POV: Grant

  I took the long way home, heading west on what used to be College Avenue taking in the sights. My magic was at my fingertips just begging to be used but oddly, nothing jumped out at me. No squirrels with acorn grenades. No two-headed oversized housecats bigger than actual cougars. In fact, this damn walk was starting to get too quiet. If so many people died and the city was empty, then where are all the bodies? I looked for skeletons, corpses, and signs of mass death. I could smell something wrong but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Nothing visual popped out at me other than the plain destruction of buildings.

  The lack of metal was surprising to me as well until I saw a small pack of those weird goats serenely eating a rusty van. It looked like the aluminum ceiling and outer covering had gone first and now they were happily chewing on the spring steel and undercarriage. I almost let out a snort of incredulity.

  “Freaking goats.” I muttered, finally breaking the silence. “Eating all the useful shit. Why can’t you eat grass like a normal fucking goat?”

  As one, they all stopped eating and stared at me. I didn’t back down. Mana surged deep within me, the stone around me eager for me to call upon it. If they wanted a fight, I’d be happy to oblige them. In fact, I was eager to rumble. It would feel good to burn some energy.

  One by one, they lazily went right back to ignoring me. When the crest of the hill hid me from their view, I shook my head. Before I knew it, I hit the intersection where the Mexican restaurant sat next to Route One. And that’s when the smell really hit me.

  Rot.

  My stomach instantly became queasy as the sickly sweet stench of death thickened. Tears welled up as my eyes began to burn a bit, an acrid bite of toxic smoke accompanying the stench. Coughing, I looked around for the source but couldn’t see anything out of the blue. The wind finally blew a bit from the west bringing an even stronger smell.

  I’m glad I was alone even though I knew it was tactically stupid. I turned to head north to get back home but I heard muffled screams.

  “Eli would kill me if I didn’t at least take a look.” I thought, even my internal voice sounded like a growl.

  Knowing that grumbling wouldn’t solve the problem, I covered my face with my arm, cursing internally that I’d left my helmet back with the dwarves. After calling myself stupid about seventy different times, I followed the smell of death.

  Horror struck me as I reached the top of the small hill from the side of the highway. I didn’t have time to process what I was seeing, my stomach reacted before I did. I took a step back and down behind the hill, emptying lunch and most of breakfast on the grass. I heard an ungodly snarl as I spat.

  Looking up, three things stared at me. Bulbous green eyes sat on top of monkey-like heads. Their wide beaks had far too many thin teeth, blackened needles that looked like they were meant for catching fish. I squinted, the sun a bit behind them casting shadows on their demonic faces. Fingers reminiscent of a chicken’s foot scrabbled at the air and slime covered fur stood out to me. These things were amalgamations of different nightmares and they looked at me as if I were breakfast.

  More screams rang out behind them, quieter this time. I heard awful chewing noises and delighted alien screams.

  They looked wrong. This is what the Obelisk was talking about. I knew it in my bones. As one, they grinned at me, their beaks bending upwards that made them even more frightening. Tattered shoes hung from one set of claws and I saw a torn purse matted in the dirt.

  I wasn’t scared. I was disgusted. And beneath that – furious.

  I was angry.

  Emotion that had been seeking an outlet for far too long boiled out of me. Finally, a righteous cause deserving of wrath. Their raptor-like legs allowed them to spring at me and for a timeless second, the waters within me stilled.

  Dirt exploded up as I dove to the side, stone welling up from the ground to encase my hands in oversized gauntlets. Even more dirt flowed up to form extra layers as I did not want those slime-dripping claws to get ahold of me. I was not idle as they landed in a clumsy sprawl, scrabbling at their eyes to remove the dirt. I pushed with my Terrastria, the ground beneath them softening to foul their purchase in the dirt. As they tried to get their feet beneath them, I formed a long handled stone cleaver from my gauntlets bringing it down.

  Two bodies fell into four pieces and I jumped back just in time. Both corpses immediately began deflating, spewing green gas into the air as their purplish-black blood rotted the grass around them. I paused for a split second as the third one saw its dead friends and giggled. It ignored me, leaning forward to take a big bite out of the exposed organs.

