“Alright, everyone. Stick with your designated partners, and proceed to the locations on the map. Remember to dial it in if you encounter any creatures above your pay grade.”

  Trevor nodded to the group accompanying them as they begun to disperse to their designated locations. Then he turned to Evantra at his side.

  “You didn’t go to the funeral with them.”

  “Going isn’t going to bring her back.”

  Trevor let out a sigh before he simply nodded and motioned towards the manhole they were set to descend into.

  “Let’s go.”

  Evantra put her assault rifle in a back sling and helped Trevor remove the manhole cover so that they could enter Wisptown’s sewers.

  Ever since her first encounter with the teethling and salamanders near the canal, there had been reports of Veilcreature appearances all over the city. Eventually, the police had little choice but to prioritise the issue – and it likely meant that there was a Veilsurge either in the sewers themselves, or in the caverns underneath Wisptown.

  They didn’t have the budget to afford a proper Ghostslayer, so it fell to the overworked and stretched police force, and whatever volunteers they could muster. The stench of the sewers reached her the moment she started down the ladder, into the inky darkness, with the sounds of trickling water sluicing through the drain beneath her.

  [Darkvision]

  Evantra activated her skill and watched as detail blinked into her vision. Thankfully, her eyes automatically adjusted to the brightness of Trevor’s flashlight and her own as he descended behind her. Prior to descending, Evantra had briefly mentally mapped out the section that they were meant to clear before moving further into the drain system.

  Her grip tightened around her Liberty Astral M5 as she attempted to stem the tremors in her hands.

  “You good?”

  Evantra gave Trevor a sharp nod before she advanced down the drain in front of him. She felt the man’s hand clamp onto her shoulder.

  “Let me take point, you don’t have the expe—”

  “No.”

  Evantra ignored him, shrugging off his grip and advancing towards the last sighting of Veilcreatures. Prior to the raid, the police had engaged in a brief recon exercise, employing drones to scout the sewers. They had identified the last known sightings of the creatures on her map before their drone had been taken out by an unknown entity.

  “Water’s stagnant,” Evantra whispered, noticing a slow in the current beside her. The flowing water had crept to a crawl, indicating that there was something impeding the flow upstream. As she crept forward, a different stench reached her, one unlike the rancid sewer water.

  The sound of splashing water and yaps reached her ears. She cast a brief look towards Trevor, and they instantly turned their flashlights off to avoid alerting the creatures.

  “Like we practised,” Trevor whispered.

  They stacked up along the corner of the wall, Evantra in the lead and Trevor right behind her. With a sharp nod, Evantra led the way forwards first, fixing her sights on the corner diagonal to her entry, while Trevor curled in after her to cover the opposite corner.

  A pile of corpses was stacked up upon one another in the middle of the channel. They looked to be a collection of various Veilcreature corpses, the water surrounding them dark with their blood.

  Evantra tore her eyes away from it after a split second, fixing her sights on the creatures that she recognisesd as gnomes that were situated next to them.

  Their weapons flared to life.

  Evantra had switched to her Nagantra to conserve her assault rifle ammunition.

  The gnomes didn’t stand a chance.

  They were caught off-guard, raising their hands to cover their eyes as Evantra and Trevor turned on concentrated beams to blind them. Evantra’s quick and precise bursts from her machine pistol ripped through their dark grey skin, sending them sprawling towards the floor. Officer Trevor killed the remaining creatures with two shots from his pistol, the cracks echoing around the drain they were in.

  “Evantra. Evantra!”

  Trevor’s voice jolted her from her fugue state, as she held the trigger down.

  “You can stop. They’re dead already,” his voice was soft and low, laced with an undertone of concern.

  Evantra ignored him as she stowed her empty magazine in a magazine pouch of the vest she had been loaned for the raid. She tried to tune out her red-tinged gaze, and her heavy heartbeats thumping in her ears.

  Focus.

  She regarded the pile of bodies stacked up in front of her.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Looks like the Veilcreatures were fighting amongst themselves, for some reason.

  Noelle mentioned that it wasn’t unheard of – especially between creatures of different Mythic Veilsurges.

  But these all look to be gnome corpses, and the ones surrounding them were of the same species.

  Strange.

  She stepped in closer, taking a look at their bodies, and frowned.

  Their skin… it’s pockmarked.

  “Trevor.”

  The man grimaced as he took in the corpses and the strange striations across their skin. It looked similar to severe burn marks.

  Are we dealing with a salamander?

  Noelle popped into Evantra’s eyes unbidden, and she mentally evicted the image from her thoughts.

  “Let’s reposition. If there are others around, they’re bound to be drawn to the noise.”

  Evantra nodded, and even though Trevor hesitated at the sight of the pile of bodies, they quickly made their way down another sewer path to reposition. Trevor extracted a drainage scheme from one of his magazine pouches, reviewing it for paths that coalesced, which would allow them to circle around and catch any Veilcreatures attracted by the noise by surprise.

  They jogged briskly, taking care to mask their steps, as they rounded the corner. Trevor kept his pistol prepared in front of him, his eyes darting left to right as they rounded the corner.

  They had made their way down a singular drain, a distance away from a junction. The stretch ran into a dead end, and they quickly confirmed that the creatures previously identified there had already been dealt with – likely by another squad.

