The notification of my imminent doom lasted a second, then another, before it vanished, returning the whole of my vision to me.

  I gagged--violently. Nothing came up, really, other than thin bile and water. There was the sound of thrashing in the snow that quickly slowed. Cato leaned towards the heart, and for a horrifying moment, I thought he was going to eat it.

  Instead, he grasped the heart like an apple, dug his fingers in, and sheared the organ in half like he was splitting a piece of fruit. I wretched again, and closed my eye. Hot tears burned at its corners. Holy fucking shit. Yeah, the man had been trying to kill us--shit, he’d buried two bolts in Cato’s own heart, which probably should’ve killed White-hair and had instead set off…whatever the fuck was happening here. Would I have killed him if I didn’t have the quest to spare him? I hadn’t had much time to think about killing--though with how the Raid was going, I clearly should’ve.

  Once, there had been a man following me and my sister home. I remembered holding her hand, remembered the fear coursing through my veins and pulsing beneath my skin. I also remembered my determination. I wouldn’t strike first, but if that man tried to hurt us, I’d make him pay. I never sought to cause violence, but I’d not allow it to be wielded against me or anyone around me that I could protect. So I wasn’t necessarily opposed to killing our attacker. I think if it came down to me and Cato, who--until now--hadn’t hurt anyone, and a man literally hunting us like animals, I’d pick us. I’d do it, even though I knew a part of me would not react well to the unfortunate necessity. I’d probably cry like a bitch.

  But what had happened hadn’t been a quick demise granted to a man that was dead-set on murdering us. This had been something beyond gruesome, ghastly in a way I couldn’t really grasp.

  I opened my eye.

  I was still dangling upside down, and Cato didn’t seem keen to let me down. He smiled. Was that a smile? It seemed more like a leopard baring its fangs than an expression of true joy. With that being said, there was something in how he stared at the horror before him with a look that seemed almost…hungry? Frustrated? Elated? Some weird mix of all three?

  He stood above the now-revealed body of a heavyset, thick man, whose chest was pried open. The body’s eyes stared upwards, empty, his mouth wide open from his last scream. The blood and organ flesh was everywhere. Cato was covered in it, but he had leaned down and coaxed some sort of light from the fresh corpse. It was purple and holographic, like Glitchlight, but darker in color, and without the pixelated flickers. It roiled, shimmering, and tried to wriggle out of Cato’s grasp like a living thing.

  His still-blood-drenched gloves tightened into a fist around the light, somehow holding it in place. Then, like with the heart, he crushed it, and the light shattered like so much glass. It became more smoky in consistency. Cato opened his mouth and inhaled, and the smoke wound its way down his throat, his nose, his ears, even around his eyes.

  Then, it was gone, and he shook his head, like a great, wet wolf. He reached down with a hand, grasping the shafts of the bolt. He snapped the feathers off. Slowly, he pushed on them, shoving them through his heart, out his back, and through his robe.

  They fell, tip-first, into the snow. The wounds in his heart healed. The Glitchlight released me, dropping me face-first into the bloody powder. I shoved myself up to see Cato’s floating chunks of flesh drop back down into their places. The Glitchlight’s eyes closed, the tendrils retreating back inside him right before the lacerations in his chest sealed.

  For a moment, there were only the sounds of t the distant screaming host and the wind. Cato stared at me. The dark circles beneath his eyes had disappeared, and he looked positively flush with the pink of health. The whites in his eyes were creeping back, the narrow, cat-like slits becoming human-round again. He finally blinked, took a great shuddering breath, and, without a single word, collapsed to his knees and keeled over with a soft crunch.

  I pushed myself up, stumbling over to him. “White-hair, you alive?”

  I grabbed his sticky wrist, which was absolutely covered in viscera, and searched for a pulse. It beat beneath my fingers steadily. I grabbed his shoulder and shook him, hard. Nothing. Shit. I dumped some snow on his face and yelled “Surtr!” loud in his ear. I did my best to ignore the body behind me. Nada.

  Okay. The Herald was coming. Cato was out for the count. There was a Sledway before me. I got up, wading through the bloody mess to grab my shovel, returning it to its clasp.

  I crouched, adjusting Cato so he’d be easier to grab. Just had to fireman carry him out of here. Run before the Herald reached us.

  Whatever “Divine Wrath” meant, it hadn’t shown up yet. Maybe it’d come later, when we were out of reach of the Herald and dying to the cold. One problem at a time, Teddy.

