The sound of shattering glass filled the air. Quickly followed by a crashing wave of water and crabs. A second later, the noise repeated itself, and I could see crabs and bullet shrimp being swept through the room by the water from their emptied tanks. One of Cheryl's eyes snapped to me in an unmistakably accusing way, and I flinched back in surprise. It was such a human look; despite the fact it was coming from something that would look at home in a Lovecraft novel. Cheryl's skin started to change in color, shifting quickly from deep black to concrete gray, to black again. A sign of agitation?

Before I could ponder that any further, Cheryl whipped a tentacle towards me. She wanted to grab me and leave before the lobsters broke free, and the tide reached her. The limb raced towards me. It froze less than a foot from my face. It was massive, its tip roughly the same size as my skull. It was also dripping with slime. Shouldn't she be dried out on land? I laughed as the gargantuan tentacle stretched, trying to gain a few extra feet to wrap around me. The things my brain decided were strange... the sight of the tentacle was certainly terrifying, but I had been terrified a decent portion of the night, so it was starting to become familiar territory.

Why wasn't it reaching me? It looked like it should be long enough. That same part of my brain that had noticed how slimy the tentacle was realized that it didn't smell fishy. It smelled like cleaning fluid and bleach. The laugh died in my throat at the same time I noticed why the tentacle wasn't coming closer. The ward circle. It had begun to gather power the instant Cheryl crossed its border. I forced myself to look past the huge suckers and twitching crab legs right in front of me and to the edge of the ward circle. It had begun to glow with a dark light that I was sure was visible to anyone, not just mages. The light reached up to the base of Cheryl's tentacle then stopped, like it had hit a wall. "Enough power can overcome any nullifying effects. It's simple math." No, they couldn't be that stupid, even Trenton wouldn't– This organization has very high standards, ones I expect my employees to live up to." Okay, maybe he could be that stupid.

I focused on Cheryl's aura, something that was easy to do since she was under the effect of mine. It felt like abruptly encountering empty space. An utter lack of substance. A hollow pit that swallowed everything up and gave nothing back. It was exactly how Rogers had described the Knull clan's signature aura. The nullification aura. And they had gone ahead and given it to a giant octopus that was smart enough to mask its scent with cleaning supplies and evade capture for weeks!

The ward's magic was disappearing as it encountered Cheryl's aura, but it wasn't letting up. The amount of magic gathered in the ward was increasing by the second, the demand so high that it was pulling from the ambient magic around me. It even tugged at my aura, trying to access my own stockpile of magic, though I easily batted it away. The dark glow around the ward grew brighter and brighter until it was like a dark sun blazing under Cheryl's tentacle. It shot up, magic so dense it was practically a solid slammed into Cheryl and cut her tentacle off at the base. She reeled back, scrambling away from the ward-circle and letting out a screech that tore at my ears. I could feel people scrambling around in the observation room, but none of them made it out yet.

Cheryl looked around, her head rubber-banding from one angle to the next. The sound of shattering glass and rushing water echoed out a third time. Cheryl was still looking around, but it was obvious she couldn't get to me before the first crabs reached her. She came to the same conclusion. So, instead of running, Cheryl turned to face the rushing tide of chitin and water. The first crab to reach her was the size of a small car and had enough mass to crush me without effort. Cheryl slapped it aside like a cat pushing a glass off the counter. The crab hurtled end over end before crunching down at the least two dozen feet away. Cheryl's severed tentacle flopped around, its tiny legs spasming. Its tip was still distressingly close. I did my best to scoot away from it, grunting in pain with the motion. I eyed the tentacle, but it wasn't coming closer to me. Once I was convinced that its twitching was the result of severed nerves firing and the tentacle wasn't going to move of its own volition, I turned my attention back to the chaos unfolding in front of me.

More crabs reached Cheryl, my aura driving them into a mad scramble to get at me. Three rushed her from the right while a larger crab came at her from the left. One black tentacle lashed out, wrapping around the larger crab. She proceeded to lift that crab into the air and slam it into the other three, bludgeoning them to death with their comrade. Beyond Cheryl mantis shrimp fought with one another and anything that came close to them, leaving massive holes in anything they struck. One of them killed a crab from behind, slamming its massive claws into its back with a boom. The next instant, it was crushed in the massive claw of a lobster.

