EXPERTUS

SIMON

It was Friday afternoon, two days since Simon and Yolanda had started dating. It was going better than he expected. Most of his relationships crashed and burned by this point. Either they decided he wasn't worth dealing with, or he accidentally insulted them, or they turned out to be lesbians. Okay, that last one only happened once, and at least he and Jelena were still friends.

So he was understandably concerned when Yolanda called him in the morning, saying she wanted to talk. He was terrified that he had done something wrong again, and this would go the same way as all his other relationships.

Thankfully, it turned out to be just poor word choice on her part.

A bland baseline reached across the table to shake Simon's hand. “Hi, I'm Adam. I'm in Applied Firearms with Yolanda.”

Simon shook his hand a little hesitantly. Adam had a good strong grip, which wasn't unexpected for a gunner, but he was still reeling.

“Sorry,” Simon said slowly. “I...” He glanced at Yolanda. She was smiling innocently. He turned his attention back to her friend. “Sorry. Didn't really know what to expect.”

Adam grinned. “Living in this city, I'd assume you'd learn to expect anything.”

“Well, that's just it. You're not from the city, are you?” Simon shrugged. “I guess I was just expecting something other than a baseline.”

“That's pretty much exactly what outsiders are,” Yolanda said with a smile.

“Except for the cyborgs,” Adam said mildly, as he sipped his coffee. “About sixty percent of the population has metal bits instead of fleshy ones.”

Simon stared... then frowned. “And now you're just screwing with me.”

Adam grinned over his coffee cup. “And you're smarter than you look.”

Simon rubbed his forehead, between his horns. “Oh, this is going to be... interesting.”

Yolanda gripped his hand. “Simon, be nice.”

Adam put his coffee down, frowning. “Wait, Simon... I've heard that name before.”

Simon raised an eyebrow. “Well, yeah. Not exactly rare.”

“No, that's not it.” He reached into his pocket, searching for something. “She said a purple demon named Simon... crap, what was the last name?” He retrieved a slip of crumpled paper and glanced at it. “...Lancaster?”

Now it was Simon's turn to frown. “Yeah, that's me. What's the problem?”

Adam rubbed his forehead, muttering curses under his breath. “Uh... I'm a friend of Laura's. Laura Medina? You guys knew each other from... somewhere.”

“Yeah, from before she moved.” The waitress placed Simon's drink in front of him. He thanked her and took a sip. “Ack, too hot... sorry, but why did Laura tell you about me?”

“She, uh...” Adam floundered for a second before finding the right words. “I've only met like three people beyond my roommate and my girlfriend, so she keeps trying to introduce me to new people.”

Simon blinked. “You're dating Laura?”

Thankfully Adam had only just started reaching for his drink, otherwise he would have probably spat it all over them in surprise. “Wait, what—no, no! I'm dating Lily! Lily, uh...” He frowned. “She doesn't have a last name. Why do half the people in this city not have last names?”

Yolanda chuckled. “Don't worry, we know who you're talking about.”

Simon was still skeptical. “You're the baseline she's dating?”

“Um... yes.” He scratched behind his ear. “Why?”

Simon shrugged. “I don't know, I kinda figured it was just a stupid rumor. She's never gone steady with anyone before.” Simon paused, thinking. “Maybe because she only dates baseline outsiders.”

Adam shrugged. “Maybe.” He changed the subject. “Laura mentioned you have a sister, Simon. Where's she?”

“Seena? She's off with her culture right now. Probably more training.”

Adam took another sip of his coffee. Simon noticed that he had a small white cloth concealed in his hand. What was that for? Was he worried about spills or something? “Laura said she's a vampire.”

“Yeah, a Mal. Got recruited right before school started.”

“Can't say I know them.”

Simon blinked, surprised. The Mals weren't exactly a huge subculture, but still... then he nodded in understanding. “Ah, right, most of what you've heard about the cultures would be through Lily. She doesn't like talking about the Mals.”

Adam frowned. “Really? What's so bad about them? I mean, she avoids any talk of succubi or daevas like the plague, but—”

“The Mals are assassins,” Yolanda said. She waved her hand. “Lily has some weird thing about killing. Doesn't even think about it if she has to.” She bit her lip adorably and turned to Simon. “There's a word for that. I just can't recall...”

He closed his eyes, trying to remember. “Starts with a p, I think...”

“Pacifism?”

Simon snapped his fingers and pointed at Adam. “Yes, that's it. She's a pacifist.”

He stared at both of them in turn. Then he just shook his head. “This goddamned city...”

Yolanda cocked her head questioningly.

