Healing Incorporated

It didn’t take them long to spot the small grove of trees and the boulder visible from the building's window. When they arrived a few minutes later, they found it empty. Eli frowned and looked around, then heard some leaves rustling.

“Hello?" Eli asked.

"Eli?” Zack stood with some obvious reluctance. “Is that really you?”

His clothes weren't all that different from what he'd worn before and resembled the Tinker's gear Janus wore with a white, fancy shirt, a brown leather vest and matching short pants. A large pack was strapped to his shoulders and a brown leather cap sat crookedly atop his head. His usually meticulously tousled hair now looked dirty and tangled.

“Yes, Zack, it’s me and Amy, and this here is Charlotte. What are you doing out here alone? Everyone else is gathered inside the building.”

Zack looked up at the tall structure and wrapped his arms around himself. “That place looks spooky, like an empty tomb. Thought I was the only one here. I didn’t know what happened.”

“You’re fine now,” Eli said. “We’re all here.”

“Where is here?”

“We don’t know,” Amy said. “But you’ve picked a class already, so you must have some idea, as much as us, at least.”

“Apothecary!” Charlotte boomed. “Small bottle man, good choice! Zack of the Apothecary!”

She held her hands to her mouth. “Oh god, I’m sorry, that just came out of nowhere.”

“Apothecary felt fitting, with the brewing and all. I mean, I didn’t exactly love my job or anything, but I was good at it.”

“Well, we loved having you in the office, Zack. Why don’t you come with us?”

Zack stepped up and poked Eli in the chest. “You are real,” he whispered, his hand squeezing a glass bottle filled with some light pink liquid swooshing around inside of it.

“What’s that in your hand, Zack?”

“Thought you were one of the green men. If you were, this here would blow you right up.”

Eli eyed the bottle nervously. Zack was being awfully careless with it. “Did you say green men? Do you mean goblins?”

“I don’t know,” Zack said, looking over his shoulder. “They were in the trees, whispering. And laughing, I think. I only saw flashes of their faces. Nasty little creatures.”

Eli inspected Zack and saw a status he should have expected.

Ailment: Mild Confusion.

“I’m going to try something, Zack, alright?”

Zack narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

Eli cast Cure on the former barista. Thankfully, the ailment disappeared.

Zack blinked, then looked around. “What happened?”

“You somehow got a confusion ailment. I cured you.".

“Cured me?” Zack asked, focusing on Eli. “You’re a healer. Of course, you are, Eli.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

Zack hoisted his pack and put it to the ground, bending over it to withdraw a whole bunch of potions. “Health and mana. You should grab these. I made a bunch.”

The bottles were small, holding no more than a small sip. Charlotte dove in and snagged half the health potions but left the mana ones. Eli handed over most of the health potions that were left to Amy, along with a few mana potions, keeping the rest for himself. Five in all, making the total in his inventory ten. Thankfully, they stacked.

“Thank you, Zack. So, did you really see goblins out here?”

Zack scratched the back of his head, looked over his shoulder again. “Not sure, truth be told.”

“We’re going to a graveyard,” Amy said. “To see if we can’t get a little stronger. Would you like to join us, Zack? I’m sure those explosion potions will come in handy.”

Zack wet his lips and eyed them all in turn before putting his gaze toward the graveyard in the far distance. “Like with zombies and things?” He pondered a moment, then nodded. “Sure, why not? I don’t see a reason to sit around on my butt. But I have to warn you, I’m not very social.”

“But you’re the most social guy I know,” Eli said.

“Well, you don’t really know me that well. At work, there’s a counter between me and everyone else. It allows me to play a role, if you’d like. It’s not the real me you see up there.”

Amy and Eli exchanged a glance.

“I understand. You’re still welcome to join us. We’d be happy to have you,” Amy said.

Zack nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

"Ravenous Barbarians go!" Charlotte boomed.

Eli frowned. “What’s ‘ravenous barbarians’?”

Another dot turned up on the mini-map. Charlotte laughed heartily. “We are the Ravenous Barbarians! And we shall have our fill!”

He noticed the party name changed to just that, 'Ravenous Barbarians'. How fitting. Eli just shook his head and began filling their new friend in on everything they’d learned so far while they trotted off in the direction of the graveyard.

The place was bigger than it looked from high up in the Infinite Innovation Solutions building. There was a chest-height metal fence with sturdy poles surrounding the entire place, or at least as far as they could see, with a gate not far from where they arrived. A dirt path ran from the gate and away into the far distance, disappearing on the horizon. In his estimation, the graveyard itself was perhaps four football fields in size.

Only the top of the church was visible over the trees and many bushes of the graveyard, but it looked far bigger than he'd initially thought. The top of the church's tower was not a cross, but a round symbol with an eye in the middle. Creepy.

A brass sign near the entrance read: Church of The Dying Light.

"Dying Light? So there's religion here?" Eli asked.

"What's that?" Amy asked.

A moan sounded from within the graveyard and a zombie came shuffling out from behind a gravestone. Eli immediately felt nauseous. He wasn’t sure why, but he’d imagined some green, cartoonish monstrosity, like in comics or games. But this was a person. A decomposed person. Just a man, maybe forty years old, with dirty hair and empty eyes. His jaw hung open, revealing broken teeth covered in dirt. His clothes were simple, but he would’ve fit right in at a renaissance fair, with gray cloth and a leather waistcoat over it.

