I really wanted to learn more about these people, both out of raw curiosity and because their organization was obviously super relevant to my situation and potentially quite useful. That being said, it was also true that I was starting to get more than a little bit spooked, and I didn't want to immediately dig myself deeper into what was already a huge mess. Walking a bit slower behind Baldie as he began scurrying over to the manhole, I quickly started putting together a plan.

  I wanted to find out more about these people, but I also really didn't want to run off with them like this. I could arrange for some kind of future contact, maybe, but I was pretty sure they had no idea who I was—that could be a big advantage. The best strategy seemed to me to be running off on my own now and seeking them out later on my terms. That came with its own problems, but I was pretty sure it was doable, now that I knew to look in the first place.

  All of that was well and good, but the critical part that sealed my decision was the way I could recycle the same stone for the other bird I needed to deal with. Leaving giant claw marks on my bedroom floor and breaking out through the window wasn't something I could just ignore, and now that I had my hunger back under control, I needed a plan for how to deal with that. I had no intention of leaving my entire life behind to go frolic around in the sewers with the other Anathema.

  The plan was simple. Tell Katherine and David that I was abducted by the same cultists who kidnapped us a week ago. They knew that the two of us became star guardians, and since we were still relatively weak, they wanted to capture us for some kind of experiment. Tell Katherine what I learned about that Mook guy—hopefully, it will even match up with whatever feedback her power might have given her at the time. I'll also explain what I learned about artificially seeding incursions—that they have technology to do it, and that they tried to use it as a distraction for their getaway.

  I managed to escape from them in the chaos, though, but I know they were trying to take me through the sewer network. It's perfect!

  I would also give whatever details I could about the two other intelligent Anathema I met. Those would be this Krok guy, of course, but also, well, me. I was still hoping the cultists didn't actually know who I was—it was possible that they did, but also possible that they wouldn't make the connection—and that meant I might have the opportunity to play things from multiple sides. A thrill started racing up and down my cat-like spine at the very thought of it.

  Then, Katherine and I can go on an awesome, secret investigation! Since our nature as Star Guardians was supposed to be under wraps, and that was the reason I'd give for going after me, she would have to keep the whole thing secret instead of going straight to the 'authorities.' I had no doubt that her freaky ghost whisperer power would be super useful for our future investigations. God, I can hardly wait. This whole thing sounds so much fun.

  But first, I had to get away from these guys. Baldie had reached the manhole and was in the process of climbing down. I would wait just a few seconds longer before making a break for it—the moment right when he made it fully inside the hole would be the best moment for me to turn tail and run. It would make it the hardest for them both to realize I was doing a runner and to catch back up if they decided to try chasing me.

  Wait for it, wait for it—now! My legs were already coiled, and a simple flex of my massive, metal muscles sent me exploding away into the night. Wait, do I even have muscles? I was pretty sure I did, actually. They might be very different from the muscles of normal, earth lifeforms, but I was certain I still had specific components for motion. I could feel it, much in the same way I could feel normal, human muscles when flexing them hard enough. Huh. I wonder what I look like on the inside right now?

  In contrast to the partial transformation during the previous incursion, I was pretty sure I was equally dense and metallic throughout. But if you took a cross section or started peeling back the layers—would it all be a continuous, solid mass, or would there be a bunch of different stuff visible in there? I was leaning towards the latter. I couldn't forget my mercury-like saliva and shiny, silver tongue—actually, even my 'surface' had at least two different materials visible. There was the rough, dark—almost black—metal that most of me looked to be made of, and that had also formed almost all of my 'armor' the first time. Tipping my claws, mouth, and seemingly lining and spotting many different parts of my body was that pale, slightly reddish, burnished gold material that appeared whenever I manifested claws in my human form. I wonder what the difference is?

  Something to test later. Right now, I was quite literally tearing up the concrete in my mad dash away from Baldie and Krok. There was no sign of Mook—I couldn't taste him, and it seemed like we'd taken alternate getaway routes from the very beginning. Looking back, it seemed like neither of them were following me. Granted, I was only really worried about one of them. Something tells me Baldie wouldn't have a good time trying to race me.

  After running for a full minute and losing all sight and taste of them, I stopped and took a moment to reorient myself. I was still on campus and still in the midst of the incursion. Amusingly, it seemed like I'd ended up quite close to the Guardian College building. The nearest breach was at least a few blocks away, judging by the strength of that annoying, atonal buzzing, and also by the fact that I couldn't see it. There were still plenty of Anathema spreading out through the streets, though, and I noticed that there was more variety than before.

