Atop the highest building in the city, a man was sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed. As Alex was focused entirely on recovering the Divine Breath he expended in his small bout with the monstrous crows, he didn’t pay attention to the passage of time. After he started his recovery, seconds turned to minutes, and minutes turned to hours.

After a couple of hours passed uneventfully, Alex finally opened his eyes. His usually dark green eyes shone with uncanny brightness in the black of the night. As he stretched his body, he raised his head to look at the night sky.

“Hmm, judging by the location of the moon at this time of the year, it should be about midnight, which means the full recovery of my reserves took about four hours. More or less, I guess.” Alex concluded.

As he sighed, he lowered his head to gaze at the city below him while he pondered on his next plan of action.

“I need to get some kind of bag or sack to carry all the stuff from the beasts. Two beaks might fit in my pocket, but I don’t have enough pockets for all the parts I need to get. Also, from what I’ve seen, most of the central area is thoroughly purged of any Awakened Beasts, which means I’ll have to move towards the outskirts of the city; maybe pass by my apartment. Anyway, getting down from here comes first.” Alex monologued inside his mind.

With that thought, he took out and donned his mask, invested a smidgen of Divine Breath into his arms and legs and jumped from the roof. As his body was beyond the roof fence, he started free falling.

“I need to start practising rationing my power, and not simply running at full strength all the time. No better time to start than now, I guess.” he thought as he was approaching terminal velocity.

As soon as his mind was made up, he sent a single golden-coloured thread of Divine Breath into his brain, as opposed to the waves of power he used earlier in his fight. The instant the thread seeped into his skull, time once again slowed for Alex; not as much as earlier, and definitely not for as long, but enough for his current purposes.

As his senses sharpened by a degree, he turned his body towards the building while he was still mid-air, and used his left hand to smash into the wall of stone. The moment his clawed gauntlet dug into the stone, it immediately slowed down his fall. Having made sure that the current speed at which he was sliding down along the wall was safe, he stopped the current of Divine Breath to his mind. The whole trip down took less than ten seconds, even with Alex using his legs to keep his path straight while his hand took the edge off the fall. Still, gravity unfailingly executed its duty, and soon enough Alex reached the ground-level.

As soon as his feet touched the ground, he finally could appreciate the marvel of what the Unity had done when enhancing his mind. Previously, during the fight, Alex was focused entirely on surviving and vanquishing his opponents, and so had no time to analyze in-depth what it was the Unity did exactly; he just knew it was extremely useful. Now though, he had the chance to observe it at work without any looming danger. After probing with his Will around the Unity, Alex came to a simple but very complicated conclusion. The Unity, true to its name, allowed the user absolute control over their whole body. This meant that aside from the normal range of actions available to Alex, he had control over things previously thought impossible for humans.

Content with his discovery, he dusted off his robes of the rubble he created with his hand while falling and he turned his head towards one of the streets branching off from the building he just came down from.

“There should be a general store about half a block away from here. They should have some bags there.” Alex thought to himself and started walking.

Alex could have easily started a light jog towards his destination, but he opted for a walk along the empty city streets, which allowed him to spend some time ruminating on what happened, what was happening, and what was about to happen.

“Elder Bellum mentioned that sooner or later, we’re going to come head to head with the other factions; which means sooner or later I will be forced to kill. How does one prepare for killing people? Not mindless, rabid beasts, but living, thinking individuals?” Alex asked himself.

After some time was spent on this issue and no clear answer presented itself to Alex, he decided to leave it for later. Looking ahead, he could feel the summer-night wind caressing his face as he made his way through the street. A short while later, he arrived at the general store he remembered. It was a little eery seeing the store plunged in darkness, without a horde of people rushing in and out with their wares.

As he approached the automatic doors of the store, he momentarily forgot the whole world was devoid of electricity as he stood still, waiting for the motion sensors to react to his movement and open the doors.

“So stupid, haha.” Alex thought in a joking self-deprecating manner.

As he shook his head with a goofy smile on his face, he extended his hands towards the small crack where the two doors met, and after wiggling his fingers inside the small cavity, started to pull the doors apart. As the glass doors started parting, Alex could hear the inner mechanisms of the automatic door cracking and breaking under the strain of his muscles.

A second later, the two doors were wide open, and Alex stepped inside the store. The moment he stepped inside, darkness greeted him; while the outdoors were illuminated by the grace of a starlit sky and a full moon, the inside of the store, which had no such thing, was unilluminated.

Stopping briefly, Alex recalled his previous discovery regarding the application of his Unity; the adept could, in theory, achieve a greater amount of control over their own being. As this thought crossed his mind, he immediately focused on his Unity and sent the basic intent of his idea in the form of a command.

“Dilate.” Alex intoned.

