With looks of contempt on their faces, Matthew and Theodore hesitated to drink the potion.
"This isn't some concoction of a quack, is it?" Matthew gulped as he glanced at the pint bottle.
"No, it's not, it's something from the mystic… will you boys take the potions and get on with it! There's no time to waste. Do you think I'll do anything to harm you?" Lilly urged in frustration. She could understand that they didn't trust her completely, nonetheless, it didn't mean that she liked how it felt.
"Fine," Matthew whispered as he pinched his nose, tilting the pint bottle over his lips and gulping down its contents.
Seeing this, Theodore followed suit, also pinching his nose.
"Haa!" Matthew exclaimed, surprised that the potion didn't have a taste per se.
The two of them felt their stomachs growl for a second, and then they felt their bodies getting lighter. Their senses got sharper, to the point where the darkness of the night wasn't much of a problem anymore.
Before Matthew and Theodore could process this properly, Lilly interjected.
"Now follow me," Lilly charged, running faster than she did previously. Her quick movement stunned Matthew and Theodore for a second before they too started running.
-Whoosh!
Like the breeze, the two of them moved faster than they ever thought that they could.
'Even a seasoned horse wouldn't be much faster than this, right?' Theodore thought to himself.
Matthew on the other hand was getting a bit excited due to this new development. He even thought about asking Lilly for more. The potion made him feel stronger than ever, and to him, it was the right drug for his fears at the moment.
Requiem in West Brook…
The acid bite of cordite smoke hung heavily in the air, clinging to the rust-blemished balconies and grimy windows of Lilly's building, the resistance-safe house in Araya.
The once vibrant apartment, now war-torn shells mirrored the broken spirits of the remaining resistance huddled within.
They had held off the pantheon for almost half an hour, enough time for Lilly and the boys to safely sneak away, using the tunnels. They had weapons and as effective as they were against the human goons the gifted were a bit harder to take down.
Fatigue gnawed at their resolve, leaving on the cold ember of desperation.
Leading the fray was Anya, her crimson cloak a stark contrast against the soot-slicked walls. Her once vibrant emerald blazed fury, each bullet fired from her engraved repeater pistol etching lines of vengeance on her smoke-smudged face.
Beside her, the hulking form of Nikolai, wielding a modified Gatling gun that spat fire and fury, mowed down advancing pantheon enforcers in a relentless ballet of lead.
"How much longer?" He screamed asking Anya, his brass voice cutting through the chaos of a hundred bullet shells falling to the ground.
"10 minutes more!" She answered as she stared at a metallic contraption in her hand. It looked like an old stopwatch; it had one job… to receive a signal the moment Lilly and the boys got to the train station.
Then they could stop fighting. The pantheon had to believe that they were fighting this hard to protect something important. If they felt that the important thing was gone, they would resort to using deadlier force.
Even though this was a bloodbath.
Anya held on to the watch as she stood back-to-back with Nikolai shooting at their imposing enemy.
The pantheon enforcers, clad in iron masks, long black trench coats, and clock gears that whirred with every movement, were an inexorable tide; they were the blade that the cults wielded, each church having different variants of the same militia.
The gifted used the human enforcers as meat shields, absorbing the bullets and then viciously attacking the resistance while they were caught in a reload loop.
The pantheon enforcers alchemically-forged blades hissed against steel, their eyes glowing as magic and potions enhanced their gifts and physical abilities, arcane jolts of energy crackling through the night air, weaving deadly tapestries of light and shadow.
The clang of metal and screams of the fallen echoed in the narrow hallways of the building, each death a chilling counterpoint to the dying embers of hope.
Amidst the chaos, whispers of dissent flickered amongst the remaining resistance fighters. Fear, a serpent with a thousand tongues, began to coil around their hearts.
Doubts about Anya's leadership and whispers of retreat and surrender slithered through the ranks like poisoned smoke.
Anya knew this and wished for Lilly desperately, no she prayed for her. Despair was a weapon the pantheon wielded as aptly as any blade.
She looked at Nikolai, a tear forming in her eyes as she watched the man she loved escape death time and time again.
They were outnumbered…
The odds of survival were minimal…
Suddenly a deafening continuous hissing sound cut through the air. The pantheon enforcers suddenly stop moving eerily then walking again backing into a certain formation, making way for something.
A grotesque amalgam of flesh and metallic glowing objects, hulking and deformed, a true pantheon monstrosity, lumbered into the lobby of the apartment where the final of the resistance defense stood strong.
Its iron claws tore through their barricades with contentious ease. Panic surged through the resistance, dashing any hope of survival from their hearts.
Nikolai's Gatling gun coughed and sputtered, its bullets bouncing harmlessly off the behemoth's hide.
In that moment of despair, Anya stepped forward, launching herself in the air using Nikolai's back as a base.
Swoosh!
She went in the air with a gesture of defiance, she raised her pistol, aiming at the creature's chest where a glowing red orb was nestled. She knew it was a futile gesture.
A lone ember against the encroaching darkness, but hope, even the faintest flicker, was better than surrender.
A searing bolt of arcane energy erupted from the creature's chest, engulfing Anya in a blinding flash. Her cry, a defiant note against the symphony of a battle lost, was swallowed whole by the explosion.
For a terrifying moment, the world froze, draped in a shroud of white-hot silence.
Nikolai was the first to scream as he fell to his knees.
The lobby erupted in a cacophony of screams, smoke, and debris rained down obscuring the battlefield. When the echoes faded a chilling tableau emerged. Anya was gone.
Vaporized by the creature's magic.
The creature, half-crippled by the blast, shrieked in pain and fury, its iron claws lashing out randomly as members of the pantheon rabidly rushed to it, picking at it for parts, like animals at a feast.
The resistance, their leader and spirit gone, faltered as desperation morphed into despair. One by one they were cut down, their guns falling silent against the wave of bloodthirsty gifted ones.
Nikolai, grief fueling his rage, went down fighting with his Gatling gun spewing bullets until its gears choked on his blood.
The pantheon pressed on; their masks impassive to the cries of the wounded. They rounded up the remaining resistance members herding them like cattle into the darkness.
Blood and smoke lingered in the air… the survivors holding on to what they had fought and were ready to die for… an undefined tapestry of freedom and a flicker of hope.
Unknown to them the watch dinged under all the rubble, signaling that Anya had succeeded.
Lilly and the boys had gotten to the train station. It was a small victory for the resistance but a huge loss to the relatives of the deceased.
Lilly's apartment, Westbrook, once a symbol of resilience in Araya, now lay silent, a tomb for the curious and a testament to the pantheon's ironclad might and the church's resolve.