Now, Kansas
The Meat Parade caught up to the rear of the convoy.
Hulking, pale-skinned, barely human monsters jumped from rooftops to crash down on vehicles.
They ripped people out through windows and tossed them to be torn a part by others.
The smaller cannibals dived into the vehicles to savage the passengers inside.
Deandre had found luckily found himself inside the second bus.
The terror threatened to choke him.
It was different now.
Before when he had fought in the desperate defense of the foundries with his apprentices and fellow blacksmiths he had given up on his life and had resolved to go down swinging.
Then the voice had spoken in his head.
Told him that there was still a chance to live.
He had taken the offer like a drowning man grabbing a line.
Now?
Now he wanted to live.
The terror had returned.
His invested axe thrummed with power that only he could feel. Meaty hands shook around the handle but he swung with the strength that pounded metal into shapes.
The blade rippled through the air as it sunk deeply into a hulking cannibal’s skull.
He had seen those monsters take high caliber bullet rounds without flinching.
“Nice axe… magic? I can feel it… I think… whatever… it’s weird… keep doing that.”
The pretty young woman said from a nearby seat.
Her arm was in a sling and she looked like she had gone through a rough time of late.
She had road rash across her face and several bandages on her limbs that leaked red.
“Here… Mage Shield,” she reached over and slapped him on the face.
He blinked and looked at his arms.
A soft glow lined his body.
“You’re welcome.”
“Uh… thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. It’ll take a shot or two, but don’t think you’re inv—”
The window next to the young woman shattered.
A cannibal grasped for her.
“Stone Spike!” she snapped out a punch.
The cannibal fell away from window with blood trailing from its eye.
The bus suddenly swerved from side to side.
The people packed inside screamed.
Some fell into the cannibals’ grasps and were dragged out to their deaths.
Others continued to fight for their lives.
“Shit! Amber! The driver!” the young woman called to the back.
An amber glow dashed past Deandre.
He watched as another pretty young woman rushed to the front.
She was covered in glowing translucent knight’s armor with a translucent blade of the same color in her right hand.
The bus driver screamed for help while cannibals bashed at the windshield like rabid animals.
The young woman raised a hand. “Magic Missile!”
Amber orbs the size of marbles streaked through the interior, burst through the glass and drilled the cannibals.
She followed it up by running a cannibal through knocking it loose.
The second cannibal swiped a clawed-hand against her magic armor before she cut it in half at the waist.
“I thought you can’t cast attack spells when you’ve got defensive ones up,” Deandre said.
“Huh? She must’ve hit 30.”
“Jayde! I need help back here!” the third outsider bellowed.
Deandre saw that the stocky man was single-handedly holding the line at the back of the bus.
Several cannibals had managed to get inside and most of the people where frantically pushing to the front to get away.
The man fought in the middle of the aisle. Punching, stabbing, gutting, gouging and even biting.
The cannibals were taking fatal wounds but they kept fighting long enough to find the gaps in the man’s thick armor.
The pretty young woman, Jayde, scrambled over the seats as the people clogged the aisles.
Deandre was climbing over the seats on his side before he realized what he was doing.
“Heal!” Jayde slapped the back of the stocky man’s exposed neck. “Mage Shield!” she slapped him a second time.
A cannibal snarled and snapped at her.
She fell back into a seat and upkicked the cannibal under the chin.
The blow left it open for Deandre to behead it with a single swing.
“Thanks!” Jayde pulled herself up and punched a fireball into the side of a cannibal’s head.
Deandre planted his feet. He was stuck between seats but there was no place he could go.
The axe rose.
The axe fell.
Just like a forging hammer.
It was familiar.
The terror slipped away as he fought alongside strangers.
Back in the first bus, Heddy found herself holding a little toddler as they cowered low to the ground next to the couch.
The unconscious Asian woman laying on the couch groaned and stirred but didn’t wake.
Heddy forgot the woman’s name and felt really bad seeing as how the woman had been the one that had healed the arrow wound in her shoulder.
