Time has a way of getting away from you, Alexander Gerifalte thought, as his boots padded softly over the derelict, grass patched asphalt of the road. October had come with early cold spells. Already, a sharp wind blew through the low hills, carrying sea salt, and the cries of gulls. A train of large wagons, wheels depressing the ground under the weight of their loads, chattered across the crudely paved road, asphalt starting to show signs of wear from the passage of seasons and the lack of maintenance.
Alexander, in form fitting leather and metal splint mail armor, was half a mile ahead of the wagons, and thankful to be upwind of the beasts hauling them. Massive mules, great flanked, long fetlocked brutes of a bunch of draft animals, pulled the train with unflagging strength and endless stamina. The wagons would tire before those animals did. They shat with the regularity of clocks and ate their weight in grains and hay if you let them though, so the smell that accompanied a wagon train was…memorable.
From his place in front of the caravan, the young man kept careful watch, he and the rest of the scouts were the first line of defense from what roamed a once tame Maine countryside. Tame no longer. He had been seventeen when the world ended. It was two years and change since then. The young man, now firmly into adulthood, was lithe, a formerly lanky six feet and four inches tall that had filled out under the necessities of survival in an abrupt dark age, where the fleet of foot, and strong of arm were the only ones permitted to live. Alexander was in privileged company with those who had survived the Pulse, a sudden global flare of magic that had not only cooked every electronic device the world over but had also rendered approximately two-thirds of humanity into petrified statues, frozen in the moment of the Earth’s awakening to consciousness.
Nobody knew why, yet, that the planet had suddenly transformed, but many suspected that it a form of self-defense.
For, simultaneously to the Pulse, there had appeared the dungeons. Dungeons had in common a core of crystal, a pristine jewel of faceted magic, roughly the size of a refrigerator, that warped the reality around it, bridging the space with a planet or reality of Elsewhere. Within these “contested zones” as they were referred to by the mysterious messages delivered by analytical abilities, inhabitants of the foreign worlds could seep out and begin to claim swathes of the Earth. Sometimes the dungeons created their own spaces, twisting the geometry of the landscape into a closed region, isolated from the surrounding areas. Those were called, aptly, closed dungeons. Others simply washed over the landscape, spilling their influence across the surface, in what were known as field dungeons.
What these dungeons all had in common, aside from the fact that they were riddled with monsters, strange magics, twisted variants of Earthen flora and fauna, and a guardian creature of great power, was that they had a name for the mirrored reality that was encroaching on Earth’s own. Or Gaia’s own, as it seemed the planet had adopted that ancient reference for itself. So far, nine realms had been formally identified. There were rumors, whispers, and drunken tales in seedy taverns of ill repute that there were thirteen realms, Alexander had a trait that suggested as many as one hundred eight, but the major Guilds did not recognize such stories, and what the Guilds didn’t recognize didn’t merit further consideration.
Alexander did not hold that opinion. From his experience, everything was true, because nothing was true. For Alexander Gerifalte, last of the Gerifalte’s, the world had gone insane two years ago, and everything after that followed rules that nobody knew for certain, even though, like a seventh day Adventist pounding on your door to tell you the Good Word, they would try to sell you a fable they swore was truth. If anybody asked him, and they didn’t, the likelihood of there being only nine world destroying catastrophes slowly stealing across the planet was the same as what the mules were leaving behind the wagons being gold.
Skepticism dominated the young man’s attitude, skepticism, and the need to know more about what had happened that turned his mother and father, in the middle of their loving banter with one another, into stone inside their house one afternoon. It was Alexander’s mission in life now to find a remedy for the curse. After falling from the sky in his plane and subsequently surviving in a hostile world full of magically enhanced, and often aggressive beasts, invading goblins, necromantically driven zombies of a neighboring town’s dead, and the simple challenges of finding food and water when your entire civilization dies in a single instant, he had come far along his path.
During those struggles he’d faced the crystal hearts of invading fragments of different realms. In the act of striking them down, part of their aetheric power had become a part of him, according to rules only Gaia, newly wakened consciousness of this third planet orbiting Sol, could know for certain.
Alexander was WORTHY, by the judgment of the mind filling voice that had vibrated his essence when he’d killed the dungeon cores.
Striding ahead of the wagons, guided by various gathering classes and craftsmen, along with their more martial escort, in a position of great trust, as none were more essential than the scouts to ensuring safe journey, Alexander didn’t feel worthy. He had learned much in the year and a half since coming to the settlement known as “Safe Harbor” a sprawling seaside former port town that had been called Searsport.
Searsport had been home to a deep-water seaport and was proximal to a large collection of islands and a river that ran Upta into the Appalachian Mountains, from whose runoff it had its source. The port town was relatively sheltered from storms that could batter the coast, especially since the Pulse, which somehow infused the ocean with strength. The Nor’easters that came in bore only vague resemblance to their lesser historical brethren. These pelted the coast with sleet, hail, and gale force winds, draping the coast and fifty miles inland in ice, where they did not scour the landscape with their fury. Against that, and against some of the massive guardian beasts he’d witnessed, Alexander did not feel worthy at all.
