Chapter 31 – Sides
Umbra stood a short distance away and watched as Farah extended her hands, pale light spilling from her palms and pouring into the scorched earth where the broodmother had fallen. The ground itself seemed stained, dark veins of corruption spreading through the soil like rot beneath skin. Under Farah’s holy fire, that corruption recoiled and then burned away in slow, stubborn patches, leaving behind nothing but blackened dirt and drifting ash.
Ordinarily, it would have taken longer for the Witch to gestate a broodmother to that stage. The process required time, biomass, and careful shaping. This one had matured far too quickly.
Umbra narrowed her eyes.
She suspected the Witch was accelerating the process by feeding more of her own blood into the transformation, forcing growth at the expense of stability. That would explain the speed.
It was both reassuring and deeply troubling.
Desperation meant weakness, but it also meant escalation.
If the Witch was pouring more of herself into each creation, then there were likely more half-finished horrors scattered throughout the district, ticking toward completion. Ones Umbra and Farah had not yet located.
They had already encountered far too many transformed civilians. Twisted figures that had once been ordinary people now lurked in alleyways and recently abandoned storefronts, reduced to snarling, mindless shapes driven only by hunger and instinct.
The evacuation efforts only complicated matters further. Military vehicles blocked intersections, police officers banged on doors, and Loudspeakers blared confused instructions that overlapped and contradicted one another. Some residents panicked the moment they saw uniforms, grabbing children and running without direction. Others refused to move at all, demanding explanations no one had time to give.
They were caught between terror and disbelief, frozen by not knowing what they were running from.
A sharp, piercing scream split the air. Umbra and Farah locked eyes.
They did not need to speak.
Farah launched herself skyward in a burst of radiant light, wings unfurling as she streaked toward the sound. Umbra broke into a sprint a heartbeat later, her armoured boots tearing up clumps of grass as she exploded out of the park and into the neighbouring yards.
A corpsestalker lunged at her from behind a shed. She cut it down mid-stride, her spear flashing in a clean arc that severed its head before it could fully commit to the leap. Another skittered across a fence line; she drove her shield into it without slowing, shattering its ribcage and sending it tumbling lifelessly into a flowerbed.
She vaulted a wooden fence in a single fluid motion, landed, and immediately dispatched another that had been crawling beneath a porch.
By the time she cleared the final yard, Farah was already there.
Rays of concentrated holy fire lanced downward, striking with surgical precision. Two monsters were reduced to smouldering husks. Another darted aside, its flesh blistering but intact, only to be forced back by another burst of light.
Umbra landed heavily in the centre of the yard, placing herself squarely between the monsters and a family of five huddled in the corner against their back fence.
A corpsestalker hurled itself at her.
She pivoted and slammed her shield into it with such force that it blasted through the wooden fence in a spray of splinters, only to be caught mid-flight by Farah’s flame and incinerated before it hit the ground.
Two more rushed her from either side. Umbra stepped forward, driving Halcyon’s Spire through the first and into the second in a single thrust. With a roar of effort, she tore the spear free in a vertical rip, splitting both torsos open as though they were made of wet parchment.
Three remained.
They attempted to flank her, recognising instinctively that brute force would not suffice. Umbra deliberately turned her back to one of them, trusting utterly in Farah.
Her shield smashed into another, crushing its skull with a metallic crack. Halcyon’s Spire snapped backward and punched cleanly through the third’s head.
The last creature let out an unearthly howl as Farah’s fire engulfed it completely, reducing it to ash in seconds.
Silence followed, broken only by the crackle of lingering flame.
Umbra exhaled slowly. The exertion was beginning to weigh on her. They had been sweeping the district for nearly half an hour, and the infestation was broader than she had anticipated. Each engagement chipped away at her reserves, and they were covering too much ground too quickly.
She turned toward the family.
The parents were pressed back against the fence, arms wrapped around their three children. All five flinched at the sight of her towering, armoured form. The children were sobbing openly now, faces buried against their mother’s coat.
Umbra’s expression softened, and she lowered herself onto one knee to reduce the distance between them.
