The floorboards groaned beneath Gael’s boots as he shifted his stance, blade loose in his grip, while Maeve stood beside him, her umbrella held at a calculated angle like a fencer waiting for the first move.

  Neither of them were looking at the girl kneeling at the end of the hallway, exactly.

  They were looking at the hounds.

  Three monstrous things, too big to be called dogs, too wrong to be called natural. Gael had seen his fair share of ugly, but these really weren’t normal guard dogs. They were Myrmurs confirmed by his red-tinted vision. The beasts were emaciated but muscled, their grotesque forms stretched too long, their fangs blackened like they'd been dipped in bile. They were all as tall as he was. Their eyes were hollow pits, gleaming with something hungry, and perhaps worst of all, their tails weren’t tails.

  They were thick, umbilical cord-like tendrils pulsing and coiling, extending straight towards the kneeling girl’s spine.

  Like leashes.

  Well, not really.

  More like… waist leashes?

  [Identification Complete]

  [Common Name: Shrill Cicadas]

  [Grade: D-Rank Wretch-Classes]

  [Essence Art: Shattercall]

  [Brief Description: The shrill cicadas can infuse their voice with bioarcanic essence, increasing the strength of their voice projection by twice their strength level]

  [Aura: ~800 BeS]

  [Strength: ~3, Speed: ~3, Toughness: ~2, Dexterity: ~2, Perception: ~2]

  While he grimaced at the interfaces he was sure he hadn’t pulled up himself—it must be Maeve’s doing—Old Banks stepped down the grand staircase at the far end of the hallway, boots heavy against the polished steps, his greatsword gleaming in the dim light.

  He looked down at the girl’s trembling form, blinking in disbelief.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Two of the hounds charged straight at Gael and Maeve. Gael’s blade was already half-raised, but he didn’t feel like blocking. That required too much effort. Instead, he dropped his weight, twisting just as the first hound soared over him, missing his head by a breath. He felt the heat of its rancid breath before it crashed into the floor behind him.

  Maeve didn’t dodge. She didn’t need to. As both hounds rerouted and tried to lunge for her throat, she whipped her umbrella through the air in a clean, brutal arc, striking both of them with a force that sent them flying all the way back to the end of the hallway. They slammed into the girl, knocking her flat, but Gael didn’t get a chance to breathe.

  The third hound was already mid-air, fangs flashing toward Old Banks on the grand staircase where Maeve couldn’t reach.

  Gael snapped out. “Move it, old man—”

  The old baron didn’t duck, either. Instead, his greatsword rose fast as an executioner’s blade, and steel met flesh. The hound crashed against the blade, teeth scraping against tempered metal.

  Old Banks didn’t budge. Not even an inch.

  Then, with a grunt and a vicious swipe, he sent the beast flying back down to the girl, and all three hounds were together once again.

  “I may not have a Symbiotic System,” Old Banks grumbled, shaking his shoulders loose, “but I was a baron of Vharnveil, and we breed men twice the size of the lot you’ve got down here.”

  Well, that’s just unfair.

  The hounds weren’t down for long, though. They staggered back onto their feet, snarling, fangs dripping, eyes rolling with an intelligence Gael didn’t like.

  Maeve’s voice was sharp. “Please go upstairs, benefactor. A Vharnveil baron you may be, but they are still Myrmurs. Let us deal with them.”

  Old Banks glanced at her but didn’t argue. He backed up the staircase, dragging his greatsword behind him in case he needed to swing again.

  Gael, meanwhile, was already shifting his stance, taking stock of their situation. “You think you can knock them out?” he muttered, voice low.

  "Can you do your thing?"

  He tightened his grip on his blade, holding it at the ready. "Not here. No symbiote elixir on me, so I can’t do any field surgery. If you can knock them out real hard, though, we can drag the girl back to the clinic and fix her properly."

  Maeve gave a small nod, adjusting her stance. That was all the warning either of them had before they moved.

  They charged at the exact same time.

  The hounds were faster.

  The moment their feet left the ground, all three hounds lunged, moving with a viciousness that hadn’t been there before. Maeve barely had time to angle her umbrella before two of them crashed into her, forcing her into a desperate, close-quarters fight. Gael, meanwhile, swung his blade in a sharp, though clumsy arc, catching the third hound mid-leap. The silver bit deep, severing both front legs at the shoulder, sending the beast sprawling.

