~~~Stanley~~~

"Caw!" The crow squawked in his ear the moment it appeared, already standing on his shoulder, and without any warning from Premonition.

Stanley didn't need to see it. He knew what it was the instant it entered his domain. The problem was that he couldn't feel a soul and didn’t know if it was attacking or not. So he struck first.

Cu...

The crow vanished a mere instant ahead of his power, then reappeared on his other shoulder, little feet latching onto and digging into his suit. "Caw!"

C...

Again, it escaped, and Stanley reached the ground, letting the squirming Caffeine touch down an instant before the bird came back.

"Ca..." It didn't even finish squawking in his ear again before Caffeine was abruptly standing beside him, just large enough that his nose reached and touched the bird. It fled.

Stanley didn't know why this time his Still Mind hadn't activated when he got surprised. So he activated it on purpose.

Time slowed. He felt the crow pop into existence on his other shoulder and saw the ground caving in beneath Caffeine's feet as the pug took a step.

Cu...

The abrupt cancellation of Still Mind was jarring enough that he missed killing the crow. Caffeine was there instead, back in the bird's face, sniffing it... with a wagging tail.

Stanley waited when he saw the tail. Tensely and with his finger on the proverbial button. The bird hadn't technically attacked him... unless you counted appearing out of nowhere while already touching him. Stanley counted that! It was a fucking threat!

Apparently, Caffeine didn't agree.

So he let Caffeine chase the bird as it blinked faster and faster around the area, no longer confining itself to Stanley's shoulders. Every time it appeared, Caffeine was there before it could make a single sound.

Eventually, the bird abandoned the ground to appear in the sky. "Caw!"

Caffeine howled at it and then sat dejectedly while the bird spiraled slowly back down. The pug continued to wait when it touched down and bounced closer with a few little hops. Until it was right in front of him, whereupon he gave it a good long sniff, then dropped into a play bow.

"Caw!" the crow squawked and teleported further away. "Caw!" The chase was on.

Stanley relaxed slowly, reluctant to meditate at the moment. Instead, he just focused on the happy feelings from Caffeine's soul and the complete lack of anything from the crow. He even tried turning on Soul Sight and ramping up the power like he'd used to spot the skeleton. Nothing. Was it not real? Daryl had made a copy of himself that looked real but wasn't.

He was about to scan the surroundings for the source of this magic when the crow suddenly had a soul. Only for an instant. Then it blinked off. And on. Off. On.

What the... Was it mocking him? There was definitely amusement coming from it in the brief flashes he picked up. His eyes picked up something else. Something that looked very similar to his own soul shield—only faster and way stronger.

Is that how the invaders hide? Stanley followed the playing pug and the maybe playing bird as they sprinted and teleported after each other. He studied what he could see of its blinking soul along the way, even activating Still Mind again to give himself more time to figure out what it was doing.

It had to be an actual skill. It was too smooth, too easy. He watched anyway. He watched the bird's soul energy as it sat still for one moment, then twisted, strands flowing into an intricate web of... It was too fast. He couldn't follow the pattern, even with time crawling. He'd need to see it much slower...

If he could lock down its teleportation to keep it from escaping, then he'd have plenty of time to figure out what it was doing... Maybe he could stop the bird? Or slow it?

S...

Caffeine canceled his Still Mind.

God d... Stanley sighed and let it go. That was a mean idea. Sure, it was a bird, but maybe not just a bird. There was some higher level intelligence in its soul. At least he thought there was; it was hard to tell with all the flickering. Plus, Caffeine was probably best friends with the damn thing already...

He redirected his anger toward the corrupted squirrel creature that sprang from a lair toward Caffeine's back. It wasn't an actual zombie. Not yet. But its soul looked... rotten. Its body wasn't much better.

The crow didn't seem at all bothered by the sick-looking flesh when it appeared atop the bisected body and started picking at it. Is it eating... Hey, that's my core! It vanished with the glowing crystal in its beak... and reappeared on Stanley's shoulder.

Stanley flinched, but the crow vanished immediately after dropping the core into his lap. So, not a thief... It went back to the corpse, ripped a piece of flesh free, and tilted its head up to swallow the rotten meat. But gross, and maybe not very intelligent if it’s eating that...

Caffeine sniffed the body but had the good sense not to eat it. Instead, he turned to stare at Stanley.

"I got it," Stanley said. "You're starving." He looked down the street at the chicken he'd dropped earlier and saw it marching confidently into another lair full of monsters. Seriously?

He killed the cat-lizards with ugly looking sores all over their hairless bodies and dragged the chicken back outside. It acted like literally the dumbest monster he'd seen to date.

Had the chicken queen gotten domesticated?

