I awoke early, well before dawn, after a short and troubled sleep. I wasn’t the only one awake either as I could see Nishalle’s crimson eyes scanning the darkness. From the sounds of shifting bodies around me and subtle movements catching the attention of my night vision, I figured that my sister and I weren’t the only ones awake either. “So you had trouble sleeping too, Sis?” I asked as I sat up.

“I figured that it might be a good idea for one of us to keep watch, and I’m the best suited to the darkness,” she replied with a shrug, though we both knew that wasn’t all there was to it. She sighed and directed her gaze on me. “I wish I knew what was out there. The lack of zombies in the city is bothering me a bit. We haven’t seen many at all since coming back, but when we left during the Deadrush the city streets were crawling with them. Although I’m not really sure what to expect from these zombies anyway, and that’s part of the problem. They’re not very much like the walking dead in other games and the movies, there’s been a lot more blood than I would have expected from killing zombies.”

“That’s because they’re not the walking dead, they’re alive, sort of,” I attempted to explain. “True walking dead would be dead bodies animated, and usually controlled, by a necromancer. The zombies that we’ve been fighting aren’t like that, in fact, Moira never called them zombies or walking dead. She called them undead, which when taken literally, and not as the commonly used modern term, means ‘not dead’. They’re infected with a sort of viral curse meant to change Humans. So yes, Humans still need to be careful because they can be infected by being bitten or scratched, but they are not animated corpses.”

I took the time then to explain to her what I knew about the creatures that we had been calling zombies. They were actually something that the Fae refer to as ni’shahnkiir, or the blighted. In ancient times Humans were jealous of the Fae, the Beastkin, and some of the other races, and some Human druids and alchemists attempted to emulate or even surpass them through magic. The blighted were created through an attempt by humans to make themselves as long-lived as the Fae by magically altering their bodies.

It would seem that things hadn’t gone as planned though and the spell killed them all while making those changes and then brought them back to life with the changes in place. The once humans could live a long time if they weren’t killed or starved to death and they felt no pain, but when the spell had resurrected them it had only returned life to the bodies, their souls had already passed on. What was left were soulless creatures incapable of morality or higher thought and fueled by their baser instincts, primarily the need to feed.

The curse was spread whenever they bit or scratched someone and the infected quickly became ill and died within a few hours of being infected as the changes began. The illness, followed quickly by death and then magic changing the body and resurrecting it, left the newly risen creatures very hungry. So, with nobody in the driver's seat anymore, the bodies went into survival mode and began to search for food, then spreading the infection even further. Vampires and Werewolves had been created by similar reckless magical experiments.

My sister narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously when I finished my explanation. “You sound pretty certain Sis, how do you know all of that?”

I shrugged my shoulders as I admitted, “I had enough XP to choose a new skill the day after the Wild Hunt. I thought about messing with you by taking something like singing or animal training, but I figured that I should take something useful so I chose Monster Lore.”

“Damn, I’m only like three-quarters of the way toward earning a new skill,” the Tokh'dhraí complained. “That racial ability of yours gives you a real edge. You may have had to sacrifice four skill spots at the start, but if you keep going at this rate you’ll be way ahead of everyone else on the server in skills by the time our three months are up. So, does your new skill give you an insight into our current situation?”

“Not a whole lot, from what I’ve seen in the city since we got here, whatever’s watching us could be any of a large number of creatures, or groups of creatures, and not one of them are anything that I want to be facing any time soon,” I told her with a frown. “As for the blighted, well with most people fleeing the city they could have turned to cannibalism. That would thin their numbers considerably, but even with that, I would have still expected to encounter more than we have been. As much as I would like to believe that those corpses that we found near the collapsed buildings were killed by other blighted, the evidence points to something a lot bigger and deadlier.”

“That’s not exactly comforting Taelya,” Venika muttered in the darkness beside me before heaving a sigh.

“I would rather we be alert than comforted,” I replied as I regarded the Sprite and her Beastkin daughter. Then I too sighed as my ears indicated that they weren’t the only ones to have overheard the conversation between me and my sister. “So, I guess none of us is getting any more sleep.”

