The Raid: Conclusion

  At the gates of TOAL’s basecamp stood several peculiar people. Most of them were soldiers, those expected to be there, and thus exempt from such a status. Next was Annabelle, the newbie member of Delta Squad who was called over to offer her judgement on the current situation. Calling forth such a person when much more qualified individuals were present was definitely peculiar, but not as peculiar as the woman standing just outside.

  “Yes, I love you,” Lyseris replied with a raised voice, looking directly into Annabelle’s eyes with all of her focus. “The way we melded together so well last night over dinner was something I’d never experienced before in my life! After you said you had to go, I realized I couldn’t wait and risk losing you, even if it’s just for a week! Walking this far to get here was nothing, I’d walk across the whole Kingdom for you, Annabelle! Please, I just want to spend more time with you.”

  Everyone continued to stare at the beautiful woman in front of them, Annabelle with her mouth now agape and feeling overwhelmed with joy made impure by a nagging sensation. A pair of the gun wielding guards tried to hide a snicker at the cheesiness of the speech.

  “Wait, in love with me? Yes! Wait, but we’ve only known each other for a day! Artyom’s report did mention that one girl who pretty much did the same to him, it’s probably a normal thing in this World,” Annabelle thought to herself. “But he saved her life, and I’ve only talked with Lyseris. Maybe I’m looking too hard at it and she really is in love? I mean, this is how people acted back in the World I was first summoned to, but this time I think the feelings are mutual…”

  “Hey, Annabelle,” whispered the soldier who escorted her there, snapping her out of her thoughts. “The only reason we haven’t sent her away yet is because she met you during your mission, and could be a good source of intel on the hero and Artyom’s whereabouts. If you think she could be helpful, then by all means go ahead and say so, we can provide an armed escort for her to be on the safe side.”

  Lyseris brightened up at his offer, turning to address them both. “I know all about him, since it’s my job!” continued Lyseris. “I’d love to meet your leader and talk all about the Great Hero and his quest!” She turned back to face Annabelle with narrow eyes and a devilish smile. “And once we’re done there, maybe you and I can get to know each other better… in private?” She winked.

  Annabelle immediately went beet red and tried to cover her face, but everyone could see her expression underneath. The other guards gave Annabelle befuddled looks, one of them with a stupid grin plastered over his face and a thumbs up. For the most part, what she did in private was her own business and not theirs, but they still waited for the OK to let Lyseris in.

  After several seconds of silence dotted with the sound of deep breaths, Annabelle was finally able to focus her mind to come up with a response. She slowly approached Lyseris, hands clasped together and heart still pounding, and looked her right in the eye, ready to say “yes” and plant a kiss right on her lips. But something stopped her. The nagging feeling was back.

  “Annabelle?” asked Lyseris, looking concerned.

  Annabelle couldn’t shake it no matter how hard she tried, this really was too much. At that moment, suspicion coiled its way around her mind, and she was livid. Angry at Sergeant Mike for first sowing the seeds of doubt, angry at fate for sending her to a World she would be constantly reminded of what she couldn’t have, and angry at herself for feeling all of these emotions. But that suspicion had taken hold of her, and demanded to be acknowledged. So with a heavy heart, she acknowledged it.

  Annabelle closed her eyes and went back to her time as the heroine of her own story. From her time in a World out of a romance novel, she had seen plenty of people throw themselves at her feet and bear their hearts towards her. Fortunately enough to not be distracted by infatuation or lust, she had an easier time than the many men in her party at being able to identify someone’s sincerity. Over the course of her time there, she eventually picked up the uncanny ability to determine someone’s true nature from such displays. She’d subconsciously used it on her friends, like with Sergeant Mike on the way back to basecamp. Now it was time to truly put it to use.

  When someone bares their heart, they expose their deepest and truest selves in the process. The eyes are a window to the soul, and through them Annabelle could understand just about anyones’ inner drives and machinations. Even the strangest, most peculiar kind of person could be read this way. Yanderes for example, someone psychotically in love, would reveal nothing more than a gaping hole with no surrounding substance to their personality. No atrocity would be beyond what they were willing to commit to fill that hole. Annabelle had the misfortune of encountering several when she was the hero of her World, but was able to drag out and expose the darkness hiding within them before things got out of hand. Now it was time to see what was hiding within Lyseris.

