Alexander was with Wynona Saki in the chemistry lab, working a handpump to operate the vacuum filter when news of the first monster attack arrived.

His shoulders ached slightly from the effort of rapidly actuating the pump to achieve the negative pressure to draw a dissolved acidic supernatant through a fiberglass HEPA filter. Saki watched impassively, her eyes on the resulting product separation. She eyeballed the yield from the process that had consumed the better part of the lunch to midafternoon span, a clear liquid pulled free from the milky, wet chalk consistency, substance above the filter.

Saki had high hopes that the liquid would be neutralized to produce pure crystals of a metal complex Alexander was too busy following her crisply delivered instructions for lab procedure to remember, and not well versed enough in inorganic chemistry to know the purpose of. If it had necessitated his being pulled from the smithy, then it was important. Usually, she would enlist one of the other villagers for manual labor and simple protocols. His Warforger trait carried distinct generalist abilities that might come in handy though, hence he was slightly red faced whilst pumping like his life depended on it.

The door to the lab was wrenched open and a sweaty, panting Julia appeared there, eyes wide.

“There are werewolves in the forest!” The quiet girl cried, which stopped Alexander’s pumping and wiped the scowl of being interrupted from Saki’s face.

Julia wasn’t done, and she pointed vaguely outside, “They tried to snatch Granny and Melinda, but the pair drove them back, and Kevin was around and led the creatures off with his shadow.”

Two and a half years ago, that statement would have been absurd. Today, absurdity was spooned in with your coffee, like cinnamon, to keep it interesting.

Alexander stepped away from the pump and made for the door.

“Can you handle it from here?” He asked Saki, not particularly needing her nod to leave, but he would have shouted for someone to come and take over if she couldn’t.

“Let’s go Bonny!” He called and the pair ran out from the old high school, down the street, with the girl and her new familiar, a winter bear this time, in the lead.

On the way, the young girl warrior-scout of Impervious, just this month a tender seventeen, described the werewolves. Alexander listened while one of the youngest Matriculated on Gaia, and, according to her description of the “Hierarchy adjusted” notice when she’d drank the dragon blood, Gaia’s youngest tier three human, listed the characteristics of a horror flick made real.

“There were four, all about five feet tall, no sex immediately determined, muscular, hominoid but with arms long as the legs, they hunched over or they’d probably be over six feet, and used their arms to run as much as they were bipedal. Long muzzle almost exactly like a big timber wolf. Claws on the fingers and toes were slightly curved, but more like a bear than a dog. They were stronger than they should have been and didn’t like Melinda’s Solar Lamp in their eyes.” The once painfully shy girl detailed, calmer now that they were approaching the tavern, which had become the spiritual center of Falcon’s Rest over the winter.

The rest of Impervious, along with Getsome, and the scouts, aforementioned hero of the day Morrigan bloodline Kevin Meijer, which had earned him the moniker Major, included. Of an age with Alexander, the young scout’s class, Shadow Sentinel, let him pull his shadow free of himself and control it like a hologram. Somehow, the shadow held his essence, the man faded from awareness for the duration it was parted from him, and only regained consciousness when it returned. Fortunately for him, he became invisible while this process occurred, as long as he was shrouded by another shadow.

Alexander no longer asked how, for some things. Gaia’s rules were her own, especially when magic was involved.

The mousy youth waited until they were joined with the growing crowd, word had spread quickly, to drop the heavy news, her brown ponytail bobbing when she revealed quietly, “My hawk’s inspection skill said the werewolves were from Nut, realm of shadows and night.”

Damn. Double damn. Another realm meant a contested zone. A dungeon had emerged nearby. Or, at least, nearby enough for its minions to spill out in search of sustenance. The phrasing of Julia’s words echoed in his mind for a second, and he turned a quizzical gaze on the Dryad beast tamer.

“Julia, why did you say the werewolf tried to snatch Granny and Melinda? Don’t you mean it tried to eat them?” He checked, his question answered by the shaking heads of the two women in question.

Melinda answered for the girl, who looked extremely relieved to not have everyone assembled staring at her.

“No, Alexander, they didn’t try to eat us. They circled like they were herding us, driving us deeper into the woods, and that only after one tried to grab Annita by the hair and she cut its hand off with that axe she calls a knife.” The woman explained, frowning at the remembered experience.

Bugger. Was this Doppelgangers again? Body snatchers?

“So why did they chase Major’s shadow?” He asked, trying to find all the pieces of this puzzle.

“Probably because after Melinda put her sunlight lamp in their grills, we started hacking at them and they spotted something easier to grab. I think they wanted a sure thing, not a fight.” Granny replied, injecting her impression into the mix.

Annita’s judgment was, mostly, sound. Even when she was wrong, it was mostly the kind of wrong that points toward right.

Alexander turned to the seasoned Adventurers and did what a good leader does, he asked for opinions of men and women smarter or more experienced than himself with a simple “Okay, thoughts?”

Mark chewed lip briefly before he raised the specter in everyone’s minds, “Doppelganger situation?”

No one disagreed, although Brig noted, “They’re not very good at it, if that’s the play. I don’t think it’s as straightforward as the Doppelganger bait and switch routine. Maybe they’re wasps.”

Alexander paused, because he didn’t see the connection between a werewolf and a wasp.

“Uumm…I’m gonna need you to go back over that. What do you mean wasps?”

The slightly taller woman wasn’t playing around, she was serious, so what on earth did bugs have anything to do with it?

He didn’t have long to wait, Brig sighed, and asked, “Didn’t anyone watch the national geographic channel when they were kids?” and received blank stares in return.

“What?! Seriously? Bunch of yobs.” She scoffed at her fellows, disbelieving.

Julia Richards raised her hand, which was slightly adorable.

“Yeah, go ahead Bonny.” Nathan insisted gently.

“I think she means wasps like mud daubers. They sting with a paralytic and drag the prey to their nest, where they lay their eggs inside. The eggs pupate in the paralyzed victim and feed on it until they’re mature enough to fly and hunt on their own.” The beast tamer described.

Yikes, Alexander clicked his tongue distasteful of the notion. Human incubators for werewolves? Honestly? Not even the weirdest thing, he recalled the goblins hatching from disgusting eggs laid by the Goblin Queen. Still kind of yikes though.

Brig strode over and patted the scout softly on the head, and praised, “Yeah! There you go Bonny, you got it. Unlike the rest of these uncultured heathens.”

“They’re calling for frost in hell, right about now.” Ben observed.

Alexander slipped him a subtle pound to acknowledge the jab, which spurred the Lancer to flip her senior monster hunter brethren the bird.

The levity lightened the mood. Everyone was afraid of another Doppelganger situation. It’s why there were so many scouts with the expedition. Of the sixty surviving members of the village, fully nine of them were those who had abilities in their classes that were fantastic for reconnaissance, not counting Alexander, whose talents also lay in that direction, just with a sharper point to his talents.

Before things could get too off track, Mark reminded them of another problem, “I think we just got very, and I mean very lucky today. Nut is the realm of night, but the werewolves caught you in the daylight, and the one person whose abilities are all sunlight based at that.”

Good point.

“So, nobody leaves the walls after dark?” Alexander suggested.

“Nobody leaves the village period, not without a full party escort.” Ben advised.

