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sw0rdtooth · 5 months ago

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Chapter 1: The First Hunt

Synopsis: Vincent, his son, and two co-workers split up to collect the first of twelve enchanted items they're set to collect.

As Vincent watched the clock tick over to 3pm he rose from his bed. He stumbled through his dark cluttered room, not bothering to open the curtains. After feeling his way through the room, he went under the cloth in between the bamboo dividers that separated his room from his office. He then opened the office door that led to the rest of the house.

“Look who dares exit his cave” Shouted Vincent’s son, Tod, from the couch across the house from Vincent’s door.

Vincent promptly ignored him and stumbled his way to the kitchen and prepared himself a bowl of cereal. He sat next to Tod as the TV blared, illuminating the entire main area of the house. Vincent finished his bowl of cereal and dumped the remaining milk into the sink, Vincent stared at it as it swirled around, slowly pouring down the drain.

“You ready for this thing?” Asked Vincent. “I mean, I guess. I’ll get Catherine,” responded Tod.

“Is she still asleep?”

“I don’t think so.”

Catherine exited her room, and they all made their way out to the car, opening the trunk to reveal a sniper rifle, two pistols, and a Tommy gun. Vincent armed himself with the sniper and climbed into the driver’s seat of their SUV. Tod and Catherine armed themselves with the pistols, Catherine also grabbed the Tommy gun and climbed in the back while Tod took the passenger seat. Vincent lit a cigarette and started the car, as they began to make their way towards their co-worker’s apartment building.

“So, this person just signed up for the company online?” Asked Tod.

“You betcha, her name is Eiliesh, Catherine knows her apparently,” answered Vincent.

The car slowed to a crawl in front of the apartment, as a pale redheaded woman rushed out of the apartment’s doors and waited for the car to stop. She climbed in the back behind Vincent. Catherine handed her the Tommy gun she was holding onto, and they set off for their destination. Vincent parks the car in front of a building with a sign outside titled “The Diamond Council.” A company that had always been ahead of everyone else in the universe in terms of technology. They had just perfected their Wormholes, finding methods how to use them as fast methods of transportation across the universe.

Vincent and his group opened the door to find a plain white room with dozens of vacant waiting chairs and a single reception desk in the middle.

Vincent approached the receptionist, “Uh, Vincent, I have an appointment for wormhole…y… stuff…?”

The receptionist checked his list and nodded his head as he picked up the phone and notified the other end of Vincent’s presence. After a few seconds of silence, he pointed the group toward the door to the left of the reception desk. The gang walked through and down a long hallway until they came upon a door with a person waiting outside who led the group into the room.

“Okay, so, you two take the first one on the list and me and Catherine will take the second one,” Vincent ordered.

Tod and Eiliesh were up first and gave the coordinates of the first target on the list to the worker operating the wormhole machine. They were led through another door, and it led to an observation deck overlooking a large machine with a large empty circle in the middle about thirty feet in diameter. The machine powered up with sparks flying around the center of the circle, large pieces of machinery moving in tandem with each other, and a green liquid moving through tubes surrounding the entire machine. A large spinner moved inside the circle creating a gust of wind that sucked in the surrounding sparks to lead them into a circular shape and as it spun faster and faster the sparks formed a glowing border soon to be filled with a portal.

Tod and Eiliesh walked down the steps and were loaded into a black bean-shaped ship with a windshield at the front made specifically to withstand the walls of a wormhole. They powered it up and it began to float 20 feet above the ground, directly in the center of the circle. The ship blasted into the portal, and they were immediately surrounded by a tunnel with a glowing substance colored pink, purple, and blue making up the walls in a camouflage pattern. This was Tod’s first time actually driving one, he’d done training before, but this was a lot more intense and faster moving than he had trained for as he made sharp turns through the winding tunnel.

