They also found chitin pauldrons that were one size fits all; the leather used to tighten it would be easy enough to make additional holes in so that it fit them better. For now, they hung loosely, but it would be a simple fix the next time they were in a safe place.
Drew turned away and frowned. Again, they were working in a silence that he didn’t know how to break. Did she blame him for what happened? Was she just mourning? He dug around at the various items, lifting what looked like rat hide lid off a cockroach shell. Inside were chunks of blue-tinged meat. “I think I found some food.” He wrinkled his nose at the smell.
“Oh god, that’s awful,” Katie said, putting an arm over her mouth and nose. Drew replaced the hide and put it back.
“Oh, shit,” he said, glancing back towards the stairs. “We left the cart up near…up on the third floor.” Drew didn’t want to remember what had happened to Juan and he didn’t want to remind Katie about it.
“I don’t want to go back up there,” Katie said after a few seconds of contemplation.
“Yeah, I don’t really want to either.” He looked around, “But we’re gonna need food and water.”
“Well, we can’t eat that stuff,” Katie said pointing at the recently covered meat. “Maybe if we could cook it.” She glanced around, but there wasn’t anything to burn.
“Probably too bulky to carry anyway,” Drew said, once again wishing for a video game’s magic inventory. They resumed their search for things to assist them and found several bone clubs and javelins. Drew put on one of the quivers, putting an atlatl and several javelins in it. They were heavier than he would have liked, but he didn’t want to complain. They hadn’t seen any movement or monsters during their search of the camp. When they got to Chakri’s corpse, Katie kicked it a few times, and then with a strangled cry she seemed to collapse next to it, head buried in her arms.
Drew knelt next to her. He raised a hand to put on her shoulder, but then thought better of it and sat there in silence, her quiet sobbing echoing through the chamber. Drew, afraid he would say the wrong thing, stayed silent, waiting for her to be ready to talk.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do, Drew? I feel so goddamn helpless. Everything we try just ends up killing someone. And now we have no food, no place to go, and who knows what is out there? What if it’s worse? What if this is the safest place on Earth now? What sort of fucked up psycho did this to us? What if Sarah never wakes up?” She looked up, and Drew could see the pleading in her eyes, waiting for him to tell her it was going to be alright, that he was going to be able to fix everything.
“I don’t know, Katie. I don’t have a clue what’s out there. All I know is that there’s light, and I’m so gods damned sick of the darkness.” He looked down, breaking the eye contact, “I don’t want any of this; I didn’t ever want to be the one that kicked down doors and shot up the bad guys. I joined the Coast Guard so that I could hack drug lord’s computers. I don’t know how people deal with this, the violence and the death. Maybe there aren’t any safe spaces anymore, maybe there never were. But what do we do?” He paused looking around, “We keep moving because otherwise, I know we’re going to drown here. We keep moving until we can’t because otherwise, that’s letting this, all this,” he gestured towards Chakri’s corpse, “win.”
Drew looked up again, meeting Katie’s eyes again. He wasn’t sure what her expression meant. He had never been good at interpreting other people. She reached a hand out to hold his, squeezing it tightly, “Alright, let’s keep moving.” She stood up and grabbed Chakri’s axe; it was heavier than she could easily handle, but she added it to her pile of things and then turned back towards the safe room.
Drew shook his head, unclear as to what exactly had just happened. But he stood up as well, eyeing Chakri’s equipment. The chitin was still in good shape, but all of the leather had been ripped or burned. He didn’t relish trying to pull it off the dead, so he left it there.
Katie had found a fleece blanket in one of the cabinets. With the blanket, two more pipes that Drew cut out of the ceiling using acid dart, and a couple of the uncut leather pieces, they had enough material to build the litter.
Drew also built a splint for the obviously broken leg, hoping that treating it would help Sarah wake up faster. After binding the leg and getting Sarah onto the litter, they prepped to set out again. Katie shooed Drew away from picking up the litter, “If, no…when we get attacked again, you need to have your hands free to cast.” Drew nodded, the look in Katie’s eye telling him that arguing wouldn’t help him.
“Did you level up?” Drew asked, remembering he still hadn’t upgraded his acid dart.
“Yeah, I did,” Katie said, as she stared at nothing. “The human protectorate has demoted me to Seaman Apprentice.”
Drew snorted. It was the first thing like a laugh either of them had done since the break room, “Oh yeah, I got that message too. You get the one about the knights?”
“Knights? No, just the one about the level one thing. What did the knight one say?” Katie asked.
“It said because I was an assault mage, I was inducted into the Order of the Dragon and promoted to Midshipman.”
Katie quirked an eyebrow, “Am I supposed to salute you now?”
“Hah, no.” Drew shook his head, “It did say I got more interface options though, I haven’t taken a chance to check that out, actually.” The only interface he could think of was his Xatherite map. He pulled that up and realized that there were two options off to the side- SA Sarah Rothschild and SA Katie Sabin. He focused on Katie’s name and a new map appeared in front of him.
Katie’s map was three concentric circles, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere near as many links between the nodes as there were on his, even accounting for the smaller number of nodes.
“I can see your xatherite map, Sarah’s too.” He focused on Sarah’s name and her even smaller map appeared. It was hard to tell at first, but the nodes and lines were roughly in the shape of a blossom.
“They look different,” he said, comparing the three maps.
“How so?”
“Well, mine looks like star constellations. Yours is a bunch of circles, and Sarah’s looks like a flower,” Drew answered, flipping between the maps in front of him. “Also, you both have fewer links than me. And smaller groupings.”
Katie had pulled up her map as well and was looking at it curiously. “Yeah, before you came, we discussed it. Mitch said his map looked like a human, and Juan said his were stars like yours. How big are your groups?” She asked.
“Well, I have a bunch of five and six links.” He looked through Katie’s map, but the largest linked set he saw only had four links in it, and there was only two that large.
“Well, that explains why you have so many linked spells. I was wondering how lucky you had to be to get a perfect grouping. They aren’t even full yet, are they?” When Drew shook his head, she frowned, “Did the tutorial tell you anything about how the maps are generated?”
“Not really; the only thing it said was that I had more nodes than average.” Drew flipped through the nodes, and focusing on the various xatherite, saw that the new value of rarity had been added to all his xatherite. “When you look at your xatherite, do you see the rarity?”
Katie pulled up an individual xatherite and then shook her head, “No, just name, color, grade, type, effect, and cooldown. What are my rarities?”
“Well, all of your xatherite are widespread, except for the knight, which is common.” Drew looked over his xatherite too, and all his old ones but storm were likewise widespread, with storm being common.