Chapter 5 - Sweeping

Chapter 4 - A Poltergeist's Work

“Should I be worried about you and this mark?” Rechke quietly asked, running his light grey hand carefully through Ukedideka’s hair. “You said he was definitely someone you’d go out with.”

“No, you don’t have to worry about it Rechie.” Ukedideka mumbled, his head was resting peacefully on Rechke’s lap, “You’re too good to pass up for some Novan.”

Rechke was Ukedideka’s boyfriend of two years, he himself was a Healer, one of the gentle-handed medical workers of Imagination. Unfortunately, each of their jobs meant they couldn’t see each other very often, so they grabbed any precious moments they could. Rechie was taller than his other half, yellow curly hair balanced precariously on his head that Ukedideka thought was cute. The Healer was also one of the few people he trusted enough to take his eyepatch off for, something that Rechke felt honoured to be privy to.

The healer was rather muscular, surprisingly so considering his work, Ukedideka could spend hours simply tracing his hand over Rechke’s bare chest while the taller man ran his gentle hand through the Poltergeist’s hair. His sigil wasn’t easy to spot unless he took off his shirt either, a white helix adorned his shoulder and wrapped around onto his back.

“Better be.” Rechke purred, a hint of playful warning lilting his quiet voice. “Lest you want me to remind you how much I love you.”

Ukedideka chuckled and shuffled up closer to Rechke. “I think I’d like that, guess I gotta deal with this Noble.”

“Then come home safe and don’t make me.” Rechke purred again, leaning down and planting a gentle kiss on the Poltergeist’s cheek. Ukedideka smiled and yawned, allowing the taller Abstract to keep stroking his hair till the Poltergeist settled down and closed his eyes in rest.

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The week before, all sixty-three Guardians had been called back to their castle-like guild in Perception and told about the state of the war and how they would assist in the war efforts. They had no choice in the matter, disobeying would be viewed as treason and they’d undoubtedly be executed or banished for the crime. Thankfully, all the Guardians were happy to get in a fight; bigger battles were filled with more honour and glory than measly street fights or tiny skirmishes.

Quizzical herself wasn’t a good strategist and would fight on the front lines, duelling against Novans twice her size with a shortsword while they fought hard with more advanced weaponry and far more complex.

Although she knew that she was good with a blade, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t anxious about it. The Abstract woman had been involved in countless wars and battles even at her young age, being that she used to be part of a mercenary group with her brother and a few of their friends. That all fell apart when one of them was killed on a particularly risky mission, Ukey was shaken up pretty badly and they couldn’t keep it up.

She was now a more active member in the Guardians’ guild, preparing for her first excursion into a true battle as a soldier. This was an ongoing conflict that had started the previous year on one of the Novan colonies on another planet, Surie. In an odd way, she was excited about the oncoming battle as she strapped  armour onto her body.

Guardians’ armour was intricate, dark hardened leather covering her from neck to toe. Cloth gloves and leather boots only leaving her head exposed, to finish it all off Quizzical donned her helmet. The headgear was comfortable but tight, the plush interior offering the most protection for her head. Around her other Guardians were also putting on their armour, each of them had a unique set. While Quizzical’s was dark, similar to that of Poltergeists, there were a wide range of colours and styles in the room with her.

She slipped her blade into the holster at the back of her hips before tugging at the leather around her middle. The armour was relatively tight-fitting but not revealing or clinging to her curves. This was the armour of a warrior, something that was protective and functional over attractive to the eye.

“Aphré!” Came a shout from the door, “We need you sweeping in five!”

“Aye!” Quizzical replied, shouting over the chatter of the room before moseying over to the door, shuffling her sash and belt around her body so they rested happily around her shoulders.

She walked out into the courtyard of the castle where a group of other Abstracts had gathered, these weren’t guardians, rather the foot soldiers of the Abstract army. They all had the same sigil, that of the Breakers’ guild, they were all wearing identical sets of white armour.

