It took six days for the party that departed Falcon’s Rest to return. They were grimy, blood covered, and tired. Alexander joined them in the Survivor’s Well for debrief, when they’d dragged themselves through the portcullis backed gate, where they’d immediately stripped down to bathe. If anybody asked Alexander’s opinion, the entire group looked like steel wrapped burlap dragged across thirty miles of four-wheeler trails.
Ensconced within the tavern, the recon party each had a beer in their hands, including Bonny, who would have been too young in the world that had existed before the Pulse wiped out nonsensical laws that dictated a kid could be drafted to go to war across the world, but was too young to buy alcohol. Trust Sunday morning Christians to make shit up without bothering with unnecessary things like logic. In any case, tables had been pulled up to make a circle where the party could relay their findings. The rest of the tavern was packed, the settlers wanting to know what had been discovered about this most recent threat to the town.
Mark Ross, Incandescent Triarii and Ifrit bloodline led the discussion as leader of the more experienced team of monster hunters.
“Thanks for coming, everybody,” He began, egalitarian and civil, despite the clear exhaustion writ on his face, “I know it’s busy times for some of you, but here’s the deal.”
He paused to organize his thoughts and take a long pull of beer, with an approving double take toward Alvin and Tom for their newest demonstration of brewing prowess. Tom gave the bro nod of appreciation to acknowledge the obvious pleasure of the patron from behind the bar.
“Wow, that’s something! Ehem, anyway, so it’s a closed dungeon. Minor, but tier three. No clue what the guardian is, we didn’t go in much past the entrance. Inside looks like a mirror image of the forest outside, expansive enough to probably be a spatially expanded type of dungeon, but with bogs and swamps that shouldn’t be there according to the Gaian overland outside. Pretty spooky. No moon, no stars, there’s no light at all.” The leader of Getsome described.
All attending took that information stoically. Closed dungeons tended to be more dangerous than the field dungeons. They were “closer” if that was the right way to think of the overlaps between realms that formed the contested zones, to the invading realm. That meant that the monsters within tended to be stronger than they would have been in a field dungeon, with higher tier variants. Worse, the bosses of closed dungeons were suspected to be more aggressive in sending minions out to hunt the surroundings, which explained the presence of the Werewolves.
Riley Potter broke the silence and laid out some more bad news, drawling, “The critters get more dangerous the closer you get too. The grownups are nasty business; eight feet tall, fast, strong, and meaner than three barn cats in a sack.”
Brig followed that observation up with a warning, “They fucking plot on you too! Barking, yipping, howling all across the woods, but they’re coordinating their movements to try to get your flanks all the time. Most of the frontal attacks were feints to pull us away from Bonny or Melinda or Potter. The fuckers knew who was weakest in a fight, without anybody so much as swinging their dick for a piss to go on.”
She sounded almost angry, which was strange. The Oread beauty, for all her brashness, didn’t normally take personally the monsters’ evil tendencies.
Getsome’s Gravity Spire muttered into her beer, “Wouldn’t even hang around so I could whomp them fair and square, the bitches.”
Georgia comforted the amazon with a pat on the shoulder, “It’s alright Hon, you still got to give them a good impaling once you caught them.”
The Chronous Bulwark looked around at the gathered Adventurers, plus Alexander and Annita, who were sitting together with Saki and Jules on a double date kind of thing, and added her two cents, “They came at us every night. Every single night, at least once. I burned myself out keeping a Temporal Ward up sundown to sunrise before we even got to the dungeon, so we need a better option to handle that.”
Ben remarked, a distinctly sour twist to his usual dourness, “Damn good thing you did, too, or that second bunch was getting in close, almost on top of the sleepers. They were up the trees, went right over the sentries, me included, quiet as church mice.”
Nobody wanted to consider what harm an eight-foot-tall super werewolf could do to someone asleep in their blankets.
Melinda seconded Georgia’s position, “The distance to, and nocturnal nature of, the dungeon is a problem. Georgia had to keep her wards up all night, and I had to maintain Day Globes constantly. I don’t think we want to fight in the dark, the monsters were clearly struggling against the lights. We pushed like hell to get close enough for Julia to find the entrance.”
Alexander decided now was a good time to add some good news.
“I think Saki and I have something for that.” He spoke up, making grateful half salute toward the professional chemist.
“We nailed down a few tricks for using monster cores and managed to successfully create magic stones that let you harness the nonsense inside them. There’s a lot of details we don’t have yet, but we used the cores pulled out of those Elk that try to laser you to create a Sun Lamp. It does what you’d think, and it can use oil lit wicks to throw a hell of a lot of pure sunlight.” Alexander narrated the discovery.
Relieved grins went around the tables, especially from Melinda, who was heavily concerned about her ability to maintain light within the confines of the dungeon. She was so unburdened she went and laid a big squeezing hug on Saki, and then one for Alexander, ruffling his downy hair for good measure.
“Hell yeah! That’s our Prime Minister for you.” Brig laughed.
He smiled in response to the loss of unease on the team, and gave them the bonus, “Then you’ll be glad to know Mark’s fires can feed the lantern, meaning he can keep the lights on while Melinda handles point lighting, and we have two more Sun Stones to go around, one of which could probably be turned into some kind of catalyst to amplify our Luminous Pathfinder’s solar magic related abilities. Like, I dunno, a fucking wizard’s staff or something.”
Even Ben laughed at that revelation, crowing, “Shit, look at y’all, all grown up and getting the R&D budget sorted out.”
Mark raised a glass and gave a hearty call of “Cheers to the nerds!”
“Cheers to the nerds!” Echoed off the wall into the night.
After that, they got down to business. Annita had recommended, when he’d asked her, that the three filler spots in a six-man party, in addition to Melinda, Mark, and Himself, be Ben, because of course, with the last two being Cervantez and Georgia.
