***Tirnanog, Old Camp***

***Magnus***

"By everything holy!" I exclaimed when Loops touched down at the Old Camp. It was a battlefield, and yet not a battlefield. The bodies lay every-which way imaginable. From the looks of it, some had been caught while trying to flee. Others had apparently taken care of themselves, and another sizeable number had torn each other to pieces from the looks of it.

Thankfully, I hadn't much first-hand experience with the aftermath of many battles. Only one true one, Tros, and it hadn’t been pretty. Nonetheless, the aftermath at Tros had been clear – one party against another. But this…

Somehow I knew what had gone down here must have been pure madness.

I threw a concerned sideways glance at Thalia, seeing her in a totally new light. Everyone had told me of her potential, but I guess I hadn't truly rationalized the psychic's true capabilities.

“That was you?”

Thalia raised her chin and looked down on me from atop her much larger mount. “~They~ did it to themselves.”

“I am not judging.” I raised both hands in an appeasing gesture and allowed myself to slide down from Loop's back. The flight had been relatively short and there wasn't any obvious danger nearby, so I had opted to risk riding my drake properly.

Besides... through necessity, I had now confirmed at least one way to prevent immediate death if I ended up falling off. Landing anywhere except on water wouldn't be pretty, since cancelling out inertia with flash step only semi-worked. But I had high confidence in my survival. Plus, Loops had notably calmed down over the last few days and was no longer trying to impress the two females at every opportunity with risky aerial manoeuvres.

I gave myself another moment to take in the scene.

“Note to myself: Never piss off the psychic who can turn an entire settlement into suicidal maniacs,” I commented while I wandered through the remains of what was once the Old Camp. “Are you sure there are more survivors inside the bunker?”

“Yes,” Thalia replied curtly. “We went to get you before checking it out.”

There was no doubt she was currently trying to cope with issues of her own.

“What about them?” I gestured at the people my Second Sight revealed among the ruins. Those with some semblance of sanity were hiding like rats. Others… others didn’t care at all, staring off into space or doing something – anything – which worked as a coping mechanism for them.

Was one trying to dig himself a hole to hide?

I squinted at the silhouette I could see through the wooden walls of a shed and shook my head.

“They got a full blast of Thalia's ability,” Astra explained. “They won't be a threat for some time. Normally, it takes a day or two for someone to regain his marbles after a full dosage.”

“What about those inside the bunker?” I asked.

“They won't be affected to the same degree,” Thalia explained. “Nobody has managed to explain how exactly psychic mutations work, but many of the abilities classed as psychic can be shielded against with large amounts of mass. The more material you have between yourself and the psychic, the better the isolation. My range is around five hundred metres with a clear line of sight and I can sense strong emotions through a layer of concrete, but my ability to affect people falls off drastically with obstacles. Also, wielding my ability at full power to cover a large area makes fine control impossible. Which means I am not much of a help with allies nearby – unless you are willing to make the sacrifice.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “Like a wireless connection then?”

Thalia sighed. “Like a wireless connection. Though, our research has proven psychic abilities are most certainly not some sort of electromagnetic signal.”

“Would be too obvious.”

I turned and we made our way to the bunker.

***Tirnanog, Old Camp***

***Mark***

They were screaming.

Wherever I turned, people were screaming as the monsters took them. It wasn't unusual for some predator to find a way past the wall. At worst, a single creature might take out a shelter or two before the clanners would hunt it down – depending on how adventurous they felt.

If the monster went rampant for too long, the settlement’s exiles would organize a hunting party of their own, but such a thing would usually take much longer than having the clanners take care of it because it required more people.

A single predator getting past the wall was bad, but not the end of the world. However, this was a goddamn invasion! Did we have a hole in the wall? Had some god damned idiot opened the stupid gates which were nothing more than a safety hazard in my modest opinion?

I cursed and ducked behind a vendor's stall as something resembling a huge ass centipede rushed down the street, chasing two exiles who were trying to get to the bunker.

The slower one was screaming for his friend to wait, but the other man wasn’t listening. After all, if a predator was chasing you, you just had to run faster than the guy next to you.

Unfortunately, he would have no luck, even if he got to the bunker at the cost of sacrificing his friend. Because that was where I was coming from.

Gurney had been my first thought when my shelter was breached and so I made my way over there when I managed to slip past the omnieye which trashed the longhouse I was staying at. But the bunker was closed and on total lockdown. When I banged against the blast door, nobody answered. There was no getting in and standing out on the plaza was suicide. So I left.

As soon as the centipede was gone, I rose and ran down the street as fast as I dared to while keeping close to potential hiding spots. Speed was of the essence, but not getting into a fight was even more important.

The cellar in Bastion's blacksmith shop was the sturdiest shelter I knew of aside from the bunker itself.

