Chapter 51 - Fascination

Colonel Turner glanced at Farnsworth, then directly at me, sizing me up. There was something positively magnetic about the man. I felt drawn to him in a way I couldn’t explain. If he’d been running for president, I couldn’t imagine anyone voting against him. I didn’t think I’d ever met someone with so much raw presence.

“This must be Miss Serrano,” Turner said.

“I am. But Selena is fine,” I replied.

“Excellent. Please, come with me. Master Sergeant, that will be all for now, but hang out someplace close. I might need you when we’re done talking.”

“Yes sir,” Farnsworth replied.

Turner led me into his office, Hope following close behind me. It wasn’t an enormous space—just room for a desk, a few chairs, and a book shelf. I glanced at that. You can learn a lot about someone from their choice in books. His shelf was all nonfiction. Some history, some science, a few books whose titles looked like they were for military strategy, a medical tome, and other assorted topics. Eclectic; that did reveal a little about his nature. Might be useful.

“Please, have a seat Selena,” he said, waving to one of the chairs. He moved around to the other side of the desk and fell into his chair. “I’m sure you’ve had one hell of a journey.”

I sat, as he asked. “It hasn’t been easy, no. But that’s true for everyone. Colonel, I have friends who are in trouble, back on the UVM campus. Kara and I came here to scout the place out and see if it was safe or not. Now that we know it is, we need to go collect those people, or they’re going to be overrun by goblins.”

He raised a hand like he was asking me to slow down. “Don’t worry. We’ll do all we can for your friends. Getting a large enough force out there and back safely isn’t going to be simple, but we’ll do what we can to help.”

That wasn’t exactly the answer I’d been hoping for. They had hundreds of people here, some of them very strong. Surely they could afford at least a small team to go rescue Alfred’s people?

“Right now, I want to know more about you, Selena,” Turner went on.

“Me? Why?”

“Because you’re the first tier five person we’ve had join us here. We have a few at that rank here, but all of them are military. We got them to that rank by pooling crystals and then doling them back out. Master Sergeant Farnsworth is one of our rank five Guardsmen.”

“I saw,” I told him. “Just like I can see that you’re tier six. Impressive.”

In fact, he didn’t just feel like a six; he felt like a strong six, as best I could tell, anyway. It wasn’t like I had ever met someone who was tier six before, so I didn’t have much to gauge it off, but my gut said he was more than just a tier six. He likely had at least one other stone at tier five, too.

Something still felt wrong about him, though. Part of me was still wanting to fawn over the man, to trust him, reacting like he was the perfect leader. The other part of me rebelled against the whole concept.

He looked a little annoyed at my answer, but brushed it off. “Like the Master Sergeant, I got all my crystals from the collective work of many airmen. We’ve had people out fighting monsters daily since all this started, and as the base commander, we elected to make me one of the first rank fives. We only pushed me up to rank six this morning.”

Of course he’d been taking in the lion’s share of crystals. He was the leader of these people, so it just made sense they would hand over the stones, allow Turner to dole them back out to everyone. That was to be expected. Right?

At the same time those thoughts were crossing my mind, I felt like I wanted to throw up a little bit. Was this man ever even out in the field, fighting? Or was he just leeching off the hard work of others?

The two thoughts were so wildly different from each other that I felt confused. What was happening to me? Why was I struggling to keep my thoughts clear?

“All of our rank five airmen and officers got there the same way: by working together,” Turner said. “But not you, I’m guessing. We haven’t seen anyone from outside our fence arrive with anything higher than a rank three crystal—until you showed up. My question is pretty easy. How did you manage it?”

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I thought I was beginning to understand, at least a little. He knew about being able to loot stones from dead people. He must know; how could he not? He was the commander of so many men and woman—they had to have run into at least one unfriendly human, and then they’d found out that people could be looted for their stones the same as monsters.

In a lot of ways, people were the best possible loot sources. Kill a monster, get one stone. Kill a human who’d been fighting for a bit, and you got all the stones they’d collected, both the ones they’d socketed and any spares they had, too.

He wasn’t asking me for my story so much as trying to figure out if I’d gotten to tier five by murdering a bunch of people.

