Yasmin De La Rosa's Story

Softly, gently. Summer sunsets filled the city with a warm glow. In the distance the ocean glimmered. Intoxicating smells of barbecues and bonfires swirled in everyone's minds. Tourists packed up their things and left the beaches. Traffic filled the streets and restaurants relished in new customers hungry from swimming and surfing. Such was the way of ocean towns. Summer brought promise of income. It was a time of new beginnings. Of joy and relaxation. For Angela Taylor, that would have to wait a while.

For the pretty blonde, summer meant cheer camp. One week of workouts, stunting, tumbling and bonding with her teammates. Hardly anything relaxing about that. The previous year, she had been so nervous that she had completely forgotten most of her socks. Thankfully it was Jessica to the rescue. Her best friend had packed extra just in case of such an event. Angela wasn't about to let that happen again. As much as she appreciated Jessica, Angela knew she couldn't rely on the brunette forever. She had to be able to take care of herself at some point. Here Angela was. Nineteen already and major still undeclared. It would be nice if things could just stay the way they were. If she could keep relying on her friend, just a little longer.

That's why this year's cheer camp was special. It was to take place in New York. Since many of the people on her cheer team had never been there before, many had decided to arrive early and spend a few days exploring the city. Jessica included. For all Angela knew, it could be their last vacation together.

Angela looked at the shadows cast by the setting sun. Her room was a mess. Clothes strewn about, shoes piled by her bed, makeup cluttering the vanity. Even her suitcase was bulging from all of its contents. By her window, the family dog dozed off on a mound of old t-shirts. Angela knew she had to clean up but the pent up excitement left her checking her social media accounts every few seconds to look for more details about the trip. As she browsed, Angela was interrupted.

“Angela! Have you finished packing yet?” A voice called out to her.

Angela turned around to see her mother walk into the room. Around her neck was a cloth tape measure. A few pins stuck into it. Angela still thought it odd, as she could easily recall the time when her mother was a proper businesswoman. Back when sewing and designing clothes was just a hobby.

“Yeah. I double checked everything, too, so I'm all good!” Angela grinned and got up.

“I hope you didn't forget to pack hair ties! It's going to be hot in New York." Her mother said.

“Well duh. I make everything hot.” Angela flipped her hair and posed. She fluttered her long eyelashes, but not enough so that her bright blue eyes were left unseen for too long. Her free hand rested on her jutting out hip and she managed to make a kissing sound before going into a giggle fit.

“Don't I know it! I wonder where you get it from...” Her mother ran her fingers through her own hair and laughed. “Be safe, hun. I know you can protect yourself but I do worry.”

“I'll be fine. It's like, the jet lag will be the worst. Besides, I've got Jess and the gals! If we can throw each other in the air, I’m sure we can get rid of some muggers or whatever!”

“Alright, alright. I just wanted to make sure. You'd better get some sleep soon. It's going to be a long trip. Sammy! Come on, baby!” Angela's mother whistled and the golden lab got up. He yawned wide and quickly paced over to her. The two left and Angela stared out her window. Would the sunset be different in New York?

As it turned out, the sunset was a little different in New York. Angela couldn't put her finger on it but it had it's own flavor. It was a little scary for something as ever present and reliable as a sunset to change so easily. After a long flight and a busy hotel check in, Angela had really hoped for the sunset filling the crowded hotel room to be more familiar. As she gazed out the window at a sky lit only by buildings she felt a strange sense of loss.

The next day, it was just as hot as expected. Angela was grateful she had decided to go with her denim shorts instead of her jeans. Not only did they show off her long toned legs, but they went well with her cute white blouse and beige sandals. Thank god she sealed her makeup, because otherwise she would worry the sweat would melt it off. As for the topaz pendant, that went without saying. She wore it wherever and whenever she could. Though it had to remain off for cheer practice it was a constant in every other part of her life. It changed many times over the years, adorning whatever it could attach to. Necklace chains were frequent, but Angela had decided on using a choker for now.

The girls toured the city excitedly at first, sticking together like a flock of birds. Photos were taken and uploaded online. As morning turned to afternoon they began to split apart to each do their own thing. Angela was no different. She loved being in a group, sure. In fact, she felt most comfortable when she was around others. There were certain times, though, when she had to be on her own. The moment she saw that odd little shop with crystals and incense decorating the window display she knew she had to go alone.

Angela wasn't keen on letting others know about her interest in the occult. Though she had many occult related objects she kept them hidden from friends and family alike. The only time she would ever bring up the subject was during Halloween or a party that needed a bit of extra spooky fun. Around others, she treated the subject like haunted mazes or horror movies. Just a bit of excitement and scares. When she was alone, though, she was far more serious. Her tarot deck was worn out from use and her Ouija board was a beloved object. She kept scented candles on her dresser and books on the occult stuffed away in her closet. Though she was interested in the occult in general, it was the paranormal that Angela focused on. She lost count of how many ghost hunting shows she'd watched.

Angela looked around the little shop curiously. It looked cheap but smelled fantastic. She guessed that it would be around much longer. The nice smells of the incense didn't make up for the obvious fact that this wasn't a shop that appealed to many people. Occult stores were often like that. They would appear one day and disappear the next. The variety of odd items fascinating Angela. Before she knew it, it was already getting late. Quickly, she purchased a small tarot deck that fit neatly into her purse. She didn't really need another deck, but this one was so tiny and cute that she just couldn't help herself. The clerk thanked her and she was on her way.

Another sunset. Angela took a quick picture of it with her phone before focusing on the map in her other hand. The girls were supposed to meet up in Central Park. No one wanted to be alone at night. That, and no one wanted to miss out on the chance to see the sun set there. Angela texted her location to them. It seemed like an alright enough place to meet.

Suddenly, a tiny bit of pain. Map in hand, she gently touched her topaz pendant. It emanated some sort of heat. Did the sun warm it up? Angela wrinkled her nose. She wasn't about to take it off just because it stung a little. Besides, she'd faced far worse injuries.

She sat down on a nearby bench and took a couple pictures of the scenes unfolding before her. A gathering of cats, a girl in a tree. Was this normal for New York? Angela sent the pictures to her group chat in the meantime. It'd be a little while before they showed up. She would have taken a picture of the girl filming herself, but she was fairly certain that that woman was famous somewhere. She did look familiar, and Angela didn't want to get sued.

The whole earth had been swallowed fully.

Well, Xabier felt it, so it had to be true. There were so many uncertainties in the world, yet one thing felt absolutely certain - that a person could be in one of the highest populated places on Earth, and yet feel so utterly alone.

All around him were the shadows of millions of bodies passing him by.

It was quite hot out. 30 degrees? 35? He couldn't tell. The sweat had started to form on his forehead.

His phone started to ring in his pocket. He had bought a cheap disposable, drug dealer mobile as soon as he knew he was going to the U.S.
There was no point of spending a fortune on phone bills as he had planned to be going home after a few weeks along with - well, it didn't really matter now, did it?

He plopped himself onto a bench. A couple of French tourists got up, disgruntled by his appearance.

He could hear them talking about him as they stood up.

He hadn't studied French at 17 for nothing.

The younger of the two girls were giggling, a reaction he was used to, but the elder girl didn't seem impressed.

He must look exactly how he felt.

(Like shit.)

Looking at the caller id, he pondered picking up.

Maybe she was calling to apologise. To tell him that she loved him after all.

….

He let it ring out.

The silence afterwards made him desperately want to redial the number.

And yet still, this empty, lonely feeling, sitting alone on a bench in Central Park, was ten times better than being anywhere near her right now.

"Il a l'air d'être ivre….. Mais si tu pense qu'il est mignon, demands lui son numéro."*

"Ah non~ Je suis trop nerveuse.."

He sighed aloud. "J'en ai ral le cul."

"Tu me gonfles, dégage!"

The one who had made eyes at him looking shocked and then hurt. She had wide eyes and was decent looking. His mate Paolo would've been all over her. He felt suddenly ashamed.
He was acting like a total d***head.

The shame didn't last too long when he felt a splash hit him.

The older girl had emptied the contents of her water bottle over his head. The plastic bottle hitting his feet.

"Va te faire foutre, connard!" She spat, grabbing her friend/sister and walking away.

He thought three things:

1. At least he had cooled down a little. Blessing in disguise.
2. She had thrown her bottle at him so technically she was the bad person in this situation.
3. He had proved to himself why he had to be alone.

He really needed a drink.

He heard a deep chuckle beside him. Some hobo had plopped down on the ground beside the bench.

"Tough luck, hombre. They may look it, but chicks aren't that easy nowadays."

Xabier just looked at him, biting back his tongue.

"I dunno man, for me it seems like the opposite." He said, switching into Spanish.

The man just kept laughing and then took a swig out of his flask. Xabier got off the bench and sat with him.

