Eventually, the buildings thinned out, and the skyline of twisted dream-ruins gave way to fields and jagged terrain. The edges of Clawdiff came into view.
They were nearly there.
As they skidded to a stop in a cloud of glitter-dust and gravel, the group scrambled out of the vehicle, catching their breath.
It was then they saw them—two figures ahead, barely holding their ground.
An older billy goat, dressed in a flat cap and a worn army jacket, wielded a rusted pitchfork against a slow but persistent horde of zombies. He looked around five hundred, brown-furred, with a handlebar moustache that bristled every time he shouted.
Next to him, a silver-furred wolf, far younger—maybe two hundred, maybe less—stood in boots, shorts, and a T-shirt, cobbled armour strapped to his arms and shoulders. He moved quickly and fiercely, trying to protect the older goat, swiping at the zombies with a makeshift metal pipe.
“Oi! Get back, you rotten walkers! This land’s not yours to take!”
Beside him, the wolf moved like a blur. Every swing of his pipe was precise, his stance protective. His voice was clear, controlled, and commanding:
“Hughes—your flank!”
The goat whipped around, shoving his pitchfork through a jawbreaker ghoul. “I’ve got it, lad! Don’t fuss!”
Celeste held Bonbon closer, her ears dipping. “Um—oh stars—looks like we’re not the only ones out here, then.”
Mezzo grinned, sunglasses sliding down his muzzle. “Field trip just got spicy!”
He gunned the engine again. Tyres screeched, sugar shards flew, and the car blasted forward like a rocket.
WHAM. CRACK. SPLAT.
Two of the advancing zombies burst into clouds of sticky candy and syrupy gore as the front of the car smashed through them. Glitter and rainbow goo rained down in chunks as the vehicle spun into a wild drift. Mezzo yanked the wheel with unnecessary flair and brought the car to a screeching halt, perfectly parallel to a lollipop-shaped signpost.
He threw his arms up. “Did ye see that?! PERFECT parking!”
There was a pause as everyone stared at the crumpled, dented hood now smoking faintly with melted jawbreaker bits.
“MY BABY!” Mezzo cried out, dramatically clutching his chest and falling against the steering wheel in mock agony. “She had so much to live for!”
Arcade leaned out of the passenger door, quills on end, and vomited noisily into a pile of melted sherbet. He spat, wiped his mouth, and muttered weakly, “Statistically speaking… we should all be dead. I hate being wrong.”
Ray barked a laugh, twirling her lollipop like a knife. “Pathetic. One drift and you lose your lunch? Amateur.”
Celeste, meanwhile, was still recovering. Dizzy and pale, she carefully unwound Bonbon from the carrier, who clapped happily and mumbled something in Caerfaenic about “fun wheels.” Celeste swayed a little as she staggered out of the car.
“You,” she whispered breathlessly, “are never—ever—driving again.”
Mezzo wiped a fake tear dramatically, still beaming. “Worth it.”
Bonbon tugged Celeste’s cheek, pointing to the goat and wolf still fighting off the last of the horde.
Celeste steadied herself, her voice small but firm. “Right… we’re not finished yet.” She squared her shoulders and reached to summon Starlight and Starbrite.
Nothing happened.
She blinked.
“Oh.”
She tried again.
This time one katana flashed into existence—only for her to fumble it immediately and nearly drop it point-first into the dirt.
“Sorry! Sorry, I had it, I just—didn’t.”
Mezzo, trying to look far cooler than the situation allowed, threw out a paw and summoned Infernal Riff.
It appeared the wrong way around.
He yelped and nearly sliced his own hand open before jerking it backward. “Mother of stars! Alright—no one saw that.”
Ray stared at both of them in disbelief. “This is the team.”
Up ahead, the older goat rammed his pitchfork through another zombie’s chest—only for the thing to twitch, knit itself back together in a sticky crackle, and lurch upright again.
The wolf smashed a pipe into another one’s face. Its head burst apart into sugar fragments—
then reformed with a horrible, glitching shudder.
The group went still.
Arcade’s nausea vanished instantly. “They’re regenerating.”
