Post by Kriven on Aug 26, 2008 13:44:00 GMT -8
Everything in this thread will probably, eventually, be completely rewritten... enjoy
She solemnly stood on the concrete wall that protected the Last Stand’s operations base. Before her the sun had just begun to show itself, emerging from behind several distant mountains and casting an orange glow over the war torn dessert. Behind her were the weapon storage facilities and temporary camps of the unit she was assigned to. The wall she stood on blocked the young sun’s light, making all but the slightly orange sky appear as night. Her pointed ears flicked as they picked up the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Do you remember anything?” asked the familiar voice of Alcuin.
His brown hair was slightly spiked upwards though his bangs fell just above his eyes. He hadn’t bothered to dress for the day yet; a brown robe sufficed for his early morning activities. A tray of food was held in his right hand, steam still rose from the bowl of oatmeal.
“No… I can’t remember anything of my life before I awoke in the Professor’s lab.” Freya answered without bothering to turn towards Alcuin. She was too wrapped in thoughts to remember her manners.
She hadn’t slept well the night before. She gave up on her sleep hours ago and was already dressed in her specially fitted blue armor. The sun’s light was reflected off the smoother, harder pieces of her armor while the more rubber-like portions on her joints and torso seemed to absorb the light. The armor was colored to compliment her long blue hair and sapphire eyes. These colors were natural for elves.
“I brought you some breakfast.” Alcuin said, motioning towards the tray of food in his hands.
“Oh. Thank you.” she replied snapping away from her thoughts.
Together they sat cross-legged on the large wall, eating bowls of hot oatmeal and enjoying the site of the rising sun. Alcuin couldn’t help but smile. Most elves emitted dread and other dark emotions in the young human, but Freya seemed to emit a light brighter then the sun itself. His smile shifted into a frown, however, as something appeared on the horizon. A large silhouette followed soon by the many smaller silhouettes of bipeds approaching from the distance.
“They’re here.” Alcuin said sadly.
Freya rose to her feet; “Excuse me,” she said. And before Alcuin had time to say anything more the girl had leapt from the large wall.
Twenty feet. Thirty. Forty. The wind whipped her blue hair in all directions as she plummeted towards the dusty dessert ground below. Her sapphire eyes were focused on a spot a few dozen feet beneath her. Seventy feet. Eighty. Ninety. One Hundred. She hit the ground hard, one of her legs immediately buckled and left her kneeling on her right knee. A cloud of dust and sand quickly consumed her, making her completely invisible to Alcuin from the wall above. It took only a few seconds for Freya to burst out of the dust cloud, but to Alcuin it felt so much longer. She was running at a speed no human, or elf, could have normally achieved. From atop the wall it looked as though a small blue ant was running across a sandbox, kicking up clouds of dust with every step it took.
The distance was between her and the oncoming army was quickly being closed. She grabbed one of the hilts strapped to her back and tugged. In an instant she held a blue weapon resembling a long sword, a katana. But the sword was not metal; it instead resembled a neon light. Another instant and she had grabbed at a second hilt and held a sword in her other hand. The handles of these blades were made with the same material as her armor, though the coloring was white.
The soldiers she approached were dressed all in black. Their ears were pointed and their hair was colors unnatural to humans. They were elves. This was a land unit of the Elfin Army. The object that had once been a large silhouette was now revealed to be a very large assault tank. Though it bore some resemblance to the tanks of our world, it was very different. All black with jagged sides, it seemed to be built of several rectangular tiles stuck together at angles with a large tube protruding from the front.
Some of the soldiers pointed at the dust cloud that approached them. “Captain Jaren!” some of the soldiers shouted. Their captain stood atop the black tank, his golden hair was tied back in ponytail. The red cape he wore signified his rank.
“Shoot it! By the time you can make out the girl creating the cloud, it’ll be too late!” Captain Jaren shouted, his green eyes fixed on the cloud of dust and dirt.
The soldiers fired their automatic weapons. Machine guns and auto rifles very much like those in our world, they even fired metal bullets. But the bullets were a wasted effort; they hit Freya’s armor and simply stopped, harmlessly falling to the ground.