"If you scrubbed up a little, you might get some… or maybe not…" The homeless man looked him up and down. "Me, however, I get ALL the ladies. Here have a drink, you look like you need one."

Xabier accepted the drink, fully aware that he might catch some disease or get aids or something. Still, he hadn't drunk in what seemed like months.

It took several more swigs until he had started just completely revealing his story to this homeless man.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"Sometimes absence makes people forget what's important, she'll come around."

Xabier just stared at the lake, his hands gripping his phone.

Afterwards, the homeless man started to tell him his own story. His name was Miguel and he had been screwed over when his wife got ill and he went into deep debt paying for her medication. It turned out that since the crash, he had lost all of his savings and ended up on the streets after his wife died and the banks took his house.

Listening to him made Xabier sober up immediately.
As dreadful as he had been feeling, Miguel's story had made him feel less pathetic by a little.

"I am sorry, man." He took another swig and passed the nearly empty container back to Miguel.

Miguel took it off of him and a soft smile graced his face and for one short moment, he saw the person behind the dirty clothes and dishevelled appearance.

"At least I'm good with the ladies, my man."

They both laughed at this and Xabier took out some sandwiches from his bag.
They were all mushed and warm, but neither of them was exactly in the place to complain. Miguel ate both of them while Xabier drank the remnants of the booze.



Across the way, he could see a girl hanging by her leg in a tree...

Okay, he was a little drunk, and it didn't help that he had gone to a pub before arriving in Central Park.

He was tempted to go over to help her, but he saw some chick feeding a ton of cats right near her.

Disgusting, he thought, there was no way in hell that he was going over to fight those cats for some random person.

That cat lady could help her. Or that blonde chick on her phone.

He was somehow still brimming with anger, but it had simmered down a little. The booze had settled him down. He didn't need it, but he liked it.

All was good…. Well, as good as it could be with some chick recording him and Miguel.

...tan hermosa! So, no more walking for us but check these two out, I guess they're comfy there?"

"Qué chingados!" Miguel spat.

Xabier recognised her in the dim of his hazy mind. That chick was famous with the girls back home. Most girls followed her (and the likes of her) on their social media and tried to be like her.

He was going to ignore her when he remembered something.

Val might be watching… and he was drunk...

The thought spiked his brain with steroids.

"OY! Stop recording us!" His anger had flared up again, getting up and walking straight towards her.

He had to stop her recording him.




*translated as following;

Girl 1: "He looks like a drunk, but if you think he is cute, ask for his number."
Girl 2: "Ah no, I'm too nervous."
Xabier: "I'm so f***ing fed up. You are pissing me off, get lost!"
Girl 1 throws drink at him.
Girl 1: "Go f*** yourself, asshole"

Pardon the french lol

Roisín O'Connor

"Eeuugh"

That was almost a word. The hangover, it seemed, was getting better.

Roisín O’Connor contemplated life as she lay face down in what she prayed was her own bed. Her head was trying to burst, her stomach seemed to be brewing fresh vomit and her tongue felt at least two or three sizes bigger than it should have been. And her face felt warm and heavy.

"Bleeeaagrh..." she muttered, in an almost conversational tone to the mattress. Despite her current condition, Roisín smiled mentally. She knew today would be a good day. After all, three facts lay firmly in her throbbing mind. Firstly her innate defenses against ethanol had not only allowed her to win the drinking contest, but were quickly working away, getting the alcohol out of her system. Secondly, she had finally figured out the subway system as evidenced by her getting home (she hoped). New city, new venture, new opportunities for stories. After all wasn’t New York supposed to be the city of dreams? Such things were always too good to be true, but Roisín was always drawn to them like a moth to a flame. Finally, and of all things, most importantly, she had avoided paying for any of the many, many drinks she had consumed the night previously.

Rosín inhaled deeply and instantly regretted it as her stomach protested. The duvet-filled stench of whiskey lay heavy in the air, mixed with the sharp tang of vomit and at the very least, four other unpleasant smells which she did not want to identify. Steeling herself, she cracked one eye open. Then, puzzled, the other. She wondered stoically if this time she had actually, literally drunk herself blind. Her vision was... beige. Slowly, realisation dawned upon her and she reached toward her face and removed the covers that were stuck to her sweaty face.

MISTAKE! Daylight flooded intrusively into her milky green eyes and spurned to sudden action, she rolled and threw her arm up to shield herself from the sun. "Christ!” She hissed, and pushed herself into a sitting position. Glancing around, it did seem thankfully, that she had made it back to her Air BnB apartment, alone, and by all that was good she had remember to plug her phone in last night/this morning. Reaching for her phone she had several snapchats from friends all around the world and from home. It was the one’s from home that she watched over and over until her body felt ready to move. Pulling off last night’s jumpsuit Roisín very ungracefully crawled to the bathroom and tumbled into the shower.

As she sat under running water Roisín decided that it would be a waste to let the day go on without seeing at least one of New York’s famous attractions. Though the thought of being in a big city or subway with people pressed up against her right now made her gag involuntarily and she wanted to be somewhere green. Central Park, wasn’t that supposed to be close by? Drying herself off and putting on her jeans, green tank top and a light white cardigan, Roisín googled the direction to the park. With luck it was only a 15min walk away.

With that Roisín pulled on her runners, plaited her wet hair threw her backpack over her shoulder and made her way to the park, pausing only to dip into a coffee shop to buy a hot chocolate and again to vomit, almost daintily into an alley way, and to readjust her ruby bracelet to over her cardigan and off her skin as it seemed to have absorbed some of the sun’s heat. Before long she found herself amongst the grass, sure the place wasn’t as grand as Dublin’s Phoenix Park, but it could serve as a home away from home for now. What she did love instantly was the variety of people who were walking around, people were sitting in trees, homeless men ate sandwiches, animals were being fed. Her mind began to fill with possible stories for all of them as she sat cross legged onto the grass and pulled out a notebook and pen and began to furiously write. She hadn’t even finished a page when she heard:

"OY! Stop recording us!"

Roisín’s head snapped up as she saw a rather dishevelled looking man marching towards the girl with her phone. The man, in Roisín’s eyes looked a little crazed, were these the crazy Americans her mother had warned her about? She wasn’t about to go tackle the man but she did pull out her phone ready to phone the Gardaí - urgh what was their name over here?- That’s right, ready to get the cops. “Hey mate! Calm the hell down!” she shouted toward him but keeping her distance, phone ready in hand to press call.

This sunset just kept getting weirder and weirder. As if the world had decided the cats and the girl in the tree weren't enough, the budding argument made this part of the park quite possibly the most entertaining sunset Angela had ever seen.

She texted her group some of the details. Of course, the cats were everyone's favorite thing to hear about. Some asked about the hot guy yelling at the possible model filming. Angela had thought about saying hello to him, but that was before the argument began. Yelling always annoyed her.

At least the tree girl was getting some help. Sure, the guy there looked like he should have been working on a farm instead of in the middle of New York but who was Angela to judge? Maybe it was some new high end fashion. She'd seen weirder in her mother's magazines.

Angela pocketed her phone and walked over to the tree, far more confident now that someone else was there. She wouldn't have been able to do anything on her own but could help out now that there was an extra set of arms. That, and she was regrettably uneasy about trying to help the girl on her own even if she was capable. The situation was just too weird for her to confidently ask if any help was needed. Maybe if it had been something simple like a sprained ankle she'd be more eager. But now that someone else had the guts to do so, she felt pretty guilty.

“Hey dude,” She greeted the man by the tree with a smile. "I got an idea that can help her out. We can like, catch her. We'd need one more person but we can totally do it!"

"What do you think?" Angela called up to the girl. "I'm super good at catching people, I swear!"

Her topaz heated up once more, this pulse making it warmer than the last. Again, Angela ignored it.

“I have to be somewhere near camp right?” The young woman pondered. Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a blurry streak of black zipping across the green grass. Turning towards the disturbance, she realized that it was a black cat, bowing at the feet of a woman surrounded by many other cats. Like… a lot of cats. Tallyho didn’t hate them or anything, but the abnormal amount of felines in the area was cause for feeling just a little unsettled. But not to worry, her concern was validated completely when the screaming started.

"OY! Stop recording us!"
“Calm the hell down!”

Tallyho sunk further into her seat on the tree as an angry man began trudging toward a woman who wasn’t wearing many clothes and seemed to be talking, not to another person, but to a shiny rectangular slab. A third woman began to shout in the distance, lifting her slab up to the man as a threat. Tallyho didn’t know what these things were, but from the looks of it she was unarmed. Eager to leave, she began to scoot out of the tree, ready to take a little fall if that meant getting away from… whatever those weapons were.

"Never seen New York?"

