“Cora, Mari told me you’ve been acting weird. I want to know why.”
“Everything’s fine. I promise, this is just how I like to keep my room, okay?”
“Hey, what’s that? Woah, what was that?”
“I dunno. Probably just you.”
***
They don’t stop coming.
Hundreds of slimy masses flood the plains like disgorged matter spewing out a sewer pipe. Howls, screeches, and hoots reach a crashing crescendo, drowning out the river, drowning out Cora’s half-anguished whimpers as the three of them hunker near the woods.
Their side of the woods, at least. A mile, maybe two miles, of tangled weeds, bushy shrubs, and the occasional stunted tree separates them from the last patch of forest, the place they’d camped yesterday.
Except every gap between the distant trees bristles gray. Hordes of mutants keep coming. Their stampede kicks up clouds of hazy dust. The crushing wave of animalistic frenzy becomes one, a force of reeking, slobbering, murderous animals charging toward them.
Cora recoils from the gruesome sight. So much for her newfound confidence. She can’t breathe. Her lungs are close to bursting, but that doesn’t matter when the mutants are minutes away at most.
“We should be moving,” she whispers, struggling to keep her breathing steady. Her heart pounds. Her hands are clammy. She can’t stop staring at the mutants. “There’s no way this plan will work. There’s too many.”
“We’ll be okay,” Callista says, squeezing Cora’s shoulder. “You saved me. Now let me save you.”
Too many. Impossibly many. Within the horde, new variants emerge. Several dozen lanky quadrupedal mutants bound over the rest. Long strides and high leaps push them to the front of the horde. Their skin is a pallid gray, their limbs possessing too many joints, curling like a spider and jumping like a grasshopper. Far behind, slabs of wet muscle drag themselves forward. Multi-segmented, they contract like worms, their great masses shuddering with the sheer effort of moving their bodies. Other mutants part around them, some the familiar slobbering horned freaks of nature that leave Cora shuddering, others less distinct, such as horse-like mutants with six legs, galloping between smaller mutants, or squid-like octopus beings clinging to the striders, slabs, and horse-creatures, arms and suckered tentacles dangling behind.
“You’ll be okay, you mean,” Liam says. His throat bobs. He holds his knife out, muscles tensed, teeth gritted. He sweeps back his bangs and scowls. “Listen. I appreciate you thinking that highly of us, but we are human. We won’t be okay.”
“Humans with gifts of languages. Perhaps both of you have other unseen gifts.”
Liam grimaces. “That just adds fuel to the fire, you know? We got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Several fingers pry loose from his knife’s handle and tap it. The blade swipes at nothing, bobbing to a mental beat only he understands. “Right, Cora?”
Please, stop! Her mental pleas fall on deaf, ignorant ears. She shudders, hoping they think it’s just her fried nerves, squirming and twisting before the rampaging horde of creatures.
“Yeah. But I, um,” she chokes out, biting on her tongue. Stupid traitor tongue. She switches gears, hardening her heart to the Mari-apparition endlessly laughing at her. Best left unfelt. “I won’t be able to do anything.”
“Keeping watch is just as important,” Callista says. She points at the nearest tree, a sturdy, thick gray tree, massive branches reaching high toward the sky. “Up there, they won’t reach you. You’ll have the best view, too. Liam, you know what to do. If some creatures break past the barrages, remove the threat.”
“Nice way of saying to gut them.”
“I’m trying to keep calm, okay?” There. A crack in Callista’s armor. She licks her lips, protracting and retracting her claws, flexing her hands. “It’s what me and the others used to do. It’s what we should’ve done when we were ambushed in the Mestessines.” Her jaw sets. She looks at each of them, raising her head. “I won’t make that same mistake again.”
Liam nods. He traces his finger over the blunt edge of his knife, then licks his lips like Callista did. “Passing big rocks. I’m okay with that. But Cora, here.” He offers her the knife handle-first. “Insurance, just in case.”
She ogles at it. “You’re going to need it when-”
“Yes, I know, but pass it to me when we’re ready. I don’t want you to feel unprotected. That’s all.”
He neglects to mention that between him and Callista, they’re her sword, armor, and shield. Cora forces herself to reach out with a shaky hand and take it. It feels so much heavier than she expects, its heft dragging her arm down.
