The woman's scream was a hook in Amir's gut, yanking him forward. He and Johnathan burst through a crumbling archway into a vast, subterranean chamber, and the scene that greeted them stole the air from his lungs.
It wasn't a nest of cultists. It was a prison.
Huddled against the far wall, trapped behind a rusted conveyor belt, were two dozen people—women, their faces gaunt with terror, and children clinging to their legs with wide, silent eyes. And closing in on them, flowing like living oil across the stone floor, were five Shadow Demons. Their formless faces, voids of swirling black, were fixed on the cornered civilians. The low, guttural hum that emanated from them was a promise of consumption.
The door slammed shut behind the two Inquisitors with a final, booming clang.
The humming stopped.
As one, the five shadowy forms stilled. Then, slowly, their featureless heads rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees. The silent, hungry voids of their faces were now fixed entirely on Amir and Johnathan.
"Well," Johnathan deadpanned, his voice cutting through the terrified silence. "That got their attention. You wanted to kill them off, rookie? Now's your chance."
The demons moved. They didn't run; they flowed, gliding over the floor and up the walls with unnatural speed, surrounding them.
"Illusions! Now!" Johnathan barked, already hurling a vial. It shattered at the feet of the lead demon, erupting not in fire, but in a cloud of sparkling, silver dust. The creature recoiled as the dust settled on its form, making its shadowy outline solidify and flicker, its intangibility momentarily nullified.
Amir didn't need to be told twice. He focused, the sacrifice of his finger a dull, phantom ache that fueled his power. Three phantom Amirs shimmered into existence, each charging a different demon. The strategy was simple, brutal, and born of desperation: overwhelm their senses.
It worked. Two of the demons swiped at the illusions, their claws passing through empty air. But the third wasn't fooled. It ignored the false charges and came straight for the real Amir, its form rippling as it phased through a decaying vat.
"Incoming, left!" Johnathan yelled, already engaging two others. He was a whirlwind of alchemy, creating zones of control. A pool of glowing, sticky resin trapped one demon's legs, while a barrier of shimmering hard-light forced another to divert its path. He fought with the grim efficiency of a man cleaning a clogged drain, but the clog was a nightmare made sentient.
The demon on Amir lunged, a claw of solidified coldness forming from its limb. Amir threw himself backward, the claw ripping through the air where his throat had been. He could feel the deathly chill of its passage. He fired his hand cannon. The BOOM was deafening in the enclosed space. The shot tore a hole through the creature's center mass. It staggered, the humming from its core faltering.
But just like before, the shadows writhed, stitching the void back together. A dry, multi-layered voice echoed in his mind. "The gnat… stings."
Before it could fully reform, Johnathan was there. "Stop admiring your work and move!" He shoved Amir aside and threw a smaller, crystalline vial. It didn't explode, but instead hovered in the air before the demon, emitting a piercing, high-frequency whine. The demon clutched at its headless void, its form shuddering violently. "Sonic frequency disruptor!" Johnathan grunted. "Hurts like a bitch, doesn't it?"
They fought back-to-back, a chaotic, violent dance. Amir was the misdirection, the feint, the liar. He created false walls that demons phased through only to find Johnathan's alchemy waiting on the other side. He mimicked the sound of reloading to draw attacks, then made Johnathan's silhouette appear behind a demon, causing it to turn into a point-blank potion blast.
But the demons were learning. They began to ignore obvious illusions, their collective intelligence focusing on the real threats. One of them, smarter than the rest, flowed up the wall and across the ceiling, dropping directly onto Johnathan.
Johnathan sensed it, twisting at the last second. A shadowy claw ripped through his coat sleeve, and he hissed in pain, more from anger than injury. "That was a new coat, you son of a–" He slammed a palm against the creature's torso, a contact-poison capsule on his glove bursting. The demon shrieked, a real, pained sound, as its form began to dissolve at the point of contact.
Amir saw his opening. As the poisoned demon reeled, he created his most complex illusion yet. He didn't create a copy of himself or Johnathan. He created a perfect, shimmering duplicate of the holy knife Johnathan had used before, lying on the floor in the middle of the room.
The effect was instantaneous. All five demons froze, their attention snapping to the false relic. Their humming rose into a unified, agitated shriek of hatred and fear.
It was the distraction they needed.
"Now, Blake!" Amir yelled.
Johnathan didn't question it. In the two seconds of bought time, he produced two vials, smashing them together in his fist. A storm of alchemical fire and concussive force erupted in the center of the room, engulfing three of the demons at once. Their forms thrashed, unable to maintain cohesion under the dual assault.
