Another two weeks passed by in a flash for the settlers of Falcon’s Rest. October had transformed into mid-November, bringing sharp cold this far from the ocean. Almost unseasonable cold. Shared looks amongst the townsfolk confirmed what all suspected: winter would arrive early. Aggressive schedules and generous use of lanterns permitted the carpenters and Potter to finish the outstanding construction tasks and renovations of the houses that needed them, and Scott and Van, with Jules to back them up completed the wall, with one final push just as December landed on the calendar. December was barely two days old when the first of the snows fell. A Nor’easter pounded the Atlantic coast, blasted the village, winds hurtling against the walls with tremendous force.

Alexander had recently spent most of a day sitting in his kitchen, grieving over a lovely clam chowder, recipe courtesy of Mama Gerifalte, a meal that never failed to make him at least a little somber. The wailing winds, courtesy of their interactions with the buttress architecture of the walls, enhanced his sentiment.

So did the communal labor of the week past.

Scott and Van finished the Vault, the repository for the Enshrined of Falcon’s Rest. Into individualized cubbies went the former occupants of the town, all of them that hadn’t been destroyed in the chaos of losing control of numerous vehicles, ransacked by goblins, or knocked over by some scavenging critter or another.

His parents were amongst those entombed within the Vault. It had been hard, facing them again after two years, not much closer to a cure for the petrification than he had been when he left for Safe Harbor.

Hence spending a day in quiet reflection in his house. Guilt rode the young man hard that night, so, the next morning, he threw himself into his smithy to work it out. One day of penance did not suffice, so he tried again. And again.

Four eighteen-hour days running concluded the project which had occupied most of his shop time: the outfitting of Getsome and Impervious with their new combat kit. Based on their individual preferences, with input from each on dissatisfactions with their current armor, and with Kim Summers to help him with the detail work, he’d completely overhauled the arms and armor of the best warriors Falcon’s Rest could muster.

The young man, having put forth his absolute best effort, looked at the sets of medieval meshed with modern and beamed with pride, this last helmet his best work. If Mark had had this gear, the wyrmling wouldn’t have been able to hack through his shield and almost bisect him. Dragon scale, high steel, and a combination of Yeti and dire wolf leather made for tremendous protectives.

Before him, hanging in the air in blue scrollwork, was the intangible evidence of his mastery, a complement to the tangible arrayed on the floor of his shop. He’d just laid down the peening hammer for one last rivet.

Blacksmith + Silversmith ►Armourer

Armourer: meticulous craft, diligence, and experience fashioning arms and armors of various kinds has expanded your capabilities. Utilization of otherworldly components, alloys of uncommon heritage, and self-fashioned materials tailored to purpose characterizes your workmanship. The armourer has an intuitive sense for the locations along which forces tend to concentrate and where gaps or faults in protection might be located, to cover those for the armors you design, and to highlight them for the armors you must defeat in combat.

Prior skills in blacksmithing are retained and apply to the forging of weapons and protective kit.

It had been a rather long time since any distinct improvement in Warforger sub traits had occurred, but this was a big one. A fusion of the skills to fashion rough metal into fine shapes, to engrave, fit, and precisely finish delicate projects had tipped him over the edge. He’d pushed himself to his limits and beyond to make ultimate use of the precious supply of dragon scale and golem sourced ingots. He was now out of the golem high steel, had only a couple of two-pound argentum ingots left, and about a dozen dragon scales, most of them slightly larger, which made them harder to use without cutting material away. Or, rather, asking Jules to come and mold them to shape with his wonderous abilities.

He looked over and saw the slightly vacant look of someone reading something invisible. It would seem that he wasn’t alone in his advancement!

A joyful fist pump, a declaration of “Fuck yeah, Kim!”, and the two men responsible for this artistry of martial equipment traded firm handshakes.

The normally unreadable Kim Summers was clearly over the moon, Korean features as joyful as anyone had ever seen him.

The Oread man had taken a couple of weeks to figure out the tooling available, and to get back into the groove of fine machining. Afterward, he quickly left Alexander behind in some regards, having had much more formal training in the precision end of things metal shaping. Ricky the lathe, in particular, benefitted from a more educated hand. A few other tricks of the trade came not precisely from machining, but from tangential fields with which Kim had become familiar during his training. Techniques including one Alexander hadn’t thought of: the use of wood carving tools to sculpt dire bee wax molds formed on the bodies of the would-be wearers, into which liquified metal or, thanks again to Jules Reynolds, red wyrmling scales, could be poured to form precisely matched shapes perfectly fitted.

Strenuous application of vocational skills paid dividends for all, as Alexander was made aware currently.

“I have obtained the trait Armor smith!” Kim announced aloud, radiant, his thick work gloves clenched into fists raised overhead.

“I can finally see the traits of these novel metals, identify the more suitable ones for different applications, and intuit stress-strain relations to better understand the gauges of plates or fasteners needed to efficiently match design parameters. This is what it’s been like for you this whole time? Seeing all of this? You beautiful cheating bastard!” Summers ranted, with more emotion in his features and voice than Alexander had ever seen.

It felt good. Progress felt good. Making with his hands the things that would keep his hired champions safe, which would make the enemies of this settlement unsafe, felt good.

Summers had been as much of a game changer as Alexander had hoped, his machining skills and willingness to trade tricks and techniques made them both grow.

The cherry on top was Kim’s class abilities. Rune artificer allowed him to carve magical circuits made of magic into an object and imbue it with very specific functions. The language of the runes he carved looked like no specific written codex Alexander knew of, but had similarities to Arabic, Norse, and a bit of Kanji. Kim himself had no real idea what the letters were until he had set them into the material, it was as if Gaia had implanted within the man’s mind his own personal language of magic.

The results were fantastic, however. Carving the runes to ward fire, filling them with his magic, let him add lesser fire resistance onto the object. The same could be done with most of the known elemental forms. Acid resistance? Check. Cold? Ayuh. Lightning? No problem.

Experimentation revealed that, at his current level of competence, the artificer could only layer three enchantments, and only of the lesser variety. He could scribe the same one three times to elevate its level to the next tier of proficiency, thereby locking out other enchantments. Mostly, that wasn’t worth it, compared to making the Adventurers resistant to a wider scope of potential threats, but when it was good, it would be great, with the sky as the ceiling, as his skills advanced.

For a couple of the projects, the pair of craftsmen had gone all out, had created something quite special indeed.

Mark Ross, party leader of Getsome, Anchor tank, and widely agreed upon by the residents of Falcon’s Rest to be one of the most effective leaders of men alive, was recipient of one of the special projects. It had come to be named, Wyrmcinder

Mark’s offensive abilities were lacking, by his own admission.

His role wasn’t an offensive one, he was an Anchor tank, a frontliner whose job was to be a rock, with some upside in his fire manipulation. After hearing the young captain’s worries, Alexander had decided that needed to change, every member of Getsome needed to be lethal, even Shiv.

Toward that end, he and Kim had put their heads together to work a dragon fang into a type twenty-two, by the Oakeschott typology, arming sword. Wide base, strong point, moderately tapered with a foot long fuller, the weapon possessed a short hilt with heavy round pommel. The wyrmling fang was almost exactly as long as the blade and tang required, meaning no waste of material, and it had exquisite strength, even while holding heat. Alexander liked to think of the dragon fang as Tungsten, if Tungsten had been raised by osteoblasts.

On its own, that suited the Incandescent Triarii’s abilities nicely. Then came the sauce. Kim layered runes for lesser sharpness, lesser durability, and lesser restore onto the blade, which combined to make the edge keener, last longer, and to self-sharpen over the course of a few minutes to an couple of hours, depending on the abuse. Alexander sacrificed a salamander core, one of the few they had, to turn the blade into one that would reach white heat when infused with a bit of fire magic. Mark’s heat manipulation abilities would let him keep the firebrand hot enough to slice a glowing trail through concrete with only minimal draw of his own mana.

The short, heavy bladed sword, in Mark’s able hands, would devastate anything not immune to fire magic. In other words, if it wasn’t from Muspelheim, it was going to suffer greatly closing with the legionnaire.

Benjamin’s main arm had already been replaced, with Alexander giving him the naginata he’d made for himself, imbued with a potent cold generation. Winter’s Breath, between the golem High steel, the golem silver, and being pure metal from top to bottom it was already a mighty weapon. Three applications of the runes for lesser durability kicked it up to standard durability. That didn’t sound like much to the uninitiated, but Ben’s powers let him borrow the strength of the metal he touched. By making the naginata stronger, they made Ben stronger. Making Ben stronger amplified his effectiveness exponentially. He didn’t need help keeping his instruments sharp, he could simply will the metal to a razor edge as part of his Steel Heavy Knight class.

