Chapter 3, Evening Excursion


The first thing Hakke noticed was the calling of crickets. The second thing he noticed was that he was still alive, face down in the dirt. Whatever the hell had just happened to him hadn't been properly fatal, although at the moment he wished it had been. At least then he would be brought back to life without all the innumerous injuries he currently had. Each breath felt like a small blowtorch was frying his chest; a wonderful result of that Knight's axe crushing most of his ribcage. The rest of his body felt like he had been dragged behind a Sparrow for several miles over rough terrain. Add a layer of unnatural exhaustion on top of everything else, and Hakke's day had taken a massive turn for the worst.

Not how he would have preferred to wake up. The Warlock would have preferred waking up in a pile of unclaimed glimmer, exotic guns, and decrypted Golden Age data. On the other hand nothing had tried to murder him while he had lain there unconscious, so there was largely little to complain about.

Had to think positive after all.

Hakke finally lifted his head off of the ground with legitimate effort. It appeared that he had left the portal moving fast, as a solid amount of dirt had been shoved through the now broken visor of his helmet, and even from where he lay he could see a trail of crushed underbrush and torn earth. The portal had not been gentle in ejecting him, or the pieces of the Arcology structure it had pulled through either. Pieces of what had once been floors and walls were embedded in the ground around him, some lodged inside of the trees in his vicinity. One piece had cleaved a smaller tree in half, leaving splinters of wood scattered and still burning in its wake. All of them had been warped, elongated like a stretched taffy. Still, some of them had working strips of lights along their length, casting sporadic flickering blue light through the forest glen he found himself in.

That was another fact he found surprising. He was in a forest. An honest, by the Light, terrestrial forest. Not the ossified trunks of Io, not the overgrown wilds of Venus, but a normal Earth forest. He didn't recognize the type of tree, but there was only one place in the universe that had vegetation that looked like this. The Hive had sent him to Earth.

He rose on unsteady feet, hand cannon in hand. It was hard to guess what the Hive Wizard's plan was exactly, but he could make some educated guesses. The Hunter had told him to keep the Crown from Earth at all costs, and now that is exactly where he found himself. If this was part of their plan, he would make them regret pulling him along for the ride.

He began to form a plan of his own in his head. First step, find the Crown. Second step, get in touch with the Vanguard, and get the Crown off world. From there, they could learn more about the artifact from the Vanguard's spooky expert on the Hive, Eris Morn. Or he could launch it into the Sun. Either would be effective.

He looked around the still burning ruins of the glen. Night was falling fast, the last rays of the sun beginning to vanish behind a range of shallow mountains off in the distance. Soon he would be searching in the twilight, and then in the actual night. The Warlock reckoned that the Hive would be arriving soon to regain control of their toy. Hakke planned to be long gone by the time any Tombships appeared in realspace.

"Callie, can you pick up the Crown on your sensors?" He called out, making sure to keep his voice down. He didn't want a repeat of his earlier outburst if there were Hive already around.

He peered around the wreckage, sifting through the long grass that covered the ground. There was no reply.

"Callie?" His partner wasn't responding. That was bad. Extremely bad. There was practically nothing that could knock out a Ghost, or at least render them incapable of communicating. There wasn't an overwhelming amount of Darkness in the area; he would have been able to feel the presence of the Light's antithesis himself if it was here. That meant she was either remaining quiet on purpose, or she hadn't survived the trip.

He focused inwards. Guardians without their Ghosts were a rarity, usually because the Guardian in question didn't live long once their Ghost was killed. It was a bit of a taboo subject on the Tower, which had the unfortunate ramification of ensuring Hakke had no idea what to expect if Callie was gone. He was fairly certain that he would be unable to wield the Light if Callie died, but he could be wrong there. The only truly Ghostless Guardian he knew was still roaming around was Eris Morn, and he was absolutely not brave enough to ask her anything about that topic.

