《Method Of Loci》Chapter 5 - Damsel in distress
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There was no time to argue with his childish sister who would literally endanger herself and her family for some petty revenge. The thralls further away started picking up speed towards them, he gave her a hard look and she had the nerve to look sorry for what she just did. Eliot pushed passed her walking back towards their parents, he would have words for her later.
“Katherine, know there will be consequences for what you just did.” Came Vivian's ice cold voice. Kat grimaced at that, our mother liked to get creative with her punishments; and she knew that better than anyone.
Without any further words they started running again to the direction of the summer house. Which was a good twenty miles away, Eliot could hear gunshots and screams in the distance, but he wasn't about to turn back to see who made them. Running became monotonous, his heart was beating hard in his chest and his legs began to burn. They were passing building and noticed people in their houses looking at them, shutting their blinds when he made eye contact.
‘What a bunch of arseholes.’ Eliot thought as they neared another small horde of thralls surrounding a car. They were bashing their bony hands against the windows creating small, but growing cracks; screaming at the top of there lungs in frustration with each failed attempt.
They were about to find a different route, before the thralls noticed them; but then Eliot made eye contact with one of the passengers of the car. It was a middle aged women and she looked like she was about to have a panic attack.
Eliot stopped and took a deep breath before pulling out his plasma pistol and shooting one of the thralls in the back of the head, its cranium was vaporized in an instant. The thralls instantly turned toward their group.
“What are you doing, we were home free!” Kat screamed as her blade slid out of her gauntlet.
“There are people in that car, they would die if we left them alone!” Eliot retorted, he took aim again and shot one the creatures in its neck nearly decapitating it. Honestly Eliot didn't know why he just helped the trapped lady, he knew trying to be a hero in real life only gets you killed; but when he looked into her eyes he felt he didn't have a choice.
James looked at the lady trapped in the car and then at his son and nodded “He's right, we can't leave them to die. Not like this.”
James aimed his plasma rifle and started picking at the ones running towards them. Vivian took her staff and placed it on the floor, the wooden staff started to twist and turn, morphing into the wooden humanoid from the previous battle. The wooden creature stood in front of his mother like a statue daring any thrall to come in its range.
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Kat lost all her previous nervousness from the recent battle and got up and personal with the thralls, slashing and impaling them with her blade, splashing black blood all over her forearms.
After Eliot unloaded all twenty shots, his plasma pistol ran out of juice and would need to recharge, he pulled out his black dagger and joined his sister in the fray with Anubis next to him. To say he was nervous was an understatement, he felt fine shooting them from afar, but having to be arms length from the ugly creatures changed everything.
He dodged the slow clumsy thrall and flanked it from behind imbedding his blade into its head, he quickly yanked it out and immediately turned around to shove it in another creature's eye killing it instantly. He was breathing even harder now, and he felt like he was going to faint at any minute, luckily his dad shot the last one that was still trying to bash its way into the car, ignoring all the commotion around it. ‘Gotta say, you gotta admire its dedication.’
He looked for Anubis and noticed he was gnawing on one of the legs of the dead thralls, that can't be healthy; but who's he to judge someone else's eating habits.
Thrall x17
340 pts
Eliot quickly glanced at his kill count from both battles, he realized he missed a lot of those initial shots with the plasma pistol and he didn't receive any kills from Anubis. He waved away the particles and walked up to the car and knocked on the window, the lady just stared at him as if he was her lord and savior, and in a way he was. He also noticed that someone was passed out in the backseat of the car.
“You can come out, you should be alright now.” Eliot said as gently as he could, but it's hard to seem like a gentlemen, covered in blood and surrounded by dead bodies.
She slowly came out of the car and suddenly ran up to Eliot giving him a hug, saying thank you over and over again. Eliot looked back at his family awkwardly and noticed his dad had brought his gun up as soon as the lady made a move. After calming her down, we heard the car door open and a boy around the age eighteen the same age as Eliot, stepped out, he had short black hair with light brown eyes. He looked confused as he noticed multiple people looking at him.
