Chapter 23

Creatures on Anogwin are ranked based on how dangerous they are. The CTRS, or Creature Threat Rating System, scales from 1 to 10. An example of a 1 on the scale would be a rat infestation. While technically, a pack of rabid rats could kill someone, it is very unlikely and requires only minor skill to handle. While a CTRS 10 would be a dragon attack. Any creature rated CTRS 10 often requires a Hero in conjunction with a group of at least three parties of Adamantine Master ranked Adventurers.

By the time Nel, Ferris, and I were on our way back to the surface, I had traded all the drinks I had brought as payment. I had traded seven cans for seven pieces of information, even if a couple of those tidbits were free and a couple cost more than one can. With my last can, I purchased a safe route back to the surface. Skitter also gave me his contact information and the address for his personal teleporter. He also gave me his legal name, Vennowa Veddawer. Veddawer promised me a special discount for info in exchange for a few brink-breaker drinks.

We couldn’t take the same path back that we had taken down. Even if the bridge I had dropped was still intact, we had only one hook and rope between the three of us. While that one handicap wasn’t enough to force us to turn back, the fact that the path was likely swarming with ghouls was more than enough of a deterrent. The path that we were given was shorter than the one we had taken down, but in exchange, it was also much more dangerous.

I led the way down a hall as we drew near a stairway that had been marked on our map as the path to take up. The long hall we passed through reached eighteen feet from one side to the other, twenty feet high, and stretched on for hundreds of feet. A massive double door broke each wall every fifty feet. Each of these pairs of doors stood as high as the twenty-foot ceiling and was made of thick steel with several proportionally large bolt-locks running down the break between the two doors. Upon closer inspection, those bolt-locks, each as thick around as my wrist, with the bolts installed in the walls of the door frame. The square rod bolts traded which wall the bolts started from in an A, A, B, B, A, A pattern. Looking even deeper into the security, these bolts were designed to pass through both doors and lock into the opposite wall. These barricade measures were paired with a three-factor lock system. A biometric hand scanner, key-card reader, and a pin pad were all installed on the on the right-hand side of each doorway.

These doors and the size of the hall were standard for a mass-production industrial forge site. That estimation was verified by peeking in through a few open doorways. What was concerning was that several of these doors were torn off their hinges. I had grown accustomed to broken and damaged doors in the Undercity. But doors of that scale in the state they were in. Doors ripped from industrial hinges, bent in half, and/or displaying horrifying claw marks. Some gouges in the metal were deep enough that I could almost fit myself inside some of the larger gashes. Each set of claw marks displayed two thick parallel gouges with a third offset, likely meaning whatever did that damage had a thumb.

I was worried, really worried. But Nennel and Ferris looked to be in a state of abject terror. To keep them safe and put the two at ease, even if only by the slightest bit, I checked every open door down the hall. After a thorough inspection of each room, I would quietly wave to them to proceed forward with me. Things were going perfectly fine until I checked the last door on the right side.

The first warning sign was a low and slow rhythmic vibration that I felt through the floor only a foot from the doorway. It only took me a second to recognize the rhythm as the deep breathing of something large in a deep sleep. I peeked around the corner of the destroyed door. Inside the room filled with former assembly line equipment, in the farthest corner, I saw horror. A slimy serpentine body covered in pale translucent skin with bulbous black veins. The body wrapped around itself several times. I caught sight of more than two limbs, each with extra joints. Even with those few details, I knew what it was, and I was shot through with a terror unlike anything I had ever felt before. If that thing caught even a whiff of us, we were all going to die in very short order and in the most horrifying way possible.

When I turned back to Nennel and Ferris, they read the terror on my face, and each took a step back on reflex. I hurried over to them with steps light enough that I could’ve passed through the wilderness without making a sound. “We need to move, but we must be completely silent. The thing I saw in there. I know it. It has insane hearing with echo-location, a sensitive tremor sense, and an advanced myst sense. The nightmare is currently sleeping, so we have a chance. I’m pretty sure I got unbelievably lucky that it didn’t notice me with my Affinity Ratio. But that thing actively seeks Death and Umbra Myst.  I would be the tastiest morsel that thing has seen in a long time, given that I’m a total anomaly freak with Myst Affinities.

