The citizens of Falcon’s Rest presided over four fresh graves, their occupants formally laid to rest this hour past. The honored dead, amongst the first that Alexander had known personally, were these:
David Grosse, saddler, Ifrit with alchemical potential as a Corpus Transmutationist, who stopped three cloaked figures in the street who he hadn’t recognized and died with a shout of warning on his lips to a bullet in his brain.
Hilde Baumgartner, member of Impervious, Djinn Mirage Caster, who turned off the eyes of the three Matriculated assassins and cloaked the practice field from sharpshooters until a lightning bolt from a hidden mage slew her.
Dan Price, carpenter, Dryad with wood manipulation class Timber Seamster, who jammed the heavy caliber rifles of the dozen or so Normal hitmen by pushing the wood stocks over their triggers and died with an acid infused knife in his belly.
Kim Summers, machinist, Oread Runic Artificer, who traded his life for the lightning wielding assassin, buried his belt knife in the man’s liver, and absorbed the bolt meant to kill Ben, the target of the hit.
There were several grievous injured.
Julia Bonny Richards had lost an arm and had half her face crushed by a great hammer. She was unconscious, but Shiv had stopped the brain bleeds, and the Phoenix sun that rose tomorrow would bring her back to full health. Not so for her wolf familiar, and another six of the tamed pack. They had died keeping her assailant from a final blow. That had the appearance of a personal vendetta, the man who had done it was the one who had attempted to attack her all those months back in Safe Harbor. The wannabe rapist lunatic had targeted her first, and the tamed beasts had been killed by the invaders, so they’d known about the beast tamer’s kennels. Probably thanks to the invisible one, a stealth scout classed whose hit attempt would have been countered by the keen noses of the wolves.
Melinda had been cut in half by a nearly invisible crystallized air monofilament. Mark cauterized her entire abdomen, staunching the bleeding, and saved her life. She too would rise with the Phoenix sun, hale and whole.
A few gunshot wounds from small caliber side arms inconvenienced some folk but weren’t otherwise worth mentioning. Nathan’s Soak aura had negated most of the damage from those small, slow-moving bullets.
That was mostly thanks to David and Hilde, who’d stolen the initiative from the assassins and kept them from targeting freely for those few precious moments. Dan kept the Normals from going to work on everybody with those rifles, which probably saved more than a few lives. A dozen 45-70 brush guns unloading into the drill field from a hundred feet away would have been a massacre.
Benjamin killed the assassins. All of them, other than the one Kim took with him. Speed like a jack rabbit, strength like a forklift, he blew through the killers in a couple of seconds, after he broke the air monofilaments that had temporarily bound him, the same ones that sliced cleanly through Melinda, who’d been in the way. Alexander’s gift of a naginata crafted with a combination of pure magic infused metals had had unexpected influences on the Steel Heavy Knight’s self-imbuement: Golem Argentum carried a potent Impetus increase, to one such as Ben, in addition to the Golem High Steel Might and Kim’s runic Durability enhancement.
Bad as it was, the tragedy could have been, had been intended to be, so, so much worse. It was awful enough.
Cervantes was inconsolable. Hilde and he had been an item since the Pulse, had taken care of each other through the worst of the beginnings of the end. He was a part of Impervious because she was, otherwise, he didn’t care much about what happened. Cervantes stood on a cliff now, and nobody knew what he would do. The light of his life had been snuffed.
Riley was also broken up; Dan had been his best friend in the settlement. They’d worked arm in arm on every single house in Falcon’s Rest, doing the labor of six together, for months. They’d been best pals since the founding of Safe Harbor. Potter swore vengeance, and nobody objected.
Everyone had liked David. He was the stereotypical chill uncle who, if you stopped to talk to him, would eat your entire afternoon bullshitting. There wasn’t a person in the settlement that didn’t bear at least one craft of the garrulous leather worker. His loss would be noticed every time you walked by his porch and didn’t hear a call that you knew was going to take at least an hour of your life, passed in amiable chit chat.
Despite his relentless poker face, Kim Summers’ dry wit had made him friends across town, alongside his gluttony for work. If it had a simple machine involved with it, Kim had probably laid hand to it at some point or other. He’d also smelted down so many cars that raw steel wasn’t going to be an issue for a little while. Without him, the smithy was less than half as capable, its projects on indefinite hold for lack of a craftsman talented and experienced enough to execute them.
