Chapter 31: Eyes Wide Sewn - The Unforgettables: A ZeroYear litRPG

  A faint blue light pierces the darkened ravines on the southern face of Cernutos. A heavily hooded figure takes long and uncertain strides through the valleys filled with snow and dirt, lifting a light over its head. Three cats closely follow the traveler's steps.

  “2770 days…” grumbles a hoarse voice, “all this time and today she’s gone, you damn spider, Cernutos’ legendary hospitality never disappoints…”

  “It was just a ride, and you shouldn’t have left everything until the last minute!” one of the talking cats revolts.

  “We should have more than three months left, if they hadn’t turboed out of nothing a couple of days ago, and now we have only a few hours remaining. I think... Am I wrong?” The figure pauses and puts his hand to his head, “yeah, yeah. With some luck, a little over 10 hours.” The hooded figure quickens his pace, dims the light, now relying on the bizarre dancing skylights, and shushes the cats to be quiet.

  After a little over an hour fighting the shadows, the curtain of hills opens, revealing to them the silhouette of the tower cutting through the horizon, like a pillar of stone resisting the heavy wind, adorned by a veil of dust blown from its steepest face. The narrow ravines open up into a wide clearing that appears to have been flattened by brute force, and some traces of black soot can still be seen painting straight lines in the snow.

  “We are very close, he must have noticed us already, we need to act now!” the figure whispers to herself as the cats that followed her spread out across the high clearing.

  A barely audible voice whispers back through a comlink hidden inside the long hood, “The remains of the ship are on the left side of this clearing. It looks like there is someone in the middle of the snow in front of it, but I am not sure if it is alive; it looks more like a statue.”

  The hooded traveller approaches the statue with an unnatural jump, already placing her hand on the hilt of a weapon hidden underneath. She freezes, then she raises her voice: “Oh God, Silas!” she says in surprise, but still mumbling, as a green light emanates from her cloaked eyes and illuminates the ebex frozen in time for years, looking straight South with an excruciating pain imprinted in his face. More than half of him sank under the snow and dust, the traveller continues to murmur, “What the hell did they do to you?”

  “What will we do?” asks one of the cats.

  “We can’t leave him here, Bebel, we’ll have to take a risk,” the figure thinks quickly, as she clears the snow and dust around Silas, “if I try to get him out of this trance now, he’ll die immediately due to his injuries, Kaskas and Memel! Search the ship for a medbot or life support cube, while I think about this mess. Bebel, climb the highest ravine there and keep an eye on the path to the tower. We′ll have company soon.”

  In a matter of minutes, the cats find a way to go inside the wrecked airship, which is actually in much better condition than expected. They find a working emergency kit right on the lower deck, which has its door broken open and is only partially covered with snow. The smaller cat says: “We’re taking, the kit seems OK, but…”

  “How lucky it’s still working! And I think I got a plan to solve all of this here…” the cloaked figure replies.

  “I don’t think it’s luck, you better take a look at the ship…” replies the other, bigger cat who is dragging a huge piece of technology, but with apparent ease.

  “One thing at a time. Is there anything else on the ship? I haven’t detected any life signals, even Silas here has almost nil,” says the figure with some hope.

  “We haven’t seen anyone, but the ship is strange, kind of humid and hot inside,” replies the cat.

  “What the hell? Well, for now, let’s activate life support for Silas,” says the figure, while rejoining with her cats.

  “Let′s set up everything right here outside while he’s still paralyzed. It looks like a temporal distortion to me, typical of rotten psionics,” loudly thinks the figure, a little reticent. The cats help lay down the giant ebex while they plug the life support devices all around his body, but it still unresponsive as Silas remains completely frozen.

  The figure says, "Well, it won't work until I get him out of this trance..." while pulling out a small sword with a wavy blade from inside her cloak. She looks back at the ebex and says, "Don't worry, Silas, Kalis won't hurt you, but you'll be out for a long time because of these injuries."

  And as soon as Silas finishes being connected to the life support device, the wanderer gently touches the tip of its blade to Silas' finger. He immediately starts breathing again and panics when he sees the cloaked figure in front of him. "Silas! Don't worry, it's me... Laetilia." But it doesn't work. The ebex in cognitive distress doesn't understand what's going on and ends up succumbing to his injuries. He passes out in a deep sleep while the life support saves him from certain death. Laetilia, at a speed reminiscent of her mother, decides to enter the ship, taking with her the ebex and all the devices connected to him with ease. She says, “Let’s take him inside where it should be safer. Trouble is coming very soon.”

