Victoria was in an enormous dropship. She had never been on one of these before and she did *not* like the feeling.

In design the interior wasn’t dissimilar from the hunters’ quarters. Featureless metal furnishing screwed into the featureless metal floor. They had been given another briefing on their way here, they were dropping into a small coastal strip of land to evacuate the human citizens before the monsters began to invade their towns invigorated by the presence of a Nephilim, whether it was active or not.

The Nephilim were a group of 7 enormous monsters that had appeared out of nowhere around a year after the first monsters appeared. Victoria wasn’t sure how Beowulf knew there was 7 of them because only 3 had ever been seen. Chitina, an insectile Nephilim that lurked inside volcanoes, Zephyron, a monstrous winged beast that cruised through the sky occasionally disappearing before returning to attack again and Chyrnor, a wretched creature that seeks radiation that became the sole reason that nuclear power fell out of fashion.

Chyrnor was also responsible for one of Beowulf’s greatest embarrassments. They had been trying to save some nothing island in the middle of nowhere and launched a full-scale assault on Chyrnor holding nothing back. Hunters were rare and elite in the grand scheme of things, there were very few of them under Beowulf. Beowulf lost 238 hunters in that tragedy and only half of those had died in the battle. The other half were killed by the radioactive fallout, she hadn’t been there, but she had seen the bodies.

Victoria was not alone in the hangar; she was grouped with 3 others. Cheshire was there, he was wearing camouflage, as if that did anything to hide the fact that he was a bright orange cat creature. There was also a man with thick grey skin and tiny black eyes. He was enormous, almost touching the ceiling sitting down, he hadn’t spoken for the whole trip, and she hadn’t gotten his name, which immediately made her like him. The final hunter was a lean woman with wild hair and sharp teeth. Upon noticing Victoria’s glance, the girl smirked and got to her feet, leaning back with a languid motion until her legs were in the air, then she pushed herself up from the hard bench she had been sitting on before landing back on her feet with a resounding clang.

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“what’s wrong Victoria, you look paler than usual, you wouldn’t be scared of the big bad Nephilim, would you?” pouted the girl, a malicious glint in her eye

“I’m not scared of it Hera” replied Victoria “and even if I was, you would be worse off, you have scored lower than me in everything, in and outside of tests”

Victoria had touched a nerve and the snarling Hera stormed off without another word. Hera was one of Victoria’s oldest acquaintances from Beowulf, she wouldn’t call her a friend by any means, more like a bitter rival.

Victoria went to alleviate her boredom by staring out one of the few windows in this bleak purgatory of an aircraft, she was genuinely curious what the dead zone looked like, she had been deployed to corrupted areas before but never *the* dead zone.

This part of the dead zone was a rainforest. The deep green canopy almost completely blotted out the view of the ground and creatures soared through the air. She had fought these creatures before, they resembled pterodactyls or some other prehistoric flying beast from a distance, however when you got close you could see the 4 powerful limbs that protruded from underneath, making the creatures more resemble fantasy dragons than anything, however they were small, in fact the ones below were the largest she had ever seen. but they were growing bigger?

Victoria jerked back from the glass as the great beak pierced through the reinforced glass of the ship leaving everyone in the room shocked.

“What is that pilot doing?” yelled Victoria “they’ve pulled us way too close, and I am *not* dying here”

First to rise Hera quickly grabbed the beak of the creature and began to claw at its throat even as its arms slammed against the wall from the other side

“Get to the damn pilot and get us up, *now*!”

Just as quickly as another creature poked its head through another window the brutish man had risen and, seizing its entire head in his palm, twisted it off like one would a tick. He pointed wordlessly toward the cockpit and Victoria’s liking toward the man grew.

She ran through corridor after corridor, winged creatures of all different types now began appearing through holes and Victoria began to wonder what getting the pilot would do. But it was too late now, she could feel the dropship beginning to tilt downward and not dying in a burning crash was now her number 1 priority, she completely ignored the door to the cockpit, tearing it open with her bare hands and screamed

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING”

Her screams fell on deaf ears. The seat was empty. There was a bloodstained hole in the glass. And she could see the ground coming to meet them.