Ch: 22 On the road.

Edited. 

Chapter 22

On the road

“Hey, can you help me out?” Jules asked Lily, who had her head down looking at her hat in her lap. Jules had just come from the tiny room between the cab and the back of the truck that contained the bathroom.

“Sure.” Lily said looking up. “What do you need?”

“I need help checking the defenses on this thing.” Jules told her.

“Oh, yeah.” Lily replied remembering that she had agreed to help.

“You take the roof, I’ll take the windows.” Jules told her, motioning upwards.

Lily nodded and carefully stood up. While the truck wasn’t bouncing around, it was moving down streets that were fairly tight. She held onto a railing that was bolted onto the ceiling for balance and dropped into her soul. From within herself she looked up and saw the ceiling which was covered in runic spells.

At first she thought an amateur did the work, but that didn’t make sense with how well the runes were carved. She traced back a spell and then started from the beginning of what she thought had to be the first part of the defensive runic spell. She frowned almost immediately as she saw the same rune repeated over and over again.

“Who does that?” She asked herself, not sure what was going on. There were literally ten of the same runes written back to back. She had to go back once more to the beginning again as she didn’t understand what the caster was trying to do. She slowly went over the rune for earth. It was one of the standard runes that the System gifted humanity. She was so caught up with trying to figure out the first rune that she almost missed the spell underneath. She only caught it because the rune glow had a blue tint to the normally brown light.

That led her to a spell she knew very well. It was hard to see because of the runic spell that was covering it, but it looked like one of her spells. In fact, she knew it was, now that she had seen it. It was the first part of the defensive spell she used in her apartment. The problem was that the spell didn’t work on a thing that moved. It only worked on a stationary object like her apartment wall. Having a spell like this anchored on a truck like the one she was in was, as far as she was aware, crazy.

She followed the mana of the spell until she found the center of the defensive spell and found a tiny metal box that, if she was not mistaken, was covering a mana crystal or core. Her fingers found a small keyhole in the side of the box. Cranking her head to get a better look, she spotted it. It wasn’t exactly hidden, but it was facing towards the wall. It would be hard to spot unless you knew where it was or went looking for it.

“That makes sense.” She thought to herself, as she returned her head to a neutral position. “With the box where it is, I bet it would be easy to overlook, which would protect the valuable crystal.”

“That still doesn’t tell me how the spell is working on this thing.” She told herself, as her gaze returned to the runic spell.

She started back at the first rune again and slowly examined it. It took her a few minutes to figure out what the intent of the first rune was, but once she did she was really confused. The intent of the first rune was to make the second rune become more solid, which was weird. She had to double and triple check the rune just to be sure, but she was completely sure whoever had carved the rune wanted the second rune to be more solid. Not physically solid though, she realized. Magicily more solid.

“Are you trying to make the second rune stronger?” She asked the unknown runic mage.

Leaving the first rune alone, her gaze fell onto the second rune. Her eyes widened as she found the second rune almost exactly the same as the first. Quickly, her eyes traced the next one, then the next one, until she found the last rune under the metal box that was covering the mana crystal. The last rune was the only one that was different from the others. While it too was an earth rune, the intent was not to make the next rune more magicily solid, but itself.

Eyes wide, Lily looked in awe at the simple yet effective runic spell. The thing was created to fool the universe into thinking that the ceiling she was looking at was not moving. That it was anchored to the earth itself. She sat back and admired the runic spell for a few seconds before she summoned her grimoire and wrote the concept down in her book. When she was done she closed her book and let it fade into nothingness.

“This is all André’s work.” Jules said from behind Lily.

Turning around, she found Jules on her knees looking up at her. “He may look and act like a fool. No, he is a fool, but he’s the best runic mage I’ve ever seen.” Jules said with a smile. “He is a good guy, if a bit dense at times. The crazy thing is that he leveled all the way up to Tier 4 now, and he’s hardly ever been in a fight. To the best of my knowledge, he’s never left Quebec.”

