I barely had more than a second to gape at the cloud of ash that settled onto the white steel floor of the bunker where the Lich had stood moments ago, before a loud, clear female voice began to echo through the halls. I couldn’t even tell where it was coming from, as all the light sources around us began to pulse an ominous red.

  “ALL HANDS, EVACUATE,” The robotic female voice droned. “I REPEAT, ALL HANDS, EVACUATE. ERASURE PROTOCOL HAS BEEN ACTIVATED, UNDER AUTHORITY OF…‘DOCTOR CECILY MONTBLANC. OCCUPATION: CHIEF ENGINEER.’ FACILITY CABLES WILL BE DETACHED IN T-MINUS FIFTEEN MINUTES.”

  My eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets at the implication of that, as I felt the now dissipated Lich’s bindings vanish as well.

  Travers had activated something called the Erasure Protocol?! He’d done it with Cecily’s ID card at that! If…the cables holding this entire facility suspended in the center of the mountain were the be released…

  Then it would plunge straight down to the bottom, right to where Kazuma and I had rescued Venix. The entire bunker would be annihilated from such a fall.

  Wait. Waitwaitwait.

  What the fuck would that do to the Core in such a crash?

  I cast a quick look over the artificial star composed of Mana and Ki, and was alarmed to notice that it was starting to bulge oddly in places. In that split second, I saw the containment shield fail briefly in a single spot before it reasserted itself. But not before a single emerald lick of flame lashed out and scored the steel ceiling.

  If that thing went up…

  Just how big of an explosion would it be?

  Alright.

  Enough standing around.

  Time to get the fuck out of here.

  I bent down and scooped up the small form of Aveline from the floor, noting as I did so that she was starting to stir ever so slightly. Over the panicked adrenaline that was now starting to pound through my veins, my Core Ring idly noted that with Travers' true death, whatever he was using to keep his daughter asleep had passed with him.

  I told it to shut the hell up and keep focused.

  But before we could dash out of what might just be the most perilous sector of the entire bunker right now, I was stopped by the sound of a door, of all things. A sliding, pneumatic one, not all that dissimilar to the one that had been on Travers' clinic.

  I risked a glance over to my right and blinked at the odd sight I found.

  A small section of the spherical chamber, set into the wall, had abruptly receded to reveal a hidden alcove. On the other side of it, I could see a number of physical switches, screens, and monitors. I…had little idea of what it could have been, but none of that mattered. What did was what came drunkenly stumbling out of the small room.

  The lost Shurengan that Tarus had asked us to find down here, as part of Azarus’s agreement to become his Envoy.

  Oddly, I recognized this cat.

  That was Sena. One of the guardians of Mt. Umetsuji, and possibly the second strongest of the Shurengans next to Tarus’s daughter herself. What the hell had she been doing, tailing us? Honestly, I would have expected her brother Gin instead of her. The male Shurengan had struck me as particularly willful.

  A droning, mechanical female voice echoing up and down the halls reminded me that I didn’t have time to consider such things.

  “T-MINUS FOURTEEN MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

  Fuck it. I could question her later.

  Assuming there was a later.

  “SENA!” I bellowed over the sound of the klaxons and the voice, waving my free hand. “OVER HERE!”

  Previously, Sena had looked to be near drunk, wincing at the piercing sounds echoing all around us. Still, one of her ears twitched my way at my call, and she looked much more alert as she faced me. In seconds, the large saber-tooth had bounded over our way.

  “HART!” Sena shouted, to be heard over the cacophony. “WHAT IS GOIN-”

  I cut her off. “WE NEED TO GET GOING NOW OR WE’RE DEAD! FOLLOW ME!” Without even looking at the sapient feline, I turned towards the exit hall and sprinted that way, pumping my legs as hard as I possibly could. Thankfully, Sena must have realized that now wasn’t the time for questions as I heard her start padding swiftly after us.

  Good.

  I barely paid any attention to the piles and piles of dead, shattered AutoMats that Travers had left in his wake as we exited the Core room, chased by the sounds of blaring alarms and droning robotic women. Instead, I focused more on clutching the limp form of Aveline closer to my chest with both arms.

  Please, please let her stay out of it long enough for us to get out of here. A panicking child would make everything so much harder, and my idea was already a stretch as it was.

  I’d had it on the walk to the Core, after all. I just had to hope that my friends and companions had dealt with Harlow quickly, so they could get out as well.

  Fuck I hope their idea of an exit was better than mine.

  “T-MINUS THIRTEEN MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

  I was startled as I felt a large, furry mass abruptly shove itself under my legs as I ran. In seconds, I found myself sitting astride the broad, crimson back of Sena as she picked up speed down the narrow corridors of the Engineering sector.

