[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Terence Glasgow]

[Level: 1]

The grass was wet under his feet, and a numbing pain was working its way through his legs. He was having trouble keeping up with the others, with his lack of physical ability compared to them all.

In front of them, far in the distance, the outer wall of Hygeia stood tall. Rough and amateur, but strong. It didn’t look like it was falling anytime soon. A safe place to house anyone nearby and would never, never fall.

He’d thought that about his supermarket. It had fallen anyway, set ablaze by that damn Harbinger. They started losing speed at that point.

“Judging by how fast their regular speed is, we should be coming up on them soon.” Ben explained, her eyes darting around the lush greenery, “Speed up, will you?”

Terry winced, massaging his left knee, “As fast as can manage.” He argued, tightly.

“Want me to give you a piggyback?” Asadullah offered. Terry flushed and looked away.

“Not that tall.”

Asadullah grinned and tapped his hand over his bangles to lengthen his femurs into a more lion-like form to add a couple inches to himself and an extra padding of muscle to go along with it, “How about now?”

“No.” He replied, “I got it.”

Asadullah and Ben glanced at each other, but shrugged and let it go. They barely even managed to get a couple miles through before a glimmer of light reflecting off live metal caught Ben’s attention. She put her arm out to block them all from walking into range of the attacker, “Be careful, something’s up ahead.”

Asadullah took a sniff, before a smile broke over him, “It’s okay, just Vera.”

The patch of leaves near the reflective metal shook as their hyper-competent teammate popped out with a disappointed sigh, “I wanted to give you a fright.”

“This is serious, Verity, stop messing around.” Ben crossed her arms, “How’re you calm enough to do this after the state you were in the last time?”

Verity’s eyes sharpened at the words all humor melting away as she dropped to the ground in front of them, “What happened? They come for you?”

“Burnt down the supermarket in the process.” Terry explained, feeling his throat close up, “Some guy called… Roiland?”

Verity spat, stomping on the ground in frustration, “Roiland was there?! Goddammit, I should have stayed there! I wanted to be the one to kill him!” She paused as she turned to look at them all hopefully, “But he’s dead, right? You killed him?”

Terry coughed, looking away, “Uh. No. He… he got away.”

“Injured him terribly in the process, though.” Asadullah offered in solace, “But who knows how durable that guy was. He was basically made of fire.”

“Fire?” Verity pushed, “I thought he just conjured it, not that he was made of it. Is he even human??”

“Remains to be seen.” Ben replied, holding out her burnt arm for Verity to inspect. The girl frowned, the hanging stench of burnt flesh was waved into her face.

“The fuck.” Verity looked thunderous, “I’m going to kill him.”

Ben grabbed her before she could rush into the direction of the supermarket, “We need you alive, Vera.” She warned, “You’re not walking away from that alive.”

“But you said you got some hits in!” She argued, “I just need to finish the job!”

“It’s been three hours. Chances are that the other Harbingers have picked him up already.” Terry pointed out, regretting speaking up when Verity turned to look at him with those bloodthirsty eyes.

“Mushroom boy has got a point.” She relented, though she didn’t look happy about it, “Come on, I gotta bring you guys back to the camp we’ve set up.”

“You didn’t go directly into Hygeia?” Ben asked, turning to look at the walls barely ten minutes away from them.

“The game isn’t letting us get close.” Verity explained, “Green boundary line popped up insisting that all of [Party(Main)] be here to cross the premises.”

“We’re here now, though!” Terry assured her, “Meet up with the others and head inside?”

It wasn’t going to last, he knew. He’d come to terms with it. But the safety of the walls called for him and he needed to get inside. Open green skies had become his greatest fear.

“Yeah, camp is this way.” Verity directed them through the more crowded part of the woods, where a couple sleeping bags were set up, and a small electric stove. Tench was poking a skinned rabbit being cooked on top of the fire with a queasy look on his face, while Jared and Michael played a card game that Jared seemed to be wiping the floor with him in. Derek the zombie was tied to a tree, hands bound and jaw clamped shut, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to stare at the people in his vicinity, hunger burning in his dead eyes.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They all looked up when Vera entered, though, and broke into smiles of relief. Except for Derek. He only let out a weak snarl as she walked past him without any hint of fear.

“Vera, you found them!” Tench began to congratulate her, before his eyes caught onto Ben’s arm, “Shit, are you okay?”

“Harbinger got me good.” She grunted, letting him lift up the injury and take a better look at it under a torchlight, “Those guys… aren’t just human.”

“They’re trying to end the world. Of course, they aren’t human.” Jared scoffed, “Should be obvious to anyone who sees that no one human would do something like that.”

“Very odd statement to make, you know, because a lot of philosophers would say the opposite-” Asadullah made to argue, but was quickly cut off by Jared’s cutting need to debate this.

“This isn’t a human level of evil. People can mess up all the time, but at the end of the day, I’d say they are at their core not going to do something that will create no joy and prove no point, other than killing everyone in the world and then themselves. No real, free-thinking person would do that to themselves.”

“Maybe they’re being manipulated?” Verity offered, oddly quiet all of a sudden, “That Compulsion stuff is pretty nasty.”

“Why’re you taking their side, Vera?” He demanded, shooting her a dirty look, “Something you wanna tell us?”

She backed down immediately, fixing her gaze back on the rabbit.

