The situation seemed bleak, but harming them with her rifle was never her intention, as she had already learned from previous experiences that her actions seldom had any effect on the bizarre apparitions she had always encountered. Her true goal was to attempt a distraction, or at the very least scare them away with the loud blast from her weapon firing. The ones that crawled on the ground, she recalled, tended to be sensitive to loud noises and just as she had surmised, the distortions began to skitter away in various directions.

Of course, this was also bound to garner the battling elf’s attention.

"Yoo-hoo! Ms. Sniper!" She had already discovered Alma’s location and was shouting from down below.

“Hey!” shouted Alma back in warning, keeping Esme trained on the elf. “Stay where you are and just answer me one thing! What in my veritably frozen ass were those things?!”

The Hecatian had quickly knelt down and began checking on her companion during the creatureless respite, in spite of Alma’s threat to stay put.

"I take it you’re not out here hunting elfwin like me," she stated loudly. "So I'm right thrilled you scared 'em off like that. Was a pretty clever gambit! But knowing those chthonae, they won't flee too far before hopping back into the fray."

Her expression was one of both relief and concern. Despite the distance, Alma could clearly see a deep weariness that betrayed the burning ruby color in the elf's eyes, a dwindling fire beset by the smoky eyeshadow that did a decent job at covering up the exhaustion below them. It appeared that whatever trials and tribulations she had undergone up until then were finally taking their toll. Luckily, she now had an additional day of suffering thanks in part to Alma's intervention.

"Chthonae?" Alma repeated the elf's words back at her. It took her a few seconds to process the new bit of information. "Is that what they’re called? I didn't know anyone else could see those damn things. For the longest time, I thought I was suffering from some kind of brain damage."

A chuckle caught in the girl’s throat.

The elf seemed confused for a moment, before suddenly letting out a cry.

"Behind you!"

Alma, still lying in a prone position, jerked her body around faster than she ever had before. She felt the pain shoot through her waist and up to her wrists as she blocked against the invisible attack with her rifle. If not for her military training, she would have already been cut to ribbons. Struggling to hold the heavy weapon above her chest, there was now a growing pressure as the creature's weight bore down on her. Long, invisible appendages swung down in cascading arcs, battering against the stopgap shield that was her rifle.

Her grip on the weapon was beginning to weaken as the endless barrage continued. Each passing moment felt like an eternity until finally the crushing tension exerted by the creature began to weaken, enabling Alma to quickly regain some semblance of balance before it immediately slammed down on her body once again. One final blow caused the ground beneath her shoulders to crumble, sending both Alma and the creature tumbling down the snowy embankment.

Badly injured from the fall, Alma groaned in pain as she struggled to pull herself up from the ground using her rifle as a crutch. Her coat had become soiled with the snow and dirt of the deadly battlefield and now the blood that was bleeding profusely from several cuts on her face. The distorted form of a creature was laying lifeless by her side, hemorrhaging its own innards due to the she-elf’s thorough skewering the moment it hit the ground.

"That was quite a nasty spill you took." The nameless elf smiled at Alma, reached a hand towards her and pulled her to her feet. She gave the beaten down soldier a quick once-over. "All good, mate? Nothing broken I suppose?"

“I-I’m fine. Thanks.”

"You would’ve been better off not sticking your neck out for us.” She looked into Alma's eyes with a troubled expression on her face before finally letting out an exasperated sigh. There was a small stud on her nose that had all but lost its luster. “But cheers all the same."

She clicked her teeth in slight annoyance and looked back at her partner, "Bollocks. Now she's probably gonna wanna involve you too."

Alma opened her mouth to protest but the crunching sound of snow suddenly pervaded the conversation.

The invisible creatures had returned and were now creeping in from every side. The elf readied her blades while Alma brandished a small pistol she had hid in a side pocket of her bag—It was a choice she was fully aware had been meaningless.

The cold wind wriggled between the trees, causing the leaves to shudder and chant. Alma gripped her pistol firmly, praying to her mad goddess that maybe the same trick would work twice.

"Hwalín."

A soft, quivering voice that was carried by the breeze had reached their ears. It was coming from the elf's companion, who was now on her feet and leaning against a tree. She was visibly struggling to keep herself from collapsing.

"Please—" Her voice was catching in her throat. "Forgive me. I did not foresee the situation growing to such a dire point. The chthonae should not have woken for yet another ten million years."

The girl winced; her breathing was ragged and heavy. She was clutching the side of her stomach in pain.

"I fear—" The girl continued, stumbling. "I fear I am still not completely used to the frailty of this form. However, I must attempt once more to quell the chthonae before we are all swiftly overtaken."

"You don't have to do this, Nia!” Hwalín shouted back to her friend without taking her eyes off the approaching chthonae. There was depleted desperation in her voice. “We can figure out another plan!"

The woman named Nia simply shook her head.

"We sure bungled this, didn't we?" Hwalín mumbled to herself through gritted teeth.

Alma felt sure the elf had been referring to something beyond the obvious situation.

"I am afraid this is to be the only way," the injured girl spoke erratically. "This mistake was mine and I must now make amends for it. Just take solace in the fact that I did not awaken their progenitor."

She turned to Alma and smiled a regretful smile before mouthing to her a few inaudible words.

Before Alma could puzzle out the silent message, the girl in white had opened her mouth once more and began to sing.

The beautiful yet heavily injured stranger sang in vibrant, foreign tones, embraced by wordless sounds impossible to pronounce.

