"Yo." Val casually waved at Valor, who, aside from looking exhausted, was lounging in his usual spot."Welcome back."
"I figure you know what I"m here for, but what the h.e.l.l happened to you?"
"Muninn"s tactics, effective and correct, were particularly taxing. It was actually good of you to dispense with the excess."
Val raised a curious eyebrow. "Muninn"s? What are you talking about?"
"You do not remember? She overloaded the brand with her own mana to force you from the Draug"s spell."
"Huh... When I woke, she was sitting on a roof, and I was greeted by that Draugr p.a.w.n."
Valor smiled for a moment before his expression turned dark. "Hmm. Well, I suppose it"s beside the point, you"re here about the Draug. I am still shocked to see them return. They are a vile abomination, a blight on the world that I thought we had exterminated."
"How dangerous is the situation exactly?"
"They have not taken the coast yet, but if they are moving on this scale... Extremely. Muninn is correct, it will take far more than a few would-be heroes to resolve this."
"I only have a few "would-be heroes," what can you tell me about them? The one I fought had tough flesh."
Valor rested his head on his hand, gently ma.s.saging his temple as he recalled. "Tough skin and flesh are two common traits I know of, but that"s only the start. Many horrifying creatures of the deep once answered their call. They turned some of my best warriors with promises of power and eternal life, not empty ones either, but it"s a d.a.m.ned existence. Their transformed figures vary, but aside from making them swell in size and gain flesh as tough as iron... They are sometimes augmented with entirely new forms. A popular form we saw among their larger soldiers reminds one of sh.e.l.lfish, only the kind from your nightmares, not the dining table."
Val almost sn.i.g.g.e.red. "Great... So you"re saying they have an army of were-crabs and were-lobsters."
The one-armed G.o.d smirked. "Hmm, I a.s.sure you it"s less funny in person. But what you must truly be wary of is their magic. You"ve already been subjected to it once."
"How am I supposed to combat that, by the way?"
"We used formations comprised of "Peorth," to shield our warriors from their reach. But it"s not only during sleep that you must be wary. They have strange magics that can cloud your mind and drain you of your vitality. The very mists they take refuge in, strengthened them, and sapped our warriors."
"How do I dispel the mists?"
"I don"t know that you can, we combatted it with fire, but it was only when we pushed them back to the seas that the mists subsided. If you had a powerful sorcerer capable of countering and dispelling magic, you might succeed, but even Friga could not find the reason or sense in the spells they used."
"One last question... Has anyone ever come back after being turned?"
Valor met his gaze and held it, answering in a severe tone. "Even with our best healers and efforts... Not even once."
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Kainoa woke early in the morning, several years of training and habits still held strong. He had a dull headache, but nothing that was not fixed with a few swigs of water. Getting up and out of bed, as if on auto-pilot, he began to fix and make his bed.
"The first task of a productive day is to make your bed..." The marine grumbled to himself, reciting a lesson that had been hammered in by his CO. Taking stock of the room, he noticed Asha had gotten up already, and her bed was made, whereas Val"s remained in a disheveled mess.
"Sigh... Wouldn"t be Val otherwise." Kainoa quickly finished folding his blankets and moved on to fix Val"s bed too. When he was finished, the dozen or so beds in the room, lay in nearly identical conditions.
Kainoa was getting dressed with a dark-haired head poked into the barracks. It was Val, with a box of MREs and other supplies.
"Oh, good, you"re up. Hey, can I have these?" Val asked.
"What"s up with you? Sun just barely rose, and you"re awake already?"
Val shrugged. "Mmm... Yeah, been awake since one or two in the morning. Anyway, I can have these?"
Kainoa looked at him suspiciously but answered his question. "... Sure, got a bunch of them and not enough people to eat them anyway."
"Super, thanks." Val disappeared almost as quickly as he had appeared. No sooner than five minutes later, as Kainoa finished getting dressed and freshening up, Val reappeared.
"Can I have these too?"
"Man, we probably have lots of them, if you"re that hungry, just take "em—" Kainoa paused, noticing the lettering along the side of this particular case. "M67 DEFENSIVE FRAGMENTATION GRENADES" was printed in large white letters.
"No, you cannot have a whole case of grenades!" Kainoa quickly added before Val ran off with what the marine estimated was a couple of dozen, live grenades.
Val frowned. "... Okay, fine, how about... ten?"
"How about you explain what the h.e.l.l you need even one for?"
"You know, kick some a.s.s, take some names, not necessarily in that order, maybe skip a step."
"Yeah, no. Bud, I know you. Humor and playing things down is a tactic of yours only when something is serious, what"s going on?"
Val"s expression darkened, as his tone grew serious. "Let"s eat something first, I"ll explain, but I think I know where everyone went."
Nearly fifteen minutes later, Val and Kainoa were cooking up breakfast, making a meal of some MREs. Val was not too picky about his food, and neither was Asha, it appeared, though that made some sense to him considering she was ultimately some form of a soldier to her people.
"So you had a weird dream and sleep-walked down to Pike Place, where you encountered the monsters you call the "Draug"?"
Val nodded. "Yessir."
"Stop that. On top of that, you literally... Shot a bolt of lightning and killed one?"
Val smirked. "And you literally slept through that?"
Kainoa ignored his remark. "The "Draugr" you found was dressed in modern clothing, so our folks are really being turned into these monsters."
"Yeah, and for the record, once turned, they can"t be turned back. We have no other option than to put them down." Val"s words darkened Kainoa"s face.
"Then, we gotta move quickly."
"Indeed, I want to hit them soon, while the sun is out and their mists are even slightly weaker. Hence the grenades."
