They all scrambled backwards as fast as their feet carried them. There was only so much space between the sides of the sewer entrance that opened into the canal. Some of them splashed into the dirty water, while the rest of them attempted to climb up to higher ground.

Of course, the explosion wasn’t waiting for them. Huge chunks of stone flew out in every direction, the shattered barricade of frozen concrete spraying everything like stinging shrapnel.

They would have been shredded if they hadn’t had the presence of mind to use their Sigils. After all, they had several barricading powers. Miles used his Sigil of Earth to throw up thick walls that cracked with the pieces of concrete bulleting into it. Rory and Trish followed a microsecond later, using their Barricading Blizzard and Steel respectively. Together, they were able to provide decent shelter for everyone else near the tunnel’s entrance.

“What’s going on?” April asked, blinking as she cringed when Trish’s large steel shield gonged at a heavy impact from a flying chunk of rock the size of a terrier.

Rory tried to see through the gaps between their barricades, but the rising dust was too thick to pierce with vision alone. “I can’t tell.”

Ned coughed. “Too much dust.”

All the while, the shaking hadn’t stopped. They had lowered their profiles to keep their centres of gravity as close to the ground as possible. It helped to keep them upright while the world continued to shake apart.

Rory just hoped that Dr. Jace, Dez, and Viv were all right. He hadn’t been able to tell what had become of them in the sudden madness that had sprung upon them.

The fear Rory had been trying to shove back now reared its ugly head. He didn’t want to contemplate it, but it was all too possible that the shaking was caused by the enormous monster they had spotted in the sewer’s depths. This had to be that creature’s doing. Somehow, it had broken up the exits to ensure that the Revenants would continue barging outside.

“They’re coming,” Trish warned. “We’re going to have to get out.”

She was right. Despite the dusty gloom, Rory could make out the Revenant’s shapes climbing out of the murk. Several monstrous variants were charging in their direction. Rory’s heart quailed at the sight. If there were so many so desperate to push out through this opening, there had to be just as many, if not more, in the other exists.

Hillhard was going to be flooded with the Revenants soon.

“Let’s go, then,” Miles said, straightening. “The shaking’s stopped.”

It had. Rory was happy to be able to get to his feet without worrying he’d fall over at any second. But even as he rose, he found that Miles had frozen stiff, as had Trish. His pulse went erratic. Heart in his mouth, Rory tried to peer through the gloom to see what had them so worried. As the dust swirled thanks to the Revenants’ passage, the gloom lifted to reveal a claw.

A gigantic claw.

There was a curved, metallic protrusion that ended at a point where the tunnel’s mouth should have been. The claw was big enough to a punch a hole through a school bus. It shone a dark magenta, the hint of a molten glow underneath its edges as though there was lava trapped within.

Miles almost audibly swallowed the growing lump in his throat. “What in the world—”

“Miles!” Trish warned even as she charged forward to deflect a thrown spear with her axe.

Miles staggered. Then he summoned his Stormfire, ready to engage the approaching Revenants. Trish joined him, her fierce expression focused solely on the enemies they could take down.

For his part, Rory was trying to judge the implication of that gigantic claw sitting in the dungeon entrance. That enormous monster at the dungeon’s lowest level wasn’t just forcing its followers and its power out. No, it itself was pushing out. That spelled bad news. Terrible news.

Letting the others deal with the Revenants, Rory activated his Frozen Lighting. His blue arcs flew right over the growing battle before him and struck the monstrous claw farther behind them. It worked. Rory sighed in relief, then coughed out some dust, as ice and lightning crackled and spread over the ruddy claw.

It didn’t spread fast enough, so Rory threw more energy in large parabolas. His targeting was great. Rory suspected will and intention had as much to do with how the energy flew to its target as much as the physics of throwing something out.

“You think that’ll hold that thing?” Ned asked.

Rory shook his head. “It’s not like I’ve got a better idea.”

“I’m just worried after how it broke through the concrete and you had Frozen Lightning on it too, right?”

“I did.”

That was certainly concern. The creature hadn’t been moving or attempting to break more of itself out when Rory had attacked. For all he knew, his Frozen Lightning was only mildly irritating the monster, and when it wished, it would break free as easily as it had done to the tunnel’s blockage.

“We need to retreat,” Rory said.

Ned stared. “What?”

“We don’t know what that thing is capable of, and I don’t want to take the risk of confronting it without knowing more. Let’s get back to the Safe Zone. We can plan what we’ll need to do safely.”

Ned gritted his teeth together. “Try convincing the others of that.”

Rory sighed. The battle was going as well as it had done before. Just because the Revenants had scored a “victory” didn’t mean they were able to overcome the combined might of Rory’s group. Trish threw more javelins, Miles blasted the monsters with Stormfire and corralled them with his Sigil of Earth, while April used her Temporal Burn and Distant Detonation to kill them from a distance.

But it wasn’t going to be enough. Their Mana supply was running low. They couldn’t afford to get caught here.

He turned around. The air was still too clogged with dust to let him see what had happened to the battle against the Djinn. Everything was a mess. Rory was sure he saw more black fire raging, but he couldn’t tell a thing about Viv or Dez’s specific whereabouts. Or the Ifrit’s.

“Everyone,” Rory shouted over the din of the battle. “We need to retreat. The palace will protect us. We need to figure out a different plan. Let’s go.”

