Ch: 16 Fungal infestation. Sage of Humanity (Patreon)

Edited by Aldous.

Sage of Humanity chapter. Day or two late. Sorry. I rewrote the chapter as it was too info-dumpy. I combined it with the next chapter and move what I was going to write later into the story.  I'm writing the next DM chapter now, but I work tonight. The Chapter still should be out on Monday at the latest. The schedule is still to post on Sundays, but lately, it's been hard as work is crazy at the moment. (Covid, flue, RSV, etc.)

Chapter 16

Fungal infestation

In the morning she woke up with several new ideas bubbling in her head about trying to create a new rune, or rather runic spells with new runes. She got to work immediately after popping a new mushroom into her mouth and going to the restroom. She did take the time to clean herself with her spells as she still hadn’t gotten a new shower curtain. Telling herself that she would do that sometime today, she sat down in front of the wall by her bathroom again.

She summoned her grimoire and looked through it at her spell ball library. The spell balls were written with their special effects. She picked a symbol that she had vaguely remembered. It was one that felt like a lack of a vibration. It was an odd feeling. It was like she had been feeling a heavy vibration for a while and it had stopped all of a sudden. The only difference was that the feeling went on and on as she drew it on the wall. It was used in a three ball spell that she used to use on herself to sneak around outside her home in the hellhole. The only problem with that spell was that most beasts and monsters could smell her better than they could hear her. So she had stopped using it and started using her Barrier spell instead.

Once she was done drawing it, she started to carve it. As she did the day before, she started to vibrate the mana into her knife until it started dripping again before she started to fill the rune  up. The rune immediately started to spark again. Cursing her failure, she cast Repair and started on her next idea. Well, not an idea, but another spell ball. This time she used one of her power-type spell ball symbols.

An hour or so later, she cursed and cast Repair once more. Then she used yet another spell ball symbol, this time she carved a circle around it like she was creating a spell ball. It was another failure. She tried a bunch of different spell ball symbols, both with and without a circle around them. She tried a bunch more spell balls until she got too tired to think. Checking her phone she realized that it was nearly one o’clock in the morning. She had spent the entire day testing out new symbols.

She went to bed soon after that, but as soon as she woke up she went back to trying to figure it out. Time passed as she tested nearly every spell ball that was written in her grimoire. She also avoided the universe spell ball like the plague because she still feared it. There was no way she was going to test that spell ball as a rune. Feeling frustrated, she decided to go out and finally get her new shower curtain as she hadn’t had a shower since she left her cabin in her own little world. Not that she didn’t use her spell to keep herself clean - she did. It was just she wanted to feel a real shower since it had been a really long time since she had one.

She opened her door, only to see darkness. She frowned and realized she had worked late into the night again. In fact, she had worked a lot of late nights in the past month or so. She cringed when she realized just how long she had been caught up in her testing. She cursed at herself because she had fallen into the same old pattern that her double had warned her about. A sad smile blossomed on her face as she realized that she had already failed to keep her promise about not getting caught up in her research, and getting out more. She shook her head to banish her thoughts and pulled out her phone to check the time.

While it wasn’t the next day yet, it was still very late in the evening. With a deep frustrated huff, she went inside and went to bed. The next day she lay in bed for a while as she thought about runes and how to create them even though she told herself that she wouldn’t get caught up in it again. She gave up after a while as her bladder demanded that she deal with it. With a frustrated grunt she stood up and went to do her business and cleaned herself with her spells, which annoyed her. She bit her lip then forced herself to ignore the ideas that were still bubbling up in her mind as she marched out of her room. This time the sun was up.

The courtyard was as full with people as it was the first day she had arrived. A quick check on her phone-thingie told her that it was Sunday again. Shaking her head at the coincidence, she walked down the outside hallway towards the elevator, looking down at the people below her. No one looked up at her as she made her way towards the elevators. She felt an odd pang in her chest.

