“I can do this, I thought. Then: And even if I can’t, I have to.” -How They Met, And Other Stories, David Levithan-

  _____

  “Assume he can sense if people are looking at him.” James sent silently to Alex and Spire-Cast-Behind. “So don’t. Don’t look at the gas station at all. Get clear, and if you can, make sure the woman is dead.”

  In front of him and Zhu, a man lit a hand rolled cigarette, and puffed acrid smoke into the night. The dungeon detector on James’ belt clicked steadily, letting him know he was, in fact, in the Underburbs. But the gas station hadn’t been warped and transformed yet, and the lights were still on, so he sat with some discomfort on the ground under a broken plate glass window, feigning injury while the man held a gun on them.

  The gun was, annoyingly, not something James recognized. It looked like an AK-47’s uglier cousin, but he wasn’t sure what the caliber of it was, which meant he didn’t know what to set his shield bracers to. He flipped one to automatic, but that still left a window of three or four bullets going into him, and James didn’t trust the kevlar when the guy was holding the barrel steady at his head. He would have been more confident facing the score of dog-things full of rusted nail teeth and bulging protrusions that held them both in a semi-circle.

  ”So. Business.” Gregor said in his calmly professional voice, Russian accent present but not overwhelming.

  ”You know I can help with the smoking, if you want.” James offered lightly. “Got a magic for addictions.”

  ”Ah, but the addiction is what makes it exciting.” Gregor smiled at him as he took another pull from the cigarette and paused before blowing the smoke out overhead. “Now. Speak. What are you?”

  James was technically supposed to be pretending to be broken and looking for an easy death. Though past that, he was also playing the role of someone who was buying a little more time. Neither of those were true; he was sitting here to keep Gregor talking, and yet, he couldn’t not be a little sarcastic. It would be too obvious. ”Loaded question.” He said in reply. “I don’t suppose you’ll take ‘human’?”

  ”You are part bird.” Gregor motioned to Zhu’s lightly leaking manifestation. “And that does not matter. Explain who you are.”

  ”Sure.” James sighed. “I’m a paladin of the Order of Endless Rooms.”

  ”I have not heard of this Order. You are Catholic, yes? A Vatican cell then?”

  Resisting the urge to mimic the man’s accent, James replied slowly. ”I am not Catholic, no.”

  ”But a paladin.” Gregor grinned, eyes sparkling with amusement. “I have not fought the Vatican yet. I am looking forward to this.”

  ”It’s a different cultural thing.” James explained with a pained grimace that was only mostly fake. “It doesn’t matter, it’s just a title. You haven’t heard of the Order because… because I don’t know. We sure haven’t heard of you.”

  Gregor grinned and took another lungful of smoke before widening his arms, the gun bobbing to the side and away from James as he did so. James didn’t react to it, not wanting to let the man think that the weapon pointed at him or not changed the math on if he was beaten. “You have not heard of us because we are so very good at what we do!” He declared.

  ”Yeah, you hit like a fucking truck.” James tried to shift to rub at his chest, but just let his arms lay loose at his side and coughed instead. On a normal human, that hit would have been lethal; internal bleeding at least. So that’s what he played at. “Not… not great form though.”

  ”Bah. Everyone is critic.” Gregor spat onto the pavement. “We are the largest predators! We are the favored of the Hunting Sprawl! And you are meat for the teeth.” He paused, his toothy smile slowly shifting into a scowl. “So what are you doing here, hunting us back?”

  James rolled his head around and looked up at the man, defiance coming easily and seeming in character for the wounded false front. “That, you asshole.” He said with another cough. “Hunting monsters. Some of them just happen to be Russian.”

  The man blinked, and then threw his head back and gave a great booming laugh. As suddenly as the humor started, it cut off as he snapped his gaze back to James, arm blurring as he threw his still lit cigarette back against one of the gas pumps. James knew gas stations had safety standards so that wouldn’t just make them all explode, but he still felt a spike of worry that was bigger than when the gun was pointed his way.

  Glowering at him, Gregor growled out a demand, a sickly film like spilled oil spreading through the air around his teeth for a moment before fading. “How many of you are there? What happened to the dragon? What is extracted from your weak bodies? Fun is fun, but the night is ends soon and the teeth close. Give me answers, and I will keep your death out of the hunting ground. As a favor.”

  ”About a hundred. She left. Blood, mostly.” James heard himself answering as if from far away. Something - someone actually, it was Zhu holding his agency at least a little in place - kept him from giving the exact answers Gregor was looking for. But he still gave away more than he had meant to.

  James actually understood something important about the pillars. The desire to be cryptic and mysterious wasn’t something that people magically manifested once they had phenomenal cosmic power. It was a simple and pure desire that anyone could cultivate in themselves. And he, personally, loved being in the role of enigmatic wizard. He was actually having a great time letting his recovering thought processes race to say just enough, to prod Gregor in just the right directions, to bat words around like pieces of a puzzle.

  So to have answers ripped out of his mouth with no filter was actually quite insulting. Gregor didn’t think so though. The man instead raised an eyebrow, rolling his head from side to side and cracking his neck underneath the pooled cloth of his dropped hood. “Resistance. You are an interesting one.” He gave James a respecting nod, the dogs around him stilling to almost statues in contrast to his own animated movements. “You would have made a fine hunter.”

  ”I don’t really go in for the long pig diet.” James spat back.

  Gregor laughed again. “We don’t eat flesh. Not so crude or cruel. We are not monsters, just survivors.” He gave an exaggerated shrug, rifle twisting in his palm. James eyed the weapon but made no move toward it, just in case. He was still hoping to hear more that was actionable intelligence. “Better at surviving than most. You are a survivor. If I left you here, if you were still here in an hour after the teeth close, you would survive, wouldn’t you?” The man thumbed the side of his nose knowingly after he finished checking his watch for the time. “I can tell. You do not die easy. We are the same like that.”

  James winced at the words. “An hour until everything here dies?” He muttered, like he was talking to himself.

  ”No, no!” Gregor blew out a long breath through the side of his mouth. “An hour until the Sprawl finishes its hunt! Not even as much, now. The teeth you have not broken will close. This slice of pitiful city will become one more layer, and we… those of us that survived, will have our reward.” He grinned. “You could be one of them. Maybe? We will be needing some fresh blood. And I will not be wasting the bullets.”

  ”Pass.” James said with a displeased frown. Was this an interrogation or a recruitment pitch? Maybe both. “I like magic, but I don’t want anything from this place in me.”

  The man shook his head at James’ words, an unhappy frown that was a disappointed mirror of James’ own locking in on his lips. He raised the short rifle he was carrying again to James’ face. “Well. Promise is a promise. It has-“

  James was tensed, prepared to start moving at his full Endurance-boosted capacity, as Gregor’s finger touched the trigger. But both of them stopped as a shrill noise sounded in the gas station. Something that was unexpected enough that even the still forms of the Underburbs dogs shifted their bodies around looking for the source.

