Sientro

Weeks of planning had gone down the drain. A group dedicated to intelligence gathering called Videre had entrusted Luce, a light orange fox from a town in Lucatago, with the mission of investigating the research of a certain scientist in the Academy of Alumbra. The plan was perfect. He had been tracing the layout of the Academy into a mental map since he arrived in the city and monitored the schedules of scientists and church guards alike. 8 PM should have been the perfect time to sneak in through the entrance route he had outlined; it was when the brightest lights across the grassy campus were the lamps placed along the paths to each facility, when the busy chatter of the day became the barely audible murmurs of those who still wandered around, and, most importantly, when the rotation between guards from the day shift and the night shift happened. But something he had not considered occurred—someone had entered the laboratory room he had snuck into, and now he was trapped in a room decorated with pillars of glass filled with ice, tubes, and frozen bodies. He had to hide. Under a desk? Behind a monitor? No, his light orange fur and large ears would stand out. Between those stasis chambers by the walls? No, they were too transparent. The clacking of someone’s heels against the metallic floor felt like the hands of a clock, ticking closer to doomsday with every passing second. The platform at the center grabbed his attention. It was elevated just high enough to provide him with a blind spot if he crouched behind it. With no time to hesitate, he leaped toward it. The fox tripped over a group of cables that stretched from the back of the platform, branching out in every direction to power up the stasis chambers, and a short thud echoed in that silent room. Luce covered his mouth.

A feminine voice spoke immediately after, and the sound of the indecisive footsteps of its owner followed right after. She first took a few steps to the right, and then to the left. “Hello? Is someone there?” She stuttered. Luce held his breath, suffocating the last remaining sound in that laboratory. There was a long pause, and the fox had to suppress his temptation to look at what the scientist was doing. Eventually, she spoke again. “I must be imagining things,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. Luce sighed.

She kneeled in front of a desk, the one closest to the platform Luce was hiding behind, and pulled at the handle of a drawer. It creaked open, and she thumbed through the folders inside before burying another one that she had been holding. While her head was down, Luce peeped at her. The scientist was a female cat with ashen fur, most of it concealed by the white lab coat she wore, and red glasses with a circular frame that made her emerald eyes stand out. Her appearance matched the description of the scientist in the mission report, down to the darker stripes on her face. That’s Dalia, he thought. Those files must be the ones I need.

Dalia pushed the drawer, and it closed with a short slam. When she raised her head, Luce took cover again and listened to her movements. Her footsteps were getting closer. In case he needed to run, the fox clenched his fists and feet but didn’t move until he was sure. But instead of walking around the podium at the center, she went up the stairs to examine the computer above where Luce’s head was. Her fingers rapidly tapped the screen, and the machine matched her speed with a series of beeps. Sometimes, she stopped and mumbled words too low for the fox to hear. If he tilted his head up, Luce could see the back of the monitor. However, what she was doing remained a mystery to him.

“Okay,” she whispered, “all the important files should be protected now.”

Eventually, Dalia turned around and went down the stairs, walking toward the laboratory’s doors. They were made of centirium. That material allowed mana-users to manipulate it, but most people, including Luce, lacked that ability. A faint lime glow enveloped her right hand when she pressed her palm against the frame of the door, in which a vein-like pattern of the same color blossomed and spread until it covered the entire gate. The white hallway lights spilled into the dark lab until Dalia left, and the door closed behind her. Finally, Luce could come out of his hiding spot, back to his mission. At least, now, he knew where to look.

“I thought I was gonna join you, pal.” The fox placed his hand on the glass of one of the stasis chambers, pretending the corpse inside it could hear him. He felt a burn that caused him to flinch. “Ow, cold!”

Luce walked up to Dalia’s desk and opened the drawer, just as she had. He shoved his hand in and picked one folder, the first he could get his hands on, and scanned through its contents while skipping any words he couldn’t recognize. “Experiments to control the decay of mana in bodies?” He raised an eyebrow. “These people are into investigating some morbid things.”

From his small satchel, the fox pulled out a device that looked identical to a flashlight and pointed it at the files. His thumb fell on the button that switched on the machine, but he didn’t press it immediately. Instead, the fox rubbed his finger against it, hesitating. Then he closed his eyes, raised his thumb, and slammed down on it. Click! Pain spread across his hand and he gripped the handle of the machine tightly so he wouldn’t drop it. It felt like invisible needles were stabbing into his skin to extract something from him—and that powered up the flashlight, now illuminating the paper and the words it contained. No, it would be more accurate to say that the paper itself was glowing and that the machine absorbed that light. The words became dimmer until, after a painful wait, the glimmer faded completely. The pain subsided, and Luce sighed. Never hurts any less, the fox thought. He shoved the folder back into the drawer and picked another one, repeating the same process.

