Sen knew the moment he sailed out of the window that the flight ability Mortal Commandment gave him was a weak one. He drifted away from the window at the speed of a casual stroll, and as the seconds ticked away, Sen was sure that the duration of his Ability would run out far before he reached the bottom.

As versatile as the Ability was, it seemed it still needed a little help at this stage to perform well.

“I’m going ahead,” Em told him, as she swiveled in the air before kicking off the side of a building. She shot down like a bullet, the push aiding her flight’s otherwise sedate velocity, as she muttered her weapon incantation to summon her massive, reaper’s scythe. The weapon extended from her arm as she sped towards the screeching arthropod below.

Sen followed after her without pause, bursting away from the side of the building with a resounding thump! Sen rocketed down after Em. He reached out with his hands, sending psionic tendrils out with his Flow to latch onto the monster’s back. Below him, the lobster rampaged through the streets, chasing the two humans in front of it—an old Indian man and a girl that looked like his daughter, sprinting between cars even as the lobster knocked them aside like toys. Its giant spider legs speared straight through windshields, and its claws snipped away at street lamps, sending them toppling and crashing down.

Human – Tier 0

Human – Tier 0

[Elite] Lumbering Creepback – Tier 1

The monster smashed its claw down on a nearby motorcycle, flattening it into tin and flipping it over, before sending it whipping down towards the two on the street. It missed them. Barely. And then a blur reached them, and Em was there, floating down and meeting a swollen lobster’s claw with her scythe. She hooked onto it and wrenched down, the sparks flying from the creepback’s shell, as she pulled its strike to the ground. It hit the concrete; cracked it.

Sen wasn’t far behind. He used the psionic forces to guide his velocity down towards the monster, wrenching himself towards the creature with invisible strands of psionic energy. He plummeted down, a blur, descending down feet-first like an armored, human nail.

“Sen Salazar is extremely heavy.”

The decree rippled through him, increasing his weight by several factors. Sen uttered a second commandment—one that increased his durability—and he crashed his feet into the giant crustacean with a deafening boom. Its legs gave way underneath it as it smashed into the concrete, bursting the asphalt, before releasing a pained shriek that sounded like a squealing, butchered pig. Its shell cracked. Two of its legs snapped and sickly, green blood spurted onto the road.

Sen dismissed his first commandment, leaping away before the extra weight could bring him down. He landed with a roll, stumbling forward as the shock of the impact vibrated up and down his legs like aftershocks.

That attack really wasn’t his brightest idea, but it was far from ineffective.

He sprinted away from the downed elite monster as it stumbled upright, and the many, scab-like patterns on its shelled back opened into dark holes that led inside its body. Giant, fleshy tendrils flooded out of its shell, tipped with beaked mouths and vicious spikes. They whipped and crashed as the creature fell into a frenzy, smashing cars and storefronts with reckless abandon.

Three tentacles shot towards Sen just as the Flow in his [Bone Armor] surged.

Clawed shields formed on his arms. Sen raised them to block.

Bang!

The impact rang through him, dampened by Psionic Force’s invisible barrier. Sen stayed unfazed as the Tier 1 elite struck him with his claw, its blows bouncing off his shields. The tendrils on its back snaked around, flanking him—

And then a blur of motion joined him, and Em lopped them off with her scythe, twirling her weapon in a storm of steel and death. She sliced apart all the countless tentacles that drew near. The lobster raised its claw to smash Sen a second time, but he didn’t stand there and take it. He rushed forward, shields at the ready, and he met its barbed pincers with a shielded uppercut.

[Shield Bash] blasted Flow into the creepback’s claw in rippling waves, cracking its outer shell as for a moment, the monster froze.

“Sen hits like a truck.”

Sen tripled the commandment’s effect with his daily active and followed with a second, cataclysmic [Shield Bash]. The impact displaced the air and blasted into the monster’s claw, sending it reeling upward. And while Mortal Commandment still wasn’t capable of augmenting his strikes to actually hit like trucks, this much was enough. Sen stepped in and smashed his shields against the lobster again. Another boom. Another sickening crack as more of its exoskeleton splintered.

