Shadowbane

{What is that noise...?}

An alarm of some sort? I'm actually not sure.

A few days after falling asleep I had been awoken to a sound neither of us had heard before. It was a long wailing sound that looped from a low pitch to a high pitch over and over.

I rolled off of the couch and walked through the front door. The sound was much louder outside, and I could see hundreds of bright orange lights blinking on a tower in the distance. I assume it's a tower anyway. All I can see through the snow is hundreds of orange lights ascending from the ground to a point that appears to be around one thousand meters in the sky. That's one hell of a tower...

I was tempted to run over there to see if I could find out why the alarm started wailing, but I decided not to. After I sign up for missions from Arcadia I'll have plenty of time to scour the ruins. Plus, they likely already know why there is tower alarms out here, so I could just look the information up at home or wherever I end up living.

I ran back to the beach, sprinting past the dead machine and onto the ice. When I was a safe distance away I removed my veil and activated my halo.

That's when I saw something I had missed during my landing the other day. The large machine on the beach was looking at me with two small red eyes. Its body, legs, and arms weren't moving, but its head was now looking right at me.

{C-Creepy! That's so creepy!! Fly away, hurry!}

I ascended into the sky at an angle toward the ocean until I was around ten thousand feet again.

{How come we can't go higher?}

You know why. I already tried to go higher on the way to Caedrus. I said to her as I began to fly toward the east again.

{I know that! I mean why do our souls weaken when we try to go higher?}

Oh, that's what you were asking... I honestly don't know why that happens.

I've never known anyone who could fly, but I do recall that Viktor's first airship was really high in the air, which is why I'm struggling to even come up with a theory on the matter. At first I thought that maybe the moons and planets have some sort of field around them that damages people's souls, and that we were reaching it by going to high, but then how are Viktor's people surviving that high up inside of his airships? Hopefully the Elves have an answer to this, because I can go anywhere I want on Arcadia if I'm able to fly higher than the machines can sense me.

{Is... Is that a 'snatcher'?}

Yes. I simply replied as I watched the machine sprint through the snow with a human strapped to its side. The person wasn't moving or screaming, so I had no clue if they were still alive or not.

{Are you going to help them?}

... Hmm. We have to be close to Arcadia right now. I've seen multiple outposts and hundreds of vehicles over the past day. Plus, there is people walking around between the ruins as if the area is safe, so the main city should be within the next fifty miles.

I'm almost positive someone else is going to save them, I can even see several vehicles catching up to them right now. But just in case, I suppose we could help.

And I may need help myself if my Uncle isn't alive.

I flew down toward the snatcher that was barreling through the snow at over sixty miles an hour. It was hunched down like a lanky animal, using its two feet and both hands to pull itself forward. Like several other machines, its frame mirrored that of a human ribcage, and this one was obviously old. Parts of it were broken off all over its body, and I could see that only one of its red eyes were lit up as it looked up at me.

{They have the same eyes as you...}

I thought that was odd too, but it has to be a coincidence.

As I reached the ground it dodged to the right, leaping over fifty yards in a single bounce before restarting its sprint through the snow. Acceleration is no issue for this thing huh? It reached its max speed instantly. I can see why weaker people struggle with snatchers.

I flew forward and grabbed onto the metal that was wrapped around his captive. The machine had an insane reaction speed and was already leaping through the air as I began to fly toward it, but I was far too fast for it. Plus, I could fly. So catching it in the air was obviously not a problem.

I ripped the metal off of the man and as I grabbed him I could hear him suck in a lungful of air. He continued gasping for air as we began to fly up into the sky. Fucking thing was crushing his chest, that's why I couldn't tell if he was alive or not.

Even though it was pointless, the machine jumped high into the air after me. That's when I saw Luna try and grab it with her ethereal fist spell, however...

{Ughhh, it went right through him! I forgot that these stupid machines don't have souls.}

Hmm, I didn't think about that either, but only a few of her spells are debuffs that require souls, so it's not that big of a problem.

