Successor of kukulkan st.., p.23
Successor of Kukulkan: Stormcaller, page 23
“You heard him.” Zig said. “I don’t like to hear it, but I think it’s the truth. Second priority today is to hunt. If you’re too scared to focus on killing as many of these creatures as possible, I understand. Make your way back to town and stay with the people in the firehouse. Thank you for helping out until now. If you stay, you’re going into the fire with us right now.”
The assembled hunters looked at each other, worried. One began to turn away, a young girl about 17 or so, and TJ Appraised her as she walked away.
Acolyte, 1
Anywhere up to a level 3, without an Occupation. Several others looked at each other and the retreating girl, but then Seth walked forward. His acne-scarred face was screwed up in a horrible display of hatred and rage, and he spat the words with a vitriol that almost scared TJ.
“They killed Hannah yesterday. I’m not letting another one of the fuckers live another day, not if I can help it. I’m with you.” Then, he walked forward and summoned his Sacred Weapon, a medieval-looking crossbow. TJ realized that he didn’t understand the variations between the Skills offered by each Class, just like how his Divine Transformation differed from Charlie’s.
“Well said, Seth. TJ, if you want, you can lead us on the hunt.” Zig answered, and many of the less sure hunters seemed mollified by his potential presence.
“I’ll be here,” TJ answered, his hands held up in a warding gesture, “but I’m not much of a leader. I’m happy to be a part of all this and help out however I can, but I won’t lead. I’ll protect and fight alongside you, but it’s better to follow Zig, since she knows you all and everything.”
“Sounds good. OK everybody, keep your eyes peeled while we go. If you notice something, pass it on and prepare to engage.”
Murmurs of agreement traveled up and down the group, and the dozen people standing together all prepared themselves. Of the five Zealots, three had suits of armor appear over them while the other two carried massive iridescent shields over three feet tall and stood on each side of Angelo the Disciple. Charlie stood beside TJ, his jacket put back in his backpack and his eyes peeled for anything approaching. The remaining hunters were all Acolytes, and TJ was again surprised at how the weapons varied. Zig and another carried bows, while Seth hefted his huge crossbow and Farid had a pair of javelins appear in his hands. The last Acolyte, a short girl, carried a two and a half foot-long boomerang that looked almost comical in her hands. That she was labeled an Acolyte, 2 meant that she’d been at least partially successful in hunting with it, though, and TJ refused to underestimate her.
“Ok, we’re moving. We’re about to get to where we’ve seen the closest enemies, so be ready for anything!”
With that, the group of hunters set out. The initial nervousness quickly segued to a more high-strung caution, then to a relaxed awareness. With each step that they took without anyone seeing or noticing anything out of the ordinary, the less experienced hunters slipped more and more out of readiness. So it was, that when Seth shouted, half were entirely caught off guard.
“Three blurs!” Without another word, Seth raised his crossbow, sighted down it, and let the bolt fly. TJ only saw the blur at that moment, and saw it attempt to dodge. The pukwudgie was too late, the bolt catching it squarely on the shoulder. It spun out of its camouflage, blood and screams flying freely. Zig was the second to shoot, an arrow flying with a slight whistle through the air towards the gathered monsters and into one’s surprised throat. Farid’s javelin was just behind, though it fell slightly short of the group. The third attempted to flee, and none of the hunters were ready to keep it from escaping.
TJ, seeing the inevitable problems that would arise from a warning being given to dozens, and maybe hundreds more pukwudgies, activated Divine Transformation and rushed forward. His scales made a pleasant sound on the ground as his tongue flicked out of his mouth and tasted the fleeing pukwudgie’s scent. He could see it, though not with his eyes. He trusted his senses, and with a brief moment’s concentration, he sent a spear of wind lancing around a tree and into the goblin-like creature’s spine. It fell with a weak cry, and TJ grabbed it in his jaws before carrying it and the other still living pukwudgie towards the group of hunters.
