“You notice that?” Lionel asked me quietly. There was movement in the tree branches.

“Yes, whoever kills the most, gets to ask the other a question?” he glanced at me in surprise and then grinned slightly.

“Deal. Don’t back out now,” he countered.

“Same, just try and keep up,” I replied as I kept walking. We both kept glancing around as I saw shadows moving through the canopy that had surrounded the road. My danger sense spiked. I twisted out of the way as white sticky goop impacted the road where I had just been standing.

I quickly dodged out of the way of more attacks. Lionel was managing on his end, but he had been hit on the chest. Looking where the attacks came from, I saw spiders. They were quite large, much larger than regular spiders. I really needed a ranged attack. I quickly ran for a nearby tree and raced up it.

The spider on the branch spun and shot its webbing at me. I went under the branch, coming back up and around. A slash of my claws ripped off two legs and some flesh from the spider and sent it plummeting to the ground.

Dodging more webbing, I raced to another branch, and took out the next spider. They clearly were feral creatures. They might have set up a trap, but there was no attempt to communicate and they were struggling to react to my counter attack. Lionel was still on the ground dodging attacks as I raced from branch to branch.

After killing twelve spiders, I leapt back down to the ground. He was webbed to the road. “I seem to be caught in a sticky situation. Some help please?” he asked. I tapped a digit against my cheek.

“Well it seems like I won,” I replied with a grin. I hadn’t been hit once. “You aren’t an Apostate, but you work for the snakes. What exactly are you?” I asked.

“I am one of their Agents. Not every snake has Apostates. There are factions among the snakes, probably like you have factions among your High Clerics. The snake I work under is Haskins.” He stretched out the ‘s’ sounds. “They are less spiritual then the other snakes, so no Apostates,” Lionel replied.

“Alright,” I said, since he had answered. “Don’t move.” I reached out and began cutting the webbing off of him with my claws.

“Nice claws. Celestial ore?” he asked.

“Something like that. Using up a question ahead of time?” I asked back.

“Ah no. Just that I couldn’t cut this stuff,” he said with a sigh. I could understand his frustration. Losing so easily while I had defeated the spiders single handedly would make him think twice about attempting anything. I had information now, that I hadn’t known before.

I was going to squeeze Lionel for everything he was worth. If I was going to eventually go to the southern continent, I needed information. I had a name of snake that didn’t use or train up Apostates. I needed a lot more. There were a lot of possibilities.

Also, Lionel was good as a distraction as he had shown with the spiders. It made my job of killing them that much easier. If there was a super threat at the center of this island, then he could hopefully buy me some time as I escaped.

“Spiders,” Lionel said as he peeled off the last of the webbing and wiped it on the road.

“Yes, but they were clearly feral. There are probably a lot more,” I replied.

“Hmm, the ambush was well done, but after that, not so much. They only had numbers and the advantage of terrain. That was very impressive by the way,” Lionel complimented me.

“Thank you. I take my job very seriously. Well, I don’t sense any more spiders, you?” I asked.

“No. But I didn’t see any webbing in the town either. There is clearly something else at play and not just spiders in this jungle,” he replied and I nodded at this as we set off down the road.

‘Mes, no alert about the spiders?’ I asked my other companion.

‘You already saw them. I am more concerned about what was influencing them. I was trying to trace the connection and also identify the energy at play. I am thinking it is probably an Energy Vacuum Lift. It is…something is off. But for it to be here and for something to be using it. That isn’t good,’ Mes said while looking around.

‘What is it?’ I mentally asked.

‘Mittens. You need to stop this right away. Whatever is out there is attempting to break the Energy Vacuum Lift. If that happens, the result would be cataclysmic. It cannot happen. No matter what. I might have to intervene, which would only be slightly less worse. Hurry,’ Mes said.

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“We need to speed up, I feel like something bad is going to happen,” I told Lionel. I picked up my pace to a log and he easily kept pace with me.

“There is something in the air,” he replied while nervously looking around. Mes kept floating off to one side while looking about and waving their tiny paws about. We continued up the road and saw a large building ahead of us. The door was ripped open and I saw at least twenty spiders moving about.

They rushed towards us. I easily twisted past some webbing and moved in. Lionel hung back for a moment and then followed after me, since he wasn’t as nimble as I was. I slashed out killing the spiders one after another. Lionel jumped into the action too. Soon, there were twenty four dead spiders and I had killed sixteen.

I rushed into the building. There was still power, but the lights were flickering occasionally. Mes pointed out the stairway, and I quickly began to descend. I heard Lionel following after me. While I knew he was tempted to escape, he would probably make his snake master very upset by running away and not finding out what was happening here.

