There were a few paralyzed seconds of stillness where everyone seemed too shocked to move, as if the entire megacity was collectively holding its breath. The deafening droning of the air-raid sirens continued blaring in the background, and the flashing advertisements depicted on the enormous billboards were replaced with a lone symbol: a triangle with gold-accented vertices and two lines decussating across the center to form an X. Every nano-light, glowing mechanoshroom/algae, floating orb, cloud of robotic fireflies, and LED strip in the quarter took on a crimson hue, dousing the city square in the same ominous shade. For a split second, Eris thought the city was drenched in blood. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized that could very well become a reality in the next couple of hours. Belatedly, she found herself wondering how many of the shell-shocked citizens littered around her would die before the sun fell.
The symbol flickered and dramatically shrunk to a fraction of its size, leaving space underneath for Prometheus to begin typing out instructions in bold font. They were the same edicts drilled into our heads through annual assemblies dedicated to ensuring the citizens knew how to combat the renegade Animus threat, just rehashed and curtailed so only the most pertinent directives were provided.
The instant Prometheus’ automated voice started reciting the injunctions, the spell shattered and terror gripped the minds of the people. Someone screamed and that was all it took for everyone to immediately start flinging themselves to the nearest Animus Shelter, inconsiderate about the needs of others. It was everyone for themselves as they scurried through the streets and sidewalk, bowling over anybody not as flighty who were still gaping at their phones.
People abandoned their cars in droves and took to the streets. One of the commandments during an Animus Incursion was that Prometheus manually shut off every vehicle. Panic wasn’t a good incentive for obeying the law of the road, and the number of traffic collisions surged during the early Animus Incursions before the government wised up.
Eris recounted the history of the Animus Incursions drolly, her lidded eyes observing the mad scramble but none of it registering in her mind. The screams and howls of horror-stricken citizens were subdued, mumbled as if they were braving the ocean to reach her. The rancid, bittersweet stench of iron and blood in the air marked the breach in space-time from which a horde of Animus would spill forth, bending the laws of physics into putty and remaining unconquered as they descended upon the city in a flash-flood of slaughter and destruction. The scent was filtered through the muddy miasma of discrepant memories and discombobulation, just barely itching her nose as opposed to the nasty pinch brought on by the acrid odor of sulfur mixed with burning plastic. But when she cracked open her heavy eyelids, there wasn’t an inkling of smoke.
Yet. A nauseatingly condescending voice saw fit to remind her. In the blink of an eye, the city square was gone, and she was surrounded by brimstone and raging firestorms. The tumultuous sea of fleeing people were replaced with mangled corpses scattered desultorily around her, strewn flaccid over debris and crumpled columns with their back folded unnaturally. Even from a distance, their glossy eyes were clear as day; as was the thin trickle of blood etching a path from the corner of their mouths. The Animus alarm echoed in the distant background like a broken clock, spluttering out irregularly before bouncing back with a vengeance. There was no one to hear its warning though. Everyone was dead.
She blinked and all of a sudden, she returned to the present situation. Sometime during her reverie, she’d been knocked onto her bum. The new vantage point provided her with a fresh perspective of the stampede. It was surprisingly spine-chilling to possess the standpoint of an infant when faced with an onrush of frightened citizens. Eris was mildly surprised she hadn’t been mashed to pulpy bits yet; getting pushed over was genial compared to the horror stories that always seemed to come with stampedes. Lanky legs like beanstalks thundered around her, kicking up a storm of dust and dirt in their wake.
She was staring aimlessly at the sloppy procession of threadbare pants and mangy shoes when a hoarse growl lifted from the dusty brume, freezing the blood in her veins and sending debilitating chills down her spine. Her heart stuttered to a stop as her arms and legs locked up, tensing until they were ramrod straight and paralyzed. Eris whipped her head to her left, a cascade of sordid tresses smacking her in the face during the process, and released a small puff of air when the only thing she saw was a pair of faded red sneakers. Just a hallucination.
Eris rubbed at her eyes until they became bloodshot and tried again, staring unblinkingly at the free-for-all mass exodus of hysteric residents evacuating their homes. The air raid sirens were still deafening in volume. Over time, the alarm would progressively abate to ensure the Animus didn’t target them during the Incursion. Motes of floating, neon-green particles of light sailed smoothly over the heads of the frenzied citizens, coalescing into vibrant arrows three-meters long that somewhat stemmed the turbulence as they directed the horde towards the nearest shelter.
As she continued surveying the spectacle, she noticed people being led out of the many buildings lining the streets and avenues connecting to the city square by smaller arrows, and seamlessly integrating into the stream of retreating citizens. The same thing occurred in the gaps between buildings spaced intermittently alongside the street, dozens of people getting assimilated with a whimper. Their respective arrows disbanded into a thousand individual granules, scattering and fluttering over to their bigger sibling in order to merge together, broadening the already-considerable breadth of the arrows.