The others gathered mulled it over and decided that getting kidnapped by monsters wasn’t a good look.

Nathan’s fingers wrapped across his oak great shield, and he announced, “Seconded.”

Alexander put things to the vote, now the official procedure had been started, “Ayes for none to leave the walls without either Getsome or Impervious to run escort. Nay for debate for alternatives.”

The ayes rang out from all the gathered people, which, by now, totaled the full complement of Falcon’s Rest.

“The ayes have it. Granny, that means you too, no more shack until we figure out where these monsters are coming from and stop them.” Alexander declared.

He almost expected her to argue the point, but her face said she had no fight to offer. The werewolf encounter must have been close if she wasn’t willing to even joke about it.

“Fine,” She agreed readily, “But where will I sleep? I packed all my stuff out there as soon as Potter and Dan, gods of the earth rest his soul, finished sealing up the shack.”

“You’re welcome to stay with me, I’ve got a spare bedroom at my place.” Volunteered Georgia Stephens.

By this time, it was midafternoon. The sun set around five thirty, not a whole lot of time to get any more information, but this is where Julia’s gifts shined, so the somewhat unwilling leader of Falcon’s rest made an executive decision.

“Okay, it’s too late in the day to be risking dicking with creatures from Nut after sundown. Julia, can you double your hawk and see if you can figure out if any more of those monsters are hanging around?” Alexander asked, not worrying about stepping on Nathan’s toes.

Impervious’ leader would have probably asked her to do the same later, where there was less pressure on her from the gathered Adventurer’s attention, but he wasn’t waiting around to get reports.

“Count on me!” She whispered as assertively as she ever could, and ran off to find a quiet place to focus on controlling her hawk, and its aetheric clone.

He took a moment to appreciate the improvement to the Lunar Warden’s social phobia, but he’d pass on thanks to Dr. Patel for her obvious role in that later. For now, they needed to get a war room conference going. The priority: intelligence.

Which was why he’d given their very best the get at’em. Alexander had the best eyes in the settlement, of that there was no doubt. But Julia Richards could fly, or at least, her consciousness could by proxy, and that trumped his advantage easily.

Fortunately, matters martial weren’t exclusively his discretion. He’d hired out for that, so Mark and Nathan got together and started giving orders to the assembled villagers to start battening down the hatches.

Physical capabilities of werewolves were unknown, but they probably didn’t fly or have the ability to jump the one hundred eighty feet it took to get over the wall, or dig through the solid granite of its foundation, or dig their claws into the supernaturally smooth face of it to climb. Through the craft of Van Richards, that wall was smoother than glass, nothing that wasn’t a gecko was getting up that surface.

That meant that Falcon’s Rest was a tight perimeter. The only concern was the access points, the gateways at each cardinal direction. Those had big ass multi-ton portcullis doors now, made of some of the steel extracted from Kim’s car disassembly project. The slot through which they dropped down when you lowered them was a ball bearing track, and so tight to tolerance that anything that bent the frame of that gate effectively locked it. No bashing their way in, unless they had a cutting torch to deal with the inch and a half round stock of the portcullis, meshed about six inches square. You could put your arm through that gate, and that was about it.

“Shape shifters might have tricks to alter their size, I say we plug the portcullis somehow.” That from Riley Potter, who’d become somewhat security paranoid since his best friend’s murder at the start of winter.

The assassins hadn’t had to deal with a portcullis then, they’d walked through an open gate. The citizens of Falcon’s Rest were more cautious now. Riley more than most.

Alexander offered no input on that discussion, he didn’t need to micromanage his people, they’d figure it out.

Instead, he went to find his notes on Nut, the realm of endless night, giving the assembled villagers a parting wave and a clearly called, “In the Lab!” to let them know where he was going.

Within the holy ground of his study, mind calmed by the familiar musty odor of long stored books and the distinct notes of chalk dust, he sought answers.

They were thin, there wasn’t a night dungeon near Safe Harbor, all the information came second hand from travelers, of which there were precious few. Without cars, or planes, or many people at all who had the ability to ride a horse or drive a team to pull a cart, people traveled on foot these days, in groups of six to ten. And, if they wanted to get where they were going uneaten, they did that slowly, carefully, and with time to establish at least a minimally secure camp at night. A trip of a hundred miles was a big undertaking. Movement of information was sketchy, at best. It drove Alexander nuts.

What there was, said what you’d expect: contested zones range from deep twilight to full moon night, to pitch black, moonless forests that might as well have been caves. Light sources were absolutely necessary within. Dark adapted monsters, with excellent hearing and night vision. Creatures positively ID’d included giant owls, spookier versions than the bunny boss outside Safe Harbor, living shadows similar to Major’s abilities, but with claws that could cut, although they were reported to struggle with armor. Other inhabitants were eyeless humanoids, like tall, thin men, but with teeth filed to points. Those last ones were intelligent, cunning, and utterly cruel, they liked to flay things before they killed them, which was why they were called Skin Peelers.

Skin Peelers had a limited form of terror aura, akin to the one that the undead field boss Alexander had killed, a Reaper, had employed. Instead of attempting to paralyze with thoughts of one’s own mortality, however, the mental intrusion was more sinister, it made you afraid of light. The described photophobia reportedly pushed you to run into the dark, where the creatures were waiting with their jagged hooked knives. Somebody with a sense of humor darker than Alexander’s had referred to the packs of six to twenty of the monstrous bastards as a Knitting circle.

There were a couple of other nightmares listed in his notes, most absent as many details as the Skin Peelers, which meant those probably came from a survivor of the creatures. No werewolves though, they were on their own figuring that one out.

Alexander thought of his naginata, whose construction had used golem Argentum, silver extracted from the golem’s corpse. Werewolves were supposed to be vulnerable to silver, right?

He immediately ran to the smithy, to inventory their supply of the metal. As he double timed, the pavement just recently cleared of the last traces of snow clicked on his boots. A few white banks from plowing stubbornly squatted at street corners, refusing to admit their time had passed, and the rain clouds overhead seemed bent on informing them otherwise. Groups of people organized into fives could be seen traveling around town in the corners of his eyes, each determinedly following their instructions given by the Adventurer party’s leaders.

They had their jobs, he had his, so he spared them no further attention. It only took a couple of minutes to get to his shop and he pulled the heavy door open, without bothering to light the oil lanterns that normally provided light. His eyes didn’t need that assistance, and Kim wasn’t around to make irritated comments about working in the dark.

Results weren’t great, he’d used most of the precious Argentum while arming Getsome and Impervious. The san-mai jacketing method of fashioning their weapons meant that they had, if his suspicions were true, anti-werewolf capability. But he had two ingots of the material left, which meant very few others would, unless he came up with something.

For himself, he had the ultimate anti bullshit tech, his entropic mana. Nothing withstood his chaos magic. Baleful Smite had killed anything he’d struck with it thus far, although that meant getting up close. Chaos strikes in a volley, as draining as that was on his core’s energies, put down most things, or, at least, crippled them badly enough to finish off.

“So, how do we stretch this out, get the most bang for our buck using what amounts to two forty-pound ingots?” He asked the otherwise empty shop.

Times like this, he really missed Kim Summers, he mused sadly; missed the man quite a lot.