If there was a super weapon or something, he couldn’t allow the Covenant Church to get it. The stairs went down five levels and then the concrete walls turned into mined out rock. I noted an elevator nearby, but that could easily be a death trap if I got stuck.

There were no spiders and the scents were too jumbled up to make sense of. The strung up lights in the cave were flickering more rapidly. ‘Electricity doesn’t do well in high energy areas. Hurry,’ Mes said as I kept moving forward into the stone tunnel.

It spiraled down and eventually the path leveled off and opened up to a large caravan. There was a large structure in the center that was emitting a loud hum. The device was twice my height and there were red lights on the side that were pulsing upwards on long clear panels that extended the length of the pillar. There were several devices attached to it and other equipment scattered about that appeared to have been brought down.

I looked about, but I didn’t see any other creature. I could hear Lionel coming behind me. My danger sense spiked. I quickly dodged out of the way, as he slashed where I was standing. “Really a betrayal now?” I asked loudly.

‘Mittens, he isn’t himself. His will has been overwritten. We need to shut down the Energy Vacuum Lift now,’ Mes shouted at me. I dodged another attack. His eyes were darting about wildly and his movements were much more erratic than before.

“Fine!” I trusted Mes. Sorry Lionel, but whatever this was, was bad news if Mes was this worried. Even the tree didn’t worry them this much. I dodged past a swipe of his claws and came up behind Lionel, matching his movements. I cut the muscles at the back of his legs.

Unlike other creatures, I couldn’t choke him out, since he had claws to attack my arms. He collapsed to the ground, bleeding and crippled. But it wasn’t fatal. I quickly moved away from him as he trashed about.

‘What do I do now?’ I asked Mes. ‘Wreck it?’

‘No! That would be bad. It needs to be sealed off. Something is on the other end, pushing more and more energy through. We need to seal it off, not leave it open permanently. Give me a moment, I am consulting my databases,’ Mes replied.

‘What? You don’t know?’ I asked afraid as the red lights seemed to be pulsing faster.

‘I haven’t encountered this design of Energy Vacuum Lift before. I understand its core working principles, but the exact mechanics are something I haven’t seen.’

I looked around wondering what I could do. Lionel was still stuck on the ground where I had left him. ‘Just wait while I think.’ I waited as the energy was quite high. I heard movement over the background hum of the device and went to check the spiral tunnel that led down. There were creatures moving down the tunnel.

I quickly looked around and began pushing nearby crate to block the entrance. ‘Mes hurry up!’

‘It isn’t simple Mittens! The emergency systems aren’t working. And the physical shut off is blocked from the other side of the device by whatever is causing this. It is forcefully holding the Energy Vacuum Lift open. I am trying to figure out what I can do, besides direct intervention against whatever is doing this,’ Mes replied while I kept moving stuff to block the entrance of the chamber.

The lights were flickering even more and the pulsing red lights were definitely speeding up. The creatures reached the crates I had put in the way. They were staggering about, just like Lionel had been.

‘Alright. I see what we can do. I can manually close the Energy Vacuum Lift. But it will take time to shut and a portion of whatever is blocking the opening will be cut off. I don’t know what will happen. Best case, the island shatters.’

That was the best case! I swiped at a mouse that was climbing over the creates. He collapsed bleeding heavily, as more creatures kept coming through. Suddenly they all collapsed and stopped moving. I looked behind me and the device had stopped pulsing red light. It was glowing with just red light. Mes was standing in front of it, waving their tiny paws.

‘And done.’ The ground shook. The large pillar partially deformed. ‘And now we need to go! No time for the other cat! Run!’ Mes said. I quickly pushed past the crates and creatures blocking the entrance. I heard Lionel shouting in the background. But I was not about to risk myself to save him. Sorry Lionel, but you worked with snakes and I needed to save myself.

I raced back up the stone tunnel as the island began to shake some more. ‘What exactly is going on?’ I asked Mes as I raced back up the stairs.

‘I shut it off. It wasn’t an Energy Vacuum Lift. But an Energy Vacuum Missile. That was what made finding the off switch so tricky. It had been activated by the creatures fiddling around with it.’

‘A missile? I don’t get it? You said it was super advanced?’ I asked as I left the building and raced back down the road.

‘It is. Even more advanced that an Energy Vacuum Lift. It is a relic of another civilization that should not here. It was probably aimed incorrectly. Emerged in the ground and then it was discovered somehow by your Covenant Church.’

‘Then once they primed it, there was something waiting on the other end, to where it draws power from. It was trying to break through. Thankfully we stopped it in time. If it had managed to break through. That would be the end.’

I kept racing up the road past the spiders I had killed. ‘The end?’ I asked.

‘Yes, the end. You would no longer exist, and I would be at risk as well. Whatever is on the other side is a threat to even me Mittens. Even now, hopefully what I did was enough,’ Mes replied.