Path of Dragons

Unlike when she’d entered the minor dimensional rift, Alyssa didn’t stumble.

Not physically, at least. But her mind certainly hit a speedbump as she beheld the landscape before her. At its most basic level, it looked like a city, not dissimilar from any of the dozen or so major population centers she had visited before the world had changed. Skyscrapers stretched high into the air, surrounded by comparatively squat structures. Streets cut between them, populated by a multitude of densely packed cars. The whole thing was surrounded by a river, making the city accessible only via a trio of bridges.

“Do you recognize it?” asked Roman from beside her. She turned, noting that the other four were also staring at the city.

She shook her head. “No. But I haven’t been everywhere.”

“Did you read the notification?” was his next question.

“Not yet.”

“You should.”

Alyssa conceded with a nod, then focused on the notification that had popped up upon entry into the tower:

Alyssa stared at that notification for a long moment before moving on to the second:

It seemed simple enough, but just because it was easily understood didn’t mean that it wouldn’t be a difficult task. Alyssa glanced around at her immediate surroundings. Clearly, they’d arrived in the outskirts of the city, but more immediately, she and the others stood in the center of a wide street that would have been at home in any low-income neighborhood. What looked like a service station occupied one corner, while an obvious pawn shop sat across from it. The other two corner lots were vacant, though they featured a few overturned and rotting couches and a multitude of burning barrels. It was clearly the sort of area where homeless people tended to congregate.

But there were no people around.

In fact, aside from a gentle wind that sent the pawn shop’s sign to flapping, there was no sound at all. To call it eerie would have been a vast understatement.

And Bryce, at least, agreed, saying, “This looks like the opening scene from 28 Days Later. You know, that horror movie where Cillian Murphy wakes up in the hospital and walks around an abandoned London.”

“You’re just saying that because of the tower’s name,” Trace said.

“They weren’t zombies in that movie,” Bryce pointed out. “They were infected by the Rage virus.”

“Oh, come on – they were zombies, and you know it. Just because they call them a different name doesn’t mean –”

“Enough.”

Bryce cut off at Roman’s single word. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“I didn’t think I would need to remind you people that this is probably the most dangerous place you’ve ever been,” he went on. “So, perhaps you should take it seriously.”

Alyssa wanted to say something, but she held her tongue. She knew Bryce well enough to recognize his coping mechanisms, which included babbling about whatever useless facts had taken hold of his mind. But Roman was right. They needed to focus, and that included refraining from talking about twenty-year-old movies, even if the comparison did seem fairly apt.

Instead of commenting on it, she chose to address the topic at hand. “So, we have three options,” she said, pointing at the city in the distance. “Three bridges into the city.”

“Shouldn’t we just go for the closest one?” asked Chun, her arms crossed.

“You think it’ll be that simple?” asked Trace. “Because I don’t.”

“I don’t think anyone believes this will be simple,” Roman stated. “But that doesn’t mean it won’t be straightforward.”

Alyssa said, “That’s not necessarily true, chief. The guides I bought said that these tower tasks can be incredibly complex. I read about one where the tower climbers had to fight a war that lasted weeks.”

It was true, but that tower had been on the verge of being a Primal Realm, so it was larger and more complicated than normal. According to her research, towers could be divided into five levels of power, which coincided with the grades associated with items. The lesser dimensional rifts were better categorized as unranked and crude, but any tower that manifested was at least considered simple grade. But that was just the minimal level of power, and there were also stronger towers that were classified as complex, then sophisticated, miraculous, deific, and transcendent.

And that wasn’t even considering the Primal Realms, which were akin to entirely separate worlds, complete with indigenous populations. Like intelligent creatures found in towers, the denizens of Primal Realms were still manifestations of Ethera whose sentience was based on copying existing people’s souls, but the explanations she’d found in the guides were a little fuzzy on how all of that worked.

“What grade do you think this is?” asked Bryce. They’d all read the same guides, so theoretically, they should’ve all had the same information.

“No way to know,” she said. It would take someone with a powerful analysis skill to determine that. Abilities like that came from classes subordinate to the scholar archetype. Roman’s policy on the uselessness of those people meant that no one in Easton had received any skills that could manage the sort of analysis they needed.

It was short-sighted and more than a little moronic, but Alyssa’s efforts could only effect so much change, especially considering that she had so many other responsibilities. When weighed against keeping the town safe via her frequent patrols, making sure that scholars were properly appreciated seemed particularly low-priority. She always intended to use her influence to change things, but she had so far been too busy to implement any of her plans.

That would probably come back to bite them sometime in the future, but for now, she needed to focus on the tower.

