Sen led the way down the stairs.

He leapt down three steps at a time, bringing up the front with his entire body covered in vicious plates of bone. Unlike the usual, sleek armor, Sen modified his current armor into a brutal, jagged shape. Spurs and hooks speared out from his armor, ready to latch and cut. His fingers were wicked claws, while bladed trident tips stabbed out from the front edge of his shields.

Em followed behind their group like a shadow. Her steps were soundless, and her red eyes scanned the path down with silent, predatory focus. Her scythe blade trailed behind her like a giant, silver claw as they ran down.

Escape was on their minds, but they weren’t about to do it like prey. Sen was a juggernaut and Em was a reaper; ready for a fight.

Nothing was going to stop them from finding the Maladh.

“We’re doing it like we planned!” Sen said, glancing back, and Bali gulped.

“I understand, my friend! But are you sure you can do what you said? It’s a dangerous role!”

Em spoke up from behind him, her lips twisted into an uneasy grin. “Sen’s got the best chance of surviving danger out of all of us,” she said, holding Sen’s sunflower on a bag around her hip. “So just focus on getting to safety as soon as we’re out there.”

Sen reached the bottom of the stairs first. He pushed through the doors and out the lobby, scanning the darkness with his Darkvision. Empty. No enemies in sight. Sen pushed forward, through the doors, and out into the Salt Storm outside. As soon as he left, he felt the salt crystals striking his skin, burning into his being in faint flashes of fiery Ardor.

Dark spots appeared on his skin. Tiny, smoldering pinpricks. He circulated his Flow and they faded, swept aside by a wave of cold energy. Sen raised his hand, and Bali stopped behind him, hiding under the cover of an umbrella they’d scavenged from one of the rooms.

Em stepped up beside him, her Flow likewise swirling through her body.

The two of them crouching behind a line of shriveled, coral-infested shrubs. Sen leaned around the corner to find the street full of rampaging monsters, lunging at each other and tearing away at chitin and flesh. They raced for the salt, sweeping up the dust and snarling as they crunched on massive, fist-sized crystals of Ardor.

Sen scanned the street for an opening—a way to sprint past the chaos and into a car, ready to make their escape.

“What’s your Spirit at?” Sen asked, and Em glanced at him.

“Rank four,” she said. “Tier zero.”

“Anything at Tier one?”

“Body.”

Sen nodded. He stood up from behind the cover of the corals and pointed across the street. “I can last in the rain for longer than you. Save your Flow. Rush Bali and his daughter towards the closest SUV you can find,” he said, letting out a shaky breath. Sen clenched his fists. “I’ll see if I can cover you—beat back anything trying to get close. Get them under cover as soon as you can.”

Em nodded. She stood and squeezed his arm once, before dashing off. Back to the entrance, where Bali and his daughter were under the cover of an umbrella.

Sen heard them talk. He saw them move, off to the side, behind the cover of several sedans parked along the driveway. Em peeked over the cars and pointed, motioning to a black Volkswagen in the middle of the street. Sen nodded, raising a hand.

Three fingers up. He lowered one. Two.

Em lowered her head. He saw Bali’s umbrella tense, ready to move. Sen lowered the final finger; one.

They burst into motion.

Sen circled around them as soon as they sprinted into the street. Several monsters turned their way—a pack of four-legged beasts, covered in dark scales and snarling with a giant, anglerfish’s head. The pack lunged for Em and Bali.

They ran into him, instead.

Sen barreled out from behind a wall of jagged corals bursting out from the tarmac. He bashed his shield into a sprinting monster from the side, and Shield Bash vibrated through its body, sending it stumbling, its limbs stiff and jerking. Sen rushed it. Stabbed it with his shield-claws. He pierced deep into it, grunting, before sweeping his arm to the side and tearing his claws free.

It yowled a grating, slimy cry, stumbling to the side and bleeding profusely. The pack stopped their charge and turned to him, growling.

Lesser Deephunter – Tier 0 (x7)

Sen counted them quickly. Seven. Six healthy, one injured. They circled him, rushing into the corals and hiding, as Em and the others vanished behind cover. Farther, closer to the Volkswagen across the street. Sen raised his shields at the pack of deephunters.

“Stay,” he said, sneering as they faced him. “Good dogs.”

They snarled at him, their teeth bared. The ones in the lead leapt, and wicked barbs burst out of their webbed feet. Fins flared on their backs, flashing with bioluminescent, blue dots. They charged him. Sen smashed into their formation, his shields raised. He pummeled the first beast with a Shield Bash, sending it staggering, and Sen swiveled to swipe his claws across another deephunter’s side. Blood sprayed. It screeched.

Two more came from behind him. Sen sprang forward, diving deeper into their encirclement; he used their numbers against them. Sen shoulder-checked a deephunter and sent it to the ground. He stomped—crushed its skull.

One dead.

A deephunter at the back roared. Flow flashed. Sen felt a burst of electricity crash into him in a thin line, coursing through his armor and down into his skin. But it didn’t stun him; didn’t freeze his limbs.

