Click. Click. Click. Keeping the talons on her heels had been a mistake. In fairness, the clicking sound wasn’t any noisier than Talver’s crossbow and the other gear hanging from his waist or back. The angel was just sensitive to sound knowing how easy it made finding people for the gaunt, let alone the Between’s other denizens. The added height wasn’t so bad though. Silver linings and all that.

  Brivaria had kept her hybrid-gaunt and demon form. Akashic said it was extremely similar to a hell gaunt. With a few adjustments and some experimentation, she could likely craft a hell gaunt form. She definitely saw the appeal in it. The claws on the tops of her wings were fantastic. Her new wings were like a second set of arms but they were far stronger. The claws were roughly three times the size of her hands and, when they’d entered the space they were in now, she’d used them to move a large beam out of their way.

  Speaking of the space, they were now in what appeared to be a warehouse or large storeroom. The door from the cliff had led to the third floor of some kind of building and Brivaria was deeply thankful to be out from under the gaze of that giant eye. She had the feeling that it was watching them, specifically her and had been doing so the whole time.

  Talver was likewise thankful by the looks of things. The young guardsman still had a haunted look about him but he was forcing himself to go through the motions and do what needed doing. More importantly, he was still alive. Akashic’s plan to have Brivaria turn into a gaunt had worked though it had almost worked too well.

  Now they were surrounded by shelves full of crates in what looked to be a man-made building. It was easy to tell the parts of the Between that were closer to a given universe as they started to resemble that universe. To someone just stumbling inside, it would look like a gloomy parallel world. Of course, the natural thing someone would do in such a place was to call out for help and things would go south very quickly after that. Brivaria and Talver knew better. When they reached the guard rail that overlooked the rest of this building, Talver had said he recognized it.

  “This is one of the big storehouses on the east side. Some of these boxes are too heavy to be lifted without skills or high attributes so a wagon comes in through one large set of doors, moves to a specific place, and then crates are lowered down onto it by hooks and pulleys. The wagon driver then guides the horses pulling the wagon out the other side,” the guardsman explained quietly while gesturing for emphasis.

  “What do they store here?” Brivaria asked, equally quietly but curious.

  “Lumber, ore, stone, trash,” he answered. Brivaria blinked.

  “Trash?” That seemed the odd one out to her.

  “Yeah, you know how folks have harvesting skills that can skin, cut, and prepare animals? I’ve heard some adventurers have those kinds of skills but for monsters.” Brivaria nodded at his words. She’d heard of those though no one in her group had one that she was aware of. “Well, there are reclamation skills too. They can turn a finished product back to its component parts. One second it’s a wagon, the next it’s a pile of lumber, a block of iron, and so on. Costs a lot of mana but lets the city reuse anything that can’t be fixed or can’t find a home.”

  Brivaria was checking the crates as they passed to see what they held. When Talver noticed her doing it, he started doing it too. Items copied by the Between were real and would persist outside the Between. If they found a bag of mana coins then they could pick it up, take it with them, and walk away that much richer assuming they got out. Tragically there were no bags of treasure just sitting around to be snatched up by the duo.

  “Say, why are all these places so deserted?” Talver asked.

  “The Between can’t copy people, anything people are wearing, or anything touching a person. No one knows why. The only inhabitants of the Between are focused on killing anything that enters and is not of the Between so no one is answering questions.”

  While speaking, Brivaria was using one of her large, wing claws to hold up a crate lid so she could pull a few bars of some kind of metal into her inventory. Her shield was ruined thanks to the molten spray of the slimes which was downright tragic since Spiteful Aegis was some sort of unholy variant of Holy Bulwark and scaled off spirit. She needed a replacement shield if she wanted to use the skill. If she could grab a few bars of whatever this stuff was and barter them later for new gear then she’d do so.

  The two passed a window on the way downstairs and Brivaria glanced outside. Without the sun, it was utter darkness outside so Talver hadn’t given the open window a second thought. Brivaria could see in the dark, however. She stopped dead in her tracks and stared. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of Ogramites standing outside. Some wore metal armor, some wore padded armor, but they were all just standing still as though waiting for something. Several of the six-armed demon horses were present along with some grotesque spider-shaped abominations. It was eerie and the angel might have thought it was some kind of trick of the Between if not for her eyes magically sighting each monster. Her demonic prey sense registered them as creatures.

