The Chase

Previously on the Chronicles of Coralende: elizabeth threw herself into a janitorial closet to throw off the gigantic skeletal human-bat that was barreling after her. And that, precisely that, was when she found it. A slender box with the note she was compelled to read: “I hope this helps. jacob.”

The emissary had over-shot the closet but elizabeth heard it pound to a stop and turn around. It screeched as it came closer. It knew its victim was near and closed in. She was out of bullets and she didn’t think the taser would do much.

She needed to run but she didn’t. She couldn’t help but open the box. Something in it shimmered. As she lifted the object up to get a better view, the emissary shrieked and launched towards her closet.

elizabeth flew back into the closet and pinballed to the ground with just enough sense to struggle back up swinging her taser at the emissary that was nowhere near her. Somehow the fiend had been launched 50 feet down the hallway to crash into the wall. It must have been incredibly disoriented because it gave elizabeth enough time to dash off towards the exit, completely unaware of the tiny silver spoon still clutched in her hand.

A screech of curdled death rang after her, but she made it to the door and tore out into the night. She made it to the hedge that delineated the property but then she double back to the door. The emissary’s shrieks vibrated door’s glass. It was almost there. And then elizabeth dove into the dumpster and closed the lid. From within the trash she heard a car crash of broken glass followed by a tremendous flapping.

Was her trick going to work? elizabeth was entirely focused on the tempest-like flapping: it was going away but then came back; it seemed to circle; it was right above her; and then for a heart-vaulting second it stopped before a trembling thump announced that the emissary decided to perch on the dumpster. After sniffing for what must have seemed like ages to elizabeth, the emissary finally flew off for good.

After twenty minutes with no sign of the emissary, elizabeth finally noticed the smell. It was so putrid she felt more than smelled it. Her biological programing was having a tantrum but she remained for five more minutes as she snailed open the lid an inch. No emissary in sight. She decided to slip out, momentarily forgetting the smell as she focused in for the slightest sign of a surprise attack. Nothing. She ran three blocks away from 257 e. mahogany before easing up and the stench rose back to full tide.

Ducking into an alley she began scrapping off plastic packaging, spaghetti noodles and unidentifiable slug when she noticed she still had the spoon. How did martin know she would be there? How on coralende could he know? And why would he do it? And why was a gigantic human-bat creature chasing after her? Where did it even come from? What was-- No. She had to pull it together. There were way too many questions and no time for answers. She had to figure out what to do, what were the priorities.

1) call andrew garner, her brother, while cleaning up at the charles st. apartment
2) call smithins to find out the status of the rest of the resistance
3) action

She navigated the alleys towards charles st. where she had access to a hole in the wall studio apartment, which she had for reasons I’d rather not tell you right now. On the way she phoned her brother several times and finally made it through on the seventh try.

“What is going on, andrew”

“Thank God you’re ok liza.” he spoke in a low rush that quivered with anxiety “It’s some sort of national attack but landers has all of us locked in the politburo. He’s with some sort of strange soldiers. I’ve never seen anything like them before. A few of us are planning to break--”

He hung up. Someone must have seen him sneaking a call, but elizabeth couldn’t worry about him. She was at the back of the apartment complex and ran up to the 2nd floor door tugging out the key card on the way up. Once inside the tiny dark room she tore of her clothes, jumped in the shower and dowsed herself with soap. In less than four minutes she was out of the shower pulling on new clothes from the closet, while phoning smithins.

After the third try she finally connected.

“Elizabeth where are you? Why didn’t you make it back with rafenner and the rest of them?”

“Oh good they made it. What do you know about what’s happening? How do the branches stand? Are we clear to move?”

“All critical officers have made contact but we sill have no clue what is going on. There have been attacks that seem to be from out of science fiction at seven of the citadel’s districts. We don’t know who is doing this or why. It all started 50 minutes ago and there is no sign of calming down. But we are ready to move as needed.”

elizabeth was already out the back door and heading north through the alleys, silver still flashing in her hands as she ran. “Ok. We need to move and we need to move now. It’s Assmachestan. I know it is so just trust me but don’t tell the others. They are going to annex nilbmah. Initiate beta phase. Did you get that? Initiate--”

The screech came from above and was the only thing that saved elizabeth from being pummeled by the 400 pound emissary. As she dove into a series of trash canisters, the emissary dove to the ground and bounced back into the air to initiate another attack. As elizabeth shuffled to her feet she grab a rake the she had knocked down with the trash. She faced the emissary above. The rake trembled in her right but the quilaire in her left started to shine a soft silver. The emissary dove in for the second attack. elizabeth didn’t budge. The emissary was a red blur of lightening about to strike. Like a toreo, elizabeth waited for the exactly last instant to turn on her heel and strike the fiend with the head of the rake before jumping out of the way and tearing down the alley.

But the blow only enraged the monster. It quickly rifled back at the fleeing elizabeth. Just as it was inches away from smashing in her head, she jutted into a side sub-alley. After doubling back, the emissary was struggling through the narrow alley. elizabeth, having tossed the rake, was creating a lead. After clearing the alley, she bolted across the street to seek refuge in a book store. She got to the door and was slammed into the air and crashed into a parking meter five feet away.

Back in the alley the emissary had scaled the wall like a lizard and then dove on elizabeth from the roof. Having downed its victim it entered a frenzy and rushed elizabeth’s limp body.

