Breaking into a police precinct while it was under siege by a small army of angry cultists was much easier said than done. We needed a solid plan, and we needed to know what we were up against.

The first step to solving both of those problems was to scout the area, and there was no better scout in our group than me. I wasn’t the most difficult person to spot, given my glowing lightning-filled eyes, but I could fly over the area from a distance, and escape quickly if that became necessary.

We decided that we needed to move quickly, as we were already hours behind, so after another hour of bickering over what I needed to take, I sat down on the steps in the front room of the hotel, waiting for supplies to be brought to me. Kaitlyn joined me to wait, and I thought it was an excellent opportunity to discuss her abilities and build.

To start, I went over what skill slots she had available as a beastkin. Surprisingly, she had no magic slots open. Instead, she had two combat, two racial, and three general skills. As she wasn’t a member of the first wave, she didn’t have a character archetype. Instead, the slot for it in her menu read ‘Archetype Requirements not Met’. It made me wonder if she could end up with an archetype in the future, and what it might be.

Her racial skills were already selected; the first called Dash, which granted her instantaneous movement from a standing position, and Beastly Aura, a skill that supposedly granted beastkin more resilience and alignment to some type of magical element. She also lacked Identify as a general skill, so without it, she could have more options to work with.

Kaitlyn didn’t have many opinions on what additional skills to choose, so I made my personal thoughts known.

“I think your strongest potential is in your speed, so choosing things to help augment that could be very strong. You might consider Running as a general skill to double down with dashing, or maybe Stealth as well to go for something more ninja-like. Something that increases your endurance might have an even stronger effect. For weapons, it’s largely up to you, but since you have two slots, at least one combat skill to take advantage of your strong legs and arms might be interesting.”

She turned my ideas over for a while, before glancing at me out of the side of her eye.

“Could… knife fighting be good?”

Yet again my imagination flashed to two corpses in the forest. I swallowed the lump in my throat before answering honestly.

“It could be. Knives could be both throwing weapons and close-combat weapons, and I think they would pair well with your speed.”

She nodded, jaw clenching and eyes shining with determination.

We waited in silence a short while longer before a smiling lizardkin arrived with a small backpack. Inside was a loaded handgun, notepaper and writing materials, and enough food and water for a day. I wasn’t sure I would need any of it, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Bidding quick farewells, I flew up over the rooftops, over the trees, until everything on the ground was small and indistinct. Looking to the southeast, I saw the forest where I first met Kaitlyn, extending out of sight on the horizon. It looked like all of Austin had been consumed by the woods like an ancient city buried by history and time. Not like the burgeoning metropolis it was only two days ago.

To the north, I saw smoke rising from what I guessed was the University of Texas Campus. That was concerning. Downtown, the skyscrapers that remained standing were turning green from the ground up, slowly being consumed by the unrelenting magical plant life. I felt a pang of sorrow in my gut.

I had lived here my whole life. How many days would it take for the city to be buried completely? A week? Maybe two?

Shifting my eyes back to the southeast, I rushed closer to the ground so I could start looking for landmarks that might direct me where I needed to go. A familiar building peeking from the trees here. A fallen street sign there.

Finally, I found the remains of a familiar four-lane road. I rushed down it, skipping over stranded cars and the occasional patch of strange land that appeared here and there. It took a while, but before long, I found my quarry.

Though there were no cultists, I did not like what I saw.

There were corpses. Lots, and lots of corpses. Some of the bodies were positioned and moved around in an obvious effort to make more room. They had even burned some of them in a large pile, reducing the bodies to cinders and bone, but most were intact, swarming with flies. Covering my nose and mouth, I counted the bodies strewn across the small patch of road and piled next to the door, but I stopped after reaching twenty-five.

Forcing myself to continue despite my horror and disgust, I decided to look for Kaitlyn’s parents. I wanted to try and have them buried, at least. As I searched, I noticed that some bodies were of regular humans, probably killed before the second wave. Others were changed people. Despite my efforts, though, I couldn’t find any cheetah beastkin. They might have been some of those burned beyond recognition.

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Most of the dead had bruises and deep cuts on them, sometimes on their forearms or shoulders. I was pretty sure those were defensive wounds. A few others had burn marks like they had been touched with hot coals.

Turning away from the abject horror, I moved towards the building itself. The precinct's windows were burned out like Molotov cocktails had been thrown through them. The front door was broken into splinters. Bloody scrawls of unintelligible words and runes covered every inch of the building’s face.

As I stared, the door of the building loomed before me like a gaping mouth. Did I go inside? Did I try and find out what happened here? Listening as carefully as I could, I tried to pick up any sound of conversation. Instead, all I heard was the chirping of insects and the tweeting of birds.

