The population got less and less dense the further away from the populated section of the city we got. More often than not, there wasn’t a hostile force keeping people out of these distant areas, there just weren’t that many people and they didn’t want to be too far from each other, save the occasional hermit holed up in some defunct gym or shop.
In this case, the reason why people hadn’t gone this way became obvious. One of the largest buildings, probably the largest building in this city before it got toppled, was lying on its side, blocking the path forward. It wasn’t impossible at all to get by, and there was even some wooden scaffolding already built to get up into one of the windows and through it.
Springer led us past it, himself seeming well acquainted with the proper path. We could’ve teleported as well, but getting three people across would’ve been draining on Elenor, and unneeded.
We had to brush some broken glass shards away, and I might’ve hit my head on a doorway I didn’t see hanging, but we made it pretty easily, falling out the side of the window for a small 4 or five foot drop and landing across the barrier dividing in town to out of town. The other side totally unpopulated.
Springer reached into his notebook, drawing a piece of charcoal out of his pockets. “Alright. We’re decently far away from people now. I can roughly track the demons down with my power, just might be a little crude.” He drew on the paper, the image of a bird roughly coming to life in a very quick very shoddy drawing. He tore the paper out and threw it up, the paper shifting and crumpling in on itself, until it shaped itself into a bird as well, landing on his head. “Nice. Go look for butterflies!” It took off into the distance.
Springer turned to look at us, hands on his hips. “See! Useful.”
I glanced at Eleanor, who returned the gesture. I looked at him for a long moment, before holding both my hands up and slightly off to the side, moving my fingers slightly. Then I stuck two fingers out on both hands and rubbed my dominant hand overtop of the non-dominant one twice.
She raised a closed hand up to the side of her head and then stuck her index up.
Springer looked between us like a young child watching his parents discuss a financial matter. “Um? What’s happening?”
“Sign language, don't worry about it.”
“Well, I’m not worried so much as curious.” He grabbed his notebook and skimmed through it, eventually finding a blank page. “Could I see that motion again? What does it mean?”
“No time, we have work to do.”
He frowned slightly, but luckily my bluff wasn’t called, and we continued walking further into the city, closer to the king's shell. He sketched out the rough motions the two of us made, the art actually fairly crips and viewable, if continuing that black, from the void, style that was indicative of charcoal writing materials. He flipped it shut and held it by his side. “Out of curiosity, what do you inland people know about the difference between animals and monsters? All I can learn comes from the preacher but, well, his words are somewhat biased.”
That was interesting to me. Not many people took a critical view of a religious leader in smaller towns and cultures like this. “Yeah?”
He seemed to notice that he made a misstep. “N-No, just, the only thing he says is that they’re from hell and god will protect us if we pray enough. But, I figure you guys had a different definition since y’all are all godless.”
“A lot wrong with that.”
“What?”
I let out a sigh. “Most people inland are some kinda religious. Some are new beliefs about powers and their origins, some are old ones adapted to fit the new society, and some are old ones that stay clung to their original tenets. But almost no one is godless. Everyone worships something.”
He glanced between the two of us. “Then, what do you guys?”
Eleanor gave a small twirl, then a bow. I spoke in her place, giving her a small push to keep her moving forward. “Theater, art, music, and culture. For me, it’s probably just…waking up for another day.”
“That doesn’t sound like worship?”
I shrugged my shoulders lightly. “Depends on your definition. Neither of us clasp our hands together and pray to it, but they’re things greater than us that we respect and keep us going. If it brings us comfort and we dedicate time and effort towards it, what separates it from a god?”
“...I can’t quite say I agree, but I understand your perspective. For me, knowing that god exists is pretty much the only reason I’ve been able to keep researching. If it was all chaos from chaos for chaos, there wouldn’t be as much intelligence behind the design of reality.”
My mind wondered to the end of time, to the things that I couldn’t understand at the precipice of reality. The thing that the only parts of it I could understand were the things it wasn’t. Singular, mortal, comprehensible, logical, good or evil. “...I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
He shrugged. “I’m plenty used to that.”
