The High Humans (1/3)

Worn shoes scrape across concrete sidewalk, and a hunched man shuffles down the street toward his house. With the man's slumped posture and unkempt appearance, he gives the illusion of being decades older than he actually is, despite only being in his early 30's.

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and this man's eyes are emotionally dead – killed by exhaustion and depression.

Slowly, the man shambles up the stairs and opens the door to his apartment. Immediately, the smell of rotting food wafts out, and the sight of a cluttered mess greets him.

Ever since his girlfriend left him a few months ago, the man just… stopped taking care of himself. 'I didn't use to be this way…,' he thinks sourly.

'Arg!' he curses in his mind. He slams the door shut with a bang. 'I don't want to think about that wench! I should've asked questions when she started coming home with all that jewelry.'

His salary as a historian is so meager that she really shouldn't have been able to afford stuff like that.

What's most infuriating about that woman is that despite cheating on him with his boss, she didn't actually tell him for 5 years. FIVE YEARS! That whore only bothered to confess after she secured another boyfriend for herself – a richer boyfriend.

'It's a good thing she told me through remote messaging,' he thinks while tapping the small tablet in his pocket. 'I'd probably have smacked her if she were right in front of me. Then, I'd lose my job and go to jail.'

'Ugh. Whatever.' Just thinking about that woman makes him so angry that the tiredness in his heart starts burning up. 'Crap. I won't be able to sleep at this rate. Well, I have to try.' He's got work in another 5 hours, after all, and he needs all the rest he can get.

---------------------

Just as the tired man is finally drifting off to dreamland, he hears a loud pounding on his door. "BLEH!" he yelps. At the same moment, he kicks so hard that his blankets fly off him in a crumpled heap at the foot of his bed. "WHO'S THERE?!"

He rolls over and checks the time on the clock on his wall. 'Midnight!?' he curses. 'I don't remember visiting any loan sharks! Who'd want to visit me this late!?'

His next thought makes his heart flare hot with rage. 'I know! That wench came to harp about her share of the bank account!'

Before they separated, they DID have a shared bank account. By law, his girlfriend gets at least half of his savings, even though she hasn't worked a day in the past 10 years.

This thought gets wedged in his mind, and with every step toward the door, his stomps get louder and more dramatic.

He reaches for the door and wings it open. "WHAT!!!???"

Seeing who's on the other side of the door, his anger immediately cools, and he wants to drop dead from embarrassment.

There, on his porch, is a young man and woman standing side by side. Both of them are wearing professional black and white tunics.

They also have a single blue stripe on their arms. It's Lareen Law that all mages have to have this stripe on their clothing.

Pinned on their chests are small, silver badges bearing a logo of a shooting star, circling around the three letters "MIS" – "Ministry of Innovation and Science".

It's an organization funded by the Lareen government that works to both manage smaller businesses, as well as to make sure that they're fairly compensated for sharing their new research.

But that's not important. What's important is that these people are from the government.

"We're sorry for intruding so late," the female MIS agent bows apologetically. "You ARE Mr. Belna, right?"

Mr. Lyr Belna goes red in the face and looks down in shame. "I am." He looks up nervously. "Am I in trouble somehow?"

Why WOULD the MIS come to his door – so late at night, no less? Sure, he deals with research, but his entire career orbits around obscure artifacts from the past and deciphering dead text.

Doesn't the MIS only chase after people who discover new technologies and don't share them? Why would they come after him?

"Read this," the male MIS agent says as he hands Lyr a clipboard with paper on it. "Sign it."

Lyr holds up the paper closer to his face (seeing as how he doesn't have his glasses on), and he reads the paper carefully.

On it, is written a contract for a job – sponsored directly by the government.

Of course, there are a few terms and conditions written, as well as some disclaimers that they're legally obligated to tell him…

'A live-in job… Top secret… Confidential… POTENTIAL DEATH!?' His eyes go wide as he reads the paper. 'Eh… It's 2 million Boros a month. That's more than I make in a year…'

He looks behind him and sees the smelly clutter behind him. 'Eh... Well, what's there to lose?'

