The lugubrious, fey hum grew to a pronounced decibel, hinting at a clairvoyant unease that whispered around the hallway. The cold air seemed to only grow darker and inexorably mirthless. The wolves licked their dry, rubbery lips at the new waxed arrival into their hungry minds. Their paws pranced, circling, trying to discover the best position to pounce.

"What are you doing encroaching on our sacred ground?" growled Algoroth, the lead wolf. He seemed metrically taller, heavier, and bolder than the rest of the black furry mass with glowing red eyes. "How did you approach this city?"

"A-A game," Tyler said. His hands felt moist and slippery and it only worsened as Braxxie mushed hers with it. "We were brought here by a game. Y-You're not gonna eat us are you?'

"We're supposed to be at the Office," Braxxie let in. "But our mindless toes accidentally wound their way here. Isn't that funny?" Braxxie feigned a horselike laugh.

The congregation of sable canines stared back in acerbic distaste. Unimpressed, impatient. "If you don't mind, we'll just be making our way back. Nao e assim, Tyler?"

Tyler gulped. Those ancient cherry blood eyes seemed to be sucking him more into an inexorable void of evil the longer his jittering legs remained glued to the spot. Braxxie tugged his arms and surged forward but was met with an unrelenting proliferation of growls. A loud, thundering roar quaked the building, nearly crashing the orbs to the ground. Algoroth prowled closer.

"You have breached the rule of intrinsic property. A property belonging to the Father himself. And as you know," the wolf grinned a slimy gangrenous grin. "We must follow orders and uphold the duties of guarding the inviolable. Therefore we must upbraid—"

"Get on with it!" the wolf named Valgaard growled, scratching the ground with its paws and licking its dry salivating lips... "You hoard time with such leisure."

"But no one lives here!" Braxxie shouted, flustered. "Aaah!" A giant black form stirred into the air, plowing Braxxie to the ground. Valgaard grinned raising its paws, docked to fight.

"Look," Tyler extended his jittering palms, hoping in some way to invoke some spark of clemency. "We don't want any trouble. Just please let her go."

"Kill them, boys. Don't abstain and leave me some crumbs, I have some taxes to fill out. Those bodily units aren't going to write themselves out."

There was another attack of growling and baying, one that made the blue tips of the wolves shine even brighter. The wolves barked back, moving their heads around at the conspicuous noise. "Who was that?" Algoroth demanded.

The howling grew louder, accompanied by an explosive boom that rattled the building. A quake that inspired a magnitude of fervent spite. Several red orbs smashed to the ground, releasing the spirits into the origin of their hot ether. The wolves bit back, releasing their hot anxious breath into the shaking treacherous air.

"It must be Antegoth, I can smell it," Algoroth muttered in an air of spite. "His sweaty crowd can never rest. They must always be in his wake, on the move for whatever striking nonentity they can discover. We'll show them. Leave them, we have better flesh to acquire before the gibbous rises."

The pack of wolves swarmed out of the hallway and chased the howling sounds. Once the last racing paws of the wolves had disappeared, Tyler picked Braxxie up and walked toward the looming exit.

"You know, you don't scream well enough."

Braxxie groaned and slapped her forehead. "It's as if I wasn't here."

They made their way out of the museum and continued down the cracky abandoned walkway of the city. The sun was beginning to sink even lower the golden light was beginning to rain more prominently on the city walls. Everything from the glassed walls to the graffitied bricks seemed to be glistening in a tropical orange.

As they continued walking, Tyler and Braxxie spotted a strange graffiti colored on one of the buildings. It protruded weird hornets that made a sort of painting that revealed some type of red-horned demon with golden teeth. The closer they moved at it the more the demon danced and buzzed. Suddenly the demon became resoundingly alive and started to dissipate into full colorful hornets, each variegated in their own noxious colorful paint. The hornets came pelting at them with full pernicious vigor.

Tyler acted with mercurial effect and grabbed Braxxie's arm. "Run!"

They sprinted deeper into the narrow allied streets until they arrived at a strange fork of roads. There was no middle spike to lead the way, they had to choose either left or right. Left seemed less crowded and neater than the right side so they plowed into the left but just as soon as Tyler had stepped on it, he felt a soft sticky sensation under his feet and it probed him to jump off the tarmac and land on the sidewalk.

"Tyler!" Braxxie yelped.

The black concrete was already a foot deep into Braxxie's ankles. She held out her trembling hands pleadingly, hoping they wouldn't drown as well. Tyler grabbed her hands and tugged but she couldn't seem to budge. He tried three more times but Braxxie just stood rock still. Then suddenly an unfamiliar pair of soft small hands joined him.