For those of you who don’t remember my Affinity Ratio from the last story, I’ll give you a brief recap. You might have already picked up on the fact that I have a big fat zero in all Positive Elements, but most of my Negative Elements are disturbingly potent. Going down the list, my Affinity Scores are as follows. Earth: 10, Fire: 26, Wind: 16, Water: 10, Fate: 0, Chaos: 8, Synthesis: 0, Ruin: 26, Life : 0, Death : 28, Lumina: 0, Umbra: 30, Stasis: 0, Morphic: 26, Resonance: 0, Distortion: 24.

You should also keep in mind the scoring system for affinities. A score of 0 in any affinity should not be possible, and I have four of them. Also, remember that scores cap out at 30. Any score above 15 is uncommon, any score above 20 is rare, any score above 25 is exceptionally rare, and a score of 30 is almost unheard of. 

“I’m going to need you to skirt the opposite wall, quick and quiet, while I cobble together a diversion.” I whispered to each of them with only an inch between us. But I could still hear the horror shift in its sleep, though that might have only been my paranoid imagination.

I saw the question in the eyes of both of my friends, but I silenced them with a sharp motion of my hand before typing out a further explanation to send to them via therra message. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m going to release a myst smoke screen. But I need the two of you to have a head start. As much of a head start as you can manage without drawing attention.’

The two gave me nervous looks but did as I instructed after I gave a hand signal. Nennel and Ferris kept close to the opposite wall and moved, making as little sound as they could. While they moved, I pulled free another Gas Cap-Shell and depressed the button for only a second. I tossed the device five feet into the room the creature dwelled in. The device hadn’t even touched the ground when the device released a cloud of aerosolized Chaos Myst. The silver cloud of magic wasn’t toxic or had any actively dangerous effect by itself. What it would normally do was alter the probability in a localized area. That batch of Chaos Myst I had polarized to cause horrible luck for anyone that stepped inside the cloud. But that was not the goal. If I wanted to affect the creature, I would have had to throw it much harder and set a longer delay.

Where I had thrown the Cap-Shell, the gas wouldn’t affect me or the creature. But it would obscure Nennel’s, Ferris’s, and my Myst emanations through the cloud. After the other two passed to what I thought to be a safe distance, I waited for another thirty seconds. Once I was sure that the creature would not wake, I moved to catch up.

Nel and Ferris both waited beside the stairway up to the next floor. But that ‘stairway’ was actually a ramp wide enough for a tank to drive through. The path climbed at a forty-degree angle and reached up into the darkness beyond what I could see. I gave one last look over my shoulder before leading the way up the ramp to the next floor. I climbed the ramp and kept an eagle eye out for anything that could warn of danger. When I reached the top of the ramp, I double-checked my map to see where we needed to go next. The map said that we would need to take a left turn in the next hundred feet, but there was a red-marked door that blocked the route. Veddawer explained the door marked on the map was sealed before the Undercity was abandoned as a whole. The door hadn’t been opened in almost six hundred years. But the hacker had provided me with a code I could use to crack the door.

I lead Nennel and Ferris down the tank drive path, the space becoming more and more disarrayed. Rubble, dust, and cracks became more frequent the deeper we passed. When we came to the door, I gave it a close inspection. The nine-foot-tall, three-foot-wide gate was made of two halves that locked in an asymmetric pattern. Beside the door was a keypad, long since devoid of electrical current. But I could still use it.

With my thallerite multi-tool, I popped off the panel after pulling a few screws. With the wires exposed, I snipped four of the cables and then reached into my bag to pull free a small yellow box. I took two ends of the power line and hooked them up to a Pocket Power Generator, or PPG, but didn’t activate the device. The PPG was a small device that could take any of several types of current transfer wire and push the electric juice through from a small myst crystal shard installed in the center of the device. I slotted one of the wire ends into the appropriate socket before moving on to the other two wires. The two remaining wires were used to convert and transfer data from the keypad to the door to grant or deny access. I technically only needed one wire for that, but there was an issue that Veddawer informed me of. Like many of the doors in the Undercity, this one was sealed by forcing it into a locked position and cutting off the emergency release system.

The second wire I needed to work with was the far right one. That one I plugged into the PPG in another slot, but I needed to balance the power output. The emergency release system only required 3 volts running at 2 amps. The main door power, on the other hand, required 22 volts and 15 amps. If the emergency system received too much power, it would register as an attempt to break in and would trigger the local alarms. That was very much something we did not want. To correct this problem, I dialed down the volt and amp output for the emergency system to the standard levels. The primary system was still not receiving current, but I had one more thing I needed to do before pushing current through it. I pulled out a small pocket computer. The device was too small and too simple to honestly be called a cyber-deck, but it would do the trick. A cyber-deck was a personal, portable, high-performance computer worn on the wrist. Cyber-decks were also the origin behind the hacker deck organization-type name.