A minor dungeon, even at higher tiers, permitted only six Matriculated cores inside of it before its core phased, making the crystal heart completely intangible. You could kill the monsters inside, explore the shard of another realm to your heart’s content, even harvest the arcane stuff from its landscape, but you could not claim victory over the contested zone. Hence, why it was imperative to build a party that could effectively take down the creatures within, deal with the challenges associated with the realm in question, and kill the guardian. In Safe Harbor, parties tended to be close knit regulars, and they adopted a sort of specialization in one direction or another. Falcon’s Rest did not have that luxury, so this planning phase took on additional significance.
“But why do I have to sit out?!” Brig objected, peeved at being neglected from the Nut raid.
Mark let her down gently, “Because as soon as you jump out of the lantern light you’ll be completely, utterly, totally blind, and you already have trouble judging your landings.”
One of the Brigitte O’Connor’s most potent abilities was to do a high jump of about thirty feet, assisted by a sort of earth magic antigravity, that reversed to pull her down in an incredibly potent dive. It was as if her core turned her personal gravity into a slingshot. The result was impact enough to blast a giant cougar’s spine apart. Trouble was, she hadn’t yet figured out how to control her technique and, on several occasions, injured herself somewhat seriously during the landing.
Her secondary ability, a remnant of her initial class, let her pull solid rock up from the ground nearby and strike like a one of those Indiana Jones themed, spring-loaded spear traps. The rock spears she could make were excellent tools in her arsenal, giving her the element of surprise to stop charging monsters cold, but within the darkness of Nut, against a pack of werewolves and who knew what else coming from the night, she might not even have time to raise those spears. Which meant Brigitte O’Connor wasn’t a whole lot more than an eager lass with a big lance. Within the dungeons, they had to do better than that or risk losses they couldn’t afford.
Clearly, the copper haired warrior woman was unhappy, but she subsided. Courage wasn’t idiocy, and she accepted her leader’s reasoning.
A side benefit of one of the better fighters in Falcon’s Rest remaining behind, was whispered by Alexander’s more pessimistic side: If none of them came back, she would be needed all the more.
“Besides, if the worst scenario possible occurs, you are the number two in Getsome, and the settlement will need you to protect it without us.” Mark told the gathered people, his tone grim.
Ah. Alexander hadn’t been the only one entertaining a bit of the dooms then.
“Now that that’s settled,” the captain of Getsome declared, “Let’s go over it again. Me and Ben and Melinda to do the regular thing, with added benefits that I can power a Sun Lamp, and Melinda’s tailor made for leading us through the dungeon.”
Then he motioned toward the other chosen warriors from his table, addressing each of the people coming along directly as he mentioned them, “Alexander because, apparently, you can see in the dark now, and the usual antimagic and boss killing stuff. Cervantes, you proved you can tune your sound magic to crush werewolf bones, and, probably, even bigger things if we run into them, but let me do the tanking, you’re a little too aggressive. Last, Georgia. We won’t have you keeping your ward up all the time though, you’re our ‘Oh shit’ button. If a pack swarms, or something we aren’t ready for, your stasis ability will buy us time to plan and respond.”
“Is there a limit to how many things get frozen when they cross the ward?” The young leader of men asked.
Georgia, Chronous Bulwark, confirmed that there was not, summarizing her ability as “It’s a kind of domain thing, like, Lucy’s haven, but way less comprehensive. I can spread the ward by placing the runes, or marks, or fetishes, however the hell you magic people call them, and, after that, the only things that get in have to have my blessing. Impervious uses little stones on necklaces. The problem is, it takes time to set up the ward, I can’t do it reactively. I’ve got an ability that lets me slow monsters I strike though, and it stacks until they look like they’re in super slow mode.”
Mark nodded along and was somewhat at a loss. He’d hoped Georgia could get them a free pass for dealing with ambushes.
Ben came through, as he tended to do in these matters of monster hunting.
“You can set the wards up in advance, yeah? Place the runes, and then, when you’re ready, set it off?” The gravelly voice asked.
Georgia, stopped chewing at her nail from nerves and answered in the affirmative, “Ayuh.”
“Does that mean you can leapfrog? Set locations for the wards up in advance, ready to go as soon as we get to a specific location?” The Steel Heavy Knight checked.
“Yeah, but that’s not so great for pushing into the dungeon,” the Morrigan Anchor tank, rebutted, “It’d mean moving up with my most powerful ability effectively useless while the rest of you fight off whatever is in the area, until I can set up the twelve clock marks.”
Ben shook his head, “Nah, not what I’m getting at,” the broad man, made broader by the dragon scale and high steel plate armor said, “The rest of us, we can push through, what I want is a way out. If things get sideways, you can give us a set of checkpoints to extract to, a chance to catch our wind, set our feet, and make an orderly retreat. And, if that slowing strike thing you do works even on the bad news shit, then all we need you to do is give them a love tap to buy us time. A little more time saves a lot of lives in a combat zone.”
Georgia’s blue eyes widened slightly at that beforehand unexplored use of her time stopping wards.
“This is why you make the big bucks, Benjamin! You ought to ask for a raise.” She praised the Knight, before playfully yelling at Mark, “Why are you underpaying this man?! We’ll all strike is what we’ll do! Workers unite!”
The Dame, from the side scoffed, “Phaw! Peasants and their bean counting. A true knight of honor, as Sir Benjamin, fights for the glory of Liege and Country. You would do well to emulate your senior in arms, Sir Georgia.”
Georgia Stephens responded to that sally with a barb of her own, “You’re right! But I’m not sure that works, you don’t look like you can handle the both of us riding you.”
A blush of color spread along the Dame’s cheeks, and she covered her face with a hand fan she’d had made at some point, exclaiming, “Wench! My Bordeaux is not your concern.”
