by Xander Boyce
He took the time to begin casting storm, assuming they would see him and attack sooner rather than later. He was correct; two seconds of disorientation was all the time he was given. With three seconds left on the cast, he wasn’t sure if it would be enough time. He aborted the cast a second later to launch a cone of frostfire with one hand and a frostfire ball with the other. They were too close to dodge and they took both spells full on. One of the squirrels’ face was cut into shreds by the ice shards while the other rocked back on a leg that had frozen to the ground, bending in an unnatural way.
He launched a spark at the one squirrel that still had a face and then backed up, not sure if any of them were still alive enough to pose a threat.
Something hard impacted into blade barrier behind him and he turned around to find a fourth squirrel. It tried to bite his leg again before he could respond. He kicked as hard as he could, none of his close-range attacks off cooldown yet. His hand searched for the dagger he had picked up from the first orc attack as he jumped onto the last squirrel, trusting in mana guard to keep him alive while he stabbed it into the thing’s flesh.
The squirrel was a lot harder to keep a hold of than he had anticipated. Wriggling around, he could see flashes of yellow light where its claws raked against his mana guard. He pulled the dagger out and then tried to stab its chest, but it rolled, and the blade glanced off a rib, doing only minor damage.
Slamming his body weight into the thing to keep it from wriggling, he stabbed again, and this time the blade pierced it between the ribs. The creature let out a wild scream and then bucked, throwing Drew off. It tried to move away from the human, but the blade hindered its movement to a crawl. Drew cast another bolt of electricity, and then followed it up with an acid dart to its head. It twitched a few times and then collapsed, still.
Drew heaved himself up, looking around for any other threats in the area, but found himself alone again. With a sigh of relief, he went to stand up, only to realize that somewhere in the fight the squirrel had scored a five inch long, relatively shallow gash down his calf.
“Fuck,” he cursed, sitting back down. He pulled the backpack around in front of him, grabbing a bottle of water. He drank a gulp or two and then poured the rest of it on the wound, wincing as the liquid encountered his torn flesh. He then ripped off portions of the spare shirt he had packed and used it as a bandage before casting refresh on himself.
Standing up again, he gingerly put weight on the leg to test it. “Well, that’s fucking amazing.” It could support his weight, but he wouldn’t be fast. He was about halfway to the commissary but heading into unknown territory when he could no longer effectively run. This was a bad idea. However, if they didn’t get help for Sarah soon, she might never wake up. He looked at the squirrel corpses around him, their auras having already faded to leave them colorless, and weighed his options. Then he slung the backpack over his shoulders again and began limping south, towards Bolling.
The slow walk down the frontage road was otherwise uneventful, for which Drew was grateful, as his leg was beginning to ache more and more. About a mile down the road, the tree line ended and there was a slight bank down to an eight-foot-tall wall. Standing next to the wall and staring up, he considered his options. If his leg wasn’t injured, he could probably jump up and climb over the wall.
Casting gravitas, it took almost five seconds to float up to the top of the wall and another ten to make his way down the other side, landing with a grunt when his bad leg took the weight.
Crossing the wall, he’d landed on a field surrounding a parking lot. Directly ahead of him was the Defense Intelligence Agency or DIA building. He had attended a few trainings there, and if he recalled correctly, it was the tallest building on the base. That probably made it the safest place for him to go. If he gravitated to the top of it, he could get a good view of the base and hopefully avoid any more mana twisted predators like those gods damned squirrels.
“Stupid fourth squirrel,“ he muttered to himself. As he crossed the parking lot, he considered the building in front of him. The near portion was only two to three stories tall, rather low compared to the eight-story portion of the building he was headed for. If he took his time, he could blink step up the building easily and then make his way across the roof to the taller sections.
Between them were a few guard posts and parking lots. The DIA complex’s parking garage was due west, but like everywhere he had seen, it was mostly empty. The overnight guys must have parked somewhere else.
He stopped at the vehicle checkpoint where there were no guards. And again, no sign of blood. What had happened to everyone? He was in the middle of one of the most important buildings in DC. Thousands of the movers and shakers in the nation’s capital passed through this building daily. Yet there were no guards, no signs of life. Would they have evacuated already? How long had it been?
His mind turned over the possibilities as he made his slow way through the abandoned fortifications. He failed the timing on his second blink step, landing with his weight at the wrong point and tripping, falling over the guardrail and getting small rocks embedded in his hands when he stuck them out to break his fall.
“Fuckity fuck,” he cursed as he sat up and began digging rocks out of his hands. Several of them were deep enough that he had to pull out his pocket knife and cut them out. He then pulled out another bottle of water. He only had a few more bottles, he realized with a frown, but he suppressed his groans and washed out the dirt and grime, then wrapped his hands with what was left of the shirt he had used to bandage his leg.
That’s when he heard the noise.
It was a dull thudding, like a drum. He frowned. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the building, and he quickly advanced the last couple hundred feet and cast gravitas on himself again, floating up the side of the building. He shot past the top and then reduced his gravity until he was floating free in the air. Casting blink step, he landed on the roof, not wanting to worry about controlling the landing properly with gravitas.
