A little while later, we were back on the streets, and Mooney was machine-gunning questions at me as we walked.

"I still don't think I quite understand what your deal is, Undershaft. Are you now like… an Avenger or something now?"

"No," I said, keeping a close eye on my minimap. What the Lugat had shared with me had peaked my paranoia levels off the charts. "It's nothing like that."

"Oh." We walked in silence for a little while longer. "Have you got more of a Legion of Doom thing going on?"

"What? No. What makes you think that?"

"Well, I'm not being funny, mate, but you've done some pretty shady stuff over the years. And the whole 'attempted murder by your beloved mentor' thing is giving supervillain origin story vibes."

I picked up on a couple of red dots moving in on us, and I stopped dead outside a shuttered chicken shop - grease ghosts on the glass and a sun-faded deal for "5 Wings £2.99" - causing Mooney to cannon into my shoulder with an offended "oof."

For whatever reason, pretty much everything in this part of London was showing as a red dot, but there was something about these two that seemed especially sus. Then a moped screamed past two-up, no plates, and with the pillion hugging a duffel bag. I pulled Mooney behind me and braced for the double boom of a sawn-off and the scatter of Number 6 shot across the road.

But nothing came.

And the dots blinked away. The chicken shop, to its credit, didn't shoot me in the face either.

As the moped sped away, I took a deep breath. I needed to get a grip.

What the Lugat had told – and shown – me wasn't exactly outside my experience envelope. Was it creepy? Yes. Deeply unsettling? Also yes. But "massively beyond expectations enough to have me this one edge"? Hardly.

I'd spent my time on Bayteran up against an Empire, a Rebellion and a literal god. And some of the worst of that had gone down before I'd even had access to half the Abilities I'd got clipped to my Core now. Compared to the Eli I'd been when I'd first walked through Bayteran's woods, one previously banished shadow demon felt like… scope-creep.

I'd gone toe-to-toe with the Maker when I'd been under-levelled, under-armed, and - let's be honest – spectacularly underdressed. For whatever reason, the Veil was obviously particularly thin right about now. And this Nazi demon was seeking to return. And everything seemed to be mixed up with Griff, which was giving me the heebie-jeebies, for sure.

But even then…

This was all still in my wheelhouse.

We cut through a grubby, built-up estate that sensible people would avoid like the plague. A fox ghosted along a fence line, mouth full of someone's dinner and a powerful beat of bass leaked from a top-floor window. Two lads on e-bikes watched us with the professional incuriosity of people who absolutely were interested. Far above, a police helicopter chalked slow triangles in the sky.

"And the Albanian's are led by an actual, literal monster?" Mooney said, already not waiting for a response, "and your aunt is… what, a ghostbuster who does mystical karate?"

"Breathe, Mooney."

"Easy for you to say, Undershaft. Apparently, you're nigh on immortal."

A Range Rover idled at the kerb ahead, hazard lights doing Morse for 'don't ask questions.' Three men in tracksuits stood at its driver side door laughing uproariously. One of them gave Mooney a little nod of recognition as we passed.

I found myself thumbing the red thread the Lugat had given me. Entry. Dwelling. Leaving. Three knots. Three ways in which Aunt M had sought to fight the Shadow on Earth. It seemed like it had worked out pretty well for her. Until it didn't.

"You will have to stand in Margaret's stead," the Lugat had said, just before ushering me out. "But know that He that was banished cannot be allowed to return to Earth. Things are moving quickly, and you must be equal to them, Warden." Then he'd handed me a shadow orb, which moved my Earth Invasion quest up to 2/5, and also supplied me with the location of three more Shadows within hittable distance.

Now I thought of it, I was pretty sure he was availing himself of the opportunity to have me take out a bunch of his rivals. Just because the world was potentially ending didn't mean there wasn't gangstering to be done. But, right now, I didn't think I cared.

"Right," I said. "We need to take the next left. Who we're looking for is supposed to be under one of these bridges."

"Excellent. Because all the good things in this world happen under bridges," Mooney said. "There's fairy stories about it and everything." There was a pause. "I don't suppose you can summon us up a couple of Billy Goats Gruff, can you?"

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"No."

"No summoning skills?"

"No."

"And you're still absolutely sure I have to come with you?"

I didn't answer that immediately. Because, to be fair, I wasn't. I really wasn't.

Sure, on paper, Mooney was technically a Level 3, which wasn't nothing. But, in practice, he seemed to have about as much System access as a toaster. I wasn't sure how any of that worked. He'd levelled up – and thinking about it, the guys who'd tried to shoot me outside Aunt M's cottage had levels in them too, didn't they? – but he obviously didn't have any understanding of the System or how to use it.

No more than I'd had before I was shot in the attic.

The upshot of all of that was, at the very best, I was going to be completely carrying him through the hunt for these last three orbs. Which was fine, that was the point of my Class, but even on a good day, Mooney was a small-doses personality. Best enjoyed in sampler flights, not by the pint. And now the Lugat had pointed me in the direction of my next objective, which I thought was going to lead me to Griff, I didn't actually need his help for anything.

