Mark rushed through the entrance to the locals’ station. “New plan. Kind of.”

Horan looked up from where he was lying on the ground in front of a spread-out carpet of tourist brochures and pamphlets. “Mark!” The Egyptian flew to his feet and raced across the room to come face-to-face with Mark. “I–I didn’t– I didn’t even realize how long it’s been! W–With all the stuff that’s been happening down here, I didn’t even–” He looked over his shoulder. “How long have we been down here?”

One of the locals checked their watch. “About two hours.”

“Two–!” Horan coughed. “How are you alive?!”

“It’s, uh, it’s a whole thing.” Mark looked around Horan’s towering frame to look at Quet and Waia. “Are you guys okay? It doesn’t look like you’ve been doing too bad without me.” He gestured at the Voidfish 1½ hung up in the side of the room. “…All things considered.”

Quet sighed and got up from where she had been sitting in the Voidfish 1½’s basket. Taking a deep breath, she strolled over to Mark and Horan. “Tlahuel, occeppa otonmocmihiyohuiltilih. Ononexohuatzinoacin ohuihcayotontli.”

Mark stared at Quet in silence for a moment. “…That’s new.”

Quet’s eyes went wide and she manically searched her pocket for her translation, shakily tossing one of the two stones to Mark. “Okay, that’s, uh… That’s another thing to deal with now. I’m not a walking Rosetta Stone anymore! Cool-cool-cool-cool-cool. Awesome. Wonderful! Silver lining to finally crossing that line, I just found out what English sounds like!”

“It’s been a pretty harrowing past hour,” said Horan.

“I’ll say,” affirmed Mark.

“I need to eat to not die,” continued Quet, “I need to start paying attention to my dietary needs, I need to start learning languages spoken by more than one person on the planet– actually, that one’s fine– and I’m not radiation-proof anymore! In the middle of a nuclear winter! Great!”

“Yeah,” said Mark, “It’s intolerable.”

Waia walked up behind Quet. “But hey, we can leave whenever we want, now that you’re here.”

“Hey–hey,” protested Horan. “Ten seconds. Give us some breathing room. Please.”

Waia rolled her eyes. “Fine. Sure. But I’m ready when you are.”

Mark looked at Waia and cleared his throat. “By the way, how are you? Because I thought you died! Everyone was saying that!”

Waia scoffed. “By ‘everyone,’ do you mean the Servants?”

“I…” Mark looked away. “Okay, yeah. But everyone was talking about how that fire Chosen had killed you, and since I figured you had no way to kill a living cloud–”

“I found one on the fly. Waia never loses, remember?” Waia folded her arms. “They mistook the Chosen as their Burning One boogeyman, because ooh, how could their favorite mythical super-soldiers who nobody ever actually sees lose? It’s the Servants, dude. They’re always wrong.”

“Well, I’m glad they were wrong in this case.”

Off to the side, Quet took several deep breaths in a vain attempt to keep herself steady, rubbing the glowing translation stone between her gloved fingers. “Okay… At the bare minimum, I finished building the Voidfish 1½ just before I became even more of a liability to the group, so, y’know, that…” She flashed her gloves at Mark. “Stole them from Torch. They’re magic.”

“Oh, nice.” Mark looked around the station. “So, okay. First of all, we aren’t going to Mount Rainier anymore. Skipped that step. Instead, you guys know the fire lookout on Mount Baker, just to the northwest of Rainier? Sun Top Lookout, is the name?”

Waia stared at Mark. “Why would literally anyone know about either of those things?”

“I… Yeah, I dunno.” Mark shrugged. “Forgot it wasn’t, like, common knowledge, I guess. Anyway, there’s a portal to the Seraphium’s real hiding place in there. It’s like a hatch in the ceiling or something.”

“In a random tower on a mountain somewhere?” asked Horan. “A tower built by humans? Like, what, fifty years ago?”

“It’s not really a tower,” said Mark. “It’s wider than it is tall.”

“How do you know this?!” exclaimed Quet. “We’ve only been apart for something like two hours, and suddenly you have it on good authority that this random fire lookout is the secret portal to the Seraphium? What even happened?! Sorry if I’m yelling, I think I might be having a panic attack!”

