One of the things nobody tells you about living in a world wild and, largely, alone, is that your mind goes weird. Shadows loom larger, the dark gets deeper, and the light of the sun more precious. When you tend crops, rain suddenly becomes a person, to be greeted, welcomed, and implored to return swiftly. Pests and animals that you wouldn’t have thought of twice before, became foes to be vanquished. Like those raccoons, the masked little bastards. Or the wretched crows, waiting, jabbering, plotting on his crops.
Alexander had not been a spiritual person, and neither had his parents. They were quite secular, which was a little unusual in this town. While the majority of the population spent Sunday mornings at the local churches, his family was making a big brunch and planning something outdoorsy, or he was helping the old man tinker with some project. Daily brushes with death or ruin put things into perspective a bit, mostly the lack of control you have in what goes on in the world.
The end result of that, was that your mind approached things a little differently, you gained a certain fatalism blended with personification of the world around you, attributing to it an almost Shinto spirit held by all things. Or, at least, he had. None of it was real, of course, his brain knew that. His brain also knew, deep down, that nothing was real ever since his plane had fallen from the sky. So, when what was real or not got a little foggy, no harm in indulging a bit of the fantastic. That is to say, when he put the finishing touches on a variable speed transmission on George the power hammer, he thanked the hammer for its hard work, the metal of the gears fashioned from a golem’s corpse, and the spirits of knowledge that had granted him the ability to craft the vital upgrade to one of his most important tools and was not ashamed to do so.
The noise of the steam engine, muted by his ear plugs, served as a steady beat and he practiced shifting George from half beat, quarter beat, to full beat, the three settings he felt comfortable working with. Before, the great industrial machine had only had a single speed of about one stroke per second. Alexander had improved his skills handling metal with tongs and could keep up with a faster stroke. He even had the ability to control George’s strength, with levers to produce reduced force. Modulating the output had been tricky, but Alexander had added pressure valves to vent steam and could do finer work without resorting to grabbing his smithing hammer. The same variable transmission could be copied to Ricky, the Lathe, Jerry, the band saw, and Tabitha, the drill press, to give him a bit more control. These tools, retrofitted for alternate power, opened the manufacturing playbook, and many of the schematics he’d considered nonviable before the winter were now on the table.
Agriculture was going well, and he was more or less assured of food for the winter, if only this winter. Beyond that and the expiration dates on his stocks added too many question marks for confidence. Alexander had needed a greenhouse, so he built one. Rice would grow poorly in this northern climate, so would peppers, and anything subtropical, which included lemon trees, oranges, and couldn’t hurt for grapes. A 4b to 5b climate demanded warmth and higher humidity than Maine offered, so, for three days, the young survivor of the end times built a bombproof structure framed by two by fours and paneled with what were once astronomically priced double paned windows from the hardware store. The temperature, according to a mercury thermometer, stayed a nice, balmy, eighty-seven degrees, even on a sixty-degree late May morning.
He needed an irrigation system for said greenhouse, so he rigged one up with PVC, fittings, and some drip tape. Screws he had aplenty, and brackets, and hosing, and a particularly wonderful tome describing the marvels of a ram pump gave him the ability to use head pressure from the creek to push water uphill and through his drip irrigation system.
Things were going so well that when a huge, shaggy bear with foot long claws ambled from the mountain to tear into his Dire Bee hive, he wasn’t even surprised. Just horrified. The sound of boards breaking, and a pained roar launched him to his feet and he was out of the drafting room in his smithy before he’d stopped to register the source of the sound, spear in hand.
Sight of the great animal, obviously a mana infused mutant variant, pulled him up short. The bear was halfway into the house, digging through an exterior wall, menacing growls rumbling Alexander’s ribcage as it snapped at defending bees.
It had roared because the Dire Bees were pissed, their queen had ordered the bear removed from the premises with prejudice, and they were complying with alacrity. Several had been swatted into insectoid pulp, but the hive’s number had doubled with access to rich, Entling boosted nectars and a massive new home that agreed with the queen’s tastes. More than two dozen were currently fighting through the thick fur, silvered, but in a metallic way, not a natural fur way, and when one managed to reach flesh, the bear roared its pain.
Abruptly, the assault on its back and hindquarters became too much, and the great bear pulled its head and shoulders free of the hive to slaughter the belligerent defenders stinging it. When it turned, it immediately locked beady, vicious eyes on Alexander and dug claws in, muscles visibly tightening to charge.
“Oh, fuck you, Pooh-bear!” Alexander shouted, and he cut loose a volley of Chaos Strikes, just about the time the bear threw itself forward.
Streaking orbs of entropic energy slammed into the bear’s head and neck, and it slid to the ground, dragging its face against the concrete, trying to shave off the agonizing magic eating away at eyes, nose, and throat. Experience against the beasts and monsters had taught the young hunter well and he was leaping forward with the spear leading, seizing the opportunity to deliver a mortal blow while the great creature was distracted. He needed to get in and get out, the swarming Dire Bees hadn’t turned their attention to him yet, but he wasn’t counting on that for long.
Whether the bees knew friend from foe wasn’t something he wanted to test.
A running leap took the young man high. His sailing arc, spear held ready, legs tucked, made him into a blade tipped bundle of deadly inertia. Alexander Gerifalte dove down on the bear’s neck with all his momentum behind the sword bladed spear forged of golem High steel. Glittering razor edged metal slipped through fur that offered surprising resistance, resistance weakened by the infusion of chaos magic he was channeling strongly into the weapon. His full weight applied against the tip finished the contest. The spear entered the bear’s spine, rending nerve tissue.
Alexander felt a moment of elation when his attack slammed home, short-lived because the bear spasmed and threw him in flat trajectory through the window of a neighboring house across the street. His head clipped the window frame and he saw stars, taking an unknown number of seconds to realize he was hanging by his legs in the window frame, half his body inside the house, legs outside. Broken glass had delivered several nasty cuts to his shoulder and arm. Wetness in his eyes wiped away to reveal blood sheeting from a long cut along the top of his head. Unthinking from the violence of the crash, he pulled free a thin wedge of glass, a sickening sucking feeling from skin and meat clinging to the shard made him nauseous when he wrested the thing from his arm.
For a moment longer his senses were dazed. When they returned, he had the awareness to roll back into the house, throwing legs back to keep them from being lacerated by the remaining glass in the portal through which he’d entered. Darting eyes glancing over the sill saw the bear, his spear still inside it, and the bees were finishing what they’d started. Weak twitches from crippled paws couldn’t stop them from targeting the bear’s face and head, especially those locations weakened by the last Gerifalte’s chaos magic.
