by Xander Boyce
His musings were cut short as he began to see green forms filing out of the building. Drew immediately stopped and began casting storm over them. Hoping to kill as many as he could while they were still clumped up near the entrance. He heard shouts behind him as his fingers created the seals needed to send death and destruction towards his enemies. Seven or eight were out of the building when the five second cast time went off. Enveloping them in lightning, wind and water damage the mist caused by the storm made it impossible to see what effect his spell had caused.
Behind him the civilians were dragging their carts onto the track surrounding the soccer field, using it to transport the shopping carts full of food and fuel across the expanse of grass. He turned and followed suit, glancing back towards the DIA building’s entrance every now and again to check the status of his storm. About a quarter of the way across, the storm’s energy dissipated. Drew was slightly ahead of the group of civilians, while Katie, Chuck, and Robbi were running across to the other side where a row of mature trees had been planted as a windbreak.
“Head towards the trees, climb up one and keep pressure on the entrance,” Daryl’s voice came into Drew’s head. He sped up as much as he could while keeping watch on the doors to the north, waiting for any more trolls to venture out.
Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, he stopped long enough to cast firestorm about two-thirds of the way across the field. When the spell was cast, he turned back to the east and ran as fast as he could the rest of the way to where Katie and Chuck had begun to build something around a few of the trees. Katie had already created a few walls, while Chuck seemed to be focusing on one of the larger trees, his hand touching its bark and his eyes closed.
Triggering blink step, he jumped just past the halfway mark up the tree, falling half a foot before he managed to catch himself on a branch and cutting his hands on the rough bark. He grunted at the pain in his shoulders as they were wrenched from trying to arrest his fall. He could hear a shout of alarm from below as a branch he knocked loose crashed down through the canopy to land within a few feet of Chuck’s concentrating form. “Sorry,” he shouted down to the older man and then turned back to look towards the entrance. Hooking his arm over a branch and wedging one foot into a y-joint.
Turning his attention towards the entrance, he realized he could hardly see anything. The line of trees that made up the windbreak blocked the entrance of the DIA building. He worked his way around the trunk to the other side where fewer branches would obstruct his vision. As he did, he felt the tree sway a little and looking down realized that he was higher up than he had been before by a few feet. Chuck must be growing the tree. Shaking aside his vertigo he walked out along one branch a few feet until he finally got a decent view of his target. A few dozen trolls had already made it out and were running towards their group.
Drew took a few seconds to ensure he wouldn’t fall and then focusing to the north began casting frost storm. He thought that the cooldown on storm was almost over and planned to switch to that one next. Wanting to keep frostfire storm for when he could hopefully get a relatively large group of them together. He finished the last seal of the spell and saw more than a handful of them engulfed within the radius of the frost storm. One, on the leading edge, managed to punch through the last few feet of the frost storm, chunks of ice embedded in his shoulder had breached the front side.
Drew frowned, trying to decide if he wanted to reveal his position by launching a fireball at this distance when he heard the report of rifle shots being fired. JP had made his way towards the front and, with his rifle out, shot a few rounds towards the lead troll. The first two shots went wide, launching into the fury of the storm behind it and hopefully catching some of the trolls behind it. But the third shot landed true, and the forerunner burst into flames as JP’s combustive ammo exploded on contact.
With no targets immediately visible Drew glanced down. Katie had not been idle, and several sloping walls had been built around the tree. She was making a diagonal line using the windbreak of the trees as a central point, the first few sections of what Drew assumed would end up being a diamond shape. It would create a choke point for anyone attempting to approach them. As defensive positions go, it wasn’t ideal. Drew would have rather had a funnel, but they needed to get as many of their people in a covered area as they could.
He approved of Sarah’s decision to put them in the open. With the trees hiding Drew, he would have a decent chance of keeping overwatch and attacking the trolls long before they could bring their melee weapons to bear on his people. And JP could continue to take potshots at them as they approached or switch to pistols when they were closer. He just hoped the man would have enough ammunition for the long fight that was bound to come.
The last few shopping carts were making their way across the fields, most now being pushed and pulled by three or four people each. Others had already begun emptying Katie’s shopping cart of flammables spreading the liquids around the area near where he assumed the entrance to their defensive diamond would be.
The sound of new rifle reports caused Drew to glance back up, casting storm before he even saw his first target. Another dozen trolls had spread out, heading east where they could hide behind a building for the final approach. With their jumping ability Drew assumed they wouldn’t be limited by the narrow gap in the buildings, but he and JP would make them pay for any ground they gained.
Another storm lashed out and caught a few of them, making the rest detour around it. JP’s bullets had killed another troll. Drew was impressed with his accuracy. They were still eight or nine hundred yards away and running quite quickly. He hoped the two of them would be able to buy enough time for the defenses to be set up. His fingers began casting firestorm as another dozen circled around to the east. More appeared to the northwest, but they had spread out enough that he couldn’t catch more than three or four per storm. And he still hadn’t seen any sign of the lightning caller.