Still, his impromptu meditation did give him some interesting results. He could feel her presence in his mind, even if it was far fainter than it usually was. She wasn't in his Backpack, he could tell that much, so he guessed she was somewhere amongst the wreckage around here. At least he hoped so. She could be on another planet for all he knew.

Reaching deeper still, he coiled his control around the Light, willing a spark of solar energy to appear in his palm. It was difficult, he found. More difficult than he anticipated. The Light was there in overwhelming quantity, albeit with a strange overtone of sorts to it. It was almost like it was a different style, or flavor of light. But for as plentiful as it was, actually grabbing it was difficult. It was separated from him somehow with a thin veneer, a membrane of some sort, trying to prevent him from accessing it. The force he was feeling, the Barrier wasn't based in the Darkness either, it shimmered in his mind with the same base luminance as the Light itself, but it acted and reacted to his attempts to bypass. Whatever it was, Hakke managed to cut through, and a small sphere of solar light eventually appeared in his hand.

He hoped that the extra difficulty wasn't due to Callie's mysterious disappearance.

It seemed like he needed to revise his plan. Step one, find the Crown or Callie, whichever came first. Finding the Crown was probably a more mature and reasonable first choice, but it wasn't an exaggeration to say that he needed Callie to operate at 100%. She ran tactical for him, managed his digitized arsenal, provided both solid analysis and terrible jokes, and generally tempered his more suicidal tendencies. He had lost count of the times her insight or skill had been the difference between failure and success. Not to mention she was one of his closest friends.

Finding Callie was the unofficial step one, he decided.

He began to search the wreckage with a new intensity, digging through patches where the ground had been pushed aside by debris and overturning the loose chunks of heated metal to see if they had covered his quarry. The longer he looked the more he began to piece the topography of the glen together in his head. First things first, it wasn't a glen, at least not originally. Behind the spot where he had woken up, the trees had been felled by what he guessed was a combination of the shockwave from the portal appearing and shrapnel from the Arcology. He scaled a tree trunk that had been embedded in the ground to get a better view of the area, to see if he could identify the best spots to investigate first, and got a glimpse of the epicenter of the glen.

The portal had spat everything out in a gargantuan cone by the looks of things, the forest behind where the portal must have been was intact. Everything in a 90 degree cone from the epicenter was destroyed, and at the very heart the ground was glossy. Enough heat had generated there to disintegrate the vegetation and fuse the soil into a sheet of glassy substrate. On top of the smooth ground he saw one of his objectives, sitting untouched and undamaged. The Crown.

He was glad to see that the runes were no longer glowing. It sat motionless, as inert as the bone it had been carved from could possibly be. Whatever arcane power it had been channeling seemed to have run out of steam, leaving only thin wisps of steam to waft off it's edges.

He began to stumble forward to the Crown, intent on securing it when a twig snapped off to his right. He spun around and down to one knee, hand cannon leveled at the source of the sound. Frozen directly in his sights were two men in varying degrees of formal clothes for reasons beyond Hakke's comprehension. The man in front had a white collared shirt on, black bands wrapped on both arms just above the elbow, like some sort of wild west bartender. A thick brown mustache covered his upper lip, and he had a large satchel bag over one shoulder. The man behind him was wearing a full, dark pinstripe suit, and had long, slicked back hair. Both men were armed. Mustache with a strange, complicated looking pistol, and Slick with a boxy carbine of some sort.

Mustache spoke up first.

"Ey, whoa! Take it easy there, friend. You can put that gun down now." He had one hand outstretched, palm facing Hakke as if he was trying to calm a wild animal. The pistol was pointed at the ground, and Hakke watched as his finger lightly slid to hover just outside the trigger guard. Slick watched from the background, giving Hakke a look of bemusement.

Hakke's eyes darted between the pair, before slowly standing and letting Midnight Coup lower by a slight margin. He hoped it was low enough to help defuse the situation that was beginning, while still allowing him to snap the gun to bear at a moment's notice.

"Well, it's certainly good to see a, friendly, pair of faces. I don't see any insignia on you, who are you with?" Hakke asked.

