Читать книгу MODERN MAGICS - Tianyu (Tony) Zhu - Страница 8

Slowly, Sapphire made her way out of the twists and turns of the alley, as the sun slowly set behind the smoke and fog of the engines roaring in the distance. The dull colors of the gasoline pollution faded away as the light also faded from the sky, leaving only the faint, blue residue of arcane, whose thin threads of magic wove together like a tapestry in the night sky. She reentered the street, packed with the acrid smell of trash on the sidewalks. She sighed as the adrenaline finally left her body and she patted the dirt from the fight off her clothes.

Walking down the road, Sapphire tried to do an inventory check on what she had left, only to realise that she only had the wallet that she took from the workers and the clothes on her back. Meanwhile, the supplies Sapphire had were gathering dust on the other side of the city. To go back would be dangerous, it would mean that she could cross paths with the mysterious person tracking her, and the last thing she’d want would be to be brought back home, humiliated.

First, she needed a place to settle down, then the next day was for supplies. She made up her mind and started looking.

Sapphire pulled her dark hood down, as she approached a Lesser. “Hello,” She said, he turned his head and looked at her. “Do you know where the nearest hotel is?” He blinked for a second as if he couldn’t comprehend what she was saying, then he started quietly chuckling.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” He said as he pointed towards the end of the street. “There’s only one hotel in Novati, but that’s probably too expensive for you to go to. Your best option is that hostel right around the corner.”

Biting back a snarky remark, she thanked him and continued on her way. The faded neon sign that read “Hostel by the Harbor”, ironic given its location, hung over the low roofs above her. As Sapphire approached the building, she started to notice the smaller details: the walls that were covered with old paper advertisements, torn off at the edges, the sense of loneliness the building gave off, being the only building with light shining through among the ancient houses that were shut with metal gates and closed curtains.

She opened the door to the hostel, which was messily decorated with an assortment of bells and chimes.

The front desk clerk, who was snoring behind the counter with his forehead resting on the table, immediately perked up at the sound of the ringing.

“Welcome, how ya doin’!” The clerk’s eyes shone behind the mess of his hair as he spoke to Sapphire. “It has been a while since our last customer, would you like a place to stay?”

She nodded, not wanting to speak to him. Not minding her silence, he hummed to himself happily as he pulled open the door behind him and went into a dimly lit room. His footsteps grew softer and softer as he walked further away.

With nothing left to do except to wait in silence for him to return, Sapphire sat down on the creaking sofa behind her, the dark brown leather already stripped away and scarred from age. She stretched out her limbs, which were sore and tired from today’s encounters. Those drunk workers really wore her out, mentally and physically as she tried to hide from the stalker.

Sapphire crossed her arms and dipped her head down, plagued with anxious thoughts. How is my family reacting to me running away? How far away is the stalker? How has one of my family’s employees already caught up to me, when I’ve only been here for a week or so? How will I survive-

“Uh, hey.”

Sapphire’s eyes snapped open, and she stood up reflexively and knocked the sofa into the wall, ready to fight. All of her tiredness melted away in an instant as she focused once more, a behavior that was drilled into her head by her family. The clerk standing in front of her jumped back, surprised by her sudden movements.

“I got your key.” The clerk said nervously as he handed a rusted key to Sapphire.

“Th-Thanks.” She snatched the key out of his hand and quickly made her way up the stairs in an attempt to conceal her red flushed face, embarrassed from the trail of drool going down my chin, which she wiped off quickly. After a few seconds of walking down a small hallway, Sapphire approached and opened the door to her room. She quickly covered her nose in disgust as the overwhelming smell of some dilapidated mold washed over her.

Sapphire entered the room, furnished with a torn carpet, a bedside table leaning against the dirty bed that was missing half a leg, and a dent in the wall in the shape of said table. Some sinister green and yellow pulp sat in the far corner of the room, which she suspected to be the source of the smell. Too tired to care now, she promptly collapsed on the bed, which made a loud creaking noise. The protests of her muscles, which she had ignored while focusing on the numerous escapades she faced throughout the day, were finally silenced.

