"When the Angels came, I really thought everything was going to be alright. For about a day. Then they started telling us to kneel, and I knew what was going to happen. Maybe not exactly, but there was just the feeling. Earth is just not the place you come to when you want cooperation.
Fighting is all we know how to do." – Jacob Ramier
[Year 3 ASE | November 18 | 0700 Local Time | "The Road" (Transit Route between Bask and Fort Penn)]
"We're makin' damn good time so – probably about another week." Sara listened to Rider speaking through a half full mouth. Breakfast on the caravan was when everyone milled about and socialized between the trucks, whereas the days were mostly packed in and rumbling along the road or waiting for obstructions to be cleared. Sunset was always tense, setting up night guard and locking everything down.
"Been clear so far, yeah. God willin', stays that way." The man Rider was speaking to replied – a gruff looking, overweight man who too looked the part of a heavy machinery operator. Tattoos peaked above his collar along the left side of his neck, and he seemed to take some not of pride in the sheer volume of his dark beard. "Expected trouble at the outset."
Sara took a bite of her breakfast. Another of the pressed grain bars Grace had given her for the road. Honey and sugar and what was probably oats – to Sara it tasted like an extremely sugary spoonful of cereal from before the world ended. Sans the milk, which caused her to wash it down with gulps of water each time. She vaguely remembered them tasting better only a week ago. Distance from the valley had left her feeling that most things from it were somehow losing their luster.
"Brought some with us though." Rider's pal added after a pause. Sara met his gaze, looking down at him from the hood of Rider's truck where she'd perched. She'd happily taken to being seen and not heard in the company of her presumed escort. She'd gathered that the others in the caravan respected Rider, despite her coming to know him as a clumsy people-pleaser who she could chase off with a glare and was mostly inclined to give her whatever she wanted.
They didn't know him the way she did. So she stayed on or in his truck, and she was left alone. This morning she sat outside to eat, wrapped in a heavy coat she'd bartered for. Being almost fully obscured didn't keep the man's gaze from wandering up her body after his remark.
At least I know I don't fade like Bask's aura does.
"Sweetheart Sara?" Rider asked back, grinning as he traded his gaze between the bearded man and her. "Nah, she ain't trouble. Been nothin' but helpful the whole time. Can't go by that craziness before we set out, man. Basks's full of nutters, this here's a decent girl."
Sara kept her eyes on the bearded man, finishing her chewing and taking a swig of water as Rider reached up to her on the thigh.
"Helpful." The bearded man huffed out through a laugh. "Yeah I imagine, Jeff. Imagine she is."
"Well there's one thing I do for Rider," Sara spoke up. The bearded man tipped his head a bit, Rider blinked and looked up at her surprised. "…he hasn't gotta keep the heat on too high at night. Saving us on fuel."
The bearded man tipped his head back. Furrowed his brow, then erupted into laughter. Sara gave him a grin and shameless shrug, glancing down and over at Rider as the bearded man turned away to guffaw.
He removed his hand from her leg.
"Hey, you got you a rare one… Rider. Bet you're damn hopin' this trip gets held up. Lemme find out you're skippin' night watch because your lil' cab toy got you distracted." The bearded man, still laughing, clapped Rider on the shoulder.
"Never that, man. C'mon." Rider chuckled out his words.
They continued to trade remarks. Sara didn't hear them anymore. Her attention moved elsewhere, as she'd done her job. That was their agreement, formal or not. He didn't bother her, she pretended as though she'd transformed the cab of his truck into some sort of ridiculous pleasure den. It was strange how things worked outside of the valley, but she was quickly growing accustomed.
Life stayed simple, out here. A simple world was much easier to have advantages in, as opposed to the forced 'civility' of Bask. Distantly, she recalled Grace's face and missed her.
You'd have been a goddess out here.
But maybe you already are, in there.
She took the time to look around, finding the caravan as it always was in the morning. The rumble of idling engines, small fires started for those who insisted upon messily cooking things – the ones with children were the loudest voices about that.
The expected tension of hundreds of strangers being in the same place had spilled away by the fourth day or so. There was a sense of community borne of mutual benefit.
