Colonel Lars Zeigler walked at an even gait, his back straight and face impassive as if he hadn’t just been staring down a two-metre-tall anthropomorphic lion with biceps thicker than the Colonel’s torso.

  He couldn’t show any weakness or even appear the slightest bit ruffled, though he suspected the beastkin could still somehow smell his hints of fear.

  It wasn’t that he was a coward, but that anyone with a half-functioning brain would fear someone who could pop their head between their oversized fingers like a grape. It was in their genes, in their biology, to have a healthy fear of such beings—and that fear kept people alive. What kept them from trying to wrestle bears and start a fistfight with a gorilla?

  Things were getting complicated just as he thought he was getting the train wreck that was this operation back on the rails. Two rifts were gone, and the third would soon follow if he could trust the reports of the elven archer’s prowess. That left two, and Zeigler had been reasonably optimistic about getting both destroyed before they were overwhelmed or ran out of ammunition.

  It had taken a fair amount of wrangling, but he had managed to get the remains of the army division in Graz organised under him. Sure, maybe two of his fellow Colonels had unfortunately gotten eaten by goblins … after Christine stabbed them in the neck on his orders.

  It was not something he was proud of or even sure that had been a must for them to succeed, but it had allowed him to wrestle control for himself over the remains of the army division in Graz after the general’s untimely death. Zeigler had no hand in that unfortunate happenstance, but he was nonetheless grateful to whoever had facilitated it.

  Because someone had to have, it stank something fierce of betrayal or some hidden scheme. Not that Zeigler dug too deep lest he give whoever had done it the impression that he was seeking retribution for it. He had ideas, even some suspects, based on a few reports he had gotten from spies he had planted among the general’s staff. If his primary suspects had done it, he felt no need to punish them for it, or invite their wrath onto himself. He had enough problems as is, he didn’t need Eisenfaust’s runaway … slaves — because that was the only thing he could call the ‘changed’ men and women the general had forced into his service — to target him next.

  Things had been looking up.

  There was that ugly business with a pair of idiots, supported from the shadows by who he was reasonably certain was an agent of Starhaven. Luckily, whoever they’d sent seemed to be incompetent, or at least horrible at proper sabotage and assassination work, because who the hell would think that pair of idiots would not get caught?

  Especially when one of their targets was a vampire with a better nose than bloodhounds. Idiots. He had seen the look in the woman — girl, really, Zeigler’s own daughter was half a decade older than her, and he still considered her a little girl in the grand scheme of things — had in her eyes as she dumped them in his office. It must have taken an immense amount of willpower to resist at least beating the two into a pulp after they tried killing her and her friend.

  He pitied the girl for being put into a situation where she had to hold herself back from killing her would-be murderers. She should have been worrying about college and romance, getting her first job and all that jazz, not getting murdered and saving a city from monsters. He pitied her, and everyone else forced to put their lives at risk for the betterment of others, and he loathed the world that has gone to shit and forced them all into those positions.

  Along with the pity, he respected the red-headed girl and couldn’t really complain from a purely professional standpoint about her conduct. The girl showed she respected the proper order of things, that even with the world having gone to shit, she still had respect for hierarchy and the proper people making the judgement of whether the two were guilty or not, then pass judgement. If the world was normal, he would have scolded her for not letting him deal with tracking down the assassins and capturing them, but it was not, and Zeigler knew he wouldn’t have had the manpower to spare for a manhunt and a proper investigation. She did his job for him and saved him from ending up in a lose-lose situation where he either had to spend a disproportionate amount of resources on an investigation or having to tell his most loyal fighters that he wasn’t even going to bother, thus likely alienating them.

  Zeigler had promptly exercised his powers and rights as the supreme commander in charge of this army regiment. He was Judge and Jury with his Martial Law given freedoms, and he knew even those freedoms had to be further … loosened even more to fit the circumstances.

  So the pair had been interrogated, using a minor Truth Serum one of the alchemists had managed to concoct. They had been milked for every last nugget of information, then taken down into the basement where they were promptly executed by a bullet through the head.

  Zeigler could not afford to waste resources on keeping morons who spread anarchy in such a trying time prisoner. He would much rather spend those resources on people who didn’t try to cripple the war effort. He needed reasonable and powerful fighters like Mia and Carmilla, he couldn’t allow an attempt on their lives to go unpunished or to happen again.

  Still. Besides that one hiccup, things had been going reasonably well, and he had been starting to hope for a day when Graz had no more otherworldly hellholes vomiting out monsters within its borders. He could see the flickering light at the end of the tunnel.

