((Book 1 if this is your first time here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZZBHBMF))
I pick up the bone, and the collar, and head up the stairs. In the little room at the top; in an alcove behind a bookshelf, I find the altar. It's a wooden thing, with the sigil of Roki burned into its surface. The top half of a skull that looks disturbingly human sat on top, pinned to the wooden surface with a dagger. I pull both of them off and put them in my bag before setting the altar on fire.
I hurry back to the grate in the other house and toss everything through before I jump through myself. It takes moments before I'm on the other side of Earth.
"That was quick," Garcia says as I step through the door. He walks past me, counts the 770 dollars, and places them in an envelope he has on them.
"It was a low-level one," I say.
I glance at the nearby lamppost to the poster with the German shepherd.
"MISSING SINCE 12/23/2022: MALE GERMAN SHEPHERD: LUCKY. PLEASE BRING HIM HOME. HIS FAMILY MISSES HIM."
I look at its neck. It wears a red collar, with a bone tag hanging off of it.
"See this?" I ask Garcia.
"Yeah, missing dog. So what? Lots of them hung up and down the street."
I reach into my pocket and toss him the collar.
"I found this in Efra."
He catches it and looks it over.
"Heh, it looks almost like a...." his face blanches, "Like a dog collar."
His gaze darts between the collar and the poster, and I tap the bit of red around the dog's neck.
"Holy fuck. We gotta tell the Colonel."
I set my bag down and dig through it and pull out the bone and toss it to him as well. He fumbles with it a little.
"What's this?"
"Go tell the colonel, and get this tested. I'm going to close all the doors on this street just in case our suspicions are true, okay?"
"Do you have your radio with you?" Garcia says.
"I do. Go."
Garcia climbs into the car after loading up the stuff that I had deposited on the street, and I was left alone. There were nine more doors on this street; one level 26 door in the middle of the street. If they had a way in somewhere, I couldn't very well leave a single one open. For sure, a dog somehow got in through a door, but what about a child? Did a resident of Efra somehow cross over, or did a dog somehow get over there? Either way, it didn't bode well; and something in the back of my mind told me that it was the first signs of a great disaster forming on the horizon.
The nearest door was in a person's yard; freestanding in front of the hedges in front of their window. The chatter of television came from the other side of the curtain, and the silhouette of a family of four sat in front of it. I try to act as sneaky as possible as I enter it to not disturb them.
It's a level 3. In it, the task was simple; kill the priest. It doesn't take me long to locate it in the small temple set up a few feet away. The priest was an easy kill; before it even had a chance to strike, I cast an earthen spike and impaled him through the chest. I took the platinum ring on its tail, and before the door closed, I looked around for anything useful; settling on a few books and documents laid out on a table. I'll get these translated on war-efra when I'm finished here. I put the documents in my backpack, and continue on my way.
The third door was level 2. I had to destroy an altar. Easy enough. I found it in the basement of the house that I stepped into. It was guarded by a black feathered serpent; curled atop of the altar around the dagger in the middle of it. The serpent beat its large black wings, and I drew the kris. I recited the incantation as quickly as I could, and before it closed the distance halfway across the room, the violet shade erupts like a purple flame from the tip of the knife and screams across the dirt-floored room.
The shade robbed the feathered serpent of strength. The serpent stopped midflight and fell to the ground — skidding to a stop in the dust. I finish it off with a stab of the spear through its head. I pull the spear from its head, set fire to the altar, pick the corpse of the feathered serpent up, and draped it over my shoulder. Its blood ran black and stained my gray shirt in a sticky ooze. I tossed it through the door and stepped in after it.
Garcia was back, picking things off the ground and putting them in the bed of the truck. It had been about 30 minutes or so since he left.
"There you are," I say. "Did you give it to Ortega?"
"No. He's busy at the moment. Waited for a while; the receptionist just told me to leave a message and go back. So I did."
I hand over the 990 dollars to Garcia. He counts it, notes it, and stuffs it in the envelope as I help him with the labor of tossing the things into the truck. He stops for a second, catches his breath, and stretches out his back.
"Thank you. Oak just tosses things through the door and leaves me to do this stuff, but I'm not a superhuman like you guys so it's tiring, you know?"
I nod.
"Is this a volunteer thing? Or are you chosen at random?"
"Both." He says as he pulls his canteen off his belt and takes a long drink, "We get paid per trip. 100 dollars. 30 trips in a month? That's an extra 3k, you know? I'm trying to save up for something."
"What for?" I put a handful of weapons into the back of the truck.
"I'm trying to buy my mom and dad a house. They spent their lives working the fields and renting a beat-up trailer. My dad threw out his back last year, though." He takes another drink. "So it has been hard for them."
