“Are we really leaving the Otherworlders to die?” Arie asked.

She wasn’t speaking to Rory or asking it to the group in general. Her voice was low and hushed while they were preparing dinner later that evening, conversing quietly with Ned. The other former Neophytes had joined her too, all of whom had been given their mental faculties back thanks to Diane’s efforts.

“We can’t afford to go out and help everyone,” Ned explained. He looked helplessly at everywhere except at the latest additions to their party. “We need to look after ourselves first and foremost, and sometimes, that means not interfering in the business of others.”

“But you interfered with our business,” another former Neophyte said, voice hissing as he opened his mouth and flickered his tongue out. “And look where it got us. It’d help if we could offer the Otherworlders the same kind of assistance, right?”

“Yes, but the situations are not at all equivalent. No one cared if we helped people like you who were in danger from monsters. We’d be in existential danger if we helped the Otherworlders. It could be seen as taking sides in the war, and then we’d have targets on our backs. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“Cherry picking who we help and don’t help is a deplorable state to be in.”

Ned sighed. “I agree. But it is what it is.”

Rory thought that was going to be the end of it, but it was not to be. After they had finished dinner, most of them decided to take the night off to relax some more before an early bedtime. They’d be up early next morning to continue with their daily chores and practising with their Sigils. Rory approved of the idea and sought to emulate it himself. But then yet another alarmed shout rang in as night turned the world dark.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

The others near him had no clue. April and Bo looked blearily confused, but their teenagers looked more alert. Leaving Leo behind, Leanne ran off towards the ruckus. Viv followed soon after, rising far faster than the rest of them.

Rory didn’t have to wait long before he found out what was going on. Viv and Leanne both returned by the time they had made it to the ruined staircase leading down. Trish and Jerome, who had been keeping watch, had joined them.

“The Neophytes left,” Viv said, a fierce twist marring her expression.

Rory froze. “What?”

“A bunch of the former Neophytes ran off together to help the trapped Otherworlders,” Trish said. “The idiots are going to get themselves killed, and the rest of us along with them.”

“Sorry.” Jerome almost looked teary. “I should have stopped them as soon as I saw them. I didn’t realize they were going to—that they were going to go crazy!”

Rory rubbed his temple and held back the heavy sigh trying to burst out of his lungs. He hadn’t realized their complaints about not helping the Otherworlders would lead them to take such drastic action by themselves.

Worse, the turn of events was both strangely infuriating and relieving in a way. They’d have to rush after the former Neophytes before they were killed, one way or another, but that likely meant they’d be led straight to the Otherworlders. Though, that entertained the big if regarding the ragtag group reaching the Otherworlders safely in the first place.

“We can’t let them go too far,” Rory said. “Let’s go.”

No one argued. He could see the consternation and worry on several faces. As troublesome of a situation they’d been put into by the misjudgement of the gaggle of the former Neophytes, they couldn’t afford to simply let them die. Not after the Thunderclaw had killed so many of them already.

They loaded up the pickup truck with some supplies of Mana and were soon ready to depart. Rory decided to head out with Trish, Allen, Viv, and Melvin, one of their recent additions who hadn’t left with the rest.

Rory’s heart pounded as the truck rushed out of the driveway and through the Safe Zone’s golden barrier. This was the first time they were leaving the palace grounds since the disastrous day of the Thunderclaw Knight’s attack. The first time they were leaving after the Safe Zone had been established and the war between the Homeworlders and the Otherworlders had started.

No time to worry. They’d do their best to stay safe and keep an eye out. All they had to take care of was recovering the people who had run out and bringing them back to the palace. Shouldn’t be too difficult if they didn’t suffer overwhelming monstrous attention.

But as they trundled down the hill with the pickup’s wheels crackling on the gravel, Rory’s mind wandered to what might have led the escapees to such a decision. Did they think too differently now that their brains were more monstrous than human? Then again, Rory could see people making the same kind of stupid decision too, so who could tell.

“You don’t know where the rest of your friends went?” Rory asked Melvin.

He blinked his reptilian eyes. Rory had to wonder if that was a signal for shadiness in a Neophyte. “I can’t say.”

“Can’t say,” Viv mused. “Or won’t say?”

“Can’t say.”

“I thought you were bringing someone who could help guide us, Rory,” Trish said. “Not a tropical parrot.”

Rory faced Melvin head-on, trying to impress the gravity of the matter. “This is serious, Melvin. We need to find where exactly the rest of them are before they’re overwhelmed by monsters. Worse, they might end up killed by the Otherworlders. None of us wants that. So where are they?”

Melvin hissed out a quick breath through his narrow, pointed teeth. “I really haven’t listened in to their conversation. We can do it if we want. It’s how some of us sleep while the others natter on. But I suspect they might have left trails of their passage or were spotted by others.”

Basically, Melvin wasn’t going to be of much help. No problem. Rory had taken into account that he might not, for whatever reason, and had other ideas.

Allen, their designated driver, slowed the truck down when they met a patrolling Wraith.

“Have you seen a bunch of…” Trish struggled to describe the Neophytes, but then Viv jumped in.

“Draconic creatures, but human-sized,” she said. “You may have seen them at the palace if you were there at any time the last couple of days.”

They couldn’t tell one Wraith apart from the another, so it was anyone’s guess who their current acquaintance was. The Wraith nodded, however, setting Rory’s heart at ease.

“I have,” she said. Rising one spindly arm tipped with claws as long as Rory’s foot, she pointed further east. “They passed by not long ago. They were fast, however, and will have moved farther off by the time I take you to where I last saw them.”

“Any guidance will be appreciated,” Rory said. “Hop on in.”

Some of the others raised their eyebrows at inviting the Wraith onto the truck itself, but no one really protested. They made space on the bed of the back that she could climb into, and she began pointing out the directions to Allen as he resumed the journey.