  I didn’t need time to think or decide. I lifted the stone cleaver and left it buried in that ugly fucker’s skull.

  The screams had died out and all I heard with desperate sobbing. I crested the hill again, pulling up more stone and dirt to reform my armor and gauntlets.

  “Somebody please . . . somebody please help me! Anybody!”

  I knew I had to look, the awful sounds tearing at my soul. But what was looking directly at me were another dozen of the unholy little beasts. From my standpoint, I got an even closer look. They reminded me of twisted versions of gremlins, the version after the ones that got fed after midnight, but even more vile.

  Slitted eyes that couldn’t focus without hunger spurring them on. My primal instincts balked at the springy birdlike knees tipped with wicked claws. Even worse, the creatures looked badly designed. Most of them didn’t have any kind of symmetry, their limbs being different lengths forcing them to have an alien gait, like insects walking while missing a few limbs.

  I noted the slime and filth dripping off of them. The vegetation hissed, boiling slowly as the liquid dissolved it. The ones with bulbous noses sneezed strings of fluids that landed like spider webs. I even saw some with flat cow-like teeth that kept their faces to the ground and ate the grass while simultaneously spewing out the other end.

  Each creature was an abomination. If I had a religious bone in my body, I would’ve been certain that Hell itself had unleashed some of its demons.

  All around them, everywhere they went, they ate and tore and spewed vileness on everything around them. Even each other. They were not safe from the predations of their own kind. If one tripped and fell, the others would fall on it in a frenzy until they created a mudhole of filth that began to spawn even more of them.

  “Filthlings. That’s what they are.” I named them with all the disgust I felt.

  I heaved again but there was nothing left. My soul felt the cloying sickness growing thicker.

  “Help us. Help me.”

  I pushed the cries to the back of my mind, ignoring the pleas for help. My feet sank into the earth up to my knees, mana from the earth slowly pouring into me. The more I was buried, the easier the flows of magical energy came to me. Wasting no time, I moved forward slowly, the stone beneath me answering my calls.

  I had been thinking about the tactics that I’d used on the giants. And I realized that I’d simply not been creative enough. If I can make something fall, then I can probably determine where and how it lands. With a bit of control, I can end fights before they truly start.

  Hands of stone ripped out of the ground in front of the filthlings, grabbing them by the face and pushing them down. The shoves were so violent they were basically body slams that used their faces as handles. I smiled at the simple part, the unseen strategy was actually the easy part. As the filthlings fell backwards, a small chunk of jagged stone popped up out of the ground right where their head landed.

  No soft dirt for them.

  Each filthling went out like a light. I remember my dad telling me about his very young marine corps days when he saw a bar fight. One guy got hit in the face and fell over. He died, not from the punch, but from his head hitting the ground.

  It’s that simple. And energy-wise, it’s cheap.

  Within five seconds, I had taken out the closest nine filthlings who lay on the ground, their brains dashed against the rocks. The others stood there, consumed with hunger as they stared at their dead brethren. The desire to attack me warred with their need to eat vulnerable carcasses.

  Finally, greed and hunger overtook any hint of fear or good sense they might have had and I watched as they sprang on their dead, ripping and tearing into the putrescence. These ones were even easier to kill. With zero spatial awareness, they did not notice me as I grew another cleaver out of stone and chopped them down. Grimacing at the stench that almost forced me to heave again, I pulled on my Terrastria, using the dirt to move all of their corpses and filth and fluids into a central area.

  “What are you doing? Help me?! Please!”

  Turning to finally register the begging behind me, I saw an older woman, maybe mid-forties, underneath several other dead people. It struck me that most people I’d seen had de-aged significantly but she was not in her early twenties. Gray hair, face lines. She’d had a hard life and this hadn’t done her any favors. It struck me that magic, the System, it did not touch everyone equally.

  Carefully, I reverently moved the dead humans and laid them out in the grass. There was no rhyme or reason to the dead. Most were missing their bellies and throats, the soft tissue and organs eaten away. Even more were missing their eyeballs and the women were horrifically disfigured.

  The monsters had gone for whatever soft tissue they could. This time, I couldn’t stop myself from emptying the remainder of my stomach. The water in my eyes finally broke free.

