Callisto

Path of Light (pt. 2)

"Twenty-Five!" Rain-Born yelled as her feet sank into the broken ground and brushed past ashen bones melded with disintegrated pieces of flesh.

Jespar panted beside her, no stranger to bouts of sprinting after his sewer maze adventure but keeping his eye trained on the end of the street where the tell-tale sign of twitching static had begun to play across the air.

"Fifteen!" he barked.

Rain-Born's eyes darted between the broken metal mesh of the blown-out buildings and the rotted car frames that composed the first quarter of the road, hoping to find some form of opening before the inevitable happened.

She felt the ground beneath her give way – here it was like onyx-coated quicksand, totally liquefied by the living, pulsing being of pure light that had blazed down its surface for who knows how many years.

"Ten!" She heard Jespar yell, and at the terror in his voice, she focused her attention on the deep night black between two buildings – a crevice that looked like it could barely fit two average-sized humans.

"Five!"

It was better than nothing.

As she suddenly veered and guided Jespar toward the spot to their left, the entire world exploded in a blinding pearl haze, and she felt the anger of something more than human. She felt the burning rage of unrepentant power itself. The orb raged towards them, throwing vehicle husks and whole patches of the road aside.

She dove into the crevice after Jespar, and her shoulder hit him hard in the face. But she registered only shock, no pain, and they felt it before she could utter an apology.

The heat. The burning. The intense, searing, blood-bubbling sensation of a spear of lightning being hurled at them and just coming up short – striking instead the ground where Jespar's paw prints were still visible before he jumped from the sinking earth into safety. She felt him cling to her as the light of the arcing ethereal predator bounced and ricocheted off the sides of the adjacent walls, and for a moment, she thought it had them – trapped. Cornered by a force field of sparking sapphire, writhing blue wires penning them into this hole where they would either die of starvation or willingly walk into the light that heralded their end. But then, as though it were merely a change of the weather, the moment passed, and the orb continued its run.

She could feel his heartbeat against her back. Sweat ran down her nose and dripped onto the panting earth below.

"It is okay, Jespar," she said with a gulp. Even she knew her voice didn't exactly instill confidence.

"Chief," he whispered. "One wrong move, and we're done."

"I know."

She was trying to poke her head around the corner, trying to visualize their next move – the next safe zone just short of the orb's perimeter. This had been too close. The standing, shaking hairs on her arms had practically been singed.

No matter the will of the warrior, the body always betrayed its fear.

"Ready?" She asked him, feeling the orb retreat down the road.

"Never," he said.

It passed them by again without much fanfare, raking its burning claws across the buildings as it went, and for an instant, Rain-Born thought she caught a glimpse of her image reflected in the blazing light of the twisting ball of energy. Not much. Just her eyes.

There was fear in there. She was shaking. And even Jespar could feel it.

"Chief!" he barked.

She listened. She leaped from the aperture and felt her feet burn this time – the road was now warm and smoking. The being, though limited by its invisible procedure, had its own tools. It further melted the path and radiated all the heat it could to make each step on the run more agonizing than before. She grimaced now with each bounding footfall. Behind her, Jespar growled with the same pain.