by Xander Boyce
“Last is me, I’m a red like you...well, except I’m not a spell caster. I have a bunch of reds that allow me to do some interesting things to my melee strikes, but mostly they just make me hit harder. I’ve got an orange buff that redirects some of the force from attacks away from me and a shield that blocks incoming kinetic damage.”
“Alright, so, we have a healer, a tank, a support class, and two ranged damage dealers.” Drew looked around the group, “Honestly, that’s a far more balanced a party than I was expecting. We might have to take it a little slow and heal up between fights, but I think we should be fine.” He looked over at Juan, who had finished mending his uniform, and gladly put it back on, even if it was still covered in blood and gore.
“You guys do look a bit rough though; I want to try casting my refresh spell on someone else… Ma’am, you look like you’ve not slept in a while. Mind if I try it on you?” Drew asked Sarah. She just nodded. So Drew reached a hand out to grab hers, his other hand forming the seals to cast the spell. When it was done, the bags under Sarah’s eyes disappeared, her shoulders relaxed from the invisible tension she had been carrying, and she stood up, stretching.
“Man, I would have killed for THAT back at the academy. That’s better than a dozen cups of coffee. Gosh.” Sarah beamed at Drew, and he realized that a lot of her sourness was just plain being tired. He tried to imagine how she must have felt being responsible for the group, despite being one of the youngest members of it.
“How did you do that? You didn’t say a word,” Juan asked, staring at Drew incredulously.
“Do what? Cast the spell? I just formed the seals for it with my other hand. How do you cast your spells?”
“We all have to say a bunch of weird words,” Katie offered. Drew finally realized that Juan hadn’t been muttering; he’d been casting the spell under his breath. “Even Mitch has to say his xatherite’s name to active them.”
“Oh, well, yeah…the only ones that really need much more than a thought and a point are the buff spells, and maybe the storm spells. Like I said, I haven’t actually tried to cast those…the three longer spells take a couple of hand seals each.”
“Wonder what the difference is. It’d be really nice if I didn’t have to say Illusory Fire when I tried to damage people. I have a feeling they aren’t going to believe that it’s going to hurt them if they understand English.”
“I dunno, try activating them by just pointing and thinking of the spell. That’s what I do with all my attack spells.” Drew hadn’t realized just how individual the system was. Now that he thought about it, they could all have different types of xatherite nodes other than the constellation type he had. “Mitch, try using yours with a thought. Swing your fist around a bit; I don’t want to be throwing imaginary fireballs around in here.”
Mitch adopted a fighting stance and looked away from the rest of the group, then threw a punch his hand crackling with lightning as he did. “Hah! It works,” he crowed, “That’ll help a ton with my breathing while I fight.”
After a few more minutes to sort out the division of labor, Sarah cast her mind link and buff on the four of them. She and Juan would stay back, to let them back into the room and prep all of their things for the trip. Meanwhile, Katie, Mitch, and Drew would go recover the supplies and kill the spider eggs.
Chapter Eight — Storms
Chanting words of power, Katie began the process of summoning the Knight. Drew watched as a dark figure slowly began to appear. The dark shape slowly gained substance; the knight was seamless. The figure was solid, made of a dark metal shaped like a set of full plate, the articulating points defying physics as matter seemed to disappear and reappear to accommodate the change of shape. The entire ritual took just under two minutes.
“Wow, that’s really cool,” Drew exclaimed. Katie grinned back at him.
“Yeah, some perks of living in the end of times, eh?” The brunette reached down and tossed some light rocks at Drew, “Keep a couple of these in your pockets. It might be useful to throw them down a hallway for your long-range stuff.”
Tucking the rocks into the various cargo pockets in his pants, he kept one in his hand, “Good idea, probably should get a mount for these so we don’t have to keep our hands full. You know…when we have a bunch of downtime, and needles and thread, and probably a bunch of other stuff we don’t have.” Katie laughed as Drew put the final light in another pocket.
