~~~Stanley~~~

Stanley stared at Nate while dragging in ragged breaths. His chest felt tight... and his hands wouldn't stop shaking as he ran them over Caffeine's soft fur. He could feel Nate's soul. He could feel the... happiness? The triumph? Nate had wanted him to fight, hadn't he? This was all part of some plan? But they'd died...

Buff Gained: [Purifying Aura]

A tongue touched Stanley's nose, and he pulled his gaze away from Nate to look into the big brown eyes of the worried pug in his lap. Caffeine was fine. He wasn't hurt... anymore. He'd saved...

Stanley looked at his friends then. Rather, he looked at their souls, because none of them felt upset enough about what had just happened. About how they'd all died... Because it hadn't happened. Because it was a premonition that never came true.

Caffeine had saved them. They didn't even know how close it had been... Stanley was the only one who saw them all die. He was the only one who had felt himself dying... They didn't know. Nate didn't know that his little plan had come so close to disaster. Or did he?

"Nate," Stanley said, and his voice came out as a growl. "You almost..."

"I know," Nate said, interrupting as he approached. "I know it got dicey at the end there..." His gaze went to Caffeine and then back up to Stanley. "But we're okay."

"If Caffeine hadn't..." Stanley's head snapped toward the stage, where a soul had just vanished. Dale's soul. "Don't hide!"

Dale's shield might have blocked his soul, but he hadn't put it up early enough to hide what he intended. Which meant Stanley was expecting it when the bastard reached for his scepter...

Stanley didn't have to do anything about it. Because the other wizards reacted even faster, and their still visible souls told Stanley exactly what they were after. Or rather, who they were after when a dozen spells knocked out, knocked down, and then restrained the unconscious Dale.

Someone gasped, and Stanley rounded on the bleachers, where a bunch of wizards were still sitting and hiding their souls. A bunch of bastards who'd just sat there and watched... "Show me your fucking souls! Now!"

Less than half of them complied, and Stanley reached for the defiant...

"Do as he says," a voice said from the stage. Theo's voice. "Release your shields."

They complied. Slowly. But all of them showed their souls. Eventually. Some were frightened, but most only felt confused... and all of them were humans.

Nate reached out but stopped short of touching Stanley. Instead, he leaned in close and whispered, "I can handle this from here. If you want to take everyone back to the tower?"

Stanley studied the man's face and soul. Nate was slightly worried but mostly confident, and his soul still had that sense of triumph... "What are you after?"

There was no hesitation in his reply. "Allies." His eyes flicked toward the stage, but his head didn't move. "You did what you... needed to do. Can you trust me to take it from here?"

"I... fine." He trusted Nate. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he shouldn't trust anyone. But even Caffeine liked the man, and that was the best endorsement there was. Plus, he really wanted to get out of here.

His premonition skill had finally advanced in almost exactly the way he'd wanted it too, and it hadn't been enough. Magic was still too dangerous. If he couldn't deal with a handful of weakling human wizards, then how was he supposed to fight the skeletons?

Stanley grabbed everyone, cut a hole in the ceiling, and flew outside. Daryl laughed about something, and Adrian admonished him. Then they bickered back and forth about historical buildings and which ones actually mattered.

All of that happened while Stanley hovered above the defaced building and scanned their surroundings. For whatever it was worth. He already knew the undead could hide their souls, and now a bunch of humans could do the same.

So trying to scout the area was probably pointless. Instead, he moved them all to the tower.

It took a few seconds to make the trip. Far too long. Anything could happen in that amount of time. Everyone could die in a single instant.

Stanley looked at the others as they tromped into the penthouse from the balcony. He felt the eyes avoiding him... as well as the ones that never strayed from him.

Daryl and Adrian kept bickering about nonsense, but it was a shield. Against him or simply against reality, he didn't know. Zeke tried not to stare, but his concern was blatantly obvious.

Eve didn't even try to hide anything. "What the fuck happened back there!?"

"Nate wanted... he wanted a fight."

"Obviously!" Eve yelled. "I mean, what the fuck happened to you!? Aside from that rewinding bullshit, didn't you kick their butts? Why are you acting like we fucking lost!?"

"I..." Stanley looked away. He couldn't stop seeing that blade go through their heads. He could still remember the feeling of them dying...

Stanley said nothing else as he retreated to his room and the silence it offered... but it didn't help. He paced back and forth, only while sitting in the air instead of walking. Maybe that was why it wasn't helping.

He needed to fight something. To kill something. But he was supposed to be protecting Zeke...