Mark sighed. “Something in a big pile of bandages was hiding in a cave at the top of Mount Rainier that might not actually have been there and it teleported me there and psychically projected everything into my brain.”

Quet’s now-visible pupils, which had both dilated to a concerning width the instant Mark started talking, returned to an appropriate size. “Sorry, I think I spaced out for a second, can you repeat that?”

“Uh, same here,” added Horan.

“Figures,” mumbled Mark. “Look, we can work out a way for me to explain this to you later. But right now, we’ve got a working flying-thing ready to go, and we need to get up to Mount Baker before anyone else gets hurt. I can provide the directions, probably.”

“I, uh…” Quet rubbed her arm. “…Give me a few minutes. I’ll carve out the anti-gravity matrices. We probably won’t need more than a dozen. I’ll… I’ll go.” She walked over to a massive lead pipe that ran along the length of one corner of the station. Gloves raised, she began peeling off chunks of the pipe and reshaping them into perfectly round discs with identical patterns inscribed on their surface.

Mark stood between Horan and Waia and watched Quet work, his hands stuffed into his pockets. “Hey, so… Horan?”

Horan looked at the floor. “Yeah?”

“We’ve talked a couple times now about all this, like, light-blue stuff that’s been cropping up around tons of bad stuff,” said Mark. “Thel’s demon scroll, Yang’s Chosen monster–”

“Torch’s everything,” added Waia.

“Yeah,” said Mark, “all that.”

“Still can’t think of any Primus with that kind of baby-blue color,” replied Horan, “no.”

“Right, but… Back at that red herring hiding place for the Seraphium, when I was inside, there were these, like… frescoes on the walls? Is ‘fresco’ the right thing? Whatever, doesn’t matter. But they showed off what I think was meant to be every Primus in the world. It was pretty outdated by the looks of it, since the Aztecs and Hawaiians weren’t there, but I was able to find you specifically among all the different Primoi. Next to Thel and everyone.”

“Great to hear you were spending your time well while the rest of us were getting mulched by Torch,” muttered Waia.

“I didn’t… Whatever.” Mark sighed. “But right at the end of that whole tunnel, where the Seraphium was meant to be, there were two of those fre– bas-reliefs, that’s the name. Two bas-reliefs way bigger than the rest, like they were supposed to be equals above the rest. I recognized Deus as the white one, from the spirit-probe things during the Nabbing, but… the other one was that exact shade of blue.”

Horan frowned. “Well, that… No, that can’t be right. I was around since way before Deus became anything prominent, I would remember if there was… what, a second Roman?”

“Oh, we’re dead, aren’t we?” mumbled Mark.

Horan scowled. “No, Deus is the Domain of one! Undivided power, that’s his whole thing! A–And if this was for the Seraphium, then that would’ve been made well after he became the number-one Primus. Even if it’s been two thousand years, I wouldn’t just forget about an entire second Deus. Especially if they’ve been around enough to mess with us like this.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Wouldn’t you?” asked Mark.

“This guy forgot to tell us about this for five whole months, after all,” noted Waia.

“Yeah, I…” Mark shook his head. “It’s not even like I forgot-forgot about it, it’s just been hanging in the back of my mind, and after a while, I… stopped thinking about it. Like it was being locked up inside my own head. There’s stuff out there that scares me, man.”

Horan slowly began to frown. “It… That actually reminds me.”

Mark lit up. “See?! Yeah! It’s been happening to you too! The past half-hour hasn’t just been another of my hallucinations!”

“Yeah, I mean…” Horan made eye contact with Waia. “Remember around the same time as that? While we were outside? When Torch was… I dunno different? Ugh, I’ve barely even thought about it, it feels so distant…!”

Waia shrugged. “I… Same, totally. What, weren’t they possessed or something before they attacked us? What did they even say? And why do I remember someone saying something about Wells-next-the-Sea? Where even is that?”

Horan shrugged. “Okay, yeah, that’s… that’s spooky.”

Waia crossed her arms and slumped against the wall of the station, silhouetted in green by Quet’s work. “Man, what’s even doing that?”

“The same thing that still won’t let me tell you what it is,” replied Mark.

