The fields stretched out below them, stitched together by hedgerows and stone walls. From this height, maybe three hundred metres up, John could see for miles in every direction, the burning sky casting its perpetual hellish glow across the landscape.

  John's swept his preternaturally enhanced awareness side to side, searching for any sign of Alissa and the two children. Beside him, Jade flew with the same speed, her new enchanted glasses providing her with a sphere of perception, her enchanted hoodie manifesting wings that kept her aloft with powerful strokes. The grey fabric rippled in the wind, and she'd pulled the hood up over her short hair, though it did little to keep the strands from whipping around her face.

  It had been several hours since they'd found Sam. Several hours more since Alissa had been on the move with two traumatised kids in tow, fleeing from monsters and God knew what else. She wasn't particularly high level in the grand scheme of things, and she'd be moving at the pace of frightened children. They couldn't have gone far.

  The problem was direction.

  They'd started their search north of where they'd found Sam, following the most logical escape route. But Alissa could have changed course, doubled back, taken any number of detours to avoid monster activity. The search area had grown exponentially with each passing minute, spreading out in a widening arc that made John's systematic approach feel increasingly futile.

  Still, he kept at it. Clairvoyance was a Level 7 Spell that gave him a sphere of awareness roughly a hundred metres in diameter. Within it, he could perceive everything, as if all his conventional senses had been extended outward, detached from his body. Sound, sight, smell, even the faint pressure of air currents. Most importantly, he could move it, sending it down to check underneath and inside things he couldn’t see from the sky without having to descend.

  It had been disorienting at first, maintaining his normal vision while simultaneously processing this ghostly sphere of perception and receiving input from his Sanguine Clone, but Mind Level 9 let him juggle the trio of inputs without too much difficulty after an adjustment period.

  The All-Seeing Eyeglasses he'd enchanted for Jade worked on the same principle. Between the two of them, they covered a decent area with each pass.

  The birds flew with them, though their formation seemed less about assisting in the search and more about providing protection. The crow soared high above, its massive form cutting through the air with lazy beats of shadow-dripping wings, those abyssal eyes constantly scanning for threats. The dove glowed at the back of the formation, its feathers pulsing with soft light. Polly and Zazu took up the flanks, their little heads swivelling as they kept watch.

  "Anything?" Jade called out.

  "Nothing," John replied. "You?"

  "Just fields and monsters for bloody miles."

  They'd fallen into this pattern a while ago. Regular check-ins, confirming neither had seen anything of interest. The monotony was starting to grate, made worse by the knowledge that every minute that passed was another minute Alissa and the kids were out here alone.

  John swept his awareness across another section of farmland. A barn, long abandoned. A tractor rusted in a field, weeds growing through its wheels. A stone storage building that had collapsed in places, probably decades before the apocalypse. No people. No movement except for the wind through the grass.

  John's mind drifted as his eyes and Clairvoyant perception swept across another empty field. Through his Sanguine Clone back at the farmhouse, he could feel the others' presence, could see through its blood-red vision the interior of the building where Doug, Lily, Chester, and Sam waited. The clone's hearing wasn't great, muffled and distant, but he could make out the general shape of things. Doug was talking, his deep voice a rumbling undercurrent, and John saw Chester's shoulders shaking, saw Lily with her face in her hands.

  They were having a moment. A real one, the kind where people actually processed what they'd been through instead of bottling it up and soldiering on. The kind of moment John really, really didn't want to be present for.

  Is that why I volunteered for this? he wondered, not for the first time. Because I didn't want to deal with their grief?

  He pushed the thought away and focused his clone's gaze out the window instead, letting it keep watch as it had been doing. Whatever the others needed to work through, they could do it without his blood-construct staring at them.

  "You doing alright?" Jade asked, pulling him from his thoughts.

  John glanced over at her. She was still scanning the fields below, the All-Seeing Eyeglasses distorting her eyes slightly, but there was something in the set of her jaw that suggested the question wasn't casual.

  "Fine," he said automatically, then paused. "Why?"

  Jade lowered the specs for a moment, meeting his gaze. "Because you just killed someone a little while ago, and you've been acting like it was nothing more than taking out the rubbish."