Forty pounds, that sounds like a lot, but golem silver was a bit denser than regular silver, somewhere between palladium and gold. Alexander hadn’t ever had reason to measure it precisely. He estimated forty pounds rolled out to a coating about an eighth of an inch thick, on a piece of scrap paper.

Neat handwriting, courtesy of long practice tracked his work. Let’s see…density maybe around 0.4408 pounds for every cubic inch. Erring on the side of maximum coverage he used palladium as his reference, looked up in a well-thumbed book of industrial standards, and jotted that starting figure for density. Forty pounds divided by density grabs your volume, the volume divided by thickness gets you surface area for…He continued to math it out and scribbled 726.0 square inches of golem silver per bar, his calculations checked by units.

More calculations turned that into a more intuitive measurement, which came out to sixty and a half inches long by twelve-inch-wide sheets. One foot by five foot. Not a hell of a lot, as he’d suspected. But if he only jacketed the upper third of a blade, which is where you’re supposed to be striking, that would stretch it out a lot further. The balance of the weapons would be fucked, they’d be less wieldy with that extra weight sitting at the tip, but if it meant killing a charging monster with your first blow, instead of having to trade with the things in close, that was an easy compromise.

Alexander looked to Sterling the second, the completely redesigned, enhanced version of his steam engine.

It was a work of art, far beyond what he’d built on his own, far beyond what he’d built in Safe Harbor, which had been based on that original design. Sterling Jr. was a monument to the miracles humanity could achieve when they put their heads together in times of need.

Jules Reyolds had done the fine shaping that needed tools they did not have, sculpting the metals to shape and to tolerances measured with a micrometer, as well as to offer his experience as a hobbyist shade tree mechanic. Kim Summers, bless his soul, lent his expertise on engine design and machining, and was mostly responsible, with Reynolds back seating, for the revised v six-cylinder design. Alexander figured out the heat recycler and heat exchanger system, as well as most of the transmission, now a continuous variable transmission based on a working model ripped out of one of the defunct Subarus that had been scrapped.

Wynona Saki, putting her head in to borrow Alexander for help in the chemistry lab, stopped to ask why they didn’t replace the working fluid, which was water, with a more advanced water-glycerol mixture, and an exchange coolant line of ethylene glycol, which she promptly generated and they connected to a winter bear core to bring the temperature of the exchanger down to a crispy negative one hundred degrees, thus magnifying the efficiency and consistency of the machine’s output.

These modifications, plus a v six piston arrangement had quintupled the horsepower, it had at least five hundred now, and the far better continuous transmission using an actual planetary gear and torque converter to regulate that horsepower. The oil pump on the transmission that smoothly aligned the gears to keep belt tension, keeping the machine delivering power consistently with demand, piggy backed off the sterling heat exchanger coolant line.

Sterling Jr. ran like a fucking champion, a machine god Atlas, on whose back Falcon’s Rest would be carried into the future.

Nearby, abandoned after his murder, lay the half-finished plans and a few prototype pieces of the system Kim had worked up that was meant to create Sterling the third, a true steam turbine. Alexander would come back to that project, when he’d gained the skill, but his focus now was on some godsbedamned werewolves. Werewolves who Sterling Jr. was about to contribute to killing by powering the machine shop tools, so that he could retrofit anti-furry bastard swords, spears, and knives for the people of Falcon’s Rest.

What a world.

The salamander core lit up with a small pilot flame. The heat of that flame it consumed and spat out, magnified, and flames grew in the firebox to produce heinous temperatures. A heat returner pulled the waste heat back into the salamander core containing fire box, which it then continued to reheat back to working temperature. Muspelheim’s defeat would fuel Gaia’s ascension, which Alexander had the feeling was most of the point of Gaia empowering her children as she had.

Not that he could be certain about anthropomorphizing an entire planet’s intentions.

It took about fifteen minutes for the small pilot flame produced by a wood fire to heat the working fluid sufficiently to permit the salamander core to maintain operating pressure in Sterling Jr., so Alexander left the smithy to start collecting preferred weapons with which one might gut a darkness beast from the realm of Nut.

He returned with Granny Nguyen, whose pack contained the offerings to be upgraded. She was a better pack mule than he, by far, and had seemed a little at a loss as how to help, so he’d grabbed her up. He also had Jules Reynolds in tow, because he didn’t want to spend an entire evening hammering golem silver ingots into eighth inch sheets when Jules could, and he wished his life weren’t insane enough to say this seriously, roll them out with a rolling pin, the kind a baker used.

Inside the shop, Sterling was just about warmed up and had started to hum, pistons churning in delicate synchrony, their power impotent until the drive mechanisms were engaged that joined them to the shop’s tooling, currently that of George, the power hammer.

Alexander had forgotten to light the forge before he left, and he cursed himself for the waste of time. It would take the forge a few minutes to heat to temperature. Instead of standing here like an idiot while a dungeon shits out monsters, he could have been working already.

Granny laid down the oversized backpack and started unloading its contents. The people of Falcon’s Rest had diverse tastes in weaponry. Two handed bastard swords, double bitted felling axes, a few Messer style knives whose design Alexander might have inspired, and a solid dozen spears of various flavors. Most people recognized the benefit of a weapon that let you stay out of arms reach of the kinds of things dungeons produced.

The kinds of things Gaia produced too, now that he thought on it. Panther Rex, Yetis, winter bears, Entlings, dire wolves, there was plenty out there you didn’t want close to hand, all home grown.

Normally, Granny hated the sound of the machine tools and engines, so the fact that she was still standing there, even after the implements to be worked on were unloaded surprised him. Jules was over to the side, already going to his task with a will. The Quintessence Shaper was whistling, rolling out solid metal like dough. He’d be done in five to ten minutes with something that would have taken Alexander four or five hours. Insanity. The Guilds had been stone blind not to see his worth.

“What’s up Granny Nguyen?” Alexander asked, while he started a wood fire inside the salamander core firebox, which fed the lion’s share of its heat to the obsidian lined uber forge, and from which a small portion of that heat was siphoned to a downscaled steam powered blower that continuously circulated the superheated air inside, to produce even heating of the metals within.

“Ahh, nothing.” She replied, obviously lying.

Annita really did not like being inside his shop. It was why he hid there when she was up to her games, and he didn’t want to play. So why was she here, beating around the bush in a most Un-Granny-like fashion? Was it the werewolves? Itching at being stuck behind the walls?

He had some time to kill until the forge got to temperature, so he might as well investigate what had her hanging around in the last place she’d normally be found.

“Out with it, witch! I know you don’t like the shop, and you’re eyeballing George like he drowned your kittens or something.” He probed.

She put her hand on her hip and cocked her head at him, so he knew he was getting somewhere.

“You know it’s weird that you talk about your power hammer like it’s a person, right?” She accused, more than asked.

He seemed to recall having a similar conversation a while back, but the details were murky.

“Don’t talk about George like that, he has feelings too!” Alexander rebutted.

He didn’t expect a hill witch to understand his steel cased friends.

“Besides,” he added, trying for the heart of the matter, “You’re not really mad at George, you’re just deflecting. It isn’t like you to mince around Annita, what gives?”

