8 - Gah! Monsters!

John hit the monsters like wrecking ball. Furry creatures and parts went flying through the air as he smashed, ripped off arms, picked up and threw monsters away. Monsters further in the field came rushing our way, throwing away all attempts at stealth. I turned to meet some of the incoming monsters, and saw Ashley swivel out of the corner of my eye. She began firing into monsters as they neared me. She could no longer focus on any of the monsters John had engaged without worrying about hitting him.

Looking over, John was a whirlwind of violence that was more than a little terrifying. I did my best to push the squeamishness away and ran after John. Funny that he was fine with ripping off arms and heads, but cut one minotaur open, for his essence stone, and he turned green. I began stabbing any bodies I came across. More than a few were still moving angrily.

And just like that it was over. Silence overcame us as Ashley stopped firing her gun, and John stopped roaring like a berserker. I moved toward the family still hunkered down behind their truck. A notification popped up before I could shout out a greeting.

[Your party has killed: Gnolls x 12]

[Monster kill total: 13/25]

I dismissed the notifications and shouted out to the family, “Hey! It should be safe now. It looks like we killed all the gnolls. Is anyone hurt?” I continued cautiously moving forward after I broke past the last of the wheat or corn or whatever. They looked more than a little skittish.

There were five of them. Two adults, one older teen boy, one younger teen girl, and one toddler. Actually I didn’t know. The younger kid could have been anywhere between three and six. I was really bad about kid ages.

As I came nearer the back of the truck I noticed quite a bit of blood. “Oliver! Might need you over here,” I called out behind me.

“What’s going on folks? Is anyone hurt?” I repeated to the family. They were all huddled around the older teen now, still kind of ignoring us.

When I got closer, the dad looked up with tears streaming down his face, “Thank you. Umm…I don’t mean to be rude, but you can leave now.”

He stood up as if to confront me as I kept moving forward. It was then that I was able to see what was going on. The older teen boy had an arrow sticking out of his abdomen and was bleeding profusely all over the mom and younger teen girl who were trying to apply pressure with some blankets.

“We have a healer. Would it be ok if he took a look? He’s also a nurse if that helps,” I offered.

Just then, Oliver jogged up. “Please, I can help. I picked up a healing skill.”

“I don’t trust any of those ‘skills’ or whatever,” the dad sneered at us.

“Ok, well I’m also a nurse, like she said. Please let me take a look?”

“Donny…” the mom’s voice was full of despair and anguish as she looked at Oliver with the faintest glimmer of hope.

Donny sighed and nodded at Oliver, “Ok. Please help Travis.”

Oliver stepped forward and kneeled down in front of the boy. He placed one hand on his forehead and the other hovered over the arrow wound. “Hey, Travis. My name is Oliver and I’m going to take a look at you, ok?”

The boy’s skin was pale and covered in sweat. His eyes looked haunted. He knew what waited for him if Oliver couldn’t help. The county hospital was either overrun or abandoned by this point. And I wasn’t sure they were equipped to deal with something this severe anyways.

“H-hi. Can you r-really help?” Travis asked.

“Well, I’m going to do my best. Hold tight for a moment while my skill scans you.”

“You can’t tell what is wrong with him? There’s a fucking arrow sticking out you dumbass,” Travis’s little teenage sister growled.

Oliver was nonplussed, “I don’t know what happened internally. A severed intestine is a different thing from a severed artery. I don’t know exactly how my skill works, but from practice the more I actively direct the healing the easier and faster it is.”

“Oh…sorry,” the girl said.

“It’s alright. I know you’re just worried about your brother.” Oliver’s eyes seemed to lose focus on the world around him for a moment. After a minute, he let out a loud exhale and turned back to the sister. “Ok, I need you to grab the arrow here, and when I tell you pull it straight out. Be careful not to turn or twist it as it comes out.” He pointed to where he wanted her to grab the arrow at.

The girl looked flustered but determined.

“On three. One…two…three!” Oliver counted.

The girl pulled the arrow straight out and Oliver slapped his hand over the wound as blood bubbled up. There was a bright glow that surrounded Oliver’s hand and the boy’s wound. Oliver sat hunched over the boy for several minutes. His face quickly became strained and sweat popped up on his brow. Color seemed to be slowly seeping back into Travis and his features relaxed.