Adam waved the hand that wasn't holding his coffee—which, Simon noticed, also had a small white rag concealed. “Don't worry about it. So you're a...”

“Sibriex,” Simon said. “We invent new ways to use the toy maker. Or... well, the rest of the culture does. I'm really not very good at it.”

Adam sipped from his coffee. “I thought that was a vampire subculture.”

“You're probably thinking of the Glasyans. And yeah, they're basically the same, but for vampires.”

The waitress, a dae with a big bushy tail, sashayed up to the table with an empty glass pitcher balanced on a tray. “You guys all right? Anything else I can get you?”

Simon smiled politely. “Ah... no. We're fine, thanks.”

“Well, let me know.” She turned to go.

Turned a little too fast, actually. Her tail smacked him full in the face. He spluttered as hair got in his mouth, and started flailing around trying to push it away.

That was the exact wrong thing to do. He knocked her off balance, and the platter immediately went flying. She yelped and dodged to the side, while the pitcher landed on the table and shattered.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Glass went flying everywhere. Simon tried to shield Yolanda, and felt a few pieces of glass hit his back.

“God, you guys okay?” Simon turned to see Adam rushing forward. With his enhanced eyes, he spotted something glinting in both of his fists, still gripping those little white towels. What the hell? Was he coming at them with knives?

Simon would never learn the answer to that question, because a split second after Adam leaped out of his chair, a roar shook the entire building.

Simon looked behind him, past the dae waitress still cowering on the floor, to see what all the fuss was about. It was a street-level open air cafe, so he had a pretty good view of what was going on.

It was a gargant. A massive one. It was bigger than a bus—had to be at least thirty feet long and fifteen tall. It had six legs, each as thick as a tree trunk, splayed about its body. Its belly was low to the ground, and a rational part of Simon's mind noted that this probably indicated it was built from some kind of lizard.

It didn't have a tail, but its entire body was covered in thick plates of cartilage, fitting together like the scales of a crocodile. These were a dull yellow that shone under the right light, giving the impression the gargant was armored in gold.

The most distinctive part of its anatomy, however, was the creature's head. It had no eyes or mouth, and no visible nostrils—though there would be a large number of very small ones scattered around its skull. The gargant was blind and deaf, but that was intentional.

Simon knew from his time with the sibriex that it was a blind-rammer gargant. Not the most dangerous creation of the fey, but dangerous enough, and very hard to kill. But something about it bothered him...

He tabled his thoughts about the gargant itself for the moment, cursing his luck at having been caught in a fey Hunt. They liked doing one big attack a day—each—so it was inevitable to get caught up in one every once in a while, but they usually didn't use full gargants.

The beast stumbled forward into a storefront, thankfully one that had already evacuated. Metal screeched as the gargant broke concrete and twisted the rebar supports, nosing through the crushed window for... something. What, exactly, was unclear. Blind-rammer gargants were quite rare, so there was little data on the reasons behind their behavior patterns.

It was clearly seeking something, though what was impossible to say for certain. Maybe it was trying to track something by smell? It was pretty much the only sense the poor thing had left.

“Grace, get up,” Simon heard from behind him. He turned to see Adam helping their waitress to her feet. “You need to run.”

The dae blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Run until you can contact MC. Quickly.”

The girl fished for something in her pockets, presumably her phone. “What are you talking about? I can just—”

“The phones are down,” Adam said. “I already tried. This is not a random attack.”

The dae swallowed, then nodded and ran in the opposite direction of the rampaging behemoth.

Simon mentally noted the fact that Adam seemed to know the dae. He was starting to get more than a little suspicious of him, but there were more important things to worry about at the moment. “You think the fey sent this one?”

“Obviously,” Adam said as he plopped his gun case on the table, opened it up, and took out a massive shotgun. He checked it briefly, then started belting on a bandoleer and holster. “But yes, I do think they sent it here for someone specific.”

“That's what I meant,” Simon said. “Obviously the fey sent it. But who for?”

“Damned if I know. Crap, I knew I should have bought more god slayers when I had the chance...”

“Wouldn't do much good here,” Yolanda said. She was clinging to Simon very tightly, but was otherwise composed. She wasn't even trembling. Or maybe he just couldn't feel it under his trembling. “Unless you can get a round through one of its nostrils, we're pretty much out of luck.”

Adam muttered a curse under his breath. “Not likely. I'm not all that accurate. If Kat was here...” He stopped suddenly.

“Kat?” Simon asked after a moment.

“Friend of mine,” he said. “Got too close to some screamers—the bats, actually—and got turned.”

Yolanda winced. “Sorry to hear that. Maybe there's a cure...”

