The invasion of Denver has started. I decided to join, despite what Dad said. I may not be a fighter, but with my light sigil, I can be a walking flashlight. Also, I have two sigils nearing capacity, which makes me stronger than the majority of humans.

  I am handing this journal off to Dr. Phisher. If I don’t return it will be a firsthand account of the appocalypse. If I do, I guess I will write to my future readers in a few days. Or maybe paragraphs. Yeah, I will see you next paragraph.

  Day 125, Owen Landers

  Rahul did not wait, Silas knew the plan and didn’t stand in front of the aperture. As soon as the portal opened the sound of revving engines filled the terminal drawing the eyes of every monster. Unfortunately, Silas couldn’t tell Rahul to aim at the crows.

  Unaware of the threat that the squawking creatures posed, Rahul targeted large groups and more threatening looking enemies. The deafening booms of three different cannons rocked the terminal. Silas blinked, he could actually track the motion of the shells through the air.

  Two groups of monsters were splattered across the floor, their armor doing absolutely nothing against the high powered round. The final shell hit the lion puppet. Silas had seen these things shrug off rocket strikes, so he wasn’t surprised to see the creature rise from the cloud of powdered concrete.

  A large chunk of its chest was missing, Silas could see a row of cracked ribs and the burnt organs beyond them. The lion monster roared again, the injury to its chest grievous. It needed to be stopped before it could cause any more damage. Its injuries would eventually kill it but it wouldn’t be anytime soon. Not that most of these creatures truly feared death caused by a human. For them, it was little more than a ten-minute inconvenience.

  The lion’s roar caught all three operators’ attention. The monster might have been strong and supremely dangerous under normal circumstances, but drawing the focus of three tanks, all with their main guns loaded, was not a healthy decision. Even for it. Three simultaneous booms rocked the airport.

  The shells slammed into the creature’s cracked ribcage. Bone shattered and flesh ruptured. Its body was torn in half, the remaining momentum carrying through to pulp several smaller creatures unlucky enough to be behind it.

  Then the first tank came through the portal. It emerged at a speed that didn’t feel real. Most people believed tanks were slow, lumbering machines. In reality, they ran on jet fuel, and some models could reach speeds approaching ninety miles per hour, which was faster than Silas’s armored bus. He barely had time to react as the massive vehicle burst through the portal and plowed into a cluster of monsters. Armor crunched as bodies were crushed beneath the treads. A fifty-caliber machine gun opened up, tracer fire stitching the air as creatures died in droves.

  In less than ten seconds, nearly fifty of the four hundred monsters were dead. Then the counterattack came. A crow landed on top of the tank.

  Its beak punched straight through the machine gun operator’s face. Phantasmal threads speared down through the armor and into the compartment where the driver sat. The creature screeched, wings slamming against the tank's armored plates as it took control of the operator.

  The tank slowed. Silas didn’t know how the puppet ability worked, whether the crow needed to micromanage every movement or merely influence the operator, but he didn’t intend to find out. He snatched a rifle from an infantryman entering through the portal, braced, and fired.

  The automatic rifle bucked, but Silas had more than enough strength and stability to aim accurately. Bullets tore through the crow’s body. It wasn’t enough to kill it, but it was enough to shred its wings. The creature was blown off the tank, its control broken.

  The next two tanks rolled through more cautiously. Having seen what the crow could do, their crews angled their guns upward, keeping watch for aerial threats. That meant less suppressive fire from the fifty-caliber guns, but the infantry pouring in beside them made up for it. At least they tried to, as their weapons were significantly less effective against the monster’s armor. The main cannons still fired intermittently, but as the monsters closed in, the heavy guns became less effective.

  The battle devolved into a bloody melee. Silas handed the rifle back to its owner and moved to one of the tanks. There was no way he was letting another crow take control of one of those things, that would be a death sentence.

  Bella had the same idea. She dragged Samantha with her, positioning her daughter between the tank’s hull and herself. Samantha, in turn, blew a crow out of the air as it tried to reach another machine-gun operator.

