We have found an oddity in technology, something that has been omnipresent, yet escaped our attention. Our interfaces catalogue the most advanced people in any given area. It has a three mile chained area of influence. The fact that it can send a signal means that there is a route for technology to progress.

  Dad’s eyes glazed over when I tried to explain it to him. However, Dr. Phisher and especially government leadership were very interested. I think I am going to put the bulk of my time into figuring this out. It is a way to make a mark on the world. Apple has the smartphone, Commune had biotech, and I will be the creator of spirit based communication. I will be famous!

  Day 109, Owen Landers

  Silas yanked his blade free from the body of one of the Dr. Seuss abominations and called out, “There are a lot of these freaks in here.”

  Bella grimaced as another one scuttled across a shattered storefront. “You can say that again.”

  This variant was different from the ones they’d seen back in Hell, but the family resemblance was undeniable. They seemed to share brightly colored fur patterns like something from a toddler's cartoon show, an oversized, too-wide smile packed with disturbingly human teeth, chubby cheeks, and long flexible arms like an octopus’s except covered in fur and ending in hands. The worst part was the way it moved. It had suction cups on its feet, not octopus suction cups, but comically oversized toilet plunger looking things. While they may have looked stupid, they allowed the creature to haul itself over walls and rubble like a demon roach. That thought made him miss Steve.

  It lunged off the wall in an attempt to bite Silas’s face. He snarled and let it clamp down on his armored forearm. The armor held up to the lama like creature far better than it had against the dragonkin chief. It let out a screech and thrashed its head back and forth like a dog. Silas shoved it back into the wall before gutting it with his sword.

  Aron flinched back, “It's disturbing how easy you make that look.”

  Silas let the body fall to the sidewalk, “It helps that they’re trying to kill me. I don’t think I could make myself kill a person,” Kneeling he purified the creature, “Heh, it's called an Iratus Capra. I’m pretty sure that means angry goat.”

  Samantha eyed the corpse, “The name fits, I wonder if its sigil would give someone the ability to stick to walls.”

  Silas shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they let it suction-cup stuff? Like sticky fingers. Like Spider-Man. No, that can’t be it, we got that spider sigil that allowed for wall walking. Maybe you need both to be Spider-Man?” Silas mused as he flicked monster gunk off his blade. “Whatever. I hate it.”

  “Is this really the right time to be talking so much?” Aron hissed, “We’re in the middle of a monster infested city.”

  “Honestly, this isn’t too bad,” Bella brandished a shovel. The head was glowing a cherry red. A combination of her Thermal Cultivator sigil to heat it and Hearth Conserver to keep its shape had let her turn the tool into a deadly weapon, “I don’t have real gear or a real weapon, and yet I am holding my ground. Back in hell we would have been overwhelmed hours ago.

  Silas passed the sigil to Mandy, who had been designated as the sigil holder. When they stopped for a break, Silas intended to see what he could make with them. Not that he held high hopes for anything related to these cartoon nightmares.

  They had been marching through New Delhi for the better part of a day now, and Silas was still a little stunned by how similar it felt to the U.S. Or maybe he was stunned by how wrong his assumptions had been. It felt a bit racist to admit it, but part of him had expected mud houses or something more primitive. Instead, the city had skyscrapers, glass-pane apartments, office towers, everything America had, just with significantly less organized roads.

  People really were the same everywhere.

  The other difference was that New Delhi was overrun. Buildings were gutted, cars crushed, a train had been derailed and thrown through a plaza sending glass everywhere. As for monsters, well, there was no shortage of them. Silas had never really considered the numbers before, but if Earth was invaded based on population, then India and China would each get nearly half of the world’s monsters dumped on them. Four billion people in nations where it was difficult for private citizens to own weapons. Silas sighed as he thought about the death toll.

  “We’re almost there!” Aron whisper shouted from behind them.

  Silas nodded and stepped forward to intercept the next creature, a fuzzy little hamster monster with panda coloring bark-roared adorably as it charged them. He put it down with two quick strikes. No mercy even if they looked like living plushies.

  “How did Batu put anything under any of these buildings? They’re so tightly packed.” Silas asked as he wiped his blade on the monster.

  Aron shrugged. “He didn’t put one there. The basement already existed, he just fortified it.”

  “Fair enough,” Silas muttered. When Batu had described a bunker in the countryside, he had assumed that meant it was in a cave or nestled in rolling hills. No, New Delhi was massive, and what Batu meant by out in the country was apparently the suburbs. It made him wonder if something had been lost in translation.

