Dad has shown a startling degree of savagery over the last few days, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Normally he is a laid back man who cracks stupid jokes and overanalyzes MMA videos. Having his first near brush with death seems to have shaken something in him.

  I was working at Denver Military HQ, helping Dr. Phisher create a kind of simple Morse code when Dad stomped in. He walked up to the acting governor and dumped out a bag full of no less than forty blood sigils. I am torn between concern and how epic that was.

  Day 115, Owen Landers

  Silas picked up a sigil, deciding not to think about why the cartoon monsters who were corrupted by Disgeneree would have a slave corrupted by Demiurge. He inspected the glowing crystal briefly before glancing up at the jagged remains of the bridge. The battle was over now, and that left them with a few choices. They could continue on as if nothing had happened, or they could finally take advantage of something that was currently in short supply, human direction. That, after all, had been the entire reason they’d rescued the people in the first place. At least it was one of the reasons.

  Silas chose the second option. Information, instructions, and hopefully even an aircraft. His old interface had included a navigation function, but it was now absent. Silas suspected it had fused with the leaderboard, a much less useful function.

  A staircase ran along the side of the bridge, leading up to street level. From there, they could rejoin the road and reach the bus. Silas climbed out from beneath the bridge and glanced back toward the city wondering how long it would take for other creatures to start showing up.

  Feeling a sense of urgency when he saw the silhouette of something big and airborne in the distance, Silas decided to move with haste, “Aron, could you put this with the others?” he said, handing off the sigil. “I’m going to portal the bus across the gap and see if we can get some information from our new friends. Mandy, would you be willing to help translate?”

  Aron took the sigil and climbed into the back of the bus to place it with the other sigils. Mandy followed him, and Samantha scampered down from the edge of the bridge, choosing to sit in the back this time instead of the shotgun seat, letting her mother have that spot this time.

  Silas pressed down on the accelerator and opened the portal. It wasn’t a long one, just enough to carry them safely across the destroyed span of the bridge. He was happy it ran smoothly. Most vehicles could not take a five foot fall nearly as well.

  “Batu, whatever you did when you built this thing,” he muttered, patting the dashboard, “you gave it great suspension.”

  Bella gave Silas an odd look, “What are you doing?”

  “Uh, I’m talking to the bus,” Silas patted the dashboard again, trying to make the motion look natural, “It's a guy thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

  Bella raised an eyebrow and glanced back at Aron. The young man betrayed Silas, “I don’t do that. He’s just being weird.”

  Any retort Silas would have made was cut off when they emerged on the far side of the bridge to find soldiers nervously standing around their own disabled vehicle, weapons still at the ready. Another rocket had already been loaded into the launcher, though thankfully it wasn’t aimed at them. While the lion monster might have been able to tank a rocket, Silas was not at all confident he could do the same.

  The guns weren’t pointed at the bus anymore. However, they were still drawn, aimed at the ground, ready to be used with fingers close to the triggers.

  “All right,” Silas said as he climbed out, “Mandy, you’re up.”

  The girl nodded and followed him timidly. Silas found himself standing before five extremely tense soldiers. Every one of them looked like they were wondering whether today would be their last. He was more than happy to reassure them otherwise.

  “Do you have a base of operations?” he asked, “Somewhere we could go, maybe trade supplies, get information, anything of that nature?”

  The bus carried plenty of materials, and more importantly, a box full of sigils. If there was one thing Silas was certain of, it was that sigils were valuable. He’d be willing to bet that fewer than ten percent of people even had a chance to acquire one simply due to the danger associated with it.

  Mandy translated quickly. The reply came just as fast. They did have a stronghold, but there was a problem. Their truck had run out of fuel, and without it, they couldn’t get back. They would either need more fuel or be forced to abandon the vehicle entirely. Unfortunately for them, Silas’s bus ran on solar power. Convenient in most situations, useless for helping here as they could give them some fuel to get home.

  To make matters worse, the nearest gas station had already been destroyed by a rocket during an earlier attempt to kill the lion monster. There was no fuel close enough to make it worth braving the monster infested city.