That machine was an invention created in the city of Kythra. It served the purpose of copying written information instantly, and the particular model he held was a modification that allowed non-mana-users to wield it. Mana-users could externalize their body’s mana to use it for various purposes, but others didn’t have that privilege. Instead, they had to rely on dangerous technology that forcibly extracted it from their bodies—and it always hurt. Mana was the basis of life. It was what gave things structure. Consuming too much of it, especially with a body that wasn’t built to use it, could cause serious repercussions.

Once he was done, Luce put the machine in his satchel again and took a step towards the door to the hallway outside. He had everything he needed for his client. However, the faint light from the computer on that platform caught his attention. There was something about Dalia’s actions that bothered the fox. Why had she come to the lab so late? Just to check on the computer? What did she mean by “protecting files”? Luce knew that staying there for longer could be dangerous, but the questions didn’t let him step out of the room just yet. He turned around and walked up the stairs to the podium above, grabbing the railing next to it. With every step he climbed, he looked back at the door to make sure no one came in. Maybe this will have useful information too, he convinced himself.

“Let’s see…” Luce squinted and raised one of his hands, tapping the screen as Dalia had done earlier. There were several icons, one for each of the stasis chambers in the laboratory. Most of them were green, but the rest were red. “A little clue of what each color means would help,” he grunted. “This one, why not?”

When he tapped one of the green ones, the icon expanded into a window full of graphs and details about that chamber’s patient. Although an identification number replaced the subject’s name, there was a full-body picture of them that someone out there, but not him, could identify. City of origin, Alumbra, Luce scanned through the written details. That is this city. They passed away 3 months ago after suffering cardiac arrest. A graph tracked the decay of their mana, which had only gone down 10% since the moment someone put them in the chamber. When he finished reading through the file, he closed it and opened a new one. He repeated this process, going faster every time he found nothing of particular interest—until he clicked on the first of the red ones.

“City of origin, Rento.” He read those words again, now with his eyebrows raised. “What? But I thought…”

That didn’t sound good. Academies across Sientro were very particular about what was allowed and what wasn’t. He had heard of experiments on the corpses of people who had already passed away, but experimenting on those from a different city went against most agreements he knew about. If there was a reason for there being only one academy in each city, it was so that they wouldn’t step on each other’s feet. This sort of thing could be grounds for a legal battle. He kept reading, wanting to figure out more. Passed away a month ago after overexposure to Excitas. Luce took a step back.

“Excitas?” The fox gasped out the name of that substance, one he was all too familiar with. “Wasn’t that banned after the Vismagus War? Amenias has to hear about this…”

He clicked on more of those icons, holding his breath. If this place had any information about recent incidents with that substance, he had to know. If there was any connection with that bloody war, he had to know. He tried clicking on more of those red icons, but the window with information about the subjects stopped appearing once he clicked on enough of them. Instead, the screen now asked for a password. Shit, he cursed and clicked his tongue. There weren’t any papers or notes where any forgetful scientist had written the password, to his dismay. Luce made his way down the stairs of the platform and opened Dalia’s drawer again, flipping through her folders to find any clues. He only stopped when he heard a couple of voices outside the laboratory and the sound of rushed footsteps that grew louder. So that he could distinguish the words, Luce pricked up his ears.

“No one should be in that lab,” a masculine voice said, “but someone is using the computer.”

“It’s probably just another error,” another man followed.

“Let’s check just in case, it never hurts to look.”

You’re kidding, Luce thought. He shoved every folder he was holding inside the drawer and slammed it shut. He wanted to go back to his previous spot, but he didn’t have the time to run all the way there before the door to the laboratory opened. Instead, he had to hide in the place closest to him—behind the closest stasis chamber, trying to conceal himself within the shadows. Two guards made their way inside, bipedal white dragons with golden ornaments belonging to an entity anyone could recognize. The church guards, Luce thought. If they caught him now, they’d arrest him on the spot.

“You check the left side”—the taller of the two guards pointed in Luce’s general direction, unaware of the presence of the thief—“and I’ll check the right.”

The other guard nodded at him, and they split. The fox tried to be as silent as he could. He wanted to close his eyes and pray that they’d leave, but they didn’t seem to have the intention of doing so until they meticulously checked every inch of that place. Even if he stayed hidden, they’d find him. It was only a matter of time. There was only one option left for him.

Run.

