Aurora took a left turn down a street she didn’t know. Turning the steering wheel with a single hand, she remembered how much it irked David, her husband. He never said anything whenever she did it, but she’d grown to notice over the years.

David was meticulous like that, the safest driver she had ever seen, amongst other things. But anyone who knew her husband well enough knew that his meticulousness had nothing to do with safety but control.

Regardless, anytime she was in a car with him, both hands were always on the steering wheel at the correct position.

The screen on her dashboard lit up again and she looked at it.

While she already knew who it was, the only reason she kept looking when it lit up was because a part of her continued to hope that she would see her husband’s name, or Mel’s name. This was the eighth time it was lighting up in the last ten hours.

And it was the same name.

Shield.

Aurora had bigger problems on her mind. Problems that were significantly more important than whatever it was that Shield would possibly have to say.

She’s just going to keep calling, Aurora sighed.

With a silent grumble she clicked on the button on the steering wheel of the car that answered the call.

A small silence filled the car once the call was picked and Aurora waited in it.

One thing she’d learned growing up in such a volatile and dangerous childhood was that whenever you picked up a call, you did not speak first. You never speak first.

Anyone who knew her knew this. Even her kids knew this.

When Shield finally spoke, it was with a single word that worried Aurora.

“War.” The woman’s voice came through the car speakers. It was gentle and probing.

Shield never called her by her Oath ever since she’d lost her Oath, or given it up, as Dorthna liked to point out.

Aurora couldn’t hold back her sigh. “It has to be bad if you’re calling me ‘War,’ Ruth.”

Silence followed once more.

“In simple terms,” Aurora said, already losing her patience, “if you won’t talk, I’m hanging up. I’ve got things on my mind.”

“Your background sounds odd,” Ruth said. “Are you in a car?”

Aurora’s brows furrowed. “Yes? Why?”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Are you—”

“Ruth, we are not playing this game,” Aurora interrupted her. “That was the last answer you will get from me when I ask you a question and you don’t reply. This is, at best, a conversation, not an interrogation.”

Aurora took a hand from the steering wheel to pinch the bridge of her nose. Since she’d stopped being an Oath, she’d only had a few conversations with other Oaths, bits and pieces to be precise. If there was one thing she’d learnt from those conversations, it was that if she didn’t put her foot down, they would talk to her like it was an honor for her to talk to them and a right for them to talk to her.

Ruth would railroad this as some kind of military briefing and not a conversation if she allowed her.

A small smirk touched Aurora’s lips when she remembered the time she’d hung up on the Oath of Pain simply because he wasn’t listening. From what the Oath of Grace had told her later on, the man had lost his mind so terribly that he’d sworn to inflict her with so much pain that she’d wish she was dead.

He clearly hadn’t, and he clearly wouldn’t have. He’d just been throwing a childish tantrum.

“What do you want, Ruth?” Aurora asked when she realized that the woman was still silent on the other end.

It took only a moment before the Oath of Shield answered. “I need your help.”

“With what?”

“I got into a bit of trouble with another Oath. Are you home?”

“Not yet,” Aurora answered. “Didn’t get to finish my Delve when I was yanked out. Never happened before. So I’m currently on my way home.”

She would’ve asked if Shield had experienced it, too, or ever, but she didn’t have to. All the Oaths knew that Shield never went into portals. Before being an Oath, she’d gone into a lot of portals, but not anymore.

There was no traumatic experience that stopped her or anything in that direction. It was simply a thing that came with her Oath-hood. Since becoming the Oath of Shield, she could no longer enter a portal.

It was one of those Oath things that there was no reason to fight, unlike David’s impulses to smash in someone’s head or rip off a steering wheel while driving for reasons only the mad would understand.

In summary, from what Aurora knew, a shield was meant to defend its owner. The Oath of Shield was meant to defend her world. And in her case, a good offense was not a good defense. A good defense was a good defense. So, she was, in a manner, ultimately bound to the world.

She never entered portals, but you could be sure to see her in any Chaos Run that was the result of a failed powerful portal.

“Ruth,” Aurora repeated with a sigh, “this conversation will not go anywhere if you do not get to the point."

“I’m wondering how best to get to the point,” Ruth muttered.

“If it’s an Oath issue that you feel you shouldn’t share because I’m not an Oath, then I think you dialed the wrong number.” Aurora pulled the car to a stop at a red light.

“It’s not,” Ruth said before another pause. “Is this line encrypted?”

Aurora almost threw a fit. Does she think I became stupid because I stopped being an Oath?