  Silas grimaced. It felt like an oversight on the IDF’s part to leave safety without enough fuel to retreat if things went wrong. Fortunately, the bus could seat nearly a dozen people. It would be cramped with the supplies in the back, and a few people might have to sit on the floor, but it was possible to carry everyone, weapons included.

  Relief washed over the soldiers’ faces as Mandy translated that offer. Despite the language barrier, their reactions were unmistakable, their shoulders relaxed, their expressions softened, and an enormous weight lifted all at once. People weren’t really that different, wherever you went, Silas thought.

  He offered the IDF squad leader the passenger seat beside him and asked Mandy to sit behind them to translate. Bella positioned herself near the supplies. Silas suspected she might be worried about the soldiers trying to confiscate their belongings, but he doubted that would happen. They were outsiders and friendly ones at that.

  What kind of human hurts those who help them? The thought gave him pause. Humans did that all the time. In fact, his whole faith centered around humans being so corrupt that they killed an innocent man who only came to heal them. Shaking his head, Silas chose to put his trust in the general goodness of humanity and followed the soldiers’ directions to their stronghold. Maybe it was naive, but Silas was really good at running away if things turned south.

  The stronghold in question was a large building, one that somewhat resembled the government facilities Silas had seen in America, though it carried an unmistakably British architectural influence. They had taken advantage of stonework and the solid nature of expensive, old-world construction to turn it into an extremely fortified location.

  It wouldn’t have stopped most people. The entrances were obvious to Silas, clearly identifiable doors and service access points. However, it would stop most monsters. A creature would need to recognize what a door or a ventilation hatch was before it could exploit one.

  There was some wood used in the structure, but mostly in smaller interior sections. Silas could imagine something like a sphinx squeezing into a ventilation shaft and attempting to mind-control people from within. By the same token, however, any creature small enough to sneak inside would also be small enough to be handled with light munitions. Anything intelligent and small enough to use a door could be met at a choke point with overwhelming firepower.

  Silas frowned. That logic didn’t entirely hold water. None of the monsters had sent out their truly heavy hitters. Why hadn’t the Dr. Seuss looking creatures unleashed those lion-like beasts? Those things could have smashed straight through the walls using nothing but raw body mass. The stone was thick, but it wasn’t nearly as thick as the width of the bridge that had been destroyed earlier by sheer momentum.

  Around the government building, a ring of rubble had been stacked high, composed of large chunks of concrete and stone from nearby structures that had already been destroyed. The debris had been mortared together into a defensive wall. Silas’s first thought, seeing a post-apocalyptic setup like this, had been a ramshackle fence. Instead, the barrier was surprisingly sturdy, thick enough that people could actually walk along the top.

  An IDF soldier motioned for Silas to pull the bus up to the gate. As he did, Silas counted nearly a dozen guards, all armed. Each one carried an automatic weapon, all of them aimed squarely at the bus’s windshield or tires. The gate itself was nothing impressive, little more than a reinforced cart fitted with metal plating.

  Silas might have dismissed it as a poor substitute for a proper barricade, if not for the .50-caliber heavy machine gun mounted in the cart’s bed, its barrel trained directly on them. He was confident the bus’s armor could shrug off small-arms fire, but a weapon like that would punch clean through its steel plating without slowing down.

  Thankfully, they had locals with them. Silas rolled down the window and let the IDF soldier speak with his comrades. Mandy translated the exchange. The soldier explained how Silas’s group had come through and saved them, and how they possessed strange powers, abilities not unlike those of their commander.

  At one point during the conversation, Mandy glanced over at Silas and said quietly, “I think they might want to search us. They’re probably worried about weapons of mass destruction.”

  Silas resisted the urge to smirk. No, they didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction. They were running around with swords and bows, well, except for Samantha. She had a ridiculously powerful gun-adjacent ability, but even if they wanted to confiscate it, they couldn’t. The sigils were part of her soul, after all.

  “What are they going to do,” Silas muttered, “take a few swords from us? That’s not really going to make us any less dangerous to normal humans.”

  Mandy tightened her grip on her cluster crossbow. Silas might have been confident without a sword, but she definitely wasn’t without her weapon.