“I guess not,” Rei ventured from her sleeping bag.

“We may as well just get up at this point,” Pete pointed out. “If we start loading the delivery truck then we could be on our way to our next location by dawn.”

“Well let’s get started on breakfast then. If we’re not going to be well-rested, we can at least make sure that we’re well-fed,” Grell added as he shifted in the darkness, climbing out of his sleeping bag.

Once Rei had provided some of her ghost-lights to work by, we all packed up the sleeping gear and got to work on breakfast. Our meal was fairly simple, consisting of oatmeal, coffee, and some fruit. After we were fed, we returned to the loading area and began loading our haul into the delivery van as quietly and stealthily as possible. We didn’t want to push our luck and garner some unwanted attention from whatever had been watching us the day before, or any other denizens of the necropolis that we found ourselves in.

The sun was just peeking over the horizon when we finished our work. “Grell and I can take the delivery van and you ladies can take the truck,” Pete offered, taking the keys from the hook by the door.

“I’ll take the bike,” Nishalle added, quickly snatching up those keys for herself. “It’s not as good as my bike IRL, but it should allow me to keep mobile and watch Taelya’s back. I can’t do much for her inside the cab of the truck and the visor on the helmet is tinted so it should make the sunlight bearable for me.”

“I guess I’ll drive the truck then, so we can keep Taelya safely positioned between me and Lissany,” Rei said with a nod. Then, seeming a bit uncertain, she added, “before we go though, I need to make a quick stop down the street. I saw a veterinary clinic, so I think that I may be able to find some surgical tools there. We could really use some for emergencies.”

“Okay, but we stick together on the road, caravan style, and you’re not going inside alone when we get to that clinic sweetie. We’ll need to make sure it’s safe inside and we’ll want at least one of us standing guard and keeping watch outside,” I said with a frown. After being shot and nearly dying I wasn’t going to argue about those tools, but I didn’t want any of us going anywhere alone or putting ourselves in unnecessary danger.

We made our way carefully down the street and broke into the clinic without too much trouble. Since Venika was so small and would attract the least attention, we left her outside to keep watch. Once we had checked for blighted and found none we let Rei gather up all the surgical tools that she could find and place them in the backpack that she was using as a medical bag. It was as we were about to head back outside to the vehicles that I felt a sudden spike of fear. It seemed that I wasn’t the only one either since everyone had stopped mid-step to look around nervously.

I was about to rush outside to see if Venika was alright when she flitted inside looking confused and shaking her tiny head as if to clear it. “That was weird,” she muttered.

“What was weird Mom?” Lissany quickly asked, giving the Sprite a look of concern.

“I was probably just daydreaming or something,” she told her daughter with an uncertain, and somewhat forced smile. “I could have sworn that Taelya came rushing outside, looked around nervously, and then there was this shadow passing over us and she was pointing to the sky saying something about a worm, but then I was suddenly back and alone keeping watch again.”

I took a cautious look outside as a shadow passed over the ground and vehicles outside. I looked upward and that was when I saw it. A monstrous black serpentine creature passed overhead, over a hundred and fifty feet long, like a massive snake with huge bat-like wings. “Everyone, stay inside, no sudden moves outside or loud noises,” I quickly cautioned before silently cursing. “Shit. I know what’s had us all on edge now, and what caused that damage and killed those blighted. It’s a fucking Lindwyrm.”

“Language Taelya,” Venika quickly admonished me.

What the hell is a Lindwyrm?” Pete silently hissed as I tried not to look guilty about swearing again. Damn mom-tone.

“Something that we don’t want to fu… mess with, if we can avoid it,” I quietly replied with a frown, watching my mouth so I didn’t get told off again. “It’s a humongous snake-like monster with wings, distantly related to dragons. They exude an aura of fear and they track their prey through sound and motion. As long as we’re quiet and don’t move where it can see us we’ll be fine. They’re big, powerful, fast, breathe fire, and have a lethally poisonous bite… that is if they leave enough of you left to be poisoned after the first bite.”