"Permettez-moi d'entrer. D'accord, pull now!"

Flustered by the new arrival, Tyler blindly pulled Braxxie's hand. Startlingly Braxxie was gushed out of the tarmac, her whole ankles blackened. Braxxie grimaced. "Gross."

Tyler turned to the sudden, paroxysmal visitor. It was a thin petite girl donned in a black beret with a long sweeping, midnight black cardigan cloaked over a simple white and black t-shirt and a petite black skirt. She had a soft pallid face and an aquiline nose. Tyler grinned, crossing his arms. About fucking time. The French players were here.

"And you are?" Tyler said with an animated high voice. "Let me guess, your name is Eleanor Baguette and you're from the pristine city of Paris."

The girl raised her eyebrows. Even Braxxie felt the paroxysmal urge to punch Tyler in the arm and fulfilled it heartily.

"Oi!"

"My name's actually Charlotte Duveille," her accented voice was warm and milky with an elegant purple scent of French prose. Her tone was affected, but she tried to keep her voice mid-level without being affronted. "And I'm from Renne, in the district of Brittany. If you must know."

Charlotte stared, a shrewd interest stirring in her eyes. "And you're Portuguese, I'm assuming?"

Tyler and Braxxie exchanged looks and fervently snorted. "They wish," Tyler said. "I'm Tyler and we're Brazilian. The better Portuguese."

"C'est vrai," said Charlotte. "Your accent just seemed to match."

"I'm Braxxie. It's honestly nice to see someone who isn't well...Tyler."

"Olha a boca!"

Charlotte giggled. "You're funny. Très drôle. We should be friends."

Braxxie brightened and clapped her hands. "I love making new friends."

Tyler stared at Charlotte, a dawn of cognizance lighting up his face. "It was you, wasn't it? You sent off those wolves."

"You mean the Police? Yeah, they're really bad but extremely dumb. Who knew a set of holograms could fool them?" She held up her iTech watch. The young faces burst into a gusto of laughter.

"We should probably get going to that office ya know," Tyler pointed to the timer. They only had eight minutes to spare.

"Allons-y," Charlotte concurred.

The trio walked past several buildings but even then Tyler could feel an odd sensation behind his shoulders. But when he looked behind his shoulders it wasn't there. It was almost as if it didn't want to be seen, like a shadow. Then suddenly it appeared, standing on top of an abandoned car that was parked beside a barbershop.

It was a leaking, faceless black body of paint. Instead of features on its face, it had the bloody paint of the letter A on it. The slimy black creature sunk into the roof of the car like an inky puddle.

"What the hell was that?" Tyler asked.

"I don't know," Charlotte said in a trembling soft voice. "But I don't want to stick around to find out. Let's–Aaah!"

The inky faceless creature rose out of the ground in a formless puddle. It held out its black leaking hands and it started to get squiggly and bubbly, the malleable sacred hands molding into a tall gleaming black sword.

Tyler gulped. "Charlotte duck!" Tyler took a reproachful swing into the jaw of the demoniac figure. It didn't splutter back or even tumble back. A feign injury was of no need because Tyler's hands had gone through the inky face and entered through the other slimy side as if he merely only punched a block of paint.

Tyler stared, recoiling, shaking with racking breath and sweating beads.. Awestruck at the sudden miss. "What are you?"

Tyler suddenly understood. He could finally see through the creature's smoke and mirrors. It wasn't going to stop attacking them until they reached their destination. Because no matter what, it couldn't die anyway. It was only going to keep regenerating. In essence, it was a pearly example of how the game didn't want them to stop and luxuriate in senseless trivialities. "Guys, we have to make it to the office, now! It's the only way this thing can disappear!"

The painted, bald figure raised its sword and struck. It was going to clout Braxxie across the head but a strong machete sliced through the air, splintering the black creature's neck in two. Its head bobbled off and splattered to the ground. The creature was struck, but only momentarily. Their provision of time would only lessen from here. The sword swung back.

Tyler turned around to find the origin of the sword but strangely enough, didn't find anyone.

"Over here, quick! Vamos!" A player was raising his hands, waving to them into the alleyway between a fish market and a tech store. He disappeared into the dark looming strip of ground and Tyler felt he had no choice but to take heed of this stranger's words. He did after all save their life.

Braxxie seemed to automatically voice his thoughts. "Well, what are we waiting for? We're not actually gonna wait for this inky thing to come back and shank our asses, are we?"