Sarah complained the entire trip: all four seconds of it. The absence of light pulled at her skin, but without the owl's technique actively mucking things up, the skein wasn't as dangerous as she'd initially feared. The Light must have improved the terminus' defenses, or the Offal Sea's records weren't up to date. Regardless of which explanation was correct, Sarah came through the gateway with her body intact and was soon expelled onto a grassy hill beneath a burning, emerald sun.

She celebrated her survival by spitting out a mouthful of feathers. Sarah tossed her half of the owl's carcass onto the ground before rolling over onto her back. The stars seemed bright, despite it ostensibly being mid-day. She suspected the brilliant spectacle was because the seed didn't have enough atmosphere to obscure their azure glow.

A minute or two passed in what was essentially exhausted paralysis. Soon, a pair of footsteps approached her from the right-hand side of the slope. Sarah ignored both the dirty boots and their owner until Amanda leaned down and eclipsed the unearthly constellation. "So..." the parasite drawled, glancing between the blonde and the bird. "Did you change your mind?"

Sarah lifted her arm to give her ex the finger. Her wrist made it about six inches above her hip before flopping over her face. "Let's just say that something came up. Plus, you were taking a while; I was worried you'd gotten hurt."

"Ah," Amanda hummed, a little ashamed of her flippant dig. "No. It's simply been difficult to arrange everything safely. I did say this would be easier with your help, you know."

Her words were absentminded. Amanda mostly kept her gaze on the treeline at the bottom of the stumpy knoll. Beyond the willows clinging to the sandy soil, the tall trunks of Abraham's Regret rose up past their limp boughs and resisted casual inspection. Magical inspection too: the red-veined fronds were notorious in Sélune for their ability to skew divination.

"What have you been working on?" Sarah asked, her own eyes glued to the skein. "You never said what alignment you were pursuing."

"'Smell,'" Amanda replied, drawing her colleague's attention away from the gate. "Both as a noun and a verb. I was hoping my construct would be sophisticated enough to pick up the ranger's trail, but I don't have enough mana to get the coverage I need. I'd burn through my entire core before I'd manage to narrow it down."

"So, you've been sitting here," Sarah concluded. "Cultivating. Making use of the seed's effusive presence." She waved her hand around the verdant rise while Amanda nodded her head. "...You idiot," Sarah whispered. "What were you thinking?"

"That I care more about saving a man's life than I do about risking my own." Amanda scowled at Sarah's gob-smacked expression. "What? Did you think I'd deny it? I've already told you where my lines lay. We both know the stakes."

Sarah spluttered; she turned Amanda's parting comment over in her head. "I didn't need to tell Pallsburg shit, did I? You let her know what you were doing when we left."

"Not exactly, but she got the gist." Amanda couldn't quite meet the blonde's betrayed stare. "What? Are you mad?"

"Yes."

Amanda shrugged listlessly. "Sorry. If it's any consolation, I was fine with you remaining outside. If this took too long, I didn't want Juliette to worry."

Sarah thought Amanda could take her two-faced sympathy and shove it straight up her ass. "You understand that stuff like this is the reason why we broke up, right? Not to put too fine a point on it, but you lie all of the time. I'm surprised I didn't learn you were a woman by accidentally finding your bra."

Amanda winced before bobbing her head up and down. "I deserve that. I know you don't want to hear it, but I've been trying to do better. Be better. I don't hide things from Julie the same way I hid things from you."

"No," Sarah muttered bitterly, "apparently you bond over them, instead."

Amanda flinched at the churlish accusation and Sarah nearly bit her tongue. "Don't tell me that shit with Lionel was foreplay."

"No," Amanda hastened to reassure her. "I wouldn't use him like that."

Sarah found herself getting pissed. "But fucking your girlfriend with his body is fine?!"

"You didn't have a problem with it when I was dating you."

The two of them had begun to raise their voices, but Sarah couldn't bring herself to care. "I'm not the one who's trying to be a good person!" she snapped back. "I know I'm an asshole! I get it! I've resigned myself to being a member of the cuntiest clique on the planet. And you know what?" Sarah hissed while her tendrils squirmed beneath her skin. "It sucks. It sucks, it's sucked, and it's going to keep on sucking, but at least I'm not a huge, fucking hypocrite every time I act like a jackoff!"

Amanda's lips twisted in disgust. "That's such a load of bullshit. If you were half as heartless as you pretend, you would have grabbed a cushy host like Mannly."