His Spirit Attribute reinforced him, reducing the weak zaps into nothing.

Sen felt himself grin.

It was nice to be the boss monster, for once.

He splayed his palm towards three of the creatures and pulled. Psionic Force dragged them across the air and straight towards him, and Sen met their bodies with his claws, shredding them apart with vicious sweeps. One of the hunters crashed into his back, but Sen hardly stumbled. He reached over his shoulder and his clawed fingertips sank into the creature’s skin like hooks. Sen dragged it up—he smashed it to the ground.

Bones broke. Sen killed it with a quick stab to the neck even as two more zaps of electricity coursed through his flesh.

As soon as the monster under him died, Sen kicked it to the side. The monsters watched him, snarling. Hesitating. Sen saw them take a step back in fear. Knowing the fight was over, Sen bared his teeth at them and sprinted off without a second thought, rushing through the corals. He sprinted towards Em and Bali.

His three companions were locked in a fight against four vampires.

Desiccated Vampire – Tier 0 (x3)

[Elite] Desiccated Bloodfiend – Tier 0

Em handled three of them with deadly precision. She dodged and weaved, her Ability flooding her with inhuman reflexes as she tore into her foes. One vampire fell to her scythe. Another stumbled away, its arm cut and hanging off by strips of flesh. All the while, she danced around the bloodfiend, raking her weapon across its armored body. Sparks flew with each slash as claw met scythe.

Off to the side, Bali stumbled around a car, dodging and desperately sprinting away from a third Tier 0 vampire. Sen rushed towards him and reached out. He pulled.

Psionic Force flooded out of him and latched on the beast, sending it jerking back as if grabbed by an invisible hand. It crashed to the floor and Sen roared and he kicked it in the chest, snapping ribs through its shriveled flesh. It leapt up at him, scrambling, and Sen bashed it in the face with his shield. Its brittle skull cracked like glass. Its face crumpled inward and it crashed down, dead.

Sen turned to Em just in time to find her rip her scythe out of the bloodfiend’s neck, sending its head thumping down onto the sidewalk. She dashed to him and Bali, panting and covered in dark blood.

“Car’s locked!” she said, and Sen nodded. He laid his hand on the Volkswagen’s door.

“This car’s door is unlocked.”

The lock clicked. The door swung open, and Sen winced as he grabbed the shriveled corpse on the driver’s seat. He shoved it out as the four of them rushed inside. Bali and Sen took the front seats, while Em helped Bali’s pale daughter put her seatbelt on. She raised a hand toward the street, and the black blood pooling along the ground surged towards her. It compressed into a dark mass, floating in a sphere above her palm.

“The car will start!”

With another commandment, Sen felt his Flow drain into the car. The Volkswagen purred. The lights went on and—

A massive form burst through one of the buildings behind them, and Sen saw the Tier 3 centipede creature, its carapace dented and half-melted as the Child of Kulv’arash threw it straight through a local shawarma place. Glass rained and concrete crumbled. The creatures roared as they crashed into each other again.

Em leaned forward through the back seat and roared. “Drive!”

Bali jerked in his seat as he slammed his foot straight down into the gas. “Driving now!” he cried, his hand shifting through the gearstick. The tires screeched and the SUV barreled through the parking lot, swerving around several other cars before bursting out into the highway.

Another crash came from behind them as the screaming Tier 3s smashed a car into the air. It fell towards them. Sen smashed his fist through the passenger-side window, before shoving his upper body out of the car. He aimed his arms toward the falling car and pushed even as a strained scream tore its way out of his throat.

With a great, telekinetic heave, Sen felt his Flow blast out of him in a rippling wave. It struck the falling car and it shifted, crashing off the side, away from their path.

It fell with a deafening crash and Sen had to cover his face as shrapnel bounced off the side of their ride.

He pushed himself back into the car before a passing coral could smash his head into pulp.

“Watch out left!”

Sen heard Em scream too late. A massive shape hurtled out from the left side of the intersection, and a massive, worm-like beast covered in rippling muscles dove across the street, scooping up salt into its gaping maw. Sen saw undulating, talon-tipped fins wave across its back as it propelled itself across the street. Bali stomped on the brakes. The car screeched and Sen jerked, and suddenly he was crashing through the glass, bursting out the windshield and rolling across the car’s—

Sen reached out a hand and metal screeched. His claws scraped across the hood of the car and caught on the edge of the windshield. He scrambled up, turning, just in time to see the giant burrow worm rear up and roar.

Viscous, yellow saliva dripped from its mandibles.

“Drive around it!” he screamed, just as it lunged. Bali jerked the wheel to the side and the car veered right, dodging. The worm crashed into the concrete with a deafening boom, cracking the asphalt even as it swept its massive body to the side. Sen leapt up from the car and crashed into it, his clawed shields tearing into its unarmored flesh.

It shrieked. It was a piercing blast of sound, rumbling through its body and out its flesh like a physical wave. Sen felt his bones shudder under his skin, his flesh threatening to rupture from the contact alone.

Fiendish Resilience’s shock absorption saved his life.

