"I'll take the back alley. Best to cover all ways in and out. Rose and Iris, it's up to you where you go. We could split evenly to both paths, unless you got some tricks or ideas up your sleeve. And I assume Fluke will make sure to report our deaths if anything goes wonky."

Fluke threw out an enthusiastic thumbs-up, jumped backward and perched like a cat on top of the weapons chest, clicking and wiggling the drone controller like the mission was a video game.

The little flying sphere glimmered and flashed and zoomed over the crowd at breakneck pace, perhaps out of Cedar's sight for awhile, zigzagging among the tents and banners and throngs of people. The drone waited for him at the entrance to a narrow alley between the potter's workshop and the florist, bouncing up and down in midair like an impatient hummingbird.

As soon as Cedar approached the alley (which was more of a gap between buildings) the drone sped off through the dark narrow space.

There was barely enough room here for Cedar to walk without turning sideways. The stucco walls dripped with old inexplicable stains, the ground under his feet had probably been recently used as a urinal and a compost site, and-- the deeper he went into the seemingly endless corridor --there was a burning, ever-present smell of rotten eggs.

Something moved behind him.

Cedar would see, in the corner of his mask's vision, a flicker of a shadow rippling along the wall beside him-- but then it was gone. Or it could've been a trick of the dim light, an illusion in the dank dripping stains.

Just ahead, an armadillo wiggled in the middle of the narrow aisle, snuffling and digging in the rancid dirt.

The drone continued onward, far ahead toward a brighter light at the end.

"It's safe to say I'll blend in best here, and Listener, I'm guessing you will too?" she asked. "How about you, Iris? Which path is it gonna be, marketplace, alleyway, or your own?"

"WHY DON'T YOU JUST SHUT UP, OLD MAN?" A younger man with a scraggled goatee pointed up at Ruskali with a brown hand full of rings and bracelets. "It's always the same drivel: the world's going to end, the sky'll catch fire, the same story day after day and it never HAPPENS, does it? When will you get a clue, ya lunatic?"

Ruskali raised his bearded chin and puffed his chest. "People like you-- nonbelievers! --will be the first to repent when the end is upon us--"

"I know what you're really doing!" the goatee-man sneered with a smirk. "Come down here to earth with the rest of us, give up, and accept that NOTHING goes on forever. Everything's not ending. Just one thing's ended--"

"YOU KNOW NOTHING!" Ruskali howled with a spray of spittle, his eyes bugged and wild. "THE PREMONITIONS FORETELL--"

"Keep your trauma to yourself." Goatee-man turned his back on Ruskali, paid for a handful of wildflowers, and strode off toward the main street.

Ruskali wheezed as if he'd been punched. He dropped weakly to sit on the stairs, hunched with his head bowed low.

"I got the gist of it," she assured her fellow recruits with easy confidence. "Nobody's going to be able to tell me apart, and if there's trouble I'll have the birds-eye view. So no need for anyone to report any deaths or anything."

The bike cache was brimming with hoverbikes and folding gliders, left behind while their owners perused the wares of market day. The passersby left them alone-- save for the occasional glance that was impressed or envious or appraising --out of unspoken respect for the high fliers that lived on the wind.

The only disturbance was a little girl who'd dragged a hoverbike away from the wall and sobbed and choked and gurgled shaking, teary breaths while she squeezed the handles and kicked the engine and jumped up and down on the seat hoping to make it go.

"Come on..." she wailed. "Go up! Come on! Don't do this to me!" She was shaking, she couldn't see through her streaming tears.

High above, atop the building against which the other hoverbikes leaned, there was smoke.

Sickly blue smoke wisped swirling into the sky, from something burning atop the roof. It began to billow and spark with flying red embers, deeper and darker as the moments passed, shifting color from blue to heinous, swirling, unnatural violet that flashed and glowed within.

No one had noticed it. Not yet.

Listener felt impressed at just how successful her venture turned out to be. She also felt very guilty over the hurtful words exchanged as a result of it. She could see why people did not like Ruskali's ravings and "premonitions". Everyone was living a mostly peaceful life of luxury. She could also understand why Ruskali was so panicked and alert. Although, she would not have gone the route he did with expressing those concerns.

