The Basement of DIA Building, Joint Forces Base Bolling,

Washington District of Columbia

Drew and his team of three were on guard duty. The noncombatants were in a flurry of movement; it was amazing how much they could settle in so short a period of time. They had only been at the entrance of the DIA building for a few hours, before that they had been prisoners of trolls. Drew wasn't sure how they had managed to acquire so much junk since then. Everyone seemed to be carrying something, mostly some form of improvised weapon: table and chair legs, large rocks, and iron pipes were the most common.

Those that didn't carry something were worse, they stared off into space and didn't do anything unless guided to do so by someone else. They were called the Numb, people who had given up. The major and captain who had assumed command of the survivors after being rescued had organized them efficiently. It only took fifteen minutes to round everyone up and send them down the tunnel towards the outside world. Drew was the rearguard, charged with holding back the harrying wereghouls behind them while the main group retreated. There had been no sight of the beasts yet, but their howls echoed through the tunnels.

Drew watched the forward guard leave. Led by Daryl, their scout--a thin black man with haunted eyes whose wife had been among those killed by the trolls. Daryl disappeared before he entered the tunnel, his invisibility xatherite removing him from sight. Next down the tunnel were Robbi and Krista, the former a cop who wielded a deadly blood red sword and the latter an army sergeant whose xatherite left lines of fire in the trail of the her bullets. Sarah, the group's healer, followed behind several other unfamiliar figures shortly after Krista, and she turned to make eye contact with Drew before leaving, giving him a silent nod of encouragement.

Turning his attention to his three team members, he gave them an encouraging smile. They were all young, early 20's at most. Dak was their tank: he had a xatherite that turned him into rock. The problem with that was he wasn't nearly strong enough to move all that rock, and it tired him out a lot. Drew was hoping that as the crystal improved in grade it would also come with some strength augmentation.

Glenn was another ranged attacker like Drew, capable of launching daggers at his opponents as well as blocking ranged attacks directed at him. The third member of the team was a kid named Adam who had the ability to move earth with his mind and really didn't belong with the combatants in Drew's group. Having been assigned to help him move the dirt to claim the node, Adam was still lumped with Drew for the emergency evacuation.

Dak seemed relatively calm, but the other two were visibly nervous. "So, Dak, this your first duty station?" Dak was a private in the Army.

"Yes, Sir. Got out of boot camp at Benning six months ago." Dak responded.

"What about you Glenn?"

"Same, although I've only been here for two months." Glenn said.

"Good times, where you all from?"

"I'm from Minnesota, St. Cloud area northwest of Minneapolis." Dak announced.

"I'm from Utah." Glenn added after Dak.

"Really? I'm from Idaho. What part of Utah you from?" Drew asked.

"Orem? It's down in the center."

"Oh yeah, that's where BYU is, right?"

"Close we’re the next city over."

"Ahh, right." Drew said looking at Adam.

"I'm from Alexandria, Louisiana." Adam seemed reluctant to talk about his home.

"Ahh fun times, what brought you up here?"

"I work...well, worked for a consulting company."

"Ahh, you were a lobbyist? My roommate does that, well, did that." The realization that there was a good chance that everyone they knew in the area was dead sort of ruined the levity that Drew had been trying to cultivate with the group, and they sat in awkward silence for the minutes it took for the rest of the group to file out. Drew mentally castigated himself, he had always been a little awkward around people.

The constant howling from the wereghouls had them all on edge, and Drew would have preferred the semi-intelligent undead would finally make their attack. Especially as the minutes dragged on in uncomfortable silence.

Katie would know what to say to make this less awkward, he wished she were here. The beautiful girl was much better at these sort of things than he was. But sadly Katie was above ground with most of the first group of captives they had found. They had needed people to stay behind and keep everything in order, and Katie had been the obvious choice. Her abilities meant that she could build a shelter for the people there, and her experience with running control over coast guard operations made her an ideal leader.

Pulling up his mana interface, he checked Katie's status again. A new benefit of his promotion after taking over the node under the DIA building, Drew's interface had upgraded and now allowed him to see overall health and mana fatigue of the five individuals the system recognized as part of his squad: Daryl, Sarah, Robbi, JP, and Katie. JP was with Katie, and as the other major source of firepower, he was in charge of the defenses of the little bunker Katie had created. Both of them had clearly been fighting, their mana fatigue was pretty high, but their health status was still good.

"Alright, that's the last of them, you three in front, I'll take the rear." Drew said at last, motioning his team forward as the last of the captives filed out of the room ahead of them. He turned to look back at the tunnels as he walked backwards towards the exit. The tunnel to the surface was long; it had taken them twenty minutes to walk down it. As he backed up, a single snout poked its way out of the tunnel he had been standing near a few minutes before. He considered launching a lightning bolt at it, but knew it could easily dodge the blast.

It was hard to say there weren’t a lot of physical variation in the beasts, but this looked like the wereghast he had seen in the pit. The sense that the creature was testing him, probing for weaknesses, unnerved Drew more than anything else that had happened in the last few days. The next second the snout withdrew into the tunnel and he hurried his pace to catch up with Dak, having lagged behind his new team.

