Pain. He was dying. Surely he was dying. Oh Lord, I tried. I tried so hard... Shame burned at him for his failure. Would Chenelle die? Terry? Danny? Doug? He'd pushed his luck one too many times.
Faintly he thought he heard voices. Karl...Karl, wake up...Karl please, you've got to wake up... He couldn't think. Fog. Pain. Are you sure you did it right? Doesn't anyone have any more?
Go away, he told the annoying voice.
KARL!
“KARL!” Something was shaking him, and he retched. Mind reeling, Karl finally realized that he was alive. Barely.
Memory rushed back and he forced his unwilling eyes open. His head spun. He thought he might vomit some more. But he forced himself to whisper, “Who...needs...healing?”
“Who needs...!?” He recognized Terry's voice screaming in his ear, “YOU! You do! If you have any juice left, heal yourself.” Her voice broke. “We're all alive, except for you if you don't heal yourself right fucking NOW, you crazy old man!”
Karl sighed with relief and prayers of gratitude. He made himself focus, and cast healing hands on himself.
For an instant, he almost wished he hadn't. Everything hurt. Everything hurt. There was a strange light stinging his eyes right in front of him. Above him, rather. He was lying down, but the ceiling was oddly close. He closed his eyes for a moment, and muttered, “bright.”
“He did it,” an unfamiliar voice said in a tone full of relief.
He forced himself to roll onto his side. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, take it easy, mister.” He felt several hands on him, gently pressing him back.
“Where am I?” He looked around.
He was in a kitchen, lying on the table. He was bandaged. He recognized Terry. Chenelle was hovering next to her. He couldn't see Daniel or Doug. There were two other people in the room.
The first was the archer from the fight. The other was a much younger man with black hair wearing a relieved expression.
“You're in our house. I'm Michael Cook. This is my son Jake, who just saved your life, or helped anyway. My wife Emma is outside with...uh...”
“Doug,” Chenelle supplied. “Ooh! I think I'm ready.” She lifted her hand in Karl's direction, concentrating, and Karl glowed golden, while some of his injuries seemed to stop hurting.
“Finally.” Terry sighed, then frowned. “Sorry.”
“It's okay,” Chenelle said. “But I think I need to sit down. I'm out of mana again.” Terry guided her to a chair. The new healer pressed her hand to her forehead as if she had an awful headache. It reminded him of how he had a headache when he was tapped out of mana.
Karl made himself focus on the man Michael. “Karl Hausman. Pleased to meet you. What happened with the fight?” Everyone started talking at once, until Michael used his loud voice to bring some order to the conversation and told Terry to explain. Then the man stepped outside for a couple of minutes to guard his wife, and Doug came inside.
It seemed that in the thick of things Karl had missed a lot. His guess about Doug's vision getting blocked was right. Chenelle had panicked and dumped all of her healing into Doug when he was trampled, which was likely the only reason he was still alive. Then she had dodged, repeatedly, before getting hit.
“Thank you for the healing, it came just in time. I'm so sorry I didn't have any left for you.” She looked embarrassed.
“You did great,” Karl assured her. “You kept Doug alive. That's how it's supposed to work.”
Terry had thrown caltrops—and where did she get those? Karl wondered—in the path of the charging boars, taking two of them out of the fight temporarily. Two more stayed focused on knocking her tree down, which ultimately succeeded. Apparently she had done some sort of amazing acrobatics Karl had glimpsed as the tree started tipping over, diving down onto one of the boars and stabbing it to death in a single blow. Karl whistled.
Terry nodded with a smile. “It said 'critical strike times seven.'” She gestured and a wicked looking knife appeared in her hand for a moment. “Looted this bad boy off of the marsh archer earlier.”
Karl frowned in thought. Those critical strike numbers seem pretty high. Is there a reason for that? Or is it just the way things work with the System?
Despite their efforts, they all would have died if Michael Cook hadn't stepped out on his porch with his bow and repeatedly shot the one that was killing Karl, then the other one on that was killing Karl after trying to kill Chenelle, and then drawn the last boar off of Terry for a crucial moment with his last arrow.
Terry had used the healing staff on herself once during her fight, and had panicked when it crumbled while trying to heal Karl. Apparently it was possible to lose consciousness while still at positive health, but he was taking ongoing bleeding damage when they retrieved him. Jake Cook didn't know first aid (or First Aid), but had improvised something that the System had dubbed 'Stopgap Aid' to bandage Karl up temporarily. He had been trying to figure out how to extend the time limit on it when Terry had managed to get Karl to wake up and heal himself.
