After years of waking up in really early in the morning to the sound electronic sound of his alarm clock, Cipher had developed the habit of rolling to the side of his bed and extending the arm to push the large button of the clock with his eyes still closed. It's the kind of habit that is really hard to get rid of, something that you do without even realizing it.
But this morning, as he slowly emerged from his slumber, something was off. His right hand only met an empty space, and there was no sounds reaching his ears. Confused, he tried to roll closer, his eyes still closed, but a sudden burst of pain coming from his right flank forced him to stay on his back and open his eyes.
But what he saw was not his small and packed room in Valais. Instead, it was a larger room, filled with old wooden furniture. The walls were not made of the standard and boring military concrete, but rather of a home-made material. In fact, it was just like he had woken up several hundred years in the past.
It was at this moment that everything came back to his mind, the flash of blinding light, the awakening in his cockpit, the unknown landscape below, the dirt road he tried to land on, and the crash. But so early after waking up, the only things those memories were doing was adding to the confusion.
Despite the pain, he managed to get off the bed and stood up. The only thing he was wearing was his underwear, his flight suit hanging from a small hook on the wall and his equipment stored on a nearby desk. His hurting flank was greasy, just like if someone had applied some kind of cream.
Someone took him to their home and healed him? Are there no hospital nearby? Have the authorities even been alerted?
He stepped next to the desk, holding his side like to calm the pain, looking for his gun. Luckily it was there, the magazine and a few nine millimeters rounds out, next to the cloth holster that had accompanied Cipher through most of his career. Quickly, he reloaded, ready for anything, in case his hosts were hostile.
It was at this moment that he noticed a pile of paper in a corner. But it was not paper, it was actual parchment, and drawn on it with a bird's feather was simple drawings that vaguely looked like crashed parts of an airplane, the only thing allowing Cipher to understand being the relatively accurate depiction of the markings.
As he looked through the parchments, the sound of wooden floor cracking under someone's weight reached his ears. By reflex, he turned around and started to point his gun, but the door was already opening.
And who opened it?
A teenage girl holding a tray full of jars and bowls and wearing an extremely strange dress. But those were not what Cipher noticed at first. Instead, the first thing he truly saw was her hair.
Short hair of an unnatural light blue.
"What the fuck…"
The girl brutally stopped when she saw him standing and pointing the gun, as she was probably expecting him to still be unconscious on the bed. She was obviously surprised, but her face remained still, not really showing too much emotion.
They both remained still for a second, Cipher not being sure who was supposed to make the first move.
Finally, it was the girl that stepped backwards, putting down the tray on the ground, out of sight, while still looking directly at him with eyes of a shade similar to the one of her hair.
Then, she finally opened her mouth.
"Mesteo, el set revelat." She said with her young voice in a language he was not able to understand, calling someone that was probably in another room.
At this moment, Cipher realized he was pointing a loaded and armed gun at a kid, but he had no choice than to keep it like that, fearing that anything could happen.
"Who are you? What is going here?" he asked, not really knowing if he was going to be understood.
She did not answer, instead turning her head to the side as someone else came close. The pilot stepped back, trying to gain as much space as possible between him and the doorway.
The figure that appeared was taller. It was an old man with a beard, wearing a simple white toga and holding in his hand a long wooden staff, fitted with a large gemstone at the top.
"Does one of you two speak Osean?" he asked again, now shifting his aim towards the old man.
He too did not answer, simply standing there, holding his staff. There was no way to tell how he was going to act, but in the back of Cipher's mind, the probability of them being hostile reduced. But he was far from letting go of his gun. One key rule of combat is that you must never underestimate your opponent, no matter the odds.
The elder turn his head towards the young girl and said something with a calm and low voice. The girl nodded and disappeared in the corridor.
"Where the fuck are we? Belka? Sapin? Gebet?"
They were not speaking the same language, but Cipher hoped one of those names would ring a bell, allowing him to at least know where he was. But sadly, the man stayed still, not answering, and a heavy silence fell. A few seconds later, the girl returned, this time with a staff of her own. The wood of the handle was darker and the crystal was smaller and of a deep blue shade. She put it in front of her, holding it a few centimeters off the ground, and extend her free hand towards Cipher.
"Wow wow," he launched, pointing the gun back towards her. "What the hell are you trying to do?"
At this point, he was not expecting anything anymore, only speaking to try to get her to stop. But instead, she started to mumble something. It was so low that at first, he did not notice it. However, he did when something else happened.
The crystal started to shine.
"What the fuck?"
Slowly, Cipher started to feel dizzy, just like if he was drunk and his balance disappeared. Putting his hand over his hand, he tried to stay on his feet, but there was a force that he could not fight in his head.
"Argh… What are…? You… My head…" he tried to say, but words were barely leaving his mouth.
