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-WARNING! DARKNESS LEVELS RISING-

This was really bad. All these signs were things that happened when the Reaper showed up. If he really was back, then this whole city would be in terrible danger.

“Uncle, Uncle!” I tugged on his coat. “We have to warn the church! The Grim Reaper is on his way here!”

“Grim Reaper?” Uncle’s brow raised. “I don’t understand.”

“I…uh…” I was looking around, seeing all the people just casually walking up and down the streets. Each one of them was in danger of the Reaper stealing their spirit.

“Yalda, calm down.” Uncle kneeled and held my shoulders. “Listen…give me a status report of what happened while we were separated.”

I told him about how Indena and I were stuck in a spooky valley and a Reaper demon showed up. But with the help of the witch Melpomene, and my mana cannon, we were able to stop him. But I guess that win was only temporary.

“He also had these nasty looking bug guys who attacked us too! They were super creepy.”

Yamin looked mortified at the news. Her arms closed in on her body and she gripped her necklace close to her heart.

“No…” she uttered, quietly. “Not again…not a demon attacking people…”

She must have been thinking about her own home being taken by one. I didn’t want to find out what it was going to be like if that slice of heck came here.

“Why would this Reaper come here?” Marek asked. “What does he want?”

The Reaper wanted to steal our spirits, or more specifically, the mana our spirits were made of. He stole a lot of Indena’s mana before and he was coming for me next when he saw the mana cannon charging.

“Oh no…” I uttered, realizing this might be my fault that he’s here. “The Reaper wants mana, and he wants a lot of it. He’s probably coming after me because I used the mana cannon.”

“Wait, you have access to that?” Uncle looked unnerved. I let him access my systems, and then he gave me a mean look. “Blast it…” he shook his head. “You overworked your body too much, now it’s at 31% efficiency.”

It was 30% this morning, which meant it was healing. But still, I could feel that I needed more rest.

Uncle picked me up and let me piggy back on him.

“She’s right. We need to alert the church,” Uncle concluded. “Get Indena up. We’ll need her help getting there.”

“H-help getting there?” Yamin shivered. “Wait. It’s not that far away, right?”

Things were getting a lot colder and darker by the second. Snow was falling down fast, piling up everywhere around us quickly.

“She’ll be able to clear this snow out,” Uncle said. “Plus, I think we may have company very soon.”

Yamin went over to Indena and started shaking her to wake up.

Indena grabbed her arms and looked harshly at her. “I get it, we're F’ed. Stop shoving me…” She sat up, collecting her thoughts before running to us. “How bad are things?” she asked.

“Not so bad yet that we can’t get a head start. Come on!” Uncle gestured for everyone to follow him.

Without a second thought, Uncle started running down the road. The others could just barely keep up.

“Yalda, tell me everything you can about the Reaper,” Uncle ordered as we ran.

“Um…he’s like the Grim Reaper. A spooky skeleton with a cloak…oh! He’s also got a scythe! Aa…and death gas! And…and…um…he can summon bones out of the ground…and…”

“Good lord, what did you guys have to deal with in that valley?” Yamin commented.

At this point, the snow was making it hard to move. Even so, the average people walking the streets and cars driving the roads were fighting against it like it was some immobilizing dream. The weird part was that none of them acknowledged how odd it was. They just kept walking, even though they were horribly underdressed.

They shivered, their bodies turning cold as they began to succumb to frostbite.

“Oi, anyone who doesn’t want to be a damn human popsicle, get out of the damn cold!”

Indena’s words of warning provoked a response, but not the one she was intending…

“Hey, quit shouting!” One man shouted.

“What wrong with that girl?” A woman questioned.

“Mommy, why’s that lady screaming?” A child feared.

Indena cringed in disgust. “Who’s that brat calling a lady? I am not that old!”

“That’s all you’re worried about here?” Marek commented.

They were acting like she was the one with the problem, not the fact that they didn’t seem bothered by the snow freezing them to death.

“Oh my God…” Yamin teared up. “It’s just like what happened back home…”

Yamin dramatically fell to her knees, landing in a pile of snow. Her nose was all red and she had her arms wrapped around her, shivering like a leaf.

Marek took off his coat and put it around her, then he held her up to help her walk.

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“All this damn snow can go to hell!” Indena’s body ignited and she blasted the streets with a controlled flame. She managed to avoid all the people and melt a great amount of it away.

That made a lot of folks scared and angry with us. They started cursing Indena out like she’d attacked them.

No matter how much we yelled at them that the situation was changing around here, they didn’t believe what we were telling them.

“Don’t bother trying to convince them,” Yamin uttered, shamefully keeping her head down. “They won’t see what’s going on.”

Marek supported her claim with a nod.

“We can’t worry about these people then.” Uncle commented. We’ll just need to get to the root of the problem and hope it saves them too.

“Great.” Indena threw her arms up in the air. “These piss ants are gonna die if we don’t do something about this.” She turned to me. “I haven’t heard those sirens, so he’s not here yet, right?”

That’s right! The reaper doesn’t show up until you hear his sirens. We still had time to prepare for that.

It would have been nice if these angry people would get out of the way! It was hard to get past them like this.

