~~~Nate~~~

Nate didn't watch Stanley leave. Whatever was going to happen had already been set in motion. Now he only needed to find the best path through whatever was coming. Though it sure would be freaking nice if he knew exactly what that was!

He didn't dwell on it. That wasn't how you got things done.

"Mareen!" he called, hopping off the wall and catching up to the woman currently in deep discussion with the wizards. "How are we looking?"

"We're as ready as we were an hour ago," she replied without turning. "Johnson, I'm giving you lead on the shield backup team. Don't let a single one of them drop their mana below seventy-five percent. You can contribute until called on, but the shield is your priority."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Blake, don't leave it to the last..."

Nate left her to it. The woman knew what she was doing, and his micromanagement wouldn't help. His trust in her was the reason he'd put her in charge of the wizards, after all. Instead, he went looking for the newer additions to their fighting force. They were the ones who would benefit most from his attention. Not that they were doing anything wrong, but Nate knew that his own projected confidence might rub off on them.

He made the rounds, checking in with some teams, reassuring others, and generally trying to look like he had everything under control. He was successful, mostly.

"Are you really sure about this?" Bernard said, falling into step beside him as he entered the main building. At least he kept his voice low.

"I am." Nate didn't have to look to know Bernard was frowning at him.

"My people will be on the front lines out there," Bernard said, his voice riding the line between a statement and an accusation.

"So will I." The older man was still coming to grips with taking orders from Nate instead of giving them. But it wasn't all about that. He truly cared for his people and worried Nate didn't. He feared Nate might spend their lives carelessly, which he wouldn’t. "I asked for the best, and they volunteered. You know that."

Bernard huffed, then lowered his voice even more. "Don't think I can't see through you! You aren't as confident as you're pretending to be, and I want to know what you aren't saying."

Nate held up a finger as he strolled through a doorway. "Need anything, Trudy?"

The older woman grinned at him from her chair, a small child on each of her legs and a gaggle of the little tykes crowded behind her. All of them staring with rapt attention at the book in her hands. "We good."

She was only one of many guarding the children, and even though he knew the woman would die before letting anything touch them, Nate wasn't counting on her. She and the others in here were some of the weakest in the base and mostly crafters. In fact, Trudy was likely the strongest among them. He wished he could spare better guards, but it just didn't make sense. If the enemy reached this room, then they would already be in deep trouble.

Besides, he had a secret weapon in the room with them. Well, not that secret.

Barbie was lying down beside Pita, but he wasn't relaxed. The children might not all understand what was going down tonight, but the pit bull knew. His head was up and his ears twitched and turned as if he was hearing more than anyone else in here, which he probably was.

Nate had been quietly feeding the dog cores every chance he got, and he suspected its power to be near his own by now. It was difficult to know for sure because Barbie refused to leave Pita, and Nate wasn't about to put her in danger just to test the dog's strength.

Instead, he was basing his assumptions on the times he'd watched Barbie play with Caffeine. Man, he wished they had Caffeine here... he definitely wouldn't be as nervous with the little pug on their side. But that wasn't in the cards. Not yet...

Nate knew Caffeine would play a role before this night was over... but he still had no clue how.

Bernard was waiting when he left, and he was still scowling.

"You know as much as I do, Bernard," Nate said, a half-truth. He'd shared information freely, both about his intuition and what it told him. Just not... all of it. He shared the pertinent bits. The stuff they could understand. Too much of what his intuition gave him these days was beyond even his own understanding. There was no point in everyone else being confused along with him. "The invaders are coming for us, and..."

Nate whipped a coin from his pocket. "Get that shield up now! They're coming!" He received confirmation before pulling out another coin. "Stanley? Come in, Stanley!"

No response came, but then he'd known it wouldn't the moment he touched the coin. He tried another, expecting the same result. "Edward, do you copy?"

He was right, and Nate tucked the coins away with a rueful smile for Bernard before heading for the walls. "Shall we?"

Bernard looked upset. "Wait... I thought Stanley was going to be a part of this!?"

"He will be," Nate said over his shoulder as he jogged.

"But he didn't reply," Bernard said as he caught up in a burst of wind. "What if he's..." Wind swirled, and Bernard's voice whispered in his ear, "Dead?"

