~~~Stanley~~~

Stanley slept terribly in the room that had been vacated for him. Between the strange space, too many people moving around nearby, and the ground only a single storey below. All of it added up.

He really wasn't feeling it when he received a lot of not quite glares from people with bloodshot eyes after he came downstairs. So what if he'd woken screaming a few times? He'd give them something to scream about...

Samantha touched his arm with a small squeeze. "Like water off a duck's back."

Stanley stopped and frowned at her. "What the hell are you talking about?"

She laughed. "Sorry. Just something I heard somewhere."

"What do ducks have to do with anything?"

"Nothing. I'm saying don't let other people affect your mood."

"That's a terrible way to say it..."

"Have you really never heard that expression?" Jerry asked.

"Are you idiots really not going to stay here?"

"We want to help you, Stanley. Don't leave us behind." Samantha said. "Right, guys?"

Jerry and Arthur mumbled their agreement. Not nearly as cheerful as her. With Arthur muttering, "What? After last night, when you said they would all die?"

Jerry just kept grumbling about, "Stupid Bill and his stupid cheating class..."

Stanley took Samantha's advice to not let the people bother him. It was easy. He just pushed all their tables away from his and then glared at anyone who looked his way.

Someone here must have a skill for making the furniture, because he was pretty sure he'd smashed all of it the night before... at least they got to level their skill. Stanley was a real giver like that.

Bill brought a couple of full packs after breakfast, but before they left. "The buff fades whether or not you eat it. So keep that in mind. And I'll see what I can do about your suggestions for this place."

Stanley didn't see Tony or his friends anywhere, and he didn't care as he flew out the door.

Debuff Resisted: [Miasma]

"It's gone up," Samantha said immediately upon exiting the building. "Four percent now... and it says something new..."

She took a step back inside and froze. "It lingers..." she said, then elaborated before he had to ask what the hell she was talking about. "The debuff always vanished the moment we entered a lair, but now it turns into debuff with a duration before going away. Only thirty seconds... for now."

There was a chance this meant something was nearby, and Stanley tried not to get his hopes up as he took them into the sky. He even left off the dirt shell in hopes they might see something.

No luck.

Stanley cursed every useless person in this dungeon, and their mothers. Then he got back to hunting.

It was Caffeine's barking that drew his attention after the second lair. Stanley was only a couple of buildings away, and he opened his sphere to see what was happening, even as he flew closer at a blurring pace.

He didn't expect to see a horde of monsters swarming his core gatherers. Monsters that looked a lot like sloths... which was weird to see in Boston.

Especially because he'd already killed them...

Stanley's mind raced. His mood amped and blood roaring in his ears at even the suspicion that Caffeine was in danger. He didn't wait to figure out what was happening, and pounded the entire area flat in a heartbeat. It was easier than it should have been...

"What the hell was that?" Arthur yelled. "I thought they were dead!"

"They were," Jerry said. "Not only did we already get their cores..." He looked up at Stanley. "They weren't food anymore."

Stanley understood what he was talking about instantly.

Invaders!

He dropped out of the sky to get a closer look at the now twice dead and flattened monsters.

There wasn't much to see... they were all fucked up, both from his flying rocks and the followup smashing. The only oddity he noticed was when he took to the air again. There he saw it wasn't all the dead that had risen back up.

"Stanley," Samantha said. "Behind you." Caffeine was growling in the same direction she was pointing.

He turned back the way he'd come and saw the monsters from the next lair now also climbing back to their feet. Only instead of the sloths, now it was the naked mole rat wolves... that was the best description he could come up with.

More clearly this time, he could also see that it definitely wasn't all of them, and it wasn't hard to pick out the difference between the dead and not dead. One group still had their heads, and the rest did not.

It didn't seem to matter what else was missing as long as they still had heads. He watched one creature drag itself across the ground with the single leg it had remaining. Drag itself to a core lying on the ground... and eat it.

Hey, that's Caffeine's core!

Stanley dragged it over, trying and failing to tell if it was any heavier than a normal corpse to his power. He ripped it apart easily enough... but the core was already gone.

He dragged another away from its targeted core before it could eat it and dropped the monster on the ground below.

It shuffled in a slow circle until its head pointed at the trio of core gatherers. Then shuffled just as slowly toward them. Caffeine growled at it but didn't attack.

Stanley flew down into its line of sight, which it shouldn't have... the thing had no eyes. Its face partially caved in, probably from a rock. Despite the obvious lack of sight, it still turned toward him.

He flew up, and its head tracked his motion. He kept going until it stopped looking his way. Instead, it went right back to chasing the others. Did it just chase whatever was closest? It couldn't see anything, or shouldn't be able to at least, but it didn't seem to have trouble detecting him, no matter how quiet he was.

Stanley picked up his core gatherers and lifted all of them out of range. Then he watched and waited. Don't you want to go home? Stanley thought at the monster. Lead me to your creator!

It was a long shot; he knew that, but he still hoped.

The monster shuffled in random directions, never going far in any one direction, and he wasn't sure if it was intentional or just because it kept stumbling. It definitely didn't look like it would lead him anywhere...