  “Well, for now, I don’t see any movement. I found another smaller ship landed on the other side of the Tower. That ship is the source of the bright light coming from behind, but I don’t detect any movement yet,” says the third cat, who has already climbed to the top of the ravine.

  “Great!” replies Laetilia as she enters her old ship-home. She is speechless for a moment upon seeing the place, and her sensors give her no clue of what is going on with the ship.

  “What happened here?” Confused, Laetilia recognizes parts of devices scattered on the floor and a portion of the almost destroyed interior furniture. The ship's self-repair capabilities restored only a few devices, as the energy was exhausted, but the structures were significantly different. The walls are red and hot; they seem to be made of flesh and blood in some parts. It is even possible to see veins of it pulsating like something almost biological. She walks through the hangar and the central stairs cautiously. The cats stay in the entrance hangar with Silas.

  Laetilia goes up the stairs to the rooms, which are in better condition. When she opens the door to room number 7, she notices colorful flags still hanging on a string adorning her old room, which reads in handmade letters: "WELCOME BACK LAETILIA" as she notices all her old belongings scattered on the floor, most of them broken. At the same time, an ethereal tear bathes her face with happy memories, she separates some of the parts of her old body that, even abandoned for so long and quite dented by the impact of the fall, still works better than some of her current parts that she was forced to repair on her own in an improvised way, in a matter of minutes she reassembles most of her old body. She says to herself, looking at a small piece of mirror that survives on one of the walls, “Am I back?” while she clenches her fists and cracks her newly modified neck.

  “Something is moving inside the other ship nearby, the door was opened, but I don't see anyone leaving yet…” says Bebel, who is lurking on top of the ravine.

  Laetilia reacts immediately and runs down the stairs. “The time has come! Kaskas! Stay by Silas' side; he's still in critical condition. If things go wrong, get him out of here. Memel, this ship has weapons, but I don't know their condition. See what you can find. And Bebel, go inside his ship and see if you can do anything from there while Adarian is distracted!” At first, the cats heard it as a bold plan. However, after a while, they start thinking about how they will be able to complete any of the near-impossible tasks they've been assigned.

  On the way out, Kaskas looks at the giant ebex connected to life support with great perplexity. She tries to mumble something since it would be impossible for her to carry all that stuff out of there if she needs to, while Laetilia blazes past her and jets out of the ship, already focused on facing her supposed enemy. The cat, being ignored, decides that the best chance is to get out of there with the whole ship, so she starts to seek things to put this vessel in the air once again.

  Meanwhile, on the small ship near the tower, Adarian follows his strict routine, just another day like all the others, training intensively, completely paranoid about the rest of the world, but not without reason. He had already been visited a few times by his former Alpha colleagues after Kuj's assassination, and they always came with the intention of stealing his shadow blade, but that could never happen. The weapon became the last reason for him to be alive; the fear of losing it consumed him completely.

  As soon as Laetilia stepped into the valley, Adarian started to feel that something was very wrong, and the closer she got, the greater his panic of the unknown. It had been years since he had felt anything like this, but he remembered the last time very well, as a trauma. It was when he was still with his master hunting knights in uncharted lands, right before he decided to make his pact much earlier than planned. By that time, he had proven himself weak and needed to accept any deal in order to survive.

  As the eerie feelings rose, Adarian unsheathed his fabulous artifact with a single hand, one of the few things that had never failed or betrayed him. He glares at his shadow blade with a stern look, one last time before carefully turning it into a stick and putting it back in its sheath. That is enough to turn his fear into fuel for his fury. Once again, he is prepared to kill. He covers his body with his heavy combat cloak and disappears into the shadows using his powers.

  Laetilia's mind goes silent as she deepens into the valley towards her hidden enemy. She feels nothing, but she knows he is there, lurking. After a while, running alone along the elevated road that narrows downwards, already at a reasonable distance from her ship, she suddenly stops at the high ground and stands still in a gamble, staring at the open valley slowly squeezing into a downward throat. Underneath her cloak, she holds her sword handle and waits in a martial defensive position.

  Adarian is ascending from the valley and notices a darkened figure approaching him. He planned to sneak up behind his enemy and kill her with a single blow, but now he realizes that this plan would not work. He saw the figure in an unnatural, deep black cloak; she surged toward him with the tense grace of a predator, alert and calculating. But suddenly, she stopped, looking directly at him with complete conviction and assuming a defensive stance, a clear invitation to a duel. The knight must have already noticed him, so Adarian adjusts his strategy, planning to engage his victim in conversation to put her in a mental trap, and thus control the outcome of the fight with his powers even before the real battle begins.