Thankfully, fast as the former Neophytes were thanks to their monstrous physiologies, they weren’t faster than the truck. In about ten minutes, they caught up to their friendly vigilantes.

“Strange we haven’t met any monsters yet,” Viv said. “I don’t like this. Feels like that time we were hunting Thundershells in the palace.”

Rory’s heart skipped a beat at the memory of them being trapped by a small army of rocky lightning crabs. In a display of surprising intelligence, they had waited until all the humans were together before attempting to crowd them in and kill them. It had gone badly for the monsters, mostly because their Sigils had grown far more powerful than their adversaries.

But still. Rory had no intention of repeating the experience.

“We are nearing the location where the Otherworlders were trapped,” the Wraith said.

“Ah.” Viv nodded. “That might explain it.”

Rory didn’t recognize the area they were in. He blamed it mostly on nightfall, and for the fact that he had rarely visited this section of Hillhard. It was a residential block, but the tenements here were uniform, two-storey affairs with sloped roofs. Most were a combination of abandoned and damaged.

There were little fires here and there, though. He wondered what had caused that. Something told him they weren’t a sign of life.

“Take a left here,” the Wraith said.

Allen did so, then shouted, “I see them!”

Rory peered in the gloom. It took him a second longer to make out the lizard-like forms farther down the street. Arie’s group had clustered under a broken streetlamp, bodies leaning forward and gazes pointed away from Rory’s party. Even when their presence was obvious—even at reduced speed, the pickup was the opposite of quiet—the former Neophytes didn’t turn.

It became obvious why in moments.

They were all standing witness to a horrific battle in the distance. Now Rory understood why they hadn’t been attacked by monsters yet. All the hostile creatures in the vicinity were focused on getting to the Otherworlders in the distant post office.

The darkness made it hard to decipher which exact monsters were carrying out the assault. But the flashes of fire proved there had to be Emberteeth, and the cries shrieking through the air sounded like that of Dreadraptors’. No doubt there were more monsters Rory couldn’t see yet.

Thankfully, it looked like the Otherworlders had things in hand. Violent purple light shot in like lasers and killed monsters left and right. Silvery chains would clink as they shot in and wrapped around creatures, holding them in place for explosive shots to end them. More Sigils showed their effects, brilliant lights and fancy fires blistering everywhere.

“How dare you idiots run away for the palace?” Trish shouted at Arie and her group.

They turned in unison, looking not a whit abashed at what they’d done. Trish went on before they could reply.

“You could’ve gotten yourselves killed.” Despite her raised voice, Rory saw none of the monsters at the post office pay any attention to them. “You could’ve gotten us killed. Don’t you have any sense of responsibility?”

The former Neophytes looked on passively. The silence stretched long enough that Rory was about to break the ice and start their journey back to Belcourt palace, but then Arie spoke.

“We came to offer some much-needed assistance,” she said.

Viv stared past them at the battle at the post office. “It looks like they have things well in hand. I don’t think they need any of our help.”

“Perhaps not yet, but I suspect the monsters have been waiting so far.”

“Waiting?” Trish asked. “For what?”

She might not have got it, but Rory got did. And judging by the way Viv’s face blanched, she got it too.

“We don’t have any time to waste,” Rory said. “If we hurry, we can make it back to the palace in one piece. All of you,” he yelled at Arie’s group. “Get on the pickup truck, now. Hurry.”

“There’s no point,” another former Neophyte said. “It’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” Allen asked, a hint of fear needling into his voice. “We should get moving.”

Arie stood up straighter all of a sudden, her head veering this way and that like that of a meerkat. “Too late to escape the tide of creatures bearing down upon us.”

Trish loosed a loud curse.

If she said anything further, it was drowned out by the sudden roaring and shrieking coming form all around them. The ground was shaking harder and harder with every second. Rory wanted to throw something.

“There are too many of them,” Viv said. Even her voice was quivering.

“Correct.” Without further prompting, the Wraith jumped off the pickup’s back and started leaving. “I will see if I can call for reinforcements. Survive till then, if you can.”

“Great,” Allen said. “We’re trapped, and now we’ve been abandoned too.”

Things were beginning to look dire, and Rory wasn’t sure he wanted to test their mettle against creatures so numerous. Not when they didn’t have anywhere close to their full contingent. The noise of the approaching monsters was coming from every direction. Well, almost.

They weren’t coming from the direction of the post office.

Rory made a split-second decision to save their lives. “Allen! Hurry to the post office. Don’t worry about anything, just drive there. Arie and you lot, hurry up and get in.”

Good man, Allen. Instead of wasting time by questioning whether the Otherworlders would kill them on sight or not, he just drove as soon as the last former Neophyte’s clawed paws had left the ground.

“Hold your vehicle!”

The challenge had come from the post office’s interior. Rory had expected it. The Otherworlders weren’t simply going to let them in just because they were both in the same screwy situation.

“We’re friends,” Rory shouted back.

They reached the battle before Rory could finished talking, which meant they had to engage. Well, Viv, Trish, and several members of Arie’s group attacked the monsters from the rear. Their surprise assault caught the creatures off-guard, and they made tremendous progress against the monsters.

“I’m Rory and we’re here to help,” Rory continued, raising his voice even higher over the din of the battle.

His name had the desired effect. One section of the assault upon the post office, where the Otherworlders were busy throwing the power of their Sigils and whatever else they had, now became smoother as they retracted their abilities. An opening for Rory’s group.

“Join us then,” said the voice who had addressed them. “Our fight is not yet done.”

He was right. For from behind, a thunderous roar hammered over the ground. Rory looked back to see a gigantic monster barrelling down the street the way they had come.

The battle, it seemed, was far from over.