Chapter 10: The Hunted

The cathedral's bells hadn't rung in thirty years, but they were ringing now—a deep, mournful toll that echoed through the pre-dawn darkness like a funeral dirge. Arthur jerked awake from his bedroll, divine senses immediately screaming warnings as his interface flared to life.

HOSTILE ENTITIES DETECTED: MULTIPLE MAGICAL SUPPRESSION FIELDS ACTIVE THREAT CLASSIFICATION: JANITOR OPERATIVES RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE EVACUATION

"Everyone up!" Helena's voice cut through the cathedral like a whip crack. "They've found us!"

The sanctuary erupted into controlled chaos as the forgotten community moved with the practiced efficiency of people who'd learned to run at a moment's notice. Bedrolls disappeared, personal belongings vanished into hidden pockets and concealed bags, and within seconds the nave looked abandoned once again.

Arthur struggled to his feet, still groggy from the deep communion with the Keeper. Through the stained glass windows, he could see dark shapes moving in the street—too coordinated to be random, too purposeful to be anything but a strike team.

"How many?" Kael demanded, his revolver already in his hands as he took position near one of the windows.

"Six outside that I can see," Zara reported, her fingers flying across her tablet's interface. "But Arthur, there's something wrong. My scanners can't get a proper read on them. It's like they're... dampening everything around them."

Arthur extended his divine senses and immediately understood what she meant. The approaching figures weren't just hiding from technological detection—they were creating dead zones in reality itself, spaces where magic simply failed to function properly.

"Nullifiers," he breathed, remembering something from the Keeper's revelations. "The Janitors' elite operatives. They don't just suppress magic—they erase it."

WARNING: DIVINE ABILITIES COMPROMISED EFFECTIVENESS REDUCED BY 70% IN PROXIMITY TO NULLIFIERS STANDARD COMBAT TACTICS INADVISABLE

"We need to go," Helena said urgently, leading a group of her people toward a concealed entrance behind the altar. "There are old catacombs beneath the cathedral, tunnels that connect to the storm drains. We can—"

The front doors exploded inward.

What stepped through the shattered oak wasn't quite human anymore. The Janitor operative wore the face of a middle-aged man in an expensive suit, but there was something fundamentally wrong with the proportions—too tall, too thin, as if someone had stretched humanity until it was ready to snap. Where his eyes should have been, there were only pools of absolute darkness that seemed to drink in the light around them.

"Citizens of Calathon," the creature spoke with a voice like static electricity, "you are harboring a terrorist cell within this structure. Surrender the individuals known as Arthur Tala'thel, Kaelen Bronzebeard, and Zara Nimblefingers, and the rest of you will be relocated to appropriate facilities."

Arthur felt his divine power guttering like a candle in a hurricane. The nullifier's presence was actively eating away at his connection to the Keeper, turning his abilities into pale shadows of their former strength.

"Relocated," Kael spat, raising his revolver. "That's a fancy way of saying 'processed for elimination.'"

The dwarf's shot rang out through the cathedral, the rune-etched bullet trailing silver fire as it struck the nullifier center mass. For a moment, Arthur dared to hope—but the creature barely staggered, the magical enhancement of Kael's ammunition simply dissolving against its aura of negation.

"Resistance is futile and counterproductive," the nullifier stated calmly, raising one elongated hand. Where it pointed, the very air began to twist and darken. "Submit to processing."

More shapes poured through the ruined doorway—five additional nullifiers, each one a slight variation on the theme of humanity stretched beyond recognition. They moved with perfect coordination, spreading out to cover all exits while maintaining overlapping fields of magical suppression.

Arthur tried to channel divine light, but what emerged was barely a flicker—not enough to harm a mouse, let alone creatures designed to hunt champions of the gods.

"The tunnels!" Helena shouted. "Everyone to the catacombs!"

But as her people began to flee toward the concealed entrance, one of the nullifiers simply pointed at the wall. Reality twisted around its gesture, and the hidden door ceased to exist—not destroyed, but edited out of the world as if it had never been there at all.

"All exits have been sealed," the lead nullifier announced. "Begin collection protocols."

That's when Arthur realized the true horror of their situation. The nullifiers weren't here to kill them—they were here to capture them. The Janitors wanted them alive, probably for interrogation, possibly for public execution as an example to any other magical communities that might be thinking of resistance.

"Kael," he said quietly, his mind racing through increasingly desperate options. "That tracer Sarah placed on you. Can you activate it somehow?"

The dwarf's eyes widened with understanding. "Maybe. But even if I could send a signal, who's going to receive it? Sarah's been dead for two years."

"The evidence she hid," Arthur pressed. "If the tracer was meant to lead someone to it, maybe it's not just a passive beacon. Maybe it's connected to some kind of automated system."

Zara looked up from her tablet, hope flickering in her eyes despite their desperate situation. "A dead man's switch! If the tracer stops moving for too long, or if it detects certain threat conditions, it activates and broadcasts the hidden data."

