Is this my life? Constant chaos?
A thundering tremor struck through the dead woods, and he could feel the noise echo in his head; the men attacking Hellena lost balance and fell over like dominos. Hellana stood her ground like a tree with deep roots, and a heavy dust cloud swept over her.
How couldn't I see this coming, she said to herself. Someone must be blocking my visions, but who?
Dorian was coughing violently from the dust clouds. Another thundering tremor cut through. She turned to the pig and saw him shaking and barely holding himself together.
The dead trees were tearing in half and more dust clouds were rising. She quickly fired a shot at the pig's head; it didn't penetrate him but knocked him off balance and on his back.
She snatched Dorian off the floor, pulling him by his arm. He could barely get his feet on the ground as she took off running dragging him along.
She saw the pig had gotten on his ass and was fighting against the tremors to get up, and she shot him again, forcing him back on his back.
As she pulled Dorian along she wasn't aware he was transforming into gluttony. She turned back and saw the brown dust cloud overhead.
She could see silhouettes of the dead trees through them, and from above the trees, she saw the silhouette of a giant foot crashing down on the woods.
She picked up the pace as the whole space behind her got dark as the foot's shadow fell on it. Dorian feared his arm might pull off. His feet weren't touching the floor; he was in mid-air as she pulled him along like a rag doll.
She turned back and saw the foot crash, it was gray and it was just as she had suspected
A machine. Aires, she said.
The impact pushed the whole dead woods against itself, sending trees flying against each other and throwing large masses of earth and rocks away, many morruders were buried under earth and rock and impaled on trees.
The few that survived kept running; they knew if one foot hit, the other wasn't far behind. Hellena pulled him along and they managed to escape its effects. She knew the second stride would be much closer to them.
She felt his hand grow bigger and out of her grip before she could turn to grab him again, he pounced on her back.
He's gotten so fast, she thought."So now you want me to carry you on my back."
He had wrapped himself around her, wrapping his legs around her hips and his arms around her shoulders. She stopped running, turned, and met the eyes of gluttony.
Deep green vacuums of eyes that look like they consume the very light they need to see and they were hungry for more.
He was partially transformed and still relatively small compared to her; he was still only red, his horns were little, and his claws blunted.
He opened his jaws and revealed big fangs, he was about to bite her but wondered why her attention was somewhere else.
She was looking back at the woods and she saw the second foot coming down as she expected; it wasn't far from them. Dorian bit hard into her neck, and she didn't flinch, but instead, she took off running.
"We have to make it to Styx, you'll need your energy so eat up"
The second foot of the war machine was crashing down; it was large and gray like the other one, and it had large black blemishes around.
It had a rusty brown mechanical contraption on its ankle that looked like it aided its joint or acted at it. And the bottom of it was a long sheet of brown iron covering the Achilles heel, protecting it from attack.
The feet landed, and like an earthquake, the ground tore, causing seismic ruptures. The ruptures were quickly catching up to her, with the cracks on the ground chasing her down.
With gluttony still feasting on her neck, she kept her pace very fast, like she had a hummingbird on her shoulder instead.
She turned back and saw the cracks on the ground get a couple feet behind her heel. The uplands were coming to an end and she knew she would soon have to jump down into the valleys.
One prospect wasn't better than the other. You could be picked off mid-air by a wraith or land in a much worse place, but all she wanted now was to get out of the war machine's reach and make it to the underground Styx.
The dead woods were part of the mountains, and the many tremors from the giant walking on it had made it quite unstable. The crack cast by the tremors was reaching down into its core, and she knew this; any moment now, it could all go down.
He's zapping too much energy, and referring to Dorian, she taps him on the head and says, "Go easy on it, you're not a monster remember that"
He growled at her like a monster would, and that made her frown; in a swift move, she grabbed his whole face with her large hand and squeezed it.
A cracking sound echoed out of her palm, followed by a gush of blood; she had broken his whole face with one grip. His head dropped on her shoulder and blood spilled out of it,
"that should buy me enough time"
She was making it to the end of the highland when the other foot, the first one, was landing again. She jumped off the cliff, and as the foot crashed down, the core of the mountain shattered, and it all began to collapse.
Giant rocks of the mountain came hauling towards her, with Dorian on her back her maneuverability was greatly lessened
Large dust clouds filled the afternoon sky and even the gray giant was caught up in the destruction.
It fell down into the mountain's depths towards its core as it shattered all around. It roared as it fell, and it sounded like the roar of a beast mixed with that giant engine.
Hellena did her best to dodge the giant boulders that were falling around her. She dodged a couple, but some were just too big; she would get nicked there, but she made sure none of them hit Dorian.
The valleys were approaching fast, and she thought of how to break her fall, she made sure Dorian's grip was strong around her, and she held onto his hand just in case then she found a boulder large enough for her plan, and she made her way to it, diving through the air and adjusting her direction.
Time was running out, and she was nowhere near the boulder, but she needed to be at the top of it before it crashed unless she shattered into pieces. To heal from something like that would take days, and by then, they would have caught up to her and Dorian.
She couldn't risk it, she stretched out her hand, revealing a glowing golden symbol on her palm, the shape of a triangle. It turned red, and a circular portal with gold rims appeared just by her hand; she reached in and drew out a Gatling machine gun.
She turned around in mid-air and opened fire without aiming at anything; her goal was to use the recoil from it to push her toward the boulder.
The force propelled her forward at a steady pace, and soon, the gap between her and her goal shrunk to a couple of feet.
When she got close enough, she threw the gun away and grabbed onto the boulder, digging her fingers deep into the rocks; she used her other hand to hold onto Dorian so he wouldn't.
Another boulder came crashing down on the one she held onto, and in no time, she was buried in its shadow while the valleys were approaching fast.