  For a split second, Gael thought he had an opening.

  Then, in the space of a breath, the severed limbs writhed, pulsed, and reformed. Ungodly bioarcanic regeneration. The hound didn’t hesitate. It launched at him again, snapping its jaws, forcing him to deflect instead of going for another strike. Again and again, it lunged at him from as many directions as it could manage, and he was running out of room to maneuver.

  The hallway was too damn narrow.

  Every dodge and every sidestep put him right in Maeve’s space. He barely avoided an overhead swipe from one of her umbrella strikes, she barely twisted past one of his stabs, and then she nearly took out his leg with a misplaced pivot. They were tripping each other up. He grimaced, frustration mounting.

  What a dogshit fight this is.

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  Not only was there no space to move, but their footwork was completely out of sync. He was used to scrapping drunkards and debtors on the streets, adjusting his rhythm on the fly, but Maeve was an Exorcist trained to work in pairs where her partner wasn’t usually in the battle with her. She was stronger than him. Faster than him. She was expecting a level of coordination from him that he didn’t have, and these weren’t the mangy street dogs he sometimes wrestled outside the clinic.

  A harsh caw sounded from outside. Through one of the windows, three raven perched on the ledge, watching. Laughing.

  “Winston!” cawed the first crow.

  “Marlowe!” cawed the second.

  “Balthazar!” cawed the third. “Together, we are the mischievous three, and when we arrive—”

  Gael spun, chucked his cane at the window, and the damn thing bounced off the steel bars to hit him back in the face.

  Fuck off!

  His hound lunged again. This time, he saw his opening. A clean angle. If he could just take its head off, even if it wasn’t actually going to kill him, that’d buy him the space he needed to jump on Maeve’s hounds two versus two.

  He swung—and then all three hounds screamed.

  It wasn’t a bark, or a growl, or even a howl. It was the Myrmur’s true colors as ‘Shrill Cicadas’, and Gael had to admit, he completely forgot he was fighting Nightspawns merely disguised as hounds. So did Maeve, apparently, because when they let out three unholy screeches from three points of a triangle, the first thing to go was his eardrums.

  The entire hallway shook. Every window shattered at once. Brittle vase and flower pots cracked and splintered. Gael felt the impact of it vibrate straight through his skull, rattling his teeth, splitting through the lenses of his night vision goggles.

  His vision wrenched. A single fracture rippled down his right night-vision lens.

  Everything blurred, and black spots swarmed his vision like gnats in heat.

  Fuck.

  That’s… their Essence Art?

  He barely had time to think before another screech tore through the hallway. It wasn’t from the hounds this time. It came from the girl—the kneeling, head-scratching, downright deranged-looking girl at the end of the hallway. Her mouth stretched open far too wide with her snout-shaped mask pulled down, an inhuman sound ripping from her throat. The walls trembled again. The floor beneath them quivered like something alive as she roared for two of her hounds to return to her.

  “Protect me, Luce, Bram!” she screamed. “Don’t let them get near me!”

  Both Gael and Maeve were already on their asses, hands clutching their ringing skulls. The screeches had drilled straight into their bones, but instead of finishing them off, two of the hounds instantly turned tail and sprinted back to her side, flanking her like obedient demons.

  But the third?

  The third didn’t retreat.

  It pounced.

  Gael barely caught the movement in his periphery. The glint of teeth, the ripple of muscle, the sheer weight of the thing mid-air. His instincts screamed at him to move out of the way, but… Maeve.

  While he’d only been screeched at point-blank by a single hound, she’d taken two screeches in both ears. She was far worse off than him. Her glasses were cracked, and she was so out of it that she didn’t even seem to realize she was still alive.

  Hah.

  So he turned without thinking, throwing himself in front of her.

  The force of the hound still slammed into him, knocking the breath straight out of his lungs. He’d pulled his blade just in time to clash against the beast’s jaws, but still he skidded backward, boots barely holding traction on the dusty wooden floor. His shoulders burned, his knees shook, but he held his ground. The hound thrashed and snarled. Fangs gnashed around the blade’s silver. Clawed feet scrabbled at his arms, slicing through fabric, into skin. Pain bloomed, sharp and immediate.