Startled, the blonde paused instantly. And with a furrowed brow she turned her head slowly toward the voice, eventually meeting the eyes of a man with a stained jacket and an unknown beverage. New York? Where was that? What was that? The worry that she had cynically suppressed earlier was beginning to flare up. She knew the continent of Solace very well and she’d never heard of New York. What if she was on another continent? She hadn’t gotten a chance to respond before the man offered to help her out of the tree.

Tallyho appraised him. She wasn’t going to lie, he did look a little weasely, like he would con her out of a first born child, and as a Sun person she knew a con man when she saw one. But when she looked back up at the screaming trio, the fifteen hundred cats in the background and then back at him, she decided that she could spare any future offspring tomorrow if she was going to be awarded an opportunity to get back home today.

“Yeah,” she said crisply, her eyes trained on the chaos behind him. Again she was about to commit, but then a girl, one who Tallyho noticed had flashed her slab at her earlier, also approached the tree. Tallyho looked her over once, checking to see if she had that… that thing that was in her hand put away. Once Tallyho felt that it was all clear, she glanced back at the group yelling, hoping that they wouldn’t come over. “Just… Get me away from all of that.” She mumbled to herself, probably loud enough for the two to hear her if they listened closely enough. If they didn’t, well they might have been in for a surprise because she didn’t waste any time thrusting herself off the edge, half-way hoping that someone would help her break the fall.

It is common knowledge that Hales is an unforgiving country of ice and silence. Any Airesian boy and girl could tell you that. Nothing grows there, the people are as cold as their homeland, and their cities are fortresses made of iron that no one may enter or leave without permission from the leader of the military.

All of this has been an irrefutable truth ever since Callum the Wanderer, one of Aires’ greatest historians, had written an account of his visit to Hales, beginning with the enchanting line, “Hales is a country of night, as dark and cold and inhospitable as the ice that threatens to consume it.” Poetic, foreboding, and, above all else, fictional.

Callum had never actually visited Hales. He’d refused to go past the border after slipping on a patch of ice and bruising his rump, so he had instead relied on the irate grumblings of some ex-patriots from Hales to cobble together the image of the country that most Airesians imagine today.

This opinion of Hales was, frankly, unfair. The first settlers of Hales hadn’t been idiots. Perhaps a little crazy, but not idiots. Beyond the frigid tundra at its borders, beyond the foreboding icy slopes that foreign poets so love for their apparent symbolism, there is green, however little, for the rural inhabitants to grow what they can and raise the sturdy, robust cattle and other animals that make up a good portion of the Hales diet. Beyond those areas are the cities of Hales, thriving places full of oil, machinery, and, alright, a little iron. Each place is alive with the sounds of people, of crackling fire fighting off the bitter chill, of machinery whirring, and of factories belching.

Don’t misunderstand, however. A good portion of Hales is quite icy and silent.

“This is bullshit.”

At least whenever there are no people the ruin it.
Consider this last bastion of humanity, an old stone outpost far from the nearest city and even a good trek away from the nearest farm. Here ice and rocks are starting to intermingle to suggest the beginning of dramatic and icy slopes that rose further in the distance, and a thick, packed layer of snow covers the ground. It was a dark and bitterly cold night, dark clouds hanging overhead blocking the moon and stars’ attempts to cast their feeble glow. The only light came from the outpost, firelight flickering through small cracks around the door and windows.

Inside the outpost were four men, three lounging around the fire pit at the center of the room, swigging a jug of Hales’ notorious Pyre Water*.

*Pyre Water is made from the root of the Pyre plant, which, surprising absolutely nobody, was as spicy as the name suggested. A normal person could perhaps take a shot of it before running off to fill their mouth with snow, but the people of Hales were a bit heartier than that. Either that or they’d built up a sort of evolutionary resistance against it over the years. Regardless, they swigged where others would have screamed “Oh, Goddess, it tastes like burning!”

“Absolute bullshit,” one man continued. His name was Yuri, and he was the youngest in the group, still scrawny and knobby-kneed but with a big mouth to compensate. Yuri wrapped a thick woolen blanket around himself, taking another swig. “Why in the name of the Goddess were we the ones that got suckered into this wild goose chase?”

“Not suckered into. Ordered,” corrected another man as he took the jug from Yuri’s hands. His name was Gregory, a lazy but affable man who had reached as far in the ranks of Hales’ military as he cared to. “And who knows? Maybe there’s some truth to it after all.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Yuri scoffed.

“Maybe not, but I do know there’s a lot worse things we could be doing than drinking around a fire,” said Gregory with a warm laugh.

“It’s not the worst outpost I’ve ever slept in, anyways. Even the wind’s stopped blowing through the cracks since we’ve gotten here. It’s almost cozy.”

“You have Steinsson to thank for that,” said Ivan, the third man in the circle and by far the oldest in the group. He stroked his gray, unkempt beard and nodded to the last man in the room who was currently hunched over like a gargoyle, staring steadily out of the room’s only windows. He hadn’t moved in at least an hour. “I’ve heard the wind always seems to cooperate when he’s here. It’s probably too scared to show up.” The three men’s laughter petered off as soon as it began when they became aware that Steinsson was not, in fact, staring out the window anymore. He was gazing directly at them, gray eyes as cold as the night air.

“What did you say?”

The words weren’t necessarily a threat, but his deep, raspy voice and the sharp, serious look that was permanently settled on his face certainly seemed to imply one.

The three men tensed. None of them had worked with Dorian Steinsson before, and, if they were honest, it had never exactly been on their bucket lists. Even among other soldiers he had a certain notoriety, known for his ruthless efficiency and extreme dedication to his homeland. It didn’t help that he gave off the same vibes as a wolf on the prowl, all lean and hungry for his next prey.

“Nothing, Steinsson. Sorry. Just joking around,” Ivan quickly amended before the three men hastily turned back to their conversation and, more importantly, their jug of Pyre Water. Yuri glanced at Steinsson out of the corner of his eye and shivered. He looked even angrier than before. Had he heard them? What on Aires could he be thinking?

What Dorian was thinking was that, honestly, he felt a bit left out. It seemed like he was always missing out on something, and no one ever seemed inclined to fill him in. Maybe it was just one of those things that you had to hear the first time, or maybe it had been a dirty joke that they’d been too embarrassed to repeat. That would at least explain the discomfort on their faces.

He sat up slowly, straightening out as he worked out a kink threatening to develop in his neck. Usually he could hold position better, but this was his third consecutive week of field assignments, camped out in the boonies day and night with only the other soldiers on assignment with him changing. He would say that the sights changed too as he moved from camp to camp, outpost to outpost, but if you’ve seen one snowy desert or icy hill, you’ve seen them all.

One could always tell just how long Dorian had been out on assignment from the beard developing on his usually clean-shaven face and the way that his black hair had begun to outgrow the military cut it was usually shaped into. He looked a bit wild, but out here there was no one to impress and, more importantly, a severe lack of mirrors.

Dorian’s gaze flickered back to the window for a moment. It was an unusually dark night, and even with the help of the flickering fire inside he could barely see four feet in front of the outpost. That didn’t stop him from remaining in position, however, although he allowed his mind to wander towards the conversation that had picked up again among his team members.

“I’m not sure what could cause all that damage,” Gregory said, leaning back on the floor. “Did you hear about the bodies? Absolutely disgusting.”

“It was a bear, probably. Or a wolf. Maybe a pack of them,” said Ivan, finally taking his own pull from the jug. “Probably starving and desperate. People are just getting spooked. Things like that happen this time of year. It’s because the nights are so long. It’s easier to believe in scary stories when it stays so dark.”

“What was that scream they talked about, then?” Gregory asked, more out of amusement than any desire to start a real argument. “They said it was still ringing in their ears a day later, you know.”

“Definitely not a fucking Cyclopean,” Yuri grumbled. “But what can you expect from ass-backwards farmers? Most of them grew up with that fairytale bullshit. It’s rotted their brains. Makes them see and hear Month Warriors and monsters everywhere. Fucking embarrassing.”

Ivan glared at him. “My wife’s from a farming family, so I’d watch my mouth if I were you.”

“Well, if I were you, I’d-“ None of them ever found out what Yuri would do, although it did promise to be something quite creative given his penchant for artistically turning foul words even fouler, because a single sound rang out in the night.

The thing about sound out in Hales’ uninhabited region is that it wasn’t swallowed by the silence; it was amplified by it. Even a whispered conversation seemed to carry on for miles, and this noise was no whisper. It was a screech, blood-curdling and as painful to hear as nails scraping down a chalkboard. There was something primal at work here, forcing the men to drop to the floor and cover their ears instinctually as if it was the most natural reaction in the world, until the last of the scream had faded away into the night.

“What the fuck,” Yuri breathed, the first of the three around the fire to recover, as he shakily sat up, clutching at his heart. It was silent outside again, but this time uncomfortably so. They knew they weren’t alone.

“Should… Should we go check?” Gregory asked in a tremulous voice that clearly expressed what he’d prefer the answer to be.