  It was a simple noise. A tune that most people James’ age would recognize in a primal part of their brains. Five notes in a basic pattern. Doo-do-do-dooo Doo-do-do-dooo Doo-do-do-dooo-dooooooo.

  ”…What is…” Gregor’s face scrunched in consternation as the ancient cell phone ringtone sent out a clarion call through the cold night.

  Doo-do-do-dooo Doo-do-do-dooo Doo-do-do-dooo-dooooooo. The tone repeated.

  James cleared his throat, shifting how he was sitting. “Sorry, you mind if I take this?” He asked, already moving smoothly to pull the absolute brick of a Nokia out of the pocket it was stored in. This Office item had no problem taking damage and remaining intact, and James kind of doubted it was a blue item at all. It rang again, and he held up a hand to Gregor’s perplexed and off guard look. “One sec.” James pushed the answer button, and held the phone up to his ear. “Y’ello.” He said easily, ignoring Zhu’s twitching feathers as the navigator repressed his own laughter.

  “I have found a way to return more effectively.” Cam said from two feet away, her wings angled outward and blocking James’ line of sight of most of the creatures surrounding them.

  ”What is this?” Gregor spoke, gun up as he stepped back toward the crowd of dogs. “Who- dragon!“

  “Cam? Kill him!” James ordered. He followed that command up by rolling to the side, Zhu’s talons and his own suddenly manifested ice arm adding a flinging force to his body as he let his gloves and armor keep the scattered glass from ruining his night and dodged the burst of gunfire that Gregor sent out.

  Some of the bullets might have hit him, but James wasn’t there anymore. Phone held in one organic hand so the connection stayed open, he triggered the active ability on the greave he wore strapped to one shin, and let the magic impart enough momentum onto him to crush the head of one of the dogs that had started rushing in as soon as Gregor started shooting.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cam’s projection, armed and armored as she was when she went into combat, shrug off a magazine worth of bullets and then punch Gregor about as hard as Gregor had punched him earlier. But the man took it like it was a friendly spar and not a jab that could shatter bones, swinging back at Cam, who grabbed his gun in her off hand and crushed the metal of the barrel down to something useless before she took his own roundhouse on her cheek, head snapping sideways from the force.

  James Paved two dogs approaching him as he pulled his pistol and started trying to pick off the pack that was rushing Cam. She’d actually be fine if this version of her got hurt - though they hadn’t tested if the projection died, or what would happen with the Underburbs diseases - but all the same, the fewer things dragging her down, the more likely she could kill Gregor.

  What he kind of forgot was that Pave wasn’t that strong, and the two dogs kept running at him even as he stepped out of the corpse of the one he’d kicked in the head of. Oh, they faltered, but they didn’t stop. And the dozen of the things rushing Cam as she and Gregor traded blows hard enough to be heard clearly over the howling were still a huge problem.

  “Get clear!” Alex suddenly sent over link. “Like, really clear!”

  ”Oh fuck me.” James gasped with Zhu echoing the words, burning a little Breath to stick a Survival Flare on Gregor’s back before he used a combination of Move Person and the greave to launch himself away from the gas station, trusting that Zhu’s guiding orange lights in his vision were pointing him past obstructions in the dark. He didn’t go too far; the phone had about a one block range. But he got close to the edge of what would keep the projected Cam in the fight just as Gregor grabbed onto her wings and used that as leverage to suplex her into one of the gas pumps. The metal and plastic squealed and snapped as half those careful safety measures that kept the gas in its underground tank were destroyed. The other half were still there, but since James was aware of Alex’s ability to solve problems with fire, and this copy of Cam’s expendability, he felt like a couple hundred feet wasn’t even close to enough distance.

  Alex showed off that habit before James was through the intersection with its weakly blinking traffic lights. A ball of plasma screaming past him out of the darkness, headed straight for the duo duking it out on the gas station’s concrete. It wasn’t unwarranted either. Gregor was taking hits from Cam that were heavy enough to bow metal with their force. So either this copy of her was weakened, or Gregor was a problem.

  Cam must have agreed, because she saw the shot coming, and instead of dodging, the echo grabbed Gregor’s neck and pinned him against a different and slightly more intact gas pump as the fireball bore down on them both. Out in the open and in line of sight for Spire to slow him down, which must have been happening since he seemed to be struggling against thick invisible mud to move.

  When it got there, a second later, Cam’s off hand slapped it downward. Into the pump mechanism and piping that led to the main tank of fuel stored underneath the concrete lot. James didn’t see that part, he was too busy running as fast as his considerable speed could move him. He did hear a man swear loudly, the word cut off halfway through so he didn’t get a chance to learn new and exciting Russian profanity. And then the event that cut the word off reached him.

  A wave of pressure and heat, though less heat than maybe there should have been as a huge amount of it was sucked into the Climb spell and dumped into the enemy delver. The combined sound of solid things breaking, loose objects thrown around, and the much much larger fireball that erupted from the structure overwhelming James. Running as fast as he could as he magically forced the temperature of his skin downward, he was still lifted from his feet and flung like a discarded hamburger wrapper down the street at an oblique angle, his shoulder slamming into pavement as he was launched by the explosion.

  James kept calm. Or as calm as he could despite the fact that he could taste his own heartbeat from the overwhelming surge of adrenaline. He had thought that training for being thrown by someone like Cam was a waste of time, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  He let himself bounce painfully again, and then extended his ice arm straight down to scrape the ground and bleed off speed. Bones Of Flashing Metal drained more, converting the momentum of the shockwave into durability that he would hopefully not need and slowing him further. Avoiding flailing, he brought his arms against his chest and searched with his legs for the floor as he tumbled, finding purchase with the toe of a boot and just barely managing to get himself landed in a crouch that still had him sliding five feet along the ground to crash into a parked car. He broke one of the windows with the hit, and if the alarm wasn’t already going off because of the detonation, he would have started it up.

  James blinked tears out of his eyes and focused on the blurry sight of orange and red fire fading into the sky. The lights of the gas station were gone, as was presumably any human construction on that plot of land. All that was left were chunks of cracked ground that were flickering with oily flames, and the fireworks of where Alex had set off quite possibly the largest Order-initiated explosion so far.

  In his thoughts, Zhu prodded him, and James shoved off the car to clear a couple feet of space to his right just before a piece of smoking concrete went through where his head was a second ago and into another of the car’s windows. Zhu’s talons flashed in front of James’ face as the navigator snatched something out of the air, before his arm pulled to the side twirling a heated and bent piece of rebar. “Think that got him?” Zhu asked.

  “I’m not gonna be happy if it didn’t.” James wheezed out, rubbing at his shoulder. His hand was empty, he realized, which meant he’d dropped the phone. That was bad. That thing was kind of valuable, in the sense that it was entirely irreplaceable and allowed for tactics that they hadn’t really had the chance to abuse yet.

