The scattered light bulbs strung up against the ceiling cast a warm orange light that barely cast away the darkness hovering just outside the windows. Accustomed to the inside of the grocery store, the outside was darker than ever as night descended.
It was total and utter darkness, where not even a slimmer could been seen outside the little light spilling from the windows and the small patch that surrounded Greyson just outside the door,
Occasionally a beam would lance out into the unknown as Greyson toyed with his flashlight and responded to skitterings and wanderings. Roy couldn’t hear from where he stood next to the cash register.
It was diner time and the survivors gathered again near the front of the store, some of them were still ambling down the aisles. Soft ephemeral figures wound through grey deserted shelves, every step causing the water to shudder, and bloom with orange-yellow confetti as the light played against the waves.
Everything was orange, like some filter cast against the world, the people, the scenary, evenv the can of orange Roy held in his hands. They were serving canned fruits, SPAM, and stewed beans this time, something ordered specifically by Owen.
Roy worked the can opener and dumped the contents onto a metal platter which he then handed to the person on the other side of the register. A gaunt looking man whose eyes darted from side to side, matching the finicky motions of his hands.
Roy was worried the man might drop his food, which would certainly make a mess as the slurry contents of his plate bloomed through the water like an insect caught in ember, before it all fell apart and sunk to the depths.
That was the last of them, all two hundred odd people served their meals, some by him and some by the others who stood behind similar registers with similar cartf, now filled with only empty cans.
“Last call for diner!” Lestrat announced as he looked over the clearing near the front, some took their meals near the front. They whispered quietly to each other, as if afraid their noise might disturb the perfect darkness outside. Like it was a masterpiece, something consecrated and holy, for how else could such silence, such night ever descend on a modern city? So full of life, light and lucidity.
There was some cleaning up, some toiling under the rustic lighting, picking up scattered cans and odd bits of cutlery. There was even a small action figure, a plastic dragon figurine with movable joints and a little button under the neck that would cause the jaws to snap shut.
It was red, and scaly, and menacing with its red gaze. Roy toyed with the figurine for a while, almost lost in its mundanity, things were so much calmer when dragons, magic, and the fantastical were relegated to fiction.
On a whim, Roy tucked the figurine into his pocket, the sprawling wings forming quite a bulge in his jacket. He would return it to the kid that owned it, if he ever found them. Otherwise he just might keep it, the detail on those new action figures was exquisite!
Unloading the last batch of junk into the carts, Roy said his goodbyes to some of the other stragglers and made for his suite near the back. Sweat and other human odours permeated the alleys between the rooms, with not a breeze to carry them off.
It was warm too, especially here in the recesses and with his recently degraded CON, it would be hard to rest in the sweltering heat which, along with the air that held a sludge like consistency, left his skin with a sticky coating. Some of the others had gone outside in swimwear and washed off the day’s grime, but Roy doubted the water, full of the dead and decaying, would do much for hygiene.
Finding his room, Roy stripped off his boots and climbed aboard the platform and out of the water. A piece of cardboard had appeared next to his door since last time and Roy stuck it in in front of the door way, giving the room some smidgen of privacy.
The rest of his gear was in the room, stripped off after he got back and changed into a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Pushing all his stuff aside, Roy plopped onto the ground and lay on his back as he stared up towards the rafters, where the light bulbs twinkled from time to time as the electricity hiccupped and stumbled along improvised mechanisms.
According to the others this was the first lighted evening, Jonas had finished wiring everything up earlier in the day and they would have two or three hours of lighting for dinner and a little while afterwards. Which meant he had another hour left before darkness erupted into the room and things darkened yet again.
The thought of the dark didn’t appeal to him so he would cast his torch spell, see how long the little tongue of flame would last. He would get his light, and some training in.
Training, working, studying, what a ridiculous though! Never before had he studied, never before had he turned in an assignment on time, and sometimes not at all. Now he was going to do the exact opposite, work when no one instructed him to do so. But wasn’t grinding in a game a sort of work, a repetitive sequence of buttons, a series of steps like solving a high school math equation, with a reward at the very end.
A jolly ding in the case of MMORPGs and a 100 writ large and in red in the case of math.
Now he was going to go through the steps. He would feel the mana in his body, capture a small patch of it, align an even smaller part of the patch, pull the whole thing through that weird membrance he felt surrounded his mana, and – fwoom – firelight mixed with the electric lighting, incandescent yellow mixed with fiery orange.
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A few inches above the palm of his hand the flame hovered, casting light and heat. He had created it manually, went through all the steps like he had done during his previous tries, each movement of his mana carried its own exotic sensation.
He didn’t need to follow those steps though, he could use his skill and be dragged along by the ethereal hand that would descend upon him. A process which was both faster and bolstered by the perk he had gained.
Roy moved his hand away, and to his satisfaction, the flame persisted. There never was a connection between him and the spell, it didn’t so much hover above his palm as stick to that place in space.
Now he recalled the spell, the system granted ability, ‘Flame’, and activated it.
The hand arrived, almost in fast forwards as it began its series of actions. No longer slow like a spectre buy nimble and quick, though no less soothing with its presence. Roy latched on and he felt himself accelerate alongside it, shooting through steps in a series of arcane gestures.
