As we entered the school building, the first, unmistakable thing you could observe was the ravages that had been done to the place, to the occupants.

“They’re dead,” I spoke aloud, not making particularly insightful commentary. It was like I needed external validation for my observation.

“That they are,” Owen replied, prodding a body with his foot, as if to confirm they were truly deceased.

The bodies, by the way, were disfigured. I couldn’t help myself as a morbid curiosity grew inside me; I kneeled down by one particularly feminine body near the doors to study it further.

Is it a girl? I asked myself. They were wearing a shirt and tie but that merely meant they went to this school--they very well could’ve been a well-dressed faculty member. The pleated skirt, however, suggested to me that they were, in fact, a student.

They can’t have been much younger than myself. Judging by her fairly developed body, only a handful of years younger than myself at most.

However, there wasn’t anymore I could derive from this corpse. In a rather grim fashion, a similarity born by the other deceased in this particular area was abject and vulgar dismemberment; nearly all bodies had stumps for limbs and only a select few had heads.

The specific body I was checking out was merely a torso and waist--no arms, legs, or head. Blood splattered and stained the pure-white of the shirt while the skirt looked like it had many damp spots. Her limbs ended in grotesque stumps of flesh, blood no longer pouring out of the wound (judging by the puddle the body was currently lying in) but not quite dried either.

I found myself transfixed on the body; so alien. In its current state, it barely resembled a human and it was that that was so interesting--five swipes are all you need to completely reconfigure someone.

What was truly confusing, though, was the complete lack of limbs. I don’t mean on the bodies but in the room; there were corpses with limbs chopped off but no limbs anywhere to be found.

“They look so different without limbs,” I voiced my thoughts into the silence that permeated the atmosphere.

“Of course they do,” Owen replied again.

“Where are they?”

“There- You know, good question.”

“Probably eaten,” Luna answered whereas Owen was stumped. “By those… Things. They need a name.”

“Limb eaters?” S2 volunteered. Most of the group seemed nonplussed about the bodies scattered about the place, though that wasn’t surprising in the case of the servants. If Candace was perturbed, she certainly didn’t show it.

“Just call them mongrels; they don’t need a name,” Jonathon answered with finality. His whole body exuded solemnity as he kneeled over another body before standing up. He seemed to be the only one who took this situation with an intense severity and reverence.

“You okay?” Candace finally spoke up, concern on her face. She stepped towards him.

“I’m fine. Just a damn fucking shame it had to be a school of all things.” For the first time since I met him, I sensed a bit of anger seeped into his tone. “We should get going,” He ventured.

He seems uncomfortable.

As soon as he began to move, however, S2 spoke up again, serious replacing her light tone from the name suggestion:

“You probably shouldn’t do that.”

“What; go in there?” Jonathon pointed towards a door behind the counter that demarcated reception.

“Seems like a bad idea,” S2 vaguely replied.

Just to see, I activated my Specialisation and looked at the door he was pointing to. Sure enough, I saw those limb eaters dashing through with far more haste than they had when going outside.

“Monsters?” Jonathon asked. S2 simply shrugged.

“Mongrels,” I answered, causing his head to swivel to face me, “There’s a few behind that door.” I looked towards S2; she caught my gaze but just stared at me in return. Helpful.

“Alright, then. We’ll handle it like outside; get behind the counter while Candace lures them out.” His commands were short but they didn’t need to be long.

Without any reluctance or hesitation on our part, everyone hid themselves behind the counter including Jonathon.

Once again, the eerie tune that emanate from Candace’s mouth filled the room, the silence only serving to amplify it. She held the noise for a few seconds before nothing and we just waited for a response.

Initially, there was nothing. We waited for a few more seconds, and then a minute; still nothing.

“Okay,” Jonathon whispered to all of us, “I’ll kick down the door. Make sure you’re ready for when they come out.”

With only a brief glance at all of us to make sure we understood, he stood up and gingerly walked over to the door. All of us were already prepared--Luna and I had our bows already out and in our hands.

Methodically, Jonathon took off his sandals (a perplexing fashion choice but I wasn’t one to judge) revealing his bare feet. In one moment, a glistening, metallic sheen shone over his rough skin and the next, he slammed his foot down hard against the door as a loud crash reverberated throughout us.

The door popped off its hinges and slammed down onto the ground in the room, hitting one of the monsters judging by the squeal.

Whether the door was open or not, it didn’t matter; the goal was to make a loud noise and make it clear it came from reception--kicking down the door did just that.

As soon as Jonathon took one step back, he threw his foot forwards, a kick connecting with the first limb eater as it rocketed across the slick floor. The blood served to propel it further until it brutally hit against the wall, the bookcase besides it violently shaking in place.

I couldn’t watch to see the fate of that creature, however, for an immediate two more of them flowed out of the room and required our attention. As soon as their spindly, strange feet tapped crossed the threshold, arrows pelted its body, shaking in pain. Immediately, just like the other one, it was kicked by the mighty metallic feet of Jonathon.

