The Bloodforged Kin

Warm air washed over them like a welcome blanket as they stepped through the butterfly tunnel and into the compound. No snow was anywhere and it felt like the most comfortable of early-summer days.

"OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING!" Luna said as she shed her winter coat and gloves. She was gone in an instant, bouncing her way to the massive covered pergolas that were Madison's workshops. Cass dropped his winter clothing and wandered over to where Jason was working on a new project.

Tess smiled, then made her way to the large porch where Ed and Owen were bent over a large table. As she got closer she realized that the table was covered in what appeared to be hundreds, or maybe thousands, of small dots.

Ed saw her approaching and smiled. "You're here!"

"I'm here," she said, giving the lanky man a hug. He was much improved over the last time she'd seen him, his skin flush with color and his frame filled out from the gaunt skeletal look he had when he'd first joined them. He had stayed at the compound, working with each of the family members in turn, learning and teaching in equal measure.

"Oh good, you're here!" They turned to see Madison hopping up the stairs in excitement, Luna close on her heels. Cass and Jason followed soon after, as silent as ever. Tess wondered if the boys ever talked when they were alone together. "Have you guys told her anything?"

Owen shook his head. "Not yet. She just got here, figured I'd let you run the show."

Madison moved to stand next to Ed, the two of them looking like they were about to give a science fair demonstration. Scanning the table Tess thought that that might not be that far from the truth.

"Okay, to start - do you remember the drones I made to help around the compound?" Tess nodded and Madison continued. "One of the issues I had was how to control them and give them more complex tasks. They could do one thing, maybe two, but at this size their functionality was very low."

"That's where I came in," Ed picked up the explanation. "Madison and I spent a while finding a way to modify my life-seeking spell into a set of instructions that could be imprinted on the drones."

Madison continued, the two of them obviously well-accustomed to carrying on a constant stream of conversation together. "Cracking that code made it a lot easier to program the drones. Instead of the drones having to hold all of the instructions, they could instead become carriers of a spell and a recorder of what they found."

"It took some experimentation and reformatting of my spell to get it to work with another object, especially one that didn't know how to interpret the magic,"

"But we solved that by reprogramming the drones to accept a series of commands, each given at different times. I just had to make their internals able to replace a command with a new one without losing any information it stored."

"So then I was able to reformat my spell to not just seek out life, but to record the type, then tell the drone to return."

"Then we worked together to get it to do this," Madison finished.

Ed waved his hand over the table, rainbow light falling off of his hand as he did, spreading over the table in a wave. Once he was done the drones lit up in various colored lights.

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"Is that… is that a map?"

Madison and Ed grinned at each other then nodded together. "Yep!" The girl said. "I sent the drones out and they recorded everything they saw, then came back here and positioned themselves relative to where they were when they left. What you see here is a fairly basic map about 100 miles or so in each direction."

Ed continued for her. "It took about another month for them all to get back, but now that they have we have a pretty clear picture of what's out there. Not at a granular level, of course, but it's pretty good for a macro level."

Tess looked at the table in awe. The area around them was forest green, with black lines giving a vague impression of large roads. The image was too low-resolution to show individual neighborhood roads but the terrain was recognizable. She even saw a border of blue that was obviously Lake Michigan.

"What are these?" Tess pointed at drones that were white and red.

"The white lights are human life. It's hard to know if it is one person or a group that's close together. You can see that there are these big puddles of white - that's a group of human life that's taking up a lot of space."

Tess looked and saw a decent number of small dots of white scattered randomly around the area and a few pools that shone brightly. "What's this one?"

"That's the Renaissance Faire grounds," Ed said. "It seems like a lot of people have congregated there, which makes sense considering that we're living in a fantasy world now."

"Hmmm… this is downtown Milwaukee then?" Tess pointed at a section of the table that was pure white.

"Yep," Ed said before pointing out a few more areas. "You can see that the towns and villages between here and there have decent population centers, which makes sense as well since groups of people have a better chance of surviving than individuals." None of them missed the undertone of that comment.

"What about this?" Tess pointed to a white area right on the water.

Ed shuddered. "Don't go there. That's Mason's area - where he kept me." Shivers ran down his body and he absently fingered his missing digits.

"Okay, I got that. Then what about the red?" The table went silent as Ed, Madison, and Owen exchanged glances.

"Them's the creatures," Owen finally spoke up.

Tess gasped. The red lights were in thick bands surrounding each of the populated areas, in part or in whole. The bands and semi-circles were wide enough in some places to outnumber the people ten to one. Individual red blips were scattered all throughout the woods, but the majority of them were heavily concentrated in wide areas obviously staged to completely surround and engulf the human-filled zones.

"Wha" her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and tried again. "What do you mean they're creatures?"

Madison's voice was somber. "As best we can tell they're not moving. I've sent drones in to investigate, but there's nothing there. We can sometimes see the creatures we're used to seeing, but those huge bands just seem to be empty."

"Then how are your drones picking them up if there's nothing there?"

Ed took a deep drink of his beer. "We think they're the Cryptid creatures. We're picking up their life signatures because they're actually there, but System Fuckery is preventing us from interacting with them before the timer expires and the event starts."

"But there's so many," Luna's voice was a whisper.

"Best we can tell, our neck o' the woods is outnumbered by about fifty to one," Owen said, taking a deep swig from his glass. Tess noticed that it was the darkest brew she'd seen yet.

"What do we do?" Tess's voice was soft and plaintive.

The table was silent again as they shared looks, no one having an answer.

"Part of me says we should flee," Fara's voice made Tess jump. "But part of me thinks that this could be a lot of fun!"

The crowd around the table dispersed, each lost to their own thoughts. No one noticed that Cass hadn't moved and was staring at a large patch of white that bordered the Lake.