However, he wasn’t the one that made that decision, nor had his opinion ever been sought on the matter. The planet itself had said as much when he conquered his first dungeon, by himself, and then his second, also by himself. Since that time, after joining a band of adventurers who had been paid to scout Upta and stumbled across what remained of his tiny town, he had joined with other groups to cull the monsters in three other dungeons, though their cores were left intact, standing orders from Guild leadership. Then, a few weeks ago, he had slain the crystal heart of another dungeon in a solo run while doing a patrol for some creatures that had been attacking fishermen, and the planet’s voice had, again, declared him WORTHY, alongside some other cryptic nonsense.
That action had gotten him into hot water with the Guilds, as they used the field dungeons near the city as hunting grounds and gold mines, providing the settlements with resources unique to that particular mirror of reality, and the training for up and coming warriors. After a short trial, which had found him guilty of nothing, per se, he’d been summarily tossed from the Guild he was in. The inquisition of sorts had wanted to hold him liable for the loss of Guild income, resources necessary for the survival of Safe Harbor, and violation of his Contract with the Guild.
It failed for lack of credible evidence that he’d done anything wrong.
If they didn’t want people destroying the unnamed dungeons from which murdering monsters crept, they could have said something. At the least, they should have probably posted signs, because, as far as Alexander had known, there was a world eating crystal of alien magic sitting in the middle of a beach surrounded by Sahuagin, and nobody had bothered to do anything about it, so he figured he might as well while he was in the area.
Once the dungeon crystal was killed, it did not regrow in that same location. New dungeons could coalesce in the regions where the Dragon Pulse, the leylines of magic that encircled the planet joined to create dense fields of mana. Or so folk said, he hadn’t seen it.
The Guilds permitted, and even encouraged, this to happen, also according to rumor. Beer sodden talk, that, or it had been until his ass was in the wind for killing one of the top ten Guild’s cash cows. Now, he believed those rumors, since it would appear getting in the way of a Guild’s profits was nearly a capital offense.
Madness. The dungeons were alien, they were an infection that needed to be cleansed for the planet to heal. His working hypothesis was that the Pulse could not be undone until all of the dungeons were destroyed, their crystal hearts shattered, and the planet no longer had a need to defend itself. When that happened, the waves and washes of magic that poured from the interior of the world would cease and electronics would function again. In the meantime, humanity, as the dominant species of Gaia, was on the hook as her champions, and they were responsible for defending her from the spread of the “contested zones” which rooted themselves on her surface.
Alexander didn’t know that the magical interference in digital technology would fade with the dungeons but didn’t not know it either. Regardless, until that time, it was an analogue only world.
Anything digital, no matter how you tried to shield it, no matter how robust the circuitry, no matter how redundant the operational code, fried within a few hours, the electrons inside compelled to mutiny by the variations in the fields of magic that pervaded Gaia. This fact rendered approximately half of his father’s tinker’s library fully null, but the other half, it was suddenly gold plated. Lore for the old skills, the manual crafts, the techniques for farming, smithing, smelting, analytical chemistry, preserving food, animal husbandry, it all lay inside those tomes collected by a man who had been a nuclear engineer and who coveted knowledge of all things, certain that man wasn’t ready to know about the atom and would eventually use it to bring his civilization to an end.
He had been wrong, old Papa Gerifalte, but Alexander figured that the Pulse had just beat humans to the punch.
Anyhow, the last Gerifalte mused, at the end of the day, the comfortable life of a Guild contractor was snatched away from him barely a year after he’d gotten it, and he was blacklisted.
When the Guilds blacklist you, that means nobody sells to you, and nobody buys from you. Alexander Gerifalte was, effectively, dead in Safe Harbor. Which was why he was scouting for a caravan of wagons that was headed back out into the frontier, following the decaying roads that led north, back toward his homestead. Alexander had been gone from his home for a long time, almost eighteen months.
He hadn’t planned it that way.
Originally, he’d only intended to visit the town with the adventurer group, take the measure of the place, see about learning the lay of the land, and cabbaging onto whatever useful goodies he could take back to his hometown in the mountains. The Guildie who had been with the team that discovered him had made good his brag about the advantages of joining one of the big Guilds though, and Alexander Gerifalte discovered that he did, indeed, have a price. It was a damned high one. They had paid it anyway.
For a year and more, he had been worth the money, and holy hell, he could not have imagined such a lavish lifestyle. In that time, with his morning hours, Alexander had built four steam engines, even bigger and more powerful than Sterling, the engine he’d built back in his hometown. He’d gone on to retrofit six Georges, and three accompanying Rickies, Jerries, and Tabithas. A powerhammer, lathe, bandsaw, and drill press, respectively. Each one of the sets of modified industrial equipment went to a master smith class, fed the best ingots and ores that could be found.
Alexander, in one of his rare strokes of foresight, had not hoarded the ludicrous amounts of Guild credit, but had instead reinvested it. Two of the heavy wagons, and a handful of fourteen-foot modified trailer beds behind him were, in fact, his. So were the draft teams of mules and horses that pulled them. So were the men driving those carts and wagons, and the warriors escorting them. Alexander had had Contracts drawn up for two years, full wages, for all of them, in advance, with bonus incentives to settle in the village he was planning to found.
After his little faux pas with the dungeon core, a plan buzzing in the back of his head for a few months was pushed to major priority. A few of the less hearty individuals hired before the inquisition had tried to wriggle out of their agreements, but those were magically binding. They had taken the payment and signed the dotted line and the Contract mages did not believe in “take backsies”.
