PenguinKills
patreon
Chapter 106 - It Was Me
🕑 Added 2024-08-12 20:00:05 +0000 UTC"Abigail, I'm gonna need you to heal me up," I said. Anger coursed through me like a hot knife through butter. I wanted to fight something, smash something to bits.
The only thing that stopped me was the various wounds I had. The knife still in my back mostly. Abigail, for her part, listlessly worked over my body with her healing before getting to the knife. She pulled it out and layered multiple of her more potent healing skills onto the area.
The whole time she said nothing. Total silence. It was like her mind shut down and wouldn't come up with words to say. Only working on autopilot as she healed me up.
It didn't take long and I was good enough to get back into the fight. Healing to 100% would take a while yet but it was enough to go hit something.
And go hit something I did.
~~
It was a sobering trip home. The now uncontrolled beasts met their end swiftly and brutally, probably wishing they were somewhere else away from the walking calamity I turned into.
The hours following my father's death were a blur. There were so many emotions that I had to work through that it was hard to remember much of what happened.
I can say that it was bloody though. That I knew with certainty.
Even taking it out on the surrounding beasts didn't do much for the pit of jumbled thoughts I was going through. I was easily aggravated, snappy, and an overall chore to be around.
Austin tried to be there for me, but that wasn't what I wanted right now. Wasn't what I needed. Jonathan saw to my sister, comforting her which took a load off of me. I wasn't sure I would be able to deal with my grief while comforting her at the same time. Abigail even felt bad for me because I didn't have someone like that.
Her pity only made me more angry.
I took care of the surrounding beasts while everyone else cleaned up the best they could. Spent consumables couldn't be recovered but the equipment could. From both our camp and the Mindbreaker's.
Anyone healthy scavenged the battlefield for anything valuable they could find, piling it all up near our makeshift camp.
Kathy sent a message back to have people come up to help with the clean-up who arrived a few hours later.
There was a lot we needed to do and not enough people to do it.
The 27th wave came tomorrow and we had to be packed and returned before then. Wounded needed to be carried back along with equipment and supplies.
Most had been used, but there were a few that hadn't, along with things we could take as loot.
One thing we did take the time for was a funeral. The few hours it took to get there were non-negotiable for us. It was something we had to do.
We moved the bodies back to the hill adjacent to our camp and dug holes. Yes, bodies and holes plural. My father wasn't the only one who met their end today. Four of us were gone.
Our number dwindled to 17. Barely above half what we started with.
Other than my father, Scott and Diana both met their end. One in a rushed retreat where she fell and couldn't recover fast enough and the other in a false sense to save his wife. The tutorial hadn't been kind to Uncle Scott's family and it mercilessly took all of them. His son, his wife, and him.
The last of the dead was my cousin Christian. When I asked how he died Austin didn't answer. He was unusually cagey about the subject and that cageyness was going to end now.
I had let it go before because there were still things to do and I was needed elsewhere. Now, on the walk back to camp, I wanted answers.
I wanted to find out what happened after I left. Four people dead was a lot, but that said nothing about the wounded. People were gravely injured with some even missing limbs. The healers still weren't sure if they would be able to reattach them or grow them back.
There was still too much they didn't know to start the procedure in the dark.
While walking back to our camp for the funeral, I singled Austin out to get some answers.
"How? How did this happen?" I asked with a bit more force than intended. We had planned meticulously and I was having trouble coming up with reasons for how it turned out so poorly. It shouldn't have turned out this bad. We had plans to retreat if it did. Not fight to the death. A live to fight another day sort of thing.
"It all went to shit after you left. We were fighting the new arrivals off with the traps and consumables but it all went wrong all of a sudden. Your Dad, Jonathan, and I were holding off the hordes as best we could with help from people behind us.
"One minute, I was stabbing through monsters as quickly as I could, the next, half the fortifications blew up behind me.
"I wasn't sure how any got through or how it happened. I was too far away at the time to know for sure but I heard yelling as we were falling back to the second line of fortifications and that only made me more confused at the time.
"Kathy and Abigail were yelling at each other heatedly, basically screaming at each other but I couldn't take the time to find out why. I was busy fighting. I only found out later what happened and the reason they were screaming at each other.
"Kathy accused Christian of sabotaging the fortifications and Abigail was defending him, saying that it wasn't something he would do." Austin sighed.
That was... unexpected. Anger flared in me at her accusation. I expected to see the same in Austin, but his face painted a different picture. His lack of emotion confused me further.
"Christian wouldn't do something like that though." I defended, "Why would he sabotage the fortifications?"
"That's what I, and the rest of the family, thought. We thought that Kathy was wrong and we ignored her accusation to focus on the fighting. Our retreat didn't go perfectly since it was unexpected, but it went better than it could have.
"That was, until it happened again." Austin's resigned tone told me more than words could have.
No, he couldn't have. Why would he?
"There were witnesses the second time. I saw him do it myself." He confessed.
"But why? Why would he do that?!" I yelled. My mind couldn't come up with a reason he would do that.
I had known Christian for a long time and nothing I knew about him pointed toward him doing something like this.
Austin just gave me a flat look until I came to the conclusion on my own. We were fighting someone who could manipulate people and that wasn't the first thing I had considered.
That showed my naivety.
I believed that my family was above that, like there was no way that we would be influenced like that. Like a child who believed their parents could do no wrong.
