Zgax made her way through the crowds of the marketplace. Every bone in her body told her to run away as fast as she could, but she managed to hold herself back. “If I run”, she thought, “they will be suspicious. I need to move at a casual pace.” She stood on her toes to see how much farther she needed to go before she reached the transportation hub, then she could hopefully find a ship willing to fly her to a world on the rim of the empire.

Zgax needed to travel about a hundred or so feet to get there. Still on her toes, she turned to look back through the crowd. She saw the two Zarxion imperial guards she was sneaking away from talking to the owner of the inn she had stayed at. The man saw Zgax in the crowd and casually pointed at her. He probably didn’t know who she was or the significance of his compliance, so Zgax decided not to hold it against him. What she decided to do was run.

She was a good distance away from them, however they had their armor on. Their armor was similar in appearance to the armor of a simple Zarxion trooper, if that trooper’s armor was changed from blue to purple, accented with gold, and had horns attached to the head to signify their proximity to their draconic master. The crowds saw the gleaming claws of the emperor and moved aside. They knew the consequences of knowingly obstructing them from completing their divine duty.

Zgax made a split second decision and turned into an alleyway. She ran through the twisting maze created by the buildings of the upstart city. She quickly turned behind her to see three guards behind her, they must have had a duo set up at the transport hub. Imperial guards always traveled in pairs, so the odd number was a bad omen. Zgax reasoned that one of her siblings, or Metachrome forbid, her father. While her father was unlikely, Zgax did suspect her family was hot on her trail, and at this point they must be keeping tags on every transport hub on the planet.

As Zgax ran, she reached to her back and grabbed her glaive. Calling it w glaive was a bit misleading, as it didn’t have a blade. It was made of a dark black metal, and just like her gun, was powered by her faith in Metachrome, the first dragon and parent of the first Emperor, as well as the empire at large. But Zgax didn’t have much of that now. Even if she did, the inside was full of candle wax so she doubted it would work.

While this was a weapon only used by the imperial guard and the royal family, Zgax was confident her pursuers wouldn't actually try to kill her. That was unless they were receiving orders from her older brother Grazor. As if on queue, Zgax heard an earth shattering Bang and narrowly avoided a  shot from one of them. The alleyway in front of her was consumed by a massive explosion.

Zgax quickly turned to kick off the building to her right, giving her the momentum and height to reach a balcony to her left. She continued this until, in a matter of moments, she was on the roof about four stories high to the right of her pursuers. She knew they would be up in about a minute, maybe less, so she quickly made her way from building to building, trying to reach the edge of the city to make it to the wastes.

***

Zagx took a moment to catch her breath. The imperial guardsmen had never managed to catch up to her before she made it out of the city. Beyond the city were the wastes, basically a dessert of rubble. This planet, Alsin, had fought particularly hard to keep their independence from the Zarxion empire, and they suffered the consequences. Half of the planet was left in ruins due to orbital bombardment. The only reason there was a city out here was because the Zarxion empire needed a lot of metal for weapons and ships, and this area was particularly rich in iron without being heavily irradiated like most of the wastes. Most remaining life on this planet was on the other side of the planet that could actually sustain life.

The city Zgax had left was, thankfully, near the border of the wastes, so it should only take a couple days to reach the next town and a week to reach the habitable zone. Unluckily, Zgax didn’t have much food or water packed with her. On top of that, the city she was in, Tharkaz (Thar-ik-az), was not safe for her anymore, leaving her no choice but to take the risk. At least the worst that could happen was death.

So Zgax walked, using her glaive as a hiking stick. Without much to look at besides rubble and piles of rubble, she thought about how she got here. She had gone from being a princess, living in luxury, to an under-prepared wanderer who was probably going to starve to death.

After four or five hours, Zgax started getting tired. She was exhausted and sweaty from walking with not only her armor on, but a cloak on top of that. She wished she could take it off but her backpack couldn't hold more than her helmet, and she didn’t want to leave it behind. 

finding a crater to crawl into, Zgax got ready to take a quick nap. She was just about to drift into the great Phantasm (realm of dreams) when she was startled by a flash of pink light. She quickly grabbed her glaive, preparing to fight whatever threat the universe was throwing her way now.

But it wasn’t a threat. In the center of the Crater was a strange alien that the Encyclopedia of Monsters called a “human” holding a lantern. They had light brown hair that went down to her neck and makeup that had been ruined via tears. The human’s cloths were damp and the tights were not doing great

Zgax saw the human fall to her knees and start crying, dropping the lantern as she did. The lantern flashed one final time, however this one wasn’t blinding, and dimmed. It still produced a little bit of light however.

“Hello,” Zgax said in a language she had never heard until just now, “are you ok?”

Princess_Bouncy_Ball

the name Zgax has to be pronounced fast, if that helps.