Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s a strange thing, watching the world fall apart.

William Wisp sat slouched on the worn grey sofa in his family’s living room. He was only half paying attention to the news broadcast playing on the tv. His eyes instead trained on the old clock ticking away the minutes on the mantle. His mother was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for dinner. Everything was quiet, still, mundane. Everything you would expect from a Saturday afternoon. Except for why William was even bothering to watch the news in the first place.

“They have been sending the world into a frenzy. Dangerous, brutal, and contagious, The public has been calling them the Fallen. But what are they? And how can you protect yourselves against them?” The newscaster rattled on.

The Fallen. It’s only been a couple days since they started terrorizing the world. They hadn’t hit Deadwood yet, but something told William it would only be a matter of time before that happened. He could defend himself when they arrived, maybe.

With a snap of his fingers a spark ignited and blue flames began to lick at his hand. It didn’t burn, just tickled a little. William didn’t even know if he could be burnt anymore, though he hadn’t mustered up the courage to test that yet. He’d been too busy trying to figure out why. Why did he wake up four days ago with the ability to control fire? Why did so many other people also wake up that day with superpowers that should have been impossible? None of this made sense. Maybe life just couldn’t make sense anymore and he’d just have to get used to the unexplained.

He snuffed out the flame and sunk further into the cushions with a frustrated sound. He never liked not being able to know why. His dad said it was just because of his curious nature. His elementary school bully said it was because he was a nerd.

His attention drifted back to the news broadcast. On the screen was a picture of a Fallen. It looked mostly human, but twisted and distorted. Its eyes were an inky black, its veins glowing with a strange red hue, weirdest of all, it had horns, like some kind of demon. WIlliam shuddered at the sight of it. It was leaping at the camera, bearing needle sharp teeth and bloodstained claws. He didn’t want to think too hard about what might have become of the person who took the picture in the first place.

“It seems that if one of these creatures bites or scratches you, you will transform into one of them.” One of the newscasters informed, their image replacing that of the Fallen.

“What? Like some sort of zombie?” The other asked with a nervous laugh.

“Something like that, there’s no need to panic however. Scientists say this will be solved shortly. There is a cure in developm-”

The television switched off mid sentence and William looked up to see his father holding the remote.

“You don’t need to worry about all this.” He said. William couldn’t tell if he was trying to be comforting or dismissive. “It’ll get handled. Your mother is already running around like a headless chicken worrying about these ‘Fallen’. Don’t need you to start panicking too.”

William didn’t say anything but simply watched him leave the room. He then went back to staring at the clock, listening to the gentle tick tick tick of the hands. He mulled over his father’s words, was he right?

Yeah, nothing to worry about.

Not like a hoard of other worldly monsters are causing destruction and death everywhere they go..

Not like absolutely nobody knows what to do about it because a week ago magic was just elaborate fantasies and party tricks instead of something you could actually wield.

Not like William had a terrible, sinking feeling in his stomach that this was the beginning of the end.

No, It’ll be fine, William was just being a pessimist again.

There was nothing to worry about.

It was a few days later, and William could barely hear the thud of his feet against the pavement over the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears.

He was running for his life.

Vicious snarls sounded from behind him, he hadn’t lost them yet.

He was at school when they first attacked. Sixth period, when everyone was exhausted and tired of classwork before they got that inevitable mid-afternoon second wind. No one expects an attack from extra-dimensional monsters when they’re in economics class, maybe that’s why most people were too caught off guard to run away.

Fuck, he even felt bad for his teacher, and he hated his economics teacher.

The Fallen were even more terrifying in person than he expected from the pictures. They looked so gnarled, so unnatural, but sometimes William could swear he saw an agonized expression on their faces, a reflection of the people they used to be.

Of course it's hard to notice that bit when they’re ripping someone apart.

William expected them to be a lot less brutal. They’d attack someone, they’d transform, another would be added to their ranks, rinse and repeat. Turns out they mostly just killed you. His stomach churned and his eyes prickled with tears as his mind flashed back to the merciless slaughter he had just escaped from, but he couldn’t cry now. He needed to run.

There was a small cabin in the forest, overlooking a lake. A nice family stayed there for the summer, but they wouldn’t be here right now. There would be at least some food, there was a well in the back, even electricity. It would be the perfect place to hide. He just needed to get there. For a treacherous moment he thought about going back, to make sure that his parents were ok, but he couldn’t do that, if he did he’d get mauled, or worse. No, he could look for them once the Fallen horde left, he was no use to his parents dead.

William tried his best to tune out the snarls of the monsters behind him, the screams of the people who couldn’t get away. However, he couldn’t help but notice the sound of the Fallen drawing closer, and he was running out of stamina. They’d catch him soon, he needed to hide.

William quickly scanned the area around him. He was on the edge of town, suburban houses surrounded him, bathed in the grey, overcast light of a cloudy late autumn day. In the middle of the street to the left of him a car was left abandoned, the door to the driver’s seat left hanging open. With little time to think, he climbed into the car and locked the door. Huddling in between the seats he tried to calm his racing heartbeat and mind until the danger passed.

Hopefully they're not very smart. He thought, not daring to breathe.

William listened as the monsters trudged closer, and closer. He was painfully aware of how at any moment his short life would be over.

You were going to go to college.

The Fallen’s footsteps drew closer, horrible and heavy, inhuman.

You were going to get a forensic science degree, become a criminal investigator.

One of them stopped just outside his hiding place and made a guttural growling noise. William’s heart pounded in his chest, he decided to focus on the fact that it was still beating.

You thought you had your whole life planned out, didn’t you?

He braced himself for the sound of tearing metal, of monstrous claws ripping into the fragile sanctuary like the shell of an oyster with a nutritious meal inside.

What a fool you were, only the people you used to think were crazy could ever have planned for this.

He didn’t hear anything though, and he was still alive. The footsteps slowly faded away, he was safe, for now.

Letting out a deep sigh of relief, he opened the car door and stepped outside. The sun that was covered in clouds just a few minutes ago shone in his face, far too bright and cheerful for the situation at hand, a slight breeze rustled his hair. Most of all, he noticed how eerily silent everything was. No birds singing, no screaming, not even the screeches and snarls of the Fallen.

It was odd.

Until the silence was broken by the sound of something heavy landing on the car behind him, and immediately he knew exactly what he’d see if he turned around, and exactly what will become of him if he did so.

And still, he looked behind him.

This one had wings, it must have been ambushing him from above, watching, waiting. It’s soulless black eyes stared at him with something you could almost call curiosity. If those eyes were attached to quite literally any other animal he might have said they were cute.

This thing, with its blood stained teeth and wicked sharp claws, leathery, tattered wings and joints that bent in all the wrong directions, was not cute.

It let out a screech and lunged towards him. William barely even had time to react before claws were tearing into his left arm.

This was it, he was going to be devoured.

At least that’s what would have happened if his free arm didn’t erupt into blue flame and launch a fireball right into the attacking monster’s face. Oh yeah, he could do that now.

The Fallen howled and let go, holding its face in its hands and screaming in pain. As it wrenched its claws from his arm William noticed with horror that a viscous black liquid was spurting out of the tips of them. Like oil, or venom.

While the creature was still distracted and nursing its burns, William ran like he had never run before. Through the town he had lived in his whole life and into the unknown.
Pavement turned to grass, grass turned to leaf litter, he kept on running. He didn’t care if his clothes snagged on bushes, he didn’t care how much his injured arm throbbed, he just needed to get out of here.

He had already left Deadwood far behind him when he realized what the gashes on his arm meant, that he should have lost his lucidity only seconds after the fact, become a monster like all the rest.

Here he was, decidedly not a monster.

William slowed down and ducked behind a tree, tearing off the ruined sleeve of his hoodie. He almost gagged at the sight of the wound, red and raw and edged with black. It was also bleeding a lot, like a lot. It probably would have hurt way more if he wasn’t hopped up on adrenaline right now. The scratches were deep, he hoped he wouldn’t have to give himself stitches.

He definitely should have turned into a Fallen by now.

Was he immune? Would be really cool if he was.

No time for that, he needed to keep moving.

By the time William got to the cabin he was exhausted and light headed from blood loss. His thoughts slurred together and jumbled into nonsense. He was lucky he knew how to pick locks, and that the padlock protecting the cabin from intruders wasn’t a very good one. Still, picking it one-handed isn’t the easiest task in the world. Eventually the padlock clattered to the ground and William opened the door, kicking up a cloud of dust as he entered.

The inside of the cabin was cold and empty and lifeless, the air musty and filled with the melancholy that most abandoned buildings carried, the echo of happy memories formed by people who would never return.

Well, he hoped the owners of this cabin were safe, that they’d come back after this was all over like they did every summer. It was a weak hope, but maybe it was what helped him take a step forward towards the first aid kit on the wall.

He opened the red metal box, gauze, bandages, iodine, painkillers. It was fully stocked. William thanked god that his mom convinced him to take that first aid class, the most lame way to die in the apocalypse was of infection. He would much rather go out in a heroic self sacrifice and explosions, or to not go out at all.

By the time his arm was all patched up and he got a fire going in the wood stove, the sun was already long set. William had found a sizable stash of canned food in the pantry, and managed to choke down a can of peaches despite being nauseous from pain and anxiety. Now he was simply staring at the fire, the flames of which were not orange, but blue. William thought that made no sense, the color of a flame came from what was burning, even if the fire was started by a blue flame, it should still be orange since he was burning wood.

To be fair, chemistry also told him that humans couldn’t spontaneously produce fire from their fingertips, so he didn’t exactly think that science applied in this scenario.

Blue light spread across the wooden floorboards surrounding the stove, shining on William like a spotlight. It didn’t feel cozy, like fire usually did, it was warm, but in an unfeeling, unnatural way, like a corpse dusted with blush to make it seem more alive.

William hugged his knees to his chest. He hoped his parents were okay, he hoped his friends were somewhere safe, he hoped that the nice old neighbor who baked him cookies after his brother moved away managed to escape before everything went down.

William liked to say that he didn’t cry often, that was a lie. He cried a lot. When he was angry, when he was overwhelmed.

One thing he’d never had to cry about was someone dying.

For a place as haunted as Deadwood you’d think he would have encountered more death in his life, but no. His great grandmother died when he was three, he couldn’t even remember her at all. The only funeral he had ever been to was for a family friend he had never met and yet was dragged to anyway. The only emotion he remembered feeling then was boredom.

William wiped tears away from his eyes. He was mourning, wasn’t he? This was grief.

He hated it.

He hated the fact that he’d never get the chance to talk to those classmates he barely knew the names of, he hated the fact that so many friendly faces he had gotten so used to seeing every day were now splatters of blood on the wall or ravenous monsters who did nothing but kill. He hated that he didn’t even know if his parents were okay. He hated the tightness growing in his chest that he didn’t know how to combat, the crushing despair surrounding him as he realized that he was living through the end of the world.

Could he even get out of this? What could he do against the Fallen? What would happen once he ran out of food?

He couldn’t fight, he couldn’t find his own food, sure he was in boy scouts for a few years but he only remembered how to tie a couple knots. He’d either die of starvation or at the hands of the Fallen.

William hugged his knees to his chest and sobbed. He just felt so hopeless, so powerless, what was a 17 year old boy supposed to do against the apocalypse?

Well you’re not going to sit down and accept your fate, are you? His thoughts chimed in.

Well of course he wasn’t going to. He wasn’t going to waste away in this cabin and he wasn’t going to just walk outside and let the Fallen take him.

When he left he would fight.