Nate chuckled at the man, who, despite his lingering dislike of Stanley, clearly understood and respected his power. Nate also ignored the niggling voice in the back of his head that shared Bernard's fear. He was ninety-nine percent sure Stanley wasn't dead. Ninety-nine point nine nine percent... "He has his own fight, and we have ours."

Honestly, he didn't think Stanley could or ever would die quietly. They would know if he had died. Nate shivered at the feeling that was half intuition and half... something else. A feeling that told him in no uncertain terms that everyone would know if Stanley died.

Right now, he was more worried about the failed call to Edward and regretting not consolidating his forces with the tower's fighters, but he just hadn't been certain if the tower would face an attack as well. Zeke was still the most obvious target, but between Walter and Adrian, the tower could easily become another thorn in the invaders' attempts to corrupt everyone and everything.

While they could have brought Adrian here... Walter was stuck at the tower. Also, it didn't matter now. Edward would probably guess the fight had started when they missed the next scheduled check-in. If they weren't also under attack, they would come.

Nate didn't need to win outright here. They only needed to hold out long enough for backup to arrive. Either the tower's fighters or Stanley, and ideally both. Nate knew they could pull it off... but he didn't like the feeling that came along with that knowledge. In fact, he didn't like anything he was feeling right now.

His intuition felt... fluttery, and he knew what that meant. Things were in the air, and he didn't know where they would land. People were making choices, or about to make them. Or so he thought.

It was times like this that he wished he knew more about how it all worked. He had to be touching on some kind of future sight with his intuition. There had been too many times where there was no way even the greatest intuition could ever connect the dots between what he knew and what happened later.

Hallie, with her single point of intuition, had predicted an incoming monster swarm. There was a chance she'd felt the faintest vibrations in the ground. But he suspected it was more to do with all of her potential futures narrowing into inevitable death, and her intuition had picked up on that. Nate knew he always felt imminent death the clearest out of any other intuition.

But it wasn't only about seeing the future. His intuition was clearer the more he knew about whatever he was trying to see a way through. People, places, or things. Knowledge was and always had been power, perhaps even more so for him than anyone else.

One thing he knew for sure was that the future wasn't set. Not until it happened.

He only passed a few scurrying people on his way back to the wall. Mostly runners. Everyone else was already in position. Including Zeke. Nate didn't go to the room the kid was in to check on him. He didn't need to.

It was obvious that Zeke was in position even before he got back outside.

Golden light burst past Nate as he ran. It shone into every room. It illuminated every shadow, both inside and out, until it culminated in a dome of brilliant light covering the entire base, including the walls.

Buff Gained: [Purifying Shield]

The wall surrounding them hadn't ended up exactly circular, but it didn't matter; it was mostly cosmetic, aside from granting the defenders a height advantage. They'd built it tall, but most people had at least some kind of traversal ability, if not outright flight, and while Nate couldn't leap the wall in a single bound, he didn't need more than the tiniest of imperfections to easily scale the wall.

It was the shield that would make the real difference. A shield built by the wizards, but fueled and empowered further by Zeke's magic. Obviously, Zeke wasn't powering the whole thing, but he was contributing. From their earlier testing, Nate knew that anyone inside the dome should heal from anything short of an instantly fatal wound. So long as Zeke lasted, at least.

Bernard alighted on the wall a heartbeat behind him, and they both stared out into the now illuminated night. A side benefit of the glowing shield. For some reason, they both looked south, in the direction Stanley had gone.

Nothing moved out there, but a wolf howled from the darkness beyond the light. It was a chilling sound on the eve of battle, but everyone here knew the wolves were on their side. Nate had sent one of his beast talkers out the day before to make sure they knew what was coming, and the leader of the pack hadn't hesitated to promise their aid. He'd also sent someone to recruit the bear, but that lazy bastard hadn't even responded to the man...

Another wolf answered the first howl, then another, until a chorus of howls filled the night. Then, all at once, they fell silent, and the entire forest fell silent with them.

