Akiva did the best she could, using the stars and the moon to guide their way.  The night was full of infected and daybreak was quite a way off.  They traveled north by northwest closer and closer towards the mountains.  Jagged rocks, impassable ravines, and sheer cliffs waited for them at the top, but somewhere on the other side Phalanx awaited.

Maira brought up the rear, scanning for incoming infected.  Foxy carried the bulk of their pilfered stuff in the middle.  They never had time to find Akiva's pack or her scouting and scavenging supplies.  What Foxy had was mostly junk, but junk which might prove useful if they made it to the right patch of mountainside.  The old valkyrie who'd once used Sector 1 for field training had carved a small passage through the rock.  It was narrow, hard to find, but provided their quickest path to safety.  Akiva felt the urgency of the task before her.  Time was working against her.  She was infected.

The rush of adrenaline during their escape had counteracted the headache and the shaking.  The rash had already started on her arm, but no one else had yet to notice.  Her vision swam, and she would have been sick if her stomach wasn't already painfully empty.  The cool night air was a blessing from The Great Mother, soothing her burning skin.  She struggled against dizziness with every step.

Akiva couldn't gauge how far she'd gotten before she stumbled.  An hour felt just as likely as twenty minutes.  As she picked herself up off the floor thinking seemed harder and harder.

"Kiva, you're shivering," May put Akiva's arm over her shoulder to lend support, "and you're covered in sweat."

"You look strange."  Foxy moved into her personal space and sniffed.  The face she made was one of disgust.  "Stink."

Akiva opened her mouth to answer and regurgitated the dregs sitting in her gut.  Pain filled her belly and danced along her spine.  The acrid stench of her own bile clogged her nostrils.  She gagged, tried to take a breath, and choked on her own stomach acids.  Akiva fell to her knees, weak and sucking air down a raw throat.

She sent up a silent prayer to The Great Mother.  The goddess had pulled womankind out of a darkness of their own creation and showed them a way to the light.  Phalanx's way was not the only way.  Akiva had glimpsed the truth while in Cavalry with Mother Ophelia.  They'd spoken to a strange hermit called Lazarus whose maps showed places beyond the waste, many many places.  But Akiva'd known the truth before that, when she saw the people from beyond the waste trudging through the sands in the dead of night.  She knew then that Phalanx was but one of The Great Mother's sanctuaries.  She knew there was a world outside of the reaver clans, wasters, and the House of Saxon.  She knew.  She knew.  She knew.  She knew...

Akiva wandered in a darkness birthed of her own fevered mind.  She was walking, dragging one foot in front of the other through dirt and brush.  A daughter of Phalanx and a reaver of The Yellow Sun, a traitor.  She was what Mother Ophelia needed her to be.  Akiva Raheem, following in the footsteps of her mother, at least that's what Lazarus whispered to Ophelia that night when the three stood atop Cavalry's barrier wall.  Much of that night had eluded Akiva's recollections.  Maira had just confessed her undying love.  An irrational fear had taken hold, spurred Akiva to run.  She'd never stopped running.

Akiva tripped and stumbled.  Helpful hands pulled her to her feet, and out of the mire that was her thoughts.

"Master, stay awake."

"Don't call me that.  My name is Akiva."  Her words were slurred, her vision blurry.  She barely recognized the face staring at her.

"Never see infection this bad.  She's not gonna make it."

"She has to make it!"  May moved into view.  She was bleeding.  "You hear me, Akiva?  You can sleep once we're home."

Akiva thought of Phalanx.  Its massive doors covered in ancient rust had always seemed oppressive.  They didn't just keep out the waste, they also trapped its daughters inside.  Akiva wanted to explore, wanted to see as much as she could.  She'd been to the south where cannibals road boats along the coastline in search of food.  To the east where the bones of the old world jutted out of the sands and three of the nine clans waged bloody war over useless relics of the Usa people.  She'd been west with its thick jungle ruled by wild and bizarre creatures.  She'd never gone north of Phalanx, never seen what was on the other side of the mountains, not with her own eyes.  Akiva thought of Phalanx, but only saw how it kept her from the rest of the world.

Screaming brought Akiva to her senses.

They were at the base of the mountains.  She was leaning against the cool rocks and someone was calling her name... Foxy, the girl's name was Foxy.  Akiva fought to focus.  Maira and Foxy were fighting a small group of infected.  They were tiny creatures with stomachs swollen by the squid in their bellies, tentacles flailing in their open mouths.  Children overcome by the infection.  Foxy bashed one of the creatures in the stomach until ichor poured out of its ears.  The monster within crawled free from the wounded body and she stomped on it until it lay still.  May stabbed downward staking one of the little infected to the ground.  She bludgeoned another with her pipe.  Foxy ran to Akiva's side.

