Katherine had led her and Scruffy somewhere, huffing and puffing from the messy load on her back, clanging and banging with every other step.

She couldn’t really focus.

Likely wouldn’t be able to until the blood she’d gorged herself upon worked the stupid concussion away.

Katherine whispered things at her as she guided her to a corner, the air familiar in the way all places smelled when enclosed for a long time.

She wanted to sleep, she really did, but the System kept prodding at the back of her mind, and curiosity won over logic. Because it had been genuine ages since she’d last opened it.

So she slumped further into the corner, and opened it.

You have progressed on your Path.

[Infuser] Level 17 → [Augmentor] Level 18

Already?

She knew Paths changed over time, whether because the person had changed enough or because they’d progressed enough in their Path to be considered something superior to before or some such drivel, but as far she knew, Paths usually changed when someone had hit a milestone of some kind, an understanding, or just reached a very high Level in whatever they were doing.

What prompted-

Fuck, thinking made her head hurt.

Still… she could not complain. [Infuser] was more of a ‘catch-all’ path for people that imbued spells and properties into things and people. It caught craftsmen and rune makers and even most necromancers that were early on in their careers, just… all sorts of things.

[Augmentor] was very specifically oriented towards buffing or imbuing living things. Its bonuses to her [Haste] for example would be much better than [Infuser]’s, which was wider catching but weaker.

All this did was ensure that going into some kind of enchanting route would be much harder, and she was not interested in that whatsoever, in line with that supposed theory that the System could ‘tell one’s fate’.

Even if she wished to become some kind of enchanter, she was not stable enough, not secure enough, not connected enough to make something like that work.

Her more specific Path was much more combat oriented, and she had a feeling she’d be needing that more than trinkets.

Base Attributes:

Strength ( +0 )

Speed ( +0 )

Dexterity ( +0 )

Endurance ( +3 )

Perception ( +2 )

Resolve ( +2 )

Intelligence ( +4 )

Soul ( +2 )

Available: 5

The text stalled, and she pushed it to go on, having no clue what to put her Attribute Points into and vaguely understanding of the fact that allocating them while concussed and dizzy and sleepy and more than a little battle and blood-drunk was likely a bad idea.

-[Pain Resistance] has Leveled Up. - Level 24 → Level 26

-[Sparkburst] has Leveled Up. Level 19 → 21

-[Haste] has Leveled Up. Level 20 → Level 21

-[Mana Perception] has Leveled Up. Level 23 → Level 24

-[Mana Manipulation] has Leveled Up. Level 25 → 26

-[Mana Tank] has Leveled Up. Level 8 → Level 9

-[Mana Conduit] has Leveled Up. Level 8 → Level 13

-[Mana Touch] has Leveled Up. Level 10 → Level 14

-[Tough Skin] has Leveled Up. Level 7 → Level 9

-[Telemantic Construct] has Leveled Up. Level 15 → Level 18

She idly remembered [Tough Skin]’s existence, and quickly realized that that Skill had probably helped her hand stay usable almost as much as a mage’s natural resistance to her own spells did.

Curiosity sated, she flicked it off, flipped it the finger mentally, and tried to go to sleep, feeling wired beyond belief. She felt exhausted but not sleepy. Like there was some scraping background thought that kept her nailed to the moment.

Scruffy eventually cuddled up to her, practically laying on her left leg, her back against the wall and her head on Emhreeil’s lap.

She pet her hair as the goblin fell asleep.

It helped relax her, a bit.

When Katherine joined the impromptu pile, leaning her head on her right shoulder and draping her trench coat over all three of them like a crappy blanket, she finally began to feel relaxed enough to slump into the corner rather than curl into it, and began to slowly drift off.

And even through the fuzzy space in her head, she understood why.

She simply wasn’t used to sleeping alone anymore. It felt wrong. She wasn’t sure if this sense of safety and comfort began after sleeping on top and cuddled up to the wolf for a couple weeks, or if it only really bloomed during the past few days of sleeping in cramped spaces in a tiny bed, waking up together with Kat and Scruffy, but it was there regardless.

She wished her skin could still feel temperature normally beyond the patchy mess of conflicting warmth and chill she felt. She assumed this was warm.

Fucking chemicals.

She fell asleep to the distant sensation of her friend fighting something above, briefly.

He was closer. Significantly closer.

He had felt her. And he was coming.

She fell asleep with a small smile.

After waking up and feeling like something a step or two above a walking zombie, Emhreeil had the chance to observe their surroundings.

As far as she could tell this was someone’s abandoned basement. Cracked gray tiles over stiff stone.

Across the room from their cuddle pile of sorts, she could see a long stretch of organized objects.

Their… loot? Yeah, their loot.

It was a lot.

Half processed memories from yesterday rose.

As hurried as they were to get away from the scene, preferably far, far away, they had to stop and hide somewhere, to not only arm themselves properly, but to rest and let all the blood do its work.

And it was doing it, she could feel it. Her hand almost had new skin. It felt smooth and wax-like, but it was there. Her fingers weren’t twitching constantly.

So, they’d found themselves here, wherever ‘here’ was. It was dusty, it smelled like something died in the pipes above their heads weekly, but it was decent enough for them to sleep in.

It wasn’t like they could just walk into an inn absolutely loaded with spare armors and weapons. They’d get found in a day and gutted the next. Katherine saved them a lot of time, if not their lives outright, by finding this place.

Eventually, she drifted off again, and woke up to the sight of Katherine poking and separating the loot.

After half an hour of waking up and stretching, she limped over to join her.

“Where’s Scruffy?” She mumbled, bending down to access something that looked like a… curved cleaver.

“Outside. Sent her on lookout. She’s smaller and sneakier.” Katherine replied, distractedly, and she nodded, going back to checking their haul.

“Em? I’m proud of you.” Katherine blurted out before she could start, and she paused, confused.

“For helping that girl. You’ve… changed less than I thought. I would have walked away, personally. But you’ve always been the better person, so the entire time I was wishing you wouldn’t, but I didn’t know if you would stop them, because… well, like you said. You’re different now. You’re not quite the… bright eyed sweetheart I remember. You’re tougher now, harder. The same rose, but you’ve grown thorns, if that makes sense. So I thought you would walk past. I’m… really glad you didn’t. I’m proud.” Katherine breathed out, genuine and oddly awed, her fingers slowing on the sheath she was inspecting, lost in thought.

She took a deep, loaded breath, incredulous.

When was the last time she heard someone say they were proud of her? She must have been a toddler.

With a shuddering exhale, she stepped to the side, and yanked Kat into a hug, ignoring her tiny yelp of surprise, her hand a tight fist in her friend’s trench coat, forehead against her shoulder.

Arms wrapped around her, engulfing her.

“I’d have crumbled to pieces without you, you know that? If you weren’t there when I woke up.” She forced out from a chest tight with warmth, and Katherine didn’t reply, simply hugging her tighter.

It took a few minutes of her breath breaking and stuttering, but eventually the lump in her throat vanished, and all emotions had been bled out of both of them. They separated, and with a final squeeze on her shoulder and a smile, Katherine stepped back to give her some momentary space, picking up the sheath she’d dropped before.

After another minute of thought and mental digestion, she joined her in picking through the loot.

She was lucky that the sheer surprise and speed of the fight didn’t let any of the gangsters dig into their clothes and pull out some of the nastier stuff they had.

The inventory was ridiculous, and every passing item they laid out on the floor had her realize how absolutely crucial that element of surprise was.

Every other damn thing in this pile could have killed them.

They had an impact grenade full of acid the likes of which she could only guess would be found in the deepest ends of the fourth floor, for example. The thing frothed and whined when she brought it to her ear.

