Chapter 2

~ The Gathering ~

The light enveloped them as the three shapes on the plains fled from the barrage of frenzied lights behind them. Gunshots sounded in the air, lasers shot past them but were either deflected or evaded. "Your Highness, may I suggest something at the expense of your time?"

Eve didn't have a single care for the formality in her words. "Yes, Ophelia." The drones, seeming to work again, allowed her to glide. Otherwise I would have been caught by now.

Her maid's eyes blinked erratically, then flickered open. "Detected - Barrier 147. Status - On. Purpose - Teleportation Intercepter." Oberon sliced an oncoming bullet in half. "Your Highness, probability in safety and escape in using Transporting Tunnel B1-4?"

Eve swiftly calculated the chances in her mind. "75.324712628 percent for safety, 31.579201 percent for escape. Escaping from that transporting tunnel would take a while. If I remember correctly..." A deadly peridot laser ricocheted off of the reinforced armor of her drones. She was slightly surprised that none had hit her yet. Either she had thought that the army was much more trained, or that the three of them were just too hard to aim at. Oberon was dashing around, so quick that even her eyes couldn't follow his exact movements. He will be rewarded after this-not just with his favorite, cookies. "The tunnel is corrupted with the island's Alterasia. If one of them comes in contact with any of us, then severe repairs are required to get the corruption out. But, I would rather not take Transporting Tunnel CA. Ophelia, Oberon, guard me well while I guide us." With Moby and Remy supporting her new gliding technique, she touched the air and slid a cerulean panel out. A map flickered to life on the screen. Ahead, a gap, forty-three meters away.

"Oberon, halt! Let them come after us. We do not have the time to stop them and escape at the same time." He lowered his blades of ivory and ran after her. As they neared the entrance to the tunnel, she noticed the approaching of two massive figures. The light from the Core shone across blue and red; the golden orbs on their chests glinted as they rushed forward at the same time. Ignis and Leviathan? How did they get here in such a short matter of time? The damp smell of earth reached her as they skidded into the tunnel. "Ophelia, seal it!"

She bowed and stretched her hand out. "Activate: Electronic Field." A blast of pink lightning burst from her hands, crumbling the top of the tunnel. Chunks of rock thudded in front of her. "Permission required: Spitfire."

"You have permission to use Spitfire," said Eve. I had not thought of using that to bring the boulders together. Ophelia rose several feet off of the ground. As Leviathan created a shard of ice to attack her, she spread her hands. The lightning arced out from beneath her, not only shattering the ice, but causing the entrance to collapse in on itself as well. Ignis's shower of blazing fire was the last thing all three of them could see before the light was sealed out.

After a moment of silence, she shook herself. "We must be on our way. There is no time to waste. The blockage will not withstand Ignis's fire output for long."

The dark tunnel echoed their every step, despite the light covering of damp dirt muffling most of the sound made on the stone below. The only light around them came from the Nasod core on Eve's forehead. It washed over the black drone, Moby, as it shuddered by her side. As she reached out a hand to still it from quivering, she realized that it was not from shaking from fear.

A small lime green spot faded into existence at the edge of her vision, blinking. Oberon slid his gleaming blades out of his sleeves and crossed them in front of her, as an act of defense. She pushed them away from her and casted a scanner. "An Alterasian Spore so close to the entrance... I have not realized that they have been overpopulating," she said to herself.

Even after the spore had sunk back into the darkness, Moby kept trembling. Soon, Reby made whirring, clicking sounds, and bumped its head against her shoulder repeatedly. She looked up, the faint light still shining from her core, and saw that they had been surrounded.

"And are they not supposed to be high in intelligence? Or is...a bigger entity controlling these?"

A spore near Remy crackled with a strange lightning, blue static coursing throughout its hairs. Remy, having absorbed the full impact of the shock, dropped and did not move again.

Eve picked up the lifeless drone and swung a hand back, behind her. A commanding gesture. Oberon knelt as Ophelia kept her emotionless eyes on the spores, both determined to protect their mistress.

"Oberon, Ophelia; Heaven's Fist-

"Permission: Granted."

