The Abstraction Chronicles: The Abstract

Chapter 16: The Power of Grief

Coming to, a flash of pain shoots through my head. Putting my hand to my head I can feel a large lump beginning to swell. "That's great," I mutter. "What happened?" I ask looking around before it hits me. The yells and screams as well as the gunfire and arrows shot from bows were bombarding my ears. In front of me, the Pike Boys are holding back all sorts of Dwellers where what was left of the gate. Where it had once been a large hole was present, the meteor lodged firmly in the ground in the middle of it.

"Swordsmen, you're needed on the left flank," I hear Gandry call over the alarm system.

Paul who was right next to me before the meteor hitting emerged from behind the archer tower. "Everyone is safe. Let's get going." Nodding I follow. Doing a quick look over my shoulder making sure Cynthia was okay. She's back in line shooting with the other archers. She wears a look of determination as they line up their next shot. Running to the gate Paul and I see that the other swordsmen have already engaged the Dwellers as more and more keep charging in some larger Dwellers seem to be crushing the smaller ones underfoot.

"Glad to see you could join in the fun!" One of the Pike Boys yells to us as we reinforce them. Paul quickly unsheathes his sword and stabs one Dweller in its stomach disintegrating it. Black blood covering the blade. A large multi-headed humanoid Dweller charges me throwing a small rabbit-like one to the wind. Attempting to slash it with my sword it ducks and can get its hands on my neck squeezing. Gurgling I feel my eyes rolling back into my head as I try to stab the Dweller, but its other hand catches the tip of my blade. I would've been done right then and there had it not been for Paul whose blade appeared in its neck.

"Being new does not give you a license to go to the Beyond," he yells at me. Looking past Paul, I see waves of Dwellers making their way into the camp. A great sea of them is pushing into the camp almost as if there were no end to them. Looking to my right I somehow feel like I'm in a daze as a few of the Pike Boys get overrun and drown under the sea of enemies. Their screams hauntingly echoing throughout the camp drowned out by the gunfire above. It's at this point that I revert to being a sixteen-year-old kid. That could've been me. My legs feeling weak I just stand there in a daze for a moment. One of the swordsmen that has just disengaged from an enemy turns to me. In a split second, I feel a sharp sting across my cheek as he slaps me.

"GET IT TOGETHER!" He yells before blocking an incoming strike from a malformed crab-like Dweller.

"RETREAT!" I hear Gandry yell. His voice ringing across the camp. We're gradually getting overwhelmed both the swordsmen and the Pike Boys are suffering casualties as they're pushed back towards the center of the camp. Flying Dwellers started swooping in and carrying some Scouts off with their screams being drowned out by the chaos thus, nullifying our sniper nests.

"TO THE CENTER, MEN!" I hear Paul yell. Disengaging we all turn tail and run as fast as possible towards the center chokepoint of the camp. Getting there we see that the archers have already retreated towards the center with Cynthia and they're sending volley after volley of arrows onto our pursuers buying us valuable time to get into position. As we're turning to confront the horde a bright light blinds us all. Rubbing my eyes along with everyone else we seem to be within a blue humming forcefield. The Dwellers stop pursuing us just beyond the sudden boundary emitted. Some of them aren't so lucky and are vaporized to dust as soon as the field touches their bodies. Turning around everyone is looking at Cynthia. She's holding the stone-like object we'd recovered from the last civilization. The blue light emanating from it encasing the entire center of the camp in a sphere protecting us for now.

Walking over to Cynthia I hear Gandry ask, "Where did you get something like that? Never mind, it doesn't matter. MEN, THIS WON'T HOLD THEM. GET READY," he yells. Sure, enough several Dwellers have started bashing their bodies against it. Most of them are instantly vaporized, but the ones who weren't are starting to make a very small hole in the field. Inevitably, they'll get through and when they did, we would all die. Looking out among the Dwellers there were more than enough of them to simply swallow our small force whole.