Warehouse Battle

Present

Kana had managed to find the warehouse where she believed Serena was being held. It had been a warehouse she remembered from her early childhood, and she was rather surprised that the Order of the Shining Light was still using it at all. “You’d think they’d move somewhere else to keep their activities more under wraps,” she said to herself as she checked the two knives she was carrying with her plus the revolver she had stolen from the cult members she had killed in the village of Rimnan. Upon confirming it was fully loaded, she crossed the street and began to walk along the sidewalk in front of the warehouse, eventually rounding a corner into an alleyway with a side entrance into the stone behemoth of a building that stood there.

It was as she rounded said corner that she saw a hooded woman having a cigarette outside, clearly on a break from whatever activities were going down inside the warehouse. Kana could tell from her cloak and a necklace she had that she was a cult member. She said to herself as she dropped her cigarette and crushed it with her foot, “Damn it, today’s been so frustrating. Why can’t we just kill that Tull girl now and use her soul?”

Within a few more seconds, Kana approached the woman from behind and put a hand over her mouth as she tackled her to the ground. She then stabbed her in the neck, killing her instantly, before taking her cloak, her necklace, and a set of keys off of her body and putting it on. She did her best to brush off the blood that had spilled on the cloak before taking a deep breath and trying the locked side door with the set of five keys she had taken from the woman. Finally, on the fifth and final key, the side door opened, allowing Kana to step inside.

Once she got inside, another cult member in a similar cloak asked her, assuming that she was the woman she had killed, “Back from your smoke break?”

“Yeah,” Kana replied in the best interpretation of the woman’s voice she could do. “So, what’s next?”

“We’re making the final preparations to sacrifice Serena Tull this evening,” he replied, sending chills down Kana’s spine. “We’ll be storing her soul for future use rather than using it now, though.”

Pretending to have a similar viewpoint to the woman she had killed, Kana asked, “Why not use it now? We could cause some real damage with the soul of a monster hunter.”

“True, but it’s what Master Demas wants,” the man shrugged. “And God help us all if we betray him.”

Kana nodded, making sure not to move too much lest her shroud fall down and reveal who she actually was. She then walked along the empty rows of shelving, trying to find where Serena was being kept. It seemed at one point like this warehouse was never-ending, and as she went down a row of shelves, she began to feel like she had been down said row before. Then, she ran into someone else, bumping into the cult member and accidentally knocking her to the ground. “My apologies.”

“Watch where you’re going,” said the female cult member as she got up and brushed herself off. Unlike the others, she was dressed in normal clothes. “You gotta be careful in here, you know. The endless rows can fuck with your perception.”

“Endless rows…”

“Uh…” The woman was confused. “You do know about that, right? We put a spell on this building so that the interior’s a lot larger than the exterior. Who are you anywa-?”

Kana then stabbed her twice in the stomach, prompting the woman to scream in pain before she tried to run away. Kana replied by grabbing her arm and then slashing her throat to kill her. When she let her body drop, she looked around and then ran down the rows.

As she ran past her fifteenth row, she began to realize that the woman was indeed telling the truth. The warehouse was indeed almost endless. There were no windows, with the only light source being rather dim bulbs a good twenty feet above her. She stopped to look around, and then began to hear faint crying in the distance. She focused on the crying, trying to see if she could recognize the voice. After listening for about half a minute, her eyes widened and she took off running as fast as she could towards the sound, recognizing the crying as belonging to Serena.

After running past six rows, she ran down a row before taking a right and running past two more. Finally, as the crying got louder, she ran down the middle of two rows, with the crying getting its loudest at the end of the second row. However, to her confusion, she found no one there despite the crying sounding as if Serena was sitting right next to her. A sense of dread filled the air as Kana froze in place, terrified by the unknown source of the sobbing. “Serena! Serena, where are you?! Call out to me!”

Then, she looked up, and as she did, a man jumped out from the shelf near her, grabbing her and pulling her down. Kana replied by stabbing the man three times as they struggled on the floor. When she got up, she formed a bow and arrow and turned around just in time to see a second man charge at her with a sword. She aimed the arrow at the man, killing him with a well-placed shot to the chest. Right as she did, two women tried to tackle her to the ground, causing her to drop her weapons. She punched one of them before biting the second in the arm, struggling to get them off of her. Then, she managed to grab her knife from the ground and slashed one of the women across the throat to kill her before stabbing the other one in her right eye and then her chest, killing her as well.