None of those men and women could be replaced. They were each of them a priceless piece of Falcon’s Rest, contributors to the cause of mankind’s efforts to survive the apotheosis of Gaia. More, they were loved by their neighbors.
Alexander Gerifalte was devastated. These people had died because of him. They’d left lives of relative comfort because of him. And it hadn’t been the beasts, the monsters, the dungeons that had killed them. It was people. It was their own kind. An unthinkable betrayal. The Guilds, it seemed, had decided that they wanted blood in exchange for the lost wealth of those dungeons, whose presence was a threat to what precious little humanity was left. Precious humanity they’d further reduced by this act of murder.
Of war.
It didn’t need to be said, how four, plus the three sent for himself, class and core bearing humans, tier two Matriculated, who should have been bound by the Contract, had managed to perpetrate blatant violations of the terms of that binding. The Guilds had hidden them. Black agents, assassins, hitmen held in secret just in case a problem needed solving off the books. And Normals to accompany them, with heavy caliber rifles to defeat the Soak of Adventurers.
This was a crime against humanity, a break of the only real covenant left: man shall not slay man.
They were already so few! Alexander raged; white hot anger hidden behind a mask of grief while he stood here over these brave souls. And the guilt. It gnawed his guts.
“Oh Kim, buddy, I’m sorry. By all the gods above, below, and in between, I am so sorry.” He whispered, over the first graves dug within Falcon's Rest.
No graves were dug for the murderers. Alexander analyzed them to know what resources the Guilds had expended in this atrocity, what might yet be lurking about if these hadn't been all that were out there. Shiv autopsied them, extracted their cores for use when a use was found for them, and they were burned, the ashes and bones dumped in the river to be removed to the sea by its flow. No tears did the folk of Falcon's Rest shed for the murderers.
After services, the townspeople separated, each to their own to process the tragedy in their own ways. Some, to console each other who they held dear. Some, like Alexander, alone. Ben walked by, stone faced, but red in his eyes. He and the young man shared one look in passing, and a small nod. They were of a mind then: This shall not pass.
Alexander had never killed anyone before. He’d never even considered it. Yesterday he’d taken three irreplaceable lives. There was only coldness there for them. Dispassion. Those men had broken faith, had chosen things over their brothers. Now he understood what a Venator was. He was going to find the ones who had done this. Wherever they hid, they were never safe.
Someday soon, probably as soon as the roads were fit for travel, he was going to go pay them a visit. He wouldn’t be alone.
For now, he was going to stand here in the cold and suffer, because he deserved to. The Lucy forecast held true, it snowed for most of that morning, grey clouds breaking up and pushing away as the Nor’easter’s legacy winds trailed off. Fresh dirt covered by clean, white powder, with the silent stillness that only winter could create for a backdrop.
“You freezing to death won’t do anybody any favors, Alexander.” A quiet voice said behind him, odd for its lack of open teasing.
“You don’t know that.” Alexander told Granny, mustering a fragment of his normal, stubborn sarcasm.
“Fine, you stand here like a big, dumb statue, with snow in your feathers, and I’m going to start a timer to see how long stupid takes to turn to ice.” Annita Nguyen scolded him, with a little more heat in her tone than before.
If all he had to do to get under her skin was stand out in the cold, he’d have done it daily.
Another silent couple of minutes passed, and the Dryad inched closer until she stood next to him.
“It’s not your fault.” She tried to lie.
“Yeah, it is. I don’t want it to be, but it is.” He corrected.
“We all knew those dungeons had to go. How many people did they kill? Before the Guilds, before Safe Harbor got its feet under it? Hundreds? Thousands? They had to be stopped.” She argued.
It was a good argument. He should know, it was his. He hated it when his being right got used against him.
“Doesn’t change anything. I made the call. A couple of thousand people in Safe Harbor, but it was Alexander Gerifalte that broke the Guilds’ piggy bank. We knew there would be consequences.” He replied, resigned to his role in this awfulness.
Being in charge means being responsible when it all gets fucked up. Somebody had to be responsible, for everything. Just like somebody had to be responsible for telling those humans who were lying in an unmarked pit now to go murder their fellow man, like a cartel syndicate hitting a rival gang for stealing their take.