"When? He was never gone from camp for long, when could it have happened?" Questions streamed out of my mouth as I tried to wrap my head around what I was hearing.
It seemed unreal.
"We don't know. There's speculation, obviously, but without him here to tell us, that's all it will be. It could have been whenever for all we know." I was surprised there wasn't more anger in his tone. Anger at the fact a member of our family was manipulated like that.
"After the second line fell so soon after the first, panic spread and people scrambled to retreat again. In the chaos, Diana was lost before we made it to the third line. Scott watched it happen and threw himself into the tide of monsters to save her.
"He didn't last long."
Hearing that Christian caused two deaths because of what he did was a blow. Logically, it wasn't his actions that caused them to die, but realistically, it was hard to separate him from what he did.
Wait, if he was under the Mindbreaker's influence, how did he die?
Looking deeper at the man next to me, the lack of normal emotions he would show about something like this, the sadness that teetered on guilt, and all the other signs that I had attributed to grief.
It almost hurt to ask the question.
"How did he die?"
A hurt and guilty expression flashed on Austin's face before he controlled it back to neutral. All he did was look up with eyes that said I didn't want to know the answer.
Eyes that somehow pleaded with me to not make him answer.
This was too important. I needed to know how he died and I pressed for an answer.
"How?"
Austin sighed deeply before answering, "It was me."
The words shouldn't have been a shock, but somehow they still were. Everything I was picking up on pointed to that exact conclusion but I so wanted it to be wrong.
It wasn't.
Silence accompanied both of us while we walked for a few minutes after that. Neither one of us knew what to say next. My mind was a mess with thoughts and I didn't know what to do about it.
There were too many things happening at once and it was overwhelming. My father had just died and now I was being told family had to kill family. It was too much to take in.
My immediate reaction was anger. Anger toward Austin for doing something like that but it didn't last long before another smothered its fire. Jumping to conclusions wouldn't help anyone and I had to think the whole thing through. Christian was a liability that could have caused more deaths if left to continue sabotaging them.
It could have ended with my whole family dead instead of just Scott and Diana. Neutralizing that threat was the right course of action.
But how did someone do that?
How did one kill family?
The silence worked to feed my jumbled thoughts and they continued singing their song in my head of cousin-cide? Was there even a word for that?
Austin was silent the entire time, letting me process the bombshell he had just ignited. His shoulders were slumped slightly and he looked conflicted in his own right.
I couldn't fathom the guilt he must be feeling right now. Seeing him like that worked to bring me out of my introspection and focus on what was in front of me. My friend was hurting and I needed to be there for him.
It didn't matter what he did, it was necessary. I wanted to ask more questions but now wasn't the time. How was Sam taking this? Her son wasn't killed in battle but by our own side?
Pushing those thoughts away was hard but I managed to do it. What was needed of me right now wasn't to be questioning his decision, but to pat him on the back and tell him it was alright.
The last thought I had on the subject was one I wouldn't get out of my head anytime soon.
Would I have been able to do the same?
I didn't know if I wanted the answer to that. For some things, ignorance was bliss.
~~
It didn't take long to reach our camp after that. The remaining family dug holes for the ones who wouldn't be with us anymore. It was one of the first times I cursed my high strength.
Digging that hole shouldn't have been that easy. It almost felt wrong for it to be that easy.
Everyone said their peace about the ones not with us and we went on with our lives. Once more forced to walk ahead without letting ourselves properly grieve.
Before Abigail left, I got the full story out of her which confirmed all of what Austin said. The argument, the accusations, and the resulting conclusion.
It wasn't easier hearing it the second time around.
After everything was over, I helped them travel down south for the second time. The wave tomorrow wasn't forgotten and they needed to prepare for it. I needed to do the same but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
A part of me didn't want to. The fight was thoroughly extinguished in me today. It didn't get excited at the thought of the battle that was to come.
Neither did we celebrate our victory. For all intents and purposes, we should have traveled back to camp victorious. We won, our enemy defeated and dead with their loot ours to claim.
From an outside perspective, our return was one closer to defeat rather than triumph.
It almost felt wrong to sit in the remnants of camp without everyone. It felt worse to check off a line on my to-do list.
Of the three things I needed to do before evolving, upgrading my Law was completed. It was an unexpected boon during the battle but it was yet another accomplishment washed of its meaning by tragedy.
Now, the only thing left that I could focus on was my Spirit Anchor. I felt... something like what Jonathan described but I wasn't sure if what I felt was the same.
He said that power welled up from deep inside him and that was exactly what it felt like, but that was also the same spot my bloodline was.
Jonathan didn't have a bloodline when he formed his Spirit Anchor so he didn't know the difference between the two.
Yet more turbid thoughts colored my mind for what felt like the hundredth time that day. When the sun finally set, I was glad that the day was finally over.
Notifications pinged at me, wanted to be opened but that wasn't something I wanted to look at right now. I wanted just a moment of peace and to not look at the proof of what had happened today.
With only the stars for company, I did not sleep peacefully.
Comments
BelligerentGnu
Well, couldn't be more clear that he was right to go after whats-his-face. Imagine the final waves with saboteurs in the ranks.
James Faulkner
Goddamn, Tftc!
Demonlord
Thanks for the chapter π now we know why the mindbreaker was so sure his family is dead...