He was on his way to see two of his old friends; a commander of Velder and a knight of the camp there. Apparently there were six of them in total; the other three he didn't know. He recalled something about a fox; but surely a fox wouldn't come to their gathering?

He had to go past Velder to meet the king of Altera first, though. Chung planned a treaty ahead of time, and could only hope that the other end would agree to it. Hamel couldn't afford to have more enemies than allies.

Just as he was about to ask the driver to pick the pace up, the carriage screeched to a stop, the wheels scratching against the sharp edges of the rocky road. "Hey!" his driver shouted out. "Don't just pop out in the middle of nowhere! I could've ran you over, or you could've injured his Highness!"

Chung flinched at the mention of his title. He still wasn't used to being the king of the City of Water, even if his father had passed away four years ago. "N-No need to-"

He was interrupted by a feminine cold, bland voice. "May we consult with his Highness, then?" Her tone was such that it caused him to assume that her position was of royalty as well. Curiosity got the best of him. He clambered out the back and jumped down, landing nimbly onto his feet. However, his heavy armor weighed him down, causing an enormous dust cloud to engulf him. He brushed himself off before turning around to see the speaker.

To his immense shock, three battered humans stood in the middle of the road, all looking as if they should've been dead. But then he noticed; their mechanical eyes, the orb of endless blue upon her forehead, and their wires. The silver-haired Nasod had two lifeless mechanisms in her right hand, one black and the other white. The other hand was missing and was a steel stump. Tucked under her arm seemed to be a...head? A head with wires torn out of it?

Next to her stood one of her servants. The other, a butler, was hefted over the maid's shoulder as she stared at him. One of her eyes were punctured out, leaving behind a gaping hole of black and circuitry. But he noticed that her field of vision had never left with the other eye, the way she could see him even when her blind side was turned to him.

The speaker assessed him with icy amber eyes. "Greetings, your Highness. Would you be so kind as to grant us your hospitality?"

Chung gazed at them. They were certainly in no shape to be walking around, but his kingdom would question him if he brought back three Nasods.

The maid took his silence as refusal and said, "Your Highness, you must. I have failed my duty as protector of-"

"Ophelia," she snapped sharply. "Do not interfere." Ophelia bowed in silence and took the head from her arms.

He saw only one option, then. "Come along with me on the carriage and we can discuss some things while we go to Altera," he said cheerfully.

To his dismay, she shook her head, her silver bangs messing theirselves up as she did. "Altera is in a current state of lockdown. The heir to the throne has been lost and the King intends to find her. He is currently not letting any outsiders in at the moment."

Chung had a feeling that she was lying, even though it was well concealed. But he didn't want to pry, as that would've been impolite. "I guess our next stop is Velder then!"

She smiled, but it seemed so fake and forced to him. He beamed back at her and led her on. The maid thanked him and got on as gracefully as her mistress. Chung would worry about the trouble he got himself into later, but right now...

"Excuse me?" The driver looked up from a novel he was reading. "May we turn back around to Velder?"

He grumbled profusely and ruffled his dusty brown hair until he realized that the ruler was waiting for his response. "Don't need to be so polite, your Highness, 'course I'll turn back around for you."

Even so, throughout the whole trip back, he did not grumble any less.

The knight laughed boisterously at the villager's offer until a dark shape against the wall appeared. The laughter drained away as commander's figure approached. He was never sure of whether the news would be good or bad, so he kept his serious demeanor until it had been spilt. "Hey, Raven. What's up?"

He sighed and scratched the back of his head with a tan-skinned hand. "Chung's coming along soon, one of the soldiers spotted him on a carriage down the road a bit."

Elsword lurched back. "Wait, what? Chung's coming so soon already?" Their old companion was coming back? He couldn't shake off the feeling of glee bubbling up inside of him until he realized how unprepared everyone in the camp was. It was most definitely not ready for a royal presence, let alone be a place to sign a treaty for peace with the great City of Water. "Raven...?"

The older man sighed and said, "Yes, I thought about that too. But what can we do in, maybe if we're lucky, five minutes? The village is still under reconstruction after the demon invasions, and the camp is too out of order to possibly get anything straight in thirty minutes, let alone five. And that's if we're lucky."