  James rose up from his crouch, focused on breathing and getting full control of his limbs back. He and Zhu waited silently as he braced himself against the car that was one of a hundred alarms blaring their displeasure with the nearby blast in a choir of shrill beeps and whoops. He let a minute or maybe two pass by, waiting for Alex or Spire to ping him before realizing his local network was down, even though his braid was intact. A few wisps of mist swirled around them, lighting up the darkened street even as they obstructed sight of the city’s normal light sources. “Alright.” James exhaled, using his favorite word as he and Zhu shoved off the car in unison. “Let’s go make-“

  ”Fuck.” Zhu’s word and the orange line that was almost a physical force was the only warning James had to tip his head to the side as something punched a hole through the mist, leaving a contrail of darkness as it whizzed by his ear close enough to buzz in his skull. “I don’t think he’s dead!” The navigator announced as the charred form of Gregor charged out of the mixed dark night and illuminating mist with a furious roar.

  The man’s clothing was surprisingly intact, but the skin of his arms and face was blackened and bubbled to the point of looking like a marshmallow dropped in the campfire. The smell of cooking meat followed with him as he threw another knife at James as he ran, the throwing dagger hurled fast enough to ignore the normal disadvantage of using that kind of weapon in live combat.

  James got an arm up, failing to dodge but successfully catching the blade through his armor. It went straight through the shell, and into the kevlar weave before stopping embedded where he could feel the tip scratching at his skin. Another knife punched into his flank, taking a chunk out of the armor as it spun off into the night. Without hesitating, James kept his arm up in front of his face to deflect followup attacks, and brought his pistol up to hip-fire everything it had at the charging man.

  A lot of the bullets didn’t do anything. But some of them hit exposed skin and sent chunks of burnt flesh spraying into the night. Even with the bracelet though it wasn’t fast enough before Gregor was on him, swinging a roundhouse punch with knuckles showing exposed bone that James was sure was going to hurt both of them.

  Or it would if he didn’t have his shield bracers. The domed panes of light caught the hit, Gregor howling displeasure and agony as more of his scorched skin sloughed off at the impact. He actually forced himself backward with the impact of the punch, and while he switched to light jabs to test the follow up, showing that he wasn’t made completely idiotic with pain and anger, those didn’t get through the shield either.

  But unfortunately, he was mostly bulletproof, and not very stupid. So while James was having a hard time putting real damage down on him, Gregor wasn’t idly sitting and taking it. Instead he charged forward again, getting inside the shield despite James’ attempt to keep distance. The car with it’s flashing lights and screaming alarm getting in the way of his backpedaling, and leaving minimal room for James to dodge as Gregor tried to hit him in the head with a chunk of smoldering concrete, and then just another punch as he realized that the shield wasn’t there.

  James still managed to keep from getting hit, letting go of his gun to use both hands to redirect one of the strikes and then letting himself fall sideways to dodge the thrown piece of parking lot.

  And then he heard a perfect sound. Barely audible as it added its voice to the car alarms, the sound of an ancient Nokia default ringtone going off. The only problem was it was underneath the car.

  ”Here!” Zhu directed with a downward orange line that turned into a corkscrew of motion on the ground. James wanted to complain that he was being piloted into some really stupid maneuvers today, but he didn’t waste the time or breath, instead just flopping down flat to get clear of a kick, and rolling sideways as Gregor’s smoking boot scraped against the edge of his armor.

  The mild hit was enough to turn his roll into a tumble, and James’ face smacked into the lower edge of the car he’d been damaging, the parked vehicle taking its revenge on him hard enough that he tasted blood. Scrambling forward, he stuck his arm into the blackness through the tires, and groped around for where he thought the ringing was coming from.

  His fingers closed on something solid in the moment that a hand closed on his ankle like a vice, and he was dragged backward along the asphalt before being hoisted upward by the taller assailant. Gregor’s arm, still with blackened flakes of skin and flesh crumbling off it, was raised high into the air overhead as he dangled James in the right position for his charred face to lean forward and glare. “You-“ he coughed, and spat blood into James’ face before continuing “-you are going to die now.”

  ”Sure.” James said. “Hey, you mind if I take this?” He didn’t bother waiting as he answered the phone call.

  ”No!” The man’s Russian accent was actually mostly absent as he tried to dropkick James. Maybe, James thought with the kind of manic grin he only got when people were trying to kill him, he’d been faking it for the style. Either way, the dropkick didn’t work, and James used up half his remaining Breath and all the remaining feeling in his fingers and toes to apply a Mountain Of The Self layer to himself right before Gregor’s foot impacted. So what happened instead of him having his head flattened like an egg was that his attacker’s ankle, burned and brittle from the explosion, just snapped into rough shards of bone.

  Gregor screamed in further agony as James rolled backward, hoping that his backup from the phone call that he was still desperately holding onto in his gloved hand could give him some help. But he didn’t actually see anyone around.

  Neither did Gregor though, which, James realized, was probably the point. The temperature in the air plummeted from repeated nearby Climb casting, as someone layered at least ten casts of the Winter Wroth spell onto Gregor. At first, it was just cracks forming in his burned skin, but then the lines got deeper and harsher. An invisible slit one of his eyes in half, then another carved a canyon in his throat, and more and more slices opened bleeding wounds under his durable clothing.

  James got back up, taking a few steps to pick up his gun before turning back to the man who was struggling for air. Gregor dropped to his knees, practically skeletal hands clutching his neck as he tried to stop bleeding from too many cuts at once. “If there’s a cycle of reincarnation, I don’t know.” He said as he stepped forward toward the struggling enemy delver. “But try to be less of an asshole next time.”

  ”W-who are you?” Gregor choked out, blood pooling around the bones of his fingers. “What-?!”

  James didn’t say anything. He just shot the man in the head.

  It might have been more dramatic if it didn’t take four tries with cluster shots before it worked. To the last breath, Gregor was far, far too hard to kill.

  And then James almost jumped out of his armor as Alanna appeared next to him. “You’re going to need to tell the real me what a stone cold badass you are when you get back.” She said without much inflection. “Holy shit dude, not even a name drop. ‘Who are you bang’. That is ruthless. If I had the ability to feel different things than when I called I’d be really into you right now.”

  ”Wait, you’re not into me normally?” James asked.

  ”Hey, asking my duplicate personal questions isn’t fair!” Alanna’s echo told him. “I decided this before calling. It’s part of how I’m turning the existential dread into a joke.” She turned her head to acknowledge Alex and Spire-Cast-Behind approaching out of the dark. “That and saving your life.”

  ”Appreciate it.” James said. “If you can, tell the others that we’re alive, and moving to the objective.”

  ”Okay. I’ll try.” Alanna’s echo reached out to cup James’ face curiously, her thumb wiping away a line of blood from his nose as she studied him. “This is weird.” She declared. “Can you hang up? I don’t think I like this if I’m not ruining anyone’s day.”

  This was kind of exactly what James was afraid of with the stupid phone. ”Yeah. Sorry. Phone’s battery is almost dead anyway. I’ll see you at home. Stay safe.” He closed the call abruptly, before the copy could start to feel anything that might reflect back on the prime form of Alanna. “Hey. You two okay?” He asked the other paladins.

