The white swallowed them, cool and wet against their skin. An eerie silence replaced the hum of the industries and the background noise of the city, and even the trickle of rain disappeared.
They fled over the empty street, Edmund leading the charge with the shield in hand, and Wretch’s cross grew to the size of a one-handed sword.
“We can't beat a damn Pyre,” Edmund shouted. “Fall back!”
Grendel was at the fourth stage, while they were one on the second. Wretch had killed a Blessed beast at the stage above him only once and at considerable cost. Now they were up against something else entirely.
Astrid was falling behind, and Elenya caught the back of her dress, hauling her forward without missing a beat.
“People like you and me, half-brother,” came a thick voice from the mist. “She pushes us. You’re on the verge of breaking already, I can see that.”
The Richters barreled through the mist. They should have reached the other side of the street long ago, but no matter how far they ran, the scenery never changed, with the same old cobblestone beneath their feet.
“The Corps has something planned!” Edmund wheezed. “We just have to live!”
The creak of wood splintering came from behind. They stopped, turning around with weapons drawn.
“Cover me,” Wretch said through gritted teeth. He shut out the words of the Pyre, shut out the implications. Perhaps he should have guessed that the only other human with the Beast-flame was connected to him somehow, but in this moment, it didn’t matter. They just had to survive. And he was going to use every fiber of muscle, every jolting emotion, and every shred of concentration to do so.
Something swooshed through the mist as his claws cracked and grew, extending to the ground as his back hunched. The form of Vishnii warped his upper body. Muscles bulged, and the claws elongated to make his legs appear smaller than they were. An unyielding form, but it packed power.
The front panel of an entire building burst through the haze.
One of Wretch’s new claws slammed it aside in a burst of shredded wood and exploding windows.
Behind it, a blur flowed through the mist at incredible speed, closing in with a sense of primal fear.
Grendel. No bigger than a regular human.
The Pyre ducked under his arm, and a hand shot out toward Wretch’s throat.
Edmund’s shield slammed against the attack, exploding outward with force that rippled through the mist. The thunderclap wracked through the air, but at the last moment, Grendel’s fingers grabbed onto the edge of Edmund’s shield, anchoring him in place.
The Pyre wasn’t larger than before, but his two eyes burned with such power that tongues of flame burst from his pupils. With white hair, some of his features carried a likeness to Wretch, though the latter was clad in shades of black. Still, they both carried similar bestial snarls.
Grendel’s knee burst forward, slamming into Edmund’s shield. The captain catapulted backward. But the Richters had fought side by side against overwhelming odds before. Elenya’s cleaver whistled toward Grendel’s stomach, and he dodged low with inhuman agility.
Wretch’s other claw whizzed toward their adversary from the right, while thorns grew from a handful of scattered seeds, reaching up along Grendel’s ankles.
For a moment, they had him cornered. Elenya’s blade, Wretch’s claw, Astrid’s support, and Edmund’s defense working in unison.
Grendel smiled.
The mist twitched, and in a swirl it enveloped him. He was gone. Elenya’s and Wretch’s attacks demolished the ground where he had stood in a hail of splintered rock.
Edmund struggled forward, the healer mending some internal wound with fiery eyes.
“The mist is special. We’re trapped,” she said with wide eyes.
“Then we fight,” Edmund growled. “Hold nothing back, we just have to last.”
A voice came from the mist, echoing as if from all around.
“The Gulschaks are a bleak bunch compared to a set of proper hunters.”
“Synergy, awareness. Even strength to challenge my basic form. In another world, we would have all broken bread together.”
Wretch grabbed the cross in his oversized claw and changed into yet another shape, the fastest he could produce, borrowing the strongest muscles to his legs and core while blades of bones pushed out of his forearms.
“Bog him down. I’ll skewer him through,” Wretch said.
Grendel’s voice answered from all around them, a hint of sorrow in his tone.
“We are experiments, you and I, little Wretch. Think back. She has been shaping you from the start. She needs us for yet another scheme, another secret within a secret.”
“But I won’t let her. Now I’ll soften you up a bit. Then we’ll talk.”
From above, the mist pulsed and Grendel launched out of the haze, landing in their midst with inhuman agility. He was fast, the switch taking only a moment.
A kick rushed toward Astrid’s head. Edmund’s shield blocked it, his arm giving off a snap from the impact.
Wretch threw himself toward Grendel in a flurry of blades made of claws and bone. The Pyre tilted his head and stepped backward, weaving among the cuts with inhuman speed.