  “Talver, come see this,” the angel said while pointing her light spell out the window. She had to spend mana to make it bright enough to pierce the gloom and reveal them. Talver came over to the window and gasped.

  “What the… There’s a whole army of those things out there just standing in formation. This place gets worse and worse,” Talver said while stepping away from the window.

  “If all of those can cross over into Barton then the city could be looking at a full scale invasion.” Brivaria frowned at what she saw and her barbed tail lashed behind her.

  “Could that happen?” he asked.

  “Normally I’d say no, however I’ve been attacked on two separate occasions by monsters from the Between while in or around Barton. If someone was calling them and commanding them then maybe…” Brivaria trailed off in thought.

  “Could it be those gaunt things?” Brivaria was already shaking her head even as Talver asked the question. They were organized but she hadn’t gotten any hint about something like this while communicating with them. That didn’t mean they weren’t aware of it or even part of it but the way information was shared made it difficult to hide things.

  “I think it’s someone in Barton. I think they set those monsters loose deliberately. Now I’m afraid that there’s a plan to put these things to work. There was already one attack on the city but, with so many noteworthy people in Barton, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more,” Brivaria said. Some of the black tendrils around her body rose and fell akin to someone idly drumming their fingers while in thought. She didn’t like the looks of this at all.

  “Then getting out of here is even more important—not just for us but for the whole city.” Brivaria looked over at the guardsman and his affable smile was missing. There was a serious, thoughtful glint in his eyes but then it was gone. The carefree smile fell back into place when he realized she was looking at him but Brivaria was certain that he was every bit as worried about things as she was.

  The two made their way down to the first floor. Talver’s Sense of Direction trait was leading them toward one particular exit. He felt very strongly that the city was near which made both of them optimistic that their excursion to the Between might be coming to an end. That made it all the worse when something began to rise in the darkness. They had been quiet but not completely silent and it seemed they’d been noticed.

  Brivaria, ironically, recognized the thing before Talver. The adventurers guild had practice dummies in several sizes from small to medium to large. The large dummies were meant to simulate giants though Velk had no giantkin as far as Brivaria knew. Despite that, there were some shoddy pieces of armor strapped to the dummies that were then setup to be punching bags for adventurers. This was one of those… only it was now home to a gigantic Ogramite.

  Eight long, fleshy limbs sprouted from the large armor. The training dummies didn’t have legs but they had arms so the monster had found eight gauntlets to shove its strange appendages into. These weren’t affixed to the creature as the horse abominations had been but simply worn as they normally were. It was disconcerting to see hands used in place of feet, again, but the angel had reached her quota of weirdness for the day and was unmoved. In fact, both she and Talver simply readied themselves for battle.

  The guardsman unslung his crossbow without missing a beat and fired at the large Ogramite. He was already putting his boot through the weapon’s stirrup to draw it back for a second shot as the first bolt struck the monster. The creature answered the attack by grabbing a hunk of iron from a pile and hurling it at the duo. The metal chunk was followed by a second, third, and fourth. The creature was using four of its long, noodle arms to walk but the others were grabbing everything not nailed down and hurling it at the pair. Brivaria barely had time to throw a Bolt of Decay at the monster before the onslaught of return projectiles forced her to dodge behind a large, wooden crate as tall as she was.

  When the barrage of junk ended, there was silence in the room. Suddenly a sharpened, metal rod punched through the crate. It came out right in front of Brivaria’s head and sent chunks of wood flying out from the opening. The crate groaned as it was pulled to the side and flung away, leaving Brivaria facing the monster.

  The angel-turned-demon jumped back to avoid a heavy swing with a shovel that nearly decapitated her then dodged a downward chop with a pick. With all of its attention focused on Brivaria, the thing forgot about the guardsman. The winged girl hopped back to avoid another swing when the beast staggered from a weighty impact to its side. Bless the man, Talver had yet to run out of crossbow bolts.

  The gauntleted fist holding the shovel came down as if to crush her but this time, rather than leaping back, Brivaria went forward. Much to the creature’s surprise, one of the massive claws attached to her wings caught the metal fist holding the shovel. The creature was weakened by two sources of decay, the bolt that had struck it and the light from Brivaria’s claws. That fact combined with the larger, stronger muscles in the hybrid form’s wings let her match its strength. She squeezed her claw shut and tore the Ogramite’s arm off.

