AEGIS, Moon, Tower, and I sat quietly in the church amidst the ruined bodies of the innocent golems we'd killed before. Jack was still finding Karu below, but the relics were destroyed and the barrier should be down.

I was sitting on a pew with my arm wrapped around AEGIS, who seemed more guilty about freaking out than actually stressed at this point, but when we first surfaced, she was all tears and screaming, apologizing over and over and babbling about how she'd messed up.

Through tears and her incoherent sentences, I slowly formed an image of what had happened. In her efforts to become more human, she'd written it into Rua to give her a sense of constant discomfort while she was behaving in any way which could be considered superhuman, so that she would only use those abilities when she had to. I sympathized, having a bit of a love/hate relationship with my own powers.

But being down there, in the dark, alone, with the sense of unease creeping up on her constantly had apparently reminded her too much of being trapped in the box. She couldn't turn off her night vision to get rid of the discomfort without being dropped in total blackness, and had started to freak out.

"I'm sorry," she whispered again and let out a heavy sigh. "Scared of the dark. What a joke."

I just held her and felt guilty myself. I'd seen the reluctance to my plan written plainly on her face, but she didn't say anything and so neither did I. I was so accustomed to running into problems from Tem or Saga or myself even, that I never even stopped to consider why AEGIS might have issues.

So in essence, I was a shit leader and a shit friend.

Karu and Jack popped out of nowhere in front of us. She took a second to take in the scene and then glowered at us. "Is this really an appropriate situation for cuddling?"

AEGIS flinched and closed her eyes, which was clearly not what Karu was expecting.

"She had a bit of a traumatic event. Can you chill?" I asked.

To her credit, Karu stepped off immediately. She walked back to the middle of the church, as though to stretch her legs, and then came back to me, casual as anything.

"It has been several hours. I believe now may be an opportune moment to take a rest and eat."

"Good idea," I said. "Jack, if you could distribute rations?"

AEGIS and Karu had a really weird relationship, and I was sure the fault of that lay in me somewhere. Snapping at each other and sniping wherever they could, but at the same time, very considerate and aware of each other's legitimate issues and leaving them the hell alone. Karu was utterly transparent in proposing we break for lunch at the very moment AEGIS needed a few minutes to put herself back together, just like AEGIS had moved quickly and quietly to make as little a scene as possible of Karu's injuries on her arms.

I had to wonder, if I weren't in the picture, if they'd be great friends.

I ate with one hand, eating a tube of nutrient paste, while I held AEGIS with the other, her body warm against me and her head heavy on my shoulder.

"How are you doing?" I asked after several minutes of silence.

"Feeling stupid and crummy and dumb."

"Bad things happen, you can't beat yourself up over it."

She sat back, pulling herself off of me and looked at me incredulously. "You are such a hypocrite."

"What? I mean, I know some of this was your fault, but I don't think you really can carry the blame for it."

"Athan, if it was you who freaked out down there, you'd never let yourself live it down."

"That's totally untrue."

"Oh yeah? Hey, do you remember when you were in Saga's mine and she was dreaming and giving you all those visions and you blew yourself dead on accident?"

"...yeah," I said, uncomfortable already.

"And how do you feel about that whole incident?"

"..."

"Stupid, crummy, and dumb?"

"I wish your memory wasn't so encyclopaedic."

"And I wish you weren't such a hypocrite, or so stubborn, or such an ass, but I like you anyway."

"Yeah," I said, feeling plenty like crap now. But at least AEGIS seemed in better spirits.

It might seem like AEGIS just needed a punching bag to feel better, but I think it was just beating me in an argument which did it for her. At least, I hoped so, and that was supported by her little giggling apology afterwards.

"Well," she began again, "with the relics down, there are still plenty of defenses between us and God-King Vytar, but nothing of the magical barrier variety. A castle and everything you'd expect from one. Tons of guards, a court mage, a circle of elite knights, an adopted daughter who is the last of an lost mystical race, that kind of stuff."

"Lovely. And he himself is no slouch, I imagine?"

"In game, yeah. Warps reality to his will, summons legions from nothingness, that kind of stuff. But out here, he's just a guy, just an Exhuman, and we know what his powers are. Put a bullet in him and physics handles the rest."

"Funny, I think that Exhuman has already warped reality to his will and summoned plenty of legions."

"Huh, when you put it that way I guess he has."

"Hey," I said having a thought. "You're an enormous nerd--"

"I'd like to stop you right there and let you know that your question already sucks."

