Abigail grimaced as the connection with her third golem was severed. This one had pulled itself together from the ceramic floor tiles, and was shattered just as easily as the other pathetic guardians she had attempted to raise.

The thaumaturgical backlash transmitted through the link felt like a needle shoved through her eye. She blinked away the pain and the sea of stars dancing across her vision. Kept her focus on the most important task at the moment.

Stopping one of her companions from bleeding out onto the bathroom floor.

Even though she was a pediatric oncologist, some of her med school and residency training had stuck with her. How to create and apply a tourniquet, for instance, like the one fashioned from strips of cloth now constricting the stub of Joseph’s left leg.

The abomination that had swept out from the dungeon managed to kill two of their Party and dismember the archer’s leg before they finally put it down. She shuddered, remembering the wet chunks of flesh attempting to fuse back together until they torched them to ash.

The bilious liquid coating the creature’s scythe-like appendages acted as a potent anticoagulant, resisting their feeble efforts to stem the tide of blood pouring out of Joseph. The tourniquet helped, but without his body’s natural clotting factors to pick up the slack, it was little more than a Band-Aid.

He’s done for, a cold voice whispered in the back of her head. Systemic coagulopathy. Has to be septic, too.

Abigail buried the thought. Or tried to, until she caught a glimpse of Joseph’s face. Black, watery blood leaked from his eyes and ears, and his face was contorted in a rictus of savage glee. Remain cold, clinical. Diagnostic. Even if the origin of the toxin was supernatural, it could still be analyzed, studied.

Acute toxic-metabolic encephalopathy. That explained why Joseph grinned at her like a lunatic, gums oozing, beating the slab of his thigh against the floor in an apparent attempt to speed up his exsanguination. Despite her attempts to pin the limb to the floor, his strength, augmented by magic and madness, highlighted the absurdity of the endeavor.

Even the insanity in his eyes was not all that mysterious--she had seen its like from patients in the throes of a drug-induced psychosis. Hell, she'd seen it in little old ladies with advanced dementia who exerted enough impossible strength to overpower the biggest males on the unit.

This was not magical. It was not beyond comprehension.

None of the others wanted to come near them. Five of them, minus Leo and Tessa, crammed themselves into the opposite side of the bathroom. For a moment she resented their uselessness--everyone except Noah, but the lawyer was maintaining an even greater distance than the others. He watched from the back, impassive face punctuated by the glowing cherry of his cigarette.

Joseph’s blood had painted her boiled leather armor, dribbled down the blank wooden slab of her [ Visage of the Dryad ] half-mask. Down the sides of her chin. The others were terrified his body fluids would contaminate them, sure, but was that any reason...any reason to just stand around, faces turned away in horror, as one of their companions sprayed five liters worth of life all over the place?

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she muttered through gritted teeth.

Not like the dead and dying were her only problem. An intruder had broken through the Barrier and captured Leo. A giant of a man, if he was even a man. He might kill them all. Another opportunist sociopath who would slaughter everyone for a few levels and some equipment.

That wasn’t her problem right now. Joseph was.

“Abigail,” said one of the others in a soft, concerned voice. Jessie, the girl cashier and last surviving worker from the grocery store. “Abigail, he’s done. You’re just risking your life. Stop."

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Abigail redoubled her efforts to pin the flailing stump to the ground. “Stop. Moving!”

Joseph chuckled, pink froth bubbling from his mouth. Pulmonary edema. His lungs were drowning in blood. Still, he whispered.

“It’s calling to me. Only I can hear it for now, but soon, you’ll all hear it too. Don’t worry, don’t worry. We will be spared from the endless cold, the endless darkness. Our flesh will be repurposed. Our thoughts will feed the infernal engines. Rejoice!”

Reality flickered and warped for several seconds. The next moment, Joseph, kind, thoughtful Joseph, stopped thrashing. Body limp. Dead. His neck was twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Who did this?” she screamed, turning to face the group.

No one answered for a moment.

Noah calmly held his cigarette to the side and ashed it with a tap of his finger. “It doesn’t matter. You’re acting hysterical, Abby. Get it together. We have a problem we can actually deal with. An intruder.”

“Hysterical?” she seethed. So goddamn annoying, that patronizing demeanor of his.

“Yes.” He took another puff, exhaled. “Listen to yourself.”

“Useless sexist kafka-trapping slicked-back hair motherfucker!”

The others remained silent, like children caught in the middle of their parents fighting.

“I’m not useless. You aren’t either.” Noah took another puff, tilted his chin. He ran a hand along his oily hair, returning a loose strand to the immaculate fold. “These others, affirmative.”

Breathing hard, Abigail sat back on her ass, barely mindful of the spreading pool of blood, “Alright. Alright. I’m cool. I’m good.”

Frowning, Noah flicked the butt of his cigarette away. “I’ll go chat with the intruder. I want you to come with. The others, too, I guess.”

“Love you too, you fucking prick,” said Jessie. The four others grunted, shuffled, or nodded in agreement.

Insane. All of this was insane. Eight of them left, down from the thirty that had gathered in the shopping center the night before. Culled by monsters and in-fighting, and some sort of dungeon break from the storage warehouse in the back of the store.

At first, only weaklings had leaked out through the double doors, sacks of organic experience and loot they were all too happy to collect. A goldmine.

Until the abominations became stronger with every wave.

Insane.

Why had she been chosen to be a goddamn golemancer? How did that make any sense?

