"What?" Eik whispered, the blood draining from his face as images of the people he knew flashed before his mind's eye. "S-S-Say that again, please."

"I think Earth was a target for the cultists!" Mikla said.

"B-But why?" Michael asked. "My mom!"

"Does it matter why right now?" Heath shouted. "Open a damned fracture right now!"

"We think they're playing the long game and aiming to weaken any future force of the alliance as much as they possibly can by devastating the newest and most recent civilizations to join us while you're still soft targets," Mikla said quickly as he tore open a rift in space, humming blue filling in the emptiness to form a fracture.

"Why the hell are we only hearing about this now?" Eik asked.

Mikla made a face as he shrugged. "General chaos? Interception of the flow of information? It's not really my area of expertise, Eik. The cult is very powerful and very good at manipulating information to suit whatever need they have in the moment. It's one of the reasons they are so dangerous. Combine that with the fact that it seems like they targeted worlds with no exceptional high rankers and its not wonder it went unnoticed for as long as it did."

"Shit!" Eik snarled. "Andihar, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to leave little Bin to you for just a bit. I'll come back for her, I promise!" Heath and Sonja were already stepping through the swirling portal.

"I'll bring her over soon," the S-ranker said with a reassuring smile.

"Pardon?" Eik tried but he was already being swallowed by the portal, unable to step back out. "Could you maybe repeat tha—" And then he was gone.

***

They emerged inside Eik's house. It looked exactly as he had left it. Mis was still at Mikla's place and she would be staying there for the moment.

Rushing out of the door they ran down the street. It was exceedingly quiet. Way too quiet. A moaning voice flowed out from a door. It was from Mrs. Clain's house.

She lay on the floor of her kitchen, knife still stuck to the hilt in her belly. Blood bubbled up in her throat every time she tried to take a breath. Instantly Michael was there to prop up her head. They met a few times and she had been kind to him.

"Mrs. Clain," he tried. "Mrs. Clain, can hear me? It's Michael. Eik and the others are here as well."

Her eyes were somewhere far away but at the sound of his voice she appeared to be trying to say something. All she managed was a wet cough, however, tears streaking down her cheeks as she stopped shivering. "Mrs. Clain! Mrs. Clain!" Michael's hands of healing were already flat against the wound as he slowly pulled the knife from her stomach and jammed his fingers into the gash left behind to block the flow of blood.

Eik mashed some of his improved healing chunks down between the healer's fingers and put some pain killing medicine on Mrs. Clain's tongue to dissolve and give her some relief. "Mikey, can I leave her with y—"

"Yeah, of course. You guys go on. I'll take care of things here." His confidence was on another level compared to just a few months earlier.

They left him to treat her and kept going. The further in toward the center of town they went, the more numerous the corpses grew. As the severity of the state of things grew more and more evident with every meter walked, they eventually slowed their advance to a near crawl.

Smoke billowed up into the air from ruined buildings, flames licking their way quietly up collapsed support beams. Weakened by the persistent fire, the roof of a house collapsed just as they were passing by, scaring the daylight out of them.

Seeing the place they had called home for the past many years looking like this felt like heavy stones in their stomachs and none of them could find the will to discuss what they were seeing. Living in a world which had long since been overrun by horrific monsters, it obviously wasn't the first time they had walked through ruins like this, but it just wasn't the same this time around.

What they now saw was not the consequence of some mindless, instinct-driven beast that could be seen almost like some form of natural disaster. It was terrible but simply a part of life at this point.

This, on the other hand… it was a different situation entirely. This was done by beings capable of coherent thought. Capable of speech. Capable of logic… Presumably… Actually, maybe the insane members of a death cult were not really the best examples of such.

Eik eyed Mikla as they walked through the streets, careful to keep close to the corners. "I thought the cult was supposed to be, you know, subtle and stealthy, working under the cover of darkness to do their foul deeds unnoticed. Wasn't that what you guys told us?"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Mikla tilted his head from side to side. "They do, but I think there might have been a bit of a miscommunication there. The cult is more than capable, and certainly willing, to use force and violence to achieve any and all goals of theirs," he said and looked pointedly around the destruction around. He continued.

"Stealth and subtlety is their standard modus operandi mostly when it comes to the infiltration of minor, new, and or undiscovered worlds, such as the one you went to to rescue those children. They want to prolong the time until we find such worlds as much as they possibly can to embed themselves properly. The same goes for relatively smaller operations such as what has been happening here on Earth with the mind skulks."

"Then why the hell are they suddenly doing this?" Heath hissed, fury apparent in his voice. "Are we just a convenient way to kick the alliance in the balls then, or what?"

Mikla could only shrug, an expression of discomfort painted on his face. "I-I… I don't know. I wish I could tell you."

"Fuck this," the tank muttered under his breath, eyes under a dark cloud as he sped up to walk a bit ahead of the rest of them.

