Arcane Apocalypse

29 – Other Survivors

Mia peeked out from behind a corner, taking in the distant sight of a disorderly group of people shouting at each other while only a bare few kept watch. There were roughly fifty of them, which was quite a lot but also dreadfully few considering how many people lived in the city.

Reasoning that most people kept to the high panel buildings rising into the sky spread around the residential section they were in, Mia kept her thoughts from spiralling. She did hear voices and such from above, quite a lot even coming from the building they were hiding behind.

Must have been those fucking goblins. Mia thought, remembering how she saw the vicious little things force open doors and drag out loot from the many apartments across the street when she was sniping at them. The regular goblins were dumb as rocks, but the higher level ones seemed to have almost human levels of intelligence, though twisted into something malicious and evil by whatever made monsters, well, monsters.

If that theory was true, it was reasonable to expect much more people to have survived in regions of the city not under the control of the goblins but of monsters from some other Rift. Right? Right! Mia decided she’ll go with that theory until proven otherwise. For the good of her mental health, if for nothing else.

“What are they talking about?” Mark whispered, trying to get a look himself, but getting dragged back by Brent.

“Uhhh,” Mia squinted, ears twitching. “There is this one girl cursing out a bunch of older people for being spineless cowards. Which the older people don’t seem to like too much.”

“I didn’t even know half of those curse words,” Carmilla whispered. “Uhhhh, I think she is going to get lynched?”

“I don’t think so,” Mia said, focusing in on the group and what little of its center she could see. The girl in question was maybe a few years older than Mia in her mid-to-late twenties, who had the delinquent look down to a T with a burgundy leather jacket and ripped black jeans. More importantly, Mia heard and saw most of the crowd who were under thirty stood firmly behind the girl and were throwing their support behind her. “Maybe a fight, but most of the crowd is with the girl.”

“Really?” Carmilla blinked, then leaned over Mia’s shoulder to take a look. “I guess? Uhhh … but is barging in and putting us between two groups ready to tear into each other really a good idea?”

“What are they fighting about?” asked Brent after a moment, frowning deeply as he no doubt tried to listen in himself with little success.

“Food, and whether they should send groups out to scavenge and raid,” said Carmilla. “The girl wants to head in either deeper into the city, or out into the forest to hunt, but the others want to stay here and ration food … and hope that the military rolls in before they starve to death.”

Mia gave a nod when Brent glanced at her with a raised eyebrow, confirming the vampire’s words. 

“Mia, we might not have all come just to help you, but we are still trying to find your mother as one of our primary objectives,” said Brent. “If we get bogged down here by involving ourselves in this … “

“Mom lives only a bit further out, in the residential part of the city starting only a half-an-hour walk away from here,” Mia said. “If she fled from the house, these people might know where she might be sheltering along with the rest of the people from the suburbs? I think we should at the very least tell them about that grocery shop and to avoid going into goblin territory … or uhm, maybe they have an alchemist who could replicate Erik’s potions? You still have the recipe Mark, right?”

“I do,” he nodded. “Erik said it’s extremely basic, and even someone without a class should be able to replicate it if they have experience in chemistry and the dexterity needed to make it.”

“Sounds good,” said Brent. “Alright, who’s in agreement on trying to help out this group? Perhaps we could even settle down somewhere around here later if it's safe enough. Making a good first impression and connections could help that along nicely.”

“I’m in,” said Lina. “Though I’m with that girl a hundred percent. The main reason I left home was because I hated the idea of sitting on my butt and hoping for the best.”

“Agreed,” said Mark, the sentiment quickly echoed by everyone else, even Sam, who just shrugged sulkily when Brent glanced at him. 

Manchild. Mia scoffed inwardly. Instead opting to take another look at her surroundings. Honestly, she always liked this little part of the city with its sizable greenspace and overgrown look. 

The ground was about 2 parts panel buildings, 3 parts spacious parking lots and 2 parts greenery with towering oak and other trees that were probably standing right where they were since the second world war. It had a cozy feel to it, but Mia also realised how easily a group of even half-witted goblins could be skulking about in the shrubbery without anyone noticing them.

And the last type of monsters we haven’t come across yet are supposed to be wolves, coming from the only other level 10 Rift besides the Goblin one. She could only hope the wolf Rift spawned on the opposite side of the city, getting the two highest level ones near each other would have been peak bad luck.

