The Initials | Nanowrimo 2023

64| The Uprising And The Orphans

Cloud shoots her head up to the sky, holding his arms out to his side to stabilise himself as soon as the second earthquake hits.

It doesn't last that long but as soon as it stops he can tell something has gone terribly wrong!

The giant crack in the sky brings the night into the day, the sun and moon appearing alongside each other as reality inside the Olympia starts bending out of shape.

He narrowly misses being flattened by a school of rolling boulders that are somehow falling uphill, already panting out of breath when he accidentally bumps into a tree, watching it transform into a giant cloud of blue winged butterflies.

When they start to thin out, Cloud spots Sky a few metres away, channelling four orbs of trickling water around her that immediately transform into spikes once she snaps her head in his direction.

"Woah, woah, woah, I'm a friendly! I'm a friendly!" he shouts, throwing his hands up in the air before she can shoot, letting out a sigh of relief once she lowers her hands.

"This is bad."

"What happened to the sky?" he asks. "Why is everything getting so messed up?"

"I don't know. Something must be wrong with the Wards."

"That's exactly what's happening." a distant voice responds, revealing itself to be Jason Aranborn.

He has a giant gash on his head and looks like he just went swimming in a pile of mud, smells like it too, but that doesn't distract Cloud or Sky who throw their hands up in preparation to defend themselves. "Someone severed two of the Gateway Portals and from the looks of things they're not going to stop until they're all out."

"What happens then?" Cloud asks, expecting nothing good could come from that happening.

His sinking suspicions are swiftly answered once Sky explains it to him. "The Olympia is an artificial world created by the Professor's Wards so if the link between this place and the real world is severed, and we don't get the hell out of here, we won't just be dead, we'll all be completely wiped from existence."

"Right about now I'm beginning to question why I ever came back to this stupid, fu-"

"-you can whine about it later because we have bigger issues." Jason utters, going on to explain how all runes are no longer working, including the ones that are supposed to teleport them out the moment before a killing blow is performed. "We need to put a stop to the fighting before someone loses their life."

"Okay, how are we going to do that? They could be anywhere and there's not enough time to get to them all at once." Sky points out, looking around for a solution when an idea suddenly pops into her head. "We need a distraction."

"A distraction? Like what?"

"I don't know, but it needs to be something big, something loud, something that'll get everyone's attention, something...bright."

Cloud folds his arms with a sigh once the two Royals both come up with the same idea on the spot, realising only a couple of seconds later what they have in mind. "Where do you want me?"

It takes them at least four minutes to climb up the nearest hill, giving Cloud one minute of recovery time before instructing him on what to do. "Are you sure this is going to work?"

Sky confidently nods her head. "This rune is a universal symbol of peace. They'll get what it means when they see it."

Cloud nods his head, taking a few steps back after considering their advice on how to approach casting this spell, deciding to perform it in the ways of which he was only recently taught.