Salazar heard a thud from somewhere above him. “That’s probably fine.”

Mark overturned a table, sending the vase crashing into the carpet. He pushed it to form a barricade and rested his gun on the top. “If that was Horan, I should’ve come with him.”

Salazar looked down at Mark’s gun, which had been turned into an impressively bulky LMG. He decided to just kneel behind the table and put his arms on top. “So, you’ve definitely got a pretty memorable friend count. How’d that happen?”

“Really not the time.”

“Right, yeah.” Salazar looked out in front at the staircase. They were both at least 80% sure that this was the only way for the King to reach this floor. “It’s just that I heard it’s a good way to deal with pre-fight nerves.”

“You’re nervous?”

“...A little, yeah.”

“Yup. Same.”

The King crested the edge of the stairs, still carried by his four-armed goons and flanked by the two spear-wielding guards from the casino. Several dozen smaller monsters were visible behind him, several of whom were hovering in the air with their makeshift weapons raised. “Morning, gentlemen.” The King glanced over at Salazar. “And you must be the old guard captain. Salazar, was it?” He smirked. “Thought you quit.”

“Can’t do that just yet, buddy.” Salazar pointed his quills at the pasty, gray blob. “Still plenty of fires to put out. Is that really the note I want to end my career on?”

“Good question.” The two guards pointed their spears at Salazar. The King sneered. “Is it?”

“Yeah, reckon so.” Salazar fired a quill at the King, but one of the thugs carrying him blocked the shot with the back of their hand. So instead of dying instantly, the King was simply hurled from his seat and sent flying back down the staircase, squealing like a pig.

The two four-armed thugs were both shoved to the ground by the shockwave, and the guards with spears were taken out by Mark with pinpoint accuracy before they got the chance to do anything with their spears beyond making a nice reading light.

Salazar vaulted over the table and pointed both arms at the small crowd of monsters still on the stairs. “Alright, y’all. I’ll give you an out. You can turn around and go back to your old lives now, or you can deal with me.”

Mark waved from behind Salazar “I’m sure Poppin’ Fresh down there is a great tipper, but I don’t think you’re gonna get much out of this.”

The King dusted himself off from where he landed and stared up at Salazar with indignation. “Excuse me?! I am the one ticket these people have to get out of this dump!” He looked around at the monsters surrounding him. “You clowns are going to kill them and do your job, and despite the fact that you haven’t done so already, I’m willing to be nice and not have you all kneecapped when you’re done!”

The monsters began slowly advancing. Salazar hopped back behind the table and looked at Mark. “We gave them a chance, right?”

“Yup. Plenty of warnings.”

Salazar raised his arms. “It’s settled, then. Death it is.”

-

“And then they kissed! On the lips!” Quet sighed as she climbed the stairs. “A landmark day for people all over the world. I still remember where I was when I saw it. In my room, under my blankets, a bowl of hand-cut fries in my arms and my laptop predictably in my lap. Bliss.”

Xiao nodded. “This ‘TV’ thing sounds awesome, I wish I had been born before the apocalypse. I also wish that pre-apocalypse me had the cognitive ability to process and become invested in televised romance.”

The staircase in front of the two of them came to an end. That had not been the case a few seconds prior, but that was changed when Yang’s Locus room crashed through the staircase and came to a rest a few flights down.

Quet looked over the edge of the staircase at the wrecked scene below. “Guess that’s us, huh?”

“Yup.” Xiao turned around. “Probably our fault for slacking off and talking about your boats for some reason.”

“Ships!”

“Same thing. Stay behind me.” Xiao slid down the banister and looked out at the wreckage. “Uh, Yang? It’s me, Xiao. Can we talk? I wanna talk.”

Quet sat down at the top of the ruined staircase. “I’m here too, but I’m chill.”

The room had barrelled through a wall, leaving a massive hole right over the doorway leading into the room. Through that doorway stumbled Yang, dragging a halberd across the ground in one hand and keeping her other hand up against a gash on her forehead.

Xiao’s eyes widened. “Uh, are you okay?”

Yang’s glassy eyes flitted upward to meet Xiao’s gaze. “Oh, look at you. Mister Big Shot Traitor finally decides to show his face, and right when everything’s going wrong. That can’t be a coincidence. I assume you aren’t here to kiss and make up?”

“Yang, I just want to talk. I know we don’t have the best history with these people…” He glanced up at Quet. “But I’m doing this for your own good. Nobody needs to die here.” He pulled a rolled-up scroll out from the front of his shirt. “They’re only here for this. If you just calm down and leave the castle with me, I’ll give them the map and they’ll leave us alone.”

