He took a quick, assessing scan of the hallway. Left: clear, but the lights were dead, plunging it into darkness punctuated by emergency strobes. Right: the source of most of the screaming and clash. He chose left, the path to the engine car, where the train's core and safest shelter might be, was forward.
They moved, hugging the walls. Some compartment doors were sealed tight, shaking with impacts from within. Others were torn open, revealing interiors savaged by claws or worse.
Asher paused at one open doorway, his instincts screaming at him to look. But when he did, he regretted it instantly.
Two bodies lay tangled on the floor in a dark, wet stain. An older man and a woman, their faces frozen in final terror.
"!" Asher's blood ran cold. His stomach lurched, a wave of nausea hitting him so hard he had to brace a hand against the door frame. The scent of blood filled his nose.
He glanced sideways at Ryn. The boy's ever-present calm was gone, replaced by a deep frown, his lips pressed into a thin line. He wasn't looking away. He was studying the scene, his expression unreadable but clearly troubled.
'Good', a detached part of Asher thought. 'At least he's reacting.'
"We can't leave them like this," Asher muttered, his voice thick.
He pulled a relatively clean blanket from a shredded bunk and, trying not to look, draped it over the two forms. Ryn wordlessly helped him smooth the edges.
Then, they moved on in heavy silence.
They encountered two more similar horrors and fought three more skirmishes. A lone Scuttler in a service corridor, which Asher skewered through its single eye. A pair of rabid Vicious Rats, which Ryn distracted by hurling a heavy luggage case, giving Asher the opening he needed.
They moved in eerie sync, their impromptu coordination seamless, as if they had been fighting back-to-back for years rather than minutes. Even Asher was surprised by how easily he could trust Ryn's timing.
About six minutes and three carriages later, the sounds of active combat grew loud again.
Peering around a collapsed partition, Asher's breath caught.
In a wider luggage area, two girls their age, one with a shimmering Shield Rune barrier held shakily before her, the other launching weak, sputtering fireballs, were trying to protect an elderly woman who clutched a sobbing toddler to her chest.
They were backed against a shattered window.
Circling them, snapping and snarling, were five lean, multi-legged insectoid monsters: Skitterjaws.
The girls were clearly on the losing side. Their barrier flickered with each impact, about to crack at any moment. As for the fireballs, they were doing little more than anger the creatures.
Asher met Ryn's eyes and gave a sharp nod. No words were needed.
"Let's go!"
Asher exploded from cover, his spear a silver blur.
He drove the point into the leg joint of the closest Skitterjaw, crippling its charge.
"Focus fire!" he barked at the girls, his voice cutting through their panic.
The girl with the shield, jolted by the command, reinforced her barrier with all her might. The one with fireballs, seeing an actual opening, concentrated her next blast on the injured creature. It shrieked and curled up.
Ryn moved at the same time, but not toward the fight. He slipped past the chaos unnoticed, placing himself between the circling monsters and the cowering woman and child. He stood there, one hand slightly raised, his eyes tracking the skittering movements.
The battle turned swiftly.
With Asher disrupting their coordination and the girls now fighting with desperate hope instead of pure despair, two more Skitterjaws fell to combined attacks.
But one, the largest and fastest, used the distraction of its falling brethren. It feinted at Asher, then scuttled sideways with shocking speed, its serrated mandibles aimed directly at the toddler in the old woman's arms.
The shield-girl gasped, too far to intervene. The fire-girl was out of Arcana, her hands smoking helplessly.
Ryn, who had been watching its path the whole time, simply turned to the grandmother.
"Excuse me," he said, calm as ever.
He placed a hand on her shoulder and one on the toddler's back.
Pop.
They vanished.
They reappeared instantly, three feet to the left, in the safety of a corner.
The Skitterjaw's lunge met empty air. Its momentum carried it headfirst into the metal wall with a sickening crunch.
Asher and the two girls stared, stunned.
Teleportation.
A rare, high-difficulty Flux ability. From a "Level 2 Adept" who said he had no combat skills. And he had just used it on two other people!
The pieces clicked into place in Asher's mind with cold, shocking clarity.
'This guy isn't ordinary at all!'
But, he quickly shoved his shock down. Now wasn't the time to ponder.
"Kill it!" he shouted, snapping the girls out of their daze.
Seizing the chance, they unleashed everything they had left, finishing off the stunned beast and the final straggler.
As the silence returned, the adrenaline crash hit them all at once.
The shield-girl's barrier flickered out, and she slumped against a luggage rack, gasping for air. The fire-girl slid down the wall, her face pale and slick with sweat. Asher leaned heavily on his spear, his limbs trembling from the constant rune activation.
"We need to stop," Ryn's voice cut through the panting silence. "There are no monsters nearby, so we should rest and recover as much as possible. And... that room should be safe."
He pointed to a compartment at the far end of the carriage, its door hanging open but structurally intact.
No one argued. They staggered after him, helping the elderly woman and child. The compartment was relatively clean compared with the others. They barricaded the broken door with a toppled bunk and collapsed onto seats or the floor.
For five minutes, the only sound was ragged breathing.
Ryn stood on guard by the door, looking as fresh as when he boarded.
Asher focused on his breathing, cycling his depleted Arcana, feeling a trickle of energy return. But it was a drop in a bucket. The two girls were in even worse shape, their cores dangerously strained.
After some time, Asher opened his eyes, the grim reality setting in.
'We can't stay here.'