“She’ll see me,” I said. “Now, Strange, show me what the family’s been doing to fight the Invaders during my unintended absence. Just the highlights, for now. I’ll catch up on the details as we go along. Just show me what I need to know.”

Visions appeared, emerging from Strange’s crimson glow. Shifting scenes of golden-armoured family in running fights with Loathly One drones, in the nightmarish streets of ghoulvilles. I saw dozens of armoured forms taking on hundreds of drones and killing everything that moved that wasn’t family. The drones were often horribly misshapen, monsters with only the barest touch of humanity left in them. The Droods beat them down with golden fists and tore the drones limb from limb. A quick death was the only mercy they had left to offer. They stormed through the narrow streets, their golden armour shining bright in the sharp, painful light of the ghoulville. They destroyed buildings, tearing them apart and pulling them down through brute strength, to be sure they hadn’t missed anyone hiding inside, and afterwards they set fire to the ruins.

Whole towns went up in flames. They say fire purifies.

Sometimes the drones were already dead and decaying, only kept moving by the unnatural energies within them. Sometimes they looked just like you or me. They came out into the streets, pleading and crying and protesting their innocence. But they were so far gone they’d forgotten how to sound and act as people do. Especially the children. The armoured Droods killed them all. They had to be Loathly Ones, or they wouldn’t be in a ghoulville.

Sometimes family members dropped their armour, to vomit, or cry, or just sit on a pavement, holding themselves and rocking back and forth.

We’ve never seen ourselves as killers. That’s not the Drood way. We’ve always preferred to operate behind the scenes, making small changes here and there . . . to prevent the family as a whole having to do things like this. Secret wars are one thing; mass slaughter quite another. But we’re Droods, and we’ve always been able to do the hard, necessary things. To protect humanity.

I just hoped we didn’t get a taste for it.

I saw my family destroy towers in the ghoulvilles; huge, unnatural alien structures, part technological and part organic. Sometimes the towers screamed as they fell. They fell and they fell, and yet somehow there were always more of them . . .

The visions stopped. I stood silently, thinking. The Sarjeant cleared his throat in a meaningful way.

“We are further handicapped by our need to keep all of this secret from the general populace. They can’t be allowed to know what’s happening. We’re keeping politicians and governments informed, to a point, and they’re all cooperating. To one extent or another. Worldwide panic and chaos is in no one’s best interests.”