New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live



After mending her burns superficially, Alexander helped Kary back to her feet. They turned and nodded to David, who sported a look of both impatience and restlessness.

But as they were about to resume their trek, something caught Alex's eye, in a dark corner of the large opening they were in. Something moving.

He raised his hand to signal the other to wait and turned his head toward the movement he had seen. But nothing was there anymore.

"Why are you holding us up? We still have half an hour of walking to do. Let's get to it."

David was getting jittery with anticipation. Even if the goblins were smarter than his current target, they had also been in much smaller numbers. And that was saying a lot, given they had been almost fifty.

The rats would number well over a hundred, in this case. Of that much, he was sure.

"I saw something move fast in the corner. But It's gone now."

David scanned the room with his eyes, and amongst the trash, collapsed tents, and badly built cabins, he couldn't see anything.

Kary reignited a small fireball over her hand, wincing in slight fear of her own power, but maintained the spell for the sake of a light source.

Looking around once more, Alex couldn't see anything.

'There is too much garbage in the way. I can't see everything. Maybe I saw falling trash?'

"All right. Enough paranoia. There's nothing here. Let's move on."

Alexander nodded his head, still unconvinced, but resumed walking. But to take no chances, he half-melded with Morpheus, wanting to try something out.

In the faint fire-lit space, anyone seeing his face shift and move a bit, as his nose flattened and his ears widened, would have had nightmares for weeks to follow. But he did it behind David, and in front of Kary, keeping him half-covered.

Alex opened his mouth and a whistle, so high-pitched it was soundless, shot out of it. As it bounced around the room, it hit something that started moving and screeching in pain from the sound bursting in its sensitive ears.

Suddenly, three hidden creatures lunged at Alex from the hidden trash and tents, where they had been hiding.

"Watch out!" Alex shouted.

He ducked out of the way of two rats and batted another one away, which would have collided with Kary if he had dodged it.

The rats were the size of cats and they screeched as they skittered around the trash-filled floor, going in and out of sight before they came back charging at the one that had hurt their eardrums.

David looked at them, and his face dropped.

"Kill them! Quick!"

He dashed at one of the running rats, and quickly punched down on it, smashing its head into the concrete ground, making a mess of his jacket as the blood and viscera burst out on him.

Alex undid his meld with Morpheus, going for a partial meld with White, this time, and his hands changed to claws, and he tore into another one, while Kary burned the last one to cinders in an instant.

David stood back up, his head spinning all around the room, his eyes looking for something.

"What is it, David?"

"Shut up!" he responded.

As Alex shut his mouth, a bit insulted at the man's brusqueness, he suddenly heard something in the distance. And he wasn't the only one to hear it, as it echoed in the room they were in.

"Fuck! There goes our element of surprise. Get ready to fight, they are coming to us," David said, taking his jacket off for ease of movement.

Alex could feel the concrete under his feet vibrate lightly, as something was stampeding in their direction.

'How many are there if the ground shakes at their approach?'

But there was something he was misunderstanding. He thought all the rats would be the size of the three they had just killed, which were already much larger than any normal rat he had ever seen.

But when the first ones trickled into the large room, he grasped the reason for the trembling ground. The ones that reached them first were the size of large dogs!

Looking at the comparison, he understood he had most likely struck down only a baby of these humongous rodents, and he gulped.

Yes, they were still just rats, and their thinking process was very limited. But a rat this size could most definitely take down a human being, let alone a bunch of them.

David raised his hands, his eyes flashing a dull green, and skeletons poured out of what little shadow he was projecting. One, then two, then four, then seven undead poured out, until one last one did, much better armed than the others, and David slumped a bit after it emerged.

"I can't hold them out for too long! We need to end this quickly!" he shouted out before pulling out a metallic bident from god knows where and lunging into the incoming rats.

Alex hadn't kept the sword David had offered him the last time, and he now had to fight with just his own means. Not that it bothered him.

His hands were lethal enough in their current form, that much he had already proven. Kary also no longer had the wand.

But she had trained many a time, and she had a better grasp on her control over fire. Of course, it wasn't enough to wreath herself in it, but it was enough to turn any enemy to ash promptly.

As David and his undead lunged into a front-line position, Alex decided he was better off dispatching those that slipped past his little barricade of bone, and started darting from side to side, slashing into rats like a rabid werewolf.

Kary stood back, shooting lances of fire at anything that escaped both the guys' purview, and occasionally burned the bodies left behind, as the stench was already making the air hard to breathe.

But their troubles were only starting.