Kuravaan trudged up the hill, where he was met by a scrawny old man with one arm in a cast. He grimaced and watched the rest of the human-looking Indians walk nervously into the base camp of the Servants.

“You made the right decision,” said Suleman.

“I was never given a decision to make,” responded Kuravaan. “Certain death is not an ‘alternative’.”

“You would be surprised,” said Suleman. “Nevertheless, the deed is done. Torch has given authorization. Your Domain will be kept under the protection of the Servants henceforth, and no harm will befall any of you. I would recommend that you put the path to safety behind you. Nobody has been faced with a scenario where everybody wins for quite some time.”

“An easy thing for you to say, murderer.”

Suleman winced. “It’s what has to be done if this world is to move any direction but down. You and your loved ones have been spared from judgment, and that is all that you need to worry about. I trust Torch and their plan, we all do, and for whatever reason, they have seen fit to let you all continue living after… whatever it is you were told to do. I would advise that you do not question their decision, because there is always a slim chance that it may be reversed. I have no sympathy for your kind, but bloodshed should still be avoided where it can be.”

Kuravaan turned to look at the rest of his Domain. Several looked at their gas mask-clad neighbors with apprehension and fear. Others still glared at him from some distance away. One or two simply sat in place, attempting to ride out their guilt.

“You can’t change your mind now,” added Suleman. “Their fate is sealed. It has been for some time. You can let yourself feel guilty for the undeserving as much as you want, but nothing will change about this course of events. Make things easier for yourselves.”

Kuravaan walked away from Suleman without another word. As he walked with no real destination in mind, he glanced at the patch of forest a few hundred feet away that formed the illusory shield of the Aztec ziggurat. He tried to think of something to hope for, but failed. Whatever happened to those hooligans, happened.

-

After the third incident of someone tripping over something that it had been too dark to see, the APTTFR had formally moved back into the foyer, and had begun to wind down soon after that. A decent third of the total Aztecs and Greeks had gone back upstairs to their bedrooms, and the remainder were proving that even half an hour of legitimate partying would take a toll on someone following what had been happening for the past several hours.

Omet sat by the stairs, one leg bouncing up and down as they kept their eyes trained on the front door with just enough focus to not be noticed for staring.

Saralai came over and looked down at them. “Something on your mind?”

Omet sighed. “Guess I’m not good at looking calm, huh?”

“Nope. To be fair, it’s not hard to guess. I mean, you just burned basically every last bridge we had left. You really think we can go it alone?”

“I’ll be honest,” said Omet, “I don’t–”

The ceiling of the pyramid exploded, halting all sound within in its tracks and raining debris down on the Aztecs and Greeks. A moment later, a fridge-sized, dark green canister plummeted through the hole at the top, slamming into the middle of the floor with a deafening clang. Struts emerged from the bottom of the canister, anchoring it to the cracked floor, and a small yellow indicator light on its side turned red.

Blinding white smoke erupted from the canister as it instantly detonated, filling the now-obscured room with a cacophony of light pings and thuds, shrapnel burying itself in anything it made contact with. The force of the blast and the wave of smoke hurled Omet to the ground and half-deafened them.

Omet stumbled to their knees, eyes watering from the smoke filling their vision. “I–Is everyone okay? Are we–?”

An anti-tank missile flew through the front doors, the hazy orange light of its flame trail passing right by Omet as it connected with the spiral stairs and blew them to pieces. The shockwave of the explosion pushed Omet back to the ground.

Before they had the chance to stand back up, a stream of automatic fire emerged from somewhere outside the now-open front doors, panning from right to left in a wide, chest-high arc. If anyone was hit, they did not have the time to make a noise.

Omet peered through the smoke, desperately trying to see through the impenetrable cloud of smoke and hear over the growing sounds of helicopter rotors filling the air. They managed to take three shaky steps before being stopped in their tracks by something flying past their vision. Fired through the hole in the ceiling in perfect unison, three anchors buried themselves in the floor in front of Omet, the cables that they were connected to pulling taut and rising vertically into the smoke above Omet’s head.

Omet turned and ran when they heard the rising metallic screeches of people sliding down the steel cables. A moment later, they heard six pairs of heavy boots land on the floor, followed by a volley of gunfire in all directions. A cloud of buckshot flew through the smoke a few feet from Omet’s head, and they instinctively dove to the floor.

The boots worn by the attackers made it easy to hear where they were relative to Omet. They scrambled away from the barely visible silhouette of one of the Huntsmen as the masked figure ran through the impenetrable smoke.

Shrieks of shock and terror echoed throughout the foyer and balcony above as breaching charges went off all over the outside walls, creating yet more openings for Huntsmen to penetrate the building through the bedrooms on the upper floors. The Huntsman near Omet, hearing someone yelp from somewhere nearby, turned and vanished into the smoke. A moment later, a gunshot rang out from where the Huntsman had moved to. More gunshot sounds quickly joined the first, coming from every direction in rapid succession.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

A beam of light lanced through the smoke, burning a hole clean through the chest of the Huntsman near Omet, who silently collapsed to the floor. Saralai emerged from the smoke next to Omet, eyes and hands burning with golden radiance. “You okay?”

Omet nodded shakily. “Wh– what about the rest?”

“I see them,” said Saralai. “Stay low.”

“I–”

Saralai’s hand snapped to the right. A split second later, a Huntsman emerged from the smoke right in front of Saralai’s outstretched arm. They attempted to raise their shotgun, but another beam of light from Saralai fused the molten plexiglass of their gas mask’s visor to their face.

Saralai scowled as the Huntsman fell to the floor. “These idiots think they can hide from us with a little smoke?”

