The rain fell harder, drumming loudly on Neri’s chestplate as they trudged through pools of muddied water. In the open plain past the small forest the lack of trees and growth meant the water collected on the surface like a brown lake, the mud a sinking swamp as the dry ground struggled to absorb the rainfall.

Arna hadn’t expected the warrior to follow her and yet Neri walked beside her, having matched her pace from the demolished raider camp into the pouring rain of the open air. It soon became clear, however, that Arna was now the one following Neri – the warrior had slightly changed direction at one point, a destination obviously in mind, and Arna had simply turned with her.

She reasoned with herself that she couldn’t leave the woman alone in the middle of nowhere, a prime picking for other raiders and hungry creatures, and the warrior nursed countless bruises and injuries, never mind the exhaustion faltering her steps. Arna had saved her from one ill fate – she wasn’t planning on immediately leaving her to another one. Not when Neri had forced down her fear and looked at her as a being, not a mindless monster.

Arna knew that for some people it didn’t take long for them to see the intelligence in her amber eyes – something strangely knowing, something not purely beast-like but maybe even human. Or at least something otherworldly; surely a demon understood the world as much as a human did. However, the ones that did notice were usually hunting her in the first place – her existence wasn’t exactly a secret for those who knew where to look. Myths whispered at night in the small Eastern settlements spoke of a creature made of shadows and bone who devoured the souls of miscreants and sinners. And even further East, buried beneath the rubble of the laboratory, the records of the experiments and their purpose. In fact, if anyone managed to get an old-world computer working or connected to the destroyed network they could find the old legends and rumours of the Eastern laboratory creating the saviour of humanity.

These people who knew of her myth or idea of truth would hunt her as a way to save themselves. Slaughter the beast that watches and murders, or steal the elixir of survival from the past.

Neri was none of these things. She was a warrior dealt a foul hand and they both needed real shelter from the weather and the present. Or at least that’s what Arna kept telling herself, blatantly attempting to ignore the hope stirring in her heart that maybe for once she could taste trust again.

After what felt like an hour of walking empty lands, the rain slowed as did Neri. The warrior halted, blinking through the rain as she peered blindly through the starless night. Arna followed her gaze and found half-collapsed and burnt out buildings dotting the side of a dusty hill, the ash barely settled and the bricks still shifting unstable. Arna could smell the heavy odour of death like a great fog hanging low over the hill and even from here she could see bodies cast aside like dirt, burnt arms reaching out for salvation, slashed throats gaping open like monstrous screams.

Neri started moving again and from the mournful expression creasing her brow and paling her skin as white as the dead, Arna knew they were approaching the warrior’s village, the path retraced by memory alone through the dark.

When Neri began to stumble as they neared the thoughtless piles of stone and flesh, Arna moved closer to the warrior. Her breathing was laboured but Arna didn’t think it was solely due to physical exertion – it was the sound of someone climbing over the wall of a well before they dropped into the abyss. Arna was glad that the night and rain darkened their surroundings enough that Neri couldn’t see the true extent of the damage and death that lay before them. Or perhaps she’d already seen it when the raiders dragged her away.

Arna shadowed Neri as the warrior scaled the hill, sweat and the last drizzle of rain beading on her wan skin. She seemed to be heading towards the blackened carcass of a small home, the wooden door shattered and hanging as a block of ash from the frame. She almost fell through the doorway, her legs giving way beneath her, when Arna shot forwards and caught her, the warrior’s palms flat on Arna’s back, her knees bent as she crouched on the broken stone threshold.

To Arna’s surprise, Neri didn’t immediately flinch away. Instead she paused, taking a deep, shaky breath and used Arna as support to stand once again. “Thank you,” the warrior murmured, her attention refocused on the crumbling shell around them.

Brushing her fingertips along the ravaged stone, Neri used the walls as a guide around the building, stepping past what appeared to have once been a kitchen into an open room. The roof had collapsed in on top of what ever had been kept in there but Neri rushed forwards, picking up charcoaled bricks and splintered beams to chuck them to one side, digging blindly for something in the debris.

Arna dodged a flying box with a quick duck of her head, slowly approaching the warrior desperately searching within the rubble. She hummed a gentle growl in her throat, hoping to draw Neri’s attention. When the woman didn’t react, she tried louder, and then forced a guttural croak from the depths of her chest. “N-Neri.”

Neri froze in the dark, the glint of human eyes trying to find the amber glow of Arna’s in the shadows beside her. Neri swallowed – her fear? Her panic? Her grief? – and slumped her shoulders, leaning heavily on trembling arms as she braced herself amongst the ruins.

Arna hummed inquisitively again, huffing gently as she scraped a claw against the hardcover of an old-world book, the pages disintegrating to dust and drifting down to the puddle of rain underfoot.

She waited.

“My sword,” the warrior finally said, realizing she would never find it in the cloak of night. “My sword should be here.”

Arna climbed the small pile, the burning fires in her saber skull flashing side to side as she searched, claws easily flipping and shifting through the remains of Neri’s belongings. Something glinted beneath it all and Arna carefully took the silver wrought hilt in her mouth and dragged it out, letting it clang down in front of Neri.

The warrior patted the ground before her, fingers grazing the shining steel blade, and the hilt fell into her grasp like a jigsaw piece finding its place. Her grip tightened and she lifted the blade high, the sword a radiant beacon in the night despite the lack of moonlight, and Arna saw the warrior’s eyes glimmer just as bright.

Then the sword levelled with Arna’s gaze, the sharp point dangerously close to her own eyes, and Neri’s fear was overwhelmed momentarily by a bold valiance.

“Now,” the woman spoke, her voice as smooth as silk and as firm as the steel she expertly held. “What are you?”