The Second Tower

"I fight for she who fights for me..."

I leap effortlessly into the swirling vortex surrounding the tower guarded by insects, leaving the others behind. The vortex shrieks, an explosion of light the last remnant of my existence to the outside world.

But inside...

I land silently upon my feet on the other side of the broken bridge, my black trenchcoat waving softly in the wind. I pull down my hair, which has been so tightly hidden in hair pins of pearl and combs of shell, it's decorations adorned with rubies, emeralds and sapphires. As I pull the combs, one would've realized that they were daggers in disguise, had they been there. My hair now long and flowing, I open my eyes and reach to my side. A katana comes to exist in the air a few inches from my hand, and I grasp it out of instinct. I throw the daggers ahead of me as I unsheathe my sword and charge forward.

An insect falls on its side from the dagger's precision. The others notice, and the battle has begun. The insects shift into wraiths, their truest form. Some have adorned their scythes, while others mimic my style as if to insinuate folly in my efforts.

I run toward the first one, and the moment I'm close enough to be injured it swings... but not fast enough, for I have already slid underneath him and leaped into the air. By the time his scythe reaches two o'clock to his body, I have already split the tethers between his body and his head. Time stops in this instant, and for a moment there is nothing but light. Then, the body disintegrates in an explosion of black confetti, and I land upon my feet.

I turn, reposition my sunglasses with a slight grin, and raise my hand. The others have started to encircle me, but I do not flinch. My necklace of silver dragon's blood begins to quiver. The sleeves of my black trenchcoat cannot hide the burgundy-colored power emanating from within me. It creeps down my arms and into my hands. By the time it reaches my fingertips, a glyph the size of my chest appears before the outreached hand, and begins to twirl in a frenzied dance of green and white light. It stops suddenly, and a burst of energy as big as a small building hits the group of wraiths. Most of them are incinerated instantly from the blast, and though I've noticed the details of my attack, I know that anyone else would have seen it only as a flicker of lightning escape my body.

Some of the wraiths have made their way toward my sides, and were closing on me. But the energy blast I had released had created a path, so I bolted through to the other gateway, beheading any wraiths that dared to stop me with my katana.

About a mile past the other side of the tower, the ground ahead of me began to crumble. The ground I stood on had now become a cliff, and as far as the eye could reach not a single mountain or land form could be found that stood as tall as here. Behind me the insect wraiths shrieked and laughed like banshees from the safety of the tower's gateway, the cowards. They sent their warrior wraiths, who wore ninja's garb to enhance speed. Silently they ran, their shortened katanas unsheathed in their hands. The first one reached me, and I found myself struggling to parry fast enough. So I sidestepped, dodging a would-be fatal blow. I stomped the dirt beneath me with one foot, and a dagger escaped its place from within my boot. I grabbed it and stabbed my aggressor in the back of the neck. He fell to his knees as the others reached me. I seemed to dance along the edge of the cliff at times, having been cornered with nothing but my sword to guide me, for though my magic had been a gift from my ancestors, and though it was quite powerful, a blast like the one before would take time to muster again... my body and its magic vessel would need a few minutes to recover.

I wondered if I would be able to last that long, for minutes were too long of a time to wait during battle, and I knew that reinforcements would not come. The others had led me this far, and now it was up to me to save this land, this part of me. There was a moment when I had been a few meters from the edge, and to trick the wraiths I leaped off the cliff, twirled a 360, and grabbed the edge in time to save myself. I watched as a few of the lesser wraiths had followed me, taking the bait and falling to their death.

I jumped up with all my might, which had somehow been enough to fly over the heads of the warriors. From within my trenchcoat I pulled out a Taurus 24/7 Pro LS and began to fire at the warriors beneath me. Confusion ensued. As I landed I reloaded and faced them. With katana in one hand and the Taurus in the other, I charged, sparing the 12 rounds for critical moments. As the battle continued I muttered to myself, "...This is why I need a gunblade...", for as affective as it was to wield both sword and firearm, it left me without a free hand for balance, and thus a little harder to fight.

Twelve rounds went by too quickly, and finding that there wasn't enough time to reload, I tucked the Taurus back within my trenchcoat. I was running out of options. I had been fighting for hours now, I could tell from the afternoon sun. I was tired, drenched in sweat, bruised and a little bloodied (which was pretty good considering I wasn't dead by now). From where I stood, there was no longer enough room to even attempt the energy blast from before. I was surrounded by warrior wraiths, each one faster and stronger than the last. If I tried to run in one direction, I would meet the cliff. If I went the other direction, I'd be back in the tower, the base of operations for the wraiths. There wasn't a third option.

In an attempt to get free, I pulled all the energy I could muster together. The colors of my energy were spiraling round me. Red, blue, yellow, orange, green, and purple, and all the shades between, they twirled around themselves as they enveloped me. I lifted my head to look at the sky. Beyond the sun's rays I knew the stars, the galaxies, the verses which flipped into other dimensions... my mind reached beyond, toward one dimension in particular. The verses dispersed into galaxies, galaxies into systems, systems to planets. I reached further until I found a city, a house, a room, a woman on her computer. I looked, and she looked back. Our connection was there, but not strong enough to pull the amount of energy I needed to save me. I knew this, so I called out to her, which probably only reached her world as a mere whisper of a thought in her head. With a smile, I yelled, "You had better come and find me, Ellie!" The connection closed, and the energy I had pulled from my journey otherworldly inward came back at me at seven times the speed of light. As it hit a shock wave encircled me, completely obliterating every negative energy within a five mile radius. Not nearly enough energy.

The shock wave attracted more of the wraiths from other corners of the world, and they all seemed to appear as if they had been characters from a movie turned on by a television screen. With my last breaths I ran toward the cliff, and they followed with rage. I jumped, and this time there would be no way to turn around and catch myself. I dove off the cliff with the wraiths following at my heels. Whether I'd make it to the ground before they consumed me I didn't know, but I looked back up at the sky as I fell. I looked toward the stars, twinkling in the early evening, and thought of my Otherself. She would find a way to bring me back, I was sure of it. She always had, despite our weak connection. I smiled softly, tears starting to swell, when the wraiths caught up with me, and I collapsed in the darkness...

Author's Note

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