Rory’s journey to the gas station could be summarized by three words—pain, fire, and the overwhelming need to rest after every couple of minutes. Neither the uneven slope, nor the ground pockmarked with gouges and fractures made his little trip any easier.

Thankfully, the combination of the world punching him with a healthy dose of madness and constantly worrying about Viv spurred him on.

Not that he needed to worry about his wife. She was a hardened survivor. If anyone was going to come out of this, Viv would be right at the top of that list. Unfortunately, Rory’s old heart still quailed at the possibility of anything happening to her.

At least he knew she was headed this way to provide some moral support at the auction at the palace. Or had been, before the apocalypse started.

The Sigil of Locomotion brought the gas station into view all too soon. Only time would tell if the passive usage would raise its Tier, but that line of thinking evaporated when he saw what awaited him at his mostly-destroyed destination.

An enormous column of dark smoke towered off the burning wreck of the station. Fire raged everywhere, the ground strewn with rubble and debris. Broken and torn bodies lay scattered everywhere, cars battered, upended, and set alight all over the tarmac. Upon closer inspection, Rory found the corpses had been brutalized with torn limbs, crushed skulls, and the like, not burned.

He gagged. That didn’t bode well. He’d only seen injuries like that in a horrific accident ages ago, but this wasn’t capricious fate.

These horrors had been inflicted on purpose.

For a moment, Rory tensed up. He was sure he saw a large shadow through the smoke, prowling around, but the smoke shifted too quickly for him to be sure of anything. The safest decision would be to perform an about turn and head back the way he had arrived. But he needed a car, and for all he knew, there might be someone in dire need of help.

Rory hacked in a lungful of smoky breath and headed towards the convenience store, ignoring the ache rising once more in his head. His vision swam, the air twisting like a mirage at the heat. Perfect. As if his pain wasn’t enough, he now had to slowly boil alive too.

He walked past the bodies without dwelling on them much. He’d just have to be wary of the fires, and the failing structural integrity of the gas station. And oh, the monsters too, of course. There were some here, no doubt. Nothing else could have inflicted those kinds of injuries. The ticket had mentioned them too. Well, it had said new species.

There was a suspicious lack of Mana crystals in the vicinity, as though whatever had scoured through the area had taken them all.

The door to the station was hanging half-broken on its hinges. More bodies lay haphazardly all over the place, several with trails of blood in their wake, as though they’d tried to drag themselves away from something before giving in to their grievous wounds.

A part of Rory was curious to determine the chain of events, but the rest was immediately distracted by hammering and muffled yelling.

“Is someone there?” a scared voice asked. He sounded young. “Please, I need some help getting out of here.”

Rory swallowed and looked around. No sign of any otherworldly creatures through the smoke. “Hold on, I’m coming. Don’t make so much noise.”

The hammering shut off. Poor guy must have been desperate to risk attracting the attention of whatever had caused this massacre. Rory walked over to where a burning debris was blocking the door and used his Weaving to get more Sigil options.

[Sigil Options]

Sigil of Fire

Type: Energy Rarity: Ordinary Efficiency: Low

Sigil of Barricade

Type: Concept Rarity: Remarkable Efficiency: Medium

There wasn’t a lot of time to consider. The guy behind the door could be suffocating from smoke inhalation for all Rory know, so he picked the Sigil he hadn’t expected.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Barricade. Everyone needs some privacy now and then. For the times when the need is great, a barricade is often a great asset to have.

[Argent II] allows summoning a flimsy barricade for 10 seconds.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Uncommon

Tier: Argent II [0%]

Efficiency: Low [12%]

The white lines of his Weaving dissolved the entire pile of debris into a tiny crystal coin with the image of a red brick wall. He pocketed it for later.

“You can come out now,” Rory said, then coughed as a trail of smoke infiltrated into his lungs. They didn’t have time. This place was going to burn down soon.

The man who thrust himself out in a hurry looked little older than a teenager. His long, wispy dark hair hung in his eyes, which were red-rimmed, and his jug-handle ears framed a pale, sallow face. A ratty, soot-stained shirt and beige cargo shorts completed the ensemble.