The bus shook from impacts and she could hear what sounded like claws trying to tear through.
“It’s okay, little person,” she murmured more for her own benefit than his. In fact, he was strangely calm. Just looking around with wide, dark eyes.
One of the side windows shattered and a cannibal tried to climb through.
Heddy screamed along with the others crammed into the back of the bus.
A tall, athletic looking woman, Marci, if she remembered correctly stepped forward with a spear in one hand.
“Power Thrust!”
The spear struck the cannibal in the chest and sent it flying violently away.
Marci’s face was drawn and pale.
Heddy was shocked that the woman was even standing.
Marci’s left arm was wrapped with a thick covering of bandages that were soaked through in red. She only had the tattered remnants of armor over similarly tattered clothing also soaked in blood. Here and there were spots of exposed flesh and muscle as if something had flayed the skin.
Heddy looked away and buried her face behind the toddler.
On top of the bus, Dayana had switched to her Colt 1911, singular, since her left arm was useless.
A cannibal tried to climb to her with its too-wide mouth filled with sharp teeth, snapping open and closed as if it was imagining her sweet, sweet flesh in his mouth.
She timed her shots for when the mouth opened.
Bang!
The cannibal fell away with a hole in the back of its neck.
“Heal from that, fucker,” she muttered.
Hayden stood protectively over Dayana. The heavily armored young woman lashed her electrified chain and thrust with her electrified spear.
The last cannibals on top of the bus fell off when their bodies suddenly seized up.
“You sure you’re okay,” Hayden said.
Dayana waved the concern away without answering. Truth was she figured talking was a waste of what little strength she had left.
Inside the bus, Heddy cringed with every loud crackling discharge of electricity. The unpleasant stench of burned flesh permeated the interior.
A heavy impact landed on top of the bus.
Heavy steps moved toward the open sky light.
“It’s okay. Those scary young women are on top. They’ll take care of it,” she whispered.
The toddler burbled something she did understand. Though he sounded delighted for some reason.
An armored form dropped down from the opening and she understood.
“We’re through the gate. There’s just the Meat Parade camps to get past then we’re clear,” Nila said.
“Until we run into monsters and mutant animals,” Marci grunted.
Heddy didn’t like how hard the woman was leaning on her spear. It looked like Marci could barely stand and she was the strongest fighter inside the bus.
The babbling toddler reached out for Nila.
“It’s okay, baby. Almost done. Just stay with Heddy for now.”
“I’ve got him.” Heddy hadn’t known what else to say.
“Thank you.”
They were indeed clear.
The Meat Parade hadn’t left much in their camps.
It seemed that none of them wanted to miss out on the buffet that was once the city of Wichita.
Heddy could finally relax.
She wasn’t entirely safe but she was finally free.
----------------------------------------
The man charged them with a kitchen knife
Michael shot an arrow into his chest.
The man kept coming.
Britt hit him in the face with a light arrow.
The man kept coming.
Charlie finally stepped in to finish him off by stabbing her short blade into his throat.
“Ow!”
The man sliced a thin cut across her face with his last gasp.
“He’s an old, scrawny guy… how did he not drop from your arrow?”
“I don’t know, Charlie?” he shrugged.
“They’re all like— us— I mean when we get caught up in our hunger from the sacrament,” Britt said.
She sounded subdued without her usual enthusiasm.
Michael felt it as well.
The loss of Donald, Sunny and Lincoln had stung.
They had managed to escape and even heal their wounds while leveling up past the 10 benchmark in the time since but they didn’t feel the joy and excitement they should’ve.
It was different when he saw the missing faces and heard the missing voices in his head.
They had linked up with other groups that had joined with yet more into a band of several hundred.
One of many that were converging on the fancy cathedral that a lot of the church people had gathered in.
It had been a great shock when the people inside, non-fighters from the looks of them, had burst out in a maddened charge.
The church people seemed to be possessed. They were stronger, tougher and refused to immediately drop from fatal wounds.
It had been enough to scatter the band into smaller groups as they fled into the city streets.