The Code Puncher 86-95XM pocket computer was a device used by modern-day security lock specialists. Correspondingly, these types of devices were a standard tool for more criminally elicit career fields. The Code Puncher was designed and programmed to read the standard format of a key-code-based security system and mimic it to act as an extension of the system as an integrated node. With the middle two wires plugged into my Code Puncher, I keyed in the code that the hacker gave me and triggered the PPG an instant before I injected the code.

The lights of the door flickered to life for a few moments, and the door began to open. But the gate only opened a few inches before shuddering to a halt in time with a loud pop from my PPG. I checked my device to find that the power crystal had cracked under the draw of the door, and the condition points inside the case were cooked. I would not get any more use out of the little guy, and I gave a mournful sigh at the tragic loss.

I put my busted PPG away and peered through the crack of the door. My range of vision was narrow, but I saw nothing that would want to eat my face. With a few jerks, I tested the gears of the door. Given the resistance to moving and the grinding sound that came from the frame when I pushed, the gears were jammed with something. The jam was likely rubble or loose wires.

I waved Nennel over. “Give me a hand. We need to yank this open.” I pointed to Ferris. “I need you to keep an eye out for trouble.” Nennel stepped up beside me and took a grip on the door while Ferris gave me a single resolute nod. I took my grip on the door and pulled right as Nel pulled left. I went so far as to prop a foot against the door frame and shove with all my weight. In the end, it was Nennel who proved the hero in that encounter. Her half of the door first gave a low groan of protest before releasing with a shriek of metal on metal.

Nennel staggered back with a look of pride, but my focus was on the path we had come down. We could not afford to have that nightmare coming after us. If those doors on the floor below proved useless against it, I doubted that a few concrete walls would do much to save our hides if it came looking.

I was so focused on that path that I was blind to the one we had just opened. I heard rubble crunch under a shoe, and I turned to find Ferris doing the impossible. He took the toothpick he had been toying with since I woke up and twirled it around two fingers before gripping it like a javelin. One second, the Elf was holding a splinter; the next, he was holding a four-foot spear of something that was not wood or metal. The material was ivory white with a grain pattern I recognized but could not place at that moment.

Ferris reared back, lifting his front foot off the ground before using it to step forward and launch the spear past me and through the door. I followed the weapon’s path to find it sprouting from the chest of a Human man. I didn’t get a good look at the stranger, but the bowed back, layers of grime, war paint, and thick muscle told me enough. Cannibals.

That had me scared. The presence of that single cannibal meant that there were more nearby and likely that we were about to enter cannibal territory. The man let out a howl of pain and rage before ripping out the spear from his chest, blood welling up from the wound to gush down his chest. He, it, the stranger cannibal, gripped the weapon and swung it like a club as he charged Ferris.

As the beast of a Human rushed past me, I took two actions in synch. I hooked his leading foot with one leg and gripped his face with Venna, shoving back and down. As I forcefully adjusted his trajectory, I also used my claws to full effect, carving furrows down his face.

The attacker’s war cry turned into shrieks of agony as he clutched his face and rolled back and forth on the floor. I turned to Ferris. “We are having a talk later. But right now, run.”

“Run where?!” Nennel snapped.

I pointed through the door we had just opened. When the roar of something hungry rang up from the floor below, I headed the charge. I ran, only slowing when I needed to take a turn. As we slipped from one hall into another, I called out behind me. “Don’t stop running! No matter what! I don’t care if both your legs are broken. You’d much rather I leave you with cannibals than THAT THING!”

“What thing?! What’s so bad that we’re running headfirst into cannibal territory?!” Nennel shouted at me.

Before I could respond, a group of hunting calls came up from one of the halls we passed. As I was making my next turn, I spotted a pack of man-eaters entering the hall we were leaving. I wasn’t sure if that was a curse or a blessing. Either way, we would find out soon enough.

“Stigmaguant!” I shouted back in answer.

“A what?!” Ferris asked between huffs of air.

“Oh, you know. Nine feet tall, twelve feet long, six arms, big claws, big stinger, bigger teeth. And lots of teeth.”

“I really don’t like the sound of that!” Ferris complained.

“Oh, it gets worse.” I continued. “It’s a soul eater. If that thing catches you, your immortal soul gets snuffed like feeding a dog a biscuit.”

