Chapter 505: 505. Captured
There is a reason why the Southern Islands lack any functioning Teleportation Hubs. The spatial fabric in that region is notoriously unstable, making it impossible to maintain reliable formations or Waypoint Terminals. Attempts in the past have ended in disaster—travelers torn from their intended path, or worse, never arriving at all.
The North suffers a similar issue, though in a different form. Unlike the South, where teleportation is outright impossible, the North allows for short-distance transfers. A person can move from one mountain to another or across a frozen lake. But long-distance teleportation? That is another matter entirely.
The danger lies in the unpredictable state of space itself. At times, it can be unstable, filled with rifts and distortions that warp a traveler’s destination. At other times, it is so rigidly stable that the energy of teleportation bends around it, diverting the path. Imagine setting a course from Point A to Point B. Instead of arriving at Point B, the teleportation current redirects the traveler to Point C, a place never intended. Worse still, groups who teleport together may find themselves scattered—half arriving safely, the rest lost elsewhere.
The most terrifying cases are when the teleportation does not simply displace a traveler, but divides them. Bodies split, souls fractured, a person reduced to pieces across different locations. This nightmarish risk ensures that no sane authority dares to build major Teleportation Hubs in the North.
Because of this, Tyler almost never makes use of his Waypoint Terminal Unit.
The same misfortune had befallen the girls.
"I... I can’t smell Tyler..." Zuzia muttered, panic flashing in her eyes. Her wings spread wide as she shot into the air, frantically scanning the endless whiteness. Her voice cracked as she screamed, "Tyler!!! Tyler!!!"
The sound was swallowed by the howling wind. No matter how many times she called, there was no answer. No familiar presence. Nothing.
"Oh no... what should we do now?" Lanny’s voice trembled as she hugged herself against the bitter cold.
Myrtle, calmer than the others, narrowed her eyes and forced herself to think. "Panicking won’t help. First, let’s figure out where we are. Then we’ll move west. If Princess is still with us, she might be able to sense him." Her tone carried a steady assurance.
Zuzia descended slowly, her energy drained. She landed clumsily beside Myrtle, then collapsed against her shoulder with a groan. "Ugh... I feel so tired... Myrtle, carry me..."
Myrtle let out a long sigh but didn’t protest. "Fine," she said softly, shifting her posture to support the exhausted girl.
Minutes later,
Somewhere amidst the heavy snowfall, a large turtle shell slid smoothly across the ice, leaving a faint trail behind. Above the shell’s back, two girls huddled close, watching the vast white expanse roll by. The frozen wilderness stretched endlessly, no landmarks, no colors— only snow upon snow, glittering faintly under the pale light.
The world seemed both beautiful and merciless. As the turtle, Myrtle, carried them deeper into the snowy desert.
┉┈ ◈ ◉ ◈ ┈┉
Clack!
The door banged open so hard the hinges protested.
"Big bro!" a voice called, sharp with irritation.
A lanky figure filled the doorway, cheeks flushed from the cold and breath steaming in the room. The stench of cheap liquor clung to him like a second skin. He stalked across the top floor of the ruined tenement—a place that had once been a proud merchant’s house, now groaning under layers of frost—and stomped to the bed where a man had been sprawled like a corpse.
"Bro! Get up now, big bro!"
The man on the bed responded to the summons with a groan. He rolled over slowly, eyes squinting against light that had the sterile quality of snow. For a moment he looked as if he might sink back into unconsciousness, then he sat up, rubbing his temples.
"...ugh, fudge," he rasped, fingers digging into his scalp.
The caller leaned over the bed, impatient. "There are two people walking toward the ruins. They look lost."
The sleeping man reached for the bottle beside his pillow, then frowned when nothing poured out. He swung his legs off the mattress and tossed the empty bottle to the floor in disgust.
"Oi," he said, sitting up fully and fixing the younger man with a lazy glare.
"Uh?"
"Do you have any money?"
"Why would I have any money?" the younger retorted. "Didn’t Big Bro take all the emergency funds when we came?"
The older man snorted. He finished throwing the bottle and pulled a cloak over himself, entitlement and irritation braided together in his posture. "Right. Then we’ll just rob those two."
Outside, the wind hammered snow into white curtains. The ruined city—a skeletal grid of narrow streets and hollowed buildings—looked like the bones of something enormous, half-buried and forgotten.
