Isolation & Fear (Damned of the 2/19th Book Seven)

Past and Present

GPS Location Error
Inertia Navigation System Online
Dawnside Face, Upside
TIME/DATE STAMP ERROR
Daywalk, Second Wake Time

The snowflakes were drifting down around me in the light. The sun couldn't be seen through the thick heavy clouds overhead, but the light seemed to come from everywhere, gleaming and reflecting off the ice and snow that covered everything around me. My breath steamed out in front of me as I moved fast through the woods.

In my right hand I carried the heavy steel blade I had forged, the black steel gleaming in the cold light of the Daywalk.

One of the new unmen, that looked like a woman but was not, stumbled as she fled from me. One her arms was missing below the elbow, and intestines spilled out behind her, leaving greasy black stains on the snow. I had ambushed it, catching it too near my lair, within scenting distance. I had cut it, hacked it, and now it ran, crying piteously in a woman's voice.

But I had seen its face. Seen its unmen smile.

I was not fooled.

I bellowed my war cry as I got closer, bringing the knife back.

It thought it was clever.

Like I wouldn't see the three lumps of snow on either side of it as I "stumbled" and I drew close.

The three unmen burst from beneath the snow. They wore black aprons covered in blood, daubed with an ancient symbol that held no power over me. Their faces were covered by a black mask with wide lenses and protrusions at the sides of their mouths. All three bellowed, shaking off the snow, thinking to scare me into inaction with their gobbling high pitched cries. They were covered in barbed chains, bones with burned gobbets of flesh stuck to the barbs. They obviously depended on dark magic and their appearance to shock and cause fear.

But I was a man.

They were unmen.

It did them no good. I grabbed the black blade with both hands, my hand sliding into the blood groove, giving me a two handed grip on the weapon I had laboriously forged. I blocked the first swing, sparks showering as the thick metal bar in its hands hit the blade. My blade bit deep into its steel, and I wrenched my arms to the side, yanking the weapon from his grasp. I kicked out, my boot striking its knee, bending it backwards with a snap. I released my hold on the blade, swinging out with the heavy weapon.

I was still moving, I knew better than to stand in one place in a fight. The other bar crashed down where I had been, and the barbed chain snaked through the snowfall to where I had been, clashing on nothing with dark sparks.

The head of the female unman lifted from her suddenly cloven neck and her bellowing shriek turned to the gobbling whistle of an open windpipe.

A duck underneath the swing of the bar and the barbed chain snaked toward me.

I grabbed it, ignoring the pain of the barbs. I had salve to prevent the chill from sapping away my vitality. I shook my arm twice, looping the chain over the leather on my forearm, moving to my left.

The third one raised the great metal bar over his head and I could see the arcane runes hammered into the steel above the yellow paint.

2/19th SWG Motor Pool

He swung it down as I suddenly turned and yanked, setting my feet and putting my back into it.

The chain wielder stumbled forward.

The heavy bar crushed him to the earth.

The first one that had swung at me swiped with one hand covered in shiny black material. Some kind of strange glove that dripped blood on the snow.