The Lost Voices (OLD VERSION - New Version to Come)

CHAPTER 5... ACCIDENTS (PART 3)

Recording 2: We're Fatherless

8-19-1620 A.R. 

Location: Brickshaw, Terrarin 

Sometime later a hand was rocking Malien and the black shade over his eyes began receding. In a moment, he saw the metallic skin peaking between the glove and sleeve, telling him Jack was present. Blinking against the city's spotty lights, Malien noticed the woman he'd followed onto the bridge was crouched beside them, but she seemed to be shaking something off as well. 

Clomping footsteps made his ear drums lightly shutter, but he was recovering and finally upright. Jack started snapping his fingers in front of Malien, causing a hard tinking noise before the girl spoke.

"Malien, right? You have to stand up." Malien's vision was finally restored, but her voice was still dulled, as though his ears were slowly relearning how to hear. He noticed one of her hands still resting against her head, but she was much more aware than him. "Regimists are coming onto the bridge and we need to leave before too many show up."

Malien breathed through his nose and focused his eyes on her. "Who are...why?"

"Tarx Regime are a political clusterfff-..." Ytrieda spitefully muttered under her breath. "...Because they hunt Casters, meaning us." She turned her palm over, while pointing at Malien's hand. "And now we have glowing tattoos that might as well be targets." 

On the back of their hands were archaic gray circles that were still lightly crackling with a painless silvery aura. The rings were fashioned from words and glyphs in a language Malien didn't recognize, but it somehow felt familiar. Ytrieda's voice came through again and Jack lightly slapped the back of Malien's head. He shot Jack a look and the gear-head returned the snap with eyes that read as a warning light. In turn, Malien began rising to his feet as he grabbed his machine-sword off the grimy bricks.

In a flash, Jack had drawn up his hulking weapon to block the lower half of his face from the approaching force's gaze, while his hat cast a shadow over his eyes. Malien soon mimicked Jack's stance as he sheathed his blade in rolling flames to partially conceal himself. Then, to form a triangular defense, Ytrieda positioned herself between the boys and raised her unarmed hands in an x-shaped guard. 

Now their situation was clear to Malien. At least a dozen men and women, all wearing those strange gavel-emblazoned arm bands, were approaching from each end of the bridge, and no less than half were armed with revolvers or green gauntlet constructs with hissing orbs ready to fire photons.

"What sort of party is this?" A man's voice asked, tall and piercing, but with a low vibrating tone that floated through one's body as gears might knock across a cave floor. He was approaching from the side that led away from the greater bulk of the city. "And why o' why, weren't we invited?" Malien was the only person facing him head on, but Ytrieda's head snapped in his direction when the man protruded from the crowd. 

Standing around six and half feet tall, to say he had a 'commanding presence' was the initial idea that went through Malien's head, but it was quickly apparent that 'oppressive malignance' was a far more apt phrase. 

Chaotic, russet hair clawed straight back over his head in handsome disdain. A dark, wintry overcoat hung down to his thighs, and Malien could've sworn he saw a lab coat peeking out from the edges of it. Both of his hands were hidden by tight, white gloves and his left shoulder was covered in segmented steel armor that fastened to his jacket. The sharpest detail, however, was a string of melted scars that coursed over the right side of his pale face, which would've left most blind, but that eye was entirely metal and a glassy pupil gazed from the wounded socket.