The Book of Destiny

Chapter 2: A Simple Pickup Job

World: Navtyi

World Status: Sparkling Band

The column next to Zhou exploded, dust and chunks of debris flying towards her. Still, she kept running. She knew that if she stopped, the next bullet would be in her back. The column exploding was unsettling, but she thought her back exploding would be much worse. The tails of her long brown coat flapped in the air as she ran. She leapt to the right, behind the next pillar.

It seemed like the man who was after her needed to take time to reload each bullet individually, so at least that was to her benefit. She tapped the screen of the mechanical device strapped across her lower left arm. She was careful not to tap it too hard, since her left arm was also supporting a golden metal box, about a fourth of a meter cubed, that she was holding pressed against her side. It would be a shame to drop or lose it after coming this far.

"Hello, Ms. Jin," an artificially pleasant and happy male voice chimed from the device. She cursed its volume. "What can I help you with?"

"How long until you can get a portal open?" she whispered in a hiss.

"Based on current conditions, that endeavor will take about five minutes, unless you can find somewhere with a lower stability rating, where it might be easier to form a rift."

"Great, is there anything like that around here?" Zhou asked.

A circular progress/searching icon appeared on the screen. Great, she thought. This is just what I need. She brought her hands up to the top center of her face and pulled them out across in opposite directions, pushing any of her straight black hair out of her green eyes. Then, she sighed and decided to see what was going on with her attacker.

She moved with as much caution as possible into a position to look around the column. She knew that Psifiak, her digital companion, had probably already given away her location. Still, she tried to make as little noise as possible as she slowly crept around.

At first, she didn't see her attacker anywhere. The whole room had an eerie stillness to it. Was he hiding behind one of the other columns? Maybe the long wooden benches throughout the room? She looked to the doorway where she had entered--being pursued by her foe. It was still open, leaving a view of the hall outside. She turned the other way, looking to the front of the room, where a stained glass window lined the wall behind an elevated stage. The window was covered in dust so thick that no new light was passing through at all. This temple had been left to ruins like the rest of the town had been--although it seemed structurally a lot sounder than the rest of the buildings.

It was possible her attacker was hiding, waiting to lure her out. If that was the case, she wondered if she could make it across the room to the door without him managing to hit her with another of his bullets. They seemed pretty debilitating, and she didn't want to find out how well she would be able to keep running if one of them struck her.

She began to move out from behind her column, prepared to drop down beneath the cover of the nearest bench should gunfire start to become an issue. She didn't make it more than a step before a blade was at her throat.

"Give me the reliquary," said the man holding the weapon. It was an odd weapon, to say the least. For the one part, it had a blade, about a third to half a meter in length. However, running along the side of the blade was the barrel of a single-shot pistol. The handle of the blade bore a hammer and a trigger for working the gun. Following the weapon up the man's arm, she could see that he was wearing a dark colored jacket. Like her own jacket, his had many pockets. She could see the outlines of numerous knives and other weapons, as well as pockets of unknown equipment and contents. The man was blonde, and his face bore two long scars across it, running in parallel, only a couple centimeters apart.