7th interlude: The Last Memory

"I-I will!" Jacob says with a nod before flying back the way he came.

He takes him a minute to reach the rest of the group.

"The magic has turned all the people mad!" he tells them. "They're killing each other in the streets!"

Sam slows to a trot, dreading what might happen if she gets anywhere near the affected area. "What!? Everyone, slow down! Evrard--"

"I gotcha, ma'am." Evrard casts a Scan centered on Samantha.

Scan 1

The monk takes a moment to gather herself, wondering if she should wait for the others before proceeding but she quickly rejects that. She's the forward scout in this operation and it's time to do some scouting. The hard way. She moves forward at battle speed, ready for action.

Evrard casts his spell on the lady and discovers that the ambient magic is much, much stronger than it should normally be. It is so strong in fact that it would be dangerous to any human being, but for some strange reason, the orb within her head is mitigating the effects. Evrard suspects his own orb is behaving in the same way.

He doesn't have time to dig more into it however.

The group continues forward. At the same time, May arrives at the edge of town and sees the first crazed people; there are only five of them in her sight, and they're all fighting each other, punching and biting whoever is closest to them. Then she notices the bodies lying on the ground around them. Mostly women. One child.

The men continue fighting each other, not even noticing that May is standing only fifty meters away from them.

"Yer fine, Princess, ya can keep running. It don't affect us. Probably 'cause of these magical orbs."

"Alright, thank you." Sam quickens her pace to full tilt again.

"The magical current is too strong for anyone without, though. From the front, back, and all around us."

May closes with the men and attacks, trying to lay them out as quickly as possible using her drunken boxing techniques!

May closes in to the first two men who are grappling with each other, completely unaware of her presence. She easily eliminates them out with a few well-placed punches and then moves on to the next three men. Unlike her previous opponents, they do notice her approach, but are too busy trying to kill each other to switch their focus to her. With the same ease as before, she kills all three of them in only a few seconds, and they fall to the ground, their crazed look still in their eyes.

They're all dead. But she can already see even more crazed people and bodies down the street. And at the end of it are the soldiers, around thirty of them fighting each other with their weapons.

May moves onto the next group and takes them out as well. Afterword she runs back to the group to tell them about the soldiers.

"May thinks we should take them out fast and hard."

"Wait," Edward says while raising a hand. He looks at the nearby bodies, then the individual battles occurring further down the street, then quickly adds, "We should avoid every battle we can. Let them kill each other while we go straight for the dome."

Anne and Marcus look at each other and then the rest of the group, wondering what they think about it.

"May does not. Better to remove a threat now, before they might wander into our rear when we are possibly fighting the next group ahead. If we time it right, we can drop them in seconds." She slams her fist into her palm for emphasis.

Samantha draws her fencing sword in preparation for the grim action. "Let's not take too long on this. We'll make a beeline for the Dome and fight everything that notices us. Agreed?"

"May?" Jacob pipes up. "You're faster than us and good at fighting many enemies. You can cut us a path while the rest of us run for the dome. And Smirk can handle the stragglers."

"May will cut you a path then." And she leaves right then and there to do just that.

With May in the lead, the group starts running through the small town and passing by numerous individual battles.

The sight in town is just as gruesome as what they saw at the outside perimeter of the settlement. People scream in furor, attacking each other like animals, with no concern for all the gore that is staining their clothes. May expertly eliminates the few of them that attempt to block their path, often handling two or three of them at the same time. Some try to run after them, but either give up and aim their aim at an easier target, or are outright tackled by someone madder than them.

Once the group arrives near the dome however, things are not as easy.

From the thirty soldiers May had seen earlier, only twenty remains. These are all armored soldiers, still fighting with their swords and shields, lost in a blood lust that would frighten even Myrzen barbarians. Then the squad notices the two dozen more soldiers fighting a little further away; they were hidden behind the buildings and couldn't have been seen from outside the settlement.

If the squad fails to handle this first group of soldiers, there's a good chance the second group will join the fray.

The young monk, hardened by the last years of war, moves swiftly toward the enemies and provokes them into attacking her. She seemingly dances through their attacks, avoiding all of them with a drunken grace. These are armored soldiers however, and out of the four that she faces, she only manages to hit three of them while killing two. Thankfully, Rémi, Sam and Evrard are there to handle the rest; Rémi charges into the fourth soldier soldier with a powerful swing of his halberd while Sam and Evrard backstab a few enemies who were finished with their opponents and would have undoubtedly turned their attention at the party.

Everyone manages to run through the melee without Smirk having to use one of his spells to disperse the rest of the platoon, and they've now reached the entrance to the dome. Everyone but May.

Half of these soldiers have turned their attention to her. That is until Jacob kicks one of them in the face, then flies close enough to the others to flick their nose before going high in the air.

"Go!" the fairy yells at May. "I'll join you soon!"

The fairy flies away down the street where the squad came from, dragging the soldiers with him.

At the same time, the squad takes refuge behind the large iron doors of the dome—which are halfway open at the moment—and in the almost blinding light of the magical torches hanging from the ceiling, they immediately notice the bodies of other soldiers on the floor. They've died fighting each other and pools are blood are now staining the concrete floor.

There is only one hallway going straight toward the center of the dome, with heavy doors at regular intervals on both side of the hallway. Samantha knows that behind those doors should only be machinery, and that the Core is straight down the corridor.

"Thank you, Jacob. Bells, be safe. Everyone, keep your guard up. The next room has machinery flanking the corridors. I'll scout and sign back if I find... anyone."

Stealth 23 (AP)

Samantha takes point and begins to sneak down the hallway under the worried gaze of her husband. Although there is nowhere to hide in this blinding light—this model of magical lantern shouldn't be this bright—she is clearly more concerned about the possibility of making noise that would attract the wrong kind of attention. Then she notices the regular hum that originates from all around her. It's caused by the machinery, which for the first time ever, has now been activated.

Then the whole building begins to shake as another wave of malaise hits the squad members, one that is quite painful now. The lights all explodes at the same time, plunging the facility into darkness.

"Ugh... What just happened?" Anne mutters.

"Nothing good," Marcus says.

Spoiler:

Evrard grunts in pain, clutching his head with one hand. Sam does the same. She cradles her rapier on her elbow to retrieve a torch and light it with a tindertwig. She looks around, gripping the hilt of her weapon in her right hand again.

Sam Willpower 27
Ev Willpower 21 (AP)

Rémi grabs his head with one hand, doing everything he can to hang onto his halberd with the other. Finally, the pain stops, allowing him to literally shake it off, a process that is somewhat louder than it needs to be when he starts whapping his fist against his helmet to clear out the cobwebs.

Meanwhile, May grunts in pain, digging deep into her mental discipline training to power her way through the wave of magic. When it finally passes and Sam's torch springs to life, she digs out one of her own and uses the flame from Sam's to light it.

"Everyone okay?"

Rémi's Willpower 26

May's Willpower 20 with AP

To May's question, Anne responds, "I'm fine. I think." Then she looks at her husband and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Nick? Are you okay?"

Meanwhile, Edward peers down at the hallway leading toward the core, barely shook by the last wave of ambient magic that hit them. "We need to keep moving."

Marcus looks back at Nick and the others. "Everyone thinks they can make it?"

The white mage nods with a little hesitation, still concerned for her husband.