Reidar pushed the door wider, stepping into the diner. The interior was a ruin. Tables lay overturned; chairs were scattered across the floor. The counter was split down the middle, a tree root forcing its way through the tile beneath from the side of the building.
Dust hung in the air, thick enough to taste, and sunlight barely filtered through gaps in the boarded windows. The kitchen door was open, revealing darkness beyond.
At first glance, nothing moved. No signs of life. No sounds.
But Reidar had heard something when he was outside. The rustle of movement. The shuffle of weight shifting. And the tracks led here.
Someone was inside. It had to be.
He raised his hand, and three spectral knights entered through the door, shields raised, swords drawn.
"Search the place," Reidar said.
The knights moved. They spread out through the diner, checking behind the counter, peering into the kitchen, and investigating every shadow that could hide a threat.
Reidar waited by the entrance while Lena stood outside to block anything that dared to try to escape.
The knights reached a more secluded part of the diner, which had likely been some kind of storage area. One stepped through the doorway.
Then, an explosion came without warning.
A deafening blast ripped through the diner. Fire and heat erupted, slamming into the spectral knights and hurling them backward from the shockwave. Tables disintegrated. Glass shattered into a thousand pieces. The boarded-up windows blew out in a spray of splinters and dust.
Reidar dropped to the ground, as his instinct took over.
He triggered Stone Skin, and a gritty hardness flowed over his skin just as the shockwave slammed into him. It wasn't enough, and he grunted, layering on another defense. Reidar also had to use Formic Acid Barrier. A shimmering, greenish dome snapped into place around him an instant before the full force of the blast washed over his spot.
The shield clung on, sizzling and popping as it swallowed the blast's kinetic fury. He'd hear the roar like a physical blow, ringing his ears for a heartbeat, and the heat burned his lungs.
Debris rained down, bouncing off his barrier. Heat washed over him, singeing his cloak.
Through the distorted lens of his barrier, he saw something small and incredibly fast shoot out from the wreckage of the kitchen, zipping between the legs of a spectral knight and vanishing out the shattered front of the diner.
Lena was there. There was no way that thing could escape her.
Then, before the ringing in his ears had even begun to subside, Lena's came out with disbelief. "A KID!"
Lena was already moving, sprinting after the figure. One of Reidar's wolves surged forward, and she vaulted onto its back without breaking stride.
Reidar pushed himself up, shaking the dust from his head. His defenses flickered out. The diner lay in ruins, even more torn up than it had been. His spectral knights stood guard, unmoved.
He stumbled out of the entrance only to see Lena already mounted on one of his giant wolves, a block away, chasing whatever came out of the diner.
Ahead of her, barely visible through the haze, a small figure ran.
<A kid? I didn't mishear then!>
A child. He couldn't be more than twelve. Moving fast. Too fast.
The kid matched the wolf's pace, legs pumping with a speed that should have been impossible for something that moved on two legs.
Reidar turned and suddenly realized that, what just happened made a ton of noise.
The explosion had been a thunderclap in the city's silence. Lena's shout didn't help either.
And from the skeletal buildings around them, something came investigating. Guttural roars, the skittering of chitinous legs on concrete, and the heavy, ground-shaking tread of massive things . All of it was converging on their position.
Every predator within earshot would be on them soon. Then he heard the howls.
"Damn it."
He whistled, and his own wolf bounded to his side. He vaulted onto its back. The beast responded before he finished settling into position, launching into a full sprint.
As he rode, he channeled his trait. The familiar pulse of Skill Sharing spread outward, connecting him to his spectral knights. In a blink, he fed them the Summon Primal Pack skill, its whole shape and feel slotting right into their heads.
Behind him, his knights acted. Wolves materialized around them, massive beasts that matched the ones Reidar already commanded.
"With me!"
The knights mounted their new summons, and the formation took shape. Thirty wolves and ten spectral knights fell behind Reidar.
The chase was on. He leaned low over his mount's neck; the wind whipping past his face. Ahead, Lena and her wolf were following the darting kid.
He took a hard left, vanishing down an alley between a collapsed bank and a church with a collapsed spire. Lena followed without hesitation.
Reidar and his thundering entourage followed. But so did the monsters. His wolf leaped over a pile of rubble, landing hard on the other side. He gripped the beast's mane, feeling the muscles bunch beneath his fingers. The street stretched out before them, but what Reidar saw wasn't pleasant to the eye at all.
"Shit!"
From the surrounding buildings, monsters emerged. They poured out of shattered windows, spilled from caved-in doors, and dropped from rooftops.
The monsters were another nightmare-inducing insect race.
"Why always bugs?!"
They moved toward Reidar and his company. There was no other sound than their skittering on the pavement and buildings they were scaling or coming from.
At the far end of the street, a group of monsters turned the corner. They were larger and more imposing than the bugs but in far fewer numbers than them.
<Glimmerfangs?>
Reidar looked at the bugs and at the wolfish monsters.
<Are they going to fight among themselves or just head for me?>
In the middle of the street, Lena and her wolf had followed the kid down a side street. Reidar saw them turn and take the alley, but he was far.
There was not much he could do at that point. He had to take the same side street Lena and the kid did and use his summons to block it.
<That will stop the Glimmerfangs, but I doubt those other fuckers will be stopped by the walls.>
That meant they would keep chasing.
Reidar's grip tightened on his wolf's mane. He could feel the beast's muscles coiling.