  Annabelle looked deep into Lyseris’ eyes, delivering a look more intense than anyone had ever seen from her before. Lyseris, realizing what she was trying to do, allowed herself to grin. But then she felt something more than the gaze pierce her, there was raw magic in Annabelle’s eyes taking the form of a probing aura, and they seeked the truth. The truth they could not have for the sake of her mission. Lyseris’ eyes began to widen in surprise, but she steeled herself to concentrate on her own aura, to fight the scrying back. She was an expert in this field of magic, she was created for the sole purpose of wielding it against the enemies of the Goddess! She had nothing to fear.

  Annabelle had broken through, and began to see what was lying under Lyseris’ facade. Within the shining irises of her would-be partner, Annabelle saw the depression of desire, a culmination of all of a person’s hopes and dreams, longing to be fulfilled. To her relief, there was more. Set pieces of shrines depicting devotion to her goddess, lessons learned from a long time on the road in the shape of metaphorical statues and plaques, and much more could be found within that showcased a perfectly normal character. An exemplary orthodox exhibit at that. But perhaps a bit too much so.

  “Hey, is everything alright?” asked Lyseris, a hint of feigned concern in her voice. “You’re looking at me pretty intensely, there.”

  In all of her years, Annabelle had always always seen some hint at some sort of hidden secret or shame within whoever she looked at, any kind of human fault. But within Lyseris was no such thing. Everything was entirely perfect. And as much as Annabelle wanted to accept and embrace that perfection, she was forced to deny herself that luxury. Witnessing perfection never eased suspicion for her, it only ever strengthened it, adding fuel to the mental firestorm of delusional conspiracy. But for the World she’d only just come out of, the most outlandish accusations of intrigue seemed to always have a way to end up being the truth. And she couldn’t quite let go of that.

  Annabelle broke eye contact and her unconsciously-cast spell, and looked down at Lyseris, taking in her full form, her curves and dress, and heels…

  And that was when Annabelle made her decision. She didn’t want to accept it, didn’t want to let the thoughts into her mind, but she had to. Too much stood out that she had to be addressed. Lyseris’ supposedly great devotion to her after only knowing each other for a day, how she had only targeted her teammates yesterday as potential partners, and how she’d followed them for several hours all the way to basecamp. Despite them splitting up and trying to lose her, despite keeping up at a jog for the entire way, despite her being able to keep up with them without any loose dirt on her dress or most importantly, how she was able to do all of that in heels.

  Lyseris wasn’t normal, that much was true. But was she innocent? Annabelle wanted so badly to believe, but for the sake of her friends, she couldn’t take that risk. In the chance, no matter how likely or unlikely it was, that she was a plant by the goddess trying to infiltrate their base through her, Annabelle couldn’t take any sort of risk. She looked back up to Lyseris.

  With a heavy heart, Annabelle told her as such. “Lyseris, I’ve got a mission to rescue someone very important to me and my friends, and I can’t get distracted from that just yet.”

  “What?” asked Lyseris with a breaking voice, her eyes growing wide and lips drooping into a pleading frown. “What do you mean, Annabelle?”

   “In a week or so, I’ll be free and we can get to know each other better then,” Annabelle said with a gentle, very slightly regretful smile. “But until then, I have to do this, and I can’t let you in. I’m sorry, and I hope you’ll wait for me.”

  The air was still with a pregnant silence, neither of them saying a word. Eventually, Lyseris sighed and let a vitiating weight leave her shoulders.

  “Well, that’s too bad,” she said, looking down with a rueful smile at her bloodstained claws. Something felt weird to Annabelle. Her throat felt warm as if she’d drunk some hot chocolate too quickly and it spilled past her lips and down her neck. She tried to take a breath, but she felt only liquid enter her lungs, forcing her to cough, but there was no more air inside to get it out. Lyseris laid a hand on Annabelle’s shoulder as her fingers shifted into bone-white claws and her wrist began to sprout feathers. She blinked and her irises became black slits amongst a flash of speckled brown exploding out from the center of a white canvas. The canines in her mouth extended into serpentine fangs as her lips reeled back to display more teeth than should be possible to fit in a normal human mouth.

