Everyone stared in complete disbelief at the cage in the back of the vault. The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife as they tried to understand what they were looking at. In the deep darkness of the cage, two small, mechanical eyes suddenly lit up with a supernatural glow.
Lyn Luban let out a loud cry of recognition. Pushing her way forward through the group with sheer force, she ran straight toward the cage and dropped to her knees in front of the bars.
“Blitzie! Yes! What on earth have those barbarians done to you?!” Lyn cried out in pure disbelief.
She turned around with a massive smile to the rest of the astonished group and pointed frantically at the creature.
“Guys, this is Blitz! To be precise: Blitz von Etherhart. He is a loyal member of the EtherCorps, just like me! He was made by the brutal force of his master’s Anting. His master studied legendary Guardian Spirits and tried to recreate one, with Blitz here as the living result! But do not be fooled by his cute look. He is extremely fast and deadly! But that is the point: his master is Nicola. So we must go and free him quickly!”
Silarias looked at Lyn with a broad grin. He cast a glance over at Aurelius, Nyx, and Jane, and then burst into a loud, booming laugh.
“Hahaha! Yes! We are absolutely going to free Nicola! And this little Blitz is just coming along on our adventure! But wait a second Lyn, so you belong with him or what?” Silarias asked curiously.
Without waiting for her answer, Silarias began staring into the air thoughtfully. He squeezed his eyes a bit and thought deeply. After a few seconds, his face cleared up completely and he slammed his fist into his palm with a loud crack.
“YES! You are coming with us! Our adventure is big enough to share! And more importantly: once we have freed Nicola, he will give us his complete respect and loyalty. Which makes him and Blitz one of us right away!”
While Silarias spoke, the cage of Blitz was ripped open and the little mechanical creature was set free. Everyone took one more deep, analyzing look around them in the mysterious vault.
But at that exact moment, something insane happened. As soon as their eyes fell upon the deepest secrets of the vault, the eyes of Nyx and the eyes of Silarias began to glow brightly at the exact same time with a supernatural light!
Nyx grabbed her chest and her breathing became heavy instantly. The silver light around her began to flicker wildly, exploding with small shockwaves. Her eyes burned with pure, raw energy.
“I feel it! My seal! How is this possible?!” Nyx brought out with a shaking voice as the ground beneath her feet began to crack. “One of them has been released! I feel it now!”
Nyx felt the energy rushing through her body like a raging tsunami, growing significantly stronger by the second. Her silver aura exploded and expanded for meters, making the stone walls of the vault resonate with the silver starlight.
At the exact same time, Silarias underwent a massive, visual transformation. His body began to grow and a thick, golden mane shot forth, waving like wild flames around his head. His entire posture became broader, larger, and terrifyingly muscular. The heavy armguards around his wrists began to glow intensely like molten lava. The legendary staff he carried began to shake so violently that the air around it warped, before melting together with his gloves with a loud, hissing sound. They became one powerful whole, forming into brand new, brutal Battle Gauntlets that radiated pure solar power and fire energy!
The discharge of these immense powers immediately took its toll. The vault trembled on its foundations from the pure pressure of their combined auras. Silarias wobbled on his legs and almost fell forward. Nyx grabbed her head and leaned heavily against a stone wall, which began to crumble under her weight.
“Silarias! Nyx!” everyone cried out in deep shock at the exact same time.
“You need to rest right now, this is way too much energy at once!” Aurelius shouted, trying to keep his footing in the storm of auras.
Silarias and Nyx looked at each other with a fierce, untamable look. Their eyes were still burning with the bright starlight and sun energy. Despite the hellish pain and sudden fatigue, they shouted out together with a voice that shook the entire hallway:
“NO! Freedom is almost here!”
They refused to give up. With great difficulty, they stumbled step by step toward the exit of the vault, in the direction where Nicola was locked up. But with truly every step they took, they seemed to get more and more brutal force back! The fatigue was literally burned away by pure adrenaline. They felt they were stronger than ever before, and the rest of the alliance could feel the atmospheric pressure rising with every single footstep the duo took.
Everyone stared after them in complete disbelief. The aura that now radiated from Silarias and Nyx was so bizarrely powerful that no one could find the words for it; the air around them shimmered and distorted as if reality itself struggled to contain their new forms.
There they stood in the massive opening of the vault door. Silarias and Nyx slowly but surely came back to full power. The heavy exhaustion made way definitively for a renewed, terrifying energy. Their bodies glinted and pulsed from the brutal, newly awakened power.
With a determined look, they walked with the whole group through the hallways, on their way to the cell where Nicola had to be imprisoned. But the closer the large group got to the cell, the louder they heard a heavy male voice talking. At first, they were scared to death and thought the gang leader had returned. With drawn swords and flexed bows, they stormed around the corner as fast as they could, ready for a bloody battle!
But when they flew around the corner, everyone froze on the spot from pure surprise.
The scene was truly bizarre. Nicola was indeed sitting there heavily chained on a small stool, but at this exact moment, he was being fed very quietly and with absolute focus by none other than Vulkan! Standing right next to him were his little sister Valeria and the rest of his gang members watching.
Silarias stared with an open mouth at the sight, looking at the concerned expression of Vulkan holding a spoon of food, and then burst into a huge laugh of pure disbelief.
“Hahaha! So this is what you had to do! That really explains a lot as to why you ran off so bizarrely fast just now, hothead!”
Vulkan looked over his shoulder for a moment, not even noticing the glowing transformation of Silarias due to his own focus, and shrugged his shoulders disinterestedly while giving Nicola another bite.