She kicked around at the concrete floor a little, refusing to meet his eyes before she answered, “I don’t know! You’re in here doing all this, and the other guys are out getting ready to kick ass, and I’m not even allowed to sleep in my house. When those murdering fuckers attacked, I wasn’t even around to help; I strolled into town like a mook and found out what happened hours after the fact. You and Melinda and Julie were all fucked up and I couldn’t do anything. Just like I can’t do anything now. I hate feeling useless, I guess.”

That was unexpected. Granny was a source of self-assurance on most days. Getting down over something like this was definitely unusual. Most of the villagers who had even the slightest desire had spent the winter training, getting themselves prepared to defend the town, whatever might come. Granny had spent no less time than anybody else on that front, and her kukri had a way of finding ways to hamstring most people that sparred against her, which was followed by a circling death by a thousand chops from the Dryad, or getting thrown like a sack of grain, and finished, her judo was solid.

That said, Granny wasn’t a combat class, not even a little, and she didn’t have that immediate instinct to go for the kill. Her mind didn’t work that way. Alexander’s did, and it was why he beat better fighters in their sparring matches. A flinch, a hesitation, a moment of doubt, these were wired into his instincts as cues to finish the opponent.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this Annita, but you’re one of the least combat focused people in the settlement, besides the farmers. Everything in your tool kit so far as combat is geared to avoid fights, which is why your botanical ninja ass can wander around outside without a care in the world while the rest of us are walking on eggshells to avoid notice. I have to actively use Stalk to fly under the radar. It’s a matter of strengths, Gaia sort of suggests that we play to ours with our abilities.” Alexander bluntly told her.

She should know all this, she wasn’t unaware. Just frustrated. But he didn’t know how to fix that for her, and he wouldn’t bullshit his friend.

An almost pout crossed her features.

“I know! But it sucks! I want to be like Brig, just out full cowabunga, laying waste. Even the Dame, when she stops giving lessons on how many forks you need to eat a meal, picks up a creek and turns it into a monster hole puncher.” She cried.

Almost literally cried, there was a hint of tears in her eyes, a complete novelty. He was taken aback by her vehemence.

What could he do for her? Classes were relatively fixed, there were no takesbacksies with Gaia. Once you Matriculated and your core was formed, that was it. Sure, classes evolved, rarely, but only along a course mostly laid in by who you were as a person, by what Gaia saw in your soul, your Ka, or whatever. Even after the tier three advancement, abilities and traits evolved more forward than sideways. Bloodlines exclusively made you more of yourself, synergizing with what was already there. Granny wasn’t a warrior, that’s all there was to it. Even if she wanted to be, sometimes.

“You know, you’re not exactly helpless. I’ve seen you go to work in the volcano, and I’ve seen you handle your share of critters that would have made a meal out of me when I first started out here without a scratch. Just because you’re not Ben, doesn’t mean you’re useless.” He offered, consoling her with facts.

From the side, Alexander saw the professional matter shaper rise and rub his lower back, two ingots of golem silver rolled into approximately uniform sheets of metal. He’d smoothed them to a mirror finish by pulling a bit of concrete from the floor into brackets, liquifying the sheets, then resolidifying them. Then he’d pressed the concrete back down and smoothed it like putty. Fucking outrageous.

“Welp! Job’s done,” He announced, pretending not to notice the upset lady and the clueless lad, “I’m right out straight, so I’ll be off. See you kids later.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

With that, he was out the door and off to complete more miracles. That left Alexander alone to try to figure out how to fix whatever was eating Annita Nguyen.

The forge was coming up to temperature, so he measured the dimensions of the first blade to be forge welded with a coat of golem silver and cut out the square of silver. It only took a moment with the big High Steel shears he’d made before even having Sterling the first ready to go. Then, the Warforger gloved up, grabbed a set of tongs, and shoved both spear and piece of silver into the interior, leaving the wood handle well outside so it didn’t char. All he needed hot was the area he wanted to forge weld.

He hadn’t come up with anything to say to make Granny’s situation better, so he shut up, rather than commit to his usual tack of placing both feet in his mouth.

A sidelong glance at her found her roaming around the shop, as if she’d never been there before. Come to think of it, maybe she hadn’t, other than to stand outside and call him a filthy coward, hiding behind noise and imaginary metal friends. Well, that was fine, there wasn’t anything that could hurt her except for Sterling and George, and she had more than enough sense not to go touching those.

It was amazing the increase in shop safety when there was no electricity involved.

“Ears! Back wall!” He called, the standard notice that things were about to get loud, and where ear pro could be found.

For himself, he doffed the little orange plugs and seated a heavier set of muffs over top of them. Next, he pulled the cherry red spear out from the forge, splashed boric acid flux powder over the steel, and used the tongs to snatch the jacketing silver. These two he layered together under the flat dye of George and began working the actuating pedal, sending ringing echoes through the warehouse walled shop.

Just slightly audible over the sound of George joyfully flattening metal, hopefully completely bonding the dissimilar metals to form a strong weld, he heard Granny scream, “Sweet Gaia’s cootch, that is fucking loud!”

A lopsided grin spread on his face, and he continued to flip the spear, holding the tongs to keep the jacketing piece squarely in place. A quick pull of these two to the anvil and he laid them down, hefting a five-pound blacksmith’s hammer. Practiced blows of the hammer folded the fading red of the silver jacket, which lost its heat much more rapidly than the steel, over the edge, creasing it with George before he threw them both back into the forge for reheating.

It was critical to keep the working temperatures high, he needed the metal to bond cleanly, or it would delaminate as he completed the jacket. That was a lesson learned two years ago, when he’d taught himself forge welding, with help from Papa Gerifalte’s library of Ye Olden Ways.

Now that he had a bit of a lull, he spared the attention to find Granny seated on the planning table, golden stare rapt. It was a little unnerving, he didn’t usually have an audience while he worked. That weirdness was slightly offset by the amusing profile of the petit woman wearing the big earmuffs, with her elbows propped against her knees to hold them firmly against the oppressive clangs of metal.

The young man nearly opened his mouth to say something certifiably stupid and caught himself, pulling instead the spear from the forge and making another pass on jacketing the foot long symmetrical leaf shaped blade. George threw sparks and Alexander regularly returned the blade to the anvil for some finer strokes of the blacksmith’s hammer to keep the blade straight, and completely seal the jacket. He tossed the spear back in for a third heat, probably the last one.

Sometimes he wondered how much of these skills were his, and how much Gaia’s intervention played a role. He’d had to work ridiculously hard to learn and polish his blacksmithing, picking it up from virtually nothing. He’d failed many more projects than he ever succeeded on. Even pieces he’d done five or six times, if his focus lapsed, he would flub. But, when he was on his game, he felt like he overperformed compared to his relative level of experience. Most of the craftsmen of Safe Harbor had agreed. Kim had simply responded to his inquiries by saying, “Some guys just have the touch. You do. Your piece’s cooling, get hammering.”

It didn’t matter, not really. If Alexander had been forced to make some kind of pact with a hellspawn to get the chance to bring his parents, and all those people sitting in the Vault right now too, back he’d have done it.

In a lot of ways, a meteor strike would have been easier to take. Then you could just move on, accept that unfathomable disasters happened, senseless, without reason, and that there was no going back. But those statues always seemed to look at him and insist that they weren’t yet gone and why wasn’t he freeing them from their imprisonment? He couldn’t meet their stone eyes anymore from the shame.

