《The Realms: Worlds Apart》


 Chapter 1 - Prologue

    Traveler sighs, a soft green pulse of light emanating from under his cloak instead of any noise. The call has grown too strong, that errant reverberation in his core that forces him to use his curse and continue searching for...something. He wasn''t sure which of the reasons were real anymore.


    He stands and look around the singular room he keeps. Filled with a myriad of items from his eons roaming the Realms and beyond, it resembled a shallow but widely traveled museum of sorts. He reaches out a four fingered hand, pulses of pale green chasing themselves down the thin clear fibers of his body, and picks up a glass jar. Sitting within it is a small chunk of clear crystal. One end is black, as if containing a shadow within. The other is cracked and breaking apart, brittle as the structure of the crystal fails and falls apart.


    A failed experiment. Once the darkness found an imperfection, it was impossible to remove from the flesh. Too much light causes the body to break down before it did anything to the plague itself.


    He sits the jar back down, and steps out the door. As he exits, a dull roar of constant sound suddenly assaults him from the swarm of peoples that follow him in his wanderings. There are always those looking to take advantage of his wanderings to pillage the resources of the unsuspecting people where he went. Locusts, too ravenous to sustain even themselves in the long term. He pointedly ignores them as he turns back toward the exterior of his abode. The exterior of the building is a blockish cube of once dull grey color, now covered in a canvas of paints and strips of cloth, applied by the group that follows him since he settled here 5 cycles back.


    The camp become town falls silent around him, rippling out from his location as he turns reaches up and grabs ahold of the of a mote of Shine that only he could see and pulled. The dull tearing sound as the building tore itself free of this reality and shrank into a miniature in his hand sets off a dull roar in the now still crowd around him before the first shouts went out.


    "It is time! Traveler is on the move!"


    The shout is repeated, twisted into hundreds of languages as it ripples out across the town. He walks around the clearing that surrounds him, the space that the inhabitants have learned to leave clear of where he settles, getting one last good view. Opening a Way tended to be destructive to the surrounding environment. Already there is a crowd gathering, a multitude of people from the Realms, many hefting weapons and preparing themselves.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    This place was beautiful one. More so before he had came. The atmosphere here had no starlight to react with directly, and you could look directly out into the Void. Or rather, into the massive stareater that this world spun around while it shed a dull purple light down on this realm. He had hoped to shed this swarm of fleas when they had all gotten sick when they first arrived here. The energy the stareater bathed this realm in had a sickening effect on many. Unfortunately, too many had survived. Maybe the next realm would have better luck.


    Traveler stopped as the inert Way came into view. It certainly looked like it might have a better chance. A burnt black smoke seems to leak from twisted hole that only he seemed to able to see. Smelling of alchemy, the smell taints the surrounding area, sticking to everything and reminding him of the darkness that plagued his people.


    He reaches up towards the twist in space, and as he does, a mote of light drifts out from his clear fingertips through the air towards the twist, seeming to accelerate and and be drawn into the knot of energy in the air. The pale green glow ignites something within, growing until it is visible even to the crowd that has gathered around him. It burns at the air itself, revealing a massive, odd tunnel beyond.


    Clad in an odd grey shaped stone, there were the obvious seams of it having been made and fit into place, but it was of a texture unlike any natural stone. Formed into large geometric shapes that reinforced the door, the material continued inward, cladding the tunnel that the door framed. At the end, the green embers generated by his light continued to push the tunnel forward following a path that even its user does not understand, carving through the soft spots of the universe.


    Traveler follows behind it, walking at a steady pace, the sound of his footsteps, and the growing clamor from behind him, echo back and forth down the tunnel. At least this smooth tunnel makes travel easy. Some of the Ways are closer to crawling through a cave, difficult and slow to traverse. This one remains straight and smooth, the continued burning from the end eventually vanishing, replaced by a warm, humid breeze, carrying the same acrid stench of burnt....something. Hints of wood smoke, but mostly the same smell that reminded him of the work of alchemists.


    Eventually the end of the Way comes into sight. It appears to be night on this world, although flashing lights from something out of sight illuminate the scene. A dark grey pavement covers the ground, the same as what covers the inside of this Way. Glass panes just a few feet away allow vision into the front of what appears to be a shop, dark and mostly empty.


    Traveler steps out of the Way and looks around. This Way has opened into the middle of a city of some size, at night. In the distance he can hear the sounds of waves on a shoreline and the dull roar of what sounds like a motor of some kind. He sighs, and steps to the side, turning towards the sounds of the shore and walking away. He did not want to see what comes next.

 Chapter 2 - Awakening

    It is the sound of the front door slamming into the wall that wakes Xavier from his sleep.  He sits up and looks over at the clock, confused, realizing it is still the dead of night.  Why would the front door be getting slammed?  Balere was the only other person here, and she was asleep.  He had checked before he went to bed.


    Why would the door be getting slammed?


    He rolls out of the bed as he hears a crash from downstairs, grabbing the bat from beside his bed as he creeps up the door.  Cracking it open, he peers out into the hallway.  Not seeing anything, he swings the door open and slides out into the hall.  Spotting the door to his sisters room slightly open, and Balere peering out through the crack, he creeps up to her door quickly, causing a quickly stifled scream as he startles her.


    "Call the cops, tell them you think someone has broken in.  I am going to see if I can sneak up and see what is going on," he whispers as he creeps past.


    As he nears the end of the hallway and peers out into the living room, he freezes, shocked by the scene in front of him.  Half of the wall that the front door was on is now missing, bits of it scattered across the room.  The front door had been torn loose from the wall, frame and all, and depositing into the far wall, as if thrown by a giant.


    Through the hole, he was able to see the neighbors house on fire across the street.  He watches as the front door opens and Steve runs out into the yard, screaming in panic.  Above him, unnoticed, a portion of the fire covering his roof breaks off into the shape of something resembling a spider, if you made the spider out of flame and only gave it four legs.  It skitters over to the edge of the roof and leaps off, landing on Steve''s back and latching around his neck.  Before he can react, the air above him seems to tear and a gnarled hand, black and shiny as if made of obsidian, reaches down, grabbed him by the top of the head, and pulls him back through the tear before the tear vanished as if it was never there.


