“What the hell is that thing?” Chris asked, eyes trembling.

“I don’t know, but we’ve got to go!” Imani begged through her pain.

“But Ash and Oliver aren’t here,” Jason said, voice trembling, resolve waning. “We’ve got to wait for them.”

“And if we die waiting?” Ned asked. “Do you think they’ll be happy?”

Jason shoved the car keys into the ignition with trembling hands, his mind battling between self-preservation and loyalty. Between being a human and being a leader. His battle continued even as he turned the key and the car’s engine roared to life, even as he shifted the gear into drive. Two beasts fought within him and he didn’t have enough resolve to feed the beast that fought on the side of loyalty while the other had Ned and Imani on its side. Their constant nagging was pointless, though, because the aura that continued to stiffen the air was food enough.

Jason turned the wheel of the car and, before he could truly understand, he was driving. The Jeep moved through the dirt roads as he kept his hands steady, doing his best to isolate the trembling from his extremities. Judgement filled the car as he drove, Jason’s own disappointment in himself a potent mask threatening to outweigh the new aura.

Someone stepped onto their path suddenly, appearing in front of them with inhumane speed. The silhouette in the dark ducked forward and took the force of the jeep with his shoulder, skidding back from the force of the shield before Jason recognized him.

Jason pumped the brakes quickly, bringing the car to a halt. With the deceleration from the impact, the halt was abrupt.

“Hurry!” the silhouette shouted, gesturing someone forward and a woman ran into the side of the car.

“Open the fucking door!” Ash yelled, pulling on the handle.

“The door!” Chris barked at Imani.

Imani’s movements were slow, hesitant. Chris thought she’d have to kill the girl if she didn’t hurry up. Eventually, Imani unlocked the door and Ash got it open, diving inside. Oliver followed soon after.

“What the hell is that thing?” Ash asked as Jason started driving again.

“Dunno,” Jason said, eyes on the road. “We didn’t get to see it.”

“It looked like a lion and a gorilla fucked and gave birth to a monster with all their best qualities,” Ned said.

Ash turned to him. “You saw it?”

Ned’s nod was choppy, broken by his trembling. “Felt it, too.”

“It was wrong,” Imani said, cradling her wounded arm. “Too wrong.”

“We knew the number of monsters in the area were increasing,” Ash said, “but we only get the occasional Rukh ranks here and there every now and again. So what the fuck is a Bishop rank doing out here?”

“More importantly,” Oliver said, voice confused, “where is Zed?”

A pregnant silence filled the car.

They were growing farther away from the location so that the aura had dwindled, leaving only the memory of what it had felt like to haunt them like a phantom limb, ever present in their minds and crawling on their skins.

Yet, even the silence seemed to render it invalid.

“Where is Zed?” Oliver asked again, looking between each person as if taking a head count.

“Ollie,” Imani said slowly.

“Shut it!” he hissed, turning his attention to Jason. “I’m asking him. Where’s Zed, Jason?”

Jason was quiet as he drove through the dark night, navigating with starlight since the car headlights weren’t working.

“Jason,” Oliver said, his voice hard. “Don’t tell me you left him behind. With that thing.”

“Oliver,” Jason said, voice weak.

“No,” Oliver said. “No, no, no. You’re better than that.” His voice cracked, breaking like a man on the verge of something truly wrong. “You’re better than that, right? Tell me you’re better than that. Someone in this group has to be, Jason. It has to be you. Tell me you didn’t leave him behind. You’ve been mean to him since we met him but you can’t be that mean. Please tell me I’m thinking the wrong thing.”

Jason’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as he steeled himself against Oliver’s words. But whatever he thought he was going to say, Chris beat him to it.

“Zed’s dead, Oliver.”

Her voice was calm, eerily controlled, but the words cut through everything. There is a saying of a silence so deep you can hear a pin drop. And while the silence Oliver’s question had evoked stood comfortable within the confines of the saying, the silence Chris’ news evoked stood above it, and the sound of the car engine was its accompaniment.

Oliver said no more after that. He sat in his silence, somehow more tired that he had ever been. His mind scanned through everything he’d experienced since the second awakening and found he hadn’t really lost anyone. Before meeting Jason and Chris, Ash was all he’d had, and while there had been a few close calls, he still had her.

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Zed’s death weighed on him heavily and Oliver’s mind found no pre-existing experience with which to handle it. Even the slow acceptance that his parents might not have survived the second awakening proved too little an experience, and he found his mind bending towards a grief he didn’t know could cow a man.

Beside him, Ash slowly began sobbing.

……………………………………………….

The party had gone to as much shit as was to be expected from an intrusion from anti-mages. Despite the chaos and the dying, Abed was more concerned with one thing: he had lost Shanine in the madness.

She’d left him for a second to drop the stupid coat and the damned anti-mages had blown a hole in the auditorium, ruining the gathering, and worse, making him lose her. For all he knew, she could be anywhere.

Abed scowled as he tossed the lifeless body of another anti-mage, discarding it like an annoying piece of rag. He hefted a massive sword that was more of an extra-large and extra-long cleaver, resting it heavily against his shoulder as he stared at the new threat.

Most of the anti-mages had already started pulling out by now, leaving behind their dead and the death they’d wrought. In their wake, they left behind something terrible and terrifying.

