The broad side of my spade bounced off our Stalker’s head with a satisfying thunk. He yelped, blood pouring from where the edge of my shovel had dug into his skull, and spat out a laugh. “Fuckin’ Limiters,” he said, and vanished.

  I’d been pulling my shovel back for a second swing, and the sudden disappearance of my target gave me pause. I backpedaled, twisting my head. Shit, not having peripheral vision really sucked--

  A pain in my side. The screech of metal scraping against metal. I staggered away from the blow, the air in my lungs exiting with a forceful exhale. I twisted, and looked down to see…nothing. Something had hit me, but my armor had deflected it. It hadn’t had enough strength behind it to pierce the plate and chainmail, though some of my armor had concaved inward from the blow. My HP had dropped another point, even though it hadn’t penetrated. He’d hit me hard enough that a rib had probably cracked.

  Bastard was invisible.

  I kept backpedaling, leaning down my shovel and scooping up snow. I scattered it outward in a wide arc. If any floated--

  There! Flecks of the white were hovering in the air--far away from me. He was heading towards Cato, who had collapsed onto the ground, unmoving, red pooling out beneath him.

  Shit, shit--

  I sprinted for our attacker. He wouldn’t kill Cato. I wouldn’t let him. It simply wouldn’t happen. My shovel began to glow. It wasn’t like earlier--this time the shovel head glowed with a heat that made it look like freshly-forged metal. Discomfort slunk in, and the light dimmed. I gritted my teeth. I had to control my fear. It wasn’t an option.

  What was the light of a new day, but fire of a different kind? It was still like dawnlight, still had that orange glow that banished the dark.

  The first Death is Doubt.

  My shovel blazed with shimmering heat, the daybreak sealed into steel.

  There was the twang and thunk sound of another crossbow bolt being fired and burying in its target. Fuck.

  I hammered the edge of my shovel home into the floating snow.

  He roared with pain. “You bitch!”

  I brought the shovel down again, but he’d moved, losing most of the snow that had revealed his form to me. I scooped up more of the soft powder. Tossing it again in the direction I’d last remembered our attacker being, I ran towards Cato.

  It found its target, hovering in the air again. He was moving, but in parallel to me. I heard the groan of a crossbow string being pulled back, the wooden arms making their protest obvious. I sprinted towards him instead. I could bury the tip of my spade in his neck? It was sharp enough, but no. Even disregarding that I’d never killed anyone before, I had to spare him, or else the Quest would fail. I didn’t know a way for all of us to live.

  Despair coiled in my throat, thick like panic. No, I couldn’t let it consume me. I swallowed it, my single eye narrowing. If I could somehow summon that giant shovel head, I could use it to scoop the asshole and send him flying, or trap him beneath it. How could I do that again? I was willing to bet it was that FAITHFUL FLAMES skill, but I had no idea how to make it do what I wanted.

  Didn’t matter. I pulled my shovel back, readying it for a swing. I aimed at the rat bastard trying to kill us like he was a ball and I was the batter. I swung.

  As my shovel moved through the air, it went from molten hot to blazing with flames, and a lob of fire soared from my shovel. It was like I’d picked up a burning log and hurled it in his direction.

  It soared, true to my aim, and slapped against the invisible man, sending sparks arcing through the dying daylight.

  One moment, he existed. The next, he was on fire. He roared. The floating flames spun before he dropped, rolling on the snow.

  The fire didn’t die.

  Holy tapdancing shit, the fire didn’t die. I blanched. There was that smell again, the myriad of acrid and sweet and fresh meat. My breath came in harsh pants. Fuckity-fuck-fuck.

  My shovel’s fire had died, and the day was shrinking, retreating behind the horizon. I had to save the man. I ran for him, grabbing another scoop of fresh powder. The snow, if I could just get him covered in enough wet stuff, the fire would go out.

  Nevermind that he was still rolling as he screamed, and had been thoroughly drenched by the snow already.

  I skidded to a stop next to the floating fire that lurched and wailed, and I dumped my powder of snow on top of him. It burst into hissing steam. I kept shoveling. As soon as I grabbed a scoopful, I flung it on top of the flames. My eye burned with smoke, and my heart pounded so hard that it felt like it was trying to slide up my throat and out between my teeth. It had to go out, it just had to.

