Adelle could not move. Her eyes were fixated on the Pyrerai who refused to walk. The Pyrerai was visibly older than her, perhaps middle aged for an elf - around five hundred in years. Long, curly golden hair bounced with each light breeze over her regal clothing. But up close, Adelle could now see her face. A beautiful, sharp face and curved nosed, skin as bright and smooth and hardened as a blade. But it was her eyes that Adelle was drawn to. Two bright yellow irises wrapped in the blood red sclera. Aside from the yellow colour scheme, the eyes almost reflected Adelle's green and red.

Every step forward the Pyrerai took was in another puff of teleportation. The teleporting did not so much as stunned Adelle into shock and awe but rather, froze her in surprise. She had never seen anyone else able to do such a thing and she had always thought it was some form of magic undiscovered. But here was another person, another elf, who was able of such feat.

The Pyrerai took a stern teleporting step forward and the crowd around them shrunk away on their knees, not daring to lift their heads to face her.

"Kneel now," she smiled gently. "And in my benevolence I might spare one or two of your limbs when I cut them off."

The man in white robes, Eca, replied calmly, "That seems extreme, Miss Lachesis. Perhaps you want to... as the kids says it these days, take a chill pill?"

"You're very calm for meeting the daughter of a god," Lachesis the Pyrerai replied.

Eca scoffed. "I'm confident because the kind of god you're touting does not exist."

Lachesis squints questioningly and deduced, "Eca Rend."

"That is my name," he calmly circled his hand in the air in greetings.

"The most wanted man on the continent."

"That is also me."

"We've been looking for you awhile now."

"Awesome. Now, you've found me. But I don't see an army around to arrest me." Eca took a menacing stepped forward and Adelle swore she saw Lachesis's eyes flinched. "Or perhaps you want to take me on yourself?"

But the Pyrerai simply laughed it off. "An army you say?" Recomposing herself, she teleported herself right in Eca's face and sized him up. "Like this one?"

She raised her two hands from her side and almost trained as pets, the crowd around them slowly stood to their feet following her gesture. By the time she put her hands down, the civilian militias were standing straight up, though their heads still looked to the ground, not an eye to their leader.

"Well," Eca said. "That does put a damper on me kicking your ass."

Luce finally voiced out, "What do you want?"

Lachesis turned to her. "Want? You're obviously not from around here either, are you?" She waited for Luce to reply but the latter simply stared her down defiantly. Lachesis raised her voice an octave so the crowd could hear her. "I am Lachesis Nazarene. Daughter of the god that chooses all. Last of the old race that won the first war and here to lead Seracue to the victory that fate demands!"

The crowd echoed, "Praise Nazarene!"

"My abilities, bar none, granted as a birthright to travel the space between. Survivor of a massacre, a genocide that brought about the end of legends. The one who singlehandedly clutched victory from the jaws of defeat at The Battle of the Graves. The sole survivor!" Lachesis pulled her cloak aside and with her offhand drew a gun, pointing it straight at Luce. The latter was surprised and did not react. At the side, Eca materialised in a flash of light a white oak staff and readied to fight. "I am Lachesis Nazarene, the last of the sentinel!"

Adelle snapped out of her stun and shot her hand up in the air as if she was a student asking a question in class. Everyone stopped mid action and turned to her. Even the civilians raised their heads in quiz. It was something The Watcher had taught Adelle. If you needed a distraction, do something weird and out of place and everyone will look. Curiosity is the trait of life that turned the most battle.

Luchesis tried to hold back her confusion and maintain her regal composure. "A... question?"

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Adelle asked deadpan, "Am I a sentinel too?"

Luce was looking at her with an odd expression between stunned and worried. But as much as Adelle wanted to question her about Lachesis and her own abilities to teleport - alongside the subject of their race - Adelle pushed the thought aside to survive the minute.

Lachesis's eyes widened. "Your eyes..."

"I know," Adelle answered. "Bloody, aren't they?"

Lachesis began turning her gun towards Adelle but she rushed the Pyrerai. With a step forward, Adelle bent her body to tackle and teleported the remaining distance between them. When her shoulder connected to Lachesis sternum, she felt a pull as she was forced to teleport. It felt much like her ejection from Leviathan, being pulled by her back through space.

