BOOM!

The roar of a wicked explosion shook Arik awake as dust from the shelter's ceiling rained to the ground. His scared yet groggy eyes searched the room for Cyanide, finding him knelt down in the far corner with a gun in his hand. His figure was slightly out of focus against the infant glow of the dawn sunlight outside.

"Cyanide, what's—"

"Shhh," Cyanide abruptly cut in.

A sudden draft began to dance past Arik's face from Cyanide's direction and a voice began to whisper into his ears softer than anyone could overhear. As he listened to the words, he noticed Cyanide's lips moving in unison.

"Listen carefully and do as I say. We've been discovered and tracked by the Deft Eye Syndicate. Their objective is to take us in and weaponize us for their battle against the deathless. That's not going to happen."

He peaked out of a broken window into a tree line a couple dozen feet away before sinking back to shelter and silently rummaging through his duffel bag.

"Now, I don't know how many of them there are. But I can sense at least one deathless among them. Considering how fast they found us, I'm willing to bet it's Gnolls."

"Who's that?"

A second explosion shook the ground they sat upon, followed by the distant screams of a man in pain.

Cyanide tossed Arik a black pistol with an extended magazine jutting out of the bottom and a stealthy laser fitted underneath the barrel. While most of the day prior was filled with rigorous training of the mind and body, they did have a brief intermission with gun firing practice at play. Arik was even worse at that. This was one of the guns Arik had trained with: the Glock 17.

"They haven't pinpointed our exact location in these ruins yet. The idiots keep stepping on the mines I hid around the perimeter last night." He pulled the charging handle of his rifle back, chambering a round with confidence. "I think we are going to have to get loud and shoot our way out."

Arik's voice raised under his breath. "What?! Are you kidding me? I barely know how to hold this thing. Why don't we just run?"

"Because they also have guns, Arik," he replied facetiously. "They will either shoot you out of the sky or follow you till you land. Besides, I taught you how to use that gun yesterday, or weren't you listening?"

Reluctant defeat pulled Arik's bruised face down. This was anything but what he wanted to do at the moment.

"If you see a single soul through that opening there—" he pointed to the collapsed corner of the building, "put a few rounds in them. Stay here with Rupert. I need to scope it out a bit."

Arik, shaking with fright, tried his hand at steeling his nerve and took the handgun off of safety, nodding in comprehension. Cyanide moved into position beside the window and suspired in a brace for his next action. It was only then that Arik noticed that Cyanide's arms were a reflective chrome color. Golem Arms has been activated, probably before Arik had even woken up.

"I'm going to draw their attention away from here. Then I'll be back and we'll make a run for it. Got it?"

Arik nodded again, but his eyes grew further in fear of being alone.

"Wait! Why don't you just make that floor room thing for us to hide in like when we first met?"

"Because with that deathless tagging with them, there is no hiding. They'll find us sooner or later. So we can only fight or run. No more questions. I have to go."

In a rather covert display of a new echo, Cyanide disappeared into the ground as if sinking into water before Arik could even tell what was happening. One second the man was there, the next Arik was all alone with a questionably sentient bear creature.

Arik broke line of sight with the hole in the building wall by hiding behind the ursine husk. Sweating and heavy breathing began to make themselves apparent as a panic attack stampeded its way into Arik's heart.

The staccato rhythm of gunfire began to echo through the air as soldiers responded with shouted commands from every angle of the ruins. They all sounded so close, capable of charging into the room to take Arik's life at any given moment. The smokey smell of the gunpowder from the mines finally reached the building, painting a lucid picture of a hectic Call of Duty map. In fact, a video game like that was the closest Arik had ever been to anything like a firefight.

He could still hear the screams and barked orders of the soldiers as bullets flew across the dilapidated village. Every once in a while a bullet or two would strike the side of the building Arik was squatting in, each one inching Arik closer to religion. He fought for that brief moment of courage and finally prevailed, stopping his knees from shaking and standing up straight.

