Eureka! Thats what people say when they make a discovery, right? Smart people at least and I think I’m smart, or at least all but one of my bonus stats are in mental. Not wisdom though. Hmm, maybe that’s why Mom always says Dad and I are immature.

  Anyway, on to the discovery. We have figured out how to communicate. It's a ridiculous and clunky method, but it will work. A person in the camp found a chemical enhancement sigil that can temporarily increase a persons focus stat by one. Ok. The chemical is half a gallon of coffee and the poor guy almost died of a heart attack, but still, it was a discovery! We can use the leaderboard and a few people that are tied for a rank and change their stats to get them to swap places. With three people we can make a kind of Morse code. Again clunky, but it can work.

  Day 124, Owen Landers

  Silas looked around at the gathering and realized he had badly underestimated how many soldiers were under Rahul’s command. At least a hundred and fifty were assembled in the courtyard and those were only the ones who were invading the airport. The large U-shaped government building clearly had far more rooms than he’d expected, if the entire structure were used as barracks, it could easily house that many people, maybe three or four times as many.

  Rahul stepped forward and began his speech, “Mighty defenders of India. As you know, we are heading into mortal combat with our enemies. Our goal is to secure the airport and reclaim both aircraft and fuel. This mission is not the only one underway in our great country, but reconnecting with our brothers and sisters across India is of the highest importance.”

  Of course, Rahul delivered the speech in Hindi, so Mandy quietly translated it for Silas. As speeches went, he’d heard better and worse. Like any other military officer he had seen, the man used two words where one would do in an attempt to make his speech rile up the soldiers’ emotions. It had a mixed effect on the soldiers, though Silas understood why they both knew the importance of the airport and how dangerous it would be.

  Flying monsters were a problem, but they were far less common than ground-based ones and dramatically easier to deal with using the right equipment. If they could get a military helicopter operational, Silas wasn’t sure there was any flying creature that could bring it down. Most monsters simply couldn’t withstand that kind of firepower. He also hadn’t seen anything fast enough to catch a fully fueled jet at top speed. It would still be dangerous, but once humanity got back into the air, reconnecting across distances would become possible again.

  Rahul continued, explaining the plan to the assembled troops, “Once the tanks bring us within a mile of the airport, we will use our new friend’s ability to portal us inside. The tanks will serve as our primary operating base as we reclaim what is rightfully ours.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t seriously considered using his powers that way before. He had lured monsters into enemy camps using portals, but driving tanks through one was something else entirely.

  Could he do even more? Open a portal directly in front of a cannon barrel and place the other end right in front of a kaiju’s face? That could be game-changing for humanity assuming the target wasn’t too far away for him to purify.

  Lost in thoughts of increasingly ridiculous possibilities, Silas missed the end of the speech. Cheers erupted around him. One man, the soldier with six arms, raised multiple weapons overhead like a gladiator in an arena.

  Then everyone piled into the vehicles.

  It felt strange driving a bus alongside three tanks. Each vehicle was packed with men in body armor and carrying weapons, Silas had never been deployed to a war zone, but this was what he imagined it would be like. Monsters did attack them along the way, but the .50-caliber machine guns mounted atop each tank made short work of them. No one stopped to purify the corpses the slower they moved, the more monsters would swarm in.

  The airport was only about eight miles away, but the trip still took nearly thirty minutes. Silas repeatedly used portals to bypass collapsed buildings, road debris, and once, a street carved with three deep, parallel gouges that ran straight through cars and storefronts. Claw marks. Silas shuddered at that, hoping they wouldn’t meet whatever thing had made them.

  Eventually, they stopped beside an office building just under a mile from the airport complex. Silas parked the bus beneath its shadow and climbed out. It would be nice if he could just open a portal directly inside the airport, but he needed to know where he was going to do something like that.

  Silas opened a scout portal hoping to see through the airport's windows to no avail. Without any lights on inside, the interior was too dark to see into. So the roof it was. For a moment he contemplated arriving at ground level, but if guards were present that was where they would be.