“No! Not bullets you idiots! Only elicit can damage her armor!” Jaren shouted to his soldiers.
But it was too late for them. She was already upon them. The soldiers around her attempted to fire at her, destroy her. They all fell quickly. In under a minute she had decimated the ground troops on the left side of the tank. She paused for a brief moment, to catch her breath. Jaren, from atop his tank, began firing spheres of pink energy at Freya. She managed to avoid these shots, and rush around the backside of the tank to destroy the remainder of the troops. Like the left flank, the soldiers on the right didn’t last long.
“You will not dispose of me so quickly!” Jaren shouted.
The Captain leapt from the top of his tank, the red cape flowing behind him elegantly. He raised his weapon, and the rest was seemed to be slow motion to the hopeless Captain. Jaren had no time to fire; the blue clad warrior slid by him almost silently, and as she passed time restored for the Captain and his vision went black a second later. An instant later she had bound into the air a dozen or so feet above the tank. A push of a button and the neon blades of her weapons had bent at an angle beneath her arms and the weapons handles. Her fingers pulled the white triggers attached to the swords handle and instantly balls of blue energy blasted down into the tank.
The tank exploded in a green inferno as the elicit blasts rained down upon it. Freya landed just as the inferno cleared to reveal scraps of black metal, all with green and orange flames adorning them. The blades of her weapons returned to their original angles and she slid them back into their holders on her back, just behind her shoulders. She then began the treck back to her base, though in no hurry, she was decidedly walking.
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Alcuin had watched it all from his perch atop the concrete wall. Through the entire ordeal he was terrified for the life of his friend, but his worries were put to rest when he saw the enemies fall. He hadn’t noticed that someone else had joined in watching Freya decimate the enemy troops. Alcuin jumped in freight as the other person spoke.
“Wow, amazing.” said the person, his arms were crossed and his face should great amusement.
“Levi, you scared me.” Alcuin said, after calming down and gathering his senses.
“I know. It’s a talent.” Levi answered, unfolding his arms and tightening the green and brown camo bandanna on his head, “I’ve been wondering Alcuin. She destroyed them probably without breaking a sweat. I’d bet she could win this war on her own. Why are we here?”
Alcuin took a moment to answer. Despite Levi’s general appearance and attitude, he wasn’t an idiot. The young man before him, dressed in an unzipped bulletproof vest and black pants with his brown hair stabbing wildly at the air from beneath his bandanna was actually a mechanical genius. It was actually Levi who had invented the weapons used by Freya, not Professor Foley. After an impatient glance from Levi, Alcuin answered, “I’m sure our officials would say we’re here to win the war. Most of us know it’s really to keep Freya under control if she were ever to go rogue or change alliances.”
“Yeah, but she can’t do that, can she? I thought that when the Professor programmed her he designed her not to attack humans.”
“That’s true, but she still possesses the ability to think, as well as all normal emotions. It’s these factors that make it possible for her to go rogue. They allow her to choose what she does.”
“So what would happen if she were to make choices that conflicted with her programming?”
“I have no idea. In all cases, it wouldn’t be good. You shouldn’t concern yourself with it too much, Levi. She’s come to trust us and consider us her friends. I’m more puzzled as to where she came from.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… she’s an elf. Sure she’s a robotically enhanced elf, but she’s still an elf. It makes me wonder if there’s more to Freya we should know about. Was she a willing participant or was she abducted from some Elfin settlement? You know? I just don’t think it would sit well with me if it turns out she was experimented on against her will…”
“I guess it wouldn’t make me feel too great either. But think about it reasonably and it‘s pretty obvious. These days, there’s not an elf alive that would willingly sacrifice themselves for the betterment of humans.”
“Unfortunately I’ll have to admit that you’re right.” Alcuin said, his mind beginning to drift into darker territories.
“Come on,” Levi said, placing a smile on his face and patting Alcuin on the back, “Let’s get ready. We head out for the capitol today.”
“Yeah,” Alcuin turned back to the dessert, Freya was still a rather small speck of blue, “I’ll be there in a bit.”