“He’s expensive, too.” The older man said from the front seat. “He’s worth it though. His spells saved our asses so many times I’ve lost count.”

“So how does that spell look?” Jules asked, cocking her head to the side.

“The defensive spells are solid, but the runes could use some juice.” Lily said, looking back at the first of six runic and normal spells.

Jules nodded in reply. “Check the rest. It’s been a while since I’ve gone over them. I bet they could use some more juice, as you say.” Jules said with a smirk on her face.

Lily felt her cheeks get red, and she nodded, keeping her eyes down. She quickly turned around and got to work. She did go back and check on the mana crystal to make sure it was fine, not expecting anything to be wrong with it. The draw on it was not strong enough for it to drain the crystal dry for a very long time.

She didn’t need to open the box to check on the crystal, she could feel the mana flowing out of the crystal behind the box. She knew from past experience that when a crystal started to go, the flow, for lack of a better word, would start to sputter. It wouldn’t be as smooth as what she was feeling from it now. She took one last look at the simple, but incredibly versatile, spell before she moved on to the next one. Ideas on how to adapt the technique popping up in her head, distracting her. The wonder of seeing the technique made her forget about calling mana juice. Ideas about how to apply the technique kept popping up in her head.

Adding mana to the runes turned out to be far more simple than she thought it would be. Her mana was attracted to the mana already in the rune. The drip fell upwards, pulled like metal to a magnet, towards the rune. Lily smiled as she watched the first drop of mana fall upwards. It was funny looking, and cool to see at the same time.

The rest of the spells she checked out needed more mana, but the one by the back door needed more work. The third rune from the start of the runic spell had been damaged, and mana was leaking out of it. The rune was close to failing due to the mana leakage. It was a simple, quick fix. All she needed to do was pull out her makeshift knife and deepen the rune. It was odd to work on an active rune, but not that hard. Once it was deep enough, she added her mana into the mix.

She hadn’t thought about adding her mana to someone else's until she was about halfway done filling the rune she was fixing. She almost stopped, but a quick look at the mana told her that they were mixing without problems. In fact, she couldn’t tell her mana from the mana already inside the rune. It looked just like hers as it dripped into the rune, but once the mana drop hit the rune the feeling of ownership faded away and the slight difference in the color of her mana changed to the color of the mana inside the rune.

She was glad that there weren’t any repercussions of adding her mana to the runes because it never occurred to her that it might not be the best idea to mix two different people’s mana. The fact that she had already added mana to the other runes was very large in her mind. After thinking it over for a few seconds, she knew Jules would have said something if there would have been a problem before she started refilling the mana in the rune.

Silently, she scolded herself about moving too fast and taking unnecessary risks. She knew better, and should have thought about all the complications before starting in on the work. Living through some spectacular mistakes in the past, which she only survived by luck and timing, had taught her the proper respect that was needed for working with magic. She thought she had learned those lessons, and that she was too old to be making these kinds of mistakes. Apparently not. Shaking her head at her carelessness, she turned back to the rune she was filling and forced herself to concentrate on her work.

“Alright, we are coming up to the gate.” The older man said from the front seat. “We have a few things to go over. First, the new meat is a caster. Tier 2 gold rare. As you know we are going after Amber. Jules’ girl. She was supposed to be on the southwestern road towards Montreal. She had been gone for about four days before Jules’ bangle went off. She was on a job looking for a lost convoy. That means they would be going slow, looking for signs of the missing convoy. If she found some trouble at the same time as her bangle went off, I would put her just south of Lac Saint-Pierre. Thoughts?”

“That sounds about right.” A tanned woman replied, nodding. “How sure are we that she was still on the road and hadn’t wandered off somewhere?”

“Not very.” The older man said, shrugging. “We will follow the tracking spell Jules has got running. New meat, how accurate is that spell? And how long will it last?”