“I am not okay with this! I am really not okay with this!” Ferris was starting to sound frantic.

“Quit your whining and pump those legs, Elf-boy.” Nennel snapped at Ferris.

I turned another corner and spied a light through the far door. At that same time, the hunting calls of the cannibals behind us started turning to screams of terror. I slowed my pace as I pulled another device from my belt. “I need both of you to grab ahold of my bag and hold tight.”

They both did as I had instructed, even as they both asked why in their own ways. I answered with a simple, “Things are about to go dark.”

The words hadn’t even completely left my lips when we passed into a large room that was clearly the cannibals’ camp. The room was massive, with a high ceiling and several support pillars. Set around the room were huts and tents made from anything the locals could scrounge up. I only caught a few glimpses, but I was sure that I saw some hides pinned up that were not from monsters or animals. The place was populated with all kinds of species from among both the Sophic and Bellicose Species. Men, women, and children were all in open sight, and suddenly, I felt like the monster for what I was about to bring down on these people.

It didn’t take long for several of the adults to grab weapons and rush us. But we had momentum and surprise on our side. By the time any of them got close, we were already almost to the exit across the room. I pulled the pin and slapped the button of the grenade in my hand before dropping it behind us. The moment the grenade hit the ground, it exploded into a cloud of magical darkness.

The veil of shadow covered the three of us as we pushed on through the next doorway. I could see just fine through the cloud of shadows, and while that was confusing, that was a query for another time. I put even more effort into my striding gait, but not so much that I left the other two behind. As much as the cybernetic enhancements had been a boon, I couldn’t use them without losing Ferris and Nel and getting them killed.

I pushed my friends to their physical limits. I made sure they still held onto my bag as we fled, but I never moved faster than they could handle. While they had to be running on endorphins and adrenalin, it couldn’t last forever. Blindly, I grasped at the bottom of my bag for a pouch that I had set to hang there. When my fingers wrapped around the pouch that Navor had given us, I ripped it free without hesitation. With brutal force, I yanked open the bag and shoved my hand in. Nennel and Ferris had used a large portion of the healing supplies after I had royally screwed up in the acid bridge room. The bag still held a pack of eight Hemo-pills and the emergency beacon. It was the latter that I wanted. I pulled free the rod and moved the pouch to my teeth as I started the trigger process.

Beacons like what I held in my hands were more than a simple signal device. They could be used as a teleportation anchor for instant reinforcement or escape if a caster that could track them was close enough. These beacons were also one-use-only tools. Because of how valuable the devices were, a series of simple security measures were put in place to prevent accidental activation.

As I ran, I twisted the two halves and wrenched them apart to pull the light to the surface. Next, I rotated the top half twice as far in the opposite direction before shoving it down. The light now displayed at the top of the rod and started blinking a bright blue. Despite the pain in my eyes from the flashing emergency light, I still slapped the trigger button at the bottom. The base of the rod was shaped as a spike to allow it to be planted in the ground for the final trigger step. But the trigger had enough give to be triggered with a hard tap if it could not be planted.

Looking ahead, I spied a ramp to what I knew had to be the surface. At the foot of the ramp, we approached a massive freight elevator. But I had no time to activate it, let alone see if it was functional.

With my teeth clutching that bag that only held Hemo-pills, I locked the fingers of my left hand around the beacon even. Even as I gripped the safety device, I clawed my face with my gauntleted right hand, drawing enough blood for what I had planned next.

I drew on the blood seeping from my face and converted it into as much Morphic Myst as I could. My Mystwell was currently full with a capacity of thirty-six Vells. With the blood I had just drawn, I could cast half of my Mystwell, eighteen Vells, as a Tier 3 body enhancement that would last for three minutes. I honestly wasn’t sure if my body could handle a Tier 3 body enhancement for that long, but I would rather take that gamble and fail than let Nel and Ferris get their souls devoured.

I came to a total stop just before the ramp. Nel and Ferris, both shocked by the sudden action, moved past me. But before they could move more than one step ahead of me, I bent over and shouldered the two. Before we had met up with the Arachnyte hacker, I had swapped the power crystals of my Pacer Shoes in case of just such a desperate situation. The angle of the ramp up wasn’t impossible to climb without aid. In fact, it could only slightly slow down any Sophic Species, requiring them to use their hands to balance and push forward. But I would take every edge I could, even if it was by the slimmest of margins.

