I ran with wild abandon. We all did, and in spite of the fact that Daniel was the largest, he was by no means the slowest.

It was ridiculous seeing a nine foot tall metal man easily outpacing Fran and myself. Branches and small trees were nothing to him, he’d tear right through them. We followed in his wake.

“You’re too fast!” Fran shouted, “We can’t keep up!”

My mind sped as he faltered and looked over his shoulder, “Wow, I am! Err, I mean, sorry! I’ll slow it down a bit.”

I remembered the lay of the land, clear details coming to mind. It was like a digital map had popped up in my head, and I could guess exactly where we were on it.

Extremely helpful, but also disturbing. There wasn’t anything else to say about it, my brain wasn’t normal anymore, and I couldn’t even say that that was a bad thing. It roiled my gut, disquiet in me.

Just as the sensation worsened, I felt a buzzing warmth in the back of my mind.

[Matthew… calm.] A strange synthetic voice like an old man, grizzled and deep, rang in my head. At any other time, I’m certain I’d have freaked out. And yet, I did calm down, and I felt my thoughts snap into clarity. Dealing with whatever was happening would have to wait until later, we had to survive in the meantime.

“Daniel, don’t slow down, go as fast as you can just to your right, blow through the terrain, there’s a building about a hundred feet that way.” I shouted, catching the vibrant blink of his visored helmet, purple light spilling out of it.

He glanced that way, seeing nothing, “You’re sure?”

“Yes! Now, please, before I have a wolf biting my ass!” I shouted with adrenaline flooding my body. My pace picked up, just outpacing Fran.

I slowed down, if we split up any more than this we’d be easy pickings.

“Got it! Don’t get caught!” He shouted back, and I found myself smiling in spite of the situation.

Fran looked to the side, the fear keeping her feet sprinting forward. Combat boots helped in the situation, and I noticed she wore a bit more bulk under her clothes.

“Body armor?” I murmured in curiosity.

“What?” She turned her attention to me, “What’d you say?”

“Err, can you use the wings while running?” I refocused.

She thought for a moment, “One way to find out!”

She gestured to her right, and not a second too late. A wolf emerged from the underbrush, ready to ram her legs.

A spike of steel drilled through its head and pinned it to the ground, dead on impact.

“Yup!” She shuddered, glad that it worked.

“Keep it up! I’ll do what I can!” I panted, pulling out the pistol and turning, firing at a wolf that was just barely visible. As I did, I felt a strange tug on the edge of my awareness, and I changed the way I aimed just slightly.

To my surprise, I hit. A black slush of matter exploded from the bush. It must have been a lucky headshot.

There wasn’t time to marvel at that, though. I felt something hit my back, hard, sending me sprawling forward. If it wasn’t for reflexively tucking and rolling, I think I’d have been mauled a moment later.

Fran bought me a precious few seconds, two feathers pierced the wolf that had knocked me over. Nine feathers remained on her back, and three more rang out with whistling sounds as she killed another three wolves.

“You’re a goddamn wizard!” I called ecstatically, getting up and starting my run. She ran with me, and we tried to put distance between us and the wolves.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched one wolf jump through the air.

Fran didn’t see it.

“Duck!” I shouted, drawing up the pistol and firing a moment later. This time I felt almost like someone else was aiming, the reflexive shift in my posture put the pistol spot on without a second thought. Two shots rang out, and I balked at the sight of both bullets hitting it in the head, through each eye.

“Good shot!” Fran thanked me, running alongside me as the wolf crashed to the ground.

I nodded numbly, seeing the house ahead and a hulking Daniel waiting at the gate. When I had time later, I intended to see exactly what was happening with my body. One headshot on the move was luck, three, rapidly at that, was not.

“Come on guys!” Daniel shouted, “Do not look back!”

I rolled my eyes internally. That was not something I wanted to hear.

A loud explosion of air hit my left side. Terrified that Fran exploded, I turned to see her.

