The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

The sum of my belongings was in my purse... what looted gold-equivs I had, and what had been in there first.

I pulled out things like tissues, tampons, pens, pencils, scissors, a wallet, and a cosmetics bag with lipstick, perfume, eye shadow, and the like.

Ael had been a married man with three daughters, and was able to shapechange. Learning about all this stuff had been an entertaining diversion at some point, but I recalled nothing about the circumstances. Maybe it was just harmonizing with residual memories as I looked at this stuff and knew how to use it all.

The cosmetic case for the blush had a compact mirror, so I got to look at myself, as the one in the bathroom here had been smashed to shards by several somethings, and I hadn’t felt like Mending it.

My eyes were completely roiling black, almost looking empty, and forcibly brought to mind the cloudy darkness up top. I could only assume they were sign of a Shroudblood, or something.

Pale skin, very fair complexion, almost silken. All the cheekbones and exotic tilt to them... by human standards, this girl was an exotic beauty. Very kissable lips, pointed chin...

Moonlit Hair.

I eyed the way white moonlight seemed to ripple off the midnight black hair, and the ends of the locks ended in silvery whiteness.

It was one of the Signs of Sylune, who loved to show Her favor via the hair. The other Twilight pattern was white with black bands, sort of albino-tigerish. Alissa Twice-Blessed had that kind of hair, and it looked pretty sweet when arranged properly.

Mine was black with living white highlights as the light hit it... and the light always seemed to be hitting it.

Highmoon, Darkmoon... another Bloodline sign? How did Phoenix fit in?

A mystery for another time...

I flipped open the wallets of the dead men I’d harvested. One had a New Jersey driver’s license, the other Pennsylvania. Tellingly, the licenses didn’t note their Sinbound eye color, so it was fairly recent.

They had a couple credit cards each, and a fair amount of money that didn’t look that familiar, with a distinct silver tint to it, not greenbacks. Some form of alchemical treatment? Making valid paper currency would be a lot harder in a magical world...

The coins, on the other hand, were holed, and had actual silver and gold in them.

Definitely a magical world at work. Mana tended to condense and congeal as precious metals, so there would be an explosion of such, and decent tech was much better at mining than the medieval-level techniques used in most magical worlds.

Common currency. Wow, how long had it been since money was a problem? Kind of novel, really...

I looked at the girl’s photo.

Her eyes were silver, and her hair was black, without the Moonlit effect. 5’7, 120 lbs, Halvyri, and an address down in Maryland.

Elrii.

That’s it. No last name, which set off alarm bells. This was America... single names were very unusual. You were either very weird or very famous if you went by one name.

I rather doubted she was famous.

She had cash there, too, and more than the men had, if the denominations I Comp’ed on them were correct. A quick Assay assured me she had 18+ QL cosmetics, and the shoes I’d kept and the purse itself were QL 20 Masterwork.

Expensive tastes, and the money to afford them... but with no last name...

The question if I was going to take the girl’s place was open, but not something I was really intending on doing.

On the other hand, going back and raiding her closet was totally a thing.

Her keys were still in the purse, too. I didn’t know what they connected to, but I just might be able to find out.

I just had to get out of here.

I walked down the service drive the van had been heading down, turned south, the way the map indicated, and started on my way.

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I was thankfully light on my feet, and despite feeling like crap, I just focused and kept at it.

I didn’t know how far away those walls were, but I was assuming twenty miles, long and low on the horizon past the buildings.

Not needing to carry food and water was very helpful. It was just the fact I was not in good shape and really sore Down There from the ability damage, and this girl was definitely not a trained runner, by the way my feet were soon aching.

Damn, I wanted Monk Levels really bad right now...

Anyways, there were a lot of cars rusting on the road. Most had their windows caved in. It actually wasn’t hard to spot the way to go, as the road was clear enough to drive, as the cars had been shoved aside.

Their designs were all very old. I didn’t remember any model names or numbers, but they looked vaguely like something from the 40’s? The style of the art moldering on some of the billboards and posters here and there backed it all up.

That was a long time ago. The undead had been around that long? What would that do to the world?

I didn’t have multiple thoughtstreams to keep devolving into what-if scenarios, and had to willfully Focus on the task at hand, and getting as far as I could before I had to sit down, Meditate for two hours, hit Renewal, and wait out the night somewhere.