Every warrior would be outfitted similarly. The next time a dragon raised its ugly mug to cause trouble, it was in for a world of hurt, whether it was Getsome or Impervious to face it. He was making real moves toward the goal of fighting back against the insanity of this new world, which meant he was closer to finding a way to reverse the Enshrining, maybe. Maybe was better than not, so he cruised on cloud nine.

“Kim, you absolute genius you, I think this calls for a trip to the waterhole!” Alexander declared, basking in the shared accomplishment.

A rare grin across Kim’s face showed his agreement.

“To the Survivor’s Well, Mayor-General!” the Runic Artificer answered with gusto, using one of many titles the townsfolk liked to make up on the spot for whatever occasion demanded it.

He was Mayor. Comrade. General. Emperor. Count. Landlord. Kaiser. Admiral. Hostess. And many, many others, in combinations that had not yet found any sign of running dry. Alexander tolerated it because there was nothing he could do about it, and because it was hilarious.

With that, they cleaned up meticulously, locked the shop door, and moseyed down the main avenue of Falcon’s Rest.

Snow already piling seven feet deep had been cleared by mule pulled plows from the road, but more was falling. The Nor’easter was still howling up the coastline, and the two jubilant men marched leaving three-inch deep footprints in fresh powder the whole way to the single tavern of the settlement. Once a big old church, one of those passion projects of a congregation that had been bigger by far in those days than it was today, it was now a cozy bar and grill, run by a husband and wife and husband throuple. The two men both had classes that befitted an establishment for entertaining guests.

One, Alvin Bishop, was a Brigid bloodline with a class devoted to food preparation and brewing, with a side of significant and fairly long-lasting buffs of stamina, mana regeneration, and exhaustion prevention. He was dicing meat mixed with wild onions, harvested greens, and pickled peppers on a five foot long cast iron griddle with a wide smile that said there was nowhere else he’d rather be. Alvin was born to run a bar and grill. He was a mid-thirties black man of middling five-foot seven-inches height, thickly built stature, a Mr. Clean style shaved head, and exuded the kind of warm hospitality that made him everybody’s friend.

His partner in crime, Tom Clevinger, was a Brigid bloodline as well. Tom was pouring a round of home brew, its foamy head atop a blonde liquid that was watched with rapt attention from the patrons at the bar as Alexander and Kim doffed their coats in the doorway.

Tom was possessed of a class that came with traits that gave him a potent ability to preserve food in a kind of near stasis, to age foods to accelerate greatly processes such as fermentation, and to sterilize pathogens passively that came within a ten-foot bubble of space around him. As a result, nearly daily of the mornings, his six foot two inches of Nordic figure, a face chiseled enough to make it in Hollywood, with a long blond braided ponytail down the middle of his back, could be seen doing the rounds through town to “bless” the well and water reservoirs, and, generally, was welcomed in everybody’s home for a quick visit and a lunch on the regular.

It wasn’t completely necessary, people who full restored every three days didn’t have much to fear from common bacteria, but sterile environments helped keep food from spoiling and wood from decaying. As a result of the brewmaster’s daily commute around town, he kept a fresh supply of the juicy gossip with which to entertain the regulars of the bar, namely, everyone in Falcon’s Rest, and did such with gusto.

The woman of the trio, and unchallenged Domina of the Survivor’s Well, was the sole other Outsider bloodline, other than Alexander himself and Jules Reynolds, and a spectacular example: she had sprouted large angelic wings, their bronze pinions spanning twenty feet and bloodline trait that granted her limited flight. A onetime high school volleyball ace, Lucretia, “Lucy”, Durnham was six feet of girl next door beauty, her blonde hair done up in a fancy bun to keep it out of the platters of repast she was serving around the church floor with the grace of a ballet dancer, even with the bulk of her wings tucked inside a plush robe worn over her old fashioned skirt and blouse attire.

Lucy’s class allowed her to declare a specific region three hundred feet in every direction from where she stood to be effectively sacrosanct, wherein no guest invited could suffer harm and across the threshold of which injuries fell away, as potently as the Phoenix sun itself. Her class, Interregnum Steward, was another of those that, at first glance didn’t seem so powerful. At second glance, she was, in her own narrow sense, a god.

The space she controlled was hers, indefinitely. She did not age within it, nor did anyone inside. Her domain was cut off from reality in some quantum physics breaking way. None could enter without being invited. The only real catch to her powers was that she could only reset her domain once every six months. More specifically, only after witnessing a solstice sunrise, either summer or winter.

She also could not leave the space without it collapsing. So, on the one hand, she became a god. On the other, a prisoner of her own power. A three hundred foot radius isn’t so much when you couldn’t leave it. As soon as the settlers had come, after discussing where they wanted to set up, she had made the Survivor’s Well her territory. She bore the cost of her confinement with a kind of serene pride because, if worst came to worst, the settlers of Falcon’s Rest could flee to safety within her domain. It was a hell of a last resort, and everyone was grateful to the forty-five-year-old former bartender for her sacrifice during the first months of the village’s construction.

When the wall around the city had finished, by popular vote of the denizens of the town, she allowed herself to drop her ability, thereby regaining her freedom. It was that kind of spirit of community and sacrifice that made for strong ties amongst the settlers. The Winter solstice approached, which meant, before too much longer, if an existential threat emerged that required it, Lucy could shelter the townsfolk within her domain for as long as that was necessary.

Into the warmth of the church turned alehouse the pair of metal smiths strode, and patrons turned to eyeball whoever had let the bitter breath of the Nor’easter into the cozy bar. Such was a tradition amongst Mainers.

“You plan on letting all of winter in?” Called one.

“For Pete’s sake, just hold a party in the dooryard while you’re at it!” jeered another.

“For real, it’s wicked cold out there, my beer was almost warm enough to drink.” Observed a third.

The two men, who had closed the door immediately behind them but nevertheless had to take their medicine, approached the bar. Tom had emptied a keg and dipped into the adjoining room to the right of the bar, in which a stair led to the old masonry basement where they conducted their alcoholic miracles. Alvin, his bald, dark scalp shining under the glow of a score of flickering flames clutched by a fanciful candelabra, mundane bee’s wax these as dire bee wax candles eluded Alexander currently, stepped up to fill the gap while his griddle reclaimed its heat for another round of vittles.

“Ignore the jokers, you guys look like you’re all stove up.” the congenial man told them, already grabbing pint glasses from under the bar top.

“Kim, you still like the Irish red, right? And Mayor, I got a new IPA just finished today, Tom put the final touch on it not two hours ago. You wanna give her the grand opening?” Alvin asked, already knowing the answers to all of his questions.

He was topping Summers’ glass off at the same time he’d finished speaking to Alexander, not even bothering to wait for a reply. That was the kind of man who knew his business behind the counter, Alexander noted gratefully, for not the first time.

“Yeah, please, Alvin, and I got Kim’s tab tonight.” He said, with a thumbs up for the fellow craftsman.

It was a kind of inside joke, there wasn’t any real economy in Falcon’s Rest yet. At best, you had a loose system of barter and favor trading, no money could trade hands, because nobody had any money. In a town of sixty some people, debt was a matter of neighbors needing help, not something for holding against a guy. Alexander knew this kind of system couldn’t scale up, but he would dearly miss a time when nobody paid because everybody had paid in full through the loose network of community.

“Sure, sure. So, what’s got the two of you all giddy? I haven’t seen Kim smile three times in a month, but here he is, all teeth and no cheeks.” Alvin remarked, his tone purely jovial teasing.

Alexander directed a meaningful look to his fellow.

“You wanna tell him, or shall I?” He asked, putting the ball of who gets to dish the good gossip in the other man’s court.

Kim sipped minimal head off his brew and then took a third of it in a single deep swallow before answering, “I got this one.”

“As of today, you are looking at the village’s official senior Armor-smith, trait and all, that is moi,” Summers pointed toward himself, “And,” he now finger gunned Alexander, “Our Blacksmith has ascended to Armourer.”

“All official and recorded in the Scroll.” Alexander noted aloud.

The Scroll was what they called the blue scrollwork people with analysis skills saw or when they examined themselves. You could always view yourself, but your wisdom stats and current knowledge limited what could be seen without an analysis skill of some kind to sort of peel back the mystery. Relatively few individuals possessed an analysis skill by default. He himself had Greater Analysis, a great prize amongst the Matriculated. Melinda had the lesser version of it, and she had, around the turn of November, trained it to the regular Analysis version, a marked achievement.

