Carey stepped aside at just the right time, so close he felt the beast’s fur tickle his face.

Though he avoided those snapping, slobbering jaws, the creature was large enough to swipe a single paw that slammed the length of Carey’s body, throwing him clear across the room. He hit one of the magical force fields blocking a window and took damage. As soon as he was back on his feet, he gulped down a Healing potion, a Drink of the Spider God that raised his Feral attributes, and a Flaming Uplifting Elixir, which raised his HP and SP above the limit and fortified his Strength, Constitution, and Agility.

He felt superhuman.

He whipped three Throwing Knives through the air, zip zip zip, and dropped two of the Risen Ones. Then he threw a Shroom Boom Grenade at Cerralobos, but the explosion only served to annoy the beast and make it blink and roar wildly in fury.

Beatrice had flown up to the ceiling and began casting buffing spells. Cerralobos was smart enough to realize the threat she posed. He lifted himself on his hind legs and began to swipe at her, narrowly missing twice but the third time managing to swat her hard enough to tear a ragged scream from her throat. She fell spiraling back to the floor.

Before she even landed, Carey knew what to do. He crouched, going into sneak mode, ignoring two Risen Ones lumbering toward him, and hit Cerralobos with a Whirlwind attack. The creature roared. Carey flipped to get away from a paw swipe, phasing into his owl form. He flew above Cerralobos, distracting the creature while Will cast a spell that made sizzling-hot orange light rays drop from the ceiling like laser beams. They hit Cerralobos across his entire back, making him yelp. He yelped again, louder still, as Wally flew across the room and struck the monster’s middle forehead with a warhammer.

The head snapped at Wally and caught him, clamping down hard. Despite his Sargonaut skin and diamond armor, Wally screamed out “Bloody bastard!” as blood spurted out of him. He tried punching the creature in the eye. Carey dropped out of his owl form and swung his Numbing Dagger of the Psyches across the neck of the head closest to him. The Mind Fog effect took hold, and Cerralobos’s back knees gave out, the affected head lolling cartoonishly, tongue draped over chin. The other heads roared and barked and snapped, especially as several Basic Bear Traps went off, catching his tail. Carey had set those earlier without even thinking. He’d been getting lucky with his strikes, traps and bombs, and then he realized that his Copper Band of the Lucky had raised his Luck by 20 points. He could feel the effect, knew the abstracted stats like he knew his own name.

Beatrice was surrounded by moaning, shuffling Risen Ones. She launched into the offensive, which wasn’t her strong suit. Carey went to help her out. He phased in and out of owl form to get close, finally launching a sneak attack that consisted of firing one arrow which split into three—one for each zombie. Two of the arrows hit and one missed. The Risen Ones weren’t made of wet tissue paper like the ones in The Walking Dead TV series, where all it took was a simple jab to the head and they went down instantly. Risen Ones were powered by magic, and currently a dozen or more were shuffling toward him inside the church.

“Wally, clear the zeds!” Carey shouted. “Quickly!”

Wally nodded and went to help Beatrice. She’d already taken a few bites from the zombies and was now wrestling one of them to get out of its grip before it could bite her bloodied throat. With Wally helping, she managed to free herself. The entire front of her body was covered in blood, and the sight of it disturbed Carey more than he wanted to admit.

A blast sounded just as Carey was aiming his bow at Cerralobos.

“Yes,” he said, and relief washed over him.

Will’s latest spell unleashed three strong currents of water from invisible sources above their heads. They converged against Cerralobos just as he was about to strike Carey and disrupt his shot. The currents were enough to trap the monster in place, and Carey aimed his bow, willing the arrow to split in a horizontal fashion that would hit multiple heads.

One landed between a pair of eyes, while the other two smacked into the stone wall. Fed up with all the attacks, Cerralobos executed a spinning maneuver that caused his paw to swipe across a full 360-degree path. Carey phased into his owl form but wasn’t quick enough; the attack hit his smaller animal form, and he found himself crashing into the wooden pews, trapped beneath the rubble.

The pain was incredible. He felt hollow bones snap in half and feathers get plucked as his body was thrashed about. As he lay there, stunned, the sweet sound of a woman singing filled the cathedral. Carey phased into his human form, somehow internalizing the damage done to his owl shell. Aware he could not phase back anytime soon, he pushed himself out of the rubble.

Beatrice was singing in a foreign language. Her song caused blue-white energy to spread across the floor like a layer of sea foam. Risen Ones caught in the spell moaned and shook wildly in pain. Carey found himself both healed and buffed by it. Her voice was beautiful, and for a moment, he almost forgot he was trapped in this nightmare, about to die.

Wally cut down two more Risen Ones. The party needed his Sargonaut strength to deal with Cerralobos, which meant the Risen Ones had to be taken care of as soon as possible. Carey’s Shadow Striker mastery activated, thanks to the low light, and he executed a chained Takedown that brought down two of the Risen Ones—“Thanks, mate!” Wally called out to him—and then he threw his full focus toward Cerralobos.

The beast had something up his sleeve. Crouched on all fours, he glared at Carey with all three sets of narrowed yellow eyes. Wind rose around the mythical monster, began to spin, and formed a vortex of visible currents around his massive body that picked up dust and rubble. Carey watched in terror as the wind swept into the beast’s gaping mouths, and before he could get out of the way, Cerralobos barked with all his might, sending the wind shooting toward Carey. It wasn’t just fast-moving air; the special attack had weaponized the barking noise as well, and the sound split Carey’s eardrums and rattled his skull as his body was flung backward to slam against the wall.

