----------------^-----------

  The fires raged

  ‘I should be dead already.’ Echoed through Saiyah’s thought

  Her mind was still here… She’s stirred when they were gathered around, but there was just darkness; they came up with a plan, settled on escaping, a good idea.

  It didn’t sound like one when it commenced; it was too quiet, they never spoke much anyway, but she didn’t sense the dead, just ash and smoke in her nostrils.

  Is everyone dead!? Likely, she may just be, she heard panic and war, the fight of comrades, and then... nothing...

  …they ended…stopped…no ones left…. No one is left, but there is something left.

  A searing–

  Perhaps this is hell? The grave? Was she executed? Had she never really survived?

  She feels it lingering heat, flame, and fire…how long has it been? Hours of silence? Maybe after being first shot…she can’t imagine it was natural she had survived this….-

  Her fully lidded eyes became half-lidded through great struggle. Saiyah lay in wreckage, feeling heat and fire.

  ‘Hell is real, and I’m in it…I’m here…I’ve been punished.

  Her mind lingers… In fearful assumption,

  She hadn’t believed in anything up until this point. She had readily recalled if there had been a God, she was despised by him, for she feasted on the blood of men, his creation.

  She burns, gnashing her teeth yet cursing nothing, not out of respect, but it doesn’t feel as painful as it should have.

  her last sensation previously was searing nanites in training, working through her body faster, stronger, it had her choking on blood dying like a human having their throat slit for an infraction…

  She presumed she had died…That this time she hadn’t survived…

  Yet She was here now taking slips of breaths through her pursed lips, a pain lingering through her body that now feels alien to her as it refuses to act.

  She questions why they don’t linger–No, she realizes why they don’t linger...

  ‘In hell, I sense him…’

  ‘Aleph….’ She suffered from the lone thoughts.

  There is a subconscious sensation traveling through her, the nanites which feasted on her being dull…and what is black is brought to the light, she ponders in lingering pain, unmoving, why she has been cast unto hell….

  Yet as she glances up, the view brought to her eyes grieves her.

  Broken, she’s at the top of a hill and views a broken, streaming, cluttered mess of helmets and empty armor leading upwards to her place at the top of a massive, scorched hill

  She can see dust and smoke, embers flying around them…

  It came from the armor...

  In the scorched hollow, scraps of armor were the powdered and ash remains flowing out of each…

  Their occupants... Her Comrades and fellows…vaporized…scorched…burned, she breathed their embers, a sensation, an event she can’t imagine forgetting…breathing the dead around her.

  Asaph! Anna! She wants to call for them, but strangely can’t move….

  Saiyah feels hollow, as if she has no bones; she thirsts for blood, and her body feels foreign; she feels as if she is only the eyes, ears, and mind, and her body is an anchor tied to them.

  She feels deeply restrained….

  Restrained to the ground, only left to gaze upon the dead…

  Left with time to slowly recognize bits of personalized wear and oddities of each SET of ruined and wrecked armor, counting the deaths of those she recognized until it got closer…

  In training, when Aleph was beaten, there was a body that wanted to behead him often, Rias

  His armor notched with scratches, vicious even for a vampire…. Now dust and echoes,

  His helmet beside her face, she wanted to cry but couldn’t, she was on the ground it was so close to her head…

  His visor hollowed; a vicious wind blew through it, creating a haunting whistle in her ears at how it traveled from a hole

  She knew him by name…. too close to comfort…she recognizes a few more….

  ‘Please god no….’

  She wishes it was just a helmet…armor…but Asaph didn’t melt…. he was hit by the same weapon as her…. but it was more concentrated….

  his body is still together… Strewn out against grey dirt and black scorched soil and mud, lingering fires around his body as an orange glow flows out of his caved skull and head, his helmet split down the middle, feet facing the bottom of the hill.

  He’d fallen in such a way that she gazes into his open skull like it’s a valley.

  ‘No..no..no..no..no..no’ She chants in her head, unable to speak aloud…

  There’s hardly any blood and red viscera not evaporated by the lingering heat surrounding them…his flesh is becoming scorched just from a lingering ooze of broken plasma rifles strewn about…

  She can smell from his body and others' cooked hair, and meat…. it sizzles in her ears.

  ‘Aleph…. Aleph can–‘…Aleph saved them before…but it had to be too late.