  “I was hoping you could tell me where Artyom was, my sisters and I have much business left with him,” said Lyseris in her same soft voice, now taking on a hissing cadence, as she gently pushed Annabelle to the floor, making her way into basecamp.

  The surrounding soldiers took immediate action. The one in the back slapped a device on his side and the entire camp erupted in the rings of a shrill siren. At that same moment, the tech team’s scanners were overwhelmed with the goddess’ energy signature, all now screaming the same warnings. The two guards in front open fired at the transmogrifying intruder, riddling her with an entire magazine’s worth of bullets each. Or at least did so to her dress. Before they could move their hands away from the trigger to reload, Lyseris was upon them and forced the men to the ground with a single sickening slash of her claw to each. Intestines hanging out of the belly of one and a slashed throat on the other, the guards quickly reached for their phones and activated the emergency recall, bringing them back to headquarters for the chance of keeping their lives.

  From their claustrophobic dens at the corners of the camp, snipers hailed the monstrosity with their signature mithril jacketed armor penetrating rounds from their gauss rifles. The bullets simply crumpled on the figure, doing no more than ruffling the wenge-colored feathers that now began to cover her torso.

  “Yi, what the hell is that thing?!” asked Will, his uncharacteristic nervousness readily showing through the radio static.

  “No clue, but keep shooting. I’m going to try different rounds and aim for its vitals,” replied his partner from another corner of the camp. She quickly cycled to PAIN rounds, a special type of bullet developed specifically to combat gargantuan creatures that wouldn’t die to a single hit. Filled with alchemical mixtures that made pepper spray feel like a bell pepper in terms of heat, they were made to distract and debilitate.

  Yi fired several rounds at Lyseris, most pelting her chest, but two of them striking her face and releasing a cloud of the pain inducing toxin right into her eyes and nose. Lyseris blinked. She motioned her head back as if to sneeze, but then simply exhaled. And then she continued forward, none the slower.

  The snipers continued their futile offensive. More soldiers arrived at the scene and unloaded their whole arsenal at her. Vine traps and chains of light were ripped to shreds with a casual wave of her arm. Auras were shoved aside and countered with an even more powerful assault. Spell grenades were simply punted away.

  Lyseris’ legs, now transformed into cloven hooves on large, amber furred goat legs, propelled her forward with the strength of a tightly coiled industrial spring. She flew through throngs of soldiers with a manic grin, slashing at their bodies with her ivory-white claws. They fell like ants before a flood, her dervish of talons laying waste to even the most highly trained warrior.

  “These are all foot soldiers,” Lyseris hissed to herself. “Where’s the real one in charge? Too bad I couldn’t get that out of Annabelle, but this was as close as I was going to get to their home base, they wouldn’t let me get anywhere near it after this. Hmm, I wonder if any of these fools know where their leader is?”

  None of the soldiers let her interrogate them however, as they quickly called upon an emergency recall to get away from the creature and back to headquarters. Lyseris frowned at their retreat, but excused the lost opportunity for information or to claim their lives. In the end, her mission was simply to make them leave, but choosing whether they left back home or to the afterlife was where she planned to gain most of her pleasure.

  When the warning siren first went off, all of the staff gathered in Prithvi’s tent immediately left. Prithvi was escorted out through a one-way teleporter back to headquarters, where she would be safe. If worse came to worst, she would continue to lead the raid from there itself. Captain Michaels, on the other hand, stayed put and worked with the remaining soldiers to fight back against the monstrosity.

  “Alright, so the thing isn’t going down to normal gunfire, or even sniper rounds,” Captain Michaels loudly announced to the woman standing next to him, his lieutenant second in command. She was slightly shorter than him, with brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a mousey look about her. The captain held a pair of binoculars as he watched the ensuing battle at a distance from within the camp, only his snarl left uncovered by the eyepiece. “Time to step things up! Tell the tech teams to get the artillery online and aimed at that thing. If we had Squad Foxtrot with us, I’d have them point all of their biggest guns at her, but I’ll settle for what we’ve got.”

  “Orders sent, Captain,” hastily replied the lieutenant. “But what is that thing?” she asked, not bothering to hide the panic in her voice.