But she said nothing further and, with a conciliatory look from Mark Ross, Georgia didn’t continue harassing the blue blood with her modern labor perspectives or openly lesbian sensibilities.
From there, a strategy was set, and a departure time. In two days, they’d make for the dungeon, because the healing sun was due that morning coming. It took three days to make the trip, meaning they would be healed of any wounds taken fending off the werewolves on the way the morning they arrived to the Nut contested zone. The party would then, for two days, remain outside it, killing whatever came out, conserving their strength as they did. That would mean that they would go in with a Phoenix Sun at their backs, so that, even if they were badly mauled, that sunrise would heal them completely. Whoever was still alive.
This last point brought a surprise objection from Shiv.
Oleksiy, the settlement’s only real physician, wanted to go along with the party. And not just himself.
“Is well and good for timing the sunrises, but we should not be counting our chickens before they hatch,” The Brigid man said, his east European accent not so thick these days, “A group to assist the raid team should be present, to support and learn from our veterans. We are all in need of training, and, while not ready to tip the spear, we can help.”
The pale man looked at his hands, clenching them repeatedly and flexing fingers like loosening them for a piano performance, “I am improving my skills, but they are wasted sitting behind the wall while you fight and live with wounds for days. Major needs to learn to make use of his shadows against cunning monsters, not bear and wolves.”
He was right. Alexander and the rest realized too that they’d been too focused on the threat of the dungeon. It was an opportunity as well. A dangerous one, and not to be milked as the Guilds had done, but not one to be wasted either.
Seeing that he’d gotten their full attention, Shiv concluded his argument on behalf of the non-Adventurers, “Let those of us who are not needed in Falcon’s Rest, and who can defend themselves, go with you, develop our abilities in the Green, and establish a camp outside the dungeon. Van can fortify, Julia, can keep her eyes in the sky, and the rest we can learn to be of use in the field, instead of kids hiding behind the elders’ legs. In the worst, someone will need to bring word back to the settlement.”
Brig called, “Seconded, Oleksiy.” seeing her chance to not be totally left out of action. She could help train the others who came, which was a fine way to spend the spring, out in Green.
Alexander, with the motion sustained, called the vote. It passed easily.
Some dickering for who wanted to go and who was needed to stay took place, but Alexander tuned that out. He was now fully immersed in the raid plans; these fine people could figure out their roles for themselves at this point.
First on his priority list: making a wizard’s staff for Melinda. Well, not really a staff. He was imagining something more along the lines of a modification of her gauntlet, to leave her hands available for using her cross bow, or rapier.
When no one asked for his opinion on anything for half an hour, the Warforger took that as his cue to get his ass to the shop for more weird science.
“Gonna borrow your left hand for a bit. Got some ideas.” He said, undoing the bindings holding Melinda’s armored glove in place.
She rolled her eyes and smiled at his lack of anything approaching propriety when the synapses were firing on a project. He knew it. She knew it. This was nothing unusual.
With a wave of Melinda’s gauntlet to the group he was gone, hustling through the big oak church doors into another early March shower in Maine. Steady patters of droplets, still fairly cool this time of year, drummed his shoulders and head and he ran to the smithy to avoid a soaking.
Once inside the familiar room, surrounded by the presence of his old friends, minus one new one, he began his tinkering.
The Sun stone only needed a path for the solar mana to enter and exit it to function, like a circuit. He had plenty of gold wire left over from the creation of the stones, so he would create an inner matrix along the inside of the gauntlet’s forearm protectors, as well as in the leather palm of the glove to which the dragon scale had been riveted to form the protective. That would provide a loop from the sunstone he would seat along the back of the forearm guard.
Being a sphere, the egg sized gem would stand proud above the smooth contour of the plates that were wax mold fitted to Melinda’s forearm. To combat that and ensure a secure a firm attachment, Alexander would add a riser where the end of the gauntlet extended slightly to protect the woman’s elbow. It would stick out a bit but shouldn’t greatly hamper her movements or interfere with her hands.
No more golems had emerged to make of their bodies an offering, so he was, officially, out of High Steel. Alexander made do with some of the cast-off pieces of wyrmling scales left over in a bin from the armor project. They’d meant to have Jules come over and form the pieces into a single plate, for storage, but the Quintessence shaper’s skills were needed all over the village, and he’d never gotten around to it.
That was fine, Alexander found pieces that would overlap, leaving a gap to permit the solar magic crystal to peak out. The small vulnerability would be worth Melinda being able to charge the stone just wearing the gauntlet outside on a sunny day. Besides, he had the feeling that leaving an open face on the Sun stone would permit Melinda to push her magic into it and create a fantastically bright strobe, devastating to anything with eyes sensitive to light.
Whether because his skills were improving, or because the project was simpler than he’d initially thought, the retrofit only took a few hours of hammering, drilling, and riveting, with some finicky work to seat the gold wires so that the delicate things wouldn’t move while Melinda’s arm was wearing it. After he’d sewn the last stitch to close up the leather glove, he set the gauntlet aside, knowing he’d given the woman the best chance he could to let her talents…drum roll please…shine.
Sun Drake’s Armlet (Master quality): a dragon scale gauntlet empowered by a Sun Stone, this piece confers potent protection against dark mana. Wearers that can channel fire, light, or solar mana can draw from the gauntlet to strengthen themselves, amplifying their magics. Alternatively, weapons wielded using this armlet can be imbued with sunlight, flaring brightly, or adding a potent pulse of solar magic to their strikes that can burn their foes.
And there it was. Alexander’s Armorer branch of Warforger had paid dividends, he had the feeling these sorts of tasks, once incredibly challenging, were, not necessarily easier, but were yielding improved results. Gaia’s tweaking, raising the young man’s crafting abilities beyond what his experience might otherwise produce.
A satisfied sigh and a brush of his long sleeve to pull the stinging sweat from his eyes accompanied the completion of the magiteck glove. Melinda would love it, he was certain.