Maybe I'll just do this. Maybe they were lying about how the world is outside of the valley. Wouldn't that be some shit? Maybe after the first year or so the Nightclaws just… went away. Starved or something. I could do this. Whore or not, I always loved to travel. Maybe I'll hand over this letter and ask where Rider's headed next.
She made a face at herself, watching a boy poke a stick into a hastily dug fire pit between two trucks. Cinders flared, glowing as they floated away.
I'm being stupid. Focus on where you're going. It's free out here, don't crawl under the first guy who doesn't try to sell you to someone else.
The improvised camp was still a strange sight to her. She decided it was the mix of things which didn't bother much with making sense together. Old trucks like Rider's which rumbled and clanked even while sitting still. Newer machines which only had the low nearly sub-bass thrum of the drives 'gifted' by the Stars.
That all still confused her. What happened to get them all here still confused her. Looking around, she knew she wasn't the only one.
They'd supposedly come from somewhere else, from beyond Earth, appearing in the sky over major cities. Bright lights, like stars which had come too near. She only ever saw them from news broadcasts, and she recalled thinking they looked fake. It seemed like some sort of prank, but she couldn't figure out how it was coordinated across the whole world and why every news outlet and government seemed to be playing along.
Even when, after twelve days hanging above cities, the Stars began to speak to the world in huge unified voices which everyone could hear and comprehend regardless of language – even then, it was easier to think of them as some sort of prank. At least, that's what she thought the sane people did. A lot of people started calling them signs of one religious prophecy or another. A lot of people flocked to where they were, to kneel and pray and whatever else.
That was when the Stars started to 'bloom'. They grew, spreading out across the skies, and people stopped calling them Stars. Angels. The blinding, color shifting bands sprouting from them looked like wings, and some people claimed to see bodies at the center of the blinding light, so they started calling them Angels.
As Angels, they started giving gifts. They started changing things. Some people just suddenly knew things. There were sudden, strange inventions. Devices which seemed to use the same unbelievable energy as the Angel's wings. None of it made any sense to her as it was happening, and in those six months she thought she was simply in a dream. The world both moved along as it always did, and stopped and stuttered and changed direction wildly as the strange new guests gave gifts and made demands.
In the end, something had happened. As it always did, something took what was too good to be true and demonstrated it to be exactly that. Corrected it. So now there was this. Muddy caravans trundling along broken roadways, with diesel and gasoline burning trucks mixed among ones which utilized that 'gifted' technology.
Rider called it 'New-Tech'. In Bask, no one really called it anything other than necessary and life saving. The Angels were gone.
A lot of people acted as though the world had 'ended' after the Starfall. It was still here. They were still here, even if civilization hadn't really recovered well from the Nightclaws and whatever destroyed most of the infrastructure. As far as she knew, there wasn't much resource scarcity. Just trouble getting it, and keeping it where they wanted it.
There were too few people left for what was around to be spread thin.
"Sara." Rider's voice jolted her from her thoughts. She'd been staring at the boy playing with the fire pit, who was now joined by four other children.
"Yeah, what?" She looked down at him. His friend was gone.
"We're headed for water. Stream goes by the route. There are uh, falls. We get baths and all that there. You know, you're big on uh – baths and all so I thought I'd…"
Sara pursed her lips. "You're the one that needs it all the time, Rider. But thanks. Not really up for freezing my tits off in a waterfall."
"Yeah, right. I'm a fan of those too." He flashed a grin.
She didn't smile back.
His grin faded. "Buckets, fire. Use big cases for baths. Kiddos get first wash though – I mean we change out the water but… you know. Best to get them washed and bundled up quick. Ain't a good time to get sick, anymore. Ever."
"…makes sense." Sara muttered back distractedly, looking around again. "So it's always like this?"
"What's like what? The circus? We uh – we call it a circus because – " Rider began explaining, Sara cut him off yet again.
"Yeah I get it."
"Yeah – uh, yeah. It's pretty much always like this. Not so bad." He shrugged into his words.
"…then what's with all the claw marks. And holes. Looks like you drive through fuckin' hell every trip." She knit her brow, searching for the children she'd been watching again. They were being shouted at by what was either an older sister or mother of one or all of them. Sara couldn't tell.
Didn't seem to matter much here.
"Well." Rider started. Stopped.
Sara glanced back at him.
"That's from when it ain't like this."