Stanley flew a short distance away, taking his cargo with him, and brought back a living monster. Some kind of unicorn rabbit about the same size as the molerat wolf. The rabbit took offense to its abduction by squealing loudly. He dropped it next to the zombie, and it shut up.

The zombie had reacted to the sound, turning its head to track the approaching rabbit, and it immediately charged. Though its charge wasn't more than the same shuffle it had before. The rabbit squealed and jumped through the zombie in a splatter of gore.

Stanley blinked at it. There had definitely been some magic in that jump. He didn't like it. So he dragged more zombies over, dozens of them, and dropped them all right atop the rabbit.

Of course, the rabbit saw them coming and wasn't there when they crashed to the ground. It blasted through the first one to stand up... then the next... Stanley caught it and forced the hoppy bastard to stand still while zombie teeth and claws ripped into it.

"That's awful..." Samantha complained.

"You want to be the damn guinea pig?" Stanley snapped. "Then shut the fuck up!"

They kept mauling the bunny until the core appeared, then they all went after it. Stanley couldn't actually see which one ate it, but every zombie lost interest in the corpse after that. He wasn't even sure if they'd been trying to eat its flesh or just kill it for the core.

Stanley killed all the zombies, but none of them dropped a core. Why do they want it? Are they absorbing it? He waited until the dead rabbit climbed back to its feet... Well, its one foot. It did the same as its killers and only shuffled in random directions.

What if... Stanley moved back to the rabbit lair and went to work wiping them out. He worked as quickly as he could while gathering all the cores. As soon as the last bouncy fuck was dead, he flew back to the lone zombie rabbit and dropped the cores in front of it.

The zombie chowed down, eating one core after another, until they were gone. Then... it just went back to shuffling. "God damn it!" How many cores did the greedy shits want before doing... whatever it was they were going to do?

"I..."

It happened so fast...

Premonition only gave him a fraction of a second's warning, and it wasn't enough. The pain was unlike anything Stanley had ever felt, as if every inch of his body burned to ash in an instant, and then kept burning.

Behind the pain came the void.

It was a gnawing, clawing, void of pure oblivion. It was the end of everything. The end of Stanley... the end of his brother.

Lee was dying... falling into the void... dragging Stanley down behind him with the same connection that bound their souls to each other. A connection he could see clearly now as their lives frayed apart at the seams. Only, connection was the wrong word. There was no simple link tying them to each other. Twin-Soul didn't even begin to describe what Stanley saw at that moment.

And none of that mattered anymore... because they were dying.

It was over... just... like... NO!

Anger boiled up. Boiled over. Stanley raged against the dying of the light. Raged against the unfairness of it all. Raged against his own helplessness here at the end. Raged against every foolish decision that led him here and damned his brother to death.

Then he cast that rage along with everything he had, everything he was, every scrap of power and will. He threw it all at Lee and begged him to stay. Forced him to hold on. Demanded for him to keep living!

Stay with me!

It wasn't enough. It was so far from enough...

A screaming howl reverberated through the darkness... a roar of raging defiance that stopped the universe in its tracks.

Stanley latched onto the sound as power flooded into him. He used it all. Casting it out to his brother in a blind and pathetic attempt to halt the inevitable.

Please... don't go!

Lee stopped falling... stopped for a single instant.

The void fought back.

Oblivion bore down on Stanley with the weight of the universe... and he pushed back. He thrust every last shred of power he could muster even as his mind boiled away and his body burned to ashes.

He held it back for one fleeting heartbeat before the weight broke him. Obliterated him into shattered thoughts and broken dreams. Cast him down after his brother into the void to be devoured.

The howl continued to ring out across oblivion. Its sound was the one remaining constant and Stanley clutched tightly to it as his world devolved into darkness, confusion, and pain.

He used that ringing sound to pull the fragments of his scattered mind back together. To gather what he could while reality strained and failed to reassert itself within that screaming roar of denial.

The howl rang on while Stanley pulled himself together. But it was failing... fading... and then it stopped. Reality demanded death once again.

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Stanley's broken mind had no room for thoughts. Only the rage. That was all he needed.

And he threw it all at the void once again.

He held Lee back from the clutches of oblivion... for... one... more... instant...

It ended him. Shattered him into dust and cast the pieces to the wind.

...

It was all worth it.

That instant was enough.

A small and broken fragment of his mind felt it. Felt the spark of light that came into the darkness and touched Lee.

The void stopped pulling and only waited hungrily as the light shone on him. Then the light went out, and Stanley felt the hungry void reaching for them again.

Stanley tried to drag together... something... anything...

He couldn't do it... He was too weak... too broken...

The light returned.

Stanley smelled pine trees. He felt the summer sun on his skin, felt the wind brushing through his hair.

The warmth and light dragged Lee further from the end.

Then he hung there again. Waiting. Drifting.

Warmth returned once more, pulling them back from the brink.

Again and again, the light returned. Each time dragging Lee away from oblivion. He pulled Stanley with him. Away from the dark, and back into the light.

Until, all at once, the darkness retreated. The hungering maw of oblivion closed.

Lee... Stanley fell into his own darkness.