“I could die and no one here would know or care.” She thought to herself as she watched the people below her interact with each other. She felt like she was standing on the outside of reality looking in. The feeling came out of nowhere and she desperately wanted to go down there and talk to them, but she didn’t know how.

She stopped just before the elevators and leaned on the railing looking down. She envied the people below. Even as they beat on each other she saw that they were still laughing and enjoying themselves. She looked at a two girls sitting on a table near the edge of the courtyard, sitting next to each other and leaning in to talk.

She noted that they mostly seemed to be only interested in each other, but she spotted the girl on the left turn and take a quick peek at the group that was in front of them. She tried to disguise it as she flicked her hair, but it was kind of obvious. Lilly looked at the group of guys who were fighting with swords and tried to see which one of the guys the girl was interested in.

They were all very fit and good looking. Before the invasion they would have qualified as male models, but now they were just young fighters, or at least Lily thought it was so. She couldn’t remember any of the guys she knew back then who looked as fit as the group of guys did. She liked the look of the dark-haired guy who was taller than the rest of the group.

The elevator behind her binged and Lily turned around to see a group of guys getting off the elevator. They passed her by without a glance. She turned away and looked down once more, before she turned around and ran towards the closing doors. She rode the empty elevator down to the courtyard and made her way out of the apartment building past the same guard she had seen a few times before, who was sitting by the street. He, at least, looked at her.

She made her way down the street, looking over the white tables. Nothing interested her, and she didn’t see a shower curtain so she just kept on walking. She made her way to Jules’ diner, but when she looked inside neither Jules nor Amber were inside. The place was deserted and the cook was looking at his phone. Without seeing anyone she knew she didn’t feel like going inside, so she left and continued down the street, looking at the white tables. She was kind of hoping to see Turner’s table. She really liked the things she saw on it when she last visited.

“I really should go to the System Hub. It’s been a while, and I promised I would visit more often. Not that I have that much XP to turn in.” She thought to herself as she kept walking, glancing at the tables. So far nothing interested her. The street was not as busy as the last time she went to the System Hub, but that could have been because it was still a bit early. According to the phone-message-thingie, it was only just now getting to be nine in the morning. The weather was tolerable, if a bit cold. There was an occasional wind that cut through her clothes every now and then.

She was shaken out of her thoughts as a loud crack sounded behind her. She spun around to see a man holding a pistol in his hand, pointing it at a man who had fallen, but was now getting up. Lily immediately started to cast Mobile barrier on her right hand while nearly at the same time casting Greater flamethrower on her left. She anchored the barrier spell on her chest and had a second Greater flamethrower ready to go. It had taken her seconds to cast all three spells, and by the time she was done the guy who had been shot was on his feet again.

She was about to aim her spells at the guy with the gun when she noticed something odd about the guy who had been shot. There was something wrong with his face. Lily noted some black liquid was dripping from the guy's left eye like he was crying black tears. The right eye, though, had something in it. At first she thought someone, maybe the guy with the gun, had stabbed the guy with a brownish mushroom. The mushroom was small though, maybe the size of her thumb. What was more important was that she couldn’t believe it was coming out of the guy's eye.

Someone with a deep male voice yelled out, “Fungal infestation!” As the yell went out, the guy with the gun fired again and again. The sound was very loud, and to Lily it sounded like thunder roaring around her. The guy took the bullets to his chest and Lily at first didn’t think he was going to go down, but then he seemed to lose all his energy and he fell to his knees. The guy with the handgun kept on firing at the kneeling guy until he fell face first onto the pavement.

Lily couldn’t stop staring. The guy had fallen and it was odd to see someone fall face first onto the ground without trying to stop their fall with their hands. She felt herself pulling back inside her head as he lay there on the road. It wasn’t the first time she had seen a person die like that. In fact, she had seen plenty of people get torn apart during the invasion, but this seemed different. She didn’t know why it was different, but it was.

