The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

One that was coming this way made it inside, but not out of the sunlight. The first beam came weakly through the hazy Shroud, but that was enough, as suddenly that zombie burst into golden flames in front of me, thrashing a bit as it did so, and was suddenly a char mark on the cement.

There were a couple others in the distance, zombies who hadn’t gotten under cover in time, and the sun burned them away. It didn’t actually have to touch them... they were in shadows outside, but when the first ray of light coursed past them, if they weren’t inside, they burned down to nothing.

But that wasn’t a vivic surge! I had distinctly felt the surge of Curse magic at work. I reached down to touch the remains, and found a surge of negative energy receding into the earth, and moving away from me... but not too far away.

Back... to its ‘home’? Wherever it had once died?

If that happened to all the undead under the Shroud, that would stop a Dead March right in its tracks!

No matter how far away they got, if the sun came up and burned them back to their points of origin, did it even matter how many of them there were? They were still going right back to the same place! Maybe they could take shelter in the dark if they were close by, but if they got too far from their origin, the sun would come up and send them back.

At dusk, every zombie that had just been flared was going to manifest back at its ‘home point’, and start its wandering all over again...

I considered the implications. They were huge!

The Dead March was effectively trapped inside the area of land it could travel in one night. That might be quite a distance for some of the spirits, but they’d have to remain within a control radius of one another, so it wasn’t unlimited.

The undead they had created/spawned as they went out and killed might be bound to those distant spots, so it was totally possible that there were entire cities full of Animated undead abruptly freed from the control of the incoming Dark Cardinal when it and its controlled undead were burned away and sent back to their origin points.

Getting control over them would be fruitless. If you brought them back to you, the sun would come up and send them away, back to their origin points. If you stayed there, your minions would lose control at dawn when they were sent back instead.

If people pulled back far enough that the new undead couldn’t reach them, or they could kill the few that could reach them, they’d be ‘safe’, too.

But... could these undead be killed without vivus? The Shroud up above here wasn’t a Hellcloud, but it was definitely a dark haze in the sky, making the day gloomy and overcast. It looked to thin out to the east and south, but those were miles away, and I couldn’t see much farther.

A Dead March would be under a Hellcloud. If the master was only a Dark Bishop or less, that cloud was much less intense, and didn’t have the hate lightning. As a matter of fact, it didn’t look much different than this, save more active manipulation for effect.

It was probable that undead that were tied to a section of the Shroud like this would just be respawned if killed. You couldn’t get rid of them without some major Ritual magic... or vivus, which would burn them in the entirety and feed them directly to the Land, with the Curse magic behind all this.

They would also naturally pull in mindless undead from the surrounding area, or the stupid ones who didn’t know that slavery awaited them here. As they did, the power of their master would grow, and the Hellcloud above would expand...

So, this area would be the target of constant numbers of dead people who had Animated in the night and were making their way here. Since they couldn’t be perma-killed once here, they had to be taken down before they did.

A world where cremation or some other form of permanent disposal was required for all the dead. Without vivus, what kind of experience would that be? Magical furnaces that could burn away the dead would be quite in demand, or chopping bodies up and feeding the parts to creatures so they wouldn’t Animate...

Ugh. It would be a heckuva way to live. If they didn’t have vivus...

There weren’t any more undead coming. Wandering too far during the day, or direct light of the sun would probably trigger the Curse keeping them here. Still, there were likely bunches hiding inside the buildings nearby, who would all come back out once dusk fell to wander around aimlessly and repeat the process.

Giving me a lot of convenient targets, if I could avoid the notice of higher-tier undead...

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The window was shaky in its frame, but still there, if dirty. The outside light was also dim, but weather tended to be very uniform in a Shrouded zone, basically only changing in temperature with the season. Precipitation would be next to nil, although the humidity could change quickly. Winds moderated, slowing abrasion on buildings, too.

Killing the weather was another thing that necromancy did, after all. Deadworlds were cold, gloomy, quiet places...

I found a roof access stairwell after clearing the building, and after some lubrication and multiple applications of TK at various places, managed to lever open the hatch without breaking it. I slowly went up top, hoping and getting a view of the city from a higher point.

Shops and smaller buildings and homes covered the immediate landscape, with the occasional looming sight of a church or old office building rising up and standing out. The trees were dead and bare, killed by the lack of rain, when any place as decrepit as this should be overrun by greenery right now.