Abed stood a good distance from the monster with more than enough space to spare, yet its aura tried to weigh on him oppressively. He’d gasped when it had entered and he’d felt it, his rage slightly diminished by the sheer force of its presence. Even now, composed and in command of his anger, he could still feel the monster’s impact on the ambient mana around him. It was wild and determined to inform everyone still alive in the auditorium that it was the apex predator here.

The creature stood as high as tall, as tall as two men placed upon themselves from head to feet. It reminded Abed of a jaguar and had muscles too large for anything natural. They were so much that Abed was certain its muscles had muscles. It looked like an overly sized muscle builder on steroids and it emitted enough aura to violently warp the air around it.

It growled and snarled, head turning from side to side in threat. There was no dout it thought itself the apex predator, and it had every right to. But although Abed wasn’t as strong as it, he didn’t agree with its self-proclaimed place at the top.

And he wasn’t the only one.

Madam Shaggy stepped up beside him. Her fancy hat was torn up and the trench coat she wore was nowhere to be found, revealing the free flowing gown of dusty white she had been wearing beneath it. Her feet were bare now, and her dress was stained in the blood of her enemies. And no doubt a few of their friends.

A distance away from them, off to the creature’s side, Eitri stood in tattered clothes, bloodied and growling. He looked like the Tasmanian devil from old cartoons, heaving and bleeding the way he was.

As if intentionally flanking the creature, Lady Long Legs stood straight and tall, legs like pincers, on the other side. She was as much a mess as the rest of them and she watched the monster warily.

“Still alive, Desolate?!” Madam Shaggy barked. “Can’t tell me you’ve been done in already?”

A piece of broken wall rested against one of the few remaining intact walls of the building trembled slightly before falling forward. Behind it Big Man Desolate pulled himself out of a hole in the wall where he’d been for the entirety of the attacks. Blood painted the wall he left and he looked like a mummified cowboy with the boots and hat to go with it. All he needed was the bandage wrappings and he’d be more than complete.

One thing was certain, however, none of the blood was his. The powers of Hillview knew the man did not bleed.

There were rumors surrounding Big Man Desolate; stories of a touch of immortality that dated as far back as the first awakening. It slithered through the minds of weaker mages and was spoken about in alleyways, but that was for the lesser mages. Mages like Abed knew there was no such thing as immortality. Everyone was going to die one day; it would just take Big Man Desolate more than most to join in the mortality.

The powers of Hillview all had their theories on what made him get out of situations he wasn’t supposed to be able to, as well as why he always looked so desiccated. Abed’s theory was that he was a mage with a specialization in death mana, a specialization considered a taboo by the VHF. Abed believed that the mage somehow kept himself alive with it. How? He was still working on that part.

Big Man Desolate staggered momentarily before righting himself. Despite his attention being called by Madam Shaggy, his attention turned straight to the monster in the room, ignoring the countless canon fodder of mages still alive, and the other powers.

“Who’s overgrown cat is that?” he asked in his grating voice that always sounded like someone was rubbing two stones together.

If the aura filling the air affected him at all, he didn’t show it. He stood within it with his mana core veiled and his aura suppressed, staring at the monster the way a person would stare at their friend’s over-achieving pet.

“You sure it isn’t yours, Madam Shaggy?” Big Man Desolate asked.

Madam Shaggy snorted. “I’ve told you before, Desolate, I don’t take well to jokes. Not when it’s coming from something that looks like—”

The monster moved.

Its speed was unnatural for its size and Abed moved with it. He swung his massive blade of earth and it connected with the creature’s swinging paw. Abed’s blow rebounded off the beast and a portion of his weapon’s blade broke loose. But it served its purpose.

The monster’s claw rebounded from the attack and Madam Shaggy was already casting her spell. As a fire mage, she summoned enough heat that Abed felt its sting against his skin. With a ball of fire standing between her and the monster, she released it into the beast, sending it flying back.

The ball of fire blasted the creature and filled the air with the acrid smell of burnt hair, only for it to land on its feet with barely a scratch.

“Auras!” Eitri barked, and everyone unveiled their mana cores, auras blaring out like wild fire.

Everyone but Big Man Desolate.

The aura force of at least four Rukh rank mages, supported by a handful of other mages filled the room, fighting against the aura from the monster, and Abed could feel the effects of so many auras. He could already feel his connection to certain spellforms growing stronger under their influence. He had a feeling he could cast a lightning spell—his hardest affinity to link to—with the fewest words.

When the battle began, Eitri heralded it with a gunshot and Lady Long Legs supported him with spears of molten lava. The other mages played their part, but their parts were insignificant in the wider scale of things.

Lady Long Legs, Eitri, and Madam Shaggy played the role of ranged support while Abed and Big Man Desolate played melee damage dealers. Each of them fought under the weight of the monster’s aura, Abed slashing and cleaving, leaving injuries in the beast’s side and anywhere his great cleaver could reach. He cast spellforms of lightning and air, shook the earth with quakes as he called on earth mana with heavy stomps. He was a boulder in a fight against a growing mountain. But he was not alone, and they whittled the monster down bit by bit.

As for Big Man Desolate, if he felt the force of the monster’s aura, he didn’t show it, neither did he release his own. And while every blow he struck carried with it the weight of a thousand trucks and staggered the feline monster each time, he played bait more than he fought, taking unnecessary injuries to buy space for other attacks.

In the end, mages were lost to the monster as inevitability demanded when weaker mages faced off against a Bishop rank.