Now, then. In the thrill of a chase, you don't really remember essential details. Things just seem to vanish from your memory. Even for those versed in the death chase, the adrenaline rush.

The experience is just too novel, too immediate for anything but anxiety to be in your orbit of thought. As it was with Aenea. And the critical detail she forgot, was the little rock she carried in her hand that she hadn't let go of through the chase. Or the fact that she didn't even know where she was running to, if there was even a dead end or not.

She didn't think of any of that. It was all instinct to her. All flight or fight response in her brain. Every synapse focused on that, not even the pain of scraping her body against metal could dissuade her from that primal instinct.

Leaking pipes, the mechanical sound of their footsteps beating metal, the narrow and cramp pinch in between two thinning walls of concrete - none of that mattered.

She ran to the final end of the pipeline, it was a little ledge almost cliff-like. There was a shot behind her like thunder. The noise resonated in her ears. A bullet whizzed by her feet, the blowing wind pressed against her pants. The bullet ricocheted and struck the wall, the noise and cacophony increasing the headache now ringing between her ears.

Another shot. This one clipped her shoulder, and she looked down, at the edge of this concrete ditch to a small pond below. Green, brown, uninviting water. It made her rethink things, or maybe it made her think at last. She looked up and down in consideration (as if she could even see the invisible figure).

Footsteps approached. Or the mud stuck to the bottom of invisible boots,

And as the footsteps approached, she could only think to do one thing because that's all her small reptile brain could synthesize as a thought. She grit her teeth, she knelt down and jumped straight into the pond. Green veins ran from her arm, growing down to her feet. She struck the floor. The water was shallow. The pain registered from her heels to her abdomen and stopped there.

It hurt. But nothing broke? No. She grunted and felt the pain, but her bones were fine. She looked down for a moment to her skin and all the strange things now growing her. The green veins, like vines, right beneath her flesh.

It gave her vigor.

Sprinting was easy, kicking herself off of mounds of trash and Joshua trees and walls was easy. Even with the other person still following her. Even with bullets passing and grazing her.

She ate one to the shoulder. It hurt like a mule kick, the metal lodged in between her joint. She screamed and killed her noise almost immediately. She clenched her face close and found some...curious. It was like her muscles were trying to push out the bullet from her flesh - and still running - she sped along the process by sticking her fingers into the wound and digging for the metal. She threw it to side.

So she was now in what she presumed to be the waste dump, some intermediary junk lot in between the septic facility and the sewage itself. Where mountains of trash reign their shadows. Where the air carries the scent of toxicity.

They both ran through muddy puddles.

There was one good thing; she was able to see this invisible. She looked back in small intervals, looking to see the trash and dirt and shit collected on the feet of the invisible person. And the heavy footsteps and noise now made by the plastic and aluminum cans around them.

It was a trash lot after all. A waste dump.

She saw a heavy indentation in front of her. A boot stamped firm on the floor.

Shit.

She dodged to the left, her body hitting the floor on her injured shoulder.

A bullet. It whizzed past her face, cutting her cheek.

If she was fighting someone with good aim, she would have died five times over by now. Someone with good aim.

And who doesn't have good aim?

She gripped the rock in her hands and looked around. Bullets came flying past her body, though she was relatively still. They came past her skin, hitting her sides and striking a chainlink fence behind them. All the sparks did not scare Aenea, did not stop her from revving her arm. She found a foot trail. She aimed her hand and shot.

The air broke like thunder as the rock went forward. She was sure she dislocated her other hand just by the throw, it hurt so much.

It hit something. A loud groan from a woman. Then coughing.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Aenea grabbed her arm, it felt...fine?

She couldn't think about that now. Because in front of her was a new shape in the dirt, a cavity in the form of a body. Aenea ran to it, she grabbed something, something fleshy.

"Get off me." The invisible person said.

It was familiar. Extremely familiar.

Who was the only woman left? Salome? No, her voice was too sweet and young.

Luanne.

Aenea kicked the person, though did not know what she hit, only that it hurt. And it must have been a hard kick, there was a wound that popped and bled from the point of impact, and it traced an outline of the body.

She had struck a thigh.

It was easy from there on out, hitting and punching and cutting with her long fingernails. It was as if Aenea making brush strokes, broad and red.

She finally found Luanne's hand and rode it to her wrist until they were both fighting for the gun.

And in that instant of strife, the spell wore off. Luanne was no longer invisible. She was no longer a hazard. Her body materialized almost immediately into plain sight. It must have been hard for her.

Luanne struggled, alright.

"You did this." She shouted between her struggling breath. Aenea didn't even listen. Not to any yell, not to the extreme glossy eyes Luanne wore.

