Annabelle and I leapt up at the same time and raced over to the window. Her office was at the top of the arena’s pagoda, the highest point in the entire city with a spectacular view overlooking it and the lands beyond. Easily the best view in the city. We looked down to see the town square in chaos, people racing around like ants after someone stepped on their hill. They were mostly fleeing away from the Cathedral, which was enveloped in a cloud of smoke and dust. One whole section of the huge building had collapsed and flames licked out from various places.

“Does this window open?” I said.

Annabelle fiddled with a latch at the bottom and the glass panel swung out. I started climbing up onto the window sill.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m going to help, obviously. The stairs would take too long.”

“Obviously.” She bit her lip, then seemed to make a decision. “Hold on a second.”

She stretched both arms straight up over her head and closed her eyes. A purple mist sprayed from a ring on one of her fingers and started flowing down her arms, her head, her body, and finally her legs, shrouding her in a violet fog. Then, as quickly as it had come, it dissipated to reveal an entirely new outfit.

> Quick Change Ring

> This handy-dandy piece of jewelry provides instant access to an extra-dimensional clothes closet.

>

> Powers:

> What To Wear, What To Wear? – Swap current clothing for a different outfit in storage

Now that was a specialized piece of kit. Someone had too much artifice time on their hands.

She now wore a fitted dress made of a strange kind of bumpy leather with a high closed collar and a short skirt. Her tall boots went up to mid-thigh, showing a few inches of bare skin between the top of the boots and the hem of the dress. It was finished off with a wide belt cinched low over her hips. On top of it all, an ankle-length coat with a wide, stiff collar billowed around her legs. Everything was colored in varying shades of the same deep violet.

In her left hand, she held a staff made of smooth gray metal, about six feet long and topped with concentric rings like a model of a solar system, with a large purple crystal embedded in the middle in place of the sun.

> Staff of the Masters

> Originally used by high ranking members of the Elohim Sorcery Corps, there were once many of these staves. Now, only this one is known to exist. It acts as a focus, channeling sorcerous power into greater potency.

>

> Powers:

> Focus Up, People – Amplify the effects of the Make It Happen power; Requires Make It Happen

That focus power was very interesting. I hoped I would get to see her use it. But what was that Make It Happen power?

Annabelle

Arena Master

Powers:

Artifice - Expert: Create and enhance items

Make It Happen - Expert: Sorcery

Work A Crowd - Adept: Influence people’s emotions

Skills:

Aikido - Expert

Cooking - Novice

Magical Research - Master

Public Speaking - Expert

Staff - Expert

Tactics - Expert

With my improved evaluation power I was able to see Annabelle’s abilities that had previously been shrouded behind [Hidden]s. I was surprised to see that she had Artifice, and impressed that most of her abilities were at Expert level, and intrigued by the Magical Research skill, but what I found particularly interesting was her sorcery power. I couldn’t wait to see how that worked.

She stretched a bit, testing the range of motion allowed by her new outfit. “Good," she said. “Still fits. Okay, I’m ready.”

“You’re okay with jumping from this height?” I said.

“Just go already,” she smirked.

I used a custom power called Able To Leap Tall Buildings that combined Arthur’s ability to walk on air and Chika’s jumping power, then descended from the top of the arena to the courtyard level in a series of long strides. Once on the ground, I looked up to see Annabelle gliding down, a glowing circle of purple light containing mystical patterns under her feet: a magic circle. Somehow I knew that it was a levitation spell.

So that was how sorcery worked. Interesting.

Annabelle landed safely beside me a moment later, the circle vanishing just before her feet touched the cobblestones. We immediately rushed toward the burning Cathedral. There was a loud hiss and a gush of steam rose from the Cathedral amid the billowing smoke. Someone inside was trying to drown the fire.

I joined in and began hosing the closest flames with jets of water using Affinity Control, but it had little impact. Whatever had created that steam must’ve been a specialized power that produced a veritable torrent of water, far beyond my abilities. I couldn’t douse the flames, but maybe I could starve them. I switched from Water to Void and created an area of complete vacuum around a section of fire. I couldn’t see what was happening within the area of eldritch blackness, but I kept it up for a few seconds. When I released it, I saw that the fire in that area had been extinguished, but it quickly flared back up as soon as there was oxygen to feed it again.

“Cute trick,” Annabelle said, eyeing me.

“Yeah. Too bad it uses so much mana. It’s not feasible to keep it up long enough to be effective.”

“It’ll be okay, the fire squad's coming.”

Looking around I noticed members of the various martial arts clans storming into the town square from all six main avenues. Many carried buckets with them. With practiced efficiency, they formed human chains and began passing buckets of water back and forth to battle the fire.