Kainoa narrowed his brows. "Those grenades are not meant for search and rescue, you are aware of that?"
"Maybe not, but if I rile them up and draw them away, we can probably take out a lot of them with it."
"Hmm... True... But I"ll handle the grenades, you"ve never done any training with them regardless."
"Fair enough, we take a truck, fill it with munitions, and get to work after we finish breakfast."
"Sounds good."
"Are you both idiots? Does stupidity just run rampant in Barren Worlders? We have no idea what we"re up against." Asha looked at the two in disbelief, not entirely sure if they were serious. Muninn regarded the two with a neutral expression, she was sure Val had already consulted Tyr but knew firsthand the brutality of the Draug.
"We have some idea, and hey! We"re university graduates. Kainoa is a First Lieutenant, must have some brains between us." Val pointed at the Kainoa as if that defended their plan.
"So... Wanna come with?" Val added, grinning at Asha.
"... No, but I can"t have you getting yourself killed either."
"Trust me, you wanted to know more about modern human capabilities. I can a.s.sure you that we have perfected war to a far greater degree than you can believe. I took stock of what we have here, we have enough munitions to level a small town and then some."
"Yeah, with the disasters, we had to transfer a lot of stock from other bases in more at-risk areas just in case we were ordered to abandon them." Kainoa added.
Val and Kainoa finished eating and quickly set to work, loading up a large troop transport with several cases of munitions for automatic rifles, the case of grenades Val had found, as well as some other explosive armaments. Kainoa stuffed at least a dozen additional standard issue a.s.sault rifles to arm the captives if the people from the Guard were still alive.
By ten in the morning, Val and Kainoa were looking over a map of the downtown area.
"I"m not sure where exactly they are, but I ran into them just outside Pike Place. They might have holed up in these buildings along the water." Val had circled the area on the map with a red pen, before marking some buildings with Xs.
"We also don"t know where our guys are. If we can bust "em out, we should have some able-bodied men and women ready to pick up a rifle."
"Asha might be able to help us with that if we can get close enough. Her powers are limited in the mist but should work if we can clear some of it. I"ll rile them up, start some fires, draw out the Draug forces, you work with Asha to find and secure the captives." Val threw together a plan where effectively he would be bait. He figured that freeing the kidnapped people would be better done by Kainoa, whom they would recognize.
"You are going to be the bait?" Kainoa looked concerned.
"Just trust me on this, a lot has changed. I know how to use this sword." Val tapped Tyrfing"s hilt with a confident grin.
"It"s true, at the very least, with the sword. He knows what he"s doing." Asha added.
"Backhanded compliments aside... When we get in there, I"ll chuck the kerosene and start some fires, you"ll have to move quickly. It won"t be long before the entire place is in flames, I suspect, but that"ll clear the mist according to Tyr."
"Right... The G.o.d inside your head... Regardless, I can"t think of a better plan in the time that we have, so this will have to do." Kainoa studied the map carefully, internalizing the operation.
"Alright then, let"s get to it." Finalizing their plan, Val double-checked his gear and proceeded toward the truck parked in the courtyard. Before Kainoa made his way out of the barracks, he swiped one grenade just in case.
Everyone boarded the truck, Kainoa, in the driver"s seat, with Asha riding shotgun. Val sat in the back, hanging onto a handle, with a leg dangling out. Muninn was with him atop Tyrfing, the pair were ready to go as soon as the truck rolled up on their destination. Val would create a commotion, draw away their forces, and start some fires to dissipate the mist so Asha could find the captives.
They departed just after eleven, and encountered no trouble on the way there but saw no one on the streets, neither Humans nor Draug. What they did see, however, was strange structures built in the mist. They looked like tall posts, as high as 8 meters, casting an eerie blue-green light from a crystalline object, with a wide, umbrelllike structure on top. At its base, three large wooden barrels looked connected to it. They seemed to be helping to disperse the peculiar white mist, thickening it and expanding its reach.
"Muninn, you know what those are?"
Muninn glared at the structure. "Somewhat, I vaguely remember them, their main function is somewhat obvious, dispersing and expanding the mist they require when on land. However, they also serve to build a kind of magical relay network for communication purposes. We suffered several ambushes before we figured that out."
"Good to know." Close enough to their destination, Val pounded his fist on the wall of the truck a few times, and Kainoa pulled to a stop. Val removed four gallon-tanks of kerosene from the truck and hopped out. As Kainoa drove off to find a safe position, Val immediately drew his sword and head down the steep road, kicking along the thick plastic tanks filled with flammable fluid.
Waltzing into the empty, mist-shrouded street, Val uncapped the containers and began chucking them in four evenly spread directions, ensuring they landed next to a building. Kerosene splattered and rained onto the street, one of the tanks landed next to one of the Draug"s mist-dispersing towers.
Val raised his hand towards the tower. In his palm, a runeword was charging with a fiery glow. After several seconds, he invoked the spell and a fireball the size of a small boulder flew toward his target. To his surprise, upon impact with the crystalline object at the top, the entire thing exploded violently in green and orange flames.
The young swordsman with fiery, smoldering eyes grinned. "That is *very* good to know..."
"Val, behind you!" Muninn said sternly, though Val had heard the shuffling feet already. Turning around, he swept his gaze across three figures, more p.a.w.ns wielding jagged hatchets.
"Perfect, I"d like to get started, but can you bring some more of your friends?" Val called out to them, as he charged another runeword and lobbed another fiery boulder toward the base of a shop where one of the kerosene tanks landed. A fire erupted, bathing the shop almost entirely in flames as it set ablaze.
The three figures hesitated, Val felt he could see fear in their cloudy eyes until a bellowing roar echoed from behind them.