She started slipping through the crowd on the way to the alleyway. She considered the situation as she did. She knew all to well how things could go from great to horrifying all too fast. She was responsible for such an instance. If Archer was one of the non-believers, she definitely had the foresight at least to prepare in the instance she was wrong. Listener really hoped that things stayed good.

As Listener gained some distance from Ruskali, she looked back toward the defeated looking man, and she stepped out of the way to stop and take a look at the man. From what she could see, Ruskali was just a man that loved his people. Love them so much that he was willing to be ostracized. How he was housing a Nox and why was confusing for her.

Listener took a deep breath before turning back toward the alleyway she was heading to. "Alright, guys I'm almost there. Is it really as bad as was said?"

The drone was fast, sometimes almost too fast, but Cedar managed to keep track of it. It led him to an alley that was altogether too narrow and too filthy, but Cedar knew better than to let that hinder him from doing his job. He moved as quietly as he could through the alley, making hidden faces whenever his hand brushed against some unknown substance or he smelled something particularly foul.

"I don't expect anyone to actually die," he whispered into the earpiece. "It's just a little joke, I guess. In any case -"

From the corner of his eyes, something moved. The shape was vague, but it came from something unknown, and that alone made it potentially threatening. One hand almost instinctively went for his weapon before he decided against it - in a city like this, it wasn't best to pull your weapon on every tension-inducing shadow. But what, then, to do?

After a second, he started talking again. "Fluke - if the path ahead looks safe enough, can the drone pass over and check behind me? I can find my way through the alley, but I don't want to end up caught here. I think I saw something and I think we should play it safe, y'know?"

Steel Rose gave Iris the thumbs up. "Seems like we've got this!" she said, trying to sound as certain as possible as she dug a sheath from the chest, attached it to her belt and put the bladed gun into it. "Alright, let's get going!"

She followed Listener into the crowd. As important as this mission was, she couldn't help looking over her shoulder at Ruskali, catching some of of the conversation between him and a shopper. She bit her lip, unease growing as his zeal burned out and he sank to the stairs. Despite her joking about his ramblings earlier, she wondered what his story was. Grief changed people. He was like her in a way, motivated by it to protect society, even if it meant slipping into its margins.

For all she knew, he could have lost someone, just as she had. And now, she thought as her stomach sank, he was about to lose his pet. Grimacing, she looked away, her focus once again on Listener and the task ahead. As tough as things would be, she and the other new Zephyrs would ultimately help people... right?

Cedar's voice in the earpiece snapped her back to the present. "If you need us," she reassured him in her usual chirp, "we're not far behind, just let us know!"

"Alright, guys I'm almost there. Is it really as bad as was said?"

"Worse, yep!" Fluke chirped with a savage grin that they could all somehow hear. "Way worse. why's it taking so long for you to get to the alley? Cedar's been there for hours now. You got a wooden leg? Maybe you're gonna let us do all the dirty work and take the credit."

He said this while he sat safely upon Archer's weapon chest, navigating the drone as if it were a video game.

What happened to getting at the place from both sides? Is the plan changed? Sounds like the plan changed. Was there a plan? Someone tell me the plan! Unless I'm making the plan, in which case let's set it all on fire, yeah?"

"If you need us," she reassured him in her usual chirp, "we're not far behind, just let us know!"

"Hey, how about a little reconnaissance, ah?" Fluke hollered, swinging his feet in the air. "Looks like Ruskali's kinda fed up with yelling at everybody right now, he might head home and he can't do that until we're done. Or else maybe he knows something he hasn't shouted to everyone in a ten-mile radius. Or help Listener with her wooden leg! Where'd Iris go?! She got eaten I bet. All ten feet of her. Whoever's backing up Cedar better get your guns out. Who's going around the other way?!"

"Fluke - if the path ahead looks safe enough, can the drone pass over and check behind me? I can find my way through the alley, but I don't want to end up caught here. I think I saw something and I think we should play it safe, y'know?"

