Now, Manila
Hanna slashed down without conscious thought.
Vern stepped to his right while punching with a lead right hand.
Fist connected a fraction of a second before the blade.
Hanna’s head rocked back and she stumbled until she hit the side of a building. She knew that she would’ve been killed instantly had it not been for the Threnosh armor. As it was she still felt the hit. It hurt.
“Seriously, where did you get that sword and armor?” Vern touched his shoulder, fingers came away red. The blood quickly darkened his shirt. “You actually cut down to my collarbone. Still…” he rotated his left shoulder experimentally, “nothing major. Is it magical? Nah… doesn’t look or give off that feeling. Looks more futuristic. The spires said something about other worlds,” his eyes narrowed. “Did you get them on one of those? How’d you even go there?”
Hanna said nothing. She moved away from the wall and reset her stance. This time she held her blade with the point toward Vern. He was faster than her. She needed to keep her movements as small and quick as possible to mitigate her disadvantage. She had never seriously fought anyone with superhuman strength and the accompanying speed before. Sparring with Cal, Remy or Nila didn’t even come close to a real fight. Sure, she had faced people with Skills or spells that had made them stronger or faster than they normally were, but not to this extent.
“It would’ve been awesome to see a different world. Aliens and shit would’ve been dope. Instead, I’m stuck like this,” Vern said through grit teeth. “You’ve cut me. I can probably count on one hand how many times a person has been able to do that. And you’re doing it without Skills. Although, I wonder how much the future sword and armor boosts your power level?”
Hanna struck without warning. She moved forward with a quick cut at Vern’s face.
The young man skipped back.
Except, he did so in a straight line.
A mistake.
It had been feint.
Hanna smoothly switched from a two-handed grip to one-handed as she lunged with a thrust to Vern’s chest.
She had been too quick for him to jump back again. He was forced to slap the blade aside.
Vern cursed even as he rushed forward with a bloody fist chambered near his chin.
The distance she had created gave Hanna an edge as she swiped her blade in an arc in front of her even as she backpedaled. The blade cut deep into the steel cord-like muscles of Vern’s right arm only stopping when it hit bone.
Vern pivoted away with a shout.
He spun, reached down and ripped a handful of asphalt out of the road hurling it in Hanna’s face even as he attacked again.
Hanna ignored the debris as it harmlessly bounced off her faceplate. She thrust her blade once again, this time aimed at Vern’s stomach.
Somehow, he caught it in his injured right hand.
Hanna pulled, expecting to deal a grievous cut with the withdrawal.
Instead, it didn’t move an inch.
Blood dripped down the blade and to the ground, but Vern gave her a nasty smile. “This isn’t regular steel. Normally, all I’d get from doing this is a scratch that barely bled. It took someone strong, with Skills to even draw a little. But, you’ve got me good a bunch of times. What are you? Some kind of Swordmaster? Cause it’d be pretty awesome to take someone with a special class out.”
The two engaged in a one-sided tug of war for a moment.
“C’mon, let’s see a Skill. You haven’t used one this whole time,” Vern smirked.
Hanna only had a few active Skills. She preferred her skills when it came to combat techniques. Better to use up her points on passive Skills that enhanced her physical attributes beyond what she could achieve on her own.
Her problem now was that she had used up a lot of her stamina just to get to this point.
She needed her weapon free.
Vibrating Blade, she thought.
She felt her sword hum as she withdrew it with all her strength.
It came free with a spray of blood.
Vern blinked.
It took him a moment to realize that the fingers of his right hand were on the ground.
He stared at his hand in shock for a few seconds.
“Fuck! Guess I had that coming,” Vern laughed bitterly. “Not that it matters. It’ll be good as new next time I go and come back from that gray hell.”
Vern splashed blood from his gushing fingers on Hanna’s faceplate.
Caught off guard, she couldn’t react as he rushed in and punched her in the gut.
The blow doubled her over and he kneed her in the face.
He grabbed her throat and lifted her up before slamming her into the street hard enough to crack the asphalt.
Hanna felt like a rag doll as Vern lifted her again and spun her around before flinging her through the side of a building.
Masonry and pieces of particle board joined her in flight as she crashed through tables, chairs and the counter before a thick, freezer door stopped her.
Somehow, she had managed to keep her grip on her sword.
She pushed herself free from the steel door crumpled around her and took a moment to steady herself.
That had been much worse than being hit by a car.
The room swayed around her like she was on a boat in the middle of a turbulent river.