“To answer your earlier question, we don’t know too much about them. Being bigger is the main indication, it’s the obvious one that gives a visual clue. But, as far as we can tell, anatoiclaly they’re exactly the same, just scaled up. Problem is, that’s impossible.”
He blinked at me. “That’s a loaded word to use in discussions with a scientist who observed a natural phenomenon.”
Eleanor raised her eyebrow, but I just let out a small exhale. “Alright Scientist, you know what the square-cube law is?”
He shifted slightly, and did that same strange motion, fixing glasses he didn’t have on his face. “...No. Please tell me?”
Someone in a place like this considering themselves a scientist was pretty laughable, as mean as that might be. He was young enough that he was likely raised around here, in this sort of place without access to the modern technologies that marked actual scientific progress. No books at a college level, education from people who vaguely remembered old lessons of their own, if any education at all. Still, I couldn’t deny he had an admirable trait in his honest desire to know more. “It’s a law that states that volume increases faster than surface area. When applied to animals, it means that an animals mass would scale up too quick for their muscles and skeletal system to hold. So, in a realistic situation, if these things were actually as they appeared, the King should’ve torn every muscle and broken every bone in it’s body with it’s first step.”
“That’s…quite interesting. Would it be possible if the change of size was gradual, and therefore the animals had time to adjust?”
“Not a bad theory, for what information you’ve got, but the law isn’t that easy to circumvent. Mass would increase by the cube of the scaling factor, and muscle in the square, no matter how the upscaling happened. Basically, another power of increase that would need to be supported. Even if the change happened over millions of years, as long as it was the same creature, experiencing the same place and the same fundamental shape, it would just snap at a certain point.”
Eleanor’s elbow to my side caught me out of my explanation, and I let out a small grunt in response, looking at her. She signed, two pointer fingers hovering adjacent to eachother to look like an equal sign, then sticking her tongue out.
This might be somewhat of a random interruption, but I think it’s time to speak in some way shape or form about sign language and the form that it took with Eleanor and I. Sign language in general is a very unique form of communication, because while a standerized and genearlized language exists, it’s not used too often besides by people new to interacting with it.
This is a generalization, for the record, but after the end of times, it became much more accurate. The point that I’m trying to get at, is that since the form of communication is more often then not isolated to a small group of non-hearing people, or a non-haering person and whatever close relationships know them well, signing often becomes more ‘slang’ than anything. Signs that wouldn’t be found in a dictionary, almanic, or website, but large groups of people still recognize, or individuals can use to communicate.
I believe I may have been the only person in Eleanors life that wasn’t a government translater to learn and communicate to her in sign language. And we spoke every day for years together. At a certain point, our language became almost entirely concentrated to one only the two of us fully understood. Eleanor had the ability to switch to the standerized form of it, but personally I was somewhat stuck in our slang version, and often could only track conversations between her and translators based on expresson and body language.
Point being, while the actual ASL sign language way of saying ‘math’ would be to extend two fingers outwards like the overhang of a cave wall, and have the two press past each other, pause in the middle and slightly back up then pass them fully past eachtother, Elanor and I both just shortened it to the small gesture with our pointers to make an equal sign.
The stuck out tongue was just her way of saying she didn’t like it.
I ignored her as I turned back to facing Springer, who had stopped to stare at the brief usage of sign language, before yanking his eyes away from Eleanor and focusing instead on what I had told him. “So than, what are they?”
“No one really knows. They shouldn’t be able to exist under their own weight, shouldn’t be able to eat enough to survive more than a day or two. But they sure as hell aren’t natural. Something else wearing animal skin.”
“Demons?”
“May as well be. But for now, I think tearing some open is probably the right call no matter what.” I pointed to where his paper bird was perched up on one of the few buildings that had remained standing. It indicated its white and black beak down towards the remnants of a mall, the building stretching out a fair distance, the entrance we were using one of few that hadn’t been visibly caved in or cut off. Its doorway was comprised of shattered automatic doors, long rusted away and most fallen out of their frames, subsequently lost to the grass and erosion below. The doors revealed a somewhat dark entrance, natural light only getting a little ways in before dying out. “We’ve got work to do.”
