The sun was starting to dip below the horizon when the group came upon a grizzly scene. There had to be twenty some bodies strewn across the road and into the nearby field. Blood was caked on the road and had soaked into the ground. The bodies were ripped to pieces and limbs were everywhere. A few of the women, both human and elves, ran to the side of the road and puked their guts out. Terry just looked on, wondering what could have done this and if it was still around.
He drew his sword and moved forward carefully, Izzy and Tamara not far behind him. When he got to the line of bodies across the road, he could see that the blood was clotted and dried and there were bloody footprints a good two feet wide. They were huge and seemed to have five toes, or claws, and left a deep impression in the ground in field. He walked along the line of bodies and followed the footprints for a bit but they seemed to continue off into the distance.
Walking back to the group he said, “it looks like whatever did this was very big but it moved off that way and doesn’t seem like it’s coming back.” He pointed off to the direction he just came. “Tamara why don’t you take them back a ways and set up for the night. I’ll take care of this.”
She had a hard time pulling her eyes from the sight but she finally nodded and ushered the group back the way they had come about half a mile. Izzy stayed by his side though and just gave him a look like, try and make me go.
“So, what are you planning on doing with them?”
Terry turned back to the bloody line and sighed. “If you stayed to help me bury them, I’m sorry but you’ll be disappointed.”
“I know what you are, and you’re a good man. I just wanted to see what you’ll do with them.”
“To be honest, I’m not sure what I can do with them since most of them aren’t whole.” He said as he walked over to a severed arm and picked it up. He wondered if he would be able to get any of the blood that was dried onto the tar.
“Do you need whole bodies to summon your bone things?”
“All the ones I’ve summoned so far have been from mostly whole ones, yeah. But with these I’m not sure what I can do.” He put the arm in his special inventory and started going around and cleaning up the rest as she just watched him.
She didn’t have a look of disgust on her face like he thought she would. It was more of interest and understanding that it’s not like the bodies were going to be of any use if they buried them and if he needed to summon more skeletons or weapons, she would rather have him have the materials to summon them. Even if that meant those materials were human bodies, or parts of human bodies.
It took him about twenty minutes to pick up all the body parts and store them. Once he was done, he turned to the blood, placing his hand on the dried blood he tried to move it into his special inventory, luckily it worked. He got some dried blood, which seemed to be the same as regular liquid blood but in dried form. He tried the same thing with the blood in the dirt but that just put blood-soaked dirt into his special inventory, though he did decide to keep it, just in case.
Once he was done cleaning up, they headed back to the group. She turned to him saying, “One time I would like to see what happens when you summon your things.”
“Trust me it’s not a pretty sight. Though I’ve only done it with bloodless bodies, I can only image it would be even worse if they were freshly dead with blood still in them.”
“Even still, you can’t keep sneaking off to summon things. Eventually you’ll have to do it in front of someone or the whole group.”
He sighed and nodded his head in knowing. As awesome as his class was, it could make things difficult with people who were still stuck in the way the world used to be. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to.
The two of them made it back to the group and settled down to have something to eat. Tamara coming over to them, “we need to find another store or something, we’re running out of food.”
He looked around, everyone seemed to have enough food this time, but he knew that with the extra mouths to feed their food wouldn’t last much longer. Pulling out his map he took a look, there was just enough light left for a little planning.
“It looks like there might be a small town or something here.” He pointed out a spot on the map about twenty-five miles down the road.
“Let’s hope so. I only have a few things left myself”
Nodding his head he checked his inventories. His regular one had a few food and drink items in it but his special one had a lot more stuff. “I have some extra stuff if it’s needed.”
“If we don’t find anything at that spot, I’m sure we will.” Tamara said getting up and heading off to get the kids settled down and resting.
“You have a lot more than you say you do, don’t you?” Izzy said to him quietly.
“I have a lot of secrets.” He said slyly and smiled at her. With that he got his skeletons circling the group and laid down, closing his eyes.
The night was uneventful, thankfully. Terry was up before the sun even started to shine and had already taken care of his business and was just waiting for the rest to get up. He decided to go through his special inventory and see what all he had. Other than the food and drinks, he had quite a bit of blood, liquid and dried. More than two dozen whole or mostly whole bodies and then different body parts, heads, torsos, and limbs. He would have to see what he could do with the limbs, maybe he could throw out all the parts of a body and still summon something.
“How long have you been up?” Izzy said, breaking him from his thoughts.
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“Oh, Not long. I was just going through my inventory and stuff. As much as I’m enjoying not having to constantly fight something, it would be nice to have some regular things come out so we could get some more experience and credits.”
“Yeah, I hear that. Even with this sword I wouldn’t be able to fully protect the group.”
As the two were talking, Tamara had gotten up and was walking over to them. She just caught the last bit of their conversation. “I could also go for some experience.” She chimed in.
All three of them nodded their heads at that before the two women went off for their morning business. He walked around the group, shaking everyone awake. Of course, Sam was the only one to grumble and complain at him waking her up. He shook his head and just walked away, letting her grumble. He handed out food to the elves and then took some out for himself.
It took the group about twenty minutes before they were ready to travel, and Sam was still grumbling about being woken up and having to walk again. As the group got up to where the bodies had been there were some whispers about what had happened to them. The only evidence that there had even been anything was the large footprints off to the side and a few small patches of blood.
“Wow, you really cleaned it up, didn’t you?” Tamara said as she came up next to him.