Sarah sneered down the bridge of her nose. "Please, my grandmother's going to be dead soon, and it's not like she's going to will the house to any of my other feckless relatives. When she flatlines, I'll just sell it and..." The rejoinder got caught in her throat. Halfway through the snide retort, her eyes began to water. As much as she wanted to pretend the tears were from anger, Sarah knew that wasn't the case. She couldn't quite finish the sentence.

To Amanda's credit, the other warspawn didn't comment on her distress. There was a brief moment where she looked like she was going to press her advantage; however, she ultimately kept her peace. Amanda bit the inside of her cheek. She refused to look at her ex-girlfriend's humiliating breakdown. "Here," she muttered and held out a package of Kleenex, she'd fished from the pocket of her cardigan. "For your face."

Sarah kept her chin tucked against her chest as she pulled one from the wrapper. She blew her nose and then crumpled the mess into a ball. "...Fuck."

"Yeah." Amanda's cheeks were blotchy through her dark foundation. Sarah couldn't tell if the other infiltrator was embarrassed or upset and assumed it was a mixture of the two. Their spat had gotten increasingly personal the longer it had gone on, and Sarah had said a few things in the heat of the moment that she was beginning to regret in hindsight. Not enough to repudiate her criticism, but it wasn't a great feeling.

A strained tableau settled between them. Off in the distance, a dog howled, and Amanda listened to its mournful wail before the sound cut off with a yelp. "I should get back to work," she said before massaging her stiff legs. "You can head back to the reservation if you want. I'm sorry about what I said, earlier."

Sarah didn't echo the sentiment. The longer she remained mute, the more Amanda seemed hurt by her silence. A part of the reticent parasite urged her to apologize; however, there was a niggle of worry that Amanda was just yanking her chain again. Trust did not come easily to the chary invader, and her ex had a history of violating it. She shifted uncomfortably. Sarah thought about storming off, but the decision didn't feel right. Not when it might get one of them killed. She'd already survived one near-death experience today; if it helped her avoid a second, she was willing to put up with the seed. As for Amanda, well, the dark-haired warspawn wasn't willing to abandon their search.

The local mana field began to twist as the obstinate mage resumed her vacuum impression. First, throughout the grass, which had been brushing up against her tights, and then along the air currents circling above her head. From there, most of the motes were drawn into her body before being subsequently expelled through her nose. The only exception were the rare flecks suitable for her core; those she strove to retain a few inches below her navel.

Sarah whiled away the next few minutes by counting how long it took until the pressure differential was equalized. She didn't expect the wait to be very bothersome; the plants had already been imbued by the seed, and they'd long since passed the point of being able to produce mana on their own. Sure enough, barely thirty seconds had elapsed before Amanda was in a position to once again devour their largess.

The cycle repeated itself. Sarah let the two-tone beat rock her host as she tried not to sniffle like a child. In time, a faint odor began to make itself known atop the hill until it stretched from the crest to the foot. It smelled like muffins - blueberry, maybe, or one of those over-frosted sorts which might as well be cake. The scent was warm and comforting in the otherwise cold field, and Sarah recalled that she hadn't eaten much in her rush to get ready for their meeting. Her stomach growled. Sarah stubbornly ignored the sensation. She knew that if she traced the aroma to its source, she wouldn't find any relief.

Mostly because the origin was the faint trail Amanda was painting between the skein and the woods. Sarah frowned. The would-be sorceress was struggling to narrow her arcane ribbon and had turned her sightless gaze towards the tips of the crimson conifers. The rigid fronds of Abraham's Regret must have been obstructing her spell's dispersion.

"How far can you project the trail?" Sarah asked her once her curiosity overcame her discomfort.

"Right now? I'd say, two or three hundred meters. I was hoping the scent would drift a little, but I don't think it's going to work out. There's just not enough wind. It's a shame because a good cross-breeze could really extend my reach." Amanda eyed the dense undergrowth infesting the soil of the seed. She stood up and started walking towards the shrouded treeline. "I'll be back in a bit. Scream if there's trouble."

Sarah was prepared to scream on general principle, so that wasn't much of an ask. A better request would have been for her to keep an eye out because otherwise she might begin to wonder if this was Amanda's plan from the start. Had the shifty martyr always intended to imitate the hag from Hansel and Gretel, or was this her only recourse after Sarah's unrelenting obstinance? She wanted to believe it was the former, since that would divest her from this whole affair; however, the longer she sat upon the slope, the easier it was to see the shape of her scheme.

