As chief executive of the field team, Mark offered the suggestion that Impervious be given the opportunity to clear the next dungeon, a Tirnanog offshoot. Alexander hated to lose the opportunity, but seeing the growth of the others altered his perspective a bit. Clearing the dungeons completely was too efficient a means to increase the overall power of the caravan. Three hours of travel later, after securing the guards the same way they had earlier, Impervious walked into the field dungeon of Tirnanog located near a place called Waldo, once upon a time.
An appropriate name for the place because nobody knew where it was except the people that lived there. Had lived there. The contested zone saw to that, with a particularly cruel little brand of sentient monster from fairyland called the Redcap. Bushwhacking little murderers in ragged clothes, about the size of children, and with the instincts of sharks. They liked to pretend to be wounded children, drawing in concerned parties, surrounding them quietly, and then descending on them with short, sharp knives. Nobody questioned where the folk who had lived there that didn’t end up petrified had gone.
Early on, a few novice Guildies were disappeared that way, and weren’t seen again until a camp of the monsters revealed that the missing humans had been flayed and their skins sewn into the side of a big tent, the rest of the body impaled on a spike. No more Adventurers or Guild members had been lost since; the lesson was learned about the Redcaps.
Alexander watched, from the outside, for once, as a crackle of energy raised from the boundary between Gaia and the contested zone. Impervious had disappeared behind the shroud of the dungeon about a half an hour ago. Then, with a slight rush of air inward, as if from a mild vacuum, the barrier between the areas evaporated and there was only Gaia. Impervious appeared like a mirage in the distance, standing at the heart of the former field dungeon.
Field Techs and Getsome eagerly awaited the good tidings, seeing as how none of the defensively outfitted classes bore sign of injury.
“How’d it go?” Mark called, from a distance.
Nathan Smythe, the Anchor tank, and party leader held up a sack of bloody redcap cores, yelling, “Went through them like a hot knife through butter!”
Van, the earth mage of the party, couldn’t help cracking his usual reserve with a smug observation “They didn’t know what to do about stone brackets locking their feet to the ground.”
It was a promising display of competence from the team.
Alexander hadn’t worked with them before, but the group had had a stellar reputation, and a premium price to contract to go with it. Without the ludicrous funds he’d accrued bringing the Guild smithies up to industrial production standards, if not volume, he’d never had afforded their services.
It helped that Impervious wanted to power level their classes and the Guilds wanted nothing to do with Julia Smith, the Lunar Warden, thanks to her social anxiety and withdrawn attitudes. Especially not after “The Incident” in which an over forward Guildie from one of the top three attempted to molest her in an alley and Georgia Stephens, Chronous Bulwark, and self-appointed guardian of the girl, castrated the man publicly in the street.
As a result, Impervious wasn’t blacklisted, but they also weren’t getting invited to join any Guilds, not when they made it crystal clear that it was an all or nothing, take it or leave it deal with them. Alexander didn’t know how they’d met, or what they’d experienced to knit them so tightly, but there was no doubt that the six were basically family.
That whole blacklisting thing was about to get revisited; the young hunter had a feeling.
After a brief recap of the tactics employed, details regarding the monsters’ tendencies, and advancements of the party, the caravan was on the move again. They had a third crystal to terminate, this one two hours away, near a slightly more developed place called Munroe. Munroe was long gone, of course, eaten by the field dungeon of Rasatala, a realm that predominantly seemed to spawn demonic archetypes of minions from whatever hell it represented.
The day was wearing on, the time closing in on late afternoon, with the sun falling rapidly. They didn’t want to try fighting these monsters in the dark. Most creatures from the dungeon worlds had no better vision at night than did the humans, but the ones that did saw like owls and would prove considerably less dangerous in the daylight.
Round three would consist of a mish mash, after much discussion between Mark, Ben, Impervious’ veterans Smythe and Stephens, and the crew of Alexander’s Field techs, along with himself. They reached a consensus that getting some of the key members of the field techs crew might be extremely useful. After more discussion, it was decided before the slow uphill approach to a vaguely disquieting empty elementary school that was known to mark the boundary to their destination, that Potter and Saki would be their first techs to get upgrades.
Those two were the ones who had obvious combat potential, Potter a Vacuum Fencer, Saki a Pyroclastic Cannoneer. Both could handle themselves somewhat in addition to their technical skills, so giving them a boost now meant they could help carry their team later.
“I’ll Anchor, keep the Soak Aura up, and make sure our guys stay healthy.” Volunteered Nathan Smythe.
Not a bad idea, given the potent effects of Oakfather’s Shadow to improve tankiness of everybody near him.
Everybody except Alexander, that is.
“Main attacker.” Ben named himself, and none could really argue with the big man.
Melinda volunteered herself for scouting, Luminous Pathfinder was a natural choice, the demons frequently did not enjoy exposure to light-based abilities. That left a flex position, it was an offense heavy composition, with Potter and Saki both bearing rather aggressive classes, in addition to Ben, with a good mix of melee and range.
“Last member?” Saki asked.
Alexander was about to suggest the Dame, her firepower would help them overwhelm the low tier demons, reducing the chance of injury, but Scott Kaczynski volunteered himself.
“I’ll go. If you two are going, then I should be along too.” He said, growing more determined as he spoke.
The Cryomancer’s abilities weren’t particularly strong, and the man hadn’t ever demonstrated himself to be useful in combat, but ice was known to counter some of the fire abilities some of the demons liked to use. Especially the chimera and the yaksha, the first which had a serpent tail that breathed fire, the second which formed small fireballs that it slung from some distance. While technically in charge, Alexander saw no reason to butt in, getting willing and eager participants in facing down the enemies that covered the land was a good thing.
With the line up decided, they now had to go and deal with the sentries.
