The most common and conveniently enough weakest of the fiends is the lemure. Which appears to be a human sized lump of partially melted wax with the face of a fat androgynous man. They are the form that a soul will first take when it enters into the abyss, hell or grey wastes. They are used for two purposes, shock troops to tire invaders and to grow other demons. Should they be feed and the original soul have to proper depositions, a lemure can evolve into any other fiend. – Common Monsters

Adrian

After putting my mother in her bed to rest I check on where my twin brothers had Abagail take Bryan. It turns out he is in the guest room. Abagail is now caring for his unconscious body, I think he is still in shock but Abagail should be able to handle it. My brothers left her alone in the room, and she did not notice me as I looked in through the doorway.

I exit the house to see my brothers doing most of the work while the trio are bandaging each other. None of them are in good condition, my sliced shoulder is a light injury in comparison. Lysan is the worst off, likely because she is the worst fighter of the group even if she is still better at it than me.

I ignore the stench of the rapidly rotting demon flesh as I heal the trio. It has been not even five minutes and the demon flesh has been turning into a putrid sludge. My brothers must have done something as just after this a strong breeze keeps the scent away. I smile at them and they seem proud in knowing how to do something I don’t.

“Don’t look so pleased, you two have always been better at that than me.”

They don’t respond but turn to hide their respective faces from me as they continue to pile up the bodies not turning into a putrid and likely toxic sludge. I probably shouldn’t let them do this job, but it needs done and I do not know how long it will take for mom to wake up. I’m going to be in enough trouble without the evidence of a massacre sitting in our front yard.

By the time the trio all healed, the corpses or rather the canibalized remains of the squatters are all piled up. I smile at my brothers and tell them that I’ll take care of the rest. They rush off inside, probably to watch TV as I would have done were I still 12. Though they could be different, they never got really into the kid things.

I try healing my shoulder, it didn’t work during the fight but the demon must have been doing something to counter me. It is still resisting, but my muscle and skin begin to slowly regrow. I take a sharp breath as a jolt of pain from what I assume is a nerve reconnecting.

The trio are looking at me, they do not seem to know what to do. I guess the house doesn’t fit the mansion estate that they were probably expecting.

“Just go inside and make yourselves comfortable. If you need something just ask my brothers or wait for me to finish up out here.”

They smile and do so, though I can see that they are having a whispered conversation. I hope they are not too disappointed but they’ll be happy to know that there is more soda should they want some.

The stench of the burning bodies was not as bad as the demon sludge and is likewise taken away in the breeze my brothers created. The bodies burn faster than the ones I burnt in font of Outdoor World. Is it because my magic is getting stronger? Or did this conjured flame just happen to be better at burning?

A pointless question that I do not have the luxury to search for an answer. Too many questions, too much that I need to learn. I am too weak. I need to get stronger. At least my family is safe, injured but safe. I also wonder how dad is doing, but there is definitely nothing I can do about him not being here.

The ash of the corpses spreads into the wind and for a fraction of a second I think of burning the demon sludge before I notice that it is almost gone on its own. Nasty, but also convenient since it does not require me to clean up.

Now I need to get the power back on. The power lines are dead/down across town so I’ll have to set up the generator, that is in the garage. So I walk over to it and find that it is much lighter than I remember. I could have picked it up but it is still bulky and uncomfortable to carry alone.

Once I am at the breaker box, I think that is the right term, for the connection between the house and power line I set down the generator. The switches are unlabeled but one side should lead to the outside power lines and the other a local connection. Part of the reason why dad bought this house was because the original owner was paranoid and built a lot of self-sufficiency stuff around the property.

No solar panels but that is probably more due to how old the house is than their usefulness. I find a place to put the female end of an extension cord on the box. The prongs look odd but that is probably to handle the higher voltage. So, I connect the generator through that and start it up. Dad keeps it full, ‘just in case'. Not that it would be too much of an issue with the gallons of stolen fuel I have stored in void cache.

The generator gives me no trouble and starts right up. And I start flipping switches until the lights in the kitchen turn on and the oven has it's power failure beep. I don’t think this was built correctly, but it works.

It ends up being a larger switch than the others. I try to feel to flow of electricity to make sure that it is not flowing out into the power grid. That would ruin the generator if it tried to light up the whole grid.

It isn’t and so I leave it as it is and go inside turning off many of the extra appliances we are not currently using. I do not think the generator is meant to run that much power long term.

While I was turning off the lights as it is daytime, I hear the water pump turn on and fill the water heater. Hot baths and showers, that will be much better than a bucket of warm water.

I hear the TV turn on, and as I would expect with the amount of damage the infrastructure in town took the cable is out. We have it running along with the power lines and a lot of the poles are down.

I over to the living room to see the trio watching it in amazement as the twins start changing to the local channels. Those are broadcast over the air. A few seconds after I enter the room they found one that has content. It’s a news station, though what is being sent out is not the regular local news.

The president is talking and it looks like he had been for a while already. There are several members of his cabinet and military officers are standing around him.

“ . . . by the end of the week all military installations within our borders should be accounted for and ready to begin securing the larger towns and cities.

Some of the larger cities in areas where civilian militia were formed have already been secured. The military will be working on an order to help as many people as possible. The order will be based on population of areas and the threats that are there.”

The few people that seem to be reporters start to interrupt him with questions. Some of them are clearly still trying to stir up unrest against him.

I smile as he ignores them and their microphones are turned off. I guess in the middle of a global disaster he doesn’t have time to mess with them anymore.

He and the others there look tired while the reporters are clearly sleeping and eating just fine.

“On another note, those in Congress and the Senate have passed a declaration of war against a people that refer to themselves as Althaen.

The other nations and peoples who have appeared in this disaster seem to be willing to engage in diplomacy. Protect the people of the United States of America while we mobilize, and I will see that you are met at the table of diplomacy rather then killed by the military.”

Mr President then steps away from his pulpit and a military officer gets up and interrupts the now near shouting reporters.

“Rather than answering questions, we will be showing some footage from a battle fought in Florida. This is to warn our people of who to stay away from and a warning to other nations of what we will do if you are hostile as these people were.

This broadcast will be resent every hour on the hour through the second week of February.”

The video then cuts to a camp set up similarly to the Althaen camp nearby. It is a different city, after all I am not in Florida.

The camera zooms in on several Althaen soldiers guarding their walls and then pans over to some nobles. I doubt that most can recognize the difference without having been in one of those camps.

The camp is then subjected to precision bombing by what I assume are jet bombers and fighters. I don’t know enough to recognize the models.

After what I can only assume was a Magister took down a plane with some lightning magic a cruise missile is launched at his location. The bombing runs continue until it is clear that there is not another Magister and then a number of soldiers move in to clean up the leftover forces.

The video ends with some soldiers rescuing civilians from the slave conditions of the camp.

I smile as the TV turns to a blank blue screen. The military is getting stuff done and protecting us. I wonder if the nearby base is safe? From the Althaen they shouldn’t have much trouble, but a pack of demons would be a problem, and there was one neaby recently. Our military has no supernatural anything as far as I know.

I turn to my brothers who just smile and ask if I’m going to cook food. I would have thought that they would handle this poorer but then again all of us use magic so we already knew stuff like all this could exist. I nod, and begin to check on what spoiled in the fridge and freezer.