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When my great-great-great grandfather emigrated from Reme and came to Vespuscia for her eponymous Vespuscian Dream, he wouldn’t have guessed, in all his wildest dreams, that his bloodline would witness the end of the world.

The United-City-States were the preeminent power of the post-world-war-three northern hemisphere. Out of all developed countries, this one should’ve proved even a smidge of resistance against the Outsiders.

The Vespuscian Dream had been smoke and mirrors before the world ended so I shouldn’t be too surprised. Didn’t matter how much money that the USCV threw into their military-industrial complex, it just couldn’t cope with the apocalypse.

We hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the national guard or even the army proper. I doubted we’d see them anyhow—guns were nothing compared to reality-warping powers.

I settled my feet against the earth, my perspective shifting as I convinced myself that I was holding the world back through my bare soles—the limitations of our powers were mostly self-imposed; you only needed to let delusion run its course and consensus reality would believe it and make it real.

There was a little snag in that witnesses tended to weaken the manifestation of your esoterica, but that was easily ignored. The less someone knew of your powers, the better—I had found this out by accident when my strength suddenly tripled once my classmates had died to scythes on the first few days of the ‘clipse.

If it weren’t for Mary, I probably woulda joined them in their little jaunt into the Underworld.

“You ready, Johnny-boy?” I asked back at the Eirishman. If I didn’t have more pressing worries in front of me, I would’ve thought that he was trying to bore a hole through my shoulder-blades with his stare.

Didn’t help that he was no stranger to the gym before the world went crazy.

“Ready as one can be.”

“Then hop on. The others will run in our wake.”

Johnny became a counterbalance to the weight of the earth, his lead skeleton heavy enough to topple me without [Atlas].

“Might wanna cut off on the snacks, John. You’re heavier than a beached whale.”

I did not wait to hear his response as I pushed with a fraction of my might against the earth’s crust.

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Now, I never experienced butterflies in my stomach for a man before. Sweaty palms and clammy skin sure, but this was a new feeling entirely.

We flew through the air like an old-world missile, my metal-clad form all that kept my insides from being liquified from the intense and rapid g-force acceleration. The energy gradient was as stark as the temp difference between absolute zero and the core of the sun.

I had threaded adamant throughout my flesh, leeching it from my bones and into my muscles and interstitial system. Viscera was welded together and movement became spasmic as I rusted over my skin with the molten lead of my very soul.

It almost wasn’t enough to keep me together.

Noah hit the [Finger] like a lightning bolt from Jupiter Himself.

I held on with all my life and went along for the ride.

Reverberations echoed through me, wringing my bell from the inside out. Having rung a church bell a few times in my life, I now questioned the ethics of doing so. Green Christ, I felt my teeth rattle like a sheet of aluminum.

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Arse-over-tea-kettle we went, tumbling through layers of maroon fungal tissue. We went through almost sixty meters of solid pseudo-flesh—what I christened Soylent RedTM—and then reached the sky on the other side, having shed most of the absurd kinetic force that Noah had produced from a single fucking leap.

Then, it was my turn.

In my hands was a human life, the greatest burden I could ever be saddled with.

In that eternal moment, my vessel was entirely within my hands to mold as I saw fit. I became the primordial clay of Adam and made myself into armor, cladding Noah as he fell down upon the face of the earth.

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My heartbeat did not slow even when the air stopped pelting my skin.

I felt a dull thud when I assumed that we hit solid ground and opened my eyes.

When the dust cleared I was hit with confusion: there was a blob of metal sizzling on the bedrock. Then abject horror finished the one-two combo: that was Johnny.

He was supposed to cover the both of us; not this, whatever this was!

In mute shock I saw the slag coalesce into the rough shape of a skeleton. Slowly, it bled and that blood coagulated, forming a network not unlike the red mycelium of [Antedilluvia] from which flesh grew.

That reminded me of something.

I felt the ground rumble and looked up to the approaching [Finger].

I had only a blink or two to set my stance and leap away like a grasshopper on steroids and whatever it was that Antediluvians took. I hoped to whatever non-existent God that the man would survive a practical sky-scraper falling atop him. He’d survived losing most of his organs, what was the worst that a ton or thousands could do?

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Once the [Finger] crashed into the ground and the dust began to settle, everyone but Juan ran towards the incomprehensible mass of pseudo-flesh; he would stay behind to watch over Mary as she convalesced. [Panopticon] was not an esoterica geared towards direct combat but instead utility and scouting.

Now, we’d been scared of crossing the Atlantic so it might’ve looked like sheer lunacy to raid a world-wound… and that was an entirely correct assumption.

Without Mary we had to step up to the ante—couldn’t expect her to wake up on time and save us.

“Got ourselves into this. Gonna get ourselves outta this, too.” I whispered to myself as I grew a pipe-bomb from my phalanges. “Or die trying. Most likely die trying."

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Entity: [Omniglot//Moonscorched]

Sphera: [Golgotha], [Luna], [Empyrea], [Antediluvia]

Para-class: [Red-Aphelion]

Esoterica: [Bonfire]

Hubris: [Pyrrhus]

Reliquary: [-]

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Esoterica: [Bonfire]

Ignosis: [The esoterica of {Bonfire} derives from the sphera of {Golgotha} and {Empyrea}; establishes a commissural tract in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of a skeleton to the platonic ideals of assimilation and temperature.]

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Hubris: [Pyrrhus]

Ignosis: [The hubris of {Shouldering-The-Crucifix} derives from the sphera of {Antediluvia} and {Empyrea}; establishes an antipodal ligature in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of cessation to the platonic ideal of ash.]

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Once we reached the fallen [Finger], it was teeming with anomalies; insects mutated into unnatural size and shape, fit only for death and slaughter. They had no reproductive organs and were without fear, fighting after dismemberment and uncaring of self harm. They had no mouths with which to eat, not truly—reapers didn’t count as those were more like dimensional apertures with legs. These were life forms whose purpose was just war and nothing more.

Like my Frankian revolutionary ancestors, I started this fight for independence by chucking grenades into the coming swarm. Boneshard shrapnel eviscerated Antediluvians by the handful.

For every one anomaly felled, two more came to take its place.

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