Luce jumped out from behind that testing chamber and sprinted out of the room, leaving behind that laboratory and the two voices that yelled at him to stop. He couldn’t stop. He heard them following him, and their footsteps weren’t getting any more distant—maybe, in fact, they were getting louder. Their legs were longer, and they had trained their stamina for years. If Luce wanted to get an advantage over them, he couldn’t rely on his speed alone. That research facility had the shape of a cylinder. The hallways circled around the circumference of each floor; on one side there were windows leading to the campus of Alumbra’s Academy, and on the other, there were doors leading to different laboratories. Those corridors were wide and didn’t have many obstacles, but that also meant there weren’t many ways to hide or branching paths to take. Instead, he took the door that led to the first set of stairs he found and jumped down both flights of steps. One floor down, seven more to go.

He kept going as fast as he could, repeating that same set of steps until he reached the fourth floor and they finally caught up to him. Luce saw a green glow on the door he was about to go through, now impossible to open, and looking back he saw that same color radiating from the hand of one of the guards chasing him. Were all the doors in this place like that? The fox backed away from them, but they closed the distance.

“Surrender yourself!” the taller guard yelled. “We’ve called backup. Even if you keep going down, you’ll just meet more guards on the bottom floor.”

“I don’t think he’s a mana-user…” the other guard pointed out. His eyes glowed purple for a short bit. “Can’t get a reading off him.”

When the taller of two guards ran toward him with a spear in his hand, Luce’s ankles flashed a cyan glow. They had probably thought that Luce had no chance against them—but he had his own tools to defend himself. The glow had a distinguishable pattern; it was the shape of two snakes coiling around each other and biting one another’s tails. The fox raised his right leg so fast that it blurred in the air until it eventually appeared right next to the guard’s head, delivering a kick to his jaw that sent him flying toward the nearest wall. Luce swung his leg back down just as fast and jumped away from the remaining guard. A good kick like that could put a man to sleep fast, and it seemed to have worked. The fox winced and gritted his teeth when he felt a burn on his ankles, and the remaining guard used the chance to attack him. He swung his bulky body towards Luce, who had no other option but to step to the side and try to kick his attacker—but the golden glow of a semi-transparent shield that had appeared out of thin air stopped him. As soon as his legs hit it, the guard pushed back against him to parry the attack. Luce fell backward and groaned when he hit the ground, pain shooting through his back. How was he supposed to win?

The door he had been trying to go through opened, and another group of guards emerged from it. “This ends here!” the guard he had just been fighting announced.

The fox stood up, grabbing the satchel he had been carrying. The guards all readied their golden weapons, believing that Luce was getting ready to attack them again. But that moment never came. Instead, Luce sprinted toward the window—and leaped. He closed his eyes and covered his face with the back side of his arms, and then raised his knees to his chest. The glass shattered on impact, and the shards stabbed into his skin. The guards all ran toward the window, looking at the fox plummeting toward the ground. There were some people still on the campus grounds, who paused what they were doing and pointed up at Luce in horror while the moonlight gleamed against his free-falling body. But then the fox extended both of his hands. The same pattern on his ankles glowed on his wrists, and the swing of his arms blew a powerful breeze of air that allowed him to slow down. The fall still hurt, but at least he wasn’t dead.

Luce didn’t look back. He kept running toward the entrance of the campus. Behind him, the guards still followed—now airborne instead of on foot. However, the streets were much easier for him to traverse. The cities all had the same structure: its academy with its facilities and campus at the center; a ring of more luxurious houses, company buildings, and specialty shops right outside it; and the lower-class residential areas that comprised more than half the density of the city. The deeper he traversed into the streets of Alumbra, the harder it became for the guards to spot him. When he eventually made it to the residential area and hid himself in one of the many dead ends of that labyrinthian collection of streets, the voices of the guards became nothing more than whispers.

Luce sighed, sitting down and hugging his legs. He’d made it out, but his body still hurt. The fresh wounds on his body were still open and itched, but he avoided scratching himself to prevent the bleeding from becoming worse. The worst part was his ankles and wrists, which trembled and burned around the fading cyan marks on them—the sigils he had used to fight back. Sigils were useful tools for people who could not use their mana like him—but they were just like that machine from earlier. They hurt and they put him in danger. Still, they evened the playing field between him and the mana-users. He couldn’t complain too much about the pain, it was better than dying.

“That was too close,” the fox sighed. “Akumu is going to kill me, though.”

Now, he just needed to wait until the situation calmed down. I thought I wouldn’t have to sneak into someone’s deliveries again, but if I enter a travel nexus like this…

“Oh well,” he glanced up at the night sky. “Mission successful, I guess?”

But something still didn’t sit right about what he had seen in that laboratory. He had found what Amenias wanted—but why did it all tie back to that war again? Luce needed answers.