Angel Monarch

The buildings had vines and all kinds of plants growing all over it, some of them moved when the sunshine reached it. A reminder that not even plants are safe to be around.

They were about to reach the outskirts, when something changed. All of them felt it, but in different ways. Sarah felt the wind change, Bea felt something unnatural, Lucy felt a deathly aura approach, Vicky felt the weird soul composition, Sera felt there power and Clockwork felt the technology.

Collectively they looked towards the east where the Sun already came out of its hiding fully. There were specks in front of the Sun, they were approaching their position fast.

"Scatter!" Shouted Clockwork. He was the one to figure out what the incoming danger was, which wasn't surprising since they were had to do with technology.

In the sky was a large swarm of about hundred or more drones. Each had at least one weapon attached to it. As soon as they came close enough they began firing.

The group quickly scattered, but sadly Pixie wasn't large and not very agile. The first of the shots hit her wings fully immobilizing her. Then they shredded her to pieces. Sera was holding onto Vicky trying to calm her and keeping her from running out.

Drones fell out of the sky one by one, for no reason it seemed. But it was Vicky slowly destroying each of their souls, in a futile attempt to save her friend.

Meanwhile the others began attacking the swarm as well.

Bea using vines grabbed them and destroyed them. She could do it without even moving out of cover. Clockwork was just shooting at them from behind a broken wall, while Lucy in her eagle form started taking them out one by one.

Faith constantly changed forms, and every time she became tangible a drone died with a stab through its body.

Suddenly there were explosions as Hellfire summoned compressed fireballs and shot them in the densest parts of the swarm. Sarah used her wind powers to fend the flames taking out even more drones.

Since Will's power was pretty much useless in this situation, he ran to Sera and took Vicky away so she could join the battle.

Using her wings Sera flew into the thick of the swarm, her body was fully protected by the white and gold armor. The drones were of small class and tier so her swings didn't need to be very strong or precise. She turned her longsword into a large three meter long odachi.

The curve of the odachi gave her slashes more power for less energy consumption, and the size made sure for every one of her swings hit something. The drones began falling out of the sky in pieces as she took them apart with ease.

'This is a bit too easy. They can't even hurt me, but I can kill them with only one swing.'

The hundred drones soon turned into fifty, then into two dozen, ten and eventually zero.

Sera flew back to the ground and the group gathered around her. Vicky's eyes were rimmed red and she kept looking at the decimated corpse of the butterfly.

'I will really have to talk about not forming this close emotional connections with tamed monsters. Especially if she is going to send them into battle.'

"What the hell was that? A swarm of drones? And how did they know where to find us?" Lucy was the one to speak, but they were questions all of them were curious about, except Clockwork. He noticed something even more worrisome.

"That isn't the problem. While killing I noticed that no notifications came. Every time a new drone fell out of the sky by me shooting it, there was nothing."

The others looked at him confused. "So? What does that mean exactly? That they aren't really alive?"

"Exactly! Vicky could destroy their soul, so they must have some resemblance of it. But if the Watch didn't consider them kills, that means they weren't really alive. They were some kind of artificial life that had a small soul like power source."

The realization spread through the group, like wildfire. If they weren't really alive, that means something was controlling them and that something knew exactly where they were.

"We have to leave! Right now!" Said Sera and they began running further into the city.

Not long after they left a giant robotic being arrived at the previous battlefield. Around it were many smaller human sized robots and in the air about a thousand of the previous drones.

The giant robot that was their leader scanned the whole area and soon what it was looking for. Very shallow footsteps, exactly nine pairs leading into the city.

It didn't make any noise, but suddenly the humanlike robots began running and tracking the people, who caused the destruction.

The large death robot turned away and began collecting every usable part of the dead drones. When it was done they moved away, back to whatever hell it climbed out of.

...

The group ran through the city and soon they noticed something very strange...

The city was abandoned.

But not by just humans, it was abandoned by monsters as well. They only had this realization after running down streets and there weren't even one creature ambushing them.

After half an hour they went into a warehouse building, after running so much they were a bit exhausted, except Hellfire. He wasn't even a little bit winded.

They tried to recover as much as possible, but soon there was a noise outside and since they knew the city had no monsters other than those previous robots. They went on high alert, jumping to their feet.

Next came the sound of windows breaking, from every single window a humanlike robot jumped in. They had two legs, arms and one head. What they didn't have were hands, in their place were only blades with some kind of energy running through it.

Clockwork tried scanning them with his Watch, but there was nothing. They were artificial as well. Sharing this news with the others they formed a circle around Vicky. She tried taking them down, but it was harder. The thing that served as their soul was much stronger, than what the drones had.

Slowly they approached the group, there were dozens of them, all looked uniform with some slight changes. They were about 1.9 meters in height and had one red sensor for an eye.

Sera summoned her weapon in longsword form, it will be much better in a close quarter team fight, than the other forms she could use, also she was the most comfortable with this one.

Sarah summoned her trident and some armor item, Will his shield and spear, Lucy her daggers with dark smoke around them, Bea her armor and sword, Clockwork his rifle, Hellfire his armor and halberd, Faith used the shadows to form a dark armor and rapier for herself.

Non of them transformed, that would only hinder their ability to fight as a group.

The first lines of robots ran at them. Sera made to stab one in its eye, but the attack got deflected with one of its sword arm, the other was about to cut her leg, but it got stuck in a tridents. Sera used the stuck position of the robot and using her free hand she grabbed onto its neck then squeezed, decapitating it.

From the 'wound' some black liquid spurted all over Sera, but she didn't even notice it.

On the other side of their formation Bea evaded the sword arm and stabbed her own weapon through the robots chest where the heart of a human would be. Just as she expected the robot didn't have such weakness and it attacked again. Before the sword could reach Bea the robots head exploded from a shot at pointblank range.

Next to them Hellfire using his flaming halberd just cut a robot in two, while Faith moved behind another and stabbed through its eye. Then before the robot even died she turned into a shadow and was back in her position helping Sera kill another.

Behind them Will deflected a slash with his shield and used his spear to push the robot off balance. Lucy was waiting just for that and with two quick slashes the robot fell on the ground in a rain of black oil.

The group's teamwork was near perfect, when one couldn't kill a robot quickly, the person next to them helped.

When Sarah's weapon got stuck in a robot's skull, Will defended her and Sera killed the attacker.

When two robots tried two take out Lucy, one got stabbed in its neck by Bea, the other just fell over dead... Its souls destroyed.

When Hellfire had about five robots try their best to kill the strongest of their group. One fell over dead with an unnatural shadow at its feet, two others got shot by projectiles that were a lot faster and stronger, than railguns. The last two was taken out by Hellfire himself with just one swing of his weapon.

They kept this up until there were no more robots to kill. Somehow they all survived, without even getting hurt.

The floor of the warehouse was a mess, robot parts everywhere and that black liquid, was covering the ground. There wasn't a clean spot anywhere.

Sera crouched down and touched the liquid. It reminded her of something, she just couldn't quite remember it.

'What was it that those old world vehicles used as fuel, petrol? Gasoline? Something like that, this has a very similar consistence and smell, but I'm forgetting something... What was so dangerous about gasoline... I remember my teacher talking about it back when I was a kid...'

Slowly the memory returned and her face went white as a sheet.

'Of course... How could I forget... It is very flammable!'

There was a sound of something metallic moving. She turned around to see one of the robots still alive and as it dragged its metallic body across the floor...

It created sparks...