Then it was gone and a flame appeared before him. Roy had no way of telling how long it had taken, but just by observing the alacrity by which he completed the individual steps, he was finishing the movements at least twice or thrice as fast as normal.
Part of that could simply be due to the fact he was following the hands guidance, part of it was because of the perk he had gotten, which seemed to accelerate the movements of the hand and him alongside it.
He was calling it acceleration, but he wasn’t speeding up, time wasn’t passing slowly by, awaiting his completion. No, it felt as if he had more hands, more manipulators for completing the steps, a seamless mass of magical appendages that felt instinctual, basic.
Roy compared the two flames before him, they were different, minutely so. Each time he completed the spell a different amount of mana was gather, a different amount aligned. Each step changed something. Based on intuition, the mana would determine the duration of the flame, if the fire bruned mana that was.
The amount he aligned probably determined the size of the flame, and if the flame was larger and consumed more man it would last for a shorter duration.
These thoughts in mind, Roy began to create a series of flames, changing the amount of mana used and aligned each time. By the time he was finished the first flames were winking out, the burden of illumination falling to the other lined up before it.
The row of them looked like Russian nesting dolls, almost identical tendrils fo flame which increased in size, reflecting Roy’s desire to see how large they could get. There seemed to be no limit, or at least Roy didn’t want to continue trying considering his latest effort had yielded a flame half a meter tall and drained much of his remaining mana reserves.
It was fortunate that the fire was spire like in shape, a single tongue reaching always upwards. Had it spread horizontally some of his belonging might have caught fire.
Taking a seat Roy watched the flames flicker out one by one until the tallest disappeared, the sudden loss of light was almost perceived as a flash, a flash of darkness. Most of the lightbulbs had gone out and now only a single bulb shone somewhere in the distance, barely enough illumination for Roy to make out the fingers before his eyes.
It was probably time for bed, it was early still early though, probably no later than eight or nine. This was probably what the people of long ago felt. They slept and awoke with the rising and setting of the sun, for what could be done in the pitch dark of night, assisted only by the lowly light of candles.
How curious that the day night cycle, dictated by time, the 8 o’clock school days and 12 o’clock bed times would disappear so quickly. Flushed away alongside the ubiquitousness of technology. As he began to lie down a shout went up from the distance, a hoarse croak followed by a flurry of voices.
Roy was too far away but he could feet the commotion grow as splashing footsteps entered the fray.It continued like that for a while, new voice entered both men and women, loud and quiet.
It was too early to sleep anyways.
Roy got up and donned his socks and shoes, he would go and check it out since everyone seemed to want a part of whatever action was happening. A few more lights flickered on overhead, a halo of bright yellow appeared over where the noise was coming from and Roy navigated the clustered streets with the guides on the ceiling.
Soon he was within earshot and could make of the distinct voice of Owen.
“Get the Task Force ready!”
:”Look at how dark it is out there! It’s a suicide mission!” that voice sounded like Dan, or maybe it was Karl. The other brother rarely talked but they sounded similar enough.
“That’s an order Dan, this is our responsibility! We can’t shirk it at our convenience, there are people counting on us,”
“Look, maybe we can observe his condition for a while longer, see how things progress and go from there,” Lestrat's temperate voice cut in.
“He won’t last the night,” a somber monotone, a voice that clawed at Roy’s memories.
“”We need to go now!”
“This is crazy, you’re putting all their lives in danger!” Nolan’s hoarse voice boomed over the others.
“Quiet! This isn’t your business Nolan!” Owen snapped back, ”This man’s life is on the line!”
“It’s alright, everything is going to be alright,” Madelyn cooed mockingly.
“This is no time for joke, get you stuff ready and stop dallying!”
Roy turned the final corner and looked on the group of people gathered outside a cubicle. Owan towered up from the crowd and the others formed a circle around him. A boy in a white coat, Leo, stood beside him and overlooked a table, on top of which lay an old man.
A family stood nearby, a mother and two daughters. It seemed like the old man on the table was a grandparent and based on his condition, he had fallen ill. The family stood around the table, tears welled in their eyes as they alternated between begging, sobbing, and the occasional flare of outrage.
Roy had a half a mind to shout out to Leo but this was probably not the time,so he quietly approached from the side.
“What are you still standing around for GO!” Owen shouted again, the tenseness in him was palpable.
“Look, I don’t think this is going to work out, it’s not you, it’s us, specifically, we aren’t going to go charging into the night looking for pharmaceuticals,” Madelyn quipped in after a brief span of silence.
Owen shouted, he cursed, he glared at the others who stood still as statues and looked on. There was no light outside, no visibility. A dark permeated with monsters that could rend flesh and turn the living into the dead.
So they stood and watched the life fade from the old man’s eyes, bit by bit, pint by pint. Owen was quiet now, as if he was listening to the leaking of life from a loosed faucet.
“Fine! Fine. Then I’ll go,” he spoke simply before turning around.
“Wait, Owen, think about this alright, we need you here. Look at a everyone, there are hundreds, you can’t put yourself in danger like this!” Greyson shouted after him.
“Watch me,” the police chief whispered as he faded into the unlighted areas. The opening and closing of a door signaled his departure.