“Don’t be a dick, Jared.” Tench told him off gently, “We don’t have time to worry about all that stuff when Ben is here and hurting.”

“They see that bandage and they might think she was bitten.” Terry chimed in to agree, “But how do we help her?”

Tench screwed his face up, “I think it’s my turn to step up to bat.” He replied. The others had filled Terry in on what Tench’s classification and special ability was. Healing. Vital for this terrain where injury was possible at every turn and the slightest fester could damn them all. That being said, Tench hadn’t exactly ever done a healing before, as far as Terry could tell.

“Are you sure you got this?” He asked the man, just to clarify.

“Don’t patronize me.” Tench shot right back, unwrapping Ben’s arm and exposing the charred thing to the elements. It was worse to see it now, with the shock and adrenalin long since worn off. Nothing looked infected, but it was still a mess of exposed muscle and burnt skin and even a shard of blackened bone peaking out from the very edge. All crammed into the shape of a hand, every finger distinct on her flesh.

Verity had fallen silent as she stared at it, her face positively murderous as she ground her teeth together. No one bothered to reproach her, lost in the horror of the damage done. Even Tench looked a bit uncertain now that the extent of the injury was revealed to him.

“Can you do it?” Terry asked, trying to fight through the anxiety clogging his voice and gripping his mind. In a crisis, it was needed for someone to stay calm and take charge, because then everyone else would flounder, unable to find an anchor. He may be a coward, but he wasn’t stupid. Nor was he useless. He could step up to bat when he was needed.

Thankfully, that seemed to be the push that Tench needed, because he clenched his jaw and slipped on doctor-mode as easily as putting on a lab coat. Which they didn’t have because it was the end of the world, so the attitude would simply have to do, “I can give it my best shot.” He agreed, carefully hovering a hand over Ben’s ruined arm, and squeezing his eyes shut.

A few seconds passed, with no effect.

“Or, you can go to the Console and manually do it.” Michael suggested gently after several minutes of this.

“Yeah, okay.” He agreed, letting the blond boy pull out the Console and project Tench’s Abilities panel onto the air in front of them.

[Applying Healing…]

A bright glow erupted from Tench’s palm, green as the sun was these days, and bathed Ben’s arm completely. They got to see from close up as the bone retreated under the skin, the flesh slowly uncharred and muscle wrapped itself into thick cords once more, letting skin grow over it. Healing that would have taken months to manage was expedited into a process that lasted mere seconds. How incredible.

The light died out, leaving behind a shiny, blistered burn mark that stretched over her entire arm, charred black and scabby red with streaks of blood still hanging on, but so, so much better than it had been. Terry looked at Tench in amazement. He was going to be a very crucial member in their party if this campaign dragged on any longer.

Jared was the one who broke the reverie they were in, clapping his hands together brightly.

“Okay! So, that’s dealt with. And the sun is coming up too, so let’s move towards Hygeia and see if they grant us asylum.”

“And that the boundary lets us through.” Michael added, “Don’t forget that.”

“Right, right.” Jared agreed, already wrapping sleeping bags up and putting them aside to be put into the inventory. Once the meager camp had been wrapped up, there was only one problem left.

“What do we do about Derek?” Asadullah asked, “No way they’re letting us in with him.”

“But we need him to prove our point.” Terry pointed out, “You can wait outside and not chomp anyone’s brains out for a day, can’t you, Derek?”

The zombie growled but stopped pulling against his restraints. He tended to listen to Terry the most because they were the one he had spent the most time with. The others he listened to… not at all. But it hadn’t been more than a week! He’d work on soon.

“Alright, so we leave him outside and hope for the best.” Verity settled, “Now, the main gate where the asylum seekers are being urged to go is in that direction.” She led the way, taking over the helm from Jared as if it was second nature. From what Terry could understand, the two and Michael had history that stretched beyond the month and a half the Console had been active, so obviously they were a more cohesive unit than the rest of them.

It was when they were on the cleared-out pathway, right outside of gunfire range of the twelve-foot-tall gate that the giant wall of translucent green pixels popped up, along with an ominous message.

[Full Party Assembled!]

[Now Entering: Level 1 Boss Stage – Hygeia]

“Like a boss battle?” Michael asked, parroting exactly what Terry was thinking, “Are we going to fight someone?”

“Yes, that’s what I believe a battle suggests.” Asadullah agreed mildly.

“Maybe it’s a metaphorical battle!” Jared suggested, “Like, the ideological battle of winning them over to our ideas for a cure and a way to solve all of this!”

“I prefer the one with the murder.” Verity gave her two cents.

“Then let’s go inside and find out!” Ben suggested instead, a gleam to her smile that made it clear she was quickly losing patience for their bullshit.

“Great idea!” Tench agreed, taking a step forward, straight through the pixel barrier. He slipped in easily, and as if he was the last push the barrier needed, it all fell apart, dispelling into fine mist. Terry spied two lookouts watching them from above the door. He wondered what they had seen, and hoped that it wasn’t something that made them look too crazy. The last thing they needed right now were setbacks like that.

Because they were at the Boss Battle Stage. So close to solving the apocalypse that had plagued them for the last two years, where they had thought humanity would never recover from it. All those misgivings could be discarded now.

He was going to help save the world.

[Party(Main) has Entered Hygeia!]

[Player Log End!]