“Very accurate, and I’m not sure. A few months, maybe?” Lily replied, letting her hands fall to her side as she finished filling the rune with mana.

“You called it a spell.” The driver said, tilting his head back slightly for a few seconds to look at her, before turning back to look at the road. “I’ve never heard of a spell like that. Is it a class spell or skill? You some kind of ranger caster combo?”

“It’s a neutral spell that popped up on the store.” Jules said, before Lily could answer. “I saw it last night when I was buying things for the diner. I had Lily buy it for me since I didn’t want to wait until the cooldown for the store ended.”

“The Lost Sage strikes again, ehh?” The driver said, not looking away from the road. He sounded amused.

“Toussaint, how long until we reach Lac Saint-Pierre? Two days?” The older man asked, looking at him.

“Sounds about right, as long as we follow the river.” Toussaint replied. “Just so you know, I’ve been hearing some weird things about Saint-Pierre and the surrounding river. We lost some of our people there recently. Low-tiered people who were grinding their class skills. The official word is that they went too close to the lake, so no one has sent anyone to track them down.”

“You believe that?” The older man asked.

“Up until now, kind of.” Toussaint replied. “You get some pretty good experience tracking things that close to a nest. Even experienced rangers get themselves killed there all the time. I just thought we had an outbreak of stupid.”

“You think this is about the nest?” The tanned woman asked. “Amber isn’t that stupid.”

“Might be the nest is moving.” The older man replied. “It happens sometimes.”

“That would be bad.” A third man, who had been quiet up until this moment, said. He wore a thick vest full of huge bullets that were the size of her fist.

“If it’s heading south, it won't have much to do with us.” The older man told them. “It’ll be Montreal’s problem. We will warn them if we can, but I’m not risking Amber or anyone else here. Understood?”

“Dammit, a convoy is heading out. We’re going to be stuck here for a few minutes.” The driver said, turning his head again to look back. Lily could see they were stopped in traffic. They were on a single lane road, and there were a bunch of rough-looking military trucks in front of them.

“Anyway, it’s a good thing we’ve got a gold rare if things go bad, right …. What’s your name anyway?” The driver continued as his eyes found hers.

“Lily.” She replied, dropping her gaze from his. She felt uncomfortable looking people in the eye. He was no exception.

“Ha, you hear that Corbin? Someone else's parents had a fetish for the Lost Sage.” Toussaint, the driver, said, chuckling to himself. The tanned woman gave him the finger, but didn’t reply otherwise.

“Her first name is Lily too.” Toussaint said, in a very loud whisper.

“Ignore Toussaint, his parents dropped him on his head when he was born. Then again after they picked him up and saw that ugly mug. I think they were trying to make him look better, the second time.” Corbin told her as she rolled her eyes.

“He’s a ranger.” Jules said after Corbin finished speaking. “All rangers are social outcasts, otherwise why be a ranger?”

“Hey, I thought you were the nice one.” Toussaint said, as he drove forward about a car length before stopping again in traffic.

“I was being nice.” Jules said, and Lily noticed the small smile on her friend's face.

“I’m Blanchet, and my class is war leader. The social outcast who’s driving is Toussaint. He’s a ranger, tier 4. Gardner is a rifleman, tier 4 heavy assault. Our artificer is Corbin, tier 4 mechanist. The quiet one of the bunch is Dubois. He’s a tier 4 Rafelist Rabbi, and our battle healer.” The older man said, pointing out who was who. “And of course, you know Jules, our water witch caster. That leaves you. What can you do?”

“She gets a reduced mana cost on any neutral spells she casts, plus she gets a discount buying them in the store.” Jules told them, before Lily could talk. “She’s also leveling spell smithing.”

That made Toussaint laugh. “Not only is she named after the Lost Sage, she’s trying to be her.”

“I can also feel all sorts of magic, including demonic.” Lily said, feeling annoyed at their driver. “I also have some witch, portal, and time spells. Although, I haven't really used them all that much.”

