With the van started, we began to make our way back to Dillon, it turned out to be harder than we anticipated. Mostly because we didn’t pay too much attention on our way into the Custer Gallatin National Forest, we had GPS to get us there. We knew we had to go west, which was made easier due to James having one of those cheap compasses in his backpack. We didn’t know how to read it compared to a map, but that was fine, we didn’t have a map. We knew we could take I-90 to I-15 and that’d eventually get us there. It was a bit more roundabout, but we weren't too concerned. We made it to Absarokee without any issues.
The few streetlights that existed in Absarokee were dark, just like the buildings that surrounded them. We assumed that if there had been any people that survived, they fled as soon as it happened, or were taken out by the Husks immediately after. There were no other cars on the road. None driving at least. Most had ended up crashing when their drivers lost control during the explosion, charred wrecks on the sides of the roads dotted about every half mile. At one point Randy turned on the radio, but we caught nothing but static on it after scrolling through the frequencies three times in five minutes.
We passed a handful of Husks on the way into and out of the town, but we didn’t stop to investigate. They started to follow us, but none of them could keep up with a car, which was a pretty big relief. The thought of those things sprinting at 50 mph was frankly terrifying. None of us felt like trying to subdue them and look for survivors, we had nothing except for a single tire iron to defend ourselves with. Not very heroic of the three of us, but we were college kids only used to doing homework, working dead-end jobs, and getting high on the weekends.
We weren't the classic heroic types, not after watching our friends try and kill us.
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James and I spent the time driving to and through Absarokee shifting and condensing mana around our bodies, the excitement of this strange new ability outweighing the gravity of the situation we were in. My ability to physically see the shift in mana helped me tremendously. The only new type of mana I saw was a dark grey that drifted off of the exposed metal inside of the van. It seemed more 'rigid' than the other types id seen so far. The path it took more geometric than the swirls that came off water or fire. Even dirt and stone seemed to have a chaotic element to its motion. It was confirmation that there was more than just basic ‘elemental’ mana, like fire and water; so I took to calling it aspected mana. It seemed to fit rather well. Calling the clear stuff plain mana didn’t feel right, so I just referred to it blank mana.
“So fire emits a red mana, right?” questioned James.
“Yeah, water is blue, and dirt or rocks are a dusty brown color.” I replied, tapping the interior of the van, "The metal here is dark gray, but it acts a little differently than the others."
“Do you think we can take the blank mana and change its color?” he asked.
I thought about the way we could move blank mana around and outside our bodies, and shape it as well, just by thinking about it; albeit with a lot of concentration. I guessed that we could do more than move it, we could probably also aspect it as well.
“Well… That’s actually a very good question. I mean if rocks can take in the blank mana, and slowly shift and emit it as brown, I bet there's a way we can shift it ourselves. Or at the very least use rocks to change the aspect of our blank mana.”
It seemed like a decent line of thought. Having nothing better to do on our road-trip, and after some incessant pestering, we convinced Randy to pull over so we could each grab a handful of rocks off the side of the road. I also found a rough little piece of quartz, which I was also excited about. The light of the cab of the van showed me it emitted slight brownish hues, but nothing as deep as the other rocks, it was paler. It also drew in blank mana from the air much faster, and it was definitely disproportionate to the amount it released. Which was odd… Where did it go? I looked closer at the stone, and after a moment of analysis I noticed the quartz did indeed retain more mana that it actually let off. This gave me an interesting idea. What if I could not only use the mana inside of myself, but also draw more of the blank mana from the air or this quartz into my blobs?
I posed the question to James and Randy, they seemed to think it was an interesting idea, so while Randy was busy driving the van James and I tested it out. It was actually much more difficult than just drawing it out of yourself because you weren’t only pulling it from your own body, and holding it there, you were mentally reaching out and gathering the mana from around you as well.
