“Okay, so. First of all, this isn’t a virus zombie outbreak.” She apparently didn’t know that. “Look closely at my ankle,” she gave me a look that didn’t need further explanation, “just do it, I’m not going to bite you.” I was curious how it would affect someone else. She looked, then creeped closer and closer and cl- I flicked a finger into her forehead, hard. She bolted back, absentmindedly rubbing her forehead.
“It’s a curse. Much more of a classic zombie-trope, except they’re smart… well not ‘smart-smart’ but they are clever in their own way. You saw them using the ladder earlier toda- yesterday morning. They cut off my path through the alley even though I hadn’t fired my shotgun at that point. They have some level of cunning.”
I took a sip and considered where to continue, “Enough about zombies for now, more about me,” I grinned and she humored my smile with her own in return, “I don’t have an Affinity. Well, I do, but it’s ‘Light Affinity’ and we, humans, aren’t allowed to have that because we have the ‘Heathen Status’. It basically means that we aren’t God’s favorite anymore. For some reason Gabby, Gabriel, wants the Mortician dead and so-”
The look on her face, maybe I said too much?
“Wait. Wait. Gabriel. You mean the ArchAngel guy who talked to us in the beginning?”
“Yeah, he’s the Administrator of the Penitent System, at least I think so, though he doesn’t just have free reign to do whatever he wants. As for why’s that, I’m pretty sure it’s because of the Seed of Redemption that we have, I think. I’m pretty sure it’s something to do with your Soul, but don’t quote me on that.”
“So, I shouldn’t…?”
“Yeah, don’t trade that shit. Don’t pick up Dark Affinity. Unless you want to trade yourself from ‘known supernatural entity that’s fucking you’ to ‘unknown, possibly actively malicious supernatural entity that’ll fuck you even harder and with less lube.”
“Vivid.”
“I’m a wordsmith, zombie-slaying is just my part-time job.”
“What did you do before this?”
“I sold insurance.”
She laughed, “I bet business is booming.”
I chuckled, “More like the Tribulation Apocalypse saved them from bankruptcy. They got away clean.” Well, actually, probably not many of them qualified for Rapture which meant they were still down here. On the other hand, they definitely weren’t paying out claims. Most probably considered it a wash.
“Anyway…”
“Yeah, so anyways… I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone, but you need to complete a Class Advancement Quest after you choose a minor class. Scratch that, a ‘Base Foundational Class.”
“Yeah, I got one of those for convincing everyone to help and pulled you out of there.”
That was interesting, “Oh? Let me guess, Soul? Maybe Fortitude?”
She grinned malevolently, “Soul, Fortitude, AND Will.”
“Bullshit. That’s totally bullshit. Explain.”
“I broke it down, Soul for rallying people to shoot at the zombies chasing you and the rest to pull on the rope, Fortitude when I made up my mind to help you even if it was dangerous, and Will by healing you and carrying through with the plan.”
Her words threatened to spark a whole ‘nother round of internal theorizing, but she flicked me on the head, “Think about it later, storytime is ‘nigh Squire.”
“So anyways… In the first message we got, Gabriel mentioned something about ‘being able to see really far in the future’ but not as far as God’. Which got me thinking, why would he mess around with my Class Advancement and add in a second Quest to kill the Mortician.” I didn’t mention the third Quest, I needed to get it done and I hadn’t known her long enough to count on her trusting me to murder three of the townsfolk. “There were also two different types of Errors. ERROR and Error. One lowercase, one all caps. I don’t know what they meant, just keep an eye out if they pop up for you, it might mean the system is messing up, or that Gabriel is changing something as it appears. Also, keep an eye out for something called ‘Alternative Interference’, I don’t know what it is but the Penitent System got all… weird when it ‘detected’ it.”
“Why would he change the system for you?”
I flipped a bird into the sky, “Well, I’m sure because I think he’s a shitty being of the highest order, a real shit-angel. But besides that, he’s still working with the ‘Light’ people, right? And this Mortician sounds like a pretty bad dude from what I gathered… what’s his deal anyways?”
“Well…”
Remembering her long-winded account of my own tale overly explained to the person who actually lived through it, “Abridged version please.”
She narrowed her eyes and pouted for a second before telling me, “You probably guessed this, but he was the town’s Mortician. Well, the Mortician’s son, but he was going to take over for his father. He was always a weird kid and not well liked, but nobody thought he was dangerous. We had a big group of people by the time we got to the Morgue and… when we went inside to check on him… It was horrible. His father greeted us and led a bunch of us inside to wait while he ‘gathered medical supplies’, but then, when we were inside…” She paused for a long-few minutes here. I gave her the space.
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“His dad wasn’t… right. Somebody noticed it and then he started tearing into people and the son came out and started stabbing people. Then, another person came out and we all ran. Our group shot through, but anyone who hit anything burst into flames. We couldn’t attack him back, so we ran.”
“Wait. What about the ‘Day of Peace’? I experienced that, it wasn’t optional.”
She shook her head, “I don’t know how he got out of it, but he did.”
I sat back, I remembered that feeling of wrongness. That wasn’t something that any human could have broken, especially not a week into the apocalypse. It stank of Gabriel shenanigans, but also, not him. More like on the other side of the equation. Alternative…
Ah. Real agents of light and darkness shit going on. Fuck. That. I started to stand and my ankle had fallen asleep again. Okay, maybe just this once.
“You realized something.”
I nodded a bit and it rang true, “This is some good v. evil thing. Apparently we got recruited onto the ‘good’ side because we aren’t the ones making zombie-dolls out of our parents. Mortician is on the other side.”
“Is that why you want to kill him?”