However, no such arrows appeared for those who inhabited the slums. They were abandoned by Prometheus and left to toil on their lonesome. Of course, nobody expected them to be able to fend for themselves—not against the Animus. Only a handful of Animus would waste the time and effort to navigate the treacherous alleyways just for a couple morsels, but they would have free rein of the slums. They would run unimpeded. The sight of the desacralized buildings and streets soiled with fences rose unbidden to the surface of her mind. Eris grit her teeth, and something in her gut clenched painfully. She remembered the corpses she’d seen—both those who had died of circumstances outside of their control, and one who’d fallen at her own hands. How many more bodies would rack up the death toll before the day was over?
She already knew the answer: too many.
“Eris!” An infuriatingly unremitting voice carried over the clamor like a gunshot. Acrimonious resentment flared up within her chest, hissing and making its displeasure known. Zoe had always been able to catch her attention and hold it with contemptible ease, making her dance in the palm of her hand to the tune of her melody. Looking back, it was almost pathetic how effortlessly she’d strung her along.
A strangled gasp to her left caught her attention and she swiveled her head robotically, staring at Zoe’s blanched face apathetically. Her former friend flinched, her gorgeous features distorting into an unsettled countenance, and Eris expected her to bolt, right on the heels of her dispersing coterie. Her effervescent emerald eyes wavered in their resolve before something flinty and sharp flashed, turning them as cold as ice. A chill ran down the length of Eris' spine as she directed those steely orbs onto her person.
“Come on!” she said, lunging forward and yanking Eris by the hand. Caught off guard, she allowed herself to be dragged back into the fray. Immediately, she was assaulted from all angles by a cluttered jumble of lashing limbs and berserk thrashing. It was anarchy; beholding the evacuation safely from the sidelines didn’t do justice to the indomitable tide of people that threw themselves at the opportunity to escape, turning their own bodies into the ammunition that chipped away at the carefully structured evacuation system.
There was no semblance of order, no trace of the 100+ hours invested into ensuring the process went as smoothly as possible. Eris attempted to leave the snake’s pit before she was suffocated in the sea of writhing flesh, but a savage elbow strike to the chin that had her seeing stars swiftly put an end to any notion of that. A brutal punch embedded into her stomach made her vision split in two, and a blistering kick to the back of her knee forced her leg to buckle. Frantically, she raised an arm to block an incoming haymaker from shattering her jaw and an asthenic groan wormed its way out between her lips when she felt her bones creak.
Zoe let out a choked scream that was abruptly cut off when she was shoulder checked by somebody running in the opposing direction. Eris' heart clenched when she heard her harrowed yelp and a wave of righteous fury swelled up inside her chest. Before she knew it, she was swiveling her head left and right in pursuit of the assailant.
The deeply ingrained muscle memory of always protecting Zoe wasn’t something she could easily discard. She'd always been acutely conscious of her emotions, keenly attuned to her every sentiment as if she was partaking in them herself. This enigmatic connection had lent her an undeniable advantage in her affirming her role as Zoe’s defender back when they were little, when Zoe was a sickly kid fettered to a wheelchair and she’d been her sole confidant. Zoe'd rather keep her silence about the hurt and loneliness she was enduring than even entertain the possibility of burdening someone else with her woes, and so it’d fallen onto Eris to be her voice. To discern the most minute altercations in her attitude, and decipher the pithy cues into an elaborate breakdown of her true feelings.
It was a habit that had become as intuitive as breathing over the years, and it rose to the occasion once more, like a rusted knight rising out of the sand dunes and coming to the princess’ rescue. she barely noticed that any progress she’d been making in navigating the treacherous crowd was defunct as she stood stockstill, surveying the teeming brine of variegated hair colors and styles while on her tiptoes. Singling out a specific head from the mob, one that she hadn’t even gotten a good look at before they’d vanished into the horde after smacking into Zoe, was virtually impossible, but she was fixed on locating the assailant and then…….
…..and then what?
Eris hadn’t realized it at first, but she was cleaving the throng of people in half. Her solitary stance resisted all attempts to remove her from her spot, instead forcing the stream to split off to either side of her. It was kind of cathartic to see the hundreds of people fold to her will rather than the reverse, to revel in the fact that one person’s stand could fundamentally uproot the road map of so many others. She probably should’ve snapped like a twig, but it was them who practically bounced off her dainty frame. It if wasn’t so bafflingly alarming, it may have been comical.
She felt the pressure exerted onto her body by broad shoulders and meaty fingers, but the moment the force should have proceeded to the rest of her figure and blown her off her feet, it just…..crumbled apart. Like a pugilist acquiescing the fight, or a bruiser throwing in the towel, the momentum behind the push simply vanished, almost as it’d been forcibly dispelled or negated. It evaporated into thin air, flagrantly breaking an outrageous amount of the laws of physics left and right in the process.
W-where…..did it go?
Without the weight and load driving the shove forward, it amounted to little more than someone mildly brushing shoulders together. And even that piddling contact was toned down to a featherlight press of skin, like an inconspicuous wall was busy blocking any further advances. It was as if some omniscient numen had plucked weight, mass, momentum, power and speed out of the equation, and equalized everything to a total sum of 0. Ultimately, this left dozens of people trying their luck, only to end up completely befuddled when their flailing limbs failed to make any headway against her tauntingly loose and open stance
Eris relished the feeling of absolute might coursing through her veins, of being an immovable bastion of stability in the current fretfulness that had taken the city hostage in its insidious grasp. People would look up to her as their sa—
“—ri! Snap out of it!”
