Chương 168: CDM 3, Chapter 44: Crisis

After a few minutes, the fog thinned somewhat, but visibility was still poor. Beyond 30 ft or so, the world was fuzzy and ethereal. Only the top edges of the sanatorium were still legible from this distance. Kimmy's view was completely obscured for a few moments as well, but when the fog settled, Nathan could see enough that navigating slowly was possible. Keeping Kimmy indoors in these circumstances didn't make sense, but the sudden appearance of mist made it difficult for Nathan to retrace his exact path.

The first room he tried to exit from, he found the windows too intact and didn't get back outside until the second.

"The fog was summoned," de Saint observed.

"That's good for us in that it won't last as long as natural fog, but that's bad for us because we don't know if there's a cooldown."

"They could refresh the fog on us while we're inside, you mean," Megan said.

"Yeah, potentially."

"We've got silver, holy water, magic arrows, and a few black mage spells," I added.

"I'm not saying it will be easy, but we have the tools."

"So you want to go in?" Megan asked.

"I don't know that 'want' is how I'd put it, but I would go in." Hornby nodded that he agreed. Megan raised her voice slightly so Giago would hear.

"Giago?"

"I'm down." I thought for a moment.

"The biggest risks are a wraith attacking us from a strange angle and getting so disoriented by the fog that we can't see to fight or get out. We can drop flares along the way to help. We might burn this place down by accident, but that would give us a breadcrumb trail."

"Are wraiths smart enough to follow a flare trail?" de Saint asked. No one answered because no one knew.

"If you make it a point to drop the flares between two doorways, Kimmy has a chance of tracking you from the outside," Nathan added.

"I don't think she'll be much use inside."

"Good idea," I replied.

"Anyone have anything else?" No one said anything.

"Let's gear up then." 20 minutes later, the four of us ventured into the fog. Given our enemy's ability to ignore physical obstacles, Hornby brought up the rear with a silver sword in case we were attacked from behind. The entrance to the east wing was boarded over and padlocked shut, but that was nothing that someone with a crowbar and 13 levels of strength couldn't handle. I was on flare duty, so I dropped one right in the doorway, hoping that would be enough to mark it as an exit if we had to run out of here.

After I fired a few arrows down the hall just to see if I hit something, we began to advance toward the last known location of the first-floor wraith. Our progress was slow because we took the time to peek into every room we passed, and a facility built to house 150 highly contagious patients was akin to checking every room as you went down a hotel hallway. Each time we reached a pair of doorways, Megan pivoted left, and Giago pivoted right.

While they gave the rooms a brief scan, I watched for movement straight ahead, ready to launch an arrow at anything coming for us head-on. We didn't have an endless supply of flares, so I only dropped one every five rooms. The one exception was when we passed the stairs down to the tunnels. I spent an extra flare to mark that location. If one of us dove into a room for cover, discovering steps instead of floor would be painful.

A Bolt spell shot down the hall, the crackling of electricity echoing off the walls while the energy filled the air with ozone. Megan blocked with her shield, but she cursed after the impact. She hadn't been ready to block a spell, and she took the force straight on rather than deflecting it.

"Down!" I called before loosing three quick arrows down the hallway. I didn't hear anything, nor did I feel the slight tingle of Momentum activating. Another Bolt shot out of the fog, but Megan was ready to block it this time. Giago raised his left hand, which was always empty now that he was a spellblade, and shot a much smaller, thinner version of Bolt back.

"Forward!" Megan said.

"Hornby, keep an eye on our flank." The temperature fell abruptly as if we had been shut into a walk-in freezer. My next step forward felt slick, as if the floor was coated in a thin layer of ice. No, not as if. The extreme shift in temperature coated the world around us in ice. We continued our advance, still trying to shuffle quickly to close the distance despite the slipperiness of our terrain. When we had progressed maybe five sets of rooms forward, a blue cloud emerged from the gray fog.

Like it was inhaling, a massive rush of air threatened to suck us into the blue. Giago shot a fireball the size of a clementine into the wraith. The impact sounded like breaking glass and triggered a ripple, as if the blue fog were surrounded by water. Megan slid forward with a thrust of her silver sword. The monster retreated, avoiding the tip of the blade, but it didn't move far enough to escape my arrows. Two of three struck home, making the same shattering glass sound as Giago's Fire spell.

The third missed as the wraith went right abruptly, phasing through the wall.

"Gray!" Giago shouted, but I was already on it. I sent arrows through the walls. Of five, I heard and felt one make contact.

"A blue cloud just came out of the building, through the wall," Nathan said over our headsets.

"That's our wraith," Megan replied.

"It's two rooms away from your last flare now," de Saint radioed.

"It's going up. 10 degrees… 20 degrees…" We hadn't discussed this sort of radio guidance, but I immediately picked up on what de Saint was trying to do. I did my best to estimate the angle and started to loose. My third arrow hit, and I quickly loosed another six. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Glass shattered, accompanied by the screech of nails going down a chalkboard.

"Wraith is down!" de Saint reported.

"Two more incoming," Nathan added.

"Just popped up. One is coming from behind about three flares away; the second is on the west side of the third floor and moving your direction."

"Back the way we came!" I called.

"We can't let ourselves get boxed in." A Bolt clipped Hornby's shoulder, spinning him violently. He staggered to stay on his feet while I blindly fired into the fog, hoping to hit the wraith.

"I'm good," he barked, his voice strained and taut from pain. Megan and Giago reclaimed the front position, putting themselves between the unseen wraith and Hornby.

"Your right!" I shouted as blue fog came through the wall next to Giago. Crystals of frozen fog appeared on his blade as it passed through the wraith. I managed to get one arrow into it, but it had ducked back through the wall the moment Giago's silver wounded it. None of my other arrows hit. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the flare marking the stairwell down to the tunnels beneath the sanatorium. I felt pretty smart just then.

