Hours flew by like grains of sand in an hourglass — one connected to a leaf blower running at max speed.
Monsters died.
With every minute that passed, the fight swung more and more in the favor of Towntown. Alex and Claire carved through the ranks of the monsters and they eventually dwindled in number. The horde had been thinned out and all that remained were the stragglers. On top of that, even though they hadn’t had a chance to meditate and gain any levels, the fights were getting easier.
None of the monsters in the wave were anywhere near as powerful as their opponents in the Mirrorlands had been.
Alex and Claire racked up kills, securing their spot on the leaderboard and pulling so far ahead of the rest of the competition that Alex started to suspect a fair number of the other survivors had just stopped fighting.
As they fought together more, Alex was struck by the realization that Claire wasn’t just fast at adapting to the apocalypse. There was no way she’d just picked up a sword a few weeks ago.
Until now, he’d never really sat back and had a chance to watch her fight on her own with a sword. But with how weak some of their opponents were, Alex got all the chances he needed. It was even more apparent while she was stuffed full of excess blood to draw on, but Claire was good.
She flitted past attacks, her blade carving into the monsters with practiced efficiency. The Dhampir excelled against single opponents — particularly the Boneraptors, which were the slowest of their enemies. She struggled when extra enemies piled in.
Alex didn’t let that last long. He was still pushing to reach as high as he could on the leaderboard, and the only monsters off limits were the ones Claire was actively fighting.
“How did you get so good with a sword?” Alex asked in a brief lull in the fighting. The night sky had long since faded, banished by the rising sun. They day had ground on long into the evening and they’d been fighting for hours on end. He had absolutely no idea how he still had any energy left to move, but he wasn’t going to complain.
“Court,” Claire replied, flashing him a grin as she flicked the blood from her weapon’s blade. “I told you.”
“You practiced fighting in Court?”
“I told you before. People tend to get stabbed, especially toward the top.” Claire shifted to take cover beneath the shadow of a crumbling building, raising a hand to keep the sun from poking her in the eyes. “Fighting was never my favorite part of it, though.”
“What was?”
“Dancing.”
Alex squinted at Claire. That wasn’t the answer he’d thought he’d get. He wasn’t actually sure what he’d expected in the first place.
“Really?” Alex asked, trying to keep the surprise from his voice.
Claire nodded. “Oh, easily. It’s so bleeding fun. Everyone’s been at each other’s throats for weeks. Nobody knows which alliances are real and who’s going to betray them. We’re all as tense as a bowstring. You can practically taste the stress in the air. Then we all get shoved into a ball and you’ve got to keep pretenses and dance with people that want to run you through while figuring out if they want to kill kill you, if it’s a fake kill scenario, or if they’re actually on your side for the time being.”
Alex blinked. It took him a second to fully process everything Claire had said. That was a whole lot more than just dancing.
“Maybe this is a dumb question, but why doesn’t that just turn into a brawl?”
“That’s a great way to lose Court,” Claire said with a shake of her head. “Never can a Dhampir lose control. Never. If you start a brawl instead of eliminating someone intelligently, then you’re not worthy of being King or Queen. You can’t power through every problem.”
“Well, damn. That actually does sound really fun,” Alex said, a grin crossing his face. “Like a giant game of Mafia.”
“Mafia?”
“You’d love it. I’ll explain some other time.”
With a thought, Alex called up the leaderboard. It had been a while since he’d bothered checking on it. There really hadn’t been a point to look before. None of the other survivors had gotten anywhere near as many kills as he and Claire had — not after Diego and Gentlewind had died.
Local Leaderboard — Initialization Event
1. Ash (Novice 7): 371 Kills
2. Fangs (Novice 6): 201 Kills
3. Ben-10 (Novice 5): 56 Kills
4. NoIDontWantAName (Novice 4): 49 Kills
5. Daggerman (Novice 3): 31 Kills
6. Joe (Novice 2): 22 Kills
7. RockRocks (Novice 2): 19 Kills
8. AAAA (Novice 2): 16 Kills
9. Lisa (Novice 1): 10 Kills
10. Dorriv (Novice 1): 5 Kills
…
24. ArbysLover (Novice 1): 2 Kills
25. Barbarara (Novice 1): 1 Kill
“Did anyone ever teach you the concept of sharing?” Claire asked, her eyes scanning the air before her, evidently doing the exact same thing as Alex and taking a moment to check the leaderboard. “You wouldn’t have made it very far in Court.”
