The House of Anateer was more magnificent inside than it was outside. The sunlight shone through the stained-glass windows depicting an armoured man with flowing blonde hair and a clean, sharp face. From the back of his armour, sprouted wings, and each window showed him partaking in various activities from praying to thrusting his mighty sword to the sky. This was none other than Anateer himself, taking human form.

  At the top of the church stood a stone statue of Anateer with his feathered wings unfurled while being worshipped by two dozen men, women, and children. He looked upon them with kindness while they clung to him. The large sun emblem emblazed on his armour was radiant, even in pristine marble that emitted no light of its own. The holiness of the statue was unmistakable, having a presence of its own.

  The many benches of the church were either piled up near the door or shoved to the sides of the room, keeping the floor clear. There was no shortage of bloodstains across the floor, indicating many a battle had taken place here since the Arcanaclysm, but it was strange that the structure of the church was untainted as it was. The top of the spire had been broken, yet every window remained intact? That was a peculiarity that Arc could not explain, nor did he think he would easily find an answer.

  Standing watching him was a woman who matched Lancelot’s description of Isabella, down to her bustiness. She was a blonde woman with bushy hair that ran down to her midback. She wore a red and white leather biker suit that clung tightly to her slender and curvaceous body. Much like Charlemagne, she carried duplicate guns, however she had opted for three revolvers over six handguns. One was holstered by her waist and two more were strapped either side of her chest. Her expression was sharp as she stared at the spellslinger carrying the limp girl who watched the ceiling.

  “Give me a hand,” Charlemagne said to Jack.

  The two pushed a half dozen benches up against the door, reinforcing it against anything that may try and break through. Arc looked to the door and then to the windows. With a frown, Isabella drew the revolver by her waist and shot one of the windows, making Jack call out in shock. The bullet bounced off Anateer’s glass form and rebounded to the ground.

  “Unbreakable,” said Isabella. She had a stern voice that hid a natural softness.

  “That answers that question,” muttered Arc.

  “Did you need to shoot?” asked Charlemagne in exasperation. He was tense enough with these strangers here and his comrade’s willingness to waste bullets irked him.

  “Why didn’t you answer my radio messages?” asked Arc, not caring for any disputes between these two strangers.

  “You could have been anyone,” said Charlemagne, walked over to stand beside Isabella. He gave her a berth of a few feet. “What if you were some bandit who found half of our stuff we left lying throughout the city? What if you were a minion of the Eye of Gra’shiya?”

  “Gra’shiya,” muttered Julie, alarming Arc. It was the first sign of life she had exhibited since falling into this state.

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked Isabella, looking to Julie.

  “One of the eye fiends latched onto her and looked into her eyes,” said Arc, looking sorrowfully at the enthralled Julie. “I don’t know how to bring her back to her normal self.”

  “Get her out of here,” said Isabella, raising her gun to point at Arc, but he was quick off the mark and had raised his spellcaster.

  “No,” he said.

  “Spellslinger,” mumbled Charlemagne, rolling his eyes. “You think your flashy magic is quicker than a regular old bullet?”

  “No, but I’ve got a much faster finger and you don’t know what cartridge I’ve got loaded. Even if you put a hole in my head, this entire church could be filled with poison gas. Do you think you can clear the door before you choke to death on your own blood?”

  Charlemagne bit his lower lip while Isabella stared coldly at Arc. The mohawked man walked over to his companion and pushed her gun down. “Let’s talk about everything calmly, shall we?”

  “Good,” said Arc, holstering the Golden Hawk. “King Obsidian sent me to come and find you. He needs you back in Cliff Town to help him deal with the Iron Axe Clan.”

  “You said on the radio your name was Arc the Hawk, right?” Arc nodded. “Well, Arc, we would love to go home, but we find ourselves in a little predicament we’re having trouble getting out of. If you hadn’t noticed, New Carlington is the territory of an Eye of Gra’shiya.”

  “Gra’shiya,” whispered Julie, making Jack wince.

  “Funnily enough, I did notice,” said Arc coldly. “I also noticed that there are only two of you. Where’s Alfonso? How about Logain?”

  Charlemagne sighed and held his face in his hands. “Our time here had been…an ordeal.”