I started to hear water splash down the road. The streets started to flood, some of it heading down into the sewers through surface grates.

This wasn’t normal water though, it was demon water. That sludgy stuff from the valley where the locust spawned, although this was a lot more than before.

Before long, a river had carved itself down the road. Those locust demons were going to be everywhere if there was this much demon water!

“Uncle, watch out!”

Several of them pounced out of the water and aimed right at us!

“Yalda! I need a weapon!” Uncle ordered.

I immediately spawned a crude sword of stardust. Uncle grabbed it and quickly swung across the locust demons, killing them all at once.

Yamin let out a blood curdling scream as she saw the little demon's body parts scattered all over, dissolving into a haze of black dust. She ran behind Marek like he was a shield.

People were still none the wiser about the demons, even becoming the locusts next targets.

Locust demons would pounce at them and start chomping down on the arms and legs, immobilizing them.

One of the locusts was heading for killing bite to the neck…

-Combat Mode: Active!-

…but I wasn’t going to let that happen.

I was off Uncle and slashing a new stardust blade across the demons, protecting whomever they were about to terminate.

“Yalda, disengage combat mode at once!” Uncle ordered.

“No, sir.” I disobeyed. “That’s not going to happen.”

More of those locusts were scattering across the street. I had to fight.

“You are at 30% of your strength!” Uncle shouted. “If you fight now, you’ll cripple yourself from the stress!”

My body twitched, proving his words somewhat true. But if nobody fought these demons, I wouldn’t be the only one crippled.

“Negative, sir,” I replied. “There’s more than just my life at stake right now.”

“Mel, that little brat’s cracked.” Indena shouted. “Let her fight!”

Uncle’s face twisted and turned with conflict, but he finally gave me a nod.

“Green light. Ingage those hostiles. Priorities the ones going for humans.”

“Affirmative!” I bolted off, leaping over the large river of sludge that had dissolved away the roadway, using my wings to partially glide me down, since that’s all they were good for at the moment.

On the other side were unaware humans who were being chewed on by the locusts.

Stardust cut through those demons like a hot knife to butter. The people were safe for the moment.

“These darn mosquitoes are everywhere today…” A person commented.

The way he said that, it sounded like he was calling these locusts mosquitoes.

Hmm…I knew if I announced that they were in danger, they wouldn’t listen, so maybe I had to cater to my oblivious audience.

“The streets are flooding, find shelter immediately,” I ordered.

A few people were prompted to turn their heads and notice the sludge water running down the road.

“Oh dear…” one uttered, putting up a hand over their mouth. “I’m getting out of here!”

Interesting. It seems if I point out the conflict in a way that doesn’t seem supernatural, they’re more likely to react.

That got a few people heading inside buildings and reaching shelter, but others were slouching over, holding their stomachs and turning pale.

“I don’t feel so good…” one person said.

…Analyzing conditions; complete…

Those were the people that were bit by the locusts. According to my analysis, they were being afflicted by some sort of curse.

Slowly each of the humans afflicted by the curse began to wither into a pile of dust. Only the bones that once gave them structure remained as a reminder of the once living organism they were.

“Arch Commander!” I called Uncle over the radio. “Be advised! Bites from the locusts cause the curse of withering to organic material!”

“Copy that.” Uncle said, continuing to battle alongside Indena across the street.

Indena had been bitten by those before but didn’t wither. Either these demons have evolved since we last saw them, or she was exempt from the curse somehow. More info will be needed to form a conclusion.

A grinding sound came from behind me, like thin stones colliding with each other repeatedly.

I turned around to see those bones that rested in the ashes of people no longer laid in simple piles, but began to rise up again on their own. The same thing was happening on the other side of the street.

The eyes of the skull began to glow as the skeletons wobbled back and forth, trying to rebuild their once stable structure.

They hobbled and stumbled about, screeching like the abominations they were.

-Threat’s sighted!-

-Reanimated skeletons tagged; Foe-

My systems no longer registered these beings as human. Their termination was mandated.

Their hobbling posture was intimidating to say the least, but attacking took priority over fear.

I struck forth with my crude stardust blade, cutting the arms off all the ones in my path. but they collected their lost limbs and put them back. A thread of blue energy wove through the hard material and reconnected it.

My next attack went for the head, cutting it clean off, but that gave the same result.

I couldn’t kill these things, and their numbers were getting greater by the second.

With a running start, I leapt over the river again.

A few of those locusts were heading for Yamin and Marek.

With Uncle distracted, I cut the collection of bug-like demons down before they would harm either of them.

“Yalda!” Yamin screamed.

“Keep moving!” I pointed down the road, noticing a crowd of locust demons heading this way.

I stood between my friends and the demons behind us, swiping my sword repeatedly and hacking them to pieces.

But the skeleton beings jumped at Marek and Yamin, halting their progress toward Uncle and Indena. The two up ahead couldn’t turn around, so they continued to fight through their own mess of enemies.

“We’ll reconvene at the church!” Uncle said over the radio. “Get Yamin and Marek to safely!”

“Affirmative!”

Other than those two, there weren’t any other human life signs detected on this block. They were my top priority now.

With a cut and a twirl, I dismembered the skeletons holding them back, and we proceeded to continue running.