Once again, her delusions of grandeur collapsed around her in a shameful cataract of tainted rose petals. Blinking groggily, she felt like she had just stirred from a torpor. The rude awakening was a shock to her systems, as was the dissolution of the little sliver of unreality she’d fabricated. A firm squeeze of her hand brought her back, grounded her when she felt like she was seconds away from floating into the sun.
Zoe’s face was windowed between a pair of lanky builds, looking almost laughably tiny peeking out from a mesh of coupled appendages. If it was anyone else, they would be playing the fool. Of course, the scene looked picturesque on Zoe instead, her heart shaped visage perfectly framed and all her best features accentuated. The fact that her carefully applied makeup was a thing of the past, ruined behind salvaging, was a small consolation to Eris' wounded pride. She may not know much about makeup, but she was certain that mascara running down your face in thick, black rivulets was not the latest fashion trend that she had been woefully unaware of. Zoe's cheeks were a ruddy, splotchy red that couldn’t be passed off as the work of a blusher, even to the eyes of the uninitiated like her. She should have looked like a complete laughingstock, but there was an undeniable electric charge to her that left Eris breathless.
“Come on!” Zoe encouraged again, pulling her through the chink in the wall of bodies. Eris didn’t know where she was drawing this strength from but she blearily complied, shuffling forward with all the urgency of an anemic zombie as she tried to cope with the hurried pace of the chain of events whirling past her. She was still reeling from the surge of energy when a shadow entered her periphery, moving at dangerous speeds. Her mind went blank, overridden with one prime directive: protect Zoe. Eris released her hand and pushed her as forcefully as she dared for good measure, whirling around to meet this new foe.
The pounding of his feet against concrete filled her ears and she barely had time to suck in her stomach before they collided. The world erupted into an explosion of stars and everything went black for a split second. When she came to, her ears were ringing and she was suffering through a migraine that felt like her skull had been split in two. A shrill scream was bouncing off the walls, feeling like rusty nails skewering into her ears, and she just wished whoever was shrieking would stop before her brain imploded.
It was a while before she was able to gather her wits. Warily, she rose into an upright sitting position, her knees tucked into her chest and her elbows guarding her ribs. Eris instinctively palmed the ground to steady herself and was pleasantly surprised to find solid flooring under her hand. Blinking black spots out of her eyes, she checked her environment. Somehow, the collision had landed her inside the store proper. She inhaled deeply, the crisp, artificial air working wonders in clearing out her clogged nose and brushing away some of the cobwebs cluttering her thoughts. It also served as a means of gauging the severity of the situation: the lack of smog and fumes corrupting the air let her deduce that the Animus Incursion hadn’t escalated to the point that the monsters roamed the streets of this district. Yet. Eris knew all too well how affairs could change at a flip of the dime.
By the looks of it, she was based inside of a department mall, and one that had seen better days at that. A diverse selection of toy figurines from popular TV shows and stuffed plushies were strewn around the muddied floor, many of them stomped on; pronounced footsteps left behind in the aftermath of the evacuation delineated the route taken by the customers and cashiers when they’d received notice of the approaching Animus Incursion. Glinting shards of glass turned the polished concrete floor into a treacherous obstacle course that she needed to tread with care.
A quick glance out the burst window revealed that the streets were deserted, the horde of people likely having been long gone and safely hunkered down in a bunker by now. Figured Zoe would leave me, she thought spitefully before she smacked some critical thinking into her cerebral cortex. It wasn’t fair of her to expect Zoe to throw away her chance of reaching safety just to stay behind and rescue Eris from her own stupidity. Besides, even if Zoe had wanted to guarantee Eris' wellbeing, she doubted she would have been able to maneuver through the tempestuous crowd without risking bodily harm to herself. It wasn’t as if she could ride out the storm like Eris had; at least until she’d been utterly annihilated by the beachgoer.
Speaking of, how had she accomplished such a feat? No matter how you slice it, a fourteen-year-old girl shouldn’t be capable of weathering a mob of people that were older and more physically able. Not unless they were more than human…..
Now’s not the time.
Eris struggled to her feet and craned her head out the window to look up at the sky. The waning daylight made the absence of the evacuation arrows abundantly clear, which didn’t bode well for the timeline of events. The arrows were only deactivated when the Animus were on the verge of swarming the district. Although it was easy to make the mistake that the Animus were driven purely by primal rage and instincts, they were capable of cognitive thinking. Things that required paltry amounts of mental capacity, such as following a shiny arrow to the nearest gathering of humans, were light work for the Animus.
Wait…..I can’t smell the smoke though. Does that mean they jumped the gun in shutting off—
A cacophonous sound rent the air; a dissonant, chaotic cyclone of innumerable animal cries rang out simultaneously. The roar of a lion, the screech of a peacock, the braying laughter of a donkey, the raspy scream of a barn owl, the howling of a wolf, the bellow of an elephant, the shrieking of a howler monkey, the hiss of a rattlesnake, and so many more creatures than the human mind could hope to single out from the mad symphony of nature’s finest creations. It was, in a word, the purest essence of pandemonium.
