The hawks have magic.

  Real, honest-to-goodness, it-can-kill you, magic. Just like I noticed that the physical mutations got more intense, I guess the magical mutations are more intense now, too.

  Ryder really needs to get that fireball projectile.

  “First priority!” I shout over the cacophony, “is take down those birds!”

  “No shit!” yells the nine-year-old.

  “Language!” I call back.

  The problem with trying to fight lightning birds is that they’re birds. They coast around the top of the room, occasionally brushing past each other and scorching whatever—whoever—is directly beneath them. But even with my arm fully extended, I just can’t get high enough to knock them. And I don’t trust the smaller monsters running around to not knock over a desk if I climb up.

  So despite my instructions, neither Ryder nor I touch the birds. We just fight the monsters as best we can, while avoiding any lightning.

  It is not easy.

  As the battle progresses, my swings become sloppier, my points of contact less effective, and I realize why once I try to lift my arm to swing at a chest-high critter who leaps off a filing cabinet: I can’t lift my arm. The critter—I don’t even notice what it is—lands on my bad shoulder in a way that makes me scream and I look down to see what additional damage it did. The answer: nothing. It just landed on the bite marks. My guttural scream has it jumping off again, digging in its back nails on the take-off, and I stagger down onto an overturned desk for support.

  A skinny arm goes around my waist. I look down at the usually light, but currently gore-darkened hair of Ryder. “Out, out, out,” he’s whispering to himself. “Get her to Nancy.”

  “We need to stay in the surge site,” I manage to say. I try to look up, to get back into the fight, but the world spins a little.

  A blast of heat singes the air and a cat yowls. We get through the doorway.

  Someone in the distance screeches my name.

  We don’t get far before I stumble and Ryder, not able to support my weight, goes down. A moment later, that strawberry smell envelopes me and I force my eyes open.

  When did I close them?

  “Not safe for Nance—” I mumble.

  A voice interrupts me. “Shush, you. This is my job.”

  And then the warmth comes. That fresh cup of coffee on the first sunny, spring day. The way it flows down your throat and warms you from the inside out. The way it feels to bask in a summer sun. I’m comfortable and relaxed and well-rested.

  It’s the battle noises that come to me first. My eyes snap back open, wide and panicked as my memory catches up.

  Nancy hunches over me as some sort of mutant vole leaps over her to tackle a raccoon. I go to pull one of the grocery store tables out of my inventory, create a sort of barricade to keep Nancy safe.

  You cannot access your Inventory while actively engaged in combat.

  Ugh!

  “Get out of here before you’re hurt,” I say to Nancy, pushing to sit up and cover her with my body.

  “I need to be in the centre for the surge,” she insists, reaching out a hand to Ryder. He passes her one of my bats, the shaft already covered in blood. “And I need to do more than stand on the side.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Not the best time for heroics,” I mutter. I meet her eyes. “But thank you. For the heal.”

  “Like I said. It’s my job.” She grins at me, wild and fierce, and all I can do is return it. I pull another bat from my weapons storage—thankfully that’s still allowed—and Nancy and I climb to our feet to meet Ryder. We stand back-to-back, bats or fireballs in hand, and knock away each monster that gets too close. Ryder and I rotate as best we can, to make sure nothing too strong gets to Nancy. And it works, until the lightning hawks come crashing through the doorway and into the hallway, flipping wings-over-talons as they skid across the linoleum, a cascade of plastic chairs coming with them.

  In a moment of perfect synergy, Ryder and I both shove Nancy behind us and descend on the birds. Without being able to fly, they scramble to reach for each other, their beaks stretching out as far as they can. I know that if those beaks touch, if they can set off their lightning while Ryder and I are right there, we’re in trouble.

  Between the two of us, we keep the birds apart, and without their partnership magic, they’re just regular ol’ monsters.

  And my bat can handle that just fine.

  That’s when the rumble comes, the now-familiar feeling of the magic swelling. “It’s getting close!” Nancy calls out from behind us somewhere.

  “Where’s the actual epicentre?” Ryder asks, holding his fire into the face of one of the lightning hawks and sounding perfectly calm.

