It was about dark and refugees were still pouring into the castle grounds. The young Fornelia watched from the castle walls as a team of Spellblade guards rushed at an unspawn that had broken through the frontlines. Arrows of fire and ice flew at the creature, slashing through the air in colours of red and teal. But the moment the points hit the monster, all sounds vanished into nothingness. No colour from her ears or her eyes.

She hated the creatures. Spawns from another world, they did not reflect or take in light, constantly remaining in a state of translucency. The monsters sucked in any sound that they touched, moving without noise, striking without a crack. The world was filled with colours, both of the sight and of hearing. But not those creatures. They were pariahs of the universe that neither existed nor disappeared. Neither alive nor dead.

Her fists clenched tightly. It was not as if her home was in any danger. Their house were far from the fighting and her family had evacuated at the first signs of trouble. She was, by all accounts, going to be fine, as long as their side won the war. But the thought of those who weren't as fortunate ate at her.

The Spellblades below dealt a series of fatal blows to the unspawn. The translucent creature fell to the ground, picking up dust noiselessly. It's form slowly faded, not even giving the consideration to decompose properly, instead leaving the aftermath of the battlefield looking like a drunken brawl in a pub after all the fighters had left.

“Fornelia!” her mother called out. She turned to the woman that was approaching her. “They are calling for all of us to move further into the grounds to make room for those coming in. Come along now, your father is waiting for us.”

She nodded and held her mother's hand as they went down the walls, a supply cart was being towed across the rampart which were being used to transport emergency equipments and supplies.

The castle grounds themselves were filled with evacuees that were huddled and confused. Most, unlike Fornelia, had likely lost their homes. There were children crying and adults arguing. There were quiet huddled masses and quiet huddled messes. A churning broil of purple, swamp green, rage red, and poison blue fought in the sky.

“Wait here while I go get your father,” her mother instructed and pointed to a landmark signpost.

She nodded, still numbed by the situation around her. As she watched her mother disappear into the crowd, the crying of a nearby child caught her attention. She looked around for the source and saw a human boy, younger than even her, wailing at the corner of a building. Two hume children stood around him, attempting to calm the child down. Fornelia approached them.

“What do we do, brother?” the girl hume asked, arm hooked around her brother's.

The brother desperately tried to calm the younger kid. “Hey, it's okay. Where are your parents? Come on, I'll take you to them.”

Fornelia walked up to them and without a word, squat down next to the group. The three kids turned their attentions to her, though the youngest was still tearing.

From her pocket, she pulled out a harmonica and began playing, pulling a long drawn yellow tune. The child stopped crying and the two siblings were caught in rapt attention. The world around them was still in chaos, churning the colours of destruction, frustration, and sadness. But on a small street corner in the middle of war, the colour of sunflower danced.

*****

“Four-Chan! Fornelia! Wake up!”

She stirred, her spine aching as she was turned onto her back. She let out a pained grunt to let Seks know she was still with him as she caught her breath.

“Thank the Titans you're okay.” He was breathing heavily and she could hear him moving, the colours of those slight noises lighting her sights despite keeping her eyes closed. “Stay down, I've got this.”

She was about to drift back to sleep when two shots of gunfire rang through the night. The bright red blast forced her eyes opened and she sat up to the sight of combat. Dozens of large earth pillars jutted out of the ground twice the size of a person. They were the trademarks signs of Seks' unique and often destructive earth magic. The bodies of the civilian victims had been left largely untouched as Seks fought from the top earth pillars so as not to disturb the dead.

The drakin had his offhand weapon under his armpit, the chamber of the revolver emptied and opened. He was searching through his cloth belt for additional ammunitions but seemed to be coming up empty. He clicked his tongue loudly and took the barrel of his gun as a handle, pointing the axehead under the pistol grip forward. His right hand had the axe-revolver in its range grip and his left had it on melee.

However, their opponent was nowhere in sight.

“Seks!” she called out.

“Stay back!” he yelled at her.

It was then she saw it. The mostly transparent blur in the backdrop of the sky. She had seen the creatures in her childhood and they were an image she, and everyone else, was likely to never forget.

She jumped to her feet, swords in her hands, and rushed to the monster as it swung its large, deformed hammer-shaped fists at Seks. She met the attack head on, putting a magical charge in her swords as the attack connected and cutting the arm of the creature clean off.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“T-thanks,” Seks replied.

“Unspawns?” Four asked as the pair jumped back and away to a safe distance, Seks gliding from pillar to pillar.

“Yes,” he replied, turning their attentions back to the creature.

A radiating wave of electricity swept through the air from the south, lighting up the sky in chains of electricity that bounced out of the canyon road.

Before she could even ask, Seks replied, “Saix is taking on the larger groups. There's a couple of dozens of them.”

“A couple of dozens!?” she exclaimed in surprise. “We need to help him!”

“He says he's got it,” Seks told her. “But one of the unspawn slipped into the city. The people are evacuating but it's not going to be fast enough. We've got to find it before it does more damage.”

She ran a quick plan through her mind. There was no way they could fight the unspawn before them and search for the other one in time of not getting anyone hurt. They would have to split up.

“Do you have this?” she asked.

Seks pointed his revolver at the creature and fired a shot at its legs. The bullet hit the ground and from the point of impact, a large earth spike shot out and pierced through the body of the unspawn. The monster did not writhe or scream in pain, nor did any of its movement make any noise to signal it being injured. It simply began the process of pulling its body out of the spike, all while nearly invisible to the world.

“Go!” Seks said, apparently on the same train of thoughts as her.

