The entry into the town was… odd. No one walked the gravel streets, and it looked as though it would be a ghost town if she hadn’t seen the guards on the walls, though they didn’t approach or even react at all as the caravan walked into town. No one seemed perplexed by this as she heard a few murmurings about it being the same as last time.
It was also super cold. She kept getting a chilly breeze brushing up against her leg half-protected legs. It felt particularly cold on her poor battered feet. She chalked it up to being slightly further north than where she had been staying.
Quinn idly rubbed her sore legs as they stood in front of the abandoned house they had decided to stay the night in. More accurately, where Atamai had decided. Neither Willa nor herself had a problem with it. Willa seemed to never speak, and Quinn didn't have the confidence to suggest a better place. That and she didn't know if there even was a better place to stay.
It was much like the houses in Weildenbach. A black tar-coated roof and stone walls with a wooden door set into it. The stones were cracked as if they hadn't been repaired in a year or two. It was unnerving, to say the least. It fit right in with the ominous town.
The only difference was the door was slightly… broken. It was hanging off a hinge and swayed idly in the wind with a slight creak. Quinn was originally slightly opposed to the creaking door but agreed when Atamai pointed out its benefit of allowing them to know if someone opened it.
They stepped into the small house. Nothing looked even slightly broken or moved. It was almost as if the previous inhabitants had just walked out and never came back. The storm thundered in the background as if a massive beast was roaring. Even after the door closed, she could still hear the pattering of rain and the monstrous thunder.
The inside itself mainly consisted of one communal living space with everything in one room. There were two beds off to the side and a couch sat in front of an ashy fireplace. Nothing else really took up space in the entire building. It was a poor commoner's abode based on the fact that nothing had cushions. The beds and couch simply had a layer of hay to act as padding.
“I call a bed,” Atamai said as she lightly hopped onto one of them before anyone could argue. She kept every piece of her gear on. It didn’t look the slightest bit comfortable, but she seemed content as she settled into it. She rested on her stomach and used her arms as pillows as her breathing rapidly settled.
Willa simply stared at Quinn. Quinn finally couldn’t take her steely eyes boring until the depths of her being. “You can have the bed.”
Willa nodded and lay down on it with an impassive face. She somehow managed to not mess up any part of the sheet as she laid flat on her back and crossed her arms over her stomach. She too didn’t take off her gear nor did she look comfortable. In fact, her sleeping position looked so uncomfortable Atamai looked as though she was in heaven.
Quinn sat on the hard couch. The thin layer of straw did nothing to soften the lumpy wood the thing was made of. She looked around, shuddering as the cold started to set in through her sagen. She caught sight of a stack of cut logs next to the fireplace. “Anyone mind if I start a fire?”
Atamai lazily waved a hand in her general direction. “You do you…”
Quinn cleaned out the ash in the fireplace using Cleanse but left the unlit coals. She had figured out that it was based on her own perception thanks to the numerous times she used it over the past two weeks. That being said, she hadn't even begun to figure out what it couldn't clean away. As far as she could tell, the magic wouldn't clean something that isn't her own or anything living. It also seemed to have a worldly standard as it didn't work on anything unless it could be considered dirty in some way.
She then tossed in a couple of pieces of wood and used another lifestyle magic she hadn’t got much use out of. It was called Match and, as its name suggested, was used to light fires. She hadn’t had much use for it so far, but it was definitely a nice spell to know. She summoned a bit of her mana and made a magic circle slightly smaller than Cleanse at the tip of her pointer finger. She then engraved four symbols onto the circle. She didn’t know what three of them meant, but she did know the first. It was a sign of fire and looked much like the warning labels from her past world.
The magic circle spun and a small flame sprang to life a bit off of her finger. She moved her finger and the flame followed it as she lit a log. Soon she had a nice and cozy fire radiating warmth from the chimney as Match faded away after exactly ten seconds.
She sat back down and glanced over her shoulder at the other two women. They were fast asleep already. Quinn followed their example and kept her bow close as she slowly drifted off to the crackling fire and rumbling thunder…
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Quinn awoke in a cold sweat. She briefly rubbed her eyes as she sat up and looked about the dim room. The fire was dead, but the coals still simmered with heat. She couldn’t have slept too long with how bright they were, maybe four or so hours? She had issues staying asleep in the past, and especially the past week, but this time felt different. It was almost as if something had awoken her. Usually when she woke up her sweat was mostly dry, so what had interrupted her not-so-blissful sleep?
