Rider

One after the other, as he crests lengthwise along the wild horizon as a long disturbance on this side of the world, red, luminous orbs sprout toward the sky from back where all the energy in the world is. It’s quieter out here, this far from the hot-zones in one regard. But it’s hardly quiet at all. For a year now, their world has roared with war, and now the howl has broken through to the other side — a place scholars and learned of endless generations had debated the existence of — the spirit world. Well. It’s real, and it can be cratered and buckled in like anywhere else. The flash of the red flares’ collective rising shine flashes on the sides of his black goggles as he rides, a dull ruby glow soaking into the tanned leather gloves that have become several shades darker from mud and sweat. One after the other, a dozen plumes shoot toward the sky, marking successful combat operations. It won’t be long before the troops start pushing deeper into the spirit world. Command’s policy regarding the attack is to go fast and go hot. They can’t lose the momentum of their surprise incursion into enemy territory, even once.

Two long ears, pressed flat beneath a screened metal helmet, can hardly hear a thing over the monotone, high-pitched griping of the 751cc four-stroke flat-twin petrol engine he’s sitting on top of, wildly spinning the rear tire of the light payload recon bike over the cliffside landscape. The bike launches forward, propelling the rider across a small bump. The wind constantly presses in against his obscured face, entering through the patterned black shawl he wears around his neck and mouth. His uniform is a mousy gray color, partially obscured in the front by a protective light plate with a small ruby gem embedded into its core — ceramic body armor with a magical warding enchantment. It’s very weak, but it’s the best available option for his role, given its light weight. As he lands on the other side of the leap, a collection of metal rattles on his back. There are several bundles of hollow rods and wires tightly bound together in ready-to-go sets of radio receiver equipment.

He’s a forward scout, running a solo operation out ahead of the rest of their forces. In his old life, he used to be a light cavalryman. In a way, he still is. But things are different now for everyone, aren’t they?

His eyes wander down to his clock.

It’s been an hour since the last one, but he hasn’t been able to go straight in a while. This place is topsy-turvy. He’ll feel like he’s riding his bike up a hill one moment, but then rub his face and find himself cruising a forest that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere — except the trees are all wrong. This whole place is wrong.

The spirit world feels like it was the sandbox the gods had practiced building in before they became the masons of the world. Everything here, from the ground to the rocks, resembles what he knows from home, but it’s all so vaguely different and out of place that it all feels like a prototype of said concepts. The trees have colors and angles that are wrong, and they grow more like mushrooms do — in clusters and at angles and bends. Just about everything here is like that.

— Including the inhabitants.

He stops the bike, slowing to a roll, his thick leather boot braking, and then starts to scrape the ground. From the bike’s mounted side holster, he pulls out a small submachine gun and dismounts, sweeping the area. It seems clear. This is a good spot. It’s hidden enough, but not so much that there won’t be a signal.

Grabbing one of the antennas from the bike, he undoes the pack and sets it up. They come in prefabricated kits, made ready for the assault. All he has to do is unroll the leather wrap, stand it up, and plug in a few cables, and he can keep on riding to the next spot. These forward radio relays are important. Forward pathfinder units like himself are spreading out all across the spirit world, planting these by the hundreds. They’ll let radio signals travel freely and strongly, so it’s important that they get these ready before the core assault formation pushes in to these positions. It won’t be too long, then they’ll be here. He’s always only a few hours ahead of them.

He yanks the telescoping antenna out, angling it toward command, before holstering his gun and getting back on his bike. The rider takes a moment, turning his head to look down toward the distant horizon. He can’t see the coast anymore, it’s too dark.

— But a march of red flares begins to creep his way.

Turning his gaze, he looks toward his cargo. He still has plenty left.

His gloved hand grips the ignition, getting ready to start it again. But he stops, thinking he hears communication over the radio. However, after sitting there and listening for an idle second, he doesn’t hear anything further. Shrugging, he starts the ignition. The bike roars to life, its rear wheel spinning in the mud for a second, the front end bucking, before he shoots off down a new path that is his own to find.

----------------------------------------

He’s far into the heartland now. Fires crest behind him in the distance, the black plumes of smoke rising like the walls of a fortress being erected behind him. It’s dark now. Day and night are odd here, not following a coherent pattern from what has been observed. There doesn’t seem to be rhyme or reason for it. Sometimes a sunset will be followed immediately by a new sunrise, without dusk or twilight having ever fallen. Sometimes night will hang in the air, and the rising of a third moon will show that it intends to continue rather than making way for a morning that seems unwelcome.

