Nothing good could be said about the sons of Crusher Jim, except this- they were strong. Terrifyingly strong. They jumped up to the top of the wall in a single step, then down to the ground and into melee with the monsters in two more. The front line exploded into ribbons of skin and garlands of gore. Meat was pulverized and sent flying with teeth and toes and shattered bones.

Nothing good could be said about the sons of Crusher Jim. That was just fine with them. They knew exactly what they were, and liked it. It made perfect sense for them to be monsters. Just look at their old man.

“Where’s Daphnae?” I asked, trying to force some cheer into my voice.

“She’s about.” Jim just shrugged, plainly not giving a damn about his daughter or my attempted cheer. He looked calmly over the monsters. Not giving a damn about them either.

“This is what it was all for- your place, Sebastian’s place, Madame’s place. All for this. Re-fighting the battle for the Floating Quarter of Gradden March.” I could hear myself babbling. Not sure why I was babbling. Realization didn’t take long to arrive.

Fear. I was scared of Jim. The same fear I felt when I first saw the monsters. Jim knew it too. And ignored it. He didn’t care about me enough to value my fear.

“Apparently we just need to hold out until the Home Guard gets here. The monsters come in waves. Shouldn’t be many waves left until the Guard comes and puts a stop to them.” I forced a smile.

Jim spat. I half expected the phlegm to punch a hole through the stone. “They couldn’t stop my gran.”

“She’s a fighter?”

“She’s dead.”

Funny how you can be somewhere deafeningly loud, and somehow, it becomes a deafening silence. The queue of monsters was… insane. Was this the atrocity of the atrocity mode? Monsters seemingly without end, pouring in. I could imagine what these numbers would do to a city. It was… impossible. A cauldron of Hell.

I felt my tendons tighten. My nerves twisting like the cord in the windlasses that powered the ballistae. Once they reached a certain point, I couldn’t restrain myself any further.

“Madame! Final Revel. I’m triggering the Spell Tower, same as last time!”

Madame and the Blue Roses started their wailing polyphonic chant, raising that cloud of magic. Once the timing was about right, I triggered the Spell Tower, and watched the glorious carnage. The rippling colors vibrating through the air, melting away monsters in their hundreds and leaving a murderous trap behind. Only the monsters trapped between the walls remained. For the moment.

Then more arrived, pouring down the end of the street.

“Insane. We have already slaughtered more monsters than the first few waves combined. Maybe all the previous waves combined.” I muttered. “How the hell is anyone expected to clear this?”

“They ain’t.” The ballistae were rattling out their long bolts. Pomoroy and Radz were letting their guns speak, slaughtering the monsters as they piled towards us.

“We were set up to fail?”

“There was never any stopping the monsters. There was only delaying what would come, and hoping for a miracle. Hope.” His boulder fists flexed and relaxed, then flexed again.

“Longer you live, the more you can learn about the enemy. The better chance you can find their origin and kill them.”

“Oh, aye? Amazing that nobody tried that.”

I shut up. The monsters were still coming in, but they were coming as a stream, not a tsunami. We could handle them. I slowly calmed myself. There would be something. Some new twist. They sent three oversized monsters before. Would they go for five now? Seven? Three again but invisible? Flying units? The eternally feared and expected ranged units?

There was a scream of rage as something emerged from behind the buildings and fires at the end of the street. Not three giants or five or seven, but one. A titan the size of seven giants combined. It could casually wipe my ranged units off the top of the buildings with a swipe of its hands.

I would feel bad if the mafiosi died, but I could live with myself, eventually. Not if Mika died, though. I… don’t think I would ever come out of that hole.

“EVERYONE OFF THE ROOFS RIGHT THIS SECOND! NOW, NOW, NOW!”

The Made Men and the no longer casual looking bowman got off almost instantly, the Young Gentlemen right on their heels. The Mikas, though…

The giant came lumbering towards us, moving on all fours. Moving like a bear. Like the nightmare of a bear. The Mikas were too slow. It was going to reach them in seconds.

“Oh, I think even my old eyes can spot that fella.” The old Bowman stood on the wall now, looking excessively casual. He raised his longbow. “I’ll just take it slow. Ehehehehehe.” The old man’s right hand turned into a blurr. It was like a hose of white light stretched from his fingertips and into the eye of the monster. The monster screamed and reared back. I couldn’t count all the shafts sticking out of the eye socket. Twenty? Thirty?

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

“Not bad at all, Jones.” Jim nodded approvingly. “How’s the missus?”

“Oh, still going on about the curtains. You know she’s a devil about curtains.”

“Aye, I hear they can get that way. Wouldn’t know mesself. Hold a tick, just need to see a gent about his tab.”

Jim stepped off the wall like he was stepping off a curb. He plunged into the mess of monsters, ignoring his sons and slapping aside anything in his way. Like he was out for a stroll, and waving away some flies. The mess of blood and flesh left in his wake… the sheer smell of it all, rolling up the wall and drawing us in the stench of violence.

The titanic monster was fixated on the wall now, galloping towards us with its brows lowered. It was moving in a sort of three legged gait, with one all too human hand coming up to protect its face. The old bowman, Jones, chuckled.

“Ah. Youth.” He raised his bow once more and started shooting again. This time, aiming for the joints in the fingers of the enormous hand. The monster’s scream went off like a fire alarm in the ear drum. Didn’t slow down Jones one bit. He just kept crippling the hand. It had the happy side effect of slowing the titan. Giving the Mikas that little bit more time. I had never minded their slowness before. Now it was killing me. I just hoped it wouldn’t kill them.