The restaurant shook again as Vern crashed through the wall.
“You’re looking wobbly. Did I just rock you?” Vern sneered.
Hanna managed to hold her blade steady.
Vern feinted rushing forward.
Hanna didn’t react since she had seen it for what it was.
Vern smiled again before grabbing a table and hurling it at Hanna.
She responded by cutting it in half and letting the Threnosh armor take the hits.
This time Vern charged.
Hanna backed up and kept her sword point aimed at his chest.
Vern changed levels and dipped in low, shooting at her legs.
Hanna brought her sword down and sliced his back, but didn’t stop him from getting into her legs.
Vern embraced her legs. With his shoulder planted into her hips he exploded up and ran her through the back wall of the restaurant and into an alley before slamming her into the ground.
He punched Hanna in the face a few times before standing and grabbing her by the ankle. “What’s it going to take to break through this armor?”
Hanna desperately slashed her sword at the back of Vern’s legs, but he was faster.
For the second time, he sent her flying into a building.
This time Hanna couldn’t rise.
----------------------------------------
Jimenez wanted to jump with joy. Crossing over the invisible boundary from the fog into the light from the wards of the buildings walls brought such a release that she hadn’t known she had needed.
The fog had slowly, insidiously ramped up the feeling of oppression and despair as she had traveled through it that she hadn’t even realized it.
Then she remembered that she had a job to do.
She rushed toward the closest door.
It belonged to a restaurant at the corner of the block. The name was lit up as if it was open for business as usual.
She pulled on the door handle and her heart sank as it didn’t budge.
Of course.
If a buildings owner didn’t grant you permission and was personally a lot stronger than her then she wouldn’t be able to just walk in. She needed an invitation.
Jimenez banged on the glass. “Hello! Please, we need help! Eron Cruces! Anybody!”
She was so engrossed in her desperation that she didn’t notice Cristos run up next to her.
“Stand back!” Cristos pointed his carbine at the glass.
“You don’t want to do that,” a melodious voice from inside caused Jimenez to squeak.
Even Cristos flinched and he was a hardened soldier.
The two looked inside, but saw nothing aside from tables, chairs and a lit up bar at the back.
“Why do you want Eron?”
The voice seemed to be coming from—
Jimenez looked to the left… and found empty space.
When she looked back she saw an impossibly beautiful woman in an evening dress with long, luscious, silvery hair. It took a moment for Jimenez to realize where she had seen that before.
“Aswang!” Cristos pulled Jimenez behind him and pointed his weapon at the woman.
“I don’t like you already,” the woman sneered. “You, little mouse, you haven’t burned your bridges like the soldier. I’ll talk to you. Where did you come from? How? And why are asking for Eron? You may answer in any order.”
“Don’t,” Cristos hissed. “It’s a trap, a trick.”
Jimenez didn’t think she had much of a choice, so she told the woman, the aswang, everything.
“Well… lucky for you, Eron has really good ears. I can hear him coming down right now.”
Eron burst out of the back door and into the restaurant. He moved with a purpose as he pushed the front doors open. “Get inside. No violence,” he pointed at Cristos.
“You have to help—” Jimenez began.
“I got the gist,” Eron said.
He headed for the boundary of the wards’ protection just as Trevor and Santi stumbled out of the fog.
“Eron… Eron!” Trevor pumped his fist.
“Trevor? Long time no see. Tell me the situation out there. I only know that three of my relatives are about to kill the rest of the Watch.”
“There’s this old lady that can make these forcefields, like huge, flat panes of glass. A young woman that has like tiger claw forcefields and this punk that’s, like, a bruiser-type. He’s superstrong… sent Hanna flying with a punch,” Trevor said.
“Okay… can you tell me where the older woman is?”
“Oh shit… I dunno… maybe, like, fifteen, twenty feet in that direction,” Trevor pointed.
“The other two?”
“I don’t know… they were moving pretty fast. I would’ve had a hard time keeping track of them even without the fog and I’ve got a passive Skill that helps my hand-eye coordination,” Trevor.
“Alright, that’ll have to be good enough. You and your friend head inside,” Eron nodded at Santi. “No violence.”
Eron didn’t wait. He dashed where Trevor had pointed.
He immediately saw his mom’s cousin standing behind a large, teal-colored forcefield. He also spotted several members of the Watch trapped in forcefields. He recognized Watch Captain Lawrence wearing futuristic-looking armor and firing a similar looking rifle at Tita Lu to no effect.