Healing classes were not even uncommon. Two of the surviving group members had various abilities for healing and mending. She had dedicated her life to the sick, to the dying, to fixing problems. Ever since she was a kid, she knew it was her calling. She used to fantasize she would have been a medic or a priestess or a nun or whatever if she had been born in a different era.

Then this--this apocalypse happened, and people were given supernatural powers. And she was granted the ability to make semi-autonomous constructs out of nearby materials. Fucking...lettuce golems. Cookie golems.

Their so-called healers had barely even tried to save Joseph before backing away, shaking their heads and saying it was beyond them to help.

She laughed bitterly.

Some of the others took a step back, as if worried Joseph’s madness had spread to her as well.

“Right.” She rose her feet. Glimpsed at the other two corpses, hints of them visible from where they had been piled into the farthest stall. “Let’s go deal with the next problem. Then the ones after that.”

Noah nodded and stepped toward her. As he passed by, he paused, offering her a cigarette pushed out slightly from the pack. Pursing her lips, Abigail snatched it away and followed after him.

“Come on,” he said, his voice gentle. The lawyer was a man of contrasts. He turned to face her, hard gray eyes tinged with regret. “I wasn’t being a dick. Well, I was, but for a purpose. Better to be outraged than consumed by grief. Shook you out of your mood. You can’t save them all.”

She shoved the cigarette between her lips. Mumbled between it. “At least I can try.”

Noah stretched out an arm, ignited the tip of the cancer-stick with a flick of his silver Zippo. The crescent moon and stars engraved onto its surface gleamed with refracted light. “I respect that. Your will. Your tenacity. Channel that into something great. Something achievable.”

She looked away, rubbed the useless tears out of her eyes.

“Joseph lost his will to live anyways,” he said. “After his daughter died, he gave up hope.”

She remained quiet. Seeing the conversation was going nowhere, Noah nodded and strolled out of the bathroom, hands tucked into the pockets of his tailored Armani suit.

The sound of footsteps. The others, shuffling behind her. A ragtag group, those who hadn’t broke yet, hardened through a night of horrors. The rewards from the morning had revitalized their spirits, until the frequency and difficulty of the monsters expelled from the malevolent gate of the dungeon entrance quickly began to outpace their gains.

They stayed in the grocery store because the world outside was even more terrifying. That wouldn’t last long, though. Soon, they would be forced to migrate. And that migration would spell the end of their little Party. Except maybe for the two of them. The strongest.

She and Noah had ventured out last night with a dozen other Players, exploring their surroundings, until they discovered that bizarre Emporium. Along the way, everyone but her and Noah were picked off. Devoured by monsters. Or just simply disappearing, one moment walking with the group, the next vanished into thin air.

The Emporium, at least, had offered promises. A reprieve. They had bought some goods, lured in by the monster behind the enterprise, to be picked up today. Had meant to stop by earlier, but one disaster after another had delayed them.

Now, it was inevitable they would all have to depart. To brave the outside. Maybe they could come back with their new equipment. Harvest the dungeon until its inhabitants outpaced them once more.

First, they would have to survive this new variable. The giant.

It did not take long for him to come into sight. Big, big bastard. Over six-and-a-half feet tall, maybe closer to seven. Completely hairless--no eyebrows, even, adding a disconcerting intensity to his gaze. His face was too hard and broad to be considered conventionally handsome. Despite that, Abigail knew plenty of misguided women that would have fawned over him for his looming presence and savage looks alone. The man radiated trouble.

Could have been mistaken for another monster, even.

An incongruous robe of black silk clung to his frame, limned in a filigree of bronze thread that coalesced into the shape of a fist near his heart. His throat and the top of his chest were exposed, tattooed with what looked like a crow in flight.

He loomed over Leo, an amused little smile on his face, holding his chin in one hand. The phases of the moon had been inked onto his knuckles, and a grinning skull decorated the back of his hand. A chaotic mess of darkly colorful lines extended down his exposed wrist and disappeared into the depths of his sleeve.

Leo looked understandably terrified, both arms flung into the air in surrender.

The giant turned, noticing the approaching group. A satisfied smile spread across his face. A man who relished in domination. She clenched her fists, constructing a golem from metal cans a couple aisles over, where he shouldn’t be able to notice. Noah, sensing either her tension or some hint of her power, held up a hand and shook his head at her.

“You lot are a sight for sore eyes,” the giant rumbled. There was a slight Southern drawl to his voice, laced with amusement, that caught Abby off guard. She had expected...something else. Gruffness. A barked command, a domineering tone. The giant sounded like he had just joined a group of friends gathered around a table at the bar.

“State your business,” said Noah. His stance was confident, confrontational, legs spread wide as if preparing himself to be charged by an enraged bull.

“Roman Miller.” He pointed a thick finger at a satchel on the floor beside him. “Special delivery for you, courtesy of one presumably ugly ghoul, one Keeper CCL.”

Their group remained silent, everyone staring at Roman in shock except for Noah. They lowered their weapons, dropped their guards with shuddering sighs.

Noah narrowed his eyes, bit his lip, then nodded once. “Welcome to our humble abode.”

“Thank you kindly,” said Roman. Abigail suspected he was laying his accent on particularly thick. The man shook his head, chuckled to himself. “Say, y’all got a bunch of kamikaze food monsters throwing themselves at you, or is it just me?”

Abigail grimaced behind her mask.