He found an odd amount of comfort in the fact that Lawyers had survived the end of the world and become powerful from it. The presence of those kinds meant that laws had real meaning, rather than simply the rule of the mighty over the weak. One of the first things that had happened was that somebody had realized, upon seeing the results of matriculation, that without a code of conduct that was binding all the way to the bones, that the classed people would have the power to dominate the normal. Upon the first contract mage matriculating, a team of former lawyers drafted a constitution and every man, woman, and child who lived in Safe Harbor swore by it. All of them. The result was that there was law.
* No harm or promise of action by a Matriculated to bring harm against a Normal, except in defense of one’s life, under pain of death or exile.
* No lying or bearing false witness for the sake of personal gain or enrichment of one’s allies or descendants under pain of death or exile.
* No theft of goods or services or breach of contract, with the exception that there is inevitable death as a result of inaction, under pain of death or exile.
* Manslaughter outside of sanctioned duels and without notification of town authorities is prohibited between Matriculated persons, except in defense of life, under pain of death or exile.
* No forms of slavery shall exist, either through contract or coercion. All forms of labor must be accompanied by an agreed upon exchange of wage, goods, or services, under pain of death or exile. All parties in the agreement have the right to challenge the value of their compensation, before the town authorities in judgement, and a jury of their peers.
* All Matriculated must respond to summons to the common defense of the populace against external threat, under pain of death or exile.
* All Matriculated must swear to these laws or be considered Outlaws intent on the destruction of civil society, enemies of the state, and predators of their fellow man, to be executed on sight by any Matriculated who knows of them, under pain of death or exile.
Those were the seven that every person swore to, and which were binding. It mostly prevented the formation of a two-tier caste system of society, although, not quite. Overt actions were off the table, but there were many forms of soft power that the Matriculated could gain that their mundane brethren simply could not, mostly in the form of wealth, power, and prestige. Over time, Alexander had faith that new laws would be required to amend the original six, crafted after hard experience as to what extent supernatural power could corrupt.
Anyhow, that wasn’t his problem, not any longer. Alexander wasn’t exiled, just damned near it.
In a way, it was useful to him in the long run. Running with the Guild parties had been a refreshing experience, in that it was relatively safe. But it had obvious downsides: it dulled the instincts. Most of the Guilds and even the private adventurer groups didn’t challenge the larger dungeons, not even the relatively easier to handle field dungeons. They circled the edges, staying conservative, taking no risks. As a result, the parties were soft, were slow, were reliant on one another to a degree that made his teeth itch. When they ran into something truly dangerous, something that could dive into their formations and separate them, they would be picked off easily.
The other reason being ostracized from that organization was to his good, was that he was now free to kill the dungeon hearts. No one could complain that he was in violation of Guild rules, since he wasn’t a part of any Guild, and couldn’t be. Which meant, very soon, that those fat cats suckling at the teats of the planet’s corruption were going to have to start looking farther abroad. With the information he’d gained in his brief stint doing practice raids, Alexander was going to clear those dungeons in a series raid, all within a few days if he could, on his way home. As many as he could, anyway. Not because he hated the idea of a safe Matriculation space for novices, or failed to appreciate the wonders that could be discovered inside the contested zones, but to force the Guilds and adventurers to grow a pair of balls and actually start using their resources to combat the spread more aggressively.
A part of Alexander felt a clock ticking. It might be thousands of years down the line, but he was certain that there would be Consequences if the dungeons were not suppressed and eradicated. A gut feeling, which were the ones he trusted most.
Green and golden-brown rimmed eyes scanned ahead, as he stalked quietly to the side of the road. He saw everything there was to see, in vivid color and with the precision to count leaves from a half mile away. Gifted impeccable vision from his birth, that natural talent had been amplified to nearly hawk precision since his Matriculation, after stabbing a dungeon core of Tirnanog, by the passive trait aptly dubbed Raptor gaze. Alexander Gerifalte, whose last name meant Gyrfalcon, a popular hunting bird for falconers, found the weird blue scrollwork that defined Matriculated people and their freakish abilities to indulge in a bit of whimsy, and no little irony.
Gaia, it seemed, had a sense of humor. Which surprised no one who paid any attention at all, even before the Pulse signaled the planet’s ascendance to true consciousness.
Currently, Alexander was looking intently, but not expecting to see much. The caravan headed north had only left the walled city, its surroundings patrolled by teams of adventurers, the common lingo for Matriculated mercenaries or soldiers of fortune, yesterday. The city itself was still visible in the distance, with its walls constructed of concrete liquified, transported, and reinforced by the dedicated effort of Stone magic bearing Matriculated from abandoned or ruined buildings.
Even for a town as small as Searport had been, they had plenty to work with. The town was, after six months of work by dozens of appropriately classed individuals led by a team of architects, a Lieutenant colonel formerly of the marine corps, and some nerd that was obsessed with castles, a fortress. It was also, to Alexander, a glorified prison.
Check points to get in, scheduled passes to leave, very orderly. And chokingly claustrophobic after a while. It was understandable, even if he didn’t agree. At some point, the massive field dungeon that had consumed the nearby neighboring city of Belfast had expelled a monster called a doppelganger.
The creatures of that dungeon, whose terminus was the realm designated Akhet by Greater analysis, tended to be tricksome, stealthy, and cunning. Doppelgangers were smooth, maggot skinned, eyeless creatures of vaguely hominid proportion that assumed the exact physical features of any sentient creature they consumed. Then, using limited memories combed from the deceased whose identity they had stolen, they lured family members to their nests. Dozens of people in Safe Harbor had been consumed before someone caught on and a purge eradicated the nasties. After that, nobody in, nobody out without verification.
