Remaining Marines on the western side tossed a couple of white smoke grenades into the open. Managun fire poured out from the smoke but they failed to connect with their two aerial opponents as they bobbed and weaved in the sky. Stopping midair to fire occasionally, the two harpies flapped their colorful wings and did their best to suppress the Marines with automatic weapons fire. One was about to signal for one of their rocket equipped comrades to make a pass on the shrouded area, but that was right before the smoke parted ways to spit out an anti-air missile. The female harpy froze and a second later the midair explosion sent the blackened mass of flesh and scorched feathers towards a ground littered with debris.

Fumbling in the air, the other harpy angled himself up and away from where the missile had come from. He emptied his magazine indiscriminately before turning around to join his team on the opposite side of the bridge. Meanwhile, a Marine with a partially shattered helmet rushed onto the remains of a nearby rooftop. Her exposed hair fluttered in the breeze.

She bent down on one knee and aimed her missile launcher carefully. A moment later, the missile flew out with a whoosh.

To the right, “friendly” security troops were getting decimated by a half woman half spider creature. And blocking their path in the front were two imposing minotaurs…and a human? Not to mention they had to be wary of the bird-like irregulars in the sky as well. So that meant they could either jump however many meters into the water below, or they had to take the opportunity now to try and break through.

Sadly, it wasn’t really a choice.

As the front of the out of control truck crumpled against the concrete divider, the last three Marines standing at the remains of the checkpoint chose that moment to rush their slightly disoriented enemies. A 4th wounded Marine propped himself up and provided covering fire for his three comrades as they tried to make a run for it. Running out from cover, the three hip fired their weapons in order to try and keep the enemies in front of them pinned. The Marine in the lead pulled out a grenade and cocked her arm backwards but before she was able to follow through, a three toned harpy swooped in from above and grabbed her shoulders with her sharp, dirty talons. She dropped the primed grenade and tried to shoot the harpy as it pulled her into the air. While the avian beauty flew higher into the sky, one of the other Marines paused to try and shoot her down. Their third squad member was more aware of the situation and immediately dove to the side.

The wounded Marine in the rear watched his flailing comrade be promptly dropped from up high, while his other teammate was blown off their feet by a small blue explosion. Losing all feeling, the Marine’s managun clattered softly to the ground.

Below, a heavy vehicle plummeted through the air. A singular harpy tried to go after it as it fell. She ignored the voice in her ear. It didn’t make any sense - not to the rational mind anyway.

They were here to save some elves and some devils. If they…no if she didn’t at least make the effort to save them, then what was all of this for?

With her mind and vision focused on the falling truck, Mirella wasn’t in the position to notice the loss of more of her team. If she was, she may have obeyed the leader of her group. Not like any of that mattered to her right now anyway.

Mirella stopped hearing the sounds of combat as she dove through the air, chasing after something that she knew that gravity would not allow her to catch. She watched the truck hit the water nose first, the river beginning to consume it in its fluid embrace. Her heart pounding, Mirella reached the quickly disappearing truck and attempted to slow down the vehicle’s descent by grabbing onto the rear door’s handles with her talons. The harpy forgot to breathe for a moment before realizing that she was not going to make any difference. She gave a quick cry of frustration and switched to trying to forcibly open the back.

Panic started to overcome her. The fatigue and pain that she was feeling in her wings and back could be ignored no longer. A part of her hoped that something or someone would come to miraculously help her, but her body could not prolong the situation any further. The vehicle then vanished into the river’s murky depths.

Yelling in defeat, Mirella flapped hard to regain some altitude.

Panting, Aranea pulled out one of her many legs from a corpse and wiped the sweat from her brow. She generally disliked using her body this way but when you run out of bullets, you made do with what you had. The arachne looked around with her pale red eyes and confirmed that there were no remaining hostiles nearby. In the distance the sounds of battle continued, though that was no longer her concern for the moment - Brazak was more than capable of handling things on his own.

She felt the ground underneath her tremble a little as Tefrae, the third minotaur, came running up towards her. The chestnut-colored female tossed her weapon to Aranea, who managed to awkwardly catch it before the two of them went to the rear of the last truck.

Tefrae briefly attempted to brute force the door with her strong arms, but it didn’t budge.

“We’re certainly unlucky,” she grumbled in a surprisingly feminine voice. The relatively slim yet muscular minotaur pulled out some tools and began working on opening the door.

