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“Red, is that really you?”

"Of course it's me, Rawkner! I told you that tower was important!" On his screen, Red's face went out of focus, the rhythmic clatter of gunshots and an inhuman roar almost drowning out her voice. When their eyes met again, terror painted Red's face grim.

"Tell me what's happening," Fenrir commanded.

“It’s a Hell beast, and it’s fucking huge.”

The screen turned until suddenly a pair of gray, fleshless legs cut through the image, dust billowing in a choking cloud where several sets of headlights bounced through the gloom.

The thing was huge. Bigger than the Emperor Dragon. Bigger than the tallest tower in the damn Stacks. Red shouted and the vehicle she rode in cut sharply to the left while the field of view pivoted, pulling back until Fenrir could see it—see everything. Every seared scarred flap hanging off a skeleton the size of a skyscraper, and the desolate gray nothing of the Rim it called home.

“Incredible,” Fenrir breathed as Red’s face replaced the creature.

“What the hell do I do, Fenrir?”

There was only one person he knew who may have an answer.

“I need time!” One wave at Bastion and he was out the door of the control room, tearing through the forge towards the gravel path that would take him back to the palace. “Daedra will know what it is!”

“Daedra?” Red shrieked. Fenrir gave her a sheepish smile and she cursed. “Shit, we’re definitely dead!”

“She’ll help.” She had to. All hells, she had to.

He ran as fast as he could. Faster than he ever had before. Like it was him who was hundreds of miles away outrunning a Hell beast of a magnitude he’d never could have imagined—not in all his wildest daydreams. And he thought through the long list of Hell beasts he’d fought over the years. Creatures of varying strengths that hadn’t all been hostile, then compared that to the creatures he’d encountered when Orpheus had been under attack. Netherflame was the one common factor they all shared, and surely this creature was no different.

“Red, if that thing is still alive, it’s got to be hungry.”

“Well, that’s fucking helpful, Rawkner. Good thing we have a whole fleet of fresh meat!”

“Yeah, that’s not what I mean.” He turned a bend, and his foot skidded across the gravel, but the palace was in sight now, the gates already opening, the courtyard alive with light. “It eats Netherflame, Red. It’s got to be star—”

“Shit. Shit.”

“What?” Fenrir glanced down at the screen. “Talk to me, Red!”

Red’s face had gone a shade gray. “It got someone. Can’t tell who.”

“Got them?” Again, the screen turned, and again he was staring at the creature. A person writhed in its fist, shrieks audible over the roar of the engine as the creature lifted the soldier over its gaping maw and then closed right over his legs.

It didn’t bite. It barely even moved. It pursed its lips over the limbs and sucked.

Flesh sloughed off bone, the man in the creature's grip howling, thrashing in its fist while inch by inch the white of his femurs were exposed.

“What the fuck,” Red screamed. “What the fuck, what the actual fuck—“

“A Prometheus,” Fenrir breathed. “Red, that’s a Prometheus.”

“Am I supposed to know what that is?” she shrieked. “Because it just sucked the flesh from a man’s legs!”

“Yeah, I…think that’s what they do.”

Red’s face reappeared, ashen now with fear and dust. “How do we fight it?”

And it was serendipitous luck he knew. “Fire. They hate fire. Real fire, not Netherflame. You got some extra fuel?”

“A whole tanker of it,” Red gasped, eyes slipping from Fenrir’s face to something beyond. “Fuck, it’s doing it again—”

“Dump the fuel, light it on fire—quick—”