His eyes felt heavy and closed before he fell to his knees, dropping the gun. He tried to fight off, but everything started to fell light, and then nothing.
Yeah… I remember everything that happened after the Flash.
At first, everyone thought it was another of Belka's weapons, another Excalibur or something. But it was not. He disappeared from everybody's radar at that moment, and when we started to look for a wreckage, we found something completely different.
It was an army, several thousands strong, marching in old military formations, coming out of a lone building. Command had a hard time believing us at first, but they could not doubt the reports coming from all their fighters.
HQ asked us to stay on over watch to prevent any Belkan counter attack and, most importantly, keep an eye on those mysterious newcomers, while they dispatched new squadrons to relay us.
I remember when the first RESCO choppers came back to Valais with the downed pilots. The operators were carrying with them medieval helmets and swords while some of the pilots were suffering from cuts and other wounds of the same kind.
Confusion was at its maximum on the base, the Allied command not being willing to release information, even inside the military, to not panic the civilian population.
Now, the objective was to take care of Belka as fast as militarily possible while keeping the Medievals under control. But in the rash desert of the Round Table, it was not like they were going anywhere.
But the Belkan command was also aware of the situation, and as we progressed through the country, they took a simple decision. If they cannot have it, then nobody will. So they added B7R to the list of targets for the last stand nuclear bombings. Luckily, those planes were intercepted before they could do anything, but those twelve thousand people in Weldreich were not so lucky.
I felt sad, seeing what a country could do to its own people, it almost made me quit, but I carried on, because I had one last thing to do.
Find where my buddy was.
Bret Thompson, Warriors and the Belkan War, OBC, 23rd March 2005
As soon as he returned to consciousness, Cipher opened his eyes and tried to stand up. But he was not on the ground anymore. Instead, he found himself on the bed again, the girl and the old man sitting next to it and watching him. It felt like everything had happened in a literal blink of an eye, but seeing how the lighting had changer, several hours probably had passed.
Without him being able to ask any question, he was handed a bowl filled with some kind of soup. Pieces of meat and vegetables were floating around. He hesitated, seeing that there was no spoon, but the feeling of emptiness that suddenly rose from his stomach forced him into taking the plate and starting to drink. The hot liquid quickly made its way down his throat, creating a great sentiment of satisfaction for Cipher. He then started to pick up individual pieces of meat and gobbling them.
With the bowl now empty, the pilot handed it back to his host.
"Thanks" he simply said, not really expecting them to understand the word, but at least hoping they would get the point.
The old man simply grabbed the plate and turned around to put it on the table. The girl stayed next to Cipher, and the two looked at each other like they were both trying to find out what was the person in front of them.
"Who are you guys anyway?" he simply mumbled under his breath, more thinking out loud than truly speaking.
"My name is Lelei La Lelena, and this is my Master, Kato El Altestan."
The surprise was enough to paralyze Cipher. The girl had spoken in that unknown language of hers, yet he had understood every single word.
"What the…"
"You are surprised, and I understand," she continued with the same emotionless and distant tone. "My Master and I are magicians, and I used one of my spell on you while you were sleeping. I can understand what you say and you can understand what I say, whatever the language we might spoke. However, it only functions between the two of us. You will not understand what my Master might say and he will not understand your language."
"Wait what? Magicians? Actual magic? Holy shit… What is going on?"
"Early this morning, I was in the forest, collecting berries. Then suddenly, a loud growling rose through the air. I saw your flying beast getting nearer and nearer to the ground, trying to land on the road before spinning out. I also saw you fly up before the beast shattered on the ground. You landed not far away from me, and when I reached you, you were unconscious on the ground. I brought you back here and applied healing pastes to your wounds, mainly heavy brushes on your side."
"So the crash actually happened… But where are we? Gebet? Recta? Sapin?"
Lelei handed him a small bowl full of water before answering.
"We are only a few minutes on foot away from the village of Coda, in the northern part of the Formar County. But I am guessing, because of your equipment, that you cannot know where this is."
He only replied when he finished his water.
"Not a single clue."
"When we had to take your clothes off, everything we saw, the clothes, the equipment, everything seemed otherworldly. And we have good reasons to believe that it is literally the case."
"What do you mean?"
At that point, Cipher's confusion reappeared, and confusion is never a good feeling to have when you are a soldier.
"That you and your metal flying beast came from a world that is not this one."
The pilot did not answer, and even he did not know if it was because he did not have anything to say or if he was too confused to say anything.
"I heard rumors that the Empire was trying to open the Holy Gate to conquer new lands, and it looks like they succeeded. You were probably transported here because you found yourself where the portal opened in your world when it did. But this is all speculation."
"Wait a minute… So that means that I arrived with my fighter jet in a world with magic and that an army is coming to my world?"
"This is the most likely scenario."
