“What the hell do you mean he’s dead?” Jason asked Chris confused.
They were almost at the car now. Their mana reserves depleting as they continued to fend off shots and randomly cast spellforms. It was the ever growing problem with chaos; eventually, everyone would stop trying to hit their targets and start trying to hit any target.
Jason didn’t blame them even as a shot bounced of his mana shield with enough force to stagger him.
Chris moved with an eerie acceptance. She was like a veteran of war in the madness, most accustomed to the chaos of disorder and panic. She kept her head down and moved quickly but not in a hurry. Each step was calculated and Jason was yet to notice a random spell or shot hit her shield of swamp green mana.
Still, Jason knew she had to hurry. It was in the way her face was set. The thin line of her lips. The brows furrowed in concentration. The squinting eyes. Jason was running low on mana but Chris was most likely tapping from the bottom of the barrel.
Before long they got to where their car was parked. The Jeep was flanked on both sides by fleets of cars that numbered in the twenties. Some were missing, telling them that there were mages who’d since beat them to the exit, beating a hasty retreat as fast as they could.
Jason slammed into the car as they approached it, channeling more mana into his shield. The mana stone in the car reacted to his mana as he funneled the right amount into it, deactivating the defensive ward it had powered, solidifying the body of the car so that it was more than just a contraption of steel. He slipped into the driver seat of the car and Chris went around, slipping into the back.
Inside and relatively safe, Jason reactivated the car’s shield ward, channeling more mana into it to activate its battle variation and ducked out of sight. Unlike a mage’s shield that relied on the quality of their mana and their focus, this shield was more stable, more trustworthy. It relied on the mana of the mana stone and ambient mana. And this one grew around the car, a dome of translucent purple as wide as a foot in radius.
“Chris,” Jason bit out, “what do you mean by Zed’s dead?”
“He took a shot to the neck,” she answered, the anger in her voice restrained.
“He has a regenerative ability,” Jason explained as if speaking to a stupid child. “He’ll heal from it. You should have grabbed him.”
Chris shook her head as if dislodging cobwebs.
“No,” she said, firm. “He used a force rune to save himself from a few shots before taking one in the neck.”
“It’s just a gunshot wound, Chris. He was going to be fine.”
“HE WAS NOT!” Chris barked, angry now. “You didn’t see what I saw, Jason. He was already on his last leg. The mana around him wasn’t even drawing back to him. It was as if the ambient mana knew his core was too weak to draw it in. By the time they pulled the last trigger, his shield broke and the bullet took a chunk of his neck with it.”
“It’s no—”
“It shattered his spine!” she hissed, interrupting him. “I know he calls it regeneration but you and I both know it’s not regeneration, Zed just heals very well. But no one’s stupid enough to think he’ll heal from a shattered spine.”
Jason had more to say on the subject, had an argument to make, but held himself. He felt he was beginning to play devil’s advocate and this wasn’t some planning session they were trying to draw up. They were trying to survive, and bickering wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
“Did you see the others?” he asked, instead.
“I saw Ned,” Chris said.
“What of Imani?”
“No idea.”
“Alright,” Jason said. “And the others? Ash and Oliver?”
Chris shook her head. “I don’t think they were even in the building.”
“Alright. Then what of Ned; why didn’t you get him?”
“Because he was too far away and he looked to be doing a bout of chivalry.”
“A bout of chivalry?” Jason asked, confused.
“He was with the pretty girl; the one in the red dress.”
“The one Zed was with?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” Chris said. “Knowing him, he was probably trying to help her get out.”
“And Imani?”
“The bitch can rot for all I care,” Chris spat.
“I get that you don’t like her,” Jason said with a worried sigh as another explosion shook the building, “but she remains a hunter of the town. If we lose her, the town loses another hunter. And her personality aside, she’s a competent Beta mage. So what about Imani, Chris?”
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“I didn’t see her.”
Worry gnawed at Jason’s decision making skills. The information he’d just received dictated that he at least try to wait for Ned. There was no information on Imani, and honestly, she was not his priority, she was Zed’s by virtue of being invited by him, and Zed was no more.
Grief threatened to well up within him at Zed’s death but he tampered it, drove it down like a killer drowning their victim. Zed’s loss was painful but this was not the time to grieve. This was the time to ensure Zed was the only important loss.
Sighing deeply, he resigned himself to a decision, tough as it sounded.
“The car’s shield will hold,” he said, talking to Chris even if he wasn’t looking at her. “But I’m not sure for how long. So we’ll sit steady and wait for Chris and Oliver until we can’t wait any longer.”
“Jason,” Chris said.
“Yea, what?”
“I’m Chris.”
Jason grit his teeth. “Sorry,” he apologized. “My mind’s not in the right place right now. We’ll wait for Ash and Oli—” another explosion shook the building, blowing out the entire north side of it “—Don’t these guys run out of explosives!?”
“They are the anti-mage,” Chris said as if it explained it.
“So?”
“So they usually operate in levels of high civilization. They’ll have more than enough explosives to take out an entire town. The fact that they’re here is already confusing enough.”
“Why are they even so far out here?” Jason scowled.