  And now this happens. He groused, his eyes narrowed as he traced the greenish monsters practically vibrating with bloodlust on the rooftops around the plaza. I suspected they could at most herd them, maybe deter them with some alchemical concoction, but this level of control is troubling.

  He turned back to the crowd, bracing himself for the uphill battle of getting them in order. The soldiers would be the easier part — he had the troublesome remnants of the other regiments placed elsewhere, leaving only the less hardline personnel here — but the mages could prove to be a problem. In more ways than one.

  They were civilians, first and foremost, and ones that had supernatural power dropped in their laps. That had inflated their egos like a balloon, and rightly so in most circumstances.

  He knew some would be even more bloodthirsty than his most troublesome soldiers, while others would likely outright refuse to follow any command that involved fighting non-monsters. The latter group would involve some of his strongest groups of fighters, which would cripple any plans he could think up.

  No, he needed them to follow his lead, even if they wouldn’t actually attack, he needed them to look like they would, if given the order. That was the one chance he could see at squeezing something of a concession out of the beastkin.

  There were a lot of them, and Zeigler was running dangerously low on supplies. If he had to fight this little ‘war’ on two fronts, he’d run out before he reached the last rift.

  The wolves that rift vomited had taken over the southern quarter of the city, and it would take some strenuous doing to push through. With their reported numbers, Zeigler didn’t even think he could fully purge the city of monsters with what he had at hand.

  Clear a path to the rift, send in the best fighters and hope for the best.

  A part of him loathed the powerlessness that came with his own Class, but another part was glad it wasn’t him who had to jump into some magical portal and the monster-infested pocket space hidden beyond it.

  Commanders didn’t fight personally, nor lead from the front, they were leaders and tacticians whose primary job was spending every single asset they had at their disposal to utmost effect.

  Using one of his Subskills, Zeigler pulled on Multitasking, Parallel Thoughts and Major Enhanced Cognition to speed up his thoughts and determine a course of action that was most likely to get the mages to follow his lead.

  His Subskill connected to all his mind-enhancing secondary skills, wrapping them up and assimilating them into a cohesive whole while his other Subskill pointed out nuggets of information, fragments of barely remembered memories and offhand comments that, while holding little importance at the time, helped him get a more accurate grasp of the personalities of those he’d have to work hardest to convince.

  He might not have been a fighter like the mages, and he might not have been able to blast apart walls or build battlements in a matter of hours, but the System hadn’t been unkind to him.

  His mind, always his greatest weapon, had been further honed and built upon by both his Class and Skills. If he survived this ‘war’ and achieved some measure of success, he could see himself rising higher than ever before in the military.

  He would need to, as with monsters abound and the entire world in chaos, having more power — be it magical or political — would be a must.

  *****

  “They want to keep us from getting an Obelisk?” Mia asked, letting her incredulity fully manifest itself in her tone. By the looks the other score of mages had, they shared her feelings.

  “Yes,” Zeigler said with a barely contained grimace. “Apparently, they quite like the balance of power as it is. With everyone constrained to Rank 0.”

  “Lunatics,” a human mage said with a deep scowl on his face. Mia didn’t know him or remember him, but from his watery blue hair, she assumed he was a water mage. “The monsters are getting stronger by the day, and they want to keep playing these stupid games.”

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  ”Do they want to just kill us all?” Another mage shouted, an older woman this time with streaks of earthy brown in her otherwise greying hair. The woman pointed up at the nearest rooftop, glaring at a badger-like plant monster. “What if the beastkin aren’t the ones controlling the monsters? What if it's the opposite and all of them are just hapless thralls to those ravening beasts?”

  Helene bit back with a retort, then continued with a few soothing words to calm the crowd like they were one of her classes of children from her time as an elementary school teacher. Zeigler mediated the more violent shouts, looking as stoic as a mountain as he did, and Mia decided it was time to slip away.

  Slipping out of the mass of people, Mia quickly located her absent girlfriend with a twitch of her ears just as her Familiar came running back, jumping into her arms, Mia scratched its chin absently, sending a vague questioning feeling through their Bond as she made for the skulking vampiress hiding in an empty cafe.

  The Familiar sent back a vague negative to her question, and the tension in Mia’s shoulders abated a little. If her little cat hadn’t been fooled somehow, there would not be a single human atop any of the nearby rooftops waiting to send a bullet through her head.

  With how all nearby buildings were only a floor or two high, Mia felt reasonably safe from snipers, though she was still consciously trying to put either people or a parked car between her and any vantage point as she walked.

  Not bothering to be stealthy since Carmilla would have heard her anyway, Mia strolled right in and slipped into the booth next to the brooding vampire.