"You're all alone, Cedar," said Fluke. "Except for that Nox behind ya. It's a juicy one-- oh, nope, there it went. That's not your shadow, Ced."

A flickering darkness scraped the wall beside Cedar, shaped vaguely like his shoulders and limbs but just wrong enough to catch the eye.

The shadow opened bright white eyes. Jagged teeth sharpened on the brick wall.

Meanwhile, the armadillo had found something buried beneath the soil in the alley: a shine of a silver bracelet, still attached to a wrist, buried just below the dirt.

The Nox, with a skittering hiss, lunged at the armadillo.

Listener giggled at Fluke's attitude. She was reminded of a boy she played with in her travels with her parents. He was rude just like Fluke, but it was because he couldn't be honest with his feelings. "Oh, I'm not that far." She kept a lighthearted and playful tone.

"Hey, how about a little reconnaissance, ah?" Fluke hollered, swinging his feet in the air. "Looks like Ruskali's kinda fed up with yelling at everybody right now, he might head home and he can't do that until we're done. Or else maybe he knows something he hasn't shouted to everyone in a ten-mile radius. Or help Listener with her wooden leg! Where'd Iris go?! She got eaten I bet. All ten feet of her. Whoever's backing up Cedar better get your guns out. Who's going around the other way?!"

"Y'know," Listener commented. "Fluke, you really need to step up your smack talk game. Unless you're trying to be cute. It's okay though, I'll play with good ol' Ruski. You can keep up your color commentary. You're great at it."

She was totally fine with taking jabs back at Fluke with a playful tone. She got herself into a position to intercept Ruskalii. She already had a few ideas on how to interact with the sad madman.

Cedar was almost too invested in Fluke's little jabs that the true meaning of the last part he said almost went unnoticed. Cedar took another step forward, did a strange, jerky double-take step as he realized what Fluke said, and whirled around to face the Nox (though his shoulders scraped against the narrow alley walls). It took him a second to see it - he almost mistook it for a shadow until its eyes opened.

"I've got eyes on the Nox," Cedar said, the tension in his voice subtly suppressed. "It's going for an armadillo, so I'm going to take a jab. I'm... not sure if I'll need backup or if Ruskali has anymore around, though."

As he spoke, he drew his shortened halberd from his back. For a second the spike on the rear end of the head poked him in the back and he stifled a yelp. Well, it was as good a time as any to do some on-the-job weapons training.

He almost hesitated as Archer's words on his weapon earlier came back to him - 'That one's not much against the Nox alone, but horrors should be terrified of ya.' Well, it wasn't a horror yet, but maybe he could lightly wound it or something. He wasn't certain if Nox really worked like that or how much the weapon did to Nox alone, but surely it wouldn't hurt to at least try it out. Cedar readied himself, gripping his weapon hard, then jabbed forward with the spear head of his weapon, trying to intercept the Nox on its path towards the armadillo while also keeping his distance.

With a strained chuckle, Rose rolled her eyes at Fluke's comments. At least he was in good spirits, and maybe this was his idea of lightening the mood - even if it might not be everyone else's. "Don't ya worry, we're heading round the other way," she reassured him. She hoped Listener was going along with that plan, anyway. "We're just close by enough that we can reach each other quickly if we have to..."

At Fluke's next words, and the trace of tension in Cedar's response, Rose's grin vanished. It sounded like they did indeed have to. Without hesitation, she rushed towards the alleyway. "Scratch that, Fluke, change of plan," she announced. "It's ok Cedar, backup's on its way!"

Ignoring the smell, she hurried down the alleyway as fast as the narrow space would allow. It wasn't long until the grey-cloaked figure came into view, his new halberd pointed at a moving shadow. Right away, Rose drew Thorn. "Heads up!" Remembering Archer's warning about bright lights, she narrowed her eyes and pressed the trigger. An energy bullet illuminated the space like lightning as it shot past the Nox, denting the wall instead.