Powers that be justified the lock down of the city with such events.
“Only they wouldn’t have to go to those lengths if they’d just destroy the damned thing.” He muttered to himself.
It was an argument he’d made many times. To mostly deaf ears in the Guild, even if a lot of the adventurers who had to patrol these lands quietly agreed. People who had lost friends to the creatures of the dungeon were not sympathetic to the promise of wealth by farming the dungeons, as nothing yet that had come out of one had ever brought a loved one or comrade back to life.
Out of all the fantastic nonsense that Alexander had witnessed in Safe Harbor, and that seemed nearly infinite in variation, there had never been a spell, ability, alchemical concoction, or artifact that made resurrection possible. Dead was dead.
Of importance to him personally, the Enshrined, or Memorialized, in other words, the petrified statues of most of the human population of Earth, alongside a similar ratio of cetaceans, corvids, parrots, primates, canines, felines, octopi, and even ants and other hive insects, were not, to the extent that could be determined by analysis abilities, considered dead. Which meant that there was almost certainly a way to reverse the condition. No one had found it yet, but then, it had only been two years since the Pulse and humanity was barely scratching the surface of what Gaia’s evolved life could offer, or what could be found within the exotic realms of the dungeons.
Alexander hefted his war bow at a flicker of motion, and drew back the thumb thick arrow, its spear tipped broadhead ready to fly to whatever might be skulking about. All kinds of critters liked to sniff around a caravan as it traveled, putting aside denizens of dungeons wandering free from their domains. A big mana infused grizzly bear was every bit capable of massacring the non-combat classes and draft animals as a monster.
The powerfully enchanted stave, woven of Entling timber around a Golem High Steel core tempered to spring-like quality, made a humming sound when drawn, and sent arrows from its metal string with a tone like a plucked base string. Alexander called it Singer, and he was an artist with it. Cross bows could be more powerful, they cheated with hand cranks. The pulley system in Singer couldn’t match that, but he could put three arrows into a target before a second bolt was readied for a cross bow, even for the classed adventurers who specialized in their use.
A hand lifted from cover with fingers forming the “okay” sign, putting him at relative ease. The dark color of the skin on the hand said it was Melinda, one of the dozen scouts on this escort.
Melinda was one of the members of the adventurer party who had come north the first time and found Alexander in his cozy little flea speck out in the mountains. He had hired her team, or what had remained of it, to come out and run troubleshooting for his planned establishment of a new settlement. He had hired another two teams of six to help, each with their own specialties. Six more wagons, with three more parties of mercenary guards were part of the train, but not under Alexander’s banner specifically. They were coming along to get away from the established powers of Safe Harbor and to try to make their own fortunes on the frontier.
His town was about as far north as anybody had ever been found alive.
For active field scouting, he relied on the group that had had the balls, and the skills, to survive the long road into the unknown before. Melinda, Benjamin, Mark, and Brigitte, plus two junior members to replace the members killed on the last mission Upta. Oleksiy Shevchenko, or Shiv, a dedicated Medic with talent, but lacking much field practice, and Dame Cecelia Sanchez, or just, “The Dame”, a water mage whose eccentricities resulted in her being avoided by most parties.
Alexander turned his attention to the wagon that led the caravan behind him, this one was one of his. It carried about two tons of goods and materials he foresaw as necessary to reconstruct his hometown, as well as to feed, arm, and equip the people and animals that would soon become permanent fixtures. Around it, ready to halt any monstrous attacks in their footsteps was the second party he had hired for their expertise in defense.
Nathan Smythe, a plant magic-based anchor tank, with dark brown hair and chiseled good looks, who passively generated a significant increase in Soak for anybody within ten-foot radius around him was walking steadily, his tower shield of wood in hand, appearing not to notice its weight.
Hilde Baumgartner, a stereotypical Swiss skier with blond hair, pale skin, and light blue eyes, was a light mage who had a flair for illusions and camouflage. She was currently using her magic to replay the Lord of the Rings extended edition above the middle wagon, to the entertainment of those not on guard duty. It wasn’t a complete waste of mana, raising the morale of people on the road helped keep them ready, and sharp.
At the back of the wagon, Van Richards, an earth mage poached from the fortification teams of Safe Harbor had his head together with Cervantes De La Cruz, the team’s great sword wielder who specialized in sonic/vibration attacks and inflicting vertigo on creatures, which was why his sword looked like a sharpened tuning fork, and they appeared to be having a rousing conversation, to judge by their mannerisms.
Julia “Bonny” Richards, of no relation to the Earth mage, who could pacify and dominate beasts to use as familiars, was out away from the wagons, with a wolfhound at her heel keeping its nose to the wind, and a big red shouldered hawk that periodically came to land on a leather clad glove to give its aerial reports. The mousy woman was almost incommunicative with humans and only really opened up towards animals, or her fellows in Impervious. She was an old cat lady far, far before her time. Alexander liked her more for it, as she was unashamedly uninterested in the usual inane small talk between folks.
