While Drew was sorting through the notifications, Windsor and Cabellos had been roused. He vaguely recalled hearing one of them grumbling about wanting a steak while he did so. The thought hit him hard. Without power, every steak in DC was spoiled by now. Meat, in general, was going to be hard to come by; there just weren't a lot of animals around here. Not unless you want to eat manaborn spiders, cockroaches, or squirrels. Drew didn't really look forward to that. Thoughts of food made his stomach rumble. It had been a couple of days, and he hadn't had anything more filling than a bag of chips and some nuts. A couple of days, which meant Zoey hadn't been cared for in days.
It used to take 15 minutes to walk from his car to the watch floor. It had taken him a couple of hours to walk the first hundred feet of that walk. In no traffic, he could be home in Arlington in fifteen minutes. Something told him that the cars wouldn't work anymore though, which meant he would need to find a way to travel miles on foot through a monster-infested DC, cross the 14th street bridge, and then make his way through Arlington to his apartment. At his current rate of travel, it would take weeks.
Even if he made it back, there was no assurance that Zoey was safe. In fact, odds were she was already dead, and Rob was also most likely dead. He had family all over the country; his sisters were in New York and Seattle, and their parents in Nashville. His parents were probably a little better off than him, as they were on the edges of those metroplexes. His other two siblings were in Idaho and were likely in the best spot, more natural creatures around and probably no nexus nearby, so the mana warping wouldn't be as bad... He hoped.
The sheer weight of these realizations hit Drew and he buried his face in his hands, his elbows making smudges on the cherry wood table. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he jerked up, not having heard anyone approach. "You alright there, bud?" Sabin asked.
"Yeah, sorry, it just hit me there for a minute. All this." Drew gestured towards the glowrock in front of him. "It's never going to go back to normal again. My family is thousands of miles away and I'm most likely never going to see them again. Zoey is probably dead, and I'm stuck in this gods damned bunker fighting spiders." Drew kept his voice low, decades of societal reinforcement telling him that he should be acting manlier in front of this beautiful woman. He looked up and saw the other three eyeing him out of the corner of their eyes from the far corner of the room. They were clearly waiting for Sabin to calm him down from his mild freak out before they began.
Sabin laughed softly, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, it's just...it's nice to know I'm not the only one barely keeping it together." She gestured to Drew's uniform. It was covered in dried blood, blue ichor, and ripped in half a dozen places that he had no recollection of. "Shit, you walked in here like a goddamned spartan dripping blood and talking about killing dozens of spiders like it wasn't a big deal. We haven't even been able to leave this room and there are four of us. IT2, I know we don't know each other, but with what you've done...you've got to be one of the strongest people I've ever met." She settled into the chair next to him.
"Drew."
"Pardon?"
"Drew, my name is Drew. If the world is over, then I'm not going to go by the designator the coast guard assigned me. The 'slave name,' as someone I knew once called it."
"Kathryn, or Katie, take your pick." Sabin said with a smile at Drew, "I think we all had our come to Jesus moment a little earlier, the benefit of not being a lazy ass and sleeping the last two days away." They both laughed, each of them understanding that the other was forcing the laughter. They were in a terrible situation, but at least they were in it together.
"Thanks, Katie, I'm sorry for losing it like this."
"Hey, no apologies. As far as I'm concerned, you're my knight in filthy ODUs come to bring this damsel out of this, what did you call it? Gods damned dungeon." Katie winked at Drew and stood up, "Need another minute? I think I can hold Mitch off for a bit, but we're all a bit hungry, and we're sort of counting on you for dinner."
Drew laughed again, a little less forced this time, "No, I'm good now." He reached out to grab her elbow, squeezing slightly. "Thanks." Katie just gave him a smile and nodded.
"Alright let's do this thing," she said loudly enough that the other three could hear. They all made their way over to the table. Drew stood up as they came near, reaching out a hand to shake with the two men as he introduced himself.
"Hey, I'm Drew."
"IS3 Juan Cabellos. It's good to have you here, Drew." The younger of the two men replied. He was short, a few inches over five foot on a good day, and had the dark hair and skin of a Latino. Drew guessed he was probably Puerto Rican. The Coast Guard attracted a lot of the islanders.
"OS2 Mitch Windsor. I hear you know where some food is?" Mitch was taller than Juan, and he possessed the thick forearms of a man who did a lot of weight lifting.
The Ensign elbowed Mitch, "We'll get to that, sorry about not introducing myself earlier, I'm Sarah Rothschild."
"No problem, Ma'am," Drew said as he shook her hand as well.
"Well, shall we? We're on a bit of a timeline before Mitch here hulks out from hunger." Sarah took a chair and everyone else followed. "I guess I can start. First thing we need to do is recover the food and supplies IT2 gathered before he was attacked by the spider queen. They shouldn't be far." She glanced around, "Drew, I know you said you wanted to destroy the eggs? How long do you think that's going to take?"
"Ahh, well, I have a couple of really large aoe spells that I think should be able to take out the eggs in a few seconds. Problem is I haven't really had a chance to cast them yet, so…" Drew shrugged.
"Sorry, I'm not familiar with that term, what does aoe stand for?" Rothschild asked.
"Oh sorry, it's a gaming term, it means area of effect. The ones I have are a ten-meter radius all based around a storm xatherite."
"What do you mean based around a storm xatherite?" Mitch asked.