From what Sarah could tell, Amanda had possessed exactly two arrows in her quiver: one named 'Flowers' and the other labeled 'Scent.' Even while weighed down by her own inexperience, it wouldn't have taken a genius to successfully combine the two. If she could get one of them to generate a signal, which the ranger could recognize, then the other would've been free to focus on ensuring the message reached him.

It might've worked too, had Sarah been willing to play along. Once she'd refused to enter the terminus, though, Amanda had been forced to pull double duty while also braving the seed. It was dangerous - and frustrating - and had Sarah's discomfort ended there, she would've been content with calling these Amanda's just deserts. Recognizing such machinations wasn't the worst part of the wait, though. No, the one which really made her squirm was the way the overzealous romantic hadn't hesitated to step up to the plate. She was always doing shit like that. Moving forward; reaching for the world she wanted, instead of the one she'd found at her feet. Meanwhile, Sarah was left sitting by the curb, going nowhere and getting nothing. She was sick of it. Not because she thought she deserved better, but because Amanda's actions lent credence to the idea that improvement was possible. She honestly believed they could be seen as more than merely beasts.

Sarah's gorge rose. There was a worried squawk from within the thicket before Amanda came racing back like hell was nipping at her heels. "Time to go!" she shouted as she grabbed her ex by the arm. "Don't talk - just follow! We need to run!"

Amanda didn't wait for Sarah to obey and physically spun her around. Then, while she was still holding the stunned spy by the wrist, she began to drag her back towards the gate.

"What's going on?" Sarah asked as she was manhandled up the slope. "Did you find the guy we were looking for? ...Is he dead?"

"No and no. I've done the best I can, though, so now it's out of our hands."

There was a loud crash as one of the willows slammed into the ground. It sounded like it came from a few hundred meters away, deep within the tangled holt. Sarah cursed. She sped up and overtook her lagging companion. "What the hell was that?! Did you trip over the fucking guardian!?" Between her longer legs, and her well-honed cowardice, it wasn't hard to stay ahead.

"Yes? No?" Amanda huffed uneasily. "It's complicated. There were these... bears, I guess, and they were nestled beside a gigantic paw. In retrospect, I shouldn't have used something they could confuse for food."

Yeah, no shit! "Why were you even that close?! Are you trying to get the two us killed?!"

Amanda shrugged as they crested the top of the hill. Behind her shifting shoulders, Sarah could see a Prius-sized quadruped lumber into the clearing. The beast was slower than she might have guessed. Between its sharp claws and gaping mouth, it felt like the animal should be pursuing them at thrice its present speed. Maybe, because it had three times as many teeth as the grizzly it vaguely resembled. Arranged in a trio of concentric rings, around its lipless orifice, the incisors glistened with a phlegmy spittle and groped blindly at the air.

"Fuck me, it looks like a Vrawn. Run faster."

The eponymous beast was a familiar sight to anyone who had trained on Deravan. More akin to a walrus, than the Ursus of planet Earth, the greedy carnivores ranged throughout the coastal waters and frequently preyed upon the warspawn, who'd been sent ashore to train. Sarah had been chased by three of them over the course of her career. Amanda had actually seen six, although only one of those had pursued her for more than a couple miles.

"You know, this really brings back memories," the dainty alien mused. "I wonder how well it swims?"

Sarah gaped in consternation. "Are you screwing with me, right now?!"

"Yeah, a little."

The terminus was waiting for them with barely a ripple to mar its placid surface. From this end of the tunnel, there was no ridgeline to obscure the schism's presence; instead, the gate hovered in the air like a heat shimmer rising off of the blacktop. When Sarah focused, she could see multiple mana constructs looping around the outer edge. Feeding the motes back into themselves, until they became a tesseract of altered space, the Network had essentially pinched off a portion of reality and then sealed the opening against hostile intrusion. If they were lucky, the beast would be stymied by its defenses; if not, then they'd have to pick up the pace in order to stay ahead.

"Go - go - go," Amanda babbled as she waved the blonde forward. "I'll be right behind you."

Sarah didn't need to be told twice, let alone three times. Not when she'd already thrown herself at the translucent portal and discovered that the trip leaving was much smoother than it had been coming in. There was a brief flash of turbulence, since her body was technically in two places at once; however, the transfer quickly simmered down and left her feeling like it was over in an instant.

The skein spat her out by the base of the cliff. Sarah looked around to see if anything was still lurking in the brush and concluded that the trail was deserted, save for a few depressions in the trampled loam.

