Under Cursed and False Suns

The sound of a crash, shattering glass, a grunt that ripped my throat in two. Blacked out, my dreams swam with nightmares in the mists of the mind. The night had been unkind, as if there was any other kind. Our heist on the Bastion had failed, they left me behind, left me for those dogs who wanted nothing but my blood. The plans replaying disjointed in repose, fading in and out of consciousness as things moved in the dark. We were supposed to infiltrate the Syndicate, we had done that. Lay the ground work for taking Eo' Wissae under the control of the people once more. These Wissian fools and their absurd dominion, in the pocket of the Syndicate all along.   So much ground work, for nothing. Managed to convert quite a few folks over to see the light behind their lies, but the bigger a secret, the mouths there are to speak. Our confidant shot, the noise alerted every last Pinkerton in the region. Me, the one who wanted nothing more than to see the light of that false sun be angled toward those who needed it most, they left behind. Somewhere in the back of my mind it felt like something was chewing on my boot.   The earth moved beneath me, like I was being dragged somewhere. Yet, it was in the background for the things going on in mindscape of it all. We tried to escape, made quite the mess of bodies in our wake we did. Innocent or not, we just needed to escape with our lives and we could rebuild our plans from the ground up. I saw the others get ambushed from the shadows of the buildings, Clarren took a nasty hit across the face with that studded baton. I just had to play the hero, mighty jump and landed with a graceful flourish on top of the Pinkerton, saber fed with fresh blood. Not even turning to admire that his head fell to the ground as I pulled my "friend" up from the ground.   The fear in his eyes was my only clue, sadly, one I missed. My leg kicked out from behind, but giving him enough to to escape with the others. Knee hit the cobbles hard, stars popping into existence from the force of the blow to the back of my head. It wasn't the fact that I knew I was going to be captured soon, probably executed in the Syndicate's fashion, but it was something else. The howls, the screeching in the back ground. These fools had let something loose in the city, to hunt...us.   Yanking my arms away from the brute of a man who was trying his damnedest to hold me down. I ran, and ran, and ran. My lungs burned, refusing to let them stop working, refusing to be caught by whatever evil these fools unleashed here. I already had a good idea of what it was, it was one of the things our confidant had warned us about. Some mutant breed of the Silhouettes trying to find a cure from the rotting fog, only the cure they found only made things far worse. Much much worse.   I heard it before I saw it, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I woke with the sight of tiny lights filtering across my vision. I took me far too long to realize what I was seeing was a swarm of fireflies, Silhouette's scared off by the blinding light these, tiniest of creatures, produced without the will of a god. Heart jumping up to my throat as that thing the fools sicked on us was lying dead at my feet. A massive blade of glass sticking through it's chest, well, what I could only describe as it's chest. Though, my relief was only parallel to my silent prayer to dead gods that the forest of broken glass around me, had somehow all missed.   The swarm of dancing lights pranced from glass shard to shard, landing frequently on me. Their light still singeing the dead monstrosities skin, even in death their bodies burned. There was some solace to take from that, though, I noticed the fireflies refused to land anywhere near its corpse. Its ever present rot starting to permeate out from where its blood had been spilled.   "My my my, playing with dangerous forces, aren't we?" Jumping as the strange voice filled the air, the darkness held at bay by these fireflies. I knew it though, it was the voice of our confidant.   Without missing a beat, his corpse stepped into the light, skin singeing at the touch of it. Dead eyes, looking right through me. "I saw you die." I rasped out.   "You saw what I wished you to see. There isn't much time before those blood starved beasts find this place, theses city walls are not as secure as they would like to think." It spoke, I say it, only because what was using his body was only doing so for my benefit.   "You are not the man whom we've been talking to, who are you?" Asking as I sat up, a few dozen of the light producing godsends landed on me.   "Someone whom you've always known, someone whom you see everyday. Well," It chucked in a disgusted sort of way, "So to speak. That sun you people cling to to keep the darkness away from the Bastions, they are not infallible. Clearly the rot can get in just fine as long as they know the trick."   Arcane symbols burned their way into the ground toward to me, the same ones that traced the surface of the artificial sun that hung above Eo'wissae. "These are not what you all seem to think they are, a gateway, maybe. A binding of powers lost, maybe. A power that these fools do not understand, yes. A power that could burn away all the life left on this worthless world, maybe." It toyed with me, answering everything and nothing at the same time.   "Can we back track to the first question, who are you? To top that, where are we?" The number of the phosphorescent insects only grew when that thing had burned it's symbols into the ground.   "Oh don't get me wrong, we are still in the city. You took quite the fall from that Church, quite dramatic of you to go through the stained glass motif of fallen lords. I think we we should keep on track however, trust not that sun. Isn't interesting that there are things here in the dark that need no lord to grant light?"