"Master, we're at the rocks.  Where do we go?"  The girl was out of breath, her chest rising and falling quickly.

"I... I don't kn-"

"Akiva, wake-up!"  May's voice gave her a needed jolt.  "You led us here, now tell us where to go."  The shrieks of hungry infected ran through the night.  "You have to hurry, they're coming."

Akiva's throat was a burnt mess, her tongue felt like sandpaper, and her head was pounding like Mother Gwyneth's training drums.  Through the confusion nipping at her consciousness, she scanned the rock face looking for what?  She couldn't remember.

"There," she croaked.

"Where?  I don't see anything, Kiva."

"The Great Mother.  Right there."  Akiva pointed with a shaking arm that'd never felt so heavy.

"The squids are coming!"

"I don't see anyth-"  Maira put her back against the rocks, positioning herself side by side with Akiva.  "The Great Mother, I see her!"

It was just another rock jutting out the side of the mountain, but if you stood against the stone and looked at just the right angle you could see the subtle craftsmanship.  An effigy of the goddess herself, pointing the way home.  It was a glorious sight, a beacon in the dark.

May took Akiva under the arms and half carried her until they stood beneath the image of hope.  Maira studied the wall, frustration quickly rearing its head.

"Goddess, what are you trying to show me?"

Akiva pulled away, wobbling on her feet, and hobbled toward the rock face.  She'd found the hidden path while exploring for a valkyrie sergeant.  She'd been willing to barter quite a bit for information confirming or denying the existence of the old passage.  It was an optical illusion so perfectly crafted that May called out for caution as Akiva seemed to walk through the wall and into the mountain itself.  Akiva turned and smiled.  Vertigo brought the ground rushing up to meet her.

"Foxy, come!"

The darkness swallowed Akiva once more.  There was no concept of passing time, merely the sensation of being carried through it.  She came to in a dimly lit corridor.  She was draped over May's shoulder.  Her head bobbing with the other's hurried steps.  Slivers of crystal on the floor reflected the light, allowing them to see where they were going.  The sounds of Maira's and Foxy's hurried breaths echoed off the walls, mixing with that of their feet pounding the stone floor.

"May, let me down.  I'm going to be sick."

As if cued by her words, howls and shrieks rushed down the passage to meet Akiva's ears.

"Then be sick, Kiva.  We can't stop."

The light went out and darkness swallowed the tunnel.  May came to a stop, leaving Akiva hanging in the dark, the feel of May's hand on her back the only assurance that she was still anchored to the waking world.  Even so the darkness was not a still dead thing, but alive and writhing.  Akiva sensed movement, tentacles of unseen and hungry entities hoping to consume them like they consumed the old world.  Monsters were real things, slavering things grabbing for them in the pitchblack nothingness.  Akiva's heart raced, and the pain in her head throbbed.  The shrieks were growing louder, but Akiva didn't need the infected to announce themselves.  She knew they were already there.

A snap, and the light returned.  The darkness retreated a few paces, frightened by the dancing sparkle of the crystals along the floor.  The grasping hands Akiva expected had also fled, but she knew they'd be back.  For the moment there was reprieve in the noxious stench of a freshly struck flare.

"Last one.  After this, Squid meat."

"I know, girl.  Keep going, we're right behind you."

Akiva laughed.

"She's the lightbringer, May... she's the one The Great Mother will send to light the way to a brighter future... sh... she's the daughter born of no mother.  May.  May?  Can you see it, May?"

"Akiva, you're burning with delirium.  Just close your eyes and hold on."

Akiva did close her eyes, and thoughts of the lightbringer filled her head.  The lorekeepers said The Great Mother had once sent down her only begotten daughter to the old world and saved those people from themselves.  She told them about the way of light and showed them what it meant to walk in The Great Mother's brilliance.  When the time came she sacrificed herself as a beacon of light for the world to see.  The lorekeepers said the people of the old world misunderstood the lesson and perverted the lightbringer's words.  They said The Great Mother would send her again when the time was right, and those who walked the brilliant path would know true salvation.

"Salvation!"

"Akiva, calm down and listen.  We're at the end of the passage, but we can't find the way out."

Akiva tried to understand May's words but her thoughts weren't making much sense.  Out?  The only way out was salvation, up to The Great Mother's bosom.  The only way out was up.

