Chapter 77 (Patreon)

Chapter 77

Senna nodded yet again.  “My people called the planet I come from ‘Zazir,’ though neither of our worlds exist as they once did if what the administrator said is to be believed.  I cannot grasp the meaning of all this… I… I need to get back to my family.  How long have I been asleep?”

Athela thought back to the battle in the forest.  “Almost two days now.”

“Two days!?” Senna repeated, dumbstruck.  “Were there any other survivors other than Ethel and myself?”

“Not from your group.  We almost got there in time to save one of the men with you, but he died shortly after we killed the goblins.”

Water began to tear up along Senna’s lower eyelids, and her lip trembled slightly, but she got a hold of her emotions soon after that and swallowed hard to bring herself in check.  “Uhm… Ok.  May I ask again though, why did you two help us?”

Athela shifted her position, leaning against the bed with her arms folded - and her smile went cold.  “Because my master has a bleeding heart.  Personally?  I would have let you die.  It isn’t that I want you to die or have any ill will towards you, it’s just that I don’t care if you live or die.  You are as unimportant to me as the grains of dirt underneath my feet, but he’d have been unhappy if we didn’t help you out.  And believe it or not, I’ve taken a keen liking to my master and don’t want to see him upset.”

There was an awkward pause.  Senna’s eyes went wide at the admission, but they softened as they fell onto Riven’s sleeping figure nearby.  “Well, you are a demon.  I should have expected as much.  Still, I’m surprised that he would have wanted to help.  He is a vampire after all.”

Athela snorted, suppressing a laugh, and then beat her chest twice to expel a belch.  “Nice!  That was a good one.  Anyways, Riven wasn’t a vampire up until recently.  Or maybe he was and just didn’t know it?  He drank some sinner’s blood from the hellscape and unlocked a dormant bloodline.  Not sure how that works out, but that’s what happened.”

“And… he was human before?” Senna asked uncertainly, shifting to a more comfortable position on the bed.

Allie nodded.  “Human.  He’s been a vampire a grand total of a few days.”

“He certainly took to feeding on that goblin without much of a problem for someone who’s only been a vampire for a minimal amount of time.”

Athela’s stare turned cold, and her unusual features were set into hard lines that made Senna visibly shiver.  “I’m trying to be nice for my master’s sake.  If you want me to leave you alone, I can certainly do that.  I’d appreciate it if you weren’t so judgmental with the people who saved your lives though.”

Senna opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again.  She shook her head, eyes downcast, and sighed.  “I am sorry.  I apologize… I am just not accustomed to the idea that… Well, usually his kind views my kind as cattle.  If you say he was just turned though, I will believe you.  There is no reason not to since I am still in the land of the living… You are very pretty, by the way.”

Athela immediately beamed.  “Thanks!  You’re very pretty yourself!  For a mortal, anyways.”

Senna blushed and half-smiled, glancing over at Riven again.  “As is your master.”

The room’s mood immediately soured and Athela’s face darkened.  “Don’t even think about it.”

The way Athela got so protective over Riven in that single instant was somewhat funny to Senna, and the elf suppressed a laugh of her own with her good side cupping her mouth when Azmoth also began to laugh.

“Not funny!” Athela snapped at the brutalisk, only for Azmoth to wag his tail even faster with amusement.  “I’m serious Azmoth!  It isn’t funny!”

“I am promised to another.” Senna stated with a sly smile.  “Though he is good looking, I must admit.  What is your master’s name?”

“Don’t press your luck!  You aren’t worthy!” Athela replied, half joking and half threatening with a finger pointed the elf’s way.  “His name is Riven.”

Senna raised an eyebrow.  “Do you intend to vet all the women who chase him then?”

Athela raised an eyebrow, daringly.  “That or I intend to kill them.  Unless of course they meet my standards… I’d allow it if they were up to par.”

Senna’s face paled, only to begin laughing again when Athela’s composure broke and she couldn’t keep the straight face.

“I’m already beginning to like you Athela.” Senna said with another sigh, closing her eyes and letting her head sink into the pillow behind her.  “This is such an odd situation I find myself in… when I tell my father of this, I’m sure he’ll not believe it until he meets you.”

“Until he meets me?” Athela repeated with an eye roll, using a finger and wagging it in front of Senna’s face.  “Don’t think that’s a good idea.  Just look at how you reacted.  At how the goblins reacted.  Let me ask you a question, if you had a larger group of people with you and encountered us – would you have tried to kill us?”

Senna opened her eyes and met Allie’s gaze, then winced in pain when her clavicle moved with a large intake of air.  “Certainly.  However, I will be able to convince him and the council.  Your master has proved himself a good person.  I am in his debt, and my tribe needs to know of this place.  The more allies we have – the more protection we can bring to one another against the monsters that roam these lands.”

