When the others came back from the Camps, Alex was there waiting for them.
She waved to Team Gamma as they came by, having finished the Camp at the Mall. Sam nodded and held out a thumbs up. Tim and Brian both gave her a salute that made her laugh, chest pain notwithstanding, and Rudy paused long enough to give her a sudden, surprising hug. Then they were through the portal and safe.
Beta came a while later, apparently having been searching for her after they finished the Library. Clara ran to her, the Acolyte’s face concerned. Alex just reassured her and tapped the recovered Talismans. Audrey laughed, and Joanna shook her head, all while Alessa and Ruth looked on. Then they, too, entered the portal and left the other world.
Alex paused a moment longer. With the death of the Killer and the destruction of at least six Camps, she had no doubt that the place was a lot less dangerous. Her time in this particular section of the other world was probably over; Liliana might go down with her, but the company was likely to be after her head as well. At least an E rank near the cusp of reaching D rank would be a shoe in at another contractor, but it was a bit bittersweet, leaving the place she had fought so hard to conquer.
Then she stepped through the portal, and the light welcomed her home…
[Mission Report]
[Successful Return! +20 Experience]
[Main Quests Completed! +60 Experience]
[Secondary Challenge Quest Completed! +40 Experience]
[Secondary Vengeance Quest Completed! +40 Experience]
[Secondary Challenge Quest Completed! + 40 Experience]
[All Quests Completed! Glorious Victory! + 40 Experience]
Another full clear. Not the main thing that she had been after, but a welcome bonus. One more level, and she’d reach level five—and she’d be considered a D rank.
[Marathoning increased from 12 to 17!]
[You have reached level 4 as a Page!]
[+2 Speed gained. +1 Free Attribute awarded.]
Another point allocated to Strength. Every bit of power helped, and the harder she hit, the quicker each fight would end.
[Battle Maneuvers has reached level 20! Skill is at Max Level and can no longer increase.]
[Reset Battle Maneuvers to gain a Title?]
She could reset it now, but it probably wasn’t wise. If she did go into another portal soon, she would be at a higher level and facing an unfamiliar situation. Best to keep her Skills as they were, with an uncertain future ahead.
[Skill Chain available. Do you wish to combine Melee–Axe and Melee–Shield?]
[Warning: Chained Skills lose all previous levels.]
It was the same choice, of course, so she made the same decision.
[Additional equipment awarded! Select new equipment.]
She grinned for a moment, and then chose to upgrade her axe. The weapon had served her well so far, and she’d need it for quite a while longer.
Then Alex sat back and waited for the light to bring her back home, one more time…
She stepped out of the portal and found herself back in the world she loved.
Alex looked around the platform and saw some things more or less as she expected. Forsmith was waiting for her, once again dressed only in his uniform. He met her eyes and nodded, slowly, and she nodded back. The other Surveyors were gathered around the bus, where Team Beta was giving their reports to a person in a black uniform.
It wasn’t Liliana, though. Instead, it was some team sergeant that she dimly recognized from one of the D rank teams. He seemed a bit impatient and unhappy, but he was still listening fairly well to Joanna, and didn’t seem to be trying to kill anyone by sabotage, so that seemed nice. When he looked up at Alex, he took a step towards her, as if he wanted to confront her immediately, but then he paused, restraining himself with visible frustration.
She grinned and shrugged. Then she walked over to get in line behind her friends and wait for her turn. As she waited, she heard her phone ring in her bag. Alex glanced at the sergeant, who was talking with Audrey now, and decided that she had time. With a quick nod at the harried-looking sergeant, she jogged over to her bag and dug out her phone. When she answered, she heard her mother’s voice.
“Alex? I heard about casualties at the portal. Are you all right?”
The concern in her mother’s voice tugged at her heart, but Alex smiled. “I’m fine, Mom. Just some issues that had to be handled. I took care of it.”
“Oh.” The word carried a kind of definite understanding. “Permanently?”
“As permanent as it could be without anyone dying.” Alex felt her smile slide away. The memory of her axe carving through human flesh and bone… her stomach twisted, and she forced herself to move on from the event in her mind. “Hey, I also got the Killer this time! It put up a fight, but I managed to take it down.”
“Really? That’s impressive for a level three.”