"Sure. But you are. But I wanted to ask you, why do you think the Exhuman did all this?"

"Made this whole world, you mean?"

"Yeah. I mean, he's not out here enjoying it, is he? He's sitting on his throne lording over it all. He could have done that over a city block. Why make all these golems and buildings and shit he's never even going to see?"

"I don't know, Athan. I mean, for starters, Exhumans aren't exactly renowned for their mental stability are they? Obviously there are some exceptions," she said significantly, glancing at the others, "but in general, Exhumans are dangerous and shouldn't be allowed to run around outside without an adult if you know what I mean."

"So he made this all because she was crazy."

"Love that you assume the female pronoun the second we start speculating the Exhuman is crazy. Says a lot about you, Athan."

I rolled my eyes. "But that's your theory?"

"No," she paused and stroked one of her twintails idly. "I kind of doubt this, but have you ever browsed or read or seen fanart or fanfics or anything like that for a popular show or game?"

I shook my head.

"Yeah, figured not. Well, it's really popular, and I think the reason why is people spend a lot of time getting to know these worlds and the people in them, and then when the game ends, or the movie rolls credits or you read the last page, it's all over." She pushed her thin glasses up her nose with a finger. "Just from a psychology perspective, people feel sad, depressed, abandoned. If you spend a hundred hours reading a book and then it's gone, your brain goes 'wtf', because it assumed if you spent all this time on this thing, it must be important, must be useful to you in life somehow. Our instincts say I should be able to take these things I learned and forage better or find a mate or whatever. Instead, usually, we just put the book down and never see it again."

"Wow, that's really sad when you put it like that. I'd never thought of characters as being...disposed of, I guess."

"I mean, of course the characters don't care, but our brains do. So that's where fanworks come in. I think they're a form of denial, really. You don't want it to end, so you add your own few words or a drawn scene or a video clip to the story and it grows just a tiny bit more. And then there's a community around it, and you can accept their offerings, and it becomes this living, organic thing which keeps on as long as people are willing to keep pouring themselves into it."

"That's neat," I smiled. "People are cool sometimes." I glanced around and noticed that while most of the team was absorbed in their own interests, Karu was watching us unabashedly, and Moon had decided to set up nearby, a book in hand and had an oddly focused look on her face. I noticed her eyes weren't moving at all on the page.

"So my opinion for why this kingdom exists is it's the ultimate fanwork. This Exhuman, whoever he is, he loved this place and wasn't ready for it to ever end, so he made it real. I had that thought when I saw the golems at first, it made no sense for them to be independent compared to controlling all of them directly, but that's only if you're trying to be powerful and use your powers to their fullest."

She ran a hand through her hair and examined one of the cable ends. "Not that you exactly get a choice how your powers work, but from what I got from Lia, it's based on how you think. So I can take this data and draw some assumptions about the Exhuman themselves, so there's no way this Exhuman was just interested in fighting and growing strong. But if his or her goal was to make this world and have stories endlessly flow from it...they needed to make all the actors independent, or it'd just be a play they're putting on, it'd all be limited by their imagination. But here, anything can happen."

She sounded a little wistful.

"AEGIS, you obviously put a ton of time into this game, read all the supplemental novels, did all the quests--"

"Oh, I wouldn't say all of them."

"You've got to be pretty attached to this place too. Are you sure you want to destroy it?"

She sighed. "That's a stupid question."

"I hear there are no stupid questions."

"Well whoever told you that was lying to spare your feelings. Athan, my feelings on this place are totally irrelevant. We're here on a mission. In a few hours, the US armed forces are coming to invade. Thousands of people are dead or missing. And I'm just one...whatever I am, not even human. Why does it matter?"

"Because you matter to me," I answered honestly. "One whatever-you-are, but a really important one in my eyes. And even if you're right, and we don't have a choice in our actions, I still want to know how you feel because I care about you, and what you think, and how you feel."

She blushed a little and watched her fingers trace over the back of a stone pew. "Jeez, always saying stuff like that." The yellow eyes snapped back to me and narrowed. "Do you have any idea how confusing you are to be around, Athan? I hate that you can be so brutally honest like that, just like it's nothing."

"Should...should I stop?" I asked, completely lost where this had somehow become about us.

She smiled and put her hand on mine, so warm. "No, don't ever do that."

"Okay," Karu said, approaching and interjecting at last. "I have been patient enough by my reckoning."

"Yeah, yeah," AEGIS said withdrawing her hand mournfully. "You have. Sorry, Karu."