When Oliver took his hand away the skin underneath was whole once again. A pinkish scar sat underneath the blood and sweat smeared into his skin, but Travis looked to be free of pain, completely healed.

Oliver on the other hand wavered and almost fell over when he tried to stand up. John caught him under his arms and helped him to his feet.

“Thank you. Oh, thank you so much,” the mother reached out to grasp Oliver’s hand.

“No problem ma’am. Just glad to help.” Oliver tried to shrug off the praise.

Ashley broke in from across the yard next to the field, “I hate to break this up, but now that he’s healed we need to get out of here. The fire from the house is going to spread.”

I looked up and a lot more of the house was on fire. There wasn’t much of it that wasn’t burning. “Yeah. It’s time to go folks. We’re looking for more portals around here. We figure there has to be at least one or two more of them. Have you guys heard anything?”

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Donny and his wife exchanged a look before he turned to answer, “I don’t know anything about portals. Probably a trap anyway. But we’ve been keeping up with all our neighbors around here, and the only ones who’ve stopped answering are the McCoys. Would you mind taking a look in on them? Maybe they grew a portal and left or something.

“We’re going to head into town. Seems more people would be safer for once.”

“Can you show us where they live?” I asked.

“Sure,” he answered. I pulled out my phone to the map app and he scrolled over a few miles to show me another little cutoff road leading to a farmhouse. “They’re here. The gate code is 6653. Good luck.”

Donny turned and started helping his family to their feet. Travis swayed a little on his feet, but remained standing. They all hurried to a second pickup truck that was currently arrow free.

I turned around to our group. “I’m not sure we have time to loot these bodies. We need to get out of here too.” John looked particularly sad. “But at least we have a lead on a new place to check.”

“Sounds good, babe,” Mara called. She grumbled under her breath, “Didn’t realize how limiting having fire powers would be though.”

“Awww…regretting picking fire?” I asked her as we walked back to the road.

“It’s just, I didn’t think about how fire can get out of hand so easily,” she whined. “What’s the point of fireball if it burns down the field your friends are also in?”

“I’m sure there will be opportunities to use your powers. Maybe you should practice with them? There might be a way for you to keep them from spreading.”

“It does say I have some control over my element. But I tried to do something about the burning house and it didn’t seem to do anything at all.”

“Maybe there was too much?”

“I don’t know. I’ll practice when we have some time, I guess.” She smiled as she changed the subject, “That Ashley sure has been helpful to have around. Guess it was a good idea she came along isn’t it? She’s just so…competent.”

“I hate that I told you I have a competence kink,” I groaned as we stepped off of the drive so the family could drive past. Mara just cackled next to me. When we got to the gate, the family had left it open for us, so one less thing to embarrass myself about.

We quickly piled into the cars again and I plotted our destination. We drove there in silence, keeping an eye out for danger around us. Minotaurs, gnolls, who knew what else was out there.

It was only a handful of minutes before we arrived at the neighboring farm of the McCoys. The gate in front of the drive was much taller and sterner, but as promised there was a keypad on the driver’s side. I read the numbers off of my notes app to Ashley, and the gate rolled open a moment later.

This farm was much different from the one we’d been to. This one was much more wooded, at least near the fence line and driveway. Past the trees I could see a small herd of cows in a pasture eating contentedly.

We drove to the end of the gravel drive, and there on the right was a more normal cement driveway leading up to a large-ish house. It was smaller than the farmhouse we’d just come from, but still bigger than a lot of the ones from my neighborhood.

And there it was, off to the left, square in front of the house was a large portal. At least as large as the one in Belford. I wondered why the portals in the more rural areas were larger than the portal in the largest town in the county.

That wasn’t the only thing in front of the house though. Laying in the grass between the house and the portal sat a large pack of giant wolves. They were mostly laying down, but the few that were standing would easily be as tall as I was. There was blood running across several faces, and a small puddle in the grass.

And they all turned to look at us as we pulled up. Oh, fuck. Oliver almost rear ended us we stopped so fast. That raised a lot of hackles and started some deep growls.