There were so many more things to discover. He had a great many cores sitting in his Lab’s lockbox, waiting to be experimented on, now that they had unlocked this most recent tech path of Gaian nonsense. Yetis. Dire Wolves. Brown Bears. Elk. Entlings. Each with their own distinct notes of magic, like chords in a guitar, there were so many octaves to play, harmonies to investigate. Alexander was barely scratching the surface. But time, always time, was the limiting factor.
He left the smithy, cradling the newest working like his newborn babe, and delivered it, with reluctance to part, to its owner. The young artisan almost let slip a very Granny-like “My precious!” when the dark-skinned Luminous Pathfinder took it and, with great reverence strapped the item in place.
Barely had she done so when the crystalline quartz, packed with aethereal sunlight, pulsed golden, flushing the room with daylight.
All present had to squint against the sudden glare, Alexander included. Not even his bizarre orbs could take that brilliance lightly.
Melinda surprised him with a hug, her chin buried into his armpit, and she squeezed him powerfully.
“It’s perfect!” Her muffled voice, called, “You beautiful weirdo you!”
Alexander took the compliment as intended and patted her on the back.
“You’re welcome, Melinda, there’s nobody I’d trust to use it better than you. We’re going to kick that dungeon’s ass.” He pronounced.
The rest of Getsome, who he’d found sitting in Mark and Melinda’s house enjoying a bit of team bonding over dinner, roast goose by the smell, invited Alexander to stay. He declined, citing a dinner of his own with Granny, and they let him bow out with a rain check for tomorrow, which he gladly accepted.
Annita Nguyen was waiting for him, with a wooden cooking spoon and an apron, and wearing nothing else at the door. She was not well pleased at his tardiness; they had planned for dinner an hour ago.
“You’re late!” She told him, ignoring his shocked appreciation of a great deal of tanned silky hide being exposed to the sunset backdrop of the village.
“I…uh…wow. I was finishing a little something for Melinda. A…uhhh…just an apron huh? A magic sun glove, or something. Wow.” He managed to stammer.
The dryad witch stepped out of the door and shoved him from behind into the warm candlelight of his, their, home.
“Whatever! I have dumplings with mushroom sauce on the stove. There’s also some aces rabbit curry, with carrots and taters and all the fixins’, that’s going to get mushy if you don’t get that Kiester in here! Mother Earth blind you if you waste those spices, I still can’t replace the turmeric and cumin!”
So spurred, Alexander Gerifalt let himself be led, and the Vietnamese lady behind him firmly shut the door via a sharp kick of her foot.
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He didn’t know why she insisted on cooking without clothes on, but he wasn’t willing to challenge her on it, for fear that she’d stop.
Dinner was excellent, Granny had pulled out all the stops. She only mocked him a little for the tears, snot, and hiccups when he discovered that she liked her curry about three million Scoville heat units. The young man couldn’t feel his tongue after that, and they agreed that kissing and other forms of affection involving mouths were probably not a good idea for a while. If that sauce hit something delicate, there would be bad times.
Regardless, they ambled off to the shared bed, and slept cozily.
image [https://imgur.com/3D1kmaW.png]
For two days, Falcon’s Rest held its breath.
All but the farmers and tenders of fields and livestock, they were breathless in their labors to maximize the productivity of Main’s admittedly limited growing season. Even now, only the dedicated use of their magics, the gifts Gaia granted these growers and tenders of flora and fauna, allowed them to usher in productive gain at this time of year. Back in the before times, it would be nearly May before a crop got free of the frost, let alone fields full of shoots rearing ankle height as they were in the settlement.
For those not covered to the elbow in afterbirth from the dropping of foals, or lovingly tending eggs in imp core powered incubators to expand the chicken flocks, or taking notes on soil amendments, moisture uptake, and other minutia of agriculture, there was only the wait to leave.
Except that the dungeon was not willing to wait. The closed dungeon offered up another crop of werewolves, smaller this time, only eight of them, but they had again attempted to take the wall the night before the Adventurers departed, almost as if it knew they were coming for it.
Falcon’s Rest rebuffed the creatures easily. The Dame, on duty at the time, utilized a suggestion from her ex-military lover, condensing her water jet into three bursts of compressed water bullets that purely shredded the werewolves struck by it. Her spell craft ability to form that hydraulic weapon upgraded from Overpressure to Burst Pulse. Dame Sanchez’s offensive efficiency increased qualitatively. She required less water moved, and less magic to move it, for greater damage inflicted compared to the souped-up firehose version of her spell. Six of the eight werewolves died before another member of the defense force could even close with the creatures.
That was the good news. The bad news was that Potter, who previously had performed well against the bestial creatures, was not prepared for the remaining two to converge on him simultaneously and was gutted, his literal entire abdomen ripped open by a single swipe of a clawed hand he hadn’t seen. Alexander heard later that Nathan Smythe was the only reason they didn’t get to chew the HVAC Vacuum Fencer’s head off, he charged with great shield and spatha and solo’d the two monsters. Against the onslaught of silvered blade and shield, the beasts couldn’t withstand the Dryad tank, and he felled the werewolves easily.
Shiv reeled in whatever organs he could and sewed them back into Potter’s body. He closed the blood vessels to the organs that had been destroyed, things that weren’t necessary to survive the six hours to sunrise, like spleen, pancreas, bladder, and most of the colon and small intestines, part of which had looped into the low branches of a tree outside the wall. For hours, his survival was in doubt. Eventually, the good doctor declared that he’d gotten the damage under control. Two blood transfusions had been needed to keep the Marid man alive.
Mostly, what Alexander did those two days, was spend time with Annita. She wasn’t one of those who were joining the expedition, and they were tied at the hip in the meantime. Annita had been quiet all that day, ever since the rumor spread, confirmed by Alexander after he’d visited the unconscious man with Shiv in attendance. He was due to leave tomorrow morning to close the dungeon.
