Chapter 54 - Gone to the Birds

  Alex was awake with the first rays of dawn. He stretched, rolled over, then carefully loosened the blankets around himself, so as not to disturb the other people sleeping in the tent. Johnson still lay on the tent's floor, mouth open, with a trickle of drool dribbling down the side of his cheek. Alex smirked at that. People always looked so damned foolish while they were sleeping.

  Not Marion, though. She was also still resting, but to his eyes her slumber looked more angelic than ridiculous. Alex shook his head to clear it. Finding someone as cool and tough as Marion was an unexpected delight, but it was something he'd have to explore in more detail after the current crisis was over.

  Alex snatched his shoes up from the floor and slipped out of the tent as silently as he could. Outside, the first rays of daylight were just beginning to warm the eastern horizon. They cast more than enough light to see by, so he made his way toward the front line, where the defenders of humanity had pulled shifts all night long to keep everyone else safe. He was no exception. Alex had volunteered to join the guard rotation, and took a two-hour watch shift overnight.

  He'd use that time wisely, too. The deeper and stronger his connections were to these people, the more they would listen to him when the shit hit the fan. That was in everyone's best interest, so Alex spent those two hours building a stronger rapport with the police holding the line.

  Now, he made his way back to the line to do a little more of the same. In his pocket, Alex had a small collection of tier one and tier two crystals, each one carefully selected. They weren't stones that would do him any good. Alex was maintaining a tight focus on becoming the strongest and most powerful spellcaster he could. But that left a lot of other stones, things like Strength and Stamina, that he didn't need anywhere nearly as much.

  During the fighting the day before, Alex had gone to a lot of trouble to collect as many crystals as he could. In some cases, he'd gone a little overboard. That one time where a giant crab almost chopped him in half because he was chasing after a tier one stone still haunted him, but now all that work was paying dividends.

  He walked up to the first guard post where a young man whose name tag read Mendoza hid behind a concrete barrier. "How's it going this morning?"

  "Quiet, so far, anyway. I hope it stays that way, but I've got a bad feeling about the rest of today," Mendoza replied.

  "I know what you mean," Alex replied. He hunched down behind the barrier beside the man. “Listen, I may have something that can help you. You already have a crystal, right?”

  Alex knew he did. He could see the man was tier one, so he had to have at least one stone socketed. But it was easier to get info out of people if he just let them talk, rather than pointing out how much he already knew.

  Mendoza nodded. "Just one. It's Ice Blast."

  "That's a good one! I have that myself," Alex replied. He didn't tell Mendoza that he'd already ranked that spell up enough that it was already a heavy hitter. But the fact the man only had a single tier one stone made it relatively easy to give him a small boost. "You need a tier two crystal if you want to add something."

  "I know. It's a bummer, because I only have one more tier one stone. It's Strength, too, so I could really use it. I guess I just have to wait until I can find another one, right?" Mendoza asked.

  This was perfect. Alex could win the man over and it would only cost him a single crystal. "Nope. I've got you covered."

  Alex fished a Strength crystal out of his pocket. "Here you go. It's tier one, so all you have to do is hold it in your palm with your other one, and they should both lock in."

  "Seriously?" Mendoza asked. Even as he asked the question, he reached out and took the crystal. Who wouldn't? Those stones were the key to power in this new world, and power was the key to staying alive. "You sure? I know how valuable these things are!"

  "I'm sure," Alex replied. "The more people we get up to a decent fighting strength, the better. The way I figure it, sharing these things around makes all of us stronger as a group."

  That wasn't entirely true. Alex had ranked up his Intellect stones enough that he'd been able to do a deep dive analysis of the entire crystal system, how it worked, and how to optimize it. Because of the way every tier five stone opened up new slots, pouring more of the crystals into a single person was actually more beneficial than dividing them up among many.

  He had seen that in action, watching Castle fight. Alex wasn't sure what rank Castle's top stones had been during the battle the day before, but he'd been able to fly giant crabs up into the air, drop them on other giant crabs, swing an undead Triceratops over his head, and perform other insane feats of strength and power. Even when he had been tier five, Castle was stronger than any sixteen tier one monsters. That meant focusing enough stones on one person to get them to tier five would create a single fighter who was stronger than sixteen people each with a single tier one stone.

  This analysis had deeply impacted which crystals Alex chose to keep and which he was giving away. Everything that advanced the build he was aiming to create, he kept. No exceptions. If it was going to make him stronger, he wanted it in his hands, not someone else's. But the stones that didn't fit the design he'd plotted out for himself? Originally, Alex planned to keep those for Cameron. He knew Cam was probably still doing the same for him, so it would be easy enough for them to swap. Their builds were complementary to one another.

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  Sometimes, the best road forward wasn't the optimal one. In this case, the goodwill he was gaining from gifting the stones to others outweighed any advantage Alex thought he could acquire from them otherwise. He was already looking past this fight for downtown and into the future. One way or another, eventually this battle would end. If the humans won, somebody would step in and take control of downtown Boston, and given the way the world worked now, Alex doubted that would be the old mayor. If the crustacean invaders won, the human forces would be forced to retreat and rally somewhere else.

  Either way, having a bunch of warrior types indebted to him was a smart plan.