[Year 3 ASE | November 19 |2200 Local Time | "The Road", Glass Falls]
"It was part of a national park. Uh, the national park. Lots of space carved out for just… nature. Here in Pennsylvania. Nobody cares about all that now but – shit, having places to pull the trucks in works out don't it?"
Rider was talking. Sara was listening. He'd told her a lot of things as they rode along. Mostly about how things had been outside of Bask and along the road in the past two years. He was vague about where he'd been before the Starfall, though he wasn't vague on what he thought it all was – some sort of Government experiment gone wrong – and she'd learned a lot about the upkeep and politics of the route between the valley and the fort.
Because the world can die, but politics will never shut up.
Mapping the road between the two settlements had been difficult, according to Rider. The Nightclaws didn't roam around at random anymore, but there were still known pockets of them that could be disturbed. She sort of knew that herself, as that fact was the only way she'd survived to reach Bask to begin with. Early on, they were just everywhere. Tearing everything and everyone apart. Sometimes her lack of nightmares about the creatures confused her.
Maybe it was that she never actually got a good look at one, but horror movies which didn't show the monster were always the scarier ones. The unknown was terrifying.
Then again, they aren't unknown. They're real, and we even know where they hide.
Rider told her the worst of the attacks were, from his experience, only in the first few months. After that, it was just trying not to trip over swarms of them. Most people retreated to safe spaces focusing on defense against things which weren't actually going out of their way to attack them anymore.
Bask was a bit different, he'd said. Bask was strange. But for the most part, it was the same pattern. Most people found ways to huddle together and only bothered doing anything when they needed more resources to survive and in some cases rebuild. Fort Penn grew not actually from a need for fortified defenses from the Nightclaws, but because raider groups were making life miserable in the area.
Fort Penn, Rider shared with her, was actually formed and run by raiders. They just weren't raiders anymore when they were the raiders everyone went to for protection. It was in a defensible spot, and was apparently right on top of something that fell during the Skyfall which made all the New-Tech run better.
World ended because a bunch of monsters came out and tried to eat everyone. Glowing god-beings abandoned us when it happened. And still after a few months, we were mostly fighting ourselves?
She wasn't sure what to believe. Rider didn't seem to have a reason to lie about any of it. He just seemed happy to have someone to talk it all out with.
"Not sure what this was called, uh, before everything. Got called Glass Falls because of how clear the water is. You know, early spring? Before the rains? Some of the little side parts away from the falls, they look like glass. It's pretty."
He paused, a spoon clanking along the inside of the can he was eating out of.
Peaches. He liked to eat canned peaches. In syrup. With the syrup.
"Do other people come through here? From the other outposts or whatever? Or does the Fort basically own all of this now?" Sara asked quietly, adjusting how she sat. They were on the top of the truck now, where there was a good view out over the caravan's night camp. The fires made it easy to see a good way out beyond the immediate circle. To her back, the sound of water from the creek.
She wasn't sure why or when she started staying up with him during his watch, but she had and neither of them drew attention to it.
"I mean yeah." He replied after he swallowed. "Yeah. If you call Zealots people."
"Grace always insisted they were." Sara replied absently.
"Who?" He asked back curiously.
"Nevermind." She shrugged. "People think they're people. Some people think they're people. They're probably people enough to need water – I was curious."
"Yeah. Well, like I said. It wasn't the monsters, after the monsters fucked off. It was 'people'. The raiders just… raided. Still do, but not so much around here because of Penn. The Zealots? Those folks… I mean, they were for sure the ones who decided the Starlights… Angels, whatever, decided they were gods or whatever. Still haven't let that go. And I dunno, seems to be working for them. They can still do all that crazy shit."
"You've seen it?" Sara gnawed her bottom lip, glancing over at Rider.
"Yeah. Well no. Well yeah – well sort of. You know, rumors. But uh – rumors from folks who ain't got a reason to lie. They do stuff with the new-tech that just ain't right. It's basically magic is what it is. It's people running all over that got it working like that, but the Zealots are the worst of them. Got all that tech, why can't they just make water or whatever? Kind of picked shitty gods if they'll let you starve."
"You said you thought it was just some Government shit anyway." Sara replied, squinting at him in the low light. "So…"
"I'm damn sure it was." He asserted.