“If you say so.” Levi replied as he walked away.
Freya was at the bottom of the gray wall now. She looked up at Alcuin. She could jump, but there was no way she would be able to leap one hundred feet into the air. She knew this.
“I’ll be in the mess hall! I’m a little thirsty!” Freya called up to her human companion.
“Alright! I’ll meet you there!” Alcuin called down.
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Freya’s walk to the mess hall wasn’t a painless one. Though she protected the humans and always treated them kindly, most of them did not return her kindness. They could not see beyond the fact that she was an elf. Most of them had decided that she would one day betray them all. As she walked along the dirt roads and past the many stone structures used as sleeping facilities by the soldiers she couldn’t help but notice the many hateful glares she received.
Involuntarily tears found themselves drowning her sapphire eyes. She turned her head downwards, where she wouldn’t be able to see the ugly scowls of the people around her. It seemed like she could almost hear the thoughts of the hateful men and women around her. As she stared at her own shadow and tried to ignore her watering eyes her thoughts lifted her out of reality. But they didn’t bring her to a safe place like most thoughts do. She found herself tortured by mental images of the hateful humans. When she managed to thrust these images away the troubling thoughts about how she came to be returned to her. How does someone like her come to exist?
Lost in her thoughts she didn’t notice the man riding a horse up the road. The man didn’t call to warn her, he remained quiet as he could while ushering his horse to go faster. Faster. Freya still did not notice the man or his horse. He swerved to the side, avoiding her. But as he passed by he reached down and grabbed her by the hair. Freya was yanked out of her thoughts. Pain shivered around her scalp.
“Hey pretty girl! Wanna come to my bunk tonight?” the man asked with a gleeful cruelty.
“Let go!” Freya demanded, trying to pull away from the man’s grasp. Had she wanted to she could have easily broken the man’s arm and continued on her way, but that was the kind of falter all the hateful humans were waiting for.
“Or what blue beauty? You’ll cut me up?” the man twisted her hair tightly, pulling her closer.
“That’s enough, Lace!” a voice called from somewhere in the crowd that had gathered.
The man released his grip on the clump of blue hair. A man much larger then the others stepped out of the crowd. He stood a head taller then the rest, and a blue cape dangled from his shoulders. At his waist was a very large sheath for a very large sword. He narrowed his eyes on the horseman and said sternly; “Leave, Lace, before I make an example of you.”
“Aw gee Commander. I was just havin’ a little fun with her is all!” the horseman said in his same nasty voice.
“Leave!” demanded the large man. When Lace had run off the Commander turned to the rest of his soldiers, which had gathered to watch Freya’s torment, “And for the rest of you rotten maggots, if I catch word of your tormenting Freya at all I will strike you down! It is because of her that each and every one of us breathes today! You should all be thanking her, not pulling her hair and demanding sex! She is no less human then we are! She deserves as much respect as you show me! Do you understand?”
Grudging murmurs and nods from the crowd showed that they did not understand, but they would say what they had to to make the Commander stop lecturing. Slowly they began to turn away and disperse back to their daily activities.
“Thank you Commander Geoff.” Freya said as she turned to look up at the Commander’s face.
“Yes, well, I couldn’t allow that nonsense to go on in my camp. Tell me, where were you headed? Would you like an escort?”
“I was just going to the mess hall for some water. I’m a little thirsty after this mornings fight. I think I can get there without an escort though, it’s not too far from here.”
“Ah, I see. Well, just keep your eyes open. There are others like Lace whom I wouldn’t trust with anything less then the life of a beetle. It is unfortunate that we are in such desperate need of soldiers that we must hire the likes of him. Oh well. Farewell for now Freya, I will see you again as we leave for the capitol.”
“Until then, Commander.”
After the Commander had left, Freya walked a bit faster, feeling very uneasy. Commander Geoff had always been kind to her, but like he said, there were many undesirables among the ranks of these soldiers. Much of the human army had been built of mercenaries and released criminals. They were truly scraping the bottom of the bucket. If the war was not won soon, all hope for humans would be lost.
