Chapter 6

  A month passed, the feelings of the journey toward the Ceremony of the Moon had ranged greatly between each member of the quest. Caine, Motoko, Daan, Miranda, Claire and Sage had prepped, prepared and traveled for the same exact 30, but for some it went by without a hitch, while for others it a was a hell that only got worse with each passing day. But no matter how much griping and complaining had been done, there was always the constant reminder that the weight of the world depended on this, and it was only going to get harder from here. The five Children of the Moon had their quests, but the duo Phantoms had plenty of their plate as well for the preparation of their mission.

  Caine and his pink-haired guide, whom eventually introducing herself as “Ruby”, had a great beginning of their journey… but that didn’t last long. The first couple days had been marked with teleporting to the farthest part of Ryn that had a grounded city on the earth, Glint, with teleportation portals that went away from the center of the four nations, the Center Island of the Unnamed Child.

  The plan was to have a record of Caine’s teleportation card to lead the wrong way, and travel the actual journey on foot. One of the reasons was to try and lose any people tracking the Moon Children who might want to put an end their journey. The second reason was due to the fact that teleportation had made the trip to the Center Island a lot shorter than thirty days, and those traveling from different nations didn’t have that advantage. Ghald had their trains and early-staged automobiles, but they didn’t have any main roads that lead to the Center Island, as the Church and its people viewed it as a place of sacrilege. Miizu and Paiyi most likely had horses and carriages, at best. He and Ruby had skipped from town to town to waste time without settling in one particular area, and the denser the population the better. For the smaller towns, Ruby had set up an area for Caine to wait for her while she went to get supplies for camping outdoors. Caine didn’t know the first thing about setting up a tent or… anything that was required to make a small campsite.

  The first night on the journey, they had sex again, and any small irritation or annoyances they had built during the day had been forgotten in their moments together. But when it came to morning, it only took Caine drinking a larger portion of their water rations than Ruby had instructed not even an hour prior for their bickering to build into an argument that would later have Ruby shouting how horrible of a partner Caine was in the bedroom; a river of words telling him that he was selfish, uncaring of anything to do with her pleasure, and that his manhood wasn’t anything to write back home about either. That would be the tip of the iceberg that was the hell to come for the next twenty-nine days. To be fair, Caine realized in hindsight he probably shouldn’t have said the word “bitch”, even if she was acting like one.

  Motoko and her bandaged-faced guide, who wouldn’t give up her own name no matter how much time the two shared, had exchanged the stories of their battles and what styles of fighters and daemons they knew or encountered over the years. Motoko enjoyed not only the information they were able to share, but also how calm and collected her guide had always remained. There had been a few daemons they had come across as they traveled through the thick forest, the tree branches so full and thick that a bright sunny day had looked like dusk inside the leaves. But whenever they had encountered a daemon- whether it was an ambush or they had the upper hand on an unsuspecting monster- the bandaged woman had always kept the same calm tone, and she never rushed into action. Every single move, every single swing, every step she took was calculated and practiced. Motoko often wondered if this woman ever had the intent to end her life, would Motoko stand a chance of surviving that fight? The more monsters they came across, the less she was sure of the answer.

  Daan had prayed and asked the gods what he had done to be punished so harshly by being paired with his sharp-tongued guide. Every time he asked her name, she’d give an answer. “Britney,” she responded the first time.

  “Really?” Daan would always naively ask.

  “Ha! Nope!” she would always burst into laughter, often calling him an idiot, loser, or a long list of synonyms of the sort for believing her. A lot of their conversations were the same type of dead-ended jokes of hers, and that’s when she wasn’t yelling at him for being too far from her, or too close to her, or just about anything for the sake of complaining and yelling at him, it seemed. Everything Daan seemed to be interested in or believed in, she found stupid. Whether it was his faith in the gods and what the church taught, to his philosophy of helping those less fortunate than him, she poked and prodded at every given chance. It was especially annoying that she kept shifting and changing her face to a different face every few moments, so he never truly got a sense of which face was her actual face, if any she had shown were her own at all. It seemed as if her job was to drive him insane during the trip, and it never let up during the thirty days they had traveled together.

  Miranda and her journey with her handsome guide had been nothing short of exciting, stimulating, and a learning experience, in more ways than one, until the last few days of the trip. In the beginning, her guide, Romero, had shown her through forest and jungles and good ways to track Daemon footprints and other tells to know if any of them were around, and which direction they may have head off towards among other information about daemons. Miranda was able to point out and name several plants, and Romero was able to tell her their medicinal properties. As much knowledge Miranda had through textbooks and dictionaries, Romero had an abundance of knowledge through experience. And it was through this teacher/student interaction that she had noticed Romero was slowly growing closer to her. Like when he would wrap his arms around her waist and bring her closer to him as he pointed out a certain fruit or herb on a tree, or how he would sneak up and whisper in her ear in a way that got her heart racing.

  It was mild at first, but it seemed the more time passed and the fact that she never rejected his advances, he kept slowly creeping in feeling and touching her more and more. He would often talk about how it was taboo to get involved with a Child of the Moon, especially before the sacred marriage, but Miranda innocently asked, “Well, I’m not technically married, yet, right?” It seemed that he took that as an okay to go further, and seeing as this was the first time a man had paid any type of attention to her (especially a good looking one at that), she definitely didn’t mind. He once accidentally walked in on her bathing in a river, yet she didn’t feel compelled to cover herself as they locked eyes and he apologized and walked the other way, but not without getting a good look. The attention itself was enough to make Miranda wonder what it would have been like to feel his hands explore her body.

  But five days before the end of their journey, Romero had finally made his move. They had been holed up in an abandoned shack that sheltered them from the heat and occasional rain for the last few days, knowing they were close to their destination but needed to wait for the 30 days to run out. They had managed to make bedding out of hay and leaves that surrounded the area, and it was probably the most comfortable thing they had slept on outside of the occasional inn they would stay at when it was crowded and nobody was paying much attention to them. Miranda was coming back from another bath in the river, wearing only a towel as she tried to air-dry herself on the way back to the hut. When she had arrived, Romero was laying on the bed, fully nude and fully exposed and erect. His eyes said more than enough to tell that he wanted to bed her right then and there. As much as Miranda had mildly fantasized the thought during their trip, the surprise that it was happening right then and there gave her a great deal of anxiety. Not only that, but his hardened manhood (the first one she’d seen in outside a textbook) looked exactly like a little mushroom, and that funny little thought on top of her nervousness caused her to burst into laughter.

  Romero had left the room in an embarrassed rush, and neither of them talked about that moment again. But the flirtatious touching and whispers also came to an end. Miranda wondered if it was for the better, or a sign from the gods saying to wait until marriage. She had just hoped she wouldn’t burst into laughter with her future husband and bruise his ego as well.

  Claire and Sage didn’t even leave for the Center Island until three days before the event happened. There had been a lot of hustle and bustle at the Central Government Headquarters. People in the offices and cubicles seemed to be rushing around trying to get official documents in place, making sure they had all the right information on the 24 chosen people to get married. It was almost hard for Claire to watch so many people work so hard only to later find out that she and Sage would murder them all. She had wondered why the government would put up so much work, only to knock it down once it was complete. Besides, didn’t the Central Government want the daemons to disappear and the world to reunite? Was that not supposed to be their intention for gathering as a united force to begin with? But then again, her and Sage were merely foot soldiers who did dirty work. Perhaps there was something bigger at play that she wasn’t privy to due to her being a lackey at best.

  But when Claire and Sage did end up leaving, there wasn’t a huge meeting or anything like they had expected. They were just given emails about the details of the mission, which hadn’t changed at all: protect the Children of the Moon until the end of the wedding, and then end all the lives of everyone who had been there; the Children, the priests, any body guards… anyone and everyone was to be slain before they decided to leave the Center Island.

  At the beginning of the day of the Ceremony, each group with a Child of the Moon was woken up at the first light of dawn and traveled along a coastline until their guide had brought them to a large bolder, several feet taller than an average person, and just as wide. It looked like an ordinary rock until the guides took out a shimmering crystal from a well-secluded place on their person or baggage. When the guides had pressed the crystal onto the stone, the crystal sank into the boulder as if it were made of liquid, and the whole boulder shone a light purple hue before fading away and leaving a large entryway into the stone. The process impressed everyone, even Caine who had come from a land of technological advancements.

  “Can’t say I’ve ever seen a crystal turn a rock into a door before…” He said wryly while masking the fact that was he was impressed.

  “You kids from Ryn seem to think you know so much about the world, but you really have no idea what the world is like, do you?” Ruby asked, shaking her head at Caine’s lack of cultural knowledge outside his country.

  “What? Is it like the other three nations know about cars, and trains, and the internet and everything that’s going on in Ryn or something? Can’t say that I’m all that surprised. It’s probably the most interesting thing they’ve heard about a place outside the home they know.” he stated dryly.

  “No, it’s not that…” Ruby did her best to ignore the arrogance in his tone. “Most people couldn’t even picture a world like yours even if I tried to explain it to them, especially down in Paiyi. I guess I had just figured someone who was chosen to help save the world would know a little bit more than what goes on in their own backyard.” the sound of her voice, Caine couldn’t tell if she was subtly insulting him or simply expressing her thoughts. After she had insulted his performance in bed, it seemed like everything she had to say to him had some kind of back-handed insult. It got to the point that Ruby had to ask him if she really sounded as mean-spirited as he made her out to sound, or if perhaps he was projecting his feelings of inadequacy onto her. When he couldn’t decisively conclude, all she said was, “That’s what I thought,” and the two didn’t speak much for the rest of the journey, unless it was important.

  Caine didn’t say anything to her most recent comment, and his lack of a reply gave her the signal to start walking into the opening of the cave, making Caine follow without a word. The entrance had been flat ground for a good several hundred feet before it declined into a downhill slant with the occasional small stair case engraved into the ground. The entire cave was just a tunnel big enough for two or three people to walk next to each other, and the ceiling hung just barely above Caine’s fingertips whenever he stretched and yawned. He was slightly taller than most of the people he came across, but he could think of a couple people back home who would find walking through the tunnels a little cramped. The further they went downhill, the cooler the air began to become, and Caine could begin to smell moisture in the air. The caves were illuminated by larger crystals like the ones Ruby was using, placed on the ground, and they had shown brightly enough to see only a few feet ahead of you. Before the path would grow too dark, another crystal would be placed to light the pathway. It was a twenty-minute walk of silence between the two until they came between a fork in the path, allowing them to choose between six different tunnels to choose from.

  “So… did you have to memorize your way to the ceremony, or are we just going to guess?” Caine asked, and now that he thought about it, it was probably the question that oozed with the least amount of sarcasm that he had said during the last few days. He had hoped Ruby had seen it that way as well, because, for once, he was genuinely curious.

  “Neither,” she said as she started to take out another small crystal and cupped it in her hands. She would walk to one of the entrances and look at the stone. Caine couldn’t tell what she was doing until she got to the fourth entrance and the crystal started to give a small, faded glow. She started walking down the path without hesitation, and Caine was caught off guard by the decisiveness in her actions.

  “What exactly are those crystal stone thingies?” Caine asked when he caught up to her pace.

  “Magic.” was all she said.

  “Ha-ha…” Caine said sarcastically. “Seriously, though, I’ve never seen any type of stone being able to glow or open doors or-”

  “Magic.” she said once again, cutting him off. Based off their experiences together, her short answers were usually filled with blunt sarcasm, and it definitely felt like that were the case now.

  “Okay, you know what? I’ve been trying to be nice and considerate and watch my tone, but lately you’ve been a bigger bitch than necessary.”

  “Oh, my god...” Ruby’s head fall into one of her hands as she forced a laugh of disbelief. She took a deep breath before looking at Caine, her eyes filled with an angry passion. But before she could say a single word, she paused for a moment and her aura seemed to deflate. “You know what? You’re not even worth it. We’re almost done with this journey, so let’s just get you to your poor, unfortunate wife and never have to see each other again.”

  “Wait, what? Why is my wife unfortunate? Do you know something about my future wife that I don’t? Did something horrible happen to her?”

  “Yeah, she got paired up with you.” Ruby shot back, and started to walk into the darkness of the caves once again. Caine followed, but only after deciding not to go on a tangent about how lousy of company Ruby had been ever since they first slept together, just like she had insulted him weeks prior. But she seemed so fed up with trying to talk or communicate more than a few words at a time recently, and he thought perhaps it was best to leave laying dogs lie. She was right: their journey together was about to come to an end, and he had a whole other woman he was going to have to spend his life and have children with at the end of this cave.