The silence stretched, and Nate could feel tensions climbing among the surrounding soldiers, most of whom weren't soldiers. They did have some veterans, mostly among Bernard's forces, but the vast majority of these people had been ordinary folks just living their lives. Then the world changed forever. Monsters became real, and people no longer had the luxury to sit on the sidelines. So many of them were heroes. So many had stepped up when no one else did or could. They'd saved lives, and Nate's heart ached at the knowledge that some of these brave men and women may not live to see the sun rise again, but sometimes that was the price of freedom.

It started as a low rumble that grew louder by the second. Alongside a growing vibration through the wall beneath his feet.

Then a tide of creatures burst from the trees and into the light. They were zombies, mostly former humans but not completely, and they spilled into the clearing between the walls and the forest like a rolling carpet of death.

Someone immediately sent a fireball arcing out into the tide of zombies, where it exploded in a fiery wave of destruction, and Nate silently cursed when a hundred more attacks followed the first. Despite that, he held his tongue.

"Hold fire!" Bernard said, not shouting, but using the wind to carry his words to the ears of every single fighter atop the walls.

The attacks stopped, and Nate watched as the leading zombies finally reached the shield. To a one, they immediately burst into raging, golden flames that burned them all to ash before they could even touch the wall itself.

It wasn't free for Zeke to burn up zombies like this, but it was far cheaper than letting the fighters blow their mana on them. Besides, this was only fodder. The whole point was to waste their mana.

Hundreds of the things burned and died to Zeke's light before, as one, the zombies stopped charging. Instead, they spread out sideways, staying just shy of the shield but slowly filling up the clearing around the entire base.

"Dead zone in the trees," Bernard murmured, once again using the wind to carry his words, and this time into Nate's ears alone. "Six hundred yards out at nine o'clock. Most likely their ingress point."

Nate nodded and touched another coin. "Eve, you get eyes on them yet?"

"No," Eve growled, the irritation coming through in her voice. "They've got jammers or something. I'm not getting shit."

That was disappointing, but given that his coins weren't connecting to the outside world, it made sense. He also hadn't expected the undead to simply march across the countryside—it would have taken too long and been too easy to see them coming. Which meant Bernard's dead zone had to be where they were teleporting in.

He was tempted to rally out there with a team, but he didn't need his intuition to know that was a bad idea. Not now. If he'd known beforehand where they would appear, that would have been different, but there was no telling how much power was waiting in there now.

Bernard kept giving orders. Some Nate could hear and others he couldn't. Nate only glanced at the men and women around him. The strike team he was leading, and the ones who would venture over the wall when the time was right. Most likely whenever Bernard gave the order and a target to destroy. Because Nate had put him in charge of their army, he'd have been a fool not to.

The man was a former general with decades of experience in small- and large-scale war. Sure, the battlefield had changed since then, but he'd had time to adjust to the new rules of warfare, aside from a few hiccups. Ever since he met the man, Nate had always planned to make him the general of his army. Despite his shortcomings in interpersonal communication, Bernard excelled when it came to commanding his soldiers in live combat.

Bernard might not have figured it out yet or might not want to admit it, but his original plan to lead would have always ended in disaster. He'd been a soldier for a long time, and that, combined with the current state of the world, left him wanting to see everyone else as just another soldier. That might work on a small scale, but it would fall apart once the group expanded enough. They might be in a war, but not everyone was a soldier, and using the military to control civilians was always a terrible idea.

"I'm getting no communications from them," Bernard said into his ear. "But I'm seeing smaller dead zones approaching. They must know about my power."

Nate nodded at what he wasn't saying. They'd discussed the possibility of traitors before, but they also couldn't rule out that the invaders had magic beyond what his own people could detect.

That wasn't to say Nate was any better himself. Most people gained a sense for whatever flavor of magic they used, but not much beyond that narrow spectrum.

The only exceptions so far were the wizards. Sure, they liked to focus on specific schools of magic, but their ability to manipulate mana was the real key. Even if they didn't know what a spell did, they could usually still detect it.

Unfortunately, Nate had his doubts about how much he could trust them, particularly those from Dale's camp, which, sadly, were the ones he needed most.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The former leader of the wizard conclave had always been suspicious, from his refusal to reach out when he knew Nate was building a safe haven to his even worse lack of aid when he knew their haven was under assault by the invaders.