She took a step to the side in order to make room for Amanda while she fished her phone from her pocket. The device lit up with a cheery-sounding chirp. "The owl's corpse is gone," Sarah announced as her ex stumbled through the gate. "I shouldn't be upset about that, but it's making my brain go, 'brrr.'"

Sarah mimed shivering. It took the other warspawn a second to shake off the disorientation. "...Huh? Oh - the bird. Yeah, that's kind of a horrible omen. You know what's a worse one? The fact that you're not still running." She gave Sarah a firm push and started jogging back towards the meadow.

It took longer to traverse the trail than either of them would have liked. They just couldn't go very fast without sliding down the precarious slope. Given a choice between taking their time and having the berm give way beneath their feet, they decided to play it safe. Fortunately, they didn't see much sign of the misshapen bear and soon emerged into a starlit clearing.

Pallsburg was lazing about in the grass with her legs crossed at the knee. Her back was braced by one of the monuments, and beside her there were a couple of flower plots smeared with carbonized ash. The wood sorrel appeared to have taken the worst of the abuse; the destruction was easier to spot amidst the yarrow, though, because their bright colors showed the desiccation more clearly. "Hey!" Amanda hollered, startling the distracted sorceress. "Are you missing anything, because we are officially on the clock!"

Pallsburg had trouble shifting gears. "I- no, my bag's right here. Why? Did you two get into an argument?"

"We ran into a wild bear," Sarah explained, favoring efficiency over detail. "The animal was a lot more aggressive than I'm making it sound."

Pallsburg grabbed her backpack by its sun-bleached strap. "Got it. Are we leaving the way we came in?"

Amanda glanced between the trail Dermith had taken and the more overgrown hedge the trio had chosen to cut through. "Yeah, I'd say rougher is better."

It was hard to tell from where they were standing, but there was a decent chance the beast would need to knock down a couple of trees if it wanted to follow them through the brush. When each cramped impasse could add another second to their lead, it was ostensibly the safest option. Shorter too; the western route swung around through most of the park before running up against the interstate.

The wind released a deafening howl as it throttled the distant treetops. Sarah winced at the unsettling sound and threw a nervous glance back towards the skein. The tumultuous racket made it hard to tell if the brute was skulking along behind them. She tried to taste the mana, in order to pin down its location; however, all the field told her was that a storm was coming later this evening. With luck, it wouldn't arrive until well after midnight.

"We need to move," Sarah reminded them as she reached for the wilted brambles. "If the undergrowth becomes a problem, we can always cut around." There should be a side-road nearby - Wampachuckette or something like that. The street had one of those complicated, First Nation names that made you wish your life came with spell-check. It also led to civilization without any dips or turns. Sarah wasn't excited about trying to outrun a bear on a straightaway, but the painted lines would certainly make it harder for anyone to get lost on the way.

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"Sounds good," Pallsburg agreed before quickly forging ahead. "I'll lead." Holding her bag in her left hand while she gripped her phone with her right, the young woman played the luminescent screen over the decaying vegetation as she jogged down the poorly lit slope. Sarah tried to be a bit more careful during her descent since she lacked Pallsburg's brash confidence. As for Amanda, well, she was bolder than both of them. The silent warspawn grabbed Sarah by her hood and kept her eyes closed while she laid a false trail.

The scent of blueberries made a reappearance before drifting further north. "...There," Amanda panted quietly. "That's the best I can do. If its hungry enough to follow us, maybe it'll get distracted."

Sarah placed the odds at around fifty-fifty. Mana could elevate an animal's intellegince high enough to see through the ruse; however, it usually required years of effort or a seed with the right alignment. 'Trade' could do it - as could 'Discovery.' Sarah hadn't detected more than a faint whiff of either, though, when she'd examined the local field. If the bear had actually used the Blue Hills to build such a complex foundation, Sarah might have to strangle someone to help choke back her own frustration.

...Speaking of violence and the deserving. "What about Justin and Dermith?" Sarah asked, the couple sticking in her mind like a burr. "Weren't they headed towards St. Moritz?"

Amanda blinked. "Isn't that a pond? I thought they were going to the lake. They should already be on the opposite side of the river."

Oh? Sarah began to second guess herself. The last time she had visited the reservation, she'd been in middle school on an afternoon field trip. Her class had done a lot of hiking - and they'd taken a tour of the observatory - however, it was hardly enough to call herself an expert on the park's layout. If Amanda said she was mistaken, then the warspawn was probably correct. "Alright," Sarah agreed uncertainly. "I guess, I'll take your word for it."