Being a little quick on the uptake at folding metal or being able to taste things and see their basic properties was precious little fucking compensation for losing every single human you ever knew, in his book. All the gods above, below, and in between take his soul if it weren’t.

Third heat done, he beat and folded, and flattened the softer silver to contour around the spearhead, carefully sealing it, welding it to the steel below. The final product was nothing beautiful, the blade’s previous geometry and polish ruined by the hammering. It was rough now, asymmetrical. But not for too long. One of the first things they’d done to upgrade the shop last November was to retrofit a belt grinder to run on Sterling’s power.

It was phenomenal how versatile a flywheel was for operating machines.

This newest friend, Bonaparte, would give the jacketed spear a facelift, restoring its prior glory. The coat of silver would probably be reduced to a little shy of the original eighth inch sheet he’d started with, but as long as his forge weld took and no delamination occurred, there shouldn’t be too much excess metal to remove. The spear would have an extra tenth of an inch, minimum of the spectral monster slaying metal coating it by the time with Bonaparte was over.

Alexander only really worried about the belts that were going to be consumed during this work. They couldn’t currently replace grinder belts. Every last one used up was one less forever. He didn’t like to think about the pace of projects when that happened.

Only the people like Benjamin or Jules would be able to do fine work then, the only ones who could manipulate metals to produce the strict tolerances demanded by industrial machining. They wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demand, not by a long shot. And their talents were needed elsewhere. He shelved that as a problem for the future, borrowed worry. His focus was needed on the now, which was plenty to keep his plate full.

“You’re different like this, when you’re concentrating.” Granny intruded on his brooding.

He looked up from the spear he’d been inspecting for faults.

It took a moment for the statement to wind its way from his ears to his brain and, in the meantime, he automatically said “What?”

“When you work. You look older, more mature.” She added, still bent over to rest her chin on her hands, her legs kicking lightly over the edge of the table, in an undignified slouch.

Between her posture and attire as a cross between a homeless person and a bandit, Granny Nguyen made no efforts to show out. Nevertheless, she had a pretty face, and Alexander couldn’t fail to miss a distinctly admiring bent to her observation. He was reminded of Georgia and Brig’s statements to him a few months back. He’d meant to have a little chat with the Dryad that had gotten put on the back burner by the assault, and the frenetic pace of the village thereafter. Somehow, the atmosphere had never been right, even though they routinely hung out during the evening get togethers at the tavern, where both were regulars.

Most times, he bowed out earlyish, to plot on the next day’s tasks, to plan for what would soon be needed, and by whom it needed to be done. More often than not, that meant consulting the library to figure out the endless litany of details that accompanied rebuilding civilization. And they were endless. Lifetimes of expertise to attempt to absorb. Techniques and methods unused for a century and more to unearth, all of these could be found in the library. But find them you must, and that was an undertaking.

Saki, one of the only other college trained, and, frankly, academic minds in the village was a help. But she was narrowly focused. Her only interest was on chemical methods, synthesis, purification, and the equipment to do it.

Honestly? Hers was the more challenging task.

Chemical engineering had progressed farther than almost any field of science in modern history, and it was laborious work to figure out what methods and materials could be relied upon absent the facilities used to perform many, if not most of the processes. Worse, it was heinously dangerous. Many of the reagents needed, such as concentrated sulfuric acid, which seemed to be used for godsdamned everything, had to be produced in ways that demanded utmost respect, or the resulting mistake would maim, or even kill, within moments. Saki had spent more than one rotation of the Phoenix suns recovering from inhaled caustics, or a sulfur trioxide leak, or chlorine poisoning, or any of a host of hazards.

Alexander had dipped his toes into the complexities of synthesis to produce a high explosive. He’d followed an explicit, step by step process, published for its beautiful simplicity and maximum safety, and he’d still managed to detonate a lab in the execution. Saki was leagues farther down the rabbit hole.

None of that had anything to do with his current situation, growing slightly warmer under Annita Nguyen’s consideration, but it helped him avoid the topic. He was beginning to think that he had trouble with ideas even approximately regarding commitment.

Finally, he decided it was impossible, and also rude, to remain quiet.

“Thanks, Granny. I’m, you know, I’m trying my best. It’s important.” He kind of rambled.

You poor lame bastard, he rightfully accused himself.

“It’s attractive,” Granny said, without any apparent effort, “I think I get why some of the others really go for you. Most of the time we’re together, we’re slacking off, relaxing, and you’re doing your innocent kid rain man routine. The only time I really got to see what got Brig all hot and bothered for was when we cleared Muspelheim. I don’t have a thing for guys in uniforms though, so that was more weird than anything else.”.

Annita’s expression turned a little, like she was confused, “How do you do it, anyway? It’s like a switch gets flipped, and you go from being a goofball to being sort of spooky. Like Ben.”

That was an easy one, even if he was still uncomfortable with her absence of the usual playful teasing.

“I don’t know. In a lot of ways, it’s a lot like flipping a switch. I can’t say how it is for Ben, because I think he lives in that space all the time, but, for me, it’s like there’s this clear set of rules for who you should be. There’re rules for when things are peaceful. Then there’s the ones for when they aren’t. It took getting gutted by a Yeti to make that sink in. You lay in a ditch full of ice water, fading out from shock because you weren’t a hundred percent with your head in the game, and you sort of look at yourself from the outside, with a wider perspective.”

He shrugged, recalling the moment of epiphany, “After that, for me, I understood the rules better. Be a good person when times are peaceful. Be ruthless when they aren’t. Gaia gave me a trait when I figured it out, replaced an unfocused ability called Rage, with a sharper one called, aptly, Ruthless. I told you before, Granny, I’m not a decent human being. Not all the time.”

Alexander Gerifalte hated the sadness in Granny’s eyes when he said that. He didn’t like sympathy, or pity. Empathy, sure, it was good to be understood, but not the others.

“It shouldn’t have to be that way.” She said, and she was right.

He nodded, “Probably not. But it always has been. People just managed to put enough distance between themselves and the reality of it to forget. We hid behind our nice, cozy little convenient lives. A lot of the world didn’t have that luxury, they still had to live with the old rules. You know, Granny Nguyen, when you’re putting your kukri through a critter’s brains like chopping melons, you’re finding your way back to that place too. You just block it out after the fact because you hate it.” He told her.

That observation fed to her made the woman sit back, and she was clearly not enjoying the taste.

“That feels wrong.” She told him, with a sour twist to her lips.

“All decent people say that.” He said immediately.

“They want to live in that should be world. People like Ben, Brig, Mark, Nathan, and, I guess, people like me too, help them do that. Its why soldiers serve their country, and not some other word. We want you to be happy Annita. Even if it isn’t real. You guys get to believe in Santa Claus because someone who knows better is bringing presents down the stairs in the middle of the night to keep the myth alive. I don’t know how else to explain it.” Alexander told the lovely woman, who was his friend.

The forge continued to blaze in the background, its blowers pumping cycled heat to a salamander core to feed the fires. Sterling Jr. ran steadily, cylinders rising and falling with precise, methodical timing. The machines instilled a dynamic, tangible basis for his argument to Granny.