Without another thought, Sapphire Anaroth drifted off to sleep.

~~~~~~~~

“Please! I didn’t do anything!”

“Yes you did, you’re hiding a runaway!”

The yelling downstairs continued, faintly masked by the gentle rain outside. Sapphire quickly identified the pleading voice as the clerk and assumed the second voice as the stalker, judging by his aggressive tone. She rose from the bed quietly and put on my shoes. After checking her belongings one last time, she snuck out of the room which glowed blue under the moon in the midnight sky.

“Y-you mean the guest that arrived today?” The voice of the terrified clerk cried out as she approached the stairway leading down to the small entrance room.

“Yes!” The rougher voice yelled. “Where is she!?”

“The guest rooms are over there!” Sapphire could somehow feel the unsighted finger of the hotel clerk pointing towards her direction. She immediately turned to run, knowing that he would be right behind her. Sure enough, a moment later, a large silhouette of a man appeared on the wall, who was quickly making his way up the stairs.

Sapphire stepped back into her room, which was the fourth room down the hall, and shut the door as quickly and as quietly as she could. She formed an impromptu plan, as she held in her heavy breaths from bursting out. She was not well rested yet and she could still feel the soreness in her muscles, so she was in no position to fight him. The only options were to either hide or run, and since there weren’t any sizable furniture in the room, that left her with one option.

Sapphire snuck towards the shut window as the door down the hall creaked open. She pushed the window open. The little drops of rain sunk into her hair, as she looked down on the street a few meters below, which was nothing she couldn’t handle, as there were small footholds outside the window for her to hang on to.

The second door closed, and the footsteps grew closer. In the silence, she could hear his hand grip the handle, the individual mechanisms creaking.

Wooooosh

A strong and loud gust of wind blew down the empty street below. At the same time, the creaking of the door came to a stop. Sapphire blinked, wondering what happened. Did something reveal to him her position? Then it clicked in her head: none of the other windows were open -- only the one in her room was.

Heavy footsteps quickly began to thud down the hallway. Left with no option, Sapphire jumped out of the window immediately without preparation and fell awkwardly onto the ground below her. She clenched her teeth as her bones shook from the impact of the fall, leaving her ankles, which took the brute force of the fall, in sharp pain. Sapphire started running immediately, but because of her injury, she was barely halfway across the street when she heard the boots of the stalker stomping closer and closer behind her.

As he chased after Sapphire, the shadowy mists sprung onto his palms, forming two sizable daggers. They were strangely similar to Sapphire’s, but they kept growing, exceeding the sizes of her previous dull sparring swords, and transformed themselves into deadly longswords. Her eyes widened, his goal is to capture her, not kill her, isn’t it? So why is he using lethal weapons?

She ignored the pain in her sprained ankle and tried to put some distance between them, but it was no use. When Sapphire turned around the second time, he was right behind her with the swords in his hands, which were already high above her and in motion for a downwards strike. Sapphire threw herself to the side as the tip of the blade tore through her jacket, ripping through the rough fabric.

As she regained her footing, she started to hear other people chattering. The older buildings at the end of the street were brightened with the dull yellow light of street lamps, where a crowd wandered about in the narrow street. A good sign. She could definitely hide amongst them.

Sapphire made a split-second choice -- she could not risk another attack from him. It was not guaranteed that he won’t land his strike on her the next time. So, she came up with an alternative plan - one that was so risky, it could cost everything if she messed it up, but it was the only plausible option she could come up with.

Sapphire began channelling her magic as she continued running. The mist slowly stirred, crawling its way onto her arm.

Just a little more… she thought to herself as she pressured her feet to run faster, the pain steadily worsening as she hiked up the unsteady slopes of the muddy road, ever so slippery as it faced the constant battering of the rain.

Without looking back, she could feel him closing in on her as the hair on her arms spiked up in a dreaded anticipation. Judging by the sounds of his footsteps, he was only a few feet behind her now. With one last breath of preparation, she spun around and was met with his pitch black blade right in front of her eyes, rapidly closing in.

Barely reacting in time, she jerked her head to the side with a grunt, flinching as the edge of the blade drew a gash across her forehead, which cut off some of her hair as it went over her head. With the stalker being temporarily vulnerable due to his attack, Sapphire saw her one and only chance.

As he lifted his sword for another strike, Sapphire held her right hand out, which was now completely pitch black out to the forearm, covered by a thin veil of darkness.

With a final release, she expelled what magic she had left.

A small cylinder formed in the center of her palm -- it bloomed and spiraled into a solid beam of shadowy mist, which exploded out from her hand. A pain shot through Sapphire’s arm as the initial impact nearly threw the trajectory off course, but Sapphire quickly braced it with her other arm and expelled the last of her magic into the attack.

Though she couldn’t see his face, she could tell he was surprised by what she had done. She heard a low-pitched grunt for a brief second before the beam smashed into him square on the chest. The impact was so strong that he flew back to the other end of the street and crashed into a glass window beside the hostel. His dropped longswords briefly clattered onto the sidewalk before it spiraled into a vortex and evaporated out of existence. Meanwhile the hostel clerk could still be seen, his mouth agape as he wondered what he had just witnessed.

With the threat temporarily gone, Sapphire hunched down and caught her stopped breaths. She clutched her right arm, which was possibly dislocated from the initial recoil of the attack.

Not wasting any more time, she hurriedly limped towards the lights of the populated street. Bracing a hand on the wall, she rounded the corner and was met with a completely different street. It was completely packed with people - a blend of the poverty-stricken curled into balls on the sides of the street beneath the balconies of tall buildings and the average workers under their umbrellas and walking along silently.

Wiping the trail of blood running down her cheek with the sleeve of her jacket, Sapphire ducked her head down under the various umbrellas and blended in with the walking pedestrians.

The adrenaline still hasn’t left her body, leaving her with a jumble of thoughts and questions.

What the hell is my uncle thinking? Is he actually trying to kill me? Sapphire thought as she walked with her back hunched under the groups of umbrellas.

The man in question was no doubt a member of the Anaroth family, with those unique blades and that etched medallion. She could see the familiar style in his quick-paced slashes and strikes. But why was he using lethal weapons? Did Sapphire’s untrustworthy uncle actually want her dead or has that man gone rogue?

No matter the reason, this incident just added to Sapphire’s list of reasons to never go back: someone in the family was out for her blood.