Amanda's heavy breathing made her slow to respond. "...Believe me, if I thought it'd put them in danger, I wouldn't be doing this. If anything, we should be drawing our furry friend away while they make tracks in the other direction. Just be sure to keep an eye out for anyone else up ahead; there's a slim chance we'll run into another ranger, and I don't want Yogi's ornerier cousin to cross their path without prior forewarning."

Yes, because that would be so rude. Sarah snorted and kept up her jog. Soon, Pine Hill Cemetary drifted into view, along with the graveyard's expansive green. As for the chain-link fence surrounding the sprawling property, the wall was proving to be more of a suggestion than an impediment. Sarah hopped the barrier with little difficulty. Her ex flashed the rest of their party but still hurtled over the top. "This should be far enough," Amanda choked out while she pressed her hands to her knees. "If we haven't shaken it yet, then I doubt we will."

"And you're okay with that?" Sarah coughed weakly.

Amanda's assertion was a little hard to believe. After everything the parasite had put them through, Sarah expected her to insist they kill the bear in order to keep the city safe. Instead, she calmly shook her head while Pallsburg removed a rock from her shoe. "Just because I have morals that doesn't mean I need to be stupid about adhering to them. We did the best we could. If it doesn't feel like enough, then cultivate a more martial foundation. Get stronger. We both know how much the Networks are inclined to reward weakness."

The gleam in Amanda's eye suggested she was going to heed her own advice. Personally, Sarah was more ambivalent. "I take it you'll be coming back here to harvest additional mana?"

Amanda glanced at her girlfriend, who nodded in agreement. "We are. How about you?"

Sarah hadn't decided, yet. It was hard not to resent the game that Amanda had played with her heart. Sarah appreciated the other warspawn's attempt to bury the proverbial hatchet; she was also deeply relieved the two of them had broken up. If this was how Amanda chose to act after three years of therapy, then putting up with her during her transition would have made Sarah tear out her hair.

"I'll think about it," she said as she poked the orb in her gut.

The longer the construct remained within her body, the less it felt like an imposition. Sarah wasn't sure how much use it would be going forward, but she could see herself maintaining the practice.

She pursed her lips. Sarah opened her interface and tabbed over to the [Tasks] section to see what the Light wanted her to do next. The screen read, '[Form 5 Cores using mana of different Alignments, purity = .051, alignment = any].' It was the sixth task on the list, sitting just above [Eject the Core with Intent] and [Condense 1.000 mn into a Core}. Since the other three hadn't come with a reward, the alerts had gotten overlooked in all of the excitement.

Sarah began to clear out the messages, so the Light wouldn't get pushy. Amanda refused to comment as she made her way back towards the train. Once Sarah was done emptying her inbox, she found herself staring at a summary of what she'd accomplished so far.

[Overview] [Tasks] [Communications] [Filters] [Sarah Fields] [Level 1] [Regional Area 15 - Northeastern United States] [2.68 mn - Flower Core] [Output = .000027 mn/min] [Purity = .885] [Compatibility = .004]

It was funny; she'd spent more than twenty years trying to kill the Light, and at the end of the day, the Network hadn't even noticed. [Level 1]: she'd contributed just as much to its survival as any random Joe off the street. What a joke.

Sarah closed the screen and paid her fare with a sigh. The trio boarded the subway at the bottom of the Red Line and wearily rode it back to the station near Cutler Park. By the time they arrived, it was getting late, and the only person still sitting in the lot was a sun-burnt young man, who was selling weed out of his car. He eyed their muddy shoes from the seat of his beat-up Buick. Rather than make his pitch, he turned the radio up and played more Clash of Clans on his phone.

Sarah felt like she could relate to his apathy, especially when Amanda grabbed her by the wrist. "You know, I'm not very good at goodbyes," the dark-haired warspawn murmured. "After we had our falling out, I made sure to never say the word, or to imply that you'd burnt a bridge. I didn't want to close the door on what we'd built between us."

Amanda let the blonde's hand slip through her fingers, their skin brushing lightly before she stepped away. "...But now... Now, I'm beginning to wonder if my decision might have been a mistake. Maybe, I did you a disservice by denying you a shot at closure."

Sarah ignored the phantom imprints Amanda had left with her nails. "What are you getting at?"