Over the next few minutes, the group came to a consensus. Without any other information, one choice was much the same as any other. So, they opted to aim for the closest bridge in the hopes that it would help them conquer the tower more quickly.

As he had outside, Trace ranged ahead, plotting a course and scouting for dangers, while the rest of the party followed. Alyssa took the lead, with the others coming soon after. Roman brought up the rear, often remaining completely undetected.

Which was incredibly unnerving. Alyssa knew she was higher-leveled than the other man, but if Roman wanted to remain hidden, she would never see him. Even though she trusted him – they were friends and colleagues, after all – she still couldn’t escape the wave of anxiety his undetectable presence brought with it.

About thirty minutes into their trek through the outskirts of the city, they rounded a corner to find Trace waiting. He held one finger over his lips, indicating that they should remain silent, then motioned for them to follow. They all did, taking great care not to make any noise. They’d all spent time on patrol, so they knew how to stay quiet.

Because the people who hadn’t learned that lesson hadn’t survived long.

Alyssa and the others followed Trace for a few minutes as he led them down an alley that ran parallel to the river surrounding the city proper. It terminated in a dead end, where Alyssa saw a dumpster. Trace pointed to her, then Roman, before pointing to the dumpster. Then, he climbed atop it, giving him just enough clearance to see over the wall at the end of the alley.

Roman, then Alyssa echoed his path, climbing onto the top of the dumpster next to him. It was a close fit, but they squeezed in, maintaining their silence the whole way.

When Alyssa looked over the top of the wall, she almost let out a gasp. Fortunately, she kept her wits about her, stifling any audible reaction. Still, she could feel her heart beating out of her chest as she beheld a sea of rotting corpses.

Most lay on the asphalt surface of a wide street, and the blanket of cadavers stretched as far as Alyssa could see in either direction. Death had become an undeniable part of her life. Indeed, even before the end of the world, she’d spent a good portion of her childhood hunting with her father and brother. So, she’d never considered herself squeamish around dead bodies. Then, in her time as a police officer – especially when she’d worked in Seattle – she’d seen her fair share of death. Most of the time, the victims died of natural causes, but she’d seen the results of quite a few violent deaths as well.

But nothing could have prepared her for what she saw stretched out before her, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit that, upon seeing it, she very nearly lost control of her stomach. Still, Alyssa was nothing if not in control of herself, so she managed to push her nausea aside and focus on the multitude of corpses.

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None were in good condition, exhibiting the kind of rot one would expect from a few weeks’ worth of decomposition. In a way, that helped her separate them from their obvious humanity. It was easier to look at a rotting corpses and see things rather than the people they’d once been.

A tug at her arm got her attention, and she turned to Trace. The man’s face had gone pale, clearly indicating that he was just as uncomfortable as she was. He extended his arm, pointing toward the corpses. Alyssa followed his gesture, a little unsure of what he intended to point out. However, it only took a couple of seconds before she realized what he wanted her to see.

One of the corpses was moving.

Zombies. It was so easy to forget what the tower was called, which in turn, had prompted her to take the pile of corpses at face value. But now? It all made horrible sense. Those weren’t just a bunch of dead bodies. No. They were enemies, and after only a few more moments, she realized that they were blocking the way to the bridge, which stood only a couple hundred yards away.

Alyssa continued to watch, and over the next few minutes, she caught sight of more movement. None of the zombies moved much – just a twitch here or there – but after seeing the first, the rest were easily noticeable.

Finally, she turned away and silently climbed down. There, she settled in to think. It only lasted a few minutes before Roman and Trace got her attention and motioned for her to follow. She did, and they returned with the others to relative safety. They didn’t stop there, though. Instead, they retreated another few hundred yards until Roman finally said, “I think this is far enough away.”

“What did you see?” asked Verin, her hand resting on her morningstar’s grip.

Roman told them, explaining what they faced. He ended by asking, “Any ideas? Let’s get them all out there so we can figure out how we’re supposed to do this.”

There were a few suggestions, each of them viable enough to work. Most hinged on setting some sort of trap for the zombies, and Verin actually suggested that she get their attention, then lead them away so the rest of the team could progress.

“Nobody’s sacrificing themselves,” Alyssa said with a roll of her eyes.

“I’m prepared for it,” the Priest said. “I knew I probably wasn’t going to live through –”

“No.”

She looked disappointed, which prompted Alyssa to wonder what, precisely, the woman had been through if she was so quick to suggest martyring herself. However, she didn’t pursue the matter, largely because she needed to focus on other things.

