Advent (Red Mage Book 1)

by Xander Boyce

  Chapter Thirty-Three — Calm

  The group was silent for a few heartbeats as everyone considered the implications of Bill’s words. Odds were good that everything the trolls could send at them would be sent at them soon, and they were going to meet them on the open field.

  “Also, if anyone has upgrades to be done, now is the time to do them. I’m not sure how much experience you all got from that skirmish outside, but I know I got at least one upgraded xatherite,” Drew said, trying to keep everyone’s mind off the fact that they were going out to kill a bunch of trolls, “Daryl, did you find any xatherite on the trolls outside?”

  “I didn’t look. I came right back as soon as the shaman disappeared,” Daryl said with a frown.

  “Alright, head out now and look, we’re gonna need anything we can get for this I think.” Drew considered this for a moment, “Also, if you do find some, don’t harvest it. I have a theory and I want to give it a shot if it’s growing on an arm or something that is easy to cut off, do so. Also, harvest as many of their corpses as you can, but you only have ten minutes. Priority is the xatherite.”

  Daryl nodded and then disappeared, hopefully, to go harvest the bodies of the trolls. Drew turned to Bill and Sarah, “I need you two to get everyone ready to go in ten minutes, grab as many shopping carts as you think we can easily move, but tell everyone that the second they aren’t keeping pace, they need to abandon the cart. Their lives aren’t worth a little bit of food.”

  “JP, I need you to refill as many magazines as you can, I don’t want anyone else to be shooting; the trolls aren’t going to be hurt by anyone else’s shots. Recruit some people to carry magazines or guns and reload for you. Hopefully, we can get something automatic.” Drew gave his orders to JP, and Robbi went with him to collect all the firearms and magazines they could. Drew turned to Katie, “I want to get as much flammable stuff as we can, hopefully, things that will burn for a while. I’m going to try and cut off their lines of approach as much as possible. When we do finally settle down, I’ll need you and as many people as we can creating fire barriers that will hopefully deter them from coming at us from all sides.”

  “When we do start fighting, I want you to start making a barrier around the noncombatants. If you can seal it off from above do that, otherwise just make it at least four stories tall. I don’t want them jumping behind us.” Katie nodded her head, and everyone dispersed off to do their various tasks.

  Drew was left to himself for a few minutes, prepping for what was bound to be the largest single conflict he had been in since Advent. He tried to think of anything he might be forgetting. He could feel the weight of all those lives on his shoulders, not just the hundreds at stake here, but the trillions or quadrillions that Ares had told him depended on him surviving.

  Drew could escape right now, he could probably fly across the bridge without worrying about the squid ever trying to attack him. It would mean abandoning Katie, Sarah, Bill, Jholie, and all the others to die though. He could take some of them with him maybe... Katie for sure. He could take all the people he knew. That group, smaller and more capable, would be able to fight their way to Nat’s Park. They would be safe, and it would just be the other 15 people or so he condemned to die.

  He wished he hadn’t thought of running, that he was the kind of person that wanted to do the heroic thing and stand between the invading trollish army and his people. That was why he had joined the Coast Guard. During boot camp, they had made them recite the Ethos of the Coast Guard. “I will protect them. I will defend them. I will save them. I am their shield. For them, I am Semper Paratus.” Semper Paratus, the coast guard’s motto, always prepared. He did not feel prepared.

  Was he obligated to save these people here? Or should he save himself, so that he could save a lot more people down the line? He could sense that if he ran away today, no matter if it was the more strategic requirement, he would always feel like he betrayed these people. They had depended on him. He didn’t even stay and fight but ran away and used their lives to buy time for his own survival. He thought of General MacArthur being forced to flee Corregidor in the Philippines after the Japanese surrounded it, following the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor.