  Laetilia calculated more or less how long it would take to get there from the tower for her bluff, and it seems to have been accurate enough. A few seconds after she stopped, she noticed Adarian coming out of the shadows just a few steps in front of her. Before he says anything, she draws her weapon and holds it with both hands, leaving its wavy blade parallel to the ground to show him what she's got. Right before the blade was displayed, an aura of absolute darkness surrounded Laetilia and expanded throughout the entire skyline, transforming the bright, orange-red light into a deep, darkened blue.

  The darkened knight begins to take slow steps, circling towards Adarian with her sword in hand. This causes her enemy to take awkward steps backward, trying to move away in a panic. Terror takes hold of Adarian as he recognizes that weapon, the same one used to kill Kuj. The memory of one of the first Alphas who had visited him years ago surfaced inside his mind, a survivor from the West team in Kujs’ last expedition, and Adarian saw the entire audiovisual record of the Biggus' heir doom. However, there was something misplaced; this knight in front of him was not the assassin, nor did she seem to be a mueman.

  "Who..." Adarian chokes, now also drawing his weapon in a hurry to try to regain courage. With the shadow blade in his hand, he feels invincible again. He stops retreating, composes himself, and asks again, "Who are you, knight?"

  Laetilia notices the conflict in Adarian, but also knows that Alphas feed on this kind of feeling. She does not answer anything; she simply lowers her cloak. Adarian can barely see her face surrounded by darkness, but with the help of his sensors, he recognizes that it is an oioi. He starts to speak once again, “Well, well… Another robot? Excellent…” Adarian tries to smile back, now convinced that his strategy will work after remembering his victory over Liora.

  Laetilia doesn’t know what happened in Cernutos because she only has the memory of the recorded scene of Adarian and his master in Norther Valley, she can only imagine what could have happened to her mother, the knight refocus on the fight and thinks to herself: “I just need to make Kalis touch him, after that he will talk.”, and with this conviction Laetilia suddenly charges towards her opponent starting the fight, trying a wide blow that is easily dodged, but taking advantage of the momentum to invert the grip of the weapon, assuming an alternative and fluid one-handed instance of combat, very similar to capoeira, using the sword guarding her wrist, a bold strategy with the intention of landing at least a light touch with a hidden blow. Adarian, however, used his fear and paranoia to prepare himself. He dodges the arc strike, and his protective energy aura completely nullifies the knight's hidden attacks. With his extensive combat experience, he realizes what Laetilia is trying to do and continues with his plan to ensure his victory.

  "Your technique is pathetic. I thought I would find a worthy opponent. Prepare to meet your fate." Adarian laughs as he activates his mental domination power, a tactic that is completely overwhelming in simple duels.

  Laetilia realizes that there is yet another external and ill-intentioned voice inside her already chaotic mind. She feels a mix of anger and joy at realizing that Adarian apparently has no idea of ??the risk he is taking, but she contains her feelings, letting his opponent read only noise.

  "Ah, I see that you already knew the other robot that passed by here." Adarian manages to perceive some superficial thoghts in Laetilia's mind about Liora, he continues, now using his domination psionics at maximum power, "Don't worry, I'll put you next to my other robot in my room, if more of you keeps appearing I'll make a nice collection, now throw your weapon on the floor and follow me!"

  Laetilia is happy to confirm that her mother is indeed alive, but stifles her feelings to avoid giving more information to her enemy; she doesn't answer anything. She shakes her head submissively, pretending to throw her weapon on the floor, but at the last moment, she enters the maximum timeframe and delivers three accurate fencing blows to Adarian, using her willpower to break free for a while.

  The first blow broke his protective aura, and the other two were parried with great precision by the shadow blade. The clash of the ancient blades ignited a wild explosion, delivering a thunderous roar and illuminating the valleys in a flash of lightning. Adarian smiles in triumph: "Fool, I'm always prepared! Let's see how long your mental strength resists me. I already told you, throw your weapon and give up, resistance is futile!"

  “I have a better idea, I see you value those weapons too much, how about if I help you by destroying that little toy of yours?” Adarian doesn’t believe this menace at first, but it seems that Laetilia's first words to him, breaking the strategic silence, are deadly serious. She uses her secret knight art that took her so long to learn from her master, and at maximum power, with the true intention of destroying the shadow blade. When activating the power, a vortex of intense red energy dances in a spiral that spreads through the already darkened sky and concentrates its ominous eye in the knight’s palm, who closes her fists while staring straight at Adarian’s weapon, as if she were trying to crush it. Adarian knows that she is not joking, because he reads directly in her mind that this is exactly her real endeavour, just as he knows that she is using everything she got.

