The roar was so sudden and so overwhelmingly loud, the whole world seemed to come to a standstill. Rory’s vision blurred at the noise, his eardrums thrumming painfully as though they were on the verge of tearing apart. He felt his throat strain as he screamed too, the vibration rocking his gullet, but he couldn’t even hear himself over the noise.

Thankfully, it stopped after a while. The aftermath of the roaring could still be felt over the whole area, however. Everything was shaking, bits of earth and clods of dirt falling from all around. Water sloshed everywhere, spraying Rory and the others constantly.

Not that he could hear much. His ears still hurt, sending little bolts of agony shooting into his brain whenever he moved his head.

But something was going on that he couldn’t not pay attention to. As the last one in the line, Rory had turned around to see if the noise of the gigantic roar was somewhere nearby, and what he found took his breath away. Threatened to take his very soul away too, if he was being honest.

Something was rising out of the bottom of the waterspout. Rory’s weaving had thrown all the rocks making up the ceiling into the bottom, but now they were shifting and moving around, crumbling apart as an enormous head poked through.

Rory could hardly believe his eyes. The creature’s snout slowly making its way out of the water was the size of a bus. Its eyes glowed with the same dull, dead light that the Revenants had, glinting crimson in the gloom. The mouth was somewhere between canine and draconic, spikes and flames protruding here and there, steaming against the water.

Viv grabbed Rory’s arm and dragged him into the tunnel. She shouted something at him, but his damaged ears couldn’t make out more than a low rumble.

Nevertheless, Rory got what she meant. Her eyes, her face, her entire bearing spoke of fear and panic, and the best thing they could do at the moment was make a run for it. Which they proceeded to do. That monster wasn’t something any of them could face, not even together. They needed to run and survive.

The bodies made it harder to move, but Rory was glad no one suggested leaving them behind. April and Ned had each taken one, while Viv had taken the rest, slinging one on each shoulder. Rory helped her by supporting them from behind, though he knew his weak arms wasn’t exactly doing much.

It didn’t matter. Rory’s role came in later. They made it past the bridge over the geyser with some care, then climbed back up to the room where they had met the first Revenant. Everything was still trembling thanks to the tremors set off by the giant monsters’ rise. Climbing the steep incline was the most annoying thing they had faced so far in this sewer dungeon. Thankfully, it got a lot calmer in the round little room.

“Can you hear me now, Rory?” Viv asked. He could, though her voice still sounded faint to him.

He nodded, not really trusting himself to speak just then. Instead, Rory went over to the crack in the wall that he and April had used to enter, then used his Weaving on the surrounding rocks. There was no way they were getting through to the other side with the bodies in tow. So, Rory bent on widening the gap to at least four feet and raising the height to eight feet.

“That should be enough,” Rory said. His voice was scratchy, faint like that of the others. He really needed to get his ears checked.

“Let’s keep moving, then,” Viv said.

“You can lead the way out of here, right Ned?” Rory asked.

He nodded back from farther ahead. “Yeah. You’d be amazed the way the Sigil of Navigation is making a map for me. Just follow my lead.”

They did so. The tunnel continued to be a maze of twisting corridors, and none of them knew which real direction to go. They passed several forks, continuing with the straight option at every turn as they seemed the safest way to reach the exterior.

April stared around at the walls they passed by. “I wonder how long it took to carve this entire place out. It’s not at all like the sewers.”

Viv sighed, then nodded. “Yes, I don’t think we’re part of the sewers anymore. I’m pretty sure we haven’t been for a while.”

“At least everything isn’t shaking anymore. Really didn’t envy my ears back there.”

Rory wondered just how far the monster’s roar had been audible. “Let’s call the others. See what they have to say.”

“Oh, true.” Viv pulled out her walky-talky. “They’re probably scared out of their minds.”

They called the others back at the pickup. Trish picked it up before the first ring was even halfway to being done. Just as Viv had suspected, they were panicking.

“What happened?” Trish asked, voice shrill and unsteady with alarm.

“We’re fine, just met a crazy monster,” Viv said. “I’ll explain more in the car, but we need to go. Get the vehicle ready. I want us to get moving as soon as we arrive.”

“Have you had to fight any monsters?” Rory asked. “Or seen any of them yet?”

“No,” Bo’s gravelly voice answered. “The monsters have steered clear of us, so far.”

“Yeah, we haven’t even seen any scouts or anything,” Trish added

April slumped a little beside Rory. “That’s… a relief, honestly.”

“Alright, hold tight,” Viv said. “We’ll meet with you guys soon.”

Ned led the way again, hoisting the corpse he was carrying higher up his shoulder. Rory followed as fast as he could. The water was no longer flowing backwards, and he had the distinct feeling the flood was actually receding. After all, the ground was a little sloped here too. But Rory’s heart wasn’t fully at ease until they finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Finally,” Trish said as soon as she saw them. “No, Bo, stay in the car,” she added when he was about to get out and come up to them. “I’ll help them with the—you have bodies?”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Viv said.