It felt like an eternity but eventually, the sound died off and a heavy silence draped over the mall. Her legs promptly refused to function any longer and she fell onto her bum, miraculously managing to avoid getting pierced by the loose glass shards. There was no mistaking that godawful, jarring, strident, sorry excuse for a cry as anything but the Animus’s express calling card, signaling to everybody in the region that they were primed to hunt.
I need to get out of here. Eris looked askance at the barren street and contemplated her chances of scurrying through the open space before getting snatched up by an Animus. The results were grim. Never mind that the Animus could easily outstrip a car on a racetrack; the shelters were already sealed tightly by now. Besides, eagle-eyed Animus who ruled the sky could easily sweep their gaze over the exposed streets and come across her as she bumbled her way through overturned cars and cracked trees. Of course, remaining in her current location was tantamount to suicide, which left only one real path available.
Trying to hush the voice that whispered she was retreating further from sanctuary and into the steel jaws of a trap, she pushed off the wall and ventured deeper into the toy store. Glass crunching underfoot, she exited the shop and entered the larger shopping center. A brief look over was enough to realize that right off the bat, the majority of her potential hideouts were scratched off the list. Gridded sheets of steel blocked all entry into the dozens of other stores in the mall.
Eris made to stumble back into the relative ‘safety’ of the toy shop but the sound of metal grinding against chains stopped her in her tracks. She whirled around right on time to see a fresh wall of metal drop from the ceiling and land on her face, hitting the ground with a resounding clang. Silence reigned after the groaning steel stopped moving and she was left staring at the impenetrable barrier in mild disbelief. In real time, she felt hope shrivel up and wither away.
No, no, keep calm. Keep a cool head. Don’t panic. Think rationally. There has to be somewhere in this mall that I can hide in. I just need to keep moving. Reluctantly, Eris pried herself away from the closed toy shop and set about finding a refuge somewhere within the massive structure. Almost immediately, she began to get creeped out by the haunting lack of noise that permeated the building. The mall should have been stuffed to the brim with eager shoppers ready to cash in their most recent paycheck and overenthusiastic, overworked, part-time employees chirping in an impressively high-pitched voice about the virtues of the product they were saddled with promoting. Instead, the shopping center was abandoned and the flamboyant, practically offensive-to-the-eyes signs had darkened into a deeper, crimson hue and swapped out jovial advertising for solemn caution.
It wasn’t long before the stillness of the mall began to get to her and her mind became her worst enemy, conjuring up nightmares to fill the void. Her fingers twitched reflexively whenever she thought she saw something dart through the shadows out of her periphery, only for nothing to be there when she turned around. The maroon tint cast on the walls reminded her of bloodstains, left behind as the surpluses of a gory carnage. Every squeak of her sneakers gave rise to a fresh rank of goosebumps. The shell of false bravado she’d encased herself in flaked off in layers, the shards decaying and exposing the sniveling coward camouflaged underneath.
It was a small miracle that she reached the food court intact and sadly, it was in similar straits. Chairs were knocked over, trays loaded with junk food accessorized the stained floor, puddles of miscellaneous substances populated the terrain, and lost items like purses and wallets stuck out like a sore thumb. A (fortunately) empty baby stroller loitered near the restrooms. A plastic cup made the trek from one end of the court to the other, rolling haphazardly across the slightly-inclined flooring. Eris' eyes tracked its endeavor absentmindedly as she dealt with the fact that the mall was a literal ghost town. She'd figured that if there was anywhere any stragglers would congregate to, the food court was the clear favorite to stow away in.
She was fumbling for an exit, a plan, anything, when an abhorrent cry shattered the fraught stalemate. A sensation not dissimilar to needles cascaded through her limbs, jabbing with fierce gumption. The rest of the world faded away into a pinprick as the howl-scream-roar-hoot-hiss dominated her consciousness. A primeval instinct—an intuition that bordered on clairvoyance—emerged from the trenches of her soul with a promise of brimstone fate on its tongue if she dallied.
The moment Eris regained feeling in her legs, she did a 180 degree turn and shambled away from the paranormal monsters of destruction. Her faith in this course of action was promptly rewarded when her ears made out the sound of glass shattering in the far distance, followed by metal shredding as the fortified barriers put up little resistance to the Animus. Heavy snarling haunted the mall, the ambient noise seemingly flanking her on all sides in an instance. The entire mall felt like a prison—or a tomb.
Eris made a break for it, beeling for the nearest exit out of the food court. There was no lucid destination in mind. The only objective? To get as far away from the Animus as humanly possible. She hustled through the empty mall, her head constantly swiveling to and fro as she scanned for a haven. All the while, she envisaged the Animus nearing. Eris could hear more of them piling through the breach, amassing enough for a campaign to explore this untouched land, and their hoofsteps as they clopped around whatever store they’d found themselves in.