Despite missing every strike, Wretch pushed his speed until the joints creaked, pulling strength from that place filled with hate and desperation.
Elenya’s cleaver sliced from the side, a cut appearing on her neck. Grendel sidestepped.
“Now!” Elenya called, and Wretch pushed flame into the cross.
The weapon could hold a hundred souls. Now it barely held forty he had scraped together from rats in the cellars.
Elongated rat skulls broke out of the black filigree to spin around the weapon. Grendel’s brow twitched. He tried to dodge to the side, but Edmund’s sword came to meet him. Trapped again.
Do it, Wretch pleaded in his mind.
Grendel gave a soft smile, and mist enveloped him a moment before impact. Wretch returned a cruel smile carrying the same features.
The mist around Grendel shuddered, and the Pyre looked down. A tail coiled around his ankle, stopping him from slipping away into the mist.
“I fought your dog,” Wretch rasped through sharp teeth. “I know that trick.”
The ephemeral skulls blasted outward in a cacophony of shrieks and wails, slamming against Grendel in a violent detonation.
The Pyre disappeared into the blast and blades of his teammates.
A thought surfaced in Wretch’s mind. They could do it. He and Elenya had killed a Blaze, and the four of them could take down a Pyre.
Then he would surely ascend.
Stave off the hunger growing within him.
They could live.
A mangled hand tore through the haze. Through pure reflex, Wretch threw his head back. It saved him, and Grendel’s hand ripped out his windpipe instead of breaking his neck.
Wretch stumbled backward as Grendel’s form shuddered. Grendel’s silhouette wavered in the mist. He was wounded, missing chunks of his chest and arms. With twitches and squirms, both Wretch and Grendel regenerated their wounds.
“All right, you win,” Grendel said softly. “I didn’t want to burn a charge for a lowly Fireling squad…”
Something in his tone shifted.
“But here we are.”
Edmund pulled Wretch up to his feet. A mending hand from Astrid stitched together his throat in unison with his own Blessing. The battle had only lasted a few moments, still he was burning through his flame like there was no tomorrow.
“Just a few more minutes, as we did in Sternthal,” Edmund said. “They wouldn’t send us to die.”
“Y… yeah,” Wretch gurgled through a barely functional throat.
Grendel’s silhouette twisted and squirmed in the mist. Muscles swelled. White fur rippled across his frame as clothes were shredded into ribbons. He rose with outstretched arms, his head raised toward the sky. A towering form the size of three men.
Smoke veiled his face, revealing only the outline of curled fangs and two burning orbs.
Its gaze drifted slowly toward them. The hair on Wretch’s neck rose, and he heard the clattering of teeth from his teammates. This was something far beyond them, something carrying power they had never even touched.
“Come,” the thing rumbled. “You’ve done enough, hunters. Rest by my flame.”
The mist swallowed him, and he was gone.
Wretch listened, his own thumping heart disturbing his senses. From behind, something moved toward them.
With a roar, his form exploded once more. The arms grew larger as he swung the cross, which was in turn elongating. It strained his muscles and mind to their breaking point, activating the weapon and changing at the same time, but the weapon swung over the heads of Astrid and Edmund.
A hairy palm caught his oversized wrist, reducing his attack to nothing but a swirl of the mist.
Every fiber of his being screamed as the two burning eyes came face to face with him. Then the world flipped. He was lifted like nothing, then slammed into the cobblestone with enough force to break every strengthened bone in his body.
Out of pure habit, flame flew from his core, snapping his broken bones into place. He opened his eyes to see another massive palm rushing toward him.
He didn’t feel the impact, but the world blinked for a moment.
Slowly, sensations returned with a ringing pitch in his ears. The sharp ache of crushed tissue and burst organs roused him back from the brink.
He didn’t have to command the flame any longer. It knew what he wanted. It burned through his veins, regenerating him only to a point where he could move again. That was all he could afford. His flame sputtered at the edge of emptiness.
With effort, he sat up. In his swimming vision, he spotted Elenya and Edmund in a fight for their lives against the monster in the mist.
One of Grendel’s hands smashed down toward Edmund, and he raised the shield. The armament exploded outward with a force that could send a man through a wall.
To Grendel, it was a gust in the wind.
The shield buckled. Edmund was driven into the stone beneath him with a sickening crunch.
Before Wretch had even noticed it, he was stumbling toward Grendel, his senses electrified by the sight.
“CAPTAIN!”
The cry tore from all three of them at once.