The remaining two, including the smart one, realized the knife was a fake. With a final, psychic screech of rage, they dissolved into smoke, retreating into the deeper, darker tunnels of the factory.
The chamber fell silent, save for the crackle of dying alchemical fire and the ragged breaths of the two men. The immediate threat was gone.
Johnathan leaned over, hands on his knees, sucking in air. He looked at Amir, his face smudged with soot and a thin trail of blood from a cut on his temple. "A holy knife?" he panted. "A bit on the nose, don't you think?"
Amir, his own heart trying to beat its way out of his chest, managed a grim smirk. "It worked, didn't it?"
Yes, it did for now…
The immediate adrenaline of the fight faded, leaving behind the grim reality of the chamber. The air was thick with the smell of ozone, alchemical residue, and raw fear. Amir watched as Johnathan walked toward a woman who was crying softly, her shoulders shaking.
Johnathan sat down in front of her, his movements stiff, more suited to inspecting a crime scene than offering comfort. "I know... a lot of things have happened to you," he began, his voice gruff and uncomfortably loud. "I know my condolences won't be enough to calm you. But I can assure your safety. You, and all of you, are safe now." He gestured vaguely at the other huddled hostages.
He leaned closer. "Who brought you here?"
The woman, Salena, just stared through him, her eyes wide and unseeing, lost in a mental shock so profound it was a fortress.
Johnathan tried again, his tone flattening with impatience. "Who was it?"
No reply. Amir made a face, a weird mix of pity and secondhand embarrassment. He couldn't help but let out a short, quiet laugh. "Sir," Amir said, stepping closer. "With all due respect, this is possibly the worst way to calm down a hostage. By the looks of it, you're the one who's nervous trying to talk to her."
Johnathan's head snapped toward Amir, his eye twitching. The vein on his temple bulged. The calm, professional inquisitor had vanished, replaced by a man pushed far beyond his people-skills limit.
"If YOU are so good at it," Johnathan shouted, his voice echoing in the cavernous room, "then YOU do it! I am not good at this... this condolence type of thing!"
As the two men stood there, a silent argument passing between their locked gazes, a small, broken voice cut through the tension.
"VIC Plumber Company."
Johnathan's focus snapped back to Salena. "VIC Plumber Company? The owner, Mr. Alistair Finch, threw a banquet?"
Salena nodded slowly, her voice gaining a fragile strength. "Yes. But... wasn't the company going through a financial crisis?"
"Yes," she replied, her fingers twisting in the torn fabric of her dress. "But one day, we all received a letter. It was directly from the CEO. He said he had made new, lucrative deals with neighboring companies. The company was saved from the brink of collapse. To celebrate, he invited many VIPs to a banquet. I was one of them."
Johnathan's eyes, sharp and analytical, scanned her properly now. Despite being dirty and torn, the dress was undeniably expensive, its fine silk and intricate embroidery visible beneath the grime. His mind raced. VIPs. High-profile targets. They wouldn't lie about an invitation.
"Your name again?" Johnathan asked, his tone shifting to that of an investigator.
"Salena."
Johnathan's eyes narrowed. "Wait. Aren't you the daughter of the Sector Seven Mayor?"
Salena nodded slowly, a fresh tear tracing a clean path through the dirt on her cheek.
Amir, who had been listening intently, looked at Johnathan, confused. "What is a sector mayor?"
Johnathan gave him a look of pure, unadulterated disbelief. "You are from this city—Steelhaven—and you don't know what a sector mayor is? Are you some sort of uneducated, or what? The Captain didn't tell me I was getting an uneducated partner."
Amir's face flushed with instant, white-hot fury. He bit his tongue, saying nothing, but his mind screamed in a torrent of pure, modern indignation. Uneducated? Seriously, you piece of shit? I'm from a world where we split the atom and have the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets! You fight with glorified potions and a rusty knife!
"Amir!" Johnathan's sharp tone snapped him back to the present. "Since Steelhaven is a massive city, it's divided into seven sectors. Each sector has a mayor, chosen by the king's closest men. It's basic civics."
"I see," Amir muttered, forcing his anger down.
He turned his attention back to Salena, sitting down in front of her, his posture far more natural and less intimidating than Johnathan's. "Miss Salena," he said, his voice softer. "What actually happened at the banquet?"
