Acquiring a pickup was a non-issue, with so many lost and abandoned vehicles around. We soon had a fairly large beast of a truck, with me behind the wheel and Haley in the bed, though I kept telling her she was still small enough to fit in the seats. “I just don’t want to be confined” was all she said. I let it be. As a compromise, we opened the cab’s rear window and she poked that golden yellow wedge of a head in to talk to me.

The afternoon sun shone down on the interstate, still strewn with wreckage. It was completely empty, even now after the storm and the night had passed. I was a little surprised that we hadn’t seen any emergency crews out clearing wrecks, until we turned on the radio briefly. Our broadcast about the stadium was still playing, but now with an additional “Shelter in place” announcement from the National Guard- what was left of them, anyway. Interesting to me that the station hadn’t picked one over the other, between the conflicting messages- one saying “Go here” and the other stating in absolute terms “Do not go anywhere.”

“I guess the station doesn’t have a lot of trust in military authority at the moment, if they’re still running ours alongside,” I said.

Haley was quiet for a moment before she responded. “Do you think they should? We haven’t seen any hint of organization out of them, to date. This is the second biggest city in the state, you’d think they would set up checkpoints on the roads, or start making contact. The power’s still out, nothing’s moving- but people won’t stay put if they start starving.”

I shrugged. “I imagine every level of the bureaucracy just lost half, or more, of its people last night. It’s got me pretty worried, to be honest. There’s no way those morons aren’t treating this as some kind of invasion. I imagine we haven’t seen them yet because they’re all in the middle of taking long flights to great big mountain bunkers. Once they’re feeling safe and secure I expect we’ll see army units rolling in, so we’d better have everything we can get our hands on buttoned up tightly before that happens. Which reminds me...”

She huffed a little jet of smoke- out of the cabin, thankfully- and turned an ear towards me. “Reminds you of what?”

“Gold pieces. Half the exploits we’re going to try will rely on them. They don’t exist in this world, but if they did…”

She finished the thought. We’d had these sorts of conversations often enough, when playing games together. “A single gold piece would be worth about 100 dollars. We’d need millions of dollars worth of gold to cast something like Wish.”

I nodded. “And we’re about to head into a nearly empty downtown packed with jewelers. What do you say to a little altruistic looting, with today’s adventure?”

She grinned and I saw something sparkle in her eye. “Did you just ask a dragon if she’d like to steal a shitload of gold and gems?”

I turned back to the road and made a big show of swallowing nervously. “I suppose I did at that.” Something on the horizon caught my eye- “Hey, over there in the suburbs- what do your elf-eyes see?”

She snorted but looked for me. “Easy there, Aragorn. Looks like smoke, in columns. Fires! I see people running around, bucket brigades. Are places burning? Even the emergency services aren’t getting through?”

Apparently not. As we drove we spotted more. Who knew what had caused the fires- storm damage, or violent panic due to the “Swap” as we’d taken to calling it. But nobody was arriving to put them out, and some of them had spread. The going was slow, cluttered as the roads were with wrecks, and in the afternoon light those columns of thick black smoke on either side of the abandoned highway took on an eerie feeling, like driving across the floor of the world’s biggest Basilica.

“It really does feel like the end of the world,” I said, quietly, as struck by the moment as she was.

“I think it was,” She said, eyes still on the fires. “But it doesn’t mean the new one can’t be better.”

“Oh! That reminds me. We should put some points into your skills before we get downtown. Did you have any preferences?”

She nodded. “I know the endgame is going to depend on Spellcraft, so I’m going to keep that maxed out.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Done. Hmm… I suddenly feel like I have an undergraduate degree in a subject that has never, ever existed on this earth. Do you want to hear about detect magic works?”

I actually kind of did, but we were fast approaching whatever awaited us downtown. “Later, please. Get the physicals and necessities out of the way. Perception, Sense Motive, Fly, Heal, Diplomacy.”