The rider watches the sky as his bike screams over the jump of a grassy hill, launching him through the air for a moment. Three moons hang there, almost looking like they’re about to collide into one another as the first two both refuse to make way for the third. There isn’t so much a sky filled with stars as there is just a glossy, mirror-like blackness filled with dots.

Looking down, he sees the ground below him twinkling and shining, the midnight grass full of pinprick starlight that seems to be coming from the ground and reflecting in the sky, rather than it being the other way around.

The bike crashes down onto the ground, the springs creaking as it lands, and he continues riding across the bumpy landscape.

The smell of smoke fills the air, pressing through the fabric covering his face. Slowing to a roll, he turns his head, his black tinted goggles glinting as he scans his surroundings.

Ruins.

Slowly turning his bike, he rolls down between a collage of trees and stones that line either side of the little valley. The blue grass crunches and gives way as the bike’s wide, thick tires roll over them.

Coming to a stop, he grabs an antenna and his gun and dismounts. Ahead of him are a series of structures, houses, and such. At least the ruins of them. The grass here is deadened and gray, crumbling beneath him as he walks. The structures are burned, the oddity of their architecture apparent nonetheless.

Something comes over the radio, and he looks back for a second, trying to catch the message. But it probably wasn’t for him, not that he understood anything.

Clearing the area, he finds a good nook and unfolds the antenna on what looks to have been part of an old house. Now there’s just a hole-ridden foundation left. The ash is still fresh. Cinders and embers are still glowing around him, searching for anything more to eat before they die out, having already gorged themselves on everything there is to find. His eyes wander up to the black sky for a moment, trying to see if he can see the orange reflections of fire up there together with the three moons.

He can.

The rider wonders what to make of the fact that there are villages and settlements within the spirit world. Are these Tango’s creations? It’s hard to say. Nobody seems to be around anymore. But then again, why would Tango be destroying their own villages? Maybe the enemy isn’t as united in their front as they had assumed. Maybe there is dissent within the ranks? Is something like that possible with monsters?

Then again, monsters don’t build villages like this, do they?

Not that he’s ever seen.

This could be dangerous. It hints that perhaps Tango isn’t as primitive as they had assumed. Or maybe it means that -

He stumbles. Something grabs his leg.

The rider looks down, staring at a long, thin, alabaster arm that has reached out of a hole in the foundation, grabbing hold of his thick boot. His hand reaches for his gun, but before he can spin his arm out to aim, a blindingly bright, golden glow fills the air and he’s sent flying.

The world spins, and he goes along with it, crashing and rolling down through the ash and into a heap of blackened rubble that crumbles down over him.

[Warding Talisman {Broken}]

The small glass charm embedded into his light body plate shatters, the little enchanted stone inside of it breaking into pieces, together with what feels like his ribs. Coughing and scrambling, he pulls himself forward, grabbing for his gun.

— His ribs aren’t broken. It’s the ceramic plate of his frontal body armor. It’s been shattered into a thousand pieces, like an old dinner bowl. His spinning vision sees something run out of the ruins — a shape. It’s gangly and has an unnatural gait, viewed past the straight rod iron-sight of his compact submachine gun that refuses to fire for some reason.

He curses, getting up.

It’s running away.

No.

It’s running for his god-damned bike.

Swearing, the rider stumbles forward, throwing his broken vest off and shaking himself out once before breaking into a sprint, trying to unjam his weapon at the same time. But his thick gloves are getting in the way of him unclogging the mechanism. A round got stuck in the chamber because of some ash or some shit. Fucking thing. This is going into his report.

“HEY!” yells the man, watching as the creature gets on his bike, turning back to look his way for a second as he runs after it.

It’s face is wrong.

Well, no. It’s not so much wrong as it is inhuman. For whatever it is, it’s probably within the normal frame of reference. It has a white, alabaster body that is homid in shape, but very elongated and bony — wiry. It has eyes where a person’s eyes ought to be, but they’re very, very large — deeply inhumanly so, and take up most of its head with two yellow irises. Its head is covered in a rat’s nest of unnaturally golden hair. It looks like a harpy and a statue had a baby. It’s like a lanky bird died and tried to reincarnate as a person, only to fail halfway through and end up as some sort of odd monstrosity.

