Early the next morning, completely oblivious to the carnage that had happened across the globe, a crowren sounds off its shrieking call, sounding the beginning of a new day. Deep shades of blue and violet streak across the morning sky, igniting the triplet moons in one final burst of flaming light before they begin to dip below the horizon one by one. The crowren sounds off a second call, its brilliant green crest of head feathers shimmering in the morning sunlight, sending dazzling specks of green-and-blue light throughout West Village.

After a third call, Peter finally awakes. He opens and closes his eyes a few times, blinking the sleep away. He attempts to sit up straight and stretch his aching arms, but the effort sends ripples of fresh pain through his barely-healed scars and scrapes from the previous day. He lets out a quiet groan of pain but stretches against the soreness, determined to get ready for another long day. He finishes his quick stretch, smacks himself awake a few times, and slips into his standard outfit: yellow t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and an old and faded white bandana. His eyes linger for a second on the bandana, reluctant to look away, before he finally manages to pull himself out of his daze and tie it onto his neck.

He quickly makes his way from his room and into the kitchen to start preparing breakfast. To his surprise, someone is already in the kitchen making what seem to be pancakes. “Mamaw, is that you?” He asks quietly, not wanting to wake anyone else up.

“Oh, Peter, you spooked me,” the woman says after letting out a soft yelp. She turns around to face her grandson, a warm, elderly smile on her face. “I figured you’d wanna sleep in a bit after your little vollick incident yesterday.”

Peter lets out a soft chuckle. “Nah, I’m fine. Just a little sore is all.”

“You’re definitely more than a little sore,” Mamaw replies, eyeing the stitched-up gash across Peter’s left cheek with a knowing grin. “Besides, you’ve earned a little rest. You don’t have to do everything around here, you know. It’s not like none of us knows how to cook.”

“I know, I know. I just wanna give you and Ma a break, you know? You both already have a lot on your plates. Breakfast each morning is the least I can do to pitch in.”

Mamaw snickers a bit at that. “Peter, you already do more than enough to pitch in ‘round here. Heck, ‘round the whole village, you and your pals. Now please, will you quit botherin’ me so I can finish breakfast?”

Peter raises a hand to refuse, but then notices that his grandma had already managed to make a dozen pancakes and almost as many strips of mushew bacon in the time they had been talking. “Alright, you win,” Peter says with a smile, feigning a defeated voice.

Not long after, the whole rest of the family had woken up to Mamaw’s breakfast and were quietly and contently eating together around their circular table in the kitchen. Peter’s younger sister Jane sits to his right, happily consuming her third pancake drenched in a veritable ocean of pricklebush sap. Their mother, Venna, says something about Jane’s teeth rotting out if she eats too much sap and cakes, eliciting a small groan from Jane, a chuckle from Mamaw, and nothing but a sneer from Peter. Jane sneers right back at Peter, stuffs the rest of her pancake and his into her mouth, then bolts off to do her dishes and then rush out the door and into their family fields. Peter laughs softly, excuses himself to do his own dishes, then runs out the door to catch up with his sister and help her with the early morning chores.

“I tell ya, he looks more and more like his daddy every day,” Mamaw says absently, poking around the last few bites of her breakfast with her fork.

Venna looks solemnly at the empty fifth chair, the one directly beside her, a wan smile forming on her face. “He really does. Acts like him, too.” She stands up to grab her and Mamaw’s dishes, but Mamaw simply puts a hand on Venna’s.

“Let me do it. After all, I made the mess,” she says, eyeing the piles of bowls, spilled flour, and leaking sap with a wizened grin. “Might as well clean it up.”

***

On the opposite side of town, Maria and her family are already awake and finishing their own breakfast. Maria stares blankly down at her half-finished eggs and toast, poking around at it with her fork. Her older brother Max nudges her with his elbow. “Hey, you awake in there?” He asks teasingly.

Maria shakes herself a bit then starts piling the rest of her breakfast into her mouth. “Sorry, just tired. Didn’t sleep too well last night.”

“Really? That’s a shock,” their mother, Laine, says. “After all the excitement you went through, I was sure you’d be out cold.”

“Well I did get a good nap in thanks to that frillback,” Maria jokes, idly stroking the small gash where the serpent’s fang had grazed and poisoned her.