I smiled at the chaos. My aura wasn't stretched throughout the whole building anymore, but I was certain similar scenes were taking place in all the areas where warded tanks had been. My smile grew as Cheryl crushed more crabs, using one of their corpses as a missile to smash a bullet shrimp that had tried to sneak in from the side. Strictly speaking, this situation wasn't any better for me. It was probably more dangerous since even more things wanted me dead. But this would cost Trenton thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. And that was assuming he could even contain all of this.

I started to whistle. The tune started slow but cheerful. One lobster was bowling straight through everything in its path, heading straight for Cheryl. As I sped up, the song became more layered. Fast, jaunty. Cheryl reared up as the lobster approached, lashing it with her tentacles before it could close in on her. I wasn't a particularly skilled Whistler, but I could whistle this tune in my sleep. I had learned it from an old farmer who probably could've won America's Got Talent if he'd ever been inclined to try. Cheryl let out another screech, though this one was in challenge, not from pain. The old man couldn't let go of his land. He was as stubborn as the bones of the earth. He eventually relented, though. He asked me to help him move on. This proved a helpful memory. Cheryl swung her tentacle at the lobster's head. And I realized she was using the crab legs on her tentacles like spikes to punch through the lobster's chitin.

Stubborn, a lot of ghosts, were stubborn. The tune dipped and twisted. The man really had been something else. Most of the ghosts I used my aura on didn't give me memories of using their favorite skills. But the song had been important enough to the old man that it had imprinted on my soul. Stubborn. Or persistent? I wondered what the line was there. Was I too stubborn to give up trying to help ghosts, or was I persistent in achieving my goals? The lobster finally closed the distance to Cheryl, slamming into her with a sound like a shale beach slamming into mud. I couldn't smile and whistle at the same time, but my joy rang out through the song. Seeing things this massive fight was an incredibly impressive sight, the sheer weight behind each of their movements held enough power to break bones. I would say it was a humbling sight, but I was already used to being the small fish in a room full of big sharks. But it was still impressive.

Cheryl curled four of her tentacles around the lobster's claws, stopping them from opening. She then proceeded to flail at its head with her three remaining tentacles until it stopped moving. The sound of chitin smashing against chitin filled the room, drowning out all other noise. Some of the water from the tanks finally reached me, but it was only a thin puddle. The place must have grates set up in case of flooding, which did make sense. I idly wondered if Trenton was the one who had done the planning or if he had gotten someone smarter to handle it for him. Then again, even though he had something as idiotic as the rule of three, the man had proven to be cunning. Cunning and very, very ruthless.

My attention shifted back to Cheryl and the battle. A mantis shrimp and a few crabs had slipped past Cheryl while she had been focused on the lobster, and they were headed straight for me. The crabs were in a small cluster- or herd? - and were torn between rushing me and staying a healthy distance from the mantis shrimp. For its part, the mantis shrimp just looked like it wanted everything around it to die. Its massive eyes switching between glaring at the crabs and me in equal measure.

Though I felt a spike of terror when I saw the mantis shrimp, the sight of Blondie's body exploding still fresh in my mind, I kept whistling. There wasn't anything else I could do. And if I was going to die, I was determined to do it cheerfully. The group of crabs shuffled closer to me. The mantis shrimp shuffled closer to them. They both stopped. Maybe the ward circle would activate? No, I doubted it. I had a feeling it had been designed to react to Cheryl's aura. The crabs and shrimp continued their standoff, neither side making the first move. I figured the crabs would win; there were three of them and only one of the shrimps. Of course, one of them would almost certainly die, likely two. Plus, crabs weren't exactly the quickest crustaceans in the sea.

Would it be better to be killed by a crab or a bullet shrimp? I suppose the shrimp. It would be faster. But I did like crabs more... My question went unanswered as Cheryl finished off the lobster, her tentacles had reduced its face to a ruined mess and turned to find her prey in danger of being stolen. She screeched again, and one tentacle lashed out, smashing into the group of sea life like a whip the size of a car. Neither the crabs nor the shrimp got out of the way in time. I wondered how Cheryl had managed to stay hidden for so long when she was so large. Then I remembered that she could change her skin color and slide through anything she could fit her beak into. Mix that with a healthy dose of caution and the ability to ambush search parties, and it wasn't really a surprise they hadn't managed to catch her. Prey secured, Cheryl continued her rampage. I turned my head as I felt movement in my aura behind me. The goons had started pouring out of the observatory and were rushing to the mounted guns and explosives. A few of them stayed on the steps leading up to the room and sighted with rifles.