He'd had plenty of talks with Theo since, one of the more reasonable and less stuck-up house leaders, and the man had his own suspicions about Dale. Theo claimed the man wasn't nearly bright enough to have done so well so fast. There was always the possibility that Dale just so happened to be a magic prodigy, even if he was otherwise an idiot, but Theo wasn't buying it, and he wasn't the only one, either.

Nate had tried his best to vet every wizard he recruited here, especially the enchanters, but there was always a chance he'd missed something. Worse, if they were working with the invaders, then tonight would be their best chance to betray him.

Zeke was down there with them right now, but Nate had absolute faith in the boy's guardians over any of the wizards. His main worry was that they controlled the shield... Zeke's aura was fantastic, but it wouldn't be enough to stop the horde if the shield fell.

He got to see the shield in action a heartbeat later when a sizzling, crackling ball of fire shot from the forest in the distance and soared above the treeline before arcing down into the shield a few feet from his face.

It exploded with a deafening bang, but the wave of expanding fire never crossed inside the golden barrier and dissipated away without effect. Unfortunately, it wasn't the only spell. Dozens more soared above the trees, launched from the same location, and all of them exploded harmlessly against the shield. Well, mostly harmlessly.

As the bombardment went on, he started feeling bits of heat leak through, as well as small buffets of force that the shield failed to completely block. Each of those hits would also drain mana from the people powering the shield, and they were coming in nonstop.

Behind the bombardment, Nate saw new figures emerging from the treeline as far around as he could see, and presumably from every direction. Most were obviously undead, but some were harder to tell. Unlike the mindless zombies, most of them had weapons and armor. All of them started throwing magic toward the shield as they advanced through the horde.

Nate looked at Bernard when the now almost constant wave of explosions went abruptly silent.

"I need that artillery removed," Bernard said, and Nate caught the flicker of his gaze as it swept over his people beside him. "Can you do it?"

Nate knew the man was asking for input from his intuition, and he looked out toward the origin of the spells. It was a decent distance from where they were likely teleporting in, and he didn’t feel any impending death... so he nodded. The rest of his team were more enthusiastic and saluted with a shout, "Yes, sir!"

"Wait for my signal," Bernard said, holding up a hand. "I'll open you a path." Then the sound of explosions returned and they couldn't hear Bernard's next words. They did, however, see the results.

The defenders, who, until now, had been holding their fire, cut loose in a wave of fantastic destruction through the horde of undead at their walls.

Bernard dropped his hand, and Nate was the first off the wall ahead of his squad. He soared across the battlefield and landed in the fifty-foot-wide swath of scorched earth, leading straight out toward the source of the bombardment.

None of the zombies had survived the assault, but Nate found a skeletal fighter climbing to its feet from behind a blackened and dented metal shield. It made a desperate slash his way, but Nate merely slapped the blade aside and put his fist through its human skull. He half expected it to heal from the blow, but the thing went down and stayed down.

He ran on into the treeline, every sense alert for what almost certainly had to be a trap, either for him or whoever was foolish enough to come out here with him. He was aware of the others behind him and kept his speed low enough so as to not outpace his team. He had a feeling he'd be needing all of his power soon enough...

The cleared path didn't last long, with countless zombies pouring in from all sides, along with a dismaying number of former humans now fighting on the side of the invaders. Luckily, all of them stayed dead once killed. Though he knew it couldn't last. They were just more fodder. The poor fools...

His team went through all of it without slowing, killing what they had to and avoiding the rest. They weren't out here to cull the horde, after all.

Nate had an idea of what to expect from his time with the wizards, and his expectations proved accurate. A series of glowing magical circles spaced out between the trees, each one surrounded by a dozen undead casters feeding them mana.

Unfortunately, the undead couldn't miss where they were going, and the opponents in their path increased exponentially with every step.

Still, there was a good reason he'd wanted these people on his team, not to mention on this mission. Though not quite at Nate's level, they were among the best of the best. Soldiers of the old world and warriors of the new. People who had fought since day one, honing and perfecting their technique with weapons, magic, or both.

