Rory staggered when he reappeared next to the pickup truck. There was no time to waste. As far as Viv had thrown them with her burning red arc, they could still hear the Homeworlders raging in the distance. Which meant their captors were about to make a second pass at getting them soon enough.

“Climb in,” Viv said, pushing Rory with her lone hand. Her Thunderclaw arm had disappeared, likely in an effort to conserve Mana. “Hurry!”

They all piled in quickly. Rory was left in the back with Arie on his left and a still unconscious Allen on his right. Now that he was closer, Rory could see that Allen had a nasty head wound and half his body was petrified.

“Ned, drive!” Viv said from the rear bed of the truck, which she had climbed onto alongside Miles.

“We need to get to the jeep,” Rory said. “It’s got my staff and other stuff.”

“Where’s the jeep?”

“Ned knows.” Rory stared at the back of Ned’s head. “Right, Ned?”

He grunted. “It might be the opposite direction we need to go to get away, but I can get us there.”

Viv cursed. “Fine. Just hurry. Put the pedal to the medal.”

Ned took the words to heart. His foot thumped down on the accelerator hard enough to make Rory afraid he’d somehow break it. Maybe he still had some of the Hooktongue’s ferocity lingering within him. Either way, the pickup sped off with a thundering engine. There was no need for stealth now. Their greatest chance at escape lay in speeding themselves out of the area as fast as possible.

The roads twisted as Ned took turn after turn, never sticking with one street for too long. It made them all jostle on the van, and Rory was constantly looking back to make sure his wife hadn’t fallen off, or that the Homeworlders hadn’t caught up with them.

Rory figured he ought to call the Wraith Lord since he was their nearest source of assistance, but then, the Wraith and Ghouls had been involved with their capture. It could have been a trick, or they might have been betrayed. But no. The Wraith Lord liked to have tricks up his sleeve, but this was too sloppy for him.

Besides, Rory didn’t get the time to call anyone.

“There,” Ned said all too quickly. “I see the jeep.”

The truck came to a screeching halt as they reached their target. Rory smiled at it, even if it didn’t last for long. The vehicle was safe, and his staff was inside. He would finally be able to help instead of feeling like dead weight.

Arie and Rory exited the pickup quickly, Miles jumping down from the bed at the back of the truck. They quickly shoved themselves into the jeep as Viv yelled at them all to get going without wasting any further time.

But just as they started driving, they had to pull their vehicles to a screeching halt.

Trish cursed loudly as the pickup drifted a little before coming to a halt, barely a dozen feet from where Thomas was standing.

“You were right, Aaron,” he yelled, unable to hold back the big grin running across his face. “These guys are idiots. They came right back to where we caught them. Why even bother running away when you’re simply going to hand yourselves over to us?”

“Why bother showing up when you want your butt caved in?” Trish threw back as she climbed out of the pickup.

Thomas actually laughed. Strange how the Homeworlders’ moods had shifted. The big guy almost looked like he was having fun, compared to Aaron, who appeared next to him a moment later, staring with veiled murder in his eyes.

“This isn’t good,” Miles muttered.

Ned and Viv had gotten out of the pickup as well, staring down their opponents. Rory looked around. Just as he had suspected, the other Homeworlders had joined the fray as well, surrounding them on all sides. Linda was climbing down a building while standing horizontally on its face, while, Shen, Linus, and Sylvia had blocked the rest of the streets, including the one they had entered through.

“How is this even possible?” Miles asked. “They shouldn’t have been able to get here so fast.”

“We’re probably not the only ones with quick movement abilities,” Rory said. He didn’t have to scrounge around for long before finding his staff. The metal skull atop it seemed to grin mockingly at him. “Keep them busy, I’m going to call for help.”

Miles and Arie exited the jeep to back up Viv, Trish, and Ned. Rory busied himself with activating the Sigil of Calling in the walky-talky Ned had dropped next to the pedals at the front. The first call was a gamble, but Rory didn’t have time to second-guess himself.

“Hello?” he asked when the Sigil flashed once to indicate the other side had picked up after “ringing” for a while. “Are you there?”

There was only silence. Rory frowned, his heart starting to beat faster.

“If you’ve forsaken us, then at least have the guts to tell us so,” he continued.

No response. Only a slow moan came up. Rory’s frown only grew deeper. Cursing internally at the waste of time, he cut off the call and decided to try his next place. Thankfully, this one picked up and answered vocally.

“Who is this?” Talvic asked.

Rory grinned. “It’s me, Rory.”

“What is it now?”

There was no time to be bothered by the minelord’s gruffness. “I need your help.” Rory did his best to quickly explain where he was and what he was going through. Credit to Talvic, he at least listened patiently. “Think you can send some help? Any help?”

Talvic didn’t answer immediately. Of course, Rory had thrown him a small mountain of a problem, so quick decisions weren’t going to be forthcoming. “I’ll think about it.”

Rory tried not to feel too disappointed at the answer. They had to work with what they had. If the dwarves helped, all well and good. But they ought to be self-sufficient. The outcome of their debacle shouldn’t depend on whether anyone else showed up to assist or not.

“Any sort of assistance will be appreciated,” Rory reminded him anyway, then cut off the call. There was no time to wait on the minelord’s ruminating.

Rory headed outside. The battle hadn’t yet started. It seemed the Homeworlders were still getting into position, though slowly, as Aaron was trying once more—likely for the last time—to convince them to surrender the Sigil of Weaving.

“No one needs to get hurt,” he said. He looked like he meant it. “Give us the Sigil of Weaving and I promise that we’ll leave.”

