The countryside rolled beneath them like a patchwork quilt stitched by a drunk seamstress.

John's Dragon Wings beat a steady rhythm that propelled him westward over fields that had once been the picture of English pastoral tranquillity. Now they bore the scars of apocalypse: crops trampled into the mud, hedgerows torn apart, and the occasional crater where some magical clash had gouged the earth. A farmhouse in the distance was missing its roof. Another had been reduced to a pile of rubble.

The signs of battle were everywhere, but none of them looked recent. Whatever fighting had happened here, it had ended days ago. The countryside had the feel of a battlefield after the armies had moved on, leaving only ghosts and memories in their wake.

Small mercies, John thought. He didn't think he could deal with meeting any new people right now, letting along fighting them.

Darkness had fallen shortly after… after. It felt all too appropriate. The dark veil the great black circle pulled across the sky matched the mood in the group as they flew. No one spoke, all drawn into their own thoughts.

He checked Mana Sense and Soul Vision out of habit. There were plenty of monsters active now that 'night' had fallen, but few of them were inclined to look up right now. He almost wanted them to, just so he'd have an excuse to unleash the cataclysmic devastation of Supernova on something.

His gaze panned from side to side, taking in the silver-souled signatures of his companions and the birds that flew alongside them. The gentle thrum of life, moving through the open sky.

The crow soared beside him, its massive form casting a shadow that seemed darker than it should have been. The oily blackness dripping from its feathers left ephemeral trails in the air, wisps of shadow that dissipated after a few heartbeats. Its abyssal eyes met his briefly, then returned to scanning the landscape below with predatory intensity.

The dove glowed on Lily's opposite shoulder, its feathers pulsing with soft light that would have been blinding at close range. The light it shed felt warm, comforting, like sunlight.

Polly and Zazu had taken up their usual positions on his shoulders. They'd been unnaturally quiet even since they'd taken off, which he attributed to the sombre mood that had settled over the group. Even the parrots seemed to sense when jokes were inappropriate.

Or maybe they're just tired, he mused. Do system-enhanced birds even get tired?

It was strange, thinking about it. The apocalypse had come for everything, humans and animals alike. The monsters had killed indiscriminately, treating all of Earth's native life as targets. And he supposed it made sense; if birds had access to Systems of their own, other animals out there surely did.

Eyeing the crow, then the dove, then the two parrots, he wondered what the system was tormenting them with. What could afflict the psyche of a bird in the same way his Aura system tortured him?

Whatever the case, these four birds had survived. Thrived, even. The crow and dove had lost their original flocks to the initial purge, finding each other in the aftermath. The parrots... well, he still didn't know their full story. He'd freed them from their cage in a fairly average London home right at the start of this madness, but didn't know much about where they came from, the life they'd lead. Some of their former owners seemed to have had a sense of humour, at least.

How many other animals made it? John wondered. Dogs? Cats? What about in the wild? Deer, foxes, badgers? Are there super-powered squirrels running around somewhere, hoarding nuts with telekinetic powers?

The thought almost made him smile. Almost.

He turned his attention to his human companions instead, watching them make their way through the sky on the various forms of flight he'd enchanted for them.

Chester looked the most uncomfortable, his expression somewhere between wonder and barely controlled panic. The big man's bulk wasn't suited to the air, and he kept windmilling his arms like he was afraid of falling, despite his wings seeming fairly steady to John's estimation.

Doug, by contrast, had taken to it with relative ease, and was exuding confidence now. In fairness, his was less arduous, being a floating platform rather than wings he had to actively manage like limbs. He'd fashioned his stone into a decliner chair, hands behind his head like he was lounging in a hammock. His eyes were on the veiled flames in the sky, reflecting a deep red.

Sam was floating along next to him, still battered and bloody but conscious and alert, cradled by a stone construct Doug and John had worked together to fashion for him with their own versions of Geomancy.