  Caine was surprised when he had realized during the whole thirty days of travel, his wife wasn’t something he had thought too much about during their trips. Admittedly, there had been a lot of stress between watching their backs and making sure they weren’t being followed, the constant headbutting between him and Ruby about minor stuff, and -probably the most influential reason- Caine had his eyes set on just about every possible woman who could potentially sleep with him before his wedding day. If he was going to be stuck fucking one woman for the rest of his life, he wanted to make sure he got his fill in. But unfortunately, it wasn’t possible with the hours they had to duck away and hide from civilization, the scarcely populated towns they resided in, and the fact that Ruby was always around. The first couple days, he had thought the possibility of a threesome would be possible, but those dreams were dashed the day she mentioned how much he lacked in the bedroom.

  Now that he was on his way to meet his bride, he was beginning to wonder what type of woman she was. Firstly, which country would she hail from? All he really knew about other nations were what he saw on TV and movies, and the occasional history lesson, but a lot of that stuff was stereotypes. He wondered if he would have one of the blue-haired beauties of silence and honor from Miizu? Or would he have a rural woman from Paiyi that he could blow her mind with the technology from Ryn? Or would he get a submissive church-going woman from Ghald, a woman who had never been with a man and he could train to meet his needs in the bedroom the way he liked it? The more he thought about it, the more he confirmed that a woman from Ghald would be the best for him. Sex aside, the Ghaldians were the second most advanced nation, so while Ryn’s technological advancements may be impressive to a Ghaldian woman, it wouldn’t totally shatter her world seeing as they had trains and a much more basic model of automobiles.

  Caine and Ruby continued on much of the next hour in silence before Caine broke the silence. They had traveled down identical looking tunnels and had found twelve other forks-in-the-road like before, each one of them having six entrances to different cave routes. When they had gone through the most recent tunnel, Caine couldn’t help but wonder the progression of their trip.

  “So… are we almost there? We’ve been traveling for more than an hour.”

  “We’re about a third of the way there.” Ruby said plainly.

  “A third?” Caine didn’t mask his surprise. “We still have two more hours of this bullshit left?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Ruby’s voice oozed with sarcasm. “Maybe we should have had a major planet-changing ceremony near the entrance for all the assassins and fanatics who don’t want to see this ceremony happen to reach you. Or for just any average idiot like you to stumble upon sacred grounds. Because I’m sure they didn’t think about how having a three hour walk into some caves might be inconvenient after a 30-day goose-chase around the entire nation to avoid your death, but I’ll let the higher ups know so they could work around your royal necessities, princess.”

  “What is your deal?” Caine asked, exasperated. “You’ve been-”

  “What? A bitch?” Ruby shot back, but her tone seemed calmer than Caine’s did. “Do you realize you’ve used that word to explain any and all of my actions that seem to irritate you? Have you ever considered that you’re a misogynistic prick who sees women as nothing but something to stick your dick in and make your food for you? And in case you’re still butt-hurt about my comment about you lacking in the sack, I’ve met plenty of guys who’ve disappointed me in the bedroom, but every single one of them was more considerate of a person than you.” Ruby had hit a lot of points that Caine wasn’t prepared to respond to, and his face didn’t hide it. Ruby gave a heavy sigh of frustration. “And trust me, if I was going to show you my bitchy side, you’d know.” Ruby turned to continue on the path they were on, muttering something along the lines of her not believing she ever found him attractive at all. Caine followed her with a small gap between them for the remainder of the way to the ceremony.

  The next couple hours passed almost painlessly slow. If walking several miles in a dark and damp cave wasn’t enough for Caine to complain about, the unspoken tension of him and Ruby had made his discomfort grow tenfold. The only times they spoke was to show him which path to take at a fork in the road or when to stop and take a small break; other than that, no other words were spoken between the two. But the two had noticed that the further they walked into the caves, the bigger and more frequent the crystals seemed to be popping up. At first, they were only placed along the floors, but they seemed to be sprouting along the walls and ceiling like mushrooms. Caine thought it was peculiar that the size of the magic crystals had grown so much larger than the speck Ruby carried around, but he said nothing about it aloud.

  The end of the path had come almost abruptly to Caine. They were walking when Ruby had stopped all of the sudden and pointed ahead of her. A few dozen feet ahead came a large opening that seemed to make the tunnel expand in height, shining with a brighter purple light that shone from the crystals.

  “Well, the ceremony grounds are up ahead. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

  Caine was about to answer with a rude comment, but thought better of it. But as soon as that thought had vanished, he couldn’t help but think of why Ruby was asking that particular question. He had known Central Government employees to kill anybody who didn’t cooperate with their plans. While he did have his concerns and doubts, this was the last place he wanted to admit them.

  “I’m one of the Children of the Moon, right? This is for the betterment of the world and shit. As much as a selfish prick that you think I am, I’m not going to keep letting daemons roam around and kill people for hundreds of more years.”

  Ruby had held his gaze after his statement for a while, almost as if she were feeling out how much she believed his response. For the first time on their trip together, Caine had a growing uncomfortable feeling that his life may have been in immediate danger. He watched her every move, waiting for a moment she may reach from a hidden weapon of some sort like she did with her gun in the brothel.

  “Alright,” was all she said and she walked towards the entrance of the ceremony ground. When Caine passed the entrance, he had seen several stone staircases that spiraled along the walls of a large room that was big enough to pack an entire sports event or concert inside. There had been sixteen holes in the ceiling that seemed to be a mile high, and with each hole it shone a light from the sun that acted like a spot light. He could see a few people on the ground floor that was a couple stories below them, and he could hear their voices bounce off the cave walls but couldn’t make out what they were saying. In the center was a large stage that had a beautiful stained-glass back drop that stood a couple stories tall, but from the angle he had been walking down the stairs, he couldn’t quite make out what it was.

  When he and Ruby made it to the ground floor, they headed toward the stage, and as they got close, Caine had seen five other people around his age and a dozen priests and nuns, all conversing in varied groups. Caine spotted one girl with black hair and glasses and clothing that looked like how people dressed back home, so he figured she must have been from a different city in Ryn than his hometown of Vern. There had been two people in tattered clothing and sandals with red-related colored hair, a woman with a bright fire truck red, and a young man who barely reached adulthood with maroon hair. He assumed the redheads came from Paiyi like he had heard all his life. There was a girl with forest-green hair in what looked like a uniform and knee-high socks, from Ghald, Caine suspected. The last person Caine concluded was from Miizu, a woman with blue hair who wore a kimono and a katana at her side. She the only person not talking to anybody, but instead sat on the edge of the stage cross legged and eyes closed, a person with bandages covering their face sat next to her, doing the same. Caine assumed they had been meditating, and thought it was a weird time to be doing so. He had heard of drinking, panicking, or spending time with loved ones before the ceremony, but he had never heard of people meditating before marriage.

  As he and Ruby got to the ground floor and made way to a priest who had eyed them and began greeting them, Caine finally got a good look at the stained-glass mural that caught his eye as he walked in. The image was a woman who was several times larger than any other person in the image, on her knees on the ground, looking down, and a tear spilling from her eye. A symbolic heart was on her chest, surrounded by a flame, but broken into five equal pieces. There had been four smaller sized people that had stared at each other with, what Caine guessed was, anger. There was a sea of ant sized people that surrounded the woman’s legs, all carrying weapons or torches and going to war on each other. There was a couple dozen angel-looking people flying in the sky, shooting arrows at each other and the people on the ground as well. It seemed to be a scene from a story about the goddess Sonova and the four demigods, but Caine didn’t really know too much about the stories in the Svya other than the basic children’s stories that were taught for lessons on morality.

  “Ah, welcome!” the priest had announced as he got close to Ruby and Caine. “Which one of you is going to be part of this miraculous ceremony today?” the priest looked overjoyed at the two of them. Caine had never seen somebody smile so broadly in his life… well, not sober anyway.

  “That would be this guy,” Ruby said as she pointed to Caine. “Caine Bryer from the city of Vern in Ryn. Son of Adam, the leading scientist in his nation.” Caine had just noticed that she referred to Ryn as his nation, which made him wonder where she was originally from.

  “Ah, Mr. Bryer, it is a pleasure to have you here today.” he smiled even more at Caine and looked at the two of them. “I hope that your travels went along smoothly?”

  The two of them muttered quick responses in a flat, irritated manner about their journey, but that didn’t seem to deter the priest from showing his joy.

  “Well, whatever unfortunate situations you’ve experienced have passed, and you can now relax around the stage area until the others have arrived. We imagine that the waiting shouldn’t take long for the rest of the Children to get here for the ceremony. May I speak with you a moment, miss?” the priest was looking at Ruby. Ruby nodded, and looked at Caine, nodding her head and indicating he should sit down around the stage area. Caine reluctantly obeyed and made his way over.

  When he got to the stage, he took a seat on the edge, but distant enough from everybody else to not be forced to engage in a conversation of empty words and niceties. He was going to leave here with only one person, and he had no interest in getting to know anybody but his future wife, especially not any of the nuns or priests. As he sat, he watched Ruby talk to the priest that greeted them for a few minutes. There had been plenty of words exchanged between the two, but it didn’t seem to be good nor bad, just professional.

  During the few minutes Ruby and the priest spoke, two more Children and their guides had joined the room. There was a super tall young man with a shaved, bald head, wearing a strange, silk black and white garb Caine had never seen before, and a necklace with large maroon beads the size of baseballs. He had a spear that seemed different than any other Caine had ever seen before; the spearhead was long and curved, a weapon with a good amount of reach for those who knew how to wield it. The thing that was most captivating about this man was his size, both in height in girth. Caine wouldn’t say the man was fat, his physique suggested that he spent plenty of time physically training and growing stronger, but there was a roundness to him that Caine couldn’t help but think came genetically. But he was at least a whole head taller than Caine, who was already standing at a solid six feet.

  The girl behind the large young man was a young woman who had really caught Caine’s eye. She had red hair that reached her shoulders, and a more stylistic version of the style of clothing that the other redheads of Paiyi had worn. She wore glasses, something Caine would have thought was too advanced for the people of Paiyi, but perhaps that was his own fault for only really knowing stereotypes of the other nations. But as much as he enjoyed the look of her figure- full, perky tits and a nice bubble-butt to go along with her toned legs and stomach- it was the look in her eyes that really grabbed his attention. There was something both wise beyond her years, yet still naive, in the way she looked and held herself. There seemed to be a sense of child-like wonder to the world as well as a knowledgeable mind. Caine couldn’t put it into words any better than that, but her looks mixed with her body was more than enough to make him wish and hope that this would be his future wife.

  Caine kept tabs on the two new comers without staring like a creep, and would occasionally look over at the Paiyian girl with the glasses whenever he felt she wasn’t looking his way. The more he looked and admired her, the more he concluded that he liked what she had to offer. Caine couldn’t help but begin to imagine what she must have looked like naked and-

  “Are you Caine Bryer?” a woman’s voice made him jump a little with how sudden and close it was, and when Caine looked to his right to see the bandage faced person who sat with the Miizunese girl standing a couple feet from him. He never heard or sensed her walking towards him, so it took all his strength to not utter a shriek of surprise when he had seen her. He swallowed his nerves before speaking.

  “Yeah, that’s me. And you are…?” Caine waited for a name, or any type of response in that nature, but the woman simply gazed up and down, sizing him up. He could see no part of this woman’s face other than her soul-piercing eyes, and Caine felt that was more than enough to tell him the woman was dangerous if you crossed her. Her aura alone ran a chill down his spine, and the fact that Caine couldn’t put a finger on the reason why made it seem even deadlier than the original fear. But that ended when the bandaged woman gave a short chuckle.

  “Do yourself a favor, and make sure you take care of your wife. I don’t want to hear that you’ve been mistreating her in the future.”

  “Wait, you know who my wife is?” Caine couldn’t help but feel a little excited to possibly know which one of the ladies that would be in the ceremony would be the one to come home with him. But the woman only gave another small laugh.

  “Only the gods know who your wife is. Not even the nuns and priests here know who is marrying who. They are merely hear to bear witness to the ceremony.”

  “Okay...” Caine said unsteadily. “So, if you don’t know who my wife is, why are you warning me?” a realization came to Caine in that moment. “And how do you know my name? Have we met before?”

  “More than once,” even though Caine couldn’t see her face, he could tell there was a smile in her voice. “but I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t remember meeting. We’ve met during some pretty forgettable circumstances.”

