Rory was about to ask Dez how he thought bringing the monsters to them after they’d barely finished dealing with the lich was a good idea, but he froze when he saw through the hall’s main doors.

The parking lot was filled with all the monsters Dez, Viv, and Miles had been fighting. Enormous corpses lay broken and burning all over the place, including rocky chunks that threw off electric sparks. But there were several still alive, the resident Emberteeth and Detonetals fending off the invading Thundershells.

But several of the monsters were turning towards the hall.

“Where did you see the Knight?” Rory asked as the others drew closer. “How far away, I mean?”

Dez moved past him to check on Ned lying on the table. “Down the main road. It’ll get here soon, but we’ve got a little bit of time.”

Miles slumped against a nearby column. “It’s nuts out there.”

Viv reached Rory, and he clasped hands with her, their fingers intertwining. Unlike Dez, she didn’t look tired at all, probably thanks to her Sigil of Prime. She was covered in blood however, cuts grazing her arm and a light burn riding one shoulder. The perils of fighting up close.

“You alright?” she asked, voice soft. “You don’t look good.”

Rory smiled. “I’m fine, but have you looked at yourself?”

“Mirrors are in short supply out here.”

“Good work keeping them busy.” He raised his voice so that the others could hear too. “All of you. We managed to kill the monster here, but…”

Viv frowned, looking around at the chaos. “What happened?”

“Lich, ghosts, Evelyn’s son…” Trish eyed the other woman slumped against the receptionist’s desk and not looking at anyone. “I think we’ve got too much company for elaborate explanations.”

She was right. They all turned to face the doors, Miles and Dez both summoning their respective flames.

The Emberteeth rushed in first. Apparently, the corpses of their fallen brethren did nothing to cow them. They charged in, mouths and backs brimming with fire, throwing up copious toxic smoke into the air.

They didn’t get too close. Dez and Miles blasted them with their flames, killing them at a distance. Miles’s regular fire didn’t seem to be doing much damage, but it still made them flinch. Dez’s black pyres created a pile of corpses soon enough, though.

But there were too many monsters. The Emberteeth behind the frontline climbed over the burning corpses, ready to spew their flames.

Viv acted fast. A burning crimson arc from her Omnipresent Sabre crashed into the ceiling above the hall’s entrance, making a quarter of the higher floor crush down on the monsters. Dust and rubble climbed high, but the Emberteeth’s screeching died, granting them a small reprieve.

“Have you found any Mana?” Viv asked.

“Not yet,” Rory said, cringing. They’d failed to rescue anyone and now they were running out of Mana. This foray was starting to look like a failure. “Might be some at the back.”

“We need more. Can’t keep killing these things at this rate.”

“I’ll go look,” Allen said, pulling Trish with him. “Come on, you’re with me.”

Trish protested, but Allen pointed out how the others had firepower well in hand. They were better off contributing in ways besides combat for once. She grumbled but let herself be dragged away.

But then they stopped, and Rory saw why. His heartbeat skyrocketed. Shimmering outlines had appeared over the dead monsters. A second later, ethereal, misty impressions of the Otherworlders pulled free from their corporeal forms. Rory was staring at the monsters’ souls.

Just like with the dead humans.

Rory’s spine tingled. The ghostly monsters ignored the humans and started slowly ambling towards the back of the hall.

“Creepy…” Allen said. He pulled Trish along with him, past a slow Emberteeth’s ghost.

Evelyn slumped on the ground. The motion had caught Viv’s attention. Rory’s heart broke a little when she tried to get to her friend but was immediately pulled back into the action when the Thundershells started coming in next.

In her place, Rory tried to comfort Evelyn. She was unresponsive, sobbing into her hands covering her face. Rory’s heart twisted in sympathy. They now had proof her son was truly dead.

Lightning flashed and thunder shook the hall. The Thundershells attacked with vicious bolts, but they fared little better than the Emberteeth. All that exercise had raised the Tiers of their Sigils significantly. Their ranged attacks let them stay stationary, allowing Rory to check out their Sigil’s glows.

Dez’s Sigil of Abyssal Inferno and Miles’s Sigil of Fire were at Argent VII, while Viv’s Sigil of Omnipresent Sabre was at Argent IX. They had the monsters well in hand.

“Evelyn,” Rory said, shaking her gently by the shoulder. “Can you get up, please?”

She didn’t respond.