It felt and looked and sounded so toxic that she was pretty sure this thing would explode if it met air. Or water. Or anything that wasn’t the enchanted insides of a complicated mess of plates and locks which it was currently housed in, with a tiny slit of glass to look inside on the right side.

If it exploded, would it be in gas form or liquid? Gas bomb or liquid bomb?

She couldn’t tell, unfortunately, but the idea of an acid gas grenade was horrifying.

She’d already felt herself melting alive once. She didn’t care to repeat the experience. She missed not having numb skin, to some extent.

Then, irithite gauntlets. She wasn’t sure how Katherine knew what that metal even was or what it did. Apparently it was some kind of alchemist metal. Self-repairing, to a decent extent. A bit less sturdy than steel.

How the gangsters had access to not one alchemist-sourced weapon but two, or how they could afford it, she wasn’t sure. It was likely that the gang found some alchemist who hadn’t gotten his Guild’s protection yet, and had enslaved him for dirt-cheap equipment.

The gauntlets were too big for her hand, of which she only had one, so Katherine got both of them, and seemed oddly pleased as she curled and uncurled her fists in them.

She had to agree, Katherine and armor went together like milk and cookies. She was short, but that just made her look more… solid, in a sense. Like a small wrecking ball. Even if she wasn’t sure what her friend’s Path and Skills were, if any.

They should discuss that soon.

Then, a small packet of rocks. Likely drugs. They threw it away, even if she had to admit to some curiosity.

Only two healing potions between the five of them, surprisingly.

Cocky pieces of shit.

Then… mostly a large assortment of light armor, under-armor, knives, more drugs, cigarettes, a couple coin pouches that Katherine was in the process of emptying into their own, a giant, gleaming scimitar that she had no idea how Katherine managed to beat with the crappy dagger they bought her, and the dart launcher. Along with a couple belts for all the stuff to clip onto.

Problem number one with arming herself was simple.

She was still incredibly weak.

She felt fine, true, but that was likely because she’d just gotten used to lifting ten pounds of weight like it was thirty.

So any of the heavier, more protective options immediately went out of the window.

Which left Katherine’s loot pile absolutely decked compared to hers as she patiently reviewed the loot and kept tossing whatever she couldn’t use onto hers.

Which was most stuff.

Iron treads?

It sounded good in theory, until she realized that walking with weights on her feet with her… ‘fighting style’ and current strength was suicidal.

Gauntlets?

She only had one hand, better to sell them as a pair.

Besides, the dart launcher was a much better fit, even if Katherine had to spend an entire hour and a half readjusting everything tighten and around her twig-like arm and hand.

The whole thing was a single armor sleeve piece, unfortunately. It started with a thin sheet metal pauldron over a thick mold of leather, with straps that went around her chest and ribs. The pauldron connected down to a leather vambrace that hugged her forearm, a leather glove on her hand, and some leather protection around the arm. Simple but efficient and fairly light.

Only the lower half of her forearm had actual mechanisms, both over and under.

The dart launcher was snug with her wrist, and mercifully simple to load. It was just a little rectangular box with a button on the outer side, which she discovered she could bite to pop the box open, which split in half to reveal a groove for the darts and some kind of iridescent spring that would launch them when she performed two specific motions.

How Katherine knew all of this, she also didn’t question.

After it swung open all she had to do was jam two pointy but factory-standard darts into the two slots and flick it back closed with her wrist. The little dart bandolier slung across her hips was also light and easy to clip on, with a metal clicking… thing. A buckle?

Then she got to testing it while Katherine replaced cloth with chainmail and holed leather, trying to avoid using mana bursts to give her friend some modicum of privacy as she changed.

Unfortunately the launcher was not mercifully simple to reload. That needed a second hand, or very fine telemancy to accomplish. Not rough fields like her constructs, actually grasping something with mana turned into force, which was more of a mana control exercise than a genuine use, broadly speaking.

Shooting the damn thing wasn’t simple either.

It took Katherine around thirty solid minutes of explanations for her to learn what wrist and finger movements she had to perform simply to turn off the safety, turn the safety on, and how to shoot.

And after said half hour, she finally got to shoot the damn thing, loaded with one dart.

One barrel twanged violently, empty, while the other let out a much… meatier noise, sending the dart into the wall and bouncing off with a spray of stone chunks. The little cone of damage looked about an inch deep.

More than enough to pierce clothes and flesh, assuming no armor or ridiculous Endurance like with that fucker she fought.

When she asked how on Ergos she didn’t get nailed by one of these darts, Katherine said he couldn’t use the launcher because he was holding his sword with the same hand, and when he tried to twist his wrist to arm it, she just knocked the sword out of his hand.

Her evaluation of Katherine’s combat capabilities rose even higher. She just sounded so… knowledgeable about it. Like she knew properly what a stance and parry and riposte was. Emhreeil sure didn’t. She knew the definitions at best.

Before she could accidentally brain someone with a dart, she decided to turn the launcher off.

Bring hand straight up and yank to the right to disengage the mechanism, Kat had said.

With two short movements and twin clicks, the pull on her gloved fingers disappeared. Then she got back to trying to reload the darts on her own.

Fourth try, she almost got both darts in with the flashy motion, only for both to barely miss and hit the floor.

It was possible, but she needed some practice.

She liked this dart launcher. Even if she doubted it would do much for her, having options was wonderful.

The rest of her choices were similarly light. A thick shirt with a bunch of small, bendy wooden plates sewn into the inside, presumably chemically treated, great for keeping her organs inside her. Then, a scarf woven around chainmail with two clips on each end to tie around her neck.

Well, that one was kind of heavy combined with the weight of the golem eye yanking at her neck with its chain, but she’d rather keep her arteries intact.

Then, simple shin guards made of some kind of dark blue wood, extremely light and oddly sturdy, a bandolier belt for her darts with a padded metal pouch for a single healing potion vial, and the enchanted ring around her finger.

Which was the biggest dilemma they faced as they slowly but steadily armed themselves, watching the loot pile on the floor steadily decrease in size.

On one hand, the amount of things they could buy with the seven or eight gold coins they might be able to sell this ring for was immense.

The most desirable of which was a golem arm prosthetic.

A good prosthetic. Four or five gold coins likely couldn’t get her any of the enchanted or magi-tech stuff, not even close, but it would be enough to get something that was sturdy, reliable, and articulate. And strong.

Golems were strong already as far as she knew, but even compared to normal golems, that many gold coins got someone the good limbs, the ones that came from the really terrifying bastards down below.

And that was before anything from the System’s Attributes got factored in.

If she had one of those, she could have ended the fight yesterday by just reaching forward and crumpling the scumbag’s windpipe into mush.

And it was tempting, it really was.

To have full functionality again. To feel a little more whole again, even if it would be patchwork and her flesh would never really return, not without a price she couldn’t afford in her dreams.

But at the same time, the ability to just snap a dagger into her hand whenever she wished-

A dagger.

A stabby metal object.

Like her darts.

She let out an annoyed hiss, deflating like a balloon.

God she was so fucking stupid.

She brought her hand down to her hip, and with a few quick taps, had stored all the metal darts into the dimensional ring. They barely took any space.

She bit onto the thin rectangular wrist launcher, managing to find the button with a fang, and swung it open.

The darts blinked into existence perfectly into the little grooves, and she swung her hand inwards to the right to snap the box shut.

Just like that.

She took aim at the wall, and fired off both darts.

Then she let the springs take a short second to reel back, and teleported two more darts in without issue. With a flick and click, the dart launcher was disarmed, and she sighed as she bent down to port the darts back into the ring.

When combined with her current weakness, the weight of a good golem arm would really weigh her down. Pitted against the convenience and the sheer utility of being able to just throw anything she wanted into what was essentially a tiny pocket dimension, as long as it wasn’t full, plus the quick reload, she was willing to settle significantly.

