Ruby took a step back behind the twins, trying to look everywhere at once. Too many noises, the storm crackling overhead. Her heart was louder in her ears than the thunder or the crunching concrete. Her hands were sweating.

The subway had been terrifying because she didn’t understand what was happening. This was so much worse.

The barrier walls shuddered and fell, Amon dropping to his knees with a cry. The sudden reassertion of normal light and gravity was like a slap in the face.

“I can’t hold the barrier space. There’s another Author here.” Amon’s shield flicked up on his arm, a little sound breaking in his chest. “I can’t fight that. I can’t fight them!”

“Yes you can!” Caim shouted. The air filled with the sound of scrabbling nails on the concrete walls as the Jack’s massive head came over the edge. “The rest of you, purge the infection from the civilians and destroy the toys. Grendel, you’re on Val.”

Lighting split the sky and Ruby felt a chill, something new and unpleasant rolling down her spine. She followed the sensation, and swore she saw figures silhouetted on the distant rooftops, unmoving. 

“Amon, you can do it, get that barrier back up no matter what you...” Valefor came out of nowhere before Caim could finish the sentence, a blur of white that hit the rooftop hard enough to burst windows three floors below. Caim danced back, shouting for shatter rounds that staggered Val back long enough for Grendel to step in.

The twin’s bows sang as the swarm of raggedy clowns climbed over each other, scrambling up to the rooftop. Fenix had folded in on himself, vanishing and unfolding in front of Amon, lightning dancing from his hands as he cleared an area around them both as the latter fought to bring the barrier space back into existence. She didn’t see Cerberos or Berith.

It was pure chaos, terrible and somehow beautiful. The daemons glittered and flashed like gems in the crackle of lightning and powers. They moved with practiced speed and grace, falling back to back, dancing in between each other’s strikes.

Against the monstrous creatures swarming them, she thought they might look like angels. Demons. Muses.

She felt a queasy twinge, the weight of those motionless figures in the distance watching, those shadows cast by the lightning. Below, Amon roared and the air rang around them, prismatic air reflecting the wild storm roiling around them as he forced the barrier back into existence.

There was a scrape of metal behind her and Ruby wheeled around to see a decrepit figure, a monkey in a tattered sequin vest, wheezing as it crept forward, a rictus grin on its hideous face. It would have been ridiculous, but the cymbals in its hands were razor sharp, and black ooze wept from its burning eyes.

Ruby covered her mouth to muffle the scream, and a bolt of light shrieked past her face, so close she could feel her hair singe. The arrow struck it between the eyes, and it flailed, screeching, cymbals clanging with deafening rage as it burned.

The twin with the wild pink-gold curls grabbed her hand and dragged her to the edge of the rooftop. “Come on!” he shouted, flinging her down to the fray. His brother followed suit, twisting in midair to fire a volley as the flaming beast lurched after them.

Ruby hit the lower roof hard, Caim putting himself between her and the violence in the moments before the twins hit the ground. In the next beat, Amon spun past as the gigantic monkey flung one of its cymbals at them, deflecting it with his shield into the Jack that had clawed its way up the building.

With a nod, the twins took up position on either side of her.

“DURANDAL.” Grendel’s rough voice cut through the noise. He’d blocked a blow from Valefor with his cane. As he danced aside, sweeping the white knight’s legs out from under him, the cane reformed, splintering and twisting into a glowing blade as long as Ruby’s leg. It rang off the massive white gauntlets like a gong, and Grendel twisted and spun, smashing the hilt into Valefor’s helmet.

Fragments of white floated away as the strange gravity of the barrier space reasserted itself. Ruby saw a blur of motion in the corner of her vision as the Jack’s spindly arms grabbed Fenix and flung him across the street, brown fumes belching across the rooftop at the group.

Burning arrows peppered the Jack’s heaving stalk as it trampled possessed clowns and the ones who’d been cleansed alike, thundering towards Caim. He let off round after round into it, Peacemaker as loud as the thunder.

She didn’t expect the flash of yellow that suddenly tackled it, a suit of power armour grabbing the Jack by the throat and flinging it across the rooftop into the nearby towering wall.

“STAY AWAY FROM MY FRIENDS!” Yusuf shouted over the speakers. The shoulder-mounted lights cast the whole scene into high relief.

“Yusuf? Alice?” she screeched, seeing the two in what amounted to the chest. Cerberos and Berith leapt from the back and the mech clapped its metal hands together.

The distraction was only a moment, but it was enough for Grendel. “BINDING BLADE,” he shouted, and Durandal split in two in his hands. Valefor turned to swing but the skinny swordsman was faster, both weapons spearing through the knight’s arms in one violent blow. “Twins, now!” he roared as he drove the swords through Val and down into the rooftop.

As one, the twins turned from Ruby and drew their bows. “LANCE OF HEAVEN,” they said together, and fired. The two bolts twisted in one firey blue shot, piercing the white knight through the chest. The roof beneath him shattered, chunks of tar and concrete fracturing all around them.

Valefor screamed, and Grendel held up his hand. “FULL STOP.”

And everything simply.

Did.

Ruby looked around. The twins’ coats flared out around them. Yusuf’s suit was in mid-swing. Lightning stood frozen in midair with Caim in mid-fire at a group of clowns. “What. The. Fuck?” she said softly.

Grendel turned to her, the only other thing moving. “You’re up, Ruby Jones,” he rumbled.

“How, you.. how. I,” she stammered, and he motioned to her quickly.

“I can’t hold us outside of time forever. I know you don’t understand how this is all happening, but this is something only you can fix.” He drew her to his side, looking down at Valefor, his helmet gone, droplets of green ichor frozen in space over his broad, old-ivory face.

“You said I had no history,” she said dumbly.

“When was the last time you talked to your parents?” Grendel asked.

“Just the other. No. Maybe not for a while. I.” She blinked feeling weirdly hollow. “I remember abstract aspects of a town. Of a family. But it’s vague, it’s just… Who am I?”

“Caim said he just knew you’d overwritten yourself. To hide from the others. To hide from us. I thought he was full of bad data, but here we are.” Grendel smiled. “You like puzzles, don’t you? I saw them in your apartment.”

“But you’re blind,” she said, still staring down at Valefor. She thought she should feel something. Angry. Afraid. Anything. But she was numb. She was empty.

Overwritten. She didn’t feel anything, frozen as like the scene around them.

“I see too much and we are running out of time,” he said, not unkindly. “This is a puzzle, Ruby. He needs you to solve it, to find the answer hidden by false facts. You need to help him find the words in that jumble.”

Ruby knelt beside him. She thought she could see the information. The lights dancing under his pale skin. “A puzzle,” she whispered, then bit her lip. “UNSCRAMBLE.” The word popped into her head. “DECODE. REFORMAT.” They were more than words. They were like Caim’s "bullets". They were like the calls she’d heard them use.

They weren’t just words, they were meaning. They were power.

“RESTART,” Grendel said beside her. The world suddenly burst into chaos again, but it was just background noise, watching the white armour unspool, twirling around him as the swords and blue lance dissolved.

Behind her, Yusuf punched the Jack once more for good measure as it fell to the ground.

Caim was there in a moment, skidding next to Valefor as he collapsed, naked, on the roof. A million stars flashed under his skin while overhead, the storm vanished.

The crawling sensation up her spine was gone and Ruby looked to the other rooftops to see that their watchers had vanished.

Valefor gasped, pawing at his face, blue-opal eyes wide and wild.

In her pocket, the phone chirped brightly. “Valefor, The Berserker.”

She hated that voice.