“Ready to go?” Vega asked, as she put out the remains of fire they’d used to cook breakfast stew.
It couldn’t really be called porridge anymore when it was made with a water base, and had mystery roots – most likely wild potatoes – and hare meat added to it. The Lonely domain proved to be a much better host to the two women, as between their poison-resistance skills, healing, and the abundant wildlife that’d reclaimed the rolling fields, food stopped being an issue. Shelter was harder to come by, but so were mutated undead that no longer came knocking at one’s window in the dead of night. Camping in forested areas often sufficed as cover from the flying zombies. On the handful of days where when the women encountered nothing but hedges and dirt roads they had to cosy up under Farrah’s sports-store camo cover that they stretched over them.
But today was not one of those days. They’d found a thick patch of forest three days ago and had used the opportunity to set camp and stock up on jerky. Funnily enough, the only enemy they fought in those three days was a family of boars who had smelled the cooking and had promptly become the next batch.
“There’s … I don’t know,” Farrah made no effort to get up. She was studying her map, zooming in and out of the peripheral areas.
Scan
- Directional
- Horizontal
- Point-Source; Not-Self.
Cost: 1P per 500m radius from focal point. 1P per 1km difference between user and source, up to a maximum of 55 km.
And sure enough, there it blinked again. An orange dot that disappeared as soon as Farrah saw it. It was over 15 kilometres northwest of their current position, but the worrying thing was that it’d always been in the 13 to 20 km range from them and that it always vanished as soon as Farrah scanned it.
“Fuck,” Farrah swore, jumping up and grabbing her Steyr AUG.
“Huh?”
Aim Assist
Projectiles automatically hit a selected target with known position.
Expert
Cost: 5P per projectile.
Domain benefit: Distance and attunement skill restrictions removed. 85% chance of casting dependant skill [Blast - Force] instead.
Caliber Change
Modified the bullet diameter without modifying the ammunition of a firearm.
Trained
Cost: 2P per 5 mm of bore diameter increase.
Domain benefit: Attunement skill restrictions removed. 5% chance of casting dependant skill [Blast - Force] instead.
Five shots echoed through the empty woodland. Vega startled, covering her ears, as she glanced in the direction the rifle was aimed at. There was nothing she could make out through the canopy, and based on the low angle of the weapon, whatever it’d just hit was a fair distance away.
“Flyers,” Farrah explained.
“You could have given me a heads up.”
“I did,” Farrah chucked at the pouting expression Vega made.
“You said ‘fuck’ and started shooting…”
Farrah chuckled.
“The flying zombies are fast. And they were in the direction we’re heading,” Farrah shrugged. She didn’t really feel bad for the lack of warning. One of the things she’d learnt about Vega in the past weeks was that she had enhanced reflexes and that she would have seen Farrah reach for her gun in slow motion, then glance over the skill bips, and only then fire. “We need to talk about my mini-map,” Farrah continued, as she finished packing jerky into her rucksack.
“About how I don’t show up on it?” Vega asked.
Farrah nodded.
“Still.”
She gave the circle of rocks that held burnt wood and ash one last glance-over, before scanning the area and leading the way.
“What does show up is a zombie, about a dozen kilometres North of us. It has been blinking there every time I scanned, but I can’t get its type, and it doesn’t show up on the global raster map.”
“I don’t-”
“A raster map-”
“No, what I wanted to say is that it’s not very likely one of those monsters is smart enough to follow us,” Vega cut Farrah off before. Another habit Farrah had picked up is explaining terminology. Vega tolerated it when it related to the System, but frustration in her tone was very evident now. “How long has it, umm, been doing that?”
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“Just over a week,” Farrah replied. “At first, I thought it was a swarm, hiding under the motorway. But that would have been impossible on the dirt roads, and I did several vertical scans to check.”
“And are you sure it’s there?” Vega asked. She wasn’t doubting Farrah, but it was clear she trusted the System more. “Is that what you were shooting at yesterday?”
Farran nodded.
“Then it disappeared, until I saw it again this morning, this time further away. I can’t be sure it’s the same zombie, but I’m not sure what else it could be.”
“Sorry. I wish I could be more help with this…” Vega replied, her lips pressed together into an apologetic shrug.
“I don’t like whatever that is. Maybe it’s part of someone’s quest…”
Farrah reached for her tin, lighting a cigarette.
They passed five deformed corpses about an hour and a half after leaving the woodland. Vega stopped to observe them for a few seconds. She looked at the thin layer of skin that grew between their overly long clawed arms and their torso like someone who’d never seen a flying zombie before. Even spread out on the ground, with coin-sized holes through their hairy heads, the thick grey skin that extended over their slim bones and tendons made them look eerie.
A raven suddenly landed at the scene, and hopped to one of the corpses, before glancing at the women, as if asking them if they’d like the first pick.
Farrah took this as an invitation to keep moving. It seemed uncaring for the weapons she carried or the raw power of the woman walking next to her. Once the bird considered them out of reach, it started peeling the skin off an exit wound. Soon, it took off, chunks of black and grey brains in its beak.
----------------------------------------
“How do I look?” Vega asked, adjusting the rectangular aviator-type sunglasses over her eyes.
“Cute,” Farrah lied. Not only did the sunglasses not suit Vega in the slightest, but Farrah wasn’t sure her eyes were the issue.
They’d met with a few Collectors about halfway through their journey, which was also where they’d traded for the sunglasses, and that weary feeling everyone had around Vega simply went away after a few hours. Farrah suspected it was some sort of skill, although she’d yet to see a skill that automatically activated under external conditions.
Either way, no one was going to try anything in a keep, beyond giving them weird looks.
“I don’t like how they feel,” Vega continued, as she took the glasses off to move out short strands of hair out of the way behind her ear, before putting them on again.