As Quizzy walked out into the courtyard, they all snapped to attention in an Abstract salute to her. Touching their left hand to the centre of the chest and their right hand straight down to their side. Quizzical wasn’t expecting the greeting so politely, albeit with a few nerves, she returned the gesture and the group of Breakers returned to ease.

They were armed to the teeth with bows and arrows, and Quizzical could see that they all had swords at their hip. Next to Quizzy was the Abstract that had shouted for her in the barracks, Lidered, one of the self-appointed leaders of the Guardians’ guild.

Quizzical leant over and asked her why this group of Breakers were here, Lidered replied simply that Quizzical would be the one who was leading their charge into battle. Lidered was wearing his own version of the Guardians armour, albeit his was much more functional as armour than the other men and women inside.

Quizzy was – in a word – shocked that she hadn’t been told about this, considering that Quizzical’s speciality in a war zone wasn’t leading regiments of soldiers into battle. Quizzical was an expert at infiltration, something Ukedideka had taught her as she grew older; she knew ways into and out of buildings that most people would never think of.

Quizzical was a little out of her depth as she walked down towards the regiment, she knew the appropriate commands to give to the flock of soldiers behind her, but she had very little experience actually commanding soldiers.

“Draw swords!” She shouted after calming her uncertainty a little. Behind her she heard the distinct sounds that the Imaginary metal made as they drew their swords and activated them. Each of them then returned the swords to the secondary holster at each soldier's hip.

“Ready, sweep!” Quizzical ordered again to the two Abstracts standing before her, they walked towards one another and seemed to push their fingers into a solid brick in the grey wall.

Quizzical turned to the regiment of soldiers behind her and unsheathed her own blade, lifting it above her head as the silver metal melted and formed itself from the small cylinder, “Breakers!” She shouted and received a chorus of battle-ready cheers from the soldiers.

The guardian spun on her heels and levelled her sword at the wall the two other Abstracts were holding onto, “Over, pull!” She ordered, the pair of pulled the wall to either side as if it were a curtain.

Through the hole that had been swept between the two dimensions, Quizzical could see the ground of the planet as it was revealed. There were fires burning throughout the buildings and the Guardian could see a large crater in the middle of a carefully cobbled street.

The buildings on the planet of Surie were small concrete boxes, horribly bland and repetitive down the street. The roofs of the buildings were much more exciting though, shingles and tiles in hundreds of different colours layered the top of the buildings in a shimmering display of prismatic shades.
Surie was the site of a Novan colony, after a threat of complete annihilation by the intergalactic superpower, the native inhabitants of the planet had given in and allowed the Novans to build a city on their world. After the Novans had settled, Surie had become a booming trade hub with the bolstering of the new inhabitants.
The Abstracts had started to attack Surie four months prior, knowing the damage they could do the Novan economy by destroying as much as they could in the colony.
“All through!” Quizzical shouted, beginning to run for the portal. Behind her, she heard the thunder of the Breakers breaking into a sprint to match her impressive pace. There had been more than forty attacks on the planet, culminating in a regiment of about two hundred Abstracts marching on the warehouses of the city before they were ambushed and forced into a siege of one of the large stock buildings they had intended to burn to the ground.

Within seconds the group was through the portal, the two Abstracts who had swept it open gave Quizzical reassuring smiles before letting go of the wall, allowing the portal to close shut behind them. The group was now locked in the other dimension and in danger. They knew that there had recently been a skirmish in the city's south district, the Abstract forces having been pushed back into a set of warehouses by the Novan army.

It was due to the Abstract’s ability to interface with the candelaum that let the group of Breakers join the battle behind where the Novans expected them. Quizzical's group of soldiers carefully began to make their way through the battlefield considering they were behind enemy lines and could just as easily run into a patrol of Novan soldiers.

The Abstracts knew that they were easily outgunned by the other army, many Abstracts have found that it is difficult to parry a bullet or a laser blast with a sword, most carried large mirrored shields. Unfortunately, because of the Breakers' mission, carrying such a shield would be inconvenient and unwieldy. It was because of this that the Abstracts focused on exploiting the element of surprise that they could achieve so easily, they could appear out of nowhere with swords ready to cut down whatever was around her.