“You are safe, for the moment,” she said gently. “Did you not hear the evacuation orders?”
The woman shook her head rapidly, tears streaking down her face. “P-please… please don’t kill us.”
Umbra tilted her head, faintly confused. “Why would I rescue you only to harm you afterward? No. I am here to protect as many as I can and to destroy the source of this chaos.”
She glanced toward the street beyond the yard.
“It is too late for you to evacuate safely now. Return inside. Board your doors and windows. Stay away from them. Do not leave your house until officials declare the area secure. Make no unnecessary noise.”
One of the boys, no older than eight, peered up at her through tear-wet lashes. “Are you the knight from YouTube?”
Umbra blinked once. “I suppose that I am, young one. I may look frightening, but I give you my word that I stand between you and these creatures.”
Farah descended beside her in a gentle sweep of wings, light pooling around her feet as she landed. The family’s fear shifted into stunned awe.
“It’s an angel, mummy,” the young girl whispered.
Farah’s gaze flicked toward the horizon. “We cannot linger,” she said in Ganymedean. “There are more of them, and I believe the Earth military has begun active engagement.”
As if to punctuate her words, distant gunfire rattled through the air.
Umbra rose to her full height, towering once more.
“Hide,” she instructed the family firmly. “Do not come out until this is over.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned and sprinted toward the next confirmed broodmother location. She did not accelerate fully until she had cleared several blocks, unwilling to draw attention directly back to the family’s home.
Farah lifted into the air again, keeping pace just above and behind her as they moved toward the next battle.
Samuel lay pressed deep into a patch of overgrown bushes at the edge of someone’s backyard, barely daring to breathe as something golden streaked across the sky overhead so quickly that he almost convinced himself he had imagined it. The flash of light was gone in less than a second, vanishing beyond the rooftops, and only afterward did the sound reach him, a tremendous rhythmic thunder that pounded through the air and rattled in his chest before slowly fading into the distance.
He realised, a moment later, that he had been holding his breath.
It left him in a shaky exhale, his body trembling as the leaves around him rustled softly from the force of his release. For several long seconds he did not move at all, keeping himself curled up as small as he could make himself.
When nothing else immediately tore through the sky or crashed through the fences nearby, he allowed himself to remain hidden, telling himself he was being cautious.
In truth, he was paralysed.
What had happened to his friends?
The question circled endlessly in his mind. It was as if something had quietly rearranged their thoughts while he was not looking. They still laughed and argued, they still sounded like themselves most of the time, but whenever Umbra was mentioned, their expressions shifted into something disturbingly certain. They spoke of her as though she were a saviour, a misunderstood guardian who had come to elevate humanity.
Samuel could not see it that way.
Umbra was not benevolent nor was she misunderstood.
She was monstrous.
When they had split into two groups earlier, supposedly to scout for open spaces where they could “make a stand” if it came to that, Samuel had drifted toward the back of one group, careful not to draw attention to himself. At the first opportunity, when a fence and a corner gave him cover, he had quietly peeled away and gone in the opposite direction.
He told himself it was temporary.
But deep down he knew it was not.
There was distant gunfire echoing through the suburbs now, sharp cracks that rolled unevenly between houses. He chose to believe that it was the military engaging the creatures that Luna and the others seemed disturbingly comfortable aligning themselves with. The thought made his stomach twist.
Had they not seen the larger ones?
The grotesque shapes with swollen, distended bellies that pulsed and split open every few minutes to disgorge fresh horrors into the world. He had seen one from a distance and barely kept from vomiting.
Who would look at that and think it was salvation?
Most of the smaller creatures he had encountered while slipping through yards and alleyways had ignored him entirely, their movements erratic and mindless, driven by instincts that had nothing to do with him. They did not coordinate or speak, they simply roamed or hunted or skittered from shadow to shadow.
Even now, faint screams and shouts drifted across the neighbourhood, mingling with the occasional pop of gunfire.