"With? Hell, we're just a pair of huntsmen with good intentions, isn't that correct?" Mustache asked Slick, who muttered his agreements. "Heard a strange noise a little while ago, and popped on over to investigate. And I mean, well, you do not see something like that every day."

Mustache jerked his head in the direction of the wreckage, and the same direction as the Crown. Behind his visor, Hakke's eyes narrowed slightly.

"No you do not." Hakke stated, keeping his eyes on the duo. Something about these two men felt off to him. Predatory. "You two got here pretty quick. There a local village nearby?"

Slick laughed. "Yeah, yeah. Something like that." Slick spoke with a slow drawl, in no hurry to finish his sentences. Hakke wasn't usually accurate with his makeshift nicknames, but Slick was rapidly solidifying his.

Slick continued. "Gotta say you aren't looking too good there. What didja think he did, Doc? Looks to me like he tried to fistfight a Goliath." His companion shot him an angry look, one that Slick missed. His eyes hadn't left Hakke, and his smile didn't seem to reach his eyes.

Mustache, or Doc he now knew, chipped in. "Blunt as he may be, my companion here looks to be correct. You look like you've seen some unpleasant action, Stranger. Now I may not be a fully licensed physician, but I do know my way around a medical bag." Doc reached into the bag he was carrying and began to slowly approach. "Now if it's alright with you, I can take a gander at them wounds of yours-"

"I think I'll pass there, Doc." Hakke cut him off, taking a slow step back. As Doc had begun to creep his way forward, Slick had readjusted his grip on his carbine to one that would allow him to open fire at a moment's notice. Doubled up with how the two were positioning themselves in relation to each other, Doc just barely migrating to the left, and Slick adjusting to the right, and it was obvious to Hakke what was going on here. They were keeping out of each other's way, keeping open lanes of fire on Hakke.

Whatever reason had brought this duo here, it wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts. They looked and acted like the sort of characters you could find out in the lawless wastes of the Tangled Shore. Probably a step up from disposable thug, though that would be a guess. Hakke was far better at sizing up the intent of hostile aliens than he was his own species.

"Now there's no need to get all paranoid. I'm just offering to help, is all."

"I've had a pretty rough day, as your buddy there has pointed out. Have to say, it put me in a paranoid mood."

The duo slowed down, both giving him a look. Doc straightened out, looking as far as Hakke could tell directly into his helmet, trying to get a read on the Guardian. Slick just snorted, adjusting something between his teeth. It was a toothpick. He had a toothpick, like some sleazy 20th century gangster.

"Just like that, you are going to turn down this gentleman's offer of aid? Hell stranger, that helmet of yours must be pretty useless, cause I think you got yourself one hell of a concussion. Don't you agree, Doc?" Slick asked, a hint of theatrical hurt in his voice.

Doc nodded sagely. "I'm afraid to admit we've done all we can to aid this man. A mighty shame. Sage?"

Hakke had a solid half second to ponder what that meant before the bullet hit the back of his head. He had barely heard the gunshot itself before his ears were ringing, his helmet thankfully absorbing most of the blow. Head bowed, he half stumbled and turned, firing a hastily aimed round from Midnight Coup at the figure that had snuck up behind him. The person, a vaguely female shaped blue blur by the time he had brought his gun to bear, had to have been one of the stealthiest people he had ever come across; he had heard literally nothing before her silenced weapon had gone off.

He fired another round off at the retreating woman when a white sleeved arm snaked itself around his neck, alarmingly strong, and a syringe was forcefully stabbed into his neck. Hakke slammed his head back as hard as he could, being rewarded with both a crunch and a cry from behind him. The motion also felt similar to being kicked in the chest by a mule.

Oh right. The broken ribs.

The headbutt had loosened the arm from his neck enough for the Warlock to wrench himself free, turning and whipping the barrel of his hand cannon across Doc's face in one motion, sending the man reeling. Hakke reached over and pulled the syringe out of his neck. The thing had been sharp enough to go clean through the armored cloth, and he could easily see that whatever had been inside the syringe - wasn't.