This exercise taught us a few things. Firstly, we could only really pull mana from the area a couple inches around our bodies, granted it ended up being quite a bit of surface area because we could pull it from around our entire bodies if we really tried. The mental strain this caused was intense though, and neither of us could keep it up for more than a minute or two, but it gave us a lot more mana to fuel our testing. We also found out that we could increase the rate at which our bodies absorbed mana, if we only focused on that. Overfilling our bodies was a bad idea though, there was a strict limit in the amount of mana we could hold in, going above it gave us splitting headaches. We decided to not push it further, figuring that side effects would only compound the more we added to ourselves.
Our second conclusion was that the amount of mental ‘effort’ you devoted towards an action directly affected the efficiency and speed of the manifestation. We figured out that if you did it in steps it ended up being significantly less taxing on the mind, which in hindsight is common sense, it was a lot easier to hold the mana in a specific place without adding to it than it was to both add mana and hold it at the same time. Breaking it down into steps did make it slightly slower, but it was mostly offset by the speed we gained from actually doing it in steps. Our general process was: Condense, Emit, Shape. Which seemed to work well.
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I was just about to begin trying to interact with the rock and quartz’s mana when Randy suddenly slammed on the brakes, sending me tumbling into the back of the passenger seat since I felt like I didn’t need a seatbelt.
“What the fuck Rand-” I began as I reoriented myself, looking out the window. The road just… Stopped, ending in thick trees.
“That’s… Odd.” James observed, frankly pointing out the obvious.
“Yeah, no shit, James.” I stated, “We definitely came this way to get to the park, right?”
“Definitely.” Randy responded, “There’s only the one road through Absarokee.”
“Even less of one now.” James added rather unhelpfully.
We got out of the van, and left it running while Randy walked to the back of it and grabbed the tire-iron and a flashlight from the cargo area. “Just in case.” he said, passing the flashlight to me. I turned it on, noticing that the light let off a sort-of yellow mana that contrasted heavily with the darkness around us. It was worth investigating later. Looking and the soil where the road ended showed us that they were two completely different types of soil. We stood there dumbfounded for a minute or so, trying to wrap our heads around what this meant.
“I don’t think we’re getting back to Dillon tonight.” I noted.
“Yeah, probably not. The van’s not meant to go offroad, and I doubt we could weave it through the trees.” Randy observed.
“If Dillon is even there any more.” James mumbled, shaking his head.
A cacophany of screams and screeching echoed down the road behind us. We snapped back towards the van, I swept my flash light on the road behind us. Twenty-ish Husks were pounding down the asphalt towards us. We didn’t even have time to even scream before our flight response kicked in and we turned and sprinted into the woods behind us.
We ducked under logs and around trees, tearing through shrubs without hesitation. I’d trip over an exposed root and immediately scrambled to my feet, pure fear and adrenaline keeping me going.We got a few hundred yards into the treeline before realizing that we couldn’t hear a horde of angry Husks tearing through the woods behind us. James had pulled ahead by a good 15 feet before he glanced back at us and stopped, we caught up within seconds.
“They’re not following us,” he observed, panting, “shouldn’t they be trying to, like, eat us or something?”
We shared a glance between us and the realization hit us. “The van!”
We slowly, and as quietly as we could, crept back towards the road, wincing every time one of us stepped on a stick or pile of leaves. I turned the flashlight off when we caught sight of the light from a headlight peeking through the trees. The husks were clamoring all over and under the vehicle, busting windows and throwing themselves at the metal frame, shrieking and howling at it all the while.
We sat, huddled in the treeline for what felt like hours, watching them break and unbreak themselves over and over to turn it into scrap metal. It took them about half an hour to destroy the van to the point that the engine began to smoke, the headlights had already shut off at this point. Soon after it caught fire.
