The war was going badly.

It had been ten years, and the horsemen had been steadily gaining ground. In the past, they had been more obvious - a plague here, a war there, the signs of their presence had always been fairly predictable - but some time before Mahir had even been recruited, things had changed. They became smarter. Subtler. And they began to integrate themselves into the world in a way that hunters could not fight back against.

Some were optimistic. The less antagonistic the horsemen appeared, the more likely it was that a truce could be reached. Any sort of armistice would be preferable to the eternal stalemate they found themselves in. Even Mahir had believed in the possibility. No more looming threat of the apocalypse. It was too good to be true.

And it was.

They had never been willing to integrate at all, merely position themselves. Six years ago, they retaliated. The island of Deus Ex Machina was wiped out in an instant. It was revenge. They were only ever after revenge, and an apocalypse that no one could stop now. The only hunters that remained were scattered, disconnected, at various inhospitable bases. Portal technology was a valuable resource, power was limited, and every day another base or outpost went dark and unresponsive. Last month, there had been seven. Last week, three.

Today, only one.

Mahir didn't know how much was left of the outside world. Nobody talked about it much any more. They'd been holed up near the defunct Sahara base for a long time now. They'd been taking refuge in a series of labyrinthian famine tunnels beneath the desert. They existed in a grim countdown that left everyone quietly preparing for the worst. The occasional scouts that came too close were dispatched - Mahir had been using them for testing.

And Mahir worked tirelessly. There was no hope in his expression, no reason to keep living, except to see this through. It was a chemical unlike any other. Four small vials, each filled with a substance that shimmered like mercury. Was it ready? He couldn't say for sure.

A small quake ran through the tunnels, sending sand seeping through the cracks in the ceiling. There was no time for second-guessing. He picked up the vials, two to a hand, and passed them out like rations.

"When you see them, drink this," he croaked as he offered each of them a vial, his voice faint from the dry air and minimal use. Two of them nodded, the other hardly seemed to be there at all.

Another rumble, this one closer. And another. There were voices echoing down the tunnel The hunters huddled together in silence, the only companionship they'd had for years now. No one bothered to summon their weapon - those had gone silent too, long ago, in defeat.

They could hear footsteps, scratching, and a hundred tiny glowing eyes from down the tunnel. Mahir downed the vial without hesitation. Mahir immediately doubled over. His heart was racing. He felt himself shaking, and sweating, trapped in a state of perpetual fear. He could hear the hunter beside him choke back a sob as it hit them too. Something deep down inside of him wished he could go home, as crazy as the thought was now.

As the horsemen approached, the symptoms only seemed to get worse. Mahir's vision blurred as the closest horseman drew a long, serrated blade and put it to his throat. The life hunter had taken great care in engineering the poison - only the most fear-inducing compound would do. But what it would do to the horsemen was so much worse.

Insanity, it was called, in the few documented cases he'd studied. A corruption of fear into something unstable. The only reason it was so unusual was that it wasn't contagious, couldn't spread from one being of FEAR to another.

At least, not until now. The fear he gave off was infectious now - all of theirs was. If they wanted an apocalypse, they could have it.