Things quickly settled back into their old routine for Waia. The other townspeople were quick to welcome their barkeep back after she offhandedly mentioned visiting relatives on the other side of the island for a few days, and everyone was happy to see that the inexplicable monster attack didn’t happen again.

The weather, however, didn’t seem to be in quite as high spirits as the rest of Waia’s life. A few days after she arrived home, a cloud front rolled in and the whole day was unendingly overcast. Not particularly out of the ordinary for February, but Waia thought that the rest of her Domain preferred at least moderately sunny weather. At the very least, she expected clouds of that size to bring rain, like the wizards on Moloka’i did to sustain the humans’ crops. But the day was as dry as ever, just somewhat chilly and dreary.

Waia stared at the overcast sky through her window. “Hey, do you think I should go check up on the Primoi keeping the weather in check, a couple islands over? It’s not normally this cloudy, I’m getting a little suspicious.”

Ivy looked up from her book and stared into Waia’s eyes with a blank look on her face. “It’s been four days.”

Waia felt her wife’s gaze bore straight into her. After a while, she caved. “Yeah, yeah, okay. I’ll give ‘em a couple weeks to fix it. Maybe their glyphs or whatever are just on the fritz. Or they got tired of sunshine. Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“There we go, thanks.” Ivy continued reading.

-

Another week passed, and the clouds made no sign of even budging. It became colder with every day that passed, and plants began to wither and turn brown.

The people of Honoka’a began to worry about what might have happened to make whatever held the nuclear winter at bay finally vanish. They had adapted to the new world, but were now seemingly being pulled into the same situation as the rest of the world. And nobody in the village was more worried than Waia. She knew the cause of the fair weather, and knew that at this point, something had to have made them stop maintaining the magic that kept the weather up.

Ivy started agreeing with Waia about investigating once the animals brought back from hunting trips started to become visibly malnourished and diseased. Waia thanked her for understanding and started preparing for a trip to Moloka’i.

In the dead of night, right before Waia planned to take one of the village’s fishing boats to the other island, she was awoken. She heard a sound approaching the village. She focused her hearing and heard… Engines. Several, and growing slowly louder.

Ivy woke up to see Waia putting on her jacket and boots. “Okay, what is it now?”

Waia pointed outside. “I hear cars or something. They’re coming closer. Gonna check it out.”

Ivy groaned softly. “Really? You’re leaving tomorrow, and now you’re getting up to deal with this?” She got out of bed as well. Now that she was focusing, she could hear what sounded like engines as well.

Waia zipped up her jacket. “You might not have noticed, but working cars aren’t exactly something you hear every day around these parts. I mean, it might be a couple of really lucky merchants, but this la-” she checked the time on the wall clock. 1:32 AM. “This early? Deserves to be checked out, at the very least.”

Ivy sighed. “Fine. But you can’t leave first thing in the morning, alright? I’m adding this to your… Work Tab. I’ll think of a better name later.”

“Fine with me.” Waia opened the bedroom door and allowed Ivy to pass through first.

Outside, the couple evidently weren’t the only ones to be woken by the noises. A couple dozen people had already exited their respective houses, shacks and cabins, and now stood in anticipation, watching the westward road from which the engine sounds originated.

Eventually came the lights. The almost pitch-black town was dimly lit by the headlights of a little over half a dozen bulky vehicles. As they approached, people began to notice the odd military style of the approaching vehicles. Jeeps, APCs, camo-painted eighteen-wheelers with containers hooked up to them.

The vehicles pulled up and came to a stop just inside the fringes of the town, maybe twenty feet from the people at the front of the growing crowd. Out of several of them stepped numerous figures wielding assault rifles and clad head-to-toe in military gear, gas masks and bulletproof vests. Practically the only easy way to spot them was via their silhouettes in front of headlights, or being lit up by the flashlights attached to the rifles of other figures.