Maybe she’d buy a cheap little claw arm. Enough to grab stuff and hold onto them, nice and cheap and disposable.

With her track record, it probably wouldn’t last long anyway.

Scruffy chose that moment to tumble down the stairs with a squawk, not even bothering to properly regain her feet before gesturing above with frantic gibbers, eyes wide.

“Shit.” She hissed, feeling dread coil in her stomach.

This basement was a dead end. They had to push outside.

How the hell did they find them so fast? Blood magic? They’d certainly bled enough in that alley. But witches were expensive and fickle at best. How much did they piss them off?

Katherine wasn’t one to be sloppy with things like this, there was no way this place wasn’t remote and out of the way, wherever the hell they were.

Kat wasted no time in grabbing the long curving scimitar and clipping it onto her belt, then snatching up their backpack as Emhreeil stood there, trying to calm her heart down with deep breaths.

Her hand flit down to the acid grenade dangling off her left hip, safe within a little pouch.

She wondered what it would look like, to see a crowd of human scum melting away into the gutter beneath their bloodsoaked boots. What it would feel like to watch it.

Hear it.

“Kat. I know you haven’t killed before. But please don’t hesitate. It’ll be either them or us.” She whispered softly, hoping she wasn’t inadvertently pushing her friend down some bad path.

Kat sighed, all bulky armor under a tight trench coat, her every step clinking softly as she walked to the stairs that led them down here.

“I won’t, Em. Now let’s… see how fast I can run like this.” Katherine murmured, and glanced back at her.

They had to have a chat about their Paths soon. She had no idea how much Strength or Endurance Kat had. She had no idea if she could keep up with her, or the other way around.

Not that there was a chance in hell of her leaving Kat behind. Ride together, die together, or… something.

The golem eye flit down to Scruffy, still panting. And very short of stride.

She ignored her startled squawk as she hawled her onto her shoulder, feeling her arm weakly shake from the strain.

“Grab on tight, Scruffy. Bumpy ride.” She murmured, and the goblin understood quickly as she followed behind Kat, her hands wrapping around her neck and feet digging into her waist.

She paused, and bent down to grab a knife, handing it to Scruffy, who took it after a moment of hesitance.

Then she jogged forward, up the stairs.

She couldn’t run well like this either, she had to admit. It felt heavy to climb up stairs with, nevermind sprinting.

The door to the basement creaked open, and Kat took a cautious peek.

“I see a couple of them. They’re looking around the other doors and storage buildings. They don’t know where we are right now.” Katherine whispered.

She worked her jaw, trying to figure out a solution beyond just mindlessly legging it.

“I don’t know where we are right now either.” She simply said.

“Abandoned slave camp. These used to be storage rooms. There’s a colossal factory to our distant right, and a smaller one to our left. Across from this door a couple hundred feet down are some of the higher sumps, and behind us, if we went around, is a giant stretch of open ground with spires and hanging tower buildings all over, leads down to a fighting pit a couple hundred feet off the end. Good for losing pursuers.” Katherine rushed out in a breath.

Shit.

The sumps were a bad choice.

The factories were even worse. Far too large, far too complex. Workers got lost in factories, nevermind random people running into one. Which might help them lose their pursuers, but then they’d be in a labyrinth of machinery and very likely surrounded on the outside.

“Fighting pit sounds good. Better, at least. How much Speed do you have?” She offered, and Katherine hissed out a sigh, tense.

“I only have three points in it. And yes, it sounds good, but open space, at least until the paths narrow towards the fighting pit. We might get nailed and surrounded if they’ve got people that way.”

“I think it’s best if we just assume we’re surrounded no matter which direction we go. Besides, I can speed us both up. How did you think I moved so fast yesterday?” She asked, leaning forward to peek through the door as well by sending a small surge of mana.

No footprints. They hadn't passed through this part yet, and Kat hadn’t left any trail to the door.

“I really don’t know here Kat. All I have is your descriptions. I can make us both really fast for a while, and still have some decent mana left over. You know the terrain better, you brought us here. Which way?”

She knew Katherine wasn’t used to taking initiative and was most definitely uncomfortable with doing so, but it wasn’t like that was worth the danger her making a blind choice would put them in.

Katherine lowered herself closer to the floor, bracing against it, then glanced back at her head, before flicking down at the golem eye on her sternum, meeting her gaze.

“Honestly, I think you’re right. Speed boost, then just… get into the tunnels and run towards the fighting pit. It’s going to be crowded enough to let us slip away. Or start a massive brawl. Right. Okay.” Katherine said, obviously psyching herself up, uncharacteristically jittery.

That contrast between them made her realize how much calmer she was in comparison.

She couldn’t tell if that was a good thing.

“On the count of three…?”

She nodded, crouching, her fingertips brushing against Katherine’s back, two [Haste] spells at the ready.

A squeaky voice rose from the right of the door, getting closer, exchanging banter.

“One…”

Her mind checked the ring, the darts, the dagger.

“Two…”

The thrum of adrenaline, that sickly sweet thrill, coated her tongue, slathered her spine. Her aching, sore lips panged with tiny pricks of pain as they stretched into a small, tense smile.

“Three.”

[Haste] left her body hollow, and Katherine gasped sharply at the boost she got, a substantially more powerful than the one she gave herself.

The door exploded outwards, and their boots kicked up a wave of gravel and dust as they both tilted left and pumped their legs.

A slow shout rose from behind them, a deafening whistle starting its trill by the time they’d almost turned the corner.

She was still weak and tired. Her head still felt fuzzy and she still hurt all over. She was about half-healed. Fighting was not the plan here, not even close. They just had to run.

The short, squat building they emerged from quickly retreated behind them, and she saw what Kat meant.

A wide expanse stretched forth like a field, peppered with giant piles of gravel and dirt and discarded metal scrap, flanked on either side by tall, skeletal buildings. From above came light, spires and towers cut off a hundred or more feet before they met the ground, monstrosities of glass and lights and wire, the abandoned outlines of a giant greenhouse eerily dark and silent around them.

Someone shouted from the building up ahead to the left, and she grit her teeth, pushing through the stiffness to pump her legs faster.

At the other edge of the vast mess of gravel and metal scrap hills peppering a long stretch of solid stone, she could see the buildings and fences slowly tighten to a small collection of alleys.

It was about four hundred feet away.

The way the golem eye bounced around was disorientating, so she turned it off, relying entirely on [Mana Touch], having seen what she needed.

She felt something rush through her mana field from where the shout came from, and she threw herself to the right, lowering her center and briefly slapping her palm on the ground to force herself upright again.

The air ruffled her cloak as the arrow narrowly missed her waist and Scruffy’s leg. They only narrowly avoided tumbling into the ground, taken off balance by Scruffy’s weight.

That wasn’t a warning shot, not a net. It was a killing shot, center mass.

Her eyes widened as she felt another arrow, not even a full second later, whistle through the air, from the same direction.

Towards Katherine.

For a moment, she was about to slam into her side to get her out of the way, or try to push the projectile off course with a construct, something which took way too much time and mana to be without risk, not against something like an arrow.

Katherine drew the scimitar in one smooth motion, and she aborted that plan, trusting her friend, straightening back into a proper run.

Kat batted the projectile away without breaking stride, a motion that was impressive even with the slowed-time sort of feeling from the boost, and she again had to reevaluate her friend’s combat prowess.

She mentally prepared another construct, just in time for another one to come, before the second arrow had even hit the ground.

In the brief moment it was blown off-course, she realized that that was not an arrow, but a crossbow bolt.

A fucking repeater crossbow.

