“Shit –!”

Shane jumped.

He hadn’t expected to hear anything over the din of the rain, but there it was anyway. Loud and clear and very close, perhaps just a couple of meters away.

He leaned out and looked down the street. It was still early in the evening, so it shouldn’t have been too strange for such noises to be going around. People fooled about in Indie Lane constantly – and besides, there were several bars in the area. It’s not like there’s never been an incident where someone in a drunken stupor had gone around yelling foul obscenities at nothing and no one in particular.

Mercy…

Shane hoped it was anything but that, though. Being in the path of some drunken idiot was the last thing he needed at the moment.

He walked as far as he could get without leaving the safety of the awning.  The left side of the street was mostly clear; he could see a few people making their way towards the opposite direction, but no one was really heading towards him. On the right…

Huh?

A black umbrella tumbled out of one of the nearby alleys and settled sadly on the sidewalk, neglected by its owner.

Shane frowned. Immediately following the umbrella was a brief flash of blue light. Weak, but perceivable at the very least. Shane saw it and he didn’t have the very best eyesight.

Okay…

He waited in anxious anticipation for what would come next. There was an umbrella, then some light… And then what? Was someone going to come flying out of there, up in arms after getting into a fight with some asshole in an alley and getting carried away by the heat of the moment?

“Fuck -!”

A figure clad in all black from their jacket down to their sneakers staggered out onto the street. They were gripping their right arm like it was moments away from popping off at the shoulder, and when they stepped into the light of a nearby streetlamp, their face appeared to be seized by pure terror.

Shane froze.

That hair…

Deep blue and wavy, like the ocean.

“Niko?” He breathed.

The rain drowned him out. He had spoken too quietly.

Niko glanced behind him once and hurriedly clambered over the sidewalk safety rail, wincing and cursing as he did so. When he set foot on the street he tried to run, but he only got about halfway across the road before he collapsed to his knees in what seemed to be complete agony.

As if the situation wasn’t terrible enough, Shane could hear the roar of a car engine speeding up the street. He glanced behind him and saw a pair of yellow headlights quickly coming closer, cutting through the thin haze of fog that was slowly swallowing the buildings and trees of Indie Lane.

“Niko!” Shane screamed in a panic.

He threw himself out onto the street in a full-tilt run.

His sneakers slipped on rain-soaked asphalt. He caught himself with one hand before he could bang his head against a curb, stifling a blood-curdling scream of frustration and pushing himself to keep going. Every single hair on his body likely would have been standing on end if it wasn’t being weighed down by rain so cold and heavy that it was like getting pelted with water balloons on all sides.

Keep going!

Niko dug his nails into the ground, gritting his teeth and trying to force himself to move.

A dull ache was radiating outward from his chest, but in his ribs was an excruciating stabbing sensation that seemed to hit a terrible crescendo every time he took a shaky breath. Every inhale felt like he was being forcefully jabbed by the rubber eraser of a pencil; every exhale seemed to trigger a radiating effect where the pain spread out from the left side of his ribs and infected everything else in its radius. His right ribs, his lungs, his palpitating heart… Something must be broken in there. He just wasn’t sure what it was.

“Niko!”

Shane threw himself between Niko and the path of the oncoming car. It blared its horn in surprise, swerving hard to the left and almost hitting the concrete barrier that bisected the road.

“Jerk!” Shane yelled.

“S… Shane?” 

He turned on his heels and knelt down. He banged his knees against the road in his haste, but he hardly felt it. He was more concerned with helping Niko off the ground.

Niko felt a splash of warmth circling around his arm. It went as quickly as it came, overwhelmed by freezing winds and pouring rain – though the firm grip stayed, tugging incessantly and refusing to let go even as the grip struggled to maintain its hold.

“Shane,” he repeated. He still wasn’t all that sure,

“Yeah.” Shane nodded.

He helped Niko to his feet, keeping a steady grip on his arm in case he threatened to topple over a second time.

“Thanks,” he mumbled hoarsely.

“Are you okay? Can you walk?”

“I –”

I’m fine, he wanted to say. I can, he wanted to follow up.

He was only just entertaining the intent to move when the pain in his ribs threw a terrible fit. The sudden spike in intensity – like whoever was jabbing him had gotten frustrated and had switched to prodding him with the ferrule on an umbrella instead of a small pencil – knocked the wind out of him and blacked out his vision. He couldn’t do anything but stagger.

“Hey!” Shane yelped, struggling to keep his balance as Niko’s weight threatened to overwhelm him. (He was much heavier than he looked.)

“Sorry…”

What are you apologizing for? Shane wanted to ask.

Instead, he reached up to loop one of Niko’s arms around her shoulders to lend a little bit more stability to them both. 

“Come on!”

“Where are we going…?” Niko sounded wildly bewildered.

“Back to Eden!”

Anywhere but here.