Lastly, keeping to the right of the wagon, splitting the difference between Smythe at the front and Van and Cervantes at the rear, was Georgia Stephens, another anchor tank, but one who could create Time-based wards that, as long as she had the mana to keep them charged, repelled dungeon monsters and most core bearing beasts. Anything with a core that didn’t have a specially keyed stone from her that touched her wards froze in place. Stasis lasted for five minutes, and nothing could harm or be harmed while the effect lasted. Her talents being mostly wasted locked away inside Safe Harbor’s walls, she had come out almost for free, wanting the field experience and opportunity to grow by claiming dungeon cores as her main wage.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
The last party wasn’t so much adventurers, as they were specialist craftsmen with side benefits. These were occupied closer to the heart of the convoy, mostly sitting in the drivers’ seats of the wagons, or inside the tall wood arch supporting canvas covers covering them. They would be working on plans for the town atop the carefully nested and packed goods. Not inside or on the wagons though was the first of his hired technicians, Riley Potter.
Potter was a former HVAC engineer with, aptly enough, wind magic, in addition to a competent saber fighter class, and he would be responsible for ensuring that the new homes were airtight, insulated, geothermally temperature regulated, plumbed, and, essentially, climate-controlled domiciles with running water. Currently, Potter, all five feet eleven inches of sturdy dark headed Scotsman of him, was marching along in defensive formation with the second of Alexander’s hired techs, one Wynona Saki. Wynona, a slim, tiny woman of Japanese American descent, was a one-time chemical engineer and Pyroclastic Cannoneer, hired to take charge of the alchemy labs and point defenses. She was shouldering a big metal contraption that reminded him of a flintlock blunderbuss, only the barrel was as big around as the woman’s thigh.
Alexander did a quick circle of the caravan, intersecting with three of the other scouts to exchange brief, almost coded messages that conveyed the lay of the land ahead, the absence of beasts or monster sign, and general bearing, before heading to the rear. Being the forward scout demanded most of your attention and concentration, and it was best to keep fresh eyes to the front, so they rotated every ten miles or so.
While he moved himself to the rear, his attention lingered a little on the costliest member of his crew. Jules Reynolds was a Bronx native, a lean, mean, brick laying machine in his former life, with the muscles rippling under his acorn brown skin to show for it. He had inherited a rather rare, and costly to Alexander’s pocketbook, class revolving around phase changes of matter called a Quintessence Shaper. More or less, the man could turn a solid piece of iron into a soft putty, without changing its temperature, and then manipulate it freely. Or melt glass and shape it to whatever form you like, before re-solidifying it. He was no slouch on the fighting department either, while he couldn’t manipulate living things, he could cause the bricks of chlorine in his belt pouch to become a vapor on demand, which meant he could generate clouds of toxic gas on demand. Or load his hollow crossbow bolts with solid piranha solutions made by a chemist, liquify them as he took the shot, and watch the devastation unfold on some unfortunate monster. Alexander had great expectations of Jules, and the man had been excited to get out of Safe Harbor, so both were looking forward to the work to come.
Scott Kaczynski, not to be seen for being inside the covered wagon, was another costly investment, but similarly worthwhile. The pale, frumpy man was a licensed architect, and a not so bad cryomancer. He was drawing up the plans right now for some templates for homes, storage facilities, and replicating copies of the fortifications employed by Safe Harbor to be scaled for what Alexander was dubbing, Falcon’s Rest.
It was his town, dammnit! He got to call it whatever he wanted!
Another project for Scott to handle was the vault for storing all the Enshrined for safe keeping, until Alexander could figure out how to reverse the petrification.
Kim Summers, a tall man of strongly Korean descent, despite his surname, with fine black hair, and a poker face Daniel Negreanu would kill for, was a well-regarded smithing class called a Runic Artificer, and had picked up a fair degree of machining proficiency in college, which he had allowed to lapse when he went into finance. He was inside the covered wagon with Scott working on the designs Alexander had drawn for his machines and planned machines. Kim was going to be instrumental for not only infrastructure projects, but also become the de facto assistant armorer and weaponsmith alongside Alexander. They were going to do metallurgical art together; the young hunter was certain of it.
As he walked, a figure sidled up next to him, with surprising agility and utterly absent of sound to give her away. He’d seen her a few minutes ago, so he’d known she was around, which was why he didn’t flinch too badly when she crept up on him. The diminutive lady, looking like a former surfer turned would be Vietnamese babushka, was carrying a pack almost as large as she was, with pouches and bags tied to various loops of the mesh netting on its exterior.
It was refreshing to see someone as in love with combing the terrain for useful reagents as he was. What wasn’t so refreshing was the harvester classed woman’s love of fucking with him, but you had to take the good with the bad.
“Hey there Alexander, what’s good?” The silken voice from the solidly pretty, even cute face, her straight black hair pulled into a tight bun drawled at him.
“Nothing much Granny Nguyen. How’s tricks?” He returned.
“Oh, nothing much new yet, we’re still too close to the coast. But I can see we’re starting to get away from all this sandy turf, we’ll start finding the good stuff before long. Needs a proper loam, a little clay, and more leaf litter to foster the real aces shit.” Annita Nguyen said, her earthy language contrasting with the smooth voice.
“Ahuh.” Alexander Gerifalte agreed, having spent a good portion of his brief time with the Guild in Safe Harbor scouting and foraging to get away from the press of people, in between his engineering projects.
“Granny” was just what people called her, Annita was only twenty-three, but she had one of those effortless wisdom attitudes, laid back demeanors, and dressed in a manner that suggested she was actually about a thousand years old. The woman was going to be instrumental to helping his and Wynona’s efforts to acquire reagents, as she was a specialized harvester class called a Verdant Forager. If it grew, Granny could find, and then later cultivate it.
