Having put on the breathing mask that Dax rented from Cascade pier, I crouched deep underwater, in a small lake inlet, monitoring the situation through the V-ring’s holographic display.

  The carnage of "Operation Carb-Load" was still in full effect.

  Galateya lay sprawled on her back, limbs wide, looking less like a dragon-knight and more like a starfish that had given up on the concept of movement. Sage was curled into a fox-ball nearby, petting the dragon softly.

  My victory seemed assured.

  I had an underwater hiding place. I had a magitek frame built by a clever magpie that could help me bench-press a truck.

  Unfortunately for me, in about twenty more minutes, the scene being shown to me by V-ring cameras changed.

  Galateya sat up. She no longer moved like she was in a post-food coma. Beside her, Sage uncurled.

  She shook herself, and I watched the lethargy vanish. Their stomachs weren't massively spherical anymore, only somewhat curvy.

  Of course. They were just like Shady, their alien, Omnid metabolism capable of burning through calories like a nuclear furnace.

  The girls stretched, adjusted their paintball rifle straps, looked at each other, nodded, and broke into a sprint.

  They headed straight for the small lake and stopped at the edge.

  [He’s somewhere in the water.] Sage stated, her words projected in my eyes as transcribed by Kawathra’s magitek.

  [A very unwise idea.] Galateya grinned.

  She joined her hands in the air and then slowly began to part them. The water around me lurched and then the small lake began parting… Moses style.

  In a few minutes, I became exposed, standing between two massive walls of wobbling water.

  So much for hiding underwater.

  “Found youuuuuu!” Sage laughed. Galateya looked victorious, trembling slightly as she held the cleaved water.

  I pulled the diving mask off my face, dropped the oxygen tank and took off running.

  “‘Das right! Run Forrest, run!” Sage hollered from behind me as Galateya released the lake back into place, the rushing water nearly knocking me down as I climbed onto the rocky shore.

  “We’re gonna get-t-cha!” the Skinwalker yelled.

  My strides ate up the forest floor, artificial muscles propelling me over fallen logs.

  I felt fast. I felt powerful.

  I was deluding myself. I had no more gun units left to throw at them, no more friends nearby. Well, there was still Kawathra in the Corpse Seeker, but that would be going overboard, like bringing a tank to win a tennis match.

  CRACK!

  A lance of solid ice shattered the tree trunk inches from my face, showering my vision in bark dust. I skidded to a halt. Galateya stood on a ridge to my left, violet eyes burning. She didn't say a word. She just manifested another spear.

  I scrambled away to my left.

  THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.

  A rhythmic staccato of paintball fire erupted from the underbrush, trailing and then hitting me. Orange hexagons flared into existence around my midsection as the hexasuit beneath my armor absorbed the kinetic impact.

  Thirty minutes later, the feeling of invincibility became replaced by the distinct sensation of being a sheepdog's favorite chew toy.

  The magitek frame didn't get tired, but my human body inside it was starting to feel the strain. Almost six hours of evading had taken their toll. I was starting to slow down, to make mistakes. Plus, half of my mind was deeply preoccupied with my space venture, the Slayer’s Sword capital ship nearly in my grasp.

  Galateya emerged from the left, scales shifting to black-silver. Her mane had compressed itself into sharp crystal spines.

  Sage appeared from the right on all fours. Red fur bristling. Tail swishing. Sky-blue eyes reflecting the dying rays of sunset like polished gems.

  They had me cornered.

  The forest edge pressed close on all sides, trees forming a natural arena. I could try to run, but which direction?

  Wait.

  Every attempt to deviate for the past hour was met with immediate, violent correction. I realised that I was being funneled into a narrowing valley ahead where the trees grew too close together and the light seemed to die.

  I looked closer at the treeline. The shadows were wrong. Too deep. The light filtering through the canopy had taken on a strange quality, featuring neither sunset orange, nor twilight purple. Something was really off about the valley they had chased me into, the edges skewered by another… unexpected dimension.

  The colorful paintball hits I'd accumulated over the hunt emitted a faint bioluminescence. Like I'd been marked. Tagged. Claimed.

  The air tasted metallic, like old rot and also deeply wrong on some fundamental level. What was going on?

  "Nowhere left to run," Galateya announced, raising her rifle.

  "Trapped like a sad, glowing mouse," Sage added, a devious grin spreading across her vulpine features. "A disco mouse. A rave mouse. You're basically a walking glow stick, bro."

  Something felt VERY orchestrated about this forest. They totally herded me here.

  Toward...

  Toward what? …Darkfall?!

  I swallowed nervously and backed toward the far edge of the clearing, keeping both hunters in my peripheral vision. The forest between the cliffs looked way too gloomy and foggy. Unnaturally so. The trees grew closer together, branches interlocking to block the dying light.