  He panics at the idea of losing his weapon. He immediately shouts, “NO!” using his power of domination, and interrupts the power in the middle of its execution, apparently containing all its effects. However, the vortex of energy does not disappear; instead, it now consumes the entire skyline above them, unleashing homogenous thunderbolts and lightning that muted Adarian's echoed voice, and continues to grow exponentially in intensity.

  Laetilia waits for the situation to unfold, always maintaining her intention of breaking her opponent's weapon. Still, Adarian continues to dominate her mind and prevent any such effect. After a hiatus of mental struggle, he finally breaks the silence: "Give up this insanity, this is an ancient artifact that has existed since the third multiverse, you would never be able even to take a sliver of this shadow blade."

  Adarian then decides to wait no more and try his weapon, shouting aloud, trying to win over the ominous storm, "My turn to show you the Shadow Omen's bite." Laetilia smiles back and prepares for the sword combat. Adarian is a little faster than her, and all she can do is use her wavy blade and her fluid movements to block and dodge the attacks in an apotheotic display of lightning clashes. She spends much of her time trying to resist Adarian's control while still trying to land a single direct blow.

  Adarian realizes his superiority in the fight and takes advantage of the moment, vociferating as he strikes blow after blow against desperate parries, getting closer and closer to hitting his target, “You have already lost this fight!" Adarian continues with his threats between the thunderous clashes of their blades, and concludes when Laetilia is forced to step back, "Give up before it is too late, when my blade hits you, you will have the same fate as the humans who accompanied your robot friend.”

  Laetilia does not respond and concentrates on protecting herself from the barrage of frantic and powerful blows from her opponent, gaining as much time as she can, until her luck is over and a final blow finds its target. Adarian hits Laetilia's right shoulder, sending her weapon flying. Without any ceremony, in a full spin, he impales Laetilia’s chest with his blade, straight into her heart, who tilts her head back with the impact, and the world holds its breath as she falls.

  Adarian rehearses a laugh as an outburst for the victory against a knight. However, the fight is not over yet, Laetilia struggles to endure the growing pain caused by the shadow Omen, and uses her willpower to hold the death′s door open, raise her head, and grab the blade trespassing her chest with her left hand, she retorts “The one who has already lost is you!” breaking Adarian's artifact with her own body, and finally releasing all the energy contained until then in a furious wave of darkness that cleanse the skyline again, Adarian is thrown far away, stopping only when he hits the monolithic walls of the valley, avoiding the impact because he had time to raise his protective aura, but the fact is: the Sahdow Omen was shattered, to his complete astonishment and despair.

  Laetilia was seriously injured, but her wounds are regenerating normally, like any other. Adarian also realizes that, after years, he no longer feels the pain of the minor bruises inflicted by his master when using the Shadow Omen against him. However, he is devastated to realize that he has really just lost the only thing that had any meaning to him.

  Laetilia doesn't waste time and takes advantage of her opponent's perplexity to grab her weapon that had been thrown with the blow to her right arm, which is now also regenerating with her power. Adarian, realizing what is happening, recovers with a start and approaches Laetilia again.

  The furious Adarian can barely control his words, "The hell with you and the knights, I swear that I will end your existence, even if this is the last thing I do!" Adarian charges at Laetilia at his maximum speed, striking with his bare fists and legs, sometimes in combination with his telekinesis.

  Laetilia is in precarious condition, but she managed to use her weapon to avoid the blows. She will not be able to withstand this furious attack for long. In desperation, she still tries to hit Adarian, who has gone berserk and is no longer defending himself. Still, even in his fury, he has time to raise his protective aura again, and once again Laetilia's weapon fell, landing near Adarian's feet. Laetilia is forced to jump away to escape the heavy telekinetic blows. Once again, Adarian feels the taste of victory on his lips.

  "This is your end, I will kill you using your own weapon, and after that I will subdue it as I did with the Shadow Omen!" Adarian uses his telekinesis to pick up the wavy weapon from the ground and jumps towards Laetilia, who smiles despite her injuries.

  “I got you!” says the knight to the enemy while retreating a few steps. Adarian charges at Laetilia for a final blow, assured that it's just another bluff, but realizes that his new weapon escapes from his hand as if it were alive, transforming into a small snake that bites him at an impossible speed before returning to a weapon form and falling back to the ground, somehow he is hit even inside his energy bubble, and the pain of the bite proves to be much greater than that of his old weapon, he immediately falls to his knees, trying to make some sense of the pain he is feeling that completely soothed his angry.

  “Kalis is harmless, except against corrupted souls, I see that despite you using an ancient artifact for a long time, no one has ever explained to you how those things work,” says a relieved Laetilia, slowly regenerating from her injuries. Adarian can't even lift his head to look at the knight; he tries to mumble something, but his voice fails him.