Several of the captives ahead held torches, but the press of bodies made it so you just saw halos of light at the top of the tunnel. Light was an issue; Drew's original group of five had come down with a half dozen glow rocks each, but that didn't spread far with more than 200 people to illuminate. Drew kept glancing backwards towards the receding light of the room they had rested in, but no sign of the were-creatures appeared before he lost sight of the room and its light source.

Drew wasn't sure what would happen when they got to the surface. His only experiences with the night time since the advent was hiding from the nocturnal creatures turned nightmarish monsters in a house. Even then, the thin glass didn't seem strong enough to keep them out. The idea of trying to protect 228 people with a dozen combatants from the terrors of the night had him feeling a lot more nervous. Just as he was considering this, the people in front of him stopped moving.

A message was passed down the line, asking for him to come forward as soon as Trista made her way back to the rear to take up his position. Glad that whoever was calling the shots up there wasn't willing to leave their flank unguarded, he settled in to wait again. At least he had plenty of experience doing that in the military. Hurry up and wait, as they say.

Trista arrived a few minutes later, two of the kids in tow. The tunnel was wide enough for a couple people to walk side by side. But being dug by some unknown troll’s xatherite that made a perfect oval, the sides were too slippery to move down without difficulty.

"What's going on?" Drew asked as Trista's passed the last civilian.

"Bugs, lots of them. Daryl says they seem more agitated than normal. We need area effect stuff to take them out."

Responding first with a sigh, "Alright, careful, the wereghouls are watching us. Wish I could leave a trail of lights behind us, but we don't have enough as it is..." Drew trailed off and then shrugged. There weren't enough lights.

One of Trista's people began conjuring a wall of ice behind them. It was Trista's turn to shrug. "Aaron here should be able to block most of the path. We put enough ice between us and them and they shouldn't be a problem. I'll join you up there when it looks sealed."

Drew eyed the ice warily, "Alright. My team staying here or coming with me?"

"Ensign says they're staying here."

"Right, you three behave yourselves for the sergeant." Drew said, eyeing Dak particularly. The kid gave him a wink and a salute in response. Beginning the trek up the tunnel, he was forced to walk along the rounded sides for most of the trip. Unfortunately going from the back to the front meant he would have to cross paths with captain Snyder, the man who had assumed command of their little group after being rescued, and major Hoffecker. The acting XO was talking to the people around her. From the snatches of conversation he heard it sounded like she was getting an accounting of what xatherite all the survivors had. At least she was doing something useful; the captain just glared at Drew as he passed.

When he got to the front he was a little disturbed by what he saw. Robbi's armor was more tattered than it had been before, with several new, blood stained gashes in the leather. The representation of his offensive xatherite, his blood blade was held in his hand, its ruby appearance glowing faintly in the darkness. Sarah stood behind him, the closed wounds healed up thanks to her xatherite. A pile of massive insect corpses blocked off the entrance, although it sounded like there was a feeding frenzy on the other side. Robbi was eyeing a location where a hole in the bodies allowed him to see several eight foot long centipedes fighting over another bug's body.

"Well, shit." Drew said, and holding his hand out cast cone of binding, he was interested to see what would happen. He had just acquired the linked skill when he had finally attuned his gravitas xatherite during the last fight with the trolls.

Immediately the corpses in front of them compressed, going from five to six feet, to half that. The two centipedes also flattened, no longer able to move against the gravity pulling against them. "Dang." The newly exposed wall allowed him to see a few dozen more insects down the tunnel all fighting among themselves. Shooting off shocking acid arrow at the two immobile centipedes, the blobs of acid ate through the exoskeletons and into the flesh underneath. They continued to twitch, but Drew was pretty sure that was just the normal insect twitching after death thing.

More insects came towards them, two brown cockroaches the size of bears barreled towards the now exposed group, only to be stopped dead by the field of gravity. They face planted into the earth, but their momentum kept their back halves moving forward and they flipped up and then landed on their backs with a crash. Drew launched grav ball at them, eager to see the effects of his new spells. Instantly all the matter, cockroaches included, in a three meter wide area compressed into a 1 foot sphere, the shells on the cockroaches cracking and sending ichor flying only to be pulled back in by the forces of the ball.

As quick as the compression happened, the spell's effect ended, the ball of insect matter exploding outward as it was no longer held together. Shards of chitin, blue ichor and flesh rapidly filling the tunnel. Robbi actually stepped in front of Drew, his shielding xatherite protecting them both from the mess. Everyone else was far enough down the corridor that they were unaffected.

There was silence in the tunnel as everything stopped, and looked at the newly reorganized matter, the humans then turned to look at Drew. Awe written on their faces.

"Shall we move on? Katie is waiting for us, and it's not a good idea to keep a girl waiting." Drew said, as he stepped over the hedge of corpses and began walking out of the tunnel.

Behind him, Gary turned to Sarah, “I don’t think he realizes the gravity of the situation."