“Yeah, it was pretty messy, but we got it cleaned up.”
She had that look on her face that said she didn’t believe him for a second, but she didn’t press it. She fell back to the middle of the group with the kids. Gantar and Bradley had taken up the game Terry had been playing with him. Bradley would point out objects and animals that he saw and Gantar would repeat them.
The group made good time towards the point they had picked out last night, stopping for a bit around noon to rest. He thought they must be in a dead zone, since there were hardly any monsters roaming about. Either that or the giant thing that attacked the people he had picked up was keeping the smaller things away.
The sun was still a couple hours or so above the horizon when the small town came into view. There only seemed to be a handful of buildings, one of them a grocery store. He picked up his pace a bit as he saw the store, but also kept his eyes open for any threats. When they got to the store, the front doors were busted and bent inwards with glass all over the place.
Slowing down, he drew his sword and motioned the group to halt ten yards away. He motioned for Izzy and Tamara to go with him as he moved towards the doors, his feet crunching on glass as he got nearer.
The doors were bent inwards and open enough where they could fit through without having to move them. It was fairly dark inside, with just the sunlight filtering in from the doorway and the main windows.
His HUD flashed to let him know he gained something but he just pushed it out of the way for right now. Once he got past the glass on the ground it was a bit easier to move. It wasn’t a very big store so, he sent Izzy down the front of the store and him and Tamara moved down the length of it. Tamara taking the middle aisle while he moved to the back of the store by the deli counters.
As he moved back towards the meat/deli department, the smell started to creep up to him. It was the smell of meat and dairy that had gone bad. Looks like we won’t be eating any of that meat he thought to himself. Turning and moving down the back aisle he peered down each aisle he went past, seeing nothing but shelving and product strewn over the floor.
When he reached the end of his aisle, Tamara and Izzy were already waiting for him. His aisle was the one that connected to the backroom. Motioning for the two women to stay back, he opened the door quietly and stepped into the back room. It was a lot darker in there than it had been in the store part.
Gently closing the door, it blocked out more of the light and Terry waited a moment for his eyes to adjust before moving further in. He could make out shelving and pallets of products and boxes. Some of them were neatly stacked while there were others that seemed to be thrown all over the place. It was a fairly small backroom, only five aisles.
He had to walk down the first aisle since he could only see so far in the dark. When he got to the back wall he moved to the next aisle, checking as best he could. When he started on the third one, something just felt different about it. He got almost halfway down it when he saw a mound like thing in the middle of the aisle. Moving slowly towards it, he could see that it was concrete with a hole leading down into the earth.
From what Terry could see the mound was about five feet tall and the hole was almost four feet in diameter. He couldn’t see down into it very far so he couldn’t tell how deep it went but he could guess about its depth. He thought about firing a firebolt spell down into it but thought better of it since he didn’t know what was down there or how many there were.
Slowly moving back down the aisle, he went down the last two, just to make sure they were clear. When he was finished, he moved back out into the store, where Tamara and Izzy waited.
“Well, what did you find?” Izzy whispered when he came back out.
“There’s a big mound with a hole in it, leading underground.”
“That’s not good, is it?”
Shaking his head, “it is not.”
“Should we do anyting about it?” Tamara asked.
“No, I don’t think so. At least not if we can avoid it. I don’t want to fight underground and I don’t know how many there would be if we disturbed it. I think I’ll put a skeleton out in front of it, just in case something comes out of it. Otherwise, let’s get everyone in here and have them grab as much non-perishable food as they can carry.”
The two women nodded and they moved outside, motioning for the remaining group to come up. “Okay everyone, we’ll go in and grab what you can carry, canned stuff would probably be best but use your judgement. Also, try and be quiet, there’s something in there that may be a problem if it’s disturbed. Everyone take an elf with them and help them get supplies.”
Terry turned and headed back into the store a bit quicker than he had the first time. Bringing with him one of his skeletons to guard the mound. Katar followed him into the back while the rest split off and went down different aisles.
He opened the door to the backroom and slipped in with the skeleton following and Katar coming in last. He considered leaving the door open for some more light but thought that might draw out whatever was in the ground. Letting their eyes adjust a bit, he led the skeleton down to the third aisle and had it stand about five feet in front of the hole.
Motioning for Katar to follow him, Terry started moving down the first aisle, throwing as many supplies as he could find into his special inventory. Katar following suit after watching him for a bit. He had just cleared most of the second aisle when he heard the door to the store open and someone whispered, “Terry.”
Moving out to the front, he saw Izzy standing with the door open. “Everyone is full on food and drinks, how’s it going back here?”
“We were just getting to the end of the second aisle.” He looked back at all the wasted food and wished he had time to get it all.
Just as he was about to mention he wanted some more time; he felt a rumbling start in the ground. He looked at Izzy, then turned to the third aisle as the rumbling started to get stronger. Katar grabbed his shoulder and pointed to the store exit, like he knew what was coming. He agreed with him and he got his skeleton moving.
Izzy, Terry, Katar and the skeleton all moved as fast as they could moving towards the exit. The rest of the group was already outside waiting for them. As the four of them burst out of the door, the group was startled until they too felt the rumbling.
“Move! Let’s go” Izzy shouted at the dumbfounded group.
Gantar was the first to break free and grabbed Bradley’s shoulder, the rest of the group following suit soon after. Tamara was in the front and started leading the group away from the building while Terry, Izzy and Katar were in the back.