Reality was a mechanical thing, with rules that had to be obeyed, used, to survive. Joy was an imagined thing, a culmination of desire and expectation. One was real, the other wasn’t. Alexander wanted a world with more joy in it, so much that reality couldn’t keep up. But that meant mastering reality first.

“I love you.” Annita Nguyen told him.

“Yeah, I know.” Alexander Gerifalte told her.

Which got the desired effect, the Asian features transformed from a gentle repose, a certain shyness into a fierce scowl.

“Who the hell do you think you are, Indiana Jones?! What do you mean, ‘I know’?!” She berated him.

Alexander smiled, glad for a return to normalcy.

“It’s Han Solo. And I mean I know, because Georgia and Brig said you had a case around the new year. I didn’t know what to do, then, and I kind of still don’t. I like you, Granny. You’re one of my favorite people. Maybe ever. And I’d definitely have sex with you. I’d probably even cuddle afterwards. And I like it when I see you randomly around a corner, the day gets just a little bit better. Is that love? I never knew, so I didn’t take a chance making you sad by saying anything.” Alexander explained, knowing it wasn’t a good reason, but also knowing it’s the one that had stopped him from asking the little witch out.

“I can’t believe you tricked me into thinking you were cool for a second. You were supposed to come find me out in my shack, beat on the door, hand me a bear carcass or something, and tell me to get naked.” Granny argued loudly, gesturing menacingly with a finger that pointed in random directions, flickering around like a hummingbird attacking a flower.

Alexander frowned, “Isn’t that sexist? I thought you were all into that wiccan earth mother shit, where women were the flesh of the land and all that?”

“I am! And we are! But that doesn’t mean a man doesn’t have his role. Women are the flesh, supple and nurturing, and men are the bone, rigid and structured. And, if you don’t get over here and get boning, this flesh is going to go cry in Georgia’s spare bed for a few hours, start spreading slanderous shit about you, and then, rebound off every guy that will have it for a few months and move on.” Granny proclaimed, half serious and half jest.

Which was which she was going to leave him to figure out.

“What if it doesn’t work? What if we don’t work? I don’t want us to change.” Alexander asked, because he was afraid of change.

“We’re already changed, Alexander. The water’s boiled, the teapot’s squealing, it’s too late for that shit. Now, what are you going to do about it?” Annita demanded, imperious from her throne on the work bench.

What was he going to do about it? That was the mother fucking million-dollar question that got asked him Every. Single. Goddamned. Day. After a moment to think on it, he made his decision. Granny deserved her answer now that she’d asked it. She’d put herself out there, an act of courage he’d failed to have. His cowardice was shameful, but he accepted it, because nobody could be perfect. All he could do was try to be better tomorrow. Today, that meant doing right by Annita Nguyen.

Alexander sighed and turned off the forge, closing the valve that recirculated the heated air that fed the salamander core and opened the vent valve. The heated air rushed into the smithy, warming it. Then he did the same for the steam engine, letting the pistons rest, while the steam vented, rising into fast dispersing white clouds that condensed against the shop ceiling.

When that was done, he walked over and picked Annita up, slung the tiny laughing woman over his shoulder, and escorted her that way down the street to his house. It rained the whole way there, and neither one of them cared. When they arrived, he opened the door and threw her in his bed, and she stood on it and did the most aggressively lewd strip dance he’d ever seen.

That pretty much put an end to any lingering reservations.

He hadn’t had sex in close to three months, which sped things up on his end. She hadn’t had sex in ever, which slowed them way, way down. They figured it out to all party’s satisfaction. Later, much later, most of the good sleeping hours gone later, they finally exhausted themselves and lay in a sweaty pile, blankets and coversheet tossed aside.

“Ohhh, that that kind of stings now.” The naked woman groaned, a little while after they’d called it quits.

“How did you do that much damage with that thing? It isn’t even all that big.” Annita griped, glaring at him from her place lying on his stomach.

“You could have mentioned, before we started, I mean, that you’d never put anything in there larger than a finger.” He replied, still laying beneath her as a body pillow.

“Besides, you got lucky. If I were any bigger, you’d have been super uncomfortable. The first time I found the bottom you tried to choke me.” Alexander reminded her.

They’d found that their nethers were just about suited, his and hers. It made the sex highly enjoyable, and they’d gone a little overboard. Which Granny paid for now, and he got to merely bask in the glow, a testament to the innate unfairness of men versus women. Except for that multiple orgasms thing, that looked fun.

“Why aren’t you all hyper, isn’t that a lady thing, getting jazzed up?” Alexander asked, content to lay there half asleep and chat.

He heard a light giggle, uncharacteristically feminine, and she dispelled the myth, saying low and smoky, “That’s only for when you don’t get stroked into a coma, I’m fucking spent. And, thanks, it was great, worth a little aching after the fact.”

“I’m glad I could give you a good first roll, back scratches and all.” Alexander told his pacified lover, with a little smugness permitted on his part.

Those scratches were hard earned, and he wore them gladly.

“Do witches eat their lovers like praying mantises?” Alexander asked jokingly.

“Should they start?” Annita answered, with a nip at his stomach.

He wondered at that. Does the mantis go gladly to its death, knowing it has sowed the seeds of hundreds of its young?

“Only if you do that leg-lock shuddering thing again, then it’s bon Appetit, my good lady.” The young man chuckled.

That earned him another re-snuggling, with a silken leg tracing over his slowly. The damp, active part of the love making was over, but not the entirety of it. Granny completed the approving skinship with the decidedly honest statement, “Then we’re at an impasse, my brave sir, because those are orgasms that I’m not willing risk losing, no matter how tasty you might be. I thought Brig was making that shit up.”

At the mention of his other, somewhat infrequent lover, he wondered how much coaching had gone into this. Some of the awkwardness, not all of it, mind, but some of it, had had the feeling of someone trying to do what they’d been told, rather than something completely spontaneous.

“If you were getting tips from Brigitte O’Connor, you were taking the advanced courses. You ought to work up to that, Brig doesn’t fuck around when she fucks around.” He warned.

He needed not to have worried, Granny set him straight on that account, groaning, “I’d break my hips doing half the stuff she talked about. I don’t even think she has cartilage.”

After a moment, the silky voice nestled beneath his floating rib asked, “Is it weird to be talking about her like this, in this place?”

Alexander only needed a moment to ponder that before responding emphatically, “It would make her happy.”

In the comfort and utter relaxation of his maybe more than best friend he put into words what he thought of the Oread woman with copper hair. And her companions.

“She’s like some pagan goddess, spreading wild joy by instinct. I’ve never met a spirit freer or more comfortable in their own skin than that lady. She’s a hero to me. Like Ben. And Mark and Melinda too, really. Each in a different way, like incarnations of Greek gods, each with a different seat in Olympus. Getsome saved my life, way back when, when they pulled me out of here. I’d have gone completely batshit all alone.”

It might have taken years, but he was certain the sustained isolation would have, eventually, warped him beyond recognition. Like that one Japanese guy, Onoda or something, that stayed in the jungle for twenty something years after World War two ended, living like a savage.

“But don’t tell any of them I said that, it would make it weird.” He hurriedly added.

She laughed at him then and made no promise. She did say something that caught him broadside, however.

