There’s nothing like home. We returned to Green River and life fell back to a new normal. No psycho vampires, a competent police force, and a steady job. I can hang out with my friends whenever I want. It just feels a bit hollow.

  With Dr. Phisher I was making a real difference, finding new discoveries. Here, things are stable and simple. Yes, Greenriver is growing fast, the population just hit fifty thousand. Portals still open up in city limits, but the cops get to them quickly, so it's fairly safe. It's boring. So it's time to start something new, a R&D branch of the adventurers' guild!

  Day 150, Owen Landers

  They were driving through the middle of nowhere, and honestly, the landscape was far prettier than Silas had expected. He always imagined places like this as nothing but barren mountains, no greenery, just rock and snow. While it was true that there was snow on the peaks, and it was definitely chillier than back in India, the drive itself was surprisingly scenic.

  Silas tried to enjoy it, but it was difficult knowing there might be a confrontation waiting ahead. The more he thought about it and the more he heard about it, the more this Heavenly Fox business started to sound like a cult. Or at the very least, a group of people far too enamored with some mystical fox lady.

  “You see anything?” Samantha asked from the back seat.

  “Not yet, honey,” Bella replied from the passenger seat.

  By now, Silas’s leg had completely healed, and he was driving again. His eyes were peeled, just like Bella’s, both of them scanning for any signs of civilization. They should have reached the town by now. Instead, all they found was a mountain pass.

  If Silas were a betting man, he would’ve sworn the town was supposed to be right there. However, when they passed through the gap, there was nothing. They followed the highway a little longer, and then the road opened up to a lake, big, though not as massive as some of the ones Silas had seen back in Michigan. Sitting on the shore of that lake was a sprawling village.

  Silas did a double take. From a distance, it looked almost untouched. There were watchtowers scattered among the trees, but aside from that, the place looked like any other rural settlement. He had expected something more like Uzman’s Black Spear Company, which built stone structures, reinforced walls, and clearly defensible positions. This, though… this just looked like a normal town.

  He eased off the accelerator, slowing as they approached. If there were traps, he wanted time to react. Still, he doubted anyone would attack immediately. Most people he’d met since coming back had been decent. Which made the memories harder to live with.

  Out of the hundred people he’d been responsible for killing, maybe ten of them truly deserved it, Asura, Rahul, Been Ras. The rest? Soldiers. People who had welcomed him into their camps, shared food with him. Good people, trying to survive an apocalypse who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “It doesn’t look like they’ve seen much fighting,” Silas said quietly.

  Bella nodded in agreement.

  They were moving at barely thirty or forty miles an hour now, creeping toward the town. There were no cars on the rural streets, which made sense, fuel was too valuable to waste on casual transport. However, there weren’t any people either. No foot traffic or movement at all.

  Their first outpost came into view. The structure was scarred with deep claw marks, and a red banner hung across it, embroidered with Chinese characters. It looked like something from an old People’s Liberation Army propaganda poster, only far more elaborate, the fabric heavy and ornate. Silas recognized the characters for Heavenly Fox stamped across the bottom.

  Despite the damage, the outpost didn’t look abandoned. A candle still burned inside. Silas frowned. Someone had lit it recently, the flame was steady. In the half-light of dusk, the glow was impossible to miss.

  They had chosen to approach at night on purpose. The dull gunmetal grey color of their vehicle blended well with the darkness, and with their remaining battery charge and Silas’s portals, they could be hundreds of miles away in short order if things went wrong.

  The town didn’t react at all to their presence. No alarms blared and no guards came to meet them as Silas entered the city limits. Maybe there was some kind of festival, if everyone was at some kind of party, then the absences could be excused.

  Silas slowed even further, dropping to what felt like a natural city speed that a rural town would accept. The buildings on either side were simple, wooden structures. Some had curtains instead of proper doors. Nothing looked damaged or abandoned, there was even smoke coming from a few roofs.

  A few seconds later, they passed an old-fashioned push lawnmower sitting in the middle of a yard. The grass around it had been freshly cut. Nearby, a small tray sat on a table, holding half-filled drinks and a partially eaten sandwich, still free of bugs.

