It’s crowded with strangers, and it doesn’t help. I inch closer to the tracks, when a particular group of young men catches my attention… and they reciprocate my look in an alarming way.
Drunks, I note mentally and take another step toward the tracks, ready to hop on the train when it arrives.
The men ogle me, something I’m used to. Jasmin often tries to convince me that I’m beautiful, yet I don’t possess the plastic perfection of social media models. I perceive myself as mousy, as my long, chocolate-brown locks are never styled, and I seldom put on any makeup to conceal my freckles. My full lips, heavy breasts, and tiny waist do the trick, my friend explains. “And if men look away from your hourglass figure, they’d find that you have quite interesting eyes, too!” she had said earlier today, trying to convince me to join her at the bar.
Well, these men seem to be interested in what I offer, even as I curl further in on myself, as one of them, a tall and bulky guy looking like a textbook example of a school bully, approaches me, accompanied by the cackling of his friends.
I shuffle nervously, looking around for a way out or help. Finding nothing, only distracted strangers´ faces, suspiciously focused on minding their own business. Just two feet away are the tracks, their metal bones faintly reflecting the light. Beyond them gapes another tunnel, or God knows what—boasting black emptiness.
Warily stepping to the side, I hear the welcome sound of an approaching train and rejoice at the squeak of the breaks and the headlight slicing the gloom before me. The tracks vibrate and moan with the weight of the carts, and I can see the cockpit and the man sitting there.
Our eyes briefly meet, and I see his widen with terror just as I feel a powerful, bruising shove in my back.
I land on the tracks, hearing the cackling and the shouts of “Take that, bitch!” from the drunks, swallowed by the rumble of the machine.
The landing is rough, the adrenaline rush suppressing the pain of my injured knees and probably dislocated right wrist. Perplexed, I stare at the blinding headlights of the train, approaching at breakneck speed.
Steely hands grab my forearms, my bones screaming in pain as a superhuman force pulls me out of harm’s way in the blink of an eye, a millisecond before hundreds of tons of metal turned me into a bloodied pile of minced meat.
I become a passive spectator of my own life, watching the massive steel wheels whizz by, inches from my thigh, and the metal monstrosity stops huffing and screeching. The whiff of oil and overheated machinery sobers me up, and I look around, hardly believing the last few seconds even happened, a nightmare of a moment that has me numb.
But I’m alive. And I turn to face the person responsible for that miracle.
The stranger’s fingers are still clutching my arms, bruising them, and feline green eyes, glowing in the dark, stare at me, framed by loose silver strands. The rest of his hair is tied up in something resembling a man bun, and he’s wearing—wait a minute, is there a Comic-Con or some cosplay event in the city tonight? Because this man, who studies me as I take in his appearance, white eyebrows knit together with concern, wears exquisitely crafted leather armor. It accentuates his broad shoulders and descends to a narrow waist. My gaze drops down to his hands, gloved in gauntlets encrusted with large, faintly glowing crystals.
The mysterious man parts his lips to say something, but a massive four-legged shadow resembling a car-sized dog emerges behind him. The flash of metallic tubes and sound of a smoothly running engine don’t add up to the pair of red glowing orbs of the mechanical monster. It freezes behind the stranger’s back, staring at me, too.
Then the tunnel explodes in light and sound, emergency lights blinking, warning signals deafening me. People with flashlights swarm the train track, checking the train bumper and shouting at each other. Looking back to my mysterious savior and the odd machine dog behind him, I stare at an empty space. The man has disappeared so fast that I speculate if the adrenaline or the alcohol mixed with my meds has made me imagine the whole thing.
Yet the purple prints of his fingers on my forearms confirm that he was there, and he saved me from certain death.
Cyrell-The Warrior
“A
s above, so below.” I was so surprised that this saying exists in the human realm, too. Some concepts make it beyond the barriers of time and space, I assume carried across the universe by the pulse of the Crystal Serpent.
I grew up in the dark tunnels of the Lower Lands, surrounded by the steam of our machines and the glow of our magic, so I headed to the bowels of the human world as soon as I set foot in this realm. It was the only place where I felt safe, less exposed. Men have built extensive mazes of passageways deep beneath their cities, with hidden, dark places where I thrive.
Cerberus and I found the frail magical tread that led us to the Anchor. Perhaps it had been my warrior instinct, my sharpened dark elf senses, or the gentle support of Cerberus, who is strangely fascinated by humans, but I had caught the pull of the magical anomaly long before the other Hunters, just as I had hoped.
We dark elves are the most depraved of the four kingdoms regarding arcane gifts, but what we lack in magic, we compensate for with technology. Our refined machinery is praised all over Faëheim, and our weapons never fail.
If I manage to capture the Anchor, harvest or subdue her essence, and return to my people, my home will have a more significant chance to stand against the Siphons than the rest of the Fae kingdoms.
All Faëheim Hunters track their prey alone; none of my rivals would share their intel or suggest cooperation, as each is trying to ensure the survival of their kind, of their own lands. And this is the way of Fae. Indeed, there are rumors about some twisted partnership—even friendship—between Tarcyll the Spy and Diaphonus the Priest, yet I take it with a grain of salt.
The last Anchor I’d discovered and stalked had been a large man in a cold human kingdom in the North. It took me years to catch his scent and find him, only to realize that the potent magic had drained all sense out of him. Maddened by a power he could not understand, he took his own life.
Cerberus and I spent years after that devastating failure exploring humanity, studying their machines, observing their ways from the shadows while keeping watch for the next Anchor manifestation.
I expected another bulky man shining bright like a beacon in this magic-deprived world. Yet that cool autumn night had a different treat in store for me. The magic trails had lured me to a tavern, where I stood near the entrance, music, light, and the stench of cheap alcohol contaminating the sacred twilight. Then the blinding radiance of the primal gift of the Serpent poured out into the night.
A stunning female, her proportions more lush than a succubus, her face more serene than a high elf, and her hair a graceful mess, passed by us, eyes concentrating on the cold ground before her feet as she rushed into the night. I patted Cerberus’s neck, ensuring I was not dreaming, and my companion huffed in understanding. My discipline and focus kept me from lunging after her. Traits that have served me well and helped me to survive the raw challenges that each dark elf warrior must face at their initiation. Yet the life-giving light that glimmered within her, the sensual sway of her hips when she descended the stairs to my underground hideaway, the dreamy look in her eyes… I was enthralled by her delicate beauty. Dark urges stirred within me, and heat rushed through my core. I have lain with many females, yet this human was something special. I felt my flesh hardening at the thought that soon she would be at my mercy, in my hideout, and then I could make her scream with pleasure.
Yes, she would scream, I remind myself sternly, but for another reason. The Elders´ instructions were to attach her to the Extractor: a unique machine that would drain her magic and store it to be safely transported to our realm. What would happen to her body in the process? Nobody knows.
And I shouldn’t care, I decide, thinking of the darkness that flooded my homeland’s tunnels after the Siphons´ attack. I force myself to sober up from my lusty daydreaming by thinking about the last time I saw my sister and her offspring—crying and begging me to stay, terrified that they might never see me again.