I gripped my compound bow tighter and tried to soften my gait while I ran down the street, doing my best to ignore the screams while sticking to the shadows.

The madness had begun right at the twilight hour when most people were still out on the streets but already on their way home. With dozens of monsters invading the settlement all at once, it had overwhelmed the guards and ensured complete chaos.

Some may say I was acting like a coward for not fighting the incursion, but those people were idiots. This wasn't a battle to secure the settlement, but to find the best shelter possible before the sun went down.

A worried glance at the setting sun showed it already disappearing behind the northern mountain range. At any other time of the year, we might have another hour to clear the settlement and get to safety. But not today.

The mountain's shadow already encompassed the Old Camp and within a few more minutes the light would be gone. Only the sun’s brightness ensured some remnant rays of light dancing across the peaks. And with their absence, the night would truly fall and all the unnamed horrors would come out of their hideouts to play.

I cursed when I came across another battle barring my path. A group of eight men was trying to take down a large boar-like creature. I didn't know what it was, but it was on the retreat, backing up against a wall while they menaced it with spears.

It was a valiant, but stupid effort. In their eagerness to take down the creature, they had overlooked the time.

Not that I could blame them.

At the beginning of this fiasco, I thought I had plenty of time to find shelter. But with the bunker on lockdown, my plans of finding a safe haven with Gurney had been smushed. Now, the time I had left was running out.

One of the men stepped forward and stabbed into the beast’s shoulder, only to have the weapon ripped out of his grip when the beast used a tusk to bash it away.

Right before a dark, avian shape swooped down from the sky and took one of the men like some damned mouse. He went screaming, but there was no way of escaping the avian's claws. With the group's cohesion broken, it was enough for the boar-thing to make its escape, trampling over one of the men on its way out of the encirclement.

I used the opportunity and ran past the fight, having no desire to mess with the monsters or the people. In a situation such as this, other exiles could be just as dangerous as the monsters.

Upon turning around the next corner, I sighed in relief. Bastion's store was seemingly undamaged and there was no crowd of people trying to hog a spot in his shelter.

I sprinted across the street, keeping a wary eye on the sky. Today was not the day I would be plucked off the ground and turned into bird food.

The door to the shop stood open and I burst inside, seeing safety within my grasp. There was no way Bastion wouldn't hear my voice from within the shelter like those fuckers at the bunker. Deep inside, I knew that with most of the clanners gone, the skeleton staff had likely heard me but ignored the plight of the people outside.

“Bastion! Bas-”

I almost swallowed my tongue when the beast in Bastion's shop turned around and glared at me with two red, burning eyes full of malice. The slender, multi-jointed limbs held the body of a man in a blacksmith's apron and Bastion's head was inside the beast's wolf-like maw. The blacksmith’s body was strangely twisted. The monster looked like a child squeezing a plush toy – only that it was a human body.

As I watched, the beast cracked Bastion's skull and slurped, swallowing the head whole. Its throat bulged grotesquely as the meal went down, distending a lean belly.

My bow came up and I let loose the poisoned arrow on pure instinct.

As if it knew, the beast raised Bastion's body and used it to block the arrow!

I was prevented from firing a second shot when the body came flying at me like a cannonball. And all the creature had done was toss it forward in an almost casual manner.

Dodging to the side, I rolled over my shoulder, already reaching for my belt.

This creature wasn't something I had ever heard of. It was bipedal and eerily close to the human form, but there was nothing human inside it. Was this one of the things going bump in the night? The ones nobody had seen and lived to tell the tale?

Somehow, I knew I was already dead – and that this thing wouldn't allow me to fire another arrow. Bastion was one of the rare partnered exiles who made a living at the Old Camp. He had never told me why he wasn’t with a clan, but there must have been reasons. But having twice the mutations didn’t prevent him from becoming monster food.

So I drew my poisoned dagger with a sense of fatalism as I came back upright, thrusting it up and forwards, fully expecting the beast to be already right in my face.

My prediction was correct and my aim true.

The beast caught my wrist with a clawed, four-fingered hand-paw and pulled forward and to the side, pointing the blade away from it with an eerie intelligence in its eyes.

My shoulder popped and I screamed as the monster’s vice-like grip crushed the delicate bones in my wrist. It was at least as strong as Gurney – if not stronger.

I kicked it as I was forced to follow the direction the beast dictated, but it didn't care. My foot connected firmly with one of its leg joints, but the beast simply moved with the blow, absorbing it and even mitigating the force to some degree. If it even mattered. It felt like I had kicked a steel effigy. Admittedly, the kick was delivered from an awkward position, but given the monster's slender statue, it should have done something!

