Universal DOOM

by ImpulsiveWeaver

After being cast away by Samuel Hayden, the Doom Slayer winds up on an adventure through multiple universes and meeting those who have their own issues with the denizens of Hell. Crossover between Doom (2016) and any horror/supernatural movies/books/stories that I include. Feel free to request any movie, book, or franchise you want to see. Cover art by JakeBurner on DeviantArt!

39. The Mist

The Mist

A/N: Hello again! I'm back with yet another chapter, and this time, our heroes are headed to The Mist, and they're gonna make some baddies evaporate! Spoilers for both the movie and the book are immediate! Enjoy! I own nothing!

P.S. This chapter holds the new record for longest chapter yet, so you might want to take a bathroom break first or something...

Stephanie had been pulling weeds in the garden, doing everything in her power not to worry. An exercise in futility is what her efforts amounted to, and the trembling in her hands had grown steadily worse until she had barely been able to grasp the trowel, and it had shortly after tumbled onto the grass as her reserve shattered. In the back of her mind, she knew that she had to have been overreacting.

Last night had been nothing but a freak storm, lightning and winds that had grown to astonishing heights and magnitude as a result of two unnaturally strong fronts colliding. And yet, Stephanie's mind refused to accept that truth entirely. Something about it felt wrong…unnatural…supernatural even, and as much as Stephanie had hated to admit it, perhaps that zealotus Ms. Carmody had more of an influence on her than she'd thought. David had always told her that the crazy woman had gotten into her head with her tales of divine intervention and conspiracy theories, but Stephanie had always light-heartedly rebuked his jibes, even if she could always feel the underlying seriousness behind his joking manner. Her husband worried about her almost as much as she worried about him, which was certainly saying something, as Stephanie's capacity for love often made her worry unnecessarily so for him despite knowing how capable he was. She was experiencing an example of such behavior now, and she had tried to tell herself that both he and Billy would only be gone for a little while. An hour at most. They'd come back with the groceries she'd requested, and she'd have lunch waiting for them both when they got here. David would fix up the window like he said he would, and Billy could play where Stephanie could see him. The power company would have their electricity restored in no time, and that night she would fall asleep with David in her arms…and…and…

It was then that she'd fallen to her knees and sobbed, all the while still berating herself for doing so in the first place, as crying like this served no purpose. It wasn't like anyone had died, hell, it wasn't like anyone had even been hurt at all. All that had happened was a freak thunderstorm the night before, strong enough to fell trees and knock out the power but hardly a disaster by any means.

And yet, it stood out to Stephanie, as plain as the numerous fallen trees around her all snapped in half at their trunks by the wind and lightning the night before. It stood out because what if the storm had been just a bit stronger? What if the wind had blown just a little bit harder and the tree that now leaned through the living room window had gone through the floor instead while they were in the basement? What if the roof had collapsed and rubble had trapped them down there without any means of escape? What if…if…?

Stephanie shook her head, and in the back of her mind she had wondered if she should have gone with David and Billy and yes, even that creep Norton into town to pick up supplies. The house now seemed so empty without them, and despite the distant chorus of chainsaws up and down the lake that signaled that the neighbors were still there and cleaning up their own fallen timber, Stephanie felt incredibly alone and more vulnerable by the second.

As her thoughts drifted to the lake, Stephanie then remembered the strange fog they'd witnessed earlier that morning building on the water and coming down from the mountains. Compared to the storm, that strange Mist had seemed far more unnatural, but David's reassurance that it was simply nothing more than a standard fog bank had temporarily quelled Stephanie's fear, but David was not here now, and her heart began to pound in her chest and drown out the distant metallic roaring of the neighbors and their saws.

That fog gave her chills the moment she'd laid eyes on it earlier this morning. The thickness of it combined with the fact that it had actually appeared to be moving towards their house in spite of the opposing breeze had shocked her to the core as well. And to make matters worse, Stephanie had noticed that the encroaching edge of the fogbank had been straight as a ruler, lacking the natural bulges and pockets and swells that could be seen with a typical mist.

The thought of the fog now dominated Stephanie's mind, growing more and more prevalent as soon as her thoughts had turned to it, and try as she might to calm herself and focus once again on the weeding at hand, she couldn't shake the awful feeling in her gut every time she pictured the misty cloud in her mind. Her imagination worked against her in that regard, and she shuddered as an unbidden image appeared in her thoughts of the bank growing closer and closer.

Her anxiety eventually grew to a fever pitch, and Stephanie at last dropped the tools in her hands and tried not to run around the back of the house and towards the shoreline. Her sunhat caught the breeze as she moved and fell down onto her back, still clinging to her by the neck rope, but Stephanie hardly noticed as the lake came into view, or rather, what little could still be seen.

Her worst fears were realized immediately. The Mist, still in spite of the light wind in the opposite direction, was growing closer, and it had only seemed to pick up speed as it rolled across the lake. Its unnaturally straight edge is what terrorized Stephanie the most, and in that moment, the Mist almost seemed alive somehow, like it was operating with a will of its own against the natural order of the world.

Stephanie noticed then that the lake had grown very quiet now, eerily so in fact, as the chainsaws and sounds of neighbors at work ceased entirely, leaving only silence to echo throughout the valley and off the fogbank itself.

The edge of the Mist was less than one hundred yards from her, and Stephanie gasped when she saw that it was moving even faster than before. It would be to the shore where she now stood in less than a minute at this rate, and that thought alone made Stephanie turn on her heel and sprint back to the house as quickly as she could, her irrational fear of what that Mist was or what may be within it overriding her senses entirely.

With a frantic grunt, Stephanie threw open the rear door of the lakehouse and hurried inside, slamming the door fiercely and locking it before scrambling to the front door to do the same. She returned to the living room to see if the fog had made it to the shore already when her eyes were drawn to the window, which was still wide open with numerous oak branches sticking into the living room.

Stephanie cried out in desperation and fear at the sight, her thoughts immediately fearing the worst if the Mist held any form of toxin within, and she began to cry once more as the cloud finally rolled over the shore and reached the house at last. Visibility immediately dropped to less than five feet in any direction Stephanie looked, and in her panic she neglected to hold her breath as small wisps of the fog filtered through the window and into the living room. By the time Stephanie realized her error, she realized she'd been breathing in the gas for nearly half a minute now, and no side effects could be noted. There was a faint acrid smell seemingly coming from the Mist itself, but the smell of the Mist could be greatly ignored in favor of the fact that it wasn't poisonous. Stephanie exhaled in shaky relief, then took the time to study the cloud closely through the large living room window.

The fog itself was heavy, of that there could be no doubt. The thick blanket of white blotted out even the sun into a dull sliver. The furthest Stephanie could see was the vaguest outline of the stump of the tree that was penetrating through the window and into the living room, but beyond that, she could see nothing amidst the solid state of gray.

She stared in a stunned silence out at the fog itself, then frantically rushed to the phone, only to angrily slam it down again when no dial tone greeted her. The storm had not only knocked out their power, but their phone lines as well, and the realization that she was now completely unable to reach anyone without going outside filled her heart with startling dread once more. Stephanie's stomach dropped again as her thoughts immediately went to David and Billy, and a horrid image appeared in her mind of the two of them stranded in their vehicle on the road somewhere, barely able to drive forward without going agonizingly slow. Oh god, what if they hit someone? What if someone hit them?

Fresh tears blossomed in the corners of Stephanie's eyes, and she held her arms across her stomach and hunched over in fear over what might have become of her husband and child. The moisture in her eyes clouded her view of the outside even more than the fog did, but her agonizing cry was cut off all the same as her brain caught the slightest twitch of possible movement in the fog.

Her eyes blinked rapidly to clear her vision at the sight, and once most of the tears had been hastily swiped away, Stephanie looked wide-eyed out the window once more, her face momentarily losing its sorrow and replacing it with silent anxiety. For a few agonizing seconds, nothing moved out there in the cloudy Mist, then Stephanie saw it. She could make out nothing more than a darker blob of gray amidst the lighter shade of the fog, but it was there. Judging from what Stephanie saw, she estimated it to be the size of a small dog, but it was moving not at all how a dog would, especially for how fast it was going. It appeared to be scuttling almost, and Stephanie forced a hand over her mouth to avoid crying out as the small form moved across the ground of the backyard and out of sight, immaterializing back into the fog as soon as it had come.

She took a tentative step back, then fell to the floor as a thunderous booming noise blasted her eardrums. The floor, the house, and even the Earth itself shook with the noise, and Stephanie grasped the hardwood beneath her hands for something to hold onto as the earthquake rattled plates and cups in the nearby kitchen.

And then, as soon as it began, the shaking and rumbling stopped, and an eerie silence followed in its wake. Stephanie stayed on the floor, worried that the sudden earthquake might have been the first of many, but the ground beneath her remained stationary. After a few more moments of silent anticipation, she shakily rose to her feet and dared to look out of the living room window once more. The Mist remained, and she internally slapped herself for thinking that something like an earthquake was going to magically dissipate the strange fog. In the back of her mind, however, Stephanie couldn't fight the inkling that they were connected somehow.

Her thoughts were broken as she spied movement in the fog once more, only this time, multiple blobs of gray moved across her vision instead of just one.

Her gasp caught in her throat. There weren't just two or three or even five…No, there were dozens of them, and they were all scuttling low across the ground back and forth as though they were circling the house. Stephanie took another step backward, then jolted with a scream as a large black object leapt from the aether and landed on the glass of the living room window, its heavy impact sending a web of cracks throughout the thick pane.

Spider.

That was the first thought that came into Stephanie's terrorized mind, but to call this nightmarish creature a spider was would be only half correct. The creature held an appearance that was very similar to a common arachnid, except that it clung to the other side of the glass with nearly twice the amount of legs Stephanie knew spiders to have. Its inky black body cast a stark contrast against the backdrop of the Mist, and Stephanie could see thin yellow piping running along its abdomen and terminating at the end of its body. It was also massive. Massive enough to be the amorphous anomaly that she had seen run past before. It was the size of a large dog and at least twice as wide, and Stephanie screamed as the creature took notice of her through the glass with a head full of reddish-purple eyes, each the size of a marble.

This wasn't real. It couldn't have been real. This was some horrible dream, and Stephanie was certain that she was going to wake up any second now, safe and warm with her arms wrapped around David and Billy would be jumping up and down by their bed, excitedly requesting pancakes for breakfast. Yes, that's what this was. Just some nightmare that she'd wake up from any se—

Another spider landed on the glass, causing a new network of cracks to form across the now opaque surface. The cracks twisted and joined with the cracks already previously made by the first spider, and Stephanie heard the glass creak as it struggled to hold the weight of the two gargantuan arachnids.