"Sure, but as far as I can tell there isn't really a… 'Government' anymore. Not for the States." She pressed.
"Well fine. Then maybe it is that they got some gods or whatever. Still shitty gods, just shitty gods that managed to outlive a shitty government." His tone was completely serious.
His seriousness was why Sara laughed. "…okay, Rider. Alright."
"What? You know I'm right." He chuckled even as he defended himself.
"I… I dunno. I don't. I don't even really know what you're talkin' about. It was all just a blur for me and – "She stopped talking. Blinked a few times, looked away out toward the darkness lingering out of range of the fire light.
He remained silent. He always held still, nearly held his breath when she approached talking about herself. Like he was afraid he'd spook her, and she'd run off. Or stop talking.
He was right too. She didn't like to talk about it, mostly out of the feeling that there was nothing to talk about. The initial terror was horrible and brief and followed by confusion. She'd found herself alone in a world which had changed. But she hadn't. And it hadn't really either. Just become smaller, slower.
She missed the internet. Sometimes she missed her phone. But a few facets of life reverting by a few centuries hadn't been nearly as impactful as books and movies had made it out to be. Conveniences were gone, but the world was always dangerous, and people were still people.
She felt she should have more to say about it, but she didn't. To her, what she'd done to survive just proved that nothing had really changed all that much. Selling herself felt like what she would have wound up doing anyway, with fewer steps.
"Yeah. Yeah I get it." Rider muttered after remaining silent for a long while. She knew he was hoping she would speak.
Sara was even starting to feel some strange, inexplicable pressure to do so. To meet him halfway, or at some place between them. He wasn't so bad, when he'd had a bath. He was just a leftover of the old world just like her. She shared none of these thoughts as they spent the rest of his watch sitting quietly in the night.
[Year 3 ASE | November 19 | 0400 Local Time | "The Road", Glass Falls]
"Rider! Rider, w-wake up!" He jolted upright at the sound of her voice. She'd slept in the passenger's seat the entire trip, which his cot was tucked halfway behind. Not being alone in the cab helped him rest – he was also certain Sara didn't know it, but she had a way of chasing away nightmares. It was the best sleep he'd gotten in some time.
Sara kept telling him it was probably just because she demanded he bathe, but he knew better. He hadn't known 'better' in a long while either, and didn't quite know how to explain to Sara that she was that too.
Given her presence chased away the nightmares though, it wasn't her sudden voice which sent a tremor of terror running through him. He sat up and nearly slammed his head against an improvised hanging shelf he'd bolted over the cot.
Sara wasn't afraid of men three times her size, and according to her she wasn't even particularly afraid of Nightclaws. Not any more afraid of them than she was a bear, she'd told him. If she were cornered with one she'd be screwed, but that wasn't really worth dwelling on when they weren't around.
"Wh- what what – what…?" He threw his legs over the side of his cot, reached blurry eyed and confused for his rifle and –
Empty air. Nothing there.
His eyes focused ahead of him in the dim light. Sara.
Sara had his rifle clutched in her arms. She looked entirely too small holding it. Her green eyes were wide, a sheen of sweat clung to her brow. Her red hair was wild from sleep and what he quickly gathered to be a sudden waking. They hadn't been off watch very long.
She had freckles. He'd noticed them days ago. A random dappling of freckles around her nose, lips which were too thin unless painted in the specific way she managed to make them seem fuller. A relatively heart shaped face, with a nose that wrinkled when she laughed – only when she genuinely meant it though.
That's how he could tell when she was actually happy. Not by the sound of her voice, which she'd trained to be whatever someone wanted to hear but by her nose wrinkling, her dimples becoming visible, an exasperated roll of her eyes and tilt of her head. That was when he knew something had reached the girl who got buried by the end of the world. That was when he reached for a strange hope he'd wanted to remain a stranger to until he met her.
What he didn't realize until this moment, staring at her in the dim of the cab, was that she was capable of other emotions from beneath the costume of Sara The Whore. Fear was one of them. She was afraid.
"Sara what's goin' –" A flash took his attention away from her face. He'd reached his left hand toward her, which she'd pushed away and then gripped his wrist. Pulling him out of his cot as his gaze moved to the windshield. Another flash.