  ”I’m… gonna throw up.” Alex said as she stared at the mess of gore James had turned the delver into. “We didn’t get the other one, she vanished when I was trying to… you know.”

  Spire-Cast-Behind made a gagging noise that James had never actually heard from a camraconda before. ”She was rude.” The serpent said. “What now?”

  ”Now we finish this.” James said. “It’s a quarter mile to the anchor. If Harlan does their job, that’ll mean we’ve got them all, and we can go home and feel good about ourselves.” He almost managed to say it without breaking up his words with a pained laugh. Almost. He also found the laugh hurt in a very different way than he’d been expecting. Almost like there was an open cut in his throat somewhere.

  When Alex muttered something to her authority and it split to create a thin green seal around James’ face where his mask had been knocked off, he realized that there probably was some kind of terrible lesion in his throat. The Underburbs might not have had a lot of time to deploy its biowarfare toys, but this was the third layer of anchor, so if anywhere was going to have an airborne pathogen, this was it.

  ”You think the three of us will be sufficient?” Spire-Cast-Behind asked, starting the process of orienting herself before realizing that their connection was down and all the street signs were wrong. The blue and white rectangles bearing words that were not at all related to what had been on the map she had committed to memory on the way in.

  ”I think we need to be.” James answered. “Because unless Gregor here,” he stabbed the toe of his boot into the corpse, noticing the odd shape of a rather spiky skill crystal as he did so, “was lying, then we have under an hour before the breach is gone.”

  ”…Good?” Zhu’s voice sounded less dazed than James felt, but just as tired. “Good!”

  ”Not good.” Alex shook her head. “Cause if you’re saying that, you mean that it’s gonna, what, eat all this city?”

  ”Probably.” James said as he stooped down to pick up the crystal and put it into a secure pouch. “Either way. We’re on the clock. He said under an hour, so assume… forty minutes. Less, since we went through all this. Half an hour. Put it on the clock.” He set his own timer through the skulljack.

  ”Connection is down, by the way.” Alex pointed out, tapping the back of her head.

  James nodded. “I think it’s the dungeon settling in. So let’s get moving.”

  Spire twisted, drawing on the five skill ranks spread across two separate and previously equally useless cartography skills, before indicating with her remaining functioning mechanical limb. “This way.” She pointed with her crossbow. “I am sure.”

  ”Really?” Zhu asked, the dusty orange light that made up his eyes swishing downward as he looked at her.

  ”No. Is it correct?” The camraconda asked the navigator without looking back at him.

  Zhu’s feathers fluttered against James’ armored arm and around the knife still sticking in there. “I have no idea. Too tired to do mapping.” He said as he bent his feathered arm around to grip the hilt of the throwing blade, moving in unspoken opposition to James as the two pulled away from each other and the blade popped free. “You said it believably though?”

  ”Good enough for me.” Alex said, nervously snapping the cylinder of the nerf gun back into place, all the darts accounted for. “Out of reloads though.”

  ”Same.” James said. “Magic ones anyway.” He had actual spare magazines. “I’m also missing my rifle?”

  ”Oh, yeah, that thing is fucking gone.” Alex told him, pointing at the burning ruin of the gas station. “I think it melted. Also the lady’s sniper is toast too. I took the bullets from it just in case we want to look at what she was shooting later. And so she can’t have them, obviously.” She slowly pulled herself together as they took a moment to compose themselves as a group. “Spire, you wanna lead?”

  ”No. Let’s go.” The camraconda, yellow and white cables showing from under her armor, said as she began slithering down the middle of the street and past the dozens of cars left abandoned in a row on the street, and the buildings that were rapidly becoming nothing more than uniform houses.

  She moved faster than a briskly walking human, but slower than a jog. A comfortable and steady pace that allowed James and Alex to move one after the other to follow her while covering their rear and sides. And it was like that the group cleared the final few blocks between where they were, and where the anchor was supposed to be.

  Well, it was in that formation that they started moving anyway. Things rapidly got messy as what felt like every single monster the Underburbs had left started to flood in around them, drawn by the sound of the explosion.

  The first time a baying pack of hounds raced by, the group had just stayed low and let them move on. Keeping to the far side of a line of abandoned cars, the single dog that had circled to their side had been held in place by Spire and knifed repeatedly by James until it had been dropped like a hunk of meat.

  [Killer - Low : +1 Skill Points]

  The jaguar-shaped static interference generators that had rushed down the street next were oblivious to the group that wasn’t leaning on their skulljacks anymore. But after that, there were more dogs, then a screaming batch of grey skinned and long clawed children, then more dogs. A powerball had even drifted past overhead like some kind of menacing jellyfish, sparking and popping power lines trailing under it as it set small electrical fires on dry grass and bits of litter. But at least that one was mostly on the other side of the street, and all three of them had crawled past underneath a school bus to keep moving as they got clear.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  ”What the fuck is that!” Alex hissed as they closed the distance. James looked at her first, then at where she was pointing.

  Up. She was pointing up. And he knew what he’d be seeing even as he followed her finger and Spire’s twisted neck. Overhead, looking like it was a mile away, was a ledge. Like a cliffside with no cliff under it, illuminated mist pouring over the edge in a silent downpour, the outline of houses barely sticking up into view.

  There was another shadow farther up.

  ”Don’t look.” James said quickly. “That’s the Stratified part of the Underburbs. Last time I looked too close, I got a really cool scar for the trouble.”

  Alex and Spire both jerked their heads back down, but James could tell they wanted to look. Of course they did. It was a once in a lifetime sight, hopefully. But they didn’t have the luxury of risking getting hurt right now.

  In the last block, with the facility in sight, just a little more sidewalk away, with only an apartment complex that was halfway converted into Underburbs ‘house’ between them, that was when it got bad.

  The spiral indented quadruped - James had just decided at some point to call them interfurrences - had seen them first from where it was perched atop a car, chewing on the driver’s corpse through the window. And before Spire had frozen it, it had howled a feedback wail into the air. A series of bullets had found it shortly after, with James’ missing half his shots despite his Aim just because he was rushing it, but it was too late. The Underburbs dark zone was not quiet, but when its monsters signaled, the horde came rushing in.

  [Killer - Shallow : +2 Skill Points]

  “Move!” James shouted alongside Zhu’s own expression of panic. He’d thought to himself a long time ago that he would probably never be able to fight a thousand stapler crabs at once, and he stood by that. And right now, while he didn’t know exactly how many beasts of a half dozen different forms were racing toward the group, it sure felt like a thousand.

  He didn’t even have to aim, just firing with one hand ahead of them as dogs spilled over the cracked stone wall around the loading dock lot of the warehouse like a waterfall of rough flesh. The fog swirled around them, focusing in on their group and starting to cut down visibility as the surviving electric lights of the city subdivision were blocked off. Alex and James started running faster, the girl taking point with minimal direction as she swept her own rifle fire on the move toward their target, and Spire put on a burst of frantic speed as she moved her serpent body as fast as she could to keep up.

