13 - No Rest for the Wicked

“I don’t know how long we can use this van for,” Mara complained from the front passenger seat. “It has a tape player. A tape player! Not even a CD player, let alone Bluetooth. This thing has to be older than I am.”

We were headed over to our new accommodations with our gear. Then we were going to hit a few stores and buy some necessities like more changes of clothes, more snack cakes, diet coke. The essentials. Ashley sat in the driver’s seat, following the written directions that Oliver was reading to her as he sat forward to see through the windshield.

“And the radio stations are all crap,” Mara continued to complain. The rest of us continued to ignore her.

Eventually Ashley pulled us up in front of a fairly typical house. It was a little larger than my old house, but I hadn’t needed three bedrooms either. We unloaded from the van and schlepped up to the front door while Oliver punched in the code to unlock it.

As soon as we walked through the door though, our radios let out a crackle of static before a voice came over the line. “Yankee Doodle One, this is dispatch.”

I rolled my eyes at our new call sign. Montgomery had promised it was just a joke, but apparently not. Prick. “Yeah, what’s up?” Mara said over her handset.

Ashley seemed to be positively vibrating in place at Mara not using the radio etiquette she’d tried to teach us. Honestly, she should have known better. Especially having given one our three radios to Mara.

“Yankee Doodle One, there is a report of a pack of monsters attacking livestock out at the old McCoy farm,” the dispatcher informed us.

“Great! I don’t know where that is,” Mara deadpanned.

A flustered dispatcher rattled off an address that I typed into the map on my phone. Until I realized it said I was roaming and I quickly turned my phone on airplane mode because I did not need those kind of charges.

“Cool, you can put in the address in the System map!” John excitedly told everyone. “Oh, and I can share it with y’all too.”

I got a weird mental ping that I felt more than heard. By focusing on it, I called up my map. It was zoomed into the local area and a small dot was pulsing on it outside of town. With a gentle thought a new pulse appeared inside town where I assumed we were. It didn’t look like it would plan out a route for us, but it was better than nothing.

“Alright everyone, let’s get ready to go,” Mara called out after assuring the dispatcher we were on our way.

“Remind me to switch to a Canadian phone company,” I grumbled. Everyone else grumbled along with me. “Can’t believe it’s the end of the world as we know it and I still have to deal with capitalism. Hollywood lied to me.”

Ashley laughed as we all pulled our packs back on and headed back outside. “No rest for the wicked,” she nudged her shoulder into mine.

“Hey, I am a good g–” I gulped back the rest of my sentence.

Ashley and Mara both laughed uproariously at me. John and Oliver tried to hide their smirks. I gave them all the finger as I climbed into the back seat and shuffled all the way to the last row of the van. Jerks.

It didn’t take long for us to get to the farm in question. While we were pretty centrally located in the town, the entire thing could be driven across in fifteen minutes in rush hour traffic. We were met at the drive by an older woman with a shotgun, or rifle, I still don’t know the difference. She had a large barreled gun.

Ashley pulled up next to her as she waved us down. As soon as we stopped, she slid the door to the back of the van open and climbed inside. “Alright, I’ll guide you out to the field we spotted them in,” the woman proceeded to give Ashley directions.

As soon as she finished talking, Mara started peppering her with questions about the monsters. They were apparently some kind of shadowy cat-like creatures. Some were as big as a mountain lion and some were smaller than a bobcat. They were roaming around as a pack and were last seen chasing the woman’s herd of sheep across their field.

“Stop here,” the old woman called out. As soon as we stopped she hopped out of the van and ran up to swing open a gate in the fence. She waved us through before swinging the gate closed again.

She came hustling over toward the van, but right then we were able to get our first views of the monsters. The herd of sheep came rushing over a small hill in front of us, bleating their little hearts out. Chasing behind them, swiping at their heels were a dozen small shadowy cats. Not to say they were black, which they were, but it was more than just black fur. It seemed to surge and shift across their bodies as they ran, occasionally leaving a trail in the air behind themselves. A pair running next to each other bumped into each other and seemed to merge for a few steps. As they came together their body grew larger and somehow darker. The larger cat was slower though and it quickly separated back out into two smaller cats.

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“What the fuck?” Mara muttered as she wrenched open the door and leapt out. She immediately began flinging fireballs at the cats in the back of the pack.

“Motherfucker! Some warning would be nice,” Ashley shouted at Mara as she threw the van in park and jumped out with her army gun in hand. Soon the sharp staccato of rifle shots rang out.

All but like two of the cats peeled off of the herd of sheep and veered toward us. I hopped out of the van and summoned my spear, running to put myself between our ranged fighters and the cats. John went running full tilt toward the murder kitties, his skin coating in mithril and sharp blades forming at the ends of his hands.

