My carelessness I blamed on hunger; the proximity of the attacker was inexperience. Widening my stance with one leg, I reluctantly hoisted my arms beside my head, before swinging my body at the waist. My raised arm batted the rifle to the side, clattering against the wall and down to the floor. Closing the distance in a blink, I unsheathe the remaining piece of Gambol Shroud, and let the chipped blade dig into his throat.

Eyes traced from his fallen weapon to the sword at his throat, and our eyes locked on one another. Dressed in the cheap red threads of a farmhand, he bared worn hands in surrender, and shrugged one shoulder in defeated chagrin. "You're alive."

Her eyes roamed over his amalgamation of clothing choices: Atlas military combat boots, Beacon student uniform, and farmer's leather gloves. Settling the blade beneath his Adam's apple, I said, "Do you...do you own a keycard?" Silence for months reduced my throat to sandpaper, the wheeze coming out I didn't recognize. It was deeper, and I hoped more intimidating.

"Keycard?" His bewilderment at the question tempted my wrist, before understanding flickered behind his eyes. "Keycard. For the door? No, I used to work on bullheads. As long as the batteries still power the door I can..." Honestly I'm not certain what he said next because I was already tossing him outside. He tumbled to the rooftop, quick to dart up again. Then he saw Gambol Shroud. "You're a huntress? Are you a-" With a grunt I slammed the door shut with a two armed heave. The bullhead rocked from the motion, not unlike being on the seas, before it settled.

Standing at the ready, sword in hand, I heard a clunk and rattle as he wrestled with the controls to the door. But as I thought, the use of my keycard had drained the battery and left him trapped outside. His frantic smacking against the hull confirmed it and I put my sword away, blocking out his calls as I busied myself with other things.

When writing this I knew I wouldn't always be shone in sympathetic light but recounting myself as anything else would be lying. Mountain Glenn was my home for three months, two of those months were without my partner, and isolation had stripped humanity away. At the end what laid bare to the world was some inhuman uncaring thing. Being in the presence of death left me apathetic to atrocities around me. In my mind I'd rationalized what did it matter if another died, or I died? How great was our society if we could disappear from it within two years? At the end of the world I'd chosen to eat enough, drink enough, and sleep enough. Any other work wasn't worth the trouble. The embers of my soul were dying.

A turkey bar betwixt my teeth, I came upon the strangers fallen rifle. A huntsman's weapon from an earlier age, it was an assemblage made of both stone and iron with ornate carvings on the sides. The buttstock dug into the crook of my arm, the stone chilling my pale skin, and sported unusual heft for a typical AR15. A white stone plate clicked behind the grip; it had the face of a humanoid Grimm. Sliding the plate down opened the Grimm's mouth and expose a button beneath.

Click.

The grip slid back into the buttstock with gentle whirring and the magazine collapsed in on itself. Several wedge-shaped blades jutted from the bottom of the handguard, slipping down the barrel and locking in place. A skull shaped trinket snapped over the muzzle topping the ensemble. Holding the base of the stone handle, the rest clacked into place weighing down the blades so much they pierced the floor. It was an old rune crested axe made from stone and iron, a single shot from the mouth of the skull.

Click.

Just like that it was an AR15 again, never the journey but the destination that mattered with these weapons. The thuds against the hull grew more frantic, I ignored them. As far as I was concerned, I'd commandeered a ship, it's bounty, and the Captain's possession. The day was looking up from what it'd last been. Creeping to the helm of the ship, I used the sleeve of my cloak to brush away dried blood from the inside and popped open another turkey bar with the other. Staring across the rooftop, I seated myself in the relative comfort of the bullhead's damp seat.

My boots slapped atop the dashboard, beginning to find a rhythm in his knocking. I haven't heard real music in so long. Across the rooftop through the small cleaned patch of space, the Creeping Wail writhed to find a more comfortable position. Behind glass, observing the more human qualities of the Wail almost gave the illusion this was a television show. My friends would rush in and admonish me for not having a book to my nose. My history class would be starting soon, the cafeteria would be preparing lunch, and life was good. My life was good.

Reality flitted in just as the black shadow crossed the glass. Flattening against the seat, I watched the shadow circle in a whirlwind formation before diving into the mall and out of sight. My body went completely still, had it seen me? Did it follow me here? My hands clawed toward the back of the bullhead, knocking boxes over, and curled behind a palate of boxes. If I didn't upset it would forget about me.

A knock at the door.

"Hey! There's something out here." Continuing to stand there like prey was what it wanted, it liked to watch from afar and then suddenly close in. In my mind, I saw the glowing eyes in the black shadow watching the door, waiting for me to let him inside. It was using him as bait, I felt it within my gut. "There's something here." His voice was barely a hiss now, it sounded like he pressed his face into the hull. "Please...help me."

The bullhead shook as a freak wind bashed it aside. It hit the bullhead, bashed the hull hard enough to dent the roof. It struck again, and again. Outside I heard the man's shouting growing louder. He'd die like all the others, flayed to the bone and bled from the eyes. Wherever I went it followed, it hounded me across an entire ocean. Outside stormed a monster, an accident, and I was a kid hiding to stay alive.