“Okay, all maxed for my level. This is really weird, it feels like just remembering all these amazing things that I know I’ve never been able to do before. Still enough for 3 more, or we can split them up a bit. I’d like a Craft… all these knowledge skills are really tempting but we talked about getting them later when points are freer. Why don’t I take Appraise, split one between Bluff and Survival just in case, and spend the last on craft?”

“I think that’s fair. You won’t get a lot out of Use Magic Device, Swim, or Stealth just yet so it seems fair to ignore them. And big as you are I’m not sure you’ll ever Intimidate anybody.” She glared at me for that one.

“Just for that I’m taking Knowledge(Engineering) and don’t try to stop me.” She closed her eyes again. “Oh! That’s so weird. I just became a professional magic engineer, I have all these little habits all of a sudden but I couldn’t tell you where I got a single one of them. I really want more of these skill ups!”

I laughed, in the face of the increasingly oppressive day. “If there’s one thing on this earth I’m certain of right now- it’s that there’s more where that came from.”

---

The towers of downtown Midland City rose up to greet us as we came around one last hill. Downtown wasn’t breaking any records, but I’d always thought it was respectable. At something like 30 by 30 city blocks, it was a solid north-south rectangle of old brown brutalist concrete architecture and modern all-glass buildings. Big enough to get lost in, small enough to capture in a single panorama. It was around 2pm and we’d crossed the ‘Silent’ threshold without noticing. I turned the radio on- sure enough, nothing but static. “Okay, so there’s definitely something going on.”

Haley squinted into the glare, up at the towers. “Something new. There’s nobody in there, Sean.”

That wasn’t so unusual. “I mean, downtown’s usually ninety percent commuters anyway, so on a day like this-”

She cut me off. “No, I mean there’s nobody. Before, out in the suburbs, there were people. Here though, it’s deserted. No power, no noise, no movement. This is… eerie.”

“As usual we are in complete agreement. I’ve got a list of electronics and jewelry stores, and you are literally a one woman wrecking crew. Let’s smash and grab everything that isn’t nailed down, and get out fast. We can sort it out when we get back.”

She nodded, but didn’t take her eyes off the towers. “Okay, but you stay in the truck. There’s something out there… like I can almost see it, out of the corner of my eye, but every time I look it’s gone. Like it’s avoiding me.”

I wasn’t a huge fan of the “Stay-in-the-truck” plan but I decided not to argue with the two hundred pound dragon. Especially after we hit the first storefront. It was a Best Buy on the outskirts, before the towers proper really got started. I parked right up front and Haley went through the doors. Just- straight through them. The laminated glass didn’t even slow her down, and the rolling gates might as well have been caution tape. I supposed it was a good thing the power was off, because there was no way that every alarm in the building wasn’t going off after that.

I waited outside, head on a swivel, certain that any minute now every cop in the tri-state area was going to descend on us, but nothing happened. This was actually kind of fun- I mean, as apocalypse activities went. Who wouldn’t want to loot their pick of pristine downtown stores? I mean, this might even be- wait, what was that?

I whipped my head around. I could have sworn I saw something out of the corner of my eye, running across the street into our parking lot, but there was nobody there. Just empty streets and windblown trash. Haley was right, that was eerie. I kept staring at the place where I’d almost-but-not-quite seen something. I had just about convinced myself it was nerves when there was an enormous thump from the truck bed and, I will admit, I pee’d a little.

It was Haley. She’d set up some kind of astonishingly complex harness system of dvd racks and bags around her shoulders and used it to haul what looked like half the damn store out with her. Well we’d certainly have enough USB sticks and laptops, though I didn’t see a generator in that mess. I verified she was secure and let my heart climb down from my throat before peeling out for the next stop on our list.

The wait became increasingly tense each time. By the third stop, we were deep in that glass-and-concrete jungle. Haley was inside absolutely cleaning house on the jewelers we’d picked, and I couldn’t help but keep scanning the highrises on either side of us for any more signs of whatever it was that kept flickering in our vision.

