Thanus76

The songbirds had mana in spades. We flashed with barely a tug on my reserves, arriving at Point Pleasant with a flash. The Mothman statue and museum were our targets, but we arrived half a mile up the road from it in the bathroom of a diner that had been closed for two years. Two broken doors later, and we filed out onto the street, sniffing. The whole area stunk of Sentinel ault. They had been here, still were there, with nothing amiss.

“We’re going to have to go straight back to the Songbirds after this, right?” I looked between the team, and they nodded in agreement.

“Take em alive!” Nodak spouted before leading the charge into the street. He knew what to do, and we all filed out. The metal Mothman statue still stood defiantly, and I smirked at its gleaming silver ass. Balester stared at it for a long moment. His brows furrowed.

Kahera grinned and patted my back, “The real thing looks nicer.” He ran off, canvassing the area as I made my way around. I sniffed around for signs of Niala or Gaffriel, searching for her scent of ice and Gaffriel’s fire. I smelled neither, sighing with simultaneous relief and regret until the first shot rang out. Then the relief faded.

“Shit,” I muttered as a bullet glinted off the statue.

Without warning, screams echoed around the street as townfolk exited and bolted out in the open.

“GET DOWN, STAY INSIDE!” Lerrin shouted, now. They didn’t listen, and I winced as a portly man in sweatpants ran out into the street in a blind panic, dropping amid a spray of his own blood.

“This is so fucked up,” Krell hissed. He tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. The rings on his fingers clicked against his ears, over all the piercings in a slow drag. Krell really needed a new hobby, or he’d run out of things to pierce soon.

“Yeah.” I agreed.

“INTO THE FRAY!” Krell shouted as he bounded off across the street in the path of gunfire. I yelled for him to stop, and after what I had seen the day before, my heart skipped a beat as he jolted under the fall of bullets.

“I’M FUCKEN’ INVINCIBLE!” Krell shouted as he jumped, bounding up to the edge of a building window and hoisting himself in a scramble onto a drainage pipe. He made his way to the roof and dove over the lip. The targeted gunfire ceased, rang out a few times, and a high-powered rifle flew out into the street with a loud clatter. Whoever fired shouted, caught in a scuffle—Krell played hard.

Red fire went up in a flare, a distinctive burning arc of mana fire, and Krell staggered back with a scream.

“Dude just… Dude!” Krell shouted. I looked up at him, then to other places around the street. Gunfire ceased one by one as they managed to subdue three other sentinels.

“He just… He… razed!” Krell’s shirt had scalded, and soot smattered his face, ashes drifting.

“Grab anything identifying. We’re heading back.” I didn’t want to be callous, but we couldn’t afford to stick around.

Senson dragged an unconscious man by a body vest, and Krell jumped off the roof with a smattering of burned Kevlar in his arms. Balester and Lerrin each had one of the men subdued.

“Have they been here?” Kahera asked me.

“Nope. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow or move out again tonight.” I didn’t smell them. It could have been worse.

We linked arms and touched shoulders, dragging the men off with us as we arrived at the entrance of the songbirds’ lands. A guard lifted the spells to let us barge in with a clatter, receiving quick assistance in pinning down and restraining the three men who glared up at us. They were our kind, yes, but… something didn’t feel right. They didn’t have tattoos, their skin too pale, heads shaven.

Krell had that thousand-yard stare, clutching to his arms with ashen-grip. His brown eyes looked over at me, and he had this ‘I really need a dad’ look spreading over his face. I reached over and grabbed him. Pocked and bleeding marks dotted his flesh. But, for someone so afraid of bullets, he sure was ok with getting shot now.

“I just… I… I just punched him once in the face, just,” Krell shook, and I looked over his hand. His rings had been covered in blood—his hand dripping—; viscera smeared all the way up to his elbow.

“They’ve lost their magic. They can’t protect themselves like us anymore, Krell. They’re damn near human,” I told him, and he just buried his head into my shoulder. I’d not seen Krell cry since he was nine, had pulled Niala’s hair, and she reacted accordingly. Nodak looked miserable as he stood with us and patted Krell over his back.

“Come on. You don’t want that Nyota girl to see you crying like this. What will she think?” Nodak wasn’t very good at comforting anyone, but it did me good to see him try.

“I just… his ashes and blood are on… on my hands I just… I—I can’t….” Krell froze, shell-shocked, and broken, but I passed him off to Nodak. He pulled Krell with him, and they went off towards the showers. I shuddered to think what he’d just done and seen; Krell hit hard. He used wildling strength on what might as well have been a human. There were Gallagher videos that would never be the same for him.

“Poor fucking kid.” I looked down at my shirt. I hadn’t seen a lick of action, and even I was covered in cream of sentinel from Krell’s smeared form.