Shiv went in and tried to apply the double Vulcan nerve pinch and accidently severed one of the men’s carotids. The only clue that he’d fucked up the ability was the seizures as the brain damage began. It was only after a desperate few minutes that the healer managed to restore the blood flow and end the internal hemorrhage. Even so, the man nearly died, his chest cavity had to be opened, one of the hollow quills inserted as a thoracostomy tube, and the blood drained off so his lungs could expand enough to breathe. By the end of it, Shiv was a nervous wreck for half an hour. They left one of the last bits of Safe Harbor currency behind in their possession as apology.
Forty-five minutes passed glacially. The sun began to dip low to the horizon, casting long shadows into the rapidly cooling October air. Rain was threatening now, as the warm coastal air hit the cooling air over land, a Seabreeze driven evening shower. Adventurers not involved with the dungeon clear and the twenty or so colonials who had decided that they wanted to join the chance to found a new settlement were pretending insouciance. At the shimmer of the boundary between Gaia and the contested zone, the caravan came to attention.
Mark was almost on his toes. He and Melinda had been a thing for a while now, and it was probably serious between the two of them. Love blossoms on a battlefield. Alexander had heard that once from a certain serpent of the solid variety, one of the few distractions he’d allowed himself while pushing for flight school.
When the shimmering field of energy departed, it took with it the veil that hid a minor disaster. A red flag of cloth was being waved, the prearranged signal for medical care. Instantly, the gathered folk around the caravan got their acts together and the animals moving. Swift the draft horses were not though, so Alexander was off at a sprint, Shiv in tow. Whether or not the physician’s confidence was back, they were going to do whatever could be done.
Alexander was fast when he wasn’t trying his best to be invisible and completely silent. He reached Ben, who’d been waving the signal bandana, inside two minutes.
He wanted to sick up when he saw how badly things had gone.
Ignoring the somewhat ragged appearance of the group, with only Ben bearing few visible signs of enemy action, Wynona Saki was half covered in a mix of second- and third-degree burns, half bald, and clothes mostly burned away. Her cannon had banana peeled, a sign of the destructive energy that had caused her injuries. Smythe and Melinda were already treating her, bandaging the wounds with gauze. The Phoenix sun would take care of that, Alexander had planned his raid of the dungeons with attention to the healing light that bathed Gaia’s children every third day.
The problem was that Kaczynski, their architect and cryomancer, was missing half his face, like something had bitten down on one ear and pulled he flesh from the skull all the way to his missing nose. It was horrific. It also wasn’t the major problem, that being the fact that Benjamin was using the man’s belt to tourniquet a leg missing from the knee down, and Potter was keeping the ice mage’s lungs inflating and deflating with his magic in an effort to keep him breathing.
“Oh, fuck.” Alexander summarized.
He didn’t have the tools to fix this. But he could handle the bleeding.
With deft fingers, the last Gerifalte pulled his trauma kit open and knelt next to the ruined appendage. A tin can with an aluminum clamp lid popped open and Alexander scattered white powder over the ragged stump. Instantly, wherever the powder touched, the blood flow stopped. A visible strand of artery shrank in on itself, as if clamped by hemostat. Mandrake Leaf Quick Clot was miraculous for bleeds. More powder applied to the poor man’s face stopped the blood sheeting from his torn face.
Shiv arrived on the scene with Mark only a moment behind, the rest of the Adventurer teams remaining with the wagons to protect the caravan from stray mobs that might be roaming free, or the mana infused beasts and creatures that now roamed Gaia freely.
“Shiv!” Alexander yelled unnecessarily, since the healer was right next to him, “Our guy has massive bleeding, now controlled, from the leg and head. There look like punctures in his abdominal wall and he’s not breathing on his own, Potter’s probably the only thing keeping him alive. Ruptured diaphragm likely, maybe collapsed lungs. Can you stabilize him?”
Their healer froze at the sight of all the blood and the terrible nature of the wounds but Ben, relieved of leg tourniquet duty, reached up and hauled the Flesh Weaver down to kneel next to their wounded architect and gave terse orders, “Get to work Medic, this is why you’re drawing pay.”
The gruff no bullshit tone seemed to work, and Oleksiy laid hands. His eyes widened, presumably at the extent of the internal damage and he looked to his party mate and Alexander and shook his head despairing.
“Is fucking mess in there. I will try. How long until sunrise?” The former orthopedic surgeon asked.
Alexander kept track of sunrises out of habit and answered “Seven fifty-four A.M.”
“Fuck. We will see.” Responded their healer and he bent to his work, eyes closed, feeling the damage through his magic, repairing it as fast as he could without causing more.
More of the Mandrake powder went into the deep punctures to help stem the bleeding through the abdominal wall and diaphragm.
Ben got drafted to begin CPR compressions when Scott’s heart stopped. Potter was working as efficiently as he knew how, but his mana was limited, and the concentration necessary to use exactly enough magic to inflate and deflate lungs without tearing them apart was taxing his limits. Melinda took over for him, withdrawing from Saki and pulling free a floppy bag of rubber that had hose connections.
The wonderful woman carried a ventilation bag!
Mark bent down and took over compression at Ben’s direction and the Steel Heavy Knight surprised everyone when he quickly and efficiently relieved Melinda of the bag, got the tube lubricated and run down into the wounded man’s lungs, and applied steady compressions of the bag to establish regular inflow and outflow of air. A few seconds later Mark got Scott’s heart back and the team was able to relax, somewhat, watching Shiv do whatever his magic could to put Humpty-dumpty back together again.
Five minutes later, Oleksiy flopped down to the dirt like a boned fish and gasped, “In God’s hands now.” before he lost consciousness.
The wagons arrived not long after, and the travelers got a real good look, some of them for the first time, at the true stakes of life in the Green. A few were sick when they saw the wreckage of the Cryomancer’s features. Bandages around his leg covered that mess, but there was no blocking all the face without getting in the way of the ventilation bag.