  John considered that. Felt for the guilt, the horror, the revulsion that should have been there. Found nothing but cold satisfaction and a lingering anger. "They deserved it."

  "Aye, probably," Jade agreed, raising the specs again. "Doesn't mean it shouldn't affect you, though."

  "It does affect me," John said. He realised as he said it that it was true. "It pisses me off that we had to do it at all. That the world's set up in a way where people like that can exist, can thrive, even. But I don't feel guilty for removing them. They were bullies. Sadists. They were hurting Sam for fun."

  His voice had gone hard on that last word, and he forced himself to take a breath, to moderate his tone before the anger bled through too much. Couldn't afford to let the facade slip, even up here where only Jade and the birds could see.

  +200 Aura

  Jade was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was careful. "I'm not saying you should feel guilty, John. Just... be careful.”

  John eyed her. “Noted.”

  They flew in silence for another few minutes, scanning their respective grids. John was just about to call clear on his section when Jade spoke again.

  "You know," Jade said, breaking the silence again, "this is the first time I've flown at night. Well, false night. You know what I mean."

  John glanced at her. The Dragon Wings enchantment kept her aloft with steady, mechanical beats, the fabric-like manifestation rippling behind her hoodie. She was looking down at the fields below rather than at him, her expression thoughtful behind the enchanted glasses.

  "How's it feel?" he asked.

  "Free," she said simply. Then, after a moment: "Fucking bizarre, too. A week ago, I was worrying about exam revision and whether I'd survive the bloody year. At uni, I mean. Now I'm flying through the air with magical wings, searching for a woman in a fetish suit and two traumatised kids while monsters roam the countryside."

  "When you put it like that, it does sound fairly mental."

  She huffed a laugh, though there wasn't much humour in it. "Aye, well. Mental is the new normal, I suppose."

  They flew in silence for a bit longer.

  "I've been thinking," Jade said, "about what comes next. After we find Alissa, after we deal with Watford. Assuming we survive all that."

  John glanced at her again. "And?"

  "I don't want to go back to how things were. Before, I mean." She paused, seeming to gather her thoughts. "Having a System that rewarded torture was hell. Every fight was agony, watching the menu tempt me with more power if I'd just make something suffer a bit more. If I'd just drag it out, let them feel it properly."

  She shuddered, and John looked away, giving her privacy for the moment.

  "But now?" she continued. "Now I've got nothing. No powers. No way to contribute in a fight except as bait or a distraction. And while that's better than being forced to be a sadist, it's also… Christ, John, it's terrifying. I'm completely fucking helpless."

  "You're not helpless," John said, frowning. “You have the Blazeball Bat.”

  Jade sighed. “Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful you brought me back. More grateful than I can properly express. It was like having a parasite in my head, one that wanted me to become a monster." She paused, then added quietly, "You freed me from that. Even if it means I'm basically useless in a fight now, at least I'm me again."

  John glanced at her. She was still scanning the fields, not meeting his eyes. "You don't have to thank me for that."

  "Aye, I do." Jade turned to face him as they flew. “I… I didn’t want to die, John. Even if I hated every moment of that cursed fucking System, I was still using it, because I just wanted to live that much.” She shook her head. “But that doesn't change the fact that I'm a liability now. In any real fight, I'm just someone you lot have to protect."

  John didn't respond immediately, sweeping his awareness across another cluster of farmhouses as he considered his words. He understood what she was getting at. Without her System, Jade had no way to gain power, no way to grow stronger.

  "We’ve already established I can help with that," he said finally. "I can make you gear. Weapons, armour, whatever you need. It won't be the same as having a System to power you up, but it'll be something. You won't be helpless."

  "That's what I wanted to talk about, actually." Jade turned to look at him properly, and even through the enchanted glasses, he could see the intensity in her gaze. "I don't want to just be geared up and sent into battle. I want to find ways to contribute that don't involve violence. Or at least, not just violence."

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know yet. But there has to be more to surviving this than just killing monsters and accumulating power, aye? We're going to need to rebuild at some point. Create safe spaces, organise survivors, figure out how to grow food and rebuild infrastructure, then maintain it all. I want to be part of that. The building, not just the fighting."