Alexander took the opportunity to break out his trauma kit, pulling bandages free of the pouch, and opening a Ziplock bag containing the powder that was a combination of normal and enhanced mandrake leaf quick clot. Blood instantly stopped pouring from the shoulder and arm and he applied it to his head as well, grateful for the potent stinging that accompanied blood vessels sealing themselves off along the wounds. Miraculous stuff. Hands too practiced for his own liking applied bandaging and tied it off quickly. Thirty seconds after being thrown through the window, and Alexander was ready to rejoin the fight.
Only, there was no fight. The bear’s maw was yawning, and it shuddered once before stilling. Dire Bees made certain of the job in a gruesomely complete fashion. He smartly hid within the empty home to avoid their wrath. When the bees satisfied themselves that the bear would never rise to trespass again, they departed back inside the house containing their hive. Already, workers within had begun applying enhanced Dire Bee wax to seal the opening.
“Just another day in paradise.” Alexander Garifalte observed, brushing glass off his smithing clothes.
“Maybe I should start wearing the armor all the time? Or, I dunno, figure out how to make super clothes out of a monsterized flax or something, godsdamn.” He mused, not happy that he might have been killed by the glass on his way through that window.
He exited the door and, slowly, approached the bear corpse. Slowly because he was afraid any quick motions might draw the bees’ attention. They appeared fixated on repairing their hive though, so he walked slow, steady, and pulled his spear free without hurry.
“Okay, okay, first thing’s first, I gotta get the core out.” The young man whispered, talking himself through the situation, as had become normal.
Quick strokes with the knife in his hand opened only a thin line through incredibly tough bearskin, and he exerted strength to peel back the hide, sliding his knife along the meat as he did to make a larger hole. It was easier to cut his way through thick muscle, a path up through the bear’s diaphragm. He reached his arm into the wound up to his shoulder and dug around until his hand brushed a hard, crystalline shape, which he pulled free from the gory channel. Blood dripped, still warm, from the limb holding the core, and he slipped it into a pouch, careless of the viscera still attached to it, or to him.
Another tentative scan of the work on the damage inflicted by the bear showed impressive progress closing the hole in the building. If Alexander wanted beeswax, he had all he could ever ask for. Harvesting it might be a trick, however. Same story as the honey, solve that problem, solve both.
A shiver crawled across his skin at the thought of honey and reminiscence unbidden claimed him.
Alexander snapped himself free of the memory and the craving for honey and returned to his work on the bear. He cut free the claws and large canines from the bear’s jaws. Next, Alexander began the laborious task of skinning this massive beast. Hide bound to meat by tough connective tissue proved incredibly tough to separate. Two hours of effort and even smith strengthened hands were stiff and weak from strain. The hide had been peeled from neck and one massive shoulder.
“Damn, this is going to be a whole ordeal.” the young hunter summarized.
Dark was falling, this last day of May, and he retreated to his home, keeping watchful eyes on his surroundings while he stealthed. The bear was a pertinent reminder to stay vigilant. Nowhere was truly safe anymore, but he was adjusting to it.
Morning came and he rose earlier than the sun, hurrying through breakfast to get a jump on skinning out that bear. He wore his motorcycle leathers turned scale armor this time, with the helmet secured by quick release knot on his belt just in case he had to fight off bees mistaking his scavenging for aggression. The smell of flowering garden plants and soil was thick as he headed to the site. Yards converted into wildflower fields were already sprouting, shoots of various kinds coming up, a few even forming buds already. Just another couple of weeks and there would be magically enhanced wilding areas to power feed his apiary.
Humidity in the air was up, and the clouds overhead promised rain. A quick word of thanks to the clouds for their bounty was all he spared before diving back into the corpse of the bear. Helicopter droning of many large wings hummed in the hive-house, but none of the workers were out yet, what with the hour being just before sunrise, so Alexander plied his knife with gusto. Lessons learned about how to peel the hide from the tissue beneath accelerated his pace, as did a good night’s sleep and no time spent handling tongs and heavy metal in the smithy.
Day broke as he was peeling the fur back from the shoulders of the bear, both of its thick, powerful arms freed from the skin, muscles defined clearly. The bear meat, some thousand pounds or so of it, would go into his freezer and be good eating for a long time. He’d bring a hacksaw with him to part it up and haul it to the polar cored freezers just as soon as he finished with the skin. Alexander didn’t know what he was going to use this shaggy fur for yet, but it had resisted the attempts of the swarming hive to penetrate it and anything that could be made into a type of defensive layer he was all about acquiring.
None of the bees approached, not even while he got vigorous about tugging and pulling on sections of fur. They had, to all appearances, decided that he was not a threat to the hive. Perhaps these super bees were possessed of intelligence and a critter carving on a former enemy was not considered a problem to be dealt with. He didn’t know and didn’t care, so long as it meant he went about his business unmolested. Maybe they’d forgiven him for his rude treatment of their queen in exchange for the wonderful new hive? Nonsense, he got back to it.
A strange sound, discordant, awkward to his ears roused him from his work and he raised his head to see what had disrupted the single-minded focus of delaminating the skin from the muscle it covered.
After a few more seconds, a part of his brain long unused recognized the sound as human speech. It was people. He was hearing people talk!
Alexander grinned wildly and nearly broke into a sprint, unthinking of the blood and gore on his body and clothes and the knife in his hand. He was only halted because the sources of the sound were before him, striding down the street as if unconcerned by the monsters that were prowling. The sight of humans made his heart jump into action, sheer excitement.
If not for his habit of talking to himself, he wouldn’t have been able to form proper words. As it was, the act of speaking aloud, projecting his voice for another to hear instead of muttering to himself, sounded awkward and rough.
“He- Hey! Heeey! Don’t piss off the bees!” He called, nervously glancing to the hive and its, for now, docile swarm of workers.
The last thing he needed was the for the first people he’d met since falling out of the sky to get murdered by his honeybees.
Five adults, of varying ages, took in the sight of a young man in black leather and metal armor, covered in blood, and with a long silver knife standing over the half-flayed carcass of a giant bear, grinning madly and yelling about bees and stopped, incredulous. The close proximity of a hive of murderous hornets he treated nearly as if they were a normal part of the scenery.
A young woman, red of hair and tall of stature, called out to the unexpected sapient and said, “Are you fucking crazy, or what? !”
Alexander examined that question and gave it due consideration. Was he crazy? Events of recent months skittered through his thoughts rapidly.
“Yep! Crazy like a fox!” He replied with confidence.