She looked around the dark room, seeing surprisingly easily in the lack of light. The sleeping forms of her temporary companions lay where she had first seen them, their legato breaths an obvious sign of their sleep. It wasn’t them… A crackle of lightning briefly illuminated the room from the creaking doorway as thunder followed. Was it a particularly loud strike of thunder? But her companions were still passed out… The shadows encroached upon her vision once more as the flickering light faded.
So what was it? Was it the air? It felt slightly chillier, as if a fog had rolled in and she had gotten caught in it. She paused for a moment as a thought flittered across her mind. She grabbed at her bow and stood up abruptly, activating her senses as a sense of fear started to reach into her brain.
Her mana sense showed no irregularities, but her amber sense was worrying. It felt cold, almost dead. It pulsated like a sickened heart on the verge of collapse. She felt as if an icy claw was slowly tracing its way around her body, just begging to slice deeply into her flesh. It held a violent energy that was a stark contrast to what it felt like before. If before the amber just passively felt weird, now the amber was alive enough to create the feelings on its own. It was similar to the foxes from before.
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“Quinn?” A familiar voice called from her back. She turned around to see Atamai sitting on the bed with her hands resting on her gun. Willa wasn’t too far off as she awoke and sat up. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know… something feels wrong.” She couldn’t very well tell them that the air felt dead now, could she? Her hourly headache returned. It was light at first but increased in intensity as she struggled to think.
Something was on the tip of her tongue about the situation. Quinn felt something was extremely wrong. Something had been wrong since the moment they approached the town. She pushed and pushed her memory, desperate to see what was demanding to be remembered. It resisted her strongly, unwilling to divulge the smallest of clue. Still she pushed it.
The bell… they didn't ring the bell. It had stayed silent as night had fallen and they had all shacked up for the night. That was so wrong, horribly wrong. Every town and village in the Veiled Grove was required to ring their bells for at least thirty minutes. Ada said it was law dictate by the Halis Empire.
The dead air… the ghost town vibe… unnatural chill in the air… the rigid movements of the guards… could it be? No, surely not. Surely someone would have seen this connection before? Someone who was better versed in the possibilities of this world would have reached the conclusion before her. Quinn felt agony in her head as she struggled to keep her thoughts coherent.
Why was she having such a hard time?! Her head had felt heavy for as long as she had been here like a weight was dragging it down into the depths of ignorance. It was almost as if the world itself didn’t want to allow even the simplest of complex thoughts to take place in her head. Wait, maybe it wasn’t- the pain spiked as she felt her synapses begin to tear.
She could faintly see Atamai frown in the darkness of the room as she fought through the pain. “What is i-” Everyone in the room froze as they heard a sound over the creaking door and thunder.
Shhhhhing-dom!
Shhhhhing-dom!
Shhhhhing-dom!
It was a horrid sound, half flesh ripping-half metal rattling as something dragged along the gravel path outside the building. And then it was silenced by a heavy impact as if it was tossed carelessly onto the ground. And it wasn’t just one heavy gait, it was several.
Quinn could finally speak as the raging thoughts in her head subsided. She focused on what she was thinking about earlier. It came out as a whisper, one of many they were beginning to hear with each passing second. “Undead.”
Willa instantly burst into motion as if Quinn had released her from a spell. She drew her rapier and a silver glow appeared around the weapon similar. With her senses still active, Quinn could tell it was similar to mana, but slightly off. With a sharp thrust, she stabbed upwards into the ceiling. Although she fell short, the energy around her weapon did not. It continued to stab upward, causing a large part of the ceiling to simply evaporate as rain and howling wind poured into the dark abode.
As if she was waiting, Atamai drew something from one of the many pouches she had all over her body. Quinn could barely see its cylindrical shape as Atamai snapped her fingers and a small flame appeared in the palm of her hand. The flame disappeared and the object shot up through the roof of the building. It loudly whistled, drowning out even the thunder as it screamed its way into the sky. Once it was high up, it exploded into a red light that settled above, lighting up the entire town.
