The walls above us groaned, threatening to collapse from the shift in terrain, the jagged landscape threatening to slip beneath my feet once again at another instance of the beasts’s undulations.

I could see the beast peering over the ruined buildings, slanted frames sliding into the ground, people screaming in terror. It peeked over the cloud of debris seeping through the cracks, far out of range of the dust cloud it had created.

The beast was much worse than the preliminary explanation had captured, its essence unmeasured with the former words. Its face was filled with an indescribable hatred, each facet somewhere between human and monster, the beady eyes reflecting the ruined world around them. Each head smiled a twisted smile, the needle-like teeth staggered like a spiral. If one was to enter the mouth they would get torn to shreds in a circling display of suffering.

Its jagged tusks were covered in their own spikes, six branching obelisks of ivory shielding the cavernous mouths. Its ears were only stifled by the presence of its other heads, shrunken to ensure that the form didn’t clash, but that didn’t shrink their size past the relative scope of their frame.

It truly met the city-rank descriptor, its true breadth only recognizable when it was actually in sight. My imagination had failed to render it in the proper glory, functioning to create a poor imitation of the monster looming over the city. That thought shattered on the impact of its form meeting my eyes, the shape burned into my memory so that I could never forget the harbinger of our city’s destruction.

In the distance I could see various techniques glancing off of the beast, the hardy skin ignoring the impact, no ichor leaking from the wrinkled skin. It wasn’t prudent to keep staring, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the scene, wondering if things could ever go back to a semblance of the peace that we were certainly without now. My hopes were vested just like the others around me, wishing the best of my friends and colleagues down by the monster’s body. If they couldn’t pierce through and get results, I didn’t know what the rest of us would have to do. It was a thought I couldn’t bear to entertain.

Back by our tunnel, the civilians restarted fleeing into the depths, tramping over the bodies of the living and the dead. Their fear overwhelmed them with their desire to live, those beneath them unable to be noticed, their minds blocking out the sensation of the soft bodies beneath their struggling feet. Some of the motionless forms were plucked from the ground by stray parasites, all too used to their progenitor’s habits as to flawlessly swoop in the aftermath of its movements.

For each parasite we killed, another two took its place, weaving around the chaos and getting away with bodies. I could only pray that they were already taking corpses, because the living deserved a chance to escape, and I couldn’t bear the thought of suffering under their accumulated curses for my failures.

I looked down at the ground, trusting my electroreception to monitor the activity in the skies, staring helplessly at the horde pushing up against the tunnel down into the old city. I could clearly see the bodies crushed underneath, some of the people summoning their attributes to ensure that they could push through the throng, their fear greater than the right for the others around them to exist.

Legs got twisted under stray hoofs, arms shattered, heads in a few instances crushed. Jagged bones stuck out on odd angles, people heaving and sobbing at the agony of their misshapen forms before feet trod over their bodies once again, their cries for help falling on deaf ears. Those that were lucky were killed on initial impact, others suffering the repeated weight of the animal known as the crowd over and over, bodies clinging for life under the weight of a horde doing the same. I tried to cry out for a semblance of decency but my words were swallowed not only by the crowds panicked noises, but a horrible trumpeting resounding through the city.

It was an awful noise bouncing through my body, my organs shaking at the deep penetrative rumbling. It felt like it was realigning my organs into a formation that they weren’t suited to, drawing me into a shape that my body strained to fail to realize. The buildings teetering around shook from the vocalization, errant bricks falling into the crowd, only those with a sufficiently hardy skin able to endure the aerial barrage. It was chaos incarnate, the city betraying those that lived within it to the will of the giant invader, and this wasn’t even the full extent of the attack. This was just the opening barrage, the heralding of its arrival, the beginning salvo that would summon the end of Titan City if it couldn’t be stopped by the brave people fighting against it.

I didn’t know what to do other than my stray attacks on the parasites, trying to maintain my efforts to clean up the monsters, Mia doing the same. We couldn’t prevent the people from killing their fellow citizens, but we could prevent the parasites from making away with more of them, at least, to an extent.

I stared back up at the sky, looking to see how many of the parasites were out of the range of my senses, when drops of water cascaded down from above, the cool liquid sitting up my face. I didn’t realize we were due for rain this day, but there was always room for things to get worse, the people fleeing into the depths apt to trip on the slippery ground, skidding and colliding into others.

That, of course, would have been true if the liquid was solely rain, but my eyes traveled the route of the collective gaze of the crowd, seeing what I had failed to notice in my zealous efforts to defend from the aerial attacks.

My mistake was in assuming the liquid could only be rain.

My gaze alighted on the spike feeder, seeing one of its heads spewing out what was presumably water through the trunks, the accumulated liquid splattering off of the rooftops it demolished. It was actively spraying a district away, the splashing of the water against the slanted surfaces displaced into our sky like tears from the crying heavens, mourning the bodies that would continue to be lost in this engagement.

The spray of its trunk continued moving forward, the trajectory coming closer and closer to our position, heralded by the waters swelling by my feet. I turned fully towards the spike feeder, noting the wave seeping through the demolished buildings, a steady deluge that was going to swallow everything in its path.

While I was quite suited for aquatic warfare, as was Lenny, the same couldn’t be said for most of the civilians. In that same line of thought, I hoped fervently that Mia would keep to the skies, and avoiding being bogged down by the deluge, wings wetted down so that she was bound to the earth once again.

For all that I was thinking in the moment, my thoughts were outpaced by reality, the liquid splashing over my body. It was a warm foul sensation to be met with those displaced rivulets. The currents forced those still above the ground against other crumbling city walls, some buried under the submerged debris dislodged from the impact of the wall of water.

