At one point, while desperately searching for the exit, he had had to rest one boot on the wall behind him and the other on the one in front of him, starting to climb as if he were clawing his way up from the depths of a well. And, of course, the creatures that lived inside it hadn't left him alone at any point.

He took practically every attack they threw at him for obvious reasons. But Sylvester tried to return each and every one of them with double the fury, and most of the time he succeeded. The only thing that illuminated his lonely climb up the tunnel of throbbing flesh, even though the monster was already dead, was the clash of his sword against the monsters claws.

Because yes, they had claws. And tentacles.

And limbs for which human language had no name, things he saw writhing for a few moments as sparks flew and had to tell himself they were his imaginings, things that tore inside him without needing to reach him. A wound deeper than any other, a wound in the soul.

He thought he wouldn't make it, naturally, but he fought on anyway because he couldn't do anything else. Driven not by courage, but by fear of the pain, the cold and the consequences of stopping. Scared shitless at the thought that this hell could go on forever. Nothing more than that.

And things got worse, not better, when he realized that his message had gotten through to the syndicate after all.

His mind was dyed white.

His limbs stopped responding. He lost his balance, lost his grip, fell about ten meters before catching himself again with the help of his hands. The creatures stalking him hadn’t been so lucky.

He wasn't breathing. He could feel it in his chest... his heart had stopped because of all the electricity. It felt like he had an ice dagger stuck in his heart.

His breathing resumed.

A sweet relief ran through his body. His arms and legs were trembling. He didn't know how he had been able to hold on. And, in the midst of it...

"What..."

He saw a floating green circle.

It took him several seconds to realize what it could be, and several seconds to put aside the idea that it was a mere hallucination.

He moved his head to one side and the circle moved in turn, showing him the way still.

"Fuck."

He had crawled as far as he could, following the floating icon. The rest was history.

His friends had taken him out of there and now he was wild and free. Not from the shadow of war, but at least from that terrible darkness and the things that inhabited it. Free from the promised eternity of pain. Now he could return to the familiar.

He caught one of the giants by surprise, since the guy had been too busy fighting a strange creature with arms where it should have legs and vice versa, which, to top it off, drooled acid and crawled around like a spider.

He caught it by surprise. And skewered it on his sword before it had time to react. Sylvester had gotten too close to the enemy, forcing him to use the rifle not to shoot, but to defend himself as if it were a sword. So he hadn't had the slightest chance against Sylvester, who had appeared fast as the wind. The enemy didn’t even have the chance to react in time, but, like anyone else, he had tried anyway. No, rather he hadn't had time to realize before his life was taken.

He was going to dispatch the strange creature as well, of course. They were all his enemies.

But Cynthia beat him to it.

She did something with her revolvers, transforming the creature, which was in the middle of launching an attack against him, into an ice sculpture. Sylvester blinked. That wasn't halfway normal, but there would be time for explanations once the fight was over.

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He could have been the one to deliver the coup de grace, blowing the ice sculpture into a thousand pieces.

However, Ryan did it in one fell swoop.

A very quick reaction. He hadn't wasted a second in surprise that Cynthia could do that. Which couldn't mean anything other than that he already knew. So Ryan knew something he didn't, something Cynthia had kept secret, or at least had felt it wasn't the time to talk about it amidst all the fuss.

In any case, my, my, my. How things changed.

But it didn't really surprise him too much.

The bonds forged in the heat of battle were fine, but he wasn't too good at being a person. So it was no wonder that after four days of absence someone like Ryan had gained more of her favor, even if she had started out hating him.

Sylvester clicked his tongue.

They kept fighting. Fighting alongside Heather and her army of Lunar Remnants (meaning the population of the city, the people they were supposed to protect) against alien invaders. What a crazy day, and it had only just begun. Speaking of which, what a crazy week. It was amazing to think that the first stone in this whole mess had been thrown less than a full week ago.

The giants in armor must have been more or less human, reacting to their presence as if they feared death, and as if they had the same limitations as them in terms of sight and hearing. Backing away and putting priority on them, the newcomers.

While the other alien creatures, more bizarre and far from human or humanoid, often didn’t even fail to attack these giants as they reacted to their presence.

Most had plenty of extra limbs to attack four or more people at once.

Nothing compared to what he had faced in the entrails of that beast, something he preferred not to remember. What really worried him was that another creature like that one would come out of the portal; he wouldn't repeat what he had done before, not even if he was crazy.

But among what was here and now, among what he could be sure of, his biggest concern was those giants.

After all, they were carrying firearms.

Sylvester used a katana because his job was to fight against Lunar Remnants, monsters that had turned their backs on humanity and used only their monstrous transformed bodies to fight, along with the skills they had developed. It was the most efficient against them.

But these were neither human or humanoid.

As good as he was, it was obvious that he was at a disadvantage. It was a matter of speed and range. They could kill him from many hundreds of meters with that thing, while the length of the blade of his sword was only one hundred and ten centimeters.

And, try as I might, overclocked or not, he couldn't swing the sword faster than a bullet flew, let alone an energy shot.

That was the way things were.

For that very reason, in the end he stole the weapon from one of his fallen enemies and sheathed the katana. He didn't like it, he had grown accustomed to it over the course of a decade (there was little that humans couldn't get used to, let alone in that amount of time). But he would do what he had to do.

The disadvantage had been corrected and he had the upper hand.

He always had, but even more so now.

Heather, however, didn't seem to have any problem with continuing to fight using only her usual black crystal sword. Proving once again that she was superior to him.

For the moment, he thought. Just for the moment.

At least it looked like no reinforcements were coming through the portals, otherwise the situation would quickly become untenable and even dropping a nuclear bomb on Kaleidoscope wouldn’t be enough.

First things first. Clear the place of the enemies that had arrived. Then...

They would find some way to deal with the portals.

They always found a way, sooner or later.

(sooner or later luck runs out because she is a bad bitch)

Yes, sooner or later. But not yet.

They got rid of the aliens (by which he meant the creatures that were more obviously from out of this world, not the six-foot giants, although they would stand out anywhere else too) and also with almost all the rest of the invaders.

Sylvester left only one alive, hoping to get something besides the answers he already knew.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" asked Heather.

"I was hoping you knew what this thing was saying." Probably empty threats or equally hollow patriotism about him being one of many, they could defeat him but not stop the tsunami of shit coming their way. Just surely in different words.

But, in any case, if they could communicate at least there would be a chance to get something out of the alien.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you. I don't even know how to speak all the languages of this Earth, much less another planet. Or dimension. When would I have had the time?"

"Yeah, but I thought you'd have an Skill for that."

"Oh. Well, I wish. But I don't."

"Can’t be helped."

Shrugging, he pushed the sword further in, giving it the coup de grace.

He then stood up.

"What do we do with the portals?" Heather asked him as if he were in charge.

"I was also hoping you had some thoughts on the matter.

"Aha. And, while we're at it, are you sure we've killed them all? That none of those space soldiers escaped?" In fact, that question hadn't even crossed his mind.

It was no wonder since he had been lost in the middle of the battle. It was easier to get a broad perspective on things with, well, a broad perspective. For example, flying in the air. Not with boots in the mud.

"Good question. I have no fucking idea."

So, that was the only thing he could answer.

And there was silence.

The Defense of Kaleidoscope (8): END