Heavy. Every blow felt like getting hit by a truck. It was slow. She knew that she could dodge the bombs that wraith was giving her, but it took her all just to keep herself up. She made a mistake, and there’s no one else at fault. This was her choice, but she can’t seem to free herself from her decision. She grinned helplessly.

Her attempts failed. The moment she attempts to the side, her knees would feel weak; at some other times, it was her thighs and sides that would give up. Yet, she refused to surrender. Being pummeled wasn’t enough to make her fall, so she chose to wait and blur the numbers of the punches she took from her mind.

Verdell kept guard up and close to her face. She lost the sensations of her arms and fingers due to the burning pain that she received, but she waited.

Her vision started to darken. The plans that Verdell kept began to crumble even before she could piece them together. She wanted to fall. Ending everything seemed like a good idea. Falling asleep and treating the cold rough ground as her fluffy bed felt nice. She wanted to breathe long. It was next to nothing, but she knew that her posture and her guard was getting dragged down. She wanted to laugh.

“I’m gonna regret this!” Tom shouted.

For a moment, the punches that have been hammering Verdell were stopped. She forced her one eye open. Beyond her reddish film vision lay Tom, screaming before moving in to tackle the wraith. He simply passed through its body like a real ghost, but it was something that he had expected. Tom shifted his weight, turned his body back, and unloaded all of his bullets to tear through their enemy.

The wraith fell back at first, sustaining some holes on his arm, shoulders, and the side of its head, but it pulled itself back. Tom dodged a few blows with ease. He then jumped away with a smile, dodging the wraith’s wide swing once more to grab something at his back pocket. There came the problem. Tom froze, realizing that the vial that he expected to be there was gone and that the wraith he moved away from had already crossed the distance.

Tom’s world was overturned. His body slammed to the ground, but he felt nothing. He coughed. His body had sunk, and when he looked around to see what made it so, he realized a bloodied dent on his chest and the wraith that caused it. The wraith staggered as it regained its flesh, but it didn’t waste any time to aim its next punch to draw more blood.

Tom screamed internally. He smiled at the thought of not getting insured and embraced the death that was coming to him, but it never came. What he heard were a violent snap and a pained grunt. Opening his eyes, Tom saw that Verdell was standing above him. He shied away from looking at her ass, thinking that it would’ve been better if there was no blood trickling down the right sleeve of her coat that pinned her shattered arm into place.

“You s-see,” Verdell let out a pained chuckle. “it sucks when y-your body m-moves on its o-own, right? I never asked for help, but there’s no way I’d l-let the people before me d-die.”

Verdell watched the wraith pull back its fist with her beaten half-closed eyes. She had a plan. Her other hand found its way to her pockets while she waited, but the punch that she anticipated was stopped.

A gunshot rang, and what came next was the image of the wraith’s ripping itself apart from its body. Verdell fell to her knees to take a breath, drawing a tired smile as the wraith in front of her got torn bit by bit.

It was Lt. Higgins. He kept his arms steady and walked forward; he turned his gun into a death bell that reaped flesh and drew ethereal blood for every time it came. He started with its joints to render its body useless, expecting it to regenerate as it did with Tom, but it simply fell to the ground as it tried to remake its body. His stern demeanor remained unchanged, even when he decided to put a bullet in its head.

“That was…” Lt. Higgins’ words trailed when he looked at Tom with worry.

“Heroic?” Tom replied with a proud smile. “As what a person would expect for an investigator to do his or her duty?”

Lt. Higgins sighed and reloaded his gun. “Dumb, it was fucking risky and dumb.”

Verdell grinned. She took the handful of rocks out of her pocket and turned it to ash with a whisper. Her arm twisted back into health at that very second, but her body crashed to the floor. “Thank you for saving me, sirs.” She was left confused as she looked at Lt. Higgins at Tom, smiling at each other like nothing bad just happened.

“Yeah,” Lt. Higgins smiled at Verdell. “we were doing our jobs even if we could regret it. It takes guts to put yourself on the line, so don’t shy away from a helping hand.”

“Did you just sidetrack me?” Rosemarie ranted, snapping her finger next to cause more flames to rise from the nearby plants. They heard a bit of a ruckus inside the building, and the wraith that they had fought stopped regenerating and faded as well. “Just so you know, I—”

Just when they thought that it was done, the wooden building in front of them caught fire and turned to ash in a snap. The flames surged, crackled, swirled, and took form into a gigantic humanoid being that had a torrent of burning destruction beneath its feet.

“Are you kidding me?” Rosemarie groaned.

“That’s… That’s a fire elemental?” Tom let out a tired smile. “Holy shit, we’re gonna die.”

“Yes, that’s a fucking fire elemental, and we’re—”

The fire elemental moved like rain to burn them down, but Verdell pushed herself from the ground and brandished the metal stick caught between her fingers. She whispered, making it crumble to ash as all of their breaths felt short. They experienced a moment of blackness, and when they regained their sights, the flame elemental that antagonized them was gone. It was as though reality just broke and ate it, leaving nothing but the ashen remains of the building behind.

“What just…” Lt. Higgins chuckled and clutched his chest.

Verdell wiped the sweat off her face. “I just altered the oxygen levels for a second… sorry about that, sir.”

Rosemarie coughed at what remained of what they had investigated. Wide-eyed, she turned to look at Verdell and the others with her gaze stopping at Lt. Higgins. “You know what,” she clicked her tongue. “Fuck the nightshift, and I’m tired; I need coffee and watch Aaron cry. So much for a surprise party.”

“Surprise party?” Verdell asked with her face flat on the ground.

Rosemarie held her breath. Her gaze remained glued to Verdell as she tilted her head. Pouting her lips, she looked away and whispered, “I want a massage.”

“Yeah,” Lt. Higgins chuckled. He patted Tom’s forehead and turned to Rosemarie. “We’ll have a long day ahead of us, so…” He pointed them at the people screaming behind the barricades. Winking, he continued, “Let’s plan our lunch together, yeah? You guys should probably head back and do what you need to do.”