Rather than risk the acidic damage, he only ever attacked the creatures on their sides--who knows what chemicals were burbling inside their maws.

Just like before, but even easier this time due to the bottleneck that was a door, we cut down each creature one-by-one through a competent display of teamwork. For whatever reason, they seemed somewhat resistant to piercing damage but bludgeoning worked to kill them. Whatever internals they had, they weren’t resilient to hard knocks like orphans were.

Throughout the entire engagement, Candace stayed hunched over and hidden--clearly a non-combatant, not that I was surprised--while Owen hovered near her somewhat. Despite claiming his System Specialisation gave him excellent aim, he mostly just utilised that to land a few good shots by lobbing whatever was near him at the time--rocks or books, it seemed. He had yet to demonstrate significant combat prowess, however.

It got me thinking that, allegedly, they were a well functioning team that had cleared hives before we joined up with them; was the arrangement really just Jonathon doing all the killing?

Before I could ponder on this anymore, I was distracted by the disgusting squelching emanating from Jonathon’s hand ripping out teeth by the dozen. Without any acknowledgement from Luna, both servants went about doing this as well, having interpreted this as a duty of them for this hive.

In some ways they seemed so human. In other ways, I was reminded of robots when I watched them. 

So much strength in such a small frame. I wish I was that strong.

S2 was truly envious.

“Anything in there?” I asked Luna. Seeing how we were just standing there, doing nothing, might as well explore that office. 

“Maybe?” She replied mischievously, not demonstrating any intent to actually investigate that room.

Sighing, I gingerly stepped over the toothless bodies before walking into the room myself.

She’s getting too used to having everyone else do something for her.

Inside was pretty much as I expected; some desks, smashed and broken computer, and other equipment you’d find in an office--like filing cabinets and a photocopier. There were bodies dotted about the place, similarly dismembered--a tell-tale sign for what killed them. They were distinctly adult in age.

Apart from all of that, the distinctive purple limb that formed this hive had crashed through the wall and split the room in half; you had to physically clamber over the thing to reach the other side. Not really seeing anything of interest, I decided to check the bodies.

Hanging around one of their necks--one of the bodies that retained their head--was a lanyard holding a card as well as some keys.

Apparently, this person was Melissa Griffin and was a designated faculty member of the school. Hopefully, that meant the keys on her person should get through most locked doors, though I doubted all that many would be locked, seeing how the hive emerged during the school day.

A small thought niggled at me that her body would be harder to identify without a card that conveniently carried her name on it, but that thought was subdued by the rationale that she still had a head.

“Was there something in there?” Luna asked as soon as I walked out. The rest were standing around, apparently having picked the corpses clean of usable materials.

“Just a lanyard and some keys,” I replied.

“Why didn’t you just take the keys?” Owen asked pointedly.

“The card may be able to open some doors that the keys can’t,” I stated matter-of-factly. I didn’t know if that was true here, but it certainly was for my school. Luna seemed surprised at that revelation.

“This is a school; I don’t see why we just can’t kick down some door that won’t open,” He replied. I just shrugged; it was just natural for me to resort to keys rather than brute force, obviously.

“I’d rather not have to do that,” Jonathon clarified, shutting down Owen’s argument.

With all that done, there was nothing keeping us in the reception area anymore. So, we began to work our way further into the hive.

Normally, walking through a school building such as this doesn’t take much time; schools are organised in a way there are corridors with classrooms branching off of them. That means that if you just ignored the classrooms, it was fairly quick to traverse the whole complex from end to end, bottom to top.

But that only worked for an intact building. The general rule was that the more rooms there are, the more complex a hive became. Compartmentalisation of a building resulted in a maze-like configuration after an emergence; what was once simple and linear became labyrinthine in structure.

For a school like this, that certainly applied. If this school was intact, it’d most likely qualify as a medium-sized hive, much like a warehouse--a warehouse’s general spacious room meant limbs from a hive had negligible effect on altering the general structure of the location.

However, because those giant, solid purple tendrils had whipped through the bricks and concrete, caving in rooms, destroying walls, and collapsing ceilings and floors, the complicated pathways throughout the place elevated its size category to a large hive.

These size hives generally took a day, perhaps more, to get through.

And so, for the next few hours, in fact, our group proceeded according to our strengths. In charge of general navigation, it turned out, was S2. As we entered a new classroom, she’d have a general feeling of where to go. In addition to that, she’d give her opinion on whether some place was dangerous and, if so, perhaps why (not that she often knew).

This, in turn, led to what seemed to be my primary purpose in the group; it was clarifying and expanding upon the feelings that S2 had gathered. If a room felt bad, I’d activated my Specialisation in a short burst to see if I could derive any information from it. For something as simple as a monster, due to our method of extermination, I could usually see them flowing out of the doorway.

