“Zoey, Shaun,” Edwin barked, grabbing their attention. “Come with me.” They hustled over, recognizing the urgency in his tone. Edwin turned and led them in a quick jog towards the closest uhaul. Edwin hoped the key was still in the ignition. “Jump in, we’re gonna put the injured people in the back.” They muttered agreements but focused on watching out for any roaming centaurs as they closed on the truck. They reached the truck at the same time someone else did. Edwin froze as he came face to face with a guy he vaguely recalled seeing once or twice before. The guy looked panicked, his eyes were wide as he clutched with an empty hand at a weeping wound on his left arm. Edwin shrugged his momentary pause off. He spared no more time and ordered the guy into the back of the truck, which he complied with, without argument.
The three of them piled into the truck’s cab. It was a tight and uncomfortable fit. It was made to seat two people and their weapons had to be laid across everyone’s laps. The truck was still running, the keys were in the ignition as it idled in park. No centaurs or people got in their way as Edwin zipped over to the incapacitated prisoners. He half spun the truck into a skid to stop it before throwing it in reverse and lining the back hatch up with the prison exit. The guy in the back shouted in surprise and thumped against the wall during Edwin’s sudden maneuver.
None of the three wounded could stand so it was unpleasant work loading them. The human body was heavy and awkwardly shaped. Between the three of them they managed though. It wasn’t gentle and their patients hissed and hollored as they were jostled.
When the residents saw Edwin drive the truck off they panicked. The careful retreat turned ugly. The order Roy had scraped together shattered as scared college kids broke ranks and rushed to the other two trucks. In the chaos there was no time for orderly loading. The centaurs rushed the defenders as the back ranks broke away. Roy let loose a second bolstering wave but it was ignored. Ava maddeningly tried to outwit the blood shields but found her effort stymied again and again. She gave up before the residents completely turned tail and hurried towards the nearest truck cab. She convinced the young man inside to unbar the door and give her the seat. From her new vantage Ava returned to suppressing fire.
In the lull between laser shots the shaman manipulated its blood cloud to once more go on the offensive. It timed the crushing blow to strike as the centaurs once more closed to combat on those few holdouts still standing with Roy. All semblance of order was shattered by this final centaur charge.
Ava managed to take out a few centaurs while the shaman focused on disrupting the residents but it didn’t matter. A chaotic retreat ensued as those not swept away by the initial charge ran headlong to the trucks.
The truck with Ava in the passenger seat peeled out and shot off back towards the dorms. Some people had managed to load into the back, but even more were left stranded. Someone attempted to jump into the still open back hatch but missed and was thrown to the ground. The third truck was swarmed by desperate residents. They were shoving one another to try and cram into the back. The cab was locked and the driver was screaming at several people who were blocking the truck.
“Back in the truck guys!” Edwin hurried Zoey and Shaun back to their seats. From behind the wheel Edwin noticed a huge cloud of blood flow up from the bodies littering the park. It was coalescing ominously above the swarmed truck. The centaurs seemed content to hem in the remaining residents around the truck. Edwin gritted his teeth and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The truck’s engine roared and it accelerated. It jumped harshly as he rammed into the nearest centaur. He caught it from behind and threw it to the ground in front of them before the truck jumped harder as it crushed the creature underneath.
The shaman reacted and brought the blood down as a deluge onto the front of their truck. The blood hammered down and cracked the windshield. Edwin slammed the brakes as the truck skidded blind. Blood poured through the cracks but the shattered glass held in its frame. The truck jumped again before it slammed hard into something and came to a stop.
Edwin reeled as he tried to wipe the crimson splatters off his face. His pulse pounded in his ears as he tried to figure out his next move. Impacts rattled the truck as he only vaguely heard the shouts and screams coming from around them. He glanced over to see Zoey with her knees to her chest curled up protectively. Shaun was furiously spitting some blood that looked to have gotten into his mouth.
They had hit something big. Edwin had the unfortunate feeling they had crashed into the other truck. Hopefully neither truck was too damaged and no one had been between them. Someone tore open the unlocked driver side door and hands reached in for him. Edwin was belted in so they failed to tear him out. Edwin struck back at the hands violently. They flinched and retreated. Shaun staggered out of the truck on the other side while Edwin reached for his shield where it had been thrown onto the dashboard. From behind the wooden barrier he surveyed what was outside his door.
