It was nearly nightfall by the time the dragon slayers were in sight of the torches mounted to the sides of the wagons, pitch fueled beacons that led them back to their comrades. Risky of the caravan to have their torches lit, but they must have gotten worried when Alexander and company didn’t return in the predicted time.
There were delays. Not first of which was that both Brig and Mark had found themselves unable to swim. The former because her leg had been badly broken, along with other bones that only revealed themselves when she attempted a few strokes and promptly sank, unable to maintain buoyancy, which necessitated Alexander to fish her out of the water and onto the canoe. For the latter, Mark, his stamina taxed by blood loss and without the use of one arm, had decided he was unfit for the swim through a strong current and had joined the Dame on the canoe from the beginning.
Benjamin, Alexander, and Annita ended up having to push the terribly overloaded canoe around the south edge of the island, now several miles longer for the new rock laid by lava flows. That detour took hours.
The second source of their delay was Granny Nguyen’s massively overloaded pack. She refused to part with “Her precious” or to abandon their spoils. Not even Ben could cajole her into tossing some of the loot from the dragon’s corpse. Alexander found himself unable to put any heart into the remonstrations against their Harvester’s claims that a once in a lifetime opportunity being wasted would summon the wrath of the gods against the ungrateful. Leaving behind sealed jars of dragon’s blood was like leaving a puppy on the side of the road. It simply wasn’t to be done.
Problem was, not even Granny’s mule-like strength could carry the bulky mass of the thing for long without rest. Her frequent need to stop was slowing them substantially. After the third stop, Brig and Ben argued for lightening the load. Mark and the Dame abstained, and Alexander and Annita fought to keep their irreplaceable resources.
Joining temporarily with the forces of evil, Alexander succinctly argued, “I can’t make dragon scale armor for you all, if I don’t have any dragon scales.”
Normally unflappable Ben grew somber at that notion. After having had the chance to use Alexander’s self-crafted, and enchanted, naginata, he had a new respect for the talents of a Warforger.
“Alright, alright,” the now weaponless warrior conceded, after a few minutes debate on the edge of the banks of the Orland, the sister river that created Verona Island, “But we still need to do better than this. Rendezvous is past due, and, even if they did what they were supposed to and continued north, there’s a chance the folks guarding the dungeon we just iced might find their balls sooner rather than later and come looking. It’s awful, damned suspect timing.”
“Agreed.” Alexander conceded.
“Which is why me and you and the Dame are going to hump as much as we can, to take the load off Granny. This area is patrolled, as safe as anywhere, and it was just traveled by the wagon train. Mark and Brig can support each other to keep up, and we should be able to catch the caravan that way.” He outlined for the team.
“My precious!” Objected Granny, holding tighter to the giant pack.
“I can’t believe anybody thinks you’re a voice of reason, Annita.” He commented.
She was trying not to laugh, so he knew she wasn’t serious.
An odd lady was the harvester classed woman. When the Pulse caught her, she was way Upta, in a cabin she’d built herself, on a little cleared plot in the middle of the woods. Her pumpkin vines turned into an animate plant monster and tried to render her into compost, until she beat it to death with the shovel she had been using to dig potatoes. Her private homestead dreams had fallen to the wayside when a group of Adventurers scouting near Nickerson Mills pulled her out of the woods, against her will, and handed her off to the Guildies to be Matriculated at the Malone dungeon on their way by. She returned to civilization willingly after that, now understanding that she hadn’t gone loony in the bush, and that surviving winter was unlikely with monsters about. Her odd sense of humor and fiercely independent attitudes made her an acquired taste.
“Fine,” Granny Nguyen said, after a moment, “But I can handle most of it, I just need somebody to take the fangs, spines, and a few of these weirdly heavy containers of bone marrow. Oh, and the liver! One of you can have it, it reeks!”
Surprisingly, the Dame didn’t object to being drafted to hump gear, so maybe her delusions of grandeur were improving. Or, perhaps, she wasn’t willing to test Ben again by being obstructionist. Whatever the case, once the goods had been more evenly distributed, the team covered ground more quickly and found the wagon train only ten miles ahead of the intended meeting point, by a long pond called, in Mainer humor, Long pond, on highway forty-six.
