Book 2, Chapter 15

Sally looked around the room, her experienced eyes capturing the tension and the blood on the carpet. She had a brief, intense discussion with Steve. It was short by necessity. Everyone in the entire room was looking at her.

Cheryl had stood and walked to the front of her group. Putting herself firmly as the center of attention.

“Our jailer.” Cheryl's voice projected over the room with a dismissive, defiant tone.

Sally looked at them calmly. Her eyes were flinty.

“Cheryl, Grant, and Patricia, you are free to leave.” She made a point of stepping to one side of the door. “And from this point on you are banished from the center of Wagga unless you take a binding oath.”

“You don't,” Cheryl protested, despite the threat of being excluded from the community, she was unfazed. Patricia had taken a subconscious step away from the summoner.

“I do,” Sally interrupted, pitching her voice loud enough to carry over the sudden emergence of whispered conversations. “You attacked a man and tried to kill him. Three of you against one of him. A who has been dedicating himself to saving this town. A man who has been a hero many times over to the townsfolk. I will not have it. You are no longer welcome.

“I live here,” Cheryl rebuttered strongly, standing up “and I won't put up with your dictatorship.”

“Your house is outside the Barricade area. Use it. We ban you from the central safe area unless you take an oath.” Her tone was furious

“Of obedience to you?” The disbelieving sneer carried in the voice. 

“To not intentionally harm any human and to not create discordance in the community.”

“You are just afraid that everyone will follow me instead of you and you are trying to get rid of me.”

Sally took her head sadly. "Even now you are still a pathetic political animal. Have you lost all ability of self-reflection?" Sally's voice grew hotter. “You just tried to kill someone, Cheryl! Murder." Sally was shouting, having lost her calm. "I know your history with Steve and myself, but you just tried to murder him. Steve let you live. If it was up to me." She left the threat behind the words unspoken. "But I will not let you do that again. Take the oath and you can keep benefitting from the town's projection, otherwise.”

“So petty,”

“Not petty," Sally shouted back. "It is called empathy and being responsible. Enough." She declared, throwing her hands up in the air. "Leave on your own free will or I will have Steve escort you out. We are done.”

“Staying outside the safe zone is a death sentence,” Grant said hysterically.

“Take an oath then," Sally shot back.

“I want a vote,” Cheryl said.

“Steve,” Sally ordered, gesturing. He grabbed the sword and took a step forward.

“All in favour of Sally being stripped of her powers immediately and that her and her faithful guard dog is banished from the town, raise your hands,” Cheryl said with a curl of her lip.

“We are not a democracy at the moment,” Sally responded quietly. Cheryl’s hand was the only one in the air. Not even Grant and Patricia had joined her.

“Dictator!”

“No,” Sally snapped, “the fighting volunteers have built the prosperity and success of this town. They are the ones with the power, and they have asked me to help manage the Lucu threat. It is their mandate I am following. You want things your way? Get all the raid leads to agree.” The tone of Sally's voice made it clear how she thought the raid leaders would react.

“They are in your pocket.”

Sally gestured for Steve to continue

“I will see myself out,” Cheryl said angrily when Steve reached her. “but you have not heard the last from me.”

That was dead silence as the three of them walked out. Steve following.

“You can take an Oath,” Sally said quietly as Cheryl strode past her, “Don’t risk your life for pride.”

They had mixed reactions; a look of contempt from Cheryl, almost confusion from Patricia, and a look of hope from Grant. Despite their personal preferences, they all kept walking.

The door clanged shut behind them. A last message from Steve.

“Sorry about that,” Sally said, “and sorry for getting here so late. There were more questions at the Plaza hotel than expected.” She paused, trying to frame her thoughts, “the Lucu is still active. We got a report just after sunrise about an attack on one of the outer Wagga settlements.”

There were hisses of indrawn breaths around the table. Susie grabbed his hand.

“It was the outpost centered on the retirement home Brookwater,”

“Thank god,” the whisper was barely audible next to him and Susie's death grip on his hand released. Elsewhere in the room, they were gasps of dismay. The room was mixed with magic users from across Wagga. Of course, that would be representatives from all the outlying settlements present, after all, that was where a lot of the fighting was occurring.

“It killed a young man called Max.” A lady two tables away sobbed helplessly. A low keening.

“The Lucu attacked the barracks, targeting Max. It injured two other people in the sneak attack,” Sally’s voice was empathetic. You could almost hear the tears in her voice. “Max’s class was a level thirteen reaper spear-knight. We did not realize when we gathered everyone here that his class while being melee combat based was actually magic-based and relied on Mana to do damage. We do not know the exact numbers, but we believe there are somewhere between fifty and a hundred fighters with a magic-based close combat class. They need to be moved here to safety. So everyone here will all be double bunking going forward.”