The five people in the fight had gotten over 300 experience each, which leveled Doug and likewise catapulted Chenelle straight to second level in her first fight. Terry had reached third level at the start of the fight, and had taken a few seconds while treed to boost her stats and grab skills. Meanwhile Karl was two thirds of the way to fourth level.
Michael Cook hadn't hit level three as an archer but said he was close after the fight. Emma Cook didn't have a class and was first level, while their son Jake was also first level but had an odd class called “Tinker.” They had managed to clear their own house top to bottom, which involved four separate fights, all with imps. Jake had improvised a net out of nearby items during one fight and got offered his class.
Daniel piped up that he was a 'level five year old'. The adults laughed and agreed.
“Hey, Karl, think you can walk?”
Karl wanted to say no, but given how Terry was fidgeting, she needed him up and about for something. Abruptly he was bathed in a yellow glow, not his own. He smiled his thanks at Chenelle, who looked shyly proud of herself. “I'm up, I'm up,” he grumbled, slowly swinging himself up and off the table.
Terry beckoned him outside. He followed her to the porch. “Okay, Terry, what's so urgent?”
“Loot!”
“What? How long was I out?”
“Just over fifteen minutes.”
“Shouldn't the bodies be gone by now?”
“Apparently they stop decaying if you poke them. That's what Emma's been doing, going around and around, retrieving arrows and poking the bodies, hoping you'd wake up. Your loot might make the difference.”
Karl looked at her. “Are we close to ten silver?”
“If we pool all our money, yeah.”
It took a few minutes, and some jokes about boars with coin purses, but in the end, they still came up short.
“Eight silver, ninety-five copper. Damn.” Terry kicked a rock. “Should we fight in the dark?”
Karl shook his head. “Not unless people have night vision. And goggles wouldn't help even if we had them; even my birding binoculars are already getting blurry. Everything not 'Systemized' is decaying, apparently.” Emma and Michael had already stepped back in the house. Karl looked at the setting sun. “By the way, what items did you pick, this morning when we had two hours?”
“Well, my cheerleading baton for a weapon, my bag for an item, and my sneakers for clothing.”
“Sneakers?”
“Well, I didn't have anything remotely like armor, I didn't know if my parents would be back any minute, and I figured I'd probably need to be able to run.”
Karl nodded. “Makes sense.”
“You?”
“My coat, gloves and boots as an ensemble, the ice chopper from the garage, and my headlamp.”
As soon as they stepped inside, they were called into the living room. Jake had rigged up a light from household items, so they weren't sitting in the dark. That was what had hurt Karl's eyes when he came to.
“Did we make it?” Chenelle asked. They both shook their heads. There was a dejected silence for a moment.
“All right, let's talk about our plans for the night,” Michael said. “You're all welcome to stay of course, and I hope you will. We've had a backup plan going on the assumption that we weren't going to get to ten silver, but we'll have to modify it a bit for eight instead of three.”
“We were going to hole up in the pantry, so we could protect the food as well as each other,” Emma explained. “Jake was going to rig up some alarms for us. Anyway, what do you think, love, the basement?” She turned to her husband. “Or the guest bedroom?”
“Upstairs is better. We don't want to have another fight in front of the furnace. That was nerve wracking enough in daylight. Plus it will definitely be warmer, with the chill tonight.”
“It'll be more comfortable too,” Emma agreed. “Would, um, someone with a strength greater than two be willing to help move some furniture around?” She gave a little laugh. “That feels so strange to say.”
“If it can wait half an hour, I'll be in much better shape to help,” Karl promised.
They spent the next couple of hours moving things around and setting up futons and blankets. They used inventory to carry large amounts of food from the pantry and stack it in a pile in the middle of the guest room. Karl's headlamp was very useful as the night gloom deepened.
There were too many windows on the first floor to effectively block them all. They went on the pessimistic assumption that something would either spawn or break into the house during the night. Better safe than sorry.
Michael claimed the right of keeping first watch. Karl understood; the world had become very dangerous and the man had just let five strangers into his home. Better to show trust to earn it. Terry took the second watch, stating that she normally stayed up late anyway and had a hard time getting up in the morning. Doug and Chenelle shared the third watch, and Karl and Jake would take over for a fourth watch, with Emma taking a fifth if it proved necessary. Nobody had a working timepiece, so it was all going to be approximate anyway. It was a clear night, so the stars at least could be a very rough guide.