Samuel had never wanted to fight anyone in his life. He had never thrown a punch outside of a schoolyard scuffle that ended in tears and apologies. He had always believed that Rachel and Emily were similar, that they disliked conflict as much as he did.
But after the transformation, something in them had shifted.
It was as if their priorities had rearranged themselves. Their tolerance for violence had expanded. It was as if a darker layer had settled beneath their usual personalities, influencing them in ways they either did not notice or refused to acknowledge.
He had accepted the so-called gift because it had promised too much to ignore. At the time, the offer had seemed impossible to refuse, and everyone else was doing it…
Now he understood the cost.
So he had made a choice.
He would leave them.
He would find someone in authority, someone who could stop this spiral before it consumed everything, and he would tell them what he knew. He would turn himself in if he had to. Admit that he had accepted the Witch’s deal.
The idea of betraying his friends made his chest ache, but the alternative felt worse.
He had listened to the way they talked about casualties, about how sacrifices would be “worth it in the end.” They said it with such calm certainty that it frightened him more than the monsters did.
Would it be worth it?
Every other transformed thing he had seen outside their small group had been mindless, stripped of personality and self.
If that was the future Umbra was building, then someone had to oppose it.
Even if that someone was him.
Samuel finally crawled out of the bushes and darted across the street on all fours, his black scales catching the sunlight in brief, betraying flashes. He moved quickly, awkwardly aware of how unnatural he must look from a distance. The scent of gunpowder lingered faintly in the air, metallic and sharp, and he made the impulsive decision to follow it. It was a reckless decision, and he knew it.
He only hoped that whoever was holding the guns would hesitate long enough to hear him out instead of shooting first.
If they did shoot him, a small, bitter part of him thought, maybe he would deserve it for playing even a minor role in unleashing this nightmare.
He vaulted a fence, then another, trying to keep to backyards and narrow passages where he would be less visible. His heart pounded harder with every distant crack of gunfire.
Then a mechanical whirring noise drifted down from above.
He slowed and looked up.
A drone hovered several houses over, its camera angled downward as it drifted methodically along the street.
Samuel’s mind raced. Was it military? Police? Some civilian news crew risking too much for footage? He had no way of knowing.
But it was watching.
And if it was watching, then someone else was seeing what it saw.
As if the moment demanded urgency, he heard the thud of approaching footsteps from somewhere beyond the fence line ahead of him.
He swallowed hard.
This was the gamble.
Stepping into a patch of open yard, he waved both arms at the drone as frantically as he could, then dropped down onto his knees and huddled low, making himself as non-threatening as possible.
He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for whatever response his choice would bring.
“Over here,” called out one of the voices from beyond the fence gruffly, the kind of voice that sounded used to being obeyed without question.
“Yeah, I see the target over the fence,” another replied, closer now, more alert.
Samuel curled in on himself even tighter, his claws digging into the grass beneath him as though he could anchor himself to the earth. Every instinct screamed at him to move, to run, to do anything other than remain exposed in the open like this, but he forced himself to stay exactly where he was. If he bolted now, they would assume the worst.
His throat felt like it had closed up entirely, anxiety wrapping around it like a vicious lover that refused to loosen its grip. He tried to swallow and found he barely could. His mind shouted at him to speak, to tell them he was surrendering, to beg them not to shoot, but his body refused to cooperate.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
He could not see them yet, only hear the shifting of boots on pavement and the subtle mechanical rustle of gear adjusting. He waited for the deafening crack of gunfire that would signal the end of everything. He imagined the impact, the sudden pain, the abrupt silence afterward.
Instead, a voice spoke again, much closer now.
“Are you hostile?”
It was the same gruff man.
Samuel’s breathing sped up uncontrollably, each inhale shallow and uneven. His heart pounded so violently that he was certain they could see it moving beneath his scaled chest. He forced air into his lungs and tried to push words past the tightness strangling his throat.
“N-n-no,” he stammered at last, the words tumbling over each other. “Not h-hostile. P-p-please don’t sh-shoot.”
There was a brief pause that felt like it lasted an eternity.