"Oh. Uh. It is no problem," Karu said respectfully. "We should probably continue on however, we are in the middle of an op."

"You should but for a different reason," Lia said suddenly in my comms. "There's a situation developing outside. You guys need to sneak out of the back of the church pronto."

"You all heard the lady, move out," I said, and everyone began to pack and scurry. "What is this situation?"

"Well, remember how AEGIS said that touching the barrier we just destroyed was a church crime? Well...shutting it down is even moreso. I imagine they exolate you two or three times for that one. And they finally noticed it was gone. People...or, golems rather, are freaking out like it's the coming of the end of times, and guards are running everywhere. It won't be more than a couple minutes before they go to check on the church, I'm sure."

"Right," I said, creeping through the stone door. The situation outside was as she described. Lots of golems standing around looking confused but spectating, some completely losing their shit, screaming about the fall of Vytar, Altaura forgive us, that kind of stuff. Guard golems were running this way and that, establishing 'order', while guard captains ordered them around.

We were all out of the church and headed to the nearest building when a patrol, clomping around decoratively in formation at double-time turned down our street and of course, it was Tower crossing the street at the time. He wasn't exactly inconspicuous, and trying to be so really just made him even more obviously suspicious.

"Hey! You there! Halt!" shouted the patrol, in a deep, British-tinged gravelly voice.

Tower looked at us and then back at the patrol. "Uh. Praise Altaura?"

I took another look around, with leader-goggles on. Things were in disarray but not overly so. Whether we fought or ran, the guards were out in force and still coordinated enough that they'd have us completely surrounded in no time. We needed to incite some real panic if we were going to slip away or fight, or completely lose this patrol, now.

AEGIS went forward to smooth things over with the patrol, but it didn't seem to be going well. They were demanding to speak to Tower and he had the bluffing capabilities of a well-labelled toilet.

I looked around, carefully taking in details and my eyes were naturally drawn upwards towards the castle.

"Karu," I said. "You said you packed a lot of explosive ordnance?"

"Yessir."

"Rockets?"

"Of course."

"Could you put a few of them into the roof of that dome from here?"

"With pleasure."

She took 'from here' a little liberally, using a few bursts of her jetpack to jump onto a nearby rooftop, across the street from the church, but the small amount of panic was sufficient that she didn't draw attention. There was a sound like a dozen fireworks being lit and sizzling at once as micro-missiles deployed from her shoulders and hips, and the hazy trails of smoke twisted and churned while the missiles faded from view into the distance.

And then a boom. A lot of boom. Those little fuckers packed a hell of a punch, and it looked like the whole dome was lit up with fire. Spheres of expanding flame grew on the surface like ripening boils, leaving blackened craters and clouds of smoke in their wake, and dozens of the explosions pocked the surface before the dome itself cracked, a huge fissure connecting the dots of the blasts.

For a moment it seemed like the crack might continue up the side of the dome and the whole thing might fall in, but it stopped a third of the way up, making an ominous grinding noise which reverberated through the city.

And yeah, panic like you wouldn't believe. Those golems who had been screaming to Altaura before were now openly having crises of faith. Those which had stood by and watched were whipped into a frenzy, each one running a different direction, and the mostly-stationary crowd exploded in all directions, golems crashing into and trampling each other just making the situation worse.

I hadn't exactly intended today to include killing children or murdering the contents of a church, but as long as we were there, I guess terrorism wasn't too much of a stretch.

"Holy swordfish," I heard Lia mutter. "The whole city just went nuts. Panic everywhere."

"Yeah," AEGIS said, standing amidst the bodies of the patrol she and Tower had just disassembled in the confusion. "The dome, the castle, the barrier, all holy symbols of Vytar's unquestionable godliness and undefeatable will. That we even touched them...well...these people are watching their god bleed in front of them. I don't know how else they'd react."

"So can I point at the castle now?" I asked. Now that I thought about it, though everyone was looking in horror at the scene, not a single one of them gestured towards it. Amazing, these golems.

"Don't be a smug asshole, Athan," AEGIS said. "We're here to kill a god, not to be a dick about it."

Moving towards the castle was harder now that everyone was in full panic. It was hard to move without everyone just running into you, and while they were stone and heavy, we were fleshy and easily knocked around, Tower being the exception. It never got old watching a hugely armored guard, a thousand pounds of rock just bump into him and then go flying off like he was a rocket-powered trampoline.

He carried Moon and lead our group. Jack, AEGIS and Karu had taken to moving across the rooftops, and that left me and Tem to follow in Tower's wake, catching occasional flickers above us of Karu firing her jets or AEGIS revving to leap an impossible gap.