  I pulled up my HUD. My HP sat at a riveting 10/20, and I’d gotten two Exhaustion stacks in the meantime. My freezing stacks were also at 2, which was fine. The icon for the Inevitable hadn’t changed, which was a small blessing when I needed as many of them as I could get. If I could heal myself--but, no. The idea of using CAUTERIZE on myself made me want to curl up in the snow and panic, so I was gonna save that for when everything else scared me more than fire did.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  It took me a little longer than I would’ve liked, but soon enough, I had Cato across my shoulders in the same sort of carry I’d done with him…a day ago? Two days? My sense of time was shot to complete shit.

  I knew the direction this Sledway was. Maybe the body behind me would distract the Herald? I had my doubts. I grimaced. Don’t think about that too hard.

  I grunted, and I began to run in the direction Cato and I had been heading in earlier.

  “We really have got to stop carrying each other like this, bud,” I told him. He, predictably, didn’t respond.

  I managed something like reckless optimism for about five minutes of trudging in the Sledway’s direction. I had even reached the trees, finding a narrow footpath that quickly led me deep into the pine forest.

  Then, the screaming stopped.

  When I’d been alive, I’d lived in a small home in the middle of a podunk town in ass-blast nowhere. A weird mix between suburban and rural, we’d still had plenty of wildlife. Nothing egregious--except for when the coyotes were eating. Those howling yips and tearing noises could wake up the fucking dead. Each time, I’d gone looking for my grandmother’s .22 and peered uneasily into the dark. Sure, a coyote wouldn’t attack a human, probably, but it’d made me feel better.

  What was happening in the distance behind me sounded a lot like that.

  Haha. Keeping a solid grip on one of Cato’s thighs, I reached for my shovel. The moment my hands wrapped around the handle, the metal began to glow, shimmering with heat. It wasn’t as blazing as it had been earlier, but it was a much-needed light as the sun slowly set.

  The moon was going to be a narrow crescent, and it shone with pitiless disregard.

  My breath was coming in hard pants. I kept moving, because what else could I do? The sounds of eating stopped. The shrieking resumed. Fuck.

  Don’t panic. Don’t let your fear kill you. Because it would kill me--metaphorically and literally.

  I would reach the Sledway. The Herald wouldn’t eat us. We would be fine.

  The horrible thing about Doubt is that it crept in. It sat behind all the pretty words you told yourself, so that the reassurances became lies by its very presence.

  My shovel dimmed further, dying coals in a fire.

  “I’m not afraid,” I panted, abrupt. “I will reach the Sledway. The Herald won’t eat us. We’re going to be fine.”

  No change in radiance--but that meant it wasn’t getting darker. I grunted, gasping for breath, and said it again. And again.

  Each time I repeated the mantra, my shovel began to glow brighter.

  We’d be fine.

  Ten thousand voices screamed right behind my ear, and I stumbled, Cato’s weight across my shoulder’s almost dragging me down to the ground. Staggering, I spun, raising my shovel to see the Herald. It stood a few feet away, gaunt, long dragging arms, armored like a Shadow Knight, the upper face of its head hid in the hood. Except for the fact that its jaw had unhinged like a snake’s, revealing rows of spiked fangs, all spinning and rotating like some horrible meat shredder. I raised my shovel, the steel head still radiating light and heat.

  The infection above my heart pounded, like something was trying to burst out from beneath my skin.

  The Herald swung its arms, leaned forward, and screamed directly in my face. My hair blew back, and the gods-awful stench of rotting death consumed me in a cloud.

  I had options. Theoretically.

  The smart decision was pretty simple. Dump Cato and run. Let the Herald get distracted by him and try to make my escape.

  I simply couldn’t do that. I didn’t have anything else to live for other than my ability to make eye contact with myself in the mirror every morning and believe, to the depths of my soul, that I tried to be a good person.

  So I’d never leave Cato behind. I’d die first. He’d risked a lot for me so far, but even if he hadn’t, that didn’t change the correctness of that decision.

  The second option was run while holding Cato.

  Yeah, that wasn’t possible. Cato had been running for most of the whole fucking day, and this fucker had caught up to us within an hour.

  The last option was both the dumbest and the only chance to actually do something.

  Stand and fight.

  I released one hand’s grip on Cato, and allowed him to roll off my back and crunch into the snow.

  I dropped into my swing-and-hit-a-bitch stance, holding up my shovel and gritting my jaw.

  So, this bastard was afraid of light, huh? What was the bet that it burned, same as anything else?

  With what White-hair had told me, the little voice in the back of my head couldn’t entirely believe it, but I did my best to ignore that.

  “Everything burns,” I said. “Even you.”

  My shovel promptly went up in flames.

  Which was good timing, because before I could process my own instinctive fear of the fact I was now holding a fiery stick, the Herald dove for me, filled with the voices of the murdered dead, and intent on adding me to the chorus.