None of the creatures noticed as mounted guns were readied, and explosives grabbed. I winced just before the noise got going. With my hands bound, I couldn't cover my ears. The rifles fired first, a few quick bursts of automatic fire that seemed quiet when compared to the screams of a giant like Cheryl. Then all of them began to fire. The shots overlapped one another in a deafening cacophony of bullets and noise. They started shredding through the closest crabs, and blood flew from Cheryl's body as one of the mounted guns focused on her. She was so huge that the bullets looked like large needles, but I knew they could tear her apart in the open like this. This was exactly the situation they had wanted, well, not exactly. Since I didn't think they wanted all of their stock killed in the process. But getting Cheryl out in the open like this was what they had been trying to do all along.

As the bullet struck Cheryl's massive form, she screeched and reacted instantly. Disengaging from the half a dozen crabs and one lobster she had been fighting, she used her tentacles to grab the corpse of the lobster she had just killed and pulled it between her and the guns. I had memories of mounted guns similar to the ones firing shredding through trees. But either these were weaker, or the wall of chitin and meat was a stronger defense than the guns could break, which wasn't exactly surprising, considering that the lobster was at least 6 feet wide. Before Cheryl could do anything, two goons hurled explosives at the dead lobster. They couldn't get past it; since neither of them wanted to come anywhere close to Cheryl's striking range, but they were close enough to do some damage.

This was going to hurt. I closed my eyes as another blast of noise assaulted me. My ears ringing, I opened my eyes and saw massive chunks missing from the lobster. Though the explosions hadn't been nearly strong enough to blast it apart completely, I was starting to believe they would actually kill Cheryl, even if she wasn't in the ward circle. I decided that their winning over Cheryl was probably the better outcome. They would still be able to carry out their work, but that was better than the rampage Cheryl could go on if she got out into town. I still couldn't believe Trenton had given Cheryl a nullification aura. She was already hideously dangerous without it. With it, she could be a threat to entire towns since any mage sent in to stop her would have a genuine chance of dying before they overcame her nullification. Plus, she had enough raw strength to tear through low-level werewolves and vampires.

But as the two goons who threw the explosives went back for more, and three beefy men with pikes moved up to guard against approaching crabs and shrimp, Cheryl retaliated. Three black tentacles swung over the lobster's back, each one holding the corpse of a car-sized crab. They sailed through the air like boulders flung from a catapult, dropping amongst the men and women and killing several. A few seconds later, more crabs were thrown as well as the corpse of a bullet shrimp. They weren't being aimed since Cheryl couldn't look over the lobster without risk of taking a bullet in her eye, so instead, she was just blindly hurling corpses in their general direction. One of her shots got lucky and crushed one of the machine-gun emplacements. And the woman manning the other gun froze up in shock...

The instant the heavy guns stopped firing, Cheryl lifted the lobster's corpse a few feet off the ground and charged towards the group. By the time the woman started firing again, the giant octopus had covered half the distance. Lobster riot shield. Half, that was an... Interesting tactic. A second later, Cheryl threw the lobster, tossing it towards the group and causing them to scatter. By the time they recovered, Cheryl was on them. She killed them even faster than she had the crabs, splaying about herself with broad sweeps of her tentacles. They tried to fight back, but it was like children trying to fight a bear. A man with a net launcher raised the gun only for Cheryl to bring a tentacle down like an executioner's axe. He didn't even get a chance to scream. Next, two of the pikemen tried to stab Cheryl from behind. It worked. One man drove the weapon into her back, though she was so large it wasn't anything close to a lethal strike. The other man didn't get a chance to attack when Cheryl wrapped a tentacle around his weapon and jerked it from his hands. The two died a moment later as she lashed out, driving the stolen pike back through one of them before crushing the other.

A third pike wielder attempted to charge Cheryl, the woman's body rippling with patches of fur and twisting muscle. The werewolf managed to get close, but not close enough. A tentacle snapped around her and squeezed. I saw the woman's mouth gape open, but the scream was lost in the maelstrom of noise. The trapped werewolf started clawing at the tentacle, elongated nails tearing gouges out of the flesh. Cheryl seemed to realize that squeezing the life out of a werewolf would take an extremely long time and changed tactics. She hurled the woman away from herself. Sending her crashing into the horde of chitin that was growing closer to me. Something would've already run up and killed me if it weren't for the fact that they were fighting against each other so much. I turned my attention back to Cheryl just in time to see her hurl the box of explosives straight up, sending them clattering into the catwalks high above. Everyone on the ground had either been killed or fled. The only remaining goons were the ones on the stairs, and only four of them were unharmed.