Athela wasn’t buying it one bit.  “I am incredibly skeptical that any elf tribe would want to ally themselves with a vampire and his demonic servants.  You may broach the subject with him when he wakes, but I will advise him against meeting your father or any of the rest of your kind.  Do not think that because he is newly turned and unaware of your peoples’ histories that I do not know them.  Just as I studied his realm before the integration, I studied yours too.”

Azmoth got up from the side of the surgical table, standing to a full height and peering down at the elf with a scrutinizing gaze unbecoming of anything friendly.  “They will not know of the master unless he wants it.”

The elf was not to be persuaded otherwise though.

“But people can change, and we must change if we are to survive.  Why not try?” Senna asked hesitantly, looking a little sad and lightly clasping her hands.  “I understand that you don’t want to let my tribe know about Riven for good reason, but can we not at least find a common meeting place to leave each other messages or set aside times to talk?  I’m in his debt and wish to know more about all of you after I leave here.”

Athela’s sly smile quickly spread across her lips while examining the visibly nervous elf. “No… You’re just fishing for information.”

Athela took a step forward and jabbed a finger into Senna’s sternum.  “You’re just afraid he’s going to select you to become his thrall.  Azmoth, should I tell Riven about how to make thralls now that he’s got such a fine specimen here that seems so easy for the picking?”

The elf’s face quickly paled and a look of horror overcame her, and Athela followed up with a shrill and cruel laugh.  “Do not play games with me, mortal.  But be comforted, as he would be appalled by such an idea anyways.  However, if you truly are interested in meeting us again after we let you go… You may speak to Riven about it when he wakes.”

Senna’s horror vanished, letting out a deep and shaky sigh before she brightly smiled.  “Good!  I am excited to let my family know that I have made friends with a vampire!  It’s actually quite exciting…”

A quiet knock at the door drew the attention of the elf and two demons, and the voice of Jake the teenager from earlier called out to ask if he could come in.

Athela quietly exited the room, literally not making even the slightest of sounds as her bare feet traveled over the tiled operating room floor.  It was uncanny.  Even the swing of the door made no noise, her body’s passive abilities dampening the sound just because she was in contact with it - as she didn’t want to wake Riven up for no good reason.

He needed his sleep.

Exiting the room and staring down at the teenager who gawked at her breasts with wide eyes, she open-palmed slapped the boy to get his attention and startle him back into reality.  “The hell do you want, runt?”

The blonde, curly haired teen stammered a reply and hastily tried to reconstruct his composure while blushing immensely.  “I, uh, just wanted to update all of you.  There’s something important I’ve found with my maps.”

“Oh?  Are the monsters gone?”

The boy slowly shook his head.  “No… It’s still sniffing around upstairs.  It actually looks like they’re making a nest, or trying to find a way down here, or both.  They’re not having much luck on the second.”

“Then what is it?”

The kid pointed back towards an old closet, and he motioned for her to follow.  Taking one of the lanterns from a nearby table and using the dim light to lead the way, he opened the closet up and pointed at a thin metal sheet on the floor that was clipped down to another metal ring via padlock.  “If we can break this, it actually leads into a sewer system.  We can get out of here without ever needing to fight the creatures up above, even if they’re nesting.”

***

The next two hours passed with little to do for Athela, but eventually Riven yawned and woke up with a stretch.

“HOLY shit!”  Riven exclaimed and reared back his head - whacking it against the near wall when he opened his eyes to see Athela’s own pupils staring daggers at him from only half an inch away.

He grimaced her way and rubbed at the bruise with a frown.  “OW!”

The demoness snickered and Riven smacked her upside the forehead before pushing her away and sitting up.  “You think you’re funny, huh?”

She gave him a brilliant smile.  “I know I’m funny!  Anyways: Jake, that teenage brat, has some information from scouting out the surrounding city.  We also found a passage out of here, so get your ass moving and let’s go talk to him!”

Riven smiled at her chipper attitude and massaged the back of his head some more, but took her hand to pull himself up when she offered it.  A minute later he approached Jake who was nestled inbetween his parents on a couch, and a few minutes after that he was in the three-dimensional mapping system alongside Jake while having various details pointed out about the surrounding environment.  It was a very useful ability and class if Riven had any say, even if it wasn’t combat oriented.  The main sphere of his map was updated live, in real time.  The issue with his 3D mapping sphere was only within a certain radius concerning his current spot, which was maybe a couple hundred yards, and Jake couldn’t be paying attention to all details at once.  But he was able to use summoned dragonflies to go beyond this sphere, looking through their eyes as they zipped about to do the scouting for him beyond the updated-live map to map out other parts of the area that were stagnant based on the last thing Jake saw.  The teenager apparently could create up to 5 of these scouting mana-based dragonflies at one time too.

