EndRep's Short Stories

A Cloud in the Sky

The sounds of a door shattering into splinters happen through the house, followed by gun shots and struggled screams. "Where is the girl?" A deep voice growls commandingly.

"I will not let you harm my little girl!" Mother? She screams, fighting against odd looking men with weapons. They kill her. And her father, too.

The commander of the forces tie up the young girl and haul her away. For... modifications, one of them had said.

-

Cloud and Zyra make way into her guild's stationed headquarters in the Malator rather loudly as Cloud has finally figured out a master's plan to securing a boost in much needed resources for the guild, and, not to mention the ship was severely lacking in decoration.. while on the other hand, she has barely accounted for the large number of guard that may just be daring her to try and attempt a mission so large on her own. She would be a fool to go alone, especially after being wounded in the last expedition, but she couldn't risk the ones she loved. Death was inevitable, even for someone corrupted like her; although hers was just belated by a few eras..

Smirking, she runs her fingers over the maps of the enemy ships once again, 'a solid plan.' She thought. Zyra roars quietly in agreement, and Cloud looses a relieved sigh while stuffing the maps into her air-tight satchel carefully. A slight pain kindles in her chest but she wills it away. "This is it, this may very well be the death of me but-" She quiets mid-sentence to stare at the intruder of her personal thoughts, After a moment, she pulls up her hood and covers her pale, veined face with a deep, blood red cowl. "What are you doing here?" She asks, that kindling pain now bursting into a flame. She tries to rub her chest without drawing attention to it. "Aren't you supposed to be.." She loses her breath for a moment, quickly recovering. "Doing other things then bothering me while I'm working?" The pain dissipates, Cloud clears her throat and fiddles with a buckle on her chest.

"Why are you even working? You aren't recovered yet. There's no way you can do a heist in your condition, this isn't like you." Sage replies, ignoring her questions. He was her second half, and he knew her better than she knew herself.

"Don't tell me who or what I am. I'm doing this job whether it kills me or I kill it first. No exceptions." She growls at him, crossing her arms, as this was delaying her further.

"You almost die in an enemy raid, get home, smoke that drug of yours, what's it called? Vallenium? Bah- and now you plan on leaving again on a sure death wish? Do you realize how fortified this place is? What is going on?"

"What's going on, is you're interrupting me, and I'm a second away from knocking you out so I can leave in peace." She replies venomously with an unintentional violence, yet does not cower at her own fierceness.

Sage takes an exasperated breath, and runs his calloused hands through his black forelock. "Are you in pain?" He asks calmly.

"Why are you asking?" Cloud coughs into her hand. A bit of blood stains her fingertips, but she brushes it off quickly. "I'm leaving, and you can't stop me, Sage." The... modifications cloud yielded was that of alien technology, and she'd not let anyone see her wounds stubbornly; she knew what they would say. 'Rest, don't push yourself.' Nothing gets done if she doesn't be the one to push herself. It was causing a rupture in part of her lung, allowing blood to seep into it at an almost alarming rate. She would survive, though. Cloud always does.

Sage's eyes express grief for her, and her heart begins to race when he steps towards her, forcing his hand onto her chest where the device remains. Clouds eyes widen at Sage's sudden rage. He rips her traveling jacket open to reveal the apparatus. She feared this, his anger, because his face turned stone cold, and rather dark. His arm reclines behind him, then collides with Cloud's ribs, gripping onto the alien mechanism. She gasps for air, and blood rushes into her lungs and mouth quicker than she'd imagine it could. He ripped the tiny fissure.

"Look what they've done to you!" He growls,ripping his hand free, without the device. It was what kept her alive for nearly her entire life, druids told her that she wouldn't last a year, yet she survived for thousands.

Cloud grips the severed wound in her chest with a sour mouth, kneeling down to calm the pain. "I've had this.." her voice fades and she gasps for air, yet continues to struggle. "For as long as I can.." another gasp, her grip tightening, and her teeth clenching. "Remember." Sage calls over a Druid.

"Take that... thing out of her, now!" His temper rose to an extreme. Cloud struggled for air, everything burned, her eyes began to roll to the back of her head, and blood ran from her pierced nose.

She spits at the ground in front of the druids who came to her aid and forces herself to stand. "Get out... nng of my way." She commands, striking her witnesses with shock. A click sounds from her tongue, zyra moves to her side and she dissipates into thin air with her lioness, emerging by the travel pods. A large window reveals the stars, and the color of the void around her makes her tear up. It was the color of her blood; deep red with tints of violet, surrounded with black and littered with millions of stars. She stands there, wondering if someone light years away, was looking at the wonder before her the same way, with pain in their body but love in their eyes.

This was where she belonged, in the vast nothingness that was everything to her. She didn't care that a race of aliens had killed her family, abducted her and tortured her for years.. or that she escaped only because what they had given her, saved her life.

Now, though. I'm afraid her life would come to an end, so abruptly, and with so much pain. Her soul would become one with her passion, however, which is what she truly desires most. She was made up of the same stuff the entire universe is.