Charcoal grey domes lump up in stacked tiers, under the shadow of a low cliff. They are lopsided. They are sunken, blackened and deflated. Dozens of them cluster about, many of them sharing a merged wall, many of them standing alone. Empty spaces wind between them, snaking along and joining in a pathway down the middle causeway, and the bare stone there is red and tan with the same baked clay and sandstone as the cliff wall.

Todd lunges from the sunken doorway in a crouch and out onto a tier of glassified stone. The light is a dim orange-amber, cut off by the sharp edge of the cliff’s shadow. Behind him, another (lower) sandstone outcropping seals the area into a sheltered valley and a windless quiet. The structures around him almost have an organic look, like stacked wasp nests. Each of them though, is made from the same precise dark double-fist sized blocks, and most of the stacked levels have a curving, saw-tooth ledge leading around the wall to the upper floor. The door lintels also, even if they’ve melted like wax in the sun, distinctly were once rectangular.

So while a first glance makes the valley look like a cluster of hives, a second look reveals all of the signs that the domes represent human handiwork. Probably human, maybe human, possibly human.

Todd halts only for a moment before a shrill wail sounds from far to his left, a different direction than he’d heard a moment earlier. It occurs to him that sound could do funny things, given strange amphitheaters. So it could be the same sound echoed off of – nope!

A different low moan emerges from a second floor rock igloo. The dome rises over the opposite side of a cluster of buildings out in front of Todd. Since few of the structures in that section have a second floor, and he has a far easier time of pinpointing a closer sound, Todd skips forward towards the sloping edge of the roof he’s standing on. He nearly trips over a sunken divot, then begins to slip towards the edge. As he wobbles he spots a circumferential stairwell, but it loops around the wrong way – so Todd grits his teeth and commits to the fall, landing on his backside and sliding down bumpily over stones. He’s an idiot to be hurrying like this, but the sound of the cries coming from the far left are shrill.

If one of his friends is being killed by a monster, the least he can do is moisten it in vengeance.

The drop to ground level is a solid nine feet, but Todd lands lightly on the ground as if he’d taken a single step of stairs. His little slide maneuver has saved him nil in the landing, at the cost of a tenderized buttock; but that’s what he gets for relying on last week’s instincts to make super power decisions.

Rubbing at his sore bit with a worse arm, Todd dashes across the stone path and turns his body sideways to hop through the narrow gap between two broad single story buildings.

“♪ Please be – motha’ fuckin’ empty ♪” He sings to himself under his breath as he passes by a shadowed doorway. Weaving between and out through the shadow of stone ruins, Todd emerges onto a narrow stone path.

Strange, it’s got the look of clay, but the feel of rough stone; like he’s running on terracotta tile.

“Drips!” Candra calls out. She rounds past a corner at a jogger’s gait but a sprinter’s pace and skids to a halt. Her hair’s come loose and there’s blood on her nose. With her shield and guard on, she looks plucked out a fourteen year old boy’s hormonal dream of heavy-metal amazons.

“Candra, uh hey. You okay?” Todd clears his throat. He can’t help but compare his torn-up gi to hers, which is bloodied at the right cuff but otherwise pristine.

“Mildly traumatized, I’d say,” Candra laughs wryly, making an attempt with her shield arm to get some loose strands out of her face and making it worse by bumping herself in the forehead. She tilts up her weapon as if unsure what to do with her hands.

Todd looks down at his scratches and battered robe with a self mocking smile. “Rat monster. You?”

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A shriek echoes from farther away, bringing them back into the moment. Todd points up a winding set of narrow stairs that jut out a few inches from the surface of the black stone wall.

“Oh my god. It’s so much worse killing something that’s got a face,” Candra whispers as she leaps half-way up the flight of steps, silently landing ahead of Todd as he follows the turn behind her. She shoots back an agonized look which is only three-quarters jest.

“Normally I’d agree,” Todd huffs. “But then it bit me, so you know –”

As Candra alights onto the terrace, she wheels about the open door and risks a peek. Todd hops over across from her and places his back to the other side of the door.

“Jungle law,” Todd murmurs, then he points his chin towards the door. “Situation?”

“It’s Sue Ann,” Candra replies shortly as she ducks under the lintel and into the room.

A loud thump shakes the air and dust from a new direction, and the shrieks from the opposite way have only gotten louder. Todd clucks his teeth and looks around outside before sticking his head in.