“Ready?” Brent asked in a whisper, and received a round of nods. “Alright, follow behind me and try to look friendly. Tensions are already running high, if they see one of you mage types glowing like a Christmas tree that might just push them over the edge, alright?”

“Wait you can see us glow?” Mia asked, frowning. She thought only people with some version of her Spirit Sense could see mana. 

“Channelling Ki into the meridians in my eyes gives me rudimentary mana sight,” Brent said quickly. “Now, ready or not?”

“Oh, yeah sorry.” Mia scratched her cheek in embarrassment as her thoughts ran around in a circle. Channelling the what now into the what? What’s a ‘Ki’? And what do meridians have to do with anything? Why would that … 

Brent squared his shoulders, sheathed his sword and straightened his back before taking his helmet off and hanging it on the hilt of his sword. He forewent every notion of stealth, probably even making his footsteps louder on purpose as he rounded the corner and set off at a brisk pace towards the arguing group. Mia, and the rest of them hurried after him, and did their best to mimic his straightforward approach.

They weren’t noticed until they were only fifty or so metres away, so involved in the shouting match the crowd was by that point. A little kid, barely twelve was the first to notice them coming out from between a line of bushes on a beaten down dirt path. He shouted, screamed and a few people turned.

Brent held up his arms in the universal sign of meaning no harm as pointy … sticks and objects that could be called weapons if one squinted hard enough were levelled at him. Most of the people still didn’t notice them, having only eyes for the people they’d been cursing out for the last ten minutes.

Taking Brent’s words to heart, Mia didn’t ready mana into her fingertips, but nor was she willing to leave her fate up to the goodwill of these strangers so the spell circle of Arcane Shield was primed and ready should she need it. It would probably take a second or two for her to guide the mana into her fingers, but that would be it.

“Greetings, friends,” said Brent, his voice raised and echoing in the open space in a way that made Mia suspect some magic being at play. “We couldn’t help but hear you- “

“Who the fuck are you?” an older man asked, glaring at the group like they killed his favourite dog. “If you are with that were-cunt you can fuck right off, we want no part in his madness. Leave us alone.”

“Are you going blind too, you senile old man?” the delinquent girl Mia noted as being the leader of the younger faction shouted, stomping her way through the crowd of people and coming to a stop only a few meters away from Brent. “They are not his. Even the kid could see that.”

As she said that she patted the brown haired little kid on the head taking refuge behind her, the same kid who was the first to spot the group’s approach.

“Hi, I’m Avery,” the girl said, her hawkish gaze sweeping through the group. Her eyes didn’t have whites, the flaming orange irises she had reached all the way to the edges of her eyes with a large pitch black pupil at the centre. Just like a hawk’s. “Did you guys come from the inner city? … you certainly look roughed up enough.”

Mia took a glance over their get up, noting how her once white jeans were more grey and brown now, how Lina’s blond hair was sticking to her skull from the sweat, the many tears in just about every inch of Sam’s clothing. Though Carmilla still looked to be the worst off, still looking like a malnourished street kid who rolled around in the mud.

“We did,” said Brent, not lowering his hands and probably rightly so. Most people kept their eyes on him, on his silvery armour spotted with scratches and dents and the longsword hanging from his hips. “We overheard you had some food troubles and thought we’d at the very least mention that we came across a grocery shop just five minutes away that still had quite a bit of foodstuff in it. We couldn’t fit much of it into our packs.”

That might not have been the smartest thing to say. Mia held back a grimace, feeling the half a hundred hungry gazes locking in on their backpacks. This must be how a rabbit feels tossed before a pack of hungry hyenas.

“They are trying to lure us in for a trap!” the older man shouted, glaring hatefully at Brent. “Get the fuck outta here before we throw you out ourselves!”

“Shut up,” Avery shouted back, turning to glare at the balding older man. “Do you really want us to starve to death? We have to take risks.”

“The military is coming!” the man shouted, stomping his feet on the ground like an angry teenager with spittle flying from his mouth. Unfortunately, unlike with an angry kid throwing a tantrum, the man’s stomp had magic in it and sent the ground rumbling. “They promised, you heard the broadcast, you insolent girl! Why must you put the children in danger with your idiocy?”