“Think they’ve got this?” I said.

“For sure,” Annabelle said. “They’ve been practicing emergency measures like this since before all your kind arrived.”

“Then let’s go inside. There’s bound to be people trapped in there.”

Annabelle gave a curt nod of agreement, then together we sprinted through the smoke and flames into what remained of the Cathedral. It was a mess. Half the main nave had collapsed with rubble strewn everywhere. I couldn’t speak for Annabelle, but I had expected to find a rescue scene so I was very surprised to rush into a fight instead.

I immediately recognized Achmed hiding behind a big chunk of the Cathedral’s fallen roof, shooting off a strange sort of ranged attack toward the interior. A ball of blue light soared up from his hands, hovered about thirty feet in the air, then split into four projectiles that shot down independently toward individual unseen targets. I knew it had to be serious; he wasn’t shouting out power names every time he did anything.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

I dashed forward and joined him, nearly getting hit along the way by some sort of missile coming from the area where Achmed's attacks had landed.

Achmed Darwish

Team Legion (Leader)

Affinity:

Water

Gifts:

I’ll Put A Dent In It - Improved strength

Powers:

All Shall Be Revealed - Expert: See any Status

Heat Seeking Cluster Blasts - Adept: Launch a ball of energy that will split to strike multiple targets.

Seven Souls Mace Mash - Competent: Powerful strike affecting multiple targets in a single hit; Requires Mace (Expert)

Tsunami - Competent: Create a wave of water

You’re Soaking In It - Competent: Convert a solid area into water

Skills:

Affinity Control - Competent

Game Theory - Competent

Mace - Expert

Riding - Competent

“Daniel!” Achmed said when I ducked behind the mass of debris he was hiding behind. “What’re you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“We followed a quest here,” Achmed said. “Now we’re battling a nest of cultists.”

“Cultists?!” I didn’t even try to hide the excitement from my voice.

Annabelle dove behind our cover, tumbling over me and ending up in a crouch with her back to the boulder. She flipped her purple hair back out of her face. “Did someone say cultists?” she said.

“Yeahhhhh,” Achmed said, gazing at the new arrival with open confusion. “Cult of the Scarlet Hand. Demon worshippers.”

“Demon cultists,” Annabelle spat. “I hate those guys.”

“Aren’t you...?” Achmed began.

“Annabelle, yes,” Annabelle said. “Yahello.”

“Annabelle, Achmed. Achmed, Annabelle,” I said by way of terse introduction. “I knew there was something wrong with those people and their overpriced healing,” I said.

“Got that right,” Achmed said, still staring at Annabelle.

I remembered the man who’d given me the shakedown after my run-in with the Jackalope and the pin he had been wearing, a red hand. The other people working with him at the Cathedral had been wearing similar pins, which could only mean the cult had infiltrated the entire operation. They also all had the same Thaumaturgy skill.

Demon worshippers. My mind went immediately to my friend, the succubus Daruka. Was she involved in this somehow?

“How can we help?” I said.

Achmed tore his attention away from Annabelle and toward me. “There’s something happening in the catacombs under here. We’ve got to get down there and stop it.”

“Got it. So that means getting past the goons up here first, right?”

“Right.”

I turned to Annabelle. She was gripping her staff tightly, peeking over the rubble. “You good with this?”

She nodded without looking at me. “I’m good. From what I can tell, we’re looking at thirteen cultists. They’re all collected on the left side, in front of a door.”

“That must be the door we need to go through to get to the Catacombs,” I said. “Achmed, how are the Legionnaires?”

The leader of Team Legion grimaced. “We lost a few getting here, then a few more fell in the explosion. I’ve been trying to keep the cultists back while the others evacuate any survivors, but it’s been tough.”

He gestured a bit to the right in front of us where two bodies lay on the floor behind some debris. I recognized them as two of his teammates. They weren’t moving, and a quick check told me their health bars were flat empty. Dead. I hoped not dead-dead.

“You prioritized helping the wounded above finishing the quest?” Annabelle said, looking at Achmed with a slight frown.

Achmed rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah. Stupid, I know.”

“Probably,” I said, “but it’s what I would’ve done too.”

Annabelle started looking back and forth between Achmed and me, as though our faces were each half of a tennis court where invisible players were involved in a game only she could see. The frown was there, but it didn’t seem judgy — I knew what a frown of judgemental displeasure looked like, thankyouverymuch, I’d seen one aimed at me often enough — it seemed more like the pleasantly confused frown Achmed wore when Annabelle had first tumbled her way behind the rubble, like she didn’t quite know what to make of it but thought it was kind of cool.

