The streets of Birmingham, never the prettiest of places, were positively gloomy in the final minutes of Day One.
Back in the sixties, a local Member of Parliament had delivered a speech where he noted that “I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.” Of course, he was a spectacular racist moaning about the immigration of too many people who did not share his particular skin shade of ‘slightly off milk’, rather than predicting the fallout of a planet-wide System integration. However, of all of the sins of Enoch Powell, it would probably be unfair to put failure to anticipate the bloody aftermath of people gaining superhuman Class skills solely at his door.
So, while it might not be for the reasons Powell suggested, it was accurate to note that the pavements leading away from the Bullring were certainly running with blood this evening.
Along with the remains of various people who had fallen foul of the local wildlife—both of the monstrous and the human variety—it also seemed that the System was reconfiguring the landscape to take on a particularly gothic aspect. Certainly, by the time she was ready to start her jog towards safety, the route Lorelei was planning to follow to reach the Botanical Gardens looked not unlike the elevator door at the Overlook Hotel had just opened to flood the roadway.
“Guide, is all this really necessary?” Lorelei had asked, jerking left and right as she jogged to avoid particularly deep puddles of viscera and gore.
*** Help Message ***
Necessary? No. But having spent much of the last few hours staring at the results of all of you on this homicidal planet going tonto on each other, I kind of think we should integrate that into the general vibe. You know, there are integrations where – after the initial excitement – the beings on the planet never commit another violent act again? Like, ever. It’s almost like there are other options available to ascended beings than wholesale slaughter. Just something to think about. And, whilst you do, you get to be knee-deep in offal.
In the Guide’s defence, this did seem like the rare valid point.
Although not hanging about – the Doom Clock was ticking down with quite some relentless fury - Lorelei was doing her best to hang back from the other people who had decided that the Botanical Gardens were to be their destination. It wasn’t that she was particularly intimidated by any of them – she assumed the heavier hitters were following the red route to the Children’s Hospital – but there were a lot of people with faces pale with fear and exhaustion around.
And that made her nervous.
Lorelei had long ago learned in her professional life that when you looked around a room and you couldn’t spot the person who would be able to help you out in a crisis, the chances were it was because you were the most competent one about. Normally, this gave her a sense of satisfaction. Right now, being the person most likely not to be eaten alive didn’t fill her full of hope for the future of this excursion. Especially as the road leading away from the Bullring looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, which was, as these things go, a pretty accurate simile. Shattered glass abandoned cars and the more than occasional corpse decorated the landscape. Not exactly what the Chamber of Commerce would like advertised on the travel brochures.
The largest of the groups that Lorelei was shadowing appeared to be a ragtag assembly of office workers, shop assistants, and other random citizens hurrying through the desolation with all the coordination of a drunken octopus on a bicycle. Which was probably fair enough – the current situation was one that called for speed, not elegance.
From what she could see, though, none of them had any particularly powerful Classes. A fact no doubt noted by the various creatures that seemed ripped from the worst kind of nightmares that were prowling the streets around them. The time of Wolves and Kobolds was clearly over . . .
Lorelei thought back to the green route that would take those following it to the cricket stadium and realised her instincts to avoid that path there had been correct. For whatever reason, these mobs seemed to be very aware of these routes and appeared to be using them as a feeding trough. She wondered if anyone under Level 5 would still be alive when the Doom Clock ran down . . .
Almost the moment she came to this realisation, a monstrous Level 4 Hound with glowing red eyes lunged from an alley to snap at a young woman directly ahead of Lorelei. The girl, who seemed to have some sort of Fairy Class, managed to raise a softly glowing barrier spell just in time. The shimmering shield popped like a soap bubble the moment the attacker’s jaws made contact with it, but it bought the Fairy a moment to float away. After all, nothing says "welcome to the new world" like being chased by a demon dog.
Lorelei wondered whether she should help. She had plenty of experience with the Wolves, and, presumably, this was the sort of thing where the skills were largely transferable. However, thinking about the nature of her Class, she figured she was more than likely to make the situation worse. The girl Fairy had survived today this long, so presumably, she was more tanky than she looked. Besides, all around her were, increasingly, examples of what happened when you stopped running and started fighting. It seemed sensible to let Tinkerbell live or die by her own efforts.
To her right, one particular man with delusions of heroic grandeur very briefly took a stand against a swarm of bat-like creatures. Although they were each Level 2, the keyword that he seemed to be missing was ‘swarm.’ As he was ineffectually wielding a makeshift club that looked suspiciously like a chair leg, he was very quickly turned into a skeleton as they descended on him. Fucking hell, Lorelei thought, increasing the speed of her own run, this was all getting a little intense. It seemed like a long time since she was chased around by a Kobold with a shovel.
