Moth leaned against a wall as the world slowly stopped spinning.  The left sleeve of his shirt was gone, probably ripped off by Vincent when he worked his magic on the holes in his arm.  Apparently he had only been out for a few minutes, though he was dizzy and groggy and struggling to stand as though it had been much longer.  He kept thinking about the dream he had, about the eyes that burned into his memory and made him question everything he had seen that day.  What was his mind trying to tell him?  What role did he play in all of this?

His stomach rumbled.  When would he find something to eat?

Hopefully soon.  Moth shouldered himself off the wall onto his own two feet.  His favorite shoes, his semi-formal brown felt saddle shoes, were scuffed to hell and back.  All the running, all the terror and blind corners and crazed robots and attacking monstrosities had left his clothes in pieces.  A voice had mentioned they were passing through an armory.  In the gloom of the darkened room between the bottom of the stairwell and the door to the outside, he could make out riot gear lining the metal shelves spaced along the floor.  Armor, helmets, boots, shields...

Moth breathed out sharply and the world beyond that day came back to him.  A memory, when he was ten.  The side of his face pressed to the pavement, the roar of a crowd and heavy boots stomping the ground around him.  Cacophonic screaming as the dark and stifling heat closed around him.  Then arms, reaching.  A dozen of them, grabbing him and pulling him up into the air and the light...

Moth shuddered.  He needed better shoes, and the boots were his only option.  He lifted a small plastic-like shield the size of a buckler and held it at arm's length.  It was incredibly light.  It curved slightly, a ring of seven interlocking hexagons tinted a light orange.  Moth's favorite color.  In the dim outside light that filtered in, he got a better look at his arm.  The skin where Vincent's sigil had pulled the wound closed was thick and bunched together like a bad scar.  Moth's arm was incredibly sore, but he felt no sharp pain.  He thought he could see something there, some...black lines in the creases of his forearm.  Maybe it was a trick of the low light.

The others in the group that remained wandered around him.  The one the robot had called Vince, Katrina, Maria (thankfully unharmed)...some muscley guy, Lance or something...a worker from on top the Wall...and that was it.  That was all that was left of the ones who stuffed themselves into the trolley on top of the Wall just that morning, so long ago.  Moth breathed out, shaking.  There was a portal to gods-knew-where, just outside.  He slid the shield onto his left arm, his bad arm, and stuffed a pair of combat boots under his right and stepped through the door to the outer landing.

A hot wind hit him, making his eyes water and his hair whip around his face.  The crash of the Grit's assault on the outside of the Wall was much clearer here, the breeze pulsing in time with the resonant [b]BOOM[/b]s every few seconds.  Moth risked a glance at the sky.  The line across the city was angled, but still perfectly split between night and day.  All the stories of the Grit mentioned their ability with wild magics, but Moth had never imagined something so powerful could actually exist.  Vincent and Katrina were already outside, standing before a swirling circle of rainbow-colored liquid metal on one wall.

[quote=@drewccapp]
"Everyone else go first, I'll make sure that the sigil stays operating."
[/quote]
Permanent portals in the city were plugged directly into the Ether and looked like simple doorways into other rooms.  The accounting firm Moth interned at used a lot of them to move about Periphery.  Sometimes those other rooms were entirely out of proportion to the one Moth would be standing in, but after feeling his stomach turn a few times, he had gotten used to it.  Temporary portals used a bit of wild magic, and in turn looked like swirling death machines that would rip off one's flesh and churn one's body into a pile of silvery goo.  Moth groaned quietly.

Hopefully wherever they were going would have lunch.