Ampelius stumbled up to a cluster of boulders overlooking a narrow valley. Maybe I can see something from up here, he thought. His legs felt like water now, even though he was still moving, but only because they didn’t know how to stop. Every breath pressed a dull ache through his ribs, and the metallic taste of blood coated the back of his dry throat.

  “I need water,” he muttered, voice barely more than a rasp.

  He pulled himself onto the smallest boulder wedged between two larger slabs, using his palms to scrape the rough stone, until the treetops opened beneath him and the valley stretched into view. Below, sunlight broke through drifting smoke in thin, trembling shafts, which painted the valley in sickly gold. To his right, his eyes automatically caught movement, and saw the wolf-machine he feared crashe through underbrush, leaves scattering around its limbs like startled birds.

  What is it doing? he wondered.

  Ampelius shifted his eyes left and froze.

  "Oh shit," he said.

  An entrenched Roman position sat carved into the earth, sandbags stacked high, machine guns set up, but not manned. Dozens of helmets bobbed behind the line, as soldiers crouched low in the trenches, talking or tending to their gear. None of them were looking toward the trees. None of them saw it.

  They weren’t even alert. They didn’t even have their guns pointed the right way. And they had no idea the wolf-machine was coming for them.

  Ampelius opened his mouth to warn them, but the nightmarish thing hit the minefield first.

  A thunderous detonation tore the earth open, flinging dirt and metal skyward. The shockwave rattled his teeth as he flitched. The wolf staggered at the blast, but just like a heartbeat, it surged forward again, relentless in its attack.

  The soldiers were mobilizing quickly the moment they heard the explosion. The machine guns roared awake, their tracers stitching glowing lines above the trenches. Sparks skittered off its armored flank as infantry joined in. Someone fired a rocket launcher, the warhead streaked over, leaving a small smoke trail. It struck the wolf center-mass, causing it to cartwheel through the dirt until it stopped. On it's side, fire began to curl from its side as the soldiers cheered.

  The cheers hadn’t even finished echoing when a massive hand clamped around his ankle and yanked. Ampelius slammed onto the rock, air ripped from his chest in a harsh, broken gasp.

  He rolled while scrambling for a breath. His vision was swimming as he tried to see what grabbed him.

  A Zavon.

  Not just any Zavon. It was the one that injected him. Ampelius began to believe he was injected with a tracker, as it has obviously has been following him this entire time. Turning into a nightmare he couldn’t outrun, or hide.

  It dragged him across the stone and dirt like he weighed nothing, hauling him toward a column of white lights shimmering between the trees. At first glance it looked like the moon split into several smaller moons, until the light bent and concentrated, then sharpened into something brighter.

  His used his free boot heel and smashed it into the armored plating of the Zavon again and again. It proved useless. The thing’s grip only tightened, its fingers were like steel cables crushing his flesh and bone.

  “You’ve been tracking me,” he rasped, voice breaking. “The whole time — you’ve been following me!”

  It didn’t respond. It didn’t need to. The truth was the same. Ampelius didn't know what to expect, or what it wanted with him. He kept resisting, but his body was getting weaker, as he hasn't slept well and has been in survival mode for several days now. The fatigue was catching up to him.

  He noticed a turtle shell behind the white lights descend through the pines, landing with a dull quake. Its hatches peeled open, and metal unfurling like wings. More Zavons emerged, their weapons ready as the chittering clicks echoing like bone tapping glass.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Then the crack of a rifle thundered.

  One Zavon’s head snapped back, its body collapsing like a puppet with cut strings.

  The one holding Ampelius weakened its grip. He was able to rip himself free, then rolled as glass-sharp branches sliced across his cheek. Bullets started flying, many tore into bark around him.

  He stood up and sprinted, diving behind a tree as dirt exploded in bursts. Romans. They weren’t aiming at him specifically; they were aiming at everything. Grenades exploded, rifles firing and Zavon's returning fire.

  Chaos had no allegiance. The turtle shell above took a hit from a rocket. Fire blossomed across its hull, and it slammed into the ground with a metallic scream. Ampelius ran again, despite his lungs burning. His legs were shaking, making it difficult to run. Then a hiss tore behind him as a cloud of black gas devoured the earth where he’d stood.