She was still holding her spells when the guy seemed to inflate. People all around her started screaming and running, as she stood there with her spells at the ready. The guy's body seemed to get fat and his limbs looked like sausages before something like a fart sounded. A huge brown cloud exploded out of the guy, and he seemed to deflate.

It disgusted Lily so much that before she even thought about it, she set her Greater flamethrower in her left hand off. The fire streamed out of her hand like water from a fireman’s hose. It struck the guy and the brown cloud, and the body exploded. It wasn’t a big explosion, more like a flash than an explosion. The body and the cloud were vaporized in less than a second.

“Fall in on the caster.” Someone yelled. “We’ll make for the bunker at Montange.”

Lily looked around even as she recast Greater flamethrower on her left hand. She saw a guy, who was holding a gold machine gun that seemed way too thick to be real in the air, was pointing at Lily. He had been the one that had spoken. Even as she saw him he was quickly swallowed up by a bunch of people, some with weapons, some without, who were running towards her. The people without weapons crowded behind her while most of the people with weapons stayed on the outside of the crowd.

A very short guy took out a metal dish-shaped plate and attached it to his left arm as he ran up next to her. He gave her a smile before pulling out something from a bag he had hanging from his waist. He handed it to her as he raised the metal dish in front of her while at the same time pulling a pistol out of a holster that Lily hadn’t noticed on his waist. She let her spells drop as she took whatever he handed her. It was a hat. A black pointy hat.

“It’s so that they know you're a caster.” He told her when she looked at him. “It will make you stand out.”

She looked down at the hat and shrugged. She quickly put the hat on. To her surprise she found it fairly comfortable. She looked at the guy, who smiled and nodded at her.

“It will help with your mana regen.” He told her. As he did she came to a realization. The realization took a second or two as she looked at him, but then she realized he wasn’t a short guy at all, but a dwarf. He turned away from her and pointed his gun down the street where the guy with the mushroom eye had come from.

“Wilson, how many times can you cast that fire spell again?” The man with the machine gun asked, as he came through the crowd to stand behind her.

“A lot.” Lily said, still feeling weird with her new hat.

“I need a number.” He barked at her as he held out a small square box that was roughly the same size as she remembered a Rubik’s cube to be. He touched the top and three triangles opened up at the top and folded back. As the triangles folded back they pulled something pie-shaped from inside, which folded out like a fan as it came out. As the fan completely unfolded, far bigger than Lily thought possible, it pulled the bottom upwards. In less than a second the man was holding a fat-looking Frisbee. He tossed it up into the air as Lily stared on in amazement.

“A number, Wilson!” he yelled, as the thing started hovering above them.

“As much as I want.” Lily said, as her attention was pulled away from the fat Frisbee that stayed floating impossibly above the crowd.

“Contact left!” A woman yelled. Lily immediately spun to the left and saw a normal-looking man crawl like a spider down the side of a brick building. A bunch of guns started firing and the crawling man stopped and opened his mouth and screamed at them. The guy was peppered with bullets, but he didn’t seem to care.

His mouth, Lily noted, was full of tiny mushrooms. Like the other guy with the mushroom in his eye, it grossed her out. She raised her left hand and set her spell off. The fire washed over the guy for a second, and, like the guy before him, there was a flash of fire then he was gone. Lily absently recast her Greater flamethrower with her left hand again and looked around for more mushroom men.

“Stay within the shield. Wilson, cover our rear.” The guy with the huge machine gun yelled. “Half march. Move out.”

The crowd behind Lily started to walk away from her. Lily quickly started to follow, but the dwarf beside her elbowed her. “Turn around and watch the rear.” He told her as he walked backwards keeping his metal plate in front of her. Lily mentally shrugged and did as he asked.