Lily rode her flame falcon. Her arms were crossed, and her chin was tucked close to her chest. A crease in her brows and a downward curved to her lips marked the direction of her thoughts, but it was better than the trembling mess she'd fallen into earlier. She didn't seem to be paying much attention to her surroundings, but the flame falcon affording her such luxury, so John said nothing.

Of them all, Jade appeared to be the only one not deep in thought. There was a fretful look on her face, her eyes darting between each of them. Multiple times, he'd noticed her open her mouth and taken in a breath as if to speak, only to release that breath in a sigh, thinking better of it. She hadn't managed to work up the courage since they'd left that car park behind, though there was clearly much on her mind.

Since we killed them, John corrected himself. Since we executed four people in cold blood.

The thought should have disturbed him more than it did. He kept waiting for the horror to arrive, the gut-wrenching realisation that they'd crossed a line that couldn't be uncrossed. He'd felt it before, after his first kill, a creeping unease that settled into his bones and refused to leave.

But it hadn't come after he'd left the ninja to be torn apart by monsters, and it didn't appear to be coming here, either.

Instead, he felt... resolved. Grim and troubled, to a degree. But not horrified. Not guilty. Those four had been monsters in human skin, torturing Sam for sport, beating him until he was forced to level, then doing it again and again. They'd laughed while they did it.

And we stopped them, John thought. Permanently.

There would be no wronged enemy coming back later for revenge. No narrative convenience to reunite them. They'd cut the plot line right then and there, and he didn't care if it meant he'd never get to learn the five psychos' backstory. What did knowing the ninja's deal do for him? Not a thing.

Doug had been the first to act, approaching the knife-wielder with grim determination. He'd snapped the man's neck with a twist so precise, so practised, that John had found himself wondering just what Doug had gotten up to in his ninety-odd years. The old man hadn't hesitated. Hadn't flinched. Just… done it, and then stepped back with eyes that held neither satisfaction nor remorse.

John's only thought had been, I think he's been playing down his Doug the Thug thing.

Lily had taken the chain-wielding woman. A crossbow bolt through the eye, fired from close range. The woman had still been laughing when the bolt ended her, still making that keening sound of insane joy. Lily had looked sick afterwards, her face pale and her breathing ragged, and she'd refused to meet anyone's gaze even up until now.

That had been hard to watch. For a moment, John had wished he'd put his foot down and taken the burden all on himself. Told himself he could've handled it.

But no. It was better this way. There were going to be more shitheads out there, more bullies, and the others needed to be prepared to do what needed to be done. John felt confident he could at this point, and he hoped the others were closer to that necessary reality, too.

Chester had been the most reluctant. He'd stood over his target—the other man, the one John had beaten bloody by the car—and just stared for what felt like an eternity. His attention Spells could have ended it, John knew, but not necessarily quickly. The radiant light he'd used in the supermarket portal world was a slow, insidious corruption of his enemies, and his others were more passive in nature, more useful as a distraction in a battle. Not immediately lethal.

In the end, he'd knelt down and wrapped his massive hands around the man's throat, squeezing until the struggling stopped. He'd wept while he did it. Great, heaving sobs that wracked his huge frame. But he hadn't stopped.

And John had taken the machete woman. A single swing of his scythe, a clean decapitation. She'd been trying to crawl towards him when he did it, dragging herself forward on broken limbs, still grinning, still giggling like a hyena. The blade had passed through her neck like it wasn't there.

Sam had watched it all in sombre silence. His own hands and clothes were still drenched in the blood of the man whose head he'd crushed.

We're all killers now, John thought. Every one of us.

It was strange, how the apocalypse changed people. Merely a week ago, Chester had been a normal young man with some anxiety issues. Lily had been a tourist from Florida. Jade had been a university student from Inverness, with friends and a life that had nothing to do with violence. Quite the opposite, from what he'd gleaned.

And John had been a loser who hadn't won a fight in his entire life.