  Silas sucked in a deep breath. The air was filled with the aftermath of conflict, however even battered and broken, Earth felt better than the bleached purple nightmare of the other world. Being home made him feel lighter. Stronger. Like he’d gained a few extra points of Vitality just for stepping back on familiar soil. Given the way he’d healed from the venom, that wasn’t far from the truth.

  They rounded another corner beside a ruined building when something crashed through the fifth-story window above them. It hit the street hard enough to crack the pavement. Bones snapped on impact, but the monster didn’t even slow. It scrambled toward them on broken limbs, shrieking.

  It looked like a dog-sized naked mole rat crossed with a great dane, all teeth and wrinkled pink flesh. Silas stepped in and kicked it square in the face, sending it skidding back across shattered concrete. It tried to lunge again, frantic and twitching, but he thrust his sword down through its skull, pinning it to the ground until it stopped moving.

  This felt far too easy, he was quite literally handicapped and doing fine. That fact more than anything else made Silas uncomfortable. Where were the kaiju? Where were the organized monster armies? Silas wanted to believe that the dragonkin chief led the strongest most organized group, but that simply couldn’t be true. There was no way humanity would fall to wiggly cartoons and oversized mole rats. If there was one thing humanity was good at, it was finding ways to kill other creatures in mass.

  They kept moving through the city. Aron’s physique was the main limiter on their progress. Everyone else had either advanced their sigils or had one that directly impacted stamina.

  “Does anyone else find it odd that there are no bodies?” Samantha asked, “I mean, I’m glad there aren’t any, but still, there aren’t even bones lying around.”

  Silas took a moment to handle another angry goat, then answered, “It is bad. I’m worried that humans can be converted into monsters.”

  Back in the dragonkin camp he had witnessed Nimrod bestowing life onto a harvested corpse. While Silas had little knowledge of all that went into the process, he did know that humans had spirits. If those could be infected, the results would be dire. Instead of billions of dead people, they would be looking at billions of new enemies. Maybe not the best thing to say to a twelve year old, however Silas was a bit past treating her like a kid.

  “Let's hope that's not the case,” Bella said.

  They rounded a corner and came across a building that was in suspiciously good condition. It was made of some kind of stone in a design that was clearly not Indian. Mongolian maybe? A large sign said something in Hindi. Silas glanced at Aron for an explanation.

  The kid sighed, “This is The Great Khan’s Security and Reclamation Service.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow, “And the government was just OK with a clearly criminal organization operating in its city?”

  Aron scoffed, “You might not be able to tell now that it's destroyed, but Delhi was never a clean or organized city. Things had a habit of getting lost in the chaos.”

  Despite the location being arguably the perfect location for a base, something felt off. Samantha put words to Silas’s thoughts, “Why is that building undamaged?”

  That was it Destruction covered the city like a blanket. While it was dirty, Batu’s building was in good condition. Even the front windows weren’t broken. Could there be survivors inside? Were they maintaining it?

  “I don’t know,” Silas muttered. Glancing around his eyes landed on a nearby shop. He strode over and took a look inside. The door had been torn from its hinges.

  Within he could see clear signs of violence. Shelves had been knocked over and what looked like pottery shards covered the floor. A large furnace sat in one corner and a wheel lay on its side. In the back was a counter, likely where the owner took payment. Now there was only a blood smear on the back wall surrounding a hole that punched through the brick into an adjoining room.

  “You guys wait in here while I take a look,” Silas said. It wasn’t the most defensible, but there were plenty of projectiles for the four people with Thermal Cultivator to use.

  Bella hefted her shovel with a scowl, “We can help.”

  Samantha nodded in agreement, “Yeah, nothing’s been able to stop us since getting back.”

  Silas sighed, “I’m not saying that you’re weak or anything else, but there are plenty of things that can stop us. I need you out of the way because I’m the only one with armor. I have the lowest chance of getting one shot by any monster or trap we stumble across.”

  Samantha’s body shimmered as a second, bubble like skin covered her. She tried to fold her arms and look at Silas in defiance, “See I have armor… Ow, ow, ow,” she sucked in a deep breath, then muttered, “Forgot that was broken.”

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  Silas raised an eyebrow at her, “Exactly my point,” he pointed to Mandy’s bag full of sigils, “Let me make you some gear, then we can talk about you fighting.”

  He swept his eyes over the twins to see if there was any dissent.

  Aron held up his hands, “You’ll get no argument from me. I’m not a fighter.”