Much of her regular clothes were blown out, beneath them was a bulky suit that covered her skin. Armored padding covered every inch of her torso and legs, glowing dimly from the expulsion of force.

“What was that?” I asked, seeing Fran patting herself down to ensure she was in one piece.

“Uh, I bought this suit, it wasn’t too expensive, but I think that was a one time thing.”

I looked over my shoulder, knowing that Daniel had said not too because of the horde on our tails. Even so, a pair of wolves lay on the ground, moving still but thoroughly dazed. The suit must have saved her from being pounced on.

“Good choice!” I nodded, jumping over the low stone wall that barely came to my waist. Fran did the same, turning after getting into the courtyard, building to our backs.

The wolves, now over two dozen of them, ran around the forest line, shifting back and forth. Every time they did so, they spread out more and more, intent on trying to catch us off guard.

Daniel picked up a rock and chucked it at one. He missed, but the stone splintered a branch with the strength of his throw.

“Nope, I’m not getting any shot off that way.” Daniel muttered, looking around and keeping an eye on them. “The suit’s saying that there are 28 of them.”

I focused on the wolves, guesstimating that Daniel’s count was correct. My Reaper Eye, as I would call it from now on, seemed to be very good at analyzing things in real time, almost like another brain before it even started being sent along the optic nerve. Of course, I was guessing, but with how well I see, I wasn’t too unsure of that estimation.

“Alright, my turn. Fran, how many feathers do you have left?” I holstered the pistol, snapping up the hunting rifle just as quickly.

She came up to Daniel’s right side, putting him at our center, “Six, I think I can make better use of these ones, so long as they don’t all rush me.”

“Daniel, that’s your deal.”

“Singin’ my song.” He hunched down, a palpable pressure building in the limbs of the hulking mech. In spite of our bravado, I could tell that the three of us were scared. I was terrified, at least, I didn’t want to die. Fran shook, but her steel nerves kept her from shrinking away. If Daniel was afraid, he wouldn’t show it until after the fact. I’d need to keep it together, too.

“One bullet,” I breathed, going to a knee with the rifle held snug to my shoulder. My heart rate slowed, my heaving lungs forcibly steadied. Tremoring hands, fear, and adrenaline suddenly seemed mute in the background. When I readied a shot, it was never this calm, never this total.

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Never this lethal. It was like I was another person.

I fired, a wolf breaking from cover and suddenly dying, its head shattered. Fluidly, I breathed and refocused the rifle like it was a part of me. A second wolf broke from cover, and a third and forth, all running straight towards us.

“Two,” the second wolf dropped. “Three, four, five.” I continued, rotating around. The horde of wolves broke cover, their fallen stunning them into action.

I switched to the pistol, firing three times, killing three wolves, my aim as fluid as water. At the same time, Daniel spun, punching a wolf so hard that the ground quaked. He tore it in half, sending some of it sprawling away with black gore spiraling through the air. He didn’t stop, turning and snatching another wolf in an open hand. Steel-rending teeth threatened him, but his gauntlet fit over its skull snugly.

The crunch was audible, the spatter dripped from the metal. A third wolf, moving towards Fran, received a sharp kick, the pneumatic pistons snapping its neck. A clot of wolves moved towards Fran, ten at once. As they ran, Fran kept calm, pelting them with impaling shot after impaling shot. Daniel committed to stalling the other two before they could get to her. Some kind of cold sensation filled me as we dispatched them, one by one. It was clockwork for me then, and it disturbed me, there was definitely something taking control of my body, and it seemed it was affecting my mind.

He stepped too far away, and instead of moving closer to Daniel, I felt that self assuredness keep me in position. The wolves had waited for a moment like that one.

Seven wolves rushed me, choosing the easiest kill, unarmored and split away from Daniel.

I fired three more shots, felling three more wolves. A fourth jumped over the still-dying back of a pack mate and hit me square in the shoulders with its claws, slamming me to the ground hard.

