37 AL: GRANDMOTHER

The rats that were missing during yesterday’s travel were out in full force. She killed the first few but that slowed her down. She started hitting them with tier zero fear to scatter them. They were all traveling east. What really bothered Grandmother was that they would scatter right and left, or even surge past her but they would not turn around.

When badgers started to be mixed in, she got really worried. She switched to tier one fear since the lower tier just angered the badgers forcing her to take the time to kill them. It was looking a lot like a migration. A group of large animals was moving somewhere in the west. They were forcing all the smaller animals out of the area. It must be something larger than a badger.

People called them migrations because they displaced the ‘naturally’ occurring animals. The wave of fleeing animals reminded people of the old films of migrating herds. What they actually were was something else. Control would displace large aggressive animals. Those animals became extremely agitated at being removed from their territories. They would drive back towards their home killing anything and anyone in their path.

Normally that meant displacing a large animal from a green and letting them loose in the corridors. In this area the most common animals were boars, cougars and bears. Technically the green was below this location. Boars moved here would be motivated to travel back down to it. However, boars didn’t like stairs. Their digging claws tended to slip on the steps. If let loose in these upper corridors they were more likely to run miles along them, looking for a new green rather than go down.

That left cougars or bears. Bears would make nearly all the hall animals flee, including cats and spiders. Since Grandmother didn’t see either of those she hoped that meant she would be dealing with cougars. Cougars, even in large groups, were within her abilities. Bears would be tricky. She could deal with an individual bear but groups of them became difficult. Most of the options she knew for fighting really large groups would negatively impact anyone nearby.

As Grandmother neared the maze of corridors over the top of the square, she could hear the grunting sounds of animals in the distance. It was this sound, along with their shaggy coats and large size, that earned them the name bear. Of course it is bears, she thought. She added another possible ending to Control’s narrative. The evil wizard wipes out the fledgling settlement under the cover of a migration. She would have to be careful to avoid that one.

As the sounds grew louder, Grandmother slowed her approach. She recast her camouflage spell, it was automatically dismissed everytime she used an attack spell. She carefully inspected each side corridor before crossing them. She was just around the corner from the first connecting stairwell when she caught sight of her first bear. It was sniffing at the air in a corridor in front of a doorway that was filled with stacked furniture pieces and other debris that was gathered from the surrounding rooms.

Grandmother didn’t like the look of it. The bear seemed to be zeroing in on the stairwell. It was also not good that the stairwell was blocked with structure furniture. The items produced by the structure had a nasty tendency to change their properties at the most inconvenient times. What was once solid steel could transform into a brittle material with only an electroplated layer of steel that shattered on impact. Control worked under the premise that if you didn’t test it thoroughly beforehand such changes were fair play, since theoretically it could have been made of that material the whole time. She hoped the builders of that barricade did testing but she couldn’t count on it. Plus she didn’t know how long ago the barrier was built. All items in the structure decayed at an increased rate when they were moved from their origin.

The bear lifted up on its hind legs and rested its paws on the tangled furniture fragments. Grandmother could see it shift under the weight. She stepped out from the side corridor and hit the bear with a shot of lightning. As the bear spasmed under the influence of the electrical charge, she hit it with an ice-bolt to slow it down. Before the ice spell ended she hit it again with lightning. The animal collapsed as a nasty smell of burnt fur began to fill the hall. She carefully approached it to confirm it was dead.

She checked the barrier and found it was mostly still intact. She cast her highest tier reinforcement spell on it. The spell would wear off in an hour or so but until then what looked like steel should remain steel.

She recast her camouflage and headed in the direction of the second open stair. She managed to avoid the first few bears. She was forced to kill one. The corridor with the entrance to the stair was swarming with bears. There were at least six in sight. She could hear a banging crunching sound from the stairwell and knew there were more in there. She was tempted to make a quick retreat. The cries of alarm and fear she heard rising up the stairs made her hold her ground.

They were all focused on the stairs. Refusing to think about what she was about to do, she stepped out and hit the farthest three bears with ice slick. She followed that up with chain lightning on the nearest three. She repeated these actions reversing the targeting. Her third cast of chain lightning jumped to one of the bears in the stairwell. It came barreling out. Adrenaline flooded her system as she targeted the arrival. Several of the first targets were down, lessening the chances that she was about to be overwhelmed.

Grandmother decided that was actually a good way to pull it out of the stairs. She tried to replicate the feat and managed to pull one more. When all the bears were down in the hall she could still hear at least one more on the stairs. She could hear more animals approaching, the floor under her feet vibrated with footfalls. She decided that whatever was still in the stairwell would have come out by now if it wasn’t fixated on what was going on below. She threw caution to the wind and dashed down the hall to the entrance.