“You’re never going to see anything, straining and stretching your head about.” said the centipede in a tiny waistcoat, riding shotgun in the passenger’s seat with me. “When was the last time you ever saw anything, going about it like that? Things as want to be observed are going to make themselves plain, and for everything else you might as well be posting a sign what says you’re looking for them.”

I waved him off. “Yeah, well look up a nature video sometime buddy, you guys always have your heads on swivels, try that ‘Universal acceptance’ stuff in the wild and see how quick you find yourself observing a bird from the inside.”

Sherriff was shouting some kind of warning at me from the back of my head, but without his language centers he was very hard to interpret. I assumed it was just nerves. Me too, buddy. Don’t worry, we’ll see anything coming long before-

“I take offense to that!” said the centipede, putting a dozen cute little arms on a dozen hip-esque folds. “Point-counterpoint is all well and good but you don’t just go threatening a bloke with visions of his own demise when he’s trying to help ya!”

“I guess it was kind of gruesome of me. I’m sorry. This guy in my head is kind of putting me on edge. What is it you’re helping me with though, exactly? Do you know what it is that’s out there?”

“Oh I reckon I know a lot o’ what’s out there. Yubyub birds and bondersnootches, you best bet your bottom dollar! But that’s beside the point. Youdon’t know what’s out there, but you feel like you gotta be watchful anyway. That’s because you already know something’s wrong, and it’s withyou. ”

I sighed.“Enough with the dime-store Lewis Carroll schtick. I’ve had 35 years of exposure to me, and I’ve got to say so far it hasn’t been particularly catching. Be more specific.”

The caterpillar pulled out a hookah from somewhere and before I could tell him not to, ripped a big hit off of it. The whole car filled up with what Ireally hoped was not some kind of opiate smoke. My vision swam a little bit. “More specific he says! What could be more specific than telling you that you. Are. The Problem? You haven’t been sanctified, laddie! Until you’ve Consumed you’re vulnerable, and you’re drawing unwanted attention! Now come on, we’re late as it is.”

For some reason that was the moment Sheriff tried to shoot him. I felt him go for the gun, resisted it. The cantankerous little bug was annoying, sure, but he was just trying to help me. No threats had appeared as far as I could see, so maybe he was telling the truth? No harm in following along, anyway. I cautiously and deliberately used my arms, noticeably un burdened with weapons, to open the door and get out.

The little Caterpillar began to lead me down the street, towards a little rabbit-sized door in the wall. I still had some questions though, and figured I might get something out of him if we talked as we walked. “So uh, what exactly is this consumption you’re talking about? I mean, I remember a few bits of the Carroll canon and I’m pretty sure I want to get it very clear here- am I the consumer or the consumed?”

The Caterpillar with the alarmingly bad Scottish accent laughed and his top half spun around to face me, twirling his little hookah pipe in the air even as his bottom legs kept trundling him forward. “Oh, finally a pertinent question! The answer, as you’ll come to understand, is both, laddie. O’ course knowing you you’re going to say something like ‘oooh that’s not specific enough’ so I’ll elaborate. Now you just step through this little door here, and head down that chute, and-”

Something was wrong. I was- forgetting something- someone? Every instinct was screaming at me not to crawl into an unlit rabbit warren leading down, down into the guts of the city and maybe something more literal. But this friendly gentleman hadn’t said or done anything to give offense, did I want to seem a coward in front of- wait, no, what was this weird Victorian decorum horseshit that kept intruding into my thoughts?

“Ugh.” I dropped onto my knees as the little caterpillar pulled desperately at my sleeves. “I don’t think- I can’t- what’s-”

Several of his friends came out of the hole to help. Soon I had a whole cavalcade of sparrows, rabbits, toads, and other woodland critters tugging me by one handhold or another on my clothing, all shouting garbage at me and each other as they tried to coordinate. Inch by inch we were making progress towards the door as I tried to overcome my dizzy spell. Sherriff was hammering the walls of his home in my mind now, and try as I might I couldn’t even let him out.