“You want to go out and see whatever that was, be my guest. I…” Ivan trailed off. He couldn’t even bring himself to sit up, still huddled over and trying to calm his nerves.

A humming, electrical sound sparked in the room. The three men jerked around to see Dorian already slipping on his thick wool gloves and pulling on his hat, the light of his artificial torch (“Science, Dorian!” His uncle had exclaimed while presenting it, waving it around like a crazy person or, to an Earthling, like someone at a rave) slowly growing in strength as it warmed up.

“Steinsson, what in the name of the Goddess do you think you’re doing?” barked Ivan. He didn’t get up to stop him, however. “You want to go out there with whatever made that noise?”

“My mission is to take care of whatever that is,” Dorian said simply, pulling out his sword and picking up the torch with his other hand. It might have been wiser to wait for day, but who knows where it may have gotten to by then. He opened the door, and the wind suddenly began to pick up, biting and bitterly cold as it swept into the room, making the fire flicker.

“What if it’s… it’s not. I mean-” Yuri couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Dorian paused, considering for a moment.

“I’ll kill it,” He said firmly and shut the door behind him. No one moved to stop him.

~*~*~*~*~

Even bundled up as he was in the thick gray, fur-trimmed uniform of the Hales military, the frigid night air managed to seep into Dorian’s bones, nipping at the exposed flesh of his face. He ignored it as best he could, hunching his shoulders against the wind as he followed the steadily growing beam of his torch in the direction the scream had come from. The way the snow crunched underneath his boots and the noisy hum of the torch did wonders to stave off the eerie silence.

Dorian was scared. Of course he was. If you’d asked him, he would have easily admitted it. It was the most natural thing in the world to be scared right now. Fortunately for Hales and unfortunately for Dorian’s own well-being, fear had never been much of a deterrent for him. There were worse things than being scared to Dorian, like disobeying direct orders.

Whatever this thing was, it had been terrorizing small farming communities on the edges of the Hales Empire, which, as his commanding officer had assured him, could not and would not be tolerated. Dorian was inclined to agree. It was the duty of the Hales military to look after and protect its populace.

And maybe, just maybe, it was a bear. Well, a bear with a nightmarish voice, but Dorian could deal with bears and wolves. He had in the past. Those were simple, living creatures. You killed them if they tried to kill you. Just like people. Simple.

He was far from the encampment now, so far that the firelight dancing in the window was only barely visible, a soft, beckoning glow. He pressed onwards into the night.

What happened next occurred in less than a minute’s time. Something was suddenly behind him. Dorian could hear the quick steps skittering on the snow. That sound was his only warning before something was on his back, pushing him bodily down onto the snow and rocks beneath him. It was pure instinct that drove him to roll to the side as he fell, narrowly avoiding a long, sinister black claw longer than his own forearm that pierced the ground right where his head should have been.

Dorian never stopped moving, struggling to his feet and dodging to the side again as the creature reared up, screeching once more as the light of the torch finally encompassed it. Black scales glittered in the artificial light. The creature was at least two feet taller than him, but thin and dragon-like its features*. Its teeth were bared into a snarl, long fangs sharp and glistening with black saliva. It was a familiar face, the face he’d seen in nightmares as a child and in those morbid occult books his grandmother tried to insist were for children too. A Cyclopean.

*It should be noted that a Cyclopean actually more closely resembles a lizard. Dorian, however, has never been quite sure what a lizard was, even though he’d read about them in the Hales comedic classic “Callum the Wanderer”. Dragons, at least, he’d seen in paintings.

The creature lunged for him suddenly, and, in his haste to get out of the way, the torch slipped from Dorian’s hands, light fading with a sad little whine when it hit the snow until there was only darkness left behind. Dorian blinked rapidly, trying to let his eyes adjust as he scrambled backwards, away from the creature. The Cyclopean was so close now that he could see its glittering outline vividly even in the dark night, and with it came shadowy claws darting forward, talons grasping and slicing at its prey.
He gripped his sword with both hands and parried against the claws as well as he could. Sharp claws still managed to catch at him as the monster advanced, tearing clothing and finally catching his right arm, slicing into the flesh. His arm was burning, and Dorian could already feel the hot blood rising, soaking his sleeve.

It had never been in Dorian’s nature to give up. Well, maybe it had been once, but years in the military academy had beaten that trait out of him. His feet dug into the packed snow, and he swung his sword towards the Cyclopean’s side, putting all of his weight into the movement. The resulting clash sounded like a thick pane of glass breaking. The Cyclopean stumbled forward, alive but wounded. Dorian moved back, preparing his next move when quite suddenly he realized that there was no more Earth behind him.
It could have been a tunnel, a cave, or even an old spot where someone had once drilled for oil. Whatever it was, it had been covered only with snow until he took that step. He was falling backwards, and the Cyclopean was falling with him.

That was, according to Dorian when he would later recount this story, when things got weird. When asked why the Cyclopean wasn’t the weird part, he would simply tell you that he could handle something trying to kill him, even if that something was a fictional monster. Fighting something trying to kill you just made sense, after all.

The fall seemed to take an eternity, and the Cyclopean above him kept fading in and out of sight. One moment it was above him, the next somewhere to the side, and then just gone. It was letting out that blood-curdling scream, for all the world a wounded, frightened animal. He didn’t have time to worry about it, however, because the world around him was rapidly changing, starting with pure darkness, then a sea of stars glittering around him with strange, amorphous blobs moving in his peripheral, followed by a veritable kaleidoscope of bright colors and shapes. All the while, something was burning under his shirt, right where his aquamarine pendant should be. The heat was hot enough to blister skin, but it kept him present, kept him grounded as he continued to fall. Then he stopped.

It wasn’t that he hit the ground. There was no thud, no actual impact. He had simply stopped falling and could now feel something solid beneath him. It was soil, loose around him, surrounding him like a shallow grave. Dorian flailed for a moment before his sword thrust through the loose dirt above him, and he scrambled out of the earth, dragging himself out of the hole and crawling a short ways away. Dorian attempted to open his eyes as he staggered to his feet, but it was too bright. When had the sun risen? And, he realized as all of his senses started to come back online, why was it so hot?

He was broiling beneath his heavy layers, a humidity unlike anything he’d ever experienced weighing heavily on him. It was like the saunas dotted around Kora, only worse because there was no way normal weather should feel like this. He stopped for a moment, catching his breath, before hesitantly attempting to open his eyes one more. It still hurt, but he pushed through the initial bright flash and finally got a look at the world around him.

It was green. Vividly, painfully green with other dramatic and bright colors added in. He’d never seen plants so bright and so many trees with bare bases, not a needle in sight. There were people here too, but they looked so strange, their clothing something embarrassingly otherworldly, holding strange devices, yelling, and was that someone at the center of a herd of cats? And there, there on the horizon. What was that? It looked like a giant shiny metal tower, glittering and gleaming with glass and other metals woven in. There wasn’t just one, however. He could see more clearly now. The skyline was dominated by great metal towers.

Where in the Goddess’s name was he? The best case scenario was that he was dreaming. The worst case… Well, the worst case scenario was that the Cyclopean would suddenly appear behind him, climbing out of the same hole and bleeding black ooze everywhere from a wound on its left side, knock his sword from his hands while he was distracted, and then his sword would fly approximately fifteen feet from his person over towards a strange group of people around a tree.

This was, of course, exactly what happened.

Dorian let out a frustrated snarl and quickly pulled out his field knife from the confines of his coat. It wasn’t exactly what he’d prefer to use to fight a nine-foot nightmare realized, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Pene Michaels Sat on her hands while she watched her colorful little babies feast and be kind to each-other. Week after week of shooing them away when they tried to hit or snap at one another taught that them violence meant no food and no food meant begging for scraps. In New York, stray cats begging for scraps didn't bode well. So in the end, being kind and sharing was their best bet.

While watching the felines, she shifted around to free her hands from under her butt and instead reached them up to gently rub her earlobes. Her earrings were warming up like mad! Making a face, one of confusion, Pene looked around to make sure she wasn't sitting in the sunlight. "Huh.." Then, just as she was sliding her gaze back over to her patrons, a commotion started a little ways across the grassy field between a woman in work-out clothes with long brown hair, and a man in plain looking clothes. The female was stepping back while the male advanced forward, his movements and voice agitated. Pene frowned at the sight, before frowning deeper and cringing as a third female joined the scene. "Oh New York.. Why can't your people be kind to one another..?" She mumbled to herself.

With a slow and disappointed shake of her head, Pene turned her gaze elsewhere, wondering what else was going on in Central Park along with hopes that the scene she'd just witnessed was an isolated incident and the negative vibes weren't spreading through the area. As she looked around, she had to do a double take at what looked to be a girl stuck in a tree, a man at the base of the tree who was dressed improperly for the day's weather, and then another female jogging over to help. Worriedly, she bit her lip and started to make a move to get up and head over to the trio. Hundreds of bad endings were flying through her head the longer she stared. And then she nearly jumped out of her skin as the girl in the tree executed a complete trust fall. "In the name of all that is heavenly!!!" Pene screeched as she abandoned her slow and cautious approach for a full run.