It was a good thing she did as something human-looking jumped out a second story window behind them. The human thing was covered in what looked like wet moss. She had just enough time to see something clear drip from the thing, before she set off another Greater flamethrower. It roasted the thing as it fell towards them, and she felt the heat as the thing flashed then vaporized. She ignored the heat as she recast her spell, getting ready for the next one.

“Damn, you cast really fast.” The dwarf beside her told her.

“Thanks.” Lily said, pleased.

Gunfire erupted from her left. Lily turned her head and saw a moss-covered person falling towards the crowd. She didn’t have the time to point her hand, so she fired off her spell while  mentally aiming it. The moss-covered woman hit something invisible about ten feet above the crowd and was starting to slide down the invisible shield when her fire hit it. Once more there was a flash and it was gone.

While she was recasting her spell she saw a fuzzy-looking man on the roof before he jumped off. She set off her spell from her right hand even as she finished recasting on her left. Then another body jumped off the roof even as she finished casting her spell. She raised her left hand so that she could hold both hands out now and set off the second spell. She roasted the second jumper as another jumper left the roof. She didn’t let her spell fade as she tracked the third jumper. Fire splashed over the building, but it was a brick building, and her Greater flamethrower was designed to only burn biological things. It didn’t even leave a mark on the building.

A fourth, then a fifth jumper left the roof even as she flamed the two other jumpers. Before she could move her spell to burn them, a pink light shone on one of them for a second. The fourth jumper was consumed in pink light leaving nothing behind. Lily only absently noted it as she flashed the fifth jumper with both her spells.

“Fire out.” A woman yelled out. A second later, the roof exploded in flames. The fire erupted just in time as multiple jumpers leaped off the roof nearly at the same time. Lily washed the burning people with her fire as they fell. She got most of them, but not all. The pink light found two more, but that left a single body to hit the invisible shield above them. Unlike before this one somehow stayed on without falling off.

The thing, which was on fire, had pointy ears. Lily had seen a lot in her hellhole, but then things she killed there were monsters. Even the beasts that looked like real animals from before the invasion didn’t affect her like the burning person did. This was, or had been, a living human.

“Elf.” Her subconscious corrected.

She watched horrified as her flames washed over the Elf. There was a flash, then it was gone.

“Watch out!” The dwarf yelled out suddenly. Lily had just enough time to turn her head as a huge, fat thing slammed into, and broke, the invisible shield. The dwarf’s metal plate turned red like it was melting, and the thing, which was nearly twice as tall as she was, bounced backwards. It landed right in front of them, and jumped back up again far faster than anything that size should have been able to. The dwarf cursed and, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him drop the still red-hot metal plate from his arm. As he was doing that, she swept her flames over the huge moss and mushroom covered giant-looking man. It took both her spells and a couple of seconds before the thing flashed and was gone.

People behind her were yelling, and guns were going off, but she was too busy to look as she aimed her spell at another giant thing. It and others were coming out of the side street and turning towards them. One made it to about twenty feet in front of them before it fell, flashed, and vaporised. Two more giants came running from the same side street. She flashed them with her fire, but almost lost control of her spell as someone grabbed her jacket from behind and pulled her backwards.

“Keep moving…” The man with the thick machine gun yelled in her ear. “... or we’ll be overrun.”

She didn’t have time to do anything but follow his commands as yet more giants came out from the side street. She flashed them with one spell each. That meant they got much closer to her as it took several more seconds to vaporise them with only a single stream of fire. It was also a lot harder to walk backwards and keep her spells aimed correctly. Mostly because the guy with the machine gun kept pulling on her coat even as she walked backwards. Oddly enough, it also helped her because she knew how fast to walk backwards as he stopped pulling and put his hand on her back when she went too fast.