Tod slipped a little bit, and the ship crashed into the tunnel revealing a somewhat liquid texture to the walls but also making a loud painful searing sound. This ship was engineered to withstand the pressure and heat of the tunnels, but he thought it best to not try and test the heat resistance of the exterior of the ship. After about 10 minutes of travelling, the tunnel appeared to end completely with the colors all moving into a swirl. Tod slowed the ship as much as possible but couldn’t stop it before it flew directly into the spiral.

* * *

Back at the Diamond Council Base, Vincent and Catherine were loaded into a ship and the coordinates were changed to their target’s relative location. They were loaded into the same type of ship known as a “Void Ship.” These ships are not only capable of traveling through the tunnels but also going through the walls and entering outside the tunnels into a place known as the void. The ship took off and Vincent flew it effortlessly through the winding tunnels as it too ended in a spiral, Vincent didn’t bother slowing it down and went straight into the spiral.

* * *

Tod braced for impact or to be stuck in the void but upon opening his eyes he realized that the spiral was the end of the tunnel, he had made it to his destination. Tod landed the ship in a nearby parking lot, he and Eiliesh emerged from the ship, and she pulled out a device to more accurately locate the position of their target. They began towards the signal and approached a large town and began making their way through crowds of people trying their best to follow the signal when the pointer suddenly turned around. They immediately spun around and realized the device was pointing toward a completely normal-looking person.

Tod looked towards Eiliesh for confirmation to go through with the murder. She nodded back. He pulled out his pistol and shot the man in the middle of a crowd sending everyone into a panic.

“GET THE THING!” Shouted Tod.

“I DON’T KNOW WHERE IT IS!?” shouted back Eiliesh as she rifled through the dead man’s pockets to no avail.

She looked back at the signal and turned to Tod, “We got the wrong guy...”

“Shit.”

“POLICE, PUT YOUR HANDS UP.”

Tod and Eiliesh looked at each other not knowing what to do. Eiliesh jumped behind Tod and he ran behind her as they ran away, Tod was peppered in bullets as they fled, not doing any damage to him, each bullet sunk into his transparent cyan flesh and dissolved into the material. He shielded Eiliesh as her human body was much frailer than his. They ended up taking refuge in an old parking garage.

“Okay, we need to get the target, now,” whispered Eiliesh.

“How lucky are we?” Responded Tod.

Eiliesh’s questions were quickly answered when Tod gestured towards a man getting into his car who had a blue glowing object in his pocket. The man got into his car, shut the door, and started the car. Eiliesh had snuck in the back right door of the car as he was getting in and came up behind him from the backseat and wrapped a metal cord around his neck and began strangling him. He reached for his pocket attempting to grab the object they were attempting to obtain from him, she put one end of the cord into the hand that had the other end and used her now free hand to stop him from getting the object from his pocket. He went back and forth with different hands until finally both arms went limp, and she tied the wire around the seat.

Eiliesh grabbed the object from the man’s pocket, it was a light blue glowing orb that had the texture of magma with the glowing blue between the cracks in the brown rocks but felt cold to the touch. She climbed out of the car and crouched towards Tod, attempting not to draw any attention to the two of them. They crept out of the back of the parking garage and ran as fast as they could, not realizing that the police were searching the garage for them and began covering Tod again with bullets from the parking garage after realizing that they were fleeing.

They got to the ship with the police hot on their tail and signaled the people back at The Diamond Council to re-open the portal to let them back through. The portal opened and Tod started the ship as the police watched on in fear, the ship then accelerated near-instantly to a couple hundred miles per hour and blasted into the portal. Tod got the ship through the tunnel, this time a lot easier, and as he approached the end, he didn’t bother slowing down considering this time he knew it was the exit.

* * *

Vincent and Catherine exited their portal in the middle of a town’s parade. They landed the ship on top of a building overlooking the parade. They got out of the ship and Vincent lit another cigarette and offered one to Catherine, but she declined. Vincent got the sniper out of the ship storage and set up the stand on the building and aimed down at the parade.

“Go locate the target, message me where it is,” ordered Vincent.