“That’s funny. Because I think they think of you the same way. The lost boy, hunting the demons in the forest alone. I used to ask Ben about you, when I was trying to figure out how to get this right here to happen, and he told me all kinds of stuff that was interesting.”

He looked down and saw her smirking at him, for some reason. He didn’t get the chance to ask what was funny though because she was moving on.

“After the attack, they found those four shitdicks who tried to kill you. Ben said they looked like they’d, in his words, ‘got done real professional like’. I think even he was impressed.”

She’d pitched her voice down in her best Ben impression, which came nowhere close to the man, but was hilarious in its attempt. Knowing the older warrior approved felt nice too, even if the thing he was approving of was, frankly, fucking awful. Alexander hadn’t ever killed a human before that. Not a living one, anyway, the zombies didn’t count.

A detail from, long, long ago clicked, and he grew a little confused.

“I only got three of them. There was a Normal on a garage with a gun. I took a crack at him, but he still shot me, I didn’t get a chance to go back for him.” He explained.

Annita nuzzled her face into him solidly, and said, “You hit him in the neck, his finger must have been squeezing the trigger while he died.”

So…he’d gotten shot by sheer bad luck? Un-be-fucking-lieavable.

“What about me?” Granny prompted, full of mischief, “Do I get a place in your pantheon?”

He didn’t have to think about that either, before he answered “Of course! You’re my Hecate, Queen of the witches.”

She giggled tiredly then, and they laid quiet until sleep claimed them, spurred by the steady drum of rain on the roof. Just before he slept, he heard a whispered “Good night then, King of Shadows.”

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

While he and Annita had lain in post coital stupor, werewolves attempted to climb the wall.

They failed. Melinda flash banged them, and Impervious and Getsome together strode out like grim faced executioners and slaughtered the creatures wholesale. Cervante fought with murderous rage, every swing of the odd shaped great sword carving into flesh, before ringing a tone that vibrated the monster’s bones to powder inside them.

Golem Argentum, it happened, was super effective against the creatures. These monsters of Nut burned where struck by silvered weapons, their flesh parted far more easily, their Soak negated substantially by the magical disharmony between whatever essence made them up and the resonances of the mana instilled silver.

Daily drills, spurred by the murders of friends, had put a razor’s edge on the Adventurers, they moved in synchrony, presenting no weaknesses to the ravening man beast hybrids.

Riley Potter had joined them, replacing in Impervious, as a stand in, Hilde. He would not be denied this, because he wanted something against which to apply his Vacuum Fencing to its utmost. The abilities wielded by the one-time suck-blow engineer did awful things to flesh. Air pressure removed from the back side of a monster, pulled to the front, magnified tenfold, produced cuts and thrusts that very nearly exploded the creatures struck. Add to that, his sword was coated in air, frictionless. A monster cut was sliced cleaner than a scalpel. It took almost no effort to make his blows count, so Riley Potter had practiced finesse, and speed. He fought like a cyclone, according to Nathan.

Riley and Cervantes had bonded somewhat, over their shared losses. Nothing replaced what was gone, but a friend who understood helped.

When the two parties of defenders returned, they packed in the corpses of the slain dungeon spawn. Shiv did the autopsies. Two hearts, that was good to know, one where you might think, another low down, opposite the liver. Surprisingly small brains, the skulls of the monsters were thicker than usual canids. Similarly, the jaws were stronger, one had taken a bite out of the corner Nathan’s great shield before he cut it down, and that took some doing. Claws four inches long, not particularly sharp. Muscles and hamstrings quite wiry, the creatures had significant power. Blood was red-brown, rust colored, even when fresh.

Alexander stood over the corpses an hour after they’d been brought into the town. He was wearing his casual wear, a long-sleeved camouflage under armor shirt, courtesy of the hunting supplies shops that outfitted most of the people in town. His hands were in the pockets of his cargo pants, and he was walking around the shaggy furred bodies, his eyes dissecting the forms, cataloguing them. He needed to know if one of the scouts, Melinda or Bonny had inspected the monsters while they were alive.

That was important, the Soak a creature had died with it, it was important to know what kind of mitigation could be expected from the creatures. The Adventurer teams had cleaned these monsters up with apparent ease, but that might not be the case if the less experienced townsfolk had to deal with them. He was the only one playing with a joker when it came to getting around the passive defenses of Soak, this was maybe lifesaving information.

He looked around for Melinda.

She was chatting with Mark, the two of them with their heads together, coming up with good ideas, in all likelihood, but she came over to let him in on the debrief, when he waved. Alexander was, nominally, the head honcho of Falcon’s Rest, as bad an idea as that was. He would do his best to at least pretend to have a clue.

The tight bun of black hair sat neatly under her helmet, in a divot he’d specifically placed there for it. It would help as a shock absorber if she ever got hit in the back of the head and gave the small crest a distinct profile. Crests he’d put on them because it was fun, and because they helped you identify who was where when the shit was in the fan. Commanders of old had had simple, but effective ideas for retrieving tactical information from the thick of melee. Alexander wasn’t going to second guess Gaius Julius Ceasar or Sargon of Akkad.

Melinda stood at loose attention, reflecting the discipline Ben had instilled in them when they’d first began their careers saving humanity from the dungeons. Bless that surly bastard, there was no telling how many people he’d saved. Melinda, tiny though she was, was a hellion with her rapier, making very neat holes where you didn’t want them. Alexander thought sparring her was like sparring a hornet nest.

“Melinda, did you get an inspect off on them before they were killed?” He asked.

She was still wearing her business face, solid and serious, despite the cute dimples of her cheeks, barely hidden by the helmet.

“Aye, Napolean Feather-Cap!” She said, belying his previous assertion that she was still all business.

He blinked slowly at the address and wondered if it had been a mistake not to step on this much, much earlier. They were getting quite inventive with their titles.

“Ahuh, nice one, by the by. What can you tell me about them that isn’t obvious from Shiv’s autopsy?” He requested.

Seriously now, she reported evenly, “Fifteen to twenty percent Soak, not too bad to get through, especially with the silver. Thick hide though, and the fur likes to tangle your blade, slashing is worse than you might initially expect. The howl carries a sonic attack, makes your muscles weak. Our helmets blocked most of that, though. As we suspected, sudden bright lights blind the crap out of them, but only for a couple of seconds. We need you for the details on their cores and components. I’m pretty certain, the description on their scroll is a little oddly phrased, but I think they shape shift between full wolf for mobility and this one as a battle form.”

He took a minute to digest that information. Shapeshifters then, which wasn’t exactly a novelty, but it was interesting. How did magic permit an entire body to rearrange itself like that? He’d have to ask Jules Reynolds again; the man’s Outsider tier up had permitted him to do similar things with his anatomy.

Alexander put one of the werewolf cores in a thick leather bag from his belt and lifted a heavy smithing hammer picked up along the way as he’d passed by the smithy. He brought it down, hard, and the glasslike breaking of the magical jewel sounded loud in the pre-dawn air. He smashed the core up into powder and reached into the bag for a pinch. They had plenty to put to use later, there had been fourteen werewolves in the attempted raid.

The flavor on his tongue was like powdered vinegar, sharp and twangy. He swallowed it anyway, long since accustomed to the odd flavors of mystical nonsense.