"Oops..." She gave a hidden grimace. If nothing else, hopefully she'd distracted the Nox.

"Only six and a half," came the groan back over the earpiece, followed by a muffled, rattling cough. It sounded as though Iris had picked up a flew in the ten minutes since she'd gone radio silent, and the thin air from her altitude - a perch among the birds, where you could possibly make out one gargantuan masked rider among many if you squinted - only made her tiny wheeze a little more perilous. "Nah, something had to try and roast me first. If anyone has an apple handy though, I'd be happy to put it in my mouth, I'm dying to take this mask off."

Another small wheeze.

"Rose, it seems like you and Cedar are having fun on the ground! Good for you guys, but I went through a lot of trouble to get up here, and I'm gonna need a few minutes to catch my breath. Meantime, I have eyes on Ruskali. I'm gonna divert to keep an eye on him. If he looks like he's getting too close to home I'll body block him, he doesn't look like much."

"Y'know," Listener commented. "Fluke, you really need to step up your smack talk game. Unless you're trying to be cute. It's okay though, I'll play with good ol' Ruski. You can keep up your color commentary. You're great at it."

"Oh, I'm adorable, but it's nothing to do with smack." Fluke laid back on top of the weapons chest, bouncing a leg on his knee, twiddling with the controls of the drone. "Make sure you don't catch ol' Ruski's crazy, I'm not liable for your work-related accidents, whatever happens."

On the steps overlooking the market, Ruskali sat with his arms on his knees, his head bowed, rocking back and forth and muttering to himself between intermittent sobs. His coarse hands clenched and released, he breathed in the sugary-sour smells that wafted over the colorful crowd, and he pushed himself to his feet.

With a sag of his shoulders, Ruskali quietly descended the stairs. He kept his unfocused eyes on his feet, mumbling incomprehensibly, and somehow still managed not to bump into anyone on his way toward the main street, the long way home.

As he trudged closer to Listener, the smell became pungent. Ruskali reeked of body odor, but also a powerful stench of sage and cinnamon, as if he'd bathed in incense. This, too, ensured that the crowd gave him a wide berth as he walked.

"I try, they don't listen," he murmured. "No one hears. I'm sorry, my dear, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." He stopped when he caught a glimpse of Listener's mask and he peered sharply at her, his grizzled beard pulled in a frown. He studied her a moment, shifting back and forth on his feet. "You have a mark on you," he told her factually, as if he were reading words that were written on her forehead. "The witch lies. You will die in three days."

"I've got eyes on the Nox," Cedar said, the tension in his voice subtly suppressed. "It's going for an armadillo, so I'm going to take a jab. I'm... not sure if I'll need backup or if Ruskali has anymore around, though." ... Cedar readied himself, gripping his weapon hard, then jabbed forward with the spear head of his weapon, trying to intercept the Nox on its path towards the armadillo while also keeping his distance.

"Okay, well, you take a jab, Ced, I'm sure the Nox will sit 'n wait for ya to finish explaining what yer gonna do before you do it. They're friendly like that." Fluke grinned toothily while the drone whirred round and round like a halo over Cedar's head, which did absolutely nothing to help.

The spear sliced the air directly in the Nox's path-- a clean hit! --but Cedar's blade passed right through with only a shimmer of light to show for it. The Nox, however, noticed: It twisted and writhed like a smear of black paint, then wrapped itself around Cedar's spear, lunged along the shaft and swallowed Cedar's hand in jagged jaws.

Nothing pierced Cedar's skin-- the Nox had no real teeth to bite with --but immediately his hand would feel frozen and numb. His fingers rapidly turned blue and purple, as if his hand were submerged in ice water.

"Heads up!" Remembering Archer's warning about bright lights, she narrowed her eyes and pressed the trigger. An energy bullet illuminated the space like lightning as it shot past the Nox, denting the wall instead.

The bullet ricocheted and exploded in a burst of white-bright light that blinded the alley (and Cedar, too, if he failed to close his eyes at Rose's warning). With a high-pitched screech, the Nox let go of Cedar's hand and flung through the air, away from the light--

--and smacked like putty into Rose's mask.

