Nico walked with Luna towards the mountain. The quiet was only interrupted by their footsteps. Kara was a little bit to their front. She ignored Luna’s offer to control her temperature.

To Luna’s apparent surprise, so did Nico. Though she seemed like she wanted to say something, she swallowed her words and accepted his choice. He appreciated her slightly more for that.

Nico didn’t feel the heat in the first place, but even if he did, he might have refused holding hands out of embarrassment, though he supposed he was tall enough to be able to lock arms with her. That he might have accepted. Maybe he would have enjoyed it. Though smaller people were just better in his eyes, there was still a different type of beauty he appreciated in the larger shaped.

As for Luna herself, she seemed to be pondering lesser things, such as the end of the world and the like. She spoke little. Nico didn’t know what her specific plans were in coming here, but suffice to say, whatever they were, Kara must have thrown a major wrench in them.

It took an hour until they reached the mountain. Through the mirage of the heat, large slabs of red rose out of the ground like jagged teeth. They surrounded the mountain, making it a natural fortress. Kara went straight for it, and for a moment Nico wondered whether he should even bother telling her.

He didn’t need to. In between two giant slabs resting against each other, a pair of Doomies ran out to meet them. “I have 3 Energy,” Nico reminded.

“I’ll attempt to blind the first one.” She turned towards Nico, the glimmer in her eyes intensifying as the rest of her body did. “Don’t look.”

That’s what she said, Nico thought. A small smile slept past his guard and made it on his lips.

Luna looked at Nico curiously for a moment longer than she should have, and she smiled so wide it made him worry that she read his mind.

He looked towards the Doomies with narrowed eyelids.

A thick beam of yellow light extended forth from Luna’s cusped hands, connecting with the first Doomie’s head. The beam faded without any obvious effect.

“I don’t believe that did anything,” Luna said, lowering her hand.

Kara ran towards it, decapitating its head when it stabbed forward. Her feet slid across the bronze as she spun. Just like last time, the Doomie stabbed at Kara at a low angle.

Her feet lurched off the ground, repeating her earlier move. Her sword struck the Doomie’s neck from the side, dealing 3 Shield Damage.

The decapitated Doomie ran straight on, spurting hot air and boiling red blood from the stump of its neck, but this time Nico was ready for it.

He couldn’t just toss a Kinetic Shell in its way. That would have left him open to the second Doomie, which might target him. The 1 second he needed to create another Kinetic Shell was short, but not short enough with their speed.

Nico lined himself up with the Doomie and tossed a Kinetic shell in front of his feet. It struck the ground, sending him high in the air at a slight angle, while at the same time managing to tilt the Doomie sideways. It fell in a heap of its own metal and blood, rolling and causing hundreds of orange sparks to ignite as its scales crashed against the ground. Even as it rolled, its metal human like legs pumped sideways on empty air.

Perfect, Nico thought, as something strange entered his Life Sense.

That confused him, as he was a good 10 meters in the air. He glanced behind, gawking with slightly parted lips, as he saw a Doomie screeching through the sky towards him. Time slowed down, and a single thought passed through his mind: I want to ride it.

Nico splayed his arms out as it stabbed forward, welcoming it to take a bite. It bore a hole from the front his right chest and burst out his shoulders, screeching in gore and glory. Its scales were scorching hot, and that worked in his advantage for a second. It cauterized his chest, saving him a pound of blood, but his body was impaled by its head. His head smashed on top of its head, and he was dragged with it through the sky in a regrettably familiar way.

Nico despised fire. He despised what it was and what it did. Even if it didn’t hurt, he still hated being burned. So when out of the Doomie’s scales flames oozed out, covering him from his toes to the inside of his eye sockets in a thick coat of yellow orange, all he could think about was how the world would have been a much better place without it.

Nico made a Kinetic Shell and used a Heal, causing the flesh and bones in his chest to tighten around the Doomie’s neck. It gave the flames more to eat at before they reached his brain or heart. He wasn’t bleeding but his blood did boil, causing a terrible itching throughout his veins.