“I guess that it’s a good thing we stopped in here then,” Grell offered. “If we hadn’t, then we would have been on the move toward our next destination by now and it probably would have picked up the movement of the vehicles.”

“What do you think it’s doing up there?” Lissany asked after taking a peek out the window.

“If it’s moving, then it’s hunting,” I explained. “I don’t have any doubts about that. Lindwyrms only move when they’re hunting, otherwise, they stay in their nest, somewhere up high, and sleep. It probably feasted on blighted or something else not long before we came into town yesterday. If it was full then it wouldn’t have been too interested in us then. Now we’re on the menu if we’re not careful though.”

“So what do we do then?” Rei asked. “We’ll have to wait here until it has fed or headed to another part of the city?”

“Yeah, Venika should be small enough to keep an eye on it without catching its notice, but the rest of us will have to stay inside until it’s safe to move again.”

It was several hours before Venika figured that the Lindwyrm was far enough away that it might be safe for us to move again. We spent most of that time discussing strategies in case we actually ended up having to fight the monstrous serpent. Finally, we were able to be on our way again and drove to our next destination. None of us was too happy by how much daylight we had lost while waiting for the coast to be clear, but it was still preferable to being dead.

The gas station that Venika had noticed in front of the Costco did indeed have gas and we made sure to completely fill the truck, delivery van, and motorcycle once Grell had managed to find a way to bypass the locks and electric pumping system on the pumps and extract some gas. Then we parked at the rear of the warehouse store near the loading entrance and I had Nishalle pick the locks for the rear doors while Grell worked on getting into the Semi and bypassing the ignition so that Pete could start it up and check to see if it needed gas. The tank was on the semi was nearly full so Pete quickly turned off the engine and we all headed into the store and opened the loading door to check what, if anything, was still loaded in the truck’s trailer.

The trailer was empty, which I was grateful for since it would save us the effort of sorting through anything inside and removing what we didn’t plan on taking with us. Our next priority was ensuring that the loading docks and the store itself were free of any blighted or other creatures who might be a danger to us. Except for the lack of electricity, things were looking good on that front when Rei created some of her ghost-lights so we could have a look around.

I looked cautiously out into the store itself but I didn’t see much of anything without any electricity. “I don’t sense anything but with no power or emergency lighting it is nearly pitch black in there, nothing moving that I can hear though. Liss? Nishalle? Are you getting anything?”

“I don’t see or hear anything,” Nishalle said after a quick scan.

“Most of the scents here are old, days old at least, I don’t smell anything recent,” my Beastkin Guardian added. “We might have trouble finding and moving everything back here without some lights though. This place is pretty big after all.”

“It looks like they have an emergency generator, it’s just out of gas. If we fill it up then it should be able to run the lights for anywhere from six to twelve hours and we do have the jerrycan in the back of the truck,” Grell quickly suggested.

I considered the suggestion for a moment before nodding. “Good idea Grell, get on that so we can get started. With that Lindwrym in the city, I want to be out of here as fast as we can.”

“You got it, Your Highness,” the Atlantean Artificer replied.

Before long we had light enough to work by. We began by having Venika do a quick flyover of the store from ceiling level, where she wouldn’t be likely to be seen. The store was empty of anything close to human and it looked like anyone inside had fled except for the two security guards and six other workers whose bodies Venika had found mauled. They had all been viciously attacked and lying in pools of their own blood, including the driver for that semi in the back. From the looks of the smashed front entrance, bloody footprints, and the other tracks, something had chased any other employees outside when they had fled the store.

“What the hell happened here?” Pete asked as we looked over the bodies. “It wasn’t those zombie things because wouldn’t they have just resurrected? And these people were ripped to shreds. From the look of these bodies, they’ve been here a while too.”

“If I had to guess from the wounds, and the tracks following those human ones out of the store, a griffin ended up in here and started going wild. Griffins don’t much care for enclosed spaces so it started attacking people and then the survivors unwittingly showed it the way out when they fled outside,” I theorized with a shrug. “It shouldn’t pose a problem to us now that it found it’s way outside.”