“That’s definitely a gold rare class.” Blanchet said, after the group had fallen silent for a long moment. “What kind of neutral spells do you have?”

“As of today, all of them.” Lily told them feeling a bit insecure as everyone, even Toussaint, looked at her.

“Can you cast Heal?” Dubois asked into the silence.

“Yes.” Lily said, nodding.

“Good.” The quiet man said before sitting back in his seat again.

“I can also cast Heal Mind.” She said to him as he closed his eyes again.

He opened his eyes again and frowned. “That is not a neutral spell.” He told her.

“No.” She agreed with him. To her surprise, he simply nodded and closed his eyes again.

“She’s a back tracker?” Blanchet asked, looking at Jules.

“No, just really rich.” Jules said with an odd tone of voice that Lily couldn’t identify. The rest of the crew inside the truck laughed and seemed to relax from some unknown tension she hadn't noticed.

“Finally!” Toussaint said. Lily turned to look out the front window and saw that they were at the front gate. The gate looked very similar to the one at Fort Woburn. There was a semicircle of manned fortifications around a gate in a huge, thick wall. The gate led to a tunnel that went through the wall.

Toussaint drove up to a man in uniform who was standing by a metal, chain link fence that was lined with razor wire. He had Toussaint roll down his window and he asked for everyone’s names, which he wrote on a piece of paper attached to a brown clipboard. He then asked for their destination and reason for leaving. Toussaint explained their mission and that they were going to head down the southwestern road towards Montreal. The guard nodded and waved them through.

No one said anything as the truck drove down the tunnel and out of the city. Lily looked around and saw a deep, dense forest alongside the road that led out of the city. There was, she noticed, no traffic going in. Looking back at the wall, she saw it rose up much higher than Woburn’s. She had no idea how tall it was, but it was at least twice the size of Woburn’s walls. Like Woburn, Quebec had gun emplacements on top of the wall. Some looked huge while others were small, machine-gun-looking things.

“Lily, back to work.” Jules said, bringing Lily back down to Earth.

Lily did as Jules asked, and turned away from the window and found her next runic spell and the spell underneath before looking it over for problems. Time faded away as it always did when she was working on something she found interesting. At first, the only thing that interrupted her was the bumps in the road, but she learned to ignore them as she worked on finishing up the last bit of refilling the runes with mana. Before too long she was finished, and she sat back down in the seat she had claimed.

“So when were you going to tell me that anyone can use the tracking spell?” Jules asked out of the blue.

Confused, Lily looked up to see Jules holding the brush. Jules deliberately turned the brush and the mana crystal moved, pointing towards Amber’s location. “Very clever.”

“I honestly didn’t know.” Lily said, feeling the blood rush to her face. She hadn’t seen the crystal move, but there was no hiding the fact that it had. Every time Jules moved the brush, the crystal moved among the bristles.

“I believe you.” Jules said after a moment.

“You do?” Lily asked in reply.

“Yeah, you can’t lie to save your life.” Jules said, giving Lily a one-armed hug.

“Sorry.” Lily told her, all the while cursing herself for missing the obvious fact that the crystal moved. But she had a clear memory of looking at it on the stairs and it didn’t move. Confused, she looked outside and watched the scenery pass her by.

An hour into the trip, Lily found herself overwhelmingly bored. To pass the time, she pulled out her phone and keyed up her alarm before bringing up a new video. Letting herself fall into her new skill, Advanced Memory Trance, her sense of self faded away, only to come back what felt like less than a second later to her alarm squawking at her. Blinking, she automatically started channeling Heal Mind as she became aware of her surroundings.

“What are you learning?” Jules’ voice asked from right beside her, making her spell Heal Mind fail.