Trenton appeared in front of me, rising through the ground. His semi-translucent face was flushed such a deep red that I would've worried about him having an aneurysm if he had still been alive. He grabbed me by the collar and shook me. "What did you do! How did you break the wards!" If ghosts had spit Trenton's would've been flying at me. Well, that wasn't accurate. Ben had somehow figured out how to spit, but no one else was sure how he managed it. Trenton shook me hard, sending pain flaring through my ribs and back and snapping my attention back to the present. "You know what? It doesn't even matter. All of this!" Trenton dropped me to gesture wildly around us. "It doesn't matter. I have all of the data I need to start this operation again, and I can run it more efficiently this time." He gave me a murderous look and took a few steps away. "But you have to have cost me. Cost the lives of my employees. You'll die slowly for this. Just as soon as I take care of Cheryl." He floated up, gathering the ambient magic around him to counter the dampening effect of my aura.

Cheryl started towards the remaining goons. Then another explosion ripped through the room. It was infinitely worse than the earlier two. I hadn't had any warning, and it burned my eyes and turned my vision white. My ears rang like they'd been struck by a gong; even my breaths felt like they were coming through superheated air. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my eyes, but it took a small eternity for my sight to return. Slowly, the whiteness faded, and I could see the scene in front of me.

Standing 20 feet in front of Cheryl, floating in the air like a wannabe superhero, was Trenton. The goons on the staircase were dead, killed in the explosion. And the jackass had the gall to say I'd killed his employees... Magic floated around Trenton in half-formed eddies of power. If I didn't know better, the sight would have been impressive; instead, it just made him look pretentious. Cheryl struck at him, but her tentacles passed straight through without doing anything. Trenton raised his hand, and I could feel the ambient magic shift and flow. I had a better sense of what was happening with my aura out so far, though I still couldn't sense it as clearly as I could with my sight unveiled.

The magic bunched up, condensing into a small area then a spark of furious red passed into Trenton, and threw him into the magic. It sparked and exploded again, though I managed to close my eyes this time. I didn't know much about fire magic, but I knew that explosions were not an easy thing to pull off. Few mages had the raw power required to condense the amount of magic needed to make an explosion. So, when it happened, it was usually from a mage burning their shroud. I still had no idea how Trenton was managing to aspect the magic, but I understood why he was able to make the explosions. Ghosts didn't have auras like mages. So, their control over ambient magic was not limited by the size of their aura, which let Trenton manipulate a large amount of the stuff. I opened my eyes and saw that Cheryl was still unharmed. That was her nullification aura in effect. Cheryl's aura worked like a force field that extended past her body by a few feet. It wouldn't do anything against purely physical attacks, but it would disperse any magic that it came in contact with. Even the heat and sound from a magical explosion wouldn't reach her, as it had magic interwoven with it so tightly.

Trenton had to know that, but a moment later, he started hurling magic at Cheryl. Blades of wind, blasts of fire, chunks of ice. The last of which actually hit Cheryl, though they were too small to do any actual damage. But everything else conjured vanished when it came within a foot of her. The magic that was holding the wind blades together disappeared, turning what would've been a deadly attack into nothing more than a gust of wind. The heat and light from the fire simply died when it came into contact with her. And she didn't care about the ice chunks.

But Cheryl couldn't touch Trenton either. All of her attacks simply passed through him. After less than thirty seconds of fighting, I could see both sides growing frustrated. This wouldn't be a quick fight, but an endurance battle. If Trenton could keep throwing magic at Cheryl until her aura broke under the onslaught, he could kill her. But if she survived until he ran out of power, then she could just ignore him.

As I stared at the fight, my brain was operating at an all-out sprint. Trenton was right. What I had done here was a massive setback, but it wouldn't stop him in the long run. He would just restart. But was there anything else I could do? My eyes flicked to the doorway that used to have a heavy steel door. I knew where he had his data stored. I had walked right past it on my way in here. But I couldn't get over there! I needed – a familiar voice said my thoughts stuttering to a halt. "You look like you need some help." I turned my head to see Ben grinning down at me. "Ben, you beautiful bastard! How the hell did you find me? And with such auspicious timing to..." It was almost too convenient to be believed. Maybe he was a fake? But that didn't make any sense. Besides, he was inside my aura, and I could feel that it was him. Ben's grin dropped into a scowl, and he glared at me.

