Chapter 4

  Kelix remained still. The cart's shadow swallowed his outline. Finn's appearance dimmed, as if he were becoming a transparent mist—and he was.

  This ability served as Finn's camouflage, as even his body temperature dropped along with his visibility. It was an odd sensation, feeling the Fenrir's familiarity slide into the surrounding darkness and its chill. It was both comforting and perilous; there was no telling what could happen if they were suddenly exposed.

  The suit man snapped his briefcase open and pulled out a folded tablet. It looked like a thin sheet of glass that lit up with a muted glow. He spoke without looking up. "Formation. Aria, rear. Mage, center. Sword, front. Student, left."

  The near-graduate woman blinked. "My name is not Student, Mr. Halvern. It's Sheryl."

  "It is on the roster as Student," he replied flatly.

  Kelix almost smiled, though he kept it to himself as he observed the woman muttering something under her breath and shifted to the left, purse tucked closer. The ferret creature popped its head out again, then retreated with a tiny squeak.

  The sword girl rolled her shoulders like she was warming up for a spar. "Finally."

  The group began to move, their voices lowered and their confidence intact, but it was now shaped into something more cautious. The suited man led, with the construct beside him. The sword girl moved ahead of them, her blade loose and ready. Together, the woman named Sheryl and the mage stayed slightly back, book hovering and his staff angled.

  Aria stayed at the rear. It would have been easy to lose her again. Kelix realized that with a small jolt. If he blinked too long, if he let his attention slip, she would become background. Not because she hid, but because his mind helped her.

  That was worse.

  Kelix waited until they were several paces away, then began to follow. Not too close. Not too far. Close enough that he could intervene if the crocoraptor turned on them. Far enough that if the Association team did something official, he could vanish.

  Finn padded beside him, chains clinking softly. The sound was louder than Kelix liked. He tugged on the leash once, not hard, just a reminder.

  Finn snorted. "You are worried about my jewelry now."

  "I am worried about being heard."

  "You already are."

  "By who?"

  "By her."

  Kelix did not ask which her. He knew. His throat went tight anyway.

  They passed the remains of a food stall with a half-collapsed roof. A faded sign hung from one corner, swaying slightly. The air smelled of old grease and wet wood. Farther ahead, the path dipped into a section of the park where the rides had been dismantled and left in heaps, beams stacked like bones.

  The party slowed, and the sword girl raised her fist. The others halted behind her as if the motion carried a weight they respected.

  Kelix stopped behind a broken ticket booth and crouched, pulling Finn close. Finn's bulk pressed into the space like a living wall. The cold from him seeped into Kelix's knees through his pants. Kelix ignored it.

  The sword girl stepped forward, relaxed and ready, and the last light caught her chin-length hair. Momentarily blonde, it appeared pink when the light hit it just right. Kelix had not fully registered this from a distance until the luminescence from the flickering pole light wrapped around her head, transforming it into a flame.

  The color was wrong for the ruins. Too bright. Too familiar. There was no mistake about who the girl might have been. However, plenty of people dyed their hair, and plenty of people liked red.

  Then she turned her head a fraction and laughed at something the mage murmured, and Kelix caught the angle of her cheek, the shape of her grin, the way she held herself like the world was a dare.

  His stomach sank in a slow, reluctant way. That was Celeste. Not someone who looked like Celeste. Not some stranger who happened to have the same hair and the same restless energy.

  Celeste from Arcannite High. Celeste, who was, as far as he knew, a normal student with a normal life. She was the only one in that group he actually knew, and the last person he wanted to run into while doing something he was not supposed to be doing.

  Finn's head tilted slightly, ears forward. "You know her?"

  "Be quiet," Kelix whispered.

  Then the crocoraptor appeared. Not the one Kelix had killed.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  This one was larger, not by much, but enough to be noticeable. What made his stomach turn was its eyes. They were not bright with feral delight like the last one. They were dull and hollowed. Like the light behind them had been scooped out and replaced with something that only knew how to move when tugged.

  Its aura flared green, thicker than the last, pulsing with a hungry rhythm. Of course that made matters better. Kelix's heart gave a hard thump as he recognized the meaning of its hue.

  Green aura was not just stronger. It was denser, more alive, more certain. It indicated that monster was E-Rank.

  The crocoraptor opened its mouth. No hiss came out. It only stared.

  Kelix's fingers flexed around the leash. A thought slid through him, quiet and unwelcome.

  Something was driving it.

  Without a signal, Celeste moved first. She dashed forward, and the motion did not match her frame. She was athletic, sure, but she was still built like a high school girl than someone who practiced martial arts. Her sword should have been heavy in her hands.

  It was not.

  She swung, and the blade carved a hard line through the air with a sound like a whip crack. The strike landed against the crocoraptor's forearm as it raised a claw to block, and the impact rang out.

  The beast staggered backward. Not a small flinch. Not a polite step. It reeled, feet scraping stone, aura shuddering, as if the blow had gone deeper than metal.

  Kelix's eyes widened a fraction before he forced them back into something mild.

  Celeste's grin widened, bright and fearless. "There you are!"