Even as Ferris and Nennel complained about the mistreatment, I kicked off the floor with a forward-facing kinetic blast. I leaped forward ten feet to climb five feet up the ramp. This next part was what would be difficult. To maximize my climb, I need to alternate between triggering grip-hold with one shoe and using the other shoe to burst farther. The trajectory of the leaps could also be an issue since I would only use one shoe at a time. I was not looking forward to multi-factor mental gymnastics under life-or-death stakes.

With my left shoe gripping, I pushed myself up as far as my leg would extend before releasing the grip. As soon as I released the grip of my left shoe, I traded focus to my right shoe. My right leg was pulled as close to my chest as I could manage without testing my flexibility. That was to minimize my flight veering. I triggered the burst in my right shoe for only a second before aiming that same foot to contact the ramp. As soon as I felt all of the ball of my foot touch the floor, I triggered grip-hold and pushed farther by another leg length. As my right shoe made contact, I already had my left knee to my chest and was readying a burst from that shoe.

And so it went, climbing the sixty-degree ramp, only slightly moving left or right with each burst leap. I had made my fourth leap when I heard the cries of the cannibals behind us. The cries were only growing louder. I didn’t know if the ferals were chasing me, fleeing the stigmaguant, following me in hopes of escape, or what. But I wasn’t about to let that pack of man-eaters catch up.

I redoubled my rate and passed another two floors in only moments. Soon enough, I spotted the door to the surface and shortened my leaps. I made sure that we reached the gate and not at literal break-neck speeds. I dropped Nennel and Ferris on their feet before unshouldering my pack and desperately searching for something critical to our escape.

“What are you looking for?” Ferris asked in obvious panic. His eyes were locked down the ramp, where I noticed shadows moving.

“Breach charge. Both of you, I need cover fire. Shoot anything that moves. And when I say ‘out’, slide down the ramp to a safe distance. I’m setting the timer to four seconds. Get clear or get chummed.” I explain in a tone I tried to keep level. Inside, I was in a frantic panic. I wanted, needed, to get away from that creature as fast as we could manage.

When I found the rectangular charge, I shoved the emergency beacon into Nennel’s free hand even as she started cracking off shots. I pulled the explosive from my bag with both hands, dimly aware of Ferris conjuring and firing volleys of what could only have been bone shards.

Frantically, I stripped off the plastic coating over the adhesive, fumbling twice before getting a firm finger-hold. After yanking off the plastic, I slammed the device against the metal gate doors with enough force to sound off an audible ‘gong’. With five button presses, I armed the device and set the timer to four seconds. I threw myself into a roll down the ramp as I shouted, “OUT!”. The other two followed my example. We flew free of the danger zone just in time, striking the ground as the thunder of an explosion went off behind us. The boom was deafening, and my ears rang with a whining tone, but that did not have my focus. The shadows below had taken shape. I guessed four dozen cannibals were climbing toward us. Some of them shouted in what sounded like cries for blood, while others screamed in terror.

I pulled my kinetic pistol free and cracked off rounds at the nearest shapes as I shouted, “Get your asses out now!”

While I kept my eyes locked on the figures below, I saw in my peripherals the other two fall back. I gave them five seconds to get out before I turned to do the same myself. Before I turned to flee, I saw a shadow, much larger than the others, shifting at the base of the ramp, and it could only have been one thing. I gave another audible curse before making my escape. One of the others had grabbed the bag, so that was one less thing to worry about.

I pulled through the five-foot wide hole to find the Nennel and Ferris heaving for breath, not six feet away. “What are you two doing?!” I demanded as I pointed past them. “Get out of here!”

Nennel, with my bag in one hand, wordlessly pointed to the sky. I followed her finger to see a dot growing larger with every passing moment. After a few seconds, I recognized the dot and an AV cab.

“Our emergency evac, IS A CAB!?” I shouted in disbelief and rage. Navor really expected some random cab driver to get us out of trouble? I was going to have some serious words with her if I lived through the situation.

Neither of the other two responded to my distress, instead running toward the vehicle and waving their arms in a panicked signal.

Nennel, Ferris, and I moved to get as much distance away from the breached gate, then to get closer to some trog cab driver that might get us killed. My face was still bleeding freely, and only during my fleeing did I realize that I had carved right through my cheek, and I could taste blood on my tongue. I was dimly aware of a strange tingling in my wound, Mystwell, and hands, but I thought little of it but as a symptom of blood loss.