The group turned to each other and the woman who’d asked shrugged.
A man, younger than most of them but older than Alexander beckoned with an armored hand, and suggested “C’mon over, we’re here on a scout, we don’t want to get close to that swarm. I’ve seen those things get nasty, even if they don’t look like they’re bothering you too much.”
He was smaller than most of the group, shorter and thinner than any but one stout woman of African descent. That was when the excitement of seeing real people instead of statues wore away enough for him to notice that all of these people were armed and armored. Well, of course they were! Only a very quickly dead moron would be wondering around otherwise. It was the nature of their armor that surprised him though.
They looked like something out of a Berserk cosplay. Very Medieval, maybe a little Iron age leaning. He saw chain mail and half plate, and they each had a big cross bow although only two carried it ready to deploy its wicked bolt. A large man carried a halberd, or a billhook, or something, anyway a big, long polearm with hooked blades and a spearpoint. The younger, smaller guy who waved at him had a short, wide, thirty-inch-long broadsword and a big kite shield that looked like wood laminated with aluminum. The redhead who questioned his sanity was holding a spear just longer than she was tall, some six and a half feet, with winged blades at the side of a two-foot spearhead.
Smart folk, spears were where it was at for dealing with monsters.
The third man was wearing heavier armor than the rest, a full great helm, and a big broad bladed axe on his back that looked like it was for splitting Entlings. He had to be a hoss to swing that thing, no wonder he was holding a cross bow until he needed to wield that monster. The short black lady in light chain hauberk and sturdy metal studded leather armor was also holding her crossbow, but a long straight sword, like a big rapier or something was on her hip, almost as long as she was tall, right around five and a half feet.
Was this real life?
Alexander approached the group slowly, wondering if he’d drifted off into full on lunacy, despite his earlier reply to the woman’s question. All things considered, with Fantasia to back it up, he definitely had a screw loose. But he wasn’t insane, not just yet. Just to be sure, he used his Greater Analyze to see if he could bring up information about them, the way he did monsters. Lo’ and Behold! It worked!
Shimmering scrolls unfurled with information about the travelers, which he gave a cursory inspection. He was absorbed momentarily by the fact that he could even use the skill on people he had just met. Fascinating.
Brigitte O’Conner
Class:
Lithic Lancer
Status:
Fresh, cautious
Soak: 20%
LifeForce/Armor
Head
Mana: 90%
Might
15(+5)
Height
6’6”
LifeForce/Armor
Left Arm
18/30 impact/crush resistance
LifeForce/Armor
Right Arm
Grace
12(+5)
Weight
159lbs
14/20 slash/stab resistance
Illyrian Helm
14/20 slash/stab resistance
Impetus
13(+5)
Age
22
Metal Scale Mail
LifeForce/Armor
Chest
Metal Scale Mail
Cogitation
13(+5)
Core
Boulder Opal, half rose
21/35 slash/stab resistance
Winged Spear
Wisdom
16
Origin
Gaia
LifeForce/Armor
Left Leg
Metal Scale Mail
LifeForce/Armor
Right Leg
Ingenuity
14(+5)
Sapient Race:
Human-2rd Tier (Changeling)
16/20 slash/stab resistance
LifeForce/Armor
Abdomen
16/20 slash/stab resistance
Durability
17(+5)
Hybrid Metal/Leather Cuisses
18/30 slash/stab resistance
Hybrid Metal/Leather Cuisses
Valor
16(+15)
Metal Scale Mail
Traits
Earthen bulwark, Rage, Greater stamina, Gaia’s child
Skills
Lesser full thrust, Leap, Lesser pole vault, Minor harden blade
Arcana
Lesser stone spear, Minor shape stone
Each of the travelers shivered slightly and the tall ginger lady whose scroll he was looking at scowled at him, “It’s rude to peek, jerk. What the hell kind of inspect is that anyway, it feels like I’m down to my panties.”
Alexander shrugged, “Sorry, but you folk sort of just appeared, and the last time I saw people they were zombies. I didn’t even know if the inspection skill would even work on anything that wasn’t a monster.”
The young man frowned back at the glaring stranger and bluntly decided he might as well tell her the truth of the matter in no nonsense tones, “Besides, your privacy is always secondary to my not being eaten today.”
She mulled that over and her eyebrows raised. Abruptly she calmed and shrugged, “You know what? That’s fair.”
He wondered at the wrinkling nose of the axe carrier’s face until he remembered that he was coated in a thin film of dead bear, and the temperature was rising.
“Ah, uh, you’ll have to excuse me, I was just, umm, you know, busy. With all that, and stuff.” Alexander said waving generally toward the grizzly corpse.
The big black dude with the polearm shook his head and smiled, amused at the situation.
“Did you kill that thing yourself?” He asked, skeptical, his voice rough, but not hostile in tone.
“Weeeell,” He hedged, “Not entirely.”
A leading glance at the repair work going on led by team ultra-bee accompanied his explanation.
“It was going after my beehive and they were complaining with stingers, but not having too much luck. When it turned around to swat them, I was checking to see the commotion, sort of felt like I needed to protect my bee products investment, and it made to charge me, so I stabbed it in the spine. Got tossed through that window over there while it spasmed and the hive got in there and finished it off for me while I did some first aid.” He babbled indicating his head, which he had stitched that night, and arm area, which was similarly stitched and bandaged beneath his armor.
He was aware that he was babbling but he couldn’t help it! People! He wasn’t alone for the first time since everything had gone to hell.
The dark-skinned lady, like, really dark, east African ancestry or something, must have picked up on something and said sadly, “You’ve been alone all this time, haven’t you?”
His eyes burned for no reason, and he rubbed a sleeve across them, not caring about the smear of bear stuff on his face. Allergies. It figured they’d flair up with all the pollen.
“Yeah,” He said, his voice going shaky, “Right from the beginning. I was flying. The plane died and I crashed, and everybody was statues.”
The young man couldn’t help a small, short laugh at the ridiculousness of those first days, bashed and broken by the wreck and then attacked by wolves, of all things.
“The animals were trying to kill me, stuff that shouldn’t even be found around here, and then there were goblins or something. They ate everybody else, but I didn’t know that until I found their cave and killed them all, and it was too late. I didn’t know. All winter long it was Yetis and bears and trying not to freeze. Come spring, the zombies had killed off the next town I guess, because they came over to resident evil me up, so I had to go fuck up a reaper or wraith or something. Then it was time to grow food and I couldn’t travel too far on foot, and just leave everyone like this, even after I got rid of all the zombies. It’s my home. It was my home. My folks are here, all stone, and I didn’t want to leave them like that.”