And just as she started to run, the tingling and tickling in her shoulders flared up. "Oh please be alright..!" She worried to herself as she tried to close the distance between her and the small group. But her shoulders were alerting her to a new danger. A danger that made her stomach drop upon seeing it and nearly made the heat coming from her earrings unbearable. In the middle of the open space, not too far from her, a man dressed like he came straight from an Eskimo village seemed to appear out of thin air and lying on his back. And before he could get up, some Xeno-morph looking fellow appeared behind him and immediately began going for the kill.
Pene's shoulders and earlobes were ablaze "Holy fucking salad dressing!!" She gasped, putting on an additional burst of speed. Now she wasn't just heading for the trio to check on them, she was running to them for safety in numbers. When she reached them, her eyes were wide and she wasn't afraid to stand close.

"One, what the hell is that!?!!" She jabbed her finger towards the Game of Thrones scene taking place
"And two, are you okay?!" She panted, looking down at The Girl from the Tree.
Pene then squat down before they could even begin to answer, almost hyperventilating "Holy shit so many things are happening right now.. Keep cool Pene.. Oh my god.." She put her hands over her face, quickly whispering to herself but harshly. With the way she was positioned and breathing, if she stood up too fast, she was going to make herself pass out.

Roísin had felt very brave under normal circumstances.

Her phone felt like the ultimate weapon against the dishevelled angry man advancing towards the pretty woman who was filming. In fact, she could have described herself as one of the Fianna* themselves and probably would once she recounted the story of how she stood against a 7ft snarling drunk who had without cause attacked an innocent young girl, it was she Roísin O'Connor who had not flinched as she stood tall against the evils of New York! She felt the creep of a smile appear on her face as she imagined telling her tale to whoever was buying her drinks tonight.

The smirk didn't last long however, as she felt a sharp burn on her wrist and she looked down to see her ruby bracelet had burned a red mark into her skin. Forgetting all about the commotion in front of her in favour of current pain Roísin tugged at the clasp of the bracelet only managing to hurt her fingertips in the process. Grabbing the chain she attempted yanking the bracelet off her arm, but the trinket was too small to go over her hand. The damn thing wouldn't come off! Bloody American sun! It had never heated like this before. She cursed heavily her circumstance as she looked up to see if she could enquire for help when her eyes caught a rather stranger sight.

A man, heavily clothed and covered in dirt was standing looking rather puzzled around the park. Suddenly the heat on her arm didn't seem so bad when she thought of how hot he must be and how the hell was he managing to hold onto such a big sword? Roísin was about to make a quip when she saw a what she could only describe as a monstrous hand reach out of the loose soil beside him. Her mouth moved to shout at him but apparently she had reached her bravery quota for the day. Air escaped lungs not allowing her to form sounds as giant scaled thing emerged from the earth. She, for a brief second, entertained the idea that this was theatre, a prank, maybe a reality T.V show. However she couldn't seem to move. A sense of foreboding had cloaked itself over her. Was this what they meant when you were frozen in fear? RUN! she thought trying to catch her breath. Tar seemed to be oozing out of it's side as it looked at it's prey who seemed distracted by the sky.RUN! her mind screamed as the tall lizard brought it's clawed hand down and knocked the hefty sword away from it's game. Fear turned quickly into frustration as he pulled a much, much smaller knife from his clothing as she finally found her words.

Oh for God's sake! RUN YOU IDIOT!!! she roared. Roísin couldn't seem to take her own advice in spite of herself. Her feet seemed planted to the ground as she clutched her phone hard. All she could feel and hear was her heart pumping in her chest and the sense that maybe she'd been wrong about the day being a good one. Roísin had felt brave, but these were hardly normal circumstances.

*The Fianna are a band of warriors from Irish Myth.

As he approached the girl, he noticed subconsciously that everyone near had become agitated.

Some red haired chick (probably Irish or Scottish) started yelling at him.

Xabier considered stopping. He understood that it wasn't the way to do things, but he was so sick and tired of doing everything the right way.

The right way got him nowhere.

The universe favours the confident and the outgoing, his mother had told him when he was younger.

So he was going to stop this spoiled little princess ruining any last chance he had with-

BANG

The whole world was upside down, or at least that's how he felt.

He must have been drugged.

That was the only thing that could explain the weirdness all around him.

First with the cat lady, the girl in the tree and a legit drug dealing looking dude.

Then with a famous chick recording him on the worst day of his life, and an annoying girl getting in his way.

Now with a warrior dude fighting a gigantic costumed monster....

The warrior had lost his sword and was standing there like a chicken in a cage ready to be made into dinner.

Xabier looked around him, ignoring the ginger's contributions, and wondered if he walked into some sort of intense, choreographed New York outdoor play.

That or he was totally tripping balls.

If the latter was true, maybe it meant that everything that had happened to him had all been a drug fuelled daydream.

Everything would be fine and she would call him.

Suddenly, as if on cue, his phone started to ring again.

Her caller id.

-Y si el viento hoy sopla a tu favor
Yo no te guardare rencor -

Franco de Vita's voice crooned from the block phone.

Shit, he thought, she has seen the live-stream.

Snapping the smartphone out of the model's hand, he focused it on himself.

"Live stream is over for today." He spoke in Spanish into the camera lens and flashed one of his more charming smiles.
He wrapped an arm around the girl's shoulder, placed his head near hers and without looking at her expression he finished the livestream.
"Thanks for watching."

Once he was sure that it was over, he turned to the girl, quickly releasing her from his light grasp.

"See, that wasn't so hard."

-Claro que se perder
No sera la primera vez-

Maybe it was the alcohol or the drugs or just the day itself, but Xabier felt a sudden and irresistible urge to throw the phone...

He was going to regret everything in the morning, he knew that for a fact.

So without a second thought, the smartphone was flying out of his grasp and hit the man in the scary creature costume.

It landed near its feet, bouncing off of its left thigh.

The creature turned its head and screeched an unearthly sound.

A real shiver of fear went down his back.

What. The. Fuck.

-Hoy te vas tu, mañana me iré yo
Seré un buen perdedor-

Xabier focused in on the costume...
It looked too realistic and the level of fear of those around him had just hit him in full force.

What the hell did Miguel put in that drink?

Speaking of Miguel, the homeless man had stumbled off somewhere...

"Oh for God's sake! RUN YOU IDIOT!!!"
The ginger girl was screaming and she looked so frightened, Xabier just wanted her to stop yelling. It wasn't helping his head.

His other hand gripped his still ringing phone. His opal ring was burning into his hand.

He knew that he would probably soil himself from fear any second now.

And yet, he had a level of fool's courage in him. He was still so angry at everything and everyone, and yet, not angry at all. Tripping balls or not, Xabier wasn't going to let that thing hurt anyone.

The creature had turned back towards the strange warrior dude when the now empty flask made impact with its head.

Finally, he raised the ringing brick he called a phone. Xabier got ready to aim.

-El mundo no cambiara
Alguien sin duda hoy ocupe tu lugar. -

The creature was now heading towards him and the two girls.

Grabbing the ginger girl with his free arm, he pushed her behind him and the impending attack and he looked at the instagram model with wide eyes. Get behind me too, he asked her with his eyes, forgive me for throwing your phone and run.

"Well, you two ladies should probably run right about now." He said and then to the creature, "OY! BESA MI CULO, PUTO!"






He was going to die today, as long as that thing went down with him.





 

The day kept getting stranger. First he helped out the gal stuck in a tree and then some mysterious stranger popped out of nowhere with a knife. While the knife itself did not make the situation strange, after all muggers in New York were as common as bees in a hive, it was how he was dressed. Ignoring the fact that it was too warm a day to wear anything heavier than a hoodie, the man looked like he had just got back from the Russian tundra. It also looked like something from Game of Thrones, like he on his way for a Night's Watch convention. However, it was nothing a strange as what caught Ron's eye a moment afterwards.

What stood near the man was a large creature, resembling what could only be described as a monster from some old movie. It was devoid of all humanistic features, even a face that could show the slightest bit of humanity. It was covered in small, black scales that looked dull and invested in parasites. To top it all off, the claws and teeth looked like something out of a nightmare. As it began to attack others around the park, he realized that there was no reason for unarmed people to be harmed. He then pulled out his pistol from his jacket.

With the creature now staring at them, Ron aimed his pistol and shot it in the chest. While it screamed out in pain, to his surprise it did not drop. So he darted away from the girls 10 feet away and unloaded two more rounds into the creature. It howled as the shots landed, yet he could not tell if it was damaged or not as it was all but alien to him. It made a full on charge at him, swinging it's claws at his head. While Rod dodged the claw, he did not notice the tail that slashed at him the second afterward, leaving a gash in his side. As Ron fell on the ground he shot at the creature's knees, hopefully crippling it. At that moment all he could feel was his gash, dire fear, and a strange burning on his ring finger.