"There," Doug called out, pointing towards a cluster of farm buildings in the distance. "That'll do nicely."

John adjusted his flight path, angling towards the structures. They resolved into a typical English farmstead as he got closer: a main house of grey stone, a couple of barns, a stable, all arranged around a central yard. The buildings were intact, or mostly so. One of the barns had lost part of its roof, and there were scorch marks on the house's eastern wall, but it was in better shape than most places they'd seen. Mana Sense confirmed it was empty.

They touched down in the farmyard. Chester stumbled a bit on landing, but Doug caught his arm and steadied him with a grin.

"Graceful as a swan, you are."

"Shut up," Chester mumbled, but there was no heat in it.

John's wings folded against his back, and he took a moment to survey their surroundings. The farm had been abandoned in a hurry; there was a tractor halfway out of one of the barns, and he could see a car sitting in one of the fields nearby with tracks leading up to it. A dog's lead hung from a hook by the front door, but there was no sign of any dog.

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

"Let's get inside," John said. "Set Sam down somewhere comfortable, and I'll put something together for him."

The martial artist was conscious but barely, his eyes half-lidded and his breathing shallow. The beating those psychos had given him had been severe; multiple broken bones, internal bleeding, the works. They didn't know how many times he'd been forced to level just to survive, and even then, he'd been on death's door when they found him.

They filed into the farmhouse, finding it much as he expected. The kitchen still had dishes in the sink. A calendar on the wall was frozen on Friday, March 7th, the day it all started. There was dust on everything, the accumulated grime of a week or so without care.

Doug set Sam down on the kitchen table, which was sturdy enough to serve as a makeshift cot to work on. The martial artist groaned at the movement, and blood seeped from wounds that had reopened during travel.

John opened the Enchanting menu. Navigating to Cellular Regeneration in the Spell list, he turned his attention to the available items in his Inventory.

He needed something suitable. Something that could be worn constantly, that wouldn't interfere with movement. He briefly browsed, looking for options.

Eventually, he found a plain silver bracelet. He didn't remember picking it up, didn't know why he would've bothered. He could only assume it had come as part of something else that had actually looked useful. Whatever. Didn't matter.

-8,000 Aura

The mana sphere in his core pulsed, two miniature spheres spinning around each other until they merged. The newly enchanted Regeneration Bracelet had gained a faint green shimmer that pulsed like a heartbeat when he summoned it from his Inventory.

John dismissed the menu and moved to Sam's side. The man's eyes were half-closed, his breathing ragged. Blood had pooled beneath him on the table's surface.

"This might feel strange," John said, though he suspected Sam was too far gone to care. And, hell, maybe Sam wouldn't feel the oddness of this Skill so keenly without the constant awareness of his own body that Biomancy provided. He fastened the bracelet around the man's wrist.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Then Sam gasped. His back arched off the table, every muscle going rigid. The bracelet flared bright enough to cast shadows across the farmhouse kitchen, green light washing over Sam's battered body.

The bracelet worked exactly as intended, flooding Sam's system with regenerative energy. Broken ribs knitted back together with wet cracks that made Chester look away. Torn muscle fibres reconnected. The swelling around his eye receded. His misaligned jaw realigned with a series of pops that sounded distinctly uncomfortable but necessary.

Thirty seconds later, Sam's breathing had steadied. The worst of the injuries were gone, replaced by fresh pink skin that would scar but wouldn't kill. He opened both eyes, blinking up at the ceiling.

"What," he said slowly, testing his newly healed jaw, "was that?"

John felt an odd moment of hesitation as he looked at Sam. The others, at least, knew the truth. Even if he engaged in some arrogant bellend behaviour around them, he'd at least have the solace of knowing they understood it was all an act, and it was far more painful for him than it was for them.

Sam, on the other hand, was probably still under the impression that John's system was all about saving people. If he even believed that in the first place. Did anyone ever believe it?