Achmed pointed farther off to the right. I could see a few Legionnaires huddled behind a large section of wreckage along with a group of wounded. There were both other Players and NPCs among them. “We need to get those people out of here before we do anything else.”

“How about this,” I said. “Annabelle and I will keep those cultists busy while you help your guys finish the rescue operation. Then we’ll worry about how to get down to the catacombs once everyone’s safe.”

“You sure?” Achmed said.

“Yeah, man, of course,” I said. “Besides, I can see you’re almost out of mana.”

“I have this power to make a sort of tidal wave. Between using it on the fire and attacking the cultists I kind of drained myself.”

“So it was you who did that,” I said, pulling out a mana potion. “I saw the steam from outside.”

“That was me. Fat good it did, though. Cheers,” he added, accepting the potion and chugging it down.

“It was a great effort, Achmed. Don’t sell yourself short.”

He barked a hoarse laugh which ended in sputtering coughs. “That’s pretty rich coming from you.”

Annabelle put her hand on Achmed’s shoulder. “We’ve got this,” she said. “You go help people.”

Achmed grinned. Half his team was dead, his quest far from over, his mana depleted, yet he was still determined to save people. I felt a rush of affection and respect for him. This was the sort of Player we needed.

Looking back, I don’t know if Team Legion’s quest was particularly challenging or if the team just had particularly bad luck, but either way Achmed lost four of his comrades that day. Like, lost-lost. I heard people say later that they must have been a bad team, or that he was a bad leader, but they would never have said that if they’d seen what they’d faced, or how hard he and his Legionnaires fought to rescue people from the Cathedral’s wreckage, not to mention what they were about to do after that.

“We’ll be counting on you,” Achmed said.

“I won’t let you down,” I said.

Achmed grabbed my arm. “Hey man, thanks. Really. You know, I heard about your little tussle in the arena the other night. Word on the street is you took down an entire team by yourself with a bottle of whiskey in one hand.”

“That’s somewhat of an exaggeration,” I said.

“It was only half a team,” Annabelle said. “And the whiskey was all in his tummy.”

“You’re not helping,” I muttered.

“I’m not trying to,” she said, and that made Achmed laugh.

“Point is, I know I’m in good hands,” Achmed said.

There was a pile of rubble off to the left that had a good vantage on the cultists. “I’ll go over there and draw their fire,” I said. “Wait until they’re distracted then go join your buddies and do what you’ve got to do. Annabelle, can you cover us?”

“You know it,” she said, then shifted her grip on her staff. The crystal embedded in its head began to emit a deep purple glow, then she lurched out from behind our cover and aimed the top of the staff at the cultists guarding the door. Several small, glowing magic circles, similar to the one that had carried her down from the pagoda, appeared in the air in front of her. A series of violet blasts shot from them, shearing away chunks of stone as they hit the rubble the cultists hid behind.

I didn’t wait to see more. As I launched myself forward I used a synthesized power called Holtzmann Effect to raise a personal shield around myself. There was a whiff of ozone and a shimmering, nearly transparent barrier formed around my body, then I zig-zagged in a crouching dash toward my new hiding spot. I could’ve used Jane’s power to blink directly over but I didn’t just want to get there, I wanted to draw their fire along the way. It worked.

Something bounced off the floor behind me, then a lot of somethings rat-tat-tatted off the smooth stones barely a step behind me, tracking my movements, one of them striking my calf but fizzling against my shield just before I dove behind cover. I lay there for a moment, catching my breath and waiting for the ping-ping of the cultist’s attacks to stop ricocheting off the large hunk of Cathedral roof I’d sought cover behind.

I pulled myself up and knelt behind the rubble. Looking back where I’d come from, I saw Annabelle crouching behind her cover, alone. Her long purple hair was in disarray, but she seemed fine. If anything, she seemed really happy.

She caught my look, winked, then poked around the other side of her cover and fired a rapid series of continuous blasts from a single larger magic circle that appeared in the air in front of her staff. “Let’s rock!” she shouted, and drew her staff in a wide arc in front of her, spraying a swath of purple destruction along the cultists’ location like a machine gun.

She ducked back a split second before several cultists popped out and counter-attacked, pummeling the rubble in front of her with some energy blasts of their own. Further along, I saw Achmed’s head poke up from behind the collapsed wall where his teammates had been hiding. So far, so good. Now we just had to continue the distraction while the remaining Legionnaires evacuated the injured.

Achmed saw me, gave me a thumbs up, and ducked back down.

My turn.

What to do? What to do?