  Slowly, surely, the fire sputtered, hissed, and went out. I staggered back gasping for fresh air, my pants coming out in cloudy, clear puffs. The wind was purifying, blowing the smoke away and the stench of burning flesh.

  The man was still invisible, but my Quest hadn’t failed, so I guess he wasn’t dead. I turned away, because I’d seen Cato--

  Cato was standing.

  I was pretty sure I’d seen him take two crossbow bolts--yeah, there they were, sticking out of his chest, buried in his heart. That was the most normal thing so far.

  His gold eyes were open wide, the black irises narrowed to slits, and the whites had entirely vanished. His hair hovered, some locks flowing like it was floating in water. Other parts bent at impossible angles, making sharp, geometric squares and corners that I was pretty sure hair didn’t make by itself. Chunks of perfectly square flesh from his side floated off of him, like someone had carved them out, revealing the musculature, ribs and organs beneath.

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  Glitchlight poured from all his wounds, long tendrils that flashed and flickered, made entirely of that purple light, peppered with blue and orange. They waved gently one moment, and jumped the next, like their presence broke the world around them.

  All along the holographic tendrils, eyes were staring at me, the very same in Cato’s face, molten and feral and furious. There must’ve been fifty of them, and every last one gleamed with wrath. Shit. I could see his heart. It beat, and the two bolt broadheads were clearly buried in the organ.

  What the fuck.

  I didn’t know what I was staring at, but it wasn’t human. Was this just part of being a Warlock? Or the magic of this world?

  “…Surtr?” I said, stepping towards the man. Asking him if he was alright seemed to be a stupid question, but I didn’t know what to say. “…That looks fatal. Can I help?”

  The eyes all focused on me at once, a singular snap of motion that made my stomach drop right out my ass and into the earth below. That feeling came rushing back, heady and headspinning. I was staring at a tiger, and it was definitely thinking about eating me. His lips pulled back over his mouth, and those teeth definitely looked way sharper than they had a few moments earlier. He didn’t snarl, but something rumbled in the air around my ears and earth beneath my feet, lowly seething.

  “Yeah, okay, White-hair,” I said, because my mouth hadn’t quite reconnected to my extremely reasonable fear. “I wanna help, but seriously, what the fuck?”

  Cato’s head cocked slowly. The narrow irises in his multitude of eyes became such a thin slit I could barely perceive it in the gold of his gaze.

  “I didn’t even need to kill you.” A voice said behind me. “The monster will do it himself.”

  I wanted to look away from Surtr to make sure the bastard I’d set on fire hadn’t popped back up to hurt me, but I couldn’t. My feet were frozen, my eye staring at the mass of light and organs and deconstructing flesh, like I had a hook buried in it, leading me straight back to Cato.

  “It’s just the magic,” I said. “Just the Glitch stuff acting up, right? White-hair isn’t a monster,” I said, and my voice wavered. It was admittedly pretty hard to believe when I could see his literal heart beating in his chest. I belatedly remembered as I asked the question that Cato had been pretty clear about never admitting to the Glitch-magic-whatever but, uh, this dude was already trying to kill us and clearly already knew, and reality was literally Glitching out around Cato.

  “You can’t be serious.” The voice was gruff, raw from his own screaming. “You know damn well that every AI is a fuckin’ horror sealed in human flesh.”

  ….What?

  I still couldn’t look away. I was afraid to move, some ancient instinct from the ye olde days of humans getting eaten by wolves telling me not to twitch a muscle.

  “Surtr’s not an AI,” I said, “He refers to his parents and siblings--”

  “By the last cry,” The gruff Stalker said. “How long have you been stored? Of course the bastard is an AI--no human can use Glitchlight like that, bleeds Glitchlight like that. He’s fuckin’ made of it. He’s the AI, you’re his Moral Limiter, and this Raid is over the moment he kills you, which he’s about to fuckin’ do. If you had any real feeling for the human race, you’d let him do it.”

