The futile search for the ghouls had taken me days, and by the time I was back at the plaza, the shop in my sight, the inconsistencies started to mount and register in my mind as something unusual.

  The plaza was packed.

  Not in the same way as it was on my first arrival to the plaza, but undeniably fuller than it has been lately when many more people were away seeking the creatures that were their only means of survival.

  Folks were still friendly enough if the sounds of chatter and animated discussions were to be believed. They still congregated in large groups, talking, laughing, telling stories, and playing some games with die and stones. But a hanging overtone of anxiety, worry, and concern accompanied it.

  What's more, I saw a lot more white than I was used to. Previously, at least half of the coven's initiates were always away, and those present spent some of their time in the temple proper. Now they were out in force. If it wasn't all of them, it was pretty damn close. There wasn't anything nefarious about it—they were mingling and taking part in the social life available to us, but seeing so many of them out at once was odd.

  When I got to the shop, it was bare of produce. The only things left in the spacious place were the wooden table and a couple of chairs.

  I approached the new door between the main space and the smaller adjacent chamber. There was the blurry impression of an aura coming through the wood, so for lack of a better option to get the resident's attention, I knocked.

  "Ack!" Kenny's voice resounded with surprise, dropping something in the process.

  What was it with people startle so easily around me?

  After a couple of moments, he hurriedly walked out, affixing a rag-covered tool on his belt, leaving only the shaft visible.

  "How's business?" I tried to make conversation.

  "Nate?" Kenny asked, befuddled. "You came back?"

  "Back?" I asked. "I never left. Just had to take some time to cool off by myself."

  "Ohh… Oh, that's great news," he exclaimed, regaining his proverbial footing. "Wait here. I have to call Edith for this," He proceeded to step outside and make a few calls.

  We waited silently for a beat, but I was the first to lose patience.

  "Why the surprise?" I asked. "I came to visit plenty of times. Now you're acting like I left for cigarettes and milk."

  Kenny looked sheepish at my implication.

  "After your heroics with the raiders, everyone thought you've gone on to claim the Squid for yourself," Kenny said, but he quickly defended himself. "I didn't. I told them that you wouldn't hoard it like that."

  What heroics?

  I was barely holding to dear life, pouring as much as I could of myself into the attack. If it weren't for Edith, who ended it, I would've become the insane cannibal's next victim the moment I would've let go.

  "The reason I didn't set off to hunt the Squid myself is not due to some sort of sense of camaraderie," I harshly told him. "It's because the thing is insanely massive and dangerous," I stated the obvious. "What makes you think I can even leave a mark on the damned thing?"

  The only reason I considered the joint hunt, even with all the manpower and any help I could get, was because it was seemingly the only source of essence left.

  Didn't he understand this?

  "The guys told me everything about the fight," he gushed. "Nobody could even break Michaelson's skin. Not until you appeared out of nowhere and pinned him in one move." Kenny was gesticulating wildly. "What was this special attack you used? You burned like the sun, and he just withered under you. Nobody could even look at you—it was hurting their eyes. Edith was so furious for what he did to Victor that when she came closer to hit him, she had to swing at him blindly with how painful it was to look at you."

  Mutely, I listened to the recounting of events.

  It was insane how different it looked from the side. While not lying deliberately, it was somehow misconstructing the situation. From my encounter with a ghoul, I knew that using pain would greatly intensify my power output, and I used that, but I didn't realize it would have that spillover effect that could be felt by simply watching.

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  "A special attack?" I asked, somewhat speechless.

  "Yeah, I knew you'd think of something new to take care of the Squid," he proclaimed. "I wasn't sitting on my ass either-" he struggled with his belt to release the contraption. "-Behold, the Boomstick!"

  I didn't get the reference, so I moved closer to inspect it.

  The sight was mesmerizing.

  A short wooden handle ended in a claw shape containing a smoothed stone orb. The stone wasn't anything special by itself, but it was riddled with a myriad of small fork-shaped symbols throughout its surface.

  "What does it do?" I asked.

  Not all of the signs were empowered, but those that were, had an intensity to them comparable to the most strenuous spell I could manage when not in a pain frenzy.

  "I got the idea from the way the mist erases stuff—that's why the symbols look like sand rakes," he said, self-satisfied. "After that, it was only a matter of finding a way to maximize the power output and the delivery-"

  "You really are back," Edith interrupted him, stepping into the shop.

  She moved slowly, almost circling me at a distance, facing me at all times. Signs of stress and apprehension marred her youthful features.

  Was she afraid of me?

  "As I already explained, I never left," I said mildly.

  Edith nodded. "Did you bring him in on the plan?" She asked Kenny without looking away from me.

  "Ahh... no, I was just getting to it," Kenny said, clearly unhappy from being derailed from the gushing about his new creation. "But first, what can you tell us about the Squid?"

  "What is there to tell?" I asked. "It's huge, looks like a squid, and it moves on land."