Before I could so much as catch my breath and take in the current clusterfuck we found ourselves in, John had leaped out of the passenger seat of the car behind us and started running at the nearest wolves. His skin became shiny with metal overlaying it before he was halfway there. He for once wasn’t yelling at the top of his lungs.

He reached the first wolf who looked a little confused about the metal man that ran right up to him. John reared back and coldcocked the wolf across the muzzle. I hear the snap of bones as I was scurrying out of the truck and summoning a new spear. There was a sharp yelp and the wolf tumbled off to the side.

The other dozen or so wolves in the pack leapt toward him. There were snarls, growls, and whimpers ringing out from the pile of writhing bodies John suddenly found himself under. Ashley began shooting wolves on the periphery, which just brought the attention of the half dozen wolves not directly fighting John.

They were not going down as easily as the gnolls. This was a lot more like the minotaur where Ashley’s gun wasn’t all that powerful. She apparently felt the same way, because a few moments later a larger, louder gunshot rang out. I looked over and she had her army gun slung over her shoulder and her hunting rifle raised in her hands.

She quickly worked a bolt on its side, expelling her spent casing, and then pressed it back forward. She paused for a moment and then another boom rang out. Looking back to the wolves, I could see this gun had made much more of a difference. One of the wolves was slumped over with a large hole on one side of its head, and missing the other side almost entirely. Another one was limping with a large hole blown out of its side.

The wolves decided that we had gotten enough free shots in and the four and a half wolves shot off toward us. Ashley jumped into the bed of the truck and I ran around to stand several feet in front of the truck to protect her. Rather stupidly in hindsight, because now I was the primary target for their anger.

I caught Mara hoping up into the bed of the truck out of the corner of my eyes. She immediately started throwing fire at the wolves with both hands. Apparently the larger targets made her less wary that she’d miss and catch the environment on fire as well.

I ducked down into a low stance with the spear pointed out just in time to take the first wolf to reach us. It was barely a few steps away from the next closest wolf. I lunged forward and the wolf jerked back, taking a shallow cut across its chest. In the next instant the wolf immediately behind it had its chest exploded as Ashley’s cannon of a gun went off behind me.

The other wolves stopped short of my swinging spear and began to circle quickly. I’d lunge forward toward a wolf, only to have to abort halfway through to ward off another wolf rushing in at me from the side. Fortunately they were too dumb to realize that Ashley was still the larger threat in this instant. Another wolf went down missing a large part of its skull before they gave up on circling and lunged forward.

I dived to the side and slashed at chest height behind me. From the whimper of pain, I’d managed to hit one of them. As I rolled to my feet…this downloaded skills thing was kind of awesome…I turned to keep the three wolves in front of me.

Just in time to see Mara build up a truly impressive fireball and hurl it into one of the wolves. It practically exploded from the impact, scattering flames to the two wolves nearby. They began running around crazily, trying to rid themselves of the fire now stuck to them. As one rushed by, I lunged out and buried my spear halfway through its chest. It ripped the spear from my hands as it continued on.

I started summoning another spear into my hands at the same time another gunshot rang out, dropping another wolf. A moment later a final gunshot rang out and the wolf with my spear in its side collapsed to the ground.

My ears were ringing as I looked around the front yard of this farmhouse. John was covered from head to toe in blood and viscera. I wondered if he had noticed yet now that he was coming out of his apparent berserker rage.

There were giant wolf bodies ranged all over the large yard. And in the middle of everything sat the reason we’d come out here. The portal. I had no idea if the McCoys had made it out before the wolves. The blood that’d been here before we arrived seemed to indicate that at least some of them hadn’t or at least not unscathed.

“Alright gang! Ashley and Grace are in charge of looting the bodies. I’ll send up a notice online about the new portal. John, Oliver you guys move the cars out of the way and see about locking the gate open or just posting the code on the box for people.” Mara looked around at all of us, “Ready, break!”

Just then a new notification from the system popped up. I appreciated that it didn’t seem to push notifications until I was safe, so I didn’t need to worry about distractions.

[Your party has killed: Dire Wolves x 12, Alpha Dire Wolf x 1]

[Monster kill total: 26/25]

[Newcomer Questline Rewards: One Essence of user’s choice:

* Metal

* Healing

* Spirit

* Mercury

* Blood

* Fire

* Strength

* Decay]