The Price Of Survival

Diction

Runes-Magical symbols witch specific functions

Wards-sequence of runes usually used to keep something safe

Mana-magic

Xxx

Hanna plunged the shard of glass into the iridescent barrier and tried not to wince against the deep burgundy light. Fumbling across a jarring piece of rock, she bit her lips and edged back, shrugging the powdery snow off her shoulders.

“I told you that you can’t get in.” 

Hanna cursed under her breath.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Hanna muttered, her overgrown nails itching into her palms, flesh and blood layering off. 

“Await our deaths, what else.”

She swore he sneered under the moonless night, but kept herself from lunging into him and piercing his heart away from his thick skin. He was irritating. 

Hanna’s knees gave away, the realization dawning on her like fresh dew on flowers, a distant sort of dread pooling in her now bruised hands. 

The knife fell with a thud, her heart stumbling against her stomach, bile rising up and down.

She was trapped.

Hanna was locked away from her city.

The city of LAX21 never did feel like the comforting blanket of an embracing home, but under suppressed tears, Hanna brought herself to admit that it had enclosed her, protected her from the disease torn world on the Outside.

She had sometimes wondered, sealed away in the perfect impersonation of peace, about what it would be like to live in the free air and not worry about which monster would hunt whom. She then supposed, that dreaming about a passionate world free of its ever-growing diseases would be nothing but her imagination. 

Hanna had been told every single day of The Lapse, the sludge like disease that started creeping up the emerald green earth about ten years ago, and started destroying every single being that dared to inhale an ounce of air. It created monsters, that tore down buildings, towers crumbled in the Lapse’s wake, destruction rampaged and people lived an inch away from death’s threshold.

It was all because of The Lapse, her grandmother had said.

It was all because of Bay and Winnha, the twin sorcerers, the rune masters who toiled and fought and built the magic laden LAX21. It was all because of them that they were alive in the deeply warded city, safe and warm from the clutches of sickness, poison, mortality of the Outside World.

Bay and Winnha were the founders, the heroes, the ones who sacrificed their lives to appease the Lapse’s infinite hunger.

And now Hanna was out, locked away from her safehouse, lingering in open, toxic air, waiting for the Monsters to kill her.

“We need to get moving.” His voice was resigned, as if he had surrendered to the already written fate that sealed his life away.

Ever since Bay and Winnha founded the LAX21, blood sacrifices were surrendered to the Lapse. Two Cleaners from The Cleaner Class were thrown into the Outside World to keep the people inside safe and sound.

The Cleaners repopulated themselves pretty fast.

The Cleaner beside Hanna might have been designated all his life to end up as a sacrifice, to be thrown away, but Hanna, she wanted to live; she was the daughter of Chief Knight, destined to lead their little town on the fringe of Earth to glory.

She wasn’t destined to die, a mere sacrifice for the cost of peace, like the workers from Cleaner Caste. The Knight Class was what she had been born into, the Caste she would die into, and she wasn't designated to be a servant, a filthy maid, the human blood given up to The Lapse every year. 

Then why am I outside?

“I haven’t seen you around town.” he said, plopping down cross legged on the sloppy ground, when he realized that Hanna’s trembling body wasn’t going to get up and march itself to death like he thought they should.

Hanna tried not to sneer at his remark.

Of course, she would not be seen going into those stinking, faeces infested slums. But she kept quiet, the cost of shock and surprise at imminent danger, keeping her tongue paralysed and nerves frayed.

“Are..are you a-Thief?” he said with a moment’s hesitance, and Hanna didn’t require even a spark of fire to be able to see him gulping, hesitation mingled with, something she didn’t recognize.

Awe maybe?

She mentally sneered, her blood doing a miserable jingle, as she remembered that one Thief, one of the Rebels, getting executed on the guillotine last week.

She bit her tongue, the salty taste of blood pooling her teeth and managed to nod.

Hanna would be willing to call herself one of those scum, one of those Thieves if it meant active co-operation of the Cleaner.

Who knows what help she might need in keeping herself alive.

