In his 22 years of life, Loren had been in his share of fights. Most had taken place before he'd turned twelve, back in grade school when the consequences for them weren't, in hindsight, very dire. Parental disapproval, revoked privileges, getting teased about losing to a girl, pain… all minor things, when he looked back on them. He'd had a temper then—or had simply been an little shit—and had something of an impulse control problem.

He'd gotten better, or so he'd liked to think. Though since he was comparing himself to a literal grade-schooler—even if that grade-schooler was himself—he'd have to be a pretty terrible adult, a politician or a company executive to look bad.

The Flame mage wasn't prepared for manifested Plague keres just jumping down at them. He'd seen the things before, during a teenaged misadventure that… well, that had been a lot like this, actually. In hindsight, it should have been a sign.

These half-dozen keres were small, about the size of children, and showed just as much viciousness, malice and thirst for thoughtless, wanton violence. Shaped like humans, oni and payatin, each of them was thin, almost emaciated. Their skins were a sickly pale, covered with festering wounds that seemed to ooze pus and blood. Their faces were drawn and skull-like, their only covering were long manes of hair that looked partially burned, and they reeked of the smells of shit, piss, and fetid canal water, their hands covered in various shades of excrement. They had fallen onto the tightly packed crowd, their forms landing on shoulders and heads. Exclamations of surprise had swiftly turned to screams of terror as delicate-seeming hands covered in filth tore at eyes, smeared the disgusting effluvia onto mouths and noses as flesh was ripped apart.

Harmony had cut-off mid-sentence, one hand fumbling into her backpack as she tried to get something out, while Loren froze, one hand rising up to pinch his nose and save himself from the smell. There was a memory of pain in his leg, the remembrance of a bone breaking, and a miserable summer of being lame…

"Lor!" Harmony shouted at him, snapping him back to the present as she finally pulled something out of her backpack, a collapsible metal baton. "Come on, we need to help!"

No, they didn't. They needed to run and get somewhere safe.

But Harmony was already running, pulling the baton to full extension by hand since there were too many people around to flick it out, her backpack falling to the ground. In a movement born more of exasperated habit than conscious thought, Loren scooped up the backpack and slung it awkwardly over one shoulder next to his own as he followed after her. Damn it, why did she always insist on doing this? Why was he friends with this woman?

The crowd was running, mothers and fathers picking up children and trying to run, pushing their way past people who seemed slower on the uptake. The yellow police tape broke and fluttered away as people pushed past it to get away from the keres that had arrived. Loren struggled to follow in Harmony's wake, and was nearly knocked over as some payatin's stray tentacle smacked into his arm as they ran past. Swearing, he pushed through, summoning a Flame in his hand and holding it in front of him to ward people off. That worked, as even when panicking people did not want to run into fire. They didn't notice how the flame gave off no heat—it was only Light—just turning to avoid it and getting out of his way.

Already there were people on the ground screaming in pain and bleeding from their eyes as the keres, their grisly work done, left them to suffer. Most attacks by manifested keres weren't immediately fatal, the monstrous things preferring to leave suffering in their wake, sowing the seeds for the darkness in people that they fed upon. In this case, Plague keres left injuries that would destroy people's lives, gouging out eyes, twisting limbs so that they healed misshapen, tainting peoples' open wounds with infections, breaking bones to leave people paralyzed or with punctured internal organs… things that people usually managed survive but would exact a horrible toll on them and their families for the rest of their lives.

Harmony charged towards the nearest keres, swinging her baton one-handed in an arc towards the thing's head. There was a crack as it made contact, knocking the Plague keres over, but it quickly surged back up, its filthy hands reaching up to tear at Harmony's eyes.

Loren's left hand snapped forward in a punch from his waist, the Flame he'd held in it bursting forward in a rush that slammed into the keres. This time the keres let out a phlegmy cry of pain as it was knocked back, smoking and steaming slightly from the pure heat he had converted the Flame into, burning the spiritform that was its body. It writhed, stunned at the sensation of pain, letting Loren get in a second hit. This time what lashed out from his hand was pure heat, pure magic, what he'd been using to lance keres out of existence on the way here scaled up to the keres in front of him.

The Plague keres began to come apart, the blast of Flame scouring it like the spray of a pressure washer scouring away mud. The pale skin covered in wounds vanished, revealing something dark and wet and made him feel ill. It was a foreign feeling, something he hadn't felt since he was a child, before he'd awakened his Flame. He swallowed, feeling the urge to throw up as he felt dizzy, a headaches starting to press on his templ—

He blasted harder.

The black, raw spiritform of the keres smeared across the road, evaporating like drops of water thrown on a running engine as he managed to bore through the keres and have his Flame push it apart from the inside, and the sensation of being sick faded, replaced with a tightly controlled, burning fury. Bags still slung on his back, forcing him to stand lopsided, he drew back his left hand and punched towards one of the keres that harmony had knocked aside. He missed, the blast of Flame slamming into the pavement. The keres immediately turned and leapt at him, and he was able to blast it again as it leapt toward him, the Flame blasting off its face to reveal the blackness behind it as the keres was thrown back. It hit the ground, some of the black spiritform in its head seeming to spill out.

