I'm awake again. I don't move, and don't let my breathing change its pace. Something woke me up in the middle of the night, and I don't know what it was, but all my senses are on high alert. There's the sound of someone shifting their weight on floorboards, and then an eerie but quiet creak of wood underneath their feet. The same sound that I heard a few seconds before. And it's only a few feet from my bed. I don't dare move. This is not good, not good, not good.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSreYZMmxeN
Footsteps. One, two. Three. They're standing above me on the other side of the bed. They can't see my face, but I see the glint of metal on the wall I'm facing. A knife, or some other small weapon. Doesn't matter, because it's aimed at me. I roll over in bed with a yell, and the person stumbles back, shocked. They're a zombie, and they quickly try to get away, but I'm faster than them and pin them to the ground, taking the knife out of their hands. They don’t say anything, but their grin is malicious. “Who do you work for?!” I ask, not bothering to keep my voice down since everybody is now wide awake and watching the spectacle.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhPYduALhrH
“I’m a Crusader, same as you dear,” they sing.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN9ZWSbfsDh
“A true Crusader wouldn’t be trying to kill the one person who could tell us how to save everyone,” Ama growls, walking over.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWvXvMTCW3j
The zombie doesn’t even flinch. “What do you know about being a true Crusader? You weren’t there when it was formed!”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBH6TYly9sR
“What, and you were?” Ama sneered.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyWKv0haIky
“I was there early enough to know what it was originally made for, before their mission was skewed,” the zombie laughs.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQJDyTXQwAk
“And what is that?” I ask, taking the knife and positioning it on the zombie’s forhead.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAO7wbRFU77
They laugh, a grating, rattly sound that chills me to the bone. “Why, to destroy the humans who made us this way in the first place, of course!” they exclaim.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSvtykrlG97
Klef kicks the zombie on the temple just hard enough to knock them out, and pulls me off them and onto the bed. Rythe and Flo (when did they get here?) pick up the zombie and carry them out of the room, where more people are beginning to gather. “What?” I whisper.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmb4prl3lli
No one has an answer for me.
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An hour later, the zombie is tied up outside the base, and everyone else is sitting around the roof of the main building, a flat expanse that has been filled with chairs, crates, tables, anything that can be sat on. A few wizards have teleported around the world and brought back several important figures in the Crusaders, who are now sitting in the center of the target everyone has inadvertently made around me. No one has been given an explanation on what’s going on yet, but people are starting to piece it together themselves. The lead Crusaders watch me carefully, and I bounce my leg impatiently. Klef had gone downstairs to get me some water while we waited for my mother, the last big name in the Crusaders, to arrive. Neither are on the roof yet.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1QlQRiFK4P
Klef walks back up the stairs with a flask filled with water, and I take a long sip, my leg not stopping its bouncing. In a bright flash of light, suddenly Ama is standing with Mom and Dad, and shakily moving to find a place to sit down. “Reese? What’s going on?” Mom asks.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH8eZQFDlqW
I swallow. “Mom, you might want to take a seat,” I rasp out.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJWGt7VrxnV
Mom looks like she’s about to protest, but Dad holds out a hand and leads her to a nearby table, which both of them sit on. All the Crusader leaders look over at me expectantly. I swallow. “Well, recently you may have heard that there have been some incidences of… traitors in our midst. That’s… apparently not entirely true. There are not traitors in our midst. We are the traitors of the Crusaders.”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9Sda6buKns
The roof erupts in questions in all sorts of languages and I hold my hands up desperately. “Please!” Klef yells. “Let Rides finish!”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzIsBa27LWk
Sullenly, the roof quiets down again. “Apparently, there are two different kinds of Crusaders working toward different goals. There are the Crusaders we know, who are working for genuine good and getting everything we can from the rick for the betterment of the poor. But there’s another side to the Crusaders, the original side, which was thought to be lost to time but has been in fact, underground for decades. A side which has been working toward the genocide of humans.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7q2jJHYhOO
“I don’t know what their reasoning is, or how this came about, but somehow we have split into two groups under the same name, working toward two different goals. It is these Crusaders, the ones who we thought were the traitors, who we are fighting against to keep the world intact, if my dreams are correct.”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx4G89rviUH
Someone starts sobbing and there are murmured curses and hexes being mumbled across the roof. Mom looks at me. “Reese… I am so sorry,” she whispers. “Had I known, I would have never…” she shakes her head.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA0I5oTogj8
Klef walks up to me and squeezes my shoulder. “The obvious question now, is where we go from here. Obviously, since the Crusaders were based on genocide, we can’t keep calling ourselves as such anymore, and who knows how many people who started it are still around, and how many of those people we can trust? But we can’t just disband, either. We need to fight this, inside and out, until we can be sure everyone who is doing this is doing it for good,” he says.713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsrJO0qNaqv
“Can’t we turn the term into a good thing?” one of the leaders asks. “Why would we need to change?”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6cZfFRB2Qv
“This name is attached to some pretty bad things, I’m not sure it can be turned into a good thing again. Besides, how would the humans working under that name feel if they knew the origins of it?” another explains. “We can’t in good conscience keep using a word that’s attached to the genocide of the very people we want to benefit.”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR1a0FnSJBt
“We could be the Campaigners,” a third pipes up. “It means the same thing, but it doesn’t have all that meaning, and we know that meaning is going to get out.”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUYVaO8nUM7
“I like it,” the second one says. “All those in favor of changing the Crusaders to the Campaigners, once we weed out all the traitors?”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWL0cfVVir9
One by one, hands start to raise. “Then it’s settled,” the second one says. “We will be the Campaigners. Once we have discovered who among us is a traitor, and jail them, we will change our name. Until then, we will continue business as normal: we will work for the betterment of this world, and the inhabitants in it. And, of course, we will stop these Crusaders among us who want genocide from destroying the human race.”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnrEWVhq1sD
There is muttered agreement all around and everyone starts moving from the target to talk with one another. The leaders all come up to me, and the one who proposed the name the Campaigners shakes my hand, ginger hair flying away on top of their head. “Thank you for alerting us to this, Oracle, we will make sure no harm comes to any human, and it’s because of you we know how to prevent this.”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2MNAEZPtj3
I smile uncertainly. “It’s no problem, really. Will you be staying the night?”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYAOEqXTIND
“I think we all are staying, if only for a little while, just until we can figure out what to say to everyone working for us.”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcfScxBiOKq
I nod. “That’s to be expected.”713Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlMjUu2Fnf5
They nod in kind and just as they’re about to say something else, a cry arises from behind them. “DUCK! We have incoming!”