For all Hanna knew, there might be a need for a human shield, a sacrifice necessary to keep herself breathing. It wouldn’t be long before someone realized she was missing, unlike that dunderhead of an orphan, and then Father would destabilize the wards and bring down the Runes; it wouldn’t be long before Grandma’s cocoa warmed up her peeling hands and this ordeal would be put behind like a bad taste of nightmare.

Surely, they wouldn’t expect Hanna to sacrifice herself.

Her intestines repulsed at such a thought, of such pain, of such giving, it went against the morals she lived in.

The taste of false reassurance did a bad job at keeping her mind from wandering the various catastrophes that might await her.

“I’m Ren. 20th district. I..I always wanted to fight back against the Knights. Like you.” he said, with a careful disposition as Ren fingered the dagger in his arms, looking at Hanna like she were a hero.

Was he stupid?

It was so obvious that she wasn’t one of them.

“I’m Hanna.” she replied casting wary glances at the surprisingly, blank moor, spread out like a warped black hole.

Hanna was told that monsters would eat her, kill her, mince her the moment one foot stepped outside the City on a moonless night. 

Unless the Monsters were planning a mass attack, the fear of the possibility of a bloody and painful death, sent her into a nervous frenzy. 

She took a deep berth and gathered the Mana fest up in her, there was a lot of magic saved inside of Hanna, not being able to use the magic because of lack of danger did mean that one had a lot of Mana to spare, and started the reciting the runes from the backward letters, and civilizations. She usually started with Indian, it being the oldest and the most ascetic, and from then proceeded to recite all the runic symbols pertaining to warding and defence and then attack categories. Chinese and Greek systems of magical Alchemy, Potions and Runes were the most fascinating because they had invented the methods of reverse polarity and toggling wards which could be used to identify the techniques gone in making ancient magical wards.

Hanna was rambling again in her mind, drifting off, her senses tuned off to the beautiful music of knowledge twinkling like diamonds.

She was rambling again.

“Are you coming or not?” Ren said, his annoyed groan at her lack of motion irked the peace of her thinking. If he wanted to march to death, then he should.

Why bother dragging Hanna into the mess. 

“Get down!” he screamed interrupting her mind’s incessant speaking and scolding, as she cast an alarmed gaze towards the pitch dark sky, once illuminated with only the faint glow of the maroon barrier, but now filled with an almost blinding neon green light.

Monsters. Hanna inhaled sharply, the noxious smell tingling her nose and sending Hanna to unguided panic, at what might result in her death. The monsters were small and winged with bodies slimy and infested with black sludge, the characteristic of The monsters from the Lapse. Grandma had educated her on the Monsters, Diseases and Poisons of the world in the Outside if she ever were to have the misfortune of stepping past the barrier. Thankful to her grandmothers incessant berating to pay utmost attention to the lesson, she readied herself with the blade, hand trembling, body almost paralysed with the fear.. But the monsters were Class 0, the weakest of their kind, and the worst they could do was a permanent cripple on their victims. Ren had risen up an alarmingly alert look warped in his blue eyes, why were they so cerulean?, drawing his sceptre from his bag and holding it high, the pristine white glow spreading across the sky, illuminating the crescendo of dust billowing after the swarm of glow-worms, approaching almost sluggishly, as if it were determined that they would be their meat; and there was no escaping that fact.

 

Hanna gulped, her vision swaying from the sudden gain in altitude and tilted her head summoning magic from her core. 

Her magic came fast responding to Hanna’s call like a guard on duty, and soon it was the pale pink glow of her magic that filled the air, knitting itself in thin strands, forming a hexagonal shield over her. And Ren. 

Ren’s magic was still flooding the sceptre, Hanna never knew someone’s magic could be so clean, like a brilliant beam of light throwing the glow worms away and burning the thick slime of The Lapse into ashes. Hanna sent an apprehensive glance towards Ren, who responded with a smirk. 

The monsters, realizing that their supposed prey had quite a few tricks up their sleeve, responded with a rapid rush towards them, charging towards them with the wind whistling in their wake, talons outstretched ready to attack Ren, the one who was peeling off the protective coating of dark oozing Lapse. 

They shattered against Hanna’s overpowered basic shield. Her magic was tiring, and she could feel it, even if her reserves were extensive from lack of use the drain to her core wasn’t minimal in the least. 

