None of them had xatherite growing out of them, and their auras, if they had had one, were long gone by the time he inspected the corpses. But he did find a couple of wicked looking knives. Well, more like kris, since their blades were wavy. He tried to remember if there was a length requirement for a kris. He couldn’t remember but felt like these were too short.
“So much for knowing how to find that information,” Drew muttered, his brain having discarded tons of useless information in favor of knowing how to find it on the internet.
The next group was in a similar state. He counted seven bodies. Although it was difficult to tell, they seemed to be extra vulnerable to fire, their burns rather more extensive than the orcs had been after frostfire. He decided to call these new creatures trolls since that was the only creature that looked even vaguely like them that was vulnerable to fire that he could think of now.
“Why would they sacrifice people by fire if they were more vulnerable to it?” Drew asked himself, as he made his way through the rubble and towards the third group. The sacrificial fire still smoldered, and none of the bodies within it moved. He counted another six troll bodies here. None of them looked any different, but he couldn’t imagine the head cultist surviving. And none of them had xatherite.
He frowned. That head cultist should have been a ‘boss’ and should have dropped xatherite. He looked around him-there was no sign that something had gotten away. A shield spell and a teleport maybe? Or was it because he wasn’t in the dungeon anymore and xatherite was rarer out here?
Delaying as long as he could while looking at the dead trolls, he then walked towards the pyre. He smelled burned human flesh. The scent of the burnt trolls had been more…bitter, more like charcoal. But human flesh had a sweet scent to it; his fingers clenched into fists as he flashed back to that night in the Caribbean all those years ago.
Black smoke marred the morning light. The fire had been put out quickly, but not soon enough. Sixteen bodies… Doc said they had suffocated from the smoke in the cabin rather than the heat, that the fire had only begun burning them after they were already dead. He looked down and his hands were covered in ash. It was the smell he knew he would never forget.
He reached out for Zoey; she always came to him when he had the flashbacks. There wasn’t any barking though, and then he remembered where he was. He had fallen to his knees, bad leg forgotten as the memories surfaced. He gulped air; the wind had shifted, coming from the northeast now, and he welcomed the switch to sewage and distant rain. The base had been built adjacent to the district’s treatment plant, one of the reasons it could be allowed to be as big and sprawling as it was while still being in DC.
Shaking himself out of his memory, he pushed back to his feet. None of the sacrifices moved, but they were clearly human. He wiped his hands clean of the imaginary ashes, fighting off another flashback as he turned away from the scent and limped away.
“Hello.” A voice sounded in his head and he looked around, his hands ready to cast more spells.
“Hey now, calm down! I’m human; I’m not here to hurt you.” The voice was masculine, but as Drew turned his head looking for the source, he didn’t see anyone. Then at the edge of his vision, approaching slowly was an aura like the one around Sarah or Katie, but made of indigo, violet, and green. He pointed his fingers at the aura.
“Woah, woah, don’t shoot!” A thin black man appeared within the aura, he looked to be in his mid-twenties and was wearing blue jeans and a jacket. “I just saw your fireworks show. We’re on the same side.”
Drew narrowed his eyes, “Who are you? Why couldn’t I see you?”
“I’m Daryl. You couldn’t see me because I have an invisibility xatherite.” Daryl paused, waiting for Drew to ask any questions, “How did you know where I was?”
“It’s a secret.” The two stared at each other. Drew was still shaken from the flashback and knew he wasn’t in a place to make good mental calls.
“Look, we can do this whole…spy vs spy thing later, we need to get inside before the mana storm hits.” Daryl turned to point with his face towards the northeast.
Drew frowned. A massive storm cloud had appeared in the last few minutes and was moving towards them at a visible rate. Instead of the normal black clouds, it held the seven colors of the xatherite in all their darkest variations. “What the fuck is that thing?”
“I call ’em the mana storms. They really mess everything up though. Their water isn’t safe…and it’s gonna hit soon, so we need to get inside.” When Drew nodded he lowered his hands, “Come with me, I got a spot where I’ve been laying low.”
Drew followed Daryl, who clearly wanted to walk faster than Drew could with his limp, but neither of the two said another word as they headed for the housing area to the northwest of them. Daryl turned into the third house, looking around, “Don’t see any green skins, so we should be fine.” He unlocked the front door and they went in. Drew took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. Outside, he could hear the wind picking up as the edge of the storm started to hit the area.
Daryl waited until Drew was in and the door was locked before turning back to him and saying excitedly, “Man, how did you do that? We tried to fight them when they first showed up, but they just shrugged off the guns like they were nothing.”
“I guess that reaffirms my troll theory; they seem to be vulnerable to fire,” Drew said. The room was dark because all the blinds had been pulled shut, but he could see through the hallway into the kitchen where tinfoil lined the window over the sink.
“Nice, now if only we could throw fireballs at them, we’d be set,” Daryl said laughing as he led Drew up the stairs. “I found this place on the second day after the green skins came marching out of the DIA building and rounded everyone up. Key was under the mat.” The upstairs had been barricaded; desks, chairs, and nightstands had turned it into a narrow walkway that zigged and zagged through the hallway, ending in the master bedroom.
“How did you escape capture? The only reason I’m still out here is because I went invisible and slipped out. Been looking for other people ever since.”
“Just made my way here from CGHQ,” Drew answered after a moment of thought, now that the stress of his flashback was over. He could tell he had been acting weird, but Daryl had a friendly way to him that was quickly putting Drew at ease. “You stationed on the base?” Drew asked.
“No, I’ve been out for a few years now; my wife is stationed here,” Daryl answered as they finally made their way into the room. The bed had been set up near the wall, and a table of food (mostly canned) and paper plates sat in the other. The rest of the room’s furniture seemed to have been commandeered for the barricade.
“Your wife?” Drew asked, looking around for another person.
“Yeah, she was herded with the rest of them into the DIA building,” Daryl answered.
“That where the sacrifices came from?”
“Yeah, she hasn’t been burned yet. They’ve only done that twice now, both times right before a storm.”
Chapter Twenty-One — Daryl
Drew had been peering out of the corner of a window, enraptured by the beautiful colors of the storm around the house. The rain seemed to catch different colors as it fell, looking like oil-slicked water, the different blasts of lightning changing the colors in a captivating, rippling mosaic of colors. He turned away from the window to look back at Daryl, who he realized had clenched his fists together. Obviously, he had missed some sort of reaction from the other man.