Jessica held her axe to her breast with both hands, her grip so tight it hurt, feeling the throb of her turbulent heart.

She was living a nightmare, this much was true, things had escalated all of a sudden and she was almost sure she was about to die, maybe this nightmare would end then.

The wind blew against her beautiful hair swinging it around wildly and leaving it an echo of it former glory, it was blinding her slightly though.

She was covered in dirt and her grimy clothes were in tatters, her nose was a bit stuffy and her face wet from the most recent tears streaming down her face, she probably looked insane, she was almost sure she was.

She'd lost her favorite bracelet somehow, thinking over it now she couldn't even remember where, this place was harsh and unforgiving.

She refused to look at him, he lied to her, he promised, he lied, LIED, the memory choked her heart and she couldn't look at him.

IT was another issue, IT was still giving orders and asking them to bend to her desire, the other two were content to let it happen and she supposed for now she couldn't argue.

Right now she didn't even have much energy for even that, she blinked away her recent tears even as a chill seeped into her bones.

A kindling of raw desire had sparked in her, she fanned it, she wanted to be strong, she wanted to be strong enough to hurt them back, ALL of them, just like how they hurt her.

She clung to that feeling like a drowning man clings to a log while stranded in the desolate sea, it kept her moving, more importantly it kept the last bit of her left-over sanity lashed tightly to herself.

'Feel free. Try to scream.' the voice taunted her and fresh tears streamed down her face, she blinked them away.

'Focus. I have to focus.' She sniffed and tried to distract herself by looking about.

Eian was in leading at what must be a reasonable pace for him, because everyone could still keep up.

Nothing seemed to be about to attack them right now, and for that she was thankful, her head still felt a little woozy from using her powers earlier so she'd be relying solely on herself in a fight, she felt so exposed and weak right now.

The forest rang with activity and every howl, crack and screech sent a tiny spike of fear into her ever beating heart, this was insanity, she'd go crazy here.

She stayed just behind Eian so as to not look at the other two, her body felt numb, but everything else hurt.

Soon their lucky streak ended, something made audible clicking noises.

Turning to the source of the noise she spotted the weirdest, not to mention largest insect monster she'd ever seen.

It was a strange mixture between a Hercules beetle and a crab, it had the face and body of a beetle, but two crab-like pincers on either side.

It's protective exoskeleton also favored more of a crab than an insect and looked far stronger than the regular spiders from before.

It had emerged from a part of the ground which had cracked open, presumably from the tremors.

The mere sight of it stopped Jessica in her tracks, it rose to her neck in sheer height after all.

'SCREAM' The voice resounded in her head.

'Are there more monsters?' Her eyes scanned the area.

Eian similarly halted, before charging forward like the crazy person he was.

A flash of blue also told Jess that IT had gathered enough thought to attack, for her part Jess wasn't getting near that things, the mandibles on its mouth and pincers looked too sharp.

She didn't turn to look at him, she steadily kept her eye's on the monster even as Eian attacked it's body, still Alex managed to invade her sight by charging the monster as well, giving her mixed feelings.

She watched on as Eian chopped off the lower jaw off the beetle and retreat from it's retaliation, Jess edged backwards even as she glanced back to make sure nothing was sneaking up on them.

Alex's blade crack the shell, but otherwise bounced off, disgusting insect juice leaked from the injury.

Suddenly both the light and temperature rose and Jess saw a white-hot fire-ball streak and roast a good portion of the beetle, it thrashed wildly, Alex stabbed harshly along with Eian.

Eian managed to sever an entire pincer, while Alex's thrust penetrated what she thought was the skull, it shuddered then died.

"Can this place get any weirder?" Even as he spoke Jess imagined the sarcastic eye-roll Eian did.

"Don't tempt fate man." Alex was again buddy buddy with Eian.

"Huh, you know I always tell myself that and always seem to forget.....damn it." Eian sighed and shrugged.

IT, Sarah, stood there inspecting the dead monster and what appeared to be the opening in the ground it had emerged from.

"This is bad." Sarah stated and Jess thought IT had become a little pale.

Jessica almost snorted, that was obvious, who knows how many more of those things were down there.

As far as she knew insects always bred quickly and were pests everywhere, but these were on a whole other magnitude, these things were monsters.

"It's like that bad mosquito movie I watched a while back. You guys think these suck out your blood?" Eian's tone implied he wasn't too put off by the disgusting thought.

Jessica thought she might have vomited a little in her mouth, she could have forever lived, or died depending, without ever imagining that.

"No. I mean, if the earthquake opened up the ground here. It could have done the same all over. All the monsters down under could be coming up." Sarah spoke slowly and she couldn't be sure but Jess thought she heard a slight quiver in her voice.

Jessica blinked and looked at the ground again, somehow the instinctual fear she'd normally have at this development didn't phase her, at least not completely.

Eian swore imaginatively, cursing in some other language, probably Spanish, he was Latin after all, though he was on the lighter shade of skin color.

Alex for his part looked at the churned up ground a while longer.

"All we have to do is find somewhere safe then." Alex sounded optimistically determined and he was scanning the area, their eyes met briefly, but she looked away.

"It's not that easy. How do you escape the earth? Flying?" Sarah snorted.

Jessica blinked for a minute and looked over the canopy of trees, a clear smallish mountain was visible from here.