Filled with pain, his vision swimming, a roaring whine in his ears, Carey saw that Wally, Beatrice, and Will had also been hit by the blast and were down on their knees. They were all stunned, unable to react. The last Risen One jumped toward Will and bit him in the neck.

“No,” Carey muttered. “Get… up.”

Will tried to push the zombie away, but the stun effect had taken hold of him, and his arms moved limply like flung ropes. The Risen One chomped down twice more, causing blood to spray from Will’s neck. Carey sensed his friend’s HP drain dangerously close to zero. He could tell his own HP and SP were wrecked as well.

Cerralobos took advantage of the opportunity and snapped at Beatrice. Not once, not twice, but three times, each of his furry heads taking a bite. It had been some sort of special attack. Snap, snap, snap. Three different sets of teeth ravaged Bea’s body, causing her to moan pitifully.

“Beatrice!” Wally screamed.

The Sargonaut was the first to recover. He threw himself across the room and slammed his warhammer against one of the heads. A high-pitched yelp escaped the monster’s throat. Wally hit it again, this time with a spinning attack that smashed the head into a pulpy mess, dropping Cerralobos to his knees.

Carey emerged from his stunned state and ran toward the fray. He flipped clear over the monster, landed on the other side, and tossed a Shroom Boom Grenade and a Cluster Bomb, both trajectories visible as pale arcs in the air. Before they could land, he threw a Big Leg Flamer potion and waited a split second until the glass flask was above the monster, then hit it with an arrow, causing the liquid to spray its burning contents across a wider radius. A series of bright flashes, accompanied by several loud booms, went off almost in sync as Cerralobos was coated in flaming oil and rocked by the explosions. Carey rushed to Will and saw that he was dead, his face bloodied and still. Carey took a moment to clutch his lifeless hand, squeezing it in a final handshake.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He rushed to Bea’s side and poured a Healing potion over her mouth. She sputtered and coughed, then grabbed Carey’s chest armor and pulled him close.

“Kill that godless son of a bitch,” she said.

“I will, Bea. I love you.”

“In… your dreams,” she sputtered, and her eyes went blank, her wings twitching once before finally going still. Carey kissed her forehead, then looked up at his surroundings.

He and Wally were on their own now.

Carey released a roar of pure rage and launched himself at Cerralobos, firing a series of arrows before switching to his dagger and attacking the middle head. Cerralobos focused one head on Wally, snapping at him hard enough to drop him to his knees, the other head swinging to avoid Carey’s blade attack.

Using Calm Overdraw, Carey hit one of the remaining heads with an arrow, causing a critical strike. Using Tail Ballet, he fell back on his tail and used its curled length to spring away before Cerralobos could lick him with a tongue suddenly alight with flames. Carey ran up the nearest wall—his Wall Strike Ninja mastery at work—and flipped backward, corkscrewing through the air to face Cerralobos, and executed a Takedown that blinded one of the monster’s eyes.

Yelping in alarm and pain, Cerralobos lunged to get away. Wally continued to pummel him with his warhammer. The Sargonaut’s next special attack involved slamming the weapon into the ground, unleashing a fierce vibration that caused Cerralobos to flip onto his back with a violent roar.

“Get out of the way!” Carey shouted at Wally.

Wally flipped backward just as Carey threw more bombs, filling the cathedral with flashes of orange light and furious bursts of fire and a cacophony of booming sounds that shook the walls.

Dust and bits of stone rained down upon them. Carey used Rapid Nocker, one of his Rogue abilities, to multiply his speed with the bow by ten. Approaching the thrashing beast, he unleashed wave upon wave of arrows, issuing his own roar of pure murderous rage, until he lost count watching the fire, shock, and ice effects alight across the creature’s furry belly and limbs.

Wally grabbed one of Cerralobos’s paws. He pulled himself up, wrapped his legs around the joint, and twisted his body until a loud snap sounded and the monster’s leg was bent in the wrong direction. This time, instead of a roar, they heard a yelp, the creature beginning to whine and thrash as though its body were caught in a trap.

They were close. Carey could feel it. He couldn’t see a “boss bar” that marked his enemy’s remaining HP, but the cues were all there. Cerralobos was losing, and he knew it.

Laughter rose behind Carey.

He turned, aiming his bow, and watched helplessly as Riven Xor, standing atop a pile of rubble, cast a glowing red spell at him. A bushel of hellish vines composed of blood-red light unfurled from his hands and snapped forward, wrapping themselves around Carey’s body.

He dropped the bow, falling to his knees.

Behind him, he heard Wally strike Cerralobos. He must not have been aware of Riven Xor’s presence. Cerralobos unleashed a final howl of defeat, and Carey sensed the monster had been killed.

But the vines…

Carey lost the ability to breathe, never mind call for help. The heat was like acid burning his topmost layer of skin. Pain upon pain, each layer its own special hell.

Carey extended his right arm and attacked with the only weapon he still possessed.

His middle finger. He held it trembling toward Riven Xor—at Sam, the fucking coward.

When his HP hit zero, Carey’s eyes slid shut, the world going black around him, and his final thought was not a memory or a feeling or his life flashing before his eyes.

It was two words, spoken in an internal voice that sounded distinctly like his father, rebuking Carey for his disappointing failure.

Game over.