Sophia wasn't sure how to feel right now. On the one hand, she had always been planning to die soon. So she wasn't worried about being killed like the rest of the city's residents.

On the other hand, when she thought about all the people she knew dying at the hands of the Shrike, she was disgusted.

Her survival instincts kicked in and she burst into a sprint. Runnin down the alley she had been hiding in and away from the Shrike.

Her heart was hammering in her chest and her breathing was short and laboured. Beneath her, her legs pounded against the ground as she sprinted down the alley.

Behind her, she could hear the wretched screams of those unlucky enough to be caught in the roots of the Shrike.

While she ran desperately, leaving behind the Shrikes that were laying waste to the city centre. Sophia was reminded of a somewhat morbid saying she had once read, "When running away from a lion, you don't need to run faster than the lion. You just need to run faster than the guy next to you."

Today, she was learning the truth of this saying. Each time she heard a scream from behind her, she knew exactly what it meant. Someone had bought her an extra second to run away. Every death that wasn't her bought her some extra time to live.

Her thoughts were a mess but she had a vague idea of what she should do, 'I just need to survive long enough for Solomon to return to the city,'

A troop of soldiers barrelled past her, knocking her to the hard ground of the cobbled street. They were barking orders at each other and all of them were carrying ceramic canisters full of a strange liquid.

The sounds of screams, destruction, yelling and crying played a symphony of agony throughout the city.

Picking herself up off the ground, Sophia was about to continue running down that street, when a Shrike crashed through a house in front of her, smashing it into rubble. It was covered in a volatile liquid fire that showed no signs of going out.

A group of soldiers chased the Shrike through the ruins of the building and a few of them threw ceramic canisters at the Shrike. When the canisters came into contact with the Shrike's skin, they exploded into balls of liquid fire that stuck to the Shrike.

Sophia gasped, she had recognised what the weapons they were using were. Her mother had used to tell her about their secret weapon, [Greek Fire] "So that's what it looked like," She mumbled.

Her feet carried her away from the violent clash between the Shrike and the Soldiers. She ran through the endless, winding streets of the walled city that snaked and twisted like a maze.

The city was wreathed in smoke as the flame from the bazaar spread out from the city centre onto the nearby houses. The fire hungrily devoured every building it came into contact with and eagerly spread to the next.

Every time one of these flaming buildings was destroyed by a marauding Shrike, flaming meteors made of rubble would spread out to set all the nearby buildings alight.

The soldiers had begun to use the burning buildings as a barricade to defend against the Shrike that tried to spread out into the city. Ironically, Sophia setting the city on fire had turned from an act of senseless arson into a vital advantage in her people's battle against the Shrike.

Unaware of this, Sophia continued running through the streets. She had run so far that the screams had become a distant reminder of the destruction, rather than an everpresent attack on her psyche.

Somehow, she had ended up at the library again. She stood at the entrance to her library and bent double. She Wretched, all the food in her stomach came back up the way it went in.

Covering her mouth with a shaking hand, Sophia felt like crying. By now, she had figured out what had happened.

'The Shrike must have found an entrance to the Styx and travelled up the river until they found the Well... It... its all over isn't it,'

She was trying to drag herself up the steps of the library but her legs felt like jelly. Never in her life had she run that far or that fast.

As she crossed the threshold of the library, she flopped down onto the ground on her back. Lying there panting, she held back tears and began figuring out what to do next.

"Since I'm here... now what. Do I just have to wait and pray for Solomon to get back?"

Sophia raised her head and looked around at the musty bookshelves and weatherbeaten leatherbound books that lined them. To her, each one of those books represented a memory she shared with her parents.

She recognised a book her mother had used to read her when she was young. In it, a knight had selflessly gone on a quest to slay a dragon. After a bloody battle, he returned home triumphant, to the applause of the king and his people,"

After her mother read her that book, Sophia had asked her, "Why did the have knight go to slay the dragon?"

"Because that dragon was causing trouble to nearby villages," Her mother had replied, "It was something that had to be done,"

Sophia was unconvinced by this reply, what she didn't understand was why that Knight had to be the one to slay the dragon. He had a loving family waiting at home for him. His beloved had even promised to marry him when he returned.

If he had all of those good things in his life, why would he throw his life away to kill a Dragon that was bothering someone else? During the fight with the dragon, the Knight had thought of all of those waiting at home for him and pulled through with the power of love or some such nonsense.

Was it okay to be so cavalier with your life when it wasn't absolutely necessary? At the time, her mother had just smiled. "Someday, you will have someone you care deeply about, and when you hear stories about a dragon attacking innocents, imagine if that innocent person was the same person you cared about," she had said.

"Then, perhaps you might be able to muster up the courage to slay the dragon,"

Sophia looked at her mother with sparkling eyes, "Have you ever slain a dragon?"

Her mother had smiled warmly at Sophia "No... I have slain far worse." Her mother had joked. Then, she had shot a glance at her frail husband who was reading a book and smiled, "How else would I catch the kings eye?"

Her father lifted his head from his book and looked at the mother and daughter pair. Sophia was perched on her mother's knees like a baby bird while laughing at her mum's joke.

He just smiled and lowered his head back to his book.

Lowering her head to Sophia's ears, her mother whispered something, "Truth be told, if your father wasn't such a weakling, I wouldn't need to slay dragons," her mother whispered playfully.