"What the f-" He started, she yanked harder to drag him up front. Another flash. Another. And now he was aware that he could feel them. Thumps, low thunder. A wash of static which prickled his skin rushing through the air shortly after each. Blue-white, casting harsh outlines against the trees. They were relatively close.
"Aww shit – Zealots!" He now scrambled forward to get into the driver's seat properly and start the truck. As he did, he was obstructed again. Sara was pushing his rifle into his arms. "Wh- yeah hold, hold on I gotta, we gotta get rollin' – swee'heart go through the back and make sure folks are up and –"
"No!" She snapped to interrupt him. "Listen! Listen!"
"What I am listenin' for, we gotta –"
"Shut the fuck up! Listen!" She shook him. He'd opened his mouth to speak once more, but found her other hand across his lips. "List. En." She huffed into his ear.
He held still. There was her breath against his ear, along with an errant thought which did not belong in this moment –
Christ she's warm.
And then nothing. The flashes out in the trees. The thumps, the static. What he thought was dust being displaced around the wheels and cab, a sort of rustling and brushing noise –
No way we're getting gusts over here –
Wait what are those Zeals fighting if they're not on our trucks –
Oh shit.
"They're. Right outside. Going toward the fightin'. I've heard one've the other trucks rev up, then some shouts. Then nothing. Think everyone in the back is already dead."
He remained frozen in place, blood running cold. "I would've heard that scream they do." He whispered back. "That sound will wake me out of anything."
"They didn't do it. They're not here for us I don't think." Given how close she was, he could hear her swallow a quiet gulp. He could feel her fear, and distantly noted that her accent actually got thicker when she wasn't composed.
Afraid. She's actually afraid.
It'll be alright Sara. We'll be alright.
The flashes and thumps ahead of them were growing more intense. Faster, more frantic. Were the Zealots stuck in a fight against the Nightclaws? Rider knew they always let off a horrific shriek when they were going to swarm something. The sound was difficult to describe while being impossible to unhear. It sounded like too many voices, if those voices were made of jagged metal, grinding and screaming overtop of one another in a tone which rose higher and higher before pitching out to something he was sure would kill a dog instantly.
He hadn't heard it though. He'd never seen them attack anything without that warning first.
This doesn't make any sense.
A bang cracked through the air from nearby. He didn't see a flash that time – this was ordinary gunfire rather than one of the Zealot's insane energy weapons. Another bang, then shouting. Then screaming. Chaos was building around them quickly. He heard trucks coming out of idle, saw high beams flare on outside. He could see what looked like a wave of darkness armed with talons and scythe claws turning upon one of the trucks already.
Fear twisted a cold grip around his gut. It was possible to beat back a swarm, sometimes. Long enough to get away from it, especially after they got whatever was particularly interesting to them. But they were clearly right in this swarm's path, and the worst had already happened. Members of the caravan were panicking, fighting back. He had to assume whomever was on guard when it started was already dead.
More gunfire.
"Rider!" Sara hissed to him. "If we just – "
He cut her off. "I can't do that. These are my folks. They've been your folks too for a bit. I can't just –"
"Nobody is anybody's if we're dead! Fuckin' shit if we just – "
She didn't get a chance to finish. Before she could, something heavy slammed into the passenger's side of the cab. Glass shattered, metal wrenched and twisted, and he distantly heard her scream over the chaos as she climbed over him to get out of the way. Another series of flashes, blue-white in color again, were now immediately accompanied by thunder which rattled his teeth. Throwing an arm around Sara to shield her, he lifted his head just enough to peer over the dash.
Sara was still screaming. He wanted to. He could only make out blurs. Shadows and lightning fighting in the near blinding cone of the truck's headlights. One of the Zealot's arms was alight, bright with a surge of that strange energy they wielded with terrifying ease. Rider couldn't tell if this one in particular chose to fight with one arm or he'd begun the fight with both and only had one remaining.
Nightclaw maws and talons tended to go straight through whatever they hit. It was easy to lose a limb to a swipe.
He watched the Zealot twirl in place, turning around and raising his glowing arm in the direction of a pack of the creatures rounding to leap on him. His light ignited them, a momentary flicker of hope and then – the light was gone. The Zealot was gone, blotted out by the nearest creatures and their gnashing bladed claws.