There was an odd thunk sound above her and she looked up to see a moss-covered man sliding down the invisible shield. She flashed him, and turned back towards the giants that seemed to be coming towards them in never-ending waves. She killed one, and a new one replaced it. Sometimes more than one. They were slowly gaining on them.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the dwarf shooting his pistol beside her. She didn’t see his metal plate anymore. She looked up when she saw the dwarf raise his pistol upwards and start shooting. Even as she looked upwards she directed one of her streams of fire upwards, already knowing what she would find. She roasted a moss-covered woman that, unlike most of the moss-covered people, didn’t slide down the invisible shield. She also noted the shield wasn’t invisible anymore. She could see blue cracks in it, but she didn’t have time to investigate because there were several giants coming towards them.

Even though they were walking away from where the giants were coming from they were still getting closer and closer to her and the dwarf beside her. It was mostly because there were so many coming at them now that her spells here were having a hard time keeping up with killing them. She started combining the streams of fire, putting more mana into her spells so that she could wave her fire across several at the same time, killing them.

“I’m out!” the dwarf yelled from beside her. She glanced at him as he pulled out a metal pole that had a softball-size spiky thing on it. None of the moss-covered men or giants had gotten close enough for him to use it, yet.

“I’m running out of mana.” The man behind her yelled in her ear. “You need to burn the bodies on either side of us. The spores are weakening my shield.”

Lily looked to the side as she walked backwards. She saw a bunch of moss-covered bodies that had small brown clouds around them. She turned away from them as she turned her attention back on the giants. She had no idea how to do what the man wanted her to do without letting the giants get too close to them. She was going to ignore him when he yelled in her ear again.

“Get the bodies. I’ll take the giants” He yelled again. “Covering.”

As he spoke she saw a small, black, metal-looking thing, slightly smaller than a baseball, go flying down the street. It hit the pavement and bounced a couple of times before coming to a stop. Before she could question what the thing was, it exploded. A wall of fire rose up where the thing was and blocked the street.

Lily didn’t hesitate and turned around and took a step away from both the dwarf and the guy who had been pulling on her jacket. Stepping away from them gave her room to see around the cracking shield. She let the spells drop as she turned around so as not to burn the people behind her, so she had to recast her spells. As she was doing that, she took in everything around her.

She saw people with all sorts of guns and bows shooting at the falling moss-covered people. The moss-covered people were coming out of everywhere as the group shuffled down the street. They were falling from windows as well as the roofs of the buildings on either side of the street. The guy with the thick machine gun was firing bolts of pink lights at the bodies that were sliding or standing on the cracking shield. He wasn’t vaporizing them anymore, just boring holes in them. While he was doing that, the people that were guarding the group tried to help him, with varying success.

She raised both her arms, pointed them at either side of the street where bodies were and set off both her spells. There were a bunch of flashes of fire as the bodies that were littering the street were consumed in her fire. The problem was more bodies were falling to replace the ones she cooked. They kept on falling and she kept on cooking them.

She kept her spells running as she glanced behind her. She noted that some of the giants were getting through the fire. They didn’t make it far because as they exited the flames they were fully on fire. Their bodies looked like walking fire beings before they dropped to the ground and flashed. The flash of flames didn’t completely burn them like her fire did, but they remained on fire as her group kept walking away.

It gave her an idea if the giants made it through the burning wall of flames. She had a spell that was kind of like it. She turned her attention back to burning the corpses on the side of the street. Adding more mana to her spells, she quickly burned the corpses then slowly raised her streams upwards towards the top of the shield. She felt a little faint, but she was able to burn the bodies quickler. In fact the streams of fire were so hot that they burned the bodies as they fell off the shield.

She kept it up until she got all of the bodies on the shield then she started to burn them as they fell again. Her head was starting to hurt as her mana started to drop lower than she liked. The shield on the other hand started to lose the blue cracks and become less and less visible.

“Fungal Giants!” The dwarf beside her yelled at her, pointing at something behind her.

Lily dropped her spells and turned around once more. She immediately started to recast her spells as she saw a wave of giants running at her. They looked a little blackened around the edges, but otherwise looked fine. She stopped her spells and let them fade away as she summoned her grimoire. She quickly opened her book to the spell she was looking for. She quickly gathered her mana and started to cast the spell.