"Holy shit" were the only two words that managed to get out of his mouth, and they were full of the shock that this revelation was.
The two remained silent for a moment as the old man took away the plate with the empty bowls, Lelei turned around to face the parchment still on the table and Cipher tried to make sense of what was happening.
"So it is called a 'fighter jet'…" she said, writing down something with a large feather dripped in black ink.
Cipher turned his head to look at her, and she turned around a few seconds later with her eye slightly shining of curiousness.
"I have so many questions I need to ask you."
The sun was still high in the sky when the three left the house. They were on a wooden cart, pulled by a single donkey, slowly progressing on a dirt path cutting through the forest. The old master was holding the reigns while his student and Cipher exchanged many words.
She explained to him the context of the current situation, the Formar County, the Empire, the Gate, the rumors of an invasion before expending on the world, magic, basic politics and other miscellaneous things. Though one thing remained constant, the lack of expression in her voice.
The pilot had put his suit back on, not really having anything else to wear. He had his pistol with him, stored in its holster strapped to its right leg. But he had to admit it, without the anti-G suit and all the equipment only needed in flight, overall are really comfy despite the bland color.
When her explanations finished, she remained silent for a few moments. But the silence was cut short by her voice rising again, this time with an interrogative tone.
"On your arm, is it a banner?"
Cipher looked at where the blue eyes were pointed, the rectangular patch on his left arm. White on the top, red on the bottom and with a large black isosceles triangle with its basis taking the entire left side and pointed to the right.
"Yes it is" he replied with a saddened tone. "This is the flag of the Republic of Ustio, and I am a part of the Air Force."
He then shifted his position, revealing to Lelei the image of a hellish red hound holding its chain in his mouth and its tail coming back towards his head like a vigorous flame.
"I am a part of the Sixth Air Division, Sixty-sixth Air Force Unit. Galm. I am not a regular soldier though, just a mercenary. I fight for a profit."
He was going to start explaining the context of the war when Kato turned his head towards them and said a word. Cipher obviously did not understood what he had literally said but still got the meaning. They were arriving on the crash site.
The sun suddenly took the place of the trees as they exited the forest and entered a large plain. In the distance, there was a larger straight dirt road cutting through the green fields.
And at the end of that path laid the metal remains of a crashed jet fighter.
As they got closer, Cipher started to make sense out of the various pieces of debris scattered all over the place. As he remembered, the plane had started to roll over because of the bumpiness of the trail. The right wing had completely shattered under the weight of the rest of the plane and the main body, along with the left wing that was relatively intact, had completely flipped upside down, and needless to say that nothing remained of the two tail fins.
There was a small and strange feeling of relief in Cipher's mind, ejecting had been the good course of action as he probably would have not survived such an impact. It was accentuated by the fact that nothing caught fire, hinting at an almost empty fuel tank.
"Holy shit…" he said under his breath. He had already seen pictures of crashed planes before as well as the burning wreckage of his opponents, but being so close of the actual thing was a brand new experience.
It was at this moment that he realized that there were people standing next to the wreckage. As they got closer, he started to figure out what they were wearing and thus who they probably were.
Just like in a car crash in the middle of a city street, people had gathered out of curiousness to see what was going on, and that feeling had probably been kicked up a notch by the fact they were completely foreign to the machine they had in front of their eyes.
A handful were holding spears and had what looked like helmets. They were some sort of guards or militiamen, trying to keep some farmers away from the metal body as a small old man with a hat was looking inspecting it.
"The village Elder is already here" stated Lelei before Cipher could even ask a question. "We are not far from Coda, so this is not surprising."
One of the guard saw the cart closing in on their location and said something to the elder that turned around. As the cart rolled through the last hundred meters separating it from them, the two old men waved to each other.
Cipher could not conclude on the intentions of the old man just yet as he did not know whether or not the elder had noticed he was there. By reflex, his hand moved down along his leg, ready to pull on the handle at any time.
Caution is always the better course of action.
When the cart finally stopped, the elder launched a few words towards the two mages with the tone of relief. Kato answered with a few words before turning his head towards Cipher.
"Huh… Hello" simply answered the pilot with a small waving of his hand before jumping off the cart and walking towards his crashed plane.
He knew that everyone was watching him, but he did not care. What he cared about was the state of his aircraft.
He heard the chat that started behind his back. He could only understand Lelei, so the feeling he had was like hearing someone talking on the phone in the background.
"Yes, he is."
"I found him nearby when I arrived here and I brought him back to our house to heal him."
"He says he is the pilot of this machine."
"Yes, he can understand me and I can understand him through a spell."
Meanwhile, he was assessing the damage. Almost by miracle, the internal fuel tanks situated inside the main body of the plane and inside the left had not leaked, and what remained of the right wing tank was not drenched in fuel, meaning that said tank was probably empty.