As the snatcher landed on the ground a hail of gunfire ripped into it. It tried to flee, but snatchers aren't exactly known for their durability, and as such it crumpled into the snow no more than a few seconds later.

I flew toward the ground but slowed my descent this time now that I had a Human in my arms. My usual landings would have probably broken his back or neck after all.

As soon as I landed several of the men aimed their guns at me while a few others ran out of the truck yelling 'Jimmy!' and 'Are you okay?!'.

"I-I'm fi---" Jimmy was cut off as he went into a fit of coughing.

Once he was done coughing I tilted him so his feet were near the snow, "You able to stand?"

He lowered his feet into the snow and nodded, but as soon as I let go he buckled. I didn't reach for him again though, as his friends had already grabbed onto him.

It was one man and one woman covered in the usual non-power armor attire a lot of people had to wear out here. Thick clothes to withstand the freezing temperatures but also slightly infused with mana which allowed them to take a few hits if need be.

"Thank you so much!!" The girl yelled before guiding Jimmy toward the back of the vehicle so they could inspect his injuries.

The man nodded at me, "You really helped us out there. We know the protocol is to shoot its legs but it was just so damned fast and bouncing all over the place. All it would have taken was a couple of misplaced bullets and we would've lost my brother forever..."

Ahh, that's right. I forgot that people here take damage from friendly fire almost as much as they do from machines.

"By the way..." He looked me all over, from my wings, to the halo, to my hair and heavy black armor. "Are you a hunter?"

"What's a hunter? I've just arrived back here after a ninety year absence. I have a lot to catch up on."

"Ninety years?! You're up there with the clan leaders in age, god damn... Oh, a hunter is one of the top dogs in the clans. They serve the leaders directly, and because of their strength they stand out quite a bit. So someone who can fly, has a halo, and... Well, you know what I mean." He laughed and looked at my wings again, "If you're not a hunter, then you're going to be one soon from the looks of it. But even so, feel free to reach out to the 'Hothgar' clan if you ever need anything. We're one of the smaller ones, but we won't betray you! You can check our history to confirm."

"Will do then. I have a feeling I'm going to be needing a lot of help soon enough." I prepared to fly as I asked him one last question, "By the way, how close is Arcadia?"

"Twenty two miles away. You're almost there." He said with a smile.

I nodded to him before taking off into the air again. While I gained altitude I saw men from the truck approach the snatcher and begin to take it apart. Ahh shit, I forgot about the power core... Oh well, I can gather them up later if I need to.

{You hear that, Rei? You're almost home!}

... Yeah, almost.

{?}

Despite everything I said up until now, a large part of me never believed I'd end up back here. So many things could have gone wrong along the way, including the fact that I almost threw in the towel and followed everyone into Gaia.

{Hey, I've been wondering. Can't you beat Viktor as you are now?}

Too risky. His nation is in warmode so he probably has obelisks everywhere, or at the very least they're going to be intercepting any possible intruders in whatever city he's staying in. Plus, even if there's a good chance that I'm much stronger than he is now, don't forget that my stats are heavily skewed toward regen. A couple of mistakes is all it takes and that'd be it for me. Lastly, he's not going to let me revive this time. Even if he bought that Goblin nonsense I told him before, he's still going to feed my soul to the Xerath.

There's no need to rush it. I'll finish up here and then sneak up to whatever city he's living in with an some mechs and an army of people in high grade power armor. It'll have to be a stealth mission though, since knocking on his front door wouldn't work even for me with an army like that. I'm sure the Tengu will know how to get through his nation undetected. The only thing I'm worried about is whether he has those obelisks everywhere or only near him and other specific locations. It'll be extremely difficult to sneak through his nation if there's no way to avoid them.

Also, I still don't fully understand how his warp ability works either. I'm fast enough that it shouldn't prove too much of a hindrance now, but it is still a hindrance.

I wiped Viktor from my mind and thought about what I was going to find in Arcadia. Odds are my Uncle was either dead or gone by this point, so I prayed our clan's home was still there in our name or unoccupied.

