Hey everyone! I had some good feedback on the last chapter, and it brought to mind a problem with this arc. It's not a huge one, but I think its clear that I haven't illustrated the devastation of Tanque Verde appropriately. I want it to be clear that flight was necessary. Yes, the whole thing should feel rushed, but in a believable way; as in: "Our school is full of dead monsters and people and there are more attacks coming, let's get the heck out of here!"

Also, I want to try to show that most of the "kids" are teenagers. Yes, still traumatic; yes, still a horrifying situation, but not the same as having two hundred grade schoolers fleeing through the night. That said, I've made some changes that will appear in my final draft. Here are some of the more significant ones:From Chapter 3.20:

Piles of dead mites littered the roadway, and hundreds more were scattered about the parking lot. He saw dead mites against the gym walls and in front of the doors where, even as he watched, Andy saw a blaze of white light and knew it was Omar defending there. More streaks of fire fell from the rooftops and more mites went up in flames.

Unfortunately, as he looked past the gym where Omar fought, Andy’s eyes fell on one of the larger school buildings—low and long with regularly spaced windows—and he saw mites climbing over each other, surging through broken glass into what had once been classrooms. How many people were inside that building? How many mites had gotten in? Judging by the surging mounds of the giant arachnids, it had to be a lot.

Scowling, Andy turned back to the gap in the buses and the mountain of dead mites he’d killed, and the hundreds beyond where he’d thrown down his first smoke cloud. He didn’t see more incoming enemies; it seemed the defenders had turned the tide—at least outside the school. Unfortunately, the toll had been steep; everywhere he looked, Andy saw partially consumed, dismembered human bodies. Near the buses alone, he counted nineteen, though he couldn’t be certain with the state of the corpses.

As he started for the parking lot, stabbing wounded, straggling mites along the way, he counted another dozen dead people. He shook his head. Even if they won, how could Tanque Verde continue to survive, let alone thrive?

He jogged around the battlefield, looking for surviving people, but it seemed everyone had either made it to shelter or succumbed to the swarm. Still, he killed another twenty mites and watched as the fireballs continued to descend. One of them struck a group of mites not far from him, and he heard the clatter of shattering glass. “Alchemy,” he guessed.

He worked his way to the infested building, aiming toward the side with the broken windows, but when he got there, he was met with the grim, bloody faces of a pair of defenders peering out.

“Any more?” one of them asked, a young man, maybe still a teen; the side of his head was covered by a sheet of dried blood and his ear was missing.

Andy shook his head, looking with horror through the window at the carnage beyond. “None coming that I can see.”

The kid nodded, wiped some blood out of his eyes, and turned without another word. And walked back to the parking lot. Standing there, his wounds throbbing, he looked around for something to fight, but he seemed to be the last thing still mobile outside the school. He decided to go check on Omar, but the System decided the battle was won and interrupted him with a message:

Chapter 3.22: I changed a bunch of references to "kids" and "children" to "teens" or other generic terms for people/survivors.

Chapter 3.24: More changes to minimize the mentions of "kids" and focus on "survivors." A few imagery additions tohighlight the horror of the night and make their "exodus" more believable. Like this reflection of Omar's:

There was more to it than that, though. He’d been armed and on his feet, ready to fight. How would things have gone if he’d been asleep, or still in bed, listening to distant sounds of combat, when the mites broke into the building? He shuddered, imagining the noises the arachnids would make as they broke through windows and doors and skittered down hallways.

Anyway, after that review, I feel better about the believability of the Tanque Verde evacuation. Also, there are little hints that more conversation took place "off screen" -- things like Omar mentioning that Denise "had the directions to the mesa."

Hope you like the changes, and hope you enjoy today's chapter! Here we go!

-Plum

25 – Reason Enough

Andy stalked the figure holding the light, slinking through the shadows on the side of the road. There was a sidewalk, but it was overgrown by the newly thriving green desert plants. Tumbleweeds were the biggest culprit; they’d taken over entire yards—great, tree-sized mounds of spiky green growth. Andy was sure they’d be spreading onto the streets, too, if not for, well, the streets. Sure, the pavement was beginning to crack here and there, pushed up by the mighty roots of mesquites and palo verdes going through a growth spurt, but it was still largely intact.