  Then I saw something odd. A symbol.

  Carved into a tree trunk. Simple. Geometric… A stylized fox head composed of angular lines and curves.

  “The fuck?” I uttered.

  “Keep moving.” Sage growled somewhere nearby.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  I spun. She wasn’t there. Only Galateya stood visible, rifle aimed at me, her figure dark. “Keep running!” she snarled.

  Not wanting to become even more painted, I ran down into the ravine between jagged cliffs.

  The trees featured more freaky symbols. Fox-themed, old, grimy Christmas decorations hanging from branches on crude twine. Fox skulls. Tiny wooden carvings. Bone fragments arranged in spiral patterns that dangled and swayed in a breeze.

  “Very Briar Witch aesthetic,” I noted. “Except foxes instead of stick figures.”

  “Spooked yet?” Sage whispered from somewhere VERY close, almost as if she was right by my ear.

  Maybe she was. I swatted the air and hit nothing.

  "You led me here," I stated, "this wasn't a random pursuit. This is the edge of Darkfall valley."

  "Clever boy! Give the glowing man-stick a prize! What gave it away?" Sage giggled from the darkness.

  "The clearing. The timing. The way the shadows are off somehow. The…" I gestured at the symbols. "...blindingly obvious 'WELCOME TO MY MURDER FOREST’ vibes."

  “Keep going!” Sage stated. “Experience the full Sagetopia adventure! Complete with gift shop and commemorative t-shirts! Well, no gift shop. Or t-shirts. I'll give you a personalized shirt later, after I uncover your real size. Here we mostly have terror. But like, fun terror! Go on!”

  An invisible hand shoved me forward.

  I decided to go for it, curious to see what the magic fox made here and made my way deeper into the foggy gloom.

  Bone chimes clacked together with a dry, hollow sound. Crude carvings of foxes and foxes made from reeds and straw were nailed to the trees, some with too many eyes, some with none. It looked less like a national park and more like the set of a horror movie where the found footage is the only survivor.

  A massive archway loomed ahead, constructed from driftwood and rusted car parts lashed together with glowing red wire. A sign swung creakily from the apex.

  SAGETOPIA

  Population: 14’255

  I stared at the sign. The letters looked like they were painted on with fresh blood. My mind prickled for a second and the numbers rearranged themselves to 14’257.

  “Is that a magical counter?” I asked.

  “Yus. It counts souls,” Sage stated. “Just added you and Teya to the skulk.”

  I stepped under the gate. The air inside Sagetopia was heavy, charged with a static that made the hairs on my arms stand up beneath the hexasuit.

  The foggy forest suddenly came alive. Shadows stretched across the dirt path. Long, distorted shadows that didn't match the trees.

  Then, the shadows detached themselves.

  Eyes bloomed all around me. Dozens of them. Glowing in the darkness between the trees. Silver-blue like Sage's, yellows, browns, greens, grays. Watching.

  They moved in small circles, drifting patterns, following random movements.

  "What the fuck?" I asked.

  "The magic of Sagetopia!" the invisible Skinwalker announced with theatrical pride. "My domain! My territory! My lovely, creepy, totally-not-concerning home base! Population: me, fourteen thousand fox souls, and whatever unfortunate fools wander in looking for directions! Ke Ke Ke."

  “Your… domain?” I asked. “I thought that the tower above the cafe was your wizardly base.”

  “Nah, bruh! The cafe tower loft was just the beginning, the alpha test! This is the beta, twice as magical, thrice as swank!” Sage’s voice came from somewhere on my left side.

  Galateya moved on my right side, boxing me in.

  “Vamps have brooding castles with gothic parapets and winged gargoyles,” Sage explained. “Dragons have piles of gold in Lonely mountains. And I has…” She made a dramatic pause before resuming with a giggle. “An abandoned logging camp that I’ve been meticulously converting into my foxxxyrrific, personal playground! Very Pinterest-core! Very DIY! Spooki aesthetic on a budget!”

  The eyes in the fog multiplied. Ten, twenty, thirty, hundreds.

  More eyes flashed around me, leering at me, glowing silver from within like car lights in the fog.

  “Those are definitely not real foxes,” I noted.

  “Yass,” Sage chirp-yipped. “Them’s my lovely fox souls, manifestations, echoes. The collective skulk coming out to play.”

  I swallowed nervously.

  “And they’re extrrrrrra-currrioussss about you, A-man. They want to know if you taste as good as you smell. Ke ke ke. Spoiler alert! You smell like poor life choices! Most yummy-licious! I do wonder how many licks it’ll take to get to the real you!”

  I took another step and Dax’s boot hit something solid.

