Gaylen found himself in a different sort of wilderness; a confusing mix of urbanisation and wild growth, a logical step up, or down, from the hamlet he’d just visited. There were houses, and even paved streets, which the forest was in the process of taking over. Plant matter hung onto walls, poked out through windows, and was gradually forcing its way up through the streets themselves.

He had lost the thing a while back, or at least widened the distance, by weaving through narrow streets, putting as many walls and corners between them as possible.

He didn’t really know where he was, but he did have a direction: Sammy. Because, for whatever reason, and just like the lock-bombs, both the tracker and the accompanying pad had survived the effect that silenced guns and comms.

Magic. Whatever.

He hated not understanding the rules. He knew pirates, and port gangs, and city outfits, and station tyrants, and hitmen, and crooked corps and human traffickers. But this he didn’t know. And now, as he stumbled along a half-overgrown street of cheap concrete, he had to face that it was entirely his own fault. He had run into a real Kalero Warden often enough to be on borderline casual terms. He had had multiple opportunities to just ask Pietr how all this stuff worked. Hell, he could have just braved the language barrier to discuss it with Bers! The overall implication, as far as he could tell, was that his people were well familiar with these things.

But he hadn’t, because this stuff wigged him out in a way that nothing else did. His mind kept trying to make logical sense of it all, distracting from the task of navigating these tricky streets. How had he not seen the thing before it grabbed that guy Drebb? How had he not heard it? How hadn’t those three either, standing far closer to it than Gaylen had been?

He tried to figure out whether it had been outright invisible, or if his attention had somehow really not picked up on it until it physically interacted with something else, namely Drebb and his internal organs.

It was a fruitless endeavour, and as his foot snagged on yet another root protruding from the concrete, he forcefully jammed those thoughts into the back of his head.

Keep calm and survive. Focus on what will help you in the moment.

But that was just it: It seemed that he couldn’t quite trust his senses around this thing. And he couldn’t understand it, or think of ways to potentially counter it. It created an extra element of vulnerability, and so the intrusive thoughts fought against confinement, demanding logic, demanding reason, in an unreasonable situation.

He tripped up on a protruding root yet again. Gaylen groaned, and stopped for a moment to rest his back against a small, prefab residential. He had switched from running to brisk walking, but the fatigue was still catching up. It was causing him to make more mistakes, which in turn further sapped his stamina. It was a vicious cycle, with no real way out.

Because the thing was still after him. He just knew it, somehow. It was that strange, primal pit of dread within, a sense of revulsion he had only felt once before, telling him, in a way there were no words for, that he was being targeted by forces he didn’t understand. But some deep, near-unreachable part of him, far beyond human reasoning and limited senses, did understand. And it was afraid.

“Damn it…”

Gaylen took deep, steadying breaths. Little moments of pulling oneself together could make the difference, in those deciding moments.

He gave the pad another look. The tracker was still broadcasting, and Gaylen still didn’t dare activate audio, settling for just knowing where Sammy was headed. He was still getting closer to the prick, and the man had even slowed down. Maybe his stamina was finally running out, or he was having to do his own bit of tricky navigation.

Gaylen wondered just how big these damn suburbs were. It wasn’t until he thought to look upwards that things started to get clearer. Because sections of the starry sky were missing; generally rectangular outlines of pure blackness, rising high. Gaylen hadn’t studied the area’s countryside to any real degree, but knew there were no mountains; Baider-Bas had been built on a large plain. And though Sammy sure could run, he hadn’t led Gaylen as far as all that in roughly an hour.

Rather, he had led him towards that other nearby city core. The dead one. The one that had failed, due to various mishaps, and been abandoned by the corps. The unlit giants were what had been built of skyscrapers and landing towers before some board’s profit projections had caused the cord to be pulled. Gaylen was in a whole new suburb that had risen fast, and died as the core did.

Of course. Of course neighbouring lowlifes would put free real estate to use. What better place to store the more outrageously illegal stuff. Such as a kidnapping victim. And guns, of course. If the Green Jackets packed more than knives and a few pistols, some hideout in the dead core would be an ideal armoury.

Gaylen got going again. He had a bit of energy back, and pushed on. He came upon a long, narrow street that stretched on towards the failed core further than he could see in the starlight. And then he stopped.

It was that pit. It gripped him like a big fist and halted him in his tracks. There were no sounds; nothing but insects and a few night-time birds, hooting and chirping in the distance. And there was nothing to see, save cheaply made, decaying infrastructure as it faded off into the blackness.

And yet, somehow, that profound part of him felt there was danger.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Well, only a fool didn’t listen to those who knew better. Gaylen backed away, towards a side-street that hadn’t yet fallen victim to the aggressive growth. He looked down it, then back down the long street, and felt a sudden spike in that primal pit. A second later, as he started running, he heard the thing moving. Moving fast.

The run changed into a sprint. It enhanced his chances of tripping, but slow meant death anyway. And so he sprinted, into darkness and decay. The thing had longer legs than he did, and one of the things he had very much not asked Pietr or Bers was whether abominations from beyond sanity and normal dimensions got tired.