  Silas felt a chill crawl up his spine. It was like everyone had vanished mid-action.

  They drove through the city, and the trepidation grew with every block. The streets were too quiet. The longer they went, the more wrong things started to stand out.

  Toys were scattered across the road stacks of colorful blocks with Chinese characters on them half-collapsed on the sidewalk. A painting easel stood in the middle of an intersection, the canvas only half-finished, the paint still wet and uncovered, left for the elements to ruin.

  Samantha voiced what they were all thinking, “Where is everybody?”

  Silas shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I wish I did. But this is getting creepy.”

  They turned the corner and found people. They saw dozens of them, or at least what was left of them.

  A man stood in the middle of the street, frozen mid-step, one hand raised as if waving hello. A few feet away, a woman held a baby in her arms, her black hair suspended as though caught in a breeze that no longer existed. The baby was reaching upward, its tiny fingers frozen as it stretched toward its mother's face. All of them were perfectly still.

  Silas slowed the bus to a stop. There were more, people clustered in every direction, locked in unfinished motions. Some smiled, some looked surprised, but most were screaming. They stood in everyday poses, but the deeper into the gathering Silas looked the more expressions of fear and pain appeared.

  He couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead. Their eyes were open, glassy and unfocused. Maybe it was perfect stasis. Maybe it was something worse.

  Silas swallowed, “Nope. We’re not doing this.”

  He’d seen too many horror movies that started exactly like this, and they never ended well. Silas refused to follow the evil jelly bean trail to his death. Without hesitation, he opened a portal, burning all three of his spirit charges to push the exit three miles down the road, far past the city limits. That should be enough.

  Silas then smashed the accelerator, slamming them into their seat as the bus jerked forward. Then they rocked forward as the bus came to an equally sudden stop. The tires screeched. The smell of burning rubber filled the bus, but they didn’t move.

  “What—?” Silas hit the brakes, then threw the bus into reverse and floored it again.

  This time, they shot backward. The bus bucked as the tires went over something. He kept going in reverse, and the bus lurched back nearly fifty feet. In the front window, Silas saw a body lying on the road.

  Unlike every other creature they’d ever run over with the multi-ton armored bus, this one wasn’t crushed into chunky salsa. It slowly stood up. Crimson eyes locked onto Silas through the windshield.

  Silas swore and shifted into drive again, slamming the accelerator. The creature didn’t jump aside. It slid one foot back bracing like it was simply receiving a tackle.

  Silas cursed again, but it was too late to stop, “No. You can’t be serious—”

  The bus hit it. The creature tanked the impact. The bumper crumpled. Metal screamed as its claws dug into the asphalt holding it in place. Before the bus’s inertia was expended, the steel around its body began to glow red-hot.

  Like an arc welder striking an aluminum can, its superheated skin sliced through the bus. The entire vehicle was split down the middle. Aron and Mandy barely jerked their legs clear in time.

  For a brief moment, the only thing holding the bus together was the canopy of the passenger section. Then the windows on Samantha’s side tore free. She would have been badly hurt if not for a quick activation of her bubble armor.

  The bus split, one half veered right, Silas and the twins were still inside. The other half went left, carrying Bella and Samantha, missing the portal completely as it scraped violently along the pavement. Thankfully the armor plating made the halves fall outward.

  Silas barely kept his bearings as the wreck skidded to a stop. The creature had done this deliberately. It hadn’t wanted to kill them. It wanted to separate them.

  Silas got to his feet and stared at their attacker. It resembled a dragonkin but twisted. Pitch-black scales, jagged and angular, with glowing crimson lines running through its body like veins of molten lava. Its tail lashed back and forth, slow and deliberate.

  “What the hell…” Silas muttered.

  The dragonkin smiled. Then it did something no other member of its species had ever done it spoke in a human tongue, “You know, I set up all this effort just to trap you and you immediately try to leave before I even get to show off.”

  Its voice was deep, layered, like multiple throats speaking at once. Silas followed its gesture to the frozen people. Now that he was outside the bus, he could smell them. It was not the smell of decay and rot, no it was fresher. Silas had smelled it before when he gutted deer.

  “You killed them all,” Silas whispered. His eyes once again fell on the mother and the babe.