Sara was moving, tossing around under his arm. Scrambling for the door.
"Wai – " He started to shout at her. She kneed him in the side.
"We help or we fuckin' die!" She screamed back at him.
He shoved her hard against the steering wheel, reached down beside his seat and pulled the sidearm he kept wedged there. Pushed it into her hands. "Spares under the seat, grab 'em when I slide out."
"A-alrigh'!"
He meant to take a good look at her before he grabbed the handle and shouldered the door open, but there was just no time. By the quickly rising intensity of the havoc outside, the Zealots had migrated their fight closer to the caravan and now they were caught in it. Gunfire and Zealot weaponry crisscrossed through surging rushes of the horrid dark creatures trying to consume them all.
There was almost no way to be certain who was even fighting with who at this point, though there was a general informal agreement that no matter what 'side' anyone was on, surviving a Nightclaw attack superseded any other usual allegiance. He hoped that held up as he burst from the driver's side door, shouldered his rifle and pivoted left. Away from the Zealot which had just been swarmed over ahead of them, sickened by the knowledge that those Nightclaws would at least be busy feasting for a few moments.
He was firing before he was certain just what he was firing at. An instant later, he heard shots behind him. Sara, presumably having collected the spare magazines.
Come on, Jeff. Don't die tonight. Never tonight. Die later. Die later.
[Year 3 ASE | November 19 | 0405 Local Time | "The Road", Glass Falls]
Sara could never quite recall a Nightclaw distinctly. She'd concluded in her time in the valley that this was due to the sheer panic of the early days. Some sort of trauma suppression. That made sense to her, and she didn't think too hard on the fact that making sense out of it was likely the actual response to the trauma.
Now confronted with them again, she was dizzyingly aware of how obvious of a lie that was. It wasn't that she couldn't remember what they looked like. It wasn't that she chose to refuse the memory either. It was that she never actually got a good look at just one of them. They tended to come out of the dark – even in daytime attacks they had a way of being in dark places – and there was never just one.
They clawed over one another, the only distinguishable features being broad triangular heads and a matte black carapace upon which far too many claws and scythe ended appendages were mounted. They didn't really make much sense to look at – they didn't look as though they were built to be as terrifyingly fast as they were.
Maybe they weren't when caught alone. Maybe an individual Nightclaw was relatively easy to kill, and that was why the swarmed.
No one really knew. She did know that sometimes bullets did absolutely nothing to them, and sometimes they could be stopped. She knew Zealots tended to have a better time with them, right up until they didn't.
As she ran, she didn't have much time to think over how much she knew and didn't know. Instead, she focused on what was the most relevant to her: If their luminous red eyes set on her, she needed to shoot in that direction. That was the only warning she knew, aside from their scream. There was no way to know if being aware of that was what kept her alive, there never seemed to be any way to be certain of anything about the things. She just kept to that, and ran toward the brightest area she could see.
Three trucks back against one another, pointed outward. Running into the gunfire was likely a terrible idea as well, but that was significantly safer than staying where she was.
She'd lost track of Rider moments ago, after he shouted something to her about a stuck door and changed direction. Hearing words over the noise was nearly impossible, but when she'd turned to look he'd waved for her to go. So she did. Something had detonated back in that direction seconds after, but it wasn't the truck he ran to when she glanced to check.
He's fine. Just go. Just go Sara. Keep running.
"Filthy creatures!" The voice boomed in her ears from her left. "Arrogant stains of the Bottomless. Endlings! Eurindi!"
A Zealot. While she'd encountered Nightclaws before she found her way to Bask, she'd never actually had the displeasure of being in close proximity with a Zealot. This was as good an introduction as any. So far what she knew of them was that they used the 'gift' tech the Angels brought to cause huge amounts of destruction individually. They used devices they strapped to themselves, which glowed blue in the night. Those devices allowed them to do… things, things she could not understand. Throwing charged waves of force from their hands, or causing normal looking weapons they fired to belch blindingly bright bolts rather than normal rounds.
None of it made sense, and in this moment it mostly resulted in burning streaks being etched into her vision from where she'd accidentally been looking in the direction of one of those discharges.
Then there was their voice. Booming, resounding as though the air itself spoke for them, always coming alongside a tickling sensation along her spine and in her ears. Sometimes she thought she heard her own voice shouting with them, and only knew it was not her because of the sheer madness they managed to spew while fighting and dying just like everyone else around them.