Affectionate love making occupied most of the evening, both drinking their fill of the other.
“I think you were right, as much as I hate to admit it.” Granny spoke late that night, from her usual position half atop him, his having become her body pillow.
Half asleep, he connected no dots, merely mumbling a noncommittal, “Oh?”
Soporific snuggle of soft hair against his side, a most welcome addition to his sheets, preceded her own sleepy affirmation, a yawn that turned into a soft spoken admission.
“Hhhihhgh, hmm, I don’t think I’m cut out for the warrior life.”
Alexander didn’t consider this news. Brave though she was, slaughter wasn’t in Granny’s genes. With her back to a wall, he considered the Verdant Forager a badgerlike enemy, dangerous out of proportion to her size and class abilities. It just wasn’t her first instinct, she naturally preferred to make herself scarce and avoid trouble. When Alexander was stealthing around in the bush it was with a different intent, he wasn’t avoiding trouble, he was trying to get behind it, so he could put an arrow in its back. His Stalking and her soft footsteps might have seemed the same to an observer, but they were not coming from the same mindscape.
“There’s nothing wrong with that, Annita.” Alexander responded after a moment.
He much preferred the gentle expression on her face when she was running a hand along a sapling branch, as if coddling a pet, compared to the fierce blaze of fear and anger when she had to fight for her life.
For himself, Alexander loved to make things, loved to create tools, and see his workings making life around the town better. However, there was a not insignificant part of him that loved the moment of a perfect arrow release, a smooth trigger squeeze, and the felling of the prey. It was a sublime moment, almost holy. When he was killing a monster, culling some aberration that threatened his friends and neighbors, Alexander felt that he was doing what he was born to do. It was right.
Not everyone had to be like him, basking in that moment. Not everyone who took up the mantle of Adventurer did, even. Mark was a perfect example, he didn’t fight the monsters because their destruction brought him joy, he did it because taking the front, putting himself between the creatures and his companions was what gave him purpose. Nathan was as kind souled a man as ever walked the earth, he had to be one of the most genuinely nice and accommodating people Alexander had ever met. He simply couldn’t bear to leave others without protection, however, so he lifted his shield to cover them. The Dame took the field from a sense of Nobless oblige, it was her duty to serve the crown. Or something. To each their own.
All the people of Falcon’s Rest had their parts to play for the greater whole.
“Personally, I’m happier knowing you’re here inside the city, making green things grow taller, fuller, for our future. It’s the thing that moves your spirit. If there’s anything Gaia did when Her powers transformed us into Matriculated, it was to move us closer to our hearts.” He soliloquized.
An unfamiliar note of hesitance crept into the soft voice at his side, and he looked down into golden eyes that wanted reassurance, “Then I’m not being a coward? It’s fine to hate all the violence and death?”
Alexander stroked her cheek lightly and dispelled any such notions.
“You’re a brave woman Annita Nguyen. You walked into a volcano and fought with the most valiant humans I’ve ever known, step for step. When that dragon tried to snatch Brig, it was Granny who stole its dinner and saved her. I’d walk into the dungeons with you at my back to watch it.” He told the woman without a shred of doubt.
She smiled, relieved. Then she climbed over him to sprawl more directly on top of him so he could better cuddle her.
“You’d better not do anything stupid out there.” She warned him, her cute face at odds with the simmering pique at her imagination’s conjured ways he could get into trouble.
“I know how you get. Something wicked this way comes and it’s my feathered doofus who throws himself at them without a care in the world. We need you, Alexander, don’t waste yourself. Besides, I’ll be really mad if you die in a dungeon like an asshole.” Granny told him, and he knew he didn’t imagine the catch in her voice at the end.
Mad she said. Among other things. He still wasn’t entirely certain what they were. In the short term, it was simple, they were lovers and friends. In the long term? Mates? A married couple? Alexander didn’t know. Granny was the first woman who’d ever made him catch feels, she confused the hell out of him sometimes. Less confusing though, he was almost certain he loved the woman latched onto his chest. If something happened to her, he would hurt something awful. If something happened to Granny Nguyen, whatever did it would have him happening to it, that was a check you could take to the bank, he decided conclusively.
“Well, since we can’t have Granny getting her knickers in a twist, I’ll just have to come back. I am going to need you to dial back that curry some though, or else I can’t promise not to run away to a dungeon to hide.” He ran fingers through silken tresses while he said it, and the near purring sigh of his partner was the last sound either of them made before they fell asleep.
The Phoenix sun restored a grey faced, not quite dead Potter to full health, and that man gained a new appreciation for the Adventurers who walked the razor’s edge for a living. Alexander sympathized, having experienced a similar savaging at the mitts of a Yeti. One mistake is all you got, sometimes. Facing the monsters meant maintaining total focus, letting your training take over, when the violence of motion outpaced what a life of peace had done to your brain. Green sense was a thing won with hard experience; it didn’t come instantly.
Several times Alexander had come within breaths of his mistakes being permanent. Dire Wolves chewing his legs to ribbons. An elk trying to impale him. A Yeti. An ogre falling forward with the slide of an empty forty-five in his hands racked back. Dire bees hunting for the human that had manhandled their queen while moving her to a new home. A golem, ready to splat him against the gymnasium floor on which he’d played casual basketball with friends, about a lifetime ago. A Reaper, its scythe poised to rip life from him.
Alexander Gerifalte had stared at his mortality more times than most and found his way clear.
Each time change you, hardened you, he thought. It was why Ben didn’t flinch when somebody swung a training stick at his face, why he didn’t blink against pain. He’d already seen his end and moved passed it. That was a thing that couldn’t be taught. Some, like Scott, shattered, unable to find the will to fight again. Others, like the Adventurers of Getsome and Impervious, were forged into warriors, champions.