But I was also a huntress, a professional hired to kill monsters and save innocents. As far as I knew that man outside was an innocent. Yes, some societal norms were long dead, but my dream to be a huntress meant everything to me. Like that, the embers sparked to life.

Throwing open the door, my hands gripped the jersey of my school's uniform, and hoisted him inside. The shadow swirled in a flurry of black wind and let loose a wild howl. The door snagged and I called, "Push!" Throwing the whole of our bodies against the handle, wind tore around the bullhead, budging the door just a bit on its track. The shadow charged with black wind tearing off behind it, I yanked the door a final time, and it burst against the side of the bullhead.

Completely drained of all energy, my chest rose and fell with my back on the cold metal. He leaned against the wall with his legs splayed out, wheezing, he lifted an accusatory finger. "You...you locked me out."

Gasping in mouthfuls of air myself, I said, "Yeah...sorry."

Letting his head fall against the wall, his frustration melted away. "Not much point staying mad. Seeing as we might be the last people in Vale, be a waste to spend what time we have left on a grudge." His accusation transformed into an open hand. Tentatively my fingers neared his gingerly brushing them before being pulled in for a firm handshake. "Names (F/N), but people I'm with generally call me Rig." Once pulled away my hand was still abuzz from the unfamiliar human contact, but strangely hooked. We braced the wall beneath the shuddering of the bullhead. "Should we keep quiet?"

"Wouldn't matter," I told him. "Our best chance is to wait it out. But now that it's found us it won't leave this area alone."

"Do you know what it is?"

Not all of us brought before the Wail were equal, individuals with useful or dangerous semblances functioned differently than the foot soldier Briars. These people, usually huntsmen and huntresses, thinned out the opposition to allow the Wail to travel unimpeded. Smarter, faster, and able to communicate, we called them Thorns. I'd grown familiar with the one plaguing us, I thought I'd lost it but it'd found us again. Stripped of their identity and all hope to return, they were ugly reminders of who we lost and what we could become. Maybe that's why we gave our friends different names. "It's called the Cankerwind. It's faster than the breeze and hits harder than any Grimm. If it gets ahold of you it'll shred you to pieces."

"What's keeping it from tearing apart the door?" He asked.

"It's made of metal, we're not." I nestled in between two crates, keeping Gambol Shroud and his weapon beside me. "Settle in. We may be here all night." Peeking from beneath my hood, I saw him eyeing his rifle at my side. "Give it some thought first."

"You're a huntress, if I need to defend myself, I don't want it to just be on you." I'd been in enough bad situations to regard his excuse with swift criticism.

"You telling me this didn't belong to a huntsman?"

"Never said that." He kept his distance, knowing the end of his rifle was still pointed his way. "It belonged to my great grandad, he hunted Grimm in the mountains."

"Name?" If he's telling the truth, he knew what I meant.

"Giant's Blight." He sat taller with pride, "Felled a Grimm big as a mountain, or at least that's what he used to say."

A finger slid across the iron and stone grip, either he's telling the truth or he stole it off a dead huntsman. "You said earlier you were a mechanic?"

"Yeah, it's how I got my nickname. Friends said as long as I had a wheel and a box of junk I could rig it into something good enough to ride." Months of silence no doubt loosened his tongue more than he wanted. "I lived along the north east coast of Vale, we had plenty of Atlas stop by for repairs on their armor or giving their bullhead a once over. Learning quick kept the money coming in." He eyed Gambol Shroud, slightly tucked beneath my cloak. "For a huntress you don't mind your weapon much."

My nostrils flared at the insinuation, while I questioned his credentials, he was wondering about mine. "Broken in battle, believe it or don't."

"Surprised to see anyone else out here."

"I'd say the same. You crossed a mountain range to get closer to the Wail?"

"My village came to ask for help, we hoped some of Atlas was still fighting here."

"We?"

"Mountain was dangerous before and is even more so now."

"My condolences." His eyes remained fixed on me, staring me down until I gave him an answer. "I went to school at Beacon, I think I was hoping to find answers here. Instead I ended up stranded, living off..." From within a box I pulled out, "Freeze dried meat slips."

"So we both came here looking for something."

"And lost along the way." I kicked Giant's Blight over to him. Hesitantly, he lifted it and laid it in his lap. "Thank you."

"If you wanted to kill me you could've, you're still welcome to try."

He smirked. "Not a chance, now I have someone to play cards with." We sat together at the end of the world, enjoying the strange company we had and the unlikely chance we'd found one another. Although we still kept each other at an arm's reach, we were starved for interaction and the reminder of what normalcy could look like if we ever found it again. And at some point, I did agree to play cards.

Searching for where he'd left the pack, I shuffled some more Atlas bins about. They both sat atop two red canisters sealed tight, but it took little imagination to know that nozzles could be extracted from within. "Combustion dust." He came up beside me, looking over my shoulder. "They can't still be good, can they?"

He tapped his foot. "Dust keeps generally well, but it wont do any good for this hunk of tin. Not even I could get this thing flying again."

My eyes met his with an intensity that took him aback. "Right, but you can fix a motorbike?"