"Up, out is up."

"Take her, give me the light."

May was looking for something on the ceiling, her hair fire atop her head.  Foxy looked down at Akiva concerned and worked a cap full of water down her throat.  It was cool and refreshing.  The girl used one of her dirty rags to mop her brow.

"I'm hungry, little fox girl."

"All I have are these."

"Mushrooms?"  Akiva's voice was weak.  Like losing a fight against the current, she felt like she was slipping away.  She took the mushroom from the girl's hand and bit a chunk.  The earthy hunk caused explosions to ripple up her tongue.  "It tastes like dirt."

"I found something!"

The sound of a creaking hinge echoed all around them, and moonlight flooded the tunnel.  Akiva laughed again.  Maira said she couldn't find the way out, but she could and she did.  May could do anything as long as she believed.  Akiva believed in her.  Akiva loved her.

The fire-haired woman and the little fox girl helped Akiva out into the night.  The air was cool, and green... or were the moonbeams green?  No it was their lifeforce which was green.  Akiva marveled at their light.  Three people with three intertwined lights, a warrior, a slave, and a scavenger.  Alone their lights were beautiful, but together theirs was the magnificents of the goddess.  They were all different yet all built in her image.  Akiva tried to touch the light, while Maira tried to force the hatch door closed.

"This door won't budge.  Goddess, now she's hallucinating."

"It's the Gongdo Shrooms."

"You gave her Gongdo Shrooms?"  May was yelling, turning her energy red like her hair.

"May, you're red now."

Thick yellow mist billowed up from within the hatch, pushing away the reds and the greens and the moonbeams... Akiva jumped up.

"May, they're here.  The infected are almost to the hatch."

"Akiva, you're high on shrooms.  You're imagi-"

Shrieks bounced around within the tunnel before exploding into the night.  An arm crawling with tentacles grabbed May's leg, its owner cry like a siren.  Foxy grabbed Akiva's hand and pulled her up the pass.  Akiva resisted.  Though the fever sapped most of her strength, she still reached out for May.  Maira fired down into the monster's face, and yanked her foot free.

"Run, Akiva.  Run."  She jacked another round into the chamber of her shotgun.

They ran through the colorful night across the uneven pass.  The trail veered left, the incline increasing the farther they pulled from the turn.  Akiva's legs were jelly, but Foxy's hand and the strange surges running up and down her nerves kept her in motion.  May fired twice from the rear, the muffled bark of her weapon thunderous and musical to Akiva's ear.

"I'm right behind you.  Don't look back."

Akiva instinctively looked back.  Four hulking infected, twice the size of a woman, lumbered up the trail.  Swarming around them were dozens more of varying shapes and sizes.  May had killed a pair of the faster creatures but the main host was steadily approaching.  The air around them was a sickly yellow which seemed to gobble up all of the other colors around it.

They reached the top, following the path cut by valkyrie generations ago.  The shrooms were losing their effect, and the world was losing its color.  Strangely, Akiva felt better.  The running and the drug worked together to combat her fever.  She was still weak and nauseous, but the fever had broken.  Through muddled thoughts she racked her brain for memories of the secret route.

"Stay to the right!"  She shouted.

They soon came to a fork in the pass.  One path led up to bluffs looking out upon the mountain range and Sector 1.  The other led to the crossing they needed to traverse the ravine to Phalanx.  Akiva let go of Foxy's hand and stopped to catch her breath.

"We don't stop, keep running."

"Akiva, let's go!  They're right behind us."

Akiva fished the flare gun out of her coveralls with hands slick with sweat.  She loaded the weapon with her only flare and fired up the left route.  The gun fired with a loud pop, sending a bright red flower fifty feet into a rock pillar.  She rushed the others down the left to a chorus of hungry shrieks.

Their path ran level while the rocks on either side rose into the sky.  Inky black shadows crisscrossed the trail creating a lattice of clawing darkness.  Akiva ignored the lurking creatures conjured by her recovering mind as best she could, but frightening things with greedy grasping appendages were everywhere.

They moved in silence lest they drew the attention of the infected who were lured by the light and hiss of the flare.  Akiva squinted into the darkness as she moved to keep up with the others.  She saw things, felt things, but Maira and Foxy seemed oblivious.  She knew there was a line between fantasy and reality, but she was having trouble defining it.  She drew out a knife, her hand shaking, as she struggled to keep a tight grip.  They moved through patches of darkness, anticipation setting Akiva's nerves to tingle.

