There was, predictably, NOT a giant set of stairs sitting in empty space when we reached the site on the map. But there was something. A squat, dark building of matte black stone in a big clearing. And of course, surrounding the building was a fucking army of dark cloaked figures. Once again I was stumped by how they had so many here. There were only two hundred or so people by the end of fifth trial, and even if they all got brought over, they couldn't ALL be BMP.

"Ok, so the place is crawling with people." I said in annoyance as we stared out from the treeline. "I'm hoping that we can catch Felix in there, but if it's an exit chances are good he's already gone."

Benny's eyes went wide from where he stood next to me. "Shit, should we go after him? If he destroys it behind him we might be stuck. It would make sense to follow him through." He looked back into the distance. "And what about the others? Callen and Travis and them. Are we leaving them?"

"Nope." I said firmly. "And we're not following him either. Wherever that thing is aimed, it isn't going to be the same place we came in. I don't care how diabolical your plan is, dropping into the middle of all those A-rankers is suicide. Each and every force who had people in the trial is probably rabid with fury over us vanishing. If they pop up, they'll be under suspicion at least. Especially coming without any of us. Too big a chance someone will search them and take the cup."

Callie nodded. "He'll probably have a secondary exit point. Maybe another one of the temples. They might not function any more but they could have gotten the teleportation points working. They were able to subvert the one here, so clearly they know how it works."

"If there's a way out in that building, we need to hit them as he goes through. Stop him if we can, but the big priority is making sure none of them can wreck it behind him." I said firmly. "As much as I want to stop the rise of a bunch of evil gods, our priority is not being stuck here to be eaten by wolfhornigators."

Callie sighed, pinching her nose. "We aren't calling them wolfhornigators. That's a ridiculous name. They're...lizardwolfdeer, shit that's harder than it seems." She'd been feeling a lot better since we met up with Biscuit, cuddling the big squirrel, distracting herself from the guilt, but she only managed to joke around for a second before she remembered what she'd done and shot a guilty glance at Nat.

For her part, my cousin wasn't paying attention to Callie. She was staring daggers at the hooded figures. It was clear she blamed the translocator for Perit's death (as she should) probably at least partly to avoid focusing that anger on a friend. I knew that had to be hard, but I thought it was probably the healthiest way to go about it.

"Anyway." I said, getting us back on track. "We need to figure out some way to get eyes in there. Bethy, can you send in one of your flying squirrels to canvas the place? They'd be perfect for recon here. We need to get eyes on Felix if he's still there. If not...well fingers crossed we can cobble together a fix for whatever they did to the teleporter after he left, assuming there's enough left TO fix."

She nodded, closing her eyes, and when she opened they were glowing red. She flicked a hand and a squirrel appeared, sitting on her palm...as she sat on a squirrel. My life was so weird sometimes.

As the squirrel went in, Chelsea spoke up. "I'm concerned. This next bit...fighting is great most of the time. But we just can't waste the minutes mixing it up. We need to take them out fast even if it's only temporary. Otherwise there's too big a chance they'll destroy the thing, whatever it might be. That's assuming there's even anything in there. Lot of maybe's here."

"Agreed." I said with a sigh. "But we're in a time crunch. And I'd rather flail around half assed and have a chance of pulling something out of a hat then wait and lose our shot. We're working off ten different assumptions on this one, but I'm willing to be an ass if it means we get home. If we fuck it up we're in no worse a situation than we would be from just not trying."

Callie squeezed my hand. "You're right. But so is she, at least about needing to take them out fast. This isn't the time for an all out brawl. We shouldn't engage them at all if possible, and if we have to, we need to wrap them up fast in traps."

She had a point. Normally, I'd have asked her to take some of them out subtly. Pick off the stragglers with a knife in the back. She was our best infiltrator by far. But at the moment I just couldn't bring myself to mention it. Not knowing how awful she felt about killing Perit. So I turned to our next best hope. "Hey Bethy you hear me still?" She nodded absently. "Alright, once your squirrel gets back can you slip in and off a few of them. Try to thin the herd?"

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Bethy didn't want to be a monster. But her definition of that word was pretty specific. Monsters killed innocents for no reason. Annoying Bethy was a reason, and these guys had gone well past that. She paused for a second, eyes remote and glowing red. "Sure. I can take out the ones that let their guard down. But it won't be all of them, not if I don't want to be noticed."

"We'll take care of that." I said in relief. "Don't move yet though. Tell me about the inside. Is there an exit in there? Is Felix still around?"