  “I can’t say for sure, but it kind of resembles those ‘fatewatchers’ from the book Artyom sent over to us,” he replied, overtaken with strange serenity in the face of pure terror. “The physical description seems to match, but I don’t think what she’s doing can be considered just ‘watching’.”

  Captain Michaels’ previous orders were quickly answered with an affirmative over his radio, and the base’s artillery was quickly primed and pointed towards Lyseris. In the off-chance an entire army decided to attack them, several cannons and mortars were requisitioned for the mission. Their operating teams weren’t the illustrious army-busters of Squad Foxtrot, who were still recuperating from their last mission, but instead a regiment of technical specialists trained at moving, maintaining, and operating TOAL’s artillery pieces.

  “Three thundering typhoon-class cannons aimed and ready, Captain!” shouted his second in command. “Each armed with a different class of ammunition to maximize chances of damage.”

  “Excellent, Lieutenant Raina!” exclaimed Captain Michaels. “Fire when ready!”

  Simply at the word “fire”, three large booms reverberated from around the basecamp, interrupting the still-wailing siren. Three more booms followed along as a series of large explosions rocked the spot where Lyseris was standing. Dirt and dust were thrown into the air in the form of enormous clouds, blotting out the sky for everyone within hundreds of feet. With bated breath, everyone looked upon the site of destruction to see what their efforts wrought.

  As the dust settled, they let out their held breaths. Or more accurately, the site of a still-standing Lyseris wrenched the air right out of their lungs. Her blue satin dress was torn to shreds and scraps of it were thrown into the wind, but she at worst was only caked in a thin layer of soot. With a quick ruffling of her feathers and wiping of her face, she was back to pristine condition and continued her malefic trek into the base proper.

  Captain Michaels and his lieutenant stared at the sight slack jawed, unable to say a thing. The acting captain, still verbally stupefied, took the phone from his pocket and dialed back headquarters. “Gus, everything’s gone to shit,” he coughed out. “There’s a Fatewatcher tearing through our base that can shrug off even artillery! We need the Eye of Balor, now!”

  The speaker crackled to life as Gus replied from the other end. “I’ve been able to piece together what’s going on from the recalled soldiers who can still talk,” he said in a fast paced voice, his usually calm demeanor strained. “I’ve already requisitioned it for you and it’s currently warming up. Exit point has been set to your phone.”

  Immediately, the screen on Captain Michael’s flip phone changed to display the camera app, but with a circular crosshair superimposed over the captured feed. A ring of runic symbols appeared in the air in front of the interdimensional communication device, a hole in space-time torn in the gap at its center. Captain Michaels removed the phone from beside his ear and held it in front of him, lining the displayed crosshair up with the walking calamity.

  “You know,” continued Gus. “Artyom always wished we could physically install guns into our phones, but the Eye of Balor is much better than any gun.”

  In all of their years, the Terran Otherworldly Advocacy League had come across many powerful weapons, and didn’t want to be left out. One of their greatest feats in the supernatural arms race was a weapon dubbed “The Eye of Balor,'' after the figure from Irish mythology, whose eye would cause ruin and devastation wherever it gazed. In the same sense, this weapon would do the same to wherever it was pointed. It all started with the invention of the “elemental laser,” where a primordial elemental force like fire or lightning could be conjured with magic like any normal spell, but coalesced into a beam of light that released its energy upon impact. Now take such a spell and create an enchanted mechanism that would be able to cast it on remote command. Then take hundreds, if not thousands, of such a mechanism and place them across dozens of Worlds, all routed through a series of runic portals that exit out from a single, configurable point. Namely the one floating right in front of Captain Michael’s phone right now.

  Developed and put to use during the Carnicula incident, this weapon was one of the few from those days that they still had access to. What happened to their other weapons, let alone the knowledge of what they were and how they worked, was something people didn’t like to talk about. They were just grateful they at least had this left.

  Captain Michaels steadied his aim and readied himself to push the now glowing button on the keypad. Before he could commit himself to the assault, Lyseris looked directly at him. Despite being hundreds of feet away, the runic magic freely flowing from his phone immediately grabbed her attention. It didn’t take a genius, or even someone who’d been around weapons their entire life, to understand what was happening. Lyseris jumped to the side and out of the crosshairs, forcing Captain Michaels to swing his phone back towards her. Before he could line them up again, she juked in the opposite direction, once again out of his line of sight.