    *What the fuck was that?!*  The panicked thought races through his head as he hears a sound out on the street.  The sound of skin on concrete, as a massive bare foot, skin a mottled violet slaps down on the road in front of the house.  He ducks back around the corner out of sight as something blocks the light from the fire across the road and he hears the heavy breaths of something large in front of the building.  He freezes, trying to stay quiet, the sound of his own breathing loud in his ears.


    An massive voice crashes into Xavier''s mind, despite the silence of the room around him.  Overwhelming in its intensity, but with no meaning to him, the random noises in a language he doesn''t recognize.  The light returns through the front of the house and the foot steps continue down the road. He stands there for a few minutes, unable to move, bat clenched tightly in his fist, breathing rapidly, before he is able to shake off some of the panic from the overwhelming presence crashing into his mind.


    Just as he is about to creep back towards his sisters door, there is a scream of panic from inside her room, followed by the sound of glass shattering and more screaming.  He charges down the hallway back to her door, crashing through it into her room.  Glass from the window is scattered across the room in shards, covering the floor and everything else near the window.  His sister cowers in the far corner as an alien figure moves across the room towards her.


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    Four pointed legs attach to a carapaced body that reminds him of an insect, stretching up almost seven feet tall.  Several small slits run up the side of the creature, opening and closing rhythmically, stopping short of a triangular head, large round eyes bulging out at the corners of the head that was otherwise occupied by a gaping hole filled with small sharp spines that clicked against each other as it approached.  Held up tight against its body was a set of small arms with four fingered cross between hands and claws.  They are overshadowed by the much larger set of arms above them that resemble the bladed arm of a praying mantis, with an actual blade glittering with in the meager light, lining the last several feet of the arm.


    Without thinking he launches himself across the room at the creature, feeling the glass cut into his feet as he runs, swinging the bat at the creature towering over his sister with a scream.  He hangs in the air for a moment as he flies towards the creature, shifting the bat to line up with its head.  Impossibly fast, the thing spins, lashing out with the bladed arm at his head, but instead catching the bat and forcing it back, slamming it back into his body with all enough force to send him tumbling back across the room.


    It follows him back across the room, pointed feet not caring about the glass littering the floor, or anything else as their sharp points punch into the bedding it crawls over in the process before it stands over him.  It looks down at him, the clicking from its maw growing louder, as it takes one sharp foot and places it on his right shoulder, before pressing down, slowly, leaning weight onto the point, which pierces into his skin.


    He screams, flailing against the leg with the other arm. unable to grip the bat well enough to swing it, as the pain of the sharp point sinks deeper into his flesh.  From across the room, he can hear his sisters voice yelling, and then a small thud as she throws the phone at the creatures head, bouncing it off of one eye, cause the creature to pause, and then pull the claw back out as it turns back, crossing the room and lashing out as Balere, causing her to flinch back, holding her face.


    He watches the creature pull back again to slash down on her with its bladed arm and grabs the bat from the floor, his hand loosing feeling against the pulsing in his shoulder, and throws himself across the bed, sliding between Balere and the creature as it slashes down, throwing the bat up between him and the blade, eyes clenched shut against the pain he knew was coming.


    Instead, there was a loud peal, like a bell had been struck, and he felt a tug on his senses, like he had tensed a muscle he didn''t know he had.  Opening his eyes, he saw a grid of hexagon shapes formed in front of him, as if spreading out from the blocking face of the bat, forming a shield that has stopped the blade of the creature.  The room, dark moments before, is now revealed brightly by a light that seems to permeate the room, leaving no shadows behind.  The creature in front of him glows with the same light tinged an odd yellowish green color, but is not the source of the light that lights up the room.


    It pauses with what almost seems like shock before lashing out twice more rapidly at the shield.  Xavier spins to the side slightly, deflecting the final blow off of the bat, knowing somehow the shield was going to shatter as that third blow connected with it.  As he slides to the side from the blow, he notices the bat is glowing now, and swings out again at the creatures head desperately.  It almost contemptuously holds an arm up to block the blow, only for the glow on the bat to explode, blowing the creatures arm off and throwing it backwards across the room, as well as throwing Xavier against the wall, knocking him in the head.


    As he slides down to the floor, his vision starts to darken, his head swimming from the blow to it, he can hear as his sister rushes over to him and starts yelling at him, but he is unable to make out what she is saying before he slips into unconsciousness.

 Chapter 3 - Summoner

    Xavier awakens to screaming and the worst headache he has ever had.  He groans, and reaches up to rub his head, hand coming away sticky.  He opens his eyes, staring at the blood on his hands before looking past his hand to the room beyond.


    The screaming was coming from Balere as she stood over him, covered in blood from a plethora of cuts covering her.  The room beyond was covered in gore and looked like a giant had spent some time throwing someone into the walls, based on the craters left in them.  A strange green ichor stains the floor and walls of the room, puddling on the floor where it runs down the walls.  Lodged in the wall across from him was the head of the creature that had been attacking them, missing the rest of its body and flattened.


    Groaning again in pain, he climbs to his feet.  Or tries to, as a sharp pain radiates from his feet.  Collapsing back down, he stares at his foot.  Finding a piece of glass embedded in it he pulls it out, grimacing against the pain.  Finally the screaming stops as Balere turns towards him shaking, eyes wide in panic.  Collapsing to her knees, she begins to babble mostly incoherently.


    "I...what?  I thought...Ithought...Ithoughtyoudied.  Wha...Whats going on?  Is...Is...Is it behind me?!"  Her eyes lock onto his, barely held in check panic, refusing to look behind her.


    "Bits of it are.  Like its head stuck in the wall there.  I think I see one of its arms over there by the closet door.  What happened?  I remember some magic looking barrier forming when I tried to block it from hitting you, and then the bat exploding and blowing its arm off.  Then I blacked out."  He was way too calm about this.  That can''t be a good sign.


    "Not the bug thing!  The big monster that showed up and splattered it across the room!"


    "I don''t see anything else in the room here."  He stands and steps around her, heading towards the window and collides face first with *something* that he was unable to see.  Warm flesh presses against him for a moment as he bounces off whatever it is, and he feels the breeze of a massive breath ruffle his hair.  He freezes.


    "I don''t see anything, but you wouldn''t be talking about whatever this invisible thing is that I just walked into, would you?"  Balere turns, slowly, towards him before quickly looking away again and nodding.


    "Well, I definitely can''t see anything, but I can definitely feel it.  It just seems to be standing in my way though."  Xavier backs away slowly and tried to see through the window to outside, where he can still hear noises and sounds of things breaking.