“I agree, we shouldn’t have any problems with it, that blood is old so it probably happened during the Deadrush. People did mention seeing monsters aside from just the ‘zombies’ that night,” Venika added after having a good look at the bloody prints.

“Okay, well if there’s nothing to worry about then let's get our shopping done before that generator runs out of juice,” Rei suggested with a pointed look at the lights on the ceiling above us.

With that in mind, we started going through the sections of the store that would have the items on our wish lists, loading pallets with the supplies that we had in mind, and wrapping them in plastic wrap so they could be taken by forklift to the loading dock and loaded on the truck for transport. Even though the store seemed to be empty we all stuck together as we worked through the afternoon and almost into the evening, filling pallets one section of the store at a time with toilet tissue, monthly supplies, personal hygiene products, medications, bottled water, juices, dry goods, canned goods, any salvageable fruits and vegetables, and whatever else we thought that Haven and the Autumn Court would need. We also searched for anything that was on the scavenging requests list, loading up a pallet with tools, various electronics, and even a few generators.

There were a few electronics that hadn't been on the list added such as some cell phones and a couple of laptops. They were added because Grell took one look at them and said they would be useful. I figured that he knew what he was talking about for the most part, but I wasn’t really sure what use cell phones would be during the apocalypse. Grell just shrugged and told me, “I dunno, it’s weird. In the last few days, it’s like when I see certain devices that I know every component inside them and all of the various ways that each one could be useful. I can even sense ways to modify the devices themselves to incorporate magic. It’s not like my artificing skills though, I don’t get an idea for a device and want to make it. I don’t have any control over this, it just hits me when I see something and I see all of the possibilities at once.”

I had to wonder if his new ability had anything to do with the strange incident with Venika when we had been ready to leave the veterinary clinic. Then there had been the incident with Pete and Nishalle as well. A pallet hadn't been properly secured and when we had been getting those generators from the top shelf with the forklift one of the generators had fallen. It would have fallen right on top of my sister if not for two things. First, Pete had seen it falling and ran to protect her, not only covering the distance slightly faster than I thought he should have been able to, but he actually caught the generator. Sure he was straining when he put it down a moment later, but that thing was heavy, easily twice what he could have lifted under normal circumstances.

The second thing was that Nishalle had just vanished like she was sucked into the shadow of the falling generator. Just as suddenly as she had vanished, she reappeared from Lissany’s shadow. Neither had really been aware of what had happened until after it had and both had been very confused by the incident. Nishalle tried to explain her part in it away as part of her Shadow Call ability, but we both knew that was bullshit when she said it. My sister had been practicing with that ability a lot since she had received it and had discovered its limitation early on. It allowed her to cloak herself in darkness and remain hidden in darkness or shadows, but only for up to five minutes and only if she remained perfectly still.

I tried to put it all out of my mind as we loaded pallets onboard the semi-trailer, but I couldn’t help but think that it was all somehow related. Still, I had other things to worry about. For one thing, we had a Lindwyrm somewhere out there and I didn’t want to move until I was sure that it was nowhere around. For another, we may have gotten the trailer completely loaded with supplies, but the sun was getting low in the sky and I wasn’t certain that I wanted to risk driving at night with whatever might be out there. With the front door smashed through though, the Costco was hardly a secure place to set up camp for the night.

I decided that it would be best that we left the vehicles where they were for the moment and took the walk across the massive parking lot to Walmart to see if it might be more secure. It also had a garden center so I was hoping that it might have a few of the plants on the list that Naerysse had given me. I figured that we would have roughly half an hour of light left to give it a quick look and if it didn’t seem safe to spend the night there then we could either return to the Costco or try to look for something else safer before dark.

It was pouring rain outside but it didn’t take long to cross the parking lot since we had an incentive to hurry. We were nearly at the front doors when I felt a rush of fear surge through me. I couldn’t be sure if it had caught sight of our movement or if it had just been bad luck that had brought it into the area at that moment, but the Lindwyrm was back. “Hurry, we need to get inside before it notices us,” I told the others in a hurried whisper. “I don’t feel it’s gaze on us yet so we may be in luck.” We hurried toward the front glass doors that had been smashed, probably by looters or something during the Deadrush, allowing us to hurry inside. “Well, shit,” I cursed as I looked around in what little light the daylight through the doors provided the front of the store. It looked like we had that luck that I had just mentioned, only it was all bad.