  It was a wooden, slightly rotting sign, erected at the forest edge. Carved letters spelled out a dire warning:

  PRIVATE PROPERTY of Fox Sea Skulk Co.

  Trespassers will be eaten. Survivors will be questioned.

  Questions will involve teeth and claws.

  Gift shop is closed. We apologise for the inconvenience.

  “Very charming,” I commented.

  “Ye. It do be like ‘dat,” Sage bounded somewhere nearby. “Carved the sign myself! Extra-welcoming energy! I was going to add ‘Free Wi-Fi’, but then I remembered that we don’t got Wi-fi out here. Or electricity. Or plumbing. Really need to work on them amenities. Maybe you and your many friends can lend a helpful hand with that, ya?”

  “Sure,” I replied with a small shudder.

  The darkness swallowed me as I walked deeper in. The fox-themed symbols grew denser; carved into every trunk, hanging from every branch. More fox skulls. Wooden talismans. Bone wind chimes twinkling eerily all around.

  And the ocean of fox eyes followed.

  I moved faster. The magitek frame kept my gait smooth, while my human brain screamed increasingly urgent warnings about bad decisions and horror movie logic.

  Buildings emerged from the gloom.

  Shacks. Cabins. Rustic wooden structures in various states of decay. Some were merely very weathered, paint peeling and roofs sagging. Others actively collapsing, walls tilted at unhealthy angles, windows shattered into jagged teeth. All covered in the same fox symbols. Carved. Painted. Burned into the wood.

  An abandoned village. Or the corpse of one, to be more precise. Radiating foxness, pure and absolute.

  The main path led between two rows of buildings toward a central square. I saw more symbols there. Larger ones. Painted on the ground in spiraling patterns. A crude map? A summoning circle? An elaborate fox-themed hopscotch court? It was hard to tell in the gloom and fog and the gun-scanner sensors were going berserk, flickering with static bursts.

  The perspective seemed off, wrong somehow.

  I attempted to make the gun unit camera measure the distance between the edge of the village and the trees. The readout said 90 meters. Then it flashed to 900 meters. Then 3928 meters. Some incredible fuckery was going on in this place.

  Movement in my peripheral vision.

  Fox-shaped shadows slid between the buildings. They moved wrong, too flowy, wobbly, like foxes made from ferromagnetic liquid and static.

  "Take him apart!" Sage ordered.

  One of the fox-shadows suddenly silently lunged at me.

  I yelped as a shadow passed through me. My HUD glitched, colors inverting, depth perception vanishing into a wash of white noise.

  CRUNCH.

  Then Galateya drop-kicked me in the back.

  The impact sent me careening. My hexasuit flared brilliant gold, absorbing the kinetic force of the kick. I crashed into a pile of rusted tractor parts.

  More shadows passed through me, disorienting me, glitching the hud.

  Another attack. From behind this time. Then, as I tried to clear my vision something grabbed the oversized chin and face and yanked hard. The prosthetic tore free with a ripping sound, coming off my face.

  "Fuck," I gasped.

  I stumbled forward, kneading my aching face and blinking. Without the hud viewscreen I could no longer see in the dark as well. The abandoned village became a hundred times as eerie, practically submerged in wisps of silver fog dancing between the dead buildings and trees.

  Somewhere in the darkness, Sage's voice echoed with glee. "I got THE CHIN! O-ho-ho! Someone lost his magnificent chin! Oh no! How will you look brooding and excessively masculine now?!"

  Then Galateya was on me. The dragon drove an ice sword directly into the joint of my left pauldron. With a savage twist and a roar of effort, she wrenched the magisteel plate free with dark dragonclaws. Metal shrieked. Sparks flew.

  "Hey! That's a rental!" I shouted.

  “Liar!” Galateya accused. “Kawathra made it for you!”

  "The billing department is closed!" Invisible Sage yelled, leaping onto my chest.

  Invisible claws grabbed the edge of the chest piece. "Heave!"

  They pulled together, the fox from the front, the dragon from the back. The magnetic seals whined and failed. My chest armor was ripped away and tossed into the darkness.

  “No more gym-bro eight-pack for you, mister!” Sage giggled, making a licking sound somewhere to my left.

  The shoulder plating tore away. Then the arm guards. The fox-shadows and the two Omnids worked in coordinated attacks.

  Systematic. Methodical. Like pack hunters taking down prey too large for any single predator.

  I tried to fight back. Threw an elbow at one shadow. My fist passed through it like smoke.

  Invisible claws raked my side, making the hexagonal shield flash erratically.

  "STRIP! STRIP! STRIP!" Sage chanted from the darkness. "The foxes demand tribute! Show us your real yummy human musculature!"