    "It keeps trying to talk to me,"  Balere whispers, "How does it know my name?  How do I understand it?"


    "Maybe it knows what is going on?  Were you able to call the police before...?" He waves at the room around them.


    "Line was dead.  Now the phone is busted."  She tosses some pieces of what was once a phone at him and begins to mutter quietly, but he is unable to understand her words.  While it sounds like a language, with pauses and breaks for responses, the sounds are alien to his ears.  Xavier watches her for a minute before looking hobbling over the remains of his sisters bed and peering back out in to the hallway.


    Not seeing anything, he sneaks down the hall to the bathroom, where he grabs a first aid kit from under the sink and makes his way back.  As he is stepping into his sisters room, there is a quiet pop and a light breeze from within the room, and his sister picks herself up from the floor, quietly muttering her under her breath, "No weirder than making a shield out of thin air I guess..."


    "It doesn''t know what''s going on.  Or if it did, it wouldn''t tell me.  All it said was ''The Conduit welcomes fresh worlds under its umbrella'', whatever that is supposed to mean.  And to call upon it again if I had need of it.  Then it... poofed out of existence."


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    "Figures.  Well, lets get out of all this glass and bandage up.  Then we can see if we can figure out what is going on.  I don''t think its safe to be here.  As if this wasn''t an obvious enough sign."  He motions at her room again with a disheartened chuckle.  "Steve got pulled through a hole in the air after living fire spiders chased him out of his house.  And something.. big was looking in the hole for a front door we have looking for ''shinies''."  He helps her across her room and they retreat back into his bed room.


    They spend a bit in the dark, not that it seems to bother either of them, picking pieces of glass out of themselves and bandaging up the obvious injuries in relative silence before Balere breaks the silence.  "Are we going crazy?  I can see in the dark, what was that monster, how did either of us do what we just did?  That thing said I summoned it, like it was magic and that was normal or something.  I think I could do it again.  There is this feeling in the back of my mind, like a nerve i didn''t know I had.  I think if I pulled on it, I could bring that... thing back.  You made a shield out of light and exploded.  How?"


    "Maybe the world is going crazy.  This all sounds crazy, but I don''t feel crazy.  Then again, I wonder if a crazy person would feel crazy...  Now that you mention it though, I think I could to.  I need something better than a bat to work with though."  He trails off, realizing he had a similar sensation, now that it was pointed out to him.  "I''m going to go get that bat, if its still in one piece.  Better than nothing.  Then we can see if we can find out what is going on."


    Pulling on some shoes over his bandaged feet, he steps back into the room and finds the bat laying on the floor near where he had dropped it.  The top of the bat was scoured clear of paint and any decals halfway down the bat, but it was mostly undamaged otherwise.  A couple of dings from hitting things, but not the crumpled mess that he expected, give the explosion had blown an arm off of the creature and knocked him out.  Not the weirdest thing to happen so far tonight.  Shrugging, he heads back to his room.


    "You ready?  I dunno what is going on, but I don''t really want to sit here and wait for the next thing to attack us."  Balere nods and stands up, sliding some shoes on herself before packing up what was left of the first aid kit.


    "We should stay out of site if you saw more out there.  We got lucky with whatever that bug thing was, but the smart move would be to not fight the monsters roaming the streets."


    "Agreed, lets go see what we can find."


    With that, they crept back out of his room and down the hallway to the front door, or what was left of it.  Listening from around the corner, Xavier was unable to hear anything moving out on the street and peeked around the corner.  Nothing moved that he could see, with the exception of Steve''s house burning down across the street.  It was a full inferno now, and he was able to see through the house into the backyard, thanks to the holes that it had carved through the walls. It has to have been at least a half an hour, and no fire response.  So definitely widespread enough to effect emergency services.


    Taking a deep breath, he creeps around the corner up to the hole in the front of the house and looks out onto the street, taking in the sight.  It is...destroyed, for the most part.  Cars line the road, torn apart, chunks of their insides missing as something scavenged them for bits.  Steve''s house was far from the only one on fire, and several of them, like his, had holes in them where something or someone had punched through walls, windows, and doors, and if they were only a small inconvenience, and pulled bits of the inside of the houses out to sift through them, leaving belongings scattered across the yards around him.


    A massive footprint in the yard in front of him catches his eye, several feet long.  He can only assume from whatever that large creature was that was looking for shinies in his house.  As he tears his eyes away from it, his gaze is drawn towards downtown, where he can see something rising up above the shorter building, something that was not there yesterday.


    Rising among the buildings downtown, big enough to be seen from several miles away, a large gate stood, seemingly opening a tunnel into the air of reality itself.  Formed of what appeared to be massive blocks of concrete, it stood a couple of hundred feed tall, revealing a tunnel that continued onward, also sheathed in concrete.  Past the gateway however, he could not see anyplace for that tunnel to be in the ''real world'' around it.  As he watches, something flew out of the portal before turning and flying off into the darkness.


    "Was that a dragon!?" Balere''s voice screeches from behind him.

 Chapter 4 - Flight

    Xavier stands stunned in the middle of the road staring off in the distance that the portal and the ''dragon'' as it vanished into the darkness as Balere screamed behind him.  Hundreds of feet long, the three pairs of wings that flowed out from its serpentine body were nearly as long as the body itself.


    A ripple passes through the air, a shockwave blowing aside smoke and detritus from the direction it vanished in.  Washing over Xavier a bestial roar stabs at his ears, deafening him and causing his knees to buckle from the shear volume.  A sense of dread and terror seeps from the roar into his chest and snaps him out of the shock seeing the creature fly out of the portal.  Standing back up, he turns and grabs his sister and pulls her back to her feet.


    "Not that way"  His voice sounds tiny in his ears despite yelling.  Balere nods as they turn the other direction down the street, facing away from the portal.  In the distance, they could see movement and chaos.  Fires breaking out and things moving around that were big enough to see around the buildings.


    That bug thing knocked me around pretty badly.  I wonder...  He walks across the street towards the side of Steve''s house, spotting his metal trashcan.  He hated this thing, it always made a racket when Steve drug it out to the road.  Taking the lid off, he flipped around, and slotted his hand into the handle and held it up in front of him like a make shift shield.  Better than nothing, might help if something attacked them again.  Everything seeming quiet around them, he checked to make sure Balere was following him and headed down the road towards the next intersection, staying near the buildings so they were less obvious.


