44 – Distractions

Andy paused halfway up, watching the others lead the prospective members of their community along the winding path. The trail up the cliff face wasn’t especially steep, but each leg of the five switchbacks stretched about a hundred feet. The climb took time—especially without a guardrail, where rushing could be dangerous. He hoped he hadn’t been foolish in allowing Howell and his family to go up, but Brian had agreed with him, and, honestly, he felt sorry for the “cambions.”

He supposed it could have been worse; they could have been turned into goblins or that ghoul thing that Tina had become. At least they were still people. He just hoped the other residents of the park would be cool with them. Besides, if he believed their story, the System had sent them there to seek shelter, and they had little kids with them. How could he turn them away?

He’d stopped halfway up the trail for a reason. As the rest of the party kept moving, he opened his status sheet and read the description for Scorchmark Glyph:

***Scorchmark Glyph – bound: You may now inscribe volatile runes onto surfaces, leaving behind glyphs that trigger upon proximity. When activated by the presence of a being with ill intentions, the glyph will erupt in a burst of searing flame, dealing fire damage that scales with the will of the inscriber. Mana Cost: 25.***

He’d wanted to confirm his memory and strange innate sense of the ability were correct: it wouldn’t hurt friendly folks that passed over it. He’d forgotten that last bit, though—about it scaling with his will. He smiled when he saw that, because, honestly, he’d wanted to raise his will anyway, but hadn’t been able to justify it to himself when other attributes seemed so much more pertinent to the mad situation they were all in.

Before he talked himself out of it, he put an improvement point into the stat, and was pleased when the System didn’t tell him he’d already hit his cap. “Seven will. Should I stop?” He was down to four improvement points. Like before, he didn’t really feel any different after applying the point, but will would be hard to discern, wouldn’t it? Maybe he’d have an easier time resisting the urge to find the supply boxes and loot himself a bottle of the Whistler’s booze.

He laughed, shaking his head. He hadn’t really been planning to do that. Had he? Where’d the thought come from, then? He dismissed the idea and squatted down, preparing to inscribe a glyph, but stopped, thinking. If that trail were the only way a bad guy from Construction City might realistically sneak up into their settlement, the glyph he was about to inscribe might be very important. Hell, it would be important in an open all-out invasion, too. Nodding, he put a point into the skill and then reread the description:

***Scorchmark Glyph – bound: You may now inscribe volatile runes onto surfaces, leaving behind glyphs that trigger upon proximity. When activated by the presence of a being with ill intentions, the glyph will erupt in a burst of searing flame, dealing fire damage that scales with the will of the inscriber. The glyph will persist after the initial eruption, rearming over the course of several seconds for a second eruption. Mana Cost: 40.***

“Oh, shit,” Andy whispered, with a chuckle. He’d doubled its effectiveness for only fifteen more mana. Thinking of the mana cost, a thought occurred to him, and he hurriedly inscribed the rune at the center of the trail. As the flickering, fiery sigil faded into the stone, he thought about his mana points and looked at the reported value:

Mana:

105/145

“Hmm.” Andy counted to sixty and then looked again.

Mana: 105/145

“So. There goes my idea of lining a hundred sigils up and down this trail.” It seemed the mana was pulled from his pool until the sigil was activated and burned itself out. That meant he could, at his current mana levels, only put three down. He decided that one was enough for the time being; it would be plenty to send a painful message to any interlopers and simultaneously alert anyone who was on watch.

Nodding to himself, he clutched his spear and jogged up the trail, easily catching up to the slow-moving group. Lucy watched him approach, slowing her steps to let the group get a little ahead, and Andy stopped beside her, smiling. “Um, sorry again for how I sent Tucker to get you. I should’ve chosen my words better.”

“No, it’s all right. While I listened to you talk to those people, I put myself in your shoes, and I didn’t like the pressure I felt. I think I need to cut you some slack.” She shifted her bow to her shoulder and then looked pointedly down over the side of the trail. “What were you doing down there?”

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“Leaving a little surprise in case someone from Construction City tries to sneak in tonight.”

“A surprise?”

Andy chuckled, nodding. “Remember the, uh, fire trap I put down for the snake?”

“Oh!” She frowned and added, “But what if someone else—”

“No, it’s supposed to only work on people with 'ill intent.’”

She nodded, but her face still looked troubled, and she asked, “But what if someone like—oh, say, Tucker—goes down there, and he’s thinking about Violet, ’cause he thinks she’s cute, but he knows she’s married to Eduardo? Like, he’s thinking he still might try to make a move. That’s ill intent, isn’t it?”

