Blood everywhere. Bodies strewn across the ground, limbs and arms overlapping. Armor reduced to chunks of metal and gaping flesh. A twin blade forged of dark iron and silver edges was cast aside, familiar.

She knelt at the center, both hands poised to compress the big adventurer’s chest. His head lolled off to the side, his eyes lifeless. But the woman didn’t move. Almost like she was petrified. Her dark hair was wild, eyes wide, seeing everything but seeing nothing.

Thud

Thud

Thud

It felt familiar in a way I didn’t like. A way that invoked a tunnel and another lone survivor, their world shattered, grasping at the threads to keep going and coming up short. Her hands glowed blue and an imp manifested outside the palisades, blind rushing down winding the path I’d just taken without looking back.

“Come on come on come on fucking die already just fucking die-” Barely audible words came out in a ceaseless ramble that never fully stopped.

The adventurer the woman tended was on his back, while the other two were on their stomachs, heads angled away from her, nothing before them but a sheer cliff. One’s arm extended upward, hand and fingers curved, as if he’d tried to crawl away.

With all the powers, and flight charms, and fancy apartments, it was so easy to forget. That the odds were against us and, more often than not, this was how it ended.

Obliteration.

I hated the Order for what they’d done. To Jinny. Sae. And this woman was there. I saw her, loading her kid out of the Escalade, and later, when she did nothing. The next step should have been as simple as checking a box. Crossing a T.

Maybe it was a holdover from whatever Hastur had done to my mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to do what I’d come here to do.

An alternative solution presented itself.

“The Adventurers’ Guild still holding at the bridge?” I asked Talia.

“Yes.”

“Status?”

“Without the vampire pincer they’re stable, but not making progress. None dead. Some wounded. Probably why they’re not pushing forward. Hoping whatever’s manifesting the imps will run out of juice.”

“Yeah. I’m dealing with that.”

“Then deal with it quickly. They’ve noticed my presence and are letting me be for now, but that could change at any moment.”

“Noted. Play it safe.”

Good. That meant this could work. But I needed a plan B. I sent a brief mental prompt to the vampires below and received an answer. One I needed but didn’t want.

Another imp manifested beyond the barricade.

I unlaced my gauntlet, revealing Hastur’s mark, and placed it in front of the woman’s face. She took a full second to look at it, then screeched, falling flat on her ass and scampering backward toward the barricade. Magic flowed down her arms and she prepared to cast.

One hand went to my inventory, and with the other I extended my palm out toward her, taking a few careful steps. “I’m your backup-”

“—W-who the hell are you?” she said.

“Your backup,” I repeated evenly, making sure she could see Hastur’s mark on my arm. “We need to make tracks. Imps are pushing the other users back, so we have a window to the exit.”

“Stay the fuck away from me!” she screamed. The magic in her hands pulsed.

I stopped in my tracks. Fought through her mental resistance and soothed a portion of the black, raging anxiety in her mind with <Suggestion>. The current still ravaged her. I tried again.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Maria.” Her voice was small.

For the first time, recognition flitted through her eyes. “Sunny sent you? My messages got through?”

“Yes,” I lied. If the Adventurers’ Guild picked her up at the chokepoint, it wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t be letting her go until she spilled, and she literally couldn’t spill.

“Shit. Shit.” Maria released her spells and pulled at her hair until several frazzled strands came loose. She slapped the ground, tried to stand and failed, chest heaving, lungs pumping overtime. If I didn’t calm her, she’d hyperventilate.

I crouched in front of her. Snapped my fingers and pointed to my eye. “Look here.”

She looked.

“Deep breaths.” I breathed in deeply, held it, then breathed out.

She breathed. Short panicked gulps slowly subsided, and clarity bubbled up to the surface.

“You’re here. I’m here.” I took on a zen cadence. “You went through something traumatic. That’s normal. But backup arrived in time. You have an exit. Everything will be okay. But I need you to come with me.”

For a moment, hope filtered into her face, and I thought I had her. But her mouth set.

“No.” Maria shook her head, matted hair trailing behind the motion in a zigzag. She pushed herself back up on her knees and crawled to the downed adventurer, placing her hands on his chest. A few seconds later, he seized, and another imp manifested beyond the palisades. I monitored it, but like all the others, it scampered down the path without looking back. Then I scanned the grounded adventurer. Was he still alive? Was she draining him of mana, somehow?

Had she done the same thing to the other two?

“Need to stay,” Maria said.

“Why?”

She reached into her inventory and tossed me a mesh bag. I opened it and found several near-translucent crabs in the bottom. But somehow less than we’d found in the grimeling cave.

“Didn’t finish the quest.” She was still rambling, but it was easier to make out the words now. “Not even close. Little bastards kept dying or running away to where we couldn’t reach them. Then that fucker showed up.”

Miles?