  The way she spoke sounded like she may have had more to say or reveal to Caine, but the two sat in silence, just looking at one another.

  “Well, that’s the end of the line for the two of us.” Caine heard Ruby’s voice to his left, and looked to see her walking towards him from where the group of priests were standing. Caine turned to his right to say something to the bandaged woman, but she had vanished. Not only was she not anywhere near him in the two seconds he had turned his head, but it seemed as though she had disappeared from the large room entirely.

  “You’re leaving already?” Caine asked slowly, still looking around to see if he had just missed where the bandaged woman had walked towards, but the fact was that she was gone.

  “Yeah. I mean, I did my job. Had to deal with your bullshit for a month and drop you off. You’re all checked in and ready to waste some poor girls’ life for the rest of your days.”

  “Well thank you for your services and sacrifice.” Caine spat sarcastically. “It must have been so hard for a perfect angel like yourself.”

  “If you keep up the same attitude, it’s your wife who’s gonna be nagging about the same shit. I mean, at least learn to be a gentleman in the bedroom and give back, huh?”

  “Bye, Ruby.” Caine said flatly, showing Ruby he was done with both her attitude and their conversation. Ruby scoffed at the rude attitude and turned around and held up one hand that gave him the finger as she walked away and back towards the stairs that took her up to the main entrance of the room. She took one last look at Caine, and then the rest of the members in the room, before turning around and making her journey back towards the surface. It was going to take a few hours, and she didn’t have any intention on hanging out in such a dull area for too long, especially when she wasn’t invited to stay to watch the ceremony happen.

  Ruby had walked for almost two hours, thinking about Caine and his spoiled way of living the entire trip. His apathetic way towards treating others and the world was enough to infuriate her. I can’t believe I was actually excited to sleep with him at first… she thought. She shuttered whenever she thought back on that night and how much disappointment arose out of it. Sure, he had some positive aspects about him. He didn’t succumb to his anger and start throwing fists whenever he got upset like some of the men in Ruby’s life. He had a way of making a girl feel beautiful and special, even if she had recognized that it was all part of seducing ladies into the bedroom. But the infuriating part about him was that he was always self-seeking and looking for ways to better his experience, but he seemed to be totally unaware of his selfishness. Man, so many of my girlfriends are going to be bummed when they hear that their favorite model is a shitheel.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard a couple of voices coming from the direction she was heading towards. Ruby knew that each Child of the Moon was guided by someone in their own individual path, so to hear voices going down the path that she and Caine had taken brought concern. She padded down the small handgun she kept concealed to make sure it was exactly where she thought if she needed it at a moment’s notice. But in her experience, it was always best to appear innocent instead of blindly attacking when it came to unknown forces. Plus, people usually assumed a good-looking girl like her wasn’t capable of handling herself in physical situations, which gave her the advantage of surprise.

  Ruby crept down the tunnel slowly, hearing the voice grow closer and closer, but the path was too dark for where the voices were. She tried to peer through the darkness and took her time to not make any sudden, loud noises. Ruby paused when she had seen the same dim, purple light that came from the magic stones make its way closer to her, and the two voices kept getting louder and clearer.

  “I told you we should have taken the third tunnel at the last fork!” she heard a young man’s voice state while trying to hold back his apparent frustration.

  “I’m sorry, have you traveled using a magic stone before?” a female voice asked facetiously. “We were told to listen to the stone, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve been down here for like an hour, and I’m not seeing any indication that we’re getting any closer.”

  “Didn’t the dossier say that the estimated time of traveling to the core of this supposed to take a few hours, even for those who know the path? Do you even read those things, or do you still skim every other paragraph?”

  “I told you, that was one mission. How long are you going to keep that over-”

  The man stopped talking as they came into view of Ruby. The three had a stared at each other for a moment, gauging the threat level of each other. Ruby saw that the young man had black hair with a pattern of white stripes along his hair, and the young woman had straight, golden, blonde hair... colors she had never seen before.

  “Who are you two?” Ruby was the one to break the silence. The man and woman exchanged looks at each other and then eyed Ruby up and down once more. She knew they were trying to figure out if she were a threat or not. She made sure that her body was ready to react to any type of surprise attack without tensing up and showing any indication that she would be prepared for a fight. Her fingers ached to inch toward the handle of her gun, but she knew that that movement could be mistaken as an attack.

  “Us?” the woman responded. “We’re the added security for this Ceremony. Who the hell are you?” Ruby couldn’t tell if that was the truth, or just a vague lie.

  “I’m one of the guides to take one of them down to the marriage ceremony. But now that he’s down there, I’m done working and on my way out of here.” Ruby spoke, but kept her eyes open for any swift moments. She didn’t like the fact that she was alone in a small, tight tunnel with these two; it didn’t promote the best scenarios of winning a fight.

  “Wait… You work for Central Government, right?” the man asked her, and she could feel a bit of the tension ease off as he asked the question.

  “Yeah, that’s who gave me the job of guiding that idiot down here,” Ruby didn’t mean for her frustration of the journey with Caine to spill out, but she refused to look ashamed about the truth of her feelings. The couple had sighed of relief, and all tension had suspended when they heard Ruby’s response.

  “Oh, thank Sonova.” the woman breathed with ease. “Well, we’re Phantoms on our way to a security gig. My name’s Claire, and this is my partner Sage.” Claire had extended an arm out for a friendly handshake.

  “Ruby.” she gave her name as she shook hands with both of the Phantoms.

  “Well, Ruby, you wouldn’t know exactly how much farther we have to go, do you? We’ve only been at it for an hour, but I’ve got a big baby to babysit and I’m sure it’s almost time for his nap with all the whining and complaining he’s been doing.” Sage shot her a dirty look as she described him.

  “Oh, luckily for you guys, you have two whole more hours.” Ruby shook her head and rolled her eyes facetiously to show how much of a tried and tiring a walk it had been.

  “See? What did I tell you?” Claire seethed at Sage.

  “Yeah, yeah, I heard her…” he waved her off.

  “If it helps you guys at all, I noticed that we never, ever walked down the first tunnel on the left side. And most of the tunnels we took were the second, third or fifth a good deal of the time.”

  “Really?” Claire asked. Ruby could see in Claire’s eyes that she was trying to map out the entire route they’ve been traveling and the information Ruby just shared. “Well, that might actually be of help. Thanks.” Claire extended her hand again for a handshake. “Well, maybe if life is kind, we can meet again or work together in a place that’s not a dark little shit hole.” she joked.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind-”

  As soon as Ruby had taken Claire’s hand, she felt the cold steel of a blade pierce her throat. She had felt the blood spill out of her before she even realized that Claire had somehow sneaked a dagger into her hand and stabbed with precision and swiftness. Blood welled into her mouth as she felt the blade rip out from the side of her throat, and her body went limp as Claire let go of her hand. She gasped for air, but gagged like a landed fish on the pool of blood that seeped into her torn-open throat and pooled around her head. Ruby felt the warmth floating out of her body, and her eyes were growing heavier by the second. She reached out towards Claire and Sage, as if it were actually going to do something.

  “I don’t see why you can’t be blunt and straight-forward when it comes to these types of kills. Why do you have to act like you’re befriending them? Why not just kill them from the get-go?” Sage complained casually.

  “Like a savage?” Claire sneered, sounding genuinely offended. “I’m more civil than that.”

  The last thing Ruby ever saw was Claire and Sage retreat into the darkness towards the ceremony ground after they stepped over her like a roadkill, with the chilling realization that nobody was probably ever going to find her body.

  Then the darkness consumed her.

  * * *

  “Alright ladies and gentlemen, now that we’re all here, let’s get this ceremony under way, shall we?” one of the priests spoke, almost overwhelmingly cheerful. It seemed to be a common trait among the priesthood of this faction, while the nuns seemed to hold a more practiced and practical stoic approach to the situation. To Daan’s experience, it seemed to always be the very opposite. Not that he minded the change at all, it was just something he wondered if anybody else had realized. The other two people who had recently arrived from Ghald weren’t people he had recognized, and that was considering if they were from Krepki like he was, which he doubted based on the clothing and hair styles of the other guy and two ladies.

  Daan had arrived a few hours ago, and when he arrived, he was the eighth of the Children to have arrived, leaving half of the group to appear. When they had arrived, his guide talked to the priests, but had left without saying a word to him. He had watched her talk to a couple of the priests, and point towards his direction mid-conversation, and shortly after she simply went out the same way they came in, not saying a word nor looking in his direction. She clearly thought nothing of Daan, but he was happy to have her negativity leave his life without his need to act polite for a final goodbye.

  Two priests had spoken to him shortly after he found somewhere to sit comfortably, asking minor questions about who he was and which city he was coming from. As he answered one, the other had written down his response on a clipboard, making Daan wonder what they were taking notes for, and if they did this every single time there was a Ceremony of the Moon. When they were done with their quick questionnaire, they told him to feel free to chat and talk with anybody, so long as they stayed in the large room with the stage, and to come to any of the priests or nuns if he had any questions. Daan thanked them and watched them leave for a moment before turning his attention to the other Children in the room.

  Daan, who was usually somewhat shy even in the most comfortable of spaces, was intrigued by the looks and demeanor of all the others in the same position he was thrown into. As nervous as he might have been to talk to random stranger who just so happened to all be getting married in under the same circumstances, he had to remind himself that this was a rare opportunity that very few people have ever gotten since the barrier that divided the nations went up. He was able to talk and chat with four different people from the three different nations, and three strangers in his own land. There was a lot of information that he could learn about the world in this room. After a few moments of gathering his courage, he made way to the group closest to him, which was the group of Paiyians who were talking among each other. Two men and one of the young ladies chatted earnestly to each other, while one of the girls had sat off to the side of the group, within ear shot but more an observer of the conversation than one to join in.

  He had introduced himself to the group when there was a break in their conversation, and they politely responded with the same courtesy. But as Daan tried to find topics of conversation, he had felt there was a forced politeness about the group, as if they were uncomfortable talking to him for too long, but were too polite to turn him away. It was also hard to find any type of common ground, seeing as they didn’t have the same type of buildings, foods, or even religious appreciation that the people of Ghald had. When he felt like the conversation started to feel too forced for comfort, he made his way to the woman who sat outside the group to listen in.

  “H-hey there. I’m Daan, not sure if you heard when I spoke to your friends a moment ago.” he said, extending his hand for a handshake. But when he looked at the woman’s face after he spoke, she looked bewildered.

  “Miranda...” she said slowly, studying his face with an intensity that made Daan feel more uncomfortable than he had with the group he tried to speak to. Daan didn’t know if this was an odd Paiyian custom he was unaware of, so he waited a moment before making any type of comment.

  “I...is there something on my face?” he brushed at his cheeks gently with his hands in case there was, and the girl’s heavy gaze snapped out of it at the response of his voice.

  “Oh, no. It’s just… uh… Your voice… it sounds really familiar...” she spoke slowly as she studied his face.

  “Familiar? Really?” Daan knew for a fact that he hadn’t ever stepped foot outside the city of Krepki before this ceremony, let alone to any of the other nations. “Do you have any friends who might sound like me or anything?” he asked Miranda.

  “No... not friends, to be exact...” the way she had replied made Daan feel that she was leaving something out, but he couldn’t be certain what reason she would withhold any kind of information based on what they had been chatting about. As polite as Miranda had tried to be, Daan could tell that she was trying to continue to study his face without appearing like a creep.

  “Well, hi, there!” a bright and overly cheery voice exploded next to Daan. He had looked to his right and seen a girl with forest green pigtails and a black and gold outfit with white trim, an outfit that looked similar to the girl’s uniforms from the church groups he had gone to school with. The girl, it seemed, didn’t have a direction in her statement, but rather was greeting everyone within ear shot. When people finally looked at her, she continued with the same hyper energy she started with. “I’m Emma! And I am really excited to meet you all before the gods decide which one of you guys might be my husband!”

  Daan shot a look over at Miranda while Emma had everyone’s attention to see if Miranda was still staring at him. To his surprise, the moment he looked over, Miranda had turned her head away, as if trying to act like she wasn’t just looking at him. I don’t understand why this girl is so interested in me. It’s clear she’s thinking of the wrong person. I’ve never even been to Paiyi.