Sue Ann kneels crumpled in the thick dust. Her face is wet with tears and her breathing is heavy. A few feet from her, the wrinkled body of a giant rat lays in an overturned furrow of ash. Its skull and neck are ruined and torn, with long shreds of skin and heart-red blood seeping into the ground. Her [Mercury Rod] lies an arms-length out of her reach, and the girl lets out a deep sobbing moan as her fingers grip fiercely into Candra’s shoulders.

“Is she okay?” Todd hesitates.

“Ah…” Candra reaches out and grips Sue Ann’s skinny frame into a tight hug. She looks back and tilts her head. “She’s fiiine,” she creaks with a wide-eyed grimace. “Yep. Yea. You go save your girlfriend.”

Todd blinks once in confusion. “Oh. Randal. Right. On it.” He backs away from the room with reluctance and leaps down off of the terrace onto the alley. Following the shouts, Todd turns out onto the main road and takes four steps before a scarlet plume flashes out of an alley with arm-hair-crinkling heat. “Randal!”

A pink lump and a person lump roll out into the street in a tangle. Randall leaps unsteadily to his feet with a rat on his head, threatening to tip him over. The creature has its jaws wide around the top lip of Randall’s helmet, teeth stuck on either end and its eyes wide open with panic. Its drool runs down over its lolling tongue and onto the young man’s shoulders, while its claws tangle in his gi and backpack straps and the far end of its tail is on fire.

The two of them, hopelessly entangled and poorly situated to murder one another, shake themselves and each other vigorously in the hopes to disengage. By now both the rat and man have screamed themselves hoarse and there’s no sign of either of Randall’s weapons.

“Todd! You’re alive!” Randall sobs with relief. He struggles mightily with a leather strap that’s caught up the back feet of his hitchhiker as it kicks against him and cuts up scratches along his arm. He tries to bring up his shield to punch at the rat’s flank to middling effect.

“What do you mean I’m alive,” Todd scoffs. He steps closer. “Of course I’m… shit, dude. Tell me what to do.”

“Help!”

Todd jabs with his spike, but the hide of the animal once again rolls its sharpness away from penetrating wounds. More than once, he risks striking his friend. “Well you gotta hold still, these things are hard as hell to stab.”

“Ow! Just get it off me!”

Todd shuffles around for a better angle. “You want me to hit it? I can just punch it?”

“Just get it!”

Todd swings his [Knuckleshell Bracer] at the beast’s back hips with a meaty thud and the animal slips through the backpack straps and off Randall’s back. As it falls, it screeches and drags Randall’s helmet clean off his sweaty head before it thumps on the ground.

Todd rolls his eyes and ignores Randall’s look of indignation, instead Todd waves him over urgently away from the creature. “You got fire left?”

Randall huffs, his broad frame shaking with exertion. “I can do one.”

Todd nods and shuffles forward, bracing his arm with his rod under his elbow. Reconsidering, he lunges to the side before releasing a [Water Spear] at the back haunch of the rodent. The initial force of the stream knocks the animal into a spin and off its paws, and as it lands, the shell helmet knocks sideways out of its jaws and rolls away to the side.

“Now?” Randall asks.

“Of course now!” Todd shouts.

Randall flinches, but steps forward before the beast rolls itself upright. He slaps his wrists together and spreads his palms before a scorching blaze erupts from them and rolls over the creature. The animal is swallowed completely, and its cry sizzles out to a death rattle as the flames disperse from the air.

The two young men watch with dissatisfaction as the rat smolders.

“Drips! You’re alive! Oh hey Randall.”

Joe appears on the road from around a corner. A good hundred yards out he lifts up his arms and laughs as he jogs towards them. One of his arms is drenched in blood and it holds up an elongated silver claw, and the other hand holds a wide bladed short sword.

“Of course I’m fine! Why would I not be fine?” Todd groans.

As Joe reaches them he brings his weapons down together in front of him and slows. Grinning, he affixes the pommel of the sword to the claw protruding from his [Mercury Rod] and directs it to grip like a vice.

“Check it out!” Joe beams. He slides his grip back to the silver claw with both hands, and then gives the whole arrangement a slow swing as if it was a chopping pole-arm or a two handed sword. “I figured you’d love this nerd shit. This is boss right?”

Todd glares at Joe for a moment, but then his glower slips away as he takes a closer look at Joe’s invention, with both its superior reach and intimidating momentum.

“Okay,” he sighs jealously. “Maybe it is kind of cool.”