    Peering down the side streets to make sure there wasn''t anything hanging around and spotting nothing, he stepped out into the intersection some and looked down the roads into the distance.  Seeing the same chaos in distance as was down the road they were on, he backed up against the buildings some to think.


    "What''s wrong?" Balere asks as he stands there staring into the distance.


    "No good direction.  At least from the road it looks like this went in all directions.  Trying to think of where we should go."


    Balere ponders for a moment.  "I think the main police station is downtown towards that portal or whatever.  Even if it wasn''t, that seems like probably a dangerous place to be.  Probably fighting going on there.  We could try to hide somewhere, but that''s not going to tell us what is going on.  And it looks like whichever way we go there just moves us closer to whatever is going on.  Maybe we head towards the beach?  It would put us up against a wall, kind of, but we could maybe find a boat and hide out on the water until this dies down.  Plus, we might get lucky and run into someone with an idea what''s happening on the way."


    "Better than any idea I got.  On foot though...well, I don''t think we will make it tonight.  Especially not if we are being careful.  And its probably a bad idea to use a vehicle and make extra noise to draw attention to ourselves.  We should keep an eye out for someplace that it looks like we can hide in while we are moving."


    Balere nods, and they begin making their way down the road towards the water.  What is it to the water from here?  Twelve miles, or close enough.  No way we make that, on foot, before one of us needs to rest.  Still better than sitting still terrified. As they continue down the road, they find an extension of the same destruction and chaos they were leaving behind with no seeming pattern to the chaos.


    A couple of blocks from their street, they were passing the remains of a house that was missing half the house.  Walls were torn away, as if one side of the house had been picked up and pulled away from the other, but the pulled away portion was missing and there was a large scallop out of the land it sat on, dirt rough and scattered, when they heard the crack of gunfire on the next street over and the crash of a building collapsing to the ground.  Xavier stares in the direction of the gunfire for a brief moment before taking off in that direction, forgetting any pretense of stealth.


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    "I thought we were avoiding trouble!"  Balere calls from behind and she chases after him as he slips between two houses, looking for any signs of the source of the noise.


    "Gunfire should mean people, right?  At least we haven''t seen any of them with guns yet.  Maybe they will know something.  If nothing else, another person, with a gun, might help us stay alive long enough to find out."  As he comes out into the backyard of the houses he slipped between, he stops looks at the destruction in front of him.  The privacy fences that divided the yards had been trampled into the ground, like a car or maybe a bear had charged through them.  No bears here, thank fuck.  Would be the worst thing to run into in the middle of the night in this chaos.


    Balere touches his arm to get his attention as she stares out across the yards.  "Do you hear that?  Kind of like a squeaking noise?"


    He stops, listening carefully.  At first, there is nothing, before he hears a noise similar to a rodent squeak, but several octaves too low, in rapid succession.  Seemingly coming from somewhere in front of them.  Looking across the destroyed yards, the house across from them has a large hole plowed through the side, siding torn and crumpled into the house, but with no sign of what caused the hole.  He hesitates before from somewhere ahead he hears a single shout and the crack of gunfire again.  It is almost immediately followed by a high pick screech of pain and the sound of buildings being torn apart again.  From over the front of the house he is staring at, a wooden board flips into the air before spiraling back down and clattering across the roof of the building.


    "Maybe you should stay here."  He murmurs to Balere as he starts to creep forward.


    A snort escapes her.  "Oh sure, the one of us that has actually killed something so far should stay here and watch the other get knocked out again.  Got it," she retorts as she ignores the advice and follows him.


    Moving forward, they look through the hole in the house, finding the interior destroyed and the path of destruction continuing into the house and around the corner.  A musky stench remains in the wake of the destruction that causes Xavier to pause as he smells it.  "What is that smell...?  Its familiar." He mutters to himself as he careful steps inside the building.  The smell gets stronger as a feeling of unease settles into his stomach and they follow the destruction through the house carefully.


    It snakes through the building, following what appears to have been a hallway at one point, based on the ruins left behind, although whatever put the hole in the wall also crashed right through the hallway walls on its way through.  The path crashes through the wall into the garage of the house, through the side wall and into the house next to it.  Stepping around the debris in the garage, something catches his eye.  A couple of drops of crimson blood on the floor of the garage.


    "Whoever is firing that gun is bleeding.  Must have gotten hurt by whatever is chasing it."  He says out loud as he crouches down and looks at the small droplets.  Ae he does, the shine of metal from under some of the debris catches his eye, and he reaches over and pulls out a club hammer from under a half collapsed bench in the wreckage.  Handle smooth from use and the faces dinged from repeated impacts, the hammer is well worn, but in good shape.  Setting the bat he has been carrying down, he replaces it with the hammer.


    Better balance for using with a shield. He hefts the garbage can lid.  Less reach though.


    Stepping through the hole in the wall and into the next door house.  Here the damage leads to a large family room and seemingly out the front door of the house, although not much is left of the door..  The house itself is eerily quiet for the amount of broken walls and furniture there was as they stand in the room  Looking around, he spots another bigger splotch of blood on the ground and walks over to it, seeing large claw marks in the carpet around it that have torn the carpet up and gouged the wood underneath.


    Balere comes over to look at the floor where he is standing, and he notices that the smell seems to be getting stronger while he is standing there.  The though tickles his mind once again that the smell is familiar to him while he looks at the swipe of the claws.  The spread on the claws are at least a foot across.  Whatever caused it had to be massive.  Which explains the giant holes in the wall, but what could it be?


    Behind him, much closer this time, the sound from before starts up again, and he freezes as he remembers.  That stink is the same as when they had to pull that raccoon out of the attic.  That sound?  The same chittering you hear raccoons make when they are talking.  But so much deeper than you normally hear it at.  From behind, in the wreckage of the doorway, the snap of wood under the foot of something heavy causes him to spin around, his vision drawn up by the overgrown raccoon looming over him.


    Standing on its hind legs and looking down at him, the raccoon was closer to the size of a bear, rising up 10 feet into the air easily as it looked down hungrily at him, as if it had found a fish served on a plate to it.


    What!?

 Chapter 5 - Bearcoon

    "Nice raccoon?" squeaks out of Xavier as he looks up at the massive raccoon standing over him, bringing the makeshift trashcan shield up in front of him.  It seemed so completely not enough compared to the creature standing in front of him.


