Soon Roun and Rueben were back to their feet, and even Zadavia’s pains were subsiding, allowing them to turn their attentions back towards three strange entities.

“Roun, no holding back—” Rueben sounded as he vanished from behind the bar and reappeared, with a surge of energy, next to Roun’s location. “—that order comes directly from your father.”

Roun’s gaze narrowed as he too wasted no time powering up, erupting with a set of green flames of his own. Much like Rueben, his clothing returned to the previously selected motif of black and gold, while his hair and eyes took on the colour of the energy that leaked from his body. However unlike Rueben, whose green flames raged about him, Roun’s veranos flowed in a spiral pattern much like his aesis tended to.

“Curious...”

The mysterious voice echoed in his head before he focused it and prepared for the battle that was at hand.

“What the hell are you?” Roun probed the three strange beings, whose bodies seemed less and less human by the second.

Their faces now appeared warped, twisted by the strange chaotic energy that flowed through them and warped their bodies as well. He watched, with puzzlement as the black-haired youngster melted into the ground and re-emerged from the shadows of his partners.

“We are the plague upon your people.” The black-haired one replied with a hiss.

“Pure and Soulless harbingers of destruction.” Came the almost metallic voice of the blue-haired one.

“Haima’sa, scourge of the Souled Parasites.” Finished the largest of the three haima’sa.

“Enough talk – end them!” Rueben commanded as he outstretched his arms once more and combusted the flames floating just in front of them.

Once again the result was an explosion of invisible force, but this time it impacted a barrier erected by the black-haired haima’sa. Roun watched as a kaleidoscope of colour flickered briefly, like sunlight reflecting off a bubble, while the force of Rueben’s attack was dissipated into the room. Tables and chairs were tossed about wildly as a result; while what little that remained unbroken behind the bar shattered under the force of the shockwave.

Roun took this as his chance to take off from his location, initiating a silhouette slide towards their opponents. Much like it did with his aesis, this slide converted his entire body into the green flames that he was forbidden to use. But while aesis’ primary property was that of spiralling motion, a property which it could passively pass on to environmental zeta, these green flames – his veranos – possessed a more potent and direct ability. Each quanta of zeta, bonded to an equal quantity of foreign energy, effectively doubling the potency of Roun’s energetic effects. But what was more was that this particular variant, which Roun seemed to manifest spontaneously, also possessed aesis’ spiralling motion, which combined with veranos’ bonding abilities to create an energetic vortex of sorts. As Roun moved towards his opponents, he dragged in his wake a tornado of green flames that intensified the further he travelled.

This allowed him to impact the shimmering barrier an instant after Rueben’s attack had slammed into it, anticipating that it would be temporarily weakened by that attack. But he had not anticipated the sheer potency of the attack that he would be launching. Rather than merely shattering the barrier, the tornado of green flames that washed over him on impact also blasted the source of that barrier into yet another nearby wall. Roun’s eyes widened slightly at the unexpected result of the attack, which distracted him briefly and allowed his opponent to get the jump on him.

During that brief lapse in focus, the blue-haired haima’sa had closed the short distance between himself and Roun and was returning the favour that Roun had done his friend. With Roun still set deeply in the stance for his dashing lunge-punch, the blue-haired entity delivered a powerful roundhouse. His body blurred with the speed at which he moved, preventing Roun from catching sight of the attack until the very last second. Luckily however Rueben had already sprung into action. Once again an invisible shockwave could be felt expanding through the small building, heralding the erection of a transparent barrier between Roun and his attacker. Roun grimaced as the strange creature’s foot smashed into the invisible barrier and rebounded, before he felt Rueben’s energy washing over his back.

Roun’s eyebrow tipped upwards before the strange sensation intensified and he found his body pulled from his location. It was as if he’d just blinked once more and he was next to Rueben, avoiding a double axe-handle that impacted his location. The two watched as the reinforced floor of the building cracked under the impact of this massive haima’sa’s bare hands and a visible shockwave of black energy exploded from the epicentre of the attack.

Unfortunately for Rueben, saving Roun twice in succession had left him open to attack and it was an opening that would not go unexploited. Dark tendrils erupted from his own shadow to latch onto him just as Roun appeared safely at his side, before they yanked him downwards and slammed him into the ground with incredible force.

This attack snapped Roun’s attention back to the battle, motivating him to action and allowing him to throw himself in the way of a follow up attack. Once again he vanished from his location with a green flash and an explosion of energy, appearing with a storm of green flames swirling around him and his forearms clasped together in the shape of an ‘X’. This allowed him to stop the advance of their blue-haired opponent, who seemed to move just as fast as Roun did but without having to energise his body. Luckily, Roun’s firestorm blasted him backwards, knocking him on his buttocks to prevent him from a follow up attack. Before Roun could capitalise however, he found himself dodging the assault of their massive, dark-skinned bruiser.

“Roc, Blitz move!” The black-haired entity hissed, forcing the other two to jump backwards as scores of black tendrils erupted from the ground to engulf Roun’s and Rueben’s location.

Within seconds, they were completely sealed off from the outside world, and it wasn’t long before their raging green flames appeared to be extinguished.

“Well done, Shade.” The large man now addressed the dark-haired energy manipulator of their group.

“Pathetic whelps…” Shade hissed with a grin. “Their inexperience doomed them from the start, Roc.”

“So, what do we do with the girl?” Blitz, the speedster of the group, inquired as he turned his attention towards Zadavia who had been crippled by fear as she watched the entire battle play out.