It was closing in on nightfall when the tired legs of the party pushed through the tall grass, dew already thick, considering perhaps becoming frost, and saw the silhouette of the large pond just off the road, beyond an apple orchard. The wagon train was lit well by its torches, and the carriages themselves were circled, meaning that they were stopped for the day. Alexander’s recall of the maps said they’d made good time, which meant they hadn’t been slowed or inconvenienced by trouble on the road. He whistled the tune of the chickadee and heard an answer back. A warble on the end said it was Melinda, so he shouted, “We’re back! We’ve got wounded, and a hell of a story to tell. Bring Shiv to meet us!”
Afterward, the ragged-out Adventurers were welcomed into the safety of the circled vehicles, and much was made about the story of what they had found within the Muspelheim dungeon. Mark was being tended by Shiv, with Melinda hovering nearby to assist, and Brig was laid out semi-conscious. She’d had to be sedated to set her leg. Phoenix sunrise was still two days out, and they would be pushing hard to make distance from Safe Harbor now, which would be tortuous for the woman without her bones being splinted. It would be bad enough, even if they were.
From around the central campfire, having explained the series of events to a rapt crowd, Alexander supposed that, technically, they were officially exiles. The Normals who had been guarding the outskirts of Fort Knox, alongside the four Guildie guards along the Narrows bridge, had been deposited in Orland. They had sworn that the Guilds would have them all killed, which struck the youth as incredibly short sighted, and, after what he’d witnessed inside Muspelheim, ungrateful. There was no doubt in his mind that they had saved everyone in Fort Knox by stopping the eruption of that volcano. None of the Guildies had believed them though.
Exiles they might be, but there were other pockets of humanity, other settlements, and other Guilds, not necessarily so single minded in their ambitions. Besides, sixty travelers of varying backgrounds were enough to found a sustainable village, however, especially with the available tools and materials in their big wide wheeled cargo wagons. He was not afraid for the future of Falcon’s Rest.
For Safe Harbor though? He was now certain of its doom. If Muspelheim had been on the verge of something terrible, after months of abandonment, what would happen to the Belfast hyper dungeon when it stabilized?
Future problems, Little Falcon, he gently prodded himself again. Don’t worry about future problems, use the energy to solve now problems.
“So, you’re saying,” Van Richards, earthen works fortification extraordinaire, summarized, “That not only did you have to get past Normals armed with rifles to shoot poachers on Guild territory, you kids also went and killed a godamned tier three dragon?! Inside a volcano about to erupt? Because the folk who are in charge of keeping the dungeons around Safe Harbor under control are, on purpose, letting the dungeon go unchecked. That’s what you’re telling me.”
His skepticism was, perhaps, warranted.
Alexander was a known eccentric. Actually, now that he thought of it, pretty much all of Getsome were. Granny was no paragon of normalcy either.
“I mean, you can bite down on a couple of scales if you want to check if I’m stretching the truth. Maybe go check out the high lava mark in the caldera, just to be sure.” Alexander offered, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.
Van was a dick, in the best of times, but his skills were the real deal, and he was reliable once you’d gotten through his thick skull. If the older man wasn’t convinced, then maybe he’d gone too fast in his hurry to explain the situation.
“I thought it was supposed to be a tier one baby, no bigger than one of our mules?” the Earth mage interrogated, needing answers from this precocious, but maybe not quite all there young man who had paid dearly for his skills, but had also promised a life away from the horseshit pecker waving starting up in Safe Harbor.
That stinging reminder made Alexander wince. It was. It had. Both times he’d seen the boss it had been a tiny thing, and not a difficult kill at all. Getting to it had been the hardest part of the entire run.
“It was!” he raised his voice getting angry, “That was the entire point, killing off the dungeons before they could become serious problems. How were we supposed to know that the Guilds had, for some damned reason, completely abandoned clearing the thing?”
“Why though?” Chimed in Wynona Saki, her impressive mind working through the possible motivations for the seeming abdication.