Fuck, fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck-

Another deflection, hasty. She heard and felt the projectile bounce off Katherine’s side, striking her on the flat end before spinning off behind them.

She heard something ahead, like the slide of a razor against brass, and briefly flicked on the eye. Katherine slid to a halt, head manically swerving around.

There was barely any time for her to register the sight of a half dozen floating motes of ghost light spreading just a dozen feet ahead before masked people replaced them with the sound of crunching glass, forearms clasped together in a wide semi-circle.

Their masks were more like helmets, black steel and plain with a dozen little holes around the mouth as their only detailed work.

In the middle, a giant with a hammer on his back, bandages around his midriff, coat hanging open to reveal a chest and upper abdomen bursting with grotesque muscle. To his left, a wiry figure with gloves, wearing tight rags, covered in glowing runes. To the middle man’s far left, a man with a mechanical spear. To his right, a man in a giant suit of chains, brown-black, dozens of bear traps hanging around his lower body thick enough to be forming an ankle-length skirt, his mask adorned with a childish chalk-lined toothy grin, the eye holes large enough to shove a fist through, yet still completely dark.

Behind them, some skinny short kid in a black mask and brown leather armor, holding onto their shoulders as they appeared, who quickly leapt away.

The man in the chains plucked at his suit and connected two chain ends to a pair of bear traps, quickly beginning to spin them like a flail, picking up speed as something on his back whirred, releasing and lengthening the chain links, his costume tightening up.

The man with the spear on his back jerked and twisted, as if his body was made of melting rubber, his right shoulder folding into his chest and hitting his left shoulder. A strange wave-like motion brought the spear into his hand and into forward motion over his shoulder, and he lunged for Katherine with a bizarre stance, shoulder almost to the floor, head turned completely away like a limp-necked doll.

An upwards push from below, not much stronger than a shove, right as his foot was about to meet the floor to throw him forward, and he stumbled, tucking himself into a tight ball as he rolled even further to the left, somehow managing to keep the spear vaguely pointed towards Katherine.

Katherine simply took the opportunity to back away and slap away another bolt, sending her a wide eyed, desperate glance.

Neither of them had the reach to be fighting a twisting mannequin of a human with a spear that no doubt had a dozen tricks in it.

She kicked backwards, mind reeling, the golem eye twisting and jerking around as she billowed mana like a smoke chute, looking for a way out that wasn’t through them even as she drained herself utterly dry of mana to make a construct that would let them slip through, praying she wouldn’t have to use it.

Because if she did, after casting two immensely charged [Haste] spells, she was essentially out of the fight from then on, excluding her dagger and darts.

A gigantic warhammer’s head five times her own weight scraped chunks off the stone floor in an uppercut as the big man stepped forward in a sharp, but ever-so-slow motion. The bear trap man brought his left arm forward to whip a blacksteel trap straight at her head, equally glacial. The skinny man took a boxer’s open stance, his gloves flaring as he stepped towards her, deceptively quickly-

And the gap appeared as their movements made them lose their center of balance, tore their stability away.

“THROUGH!” She barked, fast enough that she doubted any of their adversaries would even understand the word beyond a strange shout, and the strongest mana construct she’d built yet by far, a flat plane of repulsion, slammed their line open, the big man getting thrown to the side into the bear trap wielding bastard, the boxer quickly shifting his feet as he was launched to the left, bringing himself to a stumbling pirouette to not fall on his ass, arms flailing.

She moved her upper body to the left, away from the flung bear trap, then dashed forwards, momentarily digging her feet in to let another bolt fly past, tucking her stomach in, then resuming to move through the gap, past them. Katherine dashed forward at the same time, deflecting a jab of the spear, moving with her torso almost parallel to the ground

She only had a moment to twist her torso around and meet the boxer’s fist as he quick-stepped forward, crossing their distance in two short and measured pumps of his legs, despite Kat not only being closer to him but also directly trying to move towards her, almost sandwiching him between them.

Why were they all so focused on her?

Did the fuckers in the bakery talk?

Without any chance of dodging him, she caught his fist and tried to ease it towards her, doubting she could stop it in its tracks. The leather glove sizzled as his knuckles met her palm, but mercifully, it held.

She pushed back, barely slowing his fist down, simply wrenching herself away.

Scruffy’s arm stabbed down with the knife from behind her back, aiming for the man’s hand.

He twisted his footing and moved his body in a wave from his ankles, forcing himself forward in a quick jerk. His fist barreled into her collarbone, and she spun for a moment as Scruffy squeaked, the knife flying out of her hand, her hands scrambling for a grip on her.

She was dully aware that he’d broken her collarbone, her boots scraping at stone as she bent her legs to try and not end up on her back. She learned her lesson from last time, what happened when someone hit the floor.

She felt him step toward her as she keeled forward, throwing a hand out to catch herself and push off the floor before she could quite meet it, only to promptly lower himself and jump away from her as a scimitar slashed at where his fist was a moment ago.

Katherine’s gauntlet yanked at her clothes as she passed her, and she grit her teeth through the pain as she was essentially jerked up and forward by the motion, jostling the injury.

The mechanism on her wrist quickly armed with a double twist of her wrist, and she blindly fired towards the bastard behind her as she unsteadily resumed running, hearing a grunt of pain but not having the time to feel what or where she hit.

Katherine placed herself between her and the sniper, swatting away bolts with gauntlet and sword, barely a second’s delay between each shot. In the real world, it might as well have been a steady stream of endless bolts, a barrage.

She didn’t have the mana to do anything other than see for about another two minutes, not after that giant push field, so she glued herself to Katherine’s side, matching her pace for pace as they ran, covering hundreds of feet in mere seconds.

Then Katherine abruptly began to slow down, looking around frantically in between increasingly wild swats at the bolts.

She flicked the golem eye on, and felt her heart drop to her feet as she watched detached groups of three sprint into sight from seemingly every single nook and cranny, filling the empty space before them, some of them being teleported in by the kid from before, a kid she just realized had seemingly vanished the moment the fighting began.

A mass teleporter?

Did they kill gangsters or a Dungeon Baron? Didn’t they have better things to do with all this manpower? Why did they hate them this much?

She watched another four motes of light appear through a wall, quickly turning into four people, before the masked child just disappeared again into a ball of light and sunk into the wall.

There were at least twenty people around them, forming a similar perimeter to before, wide and thin.

But they didn’t have a chance to break through. She didn’t have mana after having to toss a seven foot giant and his hammer out of their way.

After everything she’d been through, she didn’t want to die like this.

Another bear trap on a chain lunged for Scruffy on her back, as if in slow motion, and she easily twisted out of the way, turning around, struggling to figure out some path to escape.

The boxer took a wide path away from Katherine’s side before seemingly sliding forward with a tiny hop that looked like it broke every law of physics possible, just barely slower than her, then lunging right at her.

She only just managed to throw her head out of the crackling fist’s path, feeling her clothes spike with residual static, and her hand rose, a sharp metallic thud preceding the two darts that blurred forward.

They burrowed into something that wasn’t flesh, and were stopped. Armor.

Another fist, aimed just below her ribs.

A memory of what happened last time she took a hit there arose, and she spun with the hit as his fist met her padded shirt, feeling the strike take the wind out of her lungs as she spun, Scruffy losing her already slipping grip and tumbling off of her-

Then the bear trap that had missed her caught on her single grounded leg as it returned to its owner, and swept it out from underneath her, the pressure plate mercifully too far to activate and sever her foot.

Someone was yelling something, but his voice was too slow to figure out what.

She landed chest down, and bit down a shout of pain as her collarbone’s pieces ground against each other inside her.

She felt the boxer zip forwards towards her, rearing his left leg up to stomp onto her waist, and tried to twist out of the way, only to see his right leg twist and kick him forwards, in a flying spinning kick that almost moved at normal pace.