  Silas climbed onto the tank and twisted the hatch open. The operator inside was slumped over, barely conscious, his weight pressing the accelerator just enough to keep the tank creeping forward. Silas reached in, grabbed him by the back of his uniform, and hauled him out. The man wasn’t particularly large, and while Silas wasn’t as strong as Bella, Flesh Lord allowed him to build a world class physique.

  The operator blinked groggily. He said something in Hindi that Silas didn’t understand. It didn’t matter, the man had a sigil and would know what he needed to do.

  Silas jumped down and pointed at another soldier. “You. Drive.”

  The man said something in Hindi. Silas didn’t care, as long as someone took the seat and kept the main cannon active. He had something more important to do.

  After stabbing the injured crow and making sure it wouldn’t revive, Silas dragged the dazed operator toward the lion monster’s corpse. Getting there wasn’t easy, several monsters tried to block his path some of the larger variety. The larger, armored variants proved less troublesome than expected.

  They were stronger, faster, and likely smarter. However, they focused on rounding out their weaknesses instead of enhancing their strengths. Normally, that would have made them nearly impossible for Silas to fight. Control and precision were his biggest strengths if they had been better than his, he would be as good as dead.

  With a force multiplier raw physical power was less important. His upgraded sword punched through the gaps in the armor and into a creature’s torso. He activated the blade and a small pulse of liquefaction surged through its guts. The monster staggered, red ichor spilling between disturbingly human teeth as it collapsed to its knees. Silas didn’t bother finishing it, just slapped the back of its neck with the sword’s edge as he passed, knocking it out of the way.

  He reached the lion monster’s remains and threw the tank operator into the pile of steaming guts. Silas was certain that this conflict would take more than ten minutes. There was even a chance that the lion juggernaut would attack its enslavers after it revived. It was not a chance that Silas was willing to take.

  The soldier screamed, vomited, then paused as his interface notified him about the potential sigil. Black smoke poured from the corpse, thick and putrid. The lion was huge, standing at its full height, its shoulders would have brushed against the vaulted airport ceiling. This was to say black smoke filled the terminal before starting to glow. Purple lightning crackled within it, illuminating the airport like a storm trapped indoors.

  Silas sighed in relief, it was dead, permanently. Another monster charged him, one of the larger variants. Silas slashed for its neck, aiming to sever the spine with a liquefaction pulse. This one was faster and demonstrated a greater supply of experience. It knocked his sword aside and drove a spear into his shoulder.

  Armor cracked, but held. The tip of the spear punctured his arm, but not deeply enough for the barbs on the head to bite into his skin. Silas growled, drew his belt knife, and slammed it into the creature’s visor. It staggered. He shoved harder, roaring in frustration.

  It still held onto the spear. His knife had not penetrated deep enough to hit the brain, but it still gave him a bit of leverage. Jerking its head to the side, he pulled its line o fight away from his sword arm. It still didn’t release the spear. Silas drove the blade into its other visor. The tip struck the thin orbital bone separating the eye from the brain. A pulse from his relic dissolved it instantly.

  The sword slid straight in and the creature dropped. Silas felt a thrill as he purified it.

  This was objectively a nightmare. Their element of surprise was gone. The monsters had adapted fast. Their armor stopped small-arms fire, and while the tanks were pivotal, they weren’t unstoppable one had already been disabled when one of the larger creatures grabbed the cannon barrel and wrenched it aside. The barrel deformed just enough to ruin the main gun.

  Was it wrong to feel enjoyment at this? Maybe. However, he wouldn’t trade it for the despair he felt when first entering hell.

  Silas kept track of Samantha and Bella, always keeping a point of spirit ready to portal them out. Their survival was more important than getting an airplane. They were fine. The monsters actually avoided them. Bella's brutal methods had some benefits at the very least.

  Something heavy landed on Silas’s back. He stumbled forward, in his brief moment of distraction a monster had taken the opportunity to attack. Bracing himself on a piece of the lion's lower torso, he tried to shake the creature off.

  Silas thrashed, trying to get the monster off his back. The thrill of the fight vanished the instant he caught sight of it out of the corner of his vision, strands like spider silk drifting in the air, and two black wings gripping either side of his head.