Elenor lifted her index fingers on both hands up above her head. “Finally.” She pointed to herself, at the building, then made a throat-cutting gesture, which I don’t think needs translation.
Springer didn’t need one, given the way he looked at her and spoke with trepidation in his words, like he was talking to an animal he thought was making up its mind on whether to eat him or not. “Forgive if this is rude, but do you ever use words? You can hear from what I can tell.”
Part of the little, I do the talking arrangement she and I had, was If it’s a questions directed to her, I wouldn’t butt myself in, and just let her answer. If her answer was to look to me, than I would responde as needed, but she didn’t this time.
She raised her hand and pressed her pointer and middle finger against her thumb in a way that seemed like she was saying “Shut up.” The more literal translation would be “No.” But both worked in this situation.
He nodded, taking it as both an answer and a reaction to his question. “Sorry. Oh, and, If you two don’t mind, I’d like to say a quick prayer before we do this.” He closed his eyes, hand going to a small rosemary he had kept in his pocket, holding it up to his chin and muttering hushed and private words.
Elenor and I let him take his time, we weren’t in a rush and there wasn’t any reason not to. We traded glances once more, a hard-to-describe intent in her eyes, and one that I reciprocated. I repeated the earlier gesture, two fingers extended on both hands and the dominant one moving forwards and backward twice on top of the other. “Soon.”
He kissed the rosemary and placed it back in his pocket. “Alright, how do we do this?” He nodded to me. “You and I in the front, her in the back?”
I almost chuckled, the dude pretty much just offering himself up to die. “Eleanor and I will frontline, your job is to run interference, use your power to interfere with the butterflies, make them target things we don’t mind getting destroyed.”
He shifted slightly. “I’m not sure how I feel about letting a girl fight for me.”
Elenor looked at me, and I nodded. In an instant, she was behind him. She kicked the back of his leg to force him to his knee, grabbing his wrist and twisting it to pull it behind his back, knocking his notebook out of his hand while drawing her knife and holding it flat against his throat. He let out a small gasp, eyes wide.
I crouched down to be at eye level with him. “Look. You mean well, and we get that, really. But Elenor has killed much stronger than you, much stronger than these things we’re about to fight, and hell, I’d say between the two of us a fight is a tossup. So, here’s a lesson from the outside world for you. If you’re not strong enough to enforce your principles, they’re dirt. So either lose them or get strong enough to hold onto them. You think girls shouldn’t fight? Sure, once there isn’t a single one out there that can put you on your ass, once you’re strong enough that you can disregard an entire half of the population of powered people, you’re free to think and enforce that all you want. But right now, you’re not even remotely close.” I stood back up, gesturing for Eleanor to get off of him, which she did after a lingering moment. “So, to be blunt, either listen to us, or get better than us. Right now? You’re going to listen.”
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He swallowed thickly, nodding as he rubbing at his neck and already breathing deep. The two of us could almost hear his heart pounding, with how clearly hyped up on adrenaline he had gotten. His face was also quite flushed, embarrassment at being put down so clearly obvious. I helped him up somewhat forcefully, grabbing his arm and yanking him to his feet. “We’ll replace whatever paper you lose here, I know it’s valuable.”
“Ah, right. Um, thanks.” He seemed a little wobbly on his feet, that moment probably the closest he had ever been to death, even if Eleanor wouldn’t have actually killed him. Having a knife held against your throat without realizing that was going to happen still had him somewhat shaken. It was probably understandable, but working in our job, it was easy to forget that it didn’t take much to spook most people.
I gave him a pat on his back. “Good man. Now pull yourself together. Eleanor and I will be in the front, you’ll run interference. Any objections?” He didn’t respond. “Good.”
I looked up at the building in front of us, and we all moved inwards. The light inside of it got dimmer but steadily brightened as we moved in. though not by much. Streams of sunlight poured in from broken parts of the building, and the open roof. The shattered walls allow light into the otherwise dark and dreary parts of the place. granting us enough reprieve to see what was in front of us. Moss and grass life had started getting into this place as well, originating from what seemed like decorative plantlife in aesthetically pleasing parts of the mall, now overgrown and starting to take over. Trees that had been carefully trimmed and small, just decoration, were now poking out of the roofs, above the mall which contained them, their massive leaves and branches drooping down into walkways and paths that people once strode.