Giving Jules a dirty look, Lily told her, “Theoretical Physics.” before she went back to channeling her spell.  She did note that Jules was holding the brush with the tracking spell and it was more or less pointing straight ahead. She let her attention fall back to her spell that healed the damage her trance did to her mind. As soon as the spell faded away she keyed up her alarm and the next video.

She got through a few more videos before Corbin told her to stop. “Seriously, that can’t be all that healthy.” Corbin said from the seat in front of her, where she was sitting next to Dubois.

“I heal the damage with Heal Mind, it’s fine.” Lily told the artificer.

“Stupid.” Dubois said waspishly. “Go over the information before you heal your mind. It will reduce the time it takes to channel the spell. This is why you should do this under a qualified institution or at the very least someone who can oversee your learning. What would happen if something went wrong with your phone, and it didn’t go off? Let this advice be my Mitzvah for today. Either go to a fancy school, or find someone you trust to watch over you so that you don’t lose yourself to the trance. Whatever you do, don’t keep doing what you’re doing without someone to watch over you.”

“I’ll watch over her.” Jules said from the seat next to Lily. “Go ahead. I got your back.”

“Thanks.” Lily said smiling at her friend, feeling a warm feeling flow through her body.

She did as Dubois told her to and went over what she had seen while in the trance. It took roughly half an hour before she was finished. Casting Heal Mind after going over the information did decrease the time she had to channel the spell from a little over three minutes to less than thirty seconds. Smiling, she tapped Jules on the shoulder to tell her she was ready again. She set her alarm and keyed up the next video before she activated her skill.

Time flew by as Lily got into the routine of activating the trance, coming out of it and going over what she learned, and casting her healing spell before doing it all over again. The new trick didn’t speed up her learning all that much except that she was able to go much more than the sevenish hours she normally got with her videos. Checking her phone message-thing she learned that she was able to get nearly nine hours in. She was also pleased that channeling her Heal Mind never rose above twenty minutes.

It was dark out when Jules stopped her from continuing. Toussaint wasn’t driving anymore. He had changed out with the guy with the huge bullets, Garnier. Blanchet was still sitting in the front passenger seat, but he was asleep, with his head resting on the window. In fact, everyone in the truck was asleep. Lily, feeling sleepy, but as sleepy as she normally was after her trance sessions, pulled her black coat closed and leaned against her window before falling asleep.

It was still dark out when Lily was woken up by the truck slowing to a stop. She peeled open her eyes to see Jules stand up and change seats with Garnier, who sat down beside her. Jules on the other hand took over as their driver. Lily couldn’t keep her eyes open after Jules started the truck up and continued down the road.

The next time she woke up she found Jules beside her, fast asleep. Looking at the front cab of the truck, she spotted Toussaint back in the driver’s seat. Blanchet was awake, looking out the window, seemingly bored. Garnier was sitting across from Lily and Jules. He too was asleep.

Since Jules was asleep, Lily didn’t break out her phone to train. Instead she went over what she had learned the day before in her memories. She was brought back to reality when Corbin came by with a bagged breakfast. It wasn’t much, all it contained was a small loaf of bread that had a meat spread on it. Lily thought it tasted really good, and it was surprisingly filling.

They also passed a thermos of tea around and Lily took a glass. As she drank it, all she could think about was how they served her tea on the way to Lowell. That tea was better than the one she was drinking now. She wondered if it was because it was some kind of special tea, or it was the way it was poured. Either way, she wished she had that now instead of the lukewarm team she was drinking.

With Jules up again, Lily was safe to do some more training. Smiling her thanks at Jules, she quickly slipped into her trance. Jules stopped her just around noon for a quick lunch break. The meal this time was some kind of stew that was left over from the day before. She wasn’t a fan of it then, when Jules had made her stop her training to eat, and she wasn’t a fan of it now. She waved off the stew and instead ate one of her mushrooms. She then went back to her training as everyone around her ate. It was late in the afternoon when she came out of a session of learning.

