With the kind of reputation the Underworld had, most people presumed that capes and cloaks were constantly at each others' throats. While that assumption may have had more than a grain of truth when it came to street-level crime, the situation tended to be rather different for older, more experienced cowled. Steele's Regime was still fresh in many people's minds, after all. Villains still considered the heroes to be, well, heroes. It was hard to hold a grudge against somebody that risked his life to bring your family food and medicine or took a bullet meant for your kid. Heroes, on the other hand, still remembered the time when they had been the ones in hiding. Pretty much every family had or knew somebody that's been forced to go on the run during Steele's Regime. A number of older heroes and villains once fought side by side – and, though they may have become adversaries, the mutual respect remained. Most notable accomplishments of the cowled were always achieved by capes and cloaks working together.

Of course, that did not mean the heroes would ignore a crime committed right in front of their eyes.

Nor would the villains turn a blind eye to any heroes traipsing around the Underworld.

***

The only man standing in the room looked entirely average and unremarkable. His cheap grey suit would have fit any used car salesman, his hair was short and scruffy, and there was a three-day stubble on cheeks. His face was rather narrow, but still fit the kind of generic template you'd pass by in the streets without giving it a second look, and he was neither tall nor short, not buff and not skinny – just kind of average. Overall, he seemed entirely boring and not worth paying attention to.

You know, if you disregarded all the bodies lying around him.

Most of them seemed to belong to common grunts, the kind you could hire a dime a dozen down here, armed with only makeshift weapons like pipes and knives, but I could actually recognize a cloak here and there. That guy's custom harness identified him as the Mad Bomber – though it was the only thing capable of doing so, since his face was caved in and crushed to a bloody pulp. The one pinned to the wall with a harpoon seemed to be Gorebiter, her lower jaw still expanded, dripping mixed saliva and blood. The mess of flesh and greenery, emitting ghastly moans as it burned in the corner of the room, had to be Biobomination.

The entire place smelled like a slaughterhouse, and I didn't even want to know just what was seeping into the sleeve of my costume.

“We're not with them,” I stated preemptively, slowly standing up with my arms raised and trying to avoid any movements that could be deemed hostile. “We got caught up in all this mess the same way you did. We don't want any trouble.”

The suit man stayed silent.

It was not a good silence.

“You seem to be an expert in causing trouble, though,” I offered, scrambling for something to stave off the impending violence. “Can I interest you in a job?”

Blythe's head whipped around.

“Are you mad?” he hissed under his breath.

“I'm willing to pay,” I continued, “and I have access to a wide range of services – information, weapons, appearance alteration, exotic goods...”

I trailed off suggestively, letting the suit man's imagination fill in the blanks.

Blythe started inching toward the room's sole exit, but froze in place the moment dark, emotionless eyes turned toward him.

“He also knows a way out of the pyramid!” Doctor blurted out.

Those eyes turned back toward me.

“How much?”

The suit man's voice was surprisingly soft and so quiet, it would have gone completely unheard in a busy street.

“Twenty thousand,” I offered. “Reasonable for less than an hour of work, don't you think?”

“One hundred.”

The man negotiated in an emotionless monotone, giving not a single indication of his desires or feelings. It was hard to haggle with something like that.

I tried anyway.

“How about sixty thousand? Meeting in the middle and all that.”

The suit man's gaze was dark, deep and still, resembling the water surface of an abandoned old well. The kind of well one used to hide the bodies of witnesses.

“On the other hand, your offer seems quite reasonable,” I backtracked. “One hundred thousand commondollars, you say? One hundred thousand commondollars it it.”

“And a favor,” he stated evenly. “To be used at a later time.”

I nodded.

“Oh my god,” Blythe whispered. “This is what they call karma, isn't it?”

My own feeling were rather more optimistic than that. 'At a later time' implied that there would be a later time – and that was just the kind of thing I liked to hear.

Intent and confidence.

“They call me Carnival,” I held out my hand with a smile. “Glad to have you on board!”

He looked at my hand like it was made from shards of broken glass, and I pulled it back before things could get awkward.

“Kirin.”

I nodded again, a little less optimistic than before. So, no safety net of a connection. I could still do this.

“What's the situation like down here?” I asked. “As you can see, we're just dropping in.”

“It's a warzone,” Kirin's report was short and concise. “The raiders arrived from Ra's Passing. All river-adjacent tunnels are overrun. South-east section barricaded the passages and let no one in. Papyrus District is a powder keg. The main force left it alone, but looters are everywhere. Shopkeepers shoot anything moving on sight.”

“What about the Grand Auction?” I querried.

The suit man shook his head briefly – left, right, center.