    While the shield is still rising into place, the raccoon reaches out with both front paws to try and grab him.  Xavier knocks the overgrown hands away with the bat as he takes a half step back bringing the shield up the rest of the way.  The hollow klonk of the metal bat on knuckles echoes around the room as the chitters die down.  A short bark escapes from it, like the cross between a loud hiss and growl forced out in a huff loud enough to hurt his ears, before the creature lashes out in a flurry of swipes, the claws on the ends of its fingers grown to easily 5 inches long as they gleamed in the dark light.


    Xavier ducks under the first swipe, feeling the passage of the claw and the breeze that follows it as it passes by  directly overhead, before leaping backwards to avoid the follow up coming directly down at his head.  Slipping on a piece of debris from the destruction in this house, he stumbles backwards, only barely avoiding falling onto the ground.  The makeshift shield has several inches removed from the top as the next swing comes through, the claws tearing through the metal as he manages to push the claws back just enough to avoid them slicing into his face.


    Well, that''s not going to work.


    He lashes out with the hammer in a pause in the flurry of blows, easily landing a hit on the creatures underside.  It steps back with a hiss of pain, followed by another as he landed another, but the mass of the bearcoon easily absorbs the blows without any apparent damage as it begins to lean forward at him again.


    Not that either.


    Grabbing claws reach out towards him again as the creature comes crashing down toward him, evidently having decided to rely on size instead.  Xavier slams the shield between him and the large form as he tries franticly to activate the shield from before, trying to flex the non-existent muscle he could feel in the back of his head.  For a moment, as the weight came crashing down on him, he didn''t think he was going to pull it off.  The sensation felt slippery, as if he was grabbing it the wrong way and it was slipping from his grip.


    With barely any space left, it finally works as something clicks and the shield blossoms out from the flimsy piece of metal in his hand, hexagons forming out of the air between them as the creatures weight slams down onto the shield, causing several of the pieces to shimmer for a second before reforming.  Unfortunately, while the blow itself doesn''t connect, it doesn''t stop the weight of the bearcoon from shoving down on the shield, forcing him to the ground underneath of it.  While it still protected him from the now scrabbling claws of the creature, he was unable to move with his arm pinned against his side.  He could feel the pressure of the creature pressing down on the shield, despite the weight not actually crushing his body like it felt like it should.


    Maybe because its not actually attached to the shield?  Or maybe cause it was going into the floor?


    In his other hand the hammer was glowing, gaining in brightness as it cast stark shadows on the room around him as he could feel the shield starting to fracture, but he was unable to bring it around with the weight on top of him.  "Help!" he calls out.  His sister was in the room with him.  What was she doing?


    "Trying!" her voice calls out from somewhere beyond the bearcoon before, in a much quieter whisper. "why isn''t it working?"  He hears her slip on something before catching himself as he flails with his legs under the growing pressure he can feel on the shield as small cracks spread across its surface in front of his eyes.  Straight into the fur of the creature, through the shield itself as it doesn''t seem to block his body at all, despite the wall is presents to the creature itself as its back leg kicks back against the blows to its lower body.


    "Ha! Got it!" Balere''s voice calls out from out of sight.  A heavy thudding noise shakes the room, the footfalls of something big not even attempting to be stealthy as three-toed foot prints stomp themselves into the floor of the room towards him before a blow slams into the side of the bearcoon, throwing it off of him and rolling across the room as the shield winks out of existence.  Sucking air into his lungs, he freezes as he feels an invisible foot pass over him as whatever Balere had summoned step over him, following the bearcoon, before slamming another foot into the floor on the other side of him.


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    Once it had moved over him, he scrambled back to his feet, hefting his hammer as he turns towards the bearcoon as it backs away from something it can''t see, a look of panic in its eyes.  The bright gleam of the hammer draws its eyes back toward him as the outline of a large fist appears in the creatures fur as it takes an invisible punch that knocks it to the side with the sound of cracking bones.  *It''s taking actual damage!* He starts towards its as it rolls to the side, but stops as its claws dig into the floor, launching it back towards him, claws throwing chunks of the floor behind it.


    Xavier tries to summon the shield again for a moment, but despite being certain that he was doing the exact same thing as last time, all he got was a pain in his head, as if he was pulling on a strained muscle.  Instead, the throws himself the side at the last minute, swinging the glowing star of a hammer out behind him hoping to catch the creature with it as it charges past, and managing to clip the shoulder a fraction of a second before it would have slammed into him.  A bright flash of the energy in the hammer exploding blinds him while the force of it sends his already midair body into a fast spin that blurred the room around him and left the room spinning as he landed.


    Accompanying the impact of him hitting the floor was the loud crash of the bearcoon slamming into, and from the sounds if it, through something in the house.  Fighting the urge to vomit as the room spun around him, Xavier groans, fresh pain joining the aches from the last fight as he shifts off of the sharp remains of a chair leg that he had landed on jabbing into his side.  An angry roar echoes through the room as he can hear the bearcoon regain its feet and charge back into sight from the other room that it had went through the wall into it.


    Spotting him, it heads back towards him, the shoulder that he had connected with ruined, caved into the rest of the body and twisted around and the arm dangling limp at its side as it lumbered towards him.  Xavier started to climb back to his feet as the bearcoon, and his death, lumbered closer.  Before he could regain his feet, the bearcoon screeched as its dangling arm was grabbed by the invisible something and pulled on.  The bearcoon swings angrily in the direct that its arm is being yanked, but before the claw can connect with anything, a large foot print appears in the fur of its body and the arm stretches out.


    Shrieks of pain accompany the sound of wet tearing and blood splattering onto the floor underfoot as an unimaginable strength pulls the arm off of the bearcoon.  It begins to back away rapidly from its arm that is dangling in midair, blatant panic on its face at the traumatic injury, before its arm is whipped around and slammed into the side of its face, knocking it backwards, which the bearcoon turns into an awkward roll that points it in the direction of the hole for a front door of the house.  It takes off out the door and onto the street he can see beyond, trailing a stream of blood behind it as the gaping hole of a shoulder pours blood from it.