— It lets out a shrill scream, a single arm aiming back his way with such unnerving length and ambulation that he can’t help but wonder if it doesn’t have an elbow too many in there.

Its palm glows with a golden sigil. It only takes a fraction of a second, but another blast of magic streaks out his way. The rider falls to the ground, rolling beneath it and grabbing his knife from his boot. A second later, as the superheated wave of magic cascades past him, proving capable of being responsible for the ash all around them already, he jumps and tackles the thing off of his bike.

The machine, it, and him all fall over. The bike’s ignition starts, the engine roaring as it falls to the side, the rear wheel screaming over the two of them. The one handlebar twists, stuck in the ash and dirt, as it begins to spin, crashing into the two of them as they fight.

It was hard to see at first, given the distance, but he’s larger than the creature. Even if its lanky, pale appearance has a way of making it look bigger than it is. Its face opens, a mouth — wider than he expected it to be — letting out a series of shrieking and squawking sounds as they tumble, the bike spinning away from them on its own. The pink, wet insides of its throat evidence that it is just some sort of living creature. He fights his way on top, lifting up the knife. But a long hand grabs his wrist, holding his arm up and away from it as he tries to plunge down.

— It only has one arm. The other one is gone. It looks like it should have been there, but it isn’t now. The wound looks freshly cauterized.

Plainly put, his second arm puts him at a tactical advantage over his one-armed enemy. It has long, taloned fingers that wrap around his wrist with one joint too many. He grabs it, yanking it off of himself, and presses the knife down, staring into its massive, yellow eyes that are filled with fear.

He stops.

Not because of some sudden mercy for the weak, anemic enemy, but because his body physically stops itself despite his intent to finish this and get out of here.

The creature’s eyes shimmer, staring at him through his black goggles, and he can’t look away from them. It’s like he’s spellbound. A shiver runs up his spine, a warm, soft molasses running down the inside of his back as a wordless voice begins to croon inside of his head, causing audible clicks and pops inside of his brain that he can hear like an explosion inside of a dream.

— The bike spins back around, the throttle caked with ash and mud and stuck in first gear.

It strikes him, sending him flying off and tumbling. Control of his body returns to him as his line of sight to the creature’s eyes breaks. He grabs his gun, unlodging the stuck round, and then gets up, aiming down the sight at its core, and he pulls the trigger down as hard as he can.

The compact machine gun jams again, with a fresh round getting stuck in the chamber just like before.

Unbelievable. He’s never taking one of these pieces of shit with him ever again. When he gets back, he’s going to hand this time-bomb to the armorer and have him fire it at a wall until it explodes in his god-damned hands.

The creature gets up, and he makes a note to stare at its torso so that it can’t hypnotize him again.

— It grabs his fallen knife.

“Shit,” says the rider.

There’s a pistol in the leather satchel strapped to the side of the bike. But this damn thing is between him and it.

The bike, meanwhile, continues to spin around in first gear in the ash next to them. The creature steps down on it with a long, lanky, pale leg, trying to get the bike to hold still. However, it lets out a surprised shriek as it succeeds in doing so for a second, but only because it stepped on the scorching hot engine. It leaps, flapping its arms in surprise, and he takes his shot, shoulder checking the creature and sending it flying. The rider grabs the bike’s handles, forcing the throttle free again to get it to finally stop, as he rights it and fumbles for the pistol.

The creature tries to get up again, stumbling over itself in disorientation. Wildly, it swipes around itself with the knife, not coming close to hitting him as it wobbles like a drunk on its way home.

He grabs the pistol, yanking it from the pouch, and aims it straight toward center mass.

— A horrific scream comes from the ruins, a witch’s cry at midnight that sends the hairs on the back of his neck up on end immediately. It’s not the voice of a person or of some creature like this. It’s… something else.

The rider, looking out of the side of his eyes, looks back toward the destroyed village.

Broken wood snaps and pops as something presses over the old boards. Fragments of what might have been melted glass crackle as they’re pressed down over by a weight that is insurmountable.

“What in the name of…”

He steps back, quickly turning, as there is a sound to his side. He shoots the gun. The bullet cracks out from the round, and a tree screaming in agony as its wood splinters apart. An alabaster silhouette bolts, running off into the distance in a wild terror. The rider looks back at the village, watching as something there in the darkness of the night begins to move his way.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

— The radio behind him begins to crackle, like it had done several times today on his outing.

