The houses silently judged his every step. The nondescript walls drowned within the absence of light. The alley stretched into infinity, dragging his already weighted legs even deeper into the ground.

He wasn’t hugging the rifle in his hands. Quite the contrary - the weapon was guarding him. This piece of metal was his only reassurance that everything was alright with the world.

“...Ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Best college party ever. Am I right, Nicholas?…”

The smell of ash and smoke teased his nostrils, answering to a nervous chuckle. Behind every corner, every crate, or a barrel, Joe saw a silhouette wearing a bloodthirsty grin.

But every single time, when the shaking barrel of the gun looked behind a dark corner, the empty ground left a reminder what a fool he truly was.

The mercenary wanted to kill him. Justifiable self-defence, the frontier justice, the rule of survival - figuring out the names for his course of action became his favourite hobby for the whole of these two moments as he prowled down the same alleyway his foes arrived from. There wasn’t a choice, he thought, nor there should have been any space for hesitation. Shoot or die. Stab or perish.

Yet the thought clung to his consciousness like a parasite. Inside, he figured that he missed something. That there was a moment when he could change the way the encounter went down.

…How?…

He had no clue. Was he feeling guilty somehow, for fighting for his life? Why?

He couldn't figure out whether he was tired or stupid. Probably both.

As much as he was able to tell, most of the action ran parallel to his own path, closing in on the tavern. The south part probably had rivers of blood flooding into the searing lake, while his north remained relatively peaceful in comparison. The destruction scaled down, the smoking roars in the sky - the clear signal that another poor building would scatter into tiny pieces in a moment - calmed down.

The red rays watered the skies above every so often, but the rhythm had shifted. His steps matched the tired echo of gunshots, bringing him to the main attraction when his eyes caught the bright orange among the smoke.

The wall of flames. Every bit as imposing as he thought it would be. The sweat ran down his forehead, with the scorched air chasing away all the crazy ideas he ever had.

Charging right through would not be the most pleasant way to get the tan for his pale skin, he figured.

Joseph peeked around the corner. The guard tower near the tavern stood undisturbed. Like a piece of a bone, sticking out from a broken ribcage, it seemed out of place with the still night sky right behind it.

Joe weighted his options.

The wall of fire, weirdly enough, did not reach the entrance that led inside the tower, enveloping only the corner with the tavern instead. He lifted his gaze up and caught the movement of something on the walls.

A loud boom rang out above his head. Several pieces of stone and dust crashed down, right after Joe heard something rapidly hammering the stoic building way above his head.

Somebody was taking shots at the people inside the tower. The light of inspiration flared up.

Now or never!…

He pushed forward, aiming for the door of solid iron. Ignoring the background screams, Joe crossed the short open distance between the tower and the alleyway. His unsteady hands pulled the handle with the energy he never knew he had.

He literally jumped inside the familiar building. The door shut behind his back and left him alone, with the surrounding darkness as his only friend.

The silence stifled his senses. The pinches of the outside light had as much use as a roll of wet toilet paper. But even then, the shivers froze his blood flow when his eyes caught the ghostly thread above the threshold of the entrance. He followed the thread - and the small round object revealed itself, sitting right at the door, literal millimetres away from where his foot stood.

He didn't like to pray to anyone, but there would never be a more fitting moment to thank the god(s).

The spiral staircase was covered in darkness, with periodic thuds from above reminding that the marksman still was sitting comfortably in his position. Joe raised the rifle and aimed it at a hole in the floor above.

“Arrgh!!-”

The scream crashed down from above, then the interior of the building woke up. Intense gunshots and heated profanity, all good signs that someone caught one savage message. Joseph increased the pace, steadily but carefully approaching the top of the tower. Following the screeches of pain and the rough voice of someone else, he slowed down right at the last steps.

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“Stop… screaming… damn you… calm down!”

The shrapnel bomb rolled into his palm. Solid and heavy - just like the air he tasted the entire way through. Joseph recalled his first visit to the tower and built a trajectory in his mind

The small ball bounced off the wall. The tower shuddered, accompanied by the dust pouring down from the ceiling.

The sweet cries of agony told him everything he needed to know. He dashed into the room a moment later.

He mentally congratulated the bomb for its valuable sacrifice. Two mangled bodies, still twitching and snarling on the concrete floor were of no concern to him. The shuffling behind his back, however, was.

Two shots cut through the air. Joseph stared at the corpse of the third person, who still held the pistol in their left hand. Half of the body stared at Joe with cuts and pieces of shrapnel.

The noises were gone. Not a single rustle reached his ears no more. He lowered the rifle.

And regretted it instantly, when the floor shook beneath his feet. The explosion came from the bottom of the tower. Joe dashed to the corner and crouched, holding back his breath.

A minute passed when a familiar cough came into the room from the stairs.

“Joseph… You alright up there?”

Now that was the voice he couldn’t possibly expect to appear.

“Captain?!”

Six yellow eyes peeked from the hole.

“How’s Ghastly Wail treating you, lad? Enjoying your quality time?”