  If Douglas MacArthur had stayed on the island as he had wanted, instead of evacuating when it became clear that they would lose the Bataan peninsula, the US would have lost its most experienced general. The following years of the war proved that he was one of the few people capable of leading the Allied offensive against the Japanese. But what did that mean to the 70,000 troops left on the Bataan Peninsula, the men who eventually faced the Bataan Death March, men, who if they survived, then spent the next three years in the most hellish prisoner of war camps the Japanese could devise? Only a handful in every hundred survived to see the end of the war!

  Was he supposed to be MacArthur or a King Leonidas? Although if he remembered correctly, the Battle of Thermopylae had ended with all of Leonidas’ Spartans dying. His musing was cut short when he saw Katie heading back towards him with a cart full of charcoal and lighter fluid in front of her. He shook his head, trying to banish the dark thoughts of the past few minutes.

  “You okay there, Drew?” she asked, a slight frown on her face.

  “No, not really.” Drew looked down, frowning, “I was thinking about Ares, about how he said I needed to survive or quadrillions of people would die.”

  Drew wasn’t sure what the look that passed across Katie’s face meant; it was inscrutable in its complexity. “Drew, we both know that this is a tough spot. We’re severely outnumbered and a bit outgunned. If you need to make a tactical retreat so that you can come back and rescue all of us, then you should do it. It’s not going to help anyone if we all die here, and no one knows there are all those people trapped down there. If anyone is going to be able to escape and go get help from the stadium, it’s you. In fact, here.” A message saying that she wanted to trade him metallurgy appeared, and he shook his head.

  “No, Drew. I’m serious. If something happens to me, this goes away. That means that everyone else is worse off. If you die, then, either way, we’re probably all screwed. So, this way it’s as safe as it can possibly be.” Katie fixed her eyes on Drew, staring him down until he accepted the trade. “Now, you’ll just have to keep me alive so that you can give that back to me.” She grabbed his collar with both hands, keeping him looking at her. “Promise me you’ll come back for me or burn these fuckers to the ground if they kill me.”

  “I haven’t even decided if I’m going to leave yet. Who knows? Maybe they’ll all come out close together and I can just firestorm them to death before anyone is the wiser,” Drew said, trying to force a smile. Katie’s elbows against his chest and the closeness of her body was causing him to respond in a way that he hadn’t been expecting, and that certainly didn’t fit in his ten-minute timeline.

  “Promise,” Katie said glaring him down.

  “Alright, alright, I promise I’ll come back for you,” Drew said.

  “Or burn the fuckers to the ground,” Katie said, with a manic gleam in her eyes.

  “Or burn the fuckers to the ground,” Drew repeated dutifully.

  Katie smiled finally and then pulled him close to her, kissing his lips. After what seemed like an eternity to Drew, she let go of his lapel and took a half step back. “There, now you have more motivation to keep me alive.” She stepped back again, opening the distance between them more completely and turning towards her shopping cart of inflammables.

  Leaving him alone for a few minutes, Drew considered Katie’s words. There was a logic to either him or Daryl being about the only ones that could effectively escape. While he liked Daryl, he understood her reluctance to trust him. But there was also the fact that he wasn’t sure he should believe Ares. He thought back to his time in the tutorial. Aevis said that the Protectorate had claimed the solar system, that they had then seeded Earth with humans and waited. Had Earth been an intergalactic Australia? Had they sent all the
ir prisoners here to tame the planet while they waited for the full citizens to be born? Why not just settle here after the mana levels were acceptable?

  What did Ares want with him? What was the point of telling him his own importance…of giving him that mysterious xatherite with its obfuscated effect? What was the point of killing off so many people by not preparing us for the Advent? Was the system something the Protectorate made or was it something that they just utilized? The fact that they were at war with other ‘awakened’ species led him to believe that they didn’t create the system. But if the Protectorate didn’t, who did? And why?

  Every interaction he had, they had refused to give him the information he needed. First Aevis telling him he was only allowed to say so much, then with Themis in the elevator, and finally when Ares started to tell him about the central nexus. Drew knew he should have asked a dozen more questions that he simply hadn’t even thought to ask when he was there. That wasn’t like him.