“You didn’t kill our friends, Alexander.” She insisted.
On that he agreed. They were killed because of him, not by him. It was an important distinction. To him. Not one that mattered one whisker to the dead.
“You’re going to kill the ones who did though, aren’t you.” Granny said, rather than asked.
“Ayuh.” He answered, without emotion.
“Can I come too?” She asked, and now he was surprised.
Granny wasn’t a warrior. She wasn’t a fighter at all. She was a collector of green things, a grower, and a lover of life. A humble hill witch in her shack, happily tending creepers. Just because she wasn’t squeamish about bashing a monster’s brain in, didn’t mean she had a killer’s instincts.
“Better if you didn’t. You’re too decent, Annita Nguyen.” Alexander advised, hoping she wouldn’t commit to this course.
He heard her huff, and he finally turned his gaze from the mounding snow on four fresh graves to see her arms crossed, glaring at him with golden eyes, “And you aren’t?”
Alexander smiled, and he knew that none of it reached his eyes, green rimmed with brown, set in black.
“No.” He replied.
A Venator kills things. Tracks them, hunts them, stalks them until they can flee no longer, then applies the knife. He wasn’t decent. He was selective. That, too, was an important distinction. Gaia knew her children, knew them best, even the things they didn’t know about themselves.
The determined features on the Vietnamese witch woman’s face faded a bit, looking at someone she’d thought she knew well showing a hidden side of themselves, one that stood in stark contrast to the one with which she’d been familiar. To her credit, he knew right away that, just because he’d shown her the ugly part, she wouldn’t flinch. This was Granny, a woman who built a shack in the wilderness and slept out there with the monsters, roamed their territories with impunity, and gave no fucks, because Annita Nguyen feared no man or beast that walked this rock.
“You weren’t a serial killer back before, were you?” the Dryad woman with sturdy, if small frame asked.
He couldn’t help rolling his eyes at her, “No! Just a dumb kid that wanted to be a fighter pilot and had so-so social skills, you know this. Why?”
“Asking for a friend.” She sassed.
He wanted to groan. How did she do this? Here he was being sad, and she comes along and professionally gives him enough shit to take his mind off it.
“You are a pain in my ass Granny.” He told her, smiling a little for real this time.
She nodded, “It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.”
“Fine, I’m done getting icicles in my feathers, you happy?” Alexander demanded, not even allowed to be left to wallow in self-loathing around this burg.
A sparkle in her eyes took hold, and she assumed a superman pose, with an arm raised, fingers forked for victory, and he groaned.
“Granny Nguyen, wins again!” She called, knowing it’s what her friends in the ground would have wanted, to see their leader, their friend, get his tail twisted one more time.
They left the graves and retreated to the Survivor’s Well. There were the dearly departed remembered, tales of the loved swapped, and the shared sadness of community to make the burden easier to bear. Lucy had to avert disaster, when Alvin tried to slip the bottle holding the Vodka That Shall Not Be Consumed into the impromptu wake, slapping him on the shoulder repeatedly while demanding to know if he was crazy.
image [https://imgur.com/3D1kmaW.png]
Six hours later, most of the sixty remaining members of Falcon’s Rest were respectfully drunk.
Half of them were packed into the old church, its pews long since replaced by sturdy wooden tables, its pulpit a long bar, with kegs tapped along the back wall in a big set of x shaped cross braces, so that empties could be swiftly replaced. Bottles with wax pencil labels could also be found in homemade wine racks, recently brewed concoctions of varying quality, dubious taste, and full of gasoline. All of those racks, most of the tables, and the bar along the front of them, behind which Alvin and Tom tended with efficiency the full house, had been made by Dan. A tradition emerged of rubbing the bar top, saying “thanks” and then placing your order. Years down the road, the front edge of the bar would be rounded. A Flatlander or Down Easter patron would instantly be recognized, based on whether they thanked the bar before they ordered.
Not all the townsfolk were grieving by revelry. For some of them, with the wounds still raw, they were deciding how to answer the injury.
Alexander sat at a square table with four chairs. Nathan to his left, Benjamin across, and Mark on his right. Mark Ross, normally a calm, considerate sort, was flagrantly pissed.
“When you two go, I’d better be told.” He warned his friends again, only slightly slurring.
A calm down wave of large hands from Ben preceded his promise, “Easy now, Mark, you’ll get yours, I told you no lies.”