A voice cut through the din of arguing critters. “HEY!” It was Haley! I knew I’d forgotten someone! She was picking her way out of the completely smashed front of the jewelry store, several bulging bags slung over her shoulders. I felt acute embarrassment at letting her see the mess I’d become, half a block up the street and swiftly being dragged down this hole by our animal friends- instead of climbing in myself! That was twice in one day I’d nearly been incapacitated in her presence. I picked myself up hurriedly, waved sheepishly and jumped through the door before the Caterpillar closed it behind us, so seamlessly it was like it’d never been there. I’d apologize to her when all this was over, I decided.

From outside, I heard a muffled “OH WHAT THE FUCK.”

---

Some time later I had to admit, this was becoming a bit of a what-the-fuck scenario. We’d been falling in absolute darkness for what felt like a half hour, and still hadn’t hit the bottom. Something in me was still just kind of going along with it, but occasionally what felt like tree roots, or perhaps this deep in the city, gas pipes and power cables, made whooshing noises as they rolled past us in the darkness. I had no idea how fast we were falling, though I was fairly certain that it ought to have been many vertical miles, now. Preeeeetty sure the city doesn’t extend down this far.

The animals falling alongside me didn’t seem perturbed, though, so I tried to play it cool and resume our earlier conversation. I turned to where Ithought I’d heard the Caterpillar, flapping in the breeze next to me. “So you were going to explain about… Consumption, or whatever it is?”

His voice came to me in the dark. “Ah! Yes, forgive me, drifted off there for a bit. Well laddie, I’ll tell it t’you the way it was told to me. Long ago when I was just a wee lad fresh out the egg, I had this story from a passing butterfly- maybe me own mum, hah! She said it was about our creator, and it went like this-” he lapsed into a bit of a sing song rhythm, and some of the other animals falling with us took up the chant around him.

It was an interesting effect, I thought to myself. The droning chant and the speed of the earth whistling past us should have been horrifying. Something about all of this was deeply wrong . But the darkness and the breeze and the slow sonorous voices calmed me, and as we fell I found myself drifting off to sleep.

When world was young and time abstilled,

a girl did trancle and trompout her youth

with hands unstained by harnasteem’s ills,

in a manner most manxome and couth.

‘Ware!’ said her mother, by the old tuktuk byrn,

‘Of men, those most frumious of beasts!

Ware the eyes and the hands and the tongues that doth burn,

And those last you must trust the least!’

But it came to be, in gyre of time,

She was bound to a slithy old suitor,

Of a night she would stare in uffish daze,

As he came to her budoir and took her.

She lit on a plan, a desp’rate resort

of frabjous and terrible pain.

Rallied she allies within her mind’s court,

And Consumed herself once, and again.

The vorpal blade worked in its beamish way ,

The old oafkin did burble, and flee,

But the suitor, he looks for a new suit today,

So now we must help Consume thee.

---

Haley had found a pretty good haul in Bergman’s. She’d never really considered herself a vain woman, but she cherished the few pieces of jewelry she’d accumulated over her life- a pair of her grandmother’s earrings, her wedding bands, a necklace Sean had bought her one anniversary. She’d been joking before, in the truck, about draconic temptation. But maybe it wasn’t entirely a joke? She had to admit she was going to have a hard time parting with the small hoard she was accumulating. She’d even taken the time to melt through the hinges on the safe in the back, adding substantially to her total. Her newfound skill at Appraisal gave her a near-master-jeweler’s appreciation for the work. It was easily over 10,000 gp- wait, was she mentally calculating in Pathfinder units?

She muttered to herself as she kicked her way back out into the street, sacks of loot in tow. “Get it together Haley, bad enough you went along with this, next you’re going to be talking like a Ren-Faire reject and- HEY!” That last directed at Sean.