Dream or not, Stephanie was no less terrified, and with all the remaining sanity she could muster, she turned and bolted from the living room and through the kitchen. Sandwiches and lunch were furthest from her mind now, and she clawed open the door to the basement and threw herself inside before turning around and locking it behind her. An idle thought wondered how long the door would hold against a wolf-sized demon spider, nevermind two of the beasts, and Stephanie crushed the thought down as best as she could before turning away from the now locked door and fleeing down the remaining stairs and into the basement proper. Originally designed by David's father when the house had been built, the pragmatic man had seen it to ensure that the basement doubled well as a shelter if need be, meaning that there were no windows. That was a fact that Stephanie now found herself eternally grateful for.

But now, no windows combined with no power meant that Stephanie was in complete darkness. The only thing she could see was a small strip of dulled light from under the upstairs door. Her thoughts went to the candles that they'd lit when they'd slept down here last night, and Stephanie fumbled her way forward to where she remembered them to be. Thankfully, the matchbook was still sitting right next to the candles, and with trembling hands, Stephanie pulled one of the small wooden sticks from the pack and struck it firmly against the lighting strip. There was a brief spark as the match attempted to light, then pitch blackness fell over the basement as the flare failed to catch.

Stephanie swore and tried again with more force, and was rewarded this time as the head of the matchstick burst into flame and held. Stephanie took comfort in the sudden light for only a moment, and then held the match quickly to the wick of the first candle. It had previously been lit the night before, and the already used wick eagerly ignited at the flame's touch.

The sound of shattering glass upstairs brought Stephanie's hammering heart to a stop. Her breath shuddered to a halt as well, and she remained terror-strickenly still as she listened. After a few moments of nothing, she heard it.

Movement.

Scuttling, to be specific.

There were multiple instances of it too. The upstairs was now full of them. Too many for Stephanie to accurately guess, but enough that she could hear them from every corner of the basement.

Then there was the relatively deafening noise of the tap-scuttling on the door at the top of the stairs, and Stephanie clamped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from shrieking in despair. The scuttling stopped for a beat, then started again, growing more faint as the source moved away from the door. The scuttling continued on the floorboards above as the creatures began to explore the house, and Stephanie listened to them for almost half an hour before cradling her lone candle in her hands and sinking slowly onto the bed that she'd shared with David and Billy the night before. Her thoughts went to them, and she immediately regretted it as visions of the two of them swarmed by those demon spiders above flooded her consciousness. The tears came again, and Stephanie buried her face in a pillow to muffle her sobs.

She was trapped now. She couldn't leave. The creatures above still continued to move around the floors and walls of her home, though their movements had decreased in frequency as they became acclimated to the space. Now, the slower and methodical sort of scuttling she heard seemed to indicate that they were making themselves at home. They didn't seem to be going anywhere, so that meant neither was she.

There were provisions down here, enough to last their family a week if need be, and Stephanie prayed that these monsters would leave or at least be driven away before then. But even if they did, then what? The spiders might leave, but what about the Mist? What else lurked in the white fog that defied reason and logic? Certainly the Army or the National Guard would come? They had tanks and guns and things that could wipe these creatures out. But how long would that take? Would they even think to come here?

Those frantic thoughts and many others filled Stephanie's mind as she sat alone by candlelight in the basement of their once quiet and peaceful home. Overarching all of those thoughts, she wished David were here. He always seemed to make things better. She did everything in her power not to dwell on where he and Billy were now, and furiously reminded herself that she had no clue as to how widespread this horrid Mist was. Maybe they were clear of it. Maybe they'd made it far enough that the fog hadn't reached them.

Doubts formed immediately in her mind at this, however. Doubts that poisoned her mind and made her sink further into herself.

For countless hours, Stephanie sat listening to the periodic scuttling of the spiders above. How long she truly spent down there, she did not know. The one clock that sat down in the basement had been electric, leaving her no way to tell the time with the loss of power. She watched as the candle burnt low, and she eventually lit another one when it had burned down to its stub. Every so often, tears would come, and Stephanie fell into a rhythm of pressing her face into the pillow until she stopped. She also prayed. She prayed like she'd never prayed before, asking for a sign, a saint, anything that might save the lives of her family. Eventually, Stephanie cried and prayed herself out and fell asleep. No dreams came to her, as she'd exhausted every part of herself that day, meaning that she had no energy left to even dream.

How long she slept, Stephanie did not know, but when she awoke, the basement was pitch black again, as the candle had burnt itself out during the course of her slumber. For the briefest of moments, she had panicked, forgetting where she was and why it was so dark. She calmed down as the memories slowly returned to her, but they offered no comfort as she was once again reminded of the dire situation she was in. Another candle was lit shortly after, though her actions were slow and unenthusiastic as the cold weight of futility began to settle on her mind.

She sat in silence for a little while before daring to move slowly around the basement, looking over the various items of furniture and clothing that had been stored down there as items that were not worthless enough to sell or give away, but still not important enough to keep upstairs where they'd be more easily accessible. Stephanie might've once smirked at the irony that these were now the only things she had access to, but she was too tired for humor. It was the kind of fatigue that sleep did not fix. She slept again after a while, though dreams continued to elude her. She was too tired for those anyway.

When she awoke once more, the third candle had burnt itself out. She barely found the motivation to light a fourth.

How long had she been down here now? A few hours? A day? A week? How much longer would she have to wait?

Darkened thoughts came to her again, and this time, Stephanie did not have the mental strength to banish them.

David…

Billy…

What were the odds they were still alive? Had they made it to somewhere safe before the Mist had come? And even if they had, how long before they were rescued, if at all? How long before they told their rescuers where she was?

No one was coming.

The thought had been so sudden, and yet, it was the loudest of all in her mind. It had popped into her head of its own volition, and Stephanie offered up a paltry resistance against it, but it was like her mind had already accepted it as an undeniable fact.

No one was coming.

And even if they did, they wouldn't save her. There seemed to be nearly dozens of those monstrous spiders above, and any attempt to rescue her would surely end in death at the hands of those creatures.

Stephanie felt herself grow numb as her mind settled on its conclusion. There was no point in denying it now. This house would be her tomb. Whether she died of starvation in a pointless attempt to survive as long as possible, or whether she was eaten alive by the creatures waiting upstairs, it made little difference. The outcome was the same. Her thoughts then turned to consider the inevitability of it, and how despite the fact that her death was coming anyway, she still had some power over her fate: how to meet it.

In the dull orange glow from the candle, Stephanie looked up the stairs to the door at the top. The sliver of gray still permeated from underneath the portal, meaning that it was daytime at least. Whether it was the same day as when she'd first come down here or three days later, Stephanie did not know.

Her mind dwelt on how much longer she had in terms of food. There was still plenty stored away in the pantry built for such a purpose, and though she was no survivalist, Stephanie figured she could last at least another two weeks down here. Was that enough time to be rescued? Stephanie was doubtful, especially if this Mist covered more than just the lake. Perhaps it went even further than the state line…maybe even the entire eastern seaboard…

No one was coming.

She'd already accepted that as fact, which easily defeated the argument of staying down here and wasting away until the food ran out.

That left only one option.

She took a step towards the stairs, her mind slipping into a haze that could be considered akin to the fog outside. It was the only way she could see this through. Dissociation was what she needed to give her the strength to do this.

David. Billy. I'm so sorry.

The tears came again, but they went unnoticed as she reached the foot of the stairs. In a trance, Stephanie laid her hands out onto the railings, her head tilting up to look at the orange-bathed door and the sliver of gray light slipping through the bottom.

Please forgive me.

Perhaps that was the light at the end of the tunnel. Seeing it now, Stephanie felt closer to God than she'd ever had, regardless of the fact that all of this was likely a result of His abandonment of them. She sent one last prayer up to beg for forgiveness, doubtful that anyone was listening now.

No one is there. No one is coming.

At least she could be sure of two things now.

Her foot had just climbed the first stair when a loud commotion came from above. It had sounded like a heavy crash, and Stephanie could hear the splintering of wood over the sudden surprised movement of the spiders upstairs.

There was a brief pause, then a deep bark rumbled throughout the house, sounding like something close to the bark of a dog but deeper and more warped, as if it had been twisted in an unnatural imitation of itself. It carried far more weight as well, the strength of it evident in the way that it still echoed throughout the house even though the bark itself lasted only a split second.

The bark was followed by a growl emanating from the same source, and it carried the same distortion and power as the bark that preceded it. Stephanie heard the screech of a few of the spiders in response, but they sounded so insignificant now compared to whatever new creature had just broken in.

Then, all hell broke loose as something large and heavy began aggressively moving about the upstairs. The sound of the large spiders running this way and that overlapped into a continuous scraping, but the pounding of the larger creature permeated through the sea of noise, and periodically, Stephanie heard the dull thud as it crashed into the walls and furniture. The spiders screeched even louder, and even though Stephanie had no familiarity with this form of arachnid, she still knew what cries of pain sounded like.

She remained still as the carnage upstairs continued, and after only another minute or so, the overarching scuttling began to falter and break, indicating that fewer and fewer spiders were active and moving with each passing second. The snarls of the larger beast grew more and more dominating as a result.

A deafening blast was then heard, and Stephanie immediately recognized it as the discharge of a firearm, and a powerful one at that. The larger beast had not ceased its assault by any means, but it was obvious that something new had entered the fray as well.

The firearm discharged again, and then five times more before silence finally fell upstairs. There was no more scuttling to be heard, and Stephanie stood frozen with her foot still perched on the bottom stair as her ears strained to make out any form of movement on the floor above. Only ringing reached her ears at first, courtesy of the gunfire, then the heavy thud of footsteps began, combined with a lighter trotting of something four-legged as well.

Stephanie turned to look at the point on the ceiling where the footsteps were just above, following the heavy footfalls as they worked their way across the living room and into the kitchen, steadily growing louder all the time. The steps were slow and controlled, giving the impression that whoever, or whatever was making them carried an assurance and relative calmness that Stephanie certainly did not share.

The footsteps continued until they stopped right in front of the door to the basement, and Stephanie jumped when something on the other side rapped three slow and distinct knocks on the wood. The door shuddered with each knock, as if it was having trouble withstanding the force used to knock against it, but Stephanie remained still, her mind blank and unable to come to a decision as to whether she should answer. Whatever was up there obviously knew that she was down here, but Stephanie had no indication as to if it was friendly or not. It sounded just now as though it had killed the spiders, but that did not mean that it held her best interests. What if—

"We mean you no harm," came a sudden cold and metallically pleasant voice from behind the door. "We wish only to provide assistance."

