RETREAT OF THE FURIES:

My Cup, Overflows:

As the ravenous Occultists swarmed towards our pititful holding, I triggered the detonators, sending a hail of sickly, dismembered limbs in all directions. The explosions glared in frenetic blue and yellow, against the descending grey of night. Their screams of tormented anguish lingered onward, their bodies burned and flailing, as others stampeded over them, with voracious intent.

It seemed obvious to my companions that our current poke-hold amidst the blackened ruins was quickly becoming grossly inadequate, and they shouted something incoherent, amidst the blaze of our tachyon semi-automatic rifles. I was loathe to depart, yet necessity was loudly beckoning, as I raised my scope to gather Overlords and Automotons emerging also from the sordid depths ahead.

As we broke cover for the sewers, I clamped down a ragged trail of detonators covering our disorderly retreat. Arrayed against us the Overlords took wing, the seething fires of their rancorous swords reflected in their eyes, whilst the Automotons advanced, beginning a devastating missile barrage. Horrific plumes of purple smoke rose on high, as the ruins collapsed around us.

With reckless abandon did the Occultists continue to advance, trampling their fallen beneath a tide of cruel and heedless feet. The Overlords descended upon the ruins, slashing furiously through their lesser cohorts, intent upon themselves devouring the tender morsels of our wasted flesh. From deep among the shattered ruins, we gasped for breath; what few of us remained, not scattered, injured, deceased or leaderless.

As the torrential din of the malicious hordes above us drew ever near, I ordered all to tilt their visors and light their torches; we burned downwards through the hardened steel and concrete, expecting to eventually intersect with the farthur buried tunnels of the ruins which lay beneath. As we broke through, and the route of our escape seemed somewhat temporarily more certain, we abandoned both the wounded and the torches; yet before tossing my lumbering form downwards into the uncharted abyss beyond, I paused to activate the detonators with my last remote, which tore a twisted, malignant opening in the foul and frenzied mass of writhing minions lodged above us.

CREATURES OF THE NIGHT:

Who Art, In Heaven:

A silver figure emerged from the oppressive confines of the sweltering night, while the measured calm of the acid shower falling from the clouds slowly scarred the dank, harsh and yellowed hulking wreck of her surroundings. The complex was vast and desolate, populated by unthinking horrors, lurking savagely amidst the tarnished ruins; yet these were not her quarry, as she settled silently beneath a distaff and discarded member of a heavily armed patrol.

He paused to gaze over the gallant outlook, waving once, as he turned his back upon his comrads. The poisoned rain ever spilling downward, through the puddles at his feet; he scanned the dark horizon, stopping only once to check the proofing on his firearm, after clearing a troublesome blockage in his breathing apparatus. Returning once to the drab comforts of the gaunt horizon before proceeding any farther along the vile, infested exterior, before he was suddenly alerted by the scraping sound of movement along the wall below. Readying his weapon, peering desperately into the night through the mounted infrared sensor, he turned to flag his fellows for assistance which would never come.

They lay shattered, broken and dismembered, surrounding the tattered remains of the patrol vehicle, bent and acid-etched. At his approach he was surprised by the horror frozen in the faces of their fallen forms: limbs wrent, mouths gaping, acid seeping through disloged equipment, disfiguring what flesh would lay beneath. Aghast, he reached to report the grisly scene and at once desired aid, yet his transponder would fail to function as the silky creatures of the night descended, resplendent in their voracious fury, rivaled only in their prowess by she who now looked onward, from the slowly coalescing shadows.

TRIALS OF THE INNOCENTS:

Thy Will, Be Done:

In recalling our first meetings, brief, furious and deadly, we knew eachother only in passing, as shadows, purchased and manufactured. She as a rogue counter-espionage agent; he as a failed corporate entity, a commodity which would not be contained. Her knowledge of the craft, combined with her reputation for both proficiency and discrection unsurpassed, made her valuable; conversely, his value was quickly fading, as he dwindled upon the brink of obscurity, a discontinued prototype, malcontent and obsolete.

Within his pain and rage, those who had brought him forth, had unknowingly forged an inexplicable union of both sacred and profane. He was to be the first, the foremost of his bloodline, a new breed of holy warrior, scorched by the breath of the infernal, empowerd by the words of the divine. None would live to know the horrific magnitude of that ambitious error, for those who sought vainly to discover it, were only among the first of his tormented victims.

FLESH OF OUR FATHERS:

Forgive Us, Our Sins:

All records of our youth which yet remain, both distorted and uncertain in their own accounts, seem at once to confirm that the first of the killings and abductions were silent and painless; throats slashed open in the night, writhing bloodied fingers clutching, lungs quickly punctured, helplessly emptied of breath, before even the wind itself had heard a sound. Many children were taken in those early years, myself included; blinded and butchered by genetic tampering, altered and augmented, trained to walk unseen within the bitter unrelenting darkness, breeding slaughter, terror and dissent, for abyssal purposes which we ourselves failed to comprehend, at the maniacle behest of our wretched, cybernetic masters.

While none dared spin tales of our self-aggrandizing anti-heroism, some would find what few wild and bitter fragments of our voyage which remained. We brought ourselves together out of infamy; the dregs of society we were; a scourge upon mankind, armed and dangerous, thought better exterminated, slain in the streets, as a tribute to public safety and hegemonic dominion. The suffering and malice of our lives became both our blessing, and our curse; for we gained through it such harsh talents, which enabed our meagre survival, within the pestilent and shambled ruins of our tortured world.