I turned around slowly, looking for something that stood out...

Like a very remarkable dark line on the horizon over there. Was that a wall of some kind?...

To the north, the Shroud thickened into a true Hellcould, but not very big, maybe four or five miles across. It took a lot of undead to manifest a true Hellcloud, packed into a pretty small area there.

To the north and west, the skyline was broken up by blocks. Lots of blocks.

The skyline of a city, and a major one, judging by the number of multi-story buildings. The half-zone of the Shroud, like here, was covering it, so nobody alive was there, that was certain.

I certainly wasn’t going in that direction!

The Wall seemed like a good target, if quite some distance away. Ten miles away? Twenty? I glanced back at the Hellcloud. Perhaps there were restrictions on how far incorps could wander from a Hellcloud? If so, a tall enough wall could definitely keep numbers of zombies at bay. The wall seemed to end... was there water there? Purifying it would keep the zombies from entering it...

I was feeling a headache coming on.

This place could potentially be a grinding dream. The problem was that I was in no shape to be a grinder. I was a combat round away from being dead, and could be Dominated, soul-sucked, or simply blasted to ash almost instantly, and had no way to prevent it, because I had no Levels.

I could hole up in this building, wait for my Karma Reserve to flow down day by day, or I could head to the Wall there, shifting inside a new building near dusk, clearing out any undead, and waiting out the night.

I couldn’t stay here, as I’d wind up leaving a vivic footprint, and sooner or later something was going to come investigate... in force. I didn’t have the firepower to deal with it.

So, I had to get out of here. The sooner, the better.

I was so not in any shape to be traveling. I thought about the van, and grimaced.

Just that short trip inside it had felt alien. I already couldn’t remember what the symbol for the radio or lights was, or where they were located. I had a hard block against the tech because I didn’t have any Skill Ranks in them... and my Skill Ranks were getting pre-assigned, or I’d just take the risk, wait a day, gain a Level in something, and drive on out of here when the roads were mostly clear in the morning... if they were clear, which was highly unlikely, now that I thought about it, unless some brave people had cleared a path.

Brave, or cunning. Like Sinbound Warlocks...

Still, not an option. But... the van might still be my way out of here...

------

I sealed the roof access back up and headed out back to the van again.

What I was looking for was something pretty simple... a map out of here.

If they had come here, then they had a route, and had driven that van along it, intending to go back along it.

So that’s where the radio is...

I thumbed through the paperwork in the holder between the front seats, tossing up my Comprehend Languages to read it.

Owner’s Manual... for a cargo van built by Delta Motors, Inc.

Okay, an expy for Ford or GM or Chrysler? The terms were vaguely familiar as I read through them, so it was pretty similar.

So that’s where the radio is...

Glove compartment. I dropped the Owner’s Manual where I found it, and opened up the glove compartment.

The multi-colored paper on top gave me hope. The revolver and box of cartridges there were somewhat less important, despite themselves. I was pretty sure that if I tried to use it, I’d keep forgetting if I had the safety on, or something.

I pulled out the map, and opened it up.

The big black lines stenciled across the complex array of streets clearly indicated that these people had means of moving around this territory.

I looked at the top.

Map of the Five Wards of New York... well, different and not...

I looked the mess over and noted the arc to the north and east, ranging over the landscape only a bit irregularly.

The small islands out in the bay there seemed to be the focus of the Hellcloud, given how the area was shaded so darkly.

Ah, for Clarence to be here, and tell me all about the local attractions.

I seemed to be on Long Island, in Queens or something. I wouldn’t know until I found a street sign and matched it up with this map.

Still, I was somewhere along this map. The wall did stretch across the island to the east, and seemed to pick up across the water further.

I noticed that the routes stenciled in took them up to the waterfront. They could go in and out by sea, and who was going to stop them?

There were signs and notations here and there which had no reference points, but were probably the signs and sigils of forces active in this Shroudzone... intelligent undead forces, most likely, and it would not surprise me at all that those that looked to be in Fiendish script were Daemonic...

Right, I did not want to stay here. The Pact-grantor was probably the thing that had sent me here, and would be able to sense the death of its Warlocks... not that it likely cared much, but other things might be sent here to hurry me along.

I had the sun to work with. I had best get moving...

Huh, so that's where the radio is...