We began jogging through the maze of haphazardly parked cars and trucks to return to the bigger fight that was raging almost a hundred meters from where we had run off the midnight wolf. I was irritated I had let us get dragged away from the main fight, but there was nothing to do but return to the fight as quickly as we could.
Just as we were about to round the final aisle of cars, the sky seemed to open up around us. We all looked up as a large chunk of ice and fire barreled down on Andras with all the fury that killed the dinosaurs. I looked over to see Carly absolutely shimmering in radiant blue energy. Her eyes rolled up into the back of her head as the last of her mana was spent and collapsed to the ground a brief second before the impending extinction level event crashed into the great demons’ defiant form.
We started backpedaling too late as a flash of light and fire swept over us. I was lifted off my feet faster than I could register my temporary blindness. What followed after was the sensation of tumbling uncontrollably for an indeterminate amount of time and then pain. I felt my head smack against something hard and then I was dragged unwillingly into unconsciousness.
It was some minutes later that I woke with a groan and blurry eyes. A quick check of my notifications told me I was kinda’ fucked. “Veep, what the fuck just happened? And how long have I been out?”
Veep appeared in an instant and began answering my questions, “First, you’ve been out for a bit less than ten minutes. Took quite a knock on your head there. Which is why you were unconscious.”
“Ok, how did she do that!?” I attempted to clarify my question as my vision continued to swim.
“Oh, it seems she figured out how to overcharge her abilities. Unfortunately, she dumped all of her mana into the spell. When you do that, you kinda risk falling unconscious.”
I looked at the Virtual Assistant, well, all three of her and attempted to wave a broken arm, “Ungh, fuck! Why has no one ever told me about this before now!?”
“Well, you haven’t particularly used any mana heavy abilities. So, you know, not particularly relevant to you.”
I winced as I felt the bones in my broken arm begin to knit back together. A cough and groan from behind me revealed that at least one of my companions was alive and finally coming around. I fished into my interspatial inventory to retrieve a couple health potions. I pulled the stopper on the one in my left hand, tipped it back and drank greedily.
The first thing fixed was my sight, which merely allowed me to see just what shape my body truly was in. It also allowed me to locate a coughing and bloody Albert. My left arm seemed to be functional so I tossed him a potion which landed by his hand. He limply fumbled the potion to his lips, then leaned back and released a pained sigh.
“Henry?” I asked between cringing gasps as my legs realigned one bit at a time.
“Eh, no idea.” He responded with a pained hiss.
Soon my body had realigned itself and I rolled to my knees with a sharp gasp. I looked around for Henry and didn’t see him so I tried to gather my bearings. It was clear we had been thrown some distance from the fighting, though I was having trouble determining which direction we had flown.
“Veep, get us back on target, which way?”
“In your vision now.”
“You have a read on Henry?” I asked while glancing back at the man’s broken, yet quickly healing best friend.
The little Virtual Assistant bobbed and hummed for a moment then paused, “I... do. In your vision now.”
“What aren’t you telling me Veep?”
She drew my attention towards Albert then returned from her holographic form and spoke directly into my mind, “I don’t read any life signs, his HP is depleted.”
I stood shakily and walked over to the other man who was now just gathering himself. He reached down a hand to lift him up which was accepted gratefully. He looked at me briefly, a questioning look in his eyes. “He finally kick the bucket?”
“Maybe? Dunno, let’s go find him.”
He grunted and followed me as we marched in the direction that Veep indicated. He didn’t say anything as we walked, just continued on stoically. I looked behind us and could tell that Carly’s attack had cleared a large amount of the surrounding area. According to Veep we were only a half mile from the impact site. The sparse gathering of petrified trees had broken our advance. After a few minutes of light hiking, we found where Henry had come to land.
In front of us was a random cinder block industrial building that probably consisted of some kind of small-scale manufacturing before the System. Now it was a plant and vine infested monument to a quickly dissolving past. A large section of the brick wall was completely collapsed where we assumed Henry’s body had punched clean through.
“Marker says he’s inside, shall we?”
The man grunted again and ducked inside before me. It took a moment for my still healing eyes to adjust to the darkness within. When I did, I found Henry’s body impaled on some kind of copper piping, staring out with glazed over eyes. The man apparently didn’t die instantly, instead he bled out, unable to remove himself from the pipe.
Albert silently stared at his friend, then pulled out a steel flask. He unscrewed the cap and held it up to Henry, then brought it to his lips and tipped it back. Smacking his lips in thought he offered the flask to me and I mimicked his previous actions, handing it back to him. After several long moments he finally spoke.
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“We met in AA. He brought me back from the brink over and over. He was my only friend.”
With that simple statement he stoppered the flask and walked back outside. I proceeded to pull the man off the pipe, retrieved my heavy plasma machine gun and his weapons and ammo and stepped back outside. With the way shit was growing he would be consumed within a couple weeks. Silently I asked Veep what it would take to collapse the rest of the structure around him.
Plasma pistol at these four points will create a proper tomb.
I drew my pistol and collapsed the structure, then I joined Albert several meters away and began the long, silent march back to the fight we had been thrown from. We quickly reached the edge of the blast crater that extended just past where the back edge of the Home Depot used to stand. With everything flattened or dropped into a crater we were able to quickly identify the location of our remaining party members further back from the crater resting against a hill.
At the bottom of the crater, I saw the headless body of the Great Demon, Andras. Satisfied the fight had been won we jogged lightly forward to meet with Keeg and the rest of the party. He rose as we approached, Courtney waved as she tended to Stephen and Carly, who was currently unconscious. While the meteor turned out to not be the world ending type, it certainly leveled everything around this block.
“Where’s Henry?” Keeg asked, noticing the look on our faces and the distinct lack of the man in question.