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He was crying by the end of the story, and he couldn’t stop. It was weird to feel tears without feeling sadness. Maybe sadness was just a part of him now. Whatever, it was super embarrassing, him breaking down in front of the bad asses.
The group looked uncomfortable, but it wasn’t like he could do anything about that. They found him, not the other way around, so they could just deal with it.
“Jesus Christ.” Muttered the guy with the axe.
He was having a hard time with going back over those first days, they mostly lived as nightmares in his sleep. Same story for the goblins turning his friends and neighbors into stew and zombies lurching around in the dark waiting for him.
Get your shit together, Little Falcon, he hissed to himself. It wasn’t like he was the only one who had lost people, all these travelers probably lost loved ones, and they weren’t sobbing like little girls over it. It took him a second to get himself under control and he remembered to put up his knife, which made everybody a little more comfortable.
“C’mon. You guys must have been traveling a while.” He said, trying to pretend to be casual, “The garden’s making pretty good now, and bear might not sound like it, but it cooks up alright if you season it.”
Alexander turned to lead these strange survivors to his laboratory, before their presence got his bees riled up, or something big decided to come investigate the noise and dead animal smell.
They shrugged and followed, and he only stopped long enough to carve off a set of steaks from the bear and retrieve his still unenchanted naginata. Opportunists would be along shortly to start in on the creature.
Hell with it, he commented to himself. His morning was shot what with the advent of the team of marauders, explorers or bounty hunters, or whatever these armed and armored travelers were.
The redheaded woman, even taller than him, asked, “So…you said goblins? And zombies. How did you, uh, you know, get them to stop coming?”
Alexander wondered how they’d been dealing with the monsters and the dungeons all this time if they didn’t know something like that. Or, perhaps, they did know and wanted to see if he did. Briefly, he considered keeping back information and then decided against it. They were humans, and all the humans were in this together against whatever had happened to the world. If somebody died because he didn’t tell them something vital, he might as well have knifed them in the back himself.
“Found their dungeon core.” He told the group, “Some kind of big magic crystal deep inside the odd space called a ‘contested zone’. I don’t know much except that it warps reality, and I’m not sure the place is Earth inside there. One of the places was called Tirnanog and the other was Tech’duinn. I Looked them up, they’re like, domains of myths in Irish folklore. The goblins came from Tirnanog, land of the fairies, and the undead from Tech’duinn, realm of the dead or slain or something close to it. You find the core, and, I dunno, I stabbed it. Anyway, it bled out its magic and I absorbed some of it and the planet spoke to me, did something weird to my body too, but you guys look like you have something similar, you all have the classes and stuff like I do.” The last Gerifalte rambled, having already scoped the travelers out before he approached and committed to truth telling.
They had interesting blue scrolls, just like his, but he couldn’t stop to study them in exacting detail, or he’d look like a nutjob staring into nothing. That didn’t mean he hadn’t used his Greater Analyze to make certain they weren’t hiding nefarious secrets or weren’t what they appeared, although he’d have to be careful with that because people could tell when you were snooping on them, which was a good thing. That meant he’d know if someone were doing it back to him.
He wasn’t ashamed of his caution, he was excited, not stupid. Who knows whether some particularly smart necromancer would use fresh corpses only and pretend to be friends on the road. Trust but verify. That was the only reason he’d come close to these people in the first place. If they’d been zombies, he would have played dumb a little longer to suss out what their summoner was hoping to gain from deceit, or where it might be hiding.
The youngish guy with the shield whispered, “He raided the dungeons alone?” to his comrades, but Alexander’s hearing was impeccable, and he could read lips easily with his cracked vision.
He guessed most people hadn’t been forced to do everything by themselves. Well, tough shit for him he supposed. Some people just got all the luck like that.
“I used guns when it started, you know.” Alexander explained, making sure they didn’t get the idea he was a lunatic jumping monsters with a spear right off the bat, “I’m a decent shot, my parents were in the navy and my dad took me Upta, just like all the good old boys around here. Big calibers did okay on the small stuff, but whatever Soak is, it just eats up muzzle energy, so you gotta do something else if you want to kill the bigger things. Course, you all know that, seeing as how you’re armed with magic laced gear that bypasses that crazy shit, at least a little.” He continued, while opening the door to his home away from home.
The kitchen was impeccably clean, as always. He would not leave food scent to prompt a predator to investigate his sanctuary.
“Come on in. I’ll get some tea going and you guys can tell me what’s been going on since October. Then I’ll show you the around the workshop, I guess, and the gardens. If anybody was a machinist, I’d appreciate it if you don’t laugh.” He nattered on, self-conscious about the crudeness of the life he’d cobbled together, “My set up is rough, barebones as all hell, but it’s all I could get to work with what all got cooked by the Pulse.”
Alexander couldn’t help brightening up a little at the mention of his smithy.
More cheerful now he went on, “There’s this really neat golem metal there. Don’t know if this has happened to any of you, but it turns out magic can make piles of silver ore come to life to try to eat you. Their bodies make amazing mats for forging though, so long as you can manage to smelt them, so I’m kind of hoping another one tries it. All kinds of neat shit out there if you don’t get killed getting it. Like my sweet ass bees! Yetis have some crazy cool fur but they’re sneaky fuckers, and you gotta keep your eyes peeled on those claws. Got ripped up pretty bad one time and had to lay in ice water to make it to that weird third sun rise, would not recommend. Just sit wherever and make yourselves comfortable.”
For the first time since the world ended, Alexander Gerifalte gabbed, elated to at long last have company over, even if they were strangers. The group entered and the big axe carrying guy from before echoed his earlier statement, “Jesus Christ.” as he wrapped up his rant. Nods of agreement and incredulous expressions were shared by the adventurers.
“It’s, um, thank you for welcoming us, perhaps we should introduce ourselves.” The sword and board guy, Alexander recalled the blue scroll that had read Mark Ross, said, while the assembled party sat in the indicated chairs, except for the halberd dude that barely fit through the door.
The large man slouched against the kitchen wall his eyes restless and alert. That was good, apparently at least one of them knew to keep their head on a swivel, even in “safe” places. For his own part, Alexander had been ready for something to come investigate the noise of the armored troop since he laid eyes on them. It was a slight risk, bringing them here, but he couldn’t very well entertain guests in the street.
“I know all your names, from when I checked you out earlier, but feel free to do it official.” Alexander told them, distracted by trying to figure out how much tea he needed to serve.