  Asaph was already deteriorating far past a phase she had witnessed personally, even though the exposed flesh started to become a more dead-grey than his standard skin,

  Left and forced to watch him deteriorate to her grief and agony, seeing the excruciating detail in which his exposed, sharpened canines became dull.

  He began to wither his flesh, slowly becoming like mulch. She hears a distant voice she wishes could pull her attention, but her head can’t move, and her eyes won't depart.

  ‘Why….why…’ It’s all she can think, stunned, she forgets her predatory nature, she distressed, tries to move but still can’t, she can’t shut her eyes either….

  And worse, her senses are too strong; this is a vivid sensation as she sees Asaph die and falls apart…–

  Shlllk!

  Disturbingly, his face splits in two, she can almost see the bits of melted mass that would’ve been his eyes, a liquid pool of collapsing gazing pointed in the direction of her undead soul…

  She wishes she was human in this moment, that her senses so strong, that she was weak or better yet…–.

  ‘I wish I was dead too.’

  to hear it amidst the aftermath of chaos, as his face slips further into four parts,

  The rest of it discoloring into a grey mass before becoming a messy pile

  Asaph gone before her eyes….Anna likely the same fate, she can’t turn to see…but her heart twists at the idea Aleph may be dead.

  ‘Aleph….you damn well better be alive…’ her mind rings out, cursing him in her mind

  ‘All the moments leading to now, what were they for?’

  What were they, thrown here to die? Why did they exist? Was everything spent here for that moment….. What superiority had they over a man, what greater claim than a human if their end was so vicious?

  Her heart twisted…

  ‘Had I never been born I would’ve never had to see this…’ she collected, Saiyah ponders the futility of their lives, raised to be a vampire, cold thirsting for blood.

  They died no better than the soldiers of the dark ages–. Those human soldiers…

  She gives a groan able to subtly twist her head

  …she has her vision filled with fires, smoldering rock, dark rubbles and black clouds and ash.

  ‘This is hell...’

  But he’s there…Aleph…–

  Illuminated by flames, his silhouette stands against the light like negative space amidst a tide of familiar foes, one that she has faced and bested her…

  Even amid hell, he stands, and clouded, drained, thirsting for blood, she pools the last of her strength and palms the dirt. Nearly ready to stand.

  ---------------------------------------------------------

  [ALEPH]

  Here I am again…..A failure, having held back thousands, now they are perishing, my head is turned back, I feel as though I saw a ghost, a corpse move…but I was possibly wrong.

  But further back behind me…in the slowness of this moment. I can see it, an extension of my failures…-

  Burning, fire, hell, I see tails of fire from missiles raining, chasing each transport that’s left

  Even those who were left are being struck, a transport is hit and after the fire and smoke fades there isn’t even a falling wreck.

  All this for nothing…

  And now here I am, prepped to fight, the tiebreaker out of my hands

  I’m hopeless, but even I am pathetic enough to try and call upon that ability, yet my attempts to use it are as if I wanted to move my arm purely from thought,

  It’s no longer an extension of myself I wield…I’m without it, locked out of it…

  Surrounded by machines, it may have had the tiniest smidge of helping me survive against her... That girl…

  I recognize her now, I spared her..a mistake, I fought her, and she survived she nearly killed me and Saiyah, she would’ve killed us both had I not been what I am.

  Now I am without what makes me different, I’m worthless now. If I were to be hit with it again, I’d surely die.

  But that doesn’t worry me,

  The pain I have now is so strong I thirst for the death that the enemies circling me seem ready to give, they hold glowing blades... me frozen,

  I was strong, able to resist the pain of when this armor was put on my body, able to resist the pain of boiling plasma before, but now, I can’t endure because I’ve lost my people and my mission.

  It’s over.

  The sensation of my failure feeds me, into my heart it feeds me boiling coals and boiling oil, my loss is less grief and more anger, I’ll die with my fists clenched as I do now.

  It’s why they haven’t approached; they still think I have something, but I don’t have anything.

  I stare them down.

  the sensation of pain continues, due to the fires intensifying more as the heat rises and whatever blood within me, my own or other, boils within my body.

  The heat is near what I felt when this armor was equipped on me.

  It burns me more than when I felt this armor on–No, it burns just as much as when I equipped it, my face is exposed out of the helmet.

  I feel a breeze blow through my mouth and jaw, partially exposed, not enough blood to safely regenerate…

  I’ve been boiled to freezing.