The journey from their drop-in point was mostly uneventful, there was a horrible incident with a Novan landmine that had been left in the middle of a street. The device was barely the size of a bottlecap but had left the street and group of Breakers in tatters, four of the eighteen that had gone through the portal had been killed immediately by the blast and it injured nine of the twenty-one left.

Quizzical was lucky to be unscathed, even though she’d been knocked off her feet into a wall by the blast. She made sure that the rest of the group was alright and allowed them to pay their respects to their fallen companions before insisting that they all had to move on, only now they were to move along the roofs of the buildings to avoid any other mines littered on the ground.

Within five minutes, the remains of the group had scaled the buildings either side of the street and were bounding along the prismatic slates, cracking them under their boots with the vigour of revenge and justice for their companions quivering at the ends of their blades.
Quizzical didn’t care much for the Abstracts whose lives were just extinguished individually. On the other hand her natural instincts as a Guardian was to mourn them. Unfortunately, she didn't have time to care for them, focusing instead on the instructions she had been given helped her take her mind off the deaths she had just witnessed.

Quizzical jumped and rolled across the roofs alongside the regiment of Breakers, each of them having a slightly different way of overcoming the obstacles that befell them. Quizzical typically leapt or slipped through objects ahead of her while there was one Breaker running alongside her that sidestepped and vaulted everything that impeded him.

It wasn’t too long before they found the site of the siege, although Quizzical would sooner describe it as a siege. She held her hand up silently to signal the surrounding Breakers to stop moving so they could observe the Novan troops on the ground before them. The small group of breakers were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, they knew that they weren’t the only group of Abstracts that had been sent into the war-zone but even then the casualties that they'd already suffered put them at a serious disadvantage.

They had to coordinate themselves and try to cut a swathe through the Novans below them, for every one of the Abstracts, there was at least ten Novan soldiers. Each of the aliens was armed to the teeth with weaponry Quizzical and her race couldn’t hope to understand, wearing white and red armour that covered them from head to toe. They were camped out lazily, sitting and joking around barrel-fires and gas-burners as they waited for the group of Abstracts who were holed up inside the warehouse to give up.

Quizzical waited for a good twenty minutes on top of that building, staring down at the army below her, watching the smoke rising from the fires littered around the warehouse.

Quizzical's sensitive ears twitched gently as she heard a shrill sound break the near-silent night into shards of unsavoury silence. A quiet whistle had been caught and carried by the wind, a signal used by Abstracts for the start of a surprise attack. Quizzical grit her teeth before tightening the strap beneath her chin that fastened her helmet to her head, after a moment, she thrusted her hand forwards towards the ground. The remaining Breakers broke into action immediately, they drew their swords before they all vanished as one.

Seconds later, all chaos broke out on the ground. The Breakers who had been crouching around Quizzical had momentarily breached the Candelaum to reappear among the Novans on the ground. Quizzical watched for a moment as the Breakers got to work, bright red sprayed into the air and terrified screams echoed across the camp. Quizzical pulled the faceplate on her helmet down to cover her jaw before cracking her knuckles and leaping from the roof of the building, the Guardian pressed her wrists to her hips to engage the wingsuit that had been built into her armour. Thin membranes spread between her sides, arms and between her legs to help her glide closer to the ground like an eagle about to capture its unwitting prey, when she was low enough she disengaged it with the same motion and launched into a free-fall.

Before touching the ground, Quizzical put her hand to the holster behind her back and drew her sword, it was a beautifully crafted shortsword with a deadly sharp double edge running down to the hilt. Quizzy tucked into a roll and landed hard on top of a Novan soldier, the armoured man let out a shocked cry as a cacophony of snapping and cracking noises burst from his chest. Quizzical didn't bother to make sure the man was dead, his futile attempt at punching her leg was enough to know he wouldn't be getting up again. She leapt from that Novan and began to sprint through the next white armoured chest through, the unfortunate recipient of the blow shuddered and dropped their weapon before Quizzical twisted her blade and yanked it out. Crimson gushed from the wound and pooled on the ground around Quizzical’s feet as the Novan fell to the ground, the Guardian flicked the remnants from her blade and fought on.