We all stopped dead in our tracks before I hustled the others to the area designated for shopping carts where we all hid in a corner behind the cover of some messily placed carts. “Why am I not surprised that Walmart is filled with zombies?” Rei muttered quietly, letting a slight groan escape her lips.

“Because it’s Walmart?” Lissany shot back in a hushed tone. “Seriously, it’s like that in the real world too.”

“Only these zombies actually want to eat us,” Pete grumbled.

“We’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place here guys,” I whispered to my companions with a sigh as I sat back and leaned against the wall. On the one hand, there was a horde of blighted around the checkouts, and on the other, I could still feel the amped-up fear from the Lindwyrm’s presence in the area. “Give me a few minutes to think of a brilliant plan to deal with this situation. Until then we need to be quiet, so nobody make a sound.”

It was then that a very naked Nymph materialized in front of me by what I assumed was a teleportation spell. She had long strawberry blonde hair with a large gold-colored decoration holding it back in a braided ponytail, turquoise eyes, and several tattoos the same color as her eyes running down each of her arms and encircling her neck like a collar. I had never seen a Nymph with tattoos before, much less one that was a player character rather than an NPC, and sure that was all very unusual, but it was the suddenness of her appearance that made me slap a hand over my mouth to stifle a squeal of surprise. “Eeee...mmmphh!”

Not only did she just surprise the living shit out of me, but I was now blushing fiercely as, since I was currently sitting down, I was eye-level with her crotch. As if that didn’t make for an awkweird enough first meeting, my blush quickly intensified as she bowed to me, practically putting her breasts right in my face. She seemed oblivious to how unsettling this was for me though, probably because she, herself, looked nervous as hell, shifting from foot to foot with her head lowered like she was scared to death of me as she spoke. “I… umm.. hello Mistress. I’m… uhh… Daenyss. Her Majesty Queen Amoiraishe said that I should... ahh... come to introduce myself and help you with your scavenging if you need it.”

“Shhhhh!” everyone in the group shushed her at once.

“Daenyss is it?” I asked in a near whisper once my heart rate had slowed. At her silent nod, I told her, “You’ll have to excuse us, we have a bit of a problem and I’m trying to come up with a way to solve it. Your sudden appearance kind of surprised us a bit.” That was when it came to me and I grinned at the realization as I told my companions, “Daenyss just gave me an idea.”

The Nymph continued to look at her feet as my party mates managed to turn their eyes from the new arrival toward me and Lissany asked, “What’s the plan, Your Highness?”

“I’m going to go over there and fire off a spell into the middle of those blighted, and then, once I have their attention, I’ll run straight for the gas station across the parking lot. With any luck, the horde running behind me will keep the Lindwyrm’s attention off of me and then I can use my teleportation spell to come back here to the entrance and hopefully kill two birds with one stone.” I knew that they were going to argue the plan, but I didn’t think that Venika was big enough to get and keep the attention of the blighted and asking someone who couldn’t teleport back would be sending them on a suicide mission. I could make this work without being in quite as much danger as anyone else.

“I don’t know about this Taelya,” Venika said with a frown. “I think I know what you’re planning, but you’re talking about casting a spell while at a full run and that’s not easy, even if you’re not out of breath. And then a second spell as soon as you’ve teleported if you want to get the timing of this right.”

Nishalle and Lissany were none too thrilled with the idea either. Both were shaking their heads as my sister offered. “I can try to do it. Maybe I can do that thing that happened earlier with me moving through the shadows.”

“I might be able to get the attention of the blighted with a bit of foxfire then shift into a faster form to keep ahead of them, then I could shift into a Sprite to try to get away before you cast the spell to take them out,” Rei suggested.