Sure enough, no matter how much Hughes and the wolf battered them, the zombies just kept pulling themselves back together—candy flesh crawling into place, syrupy wounds resealing, broken limbs reforming in twitching, pixelated spasms.
Hughes looked over at them then, properly seeing the children, the toddler, the panic, the complete disaster of their arrival.
For one second he just stared like he genuinely did not know what help they were meant to be.
Then he shouted, “If ye’re not useless, get the children out of here!”
Ray rolled her shoulders and stepped forward, hammer flickering into one hand. “Or,” she said, “we help them out. They might pay us.”
Arcade turned on her in disbelief. “You’re thinking of money right now?”
Ray shrugged. “What? Surviving costs things.”
The wolf—still fighting, still controlled—did not even look at them as he barked, “Either fight or fall back, but decide now!”
Arcade slapped at his wrist. “Chip. Activate.”
C.H.I.P. unfolded from his bracer in a shimmer of light, antenna spinning. He took one look at the scene and immediately recoiled mid-air.
“No,” he said flatly. “I don’t want to help.”
Arcade gawked. “What?”
C.H.I.P. crossed his tiny arms. “Before I do anything, I would like formal acknowledgment that I was right about the cores.”
Arcade stared at him, aghast. “This is blackmail.”
“This is vindication.”
Another zombie lurched toward Hughes.
Arcade threw both paws up. “Fine! You were right about the cores!”
C.H.I.P. brightened at once. “Accepted. Deploying assistance.”
Ray dragged a paw down her face.
And then, with all the grace and cohesion of a troupe of concussed circus performers, they staggered into the fray.
Ray was first, sprinting ahead with Heartbreaker blazing.
Celeste followed, one katana finally steady in hand and the other flickering uncertainly into existence half a second late.
Mezzo came in from the side, still fixing his grip on Infernal Riff and muttering, “Pointy end away from me, pointy end away from me—”
Arcade stumbled after them with C.H.I.P. buzzing overhead, still looking mildly offended by the whole situation.
Ray glanced back once, took in the full disaster of her team, and facepalmed so hard it echoed.
Then she turned and brought her hammer down on the nearest regenerating zombie with a crack like thunder.
Arcade was the first to reach them, his eyes flashing as he commanded C.H.I.P. into full combat form—a gleaming, magnet-like robot with grey-patterned plating and thrusters that sparked on activation. With a commanding gesture, Arcade charged into battle, flanking the silver wolf and slamming into a cluster of candy-infected zombies, electricity arcing across their sticky bodies.
Ray, ever itching for a fight, joined him in a blur of motion. Her hammer materialized mid-stride, glowing with a purplish hue, and she smashed into the nearest foe with a guttural yell, reducing it to splinters of hardened fudge and syrup.
Before she could even catch her breath, something inside the weapon pulsed—mana thrumming beneath her grip. The hammer suddenly felt heavier, vibrating with an unstable charge.
“Oh, that’s… new,” she muttered.
Instinct took over before reason. She raised the hammer high overhead and brought it down with all her strength.
“Crater Smash!”
The impact detonated like a miniature explosion, sending a shockwave rippling out in a circle. The ground cracked beneath her feet, candy shards and sticky syrup blasting into the air. Smaller enemies were flung back, dazed and stumbling, a few completely stunned.
Ray blinked, gripping the hammer tightly, chest heaving. “…Okay. I definitely meant to do that.”
Celeste and Mezzo split off to deal with the stragglers—Mezzo, despite his earlier dramatics, was swift and brutal, using his sharp reflexes and hybrid strength to outpace and disable smaller threats. Celeste used a mix of agility and quick thinking, kicking over a candy bin to trip up a liquorice-wrapped zombie before delivering a solid heel stomp to its sugar skull.
But as she moved, something strange stirred deep in her chest.
Her core pulsed once—hard enough to steal her breath.
A blue thread of light flickered beneath her skin, not toward Lumina, not toward Bonbon, not toward any of the others she already knew—
toward the older billy goat.
Hughes.