Foxy and May emerged unscathed which gave Akiva a spot of relief.  Then she heard a noise.  A stone cascaded down the rock wall, disturbing more as it fell.  There was a loud commotion, and Akiva's heart sank.  She heard the footsteps coming before the bulky figure emerged from the shadows.  Akiva raised her blade. A shot rang over her shoulder, and an infected died in a gurgling heap.  May shouted and trained her shotgun on the shooter.  Foxy dropped on all fours and growled like a cat, which made Akiva chuckle like a madwoman.  She shook her head to chase away the madness and took a good look at the woman in front of her.  Her head was wrapped in bandages, her face swollen and stained in blood.  She leaned dangerously on a makeshift crutch, and more bandages were visible through the rents and tears of her valkyrie uniform.  The warrior had seen better days.

"Gemma, is that you?"

"What little bit the goddess spared..."  Her voice was strong despite her body.

Behind them came the hunger cry.

"We go!  We go!"

"Foxy's right.  There's a swarm behind us.  We go!"

"I can't, not without help."

"We have help," Akiva said, "what we don't have is time."

"Raheem, you can barely stand.  L-"

"You help me stand, and I'll help you walk."

"How abou-"

"There's no time to argue."

Akiva pulled weakly at Gemma's arm.  After a moment's hesitation the valkyrie lieutenant let herself be helped.  Akiva remembered the women who died saving her from the nest three days prior.  The dead faces in the sand, the blood on her hands.  Gemma Acosta had received The Great Mother's grace.  Akiva owed it to the dead to give her all to get the lieutenant home.

The four moved through darkness and shafts of moonlight until they reached a rugged ridge.  Before them was an expansive drop into Umbra Canyon.  On the other side sat Phalanx.  Her walls were dark but the lights of the city could be seen even at their distance.  A welcoming torch in the cold dark night.  Home.  Cradle of The Mothers... and still too far away.

"Keep going.  The rope bridge is around the bend."

Foxy rushed ahead while Maira fell back to cover the rear.  She must not have liked what she saw because she returned quickly to help Gemma from the opposite side."

"Hurry."

"How bad is it?"  Gemma asked, her voice that of a field commander even in her wounded state.

"More than I have bullets for, lieutenant sister."

"They'll push us off the mountain if we fight here.  We find a stronger position, and stand our ground."

"We're beaten as it is. We can't make war."  Akiva felt out of her element.  The valkyrie were soldiers, she was just a trash collector.

"We either fight them on our terms or they'll take us on theirs.  Get me somewhere Quinn and we can fight back to back.  We'll make our stand."

"No, we make our way across the bridge."

"Spoken like one consumed by fear."

They were almost to the turn.  Akiva kept her eyes focused on the ledge, and the rocks to their right.  On her left was open space and a fatal fall.  By day Umbra Canyon was quite the sight, but by night it was a pit of darkness eager to swallow them whole.  She was afraid, she'd been afraid since that moment in the old depot when she stumbled upon the chambers of sleeping infected.  She'd never stopped being afraid.  Infected, reavers, beasts, wasters... there wasn't time for anything but fear.  Fear kept her safe, fear kept them alive, and fear would get them across the rope bridge.  Akiva held on to her fear as they followed the contour of the ridge.

The terrain leveled and expanded into a ledge which extended out over Umbra Canyon.  At its tip were the stakes and struts for a seldom used crossing to the other side.  As Akiva watched Foxy running back toward her she knew something had gone wrong.  They drew closer to the edge and the evidence was made clear by the moonlight.

"There's no bridge.  Nowhere to go!"  Foxy face showed the despair which had been dogging them since they left The House of Saxon.

Akiva let Gemma's weight settle on Maira and hobbled over to the last remnants of hope.  Frayed ropes, and sagging wood taunted her.  Phalanx sat across the expanse, an impossible distance, a lifetime away.  Shrieks filled the night, drawing closer with every passing moment.  She dropped to her knees, weak and mentally exhausted.  She had nothing left.

"Akiva, get up."

"Why, May?  It's over.  I can't run anymore, and there's nowhere else to go."

"So we fight.  We're all tired.  Look at Gemma.  She's half dead, but still she fights."

"She's a valkyrie.  That's what you do."

"I'm not fighting because I'm a valkyrie, Kiva."  Maira took hold of Akiva's chin and raised her head until their eyes met.  "I'm fighting for you, I'm fighting to protect the woman I love."

The infected howled and cried, the hunt was nearly at an end.

"Master, what do I do?"

"Don't call me master.  Call me Akiva.  My name is Akiva."

