, they'll be coming after you! Please understand that this guy I'm supposed to find is going to help me save everyone by-”
“June!” Sherah scowls. “This kid and the people of this world can't be dragged into this mess!” Sherah turns her head to Raphael. “Please, just forget about what June said about our objective, you have nothing to do with it. With any luck, we'll be out of your hair in less than a few days and then you can go back to your everyday life. Now, Raphael, can you lead us to your house. The longer we wait, the higher the danger level gets.”
Raphael nods his head at her question and walks out of the bedroom door with Sherah following closely behind. Raphael rounds around the doorway and continues down the hallway until he reaches the well-lit stairway.
As Raphael goes down to the second floor, he starts to wonder about who exactly the Nes Demu are that the pilot was talking about. Whoever they are, they're definitely not friendly and he is probably not going to get any more information out of these people any time soon about who they are. He decides, as he walks down to the first floor, that this is something that doesn't concern him and that there is probably nothing that he can do about it anyway.
Raphael runs to the opening that had opened earlier in the ship's frame and looks out to examine the area outside and see who had won the battle earlier. From what he can see, the police have basically been massacred. Dead policemen lay around the area in pools of their own blood with wounds ranging from stab wounds to slashing wounds to bullet wounds.
Despite there being many policemen dead on the ground, there are even more black-robed men scattered around the area. Most of them are either dead or dying, but around ten to twenty of them are still standing unscathed. Most of the black-robed men have scattered around the area and are looting the remains of the dead and dying with barely any type of authority or moral fiber keeping them in line.
In the back of the group, almost completely out of Raphael's view, are two men with gray skin and deformed faces clad in leather armor, wielding swords crafted out of some kind of black steel. In between these two men is another, larger man with gray skin and a black steel axe who is speaking into some kind of wireless device. Raphael concludes that the man with the axe must be calling in for reinforcements, since the recent battle took out most of the troops, to refill his ranks and is probably going to search the ship afterward.
Sherah calls out to Raphael as he watches the outside area. “What do you see?”
“About twenty or so men, all wearing black robes. The police lost this battle, they're all dead. We need to find another way out, there's no way we're getting out this way.”
Sherah considers what Raphael has said for a second while thinking of more possible ways out. Her face brightens after a few seconds as she speaks “Follow me, the entrance to the ship probably wasn't too damaged from the forced landing and will probably open up with my key-card.” After she speaks her last word, she motions with her head for Raphael to follow as she walks to the other side of the room.
The entrance wasn't very damaged by the landing, just as the three had hoped. As Sherah goes closer to the door, she orders Raphael to the front. Sherah, having no hands free to reach into her pocket and pull out her key-card, tells Raphael to pull out her key-card from her uniform pocket. He does as he is instructed and swipes the card in the nearby scanner. The door barely makes a noise as it opens, to the delight of the party, and the group moves single-file out of the released bridge out into the midday sun. Raphael goes first and Sherah follows close behind with June in her arms.
Raphael, knowing that the only way back to his house is to go back the way he had come, peaks over the edge of the portion of the ship he is at to examine the battlefield.
From what he can see, the people with the black robes are spread out around the entire clearing, and there is no way to get around them other than looping around through the forest, if they aren't in the forest already.
Raphael motions to Sherah and points toward the forest, she understands immediately. “Raphael,” she states “I know that you don't know anything about the Nes Demu, but they tend to use forests as their entry points.”
Unfortunately, Raphael doesn't understand what she means, so he shrugs his shoulders. Sherah, seeing that he doesn't understand what she means, sighs. “But judging from the fact that the Demu are all over the clearing and we don't have a single speck of cover, I guess we have no choice. Come on, let's get going and hope for the best.”
Sherah turns around and nudges her head in the forest's direction. “You're going to have to lead the way though....”
After hearing Sherah speak, Raphael moves ahead of her into the forest with Sherah following close behind him.