Since the wounded couldn’t be reasonably moved the wagons formed a circle and the colonials got to work making camp. The guards, dosed to sleep, were stripped, and bound. When they woke, they would be pissed, but there was no helping it.
Not so long later, Saki woke up and joined the huddle of Adventurers around the fire, shying slightly from the heat of the campfire flames. Alexander hoped she didn’t get gun shy, a pyromancy based class who was afraid of burns was going to be ineffective.
He hated thinking about the woman in such terms, but he hadn’t hired any one of these people out of charity. Founding Falcon’s Rest, turning it into a base of operations to cleanse the area of dungeons, and finding the path to reverse the Enshrining were his goals. All of these people were a means to that end, and he refused to be a hypocrite and not acknowledge it. They deserved his honesty, for coming out here knowing that there were no guarantees they’d live to enjoy the fruits of their contracts.
Some had taken currency, the kind exchanged between settlements: good old fashioned metal coinage minted by the smith contracted to be a coinage artisan whose skills literally could not be used to make forgeries thanks to the ironclad terms of their contract. Others, most, in fact, had also taken payment in the form of citizenship in the settlement and a cut from the settlement’s shared resource pool. They would have and make homes in Falcon’s Rest. The prosperity of the town was their prosperity. That made them neighbors, and being raised in Mainer-land meant there were certain expectations for how you treated your neighbors.
At least the slight, Japanese American lady wasn’t in too much pain. Third degree burns tended to kill the nerves in the damaged tissue. The sunrise would return her to wholeness before the worst of the hurting could set in. Her hair would be a little gothic style for a bit, long on one side, clean to the scalp on the other, but Brig was already on it, patting a bench seat next to her and using her exquisitely sharp belt knife to even out the edges of things and clean up the remaining damaged hair. Who would have thought that the girl would know how to do hair?
Everybody had a life before the Pulse. Almost none of them talked about it. It was a sort of unwritten rule that you didn’t ask someone who or what they were before. Some took it further than others. Alexander would tell you whatever you wanted to know about anything and everything from his old life. Ben refused to acknowledge that anything before the Pulse existed. He was an odd duck was the big man, but the way Alexander saw it, he had simply committed harder to the new reality than everybody else, had accepted the way things were and was living eyes forward in all things. It helped that his only passion in life was slaying dungeon critters and the monsterized things Gaia spawned.
The group was coming around to the point of their little pow-wow.
“What went wrong?” Alexander asked, ready to find out how a field dungeon that was supposed to hold low tier bat winged little imps, a few chimeras with lion heads, eagle talons on the front legs, and three tails, each with a serpent’s fanged maw on the end, a dozen three-foot-tall stone statue looking things called yaksha that pitched fireballs, and were tough, if slow, had caused so much trouble.
Ben answered immediately, not even looking up from where he squatted, poking the fire with a stick found for that purpose alone, “Fucking greenhorns panicked.”
Smythe grimaced and Melinda examined her hands studiously. Wynona turned her face away from the rest, tears silently falling to the ground. Potter was the only one who didn’t shy away from the blunt assertion.
He scratched a full dark beard and admitted, “It could have been worse. Not much though.”
Alexander didn’t need to press, everybody knew the score here: Knowledge is power, mistakes that don’t teach are wastes of life. It was another reason he had hired on who he had. He just hadn’t expected the lack of experience in combat to bite them in the ass so quickly.
As the Anchor tank, the lynchpin of the party, Nathan took responsibility, “It was my fault. We were in a tight formation, keeping the techs close to me so they were protected by my aura. A chimera rushed, and Saki forgot she was holding a charge on her cannon for way, way too long. It blew, smoked her hard, even through my Soak, and the chimera came in vicious as hell.”
Ben offered to take a share of the shit pie, “I didn’t say anything about the grouping either, we all should have known a class called Pyroclastic Cannoneer might have some collateral damage. Anyhow, when her cannon popped it knocked the piss out of everyone. Took a second to recover and get the chimera handled. It almost got Scott and I should have known right then we were fucked.”
A click of the tongue from Potter and a low groaning, “Yeeeaaahh. About that guy,” He started, looking around like a lifeline might be thrown.
When none appeared he chucked the chewing tobacco from his lip into the fireplace and made no bones about it, “Scott’s a coward. Bonafide. Dude froze up when the chimera came in and Ben had to just about peel it off him.”
Seeing no objections, the HVAC engineer gave the report with his twangy salt of the earth accent.
“We got our asses back in formation, Saki over there burned to shit but soldering on, even without her main weapon and useless as tits on a boar hog. Still, Ben is a motherfucker and Smythe kept us from getting another scratch. Made it to the boss, that big ‘ol Sword demon or whatever it is. Well, Baraka, that fucker goes right for our ice man like he’s wearing the dude’s girlfriend’s panties. Barrels right past Smythe over there, just ignores getting slashed, shoves me down like a bitch, even with my saber in its kidneys. Melinda, she popped off with a flare that blinded it, but it must have a great sense of smell, and our guy shit himself when the chimera jumped him, so it ran blind, and, wonder of wonders, he froze again. Mother fucker grabbed him, carried him out of Smyth’s aura chewing on his head. It ripped his goddamn face off and hacked his leg off, then it started fishing those sword arms around in his guts while we stabbed the fuck out of it. It didn’t care if we killed it, all it wanted was to kill the shit out of Scott, which it mostly did.”
The gathered warriors and explorers of the unknown absorbed that tale in silence, with only the crackle of the flame for commentary. They stayed that way for a minute. Alexander, for his part, was suddenly questioning how many people who had been Matriculated would find themselves unable to operate when danger was roaring down their necks. How many Scotts would freeze up and get themselves or their teammates who tried to cover for them killed? How would they advance those people’s classes if they couldn’t be relied upon to clear even a low tier, vanilla as it comes dungeon?