  “What are you waiting for?” asked Gus from the other end, hints of tension leaking into his otherwise monotonous voice. “Take the shot.”

  “No can do. If I miss, we can kiss the entirety of wherever it hits goodbye. Could be a town or a village, or if I’m exceptionally unlucky, it could be basecamp itself. I can’t take that risk, I have to make this shot count.”

  Gus swore to himself in a whisper that the Captain and Lieutenant picked up. As they waited for an opening, Lyseris slowly made her way towards the armed duo, step by step between her horizontal skirting.

---

  Annabelle lay on the grassy field, her head sitting in a pool of her own blood. Her eyes were half glazed over as her mind tried to make sense out of what just happened. She’d fallen for Lyseris, trusted her enough to keep her around despite all of the now-obvious warning signs. They say hindsight is 20/20, but that wouldn’t stop her current rampage. Annabelle had let everyone down, and now they were suffering for her mistakes. The pain of the wound on her throat had turned numb from a combination of her emotional turmoil and blood loss, and she knew she didn’t have much longer.

  She slowly reached for her phone to perform an emergency recall. She’d be brought back to base, and be taken care of by the trained medical staff and army surgeons who have healed worse injuries, swaddled in the safe hands of her friends. The same friends she was abandoning.

  Annabelle’s mind went back to the time she was first summoned, her first experience as a hero. She’d joined a party of idealists like herself who became incredibly close friends. They’d cared for and protected each other, through thick and thin, even if there wasn’t any hint of romance in their relationships. It was a true friendship, and that wasn’t the last time she’d experienced it either. Her memories jumped forward to when she was found by TOAL, the people she’d met there, and the connections she’d made. The staff and researchers, the new recruits she’d joined alongside, her fellow members of Delta Squad. She’d gotten to know each and every one of them and could truly call them lifelong friends. How could she accept their help when she wasn’t willing to do the same? Could she really let them down like this?

  Annabelle closed her eyes and stopped reaching for her phone. With her throat so full of blood, she couldn’t inhale, so she settled with bearing her face in an expression of wrath. Her eyes bulged wide and lips snarled as a newfound fire began to burn in her slowing heart. She ripped at the emergency potions on the pouch at her side, tore open a red colored vial, and splashed the contents on the wound. Immediately flesh and skin began to knit together, sealing it shut.

  Forcing herself up, Annabelle tried to take another breath, but once again could not. While the wound on the outside was roughly healed, the potion hadn’t been able to penetrate deep enough. She reached into the pouch again and pulled out a small bottle with a spray nozzle on top.

  To deal with heavy injuries that a healing potion wouldn’t properly work on, emergency first aid kits like the one Annabelle was carrying also came with a clotting potion, that would react with blood on contact to coagulate and form a solid barrier to stop rampant bleeding. The problem was, it was meant to be applied to surface wounds.

  Annabelle braced herself as she ripped off the top and began pouring the liquid into her mouth. She then, against the internal screams of all of her instincts, inhaled sharply, letting the liquid splash down her trachea. Out of sheer willpower alone, she forced herself from coughing the potion up as it made its way past her wound, sealing it.

  She forced herself to her feet and took her first breath. It wasn’t deep, and it was interrupted with a bout of coughing as she hacked out chunks of partially clotted blood. But air had finally filled her lungs, and she was once again standing.

  Looking around remnants of basecamp and past the other pools of blood where her comrades had fallen, she located the source of her troubles. Lyseris juked around while staring down the captain, who was trying to aim some sort of runic weapon at her. Annabelle had seen her once would-be girlfriend shrug off gunfire and artillery from her spot on the grass, and realized that whatever was being aimed at her could be their only hope at victory.

  Annabelle took one step forward, and then the next. It was slow in her dazed state, but she was making more ground than Lyseris, and that was all that mattered. Inch after inch, step after step, meter after meter, she was closing the distance. As her silent approach was almost complete, she reached for a separate pouch and readied the contents within.