  There was a God forsaken crow on his back! Each “feather” was a long, thin, jointed digit, lined with thin fur along two ridges, digging into his skull. It felt less like being grabbed by a bird and more like a giant insect latched onto his head,

  As phantasmal strings seeped through his flesh, numbness started creeping in. Silas did the only thing he could think of. He threw himself backward, trying to crush the creature beneath his bulk.

  The thing was built for mental combat, not brute force. However, it moved, skittering over him like a spider, impossibly light and fast. The crow was large for a bird, but still a bird, and yet it moved with horrifying precision, slipping through his grasp.

  More of the strings speed into his flesh. Numbness spread outward from the contact point. His limbs felt distant. His thoughts began to drift, lightheadedness creeping in until it felt like he was watching himself from outside his own body. He remembered people describing anesthesia before surgery, how awareness faded just before the drugs took hold. This felt exactly like that.

  Silas growled, “My body is mine to control.”

  The words resonated, as if they were fundamental to his very being. Something intrinsic to his soul answered back, and he understood instantly what was happening. This wasn’t just a monster using its eldritch abilities to control him. It was a contest.

  His soul had been influenced by Flesh Lord. Silas liked to think of it as a stamina and healing sigil, but in reality, it granted authority over his own body and was normally demonstrated via healing and stamina. Now it was directly competing with the crow’s power. The puppet strings were tightening. Slowly, inexorably, he was losing. Not the instant takeover he’d seen happen to the tank operator, but a steady erosion of control.

  The crow screeched, the sound was a disturbing combination of hungry and eager. Silas needed something drastic. If the creature was a puppeteer, then there was one thing no puppeteer could handle. Tangled strings.

  He drove his final reserve of spirit, the point he’d been saving for emergency portals, straight into his Flesh Lord ability. The greater part of the sigil forcefully expanded the crow’s own influence across his entire body.

  His muscles went completely numb. Silas’s mind temporarily short circuited in a psychic whiplash that would have knocked most people unconscious. His vision went black for a split second and a ringing filled his ears.

  The crow recoiled, shrieking, its grip breaking as it tumbled from his back. Its mind had been forced to synchronize with his sigil instead of overriding it. It was like a game of tug-of-war where one side suddenly let go, the other didn’t win cleanly, but the sudden release still sent them sprawling.

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  Silas didn’t hesitate. Without anything holding the reins, he had a moment to act. The creature lay on the ground, stunned, no bigger than a basketball. He stomped down.

  The crow's eyes cleared just before impact. Silas’s muscles locked mid-motion, but he wasn’t balanced on one foot, so while he couldn’t move, he still toppled forward. His foot crashed into the crow’s head with a sharp crunch, delicate bones collapsing beneath his weight. Control trickled back not fully, but enough.

  The crow wasn’t dead, however, its influence was shattered. It still twitched, in a state of shock but very much still alive. Silas drove his sword straight through its chest and twisted. The resistance was minimal. When the creature finally died, its influence evaporated instantly, leaving behind a nauseating sense of wrongness and violation.

  High control or high wisdom might counter something like that, he thought. Maybe, but the crow clearly specialized in those stats. Unfortunately, if he failed, there was a good chance no one else could.

  He kicked the corpse aside and turned back to the fight. The excitement was gone and only grim determination remained. This wasn’t a game. This wasn’t sparring with his friends in Tucker’s dojo. He was fighting for his life on the far side of the planet.

  It was time for blood and slaughter. The battle raged on, and the humans were barely winning. Now that the crows’ abilities were exposed, the tanks dominated the field. At first, Silas assumed they had near-limitless ammunition, but a quick check revealed a strange fact. Someone had a sigil that temporarily replicated small objects. Phantasmal .50-cal rounds were spat out at a terrifying rate before dissipating into nothing.

  Silas knew that there had to be a limit to that ability, but even a limited generation was enough. A three-round burst from a heavy machine gun killed almost anything.