Catherine walked down each flight of stairs until she reached the bottom, she began fighting through crowds trying to find the target. She fought through line after line until she finally reached an opening, a crowd of people watching something. According to a sign, the carnies found a stone with a glowing blue sword stuck into it, that had supposedly fallen from space into the rock, and they were costing people tickets to attempt to pull it out.

Catherine attempted to message Vincent, but the cell service wasn’t compatible with her phone, so she began to make her way back to the building fighting through bigger crowds, she was pushed onto the ground and struggled to get back up with the sheer amount of people. She finally made her way back to the abandoned building, running up each flight of stairs.

She made it to Vincent, out of breath and barely able to utter the words, “It’s where the Sword in the Stone sign is.”

He looked through the scope and saw that the sword had been pulled out. The person was put in front of several things to test it, they had sliced through fruits and farm animals.

“They used it already,” Vincent said dejectedly.

“Already? So, we can’t just grab it?” Catherine asked.

“No.”

Vincent readied the Sniper, ordering Catherine to go down and be ready to retrieve the sword. She fought her way through the crowds again and got to the front of the line of the sword-pulling competition that had already disbanded, she just wanted a quick way in. Vincent readied his shot and fired from the top floor of the abandoned building, and it went straight through the sword holder’s head sending his brain matter flying everywhere after his head exploded coating the surroundings in blood. The crowds fled the area and made their way out of the building as police swarmed the area. Catherine jumped over the barrier, grabbed the glowing blue sword, and ran as fast towards the building as she could. By the time she got there, Vincent was already on the ship and waiting for her. She climbed in and they signaled The Diamond Council and flew straight into the portal.

“So, what do we know about these targets?” Catherine inquired.

“All I know is that they’re enchanted somehow and that we aren’t allowed to use them, but according to the list, he said he put them in order of easiest to hardest to retrieve, so Tod and Eiliesh shouldn’t be having much trouble.” Responded Vincent.

“Does using them do something to us?”

“I don’t know.”

They both climbed into the back cabin as Vincent put the ship on autopilot. Catherine tucked the sword in between some cushions on a small couch in the back. She sat back on the couch and Vincent leaned up against the driver’s seat until suddenly the door next to Vincent flew open. He was immediately ripped out of the ship and grabbed the track that the sliding door slid on to keep him from flying into the walls of the wormhole tunnel. Catherine was just to the right of the door and was grabbing onto the armrest for dear life.

She managed to gain some courage and maneuvered herself around the ship, eventually managing to wrap her shoes around a bar on the ship across from the door and stick out her arm for Vincent. Vincent grabbed hold and pulled himself up slowly but the further he pulled himself up the more her shoes slipped from the bar, as Vincent grabbed hold of the couch to his right and let go of her hand, suddenly her shoes unhooked from the bar sending her flying into the tunnel walls, spraying out a black dust. Vincent looked on in horror. Her body would have no way of withstanding the heat and speed of the tunnel walls.

Vincent climbed back up using the couch as support and slowly shut the door as his eyes welled with tears. He sat back in the driver’s seat and drove it the rest of the way back. He approached the swirl of the portal and slowed way down to a crawl and slowly landed the ship back in the docking bay and it moved along on a conveyor belt ready for the next ship to land, Vincent grabbed the sword and sat down on a bench waiting to break the news to Eiliesh and Tod.

Tod’s lack of slowing down sent him flying into the glass of the observation deck and destroying many of the controls of the machine. Shattering the windshield of the ship, exploding pieces of the concrete wall off, and sending two workers flying back from the force of the ship crashing into the window. Vincent ran up, Tod was still awake and alert, but Eiliesh was unconscious.

“Vincent, where’s Catherine?”

“Get out, we need to help Eiliesh,” Vincent said, trying to hide his grief.

Vincent pulled out Eiliesh by the arms, ordering Tod to grab her legs. A worker carried out a gurney that they placed her on. After she was on the gurney the worker whizzed her out into the hallway and rushed her into a room with a red cross above the door.

Vincent looked up at Tod and he spoke up, “The door swung open.”

“What?” Tod asked.