…

"What will keep them at bay? The rock will not hide them! The dead tree offers no shelter!"

"Expiation…"

"What will end it? Let me hear it!"

"Expiation."

"Say it again, like you mean it!"

"Expiation!"

Ollie sighed next to David as they all looked on at the spectacle.

"Welcome to Sesame Street," he said in a low sarcastic voice so that only David and the few others could hear from where they stood apart from the main group. "Today's word is: expiation."

David's eyes wandered across the gathering that had built in the meat section, staring with defeat at the amount of followers Mrs. Carmody had amassed. Those that weren't enthusiastically participating in her sermon still listened raptly to her every word, seemingly taking in sustenance from her preaches of deliverance and salvation from the nightmare by atoning for their sins. His eyes stopped when he saw Jim standing at the front of the congregation, more involved with the chants than anyone else.

"That boy hasn't been right since the pharmacy," came Dan's weathered voice from beside him. "His mind just snapped."

In a way, David understood why. Jim had seen the horrors of the Mist just the same as they all had ever since they'd found themselves trapped inside the store. Everything that they thought existed only in fairy tales and nightmares had become real in a matter of minutes, shaking the foundation of everyone's belief in what was and wasn't possible.

And that M.P., the one they'd discovered when they tried to run to the pharmacy for supplies… What those creatures had done to him…That had shaken all of them to the core, those that had seen it. David, despite the terror he felt, tried to remain strong and put on a brave face despite the despair he felt inside himself. He had to be strong, for Billy, who was sitting idly just down the produce aisle from him…and for Stephanie.

David's thoughts turned to her for what seemed like the millionth time now over the last day and a half. He hoped and prayed with everything he had that she was alright. She was tough, and she had enough food to survive, and his only hope was that she had been able to make it inside before the Mist had fallen.

"It hasn't even been two days…" Amanda muttered from his left shoulder. "Not even two days for them to lose their minds…"

The older man, Ambrose, grunted from where he stood at the back of their small group of outcasts.

"I'm not spending the rest of my life here," the grizzled man said resolutely.

Ollie looked over at all of them, then spoke softly so that no one outside the group could hear.

"I could quietly gather up some bags of supplies," Ollie said, his eyes already moving up and down the aisles, looking like he was already sorting out what they'd need if they were to try and survive outside the store. "I can hide them up by one of the check stands by the door."

"It was your idea, David," Dan said, the seven of them unwittingly turning to make a small huddle of discussion. "It's your vehicle, so it's your call."

David remembered. He remembered how he'd suggested that a few of them that still had their sanity could gather some supplies and try for his vehicle located only twenty feet away in the parking lot. They might not even make it two feet past the doors let alone twenty, but they had to try something, anything rather than sit here and wait for something else to come in and kill them.

"I'd rather die out there, trying," Amanda said, echoing his thoughts. "I don't want to die here, simply waiting."

A look across the others' faces showed that they shared in Amanda's mindset, and David found himself slowly nodding along with them. Anything if it meant he could escape from Mrs. Carmody's delusional ranting and maybe see Steff again…

"I want some idea of what we're up against," he said resolutely. "I wanna know what this Mist is. We gotta talk to the soldiers."

"The soldiers?" Ollie asked, his face scrunching up in confusion. "What's that gonna do?"

"You heard what that M.P. said at the pharmacy, Ollie. They know something."

"David, I don't even know what he was saying. The situation was insane!"

"He said he was sorry…" Irene said, the older woman's eyes flitting contemplatively. "Wasn't that the word he used? Sorry."

"That's right," Dan agreed with a nod. "He said it was their fault. The Mist…the monsters…everything."

"W-what did he mean by that?"

"That's what we're gonna find out," David replied. "Come on…"

He turned and led the group away from the congregation, leaving Mrs. Carmody and her followers to continue their shouts of delivery and sacrifice.

…

The alpha hellhound paced impatiently as both it and the Doom Slayer waited for the human behind the door to answer. The hound could smell her quite clearly, as fear left a quite pungent aroma in the air when it was experienced by humans, or at least, it did to the hound. It growled annoyedly and tilted its head questioningly to the Doom Slayer, curious as to why he refused to open the door himself. The hound fundamentally knew what locks were, but both it and the Doom Slayer were more than capable of breaking this door down to come face to face with the human inside, lock or not.

Eventually, the hound concluded that the Slayer had opted against destroying the door in order to keep it as a possible future barrier to protect the human inside if need be.

From what the hound had seen of the prey that existed in this world, if something out there really wanted to, they could destroy the door as well. What they possessed in strength, however, they did not possess in intelligence, and the hound doubted the creatures would recognize a door when they saw one, meaning that as long as the door remained closed, they would pass it by without a second thought.

So that meant the door had to stay unbroken, though it was becoming more and more difficult to resist the urge to charge through it by the second.

An idea then crossed into the hound's mind. It knew how doors worked, so maybe it could open the door from the inside.

Without a second thought, the hound summoned its will and warped into the basement with a flash of lightning.

Immediately, it came face to face with a startled human female, who shrieked in surprise and horror and scrambled backwards from it. A quick glance around the darkened basement showed the only source of light to be a candle on the bedside table, meaning that the flames on the hound's back brightened the space considerably with its arrival. Shadows danced on the now orangish-amber walls, and the hound spared the terrified woman a glance before trotting up the stairs to the door that now separated it and the Doom Slayer. A keen glance with its glowing eyes told the hound that there appeared to be no external locking mechanism on the door itself, meaning that its lock must have existed in the handle.

Standing up on its hind legs, the hound experimentally took the door handle in its teeth and jolted it slightly. It was rewarded with a sharp click as the lock on the door disengaged, and with a twist of its head and a push with its forelegs, the door slowly opened, revealing the Doom Slayer's waiting form on the other side.

The hound gave a snort, then turned and trotted back downstairs into the basement, the Doom Slayer following its lead and shutting the basement door behind him.

Back at the bottom of the stairs, the human female had scrambled to her feet and pressed herself as far away from the two of them as was possible, her terrified eyes looking between the hound and the Slayer as though the two of them were going to attack at any second. There was a brief moment of silence, then the strange voice that lived in the Slayer's suit spoke to the woman, and though the hound did not understand the words, it deciphered that the voice was doing what it could to reassure her, though it seemed to have minimal effect.

The woman asked a question in a stammer, and the strange voice answered almost immediately. The woman asked more questions after that, and the hound began to grow bored as the verbal interaction continued. Looking around the darkened room, the canine gave an experimental sniff in the direction of the food storages that the woman had stacked nearby, but found nothing of interest. It had eaten its fill just a few minutes ago, as the number of arachnids combined with their large forms had been a feast for it. Its stomach was satisfactorily full.

A glance back at the woman showed that she seemed to grow a bit more trusting of them as the conversation went on, then the hound detected frantic enthusiasm in her voice as she began gesturing with her hands and pointing to an arbitrary destination the hound could not see. It looked as though she was requesting something from them now, and the hound tilted its head once more in curiosity of what it was she wanted.

The voice gave a final few words of reassurance, then the Doom Slayer turned its attention to the hound, who looked back up at him expectantly.

The Slayer gestured lightly towards the woman, and the hound picked up instantly from his body language that he wanted it to stay with her. For how long, the hound did not know, but it felt the spark of indignation appear within its being at being asked to look after this human like she was some young pup. Not in the least when it knew that stronger prey existed out there in the strange fog that enveloped this land. The hound's excitement over hunting powerful prey was quickly being stifled by the Slayer's order to guard the woman, and it gave a grunt, but it relented, yielding to the Slayer's request despite its indignity.

Taking a few steps forward, the hellhound sat down on its haunches, locking eyes with the woman as she eyed it distrustingly. The voice spoke to her again, likely explaining that the hound would be staying with her, and she shook her head and made some sort of excuse in response, which was in turn calmly and easily rebuked by the voice. The woman's nervous gaze looked from the Slayer to the hound in desperation, but she seemed to realize quite quickly that she had no say in this matter. It seemed to the hound that she was just as unenthused about the situation as it was, though their newfound common ground did little to improve the hound's agitation at being assigned to guard a single human.

This was the first one they'd found alive since arriving in this world, and the hound could smell the familiar aroma of death stemming from the neighboring houses, signifying that there were no other living humans for miles around. They had already been hunted and devoured by the creatures that dwelled in this Mist.

With seemingly nothing left to say, the Doom Slayer gave the hound a small nod and walked back up the stairs, his heavy footfalls growing more and more muffled as he reached the top and crossed the living room to the outside. He had shut the door to the basement before he left, which had made the hound's flaming fur once again the primary source of light within the room.

Silence fell save for the light crackling of embers from its hell-hide, and before long, the hound eventually laid down completely, consciously diminishing its flames in order not to catch the floor on fire.

With the loss of most of its flames, the woman seemed to relax ever so slightly, perhaps reassured now that the alpha looked more akin to a naturally-born wolf instead of an apex predator from the dark aether. Tentatively, she moved away from her position in the far corner in the room and took a seat at the foot of the bed, now closer to where the hound lay but still keeping her distance.

The hound watched her as she moved, its ears still listening for any commotion outside now that the Slayer's footfalls had faded into the Mist. For some reason, sound was warped by the strange fog outside, making every noise muffled even when in close proximity to the source. The discovery annoyed the hound considerably, so it turned to its sense of smell, and was rewarded when it realized that the opposite effect seemed to have occurred for its olfactory organs.

Thanks to the strange properties of the Mist, its range of smell was now exponentially more sensitive than what it was normally, though its original range was certainly nothing to scoff at either. It raised its head and experimentally sniffed the air, catching a faint whiff of the Slayer's metallic armor as he continued away from their location, likely towards whatever obscure destination the woman had given him. Another sniff revealed the faint remnants of gasoline and exhaust from the human dwellings around the lake, perhaps from one of the numerous gasoline-powered tools humans used from time to time. Judging from the strength and intensity of the smell, the hound estimated the farthest of the smells was almost a dozen miles away, setting a record for the greatest distance the hound had ever picked up a scent from.

Standing up, the hound slowly paced around the basement, continuing to test the limits of its newfound super-smell. It smelled the strong carrion of the human victims that the Mist had taken already, it also smelled the unease and fright of the local animals in the area, those that did not originally stem from the Mist. Such creatures were woefully underdeveloped compared to the new life that now walked among them, making them all easy prey for the monsters that had spawned. Those that had tried to flee had been hunted and slaughtered, and those that hid shared the same fate, their efforts only delaying the inevitable.