“You sure you’re up for working today?” Maria’s father, Jackson, says, his voice soft and caring. “I don’t want you pushing yourself too hard. That snake wasn’t the only thing that got you yesterday. You should give yourself some time to heal and recover.”

“Seriously, I’m fine. I’ve been through worse,” Maria says confidently, eliciting some questioning glances from her family. Maria meets their gazes for a few moments before finally caving. “Fine, maybe not. But still, I don’t want to just lie down today. We got stuff around the farm to take care of. Besides, there’s always something going on outside the gates. I’m sure Peter will end up finding some monsters to bash out there, and I’d feel bad leaving him out to dry, you know?”

Max shakes his head, a disbelieving smile creeping across his face. “Man, you’re stubborn,” he says as he finishes his own toast. “Well, if you’re so bent on fighting some monsters, follow me. We gotta wrangle the bulls out from the mating pens.”

Maria lets out a pained chuckle. “Fantastic.”

“What? You can fight a pack of vollicks, but you’re scared of two measly mushews?” Max taunts.

“Nah, I ain’t scared of ‘em. Just…” Maria pauses, looking for the right excuse and coming up empty. “Just can’t wait to see you try to wrangle Magnus.”

Max raises an eyebrow at that. “Oh? Who said I was gonna get him? Come on, tiny. You got a date with a bull.” Before Maria can object to her brother’s taunts, Max is already out the door, making his way to the pens where they keep their mating mushews. She lets out an audible groan and follows after him, all the while their parents simply laugh to themselves. Both siblings are well into their twenties and they still bicker like children. Some things simply never change.

***

Earlier that same morning, just as the sun starts to rise over the horizon, Joel is quietly making his way out of his room and down the steps to his family’s kitchen. He grabs a single cactus apple, shoves a slice of bread into his mouth, and starts to put his boots on when his mom and younger sister both catch him midway out the door.

“You’re not staying for breakfast?” Cindy, his mom, asks, rubbing her eyes to wake herself up.

Joel winces slightly and stands up. He wanted to be out the door well before anyone else woke up. “Sorry, mom,” he says through a mouthful of bread. He swallows before continuing to speak. “I gotta help Mullen reload the traps beyond the town gate. We also have a…prototype to install. Probably gonna take a few hours to get set up, so we need to get started as early as possible.”

“You can’t at least say bye before you leave?” His younger sister Gwen asks as she grabs an apple of her own and starts munching on it.

“...I didn’t want to wake you guys,” Joel says quietly.

“Well, we’re up now,” Cindy says with a bit of a chuckle. “You take care of yourself, alright? Remember, I need you to be back home at some point to help repair the water line.”

Joel nods and gives a forced smile back, a little impatient to get moving. That old thing had broken down so many times over the years, Joel was tempted to just rip it out of the ground and build his own from scratch—if he ever had the time to do that, that is. “I will. See you in a bit,” he says as he puts on his red flannel jacket and steps out the door.

As he walks out, he takes a surreptitious look down the road, squinting against the pale blue beginnings of a sunrise. At first all seems fine, then he sees the one thing he had desperately been hoping to miss: his father. Across the dirt road, a few doors down from his mom’s place, Gideon, Joel’s father, is pacing around the porch of his own home, muttering something to himself. Gideon looks up slightly and notices Joel staring at him. Gideon simply grimaces and makes his way to a small shack off to the side of his house. Barely a second later, the sounds of hammering and machinery can be heard from the shack as Gideon gets to work building…whatever half-brained crackpot thing he had dreamed up this time.

Joel shakes his head in disgust and makes his way towards Mullen’s workshop, passing by his father’s place on the way.

His father’s place. Only ten years ago, it had been his family’s home. Only ten years ago, Joel would have been itching to see into that shack, desperate to know what brilliant device his dear old dad was cooking up.

Only ten years ago, Joel still considered Gideon to be a father.

Joel lets out a weary sigh and keeps moving. No point in dwelling on the past. Gideon chose to throw his life and his family away, and that’s his fault. No use getting all riled up over some washed-up loser. Joel continues walking towards Mullen’s shop, then takes a sudden left before entering the town square. He follows an old dirt path out to the edge of the town, past the farms, the homes, the shops, and everything else. He makes his way to the town gate, hops over it, and walks out a few paces away to a small pile of stones.