  “Oh. My. God!” Emma shrieked after the other Paiyians had introduced themselves to her. She rushed up to Miranda with wide and excited eye. “I love the way you cut your hair. I’ve never seen this hair style before; I didn’t know that a girl’s hair could be so short and look so good. Have you ever considered adding a blooming Paiyian lily in your hair during festivals? I imagine it would look even lovely. Did you cut it yourself? I knew a girl once who tried to cut her own hair, and it looked terrible at first, but she got better at it the more she did it.” Emma spewed a thousand words a second, barely giving one a chance to comprehend what she was talking about before moving on to her next question or statement. Daan decided it was best to move along and try talking to others, both because he wanted to avoid the Miranda girl’s gaze as well as not be associated with Emma just because they came from the same nation.

  Daan walked up to a group of people with dark hair and bright, flashy clothes. Half of them had been looking at a small electric box that seemed to grab their whole attention. He figured they were from Ryn, the nation of advanced technology, because Daan had never seen their fashion nor the boxes they were holding onto. One of the Rynians held up his box to the sky and moved his arm around slowly, announcing to the others that he, “wasn’t getting any kind of service down here” and asked if the others had any luck.

  Daan approached the group, a lot more reserved this time after the Paiyian people seemed to not be as interested in him as he did in meeting other new people. He walked up to the group, and one of the women was the only one to pick up their heads as he approached, but her attention quickly went back to the electric boxes she was holding onto.

  “Um… hi, guys. Just wanted to introduce myself since there’s a chance I might be marrying one of the ladies, or the men might move into my hometown after the ceremony.” Daan was about to explain that he could offer information about his town or country, but he noticed nobody seemed to be paying attention to what he was saying, they were all focused on their boxes. A gave a short, sad, “Well, I’m Daan.”

  “I’m Kat.” one of the girls said without looking up from the contraption in her hands. Another young man looked up and looked at Daan with curiosity, but he eventually went back to looking at the electric box in his hand as well. Nobody else had given him the time of day, which made him feel ready to leave the group, but he was curious as to what had everyone’s attention.

  “What are those?” Daan asked, pointing at the boxes that had everyone’s attention.

  “These are called cell phones,” the girl named Kat had answered without taking her eyes off of her own phone. “In Ryn, everyone uses these to stay in contact with one another, or send information, or pictures or videos… whatever you want to send to somebody, really.”

  “Videos?” Daan repeated slowly.

  “They’re pretty much moving pictures with sound.” Kat explained without much interest in Daan… or anything outside her phone, it seemed. But she paused for a moment at looked at Daan.“Wait, you guys do know what pictures are, right?”

  “Yes, we are not that far behind you guys!” Daan said defensively, but he knew he didn’t have any real idea of what type of other technologies Ryn had that could trump anything remotely flashy to those who lived in Ghald. But photography was something that was relatively new to Ghald; Daan could remember nuns and priests discussing the concept of what it meant to take a photo when he was first brought into the church from the orphanage years back. The best description he heard was that it was a lot like a painting, but seen with the same clarity and vividness as if you were looking at it through your own eyes. Daan couldn’t imagine images that moved and made sound like in reality being able to fit in such a small contraption.

  “Hey!” one of the Rynian men spoke up, the same guy who looked at Daan while he and Kat spoke just a moment ago. He was looking directly at Daan, eyes wide and full of accusations. “Can you say, ‘Your marriage isn’t a bad thing’ for me?”

  “What?” Daan asked, befuddled at the random task asked of him.

  “Say it!” the man repeated. “‘Your marriage isn’t a bad thing.’”

  “Don’t mind him.” Kat said. Daan didn’t have to look at her to know she was rolling her eyes. “That’s Caine. He’s a model back home, so he thinks he’s more special than everyone and doesn’t know how to talk to people with decency.”

  Daan looked back at the young man known as Caine. The bewilderment in Caine’s eyes as he made his demand. First was that Miranda girl, and now this Caine person was acting weird… Is somebody from every nation a little off in the head? Daan wondered.

  “Wait, don’t go!” Caine shouted. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Daan.” Daan responded as friendly as he could without showing his discomfort show. Caine looked at him blankly, as if he didn’t know what Daan had just said.

  “Dan?” Caine tried to repeat his name, but the pronunciation was off.

  “No. Close, but it’s Daan.”

  “...Dawn?”

  “Um… almost.” Daan said uncomfortably. Daan realized it was probably a lot easier to hear the difference between all those names when a lot of ancient Ghaldian was still occasionally used even when speaking the common tongue.

  “It’s Daan.” Kat spat back. “Hard D, than there’s no pitch change over the use of the A sound. It’s like John, but with a D. You really haven’t heard the Ghaldians speak?”

  “So… Don?” Caine tried again.

  “Do you not hear how you’re dropping the pitch between the O and the N? It’s not Don. It’s Daan.”

  “I don’t hear a fucking difference!” Caine shouted at Kat. That was the moment Daan decided it was best to not interact with the group any further and try his luck talking to the Miizunese group.

  He walked up to the group of the blue-haired nation, and greeted them with his name. For the first time all afternoon, he was greeted back with both respect and their full attention. He had introduced himself to each one of them at a time, one girl and two of the men, although only one of the men had taken the time to introduce himself by name. It was the tallest person in the Miizunese group… actually, he was taller than everybody in the room, now that Daan had looked around. He had a shaved, bald head with a large, curved spear on his back, and large bulbous, maroon beads that hung around his neck.

  “I am Hiroki from Jyoguri, a small village in northern Miizu.” he had addressed himself with a bow of respect. For somebody so big and carrying such a large weapon on his back, Hiroki spoke with a surprising gentleness.

  “So, are you guys excited or nervous about getting married today?”

  “The gods will choose for us who they choose, despite our feeling, yes?” the one girl in the small group had spoken. That’s when Daan had noticed another Miizunese woman who had been off by herself, meditating. “Should we complain about the destiny the gods have in store for us?”

  “No, we shouldn’t.” Daan said with a smile, finally feeling like he had found someone who had a common ideology about how to act when fate has new plans for you. “I didn’t realize the people of Miizu were as religious as us.”

  “It has far less to do with religion as it does honor and duty.” the other young man in the group spoke, and the other Miizunese had seemed to nod their heads in full agreement. “As the goddess Yukina has spoken in your- what was your holy book called again? The Svya? She says that we should view the world as it is, and not as our emotions state it should be. If the gods want us to marry and birth children to help fulfill peace in the world, we are more than happy to be a part of the process, or even giving our life to the cause if it must come to that.”

  “Does… does the ceremony actually have any kind of threat or danger that could end one of our lives?” Daan asked nervously. He hadn’t heard the ceremony to be dangerous at all, but perhaps there was something the other nations knew that he didn’t.

  “Not if you’re a man.” Hiroki spoke with a smile, and the others seemed to be amused by some kind of joke Daan didn’t understand.

  “How do you mean?” Daan’s head tilted to the side as he asked his question.

  “It’s not rare to die from childbirth,” one of the girls spoke motherly as she explained. “But it is an honorable death.”

  The group continued to discuss things that were both honorable and worthy of doing, some of which Daan couldn’t agree more, and other things Daan couldn’t wrap his head around. When they began talking about a special kind of honorable suicide that seemed to be common placed in the Miizunese, he couldn’t help but feel like getting away from the conversation. When he looked away from the group, his eyes fell on the woman meditating by herself. When the conversation seemed to give him an opening to leave, he politely parted ways and went to make his way to the woman. He approached her quietly, not wanting to disturb her too abruptly, trying to think of something to say to break the ice.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked with her eyes still closed, her voice monotone, not angry or upset that meditation was being interrupted.

  “Oh, yeah, um… well, first off, hi, I’m Daan.” he said, caught off guard by the fact she knew he was standing in front of her without evening opening her eyes. But when he spoke, her eyes seemed to shoot wide open and she quickly got a glance at his face.

  “Motoko...” she said, but suspicion was in her voice and eyes.

  “So... Do you usually meditate before a big ceremony like this?” Daan was trying to find anything to talk about, but he felt foolish the moment the words came pouring out his mouth. Out of all things to talk about, you decide to ask her about meditation? He scolded himself.

  “Usually before something important, yes, I’ll meditate. I want to make sure my mind is in the right place and not to fall prey to petty emotions.”

  “Makes sense...” Daan said uneasily, feeling that this conversation, too was beginning to feel forced. But then Motoko asked a question that Daan never thought he would have ever heard:

  “Say… Have you been hearing voices in your head lately?” she questioned. Daan looked at her as his eyes shot open with recognition. Daan didn’t know what to say, and when he didn’t say anything, Motoko tried further. “Perhaps a voice that sounds a lot like yours that nobody else can hear?”

  “How… how did you know that?” Daan asked, wondering if the ceremony was about to bring further surprises like the day he met his shape-changing guide. Was this Miizunese girl an answer to all the things the voices had been saying the last couple of months?

  “Because I’ve been hearing the voices in my head as well...” Motoko said nonchalantly. There was a moment of silence that she had seemed to be trying to think and recall on something. “I couldn’t help but notice that that redhead girl with the glasses looked at you funny when you first spoke to her, when I took a small break from meditating. And then that man from Ryn was yelling at you to repeat something, which I’m not totally sure, but I imagine might have been something the voice in his head had told him.

  “So, what…? Do you think everyone here in the ceremony has heard these voices in their heads?” Daan asked, starting to look at the other people joined in the ceremony under a new light.

  “No, I don’t think that’s it...” Motoko s thoughtfully. “It seems to me that you, me and those other two are the only ones who hear your voice and think it sounds familiar. But I do think that it’s interesting that each one of us is from one of the four different nations. That feels too specific to be coincidental.”

  Before Daan could utter another word, one of the priests had made the announcement that it was time to get the ceremony underway. The priest instructed that everybody gather on the stage, and stand underneath one of the sixteen spots filled with the sunlight of the setting sun poking through the ceiling. The groups slowly began making way to the stage and the priests and nuns began to take their spots for the ceremony to begin.

  Miranda was one of the last to get on the stage, her eyes and mind constantly went back to the young man who introduced himself, Daan. She had been watching him ever since he talked to her and the familiarity of his voice hit her hard. She watched him as he tried to talk to the Rynian group, and noticed only one girl really spoke to him. He got the same kind of results with the Paiyian group, whom she suspected of being wary of a Ghaldian with their increase in technology they were supposed to stay away from. The Rynian girl who did speak to him didn’t seem to have any interest in Daan, only being polite in answering his questions nobody else in the group seemed to care to answer. But then a very cute boy from Ryn exploded and demanded that Daan repeat a phrase, and that interaction caught Miranda’s curiosity. While she didn’t know how to ask Daan if he had been hearing the same voices speaking in her head, she could ask imagine it being easier to ask him to repeat a phrase she heard before to confirmed whether it was the same voice or not. The Ryn boy also looked at Daan with the same interest as if a unicorn had appeared in the room, something else that told her that he had possibly heard the same voices as her in his head. Miranda wondered if whoever it was that might have also heard these voices were hearing the exact same phrases or not.

  She watched Daan speak to the Miizunese group, and noticed the same type of polite indifference. He had chatted with the group for a moment, but nobody in the group of three seemed to pay any special attention to what Daan was saying or anything about his voice, until he walked to the lonely woman meditating. Miranda couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the woman said something to him and he looked at her with a similar look he gave both Miranda and the Rynian boy who yelled at him. But right before the Priests made the announcement to head towards the stage, the woman said something to him that made Daan’s face look as though she had unearthed some sort of deep secret. Miranda couldn’t help but wonder what exactly they were chatting about.

  Her attention was taken away from Daan as she got into one of the spot lights, and she looked at the other 23 chosen Children taking their places. Her nerves started to return, and she could feel butterflies in her stomach when she remembered that in a matter of an hour or two, she would be with a man who would not only be a part of her life for the remainder of her days, but will be the father of their child or children, who could possibly become the savior that rid the world of the barrier between nations and the daemons. She eyed the non-Paiyian men lined up in their spotlights and tried to imagine who would be the ones who would be a good guardian towards a savior of the world, who would be a good father, who would be a good lover.

  The men from Ryn had piqued her interest with their flashy clothes and hair styles. Her grandmother was from Ryn, so the interest to see what her grandmother’s native land must have been like was enticing. And while both men looked good, the taller one who yelled towards Daan earlier had been probably the best-looking man in the room. There had been a time when he caught her looking at him and gave a flirtatious wink before turning his attention to a nun who told him to focus on what the priest was about to say. The men from Ghald weren’t exactly her cup of tea, at least not in the lover’s department. Daan, as kind and gentle as he had seemed, was shorter than every man in the room, and shorter than half of the women as well. One other Ghaldian man was a taller, lanky, zit-covered young man who seemed to an air of arrogance about him. Even though Miranda hadn’t spoken with him, his entire aura was a turn off. Out of the Miizunese men, they had seemed equally respectful and strong, but the one with the large spear attached to his back was taller than everybody in the room and one of the tallest men she’d laid eyes on. At first, she thought that their size difference would be comical, seeing as she was a medium height. But then she remembered ladies saying that bigger size helped with things in the bedroom, and even though she had known they were talking about the size of one’s manhood, she wondered if physical size was an indicator of what was to be down there.

