I was sprinting before I knew it. The weight of my scatter gun was heavy and comforting as I ran. It took an effort of will to slow down so as not to skewer myself on the deactivated spike traps. Picking my way past the razor wire and stepping exactly on the safe spots I had marked nearly drove me mad.

  People were dyin' while I was playin' careful.

  I hit the rotunda at a full run, scattergun out and holy shells in the chamber. I burned through the last of my mundane cartridges against the hydradile and just had to hope that Shorty's special ammunitions was good for more than just revenants and ghosts.

  I came to the door of the cistern chamber, and stopped, my heart still beating in my throat.

  Smoke hung in the air, the constant shower of rain from the stone roof finally quit.

  Six rifles were pointed at me, twice as many wide, scared eyes staring a hole through my head.

  "Roche?" asked Miss Lottie as the tall, dark skinned woman pushed through the gaggle of defenders, "Oh thank the gods. We thought you were... Well, whatever that was."

  I lowered my gun, and eyed the dark water, "Did you kill it?"

  She pointed a slender finger to the vents above, and to the trail of mana blue blood and oily black… somethin’, that ran down in a viscous streak.

  "No. We shot it several times, it just shook it off. It was so fast. Only the ward fire stopped it from razing the camp. It ran after a few minutes of struggle."

  Wonder if that's why it came when it did? Right when I was gone. Came when our fire should've been good and dead to the rain.

  "Describe it. Need to know what I'm up against."

  "I think you can guess. I think you already have." She said, and there was a tremble in her voice that told me I was right, "It's one of the Anasisi, I’m almost entirely sure. Or used to be. It's flesh," she swallowed, wide eyes glued to that hole above, "It looked like tar, and it's eyes... when I looked at its eyes the world disappeared. Some kind of mind magic, I think."

  Well fuck me with a bottle of good whiskey.

  Mind magic was perfect for luring folks away, and wiping the minds of any that had seen them go. Just as suited for extracting information from captives and covering their tracks.

  I was out of my depth. Didn’t know shit and couldn’t figure their next steps any better than my own. We needed to know more, understand more. We needed an edge.

  But... One person might.

  She had seen nearly all of this coming. Shame she couldn't have predicted losing an arm.

  "Where's Shorty? We need to see if she's had anymore dreams, and we all need to talk about what I found."

  "She's here," Lottie waved at a young woman who lead the feverish red girl to me, "but she's still unconscious. Laticia can probably wake her, but-"

  "I'd really prefer not," cut in the aging biomancer, "she experienced extreme trauma, and not just physically. However necessary, an unanesthetized field amputation is a horror."

  I grit my teeth at that, I was out of ghostleaf and it was all nearly too much.

  "I'm sorry, but you need to. Whatever is in here with us, it's two steps ahead. Shorty is a Seer. She can give us those two steps back and maybe I can take one more." I looked to Lottie, "This was a probing attack. Probably a scout come to test our defenses, to check if we're weak or injured. More will come."

  Lottie nodded, "I guessed as much, yes. We've been trying to seal the vents without luck. They open again, as if the rock is moving to suit some unseen will. I think you're right. We need to use every tool available to us. Miss Laticia," she turned to the older woman, "please see to Miss Xoxoctic’s care. Keep her awake just long enough to assist Mister Roche and answer his questions."

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  "Very well, but I can't guarantee her condition if we do this. She needs the care of a Priestess, needs some warmth from the Hearthmother or else she might never be quite herself again."

  Hear that?

  That's cause you fucked up. That's cause you're not enough. You let good people get hurt, your hurt them yourself. You should stick that barrel down your-

  I bit down on my cheek, hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to cut that voice off. What was that?

  I hated myself, sure, but I never would do that. Was it this place? Was there something more?

  Was it mind magic?

  Or was it just me?

  I had to know.

  My eyes scanned over the hollow and dirty faces of the survivors. Paranoia was eating at me, and the worst part was that it was probably right. Some part of me was sure-

  Absolutely sure, that was one of them among us. I scanned the crowed of shadowed faces, but I couldn’t tell man from monster. Friend from foe. I needed to just start shootin’ and, and-

  Something tightened, clenched in my chest. Like someone was gripping my heart in a steely hand.

  I took a deep breath and looked around again. Those fingers unclenched as I reminded myself who I was. Who I had become to these folks around. That shadows that hid all them faces, Mister Munt and that kind healer, little Marianne and more, they dissolved and I saw just people again. Scared, tired, good people.

  I was here to keep them safe. And that suspicion? That despair?

  That didn't make any godsdamned sense.

  Lorcan Roche did not fold to fear or worry.

  Okay. Sometimes he did, but he damn well played that next hand. When things got dark, when things got hard, I got darker. Got harder. That's what I was.

  And lookin' at the drawn, tired faces all around? It was who these strangers needed me to be. Seemed all that fear and hunger had finally come to drag them down. Down into that lonely little hell called despair.

  "Do it." I said to Laticia, "get her up. Then I'm going into them vents. I'm gonna find the bastard that took our folks, and I'm going to kill it."

  Ten minutes later I crouched beside Miss Lottie and Miss Laticia, a lump in my guts as Shorty's eyes fluttered up.

  I knew what I was going to see when she saw me.

  But it still hurt.

  "Oh gods! No, no, no! Please. No, no, please don't!" Shorty screamed and tried to back away from me, tried to crawl away, but she fell when she tried to lean on an arm that wasn't there.

  "Calm down Xoxoctic," Lottie snapped, "It's Roche, he saved your life."

  "H-he hurt me! He's- he's not right in the head. He's dangerous! He's a killer!"

  Yep. Sure was. And a lot of other awful things too.

  Shorty didn't need to remind me.

  "He saved you. Xoxoctic," said Laticia. The older woman was softer'n than Lottie and I both. A mother for sure, grandmother maybe, "he had to amputate your arm. The venom in it would've killed you."

  "But he- he-" her big eyes were full of fear and hurt.

  "I'm sorry," I said. I didn't blunt it with explanation or excuse, "I'm sorry."

  She looked at the ragged bandage over her stump, and her face fell.

  "The snake... It bit me," she said, yellow eyes wide as saucers, "I remember. I remember now."

  "Listen, Shorty, I know you're not feeling well," Lottie began, "but things are not going well. We need help. Mister Roche believes your flashes of prophecy might give him essential insights to what's coming."

  She looked at me, and there was a little fear, a little anger, but there was gratitude and understanding too.

  "Y-yeah. I did dream, so many dreams... T-they are going to take people. Take them away. Change them."

  "Already did," I said, "and I'm pretty sure they got the first expedition too. Or most of them. Where?"

  "They're beneath us. In the depths. There's a great pit, and a-" she swallowed eyes mad as she searched the gathering crowd of scholars, "a gate. A gate of bone and blood and crystalline, rot a hole made in Entropy."

  Blood, bone and crystalline rot? Hole in the Entropy? What the fuck did any of that mean!?

  Sounded like a prison maybe, or a portal? I had heard of witches pokin’ holes in the world, in the ether between. Let them move all around the world, emerge to trike where the nations of man were weakest.

  "How do I get there?" I asked, "and how soon before they come?"

  "No, no, no. You don't. You can't go there, Roche."

  "Why? Answer me. We need a way out, and if a portal is it-"

  "You! You change too, if you do. Something happens. You'll stop being... You. It’s not a way out, it’s a way for them to get in. All of them. And some of us, they’re already inside."