From the side, Granny offered a cool, collected, “Three virgins in a single run was a mistake.”
The harvester waited briefly for anybody to disagree, but the flat expression on her features made that more of a challenge than not. When no one deigned to object she continued.
“Smythe can’t cover that much ground when they scatter like chickens in a stressful situation, Melinda doesn’t have the firepower to fill in the gaps when two teammates are incapacitated in succession, and Ben is a solid main attacker, but he can’t be everywhere.” She analyzed.
“This wasn’t a party that was used to working together, not even Ben can keep so many rookies from tripping over their own feet. Two green party members, maximum, in a dungeon, from now on, and we combat train everyone to find out who flinches. The ones who can’t fight get carried by a team of five veterans.” Granny Nguyen decreed, and the assembled group shared a nod of agreement.
It was a start. A solid plan to prevent this disaster from repeating. Other disasters waited for them, but such was life in the Green. At least Shiv had rallied to get in there and probably save Scott’s life. That man, if he was still with them at the dawn, was now benched for the foreseeable future. No way they’d risk putting him in a dungeon of any kind.
The fire died down; folk got ready for bed. Mark took Melinda off to go let her know how he felt about finding her safe and sound under a wagon. Everyone did them a favor and pretended to be deaf. Alexander let Brig take care of Saki, after he offered her encouragement by way of telling her how he’d once gotten sashimi’d by Yetis.
Everyone made mistakes. As long as it didn’t kill you, you had the chance to learn from it. After that, he sat with his back to a wagon wheel and watched the stars for an hour until Granny threatened to burlesque dance if he didn’t go to bed so he rolled himself up into his blankets instantly and fell asleep faster than he would have thought.
image [https://imgur.com/3D1kmaW.png]
Predawn indigo painted the sky when next Alexander’s eyes opened. Stars hung up there, but only the brightest still glimmered. Venus hung forty degrees up from the horizon over to the southeast, and a falling crescent moon made for a poignant sight. For him, a reminder of the ephemeral nature of lives. Not that they needed any such. Scott lived. Barely. In half an hour or so, Sol would rise up and bathe the caravan in its rebirth flame. All the aches, pains, sicknesses, wounds, everything would be restored to rights. The only thing the Phoenix dawn didn’t touch was time. All else healed.
Alexander thought it a marvelous thing to never be sick again. Worth the price of most of the human lives on Earth’s surface? Probably not.
He threw the oilcloth sewn to wool blanket off and unzipped the sleeping bag he lay in. A foam sleeping pad rolled up and he bundled it all together, tied the bed roll tight for travel. Around the hollow created by circled wagons, the rest of the camp, besides those who’d drawn sixth shift sentry duty, begun to stir. Alexander liked his fourth shift. Around two in the morning, the whole world was quiet, and he could imagine that even the monsters took a break from menacing what was left of humanity.
That part wasn’t true, of course, which was why you had to post a sentry to begin with. But one could imagine.
Granny was stirring the central campfire back to life from coals, shuffling the embers to give them air and laying fine tender down to start the smoking journey to fire.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
A choked shriek announced that Wynona had awakened. The agony from her burns had set in overnight, and she was aflame again, or so it sounded. Brig held her like a small child, rocking the weeping chemist to comfort her. That sort of tenderness was unexpected from the big, brassy warrior, but he guessed he shouldn’t have been surprised. For all the wildness, Brigitte had a heart to match her stature.
Alexander moved to join Granny by the budding fire, with intent to prepare breakfast. Hunger was a minor motivator, the major being blocking out the pain of a woman suffering for accepting his offer. Granny’s acknowledging nod wasn’t accompanied by speech, it was still a little early for the Vietnamese girl to start her schizophrenic wise woman homesteader/ depraved gremlin routine.
Food supplies were copious, and Alexander figured a hearty meal was in order, both to build morale from the shitshow of the third dungeon clear, and to get folk ready for a hard day of travel. Their course had been a kind of semicircle, arcing away from Safe Harbor north and east up the coast, then bearing harder west to hit the trio of field dungeons north of the settlement. They’d planned to travel at least two hours northeast again, but the wounds of comrades had demanded a halt. That meant they were two hours, about ten or so miles, behind schedule. The wagons could go faster, the draft mules had no trouble pulling at a greater pace, but always the concern was damaging the cargo. No professional wainwrights had built these wagons, and they didn’t ride smooth or with good enough suspension to risk the goods in them.
Bacon hissed against the cast iron and immediately lifted spirits. Melinda wandered over and started biscuit dough, joined by Mark who had collected the eggs laid by some two dozen hens being housed in a big coop transported solely by one of the smaller carts. The birds must have been cozy to be laying on the move, a good sign. Livestock was among the more important of the goods coming along on this journey, and one of the reasons for so many Adventurers to guard. The caravan to Falcon’s Rest was ringing a dinner bell to the big predators Gaia liked to spawn in the wild.
By the time the wash of renewal bathed the pilgrims, breakfast was about ready to be served. Bacon, bacon gravy, biscuits, eggs done however you like, grits, oatmeal, corned beef, haddock hash, toast, they had all the fixin’s.
“Oh God, thank you, please, thank you, I’ll never break faith again, I promise!”
It would appear that their architect had survived the night, he remarked to himself as he heaped plates with sustenance.
The young hunter had been there before. Godsdamned Yetis. The creatures had come down the mountain last winter and he’d gotten hacked open by one. That was back when he was using guns, whose firepower was largely muted by Soak. Even the big bore rifle hadn’t managed to kill the monster before he’d gotten slashed. If not for the ice-cold water slowing his body’s rate of dying, he wouldn’t have made it to the sunrise that saved him. Good times.
Alexander hoped the man wouldn’t be a total loss after the fact.