But one of the new arrivals clearly stood out from the rest. Their attire was far from modern, almost completely hidden by a jet-black hooded cloak which rendered them almost invisible in the darkness. A smooth, pearl-white mask covered their face, featureless save for a vertical slit down the middle. Instead of any modern firearms, the only weapon they seemed to carry was the sword slung over their back.

The hooded figure drifted forward, the rustling of their cloak being the only indication that they were even touching the ground. “Greetings, citizens of Honoka’a.”

Waia was getting some seriously bad vibes from this person. “Greetings yourself. Come back in the morning with your army cosplayers and let us have a full night’s sleep, why don’t you?”

The figure’s head turned for a moment to face Waia, and she felt almost physically compelled to back down. After a second, the figure looked back at the rest of the crowd. “I and my associates are humble Servants of Reckoning. I have traveled incalculable distances to stand before you tonight, and come bearing hope for your future.”

Ivy tugged Waia’s sleeve and glanced between her and the Servants, visibly trying to get Waia to draw some kind of connection. Waia merely shrugged.

The lead Servant continued speaking. “Recently, your peaceful village was assaulted by a band of armed monstrosities. Those beasts were native to a plane known as the Down Below, home to tens of billions more of such things. Thankfully, I stopped the far larger invasion that they had planned to enact upon this world.”

A few people in the crowd laughed at what the person was saying. Waia would too, if she wasn’t worried out of her mind.

“I am aware of the overall incredulity of such statements,” continued the figure. “But that is not all I know of matters beyond your knowledge.” Another glance at Waia. “Millennia-old beings have been ruling your archipelago since society collapsed, caging you here like guinea pigs without your knowledge. And while this too sounds deranged, there is more than one individual here able to confirm my claims.”

Waia kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t outing herself, not if she didn’t need to.

“All of my comrades here…” The figure nodded slightly in the direction of the armed people behind them. “I have stood before them all as I now stand before you. The Primoi, your jailors, they have been eliminated on all islands save this one. An estimated half-dozen remain, if that. And after I saved them from their unknown prisons, the people of Hawaii have taken up arms from the barren island of Oahu and joined me in my crusade to rid this world of supernatural threats like the ones trapping you on these dying islands.”

Waia had had enough. She stepped forward, making sure not to look like anything too off-putting to the people behind her. “Okay, listen here. This is my town, and I don’t want you and your weird cult talk scaring my neighbors. I’m sure I can speak for the rest of us when I say that we don’t want your kind around here. We’ve been having a rough few days, so unless you and those shruggers behind you turn out to be a couple of good samaritans, we’d all prefer it if you went back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”

Shouts of “Yeah!” came from the people behind her.

The figure calmly waited for her to finish. “Greetings, Mrs. Waia. I am not surprised by your desire to rid us from your island. I can be sure that you find my presence concerning. After all, the dissemination of this information would certainly threaten your security among these humans. Am I correct?”

Waia glanced back at the crowd, who were nervously staring at her as if she was some sort of witch. Ivy scanned the faces around her, then gave Waia a hesitant nod.

Waia nodded back and stared down at the figure. “You listen here. I don’t know where you’ve gotten all this from, but let me tell you now that you’re in over your head. I’m gonna give you and your lackeys one more chance to leave before I introduce you to everything you’re really about.” She shifted into her true form, eliciting several gasps and stifled cries from the people behind her. “And trust me when I say that all of it’ll hurt.”

Even looking into Waia’s luminous orange eyes, the figure didn’t at all move beyond craning their neck slightly to maintain presumed eye contact with Waia. They stared at Waia for a moment before looking past her and at the crowd.

“Not inappropriate reactions. After all, your trusted barkeep has now proven to you all the veracity of my claims by growing half a meter and making her eyes visibly glow. She is one of many, now few, of the beings treating you and the rest of your archipelago like playthings.”

