The Aftermath

Teec and Seelastraxx waited as Krush inspected the damage to an outer gatehouse in Sorostade, the outer-most layer of the city's fortifications. They had been at it for hours. Esther had been recovering from her long, kiting fight against a superior opponent. Senkar was with Hestia, looking for injured people. Oneiron was with them. This was once as far as the city reached, but that was decades ago. New districts had risen outside the walls since then. Luck would have it that one of the Greater Hellhulks crashed into the gatehouse instead of a nearby alms house run by the Church. This passage through the walls was now completely blocked, but nobody died from this particular impact. Four hundred and thirteen townsfolk were much less lucky, although they would come to learn that number much later. The Administration had been touring the city, inspecting the damage, talking to the people of Sorostade, healed, and promised help in rebuilding. But there was nothing they could do for the dead. They had seen quite a few of those.

There was sadness and fear in the air. To Teec, this was very similar to the overall “feel” of a community immediately after a tragedy or a terrorist attack. People look to each other for comfort. Others rage at those they think are responsible. Some of the townsfolk did not want to talk to them, or even look at them. The Players understood why. It was written on people’s faces. Why did my family have to die, when they are immortal?

There were dozens of such Player parties volunteering in the city of Sorostade as well as outside it. There were still some Hellhulks to hunt out there. Such was the directive by the Administration - not an order, because Players did not take orders. It was Seelastraxx’s idea and that was the fascinating part, in Teec’s eyes. He recalled her earlier words from that day when they discussed the Theater of Pain raid. I would sacrifice them all to return to my life, she had said, but now they were doing the opposite. He glanced over at her to read her attitude, and surprisingly she looked angry. She did not even try to fix her disheveled appearance at this time. She is so hard to read sometimes, remarked Teec. Is she doing this out of genuine feelings or to appear as ‘one of the people’?

‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked her.

‘We’re rats in a maze,’ she told him, not averting her eyes from the smoldering rubble.

‘Esther’s words.’

‘Mhm. She nailed it back then. Vivaro is right too - this was no coincidence. The attack started exactly when we used the Waygate. Why would that be? It’s because we triggered some condition. It was a trap.’

‘Or a milestone,’ Krush said, hearing their conversation. He brushed the mortar dust off his clothes and gestured for them to keep walking. They were on the return path to Rockbase, and with the collapsed gate they had extra three or four kilometers to walk to the next gatehouse.

‘Why do you mean by that?’ Teec asked.

‘It’s not necessarily a bad thing that this happened,’ he said that part quietly so that none of the Sorostade townsfolk could hear. ‘I mean, terrible for those people but maybe not bad for us. Maybe this is a sign we’re going in the right direction. Just like in a game, right? The deeper you go, the harder it gets.’

‘If that’s true, then the… The System, let’s call it, is our real enemy. It conjured up a meteor shower on our asses, out of nowhere. Can it do it again? What else can it do? Remove all oxygen from the atmosphere? Disable gravity?’ Seelastraxx asked. Can it delete memories?, was a question she also had but did not voice.

‘If it can do that, then there must be a reason why it didn’t,’ Krush pointed out.

‘And that’s why I’m pissed off,’ she hissed. ‘We’re rats in a maze. We are meant to struggle. The System puts obstacles in our path and observes how we handle them. What is it for? Cruel torture? Entertainment?’

They went silent for a moment.

‘And if that’s true, then we should expect more things like that,’ he mused, pointing at the sky. ‘Tepper will be delighted to hear it. Maybe this old codger Vivaro is right again, we should all relocate as far away from those people as possible. We put them in danger, even when we protect them too.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that for a while,’ said Krush. Everyone knew that about him already. He had been talking about farming, infrastructure, transportation more than anyone. ‘But then again, the respawn obelisk is here, so…’

‘Also,’ Teec continued. ‘Trust me when I say we’re causing even more disturbance than we initially thought,’ he stopped and pointed at a chalk writing on a nearby wall. Krush and Seelastraxx read it.

THE SAINTS ARE AMONG US. OPEN YOUR DOORS AND YOUR HEARTS.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ asked Seelastraxx.

‘This is not the first time I see a graffiti like this. It started happening shortly after our little episode with Lucia’s father.’

Seelastraxx could not follow the logic, and looked at him quizzically.

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Which is ironic, because you cause it. Among other people, that is. There will be more of this. Your heroism yesterday will not go unnoticed.’

The change on her face telegraphed her connecting the dots.

‘Oh fuck me,’ she said. ‘The Church will throw an ass-tantrum over this. They probably already are. What was I supposed to do, let everyone die?!’ She spread her arms.

‘It is what it is,’ Teec summed up with a shrug. ‘But we haven’t even asked them to work on our mysterious grimoire yet. We better get to it before it gets even harder.’

‘Maybe not,’ Seelastraxx wondered aloud. ‘Maybe it will now be easier, actually. We exposed Vivaro in front of Tepper as a liar. He fell off his high horse. Also I saved his life… but then again, that might have actually made him more upset. Oops.’