"Hey! What are you telling her?"

"Nothing dear~~"

...

Snapping out of the memory, Sophia looked at the bookshelves that contained many other happy memories just like it.

Right now, the safest place in the city was probably here. 'When Solomon arrives, he will immediately head here to check if I'm okay, so, all I have to do is wait it out,'

So... why was she running back out of the library?

She went to her neighbour's house and slammed on their door. A flustered middle-aged man opened the door in a hurry. His hair was a mess and the sounds of a child hysterically crying was coming from inside the house.

"What is it!" He yelled in frustration.

"Sir, I was informed by the guard captain that we are using the library as an evacuation point, please take your family and hide there," Sophia shouted grimly before running to the next door.

Sure, she had just lied to him and a flimsy lie at that, But as long as the middle-aged man and his family were saved in the end, it didn't matter.

At the next door, there was no answer to her knocking, but violent shouts could be heard vaguely from outside the house. 'It sounds like they are disagreeing... Who cares.' Sophia thought and went onto the next house.

She had decided to adopt a 'no second chances' policy. Either you answer the door and have a chance to live, or you don't and... well... you don't.

Running from door to door, Sophia continued to lie through her teeth to her neighbours. She was particularly silver-tongued when it came to those she knew or those with young children. It was unlikely she could ever sleep again if she had the death of a child on her conscious.

When she had remembered her mother's story, she was reminded of what her mum had stood for. Protecting those she cared for, who couldn't protect themselves. Honestly, Sophia didn't care much about the people she was saving.

But, she also didn't care much about her own life as she was already planning to go to Hell. So, in memory of her mother's bravery and kindness, she was scraping the very bottom of her energy reserves and running from door to door desperately trying to save whoever she could.

She didn't want to see the people her mother had died to protect lose their lives. At least, not when she could do something about it. Although her motivation for trying to save people didn't stem from justice or anything like it, it was better than nothing.

Eventually, she reached the end of the street. And had to make a difficult decision. 'Should I continue onto the next street and warn them as well or..." In the end, the horrendous conditions of the city made her decision for her.

By now, the air was thick with acrid smoke and breathing was becoming even more difficult. Grimly, Sophia turned her back on the next street and stumbled back towards the library.

'Sometimes, no matter how much you want to do something. It just isn't possible,' Or that's what she told herself to avoid the guilt anyway.

The thick smoke was choking her and her breathing was becoming increasingly harder. It had taken her at least 20 minutes to completely run around her street as there were over 40 houses. And those 20 minutes had begun to take their toll.

At the end of the street, the library appeared in her hazy vision. Vaguely, she could make out the silhouettes of almost 100 people huddled within the library's entrance. 'There are probably more people in the library right now than have ever come in,' She mused sarcastically.

Sophia wasn't sure if it was because of the desperation of the situation, But she couldn't stop herself from laughing at her own joke. 'Perhaps my mind has completely snapped and I've gone off the deep end,' She mused and this only made her laugh harder.

Each time she laughed, she would inhale the thick smoke and her voice would become strangled and pained. By now, breathing had become excruciating. She felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest, constricting her lungs.

Vaguely, in the distance, she saw something rear up through the thick black smoke. An enormous tree loomed up from the smoke at the end of a nearby street. Along its barbed branches were 10s of fresh corpses that dripped blood onto the ground like a sprinkler.

Perhaps the smoke was obstructing its senses because so far it seemed to not have noticed the people hiding within the library, But, the library was at the end of the street the Shrike was on and it was only a matter of time before it reached the library and the hundreds of people within.

At that moment, time slowed down to a crawl. Sophia's brain had been pushed into overdrive as she searched for a way out of this horrid situation. As the Shrike loomed closer to the library, she was plagued with self-blaming thoughts. 'If I hadn't led them all to the library...'

Finally, in a moment of frightening clarity, she realised what she had to do.

'Oh well... I was planning to die anyway. Better now than never.'

Sophia opened her mouth wide and screamed at the top of her lungs. Because of the constant inhalation of smoke, her scream came out strangled and cut off. But it did the job.

The Shrike that was looming towards the library, snapped around and faced her. Immediately, it began barreling through the buildings in between it and Sophia. It knocked everything out of its path turning buildings into rubble and dust.

Sophia turned tail and ran into an alley between two houses. She desperately wheezed and choked on the smoke as she tried to catch her breath. But the oxygen wouldn't come.

She jumped over a low garden fence and collapsed. Her legs had completely given out underneath her. There was no deeper that she could dig. That was it. She was done.

Behind her, the Shrike laid waste to any and all obstacles between them. It tore into the garden she had collapsed in and lashed out one of its barbed roots towards the helpless Sophia.

She was curled up on the ground, her eyes half open as she noticed a hazy silhouette approaching. Right as the Shrike's branch was about to cut off her head, Solomon appeared and... and... that didn't happen.

The silhouette wasn't Solomon. When her vision came into focus, she was looking at a short man with horns that looked like antlers. He had blades protruding from his elbows. In his clawed hands, was a clipboard.

From this clipboard, he monotonously read.

Name: Sophia Recturn

Cause of death: Asphyxiation

Destination: Heaven

The short demon raised his head from the clipboard. "Congrats, as a demon I can't help but be jealous."