  “Are you hurt?” I said, my voice ragged. “Can you walk?” I leaned over, getting a better look at the tattered person in front of me. “My name is Grant. I live not far from here.” I pointed in the general direction of the college.

  “Wah-we were trying to g-get to the police station.” Her sobbing stutter made it hard to understand her but I gave her the space to get it out. Nobody should be rushed in this situation. At least, as long as all the filthlings were dead. I kept working, separating out the bodies and burying them next to each other. I did my best to reunite limbs with torsos if I could but the monsters had clearly been hungry.

  “But there were t-t-too many!” Her dirty, broken fingernails grasped at the air. “They came out of the sewers! I saw them! The ones they dragged down in there!”

  She pointed wildly, as if fending off the memories of the creatures.

  I gulped, trying to breathe as little as possible. The wretched smell was almost impossible to work through. Each time I sank a body deep into the earth, I made sure to look around just to make sure that nothing was trying to sneak up on us.

  “How many were there? You know, of y’all? And the monsters?”

  She did not even register that I had asked her a question. Her gaze was getting cloudy. I dropped the leg I was holding and rushed over to her.

  “Where are you hurt?” I said, holding her face. “Talk to me!”

  She didn’t answer, just kept describing the Abhorrent.

  Ignoring her for the moment, I looked for signs of blood. It wasn’t until I got to her belly that I saw a jagged tear in her side and a broken off claw longer than a steak knife still embedded in her midsection. The jagged claw had ripped to the side a bit exposing organs.

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  She was already dead. Without a proper medical team or church healers on hand, there was nothing I could do for her. That little voice in the back of my head screamed at me.

  “You could’ve saved her! If you had just been faster! Smarter! You could’ve-”

  With a flex of will, I squashed that little voice. It had no hold on me. There was nothing I could’ve done. I didn’t have healing powers. I’d only saved her from a worse fate. She could’ve been eaten alive.

  Or worse.

  Anger and loss clawed at my heart. I didn’t even know this woman but watching the light fade from her eyes as I held her hand and did my best to keep her comfortable. It ignited something darker within me. Still a fire, but one burning colder. I almost lost it as she breathed her last. Closing her eyes, I held two fingers on her neck, just staying there for a time to make sure that she had in fact, passed away.

  I looked down at my hands, the stone gauntlets had long fallen away. They didn’t shake at all. I had gone past the point of pain, the bereft agony of not knowing where Sandra was and our gaping hole of a mental link had mostly inured me against more pain. The emptiness inside of me grew colder as a line of tears creased the dirt on my face.

  Suppressing my emotions, I buried her next to the others, erecting a large stone monument on top. I didn’t know what to say over their graves, so instead of speaking, I carved a simple phrase into the monument before moving on.

  Tomb of the Unknown Innocents. You Will Not Be Forgotten.

  It did not take long for me to encounter more of the filthlings. I did my best to clean the area, shaping a large box out of stone and putting all of the filthlings bodies into it. Taking my time to be extra careful, I also separated out the contaminated dirt and put that in there too before sealing the box and burying it.

  I started to pull up my Status Sheet. It had been a while since I’d seen it. As I opened my mouth and looked up to activate it, the early afternoon sun blinded me for a moment, reflecting off a piece of metal that fell.

  I turned, seeing the bombed out shell that used to be the Giant grocery store. Snorting at the name and the horror it now represented, I leaned forward to see the piece of metal that caught my eye. It had fallen on a trail of blood that had been dragged into the rubble.

  “Shit.”

  My stomach begged for me to turn around and walk away.

  My conscience demanded otherwise.

  Once again, stone and dirt flowed up to cover me in a layer of magically empowered armor. This time, I put a bit more focus into it. Overlapping plates of stone to look like scale armor covered most of me and provided flexibility. Plain dirt mixed with clay served as the insulator underneath the scales. My boots and arms carried yet another layer on top of that full of gravel that I could put to use at any moment.

  But I was wasting valuable time not being strategic. Pulling at the earth beneath, I crafted a kite shield out of stone, shaping it until it was an inch thick. Once the base was complete, I caked on a thicker layer of clay to absorb kinetic impacts. I also figured that it would be more than enough to stop those wicked claws I’d seen.