  There were several major differences between this conflict and the one with the dragonkin. Last time Silas was in a panic, there were hostages, and he was almost alone. Now he had a small team Bella and two soldiers who had reached capacity yesterday. They were called Been Ras and Asura.

  While searching for a secure place to exit, Silas asked the two some questions, “I can recognize a call sign when I see one. Where did you two get yours from?”

  Asura flexed his six arms, “I have my name because of these. I’m totally a war demigod.”

  “OK,” Silas said uncertainly. He would put the man somewhere between the acolytes and warriors of the threat scale, “What about you Been Ras?”

  Asura deflated at the lukewarm reception, which got a smirk from the other IDF soldier, “Been Ras means bean juice, and I got it because I like drinking bean juice.”

  “It’s gross,” Asura said.

  “It’s healthy,” Been Ras replied.

  “It’s gross,” Samantha interjected.

  Been Ras smiled at her, “You will understand when you are older, health is important.”

  “My vitality is higher than yours,” Samantha pointed out to Asura’s great amusement.

  Silas found what he was looking for, a space where a pair of air conditioning units butted up against a wall. The portal would still be visible from two different areas of the rooftop, but no abominations would be able to immediately attack them.

  Interrupting the conversation, Silas spoke, “You’ve all fought monsters before, so you know what this could turn into. There’s a real chance there’s an exceptionally powerful variant, maybe more than one living there. Any questions?”

  Silas imagined what would happen if a dragonkin chief were present instead of the Dr. Seuss–looking abominations they’d faced before. The results weren’t pretty. If they ran into something like that, they’d have to force it to expend its abilities immediately or people would die.

  Asura crossed all six of his arms over his chest, “Yes, why are we bringing a child into a combat zone?”

  Samantha’s face turned red. Before she could release the rage of a sigil empowered tween on Asura, Silas pointed at the soldier’s guns, “Those are why we are taking her.” Asura didn’t seem to get it, “If we start using something as loud as a gun, then we lose. I have a crossbow, yes, but it won’t be strong enough to punch through heavier plate armor. That is where Samantha comes in.”

  “She’s still a kid,” Asura said.

  Silas nodded, “Yes, one that’s not your responsibility, so let it go.”

  While what he said was technically true, it wasn’t the main reason. Silas’s biggest trump card was his ability to run away. Losing his ability to quickly relocate her put her in far greater peril.

  “Fine, but I don’t like it,” Asura said.

  Silas glanced over to where Rahul was sitting atop a tank and shouted “We’ll be back in twenty or thirty minutes.”

  Rahul nodded once and settled in to wait for their portal. Silas opened his own and stepped through, followed by Bella, Samantha, Been Ras, and Asura. They emerged on the rooftop.

  Asura glanced around, then back at the portal. “I didn’t really believe you when you described this power. It’s… absurd. Jumping past debris on the road is already ridiculous, but this could change everything.

  Silas raised an eyebrow, “Didn’t you get a personal sigil too?”

  Asura nodded, “Indian soldier. It cost me two titles to get it. It just makes me better at soldier things. It helps my aim and helps me intuit orders.”

  Silas had to resist showing his surprise. He’d assumed sigils like that would have a greater impact. Like enhanced strength, endurance, and maybe a sort of luck. Faster learning speed and enhanced instincts were nothing, but they felt insignificant compared to tearing holes in the fabric of space. Silas was extra grateful he hadn’t chosen U.S. Soldier.

  Silas hadn’t been through many airports. Growing up in the rural Midwest, flying was a luxury, plane tickets often cost more than driving across the entire United States. He’d only been on a handful of flights before his deployment to Germany, and even then, the experience had been awkward. Airports were massive buildings a and people were just expected to know where to go. He remembered airports as places obsessed with the appearance of security, but he had never learned their layouts. That ignorance made his stomach tighten.