“Level four now, actually. Almost to my first Role switch.” She let a little pride filter into her voice. “We’ll have to see how quickly that happens, though. Not sure how things are going to go now. My team got a bit…beat up, you know.”
“Good point.”
Her phone buzzed a little, and Alex frowned. She checked the screen and saw that Zach was calling on his outside line. He’d never done that before. “Got to go, Mom. Somebody’s calling to check in.”
“Somebody, huh? Maybe someone with a cute grin and nice eyes?”
Alex felt herself blush. “Come on, Mom. I have to go. Love you.”
“Love you too, dear.”
She switched to Zach’s call. As she did, the sergeant finished with Audrey and moved on to Clara. He glanced at her in obvious displeasure, but she ignored him. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“You just got back, right? I saw a lot of the readings change today, and I figured that last drop was you coming home.” His voice sounded partially relieved and partially stressed out, like he’d been on the edge of his seat for the past while.
“Yeah, I’m back. I’m fine.” She grinned at the thought of him being worried for her. It was weird, but in a nice way. “So the readings are back to normal?”
“Kind of.” He paused. “The Group’s in a bit of an uproar, though. Apparently, one of the teams took a lot of casualties, and one of them was a higher up’s son. People are already getting called onto the carpet. I couldn’t figure out if you were involved, so I was…concerned.”
“Well, thanks.” She turned away from the sergeant and walked a bit, wanting a little more distance from listening ears. “Do you think they’ll cancel that other project now? With the extra casualties?”
“The one we’ve been talking about? Oh yeah, definitely.” He sounded definitive. “Another high casualty incident, and with relatives of upper management involved? They’re going to be out collecting scalps for the next couple of weeks.”
Alex relaxed. At least that was handled now as well. When they fired her, she could go with a clear conscience. “Did you ever figure out which one it was? What they were doing?”
“Not much, just the project name and a couple of other details.” She could almost picture him shrugging. “They called it Project Eternal Franklin, no idea why. From some of the profitability projections, it seemed like it was some kind of power generation scheme. Not sure how that would mess with the portal, but at least that’s over.”
She paused. A creeping sense of dread stole over her. “Power generation? Like electricity?”
“Yeah.” He seemed to have picked up on her mood. “Why are you saying it like that? Did you find something in the other world?”
“Kind of? When I was exploring, I found a location called the Power Plant.” Her dread solidified a little more. Something smelled wrong, somehow. “There weren’t any generators inside, though. No machines aside from some kind of setup around a broken Anchor Point.”
“An Anchor Point?” She heard him tapping away on his tablet. “Yeah, a few early Surveys that broke that thing. A few more sent specifically to look at it. Not sure why it would have formed there, or where all the real power generators went. Maybe the Grue broke it all down when they built the Anchor.”
Alex saw the sergeant motioning to her, but she shook her head. There was something important here, something she was on the edge of figuring out. “It didn’t look like the Grue moved anything, though. Like the array around the Anchor Point looked built in. Like it was there before the Grue.” Another thought occurred to her. “Have there ever been reports of power generators in the other world? Like gas generators, or other power stations, that kind of thing?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. When Zach spoke, it was a quiet voice that hinted he was starting to see the same kind of picture as she was. “Not that I can remember. There was electrical infrastructure, yeah, but no generators hooked up to it. As for power plants, they show up every so often…” More tapping. “And every single one has had at least one Anchor Point inside it.”
She nodded, slowly realizing what she had been thinking. “What if the other world didn’t have any generators because they were using the Anchor Points instead? Like they were siphoning electricity off somehow? That’s why the Anchor Points are all over the place, and especially inside the power plants.”
Zach grunted. “If that’s the case, we can’t have been the only ones to figure it out.”
“Maybe we aren’t.” Her mind was racing now. The sergeant was calling to her in a voice laced with frustration. Why did the air feel so wrong? “Maybe somebody on Earth figured it out already, too. Benjamin Franklin was famous for electricity and stuff, right?”
“Eternal Franklin was a power generation project…” His words trailed off. “You think they were trying to build an Anchor Point? Here?”
“Ms. Morrison, I need to speak with you now!”
Alex held up a hand. Her forehead was sweating. The air was foul. “Yeah, on Earth. It was messing with the portal each time they started it up, so they’ve just been experimenting. Maybe they figured out they needed to be near a portal for it to work.”