  Silas stepped aside, letting them file into the ransacked store. Bella brought up the rear, she paused before going in, “Remember, the vehicle in there isn’t worth our lives. It’s better to walk the whole way than die for nothing.”

  “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it's running,” Silas smiled.

  Bella rolled her eyes at the objectively false words before she entered the shop. Once everyone was inside, Silas looked across the street at the building. Inside was a bunker with an armored vehicle, a large stash of non perishable foods, and a large reservoir of water. While the first two were extremely convenient, that last one was of paramount importance.

  Silas moved as quietly as he could towards the building, prepared for a trap of some kind. He paused. This was dumb, why was he trying to enter the building like a normal person?

  Retreating to a different building, this one had a bunch of powders and jars. Some of which were broken, spilling colored liquids all over the floor. A paint maker? Silas wished he could take some of it with him, white bone wasn’t the most appealing color.

  Looking up at the building across the street, Silas found a window that gave a view of the second floor. Good enough. He opened a portal in the floor of the shop while its exit opened at ceiling level. This was so useful, Silas would bet that the army would be happy for this sigil if he ever went back.

  The inside of the second floor was a fairly standard office, with desks lined up and chairs forcing people to work shoulder to shoulder. Lockers lined one wall and the door looked to be made of metal. All of that was normal, where it started getting weird was with the structures made of wax like stone.

  It looked like it had been melted together by a powerful acid. Silas wasn’t sure that was even possible, but he was currently looking at it through a portal, so he supposed anything went. He wished that he could open a portal right into the bunker, but he was limited by sight or memory.

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Silas muttered then dropped through the portal. He still had two spirit remaining, escape should be easy.

  He hit the floor, flexing his knees as he landed. Glancing around the office, which looked to take up half the second floor, he counted three of the stone structures. They reminded Silas of igloos, though made of repurposed rubble. At least that explained why the surrounding area was picked clean of debris.

  Stilling his breath and focusing on his hearing, Silas tried to ascertain whether anything heard him. There was no scrabble of claws or roar of an angry predator. What he did hear was deep breathing. Tentatively, Silas tiptoed up to the stone igloos. Each one was a semi sphere sitting on the floor and extending to the ceiling. He had to crouch to look into the structure.

  Silas froze when he looked inside. A creature that was reminiscent of a vulture was curled up inside. It had several additional traits. Solid ridge ran over the back of its long neck, overlapping like an armadillo. The. Underside was still the normal fleshy red color, but the beak was serrated like a steak knife.

  Claws extended from the wing and a long plated tail extended from its rear. Vulture wyverns, bone wyverns, Silas wasn’t sure, but he was confident he could handle three of them. If all three were a similar size, they would be comparable to one of those miniature horses.

  For a moment, Silas thought about retreating to patch the eight finger holes in his chest plate. No, he wouldn’t need it. He took a chance and lunged through the nest's entrance. He opened a portal behind him to keep the other two from sneaking in behind him.

  The wyvern’s head snapped up, its hollow black eyes locked on Silas. There wasn’t that much distance to cover, so it came as a surprise when the beast reacted first. Its head snapped forward like a striking serpent. Silas barely had time to raise his shoulder to let the teeth bite into his pauldron.

  Where its teeth connected a brown corruption started spreading. Was the metal decaying? Silas didn’t care, the armor would do its job if he did his. The mantis blade sank into the wyvern’s chest, the jagged blade tearing through organs. He missed anything immediately vital, but hit at least one lung and a few arteries.

  The wyvern didn’t release his shoulder guard, so Silas started sawing. The wyvern bucked when the blade hit the spine. A sharp crack precluded the collapse of his pauldron. Just as his armor was about to give out, the monster went limp. He quickly purified it before chopping off a wing and retreating through his portal.

  He was back in the painter's shop. Silas had made a miscalculation when it came to the wyverns. To rectify that he would simply make a new weapon. The space within the igloo was far too restrictive to be swinging around a sword. Stripping off flesh and skin had gotten easy over the last months, the advancements to his control and focus allowed an ordinarily frantic pace to feel leisurely.

  Using a point of spirit, Silas molded the claws into a fifteen inch knife designed to stab. Then he rolled the porous bones in the wing into a solid grip. Next time a wyvern bit him, he would give it some brain trauma.

  His plan had one final step. Now that he knew what they were dealing with, it was time to get Bella and the others. If there was anything Silas knew, it was that oily feathers and a team of pyromaniacs did not mix.

