"What is it?" Noonin hissed.

"The thing from the bunker, but more."

"More? How can you tell? Wait, what does that even mean? More how?"

"I- I don't know! Is that important right now? You didn't see this thing, it was-"

"Dasha." Noonin reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder. "Dasha, deep breaths. I believe you. How do we get away?"

"I don't know." 

Fire.

Dasha startled, glancing around. A voice that was not a voice, more like a thought hovering right outside her ear. For a moment, her eyes were as glassy as a days-old dead fish.

"Dasha? Dasha what is it? Are you unwell?"

She turned to see Noonin staring at her, his yellow eyes round with concern.

"I... I'll explain later. Or try to. Do you still have your broken radio?"

"Yes. What are we going to do?"

Dasha set Fia down as Noonin pulled the device out of his pocket.

"You are taking Fia and continuing onwards. I will catch up." Her voice held a detached authority to it, one that seemed alien to her.

"What?" Noonin wasn't sure he'd heard correctly. Since when did Dasha speak with such command?

"No!" This last cry came from Fia, her eyes growing watery again.

Dasha winced. Avar children needed to be around adult Avar near constantly. It was bad for their mental health otherwise. 

She knelt beside the girl.

"Listen to me, the both of you now. I will be coming back from this. I do have a plan. But I need both of you to go, now."

Fia tackled her, squeezing her arms around the older Avar's chest. Dasha immediately felt the settling warmth of healing mage craft echo through her bones, and gently pulled the child away, forcing her to stop.

"Sweetling, you can't keep doing that. It's probably not healthy for ya, okay? Now go with Noonin."

Dasha looked up at her friend, silently pleading with him to understand.

Noonin sighed. He didn’t, not really. But he didn't have to understand. He just had to trust Dasha.

"Come on, sassana. Dasha's a clever one, she can handle herself."

He reached out, passing over his radio, before offering Fia his hand.

After a moment of glancing between the two adults, she slid her tiny, claw-tipped fingers into his scaley fist.

The pair left quickly after that. Dasha did not watch them go, instead fiddling with the broken device. She didn't have much time. Already, the blot of darkness had grown on the horizon, spreading from the size of her thumb to the size of her hand. Dasha's skin crawled from the phantom sounds of scuttling. Where was all this coming from? She had no way to know any of it.

Much as she was loath to admit it, Fia's healing had helped. Her hands were not as sore anymore, although she still had several burns and the melted piece of machinery to contend with. She needed her fingers to work properly for this. 

Dasha sat on the ground, cracking parts of the radio, twisting together wires, and rearranging the components. Mechanics were really more Noonin's field, but she had listened to enough of his passionately gushing lectures to pick up a thing or two. This should be simple enough. She just needed to do what she did before, create a spark, but have it be delayed. Even a few seconds would be long enough. 

Dasha stopped for a moment, searching the ground for a loose pebble. Spotting one of an appropriate size, she scooped it up and chucked it as hard as she could, trying to gauge how far she could accurately throw anything at the moment.

It was a significantly shorter distance than she would have liked.

The blot was as large as her head now. 

Dasha went back to the radio. She needed a way to get further from the monsters when she dropped her little fire starter onto their brood. If only she still had use of her wings!

Dasha looked around. She could scramble up the mountainside a bit more. There was a steep cliff that they had been going around. But would the monsters still come close enough for her to throw it?

She had to take that chance. Tucking the radio into her pocket, she scrambled for the cliff.

Dasha was no stranger to heights, or to climbing. The Avar made their homes in the high places, after all, their eyries and roosts in the valley's city and villages, and their temporary perches out on the lower reaches of the mountains that cradled and protected the valley. But with her injuries, and without her wings...

If she fell, that could spell the end of her. Her injuries would be too great to recover from, certainly not enough to travel back home with the others. And yet, she felt more sad than afraid. The weight of her loss hitting her again. 

Krell was never coming home. It was up to her to make sure that Noonin and Fia did. Gritting her teeth, she dug her claws into the rocky cliffside, forcing her way higher. Her aching body screamed in protest. Her mind was numbly resigned. She was so so tired. 

She kept going. 

Dasha glanced backwards, sweat trickling down her brow and stinging her eyes. Her vision blurred as she tried to blink it away. The blot had grown ten times its size. Should she try to climb higher? Her shaking limbs protested as she clung to the crevices. No. She still needed enough strength to throw the device. This was all a slim enough chance as it was. Dasha carefully turned herself outwards, heart racing as she felt her fingers slip with every motion. She painstakingly arranged herself between a few narrow dents and ledges that would allow her to keep at least one of her hands free. She needed as much of an advantage as she could give to herself.

"Strange mystery voice that's been nudging me around, I sure hope ya know what you're doing." She sighed, a downslurred whistle punctuating her words as they were swallowed by the night.

The blot of monsters was starting to turn. They were going to avoid going after her in favor of chasing Noonin and Fia instead.

Admittedly, the more rational part of Dasha's brain stopped working at that particular realization. In her defense, however, it really had been a long day. Tensing herself up like a coiled metal spring, she kicked off, leaping out and away from the cliff. She soared forwards, managing to give herself several less feet of distance to cover before she had to toss the radio in midair. 

To her credit, she truly had no intention of dying this time. Dasha spread her scarred and stinging wings like a parachute, praying that at least her mostly undamaged right one and whatever remained of her left would still be enough to slow her fall. Dasha found herself almost hopeful when she was jolted upwards, then she felt her wing collapse the wrong way. She couldn't keep from crying out in pain.

She was falling too quickly.  

A great flash of light caught her attention, as the radio's spark ignited the supernatural darkness. It evaporated. Time seemed to slow as Dasha hung suspended in mid-air, watching the monsters' cover blow away. The darkness was gone. Dasha saw the writhing horde of glossy furred monsters, all tangled together with their many scuttling limbs. They heaved forward as one body and one mind, guided by some unseen sense that told them where to aim themselves.

In those few seconds, Dasha was overwhelmed. Their enemy was insurmountable, what good would blowing away their cloak of shadows do? 

Then, the holes began to appear.

Like flame catching on paper, bright moonlight began to lick at the edges of the monsters with tongues of white fire. Growing in intensity, the false flames burnt through the monsters as they let out their horrible childlike screams. The massive creatures started to fall apart, writhing and squirming amongst their fellows. Even if they had fully intended to kill them all, Dasha could not help but feel some pity for their awful end. 

But they were dangerous creatures that only knew how to spread and devour. If they were intelligent, they would be murderers. If they were mindless, an unchecked force of nature.

Krell. Noonin's arm. Fia's mom. Dasha's wings.

It was incredible, how quickly all her thoughts could fly through her head, in those few seconds from falling off the cliff and hitting the ground. But her mind could not stretch the time out to infinity. She had to reach an end eventually.

A million thoughts echoing through her head and the screams of the dying monsters ringing in her ears, those were the last things that Dasha heard before she struck the rough ground of the mountain tundra. Then everything melted into pinpricks of pure starlight, swallowed by an all consuming darkness as thick as the monsters' shadowy cloak.