He dropped both in front of the dozen, all but four of them (Zig, Farid, Charlie, and Seth) looking sick as he transformed back into his human body.
“You need experience. If the most powerful keep killing everything, the weakest will get left farther and farther behind. Zealots, you especially will need to find out how you can get more experience.”
“Who’s the lowest–”
Seth cut Zig’s question off, pulling a dagger from his belt and stabbing it deep into the pukwudgie he’d shot’s eye. It screamed for only a second before its body went limp and its cries died.
“My prey.” He grunted. “I can share later. But this one… was for Hannah–” His words cut off suddenly.
TJ looked around, slightly off-put by the rage still so prominent on Seth’s face. Before he could ask any questions or respond to that though, Seth spoke up, his tone surprised and a little happy.
“I just got an Occupation.”
“Sweet!”
“Nice!”
“Congrats!”
“What is it?”
A chorus of excited voices cut through the sudden tension, and Seth looked up, a painful rictus of a grin beginning to cross his face. “Avenger.”
Zig hesitated to ask, but eventually she pushed through her obvious discomfort. “And the requirements?”
“To have lost a friend and sworn vengeance for their death. Then, you need to kill the object of your hatred, alone.”
TJ saw several jaws clench in response, his own one of them. He stepped forward and placed a hand on Seth’s shoulder.
“I’m glad you were able to avenge her. The System seems to guide us to do things that’ll let us progress that way. Let’s see if we can’t keep you as a preemptive avenger from now on.”
Seth merely nodded and swiped at a tear from the corner of his eye. Charlie wrapped the skinny man in a rough hug, whispering something TJ couldn’t quite pick out in his ear. Charlie patted Seth’s back a couple times as he pulled away, and Zig grabbed Seth’s hand for a moment. Many of the rest of the hunters offered words of comfort, but Seth shrugged them off and pulled the string of his crossbow back while a bolt appeared in its slot.
All the while, TJ kept his eyes out, watching for anything that approached. No more pukwudgies made themselves known, but TJ swore he could hear something in the bushes.
“Keep an eye out! I hear something!” He called, and the positive huddle of hunters dispersed, each clumsily pulling away from the rest and going to their assigned spot. As they fought to get into position, a pack of a half dozen coyotes burst from the brush and jumped, jaws slavering, towards the three Zealots in the front. Two were ready enough not to be pulled off their feet, but the third was dragged to the ground and she screamed, fighting to escape their deadly attack as three seemingly insane creatures ripped and tore at her.
Charlie burst into his Divine Transformation form and threw a massive haymaker into the crowd of three furry bodies. Two were sent flying, and Charlie grabbed the third by the scruff. It snarled and snapped at his face, spittle flying everywhere. The Neophyte held it by its back legs and swung the canine like a club at the others that lunged back in. Charlie let it fly out of his hands after it smashed once against the ground with a sickening wet crunch, and it tumbled away with weak whimpers as the briefly toppled Zealot fought back to her feet with panicked breaths and strangled cries.
The two Zealots that had remained on their feet lashed out with makeshift clubs, their strikes occasionally finding purchase in the flesh of their attackers. Then, the Acolytes joined in, and with weapons flying every direction, it wasn’t long before most of the coyotes lay dead at their feet. The last two tried to escape, but were too wounded to flee quickly enough to escape the final blows coming from the enraged hunters.
With no more immediate threat, Angelo walked forward and laid a hand on the girl who’d been beset by coyotes. A faint glow accompanied the use of his Skill, and the several deep cuts on the girl’s face faded to new, healthy pink tissue.
“This was just barely outside of the ‘safe’ area.” TJ said, still looking at their surroundings. “Imagine if they’d gotten into town, what they’d do to all the people inside. What could Granny Penny do about that? Or anyone else you care about? That’s why we’re here.”
As he spoke, TJ supposed he believed it, though he wondered if the real reason he was here was just self-preservation. Did it matter if it was? He shook his head.
“Don’t let your guards down. There’s certain to be more nearby.”