You didn’t, technically, have to touch or kill dungeon cores to strengthen your supernatural abilities and class features. Dedicated training would do it too. But it took a lot of application and real jumps in skill to do it. Melinda had been studying everything she came across, and had learned to sketch. She started keeping a field journal updated while she scouted that, as she filled in the details of the surrounding territory, enhanced her understanding about where certain plants or animals could be found, which habitats, elevations, and coordinator plants and animals they tended to be found with. That was when the upgraded tier of the Analysis skill popped. That was the kind of fundamental gain in understanding to go from the lesser to the regular version of a skill.

No one Alexander knew of had naturally obtained the Greater, however. It must have been a thing that took years to develop. Greater abilities had exclusively come as a result of touching the dungeon cores during matriculation, or slaying them, in his case.

Scroll official was how you knew you’d made a transformative improvement in your skills these days.

Two people getting upgraded traits in a day was cause for celebration, and Alvin knew it.

“Well then! How’s about we get serious?” He said, leaning over the bar to rest on his forearms.

Overhead candlelight glimmered on the polished crown of the bartender as he scanned the room, as if about to share nuclear codes.

“We’ve been working on a vodka. The real stuff, based on the potatoes that started walking around when you dug them up.” The black vest and white apron clad man whispered.

He wasn’t exaggerating. Entling blood caused the plants grown in soil enriched with it to assume Gaia awakened forms with high frequency. A planter of potatoes he’d left unattended for the time he’d been gone had gone and become mobile. The brown, cantaloupe sized tubers, when pulled, would wait until you turned your back and sprout little viny tendrils so they could run away and burrow themselves somewhere. They were rich in minerals, calorie dense starches, and absolutely delicious fried or mashed. Falcon’s Rest would make Walking Potatoes a staple of their agriculture going forward.

Better yet, on account of the sneaky little things were good at finding an opportunity to flee from capture, they were starting to grow wild before the snows buried them for the winter. Next spring ought to be interesting with the great potato hunts.

A vodka based on the monsterized potatoes sounded more than a little interesting. He hadn’t had proper liquor since hitting tier three.

“I’m in.” He said, echoed by Kim, and also Brig, who’d sauntered over in casual wear, loose grey slacks and a dark purple turtleneck.

“What am I in on?” the tall red head asked, all smiles because she didn’t really care what it was, she just wanted some excitement.

Alexander shot Alvin an inquiring look. This was he and Tom’s brainchild; they had the right to limit exposure until they had a recipe they were willing to share. These were the ages old rules of brewers.

“It’s fine, Brig’s almost on retainer for sampling our experiments.” He told them.

Given the okay, Alexander took a hard swallow on his crisp, slightly citrusy, and excellently bitter beer before answering, “Those spuds that sneak away when you dig them? These madlads have distilled spirits from them…they’ve got a Tom Clevinger special fast aging into--”

He was cut off by Brig’s awe-struck whisper of “Vodka!”

The three men nodded in affirmation.

Old stuff, pre-Pulse booze, generally didn’t play nicely with post Pulse Matriculated at tier three. The enhanced physiques of magically infused humans treated the alcoholic beverages of days bygone like a low-grade poison, which, Alexander supposed, it was. But, instead of getting properly drunk, you tended to process it out, meaning a lot of piss, a headache, and not much fun. Tier three humans required something more, a drink with a touch of the aether in it to enjoy it. Since the entire town was tier three, all the booze from before was only useful as a disinfectant, at best.

“Ayuh.” Alvin confirmed, “The mash we threw out got racooned, we still don’t know where those ninja bastards are hiding in town, by the way, but a couple of them were so soused they didn’t know what realm they were in. Tom felt too guilty to bash them, so we dropped them off outside town to sleep it off.”

“It was a test batch, enough for a single barrel, you know Tom still doesn’t know for certain when things will age right or, just, sorta…” Alvin led leaving the statement hanging.

“Turn into liquid mold and organic solvents?” Kim finished.

Alvin nodded, “Yeah, that. So, anyhow, this one might be a winner. Since you two gents got a Scroll Official upgrade, you want to be the first to try it? And Brig can grab a snort on account of we need to know how it effects apes.”

Chuckles and a discrete bump of knuckles went all around from the men and a vigorous up and down from Brig’s closed fist in the ages old sign for a handy accompanied the well-timed joke.

“Alright. I’ll go grab a sample. We have to be wicked careful; I’m not joking about those racoons my boys and girls, they didn’t know what hit them.” The trying too hard to appear casual bartender sauntered downstairs into the church’s basement brewery, his mad science lab of all things alcohol. Tom, smirking with an almost childlike glee in their direction sat down the new keg and checked the tap.

Alexander woke up, with the suddenness that makes you question if you had ever slept at all. He was in his workshop. Naked. A sound drew his attention, and he turned his head to see Brig sleeping next to him. Also naked, except for the helmet he’d made to fit her, its chin strap hanging loose.

An easy flex of muscles and confused examination of the smithy from a sitting position slowly returned memories up to the small tumbler of clear liquid. He’d put his hand around the crystal-clear glass, and then, nothing.

Wow! Alvin Bishop, you king! Tom Clevinger, you devil! What a hootch! Alexander praised, amazed at the combined efforts of the brewers.

No hangover, either he noted, you went from sipping the oblivion to straight awake. That stuff was dangerous.

A soft murmur of feminine waking announced Brig was again amongst the living.

“Wowee!” She proclaimed from her back.

“How did I get here? And why am I wearing this?” Came the follow up questions.

He took in the long limbs, smooth muscles, and very well-placed curves of the Oread woman and considered again his reluctance to let her have her way with him. He was coming around. She sat up, and gravity did extraordinarily little work on her form, and he decided that hesitation was unmanly and unworthy, and he would strive to be bolder in the future.

“We got sandbagged by Alvin and Tom’s little experiment.” He answered wryly.

Blue eyes drank him in and took on a predatory glint.

“We did, didn’t we?” She said and removed the helmet, giving it an approving glance before setting it aside.

“I can’t remember anything after the burn going down, how about you?” Brig asked.

With deliberate care to make certain she was positioned for him to see anything he wanted to, Brigitte O’Connor leaned over toward him.

He very studiously did not ogle the fruits of Eden. Even though he really wanted to. Okay, maybe he managed to use his better than human eyesight to burn the image into his brain for all of time. But just for a moment!

“Nada.” He answered, “Alvin did try to warn us though, can’t blame him. I don’t see our clothes anywhere. As in, not in this building. Do you think someone dropped us off here, or what?”

Surely, they wouldn’t have run around in the snow naked. Surely.

He wasn’t left long to ponder, the lady next to him was very straight lines and A to B oriented when she knew what she wanted. There was little doubt, by the way she somehow managed to scoot closer, without seeming to move, what she wanted. If they had been dropped off then maybe help was coming soon? If not, then he was alone. Isolated. Just the way predators liked their prey.

“I don’t know, but I’ve got little bits of iron filings in my knees, so I can’t imagine we didn’t spend at least a little time humping anyone that might have been present. Speaking of which, Brigadier Mastersmith Gerifalte, since I don’t remember last night, it doesn’t count.” Brig told him, in no uncertain terms.

“Do I get a safe word?” He asked, smiling, knowing where this was going, and unable to be able to be sad about it.

The shimmery copper of her post tier three hair sent lustrous waves when she shook her unbraided hair in denial.

“Damn. Didn’t think so. George, lads, close your eyes!” He implored of his friends in the shop, grinning when Brig rolled her eyes at him.

“Alright you sex beast, do your worst!” Alexander Gerifalte summoned his courage and challenged; Mama Gerifalte had raised no coward!

The Oread pounced and he fought vainly, but valiantly.

image [https://imgur.com/3D1kmaW.png]

“You’re getting better.” Brig offered by way of apology, wishing she had a post coital cigarette, the only time she indulged in that habit.

Alexander lay back, boneless on the shop floor, a heap of welding jackets strewn about as a barrier between soft flesh and the concrete of the smithy. The tall woman’s skin pressed to his warmly and he was glad for the rigor of the athletic bonking. Without the engines running, the heat of the forge, and whatnot, the shop was rather cold in winter.

“Thanks. I’m trying. When I grow up, do you think I can be like you?” He asked.

She giggled into his neck and stroked the soft, downy black feather/hair on his head. It was a minor change, compared to some other folks’ bloodline influences at tier three. Far less obvious than his eyes, whose black sclera were, as Van Richards had described them, creepy. The Outsider tended to produce somewhat drastic changes, however, compared to the other three human lineages. His hair and eyes. Jules could alter the shape of his entire body, forming multiple limbs, rearranging bones, a second set of eyes. It cost him a heavy metabolic price, he ate like three men, but watching him use four arms to deftly manipulate steel girders like clay was awesome to behold. Lucy had her angelic wings underneath the big overcoat she wore, bronze and black like an owl though, instead of stereotypical white.

“It’d be better for Annita if you didn’t, you’ll terrorize the poor little witch.” Brig replied.