“Oh, thank everything holy,” he said, grabbing Rory’s hand and giving it a shake too almighty for his thin frame. “And thank you too, gramps.”

Rory extricated his hand and patted the relieved kid’s shoulder. “You’re welcome. Name’s Rory. You know if anyone else is alive?”

“Miles. And no clue. It didn’t sound like anyone made it. The rest must have left.”

“Left?”

“There was a big group that came in and got most of the people out when everything started going crazy. That’s what it sounded like at least. But nobody noticed me…”

Rory patted Miles’s shoulder distractedly. So that was what his first achievement had meant about being left behind. He must have been out for longer than he’d thought. “We need to get out of here, then. The longer we stay, the longer we’re in danger.”

Miles’s eyes fell on the corpses. He looked like he was about to be sick and quickly turned away. His hands gripped Rory’s arms like he wanted to shake them. “What’s going on here? Do you know, gramps? It’s like… it’s like we’re all in a post-apo horror game or something.”

Rory was going to need a moment to parse all that, but right now, he needed to calm his new companion down. Miles’s eyes were wide and wild. Rory pulled himself free, then squeezed the younger man’s shoulders.

“Listen, Miles.” Rory locked eyes with him, holding his gaze. “We can’t freak out. Not now, not yet, no matter what we see. First, we get to safety. Find other people. Survive. Then we’ll have all the time we need. Do you understand?”

Miles looked like he wanted to shimmy out of Rory’s grip and make a run for the hills, but then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, there was a sharp focus in them that surprised Rory.

“Fine,” he said. “Got it. Freak out later. Right now, we move.”

Rory nodded. “That’s right. Grab everything you think is going to help and won’t be a burden.”

Releasing Miles, Rory stepped back, then swayed and stumbled. His head throbbed as though a hammer was beating inside it, and the world swam.

“You alright, gramps?” Miles asked, taking a step forward with a worried look. “Oh crap, your head’s busted open.” He cursed again. “Wait a sec, I’ll find the first-aid kit.”

“Thanks.”

As Miles started rooting around what remained of the store, Rory decided to start gathering things to distract himself from the possibility of fainting. Or worse, dying.

It wasn’t easy. Aside from the vicious pain, he was confronted with a savage wave of sadness. All these people dead inside the store. Parents and children, lovers and friends, people who must have made the lives of other people all the more worth living. All of them were gone for good.

He just hoped Viv was alive. And Alex, wherever their child was.

New Achievement!

Rescuer! You’re a lifesaver. Do you know how valuable that is, especially in a situation like yours?

Rewards

Each member of every party you rescue will receive a Sigil.

Curious. It looked as though he got achievements from… whatever this interface was. The achievement itself was interesting. It didn’t seem like Miles had received a Sigil yet, but at least it should work for anyone else Rory helped. For now, he got moving.

Pilfering a backpack off a dead teenager—which he wasn’t sure if it counted as grave robbing—and closing the kid’s shocked eyes with a pang in his heart, he began shovelling in supplies. There were water bottles, a flashlight, zip ties, a knife, a crowbar, and as many snacks as the bag could handle, mostly consisting of chips, crackers, energy bars, and chocolate.

Rory was tempted to steal a slice of cheesecake too, but that didn’t seem like appropriate apocalyptic food.

He had to be careful. Patches of the floor that weren’t burning or taken over by a decomposing corpse were covered with broken glass, shelves lying on the floor, spilled drinks, and rubble. Wouldn’t do to trip when he was already hurting so bad.

“Here,” Mils said as he returned, carefully stepping over a fallen vending machine and avoiding a corpse’s gaze. “This’ll help.”

Rory accepted the first-aid kit with a thanks. First, he swallowed some painkillers. Next came his head.

Feeling around the area elicited sharp pain, so he forwent cleaning off the blood and simply soaked all the bandages in antiseptic before wrapping it gingerly around his head. Of course, taking off the makeshift pants leg wrap hurt. Then the excruciating stinging by the new bandages nearly knocked him out.

“You good, gramps?” Miles asked.

Rory needed a moment before he could wave him away. “Fine, fine. Go get your things. We need to move.”

He was lucky Miles hadn’t started packing. It gave him time to rest. To just exist for a few precious moments.