Stanley was pretty sure that at least some lair queens could direct the evolution of their offspring. If that was the case, was the queen an idiot too? Or was she smart and making her minions extra stupid to feed the humans? He really should have checked her out while he was there.

Also, it probably would have been smarter to take some prepared chicken instead of a live one. Come on, chicken. Let me show you the world.

The crow was probably tired of the chasing. Now it stood on Caffeine's back and kept cawing at him. Caffeine was panting when Stanley picked him up, and the crow came along for the ride. He didn't pull the pug into his lap because he didn't want the damn bird in his face, so, of course, it just teleported to his shoulder again.

Stanley took all of them toward the tower, only slowing when he saw something from the corner of his eye. He stopped and stared at the river. Large concentric waves rippled away from where a flock of birds was only a moment before and crashed against the shore. The sea king...

Souls shone from within the dark waters, but nothing was close enough to the splash zone. There was definitely nothing that looked large enough to be the source of that tentacle, which nearly flattened his first friends during their bath time.

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He hadn't wanted to get near whatever that was then, and he'd completely forgotten about it until now. Only now he wasn't afraid of meeting it again. The question was if the lack of a soul meant it could hide, or if it was just that fast... So he dangled a big piece of live bait above the water while pushing his mental touch below the surface.

Feeling through water wasn't that different from air; it was just thicker. He also found nothing down there. At least nothing big enough. There were plenty of fish, though, a few of which tried to eat his chicken by leaping clear out of the water.

They all missed, but he didn't expect the jet of water that punched a hole right through the bird.

Stanley sighed as he watched his chicken die. We were going to eat that. He waited until it was zombified, then dropped it in the river. I hope it makes you sick.

To his surprise, fish swarmed the zombie chicken immediately, tearing it apart in a feeding frenzy that lasted all of two seconds. Until nothing remained but feathers floating slowly down the river. So... maybe you're right to avoid the water, Caff.

He grabbed a fish before the swarm fully dispersed and dragged it into the sky. He wasn't an expert on what fish should look like, but he could recognize a catfish... even if it was twenty feet long. Though he didn't think the feelers on their faces were supposed to be that long... or move around like octopus tentacles. With teeth... "Anyone hungry?"

"Caw!" The crow teleported onto the fish's back and immediately started pecking at it. Not just pecking... its beak punched holes far easier than Stanley thought it should. Easily enough that he felt a little sick remembering that beak next to his head... next to Caffeine's head.

Also... had it understood him? The bird obviously had some kind of soul skill; did that mean it could sense his soul? Did it pick up emotions? Did it understand them?

It only took a few bites from the squirming fish before reappearing on Stanley's shoulder. He barely resisted the urge to attack it... and the crow dropped a piece of catfish to the eagerly waiting pug in his lap. Blatant bribery.

Caffeine ate the bribe, which Stanley really hoped wasn't corrupted yet. Though he remembered the pug throwing up the last time he'd eaten zombies... after which he'd healed from the corruption. He'd be fine.

The memory soured his mood, and Stanley carried all of them toward the tower again while the crow continued to rip chunks out of the still living catfish. It ate every other bite and gave the rest to Caffeine. Blatantly corrupt bribery. Right out in the open, too!

Stanley ignored the fish's suffering and eyed the approaching tower. He also eyed the wide expanse of ocean visible behind it.

There was a lot of ocean out there—a whole lot of space where a whole lot of shit could be hiding in the depths. Nate had originally suspected the undead were hiding in the city. What if they weren't?

What if they were instead right outside the city, hiding in the ocean's depths? They were undead... they probably didn't need to breathe. Even now, Soul Sight picked up a field of souls fading off into the distance. Normal, uncorrupted souls.

He saw what had to be schools of fish moving in massive groups. Singular souls darted into that mass to snatch away meals, while the school itself either chased other souls or turned on the aggressors. Countless souls lurked out there, in groups or alone, and that was just in the small area he could see in the harbor. The shallow water.

The lack of corruption in the souls was odd. Did the miasma not travel well through water? It would explain how the tower had fish to eat...

Stanley passed the bat lair on the way, also still uncorrupted, and he only slowed slightly when he spotted a single bat outside in the street. It crawled slowly in a circle as the undead charged, then bounded inside, the zombies on its heels.

So they were still hunting the undead. That was good. Stanley purposefully didn't pass on the side of the building where the fight had taken place, and he directed his attention ahead once again.

Many of the skyscraper lairs here were resisting the corruption better than the smaller ones further out. He just wasn't sure if it was because they were more powerful, or perhaps the miasma was now weaker in the city, or maybe they just had some trick like the bats did.