They stepped past Waia and faced the crowd directly. “The Servants have an abundance of weapons and equipment. These Primoi are not the only ones in existence. Scores exist all across the world, hiding in their strongholds and living in luxury while millions starve and die. Our group has swept from frigid England all the way east and into the specific. Only two continents remain before our presence is felt worldwide. Join us, and the world will soon be freed of these immortal tyrants.”

Waia decided not to throttle the person where they stood. Instead, she turned and looked at the crowd, her hands clenched nervously.

One of the villagers spoke up. “Hey, uh, Waia? If you’re some crazy tall demigod, or whatever the nutcase said, are you that big lava person who worked with those other randoms a few weeks ago? Fighting those monsters?”

Waia suppressed the urge to grin like a maniac. “Y- Uh, yup. That was me. I do lava stuff. That’s my thing.”

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The figure fixated on the one who had spoken. “She is also of the same race who made untold billions vanish not three years ago. Your civilization was broken into pieces because of her and her kind.”

“Yeah, okay, but did she do it?”

Waia raised her arm and pointed at the person. “No, but I know the guy who did. Nobody likes him, it wasn’t really a one-off thing.”

After a second’s pause, the crowd began to loosely huddle together and whisper among themselves. Waia heard snippets of “She did save us,” and “We know her pretty well”.

Waia turned back to face the figure, a look of indestructible smugness plastered across her face. The look was immediately destroyed when she heard the repeated faint clicks of the armed people behind the figure turning off their safety catches.

“A pity,” said the figure, as calmly as always. They let out a curt whistle.

The Servants immediately raised their rifles and opened fire in perfect unison. The crowd scattered in an instant as gunfire tore through them, scrambling in all directions to escape the assault.

Waia sprang into action before she even had time to process what was happening around her. She thrust her hand in the path of a nearby Servant’s gunfire, letting the bullets melt on contact with her hand and coalesce forwards into a curved blade-like shape. Before the Servant could account for the new obstacle, Waia lunged at them and slashed a deep gash into their gas mask. The Servant fell backwards and collapsed, their gun discharging its last few rounds into a nearby tree.

Waia pulled her blade back and formed it into a clawed gauntlet covering her upper arm, then turned to stare at the figure with primal fury burning in her eyes. “You…”

The figure had not yet even moved from their spot. Instead of giving any kind of direct response, they merely let out another whistle.

Waia heard the screech of metal being forced in two, followed by a rush of air as several indistinct shapes punched through the roofs of the trailers attached to the Servants’ trucks. She looked up in a vain attempt to follow the shapes through the air, only to be met with some kind of serrated needle that sailed towards her head.

Waia blocked the projectile with her lava-coated hand, then heard a whump as one of the shapes landed behind her. She turned to see a nightmarish amalgamation of spines and points. The quadrupedal monster in front of her waved a tail covered in more jagged barbs through the air, its slavering mandibles clicking in rough unison. What threw Waia off the most about the creature, however, were its soulless, empty eye sockets.

The creature whipped its spiny tail at Waia, who caught the appendage with her stony gauntlet. With the obstacle disarmed, Waia reached forward and planted her fist into its face. The creature reared back and yanked its tail out of Waia’s grip, but before it could make another strike, Waia grabbed its head with her now-free lava-covered hand. The creature hissed in pain as its flesh boiled under Waia’s grip, who only released her molten claws from its face once its seizing had mostly died down.

Waia looked around for that hooded figure and their stupid cloak. The Servants had spread around the town, kicking in doors and hunting down remaining villagers. Meanwhile, another one of the creatures, this one with massive dragonfly wings and spindly legs, flew over the rooftops. As it passed by, jets of fire issued from its mouth and set the homes it flew past alight.

The sight just served to make Waia want to hunt down the one with the sword even more. If they were the leader, then they were the one who Waia could blame for all this. And if she killed them, maybe the rest of the servants would…

There. The figure was floating down the street, serenely walking past the other Servants who shot people cowering in their homes. They stopped at Waia’s house.

Waia realized what was happening over there. She took three steps before the barbed tail of the creature she had failed to kill wrapped around her leg and pulled her towards its clicking mandibles.