Celeste stumbled for half a second, eyes widening as she felt that strange reaching sensation again, like her core was stretching toward him on instinct, testing the air, searching for something familiar it could not quite grasp.
“What…?” she whispered.
The feeling vanished almost as quickly as it came, swallowed by the chaos of the fight—but it left her shaken, her heart hammering for reasons that had nothing to do with the zombies.
Meanwhile, back by the car, Lumina stayed close to Bonbon, who was still sitting in the wrap on the ground and munching on a strawberry. Lumina summoned her shield—a glowing, translucent heart that shimmered with soft pastel light—just in time to deflect a splash of acidic jelly hurled their way. The shield hissed slightly, but held strong.
Skye knelt beside them, fingers drawing a card from his launcher. A delicate healing fairy blinked into existence, its wings like sunlit glass. It floated to Celeste first, casting a gentle glow that soothed the bruises on her arm before zipping off toward Arcade, offering support wherever needed.
The battle was fast but chaotic, the brightly coloured gore painting the cobbled path in streaks of candy blood. But together, the group worked in rhythm—unspoken, instinctive, hybrid-born synergy.
And that was when the difference became obvious.
Bracer slammed his length of piping through a zombie’s jaw with enough force to cave its face in. Hughes drove his pitchfork through another one’s chest and kicked it backwards into the dirt.
Both monsters dropped.
Then twitched.
Their candy-flesh quivered, crackled, and stitched itself back together in a wet, sugary shudder. Broken jaws reformed. Split limbs dragged themselves back into place. Syrupy wounds sealed over as if the damage had never happened.
Bracer stared. “Again?”
A moment later, Ray’s hammer came down on one of the same creatures.
This time it didn’t get back up.
Instead, the body glitched, flickered, and burst apart into sparkling pixels that scattered into the air like broken code.
+300 EXP
+Candy Bark (Common Drop)
Everyone froze for half a second.
Hughes narrowed his eyes.
Bracer looked from the fading EXP to the next zombie stumbling toward him.
Then Celeste cut one down with a clean slash of her katana.
That one dissolved too.
Mezzo shoulder-checked another into the dirt, finished it with Infernal Riff, and it burst into light and candy drops instead of reforming.
Arcade’s ears shot up. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
Bracer knocked another zombie flat with his pipe. It immediately started crawling itself back together.
Ray flattened it with Heartbreaker before it could rise.
It exploded into pixels.
Bracer looked at them then—really looked at them—with a new kind of wariness.
“…Only you lot can kill them,” he said.
“Nope,” Arcade snapped, backing up from a reforming ghoul. “I do not approve of that.”
The older billy goat, now free from the worst of the horde, adjusted his flat cap and gave a wary nod of thanks. The silver wolf—Bracer—panting and holding a jagged piece of piping like a sword, stood with one arm out protectively.
Celeste glanced around as the dust—sugary and sparkling—settled around them. She clutched Bonbon closer, ears still ringing.
“Is… everyone alright?” she asked softly, breath shaky but steadying.
Bonbon raised her jelly-smeared hands. “Ffresin!” she shouted, delighted.
Ray flicked melted taffy off her cheek with her thumb and groaned. “Next fight, someone else can take goo duty. I’m not your mop.”
Mezzo leaned on the crumpled sports car, grinning wide. “So… lads—what’s the story? You two runnin’ a zombie farm out here or what?”
Bracer gave him a long, exhausted look. Up close, he looked even younger than Celeste first thought—too young to be carrying himself with that kind of tension.
“We were trying to get out of Clawdiff,” he said at last, voice rough but controlled. “There were others with us.”
His ears flattened.
“They got dragged away.”
The words hit the air like dropped stone.
Celeste’s grip tightened on Bonbon.
The older billy goat gave a final grunt, shook syrup off his pitchfork, and muttered, “Young fools with sugar for brains…” He stomped past them without ceremony, flat cap askew, and rapped the bent hood of the sports car with his cane.
“Bloody sacrilege, what you did to this engine,” he grumbled, wrench already in paw. With practiced precision, he bent over the bonnet, glasses sliding down his nose as he began tinkering.
The group traded weary looks as the hum of tools filled the air.