“That’s the second time…Annita has a thing for Ben, you know. We’re pals, and she spends inordinate amounts of time laying in wait to trip my Green jump reflexes, but that’s about it.” Alexander explained again.

“Are you serious?” Brig asked him, propping herself up to stare at him, big blue eyes searching his.

He shrugged, “What do you mean? Yeah, I get why you might get that impression, we used to hit the town up kind of regularly back in Safe Harbor. We set each other up and stuff though, Granny never even hinted at anything else. Georgia said the same thing, so I know what it looks like, but nothing’s going on.”

Brig thought that over and asked a sharp question, “Did you ever see her talking to the same person twice after these ‘set ups’?”

That was a weird question. He frowned and thought about it. You know? Now that he tried to recall, he didn’t think so. There weren’t that many humans left, and everybody had their favorite places to mingle so it wasn’t like there wasn’t any opportunity.

“Brig, you know I can’t into people very well, but I’m guessing you’re going somewhere with this. I don’t remember Granny ever going back for seconds, if that’s what you’re asking. I figured she was very particular. Kind of like you, but with less destruction of egos and tears.” He told the red-haired lady currently gazing intently at him.

She cursed under her breath, “God protects idiot savants.”

Brig sat up and then delivered a flick of judgment against his left nipple, stinging him into covering it with his hand.

“Ouch! What the hell did Lefty ever do to you?” He demanded.

“Hold that thought.” Brig instructed and flicked Righty.

Hard.

“Yeaow!!” He complained and rubbed both, rolling over to protect his chest from any more attacks.

“You’re a doofus Alexander. Ben and the Dame have been a thing ever since the Dragon.” Brig told him, as if explaining that the sky was blue.

What? No shot. He was slow on the uptake, sometimes, but that was something he would have known. Right?

“You’re making that up! Ben? And the Dame? Dame Sanchez, who won’t be seen eating with the peasants? That Dame Sanchez?” He grilled his assailant.

“Do you ever see Ben in the Survivor’s Well after eight-thirty?” Brig answered his question with one of her own.

He didn’t. But then, Benjamin had never been a hard drinker or a gadfly either. He went out, had a meal, drank some beer, and talked shop with the other Adventurers who lived mostly outside in the Green, which often included Alexander, and then went to bed to get fresh for more monster slaying the next day.

“That’s not anything new,” Alexander countered, standing and wishing he had some clothes, “I love the guy, but he’s worse at people than I am. Besides, he likes to stay combat ready.”

Brig stood and stretched languorously, enjoying the post conquest limberness before she took his proverbial feet out from under him, saying lightly, “Ben is staying all up in that crazy cootch. He’s plowing royal fields. He’s got that wanna be Rapunzel bent over the dining room table ripping and tearing-”

“Gods, okay, I get it!” Alexander interrupted, waving hands to ward off the description before his mind’s eye could be contaminated any further.

He still wasn’t certain he believed it. Not that Benjamin Grisham lacked the will, but that Dame Sanchez would have shown any interest. She was real dead set on Nobles not mixing with the riff raff. Nobody really knew who got counted as Nobility or not in her internal hierarchy though, and the Dame claimed it was rude to discuss one’s place in court. Very gauche.

“But, and I can’t believe after all that’s gone on that I’m even bothering to want to know about my coworkers’ sex lives, how on earth did Ben get her on board with interclass dalliance?” He asked, corrupted by the red-haired succubus who was evidently getting slightly chilly, by the way her arms wrapped around herself, hands tucked into armpits.

He didn’t blame her, the chill was really starting to be something, now that the sweat was cooling. In a second, he’d have to turn on Sterling to get some heat in this joint. But first, he had to know.

“I think it’s because he’s a knight. You know, the Scroll says it in his class. So, it’s fine, maybe a little bit of slumming on her part, but okay in whatever delusion she’s got going on for a lady to have an affair with a big, burly knight in literal shining armor, who also slayed a dragon for her hand.” Brig explained, as if reading off sports scores.

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Slayed a dragon for her hand? Alexander thought he was going to laugh until he passed out.

When he came up for air, he was a convert.

It was something the Dame would come up with. Just enough fairy tale to turn the powerful as hell but Fantasia laden Hydromancer’s crank. Alexander had possessed the mental trait Fantasia, which boosted your magic potential, but was a byproduct of slight insanity, which, for some reason, made a person a bit more in tune with the mana flowing through the world. His had come in the form of being certain that the world was a dream, a long, slow unwaking fantasy of the mind. The Dame was a step further, she was in a fairy tale for real, like one of those Japanese comic books or whatever. Her commitment to the delusion was part of what made her so ridiculously strong at magic.

“Wow.” He finished.

Brig returned the amused expression with one of her own, adding “I know, right? Wicked funny. But that big ‘ol, dour faced, tough as nails sonofabitch, is right up her alley. And he actually did smack the piss out of that dragon when it tried to eat her, so that was pretty awesome. I totally tried to thanks bang him after, cause he did the same for me, if you remember, but by the time my legs were uncrippled, the Dame was already taking our guy to pound town and I don’t get in the way of couple shit.”

Alexander had learned today. He’d learned a couple of things. First, when Alvin tells you he’s got something bomber in the bottle, he’s not lying. Second, Brig was less meathead than she let on. Third…he might have been ignoring and/or been completely oblivious to a crush from Annita Nguyen for a long time.

So, that was his bad. Now he had a real dilemma: how to proceed without making his friend sad? Worse, did he reciprocate romantic notions? He could immediately check the box that read “Would you smash?”

He’d seen Granny Nguyen naked, yes, instantly he would agree to rub body parts until they made an awful mess. But could he do that knowing she wanted maybe something more, if he didn’t as well? Probably not, Alexander decided quickly. He had more respect for her than that. That left the question unanswered, did he like Annita in a non-platonic way? And what about the woman next to him? Friends? Definitely. More? He had trouble even imagining the Oread settled down. Brigitte O’Connor, while she’d gone on an Alexander only diet since their arrival in Falcon’s Rest, hadn’t given any sign of being interested in “couples shit”. This probably wasn’t the time to hash that out with himself, because he had another pressing issue: he was starting to freeze his jimmies off.

“Brig, as much fun as this has been, and, whooo boy! I think we need to find some clothes before hypothermia sets in. Also, that’s your armor over there, you’re welcome. That big cavalry lance over there is yours too, you smashed your old one up giving that panther a spear elbow off the top rope, super cool, by the way. Kim put a triple piercing rune onto it to make it punch through armor and Soak, somehow.” Alexander rambled.

Brig’s ice blue eyes widened at the enormity of the gift and ran over to hug him, lifting him up and shaking him back and forth, squealing, “Oh thank you, thank you, you feathery sweet fucker you!”

When the Oread released him, so he could pull air into his lungs again, he coughed, “No problem!” and they opened the door to the smithy, bound for their next adventure: to find their clothes.

Midday sun greeted them, a gorgeous white coat of fresh powder that turned Falcon’s Rest into a wintery post card of a town. The wall, with its flying buttresses and arches, and battlements, stood out majestically around the periphery of the settlement.

Winter was a slow season. Unlike pre-Pulse, there was no television, no internet, no digital games, or entertainment of any kind. Lighting was also a nontrivial issue, so when dark fell, people tended to congregate in communal places like the tavern or to retire to bed. The daylight hours, especially when snow was on, were when folk took care of the many chores that preindustrial life demanded. Wood to be split, harness to be repaired, tools to be serviced and maintained, clothes mended, the critical minutia most people had forgotten about before magic arrived.

The people who stayed busy were the ones like Alexander, the craftsmen, the weavers and tailors, the people who made stuff. The carpenters making handles and frames. And the Adventurers, the warrior classed citizens who drilled and sparred and patrolled the region beyond the wall to cull anything that might present a threat to the settlers.

Most bored were the farmers, their skills were virtually unneeded for the next three months, at least, the direct application of them. A dozen agriculturally classed and husbandry oriented Matriculated settlers had their heads together in the Survivor’s Well, planning food plots, rotations, supply chains, and fertilization regimes. Those twelve men and women were figuring out how to turn Falcon’s Rest into a self-sufficient beacon of civilization.

Alexander and Getsome’s red haired front liner stood briefly, squinting against aggressively bright light reflected off of snow, going slightly blue in a fifteen-degree wind chill, wearing their skins and a smile. Less a smile every second, it was friggin cold!

Fortunately, the small side street that led to his workshop was empty, there not being much on this side of town other than now vacant lots and, on down the road, the empty market. Most people would be inside, unless…

Just as the thought occurred to him, a mule bearing a cart with a plow affixed to it turned down the street, powerful hooved legs throwing clouds of snow as the mule high stepped, enjoying the light work of snow plowing. The driver of the plow-cart was the resident horse trainer, and she threw a thumbs up at them as she passed by, with a double for the red-haired Oread.