  “I am the Herald of Nimrod, Master of the Hunt,” The creature said, its voice took on an almost humorous lilt, “Taxidermy is part of my duties.”

  Silas’s blood ran cold. He snarled, clenching his fists. The Herald needed to die. There was only one problem with that goal.

  This thing was far stronger than any dragonkin he’d ever seen. The dragonkin chief had nearly killed them, and they’d only won because they exhausted every ability it had on fodder monsters. This creature felt different. More complete. It was likely at late-stage diversification or even higher.

  Silas reached into the wreckage and pulled his sword free. Just because killing it would be hard didn’t mean it was impossible. He didn’t need to do it today, one day he would be strong enough.

  They only needed thirty seconds for Silas’s spirit to recharge. The Herald’s smile widened when he raised his sword.

  “I’m glad you think you can stop me,” it said. “It would be boring otherwise.”

  Its eyes burned brighter. Silas used focus to speed up his perception of time, he needed a plan. He only needed about thirty seconds to get a portal. Time enough for a few sentences, a few heated exchanges at most.

  He glanced over to where Bella and Samantha were. The dragonkin had positioned itself between him and the two girls, deliberately interposing its massive body. Silas grimaced. Make that a minute. He’d need two portals, one to reach the girls, and another to get them out. That was assuming this creature would just let him grab them and run.

  “So,” Silas said, stalling for time, “who is this Master Nimrod you keep talking about?”

  The dragonkin smiled wider, “Oh, don’t play dumb. He’s the one who sent me to hunt you.”

  The creature crouched, its gleeful expression never fading. Then it vanished.

  Silas had expected communication to break down eventually. If the creature was tracking him through any kind of linear predictive method, then it would know he had some way of traversing space without actually passing the intervening distance. It would be a fool to let Silas exploit that ability.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Silas raised his blade to intercept. He could see the creature move, barely. Even in his hyper-focused state, where the world slowed and every detail sharpened, the dragonkin was still blindingly fast. Silas felt like he was trapped in syrup while the monster moved like an Olympic sprinter.

  He watched it approach. Its fingers flattened, forming a spear. The expression on its face shifted to disappointment as if it found Silas unworthy.

  Silas didn’t try to swing. He didn’t try anything fancy. He simply lowered his guard and aimed the sword’s point at where a human heart would be. The dragonkin slapped the blade aside, almost lazily.

  The impact warped the sword, bending the steel into a grotesque curve. Then the dragon’s hand blurred forward.

  Silas realized he was about to die and he wasn’t ready to go. Internally, he screamed. Move. Move. Move. But his body was already going as fast as it possibly could.

  A bright flash of light slammed into the dragon’s side. The sharp tip of a glass like cone, one of Samantha’s projectiles, hit it mid-stride and knocked it flying. How the girl could hit a target moving that fast, Silas didn’t know. The creature skidded across the street, rolled, and landed on its feet like a cat.

  It turned, crimson eyes locking onto Samantha. Then it started laughing, “Oh? So some of them have teeth.”

  Samantha’s face was pure shock. She’d punched through steel plates and entire rows of monsters with that attack. Yet this thing had only been nudged. The Herald wasn’t even bleeding. Silas suspected the only reason it even moved was because it had been mid-stride. Its body, no matter how absurdly durable, still obeyed the laws of momentum and conservation of force.

  Silas looked down at his sword. Purple smoke wafted from the blade. The internal structure that held the sigil was ruined. Fractures ran up and down the warped steel, he could recycle it, but for now, it was nothing , more than scrap.

  He tossed it aside and drew his wyvern claw dagger. It wouldn’t do much either but it was better than nothing. Silas saw the tension in the creature’s muscles shift. His eyes widened when he realized the Herald’s target.

  It was Samantha. Of course it was, she had the strongest attack. He moved before it did. It was the only reason he made it in time.

  The dragonkin blurred toward Samantha one hand cocked back to deliver a lethal blow. Silas predicted its path, where it would be if it maintained the same speed as before and he was right. He slammed into its side as it charged her.

  This time, the impact didn’t knock it away, but it did stall its forward momentum. The dragonkin planted one foot into the street, braced itself, and brought the back of its fist around into Silas’s chest.