Voices come over it. He can’t understand them. There are too many, and they’re talking over each other. Words from endless languages become louder and louder, amalgamating into a senseless mass that is little different from what he can see forming there. He swings his leg over his bike, watching as the radio screams for a second as his freshly constructed antenna is swallowed by flowing ink.

Bodies.

Bodies press forward like a wall, all of them melted and collected and festering together into a senseless mass of sludge that is full of thousands of bones that are unable to recoalesce into a coherent shape. Ten-thousand teeth from thousands of mouths chatter and flow together, trying to form sensible shapes and sounds, but all they create is a chittering and chattering of bone knocking against sharp bone. Fingers crawl down at the bottom of the sludge, pulling it forward like the endless legs of a centipede that had gorged itself too greedily and become fat and proud. But instead of chitin, they pull hair and gut-filled black sludge that is full of bubbles created by the screaming, half-digested faces still trapped inside its filthy body.

The bike roars to life immediately on response, being just as ready to go as he is. The machine is the only stable constant in his life. His boot presses the clutch and he rolls out, the radio hissing and screaming at him as the voices tell him to stop, to stay here, to help them, to come to them.

Thankfully, none of those are orders from direct superiors, so he dutifully ignores them and blasts off into the darkness, not quite sure how he’s going to report this to command. He wipes off his mirror, looking behind himself as the thing picks up speed as digested arms press out toward the ground like anchors that rip into the soil. They break and shatter into sharp needle points that it uses to pull itself forward faster and faster. The screams on the radio grow louder. He powers the engine forward, going faster now, so that the bike’s cry overpowers everything else in the spirit world.

Fuck it’s fast.

Looking back again, he watches the mass pick up speed, moving at a speed something of such a shape and size shouldn’t be able to participate in. He yanks the bike to the side, diverting in time as something flies over his head.

A globule, filled with sharp bones and melted tongues, splatters down directly where he was going. A sizzling sound fills the air as the acidic mess eats away at the grass, turning it ashen and black.

The rider lowers his head, launching into the woods.

Something latches onto him. The bike bucks, rolling onto its rear wheel, the front rising high past the point of imbalance as weight diverts to an uneven point.

He curses, holding it forward as the world around him is filled with a wet sloppy sludging as the thing comes closer and closer. Trees crack and break one after the other as it forces its way into the forest.

A white, alabaster arm latches onto him as he forces the wheels back down onto the fallen forest canopy. Behind him, the crunching, the wet, becomes louder. The smell becomes stronger. The screams on the radio become more clear.

The rider presses down as hard as he can, the bike shooting off, wildly imbalanced, as he tries to navigate away from the encroaching thing that is on his trail. The uneven weight, sitting behind him and flailing like a terrified animal, continues to throw them out of balance, and he can barely just manage to avoid crashing into one tree after the next as he tries to hold enough speed to keep from getting slopped by whatever that thing is.

“SIT STILL, ASSHOLE!” yells the rider as loud as he can, as white talons continue to rip into his leather jacket, trying to hold on. A loud bird-like shrieking fills the air. With one hand, he reaches down and yanks its wrist forward around him, his other hand holding the throttle down as they launch forward just in time as the trees next to them begin to melt, dripping with screaming faces that lash out, enviously trying to bite the living to bring them to suffer just as they are.

His collection of radio transmitters falls, metal rods jangling as they roll down into the darkness behind them, being absorbed by the thing.

The two of them on the bike — the rider and the pale thing — screech out through the woodlands on the other side as they jump a small creek. Fresh, midnight air covers his sweat and grime covered face. His eyes look up for a second.

— Two of the moons really did crash into each other.

Rocks and debris fly around the sky in all directions, like shooting stars. The third hangs between them like a sickle, responsible for the harvest.

Landing in the clearing, a wild thing screaming in his ears, he presses the throttle forward as far as it goes and doesn’t stop until the radio finally becomes quiet, somewhere far away from where he started.

----------------------------------------

Fire crackles.

— The jammed round in his submachine gun falls out as he dislodges it.

Cursing, the rider holds his weapon upside down, hammering it with his fist in an attempt to fix the problem. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with the damn thing, but he’s deep inside enemy lines, still hasn’t gotten his knife back, and he lost his pistol during the escape. This damn thing is all he has left.

A white head tilts itself at a sharp angle.