Eron didn’t waste time. He rushed up behind and grabbed her in a chokehold. “I’m sorry for this, Tita Lu.” He squeezed. The sound and feel of the crack sickened him.
The teal forcefields winked out as her body turned into fog in his arms.
“Officer Lawrence, that armor tells me Cal is with you… so where is he?”
“It’s Watch Captain now. Your brother is back at base camp outside the fog. He was planning on attempting an extraction for us,” Demi said.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Congrats… okay, well we’ll figure the rest out later. For now, you all should get inside the sanctuary. That’s an official invitation.”
“We can’t leave,” a big man with a bloody back leg limped over.
Eron didn’t recognize him. In fact he only knew Demi and vaguely recognized a few others.
“Hanna’s still out there. Fighting a young man named Vern,” Demi said.
“Of course it’d be him,” Eron sighed. “Which way?”
“Down the street, last I saw,” Demi said. “We were also separated from the rest of our team. More of mine, your sister’s rangers and a unit from the California State Government. They were just behind us, but we lost them.”
“Okay, I’ll get them. Get in the sanctuary before more of my relatives or monsters show up.”
“There’s another thing…” Demi hesitated for a moment. “We lost your father.”
“My dad came too?” Eron blinked.
“An ibingan ate him,” Jake said in a small voice.
“I knew it!” Eron snapped. “Damn it! How did the fog entity managed to subsume an ibingan. Those things are strong physically and magically. Damn, damn, damn, That’s what Tito Carlos was talking about!” Eron laughed bitterly. “The fog must’ve been dealing with it, which was why he said that I could’ve escape.”
“Um… did you not hear what I said?” Jake ventured. “It ate your dad…”
Eron shook his head. “I’ve tangled with an ibingan down on one of the southern islands. My dad’s strong enough to not get killed by one easily. Plus it’s a fog version, so it’s weaker. This Hanna of yours needs help right now. If she hasn’t already taken.”
“She won’t be. She’s our best fighter and she’s got a sword and armor from the Threnosh world,” Demi said.
“The badass sword woman? With that gear? She could fight Vern,” he mused. “Go inside. There’s a… woman, Cherry, in the restaurant. Don’t fight.” His eyes were drawn to a beautiful young woman a short distance away helping another woman stand. It took an effort to pull his attention away from her. “Yeah, no fighting.”
Eron waited for them to cross over into Lilah’s protection before he took off down the street in search of the one named Hanna.
He came across a car neatly-sliced in half. “Threnosh sword, huh?”
He strained his ears and caught faint sounds of violence. He followed them and found two holes in the side of a restaurant.
The interior looked as if a tornado had gone through. It was completely ruined.
Oddly enough he hadn’t been attacked by shades.
There was a small crater in the ground out in the alley. He could almost see the human-shape in it.
He hurried down the alley and found another broken hole in a wall.
The fog swirled thickly around him, making it hard to see.
However, he could hear sounds. It reminded him of an industrial hammer beating on a block of metal. It was the kind that sent vibrations through the air that he could feel.
The fog thinned inside the clothing store. Trendy ten years ago, but that sort of thing ended with the spires’ arrival. Fashion was one of those things that almost instantly stopped mattering.
Eron found Vern straddling an armored woman.
His cousin was landing left hands over and over again with methodical violence.
“Hey, Vern,” Eron tapped his cousin’s shoulder.
Vern turned in surprise and caught a hook to the jaw.
Eron grabbed his throat. “You’re a dick but I’m still sorry for this.”
Vern tried to swing at Eron’s face, but he was seeing stars and whiffed by a mile.
It took an eternity for Eron to choke the life, if one could still call it that, out of his cousin.
Vern dissipated back into the fog a few moments later.
Eron regarded the unconscious woman.
The faceplate of her helmet had been cracked badly, but her face was still pretty, so the armor had done its job.
He needed to take her back before he could search for the rest of them.
“Probably got your brain rattled around in there though,” Eron sighed as he lifted Hanna off the floor. “We’ve got a legit Doctor with healing Skills. He’ll fix you up.”
He headed out the door before realizing he had forgotten something.
He bent down carefully, so as to not jostle Hanna too much, and picked her Threnosh sword up.
“Ow!”
The blade had actually nicked his finger.
He shook his head. “I hope Cal brought me something from there.”
----------------------------------------
To dream is to enter a world born of one’s imagination. Memories, some long-forgotten, emerge from the subconscious to populate the dreamscape. People, places, things, events, all are thrown together to create an experience that can be as real as the waking world.
