Work in Progress - Prologue

Breathing heavily, Eileen's head spun around, in search for a way out of her nightmare. Still in full sprint, her magic power exploded from her heels and slung her haggard body around the corner. As the black machinery along the walls whizzed past her, Eileen's feet carried ever further away from her prison. Beyond the bubbling pipes and churning pistons she would find her freedom, that was her desperate hope. Although her bare feet slapped on the hard steel floor, all she could hear was her own erratic breath and the rush of blood in her ears.

How long had it been since she could let loose and just run? Eileen knew the answer, but forced her brain to ignore it. Before she reached the next crossroad, her hazy thoughts refocused.

Stay sharp, Eileen.

Any mistake could spell her doom, and she only had this one chance. So when she saw an intersection come up, her strides slowed. Careful to silence her breath, she spied around the corner and found her pursuers, those alien creatures who dared call themselves human. Slick red robes made from plastics and a red hood to match hid their grotesque features, but she had seen their faces just minutes ago. Though she still understood little of the tower's real, hideous truth, she knew that whatever these things were, they weren't guardians of the peace, despite their self-proclaimed title.

Although she had been ever so careful, one of the beasts still found her. The thing froze up only for a second, before it raised its cylindrical weapon to take aim.

Danger!

Once again, Eileen wasted some of her inherent magic force to propel herself past the crossroads, and past the alerted monsters. Behind her, the gun's magic burst ripped a fist-sized hole out of the steel, but her body had left the floor behind already. When her legs touched the ground again, they buckled under the excessive force. Stumbling forward, she tried to convert the energy into a roll and fire back up, but her body wouldn't follow her will.

Too weak. Too hungry.

She forced another blast of precious mana out of her hands and propelled herself back up, onto unsteady feet. Her happiness lasted less than a second, only until she saw the end of the hallway. All the pipes led into a small room full of servers. The cables snaked all across the floor and formed dens along the walls. There was no way out. She was trapped.

With realization, despair set in. As Eileen sank to her knees, barely conscious, a silent scream escaped her muted throat. Not even relieving tears would escape from her withered eyes. With the monster's steps in her back, Eileen stared at her reflection in the unnatural, shiny surface of the floor. Somewhere within her face, inside those two pitch-black holes, hid her dim, sunken eyes. Her dried skin stretched over her face like paper. After its continued retreat, her skin had developed red tears all across her face and her mouth had turned into a wide, skeletal grin, to make a mockery of her misery.

The vibrant young girls had turned into a monster to fit her captors over no more than two years. Once she had realized the tower's goals, learned of her true duty, she had started to count. Day after day, through anger, anguish and resignation she had counted. 712 times, two years on the dot. Her brother was two years younger than her, so today would be the day of his own tests, the day he might retread her path. If there was one thing she would do in her desecrated life, she would spare him of her own fate. It was all she could think of to retain her sanity. Without purpose, she would have gone insane, like all the others.

She had taught herself to use her gifts beyond the lies the beasts had fed her, in secret so they wouldn't know. When the monsters had come to take her from the numbing comfort of her hamster wheel and into the unspeakable terror of the slaughter house, she had taken them by surprise and escaped, reached here.

“Target has been cornered. Proceed with caution until the threat is neutralized.”

The words of the monsters mattered little, for the cables to her left called out to her. They would lead all over the city, all the way down the towers, into the Aether which spanned across Astralis like a net. Through them, she could reach her brother, reach out one last time. She had never had any proper training in magic, but a faint hope was better than a worthless death. Determined to die with purpose, Eileen grasped her last straw and forced her shaped mana down the line.

Before she lost consciousness, one final thought remained:

Good luck, little brat.
 

Hermit's Note: This is the prologue to a novel I might end up publishing on amazon soon-ish. An earlier version of this story is already up on Royalroad under the title 'Ars Utopia' (Still need a new title), but this is a complete overhaul, so a lot is changed, especially in terms of style. I will probably still rework this version a bit, but this should be pretty close to the final product.

This week, I'll post a chapter on any day I don't post a new chapter for Enlightened Empire, so today, on Wednesday and on Friday, until I've reached chapter 2 (which is pretty much what I'm comfortable with posting so far, since those parts won't change much in the final version).