“Do you honestly think I’ll be talking so freely about Oaths if it wasn’t?” she asked.

Another moment of silence. “Good point.”

“You’re stalling,” Aurora said. “Which means that either what you did was very stupid, very terrible, or has something to do with me.”

As her words left her lips, a frown touched them. Aurora had a bad feeling about this all of a sudden.

“It has something to do with me, doesn’t it?”

David had always been good at reading people. He could spot a lie eight words into a sentence. Then his Oath-hood enhanced that by giving him the ability to spot the dissonance in a person, making him the perfect lie detector.

While Aurora wasn’t so blessed, she’d lived long enough to know when there was a problem.

“What did you do, Ruth?”

“Nothing the Oath of Shield should not have,” Ruth answered, suddenly defiant.

“I don’t doubt that,” Aurora said. “But you and I both know that that’s not what I asked. Tell me what you did or I’m hanging up.”

“There was a problem,” Ruth started. “Too many portals have been opening up recently. You know that. And then there’s the unidentified creature that keeps coming out anytime an S-rank portal turns into a Chaos Run.”

Aurora already had this piece of information. “I already know this, what does it have to do with—”

“I’m getting there,” Ruth interrupted. “If I’m going to stand a chance of having you help, you’ll need all the context I can give you.”

Aurora snorted. “You must’ve royally fucked up.”

“You have no idea,” Ruth mumbled.

“Alright.” Aurora spotted a snack truck and wondered if the kids would be interested in some. She didn’t stop, though. “Give me context, Shield.”

“So while a Chaos Run isn’t that big of a deal, there’s a creature that keeps showing up in all of them,” Ruth continued.

“The one that comes out, looks around, then goes back in?” Aurora asked.

“That one.”

“What’s the big deal about it?”

“Believe me when I say that it’s a very big deal,” Ruth said. “I was at one of the Chaos Runs before it came out. If there is one thing that I can say for certain, it’s that I was happy when it went back in.”

“We’ll all be happy.”

“You don’t get it, Aurora. That… thing… it’s not normal. When I met it, it walked out like it owned the place. It looked around like it was looking for something.”

“That’s what it has been doing.”

“But that’s not the problem. That thing was powerful, Aurora. Very powerful. And intelligent. I established my presence as an Oath--my dominance--when I saw it and it just spared me a glance. Its attention made me feel like a child.”

Aurora shot her dashboard a worried look. Was that a tremor in her voice.

“We don’t want that thing coming back here, Aurora,” Ruth continued. “I don’t know how many Oaths we would need to stop it. I don’t even know if we can stop it.”

“I understand.” Aurora nodded. “So that’s context, what’s the problem?”

“Because of that, I’ve been working hand in hand with Inevitability and Grace to make sure that we have all the Oaths and Gifted stopping the necessary portals before they turn into Chaos Runs as quickly as possible.”

Aurora fought back a groan as she turned onto another road. Context was annoying her right now. She just wanted to know what she was supposed to do so that she could say no and be done with it if it had nothing to do with her and her family.

“During these occurrences, Madness returned from his portal with his team,” Ruth was saying, “and I went to meet him.”

Aurora’s brows furrowed. “Personally? Why?”

“Because due to certain occurrences,” Ruth said, voice cautious and gentle, “we believed that he might not be in a hurry to go into the next portal.”

“Was he injured?” Aurora asked. “Did you send my injured husband into another portal, Shield?”

Even as the words left her mouth, Aurora knew that that was not what had happened. Dorthna had confirmed that Madness was safe.

Which meant that for some other reason apart from his health, David had decided not to go into another portal. That didn’t make much sense.

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Oaths went into portals. It was simply what it was. The embodiment of concepts of the world involved a certain level of attachment to the world. You protected what you were attached to.

By God, Aurora had risked her children to protect the world. What could possibly keep David from…

Melmarc who always picked his call wasn’t picking his calls.

“Cut straight to the point, Shield,” Aurora bit out. “Or so help me God I’ll cut this call and actively work against you on whatever is going on.”

“I need you to understand that everything I do, I do for the greater good,” Ruth said quickly. “You know this, War.”

Aurora knew this but didn’t care. She’d already broken off the ‘ten and two’ of her steering wheel. The material had crumbled under the weight of her grip. Now she was holding on to a new ten and two.

“What. Did. You. Do?”

“A message came in for War before he stepped out of his portal.”