  John considered that. It made sense, in a way. They'd all been so focused on immediate survival that longer-term concerns had fallen by the wayside. But Jade was right. Eventually, they'd need to think beyond just combat. Especially if they were serious about liberating Watford and protecting the survivors there.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "I think that's a good goal," he said. "And I meant what I said. I'll help however I can. Equipment, enchantments, whatever makes you feel less vulnerable."

  "Thanks," Jade said, and there was genuine warmth in her voice. "Honestly, just hearing you say that helps. I've been worried you were really thinking of me as dead weight now."

  "Never," John said firmly. Then, awkwardly: "You're not dead weight. You're… you know. Part of the group."

  Jade smiled at that, a real smile that reached her eyes. "Eloquent as always, John."

  "Shut up."

  She laughed, and the tension that had been building during the conversation dissipated. John found himself relaxing marginally, though he kept his awareness focused on the search. They were getting further from the farmhouse now, covering ground that Alissa could conceivably have reached if she'd been moving at a steady pace.

  They continued their search pattern, crisscrossing the fields in a methodical grid. John's awareness touched a ruined cottage, its roof caved in and walls crumbling. Empty. He moved on to a cluster of outbuildings, finding only more emptiness and decay.

  "How are the others doing?" Jade asked after a while. "You can see through your clone thing, right?"

  John nodded, checking in with the construct's perspective again. "Doug's talking to them. Lily and Chester look pretty rough. I think they're..." he trailed off, searching for the right word.

  "Processing," Jade supplied. "Grieving, maybe. Or just finally letting themselves feel it all."

  "Yeah." John watched through his clone's crimson vision as Doug put a hand on Chester's shoulder, saying something John couldn't quite make out. "They seemed to be holding it together pretty well when I was there. Guess they were waiting for me to leave."

  "People do that," Jade said. There was understanding in her voice. "Put on a brave face for the strong one, then fall apart when they're gone. It's not personal."

  "I know." And he did, intellectually. But it still stung a little, the knowledge that they felt they had to hide their grief from him. Like he was too intimidating or too distant to share it with.

  Or maybe you just made it clear you don't want to deal with that kind of thing, a treacherous part of his mind whispered. Maybe they picked up on the fact that you ran out here partly to avoid exactly that kind of emotional moment.

  The black hole hung in the distance to the south, its impossible mass creating a false night that stretched across miles of countryside. John could see the monster activity increasing in its shadow, creatures that had been relatively dormant during the burning day now emerging to hunt.

  A flicker of movement caught his eye, and John's attention snapped to it immediately. A monster was launching itself from the ground, a grotesque thing that looked like the flayed skull of some alien creature mounted on a coiled spine that unsprung like a jack-in-the-box, sending it hurtling up toward them. Its maw gaped open, revealing teeth like jagged shards of bone, and its empty eye sockets somehow seemed to track their movement.

  A flash of Soul Vision revealed it was a green soul. Weak, relatively speaking. But loud if he dealt with it normally, and noise would draw more attention. Attention that could lead monsters straight to Alissa and the kids if they were nearby.

  John raised his hand, fingers splayed, and activated Ultimate Shot. But he didn't just fire it immediately; he engaged Archmage, the Skill he'd unlocked during the supermarket portal battle. It was an acquisition he was still getting used to, but the principle was simple enough. Combined Spells were normally a chaotic mix of all their component parts, each aspect contributing equally. Archmage let him moderate that, adjusting the slider on each element.

  Ultimate Shot contained numerous different aspects because he’d been more reckless with Combine when he’d first got it, and he’d wanted to build something that was versatile enough to threaten any conceivable enemy: Aqua Shot, Flash Freeze, Electric Shock, Light Burst, Burning Gale, Thunderous Roar, Verdant Hell, Death Arrow (Soul Arrow and Necrotise), Tempest Sphere, Vector Lash, Scouring Steam, Sigil Detonation, and Soul Drain. Normally, firing it was like unleashing a small-scale apocalypse, thunder and lightning and ice and fire all at once.

  But with Archmage, he could change that. Mentally adjusted the sliders, he dropped everything to one percent except Death Arrow, which he cranked up to the highest state it could still reach. The maths had to add up to one hundred, so the other aspects got one percent each, still present, but barely.