“What could the Guild have gained by permitting the Muspelheim dungeon to grow? Could they have possibly thought that a higher tier dungeon would bring more and better materials and rewards from the dungeon heart? Maybe a tier up would permit more people at once to Matriculate or gain the reward?” The chemist mused aloud.
All good points, and all unanswerable. Without being a fly on the wall in the top three of Safe Harbor, there was no real way to know for certain.
“Any or all of the above, or none, so far as we can know,” Riley Potter answered, mirroring Alexander’s thoughts.
Nathan Smythe spoke for a large number of the caravanners then saying simply, “All the more reason to be gone from here as fast as we can get these mules to pull the train.”
Georgia Stephens, all five foot eleven, one hundred sixty pounds of dirty blond, Iowa farmgirl of her, agreed readily with her party leader, “If the Guilds have decided to keep anyone out from the managed dungeons, to grow them and reap the gain, then we don’t want to be anywhere near when something goes south.”
The stout, time manipulating tank threw Alexander a bone, adding her weight to the scales, “I don’t know about any of you, but I believe our contractor’s tale about the goblin dungeon pouring out ogres and goblins to scour the surroundings. It’s just a matter of time before one of those dungeons makes something that can’t be dealt with that also has an appetite.”
Vindication was good, but unanimity was better. They were on their own out here on the frontier of what could pass for civilization. Gaia was a fickle and fecund god, creating creatures long extinct, empowering species extant into various forms imbued with wyrd powers, without pattern. Like a child tottering around after having learned to walk, the planet was playing with its newly discovered potential.
The Dame, surprisingly enough, was the one to call for consensus. Resplendent in her armored gown, she held to her sense of dignity as much as Mark did to his shield.
“The Dukedom demands leadership, and these yeomen, stout of heart as they are, cannot survive without it.” She said, clarion voice rich, as if addressing a gallery of the peerage, “Some of us are here under contract, bound by magic to our oaths, in exchange for remuneration. Others are here by personal choice, following their own circumstances. What is not unique is that this expedition represents opportunity, a fiefdom of our own. But only if we are strong enough to be worthy of it, a strength found in unity, and faith in the future.”
Alexander was almost decided that she was calling for a vote, but not quite. The Dame, historically, did not think much of democracy as a political decision-making process. To her credit, she also did not think herself the one to claim the seat of Kingship. But, in her not so humble opinion, someone she approved of should.
Metal clattered, and leather creaked, as Benjamin came away from visiting his injured teammates to weigh in.
“It’s too damned late to be getting cold feet. The facts are, the contested zones grow, why and how be damned, and if they aren’t dealt with, they get harder to deal with, eventually. If we don’t get harder with them, we’ll all die, sooner or later. Everybody is going to have to join the effort, get their hands dirty, and, maybe, die in a dungeon for the cause. There ain’t no bystanders anymore, you want to see what that gets you, take a look at where standing still got Scott.” The reticent warrior spoke, the rarity of it grabbing all ears.
He looked around the temporary haven of the circled wagon train for anyone that wanted to play devil’s advocate. Not even Van wanted to naysay. The architect Cryomancer being nearly shredded was a poignant reminder of the stakes of being found wanting.
Absent any contest to his assertions the gravelly voice put their situation into context, “The other settlements, as far as we know are taking a more aggressive approach, clearing the smaller dungeons as fast as they can. Safe Harbor’s tack is a minority position, a dangerous one, and we don’t want to be around when those chickens come home to roost. Anybody want to add to that?”
Kim Summers, the artificer, smith, and generally regarded voice of reason raised his calloused hand, “We’re headed north with the presumptive mission of establishing a new settlement farther than anybody has been known to have survived the mana pulse, except for our resident Chaos agent. Said Chaos agent intends to build up a base of operation to create a bastion of civilization from which to branch out and engineer a way to either reverse the Pulse, or to restore the people Enshrined by it and reclaim Gaia. I think that’s a good plan. It was the original plan in Safe Harbor, what convinced us all to pull together before Safe Harbor’s top ten took a hard left to start carving the place up into their own little Countys.” The down to earth man said, laying out the situation cleanly.