“He cannot starve!” Vulkan reacted dryly. “I had exactly the same idea as you just now!”
Nicola was meanwhile chewing with his mouth completely full of food. He looked at the binnengestormde group with a worried look.
“People, I completely understand if you do not manage to free me. The leaders of this gang are truly inhumanly strong, you must be careful…”
Vulkan interrupted him immediately with a light grin on his face and waved it away with his free hand. “Oh, that? Yeah no, those fools had captured my little sister. We just kind of worked together to get her out. Those guys are already history.”
Suddenly, Silarias stepped forward. He did not hold the bunch of keys up, but the glowing, just obtained fragment from the vault that was giving off a pulsing light.
“Yes, exactly! And we already have this fragment in our hands!”
He walked straight up to Nicola. Instead of messing around with locks or keys, he charged up his brand new Battle Gauntlets. The fire and sun energy exploded around his fists. With pure, brutal force, he grabbed the heavy metal chains and pulled them apart with one giant yank, resulting in an terrifying crack of breaking steel! The shards flew against the walls. Nicola was free in one single blow, except for a small piece of chain that kept hanging from his left wrist as a memory.
“There!” laughed Silarias, as he looked at his smoking gloves. “What annoying figures those were. Truly clear, brainless fools.”
The eyes of Nicola immediately filled with pure happiness. But that happiness quickly turned into an overwhelming tidal wave of emotion when his eyes fell on Lyn Luban.
“Lyn! You crazy girl! Hahaha!” Nicola cried out with a lump in his throat.
He jumped up from his stool, threw his arms around her neck, and lifted Lyn completely up in the air with a big swing. The tears were now flowing freely over his cheeks.
“I am truly crying with joy! I really thought I would never see you again!”
They began to hug each other closely and tightly, a reunion both of them had longed for for so long. Lyn wiped away a few thick tears with her sleeve and looked at him with a shining smile.
“Yes, I am here! And take a very good look at who we have brought along as well!”
Lyn stepped aside and showed Blitz. The little Blitz was a bizarre and cute creature. He looked like a living, glowing lightning bolt in the shape of a small ball with big, shining eyes. His entire little body pulsed with a soft, blue-white static electricity and small, innocent sparks jumped happily off his round body. He made a cute, crackling sound that sounded like purring, electrically charged hair.
Nicola’s eyes went wide with recognition. He immediately let a stream of his own Ether energy flow from his palms to feed Blitz. The small creature immediately began to purr enthusiastically with pure delight. Nicola began to pet him tenderly over his glowing little head. An emotional dialogue followed between them, full of whispered promises and relief.
Then Nicola turned his eyes toward Silarias and Nyx. Without hesitation, he dropped to his knees and bowed his head deeply to the floor.
“By this, Silarias and Nyx. I give my eternal loyalty to both of you. Thank you for freeing me, my little Blitz, and for making my Lyn laugh. I truly do not know how I will ever…”
Nicola was abruptly interrupted in the middle of his sentence by the heavy, warm voice of Silarias.
“Listen to me very carefully, Nicola.”
Nicola looked up. Silarias was standing there with a serious, intense look, while his golden mane gently pulsed like dying flames.
“You are one of us now. That absolutely does not mean that you are our tool to be used. From now on, you are our KIN. Our family.”
At that word, the entire room fell dead silent. It resonated deeply through the stone hallways. Silarias stretched out his arm and locked his forearm in a tight, brotherly grip together with the arm of Nicola.
“Just come with us. We ultimately have the exact same goal in mind anyway, you said so yourself just now. Do not just come with us to the university; we also really want to have you guys at the Ward. We are simply looking for exactly these kinds of loyal people like you.”
Those powerful words resonated like a warm shockwave through the souls of Lyn, Blitz, and Nicola. They felt the honesty and the unconditional acceptance.
“We are going with you!” they answered at the same time with a look full of determination.
With those words, the complete, reunited group walked back outside where the chariot was still waiting for them perfectly upright. They stepped one by one toward the large wagon. The horses snorted and stamped wildly with their hooves on the ground, as if sensing the renewed energy of their passengers. With a loud roar from the group, the chariot thundered out of the smoking hideout, straight toward the setting sun.
They looked back one last time against the backdrop of the smoldering ruins, where they saw the backs of Vulkan and the rest. A last, roaring shout came from the distance from Vulkan.
“Haha, do not think that I will take it easy on you now! But I will not forget this!”
Vulkan turned around abruptly. With a brute, epic swing, he drew his gigantic weapon and thrust it with unprecedented force straight into the sky. The metal of his weapon caught the very last, blood-red rays of the setting sun and began to reflect terrifyingly, as if he were piercing the sun itself. His entire gang followed his example, lifting their weapons synchronously into the air. It was a legendary, awe-inspiring sight that seemed to split the sky; an image of pure, unbreakable rivalry and respect that would be etched into their memories forever.
Silarias fell quiet for a moment and not much was said, except: “Expected nothing less from you, haha! Our paths will cross soon!”
He raised his arms in the air along with the rest of his group, including Apollo, Nicola, and Lyn. With that movement, Apollo and Nicola simultaneously shot a gigantic blast of Ether and fire energy into the air. The two forces collided high in the clouds and exploded into a bizarre spectacle of beautiful, magical fireworks that lit up the entire horizon in shades of gold, blue, and silver. After that, they stepped quietly deeper into the chariot while the sparks still drifted down behind them.
Memories have been made, but the adventure is only just beginning!