A new smell registered on the tip of the hound's nostrils, and it immediately bristled as it recognized it to be a creature of the Mist. It was approaching rapidly through the fog, heading directly for their current location. The hound recognized it as exceptionally large, and its strong smell was also indicative of the fact that the creature itself was formidable.

The hound let out a low growl, startling the woman and causing her to half-rise from the bed she sat on. Her scared human eyes searched the hound questioningly, but the hound paid her little mind. Its focus was on the approaching challenger, and its initial irritation at being left behind by the Slayer quickly faded as it felt the thrill of the hunt well up within it. The flames on its hide flared in response, causing the woman to take a half-step back and hold a hand up to shield herself from the light and heat.

The hound gave the human a quick glance, then warped out of the basement and into the Mist outside, shaking its fur upon its arrival to ensure that its own scent carried through the forest and to the approaching creature.

The challenge was accepted with a distant roar and the scent of adrenaline coursing through the new monster's body. The hound felt the thrill soar within itself even more at its response, and it began pacing with anticipation as the creature grew nearer. Its hell-hide burned brighter as well, and the resulting blaze evaporated the Mist around it, the fogbank seemingly retreating in deference to the life-fire that flared from the alpha.

The scent of the creature reached its apex, and as if on cue, a large shadowy form coalesced from the Mist, slowly stalking forward into the ring of clear visibility that had centered around the hellhound.

It was large, significantly larger than the hound, and it walked on four powerful legs that ended in sharp claws that looked perfect for climbing steep surfaces or tearing into prey. Further observation showed it to be reptilian in nature, with a smooth pointed head that extended from a rigidly scaled body. A long tail swished back and forth menacingly from its posterior, and a pair of glowing golden eyes with vertical slits for irises studied the hound menacingly.

The canine growled as the creature locked eyes with it, and the reptilian monster responded in kind with an aggressive hiss that showcased rows of razor sharp teeth within a gargantuan mouth. Its slitted eyes narrowed, and its large body began to slither fluidly back and forth as it sized up its foe.

With a trained eye developed over time by hunting all manner of prey, the hound took note of the creature's more dangerous traits. The claws and the teeth were obvious enough, but it also noted its scaled body and tail as well. Scaly skin was difficult to find purchase on, which meant the hound would need to exercise extra caution when attempting to bite. The monster's neck was also as thick as its head, meaning a quick kill by snapping the joint was out of the question.

Looking now to its tail, the hound noted that the size and length would make for an excellent bludgeon, and it held no doubt that the creature would attempt to use it in combat.

With initial observations complete, it was easy to see that this monster was well-suited for battle and was likely considered to be the top of the food chain among the other creatures that resided within the Mist.

Unfortunately for it, the hellhound was also at the top of the food chain, and though the monster was sure to be formidable in a fight, the hound could see the inexperience in its eyes. The vertical slits carried a blatant arrogance that suggested the creature was assured of its victory, likely only taking into account its size advantage as the sole determinant of who would survive the ensuing brawl. It did not yet understand that size was not everything, though it would learn that lesson soon enough courtesy of a true apex predator.

Planting its feet, the hound's growl crescendoed into a loud bark, and without waiting for the monster to reply, it charged forward, its fangs bared murderously.

…

"No! No, it wasn't me!"

David struggled to try and reach Jessup, but the angry hands of Mrs. Carmody's mob held him back. Everyone in the store had formed a ring around the soldier, and the private had been forced to his knees as by the now zealotus Jim.

"Private Jessup," Mrs. Carmody said accusingly. "Tell us the truth!"

"I'm just…I'm just stationed up there!" Jessup said from his position on the floor. He held his hands out in an attempt to quell the frenzied glares from the mob around him, but David could see that these people were now beyond reason. And now that there was possibly blame to place, all of the pent up rage and "righteous fury" that these people felt was about to be unleashed.

"I'm not responsible…"

"Bullshit!" Jim barked from where he stood next to Jessup, fists balled in anticipation in case Jessup tried to rise.

"I'm a local!" Jessup shouted back. "Hell, most of you people know me!"

Mrs. Carmody stepped forward and wrapped her hand around his throat, choking the words from Jessup's mouth before he could speak again.

"You stop your chicken-shit prattling now, or I will cut your puling tongue out, boy. Now, tell us!"

Mrs. Carmody forcefully released him, and David attempted to reach him once again before being forced backward by the mob.

"You stay out of this, Drayton," one of the men hissed dangerously.

Jessup doubled over and coughed as his airway became clear once again, and the store fell silent save for the low drone of the fluorescent lights above.

"Ok, ok," he said desperately. "I heard stuff."

"Stuff," Mrs. Carmody said with a sneer.

"Yes! We all heard stuff! Like…like how they thought there were other dimensions, you know? Other…other worlds around us and how they wanted to try and make like…like a window or something. Then maybe they could look through and see what was on the other side."

Silence reigned once again, but the air was thick with the weight of what Jessup had just said. Even the prophetic Mrs. Carmody was speechless, her hand held over her mouth in absolute shock. It was a long moment before she finally spoke.

"Well, maybe your window turned out to be a door, didn't it?"

"No! Not mine! The scientists…"

"Oh yes, yes, the scientists, of course."

"Yes! They must have ripped a hole open by accident, and that world came spilling into ours. That's what Donaldsen was saying to me right before he killed himself! I didn't understand half of it! That's all I know! I swear!"

Jessup was crying now, pleading with every ounce of his being for the crowd to listen, but even a blind man could see the vengefulness in their eyes.

"It ain't my fault!"

"Oh," Mrs. Carmody said, throwing her hands up as if all was suddenly made right by his denial.

"It. Ain't. His. Fault. Of course not. Ain't nothing ever anyone's fault. But he denies it! He points the finger!"

Mrs. Carmody gestured down to Jessup's trembling form.

"This Judas in our midst!"

David attempted to push forward once more, but he was shoved back roughly once again, this time with enough force to almost topple him.

"You…"

The commotion had been enough to draw Mrs. Carmody's attention, and David felt his skin crawl as she fixed him with vehement eyes.

"Don't you know by now, David Drayton? Have you not seen the truth with your own eyes? We are being punished. And for what?"

Mrs. Carmody turned back to Jessup and grabbed him by the chin.

"For going against God's will. For going against His forbidden rules of old! Walking on the moon! Splitting his atoms! Yes! Or messing with His stem cells to try and unlock the secrets of life that only He has any right to!"

Her sermon was answered by numerous shouts of "Amen!" as the crowd began to rile up. Jessup pleadingly looked around himself for help, only growing more and more nervous as the shouting grew louder.

"And now, His judgment has come upon us! The Fiend is let loose! Star Wormwood blazes!"

Her finger came to point at Jessup once more.

"And it is his fault!"

"No!" Jessup cried out, his fear turning to desperate anger at last. "It is not my fault!"

"They have spit into the eye of the Almighty!"

"NO!"

Jessup jumped to his feet and tried to run, but he was forcefully grabbed by Jim and thrown forward into the crowd of Mrs. Carmody's bloodthirsty followers. The crowd began pummeling him in his attempts to escape, driving him back into the circle and bouncing him around like a trapped animal in a cage.

David lunged forward again, but this time, Jim turned and drove his fist hard into David's face, staggering him and forcing him back once more. Ollie and Ambrose both supported him so that he didn't fall to the floor, but their hands now held him back as well.

Angered shouts grew more vicious as the crowd continued to punish Jessup. Shoves turned into punches, and Jessup's pained shouts made David's stomach churn.

He was just a kid.

Couldn't have been older than nineteen.

And yet, the angry mob still tore into him as though he was nothing more than a rabid dog. How did it come to this? How had they lost their grip so much that they were now lashing out at someone who wasn't even responsible for this?

David saw the knife appear moments before it struck, and even still, he almost couldn't believe it when Mr. McVey, the once kind man that operated the grill for the store, buried his favorite cooking utensil in Jessup's stomach. What had once been the kindly gentleman that always offered Billy a free sample of whatever he was cooking for the day had turned into nothing more than a zealotus acolyte, and David's shouts were drowned out by the crowd as Mr. McVey stabbed Jessup once more.

Twice more.

Blood now dripped freely onto the linoleum, sprouting fat red puddles on the otherwise polished white surface. Jessup's cries ceased, for now his mouth hung agape in pain and shock, unable to comprehend what was happening to him.

David watched in horror as little old ladies and mothers and fathers all closed in on the poor boy. People who Jessup had once regarded as neighbors and even friends were now all cheering as blood seeped from his stomach, whatever humanity they'd once had now evaporated courtesy of the Mist outside.

And above all the chaos, despite the roar of the crowd and the frantic pleas of David and his group to stop, Mrs. Carmody's voice carried over the aisles and counters.

"Feed him to the beasts! Let the abominations smell his blood!"

"Expiation! Expiation!"

Jessup's howling form was hoisted into the air, countless hands holding him aloft and starting towards the doors. His limbs, whether by intention or not, were spread in a sacrificial posture as the bellowing mob raced up the aisle and towards the outside. Groceries and items were knocked haphazardly from their shelves as the mindless crowd stampeded forward, leaving smashed jars and flattened boxes in their wake.

"No!" David called out, he moved to stop them, but Ollie and Ambrose still held him back. "Let me go! We have to stop them!"

"No, David…" came Ollie's voice. It was tired and defeated, but it still carried a sense of finality.

"We need you, David. Billy needs you. Goddamit, they'll throw you out there too if you try to stop them…"

David still struggled, and it was only when he saw Billy's frightened and tear-stained face that he reluctantly stopped trying to reach Jessup. Instead, David fell to his knees and pulled Billy close, wrapping him in a hug and doing everything he could to ignore Jessup's screams as they grew more distant.

He looked up to see that Jessup was halfway out of the door. The wounded private had still enough fight to grab onto the door frame before he was completely thrown out, but his struggles were in vain as multiple hands reached out and tore his fingers away from the frame.

Once outside completely, the mob threw him onto the asphalt of the parking lot, and Jessup weakly cried out as he landed hard on his side, his hands clutching his stomach as blood still oozed from his wounds.

The doors were closed once more, and the lock bolts were thrown before Jessup could even struggle to his feet. Shakily, Jessup rose and stumbled back to the door, taking one hand from his stomach and pounding on the glass, begging to be let in by anyone who would listen. Jim's hard glare stared back at him from the other side, and David could only watch as Jessup continued to pound against the door, his bloody hand smearing the glass.

