The next floor felt like the correct one. Even if the distance was still wonky, the angle felt about right.

Alice carefully checked the floor from the stairwell. It was more of the same, mostly, if a bit more intact than usual. A short corridor led from the stairwell past six doors, all on the right, before terminating at the two elevators she had spotted downstairs. One of the elevator doors were either stuck open or just missing, revealing an open shaft behind them.

Alice made a mental note of it in case a quick vertical escape was necessary. She was almost tempted to pre-attach some silk there, like a kind of escape rope, but in the end couldn’t quite figure out how she would feed out a silk cord without her body weight on the other end.

All the apartment doors were whole, though several were standing open. Based on her spidey sense, the Demon’s crew were inside one of those apartments… or possibly several hundred metres on the other side of the apartments, out in the open air. It was a little hard to tell.

She headed towards one of the open doors that seemed in the right place, moving carefully and as quietly as she could. If possible, she wanted to scope things out to determine what the best approach was before they even knew she was there.

Through the doorway, she could see the tiny apartment. A short entry hall had three doorways, presumably leading to its other rooms.

Carefully, she tiptoed through, peeking into each room before moving on. The first was a bathroom, but the toilet appeared to have been broken in half and the sink was filled with some kind of black, tarry substance. The second was a guest bedroom with the frame of a single bed pressed into the corner. The last one at the far end was the master bedroom and held a larger, albeit collapsed bed.

None of the rooms showed any sign of having been disturbed.

Guess this was the wrong apartment?

“Yeah, looks like it” Alice mumbled as she walked back through the entry hall and headed towards the neighbouring flat.

From the direction she could tell that the people she was looking for were somewhere in between the two apartments. If the room they were in wasn’t accessible from this side, it was probably one of the other apartment’s rooms.

Her path was blocked, however. A tug at the handle of the front door of the neighbouring apartment revealed that it was locked.

“Shit, they locked us out” she growled, looking around for something she could use to break it open.

Hold on. Go back to the previous apartment before we do anything drastic.

“Why?” she asked.

Something about it is bugging me.

Alice raised an eyebrow but did as Rita asked.

“Now what?” she asked from the middle of the entryway.

This is a two-bedroom apartment, right? Two bedrooms, one bathroom. Where’s the kitchen?

“Maybe it doesn’t have one?” Alice replied, casually glancing around.

Who designs an apartment with an extra bedroom but doesn’t bother putting in a kitchen? It makes no sense. No living area either.

“Maybe the kitchen was in one of the bedrooms, but decayed away completely?” Alice tried.

Leaving behind a carpet? Right. Either the architect was a complete moron or… check that wall.

“Which one? This one?”

Yeah, the one in the direction of our friends.

Alice stepped over to the wall and carefully began running her hands along the plaster.

Unbeknownst to her, five pairs of eyes were following her every move.

Gora just managed to catch a brief glimpse of several spider legs through the open doorway of their room as she came out of her tent before they disappeared down the hallway. By the time she and Samual had woken everyone up, however, the creature had come back.

It stood right outside the Campsite, casually looking around. Yet somehow, it hadn’t seen them.

“Yes. That’s definitely Nemesis” Gora whispered through grit teeth.

The half-woman, half-spider was standing not three metres from her. If she extended her sword arm the tip of her blade could almost touch it… her.

Gora hated to admit it, but Ava was right. It was definitely a woman. Even the milky white legs with their plethora of mismatched, dirty socks seemed somehow on the delicate side. She wore a ragged shirt with several holes, as well as a torn skirt covering the join between her torso and thorax.

Everything about her was filthy, though. Her clothes were stained with blood and other fluids, her hair was matted and tangled, and her skin was covered in grime.

If her nose hadn’t become accustomed to the stench of body odour and decay, Gora was sure that the creature would have stunk to high heaven. As it was, none of them were the freshest. You stopped noticing the smell of sweat about two days into a trip like this.

“Bob, second position” Zaxier whispered after scrambling up Bob’s leg.

The young man immediately began moving his hands, forming arcane symbols as Zaxier had taught him.

Gora’s big, meaty hand closed over his, stopping him mid-sign. He and Zaxier both looked up at her in confusion.

“What are you doing?” Zaxier whispered. “You said that if we see this creature again, we were to focus all of our efforts on her to the exclusion of all other considerations!”

“Yes, but not here!” she hissed back. “This is a Campsite!”