I wasn’t a full strength-type, but I had at least one muscle enhancement which made me confident not to lose completely against something roughly my size.

Another hand-paw clamped down on my upper arm and my feet left the floor as it brought me up to its level almost lazily, biting down on my lower arm with a maw lined with shark's teeth!

There was a 'crunch' and an entirely new pain shot through me as I screamed and flailed to no avail, going insane from the pain as the fucking thing chewed in an almost devout manner to get a taste of me!

I kicked its side repeatedly, going insane from the pain as a primaeval instinct to fight or flee took over.

The dagger clattered to the ground and the monster tossed away something.

Was that my hand?

At the edge of sanity, I realized I was hyperventilating as I fiddled for my quiver, my feet treading empty air as I tried to retrieve an arrow.

Another hand-paw closed around my good arm as the monster changed its grip on me. And another squeezed down on my throat, reducing my air intake without cutting it off completely.

Being choked returned me to my senses a little bit because of the reduced oxygen intake as I stared defiantly into my tormentor’s eyes.

Had the beast intended to bring me back to my senses to savour my terror? I didn't know.

Strangely enough, I was more concerned with the fact that it now held down all my limbs and a foot!

Could it use its legs just like its arms?

There was nothing I could do as the monster brought my face ever closer to its maw, presumably balancing peculiarly on one leg. Would it swallow me whole? Or chew off my face? Could I bite that damned, pink tongue as a last ‘Fuck you!’?

… and then it toppled forward and fell on me. My face entered its maw and the impossibly sharp teeth nicked my cheek, but the monster didn't bite down as the muscular tongue muffled my terrified screams.

Was the fucking thing trying to French me!?

I struggled, screamed, and squirmed, but nothing happened.

It took me much, much too long to realize what had happened.

My poisonous blood had finally come through, better late than never.

I wiggled and somehow managed to free my remaining arm from the paralysed beast's grasp. Then I immediately retrieved my head from its maw and pushed myself awkwardly out from beneath my foe.

Not knowing how reliable the paralysing effect of my blood would be, I reached for the nearby dagger and, unable to resist at least a little bit of revenge, pushed it as slowly as I could into the beast's eye. No doubt, the creature was still awake and aware, because the other eye went mad as the oval pupil flicked back and forth. But there was nothing it could do.

Once I pierced the eyeball completely, I encountered resistance, preventing the dagger from going any further. So I leant forward and placed my sternum on the dagger’s pommel. Bringing my weight into play did the trick and the dagger overcame whatever barrier prevented it from going further.

It sank in all the way in one go until it was hilted fully inside the beast's skull.

Despite the paralysation effect, the beast shuddered for a second or two until it went still.

Then I took stock as I leant above my foe for a few more seconds. I was in pain, my body broken and with an injury which reduced my survival chances to practically zero.

I found myself laughing with madness, much like fucking insane Tulkas. The lucky bastard had escaped this hellhole right before the shit hit the fan.

“Curse my life!”

For the first time, I dared to look down at my severed hand and winced. It was chewed off right at the elbow. Normally, I should have bled out, but the monster’s tight grip on my upper arm was enough to squeeze off the arteries.

I pried the beast’s hand-paw loose and rolled the body off of me. The pain was still agonizing, but it was nothing compared to feeling the teeth grinding through my bone. And more pain was yet to come because I had to seal the wound somehow.

If I lost consciousness now, it would mean my certain death. The starfish mutation ensured I would heal with time, but the keyword was time. There would be no healing if I lost too much blood.

Already seeing stars in my vision, I got up and staggered over to the forge, leading with the stump of my arm as I grit my teeth. Thankfully, it was still hot and the metal hissed as I pressed the wound against the furnace’s cover.

I almost lost consciousness right then and there, but somehow I managed to stay awake. I felt disconnected from reality, but I had to pull myself together one last time.

My eyes landed on the open cover of Bastion's shelter. A heavy, metal door at the back of his shop. Miraculously, it lay open, inviting me in.

But not yet.

With my vision swimming sideways, I missed the handle of the forge’s hot poker on the first attempt but grabbed it on the second. Then I made my way over to the creature and raised the poker before I struck down, lodging the nasty hook at the poker’s side into my opponent’s throat.

When I pulled, it hooked firmly into the jaw.

I giggled, aware of the insanity I was planning.

As I was now, my survival chances were close to zero, even if I survived the night. I had no illusions about the settlement’s survival. Whatever had happened was bad and tomorrow would be survival of the fittest with winter just a few weeks away.

I took my first step, pulling the corpse with me. Step by agonizing step, but with a mad grin on my face. It was time to roll the dice.

“You wanted to eat me, bastard? Well, now I will eat you! Never mess with a bank accountant! We tend to take whole bodies when you offer a little finger.”