Sure, it was in the middle of a building about to collapse, in the midst of fire, smoke, and dead bodies, with a monster prowling out there somewhere. But more than that, Rory was tired. He was painfully aware that he had left the years when he could run around with nary a worry about his physical condition far behind

Also, he’d survived so far too. The reward for that was a little break.

“You seem awfully calm about being thrown into a game, man,” Miles said from where he was rummaging through a cabinet on fire.

“What do you mean?” Rory asked.

Miles looked back over the debris and corpses. “You got one of these weird coins, right? A Sigil? It gets you stats just like from any RPG, and I’m pretty sure there’s got to be some that gives you skills and classes too. There’s just got to be. I can totally tell.”

Rory got the stats thing. Miles must have received the same Sigil of Stats that he had. But skills and classes… it had been ages since Rory had dabbled in Dungeons & Dragons, and he’d never bothered with the more advanced video games Alex had loved to play occasionally.

“I think I already have a skill,” Rory said. He thought for a second. “In fact, I have more than one.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold on. Let me see…”

Miles shuffled around and put more stuff in his backpack. He stopped at the counter, watching someone intently. Maybe it was someone he knew. His face twisted in sorrow, and Rory let him have his moment.

When he joined Rory, his face looked even sallower.

“What do you mean you’ve got skills already, gramps?” Miles asked. “All I got was this Sigil of Stats.”

Rory pulled out the Sigils he had pocketed. As Miles’s eyes widened at the sight, Rory subdued the smirk rising to his face and briefly explained what he’d read in each of their descriptions.

“Oh, so… you’re not supposed to eat them?” Miles asked, inspecting a Sigil at a distance with two fingers like it would bite him if it got too close.

“Eat them?”

“Yeah… I was looking at my Sigil, while holding it over my head, like to let the light shine through. Then it kind of slipped and fell on my face, and I thought I’d accidentally swallowed it or something, but now it sounds like it just passed right through.”

Rory couldn’t help it. He laughed. The motion hurt his head, so he quieted down soon enough, but it had done him a world of good to let himself feel good, even if it was for only a moment.

“You’re a riot,” Rory said.

Miles rubbed the back of his head with a sheepish look. “Anyway, this means we’ve got both stats and skills. Like I said, there’s got to be classes to.”

“Actually, now that I think about it, there are.” Rory told him about the [Status] he was able to pull up and how he had received access to it. “Doesn’t yours show one?”

“Nope. I guess it’s because of the other Sigils you have. All I’ve got is my Sigil of Stats. I guess I nee—what is that?”

Miles was staring past Rory with an aghast expression. Rory’s heart sank back down to its usual spot after Miles’s alarm had raised it too high. It was just a donkey. The grey animal stared at them as they gawked back, and it was impossible to say who was more surprised.

To make matters even weirder, the donkey started speaking.

“What ho, mortals!” it said. Its voice sounded masculine. “I feared all of you had passed on after my unfortunate early arrival, but it seems I am still in luck!”

Neither Rory nor Miles responded. Considering how crazy their world had become, talking donkeys wasn’t supposed to be this surprising. However, Rory’s slow mind felt like it had suffered from too much smoke inhalation and was now hallucinating, though this felt too real for an illusion.

“I assume, humans, that you are quite shellshocked,” the donkey continued. “Perfectly natural. However, I should warn you that you are about to become food for a rather tenebrous creature haunting this patch of your locale. I suggest you prepare for the encounter, in whatever a fashion you think is appropriate!”

Miles was the first to find his voice. “How do we know you’re not the monster in disguise?”

“He’s right,” Rory said. “Forgive my rudeness, but what even are you?”

“Impertinence!” Instead of being angry, the donkey laughed. It sounded like a strange, braying cough. “I like it. I was under the impression I’d be bored after arriving far too early, but you’re proving more intriguing than I thought. Unfortunately, introductions will have to wait.”

The donkey cocked his head, eyes looking away as though waiting for something. Then Rory heard it. A strange rocketlike sound. Rory was starting to wonder what in the world was making that when a sharp shriek pierced the air. A heavy thump landed a second later, shaking the whole area.

“Brace yourselves, mortals,” the donkey said with relish. “The Hooktongue is here.”