  “Captain, I don’t think we’re going to get the shot,” said Lieutenant Raina, readying the call for everyone at basecamp to evacuate before abruptly pausing. “Wait, what’s that?”

  Before anyone could answer, Annabelle jumped onto Lyseris’ back, wrapping her arms and legs around her. As she did, every single one of her crowd control spell grenades went off, turning the spot into a maze of vines, chains, and mud. Taken by surprise, Lyseris wasn’t able to react in time to easily free herself from the synchronized assault as she did with the other attacks. When she wrenched at a vine on one arm, a chain of light bound it once more. When she tried to free herself from them all at once by jumping into the air, the enormous and deep quagmire at her feet prevented any kind of vertical movement.

  “Annabelle!” shouted the monster, voice dripping with venom. “Get off me, and I’ll make you suffer!”

  “Isn’t it supposed to be or?” she coughed out in reply, still riding piggyback. “Besides, isn’t this what you were talking about when you said you wanted to get to know me better in private?”

  “I was implying sex!” Lyseris screamed indignantly. “And I’d rather choke on my own entrails than do the deed with you.”

  “Oh but you see, you screwed me pretty hard by slashing my throat back there, so now it’s time I returned the favor. I don’t want people to think of me as a selfish lover, after all.”

  The creature forced her head back as far behind her as it would go, delivering a seething glare of pure abhorrence. “You...”

  “Get fucked!”

  Seeing their opportunity, the captain pressed the button on his phone and the ring facing the two began to light up. Annabelle quickly pressed a button on her own phone and was taken back to headquarters in her own emergency recall. Lyseris smiled at having one less burden to break free from and quickly tore away at the rest of her bindings, but then she saw what was waiting for her, and stared directly into the Eye of Balor.

  The ground shook, the sky turned dark, birds began wailing in fear. All of the telltale signs of an apocalyptic disaster heralded the mighty beam of light that appeared from the portal, its rainbow of streaming colors more akin to an auroral aberration than a simple lightshow. Beams each carrying a different element of destruction cascaded across each other as they tore through the space between the portal and their target, as if ready to enact vengeance on behalf of those guiding their soulless photonic fury.

  The titanic force impacted the advancing colossus with a thunderous roar as stray beams deflected at the point of contact. A sliver of orange hit a nearby tree, making it immediately explode into a rain of splinters. Light blue tore through the grass, freezing the individual blades in massive coffins of ice. Yellow streaked through the sky, sending a shower of full-sized lightning bolts along its path to strike at anything unfortunate enough to still be in the way. The elemental barrage nearly deafened everyone present at the moment of impact in a roar of umbrage, fraying nerves but otherwise bringing back some modicum of hope.

  “It’s a hit!” shouted the acting captain, pumping his one free arm in the air while being careful to keep the superweapon properly aimed.

  “Uh hey, Captain?” asked Lieutenant Raina.

  “What is it?”

  “You see that point where the Eye is hitting and splitting off?”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Is it me or is it… getting closer?”

  With a look of utter horror, he realized it was.

  “Increase power!” the captain shouted.

  “We can’t, it’s at max!” shouted Gus from the other side of the phone, the static no longer enough to cover his fear.

  Slowly, one foot at a time, the impact point began approaching the survivors, the sound of the god-defying weapon getting louder. There was nothing they could do, the Eye of Balor was their one ace-in-the-hole, their trump card. If whatever this monster was could survive that, then they were hopeless.

  The creature made it halfway towards them when they began to hear a new terrible sound. A primal, guttural wail born from the unholy matrimony between nails on a chalkboard and the death throes of a suffering infant. Through the sparse clear beams of the bundle, the remaining soldiers could see the silhouette of the siren, its skin and flesh beginning to peel and revealing the outline of bone underneath. Even as it was reduced to nothing more than a skeleton, it still stepped forward, still uttering its hateful cry. Everyone waited with bated breath and uttered prayers, there was nothing else they could do. Fate was no longer in their hands.

  Only as the beast finally reached the survivors did it begin to slow down, and only due to a lack of corporeal legs. As the rest of it dissolved under the elemental maelstrom, Captain Michaels was certain that it looked directly at him, through him. Through his soul, laying a final curse on him and his thrice damned meddlers in the name of its goddess that their mission would fail and their loved one would perish like it did now.

