[quote=@Mole][color=gray]Neomi looked pleadingly at the other girl and began to run. Her feet felt like lead, but somehow, they still moved quickly after Echoh into the next train car. She didn’t want to dare watch as Toni tried to save Yiya and kept her eyes on the moving terrarium — just as instructed.[/color][/quote]


Echoh crashed through the door to the next traincar, leaving a mangled mass of metal and splintered wood for Neomi to navigate in its wake. The terrarium jostled violently while Echoh's sharp legs scrambled over seats and clattered in the aisle, flickering with the broken red lights that crackled overhead. With every flash of light, more shadows loomed outside the windows, their eyes like hollow caverns.

A [i]crash[/i] of glass shattered across the seats far ahead, and the terrarium skidded to a clamoring stop while a billowing gust of sweet-smelling wind roared through the traincar.

Something dark sailed neatly through the jagged remains of the window and landed with a [i]taptaptap[/i] on the glass of the terrarium. It was a child-sized four-legged thing that drifted in and out of Neomi's sight, its four long wings striking out and in again. There was a shrieking sound of claws on glass and the robot shook and danced to try to shake it off.

Echoh reached underneath-- and Neomi could now see the trap door on the underside of the robot --pulled out the steaming hot teapot and tossed it at the creature, but the Rue was unaffected and the gusting wind threw scalding tea throughout the traincar.



[quote=@Wayward][color=gray]Slowly, Toni stepped over debris and through a shallow pool of the train driver's blood. She took a smooth, deep breath. "Let her go," she spoke, mostly in stern tone, as though ordering the Rue like a misbehaving child.[/color][/quote]

Back in the first car, the silken Rue with a head of spinning gold lifted Yiya by her throat with long sharp fingers. Blood had begun to soak the old woman's saree. But at the stern command the gold bands of the creature's head spun to focus on Toni, its jaws sharp and grinning.

The Rue lifted Yiya so that her feet thunked against the top of the seats while the Rue slipped forward along the aisle toward Toni. Toni could feel it, blistering cold, gooseflesh down her arms and prickling the back of her neck, like frozen metal in an ice storm.



[quote=@King Cosmos][color=gray]Her finger hesitated on the trigger, a sinking feeling in her stomach telling her that her weapon wouldn’t stop this thing. Wouldn’t kill it. Instead she turned away from its torso and pointed the gun at its elbow instead, aiming at the inside bend of its outstretched limb and firing a shot into it.[/color][/quote]

[i]BANG![/i]

The shot rang out through the train and echoed in the shining chamber beyond the windows, where the shadows and apparitions flinched with the thunderous noise. The arm that held Yiya shattered with the impact, the gold-banded Rue collapsed backward and dissipated into the air (only Sadie would hear its unearthly, soul-wrenched scream like a thousand nails on a chalkboard) and Yiya crumpled against the back of a chair and rolled into the seat, unmoving, with a few limbs bent in ways they should not bend. She was breathing, but would not wake.


[quote=@Sadie][color=gray]She rushed ahead and stopped when she saw a group of people, one holding a revolver towards something Sadie couldn't see. Gulping, she looked around and raised a brow. "The hell is going on around here?!"[/color][/quote]

A thousand hollow eyes stared in through the windows. Beyond the shivering gray shapes, the Golden Cathedral sparkled like the halls of a mansion, glittering with a mockery of bright gold and marble in the shape of stalactites and dripping cavern walls striped with precious metal. The light outside was beckoning, like a flame to moths.

They might hear the scuffle and crash of Echoh and Neomi in the next car.

Sadie alone would hear a hissing, almost electronic voice like steel through a spinning fan, that came from everywhere and nowhere: [i][color=7ea7d8]give it back[/color][/i]

Sasha and Toni would see the mist of silky vestments, then the rise of the reappearing spin of golden bands and sharp teeth emerging out of the air behind Sadie's back. Its left arm was gone, but, as she felt a thread of tickling cold in her chest, it leaned close behind Sadie's ear, with the same chopped hissing voice that only she would hear: [i][color=7ea7d8]tell them to leave ... or we stop your heart[/color][/i]