Hers was another set of talents unappreciated and permitted to languish inside the walls of Safe Harbor. Most of the adventurers with him had come, in part at least, because they wanted to get away from the city. It hadn’t taken long, but already there was some have and have nots and political shit going on that made some people long to get away. Especially people like Brig, who couldn’t keep from pissing off a dozen people if she walked by five of them. Or Ben, who said little, and preferred to say less, unless you wanted to know everything there was to know about fighting or killing monsters. Besides, Ben made the Guilds nervous, on account of he was widely regarded as one of the most directly powerful warriors alive and didn’t dance to their fiddles.
“I see that the lack of anything new hasn’t stopped you ransacking the countryside.” He observed, to judge by green fronds hanging from pouches, and bulging pack.
A soft laugh from the obsessive-compulsive harvester confirmed her habit. Alexander brought up the blue scrollwork imparted by his analysis skill to confirm that Granny was putting in that good work.
Annita Nguyen
Class:
Verdant Forager
Status:
Fresh, active
Soak: 24%
LifeForce/Armor
Head
Mana: 76%
Might
8(+10)
Height
5’3”
LifeForce/Armor
Left Arm
13/8 impact/crush resistance
LifeForce/Armor
Right Arm
Grace
17
Weight
132lbs
12/14 slash/bite resistance
Padded Hood
12/14 slash/bite resistance
Impetus
19
Age
23
Light Boar Overcoat
LifeForce/Armor
Chest
Light Boar Overcoat
Cogitation
17(+5)
Core
Demantoid garnet, step
Titanium Kukri
15/21 bonus to slash resistance
Wisdom
24(+5)
Origin
Gaia
LifeForce/Armor
Left Leg
Mild Steel Light Cuirass
LifeForce/Armor
Right Leg
Ingenuity
14(+5)
Sapient Race:
Human-2nd Tier (Dryad)
14/20
LifeForce/Armor
Abdomen
14/20
Durability
9(+10)
Bear Bone Scale Tasset
12/10 bonus to slash resistance
Bear Bone Scale Tasset
Valor
9(+5)
Mild Steel Light Cuirass
Traits
Seen it all, Salt of the Earth, Greater poison resistance, Horticulturist, Gaia’s child
Skills
Green thumb, Sense reagent, Lesser erase presence,
Arcana
Lesser growth, Minor photosynthesis, Lesser wither
For someone who hadn’t done any dungeon crawling, her abilities were well honed. Ol’ Granny wasn’t afraid of work, that was for certain. It was one of the reasons they got on together, both of them tended toward being workaholics. They also partied hard and had become fast friends.
All in all, the once upon a time lost boy, hunter of Wild Things, and devoted student of making shit, felt like his time in Safe Harbor hadn’t been a waste. He’d learned both about the state of the world and about his own abilities. He’d gotten valuable time practicing his Warforger skills without the worry of providing for his necessities or being eaten. Very importantly he’d gotten to practice fighting with the other adventurers, so that he wasn’t as unpolished with weapons. He’d also, for too short a span, gotten to live every young man’s dream of sowing wild oats while being a rich superstar.
Ahh, there were some good times for the unseasoned youth.
That was another reason that he was glad to be leaving Safe Harbor behind: It weakened his will. There was a level of comfort that got in the way of his agenda. The young man wasn’t a saint, and he had no illusions about himself, not once his head was cleared by the experience of standing in front of a room full of people who were making arguments about whether you might be shackled to a work bench to slave to replace the value of a horde spawning murder crystal to their income.
Such things put his circumstances into the proper light.
“They made a mistake to blacklist you, you know?” Granny said, after a few minutes of silent companionship.
Alexander’s stalk skill was always active, and he made almost as little noise in the underbrush as the ninja gatherer of things green and growing.
“Do you really think?” he asked, drily.
“You bet that supple ass I do.” Granny jibed, and he rolled his eyes.
He wasn’t her type, from what he could gather from their many evenings pub crawling, but it didn’t stop her from harassing him. Granny was his wingman and he hers; they’d known each other in the young folk’s scene long before he’d ever needed somebody with a gift for scalping the landscape of useful herbs.
“Are you sure you don’t want to see it again?” Alexander teased, shimmying a little, “We’ve got time. I might even let you touch it, but only if you’re nice to me, and pay for dinner.”
Now it was the woman’s turn to shake her head in disappointment at him.
“No thanks, you’re still too young, an innocent babe in the woods. I’d ruin you. Sort of like how Brig ruined you.” She pulled out all the stops, launching the barb she’d held onto for a special occasion, when the young talent got uppity.
Alexander Gerifalte made a crunching sound as he made a misstep; his posture thrown off by the almost full body flinch at the mention of the tall redheaded carnivore.
“You would have to bring that up, wouldn’t you.” He groaned at the softly cackling woman.
Ahh, the mistakes of youth. Brig was an unrepentant sex beast. She took pride in it. Her comrades had warned him against letting her trick him into her den. A few weeks in Safe Harbor made him forget that warning and, after a few bottles of liquid courage, he’d allowed her to take him back to her apartment. She’d wrung him out to dry and hung him from her balcony, ragged, and empty.
