Test Summoning: Apocalypse

The sparse, dim street lighting of the slums started to flicker on in the red of the setting sun. Void, Tizek and I were currently standing in a mostly empty street in front of one of the community toilets. Behind, Lia was having a last-minute squat. She was nervous and it manifested in a little difficulty from the rear exit.

I glanced backwards and she had her eyes focused on the ground at her feet and the leather leggings bunched around her ankles. Even though she had grown up here, she had gotten accustomed to having private facilities, be it at the Teeth, the inn at Gesper or in the dungeon shelters. Sitting exposed where anyone can see was difficult for her. And since the buildings in the slums didn't have indoor plumbing, the communal toilets were typically busy 24/7.

When it looked like she was about done, I slipped the boy serving as the Sanitation Engineer a few coppers to ensure Lia had a fresh, never used stick. Lia finished her business and we hurried away.

"I think that's the last time," Lia muttered as we walked.

"I am also afraid," Tizek stated. "Friend Lia need not be ashamed."

"Thanks, Tizek," Lia whispered. "I think we can be scared together."

"At least you got decent sleep," Void replied. "We didn't get to go to the carnival because of me."

After I got to bed last night after serving amused customers, which ended up going later into the night when word got around I was on duty, Void had gotten up twice more in the night. I ended up helping her out get over whatever she was dealing with. By the time it all settled down, it was around 4Mor and we ended up sleeping in to around 3Af before she was feeling better.

We had to make up an excuse as to why we were leaving The Gnashing Teeth in full gear at 4Af. Void mentioned we had taken an extermination quest outside of town to track down some Advancement 0 monsters harassing a farm. She mentioned she didn't pay attention to the deadline and we only had to midnight to get it done and we wanted to avoid the penalty.

After Doun and Mira reprimanded us for our negligence, we left and sat in the park chatting until it was time to head to the slums. I wanted to get some of Alvin's roasted chestnuts, but the line was too long, so we instead got sandwiches to go from a shop I had found on a previous loop. It was a nice final break before we had to get down to business.

"Don't worry, I'll get you your stuffed rabbit on the 30th." I gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder for emphasis.

Lia reached back and brushed the sword strapped to her back on its hook. "You sound confident we'll win."

"Of course. Lisa's team won last time and she's had more time to prepare than gathering every goon in a 30 minute radius," I replied. Of course, I wasn't entirely truthful. Lisa was the sole survivor and we are talking about street thugs, not a proper military.

"I hope so," Void replied. "Especially since we couldn't get you any more arrows."

Void was correct. We had stopped by Armond's place to see if I could get more than the 20 arrows I normally carried around. When dealing with a big battle, that wasn't going to be enough. Unfortunately, Armond was sold out. We had completely forgotten we are in the middle of rookie season. New graduates from various academies and freshly of-age kids had joined the various Guilds in the city in early summer. Right now, all the new recruits are either still working on their five probationary quests or are rushing the Advancement 0 dungeons. Even the miserable Mermaid Falls was so booked out to the point you can only get a one day reservation a few weeks from now.

Needless to say, with the kind of demand on the city's woodshaper and leather working industries, equipment prices have gone through the roof and munitions like arrows are on backorder. I'll need to be very selective of when I use my arrows and focus on harassing the six strong mages to disrupt spells.

It was getting dark by the time we made it to the abandoned shopping district. The streets outside were empty since most people were going to be locked away in their homes. It was dangerous out. The only people around were those looking for trouble. In this part of the slums, no one even risked going out for an evening drink. It wasn't worth the risk.

Surprisingly, the ominous abandoned mall looming over us didn't feel too terrifying. We knew the bulk of the dangerous people in the area were congregating inside while those unaffiliated with Gully Jack had the good sense to not be nearby. The air didn't have the usual oppressive feel like the bad part of town at sundown gets. My bad juju instincts weren't firing the same way they did on the loop where Gerry's crew ambushed us in an alley.

The broken out doors leading into the mall had a glow of magic lights flooding through them. We entered and saw a series of standing lights leading toward the central atrium where Lisa had congregated her people before. We could hear the crack of crates opening and murmur of talking echoing through the halls. In the various empty storefronts, I noticed the contingent of homeless and addicts were absent.

We continued toward the central atrium and saw the mass milling about. The gang was currently arming themselves with gear from crates. I tried to gauge how many more people Lisa managed to pull in but it didn't seem much larger than before. She did admit she wasn't willing to commit the entirety of her organization to the fight and was hoping more prep and better gear won the day. Lisa, in her Gully Jack disguise, was directing the proceedings from a raised platform in the center of the atrium which was constructed next to the mascot statue.