He looks, taking a second to cautiously study the yellow eyes gazing at him. The creature is sitting there on the other side of the fire — almost like a person.

He doesn’t like it. Command didn’t warn him about anything like this.

Then again, they didn’t say anything about the ooze monstrosity either.

Damn spirit world. Everything is topsy-turvy here. He’s surprised that fire ‘works’. He was half expecting the flames to be cold at this point.

“Fuckin’ moon exploded,” mutters the rider quietly to himself, staring up at the night sky, full of floating rocks.

It moves like a person, but it acts like a bird. Its mannerisms are odd and unnerving. It’s nothing like a harpy from back home; this thing is more… slick. It’s body is unnaturally smooth, like a fish’s. It looks supple and almost boneless in some places, but that contrasts with its arms and legs, which are knotted and sharp like a starving man’s limbs would be. And those damn eyes.

Freaky.

“Fuckin’ moon,” creaks a shrill voice from next to him, causing him to fumble the machine-gun, almost dropping it. He looks at the creature. It sits there on the other side of the fire, tilting its head the other way as it stares at him. It slowly blinks and then elongates its neck. “- exploded,” finishes the repeating voice, before it compresses its neck back down again into its torso. It smacks with its mouth a few times, like a bird chittering with its beak.

He racks the slide back, pulling a fresh round into the chamber.

This time, everything seems to work.

Which is great, of course. But it would be ideal if it also did so when he needed it to.

“What are you?” asks the rider, looking at the weird thing. Its movements almost remind him of an owl’s, now that he thinks about it. Its head, tucked into its shoulders, turns from side to side as it watches the world.

A popping sound comes from the fire.

He looks down, pulling out the mushed up MRE pouch from the sides of the coals where it had been heating. Command doesn’t recommend cooking them this way. Something about toxins in the material and heat. But this is hardly the time or place to be worried about that.

The creature looks at him and then pops with its mouth several times, honing in with each click until, after a few tries, it perfectly mimics the crackling sound the MRE had made.

“Gods have mercy,” sighs the rider to himself, tearing the MRE open and looking at the slosh inside — a compacted mixture of all the ingredients pressed together in a highly efficient and easily digestible manner. It is, by definition, food.

His stomach disagrees, however, at the smell and sight of it. Perhaps it is too similar to the monster he just encountered. He takes off his goggles and scarf, looking at it again.

Nope. That made it worse.

Recoiling, he leans back, holding the pouch away from himself.

“Like a bird's vomit,” he says, shaking his head. He’d rather go hungry. “Will you stop staring at me?” asks the rider, looking at the creature, still staring at him with wide eyes that blink only unnervingly rarely.

“Bird vomit,” chirps the copy-cat.

“Sure, whatever,” he remarks, holding the pouch out to it. “You can have it.”

It sharply tilts its head the other way. The single, long, bony arm reaches out. Two long, curved talons pinch the foil bag as it lifts it up, holding it up just as cautiously as he himself had done. Although he thinks it’s just copying him.

The two of them stare at each other as the fire crackles. “Gods, I need to get out of here,” he says, getting up and grabbing his bag. He digs through it, trying to find his charts. He’s a pathfinder, so it’s not out of the calculations that he gets lost somewhere in the heartlands. He’s trained and prepared for exactly this. But it’s still not ideal. He’s lost his receivers. He needs to get back to command.

Unfolding a paper map, crudely put together by flying high altitude scouts, he looks around, trying to pinpoint their location.

— A wet slurping sound fills the air.

He lowers the map, looking over its edge. The albino creature has stuffed the MRE’s cut open end fully into its wide mouth. He can see the inside of the material bulging as a tongue worms around the inside of the pouch.

Feeling his stomach turn, he lifts the map back up higher again.

There’s a bluff marked here. It should be pretty obvious, given it’s size. He can orient himself from there to get back to base.

“…If only it wasn’t so dark,” he says, realizing the issue with his plan.

“Bird vomit,” squawks a voice from behind the paper.

Lowering the map, he looks at the angled face, smears of gruel visible along its features.

He’s going to leave this thing here. This is its world. It can figure out what to do. He has a mission. It attacked him, but clearly it just wanted an escape from whatever happened in that village. He’s willing to let it go here. He’s a man of religion, after all.

It continues to lick the empty foil, the material pressing out like a snake crawling below a blanket, as it stares into his eyes.