  He had been calm on the ship. Had that been Themis’ job, to keep him calm, to control his emotions and prevent certain questions from being asked? He didn’t have the shield on until he left, so Themis could easily have been manipulating his mind that entire time. Was thinking about these things now just evidence that they had been pacifying him and that the effects had finally worn off? Themis had said that the system wouldn’t let them talk about some things, why? What was the point of the system? What did it want and was the Protectorate at its helm, or just another pawn it commanded? Why did Ares give him that xatherite? Everything about it seemed off. If he was the embodiment of the Protectorate, then it would be against his interests to give him that kind of protection. Or was he a slave to the system and that as his way of giving Drew a warning?

  Drew could feel the anger inside of him. Anger at being lied to, at being controlled and manipulated, at the complete lack of caring about billions of deaths. He refused to play their game. He was an American, and he had a right to freedom, and he wasn’t about to give it up simply because some alien told him that they owned his planet.

  He pushed down his doubts about survival. He only felt the cold anger in his stomach that he had learned to control a long, long time ago. He wasn’t going to run away. He wasn’t going to let anyone tell him what was or was not possible. These were his people. He had saved them from the system’s monsters, and he would do it again. It didn’t matter what the Protectorate wanted from him--he would do what he wanted.

  Looking around, he realized that all the groups had gathered. They were just waiting on Daryl, who appeared a moment later, laden with several thick troll skins and what looked like half a leg. Raising an eyebrow, he turned it around to display the glowing blue xatherite about half again as big as the one from the mosquito coming out of the heel of the foot. He looked over the group of people around him, seeing their auras. Katie and JP both had the strongest blue auras of anyone in the group. But he didn’t trust JP; he didn’t trust his mysterious senator’s motives.

  “Katie, collect that xatherite, you just have to touch it.” She raised an eyebrow at him, curious. “I have a suspicion that who you are affects what kind of xatherite you acquire. I think you have the best chance of getting a good blue.”

  “Okay.” She walked towards Daryl who held the leg out to her; his clothing was spotted with green blood, his hands stained with it. He managed to keep most of it away from Katie, holding the leg without touching the crystal.

  When she touched it, a blue glow surged throughout the room, bathing everyone in its light before fading away.

  Chapter Thirty-Four — Initiative

  Everyone looked at Katie expectantly, “So, what did you get?” Drew asked. He could have pulled up her map but chose not to. He didn't want to inform JP and Robbi of his additional abilities.

  “It’s…a familiar?” Katie said with a bit of confusion, “It’s called Eyes of the Loon, and it allows me to summon a creature whose eyes I can see through,” Katie continued to explain. Drew was circumspectly pulling up her map to look at the xatherite information on his own.

  Xatherite Crystal Name: Eyes of the Loon

  Xatherite Color: Blue

  Xatherite Grade: Intermediate

  Xatherite Rarity: Widespread

  Type: Physical

  Effect: Creates a psychically linked familiar whose vision you can share. Familiar cannot attack but can move up to 1000m away from the user. Lasts until killed.

  Mana recharge time: 1 day, 14 hours, 24 minutes.

  Glancing over Katie’s map, he also realized that she wouldn’t be able to slot it currently. But this was the sort of thing that would give them a significant advantage in the upcoming fight; it was obviously something they would need to have slotted into someone immediately. Sarah could slot it, but it would eat into her single white slot. For a moment he thought about slotting it himself, but he doubted he would be able to fight and use it at the same time. Which made it less useful for him since he wouldn’t be able to do reconnaissance during a fight, something that would help prevent them from being flanked or surrounded.

  Meeting Katie’s eyes for a moment, he could tell she was thinking the same thing. “Daryl?” She mouthed to him, and he blinked. Daryl made a lot of sense, and if he could link it with his invisibility xatherite, he would become an even more potent spy. He turned to the other man, “Hey Daryl, you got any blue slots linked to your invisibility?”