I thought we were between two patient rooms until I noticed the flares, but now I knew that moving left would mean throwing myself down a stairwell.

"Fucker!" Hornby grunted behind me. I turned in time to see blue fog evaporating, accompanied by a nails-on-a-chalkboard screech. He had gotten a good swipe at it with his sword.

"Was that the one we were fighting or a new one?" Megan asked.

"No clue," Hornby replied.

"No visual on our side," Nathan said in our ears. A glimmer of light caught my attention. Faint flickers of yellow, blue, and green emanated from the bottom of the tunnel stairs. Only one monster would cast a blinking light like that.

"Wi-" I began. Cold fingers gripped my heart, but the pain and fear disappeared as quickly as they had come. Where was I? No, who was I? I could see the flow of the universe all around me. The energy that moved through every object and being was like rushing water, flowing endlessly into a drain just beneath my feet. The world running into the drain was like a curtain being sucked away, revealing a galaxy of stars. There was no I. I was the universe, and the universe was me. Light and dark. Everything and nothing.

Not alive and not dead. Feeling a downward pull on my soul, I looked to my feet. I was spiraling down the drain now, watching my body fade away. This was right. This was how it always was and always should be. So serene. So peaceful. So cold. I had the sudden sensation of drowning. I felt the water in my throat when I coughed.

"Dorion! Drink it!" a voice commanded. Glass touched my lips, and my mouth filled with warm light. I swallowed. My body bounced.

"Dorion? Can you hear me?"

"Should we give him another?"

"I don't know!"

"I'm looking it up! Okay, one full dose should be enough. We have to give him time and keep him warm." My body bounced again. I had a name. Dorion Carmino. Me. A being. A person. I was a person. My eyes adjusted focus, finding Megan looking down at me with grave concern. I was on my back in the van. We were in motion. De Saint was at the wheel. Nathan was focused on his laptop screen, drone controls in his hand. Hornby and Giago watched out the back window.

"They stopped chasing!" Hornby announced.

"Are you sure?!" de Saint yelled.

"Yes!" She hit the brakes. Hornby and Giago pushed both of the back doors open so Kimmy could zip inside.

"Kimmy is secure!" Hornby shouted as he slammed the doors shut. De Saint turned back to face front and hit the gas.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You don't remember?" Megan asked in reply. I shook my head.

"A wraith touched you, and we had to run from wisps." Which was all technically true, but when I saw the final edit of the hunt, I realized how much Megan had undersold my wraith encounter. In the replay, I watched Hornby's headcam glance over his shoulder to check in on the party. His shock at seeing a wraith reaching down at me from the ceiling was visible in the shake of the footage. I was frozen in position, my head turned toward the stairs, my bow slightly drawn, but my eyes were empty.

The lights coming from the stairwell were brighter and blinked more frequently. Hornby thrust with his sword, killing the wraith attacking me. At the same time, Giago hit the other wraith with Fire, stunning it. Megan capitalized and lunged forward, delivering the final blow.

"Run!" Hornby shouted. The edit showed Megan's headcam turning to look at Hornby and me. The white spellblade lowered his hips and threw me over his shoulder. A green streak shot out of the stairwell, a blur of movement that stopped abruptly behind Hornby. Its core was about the size of a baseball, and semi-opaque green light swirled around it. The wisp was no bigger than a dinner plate, and its body reminded me of an over-easy egg whose edges endlessly morphed.

A fireball of about the same size as the monster materialized from the green and shot at our party. The blast struck Hornby in the back, throwing him and me forward.

"I got Gray!" Giago yelled as Hornby scrambled to his feet. The white spellblade's back sizzled and smoked, and he seemed grateful that someone else was grabbing my stiff, lifeless body. Another fireball rocketed forth. Megan managed to block it, but the force twisted her body violently and knocked her back. Cutting to Giago's perspective, three more wisps–two yellow and one blue–darted out of the stairs, all moving in the same herky-jerky manner as the first.

Wisps could gracefully hover, or they could dart from place to place. Their movements had no in-between, and the guides all said that they could manage no more than two of those bursts of speed in a row. On the video, the tempo of their pursuit made it seem like the monsters paused to reorient themselves and to decide whether they should continue chasing us or not. In reality, that was just how they moved. Fast. Fast. Hover. Fast. Fast. Hover.

"We're bringing the van!" Nathan announced over the headsets, and we saw from Kimmy's perspective as the ice cream truck backed up toward the east entrance we had used to come in. Bangs and zaps echoed from behind the party as spells crashed into walls. Nathan threw the doors open for the party to jump inside.

"Go!" he shouted as soon as Hornby landed in the back. They sped away with the back doors still open, swinging wildly as the van zoomed over decades-old asphalt. Since Nathan had dropped his controls to help, Kimmy was still hovering over the east exit as we sped away. Four wisps exited the building. Shooting Fire and Bolt at our retreating party. The drone started moving again, showing the wisps following us and hurling spells.

One fireball smashed into the driver's side rear door with the sound and force of a car crash, slamming it shut. And that was lucky. Had the door happened to be more open at that exact moment, that fireball would have gone right into the van. The video ended with Kimmy's perspective as she flew into the arms of Hornby and Giago.

"How do you feel?" Megan asked me while Giago helped Hornby out of his armor. The white spellblade's back was burnt and bruised, and then his skin began to glow, the wounds shrinking as if time was rewinding. That's right. We had two people in the party with Heal spells now.

"Cold," I managed. We didn't have much in the way of blankets, so Megan wrapped me in towels. With the wisps in our dust, the biggest threat to me now was hypothermia.