It was chaos! 

Lorelei squinted as she felt the wind ripping apart her jumpsuit. Sharp pain stung along her backside. It felt like liquid fire was breathing down her spine, as the scorching winds erupted above them. 

The walls stretched and bent from the sudden fluctuations of magical pressure, the earth and debris was sharpened like splintered nails. The cacophony of noise brought back old memories. Terrible memories of screaming and blood, of burnt skin and cooked meat. 

Her ears popped, as another layer of of her bodysuit was stripped from her lower back. Poor Squishy buried herself even deeper into Lorelei’s bosom, trying to hide in the grooves of her underboob. 

Time seemed to stretch on forever; adrenaline shot through her veins, as Lorelei held onto Theo for dear life. Her heart was racing, her lungs struggled to capture a single gasp of clean air. The crunch of metal being torn apart was terrifying, and Lorelei fought the urge to scream.

Eventually, the wind finally died down, but not before sending one last gust of wind that threw her against the wall. The screeching of a dying world waned, and Lorelei struggled to breath as the air pressure was slow to settle. Everything felt hot, and her ears wouldn’t stop ringing. 

When she found the strength to rise, Lorelei’s knees ached, and parts of her armor fell from the frame of her suit. Each segment was cracked and shattered as it hit the ground. Her bare skin tingled, her bodysuit now ripped and torn in several places.

She looked over. Theo was on his feet, blood streaming down the side of his face from an open cut on his cheek. He tried to talk to her, but she could barely make out the words. 

“I’m ok,” her voice was shallow, strained. She could smell blood, and knew it was her own. 

Theo applied pressure to the gash on Lorelei’s back. He had carefully removed all the shards still embedded in her skin, and did his best to stop the bleeding. The cuts didn’t look deep, mostly superficial, but there was blood everywhere. 

His own arms were throbbing, the shrapnel having done a number on his limbs, but Lorelei seemed to have gotten the worst of it.

Lorelei moaned in pain as he kept his hands pressed against the wound. He reached with his free hand for the small first aid kit in the pouch of his belt, and tried to find something to sanitize her injuries. As he did so, he spared the briefest of seconds to look for Cassie. The wolfkin must’ve been buried in the rubble. 

Shit, he tried to remain calm. The air above seemed to be stuck in an eternal flux, and he dared not look up. Calm season my ass!

Trying to stay focused, Theo did his best to clean the cuts on Lorelei’s back. It looked like some of them might need stitches. He knew Redever skin was thick, and quick to heal, but he had no idea just how long it would take to stop the bleeding. 

Lorelei moaned while he tried to clean the wound, before applying the wadded bandages from the first aid kit. He breathed a sigh of relief when the bleeding finally stopped, the layers of gauze covering her back were soiled with dark red blood, but seemed to finally hold. 

“Just lay there, I’ll try to find something,” he tried to speak to her, but could tell she couldn’t hear much of what he was saying. His own ears were ringing, but she seemed to understand him enough to remain still on her belly. She returned a nod, while laying flat on her stomach.

Theo carefully navigated to the other side of the room and began searching through the rubble for Cassie. It didn’t take him long to spot her frizzled tail poking out through the debris. He helped to dig her out, and was relieved to find she was mostly unscathed, shaken up, but physically unharmed. The rocks that caved in around her must’ve saved her from the worst of the weather.

“I want to go home,” was the her first words out of her mouth, and they were spoken meekly.

Theo sat back against a slab of concrete, only now having time to asses his own wounds. His cheek stung, his shoulders ached, and his hand was still throbbing. He looked down at his missing fingers, and spat out of thick glob of blood. 

“Well, this really sucks,” he nearly laughed to himself.

They all looked up into the sky, and could already see a new series of rotating clouds growing overhead.

“What am I looking at?” Lucy’s voice quivered.

Laura was dumbstruck, glaring at what she had thought would be the control room for the artificial intelligence guarding the facility. Instead what they found was a room full of gurneys, crude knives and surgical instruments, and left over cadavers hanging on the walls. Humans, Redevers, Wolkin, Lamia, even Vampires were carved up and left to rot. Their bones were now covered in dust and dried blood. 

The smell stung their nostrils, it was enough to wake Mike out of his hypnotic stupor.

Lucy’s precognitive abilities noticed his reaction seconds before he was able to throw the first punch. She ducked and weaved around him, stomping the back of his right foot to dislodge him, then tried to pin his arm before he could turn around to counter. 

“Laura bite him again, hurry!” Lucy yelled, but the vampire wasn’t listening.

Laura was completely lost to the heavy smell of blood in the atmosphere. Old blood covered the walls, there was even dried up splatters on the ceiling. It tugged at all her senses, consuming her vampiric need for sustenance.

Mike back elbowed Lucy hard in the cheek, forcing her to let go so that he could regain his posture. Once on his feet, he looked down at her while popping his knuckles.

“You know…I’ve never hit a woman before, and I certainly never wanted too.” He squared his shoulders. “But if you think I’m just going to let you have your way with me, then you clearly don’t know just how terrifying my girlfriend could be.”

“Laura get over here!” Lucy called out.

“Oh no you…” Mike froze, looking over at the vampire, and what she was staring at. “What the fuck…”

Mike saw what had captured Laura’s attention. Over to the far side of the room, a giant vat stood empty, shattered open from the inside. Something was still inside the ruined container. It was calcified, its arms and legs laid neatly to its side, and its torso and midriff was wide open, revealing that all of its organs were missing. The skull was pearly white, as if having been bleached, and yet the pits where its eyes used to be seemed to stare at them insidiously. 

Its form was slender, the torso segment seemed elongated, longer than it should’ve been, and what looked like the bones for two wings laid limply behind it. The tail bone was the longest part of the skeletal remains, having reached out through the broken glass. It was likely the tail that had broken its containment, but there was no indication as to what could’ve killed it.

Vines seemed to collect around the remains, covering the base of the destroyed vat, and already laying claim to the skeletons limbs to grow on. 

“By the gods,” Lucy gasped. She could taste blood in between her teeth.

Laura merely got to her knees before the old corpse, leaned forward, and whispered a single word. Upon saying it, with a sickening crack, the skull moved.