CoESC Book 18-10.2: The War for Turf (Patreon)

While surprised, the Ennoia of the Unyielding Guardian Sword melded into her Truth of the Sword, giving her what she needed to do. Yuriko tilted her head and torso away from the incoming claw, then shrugged as the hand passed close enough to her cheek to cut it. Her rising shoulder bounded the hand up, then she followed up by reorienting her stab back into centre mass. 

The change in pace made her curious enough that she didn’t exert much effort in her counterattack, and the walking corpse managed to backstep out of her obvious reach. She could have propelled the Radiant mote to still connect with the creature, but perception showed quite a bit of difference compared to the norm. She assumed it had the base of a skeleton, but the bones were completely covered with plant fibres acting as muscles and armour. The eye sockets were filled with what looked like human eyes, but since they resisted her perception, she couldn’t actually be certain. There was a green-ish glow behind the pupils, though. The creature’s movements were smooth and graceful, though it only showed when she came close enough to ambush. 

Now that she was properly paying attention, Yuriko noted how fluid their movement was and how fast. It was only compared to the previous walking corpses, though, and objectively, they were slower than the Hunter Wyldlings she fought when she was thirteen. 

The introduction of a second combat knife into the mix soon dusted the creature, and Yuriko sighed at her failed expectations. 

Ratatatat! Boom! 

Yuriko stepped away from the incoming horde and looked towards the noise. Most of the passersby had wisely run off, and in the distance, she could see the muzzle flash of gunfire. Roughly a longstride away, she thought. Only the nearby horde was focused on her earlier, but she noticed that the more distant elements had shifted direction briefly. They returned to their usual behaviour after the destruction of the agile one. 

With no more innocents to keep safe, Yuriko threaded her way through the horde instead of cutting them down. It would be more efficient to find out where and why the dead rose in the first place rather than culling the whole. The spores reproduced quickly, and even now, many artificially muscled skeletons were crawling out of the dirt. 

“This had been planned,” Yuriko muttered. The walking corpses had been a problem for Westenland for a decade now, and they weren’t as simple as she initially believed. She suspected that something directed the foul creatures, and wondered if the agile corpse was an incarnation of sorts. Perhaps they were limited by their vessel rather than skill. 

She circled the park so that she’d arrive at the gunners from the flanks rather than from the front, since she didn’t want to get shot at. The cops were using assault rifles to tear the walking corpses to pieces, though that wasn’t always effective since the critters would either continue crawling to press the attack, or they would pull back and stitch themselves together, sometimes using body parts from other walking corpses to do so. 

When there was a reasonable gap between the fallen corpses and the upright ones, several officers—who didn’t actually look like regular police and more like special forces, come to think of it—stepped forward, carefully aimed their guns at the corpses’ heads and shot them. Surprisingly, the bullets didn’t all strike the skull but lower, at the base of the head where it met the spine, she thought, the nape of the neck?. Those who missed that point tried again, and every walking corpse struck at that point ceased to move. 

Huh, so that’s how they were dealt with. It made sense, of course; otherwise, the country would have long been overrun by these things. Yuriko didn’t spot the weak point simply because Radiance was more than effective, and this seemed like the first step in a long process of containment and destruction. Indeed, she saw that at the park’s borders, a cordon had been created, manned not by law enforcement, but what looked like a group of local militia. Or perhaps reserve officers? 

They were funnelling the survivors of the attack towards a collection point where, Yuriko assumed, they would be cleansed of the spores. Well, she was sure she was safe, and she didn’t want anyone messing with her stuff anyway. But she didn’t want to break the quarantine openly, so she could only keep away until evening, she supposed, then she could slip out. Ah, but she had to make sure that none of the spores clung to her body, or her clothes, and bags, so she’d have to bathe them in Radiance. The Cleanse spell didn’t work against the spores since, she supposed, they were technically alive. The spell didn’t get rid of parasites either, or the first-circle spell version didn’t work on them. Her last synchronisation had posited the need for her greater self, and she knew she’d look for a more complex version available in Shangria. She hoped she could actually cast the spell here. Actually, would Irisvaile even allow it? She still couldn’t deploy her Animakinesis, and she couldn’t thicken her perception before its ephemeral, nearly undetectable level. Self-boosting was the only recourse she had for her Anima, though she felt her reach grow to twenty-five paces over the past month. Whether that was a result of her incarnation body growing stronger, or if her true self did, and this body’s limitations grew to match, wasn’t clear. 

The memorial park had a fence made of iron grills around the border, and it had four, maybe five, entrances. Yuriko intended to use the park to cross over from the western entrance to the northeast exit, which would have allowed her to cut a league or so of travel. 