  John clenched his fist. The projectile that erupted from above his knuckles was a far cry from Ultimate Shot's usual chaos. Instead of a maelstrom of elemental fury, it was a midnight black arrow with a faint opalescent sheen, trailing wisps of diminished elemental effects like streamers in its wake. A few tiny ice crystals. A whisper of steam. A spark of electricity. Et cetera.

  It struck the skull-spine monster dead centre, the Death Arrow aspect boring through its alien bone structure and flooding it with necrotic energy. The creature's upward momentum arrested immediately, its spine going slack as the corruption spread through its frame. It spiralled back down toward the earth, already beginning to decay.

  The noise was vastly muted compared to Ultimate Shot's usual thunder. It was still loud enough to make John wince—there was no getting around some sound when you were firing a magical projectile at high speed—but it was more of a sharp crack than a deafening boom. Closer to a really loud clap than an explosion.

  Still too much. John could see monsters nearby react, heads turning toward the sound. Not a vast number of them. Perhaps not enough to cause a stampede. But any attention was too much attention at this point.

  "Shit," John muttered. Then, louder: "Everyone close to me."

  Jade banked toward him immediately, and the birds converged. The crow folded its massive wings and dropped like a stone before levelling out beside John. The dove zipped across the gap in a streak of light. Polly and Zazu took up their customary positions on his shoulders, bracing themselves.

  John raised both hands and activated Shadow Stream, one of his earliest Spells and still one of his most useful, broadly speaking. Oily darkness erupted from his palms, billowing out in great clouds that quickly enveloped their little group. The world plunged into greyscale, that familiar monochrome vision that came from being inside his own shadows.

  They were veiled now, hidden from sight in a cloud of magical darkness. John could see through it clearly, but to anything outside, they'd be nothing but an opaque mass of shadow.

  With a bit of tweaking, he managed to open up a little pocket of space inside the darkness, so Jade and the birds weren’t trapped in unnatural black, while keeping a bit attached to his face so he could still see through it all himself. The dove’s glowing feathers provided light.

  "I could sort of see already," Jade breathed, eyes flickering side to side as if reading something only she could see. "It's blurry as heck, but the glasses kind of let me feel what’s going on in here."

  John looked at her. With Sanguine Clone, Dragon Wings, and now Shadow Stream all necessary, he’d been forced to drop Clairvoyance. "The enchantment bypasses the darkness?"

  Jade shrugged. "I mean, it's confusing and makes me want to throw up, but I wasn’t completely blind." She looked around, then muttered. “So. This is cosy.”

  "It'll keep us hidden until the activity dies down below. A few minutes, maybe less."

  Jade’s eyes lowered, her glasses letting her see the same thing he was seeing on the ground in greyscale; monsters stalking towards the spot where his Ultimate Shot had announced itself. It wasn’t anything like one of the hordes his shenanigans back in London had gathered, let alone Watford’s rushing waves, but it was enough to make him grimace.

  "Let's wait for them to lose interest,” John said.

  Jade nodded, adjusting her flight to match his pace. The birds settled in, the crow's darkness actually mingling with John's shadows in a way that felt oddly comfortable. The dove's light was muted here, contained, more of a cosy lantern glow.

  They drifted through the sky in their bubble of darkness, and John found himself relaxing slightly. There was something about being hidden like this, away from the need to constantly perform, constantly project the cool, aloof image the Aura system demanded, especially since Jade knew what it demanded of him. Up here, shrouded in shadow, he could just... be.

  That wasn’t to say he was completely letting his guard down. Aura system or not, he still didn’t really know how to act around another person, the silence gnawing at him more and more as it stretched on.

  It brought him a surprising amount of relief when Jade spoke. Her voice was soft, tentative. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  "Back in the car park, you talked about hating what the system was doing to you. Making you act a certain way, play a role." She paused. "Is that why you're so set on going back to Watford? You feel like you have to?"

  John was quiet for a long moment, considering his answer. Through his clone's vision, he saw Doug helping Lily to her feet, saw Chester nodding at something the old man said. They were pulling themselves together, processing their grief and fear and getting ready to move forward. That's what people did. They broke, then they healed, then they got back up.

  But the system didn't want healing. It wanted entertainment. It wanted them to break in interesting ways.

  "Yeah," John said finally. "That's part of it."

  "What's the rest?"