Not to misunderstand, it was the time of his life. But, when she declared, early the next morning, that Round Two was upon him, he found that he was no match for the Lithic Lancer’s passion. He escaped the next morning, a wiser man, and had avoided being alone with her ever since. He wasn’t ready for Brig. Maybe not ever. She smiled at him every time they crossed paths and waved when she spotted him on the streets. He shuddered a little, not certain his ego could survive her attentions for long.
“If you are anything like Brig, you should have red, yellow, and orange stripes to warn people not to come close.” He ribbed.
“Oh, don’t be such a pansy. You needed your bones jumped so you’d quit being so on edge all the time. Nobody knew if you were going to run off back into the wild for the first couple of weeks, the way you kept glancing around. Brig did you a favor.”
He opened his mouth to object, until he realized that Granny was right. He had had what some might call post-traumatic stress syndrome. Or, at least, that’s what it’s called when you live in a peaceful society absent daily hardship and threat of death. It was, in these times, as in the times of old, when man had not ascended to the top of the food chain, now known as Green Sense. When you were out in the Green, the lands outside settlements, hypervigilance, a ready fight or flight response, and constant mental stimulation, was how you survived. PTSD was maladaptive in modern settings. In premodern settings, it was standard practice.
Within the foreign setting of Safe Harbor, maybe a good bonking was what he’d needed to calm down a little. Human intimacy and a few orgasms took the edge off him, which made him more functional in the city.
“Yeah, okay, I’m not even going to argue that.” He admitted, sheepishly, “But don’t let her hear you say that she might take it as encouragement squeeze me like a used dish sponge.”
“You’re on your own with that. Speaking of the devil, here she comes. Good luck. I’ll light candles for you.” Granny said, noiselessly shuffling away under the load of her pack.
"You wouldn't." He begged, more than anything else.
A light cackling and a shake of her black hair was all he received in answer.
A rapid turn of his head in slight panic revealed the truth of the situation, Brig was marching over, her spear held over her shoulder, with the clank of her armor growing louder as she approached. The off tank and flex attacker was basically the opposite of discrete. Where Brigitte O’Conner went, sound and fury followed behind like a cat trying to slip out the door behind you.
Face schooled to impassive curiosity, Alexander faced his one time bedfellow with what courage he could muster. The creaking rattle of wagons on the road seemed to play a funeral song.
“Hey, Brig, what’s new?” He inquired, calm and cool.
The more than pretty woman smirked at him, a raised eyebrow knowing his veneer of casualness was just that. Her instincts said there was a rabbit with a limp around.
“Not much. I saw you chatting with Granny Nguyen and, since you weren’t busy, figured I’d come see how our stray game hawk was getting along. I’m getting bored following these wagons with nothing around that needs me to spear it, so why don’t we catch up?” The warrior woman said, her indolent attitude carefree.
He glanced around quickly to find a way out and found none. The other scouts were encircling, doing their rounds, the caravan was well guarded, and the still visible settlement behind them said that they were, as much as could be, out of harm’s way.
“Sure, sure. I’m glad you guys took the contract; I feel better about this with Getsome around to handle the field work.” He said, hoping that talking about work would keep her focused on her second favorite past time of battling monsters.
He received a thumbs up from her leather gloved hand, armored plates along its back glistening under the bright October sky. Clouds were blowing in, promising rain by and by, but, just right now, it was about as peak an autumn day as you were going to get in these parts.
“Not a problem, Ben likes you, which is rarer than frog fur, and we were all getting a little restless. Last winter cooped up in Safe Harbor sucked. Other than the ice wraiths, there was nothing to do but sit around, drink, practice, and bump uglies. This job pays and gets us some action.” The tall woman reported, an understatement on those last two statements.
“Besides,” Brig chortled, “We’re basically guaranteed to get stronger when you go after those crystals this week.”
Alexander’s face froze. How did she know that? He hadn’t said a word to anyone before leaving, hadn’t even hinted at it. It was going to be his own little project to help clean up the coastline before they turned inland. The Guilds were wrong, that was all there was to it. Leaving the dungeons up to grow and generate even spookier horrors was asking for trouble. They didn’t have enough humanity left to spare to lose them for greed’s sake.
“I, uh, I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything about the dungeons in the contract?” He replied feebly.
She laughed at his attempt to dissemble. He’d been staring with that intense hunting stare in the direction of the field dungeons for weeks. Just sitting up on the walls, chewing those full lips, that face shifting between a haunted look and murderous ferocity. Which she found fascinating. He might as well have been firing signal flares calling her over to ruin some sheets.
“Mark was so certain you’d go after them after the blacklisting, he had Melinda go and mark campsites.” Brig told him her tone still holding humor, “No need to hurry Alexander, we’ll take our time, do it right, and purge those assholes real good like.”
So much for discretion. He had to get Kim to show him how to go all dead in the face, the guy was completely unreadable.
“The Guilds are wrong.” He stated flatly, not afraid out here to say it again, even after the blacklisting.
“We talked it over,” The tall Red-haired Lancer commented, “Ben says the dungeon farming is going to get Safe Harbor killed. Mark and Melinda agree. If they say so, then I’m with them. The new guys don’t have opinions that matter yet, but they listen to Ben so they’re not hopeless.”
People who knew the main attacker of Getsome knew to take his rarely offered opinions seriously. Benjamin Grisham, metal manipulating Heavy Knight, was as close to being a champion of humanity as there was. He’d been the one to catch onto the Doppelganger infestation and was most of the reason that Getsome had been sent north in the first place. The two members of their party that had died on the way to eventually find Alexander had done so because they didn’t listen to the gravel voiced black man when he warned them that something was watching them.