"Well, well, if it isn't little Lia." I heard a familiar voice. I turned and saw Gerry with his crew congregating outside a storefront at the edge of the gathered force. They were each outfitted with a simple wooden plate strapped to their chests and had wooden helms. They also had long spears. Lia reflexively shrunk behind me even though she's a little stronger than an average Advancement 3 person. I get it. I had the same reaction to Lisa and probably would even after I managed to fix my mana channels.

I rested my hand on my rapier and prayed the Grand Creator was real and would somehow stop this from ending like last time. "Heya guy. You know my little sis here? I'm Oliver. What's your name?"

Gerry paused. "Your sister? You only got here three months ago. She's not related to you."

"I adopted her a few weeks back," I replied. "Nice to meet ya, but we gotta go see Jack."

"Hold on. We have business with little Lia," Gerry said, getting in our way. This caught the attention of other gang members in the area. I saw one bolt off in Lisa's direction.

I adjusted my rapier. Tizek and Void also matched my movements and let me do the talking. "Sure. What do you want to talk about?"

Gerry recognized I wasn't going anywhere, so he decided to air his grievances out in the open. "One of ours got nabbed a day after you showed up. I heard Lia was in your group and didn't even have a collar. She must have sold out Frederica to get free."

"No!" Lia barked. "I never talked. The king gave me to Oliver as a gift and he freed me."

Gerry snorted. "Likely story. You probably latched onto him for yourself. You look like you're doing very well with your fancy clothes and gear."

I noticed the gang crowd behind Gerry grow silent. They began parting and I noticed Lisa striding with a purpose in our direction.

Gerry began forming a rock ball in the palm of his hand. "I'm going to extract payme—" He didn't get to finish the sentence when a tendril of water lashed out from Lisa and gripped Gerry by the neck. He was lifted into the air, his thick ursine feet kicking when they left the ground, and spun to face Lisa. She forced him down into a kneeling position so she could peer down on him through her plague doctor mask.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Lisa let Gerry squirm for a few moments as he choked on the water. Then she released him, clasped her hands behind her back and leaned over Gerry. "Care to explain yourself?" Her deep, modulated voice reverberated through the halls and made the entire mall go deathly silent.

Gerry coughed and looked up with his eyes wide. "Sir, I was—"

"I believe my instructions were to bring the hero Oliver to me," Lisa interrupted. She continued to lean over the terrified gang leader.

"But Lia—" Gerry sputtered.

"Do you wish to be part of my organization?" Lisa asked.

"Yes, sir," Gerry responded. I could see a small puddle forming around him as he knelt on the floor and it wasn't from Lisa's water magic.

"Then do what you're told. Get your stooges and wait as I instructed," Lisa barked.

Lisa didn't wait for a response and walked away from the kid pissing himself on the floor and over to me. "You four, come with me. The rest of you? Get back to work and leave us to talk."

Lisa directed us toward an abandoned storefront to one side. Gerry continued to sit in his urine and was shaking from the encounter with the crime boss. I felt for him, especially since he was unlikely to survive the coming battle beneath the mall.

We entered the storefront and a I recognized Hespeth and her crew taking up guard positions outside so we could have privacy. We walked further back toward what was supposed to be an employee room and entered. "Mind giving us a light?"

"A light?" I replied.

Her mask turned to me. "You're all attuned and have been in a time loop. You haven't learned the simple spells yet?"

I cast Torchlight and illuminated my hand. "You have my number. So, what did you want to talk about?"

Her head nodded toward the others. "How much do they know?"

"Everything," I replied. I noticed her hands tighten into fists. "About the apocalypse," I hastily added to avoid making her believe they knew her secret. Her fists loosened.

"Good," she replied. "This will make things easy. I want you in the back to observe. I know these three are powerful Advancement 1 Exterminators. They'll serve as your guard. The lizard has the Medic ability, he's going to backup my little field hospital if it needs it."

I bristled at Lisa calling Tizek a lizard. It was a slur people here slung in their direction. People in the city didn't insult him in front of me since, even a dud, I was still the hero and the king decreed I be respected.

"How did you know that?" Void asked.

Lisa's masked head shifted to peer at Void. "I have people in the Guilds." Of course she did. Though those people weren't flawless. The others just updated their rating at the Guild to Advancement 2 only yesterday and that information hasn't flowed to Lisa yet. She was unaware we, in this little employee break room, had a substantial physical advantage over her.