    Regaining his feet, Xavier charges after it past his sister hiding in the shadow of the door, noticing her almost in passing as he shouts at the back of the creature.  "Where are you going!?  Got a little hurt and decided you didn''t want to play anymore!"  Bullshit!  Knocks me around like I am nothing but takes off when it gets hurt.  Missing an arm and still able to run faster than me!  The gap between him and the bearcoon grows as it takes off across the cul-de-sac this house sat on and towards another house which would provide shelter.  Behind him, he could hear the foot falls of Balere''s summon chasing him out the door, but it wasn''t catching up to him, so it would never catch up with the creature.


    I really don''t want this thing to get the jump on my again.  Either inside that house or cause we didn''t make sure that it was dead before it decided to get revenge.


    Instead, the sound of a gunshot rings out across the cul-de-sac and a bar of light pierces the bearcoon, lancing down from the roof of one of the other houses nearby, through the middle of the bearcoon and into the ground behind it.  A crater is blown in the dirt where the bar connected to it, followed shortly by the middle of the bearcoon blossoms out in an explosion of blood and bits that splatters everything nearby, including Xavier as he skids to a stop in the middle of the road.


    Xavier looks towards the roof that the shot had came from and sees a hand shoot up out of the shadows on the room and the person hiding up there waves and stands up, revealing the dark bearded face of the man up there, half dressed.  Xavier waves back and opens his mouth to call out as the warm coppery spell of blood washes over him and some of it drips down his face into his mouth.  He pauses for a brief moment before his stomach rolls and he folds in half, vomiting all over the ground at his feet as his body begins to shake, the panic and gore getting to him.

 Chapter 6 - Sharpshooter

    Xavier rights himself, stepping away from the mess he left on the ground. "Just a moment!" he calls out, and then stomps back into the house he had just left, looking around briefly before finding a towel, and wiping the blood and otherwise off of his face while he catches his breath, ruining the towel in the process. Tossing the towel into the ruins of the house he steps back outside and looks around, spotting Balere standing near the house the man sitting on, speaking with him. The conversation trails off some as he walks up.


    "Thanks for shooting that thing. It would have sucked if it had gotten away and attacked again while we were distracted. What kind of cannon is that that anyway? Never seen a rifle blow something apart quite like that."


    "That was the biggest raccoon I have ever seen! I didn''t think they got that big, it was the size of a bear, maybe bigger. Just this hunting rifle. Its never done that before though. Kinda messy though, you are covered. Thanks, by the way. You saved me there. It had me trapped there for a minute before it heard you stomping about and got curious. Gave me time to get out of there and hide up here. I didn''t expect it to come running out here missing an arm. Especially not being chased by a guy with a...is that a trash can lid? Trash lid shield and a hammer."


    "Ha. It is, its been a long night... We got woke up about an hour ago by something knocking our front door across the living room and into the far wall. Watched the neighbor get pulled through a portal in the air and fought some weird overgrown praying mantis kind of thing that broke through her window and attacked us. You seen any crazy shit over here? I mean, beyond the bearcoon there."


    "Nope. Woke up to some screaming out on the street. Grabbed the gun and was looking out the window when that thing came through the wall and started chasing me. I put a couple of rounds into it while I was running from it but it didn''t seem to slow it down any. Door didn''t slow it down any, neither did the wall. You got any idea what is happening out here?"


    "Nope, your the first person I have seen since this all started. But there is some kind of portal," Xavier points off into the distance towards downtown, "if you look over that way. I saw something that looked like a dragon fly out of it and the other direction. We were trying to find someone who had any idea what was going on, figured maybe we head towards the beach, see if we can get a boat or something and get out to water until shit settles down. Unless we find some information before then. Phones are dead, if you haven''t tried them yet. You aren''t the only one that can do new things though. Both of us seem to have gained what almost seems like magical abilities. Only reason we aren''t another victim in this so far."


    Xavier rubs his face, the lack of sleep and double hit of shock and adrenaline taking its toll as he starts to feel the weight of the nights activities settling on him. "I have the beginnings of a vague idea though. I think it is all tied to that portal downtown. If you get the right angle on it, you can see that it doesn''t go anywhere here. You can see through into the tunnel inside, but it goes up into the air a bit, and there is nothing behind it. At least some, maybe all, of the new weird creatures that I have seen tonight probably came from it, given the dragon-like thing we saw fly out of it. I think whatever is causing the abilities maybe came from it as well? I certainly wasn''t able to do this yesterday. That, or I am losing my mind and this is all some kind of mental break or weird dream."


    Both Balere and the hunter, who hadn''t provided his name yet Xavier realized, before the hunter started to talk. "As good of a guess as anything I guess. I don''t think your going to make it on foot to the beach tonight though. Or much of anywhere else since you don''t really know where you are going. Perhaps you need to find a spot to hunker down and wait for morning and see where things stand then. Better to be prepared than running headlong into another encounter like this. Eventually your luck is going to give out and it will be you dead on the ground. At least if the rest of the city is like this."


    Looking at Balere, Xavier could see the exhaustion slowly setting in for her as well, a slump as the adrenaline faded and the normalcy of conversation in this relatively quiet corner of the suburb allowing the fact she had only had a couple of hours of sleep to settle in. "That''s probably a good idea. I couldn''t think of anyplace that seemed safe against creatures that can kick doors across rooms." He turns and looks at the holes in several of the houses nearby. "Or charge through walls like that for that matter. Not trying to chase you out of some shelter if you have any, but you got any ideas on where to hide from that?"


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    "I got some. Some of them are probably a bad idea if there is a chance that everything actually goes back to normal at some point. A bank vault could be defendable if you could get in, and definitely safe-ish, but would look really bad if you got caught there in the morning. If it is as bad as it sounds, that''s probably not a worry, would still leave getting into something like that. My bet would be something big, like an office building, since it would give a lot of space, or something made out of concrete, since it would be harder to destroy. Like maybe a parking garage or something."


    Like a lightbulb in his head, it struck him. No idea why I didn''t think of this before. Must have been panicking too hard. "I think I actually have an idea then. The office I work at isn''t too far from here. Another hour, maybe a little more being careful to not run into anything. They got a garage, and I can probably get into the building. Wouldn''t get into too much trouble for being there, all things considered. Plus a bunch of interior windows with no windows, so we could have some light without giving ourselves away. Thanks...uhh, what was your name?"


    "Gareth. Look, if your not opposed to it, I can tag along. Something is going on here, and even if its calm here now, that thing crashed through something like 4 houses, and none of my neighbors are splattered or screaming in panic, so something happened here as well. Safety in numbers?"