I landed about fifty yards outside one of the city's gates instead of flying over them. There were vehicles coming and going from multiple gates, but the one I landed near was empty, so the guards were immediately readying their weapons when they saw me.

After releasing my halo I walked up to the gate with my arms raised high until I reached them. "I'm not a threat. I'm a returning citizen. I haven't been back here in around ninety years though."

The guards were fully armored and I couldn't see their faces at all. They didn't move an inch or say anything after I approached them, which would have been unnerving if I thought I was in danger. But I already knew they were reporting me to the head office while asking for instructions. That was my last memory of this place after all... Watching my parents go through a rigorous back and forth with the main office just so we could leave the damned city.

About a minute later the guards put their guns away and waved me inside as his speakers flared to life. "Entrance twenty seven. It's in the middle there. And once you're inside walk straight to the head office."

I nodded and strode by the men. Past the open gate there was a massive area surrounded by tall walls that were fully encircling it. The place looked like a large dome as a result.

While I walked I looked around at the hundreds of people out and about. Most were in vehicles coming or going through the main gates, but there was also people driving large plow trucks that looked like the one I had seen outside the home I rested in on the way here. They were pushing all of the snow toward the back of the dome where it was being dumped into a ultra-wide entrance where it all fell down to somewhere else. I forget why they do that. It's not just to remove snow out of the main area, there was something they gained by collecting snow...

I walked past several 'entrances' which were nothing more than a large or small domed building depending on which entrance you used. I eventually found number twenty seven and pushed the button next to the sealed doors. They opened up and revealed a circular platform that could fit maybe five people.

After entering the elevator I looked for the pad full of buttons, but no matter where I looked the walls were completely smooth. How the hell do I tell this thing where to go? I swear there was buttons the last time I was here.

That's when the elevator started moving on its own. I thought maybe someone else was calling for it, but that's when I realized why this one was so much smaller than even the smaller-sized elevators. This is for people who aren't citizens. Newcomers or guests basically. I guess I can't complain. This is a fitting treatment for me at the moment.

The ride didn't last long, maybe fifteen seconds. The doors opened up to a long hallway that stretched on for quite aways in both directions.

"This way, Miss." A female voice said out of an unseen speaker nearby.

After she said that I could see a long line of lights on the ceiling appear on the left side only.

"You know, I can see a large plaque on the wall that tells me which direction the head office is."

"Not everyone can read." The voice said indifferently.

Is that true? Even the pawns of the Xerath knew how to read and write. But I doubt they'd put on this light show otherwise, so it probably is true.

I walked in the direction the lights were going until they stopped outside of a set of sliding glass doors. There was a lot of people inside the office, with most of them waiting for their turn on seats to the right of the entrance.

One of the men waiting near the doors looked at me and chuckled when he saw the lights. "Another newcomer huh? Well, good luck! You're going to need it."

"Over here, Miss." The indifferent voice said from the right side of the office. I looked in that direction and saw a lady wearing the same white blazer outfit as everyone else.

As I approached the counter it was made clear that she wasn't indifferent, she was just really tired. I could see the bags under her eyes quite clearly up close.

"Name?"

"Reimia Navi Velrune."

She quietly typed away at the computer for a bit before she suddenly stopped. She then looked back and forth between the monitor and me maybe five or six times.

"Is there a problem?"

"... Give a minute." The lady pushed a button on the desk and immediately went back to looking between me and the monitor.

A man came out of one of the back offices and headed straight for the lady's terminal, placing a hand on her shoulder when he arrived. "What's the problem, sis? You finally going to leave and get some rest?"

"No. I need you to look at our 'returnee' here. She says this is her." The lady pointed at the monitor.

Her brother leaned down and compared whatever image they had of me on the monitor with the current me and I couldn't help but laugh when I realized what the problem was.

"Yeah, I obviously look way different. The last time I was here I was five or six years old, and I've been corrupted quite a bit since then."

The man looked me up and down, "What manner of Eldritch corrupted you...? I've never seen anything like this before. Normally it's something small, like new ears or wings."