She drunkenly spun in a half-circle and the mall became awash with blinding colors, seizure-worthy blotches and splashes of dazzling light garbling together while sparks flew across the mall, the details muddying as the need to gag became aggravated–
There! Tucked away in a dimly illuminated corridor–with a spasmodic restroom icon hanging over the entrance–was a plain wooden door, slightly ajar, with the tips of a few, pale, microfiber strands peeking out from the room. Shooting an anxious look back towards the food court, she careered for the alcove, hardly daring to breath all the while. It was only after she passed underneath the restroom sign that she felt comfortable enough to exhale, rubbing her palms together as she tried to resist the temptation to cast more cagey glances behind her.
Instead, she wandered further down the caliginous hallway (though calling it a ‘hallway’ was a bit of a magnanimous gesture; it hardly qualified as a cubicle) until she was in front of the wooden door. Eris slipped inside, relocating the strands–which turned out to originate from a mop head–to the back of the room and secured a spot for herself. Sorrowfully whispering goodbye to the last rays of light she’d see, she shut the door and doused the room in pitch-black.
Right away, it became impossible to ignore the tight fit. Saying it was ‘snug’ would give off the wrong impressions; ‘cramped’ was a much more apt term. Unsurprisingly, it seems like she’d stumbled onto a janitor’s closet. Eris was still clutching the mop in an ironclad grip, desperately attempting to hang onto the final fragments of sanity, and sharp ridges and rounded rims dug into her spine. Her elbows were touching the back of the closet and she had to slouch to avoid a hanging light bulb.
She fidgeted restlessly and was made to regret that decision when she bumped into what appeared to be a wire shelf unit loaded to overflowing with a medley of maintenance gear. The equipment rattled in warning and her heart jolted, going ramrod still. Eventually, the shaking abated and with it, took the last of her frayed nerves. Letting the mop fall onto her shoulder, she slowly slumped down and curled up into a ball. Eris brought her knees into her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and burrowed her head into the tiny crevasse that had formed. There, trapped inside a cluttered closet, waiting for death to take her, she struggled not to weep.
This…wasn’t how it was supposed to conclude. She'd thought that things were going to change for the better. Now, her family was going to have to dig another grave; that is, if they were at all bothered to commit to an empty gesture. The Animus would descend upon her with a ravenous appetite and refuse to spare even a single bone for mourners to lay into the earth. Her fingers bunched up her skirt as her eyes burned. Was this her divine discipline? To be eviscerated by the same monsters she failed to protect her sister from?
The janitor’s closet was parked in an offshoot of the mall proper but she didn’t expect that to save her. The Animus were known for their uncannily keen sense of smell and a small detour was well worth a hearty meal. The ground rumbled menacingly, heralding the arrival of the horde. A sound not unlike the crack of thunder screamed throughout the mall and the accompanying temblor wracked the entire building. The shelves vocalized their distress by clanking together and a copious amount of dust bunnies saw fit to announce their presence. In only a couple of seconds, the room had transformed into the setting of a desert fantasy, complete with swirling patterns of granules.
The babel of hollers and screeches just a few meters away from her hiding spot easily penetrated the walls like it was cardboard. The bedlam seeped into the small niche like poison, infecting the prosaic atmosphere with a hint of pandemonium. It was chaos taken from, clawing at her cranium and slithering into her ears and storming down her throat. The vociferation reached a new zenith and the walls felt like they were closing in, the bars of her enclosure corralling her into a tight huddle with her back pressed flush against the leaning shelves.
Before Eris knew it, her sanctuary had become her cage.
She rocked back and forth, biting back ugly sobs that threatened to burst free regardless. This feeling of utter hopelessness, hearing the mall get torn apart around her, trapped with nowhere to go as the clamoring of evil mocked her, it was sickeningly familiar. A massive weight compressed her chest until all the air in her lungs was forced out in one lamentable wheeze. The sensation of the cool concrete under her hands fell to the wayside, replaced by the bitter sting of sparks of heat beating on her arms. The small closet felt a thousand miles away.
The rest of the world collapsed and she fell through the cracks.
As Eris drifted further from reality, she came closer to embracing a different reality all-together. In the distance, the faint thumping of hooves-and-claws-and-paws gradually faded into the crackling of raging bonfires, the countless shrill screams of those in unbearable agony, the low rumble of Animus picking through the devastated mall for survivors.
She was no longer situated inside a janitorial closet, but was lying on her back with a half-collapsed stairway on top of her. Her breaths came out in short, hurried gasps as her lungs frantically tried to take in air that she was in desperate need of, but didn’t possess. Her legs had long fallen into a deadened stupor, rendered as immobile as the stairway that pinned her to the tiled floor.
The overwhelming agony was reduced to pulsating ripples of pain flaring through her ruined muscles. Eris bemoaned the loss of her legs; it’d be a miracle if she could ever march again. However, although the pain was terrible, the snarling and growling signifying the Animus’s presence was infinitely worse. Every time she heard a muffled whimper, followed by a soul-chilling screech before it abruptly cut to the sound of flesh tearing apart, a jolt of relief jabbed into her. Relief that it wasn’t her, or Alice whose life had snuffed out. Then she tried feeling terrible for being relieved, but found she couldn’t muster the energy to maintain the facade. Not now, when she was so exhausted.