As Kana got up, she called out again, “Serena, where the fuck are you?! Call out to me, please!”

“You won’t find her here,” then said the voice of her father as the crying stopped with the snap of his fingers. “You know, you’ve made quite a mess, my dear Kana.”

“Fuck you,” she spat at him. “How dare you kidnap her! How did you make her crying appear here anyway?!”

“Magic,” he replied with a chuckle. “How else do you think I did? I gotta say, you fight rather well. I’m very proud of you and your abilities, but I feel like you’re holding yourself back by not remaining part of the Order of the Shining Light, Kana.”

“I’d rather die than rejoin! I left that cult when you murdered all those people at the Reilly Fair six years ago! Yuna Miller opened my eyes to a life beyond this shithole when she saved me, and I’m not about to go back to that life!” She then picked up her bow from the ground and formed two explosive bows, aiming them at her own father as she pulled back on the string. “Now, tell me where you’re keeping Serena Tull or I’ll kill you!”

Her father laughed, finding her threat hilarious. “You really think that little bow can hurt me? Besides, without me, you wouldn’t even exist, let alone be able to wield magic. You really need to grow up and respect your elders, Kana!” He then formed two light balls in his hands and threw them at Kana, who quickly dodged them before she fired both of the arrows at her father. However, he dodged the first one and grabbed the second one, ripping off the explosive end tossing it aside, causing a small explosion that toppled two shelves nearby. “Too little, too late!” He then put his hands together as a circle of red light formed around him, creating a shield around him that Kana’s next arrow, a regular one, was unable to penetrate.

“Damn it!” Kana then put her hands together as well, forming a beam of light that shot out of her forehead and into the shield, causing it to crack and then fall apart, albeit at a great cost to her stamina as she fell to her knees. She then formed and aimed another arrow at her father as he formed another light ball in his right hand. He threw it just as she let go of the string, and the arrow went right through the ball, setting it on fire before it struck her father. The light ball also hit Kana in the shoulder, sending her down to the ground as she screamed in pain.

Johann, although injured by the arrow, managed to stay on his feet as he pulled the arrow out of his body, wincing from the pain before his wound began to heal. “You’re good, Kana, but you’re still underdeveloped. Why not come back to me so I can complete your training?”

“Fuck… You…” Kana asked her, “How did you heal so soon, huh?”

“When you’ve prayed to Timnak for your entire adult life, you get some added… Perks.” He then showed Kana the hole that she had made in his robes, showing that the wound her arrow had made had already healed, leaving only a scar. “Including some healing abilities.”

“You gotta be kidding me… You’re saying that monster made you immortal?!”

“First of all,” Johann pointed out. “Timnak is not a monster. He is the Lord of Shining Light, the true Lord of Lords.”

“Spare me the preachy nonsense… Get on with it, dumbass!”

“You should speak about me in more polite ways. I am your father, after all. Second of all, regarding your monster and immortality claims, I reject such a claim as blasphemous as that second is. As much as calling Timnak a monster is horrible, calling anyone but the Lords of Light immortal is an even greater sin!”

Kana, not in the mood for his ranting, managed to pull out a knife and swung it at his legs, barely missing him as he jumped back. “Get the Hell back here!”

“I don’t have much more time for this,” Johann chuckled as he turned away. “I have a special sacrifice I need to prepare. Why don’t I let you stay here, forever wandering these infinite rows, or at least until you accept your true calling so you can be let out?”

Before Kana could shout a response at him, Johann put his hands together in prayer, causing a flash of light that teleported him to a different part of the all-but-confirmed-to-be infinite space within the warehouse the cult had gotten a hold of. Kana managed to stumble to her feet, but she found herself to be alone, with her father nowhere to be found. “God damn it, he’s gone!” Once she steadied herself and took a few deep breaths, she felt her shoulder, the one that had been hit by a light ball from her father, and saw that she largely only had superficial external injuries. She then looked down the rows and began to run the opposite of the way she came. “Serena! Serena! Can you hear me?! Serena!”

This time, however, her calls would be answered.

A few short moments after Kana had started to run, a chained and bruised Serena awoke in her cage to the sound of her name being called out from afar. “Serena! Serena, it’s me, Kana!”

Serena got up, bending down a bit because the cage was too small for her to stand straight, and called out to her, “Kana! Kana! I’m here!”

