The blinding rays of sunlight cut through the narrow gap in the tunnel like white-hot blades. As a vampire, direct sunlight was completely lethal… I couldn't even risk peeking through the hole without my retinas and skin instantly burning to ash.
I turned to Chris, gesturing toward the opening and tapping my eyes with two fingers.
He understood immediately. Crawling forward, Chris carefully approached the gap, keeping low in the shadows as he peered through the tiny breach to scout the area outside. While he was busy, I reached out and touched the blood-pickaxes held by Aisha and Chris. Channeling my blood manipulation, I dissolved the crystallized tools back into liquid form and safely siphoned the blood back into my body, restoring a crucial fraction of my drained vitality.
Chris pulled back from the hole and turned to the party, his face pale and dripping with cold sweat. He began speaking frantically, gesturing wildly with his hands. Because I couldn't hear a word, his briefing was strictly for Aisha, James, and Hugh.
Once he finished, Chris turned his attention back to me. To explain the situation without speech, he crossed his forearms in front of his chest to form a rigid "X"... No go.
He then raised his hands and flapped his fingers in a slow, sweeping motion, mimicking wings… The sky is crawling with winged bone-thralls.
We were trapped. But with the tunnel breach open, fresh, cool oxygen rushed into our tight crawlspace, solving our suffocating air crisis. All we could do now was sit in the shadows and wait for nightfall.
SNAP!
A violent, sickening crack echoed through the cramped space.
My head snapped around just as my visual focus caught the catastrophe. The feverish heat radiating from Lukreia's body had finally overwhelmed the weakened blood-crystal bindings I had placed on her hours ago. The hairline fractures in the crimson shell shattered completely, freeing her mutated upper body.
Before anyone could react, her chest ribs snapped outward into a razor-sharp, calcified bone blade. Driven by pure, mindless aggression, she lunged sideways, driving the bone spike deep into Hugh's side.
SPURT!
Hugh gasped in silent shock as blood sprayed across the stone.
"Get off him!" I launched myself across the crawlspace, tackling Lukreia's mutated body back onto the dusty floor.
I tore open the fresh, unhealed shrapnel wounds on my chest, letting dark vampire blood surge out. Guided by my Hemomancy, the dense crimson fluid wrapped tightly around her limbs, chest, and jaw, rapidly expanding into a thick, unbreakable crystal cocoon that fully neutralized her movements once and for all.
Breathing heavily, I scrambled off her bound form and turned to check on Hugh.
The entire party was staring at him in paralyzed horror.
Lukreia's calcified bone blade had been completely drenched in her mutated, virus-laden blood when it impaled him. Because the pathogen was strictly bloodborne, the moment that jagged spike pierced his flesh, the corrupted blood mixed directly into his bloodstream.
Hugh slumped against the tunnel wall, staring blankly down at his bleeding wound. He was infected.
Hugh stared blankly down at the dark, viscous fluid leaking from his side, his fingers trembling as he touched the ragged puncture mark. From what I knew of this demonic plague, the viral pathogen moved with terrifying speed… once it entered the bloodstream directly, complete mutation took less than thirty seconds.
He looked up at us, his scarred face drained of all color, raw terror shining in his eyes.
Moving with frantic haste, Hugh spoke to Chris, James, and Aisha one last time, his lips moving rapidly as he delivered his final words to his former allies. Tears welled in Aisha's eyes, and even James turned his face away, his jaw clenched tightly.
Then, Hugh turned his gaze to me.
He reached down to his belt, unbuckling his fine arming sword… complete with its leather scabbard. Walking over to where I knelt, he carefully bound the belt around my waist, tightening the strap so the sheath hung securely at my left hip, knowing I only had my single hand to fight with. He looked straight into my crimson eyes, his lips moving as he spoke a final, silent message I couldn't hear.
Without waiting another second, Hugh turned toward the narrow, sunlit breach in the tunnel wall.
BANG!