Gathered members of the expedition looked around and seemed satisfied. They were here because they had judged that things were amiss back in the little seaport town they had gathered to when the world turned upside down. Now that they had their feet under them, they had wanted free of what was turning into a decidedly authoritarian, and distinctly feudal, environment. Many of the men and women here wanted a quiet place to live out their lives, to have children.
No one liked to speak of it, but there were no children after the Pulse. Nobody below the age of fifteen or so, or above the age of fifty-five had withstood the advent of mana. Gaia’s apotheosis had overwhelmed them. The result, a world without the laughter of a child. It was inherently wrong. Not a few folks wanted to go about fixing that, but, first, they needed safety. And hope. Which was part of the reason Alexander wanted to get as many people to come with him as possible.
Alexander was of the wholeheartedly sincere belief that his expedition north could offer these people the future they desired. He planned to do everything he could to make it so. Saving a fragment of humanity that might persist upon Gaia was plan B for being unable to reverse the Enshrining.
Flutters of bats overhead taking their toll on the mosquitos that lingered until the cold got them made up the only sound for a moment. Evening had slipped away, leaving night behind, stars flickering above, rampant for the lack of light pollution. Alexander was admiring the view, on account of he had nothing to say. He’d given his report on the happenings in Muspelheim, it was up to these people to figure things out for themselves. Personally, though, he figured Ben was right. They were pot committed, all the way to the river.
“We got z’s to grab, let’s figure this shit out now.” Announced Cervantes, who had stripped out of his Adventurer gear in favor of sturdy slacks and light vest, the undergarments meant more for working in the heat, rather than relaxing.
Nathan Smythe, leader of Impervious, laid out the options, in his stentorian baritone, “All in favor of holding course, say ‘Aye’, all in favor of hashing out a course correction, say “Nay”.”
“Stay the course?” The Anchor tank offered, and a widely varied chorus of ‘Aye’ rang around the camp.
“Make a change?” He countered, a lesser by far number of ‘Nay’ votes rose up to meet him.
Dame Sanchez announced formally, “Then the rank and file have spoken. Let that matter be left behind. Now, who among us shall lead, shall hold the final say to guide this gathering of plebians and noble persons to prosperity?”
In his mind, there was only one real choice: Mark Ross. The young man was charismatic, without being manipulative, selfless, but confident, with a good head on his shoulders, but he asked whenever he thought someone else might know better.
He was in the act of saying so when Granny called out, “We’re obviously choosing Alexander, who got us all in this mess to begin with.”
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That evil wench, he scoffed.
“That’s a horrible idea.” He countered, vehement, “I couldn’t lead a shoe to tied strings, and you all kno--” He countered.
“Seconded.” Ben said simply, cutting him off with a clear, rough voice, the traitor.
“Ben?! Why?!” Alexander objected, strangled by this unexpected sandbagging.
“Because you’re what we need: an idealist. You don’t care that the Enshrined can’t be returned, you’re doing it anyway. It would have been easier for you to kill those Normals than to capture them, but you were ready to completely throw aside any chance for the treasures inside the dungeon to keep your fellow man alive. When we found the dragon, you wanted us to run, to avoid the risk, live to fight another day. You value human life, even when it costs you. And, better yet, you don’t want it. You never wanted it. Which means you’ll do your best to get us where we want to go so you don’t have to do it anymore.”
It was a long speech for Ben. Alexander resented the warrior intensely for it. He was trying to wrap his head around it when the nail in the coffin arrived, with a funeral bell clang.
“You’ll take care of us, I know it.” Whispered Julia Richards, the sixteen-year-old, nearly mute Beast tamer girl, who everyone treated like a little sister.
A general round of approving voices lifted after that, cementing the gross error that Alexander Gerifalte, who had no business leading anyone to anything, which was why he’d contracted people with ludicrously generous expenditures of his Guildie fortune, would formally lead the expedition.
“Ohhh, this won’t end well.” Alexander predicted aloud, hoping somebody saw reason and put Mark, or Nathan, or even Potter, anyone else in charge.
His only avenue of escape would have to be their self-preservation, when they saw how wildly atrocious he was at handling other people.
Brig shouted from her drugged stupor, “Hah! I banged the President!” and he sighed deeply into the October night.