It was feet away from cracking elizabeth’s skull against the pavement when three gunshots punched it to its death. From across the street, jacob martin rushed to elizabeth. He checked her vital signs. Swore. Then picked her up. Her lifeless body swaying as he walked.

The Trade Route

Lithuania reappeared on a road in the middle of the woods. She looked around her, ill at ease. She had expected to reappear back in the hollow. Then again, maybe the hollow’s magical protection prevented anyone from teleporting back into it. Or maybe she hadn’t quite gotten the hang of this teleporting business—which was the more likely possibility. At any rate, she could tell she was in LusciousLocks. The sky was dark as ever, and the pervasive stillness of the air was unmistakable. The hollow had to be nearby.

She wandered into the forest, mulling over what she had just witnessed in Nilbmah, all the while guided by some blind instinct she trusted was somehow linking her to her sisters. As far as she knew, Nilbmah had never had anything to do with anything. Yet Winfry and Isa were from Nilbmah, and they were, for reasons unknown to her, quite involved in the mess she herself was in. She supposed a good talk with Winfry and Isa was in order—at least to understand the state of affairs in Nilbmah and get an idea of how everything was related. Thought that might be easier said than done. More than once, Lithuania had probed Winfry and Isa, unsuccessfully. They were oddly secretive—in fact, they were just plain odd. Were they an item, or just cuddle buddies? Were they socially retarded, or just like every other Nilbmahian out there? She had had very little experience with people from Nilbmah, so she couldn’t be sure, but as far as she knew, they were mostly just a bunch of lazy hooligans whose country didn’t go down the pipes thanks to the grace of some divine providence no one knew of.

At any rate, Winfry and Isa were weird, and Lithuania suspected it would take longer than was pleasant for her to extract information from them. Hopefully they’d be honest and shed some light on how they had doppelgangers, and how the hell those had come to be in the first place. Had they made it out of the tunnels alive? Surely Winfry could figure the answer out with his librem.

The librem. Lithuania kicked a twig as she ambled through the forest. She had had her suspicions about that book being a scam. Winfry got so paranoid when Latvia touched it, Lithuania suspected Winfry must be hiding something about it. And yet, the damn book spoke truths, and yielded results. Not to mention it held ridiculously powerful magic. But how Winfry had acquired his librem, how the librem worked, where Isa had snatched up her quilaire—all those questions, the little couple from Nilbmah refused to reveal. “Crazy pair of hallucinating nutbags,” Lithuania mumbled.

She became aware of her surroundings again once she noticed she was walking once again on dirt, not forest topsoil. She was back on the road. “The hell?” she muttered, looking around her, confused. Had she been walking in circles?

And then, in the distance, she heard a dull drone. The sound of something large and mechanical. The thickness of the trees didn’t allow for Lithuania to get a clear picture of what was coming around the road’s bend, but anticipating that whatever was driving the machine was most likely conscious, and therefore not LusciousLockian, she dove into the brush near the roadside and waited.

A minute later, a large metallic tank rolled into view. Lithuania could tell by its style and build that it most certainly was not LusciousLockian. It was jet black, with glowing red stripes lining its grooves and angles, which faintly reminded Lithuania of the appearance of cooling lava. It was everything Lithuania would’ve expected from an AssMachenstani tank.  

Another minute passed, and the tank was gone. Lithuania arose from her hiding place and left the road behind, delving deeper into the woods, this time with more purpose. She had found an AssMachenstani trade route—her first real lead. She could trace it with the others, and find the AssMachenstani base in LusciousLocks—that would be a huge deal.

Lithuania found her way back the hollow after a mere ten-minute trek, and smiled when she noticed everyone was still sound asleep. No one had even noticed she was gone, except—

“Where the hell have you been?” said Felix, tugging Lithuania out into the clearing around the hollow and out of earshot from everyone else.

“Felix,” Lithuania smiled sheepishly. “I’m so sorry I dropped you from—”

“Forget it. Forget it,” Felix said, poorly concealing his wounded pride. “Where the hell have you been?”

Lithuania told him about Nilbmah, about the AssMachenstani trade route nearby, and about her resolve to thoroughly question Winfry and Isa. Felix was skeptical about that part. But he was psyched about the trade route. “We can finally get off our asses and actually do something,” he said. “I say we take over a tank.”

At first Lithuania thought he was joking. When she realized he wasn’t, she simply stared at him blankly. “That’s about the stupidest thing we could—”

“What are you talking about? We could infiltrate them!”

“We could reveal our position and lose the element of surprise.”

 “Or we could obtain valuable information and AssMachenstan will never find out!”

“But if they do find out—we don’t know how they communicate, or—”

The debate continued, and when everyone else woke up, the matter was put to vote. To Lithuania’s chagrin, the vote went in Felix’s favor, mostly because Winfry’s stupid librem suggested his might be the most convenient course of action. So against Lithuania’s will, an action plan was devised, which relied mostly on everyone’s magical abilities, which were thankfully heightened due to some mysterious influence of the hollow, yet still erratic and rather unpredictable due to the three sisters’ lack of practice. Still, whether it was her plan or not, Lithuania didn’t doubt they needed to move as soon as possible. She just never suspected she’d soon be wishing she’d known how terribly wrong things were about to go.