“Figures.” Alexander stated.

“Yeah, my booty is too fine. You keep doing those squats and lunges Alexander, you’ll catch up to my greatness.” Brig encouraged, shameless.

“So, you really think Granny’s got a case?” He asked, ignoring Brig’s Brigness, sort of hoping it wasn’t true, mostly to spare him having to acknowledge that he might have brain damage to have missed it.

Brig dipped her chin, sad that a woman with an otherwise good head on her shoulders should have the ill fortune to catch feelings for the tall, dark, and handsome doofus next to her.

“Ayuh, El Presidente, I’m afraid so. She probably didn’t want to spook you, given how much of a workaholic, half feral ding-dong you are. Like trying to tame a stray cat, if you get clingy on them too fast, they just run back into the weeds.” Brig judged sagely.

Alexander did not care to be compared to a feral tomcat, but he wasn’t prepared to debate it standing in the snow.

“Whatever, I’ll try to do right by her later. We gotta get some clothes though, I think I’m losing feeling in critical anatomy.” He complained.

They took off at a trot, the run helping with the cold, and only a few minutes later stood before the doors of the old church. Both of them came to the sudden realization that they had forgotten someone. Simultaneously, sharing a worried stare, they cried, “What about Kim!?”

What about Kim indeed. A knock on the door, a few moments hopping foot to foot with freezing feet, revealed Lucy, who ushered them in with an understanding pat on the shoulder and a chair, with blankets over their shoulders to stave off the chill.

“Poor dears,” the tavern owner commented, “My Alvin and Tom set you up proper. I told them to dilute it, but they insisted that the first tasting had to be at maximum power. Well, they both got a spanking, don’t you worry.”

The lascivious grin she bore was toothy enough to make that statement more than metaphorical, and he really did not need that kind of information.

“So, we uh, we lost Kim.” Alexander admitted, ashamed.

Lucy shook her head, her blond bangs waving gently, “No you didn’t. He passed out over in the corner and left on his own this morning. The three of you got a game of strip poker going with the regular crowd. You two lost early and walked out, saying you’d find your own way home and told us all to suck on your toes when we offered to at least deliver your clothes and check on you.”

Oh. Well, small miracles, he decided, relieved.

“Does that mean our clothes are still here?” Brig checked, for once sounding relieved, just when he wasn’t certain anything at all could bother her.

“Ayuh, right here on the table where you left them.” Lucy gestured to a neat stack of folded items.

Damn. Honestly? Not the worst that could have happened to them.

“Man, that is a relief.” Brig sighed and started to don her casual wear slacks and turtleneck.

Alexander joined her, his own sturdy pants covering up the boys giving him some much-needed decency.

“Sorry for, you know, flapping about.” He said, sheepish.

Lucy let a slow smirk play over her lips, “Oh, I don’t know, there wasn’t so much flapping as the rumors made out.”

Zing! He’d set her up for that one, and bowed slightly with a salute to acknowledge the point, before resuming his dress.

“It was the pool!” He pretended alarm, quoting a meandering, pointless bit of television about nothing at all, and the Outsider woman chuckled at the reference.

“Thanks, Lucy, and, pass my regards to Alvin and Tom for me, they have outdone themselves. But that Vodka? Maybe wait until tier four to serve it neat, that shit should probably go over half its volume of ice, at least. And with, like, a big basket of tater wedges or something to help soak it up.” Brig told the tavernkeeper, giving her feedback, as she always did when she tested one of their brews.

“It’s fine dears, just don’t make a habit of it. I’ll make sure to protect the unsuspecting from any future incidents.” Lucretia promised, slightly contrite over the mess of her husbands’ making.

Alexander noticed that, in the strange yet familiar scene outside a window, flakes of snow had begun joining their brethren on the ground.

“Damn, it’s coming on again. That Atlantic sure isn’t giving up.” He noted.

“Nope.” Brig agreed, her eyes going distant at some effort to find predictive power in the gusts scattering the fine flakes.

“Going to do this another two days, you mark my words.” Lucy foretold.

Forecasting the weather over a countertop was a time-honored tradition amongst Mainerlanders. However, as much as he would have liked to sit around, he’d used half the day already and accomplished very little, except for making protein donations to the indomitable vixen next to him. The general sense of well-being that followed proper bonking hadn’t yet left him, so he figured he needed to go to the lab and work on the plans for utilizing imp cores, a water treatment plant, and a way to get the plumbing of Falcon’s Rest back in operation.

“Welp!” He slapped his leg and launched himself off his stool, “I need to get to it. Now that my favorite monster hunters are outfitted, I need to get cracking on indoor toilets and showers. It’s going to take Potter, Scott, Van, and probably that one lady, the one with the curls, she was an inspector for the EPA on gas stations, to get the old water lines up and running.” Alexander told the two women, and he departed with a jolly wave and a bounce in his step.

image [https://imgur.com/3D1kmaW.png]

“Did you tell him about Annita?” Lucy asked as soon as the departing figure had closed the door.

“Yeah, he didn’t have a clue.” Brigitte confirmed.

“And you think riding him goofy was going to help him figure things out how?” The tavernkeeper asked, with a skeptical lift of an eyebrow.

“Just spreading joy, Lucy, as is my wont. Besides, I don’t think that one’s ready to go monogamous. Good thing too, Granny might die.” The tall woman commented.

Now they were getting to the good gossip!

“Oh girl, now I have to get some details. Here, coffee or hair of the dog?” Offered Lucy Durhamm.

Brig thought about it, but she was going to the sparring grounds after she indulged the matronly woman’s curiosity, “Just coffee, and thanks. Now, what do you want to know?”

Black coffee, poured precisely from a metal pot, cast steam up from its cup, wisps trailing as it was passed to its imbiber.

“Everything. Are the feathers really soft? Cause they look like they’re lovely to run fingers through. Oh! If he’s got the aptitude, I could tell Alvin and Tom to teach him some tricks. I’ve just about got them trained.” The tavernkeeper gabbed.

“Yes, and no. Alexander’s firmly on team vagina, but only mano y mano, and, no butt stuff. Not for him anyway, me I gotta get my fix every now and then. You’d think that tush were made of glass, won’t even let me try to show him the joys of the backdoor, a prostate’s totally wasted on him. However…” And Brig began to regale her friend in the exploits of the morning.

Unaware of the appalling rumors that would begin circulating in the coming months, quite baseless he would assure anyone, Alexander returned to his laboratory. He stopped by his kitchen for a granola bar. A real one, and made with rolled oats, crushed pecans, and vanilla extract brought from Safe Harbor, held together by hazelnut butter and dire bee honey.

Granny, the woman now circling around in his brain for reasons other than her critical role in agriculture, had used the Entling blood from those monsters slain along the way to Falcon’s Rest to get vanilla, coffee, pecan, almond, peanuts, and cocoa orchards to start within long greenhouses in a few vacant lots, along with dedicated houses for medicinals and more exotic stuff, like the Muspelheim dungeon plants, which needed a whole other sort of care.

Vanilla vines were already starting to cover the long trellises rearing seven feet high, according to the bragging of the golden eyed Dryad. Arabica and Robusta coffee plant beans were, so far, successfully growing sprouting into saplings, but the white stuff coming down outside and bitter cold a little early were conditions not conducive to that native climate. They might require substantial horticulture to get a Maine hardy variant, but, for the foreseeable future, the greenhouses were the only way to provide the subtropical climate needed. Same for the cocoa.

Annita relished the challenge.

Alexander chewed the soft, tasty bar, thoughtful. What to do about Granny Nguyen?

Well, first, he’d have to be mature and talk to her, adult to adult. A snort sounded, echoing across the bookshelves, which proclaimed how he estimated that was going to go.

Anyhow, these were problems for later, right now, he was going to ride the, thankfully, much diluted, and far less overt, wave of dire bee honey. Unlike the last time he’d tried it, which had turned out to be royal jelly very distinct in its effects on humans from the regular honey, he now enjoyed the stuff responsibly. In small amounts, it tended to open your mind to more flexible thinking, which is what he needed to figure out how to get running water back in Falcon’s Rest.

They had the water tower. They had the pipes, which probably were rife with busts from the harder post Pulse winters.

Nobody knew why Gaia’s climate was shifting, but it seemed to be consistent, not that two winters was anything like long enough to know for certain. That meant probably replumbing most of the town to accommodate colder winters. PVC was right out, it couldn’t be replaced. Same thing with PEX, cross lined polyethylene pipe. Copper was a better option, but he didn’t know if they had enough. They could send out parties to scavenge up from the nearby town hardware stores, but then you had to brave the environment. Every trip outside the wall carried at least some amount of risk.