Mitch just shook his head as he picked up this room’s fire axe. “Let’s do this,” Mitch said, nodding towards the door.
Drew stood a few steps away casting both his shield buffs, causing three small swords to begin rotating around him. He then took a ready position, both hands pointed towards the door, motioning for Mitch to open it. Juan stood to the other side of him, both of them ready to throw their spells through the door if there was anything waiting on the other side. “Don’t forget to look up,” Drew cautioned, but nothing seemed to be lurking in their little alcove. The knight moved through the door, instead of the clank of metal on metal, the knight’s movements were only distinguishable by the heavy footsteps.
Again, nothing attacked the knight, so Mitch followed him out. Drew was a few feet behind him, and Katie behind him, both hands holding lights above her head.
As Drew glanced around the atrium, he caught a flash of movement in the distance. He immediately reached into his pocket, grabbing a light rock and throwing it down the hallway. It bounced several times before coming to a stop 80 feet away, a circle of light in the darkness. “Possible contact,” he whispered to the others. His hands held in front of him ready to cast spells. “It’s far enough…let’s try this.” The atrium was long, 300 feet from end to end, but only about 80 side to side, with 14-foot ceilings. He put his hands together and began performing seals. “Crap, it’s a two-handed cast.” The spell also wasn’t instant but took about five seconds to perform the rather tricky finger movements.
When it was over, the boom of lightning echoing down the hallway was nearly deafening. The wind blew debris around too fast to see. The glowrock itself was caught up in its turbine-like effects, sending chaotic white light echoing around the storm while lightning flickered an angry purple-white, reflecting off ice chunks and water droplets. Rain lashed the ground and solid chunks of ice smashed against the concrete, breaking off small rocks with their impact that in turn would fly around in the storm, obliterating themselves to pieces against the walls, floor, and ceiling. The panels of the dropped ceiling long since stripped away, exposing pipes and cabling.
The silence that followed the thirty-second-long ice storm was as deafening as that initial boom had been. The three stared wide-eyed down the hallway. Katie finally blurted out, “Ho. Ly. Shiiit.” The individual syllables stretched out in amazement.
“Please tell me that was your biggest gun,” Mitch whispered into the silence.
“Second or, uh, or third probably,” Drew said, staring at the remnants of the atrium as dumbstruck as the others.
“Well, that’s bullshit. I get the ability to make a lightning fist, and you get Zeus’ fucking lightning bolt.” Mitch looked around, “Well, I think that probably scared away whatever it was that you saw. Let’s get some food.”
They all turned away and headed in the other direction. Another door received the same treatment as the one outside the safe room. They entered the stairwell on the third floor, the blood trail leading down, “Down or up first?” Drew asked, his eyes focused on the chasm in the middle, afraid of whatever that furry beast was reappearing.
“Up, I’m starving,” Mitch said with a grunt.
“Hold up, let’s leave a glowrock here, I’m pretty sure I can cast it again.” She uttered a few short words and another glowrock replaced the one she had dropped before casting the spell. “Alright, let’s go.”
They followed the blood trail up the stairs, “I can’t believe you did this in the dark,” Katie whispered to Drew.
Drew snorted, “Wasn’t completel
y dark; I had the mop. Besides, what else was I going to do?”
He couldn’t see it, but Katie looked at him and shook her head, incredulity written on her features.
The group reached the top without incident. The cart was still there, untouched. Mitch ran over to it and grabbed a bag of chips; they seemed to disappear into his mouth without touching his hands.
Drew looked around, it didn’t seem like anything had been here. It was weird to think that he had only left the cart here a few hours ago. So much had happened since then.
Katie was eyeing the restroom though, “I don’t suppose you cleared the ladies’ room too?” She asked Drew. He shook his head.
“No, but give me a minute and I can. Wait, what were you guys using in the…? Never mind, I don’t want to know.” Drew nodded and walked towards the door.