  “Now, if I could have your attention please!” the priest who greeted everyone when they first arrived. “Now that we have everybody here, and now that the sun has started to set on the horizon, it is time to begin the ceremony. Now, the Sisters will be coming around with the Blood Gauntlet and will prick your finger with a blade. Please allow a couple of drops of your blood into the gauntlet, and we will offer the blood to the gods, who will be the ones to choose your mates.”

  The loudmouth Ghaldian girl, Emma, had shot her hand up for a question.

  “I’m sorry, but we have to ask that you please keep quiet until the ceremony is over. Our Sisters and Fathers will be chanting special prayers that allow the energy from the heavens to meet in this special spot. Any vocalization outside of the prayers may interrupt the ceremony, and the last thing we want to do is delay the salvation of the world.”

  Miranda watched Emma’s hand slink back down as she gave a small pout. The other priests and nuns started to move towards each Child, mumbling in a trance-like repetition in a language none of the Children had known while one of the nuns carried a maroon gauntlet covered with an assortment of gold, diamonds and other precious jewels. They started with one of the Rynian women and pricked her index finger with a knife and held it over the gauntlet until a few drops had fallen inside and moved down the line. Not even five minutes had passed before everyone had drawn their portion of blood, and once it was collected, the nun holding the gauntlet brought it to the foot of the stained-glass monument while the other nuns and priests left the stage and encircled it, still chanting their words. Once each member of the church members had been placed in their designated area, they stood still, but kept saying their chant. The main priest joined the Children on the stage and looked up to the ceiling.

  “Oh, great Mother Sonova!” the priest bellowed as he closed his eyes and outreached his arms towards the heavens. “Hear our words and prayer! We bestow upon you the chosen Children who, with your blessing, will give birth to our savior. We offer their blood as proof of their worthiness! May you bless our generation, or make the next step to revealing your healing glory! We pray that you join these twenty-four blessed souls in a holy matrimony that you find worthy, dear Mother! Let them be guided by your love and mercy!”

  The priest dropped his arms to his side before getting on his knees to kneel with the utmost humility, flat on his chest before rising back to his knees. Once on his knees again, he looked back at the ceiling and made hand gestures that Miranda wasn’t sure what they were to mean, but it seemed to be a spiritual end to the speech. He had slowly gotten up and off the stage, and nothing had happened for a moment other than the continuous chanting of the other church leaders.

  But just as Miranda- and most likely most of the other Children- wanted to look around and ask what else was supposed to happen, a few of the spot lights the Children stood under started to illuminate in the same purple hue as the crystals of magic they had seen walking in. Then a few more started to shine, and before the minute was over, all twenty-four were shining a bright purple light that started to become blinding. Miranda was forced to close her eyes and put her hands in front of her face, and there was a breeze that started to whirl about in the room that came from nowhere. The light seemed to grow brighter whenever she tried to peek and see what was going on, and the wind started to change from a breeze into a small whirlwind. There was a loud CRACK sound that resembled thunder that had started to go off every few seconds. The winds grew even stronger, and Miranda felt herself be gently lifted from the ground.

  “THE CHOSEN HAVE ARRIVED!” the sound of several voices speaking in unison spoke from the heavens followed by several more CRACKING sounds that boomed and echoed all over the room. Miranda felt her body being twirled about, losing track of which way was up or down at one point, but never being able to open her eyes and see what was happening. The span of the wind seemed to be enclosing in on itself, and the loud booming sounds seemed to getting closer to Miranda, to the point that she felt like it was going off right next to her ear. But with a dizzying suddenness, Miranda felt her feet hit the ground and all the lights and sounds disappeared as if nothing happened in the first place.

  When Miranda cracked open her eyes, the first thing she noticed was that her body had indeed moved to the center of the stage, right in front of the stained-glass mural when she was originally near the edge of the stage. The next thing she had noticed was that the Miizunese man with the large spear was standing only a couple of feet to her right, which made her jump with surprise. After that, she looked passed him and noticed that everybody was coupled in twelve groups, each with a man and woman. She had seen Daan standing next to the only Rynian girl with glasses who had spoken to him earlier,. The Rynian man who yelled at Daan was standing next to the Miizunese woman who was meditating a majority of her time in this cave. But before she could lay eyes on any other couple, she had seen the face of the main priest, eyes as wide as saucers and his mouth hanging open in shock and awe.

  “Th... that was the first time we have heard the gods speak like that in over a hundred years...” the priest said breathlessly. His eyes fell to the floor as he tried to make sense of what was happening. As far as Miranda understood, their ceremony happened nearly every twenty-to-thirty years, but she had also heard that it had been a long time since anyone had heard the voices of the gods. Did that mean there were generations of Children of the Ceremony that didn’t hear the same messages they just did? And if not, what was the difference between the groups and what they had to do next? The longer the priest looked confused and bewildered the more questions came to Miranda. And it didn’t help that every other priest and nun seemed to be either just as baffled or looked towards the main priest for answers.

  “MAY YOU ENDURE YOUR TRIALS AND SUFFERING TO RECEIVE THE GIFTS OF THE GODS!” The voices boomed once more, but there seemed to be nothing else after everyone stood motionless for a moment. Miranda looked around the room once more, and the nuns and priests started to gather and whisper to each other. Miranda guessed they were trying to figure out what was to happen just like she had been wondering. She had looked towards the other couples and noticed they looked around with just as much confusion as the church members, if not more.

  “Umm… excuse me, Miss?” she heard a soft voice speak towards her, forcing her to turn to the Miizunese man she stood beside. “My apologies, I never learned your name, but you have something...” he gestured and stared directly at her forehead. Miranda ran her fingers over the area he was staring at, but she couldn’t feel anything other than skin. No matter how much she rubbed her fingers over it, she felt nothing, but he kept staring. She was about to ask what it was he saw until she had seen a few other couples talk among each other in surprised hushed tones. She had looked and seen that Daan had a glowing purple number 2 on his forehead, and he was rubbing at his forehead like she had just been, and seemed to be just as lost as to what the lady next to him was telling him about.

  “Is it a number on my forehead?” Miranda asked.

  “Yes. You have the number 3 on yours… And it seems that Motoko, a great warrior leader from the main city near my village has a number… and the man standing next to her as well...”

  Miranda looked, and sure enough, the two he mentioned had the same glowing numbers. The Miizunese woman had the number 1 and the Rynian man who yelled at Daan earlier had the number 6. But when she looked at others in the room, nobody else seemed to have these numbers. Miranda, too full of questions, finally turned towards the main priest and raised her hand.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Priest? What’s going on? And what are these numbers on my forehead?”

  “Yeah!” the Rynian man with the number 3 on his forehead shouted. “What the hell is this nonsense all about? This better not be permanent! My face is my money-maker, and my contract says no face tattoos!”

  “Um… well…first of all, if you weren’t already aware, the person you’re standing next to is your new life partner and spouse.” the priest had spoken with a practiced tongue, but his tone suggested that his mind was thinking of other things, most likely the bizarre turn of events. “We have a lovely location outside the caves for you eight couples to consummate your marriage and try to plant the seeds to your potential saviors of the world. We will send you to the nation you’re appointed to live in once we have talked as Church members. As for the numbers...” the priest had looked at the four with the numbers on their foreheads, but Miranda noticed the numbers didn’t shine as bright as before and assumed they were starting to fade away. The priest seemed to look for answers or an explanation, as he kept opening his mouth to speak, but never found anything worth saying or explaining. “I have heard rumors of numbers appearing on certain Children’s heads like yours, but there has never been an understanding as to why it happens. This is my third ceremony I’ve been a part of, the second one I’ve led, but I have never witnessed these numbers before.”

  “You also said that the gods hadn’t spoken in over a hundred years…” Daan spoke as he raised his hand for attention. “But the Church and the Svya has taught us that it was over 300 years ago that they spoke last on record. So… why is there an overlap of misinformation between you priests and the Svya?”

  “You’re from Krepki branch of the Church in Ghald, correct?” the priest asked with a knowing smile. “You see, as great a city as Krepki can be, your church seems to be a little outdated on certain things. Now, I don’t wish to speak ill of-”

  The priest’s eyes suddenly went wide, and his mouth hung open. Everyone had paused, wondering why he had stopped speaking in the middle of his sentence, until the priest fell to his knees and blood started to ooze out of his mouth. The priest soon fell forward, flat on his face and stomach, with an arrow impaled in the back of his neck. One of the women gave a horrified scream before 3 loud bang sounds came from one of the tunnels that lead towards the room they were in now, and one couple- a Ghaldian man and Miizunese woman- and Emma the loudmouth had fallen to the ground, blood pouring from holes in their skulls. It wasn’t until one more arrow and one more bang dropped a priest and a nun, and that’s when everybody began to scatter and run and scream.

  Motoko saw the chaos in front of her and reached for the hilt of her sword, trying to take deep, calming breaths as she always did before a battle. She stood still and closed her eyes, trying to both find her peace as well as feel the auras of everybody within eyesight as well as in the tunnel the noises were coming from. She knew that someone, or more likely two people, were firing weapons at anybody in the room. She knew one was a bow and one was a gun, but she had only fought people relying on muskets, and they never made the booming sound that came from whatever weapon was firing into the crowd. She might have not been able to see them clearly in the shadows of the tunnel, but Motoko was starting to be able to feel the vibrations of her attackers as they moved in the tunnel. And based on their aim and their movements, they were far from amateurs.

  “What the hell are you doing!?” Caine, her newly appointed husband who introduced himself as the priest was talking earlier, was shouting and shaking her as she stood there with her eyes closed.

  “Prepping.” Motoko said matter-of-factly.

  “Do you not hear that?! They have guns, and you have a sword. What do you think you’re going to be able to do with that?” Caine asked, taking her arm and trying to lead her to run away.

  “Gun.” Motoko corrected.

  “What?” Caine asked, looking at her as if she were crazy for trying to remain still when people were being killed and they still hadn’t even seen the killers yet.

  “It’s just one gun,” she explained again, and her eyes were fixed on the shadows of the tunnel. “There’s two people, from what I can tell, and they’re trained killers.”

  “Okay then… let’s go!” Caine shouted grabbed at her arm again to try and run with her. Motoko appreciated the fact that he didn’t run off and try to protect himself like a coward, but he also didn’t know the world she grew up in.

  “You can go and help others find safety and make sure they stay away from that specific tunnel,” she pointed to the one she knew the shots were being fired from. “I’m going to either take care of these fiends are at least stall them long enough for everyone to get out of here.”

  “Are you crazy!?” Caine shouted so hard and so high that his voice cracked at the last word. “Again, they have guns, and you have a sword, what do you think you-”

  Within a flash, Motoko had stepped in front of Caine drawn her sword to use it to deflect a bullet and split two arrows that were fired in quick successions towards their way. When Caine had seen both arrows and a long sniper bullet cut in half evenly, he slowly looked at his super-human bride.

  “Neither you, nor these murderers, understand what I’ve gone through on the battlefields of my life. Now go...” she looked at Caine from the corner of her eye, not turning her face from the direction of the cave. “Make sure you get as many people out of here as possible. Just leave this to me.”

  “Look, you may be some crazy warrior princess, but what kind of man would I be if I left my new wife to fend for herself? I can’t just-”

  “Pardon me,” a soft voice had cut Caine off, and when he turned to look at where the voice was coming from, he saw the bald Miizunese man with the spear attached to his back standing next to him. “I know it’s none of my place to speak to you as husband and wife, but if I may, sir… Lady Motoko is not only the daughter of one of the leading generals in one of the most military-strong cities in our nation, she is one of the most renown daemon hunters to ever exist in our nation. And, no offense, sir, but I don’t think you’ve dealt with a lot of battles in your life, am I safe to assume?”

  Caine wanted to protest that he had been in a handful of fights, but those were just drunken bar brawls, and even in half of those he didn’t end up winning. He simply nodded his head as he kept his mouth shut. Normally Caine would have said something snarky, but the fact that this guy was a head taller than him made him seem all the more intimidating despite his soft and gentle voice and mannerisms.

