Rosewood College erupted into chaos.

  The screams of children reached them. They watched as they flooded out of classrooms, rushing down the narrow corridors. Wide-eyed teachers screamed at their charges, urging them to evacuate in an orderly manner. A handful of teachers abandoned their responsibilities altogether, simply sprinting out of their classrooms at speed. A veritable flood of bodies washed down the corridor as the children ran in the direction of the school’s shelter.

  Evantra lunged forwards, using her body as a shield to prevent a little girl not much older than Tai from being trampled by the rush of students. The blaring alarm screamed, cutting through the din, as red warning lights flashed overhead. Ceiling panels retracted, and sentry guns descended above the rushing students, slowly unfolding and clicking into place as they scanned for threats.

  Their attendant had abandoned them, running in the direction of the crowd that was bunching them against a classroom door.

  “Go!” Evantra shouted, gesturing for the rest of the group to follow in the attendant’s wake.

  Noelle shook her head, green eyes wide.

  “I’m not leaving you—”

  “Take care of them, ok? Please, Noelle. I need to find Tai and Amy.”

  Evantra watched as Noelle bit her lip, before watching her eyes harden. The other girl took a Lucas and Carmen’s hands in her own in a firm grip, ensuring that they weren’t lost in the rush of the crowd.

  “Be careful, mija.”

  Carmen’s words barely reached her over the screams. The conflict that raged within her was plain to see, but Evantra only returned a reassuring smile. Carmen’s hand was tight on her forearm, and she could see that it was tearing her apart inside at the prospect of releasing her. Evantra gave her arm a quick, reassuring squeeze before gently prying it away.

  “I will,” she mouthed, before turning.

  I need to get out of the way of the crowd.

  A churning sea of bodies comprised of students, teachers and school staff was hurtling in her direction. Evantra braced herself, cutting diagonally through the sea of people, before entering an adjacent classroom. Her eyes traced the back wall, and noticed that a part of it seemed to be connected to the next with a folding door that separated the classrooms.

  Veilsurges happen, they must have some contingenc—

  There.

  [Razor claws]

  Evantra’s fingernails lengthened before darkening into sharp black claws in a split second. They speared outwards into the weapon case under the teacher’s desk. The glass around it shattered, out of the view of the security cameras, and she extracted the pistol that she found from within. It was a familiar weapon, the same Liberty EZ Defender that she had purchased after her parents’ deaths.

  Figures they don’t equip their teachers with automatic weaponry.

  It’ll have to do.

  Evantra rushed to the back of the classroom, directing a kick at the hinges of the folding panel doors. She watched in satisfaction as the flimsy door snapped open, providing her with a passage back to the canteen while avoiding the mass of students and teachers in the corridor parallel to her. Breathlessly avoiding desks and chairs strewn about from the panic, Evantra eventually hit a dead end.

  The canteen is beyond this point.

  A scream pierced the air.

  One that paled in comparison to those emerging from around her. Evantra rounded the corner to a sight which made her blood chill. The Veilsurge had appeared in the far corner of the canteen. A familiar dark tear in reality that had torn itself asunder. Its dark edges were blurred, marking the point where reality ended and insanity began.

  But the Veilsurge itself was not what triggered the visceral sense of dread from within her.

  It was the creatures that had emerged from it.

  The entire time that Evantra had spent rushing back to the canteen in search of Tai and Amy, there had been a single question on her mind.

  Why haven’t the sentry turrets activated?

  The answer presented itself.

  Unlike the Veilcreatures from the Mythical Realm of Avalon that she had encountered in the past, these bore no similarity to creatures from Earth. Salamanders, gnomes and even rotstags were comparable to fauna native to Earth. Even the gadai oiche in the ruins of LA looked like an overgrown panther with its rippling musculature and feline grace.

  Bloodspawn didn’t bow to conventions.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The creatures that prowled amongst the dead bodies littering the courtyard bore some minor similarity to wolves, if only in the vague, quadrupedal shape that they assumed. In place of a maw was a bulbous, fleshy head with numerous tentacles, which it would use to impale its prey, before subsuming their flesh and blood. Their bodies were comprised of roiling blood of a deep maroon, which swirled and bubbled.

  Desperately recalling Noelle’s lessons to her, Evantra identified the creature.

  It’s a drinker.

  One of the weakest of the bloodspawn, from the halls of Shang-ri La. A different Mythical Realm.

  The Halls of Shang-ri La were said to be a realm filled with blood. Another world entirely just like Avalon and the Hanging Gardens from which veilcreatures poured.

  Ghostslayers that had delved into the Halls usually ended up dead or driven to insanity. Those strong or lucky enough to have survived a trip through a Mythic Veilsurge to the Halls described ruined cities and lands filled with seas of blood. Not one but two classes of Veilcreature originated from the halls.

  The bloodspawn and the yaoguai.

  To Evantra’s relief, the latter class of creature were nowhere to be seen. But floating silently in the air above the drinkers that prowled the canteen floor were bloodspawn of a different nature. They were about half her mass, taking the form of fleshy bubbles which dripped blood onto the school floor. She could see the slightest miasma peel off their surface, tainting the air around them with vertical lines of blood that seemed to be rising from the corpses strewn about the floor beneath them.

  Pustules.

  Their presence explains the lack of intervention from the turrets.

  NIMUE’S ROSE QUEST: OFFERING DETECTED

  Rank: Level 11 [Imp]

  Description: Slay the pustule

  Just my luck, it had to be the pustules.

  Just being in their proximity saps living beings of energy, leaving their prey ripe for the picking – the drinkers do the rest.

  The reason they’re so annoying to Ghostslayers is because they need to be picked off from a distance. Shooting them while within their proximity releases a hail of blood shards that would mince any bystanders into strips of flesh.

  That must be why the turrets are still on standby. They’re likely programmed not to fire if pustules are present, or it might cause a tragic chain reaction.

  There’s little chance of me killing one discreetly without the school’s CCTV picking up on the [ritual of consumption]. I might be able to lure one somewhere out of sight of the cameras.

  Focus, Evantra. The quest can wait. Get to Tai and Amy.

  Evantra gritted her teeth, but before she could ponder the situation any further, she watched as a screaming teacher tripped over an upturned canteen table. The drinkers twisted, bounding towards the man. Evantra rapidly raised her pistol, sending a precise sequence of shots into its bulbous skull. She watched as the tendrils covering the drinker’s head jolted as her bullets found their mark. The Veilcreature careened off its trajectory and crashed into the canteen tables beside the terrified teacher.

  “GO!” Evantra shouted.

  The man rose to his feet, casting a look of horror at the pustules that were pulsing above him. Evantra continued forwards while ignoring the pustules, even as she felt her energy take a notable dive as they entered her proximity.

  They won’t harm me, only inconvenience me.

  She quickly scanned the surroundings, her eyes drawn to a fallen security guard. She snatched up the shotgun a short distance away from his hands, along with the magazines in his hastily donned vest.

  I’m getting deja vu.

  Unlike the Ghoulkiller, this one seems to be one of Liberty’s semiautomatic models.

  Evantra rose from her crouch beside the fallen security guard, running to the far corner of the cafeteria, where the restrooms signs directed her towards. In the short span of time since her arrival at the cafeteria, it seemed like bloodspawn had poured into the school in a steady stream.

  When she turned the corner, she sighted a pack of three drinkers racing towards a girl with dark brown complexion who looked to be about Tai’s age. She was tearing away from the Veilcreatures with fervour, towards the empty courtyard bordering the canteen. Unlike the children and teachers Evantra had glimpsed fleeing from the Veilsurge, this girl didn’t have a hint of fear on her expression, just exhilaration. But even with her determination, the drinkers were gaining on her with every passing second.

  Evantra's arm rose instinctively, sighting the lead drinker in pursuit with her iron sights. Her bullet tore through its skull. She turned her sights to the remaining drinkers, and—

  Click.

  Her eyes widened as the gun jammed.

  Before she could react, she watched as the girl twisted with a wild grin, fire in her eyes. A young man emerged from behind a fountain at the centre of the courtyard, exploding outwards to meet the oncoming Veilcreatures.

  He was unarmed.

  The man ducked with precise timing, sending one of the lunging drinkers sailing far over his head as it overextended itself. Before the creature could reorient itself, he had leapt on the drinker, gripping its skull in his palms, crushing it, and rendering the creature into an inert pile of flesh and blood in a matter of seconds.

  They’re fine.

  Go.

  Evantra abandoned the EZ Defender, hefting the shotgun in her arms. She leapt over tables and chairs, strewn about from the panic, all the while keeping a wary eye on the pustules hanging silently in the air above her.

  Those turrets must be operating on simplistic parameters.

  They aren’t killing them even when the pustules are isolated. Typical, skimping on proper tech.

  Evantra could feel the haze of fatigue that the pustules were creating. She saw the menacing lines of blood floating upwards from the floor sway as she struggled to shrug off her lethargy. Evantra set her jaw and pushed on, finally reaching the corridor leading to the toilets.

  She swallowed down the bile at the image that she was greeted with.

  While some of the teachers had run, others had stayed behind. All that was left were the remains of their final stand. Strangely, Evantra couldn’t detect any Liberty EZ Defenders lying in the pools of blood of their own making. Ripples shifted outwards as drinkers lumbered over the corpses, prowling towards the restroom doors. The bottom portion of the door to the women’s toilet had been broken open.

  It seemed like drinkers had gotten inside.

  Evantra rounded the corner and crouched to one knee, steadying her breathing as she depressed the trigger. She watched with cold eyes as the pellets tore through the bulbous skull of the lead drinker. The second creature accompanying it rounded on her, curling itself up into a spring. The roiling blood on the surface of the creature seemed to betray its frustration, but she paid it no heed.

  In its fervour to consume her, it had made itself an easier target.

  Evantra timed her shot, watching as the creature flew towards her in an arc, holding her nerves until it came into her cone of destruction. The pellets shredded through its form, and Evantra dexterously stepped to the side as the creature’s lifeless body slammed into the wall behind her.

  Without wasting another second, she bolted towards the women’s restroom in search of Tai and Amy.