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Loren called Flame to his hand to finish the keres off, but another one came at him, the emaciated, rope-like tentacles on its back seeming studded with rusty nails as they lashed out towards him. The Flame mage stumbled back even as Harmony interposed herself in front of the tentacles, using her baton to knock them aside. They immediately snapped back, the tentacles sweeping in a wide arc to try and rake at her skin.

A glowing amber ball of veneplate slammed into the keres, pushing it back and making its tentacles miss. A nightdress-clad woman, hair graying and wrinkles on her face, stood like she'd just thrown something, her irises glowing as she frowned in concentration. The ball flattened, spreading out in a disk that pushed the keres down into the ground. The disk twisted, grinding at the keres, and with a wet pop dark spiritform burst out from its extremities like someone stepping on a tube of toothpaste as the keres was crushed.

The disk of veneplate immediately shuddered before dissolving into magic that sublimated into the air, and woman swayed, one hand going up to her head as she made a pained face. With that taken care of, Loren was able to catch his breath, even as he turned to look at where the other keres had ended up. He'd lost track of them when he'd been putting down the keres in front of him.

He found one immediately, or at least what he assumed was one. Several people had thrown themselves on top of a tarp, something small struggling inside. From the wounds some of them sported on their limbs and at the way at least one of them staggered away to throw up, they had managed to dogpile on top of one of the keres, the thick tarp preventing it from escaping or inflicting too many diseased wounds on the men holding it down. Another was being held up in the air by glowing white spiritforms that had cuffed around the keres' hands and hoisted them up into the air. The Spiritualist who'd done that must have been either really good or really lucky to pull that off as he held out his hand towards the cuffs to keep them imbued as the keres struggled. One of the cuffs cracked, and the Spiritualist hastily said some keywords, causing a ball of spiritform to coalesce before flying towards the keres' face at the speed of a thrown rock, which caved in the Plague's face. As it screamed in pain, the Spiritualist made another cuff, the process slower since they couldn't simply condense the process into a series of keywords.

Loren moved to the side to get a clearer shot—always know what's behind what you're using magic at—kneeling down before he blasted the kere hanging in midair with Flame. With it staying still, he was able to focus the Flame, making a narrow beam that set the very air on fire as it cut the keres in half from crotch to horned head, the beam punching through the keres and continuing over the buildings.

Plasma was better than lasers, after all.

The keres came apart, and the relieved Spiritualist let out a sigh. Spots of shit and mud had splatted onto his bare pot belly, but he seemed relatively unharmed as he gave Loren a thankful nod that he returned in kind. When he saw Loren start pulling back his fist, he didn't waste time looking confused, he just ducked.

Loren's blast caught the Plague keres that had jumped down from the roofs of the buildings on the other side of the street as the Spiritualist, deciding he was done with this shit, started running. More keres landed on the tents where people had been getting checked up, which bought the people who'd thought it was a good idea to hide under there a few moments as the keres tried to make their way down.

They ran, holding their children against their chests and trying to protect their heads. One of the volunteers called Flame to her hand, throwing it like a ball at one of the keres that had managed to land on someone's back and knocking them off. As that wasn't how fire behaved, it wasn't very effective.

His shoulders were burning from the two backpacks he was carrying, and he was starting to feel the drain of throwing around so much Flame. Loren felt winded, hungry, and a little cold from how elevated his body temperature had gotten from the Flame he'd been using. For a moment, he considered dropping the bags,

No, that was stupid. He wasn't going to run away while leaving his stuff. For a moment, he considered reaching inside to get one o his bottles of oil, but the keres were too close. If he took his eyes off them…

"Here," Harmony said, suddenly at his side. She had a small can of butane in her hand, the kind used to refill lighters, too small for a camping stove. "It's all I have, sorry."

Loren grabbed it and popped off the plastic cap with his thumb, then bit down on the can's nozzle to hold it in place as he pushed. The can released its butane, the fuel filling his mouth. He breathed it in, burning it as fuel for his Flame. He felt slightly better as he pulled can from his mouth. The brief hit wasn't enough to replenish him, but the surge of external fuel gave him a second wind. "We should run," he said.

"Go," Harmony said as she took an alcohol spray from her pocket and spritzed it on some cuts on her arm. From the smears, the keres had managed to tag her, and she was trying to ward off infection. "Nothing stopping you."

He glared at her as he called Flame to his hand again. "You know, sometimes it would be nice if you'd go with my ideas."

A guilty look flashed over Harmony's face. "Yeah, that's my bad. Sorry."

"You owe me lasagna."

"That's fair." She sighed, staring at the keres that were dropping from the tent. Some were spreading out while three leapt at the volunteers under the tent, the one Flame mage there trying to protect her coworkers. "Come on, they need help."

Loren sighed, but began to follow, the bags still over his shoulder.

He nearly collapsed in relief as beams of green light began to rain from the sky, striking each of the keres with an almost inhuman precision and blasting their heads off their shoulders, the beams actually turning at right angles so as not to pierce through the tent canvas. Next to him, Harmony began to squeal like the fangirl she was as she stared up with starstruck eyes at the glowing figure in the sky wreathed in a green radiance.

"You still owe me lasagna," he said as he finally slipped off Harmony's bag from his shoulder and shoved it towards her. The stupid thing was heavy!