Disarray, that’s what happens. Todd runs over to his bags, picks them up, looks over to his friends. Joe and Candra are standing transfixed. Sue Ann is packing her bedroll in a panic. Randall has picked up his sword and takes a stance. Unsure, Todd lowers his bags back down again.

  “What do we do?” Candra asks.

  “We should try that other window,” Sue Ann points. She indicates the far side of the wall.

  Joe breaks out of his distracted stare. “’Kay. Gather all your stuff,” he says.

  Todd throws the straps of his bags over his shoulder and they settle against his hips. He gathers up his things from off his bedroll and tosses them into his [greed satchel]. But by the time he does, the centipedes are already streaming through the window and down into the bowl of the upper floors. The others are only just finishing packing as well.

  The five of them reach the same conclusion: there isn’t time to get up and through the opening.

  “Shit.”

  “Shit.”

  “Form up.”

  “Are we fighting? We’re fighting? Okay.”

  “You can do this. You can do this. No big deal.”

  Todd flips the weapon in his hand to hold it in a reverse grip. Its rough surface scrapes against the skin of his fingers.

  The centipedes clatter over fallen stones as they get closer. A faint red glow emits from their flanks, near the joints of their legs. Two bugs move ahead of the mass, their short antennae wobbling and their modified venomous front legs raised and grasping. Joe skips ahead a few steps and chops down with his [mercury rod] extended [armor breaker]. He punches through the shell of its head, and its body curls up twisted in death.

  Being on the front side of the formation Todd darts forward, stepping around errant bricks. He pulls his foot back from nasty pincers, then ducks down and stabs the centipede through its neck. Pinned there, it reaches for him feebly until he puts his foot on its head to free his ixwa.

  The five of the cultivators spread out in a line to intercept the bugs and avoid being surrounded. Sue Ann reluctantly takes her place at their side. She takes a stance from training, realizes she’s too high and abandons her form. Randall limps into place and twirls his cutlass once.

  They fight a retreating battle, receding with every centipede they kill. Todd and Joe call out instructions as they go. Their new dexterity is pushed to its limit, anticipating the quick motion of their opponents and striking fatal blows. Joe kills and kills, while Todd struggles to hold his own. Forced to lower himself to make each individual stab, Todd’s fight is inefficient. It brings him far too close to the natural armaments of the centipedes, and he is at continuous risk of tripping, his back foot always questing for safe footing. Candra struggles too, her scepter not quite long enough to reach without squatting.

  Interestingly, Randall has an easier time of it. His curved blade heavily chops through bugs with each swing. He falls back slowly, and arthropods are forced to crawl over their fellows to get to him, making it easier for him to reach them. Soon though, he is at risk of being surrounded.

  “Back up, Randall!” Todd shouts.

  The large young man freezes, then hauls himself backwards to rejoin the line.

  Todd’s heart beats furiously. His eyes open wide as they desperately track the piercing fore-parts of oncoming beasts. Soon, he lifts up his leg to kick a centipede directly in its eye. It turns out to be a terrible mistake as sharp forcipules puncture holes in his boot and scratch the skin of his foot underneath. Todd rips his foot away and kills the creature. Scalding hot incisions are cut into his foot, and the venom slowly filters into the veins of his leg.

  “God dang it!”

  Endurance and vitality war against the hostile substance as it tries to spread. His knee tries to buckle as it starts to seize up. His toes knot into fists.

  He keeps fighting, stiff leg or no.

  The centipedes are starting to thin out, and Todd forces himself to continue. Thrust by thrust, he destroys his portion of the swarm. Occasionally, his blows glance off chitin when he takes a bad angle, and he scrambles to correct his vector.

  In his hyper focus he barely hears Sue Ann scream. He can only protect himself and hope that she’s alright. On his right, Candra lightens up pressure in order to support her own right side. Todd is forced to pick up the slack.

  He nixes a blow to avoid a pinch, leans back, and then brings his short-spear down hard. He stumbles back further and resets himself.

  The confrontation lasts for minutes. Bodies pile up. Venom burns. But Joe clears his helping of bugs first, and then starts sweeping down the line from behind. Todd sighs with relief, then drags his protesting legs along as he helps Joe finish off the stragglers.

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  Sue Ann lays behind the rest of them. Her leg is entirely rigid, and she wears a mask of pain. She drags herself backwards by her elbows until the fight is over. Candra offers her a hand and she lifts up like a plank of wood, barely able to stand. Randall pants with exhaustion, bright red in the face. He looks down to where he holds his sword reverently.

  “Come here, let’s get you a healing pill,” Candra says softly to Sue Anne. The two of them pull aside and administer a [skin mending pill]. The weeping holes in Sue Anne’s leg start to close. Clear white fluid oozes out with the blood.

  Todd shakes his bitten leg and grimaces. “Now that we know we aren’t safe here, we should start thinking of getting out of this town,” he says.

  “We don’t know if we’ll be any safer,” Joe argues.

  “At the least, we can find water,” Todd points out.

  “It’s dangerous to move,” Candra complains.

  “It’s dangerous to do anything here,” Todd spits out. “Nothing’s going to make this easier.”

  “We can handle crawlers,” Randall asserts.

  “Can we?” Todd demands. “Because two of us got bitten.”

  “We’ll gain levels,” Randall boasts. “It’ll get easier.”