Whatever Doc had just administered, he hoped it was slow moving.

The fast paced, muffled staccato of auto rifle fire filled the air, and a fraction of a second later a hail of gunfire slammed into Hakke's chest. He was lifted off his feet and thrown backwards, the gears in his mind turning and his body on fire. He had watched the bullets leave Slick's gun. They had been travelling just slow enough to be barely visible, yet they hit like an angry Titan. And the sound. Definitely a gunshot, but lacking the bang of a supersonic projectile. Whatever sort of ammo Slick had in that gun of his, it wasn't something Hakke was familiar with.

He landed hard on his back, half curled up around his chest. His opponents were yelling at each other, but Hakke couldn't focus on the words. These goons had decided to make their encounter into a full on firefight, and the Warlock was more than willing to oblige them.

Sucking in half a lung of air, Hakke snapped off two shots into Slick as he began to fight his way back onto his feet. The first bullet hit the wannabe gangster's midsection, doubling the man over and causing some sort of shield to flare at the impact sight. The second round hit his rifle dead on, tearing it out of his hands in a shower of sparks.

He lifted himself into a run, making his way towards the Crown. Slick and Doc would be down for the count he assumed, regular people weren't known to be able to take blows from a Guardian or their weapons and keep on fighting. Or living. He hoped they were still alive, he hated the idea of killing humans and he had questions for them both.

Sage, the woman who had shot him in the back of the head, intercepted him halfway to the Crown with a roundhouse kick aimed at his head. He bobbed his head back, trying to get enough distance to shoot the woman, but she closed in on him fast. She morphed into a twisting blur of kicks and punches, moving faster than she had any right to be. Caught off guard, Hakke was unable to block the initial strikes, and she landed hit after hit into his already aching frame. He lunged forward with Midnight Coup, trying to jab her neck with the barrel, another attack she easily slid away from.

With his gun parallel with her head, Hakke adjusted its position, trying to get the cylinder as close to her strangely large ears as possible. With inches separating the two, he fired a bullet off into the treeline, the concussive sound garnering a scream from Sage as she clasped her ears. Thoroughly distracted, she was unable to dodge his palm strike, which sent her flying head over heels off into the wreckage.

Two sharp pains stabbed into his back. Wheeling around he saw Doc kneeling behind a ruined tree stump, gas discharging from his pistol with a pneumatic snap. Surprisingly Slick was already back on his feet and firing away with a small pistol he must have had stashed in his coat. Once again they had separated to make his life harder than it already was.

Caught in their increasingly aggressive crossfire, Hakke changed direction and charged towards a chunk of twisted metal towards the edge of the clearing, colliding and letting inertia carry his body over and behind the makeshift cover. The motion aggravated his already very painful rib cage even further and forced him to pause for a moment, his offhand clutching at his chest.

He was starting to come to an unpleasant realization.

Whoever the hell these people were, they weren't amateurs. They had come armed and ready for a fight. Judging by how the majority of his neck and shoulder where Doc had stabbed him was slowly going numb, they were intending on trying to capture him as well. Then there was the personal shield tech they seemed to possess. He knew Slick had one, he had seen it react and save his life when he had shot the man. Doc must have had one in his possession, as the man's face was spotless where he had been struck, and Hakke knew he had hit him hard enough to have broken his nose at least. As for Sage, it would only make sense for the last member of this trio to have the same tech.

Then there was when Doc had gotten Hakke in a choke hold. The man had been freakishly stronger than he had expected. Guardians by and large were far more physically capable than normal humans, and while Doc hadn't been on par with a Guardian, he had been far stronger than normal. Sage meanwhile had managed to sneak up on him without so much as a whisper. He had seen Fallen Marauders move with less stealth, and they could turn invisible.

These were not normal people he was fighting.