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She quickly crossed a road, passing a teenager fumbling with a quiver of seemingly hastily crafted arrows. Call her judgemental, but Lorelei couldn’t help but think that if you were planning on making a Ranged Class work for you, it would be sensible to invest in more solid equipment. Interested in how this was going to work out, she turned her head to see him aim at a grotesque spider the size of a horse. The arrow struck true - if by ‘true’ his battle plan was to hit it and make it even angrier. A nearby woman - she might even have been the lad’s mother, Lorelei thought - her hands crackling with electric sparks, zapped the spider, whose hard skin repelled the blast, bouncing it over to the boy, sending him twitching to the ground.
Teamwork, at its finest. Lorelei did not stop to see what happened next. She had a pretty decent idea, though.
Pressing on, dodging downside streets and alleyways, she tried to avoid the worst of the horrors being inflicted all around her. Each second on the ‘Doom clock’ ticked by, marked by the heavy thud of footsteps behind and in front of her and the distant roars of unseen creatures.
Then Lorelei found herself emerging onto a wide, open expanse and cursed as the road she was on connected up with Broad Street. Annoyingly, she appeared to have joined up with a much larger crowd of panicked fleers who had all presumably taken this most obvious of routes out of the city centre. The thing was, with the increased press of humanity came a commensurate increase in monsters preying on them. It did not seem that there was any safety at all in numbers.
As she tried to pace herself to the much larger group she had joined, Lorelei found herself looking around at the chaotic mess: shops that once sold overpriced coffee and mobile phones now stood empty, their windows smashed, their wares looted or ignored. In some ways, it was nice to see this part of the city was almost business as usual. A solid night out. Just as the nostalgia of the near normalcy threatened to overwhelm her, Lorelei stumbled over a child, clinging to her father's hand, who had tripped over a fallen signpost. Dad of the Year let go of the girl and without breaking stride, sweat pouring down his face, carried on his merry way.
Lorelei was just beginning to envisage a future where she saved and protected her own version of Newt, when an actual newt – well, a Level 13 Moustached Skink – exploded through the pavement and ate the child in one bite. So that was the end of that.
Even through all the emotional dampening, this was getting pretty grim.
Lorelei reached the roundabout at the top of the road – a brisk walk from the Gardens themselves - and ran straight through it, just as Level 4 Cleric decided to go mano a mano with a Troll that was clearly relishing its day out from under whatever bridge it had come. The man muttered an incantation, and a bolt of ice shot from his fingertips, striking the Troll square in the chest. The creature roared, more annoyed than hurt – you didn’t get good at catching billygoats without some solid resistances - and swung a massive fist.
The Cleric dodged—mostly. He ended up sprawling on the ground but scrambled to his feet with the agility of someone who really didn’t want to die. The Troll, unfortunately, had other ideas, and Lorelei used the distraction of him becoming a tasty snack to press onward towards her destination.
"Ten minutes" she gasped to no-one in particular, glancing at the Doom Clock. "Plenty of time."
Ahead, the white gates of Botanical Gardens loomed like a mirage of safety. Lorelei could see other survivors filtering in. There was a queue. What the fuck was the matter with the English? The world could be ending, literally, around them, and they’d still just stand politely in line. Probably tutting at the rampaging monsters plucking them clear for food.
She was there. No big deal. Why had she even thought she needed to run this last bit? And then, with all the inevitability of the Law of Sod being evoked, Lorelei was suddenly on the floor, legs wrapped up by the tail of some sort of snake. The purple sort. With massive teeth. It was, she saw as she rolled around for the third time, something called a Reed Stalker. It was also a somewhat discouraging Level 8.
"Keep moving!" someone shouted behind her, probably someone who wasn’t being attacked by a giant serpent with shimmering scales.
Then there was a shout, and a burly man wielding a rusted sword that looked like it had seen better days ran out of the Botanical Garden and hacked at the serpent. Which was sweet of him, Lorelei thought, trying to free her feet. Each of her helper’s swings was accompanied by a guttural yell that suggested this wasn't his first encounter with something out of a fantasy novel. Maybe he was some sort of guard for the Gardens? Whatever, he was definitely hero material. The serpent was hissing and spitting, totally focused on the man and ignoring Lorelei.
Unfortunately, the snake was getting the upper hand, and the man with the rusty sword was going to be lunch very soon if she did not do something. No one else streaming through the gates to safety seemed much inclined to step in. Not that Lorelei could blame them.
Oh, fuck, she thought, I’m actually going to have to pitch in here. With a sense of deep concern as to what would be likely to happen, she activated
Original Attack Outcome: [Negative Result] Lvl 8 Reed Stalker gains ‘Poisonous Breath’ for 5 mins.
New Attack Outcome: Your coin strikes the man helping you, knocking him out and leaving him as bait for the snake to attack instead. Don’t say I never do anything for you.
Damage Dealt: Does it matter? This dude is fucked.
Feeling a touch guilty that she’d basically sacrificed the kindly man who’d come to her aid, Lorelei took advantage of him being . . . munched to slip through the gates of the Botanical Gardens.
As she did so, she tried to avoid the accusative eyes of the crowd, who, presumably, were feeling pretty judgey about what had just taken place.
Shit, she thought, her Class really was a menace.