"I know you, Sarah. I know what you want, how you act and the things you're willing to put up with. We were together for over two years, and it's not an exaggeration to say that I've gotten a handle on how you think." Amanda glanced past her shoulder at Pallsburg and released a shaky breath. "...So much comprehensive foreknowledge makes it easy to take advantage of you. To leverage my growth and experience in areas where I know you've always been weak. Earlier, I told you that I've been trying to be a better person. This is me proving that I wasn't just full of hot air."

Sarah shifted, the seriousness of Amanda's promise throwing her off her stride. "You can't know me too well if you're making a huge spectacle out of this." She glanced at the bored drug dealer and self-consciously lowered her voice. "Besides, you've already said you're sorry. I don't need a second apology that's less sincere than the first."

"I was short with you," Amanda agreed. "It's not an excuse, but I was under a lot of stress at the time. I decided to prioritize my own commitments, when I should have been kinder to the people around me. I've been acting like the worst of us. I have," Amanda insisted when Sarah shot her a sharp look. "I've been using people. Lying. I've deceived those closest to me. If I want to move beyond our roots, then I can't close my eyes to the way I've embodied everything I hate."

Sarah tried to remain cordial in the face of Amanda's self-flagellation. It was hard: she was getting awfully tired of the parasite's sanctimonius bullshit. "Amanda, I love you, but will you shut the fuck up already? It's late, I've had a long day, and all I want to do is go home, so I can sleep off the last four hours. Instead, here you are, jerking me around again. Do you think I'm blind to your faults? Do you think I can't see my own? I haven't stuck around just so I can audit your masterclass in social skullduggery."

Sarah clenched her fist around the teeth of her car keys. She resisted the urge to throw them through Amanda's front windshield. "Look, since you're being so 'honest' with me, how about I return the favor. Tomorrow, after I stop feeling like shit, I'll call you, and the two of us can play house. You can pretend to be a recovering addict, and I'll be the gaslit wreck who reluctantly pardons your abuse. I swear to you, though, Amanda: if you remind me of where we come from one more time, I'm going to put a hole in your head. Okay?"

Her ex made an effort to bite her tongue. "Okay."

...Alright, then. Sarah unlocked her car door and closed it with a self-satisfied bang. She stared at the center of her steering column until the cracks in the plastic started to look uncomfortably serpentine. Suddenly, she screamed at the air bag. Her fist slammed into the horn until she'd nearly bent her keys. Sarah drove out of the dusty parking lot with the utmost care because if someone cut her off, she was going to bury her bumper in the side of a Walmart. There would be casualties. It was, without a doubt, the closest she'd ever come to Mannly's mentality, and she hated every second of it.

The next ten minutes passed in a disorganized blur. Later, Sarah would look back on the few snapshots she could freely recall and wonder how she hadn't been pulled over for a host of traffic violations. Luck? Incompetence? It couldn't have been due to a lack of officers on the road - she'd been hearing their sirens all afternoon. Or was she thinking about this the wrong way? Given how her week had gone, perhaps some unseen monkey's paw had curled its gnarled finger and sent them all off to the waterfront. Missing the chance to argue her way into a ticket seemed like the right sort of punishment after her wish to be left alone.

Sarah let the vehicle's collision detector lose its tiny, synthetic mind as she parked beneath a carpet of wisteria that was climbing up the side of her complex. Across the street, the garage ear-marked for the building's residents was filled to bursting with over-priced BMWs and out-of-state license plates. Only half of them belonged to people who were actually paying rent. 'Fuckers,' she thought as she furiously flipped them off.

By this point, most of her rage had dissipated leaving only a back-breaking climb up to the fourth floor. After hours of hiking through the reservation's namesake, the ascent left Sarah's legs burning like the ashes of a blackened Waldenbooks - one that had been reduced to cinders to stoke an arsonist's flaccid chode. Even the apartment door fought her as she tried to shove it past her muddy rug. Once she finally bunched the mat up enough to slide it away from the frame, the dirt it left behind on her tiles seemed like the perfect end to her day.

"Ugh..." Sarah couldn't even muster up the energy to properly groan. It just wasn't worth the effort. Rubbing the bridge of her nose while she buried her face in her palm, Sarah let the tension pool between her fingertips before dragging her nails across her cheeks. The friction was mildly soothing. The blind spot did make it difficult, though, to set her keys down on the mantlepiece.

Sarah resigned herself to suffering through the journey as she swung around her waxy, leather couch. When she passed by the dim recesses of her empty kitchen, she glanced inside the abandoned breakfast nook out of habit. The faint, green glow from the microwave's display told her it was nearly ten o' clock. Sarah blinked; she let the electric halation wash over her face, paying the hour little heed. Instead, most of her attention was fixed upon the bowl of fruit, she'd left lying on the table. It contained three peaches and an apple. There should have been a banana there too. She knew because Simon had been fiddling with it all morning.