William’s gaze shifted to the window, it was pitch black outside now, but even through the night he could hear the distant sound of sirens.

That day wouldn’t be today though.

William didn’t know why he suddenly decided to step out of the cabin after months of it being his sanctuary.

Maybe it was because he wanted to look for any other survivors, maybe it was because he had gotten sick of eating nothing but cans of beans and fruit cocktail. Maybe it was because he heard a raven outside and wanted to follow its cry. It was probably a combination of all of those things.

Whatever the reason, William was standing on the doorstep of the cabin, looking out to the woods with a wooden baseball bat in hand. It felt a little cliché, but it was the only suitable weapon he could find that wasn’t a kitchen knife (ineffective against the Fallen, too close range), or a frying pan (way too heavy), plus he found out that if he wanted too he could set the baseball bat on fire without burning it, which was really cool.

The raven stared at him from a maple tree, the branches of which were just starting to turn green with a spray of new leaves. He stared back at it and it let out a keening cry before taking off.

“Hey! come back here!” William shouted, his voice creaky from lack of use. Kicking up dirt and wet leaves behind him, he ran after the bird. It flew from tree to tree, as if making sure he caught up.

By the time William arrived at the ruins of Deadwood his legs ached and his lungs hurt from the effort of running, the raven glared at him from the top of a street sign.

“What are you looking at?” He muttered, glancing at his surroundings.

What was left of Deadwood shocked William into silence. It looked much the same for the most part, the only difference in the buildings being some shattered windows and collapsed roofs.

The difference was the corpses.

The smell of death hung heavy in the air, making him gag. He buried his nose and mouth in the fabric of his hoodie, but it didn’t do much against the stench of rot. Bones littered the ground, shattered and broken by the brutal monsters that killed them. More intact bodies lay slumped against walls and trees, decomposition rendering them unrecognizable from the people they used to be.

William walked past the old church and snorted. If there was a god in the first place William sure as hell didn’t want to pray to them, not if they let this happen.

Not a sound rang through the air aside from the sound of his footsteps. New vines were beginning to climb up the walls and flowers sprouted in cracks in the pavement. Spring already beginning to take advantage of the influx of fertilizer and the new lack of pruning shears.

At least the Fallen have left already. He thought bitterly, ducking inside an abandoned cafe. A bell rang as the door swung open, as if it was excited to finally receive a new visitor.

Sunlight beamed through shattered windows and illuminated the specks of dust that floated in the air. Chairs were overturned and left lying on the ground by people trying to leave in a hurry, and as William walked the floorboards creaked in a tired greeting.

His eyes landed on the bulletin board near the entrance. Adorned in flyers for block parties and posters for missing pets, the most recent addition being a simple slip of paper, the words ‘THE END IS HERE’ scrawled haphazardly on it in ballpoint pen. William scoffed, just because it was true didn’t make it any less cliché.

He sat down at one of the tables that still remained upright, burying his face in his arms. He was tired. So tired that he didn’t even have the energy to cry anymore. He hasn’t seen anyone this entire time, no survivors. Hopefully some left like he did, hopefully they had the sense to not come back, hopefully William isn’t alone.

The apocalypse never kills off everyone, there’s always survivors, that’s how this works.

He can’t be the last one alive, all he did was hide in a cabin for a few months. Surely others hid in more secure places, they had to.

William hears a shout from outside the window, shattering the deafening silence. The sound was too far away to make out words, but it was joyful and excited and human. There was someone else here.

As the voice grew closer William noticed more among them, getting clearer with every second.

“Slow down, Dakota! Check for danger first, and don’t be so loud!” Someone scolded.

“C’mon Tide,” A much younger voice whined. “There’s no one here, and if a Fallen does jump out at us I’ll kick it until it dies!”

William couldn’t help it, he poked his head over the top of a windowsill to observe the people walking down the street towards the woods he had just ran from.

At their head was a young boy, around William’s age. From this distance his most defining feature was his spiky bright red hair that was tied back with a black patterned bandanna, as well as the dirty red flannel currently tied around his waist. Another thing William noticed was how unusually muscular he looked.

Strength enhancement power maybe? He noted mentally.

Behind him was an older man, in his 30’s maybe. Dressed in tattered cargo shorts and… was that a Hawaiian shirt? He had long black dreads that faded to blue near the ends. William guessed he was the leader of this little group, being the oldest and seemingly the most protective over the other’s safety.

Related maybe? He thought. Through adoption I’d guess, none of them really look alike.

The third especially felt out of place, since he seemed to be decked out in full fantasy garb. A purple cloak trailed behind him and he looked like he was wearing leather armor of some kind, along with the longsword at his hip. William would have almost believed that some poor unlucky soul was on his way back from a renaissance festival when the horde hit if it wasn’t for his ears. Which were long and fluffy and ended in tufts of deep purple fur that matched his hair. As Willaim looked closer he noticed that the stranger also had a lionlike tail, that he flicked absentmindedly around as he scanned his surroundings. William wondered if he was even human.

As he pondered this however, the purple haired stranger stared directly at him. He yelped and dipped below the windowsill, but the stranger was already walking closer.

“Hey guys?” He shouted to his companions. “I found someone!”

William let out a shaky breath and peered out the shattered window again. The purple haired boy was just outside the cafe now, and was looking at him curiously.

“Uh, Hi!” He greeted, holding out a hand. “I’m Vyncent, Vyncent Sol. I wasn’t expecting to see any other survivors here, how’d you manage to avoid the Fallen? ”

William sighed and took it, climbing out of the window and onto the street. “William.” He mumbled, ignoring his question. He tried not to stare at Vyncent’s inhuman features, like his nose, which was animalistic and twitched like a rabbit’s.

Vyncent must have noticed his gawking, though, because he smiled and pointed at his ears. “Oh these? Yeah…I’m not exactly from around here.”

“Vyncent’s from a different dimension!” Shouted the red haired boy from earlier, nearly tackling Vyncent to the ground with a bear hug.

“A different dimension?” He parroted as Vyncent spat some very angry sounding words in a language William didn’t recognise and brushed dirt from his cloak.

“Yep! Me and Tide found him wandering the city after the Fallen first showed up, says he’s from a place with a bunch of floating islands and dragons.” The red haired boy rattled off energetically. “I’m Dakota by the way.” Dakota studied William’s face for a moment. “You don’t happen to live in a brick house with a blue door, do you?”

William was taken aback. “How do you know that?”

“We saw the family pictures while we were raiding houses for supplies.” Vyncent chimed in. “I thought you looked familiar.”

“Oh, yeah that makes sense.” William shuffled his feet nervously. “Did you uh, happen to run into my parents there?”

Dakota’s smile dropped and he looked down at the ground. “Uh.. kind of?” Next to him, Vyncent wordlessly dug around in his pockets.

“I think this belongs to you.” He said solemnly, holding out a necklace. William took it, it was just a silver cross pendant on a thin chain, but he’d recognize it anywhere.

“This is my mom’s necklace.” He observed, looking back up at Vyncent and tracing his thumb over the pendant. “Where did you get this?” He asked even though he felt like he already knew the answer.

“I’m sorry.” He mumbled awkwardly, looking apologetic. “You're the first living person we’ve seen here.”

William’s heart sank. “Oh.” He pocketed the necklace. Maybe tonight, or in a few days, the implication of those words would sink in and he could manage to feel something that wasn’t the numb, dull feeling he’d been stuck in for months now, but right now he needed to focus.
“So uh, You three have been traveling together since the Fallen first showed up?” He asked, keeping his mind off of the cold weight of silver in his pocket.

“Yep!” Dakota confirmed. “Five months now.”

God, has it really been five months?

“You can join us if you want, It’s not the greatest idea to be on your own these days.” Vyncent offered, tail flicking from side to side behind him.

“Wait, really? You’d let me come along?”

“Yeah, Tide will be fine with it. He wants to pick up all the survivors we can and lead them to somewhere remote where we can hide from the Fallen.”

Better than sitting in a cabin alone with your thoughts.

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m in.”

Vyncent smiled with teeth that were just a little too sharp to be human. “Awesome, You seem really cool William, hope we can be friends.”

“C’mon guys!” Dakota shouted from down the road. “Tide is waiting for us!”

“Yeah, I hope so too.”

William looked back on Deadwood once more before running after his new companions. A faint glimmer of hope shining in his chest as he left behind the only home he had ever known. Dakota cracking jokes as they walked, Vyncent telling grand tales of his home, Tide introducing himself with a smile and a brief hug that made William feel more loved then he has in months.

Maybe the end of the world wasn’t all misery.

A raven crows in the distance beyond the trees.

Chapter Text

Anyone who tells you the end of the world is exciting is lying.

Sure maybe you’ll get to fight a Fallen every once in a while, but the smart move if you want to survive is to avoid deadly monsters as much as possible, and that usually involves a lot of hiding in empty warehouses and eating stale, bland food because seasoning isn’t a very high priority in the apocalypse.

William picked absentmindedly at his paper plate of beef stroganoff. At least that’s what they called it. There was certainly no beef in it. Sometimes Vyncent would catch some sort of animal like a deer or a pheasant and they’d have a little extra protein but today the menu was just limp, overcooked noodles in a sad, flavorless sauce. Tide had found a whole shipment of it in the warehouse they were living in right now and it was practically all they had been eating ever since. William shoved a forkful of the stuff into his mouth and slid the rest of his plate to Dakota. It was awful, but at least it was keeping them alive.

The four of them were huddled around a fire contained in a rusted oil barrel. The flames were blue, since William had set it, and cast that same lifeless glow over the whole group. William wished it was a normal orange fire, one that felt cozy instead of cold, but they were out of matches and William was not about to start a fire the old fashioned way when he was basically a walking lighter.

Across from him, Tide sat on a crate, watching their surroundings with bubbles of water circling around his head, ready to be weaponized at any moment. Usually they took turns keeping watch, but Tide almost never woke them up for their shift, instead deciding to take on the burden himself. William wondered why he didn’t seem more tired, he couldn’t have gotten much sleep lately, if any at all.

Dakota was to his right, devouring his meal with an unmatched ferocity. William smiled. Dakota was always so upbeat, even in the worst of scenarios. He admired him for that. Dakota was a lot of the reason that William could bring himself to laugh now, if it wasn’t for him their group would be soaking in a lot more misery, if it existed at all. Honestly if Dakota wasn’t there they’d all be scattered across the world, or dead. William would probably be dead.

Vyncent was slumped against William’s left arm, the arm that was currently swathed in bandages as it has been ever since Doomsday. He didn’t really need to wrap it up anymore, It had healed as much as it was going to and the group all knew about it. (He never hid his situation, he wasn’t an idiot. Just a couple days after he met them he aimed Vyncent’s sword at his chest and told him straight up that if he ever turned into a Fallen they all had permission to kill him.) Maybe William just didn’t want to look at the scar, With its ragged torn flesh that needed stitches it never got and black veins spreading out from the wounds. It reminded him too much of what he lost, or maybe he was just scared that if he peeled back the gauze he’d see that the infection had spread and he really didn’t have that much time left.

Vynce was snoring softly. He looked comfy and William didn’t feel like disturbing him, so he just sighed and resigned himself to the fate that his arm would be numb in the mourning. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. The screen was cracked from the time he dropped it fighting off an attacking Fallen, and the battery life wasn’t looking too good. Cell service was a distant memory at this point as well, so there wasn’t really any point in still having it anyways. Still…

William scrolled through his camera roll, through every photo of his friends and family. The ones he knew were gone, the ones he still hoped were alive somewhere. He paused on a photo of him and his cat, Salem, who was staring at the camera with a disgruntled expression. William hoped she managed to make a home for herself in the forest, surely she must have formed a group of mice that worshiped her as a god by now.