“Here goes,” Joel mutters to himself, hoping beyond all reason he can succeed this morning. He closes his eyes, lets out a long deep breath, pictures the pile of stones in his mind’s eye, and stretches out towards them with his hand. He runs through a list of things Maria had once told him helped her use her telekinesis: imagine the outcome you want, think of it like using a mental hand to pick up and move the stone, imagine the weight of the stone and all of its other qualities, become the stone. Most of those steps just sound like plain gibberish to Joel, but he’s willing to try anything to get results.

He follows the steps to a tee: he pictures the pile in his mind, he imagines his will going through his physical hand and grabbing a rock. He imagines a rock lifting up, moving around, falling over, something. His arm shakes with concentration, his eyes jitter beneath his eyelids as he desperately tries to force whatever external power or will his friends have through his own mind and body.

When he finally opens his eyes, however, not a single stone has moved. No dust had been disturbed, no gusts of wind had been conjured, no bolts of energy had been fired, nothing. His arm drops to his side with a disappointing clink against his pistol, a firm reminder of his own mundanity. He considers whipping out the old gun and blasting the stones down, just to have some semblance of power, but he doesn’t want to scare the neighbors, or worse, wake up something beyond the gate.

He simply stares out, so used to this feeling of powerlessness that it doesn’t even register. Some things simply never change. With a resigned sigh, Joel hops back over the gate and walks back to Mullen’s shop. He opens the door to find the shop as lifeless and cluttered as he had expected it to be. Mullen wouldn’t be around for another hour or so. Honestly, most folks wouldn’t be up and moving for another hour anyway.

Joel rifles through the mess of machine parts, gun bits, broken metal, and all other sorts of material for an empty stool to sit on. Once he finally finds one, he yanks it out of the pile of scrap it was buried under, whips it around so he can sit at a nearby workbench, and pulls out his pistol to examine it. He had created the weapon when he was only about ten years old, shortly after his father got…distant. For all intents and purposes, the pistol was a standard six-shooter revolver: wooden grip, metallic barrel, and a chamber for the bullets. However, he had customized the weapon to have a second chamber below the main one, attached on a swivel. The idea at the time was that when he finished his first chamber of bullets, he could simply flick the gun and instantly reload with a fresh chamber.

He had iterated and changed the design of the gun over the years, but the basic principle was still the same: empty chamber, flick gun, reload fresh chamber, replace empty chamber with a new one, repeat. He’d even created a special sash loaded with a dozen six-shooter chambers to aid in the rapid reload. He looks up from his gun to the sash as it hangs on a coat rack by the door. As goofy and awkward a weapon as it is, it was the first thing he’d ever really made, the first thing he could claim as his.

As the sun continues to rise, Joel fiddles around with his pistol, tuning up the swivel mechanism, oiling the joints on the hammer and chamber, and polishing the grip as best he can. He even takes some time to try and build a completely new chamber, one better suited to the rapid reloading and rotating his pistol would have to go through. He gets so engrossed in his work that he doesn’t notice when Mullen opens the door and walks in.

“Burning the midnight oil again, kid?” Mullen asks, his voice gruff and laced with a thick drawl, even thicker than most others in West Village. His face is littered with scars and scrapes that interrupt the permanent five o’clock shadow he has. His hair is shock white and stands on end, giving him a permanent ‘just-got-electrocuted’ silhouette.

Joel jumps a bit at the sudden interruption, but quickly recovers. “Uh, no, no I got here early,” he explains hurriedly, stashing his pistol and prototype bullet chamber.

Mullen chuckles to himself, a low, grunting noise that sounds more like a sputtering engine than a laugh. “I remember when I had yer energy, kid. I guess that means yer ready to set up the turret, then?”

Joel nods excitedly and stands up. “Sure thing, boss.”

***

Later that same day, somewhere far off, beyond Venin’s Canyon, beyond the great Nabdu Wastes in the north, in the center of Valleria Town, the Harbinger strikes again. She rains down from the skies, the inhabitants of the small mining town alerted to her presence only by the red silhouette of her wings blotting out the blue sky and sun an instant before she begins her assault. The villagers don’t even have a second to react to her attack, she simply rips through them with her scythe like a hot knife through butter, leaving a trail of devastation and chaos in her wake.