Potter, when he ran disbelieving hands over a stomach that had been ruined, tears in his eyes with gratitude at another day, demanded to know the next time some ‘shaggy, dog fucking apes, motherfucker’ was spotted, and Alexander was certain he knew which side of the coin the man had landed on. Especially after he refused to be left behind on the expedition.
It was good. Riley was an inspiration to the artisans. He had a class that was fit for combat, but he wasn’t one of the hard-bitten Adventurers, who occupied a bit of an intimidating place in the village. His fall and rise showed the rest that they could endure and come out stronger.
The expedition departed early, just a couple of hours after sunrise.
Annita hadn’t gone to see him out, he had a feeling she was hiding her worry and didn’t want to crack in front of the rest of the villagers. She made up for that with breakfast and a goodbye kiss that almost threatened to delay departure.
Granny wasn’t the only one with a last-minute hold up. Ben barely managed escape Dame Sanchez, who was also remaining inside the town. He had to go back for his helmet, an uncharacteristic bit of inattention from the professional soldier.
From the north gate of Falcon’s Rest, following the defunct highway, twenty brave souls set out to destroy the dungeon, their forms disappearing into the pall of an earnest spring rain.
image [https://imgur.com/3D1kmaW.png]
Alexander Gerifalte padded mostly silently through the soft, wet woods. He had the point of the scouts, and, despite the not at all pleasant circumstances, found himself enjoying the stalk through the brush. He’d been barred from hunting the surroundings after being voted leader of the village. For the young man who had canvassed these mountains and foothills completely alone two years past, it was a stifling experience, being trapped behind the walls of the settlement.
He understood why it was necessary. In addition to his skills, he was a symbol of the settlement, a figurehead, a totem that sustained the morale of the people who had followed him over a hundred miles away from the closest approximation of civilization. That didn’t mean he had to like it.
Now though, with no little elation in his heart, he was free again to hunt.
The eyes marked with their black sclera from his ascension to Outsider bloodline peeled back the surroundings, and he catalogued everything. Birds flitting, squirrels running the branching paths of the maples and pines, oversized jack rabbits, some with horns on their heads, he kept watch as his feet picked their way carefully across the forest floor, Singer, his wonderful bow, held loosely in his hands with an arrow nocked for draw. Julia Bonny Richards was with the main body of the raid team, guiding her hawk and its spectral brother to find overt threats. Markers left behind by the advance team on their trip to locate the dungeon made the journey almost tame.
There should be very few surprises. Mundane ones, anyhow. The dungeons weren’t the only source of knuckleballs being thrown; Gaia had plenty of dangers to keep her children on their toes.
A rustle of branches ahead froze Alexander in place. He listened and watched for a minute before the source of the disturbance made itself known: Dire beavers. Big as a panda bear, the flat tailed, buck toothed critters were chewing down full-grown pine trees about as efficiently as a crosscut saw, razored teeth taking chunks from the trunks. The young Venator saw the drag marks that indicated where they’d been towing their lumber, a wide creek in a holler, which they were intent on damming up to form a ten-acre lake, with another twenty behind it flooded into a marsh.
Briefly, the young man considered shooting the beavers, they were going to make travel difficult, eventually, with their relentless watershed projects, but decided against it. There was no real threat, and they had an objective. If the flooding ever got to be an issue for Falcon’s Rest, then they could handle it. On their own, the dire beavers had never been known to attack people so he returned his study to the landscape.
He pondered a moment why his instincts still said to stay still, until a huge cougar dropped from a tree on top of the lead beaver dragging its timber and hand length canines broke the animal’s spine with a crack that echoed across the hills. The panther dragged its prey bodily up the hillside, easily hauling some six hundred pounds of dead weight, before disappearing down the other side of the ridge.
Nothing presented itself as a threat, the surviving beaver had dropped its cargo and fled for a beaver slide into the creek when its comrade was so cleanly dispatched. Alexander crept forward, following a line midway up the ridge parallel to the one the cougar had climbed. Branches rubbed against his shoulders and elbows, their leaves depositing collected rain. He was immensely grateful for the wax that waterproofed his cloak, wax obtained from the only sentient creatures humanity had, to his knowledge, contacted on mutually beneficial terms: a dire bee hivemind. Absent that, he, and the others would have been treated to the experience of trekking soaked to the skin in the fifty-degree morning air.
Methodically, the young man continued his patrol, two miles ahead of the main group, green tinged with brown eyes, set in black, scanning ahead.
Gone was the dizzying double vision that had troubled Alexander since drinking the dragon blood. It had taken months of adjustment, but his grey matter finally had his mutant eyes under control. The additional sharpness of acuity was accompanied by an almost intuitive three-dimensional model of objects, almost like he saw from a bird’s eye, one that shifted with the movement of whatever he was particularly focused on. The young Outsider had struggled mightily on the drill yard with the Adventurers to hone his ability to process the sheer amount of information being jammed into his brain, to say nothing of the black edges that moved and shifted with cored creatures.
Annita had been somewhat correct, there was a predictive element to those outlines, but it wasn’t based on time, it was based on the mana inside a thing.
Possibly due to a synergy between Greater Analyze and Outsider’s perception, he was looking at the projection of mana that preceded movements. Ben related it to like metaphysical reading of a boxer’s feet. The punch that was coming was telegraphed, ever so slightly. Incredibly useful, but only if the fighter had the skill to respond fast enough to take advantage. Ben made it his responsibility to see Alexander acquire that skill, to the young man’s good. Alexander, on his back on the training field, covered in bruises, full body exhausted, and with a pounding headache from straining his eyes, had had mixed feelings about the older warrior’s consideration most days.
Not today, not when the fruits of suffering were ripe for the picking.