Aurora rolled her eyes despite her anger. The private Oath hotline was not as private as Oaths were led to believe. Dark Mist, the Oath of Secrets, had been the very person who’d designed it. And while he was very good at keeping secrets, he was just as good at collecting secrets.

It hadn’t taken long for a few Oaths to find out that there were people monitoring the lines. Aurora understood the necessity for it so she’d never complained as long as it was used for good reasons.

“You guys listened in on the message left for my husband. And what did you do?”

“We put things in place to deal with the problem, the message told him about,” Ruth said. “And I went to intercept him on his arrival so that he could get into the next portal without distractions.”

“I’m guessing that didn’t go well. So tell me what you did.”

Ruth was silent for a moment before she replied. “I fought against your husband and his team, and lost.”

Aurora gritted her teeth in anger, tried to control herself. “Is my husband on the run, Ruth?”

“We don’t know,” Ruth answered. “No one’s heard from him or seen him or anyone in his team since the fight. Oaths are important, War. If we can just get your address, we can confirm that he’s al—”

Aurora barked a derisory laugh. It was loud and full of mockery.

“And why would I possibly want to do that?” she asked. “Use the one registered in the system.”

“We both know that the one registered is a lie,” Ruth said.

Aurora could hear the frown in her voice.

“So, let me get this right,” she said, still laughing, because at this point it was ludicrous. “You just made an enemy of my husband and want my help bringing him in.”

“No,” Ruth said quickly, too quickly. “We want your help talking to him. Inevitability said that it would make more sense if I apologized to your husband.”

“Are you sorry, though?”

There was a long delay before Ruth answered. “No.”

“So apologizing won’t matter. My husband is all about the thought that counts and not the words or actions. He’s sexy like that.” Aurora shook her head as she turned her steering wheel and almost missed it because she grabbed at one of the broken parts. She corrected the mistake just as quickly.

“So, in summary,” she continued. “America just lost an Oath and an SS-rank Delver. Once I get home, My husband and I will be looking into one of the other countries that has been begging us to come to them.”

“War, don’t do this.”

“Helping other countries will still be helping the world, though.” Aurora shrugged. “It doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we’re closing portals and stopping Chaos Runs.”

“War, please,” Ruth pleaded. She sounded very oddly desperate. “I’m not the only one that wants to talk to him. Inevitability also needs to talk to him.”

“Needs?”

“Yes.”

Inevitability had a good reputation with all the Oaths. It was the reason most of them listened to him. In fact, he was something of a pseudo leader. Why? Because whatever his Oath did to him, it made him very reasonable, very… inevitable.

If the Oaths were a group of very volatile and toxic friends—which they kind of were—then he was the most reasonable one of them that had proved how reasonable he was time and time again. He was the only reason they remained friends.

“We still don’t know how you did it, but you two are the only Oaths whose address no one can find,” Ruth said.

“Not that you all haven’t tried,” Aurora pointed out, wondering what Inevitability wanted so desperately with David.

“We do it for safety and security reasons. You understood this once.”

“Not enough to give you my address, though. And I was War. No one understood the necessity as much as I did.”

Ruth snorted. “You only didn’t because Secret knew your address.”

“He knew the general idea of where it was.” Aurora smirked. “No one visits me unless a member of the family brings them. You’ve been to my house before, after all. Isn’t that right, Ruth?”

At this point, she was looking for trouble. When silence came again, she knew it was because Ruth was comporting herself, controlling her anger.

“I don’t know what you and Madness did, but it was enough to scare Secret straight even when he found out the general idea of where you were,” Ruth said, finally speaking. “Whatever is capable of scaring Secret that much is always something to stay away from. That’s why we never tried to look for it. I don’t know what powers you and Madness acquired that makes everyone of us forget where you live once we are no longer in the house, but this is now more important than that.”

You can thank Dorthna for that, Aurora thought. Even though whatever it was that he had done didn’t work against [Intruders].

Or [Players].

“Alright, here’s what’s going to happen.” Aurora wasn’t very far from the state her home was in now.

“I’m listening.”

“You’re going to tell me what you did to offend my husband,” Aurora said. “Because offending the Oath of Madness isn’t enough to get you this scared. I know he will want to come after you, and everyone knows that he listens to me. So, I promise to make sure your punishment will not be something too terrible.”

“This isn’t about Madness, Aurora,” Shield snapped.

Aurora let out a sigh. This was why the Oaths weren’t good friends. She didn’t know what it was about Oaths and terrible communication skills.

You actually do, she rebutted.