The lone Sidewinder was still attached to the left wing, undamaged and only covered by a few pieces of dirt. But sadly, it was completely unusable by someone on foot. The cockpit was completely crushed between the mass of the plane and the hard ground, so there was truly no point trying to see what was left in, all the electronics being dead.
Now, his plane was nothing more than a twenty million Osean Dollars piece of scrap.
"Well I can't really make anything out of it," he said as he turned around he rejoined his hosts that were still talking with the elder, "it's too damaged. Also, very very important, do not bring any kind of flame near the plane. It might light up the remaining fuel and transform the thing into an enormous fireball."
The old man looked at him confusedly, not understanding any of the word uttered by that strange looking man. But as Lelei translated, his confusion changed. Now, he was wondering who he was and how did he arrived here.
"My name is not important, but you can call me Cipher. I came from beyond the Gate and I want to go back from where I came from."
The man froze when the words of the mage, carrying the translation of the pilot's sentence. Immediately, his look switched back towards Kato before asking other questions.
Apparently, the other bystanders also heard the news as they started to whisper between one another.
"What are they saying?" asked Cipher to his young translator with a low voice.
"They are surprised. They were not expecting the inhabitants of the other world to be humans like us. They are also trying to find out someone can pilot a jet."
Fair enough. All those people looked like poor farmers that probably did not know how to read or write, so Cipher could not blame the people of this world.
"I bet you are asking those same questions, aren't you?"
She turned around, the blue of her eyes now facing the dark grey of the aircraft paint.
"Indeed I am."
Explaining how a fighter jet works and flies to a young mage in the middle of the medieval countryside had never been on the list of things Cipher thought he would do one day. But that was exactly what he was doing. And to his surprise, she was understanding the science behind it all pretty quickly. Lift, gravity, combustion, fuel, radio, it was truly like an extract of Fighter Jet 101, and she was probably going to end at the top of the class.
Then suddenly, something moved amidst the large bushes at the limit of the forest. It could not have been the wind, and Cipher had the feeling this could not have been simple wildlife with such a ruckus going on.
It was at this moment that several shadows jumped out of said bushes, encircling the wreckage and the people near it very quickly. They were as many as the militia men but had a way more terrifying look. They all had different equipment, some having bows, other short swords, and their clothes and their light armor looking like it had been gathered here and there.
Bandits.
But even if they were bandits, they were better equipped than the standard village guard, meaning that they had a clear advantage.
One of them stepped forward with a greasy laugh and launched a few words with a menacing tone.
"What's he saying?" discreetly asked Cipher to the mage that had already took a more ready stance while his own hand grabbed the handle of his pistol, still keeping it in its holster.
"He is saying that he wants to take all the valuables of the village by using the Elder as a leverage" she answered, tightening her grip on her wooden staff.
Apparently, one of the bandits heard her speak and turned his head towards the two. His surprise was clearly visible when his eyes met Cipher's. He yelled something to his leader that immediately stepped towards the pilot and the mage, drawing his sword and pointing it towards them.
The subjects were armed and had an obvious aggressive behavior.
Enough for Cipher to pull out his gun and point it towards the bandit without any form of remorse.
The bandit stopped, but it seemed it was more out of an amused confusion than anything, a small grin appearing at the side of his mouth.
He then something, probably in the lines of "You are going to threaten me with this?" before rising up his blade to prepare his strike.
The only thing that went through Cipher's mind at this exact moment was one simple thing.
He could now use deadly force in self-defense.
The nine millimeter round he fired left the barrel with the usual loud noise of the gunpowder detonating before hitting its target right below the neck, a part of his chest that was not covered by any armor.
The hole it created in the covered but unprotected skin immediately exploded in blood, and the bandit fell on the ground, his hands trying to cover the wound.
By the looks of it, Cipher had hit the trachea, considering how he started to struggle breathing and the blood he started to cough.
Everyone froze, trying to understand what just happened. But Cipher, trained for such events, immediately shifted towards another target.
It was a woman, trying to pull the string of her bow, the simple arrow pointed towards him.
He pulled the trigger two times, and she fell on the ground too, screaming in pain. Cipher did not have the time to check the injuries she suffered, directly thinking about his new target.
"Drop your weapons!" he then yelled, shifting his aim between the closest of the hostiles, with the scariest voice he was capable of doing.
The bandits froze on the spot. Then one started to run away, screaming in terror.
Then another one followed him.
Then all the others fled, running as fast as they could to save their lives.
Quickly, a rumor started to spread out, first amongst the bandit groups operating in the area then amongst the population. This rumor said that the man bearing a hellish dog as his emblem should never be attacked.
That he possesses an unimaginable power. That he could kill anything that was walking the land in a blink of an eye. That he was stronger than the demons themselves.
That he was a Demon Lord.