“They are all adults,” Avery glared back at him, her hair rising and her locks swinging back and forth like the plumes of a bonfire. “They can decide for themselves whether to put their faith in a military we all know isn’t good for shit, or to risk their lives to feed their families. Which they wouldn’t have to do if senile bastards like you had even a bit of spine in them.”

“I won’t have you drive our youth into making worthless sacrifices with your ignorance!”

We should have just snuck by them. Mia thought, her eyes tracking the flickers of mana moving about in the crowd. The old man whose name was still a mystery was brimming with earth mana. Waves upon waves of it were flowing into the ground from his feet while Avery was practically burning up like a second sun in Mia’s sight. 

There were others reading whatever magic they had in the crowd, though the two in the front were by far the most prominent. Not that Mia thought that meant much. Her own spells were barely blips on her radar compared to the two grandstanding people before her and she was pretty sure an Arcane Blast to the face could blow either’s head off with little trouble.

Though maybe the old man has some defensive stuff, he has to have a ridiculously high Earth affinity to be channelling that much mana without batting an eye. His body might be as tough as rock … the girl is the same with Fire, if not even more so. But that grants explosive power if used for body enhancement, not toughness and such. She could probably punch my head off my shoulders with little effort, though.

Mia was just speculating, wandering heavily into uncharted territory with her predictions since all she had to go off of was her Elemental book which didn’t go into much detail in exactly how strong people of each affinity would be at Rank 0. 

“No need for that,” Brent shouted, his hands still up in the air but Mia could tell his muscles were tensed and coiled to burst into action should he need to. “We’ll leave, I see that we are just bringing trouble to this group. We’ll just be passing through into the suburbs.”

“Wait!” Avery shouted, her mana dimming as she whipped her head around to stare at Brent. “No need for that! You said there was a shop around somewhere here that hasn’t been raided to shit yet? Which one?”

“Uhhh,” Brent spoke, and Mia could tell he was not enjoying the crowd’s attention. He lowered his hand to point. “A little noname one a street down that way next to a jewellery shop.”

“Marvin’s place?” the older man asked, his face scrunched up into a deep scowl. “He dead?”

“We didn’t see anyone alive in the city until we met you,” said Brent gingerly.

“Fuck,” the old man said, releasing a breath. “Nothing? No one? Hey, where is that Klein brat? He has some lie-detecting bullshit, doesn’t he? Why don’t we use him?”

“Because anyone who he used his ability on tried to strangle him from how uncomfortable and violating the feeling of his magic poking around in your head is,” Avery said, her glare gaining the intense heat her mana was quickly losing. Thankfully, the mass of Earth mana was also slowly crawling its way back into the old man’s body. “Do you really want to have him use it on a bunch of people who survived cutting through hordes of goblins to escape the inner city? Hmmm? Sounds like a stellar idea Viktor.”

“Oh shut up girl,” the older man, Viktor, waved her off. “I relented, didn’t I? This is my compromise. What say you?”

The crowd echoed in agreement, and much to Avery’s visible displeasure most of the people supporting her were nodding along and looking at Mia’s group suspiciously. They were paranoid, and not just of the monsters. It was a strange thing, and one that made Mia distinctly uncomfortable. Was this what the future’s going to be like? Was humanity going to descend into tribalism? How long would it take from there for the masses to start lynching everyone who didn’t fit in? Everyone different?

A shiver rushed down Mia’s spine as she realised how ugly things could get real quick. People could murder each other for the other having different interpretations of the same religion, for having different tones of skin colour. History was proof of that. Now, how much worse could it get when the Awakening had turned the whole world into a melting pot of extremely different races? Elves, dwarves, humans, halvyr, beastkin and probably a thousand other races, with many of those having very real strengths which the others did not.

The world could be set ablaze not by monsters, rifts, and dungeons, but by the destructive power of jealousy, tribalism, paranoia, fear, and other dark human emotions.

“I will do it,” said Brent, surprising Mia just as much as he did the crowd. 

That cunt wanted him to refuse and sod off. Mia squinted at old man Viktor and his dumb open mouthed expression. Seeing as things could get ugly quickly, summoning another Familiar was in order. I’m not fast enough to react if anyone attacks us out of the blue, but that Familiar proved to be faster than a bloodthirsty vampire, so I guess it’s my best defence against ambushes for now.