Rory gripped her shoulder. “Listen Evelyn. We’re falling back. They can’t hold back the monsters forever. We need to find steadier ground and find some Mana that can help us mount our defence properly. We need to move. Please, let’s go.”

“Go?” She pulled her hands down viciously, as though she wanted to tear off her face with them. “Go where? My son is dead. My husband too, for all I know. Where am I supposed to go? Who am I supposed to go for?”

“For us,” Rory said. “For—”

“You think I care about any of you?”

Rory did his best not to recoil. She was still shocked and grieving. “I’m sorry. I know you’re going through something horrific, and I can’t imagine what I’d do in your place. But please, your family would want you to survive. They’d want you to fight and live. You know them. You can’t deny that.”

She didn’t stop crying. Right, of course. Rory’s silly words weren’t going to magically make everything immediately all right. But at least he managed to pull her up by her arm.

They were about to move off when a violent roar made the air thrum. Furious thunder rolled out over the parking lot and arcs of lightning flashed. Then the biggest Emberteeth they had seen yet barged into the room.

No, not an Emberteeth. As Rory’s Sigil of Knowledge passively activated, he realized it was an Emberfang.

The monster was little different from an Emberteeth except that it was easily the size of a tank. Each spike in the forest of nails on it back stood six feet tall, the smoke swirling off its back tinged with a toxic green edge. Apart from the little forest of teeth all along its jaw, two, extra-long fangs protruded down to drag along the ground, dripping lava like poison.

Rory wondered where that thing had been hiding, since it didn’t look like the others had fought it yet.

Dez fired his black flames, but the monster blocked with its smoke. It looked this ones’ fumes could stop attacks. The same thing happened with Viv’s crimson energy, her arc of carmine light dissolving as soon as it touched the smoke.

“Looks like we’ll need to get down and dirty with this one,” Viv said. “Can you distract it?”

Dez shook his head, stepping backwards. “Not anymore. Not without more Mana.”

“I’ve got some…” The stream of flames coming off Miles’s hand cut off without warning. “Correction. I got nothing.”

Viv cursed. “I’m nearly out too.”

As though sensing that it held the advantage, the Emberfang grinned fierily at them. It started thumping forward, belching fire and smoke. The defenders fell back.

Rory was about to grab Ned and haul the unconscious guy back by himself if he had to, when a warning shout echoed through the hall. He turned just in time to see Dez, Viv, and Miles jumping behind columns. Not a moment too soon. The Emberfang gaped, belching out a geyser-sized stream of fire like a gigantic flamethrower.

Rory dived against the table holding Ned, pulling Evelyn with him, who squawked at the sudden jerk. Thankfully, he didn’t have to worry too much. The Emberfang’s flamethrower was localized in a small area where the other three had taken cover.

So, Rory, Evelyn, and Ned were safe for now. Well, safe from the flames, but not the smoke.

With the monster getting closer, it was able to flood the room with its green-tinged black vapour. Rory was now tasting the stench on the back of his throat. He tried not to breathe too hard but there was only so much he could stop before he choked out. Even Weaving wasn’t an option with their Mana shortage.

“Rory,” Viv yelled. “Take them and get out!”

Easier said than done. He was burdened by an unconscious man heavier than him and a woman who was reluctant to do anything except cry.

The Emberfang approached, belching more fire and smoke. It made the hall shake, and the others retreated even more. With what had to be the last of their Mana, Viv and Dez attacked the ceiling above the Emberfang. A violent crack preceded an avalanche of broken ceiling chunks, rocks, rods, and more debris.

Sadly, the Emberfang’s spikes glowed and threw up a burst of fire and smoke like a volcano erupting. All the falling debris above the monster burst outwards, shooting through the hall like burning meteors.

They struck down with apocalyptic force. Rory shivered when the column near him was hit, making it shudder so much he was sure it would topple on him. It survived, somehow.

“I’ll distract it,” Dez said. “The rest of you need to run.”

Rory knew what that meant, and he was having none of that. “Dez, don’t you dare. We don’t need—”

There was no need for Dez to sacrifice himself or for Rory to reprimand him for thinking like that. A shimmering horizontal plate materialized over the Emberfang. Before the monster could react with another eruption, the plate shimmered again until it was suddenly made of navy-blue metallic rocks sparking with electricity. Rory’s eyes widened. That wasn’t a plate.

It was a barricade.

The electric plate slammed down on the Emberfang. It didn’t work well. Fire and smoke burst out from under the rocks, and the Emberfang rushed out and growled with its flames. The barrier crumbled to nothing. But all their attention was focused on the source of the barricade.