  My mouth was dry. I swallowed and spoke, my eye burning because I refused to blink. Cato--the AI?--still hadn’t moved or blinked himself. “Don’t you want to kill him, then? I thought Raiders killed the AI to resurrect.”

  “There are greater callings than just living. A Limiter should understand that.”

  I did, actually, but I had no idea why that applied here. There was far too much I still didn’t understand, and I was getting the horrifying suspicion that a lot of really important shit was hinging on my ability to make good decisions.

  I didn’t think the Stalker was lying about Cato being an AI--or at least believing that Cato was an AI. It explained why he’d felt compelled to follow us around and attack us, if nothing else.

  Something screamed behind me. Distant and howling, a conglomeration of a thousand different voices, the desperate wail of the dying before a calamity struck.

  I blinked, and my head swung in the direction before I could quite stop myself.

  On the horizon opposite the sun was setting, something dark was coming, chasing the retreating rays of dusklight. Shit, the Herald. Yeah this whole “is Cato the AI this whole Raid revolves around” question could be solved later.

  A tendril of Glitchlight, holographic and shining, barring those very real golden eyes suspended in the light, snapped into my vision. I backpedaled hard and tripped over something large beneath my feet, falling onto my ass. The Stalker.

  Cato had been feet away, but now he stood before me. The Glitchlight pouring from him slunk and twisted around me. It flashed in and out of existence, and with each flash, it came closer. He stared at me, unblinking, teeth bared. His eyes were animal-like, unfocused and impersonal, and at the same time, he radiated fury.

  “White-hair,” I said, my voice rising in pitch from the panic. “I know you don’t like me, but we really do have bigger problems.”

  The screaming was coming closer. I could pick out distinct voices--the people the Herald had eaten? My gut twisted.

  Cato cocked his head slowly, and his blades of Glitchlight pulled back from me. I let out a shaky exhale.

  All of the eyes on his light tendrils snapped downwards to focus on the clearly-invisible man in front of both of us, while Cato’s primary pair continued to study me, and in a single, perfect motion, the flickering light blades buried themselves in the stalker before me. Blood gushed forth into the white snow, and a new bellow joined the litany.

  “Fuck, White-hair!” I rolled to my feet and lunged forward. The man--was that even an accurate term for him any longer?--himself still just stared at me, and before I could reach out to grasp one of the Glitchlight murder-lights, one wrapped around my ankle and yanked me backwards. I faceplanted into wet cold, my hands managing to grasp onto the invisible man that poured blood, before he was unceremoniously yanked out of my grip.

  I shrieked. Sue me, I’d just been grabbed and pulled backwards, Alien-style. In the next second, I found myself suspended in the air, hanging upside down from my one ankle. I flailed wildly. My shovel had fallen from my grip, laying uselessly beneath me in the snow.

  “White-hair, we have a Quest, you crazy asshole! We can’t kill him!” I yelled.

  The corners of Cato’s lips pulled upwards. He finally stopped glowering at me, and crouched before our invisible attacker.

  “Surtr,” I said, using Cato’s preferred name in hopes it would get the man to listen to me, though he seemed far beyond the reach of reason. “We need to deal with those bolts in your heart, and we need to run. Leave him. We can’t--”

  I stopped talking, my arms hanging limply in the air.

  Cato had buried his hands into the open wounds left by his Glitchlight, a wet, slick fleshy sound that made me feel ill. The bellows of earlier had become high, panicky screams.

  “Uh,” I said, “Surtr, you crazy bitch, what are you doing--”

  I was cut off by an almighty crack. Cato hooked his hands around the edges of the wound and pulled. He’d gotten ahold of our attacker’s rib cage and was literally prying it open.

  The man squealed anew, weeping. Snow and blood were thrown in the air as he flailed. Cato, still unblinking, reached into the half-invisible body, grasped something, and pulled it out in a single, smooth motion.

  I stared, blankly, at the red, still-beating heart in Cato’s bloody palm.

  QUEST: SPARE YOUR STALKER FAILED. 3/3 QUESTS FAILED blared in my HUD, bright red and pulsing, right in the center of my vision. YOU HAVE INCURRED THE DIVINE WRATH OF GREATER POWERS.