“No, I’m not going to risk anyone’s life for this. Sis, you don’t even know for sure what it was that you did, let alone if you can repeat it,” I told Nishalle, shaking my head sternly. Then I turned to my fiancée, still shaking my head. “You’re talking about some pretty quick shapeshifting while on the run, and you’ve told me that shifting into other species takes a lot of concentration. I’ve seen you switch to Sprite form before, even standing still it takes a few minutes for the change when you’re changing mass like that.” I’m the only one in our party who can…”

I was interrupted by Daenyss’ soft voice saying, “I’ll do it.”

We all stared at her for a minute and I was frowning as I gave her a quick once over with my eyes. She was one of the new players, I was certain of it. There certainly hadn’t been any Nymph players before or I’d have known about them. They weren’t even supposed to be a playable race. “You’re not wearing any armor or anything. You would be in even more danger than I would and you’re a new player. Casting a spell on the run like that is going to be even harder for you with no experience. I’m not even sure what class you are.”

“I’m a… special case. I am supposed to be your new… umm… attendant. Moi… Her Majesty told me that I would be replacing my… mother Naerysse so that she can become her attendant and you can have one who can travel with you and serve you at all times. Anyway, I’m not a Magus like you, I don’t need to cast a teleportation spell like you do, I have one right here. I just need to think of you and it will bring me right to you,” the Nymph said, looking away again as she touched one of the marks on her right arm.

I looked more closely at the mark in question, it was a combination of sigils, specifically a teleportation spell with the location being an extremely complex sigil that I recognized as being the one that Amoiraishe said represented me personally. She had three spells on each of her arms, and each of them had my sigil included and was brimming with power. “Nasyr taka,” I said in awe as I realized what they were. Spells had been embedded permanently into her very flesh to give her the ability to use them at will and it took a powerful Magus to grant a person such marks.

Reluctantly, since we figured that we should get to work while we still had a bit of daylight left, we altered the plan so that Daenyss would be the one leading the undead out the doors. Once she was in place and ready to run Venika fired a combustion spell at one of the blighted and flitted back toward us as the Nymph shouted, “Here I am! Come and get me assholes!” She took off at a run with dozens of the undead hot on her heels as she fled through the doors, out into the pouring rain, and across the parking lot toward the gas station in front of the Costco. Once I had checked to make sure that mass of once-humans had all passed the doors and no undead stragglers were coming toward the front of the store to join their companions I got in place just outside the entrance to draw in mana for the spell.

Daenyss was quick, I had to give her that, and I thought that she might have even been deliberately moving slowly enough that the undead behind her stayed motivated. She stayed just ahead of the horde on her heels and the second she reached the pumps she vanished, only to reappear right in front of me, soaking wet but otherwise unharmed. I was about to start casting my spell when I spied the Lindwyrm swooping down from above for a meal. I was still waiting for the right moment when the Lindwrym did my work for me. In its eagerness to get at its food it smashed into the pumps and the surrounding blighted, snapping one up in its fang-filled maw and swallowing it before roaring and spitting flames. I didn’t even need to use a spell as the gas station blew and erupted into an inferno.

The others had joined me and Daenyss outside and for several minutes we watched the fire burn. “Shit it’s still alive?!” Venika cursed suddenly as she shook her head to clear it.

“Language Mom,” Lissany teased.

A few seconds later we all spotted the movement at the same time. “Seriously?! How is that thing not dead after that?!” Grell complained.

“They breathe fire, so Lindwyrms are somewhat resistant to it as well,” I answered with a sigh. “I was really hoping that the explosion would have done it in though.” The giant serpentine beast slithered it’s way out of the flames as we spoke, not dead, but certainly not undamaged either. One of its massive wings was half missing, and it couldn't seem to fly as it slithered along the ground. It was either in pain or really pissed off, possibly both, and let out an ear-shattering roar as it moved toward us, probably attracted to the sound of Grell’s earlier exclamation.

