In The End

Section 1: Chapter 2

Silvana looked at the human in front of her. In the time, he hadn’t tried to attack her. She almost felt like she could trust him.
"Oh," she said, laughing, "I've never met anyone nearly as nuts as me. "

She coughed again. Her throat and tongue were completely dry. It felt like she hadn’t drunk anything in a week. Worse, her head was still throbbing from the hangover.

"Where's the nearest stream?” she croaked, “ I'm bloody thirsty..."

Then, for the first time, Silvana looked to the sky. The sun was only just beginning to rise, and the last of the stars were beginning to disappear from sight. Quickly, her eyes scanned the remaining stars, looking for the familiar constellations she’d slept under all her life. With some alarm, she realised she didn’t recognise a single star. She couldn’t have wandered that far in one night.

"Who are you?"

She asked, a little bit of terror creeping into her voice.

................

He stared for a moment. For some reason, the girl looked slightly scared.

"I'm Naoki. From the third Battalion."

He said plainly. He wanted to ask her about her name but decided that safety went first.

"You're not planning on drinking from a river, are you? You need some iodine solution for that."

.............

The boy’s response only served to confuse Silvana further.
The name Naoki sounded foreign. Yet she couldn't link it to any country in particular. Besides, she hadn't been out for long enough to travel far.
Silvana thought back to the previous night, trying to piece together what had really happened from all those disjointed images. So she’d drunk a lot of cordial,  she’d seen a strange silvery pool...
All of a sudden, a feeling of dread went up Silvana’s spine. She  remembered, long ago, walking past the lecture theatre in Crystal City and hearing some sort of professor talking.

"Magic makes our universe unstable," the professor had said...  "It means that every now and then, little tears, little gaps appear in the fabric of reality.”
To Silvana, it didn’t sound like the people listening to the lecture believed this. And then, someone in the audience, trying to contain their laughter, had asked what would happen if you fell down any of these gaps
“Well,” said the professor, “There is a theory, which I don’t know is true,  that there are..other worlds out there, and you can reach them by falling through the gaps."

Silvana remembered walking away, smirking at these words. Now, she was beginning to regret it. Was that what that silvery pool had been? A gap in reality

Alarmed, she said, "I need to see your top scientist. He needs to get me home. Now."

............

Naoki just continued to stare at Silvana.

"I don't know what in the hell you're on about..."

He simply said. He wanted to add something when he heard a loud crash in the distance. It only meant one thing.

"Bombers...."

He whispered and quickly grabbed his rifle, and any ammo he had left and begun to run off.

“If you want to live, you’d better run,"
He said to the girl.

............

She smiled.

"I'm not going anywhere."

She said, putting her sword in her bag, and dragging out her wooden bow. She notched an arrow, smiling, happy about the familiar feel that the bow in her hands brought her.
She spotted something in the distance, just over the trees. like a giant shining bird. She aimed the arrow up, pulling the string back as far as she possibly could, and fired. She counted to ten on her fingers, and then made a twisting action with her hand. Seconds later, there was a loud explosion, and the giant metal bird began to fall, a large chunk missing from where its heart would have been. Silvana smiled.