  With my shield directly in front of me, I slowly and steadily moved towards the rubble, keeping my eyes peeled for movement. My own walking was the furthest thing from being stealthy. My footsteps sounded like a diesel truck and the stone scale armor rasped as I moved. Being quiet wouldn’t do me any good.

  “Anybody in there?!” I called out, stomping forward. Every step I took, I pulsed out a bit of mana, solidifying the ground beneath me to minimize surprise attacks from below. “Hello!”

  Wet coughs pulled me up short.

  “You okay? I need to know if you’re human before I come in there.”

  “Kill me . . . please.”.

  That voice was broken. Raw. Something inside of me began to crumble before another thought hit me. What if the little monsters could speak? Or mimic human voices enough to draw in prey? It reminded me of one of my uncles who used to hunt. He told me that some animals mime voices or distress calls of their prey to lure them in. I firmed up, resetting myself for whatever horrors were in front of me.

  “It hurts so bad. Please . . . help me!”

  It did sound like a human. Raggedy, tortured, dying. I didn’t falter, keeping my head on swivel and moving at a steady pace. My eyes were barely visible above my shield. I stood in front of the rubble. There was a dark hole going down at a steep angle before leveling off. The afternoon sun did not go past the first ten feet.

  A large man’s hand lay severed at the bottom. Tanned and dirty.

  “Where are you?”

  Steel rebar poked out from the side of the tunnel. The dirt pulled away until the metal dropped out clanging against the stone floor. I sank my Terrastria into the dirt and stone to firm up the tunnel walls, the broken stones flowing together to form an actual tunnel instead of an unstable house of cards ready to fall in on me. The voice ahead grew weaker, more hoarse.

  After a minute of slow and steady progress, the tunnel opened up into a shallow cavern. Holes in the ceiling let in just enough light to see.

  I wish there was less light.

  A pool of green so dark it was almost black sat in the center of the cavern. Bloated bodies slowly sank into it as if it were a stew from Hell. I did not leave the entrance of the tunnel. Instead, I stood there, my shield in front of me as my eyes took in the horror.

  Over thirty of the filthlings ate their fill, cavorting over the rotting pyre of human flesh that towered behind the pool. I desperately looked around for human survivors but there were none. Near the top of the pyre sat a filthling that was taller than the others. Its distended gut jiggled as it looked up and called out, “Help me! Please!”

  My eyes narrowed. Taking a slow step back, I pulled at my magic until I was full to the brim. With my mind racing at a hundred miles an hour, I imagined and discarded plans until I arrived at the only one that made sense.

  Tactical retreat.

  Without Elvis or any kind of backup, fighting this number of creatures was suicide. And as angry as I was, suicide still didn’t interest me. I stepped back, using my shield as a starting point. The tunnel around me filled to plug the gape so that it sealed off the way into the cavern. Exit secured. This way, none of the monsters would be able to get to me. Hustling back to the surface, I filled in the tunnel’s entrance and walked back over to where the ceiling holes were. I kept up the flow of magic so I wouldn’t fall right through. An hour passed as I hunkered down, channeling magic slowly into the shell of the cavern, sealing it off from every angle. None of the disgusting little fuckers were going to escape.

  Taking a deep breath, I walked to the edge until I reached the tip of the fault line I’d carefully crafted. Letting out that same breath, I drove two spikes of power into the artificial fault line.

  CRACK-BOOM!

  I watched with solemn joy and righteous anger as the Abhorrent were buried under several tons of dirt and rock, entombing them. More power flowed through me, the cracks and spaces that could let air through sealing up. The landscape heaved, sinking down further until no trace was left.

  Weakness flitted through me, my limbs shaking from the exertion. With my ‘Grounded’ Trait, my reserves of mana were endless while in contact with the earth. That does not mean my ability to channel that energy was also endless. I stayed where I was until I recovered enough to reasonably defend myself. It was times like this that I was glad I’d spent so much time designing and crafting my armor. The peace of mind it gave was invaluable.

  The walk towards home wasn’t the therapy I was hoping for. It’s not like it was peaceful. I was walking through the Holocaust museum. Everywhere I looked I saw the ruins of humanity. The lack of bodies was disturbing in its own right. I kept thinking to myself, where are the dead? It can’t be this quiet without evidence of thousands upon thousands of dead people.