“Is this the best you have to offer?” She demands, her eyes wide with the thrill of her destructive spree, her mouth twisted into a wide, predatory grin. She glides across the sandy surface on her crimson wings, tearing through the small homes and shops and leaving them nothing but shattered wood and stone. “Come, anyone! Who here is truly worthy of my power?”

She continues tearing through the town, not noticing a survivor clutching the bodies of his family. His body racks with sobs, his hands, face, hair, and clothes all stained dark red with their blood. He stares into his sister’s eyes and closes them, not wanting to see her blank, lifeless expression. He lays her down gently by his mother and father, who he had already lain to rest. He lets out a fierce cry of anguish and hatred, letting his boiling hot emotions spill out through his tears.

The sound of his cry catches the Harbinger’s attention. She spins around midair and sees the young man standing rigid over his family’s bodies. “Ah… Looks like I missed one,” she says, her voice lilting and soft. “Don’t worry. You’ll join your family soon enough…” Her wings flap and propel her at the man in the blink of an eye.

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The man whips around, hands enveloped in strange, shimmering black light and smoke. “I’ll kill you!” He screams, the dark light congealing into blades of ebony psychic power.

His blades clash with the Harbinger’s blood-red scythe, the colors sparking through the burning remains of the village. The red of the Harbinger’s scythe shines brightly against the young man’s silvery-white hair, while the black of his blades lights up her face with an evil, hateful glow. She sneers delightedly at the man, pleasantly surprised to see someone put up a fight.

“Yes! You will try…” She mutters, staring deeply into the man’s eyes, into his mind, into his soul. Her gaze seems to cut through him even more violently than her blade ever could. “And you will fail!” She flaps her psychic wings once again, propelling herself even harder into the man’s blades. He strains against the impact, barely able to hold his ground.

“I’ll kill you!” He repeats, his voice strained with effort and pain. He pushes back against the Harbinger’s blade, willing more power into his own weapons. They burn even more intensely, the black wisps of smoke and flame growing to such intensity that they actually hurt to look at. “I’ll kill you!”

The Harbinger laughs as she takes one hand off of her scythe and lowers it. She points one finger at the man and suddenly a burst of crimson energy shoots from it into his right bicep. The man screams in agony as both his right arm and the blade it was holding snap back. His arm goes limp, and the blade flickers away, leaving him completely open for a follow up attack. The Harbinger draws her scythe back and slashes into the man’s one remaining blade, breaking his grip on it and destroying it. She fires a second beam into his left foot, causing him to topple over, screaming.

“Another disappointment…” The Harbinger sighs as she adjusts stray hair away from her face. Even now, surrounded by corpses, fire, and destruction, she somehow looks immaculate. Not a single scratch or drop of blood smears her perfect features or stains her pristine clothes.

The young man, on the other hand, is covered in blood and slashes. His white hair and jacket are stained red with blood, some his own, some his family’s. His shirt and jeans are torn and ripped from where the Harbinger had blasted and cut him. His face, while normally beautiful in its own way, is now ruined by dripping blood and contorted by pain and impotent rage. “I’ll… I’ll kill you…” He says, his voice broken and hoarse.

The Harbinger chuckles sweetly and raises a finger towards his chest. “You had your chance…”

The finger begins to glow with energy, the crimson light bathing her victim in one solid, bloodstained color. Her eyes continue to pierce into his own, her gleeful smile never once dropping. She is about to fire when a sharp spike of power washes over her, drowning out all thoughts of vanquishing her last victim. Her head snaps up in the direction of the wave of power, her expression switching from fiercely predatorial to childishly awestruck alarmingly quickly. Her eyes go wide, her jaw slacks open, the power growing on her fingertips fades away as her hand slowly drops to her side.

“You…” She whispers. She lingers in place for one last dumbstruck moment before she is able to recompose herself. “You!” She says with finality, her predatory glee returning once more. Without even acknowledging her current prey, she spreads her wings and takes to the skies once more, searching out the source of this great power, leaving the young man screaming in a bloody rage behind her.

***

“Always something, huh?” Maria quips, telekinetically chucking her steel orb into the serpentine body of one of the half-dozen flying kinriks that had ambushed the town center mere moments before. The creature lets out a strangled cry and topples to the ground, its arrowlike head quickly being smashed in by the same steel orb. “You good back there, Peter?”