It was easier for me to hold my place, body used to the currents that threatened to swell over this microcosm of the world, displaced by the spike feeder. I pushed against the flow, fighting to remain intact and away from the impact of the hard surfaces.

Another swell of liquid pushed in, the beast sending another salvo of liquid in our direction. My body threatened to give against the deluge brought upon by the beast when Lenny swiftly danced through the water, pulling me along by his side to an alleyway perpendicular to the flow of the water, finding a temporary reprieve from the attack. My Swollen Fur swelled at my thought, my lips stealing the air trapped within my matted hair; anything to prolong my existence under the murky waters.

He nodded back at me, saluting me as he swam back off to the rest of the water, aptly darting about with ease. He truly was as skilled as he said, my own underwater aptitude paling in comparison to his show of skill. It was a sobering thought that even my underwater prowess was nothing compared to Lenny’s, but the implication of that thought shook me, filling me with a deep and terrible chill, as I slowly turned towards the tunnel.

Down below the water would drain, water taking the natural path towards an exit. How much water was going down below? How fast did it travel through? Were the people below being swept away, the water careening them over the natural aqueducts over the cliff?

I didn’t know how I could convey that message to Lenny— I could only hope that the twins below were handling it, let alone the other guards spread throughout the city. Someone had to take care of them, although they were perhaps better off than those of us apt to drown under the torrent of churning waves, most of the civilians not as equipped as myself to surviving for this extended period.

I didn’t have to worry for too long, or rather, it would be more apt to say that one worry was replaced with another. The water started lowering from around me, ascending back into the sky. I stared at the spike feeder, noting that the guards had launched an attack on the head spewing the water, putting a stop to the increase in volume, but all of the effort was allocated to one head. The one opposite to it started to have the water flow back to its trunk, evidently siphoning back the liquid it had stockpiled, but that wasn’t the only thing flying along with it. Debris, unconscious bodies and more flew into its path, easily taken by the powerful suction power the beast possessed. I clung to one of the buildings nearby, hoping that I could endure for just long enough for the attack to end. I dug through my electroreception sensations, searching for Mia’s figure, letting out an ample sigh as the water dropped below my chest. She descended to my side, looking exhausted from the effort.

“Did you see that?” she asked, wordlessly gesturing to the monster’s attack.

“Of course I did. I lived through both halves of it. This is insane,” I sputtered. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to endure this.”

Another parasite flitted by, seeing an easy access to a bloating corpse, but I wasn’t going to let it get off easily. Sparks jumped from my fingers, traveling through the line I drew in the air, frying the careless beast, its bones sitting upon the pile of ash. “They’re not even stopping…” Mia moaned. “They don’t care if they die. They have no sense of self-preservation. I saw more than a few fall into the path of the monsters suction, effortlessly drawn through the air, no actions taken to resist the attack. They’re like an effective Culling Night and that still doesn’t encompass the horrors of the day.”

“I just hope Lenny got to the people below,” I muttered. “If we were lucky they took to the high ground, avoiding the natural channels the water would take, but who knows if there was enough room to allow for that space to go unused? This is going terribly wrong, Mia. This might be the end for Titan City.”

A ringing noise filled my ears, my cheek throbbing with pain. I gingerly touched my bruised flesh, staring at Mia’s outstretched hand, her face contorted with rage. “Don’t say that, Perry. Don’t give up so easily. We’re doing what we can so that the people who are fighting have something to fight for. We’re trying to ensure there’s some sort of Titan City after we’ve survived this mess. The city isn’t the buildings, but the people within it. I learned that the hard way when I took over for my father, Perry. Now get out of your head. We need to prepare for the next attacks.”

Her body shook as she sped up, darting around and slicing two parasites to bits, the people they carried dropping to the ground, no noises issuing from their forms. At best they were unconscious, apt to die shortly thereafter. Most likely they were already dead. It was a sobering thought that our efforts were only staunching the bleeding rather than preventing the damage from being done. But stopping wasn’t an option. We had a duty to do.

“I think the sucking stopped,” Mia said, noting with a shock the heavy thud of partially destroyed buildings falling out of the sky, crashing into other intact structures from their unanticipated flight. It kicked up yet another cloud of dust, the monster obscured by the overhead wall of particles, unintentionally providing a screen against scrutinizing its next actions.

“I don’t even know what we can do here, Mia,” I groaned. “Are there even people left to evacuate?”

“There are people. Whether they’re dead or not is a separate question that we’ll have to confirm. We’ll save who we can save, and honor the memories of those departed by guarding the others the best we can. We can’t undo what’s happened, but we can work towards protecting those with a chance for tomorrow.”

“You’re right,” I said, resigned to the struggle against what felt like our impending deaths. I had taken a life before, but the bandit took that choice from me, ignoring my words of caution, and now another choice was taken away by the overwhelming might of the monster. Madness spilled like the water before, creeping at the edges of my sensations, my mind struggling to retain its form under the weight of the situation.

I gingerly dabbed at my nostrils, feeling the steady drip of blood drop down my face, my tongue reaching out to taste the iron liquid my body had issued to the outside world. All of our training seemingly amounted to little under this high stress situation, Mia’s body too looking like it would break under the stress, but stopping wasn’t an option. I focused my electroreception, trying to put my sight to the sensation of the signals, delving for the noise of activity amidst the newfound silence where once was an ocean of action.

And yet for all that I was looking down, the hits didn’t stop coming from above.

“Perry!” Mia shrieked, balling up her form. I turned to where her eyes focused, noting the free trunk slamming into another section of the city, trying to swell my fur just in time to mitigate the impact I knew was coming, but my taxed mind wasn’t ready to handle the attack it knew was coming.

The last thing I could remember was the feeling of my body against the damp, hard wall before things grew dark and the world vanished around me.