“B-but Worldshaker, what if someone catches us?”

“You’re the highest-ranking person on this whole planet, I’m sure they could be ‘convinced’ to keep their peace.” He intoned in his smooth, velvety baritone.

Sun, that voice made him feel weak in the knees. He knew at that moment, he’d do anything for the attractive alien. He flashed his Concept, the Everwandering strands of power whisking the pair off to a vast desert on the other side of the world. The environment was still, two moons hanging low in the sky over the dunes of sand stretching into the horizon. It was.. relaxing. Or it would be if those rippling muscles weren’t so close to him.

“You know, we’re the only two that will survive the end of this.”

“Wha- ahem” his voice cracked as being around the distractingly handsome man made all his oration experience void. “What do you mean? We’re in the Garden. This will last forever.”

Worldshaker chuckled, a rumbling bass that gave the Pope a twinge in his belly. The man towered over the Elvan, so most things he did gave him a twinge.

“This is nothing. We’re Gardeners. As long as there’s a Sun in the sky we cannot die. We do not age. We do not get sick. When the beast hordes finally get strong enough to challenge our power, we’re done as a species. I can survive, you can survive but most can’t. So we’ll be left with each other.”

As he said this, he turned and looked the Pope in the eye. The moonlight struck his jaw just right and shadowed his face, somehow enhancing the raw dominant aura the man exuded. The Pope looked down, abashed. Worldshaker wasn’t having it, as he grabbed the smaller man’s chin and pulled him up into a deep, electrifying kiss.

Time seemed to stop. Worldshaker’s manly stubble scratching pleasingly at his face, the submissive Elvan lost himself in the man’s lips. They broke apart, the Pope panting, Worldshaker not even slightly phased.

“You know what to do.” He said in that sexy voice of his.

“Yes sir.” The Pope flashed his Concept again, locating the nearest, most sturdy bed and teleporting it out from under its unlucky owners. Sorry, he comes first.

He slowly stripped, moonlight dancing along his wide pecs and chiselled abs. He approached the nervous man and in one motion, ripped the robe off, exposing the man’s throbbing tumescence.

“N-no, don’t look.” The Pope tried to cover himself but was laid bare before the powerful Samoan. Worldshaker threw him onto the bed.

“Oh, I’m gonna do more than just look.”

* Excerpt from “My Immortal” (currently banned within the Holy Ish Empire)

Birgitte pulled one of her knives out of the deer’s head. She’d dropped one of her pistols earlier and was making her way towards the area she’d dropped it, but there were so many attacking deer that she’d been essentially stuck in place for the past five minutes. A brunette girl next to her shot off a bolt of some air vibration that looked like a heat shimmer. It struck one of the deer surrounding the big white stag, making it start staggering around in a daze, and the large one retaliated with a lance of ice through her breast. Dr Jones, with his Bud of Return, smoothly directed one of the other Academy Buds to the girl. The unknown Bud somehow caused the ice lance to melt away completely in an instant, and Jones used his power to return the girl as she was a few moments earlier. The whole process had taken less than three seconds. Must be why these guys were sent.

Birgitte had taken the lay of the land. When she’d started fighting, she had poured bullets into the herd’s flank killing a few, but more importantly, taking the herd’s focus off the crowd. They hadn’t wasted the opportunity, bolts, arrows and bullets all flying towards the central stag. The rest of the herd went crazy, throwing themselves in front of most of the assault and shielding their king. A few got through however, and they’d crippled the stag, tearing off a back leg. Unfortunately, this meant that the herd wasn’t going to run, as they waited for their liege to heal. Currently, they were entrenched behind a wall of ice one of them had raised, while the rest shot off ice bolts through the wall and their king conserved his energies. Its furry stump had been expanding over time, a new leg being formed from the origin of the old one. That put them on a timer. The stag was presumably concentrating most of its efforts on healing, and when it was done, it’d be able to focus its terrible abilities on the students. Without the Buds the Academy had sent, they’d have been dead already. As it was, they’d avoided any casualties thanks to Dr Jones’ fortuitous Bud power and cool competence.

“Why don’t they just go scorched earth? I always heard each Bud could take over a city of mundanes if they were so inclined.” A dark-haired boy asked out loud. It was a valid question; Buds should be theoretically able to clear a Burrow like this on their own. Of course, the Burrow had turned out stronger than expected but it should still be within their capabilities, surely.

“We could, but we came here to save y’all, not kill ya.” Jones spoke in a thick American accent, voice warm and welcoming. “See, Gerald over here has a Bud of Locomotion. He could take control of all the moving objects around for a mile and make us all mosey off a cliff, but he can’t for fear of pulling the soft bits off ya bones. My power would only heal the big fucker. Bill over yonder, could do it, but he’s stopping the ice bolts from tearing into your classmates. We need a Flower.”

Birgitte was more than impressed at the man, calmly explaining the situation while actively saving lives. She lobbed a grenade over the wall, catching four deer with her accurate shot. Each deer in the herd curiously made no sounds except for when they were dying and when the big white stag was targeted.

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“Though we should hurry this up, the big ‘un is healing fast and what happened to the buses is gonna happen to us.”

“I can help!” The brown-skinned dark-haired boy piped up again. “I’m Mridul, I have a Seed of Desiccation. I can drain the stag if I can touch him.”

“You just need to touch it?” Jones asked, face hard and serious. “Don’t overestimate your ability, you will die if you can’t pull this off.”

“I’m sure, sir, just get me over there.”

Jones looked him up and down, and seemingly satisfied, he called over one of the other Buds. “Okay, Bill, this kid has balls of stone, and I’m inclined to see if he can back up those fine words he was spouting earlier. You can get him behind the wall?”