He slapped his cheek a couple times and gritted his teeth.

"C'mon Arik, toughen up. You've been through worse. Come on!"

With those final words, a golden breastplate of tangible energy manifested on his torso. He had activated his Desired Armor on his head, an arm, and as a shield a few times the day prior, but never a chest piece. The excitement was enough motivation to finally tear him from his position behind Rupert.

Arik pivoted into view of the room with dogma masking his face. But just as he saw the opening in the wall of the building, a man stepped through clad in black tactical armor and wielding an AR.

"Eep!" shrieked Arik as he fell back behind Rupert in unbridled fear, a stray bullet flying from the muzzle of his handgun into the ceiling above.

A deafening cacophony of bullets erupted from the man toward Arik's direction, the stone wall closest to Arik chipping and cracking with each impacting projectile. Suddenly, a growling bass hummed from Rupert and he charged forward with vigorous speed, leaving Arik without his comforting cover.

The man continued to fire bullets into the encroaching bear, but they did little more than ripple Rupert's body like rain against a lake. Rupert's clawed hand reeled back and swung at the man, flinging him into the wall to his left and tearing his helmet off and into the air. The soldier now on the ground and bleeding from his hairline, reached toward his stranded gun. The heavy sacklike foot of Rupert stomped on his gun before effortlessly picking him up by the shoulder.

The cantankerous overgrown smile of the bear husk opened up for the first time ever, saliva stringing down from its shark-like jaws. As big as it had always seemed in the past, it now looked even more ridiculously sized. And the size of its teeth weren't just for show. The man screamed for his life and pushed at the mouth of the beast while inevitably being pushed closer. Then, the jaws snapped shut and the man's limbs fell to his side, lifeless.

Nausea began to tickle Arik's throat as the man's body dropped to the floor. Rupert looked at Arik, his nightmarish grin now coated in blood.

Arik stood up and stared at the new mess in the room. He had never seen another person die, and most of those that have experienced death haven't seen someone die as gruesome as what had just transpired. The fact that Arik actually wasn't heaving his stomach out was proof enough to him of how far he has come. Or rather how much messed up shit had been going on in his life lately.

"T—Thank you," Arik managed to choke out.

The bear idly stared for a few seconds before walking over to Arik and turning to the opening of the room like originally situated.

"Thanks, but I think I might be okay now," Arik replied to the protective action.

He side-stepped out from the bear and held his pistol out, waiting for the next soldier that had to have heard the commotion from earlier. Oddly enough, the firefight raging on outside had dulled in volume. The soldiers were shooting from further away.

'Cyanide's plan must be working out,' thought Arik. 'He should be back any second now so we can make a run for it.'

An enormous amount of stress and adrenaline was coursing through Arik's blood at the moment that made it nigh impossible to discern time. Instead of thinking about the inching time, he decided to count his breath and try to hone his anxiety. The longer he did that, the more steady the iron site of his gun became.

The sound of steady footsteps through grass and dirt suddenly began to draw near. Arik's heartbeat began to feel as though it had tripled and his skin became frigid as goosebumps textured his skin.

"C'mon, you bastard," he whispered abrasively, gauging the height of a man in hopes for a clean headshot.

The crunch of walking outside subsided, not as if they had walked away, but as if they had stopped. It was as if they were just standing on the other side of the wall. The suspense began to turn Arik's stomach. Rupert hadn't seemed to move even a small bit throughout all of this, which wasn't reassuring.

After a few more moments, Arik was blessed with impatient inspiration. He decided he was going to inch forward and check the sound out for himself. An attack of opportunity was for sure advantageous in a situation such as this.

He took one very cautious step forward before hearing soil fall to the floor beside him from the ceiling and a shrill grinding above, like a knife to stone. He looked up and saw nothing but the umbral corner of the building, hidden from the incoming sunshine. The scrapping abruptly stopped and was replaced with a malevolent fry voice, like some kind of feral animal growling at Arik's speculative glare.

Then the dark corner lunged at him.