The Nox immediately wrapped itself around Rose's head and clung to her mask like black oily taffy, shifting and writhing and hissing while it blocked the holes in her mask, rendering her not only unable to see but with a finite amount of air to breathe inside the mask.

The Nox clung to Rose like a cat clinging to its mother, glaring in Cedar's direction as if he were responsible for the bright scary flash of light.

"Rose, it seems like you and Cedar are having fun on the ground! Good for you guys, but I went through a lot of trouble to get up here, and I'm gonna need a few minutes to catch my breath. Meantime, I have eyes on Ruskali. I'm gonna divert to keep an eye on him. If he looks like he's getting too close to home I'll body block him, he doesn't look like much."

From her perch high above, Iris could see everything: Ruskali's confrontation with Listener. Rose and Cedar messing with a Nox in a narrow alley. Fluke wiggling his feet in the air while he mashed buttons on his controller. The ebb and flow of the clueless crowd that moved and flowed like the tide, full of every color of the rainbow, guided by roots and leaves.

And she could see the source of the sickly blue smoke: an oil barrel burned atop an abandoned building whose windows had long ago burst with twisting trunks and scrapes of ragged branches. The roof was cracked from the pressure of the roots beneath; the thin leafless branches (possibly dead) clattered in the breeze, stuck like pins high above the rooftop. The building had been abandoned for years at least.

But beside the blue-burning barrel stood a figure shrouded in a heavy wrap of orange cloth. The unidentified person's face was hidden deep inside the bright hood, another wrap of cloth held tight around their nose and mouth against the stench of the smoke.

The hooded figure raised their head and looked directly at Iris with bright, glowing blue eyes.

From her perch, if she looked close enough at the distant sky beyond the mountain, Iris might see a strange dark, shimmering cloud shifting like starlings in the sky.

Slowly, it was coming closer.

Listener did not react to Fluke's response at all. She was her own kind of crazy, and she had her fun with it. As Ruskalii approached she could see he was no evil man. Just one in great pain. His sudden statement caught her off guard, and she almost went on the defensive in response. She was pretty certain that he completely believed what he stated. That kind of conviction if paired with the right kind of person could be a true leader for good or evil.

She giggled at that thought. "So, I have three days to live! I wonder what I can do with that kind of freedom? Well, there are a lot of ways to live. Just as many as there are to die. I wonder, how do you want to live? How do you want to die?" She then shifted her tone from playful to serious. "I can tell you have a great amount of love for your people. After all, what kind of person is willing to commit social suicide for their peers? We live in a stable time. Who wants to hear a message of doom? Would you listen to your own message in the way you've delivered it today?"

Listener remembered a time when her mother told her never to talk philosophy with a madman, and yet here she was. A smile curled up her lip as she remembered at the same time she never truly listened to her parents. She always moved to the beat of her own drum.

Cedar flinched as his halberd rebounded off the ground, passing through the Nox like thin air. It caught him off guard enough that he didn't move away from the Nox, and before he knew it, it was on his hand. There was pain, the type that comes with cold. Dimly in the background he was aware of someone shouting something, but he focused too much on his hand, moving to try to get it off somehow -

And suddenly he saw brightness, enough to temporarily blind him. He staggered back with closed eyes, though on a more optimistic note, his hand seemed to be doing better.

He looked up to see Steel Rose's face (mask, at least), or more accurately, the Nox clinging to it. Cedar went still for a second. In that second, he tallied his mistakes. Let the Nox catch him off guard, ignored an important warning, and let his teammate come under fire. He felt something close to shame, but brushed it off. Focus. Gotta get it off.

Something about Fluke's chatter rubbed him the wrong way this time. "Less chat, Fluke. More work. That drone of yours have anything more than just eyes, or do I have to pull your weight for you?" Cedar's tone was noticeably less controlled than it was before - terse, audibly irritated. Inwardly he winced. He was letting the situation and his earlier mistakes get to him. He was lashing out at Fluke for a minor verbal jab when he should be focused on working together. He made a small note to chastise himself later.