The next photo was of Summer, who was the closest thing to a best friend William had at the time. They were lab partners in sophomore year and it turned out they had a lot in common. If anyone got out he hoped it was her.

Suddenly William felt a pair of amber eyes looking over his shoulder.

“Hey, Dakota.”

“Is that your family?”

A thin silver chain itched on the back of his neck.

He sighed. “Yeah…well, not all of them, some of these people were just my friends.”

Were. That word sounded so odd. It didn’t feel right.

“Can you tell me about them?”

William wondered if he had the emotional energy to handle that right now, but Dakota looked too earnest to turn down.

“Yeah, sure.” He motioned for Dakota to sit down next to him and began telling him every story he could think of about his parents, his friends, his childhood pets. Sometimes tears would prick at his eyes or he’d get too choked up to speak and Dakota would stop him and tell one of his own stories. Dakota had a much more interesting life then William would have ever guessed, turns out.

They went on like this for a long time, sharing their experiences as the fire burnt down to embers. William could almost convince himself that his parents were still alive through every word he spoke. Maybe they were, in a way.

Eventually, Dakota fell asleep, and William was left to stare at the dying remains of their campfire alone.

They’d be proud of you. He thought as he fiddled with the pendant around his neck. You’re going to save the world.

At least that’s what Tide told him. He was immune to the Fallen’s infection. He was scratched and he didn’t turn into one of them, surely there was something about him, an antibody, a gene mutation, something that in the right hands could be turned into a cure. He was the key to ending all of this.

He hoped he was.

He had to be.

He couldn’t let all of this be for nothing.

William tore through the underbrush, ears pricked for any sign of a threat. Spaces with a lot of cover were as deadly as they were safe.

“William!” Dakota called from somewhere behind him. “Where are you going? We’re supposed to be looking for supplies.”

“Yeah, I know, that’s what I’m doing.”

“People don’t just leave useful supplies in the middle of the woods, at most we’d find a backpack or something.”

“Shh! Let me listen.”

Dakota’s mouth snapped shut and he stared at William with an air of curiosity.

He didn’t move a muscle as he listened to the sound of the forest, leaves rusting in the wind, insects buzzing, a chorus or birdsong.

”Craw!"

William’s eyes locked onto the raven perched in the branches above him, It peered at him for a moment before flying off. He ran after it.

“Hey!” Dakota shouted, tearing after him. “Wait up!”

William knew this bird, at least, he thought he did. Realistically it wasn’t the same bird. There were probably a lot of ravens around here, ravens that seemed to take an interest in him specifically and always seemed to lead him to exactly where he needed to go.

Branches whipped at his arms as he ran through the woods, eventually he emerged from the thick growth of trees and skid down a hill onto a road, the asphalt of which was cracked and full of potholes, tiny green things pushed their way through the pavement, they waved in the breeze as if to say hello.

William caught his breath and looked up at the raven, perched on a lone streetlight and gazing at him curiously. Below the streetlight stood an overgrown gas station. It didn’t look like it was raided yet, either.

“Woah, how’d you find this? This has to be enough to last us months!” Dakota said excitedly, emerging from the forest behind him.

“Bird.” William answered simply, pointing up at the raven. “Go get Vynce and Tide, they’re going to want to see this.”

Dakota looked like he wanted to question further, but instead zipped off into the woods with his inhuman speed. He’d soon return with the others in tow, but first…

William was expecting the gas station to be locked, but the knob turned easily, weird. Maybe it was left unmanned in a hurry and they didn’t have time to lock it.

Nevertheless he pushed onward. It wasn’t anything special. Just your average gas station. Anything that needed to be refrigerated was long since past the point of no return, and the lights didn’t work anymore, but other than that everything seemed salvageable.

Thank god William didn’t have to eat stroganoff anymore.

He greedily grabbed bags of chips and packets of instant ramen from the shelves and stuffed them in his backpack. There were medical supplies here, batteries, pretty much anything they’d need, even things like gloves for when it got cold. (Seemed like a long way off in the sweltering summer heat, but it was something they’d need to worry about eventually.)

This stuff wouldn’t run out for a long time, they could just stay here and not have to worry about going hungry or dying from infection or anything-

William felt something cold and hard being pressed up against his neck and heard something click.

Oh fuck me.

“Just give me your name and the reason you’re here, kid, I don’t want this to get ugly if it doesn’t have to.”

William’s heart raced. He had a gun pressed to his head, some complete stranger could kill him with a simple pull of the trigger and he couldn’t do a single thing about it.

Stay cool William, just listen to him and he maybe probably won’t hurt you.

“W-William Wisp, Why are you doing-”

The stranger cut him off by pushing the barrel of the gun deeper into the nape of his neck.

“I’m asking the questions here, kid. Now why are you here? ”

“I’m just trying to survive, just like you! Just like everyone! I just need to get some fucking food so I don’t starve! Other people need to eat too, you know .” William probably shouldn’t have been so passive aggressive to the man with a gun pointed at him, but he got sarcastic when he was nervous and this was a very stressful situation.

The stranger laughed. “Yeah, okay, the thing I want to know is how a scrawny teenager like you managed to live through eight months of this shit, because there's no way someone like you got through alone.”

William wanted to make a snarky comeback, but he was cut off by a voice coming from the end of the aisle.

“Mark?”

He knew that voice.

“Tide?”

The stranger's tight grip loosened and the gun fell away to his side. William wheezed and rubbed the spot on his neck where the barrel had pressed in, a small bruise already beginning to form.

Tide was standing next to a display full of (very stale) muffins, his arm encased in a spear of ice. Dakota and Vyncent were on either side of him, both glaring at the stranger and readying their respective weapons. William hurried over to Vyncent’s side. He brushed the tip of his tail along William’s arm, a gesture he has learned to mean ’Are you okay?’. He gave a brisk nod in response and returned his focus to the man in front of them.

His face was obscured by a mask, but William could see a shock of blond hair sticking out from under his hood. He was wearing a stupid amount of layers, at least two coats from what he could see. (Probably a good idea in case you get attacked by a Fallen.) He was holding a pistol, which was what he must have threatened William with, but there was a much larger shotgun strapped to his back.

Don’t mess with him, got it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” The stranger, ‘Mark’, grumbled.

“What are you doing threatening my kid?”

Mark laughed. “What? This little squirt is yours? I don’t buy it.”

Okay, that was just mean.

“W-we’re not related in the traditional sense.” William butted in, still a little shaken. “We’ve just been traveling together and-”

“William.” Interrupted Tide. “Now is not the time.”

“Are we just going to skim over the fact that you two know each other or?” Vyncent added, his tail lashing nervously as he spoke.

“You could say that we’re old friends.” Answered Mark.

“We are not friends.” Tide hissed, barring his arm protectively in front of Dakota.

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart? William decided not to read too much into that.

“Anyway, I’d like to know what you’re doing running a daycare during the end of the world.”

“It’s not a daycare.” Tide snapped. “I’m just trying to keep us alive, there’s strength in numbers.”

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, numbers are a weakness, the more of you there are the more opportunities to get stabbed in the back.”

“Hey!” Vyncent retorted. “I got over that phase months ago!”

William had heard a lot about the fact that Vyncent had tried to kill Tide and Dakota when they first ran into him, he kinda wished that he was there to see it.

“You’re better off with just a party of one or two people that really trust you.” He continued. “Can’t just pick anyone up off the street unless you want to end up betrayed.”

They all stayed silent. William was kind of mad that he had a point.

“Unless, there’s another reason you’re traveling with a bunch of kids.”

Tide averted his gaze. “There is one thing…”

Yeah, great idea, Tide. Reveal his secret to the guy who tried to kill him five minutes ago.

“We think William over there is the key to curing Fallen. He got scratched by one of them months ago…but he never turned. We think he’s immune or something, and that maybe if we get to a scientist or a doctor or whatever we’d be able to make a cure.”

Mark fell silent for a long time before holstering his gun and dropping his pack on the ground. He zipped it open and started shoving it full of supplies.

“Grab everything you need. When you’re ready, follow me.”

William hesitated. Could he really trust this guy? At the same time, with how decked out he was it looked like he had a lot of resources. It could be invaluable to have him on their side.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

William watched in awe as the group walked their way through the bunker.

“I’m going to be honest Mark, I never took you for a prepper.” Tide remarked as he observed the shelves lined with canned and freeze dried food.

“I’m not.” Mark replied, throwing his pack into a corner. “Had a neighbor who never shut up about it though, turns out a bunker doesn’t do you much good if you’re at ground zero on a business trip and get eaten by monsters before you can get to it.”

“Jesus.” William muttered, taken aback. “So you just…took it over?”

“Didn’t have a choice. Not like he was going to be using it anyways.”

“There’s no one here.” Vyncent pointed out. “What do you mean there was someone you wanted us to meet?”

He was right, the bunker was eerily silent. The only sound was the echo of their footsteps on the concrete walls.

“William, you said you got scratched by a Fallen and managed to not turn into one, right?” Mark asked, pulling a pack of batteries out of one of the pockets of his army green jacket.

“Yeah…”

“Well, turns out you’re not the only one in that situation.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, you’re not alone in being immune, and that we’re one step closer to getting out of this mess.” Mark shoved the batteries towards him, William took them and turned the package over in his hands.

You’re not alone. The sentence echoed in his mind. There was someone else who was immune, one more person who could save the world with one blood sample. He was as relieved as he was bitter as he realized he didn’t need to try so hard to stay alive anymore, they had a backup. The world wouldn’t be doomed if he happened to go out in an epic explosion or running into a hoard of Fallen or whatever else got protagonists killed in zombie movies.

Mark took off the pair of red tinted ski goggles and gas mask that had been covering his face this whole time. It was kind of overkill if you asked William, the air wasn’t toxic, the Fallen didn’t infect you with spores or anything.

Trying to hide his identity maybe? Chimed the investigative part of his mind. Made sense, with how distrusting Mark seemed to be of other survivors.

There was something off about Mark’s face. His cheeks had patches of what looked like green scales spreading across them, and one of his eyes was a bright yellow, pupil reduced to a slit. That was…weird.

“You can stop staring, kid. It’s just my power, turned me into a lizard, I guess.”

Dakota and Tide simultaneously stifled their laughter.

“I didn’t know they could change your appearance.” William pondered aloud.

“Well, they can. Don’t know how, no one knows how, maybe we never will.” Mark said bitterly, hanging his coat up on a hook.

Bet I could figure it out. He thought. If he really put his mind to it he could figure out most things. (Problem is, a lot of the time he didn’t really bother to put his mind to it, which is why he was just barely passing a fair amount of his classes before the world ended.)

“Can we just get to the point?” Vyncent snapped, looking impatient.

“Yeah, yeah, right.” Mark muttered. “Hey Ashe! Get over here, we have visitors.”

A few moments later he heard the sound of flapping wings coming from down the hall, and a raven emerged from the darkness and perched itself on a steel chair. It looked around at the group with a soft curiosity.

There was no way.

“As a person, please.”

The raven flapped its wings a few times and in a burst of black feathers, it was replaced with a teenager around William’s age. They had long, curly grey hair and were dressed in comfortable clothing that looked far too clean in comparison to what everyone else was wearing. A pair of black feathered wings fluttered slightly behind them, probably a leftover from their shape shifting ability. She rested her chin on her hands and looked up at William, her lavender eyes sparkled in wonder.