She approached the mess hall building. It wasn’t much better looking then the sleeping houses, but it was larger and always smelled better then the dirty beds. She gently pushed the crooked hinged wooden door open and stepped in. Instantly she was hit by the smell of what would soon be lunch.
“Macaroni.” she muttered as she walked through rows of wooden tables.
“That and bits of fish slop!” a voice called from the end of the mess hall.
It was Medley, a cooking lady whom always had something interesting to say about the meals she had to make. Medley was a large and kind woman, she always managed to make Freya feel a little better about herself. The cook lady had already known what Freya would do; she presented a jug of water to the girl.
“Thank you, Medley.” Freya managed a smile for her friend.
“Oh, it’s nothing Freya. Before the war they set a pipeline to the ocean. All we have to do is boil the salt out of the water.”
“I guess that’s pretty useful then.”
“Yep. And it’s all thanks to that genius Gerald Foley! I tell ya, without that man’s genius we never would have lasted this long against the Empire! It’s a shame that he vanished.”
“Yeah, a shame.. I’m going to go sit down. I’m just a little tired. Thanks for the water Medley.”
“No problem Frey! I have to get back to the kitchen anyway, or Herb’ll get mad. We all know how pissy he gets. See ya later.” and with a smile and a wave Medley vanished behind the swinging doors to the kitchen.
Freya chose a seat at a table across from a black haired girl buried in a pile of papers. The table was old and creaked beneath Freya’s added weight. She pricked her arm on a splinter in the cracked table’s surface. Red slowly dripped down from her arm as she pulled the tiny wood fragment out. The black haired girl glanced at the blood from behind a pair of glasses.
“Are you alright?” she asked so softly Freya barely heard her.
“I’m fine.” Freya replied, watching the blood drip from her arm. Slowly it changed from red to violet, “Dora, when Alcuin comes could you tell him I went to see Levi for a minor repair?”
“Of course.” the girl answered barely above a whisper before turning back to her work.
Freya clapped her hand over the small puncture on her left arm, attempting to stop the flow of the violet blood as she stood and walked away.
She solemnly stood on the concrete wall that protected the Last Stand’s operations base. Before her the sun had just begun to show itself, emerging from behind several distant mountains and casting an orange glow over the war torn dessert. Behind her were the weapon storage facilities and temporary camps of the unit she was assigned to. The wall she stood on blocked the young sun’s light, making all but the slightly orange sky appear as night. Her pointed ears flicked as they picked up the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Do you remember anything?” asked the familiar voice of Alcuin.
His brown hair was slightly spiked upwards though his bangs fell just above his eyes. He hadn’t bothered to dress for the day yet; a brown robe sufficed for his early morning activities. A tray of food was held in his right hand, steam still rose from the bowl of oatmeal.
“No… I can’t remember anything of my life before I awoke in the Professor’s lab.” Freya answered without bothering to turn towards Alcuin. She was too wrapped in thoughts to remember her manners.
She hadn’t slept well the night before. She gave up on her sleep hours ago and was already dressed in her specially fitted blue armor. The sun’s light was reflected off the smoother, harder pieces of her armor while the more rubber-like portions on her joints and torso seemed to absorb the light. The armor was colored to compliment her long blue hair and sapphire eyes. These colors were natural for elves.
“I brought you some breakfast.” Alcuin said, motioning towards the tray of food in his hands.
“Oh. Thank you.” she replied snapping away from her thoughts.
Together they sat cross-legged on the large wall, eating bowls of hot oatmeal and enjoying the site of the rising sun. Alcuin couldn’t help but smile. Most elves emitted dread and other dark emotions in the young human, but Freya seemed to emit a light brighter then the sun itself. His smile shifted into a frown, however, as something appeared on the horizon. A large silhouette followed soon by the many smaller silhouettes of bipeds approaching from the distance.
“They’re here.” Alcuin said sadly.
Freya rose to her feet; “Excuse me,” she said. And before Alcuin had time to say anything more the girl had leapt from the large wall.