Salena's nervousness returned in a wave. She began to wring her hands. "I... I don't know," she stammered. "I was enjoying a glass of wine, and then... it was all blank." A bead of sweat traced a path from her hairline down her temple.
Johnathan's eyes, hawk-like, didn't miss it. "Miss," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, calm octave. "Are you hiding something from us?"
She flinched as if struck. "No! No, why would I hide anything from you?"
Johnathan studied her for a long, silent moment. "Ohh, I see," he said, his tone implying he saw everything but believed nothing. He stood up and gestured for Amir to do the same.
Amir rose, his own instincts buzzing. "Something is off," he whispered to Johnathan. "Why do I feel like this is a huge spider's web, and it's all connected?"
"You're right. Something is deeply off, and she is acting suspicious, too—" Johnathan began, but his sentence was cut off.
It started faintly, then grew in clarity—the same, twisted, melodic lullaby Amir had heard before. It wormed its way into the chamber, seeming to come from the very walls themselves.
Amir froze, every hair on his body standing on end. A cold dread, more profound than any he had felt facing the demons, washed over him. "Si—sir," he stammered, his voice barely a whisper. "Are you hearing this?"
Johnathan's hand had already dropped to the hilt of his holy knife, his jaw tight. His glowing eyes scanned the darkness beyond the chamber. "Yes," he replied, his voice grim. "That thing... whatever it is... it's not just hunting us. It's toying with us.
The twisted lullaby coiled through the air, a psychic barb aimed at their sanity. Johnathan's response was pure, unadulterated action.
"Reload!" he barked, his voice a whip-crack in the oppressive gloom. His own hands were a blur, yanking a vial of murky, crimson liquid from his bandolier. He bit the cork out, spitting it to the floor, and chugged the potion in one brutal gulp. The effect was instantaneous. The muscles in his neck and forearms corded, bulging against his skin, and a network of angry red veins pulsed at his temples. He let out a sharp, pained gasp as the unnatural strength flooded his system.
Amir's hands, slick with a cold sweat, moved to the heavy hand cannon. The Iron Argument was a beast of blued steel and grim purpose. He thumbed the release latch with a practiced, desperate flick. The side-loading cylinder swung out with a solid, metallic clunk. With frantic speed, his fingers dug into the pouch at his belt, retrieving the massive .577 cartridges. Each one was a small, deadly artifact of brass and lead, heavier than any bullet from his world. He slotted them home, one after another, the brass bases seating into the cylinder with a satisfying, final thunk-thunk-thunk. He snapped the cylinder back into the frame, the mechanism locking with a sound that promised violence. The knurled iron wheel, the gun's primitive hammer, was thumbed back with a deafening click-clack that echoed the pounding of his heart.
They emerged not from the shadows, but were the shadows. The very darkness of the chamber congealed, peeling away from the walls and floor in sheets of living black silk. They didn't step into form; they coalesced, their void-like faces swirling into existence first, the low, guttural hum of a perverted lullaby the only warning before they struck.
The fight was a desperate, close-quarters melee of fire and illusion. Johnathan was a maelstrom of enhanced strength, his movements a blur. He didn't dodge a claw; he caught the shadowy limb and, with a grunt of effort, slammed the demon into the stone floor, the impact cratering the rock. He shattered vials at his feet, creating a moving fortress of alchemical chaos—walls of shimmering hard-light, pools of sizzling acid, and concussive blasts that tore the shadowy forms apart only for them to slowly reform.
Amir was his ghostly partner. He created phantom doorways that demons charged through, only to find a solid wall and Johnathan's waiting fist. He mimicked the sound of the lullaby from behind them, splitting their attention for a crucial second. He fired the hand cannon, the BOOM a physical force in the room, each shot vaporizing a part of a demon, buying them a precious moment of respite. But for every one they dispersed, two more seemed to flow from the darkness.
The lullaby never stopped.
"It's not stopping!" Amir yelled over the cacophony, his voice strained. "What should we do?!"
Johnathan, parrying a shadowy blade with a vambrace that screeched in protest, didn't even look at him. "Sometimes," he growled, "to solve a problem, you need to get right next to the damn problem!"
In a move of sheer, reckless audacity, Johnathan turned his back on the horde, lowered his shoulder, and charged. He barreled through the very door they had entered from, splintering the rotten wood from its frame.
Amir was stunned into a moment of pure, incredulous paralysis. Then, survival instinct kicked in. He sprinted after the retreating form of the Inquisitor.
"Why are we running? Where are we going?!" Amir shouted, his lungs burning.