One man's flaming greatsword bisected zombies three or four at a time. Meanwhile, another man wielded twin blades of pure magical force and went through the horde like a blender, even occasionally throwing his blades like spears before instantly summoning a fresh pair.

The single woman on the team held no weapon but wreathed her body in spiked magical armor that turned her into a juggernaut of destruction simply by running over or through anything in her path.

A ninja wannabe danced, cartwheeled, and bounded after them, even jumping off or into the trees as he went. He threw out a never-ending supply of tiny shurikens that curved through the air and zeroed in on his targets. Each one went through an enemy's head. So maybe not really a wannabe?

There were more. Metal fists. A spear. A shield. And... a table. That one was odd, but the guy kicked ass, so who was Nate to say anything about his choice of weapon?

Together, they mowed down everything in their path until they reached the first circle. The casters there never had a chance, and the team barely slowed before heading to the next.

"Deadzone incoming on your loc..." Bernard's voice said into his ear before cutting off abruptly. The guy was good, no doubt, and his magic was especially well suited to command when he could send orders directly to individuals across the battlefield. Of course, it was vulnerable to interruption, like anything else.

"Go on ahead!" Nate had to shout over the sounds of combat as he ran with his team. "Take them down!" He had just gained a new target, and not one he trusted anyone else to handle. If he was right, then one of the actual invaders had decided to join the fight, and he knew he was right.

Power swelled through his body, and time slowed down as Nate activated his boost at full power. He knew he would need it, and it was the only way he could keep his team alive.

He kicked off the ground, leaving a crater still expanding behind him as he shot toward Adrianna. He kicked out as he passed the armored woman, his bare foot cutting through the air at the speed of a bullet. He put everything he had into the kick and was right to do so. Even if there was nothing visibly attacking her, he knew she was about to die.

His heel connected with what felt like a steel bar, but then his bones were stronger than steel right now, and he pushed through. The very air itself seemed to shatter under his blow, and there was abruptly a towering skeleton where nothing had stood before. Nate's foot continued on, breaking through the skeletal arm that was reaching out to touch Adrianna's head.

The green fire in its palm fizzled out when Nate shattered its arm, but then he had to twist to avoid the green fire shooting from another of its hands. He punched a third hand that didn't have any fire in it and then kicked off the thing's chest, backflipping out of its reach.

To their credit, his team didn't even hesitate at the sight and continued toward their objective without looking back. Nate landed between their retreating forms and the skeleton, and its missing hand had already regrown by the time he touched the ground. Oddly, it didn't attack him or them...

"Natheniel Washington," it said instead. "Still not ready to accept the inevitable?"

What was with people saying his whole name like that? First Dale, and now a damn skeleton? How did they even know his name? Still, he hesitated and didn't immediately go for the kill.

He wasn't sure how much it would take to put one of these down for good, and that wasn't his mission here. If he had to fight, he'd much rather do it with a lot more backup... and if it wanted to talk instead of fight, well, that would only buy his team more time to stop the bombardment. Unless there was another one coming...

"Well," Nate said slowly, reducing his boost to save energy but keeping all his senses on high alert for either an attack on himself or his team. "I actually am ready to accept the inevitable. Are you?"

It cocked its head at him, and Nate resisted the urge to smile. It got easier when he felt its eyes change and knew it was using Soul Sight on him. Or at least something similar. Interestingly enough, the sensation felt... weak. He didn't know if that was because Stanley's skill was different or if maybe he was using it wrong, but he suspected it was because Stanley's soul was just straight up more powerful.

"You are not lying," it said, and he wanted to say it looked... confused? "Yet you still resist?"

Nate did smile then. "I think you got it backwards. See, you are the ones resisting the inevitable."

It took a second, but it got it. Then it got angry. "Your madman dies as we speak!"

"Doubt it," Nate said, never taking his eyes off the thing but judging by the sounds behind him that another artillery circle had fallen.

"You don't know what has been set in motion," the skeleton said. "Even should he prevail in his battle, it will only bring a greater calamity down upon you. Regardless of the outcome, you will come to me in the end, begging for salvation."

"Great! So let's call it a night, and I'll come find you when I'm ready for salvation." Another circle down.