“Easily. It’s surviving once you’re there that the problem emerges.”

“I can help with that.”

Birgitte heard herself speak up in surprise. Why would I say that? I can’t help him.

“And what can you do, sugar?”

“Seed of Abundance. I never run out of ammo.”

“Availability of ammo seems to be a moot point when you only have one gun.”

“I also have grenades.”

Jones stayed silent for a while, thinking. “Okay you’re in. Bill here will make a door on that boulder of ice over there and it’ll open behind the wall. You’ll throw as much ordnance as you can make through the door, we shut it. Then Mridul here goes through, backed by you and Gerald, and takes the big fucker out if the bombs don’t end it.”

Why did I do that? She looked over at Jas, still passed out in the Sun, far from the battle. Birgitte don’t fuck this up.

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Musa was dumbfounded. The talk he’d had with Mr McLeod seemed in another world due to the current circumstances but seeing the alien here, disguised as one of his classmates, brought it all crashing back to him. It must all be connected. The Academy used prophetic powers to find and classify Burrows before they appeared. Anyone with those powers were being systematically killed off. There weren’t any aside from him in New London, the few remaining precogs having to be shared around every Guild location in the world. Sometime between their precog leaving and them arriving in the buses, someone must have done something to this Burrow or even directly to the Drasil. He hadn’t missed the fact that Dire beasts shouldn’t be seen in Burrows this young. And now there was a dead Elvan, in the same Burrow the last precog in New London was. Musa wasn’t a betting man but sometimes the odds are too good.

All of a sudden, all the birds in the trees took flight and dove downwards. Musa panicked and flooded his Seed with energy, but as usual, the energy was blocked. This was a good sign in this case however, as it meant he wasn’t in danger. The birds all sank into their shadows and disappeared, leaving the nest area unsettlingly quiet. Musa took a chance.

“Mike! Mike! Please answer, I swear I won’t hold my saving your arse over your head for too long.”

The forest stayed silent.

“Dude, please. Please.” He half-sobbed the last word, as the uncaring forest mocked him with its tranquility.

The tugging had followed the birds down and reappeared far away, so he knew he’d been tracking the owl instead of the man this whole time.

Mike could be anywhere.

He sat down next to the impaled corpse, hugging his knees. Mike had been the discipline to his drive, the pragmatism to his ambition. Now, he was probably dead. The tugging sensation abruptly ended. I hope you died slow, fucking owl. He tried to direct evil thoughts at its heritage and dubious pedigree but couldn’t muster any vitriol. The fruitless search for his friend had drained him, emotionally and mentally. He wanted to keep going, keep holding out hope but he knew what Mike would say if he could somehow comment on this situation.

Musa was tired, deep in enemy territory and likely not strong enough to fight his way out. He accepted that this was probably it for the dynamic duo. A tear rolled down his cheek as he made himself comfortable against the tree. He leaned his head back and just… gave up.

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Juggernaut was losing his calm. The speedster had found all the students with their maps still on them, but he also found a distressing number of discarded maps. These made him hesitate to level the Burrow with one of his kinetic strikes, because he’d never forgive himself if he killed a kid due to his own impatience.

He’d also found Elvar. He’d never fully trusted them after the war, at least those not allied with the Secular States, and it seemed he’d been proven right. Something seemed to either be hunting them or sacrificing them as they’d all been impaled by a root.

The energy was still rising however and he needed to end this quickly before the beasts got powerful enough to leave. They could only do so for short times, but they only needed a short time to cause untold havoc. So he would just add this in his report and hope people above him would have better information.

He’d found a Shade Hopper, like the pink hair had said, and hoped that meant her two teammates were near. He drew them out and eradicated them, but he didn’t see any sign of the kids. He did sense a small repeated movement in the territory he’d just emptied. Probably one of the remaining chicks, but as fast as he was, it didn’t take anything out of him to just check.

And luckily, he did. He found another dead elf, impaled like all the others. He also found the Mirzadeh boy, absolutely inundated with caked mud and pine needles, making shapes in the dirt with his finger and staring blankly into the ground.

Juggernaut knew that look well.

“Hey.”

“Hello, sir.”

“The pink haired one told me your leader was taken.”

“He was.”

The boy looked empty. He’d been quick to smile and was always the first to volunteer in class. Now, he was more like a mannequin. Juggernaut sighed.

“Come, we should find any others still in this forest. Walk with me.”

He’d move much faster without the kid, he’d be putting him in unnecessary danger and by every measure this was against his obligations as a teacher. However, as a fellow warrior, he wished someone had done this when he first got that look in his eyes. So he picked the kid up by his arm, covered him in a red nimbus and pulled all the dirt off.

The Mirzadeh boy, now standing, looked down at his clean hands.

“Hey, look at me.”

The boy lifted his eyes and gave the giant a dead-eyed stare.

“It won’t get better. It never does. But you can choose to sit here and die just like him, or you can come and bring the fight to the entity that took him away, the entities that take others’ friends every day. You, as weak as you are, are still one of the strongest people in the world. You’re superhuman. Every single mundane out there relies on you to stop these things from taking their loved ones. Worldshaker doesn’t come to these Burrows. You and people like you do. So stand up straight and do your fucking duty. You’re a hero. Act like one.”

Juggernaut wasn’t good at these kinds of talks. Something must have resonated though, because the boy found some steel in his spine and his eyes regained some of their light. But it wasn’t the spark of vitality that had been there before. No, this light was an ember. An ember of an all-consuming fiery rage.