“But that’s insane. Why would they ever…” Zach paused. There was a sudden, loud beep in the background. “Alex? Are you still near the portal?”
“Ms. Morrison!”
She shot the sergeant a glare. “Yeah. Why?”
“The readings… I’m seeing spikes all over the place. Are you seeing anything?”
“What? No, I—” Alex turned back to the portal and stopped. She felt her eyes go wide as she caught sight of the vortex.
It was roiling. Power was roaring through it in waves, with shreds of energy lifting away from it in a purple haze. Alex took a step back as she recognized the scent that had been plaguing her. Magic. There was magic flowing from the portal in a flood.
She forced herself to calm down, to speak clearly. “Zach, I need you to find an address for Eternal Franklin, now. I think they switched it on. I think they switched it all the way on.”
There was a heartbeat of terrible silence. When Zach spoke, his voice showed a mixture of horror and determination. “Got it. I’ll call you back soon.”
“Good.” She ended the call and turned to the sergeant, who was glaring at her. Alex walked over to him, trying not to run. Panic was not going to help anyone.
The sergeant looked ready to start spitting lightning bolts. “Ms. Morrison, I need to speak with you about—”
“Where is Liliana?” Alex knew, she somehow knew that the woman was at the center of it. When things had gone wrong, she hadn’t just been pulled back to headquarters to be fired. She’d gone to the project and told them that the whole thing was coming down.
And true to form, they’d doubled down again.
The sergeant folded his arms. “That is not your concern, Ms. Morrison. Instead, I want a report about—”
“Shut up.” The sergeant’s face went blank, obviously shocked, and Alex pressed the advantage before they could recover. “She went to Eternal Franklin and turned it on. The portal’s going crazy now because they are powering up an Anchor Point on Earth. We’re going to be lucky if we don’t have an Escalation Event right here in the city. So tell. Me. Where. She. Is.”
“Th-that’s ridiculous. You can’t mean—”
A crackle of lightning snapped across the face of the portal. Alex glanced at it just as a hollow grey wind washed over everything, carrying the scent of magic and the thin howls of Grue. Everyone in the containment area froze. All the color drained from the team sergeant’s face, and he stared at the vortex as if it were coming for his soul.
Of course, in a very real way, it was.
“Focus!” Alex grabbed the man’s shoulder, and he shuddered back to awareness. “Where is she?”
“I-I don’t know! She just said she had other company business, and I needed to cover for her. She isn’t even answering her phone when I call!”
Alex swore softly. She heard her phone start to ring, and she stabbed a finger at him. “Get on the phone and tell the Group what is happening. Tell them to get their response team here. Forsmith can’t hold this back on his own.”
Then she turned to look at her fellow E rankers. They were all staring at her in shock. “Get everyone on the bus. We need to be ready to move.” She answered her phone. “Yeah?”
“I have a location for you. Ten blocks north. Under a warehouse.” Zach’s voice sounded breathless, like he’d been running or shouting or both. “The place isn’t answering phone calls, and they can’t shut it down from here. You have to stop it on your own.”
“We’re on it.” She turned and gestured for the others to move, and those that weren’t already moving rushed to the bus. “How much time do we have?”
“Not long. These readings…Alex, if we don’t get them under control, half the city is going to be blanketed in magic. Even if we do—I think—”
It was obvious he didn’t want to say the words. “We’ll stop it before it happens. Let me know if it gets worse.”
She ended the call and started towards the bus…only to stop as Forsmith stepped up beside her.
His face looked calm. Even resigned. He was watching the boiling vortex of magic as if he knew what lay beyond it, and perhaps he did. When he glanced over at her, his mouth quirked. “I will hold it back as long as I can, Surveyor Morrison. Find a way to stop this. Protect them.”
There was a moment of understanding between them, and Alex nodded—and hesitated. She came to a decision. “Call me Alex. Short for Alexis. Alexis Morales.”
His eyes narrowed for a moment. Then they widened. “Morales. Daughter of Moira Morales.” She nodded, and his lips twisted in what might have been a smile. “I see. She survived, after all. Good luck, Alex.”
“You too, Forsmith.” She nodded at him and then ran onto the bus. The driver was already shutting the door; it took only a few more moments of shouting to convince them to head to the address that Zach had given her.