From there on, it wasn’t much of a fight as it was a slaughter. For thirty seconds, Sen’s strengthened Mortal Commandment let him hammer blows into the creature without end. It tried to fight back, but he was unstoppable in his assault. Sen deflected every clumsy strike and countered with shell-shattering blows. And when it tried to attack him with its extra limbs, Em was there, covering him with the augmented, unnatural grace of her Tier 1 stats combined with her Ability’s absurd buffs.

Together, they were a recipe for carnage. Especially for a monster they countered so perfectly.

Sen and Em tore into the creepback with systematic savagery. Sen shattered its legs until it fell, and then he pummeled it in the side until the strikes tipped it over. Once its fleshy underbelly was exposed, the two of them ripped into it with their claws and blades. Cutting, slicing. Slowly rending apart it from head down to tail.

By the time Sen’s thirty seconds were up, the elite monster was just a pile of twitching, shredded seafood on the road.

Absorbing Essence [64/133] – [Elite] Lumbering Creepback [Tier 1] x1

Essence streamed out of the monster in a thick, orange mist. It split into four parts, most of it flooding into Sen and Em, while a fraction stayed to hover around the two people they’d saved. Despite that, Sen found himself frowning. The battle had drained him of a fifth of his increased Flow reserves—enough to tell him just how wide the gap between an elite and a boss was.

The essence vampire he’d killed was far more intimidating, despite its small size. Sen was sure he never had the chance to see what it was really capable of. It had played with them at first, and then he’d caught it with a fatal weakness.

Even the second time around, Sen had no doubt it wasn’t fully recovered when he’d killed it. It had been slower, its psionic blasts less frequent. The boss had been vicious, but he’d killed it thanks to its overconfidence. As he was now, however…

Sen wasn’t sure how he and Em would fare against it.

They would survive, surely. But killing it at full strength seemed like a daunting task. One full of risks he wasn’t yet comfortable with tackling. Sen considered how he would fight that thing now. Now that he had a better understanding of his Ability and more reliable Attributes and Skills. What would it take for him and Em to kill another boss? How about a commander? Or hell, a nightmare?

It seemed like such an impossible thing for the both of them. But before Sen could delve into the idea any deeper, the two survivors they saved warily approached from across the street.

“T-Thank you,” the Indian man with a flashlight said to Em, who was talking to them, and Sen turned around.

He blinked.

“Bali?” Sen asked, and Bali’s eyes lit up in recognition as he pointed the flashlight his way. The Indian’s face widened into a tired grin of relief, the tension in his shoulders draining just a little more.

“I remember you!” Bali said, stepping forward to look him up and down. He carried a young girl in his arms, no older than twelve. “God must truly love me to show me a familiar face now. How are you, ah… Ben?”

“It’s Sen. How are you?”

Bali winced, and his pale-faced daughter only leaned into his arms, burying her face into Bali’s chest. She hugged him tight as Bali gave Sen an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, my friend,” he said. “I am not good with names. Age makes things… hard. I hope you aren’t upset with me.”

Sen laughed and smiled, raising his hand in an attempt to pacify Bali’s look of embarrassment. “No, no. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I’m just happy to see another survivor again.”

The man nodded, before bowing his head in thanks. “I am too, my friend. Thank you for saving me and Tasha.”

“Ah—please don’t bow to me. I just…”

Thankfully, Bali spared him from any further awkwardness. The man looked up and smiled, his face gaunt and his eyes tired. And yet, Sen could tell that relief filled the man in the way that his shoulders relaxed, and in the way that his exhaustion seemed to catch up with him all at once. Bali put his hands and Sen’s shoulders and squeezed.

“I just want to say thank you again, my friend. Really,” Bali told him, before turning his smile to Em. “And you as well, miss…”

She smiled. “Em. Your daughter’s name is Tasha?”

