“This is… different.” I commented, seeing the state of the arena, the elevator opening at the top of a towering wall. Ahead of us and spaced at every pillar were artillery emplacements, similar to the first ones we’d had on the wall before their update to their current behemoth standards. There were, however, many more than what we had before.

I studied the area around us, behind the wall especially. Unlike what would normally have been there, an empty lot and empty city lingered hauntingly. There was no army backing us in the inevitable moment that Wolven would breach the wall. Quite in fact, there wasn’t a single soul anywhere that I could see, aside from us.

Alice stepped out onto the wall first, “Wait, we do this part alone?”

“I guess the automated system will give firing aid,” Richard gestured to the artillery, “I don’t think that’s an equal trade.”

“At least the walls in its finished state,” Terry made a sour face, “Imagine if we had to deal with Wolven slipping around us.”

Daniel stepped forward, further first, and then froze. “Whoa, okay. That’s interesting.”

I was about to ask what he meant when suddenly a display appeared in front of my face. It gave the map of the area and collections of swaths of defensive materials and settings. We looked through it for a few seconds before I started laughing.

“It looks like we're on our own here, then.” I shook my head, “Alright, keep an eye on our shared reserves, let me know if it decreases for you guys at all.” After a few seconds I allocated a mine field further out from the wall, where we expected Wolven to approach from.

“It’ll be smaller than what we dealt with in the real world,” Terry spoke up, “Otherwise it’d be a little too imbalanced. But, everything else is pretty much the same, I think.”

‘It won’t be quite the same,’ I swallowed hard, remembering that existential dread that came with being so close to Wolven. The sentience it bore.

“You okay, Matt?” I heard Daniel ask over the comms, concern clear in his tone.

I breathed a sigh, keeping a hitch from my voice, “Yeah. No. I’m not a hundred percent but I’ll be fine.”

“Nobody expects you to get right back up and go after this thing,” Daniel hesitated, “I mean, hell, I don’t think I’d even be fighting again after… you know, after what happened.”

Hesitantly, I began, “I think that retiring would have been the normal response. It’s just…” I paused, the words in my head, ‘I don’t want to stop and find all of the things that are gone now, dead with the old me.’ “... I don’t want to stop.”

He made an acknowledging grunt, “We’re here for you, Matt.”

“All of us are.” Fran smiled, “Everyone in Gilramore owes you a lot.”

I took a deep breath then, feeling warmth in my chest, chasing away darker thoughts within me. “Thanks. Really.” I basked in the feeling for a few seconds before chuckling, “Before anything else, I want to win this.”

“Then we’d better get started.” Richard nodded, “How are we going to set up? Same as we did IRL?”

“Not quite, I have a few ideas that I’d like to try.” I brought up the menu, looking through things.

“Then we’ll go out and run recon, then.” Alice said as she made her way to the stairs on the back of the wall.

I looked up, “Actually, everyone stay on the wall.”

She paused, Richard looking equally confused, “Why?”

“Because last time we did this, and probably every time someone else has done this, we harassed Wolven a great deal before it finally came to the wall. It seems intuitive, but Wolven needed that. It craved the strife, to evolve and refine itself,” I answered, feeling a strange sensation of pride at that. A shiver rolled down my spine as I realized that such thoughts weren’t native to me.

‘Wait, what the fuck? I got rid of that? Right?’ I frowned, performing a mental sweep in my mind. When nothing showed, I helplessly moved on. “Basically,” I deflected, “It likes getting hit.”

“Hmm… so we hit it really hard all at once, instead?” Terry mused aloud, “What’s the goal, then?”

“Obviously we’re killing it,” I perplexedly glanced around, “I thought we were on the same page on that?”

Daniel laughed, “Well, I expected that, at least. Are we gonna have the hardware for it?”

“Not yet, but we will.” Once more I dove into the defensive options, a list of all the things we had, even some things that had been updated, “Leave this to me. When Wolven is here, we’ll hit it hard and cut into the core. I’m sending you all information regarding how I want to raid this thing.”

They each brought up their own displays, and I heard Richard murmur, “That was fast,” under his breath as he did so.

Even though I was busy looking through the defensive options, I couldn’t help but look at the appraising, shocked, and admittedly wary expressions that shifted through my teams faces.

“This’ll work?” Alice glared at the screen that appeared before her eyes in deep thought, “Won’t it just shrug this off?”

“I don’t think so.” Richard tapped his chin as he considered the plan, “I think that this might work. It’s a lot better than fire, at least.”

“Well, my jobs the usual,” Daniel shrugged, “Hit it really hard and keep hitting it really hard.”

“I’ll do my best. If nothing else, you can’t say that we aren’t pushing some limits here.” Fran chuckled.