And the worst part was they were winning this engagement. Not by sheer power, but with a thousand cuts. He needed the Light to patch up his wounds and purge whatever toxin Doc had pumped him full of, but with that strange Light Barrier up he wasn't able to do it subconsciously like normal. He suspected he would need to take time to concentrate, meditate even, to heal himself. Time he simply didn't have with the goon squad out there plinking away at him.

Every time he moved, punched, twisted or ran, he added injury to his broken ribs. Injury he wasn't able to patch. Every time he engaged the thugs, at least one of them managed to get a solid hit in on him. Every hit he took removed more of the precious little Light he had left. To top it off, he had no idea how much punishment their shields could take.

He was fighting at a net loss.

Deciding now was better than never, he reached out past the Barrier and focused on gathering Light into himself, desperate to patch whatever damage he could. Hakke figured a few seconds to catch his breath and observe his opponents might be the best option for now. Besides, even if they managed to gain ground for an escape, or tried to steal the Crown from under his nose, he was confident Midnight Coup would catch them long before they got to their goal.

Sage had staggered back to her feet, and stumbled her way to cover. While having an unsilenced gun go off next to your ear was far from a pleasant experience, he didn't quite understand why it had affected her to the degree that he was seeing. Was it something with her ears, maybe? They were larger and more angled than human standard. Did they grant her more acute hearing? The result of gene modification maybe? It wasn't outside the realm of possibility that some faction had uncovered knowledge from the Golden Age that would allow the creation of modified humans. It would go a long way towards explaining the abnormal strength and agility of his adversaries.

Her companions meanwhile were not having a good time, worry and concern stitched across their faces. Both men had their pistols aimed at Hakke's location, although Slick had some sort of glowing holographic device pressed against his ear. A radio, perhaps?

"Brothers above, Doc! I thought you tranqed this guy!"

"With enough to drop an Ursa. Now stop yammering and get the boss on the horn! We need to get the hell out of here before every damn Grimm in the forest is on top of us."

"What do you think I'm trying to do?"

They continued for a while, until Slick suddenly went quiet and began to whisper hurriedly into his comm. The device was foreign to Hakke, but he could make some educated guesses about it. It looked similar to the personal phones used by civilians in the Last City. If it was close enough in design, then it may have a great deal of useful information about these people on it. Now he just needed to get his hands on it.

He kept observing his adversaries, waiting to see how they would react, who would make the first move to restart this fight. He barely noticed when the comm in his helmet crackled to life.

"I get knocked out for three minutes, and you already got yourself stuck in another gun fight." A familiar voice said.

Hakke slumped down his cover in relief, with only his eyes above the edge.

"Glad to have you back, Callie." He said quietly.

"At least you're predictable. What happened while I was out?" Callie asked. He felt her presence return to his Backpack. She added a quip under her breath. "I wasn't even aware I could be out."

"Portal spat us out on Earth, these guys were here waiting for us, and they shot me in the back of the head. Before you ask, they started it. I'm guessing they're here for the Crown."

"What about that Hunter? Did she make it through with us?"

Hakke shook his head. "I haven't seen her. I don't think she went through with us, she was pretty adamant about killing that Wizard."

"Then it's down to us. I'll get working on patching you up, removing the alarming amount of tranquilizer that is in your system, and getting in touch with the Vanguard or any other friendly forces in the area. You focus on keeping that Hive artifact safe."

"That's the idea."

True to her word, she began cycling the Light throughout his body and he felt bone and muscle begin to reknit themselves. His head began to clear as well as the numbness from the tranquilizer began to fade. With Callie aiding him, he had gained valuable breathing room to think.

"Hey Stranger!" Slick had apparently finished his phone call, and was now shouting across the way to him.

Hakke saw nothing to gain from answering, but in the same vein there was nothing to lose from answering either.

"Yeah?" Hakke returned.

"Have to give it to you, for a half dead man you ain't half bad."

"Thanks?"