  There was a single moment in time where Brivaria looked up at the large Ogramite from beneath her black horns not with fear but derision. All four of her claws began to glow with magic as she infused them with power. The moment in time ended and she moved. Talver was aiming his crossbow for another shot and then stopped. What followed was a fight almost as one-sided as the gaunt against the slimes.

  The winged girl tore the Ogramite limb from literal limb. All eight of its long arms were ripped off and, even as it tried to close the armor protectively around itself, she pried the thing open like an oversized clam. One of her large, wing claws stabbed forward driving deadly bladed fingers into the creature’s soft flesh. The otherwise dark room was illuminated with flashes of light as a couple spells were cast straight into the monster. Its squirming came to an end.

  Brivaria looked up as she heard a sound only to realize it was Talver releasing tension on his crossbow and putting away the quarrel he’d been preparing to fire. She heard a second sound from upstairs. That was not Talver.

  “We need to go,” she said without preamble. The winged girl took a couple bounding steps toward the guardsman while he shifted the crossbow onto his back. He looked a bit wary as she came at him but smiled with forced cheer.

  “That we do. The door is this way.” He moved and she reached out to take one of his arms at the elbow. He stiffened momentarily then relaxed but she’d seen it. Brivaria’s awareness was low but it was growing, level by level, and she wasn’t completely ignorant at reading mortal body language. He was afraid of her. She understood. It hurt her, but she understood.

  The two found the door leading out and stepped from the door into the midday streets of Barton. The eerie stillness of the Between faded as the sounds of people and life filled the air. In her System menu, Brivaria could see the rest of her team as Giselle’s Heart of the Herd skill connected them once more. She wasn’t getting the attribute benefits of being near Giselle but seeing her team reappear told Brivaria that they were still in the city and hadn’t followed them into the Between. That was all she cared about.

  “That was something, wasn’t…” Talver stopped speaking as he looked over to find himself standing next to the blonde, white-winged girl who’d entered the Decrune estate with him rather than the horned demon girl. “It’s terrifying how fast you can do that.”

  “I don’t want to start a riot in the streets with my other forms,” the angel said sheepishly. He seemed to think about that and nodded.

  “Huh, you know I thought you were a paladin or something. Not a…” the brown-haired guardsman seemed to struggle to find a word for it.

  “Shapeshifter? Yeah, I suppose I’m both. Sort of,” Brivaria wasn’t sure what she was now, doubly so with her new class. Speaking of which, she checked her notifications.

  You have reached level 44.

  Gained +2 Physique, +1 Endurance, +1 Arcane, +2 Spirit, +1 Awareness, +2 Presence.

  Gained one new skill selection.

  She’d gained a level during the fight with the slimes but she had the feeling she was close to another. Maybe with a bit more practice over the next couple nights she could get it. For now, Brivaria needed to regroup with her team.

  “Say, where are we? Do you know the way back?” Brivaria asked, suddenly looking around. Talver had a distant look in his eyes that said he had also been looking at his System menus. His eyes refocused on their surroundings and he looked around.

  “Uh, yeah. Follow me. The city is really easy to navigate when you know what to do. Just pick a direction and walk until you find a main road and then…”

  Brivaria smiled and let the words wash over her. It was surreal to think they’d just been fighting for their lives just moments ago. They had come so close to dying a couple times in the Between only to go through a door and be standing in the middle of the city like nothing had ever happened only minutes later. Though Brivaria’s magic had healed the injuries, their clothes still bore the scars of the battles in the Between. A few concerned glances were thrown their way from passersby.

  They pair paid the looks no heed. Getting back to the group before someone did something reckless was the angel’s first priority. After that, she wanted to have a longer talk with Guardsman Talver. He was deliberately not talking about what had just happened and that was not usually a good sign as she understood it. She put it on the mental pile of things to do as they went about returning to the Decrune estate.

  Name: Brivaria

  Race: Angel

  Class: Sronyan Valkyrie

  Level: 44

  Stats: Health 62/86, Mana 68/170, Stamina 29/115

  Attributes: Physique 72, Endurance 43, Arcane 80, Spirit 85, Awareness 43, Presence 89

  Active Skills: Current Control, Dark Caress, Spiteful Aegis, Twisted Reflection, Wind Formation

  Passive Skills: Alternative Form, Corrupt Shapeshifting, Infernal Seed, Inventory, Lesser Flight, Lingering Decay, Natural Weapons, Rest, Traits (Angel)

  Magic: Light of Decay

  Affinity: Corruption, Decay, Unholy

  Unspent Skill Points: 1