“Okay, so here’s what I think we should do…”

As Alyssa explained her plan, the others nodded along. It took elements of the others’ plans, but, notably, it wouldn’t require anyone to sacrifice themselves. When she’d finished, Roman said, “I wish explosives still worked. They wouldn’t last long if I could’ve brought a few drums of homemade napalm in here.”

Alyssa couldn’t disagree, but one of the first things they’d discovered after the world had transformed was that explosives didn’t work anymore. Not to any degree of success. They could still set fires the normal way, but any explosion that exceeded a certain threshold had been significantly diminished. In some cases, like with firearms, that meant that they’d been weakened enough that they quickly became largely useless. In others, as with internal combustion engines, they didn’t work at all. But bombs were definitely off the table.

“Yeah,” Alyssa agreed. “But we have to work with what we’ve got.”

“I want to go on record as saying that I really like this plan,” said Trace. “Normally, I’d be the bait, so this is a nice change of pace.”

“The boss doesn’t work like that, man,” Bryce pointed out. “She’s –”

“Not the time, Bryce,” said Alyssa.

“But –”

“Not the time.”

He sighed, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he and the others headed toward a nearby building. It was a two-story brick structure that, if they weren’t in the middle of a magical tower, Alyssa would’ve pinned as being built in the fifties. It was the sort of relic she recognized as belonging to a bygone, more prosperous era. The entirety of the outskirts was like that. Sure, there were more modern, prefabricated buildings, but there were also long stretches that suggested that the area had once seen some degree of prosperity. Time had taken its toll, though, and over time, the middle class had shifted further from the city, and they were replaced by a slightly less fortunate population. Over and over, the process had repeated until, at last, it descended into poverty.

Or that was what the landscape suggested. Alyssa knew it wasn’t real. It was just a detailed projection, not so different from an elaborate movie set, with plenty of detail but none of the real history.

In any case, the others climbed to the roof of the three-story building while Alyssa set off toward the mass of zombies. Once she’d reached her destination, she settled down to wait for a little more than half an hour, just to ensure that the rest of the party would be ready. As she waited, she made certain that Hardened Skin was still active. If everything went as she hoped, she wouldn’t need either of her self-buffs, but if things went wrong, she would appreciate the defensive ability far more than the offensive Heavy Blows.

Steeling her nerves, she embraced Heart of the Dragon as well. The increase to her capabilities wasn’t massive – only a few points to each physical attribute – but it was enough that she noticed the difference. Fortunately, the ability only produced a minor drain on her energy levels. Even in battle, she could keep the ability active for hours before she began to experience noticeable fatigue.

Hopefully, the upcoming fight wouldn’t take that long.

With her abilities active, Alyssa stepped out from around the corner and started yelling. The living corpses responded immediately, pushing themselves to their feet. She retreated a few feet around the corner of a building, then waited. The moment she saw the first zombie step into view, she started jogging back toward the building where she had left the rest of her party. The distance went by in a flash, and before she knew it, she was in front of the building.

But there was a problem.

The zombies weren’t the shambling mass portrayed in most movies, but they weren’t exactly fast, either. The result was that she’d left them behind. So, she headed back, finding that they’d only reached the halfway point. Some had lost interest altogether and were heading back to their original location. That changed when Alyssa let out another shout, and when she saw that she once again had a trail of zombies, she took off at a light jog. Every few yards, she looked back and let out another yell, and like that, she led the horde back toward the building.

When she finally reached it, she once again assured herself that the zombies were on their way. Then, she used Heroic Leap, launching herself into the air. With her inflated Strength, as well as the enhancement of the ability, she reached the roof. As she climbed to her feet, she noted that Bryce was already in the middle of casting one of his spells.

Meanwhile, Roman had drawn his bow, and was steadily picking off the zombies at the fringe of the mass. After ensuring that the others knew their roles, Alyssa headed to the roof access and hefted her spear. Behind her, Bryce finished casting his spell, and there was the sound of a massive explosion. But Alyssa tried to ignore it. Bryce and Roman had their task, and she had hers.

Beside her stood Trace, while the pair of healers had positioned themselves behind her. However, Alyssa noticed that both looked eager for a fight. Verin had her morningstar in hand, while Chun had adopted a fighting stance.

Another explosion sounded before Roman shouted, “They’re in the building!”

The plan was simple. Under no circumstances could Bryce kill all of the zombies. His spells were powerful, but he’d run out of Ethera well before they were all dead. The same was true of Roman with his arrows. So, they were always going to have to fight hand-to-hand. Knowing that, Alyssa’s plan tried to mitigate the weight of the zombies’ numbers by forcing them into the stairwell, which would not only funnel them into a single file line, but it would also slow them down.