Four days of steady travel followed the, in Alexander’s view, grossly incorrect decision for the leadership of the expedition to be placed in his incredibly inadequate hands. There were many things at which Alexander could be said to be apt. He was not humble in this regard, and did, in fact, consider himself to be a resource for humanity going forward. Everyone was valuable now, everybody had a part to play. His was a critical role backstage, getting the lights on, setting the stage, the technical shit the main actors couldn’t be bothered with.
His parents had played no small part in that.
It wasn’t their intent, no one had foreseen the apocalypse that had transformed the third planet orbiting Sol into a sentient god planet, whose awakening through aetheric nova connected her to other realms in a manner that defied science as it had existed pre-Pulse. But whatever odd set of skills he’d gained from his engineer father and that wonderful man’s collection of books on all things making, combined with his mother’s spirited insistence on learning to embrace the love of taking game, navigating the wilds, and turning the mountains around his home into an extension of his back yard, what he was not was a leader of men.
Alexander was aware enough to understand that he was too young for such a role. By far. Forget that the Pulse had lopped off the top and bottom of the human population’s age distribution, which had those who had the background to understand the implications for the risks of a suddenly senescent collapse, Alexander was still close to the bottom of the remaining age group. Eighteen tender years was not enough life experience. The second day running that he voiced his objection though, Julian Reynolds, the Quintessence Shaper and one time brick layer told him to shut his yap and enjoy the perks of being Duke of Neverland before he hurt morale enough that the group splintered from not having an agreed upon leader and they all died.
After that, he stopped complaining where anyone could hear, but the burden of having to be the final say never left. His internal bitching kept him occupied while he scouted the way, although not much scouting was needed, honestly. Old interstate ninety-five was running wide and easy north. The wagons traversed this causeway, legacy of a world long gone, easily. It was worth noting though that there was plenty of sign that Gaia was accelerating her recovery from mankind’s abuses, new and reinforced versions of plants starting to encroach upon the medians and edges of the roadways.
Maine, being a heavily granitic region, quarried extensively for its robust stone, was perfect for a grand project Alexander had planned: an earth mage led effort to pave the old roads with solid granite block. One day, long, long from now, the action of tree roots, freeze-thaw cycles, and so on would render the asphalt paved roads of old Earth impassable. Before that happened, he wanted to guarantee that easy travel remained possible. Future generations would enjoy the freedom to move easily along these arteries of old humanity. When trees could up and grab a man, stuffing him down into their woody maws, like a horror show version of the trees, minus a Tom Bombadil to smack the people eating timbers back into compliance, folk would appreciate a nice wide road on which to travel.
In any case, the relatively easy travel left him with not much else to do but brood. Melinda would walk beside him occasionally and her composed support helped him come to eventual terms with things. She also side eyed him and suggested that he not wander so far out of sight, when once he took a long forward scout to clear the way of bears or the vine laden Venus flytrap like plant monsters that spat noxious poison gas which everyone only partially tongue in cheek referred to as Marlboros, anything to get his mind clear through the focus of stalking the wilds. Damned reasonable so and so’s.
Day five of the journey, in which the wagon train made an average of twenty miles per day, brought them to the interchange from which they would leave the large roadway and cut onto the tiny state highway, which they would follow all the way back to his hometown, the site of what would become Falcon’s Rest. Westward, the Appalachians reared up, this far north they were near the trailhead that marked the beginning of the Appalachian trail that would take a brave and determined spirit all the way to Georgia. Alexander suspected that a through hike these days would prove a far more ambitious undertaking than in the good old days, courtesy of Gaia’s disposition regarding mana infused wildlife and flora.
The caravan had seen no one, had traveled alone the entire time. Not one sign was seen that might indicate pockets of humanity living in isolation from Safe Harbor’s settlement down south. It was a sign of the way of the new world. Humanity, once far flung, had been cut off at the stump. It would be a long, long time, if ever, that they returned to their former ranges.
Alexander marveled that Getsome had come so far from civilization as they had.