“Everyone, this is Ashe Winters, my daughter.”

Chapter Text

William was never very good at meeting new people. He often never bothered to introduce himself in the first place, but even when he actually wanted to talk to someone he tended to stare too much, or to overthink what to say to the point that he forgot to respond. William’s greatest hobby was trying to see what made people tick, to look at their mannerisms and try and dissect from that what they thought. He thought other humans were the most interesting creatures in the world, and Ashe Winters was no exception.

They stared at him with their head cocked to the side in a distinctly bird-like manner.

“So…Why are all these people in our house?” They asked, turning to their father.

Mark snorted. “Apparently this kid thinks he has the answer to stopping this mess, and that you can help too.”

William scoffed as Mark pointed a thumb at him. Why did this guy always have to sound so condescending about everything? He hoped his asshole tendencies weren’t genetic, if he was going to save the world he wanted to get along with the people he was saving it with.

Ashe’s eyes widened and she stood up. “You think you can stop the Fallen? You think I can help?” She questioned William, unable to hide her excitement.

“Erm.” William muttered, taking a step back. “Y-yeah, I think so, I mean. You’re immune to whatever causes Fallen right? Virus, fungus, whatever.”

“I got bitten a few months back and didn’t turn into one so maybe? I’m not too sure…”

“Same here.” He gestured to his bandaged arm. “I’m thinking that maybe we have some sort of mutation that, in the right hands, can be turned into a cure, or a vaccine, or something. Only problem is that I don’t know anyone with the means to formulate that kind of thing. Unless one of you happens to be a virologist.”

Mark scoffed. “I had an office job, kid. If I had the means to make a cure I would have done it already. If you want a scientist you’ll have better luck in Haven.”

“Haven?” Dakota parroted.

“The old New Haven University, some guy took it over after the Fallen struck and turned it into a compound, to my knowledge it’s the biggest group of survivors still standing.”

“If it used to be a university then there has to be someone who can help us there.” William surmised. “Can you take us there?”

Mark barked a laugh. “Not a chance, I’m not leaving Ashe alone for more than a few days.”

“I could come with.” Ashe chimed in. “You need my help don’t you?”

“Still no. It’s too dangerous, I can’t risk losing you too.”

“But-” She protested.

“And that’s final.” Mark muttered sternly. “If you four want to go to Haven you’re on your own.” He started towards the door, then paused. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need though, we have plenty of supplies to last us a while. Tide, do you want the honors of making dinner?”

Tide gave an excited nod as he started scanning the crates of canned food around them. “I know just what to make.”

Vyncent groaned. “Please no more stroganoff, I can’t take it anymore.”

“Yeah!” Dakota added. “We should make pizza!”

“Well if you both want to help me I’m sure we could make pizza.”

William wasn’t sure how you would make pizza in a world without refrigeration and therefore without cheese, but he would take whatever sad excuse for pizza they managed to make over another bowl of stroganoff any day.

“There's a camping stove in the room to the left.” Mark informed before disappearing behind a door he assumed led to his room. The trio tasked with dinner left the hallway as well, chatting away about meal ideas. So, William and Ashe were left alone.

Ashe looked crestfallen, running her fingers through her hair and staring at the door her father just closed behind him with a somber expression. Their wings twitched as if they were itching to move, to spread to their full length, but in the concrete bunker that was nearly impossible.

“So…” William started, gaining a passive glance from Ashe. “Your dad’s kind of a dick.”

Ashe stifled a laugh. “Oh my god, yeah, he kind of is.”

“He pointed a gun at my head, of course he is.”

“Really? Jeez, I know he can be kind of intense sometimes but that…” She sighed. “He used to be different, before all this happened. Still intense, but you know, not to this extent.”

“Yeah. The end of the world changes people.” He would know, he never used to be this jaded. Once he could have called himself an optimist, but a glass half full attitude didn’t help him after what happened in Deadwood. After what he saw, it was hard to have faith in anything.
Except for one thing.

He couldn’t let the rest of the world die like Deadwood had. That’s why this was important, that’s why he and Ashe needed to get to Haven and find that cure. If only Mark could get that through his thick, lizard skull.

Ashe had fallen silent, staring at the wall like there was a world lying beyond it that William couldn’t quite see. Her wings still twitched. Still, It was hard to ignore how happy she looked to just be around new people, maybe they were like this all the time, but for some reason he doubted that.

“How long has it been since you left the bunker?” He asked, trying to make small talk I guess. He was awful at small talk.

They tilted their head again like a curious bird. “Uh, wow I don’t know exactly. I don’t think I’ve left here since we first showed up, my da- Mark says it’s too dangerous, and there’s not exactly any reason for me to leave so…”

“So you haven’t seen the sun for what? Months?”

“Something like that, We arrived maybe a week after everything fell apart. It was a long journey.” Their breath hitched at the end of their sentence. Something happened on that journey, he would guess, but he wasn’t about to pry for details.

William quickly calculated how long it had been. He lost track of the days while he was in the cabin but he must have waited out the entirety of winter, which means-

“God, you’ve been stuck in here for six months?”

She winced. “It’s really been that long?”

“Just about.”

There was a long pause, Ashe’s gaze shifted to the grey concrete floor. William wondered what she was thinking about. Maybe about how those six months felt much shorter then they should have. Maybe wondering how any of them managed to live so long. William certainly wondered that sometimes. Six months. Six months in a world crawling with monsters with a disdain for humanity. Six months avoiding them and hiding in crumbling buildings and eating whatever they could scrounge up from the pantries of suburban houses and from the branches of backyard fruit trees. Even in the walls of the old cabin that was practically a luxury condo compared to what the other survivors must have stayed in, William spent so many of those long winter nights shivering next to the fireplace and wondering if any of this was even worth it anymore. Did Ashe feel the same? Surely staying inside for so long must have been unbearably lonely, in this concrete box that felt like the farthest thing from a home. William sighed and rested a hand on Ashe’s wrist.

“Hey, are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just, what’s it like out there? Mark never wants to tell me…how bad is it?” There was a desperate expression on their face. Like they hoped for an answer along the lines of Oh, the flowers are beautiful. or You have to see the lakes at sunrise, they’re breathtaking. But they both knew that wasn’t true, so there was no use lying about it.

William wrinkled his nose. “It’s not so bad, it’s nice and quiet, and you get used to the corpses after a while.”

God, what was he saying? What kind of an answer was that? He struck a nervous glance over to Ashe, expecting a look of horror or disgust. Instead he was met with an expression of resigned sorrow.

“Yeah… That’s about what I was expecting.” They took a deep breath and combed their fingers through their hair, it was then that William noticed that their nails were painted with chipped, black polish.

“Your nails.” He pointed out. “I like them, did you paint them recently or?”

“Oh, yeah pretty much. There was a bottle of nail polish in the bag I first grabbed when we left. It’s just a nice thing to have I suppose. There isn’t much else here.”

“Yeah, I get that.” William muttered. Entertainment was important, especially when you’re alone. When he was staying in the cabin all he found was a few board and card games in a cabinet. He couldn’t play them by himself so instead he just took a deck of cards and played solitaire until his dreams were full of card suits and he couldn’t stand the look of them anymore. After that he mostly just sat alone, maybe read the few books stashed on the shelves he didn’t find that interesting, organized his stash of food again and again, wrote shitty poetry in the little notebook he kept in his backpack. Ashe didn’t even have that. William wondered how she hadn’t gone insane from boredom yet.

“I could paint yours if you want.” She offered, their expression brightening. “It’s better then just sitting here, we could listen to some music too.”

“You have music?”

“Yeah, Mark found an abandoned music store when he was out once and brought back a whole bunch of CDs and a CD player. I’m out of batteries though, you didn’t happen to bring any back, did you.”

William shrugged off his backpack and unzipped the front pocket, pulling out the pack of batteries Mark had handed him. “Would these work?”

“Perfect!” Ashe cracked open the battery package and pulled out a few, ushering William forward. “My room’s over here, sorry if it’s a little cluttered, I wasn’t exactly expecting visitors.”

The reinforced iron door opened to a small concrete room just like all the others. An unmade cot sat in the corner, next to it was a crate being used as a bedside table. Sitting proudly on the crate was an old CD player and a small pile of CD’s. Save for the drawings taped to the walls William assumed was meant to imitate band posters, the rest of the room looked pretty bare.

“So, what do you like to listen to?” Ashe asked as she switched the batteries on the CD player. “You can pick anything you want from the pile.”

William shrugged. “You can just play something, it’s your house.”

Ashe nodded and popped open a CD case, slotting it into the machine and pressing play. The tinny sound of a song he vaguely recognized filled the room and Ashe sat down on the floor, gesturing for William to sit down too, which he obliged.

“Man, I never realized how much I missed listening to music until now.” He said as Ashe shook a small bottle of nail polish in front of him.

“Yeah, in the couple months before I got this thing I swear I almost lost it. It’s just too quiet now that there’s barely any people around.”

“I like the quiet.” William lay his hand flat in front of Ashe as they began painting the stuff on his nails. “Means there’s nothing out to get you.”

Ashe sighed. “I guess that’s true, but doesn’t it feel so lonely?”

It did feel lonely. William spent the entire winter locked in that cabin, and it was the worst time of his life. He had spent so many evenings staring at the door hoping some traveler would knock on it, something that proved that he wasn’t the only one left, but there was never anyone out there. As far as he knew he was the only person left alive in the world and it was terrifying. He was so glad he was proven wrong, he didn’t know what he would do if he was truly so alone.

“Well, I have Vyncent, and Tide, and Dakota. So it’s not so bad.” William shook his right hand to dry the nail polish as Ashe started on his other hand. “What about you? Are you lonely?”

Ashe froze, the brush they held hanging in midair and dripping black lacquer on the concrete floor. “Shit, I don’t know…I mean, I have Mark, but.” Her wings started twitching again. “I guess I just miss my old friends, and my mom, and everything. Maybe I am lonely, I just want to fix all of this, you know? Then maybe things could go back to normal.”

Things would never really go back to normal, but he knew that wasn’t what Ashe wanted to hear.

“Yeah, I get it. I miss it too, my old life.” His fist curled around the cold metal of his necklace. He felt a tight knot begin to form in his chest again, the one he’s been ignoring for months now. Fuck, not now, not in front of the person he just met today, don’t think about them don’t

“Who did you lose?” They asked, voice barely a whisper.

“Everyone.” Why did he respond, he didn’t have to respond. “Everyone I knew. My parents, my friends, my whole town.”

“Fuck, I’m so sorry, that’s awful.”

“What about you?”

Ashe tucked her knees to her chest and stared at the wall again. “As soon as the news about the Fallen hit, Mark packed me, my mom, and anything necessary into his car and started driving us here. We ran out of gas a couple miles from the bunker though, we were going to walk the rest of the way.” They got really quiet, like speaking any louder would physically hurt. “We- we got attacked, I got bitten on the ankle and my mom..” She took a deep breath. “My mom didn’t make it, everything after that is really fuzzy, I think Mark had to carry me here. I just remember waking up in the bunker and she was gone and-” They cut off, staring up at the fluorescent lights as they hummed in harmony with the song that was playing.

William didn’t say anything, he knew that there were no words he could say to make any of this better. Instead he just held out his arms in an invitation for a hug. Ashe fell into the embrace and wrapped their wings around him, burying their face into his shoulder.

“I guess I just hope my dog got out okay.” Ashe mumbled into the fabric of William’s hoodie.

“I’m sure he did, the Fallen don’t go after animals, only humans.”