The ceiling, what parts of it weren’t exposed or shattered, was covered in cacoons, green shells that looked like leaves folded over themselves, hanging from silky strings.
Springer and I both let out a noise almost in sync, a sort of “Awww,” Though his tapered into amazement, and mine into despair. I ended mine with tired, “Shit.” as hundreds of dog-sized butterflies began to flood out of the different inlets and stores, perching up on banisters and the leaves of some of the large trees, all looking down at us with their large black eyes like twin black holes. The ones that had the iconic eye pattern on their wings made it look like thousands of pairs of eyes were staring down at all of us.
I grabbed Springer by his shoulder and shoved him behind me, pushing my body in front of him as I lifted my gun to fire.
I was interpreted, as they all flapped their wings in a horrible synch, a shockwave of air slamming into each of us. Springer and I got taken off of our feet, falling into each other slightly. I managed to reverse my own time before I was totally off balance, leaving me back in the firing position. I pulled the trigger, and one of the butterflies hit the floor.
Hundreds remained.
Eleanor had teleported the moment the attack happened, and I drew my pistol as I saw all the creatures turn to her, her knife stuck deep into the body of one. They got off the banisters and railing, begging to flutter and fly around. I shot as many of them as I could in rapid succession, feeling the kickback in my hand as it dislocated my shoulder over and over again, the twin cracks of my body and the bullet firing out repeating in synch.
There was a slight limitation to how fast I could fire my weapon. Reversing the bullet back into the chamber and my body back into an unbroken state meant returning to the position I fired. Time and position in space were directly related. If I wanted to reload, I had to be in the same place I was in before it fired. It wasn’t much, but imagine something like a millisecond delay between a shot fired, and being able to line the next one up.
The intense fluttering and flapping of wings started shaking the ground, my body unsteady. It didn’t hurt my aim much, not because of any skill of mine, but more so because it would be harder not to hit anything as I fired into the air filled with flashes of eyes and patterns.
It felt like I was in the eye of a hurricane, just firing blindly into the center. The shaking of the ground and the pressure of the air forced me to steady myself with a hand on the ground for a moment, giving me the clarity to notice that I had been separated from the others, the butterflies surrounding me in a column.
Before I could figure out whatever the hell that was going to build up to, I reversed my time to just before I entered the building, and ran back inside. “Springer! You alive!”
“Yes!”
I could barely hear him over the sound of air and wind getting pushed around in intense shoves. “Get out!”
“But Eleanor!”
I grit my teeth, before squairing my shoulders and gripping my pistol grip with both hands. I shot pointing up, not intent on hitting any of my allies. This dumbass thought someone who could teleport was trapped. I bit back the instinct to bark that out as well, knowing that the information would be revealing something about her abilities. Maybe it was the smarter choice, but I was confident that I could get him out of there on my own without revealing her abilities.
I charged forward, lowering my gun as I followed the sound of his voice. I had to shoulder check on of the fluttering things to break into the tornado of wings and eyes. I pressed the barrel of my pistol into its body and fired, yellowish blood of some kind gushed out, splashing my body and leaving my face uncomfortably wet. I wiped it off, shaking my head as I looked around.
The interior of the mall was covered in the things, and after getting into this formation, one of them dived down and slammed it’s body into my back, causing me to stumble forwards before I could swing around and shoot. The shot had enough force to knock me off my feet, so I had to rewind to stumbling instead of the instant before the shot.
I stabilized myself as I finally caught sight of Springer, who was running up a rusted and mossy escalator, trying to get to Eleanor, who was dicing through any of the creatures near her with quick movements, jumping off of the banisters to reach them, disappearing under my view before re-appearing in the air somewhere.
One of the butterflies in the vortex dive bombed towards Springer, this one’s face, if it could constitute that, holding a sharp proboscis on it aimed for him. I took it out of the air, having to stop and plant my feet to get the shot off, giving the rest of the fluttering insects time to close the loop around me once more.