  The corpses of the creatures were floating in the water, downturned.

  “Wait. Trevor, look.”

  Those weren’t the only corpses floating there.

  “Shit,” he pressed the button on his walkie, “dispatch, I’ve got casualties—”

  “Watch out!”

  Evantra pushed Trevor to the side, watching as a hazy brown projectile surged forwards through the space that Trevor had occupied just a moment ago. They turned to fix their gaze at the creature that had entered the stretch of drain.

  An enormous stag barred their way, pacing through murky waters. Its flesh was rotting, as if decaying before her very eyes, before being birthed again anew. She could see hulking tendons and muscles ripple beneath the exterior of black, necrotised flesh. The creature stalked towards them, hollow, white eyes staring forwards.

  “Retre—”

  Evantra and Trevor watched as another brown projectile slammed into the ladder leading up to the street above them.

  It rapidly began to corrode, falling into pieces.

  Their singular exit, the ladder to the street above, destroyed.

  Evantra watched as the creature prepared another ball of miasma in its maw, the stag’s jaw unhinging as it collected the projectile dripping with corrosion and rot, poised to send it hurtling towards them.

  She swept up her Nagantra, holding the trigger down tightly as she fixed it firmly in its direction. The piercing sound of gunfire erupted from her flank, as Trevor did the same, zeroing in on the threat.

  Their bullets thudded ineffectively into its hide, no matter how deadly and precise their aim. Their rounds didn’t seem to impede or harm the creature in any way, as it appeared to regenerate the wounds that they inflicted.

  It unleashed the projectile of miasma towards her.

  Evantra leapt aside, falling into the sewer water, which came up to her thighs, as the projectile impacted the wall behind her. She watched as the towering rot stag began to paw the water beneath it, as is preparing to impale her on its desecrated antlers.

  “Flank it! I’ll distract it.”

  Trevor jumped into the water, pulling her to her feet, before pushing her lightly in the opposite direction. He leapt onto the dry surface of the walkway to her right and advanced rapidly towards the stag.

  True to his intent, the stag aborted the charge it was preparing. As its maw widened further, it revealed a distinctly human looking set of teeth as it exhaled a cloud of miasma in Trevor’s direction.

  Trevor ducked underneath, and before the beast could lunge forward towards him, Evantra held her breath as she pointed her Liberty Astral M5 towards its exposed mouth, sending a precise burst of bullets shredding through the monstrosity’s teeth, firing straight into its maw.

  Adopting Noelle’s strategy against the salamanders.

  The beast recoiled, and in that second, Evantra leapt out of the murky water unto the path on the opposite side of the canal, bolting past the beast together with Trevor while it was winded, diverting to another drain.

  “That is way above our pay grade, we need to retreat,” Trevor panted as they finally slowed to a jog, halting towards another ladder in the drain leading streetside. The winding path they had taken had shaken the stag, but it wouldn’t be long before it recovered and came after them.

  “You go first. I’ll keep an eye out,” Evantra gestured to the ladder.

  Trevor frowned.

  “Evantra, no. you fir—”

  “Hurry up,” her tone was biting, and Trevor let out a sigh of frustration before acceding to her request.

  A rumbling wail echoed through the tunnel, accompanied by the crash of murky water as the stag that they had enraged turned the corner and began bolting straight towards her. The force of its momentum pushed the stagnant water outwards in a small wave underneath it as it hurtled towards her.

  “GO!”

  Evantra shouted to Trevor before hopping to the opposite walkway and spraying her Nagantra at the oncoming stag in an attempt to divert its course. Heedless of her attempt, the stag smashed through the ladder that Trevor had been climbing.

  Thankfully, he had made it out in time.

  But her escape was in shambles.

  Evantra turned and sprinted further into the sewers. She turned the corner sharply and sprinted as far up the path as was possible before dropping to the ground.

  Evantra activated the skills in her Ionian Mimic catalyst.

  [Object mimicry]

  [Stonerooted]

  [Conceal]

  Under the strain of her skills, each thump of her heartbeat was deliberate and languid, as if it took effort for each contraction to reach fruition. Her vision was fixed, giving her an awkward field of view that cut diagonally across the sewers, angled slightly from where she was laying face-up on the ground.

  She watched as the stag entered her vision. The hulking beast of decaying flesh walked straight past her, uncaring of the Evantra-sized steel pipe lying on the ground beside it. As it did, she could feel a prickle on the surface of her skin, as it entered her periphery, her skin having a visceral reaction to its very presence.

  With each passing second, the weight of her heartbeat grew heavier. Her vision began to swim as she struggled to maintain her acuity against the burden of her skills.

  Let me just—

  She deactivated [stonerooted], giving her the ability to momentarily adjust her position, craning her neck in the direction that the stag was headed. It was pacing at the end of the drain, in the centre of the junction, cutting off the path ahead of her.

  As the beast turned, Evantra released her skills, and relying solely on her memory of the layout of the drain from before she had switched off her flashlight, Evantra lithely leapt across the stagnant water. She rounded the corner and pushed forwards.

  She could go back the way that she came, but with the ladder destroyed, there was only one path available to her.

  She gazed further down the drain, which continued on an incline, leading deeper into the bowels of the drainage system.

  20 chapters ahead on my Patreon if you'd like to binge.