While Waia grappled with the spined monstrosity, the figure waited patiently for the scuffling from inside the house to die down. After a moment, the door opened and a Servant came out with a battered and pinned Ivy in front of them.

“Acceptable.”

While the servant pushed Ivy down to her knees and handed the figure a framed picture of something, the figure reached up with their main hand and drew their sword from their back. The first limb that Ivy had seen removed from the cloak, their arm was covered in overlapping bands of polished metal, like skin tight armor.

Ivy struggled against the Servant holding her down, staring fearfully up at the hooded monolith standing in front of her. “Wh- What’re you doing? Why are you doing this?”

The figure did not respond. They didn’t even look at Ivy. Their attention seemed to be taken up by the sight of Waia wrestling with the creature down the road.

Waia managed to pin the creature to the ground and slash a series of gouges into its face with her red-hot claws before stomping its face into nothing recognizable with her boot.

She looked up to see the figure holding their sword up thirty yards away like a lumberjack winding up for a chop, looking Waia straight in the eye as they angled the blade towards a screaming Ivy. A row of several dozen pale blue glyphs lit up along the blade, as if the sword itself was anticipating something.

Waia took off in a dead sprint towards the figure. “No!”

She crossed twenty yards in three seconds. That was the time the figure waited before swinging their sword directly into Ivy’s chest.

Instead of stopping or even slowing down, Waia rammed shoulder-first into the figure’s cloaked chest like a footballer. She carried their comparatively diminutive form away from Ivy, who collapsed to the ground with the sword still buried in her chest.

Waia slammed the figure into the wall of a burning house, sending them straight through and into the flaming living room. Waia stepped through the hole the figure had created, dragging her hand across the brickwork and creating knifelike talons of lava for her one free hand. “Let me make one thing clear right now: Whatever you did to make those monsters out there, I’m gonna make that look like a fun trip to summer camp.”

The figure wordlessly stood up and shifted their cloak off of their shoulders. More tight-fitting plate armor glinted in the light of the fire around them. Hundreds of more light blue glyphs pulsed with light all over the metal, before fading back into invisibility.

The figure raised one arm and held out an open palm. A split second later, Waia felt the sword slice a gash in her shoulder as it flew past her and into the figure’s outstretched hand. The moment they gripped their blade, the glyphs covering their armor and weapon flashed into sight again, and a shaft of sky-blue light emanated from the slit in their mask.

Waia brought two fingers up to her shoulder, and they came back yellow. She lowered herself, bellowed at the figure, then charged.

Stone and steel rang against each other again and again, Waia swiping furiously at the figure’s head with her claws and feet. Globs of lava swam across her body, covering whatever part of her was about to make contact with the figure. Meanwhile, the figure twirled their sword like a baton, effortlessly deflecting all of Waia’s strikes while making no offensive gestures of their own.

Waia lifted one leg, bent down with the other and thrusted her heel into the figure’s chest while their sword was raised. A string of glyphs on the armor near the figure’s collarbone flashed, and the figure was yanked backwards by some unseen force out of the way of Waia’s kick.

Waia growled and regained her posture, but before she could aggress any further, the figure rushed forward with inhuman speed and brought their sword up to Waia’s throat. Waia simply shot her lava-encrusted hand up and grabbed the blade before it could hit any unprotected part of her.

The figure, hunched low to bring the sword up at a hard-to-block angle, stared up at their halted blade, but made no attempt to free their weapon. Waia snarled and tightened her grip on the blade, which was beginning to glow a dull orange from the heat of Waia’s claws.

“Nice glowstick.” Putting everything she had into the action, Waia pulled the sword out of the figure’s grip, took the blade in both hands, and smashed the crossguard into the figure’s mask like a pickaxe.

The mask shattered like glass, sending shards and dust flying across the room. The figure staggered back, turned around and collapsed to the floor, blood dripping onto the wood from the depths of their hood. Ordinary, red blood.

