Tom forgot that Carol had eyes, ears, and a brain. She heard what he heard, and saw what he saw.

The Outsider was slamming the belt of ammo into place and had engaged the first round before Tom finished speaking.

The Outsider cursed, something unnatural and guttural that felt like cold talons sliding down the back of his neck. Then she took aim at the thickest knot of knights, standing idly around a barrel like co-workers chatting around the water cooler in a cubicle-packed office setting.

She pulled the trigger.

TUN TUN TUN TUN TUN

The bullets started flying. Each individual shot felt like someone had clapped him around the ears. Each shot was only about half a second away from another shot, a rapid concussive pace that was sure to cause permanent hearing loss.

The dozen or so relaxing knights were mowed down before they even knew something was wrong. Red blooms erupted out of them and they went down, lying motionless on the ground, devastated by even the most glancing blows.

With a feral smile, Carol swung the gun around, panning it across the thickest concentrations of knights to devastating effect.

A knight a bit quicker than his teammates swung both his arms up with a strained yell that Tom couldn’t hear through the gunfire. A moment later, a wall of solid stone erupted in front of him, six inches of dense silicate.

The machine gun punched through it with ease.

The last Tom saw of the man was his ankle, lying bloodied on the ground, peeking out from behind the devastated cover. They were starting to respond, now. Some were diving for cover fruitlessly, while others were shouting and pointing up at him and Carol, raising their arms to bring their own magic to bear.

Tom glanced down at the rifle in his hand and started.

Oh, right. He’d been watching like a slack-jawed idiot.

He raised the gun to his shoulder and peered down the scope, the brilliant green dot easily centering on a disheveled warrior trying to run into the woods to the east.

Tom pulled the trigger.

Pop.

Just like Jacob had said, the AR-15 kicked softly back against his shoulder, little more than a friendly shoulder pat. The sight barely twitched. A quarter second later, the knight collapsed.

Tom stepped down hard on the nausea squirming in his guts, put the dot on another straggler and pulled the trigger. The bump stock rattled off another two rounds before Tom got control of it, but all three of them hit the same knight, who slumped off of his horse.

He had to take care of the stragglers while Carol took care of the majority. That was the best use of his time.

The knights formed ranks behind three individuals who seemed capable of stopping the bullets: the old, long-bearded fellow, the water lady, and someone Tom didn’t recognize.

The woman formed a shield of impossibly hard ice, while the old man made a plane of shimmering force that redirected the bullets back at Tom and Carol.

The one Tom didn’t recognize looked like a grizzled veteran who seemed to have formed a paper-thin shield in midair composed of his own blood, which came from a massive rent in his upper arm. Somehow, the translucent film was able to shrug off bullets with ease.

Most of the remaining knights assembled behind these three shields, marching toward the two of them.

Tom resisted the urge to flinch as a bullet caught the edge of the old man’s shield and reversed, whizzing past his ear.

He felt a clawed hand on his shoulder.

“Go that way!” Carol shouted, giving him a shove to the east while she broke west, following the edge of the clearing.

Tom staggered for a moment before he realized what the Outsider was trying to accomplish. His legs felt weak, his breathing labored, his mouth dry, but he managed to keep moving, sprinting along the edge of the forest.

Almost as if they’d practiced the maneuver, the rightmost bloodshield followed Tom’s angle, while the ice and force shields followed the greater threat.

Tom’s lungs were burning, and he tasted blood when he got another opportunity to shoot.

Mr. Fluffybottom darted out of the middle of the forest and snagged the blood-knight’s ankle as he passed by at seventy miles an hour, dragging the shield-maker—and his shield—a good twenty feet out of formation before he simply let go and continued running.

Tom stopped, leveled the gun at the assembled knights and pulled the trigger, allowing the bump stock to go full auto….at the old man and the ice-woman, whose backs were to him.

Pop pop pop pop.

The sound of the assault rifle was nothing compared to Carol’s beast of a machine gun, but it got the job done. Tom caught the ice woman in the back and she went down in a heap, then he winged the old man in the side.

The old man reacted instantly, disappearing between one bullet and the next.

Tom spotted a shadow moving on the ground alongside his own, and glanced dumbly over his shoulder.

The white-haired old man was a lot more imposing up close, his sword raised in fury. The leader of the knights swung down at Tom faster than he could react.

Well, I guess I’m dying here.

A manifold shield of invisible force erupted between Tom and the blade, catching it mid-swing. Forgot about that.

