Hindmost - Another Word for Chaos

10 : Twisted Soul

Discord awoke amidst a pile of rubble with a metal spike sticking out of her gut, another rock shard piercing her leg. She moved, slowly rising from the broken stones, grabbing the metal spike and pulling it from her wound. Off to her right, Linus lay in a heap, thrown through a wall and sleeping under its debris. As far as she could tell, something similar had happened to her, only it seemed she had been plowed under, she was sitting in a crater and covered in dirt.

She let out a gasp as the spike finally left her flesh and placed a hand over the wound trying to staunch the blood flow. Closing her eyes, she managed the pain, pushing it to the back of her mind, and when she opened them Hope came zipping by overhead.

"You're alive," the speck of light declared.

"It's a loose definition," Discord pulled her hand away and examined the thick ichor dripping off of her fingers.

Pressing her hand over the injury, a series of threads slithered from her fingertips, piercing her flesh and tying the wound close.

"Ouch," Hope noticed as Discord flinched and gritted her teeth, "Are you okay?"

"Give me a week," she responded, then glanced over at Linus, "How's he?"

"Just knocked out from the look of it."

"Oh?" Discord shuffled to her feet and started towards him.

"Well, I checked, and he's definitely breathing, but he won't wake up."

"He won't mind if I do this then."

Finally limping over to his body, she collapsed at his side and started shredding long strips of cloth from his coat.

"That's kind of...."

"Necessitated by my injuries," Discord interrupted, wrapping the wound on her stomach and tying off the bandage, "Don't worry, if we get out of this, I'll buy him a new coat."

"If?" Hope repeated.

"I don't like our odds," she reached down and removed the stone shard from her leg before bandaging that as well, "Whatever the Hell took us out did it in a split second."

"You don't remember?"

"Yeah, and I'm guessing that's a bad sign," she admitted, testing her weight on her bad leg.

"That's a safe bet," Hope admitted sadly.

"Anything positive you can throw at me?"

"Well...." Hope turned blue again.

"Geez," Discord cringed, "Where's all that sweetness and light when I need it."

"It's there, always, but..." Hope flew away, circling over a large footprint, "She's really fucking Big."

"Huh," Discord nodded, quickly measuring the divot and spotting a trail of them leading off to the heart of the city, "At least she'll be easy to track."

"That's the spirit!" Hope declared, turning her normal yellow again.

"Okay," Discord covered her eyes and tried to pop the tension out of her neck, "A statue with the soul of a goddess and empowered by the strength of an Earth Mother," she spread her arms out and cracked the joints in her shoulders, "Grown to, I'd say about twenty five feet, um, is heading to the center of the city," lacing her fingers together, she popped her knuckles, "To do what I have no earthly idea," she ended, slapping her cheeks to assure that she was alert, "Alright, let's do this."

They both followed the trail of destruction eventually coming to a juncture leading to an old state building that was glowing and throwing off sparks. It that wasn't evidence enough, the hole that had been torn through the entryway was a dead given, this is the building the statue had broken into.