“Then I’ll get started, everyone else get ready.” I ordered shortly, diving into the menu. I felt my digital arms plunge into the system, setting up the defenses rapidly.

All around us, shining silver flowed through the wall and weapons. A heard the others marvelling at the sight of a veritable ocean of silver materializing our new defensive assortment, but all that mattered in my withdrawn state was the ebb and flow of control. And, the growing yearning that I felt somewhere within my mind. Something was coming, and I felt it tugging at my consciousness.

I distracted myself, diving through every automated piece of equipment on the wall, attaching them to my will. Every gun emplacement, every bomb, even the doors. Beside me, I felt something not quite fully digital arrive, a magnetically assisted vehicle, one that wouldn’t work at all outside of this space. An illusion covered it, making it as close as possible to the real thing that I’d selected.

When I was finally finished, the wall itself bristled with weapons, cannons and heavy-bore artillery. There were a sizeable chunk that would only fire once, built to house a much larger payload with the tradeoff that a regular auto-loader wouldn’t be able to reload it.

That would be fine, though, we’d only need one volley.

Terry whistled, “Now this looks like a defensive emplacement.”

“We’ll see how this works soon enough.” I managed to keep my nerves from showing, “Wolven is coming.”

A look of worry crossed his face briefly as he glanced at me, but he quickly schooled his features back to normal. There was an unspoken tenseness to the air that wasn’t strictly because of Wolven. As much as I wanted to claim it wasn’t because of me, I knew that I would be wrong. They were worried about me, and for good reason. Even if they didn’t know it, I felt that there was still something left of Wolven, that I just couldn’t seem to find. How bad that was, I wasn’t sure, but I knew that this had to be done. To prove once and for all that Wolven would never hold dominion over me.

A whisper in the back of my mind began to grow as our sensors notified us of Wolvens approach.

Ordinarily it would take a few hours for it to get here, but due to the system registering that our defenses were complete and that we weren’t moving forward, it pushed the timetable up somewhat.

“Hold your fire until it reaches the designated zone,” I called out, moving over and sitting on a hoverbike, a disposable unit that was designed to do one job.

The others acknowledged, even as the forest hundreds of meters away seemed to explode from motion. The horde of wolves was far larger than what it had been when it finally made it to the wall in reality. But, they were weaker, far less hardy and durable than the formations that Wolven had been able to create.

“Okay, it’s looking better in a way, but that’s a lot of fuckin’ wolves.” Richard cringed, getting his launchers ready, having already loaded several mortars that were linked to my automated switches.

I didn’t respond, focused on keeping tabs on the situation. The wolves spilled forth, uninhibited as they surged to the wall like a tidal wave. Last time, Wolven ran into mines every step of the way. It layered its own version of biosteel beneath its body, becoming all but impermeable to attacks from below. Above, it had taken punishment for hours from artillery and attacks and had formed a dense shell with which to protect itself even more, and eventually in use to attack.

This time, it would have neither.

As it entered the forty meter range, the bulkiest part of its body crossed over my greeting gift one-hundred meters from the wall. I let it pass the location.

“Uh, Matt? The big parts getting away.” Daniel murmured through the comms, a bit of nervousness leaking into his voice.

“That’s not where the body is.” I grinned malevolently, “It’s behind it.”

As the mass moved, I waited. This was a Wolven who hadn’t experienced artillery fire, one that was relying on subterfuge rather than brute strength.

I sent the electric pulse out, and all at once the world answered the snarling, howling horror before us with its own deafening roar.

Every artillery piece fired at once, and I felt the wall shift ever so slightly under the sudden barrage. The others fired at the same time as I’d sent the command, and I was in the air on the hoverbike in the same instant.

The ground beneath Wolven, just behind the bulky mass, erupted in a brilliant ball of fire and smoke. The entire mass scrambled, trying to recoil to protect the main body when the weapons fire cut into a circle around it, predominantly hitting the thicker mass.

This wasn’t going to be a sustained battle, Wolven had excelled at that. Instead, we would make this a smash and grab, a raid where the door would be smashed in and eveyrthign that was Wolven would be claimed and devoure-- ‘God fucking damnit.’ I shook the thoughts out of my head.

Definitely not gone.

‘It iS nOt US!’ I felt the pulse in my mind like a wriggle behind my eyes. The first artillery shells tore through the tentacles in waves. My mind writhed like a hive of worms.

The mortars, full of sticky, rapidly solidifying acids hit the masses of wolves like rain droplets all at once, drenching them. It was an abomination that didn’t understand art, how to weave, it was unlearned.

It would never learn.

We could teach it.

It would die here before it could-

-kill it? Yes. It is unworthy.

“Fuck off!” I shouted aloud and in my mind, diving with the hoverbike towards the central mass. The rest of my bombs were strapped to the bike itself, and a small pack on my back would make or break my plan. Luckily, I had ample experience with surviving suicide runs.