The battle had then ebbed back and forth as the night continued.
This was even with the added numbers of their full army.
Many of Michael’s brothers and sisters had lost themselves to the hunger.
They forgot their weapons, spells and Skills as they threw themselves on the church people.
Frenzied hunger met crazed religious fervor and the victory was yet unclear.
Britt steered them away from the thick of the fighting. She kept them on the edges. The two of them picked off enemies from a distance, while Charlie stood guard and protected them from any that got close.
Thus, they remained alive when an old man in ridiculous purple and gold robes appeared in the back of truck.
The lines parted for him.
Michael’s brothers and sisters charged.
The old man raised his arms and said a prayer.
Bursts of gold light shot from his hands and turned everyone they touched into bloody lumps on the ground.
They fled and joined another battle several streets away.
This one went better and they found themselves overwhelming the church people.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
There was no retreat. They fought to the last child.
“Why?” he couldn’t understand. He had never seen anything like it.
Even the children had fought with ferocity and strength that didn’t belong in their small bodies.
“It had to be that golden light. That music we heard,” Britt said. “Some kind of faith-based magic berserk boost… I don’t know.”
They stayed on the outer edges of the feeding frenzy.
Which saved them when a fireball the size of small car plummeted into the thick of their feeding brothers and sisters like a meteorite.
The explosion knocked them to the ground.
They rose just in time to watch the smoke clear.
Not all of their brothers and sisters had been killed.
Many were high level and they had the sacrament in their stomachs.
The church people charged.
They followed a heavily armored man.
Plain steel turned into shining gold as he reached Michael’s brothers and sisters.
What he cut and stabbed didn’t heal while he shrugged off strikes with ease.
Michael loosed an arrow.
It shattered before it even reached the golden-armored man.
Britt sent a light arrow barrage to cover their retreat.
They had enough.
The heavy weight that had settled over them with the deaths of their friends turned crushing for every moment they spent near those that exuded that golden light.
What they didn’t realize was that it wasn’t just the light.
A wordless song and music that wasn’t music played through it all.
They were deaf to it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t affect them.
They joined many of their brothers and sisters retreating to the eastern side of the city where they had established a base camp in the parking lot of a Walmart.
The only ones that continued to fight were the ones that had lost themselves to the hunger.
Nothing would pull those away from the hunt for the sacrament.
They grabbed rations, normal food, and hydrated.
They ate in silence.
What was there to say?
“Hi!” April’s smiling face only made Michael feel worst. “I know the fighting’s been tough, but I just need to ask you about your…”
“Donald, Sunny and Lincoln are KIA,” Britt said without looking up from her pouch of lukewarm pasta. “It was a three person team. High level. At least over 30… probably. A rogue-type with a high-level movement Skill. A mage-type that used punches for some reason. The last one was heavily armored and she used electricity. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t magic. I would’ve felt it otherwise. They all looked to be in their 20’s.”
“Thank you. That’s very thorough. Did you happen to catch their faces?”
“Only the punching mage-type. She was white, pretty. The electric woman had a full helm, I only saw her eyes and they glowed with lightning.”
“The rogue-type was black, didn’t get a good look at her face the way she was flickering around,” he added.
“Okay. Thank you… condolences for your teammates. Their sacrifices won’t be forgotten. If you’re up to it there’s a briefing in that tent,” she pointed across the parking lot, “in fifteen. I’m not supposed to say,” she leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper, “we’re looking for volunteers for a special Quest, but it means you’ll be able to head home for a bit.”
“Thank you,” he nodded numbly.
“Let’s do it,” Charlie said after April had moved on to her next targets.
“Why?” Britt said.
“I don’t like this place. I feel like something is smothering me. I can’t fight like this.”
“You have to fight through adversity. Battlefields, by their very nature, are never ideal,” Britt said.
“I know that!” Charlie snapped. “But this— this is different. You know what I mean, right, Michael? You’ve got the best senses.”
“Yeah…”
“I guess it can’t hurt to find out what it is,” Britt sighed.
