The Messengers of Sanctuary

25 - Chicory

Chicory stoked the fire in her blood. Feeling the heat eagerly rise as she gave it more fuel. She watched the nightstalkers carefully, trying to see if it actually made any difference in her scent.

There was silence for a long moment as Chicory slowly increased the heat.

Trinity inhaled a bit louder, lifting her head and looking at Nina. "it does change. It's really odd though."

River growled slightly, "my instincts are kind of mad at her right now. They figured out that she's not edible a while ago, but they apparently keep forgetting..."

Chicory smirked, "so if you ever go into a blood frenzy I just need to make the heat go up?"

River gave her a flat look but sighed, "yeah either that or do that weird chill thing, it has the same effect."

Nina was scribbling fiercely, but she somehow still had the presence of mind to ask an unscientific question, "You don't have the Controlex?"

River nodded, "yeah, and before you ask, I'm not interested in it. It would mess with my instincts and I already have them conditioned how I want them." Chicory just looked at them confused, controlex? What?

After a moment, Nina stopped writing, "alright, so what does the heartfire smell like? I've been looking at the cells and besides physical similarities, it's very different from the zombie virus. It also doesn't have any triggers, which is...disappointing."

"It's a subtle undertone to her scent," Trinity explained, "but it's also a bit more than that, it gets more obvious when she pulls on that heat, but besides that I've got nothing. It's not doing much to my instincts besides smelling a bit sour."

River glanced at Chicory. "This is like describing what water tastes like. It's just a scent."

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It was an odd sight for sure as three humanoid shapes ran along a long abandoned road in the middle of the night. At first glance, most would assume them to be fairly ordinary people, albeit a bit strange mannered. They ran, almost entirely tireless as the miles fell past behind them. One seemed more sure of her steps than the other two, pounding along the highway with even and almost dance-like strides. All three had glowing eyes, piercing the darkness and leaving artificial lights as unnecessary. Two blue and one red.

It had been two days since they'd left Ironwind behind, Zach still kept giving River odd looks about the fact that he was a zombie, but there was little to no contention in the group. Chicory plotted ahead of the two, cresting the hills and spotting the various potholes that marred the ancient road.

By her calculations, they should be meeting Thomas and Kade's path soon enough, and thanks to River's sense of smell, they would easily find the two messengers.

Chicory wasn't concerned as they traveled, she rehearsed in her head what she would say to explain her plan to the two, and really, after this Chicory and River would be going sharply south, to scout out their ideal location for a base in mexico, hopefully they would end up taking over an existing stronghold instead of building one from scratch.

Meanwhile, other messengers would be sent into the great plains area to see about getting a base nearer to the east coast and florida area. It would greatly increase their radius. They had sent caravans of traders there before, and as far as they could tell, the people would be receptive to the connections that Sanctuary could provide.

Chicory tried to think of what that would be like, the idea of connecting the world into a congruous whole. The idea of rising from the fallen state of the world. The idea of finally experiencing and appreciating the joys of the world that she barely remembered.

They found Thomas and McKade later in the day, as the sun began to rise and River long since donned his sunglasses. Thomas didn't really want to have a newb hanging around, but McKade happily welcomed Zach, easily agreeing to Chicory's request that he show him the ropes.

Chicory also gifted them several vials of the true cure and told them to get them to Sanctuary for someone to look at. It was always possible that the cure only worked on the western zombies. It would be frustrating, but not out of the realm of possibility to get Nina enough eastern zombies to make a second cure.

The fact that there was a true cure was still rather startling to her.

River seemed happier once they parted ways with Zach, but Chicory could have just been imagining things.

They continued southward, passing through unknown and unknowable land, marking strongholds on Chicory's map, and wishing there was a faster way to let Sanctuary know their locations.

As it was, that would have to wait until they returned. The current plan was for Chicory and River to stick around the new base location for a bit, after a few months five groups of messengers would move down there, and they would focus mostly on finding all the settlements and establishing routes between them.

Chicory knew the steps after that, but she was getting kind of tired of huge detailed plans since River was spouting them out like a sparking party coordinator. In fact, as he talked about the ideas and bounced plans off her, Chicory was fairly certain that he was a lot happier and a lot more talkative.

"I don't think I've ever heard you say so many words at once." Chicory idly observed.

River paused, giving her an odd look. "If a conversation has no purpose, I'm not going to participate."

Chicory somehow understood the sentiment. Sometimes she wished she could just connect with people immediately or not at all. But that wasn't how it worked, in fact, it wasn't even close to how it worked.

"That would be much easier, yes. If you find a way to do that without losing an entire web of contacts, please let me know."

River gave her a dirty look, but they kept running.

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River has to speak one word for every vote!

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This is the end of part 2, part 3 going up tomorrow, have a lovely day!