  A moment of surprise passed over the other man’s face before he got the semi faraway look in his eye that Drew had taken to mean someone was looking at their node map. “Uh, yeah, I do.”

  “Excellent, I’d like you to slot it there, the idea of an invisible recon…drone sounds like it would round out your kit quite well.” Sarah nodded her head in agreement. “We’re gonna need as much intel as we can get for this fight, so I’d like you to stay near Sarah and keep her updated on what’s going on.” Drew then turned to Sarah.

  “I’d like to have you doing command and control with Katie. You two probably have the best experience of anyone here doing that. Use Daryl’s mental communication to pass orders if you need to, and you can coordinate defenses and everything.”

  Sarah nodded her head, “Right, Daryl slot that ASAP. We’ll want you back up and scouting as soon as we can. Chief, Chuck, Katie, and Daryl--I want you four near me while we travel.” Drew tried to remember who Chuck was but couldn’t place the name until the guy who could shape wood stepped forward with Bill and the other two. “We’ll have Robbi, Trey, Katie, and Chuck doing defenses. JP, you cover the rear guard while Drew takes the front. Jholie and the rest of you with weapons and armor on the outside, everyone else grab a cart and start pushing.”

  Drew was amazed that Sarah had learned everyone's names and abilities and wondered when she’d had the time... Probably while he had been sleeping. The young and mostly scared healer he had met a week ago in the Commandant's plot was gone, replaced with this driven leader who ordered actions without hesitation. He wondered idly how she could possibly have changed so much over so short a time frame.

  Thinking back on the changes he had experienced himself, he guessed it wasn’t that farfetched. After all, two weeks ago he would never have believed he would be the de facto battle leader of thirty people. Looking around at those people, he realized he didn’t know most of their names, only those that had been useful to him. That was something he needed to change, especially if they rescued a few hundred more people in a few hours. Most of the ones he didn’t know by name had an air about them, a fear that the others didn’t as they clutched their kris’s and spears. It didn’t seem to be paralyzing them like happened to some people but considering that everyone was military or the family of someone in the military, he supposed that made some sense. Military families learned to deal with uncertainty, or they didn't stay family for long.

  Waiting until Daryl had slotted his new xatherite, Drew cast energize on him, removing the headache associated with doing so. He accepted the other
man’s thanks with a nod of his head and a tight smile, before watching him summon what looked to Drew like a fairly large duck, which he guessed was actually a loon. “Let me know if you see anything.” He then headed out into the parking lot, scanning around for any signs of trolls.

  Not seeing anything, he watched the loon take off and begin flying circles around the parking lot. Daryl was invisible again, although he could see his aura standing off to one side where he was unlikely to be run into by someone accidentally. It only took a few more minutes for everyone else to get organized and they were off. Drew in the lead, looked behind him at the sea of green leathered people and then down at his own black jacket and dark navy-blue pants.

  It was easy to see the other three main combatants. All three of them were wearing blue; Drew’s ODU pants and the police uniforms of the other two. Drew’s jet-black chitin enhanced armor was even more distinctive than the blue bulletproof vests since at least a few of the others still wore blue jeans under their green troll skin leather jackets. Min Sun had added sleeves to the vest, the troll skin dyed to a color more closely aligned with the original grey leather the orcs had used as a base. He wasn’t entirely sure how Min Sun had managed to create so much leather armor in so short a period, but it seemed like at least half the group was currently decked out in at least a green troll skin leather vest.

  Musing on the chance that they would create a new trend, where the warriors wore blue and black as they made their slow progress out towards the main road leading to the north. They could see the DIA building’s entrance from here, although it was a little under a mile away from their current location. How fast could trolls run on open ground? He tried to remember how fast they had been during that first ambush with the sacrifices. They hadn’t made it very far before his spells had taken them, maybe a third of the way back to the DIA building. That meant they were probably a bit faster than humans. He wasn’t sure how fast their jumping ability would make them, but he hadn’t seen any of that first group jumping.