“Wait really?” She broke off from the hug, an expression of deep thought on her face. “That’s weird…”

William shrugged. “Yeah, I guess it is, maybe it’s because they can only infect people?”

“Maybe, but don’t they mostly just eat people instead of leaving them alive long enough for the infection to set in?”

“They don’t eat people, they just kill them.”

“That’s even weirder, have you ever seen them eat anything?”

He shook his head. It’s not like he’s been up close and personal with the Fallen enough to know for sure, but he felt like he would have noticed by now if they did eat anything, and Ashe was right. William had never really thought about it before but it was weird, it was weird how the Fallen had no clear motive to their slaughter, it was weird how he swore he could see them communicating with each other sometimes, it was weird how they clearly weren’t mindless, it was weird how they could strategize.

What even were they?

“William, what if these things aren’t a virus, or anything else like that. What if it’s magical? Whatever makes us immune…can it even protect other people against it? What are antibodies supposed to do against a curse?”

He almost laughed. “Magic isn’t real, it can’t be that.” There was a scientific explanation to this, magic was too large of a logic leap. It was something more simple, it had to be, Occam’s Razor and all.

“I can turn into a bird, William, that seems pretty magical to me.”

Okay, maybe not that much of a logic leap.

“We have to try, Ashe. I can’t keep living like this. Fearing for my life at every turn, I haven’t been able to relax in six months and I’m just so tired of it. If there's any way we can possibly fix this, we need to try.”

Ashe wove their hair between their fingers and took a deep breath. “Yeah, you’re right, but how are we going to convince my dad to let me go all the way to Haven? He’s very adamant about the whole ‘keeping me safe under any circumstances’ thing, if you couldn’t tell.”

“Smuggle you out?”

“He would literally kill you.”

“Ask him really, really nicely?”

Ashe shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

Then there was a knock on the door, and Ashe stood up to answer it, when the door opened, a red smudge immediately rushed into the room and barreled into William.

"Ack! Dakota!" He scolded, rubbing his sore shoulder.

"Sorry." He halfheartedly apologized. "I just needed to tell you two that food was ready, we made pizza!."

Ashe looked a little skeptical at this, but helped William up and the three of them made their way to the main room, where everyone was sitting on the floor surrounding a strange circle of dough topped with pasta sauce and spray cheese. It looked like what an alien who has never heard of pizza might attempt to make. Still, William grabbed a slice. The dough was burnt on the bottom and doughy on the top, and marinara and spray cheese wasn’t exactly a good combination. He choked it down anyway, he wasn’t really in a position to be picky, considering Mark let four random people into his hideout and let them eat his food. Now that he thought about it, why was Mark being so hospitable anyway? It didn’t make sense, he seemed like the every man for himself type, there was no reason for him to do any of this.

William tucked the question away to nag on later, for now he listened to the small talk being exchanged throughout the group.

“-and that’s when this giant Fallen with six arms showed up and tried to attack me and Vyncent!” Dakota recounted to Ashe. It was the story of something that happened before William joined the group, and while he had heard it before, he was intrigued to find out what details would be changed for emphasis.

Ashe was listening intently. “And then what happened?”

“Well I kicked the shit out of it, obviously. Which gave Vyncent the opportunity to sneak up to it with his sword, and then he cut its head off! And then it screamed and screamed until Vyncent stabbed it in the heart and it died.”

Vyncent chuckled, sipping from a mug of hot tea. “Yeah, I was awesome that day.”

“Maybe you were, but I recall giving you two quite the scolding for going out alone when you returned.” Tide remarked.

“It’s not like we died or anything, It was fine! And we got those medical supplies we needed.”

“You still should have had me come with you, it’s dangerous.”

“You twisted your ankle! That’s why we needed the supplies in the first place!”

William watched from his corner, warming his hands on his own mug of tea. He felt like an outsider to his own group sometimes, he joined them late, missed out on so much. He hadn’t even come face to face with a Fallen since that first day, while the rest of them had been fighting them for months. Could William even fight? He wasn’t strong or fast, like Dakota, and the last time he tried to get Vynce to train him in sword fighting he almost cut off his own toe. He could make fire, that was about it. It felt so trivial in comparison to what the others could do.

Maybe Ashe felt the same way, being able to turn into a bird must feel like a useless power when you’re not able to leave and stretch your wings.

Or were they? The cry of the raven that led him here echoed in his mind, there’s no way that was Ashe, right?

“So you really haven’t left this place since you got here?” William decided to ask them.

“Nah, not once. Why do you ask?”

“Oh it’s just, there’s been this raven that’s been following me around and-”

“Wait a minute.” Dakota interrupted, rather loudly. “You haven’t left? At all?”

Ashe shook her head, looking a little embarrassed. “Mark doesn’t let me leave, says it's too dangerous.”

“But you have to go with us! We all need to go to Haven and make a cure for this thing. We need you in order to turn everything back to normal.”

“I know you do, but I don’t know if Mark’s going to budge, he’s been pretty insistent about the whole keeping me safe thing.”

“Well, he needs to be less insistent.”

“In his defense, I’m also immune, so it’s not the end of the world if you have to stay here.” William added. “While it’s always nice to have another dataset, we only really need one if we’re making an antidote.”

Ashe snorted. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he kept me here even if I was the only one.”

A hushed pause washed over the group as everyone tried to think of what to say next.

William sighed. “Dakota, I don’t know if things can even be normal again.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do! Look outside, Dakota! We’ve been running from the Fallen for months now and we’ve run into exactly two living people, of course not counting the guy we found dying of infection in an empty supermarket. Electrical and water grids have been down for ages because everyone who was supposed to run them got killed, entire towns have been wiped out. You’re from New Haven right? Your version of normal is a bustling city full of people and noise and life. Even if we do find a cure, if by some miracle I’m right and we can fix this. Nothing is ever going to be like that again, at least not in our lifetimes.” It was like lifting a weight off of his chest, even though the look on Dakota’s face made William’s heart shatter. He couldn’t help but feel like Dakota had been living in some fantasy this whole time, never waking up to the reality of the situation they were in. The fact was that their lives had been turned upside down, their goals for the future rendered as unobtainable as the stars. Life wouldn’t be easy for as long as they lived, even if they did find a way to get rid of the Fallen.

William hated that, he knew Dakota did too, but it was true.

“Maybe it won’t be like before, but what’s stopping us from making a new normal?”

“This is our new normal, Dakota.”

He fell silent, turning away. William wasn’t used to seeing Dakota upset, he didn’t think he liked it.

“Hey man-” He started.

“Don’t! Just, don’t talk to me. I’m going to talk to Mark about setting up a place to sleep.”

Vyncent shifted uncomfortably. He had expressed his dislike of arguments before, William didn’t blame him. “Yeah, me too. I think.”

“He’s keeping watch near the entrance, I think.” Ashe said as they both walked away.

William sighed and leaned against the concrete wall. Great. Now his friends were mad at him. He’d been too blunt, too realistic, he always was, and this time it hurt someone. Dakota had a habit of giving people the silent treatment too, William would be lucky if he even acknowledged his existence in the next week for this transgression. William dug his nails into his palm and tried not to let the knot reforming in his chest overflow into tears.

Ashe was looking at him with sympathy. God, there was something about her eyes that made William want to spill all his secrets, every thought that crossed his mind.

“I guess I’m just angry.” He muttered. “I don’t know about what, maybe I just hate the fact that I’ll never get the normal life I thought I would.”

They reached out a wing and brushed it against his shoulder, a comforting gesture. “I understand, you’re right. Everything we thought we were going to do with our lives, all our dreams of the future, none of them are possible now.” They stared up at the ceiling fan, rotating lazily as it emitted a bright white glow across the mostly barren room. William was once again reminded of the fact that to Ashe, the sun was a distant memory, associated with a world long destroyed past recognition.

“We had so much of our lives ahead of us, Ashe. We could have done anything, but the world just had to end before we got the chance.” He squeezed his eyes shut. It was so unfair, all of this was so unfair. Why did it have to be them? They were all going to die young at the hands of the Fallen, or worse, starve to death once food stores had run dry. Everything they thought were simple facts of life crumbled to dust in the span of a few days, and they barely got any warning. William didn’t get to say goodbye to his parents. Oh god he never said goodbye to them-

Ashe shifted closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “You know, just because those dreams are impossible now doesn’t mean we can’t make new ones.”

William tried to think of a future in the empty world he’s been wandering in for months, he couldn’t see anything worthwhile out there, but he wished he could.

“What was yours?” He asked.

“Hm?”

“Your dream, what you wanted to do with your life.”

“Oh, I guess I didn’t really have one. Didn’t think about it too much. You?”

“Well, I wanted to go to college, study forensics or something, criminal justice, those kinds of things. Then I’d move out of the sleepy town I grew up in and become a criminal investigator. Look for missing people, help solve crimes, just help people in general I guess.”

Ashe smiled. “That’s pretty noble of you, Mr. Holmes.”

William stifled a laugh. “Mr. Holmes?”

“What? You wanted to be a detective type, right?”

“I mean, yeah, but do I really seem like a Sherlock to you?”

“Ah, you’re right. You’re more of a Velma.”

William shoved Ashe away from him as they both laughed. Wasn’t he busy being all sad a few seconds ago? How long has it been since he’s met someone who could cheer him up so easily? He couldn’t remember.

He and Ashe kept talking long into the night about whatever came to mind, and when he at last settled into one of the sleeping bags Mark had set out for them. He felt warmer than he had in ages.

The next morning William was woken up by Ashe blasting a particularly angry sounding CD. Which she apologized profusely for.

“I’m not exactly used to other people being here.” They mumbled awkwardly as William chugged an energy drink he had pilfered from the gas station the day before.

“You’re okay, Dakota normally wakes me up earlier than this anyway.”

Dakota. He still hadn’t said a word to him since their argument. Right now he was sitting cross-legged in the corner. Playing a game on the handheld console he somehow still had. Vyncent had been unusually quiet too. William would have to apologize to them later, but for now he really didn’t feel like having another emotional conversation. Or having any emotions. Ever.

“Where’s your dad?” He asked instead.

“Morning perimeter check. He should be back soon.” She picked at the bowl of extra shelf stable oatmeal that was being served for breakfast. (“Extra shelf stable” meaning that it tastes like wet sawdust.) “I don’t know why he does it. We stay inside all the time, we don’t really have a perimeter to check.”

“He’s really serious about all this, huh?”

“You’re telling me. It gets kind of exhausting after a while. ‘Ashe, check our antibiotics stockpile.’ ‘Ashe, make sure all the weapons are working.’ How about I assess how comfy my bed is and take a nap?”

William smiled, and as if on cue Mark walked through the door. Wearing that same fur collared coat he was wearing yesterday. Oddly enough, he wasn’t alone.

“-Now you three promise you’re only going to be here for a few days? I’m not exactly drowning in supplies here, I’ve got a kid to feed.”

“Hey dad, why are there more people in our bunker?” Ashe asked.

“I found them wandering around nearby, one of them is injured and needs treatment. While I don’t like the idea of so many people being here at once, I hope you know me enough to know I’m not just going to let someone die out there.”

William turned to assess the newcomers. All teenagers, two were a little older than him. One was a man with long blond hair that was currently obscuring his face, he walked with a limp and was leaning on the other, a woman with an intense expression and fading purple hair, for support. The third was closer to his age, and while she was trailing behind her companions in a way that made it difficult for him to make out her face, he couldn’t shake the fact that she looked familiar.

His suspicions were confirmed when after seeing him, her face lit up with recognition. She pushed past the others to get to the front of the group.