His kick slammed into her face, and she only had the vague impression of noise and sound and pain as the eye flicked off, leaving her to swim in air, to hang in limbo, not quite unconscious but just a hair off.

“EM!”

She couldn’t afford to deflect the arrows anymore.

She let one slam into her shoulder and burrow half an inch into the chainmail, driving half a breath out of her, and in one motion, cut the strap of her backpack and dashed forwards, letting it peel off her frame.

Then she realized that no matter where she stood around Em, she couldn’t protect her. They were surrounded.

They were finished.

Just like that?

Why did they send so many?

She threw a leg over Em’s semi-concious, groaning form, and slashed upwards at another beatrap, knocking it aside with ease, before noticing the swirling chain leading up and up and up, out of her line of sight entirely, but perfectly aligned with her.

Her head jerked up just in time to see steel teeth descend towards her like a wide-mouthed shark, so much slower than it should be but a mere inch from her wrist, and she twisted her sword to align the base of its blade, unable to dodge and let it hit Em, unwilling.

The sharp blade met the pressure plate in the center of the maw.

Then she watched the scimitar shatter like a mirror as metal teeth utterly pulverized the thin iron.

In one of the falling shards, she saw the reflection of her eye, wide and pinpricked.

She looked scared.

Something rammed into her knee from the side, only her loose stance preventing it from snapping but rather folding, accidentally kneeing Em in the back as she fell. The flat of a spear jammed into her right side, making her jerk with a short cry of pain and pushing her back in the middle of trying to get away from the boxer, off Em.

An arrow slammed into her thigh, going an inch through the thin leather armor under her coat, and she lashed out with a wordless cry, like a cornered animal, throwing herself to the right.

Her hand almost brushed against the bottom of the spear before it was yanked out of reach.

The spear twisted, and extended, slamming into her solar plexus, and she let out a short wheeze as her momentum was cut short.

Someone slammed into her from behind immediately after, and the world spun.

An impact that numbed her face and made her vision swim, half the world covered by a stone wall, and she groaned in pain as a knee dug into her back, her arm wrenched behind her in a classic but efficient hold, before the second followed.

Her shoulders burned.

She panted in sharp gasps as she realized that she was on the floor.

Her eyes flit to Em, finding the spear wielder to be circling her, but not killing her.

They weren’t going to kill them.

Not yet.

That was not comforting.

She could only watch in mute, mounting panic, as the crowd around them thickened, watched between someone’s legs as someone snatched up an unresisting Scruffy who was staring at them with wide, dread-filled eyes.

“Who do you work for? Beakers? Southpaws? Are you a merc?” The man above her said, barely sounding out of breath, and she grit her teeth as his knee tried to fuse with her spine.

“No.” She forced out.

“Which of you is the shot caller?”

She opened her mouth, and hesitated.

Did she lie or tell the truth?

Which was more likely to get Em out of this alive? Would they kill the one who ‘knew less’? Or would they kill the leader first and investigate the others?

She had no naivety in her to assume they would both live. Neither probably would.

But she could at least try. Even if her self-preservation instincts were screaming at her.

The leader was always more valuable. The one who had more ‘info’, if they were thinking this was some kind of organized attack on them.

She had no idea the Snake Eyes were this strong, this ready to spring to action. This well equipped. For a moment, she rescinded all previous thoughts, and wished they’d left that girl to her fate. It wasn’t worth it. It simply wasn’t.

“S-She is.” She forced out, closing her eyes, gritting her teeth.

Its human had stopped.

It wasn’t bothering with safety anymore, nor any kind of path.

It saw a gap, anywhere, that led down, and it jumped down with only the barest hints of caution and self-preservation.

It jumped off the building it had been sliding down, onto a moving platform, feeling wood and metal crunch beneath it as the crates tumbled off into the smog below, and it kicked off again, to a horizontal, open conveyor belt, its claws barely keeping grip as they tore through the mechanisms and cylinders below, the belt fraying and spewing everywhere as it tangled the mechanisms to a crawl.

To its left, the factory twisted in a half-circle, with a monstrous open gap that led downwards, in the middle of which was a bundle of electric wiring that ran from the top of the building, outwards on a metal rail, all the way to the middle of the half-circle, before it cut off and left the wires to fall down endlessly to whatever it was powering.

It twisted and kicked off, onto a ventilation shaft that lined the half-cylinder of metal, one more solid than the rest.

The sheet metal crumpled like paper with a deafening bang, and it didn’t waste time trying to stabilize on it, instead grabbing onto the metal wall beside it just long enough to swing its lower body forward, and plant its feet on it.

Then it leapt again towards the wires, upside down, in a motion that was now as familiar as breathing, arms and tails and tentacles wide open.

It grabbed onto the mass of wire, thick and heavy enough to barely be able to grasp on or even move it with its weight, and laxed its grip enough to start free-falling face first.

It mercilessly crushed the small, instinctive fear of seeing a bottomless abyss of smog below it into a pulp.

She was so close.

It felt her jerk and twist in the way someone could only do when being struck, and it choked down the sound in its throat, a pressure building but not releasing, a howl of bloodlust and fury.

It was barely putting any pressure on the wires by now, more or less hovering over them to not tumble off uncontrollably, each skim where its fur touched them almost like an impact.

Descending, the smog let it see vague outlines as it parted, the wolf’s guts and blood pulling at its insides as it sped up more and more.

Giant pillars of wire and steel and glass extended out of the bottom rim of this seemingly endless half- tunnel, crawling downwards from the mess of the factory’s underside for hundreds of feet like unfinished pillars allergic to the floor.

Its human fell on the ground, jerked around, was struck.

A human on the ground was as good as dead.

From this far, it did the only thing it knew could reach her, could reach whatever bag of meat was trying to kill her and let it know that it was dead.

It took a gasping breath, opening its jaws to let the air rushing past it slam into its lungs instead, until they felt like they were about to pop.

[Mana Conversion] pulled mana from its body, from the air and space it was rushing through.

For a moment, a mere fraction of a second, it hesitated, remembering what happened the last time it decided to make such a racket without a care, telling itself that the humans hunting it would know where it was again.

It retracted its teeth into its jaws as much as the tendon system woven through the bones would allow, which was more than enough to not lose any of them, halving their length.

The next moment, it poured every hateful feeling and emotion into the sound it was about to make, every promise of a visceral, brutal death, every warning and tiny drop of hatred it could muster.

With shadows flickering and bursting violently around it as it descended, like a spike-covered black hole, it let go of the scream, the howl, let go of that ever-building roar in the back of its throat.

Its eardrums burst the moment it heard the first screech of sound coming out of its own throat.

Her mana weakly pulsed out as she focused back on sensation, on the real world, and her fingers slowly, sneakily, opened the metal pouch, and dug out the acid grenade, hearing Katherine’s panting, pained confessions.

She pulled the pin, rolled it down to her knee with a flick of her fingers, and shifted her knee to cover the grenade.

One strong jerk.

One knee to its surface, and the impact plates would activate.

And she would take everyone here with her.

The shift drew attention, and in a flash, there was a razor sharp blade pressing down on her nape in warning. The scarf would save her, but he didn’t know that. She didn’t need to alert him to that either.

She simply struggled through another couple pained breaths, going even more limp than before.

The boxer looked at her from where he was holding Katherine down. The spear wielder’s head moved away from her, an opening.

“Kill the bitch. We don’t need two.” Someone from behind said, their voice slow, and she barely had time to process what they meant and see the giant man with the hammer step towards Kat before something feral and senseless forced her to act, jerking her waist, her left knee rearing up, then down towards the grenade.

They’d all melt into sludge together then, a happily screaming puddle of flesh and leather and steel, in one final act of sheer spite.