Wind rushed from me, and the strike almost knocked me out. The knowledge that if I blacked out, I would never wake up, somehow burned the blackness away. At that moment, I fought for some semblance of control, and in desperation and tenacity, I found it.

I emptied the rest of the handgun clip into the wolf’s chest, one or two shots biting its heart. Desperate to evade the next wolf, I rolled out from beneath the wolf. I grasped something hard on the ground and instinctively guarded with it, coming up just as two more wolves went to bite at me.

The rifle fit neatly between their wicked jaws. I pushed them back, and saw the metal and wood splinter and shear from their ever pressurized bites.

I swept the spear up from my back, slipping the sling from over my head in time to impale the next wolf through its chest. The motion stunned me, I moved before I even had the opportunity to think about it. Instead of fighting me for control, I felt it - whatever ‘It’ was - flow through my consciousness, between the cracks.

My reaper eye glared at the next wolf, and I pivoted away from its snapping jaws, threatening to lock onto my ankle. I kicked at it, a sharp strike that sent it reeling. A blow that I also hadn’t the time to consider doing before it simply happened.

The other two wolves charged me, and this time I moved, of my own accord. I put the body between myself and the other one, and then sent a sharp stab through the closest wolf’s eye. The spear burst through its and into its brain cleanly.

Angrily, the other unleashed its barking howl, a horrible sound at best, made worse by what I interpreted as rage.

It ended abruptly when I spun with the spear, pulling it out of the dead hounds head and slapping the yet living one with the side of the street-signs metal shaft. The dagger was left behind in the previous hounds head, the makeshift weapon coming apart with repetitive use.

My lungs burned, my muscles screamed. I pushed them so hard and in ways that I’d never known I could. I dreaded suddenly being unable to move, especially with two wolves to go.

Fear would cloud my mind.

I felt a flush of calm overwhelm me, a cold, calculating murderer emerging more as I watched the dizzy wolf reposture itself to attack.

It opened its mouth, I jammed the pole through the roof of it’s jaw and partly into its brain. It was just enough that it still twitched, and I found myself apologizing that it would die more slowly than its companion had.

The last wolf tackled me to the ground from my side. I had no energy left to evade in the first place, and I didn’t see as it jumped. We rolled, and finally it was on top of me, facing me. I clamped my hands to the side of its head, one finger jammed into its gums by sheer luck. It snarled and snapped, and at that moment I felt excruciating pressure on the finger. It’d break momentarily, then the wolf’s jaws would close on my face. I would die, potentially slowly if it didn’t immediately bite through the rest of my skull.

[Sacrifice… take… life.] The voice called in my head, cold, calculating, efficient, brutal.

These were the things I thought of when the deep voice convinced me of my only potentially viable option. I looked sideways, seeing the hound I’d killed, next to the one that yet still lay twitching and dying.

Taking in a deep breath, I forced the wolf’s head and jaws down on to my left shoulder. Teeth sank agonizingly into my flesh, connecting to bone. I had maybe two seconds before the biology defying anatomy of the wolf allowed it to have bite pressure sufficient to sheer through my bones, no doubt inflicting a terribly bloody wound with it.

My right hand found the hilt buried in the previous hound.

A scream rang out in my mind, but a snarl ripped out of my lips.

I grasped with all my strength. I pulled with all my will. I stabbed with all of the murder I could muster.

The blade pierced through the ear and into the brain with a sharp crack. The jaws relented, and without wasting time, I pulled it from my shoulder, prying its teeth from me. My arm hung from my side, stunning in that I felt nothing from my injury. Who knew how many more wolves there might be? Being down an arm would be a trial of trials in this situation.

My resilience stunned me, and the sound of the world roiling in my ears inured me to my friends calling out to me, desperate to help me.

When I looked up at the horror they were fighting, I realized why they hadn’t the chance to save me at all.

[Bounty Hunt system bonus objective found!]

[The Bear ‘Karaslava’ the Sound has been found! Unique biotic, eliminate target!]