“The door swung open… and she flew out.”

“How did that happen?!” Tod shouted.

“I don’t know. But I-… by the time I looked over she was already gone.”

“…Oh my god,” Tod whimpered as his eyes welled with tears.

Vincent took out his wallet and handed the worker eighty thousand dollars for the damages, and they left the observation deck. They then made their way down the hall toward the emergency room and sat on two white chairs adjacent to the door Eiliesh was behind. A doctor came out and explained that she only fainted from the shock and the impact didn’t damage her. She quickly walked out from behind the doctor and was quick to ask where Catherine was.

Tod explained what happened as they made their way out to the car. Vincent dropped off his sniper in the back as well as the glowing sword and Catherine’s pistol then climbed into the driver’s seat. Tod went to the back and dropped off his pistol, Eiliesh’s Tommy gun, and the glowing orb. Eiliesh was already in the seat behind Vincent when Tod climbed in next to her.

“There was nothing I could have done,” Vincent mumbled to himself.

“Okay,” Tod was quick to answer in a tired tone in an attempt to end the conversation before it even started.

Vincent spoke up, “You two need to understand that.”

“I just want to go home” Tod replied as Eiliesh kept silent.

Vincent continued driving through the desert, they watched the sunset as they approached their destination. They drove up upon a large black castle with brick walls, Vincent slowly drove the car across the drawbridge and was stopped at a booth.

“What’s your business here?” The worker asked.

“I uhm- I have a meeting with The Void King to drop off some items he requested,” Vincent said sheepishly.

“Drive up until you see the sign and turn left, take this,” The booth attendant said as she handed Vincent a piece of paper with some gibberish on it.

Vincent pulled into the parking spot in front of the castle and got out of the car, “You two stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Vincent made his way up to the door giving the guard the slip he was handed at the booth. The guard led him through the winding halls until they reached a large door. The large door inched open and after about thirty awkward seconds Vincent made his way through to a large auditorium. On the far left there was an incredibly large chair facing the auditorium with a large television facing the throne.

“He’s asleep right now so just leave the targets on the table next to the throne,” Commanded a guard.

The size of the table was completely normal, and it was almost funny how much the table was dwarfed by the size of the throne. Vincent set down the sword and the orb and made his way back across the auditorium to the door. The guard led Vincent back through the halls to the front entrance. Vincent walked back to the car and pulled it out of the spot and made his way out of the castle.

He began driving back through the desert for another hour with not another word being spoken between the three of them. Vincent rolled up to the house and before the car could fully stop, Tod hopped out and walked towards the house, unlocking and opening the front door and making his way inside. After Vincent parked the car, he and Eiliesh came out, he offered her a lit cigarette that she accepted.

After Vincent lit his own, he began, “You two did good out there… I think, I mean you got the target and there’s not much else I can ask for.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Y’know, we have a room free; I can clear it out by tomorrow,” said Vincent. “Are you serious?” “What? You’ve always wanted to move in with us.”

“Maybe some other time, I need to think about all this.”

Eiliesh began to walk off into the night.

“You need a ride?” Vincent offered,

“I think I’m good for tonight”

Vincent put out his cigarette and walked back into the house. Tod was already in his room. Vincent made his way to his office, ducking under the cloth, making his way to his room. He stumbled through the crowded darkness, only illuminated by a flower bed filled with a dozen glowing blue flowers with black stems. Vincent laid down in his bed and began to drift off to sleep.

* * *

The Void King emerged from his chamber and peered down at the table to see the glowing objects. He sat down and looked at the screen overlooking the throne and saw an incoming call from an unknown number.

The King answered the call and was greeted by a hurried and quiet voice “What do you have so far, what does he know?”

“Chill out man, he doesn’t know anything, he got the first two, nothing else, I think one of ‘em died though.”

“Okay, good, this material these objects are coated in is incredibly limited, if these got into the wrong hands it could destroy planets. There is only a finite amount of this material, and we need to keep it out of the public eye.”

“Yes sir, I will call you with any updates.”

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