“I–I don’t think it’s to hide them from us…” mumbled Omet.

Saralai vanished into the smoke without another word, her presence only occasionally betrayed by subsequent flashes of light.

Omet crawled along the floor while the sounds of gunfire and cries of pain and fear echoed around them. A Greek flew over their head, surfing on a flying platform of silverware with a dozen more knives and forks hovering next to her head and poised to strike forward.

Omet discovered an Aztec lying on the floor, gold soaking into his shirt from a knife wound in his ribs. His heavy-lidded eyes fluttered open when Omet crawled into his view. “Hey… it’s you. You got any ideas on how to get us through this?”

Omet flinched as a Huntsman staggered past them through the smoke, flowering petunias sprouting from every single crack in their body armor. They turned back to their wounded brother. “I, uh… I’m gonna get you out of here, alright? Just hold on another minute.”

“W–What about the r… rest?”

“I… Just…” Omet struggled to hoist the Aztec onto their shoulder. “I–I can’t…”

Omet heard the sound of boots approaching from the front and hurriedly dropped themself and their brother to the ground, trying their best to not move as the Huntsman stepped over their bodies.

While Omet tried to pull the wounded Aztec back up, they saw a flash in the smoke that made their vision swim and their ears ring, followed by three shotgun blasts in quick succession.

“My head is full of something,” mumbled the Aztec as Omet picked them back up.

“Yeah, okay, keep talking.” Once Omet started pulling the Aztec along again, they realized that they didn’t even know where they were going, or if they were even moving in a straight line. The constant sounds of shotgun blasts and heavy footsteps ringing out around them removed any sense of distance or direction.

The indistinct shape of an Aztec lay on the floor to Omet’s side, a jagged shard of dark green metal embedded in their chest. Omet stared at the body on the floor in horror as they stumbled past.

“Stay in the middle! Form a circle!” came Saralai’s voice from somewhere to Omet’s right. “Keep people on your sides! Follow the lights!”

“What lights?!” responded another voice. “I can’t see an–!” Another shotgun blast from the same position.

“Get out of the house!” yelled an Aztec. “They’re coming from the air, we need to put distance between us on the ground!”

Rachna stumbled past Omet, hugging himself tightly as he switched rapidly between the appearances of people who Omet did not recognize. “The sighted go unheard, for the kings of the blind cannot understand that the world’s gone blue…”

Omet heard a metal door slam shut, then followed the sound until they found the wall of the foyer and the door to the pantry. They pounded on the door with one free hand.

Their knocking was drowned out by the sound of the opposite wall shattering into pieces. A shockwave scattered the smoke filling the building, scattering it to the upper levels and clearing the air of the foyer.

The four or five remaining Greeks, clustered near the middle of the room, watched as a nightmarish, unnatural creature stepped through the hole in the wall. Eyeless sockets glowed with pale blue light above a fanged mouth that dominated the Chosen’s horselike face. The tips of razor-sharp vertebrae pushed through the ashen gray skin that looked pulled over the Chosen’s skeleton without a shred of muscle to be found. Lightning arced between the spindly limbs of the Chosen, rippling what little hair could be found on its head and back with untamed energy.

Saralai mouthed something to herself, then glanced at Omet, terror in her eyes.

Omet swallowed and nodded, confirming the worst.

The creature that had once been the leader of the Greeks padded forward, an echoing scream building behind its fangs and its skin crackling with electricity.

With the smoke cleared, the two or three Huntsmen still on the ground floor noticed Omet by the door and began advancing on them. Behind Omet, the pantry door opened and a hand reached through, grabbing Omet by the collar and pulling them through the partially-open door with the wounded Aztec in tow. One Huntsman raised their shotgun and fired at their retreating target, but only succeeded in striking the wounded Aztec’s leg.

The door was hurriedly shut and barred behind Omet the moment they were all the way through. A moment later, a shotgun blast pinged off of the heavy metal, followed by the sound of a thunderclap and rattling silverware.

Omet glanced around at the three Aztecs who had already hidden in the pantry before them. “Are you guys alr–?” Their eyes went wide and they looked down at the Aztec that they had pulled in with them. “Wait, is your… leg…” They stared at the Aztec’s glassy-eyed, motionless expression. “…Oh.”

The crack under the pantry door flashed over and over, each one followed with ever-increasing sounds of explosions and lightning strikes.

One Aztec tugged twice at the ventilation grille on the far wall of the pantry before finally managing to pull it loose. “Someone said that they’re focusing on the inside. We need to get outside and make it to the trees, they won’t be able to track us.”

Omet silently begged for Mark and Waia to return and get them all out. “Alright, uh… But wh–what about th–the… This…”

“Omet, c’mon,” pleaded the Aztec by the grille. “You can worry about the rest later, but right now, all we can do is try to–”

The far wall exploded inwards, creating a six-foot-wide hole to the outside. The Aztec was knocked over by the blast and partially buried by the falling rubble. He made no attempt to stand back up.

A gold-covered Huntsman stepped through the hole and over the body of the Aztec, pumping their shotgun and ejecting a shell casing. The opaque eye coverings of their gas mask glinted with the light of the three terrified Primoi in front of them.

Omet heard the sound of a cutting torch beginning to melt through the bar that held the pantry door in place. This led to the realization that the sound of lightning strikes had completely ceased.

Omet stepped between the remaining Aztecs and the Huntsman in front of them, hands behind their head. They noticed the Huntsman shift their grip on their shotgun. “Look, I–I don’t know what you want, but please, don’t hurt my family. Whatever you want from us, we can give it to you, just don’t kill any more of us. We’ll work with you, you can even take me, if it means you don’t–”

The Huntsman raised their shotgun and fired.