I’m back? [Shane’s reintro]

A long sigh, one of relief, was released from the man’s mouth as he stood up from the ground, a crumpled body lying at his feet. His face was splattered with drops of blood but it was purple. A broken shield, snapped into half from repeated impact laid on the ground beside the corpse. The two of them had arrived at this clearing atop a hill through a dimensional portal. It was a last ditch attempt to escape, opened by the one now lying dead in the ground. The man was Zamza Mock, one of the last few High Envoy of the demon Drakodun.

Ten years ago, Drakodun had arrived on the planet Athea and within a year, had already left the entire planet in ruins. Countries, governments were destroyed. Humankind was split into two factions, those that had chosen to forsake their dignities and embrace their new overlord while the remaining twenty percent of the population had formed the rebellion. For the past ten years, the war had between the forces of Drakodun and the rebellion had been fought continuously. The rebellion had always been on the back foot. They were outnumbered. And in a world that had progressed along the rails of technology, the mystic powers that Drakodun had granted his followers had left the rebellion outmatched.

They could only escape whenever an Envoy appeared on the battlefield and pray for a swift death when it was a High Envoy.

Until the rebellion finally found their key to victory. Despite years and years of being pushed back, the rebellion forces had never given up on their experiments to create the ultimate super soldiers, to fight back against the High Envoys. The tides of war had turned abruptly when twenty super soldiers had descended upon the battlefield, fighting toe to toe against the mystic powers of the Envoys and High Envoys with their raw physical capabilities.

“It’s finally over,” the victor exclaimed to himself as he looked down on the corrupted human. The rebellion had taken the fight to the Temple of Drakodun himself, the demon himself abandoning his conquest when he saw it no longer possible to win, leaving his followers to face the wrath of the rebellion. And so began the slaughter.

Splitting up to hunt down the escaping Envoys and High Envoys, the bearded man had chased after three targets, the last of them being Zamza. He had unhesitatingly jumped through the portal after the High Envoy, wanting nothing more but to kill him, even if he was leaping into hell itself.

Looking around and merely grunting when he realized the portal back to Athea was gone, the man was just about to start figuring out what he had to do now when he realizing something was wrong.

No, it wasn’t that something was wrong. Something was familiar.

Brows scrunched and gazing around intently, the bearded man held up his arms and looked at his hands. His eyes widened in surprise, a glint of glee flashing by in his expression as a thought entered his mind. A long, forgotten thought that had never thought would be possible ever again.

His hands trembled from the excitement before he quickly balled them up into fists to keep them steady. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before letting it out again in a long draught.

“I’m back,” was all he said before running down the hill. There was tremble to his voice, emotions welling up in his throat. An energy that he had never expected to experience again coursed through his entire body, increasing his already enhanced speed as he barreled through the branches and trees in his way, arms crossed in front of him.

“This is it. The feeling! I’m really back!!!” And this time, he shouted.

By sheer luck, the portal had led to Fiore, and it wasn’t too far away from Era. As he walked through the roads, soaking in the city, its buildings and its people, memories began flooding back into his mind. And as those memories returned to the surface, an excited smirk at the corner of his mouth could no longer be hidden.

It had been ten long years. Ten years of longing and searching for a way back home. And it was fate that brought him back. But what he did not know was the decade he had spent off planet was merely one year here.

He didn’t normally shed tears, but the corners of his eyes were wet when he finally stopped his steps and stood in front of the grandest building in the whole of Era.

The Rune Knight Headquarters.

Dressed in a full-body combat suit that had seen better days, while sporting a full beard and moustache with messy and dirty blonde hair, the man ignored the piercing gazes that people were giving him and stepped right up to the main entrance. He had already cleaned himself up on the way here, doing the best he could. At least he wasn’t walking around covered in blood anymore. He pushed it open, his smile growing slightly wider when he saw Valorie at the reception desk and walked in straight without missing a beat.
His voice was gruff, and he had to clear his throat twice to ease the choking sensation before he could even speak properly.

“Hi, may I know if the Field Marshall and Director is still Serilda Sinclair and Mythal Ragnos?”


[904 words]

Shane’s smile went wide into a grin when he saw the change in Valorie’s expression from one of mild surprise to a sour scowl. She tsked at him with a small hint of smile before picking up the phone to dial for someone. The answer to who she was calling was quickly revealed. It was the Director. Excited to see his friend and former superior, Shane fidgeted slightly while standing at the counter, leaning on one elbow while waiting for the familiar face to walk out of the staff entrance.

In the short time that they were waiting for Mythal to arrive, Shane had struck up a conversation with the Rune Knights HQ’s receptionist. Normally Shane wouldn’t have much to chat with Valorie but he used this chance to know what had went on during the time he was gone.

Their conversation was cut short when the Director finally appeared. The man had went over to Valorie first, to get the details since she hadn’t been really helpful on purpose in her call earlier. She pointed him to Shane’s direction, with the Director’s gaze following.

Still leaning on the counter on one elbow, Shane cracked the most charming smile he could possible muster under the layers of dirt and grime crusted all over him. There were mud and dried blood in his hair, while the thick moustache and beard on the lower half of his face made him look like a homeless person. Oh, his clothes weren’t helping too. Torn and patched over and over again, Shane’s battle suit looked utterly terrible and did nothing to help his image. Coming to think of it, it was already a miracle that no one had tried to stop and question him when he walked into the HQ.

