The four adventurers moved cautiously as they followed Thinneus toward the sound. Suddenly, the lights to the warehouse came on, bathing the area in a dull orange glow. A drone flew overhead, and Memlen raised his shotgun to take it out but Sarah halted him. “We don’t yet know if they’re friend or foe.” She motioned for their trowlet guides to head back and they did so.

Walking in from the opposite side of the warehouse was another team of adventurers. But they weren’t sporting Guild of Champions cloaks. Instead, they wore Strigoli Family trenchcoats. One wore a camouflage coat painted in fiery colors, marking him as a priest of Innestia. He carried a light machine gun and seemed eager for a fight. A gnome stood to the side, surrounded by several drones. His expression was stoic, but the crystals growing out of his head flashed with blue light, indicating the intensity with which he was analyzing the situation. A strangeling mage stood on the flanks, his staff lit by violet enchantments. But the orange sigil on his mage’s robes marked him as a battlemage. Beside him stood a protohuman wearing only leather pants, armed with a greatsword over his shoulder and a longbow on his back. He seemed unbothered by the flames that covered his entire form. There were also half a dozen rookies holding low-quality firearms and trying to mask their nervousness.

Their leader was a Stranger, though he appeared to have been born in the physical world, rather than originating in the Strange, making him a Friendly. “Friendly” however, was the last word that would describe his demeanor. He had the body of a horse and the torso of a strangeling. He carried a potion grenade launcher, and while he didn’t point it at the Champions, it was in the ready position.

“What brings you all the way down here where you don’t belong?” the centaur asked. Translation: You’re obviously here for the Wondertrove, but we’re taking it, so you’d better leave before we make you leave.

“We’re here to claim a finder’s fee on these Wondercakes,” said Sarah. “But if you want to take a few containers back with you so you can return them to their owners, we can work with that.” Translation: We’re not going to turn tail and run. But we’ll also turn a blind eye to you stealing some of the Wondertrove to sell on the black market because it’s not worth shedding blood over some snack cakes.

While they were talking, Thinnues whispered to Anthony, “What’s going on with the flamey guy? Is he a Stranger?”

Anthony whispered back. “No, an einherjar, a saint of Innestia, back from the celestial realm for another fight. The priest summoned him.”

The centaur continued the negotiations with Sarah. “You’re probably not getting any reception down here. Why don’t you go back to the surface and ask your bosses what you should do.” Translation: Your body cams aren’t transmitting and you can’t call for backup. We’re going to kill you all and face no consequences unless you back away now. Seemingly as an afterthought, the centaur added. “Tell you what, we’ll let you each take a case of cakes back to the surface. Call it a gift.” Translation: This is your last chance.

Thinneus motioned at Memlen’s staff and the hafftrow held it out with one tentacle while keeping his hands on his weapon. Anthony readied his gun. Sarah glanced at her team. They’d been together long enough that they didn’t need words to reach a consensus. And the mood was unanimous. They might be outnumbered, but they were part of the Guild of Champions, and they weren’t going to back down from a team of burglars masquerading as adventurers.

Sarah turned back to the centaur and said, “Thanks for the offer. We respectfully decline.” Bringing up her machine, she unleashed a salvo of suppressive fire. Her enchanted bullets lit up the area with flashes of electrical energy. And as she fired, she dashed toward cover, her wings pushing her faster.

Thinneus grabbed Memlen’s staff and used the range boost to teleport himself onto the catwalk behind the enemy, then drew his pistols and turned to fire.

Anthony gave a roar that sounded nearly draconic as he fired a concussion potion from his underbarrel launcher. He ran behind a shipping container and ended up next to Sarah.

Memlen dove the opposite direction, firing off a burst of automatic shotgun fire before switching to his staff.

The opposition was not idle as they were taking fire. They opened up with a salvo of gunshots of their own, along with a pair of incendiary potions that exploded right where Sarah’s team had been standing.

“I’m hit,” grunted Anthony, digging the bullet out of his leg.

Memlen cast a healing spell on Anthony, ignoring his own bruising from the pistol rounds his vest had caught. Green magic reduced Anthony’s gaping wound to a pink scar.

Thinneus crouched on the catwalk and, with his dual pistols, rained down automatic gunfire on a cluster of flanked enemies. Their vests caught a lot of it, but one of them went down while his comrades returned fire. Thinneus conjured a quick magic barrier with one of his glyph tattoos, but even then, some of the return fire punched through the platform and grazed him, drawing blood.

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On the other side of the warehouse, Sarah was leaning around the corner and laying down long bursts of fire. Anthony blessed her with a gift of professionalism, supernaturally enhancing her every action. Return fire dug into her arms and chest but her body armor absorbed most of it. A remote-controlled car sped toward her position, laden with plastic explosives. But Memlen hit it with a red spell, destabilizing the bomb’s chemical structure, causing it to detonate before it reached her.

Meanwhile, most of the enemy had focused on Thinneus, so he had to teleport down to ground level to take cover behind a shipping container, the front of his vest frozen over from where he’d been hit by an ice spell. He coughed up chilled blood. He hunkered down, activating a healing glyph to alleviate some of the damage.

At the other end, Memlen cast a violet spell on himself to enhance his casting, then leaned around the corner of a shipping container to strike an enemy with a green spell that turned their own body against itself. The rival battlemage fired a blast at Memlen, but the hafftrow managed the appropriate countersign to dispel the energies before they hit him. The centaur fired a pair of poison gas potions at him, and he ducked away, but not before inhaling a good amount of the gas. He retched violently but kept to his feet.

