The chieftain's troop of five walked at the slow pace of the shaman down the driveway. Once they reached the parking lot, the hulking fur clad leader paused, sniffed the air for several seconds, then dropped to all fours and began to run. The shaman stayed behind while the three others in the group surrounded it like protectively, like an honor guard. The big goblin was fast at a run, and the way it moved reminded Dan of video he had watched of hyenas chasing down an antelope. It circled the building, pausing briefly at each group of three. There were eight such trios, spaced evenly about the building at a distance of fifteen to twenty feet from the walls, one group at each corner and one group at the midpoint of each side. The leader of each group chuffed quietly to the chieftain as it passed. Finally, having gathered its intelligence, the big goblin arrived back in the front parking lot and rejoined its original group, where it seemed to have a brief conversation with the old, deceptively frail shaman.

The chieftain howled. It was an eerie, echoing wail, part wolf, part cougar, part nothing Dan had heard before, and the sound seemed to cut through him like a wet, cold wind. The goblins sprang to action. In the front of the building, the trio at the center of the wall joined with the chieftain's group and the trio on one corner. Together, they rushed the glass double doors that were the main entrance to the building, the chieftain in the lead.

The structure was built into the gradual rise of a hill, and a driveway ran up its west side from the front parking lot to a smaller lot in the back. A wide, short concrete stairway, only a few steps, led from the rear parking lot to the entrance into the second story. Three more trios converged and swarmed the stairs to that door. With surprising synchronicity, the doors on the first and second floors shattered. Goblins, it seemed, were unfamiliar with glass, and a few were cut as they crashed through and into the building. Dan could not see the cacophony of green gray bodies burst through the upper door, reform into trios and spread out to search each room. He had set his rooftop sensory locus closer to the back of the roof than to the front, but as they climbed the stairs and the angle grew more severe, even his super human vision was obstructed by the sight line. He did not much mind because his focus was on the first floor, as were he and the greater number of the strange beings who had come to kill him. These, he could see, and hear, and smell, and system identify, and echolocate, and thermal image, very clearly indeed.

Dan's second sensory locus floated, invisible, in the middle of the broad central hallway that normally channeled lawyers, secretaries, paralegals, clients, insurance agents, financial planners and couriers to their various offices. Now it was host to eleven fierce, unearthly predators armed with stone age weapons, and it was lit only by their torches. Dan stood, breathing as quietly as he could, in the utility closet down the hall. He gently leaned his snow shovel shield against the wall to free his left hand to take the building's master circuit breaker switch. There was little gain in wishful thinking; he knew that well. Still, he really, really hoped this was gonna work. He could not think of any reasonable scenario where he would survive a fair fight against twenty-nine alien hunters experienced in violence.

The broad hallway was floored with wide, cream colored ceramic tiles that mud and salt quickly turned an ugly, cloudy gray. Generally there was a large, thin commercial rug that covered the entrance and helped a bit, but Dan had removed it and used it to jam a door in one of the first floor offices, just as a diversion. The offices were carpeted, but the ceramic tiles flowed, unbroken, into the men's room a third of the way down on the east side of the hall and into the women's room directly across from it, roughly fifty feet from the door to his hiding place. Water flowed back from each restroom and covered the tile in a thin sheet, steadily trickling out. Dan waited to see if his pursuers would investigate.

They did. After kneeling to snuff the water and conferring with the shaman, the chieftain directed one trio into each restroom. It was the obvious choice; they were the only source of sound or movement, both from the water that poured steadily from plugged sinks. Why there was water pressure Dan could not guess - he was just glad it worked. He could not see through the bathroom walls (why didn't he have x-ray vision among his super senses?), and so just waited for a count of four-one-thousand before he flipped the switch and set off his trap.