“Can you still see?”
“Yeah, I can see in full darkness anyway, I just don’t, umm, they might be too small…”
Farrah stopped in her tracks. Mostly to get the full extent of her surprise across.
“What?” Vega turned around, looking at her through those ridiculously large black lenses that somehow didn’t match any of the black straps of her outfits, both in shade and shape.
“You need to stop with these lore drops,” Farrah shook her head, forcing an amused smile. It was unnerving. Which further went to show that Vega’s eyes weren’t the reason people got weary of her.
“I don’t understand what you mean. You never asked,” She sounded almost dejected.
With the town in sight, they continued their banter until the concrete road under their feet became dirt, and they reached the rows of barbed wire, nail-covered planks, and a five-meter-deep trench that ran further than they could see, on either end of the town.
Here and there, the remnants of an attempt at a fortified wall could still be seen. Houses had been demolished, and piles of bricks, roofing, and rain-soaked wood barricaded a selected few streets. It was hard to tell what the idea here had been; if it was to funnel zombies into an easily defendable part of town, or if they’d planned on a town-wide barricade all along. Either way, the lack of destruction and mutated bones embedded into the sides of the intact buildings testified to the fact that they’d succeeded at neither. This was one of the many settlements that had to migrate during Horde Waves, and the windy historic layout of Glenwick was to blame.
Asphalt appeared again, from under the dust and dirt, deposited over the streets for a reason lost alongside those who’d created the failed fortifications, and the women approached a crossroads.
A large blue sign stood at the corner of one of the streets, and directed them to motorways and to neighbouring towns with lichen-covered white arrows. Under it, someone had attached green and yellow ribbons through unevenly drilled holes. They swayed silently in the wind, their movements slow and small, typical of moist rotting fabric.
Having started at the sign for long enough, Vega continued walking.
“Wait,” Farrah grabbed her hand. “It’s common courtesy to wait to be invited in.”
“Into what? That’s just a street.”
Farrah pressed her lips together and shrugged. Usually, there was more of a wall, and more guards. But her scan showed two little blue dots approaching, so it wasn’t going to be long.
“I’m not infected, come on, I’ve been here for days!” A woman’s voice, annoyed and loud, echoed through the empty street.
“Lord knows where you’ve been, duck, just quarantine yourself until tomorrow noon, and all will be sorted,” a resigned male voice came in reply, just as both he and the woman he was escorting out turned a corner and came into view.
“You can’t do this to me, mate!” The woman continued to complain. She was a bit older than Farrah, maybe in her early thirties, and had brown hair with noticeable steaks of grey. She wore a crocheted cardigan and a long layered light dress. In one hand, she was holding a crocheted beanie, and in the other a bolt-action hunting rifle. She was too far away to make out the make. “Only because I haven’t completed some horse-arse task? Can’t you just take my word for it? It’s been literal days!”
The man was in his early twenties. Unkempt blond hair fell over his eyes, and he wore a plain blue t-shirt with reflective patches sewn in two fine strips along the shoulders. More likely than not, that was what passed for a guard’s uniform in this keep. He tried to remain calm, but his expression said more than enough about where and how deep he wanted to shove the Glock 17 currently resting in a harness under his arm.
“You get a lot of traffic here?” Farrah asked, resting her right hand in her trousers’ pocket, and her left not too far away from the grip of her pistol.
“Nah, it’s literally me, and he’s being such a fucking ass about it!” The woman exclaimed as she stormed off past Farrah. “Cunt.” She muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear, before taking a right, and slamming the door of a house that she’d properly designated as her hotel.
The door slammed a second time, and silence returned.
“We’re Collectors, passing through,” Farrah returned her attention to the man.
“I can tell,” He nodded at Vega. “So, we’ve had issues recently with visitors hurting themselves and having to get quarantined. When you come in, we do have someone who will test you for the viral immunity skill,” He spoke. He had the tone of someone who was very fed up with explaining the same elementary concept over and over.
Vega glanced at Farrah, raising one questioning eyebrow.
Farrah glanced back at Vega, asking her if she had that skill with a silent nod.
Vega’s expression grew even more confused.
“Do you have the immunity skill?” Farrah asked, not too happy about the keeper hearing that.
“Which one?” Vega asked in turn.
“The one from getting one of the bugs inside you, and then burning a luck point to heal over it.”
Farrah said it matter-of-factly, but she felt the side of her leg twitch as she did so. She remembered all too well trying to get the cursed thing out of her thigh afterwards. Thankfully she was high on a custom mix of “whatever the pharmacy had” and didn’t remember most of it, but according to the Collectors with whom she’d done the quest, there was a lot of screaming, blood, and vomit. The worst part was doing it again, sober, with bone chunks from a heavy, to increase the mastery. Thankfully the requirement for the mastery levels did not include the words ‘fully enclose’ in their description.
“Oh, yeah,” Vega replied. “I have the general parasitic and viral resistances at Expert. And most, I think, umm, of the specific ones? I can check.”
“You will still have to stop by Jess anyway,” The man rolled his eyes. He looked at them with mild disdain, having taken their exchange as bragging.
“Alright,” Farrah shrugged. “So, Jess, the nurse I presume? We also have some supplies to trade in, and information to trade for.”
“The market closes at 4,” the keeper replied, “There are a few more of you, Collectors, in town at the moment. They’ll probably be at the Fowls, a pub by the chapel. You can’t really miss it, but if you need someone to take you there, I’m on shift till nightfall, and then look for someone with one of these,” he tapped the reflective stripes on his t-shirt, “will take over.”
“Sir,” Vega acknowledged, while Farrah silently nodded.
The man gestured for them to follow. Farrah gave Vega one last encouraging nod, and they followed suit.
Domain Entered: Heaven
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