“Let’s hurry, then,” she says, spying her reflection on the flat metal surface.
Callista helps her onto her shoulders. The experience is surreal, resting on bony shoulders that should lack the strength to keep Cora up. She wasn’t fat before arriving on this world, and her diet since is a joke, but five foot eight of bones and associated tissues is still a substantial weight.
She towers over Liam for once, who glances at the rolling tide of gray monsters before sprinting toward the nearest set of rocks. His knife is gripped tightly in her fist, aimed away from Callista. She tenses and crouches.
“Prepare yourself,” she grunts, before her body suddenly thickens. Several inches of musculature bulge from her scrawny body. She squats, wraps her arms around Cora’s legs, and jumps.
Cora chokes on her own spit, scream buried at the back of her throat. Wind whips her face, her eyes sink into their sockets, and her upper half flops like a noodle, but suddenly they’re clinging to the tree. Callista’s claws puncture through the bark, boots dug into a crevice between a large branch and the even larger trunk.
“Go,” she huffs, purple light spilling through her squinted eyes.
Cora awkwardly untangles from Callista’s arms and wobbles onto her bottom, straddling the branch. It overlooks a good portion of the forest floor and a wedge of the plains themselves. The mutants are a wave of stampeding gray, kicking up distant clouds of dirt and dust.
The plan is risky, a half-baked mangling of ideas bounced between the three of them. To run is to die. Cora repeats the line to herself, wiping off her sweaty fingers on her shirt. Callista is the artillery, harnessing immense strength to catapult scores of crushed rocks at several times the speed of sound. Liam is the protector and assistant, delivering rocks and shielding her. Cora is the general, commanding the battlefield and dismantling traps and ambushes alike.
It’s simple, in theory. But the mutants are too many. Their stampede is a deafening roar of frenzied madness. To stay is to die. For once, her hallucinations don’t torment her, the seed of doubt instead implanted by Cora’s own mind. A good thing, because she would’ve passed out otherwise, pushed over that frail line of sanity.
To run is to die. To stay is to die.
Callista reaches out with a bare hand. Claws retracted. Pupils dark, their inner fire extinguished. “You’re shaking,” she says. Cora realizes her entire body is wracked in shivers.
“Am I?”
“We’ll be okay.”
Gently, Callista pats Cora’s hand. She goes a step further and slides her fingers into hers. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“I’m sorry?”
Cora almost backs off. Almost rejects Callista’s hand and shakes her away, almost turns her back to her, almost spouts off some nonsense about focusing on the plan.
The old Cora would’ve done it. Heck, the her from a week ago would’ve. But Callista is like family now. A close friend.
Most importantly, she isn’t him.
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Her tension releases. Cora sighs, and with it goes away weeks of pent-up stress. “I–I made a mistake. A few weeks ago, but it was more than a mistake. I hurt people. More than you’d think.” Cora pulls her lips into the barest semblance of a smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’ve been trying so hard to be a better person. I promised myself that. I promised that to the people I hurt. But I just can’t–” She grimaces and slams her palm on the branch. The bark is rough, just enough to scratch her skin, distracting her from focusing on Liam’s distant profile hauling rocks. “I can’t keep that promise. I can, and I should, but I’m scared what will happen if I do.”
Callista soaks everything in with a neutral face. She glances down and raises her eyebrows. “Him?”
Cora’s face burns in shame. She bows her head and lets her hair dangle loose, blocking Callista. “Yes.”
“He respects you. He likes you. I’m certain he thinks otherwise about how you feel.”
“It’s not that. It’s about the box.”
Callista clears her throat. “Did you throw it at him? Hurt him, before? He doesn’t seem like he resents you.”
“Hurry up!” Liam bellows. He tosses two rocks the size of his head onto a new hill of rocks and debris.
“Tell me when this is over,” Callista says, patting Cora’s shoulder. She steadies her breath, refusing to move her head. “For now, focus on your role, as I must mine.”
A whoosh of displaced air later, Callista drops to the ground. Cora’s terror snaps and lashes at her, churning her guts and skittering up her sides. She touches her broken wrist, shielded behind layers of gauze and cloth.
