The sheer number of monsters attacking the wall that surrounded the city was concerning. Far more than it’d been during the past Blood Moons.

Anton flew above the city as a roiling mass of electricity, watching as guild members and noble houses alike worked atop the walls to keep the monsters out.

Most Blood Moons monsters avoided the city, for the most part at least. Their game was with each other and the city was, for the most part, devoid of those creatures. This time was different though, something had changed.

‘Did they find out about the snake?’, Anton stressfully contemplated as a swarm of mosquito-like creatures managed to fly overhead the wall, quickly killing the men stretched thin defending that section. There were thousands of them, and with a crack of thunder Anton near instantly appeared among them.

“Spark of Insight,” Anton mentally said, watching as most of the monsters known as legrei ragdolled into one another while still midair. All but a few of them falling far down to the ground below, dead. Moments later the remaining ones were killed as well. Slashed into pieces by the sword that Anton was carrying as he moved amongst them faster than a normal man could process. Not one managed to activate their cards before he was through killing them, not that Anton could tell anyhow.

All around Anton could see bits of wall where monsters had made it through. Cracks of their own making where the runes had grown weak and defenses had dwindled. The wall wasn’t meant to defend against an assault like this. Not in its current state at least.

A few monsters at a time was the ideal, at least when it came to the really dangerous ones, but that wasn’t the case now. Not thirty minutes had passed since the beginning of the Blood Moon and already he’d seen good men with quality decks killed in innumerable ways. Turned to stone, skin ripped from their bodies, turned insane, it wasn’t a good sight.

And with monsters already inside the walls things weren’t looking good for the general populace. Most of them had cards, but very few would be capable of defending themselves against an invasion like this.

‘Let’s just hope I still have a city to rule over when this is all said and done,’ Anton pessimistically thought, rocketing towards another monster and killing it before it could wipe out the defenders on the wall. A loud crack of thunder was the only sound the defenders heard before Anton was off once again, heading towards another monster and leaving a dead ones in his wake.

===

Daniel moved towards the exit, Jonathan following close behind him, but several men in priest robes stood in the doorway, clearly intent on blocking it.

“Step aside,” Daniel said with all the authority he could muster. “I’m the legendary user, Daniel, of the Brighttree family. I’m needed up on the surface.”

One of the men glanced towards Daniel before returning his gaze to the crowd, unmoving from where he blocked the door, and the other after a moment acknowledged Daniel’s existence, pulling his eyes from the workers entering the room with a reluctance that Daniel had rarely ever seen.

“Nobody is leaving this room until everyone is cleansed,” he answered bluntly.

“And we just were,” Daniel remarked, sending a glance back towards the hallway the workers were coming through.

“That’s not the whole process,” the priest said with authority. “You need to wait for more qualified priests to arrive. We have many followers of Selane upstairs. They should be able to do a more thorough cleansing.”

Daniel stared down the two priests for several seconds before reluctantly turning back around and moving into the crowd. Once the priests weren’t paying too much attention to him Daniel turned towards Jonathan and gripped him on the shoulder.

“Take a deep breath. I’m going to use my card to get us past the guards. I don’t want to be in here when whatever's about to go down comes crashing down on our heads.”

“What? We can’t do that,” Jonathan said, brushing Daniel’s hand from his shoulder. “We need to explain to them what’s happening. There are steps they can take.”

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“And what would that accomplish,” Daniel snapped back. “This place isn’t safe. They already know that and they’re taking their time dealing with it. Far too much of it.”

Another man collapsed as the priest in the ceremonial robes with the short black hair used his card again.

Daniel grit his teeth, “I remember the wording on Yaseb’s card. It doesn’t activate when he might die, it activates if he’d be put in a situation where he will die. We need to leave, now. Who knows how many of these people are already infected with whatever this is. You heard the priests at the door, that fancy priest over there’s card is far from a perfect solution to this and if I’m right everything's about to get a whole lot worse.”

Jonathan looked toward Daniel with a gaze of disappointment and a bit of disgust as he moved to turn away and head towards the priest in ceremonial robes, only pausing for a moment to turn back to Daniel.

“You’d make a great follower of Drint, Daniel. Not willing to fight for what is right. It's good you decided to leave our group,” Jonathan said, before making his way through the crowd.

Daniel watched Jonathan as he moved across the crowded room and approached the head priest, presumably trying to explain to the ceremonial priest the danger of the current situation, while all the while a gnawing sense of anxiety grew more and more in the pit of Daniel’s gut.

‘My only goal is to make it back home,’ Daniel rationally thought. ‘I don’t need this. I don’t need any of this. If he wants to get himself killed trying to unravel this mess that’s his choice. I’m leaving.’

Daniel began to activate Flicker Between Worlds, but was stopped when he noticed something flying towards him thanks to his boosted reaction speed.

It was a knife-like object only four or so inches long with red and pink lines spider webbing down its surface.

Instinctively Daniel stepped to the side. There was something off about the blade. It almost seemed to cut the world around it as it soared, visibly stretching it behind it. He likely wouldn’t have noticed that particular effect without A Sane Man’s Burden, and even with it he still wasn’t quite sure just how dangerous it really was, but he'd had the distinct impression that it would hurt him even if he'd been in Limbo if it connected.

Someone tried to stop Daniel as he moved to sidestep the knife, one of the workers behind him quickly moving to tackle Daniel. A swift punch to the jaw and the man was disoriented, allowing Daniel to duck the knife. It flew wide over his shoulder, and Daniel quickly moved to activate Flicker Between Worlds only to immediately feel a sharp pain in his right leg.

Another worker had dove for the leg while he was distracted, the same knifelike appendages growing outward from the palms of his hand as a mistlike substance drifted from his body. He hadn’t been there moments before, likely the work of one of his cards.

Flicker Between Worlds, Daniel mentally commanded his card to activate, and found that it wouldn’t. It felt like ice surrounded the spot where the tattoo for Flicker Between Worlds rested. Ice that was slowly melting, but not nearly fast enough.

Daniel flipped Foundation of One off of his reaction speed and over to his muscles as he kicked the worker cutting into his leg with all his strength, sending him skidding along the floor and ripping the knife still in the man’s grip out from his leg.

Heart racing and panic rising, Daniel could hear several men yelling “Drifters!” over the commotion of the room.

‘This is bad,’ Daniel thought, eyes rapidly taking in the whole room. ‘I can’t get into Limbo, and that means I don’t even have my spear because the mimics were carrying it, stupid. I need to leave right now.’

Daniel quickly turned to the man that’d tried to tackle him, pulling out his father’s knife and slashing it across the man’s throat before he could even process what he was doing.

The man collapsed back to the floor, more from the sheer force of the swing than from the blade itself, the wounded man laughing all the while. Or at least Daniel thought he was laughing; it was honestly difficult to pinpoint the source. The sound coming from seemingly everywhere.

The man Daniel had just stabbed wasn’t a good looking man, mind you. He had an average look to him, with cold eyes and a forgettable face that you’d find just about anywhere, but Daniel would never forget how the man smiled, cartoonishly, uncannily as he stared up towards Daniel with shimmering joyous eyes as his head cracked and split open like a flower, four petals dropping downward like a jester’s hat. Viscera dripped down the man’s ruined head, staining the floor around him and Daniel had to fight down his disgust at the sight.

‘I should have just stayed in the fortress,’ Daniel lamented, dropping down and plunging his knife into the monster’s chest threes quick times before standing back up ready to fight. Even then the monster on the ground still stirred. This would be a bloodbath.