"There." Jessica kept her voice low and pointed at it.

The rest turned to look at her, in what she assumed was shock, she didn't care right now.

They quickly looked at the mountain, it was higher ground so the tunnels beneath hopefully weren't accessible as easily.

The inhabitants of the city of dead had probably purposefully dug down into the earth to reach the tunnels, this mountain looked natural.

"I guess that works." Sarah sounded reluctant and at any other time Jess would feel smug about it.

"Great plan." Alex nodded with a half-smile, she looked away and wrapped her arms around herself.

Shortly thereafter they began moving towards the mountain, hopefully monsters wouldn't be spewing out from the ground up there.

The pace picked up and she tried to stay second, monsters slowly began appearing, Eian cut the first few stragglers down, but Jessica managed to get a few.

A pair of boar, a pack four wolves and three gorillas with four-arms each were dispatched easily between everyone in total.

Then something happened, the energy streaming into the sky ceased, but the entire sky had been blackened and the remains sun was dark, casting nothing but shadows unto the world.

The flying monsters then began to spread out in every direction, even theirs.

'Scream.' the voice sounded delighted and self-satisfied, the image of those terrible eyes gave her goosebumps and fresh tears formed in her eyes.

"Hurry!" Sarah was already huffing from exertion.

"Shut up!" Jessica shouted at the voice.

"URGHHHH! Start running!" Sarah screamed back at her.

The flying monsters clearly held superior speed, they soon caught up to them and swooped down.

They were those winged vampires that roamed the city of the dead, three landed in-front of them and Eian charged axe-first.

Eian and the first vampire went down in a tumble and it was screaming so that sounded good for them.

The second vampire lunged at her with a spear, she managed to dodge then get her axe in-between them, she felt her weapon penetrate it's flesh and it bloody screech confirmed it.

Suddenly she went careening to the right, she rolled like a wheel, her axe flew out of her hand and she managed to catch herself.

Briefly she processed a flash of light, followed by a battle-cry and monsters screeching.

When she got up all the vampires were dead, one was extra crispy and Alex stood over the one she injured, Eian was also up, all in the span of a few seconds.

She quickly retrieved her axe and started running towards the mountain, the others followed and soon Eian passed her and took up the lead.

'Scream, Screeeeam, scream? scream.' Jessica blinked her eyes and focused.

She tripped on the root of a tree and nearly killed herself with her axe, it had still cut a shallow gouge on her arm.

Scrambling she got up and kept running despite the others asking irrelevant questions, especially him, couldn't he get the hint she didn't want to talk to him?

She heard more swooping wings and looking up she spotted the monsters, their spears were a danger to them all and she mentally chided herself for not grabbing one off the last dead vampire.

Five more landed ahead of them and Jessica saw Eian not hesitate, he charged and she saw several spears nick his bare flesh.

One threw it's spear at her and she dodged, that one was now unarmed and she took her chance and charged.

Swinging wildly she tried to catch it's head, it's arm intercepted the axe and dug deeply into it's arm, it howled.

Jess threw her entire weight backwards holding her weapon, tugging her axe loose.

Mentally she activated her sight and saw it lunge at her, she dodged and on the next pass she embedded her axe in it's skull.

Surprisingly they weren't super fast how the book made them out to be, Eian was by far faster.

Turning again she saw all the vampires were once more dead.

"Let's get going, those things are all over the place." Sarah glared at her.

'Scream.' Jessica closed her eyes and grit her teeth, she fanned the spark dispelling the dark thoughts.

Quickly Jessica scooped up a spear this time along with an extra, the axe wasn't a good weapon for her, too short.

She had to get close to kill things, so she left the axe in the vampires head, she heard Eian mumble something before bracing a leg and pulling it out of the skull.

The darkness was unnatural and the monsters were all over, she could still hear the sounds of howls and screeching all over.

She narrowed her eyes and shot a glare at Sarah before starting to run again, this was all IT's fault, she was suffering because of her stupid demands.

Clutching her spear to her breast, she vowed to not lose this one and the other clinging on her back.

They kept running and ran into several monsters engaged with each other, they evaded those fights as the monsters were focused on each other.

This forest had devolved into complete anarchy, a disorganized melee on all sides with bodies piling up everywhere.

Wolves, bears, boars, skeletons, vampires, zombies and even a giant griffin littered the forest.

The stench of death permeated everywhere, but it didn't bother her, not even the abrasion on her arm hurt, it throbbed gently and she ignored even the blood flowing down her arm.

After the second sinister sun finally set they managed to get to the base of the mountain.

The climb was hard and they only encountered two sets of monsters, an overly large bear killed by Sarah and surprisingly three vampires.

They killed them easily and made it a bit high up the mountain in record time, they stood there for a minute.

Sarah dropped dead on her feet, huffing and unable to catch IT's breathe with what appeared to be frozen lungs.

Jessica herself was tired, but she her lungs were in slightly better shape, the other two were breathing normally and looking off into the distance behind them.

Turning she saw the city of the dead off into the distance, the tree line had been pushed back and it seemed more were being cut down as they stood there.

All the while the vampires in the air would swoop down into the forest, the whole place was one gigantic chaotic mess.

The sight was an ominous portent and the small voice in Jessica's head reared up its ugly face and began ranting and chanting death.

Shivering she suddenly felt a surge of cold envelope her at her very core.