With trembling breath, I drew my machete in my right hand and pulled out the pistol in my left. It was familiar, the Baretta I had brought from Mom’s house. I knew there were eight bullets. One in the chamber, and seven in the magazine. With shaking steps, I crossed the threshold into the building, machete flaring up with crackling energy.

The inside of the precinct wasn’t much better than the outside. There were multiple police officers, still in their uniforms, dead on the floor. None had changed during the second wave, meaning they were dead for at least a day by now.

I noticed a few places on the ground where there were pools of blood but no bodies. Some corpses had been moved. Perhaps they were cultists who died during the assault on the building.

Following the trail of destruction deeper into the building, I began to find fresher and fresher bodies. Some hadn’t yet been found by insects. Eventually, I came to a metal door that had been laboriously pried off its hinges. Behind it were three more corpses of police officers, but these had all changed during the second wave.

Hurrying forwards, I found myself before another metal door. This one was open already as well, but the sounds I heard within made me freeze.

In hushed voices, two people spoke back and forth.

“She right there, brother! We can take her!”

“No! We are to wait here for reinforcements from the Central Order. She’s killed twelve of us already. Your zeal is impressive, praise Gors, lord of wrath. But the slow knife is the most painful.”

“Yesssssss…”

It was impressive how fucked up these guys were. They were horrifyingly, cartoonishly evil. And even worse, they managed that change in what, two days? Were they monsters already, or did someone make them into what they were now?

I decided it didn't matter.

Their voices filled me with a simmering rage. This time when my arms shook, it was my muscles aching to be used. I clenched my teeth and clicked the safety off on my pistol.

“Wait. What’s that?”

My light! They saw my light.

I swallowed with a dry throat.

Good.

When I heard their steps start moving towards me, I immediately pushed through the door, surprising the two fanatics. They looked similar to those I fought in the forest, though one wore an orange cowl cut from a fraying tarp over his head. They were both some type of beastkin, but I didn’t have time to examine them carefully.

Without a second of hesitation, I pointed my pistol and unloaded everything it had. I didn’t see how many shots hit my targets, but I didn’t care. It was just the opening act.

As I took my first step forward, the uncloaked fanatic fell to the ground, gurgling and clutching his neck. I ignored him, shifting my focus to the other one.

The cloaked man seemed injured, but not debilitatingly so, and his hands were raised before him. He began to speak strange words, and flaming orange runes rose between his palms. Reminded of the burned corpses I found outside, my anger flared with the sound of crackling thunder.

My skin darkened to black roiling clouds, my eyes became tempests. A slight wind blew through the room, buffeting the fanatic, and knocking his hood from his head.

Lifting off the ground, I flew towards him, narrowing the fifteen feet between us in an instant. I saw his eyes widen in shock as my machete swept across his front, sending the top half of his right hand, and most of the fingers on his left, careening to the ground.

He looked horrified for a moment, before growling in anger, pushing towards me in a scream of rage and pain. I didn’t let him, though. I was ready for his charge.

With a front-hand blow I had dismembered his hands. With a follow-up backhand blow, I swept across his throat. I looked away as his head fell to the linoleum tiles with a meaty thud. Meanwhile, the cultist behind me had stopped gurgling and was now staring blankly into the middle distance, dead as well.

Quickly, I reached into my backpack, drew out another magazine, reloaded the pistol, and racked a new bullet into the chamber. My heart filled with simmering anger that still refused to die, I moved deeper still, passing into the holding cell area.

The first thing I noticed was the bodies scattered around the room. There were, just like the two back there had mentioned, twelve dead cultists here. It looked like a laser had cut them into pieces. Though I was disgusted, I felt a small amount of satisfaction.

Following the trail of bloody destruction, I eventually came to a warm light. It came from a cell on the very end of the row that still had a door open.

Caution forcing itself through my bloodlust, I decided to make my presence known.

“Hello? Is anyone there? All of the cultists out here are dead, but more are going to be here before long. We need to leave. I can get you to safety.”

With clicking heels, a woman walked through the open cell door. It took me a moment to realize that the light was coming from her, not from any other source. She looked… odd. She was beautiful, but in a strange way, like someone had imagined what a perfect person would look like and then tried to make it work.

But there was no imperfection. No signs of old age, or freckles from being out in the sun. Nothing at all. She could have been eighteen, or she could have been thirty-five. I had no way to tell. Her blond hair fell in perfect waves around her like a halo, her suit and pencil skirt unblemished and free from any filth.

With eyes glowing like the heart of a star, she looked at me, analyzing who I was, and why I was there. She seemed to pick me apart, learning things about me that even I hadn’t realized or understood. I hated it.

“Ms. Gale. Thanks for the timely rescue,” she said in a calm voice that filled the hall.

And somehow she knew my name. Creepy.