  I check the map. The purple haze has shrunk, turned opaque. “Inside the classroom,” I say, and I hear Nancy curse behind me. Is that where Ryder got it from? “But the hallway over there gets a sliver.” I point in the direction, against a wall of those green lockers on the far side of the classroom door from where we are.

  We move as one, Ryder and I taking the brunt of the fighting with Nancy using my extra bat to knock aside any stragglers. I’ll have to remember to look at her stats once we’re out of here, see if she needs to put in a Token to her Physical to make each of her swings go a little further.

  But it seems that the bulk of the fight is in the classroom, and with the birds out of the way it’s anyone’s fight. The sounds that we hear coming through the doorway are horrible, but the few small monsters we deal with in the hallway are manageable. It’s the least that we deserve, after everything.

  And then, the surge. Like before, like we’re getting used to, the monsters take their collective breath and seem to revert, blinking up at us with big, wide eyes.

  The three of us drop down, all sticking our palms flat on the tiled floor. The shockwaves run up my limbs as the ground does its usual rumble. The same sort of spiderweb cracks that we saw yesterday in the asphalt spread across the pale yellow tiles now. The doors of the lockers rattle in their casings, and I can hear everything remaining on the sideboards crash into the floor through the open doorway of the classroom.

  Then silence.

  I loose a breath, letting myself drop fully to the ground, the lockers against my back, as the animals near us do their drunk-walk off into the distance. I hope they find their way to an exit.

  Or, you know, I hope they don’t and die of starvation, since who knows what horns or teeth or claws or magic they’re churning up in their little bodies at this very moment.

  I watch a striped raccoon tail disappear around a corner and realize that every animal we let walk away from a surge site is a monster we’ll have to fight later. Maybe we ought to be killing them while they’re too drunk on magic to retaliate.

  Another thought for another day.

  “Come on,” I say, letting out a groan as I get back up to my feet. “I want to grab stuff from that classroom.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Nancy says as she follows me in. It’s empty of living monsters, and we have to slowly step around the corpses that remain. I pull the oversized tables that must have been used as desks into my inventory. “That you loot the display cases and stuff as well as the food.”

  Ryder looks between us. “You do?” he asks me. “Why?”

  “At first, I was hoping to just drop them on top of monsters. Smoosh them to death.”

  “Heh. Smoosh to death,” Ryder echoes.

  “But…?”

  “But I tried to take something out during this fight and the Game said I can’t pull from my inventory in an active fight.”

  “Then why take these?”

  “I’m sure I’ll find a reason.”

  Nancy and Ryder watch me as I take what I want. As we leave, we pass the bodies of the dead lightning hawks. I pause and try to take those into my inventory, too. Find some way to recreate the lightning magic.

  You cannot put corpses into your inventory.

  You wanted me to harvest a human child for her magic core, whatever that is. But I can’t loot a dead monster?

  This monster has no soul from which to harvest a magic core.

  Wait. The god-adjacent entity that stole half the world’s population and caused our apocalypse event… he ate souls, didn’t he?

  Correct.

  What would have happened if I had harvested that girl for her magic core?

  You would have gained multiple Ranks.

  This thing that eats souls. Is that why he does it? For our magic cores?

  The souls that were obtained that caused the apocalypse event did not have magic cores.

  Nancy’s voice echoes down the hall. “Jane!”

  I look up, almost having forgotten where I was, what had just happened. But the Game reminded me that there’s much more going on here than I know, and I need to be more careful.

  Play the Game, but don’t let the Game play me.

  And if we play, who exactly wins?

  Party Leader: Jane

  Race: Human

  Class: Fighter

  Secondary Class: Magician

  Level: 2

  Rank: 8

  Stats:

  Mental [4]

  Physical [4]

  Magical [6]

  Abilities:

  Telekinesis [level 2]

  Compass [level 3]

  Party Member: Ryder

  Race: Human

  Class: Mage

  Level: 2

  Rank: 6

  Stats:

  Mental [3]

  Physical [2]

  Magical [3]

  Abilities:

  Fireball [level 4]

  Party Member: Nancy

  Race: Human

  Class: Healer

  Level: 1

  Rank: 7

  Stats:

  Mental [5]

  Physical [2]

  Magical [2]

  Abilities:

  Healing [n/a]