The man—or zombie, because that’s what it said when Eli inspected it, Zombie. Level 5, shuffled right up to the metal bars, turning its unseeing eyes in their direction as it moaned again. Its face was bloated and its arm stood out at an angle, like it'd been broken.

Eli swallowed and looked away, breathing through his mouth to escape the stench.

“I’m happy I don’t have to look at that thing,” Amy said. “That pungent smell is more than enough."

Charlotte held her nostrils closed. “I wonder who he was?”

“Can we really kill it?” Eli asked.

“It’s a monster now,” Amy said. “If we want to level up, we’re going to have to kill a lot of things. Unfortunately, I don’t think my rats are going to do very much against this creature.”

The four rats squeaked, standing around in the grass. No, not four. Five.

"Did you find another one?"

"Sure did. Building my very own rat army!"

Eli chuckled and stepped up, feeling a little better now that the tension was broken. “I’ll try healing it. Step back a little, we you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

He cast Pitiful Heal on the zombie and watched as it stumbled, as if struck. It moaned again and returned to the fence, but a third of its health was gone. Once it was hurt, a health bar had appeared over its head, just like the ones over his party’s, except this one was red with a black background to indicate its missing health.

Eli cast heal twice more in quick succession. The zombie let out a final moan, then crumpled to the ground in a pile. A small ding chimed in Eli’s ears, twice.

Ding! You have reached level 4.

“Wow, already level four!” Eli told the others.

Amy's rats did a little dance in celebration.

"Three," Zack said.

Charlotte held up her fingers in a peace sign. “Four.”

Eli didn’t want to spend too much time checking his status screen, but he was happy to see his mana had refilled thanks to the level up. That was well, because the sounds were drawing more of them. Four zombies shambled out of the dark. Two more men, a young woman with her hair all pulled out, her scalp full of wounds, and an old lady with a bent back, moving much slower than the others.

“Let me try,” Charlotte said, unfastening her giant sword. Everyone else stepped back and watched as she swung it over the fence and took the head off one of the male zombies with ease.

This time, no one leveled up, but Charlotte let out a booming laugh all the same, raising the sword high over her head in just one hand in celebration.

"That was effective," Eli said, killing another one with heal.

"Hold on a second," Amy said, directing her rat army through the gaps in the fence. They began nibbling at the old lady zombie, but she barely sustained any damage at all. The zombie moaned and swatted her arms, unable to reach the rats before they scurried away.

"Well, now I'm feeling useless," Amy sighed.

"You'll find a better animal soon," Eli reassured her, downing another zombie. They leveled up again, and Charlotte headed over to the gate.

Ding! You have reached level 5.

"This is too slow. We should go inside," she growled, pulling it open before anyone had a chance to protest.

Zack threw in an explosion potion at the three remaining zombies before Charlotte reached them, but it wasn’t enough to kill them all—it only hurt them. The explosions weren’t very big, but they did have an area of effect, so they were all damaged about a fifth of their health.

Zack glanced over at Eli and shrugged. "Could be worse."

Charlotte charged at the zombies with her sword raised in another shout. She swung mid-step, throwing herself off balance. The sword struck nothing but grass and dirt, and the zombies closed in, eager to take advantage of her failure..

Her roar of triumph turned into a cry of fear as she rolled away, still holding on to the sword. One of the male zombies reached her before she got to her feet, and his fingernails left deep scrapes that drew blood.

"Ow," she whined, stepping back even more.

Eli healed her, watching the wounds close, but Charlotte barely noticed. All her focus was on the zombies, and more of them were coming now. Three new ones joined the first group, making the total seven. They quickly surrounded Charlotte, who was shaking so badly she couldn’t even find the strength to swing the giant slab of metal that was her sword.

"There are too many," she stammered.

"What’s happening?" Amy asked, her voice high with tension. "Her HP bar is full!"

"She’s panicking," Eli whispered, then turned to Zack. "Do you have more of those explosion potions?"

"Sure," he said, "but I can't throw them with her in the mix. They'll hurt her."

"Damn it," Eli shouted as he set off running toward the entrance..

"What’s happening?" Amy yelled.

Eli didn’t have time to answer. He reached Charlotte, who was slowly backing away, blocking attacks with her sword rather than attacking swinging her sword.

"Come on," he shouted, getting her attention. "You can do this! Swing your sword or thrust, whatever you want, but you have to hit them!"

Charlotte’s eyes flickered from Eli to the zombies and back. She swallowed hard, clenched her jaw, and nodded. "Okay. Sorry, Eli."

Even more zombies were coming now, and a skeleton, too. The skeleton carried a crooked sword, swinging it wildly as it closed in from behind, cutting them off from the gate.

"Someone tell me what’s going on!" Amy barked. "Hello, I’m blind! Can't see, remember?"

Eli healed the skeleton four times, drank a mana potion, and saw a countdown timer by his health bar, ticking down from 15 seconds. "Shit," he muttered. "Guess I can't just chug mana potions."

Ding! You have reached level 6.

One final heal downed the skeleton as Charlotte finally began tearing into the zombies. Eli leveled up again along with the rest of his party and healed another zombie to death. More were still coming.

"Charlotte!" he cried. "We have to get out of here. They just keep coming!"

Charlotte turned, her eyes wide with what looked like mad glee. "Let them come!"

Frowning, Eli inspected her and saw she'd activated a skill. He groaned, reading the name:

Barbarian’s Rage.