There was a noise, something akin to a dull roar, and Jessup's struggles immediately ceased as he slowly turned to gaze out into the Mist. The noise had been muffled slightly from the doors, but it had still been loud enough that everyone inside the store had heard it. Whatever had made the noise, it had been large. And in that next moment, David was glad that he was holding Billy's head to his chest, for a vile shape loomed and took form outside. Hunched over and walking on four insect-like appendages, the thing looked to be a cross between a crab and a praying mantis, its nightmarish form only accentuated by its hulking size.

It could smell Jessup's blood on the pavement and on his clothes, and as the creature drew closer, Jessup slowly turned and pressed a bloody palm onto the door in one last attempt to appeal to the forsaken humanity on the other side.

"Please…"

A claw the length of a tree reached for him, but it never landed.

Instead, a burst of fire and flame erupted against the monster's bulk, the force of the sound rattling the windows and causing everyone in the store to flinch. Outside, Jessup whirled around and fell to the asphalt in shock, landing in a sitting position with his back propped up against the glass.

The creature itself recovered and turned towards where the explosion had come from, and David saw a small ball of light emerge from somewhere in the Mist and fly straight into the lovecraftian terror, leaving a trail of blackened exhaust in the air as it passed through. When it landed, the ball of light gave off a second explosion, and the monster recoiled and staggered backward.

The crowd screamed and yelled in confusion of what they saw, and then everyone jumped as three more balls of light appeared in rapid succession, following each other like train cars as they homed in on the monster and detonated just like the ones before.

The combined power of the three rapid explosions overwhelmed the monster, and it listed to the side before tumbling down into the parking lot with a loud crash, flattening at least five cars with the size of its now dead body. The silhouette twitched a few times, then fell still.

An awed silence fell over the store, and David heard nothing save for the ringing in his own ears. All eyes searched the Mist fervently for any sign as to the source of the projectiles, and after a moment, a smaller, more humanoid shape emerged. David squinted for a few moments as the Mist obscured much of the strange form, then his eyes widened as the figure revealed itself to be a figure dressed entirely in some sort of green spacesuit. A large weapon was held easily in its hands, and though David was no expert, he deemed the weapon to be some sort of rocket-launcher, as it had a large opening in the back to vent the exhaust generated by the missiles.

The figure spared the now lifeless monster a look, then approached the store, the rocket launcher somehow disappearing from its grip. It stopped once it was within a few feet of the doors, its helmeted gaze looking down at Jessup's slumped form on the pavement. The soldier was barely conscious now thanks to his blood loss, and his chest rose and fell with shaky breaths as he looked back up at the armored figure with hazy eyes.

The spaceman looked from Jessup to the astonished crowd watching him from the windows, and then seemed to grow incredibly angry. His tilted head and clenched fists betrayed that his anger was likely directed at the occupants in the store, and David lost sight of the figure for a second as it knelt down next to Jessup. The crowd murmured and craned their necks to see what he was doing, and David could see looks of confusion and awe on their faces. Even Mrs. Carmody looked frightened, as even she did not have an explanation for what it was they were currently seeing.

The figure rose back to full height a few moments later, carrying a now unconscious Jessup underneath one of his arms. He did not seem to slump with the weight at all, in fact, it seemed that carrying the soldier was more of an annoyance than an actual physical effort.

The stranger stepped forward and glared through the glass at Jim, who stood on the other side. It was obvious to everyone present that the figure wanted him to open the door, but Jim stood frozen in place. Initially it might have been from shock and awe, but Jim then set his jaw and crossed his arms, now actively declining to comply with the stranger's silent request.

This served only to anger the figure further, and before David's eyes, the spaceman grabbed the metal frame of the door with his free hand and ripped it off its hinges entirely. Glass shattered and metal screeched as the door immediately bowed to the inhuman display of strength, and much of the metal framing around the door was shorn away as well, leaving behind a warped hole of what jagged and twisted metal remained.

Through his newly crafted entryway, the armored figure stepped through, grabbing Jim by the front of his shirt and quite literally throwing him out of the way as he entered the store. Heavy footfalls echoed loudly throughout the store as he marched in, and though he had not spoken, David could feel his anger at the humans inside. It was as though he could smell the rotten stench of their frenzied mob mentality, and David saw him shake his head before the helmeted gaze turned to him and his group, who were all still gathered a short distance away from the main mob.

The stranger seemed to come to a decision, and as he marched toward them, a polite and robotic voice spoke out from somewhere on his armor, its cordial tone completely at odds with the enraged tone conveyed by his body language.

"I would ask that everyone please retreat to the rear of the building and away from the windows. Masking your scent decreases the chance of drawing more creatures to this location."

The words were kind and polite, but no one moved as the figure deposited Jessup's form on the linoleum next to David and the others. Ollie immediately rushed forward to try and tend to the private's knife wounds, and David glanced over as the former clerk pulled open the blood-soaked fabric of the uniform, only to frown in confusion a moment later when he saw that all of Jessup's wounds were gone. There were no signs of a stabbing in his stomach. In fact, there didn't appear to be any sign of struggle or violence on the kid's body at all save for the stains on his uniform.

David shared a bewildered glance with Ollie, then frowned up at the stranger. The armored human gave no elaboration, however, and instead turned towards the meat department at the end of the aisle. There was a loud noise as the figure wrenched the door to the freezer open, and after rummaging around for a few moments, the armored man reemerged, and slung over his shoulder was a massive side of beef, nearly half a cow, in fact.

David guessed that it was from the meat shipment that must have arrived the night before, and Mr. McVey had not yet been given the chance to butcher it properly. Now, the figure held it easily over his shoulder as he marched back forward to the front of the store, pausing only to snatch a 3-gallon container of lighter fluid from one of the shelves as well.

As he returned to the front of the store, the polite voice spoke once again.

"I must insist that everyone please stand away from the windows. We cannot guarantee your safety if you do not."

"And just what are you supposed to be?" Mrs. Carmody said, finding her voice at last. "Are you the 'gracious hero' sent by the military to 'save the day'? Are you holding out some hope that fighting fruitlessly against the creatures of the Pit will absolve you of your crimes in bringing them down upon us?"

The crowd stirred, finding some sense of lunatic normalcy in Mrs. Carmody's accusations.

"Yeah!" someone jeered from the crowd. "This is your fault in the first place! Meddling with God's creation! You brought down His wrath!"

"My initial observations give no indication that the creatures and meteorological phenomena that exist in this world are the result of divine intervention. It has been our experience that dimensional anomalies such as these are more likely caused by rudimentary attempts at interdimensional travel."

"See?! Do you all see?!" Mrs. Carmody shrieked, riling the crowd up once again. "Denial! Denial of His wrath! Denial of guilt! He claims to have come to 'guarantee our safety', but he has already forgotten that it was he who placed us all on the path to damnation in the first place!"

The crowd jeered and screamed at the armored man, and David watched apprehensively.

"Your hubris will be the undoing of us all! To be so deluded that you think you can withstand Judgment and emerge unscathed. You are nothing! Nothing but a usurper! A false idol!"

That last statement seemed to resonate within the armored man, and before the crowd could jeer anymore, the stranger loudly dropped the meat he was carrying and reached out to the side with his gauntlet. A sudden blue light burst from the gauntlet itself with a loud crack, and David stared incredulously as the light took on a rope-like shape, arcing through the air and into the aisle adjacent to the one he and his group were occupying. The sight and sound of the light-rope itself was enough to startle Mrs. Carmody and her followers into silence once more, and a few of the closer bystanders took an apprehensive step back in response.

The rope of blue light suddenly went taught as it latched onto something within the aisle, and with a simple flick of his wrist, the stranger retracted the light back into the gauntlet before catching a small object that was connected to the other end.

As the figure brought the object to bear, David frowned when he saw that the object appeared to be a premade tube of cake frosting, one that already came with its own narrow tip at the end so that the user could draw details and write words on their own perspective cakes. What the figure could want with something like that at a time like this, David could only guess.

Stepping forward dangerously, the stranger closed the distance between himself and Mrs. Carmody, who still stared back at him in a stunned silence in response to the blue rope of light that had been summoned and dissipated in less than half a second.

Before Mrs. Carmody could regain her wits, the stranger brought the frosting tube to her forehead and expertly spelled out three distinct characters on the exposed skin, dark brown frosting flowing easily from the tube and sticking to where the stranger drew the tip across her face.

Once he had finished, the stranger let the tube of frosting fall to the floor, and David could have sworn that he detected the slightest twinge of…humor?…maybe?... as the figure hefted the side of beef once again and stepped out of the hole in the front door he had made and out into the Mist.

David watched him go, then turned his head back to Mrs. Carmody's group as one of the older women let out an audible gasp and stepped backward from their leader, her gaze suddenly fearful as she stared at the three characters on Mrs. Carmody's forehead.

A frightened scream was let out as more and more survivors read the characters, and Mrs. Carmody herself looked fearfully back and forth among her once loyal followers.

"What?!" she demanded. "What does it say?"

No one answered her, and David, despite everything, held back a small chuckle as he read the characters in their dark brown font for the first time.

"Oh God in Heaven, save us!" Jim cried out from where he had shakily risen after being tossed aside by the stranger. He fell back to his knees and clasped his hands together in fervent prayer as if to ward off the symbols he saw on Mrs. Carmody's face.

"What?! Tell me what it fucking says!" Mrs. Carmody said, her panic giving way to anger as no one volunteered to tell her what they saw. Despite it all, none of her devout followers dared answer as though it were a curse to speak of what they saw before them.

Looking around wildly, Mrs. Carmody finally turned toward the glass windows that made up the front of the store and strode forward hastily.

Moving so that her nose was mere inches from the glass, the pious woman squinted to make out the characters, and David watched with humor of his own when her eyes widened and her lips began to tremble as she read the characters out loud.

"...S-six…"

…six…"

"...SIX…"

Mrs. Carmody let out a blood-curdling shriek and recoiled as though she'd been stabbed, her hands jumping up to her forehead but halting a few inches from where the three "6s" had been drawn, as though actually touching the frosting would somehow cause her to disintegrate.

"He's…he's the antichrist!" she sputtered, more or less just screaming in fear now instead of preaching. Her fanatic followers panicked even more at seeing her falter, and shouts of despair and horror filled the store as they all began to shuffle around like chickens with their heads cut off.

In the back of his mind, David felt like the stranger had known that something like this would've happened when he'd drawn the numbers on her forehead in the first place, and David also felt the sneaking suspicion that he'd done it for the sole purpose of causing Mrs. Carmody and her followers to chaotically lose their minds even more so than they'd already had. He'd likely known that attempting to convince the old bat that he was there to help them would undoubtedly fail, so he had decided to at least get a laugh out of her zealotry by doubling down on her accusations.