“Who all did we lose?” Aranea asked as she scanned their surroundings. For a brief moment the area had gone silent, only to be interrupted by the bursts of Brazak’s rotary cannon in the distance.

“That trigger happy bastard,” Tefrae mumbled as she picked the lock. “Noryth, Cecerin, Velyana were shot down. Dakhus and Belyne spoke: we’re gonna get out of here as soon as possible.”

Aranea was about to say something before Tefrae let out a small celebratory “Yes!”. Right as she turned around, the minotaur grabbed the door and flung it open.

“What the hell?!”

It took a brief second for both of them to process what they were seeing, but as soon as they did, the arachne took an involuntary step back and the minotaur punched the door. Rather than the relieved smiles of liberated elves and devils, all that lay in front of them were their withered corpses. Fortunately, there were no bodies of children in the mix - Aranea may have lost it if that were the case.

“This shit ain’t right,” the minotaur declared before slamming the door shut and taking a step back. She put a finger up to her ear before saying, “Dakhus, this is Tefrae. No one’s alive, just a pile o’ dead bodies.”

While Tefrae listened to Dahkus' response, Aranea went forward and opened the door. She cautiously entered inside and got in closer. Internally cursing her size, she looked at each of the bodies and verified that none of them had a collar around their neck. Knowing that she didn’t have time for a closer look, Aranea reversed and then fully exited the vehicle. Closing the door, the arachne pondered out loud if this whole thing had been a setup.

“Those bodies had to have been that way for a while. But -”

Something in between a screech and a roar came from somewhere above. While it wasn’t quite loud enough to drown out the battlefield, the sheer sound of it was enough to send a chill down Aranea’s spine. Overcoming the urge to flee, she looked towards the origin of the sound. Light from the sun inhibited her vision but she was able to make out the silhouette of a winged being. That sound…

“A demon?!” Tefrae yelled out. As the minotaur ripped the assault rifle out of Aranea’s hands, the demon literally disappeared from view.

“Where’d it go?!!”

Whatever sound that I was able to emit, that simultaneously instilled fear and caused weaker enemies to flee, was not something I really liked to use. I mean as a tool, it was practical. Except whether you wanted to call it a screech or a roar, it made me feel less like me, and more just like a wild beast.

Granted there were quite a few things that I could have done to announce my presence: assorted types of magic, throwing around heavy things, or some other creative way of grabbing attention. I could also have just slaughtered my enemies without alerting them beforehand. The thing was, I didn’t really want to think too much about it. Or maybe I was currently incapable of doing so. Who knows? Anyways right now, the only thing that I could see were the various enemies that lay in front me. So here we go.

Seven harpies, three minotaurs , an arachne, and one human. An interesting mix no doubt but it didn’t matter what race they were. It didn’t matter what gender they were. One or ten-thousand. None of that mattered to me.

I slammed into one of the male harpies, not even bothering to extend my claws yet. Registering the cracking sound of bones, I turned my body in the direction of another harpy in the distance, releasing a deadly wave of white feathers as I fell through the sky. To my surprise, the two-toned female actually managed to dodge most of the feathers, except for one that embedded itself in her disgustingly pink wings.

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She started to fall. I debated for a split second whether I should finish her off and didn't hesitate any longer than that. Warm air enveloped me in its tight embrace, forever attempting to slow me down as I jetted towards the prey in front of me.

The flailing harpy was attempting to regain control of her wings when I slid my right claws through her rib cage. As effortlessly as they went in, their exit was not as pretty. I chided myself a little as I let go of the now mangled corpse. Feeling a strange sense of dissatisfaction, I then caught three harpies in my peripheral vision.

Lined up in the air, the two on the sides carried some kind of shoulder mounted weapon while the one in the middle aimed the weapon in their arms towards me. Deducing that they were all ranged weapons, I actually faltered for a moment whether I should close the gap or take advantage of my own ranged attacks. Unfortunately for me, the two harpies on the sides fired off their weapons. As the wave of projectiles howled through the air, the third harpy rushed forward.

Oh, I had a good idea what those projectiles were. But damn, they were much faster than I realized.

I immediately dove and they followed after me. Shit. Not wasting the opening, I heard the sound of gunfire and smaller projectiles hissing past as I sped towards the top of the river. I had the inkling that I could outmaneuver the blasted things but seeing their trailing flames, I decided it was much simpler to enter the water instead.

