Page 6 of Fated in A Time of War
It’s always a shock, no matter how many times I’ve gone up top. The sheer scale of the devastation. Tanuki used to be a trade hub, a beacon. Now it’s just bone and ash. Jagged skeletons of towers claw at the sky. Fires smolder where there shouldn’t be anything left to burn. Whole city blocks are smeared flat from artillery barrages that don’t care what—or who—they’re killing.
I move low, crouched, silent. The alleyways between what used to be massage parlors and neon-lit gambling dens are now jagged trenches of warped steel and melted signs. My boots crunch glass, and I wince, stopping to listen. Nothing. Just the war breathing through the city. That low, constant hum of death in the distance.
The shadows here don’t feel like absence.
They feel likewaiting.
I keep moving.
Every instinct tells me to turn back, to go underground where it’s safer—where it’shuman.But I shove those thoughts aside. Fear isn’t new. Doubt isn’t new. ButDarri’s dying. Thatisnew. And I won’t let it happen.
I pass a scorched transport skimmer, its side panel blown out, blackened flesh and melted alloy fused into one twisted sculpture. My throat tightens, and I murmur a prayer, half-formed, half-remembered. “Let the flame pass over you, and through you, and leave you whole.”
My Ataxian pendant clinks softly against the breather. I tuck it inside my robes before it catches the light.
It doesn’t mean what it used to, not up here.
Not anymore.
I used to believe the Coalition were the saviors. The righteous. They rescued me from the Reapers, gave me a home, purpose, discipline. They taught me peace through reverence. Through service. But out here, in the fire-blasted hellscape that Horus IV’s become, those teachings feel brittle. Shattered.
The Alliance soldiers I’ve seen are no better. Half-drunk, eyes hollow. Some shoot first. Some don’t ask questions after. There’s no heroes here. No cause. Just survivors.
And monsters.
I edge past a pile of slagged vending bots, their metal innards spilled like guts across the street. Something drips from a pipe above—thick, black, and acidic-smelling. The scent makes my eyes water even through the filter. My knees ache from crouching, but I keep low, sliding under a collapsed skywalk to cut across the intersection.
I reach the husk of the Pharmatek building.
The roof’s collapsed in on the eastern side, but the front doors are still intact. Blasted open, hinges bent, but passable. I press my back to the wall beside them, check the corners, then slip inside.
The air changes. Hotter. Still. The kind of stillness that feels like a trap.
The floor crunches under my boots—pill bottles and broken glass. I recognize the layout from the directory—storage units should be past the reception desk, down a short hall. The place smells like scorched rubber and rotten preservatives. My nose itches. The medscanner on my wrist beeps once—background levels of rad-spike, nothing critical. Not yet.
I move forward, slow. Controlled.
Behind me, something creaks.
My heart freezes. Muscles lock.
But it’s just a broken light fixture swaying in the heat. I exhale, shaky.
I’m close.
Closer than anyone’s been in weeks.
And maybe, I’ll get what we need before the war notices I’m even here.
I movelike a rumor through the hallway.
Every step is measured, slow—boots rolling heel-to-toe on cracked tile, fingers brushing the wall to steady myself. The silence isn’t comforting. It’s loaded. Thick with pressure, like the world is holding its breath.
The hallway opens into what used to be a distribution room, half-buried in debris. Empty shelves line the walls, their contents looted or melted to slag. I weave around a rusted-out medbot slumped against the floor, its casing split wide open like a cracked egg.
I’m not even to the refrigeration vault yet when I feel it.
The vibration is deep, like thunder crawling up through the soles of my feet. My breath catches. I duck low, fast, dropping to a crouch behind the collapsed frame of a ceiling vent. My heart’salready pounding, chest tight. The pendant around my neck shifts and taps my collarbone. Cold. Heavy.