The fall to the ground was quick and a little awkward—she could tell by the look on the face of the girl who had broken half of her fall. As Tallyho gathered her bearings and looked toward the two strangers to offer them a brief thank you, another voice, loud and frantic, rang out.

“Holy fucking salad dressing!” A woman with dark curls came bounding toward their group, easing dangerously close to knocking into them. Tallyho recognized her as the cat woman and she didn’t seem particularly OK. In fact, it was amusing that when the woman was asking Tallyho if she was OK, she herself looked like she could pass out any second. Tallyho didn’t have much time to respond when she heard a dull and heavy thud nearby. Her gaze met a well-hammered sword, sharp, intricate and highly reflective. It obviously belonged to somebody who was a somebody.

”RUN YOU IDIOT!!!”

Tallyho glanced up to see who she assumed to be the sword’s owner, pursed and ready for battle. If you asked her, he was the most normally dressed individual in this area if you discounted the fact that he was a bit off-season. He looked strong and a little intense…What kind of warrior was able to disarm him so effectively? It was only after she heard a blood curdling screech that she actually saw it.

This was something out of her Baba’s sickest bedtime stories, a legend that most people mocked by the time they were old enough to ride horses by themselves. A figure whose likeness she shuddered at in picture books. The creature who stole her way in fever dreams. And now it was here in the flesh, ready to rip her apart like a tender piece of chicken. Tallyho felt the ringing in her ears as she searched her brain for some piece of logic that could debunk this experience. Surely this was a dream? When would she wake up?

A loud boom rang in the air. It felt like Tallyho’s left ear had exploded. Gasping in shock, she buckled down into the grass with her hands covering her ears. From the ground she watched in horror as the man who had helped her out of the tree began pointing a foreign object in the direction of the cyclopean, producing the same loud pop that startled her so. As he moved farther away, Tallyho had time to, once again, gather her bearings and probe her brain for everything she had ever learned at bed time—any piece of information that could kill this cross-cultural boogeyman. Besides, nothing anyone did seemed to have much of an impact.

The ringing in her ears continued and the sounds became more distant. She quickly dipped her head between her knees, hoping to delay what was on track to become a full-fledged fainting spell. She peeked out from behind her waterfall of hair to see the other blonde picking up the warrior’s lost sword. Tallyho couldn’t hear her words too clearly but she seemed to be offering it back to him.

“The head,” Tallyho huffed under her breath, finally conjuring an end to this nightmare. She fought her way upright, throwing her head back in exhaustion. This whole situation was stressful and downright disrespectful. It had to stop.

“TAKE THE HEAD!” She called much louder, hoping the warrior would take the sword and then her advice. She rolled back over, holding back the impulse to pass out completely. Baba’s folk stories always ended with the head and then a pile of black jewels (onyx shards), that shimmered brightly in the place where the cyclopean once stood.

As she slipped further into her spell she hoped that she wouldn’t wake up dead, or at least that she would wake up soon enough to get the hell out of town.

Yelling. Gunshots. Snarls and Roars. The feeling of pure fear in the air.

It was complete chaos! If the scene were set in a village and everyone in the park were villagers, Pene was so sure that they'd all be running and screaming with their arms waving through the air about now.

Earlier, Pene had run over to the group of three and had immediately continued freaking out, as she had started on her sprint over already.

Now she was slowly standing up because if she continued to hyperventilate while bent over like she was then she would pass out at the first quick movement. Passing out in a situation like this could mean her death and Pene was very keen on surviving. As she stood up, she had to take very slow breaths and force herself to look around and assess what was going on and what would be the best course of action.

What she saw had her almost freaking out again while her shoulders were driving her mad with the tingling running through them.
Everyone was being a bloody daredevil.

One guy threw a phone.
The man, who was standing beside them just a second ago, was shooting!
And some stupid girl was standing there and kindly calling to the overdressed warrior and trying to hand him his sword back.

Pene grabbed her hair and made a sound of distress. This was nothing like the movies. Usually when New Yorkers were attacked by monsters no one even had to mention the idea of running and trampling anything that tried to stop them. The one thing that brought her a bit of relief was seeing that girl with the long hair book it and vault over a nearby fence and out of sight. She fanned her heated face "Oh thank god. At least someone's thinking..!" She said to herself while turning and looking for someone that was out of danger and would be easiest to convince to run.

The person she found was the girl from the tree. She wasn't screaming, shooting, throwing things, or standing there and calling to the monster to come and eat her. In fact, she looked just as freaked out as Pene felt. So, Pene reached out, took her hand whether she would like it or not and looked into her eyes. "We have to hide okay? Running from predators like that only makes them target you so we have to hide..!" She implored the girl to understand and even started to move in a direction that would lead them away from the scene. Pene wanted to get out of here and she wanted to get out fast. She was even thinking about following that girl from earlier so that they could hide wherever she was.

If Dorian had been concerned about fighting a legendary monster with just a basic knife (which, as a relatively sensible person who was already injured, he absolutely was), there was some modicum of relief for him within the following four minutes. People were screaming the moment the Cyclopean arrived, something Dorian could hardly fault them for after a moment of adjusting to their language. The words were mostly in Common, stained with accents he couldn't quite put his finger on (not surprising given that his encounters with foreigners were few and far between, even in Kora. Those that he'd actually interacted with were more keen to practice their own grasp of his language than to let him practice theirs, as was the way of foreign diplomats eager to impress), and he was momentarily grateful for his mother's insistence on teaching him more than just the language of Hales. Well, grateful until he realized the initial gems of knowledge being throw his way were simply to run.

That was all well and good for them, Dorian supposed, but turning your back on a nine-foot nightmare that seemed relatively eager to rip out your spine simply wasn't in the cards for this soldier. He dropped into a more appropriate defensive stance, adjusting his grip on his knife. No, there was no running away. The name of the game was survival, and, as the Cyclopean lashed its tail feverishly from side-to-side and jerkily began to thrust forward a menacing claw already glistening scarlet with Dorian's blood, Dorian was reminded that one of the most important elements of survival was luck.

Take for instance the flying flask that thunked the Cyclopean solidly on the head as it began to advance. It hadn't hurt the creature, merely surprising it (and Dorian) as both man and beast turned to the man who'd thrown it, staggering with heroic, drunken bravado. He reminded Dorian a bit of the men who clogged the warm taverns of Hales after too much Pyre Water, eager to pick a fight and prove himself that night's King of the Drunks*.

*It should be noted that the King (and occasionally Queen) of the Drunks was an actual title in Hales. There was an appropriately silly crown and everything, customized for each tavern. Dorian's favorite had always been a simple band of iron with little spikes on top, making it both classy and dangerous is the King decided to start head butting people.

This was Dorian's chance, he realized, to go for his sword. He began to move without much hesitation, backpedalling towards the tree it had landed near, never taking his eyes off of the Cyclopean. It only took him a moment to regret that decision because a violent percussive force was suddenly whirling past his head towards the monster, a raucous explosion of sound even deafening the continued screams around him. He dropped to the ground more as instinct than as a conscious thought, rolling out of the way as he searched for the other threat.

It was a man near the tree, holding what Dorian was horrified to see was a smaller, shinier version of Hales' newest weapon, still a closely guarded secret even among its military. Dorian had seen it before as a distinct privilege, had held the hand cannon (a working title) in his grip, had felt the power in his hands as he tested it for his uncle, and that was the only thing he knew to compare it to. How in the Goddess' name did he have something like that? Was there a rat infesting the Hales' science division, selling out state secrets to wherever he was? Or perhaps it was an expatriate, working with the brightest minds in the rest of Aires to arm other countries with superior weapons.

Dorian didn't have much more time to have his patriotic crisis because the Cyclopean began loping towards the shooter, infuriated more than wounded by each shot. That, indeed, was odd, and, as Dorian army-crawled further on, he began to realize that mere wounds wouldn't finish off a creature like this. It was like an automaton, a being that would keep moving, keep fighting until it was no longer able, regardless of wounds and the odds against it*. What was he meant to do?

*When later recounting the moment, Dorian would feel an odd sort of kinship with the cyclopean at that description, which he decided to never dwell upon again because that was just depressing.

"TAKE THE HEAD!” The cry came loud and clear from a blonde girl curled into herself, trembling in what Dorian felt was a very sensible way for what was happening, even as another girl made to move her from her position. The head. That was right. That was the appropriate way to do it. It was always the head in his grandmother's stories, always the neck that needed to be chopped through to kill a Cyclopean quickly. There were other ways to do it, but this was the way of the human hero, not one of the glistening Month Warriors with their spectacular powers and weapons.