  James saw the outline from the streetlight an instant before Alex did; an invisible phantom of some kind of fanged thing dangling inside the masked orange glow, about to close on her from above. Without thinking, he hit her with a Move Person and put her over the wall and into the back lot of the warehouse. Shooting into the hanging trap, he got it to flinch back long enough to get underneath, legs burning as he planted all his various forms of free hands on the lip of the stone and leapt over in a smooth motion, landing right as Spire-Cast-Behind popped into existence next to him from her own spell.

  [Killer - Shallow : +2 Skill Points]

  James’ nose was bleeding, his fingers were going numb, and he was running out of breath. He also didn’t have time to complain about that, as the screaming face and outstretched arms of a middle aged man rushed out of the fog at him. James shot it, ducking as the dead mass kept moving forward, and then put the rest of his bullets into its back before popping the magazine out and replacing it with a fluid motion, already snapping his arm up to start firing back at the dogs crawling back over the low wall. The man was, he assumed, not human. Because humans didn’t sound like backfiring engines when they opened their mouths, and they also didn’t tend to have rivers of oil leaking from black eyes and pooled in their mouths.

  [Killer - Deep : +4 Skill Points]

  ”Back Alex up.” He told Spire loudly, turning and leveling his Walther at a dog not even five feet away, scrambling to get to him, several of its bulbs yawning open with rusted ‘teeth’ showing. The gunshot blew a neat hole in its back, which was a problem, because James needed it to have a much larger hole in itself. And to die. Or at least stop. He shot it again, counting how many bullets he had left as he backpedaled after Spire. Ten, nine, eightsevensixfive, there was no shortage of targets but a very sudden drought in terms of ammo. Out of the edge of his expanded vision he saw Spire follow after the other human paladin, a dog hammering into her side and latching teeth onto her armor before she body slammed it into the concrete twice in rapid form and then blinked forward, leaving a part of her armor behind as she did so.

  ”Oh are we doing this again?” Zhu asked as though he were gritting teeth he didn’t have, the navigator pushing James to sidestep before he got hit by a spat wad of mucus and plague. “Hey we should hang out sometime without it being a final stand!” He yelled as he leveled his talons off of James like a mockery of a gun before unleashing his own supply of Velocity in a series of Paves into the crowd that was closing on them.

  [Killer - Shallow : +2 Skill Points]

  [Killer - Low : +1 Skill Point]

  [Killer - Shallow : +2 Skill Points]

  [Killer - Low : +1 Skill Point]

  [Killer - Shallow : +2 Skill Points]

  [Killer - Low : +1 Skill Point]

  [Killer - Low : +1 Skill Point]

  [Killer - Low : +1 Skill Point]

  James was pretty sure Zhu actually killed a few of the smaller things, and he hoped it would slow the others down. He didn’t have the time to plan out killing them to make a wall or anything; they were climbing and clawing their way forward fast enough that it didn’t matter and he was only thirty feet from the ramp up to the loading dock anyway. “I like final stands though!” He called back to his friend, an energy running through him as he swapped to his second to last magazine and then emptied it in a flurry of trigger pulls just to buy enough space to feel okay turning and dashing to the top of the concrete ramp, hopping a hanging yellow chain with a warning sign on it on the way. “They make me feel alive!”

  ”Not if this keeps up they won’t!” Zhu retorted, talons blurring as he intercepted a bulging eyed child that lunged out of a shadow at them, long claws punching through the flesh of the things chest before he closed his digits tight and ripped something important in half.

  [Killer - Low : +1 Skill Point]

  ”It’s fine!” James yelled. “They’re falling for my trap! They have no idea I’m planning to run out of ammo!”

  ”Why are you planning for that?!”

  ”The alternative would be-“ James grunted as something hit him in the leg, kicking reflexively and meeting only air. “-be worse.” He said with a pained rasp, firing twice into the latest dog charging up the ramp. Now he was making a wall of bodies. Too bad there was another ramp fifty feet away on the other side of the truck spots. Or just the ability for anything that felt like it to climb up from the pit and try to eat him that way. His vision swam as he twisted slightly, refusing to let his aim falter as he zeroed in on the next moving beast, and pulled the trigger again.

  The gun clicked. He’d lost count.

  ”Got it.” Zhu said with a confident professionalism, bolting down the humanoid figure that leaked oily black sludge from every orifice as it crumpled on the wrong side of the corpse pile, the ramp quickly becoming doused in its slick fluid. It was the last of his Velocity, and he was glad it had been enough to aim for the eyes. “You good?”

  [Killer - Deep : +4 Skill Points]

  James wasn’t. He was out. Well, mostly out. “Almost.” He said, pulling a trio of bullets from one of his armor’s pouches out, holding each one between the fanned fingers of his hand as he popped out the empty magazine of his pistol and slotted them in one by one. “Anything that needs shooting?”

  Zhu’s feathers rippled, most of his light dimming as his eyes light up like fireworks. “Here.” An orange spear of light lanced out into the gloom in front of James at head height and angled upward, and, obediently, James lined up his pistol with its very finite supply of seed rounds, Aim letting him put the gun exactly in the right spot that Zhu’s targeting line was effectively a laser sight.

  When he shot, the shockwave from the barrel nearly knocked him on his ass. The round scorched a line of hot flame in a tunnel through the mist, lighting up the real night outside as it flew into the body of something huge and winged circling overhead. The second shot made absolutely sure the thing was dead, lighting and the smell of ozone following as James recovered from the recoil and finished it off.

  [Killer - Abyssal : +13 Skill Points]

  The corpse never hit the ground. But over the howls and screams of the horde coming in, through the deafening crack of gunfire, there was one more noise. Metal hitting pavement; a rain of newly spawned seed rounds, pouring from the sky and into asphalt of the shipping warehouse parking lot, if they weren’t piling up on the roof.

  James put the last bullet into the dog that was about the snap into his face with its rusted bent nails. It was overkill of an extreme magnitude, the creature split in half by the cutting force of the shot, gore and pus splattering everywhere.

  ”Now I’m out!” James announced, expending his mostly recovered Breath to grow two clawed ice arms to supplement his organic ones and getting into a fighting crouch to prepare to hold this ground. “You think Alex could maybe move faster?”

  ”Maybe she got lost!” Zhu laughed manically as he and James layered their claws over each other and used them to slow a lunge while doing maximum damage to the aggressive beast. One of James’ talons snapped off inside the dog as he pulled it forward and then kicked it off the ledge. “Let’s get her a navigator!”

  James pulled the flaming pen out of his belt and clicked it open, flipping the writing utensil into a ‘normal’ grip as he told the leveler glove to let him write at a distance. His handwriting was probably rubbish, but he still managed to torch a pair of screaming scrabbling things before they could crawl up over the edge of the concrete behind him. ”No making life to be tools!” He admonished Zhu as he rapidly chewed through the saved charges in the glove. This was even less sustainable than his ammo situation.

