“Everyone, down the stairs now! Seek shelter in those buildings and we’ll fight Pike with burst tactics,” Xiphos said.

“We don't need to run down the stairs,” I said as I activated my class skill while focusing on the centre of the waiting buildings below.

A purple portal appeared in front of Kaiser and myself. The view from our side of the aperture showed the beginning of the long flat bridge that led across to Adormitzeu, but that’s not where we were headed until we’d made our stand. There was no shelter on the bridge and Pike would pick us off one by one.

“Damn that's cool,” Stiletto said as he rushed through the portal. He immediately activated his stealth field and disappeared.

One of the nearby buildings towards the bridge looked like a watchtower and had open windows. Stiletto would probably be on his way there to get the most optimal angle on the battlefield.

The rest of us fled through the portal and tried to get our bearings. There was no rhyme or reason to the placement of these rudimentary shelters. They had no doors, and no windows, and were mostly made of mud and stone. This whole area felt like it was from another time.

“Spread out or stick together?” I asked.

“Spread out,” Xiphos replied. “We each take one of these shelters, and we surprise our enemy as one. Hatchet, the moment you open fire the rest of us will unleash hell. If we can damage Pike enough with our opening gambit then we might be able to disable her.”

“We should try and save her, I agree.” Naginata nodded decisively.

I flexed my claws. “This will be a real test to see whether I really can purge the corruption from something living.”

“Pike is one of us. This could have happened to any of us,” Xiphos said. “We owe it to her to try. Now go, before she arrives!”

The flapping of leathery bat-like wings filled the air as Pike approached, her spear held in both hands. Two blazing red eyes shone down at us as she circled around.

As I scrambled into a nearby shelter, I had flashbacks from my first mission. I’d been sent in alone – as was customary for new EDGEs – and it was sheer good luck that I’d survived. Almost every other human on the island had been corrupted by the same power that let me create things from my own imagination.

Altrighus’s anima could be used for good or evil. It all depended on who was using it. I had no access to that power anymore, but Balaur’s anima now ran through my body. I suddenly wished that I could summon the monsters from my books to fight for us like I had back on the island, then maybe we could turn the tide in our favour. Melchior, my feral vampire, would have made a good match for the gargoyle-like form of Pike circling above.

My first mission could have gone so much worse. If it wasn’t for Kaiser, I probably would have died.

No, I definitely would have died.

Or worse.

I could have ended up as some mutated cultist monster and lost everything it meant to be human.

I could have lost the memory of my kids and lost everything that made me who I am.

If I could give Pike the chance to come back from this, then I would.

An ear-piercing screech came from above. The wail shook the air around me, causing ancient dust to rattle from the uneven stone walls around me.

“I know you’re down there!” Pike called out. Her voice was deep, with an Australian accent.

This was someone who was probably taken out of their everyday life and sent to investigate a village full of missing people against her will. Someone that I might have passed at the shops on the weekend without even realising.

Just another best and brightest member of the human race to be exploited.

A flash of anger boiled through me at how EDGE Force did things.

Sure, ignorance is bliss, and any knowledge of reality-altering entities playing games with the fabric of existence might have had a bit of an impact on the world at large, but the whole process was so callous.

EDGE Force were picking people out of the general populous and forcing them to become pawns in games they didn’t even know we were playing.

Plus, they had a damn research facility right here on this mountain, and they’d known about Balaur’s anima network for years. They’d been doing experiments on its restorative powers, understanding it to a level that let them integrate it right into the section of the EDGE Force augment that handles health regeneration.

What other experiments had they done with other anima sources or entities to let them make their own reality augments anyway?

Damn it. There was so much I didn’t know, so much I needed to know, and the rest of my team were out there hiding, waiting for me to kick this battle off.

Kaiser nuzzled his head into my hand and whined.

“It’s okay buddy. We’ll be okay. First thing’s first, we need to see if we can save Pike. She was someone before this happened to her, and it could have so easily been me.”

Kaiser barked an affirmative, and I had a feeling that he knew more than anyone else exactly how close he’d come to becoming a monster himself.

Back on Mori Island two copies of Kaiser were brought through into our world from one of the dead cult leader’s paintings. Kaiser was raised with love and attention, but one was experimented on further by Mnemtech and twisted into a hideous, deformed version of Kaiser called Grendel.

We’d delivered Grendel right into EDGE Force’s hands too.

What secrets had they learned from Grendel and the lingering influence of the anima of Altrighus left on Mori Island?

I took a breath. This was not the time to freeze.

Pike descended and landed right in the centre of the platform with explosive force. I never got the chance to open fire before the front of my building crumbled and fell in towards me. While I still had visibility to the courtyard outside, I activated my class skill and opened a portal directly above Pike. The other end of the portal opened right beneath my feet.