  But his lips pulled into something between a grimace and a grin, and he glanced back and down at Maeve, still sitting dazed on the floor.

  “... You fucking dead, Exorcist?” he rasped. “Do I gotta charge you for medical services as well?”

  Wide emerald eyes blinked up at him. She looked stunned. Not from pain. Just… baffled.

  “I’m… I’m fine,” she stammered. “What are you—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, the front doors burst open behind the two of them. Wood splintered. The hound biting and clawing at his blade flinched, jerking its head toward the noise.

  Through the gaping entrance stormed Fergal, Cara, and two dozen Repossessors.

  The kneeling girl’s head snapped up. Her bloodshot eyes went round with panic. She shuffled backward, pointing a shaking, grimy finger at the newcomers.

  “Get them, Luce, Bram!”

  And the two hounds at her side didn’t hesitate. They bolted towards Cara in a blur of sickly muscle and too-long limbs.

  Shit.

  Gael barely processed it before his instincts screamed at him to move. His fingers tensed around his cane’s sheath, ready to fling it like a projectile. He had to knock at least one of them off course.

  But before he could even budge, Fergal stepped right in front of the completely nonplussed Cara, and with six spider-armored arms, he caught both hounds by the throat mid-air.

  Gael and Maeve both blinked.

  The hounds writhed, claws slashing wildly, teeth snapping inches from Fergal’s face. The man didn’t flinch. He didn’t struggle. Didn’t even seem bothered. He simply slammed them both into the floor, hard enough to crack the wooden boards beneath them.

  The sound of chitin plates cracking in half was sickening, but both hounds went still without so much as a whimper.

  … Okay.

  The moment Fergal crushed the hounds into the floor, though, their bodies twitched—then they lurched backward, dragged by their slick, pulsing umbilical cords.

  Gael clicked his teeth as he watched the limp carcasses reel back towards the girl like meat hooked on a line, and the last hound—the one still gnawing on his blade—stiffened before it, too, was yanked away, sucked straight into the girl’s back like a leech burrowing under skin.

  Before he could get too irritated, Fergal suddenly appeared at his side, scowling like the entire world had personally insulted him.

  How the hell did he move that fast?

  What Advanced Class does he have?

  “So those are Myrmurs, huh?” Fergal muttered, scowling forward. “I was sure I killed them.”

  “Well, they clearly didn’t get the message,” Gael muttered back, rubbing his temple.

  Maeve groaned as she pushed herself to her feet as well, wobbling slightly as she braced against her umbrella. “We have… to hold the girl down,” she hissed. “Now.”

  She barely finished the sentence before the girl screamed again. The sound tore through the hall, shriller than before, vibrating in Gael’s skull like a drill burrowing through bone, but ringing eardrums couldn’t suffer much more. He was used to the noise. The three of them charged forward despite it, and then came a different sort of noise. A squelching noise—flesh ripping, something wet and membranous snapping free.

  The girl’s back burst open, and a pair of massive, insectoid wings shot outwards, slick with something thick and honey-like.

  Then, a gust of wind. A single beat of those monstrous wings, and the sheer force of it sent dust and shattered wood whipping through the air.

  Gael barely had time to brace his face before the girl launched herself sideways, ramming straight through the steel-barred window. Glass exploded. Metal bent and shrieked. She tore through the wall as if it were made of paper, her body vanishing into the misty graveyard beyond.

  The three of them shoved forward, staggering over broken wood and debris to reach the gaping hole. Cara and the Repossessors followed, eyes scanning the cemetery.

  Only shadows. Only fog.

  The Flighty was gone.

  Gael swayed on his feet and let out a slow, exasperated sigh. Then he promptly collapsed back onto the ground.

  Maeve dropped beside him with just as much exhaustion.

  With a grunt, he fished out a roll of bandages from under his coat, muttering curses under his breath as he started wrapping his own bleeding arm. His fingers felt clumsy, half-numb from fatigue, but he still had enough strength to flick a gaze at Maeve.

  “Got an answer for that, Exorcist? ‘Cause I’d love to know just how the fuck a single Host can have three Myrmurs attached to her.”

  In response, Maeve exhaled slowly, jaw set grim.

  “It’s possible,” she said quietly. “We Exorcists call it superparasitism.”

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