"Caff, stay." Stanley dropped the pug back in the main room and flew outside. He then ensured Caffeine wouldn't try to follow by flying in a new direction. Over the ocean.

It might be dangerous to leave Zeke there, but between everyone else and Caffeine, he should be fine. Besides, he didn't fly very far. Only far enough to find some monsters to kill, and the ocean was plenty full of those.

The sun was getting low, which meant the water got dark fast when he dropped beneath the surface. Stanley didn't stop. He had premonition and his domain. Both of which he desperately needed to improve. His domain was too small... and it was probably the only possible way he could have saved the others from that spell. Or if his premonition had given more warning.

Stanley knew what was wrong. He had gotten too powerful... and without a threat breathing down his neck all this time, it made him lazy. It made him soft. Sleeping in Walter's nice, safe, and peaceful room had cost him. He'd lost his edge... and he'd made the worst mistake of all.

He got civilized.

So he plunged into the depths full of unknown monsters, leaving Caffeine behind. The pug was worried and a little nervous, but he was safe. That was all that mattered. Stanley didn't need him down here, and he guessed being under the water would only make the little guy more upset than leaving him behind.

The first thing he found under the surface was a fish. Well, a lot of fish. Presumably. They had the right shape, but Stanley didn't think many fish swam around Boston with teeth quite like that. It was closer to something only seen when they dragged those alien-looking fish from the lowest depths...

There was a whole school of them rushing through the water faster than anything pre-system would have been capable of moving. They came right for him, though he wasn't sure how they knew he was there. Particularly when he wasn't even physically touching the water.

They blasted into the side of his air bubble... and ricocheted off. Even the massive numbers trying to get through didn't make a difference compared to holding back the ocean. The pressure grew exponentially as he descended, and Stanley kept going down until he reached the ocean floor.

It was good. He actually had to strain slightly against the water... the only downside was that he couldn't get any deeper. The fish chased him all the way down. Obviously, they were tracking him somehow. Maybe they could see better than him down here?

Then he killed one, and things really went crazy.

More... fish swarmed in from every direction. Not only did the others in the first group turn on and devour their dead companion, but more of every swimming creature joined the party.

The one dead fish quickly turned the surrounding ocean into a bloodbath as the feeding frenzy began in earnest.

At least until something bigger showed up.

Stanley would have assumed it was a whale based on how big it was, if not for the rows of teeth. That made it feel more like a shark—only it was one that could swallow him whole. Which it did, air bubble and all. Along with at least a hundred of the small fish. It was so big that he barely even got jostled on the way into its belly.

He didn't do anything right away, waiting to see if perhaps something bigger might come out to play. Like, say, a giant octopus.

Unfortunately, other than the shark carrying him further away from Caffeine, nothing really happened. Well, all the fish that came into the shark's stomach with him died in terrible pain. Then the cores vanished when the formerly spacious stomach collapsed violently inward.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Light

Stanley lit up his fleshy prison and immediately regretted it. Disgusting meat pressed in on him from all sides, along with a sizzling liquid that was rapidly melting everything outside his bubble into a soup.

It burned at his mind strongly enough that he knew he would get hungry before long if he kept holding it back like this. Of course, he wouldn't sit there and let that happen.

Cut

More fish swarmed the dead shark, and not only the toothy ones. Stanley's hovering light showed him the varieties all too well. Including some that looked like perfectly normal fish. At least until they opened their toothless mouths near the corpse and little bite-sized pieces of shark meat ripped away from the carcass. As if being pulled by an immense force.

Hundreds of those fish took those tiny bites multiple times a second, eating far more than their size would suggest possible and destroying the shark at a terrifying rate.

Stanley assumed their bites must be weaker on a living creature; otherwise, there wouldn't be anything else alive down here. Not with how fast they went through a megalodon-sized shark. Plus, they weren't going after the other fish, only the corpse. He barely managed to snatch the core before they got to it...

Which led to an interesting use of his power that he'd never needed before. Pulling a core through his mental wall that was holding back the ocean.

It worked better than he thought it should. Because... mind over matter? His mental barrier wasn't a literal wall; for all that it behaved like one. It might not even be a wall... unless he thought of it that way. It was more akin to his mind simply telling the ocean it couldn't come any closer...

So, of course, that kind of wall did not impede the core in the slightest.

Then he killed the hundreds of magic-biting fish and took their cores too. As expected, their bloody corpses brought about another feeding-frenzy, and this time, Stanley kept killing as each new group or individual showed up.

Even the shrimp, crabs, and lobsters that swarmed across the ocean floor. Watching them skitter into the light was... disconcerting.