Peter dodges an incoming kinrik as it makes a swipe at him, bending over backward to avoid getting his throat slashed by the monster’s sharp fangs. He strains to right himself then hurls a small psionic orb of power at the beast’s wing, nearly missing his target. “My arms are killing me,” he mumbles back, reaching for his left shoulder and massaging his recovering wounds gently.

“On your six!” Joel shouts suddenly. Peter has enough time to turn around and notice a second kinrik an instant before a scattering of bullets rip through its wings and chest, killing it. Peter lets out a small burst of psychic energy to stop the bullets from landing in him, more of a reflex than a conscious reaction. “Woah! Sorry, P.K. Shoulda given you more of a heads up.”

“No, it’s fine,” Peter replies, eyeing the torn corpse of the monster beside him. “Just glad you’re out with us today.”

Joel smirks at that. “Honestly, I didn’t think I’d get the chance to today. Guess these things just really wanted to see the test run.” He looks over his shoulder and gives a quick signal to Mullen, who is standing off to the side, tinkering with a large device of some kind. Mullen notices the signal and shakes his head, motioning for more time. “Well, they’ll just have to wait, then,” he says instead, diving to his knees to avoid getting pegged by an incoming kinrik before unloading the rest of his clip into the beast.

As soon as one chamber runs out of bullets, Joel begins the quick reload process. He thumbs the release trigger with his right hand and flicks the weapon with his wrist, snapping the second chamber into place while simultaneously releasing the empty chamber. As the chambers swap positions, Joel reaches for a fresh one with his left hand and smacks it into place the second the old chamber drops. The whole process happens in barely a second, and he is able to unload his fresh chamber’s worth of bullets into a third kinrik.

“Leave some for the rest of us, man!” Maria chides with feigned annoyance as she grabs one of the two remaining monsters with her psychic grip, enveloping the creature in shimmering golden light. She hurls it around and around before slamming it into the dirt, dazing the creature long enough to finish it off with her orb.

Just as the fifth kinrik goes down, the sixth manages to blindside Joel and latch onto him with a piercing shriek. It takes several snaps at Joel’s face and neck. Joel tries to shoot it off, but the beast’s razor-sharp wingtips keep slashing at his arms, preventing him from getting a good aim. Peter whips around to see his friend tumble to the ground, desperately trying to pry the monster off of his body and avoid having his face devoured.

“Joel!” Peter exclaims in a combination of fear and fury. He dashes to Joel’s aid, charging a psion orb in his off hand. He grabs the distracted kinrik by its thin yet muscular neck and pries it off of his friend. The creature yelps in surprise and wriggles around in Peter’s grasp, but it’s no use. With a single, vicious motion, Peter lifts the kinrik into the air and thrusts the orb of blueish energy into its backside, fully intending to kill his target.

He certainly killed the kinrik, except he went too far. In his panic, the psion orb he was charging had reached a dangerously unstable level of energy, so instead of simply detonating inside the beast like Peter had planned, the orb erupts into a massive explosion of blue-and-purple energy, sending a beam of light and destruction tearing straight through the monster, far into the sky, leaving very little in its wake outside of a reverberating shockwave of sound. Shocked by the massive amount of power he had just released, Peter drops the singed remains of the kinrik and watches with sickened curiosity as it crumbles to ash on contact with the ground.

“God dang…” Joel mutters, still lying on the dirt, staring in wide-eyed surprise at the still-smoking air around Peter. “Think you got ‘em?”

“S-sorry. I didn’t mean to—” Peter begins, his mind racing with a confusing mix of adrenaline, fear, and satisfaction.

“That was awesome!” Maria interrupts, her face and voice clearly showing her excitement. She walks over to Peter and gives him a playful one-two punch in the shoulder. “Where were you hiding that all this time?”

Peter winces away from Maria’s over-affectionate attack and rubs the back of his head uncomfortably. “I-I’m not really sure what happened. I saw Joel in danger and… Well…” Peter drifts off, deciding not to think too much about it as he reaches down to help Joel get back on his feet.

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” Joel retorts, taking Peter’s outstretched hand after examining it for a brief moment. There wasn’t any evidence of the attack at all. No blood, no soot, not even any lingering remains of the energy he had just released. If he hadn’t seen Peter destroy the kinrik, he’d never be able to guess. “But I’m sure Mullen’s a bit disappointed we didn’t get to test the new turret system.”

