Face of Eternity : The Little Angel

Cold flakes of a blizzard were falling up while I was going down. It was all a trick of perspective, of course. The sudden change in location caused me great confusion, keeping me from fully assessing my acceleration toward the surface.

That silver Pier token from the dream was tightly clasped in my hands, as if it were some lucky charm I had pulled from that paradise. Somehow it comforted me to look at, even if these things were worthless to most.

-WARNING! At current velocity, catastrophic damage will be taken upon collision with the ground. Force deploying wings-

My wings suddenly materialized out of my back, sparkling out bright and prevailing against the force of gravity and wind. That took care of that problem quickly. Now I just drifted downwards in a sleepy sort of stupor.

*Fweeeoo!*

*Fwink!*

Oh god! An arrow hit my right side wing!

The pain caused me to let out a blood curdling scream and force my mind back into reality. That thing 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.

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 no!”

This was bad. A barrage of arrows were shooting up at me now, not to mention I was picking up a bit of speed and would hit the ground soon

My hands cupped together around the coin, then I closed my eyes to send a desperate prayer to Heaven.

“God, please I need help! I don’t wanna hit the ground or another arrow!” My clenched hands sat over my heart. I scrunched up my whole body closer to them. My one good wing wrapped around me, offering futile protection, while the other just waved with the wind. “Please! Help me!”

Arrows continued to fly by like anti air rounds. None of them were hitting 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?

There was nothing above me but clouds and snow. But below me…

It was Uncle! He caught me mid-air!

He summoned a portion of a bubble shield below us, protecting from the arrows as he hovered stationary. “Now, how did you end up like this?” he asked.

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

It actually didn’t hurt at all because of the sedative. But I was too scared to say anything else.

Uncle swiftly flew 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.

My motion tracker was picking up a lot of movement all over. All of it was coming up as hostile. Were those more bowalkers? In response to the danger, my body activated its combat hud.

*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.

My wing had a trickle of glowing blue blood flow out from the wound. I've never seen my own blood like this before. I can't even remember a time I was hurt enough to bleed at all. Normally my body can’t be punctured due to how strong my armour skin is. Clearly my wings weren’t as strong as the rest of me.

“Will it heal?” I sniffled.

“The wound will heal. Either with time, or your spells. But I can’t remove the arrow until we have a safe place to do it. Are you able to dematerialize your wings?”

I tried to de-spawn them, but the right one wouldn’t go away.

“No.” I replied, deciding to keep them both out for balance.

“Then tuck them in, and keep them out of anymore danger.”

*BOOM!*

Indena launched a fireball, hitting something in the dark.

“Old Man!” she yelled. “No time to chat! We have to run!”

*Skitter Skitter…*

Something crawled out of a manhole in the road, it kept to the shadows. Many more little things followed, scattering out and staying just at the start of the dark 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 town?” Emily asked.

“They’ll have the advantage there,” Uncle said as he put Marek over his shoulder again. “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, getting into town is better than getting shot from behind,” Indena commented.

With that recommendation, we decided to head for the buildings and get away from the wall. It was only about two city blocks away.

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!” went their horrible little cries.

As they jumped down from heights, they prioritized the humans, trying to grapple onto them

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 looked like a gremlin with black skin, sharp teeth and creepy red bug eyes. It was ugly.

-WARNING! DEMON SIGHTED!-

-Night Hag type Demon tagged; Foe-

Night hag? Very creepy.

With my motion tracker, I could just barely pick out what direction they’d try to spring down 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 their war of attrition gave them a big advantage. They easily swarmed us and caused everyone to get separated all over the road. I got close to Uncle, who was very limited while holding Marek.

Indena used waves of fire to blast our foes. The flames would violently burn away the flesh of the demons all the way down to the bone, but it didn’t kill them. Only stardust could finish the job properly.

“Spear of Destiny!” I shouted, spawning my spear and jabbing the terrible tiny demons. One jab was enough to turn them to dust, especially the ones my friends had already weakened.

A spear wasn’t ideal for attacking multiple enemies at once, so Uncle’s had to do the bulk of the work, sweeping his longsword across many at a time.

“Low on ammo!” Emily shouted, reloading one of two final clips of ammunition she had on her belt.

“Yeah, there’s too many of these buggers!” Indena shouted.

We had to escape this mess and forget fighting them for now, otherwise they’d gain the edge over us quickly.

Uncle cut a path through our enemies' front lines that allowed us to move forward. Indena sent up a short wall of flame that kept them at bay for a few seconds. We ran like our lives depended on it, which was the case, but those night hags were hot on our tail.

When we turned a corner, there was a woman laying in the snow, just mindlessly staring up into the air. She didn’t look corrupted by any demon, but her skin was turning brittle from frostbite.

There was a night hag sitting quietly on her chest, pulling a glowing blue string out of her chest. It was stealing her mana energy.

I quickly jabbed my spear at the little freak and he evaporated into ash. The woman finally gained a small amount of animation and looked at me, but closed her eyes to slumber.

Emily quickly picked her up, then turned to Uncle.

“Do we have room for one more?” Emily asked, now holding both the woman and a gun.

“Not if we can’t find shelter soon,” he answered.

So far we hadn’t found anywhere that felt safe enough to take shelter in. Those Night Hags were right behind us too. But I did have a weird inkling… 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 surrounding something that looked like a trophy in it. What did it mean?

When I told the others, they figured it would be worth checking out. The only issue now was finding a way there…