He saw the backs of several dorm residents as they ran for the gap his truck had created in the centaurs perimeter. A guy was hovering nearby watching Edwin wearily. He was unarmed and appeared uninjured but his wide darting eyes raked over Edwin, searching for an opening. Edwin blindly felt around to unbuckle himself as he stared down the panicked resident.
The standoff was broken when the resident turned and gasped at something Edwin couldn’t see through his windshield. The guy turned and ran the next second as Edwin pushed out of the truck with his shield to see what was going on.
What greeted him was a burgeoning hellscape. Half the park was consumed in an inferno. A figure above poured forth further fire as liquid jets of flame lanced down indiscriminately. The trucks had been spared so far but the wizard seemed intent on broadening the conflagration.
Edwin turned back to the truck and saw Zoey crawling out towards him. She tossed both of their spears out onto the grass before clambering down.
A horn sounded from the east. The droning note was clear even among the cacophony filling the park. A great shout followed the horn and a hundred armed figures emerged from between the buildings. The ratty clothes combined with the shackled hand insignia revealed them to be a group of the medieval soldiers. The accompanying wizard heralded their intentions. Their spear tips gleamed in the roaring fire light.
The standoff had been broken but before the centaurs could complete their encirclement and capture the pinned residents their shaman was torched and their home set ablaze. They reprioritized the new threat. Centaurs boldly dashed back into the flames in pursuit of some goal Edwin couldn’t guess at. But the reprieve was appreciated. His earlier fear of having crashed into the other truck was proven true as he examined the residents' situation. His truck had struck the other in a textbook t-bone. The cargo bay wall was dented deep and the two vehicles were mashed together. Neither one could be driven. Without the trucks to ferry them away, most of the residents were fleeing. Their only hope was to run far enough away to escape the attentions of either hostile group present in the park.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The wizard drifted lazily in a circle, his gaze intent towards the center of the fire. He restrained himself as he took potshots at desperate centaurs dashing to-and-fro through the smoke and melting tarps. The centaurs converged with single mindedness towards the stack of silvery crates. The moment one of them reached the stack they grabbed one and bolted in a random direction to dodge the incoming fire lance.
The medieval soldiers spread out, moving to encircle the fire. As they jogged, Edwin retrieved his spear and decided it was time to leave. He could see Shaun stumbling away down the street and a quick glance revealed they were the only two still near the trucks. The only two who were still on their feet anyways. Edwin grimaced, and hurried Zoey to follow Shaun. She set off without much cajoling. Edwin didn’t follow, instead he ran over to the nearby panicked cries of pain and terror. Three voices pleaded for help from the back of the uhaul. Edwin ditched his spear and shield to the ground and jumped up into the back of the truck. He grabbed the nearest of the injured people under the armpits. He heaved backwards and dragged them from the truck. One of their legs seemed broken, this was the best Edwin could do for them. “Start crawling!” he commanded the first person as he let go of them and moved to drag the second.
The second had a nasty head wound that made them too dizzy to stand. Edwin repeated his actions without mercy. Worsening injuries didn’t matter when they had Dan’s ability. The woman vomited as he released her outside the truck and moaned piteously. Edwin didn’t spare her a glance to see if she started crawling after the first guy. He returned to help the last man.
Edwin grabbed him under the armpits and heaved. His muscles strained to shift the man’s bulk, but he was too fat, easily twice as heavy as Edwin. They had barely managed to get him inside earlier between the three of them. On his own, Edwin wasn’t sure he could move the man. A gash across the man’s calf prevented him from standing. He regarded Edwin with a mixture of hope and resignation. “Come on!” Edwin encouraged as he heaved a second time.
The man got his good leg underneath himself and together with Edwin they got him up against the wall. Edwin wormed underneath the man’s arm and braced his weight over his shoulders. Edwin’s legs shook as he tried to compensate for the man’s injured leg. Through grit teeth Edwin hissed and prompted them to move forward by shifting his weight. It sort of worked, they got to the lip of the truck bed stopped, regarding it. A foot of clearance separated the grass from the truck bed. Edwin again prompted the man forward by taking the first step down. The man leaned into him harder and Edwin’s balance was thrown. The man toppled from the truck bed, Edwin managed to push himself to the side before the large man squashed him against the dirt. The man moaned as he collapsed.
Edwin swore as he rolled to his feet. The woman was curled into a fetal position next to her vomit, unmoving and whining pitifully. “Get crawling!” Edwin exclaimed over his shoulder towards the fat man as he moved over to continue dragging the woman.
