The door stayed closed, but Leonid heard movement and muttering inside.
"It's Leonid. Let me in!"
The door quickly opened, and Amelia greeted him with a bear hug.
"Praise the lamb, you're alive! Are you unhurt?"
Leonid nodded and slowly peeled her off. Looking behind Amelia, he saw 8 soldiers. All of them looked tired and despondent. He looked back at Amelia and inquired, "what happened?"
Amelia, whose face just seconds prior gleamed with hope, made a look of anguish as she recounted the events of the last 18 hours
"Last night after you left, we got attacked by those creatures. We tried to fight them and succeeded in fatally wounding one, but more came and we had to lock ourselves up in here. What happened to you?"
"Everyone with me was dead by the time I got back."
The soldiers in the hut grumbled upon hearing the news, but otherwise said nothing.
"I'm so sorr-"
Amelia attempted to console him, but Leonid interrupted her saying, "Don't apologize; there's nothing we can do now about it. If anything, it's a blessing, had I been there I would've died with them."
He turned to look outside
"We should start looking for survivors. Do you know what happened to Marke?"
Amelia shook her head. "We've been in here all day."
Leonid pondered the situation for a minute. "Let's start looking for survivors as a group. Now that we're both together, it will be easier to fight off the murlocs."
Amelia was hesitant. She suggested something similar hours ago, and it resulted in a massacre, but hearing Leonid's input and remembering his abilities, she rallied her confidence and turned to the soldiers gathered behind her.
"Let's go!"
Not a single soul moved.
"Get up!"
Still, no one moved.
Just how bad was their fight last night?
Amelia continued trying to rouse their courage, first yelling and insulting them before resorting to increasingly desperate begging and pleading. They weren't convinced, and because Leonid and Amelia were CIA agents, they were outside the chain of command, meaning there was no obligation to obey their commands. They might've been willing to join the two if their plan was to escape, but Leonid and Amelia were asking them to expose their lives to certain danger to look for other members of the company who may have already escaped or become corpses themselves. It was simply a fruitless endeavor, which they already paid dearly for.
Leonid stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do. Taking deep breaths, the intense beating of his heart gave him an idea.
He said "Amelia, let me try something."
Amelia was confused, but seeing no better alternative, backed off and allowed Leonid to approach the group. Although she accused them of cowardice several times, she herself was also guilty of this offense, having taken shelter here with them.
Leonid pointed to a soldier. His green uniform was stained with mud and dried blood, his brown eyes sunken and full of fear. Leonid asked, "Why don't you follow us?"
He answered cryptically, "The destiny of the breaker is to destroy worlds. We, the broken are dust."
Leonid recognized the quote as scripture from the Church of the Breaker, the inherent meaning being that the events which had come to pass were the will of the divine and therefore could not be resisted.
Leonid raised his right brow. "You are a fellow believer?"
The soldier scoffed, "Clearly."
"Then witness."
Leonid raised his arms and sent hot electricity all over the room, taking care to not directly hit anyone inside. The soldiers watched in awe and terror as Leonid's electricity hit the walls, the ceiling, even the floor, creating a magnificent display of sparks, lighting, and plasma.
After a minute, Leonid lowered his arms. "Tell me, brother, am I dust?"
The soldier stood up. "No, praise Desto!"
Leonid turned to Amelia and said, "Let's go."
The soldiers rose one by one. Inspired by Leonid's display of power, they now found the courage to once again fight. Leonid electrically charged his machete, creating a glowing steel blade covered in electric sparks and plasma, and led the way out. Amelia dumbfounded by this turn of events, followed along with the soldiers. While she was grateful, she was also a bit jealous. Her ability to see at great distances, and in complete darkness, was nowhere near as impressive as Leonid's electrically oriented abilities. Her powers were so weak that she had mostly been able to live a free life as a judge, undiscovered and undisturbed by the CIA until she was arrested for theft, at which point her options were to join the CIA or die in a cell in the interests of "public good."
The group began to move across the village, with Amelia using her enhanced vision to detect any murlocs before they came into view. They tried to walk silently, but Leonid's lighting display had emboldened them, so the effort was mostly unsuccessful. Soon enough, a tall green scaled transmutated fish appeared in Amelia's sight. Amelia shouted, "I see one of the beasts approaching from 1000 feet away!"
Leonid nodded, and the group prepared for confrontation. There was a silence for 20 seconds before the murloc finally came into view. It detected the group and ran at them, rasping loudly. Leonid threw his charged Machete at the beast, landing it in its neck. The creature fell to the ground, twitching and convulsing as electricity fried its brain. The group paused as it watched the murloc fry and let out a cheer of victory when the abomination stopped moving. Leonid then retrieved the machete from its corpse.
The group continued onward for a minute, inspecting huts to find survivors.
"The monsters got these guys!"
A soldier reported this from a nearby hut. Leonid headed over to investigate and discovered that the inside had nine dead soldiers, their corpses like all the rest were not devoured and simply left to rot. Leonid wondered why the murlocs didn't eat the corpses of the deceased. Was there an ulterior motive behind their actions? All the reports on them suggested they weren't intelligent, so it seemed unlikely, but this sort of almost organized attack was anomalous.
Suddenly Amelia yelled, "Four beasts! 500 feet away!"
Leonid rushed out and prepared himself for battle as the murlocs rounded the corner. Leonid electrically charged his machete again and threw it at one murloc, impaling its neck. The abomination fell to the ground, twitching and convulsing. The other three charged forward attacking wildly. Amelia fired her rifle, killing a second one, while the two survivors fell upon the group, attacking them with their claws and teeth. They knocked one man into the air, breaking his neck upon impact while another soldier had their leg bitten into. The unaffected soldiers quickly retaliated. One tall one stabbed a murloc in the lower intestines with his spear, creating a gushing wound, revealing the viscera, while two others hacked it to death with machetes. Realizing it was alone, the last murloc charged at Leonid, who targeted it with electrical bolts increasing the voltage as it got nearer and nearer, stunning it. Leonid took the rifle he wrapped onto himself and, with the pulling of a trigger, blew the murlocs brains out.