  “Hi,” Mia said, bumping her shoulder with the redhead’s a little as the woman in question turned and gave her a small smile. “Whatcha thinking about?”

  “Nothing in particular,” Carmilla said with a sigh, leaning into Mia a little, almost subconsciously. “Shouldn’t you be out there, convincing the crowd not to commit assisted suicide by rushing the beastkin and their monsters?”

  “Mom and Brent have that handled,” Mia said easily, already hearing the majority of the crowd calming as Zeigler, Brent and Helene worked together to soothe their perfectly understandable anger. “I’m more interested in what’s on your mind, though. You’ve been extra broody these last two days. It’s making me worry.”

  “Sorry,” Carmilla said, the powerful woman deflating like a balloon. “I say that a lot, don’t I? I feel the word’s starting to lose meaning.”

  Mia made a noncommittal sound, instead opting to just snuggle closer to her girlfriend. This felt like one of those moments where being a silent and supportive listener was the best thing to do.

  “It’s nothing,” Carmilla said, snapping up and banishing the broody air she had about her. “Nothing at all, just … I’m just … um?”

  “Yes?” Mia asked as gently as she could manage, taking the vampiress’ hand into her own.

  “Overthinking and worrying,” Carmilla said with a great measure of forced nonchalance, giving a halfhearted shrug. “But it’s fine, you don’t need to worry about me worrying. Anyway! What’s up?”

  “What are you worrying about?” Mia asked, ignoring the vampire’s sad attempt at changing the topic.

  “Just … the stuff we’d been talking about yesterday,” Carmilla said, shaking her head in apparent defeat. “And that I never quite apologised for running off. I’m … sorry.”

  “It’s fine, you're forgiven,” Mia said easily, squeezing her girlfriend’s hand. That seemed to take a huge weight off of the vampire, who gave a wan smile in return. “Can I help? With the worrying, I mean?”

  "You already are," Carmilla whispered in a tone that made Mia’s heart flutter, a smile spreading on her lips.

  *****

  Carmilla smiled slightly; she had been worried she’d have to force it, but the expression came to her naturally as the boundless font of positivity that was Mia snuggled up to her side like a needy cat asking for attention.

  Even if the girl was asking for it, Carmilla was reluctant to vent and dump all her worries onto the bubbly girl. It would have felt nice to vent, true, but it would not have been worth robbing the girl of her smile.

  Carmilla could handle it, she had been handling her troubles by herself after all for years. So even if her troubles went from worrying about an inevitable death to about losing herself to strange new instincts, she was sure she could handle it,

  The talk the day before had helped; knowing Mia trusted her had been like a blanket of warmth covering her ever since. It also always helped her chase away alien thoughts that barged into her mind every now and then, urging her to act like some stereotypical evil vampire.

  Thinking back, her life felt like a damned rollercoaster, flip-flopping between the highs and the lows like its sole goal was to throw Carmilla off at a twist and into the deep end.

  Despair, death, rebirth, hope, despair, almost death again, getting saved, and then her control starts slipping. Now, here she was, hanging on by a thread and feeling like her grip was slipping every time her focus relaxed.

  Mia wasn’t single-handedly keeping her afloat, but Carmilla doubted she would have even bothered to fight for control without the girl in her life.

  It didn’t matter, not at this very moment, at least.

  “What’s up out there?” Carmilla asked, holding back a wince at her attempt at changing the topic after the lingering silence.

  Mia glanced up, the look in her eyes telling her the girl would have been happy merely snuggling on the old cafe bench for as long as possible, but was happy to provide the distraction Carmilla dearly needed too.

  Even if she knew Carmilla could hear everything going on outside perfectly, Mia was willing to indulge her. She was just so … perfect like that.

  “Some grandstanding,” Mia said, shrugging with the shoulder not pressed into Carmilla’s side. “The beastkin want the rift to stay as it is. I suppose they don’t want the Obelisk and the Rank 1s. it would throw the balance of power in the city on its head? Or maybe they just want to hog it while we clear the wolf rift to get as many of them at level 10 as possible. I don't really know.”

  “Won’t that be a problem?” Carmilla asked, an errant strand of thought wondering how hard it could be to sneak into whatever base those beastkin had to beat some proper sense into their leaders.

  With them being at most level 10, it couldn't be all that challenging. Not for Carmilla. Even a werewolf would just be prey before a pureblood vampire.

  “I’m sure Brent and Mom can handle it.” Mia shrugged again, leaning her head on Carmilla’s shoulder. “They are much better at people stuff than me. Plus, I’m fairly certain Zeigler also has a plan, and I know he wants all the rifts gone, too. I’m just worried his plan involves us killing people.”

