The discussion had nearly taken two hours, and by the end, Samual decided that it “wasn’t worth the trouble” and left. Mary also wouldn’t be leaving the base to make sure the hill would have enough protection against a possible threat.
That left 7 of us, Dan, Alexander, Curtis, Brandon, Hanna, Cloak-guy and me. We decided to go out in groups of two groups of two, and one of three, I was with Cloak-guy (he still hadn’t given a name, so we had unanimously and unspokenly just agreed to refer to him as Claok-guy).
This worked out well for me, he didn’t talk much, so I wouldn’t need to uphold any conversations, meaning the only thing I’d need to deal with was the giant murderous insects.
It had only really started being dark then, but it was nearly 9 o'clock though we didn’t have a watch to check the exact time.
After all the exhausting conversation was over, I headed to the flat to sleep.
“H-hi, ehm?” on my way to the building though, I was stopped by a woman wearing a short white dress and a man with a collared gray shirt that I somewhat recognised. They looked somewhat unsure of themselves, especially the woman, but collected themselves enough to speak.
“T-thank you,” the woman exclaimed emotionally, her eyes slightly teary.
“If you hadn’t been there, we would have ended up getting.” the guy started talking, but hesitated, like he didn’t want to finish, “The kids might- might not be here” His voice was cracking slightly, though he was trying to hide it.
You could tell immediately how much they cared about those kids, which put a smile on my face. But at the same time, my mind was breaking down, how am I supposed to respond to that, maybe “It’s nothing, anyone would have done the same,” but that felt off, erm, maybe “Pleasure?”. Nope, that's not right. Taking a breath, I finally responded, “I’m just glad the kids are ok, and that they have people like you around them,”. Wasn’t sure if that was a good response, but it was honest, there being others around those children, especially after the hell that has broken loss, that truly care about them, it's something anyone would need. “Well, I need some sleep so,”
“Oh, sorry for interrupting that. Thanks, again,” the woman said.
Giving another smile I continued to walk into the building, which now wasn’t that hot, or it wasn’t melting my face at least. Making it to my room, I threw myself onto the bed and was instantly out cold.
Rubbing my head with my hands, I groaned. My morning headache was worse than usual today, my back also felt like it had snapped.
‘Will I never wake up and feel fresh, at the very least I had gotten used to the misery of waking, but why couldn’t it just not be pain?’
My brain-dead mental grumbling continued as I built the energy to get out of bed. After finally flinging myself to a stand, I noticed that I still had the clothes on from yesterday and that I also didn’t have any spare clothes. I was starting to become worried about leaving in a mess, but realised that everyone else would be in the same predicament, so I just tossed the entire issue out of my mind. Looking out the window, I could see a dark sky, with a slight ray of reddish light lining the bottom of it.
There wasn’t anyone visible outside, but I probably wouldn’t have been able to see people through the dark anyway. Reasoning that there weren’t many people up yet, apart from anyone patrolling, I sat back on the bed and waited. I might have sat there 20 minutes until I felt like a living person and launched back up to a stand.
Examining the apartment properly, I thought of how lucky we were that everything was furbished, though the stove, washing machine and other cooking appliances were pretty much useless.
The reason behind that was unclear, would the toilet be like that? What causes everything to not work?
Wanting to test, I walked to the toilet, flushed it, and it worked! This told me at least one thing, that it wasn’t an issue of mechanical physics. Just thinking about that was funny, ‘Yeah some of the basic principles of existence are still there,” but still, if all guns, electronic devices, cars and so on didn’t work, then something must be wrong. Or is something stopping them? I continued to contemplate everything before eventually making my way out of the building.
I could see a few people in the entrance hall as I walked out, about 3 to 4.
Getting outside, it was nice to see the sun coming back up, though it meant the heat would be back, I wasn’t too bothered as I sped to a jog.
“What's the plan?”
“Nothing, do you want-?”
No of course not, it's just that-”
I was so engrossed in my jog that even staying close to the camp, I hadn’t noticed how many people were leaving the building, some of which were preparing to make breakfast.
An hour later, after all the food had been made and eaten, John found me by the backside of the building.
“Sitting by yourself then?” he asked rhetorically, so I an acknowledging grunt in response.
“Well, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we’re is in desperate need of more food, but the closest places with enough food are some distance off, so we need to send out the groups we discussed”.
Making my way to my feet, I moved some hair out of my face and with an acknowledging yep, I walked with him to Cloak-guy. As he explained, we obviously wouldn’t be able to carry everything in our arms, so we were also backpacks and a wheelbarrow each, which had been left over on the grounds, and cleaned yesterday in preparation for this. Since there was a possibility that the stuff in the shop has been ransacked by someone or something else, another group was also going to a separate location a little closer. They were fairly small stores but should have enough food for a day each.