Several cats jumped together as he ran at them, forming into something the size of a tiger. It crashed into John with a giant leap. John shoved both of his arm blades into the monster’s chest as it rode him to the ground. As they both went tumbling, the large cat broke up into several smaller cats that were uninjured, leaving a single smaller cat’s body lying limp on top of him.

By then the rest of the pack had reached us. I lunged and swung my spear at anything that came close. A pair of cats ran into each other, growing larger before it leapt at my throat. I ducked down and braced my spear forward, catching the monster in the upper chest and throat. One of its large paws swung at my body, clipping me on the shoulder and sending me sprawling to the side.

I rolled with the blow and staggered to my feet, already summoning a new spear to my hand. My old one held the corpse of one of the cats, the other was already swarming toward me again. I lunged forward and feinted low, before striking from the side. My spear tore through the cat from front shoulder to hind leg in the blink of an eye. The cat jumped away from me, leaking oily shadows all across the ground.

It circled around me to the side. As it did, another cat jumped at me from behind. It landed on my shoulders and began to tear at me with its hind legs. It bit at my neck and I hunched my head down into the collar of my jacket, hoping for some protection. My leather jacket deflected most of the claws, but not the strong kicks. I lost my balance and started to tip forward when the cat that had been circling me pounced.

I watched my painful end coming toward me full barrel and time seemed to slow. When it was about halfway to me, the cat’s body twitched to the side as it flew through the air, shadow bursting out of the side of its head. Its gaze went blank before its body crashed into mine.

I went down in a painful tumble. The cat on my back had started to really shred my jacket by this point, and I could feel some of its claws tear into my back. I screamed out in pain while shoving the limp but heavy body off of me. Then I started trying to wriggle my way out of the jacket.

I jumped to my feet, a new spear forming in my hands. The cat now tangled up in my jacket stared up at me with hate filled eyes as I shoved my spear through my jacket and into its chest. I pulled my spear out of it with a wet squelch and spun around to take in the rest of the battlefield.

John was covered in dark fluids and pulling his arm blades out of a pair of cats at his feet. There was a trail of bodies leading from him back to that first cat that he’d taken down. With a final gunshot cracking through the air, Ashley’s rifle fell silent. There were bodies scattered all across the field. Some were leaking shadows out of little holes peppering their bodies. Others were quietly burning to ash.

In the distance I could still make out the bleating cries of the herd of sheep. “There’s still more, guys.” I waved everyone back to the van. Oliver patched up my torn up back on our way out. Ten minutes later, after having chased down the final two cats and Ashley shooting them from the moving van as Mara drove we returned to the older woman we’d left at the gates.

[Your party has killed: Sable shadows x 12]

[New Questline unlocked: Kill 100 monsters not in a dungeon.]

[Questline Reward: System Token]

[Monster kill total: 12/100]

She had already dragged all the bodies into a pile and was about to set them on fire. “Wait! Ma’am, hold up,” John came charging out of the van. She stopped and waited for him to walk over to her. “Did you already harvest the monster cores from all these?”

“The what?” She screeched at him.

“Yeah, they’re useful for all sorts of things…or they will be. Also, there might be an essence stone as well.”

“Son, this ain’t a video game,” she shook her head at him. “Monster cores! You sound like my daughter talking all night with her friends on the computer.”

“There really are ma’am. We’ll collect them before you burn the bodies if that’s alright,” Mara framed it as less of a question and more of ‘this is what’s going to happen.’ She waved over toward me and Ashley.

John started pulling bodies off the pile. Ashley handed me one of her knives and we got to work. Cut, slice, reach in, twist, and pull. With the two we’d quickly butchered out in the field and these ten we ended up with eleven monster cores, and one very small essence. Ashley pulled it out. It was barely bigger than the monster cores, so it must have just passed the threshold.

“Huh, shadow essence,” she told us. “I’ll take it if no one wants it.”

I thought about asking for it. I knew it would complete my set, and I was fairly confident that it would give me something necromantic as well. But something held me back. I already had two, and Ashley only had the one. And while I was fairly confident it would work out for me the way I wanted, I wasn’t actually certain.

“No, you take it,” I told her. The others nodded in agreement.

Ashley smiled and began absorbing her essence right there. I went to the van and pulled out a water with my cleaner hand and did my best to wash up the dark, oily blood off of myself.

When I was finished I looked around and noticed my jacket still lying in the middle of the field. I walked over to it and picked it up.

[Equipment Upgrade!]

[This item has been coated in the blood of the shadows and has gained a level in toughness as well as the ability to allow the user to blend into shadows.]

I turned it around and the back was completely repaired. It wasn’t as good as new, but the tears had all been artfully stitched. The entire thing had a dull, matte appearance to it where once it had been at least a little shiny. This was so cool!