    Xavier glances over at Balere for a moment, half expecting her to object, but she just shrugs. "He could have just ran."


    "Fair enough. Sure, that gun might come in useful if you can pull that trick off again."


    "Let me go find some actual clothes then and gather a couple of things up, like more bullets." Gareth gets up and walks over to the side of the house, climbing down out of sight before wandering across the street and into one of the damaged houses.


    Xavier turns back to Balere, "You doing ok? You saved me back there. Again. That thing was about to squish me."


    She looks embarrassed for a moment, "Barely. That was a little harder to actually do than I thought it would be. I guess I should have practiced first. Or just kept it around."


    "Yea, it was like trying to pick something up when your arm is asleep. We haven''t really had time to do anything yet. Hopefully we can get to the office without too much issue and get a breather. Does this one look the same? The last one seemed to freak you out a bit."


    "Kinda? Not really, this one is less...alien? Not that it mattered much when it ripped that arm off. That was gross." She makes a face. "You think we are going to be alright? This seems like a big deal. Gareth made a good point. Things are torn up, but we haven''t passed nearly enough destruction or carnage to explain the lack of people. Phones were down. If this is happening elsewhere..." She trails off quietly.


    "Hey, we will be alright. I got this weird shield to keep you safe. And you can call on the monsters to beat things up. Perfect team." He grins as he reaches over a messes up an already destroyed head of hair. "We just got to figure out what''s going on. Maybe we can find something besides monsters that came through that portal that will explain things instead of attacking us. I doubt anyone here has explanation for alien mantis, bearcoon, and giant dragon that doesn''t somehow involve aliens."


    She laughs. "Maybe the mantis thing, that looked like an alien. If it came through that portal from another world, doesn''t that technically make it an alien? Oh, he is back." She looks over his shoulder as the sound of footsteps on the asphalt can be heard. Xavier turns around to see Gareth walk back up dressed in denim and a t-shirt, heavily tanned, bearded face pivoting around and watching the road.


    "Well shit, we are being invaded by aliens I guess. You got what you need?"


    "Yuh. Where we headed?"


    Xavier turns till he isn''t quite looking back towards downtown but instead off towards one side. "That way, roughly. I didn''t even think of it at first cause it was closer to downtown instead of away from it, but I think that''s far enough off to the side we will be fine. Plus, the majority of the problems seem to be outward." Motioning back towards the fading wall of chaos.


    Gareth and Balere both grimace at the direction. "Yup, back towards the portal seems terrible, unless this entire thing takes a sudden shift for some reason. Still, someplace to hide is better than being here with the holy houses that everything seems to be able to walk through." Balere comments, then shrugs. "Lets get moving though. I am tired and getting more tired by the minute. I''m going to be ready to collapse after another hour of sneaking around."


    "Agreed. Lets get this over with" Xavier starts off down the road again, headed towards the office and hopefully safety for a moment or two. Balere sticks close behind him while Gareth lags slightly further back, keeping a watch on the groups rear. Behind them, there is the clatter and crash of one of the damaged houses giving up and collapsing on itself.


    "Insurance is never going to pay out on this. That was my house if it was any." Gareth mutters to himself, shaking his head. Around them, the clamor of the invasion they were hiding from fading in the distance, the suburbs they were stalking through grew quiet once more, as you would expect for the dark hours of the night. The only sign of things gone wrong the occasional wreckage of a house or car.

 Chapter 7 - Office Invasion

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    Xavier peers out across the street at his work. The office building and attached parking garage was back towards downtown, and the buildings were fairly small and cramped on the corner of the block. There was one lone light left lit on the second floor, but the area otherwise looked empty. No broken windows to torn open doors, although there was another entrance into the attached garage that they couldn''t see from here.


    Tucked into an alley across the street, they watched to see if anything moved. The trip over had been nerve wracking. On the way, they had passed by the park at the edge of his neighborhood. A skittering sound that made him think of spiders drew his attention to the park. Moving away from it he peered into the darkness of the park, thinking of the bearcoon. But the park was pretty open and didn''t appear to be hiding any monsters to jump out at them.


    But as he had stared into the park as they walked by, he had seen an odd warping of the air over by the gazebo. While the park was dark he was still able to see through it better than he ever had prior to tonight, with the same dim illumination that he had noticed since he woke up after the first fight. The air in front of the gazebo twisted and pulled in on itself, as if something was tugging on it from the other side or it was flowing down a drain.


    For a brief moment his sight had shifted, depicting an overgrown forest scene, covered in a thick webbing that resembled spider silk was was coating everything visible as if they had been poured on rather than spun over it. A massive spider like creature sporting an extra pair of legs had reached down and rolled something over in the webbing before spraying it with more webs that steamed with a blue vapor as a moaning noise escaped the webbing briefly, before his vision had returned to the park.


    He shudders, shaking off the memory and refocusing on the office complex across the road from them. Balere''s foot shifts behind him, the sounds of small pebbles shifting underfoot loud on the eerily quiet street. There was usually some form of traffic through here, even at night. It was close enough to downtown to get the occasional passerby, but not tonight. The silence was deafening.


    "I''m tired of standing in this alley and I don''t see anything. Unless either of you thinks we should wait longer, lets get this over with and see if we can get inside?" He turns and looks over his shoulder at Balere and Gareth crouched behind him. Gareth had pulled out a monocular and was staring at the office as well, but put it away as he started to stand.


    "I haven''t seen anything," Gareth replied. "But that light concerns me, especially if its not normally left on. Something could have gotten in. At the least it draws attention to the building."


    Nodding, he looks at Balere "Not that I am aware of anyway. Granted I am not usually the first one here. You good?"


    "Yea, just tired." She stands and brushes her knees off. "Lets do this."


    Hefting his makeshift shield and hammer, he starts off across the road towards the parking garage entrance. Might as well check that entrance, plus since the building still has power, his keycard should work to get them into the building. Better than standing out in the open on the road while they try to get past the front door lock. That one had an actual lock and lockpicking was never a skill he had picked up. Felt dirty, even if there were good reasons to know how. Plus the garage would be far easier to flee from if they ran into something than the interior of the building.


    Stepping up to the dark entrance of the garage, he peers into the first floor of the garage. No cars. Well, except for that dusty piece of crap that has sat in the corner for the last 2 years. Management must know something about it, nothing was ever done about it despite the garage only being used by the company. Not even any decent lights in here, just a couple of dim domes that barely illuminated directly under them let alone the rest of the garage.