~~~Samantha~~~

Samantha sighed. Stanley was being extra dramatic after they found the undead. The cursing was especially excessive after last night.

"I..." Stanley's latest rant ended rather abruptly.

She glanced up at him in time to see his eyelids fluttering as he plummeted out of the sky. Samantha felt a chill... Oh, no.

Stanley stopped falling and his eyes snapped wide open as blinding violet light blazed out. His hands clawed at the air and she turned, looking for whatever was attacking...

Then a shadow fell over her, and Samantha's searching gaze moved upward. Her mind took a moment to process what the dark shape filling the sky overhead was, and the fear grew when she finally understood. Caffeine...

The multi-story tall pug Howled.

Howl wasn't enough to describe the world shattering sound that emerged, but it was all she had. Reality vibrated as if the earth itself was a great bell, and somebody had just rung it.

You have heard the Howl of the Beast Lord.

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Samantha's gaze slid back to Stanley, and she saw the blood burst from his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. His expression was a terrible mix of rage and terror, and she thought he might be screaming, but there was no sound beyond the howling.

She stood frozen in fear and shock despite the strength now filling her body. What was happening? How could she even help with... whatever this was?

Caffeine was shrinking as he howled and as Stanley bled. The howl diminished as the pug did, and she finally heard Stanley's screams. He was screaming out a name...

"Lee!"

Power radiated from him as he screamed, the very air rippling from whatever he was doing, while violet light blazed from his eyes.

Caffeine shrank all the way back down as his howl faded away into silence, leaving only a ringing in her ears when Stanley finally stopped screaming. He hung silently in the air for a long second and then collapsed into the dirt.

The pug took one trembling step toward Stanley and fell down himself.

Samantha stayed as unmoving as Arthur and Jerry. All three of them were staring in wide-eyed shock. Jerry broke the stillness first. "We have to move!"

He dashed forward and threw Stanley over his shoulder. "Get the dog!"

She was already moving and scooped up the limp pug with a terrible feeling. Were they still alive? She couldn't tell as she ran after Jerry into the most recently cleared building. Behind her, she heard Arthur finally shake out of his stupor and follow.

Jerry led them to the third and top floor, eventually ending up in a walk-in closet before he laid Stanley down. She caught up to see him with two fingers on the man's neck. "Is he..."

"Still alive," Jerry said, and Samantha felt a weight lift from her chest. That was good. Where there was life, there was hope.

She only hesitated a moment before laying the pug on Stanley's legs. The contact might help... and her worry eased more when she saw the small chest rising and falling. But... Now what?

"Do we feed them?" Jerry asked, shrugging out of his backpack.

It was worth a shot. Samantha pulled off her own pack and dug out one of Bill's paper wrapped bundles. It smelled delicious as she unwrapped it, but her stomach was in knots and the thought of eating made her feel sick.

Caffeine didn't react to the meat dangled in front of his nose, and Jerry had no better results from Stanley. "What..."

Something scraped outside the closet. Something close. And Samantha realized she'd left her spear outside...

Jerry pulled a knife and lunged right as the zombie rabbit dragged itself into sight. He hit it clean, straight through the head, and then stabbed it a few more times to make sure.

The monster was twice the size of Caffeine, the current Caffeine at least, but its back legs were missing and it made the whole thing far less dangerous. Jerry finished it quickly and then dragged the corpse away out of sight.

His face was grim when he came back. "We got incoming. A lot." His gaze slid to Stanley and then Caffeine. "Something's drawing them here."

Was it the howl? It had been so loud that she thought the whole city might have heard it... and for that matter, what was a Beast Lord? She'd known Caffeine was powerful, but this was the first she'd seen of that name. Did it attract monsters? Or was it just the noise...