“Maybe we should save that for later,” Simon reminded them. “The gargant is coming this way.”

Thankfully, it wasn't charging yet. It was just lumbering forward, heading to the street, sniffing for something. Everyone else had already fled to safety behind it, where it had already searched, but there were still a few of them in front of it. And if they tried to run past it on the narrow street, it would sense them through the vibrations and attack.

Simon glanced around at the other cafe patrons, hoping to see some better weapons, but no luck. Pretty much everyone had a few guns, and there were some nice big shotguns, but the only thing heavy enough to breach its hide would be a missile—and no one carried those around.

Too bad they were in kemo territory. If this were a giant domain, there probably would have been a few missile launchers or portable anti-air weapons stashed around. Something that would have been effective against a blind-rammer, at least.

Well, they didn't have a chance, and thankfully Adam realized that. He started ordering the shocked patrons away from the gargant while Simon was still standing around wondering what had happened with the dae. If this had been a random attack, he probably would have saved them all.

Unfortunately, it was not a random attack, and crazy as they were, the fey were still quite intelligent when they had reason to be.

The gargant roared again, and Simon finally realized what had been itching his brain for the past five minutes. Blind-rammers couldn't roar. They didn't have mouths.

Iron-lord gargants, however, could.

Coming around the corner from the other direction, right in the path they were fleeing, was a massive ape-shaped creature, fifty feet tall. It knuckle-walked forward hesitantly, watching the screaming and panicking little humans at its feet.

A giant ape wouldn't be that difficult to beat, especially at that size. Take out the knees, and its own weight would quickly do what no amount of bullets could do. That was why you didn't see ape-rager gargants and their ilk around any more. Everyone knew how to kill them, so the fey didn't bother making them.

This was far more than a giant ape.

Its flesh was iron.

Thousands, maybe millions of tiny plates of steel were stitched to its skin, so small and so fine that at first glance the creature appeared to be made of metal. It was certainly far too heavy to walk around like it did. Simon didn't know what arcane process the fey used to get around the Square-Cube Law, but apparently it wasn't easy, since iron-lord gargants were some of the only ones they used it on.

The ape-thing leaned forward, noon light gleaming off its shiny skull, and bit a pedestrian in half with its razor-sharp teeth. Blood spewed everywhere, especially on the gargant's face. Simon could hear the sound of crunching bones over the constant screaming, as the beast slowly chewed its meal.

Over all the incoherent cries of terror, he heard a voice he recognized. “Simon!”

“Wait—Seena?”

His sister rushed forward, away from the iron-lord, a number of other people in tow. Some of them he didn't recognize, and seemed to be random strangers she had grabbed to keep them safe, but he spotted Pam, Veda, Jelena, Delphie, and Zusa.

“We're cornered, and the phones aren't working,” Pam said grimly, as Seena glomped him in a bear hug. Behind her, he watched Zusa curse and adjust her daygoggles. “Unless you have a couple tanks in your pocket, we need to find some place to hide.”

“This way,” Adam said with some conviction. He dashed off to the right and hopefully out of the path of the gargants. The rest of them followed, and found themselves ducking into an abandoned storefront. “With luck, the monsters will fight each other.”

“That's your plan?” one of Seena's rescues said. He snorted in derision. “The fey use pheromones to control their pets. They don't attack each other.”

“The Dagonite has the right of it,” Jelena said. “New plan, please.”

Seena blinked at the first speaker, looking him up and down. “You're a Dagonite?”

The man wiggled his hand back and forth. Ish.

“Not really the time,” Simon said. “Adam, any ideas?”

He frowned. “I'm not really... tactics are Laura's area.”

Simon tried to keep his calm. He sure as the First Hell wasn't a strategist either, but Adam definitely sounded like he had a better chance at leading them out of this than Simon. He just had to convince him, first. “Laura isn't here. What would she tell you to do if she was?”

Adam thought for a moment, then pointed at the clothing racks scattered around the store. “Roll those over to the front, make a barricade. We should be able to hold out until help arrives.”

“Do you really think that will help?” Zusa asked, in a tone of voice that very specifically did not imply that she thought Adam was a moron. She really was a born diplomat.

“It's mostly a visual barricade,” Adam said, as he started tugging the racks over. The rest of them leaped to help. “Hopefully they won't notice us.”

There was a roar, and the storefront exploded inward, showering everyone in glittering pebbles of glass.

The iron-lord gargant poked its head in, searching with its bright eyes, and then reached in the store to try and grab some fresh victims. It was all Simon could do to shield Yolanda, and that would be only slightly more protection than tissue paper if the beast decided they were its target.

Nothing left to do but pray.