“It's the largest battleground in the area. The clientele all brought their own guard. They're fighting against both each other and the invaders. And somebody freed the thralls.”

Blythe frowned.

“Grand Auction? Isn't that where...”

“The escape tunnel is located?” I finished for him. “Yes.”

“Bugger.”

***

Reaching Grand Auction Hall turned out to be fairly easy. By tapping into my connection with Charlie – who was currently observing the security monitors, thus giving me an overview of the entire Pyramid – I managed to lay out a route that got us to our destination without a single shot fired.

We could hear the carnage long before we were able to see anything. Sharp bangs of gunfire and the clanging of steel, piercing screams of the injured and the dying and bellowing cries of people trying to take charge, all manner of exotic sounds from the powers unleashed.

Then we circled around the bend.

Grand Auction occupied one of the largest caverns in all of Duat. Over a hundred meters long, half as wide and with the ceiling so high up, it gave the impression of an open sky, this was the place for the rich and powerful to get things they couldn't get anywhere else. Gilded furniture, marble balustrades, exquisite decorations – everything about this place screamed of wealth. Fifty separate balconies, perpetually shrouded in gloom to hide the identities of their clients, loomed over the main walkway, giving their owners a chance to look over the merchandise.

Or, as the situation showed, shoot down an invading army.

Of course, this was not a normal army.

Sssss-crack-BOOM!

Some unknown power smashed into the balcony on our right, and the stone exploded, filleting the area with shrapnel. Somebody screamed as they fell, trying – and failing – to grab something to hold on to. The sound cut off as the man smacked into the ground, snapping his neck.

“Shoot her!” a man yelled. “Just fucking shoot the bitch alre-”

There was another explosion, and the yelling went silent.

“Ok,” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the cacophony. “This looks bad, but we can do this. We need to get -”

“I'm not going in there,” Blythe interrupted, wide eyed. His gaze was locked to the woman a few meters in front of us, as she tried to hold in her innards. Judging by the screaming, she either didn't have a Cluster to numb the pain or her gauge simply ran empty. “You can't make me. Absolutely not.”

Pop.

The woman's head burst crimson, cutting off the screams. Kirin lowered his gun.

Blythe whirled around, but whatever words he had died off, as he took a long, hard look into the still depths of the suit man's eyes. He swallowed.

“Khm,” I coughed, clearing my throat. “Yes. We need to get underneath the thirty-fourth balcony. It has a gold and blue mask under it. The eyeholes conceal a hidden lever, which opens up a password-locked panel. The code is -”

There was a kind of whistling sound. It took me several moments to recognize it, but Kirin was quicker on the uptake. Grabbing both of us by the collars, he pulled us down beneath the closest table. There was a snapping sound as something repeatedly hit its surface, like a particularly violent rain.

Patchmen. Had to be. Nobody else used bows in this day and age.

Blythe's breathing was quick and panicked, on the very edge of hyperventilating. I wasn't doing much better, I had to admit. It's been years since I've last been in a mess of this size.

“Thirty-fourth balcony,” Kirin's voice was quiet, but intense. “Where is it?”

“It's in...” I broke off, coughing, choking on the smoke. Getting actual wood down to the Underworld was a difficult and expensive endeavor, so, of course, the Grand Auction Hall was filled to the brim with this stuff. By now, I couldn't even see a dozen steps in front of me. “It's around the middle of the room.”

“We're lucky,” he nodded. “Smoke will provide cover from both sides. If we move along the walls, we might have a chance.”

“Lucky? Lucky?” in contrast to Kirin, Blythe's voice was high and panicked. His eyes were darting about wildly, as he gesticulated with his arms. “This, this is madness! Insanity! It's a bloody war, we're stuck in the middle of a bloody war! What part of this is lucky? I'm not even supposed to be here!”

The suit man's face went flat, even flatter than usual.

“I'll take care of him,” I said hurriedly, before anybody did anything I would regret. “Can you scout out the way? We'll follow right behind you.”

He shot me a look, but nodded, wordlessly disappearing into the smoke.

I took a moment to reach out to my connection with the mechanic, seeking a way to clear the path, cut down on the chaos. Unfortunately, I found him in the supervisor's office, getting viciously – though, thankfully, not literally – chewed out, and in no position to help me. I mentally apologized for the hot water I dropped him in, but didn't have more than a moment of pity to spare. I had my own problems to deal with.

“Come on, Blythe, Steven,” I gave Doctor a few moments before gently pulling him up. “We have to go.”

He followed my lead silently, the fight gone out of him. It was not a good thing, here on the battlefield, but I had neither the time nor the knowledge to help him.