When he’d asked how they’d even thought to leave the interstate and journey to find him, they said it was because Melinda had smelled smoke and followed it to his town. He believed them. Without the pervasive burning of fuels, wood smoke, the sign of combustion of anything, was a relatively rare thing, easily picked out from the fresh atmosphere. It was an atmosphere fresher still for the frost that now crusted the fallen leaves of full autumn in Maine.
Smooth though the journey was, there was not an absence of trials. Seven times the caravan had suffered close calls. Once, early on the third day from the clearing of Muspelheim’s volcano, from a trio of Entlings. The great smooth skinned tree creatures, each towering nearly twenty feet tall, flew in a rage from a stand of the real trees in which they’d lain in ambush. Alexander didn’t know what prompted the aggression from these Gaian born monsters, but they attacked like bee stung wolverines. A stone flung like a cannonball from one hit a smaller trailer cart, and blasted it apart, killing the horse pulling it. The driver of the cart was not dead, the horse having absorbed enough of the impact to spare her life, but she was paralyzed from the neck down and only fast work by the caravanners kept her alive long enough to see the healing light of sunrise.
Alexander made certain that every last drop of Entling blood was collected and they lost a day in one of the tiny towns along the way obtaining a new trailer to replace the destroyed one. The horse, unfortunately, could not be replaced immediately. Breeding the horses would eventually make up the lack, but for the rest of the journey the cart was hitched behind one of the wagons, its burden shifted to already earnestly pulling mules. Every so often the trailer’s load would be switched to another wagon to spread out the extra work. The caravan lost significant time for this event, however, traveling only seventeen or so miles per day from the initially good going of better than twenty.
Nightfall of the fifth day since departing the Guild controlled lands of Safe Harbor, the expedition celebrated with a small bender and relieved the stress of their travel. Brig, glad to be free of her crippling injuries, challenged Ben to a mud wrestling match. It was an unexpectedly close match, a struggle of titans. After fifteen seconds, with the ginger amazon pinned face first in the mud, Ben smiled and asked, “Anybody else want a shot at the champ?”
Every warrior in the caravan lined up to earn the honor of being vanquished by the heroic Adventurer. Alexander mocked Brigitte mercilessly for lasting twelve seconds longer than she had, ignoring her observations that it only took so long because he wouldn’t stop rolling like a psychopath.
“Crazy like a fox.” He remarked, in a call back to their first meeting.
It was a well-deserved break in the strain of the sixty odd travelers and they all slept better for knowing the morrow would bring them to their destination.
This day, with a sense of expectant tension due to being at the near end of their journey, the expedition rose early. They set course according to the input of Getsome, who had traveled farthest outside the immediate vicinity of Safe Harbor and set scouts to patrolling for trouble. Except for Alexander, who, as of yesterday afternoon, was barred from scouting because, “A Duke does not take risks, he has men at arms for that.”
Dame Sanchez with that observation, of course.
He’d taken not a single scratch from the giant wasps that had descended from Hell’s own hornet nest to impale and envenomate him. These hornets were smaller than the Dire bees he had ensconced within a specially remodeled house that was to have served as his apiary, back before Getsome pulled his half feral ass from the far north to Safe Harbor. Still, when Mark and Nathan both descended on him, removing his grinning trophy pose with a clutch of super hornets held by their stingers, dead of course, he was relegated to not leaving sight of the wagons.
Boring bastards, the both of them, he muttered spitefully, even knowing they were right to do it.
Barred from his usual role joining the scouts, for now, the Entropic Venator was now relegated to join the wagon train. It wasn’t long before the regular offerings of mule dung made him dearly wish he were out amongst the trees, keeping watch in case a panther tried to jump him. The only solace he had was in going through the spoils of the volcanic realm brought back from Muspelheim, which he was poring over from inside the canopy of the lead wagon of the train. For mule odor related reasons.
Elemental Obsidian, pure, black-violet volcanic glass, of which they had about three hundred pounds. Initially, he’d been skeptical when Jules Reynolds insisted so keenly on getting as much of the lava glass as they could. After he’d had time to look it over, though he understood.