It started waggling its neck up and down, trying to shake him off as they fell. He wrapped his legs down its neck, twisting himself so he was lying across the top of its neck rather than the bottom, and kicked its knees, hoping to ruin its landing. It didn’t work. That’s when he remembered he had a Kinetic Shell ready in the Locust.

As the Doomie was about to land, he tossed it below them.

The kinetic shell exploded in between its legs. It spread them apart, making the Doomie land on the inside edges of its foot. Its weight and the force of its fall snapped its knees in opposite directions. It landed flat on its bottom and fell forward, its head smashing against the ground with Nico’s weight pressing on top of it. He sprained his neck. It squished its skull. He felt the metal yield as he was flung forward, the hole in his chest so large he just slipped off.

He struck the ground and tumbled uncontrollably, leaving behind a trail of blood that the Doomie’s burning corpse shortly followed.

He used a Heal for his chest, then realized that his limbs also needed it. His legs and arms weren’t responsive. He tried to move out of the way to no effect.

I should have made a Kinetic Shell, Nico thought as his eyes recovered in time to see a couple hundred pounds of burning metal rolling towards him.

Something took him from the ground. They wrapped their limbs around him as they tumbled. Their hands rubbed his back and pushed his face against their soft body, and though he was covered in flames with most of his nerves burned off, he still felt a pleasant warmth sooth his heart.

By the time they slowed down Luna was on top of him with her arm under his head and a hand on his cheeks. There was horror on her sun-colored face. She was bright enough to damage his iris, but he still looked, because goodness was she beautiful. She seemed more angel than human, and for a moment, he even forgot she was a lunatic.

She watched him, first in confusion, then in wonder, as his ugly, half burnt body regrew. In a few seconds he was whole again, the only remnants of the fight being the smell and his mostly naked body. It took a few seconds for his boxers to regrow.

Luna stared at him wordlessly for a few moments.

“You can manipulate your sensory receptors?” she asked, getting to her feet. She offered him a hand and he took it. Her hands were the softest things he’d ever touched that wasn’t dead, or that he wasn’t trying to make dead.

Oh yeah. He forgot to tell her his powers. They weren’t something he could mask. The cries of burning men were hard to replicate. “Pretty neat, isn’t it?” he said, walking towards the Doomie. He bent down to it. Blood seeped out from its scales and knees. It sizzled on the ground, creating a sharp odor that made Nico cough. He fanned his hand in front of his nose.

Siphon or Harvest?

Nico was going to feed it to Siphon it, but it didn’t hurt to roll for Hyper Booster.

Thermal Resistance (Common III) Roll 5+> 1

Thermal Coat (Rare III) Roll 9+ > 2

Hyper Booster (Epic III) Roll 11+ > 1

“I stand corrected,” Nico said, taken aback. This was so unlikely he wondered whether the Locust was messing with him. He Siphoned it.

Elite Souls 1/3> 2/3

One more.

“What is corrected?” Luna asked.

“This is the toughest thing I’ve ever killed, really, and the closest I’ve gotten to dying, and for all that, I was just 1 away from scoring the worst possible combination I could. Almost one in a thousand.” Though he supposed Kara being one in a million evened those odds out.

There was a blank look on her face. Nico stared at it until he realized he hadn’t told her how the Locust worked either.

He didn’t think she was a spy, or even an enemy. No one in their right mind would dare risk losing a holder of a legendary skill just to talk with the Nightmare, but that didn’t mean he trusted her intentions. He wouldn’t hide the Locust’s functions, but he wasn’t going to readily reveal it to strangers.

“Let’s go catch up to Kara,” he said, setting after her. She was already out of earshot, walking towards the two slabs. The bronze mountain was just beyond it.

“Nil,” Luna said, walking by his side. “Why are the two of you not reviewing the fight?”