Ren’s attacking beam of light had lessened its intensity, and the monster’s frustrated banging on Hanna’s pink hexagonal shield had made it weaker. The talons were gory, and there were crimson stains on the tiny but menacing horde of glow worms, crawling and tittering and scratching with triumphant screeching. 

Hanna shuddered, imagining the monster’s eyes, bloodthirsty with hunger, and the sharp tearing excruciating pain of them digging into her bones, ripping apart ligaments, and watch them feeding on her own flesh like they were starved maggots.

Hanna could not let that happen.

Ignoring Grand-mama’s lessons on the harmful effects of depleting magic, Hanna exercised more magic ignoring the crack in her spine, and the flames burning, yearning in her lungs.

Hanna would do anything, if it meant seeing the light of day again. 

Ren spun his sword in his left hand, still grasping the thin and slender stem of his sceptre in his mouth, a thin layer of sweat stuck against his tousled black hair. 

The glow worms, sensing their growing weakness had edged back, clambering down, leaving trails of slime as a residue on the shield, and without a hint of warning charged forwards with the agility of magic in its purest form. Ren looked shell-shocked and Hanna attended to the hammering in her brain, urging her to use runes and cast a permanent shield that wouldn’t require active decomposition of both their magical cores.

Not that Hanna cared about Ren.

He was a Cleaner unworthy of her attentions. 

“Hold the shield.” Hanna commanded crouching on the ground, her palm dripping crimson blood on the decomposing weeds. She didn’t wait for his affirmation.

Soon enough his sword clashed with the floor, its hilt coated with something of tangible origin, and Ren’s white hot magic pulsated through the shield replacing Hanna’s pale pink one. 

She knelt to the ground and dripped beads of blood from the open wound on her hand, and before the ground swallowed up the sticky liquid, Hanna grimaced and dipped her index finger into it, drawing a small circle, with three parallel lines inside of it. 

The Greek Rune of protection.

Next to it she drew, a spiral with five twirls, and added a disgusted frown at the slime now coating her fingers. Promising herself a huge warm bath with bubbles she continued making three dots.

The Roman Rune of preservation.

With sharp pants, and exhausted muscles she pulled out the last dregs of magic in her system and summoned it in thin lines to nestle itself among her blood drawn patterns. It obeyed, slowly, and in an instant another shield was up, just before a glow worm penetrated in Ren’s sabre sharp dome of preservation, and the golden shield that sprang up as an answer to the runes emblazoned on the ground, drawn by the fresh blood of a Knight.

Hanna let out a relieved sigh, as Ren slashed the wormy monster and collapsed with raspy breaths on the ground. 

The rest of the swarm gave up, after what felt like eternity, when they realized that not even their piercing dagger like skin could enter the extremely strong runic configuration.

It always amazed Hanna, how Roman and Greek runes were so different, in their form shape and magical coefficient yet formed such a compatible and impenetrable combination.

“How did you do it?” Ren enquired, cross legged and quite comfortable when he realized that the ward wasn’t going to come down any time soon. 

“I just did. Weren’t you wanting to die earlier?” she replied carefully assessing him for threats. The toll of depletion had taken over, and Hanna’s vision was a blurry mess. 

“I realized that it was a waste for me to die. For my magic to die.”

Hanna admitted that it was exceedingly rare to find a Cleaner who had ample control of magic like Ren had.

She couldn’t tell him that she was a Knight.

Cleaners generally tended to steer off their masters.

Hanna might end up needing him, when the wards wore off and monsters attacked again, this time they might be Class 2 or Class 3 monsters, and they wouldn’t be stopped by such a weak shield.

“Look behind you.” he said rising up suddenly and stomping past her, his work boots clinging with a significant thump. Hanna groaned and wiped off her blood on her night-pants. 

She looked behind to see him poring over a piece of rock.

“There’s something written over here.” he said apprehension lined in his voice.

She crawled over, as much her breaking muscles allowed her to.

When she saw what was inscribed, in small, almost imperceptible letters were age-old runes.

Hanna recognized it.