Approaching the tower, Stanley wasn't seeing Adrian... He looked harder, inside and out, and spotted a few groups of humans inside on the ground floor, hunting zombies and other monsters, but no one that looked like Adrian or Daryl among the masses filling the building.

That was disappointing, since he'd really wanted to use them to talk to Caffeine...

Maybe Walter would know where they went? He seemed pretty invested in their lives. He also might have felt Stanley coming... because the butler stood just inside the doorway of the penthouse balcony, his soul radiating worry that bordered on terror. His voice betrayed none of that, however, instead staying in his usual monotone. "Pardon me, sir, but I must beg..."

"Just spit it out!"

"Master Adrian did not return, and Master Daryl departed this morning in search of him. Neither has returned. I am already in your debt, but..."

That wasn't good. "Which way?"

Walter pointed toward the south. "They heard reports of a..."

Stanley dropped his fish and flew away without another word. As he went, he pushed soul energy into his eyes until they burned.

He flew over the city, following the coastline south. Zombies and monsters were everywhere... but no humans. He saw the old freeway, still there but cracked and broken in places where stunted and rotten plants had grown through the concrete.

It didn't take all that long to spot human souls, but he almost missed them among the throngs of surrounding monsters. A handful of more colorful souls amidst a flood of monotone attackers.

Ants.

It wasn't the souls that gave away their identity first. It was the towering ant hill that he'd mistaken for another skyscraper, with a small group of humans at its base. All fighting for their lives.

He came in low, and Caffeine kicked off before he even reached them. The pug turned into a gray streak as he blasted a line through the throngs of swarming ants and went straight to the humans in the middle.

Stanley let Caffeine wipe out the closest bugs and then just blocked the rest from getting closer as he dropped in on Daryl.

It was a strange sight he found waiting for him.

Kira was there with his... her spear, and she'd definitely finished soul bonding with it. Now her spear looked like it was dripping blood... and she looked a few pints short herself as she swayed on her feet.

All of them looked bad. He didn't need Caffeine's keening or the pain in their souls to know that. Princess didn't even growl at Caffeine... but maybe that was because she was down a leg and barely on fire. She was so tired... and so afraid for her human.

Adrian wasn't present. That probably explained why they were all wounded. Though even as he arrived, Daryl was pouring fire onto a man Stanley didn't know, regrowing his hand... Daryl's soul was frantic. Chaotic. An insane soup of terror, despair, and desperate longing.

The man broke off his healing, and this time there was no resentment when he laid eyes on Stanley, only a surge of hope that almost drowned out the deeper fear. And not fear for himself.

"Stanley! Adrian is in there! You have to get him out! Please save him..." Daryl stumbled a few steps toward him as he begged, then fell to his knees in exhaustion. Princess was at his side instantly, crying out with heartbreaking noises as she licked at his face.

Stanley barely heard the words as he felt the emotions radiating from them. Especially from Princess.

All he could think of was every time Caffeine had cried just like that. All he could feel was the sadness and worry also radiating from Caffeine as he looked on. All he could remember was the noise Caffeine had made when Samantha died... Never again.

Caffeine finally turned away from his friends, with a new emotion rising. An emotion Stanley knew all too well. Anger. The pug growled at the swarm of ants surrounding them, and his anger drowned out all other sounds.

Every ant stopped moving, the air shook with subaudible vibrations, and the ground beneath their feet, a churned up and muddy soup of dirt and blood, danced in the shockwaves of Caffeine's rage.

Stanley didn't care that much about the people here. He barely knew any of them. But Adrian and Daryl had helped him when he needed it. They'd helped Caffeine. Cheesesteak had died to help defeat the invader, even if only temporarily. Of course, none of that was what really mattered now.

Seeing and feeling the anger from the normally happy-go-lucky pug was all Stanley needed to drive his own dark mood down the same murderous path.

The ants would have to die.

Their souls were not intelligent. They weren't even hungry. There was nothing in them but a matching universal drive to hunt. To eliminate. To gather. Stanley didn't care.

Burn

They didn't scream in pain like he wanted them to. But they did burn. They did hurt.

BURN

It started with a great sizzling sound, rising on the heels of Caffeine's growl, then the flames roared up from a field of rapidly charring flesh and carapace. The smell followed.

The humans' souls all rapidly filled with an odd mix of elation, fear... and hunger. Ew. That was when Stanley realized he'd dropped his soul shield. That, and the rising cry of uncountable souls echoing up from below ground. Thousands of them, and way down deep... a flash of something else. Something human.

"Protect them, Caff," Stanley whispered. "I'll get the rest of your friends."

"They adapt to..." Daryl called out behind him as Stanley flew toward the nearest entrance, but his mind was already reaching deeper through the tunnels, finding the pathways down.