“I’ve never tasted Terran…” Shade’s gaze narrowed as he fixed his sights on the young woman. “Tell me girl, what flavour does you ki possess?”

“No… get back…” Zadavia could barely whisper, her voice cracking as she tried to mutter pleas that she hoped would keep her attackers away. “Don’t come near me… please…” tears streamed down her face as the three strange entities approached her, licking their grotesque lips as their faces continued to warp.

“No!!!” She finally screamed, erupting in purple energy that clashed with Shade’s iridescent barrier but failed to stop the three odd creatures as they continued to approach.

Unfortunately, her energy was nowhere near strong enough to even slow the group’s advance, making it extremely puzzling when, to the mortified young woman, they all appeared to stop simultaneously in their tracks. Soon they were being repulsed by the effects of her energy, which produced surges of zeta that rushed out from her body towards the edge of her extremely limited area of influence. It wasn’t long before they each found themselves thrown to the ground under the sheer force of this young woman’s energy

Panic and terror quickly turned to confusion for the young woman as the three lay helplessly before her, unable to move, before she noticed blades of light erupting from the shadowy prison that Shade had trapped Roun and Rueben in just moments prior.

As these rays of light pierced the prison’s obsidian carapace, cracks that shone with green energy slowly began to spread over the smooth surface of the strange energetic technique. But perhaps more pertinent to what was going on was the fact that the traces of gold flames danced over the tears in space itself, which seemed to have heralded the arrival of the foreign chaotic energy that powered the three equally alien opponents. Strangely enough, these bizarre flames which had manifested themselves once again, possessed the ability to repair these tears and close the rifts between the three haima’sa assassins and their power source. As Shade’s prison was destroyed by Rueben’s flames, Roun smirked at the fact that his odd ability seemed to have rendered them powerless once more.

“Good call, Rueben.” He nodded.

“I wasn’t sure it would work myself, but I’m glad that it did.” Rueben replied with a grimace, before returning nod of his own as he walked over to their three downed opponents clutching his shoulder.

Already they were beginning to squirm again. As expected, Zadavia’s attack wasn’t enough to put them down for any significant amount of time. So to remedy this, Rueben once again energised his form, summoning his green flames to erupt from his body before engulfing their bodies completely in his veranos. Roun gasped with shock while Zadavia turned her head in disgust as the flames consumed the bodies of the twisted creatures, but the young speedster would notice another odd trait of these haima’sa. As their bodies withered and was consumed by Rueben’s green flames, he noticed that their anatomy was not even remotely human. Their bodies instead were constructed much like his artificially generated braver-form, being simply machinery designed to run on the odd chaotic energy that they were able to summon and tap into. This made it somewhat easier to stomach as Rueben’s flames reduced them completely to raw energy, before binding to this energy and allowing him to absorb their power back into his body.

“That should slow them down.” He stated as he turned his attention back towards Roun. “We should get out of here before they return.”

“Return?” Roun’s eyebrow tipped upwards. “Dude, you just killed them!”

Rueben just growled lightly, combatting a mounting pain that seemed to increase with each channeling feat.

“They can’t be killed – only slowed.” He shook his head at Roun’s naiveté, correcting the younger and less experienced channeler. “We need to go, this place is no longer safe.”

“What, no wait, hold up – we came here to hide out.” Roun retorted, but Rueben just growled once more as the pain made him irritable.

“Roun!” He snapped sharply. “We don’t have time for this. Your father wants you in Genaisa immediately.”

“—but what about Zadavia? We can’t just leave her here.” Roun countered once more.

“She’s been cleared. She can come too, but we need to move now!” Rueben pressed, before summoning his energy once more and engulfing the three of them in a white glow.

Before Roun could continue to debate him or before Zadavia could protest to being involved, the three of them were standing on the fourth floor of the high-rise car-park, just metres from Rueben’s rented Detrel.

“Hold on now, I’m not going anywhere with either of you until you tell me what the hell is going on.” Zadavia quickly countered as she found herself transported against her will.

At this point Rueben was barely able to remain standing. Staggering on the spot as he tried to ragain his footing, he sighed heavily. He could feel Zadavia’s paltry energy reserves fill to their max as the young woman prepared herself to fight if she had to.

“Roun, talk to your girlfriend or I swear to god man—” Rueben started, only for Roun to cut him off.

“—whoa, hold up man. We’ve only just met and she barely knows me, I don’t blame her for not wanting to come with us.” Roun explained, but all this debating was just slowing them down and putting the two channelers that Rueben had been charged with extracting, at greater risk.

“You two don’t understand how this all works, do you?” Rueben snarled. “Those things are hunters – they exist to track us down and kill us. And I don’t mean us Itamis or us channelers, I mean us human-beings – people.” He explained. “They can’t be killed by regular means and they can sense veranos for hundreds of kilometres – so we have to leave and we have to do it right now.” He glared at Roun. “You!” He turned his attention to Zadavia now. “You’ve been associated with us, so they will try to track us via you. Now normally, if you wanted to go home and endanger your family and yourself, that’d be fine by me. I’d read about you in tomorrow’s paper and burn a candle for you before dinner. But – I have specific orders to bring you with us, so you can either come willingly or I can revert you right now and you can wake up in Genaisa on Thursday.” He finally paused, his green flames raging in response to him losing his temper and causing him even more discomfort. “You both have five seconds to get in that goddamned car.”