One dreamed many dreams over the course of the night, though they only remember a few, if any at all depending on how close they were to awakening.
One thing was true, no matter how amazing or terrifying a dream was.
It wasn’t real.
Until the spires had appeared.
Magic had changed things.
Over a decade on people were only beginning to realize how deeply their entire world and existence had been changed.
The girl slept fitfully as she had for weeks now.
Her dreams, her nightmares were filled with thick, swirling gray mist that hid all manner of monsters and people. Fear and sadness filled her as she floated through the mist, as she became the mist.
She was the light that shined and drove away the mist, causing it great pain even as it longed to consume it, her. As she longed to consume it, her.
She observed many things. All at once, one at a time, and back and forth.
She fought to push the mist away.
She fought to push past the light.
She saw different worlds and different peoples, like nothing she had ever seen before in reality.
She dreamed, she was awake, she walked, she drifted.
She saw.
There was a small house where the warm light grew cold and dim.
A man wearing strange-looking armor… she recognized it, others wearing the same armor, if only in plain gray, not dark blue and yellow-gold… women, closer— no, farther away.
She was at a small house.
The man was sleeping in his armor. His face was visible through the clear faceplate of his helmet. There was a resemblance that she thought, knew, recognized.
Four people were gathered around him.
A woman was prying at the armor with a knife to no avail.
They spoke in hushed tones, that was loud and ugly to her ears. She didn’t want to listen, to see this.
She had to listen, to watch.
“Stop that, Dolorita, you’re just going to ruin another knife,” a tall man said. The tallest Lilah had ever seen.
The blank-faced young woman twirled her thin knife around her fingers before making it disappear in the blink of an eye.
“Magic?” the tall man turned to a much shorter young man.
“I wouldn’t risk waking him up, Domeric,” the young man replied with a shake of his head.
“Let’s just toss him back outside,” an angry-faced young woman snapped. “Why waste our time with this? The glowing symbols on the walls are getting dimmer by the minute. Go put magic in those, Samson!” she snapped.
“I’ve already wasted mana trying,” the young man, Samson, said with the air of someone having repeated himself many times.
“We can’t throw him out,” the tall man, Domeric, said. “He got inside, which means he had permission, which means that Eron fucker gave him that. He knows him,” he jabbed a finger at the armored man. “He could be our ticket to safe passage.”
“It won’t matter if the fog’s going to get in here any minute now,” the angry young woman snorted.
“Paz,” Domeric said flatly, “remember who you are talking to.”
The angry young woman bowed her head, but the girl saw that the glare in her eyes burned brighter.
“We do nothing. We wait for him to wake up and present ourselves… well,” Domeric said.
The young girl noticed the dimming symbols on the walls outside the small house.
Belatedly, she realized they were hers.
She knew the unconscious man or at least, knew of him. He needed to be kept safe. The other four made her uneasy, but she couldn’t let even them be taken by the gray. The gray couldn’t be allowed to take any more.
So, she pushed more of herself into the glowing symbols until they shined brightly.
Pain and exhaustion flooded through the young girl.
She was suddenly pulled to a different place and perhaps, a different time.
This time she sensed that she was closer to herself.
The gray must take. That was purpose. That was existence. Safety against utter annihilation.
Different worlds, different times.
Gray shattered, burned, dispersed into nothingness through countless ways.
Unfair.
Fair.
Protectors chased invaders through a building, seeking to trap them.
Gray was lesser on the inside, which meant fewer protectors.
“I have no idea where I’m going!” A young woman wearing a construction hardhat of all things ran down a tight hallway.
“Just keep heading up! We need to get to the roof! We can’t allow ourselves to get swarmed in here!” A tall, slender young man with a oddly-shaped axe raced just behind her.
A bleating protector appeared in front of the young woman and heroically charged her with pointed horns forward.
“Shit!” the young woman blasted it into mist with her gun, then pumping it to chamber another shell as more protectors coalesced.
“Keep moving!” the young man leapt up to the side wall and took two running steps to get around the young woman to land a devastating blow on another protector, nearly decapitating it.
Three other invaders joined the young man and fell on the protectors, hacking and stabbing them to nothingness before they were even ready to fight.
The last two in the group stumbled around the corner.
A ball of fire briefly scorched the gray away as a young woman blocked it with a round shield.
“Amber!” the second woman screamed as the excess flames briefly washed over the two of them.
They fell to the floor. Rolling and slapping at the small fires on their clothing.
“Watch out!” the hard-hatted young woman called back.