Everyone turned in early, and conversation in the dark ranged over their respective adventures, skills, discoveries, and pasts, especially after little Daniel managed to get to sleep in one corner of the bed. It was oddly reminiscent of camping. No one needed light to use their interface, so a lot of them spent much of the night trying to read about their strange new world. Sleep was fitful at best for most of them, although true to her word Terry was out like a light after her watch.
Wednesday
Karl woke with the dawn to find Jake keeping watch alone. He frowned, but didn't speak; he simply started looking and listening carefully. Time enough to argue once everyone was awake.
Karl couldn't get over the oddity of having fewer aches and pains in the morning. He had practically been disemboweled on Tuesday; he had had his legs crushed. He had been magically poisoned, and at death's door several times. And yet, he felt physically better than he had in years. It wasn't even that unusual for him to get such poor sleep, either. He reached for his glasses before he remembered that he didn't need them. He spent a few moments squinting to convince himself.
Once everyone but Terry and Daniel were awake, they got ready to remove the barricade at the top of the stairs and see what there was to see. Michael and Doug moved the dresser away while Karl stood ready, trash can lid and kitchen knife in hand. Half the people were watching the ceilings in case of spiders or imps; Karl focused on the stairs. There wasn't any way to do things quietly, so Karl was not too surprised to see a goblin come around the bend in the stairs into view. He was actually more surprised that it ran off instead of attacking. He started down the stairs to get the lay of the land. He was almost to the bend when there came loud thumps on the stairs and two very large green men came into view.
Hobgoblin Warrior
“Big Goblins!” Karl yelled. He hurried down, trash can lid first. This time, a single hit from one club dented the lid severely. Ow. In close quarters, the kitchen knife was effective. He got two stabs in before it broke. He tried the equip in overhead position trick with the marsh warrior club, and ended up getting parried for his efforts. He and the hobgoblins seemed to mostly be managing to get in each other's way more than doing serious damage. It was just too crowded. He had to get around the bend in the stairs.
Someone took up position behind and to the left of him, drawing some of the attacks away from Karl. He was tempted to grapple, but the hobgoblin looked stronger than he felt. On the plus side if they both fell it would clear the stairs somewhat. He decided to head butt the one before him and regretted it. It works better when I use a rock.
Fed up, Karl used his crumpled shield and tried to push his way past. The big one refused to move, so Karl did grapple him. Unfortunately as they fell Karl could tell that he was going to land on the bottom and it was really going to hurt. This is what happens when you don't know what you're doing, he thought as pain ripped through several spots on his spine and the back of the head, the hobgoblin on top of him, also head down.
The monster lifted himself up just enough to get room to punch Karl in the face. Karl saw stars. He raised his fist again, and Karl couldn't do much about it except prepare healing hands for himself, but then there was a short series of banging noises, an additional crushing weight for a moment, and the hobgoblin made a kind of coughing choking noise, followed by the sound of Terry landing on her feet at the bottom of the stairs, abruptly the new front line for the humans.
“You're crazy,” Karl mumbled. She shouldn't be fighting in the front.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“That's my line!” Terry said while dodging and weaving.
“I got him out of the way,” Karl groaned, feeling the blood rushing to his head as he attempted to push the ex-hobgoblin off of him so he could work on getting right side up or at least getting his arms and legs under himself.
“I got him out the picture.”
Karl mentally conceded the point and cast healing hands, then shoved the dead weight off of him and started to try to lift himself up, but given his position he was in danger of doing a handstand or flipping over and colliding with Terry.
“Stay in your lane old man!”
“Think I'm still in the driveway,” he groaned, grabbing the railing and starting to turn himself around slowly. As he faced upstairs, Michael and Doug both appeared.
“Jesus,” Doug said and grabbed Karl by the coat one handed, hauling him up and holding him until he could get his feet under him. Karl idly wondered what his strength was.
“Coming through!” Karl wasn't sure how Terry got airborne but she landed with one foot on the sloped rail and kicked off to go higher. “Whoops!” she shouted as her other foot missed the rail. She crashed down onto a flat top cabinet, sending mail, knickknacks and a coin holder flying.
