Chapter 4: Arrival
Chapter 4: Arrival
Many things happened at once as I held my daughter close. The window beckoned, moonlight like liquid silver streamed through the shattered panes of glass, flecks glinting. I could see the neighbor's roof just below, a possible escape route if we could make it across. Behind us, the sounds of creatures tearing through our home grew louder, closer. Heavy footfalls on the stairs told me we had only seconds.
Elisa trembled against my chest, her small body wracked with silent sobs. I cupped the back of her head, pressing her face into my shoulder to shield her from seeing any more horror. Her tears soaked through my torn shirt, mingling with the blood of my wounds. The metallic scent of it filled my nostrils, a constant reminder of what had already been lost.
I couldn't see a pleasant way through that window. Jagged glass teeth lined the frame, waiting to bite into our flesh. The drop beyond was at least fifteen feet to the shingled roof below. If I misjudged, if I slipped, if the wounds in my side slowed me too much, we would fall. Another image flashed in my mind, of my daughter broken on the ground below, and I pushed it away with a savage mental thrust.
I went anyway, because when death and horror is around you, the only way is forward. I would later learn that was false.
The only way forward was power.
But I didn't know that then. All I knew was that my little girl was crying against my chest, her brother and mother lay dead in pools of their own blood, and monsters straight from nightmare had invaded our home. The why could wait. The how didn't matter. Only survival counted in that endless moment.
I shifted Elisa to my left side, where the wounds were less severe, and prepared to leap. The glass would cut us, but better a few slices than the alternative waiting on the stairs. I took one last look at the hallway where Lynn and Jackson had died. Our family portraits still hung on the wall, untouched amid the destruction, a cruel reminder of what was already gone.
"Hold tight, monkey," I whispered to my daughter, using the pet name that now felt like it belonged to another lifetime. "Don't let go, no matter what."
She nodded against my shoulder, her little arms tightening around my neck with surprising strength. We were three steps from the window when the shrieking cut through the air.
The sound was like metal scraping against metal, amplified to impossible volumes. It pierced my eardrums and rattled my teeth, a hunting call no predator on Earth had ever made. One of those creatures flew through the window, shattering what remained of the glass into glittering clouds that caught the moonlight like diamond dust.
This one was different from the others, leaner and covered in what looked like chitinous plates rather than fur. Its limbs were too long, too numerous, jointed in places where no joints should be. The head was eyeless, just a gaping maw ringed with needle teeth that opened in four separate directions.
Elisa sobbed against me. My heart sank like a stone, my stomach twisted. I needed to protect her.
I needed her to live.
But how? Backing away would only lead us to the creatures coming up the stairs. Going forward meant facing this new abomination. I was already wounded, already feeling the adrenaline and that strange power from earlier beginning to fade. The cuts along my side burned, each breath sending jolts of pain through my body.
There was nothing more from that strange floating text. It had begun some analysis, but nothing else followed. My only hope was more of that strange power that had coursed through me moments before. I reached for it mentally, trying to summon the surge that had let me fight the creatures that killed Jackson.
Nothing came. Whatever had awakened within me seemed dormant now, or depleted. I was just a man again, hurt and afraid, holding his terrified daughter while death closed in from both sides.
"Daddy," Elisa whispered, her voice barely audible. "I'm scared."
"I know, baby," I said, taking another step back. "Me too."
The creature in the window moved with unnatural fluidity, unfolding itself like origami in reverse until it stood upright in the frame. Its head swiveled toward us, drawn perhaps by the scent of our fear, or the blood seeping through my shirt. A long, barbed tongue flicked out, tasting the air.
Then, as the creature lunged toward me, and for a brief moment I saw the descent of a scythe like forged starlight, and the finality of twilight, I was quite certain we were going to die. The monster moved faster than anything had a right to move, covering the distance between us in less than a heartbeat.
