For a few minutes, it seemed like all we could do was look at the spectacle in front of us. Even Karu and Taglock seemed at a loss.

Honestly, it was beautiful. A whole city, pulled from the earth, rendered in the monochrome of stone. Huge main thoroughfares, complete with trees made of stone down the middle, twisting stone alleys, ornate mansions near the richer parts of town, and small stone shanties huddled together near the outskirts.

In the center, rising above the entire town was an improbably large looming castle, with graceful curving architecture and graceful sweeping lines which drew the eye upwards towards the enormous dome at its apex, surrounded by a multitude of narrow towers like the points on a crown.

There were markets and churches, schools and houses, libraries and city walls, several layers, seemingly extended as the city grew within their confines, with square towers regularly spaced.

All made of the same grey, dirty stone.

It was like something out of a dream. The skyline was alien, as though medieval europe and the middle east had gotten their hands on modern construction equipment and decided to stop crusading and build a city.

And...it would have been super neat, if there hadn't once already been a city there.

Old Oakland was still visible out there. The new stone city was miles across, a huge circle, we saw that from the air when we were being deployed by VTOL, and could still barely make it out from the rooftop on the periphery where our entire team now stood aghast. It looked like that circle was the limit of the Exhuman's powers, at the edges, the city simply stopped and what was once Oakland started again.

Halfway through buildings, even, the roads from the cities not lining up. One skyscraper looked dangerously unstable, a quarter of it just...gone, like it'd been nailed by Skyweb. It was like someone had used magic to swap the centers of two different cities from different worlds.

As for what happened to the thousands who had lived here…

Lia handed me her mobile. "It's Eryendria," she said mutely.

I didn't know who that was, but I put the device to my ear. She smiled and shook her head. "No, look--"

I did, and saw the title screen for her game. Kingdom Blade.

"This isn't the time, Lia," I said.

"No, look, dummy. Look at the holo."

I did. It said 'KINGDOM BLADE' in large blue letters with a white outline, with a sword piercing the logo horizontally. Under that, fields to enter login information or adjust options.

And then I noticed the background image and held the holo up to confirm. The perspective was different, but it was clearly an exact match, the huge domed castle in the center of the city was unmistakable, and I could pick out several other landmarks, the more I looked.

"Why is the background image of your mobile game in the middle of the real world, Lia?" I asked.

"I have to assume the Exhuman is a fan and decided to recreate it."

"There are thousands of people missing right now. You think...he or she did all that...because of some stupid game?"

Taglock answered. "If you had unlimited power, what would you waste it on?"

"Not fucking this," I said. "Why couldn't they do it out in the middle of nowhere? Why destroy a city and take thousands of lives?"

"We do not know that they are dead," Karu said placatingly.

"I imagine this was a good location geologically," Taglock said. "We're on top of a fault line, a thrust fault, which means that old rock is pushed towards the surface instead of new rock."

"So if they wanted a ton of rock, of older rock, closer to the surface this is the kind of location they'd go for."

She earned a finger gun from Taglock and looked pleased with herself, despite the fact the conclusion was obviously just handed to her.

"S-something's moving," Tem shouted abruptly. We all peered forward intently, and a set of optics had appeared in Taglock's hands as though by magic. Lia was still digging out her own, and put them to her eyes, looking like a child attempting to imitate a parent.

"I see nothing alive," Karu said doubtfully, fiddling with her optics. "Nor anything in thermal."

Taglock shook his head. "The kid is right. Just scan for motion. But you're right, it's not alive."

Tem must have had fantastic eyesight because I couldn't see anything. Karu tapped a few more buttons on her visor before going 'oh' with a small gasp.

"Well, what is it?" Tower asked. He, Jack, and Moon, apparently her name was, were standing a small ways off from the rest of us. The two of them had been happy for me to be back, and the flight over with all of us had actually been pretty light and happy, but I guessed they still weren't comfortable with everyone else.

