I turned and ran from the Fury as fast as my feet would carry me, which was pretty fucking fast. I had Alex check once and the radar said I run at over forty miles per hour. And that wasn’t with a deformed mythological creature at my heels trying to drag me to hell or whatever it had said it was here to do. I turned my head as I reached the lip of the roof. Big mistake. I slowed down a hair, which caused the smirking Fury to slam into me, bowling me over and sending me off the edge of the hundred story building like a discarded cigarette butt. Panic gripped me momentarily until I noticed the shadow that another low lying building created about two stories above street level. I gritted my teeth, knowing that this was cutting it pretty close. I could only shift into Umbra when I was within a shadow, and as strong as my body was I wouldn’t survive a hundred story drop. Pushing my arms and legs away from my body, I was spread eagled in an attempt to slow my rate of descent. I slowed, but not enough. The Fury shrieked above me and I turned my body in the whipping wind to catch a glimpse of it tucking its wings closely to its body and dive toward me, eyes narrowed. I waited until it was close enough and kicked out my left leg, trying to fight it off. The fury tilted right, sailed past my outstretched leg and reached out with a taloned foot to grasp my right leg at the ankle.
Raising its head back to the sky, the Fury beat its wings furiously, slowing our fall through the open air. I only had ten stories to go by this time and I brought my leg around once more in a kick to its beaked head. The creature skrieked once more, and I reached up and pried its grotesque talons from my jeans. I started picking up speed again, and turned my body once more to see I was quickly approaching the border of the shadows below. I gritted my teeth and willed myself into my shadow state, crossing over as soon as I entered the heavy darkness below. My vision changed, I became invisible, and power flowed into me so I turned what constituted as my body and tried flying level with the street. With the speed I had been falling at, my body was slow to react, and I closed my eyes as the asphalt rose to meet me, grainy and unforgiving. In Umbra, I phased through the asphalt, and into the sewer below, finally able to control my momentum. I took a quick look around with my enhanced vision, and bolted through the sewer pipe, northward. I figured the Fury wouldn’t be able to track me through the maze of pipes down there so I turned west at the first junction, then after another mile I turned upward, and phased back through the asphalt. I floated in the middle of a dead street, all lights dimmed for the night. I needed to gather my bearings so I streaked up the side of a small skyscraper, my body rematerializing as I shot far past the lip of the roof. I looked around from my perch and saw that I was on the far side of downtown, about two miles from where I had last seen the Fury. My home was ten miles North West from my current position so I plotted my route as quickly as possible, making sure the turns I would take lead me onto heavily shadowed streets. A familiar screech sounded behind me and I turned apprehensively. The Fury landed on the roof in front of me and I found myself wondering just how she had found me.
“Princeps fugae ne temptet Skotadi. Hic ego, vt amicus,” the creatures voice rang in my ear.
A second after she spoke, I knew in English what she had said. “Do not try to flee Prince of Darkness. I am here as a friend.”
A wry smile broke out on my lips. “I’m done running. But you’re gonna have to explain to me why a friend just knocked me off a roof.”
“Sed accidens et tu meus princeps coeptus. Sed quaeso, non multum tempus. It was an accident and you have my apologies. Now please, there is not much time.”
I had heard enough and launched myself at the Fury, wanting to wring the life out of its wrinkled throat. With a single flap of her wings she rose above me and I stumbled past where she had been. Two could play at that game, however, and I coiled my legs, leaping high into the air after her. She froze in surprise as my fingers wrapped around her throat, pulling her back to the roof with me as I fell. I angled our bodies so she would hit first but I was denied the killing blow. At the last moment she lit up with a red glow and disappeared from beneath me. I slammed into the roof myself, the rocks of the gravel biting into my skin. I turned onto my back and groaned. There she was, flapping her wings above me, smiling smugly with that ugly beaked face. I decided to do a repeat performance and brought my legs up to my chest, then shot them back over my shoulders, throwing myself off the roof. Back into the sewers and another mile east I rose from the pipes and onto another rooftop. Thinking I knew how she kept finding me I stayed in Umbra until I hit the top of the roof, landed, and took off running in my normal form. I neared the edge and jumped, flying over a hundred feet before landing on another roof and rolling behind a large air conditioning unit. I looked back to the other building in time to see the Fury streak upward to circle above it, searching for me. She circled three times before landing and searching for me on foot. Twenty minutes passed as she looked in every nook and cranny, then with a despaired shriek took off into the night.
She could only find me if I entered Umbra I confirmed in my own mind, and with a sigh, kicked down the door leading to the staircase that would take me down to street level.
