To Be Wanted

Rescue Mission

      I did not know what it was at first, the creaking I began to hear. Initially, I thought that it was the old floorboards creaking with the movement of the water, however, I then jumped up in the bed when it finally clicked in my head.
      The castle. It is made of aquamarine. The only things made of wood in this place are the doors. I quickly turn my head to the door, hoping so much to see Jet secretly checking on me. It wasn't. It was a Veltsen soldier.
      "Jet!" I scream at the top of my lungs. The soldier darts forward and grabs a hold of me, covering my mouth with his hand as he pins me to the ground so that he can tie together my arms, legs, and wings.
      I hear shuffling in the next room before the soldier tosses me over his shoulder and goes speeding for the window, busting it open in the process knocking me unconscious as he then swims off with me being dragged behind him.
      It took him a minute to process what he had heard, however, Jet soon bursts out of his room and finds the door to mine wide open. He peeks inside and sees that I am nowhere to be found.
      His eyes fixate on the broken window, his heart stops as he stares out into the dark, eyes now widening. He begins swimming as fast as he could manage in an attempt to find Caliama.
      He was really in a panic, his queen had seemingly been taken. He runs into a few of the guards who attempt to stop him from disturbing Caliama so late in the night, he simply pushes past them, insisting that it was urgent and that he had no time to wait around. He slams open the door to Caliama's chamber, startling her awake. Angrily, she sits up and glares at the concerned god.
      "What do you think you are doing?" She hisses at him, about ready to sic the guards on him.
      "Serrima has gone missing!" He shouts.
      Caliama is quick to call them off upon hearing that I had disappeared. She was in complete shock, however at the same time, Jet could easily be lying.
      The expression on his face was too real for that to have been the case however, the look of terror for me, worried about what they might be doing to me.
      "Caliama. I need your help to get her back." He began to sound so... Defeated. "This... I can find where she is but... Who knows what weapons they have. I am no longer immortal, I-I-I have lived too long. They can kill me easily. I can't do this alone."
      "For the queen of Iveska, I shall help you." She tiredly blinks. Swimming closer to him. "Return to her room and gather her things, then meet me in the courtyard, by the front gate."
      "By gathering her things, I am to assume you mean collecting the Marrow egg in case whoever took her circles back to take it?"
      "Yes. Now hurry, I am sure you are aware of how little time we might have?"
      He quickly rushes back up to collect the poor egg that was rattling about the room. He could only assume that the twins were as worried as he currently was.
      When he met back up with Caliama, every guard in the kingdom was by her side, each on alert. They looked fully ready to attack the first person they saw, aside Jet of course.
      "Alright, Fierlen," Caliama says. "Let's find our queen."
      He closes his eyes and uses his enhanced sight to search every inch of Iveska. He searched every nook and cranny until he began to search the Veltsen government building the prison camps.
      The stone walls were all too familiar to him, sending uncomfortable shivers down his spine, and part of him was relieved that he couldn't find her in any of the cells, however it also worried him.
      He then began to examine the newer, more modern areas of their government, the metal and drywall, paint and electronic lights.
      He saw all the weapons and machines that they were creating, the research and board rooms, using this much of his power began to make his nose bleed... Then, he comes across an interrogation room, dark, dimly lit with a large metal board, six straps attached to it, three on either side, the largest were in the middle, then the bottom and then the smallest at the top.
      In the room appears a soldier, dragging someone behind him. It was me. Jet watches as he straps me to the board, small amounts of blood dripping from my head from earlier, he restrains my arms, ankles and even my wings, which now stretch to either side of me, as though they were on display.
      He then presses a button and the board tilts so that I am not upright, practically hanging from my wrists. This is bound to leave a bruise later on, just saying.
      "I have found her!" Jet calls to them before racing off, practically leaving the group of Uriiempes in the dust whilst they follow behind in balls of water which were controlled by Caliama.
      It was at about this time that I began to regain consciousness. Though they were dim, the lights in the room were blinding with the pain in my head and I am still dripping wet. The soldier who took me begins to put together a large machine running off of its own generator.
      There was a sort of wand which connected to the machine via a long wire, the whole thing was metal save for the handle which was made of wood and rubber. My mind was a mess, attempting to figure out what this guy was planning, added to my racing heart and splitting headache, it was not a very good combination.
      In walked another man, a large grin on his face. I believe I heard the soldier acknowledge him as Altridem, the one person that I was dreading meeting the most. He practically had the sense of victory emitting from him, likely from his cockiness I am sure.
      "Well. I will admit, you are far different from how I pictured you to be. I cannot say that I would call you pretty, however you do appear more attractive than the beast I imagined those wings would belong to." He laughs, picking up the wand and turning it in his hand.
      He gently runs the end of the wand over the bridge of my wings. I would jerk away if I could, however, I could barely move, the only way I would be able to get away from that nutcase is if my wings were to be broken or cut off.
      "So, this is it then?" I question. " You kill me and finally take over Iveska? You do realize that you will have an uprising when people find out, right?"
      "And how is that that they would find out?"
      "Jet is out there, he will tell everyone that you killed their queen. Besides, everyone knows you guys have been trying to find me, that you would finally make your move on Iveska once you have gotten rid of me and as soon as you do, they will unite against you."
      "So confident, your majesty. How are you so sure that they will fight for you?"
      "Because anything would be better than having a psychopath like you as a ruler. I mean, even a duck would probably make better decisions for the dimension than you ever would."
      "A duck? Well, just so you know, by the time I am done, there will be nothing left for a duck to rule." He says with a slight smirk. He then turns to a technician standing behind him, over by the machine. "Switch it on."