Waia blinked and shook her head. “Sorry, what? Didn’t catch that.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Remember the first time that happened? Or is it making you forget that too?”

“The first time what happened?” asked Horan.

Mark buried his face in his hands. “We’re going in circles.”

Waia grimaced. “Man, what else is getting locked in our heads? I mean, it feels like every day, I’m thinking about why we’re doing any of this less and less. Like, it’s almost stopped being about getting revenge for the sake of everyone I was meant to be protecting and just become about hurting Torch for the sake of it. I…” She looked down at the floor, fear mounting on her face. “Is someone messing with my head, or is that just me? Which is worse?”

Mark nodded. “Like a voice in your head that shouldn’t be there?”

Waia’s gaze seemed to hollow out in front of the other two. “…I don’t even know what’s meant to be there and what isn’t. Not anymore.”

The green light casting ghoulish shadows on Waia’s face vanished as Quet lowered her hands and grabbed her translation glyph. “That’s twelve. Should be plenty. Let’s go.”

Jean, by now the nominal ambassador between the Primoi (plus Mark) and the rest of the locals, stepped forward and examined what remained of the lead pipe. “So… We still can’t understand her now, but… you’re done? You’re leaving?”

Mark looked at the local and shrugged. “We aren’t exactly being chased out by a mob with pitchforks and torches, but… the sooner we make all this go away, I think, the better. Before things get any worse, at least.”

Waia helped Quet load the foot-long lead discs onto the Voidfish 1½. Plus, I’ve had to settle for random Chosen and Huntsmen for too long. I’m ready for round three against Torch. Because they’re totally gonna just know where we are and start gunning for us. At least they think I’m dead right now, thanks to their minions being idiots. Here’s hoping I can give ‘em a good shock when they try to follow us, right?”

Quet nodded at Waia as she clumsily rolled one of the discs into the Voidfish 1½’s basket. “I just want to stop having to think about that ghoul, that–that vulture of misery. They’ve already been seconds away from killing me twice. I’m sick of it.”

“They’ve been making things worse for everyone for too long,” agreed Mark.

“I just want to stop having a target on my back for once,” mumbled Horan.

Jean huffed and looked over his shoulder at the other locals. “Well, our lives have gotten much worse since you four arrived, and I don’t think any of us have ever understood what’s going on with you, at all. So, um… Good luck. And don’t bother us again.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, buddy.” Waia climbed onto the Voidfish 1½’s basket and sat cross-legged near its rim. She looked at Quet as the Aztec knelt down in the middle of the bowl-like basket and ran her hand along the surface of one of the lead plates. She felt her hair lift off her shoulders as the entire vessel was encased in an invisible bubble of zero gravity. “Alright, going up.”

“Just make sure the tunnel doesn’t collapse in on us,” said Quet, checking to make sure Mark and Horan were also safely within the basket. “Horan?”

Horan struggled to remain stable in the basket as his own weight no longer did anything to anchor him. “Yup, okay. This one’s for you, physics.” He thrust his hand upwards, and with a brief blast of air, the Voidfish 1½’s sail billowed upwards and the ramshackle craft began to rise.

At the same time, Quet wove a lattice of glyphs above the rippling sail. The earth and stone of the alcove’s ceiling parted, revealing the dismal grey sky of the world above.

Mark put a hand on Horan’s shoulder. He didn’t feel anything happen himself, but he could see that the increased, undivided focus from a human gave Horan just a little bit of an extra kick for his work. Or maybe it was a placebo for both of them. Or maybe extra confidence just made Horan work better. Or all three. The outcome was the same. “Here goes nothing,” mumbled Mark.

Horan directed a continuous stream of wind upwards, making the Voidfish 1½ rise vertically out of the hole that had been created in the street.

Mark handed Quet his gas mask and covered his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Horan’ll be doing his best to keep the irradiated air away, but we’ll be out of the city soon. Keep it on for now, just to be safe.”

Quet looked down at the mask in her hands, then up at Mark. “…What about you?”

Mark shrugged and pointed at his sleeve. “It’ll hold for a couple minutes.”

Quet sighed and donned the mask, clipping it into place with the straps behind her head. “…Man, this sucks. You seriously drew the short straw, you know that?”

Mark shrugged again.

