[Veyrmar village, Eastern Empire - Eldoris border, Reize’s POV.]
Why was she being hunted?
Reize truly could not figure it out; she didn’t have enough time to think about the issue either. But after all the things she had heard about the order of Red Knights - the followers of the Sun God faith, there was no way in hell she was going to trust their people.
Reize fired the two cannons left and right; she hadn’t brought too much liquid mana with her. Only a small pouch full that she kept hidden under her baggy clothes. It was still enough for the runic cannons to blast the lasers for several minutes. She only stopped when everyone wearing red was left unmoving and silent.
It didn’t even take her five minutes to kill six-second rankers and three first rankers.
This weapon of Damian was truly devastating. No wonder the guy was so opposed to making them. His weapons wouldn’t be simple, and he knew it from day one.
The villagers were still frozen in shock as Reize quickly snatched the spatial storage of all the knights and made a run for the simple house she shared with Yomi.
When Damian had used his waygate spell to locate her little sister, it had brought her into a basement of some palace. In a dark prison cell. There were two guards nearby. Before the two men could make sound and alert others, Reize had fired her runic bracer containing air blade spells. She had brought the idea to Damian, and they had made it together in the academy.
It contained over 12 small runic circles, each sending a single, sharp, double-edged, extremely fast knife-shaped air blade. While an enchantment she had attached to the bracer gave her the ability to set targets for the knives. It was gesture-based and required one to study the enchantment gestures to fully control.
When the two guards dropped dead and Reize turned to face her sister, she was left in shock. The little Yomi in her memories was only five years old. But here, with the face resembling her mother, was standing a grown woman. She was even a few inches taller than her.
Without saying a single word, Yomi grabbed her in a tight embrace. Reize herself had changed a lot. Yet the warmth shared was ever so familiar.
They weren’t alone, after a few minutes, Reize realized. When she asked, her assumptions had turned out to be true. The black clothed organization was indeed controlled by the demons. They were in Losan Shier, one of the biggest cities in the old empire, or as the demons called it, Malveria. The two guards Reize had killed in the dark were not humans but low-level demons. Breaking out was going to be hard, not to mention the basement was full of female prisoners, mostly human, but there were demons mixed in as well. This text is hosted at novel★fire.net
"Do you know where Mother is?" Reize asked Yomi, afraid to hear the reply.
When Yomi’s face was covered by sadness, head lowered, as tears rolled down her pretty cheeks, Reize knew her fears had come true.
"When you were gone, we tried to run from the camp again.. It was the most stupid thing; she did it for me. She.." Yomi choked up, and Reize quickly pulled her in another hug.
"It’s alright. It’s not your fault. Knowing the two of us are alive and will be safe from now on, she must be smiling at us from up there." Reize consoled her, even though her own eyes had started to tear up.
"How did you come here? Can you get us out?" One of the fellow prisoners of Yomi asked.
Reize nodded. She had no idea what the outside was going to be like, but she had to try. Damian had given her a one-time-use steel waygate tool, connecting him. But Reize did not wish to use it. With her multiple full mana tanks, Reize wanted to leave this place with her own strength. She would have loved to go back, but she couldn’t. She.. couldn’t get him involved in her stuff, not again. They were separated now, her things were her own. Reize unconsciously touched her stomach and then realized where she was and shook her head.
"Yes, come with me." She replied, speaking to all prisoners. "We will fight our way out of here."
Fighting their way out of the palace wasn’t easy at all, but she had many runic tools and enough liquid mana to power them for hours. Losan Shier city was fully in control of the demons, but still, when they came out and the civilian demons realized their lord was keeping a flock of women hidden away just for him, the city was thrown into a chaotic storm.
Some of the demon women Reize had saved were daughters and wives of high-level demons. They rallied the rebellion against their overlords. With war going on, the city only had a minimum number of soldiers - even the lord himself had gone with most of his army to fight in the war.
Running out of the city in the chaos was easier than Reize had thought possible. Once outside the city, everyone separated - even though only human women were left in the group by now, all had homes in different directions. And most wanted to reach the border of the empire in hopes of reuniting with their loved ones.
Reize herself did not think it was necessary to leave the empire, only to end up in equally crowded Dawnstar, where she might be forced to join the army. So she and Yomi travelled from village to village, staying in the border region so that they could go to any of the three countries on a moment’s notice. Eldoris and Malveria’s border was less active than the Dawnstar one, so they naturally chose to stay there.
However, Reize realized she was thinking too much. In less than a week, Damian and others fought the war against the demons, defeated them, and sent them all back to their island.