"We should run," Arthur said. "They probably heard the dog."

Jerry shook his head... then paused. "There's a chance we can retreat to where we started today. If the lair is still unclaimed... Or we make the trek to Bill's. Anywhere we go, we risk running into new monsters, and it's going to be hard to fight while carrying both of them..."

"We could... leave them," Arthur said quietly.

Samantha glared at him and hissed, "Absolutely not!"

"We barricade the door before we go and..."

"No," Jerry said.

"The zombies will chase us when we..."

"No!" Samantha said, too loudly. She lowered her voice and continued, "We aren't abandoning them!"

"What if they don't wake up? We don't even know what happened back there!" Arthur said.

Both of them turned to look at her.

"I don't know!" Why would they expect her to know more?

"The zombies are pretty slow," Jerry said after a long silence. "They probably won't be able to climb to the window, which means they can only come at us from one direction. We can hold them off..."

Arthur said what Jerry didn't. "For how long?"

"As long as we need to," Samantha said.

"And when it gets dark?"

Samantha stood up, glaring at both of them in the dim closet. "I'm staying. No debate. Now I need to go get my spear. Who's with me?"

Jerry cast one last look at Stanley before standing up. "Arthur, see what you can do to barricade this room. We'll be right back."

The only window up here was already smaller than it should be; a blessing this time. But it was still creepy how the lairs changed the buildings. A creeping shift that was slowly but surely changing the face of Boston into... something else.

Stanley had been extra aggressive and brutal while clearing this building, which meant most of the rabbits hadn't risen as undead. The few that died with their heads were scary, but slow. Jerry handled them, and then they were outside.

She finally saw what Jerry was talking about.

Everywhere she looked were shambling monsters. All different shapes and sizes... with one nearby that looked like a human...

Jerry beat her to the spear and hefted it while looking at the knife in his other hand. "Can you make another one?" He nodded at the small trees lining the street. "I'll keep them off you."

Samantha changed course and touched the nearest tree. They were all small and would need a strong boost of mana if she wanted another spear, but then she didn't need her mana for anything else.

Contrary to what others said or thought, she didn't actually need to hug the tree. It just felt more friendly... and helped funnel mana faster. She sent mana through her hand and into the tree... and her heart sank. Things were getting worse.

I'm so sorry. She sent her thoughts into the tree along with the mana. The trees couldn't communicate with words. They were all slow feelings and impressions, but she could speed them up with mana. Enough that it wouldn't take all day to ask for a spear. The problem here was the corruption. It was getting worse, and the trees were not handling it well.

Take this mana. Use it to fight back... to grow strong. The tree eagerly accepted her gift, shivering under her hand as blackened bark sloughed off and it purged a few spots of rot beneath. Fresh, healthy bark grew back in seconds, covering the tree in a new layer of protection that would resist future corruption more efficiently. Instead of taking years to adapt, and likely dying before achieving success, her mana sped up the process and gave the tree a chance.

It wouldn't be enough. Samantha knew that. Not if the corruption kept increasing. Not if she didn't come back for regular infusions. Maybe she could convince Stanley to swing by? It would do him good to stop and appreciate the trees every once in a while. He was too stressed out... not that he didn't have a fantastic excuse. They were all stressed out. But everyone needed to decompress sometimes, or they would go insane.

She tried to do just that as the hopeful tree blossomed under her touch, tried to ignore the squelching, crunching noises every time Jerry stabbed another zombie.

Her mana neared its limits, and she sent a last message to the tree, along with the mental image of what she needed. Please help me with this.

The now much larger tree was happy to return the favor, and Samantha wished it luck as she took the solid and already sharpened spear. A little more mana helped it seal back up the bark, and she went to help Jerry.

He was waiting, and immediately led her into the building as the shambling horde closed in around them. They closed every door they could and jammed in whatever furniture they could find to block them from opening.

There weren't enough doors, and the ones that remained didn't have the lair strength that still filled the rest of the building. Samantha didn't know how strong the zombies were, but the sound of shattering wood came from downstairs before they even made it back to Arthur.

Jerry stopped at the top of the stairs. "Check on Arthur. I'll hold them here." It was a good plan. High ground plus the longer reach with the spear... maybe they could even jam up the stairwell with corpses.

Stanley and Caffeine were still out. Though... "Arthur, did you take the meat in front of Caffeine?"

Narrow gaps let in enough light where the older man was trying to wedge a dresser against two others he'd stacked over the window. A feat of strength that looked almost comical as he maneuvered the bulky thing like it weighed next to nothing. It wasn't comical because the monsters were all equally strong, if not stronger. "I... haven't touched... anything," he wheezed. So maybe it wasn't as easy as it looked...