Her world and thought process jumped as agony burst over the side of her head, and her knee met stone as she jerked, feeling her brain bounce around her skull like a pinball. She tried to move it up and to the side to try again.

The mannequin bastard leapt over her and snatched the little ball up in the middle of his leap, and in one twisting movement like the unwinding of a demented spring, rolled to his feet, spun on every joint and axis, and pitched it away.

She flashed the dagger into her hand, the ring hidden beneath the glove, and tried to stab his ankle.

He flipped backwards before landing on his toes and carrying his momentum into the longest winding spin-kick imaginable, and his foot slammed into her arm, into her side through it, sending her rolling in hitching, groaning gasps of agony, writhing on the floor, the dagger clattering to the ground.

The giant snorted, the goons around them laughed and jeered, setting her blood on fire, acid moving through veins throbbing in fury and fear.

The giant began to lift his hammer, still so slow, as if the very world was mocking her, like it knew she couldn’t do anything and would stretch the moment out as much as possible just to watch despair crumple her heart into a ball.

Katherine bucked and twisted, her eyes wide, screaming as she failed to escape the boxer’s hold, and frenzied desperation forced her to keep fighting, to keep fighting to the death because that was preferable to standing by while Kat was on the execution block.

She kicked towards them, a clumsy throw of her leg with a feral snarling sound, feeling her boot explode as her meager [Sparkburst] did nothing more than irritate their eyes, too far and too weak to do anything else.

The spear reared back, either to stab through her foot or cut it off, she wasn’t sure. The start of an all-encompassing whine came from above.

Katherine watched the hammer rise, heart locked in terror, hyperventilating, bucking and twisting but achieving nothing-

For a moment, she caught the start of a faint whine, a foreign, distant sound.

Then the sound slammed into her like a physical force the next moment, exploding into an all-encompassing shriek mixed with a bestial roar, the scream of shredding metal mixed with the crunch of breaking bones, a rumble like a mountain breaking in two mixed with a million gnashing, grinding teeth, a whistle of screaming air mixing with a promise of a mangled carcass and the faint idea of a set of teeth wrapped around her throat.

She froze, completely and utterly, in sheer, heart-stopping terror, limbs locked in place, feeling the sound move through the floor, feeling the floor jump and shiver against her chest, feeling her bones crawl and writhe under her muscles, hearing the gravel piles around her click and crack in a million tumbling pebbles, hearing sheet metal rattle all around them like teeth in a shivering jaw, hearing glass crack and shatter above, showering them in fragments big and small as they all stood there, frozen solid, wide eyed.

The sound continued, wavering and shifting, adding more and more, endless, louder and louder until she could feel its echoes moving through her bones, closer and closer, sharpening into a direction, building as she quivered in place, feeling a terrified, keening whimper press into the back of her throat as tears rushed to her eyes.

The sound finally ended, its writhing echoes twisting like a broken fractal into something otherworldly, leaving nothing behind but the frozen quiet of an equally terrified crowd.

Then Emhreeil burst out laughing, a light and genuine laugh, like it was the best thing she’d ever heard.

Some fought, some worked. Some spent their savings in the markets or on the bottom of a bottle. The Dungeon was the same as ever, if one really thought about it.

Until that ungodly shriek squeezed a million hearts in an icy fist of mortal terror, and in its echoes, left behind a floor eerily silent, battles abandoned, citizens rushing to their homes, Adventurers running for their gear, waiting for some unknown monstrous threat that they didn’t know wouldn’t come for them, not yet.

The large man unfroze first, his head jerking to her left, up and up as he stumbled back.

Katherine’s teary gaze followed his own.

Among the falling spires of wire and glass, she caught a glimpse of a tiny dark shape, one with too many limbs, dropping out of the dark smog above. Golden laser point eyes gleamed through the darkness, nonsensical and far too many, and she could have sworn one of them flicked to her before they all blinked out.

The air below it exploded, sending it into one of the pillars.

She heard the cocky hammer user snap himself out of it, scream at the goons, bellowing something she couldn’t quite hear through the shrieking whine left in her ears, the sound still bouncing around and echoing in her mind.

She simply stared, terrified, as the dark shape bounced between pillars in its descent, launching itself down and to the side again and again, leaving behind a wake of sparks and falling glass, tumbling nonsensically, bouncing in ways that were disorientating to look at, much less imagine doing, with limbs fluid like spiked octopus legs and sometimes jointed like a man’s, flashing in and out of the formless black hole that was its body.

It reached the end of a pillar, and threw itself down, a hundred feet.

A barely visible shudder of air, like a ball, rushed down, and exploded before it could touch the stone, sending it flying down diagonally. It slammed into the floor, rolled as if it was a ball of limbs, sliding and hitting the ground like an urchin torn out of the void. Another explosion, and the gap of hundreds of feet was suddenly nothing but a mere second away.

She watched as in the middle of flying forward, it shot another ball of air into the base of a pile of gravel to their left, the explosion of dust and pebbles momentarily covering its advance with a wall of rocks that rained over them. The man above her scrambled off, but she couldn’t find it in herself to even get up.

The spear wielder went to stab Em through the throat, likely thinking the scarf around it was an ordinary one, and before she could do so much as twitch and wonder if it could pierce through the chainmail anyways, a black blur slammed into him, half the size of the man himself but with the speed of an arrow, sending him flying, spinning on one leg to stay upright.

Even with [Haste], she could barely keep up with what was going on, seeing little more than a whirr of black swing around the man’s body, grappling him, and then with a violent jerk, a round object whirled out of the mess.

A head, the flat metal mask now adorned with four gigantic claw marks where the eye holes were. It was followed by a splindly arm, spinning twice before hitting the floor.

Another limb burst out of the creature’s back, and before the first body had even hit the floor, she watched liquid fire light up the dark underpass, pass over her, in tight streams and wild spews, coming from four different directions on its body, covering the pass in screaming, wailing bodies.

The hammer wielder went for a side swipe, covering his head with one arm and the other swinging his weapon.

The monster grabbed onto the hammerhead as it passed by and went with the swing, adding its own momentum to swing with it and then twist at the end to slam what she assumed were its feet into the man’s head. Then, like an acrobat, it kicked off of him to spin and unveil another two limbs out of nowhere, fists pointed at the giant.

Fists which spewed fire.

The sound was not unlike an explosion, and with a blast of blinding light, the giant cried out in pain, his body engulfed from head to toe in clinging fire as he blindly swung a second time, backpedaling and writhing before dropping to roll on the floor, trying to put out the flames.

The monster whipped a tentacle at him, shooting some kind of projectile, before slapping away the pugilist’s fist with three different limbs.

The giant slowed more and more, convulsing on the floor, until eventually, she couldn’t see anything moving but the flames eating his carcass, and his panting chest, adorned by a gleaming spike.

The martial artist zipped forward again as the monster slapped aside a bear trap with a fuzzy tentacle.

Then the monster burst into a giant cloud of pitch black smoke, and the martial artist froze, trying to backpedal.

It pounced on him in a zig-zag motion, the cloud momentarily swallowing his form, and barely half a second later, she watched the cloud leap off of him, revealing a shredded torso, the man falling to the ground with his intestines spilling out of him, jerking and heaving in mindless shock.

The monster shot another ball of air that flattened everyone still up, sending pebbles everywhere once more, like a hail of buckshot, covering everything in fine gravel dust.

But she couldn’t close her eyes, so she endured the burning sensation of dust pricking at her eyes as she mutely watched, frozen.

Through the cloud of dust that seemed to cover the entire underpass, she watched dozens of silhouettes writhe and run and fall screaming before the fire’s light, hazy twisting figures locked in a twisted dance of death with a black shadow that darted in one direction and killed in another, something that moved like a rabid snake with nine limbs, that moved to one screaming shape and turned it into four twirling, bleeding pieces in the blink of an eye.