  Against my will, my stomach let out a whine, reminding me of the cost of all of this supernatural exertion. I grimaced, suppressing a roil of nausea. Lightly rubbing at my stomach, I noticed something odd. So I pulled up my Status Screen.

  The translucent blue glow irritated me, the constant evidence that my life was changed forever. I did note the changes. Squinting just to make sure I was seeing what thought I saw, I dismissed the screen and pinched the skin on my belly again.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I have lost weight. Stupid screen can tell me that but can’t give me advice on actually using my powers? Fucking System. Who the FUCK designed this piece of crap. No ‘Help’ menu, no expandable options for detailed explanations, no leveling up.” I complained darkly. My rebellious stomach reminded me that it was empty and that it didn’t care about the horrors I’d encountered.

  Grimacing, I looked around to double-check where I was. Home wasn’t exactly far, but the terrain was very different than I remembered. The sheer emptiness is what got to me. Telephone poles were either broken or completely gone. Concrete and asphalt had dissolved and the former roads were now choked with tall grass. People forget just how necessary landmarks are for navigation.

  Turn right at the grocery store and then hang a left at the CVS.

  All that was gone. Trees had grown noticeably larger. The landscape was returning to a primal state. Nature was reclaiming her due. Even up here at the top of the hill where an apartment complex used to be next to the Mexican cafe and the vegan sandwich shop, I could’ve sworn that I was no longer in Fredericksburg. I could see the outline of the Rappahannock river in the distance. That plus the fact that Route one was still mostly a road, except now one made of grass and weeds, was the only reason I could determine which way to go.

  As I jogged home at a pace that Pre-Advent me would’ve considered a run, thank you super strength, I wondered just how long it would be before all traces of humanity were erased. Bushes more than anything covered up the decrepit remains of our buildings. Boxwoods and rose bushes along with poison ivy and honeysuckle vines created a living carpet of green quietly wiping away the fact that we were still here.

  My jog took me down the hill until I hit the remains of the Canal path. This used to be a lovely walkway for an afternoon stroll. Joggers and dog walkers frequented this convenient path that snaked its way through Olde Towne Fredericksburg in a two mile loop. I took the right turn, my guard going up. The path’s inner edge sloped up and the outer edges went down into the stagnant waters.

  I heard a thump, a schlicking sound, a gurgling scream, and then a splash behind me. Hurling myself to the left so my left side hit the slope of the hill, I pulled on the dirt to cover me. A hundred pounds of dirt and rock covered me like a suit of armor as I stood back up, turning around to look for the noise. A bullfrog the size of a dump truck tire sank beneath the water ten feet away, two long spears of ice sticking out of it.

  Unwilling to let that happen to me, I pulled even more dirt out of the hill until I got to pure stone. I looked like a brown and black mannequin with a helmet and chestplate of yellowish shale.

  “You’re welcome!”

  I turned, trying to find the source of the shout.

  “Whoa! That’s cool! Dirt magic!”

  I raised my arms, continuing to pull power into my core.

  “Don’t try to find me. I’m just an average superhero doing his duty. Move along, citizen.”

  Another schlick caught my ear before another thump and splash.

  “I advise you to move quickly. Mosquitos aren’t big enough for the wildlife around here anymore.”

  I wanted to call out, ‘Thank you’, but I’d learned my lesson from the church. Being nice once doesn’t mean you’re friends. Continuing on my way without dropping my earth armor, I kept my guard up. The ice-hurling stranger didn’t say anything else but when I got to my exit along the canal path, I erected a stone column, carving a message and a map into it. The map was bigger than the one I’d given the dwarves but the landmarks were bigger to help people understand where they were. I also made a smaller column that resembled a sundial but instead of telling the time, it had compass markings on it. Working quickly, I reworked the message a time or two.

  Head north to the church for healing and food. Beware canal path and cougars in the trees. Head south to the foot of the big hill for civilization. Ask Dwarves for help. Don’t be a dick.

  It wasn’t much, but it was what I was willing to do.

  I’d seen enough in the last few hours to know that humanity needed to stick together. Or there wouldn’t be any humanity left.