Kaiser and I fell through. I grabbed my buddy by the purple bandana around his neck and tried to roll away, out of the way of the building’s roof which came tumbling through the portal after us.

Pike turned, her eyes opened in surprised at our sudden appearance above her. She grinned right as a huge piece of mud and stone slammed into the side of her head and sent her reeling.

I raised Gravedigger at Pike’s centre mass, then rethought my aim. I focussed down towards her legs and pulled the trigger, which activated my Focussed Fire buff.

Then the rest of the team started shooting.

“Aim for the arms, legs and wings!” I shouted.

I wanted to do everything I could to keep Pike alive and purge her of this corruption. Plus, if Pike had been into the heart of the enemy’s stronghold, then she might know a weakness or a secret that we could exploit.

A loud crack rang out as Stiletto fired off an Ensnaring Shot. It slammed into Pike’s shoulder, then ropes burst out from the wound. Two tethers buried themselves into the ground, and the other two smashed into the sides of nearby buildings that still stood.

Pike roared as she reached back to grab at the wound.

Xiphos activated her All For One skill, which buffed us all. Even with that and the Focussed Fire buff, Pike was like a bullet sponge. The high calibre rounds of Stiletto’s rifle broke through, but he could only fire so quickly. The buckshot from Gravedigger didn’t shred Pike’s flesh like I expected it to either.

Pike looked like a demon who’d clawed their way up from the pits of hell. Her extra-jointed reptilian legs made her stand a foot taller than me, with her wings towering above us even further. She used one of those wings to hook one of Stiletto’s snares and pull it from the ground. Pike buffeted Naginata and Xiphos with wind from the other wing, causing them to take shelter behind the rubble. The wind blew dust into the air as Pike used her weapon to dig another snare out of the ground.

“Why do you fight this?” Pike called out, obscured by dust. “You’ve never felt this kind of power. This type of connection! This power will let us do everything that EDGE Force says they fight for. It’s been waiting for us here, all this this time. Thousands of years!”

Wait, that didn’t sound right. Connection, power, here for thousands of years… all of those things could be said of Balaur too.

“That’s bullshit, Pike. Whatever Trajan is telling you, he’s lying!” Xiphos called out before peppering Pike with another round of assault rifle fire.

The dust had begun to settle again, and those bullets barely pierced Pike’s flesh either.

I looked from my own green claws to the reptilian – no draconic – claws on the end of Pike’s feet and couldn’t really see a difference. The wings, the claws, the pupils of her eyes with their vertical reptilian slits, was that what might happen to me in time?

I’d been afflicted by Balaur’s blessing for less than a day and I’d already become something more than human. Pike had been missing for weeks. Was this a glimpse into my own future?

“You think this is Trajan’s doing?” Pike said with a laugh. “Oh, you truly have no idea, do you?”

“Then tell us!”

“No,” Pike said as she tore another tether out of the ground with her spear weapon. She turned towards Xiphos and Naginata, and away from me. “You will not stop us from completing the summoning ritual.”

A deep rumble rolled through the cavern. The ground beneath my feet shook as a bright red light bloomed from the centre of Adormitzeu. Something rose from behind the parapets of the city’s walls, bright and gleaming with burning red anima.

An obelisk like the one I’d received Balaur’s blessing from was rising up from the centre of the city!

“There’s no time left,” Pike said as she tore the last tether free. “You will not interrupt the ritual.”

Pike then lashed out at all of us with her wings as she spun in a circle. I lost my footing and tumbled backwards, unable to withstand the force of her attack. We needed some heavy artillery to help in this fight, and my anima grenade ability was the only trump card we had up our sleeves.

I started siphoning the anima from my full tank into my right hand. The skin there burned as a tiny anima globule coalesced and started to grow. Bright green light burst forth from the burgeoning anima grenade just as I activated my class skill again. This time, I aimed at the top floor of the building Stiletto was shooting from.

“Regrouping!” I said as I stepped through and hunkered down next to Stiletto.

“Hey buddy, I need your help with something,” I said.

“Of course, my man.”

“I’m going to be mostly out of commission while I let this anima grenade build, but I think it’s the only way we’re going to beat Pike. You need to cover Xiphos and Naginata while I hide and let this thing grow. When I give you the signal, I need you to hit Pike with another tethering shot.”

Stiletto fired another round at Pike. “What’s the signal?”

“Purple monkey dishwasher.”

Stiletto grinned. “Purple monkey dishwasher. I can handle that.”

And so the plan was formed. The insides of this three-storey watchtower were sparsely decorated, but there were some modern things here. A bunch of books on a small shelf, most of them in Romanian but some in English, a modern blanket in a doona cover with a strange rainforest pattern printed on the outside, and some plastic eating utensils.

This place had been used relatively recently, and often. Adormitzeu was not as hidden as I once believed it to be. It had a purpose even in these modern times, and the fact that its existence was not widely known gave credence that this was the location of the Scholomance.