"Oh, right, you guys didn't get a tutorial. When you attune your xatherite and they're linked together, then you can unlock linked powers. The ones I got are fire and ice linked in with the storm and it just increases their damage and changes the damage type to include fire and ice." Drew explained. "Guess I'll just tell you all the rest of mine. I have two versions of fireball which is a…ranged explosion, really. Another two versions of a cone spell, the different storm spells I mentioned earlier. Uh, I also have a couple of defensive buffs, a spell called dancing blade, which summons a sword that attacks on its own. Two more reds that are my only individually targeted ones: one is a long-range spell called acid dart, and the other is a short-range one called spark that does electrical damage. Last is a slow recharging buff that gives me the equivalent of a good night's rest after I cast it. Oh, and I got a green xatherite from the spider queen that I can't slot yet."
The four of them just sort of stared at him. "That…is a lot of spells," Juan spoke for all of them. He looked at the other four and then with a shrug, "I guess I'm next, I'm mostly indigos. There are two spells that might work well with you, one called illusory fire that allows me to pretend to throw fireballs, but they must believe them for it to do any damage, and with you around that might actually work. The other is a fake dart projectile with the same limitation. Another is a buff that well, hulks a guy out, makes him look bigger, and causes their melee attacks to do extra damage. I can also summon a lesser earth elemental, which doesn't seem to be very effective in combat. My last is a violet that allows me to repair clothing." He gestures to Drew's uniform, "I can fix that for you, haven't really had a chance to use this one yet."
"Oh, that's great, does it clean it at the same time?" Drew asked. He was filthy after the fight with the queen. He started to unbutton his blouse so that Juan could fix it.
"Guess we'll see," Juan said with a smile, as he took the blouse and holding a hand over the rips in the uniform, began muttering under his breath.
"I'll go next. You already know about my Knight. I can also create walls; I have a green spell that allows me to move super light stuff with my mind and the glowrock one. The last one I would have killed for before this whole thing, but it's worthless now. It allows me to cast an illusion on clothing to make it appear to be something else," Katie said matter of factly.
"Nice. Trust me, you're worth it for the light alone, these things are gonna be amazing when we get out there," Drew said, pointing at the glowrock in front of him. His enthusiasm for not being in the dark anymore was obvious.
"I'll go next, its short. I've got a bunch of random colors. The first one is 'group cure' which heals all allies within seven meters of my target. The second is a buff called mana jump, which increases the target's mana charge stat by three. The last is a green called mind sense and it allows me to form connections with up to four people, and I can sense what direction they are from me." Sarah offered her part, and Drew could tell she was upset about her lack of skills compared to everyone else.
"Well, you just became the most important person in the room," Drew said with an encouraging smile at the younger woman. "You are going to literally keep us together and alive. What's the cooldown on your heal spell?"
Sarah seemed to perk up at Drew's words, "It's pretty long, 57 seconds."
"Okay, so once or twice in a fight, unless we get really unlucky." Drew nodded again and then turned to Mitch.
"Last is me, I'm a red like you...well, except I'm not a spell caster. I have a bunch of reds that allow me to do some interesting things to my melee strikes, but mostly they just make me hit harder. I've got an orange buff that redirects some of the force from attacks away from me and a shield that blocks incoming kinetic damage."
"Alright, so, we have a healer, a tank, a support class, and two ranged damage dealers." Drew looked around the group, "Honestly, that's a far more balanced a party than I was expecting. We might have to take it a little slow and heal up between fights, but I think we should be fine." He looked over at Juan, who had finished mending his uniform, and gladly put it back on, even if it was still covered in blood and gore.
"You guys do look a bit rough though; I want to try casting my refresh spell on someone else… Ma'am, you look like you've not slept in a while. Mind if I try it on you?" Drew asked Sarah. She just nodded. So Drew reached a hand out to grab hers, his other hand forming the seals to cast the spell. When it was done, the bags under Sarah's eyes disappeared, her shoulders relaxed from the invisible tension she had been carrying, and she stood up, stretching.
"Man, I would have killed for THAT back at the academy. That's better than a dozen cups of coffee. Gosh." Sarah beamed at Drew, and he realized that a lot of her sourness was just plain being tired. He tried to imagine how she must have felt being responsible for the group, despite being one of the youngest members of it.
"How did you do that? You didn't say a word," Juan asked, staring at Drew incredulously.
"Do what? Cast the spell? I just formed the seals for it with my other hand. How do you cast your spells?"
"We all have to say a bunch of weird words," Katie offered. Drew finally realized that Juan hadn't been muttering; he'd been casting the spell under his breath. "Even Mitch has to say his xatherite's name to active them."
"Oh, well, yeah…the only ones that really need much more than a thought and a point are the buff spells, and maybe the storm spells. Like I said, I haven't actually tried to cast those…the three longer spells take a couple of hand seals each."
"Wonder what the difference is. It'd be really nice if I didn't have to say Illusory Fire when I tried to damage people. I have a feeling they aren't going to believe that it's going to hurt them if they understand English."
"I dunno, try activating them by just pointing and thinking of the spell. That's what I do with all my attack spells." Drew hadn't realized just how individual the system was. Now that he thought about it, they could all have different types of xatherite nodes other than the constellation type he had. "Mitch, try using yours with a thought. Swing your fist around a bit; I don't want to be throwing imaginary fireballs around in here."
Mitch adopted a fighting stance and looked away from the rest of the group, then threw a punch his hand crackling with lightning as he did. "Hah! It works," he crowed, "That'll help a ton with my breathing while I fight."
After a few more minutes to sort out the division of labor, Sarah cast her mind link and buff on the four of them. She and Juan would stay back, to let them back into the room and prep all of their things for the trip. Meanwhile, Katie, Mitch, and Drew would go recover the supplies and kill the spider eggs.