Chapter Thirty-Five — Rising Action
“There’s a large group coming in from the west side by the river; they should be visible to you any moment,” Daryl’s voice played silently inside Drew’s head. He turned to look behind him at the back of the Commissary. They must have some sort of hidden exit out that way since they’d come from there twice now. Might be worth investigating it as a possible way into the DIA building that didn’t involve cutting a hole in the wall.
Drew wished Daryl would have told him how many were in this ‘large group.’ A flash of light to the north drew his attention as another Troll was ignited after being struck by one of JP’s fire bullets. He shifted his weight down to a lower branch that allowed him a better view of the new groups’ approach path. Glancing back to the north, he considered another storm spell for that direction. Frost storm was probably off cooldown or would be soon, and he still had frostfire storm held in reserve; but the other two still had at least a minute left on their cooldowns.
He counted two dozen spread between the northwest and northeast... Probably at least another dozen coming from the west. Drew swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. There were already more enemies on the field than he had ever fought at once before, except for a couple of his fights with much smaller and less deadly insects, and there was still the lightning caller to deal with. Drew would feel much better about their prospects when he was dead.
Holding off on more storms, for now, he was hoping he could catch them in higher concentrations with such high cooldowns. He glanced back to the west and saw the first troll coming around the corner of the exchange. They didn’t seem to be proceeding with caution, and they were still relatively grouped up. He waited a few more seconds for more to appear before beginning the cast for frost storm. Hoping that the lightning caller was in this group and unprepared for the onslaught, although he appeared to have some method of surviving his spells; it wasn’t a fight he was particularly looking forward too. Maybe JP could just shoot him?
Shaking his head to discar
d his stray thoughts, he focused on the trolls advancing from the west and cast frost storm. His eyes were on the group as his fingers moved to form the hand seals, counting the trolls. He got to thirteen before it was ready to cast, and then the storm stole them from view.
Looking down, Katie had managed to put up the northwest and northeast side of the fortifications. Tree branches wove above the small holes in the top, creating a barrier even there, and he realized that he was a good 10 feet higher than he had been at first. The tree had grown around him. The hair on Drew’s arms rose in a sensation he was coming to know all too well, and he shouted, “Lightning!” as he blink stepped as far away as he could to the northeast.
The boom of thunder crashing behind him was the least of his worries as his stomach rolled up into his chest, and he began spinning end over end as he fell, the ground beneath him approaching rapidly. Drew cast gravitas, but still landed with a hard roll, his shoulder smashing against the ground as a wave of pain rolled over him.
Sitting up with a groan and then promptly vomiting from the pain, he stared at the chunks of beef jerky that now decorated the grass in front of him. Placing both hands on the ground caused another wave of nausea to roll over him, his stomach clenching. He removed his right hand and the pain went away, giving him enough strength to push himself to his feet. Looking around himself blearily, he shook his head, trying to get rid of the ringing sound in his ears. Green men were running towards him, though they were still a long way away, maybe a couple hundred feet? He realized there were muffled noises coming from behind him and he turned around.
JP had braced his rifle against an overturned shopping cart, the muzzle flashes the only indication to Drew that he was still firing. Bill was also waving his hands and it looked like he was shouting, but Drew still couldn’t hear anything over the ringing. He stared at the shattered tree behind JP and Bill, split down the center with two halves still clinging together by the mass of branches and leaves, but visibly sagging away from each other. Wait, was JP shooting at him?
That didn’t seem right, and he focused back on JP again. No, he should be shooting at the trolls. The trolls! Drew turned around to look behind him, but he spun too fast and the pain in his arm moved from a dull pounding to a sharp stabbing. The green men, no the trolls, from before were coming closer. Drew raised his good arm, and pointing at the trolls, launched all four of his long-range spells, one each from the fingers of his good hand. Fireballs and acid arrows shot out towards the trolls and he watched them in a detached manner. Did they seem to be moving faster than normal?
The trolls didn’t dodge away from any of the projectiles and all four of his targets went down. Vaguely he could hear a voice, though it couldn’t quite compete with the ringing in his ears. He probably shouldn’t be out in the open like this. He turned back towards JP and Bill more slowly this time, so as not to swing his arm, and began walking back towards the strange sloped building that was under the trees.
He stumbled a few times, he knew it was because he wasn’t paying attention to the ground as much as he should be, but he couldn’t really seem to bring himself to care. Bill and another person started running towards him. He should know all his people’s names at this point. He should ask them that, maybe after the ringing stopped.
He stopped. It was too much effort to walk and Bill was coming towards him anyway, he sat down, too tired to keep standing. Bill reached him, and Drew looked up; he was talking, but it was all so muffled that he couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then he hugged Drew and the world came back into sharp focus. The ringing in his ears and the fugue over his brain went away, replaced by the sharp pain in his shoulder from the hug.
Drew grunted like he had been punched, “Drew?” Bill asked.
“I’m okay, shoulder still hurts though,” Drew said, moving to stand up, but Bill kept him down.
“Yeah, you dislocated it, lay down and I’ll pop it back in,” Bill said, gently pushing him down while the other man moved to press against Drew’s good shoulder while Bill braced his legs against Drew’s side and neck, and then moved the arm out and towards him. With a sigh of relief, Drew could feel his shoulder slide back into the socket. “Don’t move it yet,” Bill said, and then he leaned over and hugged Drew again. Instantly he felt the muscles in his arm knit back together, the trauma of the dislocation being removed.