Bali nodded, patting the crying little girl on the back. He whispered small reassurances to her, his calloused hands running along her hair until her sniffles turned inaudible. Bali kissed the top of his daughter’s head before turning his gaze back to them. “I’m sorry you found us like this. The past few days have been…”

“Not good,” Em said, and Bali smiled sadly.

“Protecting her has been hard. This… interface is hard to get a grasp on—game-like, no? I struggle to understand a lot of it, but you—” he looked at Em as her regalia dissipated into red sparks, returning her to her normal appearance. Bali smiled, relieved. “You two look like you have it figured out. It gives me relief to know that. Are you also trying to find the Maladh?”

Sen raised an eyebrow at him. “Maladh?”

“Haven,” Em said, blinking at Bali. “That’s what it means, right? There’s a group of other survivors?”

Bali nodded. “Yes, my friend. The broadcast came yesterday—I have been waiting to hear one from my car’s radio. Some members of Dubai’s police force have constructed a shelter in The Sustainable City near Al Qudra.”

Sen and Em shared a glance.

“That’s… far,” Sen said, looking around. “At least thirty kilometers away from here. You were planning on going there on foot?”

“I don’t have much of a choice, my friend. The roads in this part of Al Warqaa are all blocked.”

“Right. Sorry,” he said, and Em pursed her lips. She looked around them, and Sen noticed the small shapes in the darkness all around. It was night; a time for the beasts to sleep and the vampires to wait underground. But even still, their fight had attracted attention. Sen spotted a swarm of dark, scuttling shells, crawling in and out of the corals like cockroaches. Except these were bigger than that—they were the size of cats, hundreds of them—all slowly drawing closer to the lumbering creepback’s corpse.

Em grabbed his arm and nodded towards Bali. “Let’s continue this somewhere else,” she said. “I don’t like being out here like this. Even at night.”

Sen nodded as he pointed to the building behind them, back to the apartment.

“Come inside with us for now, Bali. We can figure things out once we’re in a safer place. Can you check the elite for Skill Orbs, Em?”

“Got it.”

Bali nodded. “That building doesn’t have any monsters in it?”

Em smiled as she came back from the corpse with a faint, green marble between her bloody fingers. “If you don’t count Sen? No.”

“That’s good,” Bali smiled, pointing his flashlight around, until he spotted the building they pointed to. The Al Reem building stood infested with corals on the outside, with these almost fungal-looking growths spearing out from its right face. Many of the corals lined its corners in protruding dinnerplate-shapes, their edges glowing a faint blue in the darkness. Bali hesitated. “Do either of you need light? I do not mind leading the way, but…”

He looked down at his daughter, who was asleep in one of his arms. Sen shook his head and stepped forward, patting Bali on the back. “Em and I can see in the darkness just fine. It’s a Skill. Do you have any, Bali?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve yet to do anything but increase my Attributes by accident, and it changed me. I felt it. The idea of poking at it any more is… intimidating.”

“We’ll help you out. Come on—let’s get your daughter inside.”

Bali nodded, and Sen stepped past him to lead the way. He and Em walked next to each other as they pushed through the lobby doors, pushing away the curtains and cardboard boxes they’d used to cover the windows. The inside of the building was pitch-black as a result, all looming shadows and dark, gaping halls.

Behind them, Sen heard Bali humming a faint lullaby to his daughter, so silent that he wouldn’t have heard it without his five ranks in Mind.

Em glanced at him, her lips pursed.

“So there’s a place to go after all,” she said, her voice soft. She gave him a conflicted look, her face hesitant. “What do we do? Do we not? At Belmont?”

“You’re asking if we’ll go there to check for Assad and the others anyway?”

“Yeah,” Em said. “Do we? What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know what I want to do,” Sen replied, and the air between them turned quiet. Tap, tap, their feet echoed, the sound bouncing off the walls as they ascended the stairs. And as they reached the third floor, Sen released a low, steady breath. “But I do know what we should do.”