  Glancing back up at Batu’s building, Silas could see some motion through the second story windows. Not enough to see what exactly was going on, but he could guess. The other two wyverns were inspecting the commotion in the third one’s nest.

  He could use this. Making his way down a few buildings, he entered the pottery shop. He jerked back at the glowing shovel blade that was positioned right inside the door. He slipped on some loose pottery and fell to the floor.

  “Dammit, Silas, announce yourself,” Bella chastised, “I could have seriously hurt you.”

  She made to give Silas a hand up, before grimacing when she realized that it was missing. Silas rolled to his feet and gave her a sympathetic look, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you a replacement soon.”

  Bella nodded, her eyes finding Silas’s pauldron, “So what are we dealing with?”

  Silas gave the overview of what he found. Focusing on the relatively basic abilities of the wyverns and what not to do. Basically, it came down to don’t get bitten, the claws were nasty, but they wouldn’t corrode anything they touched.

  “So wyverns, we get to fight Smaug's baby cousins?” Samantha asked.

  “Uh if Smaug were an eagle, these are the ratty pigeon cousins,” Silas shrugged. His mind went back to the dragon like kaiju he had seen before. Nothing about it was reptilian, it had both feathers and fur but its bearing was unmistakably draconic.

  It didn’t take long to prepare. They built a small fire from the shelves to create superheated pottery shards. Silas looked over the group, “Alright is everyone ready?”

  Bella and Samantha nodded, while Mandy and Aron gave each other uncertain looks. That was good enough. Silas opened a portal to the far side of the room from the nest he had invaded. This gave them a bit of cover from one of the other nests. Cover that was unneeded.

  He had expected the wyverns to be trying to figure out what had killed their nestmate. Silas had been prepared to block an immediate attack. What he saw was both wyverns with their rear ends sticking out of the third one's igloo. The sound of tearing flesh reminded Silas that they were less mythical beasts and more armadillo vultures.

  “Eww,” Samantha muttered, “That’s cannibalism. Why would they eat their friend?”

  She seemed very angry at them. Silas shrugged, “If they want to make things easy, we should take advantage of it. Toss the shards.”

  Both wyverns were crammed into the igloo's entrance and made perfect targets. The superheated pottery would ordinarily only have the initial contact to do damage followed by the hazard created for anything walking around barefoot. Now many of them hit the wyverns skittered into the wall of the igloo’s entryway, coming to a stop resting on the feathers.

  Many still fell to the floor or overshot their target, but it only took one. Silas raised his mantis blade to receive their retaliation. They just kept eating. Silas frowned, did they not recognize the pottery shards as an attack?

  He glanced at Bella. She shrugged and made a stabbing motion with her shovel. Silas didn’t see a reason not to, so he nodded. They stalked towards the wyverns when there was finally a reaction. One of them caught on fire. While a rain of pottery got no reaction, getting lit up like a torch did.

  It started thrashing trying to get away from the fire, but it had wedged itself into a doorway designed for only a single monster. The other one made irritated barking noises until the fire spread to it as well. Then both started thrashing.

  Silas and Bella arrived just as the walls of the igloo started cracking under their frantic motions. He stabbed down, aiming between the shoulder blades, driving the point in with his full body weight. Hollow bones cracked as the point carved through organs and into its heart. His wyvern went still immediately.

  Bella was less fortunate. While a shovel was a great makeshift weapon, it was still a makeshift one. One of the wyvern's shoulder blades broke, the skin split, and the surrounding feathers were ignited. She drew back for a second strike, but the death of Silas’s target gave it the opportunity to scramble out.

  Its panicked screeches rose to a frantic pitch when it laid eyes on Silas and Bella. Instead of fighting, it ran. It hit the windows lining the wall to the outside, and bounced off. Silas blinked, reinforced glass, what was Batu preparing for?

  The wyvern regained its feet as Bella arrived, chopping down on it. Despite being injured and on fire, it was still nimble. It scuttled to the side before making another dash for the window, and bounced off again. The screeching intensified, but the last head impact knocked some sense into it.

  Instead of going towards the window, it scrabbled towards the open door. Bella was ready this time, she brought the edge of her shovel into the underside of its head. No armor covered that part letting the shovel lodge itself into the wyvern’s lower jaw. That stalled it for long enough for Silas to bring the edge of his sword down on its neck where the armor plates stopped and feathers started. The monster spasmed before falling to the ground.

  Bella wrinkled her nose, “That smells disgusting. Like burning tires.”

