I feel...
...The Last Signal...
...There is hope, but not for us...
...The Way Down...
Her scarlet cloak was uncomfortable at the best of times. Fitted without consideration for her armor, it was too tight and too short, almost as if it was meant for another person. Saturated by the torrential downpour and contrasting starkly against the clouded midnight sky, it was an outright liability now. Nevertheless, she gripped the uniform's collar tightly, securing it against her breastplate lest a comrade become fatally mistaken as to her identity. Scanning from broken buttresses to torn vaults with strained, bloodshot eyes, she watched the ruined cityscape with a restless mixture of fear and zeal.
A dark figure soared into view, heralded by wings of tattered fabric, followed by a smooth, black sphere. Faces emerged from it's surface, not unlike bubbles in tar, their features contorting with ghastly silent wails as radiant starlight erupted from their mouths, only for them to sink back into the abyssal depths. Stray shards of glistening sharpnel floated beside it, forming taloned fingers around pulsating red discs. Each hand connected to the abberration with coils of bandages adorned with luminous inscriptions. Flexing its three exposed spines of seemingly solid light, it convulsively gestured.
The sky was briefly bathed in an azure glow, as gamma radiation scorched his flesh. It was the same magic that killed his wife, his neighbors, everyone he ever knew. The magic which would soon claim him. He spasmed violently as nausea consumed him, the world seeming to spin in sync with sharp pain pounding into his brain. Roaring with savage fury, he screamed his incantations to the uncaring world. Stars pierced the clouds above, their dim light insubstantial amidst the dust and debris.
Then they fell.
The newborn stars, now in the form of colossal spears rained down, gouging irradiated wounds into the desolate land. As they buried themselves, the surrounding earth was torn apart with sunlight. For a fleeting moment, miniature suns, each sixty feet in diameter littered the landscape, their heat and tidal forces rapidly disfiguring it beyond recognition.
A putrid black sludge rained onto the desolate crater field. The midday sun was nowhere in sight, drowned out by the clouds of fallout that covered the ashen sky. Lying prone amidst the gamma-choked mud, a figure cloaked in what was once scarlet slowly recalled a vague memory. It was a distant, indistinct feeling, a haze of seeming indescribable emotions. It was disgust.
And so he cried, water pouring from porcelain ducts, the droplets mingling with the blasphemous rain. For a brief instant, he recalled something, something forgotten, something important, something that he could remember no longer. And so he lay there, shedding stoic tears for a reason beyond his own comprehension.
Lieutenant Dimitri Romanov had observed the duel from afar. Blackbirds were quite territorial, a rather troublesome fact considering that their attacks did little but berserk each other. Judging by the rain of stars, one of them had already lost it, not they had much of a grip on their mental faculties in the first place and Dimitri certainly didn't need two abnormally insane soul wells. For that reason, his crossbow was already loaded and trained on marginally crazier of the pair.
Hellfire congealed upon the weapon, tar-stained flames forming a grotesque phantasmagoria of ghastly maws and bleeding eyes. Shape memory alloys rushed back into position as a red-hot blur, charring his pale flesh.
It was a barbed mass of compressed fiber with a beta-amyloid protein coating, inlaid upon it in solidified aether was the cursive rune for slow. Said rune had been repeated several hundred times and accompanied by the runes for the engraving material. It was far from an elegant solution and rather time-consuming to manufacture, but it certainly did work, there was no denying that. Tearing through the air, the bolt impaled its mark. Azure tendrils tore through the stygian core in a fractal pattern, freezing the faces mid-wail. Soon, the rest of the blackbird succumbed to the same fate.
The other abomination eventually drifted off several hours later. Or perhaps those were days? He couldn't tell. Not that it mattered much. Cautiously wading over to the petrified blackbird, he dropped the crossbow, being sure to take note of its position as it slowly submerged.
Deep within the irradiated bog, a corpse stirred. Its quarry was here.
Grasping the weapon with its free hand, a rather slow process considering that the viscosity of the mire was similar to that of treacle, it carefully shifted it away. Swinging its other arm around, it placed another crossbow there and relinquished it.
Then, the corpse moved no more.
Having drained enough aberrant souls to, hopefully, stabilize the monstrosity, Dimitri grasped the shaft and, with much effort, ripped it free. The blackbird slowly rose, its wound already beginning to heal.
"Good work soldier, you're getting reassigned."
It stared at him, or at least it seemed to. It wasn't exactly the easiest to matter to discern, especially not amidst the black rain. Examining his cloak, it slowly arrived to its conclusion, a gravely erroneous conclusion, but a conclusion nonetheless.
"Follow me."
He reached for his crossbow. That his last action.
Readying its weapon, the new Headhunter marched off in search of another target. The blackbird followed.
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Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___ (Read 301224 times)