Joe struggled with imagining the worse time for jokes. Even so, the corners of his mouth moved on their own.

“...The food’s a bit too spicy for my taste. But I can take it…”

Three eyes on one side winked at him.

“Good, good.” The eyes dived back down into the hole. “Ralf, how’re we looking?”

Joseph didn’t get to hear the answer. The eyes emerged from the floor again.

“Seems to be all fine. Excuse me, excuse me…”

The white tree trunk rose up from the entrance. The tricorne demonstrated a fresh cut on the side, the previously clean bark dressed in ashen stains and torn clothes.

“Rough fight?” Joe inquired.

Alchfrid hummed.

“Rougher than usual, right.”

“Stop flirting and chit-chatting, scoundrels,” the growling voice that arrived next had no edge to it. Ralf climbed up, quietly swearing the entire way.

Joseph took a peek outside the window. The smoke from the flame wall obscured his already limited vision. He squinted, trying to pick out glimpses of movement and action, yet finding little success with either. Enlightened by the orange, the houses stood in the way, blocking the main road and the tricky pathways between the buildings. They showed Joseph the perspective of the sniper, who was now taking an extended vacation right beneath his feet. And after seeing the cramped streets of Ghastly Wail from above, he praised the builders of the settlement for their insatiable drive to put as many small houses in a single square metre as rationally possible. He could barely figure out the spot he and Ralf separated, and the alleyways where he fought the ‘Firelight’ mercenary were nowhere to be seen.

Alchfrid, meanwhile, was looking outside the window that watched over the tavern.

“’Rattlebones’ is on fire. We should move as fast as possible.”

“What about the walls, Alch? Any foes in the fog?”

“There were before, can’t perceive any now. This smokescreen is too heavy even for me.”

The words were flowing slowly into Joe’s mind, as his eyes drowned in widespread fires and rubble he witnessed from the window. He tried to come up with the name for the feeling he could tie to the image.

He couldn’t. It didn’t feel like anything to could hang a tag on. The red and orange tongues licked the dark sky under the silver light. They were shamelessly dancing in the forest of smoke that rose up from the rooftops and scorched ground. It seemed like some kind of an eldritch creature Joseph could comprehend if he tried, but his mind refused to allow him to. Out of all the emotions he was able to name at this moment, emptiness would be the first on the list. He had to get himself back on track.

“What’s the plan?” he questioned nobody in particular.

Alchfrid released a short laugh.

“Plan? What is that, an exotic dish of some kind? Reaching the tavern would be our priority since it’s the position that is guarded the most. The fortress walls present the safest route, but I bet my injured hat on it - we will be facing heavy resistance-”

Right on the last letter, the entire tower vibrated from the core up for the who-know what time. Ralf fell down onto the floor. The support disappeared from underneath Joe’s feet, then his back met the brick wall. The ceiling dust crawled into his eyes.

He couldn’t see a thing besides a veil of moisture. The floor danced underneath his body. Alchfrid shouted something from somewhere above or below him, in a language that sounded familiar.

The shaking stopped just as suddenly as it began. Joseph laid down for a moment, gathering the shards of his consciousness together. Then he reached for his eyes and wiped away the tears. The dust still stung from within the eyelids, but recognizing the floor instead of the continuous grey stain was enough of an achievement already.

He heard a certain loud voice shouting.

“What in the void was that?! Where did that earthquake come from?!”

“This ain’t no natural disaster,” Alchfrid replied. “This island is as stable as it gets.”

Ralf pushed himself up from the floor and walked up to Joseph. Joe accepted the helping hand. The Captain glanced over the corpse that was lying near the window.

“Quite the shot. From the lower angle, even. I see you haven’t lost your skills just yet.”

The giant man snorted. “I only grazed his shoulder. He would’ve lost an eye in the olden days. Don’t praise the qualities I don’t have, Captain, for I have my pride too.”

“At least, you are humble enough to acknowledge that. Get the hatch open, we’ve lost enough time.”

Ralf nodded. From the last night, Joe remembered the rusty iron handles on the wall that led into the ceiling. The grey piece of wood hid well among the bricks of the same colour until the armsmaster raised his arm up and pushed the hatch away, revealing stars that were looking at Joseph from the square hole above.

The cold wind gripped his cheeks on the way up. From their position, the entire settlement laid down below like a caricature of chaos, shielded by the thick grey clouds. Ghastly Wail suffered so much damage, the entire area around the Kon’jar statue was simply gone. Strangely enough, the Deity itself sat right in the middle of the destruction without a care in the world, with not a single scratch to show.

But that wasn’t important. Joseph leaned from behind the tower parapet and looked beneath them.

The south-eastern gates gaped open, twisted in half by the unknown force. He noticed a number of silhouettes running across the bridge leading to the port. They moved quickly, half by half, with some of them crouching down on the bridge and aiming their weapons at the fortress walls, and the rest running past them, then taking the same stances. Switching several times, the silhouettes disappeared within the cave on the other side.

A small group of people stood near the ‘Rattlebones’. Joseph brought the spyglass out with his left hand and checked them closer.