It was the characteristic mix of Indian and Japanese alchemy, the signature style of Bay and Winnha the saviours of human kind.

It was a teleportation circle. 

It all made sense.

No cleaner was able to escape because their magic was not strong enough to recognize the runes.

Her vision was still blurry, and the golden glow of her ward, didn’t that make her feel proud, glimmering in small but easily perceptible glitches, and Hanna knew it wasn’t long before it gave away.

It was a miracle, really, that no other Monster had come crawling their way.

The scent of blood wasn’t exactly disguised.

Diverting her attention to the Runes, Runes in the outside world, she ran a clumsy finger on the trailing script of black ash on grey, mossy rock.

Hanna was right.

It was a teleportation circle, moreover it was keyed to the latitudinal, arbitrary guidelines of LAX21’s , previous headquarters.

“It’s a Circle. To home.” Hanna said, wanting to get the words out, the fascination, relief, safety, strangling her in a hot mess of emotion; she felt she would break if nothing was said now, and Ren was screaming curiosity with the way his cerulean blue eyes glimmered.

Hanna never knew she could be civil with a Cleaner.

“That defeats the whole point of going out. We were sent hear as sacrifices. If we were meant to be saved, then the Dome wouldn’t lock us out,” he said a vengeful shadow creeping up, “We have to appease the Lapse’s hunger. Or, it will satisfy itself with the blood of our kiln.”

Hanna grimaced. She should probably spit it out that she wasn’t their kiln. 

She was anything but.

Hanna paused. She gulped. She ran her fingers again, this time while squinting her eyes towards the script, it couldn’t be true, her thoughts ran wild as she inspected the runic sequence with palms running extensively, adrenaline pumping blood to her muscles, heart sped up, there might be a way out of this. 

Hanna could get out of this mess, without angering the Lapse. 

If what was indicated in Bay and Winnha's sequence were to be held true, if it really was theirs, and ignored the gnawing excitement, fear, terrific, awe, the battalion of emotions that flooded her heart and threatened to peek over her carefully passive face, as she looked over with a quivering stance at Ren, who looked with an expression like he wanted to interrupt, interrogate, but thought better of it.

“Are you a- Knight perhaps? They are Runes right? How can you cast it when Cleaners are barred from Magical Theory, or school in that matter. And, besides you said you were a thief!”

He paused, for a short breather, and tightened his grasp on the sceptre, as if the moment Hanna told him that she was, indeed a Knight, he would Charge at her and personally assist in depositing Hanna’s corpse to the black sludge of disease, or whatever the scientists predicted it would look like.

 Hanna blinked, and swallowed, wondering how to take this further.

A foreign feeling encompassed her in an ever knowing bubble of solitude; Guilt, Hanna realized was what she was feeling then.

It was as if Fate delighted in her traversing the path-the path of a murderer.

Hanna edged back, a cautios glint in her eye, that Ren caught, and with a fear inducing growl he lunged at her just as the golden shield gave away, and maroon of LAX21 seeming like a distant tower, a torch that extended far away from the reach of one’s hands. 

Hana touched and squirmed, terrified at the sudden change in his attitude.

That scum, she thought struggling to summon her magic, as he glared at her, baring and gritting his teeth, How dare he attack her, but Ren seemed oblivious and visibly struggled to hold himself back.

Hanna writhed, and pushed, unwilling to die at the hands of that slumming bastard, she would rather die at the hands of The Lapse, as an unwilling hero.

“You, you dare lie to me.”

Hanna sneered, not knowing if it was visible to him or not and mentally amended the guilt she was feeling.

“My mother died at the hands of a Knight, you-” he said the last bit with as much derision as she felt for him. 

Why did she ever think that a Cleaner Caste was amiable company.

They were beneath the Knights, they were beneath Bay and Winnha, who saved their world; and instead of being eternally grateful for their compassion, he points a sword at their descendants.

Hanna summoned magic from the pits in her soul, that she didn’t know even existed, and channelled the raw power toward him, making Ren fumble and let the cynical satisfaction fill the vessels and heart, the icy wrath replacing the rationality; fuelled by adrenaline she lifted the fallen knife from the wet ground, edging slowly and painfully towards the recovering Ren, who lay sprawled in a perfect position, just over the runes.