After the plan was told, Cloak-guy and I started our journey while pushing the wheelbarrows, I was the only one wearing a backpack though, probably on account of his cloak.
We must have looked comical to the outside perspective, one of us in medieval attire, the other in normal clothes, both with wheelbarrows in our hands walking down a street like nothing was wrong.
Though the situation was funny I was taking it seriously, the experience with the ant was still burned in my mind. The trek was in complete silence, he clearly didn’t like talking, and I was happy to oblige.
I wanted to watch him use a spell, It would probably look amazing but I wouldn’t know, since I never saw Hanna use a spell. After about 30 minutes of calm walking, Cloak-guy came to an abrupt stop and then spun to the right and stared at a house.
I turned to look in the general direction he was looking, but couldn’t see anything.
Turning to look at him I started to ask, “What is i-”. In a swift motion, he swiped his cloak out of the way and put up his hand to stop me, being far more dramatic than he needed to be. Or maybe not, because he moved his hand out in front of him, and held it there for a second, and though it was small, a dark blue circle was growing by his palm. Finally clocking what was happening, I grabbed the combat knife that Brandon lent me. Apparently, he was an apid fan of knives and daggers but figured that I get more use out of it assuring me he had many more on his person anyway. I gave a little thanks to his consideration, while the heads of two roaches could be seen poking out of a house. The blood on their face was a gut punch, knowing fully well what blood that was. A nasty feeling washed over me, and a black light flew towards the bugs from Cloak-guy.
It slammed into one of the bug's faces, pushing it back and leaving a crack in its armour. A large shriek came from it as it flailed its head from side to side before falling to the ground. The second bug turned to look at it, then also yelled cry, pushing it out of its way before turning towards us. I sprinted towards it, figuring I could distract it to give Cloak-guy some time to cast again. The bug seemed to move back a little. Seemingly, after seeing the one guy doing something unexplainable, it figured I could as well. Well, I figured I could use that, so I held my left hand up in its direction figuring I could get a reaction. And it actually worked The bug turned clunky around and tried to run into a room in the house to get out of my line of sight, while also pushing the other bug. But Cloak-guy had already finished his second spell, which flew past me with this disgusting feeling and smashed into the bug's back, ripping through its wings and leaving a large crack in its exoskeleton.
I started making my move properly and sprinted over into the house.
“Ahareahahhah”, A cry rang out of the bug, as it spun around, understanding that it couldn’t escape, but it couldn’t spin fast enough. I jumped onto its back knowing it couldn't get to me and stabbed towards the crack, but it shook around causing me to miss, so I did the same as before and grabbed the edge of its shell by the neck and stabbed at it. Unlike the last time, I could actually see where I was stabbing and it didn’t have much room to jump about, so I could get it right the first time. Just to make sure it was dead, I stabbed it a few more times before getting jumping off.
I loosened my guard assuming they were as good as dead, but the first bug suddenly jumped at me, over the one I had just killed, and slammed me into the wall beside the door. The air left my lungs and I could swear I broke a rib. A slight panic grew over me when I couldn't get up properly.
“Ahahhahhakekeakah…..” The bug let out a lengthy scream as it charged into me, I flayed my knife towards its head, but it didn’t care and suicidally launched itself at me.
Crack.
I felt like throwing up. Cloak-guy had shot a third black shard, landing directly in the previous crack on its head, and it slumped down dead.
Releasing a large exhale, I tried to stand up, but my chest wasn’t a big fan, telling me I had indeed broken a rib.
I stayed sat by the doorframe for a second before deciding to stand up, but the Cloak-guy had walked into the room and was looking at me.
“You ok?” he asked in a concerned tone but was attempting to mask it as nonchalant.
From this angle, I could actually see his face, and even though there wasn’t much light, his face was white, not his ethnicity, it was more like paper white. ‘Albinoisme’ a mentally suspected, but didn’t even think to ask.
“It's a broken rib, I can start moving again, but I don’t know how long to heal”, I responded to him, knowing that it would be better and probably safer to just continue moving than wait. He moved to sit on the stairs, which were on the other side of me. “I need rest too, magic, takes a lot”, his response was short but I could immediately see what he was talking about, his posture was even worse than before, and his head was hanging. “I…” he started talking but took a second, “my name’s Eric.” he sounded uncomfortable saying that. “Huh, a much better name than Cloak-guy,” I surprised myself when saying that, but he surprisingly just gave a chuckle. We continued to sit there for maybe an hour before continuing our travel.