In the back of her mind, Quinn was quite surprised by the firework-flare that her temporary companion had set off. She, however, had larger problems as fog poured into the house through the hole in the roof and the doorway. It wasn’t the thick fog that was outside the town’s walls. It was extremely light, barely able to cover their vision. But it held an ominous air as if only a prelude of what was to come.
The door slammed open as a man stood in it. Several other’s stood behind him in a scattered militia. The man staggered into the room, his metallic greeves dragging against the ground from where they were torn off their leather straps. He looked horrible, half rotting and covered in bites. Human bites. Blood covered his bruised body and shattered metal armor.
Quinn froze. There was no other way to put it, she just locked up. It was exactly like the nightmares she was plagued with when she was younger. She couldn’t even twitch as the… the… undead staggered into the building.
“Snap out of it!” Atamai shouted as she pulled the trigger on her gun. The bullet - a glimmering ball of fire - shot out through the barrel. Of course, Quinn was too lost in fear to notice the bullet, but the loud crack of the shot startled her from her stupor.
Quinn quickly backpedaled as Atamai’s shot connected with the creature’s helmet, piercing through and exploding its insides. His corpse fell to the ground, hopefully well and truly dead this time. Willa moved to the door and stabbed forward with her rapier. The well-crafted weapon had a silver aura as she stabbed it into another undead’s body. The silver aura easily sliced into its body. Guided along by her agile movements of the rapier the cut spread up and through the creature's skull in a spray of fore.
Quinn fumbled for an arrow from her quiver as Atamai shot once more, the bullet reclaiming another unnatural life. She finally pulled an arrow from her quiver in time to see Willa dodge a woman’s lunge and slash with her rapier. Her rapier easily slashed through the rotting corpse as if it was paper, cutting it cleanly in two along with the three undead behind it.
Quinn shakily brought the arrow to her bow, pulling it taught. ‘Just pretend they are hungry wolves and not hungry corpses. Come on, you got this… Just fake it till you make it… Freezing up here only means death…’ She took a deep calming breath which failed to steady her uproarious heart and released the arrow. The arrow flew with a twang of the bowstring, flying into the leg of a zombie past the door.
The staggered zombie didn't die, but it slowed the group behind it. Willa took advantage to precisely stab each of the bisected corpses in the head, sending bits of rotten gray matter everywhere. A shot of fire from behind claimed the staggered zombie as soon as Willa was done. She became slightly more defensive as two more pushed past the stack of corpses into the room. She dodged under one’s arms and stabbed past it into its partner. She showed no fear as she got dangerously close to the one she dodged.
That fearlessness was soon proven to be the correct move as a ball of fire exploded the remaining undead’s head. Atamai reached into her pouch and threw something at the doorway. “They’re low-level zombies! They only die if the head is removed or penetrated!”
“R-right.” Quinn struggled to remove another arrow from her quiver as the object Atamai threw reached the door. As soon as it impacted the ground, a thick slime-like substance burst out. It spread its tan ooze over the group of undead outside the door, completely immobolizing them.
Willa took her chance, stabbing each of the dozen or so zombies in the head with zero resistance as she left the building to continue her stabbing spree. The silver aura around her rapier flashed with each stab and slash. Rotten blood sprayed further along the walls of the town with each passing second.
The town’s bell started its melodic ring, barely covering the roaring wind and pelting rain. “Let’s head to the town center!” The ambient noise made it quite difficult to hear Atamai, especially as the sounds of metal clattering became more present.
Atamai left, leaving Quinn behind in her fear-addled stupor. The fear of being left behind in the undead-ridden town overpowered her fear of being eaten and she quickly followed after them. She tried - unsuccessfully - to ignore the feeling in her feet as bits of brain matter squelched up through her toes. She nearly slipped across the slick blood as she stepped over the re-unalived corpses. She paused for the briefest of seconds to wrench her arrow free and re slot it into her quiver.
The home they had taken over was one of many along an alley next to the town center. They ran, dodging past a group of slow-walking zombies as they burst into the town’s central plaza. It was a site of pure destruction.