[CW: Extreme violence, gore]
AN OMEN
Din Talin is a city that stretches across time. Old buildings–older than the city itself, some say–sit, decaying but proud, next to spiring skyscrapers and towering apartment blocks. Some remain mostly intact. You wonder about what lies inside them. Dishes, still unwashed; beds, still unmade? Others, though, have started to collapse. Walls crack. Vines tear foundations apart.
The Relic Seeker leads you to where she left Naomi. Naomi's body. She pauses occasionally, distracted by the silent city. A bare street corner, stones raised to make room for buskers. A temple without a congregation, surrounded by the stench of rotting books. A copper plaque, naming an empty building 'The Gustav Institute of Evidentiality and Natural Sciences.'
Few words are exchanged between you, beyond her curt directions. You pad softly through the streets, following distant, inhuman noises and spattered blood to a shrine. It's not the first you've seen here; Bausanan shrines have littered the city since you entered. This one, though, is a graveyard and a mousetrap, even as it announces its presence with flowers and chimes.
The Relic Seeker stops, far enough away that you can safely remain unnoticed by the raiders that swarm within the temple's bounds like so many mindless ants. Though their actions and lesioned faces are indistinguishable, it takes little effort to pick Naomi's body from the crowd. The medical blue of her scrubs marks her out, even through the seeping red.
A TEST
You think of funeral rites. You think of final words, from the dying or from preachers. You think of chierks and rochaithes. You think that it is too late for all of that.
Your gun arm is steady as always. The Relic Seeker mutters something under her breath; a prayer, or an apology. You remain silent. It takes a few moments for you to get a clear line to Naomi's head–Naomi's body's head–but you ensure that the bullet will do its job quickly and without fuss. You would want the same. No need for extra pain. Death, final death, is the only goal here.
Her body falls to the ground without even a shout.
A REWARD
Of course, the shot still draws attention. Your gun bucks and bangs. The noise is like a beacon to the remaining zombies, who begin lumbering and gnashing their ways towards you. No, not a beacon–a prize cut of meat, laid metres away from the hungriest, most vicious creatures you could imagine.
Their bodies are in various stages of decay. Some have lost all features entirely, faces made of sloughing skin and open maws. Others look like they could fit neatly into the Bastion, were it not for the dark craving in their eyes. A number are sprayed in red and brown chunks and littered with black strands of hair, as though decorated for Solstice by what you now realise are Naomi's scattered remains.
The Relic Seeker retreats. You follow, but first, you thin out the crowd. Your arm is certain, and your trigger finger is definite. These bodies, too, deserve to be laid to rest. Some meet your eyes; pure chance, of course. These are the easiest to dispose of, besides.
One pauses, slowing down and slipping from the certain forward movement of the rest. You shrug. Easy prey. But as you shift your aim and pull the trigger, something flickers in front of the creature.
A SWINDLER
Your bullet meets, not flesh, but something solid. You can't work out why metal would scream or squelch like that until you see that the flickering thing you've hit is no zombie or shadow; it's The Relic Seeker. She clutches her arm, glaring at you. The creature behind her makes no move to attack. Still, you call for her to run. Instead, she takes precious time to meet the zombie's eyes. You wince in preparation for the sight of infected teeth against her skin, but it doesn't come.
The Relic Seeker backs away. Her footsteps are slow, as though she is fighting some magnetic force between herself and this zombie. You grab her shoulder–the opposite side to the wound you've given her–and tell her to, “Move.” She nods, spins, follows you.
Once you're far enough away, you pause to let her bandage the wound. You think of apologising. Instead, you simply do her the kindness of not asking why she stopped, or why your bullet met as much metal as it did flesh. Not yet.
If she hadn't thrown herself in front of that sickened corpse, perhaps you could have freed it from its torment. You could have freed many more, too. You can always return, you suppose.
A GREAT AND FOUL THING UNDER THE SUN
Nio dawdles at the edge of the forest. She brought you here, insisting on showing you something, so why now is she so unwilling? You don't have time for this. You tell her as much–“We should get moving if we don't want eyes on us”–and they nod, finally showing you the way.
The space between trunks gets thinner and thinner, and the daylight is slowly but surely forced out by tangled leaves above you. Low light gives way to sharper hearing, and it's not long until you hear an inhuman gurgling. You recognise the stilted, pressed sound of the zombie's 'voice.' Then, you spot it, moving between the trees. Its direction seems random. It hasn't noticed you. You need to wait until you have a clear line for your bullet to travel directly to its heart.
ONE OF DEATH'S MANY FACES
Behind you, someone screams. Not Nio–you can only put the voice to a face when you turn to see the figure of Devo, obscured behind Nio's struggling body. He's wrapped a wire around her throat. He's smiling, you think, though his face is mostly hidden behind his human shield. You raise your gun. You don't shoot, yet.
“What's wrong, Raindrop?” Devo's voice is poisoned with a strange pride. “Something in your way?”
But your arm doesn't shake. Your grip doesn't loosen. This infection must be removed. You know what happens when someone allows a zombie to walk free. 'Love,' 'hope'–you've seen these before, in Mars' face, and you've seen what it did to them. You've seen these in The Relic Seeker's face, as she allowed a zombie to bare its teeth inches from her skin. No point letting it happen again. Not worth it, even if this means Nio must go, too. There is a sickness to be excised. Your trigger finger tenses.
“Don't!” Nio sobs. “Don't! Please!”
Before you can finish the movement–before you can decide to show mercy–again, the gurgling. Closer. Your head snaps away. Your arm follows. The trigger clicks. The bullet tears through flesh. A body hits the ground.
“What are you hiding, Devo?”
“Nothing at all!” Devo insists. Yet it runs, following the sound of your fallen prey directly into your gun's sight.
Nio, throat hoarse from Devo's garrotte, yells again. “Stop! Let it go!” This weakness, this inexplicable empathy for Devo, has no effect on you, though. The death you inflict is unfeeling and, to Devo's turned back as its knees hit the ground, faceless indeed.
THE ONE THAT FINDS YOU AT JOURNEY'S END
Nio's sobs don't stop you from telling her what she needs to do. You are quick to escape, quick to leave the zombie and its twisted protector behind, to be cleared away later. You are quick, but you would be quicker if you weren't distracted by the twitch of your trigger finger; by the heavy weight of your chierk at your neck; by the strange thirst you cannot place.
{[]}