Chapter thirty-five
Unsurprisingly, there were dozens more creatures waiting for the hunters at every step of the way. However, with each successful kill, the hunters grew in confidence and power. Most didn’t have Occupations, but each one obviously had a Class and each of the lower-levelled hunters gained at least one level while coyote corpses were thrown into backpacks. With the hunters showing themselves capable of succeeding without being babysat, TJ stepped further and further back. He was, according to Zig, two levels higher than her, and she was the only hunter who’d reached level 5. While he stood in the back, keeping an eye out on anything that could potentially pose any threat to the hunters, something that hadn’t been noticed by the rest, he asked Zig what her additional Skill was.
“Arrow Shower. I can spend an exponentially increasing amount of MP and Stamina to duplicate the arrows I shoot. I can do up to 20, but that bottoms me out. If I, instead, just do a couple pairs or triples, I can do a bit more than twenty. Haven’t needed to use it today, since I want to make sure these kids are growing.”
TJ nodded, not looking at her.
“You’re not ex-military or anything?” Zig asked out of nowhere.
“Hell no. I don’t know anything about leading an operation or whatever. Stanton served in ‘Nam, but he wasn’t a career soldier after that, so he’s fifty years out of date.”
“Were you like, a guild leader or anything like that? You seem to be pretty progress oriented, more than we were.”
“Nope. I have a solid goal, that’s all. I don’t know anything about the rest of you. Honestly, I don’t need to. My only focus right now is Junior. If I can get to him, that’s all that matters to me. Making sure you all pull your weight and get stronger will just help me to get back to my son. I don’t think any of you here have kids, right?”
Zig shook her head. “Not as far as I know.”
“If you did, I’d imagine you’d be a bit more driven to get to them. I bet a lot of these kids still kinda think of this as a scarier video game, and that’s fine if it keeps you all sane and alive because God knows we all need that. I don’t need to think of this as a game. Just something standing between me and him. So, I’m sorry if I’m an ass or difficult to be around or whatever, but frankly, your safety isn’t my end goal.”
Zig nodded, though she couldn’t hide the slight frown. “Are you trying to be unlikeable with all this talk like this? Just like, deliberately tearing us down?”
TJ scowled. “No. I just don’t want you to be disappointed that I’m not really a hero or a guide to safety. I’m going to be up front about my long-term goals, because you need your own. There’s gotta be something that’ll pull you through this, and it can’t be me.”
“Sounds kinda like my dad, honestly.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s always on my back about deciding what to make of myself. Hell if I know what I want to do, though. Guess that doesn’t matter…” Zig trailed off, her eyes looking not at the trees but something far beyond them.
“Maybe you should try to see him after the Tutorial. Could be something to work towards.”
“Maybe.” Zig pulled herself from her thoughts and kept an eye peeled on their surroundings. As the time passed, they had walked past several streets where more cabins were sure to be, but under Zig’s instructions, they hadn’t turned onto any of them. Instead, the pack of hunters continued on the well-paved path for another half mile or so. Every so often, a pack of pukwudgies or coyotes would attempt another ambush, the pukwudgies focused on lightning-quick assaults without warning, the coyotes determined to tear into whatever human they could reach. The coyotes continued to demonstrate the monstrous, unthinking rage that drove them to violence, even when they were guaranteed to die. On the other hand, the pukwudgies remained a much more insidious foe.
The little goblins didn’t care how much damage they did. They just wanted to make them suffer. They’d throw spears from the pine trees overhead, fake engagement, even send a single one of their companions around to hope to get lucky with a thrown spear. With so many hunters ready for them, though, the pukwudgies refused to fully commit the way they had been with TJ and Stanton alone. Though it annoyed him to no end, TJ recognized the wisdom in their approach–only commit when they had a great chance of killing them all. Otherwise, harry and harm as best as they could.