Some moments define you. I would have several of those. You came to a crossroads, and you had choices to make. People don't realize that villains aren't born. Rarely does anyone think they are evil.
No, choices are made. Make enough, you find yourself looking at the mountain of corpses you have built, and... you don't care.
That is when you become a villain.
This moment wasn't one of those crossroad choices. It was a moment where fate was out of your hands. You had nothing you could do. I couldn't get away from that creature, and I was wounded. I couldn't put my daughter down in time.
I turned my back to the monster, shielding Elisa with my body. If this was the end, at least I could give her a few more seconds. I closed my eyes, bracing for the impact of claws or teeth, for the ripping pain that would follow.
Instead, I heard a sound like air being split by a blade moving faster than sound itself, followed by a wet, meaty thunk. The expected pain never came.
Fate is a fickle mistress.
I had been hearing noises downstairs since the nightmare had begun. Boots, and shouts, the sounds of battle I would become so familiar with. Black cloaked figures burst into the room, a blonde blur, and the flash of a dark purple sword of some kind, and the monster that was to be my end just... split in two.
Two halves slopping to the ground in a pile of moist viscera, green black blood staining the floor. The creature's bisected body twitched, the nervous system not yet registering that it was dead. Its fluids spread across the carpet, sizzling slightly where they touched, as if acidic.
Standing there was a woman. She was the dark heart of winter night personified. Her hair was fresh snow, darker strands of frozen periwinkle served as highlights. It cascaded in perfect waves, not a strand out of place despite the violence she had just committed.
It streamed down her back like frozen ice at the first whisper of midnight.
Her eyes reminded me of black irises I had seen once, touched by cold, calculating light. They were the deepest shade of violet I had ever seen, so dark they appeared black until the light caught them just right, revealing their true color. Those eyes held no warmth, no compassion, only an icy assessment as they swept over me, taking in every detail of my battered state.
Even surrounded by the death, and destruction of my home, monsters dead around her, her beauty showed. Feminine perfection, or by my earthly standards at the time. Her features were sculpted as if by a master artist, high cheekbones, full lips painted a shade of burgundy that matched the drying blood on the floor, a jaw that could cut glass. She was tall, nearly eye level with me, her body lithe and powerful beneath her strange attire.
Her dark clothes shifted in the night air, a hood spooled around her neck, silken darkness that rippled outward, not unlike a stone skipped over water. The fabric seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, making the edges of her form difficult to focus on, as if she existed partly in shadow. Around her shoulders hung a cloak that moved with unnatural fluidity, responding to air currents I couldn't feel.
In her right hand she wielded a sword. A sword unlike anything I had ever seen before then. Which hadn't been a lot. The blade hummed with power, and I would have sworn it was light itself. I didn't understand it then. Like a smith had taken the light reflecting off purple sapphire, made an alloy of it and forged it into the blade before me.
The weapon had no weight to it, no substance that my eyes could detect, yet it had just cleaved a monster in two with no resistance. The edge of the blade seemed to waver and shift, as if it couldn't decide whether to be solid or ethereal. No blood marred its surface, though it had just been buried in the creature's flesh.
As I watched, clutching Elisa tight, the blade dissolved into motes of dark violet and sunset pink, leaving just the hilt, a glowing violet jewel swirling with power within the head of the rounded pummel. The particles of light scattered, some drifting past my face close enough that I felt their strange warmth against my skin.
Behind the woman, three more figures moved into the hallway. They wore similar clothing, all blacks and deep purples, their faces partly concealed by hoods drawn low. Each held a weapon that glowed with the same impossible light, though in different colors, blues and greens and deep reds that pulsed like heartbeats.
One of them knelt beside Lynn's body, placing a gloved hand on her forehead. Another moved to where Jackson lay, his small form nearly unrecognizable. The third stayed by the stairs, weapon raised, guarding against more creatures.
"No life signs," said the one by Lynn, voice dispassionate, clinical.