"That's admirable."
I haven't even thought of helping my parents since leaving that place. What was wrong with me?
"You only get paid 100 bucks for this?"
Garcia nods.
"I hear some of the other compounds around the country are paying more, but that's because there are more Chosen there. We only have you 5 for hundreds of miles; and, well, being here allows me to be near my family. My mom and dad. My brothers and sisters, you know?"
"I suppose."
He hands me his canteen and I take a drink.
"Why don't you take half the loot for this trip? Sell it for yourself." I say after taking a quick drink.
"I can't. Regulations only allow chosen to do so."
"Ah. Didn't know that."
"It's alright."
He begins talking once more about his upbringing as he sat at the edge of the bed of the truck. I excuse myself and once more begin sweeping through the doors of the area. The nearest was a cross the street and melded into the lamppost there. It's a level 10.
"Destroy the Temple," is the task. Easy enough.
I step out of the blackness and into an open field. To my right is a small gazebo-like building; much like the temple of my first level 10. Five dogmen stand guard; two wield scimitars, one wields a short sword, one wields a mace and the other wields a long pike. They don't take notice of me as I step into a shaded portion of grass. Behind me was a large building; like that of the manor of a great marble villa that seems to be made of the same stone that made up the aqueducts beneath this city. Stone walls stood around this large yard. Thin trees curled in odd, unnatural patterns.
I tap my forehead and cast Repel while whispering the incantation as quietly as possible. Once the shield was in place, I launch my attack with a Djinn's Volley. Five flaming arrows streak through the air. Two collide against the same Dogman, one hits another, and the last two slam against the wooden wall of the temple and quickly die out. The two struck Dogmen fall and writhe on the ground, and the three rush me.
Before they can close the distance across the yard, I manage to cast Bolt. The blue, jagged spear crashes into the center of the last of the scimitar holders. The dogman flies backward into the night, and the other two were quickly upon me. Their weapons collide against the shell. I grab hold of the shaft of the pike and jam the point of my own spear into the dogman's throat, and use it as a fulcrum to drive the bipedal dog humanoid to the ground.
In the meantime, the other dogman tries his best to batter its way through the shield. I throw a haymaker at the creature, and it raises its arm to block the blow from striking its face. It stabs forward with its short sword, and once more its silvery point bounces off the shell. I push more of my weight into my arm, break through the creature's arm, and slam my clenched fist into the dogman's face. The punch lays the creature low, and I finish it off with a stab of the spear.
That was all of them. I gather their weapons and set them by the door, and search the garden for anything else. There was nothing, but a few low-hanging clusters of red berries on the strangely curling trees. I destroy the temple by setting it on fire and leaving. With this door, I gain a level and put the three points into Creativity. I give the 1130 dollars to Garcia, and he counts it and places it in another envelope.
One by one, I close the rest of the doors on the street, determined to get the street clear by the end of the night. By the time 9 out of the ten doors were finished, I had gathered tens of weapons, another feathered serpent corpse, and killed ratmen and dogmen alike, and another level; I put the three points into Magic. Other than that, I gained 10 levels in Spear, the skill, 5 levels in Grapple, 8 levels in Hook, 2 levels in Repel, 4 levels in Djinn's Volley, 1 in Bolt, Earth Spike, and Flame Bolt. In the meantime Garcia tries to get in contact with someone at the base; to insure that Ortega got a hold of his message. I hear the conversations in brief snippets in my backpack and gather that Ortega still couldn't be contacted. I turn around before I enter, and approach Garcia.
"Hey, this one might take a while; go back and get some sleep, I'll radio in when I'm out."
"What do you mean, 'take a while?'
"Well, it's a high level one, and I'm in no hurry to die so I'll be taking it slow."
"And if you don't come back?"
"I suppose if I'm not back by sunrise on the tomorrow then send someone in to finish the job."
"By tomorrow do you mean like in eight hours or —"
"It's midnight," I tap my phone in my pocket, "So by, 'tomorrow,' I mean tomorrow."
"Ah, gotcha. Alright, well..." He bows his head, turns around and excuses himself. I watch as the truck pulls out of the cul-de-sac.
Thunder cracks overhead behind the thick clusters of the black rain clouds where the moon was hid, and heavy droplets of rain begin to tip tap against the shingles of the roofs of the houses that surround me. I stand in front of the last door on the street; the level 26 in the middle of the street and steady my breath. It's a double door with heavy iron rings as handles. It felt different than the others. Nerves? This would be the highest level door I had done by myself, but even if I dismissed these differences to my anxiety, grasping the wrought iron rings nearly burns my hands; and they seem to pulse and thrum like a heartbeat. Or was that my own? I take a deep breath, pull open the door, and step into it.