“Ah, we will one of these days,” Mullen’s scruffy voice sounds from behind the metallic dome of the turret. “Believe you, me. This bad boy’s gonna be real handy. He’s all set up, just needs the ammo.” He ducks out from the turret and claps his hands mischievously, clearly excited by the prospect of such heavy ordnance. He jaunts off to his workshop, eager to load his new baby.

“Sounds good, Mullen. I’ll be right back to help you, but I gotta get some things settled back home real quick,” Joel replies. He turns to face his friends to offer a more solid explanation, “Mom needs me to check out the old water pipe. Again.”

“Didn’t you fix that thing just the other week?” Peter asks.

“Yep. Now it’s got a new problem somewhere. I swear, sometimes I wonder why Gideon even bothered installing those hunks of junk,” Joel says, shaking his head exasperatedly.

Years ago, Gideon had made an entire system of pipes and tunnels around the town to help spread running well water to every household. When he and Cindy split, Gideon was a good enough man to add some new pipes running to the new house, but Joel had always suspected that Gideon had skimped on quality materials when he built it. Those things were always cracking, clogging, rusting, and just in general being a pain for everyone involved, especially Joel.

“Well, we’ll leave you to it, I guess,” Maria says awkwardly. “We’ll see you later.”

“Yep. See ya,” Joel replies quickly before turning heel and rushing back to his home.

“Think I’ll get back home to help with some chores. Ma and Jane are getting some new supplies for the shop today,” Peter says to Maria before departing himself.

Maria makes to return to her own home when something catches her attention. A vague sense of dread washes through her mind, as if some sort of monster were drawing near. Maria slowly turns around to see where this sense of dread could be coming from. A few feet away from her, Peter also turns around, the same sense of dread and foreboding washing over him now, too. Slowly but surely, everyone in West Village starts to notice this sudden change in the air, the sudden feeling of unease.

Everyone, that is, except for Joel, who goes about his way blissfully unaware of the foreboding sense of danger that is washing over everyone. He only realizes that something is off when he sees everyone slowly turn to stare at the sky. Finally, he joins the crowd in examining the clouds, attempting to see what everyone else so clearly is aware of.

Then, they see it: a bolt of red streaking through the otherwise pristine blue sky. As the object nears the village, it begins to take shape. It has stunningly beautiful wings of crimson energy, and it appears to be wearing a long, flowing, white robe. The object gets even closer, and then it becomes obvious that it isn’t an ‘it’, but a ‘she’. The woman approaching has long, flowing hair of auburn red, chocolatey-brown skin, and on closer look, a distinctly beautiful face. The woman continues her rapid flight until she is directly above the town square, looking down at all of the inhabitants as if they were mere insects.

“Who is that?” Maria wonders aloud, not really expecting an answer.

“I am the Harbinger of Death,” the woman declares, spreading her arms out wide in a grand gesture. “I’ve sensed a great power here. Where is the one I seek?” She turns her gaze all around the town, scanning the villagers one by one, trying to feel the same power she had felt only moments before. Finally, after what feels like an eternity of silent waiting, her eyes fall on Peter, who is now surrounded by both Maria and the returning Joel. “There you are,” the Harbinger says through a wide sneer.

Peter feels the Harbinger’s glare piercing through him like a knife, and he practically stumbles back with the impact of that glare. “Who are you? What do you want with us?” He demands, doing his best to keep his voice in check as it threatens to crack and squeak in fear.

The Harbinger begins to descend until she is only a few feet above the surface, the tails of her robe barely grazing the sand below. “I am only here for you,” she explains with a sadistic glee in her voice. “I have sensed your power. You alone are worthy of my attention. These other ones,” she says, gesturing vaguely at the town behind her prey, “Are just distractions. They are not worthy of my hand.” She accentuates her words by stretching out an arm and summoning a scythe of crimson red before her. “They will die by my blade, instead. The question is, will you join them?”

Peter starts to say something in reply, but before words can even form on his tongue, the Harbinger strikes. She slashes her scythe in a vicious upward arc, sending a shockwave of blood-red energy through the main road of West Village. The energy wave tears up the road, the houses, the shops, the unfortunate livestock and villagers, everything that is in its wake, leaving nothing but a simmering black scar in the land.