Sen grit his teeth and raked his claws across the creature, using his hooked fingers to climb up over its back. Sen punched down on its head and roared.

“This creature crashes down!”

Boom!

A wave of supernatural force descended from his fist like a thunderclap, sending the creature down to the ground. Its mandibles snapped and Sen hit it with a Shield Bash, locking its muscles in place with invasive Flow as he ran along the length of its body.

“Sen Salazar is fast!”

Time slowed. Sen sped up. He leapt from the creature’s back with inhuman speed and sailed through the air, before crashing down onto the speeding Volkswagen’s roof. Sen held on for dear life as Bali wove through Al Warqaa’s coral-shredded streets. They drove past the screeching worm creature before it could recover, and it disappeared behind the next turn.

Sen banged his fist on the car’s roof.

“Keep going!” he ordered, willing the armor around his soles to morph into vicious, hooked ends. Sen stood up on top of the speeding car and stomped down—tchnk! His soles stabbed into the roof of the car, hooking into the metal to keep himself attached. He heard Bali’s daughter cry out inside of it before going quiet at Em’s muffled reassurances.

He felt a thump go up from under his feet. “Sen!” Em called out to him, her voice muffled through the closed windows. “Bali’s not familiar with this street! Where’s the closest road to Academic City!? Ras Al Khor!?”

“Wrong way!” Sen shouted back, raising his arms to blast psionic waves at the monsters that leapt at the car from the corals. “Turn right at the roundabout straight ahead! It’ll take us right into Mohammed Bin Zhayed!”

“You heard him, Bali! Yallah!”

Sen heard Em shout a dash of Arabic as she urged them forward, and Bali responded with a shout of his own, the SUV blurring forward at nearly eighty kilometers an hour. They spun into the next intersection, turning a sharp curve to the right on the next roundabout. Sen and Em kept the car guarded as they did, blasting away any encroaching beasts as they sped away from the heart of the conflict. Behind them, the lumbering forms of the Tier 3s raged across the streets, toppling small buildings and crushing cars like tiny, tin cans. And in the midst of their battle, Sen watched the pulsating Ardor Crystal drum its energy into the streets, turning the metal and asphalt around it into molten slag. It dispersed essence into the air in veritable gallons, so powerful that Sen felt difficulty breathing even from a distance.

With another volley of blood and force projectiles, Sen and Em battered back a small swarm of vampires leaping down from the overpass, trying to land on the car. Sen impaled one through his shield’s spikes, before kicking it away with a grunt. It landed on the street. Rolled.

It was dead as soon as it hit the ground.

Sen looked up and finally relaxed as the car sped up the highway, going uphill into an overpass stretching over the corals. As they ascended the curve, Sen looked down the highway ahead, which extended out from the city in a thinning, concrete line.

From below him, Sen heard Bali breathe a sigh of relief. “No monsters here,” he said, and Sen nodded. And yet, they remained vigilant as they stared forward.

…Because up ahead, as soon as the road left the territory of Al Warqaa and started curling around the length of International City’s Italian-styled buildings, the rest of the overpass stabbed into a thick sheet of mist. The fog covered every inch of land past a certain point; a ghostly white, hanging over the corals and the barren soil.

Sen could almost feel the danger lurking inside.

“Puta madre,” he cursed, clicking his tongue. There was always another goddamn obstacle. Sen reached into his pocket, and sure enough, the cigarettes he’d taken from his home were crumpled from all the scuffling. Sen pulled a stick out and sighed.

“This cigarette lights up.”

The tip of the stick blazed with a quick flash of flame, and Sen inhaled a long, gray puff. As the Volkswagen drove into the mist, Sen exhaled the smoke.

It mixed into the fog and disappeared without a trace.

Sen sighed as he sat down on the car roof, using his clawed hands and hooked soles to latch onto it without falling. He thumped down on the car roof twice. “Want a smoke, Em?” he asked.

She thumped back.

“There’s a kid inside. Don’t be a bad influence.”

“Ah. Right. Sorry, Bali.”

“Get us out of here safely, my friend, and you can do whatever you want,” the man said, before pausing. He reached a hand out of the window. “May I have one? I will save it for later—once we’re at a safer place.”

Sen blinked, before leaning over the side of the roof. He passed Bali a second, unlit cigarette. “Are you sure? I didn’t take you for a smoker,” Sen said. Bali forced a smile and shrugged, his fingers taking the stick.

“The world is ending,” he said. “I’ll take what little pleasures I can. No matter how guilty. God won’t begrudge me a little comfort.”

Sen nodded as he inhaled another puff of smoke. He stared ahead, into the mist.

Any second now, and it would be hell again. More fighting. More frantic, spine-chilling encounters that would drive any normal person insane from stress. Sen closed his eyes and felt the rushing wind brushing into his hair. He felt the mist on his skin, damp and cold. A promise of violence hung in the air. It felt oppressive, like a giant hand crushing his lungs. Sen breathed out a plume of smoke.

Bali was right.

Right now, he deserved a little comfort in the face of what would come next.