"It's uh...well, I guess it might be pretty obvious, but it's rocks," said Lia from under her optics. "But...jeez this is weird. See for yourself."

Lia's and Taglock's optics were passed through the group while Karu put her visor on my head. The zoom was crazy intense, and the first thing I saw was an extreme closeup of her chest as she finished seating it, complete with a handful of helpful info callouts about her BMI, current pulse rate, and body measurements.

Silly visor was obviously confused what I was focused on here. Obviously.

I looked back towards Eryendria, as Lia had identified it, and could barely make out motion. The closer part of the city was completely obstructed behind a large city wall which wrapped around the entire city, so the nearest I could see inside was probably a mile away at least. There, in the streets, almost impossible to distinguish from the grey stone roads and grey stone buildings...grey stone people, bustling around, stopping to talk, exchanging grey stone coins and walking in and out of the grey stone structures around them.

I pulled the visor off and handed it back to Karu. It was a little small on me, but I didn't think that had anything to do with my head hurting.

"Okay, so," I said, trying to get my thoughts straight out loud to see if I was crazy. "Somewhere in that city is a terrapath. Their powers extend for miles, and they used it to wipe out everything which was here, instantly make an entire replica city of a video game, and it's also populated with an absolute crapton of...dolls or something, also made of stone, which the Exhuman is using their powers to constantly control and give the illusion of being alive. Is that about right?"

"Matches everything in our intel," Cosette said over comms.

"This is insane," I concluded my assessment simply. "Last time I fought a terrapath, if I entered their range, I was dead instantly. The Earth would just come up and skewer me. If we set foot in that city at all, every rock within miles could just crush the crap out of us."

"Correct, except that you misunderstand the nature of Exhumans," Karu said. I guess she would be the authority on fighting them. "While in theory, an Exhuman has absolute control over their power's domain within their range, in practice, the nature in which their power manifests is different per Exhuman. You, for example, have very precise control over electricity in a very small area around you--"

"It's not that small," I said frowning.

"Keep telling yourself that," Tower said.

"--whereas another electropath I have encountered was similar to Tem in practice, able to call down lightning at extreme range, but without granular control. Another seemed completely unable to direct lightning with immediacy, and instead could push or pull it through objects to leave irritating constantly-electrocuted traps." She frowned at the memory. Guess that hunt hadn't gone so well. "The point being, I view it as very unlikely that the Exhuman down there has the capacity to create buildings and stone soldiers, but also have powers approaching that of the previous terrapath."

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"So, instead...They could just build a prison around me and have a million stone soldiers pop up in endless waves and kill me without me having a chance to do a damn thing."

"I suppose that is more possible."

"This isn't reassuring, Karu."

She sighed. "Exhumans defy conventional physics and logic to a degree, Ashton. We could 'what if' all day up here and still never scratch the surface of what they are honestly capable of. Planning is good, but only if it leads to action. The only certain way is to try."

"You say that," AEGIS said, hesitatingly, "but what the heck are we supposed to do? There's a whole city there."

"There's just one Exhuman there," said Jack. "We find him, and we take him out."

"There's like, ten billion stone soldiers down there," AEGIS replied.

"Golems," Cosette said.

"Golems?" I echoed dumbly.

"Golems. From Jewish folklore?" She helpfully un-clarified. "Mythological entity of a being made from mud and brought to life by magic?"

"Sure. Golems. Still ten billion of them, at least."

"Look again," Taglock said. "There's some right next to us."

It was hard to believe we'd missed them, but because they weren't moving, I guess we'd all taken them as statues, or just part of the wall. Along the walls at regular intervals were more of the golems, wearing completely superfluous stone armor and armed with spears which must have weighed a hundred pounds. Soldiers, whom I doubted would take our presence lightly.

"Moon, you've been quiet," I heard Jack behind us. "What are your thoughts?"

I turned to her, as we all did. I'd been so caught up in what was in front of us and reconnecting with Jack and Tower that I'd almost forgotten they had a new member on the team. I guess, since I was still technically team lead, that made me an incredibly shit leader.