“Hold off on any more training.” Jules told her, as she came back to herself. “We are only an hour out from the lake. We need to be on guard now.”

“Okay.” Lily said as she looked out her window.

The dirt road they were traveling on had gotten more and more rough and overgrown as they traveled away from Quebec. The forest hadn’t changed all that much. There were still a bunch of the same trees from when she first looked out of the window back in Quebec. They looked similar to the ones just outside of Boston when she first escaped her hellhole, but much bigger, both in circumference and in height. What was worrying, though, was that she could see some trees here and there that were knocked over. It looked like, at least to Lily, something huge had simply pushed the tall trees aside as it made its way through the forest, leaving a trail of knocked over trees.

“Corbin, you bring your metal bird?” Blanchet asked.

“Never leave home without it.” Corbin replied, sounding oddly excited.

“Have it fly a patrol ahead. I don’t want to run into whatever made that trail.” He told her, nodding his head out the window.

“On it.” The artificer replied.

“Garnier, you’re on top. Use your grenades sparingly. I have a feeling we are going to need heavy firepower soon.” Blanchet said, still not looking back at them, instead looking out the window.

“You always ruin my fun.” Garnier grumbled as he stood up and did something to the roof in between the cab of the truck and the back where they were sitting. He pulled out a step stool from under the passenger seat and stood up on it before he pushed on the roof above him. It turned out to be a hatch, and he pushed the hatch top up before he climbed up, pulling a fat but short gun with him. The step stool had two steps and a wide top. He sat down on the top which left him half in and out of the truck.

Corbin on the other hand had pulled out a bag from under her seat. She dropped it on the seat before she unzipped it. From within the bag she pulled out what looked like a bird, but made of metal. It was frozen with its wings up against its body. The paint job was very well done, to the point that if Lily wasn’t close enough to see it was made out of metal she would have sworn that it was real.

The crew’s artificer then pulled down a window behind the last seat and did something to the bird, then tossed it out of the truck. The bird immediately came to life as soon as it was out of the truck. It flapped its wings and quickly gained some height. Lily was seated on the wrong side of the aisle to watch it fly once past the top of the window, but she did see a shadow in front of them on the road getting smaller. Still, it was in the shape of a bird.

“Bubo is away.” Corbin told them as she closed the window and sat down.

“Alright.” Blanchet said, ducking down in his seat to look upwards. “Jules, take your friend and sit in the back. I want one of you on guard while the other one watches the brush.”

Lily blinked as Blanchet picked up the brush from where it sat on the dashboard and held it out towards them. She noticed that the crystal was pointing slightly to the left of the road as she stepped forward a bit and reached around the step stool to take it. Jules had already moved to the back to sit down in the left-hand seat. The two bench seats in the rear of the truck had been empty the whole time, and Lily just thought no one wanted to sit back there. Now, thinking about it, she thought there might be another reason why people doubled up on the other seats while leaving the last two empty.

Once she had the brush in her hand, Lily made her way to the other empty seat. She looked over at Jules and noted that the other woman had pulled out what looked like a thin stick. It kind of looked like a drum stick, but it didn’t have that weird nob at the end of it. Jules was tapping the stick in her hand. There wasn’t any magic involved so Lily thought it was just a nervous reaction.

Time slowly ticked away as nothing happened. No one talked, nor did anyone do anything but look out the windows. Lily kept looking down at the brush and out the window. The mana crystal and the white line weren’t moving all that much except when there was a turn, but even then it always seemed to point in the same direction. After a while Lily started playing with the brush moving it around, watching the mana crystal turn on the brush along with the white line that was coming off of it. It helped with the boredom.

“The lake is about fifteen miles out.” Corbin suddenly warned them. Lily looked up from the brush to see everyone had started lowering their windows a bit, and pulling out their weapons. Corbin had a weird-looking, light-blue-green rifle that had a round magazine at the bottom of it. Dubois was carrying a fat-looking revolver that reminded her of cowboy movies. There was something odd about it though, and it took Lily a few seconds to realize that it didn’t have that hammer thing on top of the back of it. Also the rolling thing where the bullets were was also a lot longer than she remembered cowboy revolvers to be.

