Chapter 89: For The Love of Babylon... This is Just My Nature Now.

Dion stood himself to his feet within the next moment, headed to open the door, and Paris came out into the corridor after him, where they immediately met a man who hurried them down the hall.

’I seriously hope they didn’t bring anything dangerous back with them!

The floor of the area that they had evacuated by this point, after so much time of it raining, was half flooded.

Rain drove in through the broken windows, coming through in angled sheets that reached across the tiles, and the sweet metallic smell of the prana within it was thick enough that Dion found himself a little relieved by it because, all thanks to it, his sense of smell had been largely distracted from the scent of that woman’s blood.

As they turned down to where the staircases were, before any of the group had turned out and around the corner, they heard three sets of feet climbing up from the wet sound of their footfalls, and strangely, one of them sounded odd, as if dragging.

"Oh my god... what happened out there?" One of the men at the front of the group muttered.

When they, within the next few seconds, finally appeared around the corner before all of the dozen or so people who had come to see, Anton had Marcus held up with his one arm over Anton’s shoulder, and Yara was holding him under the other side with blood spilling down onto her haggard figure.

"Is that Marcus? Where’s his—"

Marcus’s left arm was mostly gone, now ending midway above the elbow. At the same time, Anton had a deep cut running across the side of his face that was still bleeding.

A belt had been cinched and pulled so tight that the leather had sunken down into the swollen flesh, and slowed down the spill of blood to the point where hardly more than a slight seeping of it ran down his hip and dripped off the hem of his shirt, smearing across Yara’s side.

Irvin, his expression exhausted and darkened with frustration as he pulled for air, was right behind them with his machete still in his hand.

His head hung, and his face had gone the colour of ash.

"Jesus...."

Anton was cut across the bridge of his nose and underneath his right eye, and three parallel slashes ran from his shoulder down to his sternum, through the shirt and through the skin under it. The blood had dried into the creases of his neck, and the rain had washed new lines down through the old.

Yara’s left leg dragged along a little behind her right, the trouser fabric dark all the way around the calf area.

Irvin sat himself down against the wall the moment he was through the doorway, just as Anton and Yara did, and he set the machete on the concrete beside him.

"Somebody get the blankets and cloths here!"

"Find the first aid kits as well! Hurry!"

Paris had stopped three steps behind where Dion stood closer to the front of the group, his expression even.

Dion glanced back at him once to see that his expression had paled somewhat, his eyes quivering. Perhaps, if there was some other good that came out of this, it was that it would expose Paris to the consequences of the reality awakened had to live before he put himself into the thick of everything.

Very briefly, Dion’s eyes had met those of every one of them, and none of them lingered their gazes on him for more than a moment.

He shook his head to himself faintly as people around had hurried into action and he remained still.

’With their case, it is not as if they would have also run into a special plant that is drawing in birds hunting for it. With none of them having been turned, its either they encountered gnolls or the other land animals are also transforming.’

Dion half glanced behind everyone to see Madeline and Basil hurrying towards them. The young woman’s eyes were wide and strained with urgency, while Basil’s brows furrowed deeply.

"Move!" Basil demanded as they approached.

Then Madeline began to slow down as she got towards the front of the group, finally able to properly see the state that everyone had arrived in.

Yara chuckled with an exhausted self-deprecation, and gave a shaky smile looking up at her, "Hey, Maddy. I think... I’ll have to re-think just how much I like the rain."

Madeline’s hand rose to cover her mouth, looking down at them, sitting with their backs to the wall, and then she immediately hurried forward to Yara and Marcus.

Her urgency spilled over into questions about what had happened, checking on them.

And within those few moments, Dion wasn’t at all listening.

His focus was entirely on the way that the prana in the air was interacting with their bodies. Especially the way that it was interacting with Marcus’s.

’It feels different from how it naturally feels when it’s interacting with Paris and Madeline... He thought to himself with some fascination.

He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what about it was giving him this feeling, but there was definitely a different feel to it, and his hint came from looking at where it seemed to concentrate itself on their bodies.

’The way it’s focusing its attention especially on their injuries... is that where the difference in sensation is coming from?’

"Here are the first aid kits."

Dion heard a voice walk up right beside him, and his heart immediately throbbed in his throat.

She hurried forward, past him, and their eyes met briefly.

Unlike what one might have expected, she looked rather calm, and in her passing him, she even flashed him a slight, delicate smile.

And finally, in the calm that the strong smell of prana brought him, Dion was finally able to properly see her.

’For the love of Babylon...’

Dion almost felt grateful to his senses for disorienting him so much that he hadn’t been able to see her properly earlier, when he was being so strongly affected by everything.

Because now, he struggled to keep his eyes from sharpening.