He liked his dark and acid strong, but figured visitors probably would want something a little milder, so he multiplied his normal dose by six then cut it in half.
The large man cradling his polearm weapon snorted at the blunt admission.
“At least he’s honest. I’m Benjamin, Steel Heavy Knight, main attacker, most veteran member, and monster hunter of this little party.” The big black guy declared, a note of good humor in a gravelly voice.
“Brig, Lithic Lancer, off tank and flex offence, and I whack monsters almost as good as Ben, just with better knockers.” Chirped the tall ginger lady from her chair, her spear propped up against her shoulder.
Okay, well, Alexander would just mark that down in case it ever became handy.
The small woman rolled her eyes at her crass companion and said with a mellow, warm tone, “Melinda, Luminous Pathfinder, flanker and shot caller, our team’s scout and navigator.”
Next to her, the handsome square jawed blond blue-eyed guy on the short side with a neat looking sword and shield raised a gauntleted hand halfway and announced cool and calm, “Mark, Burning Legionnaire, anchor tank, party leader, second most veteran monster hunter, I report to the brass so Ben doesn’t put his feet in his mouth and get us exiled.”
Axe guy, with light brown hair, built like an Abrams, with a jovial face and a deep tan, lounged and chuckled at their leader’s reasoning for being in charge before adding in a deep baritone, “Cliff, Kinetic Berserker, main attacker, not an official party member, I’m pinch hitting for one of the big three Guilds ‘cause they thought somebody needed to keep this lot on target and get intel on what was kicking off in the north.”
Wow. That was an impressive list. Alexander finished getting the small charcoal fire lit for the tea, put the water on, and reciprocated, “Alexander, Entropic Venator. Solo monster slayer, by default, I guess. Mostly I flank, scout, trap, snipe, and keep my head down until I can put things down for sure; I prefer not to get hit if I can help it, getting all ripped up sucks.”
That last part was the real trick, getting a lethal stroke without receiving damage. Alexander was getting better at it, but, as with the bear, even dying monsters managed to be dangerous.
Now that introductions were made, the experienced crew relaxed a bit and even removed their head gear. The youth had to admit, he was a little in awe of these professional looking fighter types. Like something out of a war collage from ancient history.
Various styles of helmet were on display, mostly iron age looking things, with good visibility and less obstructed hearing. Losing your senses against monsters was a bad idea, even if you got a little more defense. No full great helms in this lot. Honestly? Alexander’s reinforced motorcycle helmet was probably the most significant of the helmets out of the bunch. Mostly necessity and lack of options on his part.
“So,” opened the leader of the party, “I guess I should tell our host what we’re doing out in the middle of nowhere, showing up out of the blue after all this time.”
Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, the sandy blond man met Alexander’s eyes with his own deep blue ones, and he spoke solemnly, “You must forgive the settlements for not sending help. Please, try to understand, nobody ever thought that there might be people alive up this far north. The magic, the transformation, the apocalypse, the wave of energy that changed it all, whatever you want to call it, it was strongest along the magnetic field lines of the Earth. Farther north or south you went, the more folk were petrified, or, as we came to call it enshrined. Only people with ridiculous magic resistance survived north of New York state and we never expected anybody this far up in Maine. We were here to scout the dispositions of monsters, dungeons, and to see if there was a hope to resettle, not to look for survivors.”
Well. That explained a lot. As far as why he’d seen so many statues and why there hadn’t been hordes of tens of thousands of zombies in the city. There hadn’t been enough people left to turn.
“So, down south,” He mused, “There’s a bunch of people?”
Melinda shook her head, “Not like what you’re thinking. So far as we know, more than half of the people on Earth were enshrined straight away, and half of the ones left were killed by infused animals or monsters, more if there was a closed dungeon emerging nearby, they’re more dangerous than the field dungeons. We’re pretty certain those are magic hotspots, they tended to depopulate the area pretty fast, at least until survivors cleared the minor field dungeons and started to Matriculate, as we call it when you unlock the classes. Nobody knows how or why any of that happened either, so if you do, you’re the only one. All we know is that you have to touch a dungeon core crystal to do it.”
Ah. Then that was why he hadn’t had any weird powers at first, even while the rest of the world was going crazy. You had to earn it. The mind filling words he heard when he stabbed the first crystal bloomed again in his mind. WORTHY.
“Yeah, right, that’s what everybody hears the first time. Someone, or something, calls them worthy.” Mark said, and Alexander realized he’d spoken the word aloud.
He shook his head at the whole illogic of it.
“You must touch the crystal first? So, you are required to go up against, like, monsters with nothing, and beat them, and then you get to be enhanced? That makes no sense.”
“Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Remarked Benjamin.
Mark smirked at his gruff comrade’s observation, and Alexander couldn’t help but notice a rather direct look being directed his way.
“Which leads us to you, and why you are either the luckiest guy alive, or absolutely batshit. How did you manage to solo not just a closed dungeon, but a major field dungeon?” Brigitte, or Brig, demanded, putting her party’s cards on the table.
He tried not to be taken aback by the skeptical nature of the question. Skepticism was good, it was reasonable, it kept you from assuming things that would probably get you killed.
Alexander wished he had a good answer, but he only had the truth.
“I played dirty. When the goblins came through to sweep the city, I killed a bunch of their scouts. I don’t think they expected to find somebody ready to fight, and I was sort of losing my grip. It all felt like a nightmare and nightmares can’t hurt you when they’re dead, right?” He reasoned, recalling the fury of seeing the creatures scrabbling over the statues of people he’d known all his life, breaking some of them to pick through their belongings.
“After that, I shot them from a long way away with a big ass rifle, focusing on their leaders, these tallish hobgoblin things, and their spell casters. Watch out for the ugly females with the staff by the by, they throw fire and raise tough shields, and heal. Then, when they sent a coordinated assault group after me, including this massive Goblin King, I lured them to a Tannerite trap and lit up the entire square with shrapnel, firebombs, and poison gas. After that, I followed some scouts back to their hole in the old silver mine and killed this awful goddamned Goblin queen monster. That was how I got to the first crystal, they, basically, were starving and had to come out to find food. I don’t think monsters that come across to our world have a way to go back, they’re stuck.” Alexander narrated, telling all that he knew, as honestly as he could.
“We have found that to be the case also.” Melinda said, frowning at his story but glad that confirmation of something the scouts had been saying for a little while was coming from outside,
“The monsters that appear do not disappear, except for their corpses under the Phoenix sun. They exist like anything on this planet, and need to eat and drink, even where that doesn’t look like what we expect, since some of them eat magic, or drink blood, or live on pure life force from drained victims.” She agreed.