“Wouldn’t people want to make an alliance with me since I’m scoring well?” Alex asked. He still hadn’t figured out exactly how the game that seemed to rule Claire’s society worked, but he was pretty sure that doing well should normally be a good thing.
“Oh, for sure.” Claire nodded empathetically. “People would flock to you. Shower you with praise and gifts. They’d gather behind you, let you do all the hard work as they plotted behind your back, and then they’d figure out the best way to make sure you didn’t live to see nightfall. Figuratively speaking, that is. Killing the young in Court is looked down upon.”
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“The young? I’m not that young,” Alex said with a frown. “And why would they want to get rid of me? Wouldn’t it be better to keep the person who’s shown to be at least somewhat strong alive and on your side?”
“Young is anyone under the age of fifty.” Claire shook her head. “And that’s the problem. When you reveal what you’re capable of, people can account for it. They can find out how to beat you. How to work around your abilities. That’s why everyone hides their full strength for as long as possible. The moment you reveal it, you’re done for. You’re not an unknown. That makes you easy to handle, even if you’re strong.”
“So how does anyone figure out if they’re strong or not? Do you just all wait in the shadows right up until the last second and then fling shit everywhere?”
“That does occasionally happen,” Claire said with a wry grin. “But no. The key is dosing that strength. Giving enough to show you’re powerful, but not playing your whole hand — but there’s the catch.”
Alex blinked. “Where?”
“You need to look like you haven’t played your whole hand.” Claire’s expression was excited now. Alex could see her reliving past memories as she spoke. “And that goes in both directions. If you’re insanely powerful, you only play tiny little bits. Just enough to keep yourself interesting. But the real fun is when you’re weak. You play your whole hand, but if you trick people into thinking its just part of it… well, you’re still in the running.”
Her excitement was infectious enough to pull a small grin across Alex’s own face. He nodded his understanding.
“Okay. I think I see why you liked this so much. That really does sound fun. So it’s a giant game of bullshitting.”
“That’s just one element of it, but it’s one of my favorites,” Claire confirmed. She glanced up at the darkening sky, the all-too close stars glimmering just above them. Her smile faltered and a small sigh slipped between her lips. “I’d imagine Court is gone now. Ayrin did not take to the apocalypse nearly as well as Earth.”
Alex blinked. That was the first she’d mentioned that. He’d been under the impression that her planet had been doing relatively well in the apocalypse given all the information she’d already uncovered about it before they’d met.
“Worse than this?” Alex nodded around Towntown. The city was still standing, but only barely. Nearly half of the buildings in the street around them had been reduced to rubble — even more so than they had been when the System had dropped them off to form Towntown in the first place — and the corpses of monsters and men littered the ground.
“Much worse,” Claire said. Her expression stiffened and she shook her head. “Nearly every older Dhampir died.”
“What? Why? Don’t you get like… stronger in old age, and stuff? Or is that just rumor?”
“We do, actually. It’s not quite an exponential growth rate, but it’s close. An ancient Dhampir is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen, and that includes everything that happened in the Mirrorlands.”
“Then—”
“The amount of power we need to remain alive grows as well. It’s the flaw in our race that kept us from ever getting as much of a population as it sounds like humans did. The older Dhampirs get, the less we move. Every single action is harder. Takes more effort. More energy. When your diet never changes and you don’t get more ways to access that energy… well, we hibernate.”
“Until what?” Alex asked. “Generally, the point of hibernating is to wake up, isn’t it? Do they just sleep a ton?”
“I think we’re having a translation failure again. There might not be a direct convertible word for hibernation. I suppose I could say older Dhampirs would optimize their energy usage.”
