Erage #2 Escape

Quastiffany is a nine-year-old girl. She sits in a van with the three other survivors surrounded by about a dozen police. But they don’t like normal police. Quastiffany isn’t going to judge them on their outfits, though. She knows to be thankful. But it is so hard to be thankful after what has happened today.

There was a tornado at school today. Everyone did as they were supposed to. They huddled against the wall. But it didn’t help. The wall fell on top of them. She thought she was the only survivor. The strange-looking police found her after a long time. They took her out and brought her into a van with three other kids.

She is glad that she isn’t the only survivor. But it doesn’t make sense. Why is she alive? It wasn’t her huddling against the wall. The wall had fallen on her as surely as it had fallen in everyone else. The ceiling had collapsed. The chairs and tables and slammed into her and her friends. She considers that she might be dead. Perhaps she is just a ghost that doesn’t realize that she’s dead.

But no, the police think she is alive. And the other three survivors seem to think so as well. They are all as dazed as her. They are all thinking the same thing. “How are we alive?”

The van stops. Where are they? She kind of expected to be driven home. But they wouldn’t know where she lived. They hadn’t asked her. They probably assumed that she wouldn’t know her own address. That’s a good assumption. She doesn’t know her address. But is this the police station? It looks like a rectangular rock set into the side of a giant stone wall. Where did this wall come from? Surely she would have known if there was a wall anywhere near the city.

The police help her and the other kids out of the van. They start to guide them towards the building...they stop abruptly. A few police are standing at the entrance of the building gesturing at them and saying something. Their voices are muffled. Why can’t she hear very well? Maybe it’s those helmets that cover their entire face. She’s never seen helmets like that.

She can barely make out what the police right next to her is saying. “The outsider escaped?”

The police at the entrance give a muffled response.

“Well, then what should I do with these kids?”

Quastiffany wonders this as well. What are they going to do with them? Her life is never going to be okay again. She’ll have to go to another school and pretend that everything is fine. But how can she go back to a normal life after what happened. Her schoolhouse is broken by a surprise tornado. She thinks it’s kind of strange how the weather was perfectly normal before the tornado and afterwards. The police brought her outside after a tornado. Why is it safe outside after a tornado?

Maybe she just doesn’t know enough about tornados to make sense of it. Maybe she does know enough. It’s hard. Everything feels numb, dull. The world seems to just go on while she stands still. It’s chaotic how everything continues without her. Then a man in a uniform exits the building and heads towards one of the vans.

The police that is next to Quastiffany calls out to the man in uniform, asking him what to do with the kids. The uniform man shouts something in response. Quastiffany doesn’t know what he said. Is she going to be okay? What will they do? What’s wrong with her hearing? Everything is muffled. She can only make out nearby sounds, like some sort of auditory version of short-sightedness.

She hears crying. It’s coming from inside. She starts walking towards the entrance of the building. The police try to stop her. She probably should let them stop her. She doesn’t know where she is going or why. Something in the back of her mind tells her that she shouldn’t be able to hear crying from so far away with her short-hearingness.

Strangely, none of the police actually stop her. They are definitely telling her to stop. But she doesn’t get pulled back or anything. So she walks right past the three guards that are blocking the entrance. Strange, why are only two of them carrying rifles?

It’s dark in this stone building. But she hears the crying echo off the walls. She follow the sounds. She can picture the trail she must take. In her mind's eye, she imagines a maze-like passage filled with specks of black and white like a really old TV making the sound of white noise.

Eventually she finds a child huddled against the wall. He’s the one who is crying. Quastiffany calls out to him to get his attention. But no sound escapes her mouth. The whole experience feels like a dream. She can’t feel anything. It’s almost like she imagines sound rather than hears it.

She taps on the little boy’s shoulder. This gets his attention. He looks up at her. Well, not at her, but past her, through her. Quastiffany wonders if he is blind. He doesn’t seem to see her. She stares into his eyes, trying to figure out what’s wrong with him. Then his eyes focus, like seeing her for the first time. She is filled with inexplicable fear. She gasps, and looks around. She expects to be surrounded by murderers trying to kill her. But, of course, there is no one here but this little boy.

———

Untoltelage feels his paranoia lessen. He isn’t so scared anymore. That’s when he realizes he is staring at a nine-year-old girl that is standing above him. When did this little girl get there? How did he not notice? He feels a connection with this girl, like they are both the same person. It’s not a familiar feeling. It’s not love, friendship, anger or any emotion he has ever felt before.

It’s utterly alien. Yet, for something so new, it isn’t scary. The girl gestures for him to follow her. He doesn’t know why, but he follows her. His instincts tell him he shouldn’t not just follow strangers no matter how young they are. It’s dangerous. He could be led into an ambush. He follows her anyway.