All of my shooting was probably pissing them off, but they were choosing the wrong target. Out of curiosity, and given I was the safest person to be taught this, I let them keep going. I realized what they were doing as the wind started to get sucked into a vortex from their motions, the wind getting batted out against their wings and then bouncing back, getting stronger and stronger. It started to suck the air out of the area, and the battering winds almost forced me up. Before it could get worse, I reversed where I was.
More information was good, but still, getting sent back to the entrance once more was beginning to drive me crazy. I managed to see as the column dissipated once I was outside of it, then started closing it around Springer, who had taken a knee to write something in quick desperate motions in his notebook.
I couldn’t fire straight into it without risking a hit against Springer.
Alright, maybe I was a little too overconfident earlier.
Luckily, a paper spear pierced out of the side, taking a butterfly out with it. We were all doing damage, but there were just too many of them. Even as the ground was slowly starting to get covered with the corpses of the winged things, it didn’t visibly appear any different.
“Springer! A bomb or something man! Big!”
“But-”
“She can teleport, you literally couldn’t hurt her if you were trying.”
I shoulder-checked my way back into his column as well, gettin scratched and scraped by the wings and thin legs of the swirinling sized up insects. His frantic eyes tured to me, and missed as another of the butterflies with a sharp proboscis dove. I shot it down quickly, causing him to jolt, as I ran up to where he was and held my pistol up. “Bomb! Now!”
“My powers don’t work like that! It needs to be a living thing!” I glanced back at the paper spear that was getting enclosed by the butterflies, finally noticing that it was flopping like a fish, the spear part of it a long protrusion on its nose. A swordfish. Wonderful.
“How scavenged is this place?” If there were supplies we had a few options. Flour and a light was all we needed to improvise a fireshow.
“Top to bottom!” Things aren’ always convenient though, are they?
I lifted my pistol up and took a few more shots at the different ones, focusing on any that started their approach. I could feel the vortex starting to pick up, his papers getting blown and torn as the wind started to enclose around us once more. I tried to shoulder my way out, but they were moving too fast this time, all surging around us, and I just got cut up by the wings and sharp protrusions.
My feet caught me before I could fall backward, leaving me back to back to Springer. He tore a page out of his notebook, throwing it into the air. “Butterfly!”
“Yeah!? There's a lot of them!”
“No just give it a minute or two!”
I let out a grunt, firing a few more times into the column, before lowering my gun. While I still could speak, I shouted as loud as I could. “Eleanor!”
She was in the column in a moment, her hand went to my shoulder and I yanked Springer into her grip instead. She didn’t argue, and the two disappeared in an instant.
Back to the entrance I went.
I ran back inside with a frustrated grunt. I lifted my gun to fire aimlessly, figuring it was just going to be a matter of hitting and running.
There was a sound from above us, as something big slammed into one of the covered rooftop areas, the place shaking. We looked up, and the butterfly's activity got a little slower, as if they had all paused to look as well..
Perched up on the roof of the mall, a massive butterfly loomed. It was bigger than a person, and I actually recognized it. It had the charcoal-style rough edges to its frame, a pure black and white creature that had been on paper just a few hours ago, and deep in Springer's home.
It lifted itself off of the roof and slammed down into the mass of butterflies, taking a fair quantity down with it. Springer gave a shaky grin, before starting to draw on his notebook. He tore the paper out and threw it down, shouting as he did so. “Buy me some time!”
I didn’t know what he was doing, but I presumed whatever it was, it was probably smarter than my idea of continuing to shoot into the air. Still, shooting into the air was what I was good at.
The creatures had some degree of intelligence, greater than the animals they resemble if the little vortex attack wasn’t proof enough of that. But they still weren’t quite smart enough to realize that Eleanor and I were somewhat impossible for them to touch. That, and the massive demonic-looking butterfly on our team was very good at disturbing them.
Eleanor and I drew as much aggression from them as we could, the sound of gunshots becoming somewhat endless as I stood still and fired, trying to bait them into another column. Eleanor took more of a backseat, teleporting Springer away anytime the creatures got too close and cried out in fear.
After a few minutes of him scattering his papers around, he shouted once more. “Ready! Get as many of them bundled up as you can!”