There was another boom, further away. A strange light, blue and green and somehow unaffected by all the smoke, flowed throughout the room. It brought with it silence; all the screaming and crying and shooting and shouting just coming to a stop. I felt a bizarre sense of peace. Blythe sat down on the ground, both crying and smiling, and I sat down beside him. Why fight? Everything would turn out alright, I knew. I didn't know how, but the certainty was there, greater than anything else I had ever believed in.

All would be well.

Crunch.

The light faded instantly, suddenly. Darkness swallowed the room, consuming the peace, and not even a minute later the fight resumed. Banging and crunching and breaking. I swallowed, trying to ignore the lump in my throat.

Blythe was still crying.

“Steven...”

A bullet whizzed by, leaving a bloody trail in my cheek, and I was abruptly reminded of our situation.

“Blythe, damn it, stand up!” I hissed. “We have to keep moving.”

“That was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,” he said quietly.

“That's nice, but we have to go!”

“It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,” he repeated. “And then they murdered it. Why. Why? What the bloody hell is wrong with you people? Why do you adore soul-eating, despair-inducing monstrosities, like the one outside the elevator, and murder all things beautiful?”

“Look, I'm sure you're leading up to something deep and meaningful, but now's not the time for philosophy!” I gave up on arguing and bodily hauled Blythe up to his feet.

- only to fall back down a second later.

A shrieking, piercing sound, like a drill taken to concrete, but several times louder, roared throughout the room, overwhelming all other sounds. Gritting our teeth and holding our ears with everything we had, Blythe and I could do little except roll on the ground and wait for it to be over.

And then it was, after what seemed like hours, but likely didn't even last a minute. With a crunch that should have been deafening, but ended up nearly inaudible after the initial noise, a large chunk of stone dropped down from the invisible ceiling and shattered on the floor below. Marchioness, surrounded by several dozen guards in green and white uniforms of Grand Pyramid Security, descended through the gloom and smoke atop her forcefields, looking like something straight out of a surface-dweller's nightmare.

The raiders, quickly realizing that the tide was turning against them, responded with something big and red, swiftly expanding toward the security forces like the world's most child-unfriendly balloon, one with too many appendages and all the teeth.

“Blythe!” I hissed. “Now's our chance, while they're distracted. Go, go, go!”

For once, the older Englishman did not argue with me. Crawling at the base of the wall, we moved forward with all possible speed, trying to avoid any hostile attention. It was not as difficult as it could have been. Cowled never made for a good army, and whatever structure the invading forces once possessed had long since fallen apart. They moved around in hunting packs of twos and threes, surrounding the balconies, ripping into defenders with their powers, then moving ahead. We were dirty, bloodied and on the ground – and they didn't bother to see if were still alive or just a few more corpses lying around. I even let myself hope that we could get to the escape tunnel unnoticed.

Of course, the Weavers couldn't let something as boring as that actually happen.

The ground – solid stone, if decorated with burnt carpet, burned bodies and pools of blood – suddenly buckled underneath us, shifting and rolling like the ocean waves. I tried to move sideways, but a sudden rise threw me through the air and into the wall. For a moment, everything went dark and narrow, my body threatening to fall unconscious. I grit my teeth and pushed up, calling its bluff.

Then the world smashed into me in a blur of white.

I fell back to the ground. There was a brief second of pain, followed by my entire right arm going completely numb. Bones broken, judging by the Cluster's response. I rolled up, barely managing to get to my feet, and pulled out the Neural Disruptor, activating it with a flick.

It did not activate.

I blinked and flicked it again. Same result. It took visual examination to notice that the baton had a large crack running through its entire upper half. The wires did not connect with each other anymore. It might as well have been a fancy stick.

A surge of white, and I moved to the side on sheer instinct, feeling the displaced air from the blow.

“Uh, can we talk about this?” I breathed out, raising my one functioning arm.

My assailant was a young woman in her twenties, if that. Her once white dress was covered in soot, grime and blood, her dark hair stuck close to the skull, and her face was set into a nearly feral snarl. There was a wildness in her eyes, something beyond fear or hatred, that hinted at a person on the very brink of despair, maybe even one foot beyond it. My eyes fell down to her neck, surrounded by a thin circle of metal, the collar with no visible lock or clasp.

Oh. She was a thrall.

The woman blinked, her expression changing to surprise for just a second, as her mind processed the words.

“Where's my sister?” she snarled.

“I don't know,” I replied soothingly, trying to calm her down without seeming like I was trying to calm her down. “But, I'm sure we can find out, if you just let me help.”

“I need no help from a slave trader!” the cowled woman bared her teeth.