"What do we do, Akiva?"

Akiva looked into May's eyes, and took strength from the red-headed woman's determination.  May was afraid, Akiva could read it all over her face, but she wasn't letting that fear control her.  It was the same determination which had let her defeat Anya, and escape from Sarai's kitchen.  Akiva realized it didn't take bravery to fight just a determination to survive.

"Great Mother, goddess of the brave and faithful, hear my words and redirect your light.  We the daughters of your chosen beseech you.  Show us your grace and your mercy!"  Gemma sang in a strong tenor.

Akiva looked away from Phalanx to the battered and wounded valkyrie lieutenant.  She leaned against her crutch and unslung her rifle.  Her broken armpad caught the moonlight, dazzling Akiva's eyes.  In that moment of blindness Akiva saw a familiar face.  Whether it was her mother Akemi Raheem or The Great Mother herself, the face reminded her of the women before her and the women yet to come.

"Make us your light in this world of darkness," Akiva intoned.  She felt May's hand squeeze her shoulder.

"We are the glorious women!  We are the shield against the old world's folly!" May added.

"We are the meek made strong to inherit your world!"  The three voices combined created a single mighty sound, one The Great Mother would be proud to hear.

Akiva and Maira joined Gemma on either side.  One raising her shotgun, the other holding a knife in each shaking hand.  Foxy stood beside Akiva, the pipe gripped desperately.

"I don't know your songs," she whispered.

"Don't worry, you'll learn."

The infected came around the bend, a handful falling off the ledge in their reckless rush to get to the women.

"For Phalanx!"

Gemma fired the first shots, dropping the first infected as they reached the ledge.

"We hold the line, ladies.  We are the shield!"

She fired two more times before releasing the rifle to hang from its strap.  She drew her pistol and continued the battle.  Infected swarmed past her victims, closing the distance in beastial lopes.  May took a step forward and blew a monster off his feet.  The two sang the valkyrie battle prayer as the mutants continued their advance.

Akiva prepared herself as an infected lumbered toward her.  She ducked under the monster's grasping hand and swept his foot.  He fell to the ground and Foxy smashed his face.  Another took his place as Akiva rose to her feet.  She drove a knife up through the soft meat of his throat and dragged it across his neck.  The creature fell back clawing at the ichor spewing wound.  She and Foxy met the next monster together and drove him to the ground as they beat and stabbed him.  Adrenaline mixed with the remnants of the gongdo shrooms sent lightning through her veins.

Maira rolled across the floor tripping a pair of infected before flipping into the air and kicking a third in the neck.  She fired her shotgun into the oncoming horde then finished off her nearby foes with the reinforced butt of the weapon.  Akiva and Foxy rallied around Gemma while she cleared the cartridge of her pistol and reloaded.  Bodies littered the ledge, but none of the infected had managed to cross their line.  Two dozen mutants were reduced to nine, and Akiva allowed hope to seep into her heart.

The night brightened.  Sunrise was still distant, but there was a light.

A shriek arose from an unexpected direction.  Thirty feet above, the bulk of the swarm surged forward like a flash flood.  Infected fell to their deaths hoping to get their hungry feeders upon Akiva and her companions.  A mutant hulk crashed down on the ledge in a mass of tentacles and limbs.  It rose out of the tangle slavering, more of the mutated monsters spilled onto him.  An even greater number crawled down the cliff, howling and shrieking.

"Goddess help us."  Gemma holstered her sidearm and loaded her last rounds into her pistol.

Akiva went to May.  Her muscles ached, her head pounded, the adrenaline which had pushed her through the initial battle waning.

"Maira Quinn, I love you.  I've always loved you and I thank The Great Mother for every moment we've shared.  In front of The Goddess, I take you as you are."

"You wait until now?" May asked with a sneer.

"She's proposing to you, Quinn."  Gemma shook her head and sighted down her weapon.  "Some of us go our whole lives without finding the right woman."

May stared into Akiva's eyes as a tide of monsters rolled towards them.  Her hard eyes softened, and she nodded.

"Kiva, I give myself to you."

"I witness your union in the name of The Great Mother," Gemma said.  "Now raise your weapons, ladies!"

Gemma pulled the trigger and a stream of bullets cut a swath through the advancing swarm.  That was the moment Akiva heard the thumping propellers.  That was when she heard the beautiful sound of valkyrie singing into battle.  That was when Vulture Four swept overhead raining The Great Mother's love upon the scourge of her chosen people.

Daughters of Phalanx needed help and Phalanx answered the call.