"Way I see it, this whole situation is just one big misunderstanding. Now we are not, I repeat, we are not here for you. All we want is that chunk of stone there in the center of this clearing. The creepy one. You let us grab it, and we can all go home nice and easy. Hell, you cooperate, and we'll even go so far as to give you a ride outta this Grimm infested wood. How does that sound?" Slick proposed.

"Slick -" Hakke began.

"Slick? Hah! I like that!"

"Slick, do you or either of your friends have any idea what that stone mask is?"

There was a pause, before Doc answered in his companion's place. "Of course we do. Archaeology is a profitable venture after all, we understand why you are so defensive over your find. Now, while this sort of cutthroat business practice just rubs me the wrong way, you do have to make some adjustments when working for the wealthy. Wealthy enough, mind, to allow us the freedom to cut mutually beneficial deals from time to time. Much like that very limited time offer we just made."

They had no idea. That was good, probably. Not the wealthy patron part though.

They had to be up to something, there was no way they actually believed he would take them on their word with this 'deal'. He looked out across his environment, from where the two thug's were hiding to where he last saw Sage disappear. He could have sworn that he saw something move between the rubble piles towards the Crown, but in the rapidly darkening night, it was hard to be certain.

"We're going to need an answer from you sooner rather than later, Stranger." Doc called out again. They were putting in noticeable effort to keep his attention on them.

Hakke sent a mental ping to Callie to swap out his weapons. She complied noiselessly.

"I must say you make an attractive offer," Hakke lied, adjusting into a low crouch with his auto rifle shouldered. "However, I'm not willing to give it up. Especially not to a trio of bastards who are willing to shoot me in the back."

Silence for a time.

"We're just not gonna convince you with pretty words, ain't' we, Stranger?"

Hakke steeled himself. Energy guns were far better at tearing apart shields than his kinetic hand cannon, and he would need to shred theirs as fast as possible to finish this.

Both sides undoubtedly knew exactly what was about to go down.

Off by the Crown he saw something blue twitch. While he had been distracted with the two clowns down range their third member had been putting her stealth skills to good use. She was actively bagging the Crown inside of a metal case. Where she had gotten the case was a total mystery to Hakke, and entirely unimportant. They had made the next move, and Hakke now needed to respond -

"Hakke, what in the Traveler's name is that." Callie interrupted his train of thought.

His radar was blinking red. He turned to see what had triggered it only to have his gaze matched by two glowing red eyes emerging from the forest's shadowy depths. Something bestial, crawling forward on all fours like something out of a nightmare, was a creature Hakke had never seen before. Its black fur hung off its skeletal, wolflike frame in matted clumps, dirty white plating covered its back and face, making it look like it had been flayed down to its bone. Its lips were pulled back in a soundless snarl. Its eyes, set deep beneath a bare canine skull, never left his own. Even through his helmet, it made perfect eye contact.

"Well that's ugly." Hakke stated.

Evidently that was the wrong thing to say, as with a howl it pounced, its front, oddly human looking paws slamming into Hakke's shoulders as he rose to get out of the way. Its claws dug in, and they both went tumbling over and out into the open.

Hakke managed to get his legs between himself and the wolf-thing, and tore it free with a kick. He began to run towards Doc and Slick, both men rapidly losing their composure as a Warlock and some form of nightmare dog bore down towards them. Hakke's plan was simple. Get the wolf-thing and the thugs to kill each other, kill whatever was left from their engagement, eliminate Sage, and retrieve both Slick's comm and the Crown in one fell swoop.

Easy enough.

The monster caught up to him far faster than he anticipated. He should have anticipated it, everything here seemed to be magnitudes faster than he thought they should be. He glanced behind to see the thing up on two legs, one paw reared back to try to take his head off. Thankfully, the monster's form was lacking, and Hakke was able to grab the thing's arm by the wrist, redirecting it towards Doc and slamming a palm strike in to propel it on its way. The monster's chest pulped, a visible indent forming where the transparent ball of energy smashed into it, and its corpse was sent careening where Hakke wanted it to go.