Some people, they get one near death experience and, by all the gods above below and in between, they weren’t good for a single thing after for fearing their shadows. Falcon’s Rest was a long way north in the mountains, far, far, from what counted as civilization. Anybody skittish for there being monsters wouldn’t even get past the bees Alexander was going to be keeping.
Speaking of, he wondered how his hive was doing in his absence. Same for his gardens. He’d left in such hurry that he hadn’t been able to do much more than screen the crops off under some chicken wire caging to keep the crows and critters from packing it all away.
“Load me up brother, we’re going after that little dragon today. I ain’t eating before that shit, but I sure don’t want to be dying hungry.” Ben announced himself, with a plate held for Alexander to weigh down with grub.
Alexander obliged, noting the eagerness of the normally reserved man’s tone. Ben had wanted to slay him a dragon ever since the island had been discovered, with its draconic field boss. Guild monopolies on the field dungeon prevented that before. No longer.
For his part, Alexander was a touch antsy about the upcoming mission himself. He’d skipped the last two dungeons, giving up his place to help maximize the growth of the parties. He wasn’t missing the Muspelheim dungeon, though. That volcanic island was a treasure trove.
The cores from the imps were fantastic little space heaters or convection oven heat sources, not needing replaced if you used them correctly. The salamanders, dog sized “amphibians” if amphibians split time between lava pools and ash covered rocks and breathed fire like a napalm tank, had skin that was fireproof, flexible, soft as the finest suede, and their cores put a motherfucker of a flame tongue enchant into a weapon. You couldn’t use them for ovens, they were set to broil. You could use them to replace fuel for a certain steam engine Alexander was thinking about. Sterling would run all day without a single brick of coal off just one of the things. Lava elementals were interesting in that they turned into obsidian when they died, huge masses of volcanic glass. The stuff was interesting to anybody who could do shit with glass and Jules Reynolds, shaper of all things inorganic said he wanted every last bit of it they could grab hold of, for some reason.
Last, and of course, not least, was the dragon. A baby. Not much bigger than a pickup truck, with a tail about as long again, it had ruby red scales that were tougher and harder than superalloy tool steels. Better thermal properties than the heat shield ceramics on a shuttle, too. Not fireproof though, heat absorbent. Like Mark’s ability but dialed way the hell up. The pint-sized dragon walked on lava, turning it hard beneath the creature’s claws before it so much as sank into the molten rock. Organs, blood, all alchemical reagents of great value. The core was a bit of a mystery. No heat properties that Alexander had been able to discover from his stint in the Guild. Upper management, they were tight lipped about the things, and didn’t let anyone even look at one once they’d been harvested.
There was one last reason to visit the island, and it had to do with Annita Nguyen. Granny’s class let her harvest plants, put them in some kind of stasis, and then replant them, as long as not too much time passed. Losing the reagents of the dungeons was one reason that the Guilds hadn’t been destroying them. But, what if certain classes could get the valuable herbs, trees, mosses, or whatnots to grow outside the contested zone, whose mishmash of realms permitted them to flourish? That was what they were going to find out. If it worked, Alexander would have a strong position from which to argue that the dungeons should be cleared completely, after specialist harvesters had acquired all the useful materials that the dungeon could, safely, offer. It might push public sentiment over the top and force the Guilds to act before disaster struck.
Toward that end, their party would be The Dame, Brig, Alexander, Granny, Mark, and Ben. It was an assault team. Dame Sanchez was their hard counter to lava elementals and salamanders. Ben, Brig, and Alexander could kill effectively infinite imps. Mark could keep things under control, his defensive ability was even more effective in this environment than usual. Mark’s heat soaking ability would let him pull the thermal energy from flame attacks into the ground, giving him the advantage of muting the flame attack of the imps, elementals, salamanders, and even the dragon’s brand of area of effect nonsense. Granny was going to be batting cleanup, hacking crippled imps to death, carving cores from dead monsters as they went, skinning the salamanders, and collecting as many samples to preserve and repot with her Green Thumb ability as humanly possible.
That was all in the future however, they had a long, long way to go to get there.
Breakfast ended without fanfare. Pilgrims used water from a nearby stream, of which Maine had plenty to offer pretty much all over the place here in the lowlands by the coast, to rinse their utensils and crockery. The mules had eaten heartily and were already adding to the aroma of the campsite.
Whistles from the wagon drivers to encourage the mules, shows of Gee and Haw got the massively strong animals headed in the right direction: due west. Despite the healing light of the sun, Scott rode atop a wagon, hands wrapped around his knees. It wasn’t only Alexander that suspected the man’s courage was gone, if it had ever existed. He’d never be useful in battle. That was fine. There was room for a few POGs in this outfit, and the architect’s brain was most of the reason he was along in the first place. Saki was, fortunately, in high spirits. She bore no scars and, aside from her wicked punk haircut, showed no sign she’d been injured. Jules, using his material shaping abilities, even managed to completely repair the peeled barrel of her weapon, molding it, and shaping the metal like putty, though that took all his mana to do. The denser the material, the harder it was to work for the Quintessence Shaper.
Kim Summers, the Runic Artificer, helped her out with a final touch, running his finger around the barrel in a tight spiral, using his precise metal manipulation to cut fine grooves of rifling into the bore of the cannon, which it had lacked before; a promising display of finesse from the crafting class. He was cracking a rare smile as he did so, glad that his gifts were finally useful.
In good spirits were the pilgrims, and nothing deigned to rain on the hour-long parade to the Penobscot river, just past the tiny outpost once known as Frankfort. In the way of Mainers, there were a great many named towns, none of which had a great many people in them. Bucksport across the river was the population center back before the Pulse, and the wagons ambled down old highway one, grass already spotting here and there across the blacktop of the road, with the river and the empty buildings marking the path south. Most of Safe Harbor’s residents had come from these rural villages, banding together for safety. The atmosphere grew somber as familiar places, made unfamiliar by neglect and the absence of kin and friends, came into sight and were left behind.