“Have your butterfly move to me!”
He nodded as well, and the charcoal black thing made only vaguely out of paper, turned in the air and fell towards me. I shot rapidly around it, taking out nine or ten of the things following it as it dove.
The thing crashed into me, which I hadn’t expected, taking me to the floor with it. The butterflies descended on us, and I reversed myself to the entrance for a fourth time. I’d choose anywhere else, but the entrance was the only place I knew was safe.
I put my head down and sighed as I ran back in.
Springer's charcoal butterfly was getting brutalized, pierced into, and torn apart by the butterflies. “It took me weeks to make that!” He shook his head, before lifting a hand. “Spiders!”
All of the little papers he had spread out over the mall, littered between butterfly corpses, all spring to life, folding and contorting into dog-sized spiders. They all turned up, and shot webs up of papery thoraxes, a wide net which got cast over the largest mass of butterflies, sticking them to the corpse of his charcoal drawing.
He took out the largest chunk of them with that, only leaving stragglers in the 50’s or 40’s.
Cleaning them up after that was pretty easy, like a firing range and clay pigeons. Just, if you missed enough, they’d sink a sharp needle the size of a fist into your chest.
Relaxing.
The three of us were all huffing and sweating when the last one hit the floor, the bottom of the place caked in green blood and butterfly bodies, most of us the same. I saw Eleanor picking pieces of wing out of her hair as I went and shot the trapped creatures one by one.
Then I went and executed the chrysalises the same way. Shot by shot.
My companions were both catching their breath, Eleanor with her hands on the back of her head, pacing to not sit down or crouch. Springer on the other hand was crouched down low, hand against his head, taking deep breaths. I could see the corners of his lips twitching up, before her tamed them down over and over again.
All of us had used our power an intense amount, which meant that Eleanor was probably seeing the consequences, whatever that was for her.
Personally, I started getting that same overload I had when I was briefly the strongest in existence, the flashes of intense unneeded information about the world around me, its beginning and ends, all moving too fast for me to properly interpret beyond as a migraine.
I leaned over the balcony of the upper end of the mall, huffing and puffing out breaths myself as the last chrysalis had a palm-sized hole in it, leaking some kind of watery greenish liquid.
My eyes closed for a moment to gather myself, and when I was done, I moved down to join the two of them. I kneeled down to give Springer a pat on the back, before the reflux from my powers hit in full force. The knot in my mind didn’t even slip this time, I kept that mental control tight, but it didn’t matter, as something else forcefully pried it loose.
The drill was becoming a lot more familiar to me now, something in the past. This time, I was in a church, the stained glass windows just as broken as before, but with no drawings covering them. I saw a large group of different people in the pews, a younger version of the preacher I met earlier speaking as church was fully in session.
I started looking around for him, the contact giving me the impression this one would have to do with Springer. I tried moving around this time, finding that I could, somewhat like a ghost, as I just phased through anyone I tried to touch.
I couldn’t find him, not before the man speaking stopped, and a nun walked up in her habit. She bowed her head to the gathered people and began speaking about funding for the orphanage.
Springer was a little boy she had brought along as an example. I heard her speaking about him like he wasn’t there, her hand on the top of his head as if to comfort him. He was probably only 10 or 12. “Springger’s parents left him behind when they fled inland.” A resentful grumble went through the room. “He doesn’t have anyone here besides the orphanage, he relies entirely on the donations you all so graciously provide us. Though times seem dark, there is still a future, and our children are what makes such a thing.”
He wasn’t focusing on her or the other people, just looking up at the broken window, Jesus’s face shattered in half, one of his eyes missing as he looked lovingly down at him. Perched on one of the broken shards was a caterpillar, inching it’s way around the image of christ. The expression on his face was hard to describe, maybe something like curiosity, or ambition.
The nuns’ speech stopped, and the preacher stood back up. I heard the boy speak quietly to the nun, who looked ready to chastise him. “The windows are so pretty.”
“Hush, listen to the good word.” The nun gently redirected him to the preacher, but the boy’s eyes didn’t stray from the glass windows. A longing in his eyes, a want for some part of what they were.