Needless to say, it worked. The results were speaking, or in this case screaming, for themselves.

One man screamed and pointed to where the armored man had dropped the tube of cake frosting he'd used to draw on Mrs. Carmody's face, and terrified shouting started anew as he read the words: "Devil's Chocolate Icing" on the side.

Mrs. Carmody then fainted, as did a few other of her followers, then the rest fell silent as well as another loud bang was heard from the Mist outside.

…

Utilizing the sensors within the Praetor Suit, VEGA continued his examination of the strange fog to the best of his ability. While the range of data he could compile from the relatively rudimentary sensors was not by any means ideal, VEGA was still able to draw a few distinct general conclusions about the Mist itself.

Firstly, sound seemed to be remarkably dampened by the fog, which in turn led VEGA to understand that the Mist was constituted of more than just suspended water particles in the air, and that some other compound, one that was not an ideal medium for sound waves, was also present.

This observation was further validated by the acknowledgement that fumes and scents propagated at a far greater rate within the fog, meaning that one's sense of smell was drastically heightened when enshrouded within the Mist. Examination of a few of the creatures the Slayer had terminated showed that their olfactory organs were also highly developed, allowing them to detect the scent of even the smallest of prey from miles away.

Whether the properties that dampened sound and the properties that increased scent were one in the same remained yet to be seen, and had VEGA more time and a greater array of data at his disposal, he undoubtedly would have discovered the truth within a few hours, but he unfortunately had neither of those, so he would have to make do with what information he had.

Unlike him, however, the Doom Slayer seemed more than satisfied with what little they had discovered about the nature of the Mist, as he had already put the information to more practical use by way of the half cow carcass that he had carried out into the middle of the street.

One final property that VEGA had discerned about the Mist was that it was rapidly expanding, and that a single point of origin existed within the mountains beyond. The A.I. had effortlessly pinpointed the location within a meter or so of tolerance, but before he and the Slayer could endeavor to investigate, they would need to ensure the survival of the humans sheltered inside the supermarket. To do so meant that all life forms originating from the Mist in the immediate area would need to be terminated, and thanks to the data VEGA had already collected, the Slayer had developed an efficient method of luring them in.

Depositing the half-frozen cow carcass in the middle of the intersection that the supermarket was around, the Slayer wasted no time ripping the top off the large bottle of lighter fluid and dousing the meat with its contents. Once it was empty, the Slayer discarded the metal container and ignited the mixture with a single round from his plasma rifle, the fuel-soaked meat immediately thawing and charring with the heat from the resulting blaze.

As the Slayer had planned, the strong smell of burning meat immediately bloomed from the center of the road, and the Mist rapidly propagated the smell outward in every direction, covering an exceptionally large cloud throughout the town that smelled like cooking beef.

The response was almost immediate, and the Praetor Suit's systems detected movement and heat signatures all around them as predators from another world gathered for what they thought would be a feast, though what followed was certain to be nothing other than a slaughter.

…

The hound snarled as it ripped a large chunk of scaly skin from the monster's body, eliciting a pained and indignant hiss from the reptilian creature as it recoiled and attempted to retaliate with a bite of its own. Its large jaw clamped shut on nothing but air, however, as the hound had seen the move coming and sprang away to separate itself. It landed a few feet away and squared itself off against the creature once more, and for a moment neither of them moved, a brief pause falling over their battle as they growled and hissed at each other with animosity.

The reptile was still fighting strong, though the hound could tell that its stamina had been drained by a considerable amount. Several glancing blows showed on the creature's form, but only a few of its wounds could be considered serious. The monster's speed had been impressive despite the hound's preparedness for it, and despite the fact that the alpha was definitely winning the battle, it was not without considerable effort. The hound itself had only sustained a few minor cuts on its hide from the creature's claws, and though it had refused to utilize teleportation during the battle in order to heighten the challenge, it had needed to resort to it once in order to dodge what could have been a distinct blow from the reptile's razor sharp bite.

As it turned out, the creature itself had been smarter than the hound had given it credit for, and it had waited until a few minutes into the battle that it had spewed a highly corrosive acid from its mouth in an attempt to melt the hellhound into a puddle. Thankfully, the alpha had seen the move coming, as the creature's already bulbous lower jaw had bulged considerably more right before spewing the acid, which had given the alpha the heads up it needed to avoid the spray. Seeing the hound completely avoid one of the tricks it had saved up had caused the creature to pause in shock, which had given the hound all the time it had needed to headbutt the creature's jaw closed upon its own tongue, which had been protruding from its mouth in order to effectively spew the acid.

The tongue had been sliced completely off by its owner's own razor-sharp teeth, and as the reptile bellowed and coughed on the blood that immediately flooded its mouth, the hound devoured the tongue easily, the small amounts of residual acid only slightly burning its mouth for a few moments before being evaporated by the hound's internal hellfire.

Seeing its tongue being eaten by its opponent had served only to infuriate the monster further, as the hound had intended, and now a dirty red mixture of blood and acid dripped from its mouth and onto the forest floor, dissolving any leaves and twigs that happened to be underneath.

The hound's attention was momentarily diverted as it caught the faint whiff of meat burning in the air. The scent was strong, but it was still remarkably minuscule among the other smells that filled the hound's nostrils at the moment, meaning that it was quite a distance away, but the hound surmised the Slayer to be the likely culprit behind the sound. The hound acknowledged the scent then returned its full attention back to its foe, who did not seem to notice the scent at all.

Determined not to give the creature any further respite, the hound lunged once again, this time searching for an opening that it could take to strike the killing blow.

…

Darkened blood sprayed onto the street as dual chainsaw blades severed a large tentacle from its main body. The pack-a-punched lancer's mechanical roar drowned out the squealing from the creature at the other end as the Slayer immediately turned and fired upon the horde of spiders that had been drawn from the pharmacy adjacent to the store. The arachnids exploded into fragments and red clouds of blood as a hail of high-pitched gunfire tore through them, their large constitutions still less than a match for the enhanced rounds.

The spiders had been dead for less than a few seconds before the Slayer drew his combat shotgun and opened fire into the air above, the wide-spread of buckshot proving to be an efficient choice against the swarm of pterodactyl-like monstrosities that circled above. By twos and threes they began to drop, the air so thick with them that each blast from the shotgun struck multiple at once. A few fell directly onto the now blazing pile of meat that burned in the middle of the street, their lithe forms immediately charring and only adding to the increasingly intense scent that permeated from the flames.

The Slayer's plan had worked perfectly, and now creatures from the Mist were appearing in droves to get at the de facto barbecue that the Doom Slayer had started. None had a chance to feast, however, as they began to foolishly target the Slayer as soon as they saw him, thinking that his fresh meat would be far more preferable to the dead cooked meat on the pile. They would never get the chance to find out.

As the severed nub of the tentacle the Slayer had cut retreated, another tentacle of equal size emerged from the Mist and started toward him. The Slayer, growing increasingly agitated that the creature had yet to emerge completely, activated his instinct leash and latched onto the tentacle as close to the base of it as he could reach. The Slayer heaved as the leash connected, but in a rare event of miscalculation, the fortitude of the tentacle failed to withstand the combined force of the Slayer's pull and the creature's apparently monumental inertia, and with a wet ripping noise, the tentacle tore in two where the leash had latched on, pulling nearly six meters worth of the appendage free of its base and towards the Slayer while the other half snapped back into the shadows.

Furious, the Slayer made use of the still flopping appendage by altering its trajectory as it flew towards him. Raising it up by a few meters, the tentacle sailed over his head by less than a foot and through the middle of the blazing pile of carrion in the middle of the street. The thick slime coating the tentacle was apparently flammable, and it ignited almost immediately as its form passed through the center of the inferno. With the mass and size of a large tree, the flaming tentacle emerged from the other side of the conflagration at high speed, crashing into an oncoming swarm of carnivorous flying insects on the other side. The momentum of the large appendage knocked the swarm in disarray while outright crushing those unfortunate enough to be in its path, and the Doom Slayer capitalized on their momentary discombobulation by lobbing a grenade into the air and into the center of their broken formation.

The well-timed detonation sent insect innards flying in every direction, splattering the pavement further with more evidence of the Slayer's massacre. The dull yellow pus that erupted from the insects stood out in contrast to the darkened blood that coated the concrete in a thick base, creating a mosaic of slaughter that an artist with a twisted sense of humor might have found beautiful.

The Slayer paid no attention to the imagery he was leaving behind on the canvas that was the street, however, as the previously distant owner of the tentacles he had severed so far chose that moment to confront him fully. Shuffling from the shadows in an ever-writhing mass of slithering appendages, the Slayer noted that its main body lacked much in the way of a rigid form, instead consisting of a large amorphous pile of flesh that served as an origin for its nearly countless limbs. The mountain of flesh had emerged from behind the supermarket itself, and cars were easily pushed and scraped aside as the gargantuan form shuffled closer to the Doom Slayer. A pair of eyes the size of manhole covers stared unblinkingly at the Slayer as it drew even closer, and he could see his own form reflected in the inky pupils, the light of the blaze behind him casting him as a dark shadow that stood prominently against the Mist.

Eyes of that size would have stricken any of the humans inside the store with unequivocal terror, but to the Slayer, they were nothing more than weak points, and their size only meant they were easier to target.

In a flash, the Slayer activated the leash again and thrust his arm towards the tentacled monster, his aim locked dead center into the creature's left eye. Instead of arcing through the air and latching onto the sensitive organ, however, the instinct leash weakly flashed for a few moments before sputtering out, hardly making it a quarter of the distance to its intended target before it died completely.

"It would seem that the instinct leash is ill-equipped to interface with increased mental facilities such as yours," VEGA said, immediately running diagnostics on the device as it flickered and sparked on the Slayer's wrist.

"It is my recommendation that you limit its use until we are able to reinforce its internal components, as continued undue strain has the potential to cause irreparable damage to the device."

The Slayer's tactical mind immediately shifted to accommodate this new information, albeit annoyedly, as he had been warming up to the leash and its ability to amplify his capacity to rip and tear through his enemies. But it was of little consequence in the end, as all it truly meant was that he would have to utilize his more tried and true methods of achieving his goals.

The gauss cannon appeared in his hands in the next moment, and before the tentacled monster could grab for him with one of its countless limbs, a super-accelerated flechette of reinforced steel pierced its left eye and into its center mass. The lack of a more rigid body resulted in very little resistance to the projectile as it carved through its body, and with plenty of momentum to spare, the rod of metal emerged from the other side of the monster's body and continued on, burying itself 100 meters away in the chest of a large beetle-like creature that had also been advancing towards the Slayer. The decay imparted from the rod turned the enormous insect's heart to ash in the span of a few seconds, and the creature seized wildly as its body underwent extreme cardiac arrest. Its rapidly flailing limbs slowed and then eventually went limp after a few seconds however, and the insect died without ever even laying eyes on its killer.

