Alisa’s body was thrown to the side as a bullet tore into her layers of coats, sending her crashing down to the soaked ground. She held onto the ax and tried to roll back to her feet, but Tolus now had plenty of time to prepare himself.
“Aarg…”
A weak cry left Alisa’s mouth as she pulled herself back up to her feet, her face contorting as she tried to ignore the pain and move on with the attack. A few meters down the street, a flicker of metal glinted as the gun that’d just fired retreated back into the shadows.
Cundy already had his gun up and at the ready, and he instantly shifted his target to the shooter. His finger squeezed down on the trigger as his pistol leveled on the enemy, but the bullet only tore through empty air before hitting the wood of the building on the other side of the street.
A streak of dark shadows dashed away toward the end of the road, and Cundy followed it with his gun, repeatedly pulling the trigger.
Four more gunshots ripped through the air, and the figure stumbled and fell, a splash of crimson blood joining the streams of freezing rainwater flowing on the ground.
From his spot by the door, Roth could just barely see the side of the now-collapsed shooter’s face. It was Enric.
Shit, he was already here!
Back in the center of the street, Alisa managed to rise back to her feet and heft up the ax again, but she’d lost her chance at a surprise attack, and her current state was uncertain after Enric’s first shot.
The figures of a few more townsfolk rushed out to see what the commotion was, and Tolus swept his hand toward them as they peeked out from the other storefronts. Most of them swiftly disappeared back inside, the buildings they had come from.
“Alisa, watch out! They’re probably grabbing guns!”
Roth called out to the girl, but she was wholly focused on the enemy in front of her. Alisa launched herself forward, swinging the ax toward Tolus’s chest once more. The bulky man easily sidestepped it, then quickly countered, slamming his fist into Alisa’s side.
She was nearly thrown off her feet again, but managed to recover before Tolus could use the large dagger he’d just drawn from somewhere within his coat. Standing in the doorway in front of Roth, Cundy had already retargeted to Tolus. When he saw Alisa being pushed away, he instantly opened fire.
Two more gunshots tore through the street as the final two bullets were released from Cundy’s 6-shot revolver. Tolus stumbled, but no blood came from the new holes in his chest.
At the same time, a few of the figures that’d briefly poked their heads out with the first few gunshots also returned, flintlocks now gripped in their hands.
“Crew!”
Both Roth and Cundy hurriedly covered their eyes, and a barely audible snapping noise echoed through the street. A blinding flash of light swept through the rainy street, blinding the townsfolk who were just peeking outside. Tolus also reeled from the flash but didn’t just stand there and allow himself to be struck freely.
He lunged forward, crashing into Alisa before she could finish her strike. Instead of cleaving the corrupting medal in two, the wood ax sank deeply into the bulky hunter’s arm. Both of them crashed to the ground, and Alisa quickly tapped on the back of her hand before even trying to get back up.
As if materializing from thin air, her entire pack of sled dogs rushed out from any unwatched corner of the street. Just like when they had given Roth a warm greeting when he first wandered over to their street, the eight massive huskies piled on top of Tolus.
This time, though, it wasn’t their tongues that were in use. Sickly, dried chunks of black-colored blood scattered around the prone hunter’s figure as his already heavily injured arm was ripped clean off.
The hunter’s other arm reached around one of the dog’s necks before crushing down, causing the husky to collapse limply before evaporating into a few light blue motes of light. One small dot reappeared on the back of Alisa’s hand, right next to two other smaller ones representing the two pups she had left.
The remaining dogs continued to rip away at Tolus’s clothing and flesh, but after a few seconds, their vigorous efforts started to slow. A dark haze hung over the pile of dogs and the buried hunter as all of the dogs stopped moving altogether, then began to fall to the ground.
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“No!”
Alisa’s knees buckled as the dark mist broke some connection she shared with the beasts surrounding the hunter. She collapsed into an unconscious heap in the middle of the street.
“Shit, I’ll grab her. If it kills her and absorbs her mist, it’ll all be over.”
Cundy quickly fired a couple of shots from his now-reloaded revolver into the pile where Tolus was pushing the now limp corpses of the sled dogs off of himself, then dashed out from the shelter of the storefront and ran over to where Alisa was collapsed on the ground. He grabbed onto the soaked outermost coat she was wearing, hefted her limp body up into his arms, then charged back through the rain to where Roth was waiting.
