Fall of the O.B.C.

[Lewis!]

I​

Stood in the train car as it thundered down the track as the moon rose, pale and bruised, visible through the jagged gap in the roof where the wind had come to lash through, biting at them with the sharp edge of the east. A dozen of them, each quiet but far from at peace. The priestess, the brute, the pilgrim, even that fearful shrieking Gatchite, and all the rest of hallowed 66, all marked by their battles, all tethered to the same fate. Coterminous. Above them, the shadow of the Nerve Center crawled up the rear wall, slinking through the serrated ceiling like the hand of some unseen predator. The monolith of what was once Nova Prospekt wailed in the distance, its sounds barely discernible beneath the hammering roar of the train’s engine.

The brakes screamed as the train ground to a halt, settling with a final jolt in the cavernous docking bay, where frost clung to every surface and behind the carriage door voices fluttered.

Alma Geyer, the Fourth Defender, the priestess of their little ragged cult, turned to her band, bloodied and bruised, still carrying the weight of the fight they had just clawed through. Bucharest had fallen to them, but this was it: the final stretch of the journey, the long dark path that came to an end.

The carriage door slid open with a shudder, revealing a hundred bodies standing beyond, watching silently. Men and women, etched in the runes and glyphs of the Innoculate Path, painted with streaks of devotion and madness. Some were masked, others bare, but all staring at the newcomers, waiting.

A voice broke from the gathered mass, a shadow of a Protector, his gear worn, tactical plates yellowing with age. Maximus, he called, the name spilling from his lips like a curse. Another voice took up the call. Maximus. And then another, and another, the sound building like a storm until it rolled over them all. Maximus. Maximus. Maximus. The air was filled with the feral chanting of broken men and women, voices swelling with something beyond desperation, a feverish need. The Nerve Center seemed to breathe with them now, no longer the still monolith it had been.

.:.3.1.4.:. has returned​

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[Lewis!]