Kana ran to the cage where Serena was being held and clung to the bars from the outside. “Serena! Thank God I found you!”

“You really came back into the city just for me?! What about your friend, Yuna?!”

“That doesn’t matter now,” Kana told her as she formed a new bow and arrow to blast away the padlock on Serena’s cage door. “Just stand away from the door so I can get you out, okay?” She could not believe the luck she had, managing to get to Serena before her father did when he had teleported away. She also knew that such a spell would be at least slightly more physically taxing than usual for magic usage, even for someone as powerful as him.

Kana pulled back on the string and fired the arrow, blasting away the padlock and bending some of the bars of the cage. As she kicked the cage door open, Serena immediately yelled, “Let’s hurry up and get out of here! We can catch up later!”

“Hold it right there,” Johann then said to Kana and Serena as he and a now older Matthew Playan confronted the duo. He had formed two light balls in his hands, while Matthew wielded a staff with a green light on the top. “I see you found our special sacrifice before we were able to reach her. How… Surprising.”

“I’ll admit,” Kana replied with a chuckle. “It surprised me, too.” She then put her hands together in prayer, telling her father as two layers of red circles formed around her, “And maybe this will surprise you, too.”

Johann gasped in shock, telling his daughter, “You learned teleportation?! How much did you advance in the last six years, Kana?!”

“It’s not perfect,” she said as she began to grow a bit weaker from how intense the spell was. “But it’s good enough to get me and Serena out of here!” She then turned to Serena and told her, “Hold on to me unless you want to be torn apart!”

Serena did as instructed and put a hand on Kana’s shoulder right as Matthew cast a spell of his own using a wooden staff he carried, trying to disrupt Kana’s teleportation spell with a cancelation spell. “You won’t get away from us that easily, Kana,” he shouted at her as Johann soon joined in.

Feeling the temporary shield around them break apart from the pressure of two cancellation spells at once, Kana groaned in pain as she told Serena, “Put… Put your hands together in prayer!”

Confused and worried, Serena asked her, “Right now?!”

“JUST DO IT SO WE CAN GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” Kana then coughed up blood, some of the liquid spilling onto her clasped hands. “Damn it…” Once Serena did as told, Kana told her, “Repeat after me: May the Lord of the Shining Light…”

“May the Lord of the Shining Light…”

“Bring us from our place in the world…”

“Bring us from our place in the world…”

“To a place in our mind…”

“To a place in our mind…”

“And may he deliver us in one piece…”

“And may he deliver us in one piece…”

Then, they both said together, “AMEN!” With that word, an explosion ripped through the warehouse, blowing back Johann and Matthew several feet and causing shelving all around them to start falling down like dominos. Cult members from all around ran to the area, having heard the blast. As the dust settled, Johann and Matthew got up, looking around to find that both Kana and Serena were gone. “Damn it,” Matthew yelled. “They pulled it off! How the fuck did Kana learn about that more complex teleportation spell anyway?! Only we know of that since it’s something we made!”

“I feared this day would come,” Johann replied. “She always was too curious as a little girl. I remember finding her reading from our more… Advanced spell books, the things that she was not supposed to be reading at such a young age. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised she retained at least some info from those books.” He then turned to the other cult members and told them, “I’m afraid we’ve lost Serena Tull. It’s a blow, but… We will recover. We will find other sacrifices. We will make sure our Lord of the Shining Light gets what he needs. In the meantime, we need to clean this up and get this warehouse back in order. We can mourn those who were taken from us later.”

A few blocks from the warehouse, Kana and Serena appeared in an alleyway with a rather loud boom and a flash of light, startling several people standing on the sidewalk out front. One of them, a man holding a beer bottle, yelled out, “Holy shit! Did I drink too much already?!”

“We gotta be seeing things,” said another man. “What the Hell is that?!”

When the dust cleared, Kana had collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. Performing such complex spells, especially one that called to Timnak himself, was extremely taxing on her. As Serena lifted her up, she told her, “Thank God you’re alright…”

“Kana, what about you?! You look like you’re about to pass out!”

“I’ll be fine… I just… I need to rest…”

Kana then passed out from exhaustion. This prompted Serena to panic, calling to the men who were still staring at them, “Don’t just stand there! Call for an ambulance, please!” She then turned back to Kana, telling her, “Don’t worry, Kana. I got help coming!”