“Hurry up, mage!” The dwarf yelled at her as she took several seconds to get the spell balls written and then move them into the correct order. She looked up, ready to cast the spell when the guy behind her with the thick machine gun started shooting over her shoulder at a giant that was about ten feet from her and closing in. The pink lights punched holes in the giants, but it didn’t stop them. It did, however, slow them down.

She raised her hand and set the spell off, feeling a huge chunk of her remaining mana flow out of her. A small ball of red fire flew from her hand. The ball was the size of a ping-pong ball, and it raced towards the giant even as it kept getting hit by the pink lights. The ping-pong ball hit the giant and there was a loud boom. Lily felt the heat from the explosion wash over her body making her start to sweat. The giant on the other hand was completely consumed in the fire that erupted from the tiny fireball.

The fire didn’t go away. In fact it grew in size as it started to eat the pavement of the road and everything on it. Lily turned around and yelled, “Run!”

The group took her advice and everyone started running down the street as the fire kept growing. The good news was that the giants weren’t making it through the growing wall of fire, the bad news was the wall was growing at an alarming rate.  It was starting to eat the buildings on either side of the street. While she had been running, Lily had been counting in her head. The spell was supposed to go off when she reached five. She must have been counting too fast because it went off at seven. There was a loud boom, and wind rushed past them towards where the wall of fire had been.

Someone yelled, “Down!” moments after the secondary effects of the spell went off. The entire crowd dropped to the ground except Lily. She didn’t bother to duck for cover as the spell had already gone off. She did turn around to check out what had happened with her spell. The entire street behind her was burning. It wasn’t a wall of fire anymore, but a river. It covered the entire street and most of the buildings’ front-facing walls. She smiled at the results then she heard a thunk.

Looking up, she sighed as she saw a moss-covered woman slowly slide down the invisible shield. The woman, who had a bunch of tiny mushrooms growing out of the moss which covered much of her skin, was trying to bite the invisible shield. Lily quickly cast her spell and flamed the woman. She recast Greater flamethrower on her left hand as she heard another thunk sound above her. With a sigh, she raised her hand and started roasting the falling moss-covered people. She did notice that there were a lot fewer moss-covered people now than there had been before she set her spell off. She absently wondered why, as the group got to their feet and started jogging down the street again.

“What the hell was that?” The dwarf beside her asked.

“Timed fireball.” She replied as she burned yet another moss-covered jumper. She was really starting to feel dizzy as what was left of her mana started to drain away.

“Not sure how long I can keep going.” She said after a few seconds. She let the spell on her right hand drop as her head really started aching.

“Can you last two minutes?” The guy with the thick machine gun asked.

Feeling really dizzy, Lily nodded. “Maybe.” Then she tripped and had to let go of her other spell before she burned the group in front of her. “No.” She said, trying not to pass out.

“Pick up the speed, people.” The guy yelled, looking over his shoulder at the group. The dwarf beside her grabbed her waist and helped to keep her steady as the machine gun guy started to shoot the falling moss-covered people.

“It’s okay.” The guy told her. “This place seems pretty empty. The infestation must not have reached this far down the street. We’re nearly there.”

There was a cry from the other side of the group. Lily looked up and found herself looking at a building that looked like a bank a couple of blocks down the street. A bank with two machnig guns on its roof that were constantly firing. There were a lot of dead people in front of the building and a fairly large cloud of brown spores. The moss-covered people stopped trying to attack them right around that point, or at least that was when Lily noticed they weren’t attacking them anymore. Looking up she did see a few moss-covered people above then running towards the bank-looking building. They kept on getting torn to pieces by the machine guns though.

The guy with the thick machine gun shot something out of his odd-looking gun. Whatever he fired arced over the crowd and landed in the middle of the cloud of brown spores two blocks down from them. There was a flash of fire then the spore cloud was gone. The people didn’t need any encouragement as they all raced the last two blocks.

