“You can save these monsters. You must go deeper.” What the hell does that mean?
Allegra lays across the pews in the church, admiring the rays of sun shooting through the windows. Up at the altar, Lumen’s short, brown hair and copper skin shine in the morning light. The sunrise shines on Lumen’s armor as if it was three dimensional. An ironclad body is only fitting for a deity representing life-- above all else, humans are fighters, desperate to protect their kind.
“I grew up doing the same thing,” Wendy shouts from across the church. She settles on the steps of the altar across from Allegra. “Lumen was my second favorite because she looks the most like me, but my family worshipped Genus.”
“I thought you said that no one worships these deities anymore,” Allegra responds.
“Not here, they don't. But where I’m from, life thrives beneath them. Alaros is a small indigenous community about eight hours out of Alstine Bay. Our habits, our jobs, our gatherings-- everything revolved around the four deities. You couldn’t walk fifty feet without seeing Genus’s crown hanging from someone’s rearview mirror or Chronum’s pocket watch being sold for $8 at a corner store. My family chose to worship Genus. She’s the giver of life, the renewal of the soul, the backbone of existence.”
“Do you still worship her?”
“It’s been hard to,” Wendy admits. “I left home to find out why so many people from Alaros were suddenly going missing. One thing led to another, and here I am with elk horns, empathic abilities, and a ragtag team of misfits. When I first turned, I felt like a failure. Like these souls had failed to meet Genus again, and I was paying for their mistake. Some days I felt like she was teaching me a lesson, others I cursed her for shoving these souls in me.
“Faith is a labyrinth with a dozen exists. Everyone’s going to navigate it differently and reach a different conclusion on why they worship in the first place. Personally, I’ve learned that no one ever truly dies. You carry every lifetime with you, no matter what your next form is. There’s life within death.”
“You’d like my sister. She was all about having hope and seeing life as one, big line, rather than a bunch of individual circles.”
Wendy begins to respond, but pauses and furrows her brow. She slowly reaches for her sword; the swash of its removal from the scabbard reverberates across the church. A low growl and a few shrill screeches respond to the noise.
Allegra turns around to see a bony, ten-foot tall beast trudging heavily down the aisle. Its head twitches left and right; each bone in its body seems detached from one another, snapping in and out of place with every movement. Its four arms drag along the ground.
“Is that… a wendigo?” Allegra asks.
Wendy drops her scabbard at the altar and keeps a firm grip on the sword’s handle. “Allegra, go get Lynx, the twins, and your werewolf boy. Looks like we’ve got a visitor.”
Allegra, Lynx, Chaos and Calamity watch Wendy attempt to reason with the wendigo. There’s a gaze of familiarity in its eyes as he recognizes the souls she carries; it’s like each of them is looking at what could’ve been. If she never learned to cooperate with her lost souls, she’d be just like this beast. She doesn’t like to entertain the thought.
Just as Wendy feels she’s getting through to it, the beast emits a low shriek and raises its heavy arms into the air. She dives into the pews. Allegra cocks her pistol and fires only two rounds when Chaos smacks it out of her hand. “Bullets will only agitate it,” he says. “I thought you’d know that by now.” Almost instinctively, he catches one of his brother’s knives and hands it to her. “We better get you some real weapons if you’re gonna stick around, songbird.”
The wendigo’s claws swipe Wendy along the cheek, sending her stumbling. She scrambles back to her feet, and in a matter of seconds, her sword pierces its foot and keeps it in place. The creature emits a shriek as Lynx’s machete slices its slender right hand clean off. Before she can do the same to the opposite arm, another figure slices through both left arms. The wendigo fruitlessly slashes its one remaining arm in the figure’s direction.
“What the hell was that?” Calamity shouts, trying to get a clean window to throw his knives through. He hops onto a row of pews and nails the beast straight in the shoulder. It falls to its knees.
The figure, wielding a sword that glows blue in the sun’s rays, ducks beneath the bony beast and scales its back to weaken it from behind. It’s moments away from trampling the group when she dives in front of them.
“Lumen, lend me your staff!”
The cobalt edge of her sword emits a faint glow in the same shade. The beast stops against her blade, paralyzed. She drives it square into its chest and watches it collapse between the pews, shrinking to the size of a bear. She kneels down and mutters a few words of reassurance over the body.
“We broke up months ago and I’m still saving your ass, huh, Naira?” she asks. She turns to Wendy, but their eyes don’t meet for long. Her gaze snaps onto Allegra, her sword clattering to the floor. “Helena?”
The woman she sees is unfamiliar; the four eyes, the scar that runs from the chin down half the neck, and the slight sharpness of the canines merely make her another beast hunter native to the nearby forests. Yet, everything about her is familiar. The dirty blonde hair. The warm, watchful eyes. The kind words spoken to the beast.
“Orien…”
Orien cups her sister’s face in her hands. “I… have so much I wanna tell you. Has your hair always been this dark? Are you out here on a mission or something?”
“Yes, and no,” Allegra says. She feels her sister’s intrinsic warmth, but also sees a woman who’s lived a hundred years in the past five. There’s wisdom, but struggle. Compassion, but caution. The Orien she once grew up alongside is long gone, for better or for worse.
The twins stand with gaping mouths. “Wendy’s ex is your sister?” Chaos says.
“This is the girl that you’ve compared Lynx to?” Chaos continues. “They look nothing alike! The fangs, sure, but everything else is completely different.”
“I’d have a lot of concerns if your rebound relationship looked just like me,” Orien says, wiping the blood from her sword.
“She’s not-- you know, it’s fine. I’m not gonna discuss this right now. Chaos, Calamity, help me get this wendigo outside.”
“Boys, you take care of the wendigo,” Lynx interrupts. She holds Wendy’s chin in her hand and analyzes her wound. “I’ll patch you up. Can’t have you bleeding all over the place.”
Wendy grins softly in appreciation, resting her palm over Lynx’s against her own cheek. Orien glances between Chaos and Allegra. One of them is something she’s been seeking for a long time, the other has been seeking her for just as long. She places priority on the latter, asking the group to give them some space for a minute or two after the beast is removed from the church.
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