She just reached for the gun Luanne held. She put both hands on it as they rolled on the floor. And both of them glowed with the strength of demons in their blood. The green blood.

Aenea put her palm against the exit of the barrel. An accident.

Luanne popped Aenea's pinky and a piece of her palm. The fleshy bits flew off some meters away.

"You bitch!" Aenea said. She put her good hand on the gun.

"You're serious about this, aren't you? Aren't you?!" Aenea looked down at Luanne, whose gritted and seething teeth spat back a hissing yes. Yes.

So Aenea did what she knew. She put her hand onto the gun and held it, and the arcana in her arm worked like small electrical jolts through her fingertips and into the metal of the gun. Her mind went back, back in time it seemed...as if seeing every moment held by the gun...seeing the moment Luanne had bought it. The moment she spent contemplating with it and further beyond, to the point of which the gun was sold from legal vendor to illegal vendor. Even further, tracing every moment of that small .45's history. Aenea saw the point of forging, the hot metal and the molten rods of steel that had shaped through a forge into the components of the gun.

She stopped there.

And when she returned to reality (where she had only spent a fraction of a second away from), the gun was gone. Or rather, transformed.

It was hot metal. Aenea, let go.

Luanne didn't.

Luanne screamed. The molten steel burned her flesh, she dropped it onto the floor where it steamed and made a bed of charred grass and stone.

She rolled around, holding her hand.

"Stop it! Stop it!" It was only a moment she held the molten steel which made it all the more impressive to Aenea, how much damage had been done. It had burned Luanne's bone black, had sealed any blood and had vaporized some channels and capillaries.

It was a pain so great Luanne couldn't do much but roll and scream.

And Aenea looked down at Luanne.

What would the Apollo do?

She hated thinking of Apollo. Well, it was more than that. She just plain outright hated him. But what would he have done?

Aenea stepped up towards the prone and belly-laid Luanne. She knelt and put down her hand behind her neck and went up to her ear.

"Why'd you do this?" She asked.

Luanne screamed. Still in pain, unable to register anything but pain.

Luanne brought her hand inwards, towards her chest as she rubbed it. Aenea came down on her, a punch at first, not something particularly strong just a quick jab to the side of the face.

"Why'd you try to kill me? You're not the type to chase after power. So why?"

Luanne muttered something incomprehensible, an amalgam of stutter and scream and whining as she held her hand close to her. The snot in her nose and mouth was nearly coming out of each of her broken words. Steam came from her wound. It was trying to heal with no efficiency at all because carbonized tissue, after all, is dead tissue. It'd take time. Much longer time.

Aenea on the other hand? Well, her shoulder felt just about okay.

So there was no immediate hope for Luanne - not that either of them knew that.

Aenea slapped her again. So hard, that it turned her face the other way. She sat on Luanne, mounting her and slapping Luanne's haggard and messy hair.

She stopped. Luanne tried to talk.

"Don't kill him," Luanne muttered, her lips shaky and weak. "Don't kill him. Don't kill him. Don't kill him."

"What are you talking about?" Aenea said. Beside them, the hot iron rods hissed and settled into a puddle and no longer glowed, rather fumed in a small hole made by its own heat.

"Don't kill my baby boy." Luanne cried. Still holding her hand, still crying. "Don't do my son what you did to Floyd. Please. Please please pleasepleaseplease."

Aenea looked down. Her hand felt limp then hot. It was like reality struck her at last. Flight or fight left her and what filled the gap of thoughts was something worse.

Anger?

No, it was guilt.

Blood pulsed through her hot hand. Vanishing anger could no longer disguise the small aches and pains of her body. Her Achilles heel, burning with stress. Her hand, hot from the slap and punch.

Luanne cried, screeching almost with a wide mouth. She curled into a ball. There was no makeup to run down her face, she was white and sickly, and from the weak position she maintained, she looked like a ward patient about close enough to death's door as anyone should be.

Aenea stood, walked steps away from her.

Luanne repeated her words in what sounded like a prayer.

"Kill me. Kill everyone. Just don't get my baby boy Flint. Just don't. Don't. Don't. Don't."

And Aenea felt cold.

Her eyes began to swell as she looked at that fetal crying of her sister. Her dirty clothes, the shit-stained jeans, a ripped sweater, her perforated boots. Like poverty had struck her hard in the back of the head and left her in this ditch - an appropriate agent to the scene, the waste dump they were in.

And of all things Aenea felt, all pain and cringing shame, the growing pressure to cry was the strongest. The stuffed nose, parsed lips that could not talk. Those things you try to hide and bury like all horrible secrets should be.

Aenea put her hand against her face and breathed a heavy sigh and spoke, finally.

She said, "You and I need to have a long talk."

And it wasn't like Luanne could really say no.