  “Where?” Sena growled shortly from beneath me.

  I took a deep breath and nodded sharply, taking one hand from Aveline and clutching at the scruff of Sena’s striped neck. I leaned down closer to her ear. “Ahead! And then stop at the intersection!”

  Sena picked up the pace underneath me. Now the white steel walls, illuminated by blaring red klaxons, were really flying by. We arrived at the four-way, tree-shaped intersection that marked the separation points the Engineering sector, the Core sector, and the rest of the bunker within what felt like moments.

  “T-MINUS TWELVE MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I opened my mouth to direct Sena once more, but I was interrupted again before I could do so. Coming from my left was a piercing, shrieking noise so loud that it cut through both the wailing of the klaxons and the droning of the voice.

  Both Sena and I turned our heads towards the left tunnel just in time to watch as the massive, corroded door that led towards the upper floors of the bunker bulged outwards. The sound was coming from the already tortured steel warping more and more from repeated impacts, coming one after the other. In seconds, the door was barely hanging on by a hinge, and with one last impact, it was blown from its frame to skip down the hallway. Sena dodged out of the way with Aveline and me on her back, letting the slab of corroded steel skitter away from us down the corridor of the Engineering sector.

  When we looked back down the hall it had come down, I was both relieved by what I saw and frustrated at the same time.

  Those blows had been coming from Azarus in his transformed state. The massive armored form of the dwarf loomed large in the doorway, and rather than try to edge through it, my friend dispelled his own transformation to fit through. Following behind him came the rest of my companions, Kazuma, Renauld, and Venix.

  You couldn’t have directed them anywhere else before you died, Harlow?!

  None of them looked as alarmed as they should be, with the announcements being broadcast through the entirety of the bunker. I grit my teeth as I realized why.

  They were in English, and Language Adaptation didn’t cover my birth tongue. To them, all of this flash and noise was likely nothing more than an annoyance.

  When they hurried up to me, flush from their likely victory over Harlow and relieved to see us, I disabused them of that notion. Before they could even open their mouths, I was shouting at them. “WE HAVE TO GET OUT NOW! THE BUNKER IS GOING TO FALL AND KILL US IF WE DON’T! FOLLOW ME!”

  The smiles on their faces died at my words, while I saw Sena’s head briefly jerk up to stare at me in alarm as she finally understood why I had been so frantic. Thankfully, none of them argued with me. Everyone followed after us as I directed Sena down the hallway to our right.

  “T-MINUS ELEVEN MINTUES TO DETACHMENT.”

  The one where the open door to the interior of the mountain lay, air from the hollow howling across its surface. However, halfway down that length of corridor, all of us had to catch our balance as the entire structure of the suspended bunker abruptly lurched all around us, tilting to the right. Just outside of the black exit, I heard an enormously deep twanging sound, as if the bow of an immense violin had been thrummed too tightly and snapped from the force of it.

  My heart stuttered in my chest as I realized what that had to be. One of the cables holding up the bunker must have sheared away prematurely. Thankfully, for now, it only appeared to be one of them. But that meant the entire structure was now out of alignment. Undue pressure was being exerted on the rest of the cables. Any of them could snap at any moment now.

  I couldn’t expect the countdown to be accurate anymore.

  I spurred Sena on, despite the angle we all had to walk at now. “KEEP GOING, HURRY! TO THE DOOR!”

  I heard Sena’s fangs grind together beneath me and the claws on her feet dig into the steel beneath her. With only a few bounding strides, we reached the end of the hall and looked into blackness, now from a right angle. A few moments later, I heard everyone else reach us.

  “LIGHT!” I bellowed, reaching for Starfire Veiling and Arboreal Channeling so I could easily channel my Mana. “WE NEED LIGHT TO FIND THE EXIT! THERE SHOULD BE SOMETHING OUT THERE!”

  That’s what I had realized earlier. At the time, I’d been thinking about how I had no idea where the actual door that had sucked us into the bunker lay in here. It could have been anywhere, considering I never found it in all of my wanderings through these halls. Back then, I’d thought about how Lucretia and her assault force had likely needed some way to reach this door from outside of the mountain. Maybe a tunnel of some kind, that we could have leisurely searched for to find a way outside of the mountain.

  But we didn’t have the time for leisure, now. All I could do was hope that luck would be on our side, and the very woman who had doomed the Netherim would be our last chance to survive this.