Panic ensnares the villagers. Screams of terror and despair fill the air, creating a sickening chorus of death that the Harbinger basks in. “Listen to it! The cries for mercy that will go unanswered, the pleas for salvation that shall be silenced!” She tilts her head back and lets out a sickeningly cheery laugh, as if she had just heard a hilarious joke and not murdered dozens of people.

“Hey! What in the scorching winds is your deal?” Maria shouts, anger and fear pumping through her veins like lava. She envelops her orb with her telekinetic grip, along with a few stray rocks and boulders, creating a small storm of floating projectiles. She launches the fragments of stone and metal at the Harbinger with all her might, thrashing her arms around in throwing motions as she does so.

The debris simply bounces off of the Harbinger’s shimmering crimson energy as if it were a suit of armor. Maria staggers back as her opponent suddenly and violently thrusts her hand forward, firing a beam of pure light mere inches away from where Maria had just been standing. “It will take more than that to stop me, girl,” the Harbinger says, staring daggers back at her prey.

As if on cue, Joel begins to unload as many bullets from his pistol as he can, going through three entire clips before he realizes that each bullet has stopped just in front of their target. Then, all at once, the bullets fly back at immense speed, grazing and scraping all three of the Harbinger’s new victims a dozen times over, but noticeably not killing them.

“You are of no concern to me,” the Harbinger says with a snarl. “Begone!” She thrusts her arm out and blows Joel away with a powerful wave of psychic energy. Joel lets out a frightened scream as he is rocketed almost to the other side of the village, then he grunts and groans as he comes to a skidding halt just barely before exiting the village gates.

“Joel!” Peter exclaims. He and Maria turn to help their friend, but they are both halted in their tracks as the Harbinger whips a couple dozen feet behind them, scythe extended in one hand, a burning orb of crimson energy simmering in the other.

“You disappoint me,” she says, her beautiful eyes burning with such intense contempt and hatred that they could melt steel. “I know your power! Use it!” With a flick of her finger, the orb of energy she had been holding zips forward, heading straight for Peter’s chest.

On instinct, Peter reacts, letting out a powerful burst of telekinetic energy just in front of himself. As the orb collides with the psychic storm, they both dissipate in a flash of swirling reds and blues and purples. Neither Peter nor Maria has time to even breathe before the Harbinger strikes again, this time with a powerful swing of her scythe. Peter just barely manages to duck under the attack in time, but the shockwave from the slash still travels forward, cleaving another section of the village in two. Peter jumps back to his feet and attempts to land a punch on the Harbinger as she flies by, but she is too fast for him and he completely misses the attack.

Maria is right on his heels, but instead of a physical attack, she goes for a mental one. She lowers her eyelids halfway and reaches out with her mind, attempting to get a lock on the Harbinger. After a brief moment of hunting, Maria finds her target and begins probing the other woman’s thoughts, looking for any potential weaknesses in her psyche to exploit. Maria barely manages to get a fraction of the way into the Harbinger’s mind before she gets a flash of insight: lands searing with ruby-red heat, storms of crimson lightning rendering entire continents scorched and sterile, blades of energy tearing through victim after victim, the screams of the weak propelling her forward in an eternal chase of the powerful.

Maria lets out a startled cry and collapses to her suddenly weak knees. The whole process had taken barely a second, but it had felt like an eternity. She has never felt a mind so violent, so focused, so determined before. Maria lets out shaky breaths, her entire body trembles with lingering fear, the images of countless corpses flash across her eyes. She shuts them tight, desperately willing herself to calm down, to remember that those images weren’t real.

They aren’t real. They aren’t real. THEY AREN’T REAL! She chants to herself over and over again, but the fact remains that they are real, or at least they were. All of those bodies, all of the destruction, all of it had been real, or at the very least would soon be real. And through it all, Maria can see one final image: Peter’s silhouette, outlined in bright blue, enveloped in a sense of desire and determination.

“Maria…” Peter’s voice echoes through her mind. “Maria, are you okay?” He reaches a hand out for her to grab. Numbly, she complies and is hoisted to her feet. Peter gently shakes her, slowly bringing her back to reality before she is violently wrenched back into the present by a powerful explosion.