The Entropic Venator had glimpsed a fleeting furred outline through a pine stand ahead, a stand that sat suspiciously close to a bend in the highway that would naturally direct its travelers’ attention away from it as they passed. An ambush site.
Fingers to his lips, Alexander whistled twice, signaling danger ahead.
He was on point, closest to what he was certain was a pack of werewolves laying in wait some quarter mile ahead.
Only a minute later he was joined beneath a discreet witch hazel shrub, very quietly, by Bonny, who had her bear familiar with her.
The grizzly sized beast huffed in his direction, taking in his scent, but calmed at the girl’s touch. The reticent beast tamer was focused but spared a small smile of greeting before returning to business.
Losing one of her pets and being smashed by a hammer by a would-be rapist from Safe Harbor had hardened the young girl. Gone was the wooden club she’d preferred before. Now she carried a pair of hand axes. Julia was playing for keeps. It made Alexander sad, but he was glad she’d responded to the experience by becoming more assertive, instead of withdrawing. Doctor Patel’s therapy and her role models in Brig and Georgia no doubt played a role in that.
“My hawk is five miles ahead, and hasn’t cried an alarm,” Bonny whispered at him, skipping the pleasantries.
Alexander pointed to the pine stand and replied, in equally hushed tones, “They’re not moving, much, staying under the canopy. Probably bedded down there after sunrise to wait out the day, or for anything that turns that bend. It’s a guess, but I think the fact that the other packs didn’t return has them cautious.”
No one really knew how much intellect was possessed by the monsters. What was especially mysterious was the connection between the dungeon boss, the guardian monster, and the rest of the creatures of the invading realm. In the goblin’s case, there had been a clear hierarchy amongst the creatures and, while they were vicious little gits, they’d definitely been possessed of a conscious mind. For the undead, the Reaper was the only sentient entity in the entire dungeon, the zombies were shells, operating under its commands. It too had held a disturbing degree of sophistication in its alien crypt of a mind. Muspelheim and the other dungeons had been almost like samples of the native environment of their realms, just wild things operating on instinct without guidance.
Brig reported the werewolves to be cunning, and their instant response to the pack being wiped out by the Dame being to converge on a single target of opportunity in Potter supported that. There might be a will controlling, or at least directing, the actions of the werewolves. That meant the possibility of an over mind shifting their behaviors, learning from failure. Best to assume the worst.
Bonny examined the apparently empty stand of mature evergreens and said, “Flush them out?”
She was referring to the bear, and to her ability to create a clone of it under her direct control out of pure mana. The solid mana constructs were amongst the most obvious manifestations of Gaia’s gifts of power to man. They drained the Lunar Warden, but she had proven her bears’ combat potential against anyone who sparred her construct and against the beasts around Falcon’s Rest. Yetis had descended again from Mt. Katahdin during the winter, seeking to hunt the settlers on their business outside the walls. Julie Richards and her bears taught them to stop doing that.
Alexander thought the girl’s offer over. What could they learn? What were the risks? He decided against it for now. They were too far ahead of the rest of the raid party to get support, and Alexander had no way to know how many the enemy might number.
“No. Not yet, anyway. If you can, get your hawk back and send a message to the rest, if not, go yourself, give them the word, and come back. I’ll stay posted here. Let’s get Major to do a shadow run through that stand and see how many of them he kicks up, then you can let them meet yogi and the gang.” Alexander decided.
Another brief ghost of a smile and Bonny hustled off back the way she’d come, without a goodbye.
A nice girl, Bonny. Only a little spooky. But then, they were all spooky in one way or another, these survivors of the apocalypse who had decided to join the march on Nut. People who couldn’t be dangerous didn’t fare well in the Green.
Minutes sidled by, slowly. Insects chirped, but the cool spring of Maine meant that few, if any fliers were about for now. That would change soon, late March was the start of mosquito season. The black flies and other nuisances wouldn’t come up thick until about June, for which the crouched young man counted his blessings. Other than a fox that dared to cross into the open, furtive steps, and then a streak of orange that took it across from one wood line to the next across the old highway, there was little to suggest that anything was amiss in the forest.
Alexander knew better. His watching of the stand revealed that no birds flew into or near those pines. No squirrels pawed the pine needles for hidden treats. The native animals of these hills knew something was wrong in their home. After a few more flickers of movement, unconscious shifts in posture of huddled forms, Alexander grew certain. His count rose to at least four by the time Bonny returned from delivering the news.
This time, she was accompanied by Major, Kevin Meijer, the Morrigan twenty-three-year-old, like a Scandinavian poster boy for fitness, who was looking a little more nervous than Alexander cared for. His bloodline had evidenced itself similarly to Georgia, feathered patterns along his back and shoulders that extended down his arms, all hidden beneath the light leather and aluminum armor he wore. As a scout, the Shadow Sentinel classed man’s puppeteering of his own shadow, which somehow possessed all of his senses, was remarkably useful. He had next to no offensive ability, however.
Alexander had considered perhaps trying to use one of those Night Stones to give the man a boost but hadn’t had the time to investigate. Dark mana, by its Scroll carried risks to its use, including a predisposition for induced madness. For now, they’d make do with using his abilities to get them a good look, nice and close like, to the pine grove that had a little shapeshifting monster infestation.
“You ready to roll?” He asked the young man, who closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and clamped down on himself before nodding.
“I’ve got this. I’ll circle up the ridge and come down behind, like I was coming across the highway, west to east. If they take the bait, I’ll pull them into the open onto the highway.” Major said.
Major’s shadow, being insubstantial, didn’t make sounds when it “walked”, nor did it have any odor. If the werewolves were asleep, or did not see it, they wouldn’t be roused to give chase.
From his left, Bonny added, “Getsome and my family are coming up the road, they are ready to intercept if the creatures rush the expedition. My bear is in a thicket just across the highway. We can surround them if we move on up this ridge another half mile.”
Sound tactics, Alexander approved.