  “Bring me and my good friend Jack up to speed. We’re here to help and we can only do that if we know everything you know.”

  “Don’t,” said Isabella quietly to Charlemagne. She looked him dead in the eyes. “You ignored me when I told you not to let them inside. Don’t do it again. I don’t trust them.”

  “You can’t be serious?” asked Jack, growing annoyed with her.

  Arc walked over to one of the benches and set Julie down. He spun his bag over his shoulder and opened the front pocket. From within, he pulled out a small golden ring with a black gem embedded within. He tossed it to Charlemagne, who snatched it out of the air and held it up to his face. After twirling it around in his fingers, he held it out to Isabella.

  “Satisfied?” he asked her. “There isn’t the faintest chance they would have this without Lance handing it over willingly.”

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  “Fine,” said Isabella, putting her hands on her hips and puffing out her chest. “If Lancelot trusted you enough to give you this, we’ll take what you say at face value.”

  “Thank you,” said Arc, closing his bag. Before he could walk back over, Lancelot held up a hand.

  “Take that scarf of yours and wrap it around the girl’s eyes and ears. We likely have an unwilling spy in our midst.”

  Reluctant as he was to remove his scarf in the light, Arc complied. He carefully lifted Julie’s head and wrapped the scarf around her eyes and ears a few times over until there was no more orange fabric left. He, Jack, Charlemagne, and Isabella then retreated to the far end of the church, standing before the grand statue of Anateer and his worshippers.

  “Will she be alright?” asked Jack weakly as he looked to his twin sister.

  “Hear me out and we can talk about her after,” said Charlemagne. He sighed and then drew in a breath. “As you no doubt know, we came here to scavenge anything useful we could find and then haul it back to Cliff Town. We rolled into town, parked up by the bridge and dove deep into shops, apartments, and whatever else we could find. We noticed right away just how quiet things were and he wondered if we’d missed something, but it was only when we returned to our vehicle that we spotted the first of the eye fiends. It was on the pickup truck watching us intently and it send a bloody chill down my spine, I’ll tell you that much. It was then and there that I knew things were about to turn south.”

  “And turn south they did,” said Isabella out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Too right,” agreed Charlemagne, shaking his head despondently. “No doubt they had been watching us for hours, but the Eye of Gra’shiya himself showed up. Let me tell you, this creature…this thing…it’s a being like no other. It grabbed our truck with its tail and threw the damned thing into the riverbed like it was nothing. We open fired at it, but it was barely phased by our bullets. Alfonso shot the bastard with his shotgun and pellets all bounced off it as easily as Izzy’s bullet rebounded off that window above us right now.”

  “Protective spells,” said Arc. “The Eye is like five wizards combined.”

  “Yep,” said Charlemagne. “We sprinted for dear life, seeking somewhere to hide, but Logain had one of his arms melted by the creature.”

  “Melted?” asked Jack, his eyes so wide they could have fallen from their sockets.

  “Melted. We managed to escape, but we’ve talked at length since and realised that it let us escape. The Eye was playing with us; torturing us. Sure, three of us were left physically whole, but the mental toll this has taken is something else. We moved around the city, finding various places to hide, before we wound up here. Logain was in a bad way, as you can imagine, and it became clear a couple of days ago that his stump was infected.

  “We made a few attempted escapes, but each time we get close to an exit, the fiends swarm and the Eye of Gra’shiya appears shortly after. On one occasion, a fiend did exactly what it did to your friend and put some sort of enchantment on Logain that left him catatonic. It made it difficult to gauge how bad his infection was and we came up with a plan to get him to a hospital we found in the hopes that there was enough medicine left behind that he could be treated.

  “To get him there, we came up with a plan. Izzy and I served as decoys, drawing as much attention from the Eye and its fiends as we could, leaving Alfonso to bring Logain to the hospital. He made contact with us via radio confirming he had made it inside, but his battery was staring to run dry and we haven’t heard from him since. That was yesterday morning. We were planning our method of entry when we heard the radio crackle. Naturally, we thought it was Alfonso and he’d found himself a battery until your voice reached our ears. A couple hours later and…here you are.”