  The sheer surrounding heat keeps me down, a ring of fire about me, and the undead who had perished under me.

  They did well, out of the ammo, especially to the point when we had to fight with their hands,

  I should have brought to victory…... Not defeat…but it had to be inevitable, the entire planet would’ve come down on us anyway in the city or the open ground here, but we had better chances there….

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Now I’m counting the odds against the only one left….

  Me.

  The silver towering bodies of the mechra and similarly colored armor, and what is like a saint among them, I recognize her fully now…...

  The physical pain no longer keeps me immobile. But a pain inside as I am forced to count the bodies in my view.

  I’m immobilized by it.

  I can’t stop my eyes from raking in the bodies I brought to their deaths, foolishly charging into open terrain, mounted carcasses of melted purple, embers and smoke as I breathe in the very essence of those who are lost as I draw forth breath in twisted agony, glancing toward my end.

  I must consider there is a way out, I wouldn’t have lived this long to be spared so many mercies if there wasn’t.

  I consider what God of the humans has in store for me. Is it the fate of my brother Asaph….

  If I am to die, is it now?

  I hold it in for as long as I can...

  But I exhale deeply in regret, my eyes glaze over, but the heat burns my tears.

  I smell fire, burnt hair, and agony, but more than that, I can hear the hiss of hydraulics as if my abnormal senses have quadrupled from the agony... Yet I feel no faster.

  A thought is given to me despite all this, I felt ready to give up, but something burned into my skull, I was given inspiration…why? I can’t understand, but it strengthens me, not with courage but with confirmation.

  ‘I can survive.’

  [.]

  Aleph fists clenched bared down on the horde, cyborgs and mechanical beasts

  Leading them all though…

  He faces that girl… he now fully recognizes, when he tore through the city, when he bathed in the blood of innocent people, there she was the only one spared amongst all.

  And when she encountered him, she killed many of his own, the humans he rescued in return...

  Now there she was facing him, and he knew it was her; she was there for a final round.

  Unbeknownst to Aleph in the hours following, she recuperated and joined the army pursuing him; she failed, lost Hera and Miriam, who had been eviscerated by the raw physical might of Saiyah. She wasn’t going to lose here, she had to beat them!

  But the nature of her failure was considered; she would’ve succeeded had he not miraculously utilized the ability

  that destabilized them on a wide scale, slowed their responses to the hivemind, and aided the siege of the capital city, New Greecia, for so long.

  A girl who had lost everything, became a She-Nephilim, fought the impossible demons who shattered the Mechra, and won against their leader, even if not kill him.

  Through the lingering remaining cameras of the ruined city, they had been able to monitor their escape and trail after them.

  Now she was there, prepared to fight, to end this.

  She expected to lose; she was terrified, but by the time she made it, the overwhelming numbers swarmed them, but an army of millions lost to only several hundred thousand.

  In conclusion, it was her left, though many machines stood, most of them were too far gone to fight; it was her and a few cyborgs, the handful was put into scattered clusters from the palm of the Mechra

  But Joan felt confident that other Nephilm were here, some of them male, though she wasn’t sure if they were part of the nephilm, she’d only known she-nephilm but had never been to the other cities

  But that didn’t matter, they were with her now and ready to fight.

  And as certain so was Aleph as he grew desperate for this not to be in vain, the information he gained, what he may recall from his entry into the hivemind, may just help a future battle here; he must escape.

  Joan and the other cyborgs moved first,

  Aleph had so little left when he took steps after theirs; they were labored at first, but the fight was on.

  Garbled voices he could not hope to understand shouted amongst each other commands and screams for openings.

  He had to outlast them, maybe find an opening to run off.

  ‘How many of them are there? Several hundred? A thousand left?’

  He can’t fully determine, as if he forgot how many he counted.

  He checks around for weapons to use…... Yet as he does so, he hears a woman’s voice.

  ‘Your hands!’

  It shakes him to his core as he scrambles, looking for a tool, a blade, a knife, maybe some discarded weapon from an automaton he can stab into his flesh and use.

  He’s desperate, without ammo…a rifle he should be nothing……

  But what about training? That day, it was human adrenaline that allowed him to rip through the machines, but possibly that human desperation was mixed with something else...