  Another turtle shell showed up and joined the fight. This one dropped off more Zavons and a wolf-like machine, like the one he saw before. Its eyes burned like coals. He didn’t even take the time to process it, he just used the newly infused adrenaline into his body as the fuel to flee uphill, even with his muscles screaming at him.

  Behind him, branches cracked as metal claws tore into the bark. Then there was a hiss, followed by a roar. It was a mixed sound of flesh and machine, a living nightmare.

  At the ridge, the surrounding area had become an active warzone. Roman soldiers clashed with the Zavons among burning trees, both side entrenched in their own makeshift trenches. Turtle shells were dogfighting with Roman fighters who joined in on the fight. Ampelius had to take a breath and think of a plan, but he could taste the copper and ash, with a hint of ozone with each inhale.

  Ampelius searched around for shelter, anything to wait out the battle. He saw a cabin that was half buried in dirt, with sandbags piled around it. He noticed Roman soldiers within it that yelled something he couldn't hear through the ringing in his ears.

  “Down!” someone shouted. He realized they were yelling at him.

  He threw himself flat as gunfire ripped overhead, chewing bark and air alike. Then something whistled, a flash of steel, and a hooked barb punched past him. It slammed into a soldier beside the doorway, yanking him off his feet and dragging his screaming body back over the railing and out of sight.

  Ampelius didn't wait and scrambled up, then sprinted toward them. His boots skidded through mud, flinging clumps behind him as he dove inside, shoulder slamming into the doorway frame.

  It wasn’t a cabin at all, it was a fortified holdout. Sandbags lined the walls, firing slits cut through wood and concrete. Ammo crates and belt-fed guns were scattered everywhere.

  Soldiers were crouched behind cover, firing through the slits, shouting orders, working frantically to hold the line both inside and out.

  A heartbeat later, another soldier staggered in, with a hook lodged deep in his chest, before being ripped backward, dragged out into the open.

  Then suddenly the roof disintegrated in a pulse of blue light, blasting fragments outward like a molten hail. The air vibrated with a low and terrible hum that crawled into his bones and thought.

  A capsule descended from the sky, walls forming from the light. The hum deepened, and the air thickened, then a blue ray slammed Ampelius flat. Pressure crushed his ribs while his breath collapsed in his throat.

  The soldiers around him were frozen in place, paralyzed or in a state of stasis, he didnt know. He clawed at empty air while his muscles failed. His veins burned as if lightning crawled under his skin. He could feel his body but couldn't move it. But the fear, he couldn’t breathe around it.

  That Zavon, the tracker, his personal nightmare, walked in and lifted him like a child, placing him inside the capsule before sealing. Then the sound of the outside hollowed out. The world dropped away as he was lifted into the air. The forest shrank to a smear of burning green. A battle that has concluded.

  Vetera became a bruise of black smoke on the horizon, while Mount Nerva belched that green ash and flickered lightning, with veins of fire crawling down its slopes like the planet bleeding from its core.

  Cities burned. Men died. Civilizations cracked. The world was ending, and he was rising away from it like a ghost watching his own funeral. Then there was a flash— a white light that swallowed the sky.

  Silence swallowed everything else. A silence too heavy to be real. No rumble of engines. No battle. Not even his own breath. Everything pressed in on him like he was sinking into snow or falling backward into the ocean.

  His thoughts blurred. As hundreds offaces flickered, like his life flashing before him. Bella’s laugh, Nova’s smirk, Cicero’s hopeful smile before everything went wrong. Emmett and his sarcasm. He tried to hold them. But they slipped like sand through shaking fingers.

  His heartbeat began to slow. His grip on the world thinned. He fought it. Clawed for something, anything human to anchor to. A name. A purpose. A sense of self. But he couldn’t keep hold.

  Even fear faded. The guilt, the pain in his ribs and throat and lungs. Then the feeling of sleep crept in, like drowning in warm black water. He fought it one last time. But he was lost and losing.

  He tried again.

  Gone.

  He drifted into the dark with no dreams, no sound, no self, just the void swallowing the last scraps of who Ampelius had been.