“So?” Ava whispered back from the other side, the dark orb that held her Anima in her hands. She wasn’t wearing her normal heavy, dark robe but was clothed in nothing but a light, white shift that only came down to her knees. She’d been having a nap in her tent when Gora had woken her up and, in her rush, hadn’t dressed again. It looked rather odd.

“So, you can’t attack anything from a Campsite” she said in a low voice, pitched just loud enough so that all four of the others could hear. “If you do, the fire dies and the Campsite with it. It doesn’t come back for months. If the Guild finds out we broke a Campsite, they’ll drown us in fines and penalties.”

“Then what do we do?” Samual hissed back.

“I… I don’t know! Hope it leaves!”

They all tensed when Nemesis suddenly began talking in that incomprehensible language of hers.

“What is she saying?” Bob asked, speaking at a normal volume and making everyone wince.

“How should I know?” Gora hissed back. “I don’t speak Monster. Now be quiet!”

“I think she’s talking to herself” Ava interjected. “Look, I don’t think she even knows we’re here.”

Nemesis had started running her hands along the wall that their doorway was in. They could see her legs sticking out as she moved around.

“Are you sure about that?” Gora whispered. “She seems to be looking for something. Three guesses what that is.”

“Uh… nails in the wall?” Bob guessed.

Gora glared at him.

“No? Aww, shucks, then I don’t know. You take the other two guesses, Mr. Zaxier, Sir.”

From his perch on Bob’s shoulder, Zaxier had the perfect position to smack the young man on the back of the head with a paw.

“She’s looking for the Campsite, isn’t she? Look, for whatever reason she can’t see the doorway” Ava guessed once Bob had fallen silent under four hostile glares.

Nemesis reached the doorway, but instead of finding the edge of it, she stretched up to run her hands over the section of wall above the doorframe before continuing on the other side as if nothing had happened.

“Indeed. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say the Campsite is… hidden from her somehow” Zaxier suggested. “Fascinating. This reminds me of the methods employed by fey magic. They hide not by turning invisible, but by convincing your own mind that they do not exist.”

What bothered Gora was how the damn thing had tracked them this far. It hadn’t been on the floor when they’d entered the Campsite, that was for sure. Yet here it was, searching the exact wall that held the doorway.

Well, not that it mattered. She was going to take care of this problem once and for all.

“It doesn’t look like it can find us, so eventually it will get bored. As soon as it does and it turns around again, I am going out there” Gora said. “The moment she turns her back I’m going to kill her and we can all rest easier.”

“Samual, I want you to follow behind me. Keep your eyes open for any traps this thing has set and back me up if anything goes wrong.”

He nodded.

“Ava, Zaxier, if I don’t manage to down it quickly, and there is space, come outside and start raining hell on it. Make sure you don’t summon any Anima or throw any fireballs until you are fully outside, okay?”

“Got it” Ava replied, while Zaxier dipped his head in acknowledgement.

Gora hefted her sword onto her shoulder. “Today, we make this thing dead, once and for all.”

“This is stupid. We’ve checked the entire wall” Alice complained, throwing her hands up in the air. “There’s nothing here.”

Maybe we just missed it?

“Missed what? A secret door? Do architects often design secret doors in modern apartment blocks?”

No, but… maybe this was added later? Like, modified, or something?

“Look, Rita, the simplest solution is that they went in through the other apartment and locked the door behind them. That’s what I would have done” Alice stated as she started heading back to the other apartment.

I… I know but… it just doesn’t make any sense. Okay, wait. Can I take a look?

Alice stopped. “You’re looking right now. Look as much as you want.”

I meant… can I have our body for a bit? Wow, now that’s a weird sentence to have to say.

“Rita, this is a waste of time. Can we please just go check out the other apartment?” she asked. “I’m sure I can find a piece of metal to smash that lock with.”

Alice, you said that if I ever wanted you to hand over control, I only had to ask.

Alice sighed and rolled her eyes. It was true. She had said that. Oh well, not like it could do any harm.

“Sure. Hold tight while I transfer you. Your call is important to us” she said, chuckling.

Thank you.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she leaned back against the wall.

Except there was no wall.

Her back bounced off the frame of the doorway and she sprawled into the room and onto the floor before she could recover her balance.

Shocked, Alice looked up to see what the hell had just happened. Her eyes fell on the Demon, standing right in front of her with her massive, jagged sword held high.

Rage coursed through her veins and her vision turned red.