  After a long conversation between the IDF soldier and the guard, they were finally waved through. The cart acting as a gate was picked up by four men and wheeled to the side. Once it was out of the way, Silas saw what had been hidden behind it, a massive wedge of steel, spiked with spear-like ridges every few inches along the top.

  That was why they didn’t bother with a traditional gate. Monsters wouldn’t have trouble breaching a wall, but they would still aim for the weakest point. If that point were a gate, that was where they’d go. Instead, this setup turned the monster’s own mass against it. A charging creature would smash through the cart after weathering a hail of .50-caliber fire, only to impale itself on a slab of steel bristling with spikes.

  It was clever. Brutal, but clever. Maybe this base had already been attacked.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  A few more soldiers lifted the wedge and hauled it aside, giving Silas just enough room to drive the bus through. Once they passed, the same men followed behind, after dragging the barrier back into place.

  What awaited them inside was shocking. There was an entire village within the walls.

  Rubble had been repurposed into foundations and partitions not dissimilar to the walls. Wood lay across them as roofs to form crude but sturdy structures. Each building was small, with less than a hundred square feet of floor space. On top of that, soldiers used the rooftops like wooden outposts. In total, there were probably over two hundred guards patrolling the upper levels, with over a thousand civilians living in squalor below.

  From the brief glances Silas managed to steal, the people inside were engaged in every kind of labor imaginable. Some chiseled stone to make the blocks fit better. Others ran in groups of ten or more, clearly training to fight. Women stitched clothing, repaired gear, or hauled supplies.

  A wide range of occupations was represented. However, one thing stood out, very few people were using sigils. At least, very few were doing anything that looked outright impossible. No one heated water with bare hands. No one molded stone through sheer will. Nothing miraculous was happening. In fact, the only clear sign of a sigil Silas noticed was near an open area where a group of children were contained presumably a school.

  Standing watch on a nearby building was a man with six arms. His upper and lower pairs were made of translucent phantasmal material, each one holding an assault rifle. He was the only obvious example of supernatural ability Silas could see anywhere in the settlement.

  They were led through the camp and straight up to the government building, stopping in an empty area with a small fleet of vehicles. Calling it a fleet might have been generous, there were only around twenty vehicles total. Silas assumed that had more to do with fuel shortages than a lack of vehicles. Judging by the number of wrecks lining the surrounding roads, many could still be salvaged if fuel were available.

  Still, not all of the vehicles were conventional transports. At least five of them were tanks. That surprised Silas at first, but only for a moment. On reflection, he realized the real surprise was that there were only five. India was a massive country, where was the rest of its armored force?

  He asked Mandy to ask the IDF soldier. The answer was simple enough: logistics. A broken supply chain would cripple even the strongest military. Tanks without fuel and ammunition were just expensive metal coffins, especially due to the fact that purifying an enemy was impossible from within one. Still, even five operational tanks would allow them to harm most of the creatures he’d seen crawl out of hell.

  A soldier stood between two vehicles, holding out orange sticks wrapped in reflective tape and pointing toward an open space. Taking the hint, Silas pulled the bus into the indicated spot and shut down the engine.

  As he stepped out, he was met by half a dozen soldiers. These ones didn’t seem nearly as jumpy as the guards at the gate, which he appreciated. One of them stepped forward and began speaking. Silas glanced at Mandy, who cocked her head slightly as the man continued the man started with Mongolian, then Hindi, and finally, he spoke in English.

  “Do you speak English?” The soldier asked.

  “Yes,” Silas answered.

  “What are you doing here, and what do you want?” The soldier asked.

  Silas exhaled and explained. “We got trapped on the other side of a portal when they first started opening. A monster dragged us through. We survived the other world, and while trying to get back, another portal opened here. I originally entered in Germany.”

  The man frowned. “Other world?”

  Silas stiffened. They don’t know? They had to know the portals led somewhere. Monsters were coming through them how could they not have investigated that?

  “Yes,” Silas said carefully. “The portals don’t just let monsters come here. They go both ways. People can cross over, too. The other side is where the monsters come from.”

  The guard’s eyes widened. He said something rapid-fire into another soldier who rushed off, then gestured sharply. “I take you to the boss.”

  Silas took a step forward, then paused when the soldier raised a hand, “First, you must leave your weapons.”