Andy laughed. He knew she was being serious, but still, the scenario felt like it was out of left field. Luckily, somehow, just as he knew how to cast the spell and what it would do, he had a feeling about how it worked. “It won’t do that. It’s more along the lines of people wanting to hurt me. It’s not sophisticated enough to track down all the bad thoughts in a person’s head. It’s just looking for intent to harm the person who made the spell. Like, anyone coming up to this settlement to attack or spy or steal—that’ll work to set it off.”

By then, the group ahead of them had reached the top of the trail and were approaching the gate. Andy glanced at Lucy and nodded toward the trailers beyond the gate. “I’m gonna spend another hour or so at my trailer, then do you still wanna meet at the park? I’m already getting hungry.”

“Yes! I’ll scrounge us something good from the supply trailer.”

“There’s a supply trailer now?”

She nodded. “One of the vacant single-wides. Bernice told you this—they started using it when you and I went to the school. Remember when you told them to go through the empty trailers for food?”

“Oh, right.” Andy did not remember that conversation. He paused by the gate, watching as Paul introduced his family to the people gathered there. To his surprise, almost everyone was looking at the cambions with interest, but not hostility. He didn’t even hear anyone say anything that could be construed as rude. Tucker was a notable exception. His eyes were bugging out of his head, and he held his bat before him, occasionally slapping it into his palm. Andy didn’t think he was doing it consciously.

When Bella and a woman Andy recognized as a nurse’s assistant, but whose name he couldn’t remember, offered to take the family to a large, vacant trailer, and most of the crowd began to disperse, Lucy said, “I’ll see you at the park in an hour or so.”

“Right on.” As Lucy walked off, he made his way back to his trailer. He had a lot on his mind—more than ever in his life—but the thing he fixated on as he walked was that he’d gone from seven improvement points down to three pretty damn quickly. He was curious about his will attribute. He wanted to know if his cap was eight, like his perception, or nine, like his strength and vitality. “Or something different.”

“Talking to yourself, young feller?” James called. Andy turned toward the voice and saw the older man walking toward him from one of the lanes that crossed the main road.

“Hey, James. What’s up?”

“I got something interesting to run by you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep!”

Andy slowed his steps and waited for him to get closer. “Anything good, or am I looking at a new problem?”

“Oh, hey now! When has old James given you any trouble?” He leaned back, hand to his chest, feigning insult.

Andy laughed and shook his head. “I’m just messing around. How’s Keshawn, by the way?”

“He’s good. Ankle’s healing up real good. He’s limping around following those, uh, alien folk, listening to their story.”

Andy laughed before he could stop himself, and held a finger up to his lips. “Don’t call them aliens, James. They’re humans who got changed by the System. Anyway, they’re called ‘cambions’ if you’re interested, but you should just learn their names.”

James waved a hand dismissively. “I know, I know. Don’t worry, I know when to hold my tongue. Now, listen, young feller. I got my tinkering to level 10, and when I put an extra improvement point into ‘inspired creations,’ I got an award from the System.”

Andy’s eyes had grown wider and wider as James spoke, and when the other man paused for breath, he said, “Seriously? That’s badass! What’d you get?”

“I got a Codex page. You ever hear of one of those?”

Andy nodded.

“Well, it was a recipe.”

The older guy was clearly trying to build suspense, and Andy had to chuckle as he rolled his hand in the air. “Come on, James! You’re killing me!”

“A’right, a’right. Keep your trousers on! It’s a recipe for a spear. Ain’t that a coincidence?”

“I take it from your tone that you don’t think it is. I don’t either. Still, that’s pretty cool… What kind of spear?”

“It’s called a Desert Scirocco, and it’s got all kinds of weird components.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper lined with neat, printed text. “I figured I ought to give you a list in case you come across any of this stuff. If I make the spear, I’ll get a lot of experience, and I think it’ll open a new class for me. ’Course I’ll give the spear to you, so—”

“You don’t have to do that, man!”

He waved his hand again. “Don’t be a fool. Ain’t nobody around here can get more use out of it. Anyway, gonna be a while before you find all this stuff, I bet.” He handed the slip to Andy, then winked and walked back the way he’d come.

Andy watched him quizzically for a minute, then opened the folded-up scrap of paper and read the list of items:

Desert Scirocco:

1 ten-foot ocotillo cane

4 oz. Phoenix ash

1 Vitreous scorpion stinger

1 Sunblight crystal

1 large rattlesnake skin

1 Thunderbird pinfeather

1 lb. Silver

6 oz. Gila monster bile

Andy read the list twice, then shook his head and barked a short laugh. “Yeah, I think it’s gonna take me a little while.” He folded the paper and stuffed it in his pocket. Despite his words, his mind began to wander back to the empty pool behind the Whistler’s place. Maybe, after he messed with his improvement points and had a bite with Lucy, he should reactivate his Umbral Warden class and make a quick run over there. That giant, damn snake had to qualify as “large,” right?