Prompted Story Snippets

Whispers Across Worlds (and the secrets they hold)

Gunshots echoed throughout the halls of the abandoned building. Loud grunts and short screams flooded the halls as one side was cut down like a tree struck by lightning.

In the end, only one man was left standing. Tessen wiped blood off of the butt of his gun, smearing it over the side of his glove. 

He glared down at it like it offended him. Tessen's visor was also splattered with the crimson liquid, so it was rather easy to see why he hated it. 

He nudged one of the fallen hands away with his foot, staring down the dark building. Tinted lights flickered at the far end of the hallway, muffled sounds ringing across the concrete walls.

Someone hadn't experienced the bloodbath, and they were still alive.

Strange. Tessen's intel had told him that the members of this faction were loyal to a fault. That they would lay down their lives from one another whenever given the chance.

Tessen crept down the hallway, listening intently for the tinny echoes. He could just barely hear grumbles as well as some kind of fan. There was a large amount of electronic clicking like some kind of hardware working. 

Tessen stilled. The person inside of the room had gone silent. He could see their silhouette frozen on the wall opposite the doorway. Then-

Shing.

Tessen threw himself out of the way of the flying knife, bursting into the room while holstering his handgun. He might regret that later, but if the person he was hunting was this skilled with knives then he needed to be prepared for hand to hand fighting. 

(His mentor still would've called him an idiot. He was stubborn like that.)

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the shattering of ceramic. Lightweight but deadly in the right circumstances.

Tessen scanned the room, instantly locking eyes with a singular figure sitting in one of the office chairs. She raised an eyebrow at his defensive stance, casually tossing another throwing knife into the air.

"So you're the one they sent after me." Her silhouette was backlit by the computers behind her, but her voice was eerily familiar. Some very old memory tried to make its way to the forefront of his mind, but Tessen forced it down.

He kept scanning the room, taking note of the multiple monitors covered in code. Some of them were flickering with more technological things that he couldn't name, but he could recognize the occasional name showing up in the system.

"You think I'm here for you?"

"Well, dear Tessen, why else would you be here?"

Tessen stiffened, minutely adjusting the grip he held on the holster of his war fan. His codename wasn't something that anyone but the organization, his employers, and maybe occasional colleague would know.

"The faction. Not you. They didn't tell me anything about a cyber sector."

The room was silent for a long moment, the only sounds the whirring of fans and the occasional metallic chirp of the computers.

"Why would they tell you anything about my cyber sector? My work as Exalos has been a thorn in their side for a lot longer than you would think." Tessen blinked, filing away the name in the back of his mind. 

It sounded a bit familiar, but he really wasn't sure why. Something about a pair of traitors to the organization. Tessen swallowed, relaxing his stance slightly.

"It mist be tiring standing there all ready to murder me. Sit." Exalos waved at another one of the office chairs, holding her remaining throwing knife between two fingers. He sat, eyes still flicking around the room. She leaned forward.

"Quite honestly, I can see that you don't think of me as a threat. Why is that?" Tessen worked his jaw around, trying to think of an answer that wouldn't result in a fight.

"All of those people outside were trying to stop me from getting to you. Why would else would they be trying so hard to protect you?" Exalos laughed, flicking her knife over her knuckles in a ceramic blur.

"When a royal family goes off to war, who do they leave behind?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Her eyes sharpened. She stopped flipping the knife and pointed it straight at his neck.

"Answer the question."

"To my rather... meager understanding, they would leave behind someone who can take care of the kingdom. Someone that can manage a war if everyone on the front lines dies." A smile spread over her lips. Exalos stretched, flopping back in her chair.

"They leave someone behind that could win the war single-handedly if they had to. They leave behind someone that they know could go on without them. Why do you think the old king sends his sons off to war instead of going himself?"

Tessen gritted his teeth, staring straight at the infuriating woman. She raised an eyebrow in a way that was almost too familiar. 

"I know you."

Exalos' entire stance changed. She went from amused and relaxed to as tense as a bowstring in a microsecond, a second knife appearing from somewhere on her person.

"You're sure about that? I wasn't ever trained with you, Tessen. You're thinking of someone else, trust me."

Trained? Tessen had had several others in his class, yes, but none quite as distinctive as Exalos. How did he know her then?

"Well then you're almost exactly like them."

"It's been said." Another metallic chirp echoed around the high ceilings, a different frequency than the others. Exalos swiveled around in her chair and extracted a thumb drive from the computer. 

Tessen sprang out of his chair at the sudden movement, expanding his war fan with a flick of his wrist. The blades reformed out of liquid metal as Exalos turned around to face him. 

She lunged, an array of throwing knives pulling themselves off of the walls and hiding somewhere within her flowing clothes. Tessen ducked under her hit, aiming at her midsection with one of the fan's bladed edges. 

Exalos turned in midair, landing the edge of a knife along one of his carotid arteries. Tessen instinctually froze, giving her the split second she needed to pull him into a more secure hold. 

"Y'know Tessen, I do know exactly why you think you know me." Tessen tried to wrench his way out of her hold, but her grip felt like concrete around his limbs. She was a lot stronger than she let on.

"You must be confusing me with my sister." Exalos started putting pressure on his neck, Tessen's vision blurring dangerously fast. That wasn't right. He should have had more time.

The last thing Tessen heard before he was enveloped by the black was a tiny whisper, murmured right next to his ear.

"Cyridil and I have always been a bit of a matched set."

There is now a separate book entitled the Guild of Crystal and Ash where all of the stories within this universe are contained. Go check it out because there should be another continuation published!