He could hear the throbbing better now; it was coming from the open area on the south side of the DIA building. When he finally reached the corner, he caught sight of his first human life since Katie.
The public entrance of the DIA building was adjacent to several parking lots and a couple baseball fields off to the west, as well as a well-maintained soccer field to the south. Moving around on the soccer field about half a mile away were a few dozen humans. They appeared to be dragging other humans to a large stack of wood they had built up in the center of the field.
The source of the throbbing sound was indeed a set of drums. Three figures were seated and beating on a single drum that must have been at least a meter in diameter, although it was hard to tell at this distance and it might have been much bigger.
He watched entranced as they dragged half a dozen people (Or were they bodies? They weren’t moving.) over to the pile of wood, carefully placing them on top of it. Once all they had all been placed on the wood, the figures all stood in a circle around it, except for one who stood closer and began gesturing with his hands. He could hear words being shouted, but it was difficult to make them out over the wind and the drums.
The one in the center then pointed at the woodpile and a crack of lightning descended from the sky, catching the wood on fire with a thunderous boom. That’s when he heard the screams. The people in the fire were crying out in pain and fear. They were still alive.
Drew slumped back down onto the roof, his face turning white as he realized that he had just witnessed people being sacrificed.
Chapter Twenty — Ashes
He kept telling himself that there was nothing he could do against 20 people. He almost believed it. Could he cast a storm out that far? None of his spells listed a range he could cast them at. They all originated from him, but how far could a fireball fly?
Spending however long it had been in the close confines inside of HQ, he hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to try out
how far away he could cast his spells. He peeked back over the wall, studying the figures standing around the circle. Each was clothed in robes that covered their entire body. If he cast storm on them, they would die, and he would be a murderer.
He had already killed sentient beings before. Was he already a murderer? There was something comforting about the fact that the orc blood had been green, inhuman. Some part of him was convinced that because they weren’t human, it was alright. He frowned, realizing how slippery that slope could be. Just because they weren’t human didn’t mean that they deserved death. Or did it? Humanity was locked in an eons-long fight against someone. What if that someone was the Orcs? Didn’t that mean they were at war? Plus, they had attacked him first, had killed Juan and Mitch. Even if they claimed that humans had killed their people, they were still the aggressors in that fight.
Had he been shanghaied into an intergalactic Hatfield and McCoy scenario without realizing it?
Shaking his head again, Drew cleared his existential crisis thoughts away. He could deal with them later. Besides, he knew it was just his mind trying to find an alternative to thinking about that ash filled morning five years ago. There was no way for him to save those people on the pyre. Or was there? He began casting refreshing rain. He felt it was unlikely that they would be able to pinpoint his location; he would just be another minuscule dot on the roof half a mile away. Unless they had a skill to see where the spell was coming from or something...
After five seconds the rain appeared; he could indeed cast it from this distance. The blaze had only been burning for just over a minute. However, they had clearly used some sort of accelerant, as the rain didn’t seem to have any effect on the blaze. The robed people around the fire had a very different reaction: the drumming stopped, and everyone ceased to move or chant.
Had they been sacrificing these people to some form of weather god? The thunderbolt they used to light the fire made that likely. If so, did this mean their god was angry at them or happy with them? Drew’s fingers were already tracing another casting. He aimed for the figure that had called the lightning bolt, whom he designated as the head cultist.
He couldn’t save these people, they were already as good as dead; but he could at least give them a quicker death than suffocation and bring some vengeance on their tormentors. Frostfire Storm formed slightly off center of the pyre, encompassing the head cultist and several additional cultists in its blast radius. Without stopping, he began to cast firestorm, which then caught an additional four cultists. By now the cultists had broken ranks and begun to run, their sense of self-preservation forcing them into action. Drew smiled grimly as the majority of them made a break towards him, bunching up enough for him to hit them with his spells a few more times before they could reach safety.
After finishing the cast on firestorm, he immediately began to cast ice storm on those that were running towards him. He had contained all but a handful of the cultists that had scattered to the south and west within his stormy vengeance. He turned his attention to the frostfire storm that was about to expire. He was ready to cast his last storm spell if there was anything still standing, but the storm cleared and all that remained were motionless bodies on the ground.
The storm had ripped their clothing, revealing their dark skin. But what caused the hard lump in his throat to go away was that several of them had pools of blood around them. Green blood.
A notification popped up in the corner of his vision, so he figured that meant he was out of combat. Glancing at them quickly, he didn’t see Gravitas mentioned, so he ignored them for now. He waited, wanting to ensure all the cultists were dead and that no reinforcements were going to arrive. Once satisfied, he made his way to the west side of the building and then jumped off it. His stomach lurched from the fall, responding to his instincts telling him he was falling to his death, despite his brain telling it that he would be safe. Casting gravitas halfway through his fall, he slowed down until he was free floating a foot or two above the ground and then lowered himself slowly to the grass.