  “If it’s her safety that you’re worried about, I will stay and fight by her side. Most of my studies have been for healing purposes, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t train to become a certified warrior monk.”

  “No.” Motoko spoke, still keeping her eyes on the tunnel. “Your name is Hiroki, correct? If you really want to help me win this fight, get all the innocent people out of here so I can concentrate on the fight. I need you to make sure they make it outside safely, and to close the entrance to the cave if I’m not with you guys by then.”

  “You want us to close the entrance if you’re still in here?” Caine questioned before Hiroki could get a word in edgewise.

  “I can manage to catch up to a group of average people when I’m by myself; that’s not the issue. If I’m not with you, it means that whoever I’m fighting has won or has stalled me long enough to not make it to you guys, and if that’s the case, you need to stall them from reaching the party by any means necessary. I don’t know who they want, or what their objective is, but I refuse to let them ruin the chance to save the world.”

  Caine hesitated, but when Hiroki put a hand on his shoulder, indicating they should get going, Caine shook his head, as if to say that Motoko was insane. Hiroki held a soft, yet stern gaze before Caine finally sighed, finally listening to her orders, taking off to help others. Motoko had stared into the shadows of the tunnels, waiting for more shots to be fired, but there were no signs of the assailants making any threatening moves. Instead, after a few moments of undisturbed panic from the people involved in the ceremony, the two predators had started to casually walk out from the tunnel and into the room, showing themselves for the first time. It was a young woman with golden hair who had a large and powerful looking gun casually slunk around her shoulder as she held on to it with one hand, and a young man with mostly black hair with occasional white streaks who had a bow in his hand, and a full quiver on his back. While the man looked like someone on a mission, the woman looked as relaxed as if she were on vacation.

  “Sorry to break up your little ceremony here, boys and girls.” the woman said as she casually stretched and pulled the gun from her shoulder and dug to the butt of the gun into the ground as she leaned against it. “It’s really nothing personal, but orders are orders, and our orders were to...” she trailed off and went into thinking deep and hard.

  “Murder every single one of them?” the dark-haired man offered an end to her sentence.

  “Well, I mean... yeah, but I was looking for something that didn’t sound so… dark.” the woman seemed to pout at the fact that her partner described their mission for what it was. “In my experience, the people you’re about to murder prefer if you sugarcoat their near-future experience.”

  “Nobody else will be dying by your hands today.” Motoko spoke to the assailants with a chill in her voice.

  “Ha!” the blonde’s laugh was equal parts amusement and mockery. “I know that you’re some sort of Miizunese warrior, but you have no idea who you’re dealing with. You have heard of the Phantoms, right?”

  “Yes, I have heard...” Motoko spoke with an unimpressed firmness. “But I don’t believe in fearing stories and myths, so how about you two get ready for a lesson in humility?”

  “You really think you can handle two Phantoms by yourself? I didn’t realize you were such a delusional little cunt.”

  “I believe the phrase is: takes one to know one.” while Motoko’s face had been serious and straight as it had been throughout the whole conversation, there was at least a hint of a smile in her voice.

  “Alright,” the blonde had set the gun she balanced on her shoulders down onto the ground and against a wall that laid next to the tunnel’s entrance and took our two daggers. “Sage, do you mind watching my sniper rifle for me? I’ve got a mess to make.”

  “Claire, do you really think it’s a good idea to try and take on a Miizunese warrior by yourself? You do remember our discussions about the people we would rather fight?” the black-haired man, Sage, had responded.

  “Yeah, and I’ve also remembered a couple of Miizunese graves that we’ve had to fill. Don’t worry, I got this little bitch by myself. Besides, she thinks she’s being cunning by acting as a distraction to buy time for the others.”

  “So, what… you want me to go after the others and leave you here?”

  “What? And allow her to think she’s right? I’ll take care of this and then we can go hunt down the others and murder them in their faces, but I needed you here as witness to see that Miizunese people aren’t anything to worry about.”

  “Well, for one, those Miizunese graves you mentioned earlier… I remember that I was the one to fill them, but hey if you want to have your first real taste of a fighter, I’m not gonna stop you.”

  “You’re so sweet.” Claire, the blonde woman said sarcastically.

  Claire looked at Motoko as she tightened the grip on her daggers, and Motoko brought the hilt of her sword into both hands. The two stared at each other for a moment, waiting for the other to make some sort of move. Claire started to grin as she expertly twirled both daggers in between her fingers with a casual coolness, but made no further movements towards attacking. Motoko kept as still and calm, waiting for Claire to make the first move, or at the very least, spot some sort of opening so she could attack first.

  Before Motoko could almost notice, Claire had vanished with a sudden quickness, and Motoko slid her sword between her left arm and her torso, leaving the blade to cover a portion of her back. The moment she moved, she felt herself block a heavy blow from Claire, who looked almost surprised that Motoko managed to block the attack. But Claire didn’t let up, she sent a series of blows at Motoko, who quickly and seamlessly turned around and parried every attack swung at her. Nearly a dozen blows had been blocked within a second, but each attack had been deflected perfectly and without strain. Claire sent one hefty blow after the series of small ones and even though Motoko had blocked it perfectly, she still skidded back a few yards from the attack.

  The moment Motoko stopped skidding backwards, she had to turn to her right to deflect three shots fired from a handgun that Claire had tucked away somewhere on her body, but once the bullets were deflected, Motoko had to turn to her left to see an upcoming Claire coming relentlessly. More swings were thrown and blocked, and at one point, two more shots were sneaked between swings, but nothing seemed to deter Motoko from her perfect parries.

  It had gotten to a point where Claire was getting irritated. No matter how much she swung and attacked, no matter how heavy her attacks had gotten, no matter how much she tried to misdirect and cause surprise attacks, Motoko had blocked with equal force. It was as if Motoko was purposely matching strength without showing her true colors. And the worst part about it was that her face had been stone cold the entire time. While there wasn’t a glimmer of effort written on her face, she also didn’t seem to be cocky at all, and Claire was getting pissed at the stoic nature of this blue-haired bitch. For the first time in Claire’s life, she didn’t know where her strength stood in a fight.

  Claire kept hammering out different style attacks with her daggers and handgun, and, despite her speed being too quick for the untrained eye, Motoko managed to keep up. It was about a minute into the fight that Claire had slipped when Motoko parried one of her attacks and she was vulnerable to an attack. Claire glimpsed at Motoko’s eyes at that moment, and she could see that Motoko had seen the same opening Claire was aware of, and yet Motoko didn’t strike. Claire jumped backwards when she found her footing, and looked at Motoko while catching her breath.

  “The hell is that? You pulling punches on me?” Claire asked, not hiding her annoyances. She noticed that even though she was just slightly out of breath from the running around and fighting, Motoko hadn’t even looked like she partook in any of the action based on her statuesque stance.

  “I’m not going to strike down a person who isn’t fully giving their all, either.” Motoko said firmly. “Now are you going to give me an honest effort, or are you going to continue to waste all of our time?”

  “I’ll show you who’s a waste of time!” Claire shouted as she gripped a fragment of the magic crystal around her neck she always carried in her left hand as she swiped her dagger in the air with her right. But as soon as she swung her arm, a large light purple boomerang-shaped beam shot out from her dagger and soared quickly towards Motoko. Motoko, for the first time, leaped out of the way, but Claire met Motoko midair while Motoko’s eyes were still fixed on the magical beam that exploded upon impact with a wall. But even when Claire thought she had finally caught Motoko off guard, Motoko still managed to block three more regular swings of Claire’s daggers before she swung her first offensive attack and made Claire back off when she blocked. The two ladies landed several yards apart, but their eyes stayed on each other.

  “So, is that what the ability to use magic looks like?” Motoko asked.

  “Glad I don’t have to explain too much, most people who have made me use magic act like it’s the craziest thing they’ve ever seen, and yet you… you’re almost not fazed by it.”

  “When you hunt down daemons for a living, you run into some who have magical abilities. Not only that, but you Phantoms aren’t the only people on the planet who have learned to use magic for their own personal gains. I, for one, do not agree, but that doesn’t mean I know how and what situations call for magic the best.”

  “Well, then… Maybe that means I don’t have to hold back with the magic, then. I thought maybe I’d incinerate you before having a chance to play with you a little bit longer if I didn’t hold back a little.” Claire gave a cocky grin.

  “Uhhhh, Claire?” Claire heard Sage’s voice sound more disturbed than usual, which indicated to Claire that it had nothing to do with her or her actions for once.

  “What?” she asked as she looked in his direction, the grin on her face disappearing when she had seen Sage’s worried look.

  When she turned her eyes in the direction he was looking at, she had seen one of the priests who had been shot in the head starting to be picked up and placed on his feet by some unseen force, the blood still dripping from the wound on the temples of his head. His eyes were glowing with the same light purple hue as all the magic and crystals had. Before Claire, Sage or Motoko could say anything, one of the fallen Children of the Moon began floating and being placed on their feet with the same colors shining from their eyes. One by one, each corpse started to be reanimated and placed back on their feet. It wasn’t until the last body started to float that Motoko saw the first priest’s arm suddenly shoot out and grow muscular and far longer than necessary for his body. His other limbs began to expand and grow, and a third set ripped out of his rib cage. The priest’s face had formed a snout, his hair grew longer, his teeth began to grow in size and sharpness, a complete and total transformation. The priest had stood three feet taller now, and his new monstrous form let out an ear shattering roar that echoed throughout the halls.

  “What the hell?” Sage gasped as he eyed between the beast and Claire, wondering what the best take of action would be.

  “What the hell, indeed...” Claire said, mouth hanging open. “Don’t tell me these things are-”

  “Daemons.” Motoko said as she gripped her weapon and eyed the monster. But before she could decide to attack, one of the other reanimated corpses began to make similar transformations, each person becoming a beast of a different breed, none of them similar in looks or sounds.

  “Why the fuck are a bunch of dead bodies turning into daemons?” Claire asked.

  “The rumors and myths had always said that daemons have come from the Center Island...” Motoko reminded everyone, including herself. “Is this the reason this location has been locked away and only allowed for special occasions?”

  “That doesn’t make sense...” Claire said. “The Phantoms and government know so much about this place, from the layouts to where the real hunk of the total magic crystal deposit is… why would they not know about this?”

  “Perhaps it’s just you and those in your rank who don’t know. Perhaps you’re not worthy of knowing.”

  “You know what, bitch? I-” one of the daemons roared again, and it seemed that the daemons were coming out of a haze and finally recognizing the trio of living humans standing in the room with them.

  “I’m really sorry to have to cut this fight of ours short, but hopefully, if you’re as strong as you two claim, we can finish our fight in the outside world.” Motoko said with regret in her voice.

  “What are you talking ab-” Claire was about to ask, but she was distracted by another monstrous howl. But the moment the daemons had started to shift about and walk towards the trio, Motoko had vanished with lightning quick speed towards the main tunnel in the room that everyone else escaped out of earlier. When she was within the threshold, she jumped to the top of the opening and smashed her sword hard enough for the outline of the threshold to crumble and drop large boulders as she fell beyond the opening. When the boulders had finished falling, they piled large enough to block the entire tunnel, boxing Claire and Sage in. Motoko dashed down the tunnel, hearing the roars of the daemons and sounds of battle beginning in the main room a few seconds after she made it out. But despite all the noises, not a single one was due to the Phantoms breaking through the rock pile she just made. Motoko kept running until the distance between her and the daemon-filled room had faded from all noises of the fight.

  Motoko was more shaken up than she had been in years, but she was proud of herself for not allowing the Phantoms to see that. That Phantom girl was easily one of the most skilled warriors that Motoko had come across, but her cockiness made it easy for distractions. Motoko had to wonder what the outcome of the fight might have been had Claire been more serious. While she didn’t seem as threateningly strong as the bandaged-faced woman who guided Motoko to the cave, Claire was at the very least a small step above Motoko.

  Motoko kept dashing down the hallways until she had finally seen the tail-end of the Children and clergy of the Church who had survived. Daan was in the very back and the first person to see her, and Motoko could tell that upon first glances, he was scared to see someone gaining on the group from the dark until he could tell who it was. When Motoko managed to get close enough to talk to him, he slowed down on his running speed.

  “I didn’t expect to see you all by yourself so soon.” Daan said with a sigh of relief as he stopped to let her catch up, the distance between them and the group still large enough for a private conversation. “Did you manage to, uh… take care of those two assassins?” it sounded as if Daan tried to avoid using the term “kill”.