At the next table, Brig, Georgia, The Dame, and Granny sat at a “girl’s” table. Granny had pulled an eyelid down and put her tongue out at them when Nathan told them the tables were unisex.
Brig responded to the provocation in usual fashion, yelling “My sex isn’t Un-anything, and this table has so much estrogen in it, it’s going to start being late because it’s doing its makeup! You hairy apes won’t even be able to touch it because it’s got a headache!”
Like a vicious goose on a nest, she huddled arms around her comrades, daring anyone to come violate the sanctity of the fem table.
She might have started drinking with Georgia a few hours earlier.
“You pig fuckers don’t deserve to even look at our cast-off hose! I bite my thumb at you, peasants!” The Dame sneered and or slurred, missing her thumb twice before getting the gesture right.
She’d been imbibing with the commoners, uncharacteristically, and was no match for the works of Survivor’s Well’s brewmasters. She might be a mean drunk, by the look of things.
“Hell yeah! Tell’em again!” Egged on the red-headed woman, with Granny biting both her thumbs in the direction of the men’s table.
Georgia gave everyone the “What are you gonna do” shrug and joined her sisters' gesture of defiance, the women enjoying their temporary she-man man haters club for the brief moment of solidarity.
The table of adults studiously ignored the jeers from across the way.
Alexander noted in passing that whatever friction had existed between the Dame and Brig was gone, smoothed over by the reminder that life could be terribly short, and suddenly ended. There simply was not enough time to indulge pettiness. He briefly wondered what mental shift had to occur in the Dame’s fantasia to permit it, but then decided he wasn’t that interested. Not his clowns, not his circus.
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Heads made slightly less cool by intake of a half keg of deceptively strong pilsner between them had come together to agree that an official response was necessary. There were some details that needed working out when their thoughts cleared, but the emotional validation for the decision would hold its validity later. Blood for blood.
Alexander Gerifalte would never have willingly taken a human life, not if it could have ever been avoided. But that was before. People had been off limits, that was the rules, his prey was monsters and only monsters, no matter what. However, the Guildies had just changed the rules.
Speaking of rules, the assassination attempts shouldn’t even have been possible.
When Normals were taken through a dungeon to undergo the transformation from tier one, vanilla humans, to tier two, classed or Matriculated humans, with dormant bloodlines, they were immediately sworn in on the laws. The Matriculated were under a geas. Rule four of Matriculated Contract law: Manslaughter outside of sanctioned duels and without notification of town authorities is prohibited between Matriculated persons, except in defense of life, under pain of death or exile.
Without a core, whose magical energies could be warped to enforce the geas, the Normals couldn’t be sworn in. They were also far, far weaker than classed humans, so it wasn’t normally considered a problem. In fact, it was an important point of balance in post Pulse society. But the matriculated assassins had not declared a duel or notified town authorities. The rule was there to guarantee that murder shouldn’t be possible between classed humans.
In no uncertain terms, that meant that these individuals were outside the law, to be killed on sight, according to rule seven: All Matriculated must swear to these laws or be considered Outlaws intent on the destruction of civil society, enemies of the state, and predators of their fellow man, to be executed on sight by any Matriculated who knows of them, under pain of death or exile.
So, the catch-22 that had the four assembled men up in arms was this: how were these murdering bastards given orders without immediately being turned upon by the brass of the Guilds who gave them?
As soon as the Guildies, sworn in as they were, knew of the presence of these extrajudicial Matriculated, they should have been compelled to attack them or exile themselves from Safe Harbor. Clearly, there was a loophole. That, or the top brass of the Guilds had a backdoor channel of Normals to handle problems that might arise that required breaking the law.
Benjamin had come up with that theory, cementing in Alexander’s mind that, whatever he’d been before the Pulse, it had probably involved some kind of special forces, we were never here, kind of bullshit.
Ben had killed men before yesterday. Maybe a lot of them. Nobody thought less of him, they’d all suspected he was military, and not the kind that sits on a base dipping while they maintenance the vehicles or keeping latrines clean. Guys like that carried themselves a certain way.
In any case, the hypothesis was a good one.