They ate in silence until it was time to head to the briefing.
The huge tent was packed to bursting and they had to squeeze in.
“Here’s the deal,” Fred stood at the front, “I’ve been authorized to share key information with you so that you know how successful this Quest has been.”
Michael frowned.
Success?
It didn’t feel that way to him.
“The prophecy has been averted. I know the churchies are going crazy, but believe me, it’s all mop up from here. No golden flames sweeping the land. However, the city is still church territory and we need to completely wipe them out to make sure we aren’t burned to ash or something like that. To that end most of us are sticking around.”
Michael felt a pit in his stomach grow to life at those words.
“However, we’ve got a new prophecy to worry about. So… we need volunteers. You’ll head back home where you’ll get the details. No level restrictions. The idea is that you’ll level up over the course of this Quest. You don’t have time to think about it. Sign up at the quartermaster’s tent after this meeting. If you aren’t interested then you’ll get your orders within the next few hours.” Fred clapped his hands. “Dismissed.”
“Well?” Charlie looked at Britt expectantly.
Britt chewed the inside of her mouth for a moment. “Charlie’s in, obviously… what about you?” she turned to Michael.
“You’re the leader. I follow you,” he replied without hesitation.
“Okay…” Britt chewed the inside of her cheek, “let’s go home.”
----------------------------------------
His eyes opened to the light.
The bright orb in the sky burned harshly down on him.
It cared nothing for the throbbing pain in both his mind and body.
He closed his eyes and laid there, unmoving.
The pain pulsed incessantly.
It reminded him of his mother pulling the covers off on Saturday afternoons a lifetime ago.
“Get up! You’re wasting the day!” she had said.
His father would then chime in from the hallway. “It’s the weekend, let him sleep,” he had sighed.
His parents had bickered then, but he had never heard any real heat in their voices.
Needles in his brain that hurt on a level beyond the physical accompanied those stabbing into his muscles and bones.
The warm light prodded.
He ignored it.
The voice he couldn’t ignore.
“You are awake, yes?” a woman spoke.
Accented English.
Not the universal translations system’s work.
He knew that somehow.
He brought his left hand toward his face to clear the crust around his eyes.
The moment in time froze.
Ah… that was right.
There was no more hand even though it hurt just as the rest of his body did.
He wondered if there were there any other parts missing?
He touched his right hand to his face and found relief as he felt fingers.
He planted his left on the ground before he realized—
A jolt of pain radiated up his arm.
He tasted blood.
He deliberately and carefully pushed himself to a seated position using his right hand. The left he held close to his stomach to prevent future accidents.
“You look like you are in need of healing, friend.”
He reached out with his telepathy and felt like he had stuck his brain inside a box of filled with needles. He pushed through the pain.
There were a handful of wary minds in the immediate area and a few more in the surrounding wilderness.
As for the speaker…
Her thoughts were hidden by a wall.
He probed a moment.
It was strong, but not enough to stop him if he had been inclined.
“That is not so friendly.”
He turned his head to her for the first time.
She was a few yards away standing with open hands at her sides. Her sun-browned face watched him warily. She wore khaki colored clothing, as though headed out on safari. No armor, no weapons aside from a knife at her belt. She looked older, probably in her fifties, judging by the wrinkles around her scowling eyes. Wrapped cloth covered her hair.
Orbiting around her and glaring at him were ten eyes.
They were larger than a human’s. Around the size of a tennis ball.
One in particular drew his attention.
The source of the wall.
“I’ll concede that, but one can’t be too careful when waking up in a crater in the middle of the woods surrounded by potentially dangerous people,” he said.
The woman inclined her head. “Introductions first then?”
Cal returned the nod.
“I am the Magus of the Ten Eyes,” she said.
He couldn’t help but smile. “In that case I go by, Hon— screw it. You’re not a witch. My name is Cal.”
“I offer you healing, Cal.”
“In exchange for?”
“Freely given…” she paused. “That is not entirely true,” she gestured to the surrounding area.