  ”You’re a tool!” Zhu revved his voice in response as he used a final charge of Move Person to haul them backward before the blindingly fast interfurrence could sink teeth into James’ neck. It kept coming, and James brought his hand around in a guard position, leaving the pen buried in his enemy’s own neck still on fire as he grabbed its front paws in his human hands and used all of his limbs to fling it into the wall behind him. Copper Craft brought out a knife, a familiar knife James knew was really good for stabbing between ribs, which he used to exactly that effect before the sleek black furred form twisted and stole that weapon from him too.

  Something began rumbling. Something huge, bigger than any human device James had ever heard make sound. There was no gap in the monsters surrounding the building and pouring over his wall of dead beasts, but James still took a moment to look through the gap in the obscuring mist.

  He wished he hadn’t. The overhead layers of the Underburbs were closer than ever. Close enough to see that their undersides were also neighborhoods. Close enough to see that the mist pouring off them had lumps in it; more creatures, more enemies, spilling down into the ‘real’ world. There was no way all of them were going to survive that fall, but James was willing to bet the dungeon simply did not give a single solitary shit. Enough of them would, and they’d all be reinforcing the ones around him.

  The dungeon’s teeth were closing, and this place was its meal.

  ”Alex! Spire! Anytime you-“ the words were a pained scream as blood welled up in James’ throat. A final plea that they hurry the fuck up and break the Underburb’s grip before it closed around them and they were forced to leave any survivors in this dark zone to their certain deaths. James wasn’t even worried for himself, though telepading out would be quite a challenge with hundreds of things trying to kill him.

  He didn’t finish the sentence though, before he heard Spire’s voice, volume cranked up to it’s absolute highest level, scream out from somewhere inside the warehouse behind him. “I have not come this far to let something like you take the world away! Begone!”

  The air changed. The sky changed. The mist surrounding this half-warped building housing the last anchor for the dungeon was shoved away with the force of a cannon, dungeon air rushing away before finding it had very few options for where to go. Everything still living that wasn’t supposed to be here started screaming, this time with cries of pain, as their bodies just didn’t keep up with the abrupt change away from the dungeon environment.

  Darkness came back to the world, the altered homes no longer keeping the lights on, streetlights shattering as the creatures coiled around them took the lights out as they died. And overhead, blotting out the stars, the descending ranks of the Stratified Underburbs began to slip away. Peeling off of reality like an architectural scab, an invading landmass suddenly no longer tied to the world and forced, despite its clear resistance to the fact, to fuck off back to where it came from.

  The ground rumbled as the monsters died in droves. An earthquake sourced from far too close and far too above ground to be muffled into silent shaking. Grinding stone and breaking glass, and the sensation of a sucking pressure pulling on James and Zhu as they crouched down amid the carnage they had created.

  And then it was over.

  ”Hey we got it!” Alex yelled from inside. “James? Zhu?!”

  ”We’re alive.” James tried to say, but found himself choking on his own blood instead.

  ”We’re alive!” Zhu yelled instead. “But not for long! We need to get out of here, and James needs help cause I can’t make his fingers work and I think he threw away his only pen!”

  Alex was there in a flash, telepad in hand. “Okay. There were some survivors in the warehouse, Spire and I are gonna get them. Here. Trade. Go. Tell Deb we’re on the way if you can.”

  ”I can.” Zhu reminded Alex that he existed and had a voice as he gripped the telepad in his claw, one of James’ hands coming up to grasp the edge of the top page of the little notebook. James, despite the flood of blood filling his throat and mouth, still took a moment to meet Alex’s eyes, and grin. A messy red grin, but a smile regardless. “He wants me to tell you good job.” Zhu informed her. “Now hit him with something if he takes any longer to get medical attention-“

  They were gone.

  Within five minutes, Alex and Spire were too, along with a cluster of survivors who had been hiding in the raised office of the warehouse and waiting for the end of the world.

  And then it was time for the cleanup.

  _____

  “Pleasure doing business with you.” The main reason JP felt like he could say that was that the person he was shaking hands with wasn’t actually Harlan. It wasn’t like JP disliked Harlan - far from it, he actually found the mercenary’s particular style to be hilarious - it was more that Harlan was only funny when observed from an impersonal distance. When actually having a conversation, it was important to maintain a proper social buffer.

  The mercenary that JP was talking to dropped their arm away from the crisp handshake that had followed proper payment being delivered in a hefty pair of briefcases. “Pleasure’s ours. Rare to get a client that pays on time, and doesn’t get anyone killed. Guess that’s why you’re on the preferred list.”

  The existence of a preferred list was news to JP, but it was nice to be recognized, he supposed. Or maybe not, since it was the Wolfpack. When the mercenary said that they guessed the Order was on the preferred list, what they meant was that there was, somewhere, an actual list written down, because none of the people who’d fought here today would remember the Order as anything more than a line entry on their accounting spreadsheet.

  “This is the combat pay.” JP said instead of voicing concerns, putting on a perfect professional mask as they concluded, already thinking ahead to the next three things he needed to do. “If your squad is willing to stick around and help with search and rescue and civilian management, there’s an extra ten percent.”

  ”We don’t have anything going on.” The merc said with an easy shrug. “Anything specific?”

  “Recon the dead zone, make sure we don’t need to worry about that right now. And then coordinate with Juan in Recovery to do flyovers and announce that things are under control. Keep people calm, pick off any stray dog things. Not… not actual stray dogs. Don’t shoot normal dogs.”

  The mercenary nodded, scratching at their tattooed neck. “You aren’t worried about dogs being vectors for any of the plagues?”

  ”Of course I am. But I’m more worried about the hundreds of humans that scattered when this all started.” JP huffed out in exasperation. “I doubt we’re getting out of this without some kind of mass infection, and it’s a little late to hunt everyone down. Not that we would have been able to, even if we had the time.” He shrugged, the eel-esque infomorph that had slithered through his collar moving with him easily. “If they got far, then whatever they’re carrying is at least survivable, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t know how to… this isn’t my job.”

  JP realized he was having a difficult night. There was a limit to his charm and verve, and they had reached it. Sartori, the little infomorph doing an impression of a fashion accessory, tried to help buoy his thoughts, but there was only so much that the recently actualized little eel could manage. At least the Wolfpack member didn’t seem to give a shit, just taking the money and getting out of JP’s hair before he said something stupid.

  He was tired. JP needed to get ahold of whatever Sewer lesson James had that let him push through inhuman amounts of bullshit and keep going. The only problem was the lessons were either random, or part of a study group that he really didn’t want to deal with. There were other solutions, but they weren’t great. At a certain point, caffeine had diminishing returns, and both exercise potions and energy drinks tasted like distilled garbage that JP had no interest in drinking.

  Which was why he was deeply displeased when Sartori prodded his thoughts with a quiet inner voice. “Uniform approaches. Something is wearing it.”

  ”God dammit.” JP allowed himself a moment of aggravation before turning to face the police officer that was walking toward him with stilted motions, the professional mask set in a smile as he did so. “Good evening Long.” He said to the pillar’s puppet. “Surprised to see you here.”