“I have many sins to my name,” I admitted, “but flesh peddling is not among them. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe damsels should be distressed only for get-away and trap-making purposes.”

Incredulity flashed across her face, a kind of 'are you for real?' look. I counted that as a win.

“How do I know you're not lying? You're here, after all.”

“That's a good point.” I nodded. “Let me make a counterargument...”

Pop, pop, pop.

Kirin did not bother with negotiations or warning shots. Three bullets hit the cowled girl directly in the back of the head – and fell down, clinking on the ground.

A corona of flames flared to life around her.

“Well, shit.”

The blow struck me like a speeding train. It did not feel like a punch – there was no push, no give, just an unstoppable force reducing my right lower ribs to dust and shattered fragments. The pain faded a second later, as the Cluster did its job, and I fell to one knee, desperately trying to keep balance when I could barely feel half of my body.

The former thrall turned toward Kirin, lashing out with another punch, but the suited man was already moving back.

Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.

A series of bullets shot at her face, targeting the soft tissue – eyes, nose, throat. None left so much as a scratch. Either the cowled woman had a skin-tight forcefield or her enhanced toughness came without any weak points.

Having come to the same conclusion, Kirin did not bother wasting any more bullets. Throwing the gun to the side – and rolling to the left to avoid a retaliatory punch – he pulled out a bizarre elongated cylinder. As the cowled lunged toward him once again, the suited men spun sideways, pulling out the pin, and tossed the grenade right in front her. The second before the thrall landed, it exploded into enhanced webbing, trapping the cowled from head to toe and leaving her entangled in hundreds of miniature threads. It was great thinking, I admitted. Even enhanced strength required some kind of support or leverage to -

The woman shrugged off the webbing as though it wasn't even there and leaped at Kirin. Apparently, her strength also wasn't subject to the usual rules and limitations. Super-strength, super-toughness and pyromancy. This morning each cowled only had one power (Answer notwithstanding); did somebody change the rules while I wasn't looking?

The suited man remained unfazed, drawing a miniature spray bottle from his pocket. I did not particularly want to know what was inside it, and, judging by the wary way the cowled froze, neither did she. Even people with enhanced toughness usually needed to breathe.

The terse standoff was interrupted when the ground turned into waves once more. Kirin rode his wave out, looking so unfazed, he might as well have been standing on flat ground. The thrall woman remained in place and let the wave break around her, hard stone no match for her power.

I got picked up and thrown into a wall.

Again.

Ok, enough was enough.

“Are you two quite done yet? In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of something here.”

Kirin's look of mild annoyance was the most emotion I had ever seen from the man.

“Am I...” the cowled's mouth fell open. “You're the ones that attacked me!”

“My arm would beg to differ,” I retorted dryly.

The woman actually looked a little guilty.

“You were standing in the way of...” she froze. “My sister!”

“Calm down,” I told her. “Think. When was the last time you saw her?”

“We were brought together into a side room of this theatre-thing. Those people said they wanted to sell us as a matching pair,” the bitterness and loathing in her tone were unmistakable.

I made some soothing noises, trying to ignore the explosions, the smoke and the bodies. Just imagine this is an office up above, and you're trying to dupe some poor soul by pretending to be a therapist, I told myself. Just a regular office.

There was a scream, and somebody's severed arm flopped down in my lap.

My eye twitched.

“What happened next?”

“There was noise,” the woman raised her hand, touching the metal band around her throat. “This thing kept me paralyzed when I wasn't given an order, so I couldn't even turn my head. They could have come up behind me and cut my throat, and I would have just... I still have no idea what happened. I guess, the Auctioneer got killed? Maybe the control unit was totalled? Those men, the dirty ones, they grabbed everything in the room, carrying it out, and, when they tried to grab me, I realized that I could move.”

“The collars deactivated when the remote was destroyed?” I raised my eyebrows. “That was lucky.”

Or, more likely, the Weavers' intervention. No doubt, they would have considered the thralls all dying – especially with a cowled among them – to be too dull an ending.

“I crawled out of that room to find the entire place on fire, and my sister nowhere to be seen. I've been searching for her since.”

“Well, if they bothered to carry her away, she's most likely alive,” I smiled. “Is she a villain, like you? They may want to recruit her.”

“A villain?” the woman blinked, sounding offended. “I'm a hero!”

It was my turn to blink.

“I did not hear about any new arrivals to the Hero's Roost.”

“Hero's...” she started to ask, then shook her head. “We were following a villain.”

“All the way into the Underworld?” I couldn't quite keep the surprise from my tone. “That's very, uh, brave.”

“It's stupid,” she scowled at me. “I know that now. Lies and lows, I knew it then. I was just carried away, and my sister's paying the price. I can't accept that.”