It had to be here. Dark wizards always kept their lairs secret, and they were always well defended.

I scooted down the stairs, followed by the glow of the growing anima grenade. Kaiser dutifully trotted by my side.

“When I open the next portal, don’t go through,” I said quietly. “I’m going to lob this grenade through and I don’t want you caught in the blast.”

Kaiser quietly growled an affirmative reply.

The sounds of battle rang out as I headed back down to ground level. Xiphos and Naginata were keeping pace with Pike, even though Pike was altered far beyond the level of any human. Pike lashed out with her wings as often as she stabbed with her weapon, but Xiphos and Naginata were strong and agile enough to counter or dodge most of these strikes.

Pike lunged at Xiphos with her spear, but Naginata stepped in to block her while activating her class skill. Her parries were perfect as Pike tried to break through Naginata’s defences.

The anima grenade reached a new threshold as 200 anima swelled there in the palm of my right hand. I drew Ironbark from its holster and fired a single shot at Pike while Naginata had her attention. The Focussed Fire buff activated again, right as Naginata thrust her weapon forward. It knocked Pike’s spear aside and sunk into the flesh of her shoulder.

Pike cried out and grabbed her shoulder. Her wings flexed as though she was about to take off right as I sprung my trap.

“Purple monkey dishwasher!” I called out and stopped channelling anima into the grenade, thereby beginning the 7 seconds countdown.

Pike looked back at me with an eyebrow cocked in confusion. “Wha-” she began, but Stiletto hit his mark.

Another Ensnaring Shot slammed into Pike, right between her wings. Ropes unfurled and locked her in place, entangling the thick musculature connecting her wings to her spine. The sharp pointed ends of each rope found the ground and drilled in.

When I activated my class skill, I made the portal appear right above Pike. She was so focussed on pulling the anchors up from the ground she never saw the anima grenade fall until it was too late.

A massive explosion rocked the platform, both in front of me and in a line of fire straight through the portal, which I dodged with only a moment to spare. When I was sure the fire had died down, I activated both sets of claws and leapt through the portal.

My horizontal trajectory turned vertical, and my momentum drove my claws into Pike’s back. She struggled to flick me off with her wings, but the charred ruin of her back revealed that both wings had been blown off by the grenade. Gore-covered bones jutted from ragged holes in her back.

I drew on her anima and my mind was flooded with fragments of memory. I sensed the confusion of being kidnapped and dropped into an empty village while trying to figure out the EDGE Force augment, the terror of being stalked by a varcolac as it prowled from building to building sniffing her out, and Pike’s inevitable fall to the monster. The varcolac went to strike her down, but was stopped at the last moment.

The anima flowed out of her like a torrent, and I was awash in her memories. I kept enough of myself anchored to convert it straight into experience points so I could drain her entirely of this corrupt anima.

Trajan Cel Tradat, the dragonslayer, he was there in the village in Pike’s memories. The varcolacs followed his orders, and he was curious about this newcomer. He leaned down and sniffed Pike.

“You are not of the dragon,” Trajan said. “Touched by something, yes, but not by him. What are you?”

Then the memory faded. Another surfaced as I levelled up. The anima was coming faster and faster now, almost too fast for me to convert to experience as it built.

In this next memory, Pike was in chains held aloft over some kind of altar. Trajan wore a ceremonial robe of black and swirling reds, like the flickering colour of the anima I drained from Pike. There were others like him in similar dress. The word Solomonari floated into my mind. Trajan wielded a knife made of pure anima, and then it was plunged into her chest. I felt the pain that exploded in Pike’s memory, but I had to convince myself that her pain was not my own.

That gash torn by the anima knife opened a highway into Pike’s body and soul for the corrupting force of the dragonslayer’s anima.

Then the truth of the ceremony hit me like a drunk driver speeding through a pedestrian crossing. This anima did not belong to Trajan. It did not originate from him. He was a vessel, just as Pike became a vessel. The true source of the corruption was deep beneath the surface of the lake.

Then suddenly the torrent of anima dried up, and I found myself lurching backward onto the stone that was still warm from my grenade blast. I’d levelled up yet again, but that’s not what I was most concerned with.

The naked form of Pike lay in front of me, curled up into the foetal position. Her feet were human, devoid of corruption, and the jagged spikes of bone that had been her wings were gone too. Pike lifted her head and looked over at me. Tears overflowed her gleaming hazel eyes.

“You did it,” she said. “You actually managed to burn him out of me.”

“Him?” Xiphos asked. “Trajan Cel Tradat?”

Pike shook her head as she propped herself up on one elbow. “He is an empty pit that demands to be filled, a conqueror of worlds, a binder of wills, a terrible hunger that can never be sated. His name is Sare’zmei, and they’ve almost unlocked the door to his prison. We need to move!”