  Todd throws his hands in the air. “We’ll wear out first.”

  “We’ll put it to a vote,” Joe asserts. “Who wants to leave now?”

  Todd raises his hand, and Sue Ann raises hers soon after.

  “He’s right. We need water,” she says.

  “And I don’t mean we have to leave right away,” Todd says, “let’s take a minute to recover first.”

  Candra raises her hand. “Fuck it. Maybe we can find someplace we can actually sleep without getting jumped.”

  Randall raises his hand. “If everyone wants to go, we can go.”

  Joe reluctantly raises his hand. “Fine. But we rest up before we go. Do we want to take the window out?”

  Todd shakes his head. “I would prefer not to lose my [mercury rod] if we can help it. Can we still blast our way out of the lower floor?”

  Randall nods. “I can do one.”

  Candra sighs. “I don’t need mine, can’t we just take the easy way?”

  “Vote?” Joe says.

  Randall, Todd and Joe raise their hands.

  “I’d rather not have those rats come up from behind us,” Joe explains.

  Candra considers it and raises her hand. “Okay, you’re right.”

  “So how’re we going to do this?”

  A sealed jar sits in Todd’s harvesting satchel, half filled with eight badly damaged, leaking venom glands. He has given up on collecting more. A second jar contains a layer of luminescent flakes scraped off of the centipedes’ inner joints.

  Todd cultivates, shifting energy inside his body and sending it out into his afflicted limb. Sue Ann sits across from him, breathing shallowly. She struggles to cycle as the toxins flood deeper into her organs. Her kidneys strain as they break down the invasive chemicals.

  Joe is high above them. He straddles the broken top of the wall and looks out over the ruins in every direction.

  “Hoo boy. That’s a long way down. Okay, I don’t see any rivers or lakes but I can see some woods over that way.”

  Candra cups her hands around her mouth. “Anything else?”

  “Well, there’s something in the air over there,” he points in a different direction, “it looks like a huge bat or something. A lot of critters moving around along the streets. And… there’s a building that’s glowing. It’s pretty bright.”

  “Think there could be someone inside?”

  Joe crawls down the wall. He reaches for the window first, then weaves back inside the building and down an inner mortise before dropping down. “Can’t tell from here. It’s not quite in the same direction as the forest though.”

  Todd settles the flow inside himself and resurfaces. “It could be that’s where the crystals are. We should go there first.”

  “Drips, as far as we can tell, that quest is optional. Should we really risk searching for them?”

  “The reward is a fresh air token. To me, that means we’re not going to have fresh air when we get back. I think we shouldn’t give up.”

  Regardless of his reasoning, Todd is quickly outvoted. The others simply don’t want to take the risk of chasing down an uncertain lead. It is especially pointed out that the glow could mean danger just as easily as it could mean opportunity.

  Soon the time comes to move. The five pack up and stack their bags around the edge of the hole below. Randall takes his place there. His knees bend and his hands fold back behind him in a kamehameha pose. Rats squeal with renewed vigor as fresh meat approaches them.

  “Wait until you’ll catch as many as possible,” Joe instructs.

  He raises a hand and waits. Moments later the hand cuts down. Randall flings his hands pointed at a downward angle.

  He lets out a “Hah!”

  The ball of fire has barely cleared when Joe and Candra leap down onto the pile of charred rodents. They start swinging wildly as soon as they find their feet. There is only a dim column of light to fight in, and forms roil in the darkness just past it. Todd moves slower, lowering himself with one arm until there’s only a short distance to fall before he drops. He tries to land on his good leg and fails. For a moment, he nearly falls over, but then he shifts his ixwa into his good hand and takes a nearby rat in the throat. Randall lowers himself in the same way, but he cries out when he lands. He barely raises his cutlass in time to start chopping at the rat which lunges at him.

  Todd’s bad leg moves like a peg leg, and he hobbles as he plunges his leaf-shaped blade point into rat after rat. The tough skin gives way as he punctures them, and he sprays a judicious [water spear] to give himself more space. Saving the rest of his cosmic energy to power his own strength, he grapples a squirming rat under his armpit while he stabs it repeatedly in its side. He swings around to hold the creature in the way of its fellows until the kill energy enters him and he drops the corpse. Every so often a burnt rat tries to crawl out from the central pile, and he turns around to finish it off. He swings his bad leg like a dead pendulum and slams a rat in the chin. He stifles a scream.

  The four of them fight like this for two full minutes. Candra once again hammers through the beasts like cattle in a slaughterhouse. Joe shatters bone with each strike. Randall takes longer, his cutting edge less effective against the rats. He uses his cutlass more like a club. He kills only a few rats, and those by a half dozen cuts each.

  Finally, the way is cleared. Todd and Candra deliver the coup de grace on any still moving rats. They wait for more to arrive, but seeing a reprieve they motion to Sue Ann. She passes bags down until the others are loaded up, then lowers herself down. Joe catches her and sets her down upright.

  “Grabbing our [mercury rod]s,” Todd announces. He removes the glowing jar from his satchel, and fumbles in the dark while the others urge him to hurry.

  Todd finds the sealed pipe and a rat chewing at the bars from underneath. He punches his weapon through its eye, and it falls down into the black. Any rats underneath it are now blocked.

  “Found them!” He channels his cosmic energy and retrieves the two tools.

  “Let’s get out of here then,” Joe bids them.