The radio starts to crackle.

He turns to look, listening as a white noise fills the air. And then, after a moment, a distorted voice. Then one more. Then one more. It doesn’t take long before the radio is full of horrified cries, all melting and pressing together into a singular howl.

It’s still after them.

The rider folds the map together, stuffing it back into the bag as he grabs his things and gets on the bike. Wrapping his face back up in a helmet, scarf, and goggles, he starts the ignition again.

Tank’s half empty.

He begins to start to ride off and then stops again, turning to look at the creature that is standing there on one leg. Its other leg, it has lifted into a step forward that it never finished taking. It’s just… standing there on one leg facing his way.

Of course, it’s still sucking on the damn pouch.

“Will you just get on already?!” barks the rider at it as the screams on the radio get louder.

“MOON EXPLODED!” yells the bird-thing at him, through the metal foil its still latched onto. The bag is rising and falling as it breathes into it. He spins the bike, the engine roaring as he turns toward it, yanking its one arm toward him and forcing it to move out of its awkward state.

“The hell kind of thing are you?” he asks again as it gets the hint and sits back down. “Isaiah, give me strength,” sighs the rider as they launch off into the darkness, the headlight of the motorcycle cutting it like a knife.

“Isaiah?!” shrieks a voice into his ear from the side as it finally spits out the pouch. “Isaiah! Isaiah!” parrots the creature over and over again, causing them to almost tip over from its excitement, before he forcefully grabs its arm and makes it grab onto him again. Golden hair rests on his shoulder.

In the mirror, he watches as something in the darkness smothers out their fire.

----------------------------------------

It’s been hours.

The radio has gone quiet again. The creature has fallen silent now too, perhaps having found out that he’s ignoring it.

The rider looks down at his tank’s gauge and then back ahead as he navigates his way down the horizon. His goggles scan the world, trying to find sight of anything that isn’t skulking darkness.

He’s wary about stopping. Every now and then, the radio hisses with fresh static.

That thing is still following them. He can feel it in his gut. That innate sense of a creature being hunted is screaming alarm in him.

But he needs to reorient. If only it wasn’t so god-damned dark. Wait a minute.

The rider slows down, the white hand gripping his clothes and clutching onto him as he balances them out with his boots on the ground. He leans back behind them, his passenger click and squawking as he reaches past their side, digging through the bag for his emergency flare gun.

“Better than nothing…” he says, not having a better plan. It’s risky. Any demon within fifty miles is going to see this. But then again, what else is he supposed to do at this point? They’re going to run out of gas if they just spin their wheels out here, and if they do while that oozy thing is chasing them, they won’t have a chance. “Close your eyes,” he instructs, holding the flare gun up into the air.

A loud popping followed by a vanishing hiss comes to sense, as a ruby light fills the world almost instantly. A red shine streaks up toward the night sky like a knife aimed at the heart of God, only to fall short somewhere between heaven and the world below. The flare hangs there, washing the landscape in red light.

Pulling up his goggles for a second, he looks around the area, trying to see anything at all.

But he can’t see a damn thing.

“Moon exploded?” asks a voice, clicking in his ear. He sighs, setting his goggles back down.

— Just in time, as the single arm lets go of him and then aims up toward the sky.

Daylight fills the world, together with an incredible heat, as his passenger releases a blast of golden magic like it had done before, during their scuffle. The beam of light shoots up toward the flare, swallowing and vaporizing it entirely. It’s as if a column were being erected, needed to hold the sky aloft. A massive, cylindrical beam radiates outward with a magic so powerful that any ancient scholar of his world would proclaim the new coming of revelations upon the world.

He sees it.

The rider turns the bike, seeing a large mesa in the not too far distance. A flat-topped mountain cuts through the world. Hovering over it are several islands, floating in mid-air by themselves. It looks like a mountain that was cut in half, but the top half was never told it was obligated to fall down after the fact.

The radio begins to hiss.

He starts the bike, the two of them roaring off. A white hand clutches onto him as he leans forward, finding the way.

----------------------------------------

They’ve reached the mesa.

An old trail winds up its side. He pushes the bike as fast as he can without careening off the edge as they rise up the way. The radio continues to grow louder. But he can’t go any faster. Every now and then, the trail will veer off to the side and risk sending them plummeting.