Together, the three of them picked their way along that middle bench on the hillside, evidence of a long-ago forsaken logging road. Maine was littered with them, the north woods were, essentially, entirely owned by logging companies using the vast tracts as a timber nursery. Or, well, they had been. Gaia fixed that little problem right up.
No sign came that the Homo Novus scouts had raised furry suspicions from below, so they laid down, using their cloaks for ground blankets to wait for the rest of the expedition to make their approach from the road.
They didn’t have long to wait. Two carts, hauling foodstuffs and supplies for the encampment, came rolling down the gentle grade. Alexander recognized most of Impervious, sans Nathan, who was back with Falcon’s Rest, serving as the anchor for the town and its major source of protection, alongside Dame Sanchez. Getsome, absent aforementioned Dame, was in their usual formation. If things got hairy, they’d be there to make with the monster whacking in a hurry.
Alexander judged it time.
“Okay, Major, you’re up. Send those furry bastards a message.” He told the handsome scout.
Blue eyes closed, and Major concentrated. His back appeared to turn black, as if the shade of the forest trees above were condensing, and a dark mannequin of the man lifted itself up from its owner. The shadow-man saluted his comrades and took off at a silent sprint down the hill, running fit to qualify for the hundred-meter dash event.
When the umbral scout’s projection crossed into the stand, the response was instant. Baying howls rose up as a dozen furred man shapes flung pine needles from their concealment. Major’s shadow form fled the pine trees, with the werewolf pack at its heels. Two of the beasts shapeshifted mid stride, and, like a gymnast doing a front flip in a floor routine, they smoothly transitioned to their mobile wolf form. These circled ahead, trying to box in the target, exhibiting the hunting behavior typical of wolves.
Alexander watched the fearless shade juke and spin around a darting wolf, before breaking the cover of the forest. A casual hop of the guard rail, and Major was leading the wolves into the trap. Howls of the Nut spawned monsters increased in pitch when they spotted the traveling Adventurers and they put on speed. Alexander flicked his fingers together to Bonny, and she gave a mental command to her grizzly familiar, before assuming a concentrated pose. Magic vibrant blue and purples formed like a cloud condensing in time lapse, the shape took on firmer definition, limbs and head clearly ursine. The details snapped into focus and a bear, blue-violet fur standing thick on its body, teeth revealed by lips peeled back from its snout appeared in front of the Lunar Warden.
The astral familiar took off toward the werewolf pack with that deceptively fast lope that bears had. They looked clumsy, like the hips and spine weren’t meant to move quickly, not at all like they could outrun a horse. Many a deer learned too late that looks weren’t everything with regards to bears. The werewolves learned it too, when two of the frightfully powerful predators hit them from opposite sides.
Three of the shapeshifters were bowled over, knocked to the pavement by the charging creatures. Each bear singled out a particular monster to maul, and made savage work of it, crushing teeth over wolven muzzles and digging claws through flesh like a dog raking dirt from a hole.
A new note entered the wolfish choir of the monsters, what had to be fear. Or, at the least, dismay.
Alexander was hanging back, guarding Major and Julia’s bodies. They were defenseless when they piloted their aetheric forms. Anything that wanted to take them would have to go through him. He needn’t have worried, Getsome was in the thick of things now.
Benjamin, riding the phenomenal boost of speed, power, and toughness of his Steel Heavy Knight class, which borrowed strength from the armor he wore, plowed into the pack, his gifted naginata in full swing. The sword blade of silvered High Steel, enchanted by bitter frost magic, bisected a battle form werewolf from neck to hip, barely slowed. Metal glittered under the sun as the spear spun and was swiped horizontally with casual strength through another at chest height. The frozen spear blade threw a cloudy trail of steaming cold air in its wake. He turned and punched with a gauntleted fist that blasted a werewolf skull apart like a melon hit with a sledgehammer, launching the would be flanking monster away in a heap.
Shrieking laughter hurtled from the sky as Brig used Full Thrust to impale another creature frozen by the violence of the reversed ambush.
The cavalry lance she rode down through the monster buried a foot into the pavement, arresting the Gravity Spire’s flight. In one motion, the lancer released the impaling weapon, knelt, rolled forward, bleeding her momentum, and came to a crouch with both hands pushing toward another pair of monsters. The stones beneath her answered her magic’s call, surging forward in a pair of stabbing spikes that punched into the creatures, lifting them up, their clawed feet kicking futile in the air.
The coppery haired amazon tore her lance from the pavement and joined her hulking veteran leader in dismantling the mobile form creatures that had turned back to join their battle form pack members. She laughed boisterously the entire time she and Ben scattered the half dozen monsters.
Mark Ross was coming forward now, his kite shield raised. A clawed hand reached for him and dropped to the ground, the edges of the cut from his special made firebrand smoking. The shapeshifter actually swung the same limb, not noticing its arm terminated a foot shorter than it should have from the clean dismemberment. Mark stepped into his thrust, burying the blade in the large chest, and a surge of fire magic flash broiled the monster’s innards, dropping it where it stood.
The Incandescent Triarii set his feet against three charging monsters and determined the line that they would not cross. Naught but their ashes did.
With two bears roaring, swinging frying pan sized paws, and the three veteran warriors, soon joined also by Potter, who was eager for his comeuppance, the pack dissolved within a minute. One minute of incredible violence, and only humanity held the field in the middle of old highway eleven.
Alexander, who had fought with these warriors, and had trained with them hard for these past few months was still taken aback by the efficient slaughter. Getsome had grown much stronger since the winter. Where others had filled their time with the endless tasks of the village, the soldiers had trained their arts, had used each other as an ever-raising ladder to climb higher in their skills.
Shadow man and aetheric bear faded away, the skills released, and the two figures Alexander had been guarding returned to full awareness.
Major summarized the battle thusly: “Godsdamn.”