The initial shock was over, the Novans were now beginning to strike back against the Abstract incursion to their camp. Quizzical could already see one Breaker she had led into the battle sprawled on the ground suffering several burn-like wounds to their ruined chest, Quizzical couldn’t spare a moment to pay tribute to their death or she might suffer the same fate.

She jumped and rolled aside as she heard the crack of a Novan firearm; the blast flew over her head, followed by a rush of impossibly loud noise that made Quizzical’s ears ache. The Guardian shook and launched herself at the Novan assailant who had made the mistake of firing at her, with two quick swipes of her sword rendered them permanently incapacitated.

She paused for a moment on the battlefield to connect herself to the Candelaum, her body taking on the appearance of someone trying to move in a hundred different directions at the same time. She looked out over the battlefield and spotted another Guardian a few metres away; he was locked in a duel with a gargantuan Novan similar to the construct Quizzical had been sparring with a few weeks prior. The huge man was towering above the Abstract but wasn’t fast enough to catch the smaller Guardian, who was darting about the giant to try to get sword-strikes in wherever he could.

Quizzical smiled and turned back to her own battle, keeping her connection to the Candelaum she stepped across the battlefield to where one of her Breakers was being overpowered by a group of Novan soldiers.

She spun into the first Novan, a knee crushing bone before she planted herself and snapped her other leg around to break the Novan’s skull into pieces. He dropped to the ground with a clatter of plastic against the tarmac plastering the ground.

She caught the other two soldiers off guard they and turned away from the Breaker they had been fighting a moment before, much to their misfortune. The Abstract grabbed the back of a Novan head and smashed the helmet into his knee, cracking the plastic material. The Breaker then hoisted the dazed Novan up and threw them fatally into the wall of the warehouse where they cracked the bricks, this terrified the other soldier who dropped his weapon and began to run from the pair of Abstracts.

The Breaker didn’t give the man five paces, kicking off the wall in a vicious leap the Abstract ground his heel in the back of the Novan’s head. Bone crunched and blood splattered against the white armour of the Novan man, the Abstract shook his now rather messy foot as clean as he could before quickly thanking Quizzical and launching themselves back into the fight.

“Impressive.” A foreign voice said in badly pronounced Abstraki next to Quizzical a moment later, making the Abstract jump into the air and spin to warn the source with her sword at the ready and teeth bared in a ferocious challenge to whoever it was. The voice was rather interesting, a smooth accent that wasn’t accustomed to speaking with the unique intonation of the Abstract language.

Standing before her was a supremely casual Novan man sporting perfectly white skin and dark red hair, Quizzical knew in an instant from the way that the man was standing in the battlefield that he was either a fool or the most dangerous man on the planet. He wasn’t even wearing any armour a pair of smart trousers and a well-pressed shirt was all the man was sporting.

“Very impressive how you can kill my people with such lack of care and dare I say skill.” The man said, leaning against the wall of the warehouse in a terrifyingly cursory manner.

“What?” Was all Quizzical could say to the Novan man, “What do you mean?”
"I mean you kill like a psychopath, Guardian." The Novan man snarled through clenched teeth, "All of your damn kind do."
Quizzical flinched at the demeaning insult to her kind but stood her ground, her teeth still bared in a silent threat to the man.

“Just so you know,  coming here was a complete waste of your time. Oh, so terribly rude of me.” The man began to walk towards her and extended his hand, “Cat Egent, a pleasure to meet you.”

Quizzical saw this as a threat and acted accordingly, snarling animalistically and stepping back into a defensive stance to prepare herself for whatever this man had to throw at her.

“Hardly very ladylike, greeting someone like that.” Cat said, slipping his extended hand into his pocket and sighing, “What’s your name, Guardian?”

Chapter 6 - Monster Hunters