I shook my head and he looked aside, Courtney and Stephen looked over at us, then Carly and made sour faces. She’s going to blame herself, and maybe Albert blames her too? I thought to myself as I watched the old man walk past the group to stand atop the hill they’d taken to recovering against.
“It’s not any different than when I was in Vietnam. She’ll blame herself, though it wasn’t really her fault. Don’t tell her.” Albert settled the thoughts in my mind then walked off to apparently be by himself.
I watched the man go as I checked my quest notifications. Seeing that nothing updated I looked around in concern. “Lowe’s... Walmart... Home Depot...”
“Yes, there still seems to be another target of this quest, unless we are required to kill the Deer Lady.” Keeg the second one to read my thoughts.
“Yeah, no fuckin’ idea. I’m not really keen to go kill the woman that’s taking care of our people. Let’s finish recovering our people before we go investigating further.”
Courtney looked up when I walked over to her, “Carly should wake up shortly.” Then she glared at Stephen, “And Stephen is in time out, he likes to put himself in the line of fire lately.”
Stephen raised his hands in defense as Courtney jabbed him in the ribs. I laughed at the brief moment of levity, fishing one of the many potions I had purchased before leaving Winslow and handing it to the young healer. “Make sure she drinks this when she wakes.”
I looked around and found Keeg standing with Albert on the crest of our hill. I decided to leave the two men be as I stared up and down the cracked and broken highway considering where the last target for our quest was at. Soon Carly was heard coughing as she roused from her mana depleted coma. She looked around wearily as Courtney was instantly at her side, pushing the mana potion up to her lips. She drank the potion greedily, sighed in relief, then looked around cataloguing the members of our party.
“Where’s Henry?” She asked to the gathered group. No one answered, only Albert and myself met her gaze. I shook my head and instantly saw the wheels turning in her head. Just as she was about to incriminate herself Albert spoke up.
“Wolf got him.” He held her gaze until she looked away with a frown.
“Fuck, I liked him, reminded me of my grandfather.” After a moment she continued to inquire about how the fight went, “Did we get that big ugly fucker?”
“We did, Miss Carly. Your attack significantly weakened him, Stephen took his arm, and I took his life.” Keeg summarized the end of the fight for her.
“We get any loot?” She asked, slowly getting to her feet. Courtney stayed by her side as she wavered briefly, then managed to steady herself.
“Want a regen potion? I think I have one of those, too.” I asked her and she shook her head. “And no. The quest isn’t complete. Something else is out here, or we gotta kill the Deer Lady.”
Before she could respond to that Albert called out to us, “Hey! Karl! Come look!”
We all crested the hill and just barely visible in the distance the first wisps of black smoke rose from the area of the Walmart to mix with the dark clouds in the sky. As I focused my vision, I saw flames starting to rise across the vegetation that had claimed the lot. It was clear some form of trouble had befallen the last known holdout of man and dark elf in Show Low.
“If everyone’s ready, let’s go.”
We ran up the road towards the former Walmart. By the time we reached the store it was burning with unnatural fury. Yellow-orange flames flickered into the dark sky, the heat of the fire increasing the ambient temperature in the surrounding area. Keeg and Albert stared hard at the quickly collapsing building looking for any sign of both their peoples. Nothing was clear beyond the intensity of the fire that devoured its way from the Walmart building through the Deer Lady’s carefully manicured grove.
“This isn’t good. There’s no way we’re getting through that fire.” Stephen commented, entranced by the flickering flames.
“I could start blasting it with ice, buuuuut...” Carly began to explain.
“It’s just as likely to wreck the building and kill random people.” Keeg finished her thought for her.
“Doesn’t matter, I can’t sense any life in there.” Courtney added grimly.
“None remain.” A deep smooth voice resonated from behind us.
We spun around as one to face the source of the voice that snuck up on us. Standing casually on the other side of the road, holding the bloody head of the Deer Lady in his left hand was yet another demon. This one looked largely like an old wizened man wearing loose robes and sporting long white hair that framed his face in a long pointy beard. A pair of heavy and long horns curved up for half a meter above his head. Cold calculating eyes stared back at us with a slight smirk on his face.
Furcas, Knight of Hell, Level 20*****
Furcas tossed the head of the Deer Lady to bounce awkwardly across the road to rest at my feet with her dead eyes staring up at me. This was the second time today I had to stare into the dead eyes of an ally. I was getting tired of it. I was also already tired of Show Low’s habit of stealing clean wins from me. Before I could stew in my anger, Furcas spoke again.
“This harlot failed to do her assigned task. I assume you are the ones that have been inconveniencing my Lord’s designs on this region. You defeated the Prince and the Marquise, and subverted the filthy succubus. I’m afraid I must end you here, though.”
Albert and the mages began to back pedal to adjust their positions to better support us when Furcas raised a hand and seemingly dragged the flames from the Walmart to create an impromptu arena, ringed with fire.
“No, you will not be allowed to maneuver freely.”
The flames rose several meters into the air and thickened as the Knight drew more and more of the angry fire from the Walmart lot. I fixed the demon with a hard look while watching his work, then unsheathed my axes, rolling my shoulders and cracking my neck as I stepped towards the demon.
I waved an axe at his horns and taunted, “I’m going to have one of those horns as a paper weight.”
“Hmmm.” Furcas paused before reaching his hand out, a plain sword slowly appeared which he then flicked to the side as it exploded in fire. The blade glowed red hot as it burned and various sigils revealed themselves as red streaks within the heat. The roaring walls of our arena having been set, he took up a fighting stance, staring me down with a mild expression. “I’m afraid, young Reaper, that you and your companions will end their saga here. Please make your last fight... memorable.”