A protector barreled around the corner. “Tackle!” he roared at the two women only just rising to their feet.
“Get down!” the hard-hatted young woman rushed toward them. The thunder of her heavy boots on the faux wooden floor was drowned out by the blast from her gun.
The two women hugged the floor as a cloud of metal zoomed over them.
The protector was knocked to his back, but he was tougher than most and slowly rose.
“Soccer Kick!” the hard-hatted young woman clanged the front of her boot into the protector’s neck turning him into mist. She peeked around the corner, cursed and fired another shot before turning and running back down the hallway. “Hurry it up!” she called in passing as she hurdled the other two women.
“C’mon, Amber. We’re not dying here,” the older of the two pulled the younger up as they hurried to catch up to the rest.
The seven found the stairs at the end of the hallway and climbed. They reached the top and emerged into another hallway.
“This isn’t the roof, Ambrose,” a stocky middle-aged man grunted.
“Roof access is obviously elsewhere, Boy,” the tall young man grimaced.
“Find the door without a number,” a scar-faced woman said.
“Venida’s got it,” a fit young man said.
Another blast rocked the stairwell.
The last three of their group burst through the door.
“They’re right behind us!” the hard-hatted young woman said.
“Barricade the door.”
“With what?”
“It’s flimsy. I could run through it. A shade monster or shade person with Skills will go through it like paper.”
“The roof is our only chance,” the tall young man stalked ahead.
The mist swirled in his wake.
The rest of the group hurried after him.
Numbered doors alternated on each side of the narrow hallway.
The floor squeaked and rattled with every hurried step.
They got halfway when protectors managed to cut them off.
The gray coalesced ahead of them into a large, horned form that filled the hallway.
“This way!” the stocky middle-aged man lowered his shoulder, “Charge!”, he splintered the door into pieces.
The others filed in after him.
The hard-hatted young woman took a moment to send a blast from her gun into the protector.
“You could’ve left some of the door, Boy!” the scar-faced woman snapped. “It’s wide open now!”
“Just grab the fridge and some furniture, Venida!” he fired back.
They did just that and barely in time.
They could hear claws scratching at the fridge even as they crammed the dust-covered couch, tables and chairs into the apartment’s short entry way.
The gray was thinner inside, but was steadily thickening as more of it seeped through the gap around the barricade.
“It won’t take much time before they start appearing in here. This is the top floor. Is there a balcony?”
One of them went over to the living room window and peered out into the gray gloom. “Nope.”
“Can we still climb out?”
“We’d be easy hits for the spell-casting shades.”
“We’ve got axes… why not cut our way through the apartments until we find the stairs to the roof.”
“What if roof access isn’t inside the building?”
“Then we’re fucked. The roof is our best chance to get to the sanctuary. The streets were packed with them.”
The barricade began rattling from powerful blows.
One of the women knelt down in the middle of the living room where the coffee table had been.
“What are you doing, Alexa?” the young woman bearing the round shield whispered.
“My familiar should be small and sneaky enough. It’ll find a way to the roof.” The woman began to chant in an indecipherable language as vibrant, pink light suffused her hands.
In a nearby place.
A street-level office of some kind.
“The shades are breaking through the ice!”
“How’s it going with the sarge, Fin!”
“Almost… almost… there! Internal bleeding stopped. External… sort of.”
“The hell does that mean, you weird nutsack?”
“She’s not going to die from her wounds.”
“Oh that’s good. Perfect timing for her to get killed by shitty ghosts.”
“No one is dying here!”
“Got a fucking plan?”
“There’s stairs back here. I think there are apartments above.”
“This building runs all the way down the block. The sanctuary should just be across the street from the end.”
The wall of ice outside suddenly crumbled.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
They hurried to the stairwell only for the door to swing open as protectors emerged.
In another place.
Protectors threw themselves on sharp spears.
The invaders had piled the restaurant’s tables and chairs in the front dining area creating a thick, tangled barricade with a small open lane in the middle.
They hid behind their shields, thrusting spears into the protectors that, as of yet, couldn’t break their line.
Near the place of warmth and light a hated figure stepped back into the gray.
It was not his place.
Yet, he always returned.
To thwart.
To threaten.
Safety.
That is all she… it wanted.
This time would be different.
This time he would be stopped.
Lilah woke with a start.
She couldn’t breathe.
Her heart raced in her chest, threatening to burst out.
She tried to call for help, but could only gasp.
Eron wasn’t going to be fast enough.