“Crystal, you’ve got inbound!” Garth shouted, watching a dog-sized beetle ambling towards his longtime friend. Her hands moved in a blur of motion, and blades of sharpened mana sprung out of the air and began to whirl around her, intercepting the insect and carving it to pieces. While he was the nominal leader of the group, he had no doubt that she was more powerful. They’d travelled together for the better part of a decade, and it had been her tutelage that had led to the development of his AIR BLADE skill all those years ago. She caught him looking and smirked, a playful twinkle in her eye. “Don’t you have other things you should be staring at right now?”
He grinned back, “Not when you’re clearing out the bugs like that. Gives me plenty of time to sit back and enjoy the show.” She chuckled again as she motioned for him to come back. Carlyle and Dylan were back with their unawakened near the Central Defense outpost where they’d been stationed.
It still hurt to think about the rest of their team, all dead in the city. Garth and Crystal had gone to the Central Defense outpost to place an order for supplies before their next deployment, planning to meet their team for lunch. The supply counter was in the basement of the building, and that was where they were when the calamity struck. It took them several days to clear out the rubble that had blocked them in, and when they finally made it outside it… was awful. Many of the buildings in the town had simply been blown away in the shockwaves that had rocked the earth, but the majority of the buildings in Duilleag were sturdy enough that many people made it through the initial destruction. Unfortunately, few among them survived without major injuries, and the only surviving Healer, Dylan, was trapped in the basement of the collapsed supply depot with Garth and Crystal. By the time the group at the outpost were able to open a path through the debris, most of the injured survivors had succumbed to their injuries.
Duilleag wasn’t a town anybody would have called pretty, and Garth was perfectly happy to spend the bulk of his time in the dense forests surrounding the area suppressing the awakened beast population. That sentiment was only magnified now that the city was reduced to piles of rubble, the final resting place of many of Garth and Crystal’s friends and colleagues. Despite that, the supply depot made for a good home base, and Garth agreed that fortifying it made sense. In all, they had a group of nearly sixty, with four awakened including him and Crystal. Dylan, their Healer, was constantly trying to apply treatment where he could in the depot while Carlyle, a Mage and survivor from one of the nearby homes, would keep watch and use FIREBALL to signal if there were any issues at the camp. They could really use another Warrior like Garth, but with the resources they had this distribution of responsibilities worked fairly well.
It didn’t go without its hitches, of course. As Garth and Crystal were returning to the base, they spotted Carlyle sitting on a pile of concrete, looking out into the forest. While Garth couldn’t blame him, it was these kinds of behaviors that needed to be nipped in the bud. All it took was one mistake by a lazy lookout to cause a disaster. “Carlyle, what are you doing out here?” He called out, the playful banter from earlier completely gone from his voice. The younger man looked at him, brown eyes meeting Garth’s. “Just taking a bit of a break. The view’s a nice one.” He said, tossing a wink at Crystal, who just rolled her eyes.
“You’re ten years too young and twenty levels too weak to be trying that, kid.” Garth responded. “But you can’t just wander off when you feel like it. This isn’t a day job that comes with breaks and lunches. The stakes here are real.” He gestured towards the depot. “People like them count on people like us. One misstep on our end could cost lives, Carlyle.”
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“Really?” He shot back. “It seems like you two have all the time in the world to go wander off in the woods together. I’d watch which pots I call black, Mr. Kettle.”
Garth set his jaw, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Crystal had pushed him to try to be a little less gruff with Carlyle – he wasn’t a trained soldier and Garth had to understand that. On the other hand, the kid was awful to deal with. Terrible attitude, lazy, and most of all disrespectful. He was biting back the reply when he heard Crystal’s voice snap in the silence. “The hell you mean by that? You think we’re over here going for a midday quickie without a care in the world? You genuinely believe that we’re just frolicking about in the middle of a twice-damned wasteland? Behaving like a couple of teenagers just a few kilometers away from where all of our friends died? Grow the hell up Carlyle, and get back to your post before I figure out how to make this work with three awakened instead of four.”
Both Carlyle and Garth were stunned by Crystal’s response, but to Garth’s perspective it seemed to do the trick. Carlyle’s mouth narrowed to a line as he stood up, and he turned and walked back towards the camp in silence. Garth and Crystal stood there for a moment, watching him go. He turned to her, a small grin forming on his face. “So let’s talk about taking it easy on the kid. You know, I really think you could have –“
“Oh piss off.” she said, punching his shoulder. “You were right, the kid’s terrible.” Smiling in satisfaction, Garth rubbed his sore shoulder as they also finished their walk back to camp.
As they entered the radius of their Guard Array, Crystal gave a sigh of relief. Even as comfortable as she was regulating her mana, the wear and tear from the chaotic energy in the air took a toll. They went to go see Dylan, a balding middle-aged man with heavy bags under his eyes. “Garth, Crystal. Sorry about this, but I’m really in no condition to help right now. Think you’ll be able to stick it out a few hours while I get back up to speed?”
Garth frowned at this, but nodded. Having one healer for about sixty patients wasn’t a sustainable ratio, and despite their aches and pains Garth and Crystal were far better off than most. “Go ahead Dylan, take what rest you can. Everything quiet today?”
The older man sighed as he slumped into a chair. “Yeah, nothing out of the ordinary. I worry for these kids, Garth. There’s a reason we didn’t find any others out there, even through the Array these kids are having a really hard time with the mana coursing through them. If we survive this, I’m concerned about what this is doing to their bodies long-term.” Garth nodded, sharing a look with Crystal. That had been one of their big concerns, too. Another item on an ever-growing list of problems to deal with later. They walked to the office and the back and settled in, graciously accepting some rehydrated rations from Thomas, who greeted them with a smile and left them to their conversation.
The room was typical for Central Defense: austere white walls with a dark wooden desk and utilitarian office chairs. Some reference books sat on a shelf on one wall, as sterile and ordinary as an office can get – if you discounted the large drone floating in the center, barrier expanded to the maximum while still maintaining a reasonable filter to protect the people under its shimmering dome. The last couple of months had been hard – incredibly so, but given what they’d had to start Garth was proud of what they’d accomplished as a group. He leaned back in his chair, preparing to take a quick nap, when the Guard Array suddenly hummed. [EMERGENCY SIGNAL FROM NIERBURG, CALLING ALL SURVIVORS TO CONGREGATE ON ORDERS OF COUNCILOR VICTOR DEROSA.] Garth looked at Crystal as hope reignited in his chest. After all they’d been through, there was a chance that this nightmare would be over soon.