  He doesn’t have time to think, though, he must evade the bolts of plasma

  Pinkish hot bolts that melt the scorched hill they fly over more

  fired from rifles of cyborgs and arms of the mechanical menace,

  Only able to dodge hair's breadth each time one soars past him, glancing strikes cook his armor, but can’t melt it,

  Plasma bolts despite this continues to fly rapidly as, fire in such steady streams straight on, it looks like a column of light rather than magnetically propelled bolts

  As one of these columns of light goes over his shoulder as he ducks, rolls, and keeps lumbering. He’s beginning to realize he’s wearing out.

  ‘Not again...’ He laments...

  He’s slow, slowing down, and he feels the sensation he felt when underground and a little bit before it.

  He’s thirsty for blood, starved of it, the fires cooked him, he feels dried and hollow, but he can’t quench his thirst like he did before, it’s a horrid situation….

  The pain seems to worsen now, like when he had finally starved in the underground and was crippled…it made him fearful as he felt himself slow down

  and got his shoulder plates scratched twice by blades, the blades shattering on impact

  He was on the verge of defeat. He was dodging less and less, and a few stray bolts of plasma hit him, knocking off bits of his armor, and a gaping hole formed in his side.

  He screams as he’s surrounded, grabbed! Aleph feels something piercing his shoulder.

  Afar he can’t see, but Joan watches, holding back, tired out from how he was able to hold out

  Not again! He thinks back to training, as one of the foes Polarie digs a knife into his throat.

  Yet for a moment he strangely smells blood…something that came to him before but in hunger its different...

  They are milliseconds from beheading him going through his neck as flesh sliced through yet hardly any blood releases, he’d been boiled too much from passing plasma and the intense heat of his surroundings. But the fires have receded,

  It’s dark now, very dark.

  him, it glows searing hot and melts into his flesh as his head almost begins to dangle…

  He feels that sensation of adrenaline, like before, but not what allowed him to cleave through.

  He feels the life fade despite not being fully beheaded, as if he’s human, as if stabbing in the heart could kill him.

  As if on cue, one stabs in and burns…he isn’t regenerating–Through but like a key to only drives him made….

  Death was assured; he had no rifle to save him no blade to swing all his hand was his hands

  And his teeth

  When in a flash of thirst, his hand snapped unnaturally.

  His fist had rocketed out from his side, not in a fist but like a claw, his eyes sparking a glint color darker than any living thing…

  The shockwave of his hit startled those attached to him, as he wrestled and bit the open gory neck wound exposed, blood poured into his mouth, and he was revived into his undead nature.

  The neck wound is sealing.

  Joan herself was facing him awestruck; she’d been fighting them, seen a man clenched in the jaws of one, but this wasn’t malice, this was hunger, this was the very nature of what they were fighting.

  Bloodthirsty demons

  The machines jumped in, and so did Joan, and the fight became more of a blur as they attempted to land blows but failed.

  Aleph abandoned all pretenses of being ashamed about his humanity when he tasted the blood. The way he did it was in a blur, he open-palmed palm palm-clawed at those surrounding him, his gauntlets broken.

  His bare hands swinging through the plating of the cyborgs, drawing out whatever blood was within them, he cleaved through them….

  Eager... thirsting…

  The first time he was in a situation like this, he was eviscerated by training machines and channeled human adrenaline, but now he realizes it wasn’t that simple, but his vampiric nature and human nature that saved him

  The most convenient portions of two to settle out the weaknesses of either…

  He found the humanity that held him back, the urgency to fight by grabbing a rifle, blade, to pick up a rock to kill and slay…

  The shame of being human was gone yet even as pain remained, he fought fiercely, using his own arms like swords, his strength fully revived to its peak. They struggled at first but now he seemed unstoppable.

  His hands went through the metal of the machines as he tunneled through the cyborgs

  The tide shifted, and there he stared in the mist of blood, gazing upon her, his face shifting back with his regeneration. Gazing down like a monster.

  Again, he hung for blood. If he weren’t a vampire, his training assured him, he’d be strong.

  But he thanked God in this moment, not that he was a vampire, but for the mixture of the two, his humanity and vampirism, which allowed him in situations to end up fighting better.

  That conflict resolved itself in his desperate fight in this moment, he felt himself as neither... only a weapon fueled by blood. And he reveled in it now.