  “A room full of gods who spoke to us for generations and a room full of corpses, and you’re more worried about the human assassins?” Motoko raised a brow. “But, no, I wasn’t able to subdue the two back there, but I did manage to leave them alone with a room full of daemons.” Daan looked at her with a confused look. There were no Daemons when he was in the room last. “Oh, right… the corpses in the room turned into daemons and I trapped them in there.” Motoko said nonchalantly, which made Daan look at her as if she were even more insane. “I’m not quite sure how strong those Phantoms are, but we shouldn’t assume they’re down for the count. It would have taken me and a small team of my best fighters to take down all those daemons, and Phantoms are nothing to scoff at. I suggest we keep going until we get out of here, and then split up and return back to wherever it was that each couple were assigned to live at and keep doing our duty as the Children of the Moon.”

  “You want us to split up?” Daan asked, a small fear creeping into his voice.

  “Isn’t that what was going to happen after the ceremony anyway?” Motoko asked with a cock of her head.

  “Yeah, but that was before a couple of killers came after all of us. They even killed innocent priests and nuns!” Daan didn’t hide his concern.

  “While this is true, don’t you find it strange that two Phantoms were the ones who were trying to kill us? Two members of an organization that has spent millions, if not billions, on researching a method to get the Children of the Moon together to hopefully create the Child who would save us all from daemons and bring down the dividing barrier? Isn’t the Central government the people who had put us all together and tried to keep it a secret from the rest of the world that we are here on this island right now? Why would they send two of their own agents- supposedly some of their best agents- to come do such a dirty job? Even if there is some weird government conspiracy, wouldn’t it make more sense to hire someone who has no connection to you?”

  “Yeah, I guess that does make sense,” Daan said slowly when he let the information process in his head.

  “However,” Motoko added slowly. “Those two did seem to be just as surprised about the corpses in the other room turning into daemons as well… I feel like people who are being sent by such a high functioning organization would be given information about the daemons, but they were completely caught off guard. Which means the government didn’t inform them intentionally, or they were acting without the government’s permission with trying to end our lives. Either way, I feel like we don’t have to worry about these particular Phantoms as much as one might think.”

  “Hey Samurai girl!” Motoko heard Caine’s voice out to her, and when she looked down the path, she saw the remaining group of survivors stopped to take a small break and catch their breath after the adrenaline had ran out. “You already killed off those two assholes?”

  “As I was just telling Daan here, I wasn’t able to defeat them, but I was able to trap them in the room with all the daemons.” Caine looked at her, confused about the mention of daemons, and Motoko explained what happened, realizing she was going to have to relay that information to the others too.

  “Great!” Caine said with relief when she finished explaining. “So, they were killed by a roomful of those horrible monsters. What are we going to do now?”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if those two survive the daemons...” Motoko said while trying to devise a plan of what to do next.

  “What!?” Caine shouted in surprise. “You honestly think those two took on all those monsters and lived?”

  “Only if that woman’s partner was as strong or stronger than her. I definitely wouldn’t doubt it whatsoever, and that’s all the more reason we should get out of here. I could barely handle one of them myself, and nobody else here except maybe Hiroki seems like they’re able to fight alongside me to fend them off. I think it would be best if we split off and went to the scheduled home situation the Ceremony was going to let us leave as.”

  “You really want all of us to split up after what just happened?” Caine questioned as if she were crazy. It was true, there was a certain strength in numbers, even if it was just to keep a look out for the two warriors who could fight. “You really think it’s the best idea after these people tried to murder us on sacred ground? They know who we are, or if they don’t, I’m sure they can find out and hunt us down!”

  “Do you think it would be easier to hunt us down in larger cities with plenty of pedestrians and civilians being in the way, or out here in the middle of nowhere, where we have no contact with the outside world and nobody would ever find our corpses?” She left Caine to answer, but his silence and lack of response was more than enough.

  “What do you think we should do then?” Daan asked when there was a long silence and there seemed to be no direct plan being spoken of. Caine looked like he was about to answer until he noticed that Daan was speaking directly to Motoko and not asking for both of their opinions. He was the man in their new relationship after all, so why wasn’t this pipsqueak asking him directly?

  “Tell everyone to gather around...” Motoko said with a deep concentration in her eyes. “I think I might have a plan for all of us for if we ever end up in trouble again.”

  * * *

  Claire and Sage sat on the ground with the backs pressed against the wall, panting and catching their breathes as they wiped the blood away from their faces and other regions of their body. From what they can tell, the blood that had been splattered all over them didn’t belong to either of them, but to all the slain daemons that had body parts sprawled all over the room. Some of the arms and legs that had been severed cleanly, others were broken in places, twisted and mangled in their own pools of blood. It had taken three hours for every single corpse in the room to become a daemon and be killed off by Claire and Sage. The duo was sitting a handful of feet next to each other, both gasping and swallowing the air hungrily. The two had looked at each other with a knowing look that could only be explained as shared annoyance in the struggles they had to deal with recently. They were too winded to speak, but the glances they shared conveyed an entire conversation between the two.

  Claire honestly couldn’t believe that the Miizunese girl had gotten the jump on her and outwitted them both. Claire had thought as an honorable, battle-savvy Miizunese, she would have stayed to fight the good fight until death. Although, Claire could see it in her eyes that the little blue-haired warrior wasn’t fleeing the fight out of fear, but rather to reconvene and fight later. It was almost as if she knew that if she locked Claire and Sage in a room full of those monsters, they would meet again in the future with less distractions. Even though it meant that their missions was a failure, Claire couldn’t help but feel a ping of excitement at the thought of going head-to-head with a warrior with her skill and spirit in an actual honorable duel. It had been a while since she had found somebody who both had a similar amount of skill fighting, but also a fighting style and means of movement that were unfamiliar to Claire. She had fought plenty of Miizunese warriors in her time as a Phantom, but none of them were as elite or had movements as precise and calculated as this Motoko girl she just fought.

  As the two caught their breath, Claire looked around for a better passage out of the room they were currently stuck in. The opening they came through seemed to be their best option, even with the large mound of huge boulders still blocking it. It wasn’t that she and Sage couldn’t move the boulders themselves with their power and strength, but after the sever workout that killing over a dozen daemons, using any further strength was going to be more tedious work than it should have been. Her muscles were sore to the point that getting herself off the ground was going to be more effort than it should have been. Now that Claire thought about it, it was probably best that the Children of the Moon who survived ran away and didn’t just trap them in a room to wait to kill Claire and Sage themselves. If they had to fight that Motoko women in their current state, even in a two-against-one fight, they would most likely lose their lives.

  Before the two could even try and stand up, Sage’s ears perked up and he sat completely still for a moment, catching Claire’s attention.

  “What’s up?” she asked at his reaction to something she didn’t sense yet.

  “You hear that?” he asked quietly, and the two sat in silence to try and hear the noises Sage was referring to. Claire could have thought she had heard the soft sound of feet in the blocked off tunnel the Children escaped through, but as soon as she really tried to focus in on the sounds, they seemed to have stopped. And just as quickly as they had stopped, they started up again and then ceased once more. Claire waited to hear another scuffle, but there was an odd silence that she thought felt familiar. But before she could place where she had experienced the type of silence, a blast from the giant pile of boulders that blocked the entryway had exploded, sending pieces of rock and debris flying inward toward Claire and Sage, but nothing too big flew their direction. When the rocks had finished collapsing and the dust had started to settle, a group of men charged into the room.

  Six men in total, each holding a machine gun or rifle as they entered the room, looking down the sites of their weapon in case of dangerous enemies. They had worn tan military cargo pants, a bright red top with brown sleeves that had been covered by metal guards around the shoulders, and a metal helmet that had covered their eyes, but the technology behind the equipment had allowed the user to not only see normally, but could zoom up to ten times the normal human vision, see with night vision and infrared modes to hunt their prey easier, the visor replicating the eyes of the helmet was accompanied by a single red dot that moved along with eye site. The reason Claire knew so much about the helmet was because it was accustomed to the everyday foot soldier who had graduated the training academy for Phantoms. Luckily, Claire and Sage knew that whoever had entered the room was from Central Government and not those Children of the Moon who escaped. But the one thing that was bothering Claire was who these foot soldiers had been sent to accompany. Claire knew all too well that six men of this caliber wouldn’t arrive to such a remote location without some head figure in the Central Government in tow. She simply had no idea who, out of all the higher-ups who had ranked superior to here, would choose to take the time out of their day to come to such a barren and hard-to-reach area as the central island.

  The six Phantoms had lined up, two groups of three men standing next to each other, the two groups standing a few feet in front of each other, acting as a corridor of men, seeming like they were there to introduce the figure head who had summoned them to the area. Claire and Sage started to try and pull themselves from the floor as casually as possible, but the wear-and-tear from the battle left them appearing a lot more strained then either had hoped for. Claire winced the moment she fully stood up, not realizing just how heavy and sore her arms alone were, let alone the rest of her body. When she was able to step away from the wall that she clung onto to pull herself up and stand by herself, there was a small sound of a single person walking into the room. In all of the duo’s years in being a Phantom, neither would have expected what they had seen.

  Casually strolling in was a young woman, perhaps even a couple years younger than either of them, with the brightest neon-pink hair that was tied into long-ended pigtails. Instead of any type of military or professional clothing, she wore a white vest-like, sleeveless blouse that was thin enough to see the color of her black bar bleeding through. She wore a red and black flannel short skirt that barely seemed to cover the necessary areas, as well as long, white, knee-high socks and casual black and white sporting shoes. She walked into the room with a bounce in her step, almost child-like and naive, a smile on her face and her eyes told you her mind was daydreaming about something cheerier and more fun than the area and situation they had been in. The Phantom foot soldiers she strolled in with saluted her as she walked passed them, but her daydreaming didn’t seem to stop until she was a handful of feet away from Sage and Claire, not sure why anybody from Central Government had been sent here so soon, unless their skills on being able to properly assassinate the Children of the Moon had been doubtful from the get-go.

  “Let’s see…” the pink haired girl spoke in a sing-song voice. “You two are… shit, what were your names again? I can only remember your numbers. Wait, you guys are numbers 4 and 5, right?” she asked casually, as if the two were supposed to understand what she was talking about. It had taken a second, but Claire had remembered the odd moments before the duo had begun slaughtering those who gathered for the ceremony where glowing numbers had appeared and eventually vanished from their foreheads, Claire was the number 4 and Sage was the number 5. But before Claire or Sage could say anything about the numbers, the girl clapped her hands together once in excitement. “Wait, it’s Sage and Claire, right?”

  “Yeah, and who are you?” Sage asked without the same friendliness the girl had given. The both of them had eyed the girl in front of them up and down, gauging how important she must have been. Not just anyone would be allowed to walk around with six Phantom foot soldiers, and definitely not for any random reason either.

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that.” the girl said with a friendly smile as she waved them off with her hand, as if literally brushing the topic away.

  “Don’t worry?” Claire repeated. “A little girl like you comes down here with six soldiers, to the island that has the most restrictions to gain access to in the history of any place on the planet, and you just waltz in here, even though neither me nor my partner have ever heard of you or seen you before in our lives. So, you have to understand why we may have our reservations.”

  “Hmmm…” the girl gave a long pause as she thought about what she wanted to say, bringing her hand to her chin as she thought deeply. Everything she did and said was very animated and cutesy, like a girl who hadn’t gotten out of her high school phases of nativity yet. “What can I tell you, what can I tell you...” her voice and face still deep in thought, until her eyes lit up and she a smile crept onto her face. “Well, I guess it’s okay for me to tell you my name is May. And… to be honest, I think that’s the only thing I’m allowed to tell you right now. Sorry, it’s been so long since we did this, and no matter how often we’ve gone through this routine, you tend to forget things over the years, especially with all the stupid rule changes we’ve made to make things ‘fair’.” she spat the last word out in a cute anger.

  Sage and Claire shot a glance at each other, both wondering if the other had any type of idea what the girl was talking about. But when both of them gave an unknowing face or a shrug, they turned back and looked at the girl, about to ask her why she was here. But as if she were reading their minds, she clasped her hands together happily again and said with excitement in her voice, “Do you want to know why I’m here?”

  “Uhhhh… yeah. I was just about to ask you that.” Claire said, caught off guard by how childish this girl had been, while at the same time, how much she was able to read a room correctly. The girl’s smile had gone from pure and friendly, to mischievous.

