Author’s Note: You will understand the pictures two and three if you read the chapters first.

The Last of Shadow Templars
Episode-02: Trapped

Date: November 23, 3008
Time: 23:50
Location: New Leaf City

~Damiver~

Damiver Lazin fell, tumbling into an abyssal hole of darkness. The world around him crumbled down with his body, joining his ride to the bottom. And then, he hit the floor with a dull thud; fragments of concrete and steel clanged down all around his body, covering him in a pale layer of dust and debris.

Coughing achingly, he scrambled up, not wanting to see anything before he got out into the streets. Following the remainder of the crowd, consisting of party goers and fellow apartment residents alike, they streamed out of the building into the artificially lighted street.

From behind him, a voice called out, “Damiver! Goddamit Damiver where are you?” Whipping around, he found Felix, Michael, and Maldran together standing a distance away, separated by the mob of panicking people.

Ignoring his friends for just a moment, he in turn called out another’s name, “Nova! Nova!” Without a moment to spare, she answered right on cue.

I’m alive, I’m ok, she thought into his mind from an unknown location, I’m coming towards you. Even though they had been together for a year, her telepathy still scared the **** out of him. He had managed to start to learn how to block her imposing mind, but sometimes it was impossible.

Damiver felt the tingling sensation in his hairs as they rose on end. Nova’s presence had always made him nervous, but he had grown accustomed to it. Now, with the pandemonium ensuing, he suddenly lost everything he had accumulated over the year, retrograding back into the state he was in when he was still under the oppression of the Nexon Dominion.

“What was that? Did you see it?” Nova panted as she finally reached Damiver’s side. He grabbed hold of her hand and held it close, feeling her warmth mix and mingle with his own.

“No,” Damiver replied, still shocked at the facts of the proceedings, “But whatever it was, it’s big.”

“Hey!” A voice behind Damiver interrupted again. Michael, Felix, and Maldran pushed their way through the crowd that was still pouring out into the streets. The initial rain of twisted metal and building fragments had ended, leaving smoldering humps in little craters on the street. A few edifices were burning some distance away, and the wailing of a police siren echoed throughout the night. At least the law was still working…

“So you guys see it?” Maldran panted, quite out of breath. Apparently, none of them had been seriously injured by the collapse of the stairwell. Damiver shook his head in a solemn reply.

“Nah, all we saw was a big explosion and…”

Suddenly, a terrible and deafening extraterrestrial roar boomed through the streets, shaking window panes and rumbling the ground itself. Damiver recoiled at the sudden blast and whipped around towards the source of the altercation.

In the distance, the tall MapleStory Tower, modeled after Earth’s Eiffel Tower in France, stood tall and proud, a symbol of the great city to the nation. The lights aloft the edifice shone brightly into the sky, lighting up the lowest clouds with the New Leaf City nightlife.

And then, without warning, the beams were suddenly broken, flickering off and bringing darkness back into the night. By the lights of the skyscrapers around the tower, Damiver stood horrified as he watched the mighty tower crumble to the ground. Even from his distance, he could hear the metal searing and tearing off of its hinges as the structure collapsed within itself.

That’s when the crowd turned into a mob. Damiver felt fear rise in his throat as the people around him started to run in the opposite direction. In his mind, he had half a heart to find out what was doing this, but a quick tug on his arm persuaded him otherwise. Swiveling around on his feet, he met Nova’s urgent pleads with worried eyes.

“Come on, Damiver, we have to get out of here!” she yelled over the screams of the rabble. For the first time in her life, Nova sounded as if she were actually afraid of something. There was something serious at work here, and Damiver knew Nova could feel it.

All of a sudden, Nova’s eyes darted up; something dark and broken reflected in her watery emerald eyes. Damiver whipped around just as his ears started to register the shrieking. Running to the side of the street, he pulled back just in time as something large smashed into the ground, exploding into shards of steel upon impact. Damiver felt a piece of metal graze his hair as it soared above him, smashing finally into the window of a store.

“Sh**…” Opening his eyes once more, Damiver stepped back out into the stunned street to look at what had just rained down from the heavens. There, lying broken and burning on the ground, were the remains of the letter “M” of the once glorious “MapleStory” sign that was supposed to stand proudly in the foothills of New Leaf City.