The man was ostensibly an ally, but their camaraderie hadn't had anywhere near as much time to develop. They were practically strangers. Hadn't even fought side-by-side yet, unless you counted the shitshow back there with those five nutjobs.

"Enchanted healing bracelet," John said, feeling awkward. "Don't take it off."

Sam raised his wrist, examining the silver band with its pulsing green glow. "You can make these?"

"First time trying." John stepped back. "You'll keep healing as long as you wear it, but the effect isn't instant. It'll take a little time to get you back to full health."

"Noted" Sam sat up slowly, testing his range of motion. Everything moved correctly now, though he still looked exhausted. The bracelet could heal physical damage, but it couldn't replace the energy spent enduring hours of torture. "Thank you."

John just nodded. There was a stretch of silence as Sam gathered himself. The others had taken up positions around the kitchen. Doug leaning against the counter, Lily perched on a stool by the window, Chester hovering near the door, Jade lingering near to John with her arms crossed. The birds had dispersed; the crow perched on the windowsill outside, the dove on the guttering above, and the parrots had disappeared somewhere.

"What happened, kid?" Doug asked eventually, his voice gentle.

Sam's expression darkened. He ran a hand through his sweat-matted hair and let out a slow breath.

"We were hunkered down," he began. "A small cottage, out of the way. Me, Alissa, and the two kids. We thought we'd found somewhere safe enough to wait things out for a bit, or at least until we could make contact with you lot again."

"The meeting points," John said. "We checked them. You weren't there."

"Because we couldn't make it." Sam's jaw tightened. "We'd been seeing strange activity. Monster movements that didn't make sense, and people in the distance. Other survivors. At first, we thought that was good. Safety in numbers, and all that. But something felt off to me about the way they moved.

"We decided to move," Sam continued. "Head towards one of the backup meeting points we'd arranged before. Figured it was safer than staying put with those people lurking around."

"And they ambushed you," Jade said.

"On the road, yeah. They came out of nowhere. Five of them, all geared up, all clearly experienced at this. At killing people." Sam's voice went hard. "I told Alissa to run. To take the kids and go. I stayed behind to buy them time."

"Against five?" Chester's voice was small. "Alone?"

"I thought I could handle it. I'm trained, you know? Actually trained, in martial arts. Not like the system bullshit everyone else is using. Proper technique, proper form, years of practice. And I… When I made my stand against the monsters, before Doug found me, I killed so many of them. I thought five was nothing." Sam's hands clenched on his knees. "But people were different. I should've seen it coming. So stupid." He shook his head violently, and the self-loathing in his eyes was stark. "I hesitated. I always hesitate. I hate using it, hate what it represents, hate the person I was when I learned it. And they... they weren't hesitating at all."

"Their pain resistance," John said, remembering. "They didn't react to injuries the way they should have."

"Exactly. I'd land a strike that should have put them down, and they'd just... keep coming. Grinning. Laughing. Like it was the best thing that had ever happened to them." Sam shuddered. "They overwhelmed me. Beat me until I was forced to level just to survive. And then they did it again. And again.

"I couldn't do anything. My abilities weren't suited for fighting opponents like that, not lethal enough, and every time I tried to resist, they'd just hurt me more. I think they were getting something out of it. It was like they'd done it before. Like they had a system for it."

The room fell silent. John thought about the way those four had moved, the coordination, the discipline. Sam was right; they'd done this before.

But there was one thing he'd noticed. A lack of something, to be precise.

"I didn't actually see them using magic," John mused. "Did you?"

"They were stronger and faster than normal people should be, and they healed fast. But no spells, no special attacks. Just fists and weapons and that fucking laughter."

John frowned. "They fought through the pain, but I didn't see anything particularly impressive about their healing, either."

"They didn't heal from your attacks as fast," Sam agreed. "I noticed that too. I don't know why. Maybe your damage is different somehow? More permanent?"

+1000 Aura

Okay, come on, he wasn't actually glazing me, there.