  Turns out, I didn’t even need to ask my companions for assistance. Beneath me, I felt it as the enormous lungs of the saber-tooth cat I sat astride inflated massively. Before I could process what that meant, Sena spat a gargantuan ball of flame out into the howling darkness of the mountain cavern. It didn’t dissipate, either. The shining ball of brilliant orange flame hung in the space like a small star, an almost natural reflection of the core in the process of destabilizing behind us.

  It's light revealed our salvation.

  On the opposite wall from us, I could see an absolutely massive hole dug into the rock wall of the mountain, easily large enough for an entire army to fit through.

  There was a problem, however.

  It was…quite far away. I had hoped that the wall wouldn’t be far from this particular side of the bunker, like Harlow’s quarters had been. But no.

  That…almost looked to be nearly an entire city block away from us.

  I heard it as Azarus’s mailed feet came to a stop to mine and Sena’s left. “That’s…a damned long jump.” I heard him mutter, just barely audible over the alarms.

  “T-MINUS TEN MINUTES TO DETACHMENT. ALL HANDS, EVACUATE.”

  I grit my teeth at the reminder. I looked over my shoulder at the rest of my friends and considered everyone.

  Who could make that jump, I wondered? Venix, most definitely. Me, no problem with my wings.

  But everyone else?

  The two of us would need to-

  Before I could even voice that thought, I heard Sena speak up from underneath me. “I CAN TAKE FOUR OF YOU AT ONCE!” She shouted over the alarms. “THE REST I SHALL RETURN FOR!”

  That…worked too. But she didn’t need to return, I’m thinking.

  I slid off of the giant cat’s shoulders with Aveline in my arms, catching everyone else’s attention. Trying not to jostle the fitfully sleeping child, I set her into the arms of the person I trusted most in this world.

  Azarus.

  The dwarf had only a moment to look stunned before I grabbed him by the shoulders. “TAKE CARE OF HER! PROMISE ME, AZARUS!”

  The expression on my best friend’s face…hardened, and he nodded at me. I noticed his grip tighten on the slim shoulders of the little girl. I nodded back before turning to face the rest of my friends. “EVERYONE BUT VENIX, GET ON SENA! VENIX AND I CAN MAKE THE JUMP OURSELVES!”

  I think.

  I caught the Antium’s eyes, to find that he was already inspecting the gap with a critical eye. After a microsecond, he looked back at me and nodded decisively. I refrained from sighing in relief.

  In moments, everyone but the Antium samurai and I had crawled up onto the broad back of the Shurengan.

  She didn’t waste any time. I saw each of her four furred feet erupt into flames before she crouched just on the edge of the doorway.

  Sena jumped.

  What a leap it was. Sena left dents in the steel from the mini-explosions she seemed to have used to propel her across the distance to the cavern on the other side. Thanks to her floating flame, I easily saw it as she landed on the other side.

  Once they were safe, I exchanged a glance with Venix and nodded his way, gesturing with one hand for him to go.

  I wanted to be the last one out of here.

  “T-MINUS NINE MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

  Venix frowned at me but nodded. He must have realized we didn’t have time to argue about it. The Antium man approached the edge of the doorway and crouched lightly. I saw him draw in a deep breath before a white light began to shine through the cracks in his chitinous, armored skin as he activated some kind of Skill.

  The force of his jump from that edge left deeper dents in the steel of the floor than even Sena’s explosions had. I saw him touch down next to everyone else on the other side just as easily as the Shurengan had.

  Now it was only me. I took a deep breath to settle my nerves as well and approached the dented edge. Once there, activated Vis Maledicta Exactoris, shooting up to my full transformed height and unfurling my wings.

  Before I stepped off the other edge to flap my way over to my friends, I stopped briefly to look over my shoulder. I’d wanted one last glance at the bunker I’d fought so hard to reach, and gotten such scattered answers from.

  But I saw something else instead.

  The curse.

  I don’t know if Lucretia’s hex had enough sentience to it to realize that everything was coming to an end or not, or if it was just trying to stop me in particular from escaping like it had when I’d slipped from the grasp of my trial. But those same violet tentacles of corrupted Aether were slowly crawling their way down the hallway that led into the bunker proper, visible from around the corner. The mass of them was thick enough that they covered every surface of the corridor as they crept my way like hungry, questing eels.

  Even more alarming, I thought I heard a feminine voice just on the edge of my hearing, full of a deep, malevolent hatred. It hissed and spat at me, almost indignant that I dared to escape the trap laid by Lucretia Mors all those millennia ago.

  “…pretender…rule-breaker…”

  Okay.

  That was enough of that.

  I kicked off of the edge of the doorway and flapped out into the darkness, chased by the sound of alarms and warnings.

  “T-MINUS EIGHT MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

  really tense seven minutes.