Blanchet had a thin-looking rifle, but he also had an ax that he got from somewhere and strapped beside his seat. Above him, attached to the roof, was a round, metal, dinner plate thing that reminded Lily of the shield that the guy from the fungus invasion had tossed above them to create the force field. Except this plate-thing was fatter and had circular grooves on it unlike the guy from the infestation’s plate thingie.

Jules had lowered her window as well, but had somehow turned her seat around to face behind them. Lily looked down to do the same thing, but didn’t see how. She did find a skinny metal pole under her seat and when she pulled it the bench seat shifted forward. Understanding filled Lily and she got up and pushed the bench seat so that it was resting against the seat in front of it before she sat back down. Once she was seated, she lowered her window as well.

With the brush seated beside her, Lily started casting her combat spells. She went with her standard spells. Mobile Barrier, and Greater Flamethrowers in both hands at the ready. Feeling the wind hit her from the window, she wasn’t sure how effective her flamethrower spells would be, but left them at the ready, not wanting to dismiss them just yet.

“Let the spells drop.” Jules said from beside her. “We could be here for a while. Keep an eye on that brush. Shout out if it changes direction.”

Lily nodded and let the flamethrower spells fade, but kept her barrier up just in case. She picked up the brush so that she could watch it and out the rear window at the same time. The crystal was still pointing in the same direction, so she looked out the window. Not that long afterwards, the forest, which covered both sides of the road, faded and the lake came into view on Jules’ side of the truck. It wasn’t as close to the road as Lily expected. It was halfway to the horizon from Lily’s perspective. She did note that she couldn’t see the other side of the lake. The lake was that big.

Time slowly passed, but no one let their guard down. Lily was getting bored though. She guessed they had been passing the lake now for about an hour with nothing happening. She really wanted to close her window because dust kept getting blown in every now and again. She did note that she didn’t see anything. No birds, no animals, nothing living besides the trees. She also noted that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. She was glad she was on the side of the truck without the sun because she could see Jules having to shade her eyes when she looked out the side window.

Jules suddenly turned to Lily and pointed out her window. Lily frowned, but leaned towards her side a bit and looked out her window. At first she thought there was a whale in the lake, but its tail fin was way too skinny. In fact, it looked like a snake's tail with weird triangle things growing up from it. Another indication it wasn’t a whale was the fact that it was just floating there. She had been on a whale watching cruise when she was young, way before the invasion, and seen a bunch of whales just outside of Boston harbor. This animal didn’t look anything like that except it was as big as one. Then its head rose out of the water, showing off its tall thin neck. Lily blinked and realized she was looking at a dinosaur.

“It’s a nessie.” Jules said, smiling at the thing.

“A nessie?” Lily repeated, before she realized why they called it that. “As in the Loch Ness Monster?”

“Maybe? Is that a variant of a normal nessie?” Jules replied, shrugging. “It's a fairly tame beast as long as you leave it alone, but gets very aggressive if attacked.  We want to leave that thing well alone. We are no match for it at this time. Normally, most nessies are around tier eight or nine, but they can get up much higher. There is a rumor that Lake Huron has a nessie that’s tier 12.”

“They’re lucky charms, so don’t you go killing one.” Garner said ducking down into the truck. “I saw one on the Saint Lawrence near Lac du Gros-Pin, north of Quebec. We were out there hunting some Elk. Once the thing swam by, the biggest Elk I’ve ever seen stumbled out in front of me. Damn near killed me with its lightning. We bagged that fourteen-pointer, and got a large lightning core out of it.”

“Garnier.” Blanket said in a warning.

“Yup.” The man said and stood back up so that he was halfway out of the truck again.