  This alone explained why Rahul’s forces were avoiding being overwhelmed. The machine gunners could keep firing, the standard infantry couldn’t. Once their ammo ran dry, they fell back on melee weapons. They avoided swords, instead they wielded tools designed to exploit blunt force impacts like axes and altered pickaxes.

  Silas had moved past most of the monsters by then, the massive lion creature had been positioned fairly deep in the terminal. He was actually positioned behind their line. That was when the next problem revealed itself.

  One hundred and fifty soldiers had been sent into the airport. While there were nearly four hundred monsters. For the first ten minutes, the humans held and even gained ground. Then the dead creatures regained their feet. The soldiers manning the tanks were unable to abandon their posts to purify their targets.

  Silas had once wondered what would happen if a creature blown apart tried to regenerate. Would only one piece revive? Would the rest become useless meat? The answer was neither.

  These weren’t normal physical beings. They were spirit manifestations. The remains dissolved into black smoke, flowing together, reforming whole once more.

  The tide turned instantly. The revived monsters rose unarmed and unarmored, but that hardly mattered. They attacked, seized fallen weapons, and killed just as easily as before.

  Silas scanned the battlefield. Another point of spirit had recharged. He needed something, anything to turn the tide. More power was what he needed, but there wasn’t a quick way to get it. So he looked around for something he could do or use.

  The terminal was filled with rubble, broken weapons, and torn armor. There was nothing obvious he could use. Silas shook his head, he needed to stop thinking like a soldier. Silas slapped a portal onto the floor, opened another directly above it, and stepped aside. Then he began throwing rubble in.

  The rocks fell. And fell. And fell again. They never hit the ground. Each pass added speed. Air screamed around them as a red halo formed around the larger pieces from friction with the air. Then he did something reckless. He jumped in.

  Rocks slammed into his armor, cracking plates and sending shards flying. Pain flared, but there was no ground to splatter him on, only endless falling. Then he reoriented the exit portal. Normally he wouldn’t jump into a personal meteor shower, but he needed to orient the portal facing himself and still have the rubble to go through it. He also couldn’t use movie shenanigans to send it vertically through one portal and horizontally out of another, because the exits also had to be facing opposite directions.

  The opening above him shifted, now positioned on the ceiling over the densest cluster of monsters. Silas knew some soldiers would be caught in the splash of shrapnel but he felt it would be worth it.

  The rocks fell like a meteor shower, narrow, focused, but still a meteor shower. For a brief moment, Silas wondered if this was how God felt when he smited the depraved. It was an absurd thought, one that nearly made him too slow to grab the steel girder just outside the portal. He had been close to the edge within easy reach of the support and used his own momentum to swing himself out of the way.

  Good thing he did. A chunk of a desk followed the stones down, smashing into the ground. The granite countertop shattered on impact, spraying shards in every direction. Any creature hit directly by the debris died instantly. Most of them were monsters, but not all. A few humans were caught as well. That was the first effect.

  The second effect was worse.

  The impact turned the terminal into a massive fragmentation zone. Stone exploded outward like a giant grenade. Fewer humans were injured here, they retreated behind the tanks, and often a single body was enough to stop the smaller fragments. Some larger pieces of rubble slammed into the floor, rebounded, crushing anything unfortunate enough to be in their path.

  It was mayhem and Silas took full advantage of it. Nearly sixty monsters were dead in seconds. He released the beam and dropped thirty feet to the ground. Purification notifications flooded his vision as he landed. He accepted them all without hesitation. There was no chance he was letting anything revive and rejoin the fight.

  The rockfall had opened a gap between the humans and the monster tribe and the tanks capitalized instantly. Now that they had some distance the main guns swivelled, targeting the densely packed creatures beyond the breach. Three thunderous booms followed.

  The recoil rocked the vehicles as shells tore through the monster ranks, killing far more at this distance than the rockfall had. The .50-caliber machine guns joined in, no longer suppressed, chewing through anything that still moved. Silas was forced to dodge out of the way as the tank operators gunned the engines and rolled over the few creatures that survived the sudden change in tempo.

  Silas moved from corpse to corpse, purifying everything he could reach. Monster bodies ejected their black fog only for it to shift into slow columns of purple mist. From his perspective, the terminal looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic science fiction nightmare.

