A city in flames. A betrayal she never saw coming. Shackled and accused, Rein Lancer watches as everything she fought to protect crumbles before her eyes. Is she a pawn in a grander scheme, or has she been the enemy all along?
⚖️ Betrayal. Judgment. A crumbling empire.
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quoting naddr1qv…zgk4Rein sat with her back against the cold steel of the jail cell, wrists and ankles bound.
She hadn’t seen light or another human face in almost two weeks. The grinding and whirling of the Guardian’s mechanical gears was the only thing to break the silence, its daily arrival at noon serving as her only reminder of time. It brought her food, but nothing else; not a word, not a gesture of humanity.
In her waking moments, she sat and replayed the events that landed her in jail, and in her slumber, those thoughts morphed into haunting nightmares with specters stalking her in hell. Hell was no longer a distant fear; it had found her. Her fate now rested in the hands of the man she once considered her best friend. Whatever evidence he was putting together would serve to either absolve her or condemn her.
A sharp beam of light pierced the darkness of the jail cell from the cell block entrance. The overhead lights came on, and she stood as David, Rein’s partner and closest friend, appeared before the cell bars.
He stared at his feet and said, “Today’s your trial.”
Rein struggled to keep her eyes open from the intense brightness over the overhead lights and said, “That wasn’t nearly enough time to gather evidence.”
David pressed his lips together, eyes fixed on the floor. “I had your back on this, Rein.” Then he shook his head, and as Rein finally overcame the harsh brightness, she noticed he was staring into her eyes. “The evidence is damning. And, well, something pretty terrible has happened that has the government cracking down harder than ever.”
“Something terrible? What happened?” asked Rein.
“I would’ve never thought you were in so deep with this.” He seemed personally outraged when he said, “After everything we’ve been through together, after everything you’ve sacrificed for this city. You’ve been pretending this entire time. I’ve never known the real you.” He scoffed. “Yet there you are.”
“C’mon, David, you don’t actually think—”
David raised a hand and said, “Stop. Don’t try that shit with me. You’re lucky to even be getting a trial.”
Two Guardians entered the cell block and came to parade rest behind David. He opened the cell, and the Guardians stepped in.
“What did you find? What happened?” asked Rein.
The Guardians seized Rein’s shoulders and pushed her forward, past David.
“What did you find, David?” Urged Rein.
David remained silent. He simply watched as the Guardians took her.
A hush fell over the precinct as officers gathered around the flickering television in the corner of the reception room. Flashing across the screen were the haunting images taken from an aircraft of a city on fire, thousands of black silhouettes infiltrating the city walls. The words Shadow Crawlers Strike, Orion Dome In Ruins were emblazoned the bottom of the newscast.
Rein strained against the Guardian’s grasp to try and get a closer look at the screen and gasped, “Chronos have mercy.”
Those standing before the television turned and stared at her. Those seated at their desks stood at the sight of the Guardians ushering Rein through the offices, and within seconds, the precinct was heavy with tension. Everyone she had cared about now gaped at her with a fierce look of betrayal. Though Rein wished she could explain herself with a compelling defense, she could tell she was as good as dead to them.
The vehicle transporting her to the courthouse was as dark as the cell she had been locked up in. Rein ground her teeth and stared at the ray of light that shone through the slit in between the vehicle doors, contemplating what she had just seen on the precinct television.
After several minutes of toiling in the darkness with her own thoughts, the vehicle halted, and its doors opened at the hands of the two Guardians who towered over the roof of the hovercraft.
Many of the city people’s eyes, imbued in different shades of red, turned to stare as Rein stepped out. Their gazes were not so much filled with judgment as they were with fear. She stepped onto the walkway with her head sagged, ashamed to look at the very people she had sworn to protect.
Join the furnace of the Empire! Invest in Elius today and be a part of the Industrial heart of Aurial.
Rein clenched her fist as she contemplated the words on the crumpled flyer laying on the sidewalk beside her foot. She couldn’t help but think of what her father had been up to in that city.
She had never paid much attention to the image of the man on the flyer, his arms crossed and his head held high before a massive furnace that sparked embers into the four corners of the paper. The silhouette of a building was portrayed on one corner, a soldier held a weapon on another, the image of a child holding a toy on the bottom right, and a family held up a shirt on the remaining corner.
Those flyers were hung up throughout the precinct offices, inside coffee shops, and gathering places, attempting to attract the wealth that easily found itself in the pockets of the kind of people that lived in Roxis. It seemed to have worked on her father.
But what had he been up to?
Rein never understood why her father had abandoned Roxis for Elius, nor had he ever offered an explanation. As a financial hub, Roxis attracted wealth and intellect, leaving cities like Elius with a rougher class of laborers— many of whom turned to crime to escape extreme poverty and hard work in the very factories exhibited on the promotional flyer.
The city of Roxis had been good to Rein. Though many a passerby would think differently seeing her now with her wrists and ankles shackled as she walked up the steps of the Judgment House. She’d grown to be a God-loving woman and spent most of her adult life protecting the city from criminals the likes of which the people walking by, now, would think she was.
One of the Guardians towering at her side nudged her shoulder, and with the artificial voice generated from within its chest said, “You must move along, Miss Lancer.”
The robot’s hand ushered her forward, and a ray of sunlight nearly blinded her as she gazed upon the Judgment House made almost entirely of glass and marble.
The crest of Aurialian Empire above the entrance of the building made her pause. Her eyes lingered on the star that lay at the center of the red and blue shield of Ariel, the archangel. A character that looked like an angular and unfinished number eight with a line drawn through the middle sat like a crown above the words “Out of God, An Empire”, inscribed around the crest of the Aurilian Empire.
The symbol of peace felt like a cruel joke now. She had once sworn to uphold the empire’s sanctity, yet here she was, condemned by it.
Episode 2 coming soon…
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