No, Eris simply had to pretend they fell into a deep slumber to put her mind at ease. The only thing that mattered to her was the nearby sniffles filling her ears and world, beating in tempo with her staccato heart. She couldn’t discern the origin of the pitiful sounds with her eyes, but she knew without a shadow of doubt that it was coming from Alice. Her whimpers resonated with her soul, each terrified cry a barbed stake to her pride as a big sister.
She wanted to comfort her, reassure her that her big sister had everything under control, explain how a simple shopping outing in San Francisco had escalated into a scene straight from a horror movie, but her chapped lips wouldn’t form the words. Her broken body couldn’t sustain the effort of speaking even a few measly words, and the croaked whispers she managed to produce were swept away by the harsh gusts blowing in from the cracked windows.
“E-Eris….” she heard her squeak out. Her chest clenched painfully even as she doubled her efforts to move the stairway. “P-please……a-are you al-alive? Please tell her you’re al-alive!”
Eris was overcome with an irresistibly powerful urge to run over to her and wrap her arms around her body, patting her head and whispering sweet nothings into her ear, rocking her back and forth as she calmed. The veins on her arms popped as she strained against the insurmountable weight of stone and metal, giving it all she had. Her blood ran cold when she heard the click-clack of claws on the porcelain floors getting louder. The sound was unmistakable—the Animus was coming.
Alice knew it too. Eris could hear her try valiantly to hold in her cries, but some broken sobs were audible regardless. The Animus paused and her blood roared in her ears, wondering if it had found Alice. Her heart hammered against her ribcage and it felt like her fear had taken the form of a serpent, winding its lengthy body under and over her ribcage, flexing its muscles threateningly and resting its fangs directly over her lungs. For one harrowing moment, she saw the Animus lunge towards Alice and snap its jaw over her head as vividly as if it was real.
There was an earth-shattering roar and she heard the Animus bound away, plowing through portions of walls as if they were made out of Play-Doh. Eris almost cried in relief, even though she knew that someone else had been condemned to death. As long as Alice was alive, there was a fraction of a chance she hadn’t failed completely; a fraction of a chance she could save her. And if that meant everyone else in the mall perished, she couldn’t bring herself to care all that much about it.
Alice’s sniffles reached her ears and she renewed her attempts at lifting the stairway off her body, urging her battered body to push past its limits. Out of nowhere, a quiet, sinister voice started taunting her from the darkest depths of her mind.
You failed. Alice is going to die and it’s all your fault. You failed, and your family hates you for it. Your best friend abandoned you because she couldn’t bear to be connected to a failure like you. You’re no hero, you’re no savior, you’re nothing. What are you going to do next? Kill Amelia?
Eris shook her head weakly. No, that’s not true. Alice is right there, I can still save her! Despite her protests, the sound of the bonfires started to dwindle and the constant screams and roars plaguing the mall seemed to vanish. Even Alice’s cries were growing fainter with each passing second. The immense pressure on her lower body subsided and the stairway no longer felt so solid underneath her palm. Doubt crept in, paralyzing her body as firmly as if she’d been petrified. She was losing her grasp on this reality.
You fool, this already happened! You cannot refute the undeniable truth of the past! Alice is gone, Amelia hates you, your parents can’t look at you, and Zoe has left you for better friends! You are lost in the throes of what happened six months ago, and if you do not change, you will die, lost in your memories, along with Alice!
Red filled her vision and she snapped. Eris didn’t care who the voice was, it had crossed a line. Alice isn’t dead!
The declaration, summoned from the recesses of her soul, was a hammer, mercilessly shattering the false memory into a million tiny shards. The world elongated, twisted, and then snapped back into place. Eris gasped in shock at the abrupt transition in scenario, the heat radiating from the lingering flames vanishing and the background noises cutting off. The air became cold and the weight on her body dissipated. Despite herself, she ended up craning her ears in a desperate attempt to catch any semblance of noise from Alice, to no avail. She, too, had vanished.
Eris choked back the urge to just wallow in despair. Lifting her head up was a Herculean task; her brain felt like it’d been stuffed with a sack of boulders. The dust had started to dissipate in the monsters’ absence, allowing her to see the sad condition of the closet in all of its shameful glory. Nearly all of the gear who’d dwelled on the twisted racks had found a new abode on the ground. she absentmindedly brushed some stray mop strands off her shoulder and peered around. Something was wrong. A niggling premonition scratched at her sensibility, warning bulbs faintly flickering on and off.
The noise.
The calling card of the Animus—their signature screeches that were the stuff of nightmares—was playing truant. The spiraling hurricane of inane jabbers and treble squawks was nowhere to be heard. The sounds that had dominated the little closet so thoroughly that it’d transcended into an almost tangible status, steeping the room in an oppressive presence that was no less despotic than the bang of a muzzle flash…..were gone.