Unofficial Guildies, able to circumvent the normal proceedings, operated outside usual channels, probably with intentionally vague instruction by the Guild top men, so that they, under the geas, would not be affected by it. That went beyond plausible deniability, there was an entire shadow Guild operating in Safe Harbor, made up of criminals who could order assassinations of anybody who got in the way.
Nathan Smythe raised the question, “How many Adventurers who stepped on the Guilds’ toes and ended up ‘killed by monsters’ not so long later do you think were actually whacked?”
Offhand, four came to Alexander’s mind. Three men smuggling from a dungeon and a lady who had run a lucrative business trading insider information obtained from her front as a brothel. She’d been outed by a break in security and, two weeks later, disappeared. The woman had gone missing during the Doppelganger fiasco, and nobody had questioned it at the time. Now? There was exceptionally good reason to question that woman’s sudden disappearance.
“They can’t be allowed to live, whoever they are. This is an infection, a lethal one.” Alexander said, calmly determined.
“Agreed,” Ben said, his usual stoicism carrying a hard edge tonight, the man’s dark brown metallic luster obvious in the candlelight, “The monsters, they have to be culled or humanity is at risk. Sometimes monsters hide behind human skin, that’s all. The solution is the same.”
So sayeth the guy who figured out that body snatchers were running amok in Safe Harbor last year and averted a calamity.
Nathan nodded his agreement and looked around the room at neighbors, many of whom who relied on him, and his peers at the table to keep them safe. They had failed in that. Impervious had lost, effectively, two of its members to the attack and the Oaken Rampart took it extremely personally. They’d murdered his family.
“It might mean killing the entire leadership of the top three, maybe even the top five.” He told his compatriots.
They’d come to a consensus that only the top three to five could have the kind of pull to hide Matriculated and buy silence. Anything less than a guarantee would have mobilized Safe Harbor as a society to eliminate them. Adventurers unaffiliated with a Guild outnumbered the Guildies six to one. Just because they lacked training, optimal equipment, and the more powerful of the classes that made them less in demand didn’t mean they couldn’t pull the Guilds down if they wanted. Most of them just had no interest in hurting anybody, they wanted to help out, survive, do their part for their kin. Like everybody, Alexander had thought, until very recently.
Patriotism today meant being for all people, not just borders on a map. You owed mankind your loyalty, now. Apparently not for some. Fewer now, of those. Fewer still later.
“Fine. They deserve it, fuck’em.” Mark scoffed, a lot louder than he’d intended to say it, but rage fueled venom needed outlet.
At the sound of the phrase “Fuck’em” a chorus of twenty-nine other voices rose and “Fuck’em” rang out from the old church across town, echoing off the wall.
Boy, he really was livid. Alexander was almost surprised at his own lack of anger. It had died back after leaving the graves. He was living in the sea of calm, cold hate that made no waves, just past rage. He’d kill the Guildies responsible for this with less feeling than putting down a rabid animal. It was like Ben said, they were monsters now. Fair game.
“In order to make a move, we’re going to have to follow the law,” Ben reminded the table, “We must draft an official notification that the parties responsible are to present themselves for a duel or be exterminated. Then the fourth rule is satisfied, and we can go hot.”
That was pretty cunnin’ of the warrior. Just straight up tell them you’re coming to 'challenge' them, and rule four was totally inert. Nice. Now he thought on it, rule four never said you had to tell them when you were coming. Alexander didn't mention that the seventh injunction applied, they'd made themselves murderers by proxy, which stripped them of protection from the Contract. They didn't require a lawyer for this, he could tell by absence of subtle vibrations on his core, vibrations that became white hot agony when you violated its terms, that they were justified in this retribution.
Nathan sipped thoughtfully from his brew and put the glass down firmly.
“I’ll write it. They murdered Hilde, so we have just cause as her party. Cervantes will probably go no matter what I say, and he deserves to have us behind him. Those sonsofbitches are going to pay for fucking with Impervious, to say nothing of Dan, Dave, and Kim.” The Anchor tank asserted.
Oh, Alexander was going to see to it they paid for Kim Summers alright. Him and all the rest.
After that, the table turned aside for more casual conversation. Forced casual conversation slowly gave way to the real thing, it wasn’t the first time anyone had suffered loss. It wouldn’t be the last. Folk these days were inoculated to grief by exposure.