  Eventually, the tanks stopped firing. Soldiers advanced, stabbing wounded monsters, crushing vital organs before following Silas’s example. A few creatures were still moving, but not many.

  What had started as nearly a three-to-one advantage in the monsters’ favor had flipped to almost three-to-one for the humans.

  Silas turned toward the tank crews, “Get out of your vehicles and start purifying,”

  Most of the kills had technically come from tank fire, and the operators hesitated. Silas wasn’t their commanding officer. However, the infantry, who had nearly died keeping those tanks operational, were in no mood to argue. Hatches were forced open. Operators were dragged out and shoved toward the bodies.

  No one wanted their efforts to be for nothing. Within minutes, the battle wound down. A perimeter was established. Tanks were parked in the center of the terminal. The floor wasn’t meant to support their weight, and tiles cracked under spinning treads but the concrete held.

  Plastic tarps were scavenged from a maintenance closet and stretched over windows. The rear of the terminal was cleared, and scouts were sent to check the remaining terminals of the airport. Silas was more than happy to let the IDF handle that.

  He was exhausted, sore, and desperately hungry. A few monsters did manage to resurrect, those that had been smeared so completely there was nothing recognizable left to touch, but the soldiers dealt with them quickly.

  Silas wasn’t sure what this victory would mean long-term. From what he understood, many organizations had been wiped out simply because traditional tactics failed against enemies that could revive. Success required brutal, close-range methods. Still, he hoped this was a turning point for the IDF a windfall of four hundred sigils should help in their efforts to reclaim their homeland.

  The sigils weren’t amazing, at least most of them weren’t. Silas felt a bit of envy over the Kings Herald sigil, that one soldier had gotten extremely lucky. The tank operator had even gotten the full version.

  He sat slumped against a wall on a barstool salvaged from a fast food reteraunt. Bella sat beside him, having taken another one. Samantha rested in her lap, leaning comfortably against her mother. Physically, Samantha was the least tired of anyone there. She hadn’t had to fight, at least not directly. She’d fired one projectile every minute and a half, like clockwork.

  Still, it was a lot to ask of her. A twelve-year-old didn’t belong on a battlefield and if there had been anywhere safer to send her, Silas would have done that instead. Maybe it was a form of hubris to think he could keep her safe on an active battlefield.

  Sleep tugged at him hard, surprising, given that he had slept last week. That crow monster must have done more to him than he thought.

  Scouts eventually returned, reporting in rapid Hindi. Silas tried to eavesdrop. He understood none of it. Silas sighed, he didn’t really care what was in the other terminals anyway. As long as there was one intact airplane left, he could go home.

  Hours passed like that. Occasionally, a notification would appear, as someone unworthy attempted to claim a sigil. He allowed it every time. He did not need dozens of bendy bone sigils. Eventually, tents and partitions went up. The airport already had most of what was needed. There were a surprising number of sheets and tables that could be used to create temporary shelters.

  Silas must have dozed off. When he opened his eyes, Rahul was standing over him. He camo-patterned clothing and body armor. A pistol of foreign make was strapped to his waist and a pair of kukri were strapped across his back, grips facing down.

  “We’ve got your quarters set up,” Rahul said, glancing uncertainly at Bella and Samantha. “We weren’t sure how you’d want it handled, so we made a separate area for you and one for Miss Bella and Samantha.”

  Something about that made Silas uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure why. Bella wasn’t his wife. Feeling this way made no sense. The only explanation he could come up with was that he’d gotten used to sharing a space, being around them while they slept, even if he wasn’t sleeping himself.

  From a security standpoint, it wasn’t even a problem. As much as it hurt Silas’s ego to admit it, in the tight confines of a small room, Bella might actually be the better fighter. He glanced over at the woman to see if she had any input.

  Bella was asleep. He nudged her with his elbow. She jerked awake and reached for her chainsword. Fortunately for Silas, it had fallen over and was now lying on the floor.

  “Hey, Rahul here has a room if you need to rest,” Silas said.