  As he stepped through the portal, Silas swept his gaze across the rooftop, searching for anything that might pose a threat. Nothing moved. That surprised him. Did the monsters not have watchers here? Maybe they were worried about their guards getting picked off by flying creatures.

  “If they were here, they’d have rushed us already,” Silas said, glancing back toward the portal. “I don’t see anything. Let’s move inside.”

  Bella stepped through next, followed by Asura and Samantha while Been Ras brought up the rear. The two IDF soldiers spread out, rifles raised, scanning the rooftop. Just like Silas, they found nothing. Yellow-furred creatures in silver armor would have stood out sharply against the dull gray concrete.

  “There’s really nobody here,” Sara said, voicing what everyone was thinking.

  “That’s a good thing,” Silas replied, closing the portal now that he had verified they didn’t need it, “Find the access hatch then let's head down.”

  They moved quickly across the roof. Silas’s unease deepened. Airports were full of hidden spaces, maintenance corridors, ventilation ducts, and crawlspaces. Places designed for easy access and repairs, but perfect for ambushes. The creatures were humanoid, but not limited by human flexibility. They could use spaces no person ever could.

  They found the access hatch housed in a small utility shed. The door was barred from the inside. Bella stepped forward and pushed. There was a sharp crack as the locking bolt snapped. The door flew open violently, hinges screaming. Bella’s eyes widened as she staggered forward, nearly tumbling down the stairwell. Silas barely managed to grab the back of her armor. She clutched the doorframe, and together they wrestled the door back under control before it could fall down the stairs and announce their presence to the entire airport.

  “Sorry,” Bella muttered placing the damaged door against the exterior of the stairwell wall.

  Silas shook his head. “Not much you could’ve done. Maybe check the hinges next time.”

  Something like this wasn’t a surprise, after all they were still getting used to their strength. At least in how it related to things on earth. He hoped their next mistake wouldn’t happen somewhere more dangerous.

  Silas took point on the stairs. He briefly considered sending Bella first, but dismissed the idea. Despite Bella being more durable, he could heal while she couldn’t. If there was an ambush, he’d rather take the hit and be dragged out than risk her bleeding out at the bottom of a stairwell he couldn’t lift her from.

  There was a landing with several doors branching from it at the bottom of the stairwell. One door led deeper into maintenance areas while another opened into the airport proper. A large wall-mounted map showed access routes, electrical grids, and ventilation schematics. The labels were written in Hindi.

  Silas studied the map trying his best to comprehend it. Asura stepped forward.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “They rebuilt the airport when I was a kid,” He said, pointing. “After that terrorist attack. They redesigned it with containment and control in mind. You can see here and here how there is only one access point to go deeper in.”

  Silas nodded and committed the layout to memory. With his enhanced memory, it only took minutes. He could reproduce it later, down to the letters he couldn’t read. He briefly wondered if Wisdom would eventually help with learning languages. It seemed like it should.

  They checked the nearby chemical storage, but found nothing unusual. Someone who had more experience with the supplies might have been able to make a poison compound or a bomb, but none of them had that ability. Still, they took the first aid kit and passed it to Samantha.

  Moving on, they entered office spaces. Ceiling tiles loomed overhead, making Silas uneasy.

  “Bella, can you boost me?” he asked.

  She lifted him easily. He pushed aside a tile and swept a flashlight across the crawlspace. There were no monsters and no sign that they had ever been there. That worried him almost as much as finding something would have. Not even the dragonkin managed to drive out all their competitors.

  He dropped back down absorbing the fall with a soft bend of the knees. “Let’s keep moving.”

  The offices were in disarray, but not destroyed. They found scattered papers, plants that had died from lack of water, and drinks with the dry remnants of tea or coffee. In one room, a ladder surrounded by expensive power tools lay abandoned. All of it was a sign of panicked evacuation.

  They exited the hall to find another hallway with more offices.

  Samantha gawked, “How many offices does this airport have?”

