BI – Chapter Five: Crying Wolf (Patreon)

Rio

“This is an absolute waste of taxpayer money! You’re going to run our entire county into the dirt!” 

“Then they can rake me over the coals and set me aside come next re-election. For now, all funding is geared towards armament and preparation. This is not a drill or a joke, and if you care about your–!”

“How much of this “preparation fund” is going directly into your pockets, hmm?” 

My eye twitched. Ohhh, this little bastard. 

“My taxes are public,” I said, in much the same way I had every time my wealth came up. People knew I was rich and that I’d gotten it from the gold demons dropped. Some people felt that it wasn’t ‘honorable’ even after the federal government declared the gains from that whole incident to be legal.  

It was helpful that I’d sunk a solid half of Theo’s and my own earnings from the dungeon into city improvement. That was well over half a million dollars. At this point, I kind of wished I’d saved it.

After that, we’d paid off all of our bills and been left with a surprisingly easy lifestyle. Expanding the house or funding our personal projects. Mine was politics. After everything that happened with the emergence of classers, I figured a voice of reason might help. I also felt I had a duty to make sure as many people as possible were aware of the looming threat.  

I hadn’t made it as far as I’d hoped. Making it to Mayor of our little county was good, especially for starting a career in this field so late. It was a surprisingly large jump from city planner to elected official, but I’d hoped to be in a position to help significantly more people when the demons finally returned. 

Luca, the dead spirit of the Valam that I’d met in the cave, had been impressed with our weapons and our growth. The abilities were helpful, but a dedicated team from the Marines or the Army could’ve done what we managed without them. We wouldn’t have even come close to surviving without our guns. At the time, they seemed far superior to any number of special abilities, but he still thought we were doomed if we didn’t manage to recover the seal. 

There had to be a reason for that. Now I knew why.  

Bridges were collapsing by the hour in an expanding radius around the spots of the initial breaches. We were lucky. Most buildings in Boyerton were made of brick, while houses were typically wood and drywall. Thankfully, whatever was weakening the metal hadn't affected those materials. 

The more dense the metal was, the more prominent the effect. Metal roofing, studs, and tools seemed perfectly fine. I’d been horrified that the thought that this was an indirect attack on our guns, but I’d gotten reports from every range in the county that they weren’t having any problems. 

Thank god for that. 

Small arms weren’t exactly what I’d been relying on when I’d been so confident in our victory over the demons all those years ago. 

If they could wreck our heavy metals… how would we launch missiles? Would aircraft still function? Would helicopters? Drones? 

How badly did this cripple us if it really came down to it? As it was, it would already cause a massive food shortage, and people were panicking. Not as much as they probably should, but trucks having to drive miles and miles out of their way to cross a river meant grocery stores wouldn’t be stocked. That meant hungry people, which meant riots. 

Cimigda had gotten a lot smarter. Or, more likely, this wasn’t him at all. 

“So you say, but what we need right now isn’t guns, it’s infrastructure! What you’re doing is going to cripple us for a decade! The bridges are falling, lets get more bullets? Why don’t we spend that money repairing them?” 

“If we’re alive to feel that crunch, then I’ll consider it a job well done,” I said. “Have you not been watching the news? This is widespread! Metal is failing. Metal that supports our entire way of life. Even if I’m wrong and demons aren’t about to attack in droves, that still leaves looters and thieves as refugees looking for food come out of the city by the droves.” 

“It won’t be as bad as all that! It’s a couple of bridges!” the tall man insisted.

I almost hoped he was right. I’d never be able to run so much as a school PTA meeting again, but if he was, then everyone would be okay. In my gut, though, I knew this was it. 

Demons were invading our world, and we had to be ready. 

I sighed. “Mister Smythe, if your only purpose here is to complain about my intended course of action then your complaints are duly noted. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for this right–”

“Mrs. Tande,” came a sudden voice of reason. “Highway Sixty-Five just collapsed. Major drop, right in the middle of Springfield.” 

My heart sank. “Which channel?” 

Sixty-Five… it wasn’t as bad as losing the interstate, but Sixty-Five was a major highway that connected Springfield and Branson. Both cities were well outside of our little county but, yet again, they were major lanes of traffic.  

The problem with bridges was that they weren’t always short, and they weren’t always crossing a railroad or a body of water. Highway Sixty-Five ran the entire length of Springfield, north to south, and a considerable portion of it was raised above the city proper. If even a small portion of it collapsed…

Samuel, looking dejected, said, “Only the local station. It’s awful for us… but it doesn’t even make the top ten around the country. This is a nightmare, but we’re the most rural of locations to be hit.” 