  The force was catastrophic. Silas’s chest plate, armor that normally shrugged off heavy blows, shattered instantly. The impact lifted him off the ground like a rag doll and hurled him backward.

  Silas barely had time to wonder how strong something had to be to throw a human like a basketball. His momentum paused for half a second. He was suspended in the air, head tilted upward, legs trailing behind.

  Then he felt something slice into his ankles. The dragon yanked him down and smashed him shoulder-first into the pavement.

  Silas clenched his abdominal muscles and curled inward. If he didn’t, the angle of the swing would send his head into the pavement first. His mother liked to accuse him of having a thick skull but he was one hundred percent certain it wasn’t thick enough to be used as a hammer and survive.

  The bone plate of his cauldron struck the ground. It exploded into fragments. He had designed it to be rigid yet flexible, meant to absorb impacts exactly like this, but the force was too extreme, too sudden. It didn’t have time to flex properly. The shoulder plate shattered at the same instant, and purple smoke billowed around him as the sigil bound into the armor was violently destroyed.

  He barely had a moment to register the loss before the pressure on his ankle vanished and he was flung free. The sudden shift, from being restrained by centrifugal force to complete freedom, sent him skidding across the pavement. He tucked his head instinctively, wrapped his remaining armored arm around it, and bounced hard, rolling end over end. He struck several obstacles before finally coming to a stop.

  The world spun. Unsteadily, Silas pushed himself to his feet. Dizziness washed over him as he looked around. Several forms lay scattered across the ground, he had plowed through the crowd of people like bowling pins. Now that he stood over them, he could see the truth.

  They were people, it was more obvious now that he was covered in congealing blood and preservatives. Silas gagged, bile burning at the back of his throat. He fought down the urge to vomit. If they’d arrived even a little later, there was a good chance this Herald of Nimrod would have arranged the town like a diorama, posing people like action figures, freezing them in lifeless eternity until insects and rot claimed what was left.

  It was disgusting. Evil on a level Silas hadn’t even considered before. Who does this kind of thing? Apparently, an evil pagan god of schemes and hunting.

  Silas shoved the rising rage to the forefront of his mind, letting it drown out the fear. It was hard to control, dangerously so, but he couldn’t afford to lose himself. His friends were counting on him.

  He took a step. Pain lanced through his ankle, and it nearly gave out. He glanced down and saw blood running into his boot where the dragonkin’s claws had gouged into his leg. The armor had done nothing to stop them.

  His wyvern claw knife was gone. Silas straightened anyway, forced himself forward, and shouted, “I’m here, you monster!”

  The creature ignored him, turning again toward Samantha. Silas felt time collapse inward, to the heartbeat it took for the Herald to move. They were too far away now for him to do anything.

  Bella was close enough. She threw herself between the dragonkin and her daughter, raising her arms to block the strike. For a brief moment, it almost worked. Every sigil boost she had stacked helped. Sturdy gatherer increased her strength and endurance alongside her mass, thermal cultivator stacked with her prosthetic to generate heat that was converted to motion, hearth conserver made everything more durable, and lesser kings herald increased her abilities a further twenty percent. Everything came together in a single desperate stand.

  For a moment it looked like she would hold. Then her arm buckled. The prosthetic she wore didn’t shatter, but it tore free, the straps keeping it attached simply weren’t made for those kinds of forces. Her real arm twisted bone and muscle failing as her armor’s gauntlet exploded.

  “Stop, you goddamn lizard!” Silas roared as he charged.

  This wasn’t some unthinking, unfeeling beast. It knew what pain was. Worse it enjoyed inflicting it.

  Silas’s gait was uneven, his ankle screaming with every step, but he forced himself forward. The creature backhanded Bella, sending her flying. She hit the ground hard, shards of her helmet skidding across the cobblestone. The blow would have snapped Silas’s neck.

  Bella rose unsteadily. Blood ran down her cheek, her nose clearly broken, but the sigil in her armor still held. Her durability had taken the hit, reduced by the loss of her helmet, forearm plating, and prosthetic, but she was still standing.

  The dragonkin turned toward Silas, a savage grin splitting its face.

