The blur turned towards Ruby and Caim tackled it, the two figures rolling across the broken wreckage of the bridge deck.

Ruby could see a figure in dead white armour. Faceless horned helmet, a cloak of the same tattered, filthy fabric as the clowns hanging over its shoulders. While the suit was mostly plain, the gauntlets were oversized and elaborate, spikes and ridges swirling over the surface.

Almost faster than she could register, Caim was on top of it, firing off three quick burst rounds directly into its head. The knight flailed silently as the chained explosions rippled across its faceplate. It kicked Caim off, sending him tumbling backwards. There was a brittle sound, like a teacup cracking, and it slowly stood and lifted its head. A piece of the faceplate broke off, the pieces floating in the weird gravity of the barrier space.

A glint of fire-agate hair. One blank, blue-opal eye staring out of a pale face. The knight shook its head, and the gauntlets twitched.

Caim wobbled to his feet, a thin dribble of glittering green-gold ooze dripping from his nose. “Oh, no. No,” he rasped, leveling Peacemaker at the knight. “ELECTROC…”

Ruby stifled a scream watching the knight descend on him before he could finish the call.

When it hit Caim, the air split with the crack of a sonic boom. The gunner was flung back, as much by the shockwave as the strike itself. He struck the hood of the cab, crumpling the battered yellow steel. The back end of the car lifted off the ground with the force and Caim bounced over the roof as it came down hard. He tumbled to a broken halt across the pavement.

The phone trilled, and Ruby huddled behind an empty car to look at it. The green ring showing what had to be Caim’s health had turned a glaring red. The small darkened section had spread, swallowing up half the ring. “Oh god,” she whispered. “It’s killing him.”

The knight leapt over the cab and landed straddling Caim before he could pick himself up. One armoured hand palmed the back of Caim’s head and smashed him face first into the deck, over and over. Caim blindly reached for a piece of debris, smashing it into the side of the white knight’s helmet with a CLANG.

The blow only staggered the knight for a second, the armoured figure stumbling back in brief surprise.

Wheezing and shaking, Caim planted his hands and pushed himself to his knees. Green ichor dripped from his battered face and splattered on the pavement, while sparkling white lines began to delicately spread across his golden skin.

Ruby silently willed Caim to just get away as the knight recovered and hauled him to his feet by the back of his shirt. With no sign of effort, it flung the gunner into the nearest tower like a rag doll. Caim hit it like a cannonball, pulverising the bricks on impact. He fell hard, the wooden planks of the pedestrian walkway splintering as he bounced off and landed, limp, on the pavement. The knight spared a single glance at Ruby as it strode past her hiding spot, then turned its attention to where Caim was struggling to stand.

Caim’s pretty face was a broken smear of green, his peacock hair matted with ichor. He coughed, sending a fresh gout down his chin. His arm hung at an unnatural angle, and it was flickering with a storm of white stars. She could see them spreading under his torn shirt, across his chest and up his neck. Updating, he’d said, when she’d mentioned the faint flickers before. This didn’t look like an update. He looked like he was suffering. No, this can’t be good.

He took one trembling step, then collapsed to his knees. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t understand what he was trying to say as the knight closed the distance between them.

There was a swagger to its steps, the easy stride of a successful predator. Ruby buried her face in her hands. I don’t know what to do, please, PLEASE.

She snapped her eyes open as the engine in the cab groaned and screeched to life. Yusuf yelled incoherently, then Alice was suddenly scrambling out of the cab, pressing next to her. She was looking ashier than before, a clammy sheen growing on her forehead.

“He’s gonna die.” Ruby couldn’t stop her voice from shaking. The ring over Caim’s book sliced down to the tiniest sliver of red.

“Get down,” Alice hissed, pushing Ruby further back as the back tires on the cab squealed.

Yusuf hit the knight at speed, sending the armoured figure bouncing across the bridge and into the smoking crater Caim’s strike had left behind from the Jack.

“Caim!” Ruby screamed, running to him. Yusuf scrambled, grey-faced with shock and concern, out of the cab to join her.

Hands shaking, she tried to turn Caim over. The ichor tingled, effervescent, against her skin, and Ruby tried to pretend it wasn’t his blood. It didn’t work, and she pushed back a little crest of nausea. “Caim?” she whisper-sobbed. Yusuf helped her, and Alice joined them. Caim was mumbling. It sounded like a sunset and looked like the smell of the ocean. She shook her head, trying to make sense of the fractured, synaesthetic impressions. “Caim, come on, you have to get up.”

“Oh,” Alice said softly. Ruby jerked her head up at the word, just in time to see the knight right on top of them, fist flashing down in a blur of white.

“STOP!” Ruby shouted and there was a ripple of air as she threw up her hand. The knight’s one visible eye blinked. Ruby watched as the gauntlet inches from her hand began to shiver and flake like dominos falling away.

Before she could say anything else, there was a tremendous GONG!, and a flash of grey in her peripheral vision. In an instant, the knight was gone, skipping across the black water before vanishing in the distance.