Yumina and Luman picked their way along a cracked avenue, bundled against the cold but alert. Luman’s steps were unsteady; he still looked like a man who’d been dragged back from the precipice of death. Yumina moved with the sure-footed grace of someone who had learned to rely on her reflexes more than promises. Her lion-shaped gauntlets glinted beneath her cloak.
"Old abandoned city," Luman muttered, rubbing his jaw. "People say bandits hide in the ruins."
"We don’t have a choice. We’re lost. Let’s hope they’re not the violent type." Yumina’s voice was flat, but her hands flexed around the gauntlet edges.
They bumped into a cluster of men lounging near a collapsed fountain.
It was the same old man.
"So you two are lost," he said, spreading both palms in an easy gesture. "We can show you the way."
Yumina narrowed her eyes. "That so? You not planning to rob us?"
Yaso laughed, a brittle sound. "Rob? Please. This guy’s beyond broke," He looked at Luman, sniffing the air like a scavenger.
"And you—" his eyes lingered on the steel at Yumina’s wrists "—that gauntlet will fetch coin if you ever decide to sell. But around here, nobody’s buying much." He shrugged. "We’re not bandits, really. We’re just hiding from enemies. You can call me.Yaso "
"Yeah and bro’s enemies are officials." His lackey said.
"Shut up... what officials? They are just lackeys from the Sky Dragon Palace." Yaso said.
"So what do you want in return?" Yumina asked.
Yaso scanned her body for a brief moment.
He then produced a small wooden box from beneath his cloak and set it on the table between them like an offering. "Help us move this to the next settlement and you’ll get paid."
Yumina’s jaw tightened. "I will think about it."
"Fair enough."
Yaso then suggested they share a building for the night, then winked at the younger men around him. "If you’re a couple, you can stay in the same room."
Luman’s face went bright red. Yumina still kept a flat expression. "We’ll find an abandoned building if we want to sleep together," she said briskly.
They left under a sky of flurrying ash-like snow.
That evening, Yumina sat in a boarded-up room, Illuminating stones shining by her knee as she tinkered with the mechanisms in one gauntlet. The gears were jammed from a fall earlier in the day; she had been repairing and re-sealing them when the wind pushed the window open.
Yumina turned toward the open window as a gust of wind shoved the broken door. A faint creak came from the corridor; instinct tightened her shoulders. She snatched the lion-gauntlet from the table —its metal cool and reassuring in her fist— and moved to the door.
She opened it a crack and leveled the gauntlet’s lion-mouth at whoever stood in the hallway. The eye in its brow and mouth pulsed once, a low ember of red.
"Stop—it’s me," Luman blurted, hands raised, breath fogging in the cold air. He stepped forward, cheeks flushed, clutching something small and dingy in his palm.
Yumina’s brow furrowed. "What are you doing out here? It’s freezing."
Luman shuffled a pace closer, voice nervous. "I—found this in the hall. Thought maybe it was yours." He held out a tin can, dented and suspiciously light.
Yumina glanced at it, puzzled. The can’s metal had a cheap, greasy sheen. "That’s not—" she began, turning to hand it back, but it detonated.
A brilliant white flare erupted from the can. Light slammed into Yumina like a physical force; it ate color, sound, and balance. Her vision tore into a thousand shards of white. She tasted copper and sudden ice. The gauntlet flew from her hand and clattered against the floor, its teeth clicking uselessly.
Cold drowned her. Luman’s shout dissolved into a ragged gasp. For a breathless moment, all that remained was the terrible clean brightness and a ringing in their skulls.
When the light finally swallowed itself and the room slid back into dark, Yumina was on the floor. Her head swam; something hot and bitter ran down one temple. Luman lay beside her, curled awkwardly, blinking like a child. Both bodies felt leaden—numb, reluctant to obey.
Somewhere beyond the plaster, down in Yaso’s building, a voice that oiled cruelty with amusement grinned.
"Is it done?" one of his cronies asked, voice low and eager.
"Yeah, bro. Done," another replied.
Yaso’s laugh crawled into the ruined room through the thin wooden walls—lubricious and triumphant. "It’s been a while since I enjoyed a girl," he said, savoring the phrase. "Bring her here. If anyone so much as breathes wrong, I’ll gut them. I will give her to you guys after I enjoy her." His words hung in the corridor like smoke: crude, certain, and poisonous.