“We’ve got Mana,” Sue said, hurrying forward with a small sack in her arms, the back of her hand glowing brightly. Rory’s chest seemed to expand at the sight of her, and he smiled broadly. “Catch!”

The sack didn’t fly at them as Rory had expected. A glowing hand materialized around it, floating with the sack in its grip towards Viv. Roy was puzzled until he saw Mikey running up behind Sue, bald pate shining. Ah, that had to be his Sigil of Ghostly Reach.

When the Emberfang tried to stop it by belching its fire, Sue crafted another barricade to stop it.

Viv, Miles, and Dez rushes out and grabbed the sack, filling their hands with tiny blue crystals. Their grins were ferocious as they turned to face the Emberfang.

The monster threw another geyser of fire, but Dez stepped forward. He tapped his fists together, dark fires enwreathing them in a black storm flashing with blue sparks within. Dez’s flames spread out in a swirling pyre, rising high to block the Emberfang’s attack. The Abyssal Inferno was as good at blocking attacks as the Emberfang’s smoke was.

Viv tried to attack with her flashing red arcs again, but the toxic smoke still dissolved it. Miles stepped forward, diving straight into the monster’s fires. Rory was alarmed for a second, but Miles burst out, manipulating the flames as though they were his own.

He threw the flames back at the Emberfang. The fire exploded on the floor before the monster, the force dissipating the smoke cloaking it. Just what Viv needed. She swung a crimson arc through the opening, but instead of waiting for it to strike the Emberfang, she teleported right onto its back.

The monster was startled just long enough for Viv to slice of several dark spikes and drive her sword through its back, which started glowing.

“Viv!” Rory shouted.

She didn’t need his warning. Another quick slash teleported her away from the monster just as its back erupted, throwing up a cloud of fire and smoke that slammed hard enough into the ceiling to make it crack.

But Dez wasn’t daunted by its fury. He rushed ahead, throwing his flame-wreathed fists forward to blast the Emberfang with a gout of his Abyssal Inferno. The monster screamed, its eruption dying as it tried to spew fire out of its mouth again. But Viv joined in before it could act. A distant stabbing motion made her sword extend like beam to strike the black conflagration.

The resulting black-and-red explosion made the entire hall shake as though it was about to blow up like the monster’s back. When the dust and smoke cleared, Rory peered out from behind his column to see a heavy pit in the middle of the hall where the Emberfang had been.

It was dead.

Rory climbed out from his hiding place with careful steps. The floor felt brittle, like an accidental move was going to shift it too much and then he’d be falling into the basement or the underground parking. This battle had torn apart the bank.

“You came back,” Viv said, watching Sue with reluctant gratitude.

Sue carefully avoided the pit where the Emberfang had been. “Someone’s got to make sure the rest of you don’t end up dead, right?”

Rory smiled. “We appreciate you coming. Where’s May?”

“I made her hide in the van with Jerome.”

Dez had stepped forward, barely nodding at Sue before standing amidst the debris and monstrous corpses lining the entrance of the main hall. “It’s still coming.” If Rory focused, he could hear the thunder booming ever closer. Dez turned back to Sue. “Did you see the Thunderclaw Knight?”

“No,” she said. “We took a different road.”

Their conversation was cut off when the Emberfang’s corpse shimmered at the bottom of half-molten pit. Its soul pulled off its body and floated to the hall’s rear.

Sue stared after it. “What in the world was that…?”

“Never mind that,” Dez said. “We need to prepare for the Knight. We can take it now that we’ve got some Mana, though we’ll still have to be careful.”

“Right.” Viv was looking down into the sack. “There’s not a whole lot.”

Sue frowned. “I got what I could. There’s not exactly an abundance of it out there.” She looked past the dead monsters and into the courtyard. “I should bring in May.”

“She might be safer out there,” Rory said.

Dez cleared his throat urgently. “Anyway, plans. Things didn’t go well the last time we tried to fight the Knight, remember? Now, we need to—”

“Uh, guys.”

Everyone turned to see Allen returning, lugging a small crate. Trish followed just behind. They both looked stressed out of their minds. No, not stressed.

Frightened.

“What’s up with you two?” Dez asked.

Allen took them all in, not even pausing in wonder at the sight of the smoking pit or the fact that Sue was with them again. Instead, his eyes alighted on Rory.

“The lich,” he said. “She’s alive.”