“YEAH! SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT, YOU MOLDY WATER STAIN! THAT’S HOW WE DO IT IN THIS HOUSE!” Amon bellowed, dripping wet beside them. His shield dissolved in a shower of silver chimes as he dropped to his knees. “Oh stacks, no. Caim?”

He gathered Caim up in his arms, bright eyes wide with panic as he looked at Ruby. “Fix him!” he rasped. “Why aren’t you fixing him?” Ichor smeared across Amon’s water-dark coat, and drops fell from his curls onto Caim’s broken face.

Caim tried to bring one hand up to Amon’s chin, making a sound like a winter morning.

“No, no. She’s gonna fix you. You said she was an Author.” Amon rocked him. “Why aren’t you fixing him?” he cried, staring hard at Ruby.

“Back off, asshole.” Alice wobbled beside her, but Amon kept his gaze fixed on Ruby.

“I don’t know how, OK?” she shouted back. She looked away, down at the green ichor and dried black goo soaking into the pink fluff of her coat. “I don’t understand any of this and I don’t know what to do!”

Amon’s jaw twitched and he gently set Caim down. “BIND,” he said softly. His bracelets chimed apart to spin strips of violet light between his hands. “I can hold him together until we get to safety. Then you need to get him help if you can’t do it,” he said without looking up, carefully dressing Caim’s injuries. He wound the purple strips around Caim’s fragmenting arm, binding it tightly, and gave Ruby a sullen glare as he finished.

“He told me to.. to summon someone called Berith. To help Alice. One of the clowns hurt her and…” Ruby started. Amon’s gaze darted between the two women.

“You summon Cerb too, you got it?” he snapped, gently scooping up Caim and cradling him close. When Ruby didn’t answer, he jutted his chin towards the game. “Uhm. The. The Builder. The Alchemist. That’s who you need.”

Ruby helped Alice back to the cab while Amon carried Caim. “You watched him knock a crazy armoured guy like a mile and you still tell him to back off?” she whispered, letting the other woman lean on her.

Alice chuckled, wincing as Ruby eased her in. “Well, we have a conversation I’d really like to finish.”

Amon gave them both a hard look, then settled Caim in the back. “Sir, thank you. I’m sorry about your cab that doesn’t smell at all like vomit,” he said with a feeble smile as he pulled the fractured windshield clear of the car. “May I sit up front? I’m not gonna fit back here.”

Yusuf cleared off the seat and handed the pile of papers to Ruby as Amon climbed in. “That was the nicest non-compliment anyone’s ever given me.” Amon snapped his fingers and the barrier fell away, the ringing hum suddenly replaced by the noise of the city.

Ruby looked out at the scene. It was as if they’d never left, and the bridge in front of them was intact, clown-free, and full of confused people. A news chopper beat overhead and for a moment, Ruby pictured it full of clowns. She sank down into the seat and let out a deep breath.

They rode in grim near-silence the rest of the way to Ruby’s building, a quiet defined by the spaces between the sputtering, broken engine and Caim’s soft, synaesthetic mutterings. Amon looked back at Ruby, his handsome face scrunched mournfully as Yusuf limped the cab through the traffic on Atlantic Avenue. “Are you sure you’re an Author?”

“I’ve never written a book in my life,” Ruby sighed. “Caim keeps calling me that, like it’s a title or something. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m sorry, Amon.”

“He’s not usually wrong.” Amon looked away, chewing the inside of his cheek, as Yusuf slowed the cab.

“Assholes double parking. These streets are barely big enough as it is,” Yusuf grumbled, gesturing at the box truck parked in the middle of the street.

Amon’s jaw twitched again, and he pushed out of the car with a growl. Ruby leaned out the window. “Amon!”

“I got this,” he growled, stalking over to the truck where two men sat in the cab, looking at their phones. “Hey, I need you to move. My friend needs to park,” he said, hoisting himself up on the footrail.

“Fuck you, Snow White.” The driver looked Amon over and went back to his phone. “I got a right to be here.”

The handlebar Amon was holding screeched as it bent under his tightening grip. “Ok, Mildew, this is how it goes.” He hopped off, dusting his hands on his damp jeans. “Someone very dear to me–who’s dying, by the way--taught me how to do origami once.” Amon walked around to the front of the truck and braced his hands under the bumper. There was a screech of metal as he pulled it forward, the back lifting up as he did. The contents clattered and crashed and the two men were flung against the windshield as he lifted it like a piece of furniture, almost vertically above his head. The straining metal squealed louder than the men inside. “You have thirty seconds to tell me if you want me to turn this hunk of scrap paper into a crane or a frog.” He jostled it. “Or maybe just a boulder, you tell me.”

Ruby couldn’t hear the response, but Amon seemed satisfied. He pivoted and dropped the truck facing the other way. “Go,” he said, and watched it back up for a moment before he strode over to a Camaro parked in front of the building and nonchalantly moved it to the sidewalk.

Her phone made a soft chirp and she looked down at the game, almost dreading the brightly hued words that scrolled across the screen, blotting out Caim’s crumbling health.

LEVEL UP ++