Then he noticed the bodies and quickly began throwing up. Eliot could sympathize with him, it smelled horrible, and the thrall weren't the prettiest of monsters. Eliot was still running on adrenaline but he's sure when he has time to himself, he's going to feel sick to his stomach.
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“Thank you again for saving us, I really thought it was the end there. Im Natalie and this is my nephew Thomas.” Said the middle aged women now know as Natalie.
We all introduced ourselves, and began walking together at a slow pace, giving everyone a chance to catch their breath. It turns out Natalie was heading in the same direction as them when her car shut down, due to the spires emerging leaving her stranded in the middle of thralls.
She had also brought a pretty standard gun from the system, but couldn't decide on anything else before she left. Thomas didn't say much, he just had this look of concentration like he was in deep thought. (Constipated?) It started getting cold after a couple of minutes, we started seeing our breaths, that's not normal this time of year.
Eliot looked over to Thomas and noticed a sword of pure ice slowly being formed in his hand chilling everyone to the bone. Thomas didn't look bothered by the dropping temperature or the ice in his hands, he just looked exhausted after he was finished. (Damn how does everyone have cooler abilities then me, how many points did they start with?)
Vivian looked up at the sky and noticed the light dimming “It's getting late, we'll never make it out of the city tonight. We should find some sort of shelter.”
Everyone agreed, not only were they physically tired they also were emotionally exhausted, to much has happened in the few hours since they received there satelite. No one has had the time to digest just how much their lives have changed.
****
They found a small department store, which looked recently abandoned. They locked up the doors and tried to make themselves as comfortable as then can, luckily there was food so that they could satisfy their hunger.
Eliot was eating a nutritional bar, when his sister came up to him, she looked like she was having a hard time making her way over to his direction.
“Hey El, look i'm sorry about what happened earlier.” Kat apologized while looking at everything except him.
“You're sorry for almost getting us killed because you wanted some payback? You can go eat shit Kat.”
Her face turned to a deep red, in anger but she controlled it or atleast tried to, Eliot could hear the anger in her voice. “That's not how it was supposed to happen, it was just a joke. I would have helped if they needed it.”
“Do you hear yourself right now, we're in the fucking apocalypse if you haven't already realized. We fucking killed today and people have died, and you're still thinking about jokes!” Eliot was literally shaking by now, everything suddenly became so real.
“...You started it.” Kat all but whispered knowing she was acting childish, but Eliot was right and she fucked up big time.
“I started it? I put nair in your shampoo, you lost a bit of hair. You pretend to be scared, forcing us to pull your slack so you can spray thrall blood on me. Kat grow the fuck up.” Eliot sneered as he got up and walked away with Anubis.
Kat just stood there, thinking about how she always does this. She always takes it a step too far.
Eliot sat down further in the store with anubis resting next to him. He tried to calm down but he kept thinking about how he killed today, granted the creatures needed to die, but he did it without hesitation. When he embedded his dagger into the thralls skull he felt a sense of satisfaction. He forced himself to breathe and stop shaking, he closed his eyes thinking about his mind world.
It took some time to calm his breathing down, but when he did, he felt the cold numbness in his brain from when he purchased the Method of Loci ability start to spread from the back of his head to the front. He opened his eyes and knew he wasn't in England anymore.
Eliot found himself in the middle of a forest surrounded by what he used to think trees looked liked, before he obtained his eyesight. They were gargantuan behemoths of how trees actually looked; the bark also looked nothing like its realities cousins. It looked a lot more like alligator skin, that pulsed with an abundance of colors in the cracks of the bark.
The leaves were also an assortment of different colors, each tree had a different season of colors in the canopy, making the trees have an exotic beauty to them. ‘At Least I got the grass right’ Eliot thought as he looked at the green grass underneath his feet.
This place was beautiful, it looked more real in a fantasy sort of way than he could have ever hoped to create in his head. He looked behind him and saw that the satellite had indeed come with him along with everything he was wearing and carrying in the real world, including his bag that held the book inside of it.
‘So if I understood this ability correctly, I should have three times the amount of time in here compared to the outside. Huh, I wonder what I should do.’ Eliot thought with a small smile.
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