By now, the Voidfish 1½ was rising at a diagonal angle at a pretty respectable speed. Mark offered minor adjustments to the course so that they were headed directly towards Mount Baker (how he knew such precise measurements eluded everyone on board, including him), and with a grunt of exertion, Horan clapped his hands. The wind hissing past everyone’s ears as they rose grew silent as the entire Voidfish 1½ was enclosed in an invisible bubble of completely still air.

Mark gripped Horan’s shoulder. “Keep it up, man. We’re almost there.” He did his best not to think about the fact that all the four of them were doing was choosing between certain failure and near-certain failure. He couldn’t think about that. Not now.

-

Yang hadn’t been sure of what she was meant to do after the human she had spent several months tracking down vanished into oblivion mid-conversation. She sat on the roof of a small office building near the bank of the Willamette, backpack dangling over the side between her legs as she stared blankly down the empty street and tried to think of what to do next.

Her attention was suddenly grabbed by a smudge of green light emerging from the ruined skyline, stark against the dark background. Some kind of parachute-like sailcraft, picking up speed as it rose towards the clouds. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she could see three or four people standing on the slightly concave platform that dangled from the sail.

Yang lit up. They were doing it. Hurriedly, she hefted her backpack up off the edge of the building, stood up and ran to the building’s corner. Their course would take them directly over the Willamette, they wouldn’t be able to go above the clouds in time, and they were lit up like a Christmas tree. The Servants were going to open fire on them. That was a fact.

There wasn’t much Yang could do, standing alone on a rooftop thousands of feet from the other side of the Willamette. Indeed, there wasn’t anything she could do. But she couldn’t do nothing.

She quickly unzipped her backpack and produced her emergency road flare. Looking off to the side as she lifted up the bright red stick paper, she could almost see Huntsmen on the far shore scrambling to their battle stations in preparation to shoot a random green light out of the sky.

With nothing else for her to do, she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Hey! Servants! How about another target?!” Surely her single voice couldn’t decently carry all the way across the thousand-foot river. Surely.

Either way, she cracked open the road flare and waved it forward for all to see. It wasn’t especially bright, but any light was easily visible out here in the darkness.

Yang stood there for a long time, silently holding up the resulting cloud of harsh red light like that one green statue that was supposedly on the other side of the country that she had seen in the odd photograph. She was idly wondering if that statue was still upright next to the big city she always saw in the background when she heard a high-pitch buzz pass by a few dozen feet to her right. Snipers, naturally. They would be saving the big guns for the thing in the sky. Still, it wasn’t nothing.

She instinctively ducked down to shrink the target presented to the snipers. Still she held up the flare as it illuminated her body in angry red. “Nice try! Keep it up and you might actually hit me!” Already her throat was going hoarse.

She continued moving from side to side and occasionally taking cover behind the detritus on the building’s roof, with chunks of concrete getting blown out of the roof around her. She couldn’t even make out where exactly the shots were coming from. But no matter where she lay in cover, she made sure to keep the flare firmly visible, drawing Servant attention as if they were a bunch of especially gullible moths.

Meanwhile, the green light in the air was still receiving the brunt of Servant attention. Someone or something aboard was managing to shove aside the occasional tank shell or anti-air missile that actually came close to making contact with the craft, but with every averted hit, the corresponding reaction sent the craft careening wildly through the sky, threatening to throw off its course as it slowly yet surely made its way towards the ceiling of clouds. With all of the smaller, less-deflectable shots instead being directed at Yang, it looked like they would have a decent shot at making it into cover.

Yang kept her eyes on the craft as it slowly shrank out of view, the only thing keeping its location clear being the green light now close enough to reflect off of the matte grey of the clouds. A moment or two before the craft vanished into the clouds, Yang could have sworn she saw a new light appear in the middle of the green mass, one roughly the same size and color as the one issuing from Yang’s flare.

The demon grinned like an idiot as her flare began to gutter and fail and the Voidfish 1½ disappeared into the clouds. They’d made it.

Her smile vanished when she saw a minute blue light rise out of the Servant encampment and follow the obscured ship’s path, entering the cloud cover in a matter of seconds.

Yang had done her part. The rest would all be on them. Whatever ‘the rest’ exactly was.