Liam deserves so much better. And he’s going to fight, and maybe die, in a world that doesn’t deserve him. “It’ll all be okay,” she whispers, clutching her arm to her chest. “We’ll be okay.”
Between Liam and Callista, they build a fortress of rocks and boulders, some unearthed from underground, cracked at their tops where Callista had pulled from. Cora scans between trees, past them, behind her, and the plains themselves.
Except something is wrong. The air is too quiet. The bristling, thunderous horde of mutants don’t get any closer. “They stopped,” Cora squeaks, her throat going dry. She gulps, but the little saliva she musters isn’t enough to stop her throat from tightening. “Guys, why did they stop?”
“They’re organizing,” Liam says. He dusts off his shirt and tosses several rocks into the fortress. “Freaky fucks. They don’t have anywhere to go. The forest is too thick on our left and the river’s to our right.” He squints. His lips draw back and he clenches his teeth, eyes shining wild. “Oh fuck. What the hell is that?”
Emerging from the horde like a shiny piece of candy wrapper, a slim, tall figure waves its arms. Mutants still wherever the figure’s arms lead. Armor plates slide between chest and arms, clanging even at such a great distance away. Fractals of clashing colors leave ghostly afterimages whenever Cora blinks.
“It’s controlling them.” Callista pulverizes two rocks in her hands. She rears backward, eyes flashing. “That Transient. I’m going to pulverize it.”
Cora shakes her head, locked on a distant second figure. “Wait!”
Callista stops, her teeth bared in a grimace. Muscles ripple beneath her clothes. “The Transient needs to die.”
But she never gets the chance to finish the job. The second figure catapults over the mutants, a short and lithe figure leaping on the backs of mutants, dimmer and dirtier than the armored Transient.
Then the figure slams into the Transient. Metal clangs, flashing brightly, before both the Transient and the mystery figure crash to the ground. A brief struggle ensues, each grappling the other, metal flashing and the second figure drawing back an arm. Then the Transient drops, and the second figure sprints.
Several mutants break formation and leap onto their back. The figure flails, kicks, and shouts, slamming an elbow into one mutant creature’s side, kicking a squid-octopus creature off another mutant creature, rushing forward.
The shouts, the body shape, they’re awfully familiar, the tone sounds just right…
A mutant swipes at their legs. The figure screams, slamming their hand onto the mutant’s horns, kicking at the downed squid-octopus creature lashing out with its tentacles.
Hides rupture. Horns buckle. Tentacles tear free. For just a second, each mutant is composed of shapes fragmented by bloody canyons carved across their bloated bodies.
Then both mutants pop.
Like party balloons filled with gelatin. Chunks of grisly meat, fragments of bone, and coils of organs spray the plains. A fine blue mist of sprayed arterial blood coats the air. Two pinpricks of copper light pierce through the curtain, the rest of the figure obscured.
“Holy shit,” Liam breathes out, frozen in place. “It just looked at us. It noticed us.”
Callista’s face is pale. She rears her arm back, clutching a fistful of rocks. “I don’t–I’ve never seen a gift like that. We can’t let that Transient any closer.”
“Wait!” Cora swallows down her doubt when Callista glares at her. She won’t do anything to her, but she’s still intimidating, and Cora remembers how easily Callista threw her that night. “Trust me. Please, just trust me.” Cora draws in a shuddering breath and raises her head. “Mari!”
Her throat aches. Her vocal cords are set aflame. No human should scream so loudly, so deafeningly that Liam winces and Callista grimaces.
The figure sprints toward them. Beneath their thundering footfalls, dirt sprays the mutants charging after. But then the figure waves a hand. A hello. Cora starts tearing up, cheeks hurting from her wide grin. It can’t be her. It is. It isn’t.
It is.
The figure whirls around and touches three mutants, with both arms and a leg. They fracture and detonate, coating the figure in flesh and blood, dripping off their body, plumes of blood engulfing them, but coppery lights slice through the bloody mess and seem aimed straight at Cora.
“That is not your friend,” Liam says.
“CORA!”