"We are not conquered! Alighted, chosen of the Naiem! Next of the Khadryd! Rise, sister! Burn this wretched –"
She looked. Just in time to watch the ranting Zealot perform an awe-inspiring aerial cartwheel over a blur of darkness lashing out to run him down. Was the acrobatic move necessary? Practical? She didn't have time to wonder at it, but instead was caught for a moment at the ease of the motion followed by a landing which came alongside blades being drawn from his sides. One for each hand, plunged into the length of one of the nightmare creatures. A flourish, a spin of the blue glowing weapons, and the Nightclaw was torn in two.
" – swarm!" The shouting continued without much of a break. He didn't seem to need to pause to focus, let alone pause for air. His movements made the fight almost seem trivial. Almost.
She saw a claw catch him along his back before she turned forward to focus on running. Gunfire. Smoke. Screams. The Zealot seemed horribly out of place from the burning of her lungs and the determination to survive pushing her forward.
"Alighted! Go not to the ruddy dim flames of – " Something knocked her off of her feet. She stumbled, scrambling to both keep her grip on her Rider's pistol and thrust her arms out ahead of her to help her roll. She'd expected dust when she hit the ground, instead her outstretched left hand slipped as soon as it struck the ground. Something slick sloshing beneath her, which might have been oil or might have been blood or might have been ichor – she couldn't tell.
Air exploded from her lungs. She heard herself shout, pushed her knees under her and lunged forward in a reflex to be anywhere but where she'd fallen. She expected pain. Pain and then nothing as one of the creatures would pin her down after knocking her over.
Please just be quick.
The ground, again. On her side, a shove of her elbow turned her over. She fired twice at what may have been a shadow of the trees or a horror about to disembowel her. Not bothering to aim, she scrambled backward to try and regain her footing.
Dust flecked her face from the left and she screamed, turning as it was followed by a hot wind which smelled strongly of something metallic – coppery ozone, the distinct stench of Nightclaws – and by the time she'd tossed herself to face that direction the Nightclaw which was about to end her an instant before was thrashing and burning away.
" …- for their brutal weapons and crude tools cannot – AH!" The Zealot. Again. He'd hit the Nightclaw with something. Likely some 'new-tech' energy weapon, and killed it. Defending her.
She was back on her feet between breaths, searching in the direction the beam had come from. He was mostly obscured now, the Nightclaws closing in with their strikes coming faster and faster. It was impossible to make him out in the chaos as that darkness started to close around his light. For some reason, she imagined him grinning.
You fucking nut. How can you be happy to go out like that? Save yourself with all that power.
"Alighted!" He screamed again. Not the booming voice of before, but a scream. She could hear the pain in his voice. Feel it as she churned her legs under her harder to run for the improvise defense of the three trucks. "Go! Find your way to be amongst the –"
Why are you talking to me? Try to survive, damn it! Try to live! Why are you calling out to me?
She wasn't even sure how she knew the rant was for her. She never heard the end of it. The shouts devolved to cries of pain, and then nothing as she covered the last few yards of panic fueled chaos. She heard rounds whiz right by her as the travelers fired in covering arcs over out over the dark swarm.
Protecting people fleeing to relative safety, and surely not firing at them as the Nightclaws ran them down making for easier targets. Of course not.
Of course not.
She needed to believe that after near misses and another stumble nearly kept her from reaching the nearest truck. She dove for it, rolling and sliding along the ground. Felt a burning, throbbing pain in her side as she slammed into a tire, finding herself being lifted up by her arm before she could even shout in pain.
"Where's Jeff?" The question yelled over the noise. She could barely hear.
The face and voice was familiar. The beard. Rider's friend, who she'd never bothered to learn the name of. All she could do was shake her head, and he released her with a shove back against the side of the truck.
"Fucking fuck!" He was moving before she could say anything to him. Or ask where she should go. He'd shouldered his weapon and started off the way she'd just come from, walking and firing as he advanced out from the protection of the truck.
More shouts. Attempts to recall him by the others. She even fired at a group of Nightclaws that swerved in an apparent move to track him. She wasn't sure if she hit anything.
He didn't come back.