Tom’s relief was short-lived as the crackling energy in the sword began to cut through his shields like warm butter. It was a gold shield, and gold was soft.

I guess that explains why they felt the need to inscribe multiple ‘shield’ layers on the crypt. I wonder if that takes more soul pulses than a single shield… I should probably dodge.

Tom kicked out and pushed the two of them apart, the sword sinking into the soft Illinois earth instead of the soft Illinois boy. Suzie went flying off his shoulder and latched onto the side of a tree, immediately taking the shape and coloration of a convincing burl.

Tom hauled up on the rifle and brought it to bear on the old man, squeezing the trigger. Three shots rattled off before Tom’s brain realized there was no one there anymore.

Just for the hell of it, Tom rolled to the side.

A blade slammed down into the ground where he’d been lying, from above him. This time it was attached to a disembodied hand.

That’s fucking scary.

Tom desperately scanned the surroundings for his white-bearded assailant.

Another blade emerged from above his shoulder, taxing the shield crypt further before he managed to dodge.

Tom managed to roll out of the way of another. Thankfully, people were dying left and right, so the shield crypt could probably do this all day…but Tom still had to dodge.

At the rate he was going, Tom was going to run out of breath and get stabbed long before the time the shield crypt stopped blunting the force of the old man’s attacks.

Gotta change the rules of engagement. Tom sidestepped wildly out of the way of a swing aiming for his midsection. The old man had taken to aiming for Tom’s center of mass because it took the most effort to move out of the way, meaning he ran out of breath faster.

Tom took a gamble.

He collapsed to his knees, panting desperately. The rifle fell to the ground in front of him.

A blade emerged from behind his shoulder again, wielded by an iron-gauntleted hand.

Tom absolutely hated using the same crypt that sent The Asshole on his crazy power-trip, but...

He triggered the ghostwalk crypt, his entire body going cold, like he’d been dunked into a swimming pool.

The blade swung through his back, emerging out the front, still held by that gauntlet.

Tom drew the pink lady-pistol and shot the hand three times. When he’d been dodging there was never any time to aim at something as small as a hand before it disappeared, but holding still had given him plenty of it.

“AAGH!” The cry emerged from behind a massive oak to Tom’s left. Tom dashed towards it, snatching his rifle out of the dirt as he ran.

Tom’s heart was pounding with an indescribable joy that rivaled losing his virginity as he cleared the tree and leveled the gun at the man who’d killed his grandparents and stolen his daughter.

The old man was kneeling, clutching his bleeding hand. The sword was on the ground in front of him, his immaculate armor was dented and stained with blood, and a thin rivulet of blood streamed from a small hole in his side.

One of Tom’s bullets.

For an instant, they locked eyes.

Tom had a lot of cool things he wanted to say, but they all fought with each other for airtime, getting caught in his throat.

Best to just pull the trigger.

Tom did so.

Pop pop pop!

The old man vanished, the bullets perforating the ground beneath him.

“NO!”

Fuck that. He’s still gotta step through the portal.

A muscle in Tom’s back twinged as he twisted and lunged away, turning toward the center of the camp.

There!

Right in the middle, in front of the biggest portal, was the old man’s ostentatious armor, stepping forward into the glowing circle.

Tom snapped the gun up and centered the green dot on the old man’s vanishing back, sending some presents through the portal after him.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!

Tom filled the center of the shimmering blue circle with bullets until the gun clicked empty. He hadn’t brought any extra magazines, so he tossed the assault rifle aside.

Suzie climbed up to his shoulder as Tom took a moment to survey the scene of sheer carnage. Knights and civilians were sprawled everywhere in various states of death and injury. The remaining knights were routed, running for the portals as fast as they could while Carol harried them from behind.

She’d spent her machine gun and was now wielding a discarded war hammer to great effect, deliberately kneecapping people as quickly as possible, saving them for later like a spider might save their meal.

Tom suppressed a shudder as he spotted a flickering movement to his right. In front of his eyes, the biggest portal began to flicker and warp, gradually rippling in place like water. Like it was unstable.

Above the screaming, one of the soldiers shouted something, pointing at the biggest portal. Suddenly everyone redoubled their mad rush to get through the portal, knocking aside civilians, children and fellow knights in their desperation.

The portals are going out! Tom realized, his heart seizing in his chest.

On the other side of those glowing circles was his daughter.

