Max sat on a private airplane that Chad had rented. The two of them were almost to Vancouver. Throughout the flight, Chad had been working furiously, using his laptop and speaking softly into his Bluetooth earbud. While Chad did what was necessary for a last-minute meeting in Canada, Max read years of news stories online, filling in his knowledge gaps. Now that he knew what really happened in the Trifecta Guild, it was easier to parse the truth behind other public stories about other guilds as well. He decided that the state of the US, and the rest of the world, was not looking good.

  Even in the fact of looming global annihilation, people were still being greedy and shortsights.

  In fact, when he'd first gotten back to Earth, he'd felt skeptical about the Agency because the idea of some government entity running anything involving Challengers seemed weird to him. During his life on Earth, most world governments weren't exactly the most efficiently-run organizations, and the world had been half destroyed already.

  But humanity was still hanging on, still maintaining the front lines against the monsters. And it seemed like the entire world had the individual Agencies of every country to thank for helping with coordination and organization.

  That got Max doing more research on the Agency itself.

  It was strange, but he still couldn't find out exactly who had started the National Guild Suppression Agency, or who had proposed or solidified how each country’s Agency actually worked. Max had put some real effort into it until he also realized that he couldn't be the first person to have looked into this. After a quick search on the subject, he found thread after thread on the internet by other people who were intrigued by the mystery of how the Agency was built out of practically nowhere. It seemed like most people in the world eventually just gave up on the mystery, deciding that every country's Agency was doing a good job and without them, everybody would be worse off.

  The general consensus was also that whoever had actually started the agency, or whoever was behind it, was a hero for discovering more of how the universe worked.

  But Max knew a little more than the average bear about how the universe actually worked. Now he was suspicious whether the agency had even actually been a human invention. It was a terrible feeling, and he hoped he was wrong, but after everything he'd been through, suspecting a conspiracy at a galaxy, or universal, or maybe even cross-dimensional scale, was actually becoming his go-to.

  The plane was currently flying relatively close to the west coast of the United States. Something else that Max had been studying was how much of the world had been overtaken by monsters. At this point, it was quite a bit. The line representing the front line of the war in the US went from just inside Montana, curving inward, to the Carolinas.

  Most of Canada was gone, only the westernmost part of Canada, barely connecting the US to Alaska, was still under human control. Most of Alaska was gone too. The only reason the sliver of Alaska remained was that it was being used as a staging area for other countries, and the combined might helped humanity keep that tenuous strip of land.

  One of the many problems that humanity faced with the monster invasion was how many of them were completely comfortable in environments that were absolutely inhospitable to humans. Whole areas of the planet were much more likely to be owned by monsters now. Deserts and the north and south poles, all extreme environments. The seas and oceans were all infested now. Even in what would otherwise be considered human territory, lakes and rivers were considered some of the most dangerous areas that anyone could frequent.

  Fishing was no longer a relaxing past time anymore. Alligators were the least dangerous thing populating the waters in Florida.

  People knew a lot more about how portals can work now. If a portal was not shut in time, it would disgorge monsters, but the number was usually finite. This was the most common type of portal that still spawned on the planet. They could appear in human-controlled areas, but not as often. And most of them near cities were usually addressed and conquered right away. But the portals that opened on the other side of the country, for instance, like in New York, had nobody to challenge them. This meant that it was inevitable for the portal to break and monsters to spill out. Portal bread were basically how all the invading monsters were getting reinforcements.

  The only reason humanity hadn't been wiped out was because of human weapons effective on some monsters, Challengers, Returners, and the fact that most different types of monsters didn't work together well, if at all. In fact, sometimes monsters fought. So it was actually more accurate to say that about half of the United States right now had been taken over and carved up by about six individual different monster nations. What was fascinating about this was that each monster nation still sometimes got portals in their territory for other, enemy monsters. But monsters couldn't actually enter a portal. As a result, the monsters holding land had to allocate some of their forces to surround portal breaks in their own territory to kill their enemies.

  From a certain point of view, the entire world right now was humanity versus about one hundred different unified groups of monsters, some of whom were more intelligent than others. It was grim.

  Perhaps equally grim was how when Returners from monster-controlled areas came back to hearth, they often found themselves in enemy territory, and had to seek out survivors. The way humanity had dealt with this over the last several years was to send extremely dangerous flights into enemy airspace to drop leaflets and packages containing information about the state of the world, as well as directions on where to go.

  Max could only imagine what it would be like to come back to his hometown in the middle of monster territory and find out that he had to cross the entire country before finding other people again. A semi-abandoned city in human territory, like he’d returned to, would be far different from one under monster control. It wasn't a surprise that many Returners had died, but fortunately, a surprising number had made the trip.

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  Regular people had died in droves within the first few months after the monster attacks, but after that, humanity somewhat got its act together and began a mass exodus of people. If it weren't for all the various Challengers on the planet now, many more people probably would have died from mundane causes, if not monster attacks. Food and water would be incredibly scarce after losing half the country and not having regular shipping. On top of that, the only types of airplanes that dared cross monster-infested territory were those that flew high enough to be out of reach of most flying monsters.

  "What a mess," Max grunted.

  At some point, Chad had ambled over. "It really is," the big man said with a sigh. He sat back in his seat, letting his muscles go limp like a boneless rag doll. "I don't know what you have up your sleeve or why we're doing this, but I'm going to trust you."

  "You've already said that."

  "That's true, but I needed to say it again for my own sanity. Anyway, you will have your meeting very quickly after we touch down in Vancouver."

  "Who did you talk to?”.

  "A handler," Chad grimaced. "I didn't get a chance to deliver your message at all, so I don't know what we're walking into."