From the get-go, Jonathon trusted mine and S2’s intuition, never once doubting that what we said was dubious or deceitful--which made sense; he was the one who hired precogs, after all. Owen seemed mildly distrustful at the start but that just seemed to be his personality; after the continued validation of our claims, reason prevailed and he also believed S2 and I at our word. I could never quite get a read on Candace, but she rarely said a thing.

Our tactics remained mostly unchanged. Doors provided ample reason to stay in one room and lure monsters out from the other; they provided innate cover and throttled any swarm that could potentially occur.

Upon careful examination by S1, she’d try her best to emulate and explain the sounds the monsters were ambiently making to Candace who’d take her input and convey a truly alien tone.

What was interesting, however, was she never copied S1 perfectly; she added her own spin on things. It was not like she seemed incapable of doing it but more like she mystically had knowledge of the variety of sounds a monster could make; a monster wouldn’t react to another one of its kind if it made peaceful noises but if it heard a warcry, that’s certainly a whole other matter.

Because of that aspect to her System Specialisation--and my rather lack of use in fighting these monsters (both limb eaters or otherwise)--I found myself an abundance of time and a preponderance to ponder upon Candace.

Owen stayed by her side most of the time in what I began to see as a rather protective fashion--It was a shame I didn’t know their last names because I was curious whether they were related. Jonathon likely knew.

Apart from her use of her Specialisation, she hardly spoke at all. I doubted that I’d even shared a conversation with her at all from the moment I met her. It got me thinking; is she just naturally quiet like I was? However, I had spoken plenty in comparison to her, and made me wonder whether it was some sort of selective mutism instead?

But then, a more insidious thought entered my mind; does her system have anything to do with it? I’m not even sure how I began to think that but it brought up examples of people to my mind; those who gained System Specializations that altered their body in some way. Some suddenly had their whole bodies covered in chitin or carapace while others brains were distorted in order to use their Speialisation.

In fact, there was quite a famous user employed by the G.U.G. with alleged omniscience. No one exactly knew how their Specialisation worked--I wasn’t even sure they existed, with a claim of omniscience--but the most popular theory goes that they were incapable of first-person sight. A completely unimaginable way to perceive the world.

Even my Specialisation was basically just seeing things that weren’t there yet; it was fundamentally the same as regular sight.

So, perhaps, just perhaps, to accommodate a System Specialisation that tailored a body’s voice box to make impossible sounds, it affected Candace in some way?

The abundance of time that I had was clearly not helping me. I was losing myself to speculation over the boredom; the standard monsters in a weak hive were so easy to kill that a team as large as ours with useful Specialisations and effective teamwork rendered them next to harmless.

In fact, my role in the matter was actually relegated to a lesser position; as it was, the arrows hardly affected most of the monsters here (there were a few types that I did manage to seriously wound, however) and my, frankly, complete reliance on my Specialisation to hit them was a bad omen. As soon as I complained of a minor headache once I verified S2’s claim that the next room contained monsters of two species, she insisted that I stopped helping out in battle.

“No no no no,” She spoke rapidly at me with my first sign of defiance, “You’re already plenty help as it is; just let my master take up your slack.” She wasn’t as comforting as she was trying to be.

However, I didn’t have the energy to argue with her. Memories of blood clotting my eyes and debilitating headaches rose up in my mind, harkening back to the last hive I had been in, and I felt completely unenthused to say I should do more.

But I want to help! It was a stupid desire but it was strong down to the bone. With S2 here, they basically didn’t need me; she already provided enough caution for entering a new room.

Jonathon and Luna both looked on at the two of us with a concerned look while Owen was inscrutable. 

“Why should Charlotte hold back?” Jonathon asked S2.

“Because a headache is a bad sign. It starts as a headache, then a hemorrhage, and then death!” I was taken aback by her pessimistic outlook on things.

“It’s-It’s not that bad,” I tried to argue but S2 instantly retorted.

“How do you know? Are you willing to risk it?” Those were the final words that killed any desires to combat her argument.

Did I just get lucky the last time?

“If S2 says you should hold back, I think you should listen to her,” Jonathon weighed in.

Luna remained silent. Maybe she doesn’t want to influence my decision?

“Fine. I-I’ll stay back when you’re fighting,” I stuttered out, tired over the ordeal.

With that, my role in this whole operation was simply getting a few more details over what we’d be facing next. And I hated that. I felt useless, and a freeloader. Jonathon even had the gall to suggest that I even stop doing that, not wanting to risk anything serious. It was only my utter insistence that I could at least help in this way that quelled any arguments.

My mood turned sour, and it seemed that neither the servants nor Luna liked my sidelining in clearing the hive. The atmosphere within our group grew that slight bit heavier.

It was only natural, then, that after a few hours and having gotten to around the end of clearing out the second floor of the place that Jonathon announced we’d be having a break.