Like the boom of thunder on a stormy night, or the crackling of fireworks on New Year, or a burst of missile strikes during a grueling war, Mari’s voice sends a shiver of fear and awe down Cora’s spine. Distant, yet loud and clear. It echoes around them, within them, pain and love and fear and hope seeping into their pores, their surroundings, rustling trees and knocking a few rocks off the fortress of rocks.
Liam drops the rocks by his feet and trembles. He grits his teeth, head bowed. “Didn’t you say you last fought with her? What if–”
“No!” Cora stares at Mari. “She’s not that type of person.” Though her stomach squirms when Mari surges across the plains, uninhibited.
She was once a normal human like Cora. A few inches shorter, with wavy brown hair and star earrings. Now, she looks like a goddess, coated in the entrails of mutants she detonated with a thought, speeding the final distance between her and the forest.
Mari’s hair flows behind her in a smooth wave. Her eyes flash and she picks up speed. She’s beautiful. Cora claps her hand over her mouth and shivers, wondering what they’ll say to each other, if Mari will bother hearing the rush of apologies Cora offers.
Mari cries out. Suddenly, she falls face-first, arms spread out too late to catch her fall. She slides several feet, ripping up the grass and weeds, leaving behind a channel of bare earth and scraps of clothes.
She doesn’t move.
Her arm is bent at an awkward angle. Wrenched back from its socket, sticking out like a bird's wing. Cora stares, and stares, because it can’t be real. No, it can’t be. Then Mari’s body rises. Cora hopes that she’s getting up, she’s fine, a fall like that won’t hurt her and she’ll reach the forest, but her body is limp, carried by an invisible force.
The air waves and peels back. Two armored figures and a horse-like mutant stand beside her. The figures drape Mari over the mutant’s back, face-up. Cora doesn’t need binoculars to see the smear of red that Mari’s front became.
“Fuck!” Callista doesn’t wait for Cora’s desperate plea to stop a third time. She throws the crushed rocks straight at the Transients. Suddenly, a wall of blue light flashes into existence, catching the rocks, disintegrating them, before falling invisible again.
“They were going to ambush us while invisible,” Liam says, eyes widened in horror. “If it wasn’t for your friend–fuck. Fuck me.” He turns and spits on the ground. “Fuck. Callista, we need to go. This is beyond us. Even you.”
Callista throws several handfuls at the Transients. The wall flashes twice, and the rocks are pulverized into atomic dust. “Their gift of shield won’t last forever. We have to break them.”
“We won’t last forever either. We have to fall back.”
“Fall back to where! They’ll chase us like rats. We have the most advantages here.” Callista turns toward the plains. “We have to stay.”
Cora’s throat is on fire. Everything is on fire. She can’t see, can’t hear, can only drown in the tears that come rushing out of her, burning hot paths down her cheeks, every cell in her body quaking.
“But Mari! Y-you’re gonna hurt her–”
“She’s gone and she’s not coming back!” Callista shouts back. Cora recoils, her friend’s voice lashing at her. “I’m sorry. They take and they take and they take,” Callista says. Voice soft. So soft Cora almost doesn’t catch her next words. “Their whole world needs to die.”
Cora goes limp. Staring at her useless body that could’ve made it off the tree, helped Mari finish her sprint. But no. Cora abandoned her, again.
The horde of mutants resumes their stampede. In moments, they reach Mari and the Transients, parting around them like water. Boom after boom echoes as Callista throws fistfuls of rocks at the incoming horde. This time, the wall is far behind them, and scores of mutants turn into blue mist, buckling and tripping the other mutants.
One of the lanky, quadrupedal mutants reaches the forest line. It tenses to leap at Callista when Liam slams into the creature. “Get my knife!” he grunts, wrestling the creature down. Cora tosses it down. Somehow, he catches it by the handle and drives his arm down, severing tendons and driving the blade into its skull.
Why did it have to be this way?
Despite Callista’s best efforts, the horde is approaching, a rolling tsunami of gray, writhing flesh. Cut and ruptured and severed, bleeding and falling and dying, the mutants rush despite barrages of rocks slamming into and through their fleshy bodies. Mari and the Transients are gone, hidden behind the hundreds of mutants eagerly advancing.
In the dying echoes of Mari's screams, replayed over and over until it becomes shrill feedback in Cora's head, she adds her own.