I gulped. I’d known something terrible was coming, but what could I do about this? I’d expected to have to organize dungeon dives or maybe for hordes of demons to come pouring out of the ground. Not… not this existential attack on our way of life.

“Sixty-five…?” Mr. Smythe murmured breathlessly. “My wife was in Springfield today. She has a client there.”

He turned back to me, eyes wide. 

“Perhaps I misspoke, Mayor Tande. If I may, I need…” he trailed off, looking panicked. 

“Go ahead. I hope she’s okay,” I said as kindly as possible. 

He thanked me and stood, pulling out a cell phone before he was halfway to the door. 

“Mr Smythe,” I called out before he could leave. “Get a gun.” 

He licked his suddenly dry lips and nodded as his call connected. He left the room at close to a sprint. 

“No one is ready,” I thought dejectedly. “How the fuck are they doing this though? It isn’t like there are little demons out there hacking away at the bridge supports. It would’ve been reported. So how? Any ideas Sam?” 

The man shrugged. “You’re more of an expert here than me. Maybe it’s acid? They sneak out at night and pour acid on the struts?” 

I shook my head. I had brought a piece of the fallen bridge here. I’d wanted to see if I could glean something about it that others might have missed, but as far as I could tell it was just… brittle. I could break pieces off of the edges if I tried hard. It looked perfectly fine, except for being warped and bent, but it broke like ceramic. A multiton ceramic bridge. Under the weight of enough cars, it had crumbled. 

I sighed.

At least one thing had gone right. Trina was fine, but the demons at our home didn’t seem to be leaving their cave. Theo had encountered a pack of demons, – horde? murder? What did one call a group of demons? – but they hadn’t managed to harm him, which was a huge weight off my shoulders. 

Now, if only I could hold up an entire bridge. 

The news was speculating that it was an attack. Many assumed it was an act of foreign aggression, but there were plenty of similar collapses across every major country. China, Mexico, Russia, Brazil. A poor town in northern England had fared the worst. Every building, bridge, or structure made with even a modicum of metal had seemingly collapsed overnight. I was suspicious that the area was where Aleredas Moitreides had lived when the first breach happened all those centuries ago, but I wasn’t even certain it had been ‘England’ then. 

Unfortunately… there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. It didn’t make sense. You couldn’t just make metal weaker. It defied all logic. Then again, you also couldn’t turn transparent and walk through walls, but I could. 

I frowned as I stared at the broken metal before me on the desk. This was more esoteric than acid or simple sabotage. Thus far, everything esoteric had cost mana. 

All classers had it, though each of us described it differently. It felt like spending money to me. Running low was akin to the existential dread of knowing the account was empty when bills were due. 

Theo described it as a deep thirst when he overused it, and running low felt like dehydration. 

Seok, meanwhile, had picked up a Cleric class by killing that last escaped imp, and the feeling was spiritual for him. A stress on his beliefs or convictions and a bone-deep weariness that sounded a lot like depression to me. 

All mana, but different ways of feeling it. If that was the case, did that mean the demons could also pervert the steel with their own mana? 

I examined the piece of metal more closely, but this time, I reached out. I chuckled as I compared the sensation to tapping my debit card, but I supposed Rogues were supposed to think in terms of money. I tapped my mental debit card and let my mana seep out of me freely, unchained by a skill or ability. 

Sorrow. Despair. 

I flinched away from the tainted metal. It was saturated in mana, but unlike the kind I could use, this was putrid. It reeked of loss and hopelessness. For a brief moment, I could see a color I didn’t think my eyes were supposed to be able to. Like Red, but beyond it somehow. 

Even touching that sickening mana made me think of all the terrible things in the world. Trina’s death flashed before my eyes, and Theo’s. My parents. My sister. 

Anathema. I found that I hated it on a primal level. In the same way that humans had instinctually learned to fear the buzzing of insects or be able to hear the difference between hot and cold water, I hated this.

In a sudden fury, I reached out and touched the metal once more. My mana surged forth and eradicated that twisted energy. It wasn’t even difficult. There was so little mana that removing it felt no harder than pushing one of Trina's stuffed animals off the couch. A tiny little push, and it was gone. A couple cents lost from my mana account.

To my shock, the metal was suddenly solid once more. Completely and utterly solid, though still warped.

“H-holy shit. It’s… we can save the bridges. It’s so easy!” I exclaimed, thoughts rushing as I realized the implications. Even low-level classers should be able to manage this! 

“Hello there,” came a sudden voice behind me.