Waia let go of the sword with one hand, then reached up and snapped off a flaming rafter, holding it over her head like a club. Before she could bring it down, the figure let out another whistle from the ground.

Waia was pounced upon by another one of the creatures. Matted dreadlocks for hair barely concealed a tube-like appendage for a mouth, covered in dozens of tiny teeth. Paws covered with tiny, needle-thin blades pierced Waia’s chest where the creature stood on top of her.

Waia had done this dance before, she knew what to do. But while she was angling her feet to push the creature off, she noticed a long scar running diagonally across its underbelly, in the same place that the figure’s blade had struck Ivy. Waia’s head instinctively turned to where she had seen her wife struck. The body was gone.

Taking advantage of Waia’s distracted state, the creature, Ivy, whatever it was gnashed at Waia’s collarbone with its protruding tube of a mouth. Waia cried out in pain and reflexively struck at the creature, throwing it off of her with a fist-shaped burn scar smoldering on its cheek.

Waia scrambled to her feet, staring in shock at what had once been her wife. The creature took a step back and prepared to pounce again. But right before it sprung back towards Waia, the figure, who had been steadily shuffling back towards where all the Servants’ vehicles had been parked, let out another whistle.

Waia watched as the figure, back to her, did not even turn to watch the creature bound past them and towards the crowd of armed and bloodied Servants, who stood waiting for their leader to finish strolling towards them. The creature prowled among the ranks of the Servants before settling down and staring expectantly at the approaching figure.

Waia growled at the figure. “Oh, you’re just gonna leave me?! After what you’ve done?! Turn around and-!”

The figure raised an open palm above their head and formed a fist.

A helicopter soared just overhead, whipping Waia’s hair and clothes into a frenzy from the wind. The helicopter came to a stop directly over the other vehicles and turned, allowing another Servant to open the side door and point a rocket launcher at Waia.

Waia barely had time to rip out a section of the wall and shield herself with it before the rocket slammed into her and blew the flaming house to pieces, letting it collapse on top of Waia in a pile of burning rubble.

The figure was two thirds of the way towards the rest of the Servants. The armed members of the crowd readied their guns. The remains of what used to be a house shifted slightly.

Waia burst out of the rubble, charging directly at the figure like an enraged bull and encased in a full-body shell of molten brick. The instant she emerged, the figure simply gave another whistle and continued walking like nothing was wrong.

Every single Servant opened fire on Waia immediately. Rifles, APC turrets, the guns on the helicopter, everything. Waia’s armor was blown to bits, only for the ammo that did so to be melted down and replace what they had removed. Waia stormed through the hail of gunfire unimpeded, a muffled scream coming from her covered mouth as she sprinted straight towards the figure, who still had not turned to look at her.

Waia was now only fifteen feet away from the figure, who was still a good distance from the other servants and made no sign of speeding up. But as she approached, they held up another hand, this time with their palm facing backwards towards Waia.

Waia recognized the gesture, but before she could react, the sword careened into her armored back, sending her tumbling to the ground. She looked through the bullets slamming into her body and up at the figure, who meandered through the Servants’ ranks with implacable dignity. They reached up to grab the bottom of the helicopter, which had lowered itself in the air to meet them. They pulled themself up into the helicopter, and stared down at the sight of Waia lying on the ground and being pelted with bullets, their face drowned in the shadows of their hood.

Waia covered her head as more and more bullets slammed into her. She hadn’t realized how hard she had been Amping before that sword had brought her down, and she wasn’t sure if she could keep this up against such a sustained level of gunfire.

But right as she felt like she was about to give out, the Servants stopped. They climbed into their vehicles, turned around and drove away. The remaining two creatures, the fire-breathing one and the one that had once been Ivy, even climbed back into their truck trailers. The helicopter followed them down the road, the hooded figure aboard vanishing into the darkness.

The molten metal encasing Waia sloughed away, leaving her drained and broken in the flaming remains of what had once been her home.