  “Look, Adarian, I don't know what you've been through on your path, but despite the pain, you now have a unique opportunity. Kalis allows you to undo all the pacts you've made before, and with that, you'll lose the powers that were obtained with that pact, but on the other hand, the pain will disappear, and you'll be able to do whatever you want with your life after that.” Laetilia says slowly.

  Adarian closes his eyes to contain the pain and tries to grimace bitterly. He urges to scream in deep pain, but his ego still manages to surface some words. “Are you insane? Are you really trying to save me somehow? Such a fool... This world of yours never existed!"

  Laetilia says nothing more, and after some seconds of silence, Adarian realizes his unbearable growing pain will never stop on its own. He spoke again, now in a whispered voice but with renewed resolution, "Now I understand exactly what happened to Kuj, so I'll do as you said and accept sacrificing the powers obtained through my pact. That would be even better for me, because in my inexperience, I made the pact too early. You'll see what will happen very soon.”

  Laetilia responded promptly, with some trepidation, feeling that something was not right. “Our fight should be over.”

  As soon as Adarian decides to abandon his pact, the pain is all gone, and he lies on his back on the floor, blinking his eyes in relief. He speaks, now devoid of any anger: “When we Alphas made our first pact, we all knew exactly what we were doing, and if I were offered this opportunity again, I would certainly do it, but this time, I would ask for a much better deal. Can′t you see? No artifact will truly change what people are, since we are born, we have our destiny already traced,” says Adarian, lying motionless on the floor.

  After a while, thinking, Laetilia answers, “OK, let’s assume for a moment that you are right, how can you know everything about this destiny of yours? Maybe it was someone who always told you what your destiny was? What would happen if you, imagine, didn’t make any such pacts?” And prepare to defend herself since Adarian’s power had not been as reduced as she expected.

  Adarian shakes his head with a slight smile. “There is no such option, it simply does not exist… But that does not matter. Why do you think the Alphas are completely loyal as an order? And breaking a pact is certainly not acceptable. It is treason, for sure.” Adarian pauses, falling into a brief silence, finally concluding. “She will come for me, very soon.”

  “She? Who?” asks Laetilia, looking around and noticing that a red energy tower begins to form above Adarian, identical in shape but much smaller than the tower she had seen before, years ago, after she lost contact with her mother.

  “Matrioska…” Adarian answers, now without worrying about anything, “But I think that of all the places, this one is the best to die…” Adarian pauses when he realizes that Laetilia is running away from the tower. “Wise decision! But too late!” Adarian shouts, still on the ground, while raising an aura of protective energy around Laetilia, which confines her in place while protecting her at the same time. “I’ll be back, I guess…” Adarian grumbles, “This aura will protect you, but don’t be fooled thinking I’m saving you for free, I’m just making sure that when I come back, I’ll be the one to finish you off, and I promise to send all your friends with you to hell.”

  Laetilia notices an unsettling strategic bias behind Adarian′s nonsense. She is missing something and wastes no time to warn her cats that an explosion is on its way, but it’s too late for further planning. A flash hits the energy tower on its top, then it falls and explodes in the blink of an eye, taking the life of an already injured Adarian. Besides its immense power, the explosion is not even close to the cataclysmic event Laetilia saw years ago near the Golem's path. The landscape, full of valleys formed by monolithic veins near Cernutos, also protected everything close to the ground. As a result, Laetilia ended up unharmed; the explosion only destroyed the energy aura that had been given to her as a farewell gift.

  As soon as the explosion wave subsides, Laetilia runs towards Adarian’s ship nearby. Bebel is already inside as she was ordered before, when she notices her master approaching she says, “The ship is open, it survived since it was behind the Cernutos tower when the explosion came, this vessel have no active security, there are just a network of sensors spread throughout this region, most of them are now off because of the explosion.”

  Laetilia thanks her and hurries to get inside Adarian's ship, forgetting for now the two other cats with Silas that also resisted the explosion wave in the ship, half buried inside the valley's snow. As the knight enters the vessel, she realizes that the bo's ship is very small, accommodating only a couple of passengers. Laetilia easily finds Liora right at the entrance hall, forgotten in a corner and covered in dust, with several energy cells scattered at her feet. Only her headset comlink is active, but it is almost out of energy.

  Laetilia, trembling with happiness, cleans her mother of all the dust and replaces the energy cells, at which Liora wakes up from her sleep and recognizes her daughter as all her systems start up. The two hug each other and remain silent in relief for a while.