Shadows stretched across the grass around him, long and angular, telling him he was now surrounded. Slowly, trembling, he lowered one arm just enough to peek out from beneath his sleeve. His reptilian eyes adjusted to the light, and he saw them clearly for the first time.
Four soldiers stood in a loose semicircle around him, weapons angled downward but unmistakably ready to be raised at a moment’s notice. Their uniforms were dusty, their faces tense beneath their helmets.
The gruff man stepped slightly forward. He looked to be in his early thirties, his jaw clean-shaven, his expression hard but not cruel. His eyes were sharp, assessing, weighing Samuel’s every twitch.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
Samuel swallowed again, forcing himself not to look away. “Samuel Wilson,” he said, his voice cracking halfway through his own name. “Please. I don’t want any of this. They’re all crazy. They think she’s helping, but she’s not. She’s not.”
His vision blurred as tears welled up despite himself.
“I didn’t know it would be like this,” he continued, words spilling out faster now that the dam had broken. “I don’t want to fight. I don’t want anyone hurt. I just… I just want this to stop.”
The gruff man slowly lowered himself into a crouch beside Samuel, the movement unthreatening despite the rifle still slung across his chest. Up close, Samuel could see faint lines at the corners of his eyes and the kind of steady composure that came from experience rather than bravado.
“Okay, kid,” the man said in a calmer voice than before “my name’s Lieutenant Harrison, and we are not going to hurt you, but we are going to have to take you back to base with us, alright?”
The reassurance did not completely dissolve the tight knot in Samuel’s chest, but it loosened it enough that he could breathe more steadily. Being taken to a military base sounded frightening in its own way, but it also meant structure, answers, and possibly some way to fix the disaster spiraling throughout Hamilton.
He nodded quickly. That was what he wanted, after all. To be contained. To be accountable.
“Alright,” Harrison continued, offering his hand without hesitation. “Let’s get you up.”
Samuel stared at the outstretched hand for half a second, surprised that the man did not recoil from his scaled claws. Then he reached out and grasped it carefully. Harrison’s grip was firm and steady, and with a single pull Samuel was brought back to his feet.
One of the other soldiers, who looked younger and less composed, let out a quiet breath of shock. “You’re a lizard.”
Samuel winced slightly at the bluntness of it. “Y-yeah,” he admitted, his gaze dropping to the ground. “My friend turned me into this after Umbra turned her into a succubus.”
The word seemed to hang in the air awkwardly.
All four soldiers stiffened almost in unison and exchanged looks that were far more serious than before.
“Did you say Umbra?” Harrison asked carefully.
“Y-yeah,” Samuel replied, swallowing. “She’s the one causing all this chaos. The monsters. The big ones that keep… making more. It’s her. She started it.”
Harrison’s expression sharpened. “Does she look like a three-metre-tall knight in gleaming white armour? Possibly accompanied by an angel with wings?”
Samuel blinked, confused by the description. “No. She’s not that tall. She’s just… a bit taller than me, maybe. Last I saw, she was wearing thrift store clothes. And she was either alone or with Luna.”
There was a visible release of tension among the soldiers, shoulders lowering slightly as they processed that answer.
“Okay,” Harrison muttered under his breath. “That’s good to know.”
He unclipped the radio attached to his vest and raised it to his mouth, his posture shifting back into professional focus.
“FOB One, this is Squad Gamma,” he said clearly. “We have located a Person of Interest. Additionally, there is possibly an enemy actor operating under the name Umbra. Over.”
A brief burst of static crackled through the speaker before a voice responded.
“Copy that, Gamma. Bring in the Person of Interest. Over.”
Harrison clipped the radio back into place and looked at Samuel again, studying him with a mixture of caution and something almost like sympathy.
“Alright, Samuel,” he said. “You’re coming with us. Stay in the middle, move slow, and don’t make any sudden movements. We’ll keep you safe.”
Samuel nodded again, though he could not shake the feeling that “safe” was a very fragile word in a world that had come apart so quickly. Still, as the soldiers formed a loose protective formation around him and began guiding him down the street, he felt that he might have chosen the right side.