  “You’d be surprised how much bureaucracy an airport needs,” Been Ras chuckled.

  Silas nodded seeing his first signs of monsters. Still no signs of violence, only claw marks in the carpet. The creatures had passed through, found nothing to hunt, and moved on. He wondered if the people had fled to the roof access and gotten picked off by flying creatures or if they had made it out.

  The maze of offices converged onto two doors that exited into the check-in area. Through the glass doors leading outside, Silas spotted their first enemy, unaware of them. One of the IDF soldiers raised his rifle. Silas stopped him with a hand on the gun.

  “Our goal isn’t to kill everything,” Silas said quietly. “We find the highest concentration, open a path, and let the tanks handle the rest. One or two stragglers don’t matter.”

  Asura glared at Silas but nodded and lowered his weapon. He clearly didn’t like taking orders from Silas. They slipped past the oblivious guard and moved deeper inside. Every doorway was wide enough to drive a truck through. That was bad. Wide spaces favored ranged combat not melee fighters like them.

  Then they reached the security checkpoint. Fifteen creatures crowded a large machine that lay in pieces at their feet.

  “What are they doing?” Silas whispered.

  Bella answered, though her tone was confused, “They’re taking apart the metal detector.”

  One creature slapped a large magnet against its armor, yanked it free, and chittered excitedly. They were fascinated by it. Unfortunately, that left them trapped on the wrong side of the building.

  There was no other route forward without backtracking and circling the entire building to the plane docks and no way to fight fifteen creatures quietly. Worse, this couldn’t be all of them. An airport this size would require at least a hundred to two hundred monsters to control.

  Silas glanced between the IDF soldiers and the cluster of monsters crowded around the metal detectors. They inspected the devices with the same fascination a caveman might have shown fire. Thinking about it, that reaction made sense. Outside of mantis steel, Hell didn’t seem to have metal.

  Magnetism could be a completely unknown concept to them. He wasn’t even sure the other world had gravity as he understood it. Hell felt flat, when they stood atop the formations he couldn’t remember seeing any curvature. There was also no sun in the sky. He didn’t know how a location like that could remain stable but then again, he was already tearing holes through space a few months into the apocalypse. Why couldn’t something exist without gravity?

  The fifteen creatures weren’t especially dangerous compared to the dragonkin they’d fought earlier. Yes, they were flexible, and yes, they used clawed gauntlets, but those gauntlets were currently piled on the floor while they examined the detectors. More importantly, they were particularly vulnerable to Bella’s preferred solution, overwhelming blunt force trauma. They could fight their way through. Silas still didn’t like their odds of doing so cleanly or quietly.

  “They’re packed pretty tight,” Been Ras said. “Concentrated automatic fire could drop them fast.”

  Silas didn’t disagree. The IDF weapons weren’t particularly powerful, but they weren’t weak either and they had silencers as well. Automatic fire also excelled against clustered targets. Still, something about it bothered him, he was missing something. He glanced at the layout again, scanning for anything he’d overlooked.

  Then he looked at Asura and asked, “How thick are those walls?”

  Asura frowned, following his gaze. “This is a security checkpoint for airplanes. The walls here should be reinforced concrete or cinderblock.”

  No one wanted someone boarding a plane because they’d punched a hole through a wall. Silas nodded slowly. In this case, thick walls would be a good thing.

  “There are other routes through,” Asura added, “If you’re looking for a different route, it will be difficult. The doors that security normally use will be locked with dead electronic locks.”

  Silas asked a different question. “How much sound will carry through those walls?”

  Asura examined them more closely, “It won’t stop everything, but it’ll muffle it. That door, though, won’t stop any sound.”

  Silas nodded, “Good. Get ready to fire.”

  The soldiers exchanged confused looks. Samantha already had a compressed spike of air hovering over her shoulder unheated and drifting like a balloon waiting to be released.