Injured or not, the creature was still dangerous, probably even more so now that it was angry and stuck at ground level with us. “Everyone scatter! Hit and run, attack it from all sides so it can’t focus on any single one of us! Venika get some altitude and start hitting it from above! We need to keep it confused! Tierre kiara tala-aeluine utaera!” I focused the mana I had already gathered as I drew and spoke the sigils for my Scattershot spell, peppering its face with screaming little balls of blue flame before dashing off to get some distance with Lissany and Daenyss right behind me.

The fight went on for a while as darkness fell and the rain came down in sheets. With us having to use hit and run tactics I couldn’t get off any AOE spells, at least not if I didn’t want to risk hurting my friends, so Venika and I tried to keep it distracted with Scattershot spells from two different directions while Rei peppered it with Foxfire from another and Nishalle and Pete dashed in to slash at it with their swords before darting away again. We were wearing it down, but I was beginning to think that all that we were accomplishing was pissing it off even more.

Daenyss, Lissany, and I had just barely avoided one of its flame attacks when I heard my sister call out, “Pete!” The Human soldier had been batted aside by a swipe of the creature’s tail and was lying on the ground unmoving with his massive claymore dropped and laying several feet away on the ground. Nishalle had managed to avoid the attack by vanishing into the darkness and reappearing ten meters away, where it was safe. The beast's tail swung around toward me and Daenyss but Lissany quickly planted herself, and her shield, in front of us to block it before screaming out from a painful sounding crack.

“Lissany! Are you okay?!” I called out after peppering the back of the creature’s head with another scattershot spell.

My Guardian winced, hissing in pain as she dropped her sword and determinedly switched her shield to her other arm. “I think it broke my arm with that hit. We need to take it down fast.”

The damn creature was resistant to magic, moving too fast for our melee combatants to get any decent blows in, and Grell’s bullets were bouncing right of it. We needed to get in close to take it down. “Nishalle! Use your shadow shift thing and try to go for its head!”

My sister wasted no time in replying. Instead, she sheathed her katana and ran to snatch up Pete’s claymore, disappearing as soon as she had it in hand. The Lindwyrm had opened it’s massive jaws wide and was lunging at Lissany, intent on trying to eat my injured Guardian when suddenly Nishalle appeared inside the Lindwyrm’s gargantuan serpentine mouth, hefted Pete’s huge sword with both hands, and drove it upward with all the force that she could summon into the creature’s brain.

The Lindwyrm shrieked and spasmed as Nishalle vanished again, reappearing from my shadow a breath later. “I figured that it was more vulnerable from the inside, and there was more shadow there too,” the Tokh'dhraí explained as the great serpent shuddered one last time and fell to the wet ground, dead.

Grell, who was already kneeling on the ground beside Pete, looked up at all of us in concern. “Guys, he’s hurt really bad.”

Once we were inside the Walmart again, where it was at least dry, Rei prayed to Inari to create a barrier of protection and then to assess the injuries, starting with Pete since he seemed to be the worst off. As she finished scanning him she let out a helpless sounding sigh. “His torso is a mass of bruising, practically half of his ribs are broken, and there’s some damage to his lungs too. I don’t know if I have a strong enough connection with my Goddess yet to heal this kind of damage. It could take hours of prayer just to…”

She stopped speaking as she stared at the pale silver glow coming from her hands resting on Pete’s chest. The pained expression on Pete’s unconscious face seemed to lessen and after several long minutes of just staring at her hands, Rei collapsed on top of the Human. “Rei? Honey? Are you okay?” I asked as worry made my heart flutter in my chest.

My Kitsune fiancée shook herself as she rose wearily. “I… I think so. Just really drained, whatever it is that I just did, I don’t think that I can do it often. I think I may need to nap for a while. I… I’ll try to finish checking them before I sleep though.” She quickly prayed again to assess Pete’s condition followed by Lissany’s, then she sat down beside me and turned to look at me tiredly. “Pete’s fine now, he’ll be good as new after some rest. I’m not sure how I did it though, I didn’t pray for a heal like I usually have to. Lissany suffered a broken arm, but if I didn’t know better I’d say it was weeks ago, it seems halfway healed now my lo…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence as she passed out, her head falling into my lap.