      He flips a few switches and, as the machine powers on, I could hear the power humming within it, sending volts of electricity to the wand which Altridem had been waving around so carelessly.
      I mean, if my ankles weren't tied down, I would give him a swift to the face, or perhaps even send that wand flying and short circuit the system or something. I knew, as soon as I saw the look on his face, what exactly what that wand was for.
      He steps up to me and presses the end of the wand against my chest right below where the Snow Pendant sits under my shirt.
      It felt as though my whole body was on fire, I force myself not to cry out, no matter how painful it was, it was what he wanted. He looks at me curiously, tilting his head before turning to look at the technician. He shrugs and points to a dial on the control panel which was switched all the way to one side.
      "Hmm. It was set to full power... And yet, you still breathe, you still stare at me with such sorrow in your eyes." He looks to the wand and a devilish grin forms on his face. "I think that I can have some fun with this."
      He pressed it again, this time to my wing, right around the arch, where my wing connects to my back. The pain was far worse for some reason that it was on my chest. I bit my cheek so hard that I think I tasted my own blood.
      From behind the window in the wall across from me, I could see a man who looked much like Altridem, not exactly like him though quite similar, I believed him to be his younger brother Pironem. He did not look too happy with what was going on and ended up having to walk away from watching. Altridem places the wand back against my chest, then moves to my other wing, it was like clockwork for him, each time he pressed it against the same area and the pain got worse.
      I felt like passing out holding in my screams, or that my heart was going to give out. Altridem didn't care though, he couldn't kill me with the shocks alone, however I was more than sure that the endless torture would.
      I wasn't sure what would happen sooner, that I would give up, die, or develop resistance to the shocks. What's more, I think neither of us could figure out how exactly I was surviving each shock. After what seemed like hours of more of torture, though was more like three more rotations of his stupid, painful strategy, when I start to hear a commotion from outside the room.
      Altridem's eyes widen before forcing the technician to shut down the machine. They both start taking the straps off of and were beginning to haul me off somewhere when Jet bursts into the room, looking as though he had fire in his veins, and lunges at Altridem.
      The technician gets in between them and a few soldiers in the booth across from where we were joined in on the fight. I lay on the ground, weakly trying to get Jet's attention. Amongst all the ruckus, Altridem managed to grab Pironem and escape.
      Inside their little balls of water, Caliama and her guards float in and drench the machine, short-circuiting it, all the while Jet knocks out the soldiers before picking me up and holding me in his arms. Jet looks, out of the corner of his eye, at the Uriiempes.
      "Find Altridem." Jet says darkly. Caliama blinks at him, wide-eyed as they just stare at my weak body.
      "With all due respect, you have the queen back, Altridem is no concern anymore right now. She is injured, she is our top priority." Caliama insists.
      "He hurt her."
      "Exactly, who knows how much damage he did to her, if left untreated, she will die. If we head back to Corrisea now, we have the resources to heal her, to reverse the effects of what he did to her. Until she is better, Altridem should be of no concern."
      He couldn't argue with her. She was right, with every second passing, I was getting progressively worse. I could feel my heart failing. It would have only been a matter of time before I died because they decided to go off looking for Altridem instead of taking care of me no matter how much I think we all wanted to get revenge on him. While Jet and the Uriiempes took me back to Corrisea, Pironem was still not happy with his brother.
      "You didn't have to hurt her." He manages to say amidst his tired huffing.
      "I tried to kill her. Something was preventing that from happening. I at least got to watch her suffer." Altridem grumbles.
      "But she doesn't deserve to die. She didn't know she was meant to be the queen, that she was destined for all this. She only found out, what, two days ago?"
      Altridem turns to his brother, pure fury in his eyes. His little brother was making himself out to be a traitor, the person who was supposed to support him, the person he was desperately trying to save from being killed by Hades. He felt as though Pironem was against him, that all he had done for him since they were kids was for nothing.
      "Are you siding with her?"
      "All I am saying is that if you had planned more, let her feel safe until the end and then killed her, they wouldn't have gotten to her in time, it would have been too late. You jumped in too quickly."
      "They found her because of that meddling god." Altridem grabs hold of Pironem's shirt and pulls him so that he was directly in his face. "Don't ever question my judgment again."
      Altridem storms off, leaving Pironem behind. He could feel the chills returning, the same chills he got when Hades first appeared in the hall. He quickly left, knowing that the lord of the underworld was not going to be too pleased when he learns what happened and does not wish to be anywhere nearby when that happens.
      When Hades appeared, a look of sheer terror spread across Altridem's face. Something was amiss, as when Hades is mad, the fire that forms over his helmet and eyes is typically bright and wild, however, no fire was to be seen at that moment so whether or not Hades was truly mad was yet to be seen.
      "My lord." He gulps, backing up ever so slightly.
      "You got lucky, Altridem," Hades spoke.
      "L-L-Lucky?"
      "Yes. Whilst the girl has escaped with her friends, you did weaken her a great deal. If it had not been for that blasted Snow Pendant of hers, she would have perished right away and had it been your brother who had been in charge of your plan, he too would have been dead by now.
      My patience is running thin, Altridem. Fail me once more and I might just kill you both at the same time, and then, I will hunt down that insufferable queen and do the same to her. Have you got that?"
      "Yes, my lord."
      Altridem gulps. Once Hades is gone, he began to question what he had gotten himself into, however he knew that he couldn't fail again, he could not risk his nor his brother's life. He had to play it safe this time, Pironem was right, if he doesn't properly plan, it will mean the end of both himself and his brother.