Cannibals burst from the hole I had torn open like a swarm of insects desperately fleeing. Each wave that passed through the hole was momentarily blinded by the light of the surface before making a mad scramble to get away. None of the ferals even noticed me, Nennel, or Ferris. Many even fled right past us.

Then came the thunder and screech of impending doom. First came the ‘Boom. Boom’ of something slamming against the gate with immense force. After three thunderous slams, each warping the gate just a little more, came the claws. First, three long talons punched through the metal with a sound like a volley of gunshots. Then came another set of claws, then another, and another. Each set of claws moved at their own pace. They all carved through the metal. The gate howled in protest with each gash, but nothing stopped the horror from coming for us. After enough damage was done, the gate ruptured to give way to something out of a monster’s nightmares.

six hands grasped the exterior of the rupture, each lower set smaller than the last. Every hand displayed two fingers and a thumb, brandishing claws large enough to cut me in half. Then came its head. An eyeless thing with a four-section jaw lined with a seemingly random pattern of needle teeth. Even the smallest tooth from that maw I could’ve used as a dagger. Its neck was just as thick as its skull, giving it a worm-like appearance. The slimy skin was transparent, showing the muscles and veins engorged with black fluid. I witnessed every flex and shift of muscle it made beneath that skin as it slithered forth. As the stigmaguant entered the light of the city, I saw just how large it was. The creature stood almost sixteen feet tall and stretched almost twenty-four feet back with a worm-like lower body. Its arms each had two elbows, giving the already monstrous thing a sense of a totally alien being.

Even as I watched, the stigmaguant reached down and picked up a random nearby cannibal and brought the hapless victim to its maw. Its four jaw joints closed around the upper half of the poor man, his body convulsing as the teeth dug in. Then things got worse. I witnessed the creature’s neck flex and rotate left and right. That thing had more than just one set of teeth. Running down their throat were several rows of razor-sharp triangular teeth that would rotate to grind up prey for easy digestion.

Only after watching that brutal display did I realize I had been just standing there, watching the scene. I looked over my shoulder to see the AV cab touching down and opening its doors, and I started back peddling in that direction. At that point, any transport was better than trying to outrun that thing. The cab was twenty feet away, and both Nennel and Ferris were already climbing inside.

I rotated on the ball of one foot and threw myself into a mad dash for the vehicle. I had made it to within fifteen feet of the cab when something felt wrong, very wrong. A glance over my shoulder explained why. The stigmaguant was staring at me. If something with no eyes could stare. The moment I locked eyes with the creature’s face, it rushed me. Crawling on all six arms, it came at me with horrifying, preternatural speed.

I still had my body enhancement active, and that was the only reason I jumped over a claw swiping for me. But even with the enhancement, the cup of its hand caught my trailing foot, and I was sent into a forward tumble. I was frantic. I was desperate. I was in a total panic. The first thread my soul felt that I could use as a tool, I mentally gripped with frenzy and yanked.

In the tumble, I felt a pull on my wound, not unlike suction. I came to a stop on my back, facing the stigmaguant, and with a scarlet blade in my hand, pointing at the creature. I was so confused by the strange weapon that I focused on it instead of the monster, and that was a mistake. My focus was brought back to the creature when it lunged at me with open jaws. I stared in horror at the pit of flesh lined with what seemed like hundreds of thousands of teeth.

I won’t lie. I was frozen. I would love to say that I pulled some daring and desperate gamble that got me through to victory. But I had never faced down something so large, so horrifying, or so lethal. A stigmaguant was ranked as a CTRS 9 and tagged with the general label ‘Extermination required if encountered’. That creature was no joke and was a lethal threat to even Elite Tier adventurers.

So what saved me? Ferris. Ferris, that sneaky, hiding his abilities, trog bastard. The stigmaguant was a hand’s breath away from my feet when phantom gray-green threads rose from the ground and ensnared the beast. The creature was brought to a jarring halt, slamming into the ground.

“Move your ass, Horn-head!” Ferris shouted, and I took that as my cue to leave. I threw myself into the cab, not caring where or how I landed. How I landed was shoulder-checking Ferris in the chest and bouncing my head off Nennel’s steel thigh.

I felt the Areal Vehicle take off even as I righted myself. When I finally fitted myself into a seat, I looked into the driver's seat to find a surprisingly familiar face.

“Hold on to your balls, kid.” Said Teefa with a mad grin as she shot the cab through the air. “We’ve got regs inbound, and I’ll bet good clat that we’ll have a tail.”