  And then, there was silence. The Eye finally ran dry and powered down, leaving a thick line of black along the grass it had passed through alongside other traces of destruction, and nothing more. The captain took a trembling breath, unsure if it was truly over. The others around him didn’t know either. Eventually, Gus was the one to force them back into a semblance of sanity.

  “Confirm that it’s dead,” he said, returning to his usual monotonous yet commanding tone. “Now.”

  The soldiers followed his orders, slowly making their way across the field and looking for any remains of the creature they’d fought. Only after failing to find a single hair or strand of sinew were the crew able to properly relax.

  “God, what was that?” asked the captain. “Is that really what we’re up against?”

  “Whatever it was,” answered Gus. “We need bigger guns. I just hope Artyom’s found one for himself.”

  “At least we know one thing,” replied Captain Michaels, beginning to come down from his adrenaline high.

  “And what’s that?” asked Gus and Lieutenant Raina at the same time.

  “If we’re pissing this goddess off enough to send something like that bitch at us, we’re doing something right!”

  Everyone around him groaned. But they knew he was right.

---

  An unspecified time later, Annabelle awakened in a soft cot surrounded by bright, fluorescent lights. As she tried to make sense of her surroundings with bleary eyes, a lady with dark red hair and a bright white coat briskly walked up to her.

  “Woah there, everything’s alright!” said the woman, laying a gentle hand on Annabelle’s shoulder, easing her back into the soft sheets.

  “What about my friends, are they alright?” mumbled Annabelle, trying to focus her eyes on the figure above her. There was soon a second.

  “Everyone’s alright, Annabelle,” came the voice of Sergeant Mike. He stood next to the redheaded woman, both of them blocking some of the too-bright overhead lights. “Doctor Claire here’s been taking good care of you and everyone else who used the emergency recall. There were no casualties, and everyone’s expected to recover.”

  “It wasn’t just me, there’s the rest of the medical staff to thank,” quickly added the doctor. “Triage, nurses, the other trauma surgeons…”

  Annabelle cut her off with a sigh, her head settling back down onto the pillow. “There was so much blood and guts though,” she slowly let out. “I even had my throat slashed open.”

  “Yeah, those injuries were pretty brutal,” began the doctor. “But they were a one-and-done deal, not like getting hit with a mortar shell. So it was just a few stitches and an occasional blood transfusion to get everyone stable. Unlike you, who had several massive clots inside of your lungs. Seriously, I don’t know if I should be pissed or praise you for inhaling the clotting potion like that! It was some seriously insane quick thinking. Emphasis on insane.”

  “Oh, well thank you Doctor Claire, and sorry for giving you so much trouble,” she let out weakly.

  “Just call me Claire, and don’t worry about it. If anything, you were already mostly stable when you first arrived here, so we were able to focus on the soldiers who needed our attention the most.”

  Just then, the door to the far side of the room burst open and in ran the rest of Delta Squad, with Captain Michaels and Gus trailing behind.

  “Annabelle!” her teammates shouted in unison as they ran over to her, shoving the other two out of the way.

  “You’re alive! I’m so glad you made it out!” exclaimed Ray. “We heard what happened from Captain Michaels, here. He says you jumped onto that monster and kept her still long enough to fire their superweapon at her!”

  “That was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen!” added Aidos. “The way you used all of your spell grenades at once to restrain her was incredibly commendable! If I were still a king, I’d have you as my personal guard!”

  “Hey Annabelle, that was pretty cool,” casually said Ramirez. “Sorry your girlfriend tried to kill you, though. I know it can be rough.”

  Everyone stared at Ramirez for a second before bursting out into laughter. Annabelle was only able to let out a weak chuckle before it dissolved into a coughing fit.

  “Alright everyone, back away! She still needs her rest!” exclaimed Claire, pushing Annabelle’s well wishers to the side. “You can all throw a party once she’s fully healed. Until then, please take it easy with her.”

  Her squad stepped away dejected, but looked back at their teammate with sincere smiles. “We’re just happy you’re alright, Annabelle,” said Ramirez. “Once you make a full recovery, let’s head over to the nicest harem World we can find and throw you a party!”