“It wasn’t pleasant. I made some walls for privacy,” Katie responded.
“We can take turns watching,” Drew said, opening the door, while tossing in a glowrock. The light showed the small room to be empty. Clearing the bathroom took another few seconds and he left, nodding to Katie, “Ladies first. Not that Mitch is going to care.” The tank was on his third bag of chips, a soda in one hand and an opened bag of peanuts in front of him. “Easy big guy. We gotta bring some back for the Ensign and Juan.”
Mitch nodded but didn’t slow down on the stuff he had already opened. Drew watched the hole, worried about the furry beast. They rotated through using the facilities, Drew and Katie taking the chance to eat some food while they waited. Then Katie and Mitch carried the cart down the flight of stairs, both insisting that they wanted Drew’s hands-free to cast when he offered to take Katie’s spot.
They left the extra axe and cart on the third-floor landing. Katie threw up some walls around it to prevent any scavengers, explaining that she could dissolve any conjured wall at will and that the spell had a really short cooldown.
They got to the queen’s room and both stopped in their tracks. In the much better lighting of the glowrocks, the room was even more grim. Red blood--both from whatever had been dragged here and Drew’s fight with the spider--mixed and blue ichor covered the entire floor. The body of the queen herself was easily 7 feet long and three feet tall.
“You killed that thing alone?” Mitch asked, a hint of awe in his voice.
Drew nodded his head once, “Mitch, watch the stairs, I don’t want to get ambushed again.” He and Katie advanced on the spider queen, doing a visual inspection. Drew saw something shiny on the ground and bent down to pick it up, “Bullet casings,” he said, holding them for Katie to see. “Must have been a guard...looks like he got off a few hits on the queen before he died. He looked the corpse over again, the bullet holes now obvious. “She must have already been injured. Don’t see a body though.”
“Me either...maybe she ate it?” Drew glanced at the queen’s mouth, which was too small to fit a whole human being into it.
“I don’t think she could have, not that quickly. Spiders normally web and drain their prey, not consume it whole.” He looked around at the room that was free of webbing. “This is weird, no webbing anywhere near here, the little ones had lots of it.” He kicked some of the clutter on the floor away and then saw the black matte shape of a SIG Sauer P229 pistol. He picked it up, checking the chamber and then sliding the magazine. “Empty,” he spoke, showing the gun to Katie. He slid the magazine back into the gun before handing it to her. She shook her head.
“I don’t think we’re gonna get any answers here. We should destroy the eggs and go back.”
“No, I’d like to try and harvest her forelegs. They were sharp, and we could use some more weapons. Maybe make them into spears; that’s probably the easiest thing to use,” Drew said, as he walked around to the front of the queen. Both legs seemed to be in good shape. “Hey Mitch, come use the axe on the queen’s front legs. I’ll guard the rear.”
Mitch and Drew changed positions. He didn’t watch, but the sounds Mitch and Katie made were enough to convince him that the whole experience wasn’t fun. It took about twenty minutes to break the legs off, the thick chitin resistant to damage even in death.
“Any ideas on how to carry this? They’re gonna cut through anything we have,” Katie asked Drew, who took off his blouse again and handed it to her.
“Guess Juan will just have to repair that again.” They wrapped the legs up as best they could. “Alright, I think we’re done here,” Katie said, putting a hand on Drew’s shoulder. He nodded, his eyes never leaving the stairwell.
“Okay, let’s get back up the stairs and I’ll do another storm and kill the eggs.” Everyone retreated, and Katie managed to convince the knight to hold the lights while she took the legs. About halfway up the stairs, they hunched down. The memory of the earlier storm was enough to keep them as far back as they could make it. Drew, partially hidden by a new wall Katie made on the stairs, leaned over and began to create seals with his hands.
Again, it seemed to take forever, his fingers flashing through the movements before the room they had just been in caught fire.