  ”You are interfering with my officers.” The Long Arm Of The Law spoke through the man’s mouth. The weight of the pillar’s voice probably going to leave an ache tomorrow, JP thought. “As well as disrupting the peace of this city. I give you one chance to explain yourselves.”

  JP considered being polite. And then he looked around at the Order’s operation, the knights preparing to get back out there and render the area safe, the medical team that were risking their lives to save those infected with dungeon illnesses, even the back line support staff that were taking risks like flying drones overhead an area that tried to kill you through your senses. All of it just to keep people safe, and in rejection of the idea that power meant you could take what you wanted.

  He decided not to be polite.

  ”You know, your own officers tried calling their headquarters for help.” JP started off easily. “Radioed back to dispatch, called their colleagues, a couple of them even just drove back to their precinct to get help.” He kept the small smile steady, not mocking, but not flinching away from the authority of the thing that had approached him. “You didn’t answer. Why is that?”

  ”I don’t have to explain myself to you.” Long said bluntly. “You have to explain yourself to me.”

  ”No I don’t.” JP said with flat denial. “I know why you weren’t here. Well, I know a few possible reasons. Maybe you’re afraid to mess with Lloyd. Maybe you don’t think the Underburbs is your ‘jurisdiction’. Maybe dungeon life eating people isn’t against the law. Who cares, really.” He didn’t frown, didn’t make any unpleasant expression that might give away exactly how angry he was. He just said “The point is that you weren’t here. And we were.”

  Long’s puppet made a twisted scowl, the aura of the pillar amplifying to an extreme level that made JP want to peel his skin off to get away from the feeling of guilt. ”You still haven’t explained yourself.”

  “There was an attack. And we stepped in to defend your precious peace. You can confirm with your officers,” he motioned to the body Long was piloting, one of a few in the area, “that we did our best to work with local police and emergency services. I’d say you could thank us later, but frankly, you should feel lucky I’m not billing you for the job.” JP met the pillar’s eyes. “And I know you won’t do anything about it. Because the Order is not in your jurisdiction.”

  ”Everyone is in my jurisdiction.”

  JP turned to stand shoulder to shoulder with the puppet cop, looking at the dark sections of the suburb. The lights were out in a lot of places, but the orange light of structure fires was flickering in the sky. Sirens sounded as knights escorted fire engines to their destinations miles distant. ”Clearly.” He said.

  ”Do not mock me.”

  ”I’m not mocking you. I am pointing out that you had a blind spot.” JP said with a sigh, nerves fraying, wondering if he was about to open his mouth a little too much. “You’re a pillar. Do you want help fighting back the apocalypse, or not?”

  Long took a while to reply. But when he did, it was with a fluctuating sensation of an idealized form of justice at war with a practical kind of easy tyranny. JP hated the feeling. It felt like going to a Denny’s at 2 AM. “We are the thin line against the end.” He said slowly, like the voice he was using was being torn in two.

  ”That’s nice.” JP said. “I understand this is probably hard for you. You guys don’t seem like you can really compromise that easily. I’m not unsympathetic.” That was a bald faced lie. He wondered if Long could hear the deception, even if it was one of politeness.

  ”Yes, I can.”

  ”Cool. Great.” He sighed. “You are not keeping things together.” JP said bluntly. “If you want to claim this is your jurisdiction, get some fucking people in here to do the job. Until then, your officers are closer to us than you, so let that man go and get out of my way.” His young assignment tightened nervously around his neck as he started walking away.

  JP half expected Long to shoot him in the back. But he got clear of the officer, who was just a dazed and confused human now, without anything going wrong.

  He was tired, and he fucking hated this stupid dungeon and the stupid pillars that were fucking everything up, and now he had to go talk to Myles and Yin, which meant he needed the mask back in place because JP would be damned if he let anyone see him the way James always did when he got the shit kicked out of him.

  Not that JP was injured. He was too smooth for that, he thought with pride. But it had been a long night.

  ”You should sleep at some point.” Sartori told him. “If you are tired enough, people will let you walk around in a bathrobe. Momo taught me that!”

  ”Momo is a bad influence.” JP muttered back.

  ”Momo has no sense of classic style. We could find a more elegant bathrobe.”

  That was hard to deny. JP wondered briefly, as he made his way toward the decontamination zone in front of their commandeered Wal Mart, just who was influencing who in this whole situation. Probably everyone working on everyone, he thought, with the kind of muddled certainty that often came along with sleep deprivation. “Not from here though.” He grumbled as they got through the door and headed toward the furniture section of the Wal Mart where Nate and Planner were still coordinating the cleanup efforts.

  ”I’m thirteen days old, I’m not stupid.” Sartori pointed out.

  _____

  “You have proven yourself well, daughter.” The Last Line Of Defense said magnanimously. He had lost the human trait of showing compassion or appreciation, but this Camille had distinguished itself to the point that he was willing to let the errant weapon back into the fold.

  The pillar also didn’t feel surprise as much anymore. Not that he couldn’t be surprised, but that it didn’t feel like much of anything anymore. The emotion had ablated away, worn down by the need to prioritize the defense of collective humanity. And yet, there was a small ember of something left for the Camille, wearing armor that wasn’t from him, distorted into a shape that would need to be corrected when she returned, and showing him no deference at all despite the fact that without him she would be worse than a corpse.

  That ember burned itself out into a void that most humans would have recognized as surprise when the Azure let its eyes slip off him like he was beneath consideration, and turned her head away.

  “You will be allowed to return to the fight.” He told her, expecting to see the swell of pride and confidence that came from those words. But no. Nothing. Less than nothing, in fact. There was a brief moment when he wondered if the thing laying in the bed next to her Violet sister was going to try to strike him.

  “Father…” the word came from the Violet, and it was pained. He didn’t glance at her except to examine the readiness report for his soldier; more damaged than he’d noticed at first glance, but it would recover in time. The question was if that time was valuable enough to not simply replace it. Though this one had also distinguished itself, so some leniency would be allowed.

  “You will also be allowed to continue defending. Your loyalty has not been questioned.” He informed the Violet. They liked that. It was an effective set of words to keep his daughters mentally prepared for combat. “Recover here, and rejoin me in…” he paused to sweep the planet for the next problem that would need addressing, “...Paris.” Again. Paris again. Metropolitan population centers were supposed to be more defended than this. That was the entire point of pushing the more dangerous cages out of the edges of the desired civilizations.

  Nevertheless, to Paris he would go. At least today had not been a complete disaster. He would actually be net positive on field units now, and this Order had managed to botch the job only in the sense that they did not purge the fleeing infected. The Last Line Of Defense would have covered it himself, but the aggravating man in charge of the operation had rightly guessed that establishing lines would keep him from interfering.

  He turned to leave, about to step across into the next crisis, when he heard the Azure take a breath. The Last Line Of Defense was not planning to pause, but then the soldier spoke, and he hesitated. “No.” Cam said.

  “No?”

  “No. I will not be rejoining you.” She said, shifting to prop herself up against the mattress on display. “I am not your daughter. You don’t even know what that word means. You prove it with every breath you take.”