"Unfortunately," it said, and Nate felt its anger fade into a grim resolve. "Whatever emerges from that place cannot be allowed to acquire your purifier. He must join us. It is the only way any of us will survive. Human or Eternal."

Nate felt a chill at hearing his own words coming from this thing's mouth. How long ago had he said that exact thing to Stanley?

It knew something, and his intuition told him this was important... but something else was happening while he stood here, and he was running out of time. Despite that, he knew he needed to know this. "What do you mean?"

He didn't think it would answer, especially when he heard another circle shatter in the distance. It felt strange. A war was raging not far away, yet he remained untouched. Zombies and traitors streamed past on their way to stop his team, but none so much as looked at him.

"This world, or at the very least, this dungeon, has exceeded all expectations for what it should have been, and I suspect your madman is the cause for everything." So... it was monologuing?

"You have a purifier, not only a divine class but one beyond rare even for high-tier worlds. Not only that, but this same dungeon also holds your world's Beast Lord? Those two, together with... him, are... extremely unlikely, but not impossible. Power attracts power, after all. Yet there is still another. This dungeon also hosts a... king." It said that last word with gravitas... as if he was supposed to know what it meant.

"Which means?" Nate could feel the pressure growing, and it didn't seem to matter that his team was already mopping up the last artillery circle.

"It is power!" the skeleton bellowed, and Nate could feel its desire. "Not only that," it continued. "But your world has spawned a particularly nasty king. Should your madman lose, it will devour him and all his power. Even the alternative is no better! Your human will not resist taking its power for himself, whereupon he will become exactly what it would have been. If whatever emerges from that place comes here and devours your purifier, then even the eternal march will not be enough to stop it. We will fall, and your entire world will follow!"

Nate smiled as he felt a weight lift from his shoulders. That was exactly the information he needed, and now he could finally feel the scales tilting back in his direction. "You're wrong," Nate said confidently. "Stanley won't lose, and I guarantee he won't do what you think."

"You are a fool! It would all but make him a god! No one would reject that!" It believed what it was saying, but it didn't matter.

"Don't you get it?" Nate said with a grin as he backed up. "He already is a god!"

Sure, in any other circumstance, he might agree with this monster, especially when they were talking about a paranoid, antisocial, desperate-for-power, and extremely anger-prone Stanley. But the skeleton was forgetting about one very important and massive factor.

It was forgetting about Caffeine.

Nate ramped up his boost and took off after his team, who were already retreating toward the shield by now, even though he knew he wouldn't make it back. Not in time. The skeleton hadn't only been trying to convince him to give up; it had been delaying him, and it wasn't done.

The skeleton appeared in front of him, and Nate dropped into a slide to dodge the green lightning bolt that shot over his head with a crackling boom. His slide carried him forward, and he was back on his feet the instant the spell vanished, his fists glowing.

His maximum boost was no joke, and he advanced on the skeleton while the world stood still around them. Even the D-grade skeleton moved in slow motion... and it was a D-grade. He'd known that the instant he'd kicked its arm. How it had already advanced was a question he’d really like answered.

It wasn't as physically fast as him, despite the higher grade, but its mind was quick, and it had four hands, each one of which threw spells without pause. Nate juked left to avoid another green lightning bolt, then immediately dodged back to the right when a vertical sheet of black light shot through where he had been, spinning like a saw blade. He dove under a crescent blade, coming to take his head off, then hopped out of the magic circle that appeared beneath his feet.

More magic followed, and this time, from every direction. The undead army was no longer ignoring him. In fact, it now looked like they were all focused solely on him. Fortunately, it would be a veritable eternity before any of them reached him and a lifetime before any of them were an actual threat. Unfortunately, their master was another story.

Soaring through the air, Nate felt the smug satisfaction oozing from the creature as it pointed a finger and shot a third lightning bolt at him. The skeleton clearly thought it had him helpless in midair. Of course, it was wrong.

Nate kicked against the air and propelled himself sideways away from the lightning. He also used the kick to rotate himself around because the lightning was only a distraction. The true threat was the chains coming up behind him from the magic circle he'd jumped over.

There were five of them, each tipped with a wicked-looking harpoon-like spearhead, and they all turned to follow his new trajectory.