"I... I could take your gun, Rose, and... scare it off you. If you keep your eyes closed I could fire near you." It was a shot in the dark (pun not intended), but he had to do something quick, before it ended up doing something worse or trying to get away.

Well, we needed that thing like a hole in the glider...

She watched the ominous curtain roiling ever closer, unsure of what to even call it in her head. Could a singular cloud be considered a storm, or just a herald of one to come? What did it have to do with the fire, whose root cause she could finally see from her more elevated position? What the heck was going on with the thing in the hood? There was no way this could all still be a shakedown run for a few new Zes...right?

"So...not to freak anyone out, but there's an evil death cloud just rolling up," Iris reported brightly over comms. "Just cruising in like it owns the place. I know in all the stories bad things always happen when someone goes to check the evil vortex out up close, but does anyone have juuust enough curiosity to talk me into flying closer and seeing what's up with it?"

Just in case, she made sure her bike was ready for a few hairpin turns - although whether that would be to fly through the thing or fly away from it was still up in the air. Har har. Up in the air.

"Mmmmmmph!" With a muffled cry, Rose flailed, dropping her gun and falling backwards. She winced as she landed on her shoulder, already sore from recoil. On instinct, she gripped and pulled at the creature's sludgy body to no avail, then stopped. No. Bad idea. If she accidentally pulled the mask off along with the Nox, and it recognised her as human... It didn't bear thinking about. Yet, with Cedar hurt, and with her lungs straining for oxygen as the mask pressed against her face, someone had to do something.

More than Fluke was doing. Rose had tried to brush off his jibes and passivity, but now irritation simmered. Why watch them if he wasn't going to help them? His duty may be mission control, but surely he could do something in a pinch. As could Archer. For the gods' sake, it wasn't like either of them were far behind.

As the Nox covered Rose's ears and the speakers, Cedar's offer sounded garbled, but she got the gist of it. Even with all the ways it could go wrong, it was their only real option, unless Fluke had some tricks up his sleeve - and actually bothered to use them. With some difficulty from the writhing mass of shadow, she nodded. "That'd be great," she tried to say, although her words came out as an incoherent mumble.

Steel Rose's words were heavily muffled by the Nox, but Cedar got the message. In the background he was dimly aware of someone - Iris? - saying something about an evil death-cloud, but he made a snap judgment to keep his head on the task at hand.

Cedar didn't waste time on saying too much. "Okay. Firing now."

He aimed Steel Rose's gun slightly off, just in case a direct hit would hurt her somehow. Then a colder part of his mind took over, steadying his hand and moving slightly to line it up directly. 'Better safe than sorry,' something in him whispered. 'Safety as in guarantee Nox removal, that is, not her safety specifically.' He made a silent prayer that a direct hit would only burn the Nox away without harming Rose, then pulled the trigger.

"So, I have three days to live! I wonder what I can do with that kind of freedom? Well, there are a lot of ways to live. Just as many as there are to die. I wonder, how do you want to live? How do you want to die?" She then shifted her tone from playful to serious. "I can tell you have a great amount of love for your people. After all, what kind of person is willing to commit social suicide for their peers? We live in a stable time. Who wants to hear a message of doom? Would you listen to your own message in the way you've delivered it today?"

Ruskali peered at her mask from under bushy eyebrows. "To live..." he murmured, "...to die. There is no such thing, or there won't be, soon. You should know, Ze. You protect yourself from them, but the Horrors and the Nox are not the ones that need worry you. It is Amalgam. It is the Ravel. No one will hear it, no one will believe. All life as we know it is about to end, but only after your light goes out. So you must listen, and speak."

He lashed out and grabbed Listener's shoulders in a vicelike grip. "It's true, they're complacent! They won't hear the death knoll, but they will hear you! The Ravel draw the swarm, the swarm devours and then becomes one in Amalgam. Warn them, warn them!"