  "Oh well, doesn't matter," said Max. "How much longer do we have until we touch down?"

  "About half an hour."

  "All right. I was thinking about taking a nap–” Suddenly Max's attention was jerked to one side as if his eyeballs had turned to steel and the most powerful magnet in the world was on the other side of the plane's passenger area. He didn't have to be told what this was. Now he could actually feel all of his spirits half-manifested behind him–what he was feeling had caught all of their attention as well.

  “This has not happened in a long time," he muttered, his words trailing off.

  Lavinia's voice whispered in his ear, "Not since you met me. Strong resonance."

  Max absently nodded, and he was eternally thankful that showing uncommonly good sense, Anansi had kept quiet the entire time Max had been dealing with Chad, and the divine remnant was still staying silent. This moment, especially now that Max was a stronger and more sophisticated Summoner, he could feel how special this situation truly was.

  Just like with Lavinia, he was experiencing a spontaneous meeting with a spirit due to shared attributes, goals, personality, or some other similarities strong enough to interact with each other naturally.

  On the other side of the plane, standing on one of the seats was a softly glowing, translucent praying mantis. It was beautiful, its colors pinks, greens, and whites, all slightly washed out by its translucency. Max did a quick rundown of all of his spirits, making sure they were present and paying attention. They all were.

  They all understood the importance of this moment. Since Lavinia, his first contract ever, this was the first spirit that he truly met naturally like this, without any outside influences, or violence, or deals, or magic circles, or tests or a remnant dragging them along, or other extenuating circumstances.

  Quietly, Max said, "Chad, I need you to trust me and do me a favor."

  "What?"

  "I need you to leave the cabin."

  "And go where? Outside? I can't go up to the pilot's compartment, either."

  Max spared his friend one quick glance to demonstrate through his expression how serious he was. He did feel a little bit sorry for him that he was a guild master and kept getting jerked around like this in one day. Now poor Chad was getting kicked out of the cabin of the plane he’d rented. But Max didn't want this opportunity to go to waste. In his heart, he somehow could tell that the spirit he could see right now was shy and wouldn't like an audience.

  "Okay, fine," Chad grumbled. "I’m sensing that this is magic or Challenger stuff. Fine. If you need me, I will be in the restroom for twenty minutes. But that's as long as I'll lock myself in there."

  "That should be good," said Max. “Thank you.” He nodded in appreciation. Chad muttered to himself the entire way to the back of the plane before locking himself in the lavatory.

  After that, Max's full attention was on the spirit that had manifested by itself in the cabin. The mantis cocked its head at him. "Hello," he said softly. "My name is Max Cunningham. It's a pleasure to meet you."

  The spirit twisted its head to the other side, but Max couldn't hear anything. Suddenly he saw a chat window from Slick.

  [Good thing I've been saving my power, boss, because I can translate.]

  "You can? That’s great, Slick! Can anybody else communicate with this spirit?" he asked out loud. All of his other spirits indicated that no, they could not. Even Saliron, the dark, bone-obsessed entity, was quietly watching as well. He seemed to be as fascinated by this moment as Max and the rest of his spirits.

  This really doesn't happen very often, said Lavinia mentally. Her mental tone was full of wonder. It’s fortunate that Slick can translate so you can communicate better.

  Suddenly, a voice Max hadn't wanted to hear echoed through the cabin. Anansi wasn't speaking as loud as he could, but his voice still carried as he said, "I really hate praying mantises. Don't you think you could maybe tell her to go away and just wait for the next spirit to come along? I mean, this wouldn't meeting might not even be possible if I hadn't already talked to Siliron about lowering his standards a bit, at least officially, for any new stray spirits you pick up."

  Just as suddenly, Siliron's voice came out of nowhere, as chill and dark as it always was. "Dead God, I will not disrespect you, but I will not cower either, at least not when it comes to bones. This unknown spirit has bones on the outside, and they are beautiful and exotic. I find it pleasing to behold."

  "They're not bones, it’s an exoskeleton," said Anansi.

  The whole time his spirit and remnant were bickering, Max was observing the praying mantis spirit cock her head yet again in confusion and slowly start edging towards the wall of the plane. He didn't know how he could tell what the spirit was feeling, but he did. He growled out, "If you two don't shut the fuck up right now, we're going to have problems."

  "That wasn't very polite," complained Anansi. But he stopped speaking.

  Saliron just grunted, his voice carrying through the air like oil spreading across rusted steel. "I would normally not tolerate disrespect like this, but I suppose these are rare circumstances. However, you owe me bones of placation before night falls, Contractor."

  "Saliron, you are ridiculous. ‘Respect?’ You tried to kill me the first time we met, but whatever, you've got a deal," said Max. Then he drew in a shaky breath, stood up from his seat, and crouched down to eye level with the distant praying mantis spirit.

  "Let's try this again, shall we?" He said. "My name is Max. I'm a summoner. I actually met one other spirit this way before. Her name is Lavinia." He gestured to one side and said, "Lavinia, can you show yourself?"

  The spirit manifested next to him, translucent but still sharp, very similar to the mantis. She smiled and gave a little wave. "I was his first spirit. And if I'm not mistaken, you and I are the same rank too." Lavinia turned slightly to Max and said, "She could tell that I was here before. Spirits can sense one another. But now that we've both manifested, maybe I can try teaching her how to speak, even while Slick continues to translate for you."

  Max locked eyes with the new spirit. "Would that be acceptable?" He asked.

  [Yes].

  Slick's communication window hung in the air.

  Then Max said, "Before we start talking any further, may I ask your name?"

  There was a pause before another one of Slick's windows popped into existence again.

  [I am called Daliko.]