Elenya screamed and struck wildly outwards in the mist with the cleaver. The blade sank into the white fur, drawing blood, but in the blink of an eye, the flesh squirmed back together.
A hand came out from the side and swatted her with a snap. The impact turned one of her legs to ribbons, cracked her armor, and sent her tumbling toward him.
Wretch threw himself to catch her before she slammed her head against the ground.
With a thud, she landed in his arms.
“Elenya?” he called, his head still spinning.
Part of her shoulder was missing, and blood poured from her nose. With a cough, she splurted blood and teeth into his lap. A twitch went through his body, the world dimming around him.
She flashed half a smile, and the medallion on her chest lit. A pulse of fire filled his empty reservoir.
Everything she had.
“Wretchy!” came a call from far away.
Something inside him broke.
His Blessing had always been a struggle, shaping muscle, bone, and sinew. Whispering to the flame, hoping it understood. With suffering, its roots had taken hold in him, whispering as much to him as he to it. He had been afraid, he realized, of the changes, of the things he could do, of losing what he was and the few things he had.
For the first time since his ascent to Fireling, he let it all go, scattering self-preservation, hope, and the promise of a future like petals in the wind.
The shuddering flame answered, and they spoke to each other as fluidly as a mother’s tongue, singing hymns of violence and sacrifice.
He reached for the strongest form nestled inside him, and his flame agreed.
Fur burst out of his back, and his face elongated into a hound’s maw, his entire upper body bursting into the form of a massive hound. Eyes burst through the fur and filled his vision with several sets of tragedy. For the first time, he brandished the full form of Vishnii, a hound one full level above himself.
A roar bubbled out of his throat.
Edmund was a bloodied pile on the ground, and the creature rumbled toward Astrid, who fell to her knees by the Captain’s crushed body.
Grendel’s fiery eyes turned to him in the mist.
“You… have that form. I’m impressed, kin of blood and flame, to kill even little Vishnii.”
“Come then,” Grendel growled.
Wretch’s flame was gushing from his core like a cracked hourglass. He could hold the massive form for a few seconds at most. It didn't matter and he lunged with a shriek.
Grendel caught his claw in his, and Wretch’s houndlike maw ripped into the white fur of Grendel’s monstrous form. A Blaze’s form versus a Pyre’s, intertwining in a gruesome display of two prodigies in bestial violence.
They strained and ripped at each other, each strike sending shockwaves through the haze. For a moment, the two monsters were similar in strength, but only for a moment.
With a howl, Wretch was pushed to the ground. One of Grendel’s hands pulled against his arm, ripping it from the shoulder socket with the sound of tearing cloth. Wretch roared but was silenced by a fist slammed into his skull again and again.
From his throat, the howl became a scream as he lost his form, the flesh squirming back into that of a brittle human.
The world darkened, and his ribs cracked like a symphony between the ground and the monster’s hand. The palm lifted, and his ribs and bones snapped back into place through the last drops of his flame, a scream still reverberating from his throat.
The hand slammed down until his scream became a gurgle and he grew still.
Despite their synergy, despite tactics and revelation, the Richter Company had been decimated, lying dying on the cold ground of the city they had called home.
Three Firelings and a trailing Ember, barely pushing a Pyre.
Astrid was the last one standing, dragging the decimated captain toward Elenya’s still body.
The mist moved, and two fiery eyes appeared in front of her.
“You are the tactician. That is why I left you, my brother, the one you call Wretch. They did something to him,” Grendel’s monstrous voice came from above. “An item? What did it look like? How many are waiting outside?”
Astrid fell to her knees, pulling down her large hat in front of her eyes.
“I can’t ascend, can’t even fight, I can’t even do anything,” she whimpered.
Metal screeched across stone as Grendel lifted the metal cross, the size of a massive spear.
He pointed the black tip of the spear at her midsection.
“I won’t kill you quickly. I’ll rip out your nails, then your fingers, lastly I’ll skin you alive. Please spare me such brutality.”
Only a shudder ran through Astrid’s body, the hat falling into the puddles beneath her.
Grendel caught her chin between two monstrous fingers, forcing her to look into the burning eyes. “Answer me, and it’ll all be over.”
Astrid trembled like a leaf in a storm, her hair clinging to her scalp. Yet she refused to speak.
“A hunter called Kattla,” came Wretch’s wet voice from the side. “She used my blood. We didn’t see how.”
Grendel was quiet, standing there for a moment.
