“It’s a fadeen,” Timo-Ran said as he held his leg and tried to stem the flow of blood. “They’re spirit-creatures. Bringers of death. To even see one means you’ll die. They have to be killed, or everything you know, everyone you love… they’ll kill them all.”
Superstitions or not, the creatures were real. They were also tough.
Nyna ran up to us, took a moment to inspect Timo-Ran’s wound, and removed her backpack.
“I can fix a lot more than just tech and tools,” she said. “I’ll keep him alive.”
Good, I thought. Because I have three critters to kill. Then, I planned on taking one apart to find out why I could sense them. After I’d killed Tortengar, of course.
I found Beatrix fully engaged with one of the creatures, and I charged into battle to join her.
Every strike she made was being deflected. She was a spinning, twirling whirlwind of sparking red destruction, but the fadeen was unimpressed. At a distance, I was able to get a better look at its kind.
It resembled a human, except its arms, legs, and torso were too short. The hair that covered its body was matted and stuck to its narrow form like it had just climbed out of another creature’s giant ass. It had eyes, but they were set on the sides of its head rather than being in front. By the way it held its head, I wasn’t even sure if it needed them, or if it used another kind of perception to understand and track what was in its environment.
I came in behind the creature and stabbed at it. When it batted my blade away, I reversed my strike the same moment Beatrix reversed hers, but it blocked them both. We began walking around it as we attacked, forcing it to adjust with every strike. It was tiring quickly, and I knew it was only a matter of time before it made a mistake.
That’s when Skrew finally decided to join the fight. He pointed his arm toward the tower where one of the fadeen, the one I’d sliced, was tending to its wound, and opened his minigun.
BRRRRRT! BRRRRRT!
“Eat many bullets, ugly, furry stinky-head!” Skrew bellowed.
The beast evaporated into a cloud of dark-red mist and nasty black fur. Its presence—the aura of anger, hunger, and fear—vanished with it. They were tough, but they weren’t invincible.
“Ha!” Skrew laughed. “Made skinny baddy go poof and gross! Did Jacob see? Was like squashing nasty old fruit really hard, like how find under pile of other nasty fruit.”
“Yeah, good job, Skrew,” I said. “Now, kill another one!”
I was busy with my own fadeen, but Skrew was apparently too impressed with his own work to notice.
I took a position behind the creature, but it knew I was there and slashed at me. Beatrix punished the fadeen by bashing its paw away with her hammer. The creature wailed.
I stepped forward as I stabbed toward its throat, doing my best to advertise my intentions. It saw me and moved to block. At the last moment, though, I flicked Ebon’s point down and peeled a thick layer of flesh from its forearm. Beatrix finished it off with a hard smash from her hammer to its head.
The third had Reaver cornered, but she was giving it hell with her rifle. The energy weapons seemed to have limited effect on the creature, though. Smoke poured from the many impact points, but it continued to fight, though it did appear to be growing weak.
When it got too close, Reaver was forced to use her rifle to block the strikes. Although Beatrix and I were too far away to help, we were sprinting to her aid.
“Catch!” Beatrix said and threw her hammer toward Reaver, who caught it, ducked a slash aimed at her face, and delivered a power-hammer uppercut that knocked the creature to its back. She hit it one more time in the face for good measure.
“Was that a fadeen?” Neb-Ka asked me.
I nodded. “That’s what Timo-Ran said.”
“Where is Timo-Ran?” Tila asked.
“He’s over there,” I said, pointing to where I’d left him. “He was injured. Nyna is caring for him.”
Neb-Ka and Tila ran his direction. I stayed and checked on the rest of the team. Neither were injured, but they were a bit shaken. We walked back toward Timo-Ran.
“I have never fought a creature like a fadeen,” Beatrix admitted. “It was strong. It knew me. It could sense what I was thinking and what I would do. It felt like it was in my head.”
“Yeah,” Reaver said, “I got that too. Why would the Lakunae make them? They were primal, primitive. They weren’t the types of creatures the Lakunae could use to complete their mission. Not even close. They were clever, but they were also stupid. Glorified guard dogs.”
“What do you think?” Reaver asked me.
I thought about it for a while. We were close enough to see Timo-Ran standing on his own, showing the other Ish-Nul the spot on his leg where he’d been injured.
“I think there are a lot of mysteries when it comes to the Lakunae,” I said. “I also think we’re not as uncommon as we think we are.”
“Look here!” Timo-Ran said when we reached him.
His leather pants were torn where the fadeen had sliced him. They were bloody, as was his shoe and a big spot on the ground. But there was no wound. It was as though it had never happened.
I turned to Nyna, who was standing with her hands behind her back with pursed lips, doing her best to look cute. And boy was she nailing it.
“Did you do this?” I asked.
She nodded and showed me a small rod about twelve inches long and one inch thick. It was as black as Ebon but didn’t have any other distinguishing features.
“I