She glanced behind them, just in time to see Forsmith throw himself into the tormented portal at a full run. Alex closed her eyes for a moment and then turned to the front.
There was one more mission to complete.
Alarms were starting to sound as they closed in on the warehouse.
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They wailed like monsters of their own; they’d been installed back during the events of the Fracture, when portals had opened at random and the magic had spilled from them in waves. People had not heard much of them in the past decade; despite hiccups here and there, the Surveyors had managed to keep Escalation Events to a bare minimum, preventing the massive casualties that resulted from torrents of free magic washing across unprotected civilians.
Just because the alarms were rare, however, did not mean that people didn’t know what they meant. Every single person in the city was already headed away from the portal with whatever belongings they could fit stuffed into their cars. Traffic jams were starting to form on the major highways; Alex could already see fights breaking out between drivers, and they passed at least one accident between a van and a truck weighed down by furniture.
Her thoughts were grim as they closed in on the warehouse. Even this far from the portal, she could still smell the magic. It wasn’t just coming from the portal, she suddenly realized. There were waves of it coming from the building as well. What had the Group done?
She turned around as the bus drew close. “Okay. I know we were already just fighting, but I think we’ve got one more problem to fix. We need to get inside that building and force them to shut down their little mad science experiment before it causes an Escalation Event. Anyone who gets in our way is just as bad as a griefer. Do not let them stop you, no matter what. Any questions?”
Sam raised his hand. “Is this thing the same one that has been messing with the portal? That’s been putting all of us at risk?”
“Yes.”
Brian snarled to himself. “Griefers, huh? Got it. No problem.” Tim put a hand on his teammate’s shoulder and shook him a little. The others all gave each other serious looks and nodded as well.
The bus rumbled to a stop, and the E rankers all filed off of it. Alex led them towards the front doors, which had been closed and locked. A side door beside the entrance looked like it was locked, too, but Brian just kicked it in.
Inside, they found the bodies.
Many of them were wearing normal civilian clothes. They were sprawled out across desks and slumped against walls. Alex crouched beside the first one, who looked like some kind of door guard. She checked him and found no pulse. Instead, she found traces of purple lines beneath his skin, like veins that had been injected with food dye. She pulled back. “Magic poisoning. Any normal around here aren’t going to be in good shape.”
“Uh, Al? I think there’s more than just that here.”
She stood and walked to where Audrey was standing over someone in a black Surveyor’s uniform. The woman had been fighting something clearly, and her wide-open eyes were blank. “What is this? Did Liliana do this?”
“Not sure, but if she’s gone crazy…”
“Then we’ll all have to work together to take her down. Come on, let’s go.” She tightened her grip on her axe and shield and led them out into the main room of the warehouse.
It seemed to be a normal warehouse, with rows of shelves and boxes stacked on pallets in every direction. They didn’t need to ask themselves where to go, however. The trail of bodies led them to a small office separated from the rest of the floor. Alex saw a body lying half out of the door, and a stairwell leading down. Purple light flared and flickered inside of it.
Alex led the way down the stairwell, moving as quickly as she dared. The stairwell was filled with that same purple light; the concrete walls made her feel constricted after fighting for so long in the open. Her shoulders hunched as they moved further down, and the others whispered to each other as they kept moving. She thought the purple light wasn’t helping; she couldn’t see any particular opening or light that was giving it off. Was it coming through the walls?
The stairwell seemed to last forever, but when it ended, Alex found herself in a long hallway. There were offices and locker rooms on either side of the hallway, but she ignored them as they moved towards the end of the hallway. Purple light flowed back from a set of closed double doors. More bodies lay in the hallway or the side rooms, with more wearing the black uniforms of higher rank Surveyors.
They had just reached the doors when Alex paused in shock. To her horror, yellow text flickered in her peripheral vision.
[E Rank Surveyor Alex]
[Emergency Quest: Prevent the Gate from opening.]
She glanced at the others and saw similar looks on their faces. The Screen wasn’t supposed to activate on Earth, not without the magic of the other world channeled into them. Seeing it here told her that something was very, very wrong. What had these idiots done?
Alex shook herself, reminding her of what needed to be done. “Remember, don’t let anything stop you. Power it down, destroy it if we have to, but we can’t let this happen. You with me?”