At first, he thought it was a lantern the person held as they cautiously walked down the street, but as he drew close, Andy saw it was a glowing white orb—floating above the man’s shoulder. It was a man, human as far as Andy could tell. He was tall, with a thick, long beard, wearing a leather jacket, jeans, and leather boots. If Andy had run into him under different circumstances, he might have called out a greeting, hoping to head off violence with some diplomacy. The situation was different, though.

Andy clung to the shadows, watching as the man continued toward the slumped troll corpse in the middle of the road. His light had yet to illuminate the body; there was time to hide it if Andy hurried—but he didn’t.

He waited, wanting to see how the man would respond. Andy knew it was a risk letting the guy find the body. He might call for more help, for instance. The situation reminded Andy of the time he’d run into the men from Construction City in the desert. He remembered how he’d used one of them for bait, and, despite the way it went against his general instinct to be nice, he found himself using the tactic again.

That said, he stalked the man, watching his face, waiting for him to discover and react to Jasper’s corpse. Andy was careful to avoid the ring of light thrown by the magical orb. His experience with Jasper had shown him he’d grown a little too confident in his spell’s ability to hide him. He wasn’t the only one with magic or special abilities in the post-System world. For all he knew, the magical light would strip away his concealing smoke. As a result, he was still about twenty yards from the guy when he stopped in his tracks, staring at the slumped figure lying in the road.

The man spun, his eyes narrowed, scanning the overgrown yards nearby. His eyes glided over Andy without reaction, but then he reached into his pocket and drew something small out, lifting it to his lips. Andy often wondered if his enhanced Speed attribute affected his thinking. He knew it affected his reflexes and his ability to focus on fast-moving things. His reaction to the man’s movement solidified his belief that his thoughts were at least a little quicker than normal.

In a fraction of a second, he ran through a dozen ideas of what tiny object might be. Was it a potion, a snack, a pill, a piece of gum, or a cigarette? The ideas got more and more absurd until it clicked: it was a whistle. He was about to raise the alarm. Andy burst into action, charging with his spear. The suddenness of the movement was enough to shatter the illusion his Deepsmoke Shroud was weaving. The man looked at him, eyes widening, and blew his whistle.

The shrill note tore through the air, but then Andy cast Smoke Cloud, and inky blackness exploded around him, engulfing him, the street, and the man. The magical smoke was thick and clinging; it muted the sound of the whistle and, to Andy’s delight, snuffed out the magical white light.

The man dropped his whistle and screamed, “Attack!” Andy’s smoke swallowed the sound of his cry, just as it had the noise from his whistle. Someone standing nearby might have heard it, but the sound certainly didn’t carry. Andy attacked.

As he’d learned from sparring with Omar, Jace, Bella, and the other fighters from Mesquite Mesa, his speed was an unfair advantage. It was why he feared the knowledge of stat caps and evolution points spreading to people they didn’t trust. If he weren’t at the mesa to defend it when someone who could move as quickly as him came along—some evil-doer or monster—then there was no telling the kind of damage they might do.

When his enemy, coughing and blinking against the black smoke cloud, drew a sword, it was next to useless against Andy and his spear. First, he could barely see Andy’s attacks, and second, he couldn’t manage an effective defense. He’d hardly begun to lift the blade when Andy’s first stab slid five inches of balefire-wreathed steel into his guts. The man screamed, and Andy felt a surge of hot mana erupt from him.

As he drew his spear back, golden sparks exploded around the sentry—starbursts that burned into Andy’s retinas, forcing him to blink and squint against the glare. When the popping, crackling lights faded, and he blinked away the temporary blindness, he saw his foe a dozen yards away, staggering out of his smoke cloud, coughing and wheezing.

Andy leaped at him, and just as the guy coughed out a cry, hoarse and weak, his spear punched through his back, driving all the way through his torso to erupt between two ribs. If the terrible stab wounds hadn’t been enough to kill him, Andy’s balefire enchantment did the job. The black flames coursed through flesh in smoldering rivulets that ignited clothing and turned flesh to ash. The man fell off the spear, collapsing onto the road where his corpse slowly burned, filling the air with the scent of char and sulfur.