“What the hell?” Michael asked, horrified as his eyes traced the burning letter, “Are we at war?”

Felix pondered for a moment, then replied in a hushed voice, “No, we aren’t.”

Maldran looked from the shattered sign to Felix’s grim face and then scanned the skyline in the distance, “How can you be sure?”

“Because this is way worse,” Felix replied in a ghastly tone. Damiver looked at his face which had gone pale. Over the year Felix had grown skinnier from the lack of exercise after the war, but in that instant, Damiver thought he could see the shadow of his former self, his captain mentality seemed to be trying to force its way back up from beneath the surface of his skin.

Right when Damiver was about to open his mouth to reply, another mammoth, earsplitting roar penetrated the night air of the city. It was closer now, and Damiver could feel the faintest remnant of what seemed like an aftershock to the “earthquake.”

However, as soon as the roar died down, it was replaced by another, more horrifying noise. Something shrieked through the air directly above Damiver’s head. As his eyes followed the object, it screamed into the top floor of an adjacent building and exploded in a fiery burst of glass and brick, tumbling to the floor to its grave. Damiver backed away from the twisted “P” of the “MapleStory” sign.

“Come on,” Damiver felt Nova start tugging again on his sleeve, “We have to get out, now!”

The five of them followed the chaotic mob as they made their way towards the subway station which was a few blocks away from the disturbance. Glad he was finally heading away from trouble for once in his life, Damiver let himself be swept down the stairs towards the train that lead to Kerning City. However, as they approached the tunnel, angry shouts met his ears.

“What do you mean we can’t go through?” someone shouted over the crowd’s heads. Looking ahead, Damiver saw the gates had been locked, and armed army personnel were stationed on the other side, their weapons armed and ready.

“Yea, haven’t you seen what’s been going on?” cried another.

“We have to get out of here before it kills us all!” a woman screamed at the top of her lungs. Damiver winced at her high pitched voice, but pushed forwards nonetheless.

“Excuse me,” he shouted over the malignant mob as they tried to push past the gates, “What exactly do you mean ‘It’s going to kill us’?”

The bewildered lady whipped around and snapped, “Didn’t you see for yourself? That thing has got to be thirty stories tall! It’s wiping out everything in its path, and that includes us! If we don’t get out…”

Suddenly, Nova’s voice boomed predominantly in Damiver’s head, drowning out all other voices, Damiver we need to get out now… Whirling around, he left the woman to scream again and the five of them regrouped at the entrance to the subway station.

“We have to get as far away from here as possible,” Nova repeated once they could all hear each other’s voices again. Her emerald eyes sparkled with desperation.

“That’s exactly what we’re trying to do!” Michael sighed in exasperation, “Now we have to fight through that crowd again…”

“No!” Nova suddenly burst out, “I mean we need to get away from this exact spot immediately! Something bad is about to happen. I can feel it!”

Then, several things happened at once. Damiver noticed Nova’s eyes dilate just in time. Swiveling around, he dove to the side just as something long and grey smashed through the air. Rolling to a stop at the opposite side of the street, Damiver’s own eyes widened in horror as it smashed through a ten-story tall building as if it were butter, and slam down onto the subway station, demolishing it like a Taurospeare in a china shop.

“HOLY SH**!” Maldran bellowed as a noxious fume of dust and smoke covered them. There was an annoying ringing in Damiver’s ears as he crawled through the debris to Nova. He could barely see a foot in front of him.

“What the hell was that thing?” Damiver heard Felix roar with a hint a panic.

Calm down, it’s gone for now, Nova’s thoughts commanded. The five of them recuperated and somehow managed to find their way out of the cloud of grey.

The street was now lit a sickly yellow, but not by the streetlights hanging above. Instead, natural light illuminated the environment, bringing sight in terms of fire and flames. Whatever the thing was, it was gone now, leaving a huge crater a hundred meters long. It ran straight through a building, which now stood as if it had been sliced cleanly in half with an enormous blade, directly into the razed subway station where hundreds of New Leafers lay entombed.

In the distance the behemoth roared again, moving away from the scene of destruction. Scattered fires danced in the night, seemingly oblivious to the human sufferings all around. Damiver held Nova close as they sauntered aimlessly down the street, their only chance of escape cut off. They were trapped here until the very end, no matter how bitter it was going to be.