They reappeared hundreds of meters above the city. Adelaide punched the Pyrerai's face and pulled at her arm, disarming Lachesis of her gun which stumbled out of the sky. Lachesis countered, swinging her sceptre which slapped Adelle across her face, drawing blood with a rough bashed cut across her lips. With a kick, Adelaide pushed themselves apart. Simultaneously, the two teleported again, redirecting their momentums by firing themselves back up into the sky to slow their speed. They reappeared, launching upwards a couple of meters apart from each other. Adelle unclipped her bow and quiver, drew an arrow, twisted her body in midair, and fired a shot at Lachesis.

The Pyrerai teleported sideways, dodging the shot as they slowed to zero speed. Adelle looked down and telported onto a shingled roof. A split second later, Lachesis appeared in a puff of rust on a roof a stone's throw away.

Their stares locked. Lachesis teleported to Adelle and she teleported further away. Pulling out another arrow and notching a shot, Adelle turned to the roof they had been on to find it empty. A shadow casted onto her. Adelle umped out of the way just as the sceptre wielder dropped from above, slamming the head of the sceptre into the roof, cracking the stone beneath with the force of the fall and swing. Adelle regained her footing and turned to face her opponent and fired her shot.

Lachesis swung her sceptre up and knocked the arrow out of midair. Quickly, Adelle drew her axe and threw it at the Pyrerai and teleported. As the Pyrerai dodged the axe thrown, Adelle reappeared behind her, caught the weapon, and rushed in for a cut. In a bind, Lachesis simply blinked out of the attack range and onto an opposing rooftop.

With distance between them and a break in the battle, Adelle asked, "Who are you? Really?"

"I'm like you," Lachesis replied, panting slightly. "The last of our kind."

Adelle sheathed her axe in the conversation and drew an arrow. "The sentinels?" She notched the ammunition into her bow but did not raise her weapon.

Lachesis tilted her head. "You don't know?"

Adelle did not want to answer that specific question. Instead, she continued asking, "If we're really the last of our race, why are you trying to kill me?" Her bow was still lowered but readied to raise and fire at a hair trigger's notice.

"Isn't it obvious? You're the only one who can challenge this theatre I've put up." Lachesis was circling her now, slowly popping between roofs as she regained stamina while looking for an opening in her opponent. "The only one who can ruin the story I've spun."

"Why do it in the first place?"

"I wonder about that. It's not really something for me to decide, is it?" Lachesis gave a slight smile. Not sinister, but rather contemplative. "How will history tell of me? A hero for righting the injustice of the past? A monster who slaughters cities?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you don't. How old are you? You look young for a sentinel. Do you even remember what happened to our people? What the world did to us?" Adelle did not. She was not sure she cared. "How old were you when the first war began?"

Behind Lachesis, a small bright beam of light shot straight into the sky far to their south. On the distant roof where the light emitted from, a figure waved at her before jumping off the roof and into the streets below. It was likely Eca. The man had materialised his staff with light magic, and was likely able of casting spells in that element.

"I'm two hundred," Adelle answered late. "Give or take a few decades."

"Barely a baby when it happened. Tell me, sister. Do you not hate the ones who did this to us? Inferior beings like the humans who continues to wage war despite our sacrifice? Unable to even survive the lifespan of our youth, yet they continue to live as if they are better than us all."

Adelle did not answer. She remembered a time when she loathed them. The humans who always encroached on her home in the forest. Always cutting down the trees and destroying the nature she protected in their selfish desire for resources. Somewhere inside her, she still felt those thought ringing true, and a part of her agreed with Lachesis's hate. Slowly, she relaxed her grip on her bow and arrow.

Noticing this, Lachesis smiled and plotted. "You know, perhaps I don't have to kill you. Perhaps you could join me. A pioneer of the daughter of god. Yes, an expansion to the story. I can see it in your eyes, the want for revenge. Follow me, and you can have all the payback you need."

Adelle took her arrow off her bowstring and moved it behind her back. She shifted her body sideways as if the keep the arrow and block the line of sight from the quiver to Lachesis. Instead, she laid a palm on all her arrow tails and teleported them.

"That sounds honestly like a fun plan," Adelle grinned. "Enough to make you look."

The first arrow fell straight down from the sky, piercing the floor in front of Lachesis. The Pyrerai looked up to a rain of arrows falling down on her.

Adelle did not stay to find out the outcome of her surprise assault. The moment Lechasis looked away, she teleported as far as she could towards the direction of the light. In the sky, she looked down and quickly spotted Eca's beacon bright robes and Luce blazing scarf within the darkened alley. With a final blink, she landed beside the two of them.

She stated, "I have questions."