Author's notes:

Swazdo-lah, surah. I know, a month passed since the last chapter was published, my bad. I had the intention to complete this one in two or three weeks, but a time distortion occurred and so here I am now.

How is your farming doing? I'm looking for an army of kuva liches and Ivara prime at the moment… yeah, not really interested in those new kuva and prime weapons.

I wish you a happy farming, Tenno. WE HAVE PLANS TO FOLLOW.

The Empire Game

Chapter 21 – Marked Eye

We proceeded through the corridor. Flumine and Seo were further. She was at the head of the group. I was surprised to see her so resolute in such a dark place, holding the torch like a leader who guides their followers.

Seo was closer to Lena and I. Lena's hand and mine were still in touch, but in truth I didn't tighten my hand around hers. She was just holding mine like she feared that I would have gotten lost.

Along the way, I saw other traces of a past conflict. Spots of dry blood and burns adorned floor and walls. Metal instruments lied on the ground, twisted or broken in pieces. Some emergency lights were malfunctioning, flashing in the dark, others totally off.

My face's right side was burning. At least the pain wasn't so unbearable like when the ray of light passed by me. Still, it hurt enough to force me to make a grimace while I was struggling to not moan for the pain.

Damn you, Seo! It hurts!

I gave a last look behind. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to see the corpses of my hunters anymore, now too far away. That's when I realized that I would have never seen any of my parents again. I didn't have the strength to go back, and to go forth either. I just let myself get carried away by the others.

Now, what can I do?

What will happen to me?

Am I doomed to die here? In this cursed ship?

All those questions were about my situation, and I was ashamed to be so focused on myself when I was still alive, yet they died. I was suffering. I wanted to cry. I was worried. I had no idea of the pain they felt, I had no idea how death was. They suffered as well, yet I was thinking only about myself.

I saw again that scene in my mind. The savage grin on his face, his eyes of pure evil, like black holes in the universe. The knife in his hand, upon my head, ready to fall on me. Once such vision disappeared, I remembered that I needed something to defend myself.

ME: "Shou... Shouldn't we... take their weapons?"

My proposal came out almost like a whisper. My voice was weak and insecure like one of a shy child. Such a result hit me like a slap. I was feeling so vulnerable, like an injured puppy.

The others slowed down and stopped. They all looked back at me. I could easily see the disconcert in their eyes. Probably, they didn't expect that, exactly like me. Lena and Seo seemed to be the most surprised. Flumine changed rapidly in an expression of disdain and anger. Her eyes were two fissures pointed at me like a weapon. She seemed even more threatening under the torch's light. Still, she said nothing.

Their eyes on me in that moment of silence filled me again with shame. No one was saying a thing. I felt my cheeks getting hot for the embarrassment and that made me feel even more ashamed.

In the end, Seo smiled weakly and rose a hand keeping it at the height of his face. His hand enlightened in white feeble light, like a glowstick.

SEO: "Who needs weapons when we have this?"

I took a moment to elaborate on what I was seeing. I guessed he was talking about the ray of light. Then, I remembered the spark that I saw when I killed my mother. Maybe those two things were connected. I could not tell what was making his hand glow that way. If that was just a joke I would have guessed he had made use of some glowing powder or something like that, but I was pretty sure it wasn't.

ME: "And... What is 'this'?"

SEO: "I don't know, but it's cool."

Seo moved spastically his shining fingers and made a weird expression. His eyes crossed, looking at the hand that was right in front of his nose. It was like he suddenly lost a good percentage of his intelligence. Even if I never thought he was a so smart guy.

The face he had at that moment somehow lifted the weight I had on my heart. I could not tell if I had smiled or not, I didn't notice it. Lena seemed a little less worried, but, for some reason, her hand tightened even more around mine.

Flumine looked less angry. Her eyes seemed less threatening, but her voice was still annoyed.

FLUMINE: "Come on, let's go. The rest of us should be close."

We proceeded into the darkness. Flumine was always ahead with the torch. We walked in the ship that seemed so desert, paying attention at every corner and crossroad. We surely didn't want to fall into an ambush.

The common areas were a mess. Metal doors were on the floor, deformed. The chairs were broken, the tables bent and dislocated. Bodies of other adults were left on the way. Men, women, no distinctions. They all were dead.

Among them, I noticed a few smaller corpses bathed in pools of blood. Those were twisted in unnatural positions. Their eyes were wide, almost like they were going to escape from the fissures of their skulls, in an expression of terror. Maybe they didn't die immediately, maybe they suffered any instant of their last torture before expiring.

Invisible strings squeezed my stomach, my heart, my throat. It became more difficult to breathe the air that was more like a mixture of miasma and smokes. My body trembled like in spasm. I felt the tears were making their way out of the only eye I had opened. The hand held by Lena weakly tightened around hers on its own. She grabbed mine with more strength in response.

Thinking about everything that happened, and seeing how Flumine had changed made me wonder how much time passed. How long did we persist in that hell? And how long I remained closed in that cabin? I could not even tell how much time passed since my mother died. Since I killed her.