Just like that, whatever hold he’d had over me snapped. My thoughts felt clear and unclouded for the first time since I’d laid eyes on the man. The headache still hadn’t faded, but my mind was my own again. I closed my eyes, counted to three, and then opened them again, locking my gaze with his.

I was pissed. Before speaking, I readied my Drain Life spell, just in case. “Colonel, I don’t know what sort of game you’re playing here, but I don’t appreciate whatever spell you’re using. Control magic? Command powers? What exactly are you doing to me? Because I gotta say, the headache sucks.”

He blinked once, twice, then leaned back in his seat and laughed, a deep, belly laugh. Part of me wanted to immediately laugh with him. I shoved that treasonous slice of my mind down, hard.

“My apologies,” Turner said. “My Charisma is tier five. Once it hit that level, it started acting as a sort of…fascination. When I give orders, people snap to just a little more. When I ask questions, they’re more inclined to answer honestly. It’s not mind control, no. But a tier five Charisma makes it easier to lead these people through all of this mess.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but unfortunately there’s not much I can do about it. Short of removing the stone, it’s ‘always on,’ I’m afraid. I’m impressed you noticed, though! That’s rare and unusual; you must have some interesting stones socketed. What is your Will rank?”

Will was what blocked his Charisma? That was good to know. I needed to get my Will up to tier five ASAP, because this was bullshit. “Tier three.”

That explained why I was struggling so much. If his Charisma was tier five, it knocked out my tier three Will. I was able to sense what he was doing, and to some degree shut it out. But not enough. I’d answered his question about my Will rank without even thinking about whether or not I should.

“All right. Now, please answer my question from before? It’s important we know how you grew so strong, so quickly,” Turner said.

“Because you want to be sure I didn’t murder people to get where I am?” I asked. Best to take the bull by the horns, here. If his Charisma was making me veer toward unthinking honesty, then I could make sure I was honest and blunt at the same time. “I didn’t, for what it’s worth. I did have to kill three people, because they attacked me. I regret the need but not the deed, if you get my meaning. If I hadn’t killed them, I’d be dead right now instead.”

He nodded, urging me to go on, but didn’t say anything more. I was grateful for that; his Charisma seemed strongest when he was speaking, especially if he was giving commands or asking questions.

“Most of the rest was just from running into a graveyard that was very full of undead,” I explained, hoping this was the right move. “The cemetery I found was fenced in with these old-school wrought iron fences, and the undead couldn’t leave the place. I was able to get in, kill a few, then repeat until they were all dead.”

“How many?” Turner asked.

“Sixty-seven undead, in that cemetery. I ran into a few more undead before and after that, too.”

He whistled. “That’s a lot of crystals. You still have them all, here?”

The urge to tell him the truth was overpowering, and I blurted out the answer in spite of my wanting to lie. “Yeah. In my pack.”

“Good to know,” Turner said. He must have seen my worries written on my face, because the next thing he did was try to assuage them. “Don’t worry, Selena. Nobody is going to take your things, here. In fact, we have an exchange where you can trade in your crystals, maybe get others you’d find more useful. We allow trades of common stones on a three to two basis, so you get two for every three you turn in. Rare stones are listed at three times the value of commons.”

That was cool news. I definitely wanted to check this exchange out. I still didn’t wholly trust him about nobody taking my stuff, but… I had to start trusting someone, sooner or later. Living on my own had been okay, but it was lonely as hell. Working with other people had to be better, right?

“Well, not killing people for those stones makes a big difference,” Turner said. “If you’d been killing for crystals, we wouldn’t allow you to stay. That’s why I pushed the issue—and it’s the main reason why you were brought to me straight away, so we could find out the answer. You’ve worked for them instead, and I have no issue with that at all. You’re a survivor, clearly, and someone we want working with us.”

His words made me feel pride, and I had to shove that down, too, since I wasn’t certain if it was real or not. Yup, was definitely going to rank up Will the first chance I got. Zero doubts.

“Thanks, Colonel. I’ll be glad to help out—I do mean that. The exchange sounds awesome, too. Now, about my friends?”

He chuckled again. “You’ve earned some answers, there. Come with me. I want to show you our situation room.”

He stood, walked around the desk, and opened the door, waiting for me to follow. I rose and together we left his office, headed down the hall toward a much larger space, buzzing with people.