Chuva de carne

The sky, a bruised and mottled canvas of ochre and sickly green, had been weeping for hours. Not water, not the cleansing torrents of rain that might have offered a desperate sort of relief. No, this was a deluge of a far more unsettling nature. Chunks of raw, glistening flesh, some no larger than a fist, others disturbingly substantial, plummeted from the heavens. They thudded against the alien soil with wet, sickening impacts, splattering across the makeshift shelter the disparate group of exiles had managed to erect.

Joan of Arc, her armor dulled by the perpetual grime of Osvald and her spirit tested by weeks of hardship, flinched as a particularly large piece of meat landed with a heavy *thwack* just inches from her worn boot. The smell, a coppery, metallic tang mingled with an underlying sourness, filled the air, thick and suffocating. Beside her, Genghis Khan, his usually impassive face contorted in a mixture of disgust and grim curiosity, watched the grotesque precipitation with narrowed eyes. He had faced down armies, endured sieges, and tasted the blood of countless battles, but this… this was a new kind of warfare waged by an unseen enemy.

“By the saints,” Joan whispered, crossing herself reflexively. “What infernal plague is this?”