He lit Slick up with his auto rifle, angry red tracers connecting the gun to his target as Hakke closed the last of the distance. Slick's shield flared violently, and finally broke, a round burning a gash in his side before the two men clashed. Slick grabbed the auto rifle in an attempt to wrangle it out of Hakke's grasp, or at the very least keep the barrel away from himself. A subsonic round from Sage flew over Hakke's shoulder, telling him that the woman was on her way. With any luck she would be too slow.

He feigned a grapple on the rifle, keeping Slick's attention there while Hakke reached into his jacket to where he thought his comm was stashed. He ran his fingers into a pocket, felt a rectangle of metal that had to be it, and tore the pocket out. One task taken care of, he redirected his attention to the rifle, getting it to point parallel to the ground and pivoting it so the barrel suddenly was leveled at a rapidly approaching Sage. A squeeze of the trigger sent a volley of fire in her direction, forcing her to dive to the ground to avoid it.

For whatever reason, Slick was noticeably tiring out. Something that Hakke was more than willing to exploit. He managed to get a solid grip on the weapon before viciously yanking the butt of the rifle directly into Slick's forehead. The man fell down, momentarily stunned as Hakke adjusted to a firing stance and prepared to kill him.

He froze. Hakke had killed innumerous sapient creatures in his time as a Guardian. Far more than he could count, let alone remember. In all that time, all 20 odd years he had been fighting the enemies of mankind, he had never killed another human being. Blasting fellow Guardians in the Crucible or Gambit didn't count. Guardians come back. Normal humans don't.

He was dimly aware of Slick's two companions screaming. He saw the comprehension that his death was here dawn on Slick's face. The panic. The light whistling sound coming from the canopy. Hakke resigned himself.

It was a damn shame.

He tried to pull the trigger only to find he couldn't. Not that he wasn't mentally prepared to end this man's life, but that he physically couldn't pull the trigger. He stared dumbly down at Slick, and then at the smoking hole that had appeared in his forearm. Through his forearm. Through his chest.

He turned around, looking for where the bullet that killed him had landed before collapsing, sliding along his back down a log.

A second later he heard the gunshot itself. It appeared someone out there had a hell of a good sniper rifle.

He was vaguely aware of the Trio collecting themselves and dragging Slick to his feet. Something large was descending down through the gap in the trees, some form of VTOL craft by the looks of it. Hakke's first thought was that it looked like a grey egg with long pencil-thin wings. As he observed closer though he realized the craft had a more prow shaped front to it, more along the lines of an ovaline boat with long pencil-thin wings. It hovered a foot or so off the ground, a strong headwind being kicked up from its engines.

Standing inside the craft from a retractable door was a woman dressed entirely in white. White suit jacket, suit pants, dress shoes, the whole ensemble. She held a long rifle of an unfamiliar make in her hands, had it loosely pointing at him. It was the hair that really caught his attention though. It looked like someone had slapped a cloud to the top of her head and let it float down to her waist. He'd never seen something so… egregious in his life.

The trio piled into the hovercraft as fast as they could, with the Crown in tow. He watched as it took off, hovering over the clearing with the door open. The Woman in White watching from above. He wondered what they were waiting on.

His answer came in the form of a growl.

More of the same monstrosities had crept out of the woods and surrounded him. He counted at least six or so more of the wolf-things, but that wasn't the one that caught his attention. That particular prize went to the very large, very bear shaped beast that approached him head on.

The trio had kept referencing "Grimm", saying the forest was full of them. He supposed that these things were what they had been talking about. The Grimm. They did look rather grim to be honest, very on brand.

The bear-thing rose onto its hind legs, towering over Hakke's prone form. The Grimm didn't make any noise that the Warlock noticed. It stared down at him and he stared back.

Finally Hakke broke the silence.

"Well? I'm waiting."

With a roar the Grimm bear fell on him. Within half a minute they finished what the Woman in White started.

Satisfied, the Woman in White gave a command, and the Bullhead lazily turned, heading home to the city of Vale.