Eventually they’d made it far enough that Zig gestured for the group to follow the next branching road up a steep hill. The gated community of cabins stood seemingly undisturbed. No windows were broken, no monsters roamed the streets, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. TJ glanced through the space between the thick bars. His face didn’t fit, and he activated Divine Transformation to stick his narrower snake head through. He didn’t see or smell or taste anything…
When he tried to pull his head back, though, it caught and TJ felt panic begin to rise in his chest. Then, he realized it was just his mane of feathers catching and he slithered through the bars and then under the two foot gap under the fence to return to the rest of the hunters.
“I’m not seeing anything in there, though that doesn’t mean much from an old guy like me.” a couple chuckles from the youngest of the hunters answered his stupid joke. “The houses all look untouched, though, so I think that might be a good thing.”
“We’ve never seen pukwudgies to be the first ones in a house.” Charlie answered, also looking around for anything out of place. “They’ll go in after a human has been, but every cabin is left untouched until then.”
TJ grunted. If that was the case, maybe this would be a particularly beneficial expedition. He refused to get his hopes high just yet, though. Instead, he waited for the rest of the hunters to be prepared to go in. Though he couldn’t quite place why, the idea of walking into the community seemed a daunting one, and TJ wasn’t going to press the rest into entering before they were ready. Then, as Zig briefly consulted with the other Acolytes about the current condition of their MP and Stamina, a question occurred to TJ. He turned to Mary, the Zealot who’d been briefly swarmed by coyotes.
“How do you keep your armor up? Does it require your MP constantly? Or is it a purely physical thing? And what’s the name of the Skill?”
“It’s called Holy Vestments. Lets someone get armor or a shield, and doesn’t take MP to maintain. It drains a little Stamina and MP when it takes a hit, and, as you saw, it doesn’t protect anyone perfectly.” The woman, about the same age and height as TJ’s own early thirties and 5’7”, scratched idly at the pink flesh that replaced the wounds on her face. She was rather plain, with dirty blonde hair, narrow eyes, and wearing too-tight exercise clothing. TJ supposed that she, like him, had been on a jog like he was when all this started and felt an unreasonable kinship with her.
“What happens if you run out of Stamina or MP while you’re using the Skill? And why do some people have shields and some armor?”
“I… don’t know what happens. But we all made a choice when we got the Skill on if we wanted armor or shields.”
TJ nodded, then, since he was already asking, figured he’d ask the last question, “What’s your Bloodline?”
“It’s called Dazhbog.” Then, seeing TJ’s followup question, she answered, “Slavic god of the sun and plenty.”
“Thanks. By the way, I don’t know if I’ve said it publicly, but mine is Kukulkan. The Mayan and Aztec feathered serpent god.”
“I kinda already guessed, based on the feathered serpent thing.”
“Fair enough.” TJ nodded and watched as Zig and the rest finally were ready to enter the community that laid before them. He stepped into the front, willing to take the potentially most risky position, and the other zealots in the front nodded their thanks to him as he walked around the gate and into the street that waited before him. Nothing stirred as they approached, only their own steps and the winds overhead seeming to react to their presence. TJ made his way to the first home and, finding the front door unlocked, made his way in. Every other member of the expedition quickly fell in step behind him, all except for Seth, who stood at the door with his crossbow at the ready and his eyes on the street.
Most of the hunters walked directly into the kitchen and ransacked whatever they could find. With a walk-in pantry full of non-perishables, half the backpacks were filled nearly immediately. Seeing the kitchen filled with searching people, TJ and several others poked into the upstairs, where warm blankets and the few changes of clothes there were quickly shoved into whatever backpack they fit in.
“Do we need more blankets?” TJ called down the stairs to where Zig and Charlie were.
“Yeah!” Charlie replied, his voice echoing through the wooden building. “Most people can make it through the day, but keeping sleeping quarters nice and warm has been nearly impossible.”
With an answer received, TJ found another backpack and stuffed it full of a couple quilts as well. There weren’t any other packs upstairs to use, but when they returned to the ground floor, TJ saw that three more backpacks had been added to various arms. Half the hunters were double-stacked with supplies, and it was obvious that many of their number thought the journey was over.