Alexander was, mostly, immune to the downturn. His time alone had already thoroughly ingrained the loss of what was into his marrow. Every day he’d wound his way through streets emptied of familiar faces, except for the statues that replaced them. His mind was on the beasties that roamed free.
Animals were in abundance, deer, squirrel, big wolves, a few shy panthers, birds of endless variety, moose, and more of the elk that had attempted to murder Alexander in his early days, while he’d trekked back home from the air strip.
Many of the beasts had settled greatly since the first post Pulse days. Hypothesis varied, but, given that the Pulse had caused Gaia to literally birth many of these creatures from mana, as if bringing echoes of the creatures that had roamed its surface back to life, many saw the violent aggression of these animals as a fear response to being formed from magic. After a few months, the animals behaved again as animals, more or less. Even the obviously magical ones, like his Direbees, were essentially acting as one might expect. Good thing too, if the bees hadn’t responded to herbal smoke and white clothes the way regular honeybees did, Alexander would have been swarmed by poodle sized bees with foot long stingers.
Extremely aggressive variants appeared somewhat regularly for most species, Dire versions of about anything, really, but they shied away from an entire caravan. Numbers meant safety, for the most part, for the travelers. A few brave mana-fueled berserkers made attempts but were handled easily by the Adventurers and other Matriculated travelers.
Being amongst the scouts the entire way, making their rounds, journeying through thickening brush to survey the road as they paralleled the river, he was among the first to see their next challenge. Just ahead, around a slight bend that led to the waterfront of Bucksport, he saw ahead the first major threat to this caravan’s journey, especially following the dungeon clear operations: Fort Knox and Penobscot Narrows Observatory. An old fort, built too late to be useful against the British invaders that prompted its construction, stood proudly as a granite monument to the lack of foresight for an enemy sailing up your river and punching you in the face. It had been a favorite spot for ghost hunting and cheap picnicking with the kids. Now, it was a strongpoint for Safe Harbor, given that free walled fortifications were en vogue again. There was even talk of using the old quarry in Frankfort to reinforce, expand, and finish the fort, in case the population of Safe Harbor grew enough to warrant a sister settlement.
The fort sat up against the river, with overwatch over the entire town of Bucksport, the Narrows, with their critical bridge crossing, and the surrounding territory. Only the fact that October hadn’t yet dropped a hard frost to bring on leaf fall meant that the caravan had cover beneath the trees from the fort’s observation tower.
There would be trouble if word about the dungeon clears had got out.
What made matters worse is that the Fort’s real value lay in that it acted as a staging ground for Guild forays onto what had once been Verona Island, a chunky little plot of land between the Penobscot on the west and the Orland on the east, both of which still salty from the Atlantic not five miles away.
Verona Island was now a cinder cone volcano, home of the premier Muspelheim field dungeon with its draconic champion. The top five Guilds had a time share on the place and it would be defended accordingly. All the more so if their guard was up. One of the Big Rules Alexander had made about this little adventure run to establish a new settlement was that there would be no killing of men that could be avoided. The thought of what precious little humanity turning on itself made him slightly sick. That meant that they had to get in, clear the dungeon, and get out without any casualties. A sharp timetable, to be certain.
A flicker of motion caught his eye and Alexander had his bow half drawn before it resolved into one of the other scouts, a woman whose name eluded him. She wasn’t one of the Adventurer parties he’d hired, nor crew for the wagons he’d personally bought so he wouldn’t have spoken much to her. When word got around that someone was setting up a new hamlet, far, far from the growing hegemony of the Guilds, and even farther from the looming hyper dungeon around Belfast. He wasn’t the only one nervous about leaving that thing around to vomit up horrors.
Unlike the static, easily prepared for low tier dungeons, the Belfast hyper dungeon shifted, different realms waxing and waning in codominance over the area. The connection between realms was stronger there, more permissive. Ben had summed it up succinctly as “Bad motherfucking news.”
The scout he’d spotted noticed him and raised her hand three fingers up, followed by two fingers to her eyes, a snake hand jabbing to the southeast, and the signs for four threats. One finger, no danger, safe zone. Two fingers, caution. Three fingers, imminent danger.
So. She’d spotted four hostiles to the southeast. Alexander gave the looping sign for checking it out, saw the scout confirm, and fade into the brush to return to relay the information to the assemblage that followed.
Careful, slow steps, letting Stalk maximize the minimization of his imprint against the background, took Alexander forward. He crept from tree to tree, keeping his eyes fully focused on any fine details that might reveal an enemy. Two legged, or not.
Diligence paid wages of gold.
Two hundred feet away, in a tree stand obscured by brush, and occupied by a figure wearing the complex arrangement of fabric strips and plant material known as a Ghillie suit, armed with a high-power rifle, was the first sign of trouble.
A Guildie, manning a watch on the north road out of town. There wasn’t much reason to keep an eye on this route specifically, not unless you were hoping to catch someone back tracking from the north. There wouldn’t be any other people traveling back south from this angle, meaning that this sentry was watching for Alexander and his expedition.
The jig was up. Or was it?
Hawkish vision inspected the sentry. Nothing unusual about the man stood out. Thirties or so, medium height, medium build, tanned skin painted in camouflage grease paint in places. The weapon was a bolt-action rifle, looked to be a .270, which was big enough to be a problem for most people. The bored expression on the man’s face wasn’t consistent with getting fresh orders for trouble. Why else would they be watching the road though?
Because the Guilds are paranoid about poachers, idiot, Alexander finally realized.
He realized he had been too concentrated on their own circumstances. The Guilds were trying to manage about thirty Matriculated individuals each, cull creatures from dungeons, harvest materials, establish economic footholds, and consolidate power from the wreckage of the old world, of course they’d be paranoid that somebody might be edging in on their action.
Now, convinced that the half aware sentry was just maintaining a posting that had lasted for indeterminate hours of boredom, he decided he needed to clear that guard tower. The wagons had to come through here, to pass over the Narrows bridge.