Nut Werewolf Core, Juvenile: the werebeast assumes a dual nature, and so too does its mana. Partly composed of the magic of life and transformation but corrupted by dark magic. The combination creates insanity, insatiable urges, and inevitably dooms the sentient infected by this magic to become one of the creatures.

Application of silver, as a siphon, can draw the dark mana into a diamond the purity of which dictates how stable and efficient the storage gem may be. The life magic, once isolated, has potent transformational nature of the shapeshifting beasts, and may be drawn into Jade with a brass siphon.

There was a bit there that needed further thinking. Part of which was that they now knew why silver was effective. It would seem there were nuanced interactions between types of magic and materials in opposition. The Golem Argentum separated the dark magic from its enmeshing with the other mana in the beasts, wounding them on a metaphysical level, in addition to the physical effect of putting sharp metal into flesh.

He shook his head and ran fingers through the down on his head out of habit. It was becoming a tic when he was thinking hard.

“Okay, first thing, these fuckers are infectious.” Alexander said, grimly.

“You guys weren’t wrong; they really were trying to take you alive. I don’t know how it happens, but I think they inject dark magic into you, and it starts to eat away at you, turning you into one of them, eventually. They might have been sentient at one point, but the dark mana is, according to the Scroll, accompanied by madness and violent instincts.” He explained.

The gathered townsfolk looked around at each other grim faced. It wasn’t Doppelgangers, but it was close.

“Second thing,” Alexander continued, still mulling aloud the implications of the information hanging before his eyes alone, “Diamonds can be used to store the dark mana and silver used as a kind of magical siphon, separating the dark from the life mana. That has applications in other cases, metals, maybe only the ones that come from magical creatures like the golem, can act as mana conductors and minerals like mana sinks, reservoirs, which confirms our suspicions about the different types of human cores and why every type of magic has different cores associated with it. No insight about the facet shape, though, that remains a mystery.”

Wynona Saki chimed in then, “We can test this today. The jewelry store has tons of, up to now, worthless rocks that we can run tests on. If it works, maybe a silver wrapped diamond can be used to prevent the infection, like pulling venom from a wound, the way the old wives’ tales used to suggest.”

A solid idea, this is why he liked having people smarter than him around.

Alexander handed her the pouch of powdered werewolf core and an intact one, and said simply, “Do your thing, Saki.”

A thought occurred to him, and he called after the departing back, “Wait! Grab Jules, I’ve got the rest of the silver in my shop in sheets, cut yourself what you think you’ll need to make a prototype and have him make nice fine filaments. We can maybe ballpark mana conductivity parameters based on wire gauge, which might come in handy later.”

She waved to acknowledge she’d heard and the pair of them departed to see if they could work out countermeasures in case anyone was infected by dark mana.

A whole new avenue of research had opened up, as a result of a tidbit of information dropped by inspecting the werewolf cores. It never seemed to end, the things to be learned about this crazy life.

Alexander continued his work analyzing the parts of the werewolf corpses and tasting them for useful alchemical reagents. There were, unfortunately, none immediately useful. Dark mana seemed to be a potent corruptor, although in a fashion that made more of itself. Like rot. Well even corrosive substances had uses, they might just find application for the dark magic, provided they could do it safely.

He briefly thought of the sunlight magic contained in a rare variant of elk, ones that shot a laser from a focal point between their glasslike antlers. Perhaps the time had finally come for those little treasures to, ehem, shine. At the least, it might take the strain off Melinda, who was going to be a part of any effort to destroy this dungeon. Field dungeon or closed, her Luminous Pathfinder class was potent against the fiends that lived in eternal night.

It had taken ten minutes to examine the corpses with Greater Analyze and Analytic Ingestion.

He was going to start passing this off to Saki, she’d just progressed her Greater Alchemist trait to Master Alchemist. Alexander had cheated his way through those ranks, Gaia granting her favor to one who faced impossible odds. Saki had done it the hard way, by being incredibly good at chemistry, applying her skills to their limits, and relearning more about how Gaia’s magical bullshit worked at an atomic level than maybe anyone else he knew of. She was finicky about tasting things to gain insights into their properties though. Well, that part the Pyroclastic Cannoneer could get over, he was going to gladly pass the baton to her.

The less the residents of Falcon’s Rest needed him, the better off they were.

Alexander Gerifalte was a bottleneck on the town, he could only do so much with his time. They were coming along nicely though, he had no doubt his generalist abilities would soon fall behind the talents of specialists, just like they had with Saki. Like they had been doing for Kim Summers too, before he was murdered. It grated his nerves, that, for more than the emotional damage. Kim was a crucial piece of the puzzle for lifting Falcon’s Rest out of the pre-industrial era. His talents, his experience, wasted.

For a few seconds, the young man let himself vibrate from the rage of it. Later, Little Falcon. You’ll have your chance to collect for Kim later, he reminded himself.

A hand rested on his shoulder, snapping him out of the rage, the grief that sometimes ate at his soul. Four dead men and women all because they’d followed him. He wouldn’t let himself off the hook, but it was good to know he wasn’t alone.

“C’mon Light Bird,” Ben said, gruff as usual, “No sense chewing rocks, not when we could be getting hammers ready to smash’em.”

“Besides,” he said with a note of humor, “If what a little birdy named Annita tweeting in my ears is true, you haven’t slept much more than a couple of hours. Good going, I thought you were going to fuck it up, and have her grinding poison today to slip in your coffee.”

He patted the armored glove in thanks and rose to stand next to the senior warrior of Falcon’s Rest. Benjamin might come off rough, but he was solid, and he took care of folk who needed him. He just might not tell you what you wanted to hear while he did it.

As for Annita, that sneaky little horticulture ninja had disappeared into the dark, probably headed back to bed.

“Ayuh,” He told his hero, and friend, “Well, thanks for going to bat for me. All that time, I thought Granny had a thing for you. I was cheering for you, by the way.” He told the Steel Heavy Knight.

He smirked then at his comrade, “But the way I hear it, you managed to bag yourself a sweet sugar momma. Climbing that social ladder on your back, you dog.” He ribbed.

The amused snort from Ben was refreshing.

“I had to do something, these mothers around here, they all thought chivalry was dead. It just needed a fine specimen of man to latch onto. The Dame, she knows quality when it beats dragons to death in front of her.” The gravel voiced warrior bragged, indulging in some well-earned preening.

From the side, Georgia called “If you two turkeys are done patting yourselves on the back, we’ve got to figure out where these virulent dog fuckers came from.”

“Business calls, kid, let’s get our asses squared away.” Ben said, and they marched to where the others were huddling, intent on what Mark and Nathan were discussing.

With the action over with, the rest of the village was retiring to claim whatever sleep they could, dawn still hadn’t quite lightened the sky, but the faint hints of pink and orange were starting to break the gloom.

“By the way, Ben, what in the fuck is a light bird?” He asked on the way over.

“It’s a lieutenant colonel, just shy of making full bird, in charge of their own battalion. They’re still officer pukes, but they remember what the gravel tastes like, so they’re not all bad.” Ben enlightened him.

Alexander knew that came close to touching a past the broad soldier didn’t acknowledge existed, so he didn’t follow it up with any more questions.

With their heads together, armed with new knowledge, the Adventurers set about planning the counterattack against Nut and whatever dark dwellers lived there.