Massive fireballs rained down amidst the storm, electrical pulses flashing around them. The rain did nothing to stop the fires from starting, and the eggs were apparently quite flammable. Wind stoked their fury and the conflagration spread. The raw ozone and smoke reached them even as far away as they were, the occasional furnace blast of heat erupted out as the wind caught it and flung it out into the stairwell. The crackling sound of flames died down in an instant as the storm ceased its fury. Scorch marks and the lingering fires of masses of eggs thrown together into large piles in the corners of the room were all that was left.
“I don’t think I ever want to be on the receiving end of one of those,” Katie said, shaking her head again.
They both began to climb for a moment before realizing that Drew wasn’t following them. He stood staring into the flames, whispering under his breath:
“Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.”
After a few minutes, he turned. Nodding to them, they walked up the stairs to the cart.
They returned to the safe room without incident. Juan and Sarah, sensing the group’s somber mood, didn’t say anything; they just took a portion of the food and began eating it. Drew seemed lost in thought and the other two had an edge to them. The sheer destruction of what they had seen the former Information Technology Specialist do had made them realize just how dangerous this world was now.
This was the power of spells in the new system, and these weren’t even the most powerful level. What would happen when they were upgraded up to legendary? What other monsters did this world have that would need such levels of destruction?
Chapter Nine — Breakdowns
The pistol landed on the table with a thud. Everyone eyed it before Drew began talking, “The queen had already been injured when I fought her. If she had been at full speed, I probably would have died. Whoever emptied the magazine into her probably did.” He looked at the other four, “That said, we didn’t find a body or even a trace of a body, and the Spider couldn’t have eaten it that quickly. She may have cocooned it and stashed it away somewhere; we didn’t search around too much.”
“Could they still be alive?” Sarah asked.
“It’s unlikely, ma’am,” Katie answered, “If they were able to empty an entire magazine into the spider, and she was still able to fight through Drew’s attacks for a while, then survival...I don’t think that’s possible.”
“I think we should send another group out to raid some of the close vending machines. With careful rationing, that should last us a week or two.” Sarah’s words were met with incredulity.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but did you say you want to stay here for another two weeks?” Drew asked, looking around the table to gauge everyone else’s opinions. Katie looked as con
fused as him, while Juan refused to meet his eyes. Mitch looked between Drew and Sarah but kept his face relatively impassive.
“That’s right, IT2,” Sarah emphasized his rank, “We’re going to stay here until we are properly relieved of the watch.”
“Sarah,” Drew emphasized her name, “No one is going to come for us. If they were going to come, they would have been here already. The phones are dead, and the power still hasn’t come back on. Heck, the backup generators that should have kicked on immediately didn’t even work. If they were going to come for us, they would have done it days ago. The only thing that sitting here is going to accomplish is to give the dungeon time to spawn more monsters and make our eventual escape that much more difficult.”
“Petty Officer Michalik, you are dangerously close to insubordination.” Sarah stood up, trying to intimidate Drew by physically looming over him.
“Quite frankly, ma’am, no, I’m not. I swore to defend America from threats both foreign and domestic. Look around you. We aren’t helping anyone in here. Our jobs, my job? It doesn’t exist anymore. There are no more computers to monitor, no more risk of being hacked. You guys? You’re supposed to be coordinating the intelligence efforts of the commandant. You can’t do that here. You have nothing to report, no one to report it to. But there are bound to be a lot of scared people out there, and our oaths require that we render that aid. You most of all, because I promise you that there are injured people out there, and if you sit here safe in this little room, you are refusing to help them.” Drew had stood up in the middle of the speech, glaring down at the shorter woman.
“Ma’am, I think Drew is right. We need to get out of here,” Katie stood next to Drew as she looked at the Ensign. Juan and Mitch stood up as well, supporting the two more senior enlisted.
“We can’t stay here. Drew’s right, the longer we let those monsters grow, the worse it's going to be,” Juan offered.