He was right to be wary. He is led out of the building where a bunch of police are waiting. There are three kids out there surrounded by military-police. The military is incredibly scared now. They’re pointing their guns in pretty much every direction, including towards the kids.

Ha, as if those kids could prove a threat. Wait, those kids are all about the same age as him and this girl that led him out here. These must be from his school. These must be the survivors of the attack. Why did they let this girl out of their sight. Did they really think she would be able to find him and bring him back?

The girl continues walking out towards the three other kids. She walks through the police guarding the door. Most of the police try to get out of the way as she moves past. But not all are so fast. She moves through them, ethereal. She moves through them like they aren’t there.

Untoltelage feels a spike of somewhat more rational terror as this sight reminds him of an encounter with a person that could kill him in the only meaningful ways.

Fear then numbness. Dread then dull. Rollercoaster between extreme panic and feeling nothing at all. Untoltelage panics.

He runs forward. The police had already scattered from the little girl and seeing him, point their guns to shoot him. Oh, he has a gun too. He had nearly forgotten. He might as well make good use of it.

Untoltelage points the gun at the ground and fires. Then he draws upon his pool of plant magic to try and use the bullet as a seed. Of course, it doesn’t work. It’s a metal bullet, not a carbon-based seed. So he does the next best thing, he improvises. If he had earth magic he might have been able to get better results. But he’ll just have to do with water and plant magic.

He drops the gun. Then rushes towards the wall behind him. A surge of water pops out of the metal bullets in the ground. The high pressure of great volumes of water trying to fit into a smal bullet cause the bullets in the ground to explode. They are not impressive explosions. More like pops that splash everyone within five feet of them. But there were about twelve bullets in the ground that popped this way.

It might have not produced much physical effect, but it was certainly distracting to the military-police. Not distracting enough. They start shooting at Untoltelage.

Untoltelage hates this cursed pavement. He can’t do too much with plant magic in such conditions. So he uses his plant magic wastefully in actual conjuration. It’s one thing to manipulate the element you're using, but producing it is entirely more resource intensive.

He conjures two tiny seeds, one in each hand. Then he slams his hand, palm open, into the wall. The seed in his hand hits the wall, cracks and splits open to grow at an incredibly accelerated rate. Conjuring the two seeds took about a quarter of his plant magic.

The bullets are hitting him. Pain. PAIN! PAIN!

The tree grows tall, he gets on top of it as it grows to lift him to the top of the wall. As he is rising into the air, he drops the seed from his second hand towards the four little kids. He’s not sure what he’s planning for that seed. But it almost seems like part of him already knows what it is doing, has a plan and everything but he won’t tell the rest of him what he is doing.

He is going to die if he doesn’t get those bullet wounds healed. Looks like that body enhancement magic will come in handy after all. He drains his body enhancement magic to heal his wounds. He’ll have to get rid of the bullets that are lodged into his organs tomorrow, but this healing should be enough to keep alive until he can get somewhere to rest for a while.

What about those kids?

Who said that? No one is up here. Now that Untoltelage thinks about it, it doesn’t really seem like he heard anything, more like he just thought the words.

Well, what could he possibly do for them kids? The military probably won’t do anything to them. Okay, well, now they probably will. They might get shot or imprisoned, but because of what Untoltelage did, those kids are going to have a bad time. He kind of wishes there was something he could do for them.

There is something you can do.

Where are these ideas coming from? He looks down at the kids. They’re looking up at him. Everyone is looking up at him. The soldiers are still shooting at him. How tall is this wall? Can he just jump down? No, he doesn’t have much magic left. He’s got just about half of his water and plant magic pools left. Of course, he also has the faintest hint of a magic pool of the esoteric and abstract magics like...like teleportation.

Down on the outside of the wall, there is grass, bushes, trees. There are so many plants. He can’t wait to get there. He… He jumps off the wall towards the vegetation.

There are vines growing on the outside of the wall. Untoltelage fills the vines with water until they burst. The blast of the splash sends him outwards away from the wall. As he passes small thin branches and leaves in the canopy, he fills them with water to burst. Until he is out of water magic.

This propels him further through the canopy so he hits more branches before he hits the ground. He doesn’t hit the ground. He finally hits a branch that he doesn’t slide over or break through. It slows his fall to a stop. He grabs onto the branch. Then he falls.

He lands on branch after branch. By the time he hits the ground, the bruises and broken bones from slamming into branches have caused him greater harm than landing on the ground did.

But at least he made it out. He rolls around on the ground. Bleeding and bruised. Finally, after pulling out grass and digging up some dirt, he finds a seed. It’s a flower seed.

“Well, here goes nothing.”

The seed grows into a massive flower bud. When it blooms, and the petals spread apart, they reveal the four kids on the massive flower. The flower has no stem, it’s still on the ground.