Long term, copper would be a problem. There were no active copper mines in Maine, not since the 1970’s. There was ore though, some chalcopyrite over in Hancock County, by his survey maps. Too close to Safe Harbor, that was. That lead sent him down a rabbit hole whereupon he discovered some other geological surveys in his old man’s book shelf, which documented plenty of available sites that had been drilled, with estimates on tonnage. The silver mine behind town, surprisingly, had a fair-sized copper component, it had just never been utilized, because it wasn’t efficient to extract. However, there was plenty of lead. He grimaced at that thought. The last thing they needed was lead pipes, so he struck that thought. Could tin work? No tin ore in Maine, he discovered, but a bunch of zinc.

The volcanic belts on the coast and slightly inland were the main sources of metal ore…Wait, the new volcano generated by Muspelheim might have kicked up some new ores with its emergence! But, again, that was Guild territory for sure. On and on, he went through ideas, checked references in the library, and annotated his chalkboard.

Sunset caught him still working through solutions to the task.

When he realized that he was writing rather easily in the dark, having been too caught up to remember to light a candle, it drove home that things had truly changed for him.

In ways other than growing into adulthood, he was a different man than the youth who had stood in this room previously. He scrubbed fingers through the downy hair feathers on his scalp, and, briefly relished the softness. On casual inspection, he looked like he bore a slightly shaggy haircut. He’d grown used to it. Unless someone else mentioned he didn’t even think about the change.

His eyes still bothered him occasionally, mostly when he watched the Adventurer’s spar. The double vision was hard to get used to. Granny might have been onto something, concentrating intensely on someone made their outlines darken, like they were thrown into high contrast mode, and he started to see the changes in their outline slightly ahead of the movement. It was the reverse of an echo.

Time space shenanigans were nothing unheard of, and, really, it was only a matter of time before he grew used to the optical hallucination and could make use of it. Half a second of warning before a monster tried to jam a hidden stinger into your guts was actually really helpful. Like any tool, he needed practice. Tomorrow he’d go join the Adventurers to spar and get a handle on it, he’d been skipping recently to focus on the workshop tasks. Now that those were finished, he had some time on his hands to work on close combat drills.

A small, satisfied smile found its way to his features thinking on the Armourer upgrade. Get stronger, Little Falcon, he whispered to himself in his study, get strong enough to fix everything, to turn it all back. That had been a goal set in profound ignorance. It pleased him to chase it still though, so Alexander retired that day content that he was walking the path.

image [https://imgur.com/3D1kmaW.png]

It was an early rise for Alexander that morning, he beat sunrise by at least an hour and a half. The familiar routines of stoking the stove, less than he had needed to the last winter he’d endured, thanks to the incredible work Potter and his boys had done on the place. The Jules Heaters on his roof emitted a gentle heat on the second floor, but the ground floor still got chilly overnight. Besides, he needed the hot coals to boil his water for oats porridge and coffee.

An eggs, bacon, porridge, and hot coffee breakfast got the ball rolling mentally, and, by the time he’d finished doing the dishes, stacking them neatly in a rack to dry, he was thoroughly ready for the day. A rag bath with hot water and soap got him clean, and a straight razor took the stubble off his chin. He did not much care for shaving, but it was necessary since he hated hair on his face. Especially when it might come in feathered.

Following the self-maintenance tasks, Alexander dressed in sturdy canvas cargo pants, the pockets on his thighs carrying nothing, at the moment. If he were going outside the wall that would be different, of course. For now, the dark grey and tan pants were empty, although his heavy leather belt held several pouches, as did most peoples’. Standard kit for leaving the house was a belt knife, a small survival kit, and a first aid kit. His belt knife was larger than most, being the Messer he’d made back when forging to learn the techniques to work golem based super metal into his naginata. More a short sword than an actual knife, the Germans of old-world Europe had had a peculiar sense of humor for a blade thirty inches long, heavy single edged, with a small cross guard, with a ring-shaped protrusion on the guard to help protect the hand.

A quick eye brought up the knife’s description and he closed the door behind him with a bit of pride in the work.

Silver Stone Messer: a warforged blade crafted of Far Eastern techniques western design, using the refined body of a silver golem. This war knife possesses superior cutting power cleaving armor easily and heightened durability compared to average. Its silver will debilitate the undeathly or unclean that it touches, as if sanctified.

Ignores 10 soak. Sundering. Spectre bane.

It was a big ‘ol chopper of a knife, with some bonuses. Using the supernatural components of a silver ore golem had granted it additional utility at getting through Soak, damaging armor, which included the natural armor of scaled beasts, and the silver damaged ghostly or spectral creatures. He hadn’t had to deal with any of those yet, but better to have and not need, and all that.

His bow he left behind, it wouldn’t be needed, as he was too busy these days to be able to go a roving out. Besides, his travel ban was still in effect, unless he went with either Getsome or Impervious as security. That irked, and he frowned whenever he allowed himself to dwell on it. Given that it was a waste of the Adventurer groups’ precious time to be escorting him around while he hunted game that could be taken by any of the scouts, or doing a canvassing of the terrain that Julia could do more efficiently using her hawk familiar, he resigned himself to being useful within the city’s towering walls.

Ben had his naginata, so he was going to have to spend a little time creating a replacement. Alexander was a fan of keeping his distance, using his agility, and being able to keep the nasties outside gutting distance. A painful memory of being hacked open by a Yeti reinforced this decision.

Snow crunched under his heavy boots and steam clouded from his breath. Lucy’s forecast was proving accurate, the snow hadn’t stopped, even though the howling wind had. The plow cart, still being driven by Carol Gates, was approaching and he stopped to wave at the woman. He was considerably warmer, and fully dressed, compared to the last time he’d seen her. A single thumbs up from the woman in response to his greeting, and the mule pulled plow left behind a clean track about four feet wide and a pile of snow added to the sidewalk about half a foot high.

A team of men and women bearing snow shovels and a big wagon, now emptied of the heavy cargo it had born when they arrived almost two months past would be along in a bit, piling snow onto the conveyance for deposition outside the city.

Snow was a city-wide challenge. Everybody pitched in to deal with it, unless you had specialized skills that needed use elsewhere. He was normally amongst those. The Adventurers and warriors got their daily exercise in shoveling and hauling the fluffy white bullshit that was passing the fifty-inch mark since it had started a few days ago.

Ahh, to be Down East, where the ocean kept things milder, Alexander mused.

He carried on with his walk, his heavy down jacket repelling the cold easily. If there was one thing that the overproduction and high-octane consumerism had done well it was to create plenty for the clothing of peoples. A single hunting or outdoors shop could, to an incredibly sophisticated degree, clothe nearly two hundred people. If winter’s new normal was to be this intense, that would prove necessary, given that the textiles industry was rebuilding from scratch. The weavers and preparers of linen of Falcon’s Rest needed a couple of years to get their feet properly beneath them. When children started to be a thing again, that demand would explode.

Such considerations occupied him all the way to a hanger style building that had been an auto shop. This was the domain of Scott and Van, who spent most of their time working over designs and ideas together. With all the snow around, and the ambient cold, Scott’s abilities were far more potent, and required much less expenditure of his mana or stamina. Ice sculptures cropping up around town attested to his growing mastery. Alexander enjoyed the kind of stop motion tale of the three little pigs down one side street, it was a clever gag.

He wasn’t here to discuss the fine arts, however, he was here to talk plumbing.

When he opened the door, a bell connected jingled cheerfully, and the two men, huddled over a set of drawings, with a big overhead lamp created in the Japanese style, heavy, wax coated paper and candles to provide light.

A warm orange glow within the otherwise starkly utilitarian shop made for an odd dichotomy inside Scott’s design space.

To each his own, Alexander figured.

“Aha! Dear Leader has returned!” the Cryomancer architect announced, with an enthusiasm that made Alexander’s hairs stand on end.

These two were up to something, there was no doubt about it.

Hoping to curtail any sidetracks, he broached his topic first, hurriedly saying “How are we with the waterline, sewer, and storm drain situation?”

Van Richards, the man who was mostly responsible for handling the earthworks, given that he could rather rapidly manipulate the rocky substrate beneath the town, wagged his hand back and forth before answering a gruff, “We’re working on it. It isn’t going to be easy, not without a way to generate a steady head pressure. And we’re still having a bastard of a time finding all the heating oil tanks people buried and never reported or documented. Wynona Saki is going ape trying to test for soil contamination. Whoever was running city hall around here never heard of state reporting standards.”

A sleepy looking middle-aged man with a friendly smile, who never quite gave anyone a straight answer popped up in Alexander’s mind. Yeah, that sort of checked out with what little he’d known about the town’s mayor. Ditto for his city council of similarly sleepy looking friends who basically did as little as possible to keep the lights on around town.