“Face me, you coward!” The Harbinger declares, aiming another blast of energy at Peter and Maria. Just as she is about to release the blast, a massive crack sounds throughout the village as Mullen and Joel finally reach the turret and start pumping rounds through it. The massive shells collide with the Harbinger’s ruby-red field of psychic armor, not truly harming her but distracting and disorienting her enough for Peter to begin a counterattack of his own.

“Get behind me, everyone!” Peter shouts, turning his back to the village so he is between the Harbinger and his people. Maria takes no time to comply and races further into the village. Joel and Mullen stay behind just long enough to deliver the last of the shells before they too duck into the relative safety of the village. The final shot rings loud and collides harmlessly with the Harbinger’s armor.

God I hope this works… Peter thinks to himself as he begins to let sparks of energy flow through his fingertips. He spreads his legs wide to brace himself, forms a gun with his right hand, steadies it with his left. He continues to allow his psychic energy to flow and charge through his mind and body, harnessing every last drop he can and pumping them into this one attack.

“Psion…” He begins, raising his hands and taking aim at the Harbinger.

The Harbinger sneers, sensing the immense power emanating from her target. “Yes… Yes!” She bolts high into the sky and begins to charge her own attack, raising her scythe high above her head and sending her own power coursing through it.

Peter takes one last long moment to charge his attack, allowing so much psychic energy to flow that it feels like an active volcano is about to erupt right on the tips of his fingers. The sparks of energy coalesce into a sphere of swirling purple-and-blue, spinning so fast and warping so often that it causes a miniature dust devil all around Peter. Bolts of blue lightning spark out from the sphere in wild directions, while even more bolts course all over Peter’s body, creating a small but highly destructive electrical storm all around him.

The Harbinger releases her attack, sending a massive shockwave towards Peter, a blast of energy so large and so powerful that it could turn the entire village into ash.

Now! “Cannon!”

The word had barely left Peter’s mouth when an immense beam of blindingly bright blue and purple psychic energy erupts from his fingers. The beam collides with the Harbinger’s slash and utterly destroys it, rendering the attack nothing more than shattered chunks of flickering energy. The beam continues on its rampage, colliding with the Harbinger’s psychic armor with such force that she is blasted almost a mile high before she is finally able to regain her bearings. She unfurls her wings and attempts to push back, but the power of the Psion Cannon is too much for her to handle. Her armor begins to crack, sending recoils of pain through her mind as it does. Her wings begin to wither and shatter like fractured ruby, while the rest of her armor begins to flicker as her concentration starts to crumble.

As the energy is finally released from Peter’s body, he feels a strange sense of relief, as if an entire hurricane had once been within his mind and was now suddenly gone. He feels free, weightless, numb. He barely registers the immense, mind-boggling pain as the unnatural strength of the Psion Cannon rips through his arms, burning his skin and blinding his eyes. Only when the pain becomes so intense that he is on the verge of passing out does he finally snap back to reality and clamp down tight on his power, ending the attack with sudden finality. As the beam fades away, Peter collapses onto his forearms. They sting with an indescribable pain and are still leaking tendrils of energy and blue flames. Peter’s breaths are short and ragged, his lungs feel as if they are at once on fire and completely frozen. His mind and body are so taxed from the attack that he doesn’t register the world around him—the stunned onlookers, the massive crater he now lays in—for several moments.

When the fog finally clears from his mind and he has regained enough strength to pick himself back up, he is shocked to find himself at least ten feet underground. He is even more shocked to see the silhouette of the Harbinger floating a few feet above him, her robes torn, her stunning features bloodied and burned.

Her smile, however, has never been wider. “You. You will do very nicely. We shall call this one a draw. Rest. Come find me.” She turns to fly away, completely confident that no one else could manage to do even a hundredth of the damage that Peter had just done to her. “I am so looking forward to seeing you again,” she says with one last purr before she rockets away.

Peter tries to climb out of the ditch to start chasing after her, but he slips and slides down the walls, unable to find solid footing. Either that, or his body is so worn and so damaged that he simply isn’t physically capable of climbing out. Either way, he tumbles back down to the bottom of the ditch, and this time, he stays down. Darkness clouds his vision, and the last thing he sees before he goes unconscious is the vague, shadowy outlines of Joel and Maria as they slide down into the ditch with him.