Cores rained down into his air pocket, and he absorbed them all as fast as they came. He wasn't sure how long his air would remain good in here and was a little tempted to see if he could forcibly convert whatever gases were in the bubble with him into oxygen.

Tempted, but he didn't try it. Not only did he barely understand what oxygen actually was, but this didn't seem like a good time for experimentation. It would be much smarter to test that kind of idea on someone else. Ideally, against an enemy not underwater. Maybe by turning all of their oxygen into something else... or by turning all the air into oxygen and creating a spark? What if he compressed it first? Or created hydrogen with the oxygen? Could he brute force a hydrogen bomb?

Something to test once he was not on the ocean floor and out of range of Caffeine and all the healers. Though, if shit went bad down here, he had a feeling Caffeine wouldn't let the ocean stop him...

Caffeine versus the ocean was not something Stanley wanted to test. For Caffeine's sake. Poor little guy didn't deserve that stress. Besides, he was already stressing out the pug enough by hunting down here... Stanley could feel that Caffeine wasn't playing back in the tower. It didn't even feel like he was moving. Hell, he was probably staring out a window at the ocean and trembling. Sorry, Caff.

Stanley didn't linger very long after that. Sure, he was raking in the cores pretty well, but a few more attributes weren't what he needed. Premonition wouldn't make any progress down here, and holding back the ocean, while slightly tiring, wasn't going to improve his domain control. Trying to edit atmospheric gases might help, but he could do that out of the water and closer to Caffeine.

The next best training might be to go pick another fight with the wizards. As long as he left everyone else home... and assuming he could get Caffeine to sit out the fight.

Getting that to happen might depend on whatever Nate's plan had been, as well as whatever he was doing now. Speaking of Nate... Stanley thought he felt his soul up near Caffeine. A good enough reason to head back.

He headed that way along the ocean floor. Both to keep the frenzied fish cores coming and because he wanted to see if he could enter the tower through the fishing hole at the base. Walter had told him about it, but he'd never actually gone to check it out.

There was a large gathering of souls below the tower, but they were behind walls—lair walls. Well, perhaps cave was a more accurate description.

It was an interesting tactic to create a sapient lair literally on top of a monster lair, and it should have meant easy cores for the hunters... though Stanley supposed the whole underwater part might have put a damper on that idea.

The more interesting implication was that it meant there were underwater lairs—potentially as many as there were in the city above—lairs he hadn't tapped yet. Of course, there was one major downside of exploring said lairs. They were underwater.

As for Walter's fish lair... Stanley could reach through and kill them if he wanted, but he'd need to look for an entrance to get the cores, and Caffeine's worry was getting to be too much. Plus, Nate had indeed returned, and the bastard felt far too pleased with himself...

"Stanley," Nate said, only slightly wary when Stanley flew into the penthouse. "First off, thanks for going along with me back there. I know it got... sketchy."

For his part, Stanley resisted the urge to throw the man out a window and instead gave Caffeine a very thorough greeting involving belly rubs and some raw shark meat he'd brought back specifically for him. He would have preferred to bring back some giant squid, but that particular bastard hadn't shown itself.

Finally, he looked at Nate. "Sketchy? Everyone almost died."

Nate winced. "I... noticed that." He glanced down at Caffeine. "I had faith." Then back up. "In both of you."

Stanley wanted to yell at him for being an idiot... but he'd gone along with the plan. "So why? I'm assuming you had a damn good reason for that?"

"Definitely," Nate said, before turning to Daryl. "First off, you were about to tell us what you know about Dale?"

"Yeah, yeah," Daryl said. "He's just some stuck-up prick that thinks he's all that, even though everything in his life was literally handed to him on a silver platter."

"Says the guy living in a penthouse with a butler," Eve muttered.

Daryl shrugged. "I'm a trust-fund brat too... Well, I was... It's just that I don't go around telling everyone how fucking great I am. The little shit only got into Harvard because of his parents. Hell, he only graduated because they donated a damn building to the school, but he's just so... smug. About nothing!"

"His school life aside," Nate said, heading off what sounded like the beginning of a well-rehearsed rant. "I knew something was off with the guy when we first got in there."

Stanley tensed, but Nate held up a hand. "I don't know that he's a traitor... I only knew he had no intention of helping us. Can't say why, but I knew he wanted to hustle us out with a few threats and perhaps a show of power. On top of that, he seemed to have some hold over the rest of them."

"I could have just killed him and been done with..."

