“Pookie!” His big ol’ head whipped my way and he ran over. I snapped my fingers and placed my hands on him to a low slightly-warning growl, but he didn’t attack as I pulled out the carving wounds from him. It was strange, there was some sort of… Will sheath or something that I had to push through.

It disappeared so quickly I almost thought I was imagining it. Between the physical pain and the internal twisting, I was certainly in the right headspace to start imagining things.

Regardless, I burned the heals immediately to finish healing myself. Well, at least the most critical damage. Now that I was free to actually do something, I felt free to start getting upset. Ire rose and my Fortitude responded in turn as its regeneration rate steadily ticked upward.

“Ah…” Shit that was a good question, I was kind of focused on my generally pissed off feeling and the fact that these assholes forced me to watch Meredith get murdered right next to me.

More important than regret, the animal horde was still coming in strong but was no longer the flood it had originally been. The bunny-nemesis war was still in the thick of it. There were still a few Humans I had to take care of before I felt like I could leave.

“Where’s my shit?”

Pookie nodded to a corner of the room and we sprinted there. I scooped my backpack, slipped my shield back on, then reloaded it then reholstered my pistol while I had Pookie watching my back. Same with the shotgun, even if it was looking a bit worn down by this point.

Pooks growl thrummed in my chest. I saw the piles of dead bunnies, though the survivors were valiantly reforming their ranks to charge her again.

She made a lunge toward me but before I could manage anything Pookie repeated his earlier zoomie no-jutsu and snatched her by the neck scruff then spun and released her to launch her across the room and into a stone wall.

“Go, keep her off me.”

He bolted after my nemesis.

Mark was looking at me with a grin that barely showed through his rage-twisted face.

I pulled up the shotgun and his eyes widened fractionally before I let him have both barrels, then I Rushed him and planted my sword through his heart. Fucking asshole. That was kind of strange though, I had been clearly aiming for his neck. The sword vibrated a bit. Whatever. I drew it out of his chest and it came out clean.

I dove to the side as Ron’s sweeping hammer nearly caught me again, I ditched the shotgun and drew my pistol. I fired toward Vivi two or three times, catching her in the shoulder with one of them.

“Ron! Snap out of it you idiot.”

Shit, if he was being manipulated or cursed or whatever, I really didn’t want to kill him. Morrigan turned toward me with a ball of black flame as a wine bottle filled with a bubbling liquid splashed at his feet that made him dive before Jon closed the distance with his wickedly curved knife.

Morrigan's black fire bloomed toward suspender Jon that he desperately dodged as he closed the distance. A wounded Vivi was then fully distracted by Tracey’s ice spikes and she moved to close the distance with the ice witch.

Another big swing I backed out of the way off before slashing down at his hands. My sword cut through one of his hands completely, shit I wasn’t even swinging that hard. He roared and charged me as I fired a blast of Will at him that offset a direct collision course. Right, he was cursed. I had a whole anti-cursed-beings magic sword.

I fired at Vivi but missed. Maybe I could kill her and Ron would break out of it. At least that was my thinking. New target, I shot at Morrigan, a slower target and one of my last two rounds hit somewhere, though not an essential enough of a spot since he didn’t drop. The next pull clicked empty but it was enough.

Vivi screamed in response and I took a glancing blow on my shield from a recovered Ron that sent me off and to the floor in an awkward spin. With my distraction Jon finally closed the distance to Morrison and Vivi darted to plant her own knife in his back before taking a huge ice spike through her own chest. What a fucking mess.

The ice witch was panting hard, eyes dull and unfocused.

Ron stopped, in an unbalanced single-grip, midswing and the awkward momentum of it carried him to the ground before he shook off whatever mindfuck he was under. His eyes trailed to his hand in dull shock before going toward Meredith as they instantly tightened.

He walked over to her body, still bound and tore the restraints apart. He looked over her body and saw the neat straight sword wound through her heart. His eyes traveled to my own blade.

My eyes widened, “No no no! Ron! It was Morrigan. He used my blade. Remember? I was tied up!”

That seemed to latch onto something but it didn’t quite click. “No, I remember, it was your blade. It was you. Like you stabbed me before, you stabbed Meredith.”

Motherfucker. Whatever memory mindfuck that crazy chick had done was stuck there, or at least stuck enough I didn’t have time to deal with his shit.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Pookie and my nemesis were still tumbling, the rabbit-horde rejoining the fight now that they had Pookie on their side.

Seriously, for fucks sake there were a thousand of them. Or like 50, but whatever.

The llama… What the fuck was the llama doing? My eyes searched and found the horrid thing. It was busy tearing off its own skin with its teeth.

Instead of seeing the expected volume of blood and exposed muscle, it was exposing something like bundles of black fibers under the fur.

Oh come on. Its twitching movements were entirely unnatural. It ripped and tore at the chain that still bound it. It twisted in awkwardly spaced leaps and drags of its body as it worked for more leverage against the chain, like it was unaccustomed to its form. Fur continued to slacken off of it in sloppy chunks.

Ice-bitch-witch Tracey was walking in a daze over to the wall where she leaned against it and then dropped to sit against it. She didn’t look wounded but I was impressed she even managed to move herself there after throwing out as much ice as she had. I recognized the look, her Fortitude was completely tapped.