I could hear, even at a distance, even over the screams and the crash of flesh and blades, the dragging shields ripping up the roof tiles. Watching those hard women do what they hated- fall back. Well. They could hate it all they wanted. They could hate me all they wanted. I’d take that heat. I’d been hiding behind their big shields this whole time and I didn’t intend to stop now.

Jim pushed through the swarms of hateful monsters. He shrugged off the residue magic of the combined Revels and the Tower too- it seemed to be no mind to him. How? How? Was there no such thing as friendly fire in this world? I don’t believe it. And how was he able to constantly keep the monsters from reaching him? He was surrounded by the horrors. Drowning in the horrors! I didn’t have lungs and I still couldn't breathe watching him. Like my non-existent heart was in my non-existent throat.

Jim looked like he was off to see a man about a dog. He shoulder checked a six hundred pound monster, and the monster crumpled in on itself. Deformed so thoroughly, I couldn’t imagine the monster having a single intact bone remaining. Jim didn’t notice. He was making for the titan. The Titan was making for us. And even on all fours, its head was over the rooftops.

Those damn shields! They rattled and clattered over the rooftops. So damn reassuring, until they were deadly damned inconvenient. I tried to calm myself. They were reaching the edge of the rooftop. The bowman was holding aggro like a champ. Crusher Jim would meet the monster soon. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them.

The stream of mobs was being handled. It was all about the Titan now. The creature's left hand was ruined. I didn’t really understand what the old bowman had been up to, until the monster tried to shift how it was holding its hand. Just a tiny contraction, and it screamed. It came to a full stop in the middle of the street and its dripping, foul mouth screamed fit to shatter the air.

Jones, retired Bowman of the March, had destroyed the joints in the monster’s hand. All the knuckles, and likely most of the wrist too. Worse, the glowing arrows were still stuck in there, shredding nerves and cartilage with every pull of a tendon. The pain was, judging by the twisting monstrous face and heartrending screams, agonizing.

I couldn’t help noticing that the second the monster screamed, the very second it froze and recoiled in pain, Crusher Jim rushed forward. He smashed aside everything in his path. He smelled an opportunity. So he took it.

Jim reached the one paw that was propping up the front of the monster. As enormous as Jim was, the hand alone could have covered his entire body. It wouldn’t have a chance. He swung that heavy right fist of his. There was a visible ripple in the air, some inexplicable change in the local air pressure. The middle of the paw vaporized.

I don’t have any other way to describe it. It wasn’t even an explosion. The bones, thick, hard, strong enough to support the weight of a titan, simply vanished. The muscle, strong enough to crush homes and city walls, vanished. Tendons like steel cables, vanished. One blow, and there wasn’t even a meat puree left behind.

Jim wasn’t even bloody. He stepped back quickly, before the geyser of blood could reach him.

The monster shrieked, the agony on its inhuman face twisting obscene features. It couldn’t even clutch its hand- one had a hole in it, the other had its joints destroyed. It reared up onto its hind legs, towering over the buildings. I wondered if it could scrape the top of the skybox.

I didn’t have the chance to find out. Jim nipped behind the monster’s foot, and snapped it’s achilles tendon with another punch. A third obliterated the ankle. Screaming and thrashing, the monster fell over backwards. Howling. It was ugly to watch. I hated the monsters. Hated them. But this was a brutal thing. A slow, helpless death.

Jim jumped onto the monster’s chest and strolled towards the center. No shouts of triumph. No flexing. Just another day’s work. Crusher Jim would crush you. Didn’t matter who ‘you’ were. You would still be crushed by him.

“Miyuki sees the snake hidden in the grass!” A brilliant arrow flew the length of the street and stopped. Stuck into something I couldn’t see. Something four stories in the air.

“Blimey, my eyes really are going.” The bowman shouted, then started shooting again. Some vast, invisible, force smashed Jim to one side, blowing him into a boarded-up shop. More and more arrows thudded into that invisible hulk. They jutted out, the glowing lights throwing strange shadows. I blinked, and then I could see it.

Not just a monster titan, one of the Murder Baboons, built to a titan’s scale. The faintly glowing arrows accumulated on the body, breaking up its eye-deceiving coloration and patterns.

“VERSAI! The tower is still on cool-down! Get that damned thing off my street!”

“It’s my dad’s street! And on it!”

“Madame-”

“Far outside my range, and I can’t cast the Final Revel again so soon. My Glass Arrow would barely touch it.”

There were still swarms of monsters streaming in. They hadn’t let up. Hundreds of them, pouring down the street and hitting the barricades. Most of them were practically untouched, since all the ranged units were off the roofs. “Sebastian, Mr. Jones, back up on the roof. Mikas-”

They were behind the wall. It would take them forever to get back up on the roof, and I needed the firepower now. “Mikas, crowd together on the wall, and fire over the heads of the Militia.”

Atrocity mode, well named.

I desperately tried to think if there was something else I could do, some other card to play. Nothing came to mind. Damn. It would be down to the heroes now.

“FOR THE MARCH! RAAAAAH!” It came from behind. I turned around. Dozens, fifty, a hundred, I don’t know how many armored halberdiers came charging up from behind us. The Home Guard had arrived. I sagged with relief. Until I saw who came behind them. A blood-stained man, bearded, wearing a steel mask. Long hands. Looking like a priest. Or a reverend.