"No. I don't think that would have worked,” Nate said. “Not that you couldn’t beat him,” he added quickly. “But it would have turned them all against us. Plus, I wasn't lying when I said he could help us. It turns out he's the singular person responsible for their shields. Among other things. Dale wasn't lying; enchanters are actually powerful. Especially on his home turf, where he had all that shit ready to go."

"And I care about any of that, why?" Stanley asked, glaring. "We almost died for a fucking soul shield? Caffeine is the only reason any of you are alive!" He was pretty sure he could have escaped death himself... the rest of them, not so much.

"It was a calculated risk," Nate said, smiling at Caffeine. "I told you, I had faith..."

"That's a lot of fucking faith," Eve growled, and both Adrian and Daryl echoed her sentiment, if not in so many words.

Stanley had a much bigger problem than Nate's fucking faith. Obviously, Caffeine would step up. Obviously, he would do whatever he fucking had to do to save his friends!

"You used him," Stanley growled at the man through gritted teeth. "You... hurt him!" His hands shook, and he wanted nothing more than to punch the cocky bastard in front of him. "You hurt him to make some asshole look bad!"

"I had..." Nate tried to speak, but Stanley grabbed him, then squeezed his throat until no more words could escape.

"Are we all pawns in your game, Nate? How much are you willing to sacrifice? How many of us will you kill to get what you fucking want!?"

Nate activated his buffs, his strength increasing enough that he started squirming in Stanley's grip. Enough that he could wheeze out, "What... ever... it... takes."

Stanley considered getting really angry... and dropped him instead, exacerbated. "How does that make you a better option than anyone else? Like that asshole, Dale. Wasn't he doing the same damn thing!?"

"Because I give a damn." Nate said while rubbing his throat. "I give a damn about every one of you. About every human out there who’s still fighting on our side." He stepped right up into Stanley's face. "Look at my soul, Stanley. Look and understand that I will risk all our lives for what I believe in."

"And what exactly do you believe in?" Daryl asked with a healthy amount of skepticism.

"Humanity," Nate said without hesitation and without breaking eye contact with Stanley. "I will do whatever it takes to preserve humanity. You know this. Even if I have to die to make it happen."

He wasn't lying. At least his soul wasn't lying... but who knew what that meant anymore?

"So yes, I risked our lives today. But it wasn't a reckless or thoughtless choice. I'm talking about less than one percent odds of a bad outcome. It worked, too. That crazy gamble will pay off for all of us. Even that asshole, Dale, will be better off thanks to what I did! Thanks to the fact that I risked our lives! Yes, even Caffeine's life! Which, honestly..."

Nate ran a hand over his head while taking a step back and looking down at the now slightly nervous pug in Stanley's lap. "Yeah, he got hurt, and I'm sorry about that, but I don't think they could have ever killed Caff." He met Stanley's gaze again. "Or you... hell, you were about to kill them all at the end there, weren't you?"

Stanley felt a little embarrassed at the reminder, but he only held onto his anger and glared back at Nate. "Because you fucking wanted me to!"

"Not exactly. I don't see the future, Stanley. Remember? It's all gut feelings. Intuition."

"Are you fucking kidding me!?" Daryl exclaimed. "Everyone said you could see the future... but... Oh, fuck this!" He threw up his hands and stormed away. "I need a drink."

Nate smiled. "Hey, I never said that."

Stanley watched Daryl pull a bottle from a cupboard and almost asked for a drink... but didn't. Even if it would work on his insane regeneration, he didn't have time to waste like that. He'd seen today just how much power he still lacked. Never mind if the skeletons showed up again...

There was one other thing, though. "What about the wizard with the time travel spell? He said he saw the future..."

"Time travel?" Nate shook his head. "That little reversal spell? I mean, yeah, it was powerful. But I wouldn't call that time travel—not really. The range was crap, and Caffeine straight up resisted it, from what I saw. I'm kind of surprised you didn't..."

Stanley glared at him. "I was... distracted. Next time, I'll kick his ass too."

"Actually..." Nate winced and held up his hands. "I may have promised them your transporting abilities tomorrow, but if you don't want to..."

"No, it's fine," Stanley growled, a smile creeping onto his face. "I was just thinking about going back for another... Wait, where am I taking them?"

Nate grinned. "We're getting our own wizards. Here and back home. Part of the deal we reached after you scared the shit out of their divination master. Apparently they considered that reversal spell of his a big deal, and when he said they were all dead without it... Well, look at it this way, Stanley. They know you could have killed all of them, and you didn't actually have to kill anyone... so, win win?"

Stanley sighed, watched Daryl throw back a shot, and then looked out into the darkening city. The choice was obvious. "You want a ride home? I have shit to do."