He almost didn’t believe it, she was dead, she had to be. No one else made it out of Deadwood, he thought that was clear.

“Holy shit. William, is that you?” Said Summer.

Chapter Text

Such an odd feeling that comes with realizing you haven’t lost everything. Sure, they’re alive, they’re here, you have no need to grieve anymore. At the same time, all those tears you shed were for nothing. Countless hours swathed in hopelessness that you really had no need for. It's a bit annoying, isn’t it?

And so William found himself face to face with his best friend. Who he thought was long gone, torn to pieces with the rest of his former life. But here she was, smiling and breathing and alive. He couldn’t say anything, no words would leave his mouth. Instead he just let himself be wrapped in her embrace, knowing that at least she was safe.

“You’re here.” Summer said through sobs. “Oh my god, you’re really here.” She looked up at him, her green eyes sparkling with tears. “I thought I’d never see you again, I thought you were dead. I- how did you get out of there?”

He shrugged. “I ran, hid in that cabin in the woods until it was safe. Got lucky, I guess.” He conveniently didn’t mention that the only reason he wasn’t a bloodthirsty monster right now was because he was somehow immune to whatever they did to you, he didn’t feel like explaining that right now. “W-what about you?”

She held out her arm and it twisted unnaturally into a loop, the power she gained when all of this started. “I squeezed into a locker at school, waited until they were gone, and then I just ran, I ran and ran until I couldn’t anymore and I just collapsed. I was lucky Cantrip found me, before any wild animals did.”

“Cantrip?” He repeated, it was an odd name, one he hadn’t heard before. Must have been a survivor from outside of Deadwood, he would have known if a Cantrip lived there.

Over by the door, the girl with purple hair raised her hand. “That would be me, now can you two stop it with the tearful reunion and help him?” She gestured over to the injured man she was currently supporting.

Ashe nodded and stood up. “There’s a first aid kit in the other room. I’ve got like, a day of training under my belt but I’m sure I can help him somewhat.” Cantrip breathed a sigh of relief and followed after her, her companion’s arm slung over her shoulder.

“So that’s Cantrip,” William asked. “And the other one?”

“Doug, we ran into him on the outskirts of Rockfall. I don’t know if he even likes us very much but we have to stick together if we want to live.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Besides, I think he’s warming up to me.”

Stick together. That was the rule to live by now. No one lasted long by themselves. You might have the misconception that more companions means more mouths to feed, more targets to attract your enemies, and more hands to stab you in the back, but that wasn’t always true. When you depend on someone for survival, you’re less likely to betray them. The fact that there’s more people to look for food in the first place well makes up for the extra supplies they consume, and if worst comes to worst, at least when running from the Fallen you only have to be faster than the other person.

Besides, you go crazy like that, all alone with no one to turn to.

“What about your buddies? Mind introducing me to them?” Summer asked, resting her chin on her palms and looking up at him with that sort of quiet adoration she had always shown him. Well- and everybody, but mostly him.

He nodded, and spent the next hour or so facilitating conversations between them all. It turned out Cantrip was pretty cool, despite her prickly appearance. She had come from a small town in the north, and was able to run for the hills before things got bad. Her sister, Ruby, had been studying in New Haven when the Fallen started attacking however. She had made it her mission to look for her.

She had also been dating Summer for the past three months now. William tried his hardest to stamp out the leftover pang of jealousy that gave him.

“So you’re heading to Haven too?” Vyncent asked, lashing the tip of his tail back and forth. He was holding a glass of pseudo-lemonade that Cantrip had made for them out of a plant called sumac. She was apparently very skilled at foraging, and survival in general. The five of them had just sat through a very long tirade about the edible flora and fungi of the area. Vyncent had listened intently for the whole thing but the rest of them mostly checked out. (No matter how useful knowing the differences between toxic jack o lantern fungi and delicious chicken of the woods was.)

Cantrip nodded. “If Ruby is anywhere, it's there. What are you going there for?”

“Well.” William started. “Me and Ashe are immune? Resistant? Something like that, to whatever turns you to a fallen. We’re hoping that maybe a scientist or doctor there will be able to synthesize something that could reverse the transformation or maybe stave it off like a vaccine. It’s a shot in the dark but it's kind of all we have.”

“You’re immune?” Summer said around the straw currently delivering sumac-ade into her mouth. “That’s so cool! How do you know?”

Ashe wrung their hands. “We both got attacked and haven’t turned any more murderous than before so it's a pretty fair assumption.”
“Do you think it's like, genetic?” Cantrip mused. “Or some sort of mutation? What even causes Fallen anyway? It has to be linked to the powers, right? They showed up at around the same time didn’t they?”

“We wouldn’t be able to tell without a lab.” William answered. “And I don’t know, the Fallen are weird. They behave like nothing I've ever seen. None of them ever eat anything but they don’t even seem to need to. Hell, some of them have wings.”

"Uh- look I've never told any of you this before." Vyncent said suddenly. "But this isn't the first time I've seen Fallen. My home, Fauna, was overrun with them first. Only we called them Lich’s. I think when the portal that took me here opened up, some of them came through as well, and that’s why we’re in this whole mess. It’s not a disease or anything, it’s magic. Powerful magic we don’t have control over.”

They all stayed silent for a long, long time.

“So then…what are we supposed to do?” Ashe said in a small voice.

“I’m not sure, but you two have something to do with that. You must be extremely powerful magic users if you can resist the Fallen curse. Or something like that, it at least worked that way on Fauna.”

“Magic? I don’t know how to do any magic. Unless shifting into my other form counts, but that’s not super useful.”

‘I’d teach you, but I was never that good at magic. Besides, this place doesn’t seem to have the inherent magical energy that Fauna had- has. Your powers, the Fallen, they all come from outside sources. What those sources are, I have no idea.”

William dug his fingernails into his palm. Magic? What were they supposed to do about magic? Could anything be done? Was this all a fool’s errand? Was humanity just doomed? There had to be an explanation for all of this, he just needed to find it. As he was mulling this over, though, something about Vyncent’s testimony caught him off guard.

“Hey Vyn?” He asked, tiptoeing around the words like they were landmines. “How is Fauna like…doing?”

The elf shook his head. “I-I don’t know, last time I was there, there was a small group of survivors, but its been months now. Even if I can go back there, I don’t know if there’s anything to go back to.”

William wanted to say something to comfort his friend, say something about how he knew how it felt to lose your home, about how he was there for him, but his throat was dry and his mind was swimming too erratically to be of any use. So instead he just stood up.

“I-I need to go clear my head.” He stammered. “And uh- can you tell Dakota that I’m sorry? About earlier. I know he’s still upset at me.”

Cantrip nodded. “You know, there’s a ladder that leads to the roof I spotted on my way in.” She said with a smirk. “Looks like a good thinking spot.”

He thanked her under his breath, grabbed a shotgun off the wall, and headed outside.

The outdoors were quiet. Devoid of any sounds of traffic that would have come from the road a few dozen yards away. There was no noise that disturbed the peaceful silence of the neighboring homes. The wooden play structure that sat in the yard of the farmhouse next door seemed to be lying in wait for children to climb on it once again and find joy in its colorful canopy and ladders and slides, but for now its swings swayed gently in the wind, their chains squeaking softly, lonesomely.

Of course, the place wasn’t lifeless. The birds still sang, the squirrels still scampered along the branches of oaks and maples. It only seemed as if every human soul had up and left. If William’s mother was here she’d say something about the rapture. According to her logic, he was one of the unlucky sinners left behind.

The world would go on without humanity. Maybe it would even be better off. Ivy would swallow the buildings, chew them up until the only way to know they were ever here would be the kind of things that lay beneath the soil and never went away, and life would go on.

Such a lonely thing to think about.

William sat perched on the roof with the shotgun in his lap and his tired eyes focused on the horizon. He didn’t know how long he sat there, lost in his own thoughts, only passively looking out for danger, but it must have been a long time. Because by the time he was snapped back to reality by the sound of a raven landing next to him, it was close to sunset.

“What do you want?” He asked the bird.

With a flap of its wings and a scattering of feathers the raven transformed into someone familiar. “To check on you. You’ve been up here all day, you know.” Ashe said, unzipping their backpack and pulling out a bottle of soda, which he handed to him. “How are you doing?”

He unscrewed the cap and took a long swig, letting the carbonation dance on his tongue. He hadn’t realized how parched he was, or how much he missed high fructose corn syrup. “I’m alright.” He muttered, not bothering to put any effort into the lie.

“...Right.” She said, sitting down next to him and hugging her knees to her chest. “You know what I said yesterday? About how I didn’t really have any dreams before this all started?”

William nodded and shifted closer, leaning his head on their shoulder.

“Well, that was kind of a lie. I just didn’t say what it was because I thought it was kind of stupid.”

“I bet it wasn’t stupid.” he murmured. “Tell me about it.”

Ashe smiled and threw a wing around him, like a big feathery blanket. “Well, me and a friend from school. We both really liked music, so we wanted to start a band. Me on drums, him on guitar. We practiced every weekend in my garage, sometimes my mom would even join in. We were going to find more members once we graduated, really make it official.” Her breath hitched. “But, obviously that’s not happening anymore. I don’t even know if he’s alive.”

“I’m sorry Ashe…” He whispered. “I think you would have had a great band.” They both watched as the golden light of the dying sun began to creep its way across the treetops. “Your friend, what was his name?”

“Duck.” They answered with a certain fondness. She turned her attention to the sunset, the rays reflecting off the lenses of her glasses and lending an ethereal glow to her silver hair. “God, I almost forgot how beautiful it is out here.”

William nodded, but he wasn’t looking at the sunset.

“We’re going to find a way to fix this, you know.” They continued. “It can’t end here, there’s too much to live for. We’re going to save the world. How, I have no idea, but we’re doing it together.”

“And if there isn’t a way? If this is our new life?”

“Then I don’t think it’ll be so bad if you’re here.”

Their eyes met, and a rush of butterflies awakened in William’s stomach and gathered in his throat. He decided not to say anything. What could he even say? That he thought she was gorgeous and funny and smart and that he’d fallen head over heels for someone he met two days ago? No, that was crazy. Better to stew in his feelings for a while until he built up the nerve to confess. (although, knowing his track record, that might be never.)

Ashe took his hand. “I think you’re really special, William. You know that?”

He opened his mouth to say something, but instead he heard the all-too familiar croak of a raven coming from nearby.

Perched in a dead birch tree that seemed to stare at him with dozens of wooden eyes, a raven sat, glaring at him.

Not just any raven, his raven. Still following him. Still leading him along like a pack of wolves to carrion.

He snatched up the shotgun and descended down the ladder, Ashe gliding down after him.

“Woah, woah man, where are you going?”

“Following that thing.” He said. “You coming or not?”

They shrank into their hoodie. “I don’t know…If my dad finds out…”

“Does your dad have to know?”

Ashe looked like she was going to say something, but ran up beside him instead. “Fine, but this better be good.”

“Oh it will.” He said with a smile.

The raven gazed at them expectantly before taking off, leading the pair deep into the trees.

Chapter Text

The forest looked different at night. Unsettling. The moonlight danced unnaturally off the leaves as wind rustled them. Leaf litter crunched beneath William and Ashe’s heels. All the while the raven stared at them with its piercing red eyes from the branches, leading them deeper into the wood.

Every once in a while William kicked aside the leaves to reveal the white shapes of bones. Some of them definitely belonged to animals, others he wasn't so sure. His heart pounded against his ribcage. Every noise in the underbrush could be his only warning for something that would relish in tearing them both to bloody shreds.

