Despite the mounting mental pressure I was experiencing, I wondered if the only reason I was able to watch this for so long was due to the strange perks of astral projection. Not having blood pressure, a heart, or lungs made it pretty hard to hyperventilate and pass out - which would otherwise seem like a pretty reasonable reaction. How was I even able to maintain focus as the horror unfolded, and why did I feel curiosity, even excitement, more so than genuine fear? But perhaps I was being harder on myself than I should have been... I had managed to nuke myself and save a city, after all, and bravery isn’t simply a lack of fear; it is a refusal to give in and let the fear control you.
I had lost track of where each of the survivors had gone down below (they were moving quite fast), but I had seen the pink-haired warrior dash into a house with a burst of lightning. The giant wolf moved to another building, clawing at the doorway as if trying to widen the opening and force itself inside, but I could see that it would take a while (it was a sturdy-looking house). A few moments later the sword-wielding man jump through the back window in an explosion of blood, fur, and fire. He raced to another house nearby and dove through the window, which exploded in a firey gout of glass and flame as his sword struck it just before he did.
Abruptly the female soldier (whose spear was still lying broken on the street below) appeared on the rooftop not far for me, causing my focus to waver dangerously. She ran for the center of the roof and rapidly began working the mechanism to get inside - luckily for her the previous villagers had left the outermost gate in the upward position, either by negligence or by design.
Then the giant wolf appeared on the roof, right next to me, and charged directly through me toward the escaping soldier... and I finally found out what happened when I was distracted, or surprised, enough to completely break my concentration during astral projection: There was a brief burst of something that resembled pain, except in my soul, and then darkness.
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When I finally awoke there was I had no sense of how long I was out, but I was pretty hungry and thirsty when I came to. Mom had clearly been crying, but she hugged and fed me gently with a big smile, and without complaint. I also saw a few other relieved looks thrown our way by those near us in the safe room. Feeling guilty, I smiled back at her and babbled baby talk for a while, but I knew that I would have to continue my search - I could only hope to make it up to her in the future.
There was a lingering sense of discomfort when I next tried to send my soul up to the roof, eager to check out the situation and see what was happening, but I was able to push past it and continue my exploration.
The first thing I noticed was that the bonfires were out, with nothing but embers and ashes remaining. The next was that the giant wolf was still digging and clawing at, and around, the cage in the center of the roof. It was hard to tell due to how complex the mechanism was, but I was pretty certain that some of the smaller pieces were bent and mangled enough that nobody would ever be able to use it again, and the interior gateway was permanently bent into the open position where it stuck up through the cage.
There were also deep groves dug into the stone in a few places, but I knew well how thick the stone of the rooftop was - it would take weeks for the giant monster to dig through the solid stone at its current rate... which meant, of course, that we only had a few weeks left to live... But at least the hatch was closed, and I didn't see any traces of the pink-haired soldier (alive or otherwise), which meant she had likely survived.
A few days later I was back on the roof, trying to use my mind to set the stupid gigantic wolf-monster on fire (it didn’t work), when I sensed a loud but distant noise – boom… booom…. booooom… Booooom….BOOOOOOM – getting closer and closer (and louder and louder). We were already doomed, as far as I could tell, and if it was another creature as strong as the giant wolf it simply meant we would die even faster. Great...
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I was busy composing a suitable farewell message for Mark (he still hadn't replied to my messages) when I saw a figure running through the rooftops.
And I meant THROUGH the rooftops. Nary a tile was left behind as the figure jumped from house to house, moving with such speed and force that the surface he landed on was destroyed halfway through his next jump, flying into the air behind him in a cloud of dirt and debris. It was crazy fast, like sports-car-on-the-autobahn fast. And, just like watching a speeding car drive towards you on the highway, it would be upon me before I could react.
As it got closer, I noticed a spray of red on the streets around it; the bodies of shadow wolves were flying up ten, twenty meters into the air, forming vast fountains of blood on the six or seven streets around the approaching figure. Next thing I knew, a massive gust of wind blew across the roof as a figure dropped right beside me, landing directly on the giant wolf.
It was a man. An old man, actually, wearing ragged clothes that barely covered his body, and he seemed pretty short… but my thoughts broke off there as he reached out casually, grabbed the giant wolf by the scruff of its neck, snapped it around backward, and pulled the head off with the bloody spine still attached at it slurped out of the body.
Wait... what?
The old man (honestly, he looked homeless…) hopped easily off of the giant wolf's body, his feet covered in blood from where they had sunk into the beast, and waved his empty hand. All the ashes from the bonfires, as well as the wood that was left behind, were swept up by some invisible force, and there was suddenly a new bonfire burning right next to him. The old man began whistling, as if this was the most normal thing in the world, as he looked straight at me and began peeling the skin off of the giant wolf's head. Without warning he abruptly stopped whistling, his mouth left hanging open, as he continued to stare at me. He dropped the wolf-head on the fire and reached up to rub his eyes with his filthy hands, leaving streaks of blood all over his face. He then looked at me again, blinking his eyes as he stood up and began moving toward my astral form.
At that point, I was so far beyond shock that I didn’t even react, and I absently wondered if he was going to cook and eat me too. I bet soul-clouds taste great with pickles!
He raised an eyebrow as his gaze followed my soul-rope back to where it exited the roof, and then moved over to examine it, waving a hand back and forth right through me. I mentally cringed as hard as I could, but felt… nothing? He stared up and down my soul-rope again, reached up to scratch his (dirty) hair, and then shrugged as he started whistling again before turning into a blur of movement as he dashed back off the roof.
I saw clouds of blood and fur rise into the sky all around the fortress, and I was caught between wanting to reenter my body or see more of what was going on out there. I had already been convinced that we were all going to die sometime soon (after the giant wolf breached the stone), so my survival instincts were probably somewhat muted, and curiosity won the day.
It did not take the old man long to slaughter the rest of the wolves, and my curiosity was rewarded as he returned to the roof with a terrified scream. For a moment I thought it was me screaming, and then him, but neither made any sense and luckily the answer presented itself - or should I say himself - soon enough. When the old man appeared on the roof next to his bonfire he was holding the bloody form of a villager... but that wasn't quite right, and after a moment I recognized the scraps of his red armor under the gore. It was one of the soldiers, and since he still had two arms I surmised it must have been the sword-wielding one (though his sword was nowhere in sight).
The soldier stopped screaming shortly after he was tossed unceremoniously onto the ground and was given a few moments to catch up with what was happening. He began unsteadily trying to regain his feet, looking blearily around the rooftop, then began speaking and bowing deeply at the waist (which almost caused him to topple over again). I didn't catch most of what he was saying, except that there were general words of politeness and respect, but there was one word that was repeated a bunch of times; 'merrik'.
The old man didn't seem to be paying attention to the solder, but he did glance at my soul-rope a few times as he reached into the bonfire. He hadn't completed the task of skinning the wolf (due to being distracted by my astral form, presumably) and while most of the hair had burnt off, it wasn’t even remotely cooked. Of course, that didn’t stop him as he ripped off a chunk of flesh from the skull and tossed it in his mouth.
My curiosity was sated, and watching the old man with his delicious wolf-face sashimi was becoming more unsettling than novel, so I decided to return to my body and just hope for the best.