Joe had screamed his head off as I sped through the mall, over crowds and past countless storefronts. It felt good to move this way, adrenaline rushing through my system with every leap and twist. The movements were smooth and instinctual, like I had practiced them for countless hours.

I hadn’t, though, and the proof of that was in the tale of destruction left in my wake. I toppled many of the stalls I used for momentum and left cracks in the walls I bounced off.

Also, I think I made Joe throw up a couple times.

But I was feeling fresh and energized, the bottom of my coat swirling around my ankles as I approached the gate, Joe staggering and stumbling behind me. The mall doors were closed, and outside them I could see the bridge was raised up, forming a second barrier.

Despite that, I could still see slices of the parking lot between the slats of the bridge and the glass of the doors. There was a lot of blood. And pieces of...I looked away.

Karl, insubstantial and barely visible, wordlessly flitted along the walls, slipping out through the closed doors at my silent request. If he found something urgent, he would let me know.

My attention shifted back into the mall, where people had been standing and sitting and sobbing and shouting at each other. Now they were mostly staring at me, in near-universal shocked silence

Awkwardly, I raised my hand. “I’m a Guardian, Inferno Blade. It’s my job to kill monsters and close the portals that let them through. Anyone want to tell me what’s going on here?”

Immediately, everyone started talking. At least five people called me crazy, a liar, or a crazy liar. There was a lot of incoherent pleading, someone was ranting about chemtrails causing illusions and the Golgothan Monkey, and I caught a few snippets of actually useful information coming from some individuals scattered among the terrified crowd.

Honestly, I was impressed with their resilience. No matter how energized I felt or how confident I acted, I couldn’t make my hands stop shaking and there was a boulder of terror lodged inside my chest. And my eyes wouldn’t stop flicking to the half-full blue bar that glowed across the top of my vision, warning me how much magic I could use before those “consequences” Karl warned me of started happening.

And I had been given the capability to fight the monsters, not just cower away from them. Without it, I would have been gibbering in a corner somewhere.

These people were stronger than me. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have appreciated them slowing down a little and letting me hear what had actually happened while I had been fighting in the Reality Tear.

I heard someone trudging up behind me. “Everyone, stop talking!” Joe bellowed.

The room fell silent for a few moments, except for a distant screaming and the wail of car alarms. Then one of the security guards, a handsome man with slicked-back hair, stepped forward. “Joe, my uncle will hear about your latest insanity. Our priority isn’t putting guns into the hands of untrained idiots, it's keeping the mall safe! We need to evacuate people, not do this fortification nonsense! You aren’t in the army any more! And what’s this...costumed moron you brought to try and back you up?”

Joe seemed perfectly capable of handling things there, stepping right into the guard’s face and bellowing at him so fiercely I had to resist the urge to stand at attention. So instead I started visiting people in the crowd, talking to them quietly, promising them that they were safe now.

The beams I had made - Crimson Spears, my Contract told me that was what they were properly called now that I knew how to ask - danced in my hands, circling them, making chains and loops and spirals. I let people see them, see that there was magic on their side, as I made my promises. I would keep them safe. I would kill the monsters out there, and stop more from coming through.

I kept my movements slow, and steady, trying to act confident. In the background, I heard people getting organized, making plans, and those unwilling to fight were being sent away. I left that to Joe, content to reassure people and wait for Karl.

Then I came to a child sitting in the corner, a few older folks around them. He had been sobbing, and then he looked at me, eyes bright with tears. “You have to help them!” he cried out.

“Who?” I asked, all pretense of calmness forgotten.

I heard Karl’s voice echo in my head, as calm as ever, only the faintest tinge of concern entering.

[“Benny, there are survivors out here, and they are in immediate danger. They are children.”]

I snapped up and turned around. “Don’t worry kid, I’ll keep them safe,” I growled, and I sped across the floor, coat flaring behind me.

“Karl, I need to get these people equipped. How many points do I have, how do I spend them best?”

The concern was gone from his voice now, replaced with cool certainty.

[“You can see your totals in your vision, but to summarize: You have 710 points from kills, closing a Reality Tear, and your starting bonus of 200. Unlocking the Tier 1 Kinetic Firearms Vault will cost 100. There are approximately 30,000 different weapons in that category, but I would recommend the Model 7 Variable Fire Rifle. Each one costs 50 points.”]

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The math was quick. There were only so many people here I would trust with weaponry strong enough to slaughter the monsters, and I would need to keep some points in reserve...

“Give me six of them. And a set of spare reloads for each,” I instructed.

Moving on instinct, I grabbed the side of my coat, flipping it up like a magician. There was a blast of gentle black unlight, and then at my feet fell twelve boxes - half long and narrow, half round and squat.

[“The Vault and guns cost you 400 points, the ammunition costs 120. You have 190 points left. Will you get a gun for yourself?”]

I ignored this in favor of calling out “Joe! Catch!”