"Same here," reported the one by Jackson. "Heavy contamination. Recommend complete purge."
The woman before me nodded once, a sharp, economical movement. "Proceed."
The figures drew small devices from within their cloaks, pressed buttons, and placed them on the bodies of my wife and son. I wanted to protest, to stop them, but something in the woman's gaze kept me rooted in place. The devices beeped once, then began to glow with the same strange light as their weapons.
"Clear the area," ordered the one by the stairs. "Purge in ten."
The woman turned to me, features somehow soft and predatory at the same time. Her gaze flickered to Elisa, who had turned her head just enough to peek at the newcomers with one terrified eye. Something passed across the woman's face then, an emotion I couldn't name, there and gone too quickly to identify.
"The child survives," she said, her voice betraying no emotion. "Interesting."
She took a step closer, and I instinctively backed away, tightening my grip on Elisa. The woman stopped, raising one hand in what might have been meant as a calming gesture.
When she spoke, I was reminded of sensuous whispers my wife and I would exchange during the dark night of the witching hour. Her voice was low, melodic, with an accent I couldn't place, both familiar and alien at once.
"Varus Thorne. I am here to save your life."
I blinked, shock momentarily overriding fear. How did this stranger know my name? Before I could ask, she continued.
"This world is changing. The Flux has awakened. It is no longer safe for you or your daughter."
As if to punctuate her words, an explosion rocked the house from somewhere below, followed by more of those alien shrieks. The floor beneath my feet trembled.
"Incoming, Lady Vash," called the figure by the stairs. "Lots of them."
The woman, Lady Vash, never took her eyes from mine. "Your awakening has drawn them. They sense what you are, what you carry in your blood. They will not stop coming."
Elisa whimpered, and I shifted her higher on my hip. "I don't understand," I said, finding my voice at last. "What are these things? What's happening?"
Lady Vash's lips curved into what might have been a smile on anyone else. On her, it looked like a predator baring its teeth.
"There is no time to explain here. You must come with us now, or you both die. That is the only choice before you."
Another explosion, closer this time. Plaster rained down from the ceiling. The three cloaked figures moved closer to Lady Vash, forming a protective semicircle around her.
"The purge is set," one reported. "Thirty seconds."
I thought of Lynn and Jackson, of their bodies being consumed by whatever those devices would do. Of leaving them behind in this house that had held so much love, so much life. But then I looked at Elisa, her small face streaked with tears, her eyes wide with terror and confusion.
Lynn would want her to live. Jackson would want his sister to survive.
"Where would you take us?" I asked, stalling for time, for clarity, for any shred of understanding in this nightmare.
Lady Vash extended her hand, palm up. In it lay a small cylinder, similar to the ones placed on my family's bodies, but with a different configuration of buttons.
"To safety," she said. "To answers. To power enough to make those who did this pay."
The last words ignited something within me, a cold spark that would eventually grow into an inferno. Vengeance. She was offering vengeance.
"Ten seconds," warned one of the cloaked figures.
The house shook again, more violently this time. I heard the splintering of wood from below, the crash of furniture being tossed aside. The creatures were coming up the stairs.
"Decide," Lady Vash commanded, her voice like silk over steel.
I looked at my daughter, at this strange woman with her impossible weapon, at the bodies of my wife and son. At the home that had held all my dreams, now shattered beyond repair.
"Yes," I said, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. "We'll go with you."
Lady Vash's smile widened, showing teeth too white, too perfect. She pressed the cylinder into my free hand, our fingers brushing. Her skin was cold, much colder than it should have been.
"Hold tight to your daughter," she instructed. "Press the red button when I tell you."
The cloaked figures moved closer, forming a tight circle around us. Beyond them, I could hear the creatures reaching the top of the stairs, their claws scratching against wood, their breathing harsh and hungry.
"Now," Lady Vash said, pressing a similar device on her wrist.
I pushed the button.
The world dissolved into light.