It seemed vaguely reminiscent of the hulking bears we’d seen through our mini-nuke carrying drone camera. Hulking and as big as a brown bear, it stood taller than Daniel.

No wolves were left alive around us, and the bear seemed to be in a fit of rage, bellowing and snarling with force enough to feel like I was being buffeted by sound. Daniel limped, his suit having taken damage in spite of the fact that it was made of steel. Long taloned claws like short-swords raked through the air, a shower of fragmented metal shot out from Daniel’s chest. I noticed with my reaper’s eye that there were many such fragments on the ground.

He took the strike and punched back, hitting it in the nose. The beast recoiled just enough, eyes watering in pain.

“I’ve got him,” Daniel shouted, my hearing returning, murkily. Blood pumped from my shoulder, warmth spread outside, cold inside. An electrical buzz shuddered through my brain and down my body.

His mechanical arms stopped the bear’s paws, first one, then the other, impossibly straining from the beast.

“I’m under you!” Fran called, diving between Daniel’s mech legs bravely. She faced her wings forward, a sudden harmonic sound ringing through the air. The bear bellowed, finding the noise especially annoying.

I watched bushes and trees shake in the forest as Fran poured in the power. The feathers she’d left discarded from our flight came back to her - tearing and sticking into the back of the standing bear’s legs. The moment they did, Fran fired six black-covered spears into the bear’s chest. Daniel bellowed, louder through the mech-suit’s speaker than it should have, pushing hard against the bear as Fran pulled hard with the magnetic gloves she wore.

The bear fell backwards, Daniel landed on it.

It was stunned enough to not know how to respond to the fact that the creatures it had previously devoured whole had actually managed to harm it. That amazement lasted only until Daniel straddled the massive torso of the creature with his legs, smashing its face with his gauntleted, huge hands.

Three cracking shots thumped its head into the soil. Daniel shouting all the time.

“Just die god damn you!” Desperation leaked into his voice, “Matt needs us!”

The bear, like it understood what he said and cruelly mocked him, smirked.

It’s massive paws shot up, and Daniel only barely managed to guard against them, and pin them.

“I can’t get the feathers with you there!” Fran shouted in panic, still pulling hard on the ones in the bears legs. She turned back to where the battle elsewhere had been taking place, her face white as snow. “Where’s Matthew?”

In the next moment, a dagger plunged down into the bear’s left eye. Daniel and the bear both shuddered with shock, the sheer bloodlust coming from the attack noticed even before the damage.

The bear snapped its jaws up. I pulled back with the dagger narrowly avoiding it.

In the blink of an eye, mercilessly, I plunged the dagger back down, into the other eye.

It bellowed in pain and rage, snapping blindly. I evaded, and stabbed once more.

Then again. And again. The black ichor that covered the dagger shined in the dim light. I felt a tremor, and I knew that this creature was so much more different than the wolves.

It was intelligent, it’d somehow known we were near, it sent wolves after us. The voice in that whispered in the back of my mind told me as it struggled to keep my conscious. My black and red glowing eye peered down at the creature, its arrogance that we were easy prey would be its undoing. It knew that it was afraid of us now.

I could tell because it was shaking.

After nearly a minute, it finally died, and I pulled up the knife. Or, I pulled out the hilt, at least, the blade had shattered into Karaslava’s brain. The Bounty was completed.

The moment afterwards, I fell backwards, the electrical tingle in my brain stopped supporting me any further. Blood still flowed freely from my shoulder, the electric tingle becoming harder to feel. I knew that the wound was probably fatal. That was fine. I’d been a fool to think this would might somehow be safer. Sis said she would try to keep us from certain death. That didn’t mean it was safe.

I smiled derogatorily at my own foolishness, everything going black as I passed from consciousness. I couldn’t even hear Sis’s rewards.

But I did hear something else.

[Sleep, now. I will mend us.]

Comfort buzzed through me. Unconscious dreaming taking me far from the pain...