His skin began to rapidly lose color, turning papery thin while a roiling swelling darkness swirled in his veins. Ruskali was wasting away before her, as if his very life were being sucked from his body. "Secure the Light!" he choked while his gray-fogged eyes sank into skull-like sockets, and a group of passersby shrieked and backed away.

Inside Ruskali's widening mouth was the writhing, oily black sinew of a Nox.

"So...not to freak anyone out, but there's an evil death cloud just rolling up," Iris reported brightly over comms. "Just cruising in like it owns the place. I know in all the stories bad things always happen when someone goes to check the evil vortex out up close, but does anyone have juuust enough curiosity to talk me into flying closer and seeing what's up with it?"

On the rooftop below, the hooded figure left the barrel to burn and swept away through a rooftop door, which squealed and clacked tightly shut.

The undulating dark cloud-- like shifting starlings --was still miles away on the horizon.

"'Evil death cloud' sounds like a plague of locusts," Fluke jabbed conversationally while he spun the drone around and around Rose's head to see her new Nox-scarf from all angles. "I vote you fly straight into it. If you're not devoured like a chicken leg in a pool of piranhas, then I guess the rest of us'll be alright. But if we don't hear back from you in an hour we'll be in the fallout bunker. Oh hey, Cedar's got a gun pointed dead-on at Rose's face!"

He aimed Steel Rose's gun slightly off, just in case a direct hit would hurt her somehow. Then a colder part of his mind took over, steadying his hand and moving slightly to line it up directly. 'Better safe than sorry,' something in him whispered. 'Safety as in guarantee Nox removal, that is, not her safety specifically.' He made a silent prayer that a direct hit would only burn the Nox away without harming Rose, then pulled the trigger. (@LuckyBlackCat)

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

The impact was like a heavy mallet; it struck Rose in the face of her mask and threw her sprawling backward to the ground while the narrow alley brightened with searing, blinding white light. She could suddenly breathe again, because the Nox had dissipated into a poof of harmless black smoke.

Its death-scream echoed down the alley and rang in their ears before it was gone.

The armadillo, undisturbed thanks to Cedar and Rose, continued digging in the dirt, uncovering more and more of a dead human arm that was still connected to a body, somewhere beneath the packed ground.

Fluke's drone whirred helpfully overhead.

Rose slammed to the ground again, an eerie, high-pitched scream filling her ears as the Nox vanished. Gasping great lungfuls of fetid air, she eased herself into a sitting position. "Whew... Thanks." She stood on shaky legs, leaning against the wall and pressing a hand to the right side of her face. "Glad I made this mask tough." While the mask had protected against serious injury, she could feel a bruise spreading across her cheek, making her lower eyelid swell. Well, this isn't exactly what a markswoman needs, she thought, trying to keep her eye open. Especially one who has enough trouble hitting targets as it is.

She mentally chided herself for being negative, but Fluke's jibes weren't helping. "Y'know Fluke, less talking and more doing would be nice!" she snapped into the earpiece, shaking her head at the drone, which did nothing but buzz around like an annoying bug. "I might have to work on some combat drones for next time," she muttered, trying to reassure herself and the others there would be a next time. Despite the false starts, they'd get through this.

Rolling her aching shoulder, she turned her attention to Cedar. "You ok?" She glanced at his blue-tinged hand. As she did, something caught her attention. An armadillo dug in the dirt, around what was unmistakeably a human arm. Rose's stomach turned. "Oh gods..."

Listener winced in pain as Ruskali grabbed her shoulders. It made it difficult to listen to him, but she did her best. Mad or not. Ruskali did not seem to be one capable of lying. All she needed to do was figure out which parts of his ramblings were factual and which were simply ravings. A part of her was hurt by the clear and obvious fact that he was not truly listening to what she had just said. She couldn't linger for long on her feelings as Ruskali started to suddenly change as he shouted out "Secure the Light".

She gasped and pulled away from him with her free hand hovering over her mouth whispering. "Oh no."

She then cleared her throat and spoke into her headpiece. "Uh... guys... Ruski has become a, uh, host for a Nox."