“Oh sure, let them take everything we have and leave us to die!” Yang took her hand away from her wound and put it on the handle of her halberd, lifting it up from the floor. “They’re manipulating you, don’t you get it? I can spot that kind of thing from a mile away.”

“Yang, I came to them. They’re okay people, and they’re just trying to help me help you.”

Quet waved, a glyph in each hand. “Killing isn’t fun, let’s not do it.”

Yang looked between Quet and Xiao. “...I’m not dumb, Xiao. Gimme the map. They’re gonna take it from you, and they’re gonna kill you, and then they’re gonna kill me. I know how these things work out.” Her gaze came to rest on Quet. “I know how your kind work. And you’re not gonna get the chance to use those rocks on me.”

She took one hand off of her halberd and snapped.

The Locus appeared through the hole in the wall above Yang, bathing the room in blue light as it crackled and hummed with energy. Quet barely had time to squeeze her glyphs and form a bubble of energy around front of her before a blast of lightning sent her careening through the far wall.

Xiao watched the Locus fly over his head, plowing through what remained of the staircase and into the far wall in its hunt for Quet. He looked back at Yang, who was beginning to rub the handle of her halberd. Several glyphs began to glow along the handle of the polearm.

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“That’s that taken care of. But for you…” Yang held up her weapon. “I found this little old number in a display case. Couldn’t resist.”

“Yang, don-” Xiao was interrupted by Yang yanking the handle in two, which made the whole halberd split into segments connected by a string of rainbow energy. Yang began spinning the segments that she was still holding onto, making the whole thing begin spinning around her as if the polearm had been made of rubber.

Xiao held up his hands. “Please. This isn’t-”

“What, scared?” Yang snickered. “This is what we do to traitors round here.”

-

Waia slid down the broken remains of one of the castle’s branches, coming to a rest at the edge of the main trunk. This was where the room had landed after Omet had slammed their ride into it, and she was ready for some payback.

Waia took a single step towards the wall she heard a commotion behind. As if on cue, Quet’s bubble burst through in a spray of dust and rubble, flying directly into Waia’s face.

Waia spread her arms out and caught the green bubble, making Quet fall on her face and press up against the shield.

A paper-thin ball of energy was all that was separating Quet and Waia’s face. The former felt like it was enough to make small talk. “Might wanna put me down. There’s a giant ball of lightning out for blood.” She let go of her glyphs and dissipated the shield, falling into Waia’s arms before immediately rolling out. “Ow! Ow! Hot arms!”

“Sorry.” Waia pulled a modicum of lava off of her hands and onto her back.

The Locus slammed through the wall, widening the hole in the wall formed by Quet’s bubble. Quet looked up at the orb while frantically rooting through her bags. “And speak of the devil!”

Waia stepped in front of Quet as the Locus fired another bolt of lightning, which caught her square in the chest. Waia wheezed and took a knee. “Okay, that’s not fun. Not doing that again.”

Both Quet and Waia started running once the Locus began charging up another shot. Waia noticed Quet rummaging around in her bags. “You got something in there that’ll help against that?”

Quet fell to the floor as another bolt sailed over her, slicing a distant hallway in two. “I dunno, kinda. Maybe?”

“Kinda-maybe. Good enough.” Waia grabbed a loose boulder and set it between herself and the Locus. She watched Quet scramble behind the cover. “You need time to set it up, or something?”

“No, this is one that I’ve got-” Quet flinched as another bolt struck the other side of the boulder, sending out a spray of molten gobbets of stone. “I’ve got it on speed dial, I guess. But we’ve only got one shot, unless I also use the terrible one.”

“Then set it up!” Waia rammed her hands into the boulder, lifted it over her head and hurled it at the Locus. Instead of destroying it, or knocking it into the wall, or really any sort of desirable reaction, the boulder simply disintegrated the moment it touched the glowing orb.

“Note to self: Don’t touch.” Quet unfurled her sheet of graph paper, placed it onto the ground, and raised her arm. “And now…”

Waia saw a patch of the Locus’ scintillating surface turn pure blue as it prepared for another strike. But instead of pointing towards Waia, it was aimed at Quet.

“No!” Waia dove in between Quet and the Locus in an attempt to absorb the blow, but the Locus adjusted its aim so that the lightning merely grazed Waia’s shoulder on its path towards Quet.

Fortunately for Quet, Waia had managed to block any line of sight the Locus had with her. Less fortunately, Waia had not been focusing on the paper. Quet was thrown onto her back, her vision a white blur and her ears ringing. Her hands and face stung, and she could feel heat on her chest. But all of those pesky sensations were distant, and she was quite comfortable where she was.