Raphael plans out his route quickly. He is going to loop around in the cover of the forest and move around the robed men in the clearing. Once he has made a crescent around the clearing, he will be in a direct line to his house. If all goes well, the robed men will still think that they are in the ship when they are already back at his house. He thinks that it's the perfect plan, but the words that Sherah had spoken moments earlier are still echoing in the back of his head. Even though he didn't completely understand what she had meant, he knows that she knows something, but she hadn't phrased it right to him. Despite having minor worries, he continues on through the forest, making the arc as soon as he figures that they are far enough into the forest.
As he moves among the trees, he senses that his plan was a mistake. He now understands, at least in a small sense, what Sherah was trying to say. The Demu are in the forest, not just the clearing. His stride eventually breaks from a walk into a fearful jog. Once the group is about halfway through the crescent, Sherah calls out as quietly as possible for Raphael to stop.
Raphael comes to a complete stop and turns around to look at Sherah. From her facial expression, Raphael can tell that Sherah is having the same worries that he is. “Raphael... we're nearly surrounded and we have no other choice.” Sherah extends her arms in a gesture to give June to him. “Take June and run back to your house, I'm going to try and draw their attention away from you.”
Raphael is nearly speechless as he tries to lift June's eighty-pound body with his unfit muscles. “But Sherah, what about you? June can't make that journey that you were talking about on her own, she's going to need you!”
Without saying a word, Sherah leaves June in Raphael's arms and motions away from the two. Raphael can sense an air of desperation around Sherah, she knows that this is the end and this is her last, final bid to keep the Key alive. After taking a deep breath, Sherah mutters “Keep her safe....” and runs back the way she had came.
Raphael, with now a heavy task laid upon him, stands rooted into the ground as he watches Sherah run off. Once she is nearly out of sight, Raphael regains his senses. He looks around him in the surrounding forest and can feel evil eyes staring at him from all sides. This fear gives him new found strength to carry on. He situates June in his arms, reverses himself and takes off through the trees.
As Raphael runs with June tucked in his arms, June ponders to herself silently within her mind. “Raphael, that's the name of the guardian, the boy I was told about in my vision. But what was the guardian's last name, the crash must have nudged it out of my mind.” she thinks. June looks up at the boy that is carrying her and thinks deeply about what to say. “I'm running out of time. We are running out of time. We won't survive if I'm wrong, but....” she thinks once more, drawing upon a conclusion.
“Stop...” asks June clearly in a quiet voice. Her voice is too quiet to push through the mask of fear that envelops Raphael at the moment. “Stop now!” she screams again in desperation. Luckily, her scream is enough to make Raphael stop in his tracks. “Put me on the ground, I need to ask you something....” Raphael stares down at June with worn-out eyes, not moving a muscle. “Now!” another scream from June is enough to wake Raphael out of his paralyzed state. He lays her lightly against the side of a tree while sensing that the eyes that are watching them are getting closer.
“Now please, Raphael, this is really important,” says June as she rests her back against the tree trunk “Tell me your full name.”
The eyes are getting closer and Raphael can hear tree branches rustling and sticks breaking nearby. The eyes that are stalking them have now surrounded them and are now moving in for the kill. But despite the sinking feeling in his gut, Raphael is able to blurt out “Raphael Horizon Danteo” past his overwhelming fear.
Upon hearing Raphael's words, the serious face that June was wearing melts away into a look of pure happiness. “My god, Raph, I found you!!” June holds out her arms toward Raphael, with a white light starting to emanate from her.
Raphael doesn't know what to do, and he doesn't know what June is asking him to do. Whoever is watching them is moving in fast and they are running out of options. Then, like a beacon of hope in the time of destruction, June's voice rings out “Guardian, accept the light....” Raphael's body starts to radiate the same light that is emitting from June. Then, and only then, does Raphael know what to do.
The Demu that are stalking Raphael and June at this time go from a steady walk into a panicked sprint toward the two, but they are too late.
Raphael and June simultaneously push toward each other, the light growing with every inch. When they are but inches from each other, the light turns into a massive blast of energy that shakes the very foundations of the suburban town of Lowloft. The blast itself blowing away a near quarter-mile of the forest's trees.
And then, like a beacon of light in the dark forest, the Key's Guardian is awakened....