She was casting before she cleared the doorway. Her bolt landed on the back of a bear nearly at the bottom of the stairs. The animal was trying to reach through the last shreds of a barrier to reach the warriors beyond. The warriors were stabbing the animal through a tangle of chair legs with spears. The bear was enraged. Chucks of furniture were breaking off under the force of its massive blows. The remainder of the barricade was already reduced to little more than metal kindling that littered the steps. The bear dropped under her second shot.

“Coming through!” she yelled, as she hustled down the steps. She climbed, crawled and squirmed her way through the last of the barrier. She rolled out the far side and came to rest on the landing flat on her back. She looked up to find three spears aimed down at her. They were held by the serious faces of three young warriors; two men and a woman dressed in leathers.

“Who are you?” a young warrior demanded. Grandmother recognized him as one of the two men who let her into the square. It was the one who recommended she find a group before going out again. He was wearing hunter’s green at the gate. Now his leathers were red touched. Her don't notice me spell must have worked on him because there was no recognition in his eyes. She flowed to her feet in a show of strength and agility. She shifted her staff to her right hand and with her left reached out to cast reinforcement on the furniture fragment tangle.

“That won’t hold,” she warned them. “There are a lot more coming.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” the warrior demanded. His hold on his spear shifted and she thought he might actually try it.

“Ellen called me Grandmother,” she responded. She thought the crafter’s name would have a much better calming effect than her own would. She saw the dangerous edge to the man's fear fade. He recognized the name and realized she was here before.

“Odds are they will head to the green. If you block the doors to the housing floors they’ll head straight down this stair. That should keep them out of the upper halls and the other stairwells,” Grandmother advised.

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“What about the other stair up?” one of the younger warriors asked. Both of their leathers were marked with blue.

“I reached it before they damaged it too badly. The reinforcement spell on it should last an hour or two. With this stair open, they should ignore it,” Grandmother explained.

“We don’t have the material or manpower to block the floors. When the rats hit the occupied levels almost everyone retreated to the yard,” the first warrior explained. “Should we send everyone out into the south halls?” he asked.

“No,” Grandmother countered. “Control loves that kind of trap. Send them back up to the first floor using the other stairs, or if you can, pack them all into the shops. We will have to use plan B to get the bears out of this stair.” The growling from above grew significantly louder. The bears had found the entrance.

“Plan B?” the warrior questioned.

“I will stay here and try to anger them enough that they follow me straight down,” Grandmother responded as she shifted her staff hand to hand, flexing her fingers between each transfer. She tightened the straps on her pack and checked her blade.

“You two,” the warrior said to his companions, “get down to the yard and tell Harry to get everyone into the shops.”

“What about you, Todd?” the young woman asked.

“I will watch Grandmother’s back,” he said. The two younger warriors set off immediately down the stairs. Grandmother wanted to tell Todd to go himself but she doubted he would listen. He might be useful keeping the rats off her back.

The first bear pushed its way into the stairwell. It was a huge brute of a beast that brushed both sides of the doorway. It made its way leisurely down the stairs. Grandmother locked her gaze on the bear and cast like there was no barrier between them. The bear roared in pain from the electricity but resisted the stun. Seeing its response, she switched out to fire. Its fur smoldered and she thought a couple more hits might set it alight. Todd shifted uneasily beside her. She realized he must think she was a red wizard.

The bear collapsed on the third hit but not before giving the remaining furniture stack a good shake. Yeah that wasn’t going to hold, Grandmother thought. There were two more bears in the stair. Both of them were smaller, so she switched over to chain lightning.

She killed four more and the barrier was looking more and more ragged. She gestured to Todd to get ready to retreat down the stairs if necessary.

“How many more do you think?” he asked.

“Hundreds,” she said honestly. The spear he held shook slightly before he took a breath and steadied it. The next bear to reach the barrier cracked it open with its own momentum before succumbing to Todd’s spear thrust. They took on the next set from the far corner of the landing. They were forced to retreat to the next landing after that.

Grandmother continued to cast chain lightning with the occasional fireball. The pace of their retreat increased without the remnants of the barrier to slow the animals' approach. She lost count of the floors as they worked their way down. Suddenly the young warrior that was sent down with the warning came up the stairwell to them.

“Alex, what are you doing here! Get yourself into a shop,” Todd ordered him.

“The shops are full of badgers,” Alex explained. “They need more time to get them cleaned out.” Sometime during his absence the warrior changed his weapon out from a spear to a sword. Swords worked well against the nimble rats and badgers but against these bears he should have kept the spear. Luckily it was a long sword so he should have a decent reach.