Like ice-cream melting in the summer sun, her expression steadily collapsed in on itself. The once vibrant colors of Sarah's discouragement pooled at her feet, leaving only a disorganized puddle and a small core of frozen ice. She threw herself backwards towards the couch with bone-jarring force. The end of the hallway echoed with a loud retort as a bright, orange flare scattered the clinging shadows.

The shotgun's muzzle flash revealed Townsend's eight-year-old host skulking next to her closet. He'd obviously been hiding behind her bathroom door in order to ambush her once she'd staggered by. Sarah's hesitation must have convinced him to kick things off early because he'd taken the shot while insufficiently braced. This in turn had caused his squat form to be thrown against the sink, due to his weapon's stiff recoil. The fall looked painful. Townsend was visibly clutching his forehead and had trouble finding his feet.

The barrel swung around. Sarah scampered into the foyer and out of his line of fire. When the shotgun roared again from deep within the hallway, it blew a hole through the intervening wall. Sarah could hear a subtle click as Townsend reloaded the spent shell casings.

'When he turns the corner, he's going to have a clear shot.' The thought was so loud, it felt like someone was screaming the warning her ear. More importantly, the words had the weight of prophecy, and Sarah knew that if Townsend arrived before she'd escaped, he'd put a round right through her neck.

She couldn't take that risk. Hugging the bookshelf while she approached the narrow passageway, Sarah bent her shaking knees and listened for the sound of his footsteps. Years of practice suddenly became incredibly relevant once again as Townsend cut the corner inch by inch.

Sarah pushed the shotgun's barrel aside after it lined up with the flat of her palm. Her assailant's frayed nerves quickly turned her microwave into scrap, but this meant she now had her fingers wrapped around the weapon's sight. There was also more than enough leverage to keep it pointed away from her chest.

Townsend didn't let the loss of control phase him. He simply shifted with the force she was applying and rotated his arm around. He whipped Sarah in the face with the butt. The stock made a high-pitched crack as it slammed into her jaw. She briefly saw stars. Those sparkling motes then burst into technicolor fireworks, when Townsend brought the lever assembly around in an arc.

It hit her right below the eye. Both strikes were strong enough to make her ears ring like a battered churchbell. The sound was deafening - nauseating, even. The disorientation wasn't so severe, though, as to distract her from the ongoing fight. Sarah chased after the revolving long arm before Townsend could regain control of it. A moment later, she caught it by the rubber grip while the pre-teen was still off-balance. When Townsend noticed which way the weapon was now pointing, he threw the barrel away, so he wouldn't eat a bullet to the face.

Sarah wasn't inclined to let him off that easily. With a deftness born from more than rote practice, she forced the metal bar down and carefully twisted her wrist. The shotgun looped around her fingers, thereby chambering a fresh shell. She pulled the trigger.

At the same time that Sarah put a new hole in her apartment, Townsend stepped inside her guard. He raised his palm up towards her head. A rush of mana left his splayed hand. 'Metal aligned,' Sarah noted flatly. 'Recently refined too.' The spell just didn't have the same speed it would've possessed if Townsend had let his core cook for another month. Had he been willing to wait, she might not have been able to slide out of the way before it could drill through the bridge of her nose. As it was, the arcane missile still gouged a ragged trench across a decent chunk of lavender sheetrock.

Sarah blinked numbly at the damage and reached for Townsend's throat. She preceded to slam the tip of his nose into her increasingly compromised wall. The stunned assassin struggled to push his cheeks away from the now tacky gypsum. Sarah acknowledged his toil by cocking the hammer of the gun. She pressed the barrel up against his ear. Not half a second later, a hiss left her lips as a stream of blood squirted from the back of his neck. It was followed by a four-inch parasite, covered in barbed tendrils. The creature immediately threw itself onto the ground and began squirming for the door. Sarah tried to shoot it, anyway. She shattered a pair of ceramic tiles before she lost sight of it at her apartment's threshold.

A pained gasp brushed against the side of her hand. Sarah subconsciously resecured her grip and swung the gun back around. Townsend was currently in the process of freaking the fuck out. Both instinct and instruction insisted she finish the job. In fact, the propensity was so ingrained that her finger was already wrapped around the trigger before she could finish the thought. It'd only take a shiver to put a round through the crown of his skull. Sarah could almost hear a subtle click as the springs near the hammer were released.

