We won’t make it. We have to stay here, fight off this wave, then make a run for it.”

“Some of us might. Those with the most endurance could out run them.”

“How many would that be? Ten? Twenty? How many women? We could be the last sane people alive.”

“That’s my point exactly. We could be the last people alive, so some of us have to make it.”

“No. We could be the last people alive, so every one of us is more precious.” Epictetus said.

“The world is ending old man. This is a heck of a time to be standing on principle.”

“What kind of life could you found on the sacrifice of children and everyone who was slower than you?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“I don’t know. Maybe a long one? Look I don’t want these people to die either, but it’s over. The world is over. There are no gods left, there are no morals left. There is just survival and there is little enough of that.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Not so sure the world is ending?” Said Decius while gesturing to the vast shadowy wrongness that probably comprised most of the world at this point.

“I’m not so sure that all the gods are gone.”

“Gone, dead, fake, too shitty to give a care. It hardly matters. You are a priest, you know the gods, and you know the deep mysteries of the world. I respect that, but I am a military man and I know battles. And if you haven’t noticed, the gods don’t seem to be very real these days. Unless whatever is destroying the world can be called a god.”

Decius cut Epictetus off before he could speak “Now what the Hades is that?”

“What?”

“Do you not hear that? It sounds like air escaping a bladder or something.”

“aaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!” Flump!

“Now what the Hades was that?”

V0.2.1 11/2/23