He was down the street, on his back, being dragged towards a hole in the wall by talking, costumed animals. He didn’t seem too alarmed about it though- more, confused? He saw her and stood up, gave a little wave, and then dived into the hole . Whatever had gotten into him, it didn’t seem to be affecting her. He might be calm about his situation but she was absolutely terrified. She dropped her bags and sprinted full speed at the little rabbit warren, only to watch it close up like it had never existed in the first place. She couldn’t quite cut her momentum in time- she moved a lot faster these days- and slammed into the wall hard enough to stun herself and shake a few pieces of sidewalk loose. Without meaning to she swore, loudly. “OH WHAT THE FUCK.”

She got to her feet, shook herself off, and looked around. Quick, assess. Little after 2. Jeweler’s on the other side of the street, parking garage on the other side of this wall. That hole was headed down. They couldn’t be going down too far. Were there sewers under here? The town didn’t have a subway. There were old limestone caves to the northwest, but nothing reachable from here. That tunnel might have literally been magic, the doorcertainly had been. Where could they have gone? She stood, hesitant to take action. Sean was gone, farther by the second, and she needed more information than she knew how to get.

“Now, isn’t that interesting,” said a cultured, languorous voice from behind and above her on the wall she’d so recently made acquaintance with. “Here I thought we were the only intelligent beasts around- more fool me for making assumptions, I guess. Who are you?” That last question was particularly drawn out, too much emphasis on the oo’s.

She turned. A large dog, feral looking, blue and black striped like a zebra, was lounging on the wall perpendicular to the ground. His head was cocked to one side in curiosity and he wasn’t overtly threatening, but it sure felt like a delaying tactic to her. Her eyes narrowed. “Oh yes,” she said quietly. “You’ll do.”

To date she hadn’t really made much use of her newfound strength and agility. She had all these Feats and Skills and instincts, but it turned out that socialization was a huge barrier to any kind of murderous intent, and she inevitably found herself using other methods. Until now. With aspring and flap of her wings she launched herself at her target. Acrobatics, untrained, plus Flying-

The Dog recoiled almost instantly, faster even than she could move, but she wasn’t aiming for him. Anticipating his dodge, she collided with the wall above him, bracing with her forelegs while swiping out viciously with the back two. Flyby attack, power attack- Wickedly clawed feet impacted the Dog’s ribs with substantially more force than a horse’s kick. Whatever supernatural force held him to the wall, it couldn’t overcome that, and he slammed to the ground to lie in a heap.

Quick as a whip she inverted in mid-air, another Flight check, and kicked off the wall to body slam the space on the pavement where he’d fallen. But he was faster still, and in the milliseconds it took her to cross the distance, all she caught was the fading edge of his zebra-striped hide, as he teleported out of existence. “ No!”

“I see,” said the Dog, now panting but otherwise unharmed, trotting in place in the the air above her. “You’re quite mad, aren’t you. Pity, that.”

She got up from the now-thoroughly-destroyed pavement, shook herself off. “I think I’m supposed to engage you in some kind of wordplay about my sanity now. You’ll waste my time while my husband gets farther away. But I’m not mad at all.” Without moving her body, she flipped her head back until it was pointed straight up, and shot a column of blue-white flame at the dog’s position. “I’m absolutely pissed. ”

This time as he teleported away, she was ready. Perception plus blindsense- there. He hadn’t even fully materialized in his latest pose before she was on him, jaws closing around his vulnerable throat and then holding there, fangs pressed into his skin just the barest ounce of force away from breaking skin. Luckily she didn’t really need to move her jaw to speak, anymore. Her voice came out as clear as ever, muffled only somewhat by the furry obstacle. “Try to move, and die. I want answers.”

The Dog growled, frustrated- “And if you’d stop attacking me, I’d give them to you, you idiot! I’m trying to help you.”

Oh.

Uh, Diplomacy? “Well then!” she said brightly, breaking her hold on his neck. “Why, uh, why didn’t you say so? Haaaa crap.” Critical failure.