Back at the blazing intersection, the tentacled monster screeched loudly and recoiled. Dozens of tentacles retracting towards the rapidly-expanding hole that was its left eye. Its soft and squishy flesh that had done little against the gauss cannon's ammunition was now doing even less against the decay that followed, and the Slayer could easily see daylight poking through the other side of its body as the decay continued to spread. The monster however, was hardly finished yet, as its lack of a centralized nervous system meant that despite the massive hole in its main mass, it was still very much alive. And it was now seethingly angry.

Roughly a dozen tentacles lashed out in a rapid blur to impart its pain back onto the Slayer, who reacted equally as fast with another well-placed shot from the gauss cannon. This time, the shot pierced through three of the tentacles at once, severing them from the creature and imparting further decay onto it. The remaining tentacles continued their advance, and the Slayer drew his lancer once more as they closed in.

…

David had stared with his mouth agape when the large tentacled mass had shuffled past the window of the store. Even from the back of the building, he had still caught a glimpse of the goliath as it had gone by, moving towards the faint glow of a fire that they could just barely make out through the thick fog. Many others had seen it as well. And even those who hadn't seen it had heard it at least, as the sound was like that of skin being dragged across the asphalt, only many times magnified, as though whatever was moving outside had enough skin to cover an elephant…or maybe three.

Everyone had heeded the armored man's advice and had taken shelter away from the windows, and even Mrs. Carmody's group had eventually yielded once they began to hear shooting and the sounds of carnage just outside their vision. Mrs. Carmody herself had taken to mumbling continuous and repeated prayers from where she knelt next to some of her most devout followers, Jim being one of them.

"...it will not come unless the apostasy comes first," she recited. "...and the man of lawlessness is revealed."

The last of her sanity had all but abandoned her, and though she was far more gone than she had been, David noticed with a bittersweet feeling that she was not as aggressive and vocal as she had been before. Her subdued nature had spread also to her followers, and despite the screams and roars of the creatures just outside those doors, David felt incrementally more safe than he had been before.

"...and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate…"

"Oh, give it a rest already!" Irene said at last, the older woman's patience with Mrs. Carmody finally reaching its limit. "As if what's going on outside isn't enough to scare the children half to death, your incessant rambling is certainly not helping."

"They should be scared," Mrs. Carmody deadpanned, her voice devoid of any emotion at all, as though she'd lost all of the piousness she'd previously held. "The unmaker has already come upon us, and there is nothing that can stop what happens next."

"You honestly believe that man is some sort of antichrist just because he put frosting on your forehead?" Irene scolded. "He did that just to shut you up. Hell, if I'd known that would work, I'd have painted your forehead myself almost two days ago when you started spouting all this nonsense! He's just a soldier from the base, dressed in one of those combat suits that you see on TV all the time."

Mrs. Carmody scoffed.

"You think I'm being delusional, you old bitch? No mere 'soldier' possesses the strength that he does. He has pulled the wool over all of your eyes with his promises and pride."

A bit of bite had found its way back into Mrs. Carmody's voice, but this did not deter Irene at all.

"So what exactly was your plan then, O' divine preacher? Were you just going to denounce anyone that comes to our rescue as some kind of deceiver? Were you hoping we wouldn't get rescued at all so that you can keep spouting your crap to these people?"

"...and the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast; they worshiped the dragon because he gave his authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, 'Who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with him?'"

Irene looked as though she was about to retort to Mrs. Carmody's recitation, but David cleared his throat to stop her. It was obvious that Mrs. Carmody was past reasoning at this point, and all Irene was going to do by arguing with her was make things worse. With any luck, the armored man outside held their best interests at heart, which certainly seemed to be the case if the dying cries of the monstrosities outside were any indication of his motives. David just hoped that he could find a way home soon to Stephanie. And that maybe, the armored stranger, or at least someone like him, was helping her as well.

…

The reptilian creature had stopped moving a few seconds ago, but the hound watched it even still, watching for the subtle rise and fall that would tell if it was still breathing. When the monster still failed to move, only then did the hound look away, inhaling deep the now very strong scent of burning flesh. It had grown steadily more apparent as the brawl had drawn to a close, but by that time, the victor was all but decided. In the end, the stamina of the reptile had run out, and its speed had dropped drastically enough for the alpha to dig its claws and fangs deep under its skin. It had died via blood loss from its more serious wounds, and the hound celebrated its victory with a deep howl as it considered its next move.

The burning scent was now undoubtedly the work of the Slayer, and the hound, despite its orders, felt an overwhelming desire to join him in his bountiful hunt. It toyed with the decision for a few moments more, then made up its mind.

With a flash of lightning, the hound warped back down into the basement of the house once more, startling the human female once again and causing her to unconsciously jump away from where it had appeared.

When she recognized the hound, she slowly relaxed once more, though the alpha was indifferent to her body language at the moment, and it squinted as it inspected her for any sign of wounds or sickness. Finding none, the hound then trotted up the stairs to the door leading out of the basement, ensuring that it was locked by pressing the button firmly into the handle with its snout before returning to the bottom of the steps.

It examined the human one last time to make absolutely sure that she was fine, and she frowned in confusion at its sudden interest in her before self-consciously looking down at herself to see if she could see anything wrong.

Once it was assured that she was okay, the hound gave the human a small grunt of finality, and before she had the chance to decipher its meaning, the canine warped out of the basement and towards the scent of the Slayer's wrath. The distance was great enough that it took two jumps through subspace to reach him, and the hound emerged at his location slightly winded with the effort of warping such a distance in such a short amount of time.

The sight that greeted it was typical of the Doom Slayer, as he was currently embattled with some sort of gigantic tentacle monster while simultaneously picking off a rapidly growing horde of lesser creatures of the Mist. As usual, he was in control of the situation, but the hound could see that the large tentacled monster was drawing a large amount of his attention, as despite the numerous wounds he had inflicted upon it, it was still alive and actively attacking him.

Despite that, the hound knew that the battle between them could not have been going on for very long, as the Slayer had not yet utilized some of his arsenal that would be far more effective against the monstrosity. The only reason for that being that he simply hadn't switched to them yet.

Deciding to prove that it was far more useful here than guarding a single human that was under no threat at the moment, the hound took notice of one of the creature's severed tentacles that had fallen into the blaze that now dominated the street. The slimy substance that coated the appendage appeared to burn easily, and after taking note that the creature had a considerably-sized hole in its body where its left eye should have been, the hound wasted no time springing into action.

Forgoing teleportation in favor of showmanship, the alpha sprinted forward, ignoring the look the Slayer gave it as it ran directly between him and the monster, blocking his firing line just as he was drawing another weapon. The tentacled creature itself just barely tracked the hound with its good eye as it blurred closer, but its reaction time was not nearly sufficient enough as the hound wove through its mass of tentacles and dove forward directly into the hole that was once its left eye socket. There was just barely enough room for the hound to fit, but that suited the alpha well for what came next. As soon as it had fully entered the eye hole, the hound gave a great roar of effort and willed its hell-hide to alight to its maximum. Flames immediately filled the limited space around it that constituted the creature's central body, then jetted outward from both openings, engulfing the monster's entire body in hellfire in a matter of seconds, as hellfire burned far more strongly and at much greater temperatures than any standard blaze of the mortal plane.

The creature let out a blood-curdling screech and writhed around madly as it tried to reach for the hound with its burning tentacles, but the hound refused to warp away and willed its hide to burn brighter, searing away the meat closest to it completely. The creature's remaining eye glowed brightly for the briefest of moments before burning away as well, and the supernatural inferno sprouted from the empty socket and jetted into the sky.

…

David and everyone else stared as the faint glow they had been seeing since the armored man had left suddenly grew exponentially. Even from the back of the store did the light shine brightly, burning away the Mist completely and revealing a horrible nightmare of a beast. The clear sight of tentacled monster may have once struck David cold with fear, but seeing it wreathed in a nearly white hot conflagration left him only struck with awe. He turned his head away as it began to glow too brightly to stare at, but he could still feel the slight heat coming through the glass and the open entryway the armored man had created earlier. A high-pitched hum obstructed all other sound, and David pulled Billy close and held him tight despite his lack of fear. Nothing about that fire was normal, but somehow, David knew that it was not meant for him.

…

The hound gave one final push, then finally unclenched, letting its flames die back down to their normal intensity before tiredly warping out of the monster's now barely twitching form and in front of the Doom Slayer. To teleport even a few feet was difficult now, and the alpha growled with the strain as it looked up to meet the Slayer's gaze, its sides heaving with the effort of what it had just done. It had never strained itself like that before, but it had not done so without reason.

Though it knew that the Slayer did not regard it as weak by any means, it had still felt insulted by his order to remain behind to guard the human female. Such tasking was not why the alpha had chosen to remain with him, and though it knew that the Doom Slayer had not commanded the hound for no reason at all, the hound needed him to know that it would not take such orders, and that if it was to stay, then it would not be used as some guard dog that looked after lost humans while the Slayer participated in the hunt alone. The promise of challenging prey was the sole reason it had decided to join him at all, and though it would always respect and revere the Doom Slayer for sparing its life, its gratitude had its limits. It would certainly go out of its way to save those in need, but its true purpose did not lie in the rescue of others.

If it could not hunt, then it would have been better for the Slayer to kill it in those woods when he'd freed it from the control of the dark aether.

It met his hard gaze with resolution, and it growled once more and planted its feet firmly despite its exhaustion. It had made its point, of that, there was no doubt. Now, it was up to the Doom Slayer to decide how to respond.

For a long moment, the two of them stared at each other, the moment tense despite the cries of dying prey all around them. Then the Slayer relaxed his posture, his body language showing that he accepted the terms that the hound had wordlessly laid out. Only then did the alpha relax its shoulders as well and show how tired it was, though the Slayer had likely already known how hard it had just pushed itself.

Looking around and giving the air an experimental sniff told the hound that while it had been making its argument via frying the tentacled monstrosity from the inside, the Doom Slayer had taken the opportunity to kill any remaining creatures of the Mist. There was now no scent of a living being for miles around save for the frightened humans inside the glass-fronted building just a few meters away, and the hound approached the still-burning pile of corpses that littered the street, taking the opportunity to replenish its depleted energy by feasting on some of the more well-done pieces of meat. The Doom Slayer took his time to examine the corpses as well, likely both for his own benefit and for the benefit of the voice in his armor, then turned toward the hound once more after some time had passed.

