Mark paced around his great room. He'd already warned everyone that they'd need to run and he could still hear the sounds of panic from outside.

Despite his Vitality, his legs ached from their run. It had taken everything they had to stay ahead of Junior's demons. Whatever combination of Skills that allowed a whole army to move that fast would be there downfall.

Samba and Mark couldn't fight off the army alone, but their people could never move fast enough to escape. The walls had barely provided any protection the last time they'd been there.

No, he'd gone through this a hundred times in the run home. They'd have to flee and hope for a miracle - that was the only way.

Mark clenched his fist, holding back the urge to put it through the wall. Exhaustion from his mad dash had frayed his nerves and the hopelessness of their situation just made it worse.

Their army was still days behind the demons and even if they were here they would lose.

"Honey?" Alice's voice interrupted him from his spiraling thoughts. Seeing the concern on her face almost broke him. Their closeness laid the direness of their situation bare without him needing to say anything. "Should... I wake Rae?"

Mark ran a hand through his hair, surprised to find that his fingers were shaking. "No, let her rest just a little longer."

Let her enjoy the peace of ignorance as long as she can. He left that part unsaid too, but Alice understood anyways. She knew him far too well.

The door opened.

An Otter stood there in the doorway, wearing the robes of Samba's clan. There was a tension in her posture that was impossible to hide, but who wouldn't be tense in this situation?

"What's going on?" He assumed that she had some message from Samba about the state of his part of Wavecrest. Then he noticed the child tucked into her robe, whose eyes seemed to light up when they saw him.

In the flickering lantern light of his great room, the child leapt out of the robes and rushed across the room towards him. Mark smiled as it reminded him of Greave when he was still small.

The small Otter had loved to hang out with him and Samba. It was a shame that they grew up so fast.

Mark caught the child, turning his small smile to a broad grin. It was only a little bit forced as he had always loved children, but it was better to keep the children's spirit up. They, at least, should make it and he didn't want to add more to what would already be a traumatic night.

"Who do we have here?," Mark asked as he raised the child up so he could see them properly.

He flinched, barely keeping hold of them. The child's eyes were lifeless and predatory in a way that he'd never seen in another Otter. His instincts were telling him to run or fight that there was something unnatural in the child before him, but how could he do that to a child?

The child's lifeless eyes gleamed as it sunk its teeth into his arm.

Pain. There was only pain. Endless, mind obliterating pain.

*****

Tiria started to rush forward after the doll, but the human seemed to welcome it with open arms. She didn't know why this human seemed so open to monsters, but it had made her mission much easier.

Simple even.

When the doll finally bit down on him, the man screamed. His right fist lit up in a huge display of burning light even as he fell backward on the ground, but it was the scream that rooted her in place.

It was the sound of a soul being torn in shreds, one that she was intimately familiar with from when Wax had fallen during the battle of Igna. The scream of agony that can only happen when something whole becomes something not.

She barely noticed when the man's partner began screaming as well. She rushed forward to help the man, but a glob of web stuck her in place. Orchid had crawled through the doorway on the ceiling, eager to prove herself this time around.

"SAMBA! HELP!" The woman's accent was terrible, but she could have sworn that she just...

A human burst through the door behind her, but Tiria kicked backwards on instinct and the woman went tumbling into the street. The man's screams had slowed her instincts and she had just kicked and not killed the soldier-like woman.

That was a mistake.

More cries echoed through the street. These were mostly in the human tongue, but she kept hearing "Samba" on their shouts. She had a bad feeling about this and if the orb of light around the man's hand was any indicator, this was going to take longer than she'd thought.

"Please, don't, why?" The man's partner had started to plead with her, also in the monster tongue, but hers was much more broken.

Tiria tried to ignore her, but the act of breaking into someone's home and killing them in cold blood sat heavy in her stomach. This wasn't who she'd been before the Battle of Igna. She'd never have done this.

She was resurrecting Gi. Why did it have to feel like she was the villain here?

Despite her feelings, she didn't stop it. She'd realized how Gi had to make hard choices for their clan and had hardened her heart to lead while he was gone.

Her heart might have quivered unsteadily, but the Heart of Crossroads that she'd inherited from Gi and her Soul of Conviction that had been recently realized kept her firmly in place.

The partner's cries increased, but they had returned to the human tongue. They were no longer for Tiria.

A small, human child stood in the doorway to their bedroom. Her eyes wide as saucers at the sight of her father in pain. She shouted something in the human tongue, but it was lost to Tiria in cacophony of screams and cries both in the house and without.

Another glob of web stuck the child to the doorframe, forcing her to watch as her father's soul was shredded for their use.

Tiria felt sick, but she would endure.

Danna, please give me the strength.

****

Samba's legs felt thin in a way that he'd never experienced before. He found himself looking down constantly and expecting to see shriveled husks where mighty trunks used to be.

They looked normal though. It was just an illusion from fatigue. He returned his attention to his family.

"Greave, Helm, Shield - what is your job?"

"To help the humans get all the children into the fishing boats," Helm said.

"And protect them," Shield added.

"We're not Children anymore, Dad. You can trust us," Greave said.

"I know, but you'll always be my little boys to me." Samba pulled all three of them into a hug and they started groaning. If he held them a little longer than he normally would, they'd just think it was annoying.

He just wanted to savor his time with them.

They couldn't escape the fast moving demons, not truly. The children should be safe in the fishing boats and protected by Otters, but he couldn't just let the humans get slaughtered and he knew that Mark would never abandon his people.