She froze uncomfortably as attention shifted to her, and blushed but didn't hide. "Uh, I-I do not have the seniority or experience to provide any input. My apologies. Gomenasai." She delivered a sharp bow.

Like half of us, she was wearing an XPCA uniform, though hers didn't seem modified in any way, like mine was. Her powers must have no need for it. Her hair was straight, long, and black, a lot like Saga's, except obviously better cared-for, her bangs cut straight and flat right above the eyebrow, her sidelocks similarly cut straight just below her shoulders, and the hair at her back ending just below her shoulder blades.

She was a little short, not thin but not fat either. My shoulders were easily the broadest part of my body, so she looked a little off having narrow shoulders which traced downwards in gentle lines towards wide hips. Pear-shaped, I guess the term might be, but pears seemed fleshy and soft to me, and Moon instead looked like she only had as much body as she needed to keep her bones and stuff in.

Which I guess was just another circuitous way of saying she wasn't fat. If nothing else, that was obvious by her face, which was narrow and her cheeks were flat and smooth, and she was quite pretty if you were into Japanese girls, I guess.

"So what are your powers?" I asked, as she stood there, still locked in a bow, her hair all around her. She was about to reply when Tower, of all people, unexpectedly cut in.

"Don't have to worry about her. She's with me," he said, and gestured at a device which looked like a cage strapped to his back. A padded cage, but one filled with straps. This really raised more questions than answers but I wasn't going to worry too much if they already had something figured out. She might be the new guy here, but I was the one showing up and intruding.

She stood and almost smiled at him as we went back to our discussions, and I was glad I had let it go at that. I got the impression she really didn't like being the center of attention, and would try to address her more privately from here on, I guessed. Nice of Tower to drop me that hint, whether intentionally or not.

"So we just...go?" I asked the group.

"The National Guard and XPCA are both responding, actually," Cosette said. "We obviously want you guys fighting the Exhuman, especially since we have no idea if his window is open or not, we can't just unload Skyweb or anything. Do keep in mind that for anything other than a direct Exhuman-powered attack, that means you Karu, Taglock, et cetera, hit him with a teaser first. We do not want to escalate his powers, period. He's got an insane range, and if we add something lethal on top of that, this could be the event of a century, so don't friggin' do it."

Karu and Taglock both seemed a little miffed that their professionalism could get called into question, but let none of that show when they confirmed.

"National guard and the XPCA general forces will be launching a combined assault tonight at seventeen-hundred hours. Before then, infiltrate, figure out how they work, hell, kill the fucking Exhuman if you can, the show is yours. Give the soldiers something to work with, so that when they hit, they can give you something to work with."

"Got it," I said. "Lia, AEGIS, a moment? I have an idea."

Cosette's words, one word really, 'infiltration' had caught my fancy, and I had a bizarre realization that just might be true. Lia and AEGIS and I sat in the dust of the rooftop for another twenty minutes, pouring over their mobile phones while others listened with interest. It might have been crazy, but if it worked, it cost us nothing to try.

Which is why, ten minutes later, wrapped in improvised costumes Karu had commandeered from a party supply store a mile away, our ground team walked directly towards one of the open city gates.

The cheap burlap robe itched where it touched my hands and neck, but I tried to focus on just following AEGIS' feet, only barely visible under the hood which covered my face. Somewhere behind me were Karu, Tower, Jack, Tem, and Moon, the new girl, while Lia, and Taglock stayed behind as intel support, watching our movements, relocating when they needed, and talking in our ears.

"What's all this then?" I heard a voice which sounded half-british, and half like it was the churning of gravel in a garbage disposal, and AEGIS stopped in front of me.

"We are but humble pilgrims, sir," AEGIS said, her voice different, also a little british-y, but also a pleading note in it. It disgusted me a little, and I wondered how easily she'd fooled me in the past just by synthesizing some emotion or other. "We are here to visit the Eon Gate, last shrine of the fourteen steps of virtue, and resting place of the Ashes of Altaura ."

