Falling

With a flash of light, everything around me changed. No longer was I in a lush, fantasy like setting, but now I was passing through a cold blizzard.

Wait, I was falling from the sky! How did this happen?!

Last thing I remember…I was inside a bubble…oh, I also had a weird dream about a man who gave me a Pier token coin…Yeah! Now I remember it!

I still had the Pier token from the dream, noticeably silver compared to gold, clutched in my hands like a lucky charm. Was it really lucky right now?

My mind was blank, trying to process the situation. After nanoseconds of thought, clarity arrived.

Why am I so worried? I can fly!

My wings deployed, sparkling out bright and prevailing against the force of gravity and wind. That took care of that problem quick.

Feeeoo!

Fwink!

AN ARROW HIT MY RIGHT WING!

“GAHHH!”

It stuck in there pretty good. And it had some liquid on it, likely the sedative from before. Would that drug affect my wings?

Sure enough, I started to lose feeling in that one. The whole wing was useless before too long. At least the numbness stopped at my back.

Now I couldn’t stabilize my altitude. One damaged wing meant I was back to dropping out of the sky, but less like a stone, and more like a bird who got one wing clipped.

“OH NOOO!”

This was bad. I was picking up speed, and the ground wasn’t far down. In a few minutes, I’d hit into it. That would be some serious pain!

I…I could survive it, but it might put me out of commission for a while…I didn’t want to find out what would happen though.

My hands cupped together around the coin, I closed my eyes to pray.

“God. Please don’t let me hit the ground!” My hands clenched close to my heart, folding my whole body closer to them. My one good wing wrapped around me, offering futile protection. “Please! I still pray every night, so don’t forget me!”

Arrows were whizzing by like anti air rounds. None of them hit me. It was almost like they weren’t even aiming my way.

I knew these Bowalkers were a lot better shots than this. So what were they shooting at?

Nothing above me but clouds and snow…but below me…

It was Uncle! He caught me mid-air!

“Now, how did you end up in this situation?”

He summoned a portion of bubble shield below us, protecting from the arrows as he stayed stationary.

“My wiiing…!” I cried, pointing at the wound. "It huuurts!"

Uncle swiftly carried me back to the ground, dodging arrows by the dozens.

Once we touched down on an asphalt street, I saw the others standing around, keeping on alert for any threats nearby. Marek was still out like a light though…

My motion tracker was picking up a lot of movement all over. All of it was coming up as hostile. Were those more Bowalkers?

BANG!

Emily fired off a bullet into the fog of shadow!

“Uncle, what’s going on? Why are there so many enemies everywhere?”

“Small demons are after us…” He examined the damage to my right wing. “No significant damage, but numbness due to toxins…”

My wing had a trickle of glowing blue blood from the wound. I've never seen my own blood like this before…I’ve never been hurt enough that I could bleed at all.

The arteries that run down from my heart are full of mana rich blood, which powers my entire body. But normally that can’t be punctured due to how strong my armour skin is. My wings weren’t as strong as the rest of me, I now see.

“Will it heal?” I sniffled.

“The wound will heal. Either with time, or your spells. But we’ll just have to let the numbness subside on its own. Are you able to dematerialize your wings?”

I tried to despawn them, but the right one wouldn’t go away.

“No.” I replied.

“Then tuck it in, and keep that one out of danger.”

BOOM!

Indena had launched a fire ball, hitting something in the dark.

“Old man!” she yelled. “No time to chat with the Shrimp! We have to run!”

Skitter Skitter…

There was a manhole in the ground, scampering was coming out of it.

My combat hud activated as my body sense danger.

Something crawled out of the manhole, instantly rushing into the dark fog. Many more little things followed, scattering out and staying just at the fog of war.

Oh…please be rats and not demons…can't believe I'm hoping for rats…

They moved so fast, my IFF’s couldn’t catch what they were. But Indena and Emily were quick to take pot shots at them.

“Should we head into the town?” Emily asked.

“They’ll have the advantage there…” Uncle considered. “There’s plenty of buildings they’ll be able to get the jump on us from.”

FWINK!

An arrow just missed us! We weren’t far from the wall, so the Bowalkers could still see us.

“Yeah, well, it’s better then getting shot from behind.” Indena commented.

With that recommendation, we decided to dive into the town. It was only about two blocks down.

We must have been inside a neighborhood, because I caught glimpses of what looked like garages and garden gnomes through the darkness fog.

As expected, the little demons followed us, catching up quickly and scurrying ahead to ambush.

“SCREE!” They’d shout as they leaped from above short buildings, trying to clamber onto one of the humans.

Emily shot one in its tiny gut, causing it to hit the ground and roll around in pain. I got a good look at it now…

It sorta looked like a goblin, but with black skin, sharp teeth, and creepy red bug eyes. I’ve made friends with hobgoblins before, so these things definitely couldn’t actually be goblins.

-WARNING! DEMON SIGHTED!-

-Night Hag type Demon tagged; Foe-

Night Hag, eh? Very creepy.

With my motion tracker, I could just barely pick out what direction they’d try to spring on us from.

“Up there!” I pointed, prompting Uncle and Emily to attack the ones jumping from the right.

“Down under that car!” I shouted to Indena, who shot a fire ball at them.

We could take them on in small numbers, but they had a very big advantage when it came to attrition, easily swarming and causing us to get separated all over the road. I got close to Uncle so we wouldn’t be parted.

Indena used waves of fire energy to blast the little night demons, only to see more take the place of their fallen spawn.

Emily could only shoot so many before she had to reload. Now two spare clips were left until she’d be dry.

My spear wasn’t great for attacking multiple enemies at once, Uncle had to do the bulk of the work, sweeping his broadsword across many at a time.

My stardust energy reserves weren’t doing so well, so I couldn’t start shooting out rays of light willy-nilly. We had to escape this mess and forget fighting them for now.

Uncle made quick maneuvers around, cutting a path for us all to move forward. Seconds went by in our rush, and we got a little bit of distance from the Hags.

When we turned a corner, there was a woman laying on the ground, just staring up into the air, slowly getting buried under piles of snow. A Night Hag was sitting quietly on her chest, pulling a glowing blue string out of her.

I jabbed my spear at the little bugger and he evaporated into ash. The woman looked at me next, but closed her eyes to slumber.

Emily quickly picked up the woman, then turned to Uncle.

“Running out of arms and ammo here.” Emily said, now holding both a woman and a gun. She also gestured to Uncle, who was still holding Marek. “We gotta find some shelter.”

So far we hadn’t found anywhere that felt safe enough to take shelter. Those Night Hags were right behind us too. But I did have a weird feeling…a feeling that caused me to open up my map.

Once I opened it up, the whole thing was pretty much covered in the demon fog of war, making it impossible to get a reasonable layout of the town. But there was one icon, up in the corner not far from us. This icon had seven tiny stars and something that looked a little like a trophy in it. What could it mean?

When I told the others, they figured it would be worth checking out. But now we had to figure out how to get there…