"The first two hours I didn't think anything of it. It takes a long time to get into town, and you might've done some other shopping too. At four hours, I still wasn't too suspicious. Maybe you had gotten some food or gone back to the library. At six hours, I started to worry." How long had I been in this building? "So, when an explosion of your magic twenty times greater than anything I've ever felt from you before breaks through the storm and lights up the night... You weren't exactly hard to find." I was feeling a little stupid for not thinking about how I would be lighting a beacon, but I had been under some stress at the time, so I figured my lapse was forgivable. Ben crouched down next to me, reaching to my feet. "Wait, you can't be here! The awful feeling we got was from a soul cage!"

"I figure that's why you didn't call me or anyone else to help, like a dumb ass!" Ben's voice briefly transformed into a growl before continuing, "Is because of this soul cage." I nodded, avoiding his gaze. "I wasn't going to take the risk that one of you could be trapped here." I felt Ben's icy fingers, trying to pry my boot knife free. So, they hadn't taken it. He was making progress, but he had to get past the ropes. "The risk!" Ben practically spat the words at me as he worked. Off to our right, Trenton and Cheryl's battle rolled over into the shrinking horde, crushing and burning anything in their way. It seemed everyone was too busy fighting with each other to come kill me. Yay for universal animosity?

The knife wiggled closer towards freedom as Ben switched between glaring at me and focusing on his task. "Those risks aren't guaranteed destruction, Alder. I'm an old ghost. I know how to defend myself. I could resist the pull of the soul cage so long as I'm not right on top of it, especially with your aura covering the area. Right now, it's like an insulating blanket." The knife was almost free. "I just didn't want to," I began only for Ben to cut me off. "It isn't up to you to decide who takes those risks, Alder. I am not a child who cannot decide for myself." I flinched at his words but nodded. "Okay, we can talk about this. But can we do it after we're out of here?" Ben nodded. And the grin was back in place. "Of course, now cut the rest yourself. I just used up almost all the energy I managed to recover." Ben slipped the knife between my hands, ensuring that I had a secure, if awkward, grip before letting go.

I started sawing away as quickly as I put, making sure not to drop the blade. The ropes were bound so tightly that it was slow going at first. But once I'd cut through the first section by progress sped up. I heard Cheryl let out another ear-piercing screech and glanced towards the battle. Trenton had managed to crush one of her tentacles under a boulder of ice, causing Cheryl to go wild.

I still didn't understand how he was doing that. He said I had already met the reason he could work magic. Another section of rope snapped. A thought occurred to me, and I turned my head towards Ben. "Hey, Ben, is there anyone else in that room over there." I gestured with my head towards the observation room. Ben shrugged. "Give me a second, and I'll check." He zipped off, flying through the air and vanishing through the glass. More strands of rope severed. I was over halfway there. But I couldn't get too impatient. I was cutting at an awkward angle already, and my hands were slick with sweat, making my grip on the knife slippery.

A few seconds later, Ben popped up from the floor. "What I assume is your gear is lined up on one table, and there's only one person there. Lady looks kind of out of it, though. Her expressions keep changing from furious to blank, and she's looking out the window with a thousand-yard stare." "Yeah, I know who you're talking about. She stabbed me at Barry's." Ben nodded slowly. "Yeah, she looks like the kind of person who would do that." He paused then did a double-take. "Wait. What! Are you okay?" I chuckled darkly, then winced, I needed to stop doing that with sore ribs. "Okay... that's such a relative word." Ben rubbed the bridge of his nose as explosions of ice and fire mixed in with screeches and clacking sounded in the background. "Jesus Christ, I leave you alone for one day." "What can I say, it's a gift."

I punctuated my words by cutting through the last section of rope binding my wrists. I wanted to stretch them and marvel at the tingling feeling of sensation coming back, but I needed to get moving, so instead, I started sawing at the ropes binding my ankles. Actually, being able to maneuver my hands cut down the time, ha cut, to a few seconds. I tried to stand up, but my legs needed a minute for circulation to do its magic. Ben looked around at the chaos surrounding us and let out a low whistle. "I'll admit it. You do have a gift."