Muspelheim Obsidian (elemental grade): Volcanic glass from the realm of fire, this material was harvested from an elemental and is utterly pure, drastically increasing its strength to near diamond ceramic. Muspelheim obsidian is absorbent to all light, except for a narrow band around violet and ultraviolet and the infrared, and severely dampens most vibrations, consuming the incoming thermal energy at a molecular level. Glass form uniquely perfectly reflects heat while absorbing other bands, but readily absorbs heat energy in liquid form. Thermal energy stored by the solid glass can be induced to radiate when its natural resonant frequency is sounded.
Caution: regulating the heat exchanged from a material that contains the thermal energy of a volcano is of paramount concern.
Already, Alexander could see the applications. Firstly, he could replace his forges with this stuff. A thin layer, a film almost, would be sufficient to bring his forge to temperatures needed to melt tungsten, at incredibly efficient fuel consumption. That fuel consumption could be bypassed completely, if only he found the correct frequency to induce a short release of the molten energy inside the Muspelheim obsidian. Jules could turn the bottom of the planned forge liquid to reabsorb the energy, conserving the volcanic power, or ambient heat of a fuel source, charging the forge basically for free after use. Better yet, the obsidian ate light, meaning its internal energies could be replenished by sitting under the sun’s light.
Alexander sat back, green eyes glazed over thinking on the possibilities presented by the combination of the gifts of his settlers and the bizarre properties of matter from other realms.
“Ye gods, what a load of horseshit.” the young man remarked quietly, within the confines of the canvas wrapped wagon.
The second application of the glass followed the same logic, he could create a smelter capable of processing essentially any ore they came across, so long as the metals involved had distinguishable melting points and the reduction was favored for one over the other under specific conditions.
Hmm… Alexander mused, maybe there were fluxes that would help. Or miscible metals that could be used, like the Parkes process, where the low concentrations of silver found in the ore around his hometown was separated from the lead rich ore by using molten zinc. The zinc was immiscible with lead, but silver dissolved into the zinc, meaning mixing molten lead/silver with zinc separated the small amounts of silver out into the zinc, which floated atop the denser lead. From there, the zinc and silver could be separated easily later. It was odd how that high school field chemistry lab based on the old silver mine actually paid dividends. He owed Ms. Bates an apology, the young man thought glumly. The last time he’d seen her, she was petrified while cleaning glassware in one of the school chemistry labs, the one not torn apart by the Silver ore golem.
Muspelheim obsidian was a good example of the impossible rules that governed the other planes, compared to Gaia. It absorbed light, but not heat, which it reflected. It also had an incredible specific heat. To get it to absorb heat, you had to liquify it first. Given that the frozen material was almost impossible to heat, that was something of a trick. Fortunately, Jules Reynolds’ class let him alter the phase of materials, without changing their temperature, which meant he was one of the only people who could work the obsidian or charge its heat reservoir after use.
Alexander set aside the chunk of obsidian he’d been toying with absently while plotting and moved to the next bit of otherworldly wonder, the dragon.
Scales of various sizes from a tier three red dragon, about eighty pounds worth, were shockingly light for the volume. Despite the low density, however, they were friggin’ adamantium, harder than anything else he had, even the Golem High Steel. Those plates were going to become armor, without fail. If it was good enough to protect a dragon, it was good enough to keep soft, squishy humans free from harm. Alexander would first equip Getsome, then Impervious, and with whatever was left, he’d work on getting the scouts and harvesters some upgrades to core parts of their protectives.
Granny had pried three, three-foot-long dragon fangs from the boss’s mouth. Each was slightly curved, and shaped like a tyrannosaurus’ teeth, if a tyrannosaurus tooth was a foot across at its base. In addition to those impressive dentine sabers they had a half dozen smaller teeth, about eight inches long, roughly isosceles triangles, more akin to a gila monster. Those large fangs were meant to kill, the smaller teeth to hold the prey while the dragon savaged it. Alexander was appalled at the thought of something that was so colossal a forty plus foot long elephant sized fire dinosaur would need to fight to take down. He wasn’t sure what could be done with the spines and teeth, but he was certain someone would come up with something.
In addition to these solid materials, they had come away with substantial alchemical bounty. Alexander had tasted of each piece of the field boss, and his abilities catalogued the properties thereof, to the limit of his Warforger trait to analyze.