“That makes more sense. So they’d do less even as they got stronger. But I was under the impression your society had a lot of fighting. I know there’s more to Court than that, but if older Dhampirs kind of stop moving around and doing stuff as much, aren’t they kind of out of the picture? I mean, it doesn’t matter how strong you have if you can’t use any of that power.”
Claire’s nose scrunched and she scratched at the side of her jaw. “We’re getting really into Dhampir society here. The old Dhampirs generally keep Broodguard around to fight off the weaker Dhampirs, as a stream of young challengers would absolutely end up eventually killing them. The amount of energy they get from draining a younger Dhampir wouldn’t justify the effort killing them.”
“Broodguard?”
“Sworn soldiers. Another time,” Claire said with a shake of her head. “It’s not really relevant. But when it comes to fights between older, more powerful Dhampir — well, they’re fast. Terrifyingly fast. Usually over in moments, and the victor drains the defeated to recover their energy and remain alive. If they can’t do that in time, they die as well.”
“Brutal. But… how is that different from the system?” Alex tilted his head to the side with a frown. “Can’t you just drain the monsters? They’ve got magic in them.”
“That’s what we thought as well,” Claire admitted. “And that’s why so many died. As it turns out, there’s subtle differences in the magic. Monster energy is denser. Thicker. It takes time to digest. You have to meditate, absorb all of it properly. Some of the power comes instantly, but most of it is stored in your soul.”
Alex’s eyes widened in realization. “And older Dhampirs need power instantly after a fight.”
Claire gave him a sad smile and nodded. “Their bodies just use energy without any consideration for how much they have left. So when they fought to defend themselves and their Broods… well, you can imagine what happened.”
Alex could. “They crushed every single monster that attacked them, but the act of fighting was too much and their bodies gave out before they could actually use the vast majority of the power they got from their kills.”
“Like a drowning a man dying of dehydration in the desert. Their bodies couldn’t adapt,” Claire said with a sigh. She ran her hand through her hair and shook her head. “Ironic, isn’t it? The System basically brought the cure to our greatest weakness, but it killed almost everyone before they could use it.”
“I’m sorry, Claire,” Alex said through a wince. He’d never been the best at comforting people. There really hadn’t been much use for the skill in college, where the majority of problems were a failed exam and the majority of solutions were getting blackout drunk. “I’d try to offer you some form of condolences, but I feel like hollow words aren’t going to help much.”
She sent him a small smile. “It’s fine. I appreciate the honesty, and whining about it won’t change anything. I’m sure a few other Dhampirs survived, but I’m not strong enough to worry about them yet. For now, I’ll worry myself with surviving on Earth — and being around you.”
“Hey! I’ll point out that you were the one that decided to follow my Dao of fuck-it-we-ball.”
“I never said otherwise,” Claire said with a snicker. “I still think you’re insane, but you’ve got the right idea. This is the way forward. If we die, we die. That would have happened either way. But if we live — we’ll be monsters.”
Alex started to nod. Then he paused. The night was darker than it had been a moment ago. A lot darker. Claire noticed it at the same time. They both looked up to the sky.
The stars had winked out.
An imposing translucent doorway floated in the air at the edge of town. It was easily stories tall and trimmed by carved pillars of ivory. Spiked growths ran up their length and curled into the sky.
Strands of energy twisted around the gateway, undulating like kites in the wind. With every passing second, the gateway grew more solid. White stone doors took shape within the sea of power and designs carved themselves upon their surfaces.
A deep thrum echoed out from the doors and rolled through the city like a wave. The hair on the back of Alex’s neck stood on end.
“Well,” Claire muttered. “I think you were right about the big scary thing.”
A dull groan filled the air and echoed through the streets. The huge doors shuddered, turning completely solid. There was a loud crunch as they crashed down, slamming into the ground beyond the town.
A black line sliced down the gateway’s center as it cracked open. Darkness spilled out like smoke. It rolled over the ground and washed over Towntown, casting the entire city into shadow.
Five massive skeletal fingers emerged from the darkness beyond the door. They grasped onto the edge of the door with a resounding crash. Stone shuddered and groaned. Not for the first time, Alex and Claire watched as an enormous monster pulled itself into their realm.