They didn’t have their weapons ready when the field dungeon boss, a huge stone scaled snake, erupted beneath their feet and swallowed them. If they’d had their weapons out, they might have cut their way out from inside before they died of asphyxiation. When the field boss burrowed back into the ground, wounded badly by the remaining party’s attacks, it took the two former members of Getsome with it.
If not for the fact that he was completely disinterested in overseeing anybody and made no bones about telling people they were asinine fuck ups, he’d have been in a Guild already, whether or not they were intimidated by his incredible gift for hacking monsters apart. But he rustled too many feathers and “attracted the wrong sort”. Hence Getsome being composed of a core of highly competent Matriculated who, nevertheless, had not been able to garner the support of a Guild.
Fortunate turn for Alexander, that was.
“Oh.” Alexander said, slightly surprised.
When he said things like this in a tavern full of adventurers imbibing large quantities of spirits, it was mostly met with a general sort of approval. That was a completely different thing than actively partaking in the destruction of several Guilds’ cash cows.
He was leaving only one behind him, the absolute bunny of a field dungeon, literally, as it was full of Horned rabbits, beaver sized rats, and an Owl field boss that had the wingspan of a hang glider but next to no health and was vulnerable to being netted by a coordinated team. That one could be used to permit the willing to Matriculate in relative safety. The rest? He was putting an end to the danger posed by the contested zones.
“That’s, well, it’s more than I expected when I offered you guys the contract.” He admitted, sort of touched that his opinion would hold weight with these seasoned warriors.
Oftentimes it never occurred to him that he was also one of the most seasoned warriors walking Gaia’s surface.
“You sure you’re willing to burn bridges with Safe Harbor like that?” He checked, sincerely worried about their prospects.
Doing this meant not going back to Safe Harbor. Ever. It also might mean being persona non grata, with a possible death sentence over your head. Non-Matriculated could be hired to kill a classed person and there were not Contracts to stop it. A gun, for most, still represented a serious threat. Maybe not the Anchor tanks, with their ridiculous Soak, but certainly for Alexander, who had almost none, or the more offensively natured combatants like Brig and the mages.
A shrug and a casual wave of her gauntleted hand answered, alongside a definitive “Fuck’em.”
Well, there were other settlements, after all. Safe Harbor was just the closest one. Farther south, toward New York and Massachusetts, there were plenty of places that were akin to this far north town. Even better in many respects, except that they were closer to the massive field dungeons that had erupted, overlapped, then merged over what had been New York City and Boston.
When the Pulse happened, the major population centers, thanks to the sheer concentration of lifeforce or something, all became hotspots for dungeons. Hyper dungeons, contested zones consisting of three or more different realities, were too hot to handle for newly classed. Eventually, as the smaller, more minor dungeons were cleared and classes grew in strength through experience, and the extra empowerment of being fed by dungeon cores, they would start working through those monstrosities. Not for a long, long time though. Maybe not within Alexander’s life span, even if that proved to be full length and not preemptively cut short.
“Then, if you guys are certain, I look forward to working with you. Only problem, these are all capped at six people, max, and you guys are back to a full-strength party. Who stays behind?” he asked.
He wasn’t being left out, that was for certain. His parents depended on his continuing to “walk the path” whatever the hell that meant, so Gaia’s voice had told him.
Brig shrugged, “I guess that’s up to Mark. Party leader makes his bread figuring stuff like that out. I’m not here to second guess, just to beat asses and collect fat loots. Probably though, we’ll switch off between Melinda and the two newbies.”
Speaking of, he hadn’t seen Melinda in a little while, not since cross paths on his rotation some half hour ago.
“She okay with losing the chance to boost her class?” He inquired.
Party friction was to be avoided. Getsome was a well-oiled machine, and he didn’t need sand in it.
“Sure. She’s not like me and Ben, all hopped up on fucking up scary shit out of fairy tales. She’s slightly more normal. Besides, she’s got the least combat potential, and it doesn’t hurt as much when she doesn’t boost, compared to getting that nutter Dame Sanchez caught up, or Shiv, he’s going to be important when things go to the dogs.” Assessed the Lancer.
Alexander found himself coming to a similar conclusion. Especially because he and the Luminous Pathfinder fulfilled similar roles in a party, except he was head and shoulders, ehem, not a pun intended to slight the tiny statured woman, a better monster killer.
They settled into a quiet walk under the October afternoon. His steps quiet, his presence somewhat faded by his Stalk, hers brash and obvious, made more so by the clink of armor and rub of leather.
He was almost comfortable next to the Ginger warrior when she leaned over and said, “You want to take another ride on the Brig Express tonight?”
A choke on inhaled saliva broke his concentration, and he blushed to his hairline. On the point of an instant refusal, he recalled that he would soon be up to his neck in killing monsters trying to do the same to him and new weirdness associated with touching the crystal cores that, oh so briefly, connected you to the consciousness of the planet. Against that, what was the harm?
Alexander sighed, hating his libido and lack of impulse control already, even as he offered a resigned, “Be gentle.”
Brig slung a rough arm over his shoulders, one of the only women in the entire caravan that could do that without him bending over, and chuckled, “Oh, Sweet Summer Child, no. No, I’m afraid not.”