"Alissa and the kids," Jade said, cutting through the speculation. "Where did they go?"

Sam's expression tightened with worry. "North. That's all I know. We didn't have time to agree on a specific location. I just told her to run, and she ran. She's smart, she'll find somewhere safe to hole up, but…"

"But you don't know where," John finished.

"No. And I've been... I was hoping you'd found them. At the meeting points."

"We'll find them," John said.

The words came out with more certainty than he felt, but the effect was immediate. Sam's head snapped up, hope warring with desperation in his eyes.

"How?" Sam asked. "They could be anywhere by now. The countryside is huge, and there are monsters everywhere, and—"

"I'll go looking" John cut him off. "I have points to spend, and abilities I've been meaning to buy that could be useful for the job. I'll leave my Sanguine Clone behind to protect everyone here while I'm gone."

"Your what?"

"Think of it as a backup me. A blood duplicate that can fight and defend. It won't be as strong as the original, but it's better than nothing."

Sam stared at him. "You can do that? Just... make a copy of yourself?"

+1000 Aura

Why?!

John tried not to show his befuddlement.

"One of my many parlour tricks." John allowed himself a small, grim smile. "It'll keep everyone safe while I'm searching. If anything attacks, the clone can handle it or at least buy time for everyone to escape."

"I'm coming with you," Jade said.

John turned to look at her. Her grey eyes were hard, determined.

"Jade…"

"Don't," Her voice was flat. "I'm not staying behind while you go off on your own. Not again."

"You'll be safer here."

"I'll be more useful with you." She stepped forward. "I can cover more ground. Watch your back. And frankly, I need to do something other than sit around and stew in my own head." She then looked down, almost shyly, and John knew what was coming next. "And I'd feel safer. You're just so powerful, I feel like nothing bad can happen to me when I'm around such a badass."

+1000 Aura

John cringed backwards. "Okay, fine. Sure. Come along."

Just never talk like that again, please.

Sam was staring at her, and John got the impression the other man was thinking something similar.

John sighed. "Just stay close, and you follow my lead. If we run into trouble, you fly away back here."

"I know. I'm not stupid."

There was a flutter of wings, and the crow landed on the windowsill, its black eyes fixed on John with unmistakable intent. A moment later, the dove swooped down to perch beside it, its glow dimming slightly to avoid blinding anyone. And then, from wherever they'd been hiding, Polly and Zazu came flapping into the room, taking up their usual positions on John's shoulders.

"Punk ass bitch," Zazu said cheerfully.

"Fuck you," Polly agreed.

"I think the birds want to come too," Lily observed dryly.

John looked at the flock. They stared back at him with varying degrees of intensity. The crow gave a single, definitive nod.

"Sure," John said. "The more, the merrier." He turned to Doug. "If there's danger, just let the clone fight it. Doesn't matter if it dies, so let it tank. No point risking yourselves. I'll make my way back as fast as I can and make whoever's fucking with you regret it."

+600 Aura

"Aye, aye, captain." Doug gave a lazy salute. "We'll be fine. Just find those kids and bring them back safe."

John nodded. He took a breath, centring himself, and then activated Sanguine Clone.

The familiar sensation washed over him. Red mist rose from his skin, his consciousness split into two perspectives, and there was a momentary disorientation as he adjusted to perceiving the world through two sets of eyes. The clone congealed beside him, an exact duplicate in blood-red form.

With that settled, John turned towards the farmhouse entrance. Jade fell into step beside him, and the birds arranged themselves in formation, crow on one side, dove on the other, parrots on his shoulders. A strange little search party, but it was what they had.

"We'll find them," Jade said quietly as they stepped outside.

"We will," John agreed, leaving no room for doubt.

They both spread their wings and launched themselves off the ground in tandem. The birds rose with them, the crow's massive wingspan casting shadows across the farmyard, the dove's light painting everything in soft radiance.

Together, they climbed into the burning sky, heading north.

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