Twenty feet. Thirty. Forty. The wind whipped her blue hair in all directions as she plummeted towards the dusty dessert ground below. Her sapphire eyes were focused on a spot a few dozen feet beneath her. Seventy feet. Eighty. Ninety. One Hundred. She hit the ground hard, one of her legs immediately buckled and left her kneeling on her right knee. A cloud of dust and sand quickly consumed her, making her completely invisible to Alcuin from the wall above. It took only a few seconds for Freya to burst out of the dust cloud, but to Alcuin it felt so much longer. She was running at a speed no human, or elf, could have normally achieved. From atop the wall it looked as though a small blue ant was running across a sandbox, kicking up clouds of dust with every step it took.
The distance was between her and the oncoming army was quickly being closed. She grabbed one of the hilts strapped to her back and tugged. In an instant she held a blue weapon resembling a long sword, a katana. But the sword was not metal; it instead resembled a neon light. Another instant and she had grabbed at a second hilt and held a sword in her other hand. The handles of these blades were made with the same material as her armor, though the coloring was white.
The soldiers she approached were dressed all in black. Their ears were pointed and their hair was colors unnatural to humans. They were elves. This was a land unit of the Elfin Army. The object that had once been a large silhouette was now revealed to be a very large assault tank. Though it bore some resemblance to the tanks of our world, it was very different. All black with jagged sides, it seemed to be built of several rectangular tiles stuck together at angles with a large tube protruding from the front.
Some of the soldiers pointed at the dust cloud that approached them. “Captain Jaren!” some of the soldiers shouted. Their captain stood atop the black tank, his golden hair was tied back in ponytail. The red cape he wore signified his rank.
“Shoot it! By the time you can make out the girl creating the cloud, it’ll be too late!” Captain Jaren shouted, his green eyes fixed on the cloud of dust and dirt.
The soldiers fired their automatic weapons. Machine guns and auto rifles very much like those in our world, they even fired metal bullets. But the bullets were a wasted effort; they hit Freya’s armor and simply stopped, harmlessly falling to the ground.
“No! Not bullets you idiots! Only elicit can damage her armor!” Jaren shouted to his soldiers.
But it was too late for them. She was already upon them. The soldiers around her attempted to fire at her, destroy her. They all fell quickly. In under a minute she had decimated the ground troops on the left side of the tank. She paused for a brief moment, to catch her breath. Jaren, from atop his tank, began firing spheres of pink energy at Freya. She managed to avoid these shots, and rush around the backside of the tank to destroy the remainder of the troops. Like the left flank, the soldiers on the right didn’t last long.
“You will not dispose of me so quickly!” Jaren shouted.
The Captain leapt from the top of his tank, the red cape flowing behind him elegantly. He raised his weapon, and the rest was seemed to be slow motion to the hopeless Captain. Jaren had no time to fire; the blue clad warrior slid by him almost silently, and as she passed time restored for the Captain and his vision went black a second later. An instant later she had bound into the air a dozen or so feet above the tank. A push of a button and the neon blades of her weapons had bent at an angle beneath her arms and the weapons handles. Her fingers pulled the white triggers attached to the swords handle and instantly balls of blue energy blasted down into the tank.
The tank exploded in a green inferno as the elicit blasts rained down upon it. Freya landed just as the inferno cleared to reveal scraps of black metal, all with green and orange flames adorning them. The blades of her weapons returned to their original angles and she slid them back into their holders on her back, just behind her shoulders. She then began the treck back to her base, though in no hurry, she was decidedly walking.
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Alcuin had watched it all from his perch atop the concrete wall. Through the entire ordeal he was terrified for the life of his friend, but his worries were put to rest when he saw the enemies fall. He hadn’t noticed that someone else had joined in watching Freya decimate the enemy troops. Alcuin jumped in freight as the other person spoke.
“Wow, amazing.” said the person, his arms were crossed and his face should great amusement.
“Levi, you scared me.” Alcuin said, after calming down and gathering his senses.