He barely got his hands in time to cradle it like a baby. His cheeks and the rims of his eyes were red, and he sucked in an angry breath, but I cut him off, relaying the information Karl gave me.

I did wonder why he wasn’t just talking into Joe’s mind like before. Perhaps he was too close to another Reality Tear.

Regardless, I spoke - quick and clipped.

“This is a rifle designed to kill monsters. Each clip has twenty five bullets, you have twenty five clips in each box. It has a lever above the trigger. Up is semi-auto, level is auto, down is enchanted. You only get fifty enchanted shots total, only reserve them for something that doesn’t go down with regular.”

There was no time for anything more. “Lower the drawbridge. Now.”

The rat Joe had been arguing piped up. “No way, there are monsters out there!”

Joe looked down at the rifle then up at me. “I appreciate the help, but we can’t risk-”

Before he finished his sentence my vision flashed red and I moved. My hand halted an inch from Joe’s throat.

“Children are out there. A Reality Tear is out there. You lower the drawbridge, or I go through it. And through you, if need be.”

There was an instant of silence, the same type that had greeted my arrival. And then I heard machinery grinding, and the drawbridge started to tilt down.

I spun on my heel. I would worry about mending my relationship with Joe later. Behind me, he started issuing orders again, people organizing themselves around me. The little boy who had asked for my help was shuffled away, despite his desperate cries to stay. Others took up arms, or went to gather furniture to improvise a barricade.

They would be alright. I had my own battles to fight now.

As the drawbridge lowered a foot, I began to move, sprinting. I reached it before it had gotten a foot of clearance.

I jumped, and let instinct take over again. The wind rushed around me. My oatstretched out behind me. Up I went, legs lashing out, arms reaching up. I found footholds, or perhaps the force I moved with made them for me.

For an instant, I perched atop the drawbridge as it kept lowering, and surveyed the world around me.

The sky above me was a perfect sapphire blue, only marred by a few wisps of cloud and some flocks of what were hopefully normal crows. The sun beat down upon me, barely enough to warm my skin, uncaring of what its rays touched.

Distantly, I could see a sucking wound hovering in the air, all soft curves and pulsing nodules of nothingness that made me want to retch. Around it lay corpses, ripped and torn in grisly displays. Some of them looked like they had been devoured. Some looked like they might still be breathing, somehow. And some of them had quite clearly been...infested.

There were shattered ruins of cars and trucks scattered about. Some, seemingly at random, had been left alone, while others had been tossed through the air and left crumpled on the ground, or had been rotted and rusted into crumbling wrecks.

And everywhere, I saw monsters. So many I couldn’t count them. There were some of the ones I had seen before, inside the mall, but there were also fresh varieties. I swallowed as I saw a pair of long-legged centipede horrors, with matched arms ending in venom-dripping claws, circling the parking lot. Some of those arms had dead bodies impaled on them.

I had seen smaller buses. And those bodies...they were so small...I had to blink back tears.

I had failed. I was too late. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t save them.

But maybe, maybe, I could avenge them.

I tensed, ready to jump, when Karl appeared on my shoulder.

I nearly toppled over from the shock, and then again when I tried to shift to accommodate for his weight, only for there to be none. His tails pointed out at a patch of exposed asphalt soaked in what looked like lumpy mud at first glance.

I leaned forward and saw that those lumps were people, crouched down, shivering, terrified.

They were nearly surrounded by slavering hybrids of wolf and spider and porcupine scuttling around, leaving only a narrow gap, while a car-sized gorilla with dozens of snakes surrounding its bare skull and a third arm ending in a scythed blade prowled about.

The wolf-creatures skittered about on forests of glistening limbs, hissing and spitting at their terrified victims. The people shifted together, flinching back from the monsters. They were being herded.

And then one of them, near the gap, seemed to see an opportunity. She lunged up and began to sprint towards the gorilla-thing. Some of the monsters chased after her, some held their positions. They began snapping at each other. And in an instant, the pack’s coordination vanished. Gaps opened up, and people began to rush them. I began leaping forward, ignoring everything but the desperate drama before me.

The first to move had reached the gorilla-thing and tried to dodge around it, but its third arm swept down and scythed towards their stomach, pinning them to the muddy ground.

I could hear their screams, high and sharp and pained.

“No!” I shouted, my legs bending so I could jump, but again, it was too late.

Again, I had been too slow, too weak, too useless.

And then in between one instant and the next, that brave, bleeding soul had vanished and been replaced.

There was no transition, no transformation. Just a flash of colorless light. And then there was a girl lying in the muck, wearing an elaborate dress of overlapping feathers, wings built into the back. In her hands, she held a giant feather that glistened in the sunlight. Effortlessly, she swung it, and it cut through the limb piercing into her.

[“Reinforcements.”] Karl said with satisfaction.

And I leaped, hands out, ready for revenge and rescue.