Adelle stumbled into the room, clutching her stomach where the barb was pierced in her. Cold air misted from her breath, the world around her red from the pain. She was alone in the cave she called home, stumbling towards her cot for safety. A salvaged wooden chest next to it was where she kept all of the little belongings she had.

Once next to the chest, she collapsed against the wall, sliding down it as her legs gave way. With one hand on her wound holding in the blood, she opened the container and dug around for the small bundle of leaves. Herbal medicine cobbled together with strings. A mishmash of plants that were meant to take on anything from pain to infection, albeit not very effectively. She hardly ever got injured and never needed anything more than a good wash to clean of her own blood. But this time, it was different. This time, she might die.

She ripped her shirt open at the piercing. Clutching the arrow, she pulled and let out a yell as blood splashed across the floor. She jammed the medicine over the open wound, keeping pressure on it while using her teeth and cloth belt to tie a tourniquet around it.

Her ambush on the hunters had been careless. She had rushed in without ascertaining the numbers, and a hidden archer had gotten a clean shot from a higher vantage. An amateurish mistake.

With the force from the makeshift bandage setting in and her muscles clenching into position, her vision began to blur. No doubt she was about to pass out. She tasted blood on her teeth as the cold winter wind bit her to the bones. On the bright side, the freezing temperature numbed her enough that the pain began easing. However, there was a chance she would not wake up tomorrow. The cold, infection, blood loss, or any number of things could end her. Perhaps it was for the best.

Nobody would miss her.

----------------------------------------

It was warm. But not the warmth of a campfire burning away the cold evening. It was the kind of warm she had gotten used to in the Burning South. A heat that was as if everything around her were being baked constantly, but the air itself was not. There was light in the tomb which she now realised were meant to be hers and Josh's burial place. The illumination flickered on the verge of bright and dim.

"You're awake."

She tilted her head right to see Josh sitting against the wall, hands resting on his knees as if having slept in it. The flashlight sat next to him, converted into its standing lamp mode. The air was thin, and she wondered how much longer they would be able to breathe in such an enclosed space with the entrance sealed.

She asked, "How long was I out?"

"Hard to say," he yawned. "I fell asleep myself."

Taking a deep breath, she tried to sit up only to have a sharp pain wince through her body. She let out a grunt of pain.

"Take it slow," Josh crawled quickly to her and settled her head back down to rest. "I stopped the bleeding, but the spearhead is still in your body."

Adelle raised her hand from her wound and sure enough, it was covered in dried blood. But it was not the time to stay still. Even without the threat of being trapped with who knows how long worth of oxygen, Lachesis was still out there, apparently with Adelle's blood which was what was needed to activate Exodus and killed everybody. Somewhere inside, she missed the life of being a loner. Having to care for others was proving to be a pain. Literally.

"Help me up," she requested. Josh got under her arms and assisted her slowly off her back. Gritting the whole process, she said, "We need to find a way out of here."

"I've tried," he replied. "There are no exits. And even at your best, bifurcating things with your teleport is difficult enough. Just rest until you have the strength."

"We don't have the time."

Josh looked pained. It was apparent he agreed with her but had no idea how to escape their predicament.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Think," she said to him. "We're not going to be able to brute-force our way through this. You said you never saw her leave with the machine."

"Yeah," Josh reaffirmed, but then admitted, "But I could be wrong. Maybe she got it out when I was asleep and I just didn't hear it."

"Maybe. But that's leaving a lot of things to chance. You said she's smart," Adelle panted out. She grabbed her axe and smacked the handle against the floor, wood knocking stone. "So let's be smart."

Tink. Tink. Tink.

"You're thinking secret passages?" Though he asked as if questioning, he was already picking up Adelle's second axe and checking the slabs around him.

"You catch on quick for an old man."

While she slowly struggled to her feet, he left her side to pound on each stone slab in the floor, starting from the corner.

Tink. Tink. Tink.