  Rahul nodded, “Yes, it will likely take a few days for us to subdue the whole airport. The other terminals have more manageable threats that we need to take care of. So we may be here for a few days.”

  Silas helped Bella up and nodded his thanks to the commander, “Thank you, they definitely need their sleep.”

  Rahul turned to a soldier just out of his direct line of sight. “Asura, please lead Miss Bella and Samantha to the tent we have prepared for them.”

  Asura’s voice answered in the affirmative. Bella scooped Samantha into her arms and followed the man without protest. Silas took a deep breath and started after them.

  “Mr. Silas, might I have a moment?” Rahul put a hand on Silas’s shoulder.

  Silas paused. Every instinct screamed no. He wanted food, Flesh Lord hadn’t restored his alertness, and he was certain it wasn’t injury but deficiency. The sigil worked wonders, but not on an empty stomach.

  With a tired sigh, he nodded. Rahul led him away from the others, through what had once been a restaurant, and into a small back office. Likely the manager’s, once upon a time. Rahul pulled out a chair, sat, and gestured to another.

  Silas sat opposite him, brow furrowed. “So. What’s going on? Did you find us an airplane?”

  Rahul shook his head. “No. As you know, it’s still dark outside, and we haven’t had time to fully take stock of the aircraft.” He leaned back. “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

  Silas resisted the urge to snap. A conversation. After a battle. He’d grown used to the rhythm of the other world fight, rest, fight again. There definitely hadn’t been surprise interviews after difficult battles..

  “What is it?” he asked flatly. The exhaustion was obvious in his voice.

  Rahul smiled faintly. “Well, it may not come as a surprise, but your ability to create relics is quite impressive.”

  Silas snorted. “Is this because you want me to make one for you. That soldier of yours has a King’s Herald. I could probably make something decent out of that.”

  He wasn’t opposed to making another relic. Rahul was trying to rebuild his nation. Silas wouldn’t begrudge him that.

  Rahul nodded, “Yes. That is partially what I wanted to ask you about.” He folded his hands. “I would like you to consider staying here, making relics for us on a more permanent basis. We have hundreds of up and coming soldiers that could make use of this equipment.”

  Silas answered immediately, “Nope. I have a wife in North America. I need to get back.”

  “That is certainly a good reason,” Rahul agreed smoothly. “But what if we brought her here? We could send people immediately, tonight, even. We have certified pilots back at the base. If you help us get them, it wouldn’t take long to fly to North America, retrieve your wife, and return.”

  Silas frowned, trying to understand what the man was actually proposing. Yes, he wanted help rescuing Abbey. Of course he did. However was it reasonable to expect a force that needed three foreigners to retake an airport to fly halfway across the world, locate her safely, and return just as safely?

  That didn’t add up.

  “No,” Silas said firmly. “I’ll do it myself.”

  Rahul raised an eyebrow. “You doubt our capabilities?”

  Silas paused, then decided politeness wasn’t worth the effort, “Yes. I do,” he said bluntly. “I don’t know you well, but you needed outside help just to retake this facility. I don’t believe you can fly to North America, find where she lives, secure her, and bring her back faster than I can.”

  Rahul leaned forward, eyes narrowed in concentration, as if assembling a puzzle. Finally, he sighed, “Is there truly nothing I can do to convince you to stay?”

  Silas shook his head. “No.”

  Rahul exhaled slowly, “Then you must understand where I’m coming from when I say this.” His voice hardened. “I cannot let you leave.”

  Silas stiffened. “Why not? You know you can’t stop me.”

  Rahul nodded, “True. It comes from no malice on my part to say this, but your ability to create supernatural weapons and tools my soldiers could use is too great a benefit for me to give up.”

  Silas clenched his jaw.

  “It would not simply be foolish,” Rahul continued, “to let you go. It would be wrong of me to value the life of a foreigner over my own civilians.”

  The exhaustion drained away as anger surged to the surface. Who did this man think he was? He had no right. No authority to keep Silas here and no ability to enforce it.

  Rahul finished quietly, as if stating a simple fact, “In fact, it is worth more than the lives of three foreigners.”