We’d guessed they tore a fuel or oil line because it quickly erupted into a large fireball, the wave of fire and heat rushing out of it stopping only a few yards in front of us. The night turned to day for a brief instant, we could see the husks mostly engulfed in flames. They began to writhe on the ground, slamming their heads and bodies into the dirt in a primal reaction to being immolated by the wreckage.
After a few minutes the fire died out, and over half of the Husks were ironically even more of a husk as their burned corpses littered the ground, another five had killed themselves from slamming their bodies against the ground trying to put out the fire. Only three were left standing, having mostly avoided the inferno and subsequent self-mutilation the others experienced. We stood in shocked silence for a few minutes after, a combination of fear and awe at the events keeping us rooted in place. Without a word, we slowly began to creep backwards, not taking our eyes off the remaining Husks and the wreckage of our former means of transportation.
We made it about ten yards backwards before I tripped over some vegetation, landing on a limb and snapping it with a loud crack and rustle of leaves. From the road we heard a shriek, followed by two others and then the sounds of footsteps bounding through the woods. All pretense of stealth gone, we began to run frantically through the forest. James pulled ahead once again, adrenaline and the difficult terrain the only things allowing Randy and I to keep pace. We made it 30 yards before the Husks caught up, the lead one lunging from a few feet behind me. Tackling me to the ground we rolled, stopping due to it slamming into a tree, causing it to lose its grip on my midsection. I stood up in time to see the second pounce, time seemed to slow down as the abomination wearing human skin flew through the air towards me.
I let out a very unmanly scream as a flash of metal came from the side, slamming down onto the back of the Husk’s head with a sickening crunch. Randy, who’d saved my life for the second time, was then tackled by the third. They struggled on the ground as the first started to get back up. Before it could, James arrived. Not even stopping his running pace as he delivered a soccer kick to its face, its head snapping backwards, the Husk collapsing back to the ground where James began to stomp on its head repeatedly, the both of them screaming the whole time.
I ran over to Randy just as he lost his grip on the Husk’s arm and throat, the only thing that was keeping it from taking a large bite out of his face. I grabbed it around the waist and heaved it backwards with all the strength I could muster, just as it’s jaws snapped shut in front of Randy’s face. We tumbled to the ground, the Husk’s attention now focused on me, its nails raking along my arms and chest leaving gouges wherever they passed. Spittle flicked over my face as it's heavy-breathed snarls filled my ears, sounds of pure animalistic rage and hunger. My fingers sunk into its eyes as I tried to keep it’s gnashing teeth away from my neck.
At that moment I wished it had burned with the others. I thought of the way the flames had engulfed the Husks around the burning van, the swirls of red mana that danced off of the flames as the fuel caught fire and travelled to the gas tank, sending it erupting into the sky. [Fire]; I thought, not the word, but the idea of fire and flames encompassed my entire conciousness. In that near-death moment it clicked. I understood the fire, its desire to burn and consume reflected in my own desire to consume the creature in front of me in flames, a deep primal desire to live. I called out to them and they answered.
Flames erupted from my hands, blank mana pouring out of me and into the wreaths of flame, shaping and growing it, engulfing the head of the Husk and travelling down my hands and through my fingers into its eye sockets, bubbling skin dripping off its skull and over my hands and wrists. The fire itself didn't burn me, the bubbling face of the Husk did though, making it feel like I stuck my hand in a fryer. It released its hold on me and began to thrash on the ground writhing in apparent agony. After a brief moment it stilled, and the forest was silent save for the crackle of embers and the bubbling of flesh.
I stared at it blankly as Randy and James walked over, the three of us watching the flames subside. The first Husk’s head was pulped by James, the second done in the same way with a tire iron, its head split like a watermelon or some other rinded fruit. The third was melted from the chest up, not quite carbonized by the flames but still charred, it's skin fused and mixed in with the dirt to make a mud-like substance as the skin bubbled off its skull.
A moment passed before the pain and fatigue struck me all at once, probably due to the loss of adrenaline, causing to me lose conciousness, and everything faded to black.