So he took the first narrow side-alley he passed. The thing could probably fit through, but it would be an awkward passage, slowing it down, buying him extra seconds. A lack of sunlight had kept the alley plant-free, so there was nothing for him to trip over. That was why he was so caught off-guard when his foot did catch on something.

It was a solid, rough-feeling object; possibly fallen from one of the decaying buildings. Momentum carried him a respectable distance before he flopped on the ground. He was too far into survival mode to feel the landing to any real degree, but his body did resist him a little as he got back up. The sound of the thing, scraping up against both sides of the alley, gave him the boost needed to make up for it.

There was an empty window. The glass or plastic or panel had been removed, assuming construction had ever gotten that far. It wasn’t a great fit for a grown man, which meant it was a terrible one for the thing. Gaylen forced a leg over the sill and inside, then ducked and squeezed, and managed to force an awkward entrance. He was now in full darkness, but a glowstick solved that. He’d been reluctant to resort to it, what with it giving his spot away, but the thing was on him anyway.

There was little to see on the inside, and he only cared about openings and obstructions. There was little of the latter, and so he hurried on through. There were no inner doors, and this was some sort of row house, allowing him to jog a fair length before coming to a dead end on its far side. There he found a front door that wouldn’t open, and seconds later an empty window. He exited just as he’d entered, on the opposite side to the alley.

The glowstick in his hand shone on the broadest street he’d seen in the area so far. It was relatively clear of the encroaching wilderness, and headed towards the looming city core. Gaylen closed his hand around the stick to soften the light coming off it, and started jogging. Stamina had become a precious resource, best stored up for the next emergency. For now, he had lost the thing, and hopefully confused it some. And so he jogged.

The core loomed larger and larger above him, and still he saw not a single light. There was always something weirdly eerie about huge buildings that showed absolutely no sign of life, although with the thing on his heels that was a very distant concern. And a peek at the pad confirmed that Sammy was indeed within the core by now, so clearly it wasn’t fully abandoned.

As he crossed the final distance to the giants that he could only see via their outline against the stars, the buildings around him grew rougher. A few still stood intact, but many were missing large portions, outer cladding, or were simply foundations. Rather than outright destruction or decay, it seemed more that the corps that had pulled out had taken what valuables could be recovered in a cost-effective fashion. Mostly that meant wiring, or easily-removed plating, and the closer he got the more pronounced the deconstruction was.

The road came to an end by the ‘fence’ that the outermost skyscrapers formed around the rest of the core. Gaylen had been hoping for an entrance in between, but instead it seemed they were simply mashed up against one another. At least, that was the impression he got in his very limited light.

He opened his hand to get full use of the stick, and nothing really changed. The taller buildings showed hints of having been gutted as well, giving them a skeletal appearance, and he thought he spotted a way leading down, underneath it all, but he really didn’t need to get himself trapped now.

So instead he went to the right, in search of a road.

“There you are.”

It was the bastard in the robe. His voice had an odd echoing quality, making his location hard to tell. Gaylen waved the stick around for a couple of seconds, found nothing, then stuck it in his pocket and shifted positions. With his other hand he drew and unfolded his knife.

“How are you enjoying my world, so far? Interloper? Tell me.”

Gaylen kept on moving, slowly, carefully, looking every which way for a humanoid figure amidst the darkness, foundations, and exposed walls.

“What’s this about?!” Gaylen asked, loudly enough for his own voice to echo off the skyscrapers. As much as he hated to engage with these types, there were times when it counted as tactics.

“I think I have made myself clear,” the mystery man replied. “I tire of your kind. I tire of your ignorance and disrespect, and the influences you bring to this world. This is a world of old ways. It does not need disruption.”

Gaylen kept on moving, trying to find the man as he continued to enjoy the sound of his own voice.

“I do not know the specifics of why you are here, or what you want, but it does not matter. I am waging an ongoing campaign, and all who were at that meeting are marked for stamping out. As a lesson. As a warning.”

There was a burst, a crackle, and a flash of strange colour up above. Gaylen looked up just in time to not quite see it, but he could tell that something had come loose from the skyscrapers. He leapt, diving blindly, and heard a great crash. It sounded like piping; perhaps exposed plumbing or work platforms that had been left behind.

The stick came partially out of his pocket, giving him away for an instant before he stuffed it back in. Then an idea struck, and he took it back out, clenched in his fist, and stuffed it under a piece of the stuff that had crashed down. It glowed faintly, but visibly, and Gaylen started sneaking away. The echoes from the crash were taking their time to die away, giving him a bit of cover as he went back the way he’d come.

“Man runs from death. Tries to bargain, seeking to live on in various ways. But death can not be denied. It claims all, leaving nothing but dust and memories, and even those fade and die. And it certainly can not be fooled with a glowstick.”

Gaylen felt it: That dread, and he knew what the pretentious, robed bastard was getting at.

“Your time is up, offworlder.”

Gaylen dove again, as the dread spiked. The thing’s swipe missed him, and the only direction he had to retreat to lay downwards; into the foundations of the dead core, and into true darkness.