We stood in a shadow that cut off the Moon. The beast towered over us, its legs and taloned toes twitching through the park, its walls, and the surrounding buildings. The kaiju was covered in swaths of yellow-brown scales interspersed with trails of short, ochre fur. The armor of bony plates covering its chest and belly were the underside of the massive turtle-shell on its back. The shell was studded with vicious spikes, though as big as the spikes were, they paled in comparison to the ones at the raised end of its solid tail. Its head was wolf and lion and lizard, but fox-eared and ox-horned, with a billowing mane of blood-red feathers ruffled around its neck.

We bent our necks as far back as they would go.

Mr. Himichi staggered back, shaking his head in shock. “No!” he yelled. “No! It’s not—”

—But then he stumbled and toppled over. I rushed to him, tugging his arm to help him back up.

He locked eyes with me. “This isn’t possible!” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This thing! This monster!” He wagged his finger, pointing at the creature.

Its breaths were like thunder.

“I know it from my dreams!” Mr. Himichi said. “It haunted me as a child. It gave me terrible nightmares! It—”

—But a sound that was not a sound cut off Mr. Himichi’s words. It was a distortion of the landscape itself. Patches of our surroundings quivered like mirages—on the moon bridge, on the water, on the pagoda roofs, near the trees. They looked like amoebas, if amoebas could be made from particolored dreams.

“The darkness is here!” Andalon shrieked, pointing at the distortions. “It’s here!”

“Genneth!?” Mr. Himichi yelled. “What’s—”

“—You heard her; the darkness is here!” I stuck out my arm. “Get behind me, both of you!”

My heart raced. The park’s cool night air was starting to feel more like a fleshy, thorned tongue rasping at my body. Everything stung.

In sheer panic, I screamed. “Yuta! Geoffrey!” With all my might, I willed them to appear.

Of course, no luck.

There was a sickening crunch from behind me. I turned around to see the bridge had fractured. All at once, its front half shuddered, suddenly warping forward, shooting ripples across the moonlit water.

Andalon screamed in terror.

The bridge was deforming before my eyes. Angular growths rose up from the wood, like fruiting bodies from the fungus’ victims. Only there was no fungus here. It was as if the bridge was melting upward, bleeding onto the sky.

Hearing another thundercrack, I whipped my head toward the noise to see the pagoda fracture. The upper stories separated from one another and began to float toward us, hovering over the pond like the steps of a disarticulated staircase.

The kaiju stood in the middle of all this, utterly motionless, flickering in and out of being like an interrupted signal.

The structures moved by flowing. At one moment, they’d seem solid. The next, an invisible dam burst somewhere on their exterior, and their mass would flow out like escaping gas, only for more crunching noises to fill the air as the flow solidified and wooden walls and slate rooftops rippled into being. This process repeated over and over again, metastasizing through space and time.

The kaiju flickered even more intensely as the structures flowed through it.

The structures grew wilder with every burst of growth, spearing through the ground. Patches of absolute darkness bled into the air and ground where the growths had impaled them. Waves of heat and cold blasted off these world-wounds, buffeting me with their invisible fury.

Stains of nothingness trickled and pooled.

I didn’t want to know what would happen if they touched us.

Waving my hands, I spoke the incantation for my strongest damage-dealing spell: “Rain, O !”

Three columns of burning light pierced earth and sky. Each was as bright as a newborn day.

“Fuck!” Mr. Himichi cursed.

My flames disintegrated everything: trees, the bridge, the earth, the spreading pagoda rooftops. My spell punched giant holes in the mutant dreamstuff. Bits of dreams and memory started to crumble and dissolve, only for the whole world to shake as new fluidic matter spilled out from the holes and engulfed the park with its malignant thorns.

Abstract, voiceless roars blasted behind me.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon screamed, pushing up against my back.

I whipped around.

More of the mirage-amoebae.

The quivering mirage matter bubbled up from the ground and precipitated from the sky, taking on bestial, incorporeal forms: wings, legs, coruscating scythes, faceless heads, taloned paws; tails of fire and sinew.

“Fricassee me!” I yelled.

No two of them looked quite the same. Their appearances shifted as they pounced, their forms swapping with one another, in part or in whole.

I had to think quickly.

When in doubt, try .

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I flicked out my arm as I cast the orison.

A row of frigid blue energy bolts appeared overhead and then launched at the creatures, slamming them with the force of my avatar’s god. The creatures recoiled like frightened fire from the ice my bolts froze across the ground. Where the ice engulfed them, they froze to the spot.

That gave me a precious few seconds to think.

Precious few; the mirage-creatures quickly recovered, shaking off their frozen bits and pieces and flinging particolored liquid fire in every direction. Snarls and growls broke out, as did the hiss of ice melting into water and steam.

But I had my idea, and, I hissed in thanks as I patted myself down and realized I was still wearing my .

Now, to see if Mr. Himichi had a good throwing arm.

I called out the beast as I flung myself forward onto all fours.

“Get on my back!” I said, yelling as I transformed into my .

Himichi and Andalon clambered up my back as I grew. Andalon threw her arms around Mr. Himichi’s waist as he settled atop of my neck, with his legs slung along either side of my slender head.

“Now, hold on!” I bellowed.

And then I ran like heck, and the horrors gave chase.

I raced toward the edge of the park on all fours, tearing through the soil with my pangolin claws. I knocked over trees, snapping branches and trunks. My tail lashed through rock gardens, flicking sand into the air.

“Wall!” Himichi yelled.

Oh yeah, I thought, the park is walled.

“!” I yelled, casting the protective spell on myself with a flick of my tail.