Tom’s gaze locked onto the side-portal that their wagon had gone through.

That’s the one.

It was nearly on the opposite end of the camp from Tom, maybe a football field and a half, and there were literally hundreds of desperate enemies between him and the portal.

Tom’s gaze fell upon Jacob’s truck. The rust-bucket was only twenty feet away, emptied of its cargo. Presumably, they hadn’t turned it on the entire time.

Tom looked at the distant portal. Then back to the truck, then back to the portal, a growing sense of certainty taking shape inside of him. It’s time to do something stupid.

Tom broke into a sprint and leapt for the truck’s cab, triggering ghostwalk.

He and Suzie slipped through the door and landed on the seat. Tom reached up and lowered the visor, dropping Jacob’s keys into his palm.

A second later, the well-maintained engine roared to life.

Tom put the truck in gear and slammed on the gas.

The truck lunged forward, sending up a spray of loose dirt behind him.

The biggest portal in the center flickered, then winked out.

Like a chain reaction, the portals beside it began to unravel, flickering and wobbling in place.

Tom drove over a tent, through a campfire and over several dead folk. He didn’t look at the screaming that trailed behind him like the wake of a boat.

He didn’t look away when a tree stump nearly bowled the entire truck over, sending his head slamming into the ceiling.

He only had eyes for Ellie’s portal.

The second set of portals winked out, the instability spreading to the next ones in line.

A root jerked the steering wheel out of his hand, and Tom course-corrected, teeth bared and knuckles white. The entire truck rattled wildly around him as it found traction again and leapt forward, continuing to accelerate despite the poor terrain.

There, in front of Ellie’s portal, was the veteran with the blood magic. The man stopped and turned toward Tom, his arms raised.

Several dozen hardened drops of blood sheared through the truck’s engine and its cab, tearing the machine’s innards apart like shrapnel.

Several drops spattered against Tom’s chest, their power diminished by the shield crypt.

The engine died, but Tom was already going fifty miles an hour.

He hit a buried stump square on, launching the entire truck four feet in the air.

The veteran’s eyes widened as the flying truck caught him across the chest, folding him violently over the truck’s hood, blood jetting out of his mouth.

The portal next to Ellie’s winked out of existence.

Ellie’s portal wobbled.

The two of them sailed through the rippling blue surface.

***The Ra-Vith Desert, Palezz continent***

A blue sheen of light flickered in the sky for an instant before it dislodged a strange rusted wagon seemingly made entirely of valuable steel. There was a Crimson Knight plastered across the front of it, his fingers scraping against the rusted surface of the strange contraption.

The strange machine drew a fatal arc through the air, falling thirty feet as its front tilted down, until it was pointing straight down, the crimson knight directly underneath it.

CRASH!

In the middle of the lonely desert, there was an unnaturally loud sound as the iron wagon slammed into the hard-packed dirt, crushing the crimson knight beneath it, burying him in the earth.

A lizard skittered off its sunning rock, but other than that, nothing happened.

Several minutes went by before a panel in the iron contraption swung open, revealing a tall, slender human, his nose bleeding profusely. The young man collapsed onto the earth, gasping wildly as a toad stepped unsteadily out beside him, quickly retreating back to the relative cool of the iron wagon.

***Tom Graves***

Tom opened his eyes, and saw nothing but airbag. His nose hurt like hell, and his head was swimming. He felt like Tyson had punched him in the face.

Did I lose time? Tom thought, trying to push the slowly deflating bag out of his face. Ellie! Where’s Ellie!? Tom’s struggles gained an edge of desperation as he shoved the airbag aside and his fingers found the door handle, pulling it open.

The door ripped itself out of his hand as it swung open. Tom had a fraction of a second to realize that gravity was all wrong before he tumbled out of the truck, off the door, and straight onto a frying pan.

Tom gasped in pain as his side was scalded. He scrambled back onto the door, retreating into the shade.

What the hell? Tom scanned the endless expanse of cracked, lifeless earth. He struggled to his feet and stepped out into the glaring sun, Suzie hopping onto his shoulder. He glanced up at the sun, squinting. It was a bit…redder than he remembered.

Tom turned his gaze back toward Jacob’s truck, standing on its grille like a giant had decided to play a practical joke on him.

Sticking out from under the truck’s buried front end were a pair of metal sabatons.

Tom took a breath, processing.

“Suzie, I have a feeling we’re not in Illinois anymore.”