Unlike the hug of warm air earlier, the slap of cold water felt refreshing. Not long after, my ears were assaulted by the sounds of a series of explosions that went off right behind me. Thankfully the river dulled the sound a bit but that was not something I was expecting. After all, I figured the projectiles would enter the water and essentially die, not smack the river and explode. Or was it possible that they were remotely detonated before becoming completely useless under water?

Either way, it didn’t matter - I had made sure to go a little deeper than logic would have dictated. Maybe it had been just a feeling, but that decision had freed me from getting hurt by shrapnel. One part of me felt excited that I had outsmarted my foes. The other part of me chastised myself for giving my enemies a moment to regroup.

“Everyone get out of here,” Belyne ordered. “I’ll stay behind to try and buy you more time.” The last remaining member of the aerial team with an assault rifle, he continuously scanned the water below for the demon to reemerge. Without any hesitation, the two nearby harpies that had launched their remaining rockets turned to retreat, already having discarded their launchers.

“Brazak and I will remain behind to provide cover from the ground. Ethan will get Aranea to the rendezvous point,” Dakhus said over the radio.

“Copy.”

As the overall commander in charge of this operation, Belyne felt some amount of responsibility for its failure. However, no one could have predicted that a demon would show up in the middle of it either - at the very least, they had succeeded in taking out a critical piece of infrastructure. That didn’t make matters any better though.

Precious seconds went by and the harpy wondered what was taking the demon so long to pop back out. And then, “Ionane! Above you!”

Hastily turning around to the sound of a blast different from what he was accustomed to, Belyne saw a beam of white light streak towards one of the fleeing harpies. With basically no time to react, the ray of energy struck the harpy and exploded upon impact. Not quite believing what he was seeing, Belyne looked up towards the origin of the attack and saw the same white winged demon fire off another attack.

For the first time in a long time, a little despair finally creeped into the harpy’s mind.

Ethan looked away from the debris filled road for a moment and watched as another harpy was abruptly blown out of the sky. Distracted by the magnificent display of magic, he tripped hard over something and fell. Pain ran up and down his body, and despite knowing that he needed to keep moving, Ethan’s body resisted his orders to get back up.

“Come on kid, I got you,” Tefrae said right before picking the young man off the ground with one arm. Having only delayed a second or two to get Ethan on to her back, she was able to catch up to Aranea as they continued making a dash for the truck that they had arrived in. The minotaur doubted that they were going to be able to make it out of there unscathed, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to just roll over and die.

Their group leader had gone ahead of the others, joining Brazak on the opposite side. With the Marines apparently having withdrawn from the fight , Dakhus’only goal at this point was to try and make sure that some of their number were able to escape. The futility of defending against a fast-moving aerial target from the ground crossed his mind but he viewed this as his final responsibility. Both him and Belyne were in agreement on this.

“Cut loose,” he ordered the other minotaur.

The rather burly minotaur simply nodded but refrained from pressing down on the trigger. While he didn’t care about conserving ammo at this point, it was still a matter of pride to him not to shoot wildly at nothing. A warrior should use his brains more than his weapon after all. So he switched between watching Belyne, who positioned himself closer to the bridge, and scanning the sky. In his peripheral vision, he noticed the tri-colored harpy conceal themselves behind the remains of the bridge’s superstructure. Whether that was because of cowardice or some tactic, he didn’t know nor cared.

Before Dakhus was able to repeat his order again, another white beam came from the right. Not even noticing that Belyne had miraculously dodged the attack, Brazak instinctively pivoted in the direction of the attack and opened fire. Large, golden bullet casings flew in various directions while he swept that particular part of the sky with 20mm rounds. He thought he saw the white winged demon but she was moving too quickly and his eyesight could only handle so much at this distance. Tasting a little blood from biting down on his lower lip, he did his best to lead his target and then she suddenly disappeared from view. Confusion overcame him cause he knew he wasn’t lucky enough to have hit her.

All of a sudden, Brazak gasped as he felt the worst pain of his life sear his torso. The dumbfounded minotaur was subsequently lifted into the air, weapon and all, having come face to face with the demoness that should have been hundreds, if not thousands of meters away. And yet an unusual calm came over the severely wounded warrior.