It felt as if they were getting all the bad luck they should have gotten yesterday, but it was a lot more survivable now. Doug and Michael were at the bottom of the stairs, and Karl threw his knife at a regular sized goblin that was about to whale on Terry with a club, missing but spoiling its aim. He straightened up and looked for where he could help in the fight. Rather than trying to jump, he climbed over the railing awkwardly so he could get to the ground floor and start defending Terry properly. He cast healing hands on himself, and then one on Terry when he reached her, all but ignoring getting pummeled by regular sized goblins of the type that had nearly killed him less than a day before.
The battle raged across the dining room, laying waste to the furnishings. Doug glowed golden, then Michael did, as Chenelle got to the bend in the stairs and could see the fight. It was too chaotic even to count the monsters. It looked like a riot at a fraternity with a green dye theme.
After a couple of minutes the fight turned more in their favor, and the five combat classers shook out into a better order of battle. Terry wasn't able to stealth so she fought dagger against club with regular goblins, clearing them out slowly. There were four remaining hobgoblins but one of them abruptly glowed green and straightened up. Karl barreled through, rolling over the dining room table in order to slam into the caster, keeping it busy so it couldn't do that again. He improvised with a pottery planter, fists, kicks, and ended up getting the healer in a headlock. Then he realized that he had no idea what to do next, except to keep the magic user facing away from the battle. Eventually Terry put the thing out of its embarrassed misery for him.
In another minute it was over. Everybody looked around for more targets as the room feel silent. Then from the stairs Daniel screamed.
“DADDY IS AWESOME!”
**
After everyone had looted, it was clear that they were well over ten silver all together. Also, all five of those fighting had leveled again. Everybody found a seat somewhere in the mess and started assigning stat points and choosing skills. Poor Emma just wandered through her house, one hand over her mouth as she looked over the wreckage. The goblins and hobgoblins had already attacked the pantry before the fight, and half the food still there was destroyed.
Karl had a flood of notifications to sift through, some of them older:
Your skill in Brawling has increased (2-->3)
Your skill in Brawling has increased (3-->4)
Your skill in healing hands has increased (3-->4)
You have increased in level (3-->4)
Your strength has increased by 1
Your charisma has increased by 1
You have two skill points to distribute.
You have learned the spell Purge Poison (1)
“Help Purge Poison.”
Purge Poison
This is a paladin spell with effect similar to the healer spell Counter Blight, but more specialized. It is specific to ingested lesser poisons, and will remove one such from one target per cast. It also has a low percentage chance, increasing with level of the spell, to remove stronger poisons. Casting requires the caster to be touching the recipient.
Casting Cost: 10 Mana
Karl raised an eyebrow.
Terry suddenly called out, “Hey, am I nuts or did the System learn English overnight?”
“Hey, you're right!”
“Same here!”
Karl grunted in agreement. Strange. What did it do, hire a translator?
Setting that aside for the moment, Karl debated what he most needed. It still seemed that strength and constitution were most important for him to improve, so he put one into each.
Karl Friedrich Hausman
Class: Paladin
Level: 4
Experience: 350/2000
Health: 103/144
Mana: 101/170
Stamina: 100/100
Endurance: 19
Body: 6.3 (Strength: 6, Constitution: 7, Agility: 6)
Mind: 7.7 (Intelligence: 9, Willpower: 8, Aptitude: 6)
Social: 4.3 (Charisma: 7, Personality: 3, Allure: 3)
Skills:
Analyze Creature (1)
Brawling (4)
Short Spear (2)
Shield Bash (2)
Spells:
Healing Hands (4)
Purge Poison (1)
He finished before the others, so he made himself useful in the kitchen following directions from Emma and Jake to salvage something for breakfast. People spread out and searched the rest of the house, but there were no more spawns during the night. A brief look outside showed no new or old monsters in view.
Breakfast was mostly a silent affair except for Daniel giving a dramatic retelling and asking questions about the fight. Once people were finished eating, Michael cleared his throat.
“Folks, we've got to talk about what happens next.”
“We need to make this house a safe zone,” Emma declared.
Chenelle smiled sadly. “I felt the same way about our house, Emma, but we need to find someplace better, more secure.”
“But we have ten silver now!”
“And what would we do tomorrow, Mom? Can we kill enough things to get ten silver every day? And that's just for one room!”
Karl cleared his throat. “Given the death rate yesterday, I think it is imperative that we gather more survivors. We should continue on down Walnut Street, house by house, and see if we can rescue people and add to our strength. I stayed by myself, in my house, and fought three different kinds of monster in the first couple of hours. I almost died more than once. I realized that I can't do it alone. None of us can. If humanity is to survive, we have got to band together.”