They nodded, and she turned back to the doors. “Then let’s go.”
She kicked open the doors, and they charged through into a place of madness.
There was an Anchor Point on Earth.
The ring of crystal was floating high above the floor, with spikes pointed inwards at a column of purple light. A crude copy of the mechanisms that she had seen in the other world had been mounted to the roof, and grey lightning crackled between the ring and the machines in a regular stream. It seemed like whatever technology that the Group had been experimenting with had worked.
Unfortunately, it had done far more than produce energy.
As Alex watched, a Grue Knight emerged from the column of purple fire, its gigantic sword emerging before the rest of it clawed its way into being. It joined close to half a dozen more Knights around the Anchor, with at least as many Archers, and ten times as many Grue Soldiers. The entire room was full of the monsters, all of whom were raising their weapons and howling in anticipation of more of their friends arriving. Some of them turned, their leering grey eyes searching for new victims.
Instead, they found themselves being charged by nearly a dozen desperate, enraged Surveyors.
Alex flung herself into the battle, her previous wounds aching as she slammed into the Grue spearmen. Her shield broke their spearpoints, and her axe tore and hacked through the closest of them. Their hungry howls continued to rise, and ahead, she saw more of them emerge from the column, even as the ones she killed fell and burned.
This time, however, she was not alone.
To her right, Joanna carved her way through the enemy ranks, her sword somehow glowing with power. Audrey slammed and smashed her way through the Grue as if they were ragdolls, laughing with each swing of her club. Alessa was fighting side by side with Ruth, both crushing and stabbing with staff and spear, and when an Archer stood on a distant console to shoot at them, Clara’s crossbow picked it off with ease.
On her left, Tim, Sam, and Rudy had formed a shield wall and smashed their way forward through the ranks of the Grue. Spear, sword, and mace were lashing out to kill the few Grue that tried to stand against them, while Marcel and Sam were further out on the flank, their spears keeping the Grue at bay as the rest of their team pushed forward. The Adept kept yelling out instructions to the others, warning them of the most dangerous enemies they faced, and they forged ahead with grim expressions.
The Grue fell back, seemingly surprised by the fury of the Surveyors’ assault. They retreated as more and more of their numbers went down, packing closer together around the Anchor Point. Their Knights pushed through the press, trying to fend off the Surveyors and keep their companions from collapsing. Archers took their shots and were answered in kind by Clara, who was firing her crossbow with far more skill and speed than Alex remembered.
As the Grue Soldiers faded away around her, Alex saw two Knights coming at her, one on each side. Alex met them with a roar, ducking past one swing and meeting a thrust with her shield. Shoving past the blows, she moved faster than she ever had before and put her axe through a Knight’s knee. It howled in agony, the limb folding up beneath it, as she turned and met the other Knight, shield to shield.
The impact was enough to nearly shove her off her feet, but she gritted her teeth and stayed put. A heartbeat later, the Knight tried to stab at her over their locked shields, and she jerked her head to the side. Her helmet rang as the edge scraped by her face, and Alex responded with a hack to the head that caught the Knight right in its snout. It recoiled, and she shoved against its shield again, harder. As it staggered backward, she swept low and hooked its ankle, toppling it onto its back.
There was a roar to her side, and Alex pivoted slightly to take a sword thrust on her shield. The blow slid her a step or two to her right, but she ignored it and hammered another pair of axe blows into the Knight on the ground. It thrashed on the concrete floor, mortally wounded, and Alex grinned to herself as she turned to face the other, still down on one crippled knee.
It swung wildly at her, and Alex deflected the sword with her shield, following it up with a bind using her axe. Another sharp twist tore the sword away and knocked its shield askew for good measure. She hooked the shield with her axe head, dragging it aside, and then smashed the edge of her own shield into the thing’s face. When it collapsed, she leapt on it, axe already striking.
When Alex straightened up, she saw her friends were still fighting. Audrey and Joanna had each confronted a Knight, their weapons smashing and cutting into the gigantic Grue as they forced them back. Clara was helping them, picking off any Soldiers that were trying to push past, even while Alessa and Ruth pushed their way forward. The last two Knights were unsuccessfully trying to make their way past the shield wall. Sam and Marcel had somehow blown past the remaining Soldiers to hit the last of the Archers in melee combat. All around her, the Surveyors were pushing their way closer to the Anchor Point, and the Grue were falling back.
