Wayward Devotion

part eight: resilience

WARNING: hi friends this part is very violent and involves death. please read at your own risk. also there's swear words.

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You couldn't breathe.

All of the air had been knocked out of your lungs, making your head foggy and chest ache. You choke on air, trying to force it back into your lungs as you lay on your back.  You bring your palms up to your chest, holding it as your breathing starts to even out. You continue to breathe in and out despite the throb in your chest.

Definitely bruised ribs.

And from the stabbing feeling in your head, you assessed that you were probably mildly concussed too.

You move your palms back to the ground, and push, trying to sit up. You finally do, and it makes you breathless. You continue to sit as you rub at your eyes, trying to get rid of the blurriness.

It's dark outside, and even with some light from the gun range it was still about 200 yards away.

You squint, trying to adjust your eyes to the dark and look around. About 50 yards away was Gilgamesh, being circled by four deviants. Thena was nowhere to be found, and Rhodey was towards the gun range, trying to load a pistol.

You wipe at your forehead and see blood, but you ignore it as you push yourself off the ground.

Now standing, you barely turn to see a deviant being thrown past you. It lands with a thud in the ground, but quickly gets up.

Once it open it's eyes, it turn straight on to you.

"Shit," you hiss as you stumble back a few steps. You turn and run to the side, hoping to get to the garden in order to shield yourself.

The deviant can only be described as an alienistic moose. Instead of typical horns though, there's spikey tendons that gleam in the dark and look very sharp. The whole body of it had this sort of glow that almost seems cool if it weren't fully running at you with the intent to kill.

You try to speed up and fumble with the ring on your finger. It had a nanotech suit stored away in it, with a button to activate it that looked like a gem. Instead of clicking it though, your hands shake and it falls off into the grass below you.

You stop and drop to your knees, trying to find the ring, but the moose deviant is gaining on you, only ten feet away from you.

"Oh fuck," you say outloud before trying to duck out of the way.

You hit the ground, but don't feel an impact from the deviant. You look over to see the deviant farther away from you, knocked into the ground. You look up into the air and see Ikaris floating above you.

He quickly drops down in front of you, placing his hands on your face, checking for injuries.

He looks at you up and down speaking fast, "are you okay? What hurts?"

You place your palms over his, squeezing his hands, "I'm okay," you assure, "just a little roughed up."

The deviant is running towards you again and Ikaris looks over to it, beaming it with his lasers and turns back to you.

"You have to get out of here," he says seriously.

"I can help you," you say, exasperated.

You look over to see Peter by Gilgamesh, trying to web up the deviants from above.

"You're hurt," it's not a question, it's a statement.

"Ikaris," you say but he shakes his head.