  It was still mostly grabbers of varying sizes, but along with those, a smattering of skinners, and several packs of slow-moving scuttlers, I also caught sight of several smashers. It was the same kind of Anathema that I fought as my first real kill—by burrowing straight through it like a worm, no less—but none of these were titans. They were just the usual size. Big, probably weighing as much as a horse or something, but nowhere close to towering several stories tall.

  They also looked a lot more reasonably proportioned. Basically just a big gorilla that someone injected with evil super serum.

  Tasting the air again, Anathema weren't the only thing nearby. There were a few humans, but not many—this wasn't really a residential area of campus, and most people who were still alive had probably made it to the nearest bunker. There were also Guardians, though—not super close, but definitely somewhere in the overall area. I could also hear the sounds of battle. It was pretty obvious that Guardians and Civil Guard would now be showing up from all over the wider area. A decently large incursion so close to the center of the city was hard to ignore.

  What now, though? I could try figuring out the process of shifting back into a proper, human appearance—I'd well and truly lost any of my previous pursuers, so it was completely possible to slip away fully now. But why would I do that? This whole mess was started in the first place because I lost control of my hunger. Sure, I'd managed to fix it temporarily—but the more I ate, the longer I'd be able to maintain control, right? Also, there's no downside to getting stronger.

  That settled it. I was going to take this as an unforeseen opportunity. I would eat as many other Anathema as I could—and while I could try practicing in my 'Guardian' form, it would be way less efficient. There was no team with me, and as a proper, full chamelium, I was stronger, faster—and, most importantly—I wouldn't have to worry about people seeing me devouring things. So, with that decided, I let my sense of taste guide me.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  There were plenty of Anathema everywhere, but they were mostly small, weak, Tier 1 fodder. I was a full Tier 3, so they really weren't worth my time when there was plenty of stronger, tastier prey around. And, if my senses weren't deceiving me, there was another Tier 3 nearby. It was a big one, or at the very least, a decently strong one. There were sounds of combat coming from the same direction, as well as the mingled flavors of several different Guardians.

  One of them I even recognized.

  Alight, Alex—let's go find the first course on tonight's new menu.

  Matthias "Crimson Tempest" Asano

  Matthias was having an incredibly shit week. Nevada had been brutal. He wanted to say he didn't regret joining up, but he definitely did. What was worse was that he felt his presence hadn't even accomplished anything. All he'd really done was survive, and he wondered how many times he'd distracted a Tier 6 when they could have been focusing on the task instead of covering for him and the other 4s and 5s. The whole thing was miserable, horrifying, and most of all, exhausting. He needed a good, long rest.

  So, naturally, a sprawling Tier 3 incursion with multiple full breaches just had to spring up out of nowhere, and near the heart of the city, no less. The fact that it damn near covered the entirety of the campus he volunteered at was insult upon injury, as the cliche went. The fact that it also happened in the early hours of the 'morning'—dead of night, really—well, that was injury on top of insult.

  Matthias was well aware of how people tended to perceive him. They thought he was a sort of lone wolf, the sad manly man who copes by finding meaning in combat. His fighting style and abilities certainly didn't help, and early on, he decided to lean into it with the name Crimson Tempest. It was edgy, but anyone who saw him at work would admit it was also startlingly accurate. Matthias didn't enjoy it, though. He found it boring, tiring, and worst of all, horribly depressing.

  It wasn't just the gruesome death, senseless destruction, and accompanying monotony. It wasn't even 'mentoring' bright-eyed kids who thought they were chosen for something special, doing what he could to make sure they didn't get themselves killed over naive, star-filled delusions about it all. It was all of those things, yes—but it was also more.

  Matthias didn't even like killing Anathema. He pitied the creatures, in a way. As a kid, he'd been fascinated by all kinds of animals, and what was more exotic and wonder-inducing than creatures like those that came through the breaches? In his free time, Matthias read and watched everything he could about rare types, unusual variants, and the emerging and highly speculative field of esoteric biology. The creatures were beautiful and fascinating to him—but he was no cultist. It was his duty to put them down.

  It was also something he rarely confided to anyone. It could rightfully draw suspicion, something he had no desire to deal with. To the few people he had tried explaining it too, he compared it to walking out onto the docks and unleashing death and destruction on the lounging sea lions. 'Imagine that the sea lions carry some new disease, and they're starting to wander further out of the water. Too much human contact, and it could cause a pandemic. You know you have to do something about it, and the only practical solution is to go massacre them. Maybe it's the only choice, but you'd hardly feel good about it.

  It made him sad, and he often found himself wondering what would drive any animal, even those from other realities, to such insane levels of self-destructive aggression. In everything he'd read, from pop-science articles to true research papers, he'd never found a complete and satisfying answer. To this day, Matthias couldn't shake a deep, instinctual feeling that something was deeply wrong with the creatures—that wherever they came from, they weren't 'supposed' to act this way. That something extra was driving the ones that made it onto their planet to act in such a way.