He drove his heavy boot into the cracked stone, easily kicking open a hole wide enough for a man to fit through. Dashing out into the blinding, scorching sunlight, Hugh charged headfirst into the open plaza of Lulu City.
Aisha tapped my shoulder urgently. She pointed toward the wide breach, making a swift, forward sweeping motion with her arm… Go! Now!
Confused but moving on pure instinct, I pulled my heavy canvas cloak tightly over my head, ensuring not a single inch of my vampiric skin was exposed to the lethal UV rays. We scrambled out of the dark, dusty crawlspace one by one, hauling the bound, crystallized Lukreia along with us.
Stepping out onto the mounds of pulverized stone and shattered masonry that used to be the Town Hall, the full scale of his actions became clear.
Hugh was sprinting full speed down the main avenue of Lulu City, waving his arms wild and screaming at the top of his lungs.
Every single bone-thrall in the administrative district… including dozens of screeching, winged horrors circling the sky… pivoted in unison, drawn by his loud, frantic shouting. The entire massive, terrifying horde swarmed after him like a wave of black locusts, chasing his fleeing figure down the far boulevard.
Hugh had willingly drawn the entire swarm onto himself. He had sacrificed his final seconds of sanity to buy us a clear, open path to escape.
Aisha grabbed my left hand, pulling me along as the rest of the party bolted off the mountain of rubble, keeping our heads down as we sprinted in the opposite direction of the swarm.
As we ran, I glanced back over my shoulder through the shadows of my hood. Down the far end of the avenue, Hugh's sprint faltered. He fell to his knees as the virus overwhelmed his body. With a series of sickening CRACK-CRACK sounds, the humerus bone in his right arm violently ruptured through his flesh, lengthening and calcifying into a massive, razor-sharp bone blade.
The moment his mutation completed and he lost his human consciousness, he stopped screaming. Deprived of the noise, the vast horde froze. Dozens of winged horrors and calcified thralls slowly turned their hollow, dilated eyes away from the newly turned Hugh and locked their gazes straight onto us.
We sprinted toward the nearest major structure standing beside the collapsed ruins… a massive, multi-story stone building bearing a painted sign for the Lulu City Hospital.
As we reached the heavy double doors of the entrance, three roaming bone-thralls lunged out from the shadow of the portico, snapping their jaws as they rushed us.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
I raised the Death Chant shotgun under my single arm, racking the slide against my hip and firing three point-blank blasts directly into their thick skulls. The heavy, enchanted slugs tore straight through their calcified armor, painting the entrance pillars in dark, corrupted blood.
The moment the dark blood spilled, the passive Lifesteal enchantment tied to my blood manipulation surged to life. Crimson streams of essence drifted from the fallen thralls and soaked directly into my body. The deep shrapnel tears in my chest rapidly knitted back together, and inside my skull, my ruptured eardrums regenerated in an instant.
The suffocating, dead silence vanished. The world flooded back with crisp, deafening sound… the crackle of fires, the roaring screech of the horde, and the heavy breathing of my team.
"Guys! Close the main door! They're coming!" Aisha shrieked, her voice echoing sharp and clear in my newly healed ears.
"On it!" I barked, stepping up to the entrance.
I slammed the heavy wooden doors shut against the oncoming swarm, immediately biting my tongue to draw fresh blood. I thrust my left hand forward, channeling my Blood Manipulation to spray a thick wave of fluid over the handles and frame, rapidly hardening it into a solid, impenetrable crystal deadbolt to seal the entrance behind us.
Turning around, I saw the hospital hallway choked with half a dozen thralls shuffling toward us from the inner wards.
"Guys, let's go there!" James shouted, pointing urgently toward a reinforced patient room halfway down the corridor.
I raised the shotgun, blowing the head off the leading thrall to clear a path.
BOOM!
Without missing a beat, we sprinted down the hallway, shoved the bound, crystallized Lukreia inside, and ducked into the room. James slammed the heavy oak door shut, throwing the iron bolt into place just as the first infected slammed against the outside panel.
Inside the patient room, we collapsed against the walls, gasping for breath as temporary safety settled over us.