Cundy didn’t stop even after he got inside, continuing to run her back to one of the rear rooms of the storefront.
A distorted groaning noise barely managed to pierce through the slowing rainfall as Tolus- or what was left of him- staggered to his feet. The dark cloud of mist surrounding him was rapidly failing, but the metallic badge on his chest still glowed with the same sinister light it held at the beginning of the battle.
He was a mess with one arm, one leg twisted at an odd angle, rips and tears all across his heavy coat, and dark, charcoal-colored crumbles of dried blood quickly being absorbed into the freezing water gathering on the roadside beneath him.
“Hhhsss…. Consolidate.”
A wheezing hiss left the mutilated hunter’s mouth as he swept his remaining arm toward the shopfronts behind him. The townsfolk, who were still recovering from Alisa’s light flash, started to collapse in their doorways.
Very faint trails of mist ran through the air from their collapsed bodies, all heading directly for the hunter. The wounds on Tolus’s body slowly started to recover. Dark, dried splotches and scabs instantly formed over the already liquid-bloodless injuries covering the hunter’s body.
Roth glanced down at his map, and a chill equally cold to the rain outside ran down his spine. Red dots- there was a sea of them now. Peeking outside, he could still see a few townsfolk left alive- maybe ten at most, all of them holding guns- but the rest of the town was covered in a coating of death.
After his ‘healing’, which only lasted a small handful of seconds, Tolus started moving forward again. He started running directly toward Roth, right at the doorway where Cundy had just evacuated Alisa.
Roth quickly dropped his map and withdrew a dagger from his belt. His second hand lingered on the flare gun he’d previously received from Holl for a few moments, then moved to his trusty spyglass. Clutching the two weapons in his hands, Roth prepared to launch an attack the moment Tolus stepped inside.
-Splash, Splash, BOOM!
Just as Tolus’s footsteps reached outside of the stop, a powerful gunshot exploded from what seemed to be just over Roth’s ear. The air just outside the door shimmered for a moment before revealing Holl’s figure, his own revolver held in his hands.
Tolus, now missing 2/3rds of his head, collapsed into a pile just under the eaves of the shop.
Holl angled his gun down, pointing it directly at the metallic badge still on the hunter’s chest, then started unloading the remaining bullets into the enemy. Across the street, the few remaining townsfolk raised their flintlocks to point at Holl, but as they squeezed the triggers, all they heard were dull clicks.
They’d made mistakes by stepping out into the street, and the still-persistent rain soaked into their weapons, rendering them useless. Just as Holl squeezed the trigger for a fourth time, though, another gunshot echoed from somewhere further down the street.
A bright red plume of blood exploded out from the center of the captain’s chest.
The world slowed.
The glimmering silver revolver- two rounds still left in its chambers- slipped from the captain’s hands.
Right next to a new bullet hole, the red star with a raised white C captain’s badge shook as Holl’s body started to fall.
The old, worn captain’s hat fell from his head as Holl’s body collapsed to the ground.
“Captain!”
Roth rushed out from where he was hiding just inside the storefront, his expression ugly as he saw the gaping, bloody wound in the man’s chest. A flickering orange light lit up the side of Holl’s pallid face as Roth knelt down next to him. It looked like the light of a nearby fire.
“Captain, answer me!”
Roth pressed his hand over Holl’s wound, trying not to notice how quickly his hand became coated in blood. The captain’s lips moved weakly, and Roth leaned in to try and hear his words.
“Son… my son… son. I see…”
Holl’s hand started to reach up toward Roth’s face but fell back to the ground limply before he could touch the young mapmaker. Holl’s face fell slack, and his pupils slowly expanded.
“Captain…”
The orange firelight reflecting off to the side was starting to grow brighter. On the other side- the side where Tolus’s corpse was lying- there was a sudden series of crackling noises. Roth’s tear-filled eyes raised to see what was happening.
A few faint streams of mist flowed away from the now-dead few remaining townsfolk and into a heavily dented, cracked emblem lying on Tolus’s chest. Instead of trying to heal the hunter’s corpse, all of the mist went directly into the heavily damaged badge.
And then it moved.
The dark badge shot through the air towards Roth, corrupting lines of dark mist reaching for him.