“Thank you, I’ll deny you no longer,” Grendel answered as he pressed the spear through Astrid’s stomach with a wet noise, pinning her to the ground.
The sound of limping rolled over the mist. Grendel turned his horrid head toward the speaker.
Wretch walked on broken limbs. His left arm was replaced by strands of flesh torn like fabric. Half of his temple was missing, reduced to a mixture of red and bone.
“Please,” he said in a whisper.
“If it soothes you, I take no pleasure in this,” Grendel responded in a deep, guttural voice. “It’s mercy, brother. She’d take everything from you. See how they use you now.”
Wretch left a trail of crushed organs and blood behind him as the beast slid the cross from Astrid’s midsection, lumbering toward him in a series of tremors.
“When this is over, I’ll kill them all. The Professor. The thing that is our father. The Saint.” Grendel’s voice changed, turning soft despite the inhuman vocal cords.
“I’ll raise you a grave in fields of flowers, marked only by a circle of ash. I'll—”
Suddenly, the mist and Grendel shuddered, his form struggling to maintain itself.
“I got it!” a man’s voice called through the mist.
Grendel shot toward him, striking at Wretch's head.
A blue light shone through the haze, and a crackle of lightning shot past Wretch’s back. It hit Grendel like a hammer, sending the beast flying to the side as a figure dashed out from the lightning bolt.
Andryi charged as black chains as flat as paper grew from the ground, reaching for the beast.
Grendel vanished, and a shadow appeared behind Wretch. It was trying to end him quickly, his lethargic mind realized. Andryi shot back toward him, pummeling Grendel backward with a slam that rang through the air, a monstrous hand inches from Wretch's neck.
The mist collapsed, revealing the streets around them. They hadn’t moved an inch, but the ground was marred by their battle.
“Keep him then,” Grendel hissed, then nimbly jumped over a rooftop and disappeared. The three members of the Hunter Corps dashed after him.
Gregory, who had shown them around the bureau two weeks prior, gave a last look behind at the crushed form of Wretch still limping toward his fallen family.
The man gritted his teeth and pursued.
_____________________________________________________________________
A trickle of rain sputtered against the now broken cobblestone of the empty street. The house was set ablaze, long tongues of flame whipping toward the sky.
The only one still standing was Wretch, ceaselessly limping forward toward the broken trio.
“Son,” came a calm and melodic voice.
Edmund was still alive, though deathly pale, with streams of blood running down the edges of his mouth. His torso was deformed, and a pool of blood was quickly forming, connecting with the streams of blood from Elenya and Astrid on either side of him.
Wretch fell to his knees, placing the Captain’s bleeding head between his shivering legs.
“I can’t do it again,” Edmund said.
“No, no, no,” Wretch whispered.
“I can’t lose another group,” he said.
Wretch, unable to speak, only made a guttural sound of pain and agony.
“I can’t move. Give me their hands,” he said, looking at Elenya and Astrid with bloodshot eyes.
The smaller girl was sputtering blood, her breathing like rustling leaves in a hail of rain. Elenya was still.
“I don’t…” Wretch said with a whimper as he shivered fiercely.
“Son,” Edmund answered. "This is my last order"
With his broken arm, Wretch dragged the two hands of their coworkers into the large palms of the Captain, placing his own hand on the Captain’s temple.
“In my pocket is a watch. Give it to my daughters.”
“The three of you will have to look after them… when I’m gone.”
Wretch responded only with a wheeze, his own lungs filling with blood and his flame empty. Edmund gave a cough that expelled a swath of blood, and he looked into Wretch’s eyes.
“It was fun. I had forgotten what it felt like to have a family again.”
He flashed a smile. Despite the gruesome injuries, it was the same smile, that genuine one that made tiny wrinkles appear at the edges of his eyes. His eyes lit with fire, and deadly wounds moved down Wretch’s arm like leaves flowing down a stream.
The same was happening to Astrid and Elenya, the injuries that spelled death moving impossibly up their bodies to the clenched hands of Edmund holding his underlings.
“It was the happiest I have been in a long time.”
The wounds found their place on his already slaughtered body.
His rib cage became riddled with punctures, his arms crumbled, and sinew snapped.
He drew a long gasp as a trickle of rain, blood, and tears dripped from Wretch’s face.
Astrid gave a cough, and Elenya a groan.
Edmund didn’t take another breath. Instead, a tiny light began to shine from his chest, his face still frozen in a smile.
Wretch lifted his head toward the dark sky, and a wail rolled over the city.