text: [Themes: horror, horror]
  
  You are woken in the night by a sudden pain in your mind. You immediately recognize it as an attack like before and slam your defenses into place. You have time to examine the incoming attack and find that while the last one came with strong emotions of anger and hatred, this one was nearly emotionless, simply the attack itself.
  
  You prepare for the pain to worsen and the headache to start but you quickly realize that it's simply not that bad. Your new defenses are immeasurably stronger than before, protecting you with much less effort than before and you find that you can easily block the attack without a single crack forming in your protective shell.
  
  You start to look out through your defensive ice wall and feel like you can see the source of your attack, its faint and you have to stretch your senses far out but even with your concentration split you think you can manage it. You sense a powerful mind, like a green sun burning at the center of the city, you sense something beside it, something very similar but not so bright. "Can there be two of them there?" You think.
  
  You begin wondering what to do, unlike before, you are easily handling the attack and have concentration to spare so you decide to see what you can do, you begin pushing back against the attack through your defenses and feel it being moved back a little. You feel surprise through the attack now. "Hah, didn't expect that." You feel it slamming back against the wall in your mind stronger than before but still causing you no difficulty until suddenly you sense the second mind you had spotted flare up and you feel a second attacker on your mind.
  
  With two of them attacking you feel the pressure against your wall build and cracks begin to form so you revert all your attention to shoring it up and manage to keep any more damage from being done, however the headache and pressure is growing and you know that eventually you'll have to rest or pass out like before.
  
  You decide to try your new move again and concentrate on suddenly pushing back against both attacks as hard as you can. You are rewarded by them being pushed away from your defenses and feel the surprise again but you can now feel the pain getting worse and you know you have a nose bleed.
  
  You are sure you can beat one of them, concentrate on a sudden attack against the first one that attacked you.
  
  They are surprised and wavering, hold out but keep concentrating on your defense.
  
  > keep the defence in place
  They are wavering and surprised that you could not only hold out against both but that you pushed them both away from your mind for a moment. If you hold out a little more then they are sure to give up or retreat soon. You put everything into strengthening your defense once more and you see the ice-like shield growing slowly, like you imagine a glacier might.
  
  But the attack stops and does not come again, instead you feel a light tingle at the edge of your mind. You think it's a different type of attack and concentrate on defense again but finally realize that it isn't. you actually have no idea what is going on.
  
  You carefully reach out through your defense with your mind and find that you sense a small thread from one of the minds in the city; as soon as you touch it you hear a voice in your mind.
  
  "Ah, there they are, connect already so we can talk properly!" You are about to respond but realize that the comment wasn't meant for you as a second voice joins the conversation "Yes, yes I'm here, had to get the last of the sentinels back under their orders, can't leave them wandering around afterall!"
  
  You decide it's time to find out what on earth is happening so you think hard and them "WHATS GOING ON! WHO ARE YOU!" You hear an immediate response now "Oh dear me boy don't shout! That would hurt my ears if I was using them, the more you concentrate the louder it is so just relax a little when you speak yes?"
  
  Even more confused than before you think back, more gently "Erm, sorry, first time doing... whatever this is?" You hear chuckling from the other minds "Yes well we gathered that from the shouting. Hmm we really should get on with this though; you don't actually seem like a bad lad so sorry about the attack there. An unfortunate case of mistaken identity. We have an old enemy to the West that we though was trying to invade again when you skirted out borders. The colour of your mind gave you away once you started to concentrate but we couldn't guarantee you weren't simply a different Harbinger trying to move in. You made no attempts to attack and simply repelled us so we thought it was best to check before destroying your mind."
  
  You consider this privately before sending out your thoughts again "Well I was holding you both off pretty well there, I think I could have held out." You hear the chuckling again "Ah boy you really are new to all this aren't you. We both have rather large standing armies to maintain so we were only using half our abilities on you at most. Don't get me wrong you were strong and held out well but at best you could match one of us for strength and we clearly know more tricks than you do."
  
  You pause considering this for a moment, you thought you had been doing well but clearly you had a lot more to learn, if they had attacked with full force you might have lost even before waking up. Your thoughts are cut off when they continue again. "But we must check, what are your intentions with the humans you are with? And do be honest now, we can tell when other harbingers lie, their colour alters."
  
  "I'm going to have to find out what this colour business means soon." You think before responding "I'm their guardian and we are heading to the Eastern colony, if you plan on stopping us I will fight you again and I have few tricks I haven't show you too." You hope they buy your bluff. The response finally comes. "Well you did lie we think, but we are pretty sure it was about having other tricks, the bit about protecting them we believe. So we are content, we don't eat humans if that is what you are worried about, we actually have our own thriving colony here in the centre of the city. You are more than welcome to join us if you want and we can even teach you a bit about your gift! Bye for now and safe journey, we hope you choose to join us though!"
  
  You feel the thread vanishing and are left with more questions than answers for now.
  
  > FInal push East
  You hear nothing more from the 'City Minds' as you have taken to calling them and with your abilities the trip to the East goes very smoothly indeed, you can easily get rid of any infected in your path and ensure that the convoy doesn't have any further difficulty.
  