  Silas glanced at the sword and knife he was carrying and shrugged, placing them in the bus. He liked them, but not enough to start a fight over them. He left both behind. The guard looked mildly surprised when a search turned up nothing else, no hidden firearms or other weapons.

  One by one, the others were checked as well. Once satisfied, the soldiers escorted them inside.

  The interior of the building was starkly different from the exterior. The guards at the entrance were better fed, better trained, and more heavily built than anyone Silas had seen in the slums outside. They carried modern firearms, but also melee weapons, carefully maintained blades with a forward curve to them. Close range weapons weren’t proof, but it made Silas suspect they possessed sigils.

  The building’s interior wasn’t pristine, but it was clean enough that the contrast with the outside was jarring. White hallways branched into reception areas and offices. People worked everywhere, focused and efficient. Here, sigils were on full display men shaping stone with their bare hands, others assembling equipment and armor from scrap, still others repairing firearms with unnatural precision.

  For a moment, Silas felt a flare of resentment. He had grown up believing everyone was equal, that effort and character were the only things that separated people. However, that belief didn’t survive the introduction of superpowers. A man who could raise a stone wall with his bare hands was objectively more valuable than one who needed tools. It wasn’t about morality or fairness, it was about utility, about survival. Still, Silas found it difficult to keep his expression neutral at the difference in treatment a sigil granted.

  They climbed a flight of stairs and stopped at a large office. It had once been a boardroom with an oversized table still dominating the center of the space, though the chairs were long gone. A massive map had been rolled out across the tabletop, weighed down at the corners.

  Silas had half-expected a room full of grizzled old men hunched over the table, maybe even a hardened woman with a badass scar running across her face. Not because scars were cool, but because that was the image he’d built up in his head from watching military shows. Instead, the reality was far more mundane.

  There were only three men standing around the table, each of them looked like a normal but well muscled Indian man. They didn’t look particularly impressive, but they didn’t look unimpressive either. Their builds were similar to Silas’s, though half a head shorter. They sat comfortably between rugged and well put-together, the kind of men who had clearly spent years outdoors but still knew how to carry themselves in a professional setting.

  From what he could tell, none of the three were politicians, and none of them looked like they’d worked a desk job anytime recently. That limited how much Silas could infer just from appearances, but he was confident they had sigils. Probably a pair of Greater Sigils, and possibly a personal sigil unlocked as well. One of them was more heavily muscled than the others, suggesting abilities geared toward hand-to-hand combat or moving heavy objects. Construction, fortifications, or something along those lines.

  The guide stopped and saluted the men. One of them, apparently the leader, said something to the IDF soldier, then gestured for the group to come closer. The soldier stepped out of the room and took up a post by the door.

  Silas glanced at Mandy, ready to prompt her to start translating again, but before he could, the man at the head of the table spoke, in English. He had to stifle a sigh. How many people were bilingual here? It was fine when only a few people were, but he was really starting to feel uneducated.

  “So,” the man said calmly, “you are the ones who caused the commotion upon your arrival. I must admit, I am surprised to see you.”

  Silas straightened slightly, “I don’t see why, we saw some people in trouble so we helped. Right now, we need information and possibly resources. Since we both have something the other wants, it seemed like a prudent reason to meet in the first place.”

  Silas looked the man up and down, assuming he was the leader based on his position and the fact that he was the one speaking. The man was a little past middle-aged, gray creeping into his hair and a neatly trimmed beard framing his face. He wore a dark, robe-like outfit made of black linen, with a jacket fastened over it. Silas vaguely recognized it as some form of military uniform, though he had no idea what the insignia or markings meant.

  “I see,” the man said. “I am Commander Rahul. I was previously ranked first on the leaderboard before you people arrived.” A faint smile tugged at his lips. “If you are willing to work together, I see no reason we cannot exchange information for assistance.”

  Silas nodded. “Good. Then what do you know about the state of the world? We’re trying to get home, and as you can guess it’s quite the distance from here. Any information about what’s happening globally would be convenient.”

  Rahul glanced at his two companions. They spoke rapidly in Hindi for a few seconds before Rahul turned back to Silas.