“I know. It’s a talent.” Levi answered, unfolding his arms and tightening the green and brown camo bandanna on his head, “I’ve been wondering Alcuin. She destroyed them probably without breaking a sweat. I’d bet she could win this war on her own. Why are we here?”
Alcuin took a moment to answer. Despite Levi’s general appearance and attitude, he wasn’t an idiot. The young man before him, dressed in an unzipped bulletproof vest and black pants with his brown hair stabbing wildly at the air from beneath his bandanna was actually a mechanical genius. It was actually Levi who had invented the weapons used by Freya, not Professor Foley. After an impatient glance from Levi, Alcuin answered, “I’m sure our officials would say we’re here to win the war. Most of us know it’s really to keep Freya under control if she were ever to go rogue or change alliances.”
“Yeah, but she can’t do that, can she? I thought that when the Professor programmed her he designed her not to attack humans.”
“That’s true, but she still possesses the ability to think, as well as all normal emotions. It’s these factors that make it possible for her to go rogue. They allow her to choose what she does.”
“So what would happen if she were to make choices that conflicted with her programming?”
“I have no idea. In all cases, it wouldn’t be good. You shouldn’t concern yourself with it too much, Levi. She’s come to trust us and consider us her friends. I’m more puzzled as to where she came from.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… she’s an elf. Sure she’s a robotically enhanced elf, but she’s still an elf. It makes me wonder if there’s more to Freya we should know about. Was she a willing participant or was she abducted from some Elfin settlement? You know? I just don’t think it would sit well with me if it turns out she was experimented on against her will…”
“I guess it wouldn’t make me feel too great either. But think about it reasonably and it‘s pretty obvious. These days, there’s not an elf alive that would willingly sacrifice themselves for the betterment of humans.”
“Unfortunately I’ll have to admit that you’re right.” Alcuin said, his mind beginning to drift into darker territories.
“Come on,” Levi said, placing a smile on his face and patting Alcuin on the back, “Let’s get ready. We head out for the capitol today.”
“Yeah,” Alcuin turned back to the dessert, Freya was still a rather small speck of blue, “I’ll be there in a bit.”
“If you say so.” Levi replied as he walked away.
Freya was at the bottom of the gray wall now. She looked up at Alcuin. She could jump, but there was no way she would be able to leap one hundred feet into the air. She knew this.
“I’ll be in the mess hall! I’m a little thirsty!” Freya called up to her human companion.
“Alright! I’ll meet you there!” Alcuin called down.
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Freya’s walk to the mess hall wasn’t a painless one. Though she protected the humans and always treated them kindly, most of them did not return her kindness. They could not see beyond the fact that she was an elf. Most of them had decided that she would one day betray them all. As she walked along the dirt roads and past the many stone structures used as sleeping facilities by the soldiers she couldn’t help but notice the many hateful glares she received.
Involuntarily tears found themselves drowning her sapphire eyes. She turned her head downwards, where she wouldn’t be able to see the ugly scowls of the people around her. It seemed like she could almost hear the thoughts of the hateful men and women around her. As she stared at her own shadow and tried to ignore her watering eyes her thoughts lifted her out of reality. But they didn’t bring her to a safe place like most thoughts do. She found herself tortured by mental images of the hateful humans. When she managed to thrust these images away the troubling thoughts about how she came to be returned to her. How does someone like her come to exist?
Lost in her thoughts she didn’t notice the man riding a horse up the road. The man didn’t call to warn her, he remained quiet as he could while ushering his horse to go faster. Faster. Freya still did not notice the man or his horse. He swerved to the side, avoiding her. But as he passed by he reached down and grabbed her by the hair. Freya was yanked out of her thoughts. Pain shivered around her scalp.
“Hey pretty girl! Wanna come to my bunk tonight?” the man asked with a gleeful cruelty.
“Let go!” Freya demanded, trying to pull away from the man’s grasp. Had she wanted to she could have easily broken the man’s arm and continued on her way, but that was the kind of falter all the hateful humans were waiting for.
“Or what blue beauty? You’ll cut me up?” the man twisted her hair tightly, pulling her closer.
“That’s enough, Lace!” a voice called from somewhere in the crowd that had gathered.