Which meant the only thing between her and the column of light was the handful of Grue Soldiers that had emerged from it as reinforcements.
Alex turned to face those monsters, and they took a step back, trying to form a wall of spears. It did them no good, as she dove into their ranks. Spears reached for her, and she slipped past them or knocked them aside. Her axe met spear hafts, heads, torsos, and limbs. Her shield snapped spears, crushed skulls, and pulped ribcages. In a matter of moments, the space around the Anchor Point was clear, save for the quickly burning corpses she’d left behind.
She was left staring up at the massive crystal formation, her nose burning from the overwhelming magic flowing out of the column of purple flame. A glance backward told her the others were already finishing the last of their enemies, the last Knight falling beneath Rudy’s mace. Joanna and Sam were already running towards her, their gaze caught by the crystal spinning above her. Alex shouted to be heard over the hum that seemed to fill the room. “How do we shut it down?”
Joanna was the one that answered her. “There’s supposed to be a Keeper of some kind. Some Grue that is maintaining the connection.” She paused as a Grue Soldier clawed its way free of the column. Her sword cut it down before it took a second step. “Where is it?”
“I don’t see anything.” Sam looked around. “Do we try to break the controls? Shut it down that way?”
“Sure.” Alex paused, a new thought occurring to her. She looked around the room. “Where is Liliana?”
The others looked around, and then a low laugh echoed through the room. Alex spun around, and watched in growing horror as a familiar figure stepped out from behind the column of purple fire.
Liliana had seen better days. Her hair seemed out of sorts, and her black uniform seemed frayed. The team captain’s smile was bright, however, and her eyes were full of genuine joy. When she spoke, the column of purple light flared and flickered in time with her words. “So. You managed to survive all of it. I’m disappointed, but not too much. Now I can take care of you personally.”
Alex set herself. “Stand down, Liliana. Shut down the Anchor Point, and—” She stopped as Liliana broke into a mocking laugh.
“Shut it down? Why? Why would I do that when I have seen its glorious truth?” Liliana stepped forward, and Alex’s eyes widened as she noticed something. Her uniform wasn’t frayed; it was insubstantial, as if it were made of smoke. As if Liliana was made of smoke. The team captain’s mouth began to flicker with grey and purple light; her dark eyes began to lighten and turn grey. “You never could see the bigger picture, Alexandretta. You couldn’t see the wonder that awaits me. Now, you will never—”
She didn’t give Liliana—or whatever Liliana had become—the chance to finish the sentence. Alex struck at her as hard as she could, trying to bring her axe down on the woman’s head. Her blade met a dark staff that materialized just in front of it, and she saw Liliana’s smile grow far wider than should have been possible on a human face. “Not very honorable, are you, Alexandretta?”
“My name is Alex!” She swung her shield, hoping to knock the staff aside. Her attack faltered as Liliana simply shoved her back, grinning still.
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll be forgotten in the end.” Liliana stepped back and purple lightning began to coruscate in her other hand. “Fool. You couldn’t even challenge me when I was a simple D rank. You really think you could fight me now?”
She unleashed a burst of jagged lightning, and Alex barely caught it on her shield. The force of the attack pushed her back, but her footing held firm. Energy crackled and burned around her, but her shield held fast. Alex glared at the former team captain and then saw something beyond her. A massive hand, the size of a person, was slowly moving out of the column. Something new was coming through the column, and she doubted that anyone here was going to be able to fight it.
Liliana glanced backward, and her grey eyes widened. She laughed, a high, growling sound. “I see! I am favored by my new companions! All will see the—”
Abruptly, she cut off with a yelp, and the lightning stopped. Alex staggered forward and then caught sight of the crossbow bolt in Liliana’s shoulder. Clara’s voice rose over the sound of the thing coming out of the column. “Get her! Now!”
The shade of the team captain snapped her gaze upward, but she didn’t have the chance to strike back before Audrey sprinted in at her, her long black hair streaming out like a war banner behind her. Alex saw the war club come around and smash into Liliana’s midsection; the shade’s feet actually left the floor for a moment.