"I can only apologize," Mikla said to the rest of them. "Your integration into the Nidafjeld Alliance hasn't exactly been smooth and painless, has it?"

"This is not on you, mate," Eik reassured him. "We're well aware that its Moon Shall Swallow that is the enemy in this," he said, refraining from mentioning that they still had many doubts about the alliance as well. "Heath is just venting and you're the best and nearest target to unload some of his ire. I'll talk to him later."

Mikla just nodded with an understanding smile.

They were watching the disgruntled tank's back from a few paces behind when Olivia spoke. "Hold up, guys, I think I'm hearing som—"

A sudden yell put them all on high alert and Mikla and Olivia arrived on either side of Heath before the source of the voice had even revealed himself, Eik getting there an eye blink later, Movement Boost activating on pure reflex.

A young man with a nasty gash on his arm spanning from shoulder to elbow came dashing out of a door hanging halfway open on broken hinges. Discolored bruises practically covered his forehead and cheeks. Judging by the speed of his approach alone, he was in the low end of F-rank so no matter how much he was underestimating them, it was an incredibly bold move to charge at them on his own like that.

Immediately aware of the possibility of the cult having laid a seemingly harmless ambush in anticipation of the arrival of reinforcements, Mikla's hand shot out, the air shimmering hazily around his fingers as they weaved intricate patterns. At once, the young F-ranker froze mid run, held fast as if encased by a suit of solid, invisible metal.

"Keep an eye out for any cultists popping up!" he warned, eyes scanning the nearest corners and places offering cover, his hand remaining extended as he approached the young man. "Are you alone?" None of them had ever seen or heard Mikla such a harsh tone from the fracture specialist. The fact that he actually had more experience in combat than most of them was not as difficult to believe now.

"Wh-What?" the young man stammered, only his eyes and lips allowed to move even an inch by Mikla's ability.

"I asked you if you're the bait for a stronger force about to jump out at us."

"I— No, I— Who are you?"

"We're the reinforcements."

"You're not the—"

"I'm Olivia Valkiri, B-ranker, from Forest," she broke in. "This is Eik, Heath, and Sonja, also from Forest. We are not cultists. Can you tell us what's going on?"

Even though he stayed suspended in the air, his body suddenly seemed to slouch in the invisible hold as tears began to stream down his cheeks. Mikla released the ability and let him sink to the ground where he sat shivering, the tiny knife he had been holding clattering noisily into the dirt. "Probably not an ambush at this point," he concluded.

"I d-don't even know wh-what happened," the F-ranker. "All of a sudden they were everywhere, dragging us all from our houses. They took everybody away. They were like a fucking army of robots wrapped in synthetic skin or something sick like that."

"They took them away? Where to?"

"I— I don't know. By the time I woke up they were gone. I think I hit my head on something. It's throbbing like crazy."

"What's your name, man?" Eik asked.

"H-Harvey. My name is Harvey."

"Alright, Harvey. Thanks for the info. We'll try to do something about this shit show of a situation, okay?" Eik said, finding himself unable to believe that they would be able to live up to such a promise. "Listen, we found corpses — a lot of corpses — while walking through town. You said they dragged people away."

"Anybody who resisted got a knock or two on the head to make them shut up. Anybody who still continued to resist after that… it was awful man," he managed between sobs. "It was like they didn't have any feelings at all. Like puppets. I never thought I'd say this, but I could do with a few monsters right about now."

"Did you at least see what direction they went?"

"I'm sorry, but I'm not sure. I'm scared as hell, man. My mind is a total mess right now."

"That's okay, Harvey," Eik said. "Go back into your house and wait for help to arrive. I promise we won't forget that you're here, alright?"

"Yeah, alright," he said and went back in without another word.

"If they're rounding people up for something, then I'd bet they're moving in rather than out."

"That's probably the best place to start, at least."

Keeping low and cautious, they made their way deeper into town. Moving through the streets like this made the place feel foreign to Eik despite having walked this exact route literally thousands of times. What the hell were they going to find?

After a few more minutes of careful advance, those among them with the best ears began to hear a distant, muffled voice, traveling far as if amplified by a megaphone. They were getting closer to something. It it was probably not going to be anything good.

"And that's another," Olivia suddenly said, all eyes moving to her. "I can distinguish the words now. It said 'and that's another'"

"Can you tell w—"

"'How much more of this spectacle must you witness before you bend?'" she interrupted, holding up a finger to signal for silence as she repeated what she heard. "'Your leaders are clearly not up to the task of supporting you as you enter this new, dangerous era of your lives. Glorious, yes — there's no doubt about that — but dangerous. You need more than what these pitiful insects can offer if you ever hope to survive what's to come."

Eik's brows came together in a frown. "That almost sounds like—"

"'You need us. The Moon Shall Swallow and carry you through the peril and herald the glory!'" Olivia spoke, relaying the words of the distant speaker.

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