It took most of the afternoon and half the night for them to pass the lake. No one slept. The lake slowly got skinnier and skinnier until it turned into a river again. From there, the forest rose up on both sides of the road to hide it once more. The tracking spell on the brush kept pointing in the same direction the whole time.

“Do you think she made it to Montreal?” Corbin asked no one in particular as she pulled her mechanical bird in from the window.

“Maybe, but I doubt it.” Blanchet replied, sounding unsure. “Let's eat dinner and set watches. Jules, I want one of you on duty at all times. Garnier, get back in here. Rest up and relieve Toussaint in a few hours. Corbin, you got driver mid shift. I’ll take the deadman’s shift. Dubois, rest up. I got a bad feeling that we are going to need your services soon.”

Lily shut her window and handed off her tracking spell to Jules as Dubois started handing back brown bags of food. Lily checked inside to find a meat sandwich with mustard on it. She tried it and shrugged. It had a peppery taste to it, but it went well with the mustard. The bread, she noted, had been toasted at one point. Overall she gave the sandwich a seven out of ten.

Smiling at her thoughts, Lily nearly jumped out of her seat when Jules started yelling. “I got movement on the tracking spel!  It’s turning towards the river!”

“How much movement?” Blanchet yelled back. “Never mind. Tell me when it’s ninety degrees.”

“Okay.” Jules replied back.

Lily looked over at the brush and saw that it was slowly turning towards where the river should be. She looked out the window, but it was too dark to see out. She thought for a second, then started casting her Area of Sight spell that she hadn’t cast since before she had been picked up and brought to Fort Woburn. She was a little rusty, but she didn’t have to summon her grimoire to cast the spell. It had been a spell she had cast every time she left her shelter in her hellhole. Granted she hadn’t cast it in almost two years, but it came back pretty easily.

She waited until she saw the mana crystal point directly right of the road. She heard Jules call out and the truck slowed down, then she released the spell, angling it towards where the tracking spell was pointing. It easily passed through the truck and flew towards the forest beyond before it exploded and she was inundated with everything in the spell radius.

She saw trucks just inside the woods. As the invisible sparkles fell and penetrated the trucks she saw a single dead body. As the spell continued to fall she saw there was a bunch of four-legged beasts just past the furthest car from her. The spell kept falling and penetrated the dirt and she found seven more bodies along with a ton of bugs. The bodies were mangled and they didn’t seem to be fully whole anymore. Then the spell faded and Lily found Jules staring at her a few feet away.

“Tell me.” She whispered. Before she could she turned to see nearly the entire crew crowding the back looking at her.

“One dead body in the second truck. Seven bodies buried, to the south? That direction.” Lily said, pointing in the direction where the bodies lay. “We have maybe eight four-legged things waiting on us just past the trucks that way. They’re big. Maybe four feet tall?”

“Anything else?” Blanchet asked. “Any sign of anything living but beasts in that direction?”

“Not for fifteen feet once you get off the road.” She said, shaking her head. “That’s the limit of my spell, at least from here. I would have to get closer to see.”

“No, that’s fine.” Blanchet told her, patting her on the shoulder. “Garnier, pop top and lay waste to the area fifteen feet from the side of the road, and no further.”

“On it.” Garnier said from the back of the group. Lily watched him as the rest of the crew moved into the seats on Jules’ side of the truck and pulled down the windows.

She had let her barrier spell fade a while ago so she had to recast it. Once it was done she started to cast her flamethrower, but held it in her left hand, not letting it go. With her right she fired off another Area of Sight to see if anything had changed. The four-legged beasts had moved closer, but that was all.

“On my mark.” Blanchet called out, after looking at them.

Lily found a spot next to Jules, who was holding her stick again. Jules gave her a quick look before turning back to the open window. Lily licked her lips as she stared off into the darkness. She cast a second firethrower spell on her right hand as she waited for Blanchet’s signal. Then it was time.

“Open fire!”