Without thinking, Waia ran over to where Quet had landed and ripped off the burning belt. Quet was blatantly too dazed to walk, so Waia decided to let the molten armor coating her body fall away and sling Quet over her shoulder. That move had thrown more than a few spanners in the works.

She quickly surveyed her options. She could run through the wreckage further into the castle, where the Locus could easily barge through everything that would slow down an encumbered Primus like herself. Alternately, she could jump out of the hole Yang’s crash landing had created, which led out into open air.

Waia decided on the latter. She was more experienced on that front.

She shifted Quet into a Fireman’s Carry position so that her weight was distributed across both of Waia’s shoulders, then walked straight off the edge of the building. Right before her feet left solid ground entirely, she melted the stone under the sole of her boot and let herself sink ever-so-slightly into the floor. With her new anchor, instead of falling to her doom, she was instead pulled onto the side of the building. She repeated the process with her other foot, yanked her first foot out of the stone, took a step down, and began running down the side of the building.

The Locus didn’t follow her down, as she expected. Of course, she now had other things to worry about. Careful to make sure that she constantly had at least one foot planted into the wall, her downward movement began as a light trot. But as the weight of two Primoi began to pull her down, she found herself rapidly speeding up and desperately making sure that she was staying anchored to the wall. There was no stopping now.

When she normally did this, there was usually a body of water at the bottom of the drop that she could fall into once she detached herself from the stone. But this time around, the only thing below/in front of her was the ground.

“Horan!”

A moment later, Horan appeared from around the side of the castle’s trunk. “Hey, what’s- Okay, I missed something here.” He began flying downward in an attempt to keep pace with Waia. “Need help with all that?”

“You know which floor Mark and Salazar are on?”

“Uh…” Horan nodded. He had the general idea of where in the castle the two were. That was probably close enough.

“Push me through the window when we get there!”

“Y- uh, yes, ma’am.” Horan flew past Waia to the point where he figured the other two would be, then waited for Waia’s inexorable arrival. He didn’t even need to look up, he could just listen to the splat-splat-splat-splat of her feet sinking into the wall.

-

Mark shot out the legs of one of the last monsters, sending them sprawling on the floor. He looked over at Salazar, who was easily visible against the background of scorch mark-covered walls despite being all the way down the stairs. The monsters had all burst into dust, same as topside. Down here, however, the flickering souls had remained floating in place. One or two were beginning to grow a shell of what looked like stone around them, almost identical to the walls of the castle.

Mark walked over and finished off the final monster. “Got the last one!”

“Almost done here.” Salazar advanced on the King, who scurried along the floor and covered his unnervingly sticky hands in the soot on the floor. “Squirmy, aren’t you?”

The King bumped up against the blackened wall and looked up at Salazar. “Hey now, we just met! Can’t we make this an extended thing? Having your own white whale would be great for your future career. Think about it. Plenty of my family made deals like that!”

“That’s dumb.” Salazar pointed his wrist at the King. He was running out of quills, his arms were becoming unnervingly smooth.

“Okay then, but consider this:” The King reached inside his own chest, his ribcage bending around his hand like dough.

“Oh, that is-” Salazar was cut off when the King hurled a small pellet out of his chest, which exploded in a cloud of violet smoke. Mark aimed at the cloud, but didn’t fire for fear of hitting Salazar.

The King’s voice carried across the room, heading for an exit. “Ha ha, you think you can outsmart… me…” He realized that he was standing clear in the open. The smoke had been blown away, and Horan was shown to be floating outside the window.

Horan waved to catch Mark’s attention, then pointed up at something above the window. He used his other hand to count down from three… two… one…

He pushed one hand forward and knocked Waia through the window with a gust of wind. She landed in a heap and sent Quet’s limp body sprawling across the floor.

Waia looked up to see the King staring down at her in terror. He tried to turn around, but Waia grabbed him by the throat and hurled him through what was left of the window. His screams quickly dwindled away into nothing.

While Horan flew through the giant hole in the window, Waia dusted herself off and looked up at Mark. “That was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done. Awesome superhero landing, like I told you.”

Mark jogged down the stairs and looked down at Quet. “Hey, is she okay?”

“Well, she’s alive.” Waia bent down and shifted Quet’s position on the ground into something more comfortable. “Unharmed? Doesn’t look like it.”

Horan perked up. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment…” He flew back out of the window and waved at something out of view. “Hey! Down here!”

A few moments later, Omet’s Potirangi appeared and, following an impromptu removal of the rest of the glass by Waia, the Primus themself stepped through into the room. They looked around at the monster corpses strewn across the room. “Guess that’s one issue taken care of.” They saw Quet lying on the ground and gasped. “What happened?!” They looked around at the other four. “And where’s Xiao?”