The command room shook again as a second tremor went through the building, and dust fell from the ceiling.
Lyra'xis was already pulling overlays from the walls and gave orders to the officers, while Reidar turned toward the door without waiting for permission.
"Where are you going?" Lyra'xis said.
"My family," Reidar said. "You said they're in the building across the settlent. I'm going there before this gets worse."
Lyra'xis didn't argue because there was nothing to argue about; the portals were opening; the city was about to be flooded with monsters, and Reidar's army was already deployed across Kingsgate to fight the church. Arguing with a level 557 summoner about his priorities during a crisis was a waste of ti that Lyra'xis didn't have.
"Go," she said. "I will coordinate the defense from here."
Reidar nodded, then looked at Lyra'xis. "I'll redirect part of my forces to the portal once I know what we're dealing with." He paused. "Keep the barriers up and get every survivor behind them. Make them help from a distance, if they can. I'll be back."
He left the building only to see that the settlent was in chaos. Fear was overriding every rational thought, and people ran in directions that made no sense because running felt better than standing still.
Survivors flooded the streets between the prefabricated shelters and the repurposed industrial buildings, many of them carrying children or dragging sacks of belongings they didn't need but couldn't bring themselves to leave behind.
A man shoved past a woman holding an infant, knocking her into a wall, and kept going without looking back. Three teenagers sprinted down a side alley with faces painted in terror.
The sources of panic for these people were two. The portals that had opened across Kingsgate, which were visible even from the settlent, and Reidar's summons. But the portals were far away, inside the city proper, not inside the settlent.
The more imdiate source of fear was Reidar's own army.
His summons were still moving through the streets of Kingsgate, hunting down church mbers, and the survivors in the settlent had been hearing reports about them for the past hour.
Undead soldiers, giant insects, and flying demons. To the people who had spent months hiding behind barriers and praying for safety, the appearance of 50,000 monsters inside their city was not the result of a rescue operation. It was the apocalypse happening again.
Reidar didn't bla them. He didn't have ti to bla them anyway.
He whistled, and one of his Terror Condors dropped from the sky, its white feathers trailing shadow and ash as it landed in the clearing and sent the nearest survivors scrambling for cover.
Reidar climbed onto its back and directed the bird toward the building Lyra'xis had pointed to—his old company's building.
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