Our World Is Now A Dungeon World

The Things That Grew

They looted what they could carry in eleven minutes. Tinned beans, bottled water, paracetamol, bandages, three torches that still worked because they ran on batteries instead of circuits. Riley stuffed everything into a rucksack stripped from a dead delivery driver's locker and tried not to think about the name stitched on the strap.

 

Outside, the voices were closer. Firelight flickered between the terraces south of Old Kent Road, and Riley counted at least a dozen silhouettes moving in a loose column. Someone was shouting instructions. Someone else was crying.

 

"We could join them," Amber said. She stood at the edge of the car park, gold still threading faintly between her fingers. "Strength in numbers."

 

"Numbers attract attention." Riley hoisted the rucksack. "Big groups move slow, argue loud, and fall apart when something hits them."

 

"They're scared, Riley. Same as us."

 

"Which is exactly why they're dangerous." He turned south, away from the firelight. "Scared people do stupid things. We keep moving. We get out of the city before dawn."

 

Miko watched him with an expression he couldn't read. Not anger. Something cooler and more clinical, like she was cataloguing a specimen she hadn't quite classified.

 

"What?" he said.

 

"Nothing. Lead on, commander."

 

The word stung more than it should have. He walked, and they followed, and behind them the column of survivors drifted north while the gap widened into silence.

 

They pushed through Peckham under a moon that had begun its descent. Riley felt the thinning in his chest, a slow bleed of warmth as the lunar angle dropped. His stats hadn't fallen yet, but the reservoir refilled slower with each passing minute.

 

"How long do you have?" Amber asked quietly.

 

Riley checked the moon's position against the rooftops. "Two hours. Maybe less."

 

"That's not enough time to get clear of the city." Miko's voice was flat, factual. "We need shelter before dawn."

 

"I know."

 

"Do you? Because you're leading us south like we have all night."

 

The snap in her tone made Riley stop. "You have a better idea?"

 

"I have math. Distance to city limits, our current pace, your remaining power. The numbers don't work, *commander*."

 

There it was again. That word, Like a blade between the ribs.

 

"We find somewhere defensible," Riley said. "Enclosed. We hole up for the day."

 

"There's a cemetery ahead," Arianna murmured, reading Biscuit's body language. The dog's ears swivelled like satellite dishes. "And a park beyond it. Nunhead."

 

They cut through residential streets where bodies lay in gardens and across driveways. A woman in pyjamas slumped over a fence. A man on his back in the middle of the road, chest caved inward by something with a wide mouth.

 

Biscuit stopped suddenly, hackles rising. A sound reached them from the left—scraping, rhythmic. Something moving behind a garden wall.

 

Riley raised his hand, moonlight gathering. They waited, frozen, as the scraping grew louder. Closer.

 

A cat emerged from the shadows. Normal-sized. It looked at them with luminous eyes, then darted away.

 

Arianna released a shaky breath. "Jesus."

 

"Keep moving," Riley said. But his heart was hammering, and the reservoir in his chest felt shallower than before.

 

The park entrance was two stone pillars wrapped in vegetation that hadn't existed twelve hours ago. Biscuit stopped between them and whined, a high thin sound that vibrated through Arianna's bond and into her bones.

 

"Something wrong," she whispered.

 

"Something's always wrong," Miko said, but her hand was already on her Soul Blade.

 

Riley formed a blade, dimmer now but solid enough. "Stay close. Watch the trees."

 

They entered together, and the wrongness intensified with each step. The path was too quiet. No wind. No night sounds. Just the creak of branches overhead and a smell like sap mixed with copper.

 

Then they saw the trees.

 

Three oaks lined the main path, each trunk grotesquely swollen. Limbs protruded from the bark at wrong angles, arms and legs half-absorbed, skin fused with wood grain in ridges of grey-brown tissue. One of them was still alive. A man, chest-deep in the trunk, face tilted toward the canopy. His mouth opened and closed without sound. Then it found sound.

 

"Please." Barely a whisper. "Please, it hurts."

 

Arianna made a noise like something inside her had cracked. Amber stepped forward, hand raised, golden warmth already forming.

 

"Don't," Riley said. "We can't pull him out without killing him. The tree is the only thing holding his organs in place."

 

Amber's hand trembled. "I can't just—"

 

"We move. Now."

 

"You didn't even hesitate." Miko's voice was cold. "You just decided he's not worth saving."

 

"He's already dead. The tree just hasn't finished yet."

 

"And that's your call to make?"

