What Sera saw, she will remember until the day of her death, which might be closer then she would have liked.
There in the sky she saw a human figure with huge, graceful, white feathered wings. The creature could've been breathtakingly beautiful, if it wouldn't have made Sera feel so much dread.
She didn't have to check her watch to know that the heavenly monsters Class is at least a 4, designated as a Horror.
Every monster below Horror is a special kind of terrible being in and of itself, but only after the 4th Class do they start emitting fear as an aura.
Sera was rooted to the ground and couldn't look away from the terrifying creature.
The said creature was scanning the ground searching for something or someone. While looking around it's eyes lingered on Sera for a split second.
She looked into the creatures eyes and the next second, she immediately went as pale as a dead person, fell on her knees, and started vomiting and trembling. After everything in her stomach came out, she fell on her side and let go of her bowels as well.
Still trembling and lying in her own vomit and waste. She held on for a couple more seconds, then she passed out from the fear.
In a minute or an eternity later, she woke up to the sounds of huge explosions.
The fear still lingered but somehow it seemed to be suppressed for now. Slowly getting up on her knees, Sera turned toward the explosions.
There in the sky she realized what made the sounds and she immediately went pale again and would've vomited if there were anything left in her stomach. The sounds weren't explosions at all, just a fight between a Horror and a Stellar.
The scene in front of her was equally amazing and terrifying. Seeing the fully shapeshifted Stellar was as bad as looking at the Horror, but neither came even a little bit close to the terror she felt looking into the deadly angels eye.
She knew who the Stellar was, even met him on a couple of occasions since he was the leader of the city. No one knew his real name, after Evolving people could receive a title, and most like to use them more then their name given at birth.
He was 'Beastbane'. The name most likely been given to him, because he only used beastlike monsters when ranking up. So it was actually quite fitting.
Every Evolved can transform into the first monster they killed or the one they absorbed when ranking up. And after becoming Ascended they can mix and match their transformations body parts.
With that knowledge Sera immediately knew that the flying beast in the sky is Beastbane, even though she never saw his full transformation beforehand, the beast was put together from 4 distinctly different parts, exactly as many as a Stellar can have.
There, fighting the angel of despair was a huge beast with a lions head and a bears body. The feet of the creature were similar to the Hellhound's, but with even more dreadful talons, they were actually closer to giant curved swords in size. And the beast had huge bat-like wings that could keep him up in the air with ease.
'The angel changed size as well? Before it was closer to 5 meters if I had to guess, but now it matched Beastbane's monstrous size. I wonder if only it's size changed?'
But she knew better then to try and find out. Instead she turned away from their battle, to start sprinting home. She wouldn't survive that clash if she was in their proximity and judging by the sounds behind her she certainly was way too close for comfort.
'Come on, just a couple more blocks.'
She turned another block at the end of the street, and the houses changed from the middle-class apartment complexes, to the high-class family homes.
'Okay two more streets and I'm there.'
Sera was thanking her past self for not skipping the physical training lessons.
'Who knew that it would save my life, I certainly didn't. The only reason I went was to watch sweaty boys and girls, it didn't really matter to me if I performed well or not.'
While Sera was distracting herself with these useless thoughts, she finally arrived at her house's door, well at least what's left of it. Seems like some monster went through here, and hopefully left.
She wasn't that afraid for her parents, they were probably already in a private or public shelter somewhere close to their workplace.
Sera went in and making as little noise as possible approached the basement door. It was made from some monster material since, those were way tougher to get through than any mundane metal.
She went to the terminal next to the door and typed in the code. A second later the terminal lit up green and the door silently opened.
Going down the stairs she heard the door close and after getting downstairs, she closed another even heavier door to the stairs, after that she began looking around the place.
The basement was pretty big with it's own bedrooms, living room, kitchen, bathroom and of course armory. She quickly went through the supplies to see if everything is fully stocked, but she shouldn't have worried since her parents were so thorough. She grabbed one of the railguns from the armory, loaded it and went to the living room.
A railgun wouldn't do much against anything above Tainted but she felt safer holding it.
As she sat down on the couch and let out a shaking breath, her eyes become watery and she started crying. The adrenaline was leaving her system and the realization of the whole situation dawned on her.
The world which she knew and loved has came to an end. Her friends are probably dead. She couldn't even contact her parents, a Gate Opening disrupts any network communication.
She wanted to just sit there and cry in her self despair, but it seemed the world had other plans for her.
Above her the earlier explosions could be heard again but from way closer. It took a minute for Sera to realize what was going on.
'These assholes are fighting right above me.'