“You promise.” Trish spat to one side. “How about your underlings? Do they surrender, or are they going to attack because they didn’t promise us anything?”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. We can end this peacefully.”

“Peace?” Thomas sounded like peace belonged in a cesspit. “I thought we could gut them now that they’re determined to resist.”

Viv took a step forward. Her Thunderclaw arm was back on her shoulder. “You tricked us. You betrayed us. You attacked and nearly killed us. And now you seriously expect us to believe that you’re going to simply leave if we only give you what you say you want?”

She slashed her sabre before them to show them what she thought of that. Rory felt no different, truth be told. The idea of any of this ending peacefully was laughable.

“Please, we don’t have to do this,” Sylvia said. She glanced at Rory’s group, then turned her pleading expression onto Thomas and Aaron. “They’re good people. They healed us up. They’re helpful and—”

A stormy-grey knife shot into and cracked into the pavement before her feet. Linda jumped down next to her. “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s too much at stake to get carried away by feelings about what’s right.”

Rory’s mouth twisted. He found himself trying to see how Linus and Shen were reacting, but both their expressions were hooded and careful, clearly not betraying what was really passing through their mind.

He pulled his staff out and stepped forward, joining them. Trish and Ned saw him and made space for him. Around them, the Homeworlders were closing in.

“You want to die so badly?” Aaron asked. His crystal suit started flashing and sparkling. “Then so be it.”

He stomped one foot before him, then leaned forward like a sprinter about to shoot forward. But just as he was about charge, a sudden cold aura pressed down upon them all. Rory’s eyes widened even as the familiar feeling settled over him. This was—he turned to the right, as did everyone else. He was right.

The Wraiths were coming over.

There was a group of about twenty, slowly ambling forward, their billowing cloaks hiding their feet so it looked like they were floating. Rory tensed, as did Ned and Arie. But Viv, Trish, and Miles visibly relaxed. They hadn’t made the connection that the Homeworlders had used the Wraith and the Ghoul from before to set this trap.

But surprisingly, even as Rory turned to face the monsters, the Wraiths spread around them to face the Homeworlders. He frowned. What in the world was going on?

“So , your pet monsters have arrived.” Aaron was looking across the Wraiths with heavy distaste. “It won’t make any real difference. We’ve killed their kind over and over so much.”

“You tricked us,” Ned said, cringing away from the nearest Wraith. “The ones who came to the palace. They said you were all under attack, but it was clearly a setup. Then why…?”

“It’s not what you think, Ned,” Viv said. “The Wraith Lord didn’t purposefully compromise us.”

“What?”

“Correct.”

They all looked back to see the Wraith Lord striding in from a different direction. He looked like he ever did, his great cloak shining as much as the crown on his old head, his large sword out and glinting with the promise of delivering pain.

“I would never betray those I make deals with,” the Wraith Lord said. “Neither would my subjects. These Homeworlders used others to impersonate a Wraith and a Ghouls, then showed up at your doorstep claiming to need assistance. A dirty trick. One I can certainly approve of.”

Rory shook his head. He was glad that the Wraith Lord hadn’t betrayed them, but more than that, now he was wondering how they had impersonated a Wraith and a Ghoul so effectively. Of course, there were Sigils that allowed humans to turn to monsters, but those had always seemed partial transformations, even in the case of Shen, whose Sigil of the Rockback was at a higher tier than Ned’s Hooktongue or Viv’s Thunderclaw.

Harsh laughter echoed over the street. The Homeworlders suddenly looked too tense. There was something familiar about the noise, though Rory couldn’t place it exactly. All he had was a strange feeling of fear.

Dark fire bloomed to life behind the Homeworlders. It started as a tiny dot, then quickly grew into a dark fireball the size of a boulder. The fire starts shifting to resolve into two creatures, and Rory finally understood where the familiarity was coming.

They were Djinn.

One of them had a wide, humanoid body with the head of a panther, gigantic golden rings encircling the thick neck. The other was thinner and taller, but with the head of a black mamba. Its tongue flickered out and its eyes glinted with malevolence.

“It seems the curtain had been drawn,” the larger Djinn said. In contrast to his body, there was a musical quality to his voice. Rory could easily imagine them singing instead of floating in for the kill. “Should we kill them to protect the secret, Admin?”

“What secret, Adjunct?” the other Djinn asked. His voice was deep, no sign of any hissing or sibilance like Rory had heard from the kobold, something he had unconsciously expected from the serpentine head. “Does it change anything if they know?”

“Not at all.” Admin surveyed Rory’s group and the Wraiths around him. “We call for death anyway, then!”

“So much about all your crap about us working with monsters,” Ned said. “You’re a bunch of lying hypocrites.”

The Homeworlders didn’t have any reply to that. None of them looked ashamed, but Linda’s and Thomas’s eyes were defiant despite their temporary speechlessness.

“That’s what I meant about the secret, Admin!” Adjunct said. “These Homeworlders were the ones who didn’t want anyone else to know.”

“Sneaky, sneaky.” The serpent-Djinn shrugged. “Oh, well. The cat is out of the bag now. Let’s go kill it.”

“We can’t win here,” Viv said quietly. “We’re going to have to find a way to escape.”

“We can win,” Trish glared at their enemies, teeth bared as though she wanted to rip them to shred by chomping down on them. “We just need to show them what we’ve got.”

“No, we can’t. You’ve seen their Sigils. You’ve seen how strong they are. They actually practiced to kill, even other people like us. Face it, they’re better than us.”

“Enough talk,” Aaron said. He had caught them hissing among themselves and clearly had no intention of letting them. “Let’s get to the killing.”

Without warning, the Homeworlders attacked and sheer pandemonium broke loose.