  "How huge?" Edith asked.

  "I don't know, it was kinda flattened, being out of the water," I felt uncomfortable even remembering the creepy sight. "Thirty feet? Maybe forty if it could stand straight? It was hard to tell with the fog and all, and I ran away after barely a glance at the thing."

  Edith whistled. "You sure you're not exaggerating?"

  "Why would I?" I shrugged. "You are going to see it for yourself soon enough."

  "What did it look like? How did it move?" Kenny asked, intrigued by the imagery.

  "It was wet, kinda slimy, with lots of wriggly tentacles," I recounted. "It moved funny like, some tentacles pushed it towards me, the rest felt ahead of it or were raised up."

  "So, it used what? Four arms to walk and the other four to attack?" Kenny asked.

  "Four?" I asked. "It had like twenty of them waving about. I didn't exactly stop to count them."

  "Twenty?" Kenny exclaimed. "That's impossible, they have-"

  "We're dab middle in impossible territory for some time now. So get used to it," Edit stated. "How fast was it moving?"

  "Not faster than my best running speed," I answered grimly.

  "Clearly," Edith scoffed. "What else?"

  I shrugged. There really wasn't that much I could tell about it from our brief encounter.

  "How long are the arms?" Kenny finally asked. "Reach wise."

  "'Bout as big as the rest of it, I'd say," I guessed. "So about thirty, maybe forty feet."

  "Forty feet," Kenny mumbled. "Should be doable."

  We mulled it over for a while more, but I didn't have any more pertinent information.

  "What's the plan?" I asked, fed up with the silence. "Find it with the compass and kill it with the boomstick?"

  It sure was nice to have all those gizmos making life more comfortable.

  "The, ahem-" Edith cleared her throat. She was clearly uncomfortable with the naming of the artifact. "-The boomstick shoots out lasers that can cut through anything. But they are very thin, so we may not be able to outright kill something that big-"

  "It doesn't shoot lasers. The Erasing effect is something the reality around us enforces. I'm only calling on that effect and directing it," Kenny butted in. "Living matter is a lot harder to affect. It's not going to be a quick swish to be done with it."

  Living matter? How did they test this one? And what was it about calling on some power?

  "So if that doesn't work, we'll have to get a lot of rope and use hooks to catch the limbs and cut them off. If it's similar to the ghouls, the energy concentration should be about the same throughout the body," Edith continued with the plan.

  That was a good plan. If we had enough people pulling on the tentacles and we managed to cut one off and get away with it, it may just be enough to sustain us for some time.

  The hit-and-run tactics appealed to me on a deeper level.

  "That's a good plan," I said. "Now we just need to double your numbers and get the rope, and we can have the party started."

  Kenny winced, looking at Edith.

  "No, we can not have the party started," Edith exploded. "Karl, that backstabbing son of a bitch went after it and took the compass with him. Half the guys followed, and some teams from the plaza joined him like he could do more than spout empty promises. Took a lot of our equipment for all the good it would do them," she grumbled.

  "When was that?" I asked. "And why? Why would he go without you?"

  "A couple of days ago, around the time we got back, the High Priestess announced that there weren't any more ghouls in the city. All the initiates are chilling at the temple or around the plaza, so people got antsy," Kenny explained.

  "Good thing we didn't tell him shit about your contraption, or he would have taken that too," Edit seethed. "The compass wouldn't do him any good either way. He never saw the damned thing. How did he think to find it? Go outside the city walls and wander about until the compass starts spinning? That's not how it works!"

  "What's the Temple's solution? Wait for a miracle?" I asked.

  Kenny was as clueless as I was. "We didn't join him because the boomstick wasn't ready," he continued. "Still not. It's going to take me days to keep adding charges to it. I'd prefer a week-"

  "We don't have a week," Edith snapped. "Everybody's different, but I know for a fact that some folks out there don't have a single pent to their name. They're on borrowed time. The longer it takes, the more violent it's gonna become. I don't want a repeat of all the cannibalism, do you?"

  "No, of course not," Kenny agreed. "But we don't have the manpower or the equipment right now anyway-"

  "What about the Coven?" I asked. "Ask them to join us and front us another compass, the ropes, and whatnot. They'll get a share of the haul."

  "I tried," Edith sighed. "The High Priestess wants to talk to you for proof that there is another monster out there before she makes a decision."

  "How would talking to me prove anything?" I asked. "You know as much as I do by this point."

  "She's a walking-talking lie detector," Edith waved a hand around. "Just tell her what you told us, and we can move on with it."

  I sighed. Another unpleasant conversation with the pompous princess.

  I would almost rather risk meeting some monster head-on than have another talk with that one.

  Not because of the unpleasantness of the encounter but because she was dangerous. As plain and simple as that.

  She used some novel abilities against me the last time we met, and I felt some confidence in defending myself against them, but it was her ingenuity and the unknown abilities that troubled me.

  Nothing left to do but hope that it won't come to a conflict this time.