Of course, one little shout wasn’t going to do the trick. His voice turned hoarse as he tried to grab everyone’s attention. Thankfully, the others helped. Once Trish and April joined the group, they decided to retreat their way towards the vehicles. Hopefully, none of the monsters had sneaked up to the jeep or the pickup and ruined them.

While they moved, Rory tried to see through the dust to check up on the area where Viv and Dez had fought the Djinn. It was still too difficult to make anything out. He was sure he saw the heavy dark fires burning around the area.

“Viv!” Rory shouted once more. “We’re leaving. We need to go. Come on!”

Rory wanted to stop, wanted to wait for the love of his life to appear out of the gloom. His body had frozen a few yards from the vehicles of its own accord. He would wait until Viv showed up.

Someone grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and started pulling him away. Rory couldn’t muster the effort to resist though. The impossible thought that something might have happened to his wife was burning a hole through his soul. She couldn’t have suffered anything. Not now. Not after coming this far.

Rory pulled himself free from the grip holding him back. It was time to—

Red lightning flashed. Several arcs leaped over the ground until one flashed right next to Rory, forcing him to blink his eyes closed. When he opened them again, Viv was standing in place of the crimson bolt. An unconscious Dez was slung across her shoulder.

“You took your time,” Rory tried to master his feelings. His eyes landed on Dez’s senseless form. “Is he…?”

“He’ll be fine, I think,” Viv said. “We’re going?”

“There’s something that came up. We need to fall back for now.”

“Is everyone alright?”

“We’re waiting for nothing but you,” April said. “Get in if you want to get out before we’re overwhelmed.”

The warning was appropriate. All the Revenants they hadn’t taken care of were climbing up to charge at them. Their single-minded pursuit of Rory’s company made his heart shrivel up. These monsters were almost acting mindlessly. So little similarity to the one they had killed so long ago, the one that had given Rory and April so much trouble.

“Everyone in?” Ned shouted. When everyone confirmed vocally, he slammed his foot into the accelerator. The truck immediately shot backwards. “Let’s go!”

There was a heavy screech as Ned turned the truck around far too quickly. Rory didn’t envy who checked up on the vehicles back at the palace. After just repairing the jeep, it would be nuts to ruin the pickup.

They had to hurry, though. As soon as the vehicles’ engines started rumbling, the ground started to shake. The quakes made Rory’s body attempt to shiver where he sat. He imagined the rest of the monster bursting free of the ground, chasing them down and crushing them like ants under a giant’s feet.

“Hurry,” he said. “I don’t think we have much time.”

An enormous, thunderous crashing proved that he was right. Dust and debris flew high into the air as the vehicles screeched off towards the palace. Rory and the others looked back to see the trees in the wooded area collapsing with heavy snaps. A brown cloud had risen to tower forty, perhaps fifty feet in the air.

“Something is definitely coming out,” Miles said. “We need to move faster.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Ned said.

Trish screamed out of the driver’s window as the jeep shot past. “Hammer on the accelerator, idiot.”

“No way. They’re going to crash at that rate.”

Whatever might or might not have happened to Trish, Ned did pump the accelerator harder. They were soon free of the wooded area, and the town’s buildings began passing them at a blurring pace.

Rory tried to breathe out of a sigh of relief. His lungs didn’t want to. Apparently, it didn’t care that the shaking at this distance was more muted and they were at a far safer distance now.

“What happened back there, Rory?” Viv asked.

He could have asked her the same thing, considering the condition he had seen Dez in. But he reined in his curiosity for the moment and explained what they had seen with the claw, and what he suspected it was. Viv held her expression and reaction steady, but several others were frightened. Gasps and curses filled the pickup, faces paling and grips tightening in fear.

“So, you think it’s a giant monster that’s going to kill us?” Viv asked.

Rory looked away. “What else could it be?” He didn’t want to admit it, but he doubted even the Safe Zone’s ability to stop a creature like that. Its power had to be unimaginable. “We need to call the others and warn them.”

Miles asked Viv the question that Rory forgot. “What happened with you and Dez and the Djinns?”

“They died,” she said. “Tough nuts to crack, but we got them in the end.”

“Did… they get Dez?”

“Not as badly as he did them.”

They had left Dez in the jeep with Dr. Jace to look over the big guy. Hopefully, Trish’s insane driving wasn’t going to give the healer too much trouble.

“What exactly happened to Dez?” Rory asked, as much to know what it was he was going through as it was to keep his mind off the gargantuan Otherworlder.

Viv sighed. “He took too much damage from the Djinn’s flames.”

“But that shouldn’t be possible.” Rory had tested how a Sigil’s effects didn’t affect the user. “A Sigil—”

He stopped. With his help, Dez had changed his Sigil from Abyssal Inferno to Chthonic Inferno. It could be that the system no longer recognized them as the same now that there was a purifying add-on to Dez’s flames to prevent the rise of the toxic flames.

Viv looked questioningly at him. He quickly explained what he had surmised, and she nodded grimly, admitting that it made sense.

The rumbles and shaking had grown distant indeed by the time Belcourt’s hill came into view. Rory was glad the monster was far from the palace that they wouldn’t have to take any drastic measures just yet. There was still time to prepare. They had driven too fast for him to focus on calling anyone, but he could do so now.

When they reached the palace grounds proper and finally got out within the relieving area of the Safe Zone, Rory finally let all tension pent up within him dissipate. They were alive. They had survived. For now. That was all they needed.

A rumble groaned out from the distance, followed by a slight tremor coursing through the area. Rory tensed up all over again as the others looked on with worried glances.

“For now” was starting to sound more like a threat than a relief.