“And what of the major field dungeon?” Mark asked, still deeply curious, “Necropolis field dungeons have been found, and the boss, a Reaper, reported, but nobody has been able to kill them. They have no health, but an absolutely insane amount of Soak, normal weapons don’t even touch them.”
Alexander scratched his head, not certain how to explain that.
“Umm, I think it’s probably my magic. I don’t understand it completely, but my mana seems to disrupt other magic, and it more or less ignores Soak. I had another spear, with golem silver that hurts undead, and a frost enchantment, and I pushed all the chaos mana I could into it, completely ruined the naginata blade, but it killed the Reaper basically instantly.”
“I’ll be damned.” Benjamin whispered, thoughtfully.
Even the red headed lady that seemed to enjoy giving people crap was impressed, and she leaned back in her chair looking at the ceiling and cried “That’s absolute bullshit! An anti-mage? !”
Clifford the axe guy looked at the other adventurers and asked, “Any of you ever heard of an Entropic class? The top three Guilds don’t have one, I don’t mind telling you.”
None of them answered except for the crossbow and estoc bearing scout who answered, “Not one in five thousand Matriculated. I’ve been through the roster three times. It’s a new resonance.”
A what now?
Now he was the one who needed some answers.
“So, anybody want to explain this resonance thing then? And why hasn’t anybody else got the same type of magic, are there, like, infinite variations or something?”
“Mark? Ben? One of you nerds explain it to our jack pot lottery winner over here.” The ginger warrior suggested.
Benjamin abandoned his slouch and came over to stand closer to Alexander, close enough to stare into his eyes. The amazingly buffed out, heavily armored tank of a man had greenish hazel eyes, and they were piercing into the last Gerifalte’s soul.
“I need you to pay attention to this, because you are now going to be part of some shit.” The brusque voice intoned with gravity, “Each person that touches a dungeon core crystal comes away changed. It’s different for everyone, but what we all agree on is that, inside your mind, you hear the word ‘Worthy’ like God in Heaven is speaking directly into your skull. One word, once, ‘Worthy’, and then you become something new, with a class, a core inside your body that wasn’t there before, and a resonance, an affinity for a specific kind of magic.”
Once? Alexander’s expression must have given away his confusion.
“You not following this?” Ben asked.
“No, sorry, I get it, it’s just, when the voice spoke, it said it three times.” Alexander hurried to answer.
Last thing he wanted was to make the giant soldier think he wasn’t paying attention.
“What?” the warrior asked.
“The voice said ‘worthy’ three times. I thought it did that for everyone.” He said, uncertain.
“Like I says: Jack. Pot.” Exclaimed Brig from her chair.
“Mark?” Checked the front-line attacker.
“Just the once, from everybody I know. Probably related to Mr. Solo over here doing alone what everybody else did as a group. Everybody Matriculates these days in groups of at least six, the maximum that a minor field dungeon will allow. Any more and the dungeon core goes intangible and no one can touch it until a Phoenix sun rises. If anyone cleared a closed dungeon alone for their Matriculation, I haven’t heard.” Mark speculated aloud, his fingers drumming over the top rim of his shield with metallic clicks.
A heavy arm, made heavier for the thick armor covering it, draped over Alexander’s shoulders like a squat bar going for max, and Benjamin grinned lopsided.
“Well, I’ll be. This here just makes it worse for you, Mr. Alexander. See, resonance takes a different form for each class, but there’s mostly been plenty of repeats. Fire is fairly common, so is water, wind, earth, and light. Not as common but still plenty of them running around are resonances for things like plants, life or healing, shadows, I know a guy that does barriers or wards, and there are metal guys like myself aplenty. But what all of us have in common is that, against Soak, we have a significant part of the damage we do negated like that shit never happened. But not you, Chief. Your magic cuts straight to the bone.” Ben instructed, a small smile on his huge features.
“It’s because the world hates us and wants us all gone.” Brig hypothesized, for once lacking a devil may care attitude.
“Ignore her, we all have Soak too. It’s…the planet seems to be trying to keep everyone and everything alive, and it does it by applying a buffer to their life. Only by overcoming the buffer does harm befall anyone. That, or whatever magic is, it attempts to negate change to whatever living thing it imbues, like a form of life inertia.” Melinda corrected, conjecturing a philosophical and practical question that had occupied many a campfire for hours.
That remark made Alexander do a double take. He escaped the warrior’s clutches and poured tea; the water having come to a boil. While he bustled around with hot drinks, he ransacked his mind for context to the new information.
These people all had Soak of at least twenty percent. So, at minimum, they negated a fifth of the damage that came to them, at minimum. Mark, leader of the party and anchor tank, as he’d called himself, had a Soak of fifty percent. Half the damage taken negated! Alexander had a Soak of five percent. Almost nothing. And knowing what Soak was wasn’t just a philosophical discussion, if they could figure out what this negation was, it could be bypassed, evening the playing field against the big nasties. Except for Alexander whose magic seemed not to tolerate Soak, either for himself or others, and pierced it almost like it wasn’t there.
“Ah. Well. That maybe explains a few things.” He sheepishly admitted.
“I don’t really have any Soak. It’s five percent. Looks like the knife cuts both ways for my magic.” He revealed.
Now the entire room went dead quiet, and the last Gerifalte knew he’d said something insane to them. So much for trying to fit in with the awesome warrior people.
“You mean to tell me you been going out here raiding dungeons with next to nothing to mitigate damage except for some half assed homemade armor?” Benjamin demanded.
Brigitte started giggling and soon broke into raucous laughter, clapping armored leather gloves. Alexander narrowed his eyes at the brash, sort of abrasive woman. Just exactly what the hell was so funny? He almost died out there, and not once, not twice, but at least a half dozen separate encounters that still gave him nightmares.
“I’m glad you’re having fun, but what the hell is rubbing your funny bone? !” He challenged, allowing his pique to show.
Seeing that she was pushing her luck, the warrior woman raised her palms, and wiped a tear from her eye, before exclaiming “Peace! No offense, meant, Serious Business, but if you had been around people since this bug fuck thing started, you’d know how crazy having so little Soak really is. The crafter people don’t have much, maybe ten percent, tops, and they don’t leave the walls of the settlements without a full team for escort. It’s too dangerous. You’re over here playing Hard Mode, while the rest of us were patting ourselves on the back for being hard asses.”
The rest of the group smirked at their tactless teammate and her reasoning.