Well, not that she had anywhere to go at the moment…

She turned on the Bellemer pager, and it buzzed with a new message. She absently spread her perception aura to keep watch while she checked. The message was an address in District 2. She assumed it was a safehouse, so she’d head there as soon as she could. The pager buzzed again as another message arrived, this time a request for help against the Sporoid invasion. 

“So that’s what they called them?” Yuriko blinked in surprise. Huh. Well, she was already helping, but since she was still a wanted felon, a murderer at that, she still needed to avoid the authorities. She also had enough Weyrmarks not to be tempted by looting naughty police officers, or soldiers, she supposed. Those guns might be harder to pawn off anyway. 

By sunset, a few hours later, Yuriko had snuck her way towards the eastern side of the park. The tide of walking corpses had ebbed, mostly because all of the graves were emptied. She couldn’t imagine what kind of trauma this inflicted on the bereaved, especially those whose dead were freshly buried rather than the older graves. 

The special forces inside had been replaced by the Rakkisgrad Guard, and probably some volunteers. No one else was left in the cemetery, and Yuriko strode towards the fences rather than the exit, which she leapt over with little trouble. There were a few tall buildings around, so she had to run down a few blocks before she could duck out of sight. Someone must have spotted her because she heard some sirens blaring soon afterwards. 

She switched out of her attire, bathed everything in Radiance, then crossed a few more blocks eastward. Mindful of what had been asked of her, she tracked the sirens and gunfire to several hot spots across the district. The graveyard had been the major node of conflict, but the Sporoids could also make use of other corpses, apparently, not just humanoid ones. 

The city had several junkyards and landfills, and those were disgorging oddly shaped corpse mounds that were now being assaulted by the Guard. Most of the Sporoids from there were quadrupedal, though not smaller than a person. Some were actually quite bigger, and some had more than two pairs of limbs. Perhaps they were mixing corpses up? 

Either way, the Sporoid weak point still seemed to be at the nape of the neck, and with the quadrupeds, it was much easier to hit that part if the shooter was at an elevated position. The corpses would still be full of spores, however, so she wondered what they’d do to safely dispose of them. 

Ah, they gathered the corpses and sealed them into a metal box, much like a dumpster, then poured some kind of liquid inside before they closed the lid. As interesting as that was, Yuriko didn’t find many spots of trouble afterwards. Rakkisgrad’s response was considerably swift despite the rampant corruption, but then again, those in power needed something to rule over to stay in power, right?

By nine in the evening, most of the hullabaloo was over. Yuriko was tempted to continue her travels, but she guessed there would be travel restrictions and checkpoints. Hmmm, she actually didn’t have a means to contact the Bellemer group since she hadn’t been provided a pager number to contact as well, although…

She left the roof and found an empty apartment, though the space she found had noisy neighbours. She then closely examined the pager, and sure enough, there was a slip of paper with a number stuck against the battery pack. Speaking of that, the gadget had retained power throughout the month, and the indicator still read as full. Chaos Sight revealed that the battery was actually enchanted to draw power from the atmosphere if the machine was turned off, and since she almost always kept the pager powered down, the reserves were topped up. They also weren’t using the familiar runescript lines method, which she realised when she tried to copy the trick. Instead, it seemed they used a symbol rather than script. It was a bit fascinating, and she wondered if this was something taught at the academy. If so, then she might choose to linger there rather than hurry onwards. Or she could buy a book on how to do it? Ah, more Weyrmarks needed, or whatever they used in place of it anyway. 

She needed to use a phone to leave a message, and the only easily accessible ones were the public payphones. She headed downstairs to wander around in search of that and dinner. Grocery stores were closed, and so were the diners. A pity. 

Once she found a payphone, it took some time to figure out how to actually leave a message, but once she did, she said, “Estimated departure?” She didn’t want to spend too much time at a single place, and given that she’d just used her perception all over the place, she was likely to attract the bloodsuckers like flies to carrion. 

She was rather surprised to be left alone that night, but she supposed they would focus more on the incursion than anything else. Either that or the tracker woman didn’t run across her trail. She also wasn’t sure how long an imprint she left would last, and she had no way of knowing since she didn’t have the same kind of skill the bloodsuckers used. Oh well. 

The next morning, she received a message that said, “5th.” Oh, that was tomorrow, wasn’t it? With a sigh, Yuriko planned her route to cross two districts to reach District 2. She could simply try to use the radial routes closer to Central, then take a circumferential road, or she could take the longer circumferential roads, like C-8, which was just a few blocks away from her apartment. The problem was that those routes might have checkpoints, and the more likely place to have them was the radial routes. Then again, they might have both. She could take the backroads, but that would inherently take longer. 

Well, she had the entire day to cross roughly fifty longstrides, so after a hearty breakfast, she went on her way.