It was with a sudden start that Sarah realized the noise wasn't entirely an illusion. Her hand was shaking, and the pins in the firearm's frame would rattle whenever she so much as twitched. Her gaze slowly shifted from Townsend over to her spastic limb. Sarah tried to clench the muscles in her forearm, but the strain just made the jitters worse. Why was she...? Sarah glanced at the hole in her wall where Townsend had blasted through the struts. Her neck twisted towards the sparking appliance her grandmother had bought for her birthday. "...Oh," she murmured softly. This... couldn't be concealed, could it?

"Momma." Townsend mumbled into the perforated plaster.

Sarah blinked. She wondered if she'd heard him correctly through the ringing in her ears. After a moment, Townsend repeated the cry and some of her confusion was dispelled. More remained. Was Townsend... calling for his mother? Didn't he kill his mother?

'No,' Sarah reminded herself, the realization slow to cement. 'Townsend killed his mother.' This was his host... who was also Townsend.

The warspawn wished she could blame her head trauma for how difficult it was to distinguish between them. Sadly, it was actually an atavistic bias, which happened to be clouding her judgement. Of the two, the latter was a far bigger hurdle: you could heal a concussion; rewiring her brain was currently beyond Sarah's means.

'Not that I would if I could,' the parasite conceded bitterly. Townsend's host simply wasn't someone who's suffering she was inclined to prioritize. Not when she had hated the asshole for the better part of four years. Even now, it was difficult to look at the kid and not see the person who'd nearly murdered her. They looked the same, sounded the same and - if Townsend was anything like Sarah had been when she'd first arrived on Earth - they probably acted the same, outside of a few, niche scenarios. Altogether, it left her inclined to continue the fight, right where they had left off.

Townsend... was less than co-operative. Snot ran down his chin as he began to loudly bawl. Sarah winced at the tinny wail and jiggled his shoulder using the hand keeping him pinned. She had this vague idea that if she just jostled him hard enough, she could snap him out of his funk. It was probably her concussion talking since the pressure accomplished jack shit.

Sarah reluctantly lowered the gun. Townsend continued to disappoint her by failing to capitalize on the opening. After half a minute, she was forced to reconcile herself with the truth: unless she wanted to keep whaling on an eight-year-old, the fight was functionally over.

"I..." Sarah cut the sentence off with a mild wince. She pressed her tongue against her teeth and then spat out a mouthful of blood. "I need you to stop screaming. Hey!" she hollared when the kid didn't shut up. "I said, knock it off!"

Townsend did not, in fact, knock it off. Under more forgiving circumstances, Sarah might have been willing to grant him that this was a reasonable response; however, it was only a matter of time until her neighbors grew bold enough to investigate the deafening racket. If Townsend couldn't settle down before they got here, they'd both have bigger problems than shaking off an inconvenient weapons charge.

Sarah eyed the screaming youth and wondered how much he knew. More importantly, she weighed who would believe him should he decided to squeal. A few weeks ago, she would have said no one and let the paramedics chalk his tale up to trauma. With the arrival of the Light? Well, people were more open to the weird. Personally, Sarah wasn't willing to be discovered just because she happened to feel a bit squeamish.

Like the tide rolling in, her itchy trigger-finger returned. Sarah started to raise the shotgun up to Townsend's head as Amanda's voice echoed in her own. "Please, stop talking," she begged the both of them. "I can't handle the two of you at once." Neither complied. Through the wet gasps of Townsend's despair, Sarah could hear Amanda's stubborn insistence that they had a duty to be better than their nature. To be people.

The Offal Sea called them infiltrators. Mannly had called them betrayers. It was the pejorative Harlan had used, though, which really seemed to stick in her mind. 'Worms.' He'd called them worms. The sort of vermin who were only ever useful to bait a hook. That calloused bastard would have been proud of Townsend's rampage. Look at what his psychopathy had produced.

With a bitter sigh, Sarah closed her eyes. It wasn't easy, but she let the weapon dip towards the floor. "Shh," she hushed the boy distractedly. "Just... take a deep breath. It'll be okay."

Her attempts to comfort him were pathetic. They were also a necessary stopgap while she fumbled through her pocket for her cell. The line rang three times before someone actually qualified to handle a crying child finally picked up the phone. "Kennedy?" Sarah greeted the groggy parasite waiting on the other end. "Listen... I need a favor."