Chapter 40) Turning the Tables. Or, Let’s keep this to ourselves.

It was well past noon before the last of the birds suddenly all turned and began flying back toward the remains of the palace.

A solid clump of them had stayed in the area where I had left the city, sometimes taking to the air between taking a break to land on the building, while others flew off the circle around the inside of the Barricade and others returned from doing the same.

After a bit the white wall of light sunk slowly down and the golden symbols stopped shining as brightly, but it was only when the birds all flew off as a group that the lights from the various symbols, mounted on the barricade in front of me, scales, owl, crossed swords, trident, and lit candle went out entirely.

I think they might have been more shiny looking after all of that, so it seemed like the whole thing was good for them. It’s always nice to get in a good workout now and then.

Despite being well past noon, the three guys were still waiting in the temple for me.

Matt greeted me with "I'm guessing that light show was all you Tex."

I slowed to a stop inside the front door of the place. “Guilty. I did an overflight of the palace and the entire roof was covered, no not covered, made out of black birds and I had to head out of the city to get away from them.”

While Matt rubbed at his chin and took that in, Drew jumped in. “So what it’s like out there? Any undead.”

I bobbed a bit, “No. No undead outside, or anyone else.”

I filled them in on what I had seen. Which was a whole lot of nothing, and the entire weirdness with what I expected to have been the Liche.

Drew let his mouth run while the other two thought things over. “Why a garden? I mean maybe he likes to see some living things, but growing food? It’s not like he can eat. Does he have some people alive up there? Are they prisoners? A harem?”

Dead guy and a harem. Ew. But he did get me thinking.

“Kids maybe, or by this time kids and grandkids. He may have been around long enough to start a family, or have taken in the few people who stood up for him that would have had a pretty hard time outside the city after he wreaked the place.”

Josh raised his hand up to stop me from talking. “We only have so much time until the sun sets, so maybe we can talk about this another time, and focus on leveling up so we can get out of here.”

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I bobbed as Matt and Drew nodded. "So did you level up, and what do Acolytes get when they do?"

The big man had gotten to level four since he was getting all the Life points for kills that morning. Which meant all three of them had to head uptown to rise any higher.

At second level he had gotten Weapon Smite which let him make his weapon shine and a lot more damage to the undead, which was a bit of a waste of his energy since the big guy could smash the weaker skeleton just fine with a lump of steel on a stick, blowing them away in a shower of bones burning with white flames was overkill.

Which made me curious. "What does it cost you to use your spells?"

He shrugged. "It makes me tired, but not like I was working hard. It's more like it makes me feel tired of doing anything. Of making choices or carrying on. I just want to step back and let things happen without me being involved, but not by a lot, or for that long. I'm guessing using Smith or my other spells a lot might put me into such a deep funk I just wander off and go sit down somewhere.

Drew chimed in again. “So I’m going to call what gets drained from you and Matt when you use Mage spells Mana, the pool the Fighters use Endurance, and the one Josh uses up Spirit."

The youngest looking of the three men sounded a bit uncertain as he spoke but some murmurs of agreement from the rest of us seemed to reassure him.

The terms worked for me at least. If I had a chance I would ask someone in the know what the Panels or the Brackets called them. If I had the chance and remembered to at least.

The three guys had seen the birds go overhead and ran for cover, right into a group of Lurkers hiding in the building they dashed into. By the time the fight was over they could see the light show and the circling birds, so they had made their way from building to building back to the temple, getting there only an hour or so before I did.

Matt looked out at the sun. “We got to make a choice here guys.”

“If we head up to find something we can get Life points for fighting, we got to move now to get up there before dark. Either that or we stay here and wait for the Talkers that come after dark, or hide out somewhere and hope they don’t find us and get a fresh start in the morning.”

He held up his finger as Drew started to talk. "But we're going to lose Tex at any moment. Which means we can't expect any more replacement gear coming through the gate, and if we get killed out there we're unarmed when we try to go up to get our stuff off our dead bodies."

He grinned. “So my vote is to take down some of those tier threes at the gatehouse, strip their gear off of them, and then stash them somewhere before we either push on past the gate or find somewhere to hide out."

Drew started to ask about hiding places, but Josh shut him down. "We don't have time to discuss this, like the man said, we got to move now. So what's your plan, I say let's hit the gate and face down these Talkers up in their houses, or wherever they are holed up one at a time, instead of getting cornered here by all of them at once.”

That pretty much decided things.

The fight went a lot different this time. I found a legless skeleton with with a sword in a tower further down the wall with a good line of sight to the plaza, and he was more interested in trying to cut me out of the air than rattling his sword around in the diamond shaped metal bar hung from the remaining roof beam of the tower.

So interested that I was able to shoot him five times with [ Mage Bolt ] before he could change his mind, putting him down and preventing an alarm from going out.

Especially once I found and got the other one with a shield hung up like a gong in the tower in the other direction.

Someone believed in redundancy.

I took a shot from the now re-arrowed skeleton aiming at me from up on the gatehouse as I buzzed by the guard standing outside for the third time to get them all grouped up and following me in a group, right into a spot where Josh could step out with his white medallion in his hand.

“Smite! SMITE! Smite… Ah man I am not feeling this.” He sighed and made an effort to hold the medallion up one last time. "Smite… Okay, they're down, I'm done."

Matt and Drew cleared out the rest while I watched the big man’s back as he sat down and stared at the ground.

The poor guy just needed a moment or two.