Getting the tanks out of the ground was necessary to prevent them contaminating people’s wells. That was the source of tension, the drive to get public water going again. They could source water easily from wells, if there was one thing you could do in Maine, it was dig down and find water beneath the rock. Without machines, however, drilling through rock was nontrivial.

Thanks be to all the gods above, below, and in between for Van and his terramancy.

But, to get a system going for public water, guaranteed clean, free from bacteria, metal ions, and other unwanted solutes sufficient to get an indoor plumbing set up, they needed a closed loop, with enough pressure to guarantee steady output. The source of water had been a large reservoir pond, the pressure coming from the water tower. The water tower had been drained, mostly by Alexander when he needed emergency water without hauling it from the creeks.

They could get a steam engine powered pump system going to recreate the pressure, filling the water tower to get head pressure in the system, once all the pipes had been installed and proven sound. But not until then.

Water treatment and sewage was a whole other problem. Just because Matriculated humans couldn’t really get sick, didn’t mean the inevitable, hopefully, non-matriculated children couldn’t. Or Normals immigrating from other settlements. They had to plan ahead, Falcon’s Rest wasn’t just a club for a bunch of weirdos who didn’t fit in at Safe Harbor, it was a bastion of humanity in the far north. They needed to be prepared to accommodate more people. More people meant getting the infrastructure figured out as soon as possible.

Alexander had faith though, they’d already come a long way, getting the town’s water problems solved was small potatoes compared to that wall. It just took time, was all.

“Okay, okay, we’ve gone over the contamination problems already,” Alexander chided the men, trying to keep things solutions oriented, “Nothing to do there but let Saki do her thing. We can deal with contamination better when we know where our lines are going to be. Are we still good for tearing out the main roads and re-running all our water through one box trench and the sewage through a separate box trench, side by side in a utility tunnel?”

The idea was to set up the town’s water infrastructure like a traffic system, but instead of lanes the pipes would be in isolated stone ducts. If sewage lines broke or some other source of contamination, like the damned oil heater tanks and unmarked wells with their elevated lead and copper ion concentrations, managed to saturate the soil near the water lines, then the drinking water supply wouldn’t be compromised. It was a solid plan, just labor intensive. Big stone tunnels were expensive, unless you knew a guy who could convince the granite to just naturally form a tunnel with two hollow boxes running along the base.

Alexander did, in fact, know such a guy, and Van said it wasn’t so much a matter of difficulty as stamina. There was only so much stone he could move in a day without blowing through his core’s reserves of mana and needing a nap and a big meal to recover.

The architect and stone mage looked back and forth between each other, the plans laying spread out on the wheeled utility table, and their elected leader.

“Yeah, I guess so. No reason not to get started on it I reckon.” Van conceded, not really having any counter play.

“Are you sure you want to have such big tunnels under the town?” Scott asked, the architect in him screaming about efficiency of materials and labor, to say nothing of weight supported atop the stone corridors beneath major roads, “It’s a lot of Van’s time, and, if we do the rail system like we talked about later, there’s no way they can run on top of those tunnels. Or even cross them, for that matter.”

Alexander was way ahead of the man; he’d thought this over after the last time that objection had been raised.

“I thought it over again. Way I see it, we don’t need to run trains into the town’s center in the first place. All staging for large transportation should stay outside the walls.” He told the older men, noting their surprised expressions.

“Falcon’s Rest is going to expand. One day, probably not all that far down the road even, that wall is going to resemble the keep of a castle, the construction inside won’t be anything like it is now, we’ll start building up, raising the density. Like it or not, the work the carpenters and you guys did this autumn was just a Band-Aid. We’re going to eventually be following a Barcelona model, rectangular, almost self-contained neighborhoods, greenspaces for parks, orchards, and gardens within, and rooftop gardens with Jules Heaters to help control the climate inside. It scales well with population and lets us expand in an orderly fashion. And it’ll be easier for you guys and Potter with his carpenters to have a nice, simple, well defined building plan to follow.” Alexander described his plans with the kind of focused intensity of a zealot.

Then both frowned, an objection reached simultaneously.

“But then why all the effort-”

“That means redoing it all in just a couple-”

“Ah, ah!” Alexander cut them off, raising a hand, “I know, we’ll have to redo it. That’s fine. Think of this as a pilot study. No matter what, we’re probably going to have to completely trash whatever we try first anyway. None of us are engineers or city planners. We have an idea, it looks good, but we don’t have data on how well it works or what other problems are going to come up.”

Neither liked that assessment, even if they saw the wisdom of it. Just because they were all giving it their absolute best, didn’t mean they wouldn’t make serious mistakes along the way. So much had been lost in the Pulse. So much technical skill and flat-out life experience. When all the old men turned to stone, they mostly took their expertise with them. There was no replacing that.

“Okay, I guess. But I’m charging scale!” Van Richards told him, his normally serious demeanor cracking a little at the running joke.

Scott Kaczynski chewed a lip, thinking about the sheer scale of the planned urban development problems they faced, but said nothing in opposition. He knew Alexander was right, they just didn’t have the facts to come up with a better strategy. There was historical precedent in the young man’s concept for an extensive subterranean system of tunnels for handling utilities. New York City had its rather baroque sewar and subway system. Paris had its catacombs. A well-developed underground wasn’t altogether unheard of or even a greatly limiting factor in city design.

“Alright,” He signed off on the proposal aloud, “I’m on board. Let’s just make certain we nail down and annotate as much as we can. No sense doing a pilot study if you’re not going to document things so we, or the ones who follow, can learn from it.”

A solid idea.

“Done. Let’s get Jules in on this, and as many people as we can, really.” Alexander decided, now that his professional advisors were on board, “I can go see Potter, then I’ll visit the carpenters. It just occurred to me, but a big tunnel well below the frost line that runs central to all the structures in Falcon’s Rest is basically begging to be used to geothermally climate control the houses. If Riley can figure out how to pump the air to heat exchange, we might have made residential heating and cooling more efficient and created an emergency escape route for the populace if things go completely catawampus on us and we need a place to hide until we can get to Lucy.”

Both men became thoughtful at that last, they clearly hadn’t considered what if the city were attacked by something that got over the wall and put the citizens in danger so great evacuation was the only recourse. Such considerations were why Alexander Gerifalte made the big bucks.

The meeting adjourned then, both men needed to figure out the details of how they were going to tackle the utility tunnel and he didn’t need to micromanage that, his was the big picture role.

Out into the morning sunlight he strode, glad that they were checking off the really important boxes now. Survival was virtually ensured, at least for now. They were aiming higher, for a return to modernity.

“Just takes time, Little Falcon.” He reminded himself with a chuckle, trying not worry about how much lay before them.

From the corner of his eye, a black silhouette moved a half second before the snow exploded into a powdered white cloud, a long sword reaching for his chest.

Reflexes honed on Yetis, goblins, and monster panthers had the Entropic Venator turning before the assailant had stepped into the thrust and, instead of taking him through the heart, the thick rapier entered a lung, punching through his jacket easily and out the back.

A searing agony began and Alexander reached for his class’s aid instinctively.

Ruthless

Doubt, hesitation, and pain washed away under the cloak of his class’s mantle and Alexander grabbed the man’s sword hand and drew his Messer with the other, unleashing as he did Greater Entropic Field in a brief pulse that blew away the invisibility the man had been using. The chaos magic swept away the well-built, lightly armored form’s Soak as well. His grey eyes widened in panic, as he felt his defenses blown away, but the black outlines showed no effective resistance, he'd been stunned by having his magic shattered. Up rose his arm, and Alexander chopped the heavy Messer down into the man’s neck, slashing open vessels as it bit halfway through.

Blood sprayed, red on white around him, along the arc of his stroke and up from the pulsing geyser of an opened carotid. Alexander cursed from white hot pain lancing from the tug of the corpse’s weight pulling on the metal blade in his chest, a pain that should have paralyzed him with shock, muffled instead by the layers of separation of Gaian magic.

Panic faded to blankness in his attacker’s eyes, he’d failed to even attempt to respond to the twisting magic inside himself, and the viciousness of the counterattack from the youth transfixed on his sword. Alexander pulled the long blade free from himself, grimacing against the agony, and threw it aside. A hand shaking tore into the first aid pouch on his belt and he packed the frontal wound with a cotton gauze coated in Mandrake Quik Clot.

His breathing was labored, the impaled lung would probably collapse or fill with blood.

Crunching footsteps pulled his head around and he barely got the near short sword knife between a swinging axe blade and his face. Smoldering heat shimmers of class enhanced power behind the strike threw sparks from the hard golem steel and his parry failed to prevent the bit of the axe from tearing a line out of his collarbone, not breaking it, but burning through it like a cutting torch. More searing pain was quickly buried beneath endorphins, survival instincts, and the murderous calm of Ruthless.