Around the tavern, Lucy bussed tables, Tom and Alvin saw to the bar, and anybody who had a hand with cooking at all, which was most people in Falcon’s Rest, took a turn kneading dough or peeling taters to keep a steady flow of bar food. Before long, the tavern had transformed into a just almost jovial bean suppah affair.
Within a half hour of beer, cheese, and pretzels, in the traditions of dudes, they shifted completely to casual talk, stories of adventures had, and outright lies, instead of addressing the underlying sources of their traumas or navigating the grief that had recently beset them. Any mention of baggage was shelved in favor of the recent rumor that Scott Kaczynski was going to use his ice magic to make a hockey rink. A league was being planned, and rules for a draft haggled over.
Something, some intuition and subconscious part of his brain’s language centers pricked his awareness and he turned to the women’s table to catch Brigitte O’Connor telling a fascinated table, all leaning forward to hang onto every word of her not that quiet whisper “And you run your fingers through that downy black hair, lean back, and Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”
He put his head in his arms, unwilling to watch any further. Didn’t she have any shame? At all? They were over here planning a rampage and his sex life was getting a re-enactment, with table humping included now, the sturdy wood creaking.
“Don’t worry, kid, nobody is going to remember anything tomorrow.” Ben consoled him, barely holding in a smile, “Besides, it’s good to get the word out, let the chickens cluck about how fine the rooster is.”
The young man raised his head to see, the stout warrior was grinning now.
“Ben, it’s not your rooster she’s talking about.” Alexander groaned.
“Don’t blame me having more sense than you. Brig ain’t no barracks bunny, but she’s rough with her toys. I tried to warn you Genghis Butter Bars.” He smirked.
Yes, he had.
“Did you ever let her at you? Just once?” He asked.
The courageous warrior’s gaze went distant, and he nodded, “Just once, when I was too green to know better.”
“It changes you, doesn’t it?” Alexander asked, tongue in cheek, seeing that they were getting a united front of lifted eyebrows from the other table.
A heavy nod confirmed, shared by Mark. Brig was only interested in warriors who could match her. That was a high bar, which grew higher almost daily.
“You guys too?” He asked, amazed.
“But what about Melinda?” That for Mark, but he regretted the words as soon as he said them.
The Ifrit leader of men stoically soldiered through Alexander's moronic reminder though, appearing casual. He was aware of tendency of the young man, only two years his junior, to be incredibly oblivious.
“It was before we’d met. I was walking around Searsport, we hadn’t even renamed the town, and there she was, over six feet of bombshell, with a broom handle that had a kitchen knife duct taped to it, stained halfway up its length with blood. I never saw anything so amazing in all my life. I knew it was a bad idea, but I was weak, and she was strong. Melinda saved me, Brig won’t touch you if you’re coupled up, it’s a hard rule. That's why we gotta get you all shacked up, for your own good.” Mark narrated, with a brief tightness to his eyes at the mention of his wounded partner at odds with the forced humor of his words.
He was trying desperately to hold himself together, rather than to sit at her bedside doing nothing but twisting his insides. Tomorrow all would be right with the wounded and what could be done had been done. The others at the table pretended not to see his struggle, out of consideration.
“Ahh, quit bitching, you pansies," Their demon declared, having completed the evening’s theater, and she stood with a slight wobble to lean on the women's table for support, "A lady has a bit of a thirst, and you’re all over here boo-hooing because you can’t make with the milk.”
Now, the beast's ire was raised and she approached the table aggressively, leaning forward on it with her hands, her long braid trailing to the surface and threatening to overturn a half full glass of beer carelessly. Ben rapidly saved the beverage and escorted it to his mouth to safety. Startled yells of "Hey!", "Foul!" and such accompanied the Oread's near disaster.
She’d noticed her party leader’s dilemma and played her role, deflecting stray emotional shrapnel. She took seriously her role as an offtank, both in combat, and outside of it. Sometimes the group needs someone who goes loud, brash, and devil may care, to prop up the rest. As Mark had said, he was weak, and she was strong. It worked to perfection; the table was now focused on giving her the stink eye.
“Brig, were you born like this, or did the Pulse turn you into an animal?” Alexander asked, grateful for the save.
She squared her shoulders proudly, “God given talent buckaroos! Now, we gots us four on four here, so what do you ladies say to a little Carcassonne? I’ve got the expanded version here.”
Who could say no to that?