With a droning in her ears, she unfurled her limbs and slinked towards the door. Throwing caution to the wind, she exited the closet. The first thing she noticed, directly ahead of her, were the deep gashes and craters that stuck out like a sore thumb against the flat, beige backdrop. Lacerations left no part of the hallway unscathed, shaving down the plaster and exposing the steel skeleton underneath. A particularly grievous scar stretched from one corner of the corridor ceiling to directly in front of the closet door, baring the water pipes nestled within. Something must have punctured the tubes because a light spray of mist was spilling onto the floor, providing a thin film of liquid that rippled as she took a step forward.
The water sloshed underneath her when Eris left the passageway, revealing that it had begun to expand into the mall proper. She stopped just underneath the restroom sign and gazed down at the tiny pool aggregating at her feet. It was strange, the way the fluid reflected everything so clearly, but a single step out of line could distort the image beyond recognition. The tranquility of a peaceful mind, chased away by the tidal waves of confusion. The duality of water, whose elusive nature was so difficult to obtain in humans.
Eris appraised the mall. She'd been half-expecting some Animus to be mingling around, maybe lurking in wait to spring upon a hapless victim, but no. They’d well and truly all left. And she was alive.
She should be happy. she was happy—or was she? Had she been secretly hoping for another outcome? Or was it indignation at the situation as a whole, to think that they’d had the audacity to bulldoze through the mall and leave her completely untouched. To remind her of her complete and utter failure as a sister and daughter, make her relive the worst moments of her life, and then force her to live with that guilt. What gave the Animus the right to mess with her life like that, to push her to the brink and pull her back? To play god with her emotions, to upend her entire life at a moment’s whim as if it was as trivial as flipping a coin?
And why was Eris like this? So susceptible to their machinations? It wasn’t as if she’d been wanting to die, right? She'd been cowering in the closet just a few minutes ago because she’d been scared of death. And now what?
It took her a while to attach a label to the emotion she was feeling—or lack thereof. Eris was hollow. Not mad, not sad, not disappointed, not happy, she just felt…..empty. Like there was no reason for all of this. So she’d survived another Animus Incursion in the thick of it. Could she claim to be acquaintances with them now? Likely not if she wanted to avoid being a social pariah. It was probably just time to go back to her regularly scheduled session of self-loathing and misery.
This all felt far too reminiscent. Would she go home only to find that someone else had been taken in her stead? Was that her curse? To always survive at the expense of others? What a horrible gift.
Welp, no time to just mope around. Eris forced her leaden legs to take the first step, then the second, and another, and one more after that. Her muscle memory kicked in and she let her mind wander. It was funny. She'd been brimming with so many emotions, so many things she wanted to say, but now she had nothing but the pieces of a broken dream. Talk about whiplash.
Eris staggered through the forsaken shopping mall, aimlessly trailing the path of destruction until her journey led her to a gaping breach in the metal barricade. She stumbled through the crack and found herself on the streets, which hadn’t fared any better against the Animus. Cars were overturned, gravel had been slashed up, smoke clogged the air, and trees laid on the ground. No corpses as far as she could see, but gauging by the smoldering piles of orange-tinged flakes, the Custodians and Einherjar had already cleaned house around this area. Efficient as always.
She kicked the nearest heap and got some sick satisfaction from watching the clump break down, sending cinders fluttering through the air before getting snatched away by the wind. It was about as close as she could get to unleashing her ire onto the real deal without losing her leg in the process. As she watched the spirited fireflakes spiral in a mini-tornado, a high-pitched scream interrupted the self-diagnosed cathartic therapy session she’d booked for herself. Eris decided to put her services on hiatus and lazily, she pivoted on her heel and scanned the terrain for the source of disruption.
It didn’t take long to locate a scrawny little kid—maybe eight years old, pushing nine?—hunched behind a crumpled vending machine, hyperventilating in abject terror. If the ghastly pale pallor of his face and irregular breathing pattern wasn’t obvious enough, the fact that he was sweating bucketloads while keeling over spoke volumes. The inspiration for his dread was plain to see as well: a crippled Animus of the bipedal variety was perilously close by, pincers in lieu of hands and a skeletal tail lashing at the debris behind it. It appeared to be heavily favoring its right leg, and a quick inspection uncovered a pervious gash across its hindquarters that was responsible for the steady stream of embers it was leaking.
It was well on its way to death, but it seemed like it wouldn’t be content without damming one more soul. Eris eyed the little boy, noting he’d clasped his hands in front of his face and was murmuring frantically under his breath. If she was him, she would take her chances and sprint away. Bipedal Animus were among the slowest denominations, and this one was already handicapped. Still, she could hardly fault someone for having their preference as to how they wanted to go out.
She was about to leave—she didn’t think she could stomach watching someone get butchered right in front of her. Who knows, though? she was being surprisingly blasé about this whole ordeal—when he looked to his left and saw her. Their eyes locked, and for a moment, blue orbs bore into black. A veneer of tears gave his eyes an impossibly glossy lamination as he pleaded silently with her, and something tugged at her heartstring.
Eris breathed, and suddenly, she could feel again.
