The first thing Atlas noticed when he stepped foot through the portal was the smell.

Of all the things he’d prepared himself for, that wasn’t what he expected would what hit him so hard.

But it was immediate and overwhelming, anyway. The tangy, toe-curling scent of rot. It stabbed into the back of his nostrils with white-hot vengeance and rooted itself in his sinuses like an infection. 

It didn’t make sense. At least, not at first. The entry point was nestled in a copse of trees dripping with full stems of bright, purple leaves and glowing flowers. To the side, a shallow, lifeless pool of eerie blue rippled and lapped at a sandy shore. There was nothing here that should have made a smell like that.

They didn’t linger to admire the scenery, advancing instead to allow the remaining swell of hunters to enter behind them. He looked, and looked, and looked. 

Then Atlas saw it.

It was slumped bonelessly against one of the many trees, it’s skull cleaved clean in two. 

Some of the flesh still clung to bone in drooping, gray patches. The figure was nearly unrecognizable as human beneath frumpy and shapeless cloak. The rest of its equipment and armor were almost pristine, save for a series of sharp tears across the chest.

“Izar,” Atlas whispered.

Izar blinked beside him, quiet and contemplative for a moment.

“You think it’s them?” He asked Atlas finally. The sacrificial lambs, neither of them could bring themselves to say aloud, a member of the original strike team.

No one had ever been prepared for whatever this place was, least of all the hunters who entered the portal a decade ago. Very few had emerged when it closed some weeks later, and those who had were never quite right.

If Atlas had demonstrated any real power when the others first awakened, he very well could have been with them. Most who entered hadn’t even been evaluated yet at the time. But abilities weren’t hard to see for many of the world’s most powerful. Volunteers had staffed up that early swell of support, chasing glory, or fame, or the steep rewards offered by world governments. 

They had died for their trouble.

The deaths of so many obviously powerful hunters at the Colossus-gate meant that the first generation who awakened were rarely showy these days. People in Atlas’ cohort were the quieter sort, with the second generation — Charon and his ilk — taking over many of the positions of authority.

There had been one hunter of particular note in that first group. But this wasn’t him. He hadn’t died at the entrance. It would have been ridiculous to think so, even if the other survivors hadn’t told them he’d made it to that perilous final battle.

“Something must have caught them off guard,” Atlas answered after a few moments of tense silence. He flicked his eyes to Charon with a frown. “Still think this isn’t the same rift?”

Charon was pale, his face drawn and contemplative. “It could be the body of a humanoid here in the portal. We’ve encountered enemies not too dissimilar to us. They’re too decayed now to know for sure.”

Izar furrowed his brows. “Charon…”

Atlas sighed. “Think what you want. If this is Colossus, we’ll encounter more of them soon enough.”

The back wing of hunters began to comb the nearby woods for civilian survivors, with the second line scouting the nearby area for concealed adversaries. Charon and the rest of Last Bastion adjusted their weapons and took in their surroundings.

Other than the overwhelming scent of death, there wasn’t much to the opening. 

It was possible, of course, that much of the population here had been thinned out by the initial hunter team. 

Time passed differently in portals, changed so dramatically that it was almost frozen to the naked eye back on Earth. It wasn’t unusual for hunters to exit a closing rift just moments after they first entered, weary and exhausted and blood-soaked.

If it didn’t, if it were a one-for-one, there would be nothing but bones left of any lost hunters here. It had been ten years since they first lost their lives to the rest of Earth, their remains too far away to retrieve.

The same differences that preserved the horrific remnants of their bodies also meant that any reproductive cycles and multiplication of beasts were unlikely to have reached their conclusion. It hadn’t been exceptionally long since the closure of this portal. At least, not in here.

“We’re not going to encounter many beasts,” Atlas told Izar. He knew Charon could hear them, and that both he and Heron — Charon’s right hand man — were ignoring him on purpose. “The initial party cleared most of the ones at the beginning, before the group thinned out and had to get strategic.”

“He’s right sir,” the voice behind him said. It was the same woman from the Acquisitions Department. She’d traded her lab coat for a functional set of clothing better suited for combat. “There are very few beasts we’ve classified that can complete a full reproductive or regenerative cycle in less time than it would take these bodies to decay.”

“What she said,” Atlas responded with a shrug. “Can you accept it if it comes from someone other than me, you two? Or should we keep pretending that this is a different spot to soothe your bruised egos?”

Atlas shouldn’t provoke them. He knew better. And yet…

“Arsi may have a point,” Heron murmured. Atlas fought the sudden and violent urge to put a cigarette out on his forehead. Of course she did, he didn’t bother saying. She’s just saying that I was right. “There are very few humanoids we’ve encountered, and it’s strange that one would be freshly dead so near to the entrance.”

“We’ll keep her warning in mind,” Charon acquiesced. He tested his radio and, finding that it still worked in the portal’s atmosphere, paged the scout team. “Second line, report.”

“The immediate woods are clear, sir,” a tinny voice answered, sounding just off enough to remind Atlas that nothing here — not the air, or the “water” or the sky — was the same as what he was used to. “However, we did find three additional bodies in similar states of decomposition.”

See? Atlas didn’t say. But he was sure his expression did the talking for him. 

“Continue to keep watch for any approaching hostiles,” Charon said, then slammed the radio back down into the utility belt at his side. He wouldn’t look at Atlas, instead motioning to the rest of them to follow. “Forward, then.”

The march was a slow one. His shoes were poorly suited enough to the dense underbrush that a few B-Classes took pity on him and spelled them temporarily impervious to puncture.

For every enemy they didn’t encounter, they found another body. These were fresher. More grotesquely human. No matter how long they walked, the smell never got easier to bear.

It was nightfall before they decided to set up camp. The sun here — whatever that meant astronomically in this place — seemed to behave similarly enough to their own that sunset didn’t bring any surprises to the team.

Atlas was thankful. He didn’t need to existential crisis that came along with relearning how night and day worked.

He took one of his last cigarettes from the crumpled pack in his pocket and smoked it down to the filter. Izar collected one of the night packs the back teams had carried for him to set up camp, and they sat side by side for several long, quiet minutes.

“Nothing from your Skill?” He asked Atlas quietly. Because of course he did — Izar didn’t know how to talk about anything that wasn’t this anymore. It was like his brain had rotted between his ears the second he awakened. 

“Really?” Atlas asked him, reclining against the back of a narrow tree so he could kick out his legs and stretch. “Is that all you can think about?”

“I manage your portfolio for Portal Group, Atlas. It’s my job.”

“You used to ask me about other things. Before.” He didn’t like the way his voice sounded, a little hollow at the edges, so Atlas stabbed his cigarette but into the pale dirt and scowled. “Forget it. I know that’s all you care about now.”

But before he could say a word, the piercing, horrifying sound of inhuman screaming shattered the space between them.

It was unlike anything he’d ever heard. Somehow, it sounded both afraid and fearsome. Izar froze stiff beside him, his fingers hovering over the water bottle he’d been digging out of his night pack.

“What is that?” Atlas asked, jumping to his feet to peer behind them. He didn’t know what he thought he would see, but there was nothing but yards and yards of dark forest, too far from the fire to be visible to the naked eye.

“I’ve never heard something like that,” Izar said, and wasn’t that horrifying all on its own? Izar was a veritable encyclopedia for the beasts found in portals. He knew them by every metric — size, color, sound or otherwise.

There was no reason he shouldn’t know precisely what they were dealing with.

Atlas clutch the utility knife from his pack tightly in his free hand.