“Alright,” Bill said, and the other man released Drew. Sitting up, Drew glanced back towards the Trolls, now only a hundred feet away. He pointed his hands at the nearest and again launched four spells, targeting a clump of three with both frostfire ball and fireball and allowing the four acid arrows to target a single individual each. His spells caught all their targets; the shocking acid arrow targets collapsed and began convulsing while the two normal acid arrow targets merely became staggered for a second. It was just long enough for JP’s bullets to take one of them. The three hit by the fireball variants disappeared, a cloud of debris and body parts billowing out away from him in their wake.
He moved to stand up and both Bill and the other man helped him, “Get back to the shelter,” Drew said as he began casting frostfire storm. Bill headed back, but the other man didn’t, he just drew the wavy kris from his side and set himself between Drew and the approaching Trolls. Drew was slightly annoyed when he blocked his vision, but a half step was enough to see where he wanted to cast.
The seconds trickled by as the trolls got closer. Drew could see their eyes, and for the first time realized that instead of whites, their eyes were surrounded by a bright neon blue sclera. In their rush to get to him, they had clumped up, the hate visible on their faces. He idly wondered where the manaborn came from-were they conjured out of thin air, or transported from their homes by the system? He felt a moment of pity for them if they had been transported away from everything they knew to this new world. He wondered what sort of planet had created these green jumpers.
The spell finished casting, but two trolls were within 50’ of him and had jumped. The world seemed to slow down for a moment; he targeted the spell beyond where the two closest trolls were, catching many of them within its radius. The blast of air pressure as the storm appeared knocked Drew back half a step, and he could feel the tremors in the ground as the fire and ice bombarded the area so close to him. The blast of air threw the two leading trolls off target, and one of the airborne trolls he shot with a lightning bolt; the kinetic energy of the blast threw it back into the storm and to its certain death.
The second troll sailed through the air unobstructed and the man in front of Drew moved to attack it. Drew cursed because it was close enough for a cone, but the man had moved to block his line of sight again, meaning it would hit him as well. Drew shifted slightly trying to get a better angle, but the troll had landed gracefully, its thick legs pushing him directly towards Drew and the man in front of him. He could hear the crunch of the impact, and the man’s scream mingled with Drew’s own cry.
A report rang out and the troll burst into flames. His arms were entangled around the man, causing both to erupt in flames. Drew watched as the man who had tried to save his life caught on fire. The grass around him also began to burn, no doubt treated by the chemicals Katie’s group had scavenged up earlier. Drew stumbled away, angry and annoyed that he had another death on his conscious, and this one completely unnecessarily. If the man hadn’t jumped in front of him, he could have easily killed the troll. Angry at himself and at the man, but more than anything at the trolls, he turned back towards the bunker, shielding his face from the heat of the flames.
Reaching a small wall that Katie must have created for him, he turned around with fury in his eyes as he willed more trolls to appear. He heard voices behind him, but he brushed them aside, refusing to allow them even a moment of his focus. “No one blocks my line of sight.” His voice rang out loud and clear, the hardened fury causing all the chatter around him to taper off.
Waves of fury radiated off him. He felt something within him stirring, some
force being drawn to his rage, a bubbling burning fire of ice that filled him with a clarity and rage he had never felt before in his life. It seemed to fill any cracks in his personality, burning away the pity he had felt for the manaborn just a few minutes ago and replacing it with a cold surety. It was calling for death and destruction, tightly controlled for now, but that was only because there was no target for his rage yet, no outlet for the power that filled his body.
Chapter Thirty-Six — Retribution
With the strange hot and cold energy filling his body, Drew focused his attention outward. The world was moving in slow motion around him, everything crystal clear and within his realm of focus. The flickering shadows of the frostfire storm drew his gaze, their orange and red light reflecting a thousand times off the various chunks of ice. The lightning arcing around within the storm illuminated the elements of destruction before returning them to the ominous darkness.
The timer in his head that told him how long the storm had been raging slowly counted to thirty. When it finished, the world went quiet, the violent fury disappearing in an instant. Immediately fireballs erupted from Drew’s hand, hitting clumps of trolls that had gathered on the far side of the storm while waiting for it to dissipate. The bolts thinned their numbers a little, but there were still dozens of trolls for him to kill.
A grim smile appeared on his face as acid arrows shot from his hand to strike four more trolls. It was only at this point that Drew heard JP’s pistols firing. Turning towards JP, he watched as the muzzle flash appeared, and lasting for longer than it should have, disappeared. It felt like he was stuck in bullet time in real life.
With a shrug, he turned back to the trolls that were advancing on his position. Waiting for them to cover the gap between his long-range spells and his short-range spells, he studied the way they leaped at him, watching their leg muscles bunch and then explode down. He counted the distance between them, a lightning bolt striking the first to leave the ground. The next four sailed through the air and he could see their faces begin to bare their teeth in an unwholesome approximation of a smile.