The Runes of Sacrifice

It was the Runes of Sacrifice that Bay and Winnha had etched on the rock

It was old, the origin dated about a hundred years ago, founded by an American Ward Master, who modified the Runes of Death and Blood, by combining it with the Arabian Rune of limbo, and reversed its polarity.

It demanded a blood sacrifice, of an unwilling human, the blood from the fresh cadaver of a recently dead human.

And the person who wished to procure the teleportation services, should be the one to maim the sacrifice. 

It’s just a slash, Hanna coaxed herself, he deserves to die. She was doing him a favour, his family would never have to worry about anything after she was rescued. 

Ren was up now, in a duelling stance that told her that he was ready to face anything she threw at him, and soon enough the ethereal glow of his Mana filled the air, probably attracting dozens of monsters. 

She channelled her magic, mentally procuring an image of a two parallel lines sitting on top a scattered rays.

The Runes of Light.

She imagined the magic coursing through those symbols, filling it, fulfilling it, and opened her eyes to the advancing figure of an incredibly agile boy, a hungry menace in his eye, that made Hanna wonder what the Knights dis to his mother that made him so vengeful, thirsty, hungry for revenge.

He was on top of her again, his blade drawing a thin stream of blood across her neck, and she almost believed that her magic hadn’t worked.

But then the light struck.

It blinded him.

Hanna shivered, trembled, cried and sobbed, as her hands crept up his neck, and the knife slashed his vein. Stabbed his heart.

He screamed.

Hanna stopped.

The sound of flapping beat her down, sweat interlocked with tears, blood flowed down the ground, creeping, trickling down towards the innocuous black script.

Talons pierced her, she didn't care, his screaming filled the fear in her ears.

She had killed him.

It hit her again and again, with brunt and force, that she didn’t know she was capable of feeling, and it tore her broke her, she sobbed and cried, the pain of her flesh being ripped away by monsters far less than the lashing, whipping guilt, of his screaming, breaking her soul apart.

And she cried.

She cried, and sobbed and gagged as the-the sticky blood from his quietened thrashing touched the rock, and the world around her filled with iridescent crescendo of blue glow, that reminded her of him again.

And Hanna screamed. She screamed and screamed until her parched throat begged her to stop. 

Somewhere in her mind, she knew he was dead.

She knew she had killed a- a person.

Oh, how could she?!

The teleportation had worked, if the blue glow was an indicator.

Hanna opened her eyes, that she didn’t realize was closing, her eyes sore, and pained, blood painted all over her.

Some of it wasn’t even hers.

Hanna wasn’t, in fact met with the warm embrace of her family.

She was met with a towering golden orb.

It pulsated energy, sticky, slimy energy, that shook her, and let out a disgusting aura.

Do you regret it?

The black area around her seemed to speak.

The feeling of dread took over her again, and she tried not to puke, his blood flowing down her phantom hand.

Hanna panicked. She was supposed to be at her home. Unless, it had driven her mad and she was experiencing hallucinations, talking to cores, she gazed, cold and icy, at the dripping Lapse, that thudded from the orb’s spherical surface. 

Would you do it again?

It seemed to ask, it didn’t actually talk, but she could somehow feel the words rolling off, as her body stumbled into a morbid kind of shock, unmoving and disparaging.

The answer should not have come out as easily as it did.

Yes

Her mind rumbled, and before she could give it a second thought, she was pulled away again, except Hanna lay still, as her soul lulled and put to sleep with the pushing and pulling of teleportation magic. 

This time, Hanna hoped, that she would awake back in her bed, and all this really were a nightmare.

Xxxxxxxxx

When Hanna woke up, it was to the scent Grand-mama’s hot cocoa.

She felt numb, her memories fuzzy, the only dregs of what happened was a feeling of amassing sorrow.

There were silhouettes, her eyes were heavy, and the only thing she could hear were the continuous, never ending whispers crowded around her foot, head, limbs. 

She caught wind of one rambling rumour.

The Hero of the World, they called her, The Reaper of The Lapse someone chanted.

Oh, how Hanna wished it were true.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx