"Yes, yes! The orbital arrays confirm it! There's a concealed structure at the coordinates provided by Sherlock Holmes! Deep underground! SHIELDED! Using technology that DOESN'T MATCH any of the local construction!"

  Commander Sillicia approached, and Piotr's attention snapped to the alien. She was even more imposing in person than on video, seven feet of Wendigo authority wrapped in black armor, antlers menacingly looming overhead.

  "So," Sillicia said, silver, glowing eyes boring into Piotr, "you're the human who claims to have… found vampires?"

  "I... not exactly, the map... someone gave it to me," Piotr stammered, his inner voice completely absent now.

  Why wasn't it helping him?

  Something invisible slammed across his mind like a sledgehammer, scraping bits and pieces of his life with jagged metal hooks, digging in deep and dragging out the image of Sherlock Holmes out along with a bunch of other random thoughts.

  "This is StormoLyx!" Linari interjected quickly, stepping in front of Piotr as the man in a lynx costume heaved and wobbled on the spot. "Please don’t break him, my Lady! He's my cultural informant. He's helping us understand Earth's magical folklore. And, uh, actual magic, possibly… if what our Datamancer found?"

  Sillicia tisked. "You smell of fear and sweat, costumed human. But not deception. Something about your inner voice not helping you anymore? Curious…"

  "These coordinates... there's definitely something there. Satellite scans shows irregular signatures. The structure is old and not in local building records. And..." The Datamancer bobbed, "There are life signs. Multiple. Far too many! But they're... wrong."

  "Wrong how?" Linari asked.

  "Hundreds of entities. But their signatures are uniform. Too uniform. Too cold to be human. Like they're all the exact same temperature. Waaay below normal human baseline."

  “How far below?” Sillicia asked, eyes growing wide. “Are you saying that…”

  "VAMPIRES!" Kawathra shrieked, making the tall Wendigo wince. "Actual vampires! Crystalline-organic life! The good shit we’re looking for, to make more… you know what!" She added conspiratorially, glancing at the human. "This could be the first genuine magical discovery on this human-packed ball of mostly mundane dirt! There could be a hoard down there! That'd bring our Division's rank to number one! NUMBER ONE!”

  Sillicia's expression shifted, becoming predatory. "If our team successfully locates and captures an actual colony of fungi crystalloids with a hoard, that would be quite the accomplishment. The Admiral would have to acknowledge my success where all of the others failed. Might even warrant a commendation, no… a medal. Assuredly a promotion for everyone involved in this operation."

  She turned to Piotr. "If this is accurate, you've done us a great service! However, if this is some elaborate deception or a devious trap..." Her inhumanly monstrous, wide smile revealed too many sharp teeth, "I'll personally ensure you spend the next millennium as my wall decoration. My quarters could use more suffering."

  "He's not lying!" Linari stepped forward. "I've been smelling his thoughts all day. He genuinely wants to help! He… likes me! A lot! Genuinely likes me, I swear it on my blood contract, my Lady! He likes me and Etty. He even likes our knobby Datamancer and nobody likes her because she's so... devoted to, uhmmm, charts and stuff!"

  The Magpie nodded rapidly in agreement, feathers fluttering at the wolf's commentary about charts.

  "We shall see." Sillicia tapped her command ring. "All active units, prepare for immediate Prima Corpse Seeker deployment. Target: local coordinates 47.779402, -123.732432. Pacific Rim. Mount Olympus. Potential magical entities confirmed. Lethal suppression authorized."

  The Corpse Seeker they boarded was different from the ones Piotr had seen wrapped around buildings. This one was particularly chonky, a crystalline centipede the size of several subway trains. Its interior was disturbingly organic, something between crystals and jello, walls that pulsed slightly, surfaces that were too warm, eerie things that looked like bioluminescent organs within black mesh bones, the floors made from hexagons encasing various crystalline organelles.

  "Seeker 881-Prime, Dragonspear," Sillicia commanded, "prepare for ballistic insertion."

  The creature responded with its organs flashing brighter, moving on crystalline legs towards some kind of an elongated structure.

  “Eeee! Launch time!” Kawathra squeed, hugging Piotr which earned her a growl from Linari.

  “Sorry, sorry,” the Magpie let go of the human.

  "Launch?" Piotr asked.

  "Oh yes!" Kawathra pulled up a holo-display showing the warship's ventral cannon, a gargantuan orbital weapon that looked like it could crack continents. "We're going to shoot ourselves at the target at Mach 27! The kinetic impact alone will plow right through any magic-reinforced bunker wards!"

  "What about the people inside?" Piotr swallowed.

  "If my scan is correct, there are no people inside. Only crystalloid shrooms which are immune-ish to fire,” Kawathra bobbed. “The Seeker will burn through all shields and matter at the moment of impact. We'll materialize inside their defenses. Very efficient. Very traumatic for the defenders. Boom!” She slapped her hands together.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “And us?” He asked.

  “You and me are going to stay inside the Corpse Seeker,” Kawathra explained. “And watch. Linari, the Commander and our Knights and Slayers will handle the rest… personally. He he he.”

  The Corpse Seeker contracted, compressing itself. Piotr felt himself pressed into what felt like a womb of crystal and metal as the interior shifted. Linari's arm wrapped around him tightly, pulling him into her embrace.

  "First time being shot from a railgun at a planet?" She grinned.

  "I… umm, yes, definitely," he affirmed.

  Through the Seeker's semi-transparent walls he watched the cannon align.

  "If this is a trap," Sillicia said, her voice digging into his head as energy whined around them, rapidly building up, "you'll wish I'd simply killed you."

  "Understood," Piotr swallowed.

  Without his inner voice's confidence, he wasn't sure of anything anymore. If the man dressed as Sherlock provided the location as a marketing plot or a prank, whoever inhabited that bunker would assuredly stop existing soon. And Piotr himself… he had no idea what the aliens would do to him if there were no vampires to be found down there, at the foot of Mount Olympus.

  "LAUNCHING IN THREE..." Kawathra announced, a holographic number flashing beside her head.

  "TWO..."

  Linari squeezed Piotr harder.

  "ONE..."

  The world exploded into acceleration and fire.

  Then Earth unfolded below, a storm drifting over the Pacific Ocean, Mount Olympus growing bigger with each second.

  The attic access was hidden behind a portrait of Great-Aunt Mildred, who looked even more disapproving than Gertrude. I pushed the art inhabiting the old door aside, revealing a narrow staircase coated in decades of dust.

  "SECRET CIRCLE STAIRS!" Shady announced, immediately trying to cram herself through the opening. Her antlers scraped against the frame, leaving deep gouges in the wood. "BEEP! Too many antler squares!"

  "Turn your head sideways," I suggested.

  "SIDEWAYS CIRCLE!" She contorted at an angle that would have definitely snapped a human spine, successfully wedging herself through. The stairs groaned ominously under her weight. “GAH! SPIDER CIRCLE!!! BEEP! HELP! BEEP! EMERGENCY!"

  She yelped as she encountered arrays of spiderwebs spread across the stairwell.

  I considered that maybe I should have gone first.

  I followed the spiderweb bothered Wendigo girl, emerging onto a small turret that Grandpa had apparently used for stargazing, based on the rusted telescope mount. The slate roof was covered with moss and grime, creaking unnervingly under Shady.

  "Why circle here?" Shady asked as I carefully climbed out onto the roof proper beneath the semi-collapsed overhang, testing each tile before putting my weight on it.

  "To watch things," I said, settling against a mossy brick wall.

  “Watching things is circle!” Shady bobbed.

  The view from the mansion’s rooftop was spectacular. The entire Darkbrook valley spread on one side with Mount Olympus dominating the western horizon, its snow-capped peak catching the late afternoon sun.

  Shady plopped down beside me, the roof creaking in protest. Several tiles slid loose, clattering down into the gutters. "What watch?"

  I checked my tablet.

  8:47 AM.

  "Fireworks maybe," I said, mentally reviewing what I saw through the cameras and microphone added to StormoLyx’s suit by the Wicked Witch before the transmission cut off as the wolf and human left orbit. “Maybe nothing. I don’t know what will happen exactly.”

  The 'inner monologue' plot had worked surprisingly well, nobody suspected a thing for the entire morning when I guided two separate resistance cell agents towards the vampire exhibit in the underground museum.

  "FIRE CIRCLES WORK!" Shady bounced excitedly, sending more tiles sliding. "Emperor makes fire? BEEP BEEP big-bada-boom?"

  "Maybe."

  She tilted her head, then started making microwave timer sounds. "BEEP... BEEP... BEEP... Countdown circle! Five... four... BEEP... purple... elephant... cat... BEEP!"

  "That's not how counting works."

  "COUNTING IS SUBJECTIVE CIRCLE!" she declared, then pointed at Mount Olympus. "Mountain is triangle! Not circle! Disappointing geometry!"

  We sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, Shady occasionally making random appliance noises while I watched the sky.

  Then I saw it.

  A line of fire sheared the clouds, a brilliant streak descending from the heavens like God's own highlighter. It moved insanely fast, the air screaming in protest as something tore through it at a mad speed.

  "BRIGHT CIRCLE!" Shady pointed.

  The streak hit the base of Mount Olympus.

  For a fraction of a second, nothing. Then the mountainside erupted.

  The explosion was more epic than expected.

  A perfect sphere of destruction expanded from the impact point, vaporizing trees, rocks, and perhaps all of the vampire compound defenses. The fireball rose into a classic mushroom cloud, roiling orange and black against the gloomy sky. Even from here, dozens of miles away, it was massive.

  "MUSHROOM CIRCLE!" Shady clapped. "VERY GOOD CIRCLE! Ten out of BEEP!"

  The shockwave hit the forest first. I watched the trees bend outward in a perfect expanding ring, like grass before a giant's breath. Birds erupted from the canopy in numerous flocks, fleeing the approaching wall of compressed air.

  The Wendigo wrapped herself around me like a fuzzy suit of armor just as the pressure wave reached us. The house shuddered, windows rattling in their frames. The old oak in the garden swayed dramatically. More roof tiles gave up their century-long grip, cascading down like ceramic rain.

  The sound arrived a moment later, a deep, grinding roar that seemed to go on forever, echoing off the valley walls.

  "LOUD CIRCLE!" Shady shouted directly into my ear. "EMPEROR'S FIREWORKS AGGRESSIVE BEES!"

  When the shaking finally stopped, a massive column of smoke rose from what used to be the northwestern slope of Mount Olympus. Where forest had been, there was now a glowing crater visible even from here.

  "Minus one vamp nest," I commented.

  "VAMPIRE VEGETABLES HARVESTED!" Shady agreed cheerfully. "Circle of life! BEEP! Everything dies, except things that don't! This is… wisdom!"

  I laughed.

  Was she getting herself back? She almost made a sensible joke there.

  I stared at the destruction, doing more mental math and watching the forest burn.

  "Emperor sad circle?" Shady asked, nuzzling my neck.

  "Just thinking."

  "THINKING BAD!" she declared. "Leads to squares! Stay circle! Round Thoughts! Soft!"

  “Soft,” I agreed, petting her.