Lily started to feel better so she gently pushed the dwarf away and started running with him. She felt her hat slow her down some as the wind from running caught the pointy end, but it didn’t feel like it was slipping off. It still felt oddly comfortable. She wondered if the dwarf would sell it to her.

They reached the bank-looking building and ran up the few stairs before the double doors. There were people with guns standing behind them. They were down a hallway a bit with two metal barriers that had big gun barrels sticking out of them. Lily stood at the bottom of the stairs with the people who had been defending the group as the rest slowly filed in. Lily wanted to sit down as she was both out of breath and still feeling the effects of using most of her mana, but she remained standing as the guns on the bunker's roof kept firing.

“How the hell are you a tier one, level five mage with those kinds of spells?” The machine gun guy asked, as he walked up to her. He had his gun pointed down towards the ground, but he kept looking around for what she assumed were threats.

Not wanting to tell him she used to be a sage, she just smiled. “I have a very high mana pool.”

“And rich.” The dwarf said, still standing beside her. “That wasn’t a fire aspect spell.”

The machine gun guy nodded and looked at her, waiting for an explanation. She had no idea what to say, but the machine gun guy started speaking again. “You have a skill that gives fake a ID to those who identify you.” He told her. “Why?”

She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure what to say. She hadn’t even known that there were skills for faking IDs.

“I’m not a mage, but I bet that spell took lots of mana.” The guy said, slinging his machine gun hanging onto his shoulder and looking her in the eye. “Tier 5, with quite a few side classes, I bet.”

“Or much higher.” The dwarf said, shrugging. “Who cares? I, at least, know I owe you a few drinks and a steak dinner at Jules’. Cap’s just curious, don’t mind him none.”

“Yeah, sorry. Thanks for saving us.” The guy the dwarf had called Cap said, his expression softing. “Dougie’s right. I’ve never been in the middle of an infestation like that before. Without you, we would all have died. If you ever need the services of the Deerfield, ask for Captain Guidon.”

Lily nodded and smiled at the two. She started to take the hat off, but the Dwarf waved at her. “Keep it. It looks better on you than the man I bought it for. Plus, he’s a dick. He can wait for them to make another one. Hey, if you're looking for a team, Deerfield is a good place to be.”

“Dougie!” Captain Guidon whispered loudly.

“Ehh, don’t worry about the Cap.” Dougie said, ignoring his Captain. “He can be a little uptight, but that’s good when it comes to team safety. He brings people home more than most people outside the Deerfield, and at the end of the day that’s what’s important. That and the credits. Am I right?”

“Dougie, that’s enough.” Captain Guidon said in a warning tone. “He’s right though. I’ll drop some credits at Jules’ under your name. She’s good people. She’ll set you up right.”

Lily opened her mouth to ask if he was talking about the same Jules she knew, but the line to the bunker had faded away. Both Dougie and Captain Guidon started up the stairs. She followed them in. They walked along the long corridor to the guard. As she did she felt a wave of magic brush over her from the right-hand side of the wall. She immediately dropped into her soul and looked. She found huge strings of runic spells along the wall. It took her until she reached the metal bulkhead where the huge gun barrels were sticking out to realize the spells were designed to make sure there was no infection or outside mental coercion.

She was still looking at the spells as she passed the heavily-armed people at the checkpoint, when she had an epiphany. She knew why her runes weren’t working. She was using the shape of the spell balls for her rune. The spell ball shape had to be interfering with the creation of the new rune. Either she had to use a random shape or use another spell ball shape on the outside to the one on the inside of the rune.

She was still lost in thought when she was led down to a huge open room filled with bunk beds. There were hundreds of people already there, but she hardly noticed as she summoned her grimoire and started writing. She had a lot to do if she was going to create new runes. She couldn’t wait to get started.