Limping again, he skirted the road, eyeing the houses that were between him and the commissary. Base housing wasn’t large, but he didn’t really want to come across a mana twisted dog. He also wanted a better look at the cultists. He avoided the houses by walking through the field.
The first clump of dead cultists he came across were torn to shreds; sharp hail, wind, and lightning having done a number on them. The smell was horrible. He covered his nose and mouth with his shirt as he approached. He counted three heads. The first two spells had caught the clear majority of them. These three had just been either lucky or faster than the others.
Their faces were clearly not human; a flat pig nose, feral red eyes, and sharp fangs made up most of their facial features. Their skin up close was a green so dark that it was almost black, without any hair on their bodies. It was hard to say if there was an analogy to any mythological creature he had ever seen in a game; he certainly couldn’t think of anything.
None of them had xatherite growing out of them, and their auras, if they had had one, were long gone by the time he inspected the corpses. But he did find a couple of wicked looking knives. Well, more like kris, since their blades were wavy. He tried to remember if there was a length requirement for a kris. He couldn’t remember but felt like these were too short.
“So much for knowing how to find that information,” Drew muttered, his brain having discarded tons of useless information in favor of knowing how to find it on the internet.
The next group was in a similar state. He counted seven bodies. Although it was difficult to tell, they seemed to be extra vulnerable to fire, their burns rather more extensive than the orcs had been after frostfire. He decided to call these new creatures trolls since that was the only creature that looked even vaguely like them that was vulnerable to fire that he could think of now.
“Why would they sacrifice people by fire if they were more vulnerable to it?” Drew asked himself, as he made his way through the rubble and towards the third group. The sacrificial fire still smoldered, and none of the bodies within it moved. He counted another six troll bodies here. None of them looked any different, but he couldn’t imagine the head cultist surviving. And none of them had xatherite.
He frowned. That head cultist should have been a ‘boss’ and should have dropped xatherite. He looked around him--there was no sign that something had gotten away. A shield spell and a teleport maybe? Or was it because he wasn’t in the dungeon anymore and xatherite was rarer out here?
Delaying as long as he could while looking at the dead trolls, he then walked towards the pyre. He smelled burned human flesh. The scent of the burnt trolls had been more...bitter, more like charcoal. But human flesh had a sweet scent to it; his fingers clenched into fists as he flashed back to that night in the Caribbean all those years ago.
Black smoke marred the morning light. The fire had been put out quickly, but not soon enough. Sixteen bodies... Doc said they had suffocated from the smoke in the cabin rather than the heat, that the fire had only begun burning them after they were already dead. He looked down and his hands were covered in ash. It was the smell he knew he would never forget.
He reached out for Zoey; she always came to him when he had the flashbacks. There wasn’t any barking though, and then he remembered where he was. He had fallen to his knees, bad leg forgotten as the memories surfaced. He gulped air; the wind had shifted, coming from the northeast now, and he welcomed the switch to sewage and distant rain. The base had been built adjacent to the district’s treatment plant, one of the reasons it could be allowed to be as big and sprawling as it was while still being in DC.
Shaking himself out of his memory, he pushed back to his feet. None of the sacrifices moved, but they were clearly human. He wiped his hands clean of the imaginary ashes, fighting off another flashback as he turned away from the scent and limped away.
“Hello.” A voice sounded in his head and he looked around, his hands re
ady to cast more spells.
“Hey now, calm down! I’m human; I’m not here to hurt you.” The voice was masculine, but as Drew turned his head looking for the source, he didn’t see anyone. Then at the edge of his vision, approaching slowly was an aura like the one around Sarah or Katie, but made of indigo, violet, and green. He pointed his fingers at the aura.
“Woah, woah, don’t shoot!” A thin black man appeared within the aura, he looked to be in his mid-twenties and was wearing blue jeans and a jacket. “I just saw your fireworks show. We’re on the same side.”
Drew narrowed his eyes, “Who are you? Why couldn’t I see you?”
“I’m Daryl. You couldn’t see me because I have an invisibility xatherite.” Daryl paused, waiting for Drew to ask any questions, “How did you know where I was?”
“It’s a secret.” The two stared at each other. Drew was still shaken from the flashback and knew he wasn’t in a place to make good mental calls.
“Look, we can do this whole…spy vs spy thing later, we need to get inside before the mana storm hits.” Daryl turned to point with his face towards the northeast.
Drew frowned. A massive storm cloud had appeared in the last few minutes and was moving towards them at a visible rate. Instead of the normal black clouds, it held the seven colors of the xatherite in all their darkest variations. “What the fuck is that thing?”
“I call ‘em the mana storms. They really mess everything up though. Their water isn’t safe...and it’s gonna hit soon, so we need to get inside.” When Drew nodded he lowered his hands, “Come with me, I got a spot where I’ve been laying low.”
Drew followed Daryl, who clearly wanted to walk faster than Drew could with his limp, but neither of the two said another word as they headed for the housing area to the northwest of them. Daryl turned into the third house, looking around, “Don’t see any green skins, so we should be fine.” He unlocked the front door and they went in. Drew took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. Outside, he could hear the wind picking up as the edge of the storm started to hit the area.