With that in mind, Alyssa had placed herself at the door where she intended to use her abilities as well as inflated attributes to hold the line long enough to finish the horde off.

It was some time before the first zombies broke through the door, but Alyssa was ready. She thrust her spear forward, sweeping the blade across its neck and decapitating it. She’d seen enough movies to know that was the surest method to deal with the creatures. Even as the monster fell, another took its place. Alyssa’s spear whipped out, spearing the zombie through the head. It dropped, just like the first.

Two more appeared, trying to squeeze through the doorway at the same time. Alyssa decapitated one, while Trace stepped forward and sliced the top of the other’s head off. They both fell.

So it began, but judging by the numbers she’d seen, the battle was far from over.

As it turned out, her prediction was correct. On and on it went, and the bodies piled up, blocking the door. Every now and then, zombies would manage to crawl through, but it was enough to give them plenty of rest.

After a few hours, Roman announced that the flow of zombies had slowed to a trickle and that the building was probably full of the creatures. That meant that it was time for phase two.

Alyssa turned to Bryce, who’d stopped casting for the past hour so he could regain his Ethera. She asked, “You ready?”

“Definitely not.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“You have no way of knowing if that’s true,” he stated.

“Bryce, I –”

He rolled his eyes. “I know,” he said. “This is how it’s got to be. Just don’t let them eat my brains.”

To Roman, Alyssa asked, “Is the ladder clear?”

He nodded, saying that it was.

“Alright, then. Let’s get this thing going,” she said.

With that, Roman, the two healers, and Trace headed to the back of the building, where they descended a ladder. They wouldn’t stop there, either. Over the next few minutes, Alyssa watched the piled corpses, just in case another zombie broke through. They didn’t, and soon enough, enough time had passed for Alyssa to say, “Alright. Use it.”

“On it, boss,” Bryce said, extending his hand toward the bodies.

He muttered something under his breath, though as far as Alyssa knew, there was no verbal component to his spells. Instead, he just had to wait for them to gather enough Ethera. Once the spell was saturated, he would unleash it. Still, he was fully committed to the image he’d created, so he maintained that the incantation was a necessary part of decent spellcasting.

And considering that Bryce was the highest level pure spellcaster in Easton, Alyssa couldn’t really gainsay him. In any case, he was effective, so she didn’t push it.

After about thirty seconds, he finished his spell, and a huge stream of fire burst forth from his extended hand. It was hot enough that, even from five feet away, Alyssa felt her skin on the verge of blistering. She stepped back, watching as the fire melted the bricks around the doorway and burned the corpses to ash. The stream continued for almost fifteen seconds until, at last, the flames petered out. Bryce’s shoulders sagged as he said, “That was…a lot of Ethera.”

Then, he looked at the results of the spell, saying, “Effective, though.”

And he wasn’t wrong. Dozens of zombies had been so thoroughly burned that nothing but charred bones remained. More importantly, a few of the flames persisted as more mundane fire. That was due to the others’ preparation. While Alyssa had been acting as bait, the rest of the party had scoured the building for anything flammable, which they placed in such a way as to catch the entire building on fire.

One cast wouldn’t be enough, but they didn’t intend for it to be, either.

“You still have enough Ethera, right?”

“One more cast. Not Stream of Flame, though. I can only cast Meteor Strike.”

“That’ll have to do,” she said. “Do it.”

“Already gathering Ethera.”

Alyssa watched the half-melted doorway, but Stream of Flame had done its work well. Much of the brickwork had collapsed, blocking the way. The zombies soon piled up on the other side, and eventually, she knew they would manage to break through. But for now, Alyssa and Bryce were safe.

Then, the Wizard dropped a meteor on them.

It was only a yard or two across, and it certainly didn’t hit with the force of a real meteor. However, it didn’t need to, either. When it hit, the stairwell collapsed, as did a good portion of the roof. Alyssa had expected it, so she grabbed the much taller Bryce around the waist, throwing him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then sprinted across the roof.

Using Enrage, she increased her attributes to unreal levels, and when she reached the edge of the roof, she used Heroic Leap, sending her sailing through the air for over thirty feet before she landed on the neighboring roof.

As she skidded to a stop, she was greeted by the sound of a collapsing building, and when she turned around, she saw the fruits of their labor. The fires from Stream of Flame had spread throughout the building, weakening it enough that Meteor Strike was enough to tear it down.

With all those zombies inside.

“I just got a lot of experience,” Bryce said.

“Good. I think we’re going to need it going forward,” she said. Then, looking around, she added, “Let’s go find the others.”

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