Arc 2: The Endless Summer

"MOIRA!" Long, horrible seconds passed before John finally managed to **** enough strength into his own lungs for him to yell. He could feel his arms curling and cradling around Grace's limp body, under her back and legs, as he **** himself to his feet and tried to ignore the way she weakly shivered against him. She didn't speak... but she didn't jump or jerk in surprise when he yelled right next to her either. It was like she couldn't even hear him. "Damn it! WHERE ARE YOU?!" He still couldn't feel the tears running down his cheeks by this point, but he could see them. The blurry, stinging, salty wetness that filled up his vision was the only thing that he had to tell him that he was crying, but he didn't focus on it or try to wipe them away. He just acknowledged that they were there and moved on. He couldn't bring himself to focus on his own pain, on the hits that he had taken in his fight with Michel. If he had even still felt it after getting to Grace, his body didn't let him know about it. In a way, it was almost like the pain had disappeared. The only real pain he could feel was the part of him that was missing from when the ring had used up some of his soul.

"ANSWER M-" His shout was cut off by the abrupt drop of a large, grey shape into the middle of the street in front of him. It fell from the buildings and crashed down into the roof of one of the cars below, crushing and breaking what was left of the vehicle in a single, loud, bone-grinding crunch. The shape twitched and curled on the roof of the car for a moment and then went still... just in time for John to get the courage to approach and identify it. As he got near, a gentle, thick, red spattering of liquid came to rain down on the ground around them.

Thankfully, it wasn't another enemy, or even an ally, as John quickly found out. On first glance, he identified it as what seemed like a large, grey, bony wing. It was rough in texture, like it had been made completely out of stretched, misshapen stone... and was torn right off the back of whatever it had been previously attached to...

A loud, horrible scream echoed throughout the air from one of the nearby buildings. More glass fell to the ground, and John barely noticed a random bridge of ice and frost, that had never been there before, connecting two of the nearby buildings. He quickly brushed it off as something that must have happened while Michel had been **** him out.

The gamer swallowed and hugged Grace a little tighter to his chest before a flash of light went off above him. It was brief and only appeared for an instant, but the golden spray in one of the nearby buildings could have only spelled hope for him. It just meant that he had to climb five stories first to get to the paladin in time... if it was the paladin's light that he had seen. He considered turning away from the building for a moment and even tried leaving the barrier when he thought that it might be faster to get to a hospital... but he was stuck, and there was no way that he could find for him to get out. Not in time. As far he could tell, the walls of the barrier must have been miles out... so he couldn't have forcefully broken through them.

You are locked within a trap barrier! You must defeat everything inside before you can escape!

He didn't budge. The only option he had was the Paladin, and at the very least, he could have helped her by distracting other enemies while she healed Grace! If... if she could heal Grace. He didn't try to stay with that line of thinking for very long. Without another option, he charged into the closest building, one made out of red brick. Even while locked, the front door didn't manage to stop or slow John down. He simply kicked his way through it without a second thought.

At first glance, he knew that the building’s elevator wasn't going to work, and he would have been surprised if it had. The rest of the tower was dark and desolate. All signs of people and power were long gone. Small amounts of dirt and grime had gathered on the bottom floor, and in some corners John could see plants growing up out of it. The next floor wasn't much better. He climbed the stairs two to three steps at a time, bounding as high and as far as he could go with each step. At the very least, after the lobby there weren't anymore plants growing wildly up through the floor. It was all just dark and empty. A couple of idle, misshapen skeletons moved in and out of his vision as he ran past them, but they never seemed like anything natural. They looked like monsters, things that may have just been killed and cleared out before John and the others had been pulled into the barrier.

It is hopeless. The thought wrenched at John's heart and came unbidden. He scolded himself for thinking it and tried to cast it from his mind, but the feeling it left upon him stayed no matter what he did.

With each full rotation that John made around the spiraling staircase, he went up a floor. It wasn't difficult to climb one, though the speed at which he went left him winded, it just took a while... or seemed like it did with all of the stress he had. By the time that he had reached the third floor, where the building was just dark and looked like a grim representation of what the real world was supposed to look like, John couldn't feel Grace moving anymore. He had to slow down to make sure that she was still breathing, and she was, but her eyes were closed.

He talked to her, and she didn't answer.

He didn't even look at the fourth floor. He skipped right past it and kicked his way into the fifth. Finding the right room didn't take long; it had a lot of furniture shoved right outside the door like a barricade that had been broken through. The room was locked and nearly shrouded in darkness, save for a couple of broken windows on the far side of the room, but it didn't stop John from trying to enter. He kicked his way into that room as well and shoved the mess of boards closest to him out of the way. He made space to set Grace down to work and then looked up.

"Moira, I need-" he stopped, and felt his heart sink again.

There was no one in the room anymore. A single holy shield was left broken and nearly unusable against one of the nearby walls. A hammer sat uselessly on the ground next to a small pool of blood... but there were no other people in the room. Moira was gone, and the room full of ice on the building across from him was empty too... He didn't even remember screaming or hitting one of the windows. He just felt it crack and move away from him, his Infused Strike like a single small pane had been opened up around his hand... and then the rest of the window shattered and fell straight down past his arm. He lost a few hit points and saw where the glass had cut into him, but it didn't matter.

It really was hopeless.

There is no way to defeat everything in the barrier in time to save her. John tried to swallow and failed. His throat felt way too dry, and it was like there was a lump of food or something stuck in it. He turned to look at Grace, and his hands clenched into fists. She had started making sounds again, but they were weak... rasping noises, and it hurt just to hear them.

It would be a mercy. John blinked hard at the foreign thought that dashed through the forefront of his mind. His heart skipped a beat, and he could feel his skin starting to crawl as the thought left him.

"W-what?" he said and shook his head hard from side to side, like he was trying to throw the thought out. Why had he-

"JOHN!" a voice suddenly called out to him, ripping John from his thoughts as he turned to look at the building across from him. Another familiar face peered back through the broken glass. Robyn stared at him, her face furrowed, red, and huffing with worry. She looked at him and then at Grace's limp form on the ground behind him. Her fingers squeezed around the hilt of the hammer at her side. "What-"

"She's been shot!" he cried back, and Robyn's face fell. She patted her waist, like she was looking for something important there, but she didn't look for very long. Whatever she was supposed to have had wasn't there anymore.

"I-I don't..." Robyn's voice didn't answer him with the same strength it had started with. She fell to a whisper and then peered pitifully at John. "They're both gone, John. Th-there's nothing... nothing that I can do! I can't-" she paused when John looked back at her, and they both knew that no more explanation was needed. It was the paladin who could have saved her...

...not Robyn.

"I'm sorry," she said, and the hammer slipped from her grasp.

The trap barrier has been cleared of all enemies! You may now leave.