Shane nodded back to Mythal’s gesture, smirking when he heard the first words out of his mouth. He was betting that the Director couldn’t recognize him. During his talk with Valorie, she had revealed that it had only been one year since his disappearance. The passage of one year here compared to his ten-year stint on another planet had aged him appropriately and the aging hadn’t been reversed when he returned to Earthland.

The dirty man barked out a mischievous laugh when he saw the realization dawn on Mythal, the change in his eyes when he saw who it was behind the dirt and beard.

“Boss man!” Shane replied when his name was finally called but before he could even continue further, Mythal had grabbed him by his arm and pulled him off towards the interview rooms. Shane still remembered how he had once been in those rooms when he had applied to join the Rune Knights, but those memories were so far off now.

Like an angry mum marching their son back to their room, Shane was brought into the second interview room, the same one he had told Valorie to get Serilda to go to. Shane almost knocked over the table when he was unceremoniously shoved into the room while Mythal had slammed the door shut and locked it.

The hug had came very unexpectedly. Shane’s smile broke down slightly, touched by Mythal’s response to his reappearance. He knew the man wasn’t someone who showed his affections so openly, so it made the hug even more significant to him. Shane returned the hug as well before the two men stepped apart.

Shane took a turn around the table and pulled out of the chairs to take a seat. Plopping down into the seat, without a care in the world, with no looming threat of death breathing down his neck, the dirty soldier let out a small sigh of relief. How long had it been since he had had a proper moment to just sit down and relax, to release everything off his shoulders in the past ten years, was a question he found no answer to.

“Ten years ago.. No, it’s only one year here. One year ago, I walked into a trap. Someone wanted to kill the Magic Council member, I can’t remember his name actually, and part of their plan was to use me so that they could implicate the Rune Knights. I was injected with a hallucinogen that made me lose control of myself. I only wanted to fight and kill whatever was in front of me. Long story short, I almost killed the man with my own fists when my squad managed to stop me in time and brought me away. And the next day, the Council member was found dumped in a drain, dead from assault.”

“And here’s where the story gets wacky,” Shane continued with a mocking laugh.

“After I left, I happened upon a suspicious party of five individuals. They were bad guys, I caught them in the act, we fought and one of them threw open a portal under me and I was transported somewhere else.”

“When I woke up, I was on some planet called Althea that was at war on a planetary scale. Demon took over the planet, demon conquered the human race, small portion of the human race fought back while trying to find a way to win. I joined the rebellion, fighting every single day for ten whole years. Oh yea, time travels differently there, so while it’s only been a year here, it was ten years for me over there. And finally, we succeeded. We perfected the serum to create artificially enhanced super soldiers, I volunteered to be one of them. We managed to create ten super soldiers, and we stormed the demon’s castle. The demon escaped but we cleared out of all of his higher-ranked lackeys. I was chasing one of the lackeys when, surprise surprise, he opened a portal to escape and it coincidentally led back to Earthland.”

“The beard looks pretty good on me, huh?” Shane grinned as he ran his right hand through his facial hair. “How’s things in Fiore though? From what Valorie told me, things sound pretty bad over here as well. And I heard Doppo left too.”

[1014 words]
[Total WC: 2607 words]

The response that he got Mythal when he spoke about his outlandish tale of being transported to another planet where ten years there equaled one here was expected. He had been quite surprised as well when Valorie had given him the current year when he had asked, the puzzled look in her eyes unaddressed by Shane when he received the answer. To know that he had unwittingly gone through ten years of his life while only one had passed in Earthland had shook up his mind but after all he had been through, Shane had accepted the fact for what it was and moved past it.

However, Shane’s mouth dropped open when Mythal gave his response to his offhand question about Doppo. He had been of the same rank as Shane when Shane had resigned from the Rune Knights, and to hear all the weird rumors about the guy was quite unbelievable and funny at the same time. But wasn’t that half-dog, half-woman also a member of the Rune Knights? Shane knew there was someone like that in the Combat Corps, but he couldn’t really get a clear memory of her.

Mythal finally leaned back into his chair when the most distressing topic was approached. Shane got his abridged version of the ongoing war, and as usual, it was always Pergrande and Bellum that was right in the mix of it. Joya trying to place the role of peacekeeper was news to him. And how they had been nuked because of their intervention didn’t sit well with him. As he heard about the war, the blood in Shane began boiling again, hungering for action and it worried him. He wasn’t sure if it was due to the call to duty, to carry out his job as a Rune Knight and the want to help bring peace that was driving him, or if it was just because of the insecurity of knowing how little use he would be during times of peace. While the ten years of war on Althea had constantly worn down on him physically and mentally, he had developed a habit of being able to put his body’s need for rest on hold until the completion of whatever task or job on hand.

Shane was worried his thoughts would show on his face, using a wide grin to try and cover up his insecurities instead. “Time to drop back into the trenches then.”

“I guess getting captured and thrown into prison would be a shortcut to reaching you,” Shane let out a laugh as he leaned back further into his chair, if that was even physically possible.

“I’ve given it some thought on my way back. What if we don’t do anything about it? Everyone knows I’m gone, the Council probably has enough on their plates regarding the war. Why not use me in the dark? Undercover, espionage, all that stuff that the Rune Knights are not able to do because we have to stand in the light.”

“Granted the Rune Knights shouldn’t be dabbling in the shadows, but I do feel we need someone to stand against those who want to act against in the dark. What do you think?”

[533 words]
[Total WC: 4041 words]