Alasla: The New Age

Chapter Forty-Four - The Hunt

"I despise this body that runs the blood of Ling," Ralph began, shaking his blood off of Rain's blade. "It's a part of the world that I would change."

"Ling..." Lucy echoed. "You are quite of a nuisance, compared to the rest of your family."

Before their conversation continues, a figure fell from the sky, crash-landing into the ground before them. It was Monk.

But he took no notice of them, not even Lucy, his gaze is focused on another person in the sky that fired another blow of fiery bomb towards his direction, Jerron.

With a wave of his walking staff, he called up a wave of emerald green time fragments that slowed down the bomb. But he was still blown back by the explosion as Jerron sets it off in the mid-air.

A wall of shield shimmered in front of him just before the flame from the explosion reaches him the same time a familiar voice reached his ears.

"Things are just starting to get interesting, isn't it?" Toto flicked a brow as she appears behind him.

"So you're finally here?" Ralph pursed his lips without looking back.

"Better late than never," Toto says with a twitch of her tail. "Anything you need help with?"

Ralph glanced around at the unconscious figures of Cecilia and Paulie. He spotted Kanitha panting on the ground next to a boulder, she doesn't look like she could fight anymore. He knows that once Lucy recovers, the first one she'll be killing is Kanitha.

"Can you take them away from here?" Ralph waved his hands at them. "To somewhere safe?"

"I can still..." Kanitha tried to object, but her sentence was cut off as she spits out a mouthful of blood.

"Don't push yourself," Ralph assured her. "I'll take care of everything from here. You've done great."

Reluctantly, Kanitha nodded. With a sigh, Toto took a deep inhale from her pipe, breathing out a cloud of heavy smoke. When it ceased away, she herself, Kanitha, Cecilia and Paulie is gone.

Taking a deep breath, Ralph got up. With Rain in his hand, he marched towards the battlefield.

Jerron clashed with Monk one last time before they gets blown apart. At this point, Monk finally noticed the presence of Lucy.

"My lady," he quickly bowed. After a few seconds, he asked feebly. "May I ask about your face...?"

"Shut it," Lucy snarled. "I will rip that Harusin crap into shreds-" With a quick glance around, her expression darkens immediately. "...Where is her?"

"Gone," Ralph answered her. Ignoring the pain from cutting across his eye when he do so, he grinned. "Somewhere where you'll never get your hands on."

Was that a look of relief from Monk...?

The next second, Teddy flashed in front of him. He bridged backward to dodge the rain of poisonous spikes that it shots out, then recovers while slicing his blade into the Teddy. However, to his surprise, it did no damage at all.

"Then I'll kill you." She let out a long, terrible hiss before sending Teddy plummeting for him again.

But this time, it was stopped in its path before it even reached him.

Jerron was holding it back with his bare hand. Glaring up at Lucy with his onyx-black eyes.

"Is my presence here for nothing?" He snapped. With a mere toss, he sent the Teddy plummeting back into the valleys of volcanoes behind them. "Your opponent is me."

Hesitation flashed through Lucy's eyes for a second. She said something, but her voice is drowned by the roar from Shelly.

Pain again seared through his face from the wound as Ralph looked up to see the magnificent dragon clambering out of the volcanoes. This time, with a couple of strong, powerful flaps from her wings, she lifted off towards the skies in a ring of dust clouds.

Everyone stared as she disappeared into the clouds for a few heartbeats. When she reappeared, she was diving down right for them.

Something strong tugged on the back of his coat, pulling him away before Shelly landed heavily onto the place they were standing seconds ago. Ralph looked around to see Jerron letting him down at a safe distance, cast a worried glance at his eye, then again dashed towards the place where the dragon stood.

Lucy, on one hand, is already there.

A wild smile on her face, she blasted an orb of compressed air towards Shelly's neck. She whined of discomfort when it hits her scales, sweeping her tails across the rocks, she sent a ball of fire flying toward Lucy. But it was reversed back to Shelly in a flash of green cast by Monk.

Jerron arrived in time to absorb the fire with his mechanics, then came to a stop, siding himself with Shelly.

The hunt's begun.

Just as the tension built up, a voice emitted from the side of the island facing the ocean.

"Stop!" Eve screamed, panting as she arrived between the two sides, spreading her arms out wide, her body shivering.

"Stop!" She cried to Jerron. "She will kill you!"

Jerron's eyes flashed from surprise to doubt, twitching his nose.

Eve stood shaking, her arms outstretched, and her electrical blue eye caught Ralph's. 

"I'm sorry," she muttered as fear suddenly whelmed her eyes. "For everything I've done."

For precisely three seconds, Ralph was a little confused. Until a shower of blood filled his whole field of vision. The Teddy was there, pierced through Eve's chest like a spear. Blood stained her whole sweater in a matter of seconds, Ralph watched, frozen rigid in his pose, watching the gash on Eve's upper chest pumping blood like a hose. Eve's teeth were gritted, her face slowly growing pale, and her left eye gradually getting duller. 

Until the bright, electrical blue that was still there just three seconds ago had completely turned into a dead, dim grey orb.

"I don't take traitors," Lucy's cold, emotionless words sank into his brain like sharp knives, waking him up from the daze as Teddy was pulled back out of Eve's body, which was left to fall onto the ground like an old, worn doll. 

Three seconds.

Eve's foreseen this.

She's seen her death.

And... she accepted it.

Eve is... Dead.