A large eggshell of blue energy coalesced around me, and since I was big, it was even bigger, and was more than large enough to include Andalon and Mr. Himichi.

I gave it my all, picking up speed.

I was gonna ram my way through the metal fencing.

Andalon screamed.

Here goes nothing… I thought.

The worked exactly as planned, turning me into a slam-o-dynamic egg-shaped battering ram that tore through the fence like an oncoming bullet train. I hit the ground running, barreling onto the street.

More mirage creatures emerged from the alleyways, or descending from on high. Wings beat, jaws gnashed, claws lashed. They screamed and shrieked, and had no eyes. Their phantom flesh dripped like melted candle wax, leaving multicolored embers on the street that evaporated in their wake.

One of the entities swept down, right on top of me. I jumped out of the way, but it was too fast for me.

The whole back of my world exploded in pain. The creature hadn’t even attacked me, it just passed through the base of my tail, and everything that it touched simply stopped existing. With nothing to link it to the rest of my body, the back half of my tail hurtled away, thumping on the road behind me and then crashing into a parked car. Blood poured from my behind, slicking down hot and wet on the backs of my hind legs and the underside of what remained of my tail.

More horrors kept bleeding into being. They sprung out from the skyscrapers’ façades.

“Himichi!” I yelled. “Bag! Stuff! Use! Attack!” I screamed my words in between panting breaths and horrible pain. I didn’t have enough mental fortitude left to make complete sentences. All my thoughts that weren’t focused on running poured into a single action.

! !

I cast the spell twice in rapid succession. Healing light swirled around me. The pain receded, and I stopped seeing red. My tail itched as it started to regrow.

Feeling a scent of ozone on my nose but seeing nothing up ahead, I glanced back and saw glowing spheres bouncing off the street behind me, and the next thing I knew, there was a series of massive explosions of thunder and wind. Electricity crackled through parked cars; sonic booms whipped across the street, knocking the horrors back.

Things like wingless birds zoomed through the air, leaving trails of floating, rainbow flames. The pointed tips of the creatures’ wings sliced through the clouds of magic.

I pushed forward with greater speed. “More!”

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon screamed.

Fudge!

There was an intersection up ahead, and solid-liquid mirage creatures were spilling out from the surrounding streets. Two of the three streets were rapidly filling with the creatures. They were rising up from the ground like rewinding raindrops, and prying themselves free from the walls of buildings.

A swarm was building.

Just looking at it made my muscles ache.

“I don’t know. How much. Longer. I can. Run. Like this,” I said, in between panting breaths.

Suddenly, I felt a burst of energy surge through my body. An empty potion canister bounced off my scales and fell away, where it shattered on the street.

“You’re welcome!” Mr. Himichi said.

I felt a kindly thump against one of my head-scales.

It felt like a .

I redoubled my efforts. My regrowing tail thwacked against a street lamp as I turned down the next intersection.

Flicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth, I looked back over my shoulder and cast .

Faint yellow light gleamed around the tide of chasing monsters. Paws and claws stumbled on the street as the creatures fell to the ground, unconscious. Multicolored flames lapped off their bodies edges’ and ate away at the road.

More of the mirage creatures percolated up from the street. Their bodies merged with their unconscious brethren, growing bigger and bigger. They stretched their limbs and splayed their claws, roaring with pure sound as they set off in pursuit.

Fudge!

I ran like crazy. My spine was a spring, ever coiling and uncoiling. Andalon screamed as my back and neck rose and fell.

“Mr. Himichi!” I yelled. “Throw the fluffy one!”

“The what?” he asked.

“Do it!”

It was a piece of leftover Precursor tech Brand and I had found on our way to the Forgotten Sands. Mr. Himichi found the artifact easily and then chucked it at the now bus-sized monsters that were rapidly catching up to us. I briefly glimpsed a cylindrical canister partially covered by an impossibly fine, fluffy weave of metallic threads before the artifact burst into a cloud of glittery silver mist.

For a second, I saw the flaming shadows trickle out from the monsters’ iridescent maws as they leapt into the glitter cloud. There was a mighty whoosh as linkages emerged from the glittering motes. In seconds, the cloud had solidified into an enormous block of solid metal.

The creatures did not stop, but kept running. The metal block slowed them down, forcing them to swim as their bodies burned through it. It wasn’t going to stop them, but it gave me enough time to put some distance between us and them.

I turned left down the next intersection and ran like mad.

Up ahead was—

—Double fudge!

I sank my claws into the street, shattering pavement and scattering sparks. My whole body shook as I skidded and slowed down.

Up ahead, the road ahead sank to the ground, merging into a pier that reached out to the sea.

Turning on the spot, I followed the street as it ran alongside the coast. I felt a slap on my head. “Genneth!” Mr. Himichi yelled.

I looked ahead.

Oh God…

Andalon screamed.

The swarm had been waiting for us. It was a current and a stampede, a living tide of incorporeal horror that coalesced into rampaging beast-shapes. The monsters burst forward, erasing the urban surroundings with every furious step, only for the creature to melt back into the torrent as it flooded through the streets.

I was pretty sure I was gonna die.

And then, beneath my panic, I sensed a familiar feeling bubbling up.

I knew exactly what it meant.

“Yes!” I screamed in exultation.

I sank my claws into the street, grinding up sparks as I slowed to a stop.

The next thing I knew, the effervescent feeling inside me shot out through my limbs and materialized at either side of me in two whorls of energy that coalesced into some much needed reinforcements: Yuta Uramaru, the , and Geoffrey Athelmarch, the Winged Halberdier.

“Attack!” I screamed. “Attack!”