  “Oh? You care about her?” it mocked. “What would you do if I ended her?”

  Flames coiled around its hand, forming a clawed gauntlet of luminescent fire. If Silas hadn’t watched it form, he would’ve thought it was glow-in-the-dark plastic instead of superheated plasma. The creature reached for Bella.

  Two arrows slammed into it followed by a bolt. All three shattered harmlessly on the Herald’s scales, detonating in a burst of purple smoke. The dragonkin barely swayed.

  It snorted. “The youngest of you is the only one with teeth. Disappointing. I expected more from one marked by Fenris. They always favored the savage.”

  Fenris, was this a spat between two different gods? Maybe he could use that. Silas said the only thing he could think of that might actually matter. The only thing one could do to truly harm a zealot.

  “Nimrod is a coward,” Silas shouted. Two seconds left.

  The creature froze.

  “He’s a myth. A garbage god. A king of an empire whose crowning achievement was losing a war to three hundred naked thugs. Everything your master built is trash. I’ve seen creatures in other worlds greater than him. There was this parasite, basically a tick, that drank blood. Nimrod’s less than that.”

  The dragonkin’s grin vanished. Heat exploded outward. Flaming wings tore free from its back, not flickering fire like the dragonkin they’d fought before, but solid, condensed, real. Armor of living flame crawled across its body. It burned red, then yellow, then white, before collapsing into a blinding blue sun that turned the night into day.

  The world turned crimson. One second left.

  Cobblestone liquefied beneath its feet. Bella screamed as molten rock boiled like oil, bubbling and popping, sending molten rock everywhere. Samantha coated herself in bubble armor and dragged her mother clear just in time.

  Silas stumbled back, shielding his face from the wave of heat.

  “I was going to take you as a trophy, but you do not deserve to be remembered!” The Herald roared.

  Then the dragonkin moved. Blur wasn’t the right word, it was more like a laser, one instant it was there, the next it had arrived.

  Silas had a split second, but that was all he needed. He didn’t move. Didn’t even twitch. He opened a portal. An entrance to his left and an exit directly in the creature’s path.

  His eyes weren’t sharp enough to see what happened next. All he knew was that one moment he was standing and the next something punched through his shoulder.

  He flew backward into the mass of taxidermied people. Silas was like a comet, and a flaming tail followed him. Then he hit the ground and the fire overshot him.

  Silas was woozy, a sign that Flesh Lord was reaching its limit. He was on his back, staring up at the smoke filled sky. Looking to his right, he saw an arm missing most of the epidermis. Thats a bad case of road rash, he thought.

  When he looked to his other side he saw two arms. One was limp and he couldn’t feel it. The other was black and scaly and ended just above the elbow. That second one was shoved through his clavicle, shoulder bone, and the fingers exited his shoulder blade.

  There was no blood, the heat had flash-boiled it into steam. The flesh was cauterized so he wouldn’t bleed out. He threw the severed arm aside and wheezed. It felt like the creature had taken part of his lung with it. Maybe it had, the organ should have at least been severely burned. In his current state, it was hard to tell.

  He deactivated the portal in frustration, it had bought him a few seconds of life, nothing more. Looking up, he saw the dragonkin nearly a hundred feet down the road, clutching the stump of its arm. It was screaming in pain.

  Silas blinked in surprise. The monster that delighted in pain apparently couldn’t handle receiving it.

  Only then did he understand the sequence of events.

  The dragonkin blasted forward at what was likely supersonic speed. Then Silas opened his portal, trying to cut it in half. Unfortunately, even at that speed the Herald could still react, but it had moved too fast and paid for it by losing its arm.

  The dragonkin had obviously never felt pain before, or at least not in a very long time. It had let itself get cocky and had been hurt for its arrogance.

  Silas was just happy his portal had worked. The thing had looked invincible, and if tearing a hole in reality was what it took to harm it, then he wasn’t sure that assumption had been faulty after all. He paused and looked down at the severed limb before scooping it up again. Bones from a creature like this had to be worth something.

  He limped over to where Mandy and Aron were helping Bella back to her feet. She had retrieved her prosthetic and reattached it, but she looked terrible, an aura of pain and fury radiated off her. She looked like she was gearing up for round two.

