They awoke to smoke in the sky above them, a faint drizzle of ashes falling from the sky. The streets were empty. The district was quiet. Raj stood in the doorway, hand resting on the doorframe, looking up at the sky. Ash, pack in hand, stood behind him.

“It never rains.” He said, and pushed past him.

“Hey!”

“Come. Now.”

“Why?”

“Either it’s gone to hell.” He answered. “Or it’s about to.”

Ash’s boots thudded on the cobblestones like an approaching army. Raj struggled to keep up.

“I don’t understand. I mean, I know that’s a given, kinda with my situation and all, but please explain.”

They came to a gate. In the archway stood five Guards in full plate armor, each marked with the insignia of the town guard and holding heater shields and wooden clubs studded with iron nails. At the Hunter’s approach, they hurriedly cleared a path. Raj shot them a confused look as he jogged through the gap Ash made.

This next district was markedly richer; the cobbles were smoother, cleaner, the facades freshly painted, or at the very least painted within the decade. The streets were sparely populated, but the people they came across avoided the pair, their eyes fearful, angry, or averted altogether.

“I gotta bad feeling about this.” Raj muttered.

Ash said nothing, which was a confirmation in and of itself.

They came to a square, the cobbles stained with blood and soot. In the center was a ruined fountain, the stonework smashed and the pool filled with bloody water. The West side of the square consisted of a single building that had once reached into the sky above the district; now it’s smoking skeleton lay in ruins. Ash stopped.

“Shit.” Raj breathed.

“My thoughts exactly.” Ash replied, glaring at the men picking over the wreckage. There were five of them, wearing stained off-white tunics and swords. One by one, they noticed the pair and approached, drawing their swords.

“Looks like we missed two of the freaks.” One spat. Raj stepped back. Ash pulled the dagger from his forearm and slotted it into his quarterstaff, making a spear. With his other hand, he pulled the knife from the small of his back and handed it to Raj, handle first.

“Keep your back to me and your guard up. Don’t die.”

Raj hesitated, then grabbed the weapon.

“Shouldn’t we run?”

Ash shook his head.

“Best kill them now before anyone joins them.”

The knife was heavy and unbalanced in Raj’s hand. He fidgeted with it as the men surrounded them. Ash stood still, the point of the spear resting on the cobblestones, looking at his approaching opponents with an unreadable expression.

“We’ll take the cripple.” One said, him and another splitting off to circle around, facing Raj with evil, crooked smiles.

“I don’t know what happened here.” Raj replied, “But I’ve got no quarrel with you.”

“Then ya shoulda stayed in your world, infiltrator interloper?.”

He swung his blade, targeting the knife in Raj’s grasp with startling speed. It clattered on the cobblestones.

“Ash!” Raj cried, falling backward, scrambling away from a subsequent strike that glanced off the cobbles.

“Bitch!” Ash growled, wrenching his sword from the scabbard on his back, sending it bouncing on the cobbles towards Raj. He grasped it and swung it around just in time to block an overhead swing. Before the man could press his advantage, Raj drew his leg back and planted his foot squarely into the man’s groin, a solid blow that gave him just enough time to scramble to his feet. He swung Ash’s sword in wide arcs, left, then right. He was untrained, his form sloppy, technique nonexistent, but a poorly-executed blow was deadly all the same. The leaf-shaped blade whistled as it cut through the air, forcing his attackers back. He wrenched it back into position with a grunt of exertion. While to Ash the blade was a light and nimble thing, in Raj’s hands it was an oversized claymore that was slow and clumsy in his one arm. He gracelessly battered away another strike, and heard a burbling gasp from somewhere behind him, followed by the rough thud of a corpse hitting the cobblestones. Then another. Raj renewed his attack, a wild horizontal swing from right to left. The man held his sword up, guarding for another swing that never came. Or rather, it never came from that direction. Raj changed the direction of the strike, and instead of swinging again, left to right, as the man had anticipated, he turned the blow into a crushing overhead swing that sunk into the man’s chest, the blade coming to rest just below his clavicle. Raj had seen the man’s eyes widen at the last second, too late to respond. Those eyes stayed open as he fell straight backward, pulling the sword, and Raj, with him. His second attack hesitated a second, watching his friend fall, then charged with a cry.

Ash’s spear skewered the man. He flew back from the force of the blow and landed with a wet thud on the cobbles, where he lay twitching, gasping like a dying fish. Raj turned, just in time to see Ash draw his hammer from his belt. He slapped aside the sword of the final man, then drove it into his forehead, where it stuck fast. The Hunter planted the sole of his boot in the corpse’s stomach and pulled; the hammer peeled the bone of his forehead like the shell of a hardboiled egg.

Raj vomited.

Ash thundered past him, retrieved his spear, his sword, and his knife. Raj’s flicked to him, then to the two corpses in front of him, and he vomited again. He heard the shuffle of leather on leather, and was suddenly pulled to his feet by the Hunter.

“We need to get out of here.” He said, handing Raj one of the men’s swordbelts. Raj stumbled, looked at the sword, then the Hunter. Ash shoved the weapon into his hand. Raj stared at it as he followed him with a hesitating, unsteady gait. Ash placed a hand on his shoulder in a gesture that was probably meant to be reassuring, but failed in every way.

“We’ll talk about it later. But now, we need to get out of here.”

Raj paused, then nodded mutely.

He grabbed the belt. He unfasted the buckle, then pinned the free end of the belt against his body with his vestigial arm and tighter the strap with the other. The swordbelt hung loosely around his hips, but it would do for now. It sung with each step as the pair left the district and then the city. Ash stopped in the dip between two hills, out of sight of the city gates. He turned to Raj.

“We need put some distance on. I’m going to carry you.”

Raj stopped, confused. Before he could respond, Ash reached down, scooped him up, and draped him over his shoulders like a coat. He started to run, his boots thudding against the dirt road.

“I thought you were going to do it bridal style, or something.” Raj grunted. Ash said nothing, taking in deep, controlled breaths as he ran.

Raj stared, eyes unfocused, at the ground speeding past beneath him.

“You’re kinda a fuckin’ asshole. You know that, right?” he whispered.

There was no response.