  He stepped forward and opened a portal behind them. Then he opened the other end directly inside the doorway beyond the security checkpoint, expanding it until it swallowed the frame and bit into the concrete itself.

  He idly wondered if there was a way to stop portals from slicing through buildings. It was a massive security risk. Any sound entering the far doorway would loop back behind them, trapping the noise inside the room. It would be an echo chamber but a contained one.

  The creatures didn’t even look up. The back of the portal was what released light nothing illuminated the room. The IDF soldiers glanced between the portal behind them and the one ahead. They shifted position slightly, careful not to fire directly into it.

  Silas appreciated that. He hadn’t thought of it himself. They raised their weapons. Silas nodded. The soldiers opened fire.

  They weren’t conservative with their ammunition. Both soldiers were relatively good shots, despite the low accuracy of automatic weapons. The creatures weren’t unarmored, but they had removed helmets and gauntlets. Silas didn’t expect miracles, one in ten shots being lethal was good enough.

  The first volley dropped six. Rounds sparked off metal. The room erupted into chaos. In an instant, their numbers dropped from fifteen to nine but those nine reacted immediately. Helmets were snatched up. Gauntlets slid into place. They surged forward faster than the soldiers could reload.

  Silas and his team were in the doorway clumped together. The charge took barely a second, but Bella still had enough time to activate her armor relic.

  “Come at me!” She roared.

  Lesser King’s Herald activated, drawing the monster's attention. The faster ones pulled ahead, while the ones injured from the gunfire lagged behind. This resulted in a loose line being formed.

  Crunch.

  Samantha’s air spike launched. It tore through five bodies before losing momentum. None died, but torsos shattered, limbs mangled.

  Silas drew his sword and stepped forward. Bella did the same. The soldiers slung their rifles and drew blades. Been Ras held a bone knife relic that Silas had made for him while Asura had a tomahawk, machete, twin knives, and a spear-like relic in his six arms.

  The first one to arrive was unharmed and enraged. It lashed out with its claws, Silas slipped inside its guard and slid his blade between helmet and breastplate. He activated the relic for a fraction of a second. Flesh dissolved, just an eighth of an inch around the blade, but that was enough.

  He withdrew, driving the blade along the partially liquefied internals. The creature collapsed, choking on its blood. A second one followed on its heel, trampling its companion in its eagerness to get at Silas.

  He pushed its attack aside with his gauntlet and kicked it back to make some space. Silas finished it with a strike through the ribs, angling the blade into its armpit and activating the relic again. This time, it didn’t struggle.

  He gave ground making sure never to retreat past Samantha. Still, he was too slow to evade the next monster. A claw slammed into his shoulder. Bone armor wasn’t metal, but it was enough. He counterpunched with the sharpened guard of his sword denting the helmet, then drove his sword through the visor. No relic activation needed. Six inches of steel through the brain was sufficient.

  Silas immediately readied itself for the next enemy. Only for none to arrive. Glancing around in confusion he saw two monsters keeping their distance and he saw the reason why.

  The sound of tearing metal filled Silas’s ears and he witnessed something he wished he could forget. Bella’s chainsword carved through two creatures at once, armor rusting and crumbling as the teeth chewed it then through flesh. Blood and bits of flesh sprayed everywhere as the monsters were eviscerated.

  It was horrifying causing the remaining enemies to hesitate. By the time Silas dropped his third opponent, Bella had already killed four. That left two who were eyeing the IDF soldiers, viewing them as the weakest link, but not wanting to get anywhere near Bella.

  Silas caught one monster’s eye and smirked. He knelt, placing a hand on a corpse. Black smoke poured out, turning violet as a sigil formed above the body. The remaining creatures bared their teeth, torn between terror and rage at his actions.

  The entire fight had taken less than five seconds. Bella didn’t intend let it become six. She charged, which proved to be a bit too much for them. Their courage broke and they fled.

  They bolted toward the rest of their clan. Except that Silas had already opened a portal in that doorway. They ran straight through it and reappeared behind him.