  The crocoraptor lunged, fast enough that the green aura blurred. Its jaws snapped toward her throat.

  Celeste met it head-on. She did not dodge. She planted her feet and brought the sword up with both hands, catching the bite on the flat of the blade. Teeth slammed into metal. The sound was brutal.

  She pushed and the crocoraptor's head jerked sideways, forced off line, and it stumbled again as if her strength was a weight dropped onto it from above.

  Kelix's mind scrambled to catch up, twisting in his chest as an intelligible mess of disbelief and irritation. That was not normal. Not for her. Not for anyone he had seen at school.

  Why was she here? Why was she E-Rank capable? Why had he never noticed?

  He forced his focus back onto survival, because the questions were a luxury.

  Light shimmered in his peripheral vision, and his gaze shifted to the mage who lifted his staff and spoke a word that hummed through the air. A translucent barrier flared beside Celeste's shoulder, not to protect her from the bite she had already blocked, but to intercept the follow-up claw swipe that would have taken her ribs.

  The claw hit the barrier and skidded, sparks of green aura and pale light snapping where they met.

  The suit man barked a command. The construct lunged, heavy limbs pounding the cracked pavement, and swung a reinforced arm toward the crocoraptor's flank.

  The crocoraptor twisted away with unnatural precision, like it had expected the punch. The construct's fist slammed into the fountain instead, shattering stone into powder.

  The crocoraptor did not capitalize on the opening. It did not pounce on the construct's exposed side.

  It turned its hollow eyes slightly, not toward Celeste, not toward the mage, not toward the suit man.

  It looked past them, and Kelix felt the gaze land like a weight. It was not looking at him the way an animal looks at prey; it was looking at him the way a tool looks at a target. Kelix grinned at the threat as if it were a challenge. That was eerie.

  Behind the party, the woman named Sheryl stepped back, phone still in one hand, the other hand sliding into her purse. The ferret-like creature popped out and sprang onto her shoulder, its eyes narrowing. A faint green shimmer wrapped around it, then around her.

  That was support. Buffing, shielding, something like that. And it was different from the mage's.

  Aria remained at the rear.

  Kelix could feel her presence without looking at her, which only made it worse. She was still. Not idle, not afraid. Waiting.

  Kelix shifted his gaze to the debris field behind the crocoraptor, remembering the gap he had felt earlier. The space his mind wanted to ignore.

  He forced himself to stare at it. Nothing.

  Then something unfolded.

  A pale, slick shape skittered out low to the ground, too many joints in its legs, body moving in short bursts like a glitch. It did not rush the party. It curved around them, aiming for the rear.

  A flanker.

  Kelix's breath caught.

  Celeste would not see it. She was engaged. The mage was watching his angles. The suit man was watching the construct. The support woman was mid-cast.

  Only Aria's gaze tracked it immediately.

  A shiver ran down Kelix's spine. So Aria could see it, and she did not stop it.

  His earlier plan shifted again, faster and sharper.

  Either Aria was confident they did not need saving, or she wanted to see what happened if they did. Either answer made Kelix's stomach crawl.

  The pale thing skittered closer to the rear.

  Kelix moved, slipping out from behind the ticket booth, low and quick, sneakers crunching once on gravel.

  Aria turned her head, not fully, just enough to make Kelix feel noticed. Her eyes slid to him as if she had been waiting for that sound. She was not surprised, not alarmed; simply acknowledging.

  Kelix sighed at that. Perhaps he had been lured into the open by the girl. It disheartened him that he had probably had been played. He kept moving anyway and with staggering speed he cut toward the flanker and closed the distance before it could reach the support woman's blind spot.

  His palm drove forward. The air cracked. The woman screamed as she turned. Kelix grimaced in disgust as his strike hit the creature's side, and it folded with a wet, unpleasant sound, tumbling across the pavement. It did not dissolve. It twitched, then tried to right itself, limbs scrabbling with frantic urgency.

  Kelix's eyes locked on it, assessing. Not dead. Not core-dead, at least.

  Behind him, the party noticed him in pieces.

  The suit man snapped his head around first. "Unauthorized civilian!"

  Celeste's voice cut in right after, bright and sharp. "Wait! Who is that?"

  Kelix did not answer. He did not look back. The flanker hissed and lunged at him, legs blurring.

  Kelix pivoted, letting it pass by a hair, then drove his elbow down into its spine. Pain jolted up his arm, immediate and hot. Then green heat crawled over his knuckles.

  Kelix's breath stuttered. Not now!

  He forced his fingers to loosen. He shook his hand once, subtle. The green heat clung anyway, thin and bright, like a flame that refused to burn.

  The creature skittered away, then snapped back at him again, mindless and relentless.

  Mindless.

  That was the word that fit. It moved like it had orders, not instincts. It corrected its path too quickly. It did not hesitate. It did not react like an animal.

  It reacted like a command.

  Kelix stepped in and struck once more, this time with the intention of ending it. His palm slammed into the creature's head. The green heat shrouding his hand flashed forward, and a thunderous pulse rippled through the field.

  The creature stiffened as its neck snapped backward at an impossible angle, then dissolved into pale particles that blew away like ash.

  No core dropped.