“Ron! Behind you!” He twisted and caught the newly freed llama’s neck with a hand, but not before the top half of its head struck down and bit into the top of his shoulder. Morrigan turned towards me. His half chopped wrist was not doing him any favors.

“You bastard. You’ve ruined it all.”

I shook my head, “Should have just kept your side of the deal.”

His eyes darkened until they seemed to swallow the light.

“Give me more! I have more to give!”

He cast a black fireball at me and I raised my shield and burst some Will to disperse it to either side. It felt… weak. I didn’t even need to spend the full point.

”Why?? I just need a bit more!”

His lower arm ashed into black gritty sand and he screamed. He threw another fireball, this one wasn’t even aimed close enough for me to bother with anything but stepping the side. In exchange, part of his leg disintegrated into black sand and he fell to the ground.

”Forsake me?! How dare you!”

He wasn’t even talking to me at this point and I didn’t bother wasting more words as I walked over and stabbed him through the heart. Dammit why does this blade aim through the heart? The blade started to shake and I had to wrestle it back into its sheath, for a split second I thought it had wanted to turn toward my own heart. I was clearly nearing the end of my rope here.

I walked over to Tracey, still glassy eyed and panting against the wall. I pulled my pistol out and pulled the trigger. Click. That’s right, it was empty. I nearly started to reload before…

Well to be honest, I was tired of killing people. I didn’t like it. I felt much too tired of all of this shit. I was done. I wasn’t even mad that she had tried to kill me that first night. I was just sad and pissed and done with it all. Done with this shitty place.

I holstered it and watched Ron and the llama fight each other, he was losing and pretty badly at that. The now missing hand was too much of a disadvantage. I picked up my shotgun and belabored how scuffed it was looking. I really should stop throwing the thing onto the ground so much. My eyes caught the spaulders too and I slipped the leather connections into a makeshift loop through the outside of my pack.

The smaller glowing circle was losing some light but shining all the more brightly for it. I approached it and tried to scuff it with my foot… but that felt dangerous so I carefully pulled out my sword and dragged its tip through the circle itself and then cut the connecting line to the larger pentagram.

A wave of regeneration hit me, a feeling like Meredith's Refreshing Rain before the color of the circle completely died away.

The demonic-llama thrashed and sent Ron down into a messy blood dripping heap. Its black fibrous muscle was starting to visibly rot but it didn’t look less dangerous for it.

My survival sense was telling me it was far more dangerous than it had been a moment ago.

It whirled toward me with demonic hunger in its eyes. It licked its lips and its exposed black muscle started to twitch and a large chunk hit the ground and started to bubble the stone.

Nope. Not only ‘nope’ but ‘fuck nope’.

<“I need a new soul to sustain me, you. You smell delicious.”>

“Pookie! We’re leaving.”

“”

It started to lunge-

“Maybe another time.” I activated my escape skill, unsure if the words were required but regardless I found my limbs flush with energy and adrenaline. My breath sucked in the warm air and turned it into pure, red-hot power to fuel the generator at my core that urged me to fucking move.

I bolted up the stairs and out the door, spinning and slipping underneath unfocused animal attacks. I was physically unable to take the stairs one at a time, I stepped and several steps had already passed.

It felt like everyone was in slow motion compared to me. I didn’t know if that was because of some extra speed up on my end or some other type of time-shenanigans-bullshit. Maybe it was just my perception.

I didn’t really care, I could feel its constant drain on my Fortitude as each step of mine was the equivalent of two or three, distance unnaturally shortened beneath my feet and even Pookie's considerable, and honestly surprising, speed was left easily behind.

I slid to a stop as I balanced on the edge of uncaring.

“Is it still chasing us?”

I looked around and was alone. I had to repeat myself as Pookie came barreling around a corner.

“Where's the wolf?”

There were even more? Shit.

Well good. It’d do her good to have a taste of her own kin-killing medicine.

I looked around and saw some random hallway.

“You have the scent of the black-fire guy?”

Pookie huffed, I didn’t need Speaks with Animals to know that meant ‘yes’.

“Take me to where you smell his presence the most. I was also there a few days ago if that helps you track it.”

On second thought I held out the spaulders for Pookie to sniff, those had been in that room very recently.

Pookie took off and I forced my feet to move behind him to keep up. He pulled up to a door and rammed it open at my indication.

Morrigan’s study. Pookie was on it, that nose was pure apocalypse gold.

I went in and looted the greaves, taking the time to strap them on, then debated putting on the spaulders but if they managed to not fall off my bag by this point they'd do just fine staying there for now.

I debated the rest of the armor but settled on placing the codpiece in my bag. I wasn’t going to be walking around with an armored groin unless I had the rest of the armor to go with it. Even my deplorable fashion sense had some limits.

Eyeing the room, I took off my backpack and pulled out my altoid tin and removed a piece of charcloth. I kicked a chair apart and ripped off a leg, then tore apart a thick tapestry and wrapped it around the length of wood and stuffed the piece of charcloth inside it.

To keep it all together I stabbed a mini-sword letter opener through the top and took a zippo to my creation. Then, I touched it to books, wood, chairs, carpet, everything that wasn’t stone or metal.

“Let’s go-” I heard howls and more human cries. Fuck this place.

“Try and avoid any other animals if you can.”

Pookie nodded them headed out, I told him to slow down as I continued to burn the place to the ground. It seemed like he approved. I wasn’t looking for it, but it was nice to have.

I could never say it enough times, fuck this place.