Cal stood and looked beyond his crater. There were dozens and dozens of monster and mutant animal corpses in varying stages of completeness.
“You were not aware of this madness? I had assumed— never mind. Your injuries must be seen to first.”
She wasn’t entirely correct.
He hadn’t been aware in the moment.
Then the memories came flooding back.
His mind had partitioned itself. A defense mechanism to protect the whole from the damage and strain sustained from the fight with Zalthyss.
Blocking a massive explosion of its song with a telekinetic shield had almost broken his powers. It had struck him on levels beyond the physical.
While most of him passed out one part remained to safeguard his unmoving body from those that would’ve done him harm.
The creatures had been drawn by the impact he had made into the ground, by the smell of his blood. He had been a wounded and vulnerable animal.
Except for one thing.
Mental powers.
They hadn’t been able to get within a hundred yards of him.
Every time they had tried they had suddenly found themselves underneath one simple command.
Turn around.
And so they had.
Several steps until they had realized that a powerful and wounded thing was lying vulnerable in the ground.
They had turned back and the cycle had repeated.
Cal followed the woman to a large tent pitched in a space free from the corpses.
“You set up camp in the middle of all this,” he said.
“We have ways to deal with the ghastly odor,” she pulled a small bottle from one of the innumerable pouches on her body, “have some, yes?”
“I’m fine,” he waved it away. “Why are you harvesting the bodies?” he already knew the answer from the cursory scan he had performed on the woman’s people.
She eyed him like an intriguing puzzle. “Why need to ask that question when you already know?”
“I don’t,” he said flatly.
She shrugged. “I suppose it is the least of what is owed to you.”
“Owed?”
“We slew none of them.”
The pieces of memory returned to him as the woman spoke.
“They were mostly dead when we arrived. Slaying each other. The ones that we had dispatched provided no resistance. It was quite interesting to see. They rushed toward you. Stopped at the same exact spots. Turned around and walked away as if under a spell. It allowed us to attack first. You see, I offer healing, but in truth it is not out of altruism. It is merely what is owed, yes?”
Cal looked down at the stump of his left arm. The blood had already scabbed over. He could see bits of bone poking out at the wrist.
“You are dealing with the pain well?”
“Experience,” he shrugged.
“So… healing?”
“I don’t really need it. Thank you for the offer.”
“Ah…” the woman scowled. “Then what is owed…”
“There were a lot of powerful monsters and mutant animals out there. And, tell me if I’m wrong, but your class has something to do with turning their parts into gear,” he gestured at the ten eyes orbiting close to the woman’s body.
“And you are certain of this because?”
He pointed at the eyes. “And your people out there are harvesting parts.”
She stared at him impassively for a long moment. “Yes. You have provided a bounty I could not have scarcely imagined when I decided to travel to your country.”
“Healing would be appreciated, but what I’d really find valuable is information.”
“For what is owed?”
“Well… obviously I don’t know how valuable creature parts are. I haven’t seen them up on the spires marketplace.”
“That is because I may be the first and only one of my kind.”
“Then I’ll trust you. You decide what’s fair to exchange for all that stuff out there.”
The woman didn’t look pleased, but nodded after a moment. “Then I will need to provide you with Universal Points.”
He raised a hand. “That doesn’t hold value to me. Neither does cash, gold or jewels.”
“You remind me of another I met once,” she shook her head. “Then will you take items? What I will create out of the monsters?”
“That works.”
“It will take time.”
“That’s fine. You can send it to me through the spires when you’re done.”
“The bargain is struck.”
They shook hands.
The woman and her ten eyes exited the tent. She shouted a name.
A young man followed her back inside.
The young gestured toward the chair next to the small desk. “Please place your arm there,” he pointed.
Cal followed the instructions.
“I can’t bring your hand back,” the young man said.
“I wasn’t expecting you to.” He pushed the dark thoughts away. The hand was gone. Obliterated by a song. He needed to focus on what could turn out to be valuable information.
“This will hurt.”
“Don’t worry about me. Just do your thing.”