“And what do we do come nightfall?” Doug demanded. “The same thing we did last night? What are we going to do for food, if we lose half of our supplies every day?”
“We need to make a permanent Safe Zone,” Terry stated flatly. She looked around at everyone for their reactions.
“But isn't it impossible? We need a thousand metal, however much that is, and we don't have it.”
“How big is this Safe Zone, if we build it? How close together do the supplies need to be?” Michael asked.
“Several acres if I read it right,” Jake offered.
“Metal, wood, and stone...” Michael said slowly. “...What about the old mill?”
The neighbors looked at each other. “What, on Twisty Brook? Would that be enough?” Doug wondered.
“It's got that big metal dam for the spillway. It's a rusted hulk, but metal is metal. And if that's not enough, the road there has guard rails, and then there's the steel bridge on Post Road."
“Can we go try it?”
“I'm sorry, exactly where is this? I only moved to town this year and I'm afraid I don't know the area very well yet,” Karl asked.
“It's further up, almost the same way you've been going. At the corner of Walnut and Post Road turn right, and the mill is just a short way along there on your right. Even going slowly, we could easily get there by the afternoon.”
Terry nodded. “Then we should get going. We need to know if it's going to work, first of all, or if it needs more of something. It won't help to rescue people if we don't have anywhere to put them.”
“And if it doesn't work, we can make a temporary Safe Zone there and try again tomorrow,” Jake added, warming to the idea.
“I can't leave here,” Emma insisted.
“Mom—”
“We worked so long to save up for this house! I am not giving it up to some... disgusting... green... hobgoblins!”
“Emma, we've got to be realistic,” Michael urged.
“Why should we let monsters take our homes?!”
Karl bit back his first response and thought about what the woman was feeling. “Maybe...” Everyone turned to him, and he forced himself to sit up straight and speak evenly. “Maybe we will be able to save the houses.”
“How?”
“Can Safe Zones be expanded?” he asked. They looked at each other. No one knew the answer. Karl pressed on. “It can't be one size fits all, can it? Some Safe Zones must be larger than others. So maybe we can upgrade. Claim more territory. Expand out until we're protecting the whole neighborhood.” Karl thought the idea farfetched, but he had to give Emma some kind of hope so that she didn't dig in her heels and get herself and her family killed.
“It's possible,” Michael put in. “Some people somewhere must be able to survive and even thrive in this System thing, and they'd have to have towns, cities even.”
Jake nodded. “We could do this. But we have to start in a place with enough resources, and hopefully the mill will have that. We need to find out, and the sooner the better.”
“I like the mill idea. I didn't want to turn my house into a new City Hall anyway,” Chenelle said. “Let's do it, Emma. If we're going to save your house, we need to live long enough to do it.”
Emma looked around at them all. “Do you really think we can?”
“I think it's our best shot,” Karl said honestly. There was a short pause.
“It sounds like we have a plan,” Michael declared. “Everybody load up with whatever of the food you can carry, and let's go check out the mill. Time's a'wastin'.”
It took almost half an hour, but everyone eventually walked down the driveway to Walnut Street and turned left. Karl assigned people directions to watch as they walked, then swapped them around a bit since looking backwards while walking was proving a challenge for a couple of people. Emma and Jake stayed in the middle, with Chenelle and Daniel close to them. Fighters stayed on the outside.
Terry wanted to split off and scout the houses they passed, but Karl vetoed it. “We can't afford to pull a large group of monsters when we have so many to protect and not everyone is a fighter. We'll come back when we can. Remember, we might have a fight or two on our hands at the mill, and that will be bad enough.” She nodded reluctantly, but Karl noticed that Terry still dropped into stealth from time to time as they walked.
Karl was relieved that his extra point in constitution seemed to be helping his ability to press on. He was effectively pretending that he wasn't a feeble old man. It was important that he not look weak. He assumed appearances mattered for paladins.
They ended up stopping several times along the way. At one point the road dipped down, and Terry spotted several marsh warriors off on the right. They waited several minutes for the monsters to move on before continuing.
Next was a bear. It had once been a black bear, but it was larger than normal and its eyes now glowed red. For several minutes it was a standoff. They argued quietly about whether to attack it. Eventually the bear got bored and wandered off. They waited five more minutes, then resumed their hike.