“Well, you won't find her here,” I stood up, swaying slightly, but keeping my balance. “If the Honest Men took her with the rest of the loot, she's likely to be in their lair already, or, at least, on her way there.”

The woman rushed toward me, and I had to physically keep myself from flinching as she moved her hands to my throat.

“Do you know where it is?” she demanded breathlessly, grabbing me by the collar.

I carefully shook her off, well aware that she had to have let me do so.

“I can't say I know the exact location, but I know the people who do. First, though, we need to get out of here.”

The battle around us was slowly heating up – both figuratively and literally, as the fires spread. Marchioness was unstoppable and invulnerable – but she was only one person. Her security forces were armed, armored and highly trained, but they were also heavily outnumbered and mostly consisted of the unpowered.

The independent villains, flocking atop their balconies, were more than happy to strike back at the raiders – but didn't miss a chance to land a shot on Marchioness either. Some thought to test their likely future Duchess, since she wouldn't last long if she wasn't even capable of watching her back. Others were hoping to get a reward from whoever engineered the raid, maybe even openly bribed into sabotaging Duat's forces. And then there were those that simply wished to tear down the lady for personal reasons. As I knew from my recent experience, her personality could sometimes be off-putting.

The marauders were by far the most numerous group. Numbering in triple digits and containing more powered members than not, they were a force to be reckoned with – or would be, if they actually were a unified force. As I've noticed before, most raiders, Honest Men and their 'allies', tended to trust each other about as much as they did their enemies. The majority of the cowled swiftly split off to do their own thing, solo or in small groups, so it felt more like several dozen different fights rather than a true battle.

In the end, it resulted in a horrific three-way brawl all across the Grand Auction's floor, too wild to even tell which power took the life of a man standing beside you. It was madness, in more ways than one, and, from the way the darkness seemed to writhe and gather above the combatants, it seemed the situation was on the verge of boiling over.

Our powers were, effectively, a way of enforcing our desire upon reality and telling the world to deal with it. And it did. When faced with a single cowled, or a dozen or even double that, the world dealt with it, recovering and restoring itself to the default state with admirable tenacity. Mind control weakened, spatio-temporal anomalies evaporated, ghosts and monsters turned to dust. Bringing more than a hundred cowled, actively using and mixing their powers, into a single room, though?

That was just asking for trouble.

“I think, it's about time we made our way out,” I murmured, looking upwards.

Kirin silently nodded.

The cowled woman frowned, taking one last look at the room, as though hoping her sister would magically appear if she searched hard enough, and reluctantly followed after me.

Turns out, we were less than a dozen meters away from our target. Miraculously, the mask remained untouched by fires and the rampant power use, and I managed to use my one working arm to open the panel and hurriedly punch in the code. The door rustled – the sound going entirely unheard in the heat of combat – and faded in a rain of nanoparticles.

We were still too slow.

The darkness above our heads reached critical mass. Reality rippled and ripped with a sound that was not a sound, more akin to deep-sea pressure rupturing your eardrums. The rip itself could not be seen, as it was something that was not there, but I nonetheless felt attracted to it, almost physically drawn, yet at the same time repulsed, as though it was a thing so foul, it should not, could not exist in this world.

What crawled out was indescribable, as such things often are. It crawled into my mind, leaving a greasy, twitchy trail on my skin and a taste in my mouth so rancid, I couldn't help but throw up.

It didn't have a set form, not yet. Beings like that didn't have a shape, not in that place where they came from. They only took a body on this side, and it was a revolting, blasphemous process that often took the sanity of those that observed it.

Marchioness had no intention of waiting for it to finish. Pulling a gun from the nearest corpse, she opened fire straight at the massive, eldritch thing with an incomprehensible, wordless scream. People around her, villains, raiders and all – at least, the ones not gibbering on the ground in senseless terror – followed her lead. There was no order or organization here, no tactics or clever tricks, just human stubborness and defiance in the face of a malignant, uncaring cosmos.

As the tunnel door closed behind our backs, my last glance of the Grand Pyramid was of three sides forgetting their conflict and firing wildly into the central mass of a maelstrom of senseless malice, as it howled putrid silence at the world.

***

“It should be impossible,” the cowled woman was the first to break. “That was... was that...”

“An Incursion?” I finished for her. “No. No, thank the -”

I cut myself off, hesitant to invoke their names out loud, not with the rip torn open so close by.

“It was not an Incursion,” I started again. “Not quite, not yet. But it could become one if not stopped at the crossing.”

I turned around to address the fourth member of our group and blinked.

“Where's Blythe?”