Nate could feel a touch of soul energy coming from the chains and wasn't about to let those hooks get hold of him. So he punched them out of the air, shattering two and sending the others harmlessly into the dirt.

When he finished his midair rotation and once again laid eyes on the skeleton, it no longer looked smug. It once again looked angry... and surprised.

It left Nate with a brief window where no magic was coming his way, long enough to reach the ground and send himself rocketing ahead into melee range of the skeleton.

His flurry of punches shattered its leg, hip, and a handful of ribs as he passed, dodging more spells along the way, then he followed up by kicking off its spine in a desperate bid to gain ground towards his home and people. Because the scales had just tipped the wrong way.

+1 Intuition

Something was coming. Something was about to happen, and he knew he was too far away to stop it in time, but he still tried.

+1 Intuition

The air felt thick with possibility, and the very fabric of reality itself seemed to shift and stretch as unseen dominoes fell one after the other, all leading toward an unavoidable future.

+1 Intuition

By now, magic was flying everywhere, but Nate's gaze was drawn toward the treeline, where a single human skeleton appeared amid a stacked series of magic circles. Its hand pointed, and he saw the magic leave its fingers. Nothing big or flashy. Nothing more than a few pencil-thin beams of barely visible light that traveled erratically and left jagged lines stretching between it and the shield.

+1 Intuition

The magic had no visible effect upon touching the shield, but the sight alone was enough for Nate's formerly confusing intuition to crystallize. It was enough to know that he had lost.

+1 Intuition

As that feeling rose bitter in his throat, something told him he was looking at the very person Stanley had gone to find, and given the invader's little speech earlier, he already knew Stanley's plan to interrogate the traitor hadn't gone... to plan. Now, it was here attacking them while Stanley was off somewhere fighting... something else. Something that scared the undead...

+1 Intuition

Nate stopped his headlong charge as the inevitability of his situation swallowed him up. He'd screwed up somewhere. He'd missed something important, and now they had lost... Now he could only watch helplessly as a previously dark and silent patch of forest lit up with another barrage of magical artillery. One far more powerful than what came before, and it lit up the night even brighter than the golden shield.

+1 Intuition

He knew what came next, and the knowledge only made it worse when he saw the golden shield split open ahead of the magical artillery.

Nate closed his eyes as death rained down on the people who had trusted him to lead them. The people who had trusted him to protect them.

Then he forced his eyes open. He wouldn't look away. He couldn't. This was his mistake, and he wouldn't hide from it. He'd been too arrogant, too sure of himself, and now others would pay the price. The least he could do was watch the magical barrage falling like a star from heaven to destroy everything he'd worked so hard to build. Like the sun setting on his dreams...

Nate didn't let a single tear escape to blur his vision as a stretch of wall exploded beneath the magical barrage. Bodies flew, and Nate watched them die in slow motion. It gave him plenty of time to sear each of their names permanently into his memory.

I'm sorry, he thought bitterly. None of them had needed to die here. If he hadn't made a mistake... if he'd found the right way from the beginning... if he hadn't doomed them...

+1 Intuition

Only, it wasn't over. There was still a way through. A new path that would see humanity prevail. No, not even a path—a narrow ledge fraught with dangerous precipices at every turn—but it was there, and it was terrible.

His intuition told him what needed to happen, and he didn't like it. There had to be another way! He couldn't let this happen! He wasn't even sure why it had to happen—only that it did... Not that it mattered either way. It was already too late to stop it if he wanted to.

+1 Intuition

He didn't know exactly what came next, but he knew where it would end up and was jogging closer when Eve flew backward out of the ruins of his home and through the gap in the wall, dragged away by magic unseen. Another domino falling into place.

It was obvious in hindsight. He'd ensured Zeke was as safe as anyone could be, and he'd never considered that they might go after Eve instead. He'd treated the undead like monsters and never thought them capable of understanding human connections. He'd definitely never expected them to leverage those connections...

He kept watching, bearing witness to his failures, even as magical chains stabbed into his flesh from behind and lifted him into the air.

Nate never looked away as what had to happen played out in front of him. He only hoped they would understand in the end, even if they never forgave him for his failure...