Without hesitation, the man presses his thumb on the bottom of the contract. The enchanted paper, as if sensitive to his touch, suddenly glows briefly. Once the glowing is gone, Lyr Belna's name is printed neatly at the bottom.

---------------------

A portal hovering high in the air briefly shimmers green before spitting several people out. Luckily, everyone here is wearing little vests enchanted with levitation spells.

Well, more specifically, the levitation magic is weak enough that the planet's gravity will still pull them down, yet they'll drift down at a non-lethal speed.

Really, these vests are there to protect people from untimely falls, not give them flying powers.

The moment the people are hurled out of the gate, some of them drop a trail of vomit 2 thousand feet up.

Oddly enough, the historian, Lyr Belna, is the first to recover from his motion sickness. As he drifts down, he gazes in wonder at the sights around him – the rolling green hills, the gorgeous grey clouds, and the fantastical castle floating in the sky there, in the distance.

Once everyone lands on the ground, Lyr points up at the castle and asks excitedly, "Is that the castle you guys told me about?"

Mage Yesee is standing closest to him, so she answers, "Yes, it is."

The mage then reaches into her bag and pulls out a glowing red mana stone. "Put this in your levitation vest, then activate the spell again."

Lyr looks around and sees all the soldiers around him doing this as well. He doesn't quite know why they're doing it, but they're the experts here, so he complies obediently.

Once Mr. Belna attaches the mana stone to his vest, a subtle warmth starts spreading through his body. After a few moments, he feels himself start to drift upwards, along with everyone else.

It's not just the humans that start lifting up into the air; all around them are dozens of constructs with large, spinning blades atop them. Unlike the scouting drone from earlier, these golems are heavily armed with large mana stones and destruction magic.

(Of course, because the mana requirement for THESE golems is much greater than the scouting golems', these combative air golems have larger mana stones – making them heavier. With them being heavier, they can only fly for about half an hour before their mana stones have to be switched out.)

As Lyr gets higher and higher off the ground, he looks down and nearly pees his pants. For some reason, going higher up is infinitely more terrifying than going down. Don't know why.

Higher and higher they go. Eventually, they drift higher than the clouds…

---------------------

This whole time, their levitation vests are carrying them at a steady pace upwards.

However, once they cross above the lowest sheet of clouds, they're suddenly yanked upwards by some invisible force. Like a giant hand dragging a mouse by its tail, all the soldiers (and the historian) are dragged up toward the floating fortress.

"What's going on!?" Lyr screams at the top of his lungs. He'd liked to have sounded calmer, but the wind is so loud up here that he's afraid the others couldn't hear him otherwise.

"We're being held by a telekinesis spell!" Mage Yesee yells back. "Don't do anything! Just hold on!"

Yesee then starts weaving her hands and fingers into complex patterns.

Alas, even after she casts her first spell… there is no effect. The powerful magic gripping her hardly even ripples.

"F###!!" she curses. Yesee then says in a grim voice to her captain, "Ma'am! Those pointy-eared people… They're pretty powerful mages. I can't do anything to them."

As if on reflex, one of the golems flying beside them fires a bolt of lightning at the alien mages up above.

"SH#T!" Lena screams lividly, "HOLD YOUR FIRE! Pull your golems back!"

The human captain was ordered to avoid a conflict by her superiors... not that she's thinking of being aggressive otherwise. Given that the powerful Spiritual Pressure coming from these natives is strong enough to make her scared. It's much better for them to NOT start a fight…

'…And there's no way that alien survived. That lightning strike is augmented with more potent magic than a 5th Gate mage...,' Lena thinks sourly.

Frankly, Lena is expecting the aliens to kill them all now, now that one of her men just killed one of them…

All of these thoughts rushed through her mind as the lightning bolt struck the pointy-eared soldier – a rather beautiful man with long, brown hair.

However, the moment after the strike lands, the pointy-eared man hardly flinches.

Instead of immediately pulverizing the humans who attacked him, the pointy-eared man shrugs nonchalantly and continues pulling them up.