The hound had expected this request to come, but the Slayer had waited until it had regained some of its strength. He wanted the hound to retrieve the human female and bring her to the others, and though the hound understood the nature of the request, it still tilted its head in a questioning manner, wanting assurance that if it fulfilled the request, the Slayer would not depart on another hunt until it returned.

It was reassured with a nod, and after taking another minute to stretch its aching form, the hound warped back to where it had left the human female, this time warping outside the door to the basement and giving a few taps with its paw so as not to startle her as much.

When it did not hear any movement for a few moments, the hound gave a non-threatening bark to confirm its identity, and only then did the female tentatively climb the stairs and open the door. At first, she'd only opened the door just wide enough to confirm that it was the hound on the other side, then she'd slowly opened it all the way before looking down at the awaiting canine.

With a brief shake of its fur, the hound diminished its flames and stretched its neck out expectantly, gesturing to the human that it wanted her to grab hold. She frowned her eyes in confusion, and after a few moments, the hound impatiently nudged its head under her hand to clarify what it wanted her to do. The human seemed to finally understand, and she cautiously but firmly placed her hand on top of the hound's head, and after making sure she had a firm grasp, the hound summoned the teleportational lightning and warped back towards the Slayer's location.

Like before, the distance required two separate jumps, and when they'd emerged in front of the building, the female doubled over and retched onto the asphalt of the parking lot, her body unused to making not just one but two jumps in rapid succession.

The voice inside the Slayer's suit addressed her once she recovered, seemingly directing her inside the store and towards the others of her kind. The woman gave an apprehensive look towards the store, then nodded and gave what the hound guessed to be an awkward verbal thanks to the Slayer and it before hastening towards the broken doors and out of the Mist.

Once she disappeared safely inside, the Slayer turned towards the hound again, though this time, it was to gauge its readiness rather than request that it stay behind. The hound's fur eagerly alighted despite its remaining weariness, and it gave an affirmative bark to signal that it was prepared to hunt once again.

With that, the Slayer turned and started toward the mountains in the distance, likely towards a destination that perhaps led to the source of the creatures of the Mist, the alpha hellhound immediately warping ahead and sniffing for any prey that yet lurked along their path.

…

Despite everything David had seen over the last three days, somehow it was this moment that seemed the least believable of it all.

Yesterday, the gunfire and inferno that had gone on just outside the store had eventually died down, and shortly afterward, the armored man disappeared without a trace. But he had not left without leaving one thing behind, however, and that came in the form of a single human that had apprehensively walked through the broken entryway to the store that the armored man had made.

Stephanie.

When David had first seen her, he had been so certain that he had died, that the massive inferno that had been so bright and hot only fifteen minutes before had killed him and he was now seeing her visage before he passed on. But when she had burst into tears and choked out his name upon seeing him too, he decided that he didn't care if he was dead, and he'd scooped Billy up into his arms and carried him all the way to her, wrapping his arms around them both as tightly as he could and refusing to let go.

They were together again, and all David cared about was that. The Mist didn't matter anymore. For how long the three of them held each other, David did not know, and the only reason that they had eventually separated was to investigate the sudden changes they had seen outside. Everyone in the store tentatively moved forward to investigate the first disturbance they'd seen since the armored man disappeared into the Mist, and to their disbelief, the veil seemed to be lifting.

It had been slow at first, but eventually there was no denying it. The sky was getting brighter. Visibility was getting further. And the fog, well, the fog was getting thinner.

And then, all at once, it had broken completely, and everyone within the store had squinted and shielded their eyes as the brilliance of the sun shined once more through the windows. Not a cloud could be seen in the strikingly blue sky, and for a moment, the world held the illusion that the Mist had never fallen upon it

But, with their newfound sight, all eyes then turned to the parking lot and the street, and that illusion was distinctly shattered.

The most prominent thing above all else was the corpses, both in appearance and in number. Despite some of the bodies being easily distuinguishable as hellacious creatures birthed from the unnatural fog, most were nigh unrecognizable, their carrion being desecrated to a degree that it was difficult to tell what kind of monster it had been before. Bones had been snapped or ground into the pavement, muscles had been crudely severed and mashed into paste, but most of all, entire scores of the creatures had been burned entirely to a crisp. A severely scorched mound of carrion was visible in the middle of the intersection, and it was that which eventually drew everyone's gaze to it as the first of them cautiously excited the store and stepped out into the parking lot.

The size…the smell…everything about the mound of fried corpses screamed of spite, and the once blood and innard-soaked asphalt around it now sported a stark black layer of soot and ash. It was as though the flames of hell itself had congregated upon the pile, delivering a blaze of hatred and passionate deliverance that ensured that none that encountered it could even remotely be considered once alive.

A few meters away from the mound, David saw what he guessed to be the remnants of the large tentacled creature that had slithered past the store what now seemed a lifetime ago. What little structure remained of the body and limbs were coated in a dark-gray skin of ash, and as they all walked among the scene, one of the more curious survivors reached out to touch one of the shriveled and ash-borne tentacles.

As soon as their fingers brushed against the sooty surface, however, the entire tentacle crumbled, revealing that the entirety of the creature was now composed of only cold cinders. Its entire body had burned so quickly and so intensely that the remains did not have time to be carried away by the smoke. And so here it was, the only sign that such a creature had ever existed.

Before long, the once familiar but now alien sound of approaching vehicles reached their ears, and looking down the street showed armored military vehicles approaching, vehicles that they would soon find to contain supplies and soldiers and medicines and help. It was like the Army had finally been able to mobilize and react against the Mist, though albeit long after the fog and its denizens were gone.

In the back of his mind, David somehow knew, despite the soldiers not telling him anything about what had happened or what had driven the Mist away, that the armored man had been behind this. That he, whatever he was, whether the coming of the antichrist or some lone hero playing dress up, had done something that had led to the return of the sun and the sky.

And now, sitting here in a high school gym that had been turned into a shelter for those that had survived and been displaced by the Mist, David pensively considered what the armored stranger had done to bring back the world he once knew.

No…that was wrong. The world he once knew was gone. It was gone and there was no way to bring it back. The damage had already been done.

No matter how much people would try to forget and try to explain away and cover up what had happened, the fact would always remain that something…else was out there. More than what they just see with their own eyes, and certainly more than what they could see with their telescopes and other instruments of science.

That something, that mere confirmation of the fact that there was more, changed the very definition of reality. And it was driven home by the fact that what was out there had the capacity to wipe out humanity as they knew it. The Mist had done nearly that, as David later learned that the ever present fog had still been expanding across the country and the ocean before it had dissipated, meaning that for all any one knew, it would have continued until the entire planet was consumed.

And yet, despite the horrific reality that the end of the world had been almost upon them, the fact still remained that it had been averted. Something had put a stop to it, and the stranger that they had encountered had played a part in it. To what extent, or even how, David had no idea, but he knew for sure that he had.

Whether he was some kind of false idol like Mrs. Carmody had predicted, or if he was some other kind of visitor from beyond, like the monsters of the Mist had been, remained shrouded in mystery. Mrs. Carmody and a few of her more devout followers still insisted that they knew his true nature, and that the Mist had been only the beginning of what would be the end times, but they had been placed into custody by the Army after physically assaulting some of the soldiers that attempted to rescue them, so at the very least David did not have to endure her fervent sermons anymore.

Looking down at Stephanie and Billy, who were both fast asleep on the cot next to him, David decided for now that it didn't matter what the true nature of the stranger had been. Perhaps he was some sort of force for evil that had yet to reveal his actual plans, but for now, David regarded him only as the one who had made his family whole again, and no matter what came next, David, as well as countless others, owed him a debt far greater than all the money in the world could pay.

Thank you.

David was unsure if his silent words were heard or not, but he said it again anyway, and with a slight smile on his face, he laid down next to his wife and child and took them into his arms, falling into a restful sleep like he had never felt before.

A/N: Looking back at how many chapters I've written so far, I gotta say I'm a bit surprised that I didn't drop our protagonists into a Stephen King novel sooner. Ah well, better late than never, right?

Writing this chapter actually was a bit tricky in my opinion, as I wasn't sure whether I should stick more to the book or movie version of what happened. In the end, I decided to take elements of both, with drawing more heavily from the movie about the stuff with the soldiers and origins of the Mist and the book for characterization purposes (not so much for David, though, as I prefer the movie version of him where he doesn't have extra-marital relations. Also movie-Ollie is a certified badass, so I leaned more towards that version of him too).

Also, I'm not sure why, but I particularly enjoyed writing the fight scenes in this one. Maybe it was partly because I got to mix in a bit of conflict between the Slayer and the hellhound, but I think it was more because of the fact that the monsters of the Mist offered me the opportunity to have the Slayer fight against a variety of creatures rather than just one type, which is more similar to the game. It really lets me stretch my legs and even grants me the rare opportunity to create my own monsters as well as fun new ways for the Slayer to kill them. That being said, originality isn't really my thing (which is already evident by the fact that I write crossover fics), so the unique reptile monster that the hound fights is probably a near carbon copy of some other creature somebody else already invented, but oh well, I still had a lot of fun writing that part.

Lastly, it has come to my attention that there exist, not just one, but two other works of fanfic that attribute themselves to Universal Doom for inspiration. I have read both of them in their entirety, and I must say that my feelings are conflicted.

On one hand, the fact that MY work has had enough of an impact on someone that they created something of their own with it as an inspiration fills me with an indescribable joy that I almost made a scene in public when I first discovered them. Not to be dramatic or anything...

On the other hand, I can't help but feel a bit sheepish as well. As much as I love that my fic inspired them, I can't help but feel like I'm getting credit for something I really didn't do. Crossovers and universe-hopping have been a thing forever, and while I love what my fic has inspired in others, I am definitely not the first person to write a fic where a protagonist visits multiple other universes. Maybe I'm just overthinking things...

That being said, I implore anyone that likes Universal Doom to go read these fics as well! The first is titled: "Against All Evil" by Firestorm808, and it is also a growing anthology of the Doom Slayer battling against the baddies of the multiverse. At this point in time, there are already five chapters, so please go check it out! The second, titled "Ben 10 Saves the Universe(s)" by TimeLord2000, follows a different (but equally badass) hero as he travels the multiverse and lends his powers to those in need (I'm sure the title gives away the protagonist in question).

Please go show these fics and their authors some serious love if you like Universal Doom, and don't forget to drop a review detailing how good/bad my writing is in this chapter! With that being said, this author's note has gone way longer than it should, so I will see you all next time! Bye!

-ImpulsiveWeaver