She rushed for her bike and pushed off towards the slope of the highway. The unspawn broke free and chased after her but its movements were stopped when Seks fired another earth spike into its path. She cleared the battle and rolled down the highway, peddling as hard as she could to reach top speed sooner.

A scream echoed through the air, deathly white. She followed the sound down a road and found a street in disarray, stores and buildings damaged and trashed. Four followed the trail of destruction and arrived back at the city centre where just moments ago, a hearty concert was being held. Now, the place was deserted. Or at least, that was what she thought.

A quiet rushed whisper carried to her ears. “Hey!” She looked to the stage and saw stagehands and civilians hiding underneath. “Get down!”

“Why?” she asked, crouching, looking around carefully. Even then, she could not register anything in neither her visual or auditory sights.

“It's up there!”

She looked up and saw the sky warped with translucent lines. It was as if large webs of suspended water hung between the roofs of the building. Bodies hung in the air as if floating on strings. One of the strings moved in clacks and it took her a disoriented second before realizing it was not one of the webs, but the unspawn itself. The creature was further hidden by the dark of the sky but she could tell at least its shape. It was a large spider-like unspawn with a round body and over a dozen long legs, each the size of her arms. The creature, if at full height, would tower over her easily.

“Damn!” she cursed.

One of the legs shot down from the web right at her and she managed a parry, redirecting the strike while stepping leftwards, the appendage smashing into the ground beside her without a sound. She tried to slash at the leg but it shot right back up into the safety of mid-air.

“Damn! Damn!” she continued swearing.

She fired a shot right at the floor next to her and a pole of hard, bright white light erupted from the ground to her height. She aimed her offhand gun to another patch of empty space in the distance and fired. Another light pole burst into existence. The unspawn launched another attack. She dodged. It barraged her with a series of strikes after. She began running.

As she circled the battlefield with the creature chasing her, she fired off randomly at the ground and creating more rods of light, nearly emptying out her magazine as the unspawn continued its assault with relentless fervour. On her last round, she rushed to and jumped onto the stage. Below, the hiding innocents let out worried whimpers, cursing her for leading the attack to them. However, the half dome of mirrors covered her top and the spider unspawn backed away, seemingly reassessing its situation as it circled the plaza.

Four smirked and mouthed, “Coward.”

She fired her last round directly into the stage, erupting one last rod of light energy and drawing irritated shouts from those hiding below.

“Hey! Watch it!”

She ignored them and perpendicularly stabbed the rod with both her swords. With blades lining each other in parallel and guns pointing forward, she breathed and released her magic connection.

From the foot of the rod, 3 lines of light grew like roots of a tree, streching out towards the three nearest other light poles. From there, the roots grew further to the next 9, and so on till all 27 of the other bars of energy were connected.

Most mages who used firearms with one of the generated elements would fire elemental bullets when things got hairy. It saved them the trouble of reloading but expanded a mage's supply of seither energy quickly. Four built around that, creating hard light energy stacks that functioned effectively as charge stations. Because she could create these poles in larger sizes with less focus, she effectively 'bulk ordered' elemental bullets. She could fire ten for every single shot that other mages could do.

But she could use the stacks for something greater in a form that was much more destructive.

She pressed a charged of magic through her circuit, sending it down the energy stack she was connected to and sent that same charge out towards the other. She pulled her guns back and the rod she held bent with her as she took aim at the unspawn.

As the creature moved in to attack again, she pulled her triggers and fired two beams of light out of her guns, powered by the energy stack. The other 27 rods pulsed and released a hail of bright fire, all aimed at the spot which Four shot at.

Twenty eight eruptions of energy flew through the air and at the creature. It quickly crawled out of the line of fire and the bullets blasted off a chunk of the building behind it. She turned her turret stack and took aim again. She fired, the monster moved again and the attack sheered off the shingles of a neighbouring roof.

She gritted her teeth. The creature moved too quickly for her gain a clean hit. The target was also too thin for any room for error. She tried a third time and the bullet cut through the air and spread out into the skies as the nimble monster evaded once more.

An idea hit her and she turned her back to the unspawns and faced the mirrored dome. She could still barely see the creature in the reflections if the mirrors, just enough to get an aim on it. Seeing the opening, the unspawn clambered forward at speed and she took aim at the reflection. Those who hid under the stage screamed.

“Shoot it!”

“Quickly!”

She kept calm at the sound of life. So long as the colours were in the air, she could continue fighting with hope. It was not over until the universe was blind.

“Relax!” she shouted. “Life comes sickly.”

The unspawn passed the last pre-placed stack and was raising its legs to attack. She fired.

The first two shots from her guns bounced off the mirror and headed for the monster. It dodged, as she had expected. But from behind, twenty seven more energy beams careened at it. It tried to evade but the haphazard shooting had no rhyme or reason, just as the creature itself. Most of the attacks missed it, but a couple clipped its legs. The ones that missed bounced off the mirror of the dome Four had fired at and ricochetted back in the general direction of the giant spider. More shots met their marks at the unspawn stumbled to the ground with limbs severed.

She turned her turret around and aimed down at the creature that struggled silently to stand. The energy stacks that were placed around the plaza began to shrink, the power absorbed into the rod she was locked in to. Slowly, her own stack was absorbed into her weapons. The blade of her swords glowed bright white.

With a run, she leapt off the stage. Her weapons raised above her, she slashed down with the kinetic energy of 16 bullets as if they had been recently fired. She added her own power to the strike and in a neon stream, severed the unspawn into three at all limbs. The creature's vivisected corpse jerked for a single second before ceasing to move and vanished as if it was never there. Bodies of its victims dropped down from its departed webs and the survivors crawled out from underneath the stage.

“Rock and roll.”