Worlds of Waves and Shadows

Thirty

"What?" Cazek asked, scrunching his eyebrows.

"It's true!" Rolan cried.

"I highly doubt that someone would have discovered them." Zaic wondered aloud, cocking his head to the side, knuckle pressed to his lips.

"Maybe, but right now we must find out what happened to them and who did it." Her father asserted in response.

"Cazek." Her mother began, voice filled with incipient alarm, "I think I know what happened to them...."

Kaenisa looked in the direction her mother's gaze was fixated in as did Cazek, a similar sense of dread bubbling within her.

"What the..." She mumbled, nudging the petite blonde beside her.

"No way." Sarina gaped in response.

"How!?" Rolan hollered.

"I thought we burned them," Zaira said.

Two heinously familiar figures advanced towards them, and judging by the dismembered, once-upon-a-time, human they carried, Kaenisa knew exactly what was going on.

But what she did not know was where in the world had the other three creatures behind them a heartbeat later, come from.

Without wasting a second Zaic dashed to the trunk followed by her and the others.

Everyone grabbed whatever weapon they could get their hands on.

Kaenisa's eyes darted from one firearm to the other before finally landing on what was probably the futuristic version of an M-16. Reaching for the weapon, she found that it was indeed heavy but not as much as she had expected.

"Ma I think you need to go back inside-" She began, coming back to the front but before Kaenisa could complete her sentence, Shefali was already grabbing Zaira's gun.

She watched with an unhinged jaw as her mother aimed it at the running abominations, almost upon them, and opened fire. Not the random, chaotic kind. No. In the blink of an eye, Shefali had fired five perfect headshots.

The distorted bodies of the mutants on the ground were proof.

Everyone looked at the woman in the Kurti as if she had grown a second pair of hands, faces filled with awe and a justified sense of fear.

"You're sure that this woman is your mother, right?" Rolan gulped.

"Not anymore." She breathed.

Was this lady really the same woman who Kaenisa had grown up seeing save lives in the hospital? Maybe she had imagined her mother shooting down five indestructible monsters. Yes. That must be it.

HOW IN THE WORLD WAS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE-

"A little slow but you've still got it." The General assessed.

What-

"I'm a little rusty-" Her mother began, but a bellowing roar cut her short.

They watched, horrified as the mutants rose from the ground, bones cracking with every movement.

To her mounting disbelief, when the monsters straightened, a good two feet had been added to their height, measuring up to a minimum of nine feet.

Great. Just....great. How much worse could it get?

Apparently, a hell of a lot more.

Kaenisa's heart froze as one of them leaped, snarling heinously, aiming straight for her mother's jugular.