As Josh moved towards the centre, he asked, "How are we going to stop her?"

"No idea," she answered honestly. "We could get Eca involved. But honestly, one step at a time."

Tonk.

Josh froze at the hollow knock and Adelle limped over to him. Once he brought the torch over to the spot, she could see the edges of the slab of stone was just slightly indented.

"Step back," she instructed.

With one foot on the aforementioned slab, she pushed her powers to it, envisioning the bubble of teleporting space wrapping around the outline of the slab. Her muscle tensed and her wound gritted painfully as the piece of stone vanished and reappeared in midair at her side before dropping and shattering against the floor. Adelle floundered slightly with her leg dangling over the gap that appeared and Josh quickly took her elbow to stabilise her.

Without another word, she teleported both of them down the hole, landing within a tight tunnel dug through the ground. Burnt out torches suggested the place was last used quite a long while ago. At the end of the path was a glint of light.

They decided against teleportation, instead quietly walking towards the exit with Adelle using Josh as a crutch. However, nothing happened. Even as they exited out into an underground chamber partially lit by torches, no one stood in their way.

"This is weird," Adelle voiced aloud. "I thought there'd be more guards. Or any guards."

Josh ran his hand against the brick wall. "This looks like part of the main fortress."

They turned down a darkened corner into a corridor where half the torches were unlit, creating shades of black every few steps. Their footsteps echoed as they travelled through the passageway to the next chamber where a large beast of a machinery waited for them in the middle of the room.

"It's the E.M.P." After making sure the coast was clear, Josh leaned Adelle against the wall and headed to the console. After a quick check, he grimly announced, "It's been used."

"Fuck..." Adelle cursed, looking around. "Even then... where are the guards?"

When Josh circled around the machine and to the stairwell, he screeched to a halt. "Adelle..." His murmured voice carried in the emptiness.

She did not need to see it to have an inkling of what he discovered. Through the pain, she teleported to his side and found the stairs littered with bodies, waterfalls of blood flowing down each step. Lachesis had killed everyone who stood in her way it seemed.

The pair did not speak further. He helped her up each step, their boots quickly dyed red with blood. When the pair reached the foyer landing, they found the building empty save for the dozen more corpses littering the once midnight carpet. A loud blast rang in from the outside and the two limped their way to the exit as quickly as her injuries let them.

As they stepped out through the gate and into the light of the fire, the scene unfolding outside was burnt forever into Adelle's mind.

A cloud of black floated outside the city. But it was not the rust filled Taint that they had come to know from the burning soot that filled the air. It was dark as onyx, glinting, swarming like hornets. Within it were stones - from where they stood - pebbles, really. However, as the cloud shifted, the pebbles swung across the sky as if being thrown by an invisible hand, hurtling to the market and growing larger as it approached until it crushed the entire district under a mountain of earth and rocking the very ground they stood on. Adelle wanted to call them projectiles. But what to name one the size of a tiny island?

Once more, the swarming cloud flung another landmass into the city, but this time one of a smaller scale. An armoured golem four times the size of the fortress they stood at rushed to intercept the missile, each of its steps quaking the land. The monstrous Titan threw itself into the earth's path and shattered in a bursting explosion of magical energy and force, its remnants shrapnel the size of houses raining down on the neighbourhood it just protected. Around the edge of the city, half a dozen more of the giant-sized golems were throwing grains of rocks at the swarm to little effect.

Josh stammered, "We're... suppose to fight that?"

A bright light erupted in a pillar from southeast of the city. From it, a giant white bird like a streak of comet burst out and flew at the swarm of Exodus. The bird of light spun and spiralled into a drill before slamming into the heart of the swarm, sending a wave of magical light energy out into a ring. The cloud dispersed slightly, the bombardment stopped to the sound of screams, explosions, and crackling fire.

Adelle and Josh watched, slack-jawed at the sight. After a moment, the swarm seemed to turn course and started heading south.