First thing the kid had scouted were the monsters upstairs.  It really was beginning to nest there, dragging piles of corpses over to feed on and integrating body parts little by little of what it didn’t need to eat.

Jake had also combed through the western edge of the city with his dragonflies after he’d run out of investigating the surrounding area in thorough detail.  This had been done over the past couple days actually even before the monster attack, and the kid had even adopted a pattern of developing intelligence on surrounding groups only for his own curiosity - which he was happy to share with Riven.

The city was a lot bigger than Riven had initially thought, being situated mostly inbetween two mountains in a large valley but also extending out into the plains beyond..  Of the scouting Jake had done thus far, three areas were most noticeable.

First, after passing through a large neighborhood where looters were frequenting various houses, was an old prison.  Watching and listening through the eyes of their dragonflies: Riven had come to realize that this prison was now one of the city’s hubs.  Inmates, once prisoners there, had overthrown the guards and taken control of it.  The prison was basically a fortress, with heavy-duty barbed wire fences in multiple layers and easily guarded points of entry.  Being two stories tall, it also had a lot of room to keep people.  They’d killed all the original guards in the prison, and the inmates had replaced them with slaves while forming a hierarchy around one man named James.  These people raided the surrounding city wherever they were able to find supplies or other humans: killing anyone that got in their way, taking their things, and raping whoever they chose to take for their own pleasures.  They had a stockpile of guns, with a few of them even having earned classes, levels and abilities by killing monsters or finishing their own tutorials – the most noteworthy of these being James himself.

James was a big, bald white man with a bushy brown beard who always remained shirtless, having long scars in the form of X’s placed along his front and back.  Heavily tattooed sleeves inked his muscular arms up to the shoulders, and he was quick to anger – killing people who even thought of challenging his authority with some kind of earth magic that enveloped his skin in rock with strength and defense bonuses.  Given the way they conducted themselves, Riven had already marked him as an obstacle they’d have to take care of sooner or later if he wished to stay in Brightsburg.

The second noticeable area was a very large church next to a large lake: located on the northern edge of the city where hundreds of people, mostly rednecks and the adamantly religious types, had congregated.  A priest by the name of Benjamin had acquired a form of holy magic and some divine book of miracles he’d likely found in a tutorial dungeon, and had called upon his fellow followers of God to pray with him and take up arms.  In typical redneck fashion, they’d brought their guns and bibles and created something of a religious cult – referencing Benjamin as their lord and savior reincarnated and a direct messenger of god that would lead them from the apocalypse into greater destinations.  Benjamin’s followers called him ‘Prophet’, and according to James they’d been very aggressive in their recruitment tactics - often forcing other people to join via threat of violence.  Rumors were going around before Riven got there that Benjamin’s men had actually murdered the previous city mayor, and had killed the remnant police force as well.

The third noticeable group was a bit more… scary.  At least according to the teenager.  News from other survivors who’d witnessed the fights or even those who’d just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time swore up and down about a new undead faction in the downtown area.  There was a lot of debate about whether or not they were actually people who’d just obtained necromancy magics after the integration, or whether they were just monsters feeding on people to grow their own numbers.  Whatever the case, Jake had scouted it out as well - and he’d found hundreds of various undead species holed up within the tallest tower of the downtown skyline.  The tower was very tall, and in the snapshots Jake had taken it was even pulsing with teal and black magics that slowly warped the building from steel into… something else.  The process was still underway, but it was very obvious that the base structure of the tower was actually being converted into new materials with patches of ivory and black along its surface.  Unfortunately Jake’s creatures had been spotted rather fast when exploring this particular area, so he hadn’t been able to glean much information on it yet.

The neighborhoods to the north of the western edge of the city was also a madhouse.  Entire blocks had been lit aflame in the past and burned down street by street as gang wars erupted between a multitude of different smaller factions fighting over resources.  These resources were often found by Jake to be food, ammunition, toilet paper, medical supplies, and sadly enough - women.  From what Riven could tell, most of these people were smaller groups and spread out amidst the anarchy without any major leader unifying them just yet… but many of the gangs actually bartered and traded with one another within these five categories of goods.  Apparently Elysium Coins hadn’t become a really big hit yet with the local populace, and Riven couldn’t blame them.  He had yet to see any Elysium Altars since getting here, so how was he supposed to spend these damn coins?

Quite frankly Riven was quite surprised to see that society had fallen so far and so fast as to resort to slavery within weeks of becoming a post-apocalyptic wasteland though, but Athela wasn’t as surprised as he was.