  John looked at her through the gloom. Jade's grey eyes were fixed on him, and there was no judgment in them. Just honest curiosity, and maybe a little worry.

  Fuck it, he thought. She already knows most of it anyway.

  "I hate bullies," John said, and even he was surprised by the venom in his voice. "I've always hated them. The people who hurt others because they can, because it makes them feel powerful. The ones who pick on someone weaker and call it a joke. I had to deal with that shit all through school, and I never could fight back because fighting back just made it worse. Every time I tried, they'd just come at me harder. So I learned to keep my head down. To just... endure it."

  He paused, his hands clenching into fists. The shadows around them roiled, responding to his emotion.

  "But this?" John continued. "This whole twisted, sadistic game we've been thrown into? It's the same thing, just on a cosmic scale. Some higher power out there decided it would be fun to watch us suffer. To force us into roles we hate, to make us kill each other for its entertainment. It's setting up scenarios like Watford, where people are herded together and made to fight, all so it can watch the show."

  The anger was building now like a flame growing in his chest, engulfing more and more of him. He could feel it burning through him, that same fury that had driven him to kill Marian before he’d realised it.

  "The systems, the monsters, the portals. It's all bullshit. It's all part of some sadistic game designed to make us dance like puppets. And I'm fucking sick of it." John's voice had dropped to something low and dangerous. "So yeah, I want to go back to Watford. I want to break their little death game. I want to find every survivor in that hellhole and get them out. Not because I'm some hero—I'm not—but because fuck them. Fuck whoever set this up. Fuck their game. Fuck their entertainment."

  Jade was staring at him, her expression unreadable. For a long moment, she didn't say anything, and John felt a flicker of uncertainty. Had he gone too far? Said too much?

  Then Jade smiled. It wasn't a big smile, just a small upturn of her lips, but it was genuine.

  "Aye," she said. "Fuck them."

  John blinked. "Just like that?"

  "Just like that." Jade adjusted her position in the air, her enchanted wings beating with renewed vigour. "You're right. About all of it. This whole thing is bullshit, and the worst part is how it makes us complicit. It forces us to play along and participate in its twisted game, and we either do it or we die. But if there's a chance to fight back? To actually strike a blow against whoever's pulling the strings? I'm in."

  "Even though you can't fight anymore?" John asked.

  "I'll find a way to contribute," Jade said firmly. "You said you'd help me with that, and I believe you. But even if I can't fight, I can still do other things. I can scout, I can plan, I can help coordinate. I'm not going to be useless, John, and I'm not going to let fear of being useless stop me from doing what's right."

  John felt something tight in his chest loosen slightly. He hadn't realized how much he'd needed someone to understand and agree with him. Doug had his own agenda, his own reasons for fighting. Lily and Chester were the same, and presumably Alissa and Sam, too. They were all just trying to survive, to get through this and find their families. None of them were thinking about fighting back against the system itself, as far as he could tell.

  But Jade got it. She understood the anger, the frustration, the sheer wrongness of what they'd been subjected to.

  "Thank you," John said quietly.

  Jade shook her head. "Don't thank me. We're all in this together, aye? That's what teams do. They watch each other's backs."

  They floated along for another minute or so, letting the monsters below lose interest, before John finally dismissed the Shadow Stream. The darkness peeled away, revealing the burning sky and the fields below once more.

  They continued their search, but something had shifted between them. An understanding that went deeper than just surviving together. They were going to fight back. Maybe they'd fail. Maybe they'd die trying. But at least they'd go down swinging.

  It wasn’t long before he saw a flash of red. Not monster-soul red. Human red. The distinctive crimson of Alissa's enchanted hair, visible even through the gloom of false night. Through his own eyes, ironically. He hadn’t even been using Eagle Eye at the time, but he cursed himself and activated it to zoom in further. His heart both lifted and sank in the same moment.

  Alissa was running. The two children were with her, thrown over each of her shoulders like sacks of rice, exhaustion evident in every line of their small bodies. And gaining steadily behind them was a horde of monsters. Dozens of them. Blues, mostly, but he could see at least a handful of greens mixed in, their larger forms cutting through the pack like sharks through a school of fish.

  They were maybe a mile away. Less than a minute at full speed.

  "Found them," John said, and dove.