As Niko struggled to catch his breath, Shane turned to try and catch sight of whatever had attacked him. He hadn’t seen it earlier because his gaze had been stuck on Niko the entire time, but now…

A thin white fog was descending from the sky, lowering visibility to the point where even the nearest building seemed to be reduced to a wavering ghost. It didn’t help that several streetlights along that block were totally busted. Shane squinted, struggling to get a visual of their surroundings.

There was the storefront that he had been under, his backpack lying forgotten on the street in front of the store window. He could see Niko’s black umbrella a couple of paces from there, and after that –

It took every single ounce of energy that Niko had left just to pull Shane back. Stars exploded in his vision as the pain ripped through his body, biting into his arms and legs like starving beasts ready to rend muscle from bone. He managed to wrench Shane back several steps, but the lumbering figure was too close.

"What -!" Shane yelped.

He couldn't tell what the creature standing above them was, but he knew it was tall. It stood at roughly eight or nine feet, swaying violently from side to side under the unrelenting assault of the rain. It was all black from head to toe except for the two glowing red spheres staring down at them from where its face should have been.

A full-body chill seized Shane from head to toe.

It swiped one of its long, gangly arms out in an arc too wide to fully avoid. Niko pushed Shane further back and stepped forward to block the blow with one arm. There were jagged pieces of what looked like bleached bone sticking out from the end of the creature's limb, and they carved four gaping wounds into his right forearm.

Shit -!

The figure lurched forward, gearing up for another swing. Niko gritted his teeth and held his hand out at his side, palm facing down and fingers splayed. Blood trickled from his wounds and washed away with the rain, a thin stream of red disappearing in the downhill flood that was threatening to sweep him away too.

"Calla," he spoke.

The summoning sygils tattooed on his arm flickered to life with a burst of gentle blue light, but it was faint and uncertain, going in and out as it struggled to produce an arrow in his hand.

Niko swallowed hard. Amidst the pain that had seized most of his body was a cold spot, like ice pressing against the inside of his chest, an emptiness like hunger setting in at a rapid pace. It was numbing, almost more powerful than the pain. He stared at the space along his wrist where a black jade bracelet should have been sitting, trying to figure out if he had lost it in the rain or if he had completely forgotten to put it on to begin with.

Shane's eyes widened. Did he have any mana left? The light at his fingertips was barely even there. What was he hoping to do?

With one free hand, Shane grabbed the silver cord around his neck and pulled it off. Heat surged through his body, starting from the small of his back and flowing outwards to his hands and down to his feet like lahar. He swallowed hard and bit back the urge to put the cord back around his neck.

He reached up and held fast onto the arm Niko had around Shane's neck. He redirected the heat flow into a single stream - one leading to Niko himself. The sensation was excruciating, like lightning shooting from one end of his body to another.

But Niko's spellcasting was growing just a little brighter, just a little more vibrant. So the pain was fine. (Kind of.)

"What -" Niko shot him a glance from the corners of his eyes.

The creature threw its other arm forward. Shane twisted their positions around to take the blow, making sure to hold his ground as the bone fragments slashed at the back of his jacket and drew blood. He gritted his teeth and continued the stream of mana, refusing to be distracted even as he felt warm blood soaking into his shirt.

"Shane!" Niko yelped. It sounded like he was in an even worse panic than before. His casting arm faltered, the light almost completely dying out.

"Throw whatever spell you're thinking of!" Shane yelled back.

Niko gritted his teeth and fixed his stance. The blue light flickered back to life, brighter and more vibrant now than ever.

The faintest sensation of solid wood tickled at his palm. Niko closed his fingers around it and held fast. As the creature tilted forward, carried by the momentum of its swinging arm, Niko pooled all of his strength into his injured arm and plunged his arrow straight into one of its eyes.

The red light went out instantaneously. The steel tip of his arrow went in and it kept going until Niko's hand was practically only centimeters away from touching the creature's face. He pulled away in shock.

If the creature could feel pain, it didn't show any sign of it. It staggered backwards, reeling from the hit.

Niko drew a small spiral through the air and cut a line right through it. The gale sigil burned a bright, eye-burning white before exploding forward.

The violent gust of wind knocked the creature back over the rail, sending it sliding back into the alley it had emerged from. Blades of wind tore through its melting flesh, leaving deep gouges along its arms and legs that left it unable to stand. The arrow shaft still sticking out of its eye socket snapped clean in half, and the splinters and bits of wood were swept away by the flood of rainwater.

"Gods on earth," Niko breathed.

"That's one hell of a spell," Shane breathed, glancing backwards as he shoved his necklace in the pocket of his jeans.

That wasn't me, Niko wanted to say. That meant to be just a small gust of wind that would gently nudge it back and give them enough time to make a run for it. Whatever it was that had amplified that spell was Shane's doing, not his.

"Come on, let's go!" He said instead.

Shane stared at the collapsed figure of the creature for just a little bit longer. For a moment, Niko was almost sure that he was going to walk over and start poking and prodding at it. But thankfully, he just slung Niko's arm back over his shoulder with a bit of a pained hiss, and the two of them started walking back up Indie Lane.