Review. Discuss each great move and each great mistake in hopes of improvement. It was something everyone did when Hunting. “Hey Kara!” Nico yelled, waving his hand at her. “Want to review the fight?” Kara didn’t respond. “Huh. Guess she got a sore throat or something.”

“Nil,” she said, turning towards him. On instincts he turned to face her and was trapped into locking eyes with her. His first impulse was to turn away, but the way the liquid fire swirled in her eyes was enamoring. “I don’t understand the situation.”

“What do you understand?”

“Kara caused the 4th Fall,” she said. “What Rank is she?”

“II,” Nico said.

“I don’t understand why that is,” she said.

“Right?” Nico said. “That confused me too. She seems to have way too much experience fighting to be a Rank II—even for a Ranker from the infamous 4th City.”

“Is there a way to reset Ranks?”

“Not that I know of,” Nico said, taken aback slightly. “Though me not knowing doesn’t mean much.”

“Noted,” Luna said. “I believe Gaia is also related to the 4th Fall. In between the two of them, they can control the Deep. I do not know what Gaia wants to use it for, though I might have a guess regarding Kara.”

“What is it?”

“Can you tell me about you first?” Luna said.

“I can’t tell you how I got it, or why,” Nico said, looking at the palm of his Locust, “but long story short, I think I was fired out of the city with a cannon. Kara beelined it for me. Two people found me before then, one Ascended, the other a blind woman. After seeing the Locust both thought killing me was a good idea, but one didn’t want to do it herself, and the other did, but was convinced otherwise. They told me they would let me go if I killed a Rank III Elite.”

“Is that hard?”

“Usually impossible, but the Locust is pretty darn powerful, and it didn’t have Shields. I ended up one shotting it while I was flying.” In Nico’s books, falling was flying. “It felt…it felt like they were only going to let me go if I was good enough, but I couldn’t figure out why.”

Luna nodded.

“I survived, and they let me go. While I was trying to escape the Tengus, and then the Iron House, Kara found me. She saved me first, then studied me. After a pause she fed me a potion, told me to hold on to the sword, and then used her AoE attack. She would have died if I didn’t have a healing skill, which I doubt she aware of. She kind of refused to move even after I healed her, actually. She wanted me to go home. Thought she was a real nut-case for a while before I figured she was just super weird.”

“Do you know why she didn’t kill you and take the Locust for herself?”

“I do not,” Nico said. “Say, tell me, when she used her Howl, what happened at the city?”

“Of course,” she said, nodding at him. “When I heard the Nightmare—” Nico raised his finger “—it was a roar, a mixture of a human, monster, and machine. It broke glass and shook the floor,” she answered, making him lower his finger. “The city was immediately in an uproar. I figured I wasn’t going to be told the full story, so I went to get my bike to leave with the squads that chased her down, where I found Gaia trying to break into it with a picklock.”

“A picklock? Would it have worked?”

“It would be a terrible bike if that would have worked,” Luna said. “I made a deal with her—I take her with me, and she won’t cook me until I am orange.”

“So what was your reasoning behind us going to the Deep’s Trail?”

“I’ll tell you,” Luna said, turning Nico’s attention to Kara. “After this.”

Kara stopped at the entrance. Four Doomies waited for them inside the cover of their rock. The rocks rose to 10 feet in some areas, laid in chaotic, yet subsequent manner. It was like a maze. The space was narrow with most chokepoints having only one or two directions to dodge into. With how wide the Doomies were, fighting them in there was going to be a lot harder than fighting out here.

“Stay here,” Kara said.

Luna nodded.

Kara took one step. Nico followed her. “You too,” she said.

“There are four of them. You can take one out, two if you’re lucky with one attack, but you’ll need time to charge your blade. How many minutes is that? You’re going to keep dodging them for that long?”

“We’re down on time. I either go through here, or I die, and you go home.”

“Time for what?”

“You’ll find out if I live,” she said, and that was the end of that.