"I never thought reading all the quest text and additional lore would ever come in handy," Lia whispered in my ear.

"Do you have a token of faith?" the guard asked, sounding resigned, like he'd done this a thousand times. Despite having not existed for more than a day or two.

AEGIS made a complicated gesture which ended in a bow, and then offered the guard a holy symbol of Altaura they had me carve out of wood using a tiny lightning blade, and then spray-painted gold.

"Very well. Altaura watch over you." He stepped aside with heavy rumbling, and I moved to keep up with AEGIS's heels.

Once we were past the walls and surrounded by the bustle of a hundred golems moving a hundred places we spoke as we walked.

"So, the Exhuman is not controlling them directly, or he'd have never let us in," Karu mused.

"He might be. If he's a fan of the game, he may have no problem with anyone else willing to role-play," Lia's voice responded.

"I kind of doubt it though," I said. "There's gotta be a hundred thousand golems in here or more, and while I'm sure the guy's powers let him control things more efficiently, I can't see him managing the actions and conversations of everyone in here all at once, constantly."

We walked past three golems arguing at a stall about the price of some fish, also made of stone.

"Gotta agree with the kid here," Taglock said, his gravelly voice at risk of getting lost in the constant rumble of stone around us. "I'm guessing he just made them with a spark of intelligence and now they go about on their own. Lucky break for us in a way, but also bad news."

"Because…" Lia responded before she even had an answer, just a kid throwing her hand in the air to impress the teacher. "...because...if each one is intelligent on their own, that's a lot more threats we have to deal with."

"Bingo." I guess finger guns didn't work over comms.

"On the plus side, they won't be as coordinated as one person running everything," I said.

"You sure about that?" AEGIS said. "Because here in Eryendria, there is one person running everything. The God-King Vytar."

"Vytar. Eryendria. Altaura. Do you hear yourselves?" Tower asked.

"Hey, if you'd like, we can stop by the Well of Infinite Ripples, spend an evening at Morgdred's Gauntlet, and top it off with a trip to the Arena of Blades?" AEGIS said. "You know literally everything here has a name, and almost all of it has some backstory, right? We're standing on The Mist Road, which leads out through The Pauper's Gate where we entered, into an area where there were historically Mist Hags who would--"

"Okay, I love me some occult and mythological shit, but you have got to stop," Cosette said. "I refuse to believe this level of garbage is contributing to the mission."

AEGIS shrugged. "I just read the books."

"And you're an enormous nerd for it," Lia said, and I could hear her grin.

"My thoughts...you said there was a God-King here?" I asked

"Yeah, Vytar, fourteenth son of--"

"Is that his house?" I pointed at the huge domed castle in the middle of everything, and AEGIS slapped my hand back down.

"You do not point at God-King Vytar, and by extension, you do not point at...yes, his house...the Stellaris Forge. That is a high blasphemy in the cult of Altaura, and if someone sees you doing it, we will get crucified."

"Hey, a word I understood," I said.

"Technically they call it exolation, and it involves removing some of your organs before they hang you up, but yes, crucifixion is the jist of it."

I just stared at her blankly for a few moments before throwing my hood back over my face.

"This city is stupid and this world is stupid," I said. "Let's kill that Exhuman and get this stupid thing off our Earth."

"Something I think we can all agree with," Jack sighed.

"Where is he? Do you think? Chariot?" Tem asked, making those near me jump because, invisible.

"Well, there's only one God-King in this city, right? If I made all this on a whim using my powers, I know exactly where I'd insert myself into it all."

"Of all of my sins, I had never considered adding deicide to the list," Karu mused. "I find myself quite looking forward to it."

"Well, we've got a long way to go, and I hope I don't have to explain it to you, but he's kind of not the most publically accessible figure," AEGIS said. "We definitely have our work cut out for us."

"Fine by me," I said as we headed forward, towards the center of the city. In the distance, the dome and towers gleamed in monochrome glory in the morning sun.