But that also meant Caffeine had woken up? She quickly offered more, even shaking the pug to try and wake him. Nothing. He was as limp as before. Samantha still piled more food in front of his mouth. Then loaded up Stanley's hands and piled more next to his head. He'd bled a lot... but she didn't know how hurt he was. If he woke up starving and Caffeine wasn't awake to protect them...

Samantha stared down at his blood-streaked face. He was so still. So helpless. She'd never seen him like this before. She wanted to clean him up, but they had very limited water right now. Better to save it for drinking. "Get better, Stanley," she whispered. "We'll keep you both safe until then."

She gave Caffeine a gentle head scratch and headed back to Jerry. She sprinted when she heard the familiar sound of a spear striking flesh and bone, but her fear was unfounded. Jerry still stood atop the stairs, and she arrived to see him calmly stab an undead through the head. It was bipedal, but definitely not human. "You okay?"

"Fine. They suck at climbing stairs."

They'd gotten lucky that the top floor had only one room and one window. It trivialized the experience, and she ended up watching Jerry kill zombies with nothing else to do.

Unfortunately, the pile of dead sliding to the bottom of the stairs wasn't slowing those coming behind. The zombies were strong, and they had no issue shoving or clawing their way through their dead fellows. They also didn't stop coming. An hour passed, and they only seemed to increase in number.

Stanley had hunted a lot in this area. Like, a lot, a lot. How many of his kills were now walking around? Coming here? How many dead monsters were in the city? How many dead humans...

Did they communicate? Was there some kind of signal leading them here? Or was it just that howl?

Jerry stabbed while she paced and worried. At least until he said, "You wanna take a turn?" He was sweating.

Samantha took his place at the top of the stairs and skewered the first zombie to climb up. It was a sloth. She thought Stanley had killed all of those... twice. Her strike glanced off its head and stabbed into the shoulder. Then a reaching arm batted the spear right out of her hands. She gasped and staggered back in surprise...

Jerry's spear punched through its skull, then he yanked it back just as fast, pulling the spearhead free and dropping the corpse. "Don't half ass it. They're fucking strong."

"I can take..." Arthur said.

Samantha snatched her spear before the corpse could slide down the stairs with it. "I can do it."

They both backed off, and she didn't hold back on the next zombie. Thrust. Pull. Not too hard, but... Thrust. Pull. She knew why Jerry had been sweating.

She fell into the rhythm, and it was almost soothing. Something to do with all the nervous energy pumping through her veins. But it wasn't soothing enough. "What do we do when it gets dark?" Samantha reminded them. It was already pretty dim near the stairwell.

Silence greeted her question for a long moment. "Fuck," Jerry said. "We need fire. Which means we need firewood, and enough to last all night..."

Arthur was less helpful with his comments. "We're going to die out here."

"Can't believe I have to be the optimistic one here, you old fart."

"Caffeine woke up enough to eat," Samantha said. "At least... I think he did." They all knew what it meant if even one of the sleeping beauties woke up. They'd be safe, their survival almost guaranteed.

They had to push downstairs and scrounge furniture for the fire. Some pieces of which were also getting altered by the lair. A chair stuck to the floor in one room. A dresser fusing to the wall behind it. Extremely creepy, as if the building was eating them...

Plenty of furniture was still free, though, and they made multiple trips until Jerry said they had enough.

Daylight faded while they took turns cutting down shambling zombies. The worst was when a human zombie appeared during her shift; a child zombie... it was long dead. Only barely recognizable, but enough.

Samantha broke down sobbing after doing what she had to. She sat with Stanley and Caffeine while she cried. It was so unfair... so cruel. She hated it! So many innocent lives wasted, and for what? All this pain and suffering just so aliens could have something to hunt?

She didn't realize what the cracking sound was until the zombie came charging into the closet with her. Another human. Definitely not a child, and moving far too fast.

The glowing red eyes of the monster stood out in the dark, and it was where she aimed the knife while her other arm went up in an instinctive block.

Teeth sank into her arm with a burning chill, and her knife stabbed straight into one of the glowing eyes. Snuffing it and its partner out.

Debuff Gained: [Corruption]

Samantha didn't have time to see what the debuff was, but she knew it was bad. She could feel it digging into her where the teeth had punctured her flesh.

Then the second pair of glowing red eyes rounded the corner, and she realized it didn't matter. She was going to die here. But... at least she would die for something good. No regrets.

She ripped the knife from the first zombie's skull and prepared to go down swinging.