Ashe stayed close behind him, not daring to stray too close. They constantly glanced over their shoulder, wings tensed, just waiting for something to prove their father was right. That the outdoors was far too dangerous for them.

The raven croaked, beckoning them forward.

"Are you sure about this, William?" Ashe nearly whispered.

"Of course I am." No, he wasn't. His gut was screaming at him to run back, to leave whatever the raven was trying to show them and retreat back to the safety of the house, but somehow his brain had convinced itself that this raven was the key to everything, and in the end, his brain won the battle.

"Okay, but if we die, Mark is going to kill you." Ashe swatted away a spider that was dangling in front of her, making a face.

"I'm accepting that risk." William muttered, barely paying attention as he tried to dodge the gnarled roots underfoot. The deeper they went, the further they walked, the more ancient the forest seemed to get. Trees that might have been older than anyone William has ever met stretching to block out any moonlight still remaining. Twisted and winding branches covered in lichen and polypores that William could have sworn glowed when he pointed his flashlight back away from them.

"I don't know why I'm even following you." She continued. "I guess it's because I trust you. Why do I trust you? I've known you for three days!" Ashe dragged her beanie over her eyes and made a frustrated noise. "I just- this is crazy. I mean- I guess everything has been crazy lately."

William turned around to look at them. Their lavender eyes stared into his, pleading for an answer. They were such an odd color, it mesmerized him. He tried to search for words to say. Words that would comfort her, comfort himself. The best he could think of was: "You can go back if you want, I won't make you stay."

Ashe seemed to consider it for a moment, their wings quivering as if they wanted to take flight. Instead their gaze steeled and they walked to William's side. "I'm not leaving you alone out here.” She said, nudging him. “No one can afford to be alone anymore, especially not you.”

William laughed. “Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I-I meant that you don’t deserve to be alone, it wasn’t supposed to be an insult!” She hid her face in her wings.

“Well you’re too late, now I’m offended.”

Ashe shoved him to the side. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

William had to admit that despite all his teasing, Ashe’s comment that he didn’t deserve to be alone made him feel a strange kind of fuzzy. Despite the darkness around them Ashe was warm and bright and safe. Maybe without them he would have turned back already, but they were right, these woods felt a little less lonely with someone by his side.

And on they went, through the trees. Jumping at any noise, looking to each other for comfort. It would be fine, they were armed, nothing could hurt them, (that wasn't true, of course, but somehow they almost believed it.)

“So where do you think we’re even headed?” Ashe asked, dipping beneath a curtain of moss. “We have to be pretty deep into the woods by now.”

“No clue, but I can still hear the creek that runs by the house, so hopefully wherever it is we can still find our way back.” He replied, pointing his flashlight through the bushes in the direction of the sound of trickling water.

“Hopefully?. We can’t get stuck out here without shelter, we’d become Fallen-food.”

“I told you they don’t eat people,” William corrected, “But yeah we’d get murdered.”

Ashe kicked a rock down the very rough excuse for a path they were walking on and squinted up at the raven. “You better be taking us to like- a full service hotel or something.” She muttered under her breath, just loud enough for William to catch. He shot her a look.

“What? I miss waffles, and fluffed pillows.”

Yeah, that was fair. If there was one mundane thing he missed it was apple juice so it’s not like he could blame anyone for missing a complimentary hotel breakfast.

Eventually, after what felt like hours, the thick brambles opened into a clearing, all long grasses and wildflowers and the buzzing of summer insects. William caught glimpses of fireflies flitting through the switchgrass and field mice peeking out of their woven nests to look at them, but the raven ignored these, and flew up to perch on the weathervane of a house that sat in the middle of the small prairie.

It was just a house, constructed of pine planks and forest green shingles, but the light in the window was on, and moonlight reflected off smoke billowing from the chimney. Someone was waiting for them, it seemed.

Ashe immediately started sprinting towards the door but William’s feet remained planted to the ground, until a rustle in the bushes behind him startled him enough to walk towards the mysterious house as well.

When they drew closer, the raven flew in through an open window. William peeked inside. It looked like just a normal home, completely in order, almost uncomfortably so. Every other house has been left in a hurry, clothes snatched from drawers, doors left hanging off the hinges, tire marks skidding down the driveway. This was still, immaculate, like its residents had gone on vacation and made sure to leave the place spotless before they left.

Because no one was there.

When Ashe knocked on the door, there was no answer. The doorbell didn’t yield a response either. Instead they just heard a rattling and a click from the other side and it swung open, the raven sitting proudly on the doorknob.
William had never seen it this close up before, it was only now that he realized its eyes were such a striking red it made him flinch.

“Hello?” Ashe asked the emptiness, “Is anyone there?” There wasn’t, of course there wasn’t. This place was empty as any other house, and that would have been fine if the flames in the fireplace were not roaring, of a record player in the corner was not softly playing an old song he could not recall the name of.

Ashe’s wings shivered, but her voice held no fear. “That’s… weird.” They murmured, eyes scanning the cozy living room.

There was a plate of freshly baked cookies that sat on the coffee table, the chocolate chips still melted, and normally William would have the sense to not take one but nothing made sense anymore and so he took an indulgent bite out of one of them and let the chocolate smudge on his fingers. It felt like the first real food he had eaten in months.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ashe asked, their voice whispered. “Someone lives here, we can’t just take their stuff. They’re probably just out for a minute, that’s all.”

The raven took a cookie too, William wasn’t sure if it was safe for birds to eat chocolate, but he wasn’t going to try to stop it.

William glared at Ashe and wiped crumbs from the corners of his mouth. “Feel free to suit yourself, but I don’t think anyone’s coming. Now let's just get what we came here for.”

Ashe frowned. “And what is that, exactly?”

As if answering the question, the raven flapped its huge wings and pulled open a drawer in a finely carved hardwood desk and clacked its beak, beckoning them closer.

Hand in barely trembling hand, the two of them peered into the open drawer.

It was a book.

It was old and bound in black leather, its bosses formed out of silver. When Ashe picked it up it shed about a pound of dust, and a few pages had come loose from the text block and were sticking out of the edges. It looked like something so ancient even breathing on it could have disastrous consequences on whatever knowledge was kept in there.

Ashe opened to a random page and her eyes darted across it, the furrow in between her brows getting deeper the more she read.

“What does it say?” William asked, peering over their shoulder, but strangely, the words only looked like gibberish to him. All except for an illustration that took up half the page, of a humanoid creature with dripping fangs and claws and horns and a pair of eyes that glowed like hellfire.

A Fallen.

That was…that should be impossible.

“You can read that?”

“Can’t you?” Her expression only gained more unease when he shook his head no.

“Well, uh. Apparently they go by many names, we call them Fallen, Vyncent called them Liches, and this book calls them Vykrocen.”

“Vykrocen?” He repeated.

Ashe read further. “They’re from an unknown dimension, but they can be summoned using a specific ritual, after that they will do anything the summoner says. Due to their unique methods of multiplying, and their natural weapons, they are most often used to exterminate entire worlds.”

William’s breath caught in his throat. “So, you’re saying a person caused all this.”

They picked at some stray threads on their hoodie. “...yep, and if I were to guess its the same person who summoned them to Vyncent’s world, considering they came directly from there and brought Vyncent with them.”

William laughed in disbelief. “This entire time, everything that happened. It’s been because of one guy?”

Ashe went silent for a long time.

“There’s a way to get rid of them, too.” They said quietly.

“The way to get rid of them is to bash their heads in. I thought we established this.”

“No,” She opened to the page and held it in front of him like he could read it, “all of them. if we find and kill whoever summoned them, then everyone who was turned goes back to normal, and the Fallen who aren’t transformed people will just get sent back to their home dimension. Then well, our loved ones are still dead, but at least we won’t be in active danger anymore.”

“So all we have to do… Is track down whoever summoned them and murder him, and everything will be fine?” It sounded too good to be true, too simple, he almost didn’t believe it.

Ashe shrugged. “It’s the best bet we have.”

“And what about us? Our Immunity? Is there anything about that?”

“I-uh, I’d have to read further, but I don’t think so.” She readjusted her beanie and frowned at him. “You should get some sleep, though. You look exhausted.”

He was exhausted, that was true.

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine,” They assured him, wrapping a knitted blanket around his shoulders, “I’ll keep watch while I read and wake you up if anything happens, promise.”

William sleepily protested, but eventually he relented and laid down next to Ashe on the dusty leather sofa. It was really cozy in here, it reminded him of his old house. He fell asleep far quicker than he expected, as Ashe traced patterns into his hair and hummed along to the song on the record player.

He woke up to Ashe shaking him and the raven making a truly impressive amount of noise before flying away.

“Wh-” William said groggily. “What’s happening?”

Ashe shushed him and pointed out towards the window.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The horned head of a Fallen treaded through the field. Its soulless eyes darted around, searching for what made the noise. William had to bite down on his cheek to stop himself from screaming.

Ashe had thrown the blanket over them both, but it wasn’t going to be enough. It would smell them soon, and then it would be over. His shotgun was still leaning against the wall near the door where he set it down. He knew he couldn’t get to it in time.

He held onto Ashe’s hand as her breath quickened, eyes squeezed tight. Maybe it would just leave, maybe they would be fine. That’s what you could tell yourself.

William knew they were going to die here.

Ashe whispered something that William couldn’t hear and held him closer.

It wasn’t the worst place to die.

Maybe it would be quick.

The Fallen drew ever closer, sniffing the air, sniffing for blood.

It let out a high pitched snarl and stared directly at the two of them. Ashe made a strange, strangled sound. It had found them.

This was it.

A knife whizzed through the air and lodged itself deep in the Fallen’s skill.

As it collapsed to the floor someone came into view to remove the dripping dagger from its head and stab it in the heart to kill it for good, someone William knew well.

“Vyncent!” He shouted, “We’re in here!”

The relief on his face when he saw them made William feel about every emotion at once. He ignored the door completely and climbed in through the window to hug them.
“You’re alive! We were so worried about you, neither of you are hurt are you? We looked everywhere- why are you here?”

Ashe held up the book. “We followed William’s bird to get this,” They explained, casting their gaze to the floor. “I uh- sorry we worried you.”

“You two just disappeared, everyone thought you got snatched.” Dakota chimed in. “And you almost did, too.” He kicked at the corpse of the Fallen.

“Oh my god, William, never ever do that ever again.” Summer added,appearing behind Dakota and tugging on the sleeves of her hoodie. “You almost gave me a heart attack…I could have died!”

“You wouldn’t have died.” Cantrip said flatly, opening the door. “But seriously, never do that again.”

“Yeah, I think we get the picture.” He snapped, his mouth felt dry. “Thanks for that though, you saved our asses.”

“No problem!” Vyncent said. He was smiling, but his tail was twisting and turning in the way it did when he was nervous.

It made him realize that everyone’s clothes were singed, faces smeared with soot. They looked so… tired.

“Is anything wrong?” Ashe asked cautiously, still making an effort to appear as small as possible. ”Did something happen?”

Their rescuers exchanged a look that William could tell meant that something very bad happened, and they were trying to figure out how to say it.

“That's kind of why we’re here.” Cantrip said slowly. “Here, you’re going to just want to come with us.”

Chapter Text

William stared up at the smoke pouring from the still-burning building. Staining the dawn sky a thick, sickening grey. Respite destroyed, leaving nothing but cinders and an acidic taste in the back of William’s throat. He suddenly, hauntingly realized which members of their group failed to walk among them now.

He threw a wild, fearful look back towards the others.

