Alexander found himself inside the human’s city when he’d finally woken up. Already surrounded by the sounds of battle and the screams of the dying.

‘When did I get here,’ Alexander wondered as he cleaved the arm off a herant, an equestrian-like creature, spraying its blood along the cobblestone street.

The creature turned to bite Alexander with a jaw that stretched and twisted, nearly covering his entire body, before it disappeared in a spray of red mist as he activated Steps of Giants, launching a kick into the creature's head that destroyed it, letting its body fall limply to the ground.

‘Who do I hear laughing?’ Alexander wondered. Only to realize there was nobody else was around. Those that could had long since hidden in their homes or inside shelters, and all the monsters cursed by the Blood Moon in the area were plastered along streets and buildings, a path of carnage stretched long behind him.

‘I know the answer to that. No use answering it,’ Alexander coldly thought. ‘That horrid woman sent all of us on a collision course with this city. But why, how?’, Alexander desperately wondered.

‘No, I know why she did it,’ Alexander begrudgingly thought. ‘The real question is how she did it. She has rules to follow, rules she can’t break. So why do I feel so drawn to this place? She can’t just do as she likes, she’s still just a god, nothing more.’

Alexander suddenly felt a chill of realization run down this spine as he formed a running theory.

‘Someone's been keeping moon cursed creatures inside the city. Enough of them for Nevarre to point at and draw everything for miles to this location.’

‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ Alexander refused. ‘If they’d been keeping cursed creatures here I would have sensed them sooner. Not just on the day of the Blood Moon.’

Alexander thought it all through carefully. He hadn’t once stopped moving since he’d become cognizant, but the definition of cognizant only applied to him by the barest of definitions. Still though he heard laughter in the air, and still he felt adrenaline flooding his body. Joy at what he was doing, ecstasy at doing a task he was born to do.

‘No, think damn you. You are Alexander Coalin, favored by a god. You were meant to be great, grand, so for once just think damnit,’ Alexander screamed to himself, gritting his teeth through the joy.

‘Someone in the city was hiding the moon cursed creature, covering it up enough to avoid our notice for a time, and now it’s backfired spectacularly,’ Alexander reasoned.

‘And now Navarre’s taken that crooked finger of hers and pointed it out to us. Made it a shining beacon in the night,' and through the laughter, joy, and the madness he could faintly sense it. He couldn’t tell where it was, but it was unmistakably there. Something dangerous, and unmistakably touched by that damnable goddess.

“Then I’ll just need to kill it and everything else,” Alexander exclaimed, meaning to simply say it, but instead finding himself screaming it, exhilaration in his tone.

It alongside every other moon cursed in the city would need to die before this madness would end. Only then would she have nothing to point at, no order to give.

‘Let the exhilaration take you, as you used to, just not completely. Hold tight to yourself, think everything through, choose your battles carefully and you may well be the last of Navarres toys inside these walls by the time the sun rises.’

===

All of hell was breaking loose around Daniel as men screamed and card effects flew wildly throughout the room.

A man, untouched by the monsters as far as Daniel could tell, had his head suddenly split open before being blasted across the room out of Daniel’s sight.

One man, scrawny and scared looking, pointed his hand toward one of the monsters before muttering Flames of the Sky, only for the monster to utter in a scratchy high pitched tone, A King’s Negation, leaving the scrawny man holding his hand out with no visible effect while the monster rushed toward him, pouncing atop of him and plunging its knives into his chest.

Daniel had his revolver in one hand and his knife in the other. Reaction speed would’ve been better here, and Daniel cursed himself for switching Foundation of One to strength even if it'd seemed necessary at the time.

He still felt an icy chill covering Flicker Between Worlds, and despite his best efforts the card was still inaccessible.

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Daniel tried to force his way to the exit, piercing through the chaos when above the noise, Daniel heard someone yelling out orders, “They’re drifters, don’t kill them! Restrain them, don’t kill them!”

‘Don’t kill them?’ Daniel thought, confused. ‘What happens when you kill them?’

One of the monsters, literally skipping towards Daniel, lunged forward with a knife in either hand.

Daniel raised his gun and fired twice into the creatures chest, causing it to somehow shriek despite its head's current state, its momentum carrying it forward as it rolled across the ground and over to his feet.