However…

I was absolutely sure that left alone for ten minutes, Mooney was going to text Griff, call Griff, voice-note Griff, and then accidentally @Griff in a public post warning him I was coming.

And I couldn't exactly blame him for that. Under similar circumstances, past me might've done the same. Knowledge is power in the world we lived in. And Griff was absolutely the sort of person you'd want to gain some credit with anyway you can.

But the System had made its preference abundantly clear for me to get hold of these shadow orbs before I confronted Griff. My reward for gathering them would stabilise the Veil. Accidentally ending up in a boss fight earlier than that because my so-called mate wandered off to snitch would hardly be peak Wardening.

Initially, I'd considered leaving him in the Lugat's safekeeping, and the shadow had offered to keep an eye on him. But I'd always preferred to keep my liabilities where I could see their pockets.

"Look," I said, starting for the next turn, "you're coming with me because I want to keep you safe. And, believe me, I'm probably the best person alive to do that right now."

"And there was me never knowing you cared, Undershaft. Should we hug now?"

"Don't make it weird, mate."

"As if I would. Oh, oh! Do I get an 'Apprentice Batman' lanyard? Am I Robin?"

"How about you be quiet for a bit?"

He opened his mouth to speak again, and I hooked two fingers in his collar and steered him to the left, down under the arch of a bridge where graffiti twitched in the sodium light.

"Okay, so if you're not an Avenger and you're not a supervillain, what exactly are you, Undershaft?"

"I'm a Warden."

"And that means what now?"

"It means I've got some additional game."

We walked in silence for a bit after that. I imagine he was thinking about some of the stories he might have heard about my work for Griff – some of them true, some of them exaggerated – and wondering exactly how much that 'additional game' might add up to.

"D'you have a lair?"

"If I had a lair, mate, why would I have needed to crash at yours?"

"Good point. So, you're a bit of a budget supervillain. Like… a down-on-his luck Lex Luthor?"

I thought we were close to the first location the Lugat had flagged, and I needed to get my head in the game. "Do you think we can move on from this schtick, please?"

"Sorry, Undershaft. It's just… this is all pretty unbelievable."

I checked my mini-map and spotted a bigger, and darker red, dot just up ahead. I pulled my morningstar from my inventory, making Mooney's eyes pop out on stalks.

"Look," I said, stretching my back and getting ready for some action. "Here's the skinny as far as I know. There's this thing called the Veil, right? And it's like a protective wrapper around the world."

"Okay…"

"But the issue is, it's thinning. And as it thins, things are able to punch their way through from the other side. Bad things. But, fortunately, there's people who fight them off. And my Aunt M was the top one of those. She was the Guardian of the Threshold…"

"You're not expecting me to let that slide without asking if she was Groot, are you?"

"Actually, I am. Now, hush. But then she was killed, and it all went downhill from there. I got whacked, and, long story very short, I ended up a Warden on the Guardian track. There's a whole 'other world' chapter to that, but we don't have time right now."

I looked ahead to the bridge.

The overpass we were approaching hunched over the road, and HGVs were thundering above, shaking stalactites of old chewing gum. Spray wept from hairline cracks, counting seconds in cold drips. The pillars were tagged to the waterline. Names, memorials and a crown or two. And someone had left the burnt-out shell of a scooter as a piece of modern art.

This was exactly the sort of place where bad things went down.

Mooney squinted ahead. "Nine out of ten murders happen in places like this."

"They really don't, mate"

"Nine out of ten of my murders would."

"It's when you come out with things like that, Mooney," I said, "that people say you come off weird." I thumbed the red thread and felt it answer like a small, sensible heartbeat.

"I'm going to go under there and kill whatever's hiding," I said. "Not that I think you will, but don't follow. I've got this."

"Obviously," he said, and I took a step forward. "Just in case you don't make it back, where do the Albanians fit into all this?"

"Well, for a start. That guy wasn't an Albanian. Well, he was, but not the human kind. He's what's called a Lugat, but he's temporarily on our side because my aunt did him a solid during the war, and he's still emotionally dehydrated about it."

There was a pause.

"Anything else, or can I go and do my thing now?"

"Do Wardens get capes?"

"Seriously?"

"I think I'd look good in a cape. Proper boss energy. Speaking of which, have you considered developing a bit more of a team approach before walking into the obvious trap? You know, a lad with a machine gun, maybe someone who heals and reads Latin. If I'm going to be the wisecracking… hang one, what am I in this nightmare scenario?"

"Annoyance."

"Sidekick, then."

"Annoyance."

"We can workshop that." He brightened. "Hey, do I get a codename?'

I strode on ahead. "Seriously mate, just wait here for a moment."

"Undershaft?" he called after me, and I turned. "For real, are you one of the goodies?"

"I am."

"So, what's with the whole Bane vibe?" I heard him say as I vanished under the bridge.

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