Not for the first time, Andy was thankful that the scent of balefire overpowered that of cooking flesh. He stooped to touch the man’s sword—a fancy rapier-type thing—and sent it into his storage ring. Then he darted to the side of the road and cast Deepsmoke Shroud before silently padding across the street in the off chance that something had been observing him. As he hunkered in the shadow of an overgrown mesquite, the System sent him a message:

**Well done, Andy! You’ve overcome two enemies—a monstrous humanoid and a rival survivor. Your efforts have earned you experience toward your next Brimstone Stalker level. Additionally, you and your allies have weakened Seraphine’s defensive forces. Your goal grows near, but great danger yet lurks! Be cautious!**

###

The drums were loud enough to echo off the storefronts nearby, rattling the broken windows and vibrating through Omar’s rib cage. He twisted his fist on his mace, but he kept his shield hanging low; it was heavy, and his arm would need all of its strength if the battle lasted very long. He glanced left at an abandoned Ace Hardware store. Three archers hunkered on its roof. One of them threw him a thumbs up—Kent.

Omar nodded and turned to his right. On that side of the street sat a burned-out Jiffy Lube. A broken-down box truck had made it easy for the rest of Kent’s “rangers” to ascend that roof. They were crouched low, but Omar could make out their forms. It was reassuring; he might be standing in the middle of the road alone, but there would be hell raining down on the goblins as they charged toward him.

Not for the first time, Omar wondered if he had some kind of death wish. By the sound of those drums, there had to be ten or more hobgoblins. If there were ten hobgoblins, there were probably a hundred goblins—maybe twice that many. Omar didn’t know the rules; all he knew was that had been the rough ratio of goblins to hobs in the army he, Andy, and the others had destroyed—the fight where Bree had died.

Was that why he was doing this? Was he trying to prove something to himself—that it hadn’t been a mistake for him to live while Bree had fallen? Was he trying to earn the life he was still living? “Maybe,” he muttered, “but so what?”

He was talking to himself, but he didn’t care. If he could talk to himself, he could agree with himself; why shouldn’t he earn the life he had? Why shouldn’t he do the most with it he could? There were hundreds of people counting on him to slow these damn goblins down, and he could do it! That was reason enough for the risk.

He shifted his armored coat—hauberk, Lydia had called it—wishing it weren’t already torn and missing a dozen scales. It was good, though—better than plain clothes. His helmet was well secured; again, it was Lydia’s work. The inner basket and strap were stolen from a bicycle helmet, but she’d built up the outside with additional leather padding and forged steel. The best thing was his shield, though. Nothing felt so good as slapping away weapons and enemies with oak planks strapped with steel. Despite their best efforts, the mites hadn’t done more than scratch it up.

He stared down the street, and when the first red torches came into view, his eyes glinted like a wolf’s. Omar grinned as more and more flickering lights rounded the corner. When the drum beats rolled up the street, and he made out the individual goblins in the surging, shadowy tide, he stamped his feet and slammed his fist into his chest. “Come on!” he growled, punching his chest again. “Come on!”

When the first row of goblins—twenty strong—were close enough that he could see their yellow and red irises reflected in their torchlight, he picked up his shield and roared, “Come on!”

The goblins screamed and broke ranks, charging pell-mell at him. Arrows whistled through the air—not from Kent and his rangers, but from goblin archers. They sparked on the pavement and thudded into his shield, and Omar screamed again, “Come on!”

When the lead goblin screamed inarticulate curses at him and leaped through the air, Omar roared and smashed its skull with his mace, sending it crunching into the pavement. Then the horde was on him. He felt them crash into his shield as he backpedaled, hacking blindly with his mace. It was impossible to miss, but he couldn’t pause to bask in the destruction he wrought with each swipe of his mace and bash of his shield. He was backing up for a reason; an overturned bus was behind him, and he meant to put his back to it before they fully flanked him.

The drums rumbled madly, the hobgoblins pounding them with frenetic zeal. Arrows ripped through the air; many thudded into Omar’s shield, and one got through, slamming into his shoulder but failing to find purchase; Lydia’s armor had done the job.

The goblins didn’t seem to care that their arrows hit their comrades far more frequently than they came close to harming Omar. They fell in twos and threes, and then, when Omar felt the bus at his back, the night lit up with fire. Kent and his rangers had started shooting.

###

Andy brushed the message away, squinting down the road toward the driveway where the man with the glowing light had emerged. He could see the glow of orange lights leaking through the dense canopy of palo verde trees that acted as a natural screen for the house beyond. That was the place, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t see much.

The fact that the System had sent him a message made him think there wasn’t another sentry incoming. Apparently he’d choked off the sound of that initial whistle quickly enough. Frowning, he glanced at his mana: 644/735. Was patience the key? Should he hide and drop his shroud and Flame Sight so he could regain his mana? He scowled at the thought. No, he felt that decisiveness was the order of the day; if Seraphine learned that one of her sentries was dead, then she might flee or prepare a trap.