It was their different traits. Those Oath behaviors that they just couldn’t shake. You didn’t expect someone who lived their life full of love and affection and someone who lived their life full of war and hate to understand each other or get along easily. Especially when they were arguably ruled by the concept.

“I understand why you sound the way you sound, Shield,” Aurora said simply. “But I’m done talking with you because I can be done talking with you. You can keep your secrets. This call is over.”

“Aurora!” Shield protested.

“Have a nice day, Shield.”

“Aurora!”

Aurora was about to cut the call when Shield’s next words stopped her. The words were uttered so quickly that Aurora almost thought she’d imagined them, but she knew that she had not. Shield’s words were as clear as day.

“Your husband has found the [August Intruder]!”

“What the fuck did you just say?” she hissed.

Ruth grumbled on the other side of the call. “It’s the truth.”

If she was not in so much of a hurry to get home, Aurora would’ve parked the car to catch her breath.

“Your husband is the one that found the long anticipated [August Intruder].”

Aurora’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and—

“Fuck,” she cussed as two more sections of the wheel crumbled under her grip. Aren’t steering wheels meant to be more malleable than this? What the hell?

She was usually better at controlling her strength than this.

“Where did he find the [August Intruder]?” she asked, worried.

The [August Intruder] was as much a good thing as it was a bad thing. The [August Intruder] was the herald of the apocalypse. From what all the Oaths knew, the apocalypse was inevitable. The world was going to experience it whether they liked it or not.

The [August Intruder’s] appearance was a terror because their arrival meant that the apocalypse was going to happen in their lifetime.

Here was the problem, though. While the [August Intruder] was necessary in surviving the apocalypse, the death of the [August Intruder] did not stop, slow, or halt the apocalypse. And the [August Intruder] did not have to be alive for the apocalypse to happen.

The concept of the apocalypse happening during their lifetime simply meant within the time period that they would naturally live.

“The apocalypse is coming,” Aurora found herself muttering.

They had a hundred years, at best.

“Where did he find him, Ruth?” Aurora pressed. They needed to send all available forces to protect whoever the person was.

“In a portal,” Ruth said hesitantly. “Off-world, at least.”

Aurora ran her hand through her hair in frustrated confusion. “I thought you said you couldn’t get him to go into the next portal. Are you saying that that is the reason you intercepted him?” She frowned, shook her head. Something wasn’t right. “No, you intercepted him because of the message he got. Unless you’re suddenly very good at lying, then it wasn’t in the portal he came out of.”

“It was not.”

“Then you’re saying my husband went into another portal.”

“Yes.”

“How do you even know that he’s back, then?” Aurora asked. She already knew because Dorthna had said that David was safe.

“Because the [August Intruder] came back, too, and we can’t find them.”

“That does not explain anything, Ruth.”

“It’s Madness,” Ruth answered, as if it explained everything, which it actually did. “I don’t see him entering a portal, finding the [August Intruder], and sending them back without returning with them.”

“And how do you even know that the [August Intruder] is here? Do you guys have them already?”

“No,” Ruth said. “We know because they’ve already established dominance.”

Well, that was stupid.

Aurora paused. She could be wrong, though. The [August Intruder] was either very stupid or very confident.

Every Oath was capable of establishing dominance. The way it worked was, in a manner of speaking, declaring your presence to all the strongest things in a specific area.

With unintelligent monsters, the strongest would come charging at you. Those that were intelligent would gain a slight understanding of just how strong you are. It would not be a sure way of understanding how strong you are, but it gave a possible estimate.

It was the reason Ruth was very worried when she’d established her dominance with the creature that had been coming out of Chaos Runs and it had treated her as unimportant. It meant that it hadn’t viewed her as a threat.

But the area of reach wasn’t that far, though.

“So, you were close to them?” Aurora asked, confused. “Then they shouldn’t be that far, though. Just how quickly did they escape?”

“I wasn’t close to them, Aurora,” Ruth said. “Every Oath across the world that I’ve spoken to was notified of their presence. They didn’t establish dominance of an area. They established dominance of the world.”

“And nobody thought to challenge it?” she asked. “Oaths do it all the time, challenging each other’s dominance.”

The [August Intruder] was long awaited, and they were meant to be very powerful. But it didn’t mean that the Oaths were just going to sit back and accept a dictator and a tyrant.

“Within a specific area?” Ruth said.

“Oh.” It was all Aurora could say.

Oaths had an area of reach. If you lived in a hotel and had an area of dominance that only extended to your room, how did you challenge the owner of the hotel?

How do you challenge someone who’s established dominance of the world when you can barely establish dominance as wide as a city?