“We are doing our best,” Todd gritted out as he reset himself. The lead bear shrugged off the stun from the lightning and charged at them. Todd’s blow finished it off and it fell to partially block the door into this level.

Grandmother switched out the fire for ice. She leaned out into the center of the stairwell where she could see all the way to the top. She fired off a huge volley of ice-bolts launching one at every bear she could see along the way. Because of the angle she could only spot bears on the last two or three flights. She saw a flash of surprise on Todd’s face. He must not have seen her ice the bears in the upper hall.

Alex stepped up to Grandmother’s right and drew his sword. Although young he stayed calm as the next bear rushed them. Grandmother hit it with lightning and it dropped stunned. Alex did not jump out of line to stab it but rather stood his ground. Before the stun faded, Grandmother hit it again and the beast stilled. Grandmother decided the young warrior wouldn’t do anything too stupid.

The next one that got too close Todd took out. The one after that fell to Alex’s blade. With effort they managed to slow their retreat down the stairs but they could not stop it.

“Grandmother,” a small soft voice called out. Grandmother’s head whipped around. She was shocked to find the young girl from the market standing in the doorway to the first level above the courtyard. The girl was in green and held the stylus in her hand. “I can’t find Ellen.”

“Oh child, you shouldn’t be here,” Grandmother replied. She glanced at Todd and Alex. “Take the girl,” she instructed, “and go into the yard. I will be out shortly.” Todd nodded and crossed behind Grandmother to sweep up the girl in his arms. All three of them ran down the last of the stairs.

Grandmother fired off her highest tier chain lightning. It stunned all the animals within sight. She leaned out into the stairwell and looked up. Wondering if this was the stupid mistake that would kill her, she cast four enrage spells straight up.

The grunts of the bears turned to pure rage as the stairs shook under their pounding feet. She bolted down the last flight of stairs and out into the failing light in the yard. Sometime during the retreat down the stairs the day ended and it was now early evening. The courtyard was filled with running rats and badgers. A group of people were filing into the shop fronts even as fighters chased badgers out of them.

“Time is up people!” Todd yelled across the space. He set the girl down. She was now clinging to his leg. Alex was using his sword with good effect on any rat that got too near.

“Across to the training yard,” Grandmother instructed as she jogged forward. “Keep close,” she said to the young girl. About halfway across, she turned and looked back at the stairs. The first bears were just emerging. They sniffed the air and looked over at the people by the shops. We can’t have that, Grandmother thought. She started casting enrage. She would cast, walk two or three steps backward and cast again.

“Sarah!” a woman’s voice called out. Grandmother looked to her left where the young crafter, Ellen, dressed in hunter’s greens, was running towards them. She was coming from a totally different direction from where everyone else was at the front of the shops. Miraculously the animals fleeing from the bears ignored her as she crossed the courtyard. She arrived to scoop the young girl up into her arms. She followed Todd and Alex as they continued into the training yards.

Grandmother turned and ran after them. “Into the stairwell,” she yelled as she closed the distance. The group swerved to the left, Grandmother swerved to the right. She stumbled to a stop and cast four pure force darts into the barriers in the archways to the green, leaving the way open. She turned and ran for all she was worth into the stair.

She found everyone huddled on the first landing. Alex was holding his sword at the ready listening to the sounds of many small feet on the stairs above them. Todd held his spear with a firm grasp and was staring with horror at the stairs leading down.

Grandmother remembered that one of the stairs was open at the bottom. She didn’t pay that much attention to it since it wasn’t included in her path. She would have expected the residents to have blocked it just as they did the two stairs leading up. There was no sign that they had. That fact along with the horror on Todd’s face made her think this was new.

The bears were starting to fill the training yards. Peeking out through the open doorway Grandmother watched as their forward momentum began to ebb. Instead of heading out through the open passage to the green, they were starting to sniff the air. She glanced at the open stair leading down. Oh yeah, she thought to herself.

“Go up,” Grandmother told them. “You should be ok if you get high enough. Try to stay quiet.”

“What are you going to do?” Todd asked.

“I will lead them down. From your reaction I take it these stairs are new. From their behavior out there I think this is the path they are looking for,” Grandmother explained.

“I said I would watch your back and I will,” Todd countered. Just then something large moved on the stairs above them. It was probably a stray bear but Grandmother would have sworn it wasn’t there a moment ago.

“Don’t leave us here,” Ellen begged.

“I’ll go first,” Alex announced, shifting the blade in his hand.

Grandmother looked at the small group before her, two young warriors, a crafter and a child. She didn’t know how Control did it but she didn’t think it was a coincidence that the group included everyone she had meaningful contact with when she visited the square. Control had its own idea of the story it wanted to tell. It was starting to look like it was something different from the ones she thought of.