A droplet of red so dark as to be nearly black hit his tongue, courtesy of the tightly resealed jar of draconian blood resting in a padded box. No sooner had he swallowed the acrid stuff than his skin seemed light from within, and Alexander felt like his bones were ringing a tuning fork tone. The transient rush of heat and vibration left behind a pervasive sense of alertness that extended to his body. Textures in the dim lighting of the wagon deepened. Hidden before by the muted light from the sun filtering through thick canvas, he easily saw the weaves of fabric in the canopy. Eyes darted between objects, each startling in their clarity, as if a picture’s contrast had been adjusted to sharpen details. Alexander had switched from 1080p to 4k resolution, and the drastic difference left him briefly dazed.
Immediately, the young man called the details imparted by ingestion of the obviously magic laden substance to his vision.
Muspelheim Red Wyrmling Blood: blood of a red wyrmling from the realm of flame, still bearing its source’s warmth. Draconic blood is saturated by the mana of their home realm, ingesting a small measure of this vital liquid accelerates maturation of legacies within nascent blood lines. Unmatriculated entities, absent a core to house the mana of this beast’s blood, find themselves consumed by its potency.
Dragon blood has several properties of alchemical noteworthiness, including the unique property of acting as a metal solvent when cold, permitting alloying of otherwise immiscible elements, which are crystallized when the blood is heated back to its usual two-hundred-degree temperature. Other applications known are to vastly increase the potency of restorative reagents during synthesis although this is not catalytic and the blood is consumed in this process. It can also be used to infuse materials with Greater flame aspects, if the sudden flame mana introduction does not induce it to combust.
Insufficient skill to resolve further property, proceed with caution.
Without delay, bolstered by the sheer immortal confidence of moment, the young man reopened the jar from which he’d taken that droplet and downed a swig of blood before he could mentally bask in precisely what he was doing. At quick motion slammed the lid shut and twisted the cap to seal it, while the thick liquid found its way to his belly. Barely did he manage to replace the jar in its safe padding before that foreign heat within lit anew, this time with a fullness that found a peak, a limit, and the ringing in his bones reached crescendo, before fading to a background hum.
“Holy shit!!” Alexander yelled from his perch on the bench seat.
“Shut it weirdo! Some of us are trying to walk here!” Brig hollered at him from the next wagon down the line.
Alexander snorted and refused to take that kind of sassing quietly, especially not with the vibrant energy of a dragon’s blood in his body making him feel like he was full of triple shot espresso and a gallon of whup ass. Something weird was going on, but he wasn’t thinking it was a bad thing.
“You shut your mouth when you’re talking to me!” He yelled one of his favorite comebacks, before continuing, amped by magical nonsense, “I’m the goddamned President!”
“Just so! Tell that ill spoken ruffian what for!” Agreed Dame Sanchez enthusiastically from her place defending the lead wagon.
The pair of them butted heads frequently, what with the Dame’s semi-Victorian demeanor and Brig’s Brigness. For once though, Alexander was glad for propriety’s voice to be on his side.
He heard a beginning tirade of profanity that transformed into a pained moan halfway, courtesy of a sturdy rap on her helmet before trailing off. Thusly satisfied that no more trouble was coming from that quarter he returned his attention to the bounty captured from the dungeon. Waves of energy kept surging, beating in time to his heart.
There was something funky going on inside him due to the blood and he could guess from its description what that was all about.
Musings were interrupted by that insistent mental pull that wrenched his attention inward, compelling his focus on his own being. Before he could even properly consider the blue scrollwork, it blurred in his third eye’s sight, replaced by a string of what he could only describe as updates to his own being.
Draconic catalysis complete, Hierarchy adjusted, Acceleration of blood line substantiation complete, first Tier III human acknowledged.
Tier II Shoggoth ►Tier III Outsider
Alexander Gerifalte felt his insides warping under the press of draconic mana radiating through his body. Essence of a creature whose being was more magic than not was dissolving into him, transformative. The core crystal inside him was filling his body with a pressure that oscillated, peaking and troughing, saturating his thoughts with the ebb and flow of his own energies. The alien sensation blanked his brain’s capacity to understand what was happening and Alexander’s mind shut down.