Fucking daemons. There wasn't much that would get up after you dumped a few hundred megawatts of plasma into its chest, but this one did. Already the scorched muscle and bone were reknitting, the mottled green skin slithering back over the wound. "Saritha!" I yelled into the mic an inch from my lips, under the helmet, but she was faster than me. Always had been. Her eyes glowed a lambent green as the slender girl, looking ten years younger than the twenty-sixth birthday she hoped to see tomorrow, raised her arms and uttered a sibilant chant, swaying back and forth like a serpent. Chains came out of the air, a sickly purple fire licking from them as though they were slowly evaporating. The way one mage had tried to explain it to me, in an way they were. Screaming, a vaguely reptilian sound that made you want to burn out the audioreceptors in your hardsuit, the daemon scrabbled with clawed, spindly arms against the chains that bound it, bones creaking as they were squeezed together, bent unnaturally. "Run," Saritha whispered, the jack molded inside of my ear echoing her. We ran. --------------------- A new series. The writing will span various characters and various points of view from first person to third person. Thanks for viewing.