  -^-

  But he would not win this fight, in the depths of his power, Joan would have victory, and vengeance again… She was terrified but still stood against darkness,

  Her blade was not enough, from one of the machines with bladed arms, she ripped it up, wielding the heavy, large blade bigger than herself.

  her augmented cybernetic muscles twisting around under her battered frame,

  a sound akin to a revved engine as they bulked to accommodate her grip

  She previously doubted the divinity of mankind, but if the counterpart of her god, a devil, existed, surely this meant they were right.

  Her faith strengthened, and she felt solidarity as she stood facing him….

  But another arose behind him, one she did not recognize from before–

  Saiyah…arose, drained of any blood; she wasn’t pale, but her skin had shifted a darker color from the natural vampiric grey, a darkened figure as she was starved…her helmet no longer adorned.

  Her teeth a fierce, hungry silver, her eyes shimmering red.

  Aleph so monstrously worked like an animal, now accepting another into the pact, both without weapons

  She still appeared slow, but she would fight

  And they did, both charged in the deep apocalyptic wastes, fires long since receded, bodies, wreckages a mess of metal and hill of carnage.

  The blade swung, bodies evaded strikes, but Joan was surprised to see in the duel she came above. Once they evaded, she swung for Aleph, cracking through the metal of his armor, the blade in her hand glowing with ambient energy, melting through armor.

  Both hands dismembered, yet in seconds his skeleton revived, glistening as it came back, nerves and flesh twisting back into the place of the limbs before blows were sent her way again.

  But it was swift, she bested them both…. In the duel she came above, as they were eventually, through great effort, brought back low again…... but before the killing blow arrived

  The shape of an aircraft swooped in, Joan was on the precipice of victory, but the transport was hijacked; it was her own, she only realized it was hijacked because it fired on her, causing her to evade dual autocannons.

  It swooped in, likely to gather them, as she retreated, she had one confirmation in mind: despite victory here, despite being the only survivor

  A pyrrhic victory twisted her guts, but she’d come out on top; she knew there was hope now that they could win against them, but it brought no comfort.

  She knew assuredly that if they could not destroy that ship next and halt their evacuation

  THEY would return. Monsters…

  \\ On the flipside //

  Vito had saved Aleph and Saiyah he’d taken a transport, having broken into the fortified but distracted pyramid tower as they had attempted prior.

  His assault had been swift, he danced like a sly rat and pounced on them like the plague they carried, bounding from one after another, guarding, machine, man, bystander, he swept through blood on his fist, caved skulls and broken shells.

  But he’d discovered a chamber, a mural and a terminal within…it brought him great fear….

  His escape was far more ruthless, it took more of him going out than it did going in.

  But when he escaped, he came to the remains of his fellow undead his body regenerated, but his armor was broken and battered, picking two…presuming the others dead…until he returned.

  -

  His craft soared, though forced to land flat outside, they made their way in through loading-platform extended down to them as soon as it was discovered who they were the moment they exited the transport.

  \\ Three weeks after the invasion//

  -.-

  “Is this it…” Joan had questioned the feeling of victory when she saw that ship leave, so many had died.

  They had attacked the ship, hoping to stop it from escaping, but it did. the leader of her people's enemy survived, along with those traitorous humans she’d been sent to kill It appeared.

  Now it has become deathly quiet, save for the marching back home...

  There were few Nephilim left, assuredly so millions from her capital personally perished in an open engagement despite having the great advantage

  They must be having a shortage of manpower at the very least of those from her home in the capital

  The lack of response from the Mechra had been concerning amongst all this, she pondered how many Mechra had been martyred in the battle of that hill and the attack on that ship

  The pre-bombardment of the enemy with plasma mortars did little to weaken the resolve of their evil enemy.

  It made the reason why they were sent out even more reasonable, they were infinitely inferior to the Mechra, Joan regarded that she seemed to be the only one wise enough to see that.

  But since the Mechra themselves were calling upon Joan and the Polaries this enemy made numerical superiority pointless, to some degree, maybe they were hoping for more people like her.

  Anomalies that can match this irregular enemy.

  But as a result, many polaries had died, none from her home survived, and it was knife-twisting in her gut.

  But now. Because of the smaller circulation of polaries, and her survival in both battles including the third back in the city against the leader directly.

  Joan’s name became recognized for her persistence against the undead

  Her faith in the face of brutality and dedication to their and her gods, mankind.

  When she encountered another machine, it regarded her as a saint.

  Yet the losses made this victory, whether it was going to be permanent, long-term or short-term, even more pathetic in her eyes.