I let the bike accelerate before I jumped, the pack on my back unfurling and exploding with pressure released from it. The small parachute expanded rapidly, and my descent into the twitching mass suddenly slowed. If I weren’t in power armor and was a normal person, this would have potentially injured me just from whiplash alone.

As it stood, the fabric began to tear from the forces involved. But that was fine, I didn’t need much momentum stolen.

The bike hit the mass, exploding brilliantly. Heat billowed upwards, fire covering my body and consuming my parachute. I switched to my blades, cutting myself free and diving the rest of the way.

Screaming filled my ears, whether my own or Wolven’s I couldn’t tell. The smoke obscured my regular vision, my thermals completely useless, even sound was hardly helpful here. And yet, I could rely on experience to know where an enemy like this would be, where it would move. Having failed to bring the mass of its body to it, Wolven would seek the reverse. It would bring itself to the densest part.

I slice as I fell, carving through a few wolves that were scarcely in any shape at all, melting with the combination of acid and shattering force.

Momentum was stolen with my rapid, powerful swings, and as I cut, I could hear the sizzling as I hit a thick tentacle, cutting halfway through it and nearly halting. It spasmed under me as I straddled it, twisting and gouging the blade the rest of the way through. I fell with the severed limb, its weight carrying me the rest of the way through the horde here.

It was a mess in here, a tangle of limbs going in every direction, but they were thinned considerably. Chunks of the body itself were seeping through the twining limbs, the explosions and heat more than enough to throw it all into disarray. There was no coordination, agony rolled through the mess, especially the damage to the more sensitive arms within, the tentacles that united the whole. I focused, the smoke thinning here as I searched for my target during the bumpy free-fall.

We made eye contact, the host body of Wolven staring at me, emptily.

I had expected to feel something, seeing it up close once more. Rage, anguish, perhaps I would have felt dread. That I would somehow overcome it and kill this creature.

But what I felt instead was an empty disappointment.

‘This is not Wolven.’ I moved automatically, my legs pushing hard off of the tentacle, propelling me forward. My arms moved, swords alive with heat and carving through the chaff.

‘It is not Us.’ I felt the voice in the back of my head mirror my disdain, the empty husk before me - Us! - going through the motions to defend itself. It was a recording, nothing more.

And as I dodged raking claws that moved faster than they ought to have been able, I felt only a grim determination. I cut through its waist with my blades, and I felt what had been an underlying tension in the mass around me stutter. I slice off its hands, then moved my way up its arms, each swing it threw at me parried in brutal, disarming fashion.

‘Bad jokes,’ The voice snickered ‘Understanding, yes. It is good.’

‘Please shut the fuck up right now.’ I growled, ‘Why can’t you just stay dead?’

‘But… Us!’ It responded impetuously.

‘Oh I - Ah, I don’t have time for this right now!’ I caught the body trying to reattach its waist. “Please, at least one of you die!” I rolled my eyes, dashing forward across the twitching floor.

It screeched, ear-shreddingly loud, for just a moment before I cut through its head, and worked to fully dismember it. It was grisly work, but I wanted to be sure that there would be nothing left.

When it was finally over, I took a moment to breath deeply, savoring at least the feeling of killing Wolven’s body once more.

An almost hurt sensation rolled through my mind.

‘And why did you decide to rear your ugly head up now, of all times!?’ I turned my attention inwards, trying to divine where the hell it was coming from.

‘The Us sensed the other! Unity in conflict against the other!’ It cheered and called, and I couldn’t help but shake my head vigorously.

Worst of all, I couldn’t figure out where the hell it was coming from. I tuned it out as it began to rant about how it - Us! - were the best, and that the other should have run as far as it could.

This was just too bizarre to think about right now…

“Matt! You in there?” I heard someone shout, “We just got the notification! We smashed the record!”

I paused, looking to the notice of completion for the Gauntlet run. A sense of satisfaction, in spite of everything, trilled through me at that. We were still Team Alpha.

“Yeah! Can you get this worthless lump of meat-sacks off of my head, please? I’d prefer not to cut through it. Digital guts are still gross.” I chuckled, doing my best to not think about the mutated abomination in my head-room.

“I second that!” Alice called cheerfully, “You guys can play in the blood, I’m good up here!”

“Same, actually.” Richard’s flat voice stated volumes of how he felt about the topic, the still twitching mass of parts rapidly decomposing.

Above me I listened to Daniel and Terry griping about how they had to get their hands dirty every time, and couldn’t help but smile.

“Thanks guys. Whatever this was, I at least feel like something’s settled.” I spoke, not mentioning what had happened within my own head.

The noise above me stopped before I heard Daniel chuckle, “Hell, man, what are friends for at the end of the world?”