There was that luck again, personifying itself in blonde women today apparently as another girl, shaking in what he could only assume was adrenaline and terror, offered his sword to him.

"Hi, hey, um soldier boy! You, you uh, dropped this!" she stammered, and he was already moving towards her, lifting the sword from her hands in a sharp, controlled movement as he simultaneously tucked his knife away. There was no time to thank her or the other girl before he was facing the beast again as it bore down on the shooter only yards away. Its back was to Dorian, which, as many people and animals had learned over the years, was exactly the wrong place to be.

He was moving swiftly, unhindered by the familiar blade and the pumping adrenaline masking the ache of his arm. He could feel the necklace under his shirt pulsate with his heart beat, now warm and grounding instead of burning. He didn't bother to cry out when he moved (screaming at enemies was typically frowned upon in a sneak attack), instead swinging his sword with a quiet precision at the Cyclopean's neck. The first blow didn't cut through the scales completely, stopping halfway. The second nearly had it as the Cyclopean let out its last screech. The third, however, finished the job, the head toppling to the ground in a dramatic, but surprisingly clean fashion. There was no spurt of blood, no slow ooze from the stump of its neck as the body toppled over soon after. Instead, the body seemed to glisten in the sun, glitter like a thousand jewels before shattering into onyx shards.

Dorian stood above the mound for a moment, breathing hard and resisting the urge to smash through the stones again with his sword just for good measure. Instead he knelt down and grabbed a handful of them in a gloved hand. A good trophy, perhaps, or at least something to deliver back to Hales as evidence.

Tallyho heard a soft echo in her ear, the voice of the young woman who looked so panicked before. She was grabbing Tallyho’s hand, tugging firmly to lead her away. The blonde offered a low grunt, thick and unladylike, as all the weight in her waif body seemed to sink to her hips, holding her heavy in the grass like a stone at the bottom of a river or like a paper weight.

“I can’t…” she slurred drearily. “I need water.”

Tallyho Abel had a very firm idea of what her threshold was for giving up, and sometimes it wasn’t very high. Finessing herself out of the tree was enough for the day, with this fainting spell coming up it didn’t look like running was in the books for her. Even as the girl tugged at her arm, she half way fought to keep put. If she ran in this condition, she’d only pass out and hold the girl back in a vulnerable space.

She was so out of it that she didn’t even get the satisfaction out of watching someone take her advice. She didn’t hear the curdling hack of the warrior’s sword in the cyclopean’s neck, or the tingle of small onyx shards raining on the width of his blade.

What she did notice was a soft rumble in the ground. She begrudgingly attempted to sit up again, hoping that the quaking she felt was a figment of her own nausea. And yet, there was a shake. She could tell by the way that the trees wavered and the leaves rustled. She let in a sharp breath, throwing one hand over to brush the other girl’s leg—a non-verbal gesture that essentially said, “Not today Satan,” if there were such a figure in Airesian lore.

She turned her eyes to the horizon, everything around them just seemed to keep going. The metal machines that roamed the roads continued to move, undisturbed by the disturbance under the earth. And the people that she could see far beyond the confines of this small corner of greenspace were the same way. But the trees—they were shaking.

And then there was a light, a growing dome that seemed to creep from between the tall buildings in the horizon, and toward the lawn where this slain creature lay scattered. It was slow at first, but as the blinding spectacle came closer it seemed to come faster, and the earthquake more intense. With the light came a fantastic gust of wind that licked back Tallyho’s hair in a sudden woosh.

Tallyho, if she wasn’t already dreaming, was going to die today. The wall of light wasn’t stopping. And as it hurdled toward her and the other girl, the wind felt increasingly suffocating. She always knew that if she was going to die young, it was going to be on her own terms. But now, she supposed, that she was too young to know everything. Blinded, she closed her eyes, held her breath, and let the wall of energy crash into her very being.


What came next was like experiencing death while still being very alive, at least from Tallyho’s perspective. It wasn’t that she was reviewing every memory that encompassed her life, or watching her body from high up, cursing herself to get up. It was a different kind of ethereal removal, a feeling that she was floating in the center of nothing and everything. She was floating in this nothingness for eternity, incubated and healed of all that ailed her only moments before. The dizziness, nausea, and heaviness in her heart was spooned from her body and spilled far away.

Another light flickered in the distance, but it was nothing like the frightening wall of energy that brought her here. It was warmer, sparser, like a single laser pointing to the center of the universe. It grew, but slowly.

Tallyho no longer felt like she was floating. Something cold pressed against her soles, and the pull of gravity felt gradually more apparent. Below her feet, a sprinkling of small white balls of light, almost like stars in a night sky, dotted a path running toward the light.

Beneath the transparent path of stars, a murky body of water was churning as if it wavered in a storm. And then she looked up, catching a glimpse of a flock of twelve large birds. They, glided above her gracefully, a mass exodus of white underbellies toward the warmth of the light. Their bellies were soft and round and their gentle coos rang throughout the space. Before her she saw the path of light. But what was behind her? She turned around to see a wide gaping vortex of blue and black.

And as if on cue, it was like the houselights came on in the theatre. It wasn’t that the darkness was gone, but gradually the blonde was able to make out the forms of the other people around her. There weren’t many, she actually recognized most of them: The girl who tried to help her, the warrior, and other blonde, the man with the loud machine, the fighting trio. And there were even a couple who Tallyho hadn’t really noticed before. She wondered if they saw all that she had seen and felt everything she felt. Could they see her as well as she could see them? The answers to all of these questions were more likely than not going to be yes. She took a step forward. Physically she felt great. It was like she never jumped out of the tree or was on the verge of throwing up. She wondered if those who had been wounded felt similar effects. She wondered if they also felt an inexplicable pressure to make a decision.

“I think,” she began, pausing briefly to behold the way that her voice reverberated throughout the space. “That I’m going to go that way...”

She pointed toward the softer light that was moving ever closer. That’s the direction in which the twelve birds flew and the warped vortex on the other end of the path didn’t seem particularly inviting. In any normal situation Tallyho would have questioned the logistics of such an experience. But something about this made her want to act based on her most primal instincts.

As panic took hold of Roísin’s body she could feel all her muscles lock with tension, her stomach revisiting that nauseous feeling from this morning, her vision blurry with hot tears, her lungs burning with the desire for more than the shallow breaths she was taking, her ears could only hear the distant shouts of others, a few loud bangs and her heart beating furiously in her chest. For a moment she felt as if her ribs would shatter and break. She was vaguely aware of a man stepping in front of her but she could not make out his face nor the words he said, her eyes were focused on the 9 ft tall creature only a few feet away from her. It screamed, she tried to scream but nothing would come out of her mouth. She could almost imagine how she looked, as people around moved quickly and decidedly as merely a frightened woman. Hunched over, paler than usual, with a white knuckle grip on her phone Roísin had heard of the fight or flight response before, in fact she spoke about it often when she described her heroes and their stories and had always thought that she would be a fighter-considering how many arguments she got into. But never did she expect that she would freeze.

The shattering of the creature broke the spell over her in the same why the monster broke into a hundred shining black pieces. Roísin was overcome with gratefulness that it was gone and fell to her knees and slowing she began to get her senses and emotions other than fear back. Though what also washed over her was shame and guilt that she had done little but be a screaming girl in the background. She cursed herself, having always loudly condemned female characters in stories that did nothing while a man saved them. And a mystery man to top it off, her eyes flickered to Dorian while she rubbed away her tears who was inspecting the onyx shards and her heart began to beat a little faster for her would be rescuer, it didn’t matter in that moment that the strangely clothed man had probable been trying to save himself, he had saved her by proxy. And Roísin was grateful. Reaching out with her right hand she grabbed one of the glittering pieces and stuffed it in her bag- no doubt when she calmed and told a story about this later she’d want some evidence it actually happened. She then became aware of a cramp in her left hand, where she still clung onto her phone. Needing some comfort of home Roísin dialled the number of her mother, not really caring what time it was back in Ireland.

“Dia duit mo ghrá” [Hello my love] her mother answered into the receiver.
Roísin almost started to cry once more, with relief she felt completely safe while listening to her mothers voice.
“Dia duit mo chroí” [Hello my heart] she replied. “Ní bheidh tú buille faoi thuairim cad a tharla sa lá atá inniu. A ollphéist agus fear...” [You’ll never guess what happened today. There was a monster and a man...].

Upon saying the words monster and man Roísin’s eyes looked at the pile of jewels and at Dorian who looked...bright? She trailed off from her mother as she squinted at the warrior man, it wasn’t he who bright but a brightness coming towards them, the ground beneath her started to quake as adrenaline and fear revisited her as quickly as they had come before.