  Carmilla made an understanding sound, humming thoughtfully as Mia continued to talk about all the weird beastkin she’d seen among the crowd.

  Killing people, Carmilla felt, was inevitable in this new world, especially for her. She could hold back most urges, suppress her sudden up-flares of anger and whatnot, but sooner or later she wouldn’t be able to handle someone being an ass or doing something unforgivable.

  Then she would kill them.

  She could push that line further, but it would still be there, and anyone waltzing over it would suddenly find themselves at the pointy end of her talons.

  She’d been close back in that alley, with the two idiots who had attempted to murder her Mia, but she had just barely managed to restrain herself.

  If she knew just how badly the young halvyr took the attempt at her life — which wasn’t outwardly apparent at the moment of the attack — Carmilla would have likely snapped.

  “It’s just so strange, no?” Mia asked, nudging Carmilla with her shoulder as she noticed the vampiress’s attention fading. “Shifters. Imagine having two distinct forms you could just swap between at a thought. Hey, do you think I could get a Fae form? With insect-like wings and what not?”

  “Maybe?” Carmilla said, smiling subconsciously at the image of a tiny faerie Mia fluttering about on butterfly wings. “With magic and the System, I don’t see why you couldn’t.”

  “Or you could transform into a bat, and I could ride around on your back!”

  “A bat?” Carmilla asked, her smile turning a little strained. She never liked bats and had every intention to avoid any Traits that would allow her to transform into one.

  “What?” Mia perked up, being far too attentive and noticing Carmilla’s mood shifting. “No bats then? Do you not like bats?”

  “Nooooo … ?” Carmilla said, stretching the word out with a hint of an embarrassed flush creeping up on her cheeks. “They are just so … icky.”

  She could have suppressed it, but seeing her blush always put the most delightful smiles on Mia’s face, and this time was no different.

  “Fair enough, I suppose,” Mai said, her smile showing off her pearly white teeth. “Maybe you could turn into mist, and I’d carry you around in a jug, then?”

  Carmilla chuckled, already imagining how that could feel. It would make her needlessly vulnerable, locked up in a glass container with barely any of her power made available to her … but if it was Mia holding it, she could maybe convince herself to do it.

  That was if she ever got the Mist Form Trait.

  Though it could be worth it, if only to make Mia happy. That was worth getting a single subpar Trait and so much more.

  *****

  “What are they talking about?” The Beta — a massive Lion-kin Shifter named Konstantin — asked, his imposing gaze sweeping over the beastkin before settling on the first with an obvious pair of animal ears: Sam.

  “I can only hear the louder ones, boss,” Sam said, barely keeping his grimace in check when some of the strongest members of the Pack levelled inquisitive stares at him. “Some want to fight us for the rift, but I think they’re in the minority.”

  “Why don’t we just chase them away, boss?” Someone asked from behind, a deep voice bordering on a growl and that combined with the words it spoke, was all Sam needed to know that the man was some kind of a wolf beastkin.

  The wolves were the most ferocious, and they were also the ones who practically lived through the pack.

  Sam was a feline, and those were solitary predators, so he wasn’t all that reliant on the Pack, but some others needed it as much as they needed air and water to live.

  Pack beasts were like that.

  “Yeah, show ‘em they can’t easily mess with us!” Another shouted, and Sam caught a bunch of heads bobbing in agreement out of the corner of his eyes.

  Almost nervously, Sam glanced towards the Beta, the towering Lion Shifter and found the man gazing out at the army across the square with his arms crossed, wearing a stoic expression on his face.

  A few more eager shouts later, Sam was starting to grow worried. Raiding and looting was one thing; they needed the food after all, and the army guys could give food to the huddling survivors, but this?

  They wanted to fight head-on, with people as strong as them.

  Sure, they had the Alpha’s pet monsters around, but Sam had learned by now that the ones that were strong enough to matter in a fight weren’t easy to control and were just as likely to kill them as their enemies.

  No, if there was a fight here, people were going to die. He could die here, and for what? Territory? The rift … ?

  Sam wasn’t sure how to feel about that. The Alpha promised the rift would help everyone in the Pack get to level 10 and as such, entrench the Pack as a force to be reckoned with in the region.

  But it stank, like there was something that they weren’t told and it was grating on Sam like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

  Sam just shrugged it off. He was sure the Alpha had his reasons, and by the look on the Beta’s face, he was at least not looking like he was thirsting for some bloodshed.

  In the end, all that mattered was that the Pack survived and grew. Though he hoped it wouldn’t have to grow by climbing over the corpses of the people on the other end of the square.

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