The night of grieving passed in games, food, and companionship, as was right and proper. Some didn’t partake, Shiv was tending the wounded. Some couldn’t bring themselves to, like Cervantes de la Cruz and Riley Potter. Others shared the night quietly with their partners, their solace in that bond. Loss was a part of the people who had survived the Pulse. The were robust. They would come away from this stronger, more determined. But not until they slept off the hangover.
A hangover that would never materialize, thanks to the gift of being Children of Gaia.
The Phoenix sun rose, washing over the town with golden light reflected by crystalline pure white snow. In its wake, that magical light carried Gaia’s love for her surviving children, healing their wounds, restoring their bodies from whatever sickness had taken hold, destroying the cancers and mistakes of genetics.
Shiv got to witness the incredibly disturbing sight of golden flames, radiant, almost too bright to lay eyes on, that burned from the cauterized wound of the bisected Melinda and, when the fires faded, the woman was whole again, without sign of the catastrophic damage to her form. She wept with relief, and happiness at being alive.
Similarly, Julia sat up, the draining tube having been forced from her skull, or incinerated, one or the other, and looked wonderingly at the arm she’d lost.
Oleksiy Shevchenko gave his brief thanks to Gaia, the only god which he could acknowledge for this miracle and left the two women to dress in privacy. His had been a long watch, and he was retiring to his blankets.
Eight gunshot wounds healed nearly instantly in a different room in the clinic. The town had never grown large enough to have a hospital, just a one room converted house doctor’s office and a long drive to get somewhere if you needed anything serious medically. The new clinic was, in fact, located in what had been the town’s dentistry office, which had more rooms, and triple the space. The patients who’d been shot left the waiting room, where their attendant doctor, Shiv, and his assistant, Dr. Sandra Patel, had made certain that they were stabilized. They were the only two with anything approaching formal medical training, although Sandra's was mostly limited to CPR, mandatory anatomy and physiology coursework, and a lot of hurriedly learned theory, she was a teacher turned head shrinker.
Her efforts at crisis therapy were not wasted that long night before, and most of the townspeople who left the clinic did so without the lingering trauma that a vicious attack such as had been perpetrated against them normally instilled on the psyche. Dr. Patel’s trial was only beginning, she would go to every citizen of Falcon’s Rest in the next few days to help them process the attack, their emotional responses to it, and to counsel them through their pain.
The Djinn therapist rubbed her temples, not enjoying the psychic echoes of the memories and experiences she had to wade through to help others process their trauma. Her class shielded her from it, buffered her own mind from the effects, but her resilience was being tested. The only upside from the difficulty of the case load was that her skills, traits, and abilities were growing swiftly. Two had already tiered up from their lesser versions.
Mark and Melinda met, after leaving the rest of his comrades early he had slept outside the patient rooms, in a blanket inside the sitting room out front, and they immediately traded an embrace and disappeared to their home, not to be seen for three days.
Similar scenes played out, for those who had loved ones to share them with. Some did not.
Cervantes smashed his tuning fork great sword into stone targets made by Van repeatedly, hammering them to gravel with sonic vibrations that he was becoming rapidly more proficient in tuning to the natural frequencies of different objects. What had first taken a dozen hits to find the right feeling, now took three. Soon, he might be able to deliver a destructive resonance in only a single strike. The bones of the giant panther would be used to a greater purpose than being ground for meal: Cervantes would find the resonance needed to turn bones into powder.
He was not alone on the drill field, the rest of Impervious were out, each lathering themselves to hone their abilities. Hilde would be avenged.
Alexander Gerifalte was not idle this morning either. Well, at the moment he was idle, but that was because his head was swimming from being punished for a missed guard. Benjamin Grisham trained like he fought: hard.
“If you’re going to let a little tap like that keep you from pulling guard, you’re done the first time you fuck up.” The veteran warrior taught, while standing over him.
The young man threw himself onto his stomach and pushed himself to his feet, still a little rubbery in the legs.
“How do you move when your ears are ringing?” He asked, still reeling.
“Practice.” Was Ben’s response, and he drew back the wood practice sword, giving Alexander only a moment before he was attacking through the training routines again.
This time, he didn’t get hit until the third pass through the drill.
Even knowing what attack was coming, it was hard to meet the speed, precision, and power behind Ben’s swings and stabs. Without the helmet he wore, Alexander would already have been unconscious from the first hit. The second missed parry landed across his thigh, his having failed to push the downstroke from its arc correctly.