  Sergeant Mike forcefully nudged Ramirez’s side with his elbow to immediate effect. It didn’t stop everyone else in the room from laughing, all except for the ever-stoic Gus. The hearty chuckles stopped when one of them turned into sobs.

  Everyone looked towards the source and saw Annabelle into the blanket pulled over her face.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” asked Ray, holding his hands up but uncertain with what he should do with them. “Everyone made it out and you saved the day!”

  “No I didn’t!” squeaked back Annabelle. “I’m the reason any of this happened! If I hadn’t fallen for Lyseris, she wouldn’t have followed us back to basecamp and killed so many people! I let my own desires get the better of me and let you all down!”

  “Hey, we already said there weren’t any fatalities,” interrupted Claire, in a snappy tone. “And your last stand is probably what we have to thank for that.”

  “If I hadn’t let her in, then there wouldn’t be any injuries, and the mission wouldn’t be ruined!” she shouted back between tears.

  Everyone stayed silent, not knowing what else to say. Gus however stepped forwards to Annabelle’s bedside and regarded her with a sterile smile of his own. “Annabelle, I’m not sure why you think such a thing,” he said in a soft voice. “According to the reports I’ve read, that doesn’t seem like the case at all.”

  Annabelle slowly quieted and peeked from behind her blanket.

  “In Sergeant Mike's report, it's detailed that you and your squad did everything you could in your power to lose any followers before starting towards basecamp, in a multi-hour jog no less,” continued Gus. “And according to the soldiers keeping watch, you refused her entry on grounds of suspicion and that her presence wouldn’t be helpful to the mission, despite her attempts at bribing you with romantic interest. You followed protocol to the letter. And if that monster had gotten close to Prithvi, then the mission would be up in smoke. So as it stands, you really are a hero. Besides, the rest of us should be to blame for even letting her approach basecamp in the first place. But that’s what we get for having exhausted our veterans on the last mission.”

  Annabelle stared at Gus for a long moment, using the blanket to dry up her remaining tears. Her mouth slowly curled into a soft smile, and she gently nodded her head. “Thanks. But I still feel bad for getting used like that. And worse yet, you guys killed my date.”

  Everyone burst into laughter, and even Gus had difficulty restraining his growing smile.

  “You just keep going on about that, don’t you?” asked Claire, her sharp voice interrupting the rancor. Everyone stared at her in surprise as she continued to glare at Annabelle. “When you first got here half conscious, you wouldn’t stop mumbling about how lonely you were and that you couldn’t find a girlfriend.”

  Everyone stared at her silently, Annabelle as well while retreating back behind her blanket.

  She continued her tirade. “Seriously, do you realize how annoying it was?! If I agree to go out with you once you’re better, do you promise to shut up about it? At least for the rest of your stay?”

  Everyone’s eyes went wide at the unexpected offer. Annabelle dropped the blanket to reveal her mouth agape. She slowly nodded.

  “Alright, good. I’ve got more patients to check up on, so I’m expecting everyone here to behave themselves,” said Doctor Claire, as she made her way out the door. Before she left, she turned back with a soft expression and gentle smile. “And see you later Annabelle, I’m sure we’ll have fun together.”

  She shut the door and left the others to themselves. Everyone still stayed silent, not sure what to say after the unexpected display.

  “Dating your patient has to be against the Hippocratic oath or something, right? Hope she doesn’t try to kill you too,” whispered Ramirez, earning him another hard nudge to the side and laughs all around.

  “Thanks everyone, I really mean it,” said Annabelle, coming down from her own giggles. “But I feel bad that the mission’s been ruined because of me- I mean Lyseris.”

  “What do you mean? The mission is proceeding better than expected,” replied Gus, snapping her out of her funk and drawing a questioning look. “We’ve just made contact with Artyom, and are expecting to get him back here soon.”

  Annabelle’s head jolted towards him, and then she smiled brightly. “That’s great!” she said, her face glowing with exuberance. Slowly though, as she looked into Gus’ eyes, she felt a twinge of concern emanating from them. “But why do I feel like ‘soon’ doesn’t actually mean soon?”

  “Well,” replied Gus, showing his best poker face. “It’s a bit of a tricky situation…”