As Ace observed his older sister massacre the small horde of Ravens, he noticed something.

'Holy shit! Her clothes are torn! Its not that she hasn't been scratched, its just that she's healing from the superficial cuts and bites! She's the real deal! No wonder I've been losing our fights for years, she's moving better than even the Sentinels!'

Her impressive display lasted only another minute before something changed. Zeke was the first to notice.

"Is she... getting slower?"

Everyone vehemently voiced their doubts but Ace affirmed his brother's observation.

"Guys! She's been at it for at least ten minutes now, she's definitely getting tired... The stairwell is blocked, so we can't even help, not that we'd be able to... Lets just hope that she can last until the birds give up."

Doubting his own words, he continued to watch his sister's struggle with bated breath.

He couldn't understand it but the ravens began to ignore the other people running in the streets. They focused their attention solely on Thalia, eventually forming a flying circle around her. Periodically, one of the bloodthirsty creatures would dive in from the circle, leading either with its claws or beak. Even more strangely, the creatures weren't aiming for her head or chest, they kept targeting her appendages. It was almost as if they wanted to incapacitate her.

Ace couldn't help but shake the feeling that the birds weren't just trying to kill her but were instead trying to take her back to their nest for consumption. It was something the regular birds he was familiar with did when dealing with large rats.

He stifled the gruesome images as he watched her dodge and decapitate each bird who attempted to pierce her. With each movement she was getting slower.

'She needs to get out of there! She's the only one in the street now!'

Thinking the same thing, Thalia attempted to exit the ring of birds but many of them dove at her at once, forcing her to expend even more energy to repel them. Lacking the speed to remove them all effectively, one of the creatures left a deep gouge in one of her legs. This time, the wound stuck, refusing to heal. As she hobbled around in the center of the ring, her lack of speed became apparent, even to the birds. Emboldened by this, they increased their frequency of attacks.

Despite the odds, Thalia continued to fell the beasts.

Amidst the fray, a hint of fear revealed itself on her face, something the children of the orphanage had never seen. Ace felt himself growing anxious.

'Thalia is going to be killed! She needs help!'

Unaware of even his body, he gripped the ledge he was standing on and crouched down, prepared to leap into the frenzy himself.

Feeling a hand touch down on his shoulder, he looked to the right and saw Icarus shaking his head.

"You said it yourself... there's nothing we can do for her."

Brushing off his brother's hand he snapped at him.

"I said WE, I didn't say anything about what I could do! Just like Thalia said, weakness is a choice. I have the power to help and right now I refuse to make that choice."

Feeling a strange and unknown energy fill his legs, Ace coldly addressed his siblings.

"Wait here while I go get our big sister."

With those words, the power in his legs exploded and sent him flying from the third story of the building all the way into the center of the ring of birds.

With his landing, he sent up a large cloud of dust. Finding Thalia within it, he could see that she was in worse shape than he thought. She had even more wounds and was gasping for air. At the same time, she could hardly believe her eyes.

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"Ace?! But how? I saw you guys run into that building over there! What about the others?"

Raising a hand to silence her, he then pointed at the hole in the building from which he jumped and spoke.

"Look, they're all okay! I'm here to help! When this dust fades, they'll start diving in at us. Get ready!"

Ace then pulled out a crowbar that was tucked in between his boot and pant leg. He had hoped he wouldn't have to use it again so soon...

Standing back to back with Thalia, he braced himself as the dust cleared. He knew he wasn't as strong as her, even if his leap from the building indicated otherwise. All he had to do was prevent the birds from attacking her from behind, their specialty.

Proving Ace right, the creatures paused their attacks and continued to circle the pair. A minute passed before the first creature made its move, diving at them from straight above. The pair was forced to separate as they dove away.

The birds then focused most of their efforts on diving at Thalia from many different angles. The remaining few ravens attacked Ace.

Knowing he didn't have the strength to kill them, he used the brunt edge of his crowbar to swat at the ravens, giving him just enough room to get around most of their lunges.

He continued the high stakes dance, slowly making his way over to where he last saw his sister. Suffering a few light cuts, he eventually saw Thalia through the cloud of feathers. She was covered head to toe in even more gashes and sported a paler complexion from the blood loss. Her right arm was limp at her side while she fiercely held up her hunting knife with the other.

Distracted by the sight of his mangled sister, Ace was ran through in the leg by a raven and its powerful beak. Suddenly full of adrenaline and rage, he thrust his crowbar into the beast's skull.

Left with no time to celebrate his kill, Ace continued his gait as blood seeped from his leg wound. He had a sudden and grim realization.

'Only one of us is going to make it out of here...'

At the same time he began to feel a faint trickling of the mysterious energy that fueled him earlier. What he had left was nothing compared to before, but he knew that he could at least jump to safety with what remained. He briefly evaluated his options.

'There no way I can jump back with both of us. I might be able to -'

He ducked as another bird dove for his shoulder. Having made up his mind, Ace roared ferociously and charged forward. Jumping in the air, he willed the mysterious energy into his fist and slammed it down, throwing up a massive cloud of dust.

In the middle of the makeshift smokescreen, Ace grabbed his sister's hand. She looked down at him with a somber expression.

"Laevus, I-I'm so-"

Gripping her hand with all his strength, he cut her off.

"No... I'm sorry. They need you more than me. Please remember that this was my choice... "

If Ace could feel only a trickling of the mystery energy before, what he could feel now was light like air. Still, he gritted his teeth and condensed the energy into his leg. He had to hurry while the dust obscured the ravens' vision.

With a guttural yell, Ace stepped forward on his right leg and whipped around rapidly while transferring the energy from his leg, through his stomach, and finally to his arm. Using the rotational force, he lifted Thalia off her feet and launched her out of the dust cloud and towards the opening in the building he had jumped from.

In a fortunate twist of fate, he was so low on energy that she flew slow enough towards the opening for Icarus to jump up and catch her. As the dust cloud faded, he looked up to make sure that the ravens didn't see what he had done. Much to his relief, they still seemed entirely focused on him.

Noticing that he was now alone and injured, the ravens wasted no time. Another bird dove in and clawed at his right leg. Losing the strength to stand, Ace could only fall to his knees and wait. Seconds later, a particularly large Raven swooped in from the flock and grasped his midsection and legs in its talons.

With powerful flaps of its wings, the Raven carried Ace into the air. Having secured a valuable prize, the flock dispersed from the main street and began to hunt any rats or humans that were still running about.

***

Icarus watched with a complicated expression as his brother and closest friend was carried off into the horizon by the despicable creatures. Despite this loss, Icarus was glad, and he hated himself for it. He couldn't be happier that at least Thalia was alive. Deep down he knew that Ace was right in his decision to throw her up instead of jumping himself. The two of them would have been utterly lost without her guidance.

He looked down at his sister whose head was rested on his lap. Her wounds had stopped bleeding and color had returned to her face. She was still unconscious however.

He had always looked at her as an invulnerable monolith of both discipline and strength. Today he saw that while she was embodied both, she was most certainly not invincible. Neither was his brother.

Just thinking about Ace brought him unspeakable pain. Hot tears flowed down his face gushing forth like a waterfall. As he looked down in defeat he felt a hand grasp his own. Opening his eyes that were now clouded with liquid he saw Thalia looking up at him. She brought him into a tight embrace.

Following suit, Dane, Kalen, Zeke, Hannah, and Lucy joined in on the hug. Together, the members of the orphanage broke into furious wails of pain as they cried for their brother.