He doesn’t know if they have the fuel for this, but there’s no other choice at this point. They have to cross the mesa, and from up here, he can see the way back to base. Even that’s an upgrade from being lost, even if he has to walk.

— Not that he thinks they have a chance on foot. But still.

The wheels loose traction for a second, causing the bike to slip. Four legs press down, kicking against the ground in time before the rear wheel fully caught itself off over the side of the edge. A second later, they push forward.

The radio is filled with inhuman screams.

The rider and his passenger navigate their way to the top of the mesa, looking forward at what just seems to be an endless flat top. The stone is perfectly smooth, without a single disturbance from here to as far as he can see. His passenger is holding its arm out, projecting a soft light forward into the darkness that cuts in much further than his high-beams.

Something squelches behind them.

He kicks into gear, the bike going full throttle across the mesa. Above them, fractions of sky are visible through the gaps between flying islands every now and then. Behind them, the sound of something encroaching becomes louder and more obvious by the second. A screaming and squawking of a panicked thing fills his ears, followed by the violent cracking of gunfire as his submachine gun — aimed behind them vaguely into the darkness — lets out a full barrage. Wet, cracking splats fill the air as bullets break into shattering, drowned, waterlogged bone-fragments and send them flying back together into a mess of ooze and slime. The yellow fairy-light of the machine gun illuminates drowning, terrified faces that are peppered with brass. The rider’s finger releases the magazine, as he slams the gun against the side of the bike, lodging in a second magazine before firing again as they power forward. The bike’s super-heating engine burns the sides of his legs as he pushes it past its limits. The fuel gage sinks deeper as the revolutions rise to unmanageable levels that risk destroying the engine.

— His gun empties.

Reaching behind himself with one arm, the rider wraps his arm backward behind his passenger to hold them as they careen forward, the alabaster arm letting go of him and starting to glow with magic.

Familiar voices come over the radio. Voices that aren’t screaming. They’re back within communications range, but it seems that this isn’t any good. The monster’s screaming is jamming signals in all directions. All around the assault, soldiers are recoiling from their radios as endless waves of mangled screams run through their receivers, projected out from the metal relays stuck in the monster’s body.

A second later, a massive blast of magic cuts through the mountain behind them, the spell cutting through the thing that’s chasing them. Its sludge-body bubbles and boils from the heat of the ray of light that shines directly through it, scorching the rock of the mesa. But like a rabid animal impaled on a spear, it mindlessly and feverishly presses through the spell after them, entirely indifferent.

The bike kicks and sways, swerving from side to side from the weight and the speed as something touches their rear tire, the spinning steel breaking apart delicate fingers that had tried to grab hold and stop them.

He slams his sub-machine gun back down over his last magazine, the bike wobbling and starting to tilt. The two of them tip over. The bike slides sideways, screeching against the ground as they slide toward the edge of the mesa, their silhouette and that of the pursuer painted in orange light as brass falls all around, chiming and tinkling as it hits the smooth stone they slide over. His uniform and gear rub raw against the ground as he, with one hand, holds his passenger and the other presses down the trigger of the gun that is being swallowed by a slimy, empty face.

The two of them fly off of the edge of the mesa, the bike hurtling away down into the darkness, the headlamp spiraling through the air as it crashes all the way down to the distant forest below. And he expects to go with it.

But he doesn’t.

The rider looks down and then up, staring at the white alabaster body, whose single arm is holding his as he dangles there. From its back are projected two wide, golden wings that span with incredible size, having the same color as its hair.

“You can fly?!” he shouts at it, his machine gun dangling from the strap around his wrist as he reaches up with both hands, hanging on for life as a massive body of sludge and filth careens down off of the side of the cliff, chasing after the bike. Two golden eyes look down at him, the creature tilting its head. “Why didn’t you just do that from the start?!” he yells, his legs dangling freely.

Off in the distance, a wave of red signal flares shoots up toward the sky.

“Moon exploded,” squawks a voice from above his head, not actually giving him a satisfying answer to the question. Although he isn’t sure why he expected one to begin with. Damn spirit world.

The creature flies off toward the collection of ruby lights, with him dangling from its leg.

The rider and, what some might call an angel-of-sorts, vanish in exactly the right direction, two strange bodies flying below three moons — two of which did, in fact, explode.

As for the initial assault operation on the spirit world, it’s a resounding success. Even if not every path-finding relay antenna was placed quite so ideally.

Some of them, in fact, seem to still be moving all by themselves.