  As you approach the East there are more and more road blocks but you begin using nearby infected to clear the way ahead during rest breaks to make sure things are as easy as possible. Finally after a couple more days of travel you reach the bridge. There used to be several bridges over the river but after the infection spread and the military got involved there are only two left the soldiers told you. This was one of the biggest with three lanes each way and thick concrete construction so it was able to stay standing without much difficulty. When you asked about the others they told you some of them collapsed under the weight of panicked people and cars hitting their cables and supports and a few were blown by the military. Leaving just the large Northern and Southern bridges intact.
  
  As you get closer to the bridge you sense several infected on it, you don't want to pull them back towards your group in case they get too close and you don't want to force them out the other side towards the colony so you have them all jump off the sides into the river. "Well it's not as if they even care about the water" You think as you feel them hit the water and begin to sink. You release them and nod to the Capt. that the coast is clear as the convoy rounds the last corner and the road right across becomes clear. Sadly you can see that it is entirely blocked by vehicles parked and crashed on almost every visible inch of it.
  
  The Capt. gets back on his tailgate and calls out to everyone "This is as far as the jeep goes but the bridge is clear of infected and the soldiers will still be able to protect you. While we were in contact before the colony controlled everything up to the river on their side and kept it safe for refugees so once over we should be able to walk right there in a few hours."
  
  He gets back down and the soldiers begin to head out first with the other survivors behind. You feel ahead over the bridge just to make sure but find it completely clear so start walking. Just as you reach the edge however you start to feel something at the limits of your abilities. You pause and concentrate on sending out your senses only to find that you see several powerful minds ahead, looks like three in blue and one in green.
  
  > carefully approach
  You move forward more carefully now, keeping an eye on the minds when you see them all flaring up bright. "They are concentrating" You think as you put up your defenses as strongly as you can. You immediately feel pressure all around and know that all four of them are pushing on your defenses, not attacking yet but clearing making their presence known in a very "We could destroy you if we wanted" Kind of way.
  
  You carefully do you best to send out a tendril of thought like you had seen the city minds you and sense some confusion from the minds around yours. You look at it and realize that it is clearly wrong so try again a slightly different way, again you know immediately its wrong. You start trying a third time, realizing that the city minds weren't joking when they said you still had a lot to learn when one of the minds around yours suddenly changes to feelings of open amusement, quickly followed by the others. A tendril of thought reaches out to you and you thankfully latch onto it, realizing that your attempts at making one were failing horribly.
  
  "Erm, hello and thank you for making the link thing, I've never started one before." You hear laughter in response and a definitively feminine voice responds "I realized that after your third attempt was looking as bad as the first two. So young one, why do you approach our territory? You mind is blue so I assume it's not an invasion?"
  
  You think for a moment before responding, you assume they are at least as learned as the city minds so there is no point in lying "Well, I was escorting my friends to you, they are the survivors from the stadium. We were hoping for sanctuary with you at the safe colony." You are about to wait for an answer when something else occurs to you. "Oh and what do the colours mean, I was attacked by a red mind before and the city minds are green..."
  
  You hear a bit more laughter and an older stern male voice responds "The colours are your beliefs, you can tell a harbingers final choice from his mind. Just as different infected minds show different colours and different uninfected show differences we do as well. Shouldn't you know all this? Your teacher was far too lax!" You hear the female voice again almost cut him off "Tev, you do realize that he probably doesn't have a teacher? You were the last nice harbinger in the west of the city and the two in the centre wouldn't have taught him to be blue now would they? They are nice guys but he would have definitely been a green with those two and their choice of entertainment." You hear the male voice grunt before another new one cuts in "Taco, enough of that, the important news is that there are more survivors from the stadium, we thought they were all lost!" The voice belonging to taco comes back in "Yes, yes, but I told you SOME of them would make it didn't I and he did ask about the colours."
  
  You finally cut in again "Erm, sorry to interrupt but does that mean we can all come in? and erm what do the colours actually mean?" You immediately hear the voice belonging to Tev come back in "Blue like yours means a protector, you decided that you are human and want to protect others, Red like you mentioned means the opposite, means the harbinger decided that they were not human and eats them like prey, green is amongst the more difficult shades, means they don't actively kill and eat humans but aren't protectors. More like they think themselves different and above humans but don't see them as prey either." Again he is cut off "And yes you all may enter if you choose, just know that you'll have to live by our laws. They are fair laws and our people are happy but they are a little restrictive for some as we don't kill infected unless we are forced too."
  
  > That works fine by you, head in with your friends
  You head over to the Capt. "So, I guess this is where you head off to rescue another wave of survivors?" The captain uncharacteristically smiles "We will be heading back out to the North this time, the West is too dangerous with that other harbinger and any survivors left have been over-run by now. We could use your help, or the help of your new friends there if you get the time." You pause for a minute before replying "You know of the colonies guardians?" The captain waves to his troops and begins heading out as he replies "It was the most logical answer to their survival."
  
  You watch him leave then head across the bridge with the others. You learn a lot from the guardian minds there over the first few weeks, which is lucky considering what happens after...
  
  This is in fact the Best current ending in the game, I just wrote that last line to mess with you all!