As the command, filled with Alex’s Will, seeped into the Unity, Alex immediately could suddenly see better. The idea Alex came up with was simple. After his fight with the crows, he noticed that his Unity allowed him a degree of control over the involuntary processes of his body. Ever since the Unity first overclocked his mental faculty, Alex could feel and even influence things like his heartbeat, regulate his own temperature, and influence his metabolism. Right now, Alex simply willed his pupils to dilate as much as possible, allowing even the tiniest speck of light present in the store to provide vision for him.

With his newfound night-vision, he looked at the big banner hanging right above the entrance which provided directions to the different departments of the store. Quickly spotting the way leading to the aisle with construction materials, he started moving towards it.

The general store might have been big, but still, nowhere as big as the Legion’s Keep, which is why the simple layout of the twists and turns didn’t pose a real problem for Alex as he slowly made his way into the inner part of the store. As he finally reached the part of the store he needed, he started paying more attention to the shelves.

“Hammers, axes, drills, nails, steel wires, screws, crowbars… Ah! There it is!” Alex focused his attention on the shelf at the end of the aisle stuffed full of industrial duffle bags.

As he slowly approached the shelf, he could spot something to the right of it, hidden in the blindspot of anyone walking towards the shelf from the front. The only thing giving away someone’s presence was the already familiar nebulous cloud of negative emotions that Nova seemed to prey upon.

“This is insane. It’s the first time I see a cloud this big, dense, and full of different colours. Yellow, red, black, blue, and green; and different shades of the same colour too.” Alex thought.

As soon as Alex saw the nebulous substance, Nova opened her eyes in a snap and crawled from under his collar unto his shoulder while rattling with her illusory scales and hissing in an excited tone.

Looking at Nova, Alex seemed to be puzzled. During his fight with the crows, the beasts were covered in a cloud of yellow, and Nova didn’t even flinch in her sweet sleep, indicating that she wasn’t even remotely interested.

“Weird, then why did you devour the yellow cloud around Alana, but not the crows? Were you that starved?” Alex sent the question through their bond in a worried tone.

Feeling his inquisitive stare, Nova turned her horned head and looked straight into Alex’s eyes as she swayed her head as if to say no, after which she immediately sent a jumbled mess of meaning and intent consisting of images of the crows and Alana.

As Nova’s thoughts poured into Alex, he seemed to make some kind of connection about what Nova was trying to tell him. It seemed as if there was a fundamental difference in the quality of negative emotions that could be felt between a barely sentient beast and a fully sapient individual. The emotions felt by people were more intricate, more nutritious, as Nova put it.

“Then, that means that the source of this cloud is a person for sure, judging from Nova’s reaction; and they must be in a pretty bad shape too,” Alex concluded as he made a step forward.

As he reached the corner turn of the aisle, he braced himself for whatever, or rather, whoever awaited on the other side and spoke.

“We know you’re there. Come out.” Alex spoke in a calm tone while Nova hissed in agreement with him.

Jane tucked herself in a small corner of the general store as she used a small piece of her blouse to stop the bleeding on her arm. As she tied a simple knot around the cut on her arm, a small drop of blood slid across her forehead and blocked her vision for a second. As she raised her arm to wipe the drop of blood out of her brow, unpleasant memories flooded her mind.

Memories of the obelisk, of how she was left all alone, of how she sought out shelter, and how she met the two degenerates who promised to escort her to safety.

The memory of the two brought about an episode of shivering and panic as she tried to focus on breathing in and out, trying to calm down while still being in shock. When she remembered their lecherous faces and the way they kept looking at her, as well as the cold steel of their sabres on her flesh when she tried to escape, tears started streaming across the small scar on her face. After taking a few moments to calm herself, she double-checked that her items were near her in case of an emergency.

As she probed on the cold stone floor of the store, she felt the familiar grip of her bowie knife, the same one she used to slash across one of the degenerate’s face, and the handle of a crowbar she took from one of the racks of the nearby aisle. The warm leather grip of the knife and the cold steel of the crowbar provided something for Jane to anchor herself to, in hopes of avoiding another panic attack. She knew the type of people the two who did this to her were; morally bankrupt people that were power-tripping by abusing those weaker than themselves, enjoying the suffering of those who couldn’t fight back; which is exactly why she knew for certain they wouldn’t let her go after she barely escaped, no, they would track her down and put her in her place, as one of them expressed himself.

As she was steeling herself for what was to come, a noise suddenly dispelled the curtain of silence the store was in. Loud cracking sounds could be heard from the entrance as something made of steel and plastic could be heard snapping and shattering. As the sounds ceased, Jane became acutely aware of just how dark the store was, and how vulnerable she felt.

“It’s them, they’ve found me!” Jane's thoughts raced in a whirlwind of fear, panic, and adrenaline.

She immediately tucked the bowie knife under her blouse, where it could potentially be used for a sneak attack, and grabbed the crowbar with her two slender hands afterwards. Time seemed to stop as the only thing that Jane's could hear was the sound of her own ragged breathing, until something else could be heard. A pair of footsteps.