Despite seeing the fury in those cold, silver eyes and the unnatural way in which he was being lifted, Brazak managed to notice the gaping hole in the demon’s side. A smirk formed on his face and the heavily wounded minotaur coughed up blood in place of the intended mirthless chuckle. Time appeared to slow to a crawl as he saw the demon’s other claws come up to behead him.

With his attention on the grim reaper, Brazak failed to notice Dakhus on the left. Raising his weapon at the demon, the gray minotaur shattered the moment with gunfire. The demoness instantly propelled herself away from the bridge and Brazak abruptly found himself carried into the air. Not even a second later, he was jettisoned like trash, plummeting headfirst towards the river.

Heading away from the bridge, Ethan watched the smoke continue to rise. Even though Tefrae was struggling to drive at the moment, that was not one of his concerns - after all the truck cab wasn’t built for a minotaur and there was nothing he could do about it. Thinking out loud, he said through the open sunroof, “Ya think that demon’s gonna chase after us?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care, cause if she does, we’re sitting ducks no matter what we do,” the comically positioned minotaur snarled. While she was focused on driving, her mind kept going back to cursing humans in general, and one human in particular. In any case, taking her feelings out on the battered young man wasn’t going to change anything so she continued to fume internally. Part of her also hoped that Brazak and the rest had gotten a few good licks in and that was all she would allow herself to dwell on. Mourning would come later.

Calling towards the back, she yelled, “Aranea, you doing ok?”

“No. So please stop asking,” Aranea responded. “Just leave me be.”

“Fine! Just don’t come crying to me if you start losing it.”

Truthfully, Aranea felt bad about how she was dealing with things but a lot of things had gone wrong today and she was the type to get hung up on anything that didn't go her way. Except unlike in many past situations, there was no rationalizing this one: with all of the information they had, they still would have lost teammates and failed their objective. The only right choice would have been not to carry out their operation.

The arache shook her head to try and clear her thoughts. Softening her tone, she asked Tefrae where they were going.

“I don’t know. Just away." Much quieter she added, "Just away…from here.”

The harpy that lay in front of me wheezed heavily as his body arched upwards periodically. I debated whether or not to seek out Helia in order to heal him, but I decided in the end, none of the details truly mattered. Besides, I didn’t quite know where she was at or what she was currently doing. My assumption was that maybe she was healing some of the bystanders that got injured. Or maybe she was doing her best at keeping the others away from here.

Behind me, the wreckage still burned gloriously into the cloudless sky. In front of me were the now silent remains of what was normally a busy thoroughfare. I spotted some soldiers in the distance attempting to do a variety of things like search and rescue; maybe they assumed I had already left the area cause I doubted they would do that knowing there was a demon still around. Regardless, I couldn’t care less at the moment what they did as long as they stayed out of my way.

I stood above the harpy. Wasn’t sure exactly how I looked to him; but again, I didn’t care.

“What were you after?”

“What’s…it to…you?”

“I happened to be traveling along here when you all showed up and ruined my day. Now answer the question or I'll extend your suffering.”

He closed his eyes, and weakly said, “To free…some…elves…and devils.”

“Why?”

“Their…mana. Fuels…manabats…everything. Comes… from them…”

Managuns. Levitating vehicles. Probably countless other things I hadn’t paid attention to. Of course all of that energy had to come from somewhere. Up until now, knowing where all of that had come from hadn’t peeked my interest.

Now it did.

Appeared like the harpy was almost out of time so I decided to just let nature take care of the rest. Looking behind me, I saw where a smaller battle had taken place. Multiple human bodies littered the ground and a truck had also crashed into the concrete divider. Another one sat some distance behind it.

I approached the one closest to me and tore off the back with a loud metallic crunch. I almost wished I hadn’t.

Only a microsecond passed for me to understand what I saw; after all, I had seen a similar scene long ago. And yet, till this day, I never had forgotten the feelings of disgust and anger that had overcome me back then. The same feelings that came flooding back just now. Obviously, I didn’t know who these people were or how long it had been since that dreadful magic had taken their freedom and their lives. Except none of that changed how I felt.

While instinct told me to lash out to everyone and everything that was nearby, experience and wisdom told me to leave the area till I was back in the right state of mind. Another small part of me shouted that there had to be an alternative to the rage that started to consume me.

But like a bucket of ice water dousing a flame, my anger was abruptly tempered by the soothing embrace of my daughter.