It wasn't long before we reached the castle itself, which stood isolated, the grounds swarming with guards, moving in small formations in all directions. We stood huddled in the shadows under one of the buildings at the edge of the huge open plaza while we thought of how to cross the final gap and reach the castle itself.

There was a sound like metal clanging above us and then the zipping of cable, and I saw the shadows stir but nothing distinct. Expecting the worst, I drew my swords and braced for something to come at us.

"Come now, the golems don't use metal," Taglock's voice called from above, and I saw his head peek over the roof's edge above me. Lia popped up next to him and gave us an energetic wave, the butt of her enormous rifle visible over her shoulder.

"How'd you guys get around so easily?" I called up.

Taglock just smiled mysteriously. Thankfully, Lia was still on my side. "Taglock's got a grapple gun, and he's pretty good. He's just been carrying me around all day."

She seemed a little too excited about that. I wasn't sure I entirely approved of that guy putting his hands all over my sister all day, regardless of any practical need. She was sixteen, man.

"Great. Well, want to grapple over to the castle, or how are we getting in there?"

"That's a huge distance," Tower said. "And there's a billion guards. I don't think we're sneaking past this one."

"And they are on exceptionally high alert after our prior antics," Karu added.

"And it only makes sense they'd expect we'd come here after dropping the barrier," Taglock said.

"And they'd leave half the city undefended if it meant protecting their king," said AEGIS.

"And…" said Tem. She looked around inquisitively like one of us was going to finish her thought for her.

Jack soldiered on "The distance is too large for me to move in one jump, regrettably."

"Patrols are too dense, moving too fast. I don't think I could get through even with optic camo." Taglock scratched his scruffy chin. "Ordinarily I'd just hunker down here and act as support, but I'm guessing that castle is filled with bad things you probably want my help with."

"We've got plenty of fighters," I said. "We don't need your support specifically, inside."

I wasn't just being a dick to Taglock, though I didn't have any problem telling him he was useless currently. He'd still be valuable to have as eyes outside and keep us updated.

"I'm in the same boat, again," Lia added. "Needing to deploy and getting one shot every five seconds tops isn't so useful indoors."

"Then you two are still on support and recon. Stay out here and keep us informed of any changes as you have been. I guess...the rest of us are going loud? Doesn't seem any other way we can get there without fighting the whole damn army."

Which seemed simply suicidal. There were hundreds of them, and from what I'd learned having my ass kicked by a giant bone dragon, different golems had different levels of combat intelligence, and the skeletons and spider child monsters were at the low end. If these guys were of approximate human intelligence, we were looking at maybe a hundred for each of the seven of us, assuming no reinforcements pouring in halfway through, which would almost certainly happen, and every single kill would be a challenge.

Kind of felt like trying to take down the whole XPCA. If nothing else, they'd simply exhaust us to death with numbers. I found myself wishing Saga were here, dealing with crowds like this was really right up her alley, though I also doubted they had minds she could actually affect.

So what, then? Traps? A diversion? We retreated further into the shadows and opened up the floor to any ideas, no matter how implausible. AEGIS regrettably informed us that there were no secret tunnels or escape hatches or conveniently connected sewers to break into. Tem could melt through the ground, but not in any way controllable enough to prevent a collapse, and then we'd have tons of magma to deal with, which seemed to make Karu very uneasy.

Someone proposed Jack blind teleport all of us in the air above the castle, but he told us in no uncertain terms that blind teleports, especially with passengers was not an option. Karu suggested we demolish a few buildings at random with blast charges she carried to distract the guard, but given they knew our intended target, that would probably just make them more wary.

People were getting restless and demoralized as we drew close to an hour and a half of circular debate. We'd run out of fresh ideas a while ago, and were mostly just chewing our cud on re-examining old plans at this point. Looking around at the defeated expressions settling on people's faces, I realized I needed to make a decision soon.

But how could I? Seriously. Everyone's lives were in the balance here, and we were staring down a massive, incredibly resilient force, with the lives of everyone I cared about on the line. Cosette seemed to be of a similar opinion, pushing me to make a call, but equally at a loss for which one was the right plan.

No plan proposed had been good enough, but maybe, I thought, if I combined pieces from two or three, we might stand a chance. I tried to take stock of the resources we had and jam them together in random combinations in my mind to see what worked.

And then I had an idea. A really crazy idea. Which was good, because really crazy is what we needed right now.