  “Here we are,” said Arc. “You didn’t reach out to the king? Lancelot said he got a transmission for you asking for backup.”

  “That got through, did it?” said Charlemagne with a smirk. “That must have been the only one that did because we’ve heard nothing but static. I think the Eye is using its psychic powers to mess with our signal. Crafty beast, ain’t he?”

  “Deadly and not to be underestimated,” said Isabella. “It’s feeding off of us. Our worries, our fears, our hopelessness; all a feast for the aberration from the God of Eyes.”

  “What about my sister?” asked Jack.

  Charlemagne looked at the young man resolutely. “We get our men and then we all get the hell out of here. Once we’re free of New Carlington, we can find a way to break the thrall. As powerful as an Eye of Gra’shiya is, it is not itself a god.”

  “Fine,” said Arc. “But until then, we make sure Julie’s safe. We’ve got transport and we’ve got firepower. If we have to, we’ll blast our way to the truck and drive full-pelt until we’re safe. All we need to do is retrieve your men.”

  Charlemagne and Isabella looked to each other and then gave a nod. “We’re in,” said Charlemagne.

  “And there’s no time like the present,” said Isabella. “I’ll carry the girl. We’re keeping the scarf on her so the Eye doesn’t see through her eyes.”

  “As if it matters with all the eye fiends watching the city,” muttered Charlemagne.

  “How many do you reckon there are?” asked Arc. “We took out several dozen.”

  “I figured those were your gunshots. We must have taken three hundred of them since we arrived and, still, more continue to show up.”

  “Then we take out only what’s necessary and save our ammo for our grand escape. Are we ready?”

  “Ready,” said Isabella, walking away to pick up Julie. Charlemagne followed and started unbarricading the door, leaving Arc and Jack standing by the statue.

  “How you doing, Jacky Boy?” asked Arc.

  “Better now that we’ve got some help.”

  “Good. Truth be told, me too. We’ll get this done good and quick and get out of the city before nightfall.”

  Jack smiled weakly, still worried about Julie. His brow suddenly furrowed as he looked to Arc. “What are those?” he asked, nodding to the pair of small, rounded scars on Arc’s neck.

  “An old war wound,” said Arc, dismissing him and turning to walk around.

  “It looks like a bite.”

  “It is a bite.”

  “What bit you?”

  “An old flame got a bit rowdy,” said Arc, growing irritated. “Priorities, boy. Priorities.”

  The two headed over to help Charlemagne and they quickly cleared the benches. Isabella joined them with Julie over her shoulder, secured by one hand, while in her other hand she carried one of her guns. Charlemagne took a deep breath and turned the key in the hole. The lock clicked as it opened and Charlemagne slid a wooden bar aside, removing the final security measure for the door.

  “It’s the quiet that I can’t stand out here,” he said as he reached for the handle. “Knowing that they’re out there watching us and doing nothing about it.”

  “Time’s a’wasting,” said Arc.

  The scavenger opened the door and whipped out two pistols as he stepped outside. He looked around for any eye fiends, but he couldn’t see a single one.

  “Alright,” said Charlemagne. “Follow me and stay close.”

  He hurried along, his head twitching wildly as he tried to look for any stealthily positioned fiends that watched from the shadows. Arc followed closely, keeping his revolver in one hand and the Golden Hawk in the other; the former for lesser threats and the latter for the Eye of Gra’shiyra, should it show its eyeball. Jack stayed beside Isabella, worried that she wouldn’t be able to carry Julie for long, something that the blonde scavenger noticed.

  “She’ll be fine with me,” said Isabella. “I’ve carried much heavier for much longer.”

  “How far away is the—”

  “Do not say it. It’s listening through her. We must be cautious with our words.”

  “Alright,” said Jack. “Please take good care of her. She’s the most important person in my world.”

  “You have my word, Jack,” said Isabella, smiling. So far, she’d exuded nothing but coldness, but this smile was different. It was warm; it was caring. With that simple movement of her facial muscles, Jack was assured that his sister was in good hands.

  “Charlemagne,” said Arc. “Give me the directions and do so quietly.”

  “What are you up to?”

  Arc glanced at the Golden Hawk. “I’m going to put a spin on your previous plan.”