  Silas reacted instantly, shoving Samantha aside and intercepting them. One charge of spirit remained. He used it to weaken the armor on contact. The blade punched through taking it in the heart and killing it outright.

  The last creature fought hard against the two IDF soldiers. They had relic weapons but were limited to one spirit. Still, the creature wasn’t meant to face six weapons at once.

  Asura wielded four while Been Ras wielded two. It put up a good fight, Silas would put it around the same level as a dragonkin acolyte. Silas watched them fight, cataloging movements and tactics for later consideration. He wasn’t impressed, these soldiers had clearly been more focused on using modern weapons than training what their adapted bodies could do.

  Asura had strength, his sigils were clearly body-stat focused, but his application was crude compared to Bella’s, as if he wasn’t used to the strength. Maybe he had low control. Been Ras, on the other hand, was efficient and showed no hesitation.

  Silas smirked faintly. Of course, the one named Bean Juice was deadlier than the one named after a demigod of war. Call signs always seemed to work that way.

  The echoes of gunfire finally went quiet, swallowed by concrete. The sudden quiet was almost shocking. It made sense. No sound was coming from outside due to the portals.

  “Everyone alright?” Silas asked into the silence.

  They looked at one another. No one was seriously injured. There was enough blood splattered across the walls and floor to suggest otherwise, but the worst wound was a slash across one of Asura’s arms and he had six he would be fine.

  Silas exhaled slowly, ordering his thoughts. That had been intense, but relatively easy as far as battles went. They quickly collected the sigils and stashed them under a curved panel from the metal detector. Then Silas dismissed the portals.

  Bella cursed. Silas followed her gaze and raised his guard at the same time. Two startled monsters stood in the doorway they’d just come from. One had its claw raised, frozen mid-motion like it had been about to tap on glass.

  Silas grimaced. Right. Portals are very visible from the other side. In fact, they glowed a very noticeable purple in the darkness of the airport.

  He stepped forward, as the closest to the monsters, and lashed out with his sword. The strike was rushed and poorly coordinated. The blade smashed into the lower rim of the creature’s helmet, glanced off, and slid down its neck, leaving only a shallow cut.

  The monster squawked in surprise and slashed back. Three serrated claws scraped across Silas’s breastplate with enough force to make him grunt. If these creatures had higher body stats Silas would have just taken a grievous injury.

  Growling, Silas grabbed the creature’s arm, yanked it forward, and drove his sword in again. This time it punched cleanly through. The monster dropped.

  He turned blade ready to drive into the second only for the sound of tearing metal to fill the air. Silas’s stomach dropped. Bella’s chainsword had carved straight through the remaining creature. It was brutal, bloody, and very loud now that the portals were gone.

  Silas spun toward the security checkpoint, half-expecting a flood of enemies at the far end of the hallway. There were none, maybe they hadn’t heard? Yeah, Silas wasn’t going to bet on that.

  He released a slow breath and turned to Bella. “You need to be more careful with the noise that thing makes.”

  Bella shrugged. “I hit the hardest. Not the quietest.”

  With a weary shake of his head, Silas moved on. He wanted to wait for his spirit to recharge but that would take minutes, and if anything had heard that last kill, they didn’t have minutes. They had seconds. So they pushed forward into the next area.

  Two more monsters had indeed heard them. However, they seemed to be shocked when Silas barreled into them. He opened a portal between them before grabbing them by the shoulders and yanking them into its edges. They didn’t even get the chance to call out before they were bisected.

  Silas paused, listening for more movement. Nothing made itself known. He let out a sigh of relief, they wouldn’t have a large army of monsters coming down on their heads.

  The hallway opened into a three-way split, each path leading toward different terminals. Dead television displays hung in the center of the area and a few pots that held long dead plants sat in the corner. Silas hesitated. If the creatures were guarding the junction, this would be where he opened the portal, but those last two guards appeared to be the only ones here.