  Silas smiled, “Hey, smelling like burning tires is preferable to being dead.” He stopped and thought about that, “We will need to find a shower, I don’t want everything within a square mile to smell us.”

  The room was filled with a thin cloud of smoke. It would definitely work its way into anything they were carrying. Silas was about to advise that they should clear the rest of the building when the room abruptly darkened.

  He didn’t pause to think. Grabbing Bella, he dragged her behind an igloo. Samantha and the twins hadn’t left their cover. Pushing Bella behind him, he peered around the edge of the melted stone. Something was climbing the outside of the building.

  Silas almost jerked back when he saw what was outside. A black soulless eye, the size of a dinner plate gazed into the room. Samantha squeaked in surprise as she saw the same thing. Another wyvern was clinging to the exterior of the building and judging from its comparative size, they had just killed its hatchlings.

  The igloos took on a new meaning. Were they giant eggs? They were the wrong shape, but then again, why did eggs need to be round?

  The adult wyvern cocked its head trying to see through the smoky obstruction. Gently it pecked at the reinforced glass, making a curious cooing noise. Unlike when the baby wyvern had rammed the pane, it flexed under the adult’s curious attention.

  Silas considered running, but they were hidden at the moment. It would be better to wait for the creature to move on, then sprint for the basement. It pecked at the glass a few more times, its curious chirping turning more concerned over the next few moments.

  He tensed, prepared to open the portal. If it broke the glass, he would need to move fast. Fortunately, it did not come to that. In a blur of red flesh and black feathers, the wyvern climbed up the building.

  Silas did not wait. He gestured for the others to follow as he slunk across the room to the open door. He poked his sword through first and when nothing bit it, he stuck his head in. It was a stairwell going up to the roof and down to the ground floor. A door across the second landing was open, with daylight shining down into the room.

  “Hey Aron, was the second floor always open to the sky?” Silas asked.

  “Uh, no. Why do you ask?” Aron frowned.

  “We need to run,” Silas hissed as the light falling into the room was blotted out.

  Bella went first. She scooped Samantha up and tossed her over her shoulder before sprinting down the steps. Aron and Mandy were much slower, but still ran as fast as they could. Silas brought up the rear, which gave him a front row seat to watch the armored neck of the wyvern push its way through the door. It started to move towards the room they had just exited when its eyes landed on Silas.

  He redoubled his speed, hoping the concrete building would be strong enough to hold off the wyvern. Silas reached the ground floor in time to watch Bella kick the door off its hinges. They spilled into a small lobby that reminded Silas of a doctor's office.

  Pictures of Batu and children that could only be Aron and Mandy hung above simple wooden chairs. A desk and office chair divided the lobby from the offices on the rest of the floor. Considering how Batu worked, Silas would bet that these were made for more clandestine meetings.

  Silas looked at the ceiling uncertainly as a thunderous screech came from above. He felt he understood what rats felt like when terriers were digging up their burrows. Just like a rat he intended to go deeper underground.

  “Aron, how do we get to the basement?” Silas yelled.

  “There’s a garage in the back, the whole floor lowers. That's where the bus is stored,” Aron

  answered panic tinging his voice.

  “Go, then. We’ll follow,” Silas yelled.

  Aron flinched but obeyed. They followed him through the maze of offices and side rooms while dust rained down from the ceiling. Silas looked up every few steps and frowned as he saw brown spots appear like mold. Was the concrete rusting?

  Behind them, a portion of the building collapsed. Just as they entered the garage, Silas realized they had a problem.

  “Aron, is there a back entrance or other exit from this bunker?” Silas asked.

  The boy rushed across the metal floor to a control panel that looked to control the garage door along with the hydraulic lift below them. It was a bare bones garage, a place that could be easily cleaned with the pressure washer tucked in the corner.

  “N-N-No, wouldn’t be a good bunker if it had multiple entrances,” Aron stuttered.

  Bella recognized the problem as well, “If we don’t deal with the monster, we could be buried.”

  Silas was more worried about getting crushed by falling rock, as he was quite difficult to trap. He looked up at the roof, they could likely get food and water elsewhere, but where else could they find an armored, solar powered bus? Really it came down to one simple question. Could Silas kill a monster the size of a small building?

  The answer that came was surprising. Silas glanced at Bella, “I’ll be back.”

  “Wait!” She called, but it was too late.

  A portal popped into existence below him and another about thirty feet above him. He went from the near pitch darkness of the garage to the bright midday sun in the space of a breath. Silas looked down to where the wyvern was clawing its way through to the second floor. It was time to get to work.