Edwin dragged her out onto the street before he was interrupted by the sound of pounding hooves. A charging centaur carrying a silver box was coming up behind him. His spear and shield were on the ground back by the trucks, and Edwin wasted precious time looking around for them. The creature jinked to the side when it saw him turn to face it and passed by him before Edwin remembered the pistol on his hip. Before he could react further his world went white. A cacophonous explosion shattered his ear drums and the resultant blast wave threw him from his feet. The light generated by the blast overwhelmed his vision and left him seeing spots even with his eyes closed. Edwin rolled to a stop on the sidewalk across the street he’d been crossing. Minor scrapes marred his arms and face from the roll. Edwin lay there groaning as he tried to make sense of the world. His head pounded as vertigo and nausea roiled through him. Blood trickled down his neck from his ears. Edwin vomited and curled up into a ball clutching his spinning head, Puke pooled beside his head.
It took Edwin a couple minutes to recover enough to start moving again. Several lesser explosions washed over him again and again, but each lacked the force to toss him. Luckily none of them carried debris or shrapnel. When he cracked an eye open he noticed that the flames had spread to the neighborhood surrounding the park. Rolling to his back Edwin caught sight of the high stakes duel playing out above the park. The wizard was embroiled in a battle against one of the huge spider mechs. It had somehow snuck up on the park and was certain to be the source of the explosions. The machine’s shots burst in the air as the wizard flew evasive maneuvers. They generated the massive explosions which passed over the flickering blue shield the wizard surrounded himself with. A swarm of the small aerial drones took potshots at the man from the periphery. Even more of the drones buzzed through the streets hunting for something.
The wizard occasionally threw a lance of fire at the drones, sometimes he hit and got lucky, melting the machine and sending it’s remains free falling. Mostly though he missed and his errant jets of flame further spread the raging firestorm.
Edwin staggered to his feet and drunkenly turned in a circle to look around. Neither the fat man or the woman had moved an inch, both still laid on the ground. The guy who had tried to crawl away seemed to have weathered the shockwave better and was nowhere to be seen.
He knew he needed to get away from the park, away from the battle and the spreading flames, but Edwin conscience warred with his animal instinct as he tried to figure out what to do with the two injured people. A drone dropped out of the sky in front of him and stopped eye level with him. Like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car Edwin stared in shock at the nose mounted rotary cannon aimed squarely at his forehead. Edwin slowly raised his hands above his head while he tried not to startle the machine. A moment later it zipped back off into the sky.
Edwin collapsed to his knees. His jumbled thoughts managed to focus on his near death and it led to him deciding what he should do next. He was practically ground zero in a war zone and he couldn’t carry either of the prone forms laying around him. It cut at something inside him to leave them behind but Edwin was spooked by the drone as it really drove the nail down into where he was. It wasn’t a game, this wasn’t some scripted scenario where he would emerge as a hero who saved both people. That drone could have easily been hostile or the wizard could throw his next lance right at him. Edwin got to his feet and jogged off down the road to the south. He moved with an awkward jerky gait. He kept glancing backwards towards the battle and around the rooftops nearby for other drones.
Too busy watching the skies, Edwin tripped and landed hard on his shoulder after several minutes of moving. The fresh pain drew a hiss of breath from him as recovered. Looking around he found what had tripped him to be the corpse of a centaur. It was the same one that had gone galloping past him before the mech’s first shot. The creature’s horse abdomen was perforated with a dozen thumb sized holes. The silver box it had carried was further down the road, likely thrown when the creature was killed.
A drone hovered over the box and was aiming directly at him. Edwin froze again as his mind flashed through worst case scenarios. Instead though, nothing happened. The drone did nothing. Edwin got up and was relieved to find it prompted nothing from the drone. He walked to the far side of the road slowly and then inched past the sentry. Edwin walked backwards as he watched the drone until it turned away from him.
Eventually, after minutes of tense skulking Edwin reached the dorms. Walking into the intersection adjacent to White Hall he spied Zoey leaning against one of the traffic poles with her spear and shield in hand. She was staring at him as he approached and Edwin realized he had left his own behind. Over at the dorm, he could see people bustling around on the bottom floor.
Edwin felt relieved to see the place he called home. He glanced one last time over his shoulder and saw thick pillars of smoke rising high into the sky. A sinister red-orange glow danced between the pillars as the fire consumed several neighborhoods. He ducked as he heard another distant explosion, the spider mech was still fighting.
The last time a fight had broken out between these two factions had been at the police camp. Edwin wasn’t sure how that had ended, but this one was much closer to the dorms. He had a sinking feeling that they weren’t clear of danger yet.