“Buíochas le Dia! Uimh! Níl, níl mé ag iarraidh go bás.” [Oh my god! No! No, no I don’t want to die] she almost whispered into the speaker of the phone. It seemed like even if she ran it would do no good. She watched helplessly as she saw others collide with the dome of light. It would be her next. “Is breá liom tú” [I love you]. That was the last thing Roísin said to her mother and as she could hear her mother screaming her name the light came upon her in a rush and she was swept up in a hale of wind and then. Silence.

If death felt like this, this disconnection, this nothingness yet she could still feel her body but almost as if it was far away. Almost like the place between awake and sleeping when you know you are in a dream. It wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t so bad to be dead. After what seemed like an eternity and also seconds Roísin became aware of other around her. As she lay still on the floor she leaned to see a blonde girl already walking towards a very inviting path. Roísin wanted to follow this woman, her own body was light and calm, no longer filled with anxiety and last night’s bad decisions. As she got to her feet she heard a thud, her phone clamored to the ground. And as clear as day see could see the words “Máthair [mother] Disconnected."

Cold tears slid down Roísin's cheeks as she reached for the phone and stared at the screen. Her mind was telling her to walk away, to move towards the light but she found herself trying to call her mother back only to hear the long, lonely beeps of a connection not being able to get through. Her face scrunched up as she tried again, and again, silently sobbing a little harder with each failed attempt. "I...I can't get through ah, I, I can't get in touch with my mother" she said quietly, defeatedly, hoping that this was a dream.

Language Key
-------------------
ayudame = help
Ay dios mio = Oh my god
Ay dios mio, estadounidense loco! - Oh my god, crazy American(s)!

The pull towards the golden light was almost inescapable. Almost.

As much as she wanted to continue onwards, Angela couldn't help but turn back. Was the rest of the group following? She didn't want anyone to be left alone here. Pretty as it was, she couldn't imagine anyone who would actually be alright there by themselves. It surprised her to see people who weren't jumping at the chance to join her and the other blonde. Was this really the time or place to be checking their phones? Angela honestly didn't know. She hadn't even thought about it.

Her own phone was rose gold with a translucent case. Decorating it were some stickers and some tiny stick on plastic gems. She could tell just by looking that it wasn't damaged. Or, didn't look to be. It came to life easily, too. However, she couldn't place any call. Nor were any of her texts sending. Anything that could be seen as useful was completely down. Based on the reactions of the others it seemed that no one was having any luck. One girl was even crying.

"Hey... no... Don't, don't cry. Please." Angela lightly tapped the shoulder of the girl sobbing.

"I mean, it's not like we're dead or anything! I'm pretty sure we'd know if we were! Like, someone would probably tell us or something! Maybe we're just in a tunnel?" She smiled awkwardly.

"But, uh... Hey! Look! My photos are still there," Angela swiped through her photos quickly. Sunsets, friends, airplane food. Finally she found what she was looking for. A golden lab running gleefully across a shoreline. "Look, see? That's my mom's dog! Isn't he the cutest? He's super dopey but he's a good boy. He even knows how to fetch! So, um, now you don't have to be sad?"

It was hard to cheer someone up when Angela herself was starting to get concerned. That added to the fact that she hadn't felt much of anything but a desire to go the the golden pillar of light just moments prior only made it harder to gather own feelings sorted.

"I... don't think it's a good idea to stay here. Why don't we go together? I can show you more pictures of my mom's dog. Until the battery runs out, at least, but I have my charger with me so that shouldn't be a problem!" Angela reached out, hoping the girl would take her hand and follow.

"I'm Angela. Let's be friends, okay?" She smiled at both girls this time. It certainly wouldn't hurt if they all went together.

A week ago Tallyho would have said that she was indifferent toward the idea of death. It wasn’t that she thought that life on the other side would be a bed of roses, it’s just that she decided that there wasn’t much to look forward to. Especially so after her 16th birthday, the year when she learned that girls like her weren’t allowed to live their lives and do what they wanted. That a girl was raised to clean and cook and bed whichever loser a council of old welted fruits chose for her. That she had to sing hard, dance harder, or, if she was talentless like Tallyho, work admissions for a performance she’s heard a million times. And yet, the girl here in this space of everything and nothing yearned to hear that performance again.

Tallyho, though she’d always been a relatively independent young woman, was somewhat relieved to see that she wasn’t going to be walking into the light alone. Although she hesitated when one girl started crying and another went over to help her. The blonde stopped to look at them, now unsure of her choice. The girls were huddled over their small rectangular slabs, swiping their pale fingers against its shiny, glowing surface. She would have taken that time to finally ask what those contraptions were had she not noticed the change in the waves below them. The water seemed restless and she could feel the faint tapping of deep vibrations from the star path at her feet.

“I really think we should go,” she said louder than before. She blurted this out uncomfortably, offended by the sound of her own voice and the way it ground against the acoustics of the space. Although to be fair, her voice sounds much lovelier than she thinks it does. She halfway hoped that the warrior would follow her advice again and get the rest of them to budge. Sometimes all it took for a woman to be heard was the cooperation of a man who, in recounting his choice, would say that it was his idea all along. That’s how that half of the human race worked.

The blonde flinched, sucking air through her teeth as a cold wave of water billowed up on the path and took a lick at her feet. More waves seemed to follow suit. The water was rising and it didn’t seem like they had much time to meander in the void any longer. It was now or never.

Tallyho glanced pleadingly at the group. “Now,” she huffed before turning on the balls of her feet and making a sprint toward the light. The warmth enveloped her and she performed what felt like a nosedive into the sun.

--

There were birds chirping and Tallyho basked in the warmth that settled on her back. She was lying face down and could feel the texture of dry grass pressing onto her cheek. Her pink lips curled into a half smile but her eyes were still shut. She knew it was all a dream, but didn’t care much to know that she wasn’t in her tent, only that she felt alive. She felt a sudden jut in her side from a hard metal object. It wasn’t particularly painful, but it was the kind of sensation that made you scream “OW” just because you were shocked and not because you were actually in pain. She recoiled, gasping for air as her eyes bugged out and she floundered in the opposite direction of the probe.

Bleary-eyed, she made out the image of a red-faced older man with thick grey tufts in his salt and pepper hair. He wore a white cotton shirt, dirty and untucked from thin brown trousers reminiscent of potato sacks. In his hands was the long garden hoe that he used to wake her up, jabbing her in the side like she was a tiny spud fresh from the dirt. She was lying in a field of wheat, which made Tallyho wonder why he didn’t wield a sickle. She fixated her jaw to scream but could only let out a winded wimper-huff.

The man, unbothered looked out into the distance and called out.

“Mary, get th’ boss. It looks like ther’re a lot of em!”

A lot of them? Surely he didn’t mean the others from the strange dream? Tallyho began her scramble backwards, attempting to work her way into standing upright. The man looked back at her, noticing her discomfort. His voice was stern and intimidating.

“Now look here girl. I don’t know what you and yer friends were stealing from this farm but yer gonna have to answer to the big guy now.”

The big guy? Friends??

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“Don’t play dumb, girl!” his voice rose dramatically.

“I’m not playing anything.” She replied sternly.


“What’s going on out here?” a voice from the distance implored. Tallyho couldn’t see the voice’s owner over the wheat, but it sounded finer, not fancy but any means, but much smoother than the voice of the man in front of her. Younger too.

“We’ve got thieves!” The older man howled.

Tallyho hoisted herself onto her feet and the man posed to stop her as if she were about to make a run for it. She turned toward the other voice.

Before her was a grand old house. The wood was old but she could tell that the building had antiquity rather than rats. Around her was an expanse of land, cultivated into rows and rows of crops and wheat. Around her stood other people she hadn’t seen before, many of whom were men of varying looks and ages who wielded gardening tools. They seemed to be looking down at the ground in front of them. Tallyho wondered if they waking up those others? They couldn’t be here right?

“Oh right, I was expecting guests.”

Tallyho looked back over at the house where she saw a young man taking a huff of a cigar that seemed far too rich for this backdrop. He wasn’t overly extravagant, his pants looked like they were made of a nicer material, but he wore a plain white button down (similar to those of many of the men in the field). The only difference was that his shirt was clean. His hair, a tuft of brilliant auburn, was slicked back with a mannish care—groomed, but not too meticulous. His gray eyes scanned the field and when they landed on Tallyho she grew rigid. He didn’t seem particularly amused or bothered by her reaction, in all honesty he seemed a bit deadpan, like he’d done and seen all of this before.

He popped the cigar out of his mouth and let out a huff of smoke. He put it out in an ash tray presented to him in a timely fashion by a woman with the mark of a big scar on her face. It looked old and well worn, like she’d gotten it years ago. When she caught Tallyho staring she rolled her eyes and smirked, causing the blonde to glance away.

Once everyone woke up the young man spoke again. “Dinner’s almost ready and I’m sure you all have a lot of questions. Let’s get you cleaned up and settled and we can chat maybe?”