Mark, leader of the group, and dedicated people manager, spoke up, being diplomatic where his brash trooper was anything but, “You have to ignore Brig sometimes, she was born with muscles inside her skull. But, meathead that she is, she isn’t wrong here. Five percent…Christ, that’s nothing. Everything is hitting you for almost full damage. I don’t know how you made it this long.”
Alexander let his irritation fade some, chalking a bit of it up to being unused to being around people with loud, boisterous personalities. He’d never got on so well with that type back when. He was too serious, sometimes, and needed to chill out, not everyone has the same outlook. For some people, the whole world was a joke to be laughed at. Alexander never saw it that way, but that didn’t mean they were wrong. Especially when everything that had happened in the last year turned his nice, neat picture of the world inside out.
“Yeah, okay, fine, but don’t think it was some kind of picnic. If it wasn’t for the fact that your body gets healed every three days, I’d have been a corpse the first week. It feels like something new tries to whack me every month out here, and it isn’t so damn funny when a twelve-foot pile of metal ore puts itself together and starts chasing your ass around the town.” He huffed.
“Nobody saying it is, don’t misunderstand.” Melinda said, her calm, gentle demeanor soothing any ruffled feathers, “If Brig wasn’t slow from getting hit in the head so many times, what she meant to say was, you either have got all the luck in the whole wide world, or none at all. What you might have is a spot in any monster culling party you want. Ignoring Soak, that’s big time Alexander. Major League big time.”
He looked around the group and sighed, dropping his eyes. Okay, maybe he was being oversensitive. It was a hard world; only hard people would be left in it. He had to accept that, adapt to it, and not get too hung up on the small stuff. There were real enemies out there. Whole worlds of them tucked away into expanding pocket realities or sprawling out across what had been human cities.
“Sorry. Maybe all this time by myself makes me bad at being around people, you all are a little much for me right now. I’ll get over it.” He admitted, determined to try to reintegrate into human society.
The big warrior, his rough voice in contrast to his words, offered comfort for the concern that Alexander had been nursing this entire time, since meeting these strange remnants of humanity, “It’s all good, little Brother. Anybody that made it this long alone, like you have, they’re bound to have a few screws loose.”
A wide gesture, taking them all in, accompanied the slow, rolling speech of a man who had seen terrible, terrible things, and lived to tell about it, “We’re all the same here, none of us really fit in with the Normals, the ones that haven’t Matriculated, or the people that don’t leave the settlements. It’s hard to understand unless you’ve been out in the dungeons and lived it. Death, insanity, and killing sort of seeps into you. Everybody cracks a little, just different ways. We’re all a little sideways, so you’re in good company.”
Brigitte, taking her cue from her party mates, offered an olive branch.
“Yeah, so don’t take it personal. If everyone is crazy, is crazy even crazy anymore? Tell you what, I’ll take you somewhere quiet, and we’ll fuck it out, you’ll be peaches in no time.” The warrior woman said, like she was talking common sense.
Mark and Melinda both spoke up, “Bad idea!”
And the axe wielding not quite a party member commented, “You’re a braver man than me if you do.”
The red headed woman shot a betrayed look at her comrades, crying, “What?! When do I try to ruin your fun?!”
Benjamin shook his head a little sadly and said, “We need our guy able to walk, put a lid on it until we get back to Homebase.”
Thus warned, Alexander decided that it might be safer to sleep with the bees and avoided drawing attention to himself by scooping coals from the fire that had made tea into the oven. Then he very studiously did not look in the direction of the red-haired warrior while he built up a fire for roasting the bear.
“Um…does that mean you guys want me to come with you?” He asked, not certain about how he felt about being invited back to humanity, or about leaving his home.
More than a little of him was incredibly uncomfortable leaving this tiny town. He’d protected it from goblins. From the undead. From Yetis and monsterized pumas and whatever else tried to invade. Hells, he even had a bee colony that made magic honey and wax and the thought of losing those, after all his effort to get them didn’t sit right.
“It does, if you’re willing. Nobody’s forcing you though, it’s just, you know, there’s an awful lot of mileage between here and what counts for civilization these days. You’re exposed, you know?” Mark clarified.
An open invitation was a different thing, Alexander didn’t mind visiting town, if it wasn’t a committed move.
Nodding his agreement, he pointed to the oven, the pot full of roasting bear and vegetables from his garden, which included potatoes and carrots that had come out of an experimental bed to see if tubers could be regenerated by Entling potting mix, the answer being a resounding “You bet your ass.”
“That’s going to be a minute, why don’t I show you guys around, while I think it over. I don’t know what kind of wild critters you ran into on your way here, but Entling blood enriched soil creates gardens that make like something you wouldn’t friggin’ believe. Then there’s George and the gang, I have a feeling you guys will love meeting them.” He nattered, good naturedly.
On their way out the door he led them past the gardens. They were properly impressed by the flourishing vines of tomato growing up trellises along with the wide array of grains, and other vegetables. One of the flowering stalks of corn, the second crop to put up flowers since he’d planted them earlier this spring, was being visited by a pollen collector from the hive. Alexander duly informed his guests not to approach the bee unless they wanted to fight over a hundred workers and maybe a cadre of soldier bees. All heeded his words, and they made their way across town to the smithy.
Along the way, the warrior troupe started hassling each other, with the camaraderie of long acquainted companions. The ribbing lot of adventurers teased each other. Soon enough, they started telling stories of their journey. He was reminded again of the hostility of the world when they mentioned the two members of their party that had not survived the trip, falling to monsters on the road.
The way they talked about the loss of the two, with a resigned sort of casualness, it was the way veterans talked about war, the careful avoidance of feeling that combat necessitated. He forced himself similarly to not feel too much when the stories about their companions circulated around the group. One thing stood out about that: soldiers didn’t speak of their fallen comrades around people that weren’t soldiers. That meant that they had chosen to include him in their group. It was a subtle thing, but important.
For the first time since the Pulse, Alexander Gerifalte was not alone.
It wasn’t long before Alexander pulled open the doors to the workshop and led the crew to his babies. Sterling, his pride and joy and the reason for half his success, stood tall, the great boiler ready to start pressurizing to drive the rest of the machines to glory.
The last Gerifalte approached the engine and put a loving hand against its firebox, patting it fondly with a dull thud that echoed slightly, “This here is Sterling. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to get him up and running, probably the reason I’m still around. A hammer and tongs operation just wouldn’t have been fast enough to do all I needed. He’s got the moxie to push these other guys to do about anything I have the skill to do and beyond.”