"Theoretical computer science," Kael muttered, but he was already reaching for something concealed beneath his coat. "But I suppose it's better than letting these things drag us off to whatever passes for Janitor processing facilities."

The nullifiers were advancing now, moving with the inexorable patience of predators who knew their prey had nowhere to run. Arthur could feel his divine connection weakening further with each step they took, the Keeper's presence fading to a whisper he could barely detect.

Around them, the forgotten community pressed together in the center of the nave, children clinging to adults who couldn't protect them, elderly faces set with the resignation of people who'd been failed by every system that had ever claimed to help them.

Lucy was there, the little girl Arthur had healed, looking up at him with absolute trust that made his heart break.

"We can't let them take these people," he said to his companions.

"Arthur," Zara said gently, "look around. Our magic doesn't work, their technology is beyond anything I've ever seen, and we're outnumbered six to one by creatures designed specifically to hunt people like us."

"I know." Arthur stepped forward, placing himself between the advancing nullifiers and the community they were trying to protect. "But sometimes you have to try anyway."

DIVINE CONNECTION: CRITICALLY WEAK NULLIFIER SUPPRESSION: 85% AND CLIMBING RECOMMENDED ACTION: SURRENDER KEEPER'S WHISPER: "FAITH IS NOT ABOUT POWER"

The lead nullifier stopped just outside arm's reach, its pool-dark eyes fixed on Arthur with inhuman patience. "Arthur Tala'thel. Designation: Divine Champion, Keeper of Lost Things. You will come with us for processing."

"No," Arthur said quietly.

"Resistance will result in collateral termination of bystanders."

Arthur felt the last of his divine power flickering out, the connection to the Keeper reduced to nothing more than a memory of warmth. He was just an elf again, just a failed medical student working a dead-end job, facing creatures that could erase magic itself from the world.

But as he looked back at the faces of the people depending on him—Helena with her weathered dignity, Lucy with her innocent trust, all of them forgotten by a world that preferred its magic sanitized and controlled—Arthur realized something the nullifiers didn't understand.

Faith wasn't about having power over others. It was about choosing to stand up even when you had no power at all.

"You want me?" he said, spreading his arms wide. "Come and take me."

The nullifier reached for him with one elongated hand, its touch promising the complete erasure of everything Arthur had become since his resurrection.

That's when Kael activated the tracer.

The device hidden in the dwarf's coat began to pulse with electromagnetic energy, broadcasting on frequencies that hadn't been used since Sarah Martinez's death two years ago. Across the city, automated systems that had been waiting patiently in digital hibernation suddenly came online.

EMERGENCY BEACON ACTIVATED UPLOADING: MARTINEZ FILES BROADCAST INITIATED: ALL NETWORKS TIMER ACTIVATED: 10 MINUTES TO FULL DISCLOSURE

"Well," Kael said with grim satisfaction as alarms began wailing throughout Calathon and every news network in the city received an anonymous data dump containing two years' worth of evidence about the Janitor conspiracy, "if we're going down, we're taking them with us."

The nullifiers paused, their perfect coordination disrupted as they received new orders through whatever communication system they used. The lead operative's head tilted at an unnatural angle, as if listening to voices only it could hear.

"Priority shift," it announced. "Data breach containment takes precedence. Terminate all witnesses."

Arthur felt a moment of pure terror as six pairs of void-dark eyes turned toward the helpless community behind him. These people had done nothing wrong except offer sanctuary to the forgotten and cast out.

They were about to die because he had tried to save them.

But as the nullifiers raised their hands to begin the slaughter, Arthur heard something that made his fading divine senses sing with recognition—the sound of helicopter rotors approaching fast, and beneath that, the distinctive whine of military vehicles moving at high speed.

"Cavalry's coming," Zara breathed, staring at her tablet in amazement. "Multiple agencies responding to the data broadcast. FBI, ATF, something called the Department of Extranormal Affairs, and... oh my god, is that the National Guard?"

The nullifiers were no longer advancing. For the first time since they'd arrived, they seemed uncertain, their perfect coordination fractured by the need to deal with rapidly changing tactical circumstances.

Arthur felt a flicker of divine warmth return as the creatures' suppression fields wavered. Not much—barely enough to light a candle—but it was something.

"Time to go," he said to his companions. "All of us."

The next few minutes were chaos incarnate as federal agents stormed the cathedral, military units cordoned off the surrounding blocks, and news helicopters circled overhead like electronic vultures. In the confusion, Arthur and his allies managed to slip away through storm drains that Zara had mapped weeks earlier, leading Helena's community to temporary safety in an abandoned subway station.

But as they caught their breath in the underground darkness, Arthur knew this was only the beginning. The Janitors had revealed themselves, but they were far from defeated. If anything, they'd be more dangerous now that their existence was public knowledge.

The real war was just starting.

And somewhere in the city above, five more strike teams were already moving toward their new positions, ready to hunt down the champions of the forgotten with everything they had.