Em smiled sadly. ”You always have more of a stomach for these things than I do. I always end up asking you to say the tougher answers, because I don’t want to be responsible for where those answers will bring us.”

“You wouldn’t be, even if you did. We’re just doing our best, Em. We’re… capable, I think. At least capable of surviving. We can save people.”

“So we go to Belmont University anyway?”

He nodded. “We go to Belmont. Academic City’s the same way as where this Maladh is, anyway. We’ll just be stopping by the university to see if we can bring more people with us there. It’s not what I want to do, not deep down, but I don’t think I can stand just ignoring it.”

“Me neither. I have… friends, there. People I’d like to save, if I can.”

“You and me both. I have my club mates and Nissa to look for.”

“Nissa? You have a girlfriend?”

Sen scoffed. “Don’t look like it’s strange for me to have one,” he said, before pausing. “But… no, she isn’t my girlfriend. She actually turned me down a year ago.”

Em hummed a note of contemplation as they reached the fourth floor, but didn’t reply. Sen led the group forward to his apartment room, where he helped Bali lay his daughter down on the couch. They placed a blanket over her so that she could sleep soundly, while Sen and Em left Bali to look over her as they stepped back into his room.

There, on his desk, was a sunflower. It was bright and yellow, still, but its petals were beginning to look shriveled, and its leaves dropped down like sad little arms. Em watched as he brushed his fingers over them, before he tipped a bottle of water into the pot.

He sighed as the dry soil drank it in.

Sen had made a mental promise to take care of the flower in his mind, but how? It was already a miracle that it had survived this long. And soon, without normal sunlight, it would die.

Sen closed his eyes and remembered what his tía told him, once. Her reason for sending him sunflowers in the UAE, once he’d told her on the phone how homesick he was. She’d told him that sunflowers represented lasting happiness. That so long as the sunflowers could greet the morning, it didn’t matter how cold or quiet the night before was. It was a symbol to help him power through four years of college overseas, after his tía sent him to Dubai without any explanation. She told him he was a sunflower, waiting for daybreak.

She told him that a sunrise would eventually come. And yet, the sunflower was here on his lap, wilting away in the darkness of his room.

“Sorry, tía,” Sen muttered. “But this night might be the coldest and longest by far.”

And then he heard Em sigh and step forward, before poking him on the forehead.

Sen blinked. Em pushed her finger forward, forcing his gaze up from the flower to look her in the eyes. She sighed. “What are you looking so glum for, you idiot?” She sat down next to him with a puff, the bed creaking underneath. Em swiped the flower from his lap, setting it down on top of hers. She poked at it and smiled. “We’ll just stop by a Carrefour or some other supermarket for some grow lights. I won’t let this little guy die. Not when it’s the only pretty thing you own.”

He blinked, going quiet, as he watched her boop the plant with her finger. Then—he released an exasperated breath and smiled as well. “You’re right,” he said. “The sunflower stays with us.”

“It bloody better. I’ve watered it twice. It’s my baby now.”

“You’re gonna snap the stem if you keep poking it like that, though.”

Em froze and hurriedly pulled her hand away, as if the plant had just bitten her. “Sorry,” she told it, sporting her usual impish grin. Sen smiled at the sight as he stood up from the bed, stretching.

“I’m going to go prepare some food for Bali and his daughter. Do you want anything?”

“Scrambled eggs. And bread. There’s a loaf that’s gonna go bad tomorrow.”

Sen nodded. “Sure. I’ll—”

Tap!

They paused as the sound came from the window. A small, plinking noise, almost inaudible as it struck the glass. Then, it came again. Tap, tap! Sen and Em looked at each other, wary, as a low chorus of tapping filled the world outside. It almost sounded like rainfall, but…

It was undoubtedly different. Em got to her feet, her Flow circulating. Sen activated [Bone Armor] as he peeled the curtains away with one hand, and—they stopped. The two of them stared outside, into the dark corals of Dubai. Little, white crystals struck the glass, the corals, and the concrete.

Sen and Em stared.

Salt rained from the sky.