Alexander circled to the south and ghosted along the approach to the tree in the thick brush. Near silent steps and practiced movements between lapses in attention got him within fifteen feet. He closed the final distance on his belly, coming up directly below the sentry. How to neutralize the guard without killing him though?
It was an odd realization that he was capable of killing a person with ease, but not subduing them. Grabbing the ladder might not be a good idea, the vibration might tip the sentry off, and he might yell for help. But only if Alexander was slow. If he were fast, he could make the fifteen feet in a second or two and be on the man before he knew what was happening. Alexander mulled it over and decided that he’d go for it. There weren’t any fool proof options so he might as well just flip his spear around and whack the guy in the head with it. As long as the bop didn’t kill the guy, he’d be good as new in three days. Not a guarantee, but it was the best he could do on short notice. He made a note to learn ninja things the next time anybody was offering to teach. Ben probably knew how to put someone down without making a fuss or leaking their brains out. Even if the former soldier didn't talk about the before, he was happy, or at least willing to go into profound detail, on the arts of war.
The young hunter took a few limbering stretches from the blindspot of the stand and then gently laid hold of the ladder wrung. His whole body tensed, and he threw himself up the ladder at maximum velocity. The sentry looked around when he felt the stand sway but, when he turned his face toward Alexander, the metal of the spear haft met him across the temple and the meaty smack of the blow sent him sprawling over the rail, limp. The young man had to cradle his naginata in the crook of an elbow and grip the stand’s frame with one hand and latch onto the unconscious man beginning to slide over the rail by the ghillie suit belt with the other.
Gently, he reeled the unconscious guard in and began tying his wrists to his ankles behind his back. A scarf to cover the man’s neck turned into a gag, securing the guardsman.
A quick Greater analysis revealed what Alexander was hoping not to see: the sentry was not Matriculated, and, therefore, not under obligation of the Contract. These men could, and probably would, fire without warning at anyone they thought was poaching on Guild territory. He didn’t know if it was a violation of the Contract to order someone to commit murder on your behalf, but he didn’t want anybody arguing over his corpse on the matter. Alexander took the gun with him when he descended.
Armed with that knowledge, he repeated the exercise in sentry neutralizing three more times, each time coming closer to the edge of the forest, where the old fort sat squatting on the river. Only one person gave him trouble, the last one who pulled a knife and tried to stab him in the neck before he could strike them. The blade ran across the metal plates of his armor and got hung up on the leather between them, and Alexander dropped his spear to catch the hand before it could try to murder him again. He brought his elbow across, hard, and rocked the man’s head back, ignoring the blood that sluiced from a broken nose. He soaked the man again, and the knife fell from limp fingers.
After a second fingering the faint blemish in the High steel strips of his splint mail, right across the collar, from the dagger, he tied the man up and tried not to be rougher than necessary, with mixed results. The bastard had tried to kill him!
Anger normally reserved for the monsters kept his heart high as he stared down at the older Normal man hired to murder his own kind for money. Back when there were almost nine billion people living in almost complete safety, that wouldn’t have been so egregious.
But here? Now? It was mad.
Mankind was well on its way to becoming endangered. Alexander was beginning to question how secure the future was in the hands of the Guilds.
“Hmmph! Heavy fucker, clearly the food’s good for shooting the folk going out to face the wild for your sorry asses.” He remarked, rolling the sentry into a fireman’s carry.
Alexander was no saint, he shared many Matriculated’s resentment for the folk who refused to be carried through a dungeon to realign their beings with Gaia’s new order. In his humble opinion, they weren’t simply cowards, which he understood, having spent most of the year prior to coming to Safe Harbor living in a perpetual state of background terror, they were slackers. They did less than they could, many of the Normals wouldn’t even have possessed classes suitable for combat, but would have been incredibly helpful in rebuilding civilization according to the new rules. Their refusal meant they were just shy of being dependents, and his disdain for the lead-swingers was bone deep.
He hauled his catch with careful steps, stalking back to where he’d left the other three. These men were all Normals, they had no binding Contract from the city, they did not abide by the rules of Gaian civilization, which, by choice, applied to the Matriculated. As he made steady progress to the thicket of hogtied sentries, he mulled what he had learned of the Guilds and their leaders, imparted in taverns, and observed in his stint with one of the top three.
They had come to power rapidly after the Pulse, when the insane scramble to survive the collapse of modern life, coupled with advent of creatures from fairytales and nightmares, spearheaded by aggressive men and women who had ambition and charisma. Like seed crystals in a precipitation reaction, they drew the survivors to them, coalescing into an organization. Power gained through touching the dungeon hearts only magnified that effect. Wealth obtained by acquisition of fantastic resources cemented the Guilds as the de facto leadership of Safe Harbor.
Gently, the young hunter laid his last catch next to the others. A few were starting to come around, dazed, likely concussed, and not so thrilled about the current situation. He’d completed his mission, however, and they could just lay there and enjoy his commitment to not killing humans, even ones hired by the Guilds to murder their rivals or any who would poach on the lands they unilaterally claimed.
Alexander had decided early on that Safe Harbor was best described as a confederation of juntas: Militarized clans vying with each other for territory, with the population of the town playing a support role, but almost completely absent say in what went on. He could only hope that things normalized once the shock of the Pulse and necessities of life were secured.
People made weird decisions out of fear. He knew all about that.
Fantasia, a disorder so profound it impacted his status, was a dissociative condition in which people rejected the post Pulse reality or couldn’t completely reconcile the facts of the new world with their previous experience. About one in ten survivors of the Pulse had it. They made questionable decisions, at times, thanks to the disjunction between past and present. His Fantasia hadn’t faded until he’d come to Safe Harbor, and, at last, was convinced by the presence of so many humans that he wasn’t simply imagining everything from a padded room somewhere.