  This left Silas with a dilemma if the monsters had spread out, searching every terminal could take hours. This would cause more complications, due to the uncertain fate of their invasion force. Silas didn’t put much confidence in their ability to resist the ever increasing monster attacks for long.

  Fortunately, the creatures wore metal footwear. That normally wouldn’t matter, but the airport floor was tiled and scuffed deeply from constant movement. Some tiles were cracked outright, crushed by something extremely heavy. It was likely a sign of the dangerous variant that Silas had been concerned about.

  Signs of traffic appeared in all three hallways, but the path to the right was the worst by far. They encountered their first guard almost immediately. The creature stood at the far end of the hallway positioned perfectly to spot anyone approaching.

  It would have sounded an alarm if Samantha hadn’t been there. The creature’s eyes widened just in time for its head to explode. A spike of compressed air punched through it and vanished, leaving silence behind.

  Silas glanced at Samantha. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, shock, disgust, something at the very least, but her expression didn’t change at all. The realization left a faint knot in his chest. Whatever childhood she might’ve had once, it wasn’t coming back.

  “I can see why you brought her,” Azura said quietly.

  Samantha grinned at the praise.

  They reached the end of the hallway and stepped into Terminal One. Silas immediately took a step back. The terminal was packed.

  Every seating area was occupied. Monsters straight out of nightmares were sitting, sleeping, wandering, lighting small fires, and stacking equipment. Hundreds of them, possibly more than four hundred. It wasn’t just the docks that were full, the stores that normally sold overpriced food had been turned into forges where fuzzy blacksmiths made metal armor from scavenged material.

  Most of those resting weren’t wearing armor. This allowed Silas to spot those variants he’d been worried about. He’d compared the base creatures to dragonkin acolytes before not strong, not fast, and not particularly bright. Like the acolytes, though, there were larger warrior variants.

  These were half again as large in every dimension, their proportions still wrong. They were coated in bright red fur, not a natural red, but neon, and striped with white along their arms and legs. They still had noodle arms and legs that seemed to lack joints, but Silas wouldn’t underestimate their strength,

  Silas was almost certain they had better sigil abilities, or at the very least, they could use them more effectively. Some wore armor with the odd interlocking plates that resisted slashing and impacts but left gaps vulnerable to thrusts. Instead of clawed gauntlets, these carried spears, one in their hands and several strapped across their backs.

  That alone would’ve been enough to make Silas cautious, but there was a third type of creature. Calling it a variant felt wrong.

  Perched on a large body in the center of the room were bipedal crow-like creatures with warped proportions, using the feathered ends of their wings like fingers. From their wings trailed thin strands of something that looked like spider silk.

  As Silas watched, a group of them wove their threads into a lion-creature that they stood on. The threads didn’t stay attached to the wings but as more crows added their silk, the lion-creature began to twitch.

  Silas wasn’t sure what they were doing, but it left him deeply unsettled. It strongly reminded Silas of the sphinxes and their mental manipulation, simply using threads as a medium. This thought seemed to be confirmed when the lion-creature’s eyes lit up deep crimson like the crows, glowing like LEDs set behind the sockets. The crows cawed triumphantly.

  Samantha shuddered, “Did, did they turn that creature into a puppet?”

  Silas glanced at Samantha. She had been a victim of mental control, so she was far more familiar with the helpless feeling it brought.

  The lion-creature rose, movements jerky at first, then smoother as the crows put it more under their control. It stomped over to a pile of scrap metal, grabbed a half-cylinder of steel, pressed it against its arm before grabbing a screw and bolted the metal to its own flesh. The beast didn’t even flinch. As the crows watched, excited, their control tightened and the puppet learned how to move. Only, the eyes of the monster weren’t vacant like a sphinx’s victim, no they were filled with impotent rage.

  “Yeah, let's kill them all,” Silas said. Then he opened a portal, aimed directly at the crow monsters.