Liliana countered with a swing of her staff a moment later; Audrey got her club up in time to block, but she was still sent tumbling backwards. Sam was there in the next second, his spear catching the shade in her left hand. Joanna struck next, her glowing sword hitting the staff as it raised to smash Sam flat; Brian and Tim piled in next, their weapons flashing.
Alex staggered forward a bit more as the Surveyors piled in, each one striking at the former team captain. Liliana screamed and flailed, but she was surrounded and alone. Blow after blow slipped through her defenses, and she was bleeding white smoke from a dozen wounds as she was pushed backwards towards the pillar of purple flame. Behind her, the giant clawed hand had been joined by the fingers of a second hand, still moving slowly.
“Enough!” Liliana’s scream was shrill and high, and the Surveyors suddenly flew backwards as if pushed by a heavy wind. The shade’s unnatural features were distorted with sheer rage as she clutched her staff with both hands and swung it down. A sudden, crushing weight descended on Alex, and she saw her friends suddenly struggling to stand. Some kind of Gravity magic? She didn’t know; she’d been too focused on the non-Magic side of things to tell.
“All of you have always been against me! All of you were sabotaging me! This is all your fault!” Liliana’s screeching had gone beyond hysterics. She was completely insane. Alex forced herself to take a step forward, then another. The others were rising too, but not fast enough. The second giant hand was nearly through, and she thought she could see the shape of a giant black head following them. “I was going places! I was succeeding. If you idiots had only listened, then none of this would have ever happened! And the worst of them all was—”
Liliana’s rant cut off, and Alex forced herself to grin. She took another step, and Liliana’s now-grey eyes widened. She forced her staff a little lower, backing up as she did so. The weight increased, but Alex fought through it. Another step. Then another.
“No. It isn’t possible. It isn’t!” Liliana’s staff shook as she struggled to put more force into it, to increase the weight further. “You’re a monster. A monster!”
Alex dropped her shield. She raised her axe in both hands. It felt like it weighed a ton. She was only a step away. Maybe two. “Yes. I am.”
Then, before Liliana could step back again, she glanced upward. The head was starting to come through, a leering face the size of a truck. Liliana’s shade looked up and back, momentarily distracted by what was emerging behind her.
Alex threw her axe. It was a move that her mother hated; wasteful, she’d said, and far too risky for real combat. Even if it worked, it left you open and unarmed. All it would take was one good dodge, and you were no better than a civilian.
This time, however, it worked perfectly. The weapon tumbled through the air, turning once as Liliana’s head turned back. She saw the shade’s mouth open in a scream, saw her hands start to rise in an instinctive block.
The axe blade struck, biting deep into Liliana’s head. The shade’s head snapped back, as if staring at the grey, reinforced ceiling. For a moment, everything seemed to go still.
Then the shade collapsed, the axe still wedged in its skull.
Alex felt the weight leave her. She dashed forward, ripping her axe out and striking the shade again to make sure of the kill. The body twitched and began to burn purple, and she dashed back to pick up her shield. The others were moving too, coming together in a defensive line.
When she turned back, the enormous thing was still trying to force its way through, but the column had suddenly started to flicker. The crystal structure above it spun faster, pieces of it beginning to chip and fragment as it whirled. One of them glanced off of Alex’s shield.
The others gathered in around her, shields and weapons raised. Clara dashed over to join them, her crossbow loaded. The Acolyte shot her bolt at the face of the thing that was emerging. It didn’t seem to notice.
Alex glanced at Clara, who just shrugged and started to load another bolt. Then she snorted and turned back to the column, watching to see what would happen.
The crystal ring rotated faster and faster, and the column continued to flicker. She heard the hum, barely noticeable before, build to an almost painful pitch.
Then, all at once, the ring stopped. It shattered, and the column of purple flame vanished. Whatever had been trying to come through vanished along with it, the gigantic features becoming nothing more than a pale afterimage.
Alex ducked a little as shards of the ring came down, followed by the more solid crash of the larger chunks in front of her. She heard a couple of the other Surveyors shout and grunt as the fragments peppered them as well.
Then they were left staring at the ruined Anchor Point, and the body of a shade still burning with purple flame. The scent of magic that had filled the air abruptly began to drain away.
