The skies overhead beamed brightly, as if heaven gates were ripped wide open revealing divine light. Suddenly it burned a bright red, an omen of what was to come. Long beams of ever changing hues of light reached out like long fingers, readying to pluck the fleas that sought shelter in wherever they could hide behind. All of this was happening in rapid successions, only moments between each new sequence.

At the distance, Grusha could hear the crying of young children, afraid of what was going on. Mothers turning to their spouses, seeking strength from their counterparts. Grusha knew that they stood no chance and that the strength the wives seeked was not there, pungent odors of deep despairing fear burned in through her nostrils. The night was only getting worse.

Suddenly, the climax of the celestial drama reached its end, thousands of thread-like lights burned and came crashing towards the earth below. Grusha could feel the atmospheric pressures compressing, forces that began to cascade on every creature. Creatures bagan to drop dead all around her before the impact even happened, unable to endure the pressure any longer.

Emerging from the forest, beams began to crash all around her, exploding the earth everywhere. One impact inches from her face exploded and a large boulder in front of her, she rolled over and climbed up and over the boulder. At a higher vantage point, she saw multiple villagers disappear in the light, a certain assured death without any doubt for anyone who drowned in that light.

Fractions of seconds felt like an eternity for Grusha, never had she felt so slow. It was like trying to forge through a tarpit, any progress was miniscule. Her eyes scanned the area from atop the flying boulder, but so much was obscured from walls of light all around her.

“Aput!” She roared.

Desperate, she leapt off the stone and weaved in between the lights, searching for Aput and hoping that she was not already too late. Her senses were gradually being drowned out, the only sense that operated was that of her sight. From the edge of one cascading beam of light, she recognized the silvery hair of Aput. She skidded and made a hard turn to her right, running around the beam that burned between her and the man.

Aput was watching with a dreamy look, as if he did not believe what he was watching. From overhead, a beam was a few meters from crashing onto Aput. Grusha’s heart pulsed harder and faster, forcing to give her all to reach him. With arms stretched wide, she made a final spring at Aput. Quills thickened and hardened, extending the furthest they ever had done before.

There was no way Aput could see what was going on, much less understand. She was moving far faster than how the human brain processed information, at this moment, all he would know was that he felt something pushing him.

Overhanging him to completely cover Aput, she felt the first touch of the beam on her quills. It burned and hurt like nothing ever before, forcing her to harden her cellular structure much more. She realized it was not enough to just cover Aput from above, the force would just simply burn him to ashes from beneath around her. Drawing the last bit of energy she had stored in her organ, she used all of it into her hair growth and hardening structure.

She balled herself and Aput inside of her quills like a hedgehog, it cushioned them from the destructive beam all around her. Her senses were sent awry, even the feeling of up and down was driving her amok. The heat was beginning to permeate through the quills, making them turn red as she tried to fight off the temperatures from penetrating, trying her best to keep Aput safe.

“Grusha?” Aput said in shock. He was wide-eyed. “What is going on?”

“Ask questions later.” She grunted. “This burns, I need to focus.”

The small dark space began to light up a red, then darkening again. It pulsated like a heartbeat, as she tried between each breath to ventilate the heat back into her organ.

“Why come back for me? If this is for that life-debt, then just let me die in peace.” Aput asked.

She barked back at him.

“This is not only for a skorto life-debt! I am here because this is what I chose.”

A pause.

“Why must my life be a living hell?” Aput started. “One moment I think I found what I was looking for, the next I think it was just my own imposed illusions.”

“Skorto! Talk about this after I save your skorto ass. This is harder than what it looks.”

“Sorry.” He apologizes.

“But we are talking about this later.”

He nodded.

Several minutes had gone by, the entire time she diverted the excessive energy in her organ and ventilating through a tip of an exposed quill. Then suddenly, the cascade ended without any particular reason. She stayed balled up for a few seconds longer, the ground still felt very hot to the touch, signaling that it still was not safe enough to go out. The next moment she felt water submerging her, and from the pressure that built up, she could tell they were nearly a hundred meters beneath seawater.

