“Ordinator. No listed level. So you weren’t bullshitting. Bout time I had some luck, you’re really saving my ass here,” Maria looked up from her screen. She dusted herself off, and for the first time, she smiled.

“I help you, we both help Hastur, eventually we all end up in a better place,” I said. The words tasted like ash.

She looked around at the carnage, and her mouth tightened. “What about the bodies?”

I circled around, studying ponytail guy’s corpse. “Can’t take ‘em with us. Should probably salvage what we can. Anything else would be wasteful. He have anything good on him?”

“Uh, maybe—” Maria tripped as she walked towards me as the application of I’d set before revealing myself finally fired.

I caught her. “Careful.”

“Sorry…” She trailed off, gazing down at the blade in her chest like it was an alien object. Something that made no sense.

I’d intended to finish her quickly, before she even knew what happened, but judging from the location the blade missed her heart by a quarter-inch.

Her mouth worked. Quivered. “I… have a family.”

“I know.”

I said it without animus or pity. Because there was nothing else to say.

“Die,” She whispered. The ground beneath us trembled. Maria grew pale as a ring of blue light expanded outward. Her entire body glowed as power ripped through her.

I leapt backward, the circle expanding, consuming more of the platform as it chased after me. It defied sense. She shouldn’t have enough mana for this. A few minutes ago she was draining her team just to summon the imps.

Unless she’s draining her own life-force.

This was what I was worried about, given her level. Mages were dangerous enough as it was. If I handed her off to the Adventurer’s Guild and she pulled this shit?

It’d be a massacre.

The feeling of power grew more oppressive, unbearable, and the ground cracked under my feet. Then suddenly, the circle stopped.

Maria hadn’t moved from where she stood, but her head was turned to the side, her eyes flitting back and forth. Slowly, as my eyes adjusted, I saw the vampire draining her. She struggled for a moment, and it shook her, not unlike how a wolf would shake another to show authority.

After another moment of struggle and another shake, Maria stilled.

“She won’t turn?” I checked.

Not unless she bites us. It chortled in a way that made me profoundly uncomfortable.

“And there’s no pain.” I said. “I have your word?”

The vampire nodded confirmation. From the scrambling mental message he’d sent me earlier, they incurred most of the violence capturing prey. Once captured, their bite had an anesthetic effect. Another bat flew up from the crevasse and latched onto her opposite shoulder. I looked inward, for just a moment, trying to gauge what I was feeling, finding only a void.

I reached into Maria’s mind with She was completely susceptible now. So it was easy enough to create an image. The subject of the image was a struggle, because I didn’t fully understand her.

I created what I would have wanted to see.

Maria wasn’t in the ripple. In the dungeon, or the tower, or even the goddamn south. That was a long time ago, and she’d won, taken her spoils and moved as far north as she could. A warm blanket was wrapped around her waist, and the ceiling fan kept the temperature perfect. She was reading a book, a cozy mystery where the main character could stop getting herself in trouble, but always, eventually, got herself out of it.

Was it a little boring?

Sure.

Did she want something more stressful?

Hell no.

Because she’d survived. And at the end, she’d found that after all the fighting, stress, and heartbreak, there was hope in the world, peace. She could feel it in the blanket, in the cheery atmosphere of the house she bought, the rural surroundings outside. She’d fought like hell to get there, but she’d finally found it.

And she had every intention of reveling in it.

Her eyes blurred, text growing less legible by the second. She’d stayed up too late watching TV the previous night. She frowned. What time was it? Her kid would be home from school soon, and she’d need to throw something together.

Eh, fuck it. There were leftovers in the fridge. She had time for a nap.

Right?

Probably.

Slowly, Maria closed her eyes.

And then, nothing.

/////

A level-up notification popped, as well as a few others I couldn’t bring myself to look at.

I’d gathered whatever I could quickly grab and stuffed it into my inventory. Then left without looking back.

Audrey kept us vertical, pushing farther into the spiraling maze of bridges, while Talia sprinted beneath us. She’d had to circle around a few clusters of vampires that were beyond my influence, but mostly, they didn’t seem interested in chasing her. Maybe because Talia was a summon.

She’d reported the Adventurer’s Guild had retreated to the elevator, and as much as I could have used the help, it was one hell of a relief.

To say I was second guessing myself was an understatement.

On one hand, this was the path before me. The path I’d chosen. I’d taken out an entire squad of Sunny’s High Level Users without firing a bolt, outed the order in front of the Adventurer’s Guild, and assuming I found Miles alive, managed the outcome so the casualties on my side were nonexistent.

An acceptable outcome.

So why didn’t it feel that way?

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, the Maria situation gnawed at me. It wasn’t like she didn’t have it coming. They’d all stood around, watching Jinny die after their shooter jumped the gun, when all it would take to save her was a single one of them lending a codex, or their healer stepping in. But the look on her face…

I tried to spare her. It didn’t take. In the end, I just… expedited the process and limited collateral.

I reiterated the thought over and over until the queasiness in my gut lost its edge.

“Those bodies… dead bitey ones?” Audrey’s mental voice interrupted.

The observation startled me from my stupor and refocused me on the ground. Below us, there were dozens of ash piles strewn around the rocky ground. I checked with Talia to make sure the ground was clear, then descended.

Once we were on the ground, I tried to clear the doubts from my mind and pay attention.

Judging from the large swath of vampire bodies, arrows, and several sections of cratered ground, an enormous battle had happened here. One that resulted in monster casualties but from what I could tell, no Users. There was some blood—trails of it leading back towards the outcropping where the Order Users made their last stand, but none leading any other direction.

I studied the ground, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. “If this is the spot Maria was talking about, where they got ambushed and driven apart, Miles got out clean.” I said quietly, studying the ground.

“Not quite.” Talia said. She was at the far edge of the carnage, her nose was hovering above a dark red splotch.

“That’s him? You’re sure?” I asked.

“Unless another human smells exactly like him? Yes.”

I crossed the clearing to Talia, stepping over bodies until I reached her. With some relief, I noted that the initial spatter was probably where he was wounded. The trail of blood lightened after that, leading up an incline. He’d kept pressure on the wound.

And the blood had yet to dry.

I reached out to both summons. “Okay. Goal is extraction. But this is Miles we’re dealing with. Hyper-vigilance. Non verbal communication only, assume everything that strikes you as odd is a trap. Don’t ignore any detail. We’re almost home free.”

They both nodded.

I steeled myself as Talia followed the trail.

Whatever state Miles was in, somehow, I doubted he’d be happy to see me.