"Why do you want us in the back?" Lia muttered meekly. She hadn't internalized she could defeat Lisa about 60% of the time in a fight and, with a few more spells and experience, would stomp her.

"Simple," Lisa replied. "The hero needs to observe in case we fail again. The more information we have, the better. Besides, he is VERY important to my future plans. I'll be upset if we succeed and something happens to him." Her face shifted back to Void once more in an implicit threat to her parents. Not that it would go well for whoever Lisa sent. She apparently didn't have Guild archive data from 26 years ago.

Void ground her teeth at the threat, both against her family and Lisa's implication she wanted to make me an underworld prince. I had to subtly nudge Void to keep her hand off her rapier. I turned to Lisa. "That sounds good to me. Did the training of your troops go well?"

"It didn't go at all," Lisa flatly replied.

Now I'm surprised. The famed Gully Jack, the paranoid underworld kingpin, the one who had contingencies for just about everything, didn't train her people. "Alright, I'm lost. You were the sole survivor last time. Why didn't you train."

A deep sigh rumbled from Lisa. "You clearly don't have a political mind. Me? To you, I seem like a powerful force. In Leoren? I'm a lower tier predator. A small cat is a threat to a rabbit. Yet the cat must hide from the grizzly."

"How does that keep you from training your people for a critical fight?" I asked.

Another rumbling sigh. "My existence in the slums is…tolerated…by more powerful people. Organizations like the Guard, the various Guilds, noble houses and, Grand Creator forbid, the king and his army, are far more dangerous than I. They let me have run of the slums because I keep things here under control. My organization keeps ambitious, violent fools like Gerry out there contained. Without me, the slums falls into chaos. If it does, crime and violence spills out into the rest of the city."

"If you trained your people, someone would have noticed and thought you were preparing to challenge the existing order," Void said. Thanks, Void. That makes things much clearer for me now.

Lisa turned to look at Void. "At least you surrounded yourself by one person with brains. The Guard were fools to let you go."

Lisa's mask shifted back toward me. "All I could do was discretely purchase equipment and weaponry. I had a few of my trusted teams, like Hespeth's out there, prepare. They believe this is a turf war against a new crew funded by a minor noble. Almost everyone in here wasn't informed until an hour ago to congregate here and get ready. I didn't want any of this getting out."

"That makes perfect sense," I replied. I then gestured at my bow. "I am a good archer. Unfortunately, I only have a few arrows. I'll try and make them count against the mages to disrupt their attacks."

"I'll need more than that," Lisa replied. "You're our only archer. Street gangs don't have much use for bows and I don't trust these fools with a crossbow. They'll be just as likely to put a bolt into the back of my people's heads as the enemy's. I procured you a crate of arrows. We'll bring it down in the rear."

I was liking the sound of this more. With additional arrows, my only limit was my stamina bar. Granted, it still wasn't great, but after three months of constant walking and a little running, it was a bit better. I also had extra target practice during the period when Void and Lia were upset with me.

"When do we leave?" I asked.

Lisa pulled a pocket watch out of one of the pouches on her armor. She opened it and looked at the face. "In 20 minutes. Stay here and wait for me. I'm going to get this gaggle organized and ready to head down."

Lisa didn't wait for a response and left the room, leaving Hespeth and the other three in her crew to stand guard at the store entrance. I wondered if it was because she was trying to protect us from opportunistic members. That or she wanted to keep us from running. I had to admit, after seeing the forces and the armaments, I was thinking it would be a good idea for us to bolt and let Lisa do all the work.

Of course, the problem with that idea was Lisa was right about me needing to be there. As much as I didn't want to think about it, there was the outside chance we'd fail again and I needed to stand witness to it so we could succeed later.

My hand gripped my leather leggings and I removed my wooden helm. I was feeling a little hot.

"My lord? Are you ill?" Tizek asked when he saw my behavior.

I took a deep breath. "No, buddy, it's my turn to be scared."

"We failed to bring the gloves and ball," Tizek stated. I gave him a grateful smile for his attempt to cheer me up.

"Are you worried we'll fail again?" Lia asked. I turned and saw her eyes turned down to the ground.

I slapped myself in the face, which surprised the others, and strapped my helmet back on. No, I can't fall into a depression again. This time is different. We're not fighting the flying calamari monster. We're fighting people. We can beat people. All we have to do is take down six core enemies and destroy a ritual scroll. I wasn't going to add to the burden by airing my fears minutes before we waded into battle.