Ahh, I really don't want to answer this. I thought up all sorts of excuses in case this was asked of me, but in the end I settled on telling the truth.

"The Abyss."

The office went quiet as everyone turned to look at me.

"T-The Abyss?! But how could---" The man spoke at a fast pace but he was quickly cut off by his sister. While she was initially surprised just like everyone else, she had already returned to her usual deadpan expression. "Wait, brother. Yulong will want to see her."

"Right, good call! He'll be fascinated with you, Miss---" He checked the monitor, "Reimia Velrune. Huh? Velrune?"

He pushed his sister out of the way and began to click through something in my documents.

"... Unbelievable. you really are related to that annoying fuc---Err, old friend of mine."

His sister rubbed her eyes before looking at me with an annoyed expression, "Please don't tell me she's related to Irvine. That man doesn't deserve to receive any good news."

The man sighed and looked at me, "Your Uncle will be very happy to have you back. I haven't talked to him in years, as we had a little falling out over what he did to my sister here, but even so, this is a very good thing for him. Maybe he won't be such an ass anymore after he has family around him again..."

"He's still alive...? I hoped he would be, but realistically it seemed impossible, so I knew he had to be dead by now." I continued, "Oh! Does that mean my clan still owns the R-37Az block?"

I checked my old memories before sleeping in that ruined home a week ago so I could find my clan's residential number. There was no way in hell I'd remember it otherwise.

The man nodded, this time with a smile. "He does---Wait, no. Maybe you own it now? Hang on."

The man checked the computer again but ended up shaking his head in the end, "Nope, sorry. Your parents left it to their daughter Sera, but in the event she was not around it'd go to your Father's brother, Irvine."

Hearing someone else say my sister's name felt like a punch to the gut. Hell, just talking about my family period with someone else was about to make me burst out crying, but I held it in and smiled at the man.

"That's fine! I really don't care who owns it, so long as it's still part of our family. But um, do you know if he's done anything with it?"

The lady looked at me with an expression full of pity, "I'm sorry to say, no. Your Uncle told me about ten years ago that he hasn't been back at the clan house ever since his family went missing. I didn't know at the time that they had gone missing almost a hundred years ago, but don't worry, so long as he was paying the fees, it should still be clean and ready to move into."

I heard a beep as the man pulled a card out of a nearby machine. He handed the card and a slip of paper to me over the counter.

"The card, as you can tell, is your new keypass. While the paper is the location of a man named Yulong. He's a bit weird, but you can trust him. He's obsessed with the Abyss and won't shut up about it. He's been thrown out of several meetings because of this, but truly, if you want to discuss the Abyss with anyone, then he's the one to go to."

The keypass had my picture, full name, clan location, and even my hybrid status as 'Abyss'. While the paper had directions to Yulong's office, and an image of what the building looked like. I bet the average person who comes here is a little creeped out when they find out that their photo has already been taken without their knowledge. That's just the norm here though. They probably took it in the elevator.*

"I see, thank you for this. I'll be sure to visit him when I get a chance. There's something I need to show to someone like him."

"Oh? He'll be very happy to hear that then! Any amount of information related to the Abyss will make him overjoyed."

Then his head is going to explode when I show him my memories. Hopefully he'll be able to translate the books and murals, or at least know someone who can help him translate them.

"One last question. Where is my Uncle right now?"

The lady returned to the terminal and began typing on it. About a minute later she said, "He's currently on a mission, but it's not very far away. If anything, it's really close? Strange, but at least you won't need to wait long to meet him. It says he's due back in a couple of days."

Wow, this is really happening... How am I even going to greet him?

"Wait, I'm sorry, I have one other question. Do I need to register fairies?"

"You have a fairy with you? Hmm, I'm honestly not sure if they need to be registered. Sis?"

She typed on the keyboard again before saying, "You can register him or her as a pet, it says."

I bursted out laughing as Luna sprang out of my chest, "I-I'm not a pet though?!"