A cacophony, of blasts of air and cracks of sound mixing with screams and battlecries cut short, the sound of bodies hitting the floor mixing with Emhreeil’s giggles.

She tried to get up, but it felt like her arms were made of paper, her legs shaking and numb.

Was she having a bad dream?

This couldn’t possibly be real.

She watched silhouettes of chains flash through the air, cut through the dust, heard the thuds as they missed, until eventually, they didn’t.

The black cloud suddenly jerked, dragged off a scrambling form by the shape of a chain, and her eyes dumbly followed it to the hulking figure of the gangster from before, clad in chains and traps, the mechanism behind his back reeling the chain back.

The monster was dragged out of the dust cloud, and she watched the pitch black smoke cloud recede into its skin as it twisted and planted its limbs onto the floor like a spider, a scraping, alien noise that made her ears hurt answering the man’s grunt of effort, sharp and fast.

She watched a black arm as thick as two men’s be yanked forward as the gangster heaved and dragged the monster forward, watched another clawed arm snap to the trap.

Watched the sparks fly, the metal pieces clinking off the floor as it tore the trap off with contemptuous ease.

The gangster seemed to let his suit of chains snake around him to attach to each bear trap, after which he would just grasp a bundle of chains and spin them once or twice before flinging them forward with simplicity borne of expertise.

The monster made a sound, some bizarre noise once more, nothing like the first, but enough to make her stomach cramp and ache in fear, kicking up dust, blowing the man’s traps back like a strong wind.

It turned back into a smoke cloud and rushed at the man again, parting the tide of projectiles with unseen limbs as it slid forward like a jittery arrow.

Something popped into existence behind the man, and suddenly, with a small movement and a small mote of light that quickly disappeared, he was gone.

The monster paused for only a moment before retracting the cloud, and turning around to hunt the few survivors it had left, back into the slowly settling cloud of dust.

She watched the outline of a man be speared through the chest, heard his gargling scream be cut off with a crunch as he was tossed away out of sight like a broken doll. She watched another swing a sword, only for his hand to continue without him as something black cut through it, his weapon and hand tumbling off as he screamed, before that sound too cut off as the shadow crashed into him, like someone hitting the stop button on a gramophone.

She watched, too terrified to even move, having to remind herself to breathe.

To remind herself that people don’t feel pain in nightmares, and thus, this was reality.

She heard the screams get more and more distant, more and more out of sight as it hunted down every last person it could reach.

She… she had to get up. To get them out of here.

Her eyes moved to Emhreeil, still laughing and smiling as she shifted onto her stomach, and began to struggle to her feet.

Emhreeil couldn’t see him, but she didn’t need to. The last man crumpled beneath him, and he immediately sprinted back towards her, before the sensation faded.

She staggered upright.

Her fingers nearly slipped as she dug the glass vial out of its metal container, but she quickly bit off the cover and downed the whole healing potion in one go, panting in relief as injuries big and small began to heal. Some prissy corner of her mind lamented the loss of a few silvers, and she ignored it.

Then she let the vial drop to the ground, spreading her arm and stump wide as she laughed, a light laugh she hadn’t felt come out of herself in what must have been ages.

His footsteps neared like a horse’s gallop, and she delighted in this light feeling in her chest, of relief, of endless gratitude.

What’s the score buddy? How many lives do I owe you? She wondered once more, and beamed harder.

Then he crashed into her, tackling her to the floor, and she let out a grunt-puff of surprise and pain, her injuries protesting the rough treatment- and holy fuck he’d gotten so much larger-

“EM!” Katherine shrieked, and she felt him jerk against her, his head raising from where it was against her. His presence lit up in her mind again, another fight.

She snapped her arm around his neck before he could pounce on Kat, and felt herself be dragged two entire feet before he stopped, letting out a strange, questioning wheeze as he shifted to not step on her.

“No! Nono no no, she’s a friend! Uh, shit, fuck, Kat, stand down, get on the ground, ground, get on the ground now!” She barked, and heard a hurried shuffle and thump as she assumed her friend did as she said.

She sent out a tiny pulse of mana to be sure, what little she had, and groaned in relief, slumping on the floor as the image that returned was her friend’s furry, blood-slick head tilted in confusion, glancing between her and Kat, who was on her back, half-raised, staring at them wide-eyed.

His presence retreated, no longer in fight mode.

“Meet my friend, Kat.” She chuckled and tugged him down.

He obliged her with his previous enthusiasm, damn near tackling her to the floor again as limbs and twisty things all grabbed at her, and she laughed even more as she grinned and rubbed her forehead against his own frenzied nuzzling, the scent of wet dog and fresh blood not unlike mixing manure and roses, so bizarre was the smell.

She let out pained, hitching laughs as he smeared her red, tails around her legs and four arms trapping her to him as he damn near sent them rolling, twisting like a crocodile on her in mindless enthusiasm, his back to her chest, then back again, and then he was nosing at her bald head.

Then he licked her face and she sputtered, turning away, squirming as he continued his relentless onslaught.

“Bleugh- ew ew ew stop, ow- holy shit you’re fucking heavy-”

Then he got spit in her mouth and she gagged, turning aside to spit and choke on laughter, wiggling her arm between the half-dozen limbs around her to wrap around his neck, dodging his overexcited wriggles by tucking her head under his chin and bucking around to dodge his bloodthirsty assault of spit and blood.

“Vile beast! I’ll-” Then she grunted as a leg hit her in the stomach, and she let out a garbled sound that was supposed to mean ‘I’ll have my revenge’.

Then he twisted, pulling her around, and halfheartedly nipped at her hairless scalp, and just like that, they were wrestling like rowdy pups, and she was wheezing with laughter, covered in blood and so happy she felt like a ball of honey and butterflies as she squirmed around the floor with him, ignoring the pain.

It was so rare to feel so happy and excited to the point where it felt like its own limbs just weren’t listening.

Its ‘template’ quickly fixed its ears and vocal cords, and it somehow made the situation a little more real.

Despite having her here, doing her strange yipping and feebly struggling away from its efforts to clean her face and lick her wounds, it still took a little bit for it to sink in.

It had accepted so fully and completely that she’d died. Then when it learned she was alive, even then, it hadn’t gotten its hopes up beyond trying its absolute best to keep her that way. It was like the idea of its human still being alive was in a strange sort of captivity until now, at least subconsciously, because it knew it might not get down here in time, it knew she might die regardless of its efforts.

It knew she was alive, but it hadn’t accepted it yet, because until she was like this, next to it, doing her weird human yipping and nuzzling back and trying in vain to win their play fight, she might as well not be.

And now she was here, alive, and the odd sensation of not being alone was altogether far too pleasant to care about the other humans she’d decided to bring into their pack without its permission or consent.

It would toss her around a bit for that later, but now, it was too happy to care.

Somewhere along the ride, his voice returned, and his playful grumble-growling was so familiar it almost bowled her over with nostalgia, and then he was mockingly repeating her words back at her with grumbling little howls, and she was wheezing from laughing, from fighting, from the fact that he was suddenly one heavy bastard and he didn’t seem to realize it yet.

But eventually, she stopped wrestling back, only squirming away from any licking, exhausted and breathing in harsh pants, so he stopped too, instead just flopping down on top of her with a sigh.

She sighed too, a sigh of contentment.

Finally.

It felt right again. She felt right again.

When lying down like this, he was larger than her, almost twice as wide on the shoulders. When walking he’d probably reach her damn thigh, maybe even her hip.

Wolves and their stupid cheaty, cheating bullcrap. It’s been like two, maybe three weeks at most since they separated, and he was like twice the size and built like a rock.