  "Yeah, It's yours," Alex said. “I gave a few out to other guys last night, too."

  "Thanks again," Mendoza replied. "You're a lifesaver!"

  Alex marched his way down the line, stopping at each guard post and repeating the process where he could. In a couple of cases, the guard on duty had too many stones already, or Alex didn't have something that would help him. For those guards, Alex just offered encouragement. He was already widely recognized as one of the strongest fighters their side had, so everyone welcomed him when he approached, whether he was able to give them a gift or not. But most of the time, he had something in his pocket that would help the guard advance their own strength, and his gifts were always gratefully received.

  After he'd worked his way down the entire defensive line, Alex headed back toward his tent to check on Marion. Before he was even halfway there, he spotted an enormous crowd approaching from the north, and froze. For a few seconds, he thought they were under attack from a new direction, perhaps some new foe, but Alex quickly recognized the man marching at the head of the crowd of people.

  "Castle, what the hell did you do this time?" Alex muttered under his breath.

  Captain McGregor was already on his way to meet up with Castle, so Alex considered the situation handled, whatever it was. Still shaking his head, he finished the walk to his tent, but Marion and Johnson were both already gone. Alex glanced around, looking for them, but didn't find them. He did spot Maggie and Emmy, seated not far away and sharing an MRE. Alex sauntered over to join them, instead.

  "It's Alex, right?" Maggie asked as he came up to her.

  "That's me, yes," Alex replied. "Mind if I join you?"

  "No problem! We don't have more food, though. There's a few boxes of these meals over there, if you want one," Maggie replied.

  Alex waved off the offer. "I can eat later. My Stamina is strong enough at this point that I don't need to eat right away. I was just figuring we could chat some."

  Alex knew the little girl was important to Castle, who’d gone out of his way to rescue her more than once. By extension, the sister was probably important, too. Alex could see each of their tier levels, but not the stones they had socketed. Maggie was still only tier one. Since he knew she was the woman who had the language stone, the crystal which enabled her to speak with the lobsters, he also knew she didn't have any others.

  The kid, on the other hand? Emmy was tier three. Alex blinked when he saw that, wondering how the heck that had happened. He doubted she had come across the stones to accomplish that by herself. It was more likely Castle had given them to her to pump up the kids chance of surviving.

  As a test, Alex offered Maggie a bit of news, "Castle's back, you know."

  "Oh, is he?" Maggie glanced up, like she was looking for him. But she didn't go running after him, which told Alex if there was a connection between the two of them, it wasn't that strong yet.

  Emmy, on the other hand, stood bolt upright, her head tracking back and forth until she caught a glimpse of her hero. "There he is! Can I go say hi, Maggie?"

  Maggie looked like she was about to say no, so Alex intervened. "You should let her. Castle won't let anything bad happen to her, you know that. And he could use a reminder that he too is human."

  Maggie laughed at that. "Fair enough! Go ahead, Emmy. Have fun!

  With a whoop, Emmy rushed off toward Castle and the crowd he led. Alex chuckled as the kid shot away, and Maggie joined in until both of them were laughing together.

  "She's a cute kid," Alex said.

  "She is. And she's managing well, so far, anyway. I worry for her if we don't find our mom and dad soon, though," Maggie replied.

  Before he could reply, a sudden rush of wind and the heavy beat of wings made Alex jerk his attention skyward. For the most part, the giant birds hadn't bothered them, but he knew they'd flown off with more than a few helpless victims over the last couple of days.

  Emmy was one of them, in fact. Which was why Alex wasn't surprised to see Maggie launch herself to her feet, as well.

  But it wasn't the rocs. Not this time.

  Dozens of bird-like creatures settled themselves on perches all around them. A few landed atop streetlights, while some landed on nearby rooftops, the edges of buildings, the roofs of stalled cars, and almost any other available flat surface. In moments, they were surrounded by the feathered beings.

  These weren't anything like the giant seagulls they'd faced before. These monsters looked like someone had taken a human and a pigeon and mashed them together violently. The creatures' heads were still those of birds. Their wings were bird-like too, but their arms and upper bodies more closely resembled a feathered human. Their legs were more typical of a bird, rather than being shaped like a human’s.

  If someone had taken a harpy from Greek myths and then made the upper body bird-like too, they might have ended up with a creature that looked something like this.

  Before they could react, another of the strange avians landed directly in front of Maggie, just a few meters away. This one was even more alarming than the others, because while most of them were tier one and tier two, this one was rank five. That meant it was strong enough to potentially be a threat even to Alex, and it could absolutely be deadly for Maggie. Alex moved quickly to place himself between her and the creature.

  "Stay behind me," Alex snapped. Then he fired an Ice Blast directly upward. That was a good enough signal that he knew everyone in the area would come running.

  Before he could do or say anything else the big avian opened its beak and let out a series of loud squawking noises. Behind him, he felt Maggie freeze. She laid a hand on his shoulder.

  "That's language," Maggie said. "I can understand him!"

  "Well, what are they saying?" Alex asked. He hoped this wasn't yet another enemy for humanity to face!

  "He's asking if I'm the human who can speak languages," Maggie replied. "He says he's the leader of his people, and he wants to talk."