They had no choice but to retreat the way they had come. The Ogres were advancing in the jail. The patients had overwhelming numbers, but they hadn’t discovered the door that connected the Convalescence Annex to the jail. Paris carried Fintan like a bag of sand over his shoulder while RuTing carried the gold.
She should have left the gold. It wasn’t enough to buy a message with the Adversary. That many gilders would have weighed hundreds of pounds. She’d offered to carry it for Cherry because manifesting metal was impossible for her, and Fintan could only manifest small amounts a day. Metal had value, but it wasn’t as valuable as their escape. She’d depended on Fintan to get them past the obstacles, and now he was drained. In the chemical lamp, he looked grey. He might pass out.
Paris had no difficulty hoisting Fintan’s limp body over his broad shoulders. Moments ago, he’d been reduced to a Bomb Midge. Fintan had changed him. Paris lost his levels when he was captured, but he appeared more than restored. Unless RuTing found a way out of the city for all of them, Paris would be returned to his cell, and Cherry would be a pillow decoration for a department head.
Patients streamed through the doorway to the jail. They scrambled and slid on the blood on the floor and didn’t hesitate to throw themselves on the Ogres axis. The river was in front of them. RuTing put her shoulder into a patient and reclaimed the doorway long enough for Paris and Cherry to follow. Then she slammed it shut while Paris and Cherry warded off the patients.
The patients weren’t violent. They were persistent. The single-minded desire to reach water didn’t leave room for violence.
With the door closed, RuTing searched for something to block it. She didn’t want the Ogres to butcher more patients. They needed room to use numbers to their advantage.
She didn’t find anything but a discarded broom. She put it on the door, desperate to hook it through the handle when it stuck fast. She stumbled backward, and the handle remained suspended in the air across the door firmly attached.
“You attached it to the door,” Fintan said. From over Paris’ shoulder, he could see what she was doing. “You found a new Skill.”
RuTing paused long enough to consider her handiwork. Had she done this before? She built a lot of contraptions around their tent. Sometimes, she put two different things together and she thought she was manifesting glue to hold them. This close to the jail, the air was very dry. Skills were talents that required very little mist.
“Try this,” Cherry said. She had picked up a long bar of white bedrock in the jail. It was shaped to be a cell bar. It had no doubt broken in the fighting. After the material was carved with metal tools, it became brittle. Maybe Cherry thought she would use it as a club, but RuTing saw the answer. She took Cherry’s pole and placed it across the door. This time, she was conscious of using her Skill. The pole welded to the door and the frame, but more importantly, it welded to the bedrock around the door. When the two ends touched the wall, they became more solid until RuTing thought it couldn’t be removed without metal tools.
“It’s the opposite of Dividing,” RuTing said. “I think it's Appending.”
“The wall?” Fintan asked.
“Might not be an obstacle.”
“Do you know a way out?” Paris asked. “We have to lead them to water. Bannerburg has denied them peace. Their tortured existence must end. ”
Paris spoke the words fervently, and RuTing wondered what was his lie. His passion to save the patients was like an echo, but if he wanted to die so badly he could have ended his life in Zeusopolis. The Zeusopolans didn’t guard the river. So far as she could tell, even the slaves had the right to a painless death.
No was not the time to investigate motivations, but he was right.
“This way to water!” RuTing yelled. “I know the way out.”
The patients who piled at the entrance and the others who searched the corridor perked up at her words, and RuTing yelled while she jogged away from the intersection. She was well aware her speed, strength and agility were far beyond Paris and Cherry. She slowed and gathered the zombie-like patients while they retraced their steps.
There was no obstacle too large on the path to water. Her entourage of patience cleared the way and added to their numbers. When they finally emerged from the exit, the thousands at her back spilled into the old town center, but she didn’t stop there.
She had to get over the wall.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The flood emptied out into the streets, and many followed them, because RuTing charted a path to the River Gate.
There was no point in returning to the Portal Gate and the portals. She hadn’t confirmed with Cherry, but she knew there was a bridge over the River Gate, and she meant to travel deeper into the afterlife. She didn’t have gilders for a message, but she would find a way.
Like a wave meeting a broken dam, she stopped at the wall around the city and the patients stopped with her. They flooded to the sides, looking for an opening but finding nothing.
She raised her sword and slashed into the air, attempting to divide the top and chop the wall to pieces. Her sword extended like knife of energy in the air. It scored the inner wall, cutting the slick black layer but stopping on the aggregate underneath.
The city lights were gone, but the flicker of light from the fires still burning glinted off the white foundational stone used in the aggregate. She had a full thirty feet of aggregate to cut through to get to the other side of the wall.