As if to prove their luck wrong, the massive metal gates of Velder groaned open. The red-haired knight twitched involuntarily at the sound of metal grinding against stone and faced the other direction as slowly as possible. He didn't want to set his eyes on the sight that everyone was seeing yet. Not yet.

The carriage was simple enough that it didn't mock its surroundings. It was a plain white, made of what seemed like pine, and had a disgruntled driver. However, Elsword couldn't say the same for the person inside. Even in his armor, he radiated this kind of...authority and power, he guessed. But of course, if anyone told him that, Chung would've just shrugged it off modestly. That was just another part of his personality that many others found endearing.

The king was scanning the crowd with those eyes when they landed upon the flash of red and splotch of ashy black. He waved happily at them, and Elsword had no choice but to wave back. It wasn't as if he didn't want to, though. Just that the stiff commander behind him caused him to cringe. "Loosen up, captain. It's not like he's here to make our day look bad, eh?" He nudged Raven, who shot him a look full of acid. Elsword shut up afterwards, because apparently that glare meant: Respect those in higher positions than yours; act polite; be like a man who has his pride and knows his manners. All of which he didn't really excel at.

He attempted to flatten his untamed crimson hair and failed miserably. But his thoughts were diverted to something else as soon as he saw silver hair from inside the carriage. Without much thought, as always, he pushed his way forward to see the rest of her. She swiveled her gaze towards him, and they held it like that for a complete minute before she spoke. "And who may this mere commoner be?"

He gritted his teeth and replied through them. "I'm a knight of Velder. And who're you, a Nasod slave?"

The temperature in the area dropped several degrees as her voice became colder than he thought had been possible. "I am no slave; in fact, I am of higher ranking than you. May I compliment that I can sense a limited amount of intelligence residing within you? I am certain that if you were to go against me in a match of wit and strength, I would win." He felt his hatred meter shoot up a few levels. "I assume you have more to say?"

Elsword grinned wickedly at her last comment and held his hand out in the air. In a brilliant flash of golden, a bloodred sword nestled itself comfortably in his grip as he pointed it at her. "You wanna have a go, huh? Step out of the carriage and we'll have a fair match right-"

The freezing sensation of steel on the nape of his neck stopped him from going forward. "Please excuse this stupid, irrational, hot-headed knight of mine. He does too much but thinks too little."

"Raven!" His Nasod arm clenched his shoulder, making him wince.

"Don't speak," he said emotionlessly.

Geez, he's too stuck-up about the ranking system and respect and all that crap. Elsword sighed, letting go of the sword. Before it clattered on the ground, it burst into beams of light and disappeared. He closed his eyes and fumed silently while Chung and Raven discussed over some unimportant matters. Clinking could be heard from the carriage, but he was too irritated to be curious about it now.

Raven glanced anxiously around, searching for the two others that were supposed to come to the meeting as well: Rena Viriventa of the Elves and Ara Haan of Sanders. Chung insisted there was a third, but he couldn't remember who. But right now, he wasn't paying attention to the ruler anymore. He was staring at the Nasod.

"Isn't that Queen Eve Auguris of Altera?" he mused.

Her reaction was immediate. "No, you must be referring to Princess Apple. I am only a member of a royal family within Altera."

He was just about to respond when a dark aura descended over the whole of Velder Village. The sky above housed suddenly storming clouds, and streaks of violet lightning arced across like a web of branches. The winds picked up, howling, throwing everything into chaos. Pandemonium ensued as the camp erupted into a panicked frenzy, leaving Raven attempting to calm everyone down. And even so, he couldn't deny the tremor of fear quaking through him; where had he experienced this power before?

Then it stopped. Just stopped as abruptly as it had started. Before them, on the cracked stone tiles, was a cloaked figure, shrouded in all the dark colors possible. Black. Purple. Even maroon, as deep as the color of Elsword's eyes.

She bowed, her axe-bladed staff kept in her hand the entire time. The cape fluttered away and disintegrated into cinders.

"Why, hello," she greeted. Her voice was smooth, doubtless, confident, and dripping with cunning. "I am the fourth attender to this gathering:

"Aisha Vadralis of the Existing Demons."