Whatever they were hearing, it wasn’t close enough to see.

Atlas’ fingers flexed around the cold metal handle of his knife. Around them, the entire camp rippled and swelled as the hunters reorganized themselves into their original teams. Entire groups were shucking sleeping bags in favor of re-lacing their combat boots and unsheathing their weapons. 

There wouldn’t be any rest for them tonight. Not when whatever that was lurked nearby enough to shatter an eardrum or twelve.

Charon corralled Last Bastion to the front of the rest of the strike team. Atlas followed behind a reluctant Izar, whose brow was furrowed deeper than he’d ever seen it. The beast’s cries quieted, but every once in awhile its terrible shriek cracked the night into jagged pieces.

“There is nothing that sounds like this,” Izar murmured to himself, hands clenched into fists in front of his thighs. Zig did the same thing when he was nervous. It was unsettling, to see his best friends mannerisms on someone else entirely. “It could be exclusive to S-Grade gates, but something like this should have been in the report. It would certainly be noteworthy. Was it dormant? Game Master would have noted it to the others before they fled —”

Atlas knew that name. Everyone with a pulse knew that name.

He was the S-Class who’d closed the portal almost single-handedly during that first breach. 

Game Master was widely regarded as the most powerful S-Class ever identified. It was a stroke of luck that he’d been on hand during that original mission, or the portal would have almost certainly swallowed the city whole before they could mount a serious defense.

Game Master had paid the price in blood to close the gate. That was what everyone who returned alive said.

No one was entirely sure what his Skill was. His name told them enough — it had something to do with the screens and evaluation tools they’d all gained access to after that cataclysmic gate. But beyond that, beyond a nickname from his colleagues on that first and only mission, details were incredibly scarce.

“We don’t know how he did what he did,” they all said during the interviews. “But he seems to have some sort of knowledge about all of this. We just called him Game Master since he wouldn’t give us his real name. It's all he'd say.”

The artifact in Atlas’ pocket buzzed and shook. He clamped his free hand around it and kept pace with Izar’s long, loping strides.

The terrain this far back was even less forgiving than it had been at the entrance. The soles of his sneakers weren’t built for the thorns and mud, and no one had the time to baby him with spells anymore. He let the feeling of the cold, damp air ground him.

There had been a time when he wouldn’t have minded. When he would have welcomed it. When he did welcome it. 

But that kind of apathy was fragile and fickle. It was easy to grow attached to things, even terrible, awful things like his grease-trap apartment and his route home in the rain.

The sound of the beast was growing incrementally louder as they went, a bone-rattling series of grunts and groans that made Atlas’ teeth ache. Charon forged ahead fearlessly, like he had never met a beast that could shake him. He probably hadn’t. At least, not yet.

Atlas wasn’t nearly so confident in them at all. Last Bastion had never been in an S-Grade. None of them had. 

Game Master had died to something that lived here. It didn’t seem far-fetched at all to believe they may do the same.

“Whatever is here, they either avoided it entirely, or it came back to life,” Atlas told Izar, kicking his way through the damp foliage. He had to shout to be heard over the beast’s high pitched warbling. “Neither of those seem like a particularly good outcome for us.”

“The survivors didn’t mentioned anything like that,” Izar answered. The pinch hadn’t left his brow for the better part of the mission, smoothed only temporarily when they’d spoken about Zig back at camp. It had returned with a vengeance now. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

Almost like it was answering them, the creature let out another earth-shaking, terrible roar. This one sounded even more desperate than before, something keening and uneasy threading through its voice. It made the inside of Atlas’ ears throb with the volume of it.

“It doesn’t sound happy.” Atlas clutched his knife even tighter, rounding the corner of the mountain’s edge until Last Bastion came to an abrupt halt up ahead.

He could see why immediately.

Across a vast field of tall, billowing purple grass a great, orange dragon stamped and clawed and screamed.

It was as tall as Portal Group’s illustrious skyscraper, with dark, darting eyes and spikes that shimmered like gold. Its teeth were plentiful and curved into thick, sharp instruments of violence and death. Around all four of its legs were thick, glimmering chains that bolted it into the mountainous rock.

But what was most terrifying was the look on its face.

The party came to a screeching halt, watching the dragon struggle and groan. With a sudden, stabbing pain to his forehead, Atlas collapsed into the grass on his knees.

It was like a thousand people speaking all at once in unison, a sound that was impossible to explain or fully comprehend. It ricocheted around Atlas’ head, huge and loud and impossible to ignore.

His skull creaked and throbbed, as though it wanted to splinter into a thousand pieces.

“Can you hear it?” Atlas rasped, clutching aimlessly for Izar’s pant leg. His vision had gone black, the only thing grounding him the feeling of the damp soil soaking through his pant legs. “Izar?”

“The dragon?” Izar’s voice sounded muffled and quiet, even as he yelled — like Atlas was listening through cotton. Atlas could scarcely breathe. “I can hear it thrashing and roaring, yes.”

“No, Izar, something else. Maybe it’s the dragon. I don’t know. It’s speaking.” 

“Atlas it’s not —”

Izar paused, then Atlas heard him rustling through his bag. “The dragon is bound, so we may have time. This could be your Skill awakening, Atlas. What do you hear?”

“It’s so loud. It’s not one voice. It’s —

Suddenly, Atlas could see again.

But it wasn’t right.

Where the others were coalescing, a series of successive orange, neon boxes followed. Their names and Skills scrolled along the edges, legible even from here. He blinked, and a pattern of even, green squares flashed along their entire bodies. [FULLY HEALED] it read.

Izar waved a hand in front of Atlas’ face. “Atlas?”

“Izar, what —”

[IZAR ABENE] — A-CLASS — SKILL: ASSESS

The text flickered and pulsed alongside Izar’s box. Atlas reached out and tried to touch it, the throbbing in his skull fizzling away like a bad dream. A smattering of red boxes lined the edge of Izar’s jaw, where a cut from a sharp branch was beading thick droplets of blood.

“You’re an A-Class?”

Izar froze, then glanced frantically over his shoulder. No one was within hearing range. “How did you…”

Atlas shook his head a little and stumbled to his feet. With a sound not unlike the tinkling of bells, a pixellated avatar appeared on the top of Atlas’ Skill window. It was a sleek little cat with big, wide yellow eyes. It slunk along the top, leaning its head out to sniff him.

I see he did not tell you, the avatar said, sticking out a paw and licking it passively. It tilted its head and watched. You are much older than I expected.

“Can he hear you?” Atlas murmured, holding out his hand. The little cat jumped into his palm weightlessly.

“Atlas, who are you talking to?”

Atlas nodded. “It would be easier if he could hear you. I don’t know how long that dragon will remain restrained, and I don’t know what’s happening either.”

With another sharp ting! the weight in avatar solidified in his palm. 

Izar drew back a fraction. Last Bastion was still frantically organizing the offensive against the roaring, spitting dragon across the field. Both they and the remaining hunters were too focused on it to pay Atlas much mind. 

But it was almost like Atlas had tuned it them all out anyway, focused instead of the little animal in his hand.

“Izar Abene,” the cat said, but its mouth did not move. Instead, its whiskers twitched, and it scented the air again. “You are quite powerful for a human.”

“Who are you?” Izar asked. He seemed terribly interested. “Are you a manifestation of Atlas’ Skill?”

That wasn’t totally unheard of. There were hunters with familiars. They were rare, but not impossible.

“That is the closest comparison you will understand.” It blinked at him, and wiggled a little. “Thank you for reviving me. I was once known as Game Master. But perhaps now you would prefer to call me Phoenix.”