In each bathroom, an extension cord ran from the electrical outlet in the hallway into the room where the cord was then stripped and the bare wire looped just inside the doorway. Bathroom electrical outlets, Dan knew, had ground fault interrupt protection, but he hoped that the hall outlet did not. Less than twenty seconds had passed since the troop had broken through the glass doors and into the building. As soon as Dan flipped the circuit breaker, a whole lot began to happen at once. The lights turned on. The smoke alarms detected the torches (they had battery backups, but he'd removed the batteries) and began to blare. Overhead sprinklers started to sputter and rain. Both restrooms erupted in pained howls. Dan activated Unerring Aim [Self], and began to whirl his sling about his head with his right hand and grabbed the door knob with his left. The goblins in his watery electrocution trap tried to scramble through the suddenly painful water that coated the floor and get back out into the hall, but hit loops of exposed live wire and collapsed in convulsions. One of the chieftains retinue, a level four guard, displayed impressive willpower when it dashed through the electrified puddle into the men's room only to fall to the same wire trap. The Chieftain roared and spun around. It seemed desperate to find something it could hit. The goblins in the hall were less affected by the shocks than those in the bathrooms had been, but all were having some difficulty dealing with them.

Dan was outnumbered dozens to one. He needed to fight dirty, and he needed this distraction. He used it. The knob turned. He kicked the door open with his right foot as he grabbed the snow shovel in his left hand, the sling still spinning about his head, and stepped out into the hallway. Everything moved as if in slow motion, the next few seconds carved in granite in his tactical precognition. The sling bullet launched from its pouch and flew, true to the name of the aether ability, unerringly into the head of the Goblin Shaman, who sank, boneless, like a helium balloon with a fast leak. As it fell, it dimmed rapidly in Dan's aether sense, but a small amulet that hung around its limp neck continued to glow. He had no time to wonder at this.

Before the lead projectile had even hit, the chieftain threw its spear back at Dan, followed shortly by the spears of the two remaining warriors in its honor guard. The snow shovel blocked the chieftain's spear only partially, but while it punched through the aluminum its trajectory was shunted safely off to the side. One of others missed completely, and the third spear, Dan caught out of the air with his right hand. Two steps took him to the last door in the hall, which was both a stairway to the second floor and an emergency exit via a back door that led to a steep, short stairwell carved into the hill up to the rear parking lot. The entire fight had taken only a handful of seconds. He slipped into the stairway, closed the door, and raced toward the top, still holding the pilfered spear as the surviving goblins chased him. The combination of system enhanced agility and truly superhuman reflexes and perception really was amazing. As he ran, he spared a fraction of a second for the system messages that had floated into his consciousness.

Monster Defeated, Common Goblin (lvl 1). Aether Gained.

Monster Defeated, Common Goblin (lvl 1). Aether Gained.

Monster Defeated, Common Goblin (lvl 2). Aether Gained.

Monster Defeated, Goblin Warrior (lvl 3). Aether Gained.

Congratulations! You have reached Level 2 in Esper Class. 2 Points of Perception awarded. 1 free attribute point awarded. 1 free level two perk awarded. 1 free Aether Ability awarded. Aether Ability "Sense Deceit" (R6, Esper) awarded.

Monster Defeated, Common Goblin (lvl 2). Aether Gained.

Monster Defeated, Goblin Brute (lvl 3). Aether Gained.

Monster 5x or more higher than your level Defeated, Goblin Shaman (lvl 10). Bonus Aether Gained.

Congratulations! You have reached Level 3 in Esper Class. 2 Points of Perception awarded. 1 free attribute point awarded. 1 free level three perk awarded. 1 free Aether Ability awarded. Aether Ability "Eagle Eye" (R3, Esper) awarded.

You have reached 80 Perception. Warning! Unlocking new sense "Sense Life" while in combat may lead to dangerous disorientation. Unlock delayed. You may unlock immediately (not recommended) or at a time of your choice.

Congratulations! You have reached Level 4 in Esper Class. 2 Points of Perception awarded. 1 free attribute point awarded. 1 free level four perk awarded. 1 free Aether Ability awarded. Aether Ability "Universal Compass" (R9, Esper) awarded.

Skill Recognized - Sling Marksmanship, Level 5

Monster Defeated, Goblin Guard (lvl 4). Aether Gained.

Dan's heart fluttered as he realized how close he had just come to death. If he had misaimed or mistimed his attack even slightly, his danger sense and tactical precognition agreed: He would have had three heartbeats left, four at the most.