  The trek over to them took a long time, it should have only taken a few seconds, but he was injured. Then Silas felt it. Two eyes locking onto his back. He glanced over his shoulder and met the furious gaze of the Herald. The dragonkin had already recollected itself and was glaring straight at him.

  Frantically, Silas looked at his spirit. To his surprise that slog over to Bella had taken the better part of the spirit recharge time. With some spirit in the tank, Silas did the mature thing and flipped the Herald off.

  The dragonkin likely didn’t recognize the gesture, but it understood the intent perfectly. In a wave of annihilating heat, it charged. Silas opened a portal beneath everyone’s feet and dropped them into a location about a mile away. He closed it immediately before the heat wave could melt them.

  They all turned back just in time to see the city in the distance. A mile sounded far, but it wasn’t. They had only fallen back to roughly the same area as the scarred watchtower they’d passed earlier.

  “We need to keep moving,” Silas said, limping forward.

  He glanced over his shoulder again and saw a pillar of fire rising from the town they’d just escaped, punching into the sky. Counting the seconds before the next point of spirit would be made available.

  Smoke filled the entire region and the Herald hung in the sky like a cursed star, turning night into a hazy twilight. Silas hoped the smoke screen would buy them time. It didn’t.

  Twenty-seven seconds wasn’t very long, but it felt like hope, right up until a sonic boom rocked the world. The dragonkin spotted them and came screaming toward them like a comet. In the three seconds it took for his skill to recharge, the dragonkin crossed three quarters the distance. In the single second it took for them to scramble through the portal, it nearly reached them.

  Silas closed it immediately. Despite being a mile away, he felt the ground shake when it landed. It had been toying with them earlier, except for that one moment, when it had smashed him with its arm. That blow had crushed straight through his enhanced physique with no effort and that was just the speed of a detached limb.

  What would a direct hit do? Cold water splashed around Silas as they landed in a lake. He dragged everyone underwater and held his breath. The others understood instantly and stayed submerged with him.

  Above them, the surface lit up, yellow light turning midnight into dawn. Fire roared overhead, but underwater everything was silent. Silas had chosen the lake deliberately. Fire didn’t travel well through it, and light reflected off the surface. As long as the dragonkin kept glowing brighter than the water could transmit, it wouldn’t be able to see them.

  They could all hold their breath for over a minute and a half. As soon as that time passed, Silas opened another portal. This time, he didn’t run away from the city. He ran toward it.

  They needed time, and there was only one place the dragonkin would overlook, inside one of the city’s homes. Every thirty seconds, its search radius expanded by another mile in every direction. The longer he dragged this out, the better. They were sucked through the portal by water pressure.

  Silas closed it instantly. The next portal opened in the ceiling of the same house they landed in. The purple light stayed contained, never reaching the outside.

  The house was on fire. Not collapsed yet, but burning. Large portions of the settlement were ablaze, probably from when the dragonkin had launched itself skyward like a living missile. The other end of Silas’s portal opened roughly half a mile underground.

  His vision swam. His mind kept phasing in and out as Flesh Lord strained to keep him moving.

  “Melt it,” Silas rasped.

  Samantha and Bella raised their hands to the rock in the portal above them. The rock temperature skyrocketed to absurd levels, then cracked as they converted heat into kinetic force. A massive cylindrical chunk of stone in a twenty foot diameter cylinder dropped into the home, crushing the wooden flooring.

  Silas closed that portal and opened another in the same spot, but this time at an angle to be walked through. They entered a cave half a mile below ground, cramped, but hopefully far enough down to avoid the Herald's wrath.

  Silas closed the portal and collapsed, barely clinging to consciousness for the next ninety seconds. Part of him wanted to open a portal back to the surface of the lake, to give them both air and water. However, if the dragonkin was tracking them by smell, or something more abstract, he didn’t want it finding the portal and flooding them with fire.

  So he waited. When he could finally focus again, Silas opened one last portal. Two and a half miles straight up into the sky. The room quickly cooled and the pressure within dropped. It would have been dangerous if they didn’t have advanced vitality. Only then did Silas allow himself to fall into unconsciousness.