  “If information is all you want, that can be arranged,” Rahul said. “However, we would require something in return. Supplies. I assume you harvested many purple sigils during your encounter with our guards. A few of those should suffice.”

  Silas resisted the urge to laugh. It was a scam. He was one hundred percent sure of that. Those sigils were worth far more than any map, but they had nearly fifteen of them, and it wasn’t like he needed all fifteen. It reminded him of people charging rich tourists twenty dollars for a cheap trinket. Technically absurd, but when you had millions to burn, it barely mattered. Silas never thought he’d be in that position.

  He shrugged. “Fine. I’ll trade you one sigil for every continent you can show me information on. Seven schedules for a full world map, eight if you include the oceans.”

  Rahul's eyes widened slightly. He nodded, his eyes taking on a different light, “That is acceptable. Is there anything else you require?”

  Silas thought for a moment. “If you have a form of transportation significantly faster than our bus, that would be appreciated. A plane, ideally, though I doubt many are still operational.”

  Rahul frowned. “Actually, there are. That is one of our ongoing objectives. The New Delhi airport is currently occupied, overrun by monsters that have established a hive inside. Many aircraft remain intact, including private planes that can be piloted by skilled individuals without reliance on automated systems or external signals.” He paused. “As you may know, globally, anything that uses wireless signals has ceased functioning.”

  Silas frowned, trying to piece it together. “So if we help you retake the airport, you’ll let us take a plane. With enough fuel to cross the Pacific Ocean.”

  Rahul shrugged, “I cannot guarantee you will cross an entire ocean, but you should be able to cover a great distance in a short time. Refueling systems may be unreliable without functioning electronics so I hesitate to promise anything aside from an aircraft.”

  Silas fell silent, weighing the options. Part of him wanted to climb into the bus and keep moving. Was it really worth fighting another hive just for a chance at an airplane? However, if it worked, if he could fly, he could be home by tomorrow. Maybe the day after.

  Sure, it would be a long flight. Sure, he wasn’t entirely certain how to fly a plane. But how hard could it be? Point it straight. Don’t fly in circles. Eventually, he would hit land, he was certain he could hit the Americas, even if it wasn’t the exact location he wanted.

  On one hand, there was a real risk in attacking a hive. Their lives would be on the line. On the other hand, he could save weeks, maybe months of travel. Compared to the dragonkin hive he’d already survived, this threat seemed manageable. In the end, the reward outweighed the danger.

  Silas looked up and nodded. “We’ll help you take back the airport.”

  Commander Rahul returned the nod. “That would be appreciated. However, I cannot simply fold you into my ranks. That would be irresponsible. I do not yet know your capabilities, nor how you perform under pressure.” He folded his hands behind his back. “We are planning a dedicated offensive in three days. You may join us then, but you will not hold command.”

  Silas frowned slightly. He hadn’t expected to be in charge, and frankly, he hadn’t wanted it. Being at the top of a leaderboard didn’t automatically make him a competent leader, and Rahul was right not to assume otherwise. Still, Silas couldn’t shake the feeling that the commander viewed him less as an ally and more as a weapon. Something to point at the monsters and unleash.

  If Rahul’s reaction to the eight sigils was anything to go by, there was a decent chance the man was hoping Silas would die in the process. Maybe he would try to collect the sigils left behind at the airport. Silas filed that thought away and said nothing.

  He had a way to counteract the ambition of Rahul. Greed. Silas would take the next few days and make some new armor, and more importantly weapons. Rahul wouldn’t double cross Silas if there was something in it for him.

  Smiling, Silas nodded, “That makes sense. If we will be taking a plane, and more importantly the fuel to cross half the planet, I think I will take the next few days to make some new gear. If you have any soldiers with particularly strong sigils send them my way.”

  Rahul cocked his head to the side, “What are you talking about?”

  Silas gestured to Bella, who held up her hand, showing off the red scales running up across its surface, “I can fuse sigils into my creations. This one in particular is a prosthetic that gives Bella a full range of motion again.”

  Rahul’s eyes widened, and he turned to the other people at the table, exchanging quick words with them. Silas was patient, and eventually got the question he had expected. Rahul asked, “What do you need in order to make these?”

  “Access to the front gate and enough monsters to harvest,” Silas smiled.