“Inevitability already plans on sending a system message to the Oaths to call for a meeting,” Ruth explained. “I planned on sorting my issue with Madness there if I can’t do it before then. But that is if he attends. We need him to attend, and we need you to attend with him.”

Aurora could understand that. Oaths could send system beacons with a very short message, which in her opinion seemed more like something designed for wide scale war scenarios than a communication tactic. And the handful of times that Inevitability had called for a meeting, she had been the one dragging David whenever he was more inclined to not attend, after quite the negotiation and luring.

They would want her present because, in summary, she spoke David and Madness to a degree.

But this conversation wasn’t what was important.

“Hold up, how didn’t you people sort out my husband’s problem before he got out if you knew about it?” Aurora asked, discarding the [August Intruder]. She was not an Oath, so whoever it was was ultimately unimportant to her.

“Because he got to the portal before we could,” Ruth answered.

“He beat you to another portal.” Aurora’s frown deepened. “You said that there was a problem you were already working on, and you wanted my husband to go into another portal. But he refused and beat you to another portal.” She gritted her teeth as the pieces started falling into place. “To solve the problem, you all had to enter another portal, a portal that you couldn’t find immediately, for some reason. A portal that he found.”

There was only one way that David would’ve found a portal before them even when they had a head start. That was if someone was already working on it for him without having to be asked to.

And with Aurora in a portal, there was only a handful of people that could make David move. Only a handful of people superseded the safety of the world to David, with the right reasons.

And all of them technically lived in one place.

Aurora’s hand covered her mouth in terror as realization dawned on her. “Oh God.”

“Aurora, I swear we didn’t mean for any of it to happen,” Ruth said quickly. “It just…”

But Aurora wasn’t listening to her anymore. In this moment, the [August Intruder] could fall in a ditch and break their neck for all she cared. She’d never even liked the twerp to begin with. Their very existence had been more of a bad omen to her. Their existence meant that her children would have to live in a world that would potentially end. An apocalyptic world.

And when she’d given up her Oath, she’d decided to have nothing to do with the [August Intruder] if they ever arrived in her lifetime.

“I swear to everything that lives, has ever lived, and will ever live, Ruth,” Aurora bit out in rage. “If anything happened to my boy because of what you’ve done, my husband will be the least of your worries. I will find you, and the things I will do to you will live on for centuries after me. In fact, the apocalypse will be the least of your worries…”

“War, you have to under—”

Aurora knew it was the Oath of Shield speaking right now and not Ruth, but she couldn’t bring herself to give a fuck.

“My husband and I will burn everything you know to the ground,” she said, cutting her off. “And if we are not enough, we’ll call in every favor we have. I will make it my life’s duty to clean your name from the world. A shield that will sacrifice my son to protect this world is not a shield worth having around.”

She cut the call before Ruth could say anything else.

There was only one person that could be in trouble right now. The good news was that Ruth had helped her narrow down what the issue could be. She still worried about Melmarc, considering his phone still wasn’t reachable, but it was more than possible that he’d misplaced it or something.

Right now, she had bigger issues to worry about. Issues far more important than the [August Intruder].

She drove faster, as fast as the car could carry her. She passed stop signs and red lights, uncaring. Things had taken a very dark turn.

She couldn’t understand how a mentorship program could possibly have ended with her son in a portal. It made zero sense.

Whoever was in charge that had been dumb enough to allow such a thing to happen needed to answer a lot of questions. Then again, she knew how her son could be. He was always adventurous, seeking out troubles he had no business seeking out.

Still…

There was a reason, the mentors were put in charge. Aurora’s hand tightened on the steering wheel once more and she did her best to control herself. Driving home without a steering wheel was going to be vastly uncomfortable, and she could not afford any discomfort that would slow her down.

Please be alright, Ark, she thought as she drove. Please be alright.

…

Something tapped against Melmarc’s foot, and his eyes snapped open immediately. Once upon a time he would’ve grumbled a little, tossed around once or twice. Not anymore.

His eyes snapped open and took in his entire surroundings. Or at least it tried to. Unfortunately, it snapped open to the sight of Spitfire staring him in the face.

Its eyes, black and speckled like a starry night sky, stared at him.

“Too close,” Melmarc grumbled, groggy.

Raising a hand, he gently placed it on Spitfire’s head and pushed the demon to the side. It did not fight him.

Only when he was done did he see Ark standing at his leg, giving him an odd look.

“What?” Melmarc asked.

Ark’s brows furrowed. “Why are you sleeping on the floor?”