Listener raised her spear with an expression of discomfort and concern. Here was a Nox possessing the body of a human. Would killing the Nox kill the human it possessed? Her spirit wavered as she started to doubt herself and her ability to deal with the Nox. She had made mistakes before that had hurt people, but she never directly hurt anyone with her own hands. She felt herself shaking as she stared down the foe before her.

She took a deep breath. She was in a crowded area. It would not be long before the Nox started to attack other people. She had to defend them. She aimed for his mouth as she tearfully struck forth hoping she could end the Nox without ending Ruskali with it. She thought she would be fine with the dark reality that she knew she would have to deal with as a Ze, but what if she was wrong?

Cedar let out a small sigh when Rose stood up. She seemed a little shaken up, but otherwise alright. Cedar's heart beat fast in his chest, which a part of him disapproved of. He wasn't sure why - surely even the best Ze's heart would race after situation that hectic? But a part of him would never be satisfied with a subpar performance, he supposed.

"I'm fine,", Cedar replied to Rose, though truth be told his hand did feel a bit numb still, with a faint pain behind the numbness. He tried to move his hand and get some feeling back as subtly as possible. Maybe if he ignored it, it would stop hurting. With his other hand he grabbed his halberd off the ground. "You good? You looked like you hit the ground pretty hard there." He offered Rose's gun back towards her as he put his halberd back on his back, handle towards her. He was glad his frustration with Fluke was

Unfortunately, it seemed like there was a lot of stuff going on over the comms. A 'death cloud' and Ruskali being a Host of some kind - A lot of factors coming in that definitely weren't a part of the original situation. Well, their situation was wrapped up, so maybe they could split up or both -

"Oh gods..." he heard Rose say. He turned to her, then followed her gaze. It took a second for him to realize what he was looking at, and after that second passed it almost seemed too late to react accordingly, so he just pressed his lips together. Damn. Did Ruskali have something to do with this? If he's really a host to a Nox, then... Cedar moved closer to the body, motioning to shoo the armadillo away from it. The same part of his brain that disapproved of his fast heart approved his calm reaction to the dead body. The more conscious part of his mind again wondered why.

But then again... the other two situations seemed a bit more urgent. The body presumably wouldn't go anywhere if they went to go help the others with their situations, would it? Cedar didn't consider himself a leader, so he did what he usually did with situations like this - deferred to someone else's judgment.

Turning to Rose, he asked, "What should we do? The others seem like they're in trouble too."

The sight of a corpse was disturbing enough, but the situation had turned out even worse than Rose had thought. Ruskali, a host for a Nox. She should have known, should have gotten a good look at his eyes. She knew all too well what such an infection could do to a person's mind. And if the infection wasn't purged right now, there'd be more than this one death.

Instantly, she turned away from the body and started hurrying back down the alleyway. "Let's go!" she called to Cedar, words slurred with facial swelling, a slight stagger to her steps from dizziness. She winced as her shoulders kept knocking against the walls, but she kept running. "We've got to help them, and we've got to help Ruski!"

If Ruskali wasn't beyond helping, that was. Rose bit her lip as images of empty grey-tainted eyes, and withered figures slumped or shuddering, drifted to mind. Some former hosts kept enough of themselves to rebuild their lives, but for many, it was a different story. Shaking her head, she sped up her sprint. She had to focus.

Bursting out of the alleyway, she rushed through the panicked crowd. "Looks like those end times can wait a little longer!" she called, but as she watched Listener jab her spear at the darkness spewing from Ruskali's mouth, the reality of the situation hit full force. Hand trembling, she pointed her gun at the mass of tendrils, but hesitated. With her right eye swollen almost completely shut, what if she couldn't aim? What if she hit Ruskali? Or Listener, or an innocent bystander?

Aware that there was no time to waste, she aimed at a patch of soil where flowers had yet to be planted. A surface soft enough that projectiles wouldn't ricochet, and empty enough that the energy blast wouldn't set anything on fire. As she knew from experience, the light alone would be enough to scare a Nox, maybe even drive it right out of Ruskali. "Cover your eyes everyone!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, before bracing for recoil and firing.