An hour later, they still hadn't reached the intersection, and Karl was very glad that they had set out early. The day was somewhat cool, which helped given that they were bundled up in whatever makeshift armor each had managed to assemble. The sun kept disappearing behind clouds and then returning, giving Karl intermittent chills and warmth. The changing light also made it harder to see under the trees.
As they passed another shady low point in the road, Terry signaled. The group wasn't very coordinated yet, so it took them several moments to stop. Karl was about to walk over and ask her what she'd seen, when a loud chattering filled the air, seeming to come from all around them. Then land crabs burst from the underbrush. A lot of land crabs.
They poured forth and started to surround the group. Karl looked around but there wasn't anything obvious to use as a defensive wall. There was a large boulder, but there were crabs on top of it and Karl didn't like the idea of them attacking from above as well.
“Oh, hell,” Karl muttered, then raised his voice. “Watch out for the claws! These things jump up on your leg. Crushing works much better than stabbing, so stomp them!”
Jake hoisted Daniel up onto his shoulders, then pulled what looked like a tangle of power cords out of his inventory. Emma tried to stare in all directions at once. Michael had pulled out his bow, but vanished it and drew out a heavy marsh warrior club, a gift from Terry apparently.
“Man, I really wish somebody knew how to throw lighting bolts or fireballs right about now!” Terry griped. “Ugh, I hope I'm heavy enough!” With that she jumped high in the air and came down directly on top of one of the lead crabs. Immediately she jumped off and landed on another, and then another.
Karl started pulling big rocks out of his inventory and dropping them. It worked better if he threw them downward; each rock did significant damage falling and would pin the crabs in place, but throwing killed them outright, so long as he didn't miss.
Jake threw his gadget, which turned out to be a large net that covered half a dozen and temporarily trapped them. “Mom, give me the red one!” After a second or two, Emma hesitantly made a gadget appear in her hands and passed it to her son.
A howl of pain made Karl turn to see Michael going down covered by half a dozen crabs, club flailing. The man glowed golden a moment later, but that did nothing to stop the onslaught. Karl got to him in a moment and lashed out with a kick; that particular crab hadn't latched on yet and went sailing several yards away, so Karl repeated the process with another. Terry suddenly appeared and bent over Michael's head, her hands a blur, knife—knives?--flashing. Then Doug was there and hauled Michael up bodily with one hand. “UP! Stand up or die!” He tore a crab off the man with the other hand.
Michael glowed again, staggered, and stood on his own, reaching down and ripping one more crab off his chest, then looking around to rejoin the fight and started stomping. Karl breathed a sign of relief even as he stabbed a crab that was trying to latch on to his own leg.
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Jake suddenly yelled.
Green flames erupted on his side of the fight, with what looked like a giant pinwheel spinning faster and faster spouting fire in horizontal jets at crab level. The humans had to edge away from it a little to keep from getting singed themselves.
“Hup!” Karl gasped, jumping with both feet on a crab, killing it in one blow. “Hup!” It was taking concentrated effort to keep this up. His stamina or endurance or whatever it was was going to run out soon at this rate. Terry was doing half the damage at three times the speed it seemed; she wasn't heavy enough to kill them, but seemed to be cracking shells and breaking legs with each landing. “Chenelle!” she yelled, and Karl saw that the teenager had two crabs on her now but wasn't stopping. A moment later she glowed golden and Karl was relieved; there was no way he could cast healing hands with both of them hopping all over.
A plume of purple smoke appeared behind them, and formed up into a giant mushroom cloud. Jake swore. “That should have worked!” Fortunately whatever it was blew away from the group in the light breeze. The crabs seemed only slightly affected if at all.
“Hup!” Crunch. “Hup!” Crunch. “Hup!” Crunch, Karl managed, killing three more, then looked around for his next target. There weren't any nearby. Every crab left was either pinned under a rock or was fleeing, with Terry in pursuit.
“Don't! Even! Think it!” she yelled, stomping on them, and finally hurling a big rock at the last one, crushing it, before bending over in pain, feeling her back as if she'd wrenched it. Karl staggered over to her, his eyes still roving over his half of the battlefield. He held out his hand.
“Here,” he said gently. Terry glanced at him, then took his hand. He channelled healing hands into her.
“Got another?” Karl nodded, cast again, and Terry sighed and straightened. She opened her mouth to say something.
“Mom! MOM!”
Oh, no.
They turned, and Karl saw what he feared. Chenelle was standing over Emma's body, tears streaming down her face. “I tried. I'm so sorry, I tried...”