"Whoa, you really do have a fairy with you..." The man trailed off before continuing, "What is your name, Miss?"

"Luna... No last name."

The lady nodded and began typing again, "That's fine. Pet's don't have last names anyways. And Miss Reimia, please return your keypass to my brother for a moment."

"Rei! That lady is bullying me!"

I think that's just how she is, little one.

I handed my keypass back to the man, who promptly inserted it back into the device it popped out of earlier.

"E-Excuse me!" A voice said from behind me. I turned around and saw a young girl there with a familiar device in her hand. Isn't that one of the cameras they give to kids? I think I had one too.

"Yes? What's wrong little girl?"

"Um, can I take a photo with the fairy?"

Ahh, Luna does seem like something young girls would be fascinated with. I watched that cartoon long ago because I loved the fairies. But the God of fairies appearing before me nude while having a rather annoying personality really wiped away any lingering fascination I may have had with them.

"Sure thing." I said, picking Luna up by the wings and dropping her on the girl's shoulder. She looked annoyed as I was carrying her but the second she looked at the girl's face she began smiling again.

"Miss, it's done." The lady behind me said.

I turned around and grabbed the keypass out of her brother's hands. On it I could see 'Magical Pet: Luna. Type: Termia Fairy' had been inserted.

"... Should I register that too?" The lady said, pointing at the black bird stuck to the side of my armor."

"No need. It's not alive, it's a summon."

I felt Luna enter my soul again as I stuck the keypass underneath the tasset part of my armor.

{All done! Such a sweet girl.}

"We all done here?"

The man nodded, "Unless you need anything else, like directions? Normally new or returning citizens would be given a guide, and we can offer you the same service if you'd like."

"Nah, I'm good. I looked through my memories before returning here. I know of several different ways to reach my home."

I waved to the siblings and turned right as I left the office. I continued in that direction until I reached one of the elevators that travels to different blocks. The doors opened as I stepped up to it, and I immediately pushed R-37 after walking inside.

I could only see stone out of the glass as the elevator began to move, but it eventually revealed a large commercial area as I moved through R-1. Then R-2 another commercial district, with R-3 being a residential zone, etc. etc., until I finally reached my destination, R-37. A medium-grade district that could be used for both residential and commercial.

Most areas were like that, it was only the main ones that were specialized. But barely anyone actually went up to the first three districts. Only those who lived in R-3 could afford those places. It was R-4 that everyone went to, because that's where all of the missions were given out. Weapons, armor, ammo, everything was there. I scoured my memories on the way to Gaia trying to remember everything I could while the caravan slept, all in preparation for my return to this place.

{Where is it, Rei?!}

Hah, don't panic, we're almost there. It's about a five minute walk from where we are right now.

I walked forward through a familiar tunnel. A cement walkway with gravel beside it, and on the right side there was a small patch of grass before the wall that was made of that same seemingly-indestructible alloy you see everywhere in Arcadia. And on the left side was a slight slope full of grass and little white flowers whose name I couldn't remember.

How does this place look to you, Luna? Be honest.

{Weird, but pretty? Why is there grass and flowers down here? And it's so well maintained!}

About what I expected. It was normal to me as a kid, but after being away for so long I can't help but think about how unnatural this all looks. Still though, I love it all the same.

Eventually the tunnel exited to massive area shaped like a dome, much like the area you first see above ground. In the center were a bunch of buildings raised up on platforms, and as usual all of their lights were on. They were almost entirely full of animals or plants. Basically, they're areas for growing livestock and fruit.

There was only a few people out and about. This was the residential part of R-37, so it wasn't much of a surprise.

I turned left and continued walking along the wall, passing by one door after another until I reached the one I was looking for. R-37Az.

I pulled the keypass out and walked up to the door. I wasn't physically shaking, but emotionally my mind was a mess as I stuck the keypass into the slot next to the door. I heard a click as the door unlocked and swung open.

After a brief moment I walked inside and glanced around the living room. It looked exactly as it had the day we departed for Urza.

"... I'm home, everyone." I said, closing the door behind me.