  The Last Line Of Defense frowned, and considered correcting her that he did not breathe. But unfortunately, this wasn’t a hill he was willing to die on. And because of that, it wasn’t a position he was currently capable of comprehending how to defend. “Then you should be removed.” He said. “Before you become a threat.”

  “So should you.” Cam replied, facing him unflinchingly. The kind of conviction that only his best daughters tended to have. Only, this time, aimed in the wrong direction. “Though you already are a threat, aren’t you? And you know it. And I am more protector than I have ever been in my life. And you know that too.” She breathed slowly through her nose, the tip of one of her twisted scaled wings moving the pull away hair stuck across her forehead. “Neither of us can hurt the other. So I am telling you to keep you out of my life forever. That is all.”

  The Azure moved to begin standing up, and The Last Line Of Defense turned to the other Camille in the area. “When you are capable, test her.” He said flatly. “Join me if you survive.”

  “Yes father.” The obedient one said. Though there was far less conviction in it than he would have liked. Far more confusion.

  But The Last Line Of Defense didn’t have the luxury of caring. Instead he stepped away, into another city, and another brewing threat to mankind.

  Only one thing mattered, and it wasn’t people. Least of all them.

  _____

  “You okay?” Walkabout asked their traveling companion.

  The Right Person At The Right Moment had gone still, having noticed that some of his stars were still burning that he wasn’t expecting.

  Surprise, confusion, and panic warred inside his mind, and the slip caused an accident that may have some serious backlash later. But he stilled his power, and looked. Saw what happened and would have happened and might now actually happen next.

  “Huh!” The pillar said with raised eyebrows. “Ain’t that some shit!”

  Walkabout didn’t know how to take that, and wasn’t going to split perspective to find out. ”…Is that a no… or…?”

  _____

  The final death toll was something the Order was never going to know for sure, because despite the final last minute save by James and the other two paladins, they didn’t manage to protect the whole suburb.

  The anchor they bombed, but didn’t have the time to reclaim the territory of, still ‘went off’. Or maybe there were more hostile delvers in the area that kept the place pinned down. The ones that James had fought sure seemed like they were invested in the reward the dungeon gave for helping it claim more territory. It wasn’t impossible that there were more.

  The Order had managed to clear thousands of people out of their homes and businesses before the end, but there were definitely still humans trapped inside that radius. Hell, there had been a whole recovery team in there too, and they’d come back via telepad with another thirty terrified residents. No one had enjoyed that process; the Underburbs must have had some kind of time dilation going on, because teleporting out of it had left everyone sickened in a non-dungeon-infection kind of way. But at least they got to live.

  There was a scar in the world now. A line where buildings and roads and telephone lines just ended. Cut off like something had scoured several square miles off the face of the planet. The Underburbs ravenous hunger had closed in on a part of reality and just ripped it all away, leaving barren dirt without even the exposed foundations or bits of litter left over.

  Now the problem was cleanup. As the hours of the night stretched on toward midnight, and suddenly there was a presence of more and more emergency services, complete with support from FEMA and the National Guard even, the Order let themselves fade into the activity. There were a lot of words used by the other officials, but at no point did anyone lie to them. The Order was up front and bluntly honest about what had happened, and they backed it up by having Planner or Speaker or really any of the stronger infomorphs available punch holes in the local memeplexes. They showed off monster corpses and altered architecture, and guided people to the understanding that this was a problem. And, for the most part, it worked.

  There was definitely a tendency for people to forget the details. But the patterns stuck. There were troops protecting firefighters and infectious disease protocols in effect, and that would have to be good enough. Because the Order had a hundred people, and the government had thousands. And quantity had its own kind of quality, especially if they were organized.

  The people from Recovery attached themselves to the disaster relief teams, and did their best to learn as much as they could from practical experts without getting in the way. The combatants from the Order left the field pretty quickly, not wanting to be mistaken for targets, and transitioned into doing whatever tasks were still required. Deb handed off command of their quarantine structure to a confused set of FEMA doctors along with a very detailed list of known infections and treatments.

  By the time four AM rolled around, the Order was ready to leave. There was only so much they could do, long term, and they had filled their important role as the emergency response to this specific kind of crisis.

  In a sense, they got off light. There were dozens of casualties that would put people out of action for weeks or maybe months, but only five deaths. But every one of those deaths felt like it was its own little end of the world.

  Raoul, a rogue and knight who James hadn’t had a lot of time to talk to except for a fun conversation at the beach a long time ago. He’d died bluntly, just a little overextended and then swarmed by the child-shaped monsters before anyone could help.

  Outline-Of-Green, response knight and one of the original camraconda survivors. The dungeon disease that had probably been working on him since his first rescue run had simply shut down his body’s processes. Whatever the Underburbs had developed to work on camracondas killing him so quickly it didn’t even have a chance to spread.

  Ajish and Barker, both from the first shield team. They had a fighting chance at least, their own stupid last stand as they kept the pressure off a mass of residents fleeing through one of the secure points the Order had put down on foot. The rest of their team had lived, almost certainly because of their actions, but that didn’t make it feel any better really.

  And finally, Tyrone. He might not even be dead, but he was certainly in a coma, and he was dead enough that his final loot drop had materialized. Deb had made it really fucking clear that no one counted as dead unless she allowed it, but… it was the Underburbs. And no one was exactly hopeful.

  All five of them would be coming back with the Order. So would almost three hundred living civilians who needed a place to stay for a while, and had accepted the Order’s hospitality beyond just a month vacation at the closest safe hotel. So would a trio of new delvers who had managed to reunite in the chaos, and were bullied by one of their number into repaying what was seen as a favor.

  So would Pendragon, still alive despite missing a lot of her mass. So would Alice, Charlie, and Dance, all three of them recovering from being among the first injured in the incursion. So would a lot of knights, even if every single one of them was going to be spending a long time in quarantine.

  Almost forty thousand human people had lived in the dark zones when the day started. Not everyone had been home, but a lot of people worked in the area that didn’t live there, even if it didn’t really balance out. Projected total deaths were somewhere around seven thousand. Lives ripped apart by hostile dungeon life or magically deployed disease or even just looking at the wrong piece of graffiti. And that counted those who were likely inside the multiple square miles the Underburbs did successfully eat.

  An eighty three percent survival rate. For an event that was, almost certainly, meant to kill all of them. Worse than just kill them; drag them into the dungeon itself, turn them into unwilling delvers, kill them slowly, and if they were very unlucky, turn them into more of the bitter and deadly ‘survivors’ that had perpetrated this night of violence.

  Not quite a reversal of the first Stratified Underburbs nightmare that James had lived through. Not quite good enough. But nothing would be good enough until it was a hundred percent. Until the dungeon tried, and failed so monumentally that it killed no one. Maybe until the dungeon itself was dead, or reformed, or just leashed and turned into a less feral monstrous thing.

  But it was certainly better than zero.

  There is a discord! Come hang out with us.

  There is a wiki! It's starting to be come helpful.