Across from him, Sarah was reloading her machine gun, switching to armor-piercing rounds, as blood streaked down her face. She looked at Anthony. “What are you doing? Call George.”

Anthony fired a burst at the einherjar and missed, ducking to avoid the flaming arrow that returned his way. “I think we can do this without him.”

A potion grenade came over the storage containers and they both leapt to avoid it. After the explosion tore through what had been their cover seconds ago, Sarah shouted, “Call George!”

Anthony nodded and stood up. “Gorganthryx, I call you to fulfill your contract. Annihilate these fools.”

A hovering drone came around a corner and was lining up a shot when a portal opened and a massive reptilian claw came through, smashing the machine to pieces. Following that claw came the rest of the dragon Gorganthryx, and even on all fours he stood several meters taller than the surrounding shipping containers. The einherjar charged, greatsword raised to attack, but the dragon incinerated him with a bolt of lightning. Enemy fire ricocheted off his golden-yellow scales, but the bullets were nothing more than a nuisance. He let out a roar and charged into battle.

Half of the enemy began to run in fear, but the priest of Innestia shouted a war cry to rally them. He charged forward, machine gun tearing into the beast’s face with incendiary rounds. When that wasn’t enough, the priest raised a hand to attempt to banish it, but Anthony’s faith prevailed, and the dragon remained. It blasted the priest with lightning, leaving him convulsing on the floor. The dragon then rushed the priest, threw him in the air, and devoured him with one gulp. While Gorganthryx took the brunt of the small arms fire, Memlen, Anthony, and Sarah took the opportunity to reposition away from the expanding cloud of poison gas, with Sarah and Memlen chugging healing potions so they could stay on their feet.

The centaur was on the other side, leading a pair of rookies in a pincer maneuver to come around both sides of the shipping container where Thinneus had ducked behind, only to find the skirmisher using an agility glyph to boost himself over that same container to the side they’d just left.

Thinneus landed to see the enemy mage drinking a healing potion, and both were startled. The mage reached for his staff but Thinneus was quicker with his pistols, channeling energy from the glyphs on his hand to add fire and lightning damage to his bullets. The energy of the glyphs would dissipate after a couple meters, but at point blank range, the attack was devastating. The centaur and rookies were retracing their steps to attack him again so Thinneus teleported a short distance to dodge them.

As the dragon rampaged and Thinneus withdrew, the rest of the Guild of Champions team flanked a group of enemy combatants. Sarah opened fire with her machine gun as Anthony breathed out dragon fire, and half their team went down in one swoop. Memlen had a number of wounds by this point, but rather than weakening him, that pain morphed into rage that flared through his mutated chakra point and loaded even more power into his spells. He discovered the gnome technician that had been sending drones into the fight and was about to fire off a deadly spell when the enemy dropped his pistol and threw up his hands. Memlen grumbled, but threw the gnome against the wall while cuffing him.

From around the corner, the centaur fired an armor-piercing spike potion at the dragon, wounding it. The dragon opened its mouth to fire another blast of lightning, only to get a second spike potion down the throat. This was too much damage for it to sustain, and it dematerialized back to the afterlife. He darted back to cover, his four hooves kicking up sparks as he fled.

The four Champions moved carefully to surround him, checking dead bodies to make sure they were truly dead and keeping a lookout for any further enemy combatants. “The fight’s over,” shouted Sarah. “Lay down your arms and surrender.”

The one remaining rookie looked desperate to give in, but the centaur wasn’t having it. He aimed his grenade launcher and pulled the trigger, but the firing pin landed on an empty cylinder. Throwing it down in anger, he drew an assault rifle and prepared for a last stand.

Sarah motioned her team into position. She picked up a fragmentary potion off a dead rookie and lobbed it over the shipping container to land right next to the centaur. The explosion forced the centaur to abandon cover and he came charging out, gun blazing, only to be cut down by a combination of Thinneus and Anthony’s gunfire. The final rookie threw up his hands and shouted, “I surrender.”

As Sarah cuffed him, the rest of the team surveyed the area for any remaining combatants. Thinneus found another rookie hiding in a container. The kid was so petrified by fear he was unable to process Thinneus’ command to drop his gun nor bring himself to raise it and fire. Thinneus dashed, grabbed the gun out of his unresisting hand, and tackled the kid to the floor.

Anthony called out from across the room. “I’ve got a mage here, still alive. But barely.”

“No way!” Shouted Thinneus. “I must have dumped ten, fifteen bullets into him.”

“Memlen,” called Sarah. “How’s your spirit? Can you handle a healing spell?”

“I’m pretty fried,” returned Memlen. “I could maybe do one, stabilize him.”

“Better than nothing,” said Sarah. “In the meantime, let’s pool our healing potions and do triage.”

Memlen healed the mage and Sarah gave him her last healing potion. The hafftrow made some basic examinations. “That bought us fifteen minutes. Maybe half an hour.”

Sarah nodded. “We did what we could. Anyone else have any potions left?”

Memlen and Anthony shook their heads.

Thinneus walked over, a green glyph on his shoulder pouring a bit of healing energy into his body. “I found one on the centaur.”

Sarah turned to Anthony, “Can you pray to Arjax to supply us with more?”

Anthony shook his head. “I’ll need to pay Arjax more service before he’s willing to do me any more favors.”

“So that’s that,” said Sarah. She surveyed her own injuries and the injuries of her team.

As the adventurers considered who to give the last potion to, a clattering came from the catwalks on the far side of the room. Nearly twenty trowlets wearing red and green shirts raised their weapons as their leader shouted in a heavily accented voice, “Dith to thi humins!”