The man released his grip on the clump of blue hair. A man much larger then the others stepped out of the crowd. He stood a head taller then the rest, and a blue cape dangled from his shoulders. At his waist was a very large sheath for a very large sword. He narrowed his eyes on the horseman and said sternly; “Leave, Lace, before I make an example of you.”
“Aw gee Commander. I was just havin’ a little fun with her is all!” the horseman said in his same nasty voice.
“Leave!” demanded the large man. When Lace had run off the Commander turned to the rest of his soldiers, which had gathered to watch Freya’s torment, “And for the rest of you rotten maggots, if I catch word of your tormenting Freya at all I will strike you down! It is because of her that each and every one of us breathes today! You should all be thanking her, not pulling her hair and demanding sex! She is no less human then we are! She deserves as much respect as you show me! Do you understand?”
Grudging murmurs and nods from the crowd showed that they did not understand, but they would say what they had to to make the Commander stop lecturing. Slowly they began to turn away and disperse back to their daily activities.
“Thank you Commander Geoff.” Freya said as she turned to look up at the Commander’s face.
“Yes, well, I couldn’t allow that nonsense to go on in my camp. Tell me, where were you headed? Would you like an escort?”
“I was just going to the mess hall for some water. I’m a little thirsty after this mornings fight. I think I can get there without an escort though, it’s not too far from here.”
“Ah, I see. Well, just keep your eyes open. There are others like Lace whom I wouldn’t trust with anything less then the life of a beetle. It is unfortunate that we are in such desperate need of soldiers that we must hire the likes of him. Oh well. Farewell for now Freya, I will see you again as we leave for the capitol.”
“Until then, Commander.”
After the Commander had left, Freya walked a bit faster, feeling very uneasy. Commander Geoff had always been kind to her, but like he said, there were many undesirables among the ranks of these soldiers. Much of the human army had been built of mercenaries and released criminals. They were truly scraping the bottom of the bucket. If the war was not won soon, all hope for humans would be lost.
She approached the mess hall building. It wasn’t much better looking then the sleeping houses, but it was larger and always smelled better then the dirty beds. She gently pushed the crooked hinged wooden door open and stepped in. Instantly she was hit by the smell of what would soon be lunch.
“Macaroni.” she muttered as she walked through rows of wooden tables.
“That and bits of fish slop!” a voice called from the end of the mess hall.
It was Medley, a cooking lady whom always had something interesting to say about the meals she had to make. Medley was a large and kind woman, she always managed to make Freya feel a little better about herself. The cook lady had already known what Freya would do; she presented a jug of water to the girl.
“Thank you, Medley.” Freya managed a smile for her friend.
“Oh, it’s nothing Freya. Before the war they set a pipeline to the ocean. All we have to do is boil the salt out of the water.”
“I guess that’s pretty useful then.”
“Yep. And it’s all thanks to that genius Gerald Foley! I tell ya, without that man’s genius we never would have lasted this long against the Empire! It’s a shame that he vanished.”
“Yeah, a shame.. I’m going to go sit down. I’m just a little tired. Thanks for the water Medley.”
“No problem Frey! I have to get back to the kitchen anyway, or Herb’ll get mad. We all know how pissy he gets. See ya later.” and with a smile and a wave Medley vanished behind the swinging doors to the kitchen.
Freya chose a seat at a table across from a black haired girl buried in a pile of papers. The table was old and creaked beneath Freya’s added weight. She pricked her arm on a splinter in the cracked table’s surface. Red slowly dripped down from her arm as she pulled the tiny wood fragment out. The black haired girl glanced at the blood from behind a pair of glasses.
“Are you alright?” she asked so softly Freya barely heard her.
“I’m fine.” Freya replied, watching the blood drip from her arm. Slowly it changed from red to violet, “Dora, when Alcuin comes could you tell him I went to see Levi for a minor repair?”
“Of course.” the girl answered barely above a whisper before turning back to her work.
Freya clapped her hand over the small puncture on her left arm, attempting to stop the flow of the violet blood as she stood and walked away.