She watched until the last traces of Liliana burned away. In the corner of her vision, she caught sight of a flicker of yellow text.
[Emergency Quest completed!]
As the words faded, Alex felt herself relax. Exhaustion crashed in afterwards, but she traded tired smiles with the rest of the Surveyors. They’d won. They had finally won.
It wasn’t entirely over after the Anchor Point died, of course.
Regulation agents descended on the site almost immediately. The investigation was kept relatively under wraps—proving the fact that Golden Swallow must have had some kind of approval for their project—but apparently the negligence was severe enough that the company was hit with a massive fine, plus removal from dozens of portal contracts. It was a one-two punch that sent the Group’s stock price into a tailspin. Many observers didn’t expect it to last the week.
Unfortunately, Forsmith never had emerged from the portal. Zach had reported that there had been several drops in the magical readings, suggesting that the C rank had been accomplishing something in his lonely struggle, but by the time things had calmed, he’d been gone. Most of his team had been killed by Liliana at the project site, and there hadn’t been anyone else willing to go in after him. She’d tried, but the containment area had already been locked down by the time her group of E rankers had made it back to the place.
“So we’re all probably out of a job, but at least the portal’s being taken care of now.” Zach sat with her and her parents in the backyard. He’d been visiting occasionally, almost to reassure himself that she was okay. Exposure to an Anchor Point as an E rank was not normally something that happened after all. One on Earth was literally unheard of, so no one was really sure what could happen.
“Yeah.” Alex toyed with the cup in front of her. “All it took was almost twenty Surveyors being crippled or killed. Go us.”
Muriel laid a hand on hers. “You cannot save everyone, Alex. Forsmith knew the risks when he went in.”
Alex nodded, but she couldn’t make herself accept it. The look on Forsmith’s face remained with her, the same as the betrayed expressions on the faces of the Surveyors Liliana had killed. She hadn’t swung the blows herself, but she might as well have dared Liliana to do it.
“Who’s ready for some waffles?” Her father shouldered his way out of the kitchen with a plate full of food. She sighed and tried to give him a smile, and he grinned back. They’d had a long talk about what had happened, and he’d already told her he was proud of what she’d done. He’d been just as insistent that she not tell her mother that, but she had laughed about it. Her mother had already said the same thing to her earlier.
Alex and the others dug in as syrup, waffles, whip cream and strawberries were shared around in abundance. She sighed around a mouthful of heaven, and then Zach had to ruin it again. “So, what are you planning to do now? I doubt Golden Swallow will be able to help you finish out the contract.”
She took the time to chew a little more before she swallowed and answered. “I think whoever buys portal access here is probably going to want to bring me on as well. It’s just a matter of time until…” Alex trailed off as her father started rummaging in the pockets of his coat. “Dad?”
“Just a second, got a letter here.” He produced it with a flourish and then handed it over. “Looked official, so maybe it’s what you were talking about?”
Alex nodded slowly, her eyes scanning the address. It was some company out in Maine, not one she recognized. “Red Blade Securities. Ever heard of them?”
Her mother shook her head. “Most of the ones I used to monitor are gone now. Lots of mergers and such. Hard to keep track of it all.”
Zach’s eyebrows had raised, however. “I have. They are supposed to be a bit more of a solid company than Golden Swallow. They handle a lot more difficult portals, too.”
She opened the envelope and went over the letter. “Yeah. Looks like they were called in to handle things. They bought out the rest of the contract.” Alex grinned. “Guess they didn’t read any of my evaluations first.”
“I doubt they would have been using Liliana’s opinion for much, anyway.” Zach leaned back in his chair, smiling. “Well, let me know if they want one slightly scuffed researcher for their PAD. I promise to limit myself to only helping you bury a company once during my career.”
Alex gave him a stern look, but couldn’t help ruining it with a smile. “I’ll see what I can do.” She turned back to the letter, feeling her heart beat a bit faster in excitement. Her time as an E rank had been a bit more…eventful than she’d expected, but it had been a good first step.
Now, she thought, it was on to the next place. D rank, and beyond, until every last Surveyor felt safe. Who protected the protectors? She would.
Then she set the letter aside and dug back into the waffles her father had made for her. She still had a long way to go before the world changed, but there was a time and a place for everything—and for now, Alex was right where she wanted to be.