Back on the ground, we reunited with Silva and Alex, both of whom had opted to remain on the ground. Silva for purely practical reasons, a dog wasn’t that good at climbing ladders, especially not steep ones, while Alex had taken up an observing position, possibly to make sure no trouble found us. From what I could tell from the racoon’s behaviour, I was convinced that their primary skill was stealth, with very little offensive potential. It looked like they didn’t have access to the corrosive combination of Dark, Blood and Death-Magic I had seen the other racoons use. Maybe they’d learn in the future, but for now, they could serve as a scout, observer and general nuisance. Not necessarily the greatest catch but it was Lia’s first conversion, so maybe allowances had to be made. Or maybe we could find some other way to make an incredibly stealthy trash panda useful, traps, poison, or something along those lines. There had to be something they could do, in order to make their existence worth our while.

Trying to access the capsule, or rather the pile of rubble it had to be buried within, from inside the building didn’t get us far either. Sure, we could reach the pile but it was composed of large chunks of concrete, steel and other junk all jumbled together, making it impossible to find anything. To make matters worse, the chaotic energies during the change seemed to have fused parts of the rubble together, creating some rather weird shapes that reminded me of modern art, only that the artist was drunk. So, modern art at its finest.

I tried to use my Earth Magic to get a better idea of what we were looking at but that didn’t get me far either, I wasn’t skilled enough, nor was my affinity to the element high enough to make a difference. I could pull minor miracles from nowhere when it came to Ice Magic, likely Darkness as well, but for the rest of my magic, I had to work for it.

Ultimately, I gave up. There was simply nothing we could realistically accomplish here, not with our current abilities. I had even tried asking Alex to scurry into the rubble in an attempt to get to the capsule, not that their success would help me, but the rubble was too tightly packed. So, we walked away, knowing that I had failed. Luckily, the trip hadn’t cost us anything. Maybe I would be able to get Cassie’s old address, allowing us to check there. Hopefully, her home, and the capsule within, were still there.

On our way through town, I noticed something weird in one part of town. The Undead, previously moving in isolated groups, each led by an individual Shattered, weren’t isolating any longer. They seemed to congregate, maybe even coordinate on a level we hadn’t seen before. To make matters worse, I noticed that one of the Undead had a weird, green-grey glow coming from its eyes, more akin to the passive glow of a watch’s numerals than the flickering, burning glow of the eyes of a Shattered.

I had no idea what it might mean, but the irregularity was enough to make the four of us investigate. Our first experiments were to test how the Undead reacted to attacks. We started, as always, with simple, flying Icicles. No need to do anything fancy, no need to take any risks, just a simple frozen javelin that ripped into one of them. Just as always, my spell was enough to send the Undead to the ground, their chest obliterated by the impact. My Ice Magic wasn’t the most effective against them, not unless I tried to freeze them, but there was always the old adage about overkill.

Curiously, the swarm didn’t react in quite the same way as they had before. They started to move but slowly, instead of simply blundering into the direction the attack came from, they started to form up in something akin to ranks, moving as a cohesive unit instead of a mob of individuals.

The coordination wasn’t great but it was enough to make me wonder just how capable they’d be if they ever managed to reach us. I doubted they’d manage to actually work together, not in the way that they used the openings made by another’s attack, but just their number was enough to make me worry a little.

Fighting a hundred enemies at the same time was far harder than fighting a hundred enemies, one at a time. I had a feeling that they were getting closer to the state of fighting at the same time.

Only, my paranoia flared when I realised that it wasn’t just that one group coming for us. There were more groups, not just the one I had attacked, all slowly moving in an attempt to encircle us. That was far beyond anything the Undead had demonstrated in a tactical capacity, it was outright strategic and quite dangerous. The biggest weakness of the undead was their atrocious speed, but if their prey was surrounded and trapped, the lacking speed was almost irrelevant. If they simply tightened the noose, those trapped within would eventually get strangled.

Not a pleasant prospect.

Instead of trying to fight, I quickly conjured up some mist, simply because having the concealment was better than not having it, and pulled the others in an attempt to escape.

Luckily, the Undead preferred large, open spaces, where they could move as a mob instead of squeezing through the narrow, partially blocked alleys between buildings. Those were even more perilous than they had been before the change thanks to a multitude of broken objects from the surrounding buildings, everything from potted plants to air conditioning units, balconies and rubble had crashed down at some point. Maybe during the change itself, when the fundamental properties of many things changed, or during one of the earthquakes that happened since then. Whatever the cause, it made moving through the alleys a test of agility, greatly lessening the speed of anyone not capable enough.

Luckily for us, the least capable of us was Silva and thanks to her four-paw-drive, she could get across most obstacles, as long as they weren’t too large. Alex, on the other hand, had it trivially easy, not only were they small enough to ride on Lia’s shoulder if they so desired, and Lia allowed it, but their diminutive size also meant that they needed a far lower agility score to provide the same feats. I had yet to figure out how the relationship between attributes and size worked, but I was confident that a tiny bug with a theoretical strength of ten was weaker, in absolute terms than a human with a strength of ten. How the comparison worked in relative terms, I wasn’t quite sure but wanted to figure it out at some point. Someday.

We were halfway through the alleyway that would hopefully bring us out of the encirclement the Undead were trying to pull together when I noticed something. It wasn’t quite audible, but it felt like it should be. Almost like one of those high-pitched dog-training whistles that people generally can’t hear only that it wasn’t quite that. It was a high-pitched chittering, yes, but it wasn’t the pitch that was the problem but something else.

I felt myself slow down, trying to grasp what was going on there, when a second set of those pitches came from another direction, my head swivelling around to locate the sources. It felt as if the not-noise was coming from all around us.

Suddenly, my gaze fell on Alex and I noticed that their ears were similarly twitching, their head moving around just like mine had seconds before. Was Alex trying to locate the same not-noise or was it a coincidence?

Shaking my head, I pushed on, ignoring the strange sensation and focusing on the Undead I could still hear all around us, still trying to close the net.

Another chitter came to my ears and this time, I managed to catch the direction it came from, above us and from the right. Looking around, I saw a small alley heading in that direction and as we moved past it, I tried to find the source.

Up there, hiding on another balcony, was another racoon, or something of that size and built, it was too far away to Observe, making it difficult to tell the details. But it had the right shape and size, though there was one thing that stood out.

Just like some of the Undead we had been running from, the eyes of that racoon were alight wit the same, green-grey glow. The similarity sent shivers down my spine, reminding me of the corruption Alex had been under when we found them. It might have been a coincidence but somehow, I seriously doubted that.

What the exact connection was, I couldn’t tell. But my gut told me it was important, incredibly so. And yet, the only thing we could do in that moment, was to keep running, or we would get encircled, swarmed and, most likely, killed.