When she touched it, a blue glow surged throughout the room, bathing everyone in its light before fading away.
Chapter Thirty-Four — Initiative
Everyone looked at Katie expectantly, “So, what did you get?” Drew asked. He could have pulled up her map but chose not to. He didn’t want to inform JP and Robbi of his additional abilities.
“It’s…a familiar?” Katie said with a bit of confusion, “It’s called Eyes of the Loon, and it allows me to summon a creature whose eyes I can see through,” Katie continued to explain. Drew was circumspectly pulling up her map to look at the xatherite information on his own.
Xatherite Crystal Name: Eyes of the Loon
Xatherite Color: Blue
Xatherite Grade: Intermediate
Xatherite Rarity: Widespread
Type: Physical
Effect: Creates a psychically linked familiar whose vision you can share. Familiar cannot attack but can move up to 1000m away from the user. Lasts until killed.
Mana recharge time: 1 day, 14 hours, 24 minutes.
Glancing over Katie’s map, he also realized that she wouldn’t be able to slot it currently. But this was the sort of thing that would give them a significant advantage in the upcoming fight; it was obviously something they would need to have slotted into someone immediately. Sarah could slot it, but it would eat into her single white slot. For a moment he thought about slotting it himself, but he doubted he would be able to fight and use it at the same time. Which made it less useful for him since he wouldn’t be able to do reconnaissance during a fight, something that would help prevent them from being flanked or surrounded.
Meeting Katie’s eyes for a moment, he could tell she was thinking the same thing. “Daryl?” She mouthed to him, and he blinked. Daryl made a lot of sense, and if he could link it with his invisibility xatherite, he would become an even more potent spy. He turned to the other man, “Hey Daryl, you got any blue slots linked to your invisibility?”
A moment of surprise passed over the other man’s face before he got the semi faraway look in his eye that Drew had taken to mean someone was looking at their node map. “Uh, yeah, I do.”
“Excellent, I’d like you to slot it there, the idea of an invisible recon…drone sounds like it would round out your kit quite well.” Sarah nodded her head in agreement. “We’re gonna need as much intel as we can get for this fight, so I’d like you to stay near Sarah and keep her updated on what’s going on.” Drew then turned to Sarah.
“I’d like to have you doing command and control with Katie. You two probably have the best experience of anyone here doing that. Use Daryl’s mental communication to pass orders if you need to, and you can coordinate defenses and everything.”
Sarah nodded her head, “Right, Daryl slot that ASAP. We’ll want you back up and scouting as soon as we can. Chief, Chuck, Katie, and Daryl-I want you four near me while we travel.” Drew tried to remember who Chuck was but couldn’t place the name until the guy who could shape wood stepped forward with Bill and the other two. “We’ll have Robbi, Trey, Katie, and Chuck doing defenses. JP, you cover the rear guard while Drew takes the front. Jholie and the rest of you with weapons and armor on the outside, everyone else grab a cart and start pushing.”
Drew was amazed that Sarah had learned everyone’s names and abilities and wondered when she’d had the time… Probably while he had been sleeping. The young and mostly scared healer he had met a week ago in the Commandant’s plot was gone, replaced with this driven leader who ordered actions without hesitation. He wondered idly how she could possibly have changed so much over so short a time frame.
Thinking back on the changes he had experienced himself, he guessed it wasn’t that farfetched. After all, two weeks ago he would never have believed he would be the de facto battle leader of thirty people. Looking around at those people, he realized he didn’t know most of their names, only those that had been useful to him. That was something he needed to change, especially if they rescued a few hundred more people in a few hours. Most of the ones he didn’t know by name had an air about them, a fear that the others didn’t as they clutched their kris’s and spears. It didn’t seem to be paralyzing them like happened to some people but considering that everyone was military or the family of someone in the military, he supposed that made some sense. Military families learned to deal with uncertainty, or they didn’t stay family for long.
Waiting until Daryl had slotted his new xatherite, Drew cast energize on him, removing the headache associated with doing so. He accepted the other man’s thanks with a nod of his head and a tight smile, before watching him summon what looked to Drew like a fairly large duck, which he guessed was actually a loon. “Let me know if you see anything.” He then headed out into the parking lot, scanning around for any signs of trolls.
Not seeing anything, he watched the loon take off and begin flying circles around the parking lot. Daryl was invisible again, although he could see his aura standing off to one side where he was unlikely to be run into by someone accidentally. It only took a few more minutes for everyone else to get organized and they were off. Drew in the lead, looked behind him at the sea of green leathered people and then down at his own black jacket and dark navy-blue pants.
It was easy to see the other three main combatants. All three of them were wearing blue; Drew’s ODU pants and the police uniforms of the other two. Drew’s jet-black chitin enhanced armor was even more distinctive than the blue bulletproof vests since at least a few of the others still wore blue jeans under their green troll skin leather jackets. Min Sun had added sleeves to the vest, the troll skin dyed to a color more closely aligned with the original grey leather the orcs had used as a base. He wasn’t entirely sure how Min Sun had managed to create so much leather armor in so short a period, but it seemed like at least half the group was currently decked out in at least a green troll skin leather vest.
Musing on the chance that they would create a new trend, where the warriors wore blue and black as they made their slow progress out towards the main road leading to the north. They could see the DIA building’s entrance from here, although it was a little under a mile away from their current location. How fast could trolls run on open ground? He tried to remember how fast they had been during that first ambush with the sacrifices. They hadn’t made it very far before his spells had taken them, maybe a third of the way back to the DIA building. That meant they were probably a bit faster than humans. He wasn’t sure how fast their jumping ability would make them, but he hadn’t seen any of that first group jumping.
His musings were cut short as he began to see green forms filing out of the building. Drew immediately stopped and began casting storm over them. Hoping to kill as many as he could while they were still clumped up near the entrance. He heard shouts behind him as his fingers created the seals needed to send death and destruction towards his enemies. Seven or eight were out of the building when the five second cast time went off. Enveloping them in lightning, wind and water damage the mist caused by the storm made it impossible to see what effect his spell had caused.
Behind him the civilians were dragging their carts onto the track surrounding the soccer field, using it to transport the shopping carts full of food and fuel across the expanse of grass. He turned and followed suit, glancing back towards the DIA building’s entrance every now and again to check the status of his storm. About a quarter of the way across, the storm’s energy dissipated. Drew was slightly ahead of the group of civilians, while Katie, Chuck, and Robbi were running across to the other side where a row of mature trees had been planted as a windbreak.