Andy padded forward, crossing the road and stalking along the sidewalk toward the fast-approaching driveway. He knew there had to be more sentries. This woman, this Seraphine, had organized more than one assault on Tanque Verde; she’d gotten Leo the troll to recruit goblins, to scout out Mesquite Mesa, and who knew what else. He’d just killed a human, so he knew Leo and his trolls weren’t the only ones working for her. Andy didn’t care if there were two or two-hundred in that house; after what they’d done to Tanque Verde, he meant to put a stop to them.

He reached the driveway and froze, looking left and right. Maybe it was his high perception, maybe it was a function of his Flame Sight, but as he crouched there, staring through the shadows of trees and cacti toward the dimly lit stucco-covered house, something glimmering on the cement driveway caught his eye. Frowning, he focused on the strange, shifting flicker, and then colorful, iridescent runes resolved, coming clear under his scrutiny.

Each rune was about the size of his hand, and they stretched from one side of the driveway to another. Andy didn’t have to know how to read them to guess that they were defensive in nature—either some kind of trap or maybe just an alarm. He skulked forward along the edge of the driveway and stopped a few feet short of the runes, staring. Did they extend into the gravel and dirt? It didn’t seem so.

He thought about trying to use Smokescribe to alter the runes, ruining the magical effect, but he feared that whoever had made them would be alerted. Instead, he moved at a snail’s pace through the dirt beside the driveway. With each step, he paused and stared, waiting to see if something flickered into view, some telltale glimmer of magic. Before long, even moving slowly like that, he was well past the line of magical runes, and he edged back toward the driveway.

From his new vantage, twenty yards closer to the house, he crouched, watching. Nothing moved for several minutes, and he was about to advance when a shadow shifted near the base of a tree. Andy narrowed his eyes and stared, his fiery gaze piercing the darkness to reveal a slender figure leaning against the tree. It was a man wearing a poncho-style cloak that seemed to blend into the tree’s vibrant green bark. He held a crossbow, and his gaze looked to be focused on the end of the driveway.

Andy slipped back into the foliage beside the driveway, careful of his foot placement, despite his spell’s ability to mask his noise. The man seemed very focused—very alert. Andy knew he had to take him out, but he didn’t want to approach head-on, not when the sentry was clearly looking for trouble. It didn’t seem like normal behavior to Andy; the guy was suspicious. Maybe it was because Andy had killed the other sentry, delaying his return, or maybe the guy had heard something.

Andy stalked through the greasewoods and large succulents, grateful that the previous owners had “desert-scaped” their yard. Even so, things were growing together, and Andy had to step on clumps of grass here and there. He hoped his spell performed as advertised and hid the sound. When he emerged from the brush, in a large turnaround section of the driveway before the four-car garage, he squatted low and stared toward the tree where the sentry lurked.

The man was still there, and his gaze, though it shifted left to right, was focused toward the road. Andy grinned, gripped his spear, and padded across the cement. He was so focused on the archer, so careful not to move into his line of sight, that he almost walked right into another sentry. When a deep shadow near the corner of the house and the left-most garage door moved, Andy almost gasped as he froze. He was out in the open, standing right in the middle of the driveway.

The shadow yawned hugely, and when Andy focused, allowing his magical sight to pierce the gloom, he nearly swore—the sentry wasn’t human. He looked like a cross between a man and a hound dog. Andy dropped into a crouch, trusting his magic and trying to make it as easy as possible for the magical smoke to hide him.

The guard grunted, pushing off the wall as he lifted his long, fur-covered snout toward the sky and snuffed loudly. He had big, droopy ears, a damp, black nose, and when he sniffed again, his lip curled up as he snarled, growling deep in his chest.

Andy licked his lips, gripping his spear. His mind raced, trying to decide the best move—try to retreat or go all out offensive. Images of the ruined high school ran through his mind. He saw piles of bodies, terrified kids, tear-streaked faces. He heard Jasper the troll’s taunting comments, and he imagined Omar and the others fighting their way through the dark city streets, trying to get to safety. Angry heat crawled up the back of his neck, and Andy answered the dog-man’s growl with one of his own. Then he stood and charged, pouring every bid of his impressive speed into the action.