    "You two able to see in here? I have been able to see like dimly since I got knocked out earlier, but didn''t think to bring it up with everything else going on."


    "Yea, almost like trying to see by a nightlight since I summoned that thing."


    "Same, since bearcoon exploded. Useful, and the least of the weird shit tonight, but I wonder how?"


    "No clue, but happy to abuse it." Stepping into the garage and not seeing anything moving around he starts forward before pausing. "Do we want to check upstairs or just try to go inside? It''s just an open top floor."


    "Probably just go inside, are there windows upstairs that look onto the garage? We could just cheat and check it out from inside if so." Gareth chimes in, never looking away from the ramp up.


    "Good call, lets not bite off more work than we need to tonight." He advances across the first floor, stepping up to the large metal door set into the wall that was shared with the office itself. The blue paint across its surface was chipped and weathered, no effort having been put into maintaining it recently. Why bother, when the only people to regularly see it were employees. Fishing in his pocket, he pulls out his keycard and presses it up against the reader, wincing as a loud chirp echoes out from the reader as it detects the card. There is a brief pause before the light on the reader turns green and the thunk of the magnetic lock disengaging comes from the door.


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    "Step 1, easy. Probably a bad sign given how the night is going." He mutters under his breath before moving to the door and cautiously pulling it open as Gareth trains his rifle on the opening entry. Gareth nods as nothing comes into view and Xavier spins around the door, bringing his shield up in front of him, feeling vaguely like he was playing a video game. Probably best to not have that thought. I get stabbed by something and its not going to feel like a video game.  In front of him, a hallway leading deeper into the office for about 40 feet, door splitting off occasionally and dead ending into another. Immediately to the left, a set of stairs that lead to the second floor.


    "Balere, can you watch these stairs while we check the rest of the floor? Anything dangerous shows up have your friend squish it or run." He glances at her as she nods with a scared look on her face. "We will come running if anything happens. It will be alright, and then we can take a break." Rather keep an eye on Gareth, don''t know him yet. Not that he has done anything concerning yet... Speaking of.  "Gareth, make sure that door clicks shut behind you, last thing we need is something wandering in behind us."


    Gareth nods and pulls the door shut behind him as Balere moves to the base of the stairs and begins to watch them as if she expects the stairs themselves to attack her. Maybe they will, won''t be the weirdest thing tonight. Close to it though.  Xavier chuckles for a bit before moving to the first door and popping it open. No room in the hallway to let Gareth get a good sightline into it. Breakroom, but of a mess with chairs pulled out and scattered around and several napkins on the table, like someone had a meal and didn''t clean up after themselves. No window to the outside thankfully.


    Next two doors were bathrooms, which were quickly cleared as well, finding nothing hiding in them. The door to the next room was locked, the placard on the door labeled "Security". That door was always locked, but they should probably play it safe and find a way into that door eventually. The last 4 side rooms on the hallway were admin offices, apparently untouched since the people that work in them had left at the end of the last workday. No windows there either, thankfully. At least the core of the first floor is safeish.


    "We can be seen from the outside for everything else in here, so keep an eye out the windows as well as we move into the next area." Gareth nods as he squares up behind Xavier, gun pointed over his should. I really hope he doesn''t have to use that here. I''ll wish I was deaf.  Xavier pushes the door open, peering out into the back of the reception area. The receptionists phone lay scattered across the desk like it had been dropped in a hurry but no noise came from the headset. Looking around the front area, the doors was shut and no windows were broken in. Stepping around the receptionist''s desk he confirmed the front doors were locked shut. "I think someone has been here, though maybe one of the employees given the fact everything is still locked up."


    "Found out the phones are useless it looks like. Think they fled? Or maybe they are the source of the light upstairs." Gareth replies while looking into the other offices that led down one side of the open space out here one by one, and closing the doors behind him.


    Xavier shrugs. "I wouldn''t mind finding another person alive in this insanity. But I guess we will find out. Probably by walking face first into them. I''m not going to go calling for anyone until we know its safe in here. Anything that way?"


    "Nope, all clear. Some of your coworkers are slobs."


    Xavier chuckles. "Yea, unfortunately. Hopefully its not one of them that''s been through here. Lets get back out of sight." He turns back toward the door leading into the back when a thump echoes through the room from the ceiling. He freezes, looking at the ceiling where the sound had originated from. "Definitely something or someone upstairs. Great..." He sighs and continues back toward the door, waiting for Gareth to pass him and closing it behind him.


    Back down the hallway, he finds Balere standing in the corning of the stairwell staring up it. "Did you hear that? The thump? Something is upstairs! I heard it!" The panic in Balere''s voice was palpable as she stares up the flight of stairs.


    "I heard it. Stay behind me, lets go see what it is. Might be one of my coworkers. We found the phone in the front off of the hook and someone left the breakroom a mess. Be ready anyway."


    Creeping up the stairs, at the top he finds the hallway lights upstairs turned on, flooding light into the stairwell. Someone or something is scared of the dark.  Peering out into the hallway, he sees more signs of someone here, a bag left in one corner, with a cell phone discarded next to it. No sign of the person though. To the right he sees an office with the door open, lights on and shining out into the dark outside. Stepping over, he peers cautiously into the room, and seeing no one turns the light off and closes the door.


    Heading to the next door he pauses before turning back to Balere near the stairs and pointing at the lights overhead and then the switch on the wall next to her. She nods, turning the lights off. The top floor had a ring hallway that ran around it separating the exterior offices that had windows, and the ones for the drones that were clustered in the middle of the floor and didn''t have windows. No reason to flash a light in each one when he popped the doors.


    He made it about halfway around the floor, popping the exterior offices and confirming nothing in them, while Balere and Gareth followed behind, keeping an eye on the interior offices while he worked. From behind, he heard another thump from one of the interior offices and spun, leaving the door he was about to open closed. Peering at his group to make sure they were ready he crept over to the door, took a deep breath and pushed the door open.


    From within he heard a female screech as the face of Laura, the front desk receptionist jumped into view, her face contorted into a rictus of panic and she slammed into him, pushing him back slightly as he absorbed the impact. He felt a hot sharp pain in his side, and he looks down to spot the handle of a knife protruding from him side.


    Well, that''s not good.