  There wasn't much he could do about it, though. And right now, he had more immediate problems to deal with. "Disengage!" He hollered at the trio of Tier 2 Guardians forty feet away from him. "I order you to retreat!"

  Strictly speaking, he had no legal authority over them, and he couldn't make them leave by force. Non-military Guardians could only ever forcibly remove non-Guardians from any area of an incursion, and even then, there were specific rules and restrictions. However, it was a safe bet to assume that almost any active Guardian operating in the United States was an AAG member, and as an AAG 'officer' himself, Matthias had a limited organizational authority over any other members at a tier lower than him, at least during an incursion.

  He couldn't compel them into danger, but he could certainly compel them out of it. If they disobeyed an order like that, he could and would get them in trouble within the organization, and while they wouldn't be permanently barred, it was a major inconvenience no one would want.

  Realizing that he was now completely serious, the trio began an organized retreat away from the titan they'd misguidedly tried attacking. Good. Matthias hoped they would listen. He didn't like getting people in trouble, but he absolutely would—and more importantly, there was a reason he was ordering them away in the first place. The titan was a Tier 3, abnormal scuttler variant. Approximately the size of a small house, the enormous, spiny beetle was a formidable opponent to a small Tier 2 team. Accounting for the constant offset, it was technically a three against one fight with both sides at the same effective tier.

  That being said, the fight wasn't taking place in a vacuum. There were a lot of other Anathema around, plenty of which were at least Tier 2, and this particular titan was a tough opponent. Being a powerful Tier 4, Matthias was more than capable of taking it down—but given how sturdy scuttlers were to begin with, he couldn't do it instantly. Out of the four Guardians present, he was the only one capable of truly hurting the thing, and having to constantly keep an eye on the other three was a distraction he really didn't need.

  Much in the same way he worried that he'd been nothing but a burden to his Tier 6 allies in Nevada, these Tier 2 Guardians were currently an unnecessary burden to him. Once they finished retreating, he'd finally be able to unleash his aura and finish the fight.

  While Tier 6 was a general soft-cap, the jump from Tier 3 to Tier 4 was the big hurdle. It was by far the most challenging gap to cross for a Guardian, and there was a major division into two groups of tiers 1, 2, and 3, and tiers 4, 5, and 6. A major practical difference was the development of a proper aura, or the deliberate projection of a Guardian's so-called 'spirit.' While all Guardians had one in some sense, only upon reaching Tier 4 did it fully form. At that point, it became a localized, external manifestation of the Guardian's power. It continued to grow in strength and sophistication through Tier 5 and 6, but the differences there were more nuanced, and a Tier 4 Guardian could tolerate being within the full manifestation of a Tier 6 aura, assuming it wasn't actively being weaponized against them.

  That was not the case for any tier lower than 4, and that was a major reason for the broad division between Guardians by tier. Anathema developed auras as well. While it was only ever recommended to fight Anathema a single nominal tier above you, going up by two tiers was definitely possible—if exceedingly challenging—in many cases. However, there was one glaring exception, and that was Tier 5. Due to the disparity in aura formation, a Tier 3 should never, under any circumstances, attempt to face a Tier 5.

  So, not only did the presence of the Tier 2 team distract Matthias, but it also hampered him from unleashing the full might of his abilities. Now that it was just him and the scuttler titan, Matthias should be able to—wait, what is—something far too large to be a guardian blasted straight past him, leaping into the air and latching onto the side of the titan's armored shell. For a second, Matthias just stared. I didn't even notice until it passed me—if it had attacked me instead of the titan...

  He didn't pause long before moving again. But, rather than immediately attack, he instead circled around the two Tier 3 Anathema, keeping one eye on the unexpected battle while picking off all the nearby Tier 1 and 2s. The unexpected attacker was a chamelium, and Matthias grinned in excitement. Chameliums were a rare and interesting type, and he'd only witnessed one himself once before this. He was getting a much better opportunity to observe this time, and he wasn't going to waste it.

  Despite the size difference and the equal tiers, the smaller Anathema was clearly far stronger. The enraged scuttler was unable to strike back against the fast, flexible, and agile opponent, but the chamelium seemed to have no difficulty ripping straight through the armored shell.

  You know what? I take it back. Matthias wasn't going to forget the danger these creatures posed, and overall, it was a bad thing that the incursion happened. And yet—I'd be lying to myself if I said I wasn't glad that I'm here to see this. Now that the two Anathema were fully focused on each other, the Tier 4 guardian could hardly wait to see what would happen next.

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