 

Riley didn't respond.

 

The vines struck before anyone could argue.

 

They whipped from the canopy in green cords thick as cable, and riding them came the squirrels. Five of them, each the size of a house cat, backs bristling with quills that stood rigid as they landed on the path.

 

The nearest one fired. Quills detached from its back in a volley, punching into the tarmac where Miko had been standing a half-second before. Blade Instinct had already moved her. She closed the distance in two strides and Tide Cutter bisected the creature in a rising arc that carried into a second strike on the vine behind it. Each consecutive hit landed harder, the blade singing with accumulated momentum.

 

Riley raised his palm and unleashed the new ability without thinking. Crescent Barrage. Three slivers of moonlight screamed from his hand in rapid succession, each one curving slightly, homing on movement. Two squirrels burst apart. The third volley caught a vine mid-whip and severed it.

 

The reservoir in his chest lurched, suddenly shallower. The cost was higher than he'd expected.

 

Biscuit snatched the fourth squirrel from the air as it leapt for Arianna's throat. Amber planted her feet and the ground beneath her blazed gold. Consecrated Ground. The last squirrel touched the radiant circle and shrieked, fur smouldering, quills wilting. Miko finished it with a backhand cut that didn't even slow her breathing.

 

Riley doubled over, breathing hard. The moonlight in his veins felt thin, stretched.

 

"Riley?" Amber moved toward him.

 

"I'm fine." He straightened, but his hands were shaking. "Just... the Barrage takes more than I thought."

 

Miko's expression didn't change, but something flickered in her eyes. Calculation. "How much more?"

 

"Enough. We need to move."

 

They cleared the park and pushed south through Honor Oak. The sky above the eastern horizon was turning from black to deep violet, not yet dawn but the promise of it. Riley's skin prickled with the wrongness of approaching daylight, a cold awareness that his power was draining like sand through fingers.

 

"There." Arianna pointed to a Victorian church hall with thick walls and barred windows. "Single entrance. Defensible."

 

Riley felt a surge of relief. Shelter. Safety. They could make it.

 

They were crossing the street toward it when Biscuit stopped dead, ears flat.

 

A sound reached them from the next street. Distant at first, then growing. Screaming. Not the distant background noise of a dying city. Close. Raw. Young.

 

"No," Riley said. "We're fifty metres from shelter. We don't have time."

 

"That's a child," Amber said.

 

"We don't know that."

 

"I know that." Arianna's voice was shaking. "Biscuit can hear it. That's a kid screaming."

 

The sound came again, closer now, and beneath it a chittering that made Riley's skin crawl.

 

"We get to the hall," he said. "We secure it. Then—"

 

"Then they're dead." Amber was already moving toward the sound. "I'm not leaving a child to die because you need a nap, Riley."

 

"It's not about—" But she was running, and Arianna was following, and Miko was looking at him with that same clinical expression.

 

"Well?" she said. "Commander?"

 

Riley looked at the church hall. Safety. Survival. Everything he'd been working toward.

 

Then he looked at his hands, where moonlight flickered thin and pale, and broke into a run toward the screaming.

 

They rounded the corner and the scene opened like a wound.

 

Seven people backed against an overturned skip. Two in police stab vests, batons swinging. Three in high-vis jackets wielding lengths of scaffolding pipe. A woman clutching a rucksack. And behind her, pressed into the metal, a child. Eight, maybe nine years old, face white and silent in a way that was worse than screaming.

 

Surrounding them in a shifting, chittering crescent were rats. Dozens. Each one the size of a cat, slick-furred, eyes like wet pebbles catching the last of the moonlight. They moved as a swarm, testing, darting in, pulling back, tightening the noose. One of the officers was bleeding badly from his forearm. A construction worker swung his pipe and connected, sending a rat tumbling, but three more filled the gap.

 

The woman saw them. Her eyes locked on Riley, on the fading moonlight around his hands. "Please! Help us!"

 

Riley felt the reservoir in his chest. Nearly empty. Minutes of power left. Minutes he needed to survive the coming day.

 

The child's eyes found his. Wide. Terrified. Trusting.

 

"Riley." Amber's voice was soft. "We have to."

 

"We don't have time." Miko's tone was matter-of-fact. "Dawn's coming. If you burn what's left—"

 

"I know." Riley stepped forward, moonlight gathering in his palms despite the cost, despite the mathematics of survival screaming at him to walk away. "I know exactly what this costs."

 

He looked at the child one more time.

 

"But we're doing it anyway."