He then visited the power hammer pointing to the upgraded dies of golem High steel, “And this one is George. I recently upgraded him with a variable transmission and p. s. i. adjuster to let me get a ton more versatility out of him. Before, it was just hammer hard, or hammer harder, and that made a lot more manual finish work for me. Had to replace the head and dies, golem metals are more than the original could handle. Now though? He’ll pound whatever you want to feed him flat.”
Moving on, Alexander introduced the adventurer team to meet Ricky, Jerry, and Tabitha, the lathe, bandsaw, and drill press, respectively. Each got a word of kindness and a brief explanation about the things they’d helped him do.
“You can forge monster cores into your tools, armor, and weapons, and it infuses them with whatever nonsense magic the monster used. I haven’t been able to experiment with that too much but my first successful naginata, the one I wrecked killing the Reaper, it had a bitching ice bite to it, really fucked up zombies pretty hard. Damn, I wish I’d been able to hunt a few more of those white bears; they have the polar cores I need to do the enchant, but I can’t sacrifice my refrigerators for it.” He finished, turning around to look at the dumbstruck visitors.
“What?” He questioned, when he finally noticed that the group had stopped talking.
“Mine! I call him! The Guild is going to want this kid, real, real bad. They’ll assess all of you a finder’s fee, and I can promise you it will not be small.” Clifford asserted to the group.
A finder’s fee? For him? The hell?
“Uhhh…I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m not sure I like it.” Alexander told the group.
“Shush, doofus, you’re getting a job offer! A good one!Guildies get perks, stipends, escorts through dungeons, and some cozy digs. It’s like joining a primo union in the settlements.” Insisted Brig.
That did not sound so bad. But wouldn’t that mean he had to, sign up or offer up his loyalty, or something? Alexander wasn’t willing to be restricted so readily.
“Who takes the first offer they get? And why would anybody want to hire me? You guys are all wearing crazy neat armor and have real weapons! I’ve got shit cobbled together from whatever.” He argued, not certain why he was resisting, but sometimes your instincts tell you to dig deeper, and he listened to those instincts.
Benjamin pointed to Sterling and responded without attempt to obfuscate, “It isn’t what you’re using the machines for, it’s the fact that you made them work. Our smiths and crafters, they’re all using hand tools, iron age techniques for metallurgy, and no ability to scale production. It takes a good armorer a week to make even decent quality sets for a single person. With your set up here? A smith might triple that and be able to use better quality materials.”
Melinda backed her normally reticent comrade up, “I’ve never seen anything like these ingots you’ve made. Golem High Steel? Golem Argentum? That’s new. Alexander, you’re some kind of savant. A sort of weird one, but a savant.”
For some reason, he had trouble registering those statements. He wasn’t a genius, not like his dad. He had the old man’s library and not much but time on his hands at night, so he read, studied, and worked himself to the bone to learn to use what those books told him. That wasn’t so special. Was it?
He didn’t know what to say to any of that, so he didn’t say anything.
“Ahh, you guys are making the Murder Tinker shy!” Brig called from the back of the group, a goofy grin on her face.
For once, he was glad for the loud woman, she took the pressure of the gazes off him.
“Look, putting Guilds aside,” Mark enjoined, bringing everybody to order and settling the atmosphere down skillfully, “I think everyone here agrees that you’ve done a hell of a job here, Alex. A fine job indeed. Especially for being alone. Nobody is going to pressure you into anything though, not even a Guildie, Cliff, so don’t start up.” The team leader intoned calmly.
The shield bearer snorted lightly in exasperation looking at the axe wielding man, “Besides, when he sees how the Guilds treat their all-stars, you won’t have to say a thing. Let’s just say, if our party gets tapped by even a top twenty guild, we’ll be drunk as skunks and celebrating for a week. It’s a life changing thing in the settlements.”
“Total panty dropper in the taverns. Or jock straps, it’s whatever.” Brig volunteered, knowing the levers that moved young men.
One of the parts of his life that was regretfully lacking was interaction with the opposite sex. He’d put his aspirations of making record time getting through flight school and into the driver’s seat of a fighter plane first and foremost. It didn’t help that almost all the girls in Podunk High were boring as hell. There were a couple that caught his eye, and he’d almost had a thing going with the Pharmacist’s daughter, but once he’d graduated school and started flying that budding interest died on the vine, traded for the cockpit of a trainer plane.
“I’ll keep an open mind.” Alexander decided aloud, “But no promises. I have a whole thing going on here, and I’m not throwing it all away to run off to the big city. Besides, if there aren’t any settlements nearby, maybe my place is the place to be. Less competition and more opportunities for people that want to get out of the bigger places, if they can handle the challenges of the frontier.”
His counter argument seemed to register in the expressions of the adventurer party. It was true that the settlements had grown somewhat confining. It hadn’t happened yet, because just getting a relatively safe base of operations set up for the remainder of humanity in the area had been hard enough, but anytime now, people would start to gravitate toward the fringes, looking for their chance to make it big.
“An open mind is all anyone could ask. Of anyone.” Melinda said allowed, seeming to echo Alexander’s thoughts to her team.
“Anyhow, the roast ought to be done and we need to eat before too much longer. It isn’t smart to make food smells for too long, something always comes to check it out.” Alexander reasoned, chivvying his guests toward the door.
“Let me tell you about this colossal freakin’ panther that I saw on the mountain this once. Big as a bus, heart crossed and hope to die.” He said, leading the way home.
Life had just gotten a lot more complicated for the last Gerifalte. Now he had to figure out how to make this complication work for him. First things first, he was going to knock the socks off these warriors with some of the finest eating this side of a bowl of clam chowder on the coast. Then, he was going to go with them to see what one of these so called “settlements” looked like. After that, who knows, maybe he’d pack up and leave this place, as long as he could carry all his equipment and books with him.
Or maybe not. Maybe he’d get a bunch of people willing to scratch a life out in the wilderness. Whatever the case, what he wasn’t going to do was ever stop trying to find a way to undo the curse that had felled his parents. There was a way out there, the voice had said so. It had said that he was already on the path. He didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he took it as “Do what you do” and so he would. Alexander Gerifalte was a hunter, a crafter, a scholar, and, above all, a survivor.
The secret was hiding in the dungeons, inside those cores where powers resided to twist reality and connect worlds. Every time he’d touched one, his own powers had amplified. The young man had no illusions about the dangers. There would be monsters. There would be hellish creatures that feasted on souls. There might be dragons. Alexander would take them all on and use the reality hacks from this crazy world against them, until he had his answers. Then, when his parents were whole again, he’d find a nice place out of the way, and show them how to survive after a planetary apotheosis.