Getting on Route 25 wasn’t that hard. I wound my way between nearly a hundred cars piled up on the first corner, crashed and with burned scars, but no signs of bodies, surprise, surprise. The asphalt of the road seemed to have held up well.

It wasn’t a true highway, just an enlarged road, fairly typical of the time period. That meant side streets directly connected into it, and there were buildings lining it.

I was effectively moving right through the heart of a fallen town in the middle of the day. I could only grimace and keep my pace up, feeling the eyes on me from the shadows inside the homes and buildings lining the route.

I had plenty of caloric energy, didn’t need food or water, but just plain muscle fatigue was going to be a thing, and I didn’t have any way to get rid of it. I wasn’t in shape to travel twenty miles in a day, but I could only grit my teeth and go as far as I could.

Tonight... was going to be interesting. I was definitely going to have some undead following me and trying to find me. Whether or not that would include incorps was going to be a thing. That meant I was going to have to be damn sure that I got some oomph to my spells tonight...

I had a pretty good idea what I was going to be taking.

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It was a long day, with a lot of eyes watching me trotting and strolling by.

I rested once, around noon, massaging my aching feet, cursing that I couldn’t have been stuck into a jogger, at least, and then started my journey again.

The tracking of my Visual File said I’d gone about eight miles, trying to keep as easterly a direction as possible as I moved along the streets. The map didn’t seem to indicate any bridges or anything that might be blown or taken down, which could really suck. Undead in the water were no joke, either.

There was more green as I pulled away from New York City behind me, but the houses and buildings were still tightly clustered along the road. Cars did thin out, as if there had been less killing and more running away (or no running away...), and the houses didn’t look as broken into... or out of? It was hard to tell.

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At 4 PM, and with fourteen or some miles behind me, I called it quits. I could definitely see the wall in the distance, maybe another ten miles... but there was no way I was going to make it today, so I started casting about for a place to stay, while my feet throbbed badly and my guts were telling me to sit down and relax a good long time.

Using Prestidigitation for the last half hour to totally neutralize my scent, I picked out a fairly narrow townhouse whose doors were open, but intact... and which could be blocked.

There were no undead inside when I scanned it thoroughly, including looking for spirits and haunts. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any manifesting come sundown, but at least I wasn’t going to be surprised as I explored the place.

The furniture was rotting, the main window in front was busted, and there was mild weathering and decay of things. But the negative energy in the air had prevented the normal bugs from getting anywhere, and the place looked abandoned, not overgrown... no spiderwebs to speak of, for instance.

There were pots and pans, some decayed food and even curdled milk in a very old refrigerator, with tools and cutlery. The photos on the walls or in stands were all black and white, in old-fashioned garb that indicated a life WW I’ish or thereabouts, with primitive automobiles in two of the backgrounds, and coal trains here and there.

The beds upstairs were actually still made, and actually viable, if dusty now. No bugs even meant they were relatively clean.

I found a jackknife up in a sheath in the closet, slipped that onto my belt, wishing it was a Bowie. The closets and drawers were a mess, as if things had been taken from them in a hurry, the rest left where it was strewn.

The underwear was very out of style, but given how I was chafing, I didn’t really care.

I located the trapdoor to the attic, and lowered it down. Barring incorps, I was pretty sure I could hold that entry point pretty much forever, unless something really powerful destroyed the floor, or came through the roof.

I used Prestidigitation to clean off the very small windows up there, giving me some visibility, just in case, and cleaned up the floors so I wouldn’t have to worry about footing. There were old washers and things in the basement, and the detached garage didn’t have a car in it, but it did have some old gardening tools, lawn mower, oil, cleaning chemicals, and other things.

If I was an Alchemist, I could have done something with them. Alas!...

I did find a hammer and nails, which I used to pound up a cloth over the front window. This wasn’t to actually block it, which was meaningless, but more to stop those outside from seeing what was happening inside... although if I attracted a horde of the things, they’d just attract more, so what could I do about it?

I locked the front and back doors, and dragged some chairs in to further stop them from opening into the halls, anything to buy me time and slow them down in case something happened.

I assessed the yard, possible flight paths (which I doubted would save me at night, but you never know), alternative ways in and out (windows again), and reflected I couldn’t do much better, given the surroundings.

I sat down in the front room with two hours to go to dusk, and Meditated to regain full Valences... and see what happened at Renewal.