On the computer, Slady typed incessantly. He watched Elisa and Shaphira get ready. The younger one adjusted the sword in her hands and fastened it to her waist. The older one stretched, her eyes briefly meeting Slady's.
In a tab on a scientific organization website, he deleted the content and closed the computer. He straightened his overcoat and walked over to them. Were they excited for the first mission in an Inferius? Shaphira nodded repeatedly. Elisa shrugged.
Then Slady offered to help. They refused, insisting they were capable. So he demanded they go to a low-classification Inferius, look for Renkata, and eliminate the core, above all that they look for Renkata. They agreed. He told them to take care of themselves.
When they left, Slady placed his hands behind his back and paced back and forth inside the library, deep in thought. His instincts told him something was wrong. Despite trusting the training he had given them, his subconscious warned him that he would need to intervene.
***
Elisa walked with her chest raised. Shaphira was in her Renkai Creature form. Both walked scanning every direction, their heartbeats rising and falling from time to time.
Upon entering the shadows of the trees, they found a portal. They looked for demons nearby. There was nothing. So they went in.
Their vision blurred for a few seconds before revealing an Infernal Inferius. Elisa let out a wide-eyed sigh, running her arm across her forehead. She was surprised by how hot it was. Shaphira simply shook the fur on her body.
As they walked, the two observed the demons throughout the dimension. Elisa fused the sword with her blood. Shaphira crouched down, Renkai Energy emanating from her body, her muscles growing more rigid and her claws longer and sharper. Without hesitating, she advanced. Elisa followed.
There were countless cuts. Elisa created small blades that dissolved upon being thrown at the demons. The blood entered them and, with an expansive motion of her free hand, several thorns pierced them from the inside out.
Shaphira leapt onto them, devouring their flesh. The Renkai Creatures ran toward her, but her tail whipped them, reducing them to nothing but piled meat.
Within a few minutes, however, both of them had fallen. Elisa spotted the core, pulsing. She suggested they should ignore the demons. Shaphira nodded, grabbing her with her teeth and draping her arm over her own back. Elisa mounted her, gripping her fingers into the fur. She told her to run.
The speed made her hold on tighter, her hair flying. She swung the sword, taunting the monsters. They gave chase, only to be cut down or trampled. Shaphira leapt across great lava chasms. She climbed a rocky elevation, launched herself into a jump, and swallowed a demonic bird.
However, as if by a cruel twist of fate, the dimension shook. From the magma, a centipede emerged, with countless teeth in a mouth that seemed capable of swallowing entire mountains. Elisa's sword slipped from her hand just as the creature slipped from Shaphira's teeth.
Yet that same centipede was cut in two. Its mouth nearly caught Shaphira's paws, and she fell to the ground. Elisa flew off the mount, tumbling across the ground until she reached another chasm covered in lava, and fell.
However, something caught her. The figure landed on a rock wall, drove a sword into it, and climbed slowly to the top. The body (heavy with armor) let out brief groans as the long auburn hair caught on stone tips and tore. Upon reaching the top, the woman set Elisa down on a stone surface. Then, slowly, she turned her neck and faced Shaphira.
In the blink of an eye, she was already before her. She spun the blade with mastery, where it was struck by flames and, in doing so, she turned and cut an incoming projectile in two.
High in a lifeless tree, Slady holstered his pistol. He thanked her sincerely for having saved Elisa's life. He would have hated to have to end the expedition so soon. But watching whoever saved her try to kill his daughter was as contradictory as it was unforgivable.
The woman said she had no ill intentions, that she was carrying out a task. And she added: he would be next.
Standing face to face with her, Slady circled around. She did the same. Her red eyes fixed on his single gray one. He asked her reasons. Even she did not know. She went so far as to apologize, but said she would waste no more time with conversation.
Then she advanced. So did he. The woman braced on her blade and kicked. Slady deflected with his mechanical arm. The impact sent Shaphira's body stumbling back.
He grabbed her leg and slammed her into the ground. She pulled his arm, her feet locking around his neck and in doing so hurling him toward the chasm. In the same instant, she ran to the edge, and there was nothing there.
Suddenly, an explosion behind her lightly burned the heavy armor. A mechanical claw latched onto her waist and Slady reached her, punching her in the chest and sending her plunging into the orange liquid.
Without hesitating, Slady scaled the chasm with his mechanical arm. He grabbed Elisa with the iron limb and that same claw wrapped around Shaphira. In one burst, he ran at high speed, crossing the entire Inferius in seconds. Facing the portal, he prepared to exit. But the ground beneath his feet cracked in a cut that revealed fire. With that, he threw the girls toward the portal. Both disappeared, and the portal was cut in two as he dodged aside.
He only had time to murmur about the abnormality of that attack before being grabbed by the neck. The woman was there, unharmed. Her voice, colder now, echoed. There was something in him that interested whoever had sent her on the mission, some technology he allowed no one to see.
And so, she tore off the eye patch and forced the eyelid open with her nails, revealing a mechanical eye, a reddish glow amid a darkness.
She widened her eyes. Was that all? She whispered to herself about its usefulness, having seen stranger things. However, she fell silent when she felt something cold against her neck: not one or two, but five of those same claws. Two tips aimed at her eyes, one at her back, one at her chest, and another against her temple.
Slady also apologized, but she needed to die with that secret.
Everything closed in. In a movement that not even the iron eye could follow, she cut him in two with the blade. But she was also pierced. She partially deflected the ones aimed at her eyes and her temple, but the middle of her body was penetrated.
Both fell to the ground, paralyzed. The woman tried to breathe, but nothing came in. Slady tried to move, but nothing obeyed. Yet something was the same in both of them: their vision. The woman's grew gradually darker, while Slady's, flooded by countless pieces of information from the mechanical eye, made him see reality in the most exposed way possible, revealing to him even the atoms. His mind boiled, everything lost its color and deteriorated before everything went dark.
And the first thing he heard, in the nothingness he saw, was a welcoming greeting.
After two centuries, Slady had finally come home.