There was more than one person crying. The first woman was hysterical. The man next to her had wrapped her in a bear hug, but it was doing nothing to ease her pain. Everyone on that table had the shocked expression of someone who had just lost a friend.

“There might have been other attacks during the night, but the information has not got back to us. Based on Brookwater and the location of the other attacks, there is a pretty narrow area where the lair is likely to be. We think we can find the lair today and stop the threat. We will dedicate seven hunting groups to exploring the area.” Sally stopped. “That is the good news. The bad news is that the lair will probably be accessible by a narrow cave. Even when we find the location, we will then need to work out how to kill it safely. None of us are powerful enough to survive a direct fight with it. We are working on smoking it out or possibly attempting some carbon monoxide poisoning once we know the details of the cave.”

“Any questions?”

No one ask anything

Of course, no one listening to his prayer. Questions flew from everywhere.

“Are we safe?”

“Can we speed the search?”

"How Long?" "How fast is it?" "What does it look like?" "Can we fight it?"

“Did Max hurt it?”

“No, it got him before he could draw his spear.”

“But the barracks were double reinforced.”

“It went through the roof. Crashed through right onto his bunk. Then exited through the door which is when the others got hurt.”

Sally answered all the as simply as she could and had a surprisingly large amount of detailed knowledge

“You look bored out of your skin,” Susie whispered next to him. The observation was like a bucket of icy water being thrown over him. Someone had died, and he was worried about missing hunting time.

“I hate this stuff,” he paused, suddenly conscious of the absence of Jules and Kozzie. “Where are the kids?”

“They got kicked out of here late last night. There were some late arrivals who needed rooms. They were intending to go back to the Hotel,” Susie's reaction to the start of Sally’s statement made sense. “I think tonight they will stay somewhere closer.”

“Oh.”

The questions dried up and almost immediately everyone rushed outside to get to work. There was an entire world out there to subdue, and with almost everyone being over level eight in standard interface terminology meant they were all fighters.

Jules and Kozzie were standing together in Rupa’s group. They were going to be searching for the Lucu. Wandering over, he made small talk with everyone then wishing them all luck excused himself.

The day was boring and hot. Even outside the lizard zone, the sun-baked down on him, and between the river and the lizard there was only patchy shade in the spot that he had chosen. There was enough cover for shadow stepping, but insufficient to hold off the sun. The lack of breeze did not help either.

The day was spent trying to get opportunities to observe the lizards. He wished he could do it at night. Maybe part of the Lizards territory was beyond the range of the Lucu. That would let him observe them at night safely. Everything was quiet, so the strength buff was continually rotated inside him. The buff was hellishly inefficient, and it was a long time from working but continual practice progressed it in a slow and steady fashion.

The lizards were uncooperative and barely emerged. The majority of his fighting was clearing the river bank for a hundred meters on either side. There was nothing big and nothing emerged from the lazy river waters.

Three lizards over the course of the day emerged close to the edge of the territory. Those he killed with an arrow straight to the heart. Before sneaking in to retrieve their bodies. That got his heartbeat racing as there were no shadows available to speed the process. He needed to be doing this at night. A core was still worth the risk, and each trip was successful.

There were also four lizards deeper in the territory. For those, he did not even consider trying to kill and retrieve the body. Instead, the first one he just observed. It played outside for about ten minutes before disappearing into a burrow. After that, he hit the other three with an arrow through their tails. It caused them to squeal and the entire ground around them exploded with lizards. Fire domes, waves of flames, and blasts filled the air. It was an awe-inspiring display and his flame sprout progression ticked upwards. They subdued the world with the flames for twenty minutes before the fire domes vanished and the dust and soot and new scorch marks the size of a football oval.

Flame Sprout     - 42%

There were still eight cores in his bag of holding, which might bump him up to the mid-fifties if he was lucky. The more advanced skill was proving difficult to acquire. Each core was only advancing him by two percent if he was lucky. Observation had gained ten percent, which was helping but gathering enough viewing time, and the required cores were proving harder than expected.

It was a shit day. Infinitesimal progress. Hot and so boring. Who wanted to stand next to a half-burned tree and watch a burnt-out landscape for the entire day? Outside the hotel, wash stations that had been set up and caught his eye. Sniffing the armpits.

Not good.

Definitely time for a wash.