A mage struck the shield of the car, rebounding off it. As he charged forward, escaping into the distance, a gunshot boomed into the night and his head exploded like a burst water melon.
Chris watched it happen without so much as a twitch.
Jason frowned at the mage’s death before continuing the conversation.
“Aren’t the anti-mages known for their activities in civilized areas with established laws and order; proper governing?” he asked.
“Yes,” Chris agreed.
A beam of light from a gun’s torchlight flashed past their windscreen and they ducked lower, avoiding it.
“But,” Chris continued, as the antimage with the gun went on his way, aiming and searching, “so are the VHF. Those guys don’t have any reason for coming this far out.”
“Not entirely,” Jason refused. “They’re always spreading, taking over areas.”
“Yes, but it’s a gradual process. They skipped a lot of other places to get here. East point, route twelve. Edgar creek. They even skipped that place where Jackson keeps buying his batteries from even if he could’ve just waited for Luke to stop by. Everyone had a going bet that they’d take that place first if they ever came this far out. But they didn’t, they skipped all of them and hunkered down right in our shed. Why’s that?”
“Because they’re here for something,” Jason said slowly, the answer dawning on him. “They’re all looking for the mana surge.”
Chris nodded.
“But that’s impossible,” Jason said. “The anti-mages are a group of people who don’t use magic.”
Chris laughed at that.
“There isn’t anyone above eighteen that can’t use at least some level of magic,” she said. “And even if they were all attribute mages that really can’t use magic, a mana surge would still help them. It might advance an attribute or something. Or they could sell it to further fund their operations. There are a slew of things anyone with the means can do with a mana surge.”
“True,” Jason agreed.
A mana surge in their time was the equivalent of a philosopher’s stone in worlds of magic in old stories. The stories surrounding mana surges claimed it was possible to do the things magic still hadn’t allowed mages do with them.
Jason and Chris remained in the car, hunkered down a while longer. Time passed as the explosions dwindled into nonexistence until there was only the sound of gunshots and spells and people dying filling the place.
It was during the dwindling chaos that another mage bashed into the shield, bashing against the dome of translucent purple that surrounded the car.
“Let us in!” Ned screamed, looking frantically around.
Beside him, Imani continued to beat on the shield with one hand. Jason took one look at them and lowered the shield, switching it from combat mode to its resting mode were it merely smothered the body of the car, reinforcing its steel.
Imani and Ned, slipped into the car, breathing heavily. Imani’s right hand was bleeding worryingly from a gunshot wound and Ned’s hair was a complete mess. Their clothes were worse than Jason had expected they would be in the chaos and both had manic eyes.
“We’ve got to go!” Ned screamed. “Now!”
“Oliver and Ash aren’t here yet,” Jason told them calmly.
“And we waited for you,” Chris snapped. “So shut the fuck up and wait for Oliver and Ash.”
“You don’t want to be here when that thing comes out,” Ned said.
The earth shook beneath the car and a piercing roar split the air. Jason felt the monster before he saw it.
Something wrong had come to this side of the world.
………………………………………………..
Ash ran forward, pushing on with the speed of her rank. The world zoomed by her as she put her legs to work. As a Beta mage, she was already significantly faster than any normal person could dream to be but she channeled mana through her mana channels, filling her with the unholy strength of her rank and the world was a blur around her.
Beside her Oliver followed with equivalent speed.
Ash knew he could go faster. For all her speed, she remained a rank below him with more than one category between them. So while he could outrun her and get back faster, he chose to stay beside her. She knew he did it for her sake, but the dark look on his face told her whatever questions were festering in his mind over what he saw, she wasn’t ready to answer. Unfortunately, she knew Oliver well enough to know they were burrowing a hole in his head, taking root and festering.
She could only hope he would understand when she explained what she had done to him.
For now, she had deeper worries on her mind. Someone had informed the VHF of her team’s arrival tonight, and that someone was Abed. She was certain of it. But while she loved more than anything to put the blame on Abed and watch Jason tear him a new one, she knew she was part to blame. After all, Abed could not have confirmed their arrival, all he could’ve assured the VHF of was that they would be invited.
Ash’s decision to meet her contact at the party had confirmed they would be here. She had unwittingly put Zed’s life in danger.
Whatever chaos was ensuing at the party, she really hoped Zed would outlive it.
Ash’s hopes cracked when an aura filled the air. It was a wild and savage thing, easily recognizable as that of a monster’s. Ash had felt a lot of monsters over the years even as a mere awakened mage, but nothing had carried such darkness with it. Nothing had drowned out reason as blatantly as what she was feeling.
The aura corrupted the air around her, tainted it so that simply existing in it felt like standing in a world of filth so vile that it corrupted the good in her. Beside her Oliver gritted his teeth in discomfort as he felt it but did nothing to hasten his steps.
As they ran, Ash’s fear turned to dread. It was one thing to hope in the face of hope. It was entirely another to hope in the presence of despair.
Whatever had just shown up, they’d need at least Ivan and Heimdall to stop it. And if Festus wanted to lend a hand, then he’d have to come in with all the runes God had ever thought to create.
After all, they’d need nothing less if they were to face a Bishop rank monster.