"You don't need to hide it." Void had gently taken my hand into hers. I turned and looked in her eyes. Damn you for being so observant. I went to give her a brief hug of thanks when I saw her face change. Her eyes bulged and she then rushed into the corner and heaved out bits of her dinner.

I knelt by her rubbing her back and holding up her hair while Lia and Tizek wisely absconded from the break room. It wasn't a good idea to have an audience for this. "We'll get through this."

She took a deep breath. "It feels like I'm back on that blasted boat to Gerilon. It's passing, I'll be fine."

I looked around and noticed there was a small puddle in the corner of the room. I scooped up some water and cast Purify on it. The water briefly glowed. As it did, I watched little bits of detritus float up and out of the water then fall to the ground. Purify didn't convert non-magical materials into mana or make it disappear. It just moved it elsewhere. Higher level spells could dictate where it moved and could even separate out contaminants, which is how the city sanitation system removed gunk to sell as fertilizer.

I offered it to her. "Here, swish that nasty out of your mouth."

She lapped the water out of my still-glowing hand, gargled and spit it out. "Do you have enough mana for another? I'd like to drink a bit."

I complied and used the rest of my pitiful mana pool to give her another handful. The upside of my tiny pool was I'd be full again in a few minutes. The recharge rate was dictated by how big your pool was, not a fixed amount.

"Thanks, it's passing." Void took a deep breath and looked up at the mossy ceiling. "The stink in here isn't helping."

I took a deep breath and gagged. The air had a pungent odor of stomach acid, mustard, meat and molding organic material.

"I just said it stunk and you take a deep breath," Void stated as we made our way out of the break room.

"Look, I'm a man and you just said something smelled horrendous. Of course I had to get a big whiff of it to find out," I replied.

"That's not true!" Void exclaimed. "You're just being strange to make me feel better."

I put my hand up Boy Scouts style. "I swear to the Grand Creator I'm not making that up."

Void squinted at me. "Yes you are."

"Fine, want to make a bet?" I replied.

She pulled away from me and crossed her arms. "What are the terms?"

I got her. This is going to be an easy win. "The next time your parents need help, the winner works the floor and the loser does the dishes."

Her expression changed. Her eyes darted down in thought and then she briefly sneered. Yup, she's imagining getting elbow deep in other people's leftover food. She started waffling over whether to take such a high stakes bet. Then she looked at me and put a hand out. "You're on."

I shook it then smiled. Loudly, I said, "Lia? Tizek? You really should stay out there. It smells horrendous."

Lia gave me a brisk nod. "Thanks for the warning."

Tizek, on the other hand, fluttered his crest. His eyes drifted toward the back door. I had also forgotten about the four at the door. Hespeth, Kelly, Bayle and Vark all turned to look at me. Kelly and Hespeth had looks of disgust on their face at my announcement. Then there were Bayle and Vark.

"Uh, Hespeth?" Vark said as he turned fully around. "I think I need to check in there to make sure there isn't a problem."

"I'll back him up," Bayle quickly added.

Void's face was in disbelief. She threw her hands up when Vark and Bayle started making their way through the empty store toward the rear room.

When they got there, they stuck their heads in. Bayle gagged and pulled back out with his wolf ears folded to his head. "By the Grand Creator! It smells like a yellow spotted agulor coughed up its lunch back there."

"That's an understatement," Vark replied as he waved his hand in front of his face. His beaver tail was padding rapidly on the floor in distress. "Agulor hork doesn't have a vinegar undertone to it."

"What are you two idiots doing?" Hespeth shouted into the store, her fox-clan whiskers vibrating in irritation. "Get out here!"

"We had to check. You know Jack doesn't want anything to happen to them," Bayle shouted back. The two men started bickering with Hespeth while Kelly silently watched with her feline cougar-clan face of disapproval.

When the two left, Tizek also broke, stuck his nose in, took a whiff and grimaced. If his head crest could go any flatter, it would become a true two-dimensional object. "I have confirmed my lord's story. We must not go there, Friend Lia."

Lia's brow was severely creased and her mouth partially opened. I could see the fangs on the on the left of her mouth where her lips were pulled up with disgust. She had just watched Tizek, who had three separate confirmations the back room smelled disgusting, go check for himself.

I looked at Void and put on my biggest smug expression. "See?"

Void rubbed her hand over her face. "I can't believe it."

After our little bet, I paced around the store slowly with Void. It was the best way to help keep her stomach strong. The little distraction with the foul odor helped lighten the mood. We needed it. The battle was going to start any minute.