An Old Legend

The body of the Mayor twisted and spun, getting tossed a few feet away, his massive gun going spinning off in the distance, visibly shifting the air as it flew. The bottom half of his left leg was mangled, staying attached only by what could be described as a miracle. Dark red muscle was exposed in several spots, bone in several others, and it was all quickly drowned in a tide of dark red blood. His right shoulder seemed to have exploded, his arm hanging on only by what remained of the muscle, tendons, and skin. A large gash extended from that shoulder down to the middle of his back, stopping just before the spine. Several ribs could be seen at various points along its length, but compared to the two other wounds, it seemed almost tame.

I stood there stunned, not knowing what had just happened or what to do. One second, he was standing in front of me, jovial as ever, the next he was laid out in a growing puddle of his own blood, the only sign of life being his still-moving chest. In the peripheries of my vision, his attackers stood opposite each other. My vision slowly panned from one to the other.

There were now two Anglers in front of me, flanking the Mayor.

A fear began to seep its way into my bones. These things were far more cunning than a beast had any right to be, cunning enough to be able to fool even the super-human senses of the Mayor and carry out a simultaneous attack without being discovered until the moment they moved. But the thing that truly shook me was the explosive power they had demonstrated. I had yet to see the Mayor even suffer a scratch from anything we had faced, and yet these small things one may easily miss in a flood of lesser beasts had been able to nearly kill him in an instant. And to top it off, they still chose to run more often than not, if given the chance. 

There was an abyssal chasm in the hierarchy of these creatures, and this was just my first taste of it. The knowledge that the next step up from something I could just barely fight on equal terms with was able to kill me before I was even aware of its presence was disturbing, to say the least. While I was thinking, the two Anglers were looking intently at each other, occasionally making strange noises, seeming to be communicating in some way.

This four-way standoff continued until the still figure of the Mayor finally twitched and started to move. He let out a long groan and sat up, reaching an arm around to feel the wound on his back while looking at his legs. 

"You just had to hit the good one, didn't you? Little shit."

He laughed, finally looking up, his eyes meeting mine. There was a trace of exhaustion that made me worried, but most of his confidence was still there. He looked to his right at the one that hit his leg, raising his hand in the image of a gun and miming a firing action. His bladed whip was still wound around his arm, but even with its length he was too far away for it to even be worth trying to strike. It was clear that he was still dazed by the blow, but he seemed to be gradually recovering. 

He shook his head to clear the last bit of fog but froze midway through a rotation. His head then slowly turned to his left, his eyes locking onto the second Angler.

"Two? There are two? But how…? How can there… unless…. Kid, you need to leave. Now. Out of the city, if you can. This is no longer something you can or should take part in. If you stay, it'll be nothing more than suicide."

His eyes, filled with a seriousness I had never seen and a hint of panic, locked onto mine. He had realized something about the situation I had yet to. I was confused, wondering how two creatures could impact the situation this much. I hesitated to move.

"What about you?"

"Just go. I need you out of the way. The less variables there are for me to track, the better. Now go."

I was conflicted, not wanting to simply leave him, but unable to forget how he had used me. I'm not sure whether I didn't want him to die, or whether I simply didn't want to be the reason for it, even indirectly. Eventually, though, I chose to leave, shaking off my last bit of hesitation and sprinting towards the back of the city. I ran through the twisted, winding streets, passing by countless buildings in varying states of demolition. The scale of destruction was immense, but there were rarely two buildings directly next to each other that had been destroyed. I thought about what each of these buildings meant, feeling better seeing the staggered destruction, but the more I ran and the more piles of rubble I passed by, the more I realized how many people hadn't made it out. 

Every now and then, I would pass one of the beasts remaining in the town, but they'd quickly give up the chase once they realized they couldn't catch up. I didn't encounter any of the bigger ones, which made me wonder if the last two we had killed were the last two in the whole of the wave. There was only a slim chance, but hope had quickly become a scarce commodity, and any I could find was welcomed with open arms. I continued sprinting until I popped out onto what could be considered the main street of the town, leading out towards the edge only a short jog away. My pace slowed a bit, but I continued moving relatively fast until, eventually, I had left the confines of the town, stepping onto the soft dirt road just outside.

I continued running for a short while in a daze, a strange feeling growing stronger the further away from the town I got. It was anxiety-adjacent but couldn't be described as just that. I stopped moving and turned to look back at the town, seeing that nothing had chased me. I was free to go, to escape this nightmare that had descended upon me suddenly, but for some reason, doing so felt wrong. There was worry, there was regret. Neither was my primary feeling, but I couldn't place what that feeling was. But all I could do now was run, and so I turned and I ran. I kept moving, knowing that the more distance I could create, the safer I would be in the future, once the wave moved past the town. 

Eventually, the run slowed to a job, which slowed to a walk. The strange feeling I had continued to grow stronger, but it seemed to stabilize once I reached a certain distance and slowed down. I once again turned around, this time not stopping. The town loomed between me and the horizon, having grown noticeably smaller while it's presence somehow remained the same. It was one more thing I was unsettled by, but I shrugged it off and turned back around. Now though, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was chained to the town, like there was something latched onto me, not strong enough to slow me down, but attached just strong enough to make me unable to ignore its presence. 

I eventually came upon a forest. There was a path cut through the middle of it to make way for the road, but the dense canopy blocked what little light there was from gracing the road, making it look as though the road simply disappeared a certain way into the forest, leading into an endless abyss. I knew there to be no danger in the forest, nothing worth worrying about anyway, but I still decided to rest for a few minutes just outside it. I moved just off the road and sat on a small boulder nestled nicely in some foliage.

Before I could even start considering my next steps though, a few voices lazily waltzed out of the forest road, immediately stealing my focus and putting me on edge.