The bullet hit Arnold's dolls and sent up a cloud of dust upon impact. The doll reached down and dug the bullet from its skin, then pinched it between its fingers, before holding it up to its glowing eyes, before releasing it and letting it fall to the ground.
But, before the small metal ball h done its descent, Arnold's doll was already charging towards the girl. The girl's eyes widened in fear, and she let the gun fall to the ground. She held up her hands in surrender.
The people behind her, the ones not too injured to move, let our cries of terror before running, leaving the injured lying in the road.
"Wait!" I called, and the clay doll stopped mere inches away from the girl and turned its head 180 degrees to stare at me.
Okay creepy.
With the horrifying figure no longer charging towards her, the girl seemed to regain herself because she immediately fell to the ground to retrieve the gun.
"Wait!" I called again, but this time to the girl, "Don't pick that up, we aren't going to hurt you!"
The girl ignored me and had the gun in her hand in mere seconds and pointed it at me. The gun might not be able to kill me, but it could certainly hurt me.
Right before I thought I was going to have to talk this girl out of shooting me, suddenly a shape darted out from around one of the corners and tackled the girl. The gun fell to the ground once again.
The figure was so fast that at first, I thought it was one of the soulless monsters. I saw the brown ponytail and the black outfit.
I watched while Amber took a bunch of the girl's hair, which was auburn, in her hand before she slammed the girl's face into the road, and the girl went completely still.
"Whoa," I breathed.
Amber stood, then immediately stooped over and placed her hands on her knees, and began to breathe heavily.
"Are you okay!?" I asked and moved towards her.
Amber let out an exasperated sigh without looking up, "I've been chased around by monsters from the second I got here. I tried to fight them at first, but no matter how many times I hit them, they wouldn't stay down. I finally got away when I saw this girl threatening you with this object." Amber trailed off when her eyes caught the mental object lying on the ground. She bent over and picked it up and dangled it in her hand.
"Careful, I warned, taking the gun from her and clicking on the safety before handing it back to her. "Those things are dangerous," I said.
One of my earlier foster families had been big into hunting, and one of their sons had shown me how to work a gun.
"Really, what does it do exactly that makes it dangerous?" she asked, gripping the gun in her hand and lifting her brown eyes to look at me.
"They put holes through people with small metal balls."
"Hmm," she said and lowered to her side and looked down at it, "Mind if I keep it? I lost my channeling weapon when I crossed over."
"Sure, I don't care," I replied, "But put that away for a second. We've got to move some of these injured people somewhere safe. I can't have them remonstrated."
"Wait, so they were once monsters? Amber asked and pointed at the woman she had knocked out and the injured who lay beyond her still body.
"Well, I guess I didn't have time to explain before I was sucked through the portal, but we just need to kill the soulless people that crossed over from our world. If you do that, all their victims return to normal. The only problem is that it appears that only I can kill them. It looks like the dolls that Arnold filled with some of my powers can weaken them, but they can't finish the job."
"Got it," Amber said, "Now, how do you work this thing?" she asked and held the gun up to me.
"Just click this lever when you want to fire it and click it when you're done," I said and pointed to the small piece of metal on its back, "And when you want to fire a metal ball out of it, you squeeze this," I said and showed her the trigger.
"Okay," she looked back at the group of injured people who were still on the ground, some were conscious, while others were passed out.
The people who were still conscious looked at us with wide, frightened eyes when we approached them. Some pleaded for us to get away from them, and some begged for us to help them, but regardless of their wishes, one by one, we moved them into a nearby building.
While we completed this grueling task, Arnold's doll stood there just staring at us. Not that we need any help or anything, especially when we were carrying that guy who must have weighed 300 pounds. But hey, I guess having a giant lump of clay carrying you was the most calming thing ever, and we didn't want to scare these people more than they already were.
By the time Amber and I were done, we were covered in blood and exhausted from all the manual labor. We had both leaned our backs against a nearby tree to take a small break when I heard someone shout. But instead of fear, it sounded like a happy shout, and it sounded like it wasn't too far away. Immediately, the clay man turned and began spiriting away from us and disappeared around a corner.
Amber and I both exchanged looks before we quickly hurried after it without a word. Amber barely managed to keep the clay man in her line of sight, and I barely managed to keep Amber in my line of sight.
When Amber finally caught up with it after five agonizing minutes of running down allies and zig-zagging along the multiple roads, I caught up with Amber. She was slowly backing away from whatever she was seeing, and I soon saw why.
There must have been hundreds of them, all gathered together in a clump of arms and legs. Drooling people gathered around in a large mob in the middle of the road, and in the center of them, Arnold sat on the shoulder of one of his clay dolls while six of its kin surrounded it. They were all slashing at the drooling people, while Arnold excitedly and loudly encouraged them. The clay doll that was with me was slowly pushing its way through the crowd towards Arnold and his clay brothers.
Some of the soulless people on the outskirts of the group surrounding Arnold and his clay man have noticed Amber's and I's presence because they jerked their heads around. Once they saw us, they steadily began to move towards us.
"Mistress, would you like our help?" voices softly whispered in my ear. At the same time, I noticed Amber was beginning to run in the opposite direction away from them, and not wanting to be left behind, I chased after her. Arnold was just going to have to fend for himself, and hopefully, he didn't take down too many people with him.
Amber ducked into one of the buildings, and I followed her inside. The building was full of all sorts of furniture, which Amber wasted no time in shoving in front of the door once she saw I was inside, too.
"Mistress, we can help you," voices whispered again while I watched Amber shove a large desk against the doors we had come through. I still held the channeling spear in my hands.
"Do you hear that?" I asked.
"Hear what? The sound of you standing there and not helping me move this furniture?"
"No, somebody whispering. Hold on. I think this might be a necromancy thing," I said and moved towards the back of the room.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"We are the three souls that have promised to serve you," they whispered back.
"You did?" I asked.
There was a very, very long pause after that, so long in fact that I thought that maybe they had left.
Meanwhile, I heard Amber say out of my line of sight, "This is as creepy as watching Neeva do it." I ignored her, though. I was creepy, I could admit it.
"Did you forget us?" a single whisper said in a very dry tone.
"Oh wait..." is said, snapping my fingers together while I tried to bring up a memory, "you're the souls from purgatory that followed me back and promised to serve me."
"We are," all three voices chimed in together again.
"We figured," they answered, "Especially when that woman had you pinned down with mind control, and you didn't call upon us."
"Oops, sorry guys, it's been a day, and you kind of slipped my mind for a bit...but so you said you could help me? How?"
"The creature you encounter, they can't take the souls they steal into their bodies because the souls don't belong to them, but they don't release them either. Instead, the souls are left circling their bodies. If you can get us closer to one of these creatures and release us, we can capture the souls and return them to their original bodies, where they will resume living or pass on.
"You can!?" Then an alarming thought occurred to me, "Wait, you heard that conversation and saw that whole thing with Greta, what else have you heard and seen?"
"We see everything you see unless you send us away, and you haven't yet."
"You mean..."
"Yes..." all three voices said at once, and I felt my face heat up.
Just then, there came a loud banging from the front door.