“What do you think it looks like?”

Rory sighed. He cleared his throat, still feeling like there was something wrong with it after their experiences in the dungeon. “They were dead when we got to them. We’ll explain on the drive back. For now, there’s a giant monster inside the sewers with an army to boot that’s about to invade the surface, so we need to hop on it.”

Trish blinked at him, and Bo did get out of the car then.

“That’s insane,” he said. “How is there even enough space underground for a giant monster let along an entire army of monsters?”

“Things have been crazy for a while, so. But we need to move.”

“What’s our plan?” Viv asked. “Do we head out and take care of the sewer entrances everywhere.”

Rory nodded. “That’s all I was able to come up with. There’s no telling how effective it’ll be, but the best we can do immediately is to shut off their exit points. They’ll need a longer time to recover and get ready to attack after we destroyed their flooding, so we’ve got some time.”

“Anyone know where exactly all the sewer entrances are?” Viv asked, looking around them all.

“I should be able to get a map from the police station. Pretty sure we had one that detailed the locations of manholes, drainage ducts, and other entrances and exits.”

“If you can get it, I can use my Navigation to get to them quickly,” Ned said.

Rory nodded. “Then we’ve got a plan and got no time to waste. Let’s move.”

They headed out. Using Sigils directly wasn’t going to help block up the entrances and exists as their effects were only temporary. They didn’t have the Sigil of Permanence with them, nor did they have the time to retrieve it from the palace.

Instead, they focused their Sigils’ powers around the area of the sewer entrance. Rory used his Weaving while the others destroyed the surroundings. Streets broke, houses fell, rubble collapsed. Debris soon covered the entrance in a large mound that would surely give the Revenants pause.

Though, of course, it would likely pose no trouble to the gigantic monster they’d seen. Then again, neither Rory nor anyone else had any idea what they could do about it. There was no point in worrying. They had to focus on what they could accomplish.

After the first entrance was taken care of, and the dead bodies were piled onto the bed of the pickup’s back, Ned drove the truck like a madman. As promised, the rest of them narrated their underground experiences to Bo and Trish, who reacted at various points of their story with proclamations of her wish to have seen it all in person.

Rory was sure he spotted some monsters along the way to the police station, but nobody cared. They moved too fast for the monsters to do anything more than be weirded out by their fast passage.

While April hurried inside the police station, Rory reminisced about their adventures in the area. Nothing had changed since they’d last been here. The overturned cars were just as the Wraiths had left them, and there were still the old tire tracks from then they’d sped away in pursuit. The evidence of his and Dez’s battle against the small Wraith army was strewn all over the grassy field to the right.

“Brings back memories, huh?” Ned asked. He had a strange look on his face, which Rory supposed had to be reflecting his own pretty well.

“Yeah,” Trish growled. “This is where you destroyed my Spyder.”

“I meant memories about Alves, you dolt.”

Trish looked away, suddenly sad. Rory frowned too. That poor officer had given his life for the townspeople. Deaths were unavoidable in an apocalypse no matter how much everyone tried, something that the rational part of Rory’s mind recognized. But the rest of his head was stuffed with memories of the Thunderclaw Knight’s terrifying assault. So many dead…

Viv gripped his arm from across the seat. Rory blinked, then smiled at her.

April didn’t need long to come out with the required map. Her return helped Rory to forget about the past. As soon as she was in the car, she threw the map at Ned.

“I’ve circled all the sewer entrances big enough to worry about,” she said. “We should be safe once we take care of them.”

There was no more time to waste. If Ned’s driving had been crazy before, now he stepped on the accelerator as though slowing down would mean instant death. They reached each of the spots April had marked out on her map in no time at all, where they then proceeded to use their Sigils to seal up the entrance.

At one point, their road ahead was blocked by a gaggle of monsters. A large growth of vegetation had suffocated the street, smaller versions of the Wilder they had fought at the palace eagerly waiting for them to drive closer.

“Don’t stop,” Viv said. “Keep driving. We’ve got this.”

The look on Ned’s face professed he had no intention of stopping. As soon as they were close enough, Viv launched a volley of Omnipresent Sabre slashes at the creatures, followed up by lightning from her constructed arm. April supported her with her Distant Detonation. By the time the pickup charged through, the monstrous vegetation was a smoking pile of ash.

It didn’t take them long to find the rest of the sewer entrances. By the time the sun had reached its zenith high in the sky, they had closed up all the openings on April’s map.

“You think we’re safe now?” April asked when they paused after sealing the last one.

They were near the park. Rory could see the distant trees moving suspiciously. There wasn’t much wind, certainly not enough to account how much the branches—and in some cases, entire trunks—were swaying as though drunk.

But it wasn’t something they needed to worry themselves about.

“I don’t think we’ll really be safe until we’re back at the palace,” Viv said.

“That’s right.” Rory turned back to the pickup. “Let’s go back. We’ve done what we can. Now we’ll see of it works or not.”