“Honestly, no.” Her face fell slightly, “Don’t worry, I still totally plan on killing him. But mostly because that’s the only way I can get access to, and I quote, ‘a singular class-specific Light-Affinity Skill’. I’m hoping for a healing skill to remove the zombie curse from me.” A bit of a lie, but again, I wasn’t going to be telling her about an upcoming townsfolk murder. Nor was I even willing to discuss alternatives.
She nodded, “Well, it’s not the noblest of reasons, but as long as it’s done.”
I mimicked her nod with my own, “Well, yeah. What are you expecting? I’m just a Squire.”
We smiled at each other,
“So what’s the plan?”
That… that was a good question. But before that, “Do you have a Foundational Class to choose?”
“I didn’t get that many options, how many did you have?”
I shook my head, I could remember something but only if I committed it to memory, “I don’t know, 5? Maybe 6. I only bothered considering 2 or 3 though.”
She smiled and hesitated for a moment, “The names are embarrassing, but basically a water mage, a Mayor, or… just nevermind the last one…”
“What do you want to be? Let me guess, water mage but you feel obligated to be a mayor, yeah? What do they provide?”
“Water Mage gives me spellforms and a ‘deeper’ Affinity as well as some other bonus’ it doesn’t tell me about, Mayor sounds… kind of lame honestly.”
I cut that off, quick, “Did you already forget what I said? You should study the Penitent text for clues but absolutely should not trust its recommendations. It said Squire would be all about polishing codpieces and even trolled me with a Dark Shadow Lord of Death or something like that. You gotta stop thinking about it like some JRPG. There are no safety rails. What does it say, exactly, about the Mayor one.”
Her cheeks flushed and I rolled my eyes, “You’d stop speaking for a week if I told you what my system says to me, you really can’t embarrass me anymore than my system already tries to do on a somewhat regular basis.”
“Tell me one of yours.”
I rolled my eyes, “You have to promise to not tell anyone about this.”
She started to shake her head but I cut back in, “No, you have to or else I won’t tell. This just has to do with me and only me.”
She thought then nodded. I waited until she got the hint, “Fine! I promise, I promise.”
“It called me ‘Super-Ultra-Average’ in about 15 different ways. My entire sheet is filled with ‘mediocre this, slightly-below-average that’. If I didn’t know that Gabby was such a petty bitch of an angel I would have been seriously offended a long time ago. But…” this part pained me to say, “but, he’s also…” I sighed, “Not wrong. This almost hurts to say, but he’s not wrong, he pretty much has my number. So while there will be misdirections and misleading information all over the place and there might even be very dangerous information that is downplayed or is dismissed as unimportant. It might be all of that but what it won’t be is an outright lie. That’s one thing I think you can count on. Again, I think.”
She nodded, “Well… he… it?” I shrugged. “It calls me a neurotic, control-freak, that feels like she should care more than she actually does. Unique abilities granted toward protecting the town, increasing cohesion when defending it. That kind of stuff.”
I nodded, good to know about her, but nothing surprising. Does it matter if you actually care or if you feel obligated to care as long as you do what you need to do?
“I think you should take it.”
“But… magic!”
“You already have magic. For instance the magic I use is something like ‘unattuned’ or ‘unaspected’ magic.” I snapped my fingers then pushed out a hand, feeding it a bit of ‘I’m going to move that damned chair,’ and it skidded a half foot away as it drained what I guessed to be a single point of Internal Fortitude. I hadn’t needed to snap my fingers but I wanted to see if it made a difference. It might have helped with control a bit, but I wasn’t sure.
“See? You just won’t be given the Skills for water magic… or maybe you actually will be. But you can train them too. The other class… Well, that depends”
“Depends on what?”
“If you actually don’t care enough to let everyone in this town die.”
Her face blanched until I was sitting across from a ghost.
“No! No, I don't want that, but I can still protect them as a Water Mage.”
“I doubt a baby water mage can protect them from much, even after we deal with the Mortician. I would have died without you getting them moving together. Shit, Gramps and I probably would have killed each other in front of the Church on the first day without you there. They’re capable enough, but I don’t see much flexibility. As far as I can tell, you’re already the Mayor in all but name and system. It’ll probably give you some pretty powerful tools to defend the town.”
“I guess…”
“You’re worried about being stuck here?” I had an idea what her third Class might have been.
Her gaze darted up.
I held her off with a hand, “Listen. There are a couple things that you should know. First of all,” I debated on the order to lay it out, “I won’t take you with me, or be traveling companions with you. It’s not you or anything you did. I think it might even be a good thing. But I have a Nemesis shadow-wolf that will hunt me to either its own or to my own death. The second reason why I won’t is because, and I don’t mean to sound cocky here or whatever, but… I’ve set my heart on the fact that I will see my girlfriend at the end of this,” I held up my pinky finger with the ring, “I was going to propose to her the weekend we went camping, but she got Raptured. Sorry if I assumed too much there but it’s not even the most important part.”
She looked like she wanted to be offended but just settled on asking me, “What’s the most important part?”
“Every single person in this town, ones you’ve known and known you for years. Every one of them will be dead the second you leave this town. Maybe not the day after, but if you leave them alone to the apocalypse. They will die.”
She looked like she wanted to argue that point as well, but I could see that it had caught on something and was settling in her mind.
“Will…”
“I can’t stay here, but I will definitely come back and visit. I mean, I’m sure there aren’t that many friendly towns in the apocalypse with hot Mayors.”
She grinned and punched the top of my knee. I rubbed it and genuinely smiled back. Everything I said was true and I really didn’t want sexual tension or responsibility for a person that my personal shadow-assassin wolf would be constantly aiming for. I knew that having to protect someone would kill me.
She took a deep breath and sighed, “I have to secure the town, make sure the Mortician is dead, and remove anyone with Dark Affinity.”
Well, that made things easier on my end.