The footsteps could be heard louder and louder until they stopped. As the footsteps stopped, Jane felt panic creep up once again into her. She gripped the crowbar as hard as her tired muscles allowed, and waited. After a split second the footsteps resumed, approaching her, but slower than before. Once the footsteps reached the corner and were one turn away from coming face to face with Jane, they stopped once again. As Jane could feel her heart trying to escape from her ribcage, the voice spoke.

“We know you’re there. Come out.” the voice coldly ordered.

As she heard the cold voice address her, she knew the gig was up; she was found. A wave of fear washed over her for a moment, before something else reared its head from the deepest parts of her soul. Remembering what the duo was about to do to her, all the fear she currently felt was seemingly washed away. Washed away by a wave of anger and hatred and madness so pure and unadulterated, it almost could be called primordial. As the hatred flooded her heart, only one thought remained in her mind.

“I’d rather die!!!” she screamed within the confines of her own mind with finality.

The moment Jane steeled herself towards her seemingly imminent demise, she rushed from her hiding place and charged her assailant with a primal scream.

“AAARGH!!!” she screamed from the bottom of her soul.

The moment Alex’s words left his mouth, a figure charged at him from behind the corner with a primal scream and a crowbar. The instant he noticed the figure, he willed the Unity to enhance both his body and mind.

As time seemed to once again slow down for Alex, he took in the situation before him. The figure charging him, a woman seemingly in her twenties, somewhere around 170 centimetres in height; wore black jeans with a ripped light blue blouse. She had a scar running across her nose, hazel-brown eyes with dark, raven-coloured straight hair, though now the hair was caked with dried blood.

“A head wound, a scar on her face, and a cut on her arm.” Alex quickly assessed the condition of his would-be attacker as she ran at him screaming.

“AAARGH!!!” the woman before him screamed.

As she quickly closed the distance between herself and Alex, Jane lifted the crowbar overhead, and using all her strength, she swung at Alex’s masked head. Unfortunately for her, both she and the crowbar seemed to move infinitesimally slow for Alex.

As the crowbar was descending unto Alex’s head, he simply raised his gauntlet-clad left hand and grabbed the incoming iron rod. The instant the crowbar stopped in Alex’s hand, Jane pulled on it in hopes of snatching it back when Alex struck back. He extended his free hand, grabbed Jane by her neck, and lifted her up to eye-level, causing her to drop the crowbar.

As her feet left the ground, Jane started flailing in a panic-fueled rage as she used her hands to try and free herself from Alex’s grip. After a couple of seconds of trying, she understood that Alex’s hand was holding her neck in a vice grip. Understanding that this was it for her, Jane went for her last Hail Mary. She quickly let go of Alex’s hand around her neck and reached for the bowie knife hidden under her blouse.

As she took it out, she started a stabbing motion while screaming with what little breath she had at Alex.

“Die! I’ll kill you even if I die trying. I swear to god, I’ll gut you like the pigs you are!” she screamed in desperation at Alex.

Hearing her scream, Alex froze as a memory surfaced in his mind.

“I swear to god; touch my son one more time, and I’ll gut you like a pig in your sleep,” Alex remembered his mother’s words, and how eerily similar they were to the words he heard just know.

Seeing the woman’s figure dangling from his arm, broken, but defiant even in the face of death, reminded him of his mother so much.

As he looked at Jane once more, he could see the amalgamation of colours around her; fear, anger, disgust, sadness, despair. Seeing this, Alex started to assemble the limited amount of puzzle pieces he had before him.

“Someone must have done this to her. Something.” Alex thought, refusing to acknowledge anyone who could do something like this as another fellow human.

While Alex was stuck in this fugue state, brought about by old memories, the bowie knife in Jane’s hand finally reached Alex’s abdomen. As it pierced the cloth of Alex’s robe, the knife stopped dead in its tracks when it met the incredibly hard exterior of his skin and muscles.

Seeing this, the last embers of hope inside Jane dwindled out, and she became a bumbling, screaming mess. Seeing her like this, Alex felt something he didn’t feel for a long time as he shed silent tears behind his mask looking at this woman.

“Nova, do your thing,” Alex asked Nova.

Nova slid along the full length of his arm as she reached the dangling Jane’s neck, and with a vicious movement, pierced it. The moment Nova’s fangs came into contact with Jane’s flesh, a dazed look covered Jane’s face as if she were in a drug-induced haze, while the multicoloured cloud of negative emotions was being sucked dry by Nova. After a few short moments, Nova was done; nothing of the blighted colours remained around Jane except a shallow grey. As Alex was about to let go of her, he noticed that Jane fell asleep.

“Must be because she’s mortal, so Nova’s draining affected her harder than it did Alana,” Alex concluded as he carefully picked her up in both his arms.

Making sure she was in deep sleep, Alex picked a random duffel bag and put Jane’s bowie knife and crowbar in it before strapping it to his shoulder. After he was done, he turned around and headed out of the store with the still sleeping Jane in his arms.