Johnathan's voice came back, sharp and strained as he ran. "To the source! That thing is using the shadows to grind us down, to exhaust us! They won't stop coming until we kill the singer!"
Amir's mind raced, but before a coherent thought could form, Johnathan skidded to a halt before a reinforced metal door and kicked it. The lock shattered, and the door flew inward with a scream of tortured metal.
The room beyond was an abyss. It was pitch black, a darkness so absolute it felt solid, swallowing the light from the chamber behind them. The air was thick, cold, and carried a metallic, coppery scent mixed with something sweetly rotten. The floor was slick with a black, gooey substance that clung to their boots. And rising from the floor were huge, round, cylindrical chambers made of dark, glass-like material, their contents hidden in the gloom.
The lullaby stopped.
The silence was more terrifying than the sound.
"I know," Johnathan whispered, his enhanced muscles taut. "Now, focus. This is a mission a rookie wasn't ever meant to handle."
Amir looked at him, the true gravity of the situation dawning. "Am I going to die?"
Johnathan met his gaze, his eyes glowing faintly in the dark. "No. Not while I'm still breathing. Now stay close."
They moved forward, their footsteps unnaturally loud in the perfect silence. Deeper into the room, they saw her.
Johnathan froze. Amir's breath hitched in his throat, a small, pathetic sound of pure, unadulterated horror.
It was a woman. She wore a beautiful, pristine white gown, a stark, blasphemous contrast to the filth around her. But where her head should have been, there was only a smooth, unbroken column of pale skin rising from the gown's collar. She was sitting, and in her lap, she cradled a doll. The doll was fashioned from the same pitch-black darkness as the demons, its form shifting subtly, and it had two pinpricks of malevolent violet light for eyes.
She was gently rocking the abomination, stroking its hair with a tender, maternal care.
Amir leaned close to Johnathan's ear, his whisper trembling. "What in the name of all the gods is that?"
"I don't know," Johnathan breathed, his voice tight with a fear Amir had never heard in him before. "I have never seen anything like this. Abort mission. This is beyond us. We get the hostages and we run."
As they began to slowly back away, a voice spoke. It didn't come from the headless neck. It seemed to emanate from the very air around them, a chorus of whispering, giggling children and sighing women, all speaking in perfect, chilling unison.
"Wait. Leaving so early? Aren't you going to play with me?"
Amir and Johnathan froze in place. It was not a choice. A pressure descended upon them, a tangible force of wrongness that seized their muscles and locked their joints. It felt as if reality itself was groaning, straining to reject this entity's existence, yet it remained, a cancerous stillness at the heart of the darkness.
The headless woman stood, setting the dark doll down carefully. She began to walk towards them, her steps silent on the goo-covered floor. With every step, the psychic pressure intensified, a weight threatening to crush their minds and snuff out their consciousness. Johnathan's face was a mask of agony, his knuckles white as he fought the invisible bonds. His glowing eyes began to dim.
With a guttural roar of pure will, he brought his thumb to his mouth and bit down, hard. Blood welled, bright and shocking. The sharp, real pain was an anchor. He gasped, staggering a step as control flooded back into his limbs. He didn't hesitate. He spun and slapped Amir hard across the face.
The sting jolted Amir back to his senses, his own gasp echoing Johnathan's.
"Move!" Johnathan snarled, already hurling a glass orb of alchemical fire. It struck the woman's chest and erupted, engulfing her pristine white gown in roaring, hungry flames.
She did not scream. She did not stagger. She simply kept walking, the fire cascading over her form as if it were nothing but morning dew.
Johnathan grabbed Amir's arm, his grip like iron. "Fight it! Look at me!" he commanded, his own will a shield against the psychic tide threatening to drown Amir's mind.
"What in the world is that thing?!" Amir screamed, his sanity fraying at the edges.
"I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!" Johnathan roared back, his composure utterly shattered. "All I know is that thing has power… it feels like a Frequency 5 Tuner! The same level as the Captain! How in hell do we beat that?!"
"How?!" Amir cried out, his voice cracking.
"We don't!" Johnathan shouted, pulling Amir backward as the burning figure advanced. "We can only pray! We can only hope! And we can try to survive long enough for a backup that will probably be too late!"
The headless woman, wreathed in silent, unconsuming flames, took another step, her gown now a shroud of fire.
"Do not be afraid, my little toys," the chorus of voices cooed, sweetly, poisonously. "You are all my playthings. We are going to be together… forever."
End of Chapter 2