Tala's eyes were misty as she knew what he was thinking. She'd said it herself to him. He was always willing to sacrifice himself and this time would be no different.

She slapped her body against the four of them and joined in on the hug.

"Mom, not you too!"

Samba chuckled, but it died quickly. Any mirth would be short lived on this night.

Shouts from the human side slowly registered in his brain. "Samba! Help! Samba!"

Samba extricated himself from the hug and slowly turned his way toward the wall that separated their camp from the human's. One of Mark's soldiers popped above the wall and panted as they yelled to him.

"Mark is under attack!"

Adrenaline flooded him. The fatigue of his mad dash washed away as panic took over. He took three steps, his stride much longer than any of other sentients in their camp and jumped.

The same wall that wouldn't hold the demons back held no barrier for him either. As he sailed through the air over the soldier's head, his mind raced for how the demons had caught up. Did they have some ultra fast moving assassins? Teleportation?

The demons had already been moving at an impossible pace for an army, one that he and Mark had only been able to beat by running themselves ragged. How could they be here?

He crashed into the ground on the other side, but the impact barely registered on his exhausted legs as he was already sprinting. The humans continued to shout for help and he wondered why they weren't fighting whatever assassin was here.

Were they that much higher of a level? Was Junior somehow here?

It took him only seconds to reach Mark's house where one of the soldiers pointed inside. Samba didn't even bother with the door.

He burst through the log wall that made up Mark's house, ending up in the great room to an impossible scene.

Mark's scream split the night as he lay nearly comatose on one side, the light of his fist flickering. Alice and Rae were tied up in web that looked startlingly familiar, but the one thing that brought him up short was Tiria.

He stumbled for a moment surprised at seeing her there, but then he was thankful. Surely, she could help them against the demons. Maybe have some crazy Gi level idea that could get them out of this.

"Tiria, thank Danna, you're here. Did you see what the demons did to him?" Samba started rushing over to Mark to see if he could help, but Tiria stepped into his way. "What are you doing? He's hurt! We need to help him!"

She didn't answer, but she didn't move either.

Orchid the leader of the Hidden Spiders was there, crouching on the ceiling. It must have been her web that had pinned down Alice and Rae, not letting them approach Mark.

Mark, himself, was nowhere close to cognizant. Only the screams ripping out of his mouth were any indication that he was truly awake, but Samba's eyes had glossed over one critical fact.

There was a doll latched onto Mark's arm. Its eyes both wild and lifeless. While not the same, it was a type of doll that he'd seen before the first time where he'd joined the Dungeon as an Elite with Gi.

Back when the Subgenitor of the Coastal Goblins, Jalx, had been trying to revive their Progenitor.

"What have you done?" Samba asked, his voice barely a whisper. His clan was targeting his best friend just to bring back that old monster? "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

"What I must," Tiria answered coolly. "If you don't have the stomach for it, leave."

"No," Samba shook his head in disbelief. "No." His eyes landed on Alice and Rae forced to watch the life drain out of Mark's eyes. The senseless cruelty at play here, stunned him.

She was a monster.

Samba roared. He hadn't even realized a decision had been made until his fist hurtled through the air towards Tiria. She stepped closer to him to dodge the fist and shoved him backward with a surprising amount of Strength.

She'd leveled up since he'd last seen her.

"This is for our clan. With Gi back, we won't have to scurry and hide from the Demon Empire anymore. We can push back and fight. We can carve out a space for ourselves here."

"Let him stay dead," Samba spat. He threw two more punches, but she dodged both of them as well. If he'd been more controlled, his accuracy would be better, but his heart and mind were in turmoil.

A watery mace dropped into both of Tiria's hands and she adopted a fighting stance that seemed eerily similar to Kumo's. "Orchid, make sure the humans don't make it in. I'll handle Samba."

His battle roar was more of a helpless shriek as he let out another flurry of blows. Like every time he'd sparred Kumo, hitting Tiria was like trying to catch the river's current.

Where his blows missed, hers hit, cracking into his side. Even with his monstrous Vitality, Skills, and Domain, the damage still hurt. He knew he wasn't fighting to his peak, but this was Tiria. Why was she doing this?

Why?

He knew the answer, obviously, but the disbelief just couldn't be banished from his heart so easily.

"You and Kumo abandoned us. Why did you have to return? Why Mark?"

Tiria's face was tight and controlled. The same face that he imagined Gi had as he systemically shot down Children in cold blood. "I didn't choose him. He's Gi's Mirror. This is the only way."

The coldness on Tiria's face made him feel like he was staring at a stranger. She didn't care about the damage that she was doing or the pain she caused him. For her, there was only the clan.

"You don't have any right to make decisions for us anymore. This is my clan. Mark is my clan and I won't let any of you monsters have him!"

A pulse rippled out from Mark as some threshold in the process was reached. The doll looked bigger and now held up Mark's limb body as it continued to drain his soul, but the energy was more than that.

It felt like a crack had been opened in the world and the raw energy of creation had poured through to help power such an unnatural change. It was a bad sign for Mark, but Samba still had time to save him.

The energy from beyond washed over him and it heard the thrumming of his heart very clearly. His will to fight against those who would do wrong. His will to standup for those important to him even if it meant standing up to his loved ones.

The energy in the air vibrated, singing in his soul's declaration.

Changing him.

You've developed a Unique Soul!

You've gained: Soul of Defiance

Aspect: Water