The young man’s words were in English, but he knew that it had been the work of the translation system. There was just something different about the way he had spoken when compared to the woman. The feeling he had was that the young man’s mouth movements weren’t perfectly in-sync with the words coming out.
Cal suppressed the wince as the young man began to scrape away the scabbing covering his right wrist.
“What did this?”
“I thought I was going to ask the questions?”
“Surely, you can indulge some of my curiosity?”
“Maybe later. My first question is where did you come from?”
“The Middle East.”
The woman didn’t elaborate.
He didn’t care enough to push.
“How did you make it all the way from there?”
“Walked, drove and then took a boat. It was a costly journey.”
“Why even make it?”
The woman paused and chewed the inside of her cheek before answering. “For opportunity and to find a great threat.”
“Okay… you’re going to have to elaborate on that.”
“I cannot. It is not my knowledge to share.”
He reached out to the other people in the area. Their minds weren’t protected like the woman’s.
Unfortunately, they didn’t know anything.
They were here because they followed the woman for a variety of reasons.
“What exactly don’t you want to elaborate on? The nature of those two things? Or the source of this knowledge?”
“In regards to the former, I cannot. I only know that I will find what I am here for in the middle of your country. Where you have your ‘amber waves of grain’ or so that song went. As to the latter. I am sworn to secrecy.”
“Huh? Well, that’s interesting. I might be able to help you out if you share a bit more. Like, say, be a bit more specific about said opportunity and threat.”
The intensity in the woman’s eyes was mirrored by the ten grotesqueries orbiting around her. “There was a song that swept through your country in great flames of gold that in time would cover all the nations in the world.”
Cal laughed.
The woman frowned.
He told her that she might have wasted her time.
That song was dead.
Cast into nothingness at his hands.
“That explosion?”
“That was your golden threat.”
“You will tell me more, yes?”
“Trade goes both ways. I respect that you won’t tell me about how you even learned about Zalthyss, but all I’m willing to share is that it was from another world with designs of adding ours to its dominion.”
“I see… very well. Although, perhaps you would do well to consider a collaborative relationship to your benefit. Your current state suggests you would benefit from us fighting alongside you the next time.”
“I saw the damage to your people’s gear. The looks in their eyes are those that went through some crazy stuff. Your journey turned into a one way thing, didn’t it?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Well, not right now, but I might be able to help you with that once I’ve healed up.”
“I will consider it.”
“You might want to avoid heading to flyover country. I can give you the exact location, but there’s a battle going on last I was there. The eternal church versus thousands of cannibals.”
The woman’s face twisted. “There are ghouls here as well? Unwelcome news.”
“Humans turned monsters through a class. Flesh Eater.”
“I am aware, yes. I’ve encountered and destroyed both ghouls and Ghouls. These spires…” she shook her head. “Not enough to flood our world with monsters, but it turned us into them.” The woman eyed him. “I have a question for you. Where did you slay this Zalthyss?”
“New York City. Just follow the devastation and maybe watch out for big spiders. If they’re still alive. Another question for me.”
The woman nodded.
“The eyes… what kind of monster did they come from?”
“A floating eyeball, much bigger than these,” she held up a hand and one of the eyes floated around to land in her palm, blinking. It almost looked alive. “These were set into tentacle-like stalks protruding from its round body. The man that aided me called it a ‘Beholder’. Though, I imagine that is not its true name.”
“Did it talk?”
“Yes. It had a mouth. Its words were not kind.”
“What do the eyes do?”
“I will not say to maintain my advantage.”
“Fair.”
“How’d you turn them from monster eyes to that?”
“That is a trade secret.”
“Fair. It seems that I’m out of questions that you’re willing to answer. So, I guess we’re done. I’d like to keep in touch. For mutual benefit.”
“That is agreeable. We may exchange words through the spires.”
“Best way I suppose,” he sighed.
“I have one last question for you.”
Cal nodded.
“I think you remind me of another. It is hard to say with how beaten up your face is. Are you familiar with a man that calls himself Relentless?”
Cal couldn’t help but laugh.