What little the woman's chant was perceivable to Alma had been the most magnificent thing she had ever before heard.

It took mere seconds before the urge to cover her ears filled her mind.

Something inside of her was howling at her that if she continued to listen for even a moment longer, she would be driven to insanity. Both her soul and her mind had been set ablaze by the chanting. Blood rushed to her head, causing a pounding in her skull worse than any pain she had felt before. A pain so harsh that it caused her to wail like a banshee crying its death knell.

The singing continued. A centuried melody dripping melancholy words about the romantic tides of existence. Abstruse lyrics about the vestiges of stars where once walked unnamable gods, watching their ruined kingdoms from afar. A song of the significant fragility of the psyche—these were words unintended to be heard by a mortal consciousness.

Hot, crimson tears trickled down from Alma's eyes as her body convulsed wildly in pain. She stifled an overpowering impulse to utilize the pistol in her hand to cease the pounding in her head right then and there.

Her mind was failing and her vision was fading. The last thing Alma saw in her twilight state before finally losing consciousness was a beautiful, umber-skinned elf covering her long, slender ears. She was looking down at her with the most heartbroken expression Alma had ever seen.

In the wall beyond sleep, Alma found herself absent of any bodily sensation and surrounded in an inky blackness. Straining her eyes as hard as she possibly could, she was able to see that the stygian emptiness was specked with dimly glowing, white dots that appeared to be at markedly different distances from each other. The sheer magnitude of the nearest ones eclipsed any preconceptions she held about how massive objects could get. Her body traveled through the void at inhumanly fast speeds, yet any attempt she made to float towards one of these dots had felt like an eon. When she had finally gotten relatively close to one, she realized what she had been seeing were the fading lives of supernal children. Amid the dying white lights of these stars could be seen enormous masses of floating rocks that she surmised were the pulverized remains of dead planets, now simply a shade of their once celestial glory. She had found herself in a cosmic sepulcher, where divine bodies went to die. For a moment, she had sworn she caught sight of a figure standing on one of them but when she looked again, there was nothing there.

The young soldier sat there for a while, attempting to meditate amid the crushing darkness. Contemplating to herself how a dead region of space like this could conceivably exist. After what seemed like an eternity, she began to notice that the emanations from the dying stars appeared to be getting siphoned off into the dark emptiness of the heavens above. Her eyes, having followed the streams to their source, had at first provided her with nothing significant to note. Until she noticed a slight red glow at the tail end of these ghostly strands. In that same moment, massive splotches of glowing crimson spots began to fill the surrounding obsidian sky. Stranger still was that in those fresh, carrion-colored stains were a plethora of pulsating, black webs. They were appearing at an alarming rate wherever she looked, siphoning more and more of the remaining lifeforce from those withering celestial bodies until at last they lost their radiance and faded into the surrounding darkness. It was then that her mind had come to a chilling revelation. Of the possibility that the crimson stains filled with black tendrils that were contaminating the fading sky had actually been the loathsome blood vessels of some unfathomable creature.

Alma awoke suddenly in a cold sweat. Her vision filled with an unfamiliar tapestry of luminescent stars dotting the night sky that were peeking through the coniferous crowns of the trees above her. The occasional sound of a bird's cry from within rode through the nocturnal air while the blazing flame of a nearby bonfire was illuminating her immediate surroundings. A cold wind had been blowing, causing the girl's face to feel numb. She groaned as she struggled to sit up but the damage done to her body had been too extensive and she found herself giving up after only a few tries. Her throat felt sore from the screaming she had done earlier accompanied by a painful sensation in her eyes that kept forcing her to strain them every few seconds. Squinting back to the sky, it seemed, for a moment, that there were more stars than the usual. An absurd notion she almost dismissed before realizing how rare it was to see any stars near her home at all.

"Welcome back to the waking world."

The voice of a stranger with platinum-colored hair startled Alma out of her thoughts. She recognized her as the injured girl from before. The weird girl was sitting on an overturned log with the sleeping head of a feisty, relatively young-looking elf resting on her lap. Alma found herself much too exhausted to be frightened of the pair of strangers or the portentous significance of the situation. The pale woman's face seemed to glow in the light of the fire, her eyes a color the injured Alma couldn't quite recognize. It seemed her eyebrows and even eyelashes were of a platinum hue. Her main head of hair flowed freely to the small of her back. There was a noticeable faint, purple starlight-like twinkling that passed chaotically from the tips of the various strands of it. No longer wearing her cloak, her hair’s dim glimmering illuminated a long, slender neck. In its light, Alma noticed she was wearing extremely plain clothes, a white short-sleeved t-shirt tucked into white pantaloons and a pair of dirty white sneakers. Her build was rather androgynous.

This creature in human form seemed like she was trying to carry herself with a kind and caring air that for a moment reminded Alma of her sister. In her paranoia, it instead led to a growing feeling of distrust.

"I was beginning to worry you would not awaken from your state of repose." Her small mouth turned into an insincere looking frown. "I would not have been able to face myself had I been the cause of your untimely demise."

Alma looked at her for a few seconds, then turned back to the sky. Sarracas's moons shone blue and white as they hung silently above. Her country had held the belief that the sister-maidens, D'rrota and D'mona lived on those two moons and that their visibility coincided with ominous events.

"I had a very strange nightmare just now," Alma finally said quietly. She then recounted her very recent dream to the woman on the log without interruption.