Daniel’s boot came down on bits of the creatures flayed head and neck, only for his foot to impact it harmlessly with a loud thud as its body took on a shimmering metallic sheen.

The creatures had cards, and a wide assortment from the looks of it. The drifter tried to scuttle out from under Daniel’s foot, but with Foundation of One boosting his muscles, and with a further emphasis on his legs, the disturbing creature wasn’t going anywhere.

Daniel risked taking his eyes off the monster to scan the chaos around him. Half the room seemed to have been cut off by some kind of semitranslucent wall, and in the far corner was a dome of fog similar to the stuff that Jonathan’s card produced.

Someone was on fire, but he seemed calm enough that it was probably intentional, and Daniel caught several workers sprinting towards the exit out of the corner of his eye, only to be thrown back into the room both bisected at the waist.

‘I need to think,’ Daniel frantically thought. ‘This next choice may decide if I live or die.’

A glance towards the monster still weakly squirming beneath his foot revealed it to be invisible. Just like the monster that’d managed to get him in the leg.

The concerning thing was that he’d felt that one’s ribs crack under the force of his kick, and he was pretty sure that this one wasn’t the same one. And now that he was listening for it he could hear several different drifters using A Kings Negation.

‘They’re sharing their decks,’ Daniel thought, horrified. ‘This, somehow, has just gotten so much worse.’

Daniel came to a decision and acted on it immediately. The main exit had something extremely dangerous guarding it and he didn’t want to mess with it, but at the same time the only other exit was the portal down that long stretching corridor, and it wasn’t even clear how many monsters stood between him and it. Or even if the thing was still running. It apparently took a lot of power to function. There were just too many unknowns.

What was clear, however, was that he wasn’t going to get through either exit by himself. Not without Flicker Between Worlds at least.

Which meant he needed help, and he only knew one man in the room. That made the decision rather easy.

Daniel sprinted towards the gaseous dome in the corner of the room, firing his revolver at several drifters that got too close.

One drifter took a shot in the leg, sending him twisting to the ground, another took on a metallic form and the bullet failed to pierce him, instead deeply denting the metal around his chest.

It didn’t kill the thing, but it certainly stunned it long enough for him to sprint past.

The room itself wasn’t large, but the monsters had clearly been winning the fight, with more than a dozen unharmed ones still standing on this side of the dividing wall and only eight people Daniel could see were still fighting back.

That left plenty to attack Daniel, a knife flying from his blind spot and burying itself into his shoulder.

Immediately Daniel felt the Breath of None tattoo on his arm chill over as he was suddenly hit with the need to breathe like a sledgehammer to the chest.

Daniel gasped, sucking in air like he hadn’t breathed for hours, and that wasn’t far from the truth.

He still breathed throughout his everyday life. It was an unconscious response drilled into him by years of repetition, but even still, when he was stressed and apparently when he was fighting it was something he neglected.

Normally it wouldn't be a problem. Now it was.

Daniel stumbled forward, fighting to keep himself from collapsing to the ground.

A drifter that Daniel stumbled by, playing in the guts of a priest that twitched ominously raised it head at Daniel’s passing and lunged forward swiping widely at him, catching him in the side.

Immediately he felt his connection to Mimics of Stone disappear as the same eery chill covered the tatoo.

‘Could’ve been worse,’ Daniel thought through gasping breaths. ‘If it’d gotten Foundation of One I don’t think I’d still be walking right now.’

Daniel quickly twisted around and fired at the two closest drifters behind him, dropping them to the ground. One with a leg shot and one with an arm and thigh shot.

Three more drifters ahead of him ran in from either direction of Daniel, leaving a thin trail towards Jonathan’s bunker that Daniel sprinted down.

His lungs burned fiercely as he moved and the stab wound in his leg, that he’d all but ignored so far, was making its presence bitterly known.

‘I don’t have time to stop,’ Daniel internally cursed as he ran towards the gaseous bunker.

“Johnathan, open up it’s me. Let me in,” Daniel yelled as he ran, but there was no time to wait for a reply, no time to hesitate. Daniel remembered vividly how the gas forming that bunker had melted skin and bone during his short time spent in Gabriel’s group, but right now he had no other choice now, no other option.

So with his last breath of air Daniel screamed Jonathan’s name with all he had, throwing himself headfirst into the white gaseous mist.