With the guards handled, Alexander Gerifalte retraced his path through the woods to the waiting wagons a mile back. They would be collected and packed along for safe keeping until they could be deposited when the wagons left Guild territory.
He warbled like a black-capped chickadee on his way back, signaling to the other scouts, with the idea of preventing anybody who might be a little too high strung from sending an arrow or crossbow bolt at him. Accidents happened when tensions ran high.
“The kid’s back!” Announced Van Richards, from his position driving one of Alexander’s wagons.
Kid. He frowned at the appellation.
It was annoying that the forty-year-old referred to him that way, he wasn’t much younger than Granny, or Mark, who was leading Getsome. Most of the people in the caravan were in their mid-twenties to upper thirties. Matriculation had caused most people with set careers to take on classes that were of a nature with their deep-seated hobbies or well-established skillsets. The younger folk, absent those long-ingrained habits and full of vital energy, tended to lean more heavily into classes that favored combat roles. Gaia, it seemed, gave the young a fighting chance.
“That’s Mr. Kid to you, Old Man Richards!” He called back to the Talus Mage, exchanging snark for snark.
The oldest man of the expedition replied with a shake of his head at the reminder that his employer was half his age.
Mark and Smythe, the leaders of their respective Adventurer parties, came over to get the lay of the land. They were joined by Potter, who had assumed the role of representing the field techs, especially since Scott Kaczynski was psychologically unfit for a whole lot at the moment.
“Good news and ba-- Aaaah!!” He squawked at the finger that ran across his left buttock.
A turn revealed the serene features of Granny Nguyen, who gave no sign that she’d snuck up on him for the sole purpose of goosing him.
Smythe and Mark exchanged concerned looks between them.
“You, uh, you alright there?” Smythe eyed the young hunter who was leading this expedition, hoping tales of his eccentricities were exaggerated.
“Neither of you saw that?!” Alexander objected.
“Saw what?” Mark replied, stolidly ignorant, “You jumping at your own shadow? Or do tiny little Vietnamese girls with oversized backpacks spook you?”
Alexander gritted his teeth and “woosawed” to himself a couple of times. Don’t give them the satisfaction, Little Falcon, he whispered to himself. Clearly Granny and Mark were in on the game, with Smythe left out for plausible deniability.
“Never mind,” He sidestepped, “Just a particularly vicious mosquito, probably.” He said, with a deliberate green-brown glare at Granny.
His time was wasted trying to stare down the woman, she was born with a gift for harassing people while appearing innocent, so he turned his gaze back on the men.
“Ehem, as I was saying, we’ve got a situation ahead.” Alexander told the assembled group, explaining the sentries and the likelihood that there might be armed Normals as a part of the group guarding the Muspelheim dungeon.
None of the men and women looked happy at the prospect of having to escort the wagon train past a fortified position in easy shooting distance of high-powered rifles. Only a few of the expedition had classes that were durable enough to shake off that kind of damage.
Potter offered a piece of earthy sarcasm, “Sounds wicked fun, getting shot at from an actual fort. Any chance their cannons work?”
Alexander knew the answer to that one, his parents had taken him to tour old Fort Knox as a child. The two naval retirees had thought the place was hilarious, given its time of construction and having never fired a cannon in anger. Still, the picnic and immaculate architecture had made for a fun outing.
“The cannons were decommissioned. Unless somebody with the Guilds is particularly good at metalwork and reinforcement of the tubes, they’ll explode as likely as send cannonballs down range.” He summarized.
“Doesn’t solve the problem with the rifles.” Mark observed.
Smythe changed gears completely and leveled a dour expression at him. The Anchor tank of Impervious wasn’t looking so thrilled, by his judgment.
“By the way, why did you decide to clear all the snipers on your own again?” Accused the veteran adventurer.
He mulled over the motivations that had driven him to handle the sentries without calling for help first. Honesty was the best policy he decided.
“Because I’m better than all of you at ambushing things and I figured that if anyone else tried they’d get spotted. A single gunshot would have turned this mission into a fiasco.” The Entropic Venator explained.
It was true, so far as he was aware. For all that Granny had the uncanniest knack for creeping up on people, she wasn’t as good as Alexander at it. He just didn’t abuse his powers in the name of evil was all.
For once, his nemesis and wingman supported him.
“I must concur,” confirmed Granny “Alexander’s class is dovetailed to clandestine murder. He moves better than any of the scouts. Even I have trouble keeping up with him, and I know most of his tricks.”
Alexander didn’t like his class being described as suited for assassination, but she wasn’t exactly wrong. Especially since picking up marksmanship with a bow, which was quiet compared to guns, he excelled at killing from stealth, at most ranges. Just not people. He drew clear lines between dispatching monsters and mana infused beasts and taking a human life.
Nathan turned to his fellow party leader and inquired, “Mark?”
Getsome’s leader shrugged and replied, “What can I say? We haven’t worked together since the trip back from where we found the crazy bastard, but when he hits the bush, he same thing as vanishes. Most of the nasties go away not so long after when he does.”
There, Alexander commented to himself, what more do you want?
A resigned sigh escaped the older man, and Impervious’ Oaken Rampart accepted what couldn’t be changed.
“Fine,” the party leader agreed, clearly reluctant, “But try not to make a habit of lone wolfing, please? Last thing we need is an uncontrolled variable turning everything it touches into chaos.”
A curiously apt choice of words, Alexander thought. His class was defined by precisely applied chaos.
“Of course! Glad we’re agreed then.” Alexander said, happy to have his judgment supported, even if he didn’t much care for constantly being questioned.
He was young, not stupid. Well, mostly not stupid, but nobody needed to know how close he’d shaved it sometimes.
Whatever, they were burning daylight. There was a dungeon that needed killing today, and he wanted a plan for how to do it without taking the entire damned fort. As if that were an option.