  “Well, I’ll tell you only if you two promise me with your lives that you won’t tell anybody in the Central Government that I was here.” Sage and Claire looked at each other, wondering what it was this girl was hiding for her to be here and requesting secrecy. They looked at her, urging for her to continue, but she just stood there, staring back, her eyes looking as though they were waiting for something. When Claire realized what it was that May was waiting for, she let out an irritated sigh.

  “Yes, yes, we promise we won’t tell anybody.”

  “Yay!” May cheered as she clapped her hands together happily until she was ready to deliver the news. When she spoke, she spoke with the same type of excitement as before. “Well, if you must know, I’m here to cast judgment on you for your failures to kill the Children of the Moon, and arrest you for treason!” If she were speaking another language, Claire would have guessed her and Sage won a dream vacation based on the thrill in her voice as she spoke.

  “What?!” Claire and Sage shouted in unison, but Claire carried the rest of their indignation. “Treason? What treason? We didn’t lose those fuckers until a few hour ago, there’s no way in hell anybody in Central Government would have known that and gotten here within that time frame! I don’t care if you teleported to the island an hour before the ceremony started, it still takes three hours to travel down these tunnels.”

  “Oh, I know.” May said matter-of-factly with a cute smile. The warmth in her voice was starting to get on Claire’s nerves. It made her even more upset that it didn’t seem like May was going to say anything else on the subject. Claire gritted her teeth, wanting to do nothing more than to reach out and wrangle the cute smile off this pink-haired bitch’s face. But Sage stepped forward, both to speak, but also to be in front of Claire in case she did do something to act out in anger and frustration so he could be in the way to stop her from doing something she may regret.

  “And what are the charges to suspect us of treason? Could you elaborate on what we’ve done? Because, I can assure you we’ve definitely come closer to crossing lines in other missions compared to this one, and we didn’t even receive a metaphorical slap on the wrist for those moments.”

  “For withholding important information to the Central Government and dispersing other valuable information to those who are outside a need-to-know basis.”

  “Withholding information!?” Claire roared in astonishment and fury, enough to make Sage wrap his arms around her waist to keep her from charging at May. May turned her back on the duo and began walking away, signaling to the six soldiers with nothing more than a wave of her hand. Four of the soldiers got handcuffs out and started to slowly make their way towards Claire and Sage. The two didn’t want to add resisting arrest to their charges by fighting back, but they kept the soldiers at a fair pace away. “You think we’ve been withholding information?” Claire continued to shout. “What about you fuckers and the cunts at Central who forgot to tell us that there would be Motoko Kawaguchi, one of the most notorious warriors in Miizu, here to be assassinated. You don’t tell a child to go inside a cave to hunt rabbits knowing full well that it’s the lair to a daemon!”

  “My, my, Claire...” May spoke with the same cute tone as she continued making her way out of the main room and back into the tunnels with two soldiers guarding her as they began to depart, but Claire could feel the acidity in her words this time. As cute as she looked and sounded, Claire was beginning to realize her assumptions of May being an utter bitch were starting to show some truth. “I thought somebody as professional as you would accept your fate and fight for your innocence through the courtroom. Your actions aren’t going to go over well with your jury when they find out you’re clawing about like a wild animal.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, how do you think people are going to feel when they find out that this Center Island has powers that transform dead people into daemons!” May had stopped dead in her tracks, but didn’t move or say anything at first. The soldiers trying to close in on them to arrest them also froze, but gave the duo and each other curious looks at this information Claire announced, before turning to May for answers. “Yeah, I bet our jury is going to listen to us a lot better when we hand them that information!” Claire announced with a gleeful and mischievous grin. She didn’t know how the rest of the Central Government would feel about this type of information, but the way that it seemed to shut May up was enough.

  May stood there in silence for a while before taking an exasperatedly deep sigh. Her shoulders sank, as if all the cute, fun-loving joy that seemed to be pouring out of her just moments ago had suddenly ceased and dried up. But it wasn’t until she had spoken that Claire’s joy at May’s shrinking optimism turned sour and a creeping sense of worry started to spread through Claire’s body. The aura around May had transformed drastically, and for the first time in years, Claire found herself uncertain of whether she had spoken too much and should have shut her mouth. And that feeling only grew by the second.

  “You know, Claire...” May’s voice still sounded cute even though her smile had vanished completely. “I think I can speak for all of us higher ups when I say I really wish you hadn’t just said that right now.”

  Before Claire or Sage could ask why it might have been a bad idea to bring up the fact the island had turned human corpses into daemons, May quickly swiped her hand towards the soldier guarding her on her left with a casual swiftness, fully decapitating the soldier. Nobody seemed to even realize what happened until the corpse had fallen to its knees, neck spraying blood like a wild geyser, and the head had fallen onto the floor. May quickly turned to the guard on her right, and placed her palm over his face, but crushed the man’s skull with ease as she closed her hand, blood spurting at high speed in random directions. Both men were dead before anybody could register that May had been attacking people, but once they did, everyone began reaching for a weapon.

  Claire didn’t even see May approach her. In a fraction of a second, before Claire could even place her hand on a dagger that was hidden in her bootstrap, she found herself being restrained by May, who was behind her, holding both of Claire’s arms above her head and locked in a way she couldn’t escape with only one arm, May’s other hand holding a rifle she stole from one of the other soldiers, pointing it directly at Sage’s face, too close to dodge or look for a way to attack. The four men who surrounded the two just a moment ago were motionless for a few moments, until Claire had noticed one half of a man’s face start to slide downward while the other slide to the side, his head eventually splitting in two from a fresh, clean cut. Not only his face, but the rest of his body started to crumble in several different pieces as gravity weighed down on the split corpse. One by one, person by person, they fell, almost as if taking turns to turn into a pile of separated limbs, organs and blood. And May had been the one to do all this within not even a full second.

  When the last of the corpses had fallen into a bloody mound, there was nothing but the deep, fearful breaths of Claire and Sage, their eyes and attention entirely on her. It was clear that whoever this woman was had been entirely out of their league. Claire had known there were plenty of people out there more powerful than her, people she respected and even feared due to their skill… but even if she were to gather every single one of those individuals to fight this woman all at once, she doubted they could even cause her to bleed, let alone kill her. For the first time in decades, Claire felt completely helpless and vulnerable, knowing her life was fully dependent on this woman’s desires and mood. If she was blood thirsty enough, it would take next to nothing to send Claire and Sage into the eternal abyss. And Claire knew that to obtain that type of skill and strength, she must have killed several hundred people at least, and if she were to add Claire and Sage to her kill streak, it would be so easy, their death would most likely never come across her mind in the future. That was the real ego killer of the situation. Claire had never felt so small and insignificant in her life.

  “Now...” May sighed once more, almost as if trying to recompose herself. Her warm and cheery smile had started to creep back onto her face, and the dark, ominous aura that surrounded her had nearly subsided. “Since we have fully established how easy it would be to kill you at any time, do I have your guys’ attention?” The two nodded, not being able to hide the fear that a single sound might cause her to make a sudden decision to end them if they weren’t careful. “Good, because to be honest, I need one of you. All my money is riding on- oops! Almost said too much there. I can’t get disqualified.” she tittered with a girly giggle. “But if I’m going to let you two live, I’m going to need you to never ever mention to anybody anything that has happened on this island, especially about the origins of Daemons.”

  “The origins?” Sage questioned. “You mean… dead humans have always been the way daemons were created?”

  “Oh my…” May said, as if she had slipped up. “I thought you two had already come to that conclusion. My mistake. But as I’ve said, you two are to never -EVER- talk to anybody other than the other Children of the Moon about this. And I don’t care where in the world you might be, I don’t care who you tell, I don’t even care if you inform somebody in other ways than verbally: I will know. And I will hunt you two down and make you suffer in ways you couldn’t even dream.” Her voice sounded as friendly as ever, but Claire could tell her threat was far from an exaggeration. “Now, Sage, I need you to do me a favor, and stand by that wall over there, I want to have a little girl time with Claire, if you don’t mind.”

  Even though she was asking with manners, the gun she kept waving in his face reminded him it was more a demand than something Sage could deny. Sage slowly got up, showing his hands in a way of surrender and slowly made his way to the wall she asked him to go to. She had pointed the gun downward, suggesting he sat down or got on his knees, but he chose the former. When Sage got on the ground, she dropped the rifle on the ground, but something told Sage that if he tried anything suspicious, she would see it coming a mile away and make him, or even the both of them, pay for it.

  May still held Claire’s arms over her head, and in the position she held it, Sage could bet that if May wanted to she could easily snap both of Claire’s arms if she wanted a nonfatal way of making the two do whatever she wanted with a threat. Sage wondered who this girl had been to be so young looking and yet so ruthlessly savage on the battlefield, and why she had wanted to have him sit so far away from the two of them. What had she meant by “girl time”, and why did he feel unconformable about the way she had implied it? Sage watched the two closely, knowing there was nothing he could do on the offense to help better their odds at surviving this girl, but he could at least be ready to be defensive to the death if she had ever been willing to strike. May looked at Sage with a coy smile, one he couldn’t read, but that he didn’t trust either. She put her mouth to Claire’s ear and begin whispering something that Sage couldn’t hear. But after a few moments of whispering, Claire’s eyes seemed to open wider, as if she was hearing surprising news, but Sage also couldn’t tell by Claire’s face if it was alarming or not. Claire seemed to freeze as May kept whispering in her ear, and Sage watched as May’s free hand started to move towards Claire’s naval.

  With a slow and taunting trail of her finger, May’s hand moved from Claire’s stomach to the lip of her pants, slowly creeping to the button and zipper. May’s mouth kept moving voicelessly from Sage’s location as she unsnapped Claire’s pants with an expert casualness before teasingly unzipping her pants. Sage looked worryingly at Claire, who’s eyes had been just as uncomfortable as Sage imagined, but they also had a message: “No matter what she does, do not retaliate.” Claire had never been the type to take a beating without fighting back, nor did she allow anybody to walk all over her. But here she was, being held down by a girl who looked younger than her, her body beginning to be violated, and yet Claire was as timid as a baby deer. Sage watched as May’s hands slid into Claire’s pants, the pants not concealing where her hands began to explore. Sage saw Claire’s body jump up at the touch of a sensitive area, and Sage finally heard May shush her with an almost-calming voice as her hands fumbled and moved around slowly but forcefully. Sage could tell Claire was doing everything in her power to not say or do anything that was in her power, but every now and then she would wince or exhale sharply at May’s touch. This went on for nearly a minute, but it seemed like an eternity for both of them before May gently kissed the top of Claire’s head like a loving mother to her doting child. After the kiss, she took her hands out of Claire’s pants and pushed Claire onto her knees.

  “Alright, you two, I suppose that’s enough fun for now.” She said as she looked at Sage, but then looked back down at Claire. “You just remember what I told you, okay? Do that and hopefully you two will never have to see me again, yeah?” the way she asked made it sound as casual as if they had made a lunch date. “But just so you know… if you two ever do force me to visit you two, I will literally rip your throats out and shove them down your...” May trailed off before giggling a little. “I was going to say ‘and shove them down your throats’, but that doesn’t make very much sense now, does it?” Sage wasn’t sure if either of them were to answer or if it was simply a rhetorical statement, but it didn’t matter, because May clapped her hands to her lips as if she had concluded her business here. “Ah, just in time!”

  Sage didn’t know what she had meant by that statement until a moment later he heard the sounds of approaching footsteps from the tunnels. Once footsteps got close enough, Sage saw another ten Phantom foot soldiers spill into the room, half of them making sounds of horrid disgust as they witnessed the bloody messes that used to be their fellow comrades.

  “Ugh,” one of them forced himself to look away. “What the fuck happened in here?”

  “These two Phantoms have been caught blatantly disobeying Phantom procedures and attempted to assassinate all of the Children of the Moon they were ordered to protect. Not only that, but they had refused arrest and killed their own.” May explained to them. Sage wanted to shout how what she was saying was a lie, to defend his and Claire’s honor, but it felt odd. Usually Claire was the one to have outbursts and he usually had to calm her down, but Claire simply sat on her knees with her head hung low, an aura of utter defeat was infectiously flowing from her. Sage, as much as he knew they were being set up with lies and fraud for whatever reason, didn’t say anything due to Claire’s lack of animation.

  “What do you wish for us to do with them, Lady May?” one of the soldiers asked.

  “Lock them up and take them immediately to headquarters. There, summon Griffin for a trial. You know how much he loves a good, short trial. And then do to them what we do to all traitors,” she gave one last glace at Claire and Sage, and Sage saw a devilish smile creep on her face before she turned and walked away as casually as she entered: “Kill them.”