She exhaled heavily. A tremendous burden had been lifted, the sweltering heat cooled off somewhat from the arctic ocean, even the water itself felt warm too. Still, it was much more soothing compared to what she endured for several minutes. However, there was another problem that was building up inside of her, but she had to put that aside temporarily.

“The ground beneath you is still very hot, refrain from touching it unless you want to melt off your hands and feet.” Grusha warned him.

“Right.” He acknowledged.

“Also, we are beneath nearly 300 hundred feet of water.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“We’ll get to that in a few, I promise, as my honor as a beast that I will reveal to you all that I know. For now, listen carefully.”

He nodded silently.

“I will let the water in slowly through my quills, do not panic. When completely submerged, I will bring us to the surface, so hold on tightly.”

He nodded again.

Without another word, she started to depressurize the balled up hair around her. Water began to pour in, she and Aput began to float. The water was surprisingly cold and warm to the touch, therapeutic for the muscles. They took one final gulp of breath before she completely let loose her hair, they floated momentarily as they checked their surroundings. Molten rock glowed red in the water, the moonlight glowed above them.

Grusha took hold of Aput around her arms, he wrapped his around her firmly too. This felt slightly awkward for her, being this close to a human. Her heart began to skip beats, she tried to scan her bodily functions to make sure there was nothing wrong with her. Nothing was wrong from her on the inside, she shook her head from this. Something was wrong with, maybe it had to do with the other problem that was steadily growing inside of her.

Swimming straight up, she reached for the round shore overhead. Long hair streamed nearly thrice her body length, slightly dragging her speed. Kicking harder, she swam like an enlarged fish. Reaching the edge, their heads bobbed out of the water. They both took deep breaths of air, from the distance, someone called out their names.

“Wildebeest! Aput! By this side my friends!” Lady Hammer waved at them.

Grusha sighed.

Dragging Aput over her shoulders, she swam towards Hammer’s direction. When she approached, she peeled Aput off and breached onto the shore, landing on her foot. She reached in and snatched Aput out of the water. The ground steamed and water flooded into the ocean from the forest that was now defrosted.

A massive lake was formed, circumferencing around from where the village once was. A few pieces of wood and debris were washed up the shores, more painful evidence of the destruction of the once humble village of humble people. They had to crawl further up from the shore, since the ocean was flooding in and filling the crater.

At a higher vantage point, they could now see the full scope of the level of destruction. Entire forests were brought to nothing, only a few fortunate sturdy trees were left standing in miles of a radius. Deep from the newly formed lake, a red glow slowly dimmed back to darkness.

Aput slumped onto his bottom, unable to stand from shock. He gripped at his chest very hard, then grabbing his head.

Looking up back at Grusha, he asked. “Who could have done this? Why would they do this?”

Grusha and Lady Hammer exchanged glances.

Lady Hammer answered first. “I would dare and venture to say that most certainly this was part of Static’s doing, only a fiend as he could unfathomably do a deed.”

Grusha nodded. “Yes.”

“But why?” He pushed for an explanation. “They had nothing to do with this, any of this. Would he dare involve innocents like this?”

Grusha sighed. Slowly blinking. “No. Not just Static. This is what we were trained for, and Static functioned as a sword for Foundation. This is not the product of a single individual, this is the culmination of many brought together for a single cause.”

“And what cause is that?”

“That demis are a plague.”

“But how does that involve my village, my family?”

Lady Hammer answered. “We were loose ends, ends that needed drastic measures to be taken care of.”

Grusha felt a surge of pain course through her body, she could feel all of her muscles tensing aggressively to hold together. She roared into the night, scaring both Hammer and Aput from surprise. Her newly formed organ was rupturing, pockets of energy began to seep dangerously into the rest of her body. Her abdomen began to glow a bright blue, like a bright star in the middle of the night.

Aput and Hammer tried to help her, but she shoved them aside. She knew what she needed to do, she cut off her senses and slumped to the ground. Dedicating her mental faculties to processing data again in rapid succession, looking for another solution to the predicament she was in.