Lena didn't change as radically as Flumine, even if her expressions were less bright than before. Like the events that happened in that hell obscured her light, placing a veil of sadness on her identity. Her brother, Seo, on the other hand, seemed not affected at all. Or at least, that was the impression he was giving to me. Maybe, on the inside, he was suffering like me.

I closed my left eye too. I didn't want to show myself in such a vulnerable shape. I placed a hand on my mouth, trying to hold back my moans. I could not see that graveyard anymore. I let them guide me through that horror as memories replayed in my mind.

I was standing in front of the window of one of the many observatories onboard. Looking with excitement and apprehension at the countless stars of the sky. My whole body quivered with adrenaline while the countdown on the screens was slowly reaching its end.

Right behind me, my parents were in touch shoulder with shoulder. They tried to keep a serene expression, but they could not control the signs of nervousness that their bodies were showing.

My mother's hand tightened around mine. I instinctively responded to such action grabbing it with more strength. My father gulped and his Adam's apple moved up and down on his neck.

Around us, there were other families, reunited for that moment of break. Most of the people were worried like us. The observatory was shrouded in silence that made the waiting even more unnerving.

The commander's voice boomed in the ship through the speakers, accompanying the countdown. White light bloomed outside the windows. A violent quake ran through the ship.

I felt a force pushing me and I fell on the floor. In less than a second, my mother's arms embraced me. My father tried to grab both of us. The three of us were on the floor. My father absorbed most of the impact, shielding us with his body. Since my mother did the same to me, I was the one who suffered less the fall.

Except few who were on the seats, most of the people were all on the floor, like us. The tables were upside down, the vases that had been upon them now were broken into countless pieces, the plants were bent and ruined by the fall.

The lights flashed for a little while and then turned off. The children screamed and cried in the observatory. Behind the door, other voices rose from the rest of the ship, in panic.

One mere second and our lives completely changed. One mere second and we were doomed. One mere second and all our plans for the future, all our hopes and dreams vanished like a drop of water in a desert. All the time passed imagining a new life in Tau, all my efforts in studying and preparing myself for the life in a colony. All in vain.

An explosion awoke me from my journey through the memories. Screams of boys and girls reached us from somewhere close to our position. Without saying anything, the others ran in the direction of the sounds. Lena didn't let me go so I was forced to keep up the pace with them. Even if I thought that going where there had been an explosion in a spaceship wasn't a good idea.

Once we arrived on the spot, the only eye I was keeping open suffered the light of the flames. The fire was devouring the area, coming from a breach in the wall. It seemed a living monster born from that very hell with the only purpose to worse our nightmare before eating us.

The smoke made me cough. The others tried to protect their eyes and mouths with their hands. Other children were coming out from the sideways. One of them yelled at us while he was running to our direction, to take distance from the flames.

CHILD: "Not this way! They are coming!"

The last two of them came out, a girl guiding a boy. They almost looked like Lena and I. The girl had light brown hair that reached her shoulders. On her face a grimace for the effort of the run, annoyed by the light of the flames.

The boy was almost bald, the way he was running was clumsy and unstable. His eyes were unfocused, almost like he was sleeping, or like he was dreaming.

After one second, the adults stepped in. Their hands equipped with any kind of object that could be used as a weapon. They approached rapidly, not caring about the fire they had behind.

FLUMINE: "Run!"

Her voice yelled so hard that I felt it crossing my whole body. We immediately joined the children who were already running away. Lena seemed to have no intention to let me run alone, but that wasn't the right moment to talk about it with her.

I can run on my own!

Some children from ahead stopped a moment, turning back in the direction of the hunters. Every time one of them did so, a ray of light bloomed in the way, coming from their hands. Flumine and Seo did the same a few times. But no one of our party had the intention to face the threat directly.

When I dared to look back, I saw the adults running after us. They were like a pack of beasts hunting their prey. Their numbers were reduced.

Behind them, now far away, the flames were raging in a dance of light, devouring everything on their path, even the bodies of the fallen hunters.

Nearby, among the others, there were the girl and the boy running hand in hand. A shiver ran down my spine when I noticed that the boy was looking at me. His eyes were deep like an ocean, I had the feeling he could read my mind or see my very essence. He kept looking at me and then spoke in a calm tone.

BOY: "Marked eye."

Suddenly, my vision got dark, it was like a black veil just fell on my eyes. Everything blocked in place like the time had stopped. The environment lost its colors. The shapes became distorted like dancing smokes. The sounds faded in the distance, and soon it was only silence.

The smokes were fluctuating and spinning. Their forms changed constantly, like the clouds in the sky. One moment they were like waves of the sea, the moment after they were a tree. Ships, people, towers, animals, all kinds of designs switching in mere seconds.

I didn't wonder what was going on. I was feeling so relaxed. Everything was so perfectly fine and normal to me. A black sea where the smokes dance, where there is peace. An abyss of calmness filled with memories of a forgotten past, and illusions forged by my own mind.