It was as if she had her head dipped into the Arctic waters and stayed submerged until sense came rocketing back. Panic ripped through her with such intensity that she was shocked it didn’t hurt, and with electricity coursing through her veins, she took flight towards the boy, praying she could make it before the Animus.
Her hopes were dashed when the monster leapt atop of the vending machine. The metal buckled and groaned in protest, and the splintered glass shattered completely under the warped frame. The boy let out another shriek as fragments rained down on him and the Animus joined in, a cruel score that was a medley of horror and ecstasy, two parts innocent child and homicidal creature.
His cover was now blown, if it’d been there in the first place. “Hey! Over here!” Eris bellowed, tapping into a reservoir of air that she didn’t know existed. Her throat burned but she continued screaming with everything she had, trying to delay the boy’s execution long enough for her to get there and then—
Then what? She couldn’t do anything. If she intervened, she would just get them both killed. Eris knew that, but she couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t stop. Not for anything. If she had the chance to help that kid, to do everything in her power to increase his odds of living by even a fraction of a percent, then she owed it to Alice to commit. To do for someone what she couldn’t do for her.
Her hollering tactic wasn’t working. Eris needed to become more appealing. She wasted several priceless seconds bending down and scooping up a handful of rocks. Trying to hit something while running was hard enough, but rocks were among the most unwieldy of projectiles. Stopping to aim could prove fatal for the boy though, so she pitched her arm back and hurled.
To her surprise, the rudimentary weapon soared through the sky and impacted the Animus across the face. Even more unbelievable was how the rocks collapsed into fine powder upon contact and the beast recoiled, shaking its head as if she’d actually hurt it.
While it was momentarily stunned, she bridged the final stretch in what felt like a second and skidded to a stop. Wrapping her arms around the sobbing boy’s waist, she hefted him up and started to make their escape, only for a colossal weight to slam into her back. Her knees folded and she got down on all four, digging her hands into the street in an attempt to avoid crushing the boy. Above her, the Animus shifted its bearing and applied more pressure, slowly bending her spine. A whimper slipped out of her as red-hot agony radiated outward, as her bones were ground to dust, as her tendons snapped, as her world threatened to grow dark.
Below her, Eris could feel the boy looking up at her with fear in his eyes. Who wouldn’t be scared knowing that they were watching a person get pulverized right in front of them, coupled with the cursed knowledge that they were next? But she couldn’t spare an iota of energy to comfort him. Not when she was straining body and mind to the maximum, trying to hold herself together and not fall apart at the seams as mind-numbing forces sought to do just that.
Eris never realized it until now, but the scariest thing about an Animus up-close was the lack of characteristics befitting an organism. There was no heat of heavy breathing against her neck, no growling or snarling that seemed appropriate with the ferocity the Animus was displaying. Even its triumphant bays had tapered off, leaving a silent killer behind. That was most terrifying. To be confronted with the sheer alienness of the Animus on your deathbed, knowing that you were going to meet your end at the hands of a creature with no bond to any other on this planet. To know that it wasn’t hunger or revenge or any other comprehensible motive fueling their actions—just a callous obsession with extinguishing all life.
Her brain felt like it was liquifying under the pressure. Her eyeballs were about to pop right out of her sockets. Eris gagged, too weak to even think of screaming. So this was how it ended. With her too weak to even save a single soul. I’m sorry, Alice. Closing her eyes, she surrendered herself to bliss.
Snkt.
A peculiar sound cut through the haze of pain that had infiltrated her mind. A sound of something piercing armor. The pressure on her back was alleviated in an instance and her entire body cried out in relief. Eris wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep for the next century, but she had an obligation to see her duty through to the end. Even if she died, she needed to make sure the boy made it through.
Stiffly, she rotated her neck and pried open one eye, only to jolt back in shock. That little movement spurred on a chain reaction that triggered different parts of her body to sob in anguish, but for once, the pain was overshadowed by the implications of what she was seeing.
A lance was speared through the Animus’ skull, entering from the back of its armored head and exiting through its open jaw and stopping just a couple of inches from her own face. Eris held her breath, ignoring the ache in her ribs as she contemplated what this meant. She didn’t have to wait long.
“Yahoo! Everyone okay down there?” a cheery voice called from above. Carefully, slowly, she tilted her head up until her neck felt liable to snap in half, but more importantly, she could see two silhouettes perched on the edge of a roof, overlooking the entire street from their position.
Two dazzling, spellbinding, glorious silhouettes, illuminated perfectly by the sinking sun behind them, casting their splendor and protection across the world.
Custodians.
Thank you!
This girl needs to catch a break or die before what's left of her psyche shatters. I hope she gets exposed to some huge hypocrisy of the custodians and becomes a villain though.
We'll see
Do you recommend starting from the beginning? Since the story had some modifications and all.
Also, welcome back!
Thank you! Glad to be back. As for starting from the beginning, that's a great question! I'd advise waiting, because I've gotten feedback that they're too bloated, and I definitely agree. I'll likely be going back and massively them down this weekend, and this involves cutting out scenes (likely scavenging them for future chapters), so maybe wait until then!