“This User? He was alone?”

Maria shuddered. “The rest were trash. We would have shredded them in seconds if it was just them. Him, though? He was a goddamn nightmare. Took hit-and-run to another level.” She pointed to one of the downed adventurers with long hair, the smarmy one carrying around twin blades. Not so smarmy now. “Just fucking look.”

I walked over to him and lifted the bandage on his lower back. There was a jagged wound big as a pool ball in diameter. Bastard didn’t need a bandage, he needed a new kidney and a staple gun. No wonder he bled out.

Maria spoke through gritted teeth. “Whatever his class? Whatever gear he was using? Arrows hit like a goddamn fifty cal. And he was fast, too. Impossible to pin down.”

Definitely Miles.

“Still alive then. He going to cause us problems?”

She scoffed. “With any luck, he died screaming. Vamp food. There was a wave of them that got between us. Fucked up both sides. We got pushed to the fringes, he and his got pushed further in.”

Good chance Miles was still alive then. But none of this explained why she wasn’t leaving. If I kept harping on that point, she’d sense the agenda behind it. I switched tact, tried for rapport.

“You a vet?”

Maria just looked at me, startled.

“Small number of people know what a wound from a fifty cal looks like. And it sounded like you were speaking from experience,” I explained.

“Marines. Semper-fuckin-fi. Did a few tours. Don’t bother thanking me for my service.” Her eyes gained a far-off quality. “You know they screw you on VA benefits if you bag a DD? You can be a perfect little stone-cold soldier for years, but break down at the wrong moment and do one little thing at the end they don’t like? Forget accounting for PTSD, or the mental toll. You’re done. Fuck your health insurance, fuck your kid’s health insurance, fuck you. And now I’m fucking here.” Bitterness gave way to melancholy and despair.

“Lot about the old world made little sense,” I said, mainly to keep her talking.

“Were you in?” she asked, giving me a curious side-eye.

“No.”

“Fine. Don’t tell me.”

I pushed past it, trying to get through. “If you saw combat, you know that retreating isn’t cowardice. It’s tactical repositioning.”

“Not about that.”

“Then what is it about?” I ran a hand through my hair.

She hesitated. Grimaced. Then gestured to the men on the ground. “My… title… lets me absorb life-force and convert it to mana.”

“…Ah.”

So she had drained them.

She spoke faster, trying to justify herself before I drew my own conclusions. “They were all wounded. One was already unconscious, the other passed out the second he put him down. First one, I didn’t know it would kill him. Never took it that far. Second one… I guess I did.”

Maybe she hadn’t known, definitively, but there was no way it hadn’t crossed her mind.

“And now it’s big boy’s turn,” I finished.

Her face turned dark. “Just go. Get out of here.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

Maria snapped back. “If I go back to the Order, they’re not just going to pat my ass and give me a better-luck-next-time-champ. Sunny’s gonna ask. And because of this geas bullshit, I can’t massage the facts.” Her eyes trailed to the bag in my hand. “If I come back with next to nothing and have to explain what happened here? I’m fucked.”

“In that case, aren’t you boned anyway? For doing this to members of the Order?”

She shook her head. “All they care about is results.”

“So, what’s the alternative?”

Her face was hard. “This position’s defensible. Hold out until everyone on this floor is gone or dead. Bag the artifact, grab as many planners as I can. Get out.”

“Just that?”

I hammered her with <Suggestion>, poking as many holes in her strategy as I could. I felt her mind harden, shoving away the doubt until I couldn’t influence her at all.

With that, I watched Plan A crumble to ash.

I stood. “You’ve been honest with me, so I’ll level with you. I’m the Ordinator.”

Her jaw dropped. “I heard the rumors but thought they were just people spinning bullshit. Sunny really brought you in?”

I continued before she could regain her wit. “Look, I saw what you’re up against. Whoever they are, they’re here in number. And they’re not just going to give up. But crowd control’s my specialty. If you can keep them distracted, I can finish them. Then I’ll see myself out and you can claim the artifact.”

Maria’s eyes narrowed. “You’d do that.”

“Of course,” I looked to the side. “For a few favors to be named later.”

“I’m not blowing you.”

“Not the sort of favor I’m interested in.”

I watched her think. Consider her circumstances. Eventually, she nodded. “Okay. You gonna do to them what you did to Region 6?”

“On a smaller scale. But it’s still difficult. Takes time to set up, otherwise things get… unpleasant.”

“I can do that. Buy you time.” Maria shivered. Her eyes flicked, navigating something unseen, and a few seconds later I got a prompt.

<User Maria has invited you to join a team>

I accepted the prompt. As I navigated the team screen and searched for her level, I prayed. Prayed to no one in particular that she was the baby of her group, low-level enough that I could justify guiding her into the Adventurers’ Guild without putting them in danger.

<LVL 26>

Fuck.