Cutting was no good. She needed a ramp.
Townspeople were fighting the fires with water hoses and buckets. The landscaping with decorative ponds and islands of nature served as a resevoir. They ignored or fled from the patients that rose with the mists in the night.
When Paris saw the chagrin and horror and ash-covered faces he shook his head.
“How could they not know what they are doing to their own people?”
“They know,” Cherry said. “I’ve seen a few of my friends tonight. You think of them as released, but I think of them as sick. If we could find a cure for the water, we could save many lives.”
“They are being used as filters,” Fintan said.
Of course, Cherry had told them that.
“They aren’t a burden to society,” she said. “Isn’t that important too? Everyone has to be paid, and it works. Until now it was a system that managed pain. I’ve destroyed it for everyone.”
Cherry’s anger had turned to guilt. After watching the patients butchered by the soldiers, she’d taken an unusual step to reconcile their actions. The ogres had been deadly calm when they performed their nefarious task. The absence of emotion was a strange kind of validity that fostered acceptance.
“They are getting what they deserve,” RuTing said. “None of this is on you. I need boards.”
She was studying the wall, and the patients with them ripped apart buildings to provide her with materials.
RuTing led them from the imprisonment, and many were self-aware enough to trust she had a plan to get them to the river. Her strength was such that no matter what they brought her, she could lift it to the wall. The slick substance that protected the wall from the white corrosion didn’t stop her Skill. She fashioned ladders and platforms out of garbage and debris. The mists were thick in the city, and she built a tower against the wall, climbing steadily with Cherry and Paris behind her.
When she reached the top and stopped, a dull moan under her was the call for water. The patients had followed them to the very edge of the wall. In the distance, RuTing could see the light glinting off the dark waters in the river. The doctors had plumbed the ground under this land to feed that city. She couldn’t see the bridge, it was lost in the trees. The water was easily over a mile away. She felt the call, but not strongly. Those who followed her beat at the wall with their hands, feet, and heads. Her platform was not large enough for them to push past Paris and RuTing.
“How do we get down?” Cherry asked.
The answer was simple.
“Your fear of pain confined you to the city,” RuTing said. “I can’t give you courage, but I can teach you that all things are transient.”
RuTing grabbed a fistful of Cherry’s pants and hoisted her over the edge. Cherry flailed her arms in the air as she fell, hitting the rocky ground below. She only bounced once, but her arms, legs, and neck appeared bent at all the wrong angles, and a pool of blood slowly saturated the ground under her.
“I’ll pick my landing,” Paris said. He jumped, still holding Fintan. Surprisingly, he landed on his feet but sunk into the soft earth to his knees.
He selected a good landing spot, so RuTing followed. When she landed, she rolled, dissipating the kinetic energy and using her whole body to increase flotation. By the time she was on her feet, Cherry had risen. Her bones had mended, and her legs straightened. She was angry, but her guilt was gone.
Behind them, the patients dove off the side of the wall. They landed with sickening splats before they rose and ran for the water. The river guards operated all night, but they would never stop so many. By the end of the night, RuTing suspected Bannerburg would lose nearly every gold filter. Would they have enough gold for serum?
Cherry started the destruction, but by letting the patients die, RuTing had changed the power dynamics for the entire city.
She wasn’t sure if what she had done was right. She manifested a torch.
“We need to find the bridge,” Cherry said.
Her anger was gone, but her eyes were still locked on the destruction. The night air was filled with screaming. The patients fell on the rocks or the soft dirt, but they screamed before they hit the ground. They didn’t wait to heal before they pulled themselves upward on broken legs and ankles and shambled into the darkness, looking for the river.
A patient with a twisted back dragged himself through the sand. Between spasms of pain, his mouth was twisted into a rictus of joy. Every tortured foot brought him closer to the water. This was far worse than the Bomb Midges.
“They are free,” Paris said, and without irony added, “The others will make good slaves, and when their time has come, they will enter the waters without fear.”
There was no doubt Paris believed RuTing had dealt the city a death blow. Without copious amounts of serum, the ogres would not be able to defend the city. They used the patients to make gold for serum, and the Flying Midges were few in number compared to the thousands of Convalescent Patients she’d released.
Fintan was oddly silent. Typically, he’d have something to say. His idealism was at a loss for words, or he’d succumbed. In either case, she had to go on.
“The river is this way,” RuTing said. She manifested a rope, giving them each a part before she dissolved the torch. “We’ve learned enough about death tonight. I’ll teach you about stealth.”