Still staring distractedly, Bethy nodded. "I see him. He's standing in front of some sort of huge box made of black marble. It's covered with symbols, and there are a bunch of dials on it. He's messing with one of them. There's a big glowing portal on top of the box, and as he flips the dial the portal is changing. He's moving it slowly though, sometimes stuff comes out and the others attack it before it can hurt him. Every couple of turns he keeps dumping more Lamentation Liquid on it."

"Perfect!" I said in excitement. "That's exactly what we need. I'm guessing the portal is some kind of maintenance thing for the testing sites. He must be looking for the right one. I guess his crazy juice wears off quick. That means it'll probably take a bit."

I considered what we needed. I had a vague idea of how to do this. "Gabe. Take Biscuit and Abel back and help the others. Get them here as quick as possible. Here's hoping there's enough of that liquid left to get us home. Callie, you're with me. I have an idea for a trap setup that should do the trick, but it's going to be tough."

We needed to take them out either all at once or too fast to react. Which meant we needed some way to get the drop on them. Callie nodded, following me off to one side as I tasked Mel with keeping an eye out and the others with watching her. Once we were a bit back from the treeline I looked down, concentrated, and triggered Pit of Despair. Callie squeaked as we fell, but I grabbed her, triggering Ripple running to stop our fall.

Once I had a stable footing, I dipped a hand into the pit and dumped all the dust into my spatial ring. I let us drop, and we were standing at the bottom of a ten foot pit. Then I did it again. When we were twenty feet down, I triggered Eye of Revelation and Song of the Soil. "Alright, follow my lead here." I said as I knelt and put a hand against the tunnel. "I'm going to use Pit of Despair horizontally. I need you to reinforce the tunnel with shadows before I remove the dust."

"Alright." She said pensively. "Not sure what you're going for, but I'm game." I triggered the skill and she reinforced it, then I drained the dust. I sculpted the pit this time, doubling the distance by halving the diameter. Twenty feet deep but only five across. Then I repeated. Following Song of the Soil, I led us to just short of the building, and I created a couple tunnels to allow movement underneath the clearing.

Then, hunching down quite a bit (damned tunnels were so short) I looked at Callie. "Ok, step two of the plan. I'm going to make more pits. Not all the way up though. Just to a few inches short of the surface. Then I need you to reinforce the ground there. Not enough to hold up under a person's weight. Just enough so that the grass doesn't collapse."

Her eyes brightened. "Pitfall traps. Nice. I can do that. It's getting strenuous to hold so many constructs, but I didn't get all that soul work in for nothing. I can make a few of these." Once I got her go ahead, I made a series of pits, each one reaching up to about two inches shy of the surface, and when she reinforced them, I absorbed all the sand. I wasn't sure what was going to happen to it when it came back out, but that was a problem for future me.

Once we had a line of the things stretched out in front of the building, I let out a deep breath. "Ok Cal. Here's the not so nice part. I need spikes. Big sharp fucking things lining the bottoms. All pointed straight up."

She flinched. "I...Shane that's not...look. I don't mind killing them. Even after Perit. ESPECIALLY after Perit. But pitfalls are so dangerous. Anyone can fall into them. What if one of our friends drops in. I don't think I could take something like that happening again."

"And it won't." I said soothingly. "I'm the one on bait detail for this. That's the plan. You'll see, I know exactly what to do, and since I know they're there it'll be zero danger for me." I reached out and grabbed her hand. "I know this is a lot." I said softly. "You're hurting. And it's not fair. I should be giving you time to grieve, to work through what you're feeling. But in order to give you that we need to get home. And that means I need you to be strong for me for just a little bit longer."

She swallowed hard, closing her eyes and squeezing my hand. "I can do that." She murmured. "I keep seeing her face Shane. The look in her eyes as the light faded. The hurt and the confusion. We weren't that close, but she was still one of ours, you know? One of our people. I'm supposed to protect them. We all protect each other. And I killed her."

"You did not." I said firmly. "I mean that. But I know I won't convince you. So dedicate yourself to making amends. Helping me bring her back. And protecting those that are left."

Nodding slowly, she opened her eyes. "I can do that. I'll keep the rest of our friends safe. Even if it means killing all those hooded assholes to the last man." She waved a hand, and a wave of darkness flooded the floor of the pit nearest us, spiking up into large jagged spikes.

"Perfect." I complimented her with a grin. "And just to add a bit of zing." I snapped my fingers, pulling out some of the wolfhornigator venom. "A bit of special sauce." I smeared a bit onto each spike, and then we moved on to do the other pits. These assholes wouldn't know what hit them.