“Mark, Tide, Doug. They aren’t still inside are they?”

He heard an odd, strangled noise escape from Ashe’s throat.

“We don’t know.” Cantrip admitted. “They were still asleep when we all left to look for you two. We don’t even know how the fire started. Faulty generator maybe?”

William looked down and noticed with a start that the flames were not a normal color. They were too golden. A subtle difference, but easily noticed if you know what you're looking for.

“No.” He spat, “This wasn’t a normal fire.” He was familiar enough with magical flame to know this fit the bill, and he only knew one other person who wielded it.

He took a moment to survey the others. Summer was nervously tying herself into knots as Dakota paced back and forth, anger carving furrows into his brow. Vyncent stood at attention, hand never leaving the hilt of his sword. Ashe seemed frozen in place, staring unmoving at the wreckage. A bead of sweat ran down her cheek, but he couldn’t tell if it came from the heat or from cold, stark fear.

Cantrip looked stern, gaze steeled, but otherwise unbothered.

William took a deep breath. “I’m going in.” He muttered.

“What?” Summer yelped. “Are you nuts? It’s on fire!”

He stared at her and picked up a smoldering branch that had broken off from an overhanging oak. He blew on it until the unnaturally colored flames started up again and waved his hand through it. No reaction, it was on the cusp of being uncomfortably warm, but it didn’t burn him, not in the slightest. “Magical flame can’t hurt magical flame.”

“Oh…” She said, realization dawning on her face. “So it was Doug then?’

“Had to have been.” He lamented.

“Shit!” Dakota cried out, kicking a rock into the stratosphere. “What if they’re still in there?’

William took a deep breath. “Dakota, If they’re still in there they’re already dead.”

“No, no, you shut the fuck up! They’re fine, they’re alive. I’m not going to be left alone out here, not again.”

“Dakota…”

“Why are you all so calm about this?”

Everyone froze. Vyncent was the first person to speak up.

“Dakota, losing people is a fact of life now.”

“Stop acting like I don’t already know that,” Dakota growled, angry tears streaming down his face.

William narrowed his eyes at the still flaming skeleton of the house, rain was beginning to drizzle down from gathering clouds. Drip drip drip. The fire was starting to subside.

“I’m going in.” He said. “But if they’re still alive in there I doubt they’re in good enough shape to travel with us.”

“Then we’ll stay with them.” Dakota said, “Until they’re better, as long as it takes, whatever it takes.”

William bit back a retort about how much of a death sentence that was, he really didn’t feel like making Dakota any angrier at him. Instead, he just pulled his hoodie up over his nose and mouth to block the smoke and walked right into the blaze.

The place was in complete ruins, but he knew that. Every inch of the place was scorched to blackened wood and drywall. He swept through the rooms, only half looking for Mark and Tide, should they be charred skeletons or otherwise. He was mostly looking for supplies, things that could keep them alive during their inevitable journey away from here.

He found a whole lot of nothing in the house itself, so he descended to where the fire started, the bunker. Everything down there was similarly blackened and smoking. Supplies destroyed. Every heavy metal door opened wide to let the blaze spread.

All except for one.

The door to Ashe's room stood in front of him, proud and smug and only a little smudged with soot. Hope unfurled in William's chest. Maybe Mark and Tide were inside, hiding, waiting to be rescued. He reached out and touched the door handle, cool and smooth in his palm. No fire lurked behind it. Slowly, he opened it. It creaked inward and both William and the flames held their breath.

Nobody.

Just a pile of CDs and some supplies that survived, some food, two first aid kits, and a few faded red cans of gasoline. He was grateful that at least some things were saved, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they were left there intentionally. Lying on top of them was a Zippo lighter made of dark steel, engraved with a pattern of drifting feathers. He couldn't remember ever seeing it before, someone put it here, as a gift.

He picked it up, and the cold metal felt heavy in his hands. It looked…wrong somehow. Like it didn't belong like it was photoshopped into their world. He thought about putting it down, and honestly, he really should have, but curiosity got the best of him and he flipped it open, striking it.

The blue flame danced and wavered, and suddenly it hit William that it was not fueled by lighter fluid, but magic. His magic.

Without a word, he pocketed the Zippo and gathered up the paltry supplies.

The others were all in various states of worry by the time he arrived, and once they noticed he was alone that worry immediately got about three times worse.

"Anything?" Vyncent asked, looking up from polishing his sword.

William shook his head. "They aren't there, alive or otherwise. Either they ran away or someone took them."

"They wouldn't just leave us," Dakota said, digging his nails into his biceps. "If they escaped they would be back already."

"So the only two adults in our group got kidnapped for who knows what reason." Cantrip snapped. "Fucking great."

"Do you have any idea where Doug might have taken them?" Ashe asked.

"No clue. I didn't exactly know him that well, you know. We teamed up because we had to and he wasn't too keen on heart to hearts."

"He seemed nice enough." Summer whispered. "Why did he— I don't understand."

"I don't think we ever will," Vyncent added bitterly. "I'm sure he had his reasons but—"

"We're going after them, right?" Dakota continued pacing, faster now. "I mean we can't- we can't just leave them."

"We don't even have an idea of where they might be." William pointed out. "Even if we do find out where they went, it could be too dangerous to be worth it."

"The hell do you mean 'too dangerous to be worth it'? If we were in their situation they'd go save us without a second thought!"

"I'm saying we need to weigh our options." He sighed. Knowing saying this would only make Dakota even more pissed at him, whatever. As long as he's alive, as long as everyone is alive.

"I agree with William," Cantrip said. "I know you guys obviously have a lot of connection to those two, but I don't, and I'm not risking Summer getting hurt from going on a wild goose chase after Doug."

"Risk me getting hurt?" Summer protested. "What about you? It's better to stay in a large group, you know this. We should protect our own, and right now, Mark and Tide count as part of that."

"We've known them for three days, Summer! They're not our business, our business is getting to Haven in one piece!"

"Everyone stop!" Ashe shouted above the arguing. "Just shut up, this isn't the time. What we need to do is make a plan. This book, I looked through it, it has spells, things that can help us. I saw a tracking spell, we can at least find out which direction they went, we can decide what to do once we have that information at least."

Everyone turned their heads to look at them.

“A tracking spell?” Vyncent asked. “Are you sure that’ll work?”

She shrugged. “Wouldn’t hurt to try, I’d need some extra stuff though, does anyone have something that could point in a specific direction? Like— a compass or something.”

Nervous glances were exchanged across the group until finally William unclasped his necklace and handed it to Ashe. “Will that work?” He asked.

She peered at it curiously for a moment. “Yeah, that’s perfect.” They hugged it and the book to their chest. “Magic spells, yeah, gonna cast one.” She didn’t look too enthused at the prospect.

“Do you want us to leave you alone or—?”

“I mean, yeah? You guys can go investigate the crime scene or something. I’ll catch up when I’m ready.”

“Alright well, I’m going to see if I can catch anything to eat.” Vyncent said, “You want to tag along Cantrip? You’ve got more of an eye for edible plants than I do.”

She nodded and the two of them disappeared into the woods. Dakota had already gone off on his own, to where didn’t matter. William let out a long sigh and started walking along the perimeter of the burned-out house, studying for any clues. It was calming at least, and held a certain familiarity to it.

Footsteps sounded behind him and he turned to see Summer, trailing after him with a look of curiosity.

“Looking for anything in particular?” She asked.

“I don’t know.” He admitted, “Anything that can help.”

“You’ll find something. You were always the guy people called to find their lost pets back in Deadwood.” She assured him.

William winced at the mention of their now destroyed hometown, the two of them its only legacy as nature slowly crumbled its ruins back into soil, miles away from here, miles away from the people he called home.

He spotted a footprint marring the muddy earth near the driveway. From what he could tell it wasn’t Doug’s. It was a dress shoe for one, not a worn sneaker, and he would guess it was several sizes too small.

“Doug wasn’t alone.” He observed, “Someone helped him, someone who thinks arson is a black tie event apparently.”

“That’s…weird.” Summer said, “Oh look! Tire tracks!”

His eyes drifted to where she was pointing, sure enough, there were a pair of thick black tire tracks skidding across the asphalt of the driveway and careening down the road. They left by car, and in a hurry too.

“Shit, they could be miles away by now.” William hissed through his teeth.

Summer kicked at the torn-up grass. “I’m sorry Will, I really am. I really thought he wasn’t— He wouldn’t—”

“I know Summer.” He muttered. “I’m not blaming you, or Cantrip. You were just doing what you had to and you trusted someone you shouldn’t have. That’s not a crime.”

“Yeah, I know…I just— I wish this hadn’t happened, I wish we at least knew why.”

“I do too.”

Ashe’s voice sounded out from behind them. “Well, It worked! I think… Do you two want to take a look at this?” She walked up to them, holding the book under one arm and the necklace in the other, the pendant was floating, and pointing down the road and towards where the highway was. William noticed the necklace now held the same odd, out-of-place quality the Zippo did. Strange. “It’s pointing to them, so if we follow this, we should find where they are.”

Summer’s eyes widened. “Oh my god… I know what’s in that direction! Do you think they went to Haven?”

William considered this. “It’s not impossible, likely even. I can’t for the life of me figure out why, though.”

“The why doesn’t matter right now, just the where. The only question is how we’re going to get there. I don't think we have enough stuff to last us on foot, we’re basically on the edge of nowhere, and the places we can pick up supplies between here and Haven are…sparse.”

“We have gas don’t we?” Summer asked.

“Yeah, about six gallons, why?”

“Me, Cantrip, and Doug found a house with an RV a little down the road, it should fit all of us, could have some useful things in it, and it will get us to Haven way quicker than on foot. Plus, it means not sleeping on the ground, and protection from Fallen if they find us.”

“That’s…useful.” Ashe said, “But we should wait until the others come back to make a decision.”

It ended up being a couple of hours before they returned. Dakota hadn’t been doing much but Vyncent and Cantrip together managed to gather enough greens, mushrooms, and squirrels to make a relatively nutritious meal. As they ate, they discussed the plan, and it was mutually agreed that it was their best bet. They’d leave in the morning, for now, Cantrip took the first watch as they pitched their plundered tents. Normally William, Vyncent, and Dakota would all share one, but with Dakota still not any less angry with William, Ashe volunteered to trade places.

The sound of crickets filled the air, but not enough to drown out Vyncent’s soft snores. William lay awake, as usual, his thoughts racing too much to fall asleep.

“You awake?” He whispered to the faint outline of wings curled beside him. Ashe made a noise of protest and turned around to face him.

“Almost wasn’t, but it's fine.” They whispered back, “What is it?”

“I was just wondering if you felt okay, after everything.”

Ashe went quiet for a long moment.

“That’s sweet of you to ask.” They murmured, “But honestly? I don’t really know. I’m scared, I guess. Scared I’m going to lose my dad. Scared I’m going to lose one of you. Scared that all of this is going to be for nothing. Scared that we can’t fix anything.”

She went quiet again.

“Scared that this is just life now.”

“I get that,” William said solemnly.

Ashe silently wrapped a wing around William and pulled in closer.

“I feel safer around you, I think.” She said.

William smiled and reached for their hand in the dark, holding it, tracing a thumb across it in an attempt at comfort.

“Me too.”

“Do you think it’s going to work out? That we’ll get them back?”

At first, William didn’t really know how to answer. He wasn’t optimistic about much of anything. But there was something about the way that Ashe’s eyes shone in the faint moonlight that for at least a moment, made him really believe it was all going to be okay.

“Yeah.” He whispered, “I think it will.”