“Where are you gonna squeeze into when you’re the size of a dragon, huh?” She murmured, flicking his ear, smiling when it flicked her hand back with a bratty grumble.

She sent a pulse of mana to Katherine, who still looked shell shocked, staring at them from the same spot on the ground.

Then the wolf’s head raised to the left, opposite Kat, and she felt him tense.

Another pulse of mana that left her dry, and she felt Scruffy, very cautiously approaching from wherever she’d hid, in tiny steps.

She tapped him, and pointed to the goblin.

“Friend.”

Then she pointed back from herself to the goblin.

The wolf, bless his heart, wasn’t stupid, so he quickly realized her meaning and flopped back down.

She wheezed, and after a small bout of squirming where she realized he didn’t care too much to move off her, she snorted out a laugh and scratched between his ears, ignoring the sticky, congealing blood.

His absurdly bushy tails combined into one, and wagged.

Then she turned towards Kat, still breathing deep and heavy as she tried to find words, now that the initial excitement had faded somewhat.

Katherine found them first, it seemed.

“So that’s… your friend.” Kat half stated, half asked, incredulousness and a heavy dose of fear in her voice, very cautiously and slowly starting to shift to get up.

Why was she…?

She thought for a moment, then inwardly grimaced as she realized that having him slaughter something like thirty gangsters, after that horrific noise, however the hell he made it, was not exactly the best way to introduce him to Kat.

Emhreeil almost pissed her pants from hearing it, and she knew who made it. Katherine did not.

Kat was a tough cookie, mentally and physically, but from her own assumptions and snippets of conversations in lifts and inns, she could tell that Kat wasn’t used to coming so close to death as to taste it, nor was she used to this much blood and carnage.

She’d spent the majority of those two years of separation doing training and going around as a bodyguard for Lady Anna. She didn’t bathe in blood and guts, she didn’t drink blood just to survive, she didn’t have to kill to live.

She was shaken, in short.

She pushed at the wolf’s shoulder, insistently, and after a grumble, it got off her, quickly trotting off to snatch someone’s head to chew on, with a parting lick that made her laugh.

A thought occurred to her, as she noted that she was on the floor, the wolf chewing up meat a little further away as the scent of blood and death licked and danced in the air.

Just like old times.

She damn near started laughing again from the ghostly sense of deja vu, but she tamped it down for Kat’s sake to a small quick of her lips.

She heard the crack of bone pause, then paws thud quickly towards her in a steady, quick beat, and ignored it, assuming he was just excited or something.

“Kat? You- whoah!” She yelled, suddenly finding herself thrown up in an arc, a pair of muscled tentacles digging under her back and around her waist. She grasped at his tails for a moment for a sense of stability, legs kicking and accidentally booting him in the ass, and then she curled her knees in as she realized he was trying to carry her again, for some reason.

Barely a moment later, she was moving again towards Kat, and she stiffened, a pulse of mana showing a petrified Scruffy held in his arm, one of the lower pair.

He stopped just a few feet away from Kat, who looked stiff as a board, and tilted his back towards her, jerking his head to it with a short growl.

She didn’t know why he was in such a hurry, but she didn’t care. She trusted him far more than she trusted her own senses.

“Kat, just get on before he throws you on.” She said, wriggling a little because there was something vaguely bony pressing into her rib.

“Why?” Katherine whimpered despairingly to herself, rubbing at her face, then turned around, and began to sprint away. “Our supplies!” She yelled back, as if to explain herself, which was a nice gesture because for a moment she thought Kat had just decided to bail on them.

Her wolven friend snarled lowly, annoyed, and she quickly patted his tail, pointing insistently to the left, where two objects she very much desired were.

He turned to look, then glanced at her.

“Ssss…hwoooord?” He rasp-hissed, and she grimaced at the sound, before nodding. Well it was a dagger, but in his eyes, same thing.

Then she smiled because where had he learned that word?

He quickly bound over, and with another small flash of mana, she found both the items she wanted. A bloodstained mask with four claw marks going through the eyes, head not included, and her dagger.

She just pointed at them, and felt with fascination as a human arm uncurled from around his ribs to snatch them both up in a giant paw of a damn hand, and then just… stare at them, before he turned and chuffed a wordless question at her.

It took a moment for her to register it because the more she paid attention the more changes she noticed and the more she inwardly goggled at how much of an amazing monster he was.

He even had an eye in his neck. That was just- impressive and disturbing and perfectly suited to the absolute nightmare he was growing into. She smiled wider. She felt oddly proud of him.

Then finally his question registered, and she just made a universal “give that to me” gesture with her hand, and he twisted his waist a bit to present them to her.

Two taps, and they were thrown into her ring.

He stiffened, before tilting his head further, then pausing to shake and twist around, the blood matting into his fur most likely drying and making him feel stiff.

Katherine jogged back, something she didn’t see but hear.

The wolf moved forward, and Kat immediately ground to a halt, stiff and uncomfortable as he came up close and began sniffing her, the low range allowing her a near constant feel of the interaction.

Then he snorted, presented his back, and jerked his head there again.

Katherine stared at its back, looking equally disturbed by the intelligence on display and the… everything else. She looked down at the wolf’s impatient glare, then at her, pleadingly, lost.

“Just uh, lie kind of flat, and grab his shoulder-”

The tentacle in his back whipped out, wrapped around Katherine’s waist, and yanked her forward and up, her stomach landing on his back and landing her face to face with Scruffy, who was dangling off his left side by the secondary arm.

She’d never thought she’d live to see the day where Kat would squeal like that.

She felt her jaw literally drop, and idly noted that she really had to make Kat less scared of him before it became a problem.

He only took a moment to maneuver Kat around and force her to grab his shoulders, wiggling the spikes on them and waiting for her to fist her fingers in his fur.

Then Emhreeil was the one who squealed in surprise, because she felt like she was suddenly dangling off the back of a fucking freight train as it bound forward like an arrow, the bouncing irregularity included.

Little more than a dozen seconds later, a familiar sense of weightlessness came over her. A flash of mana revealed an edge behind them, retreating, and nothing around her.

Ah, he was jumping over something. Or a gap.

Something that was likely as dangerous as everything else he did.

Katherine let out a choked sound like a whimpering, high pitched keen of terror.

They hit something, the impact jarring and painful on her miriad little injuries, but she didn’t let that distract her besides a surprised grunt as she clutched at the bushy tails squeezing her like a paste tube.

She took a moment to examine the fear and exhilaration coursing through her heart.

She pushed the fear down, and embraced the latter. She went to throw her hand up, stopped immediately when her collarbone stabbed a spike of pain into her chest, then whooped like a madwoman as she idly kicked her legs as if hanging from a swing, too happy to care, finally feeling like she was home, like she was whole again.

Maybe the repeated brain damage and the dizziness helped in her ecstatic joy, but that was something to worry about later, so she raised her hand to slap Katherine on the back from where she was glued to the wolf’s back.

“Come on! They already heard us! Who gives a fuck for some more?!” She yelled through the shriek of tearing metal and rumbling machinery.

After a moment of hesitation, where they slowly slid down the side of a building, the wolf let out a howl imitating her whoop, a small, hesitant one, and dropped.

And she screamed louder, exhilarated, and the wolf howled louder too on the next drop, Katherine letting out muffled screams as if to oblige her, but slowly getting swept into the atmosphere as they continued to tumble and scrape down pipe after pipe, building after building, down spires of wire and lift supports, even Scruffy doing her best to join in, though she was definitely more than a little terrified.

And like four nutjobs, they howled, whooped, screamed and croaked their way down into the desolate walls of the Dungeon, and she’d never felt happier.

-

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