Alexander fired from the hand that had been holding pressure to his chest a trio of Chaos Strikes, watching the black and grey energies bite deeply into the man’s face and chest, the incendiary classed axe wielding man screeched at the feeling of flesh peeling away, like a flame combined with acid unraveling his body. A hard man though, he held onto the weapon and deflected the first two handed swipe Alexander took at his head, and the second, trying to back up, feet stumbling in the fresh fallen snow.

The third stroke wasn’t aimed at the man’s head, but at the hand holding the axe haft and half his fingers and one thumb flew into the air, swiftly followed by the axe, but Alexander was watching a black outline try to draw a knife and he rammed the hand back toward the sheath with one hand, pinning the knife.

Baleful Smite

His other arm, channeling the power of the Entropic Venator, stuffed the Messer up into the man’s guts, driving into lungs and heart. A single lethal thrust, ignoring Soak, that burst chaos magic within the victim’s chest, ravaging his insides.

“Huooh!” A surprised grunt was all the second attacker uttered before he too fell dead at Alexander’s feet.

Shock was setting in now, from a deep, semi-fire cauterized chop broken open by his exertion, in his shoulder area and the stab wound. He dropped the Messer without intending to, the hand going swiftly numb and his blood running freely down that arm.

Panting, Alexander spun in place, his eyes digging through the surroundings to find threats. Nothing appeared. A movement two blocks away made him dive for cover, just as a staccato of rifle rounds unloaded from the top of a garage.

Cover, in this case, was one of the dead men, and Alexander pulled him up as a shield, heard the meaty thuds of bullets tearing into flesh. Distantly, he catalogued the rifle by its familiar report as a light caliber, a .223 NATO. Despite the jerks of impact, none of the small fast-moving rounds managed to bite through light armor, meat, and bone.

Alexander slung a Chaos Strike at the source of the gunfire and scrambled to his feet into a sprint, almost falling from vertigo as he did. Blood loss was slowing him down, but he pushed himself to slide around the corner of the auto shop. No shouts from where he’d sent the magic, so, a miss. Most things screamed when hit by his chaos magic.

“Attack! We’re under attack! Gunfire on top of the Carrol Street garage, small caliber rifle! Two Classed dead, likely more enemies!” He shouted, as loudly as he could, which hurt his lung badly, even through whatever shielding ruthless provided.

The pain was distant, muffled, but very real. He was badly hurt, he just didn’t feel all of it yet.

The young man slid down the wall of the building where Scott and Van were working. He heard them inside, Van called, “Alexander! You alright?!”

Was he alright? The surprisingly unruffled young man echoed internally. He looked down at the wounds. He’d had worse. But, no, it wasn’t great. He had no weapons, one arm, and one lung functioning, and he was probably bleeding heavily internally. The Mandrake leaf could do wonders, but he couldn’t apply it along the entire length of the impaling wound. His venator focused mind suppressed a note of panic on that note.

“Nope! I’m alive, but cut up some, deep puncture through a lung.” Alexander answered, voice clinical beneath the calming effect of the ability.

He didn’t need to give the enemy any more information than he had to.

“Van! Scott! Do not exit the building.” He ordered; his voice labored.

An assassination. That’s what this was. And he was definitely the target, or the killers wouldn’t have waited until he was alone.

Scott and Van were in danger as long as he stayed here, he had to move. He needed to force the enemy to navigate the town. If he could make the sparring grounds across town they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Panting, and wracked from the pain of it, he struggled to his feet, leaning hard on the building’s cold exterior. Maybe that was a bigger “if” than he’d thought.

“Gotta break for it. Good luck guys, Van, watch out for Scott.” Alexander implored the men inside, and he threw himself into a lumbering run, grateful when, after a few stumbling steps, his legs remembered how to do it.

Gun fire opened up again, impacts pinging the frozen pavement, thuds into wood paneling of homes, from a different direction. A hit below his rib cage staggered him, but he kept pushing, and a swift glance down showed him a growing spot of blood just above his hip. Through and through, the damage was minimal, and he gritted his teeth against the wound.

A break in the reports meant that the shooter had lost sightline, Alexander had put several houses between them now. He abandoned the main street, cutting between houses and took a twisting path of back ways, vacant lots, and kept his bearings on his goal, the old high school football field, where Getsome and Impervious would be drilling. That was his only real chance.

Alexander’s world spun violently then, and he was sailing in free fall, hit as if by an NFL linebacker. Fresh powder padded thinly the impact with the ground, and he blacked out for a few seconds, coming to in a sprawl, ice cold melting water from the slide filling his shirt collar with snow. A low moan accompanied his slow attempt to rise. He fell back down when he tried to use his right arm to balance.

He was nearly upright when he got hit again, this time blasted against the thick layer of snow on the turf of the yard he’d been thrown onto. The force buried him in three feet of powdered ice and threw a cloud into the air, obscuring everything in white. Gasping, agony rolling from the damage accumulating in spite of the adrenaline, he knew he was at the end of his rope.

Weakness made his struggles to pull himself out of the hole in the packed snow almost futile.

But only almost, desperation drove him to force his way to his feet, the huge billowing fog of ice crystals drifting slowly around him.

This time, the distortion of compressing snow revealed the attacker’s weapon: a sphere of compressed air big as a basketball.

Alexander took a barely balanced step to the side, and it sailed by, whipping at his jacket.

Shaking, his impeccable vision still easily tracked the vector of the attack and he pulled hard on his core’s remaining energies.

Three Chaos Strikes boiled into existence, and he willed the dense shards of destruction to sizzle back along the wind magic’s trail, one after another in a line.

An awful howling wail rose up thirty feet away that quickly turned into a gargling death rattle, announcing that sequential impacts of the ruinous energy had destroyed the assassin.

That was the end of his strength however, he fell back into the thick drift in the yard behind one of his neighbor’s houses.

Ruthless faded. Alexander’s world came apart, from the pain overload.

He was laying there deep in the numbness of shock when an east European with an unkempt goatee, the most beautiful thing on earth, suddenly blocked his narrowing view of the clouds above, and the slowly, steadily flying flakes that came to rest on top of him.

“I have him!” the thick accented voice called, and Shiv roughly tore open his shirt.

“Okay, is not good, but is okay. I can deal with this.” The Brigid healer class chanted under his breath.

Distantly, Alexander wished that the man did not sound so much like he was reassuring himself, as compared to reassuring the actual injured person.

With his shirt opened, each flake of snow felt like a tiny kiss of winter. He would have giggled about it if he could do much but keep dragging air into the one lung that worked.

Shiv got to business, and, true to the man’s description so long ago, it was incredibly disconcerting to feel one’s flesh being knit from inside, with nothing touching. The one-time orthopedic surgeon, a man who made his bread fixing up carpel tunnel, doing hips and knees for the elderly, or the odd shoulder reconstruction for a concrete mason who’d destroyed them hand finishing far too many square feet of slab for three men’s life times, let alone one, did as his class described: he wove Alexander’s flesh.

Blood vessels were tied together, becoming whole, in an itching, spiders under your skin process. Muscle fibers reconnected. The perforated bowel was repaired, and, so long as he didn’t croak to sepsis in the next two days, toxic shock wouldn’t be an issue. An almost comically large needle connected to a pump got inserted into Alexander’s chest, and the blood filling his lung was siphoned out, before the Mandrake coated gauze was removed so that the stab wound could be closed. His collarbone being burned through made the repair difficult. Alexander could feel the bones lengthening, like a soft grinding on his skeleton as Shiv forced his body to provide the material to restore wholeness to the cleft bone. He lost consciousness sometime during that process and didn’t wake up until a few hours later, in his own bed.

His disorientation was short lived, memory of the attack came back swiftly, and adrenaline flooded him pointlessly in his bed before his fight or flight response registered that everything was done and over.

From the side, the man to whom he owed his life, Oleksiy Shevchenko, or Shiv, was waiting.

“And the patient, how is he?” the medic asked, relieved that the young man had come too so quickly.

A fast waking normally meant a complete success on the healing effort. Delayed waking often mean that something was still broken, demanding the body to stay dormant while it healed. He answered Alexander’s questions with a sound, comforting bedside manner. How long did the operation take? A timeless span of fifteen minutes it had taken to have his wounds knit together. Was it normal to feel tiredness unlike anything he had ever known? Da, and for a few hours. And so on.

The price for healing was his body’s reserves, he lost five pounds of healthy weight, in addition to the blood volume.

Shiv took the inquisition well. Alexander was trying to avoid the real question, the one that made his guts churn.

If there was one target, had there been others?