“Fuck!” He yelled, his leg Charlie horsing through the armor plate.
He limped, trying to force the knotting muscles to straighten.
“I didn’t end the drill, Alexander, get your ass ready before you get brained.” Ben demanded, and Alexander had to force himself to receive the attacks mostly on one leg.
He did not do that very well, and it was only a few more strokes before his shoulder took a batting. He dropped the practice sword and then Ben stabbed him, jabbing the wooden pole into his solar plexus and sending him to suck wind on the icy drill field.
Brig and the Dame were absent, they were doing “applied” training. Granny and a couple of scouts, including Julia, were finding the beasts prowling the area, such as the Winter Bear, and then the attackers of Getsome would handle the dispatch. Both of them needed real use of their skills, since it was difficult to unleash a water cutter that could pulverize stone on someone in practice. Same story for the Gravity Spire. Her abilities allowed her to perform a limited manipulation of the same said force, since her class evolution and tiering up. She could jump higher and farther than anybody should be able, about twenty-five, thirty feet straight up, and came down with more force than her weight justified. It had proved incredibly effective against the giant panther, but she’d broken her leg when she landed, so, clearly, there was room for improvement.
That was good, Getsome’s Adventurers were the best he knew. Them getting better was strictly necessary. Plus, he thought, from his back, only just now getting his wind, he didn’t have to have his ass beat in front of the copper haired Oread, who would take time from her busy schedule of monster whackin’ to poke fun. Until Ben suggested she take her turn in the circle, that is.
Speaking of, the older warrior was waving Alexander up, indicating that break time was over. He suppressed the groan that welled up from his bruised anatomy and threw himself into the training as hard as the rest, determined to make up for lost time.
Alexander wasn’t the only one. Riley Potter, the HVAAC technician and Vacuum Fencer, was also on the field. Getting run through the basics by Georgia, who was shepherding a crop of newbies to combat through drills. Most of the town had realized now, that there were no noncombatants. First, Panther Rex had pounced on the convoy, although it had been cleaned up so quickly by the combined efforts of the Adventurers that it hadn’t caused much harm. This last injury was the straw that broke the camel’s back, however. Those who had even the vaguest aptitude or inclination to fight were taking the winter’s lull in normal activities to drill.
Nathan Smythe’s Soak aura worked overtime, shielding the trainees from harm, some from their sparring partners, and some from themselves. More than one needed Shiv’s services when they managed to cut their own leg or arm or hand open from poor grip or an errant swing.
Only the full speed sparring happened without use of live weapons. At the moment, that was basically Alexander and Ben, the rest were either too immature to soak up the lessons raining on Alexander’s body right now, or too advanced, needing, like Cervantes, to practice specific applications of their classes and innate traits, but not confident enough to tackle real hunts while they did it. Cervantes' provided a percussive base line for the rest, while he viciously assaulted stone dummies with sonic booms that would likely kill a person, even through their Soak.
A new schedule manifested for Falcon’s Rest. Dawn to Mid-morning, training for combat. Mid-morning to noon, brunch and socializing. Noon to dark, returning to whatever projects and tasks needed attending to, the same as before the attack. From dark to bed, folk gathered in small social circles to entertain their friends at various people’s houses, or, they gathered at the tavern to join the large community circle. Games of skill, chance, and memory abounded. Risk games running for days formed distinct camps of townsfolk, with their own supporters.
Maine from December to February was a cold, dark affair. Only eight to nine hours of daylight, and half of that lost to the clouds. Board and card games were a time-honored tradition to pass the winter months. So was reading and storytelling. Scavenging through various homes, businesses, and storage buildings had accumulated an impressive library that covered everything from self help to philosophy to young adult fiction. Lucy and her boys, in addition to their prowess of the bartending arts, were trying to get a theater going, for small scale productions. The collected works of Shakespeare had been found for a script, and other narratives could be adapted for the live performances. Someday, soon, a theater house might go up for plays.
Not until spring, however, the time of building was over. Now was the time of waiting and mending.
Falcon’s Rest held its collective breath for three months, until, a few days into March, the snow finally melted enough to see the drill yard, where those who could, had worked themselves hard to make anyone who tried again to take from them regret it.