  The Polaries her fellows were happy, but she wasn’t, nor were the machines.

  She’d passed by them, and they chirped in binary positively to her, but never about the fight, the enemy was very likely to return, and they’d just barely survived.

  “A mere hundred thousand killed so many and my–,” Joan muttered aloud to herself but hiccuped.

  She looked to New Greecia the capital, seeing it still broken, surrounded by the lesser cities, smaller but intact…

  “You mustn’t lose hope.” A voice rung and a figure passed her up, he was quite tall, but he didn’t look toward her face “We wont fail our gods, we’ve pushed them off…if-..if they..come again..”

  He looked toward the city in the distance and paused

  He wasn’t looking toward her and spoke “That’s your home isn’t it.”

  “Yes.” She paused, glancing left to right, seeing in sporadic formations machines and Polaries marching back from the site of the fight against the ship…

  He took in a sharp breath, and she almost rolled her eyes feeling he was going to comfort her.

  “They’ll pay for this.” He didn’t have words of encouragement, but it was encouraging, it filled her with faith that another angel felt something at the destruction of her home.

  Joan lamenting aloud seeking more of this comfort “Many of our gods were…plucked by the roots…feasted upon...”

  She didn’t know who he was but he nodded and half-turned his head to her “We’ve pushed them off this world, and we’ll push them off others…and burn them, I’m sure of it.”.

  The hope of what he’s saying being true, possibly filled her with hope that they’d burn their homes too.

  She knew the Mechra spanned from outside the Triangulum galaxy but didn’t know how many worlds they were planted on. Before they arrived, this had been the only world she’d ever known.

  The only world she’d ever known was struck by an enemy most terrifying, and worst of all, they escaped with knowledge.

  Though she bested her enemies, they escaped…she avenged nothing….

  The planet, filled with the noise of war in one region, became quiet

  But she was lost… after this

  Her victory brought no confidence but a resolution.

  For her faith she must endure more. For her failures to help Hera, Miriam, her infant brother, and Zeta. And her mother….

  -.-

  Joan stopped by the hill of that major fight…where only she escaped…

  She couldn’t limp even now having still not returned, hungry wounded even from the battle where she barely dodged cars thrown at her..

  She felt need to ensure no vampires remained or survived..she’d been burned once before..

  She couldn’t help but freeze when a helmet finally came into view as she circled the hill, but then slouched whilst standing, be calm, she reminded herself.

  ‘We had won, forced them off……By pure sheer numbers and luck.’

  Of the millions who had been responding, she joined them, stepping into the scorched dirt, and she’d been one of the few who survived, the last who survived even of the machines.

  That was all she could think regarding herself as the only survivor of this battle where they outnumbered them more than 100 to 1 and still nearly lost.

  Joan stepped up the hill, seeing other Polaries stopping here. She didn’t approach or communicate; they seemed to glaze over the battlefield.

  The sea of broken silver bodies cyborg and machine made the battlefield look like it’d been glassed, and to some degree, it was.

  ‘By the gods…By man’ she sighed, it felt odd holding the helmet of her enemy, it was massive, a credit to their stature, the shortest of them she’d seen after all was only seven-foot two...

  She looked back to her wrecked city and wondered how many more bodies would be there…So when she prepared to head back to the city it was troubling

  -

  Entering back into the ruins of her home was daunting.

  And she had given pause making her way to the place her family has died, in the dust and rubble a stain lingered, of who she loved, when they had been stomped and splashed onto her.

  She can almost remember vividly the spray of their viscera onto herself, and the weight of it crashes down as the long adrenaline of all the fighting dies down.

  she’d never known the outside world was destroyed. She knew they lived in artificial habitats, but to see the remains of her cracked sky haunted her.

  The distant cities, unlike hers, were unharmed, and she lamented not being born in them; their shields still glowed, Her’s had collapsed, and returning home, there was silence.

  For a moment, Joan considered wanting to see the worshippers of the ‘invisible god’ being stoned just to hear any life but saw none.

  Scouring the city, she saw nothing but the ruins that cut her heart asunder. She went into the wastes, trailing behind signs of battle, where they slaughtered them to the mount of Armageddon.

  Joan had just arrived, making it back to the mount where they destroyed many of those vampires, the taller ones with the glowing mono-eye.

  ‘The bastards who massacred my city.’ Her heart cried