Taking a deep breath, Nico walked backwards until he stood side to side with Luna. They watched Kara break into a sprint towards the four Elite monsters, all two star ranks higher than her, alone, in their home turf, with the Augmenter she was supposed to have on Nico’s shoulder’s instead of hers.

“Nil,” Luna said. “I’m not familiar with Hunting. Is—”

“It’s suicide,” Nico answered.

Two of the Doomie’s jogged to meet Kara, one after the other, while the other pair navigated the sides. They ran behind rocks, going out of their vision. The first Doomie reached Kara. She stomped her foot and side stepped it, arching her body away as the Doomie’s head went past her. She landed on her right foot and kicked the ground with her left, turning sideways into a cartwheel just as the second Doomie reached her.

Her blade was in the perfect place, with both hands free, but Kara did not unleash her attack. She landed into another sprint. Nico caught a glimpse of the third Doomie running out from one corner, straight through where Kara was barely a moment ago, into a different one, without pausing once. She ran ahead, stomping her foot to a stop at the corner. The fourth Doomie past right in front of her into a different lane.

She resumed running, a pair of Doomie’s now behind her, while two others stalked her from the sides. She went straight towards a great skinny slab, probably the tallest, that was around 15 meters tall. Just as the Doomie stabbed, she jumped into it, then suddenly faced away from it, her blade unleashed, a green tracer going through its base and the Doomie’s head. She landed with both feet against the slab and jumped off, rising above the Doomie’s still running corpse as it crashed into the slab.

The rock was tall, and the Doomie’s body struck it from the base, right where Kara had cut. It made it tilt forward towards where Kara was running.

The Doomies charged her landing spot, oblivious to the danger.

Nico saw her tiptoes touch the ground as the Doomie’s reached her and the slab fell on top. In a thundering explosion the oasis was covered in a storm of red dust. Hot air and the heavy smell of rock reached his nose.

Replacing the chaos was a sudden, unsettling quietness of rubble falling and pebbles rolling. The wind settled, but the cloud remained to fall slower. He couldn’t see anything inside. He tightened his hold on his axe. A second later the sound of metal hitting metal began ringing in a steady rhythm.

Luna turned towards him.

“Well… not if she does that,” Nico said, scratching his head. He kept facing the cloud, one because the Doomie’s might run out of them, and two because he didn’t want to meet the fat smile on Luna’s face. He had to admit, turning her greatest disadvantage into her greatest advantage was admirably clever, but the dust was falling to the ground already. The dense red brightened into yellow as the sun’s rays fell on it. Kara needed to make another slab fall, but he wasn’t sure whether she’ll be able to.

“Those are beautiful sounds,” she said. “But why isn’t she just hiding?”

“She won’t have enough time to charge her blade. She’s using her axe to break their Shield before she finishes them off.”

“What’s your opinion of her?” Luna asked.

“Probably the best Hunter I’ll ever have the pleasure and displeasure of meeting,” Nico said. “I don’t understand what she’s doing most of the time, and she won’t explain anything.”

“Actions do speak louder than words,” Luna said.

“Well, if she’s speaking, then I’m not understanding,” Nico said, as three different orange lights ignited within the cloud. Fire Cloaks for light? That cut her time even lower. “Her actions range from stupid, to incomprehensible, to ingenious, and frankly, I’m not good enough to figure out which is which at any particular moment.”

Luna looked at her hands. “Nico, let me pose a different question for you.”

“Shoot,” Nico said, distracted.

“What are the chances that someone like me, would meet someone like her?”

“Low.” Nico said without thinking about it. “Wait, what do you mean by someone like you?”

“Watch,” she said, tightening her hands into fists. She ran into the cloud, and like a drop in a paint the paling red turned dark. The further she went into the cloud, the further the darkness spread. Even the Doomie’s orange light was reduced to a weak glimmer.

Nico took a step back, covering his mouth with the Locust so he could open it without having the dust float in. His eyes widened, as if that would let him understand why there was night in broad daylight..