Bedlam greeted road worn Adventurers. They had to be pushed from the gate as their support crew entered, and then they too were witness to the shocking scene of over a thousand strangers crawling over the rebuilt town’s streets like ants. Many appeared ragged or underdressed. A fair few were bandaged, which bespoke that they had come within the last thirty hours, because the phoenix sun had risen day before yesterday.
Slack jawed, Alexander only managed a breathless “What is this?!” and preceded to quietly melt down. At some point you reach your limit for what you’re prepared to deal with and finding his tiny town overrun was that limit for the last Gerifalte.
Cooler heads took charge, and Mark led the raid team into the enclosure. The armored warriors, accompanied by wagons loaded with half empty barrels of supplies and packs containing the spoils of dungeon spawned monsters and the villagers who’d turned out to help, drew as many stares at the strangers in the town as they gave.
A few outlines jangled memories and Alexander realized that he recognized some of these people, now that he’d gotten over the initial shock.
They were from Safe Harbor.
His stomach dropped, because the only reason a thousand people from that town would be here was if something horrifically wrong had driven them from their homes. The two years of struggle scratching something close to comfort from the outskirts of the Belfast hybrid dungeon, clearing the surroundings of monsters, taming the new Gaian landscape, all of it must have come crashing down, somehow.
Slowly, the train of carts and victorious Adventurers, their exuberant return now muted by the sign of catastrophe that surely had occurred, pushed into Falcon’s Rest. The central town square, where one day Alexander had lured the majority of the aggressive elements of a goblinoid incursion to its doom, held a sort of impromptu field hospital, big canvas tents raised to enclose the wounded who had been hauled from whatever disaster had driven Safe Harbor’s people to flight. The original settlers had posted a detail to keep watch over the Dire bee hive, so a newcomer didn’t accidentally trigger a swarm for some slight toward her gilded majesty the queen, or interfere with the duties of the workers, and the expedition as a whole sighed with relief.
Alexander noted that many of the Guildies, the Adventurers under contract, were not present. In fact, he saw not one in ten of those who took the guild’s coin in this lot, those he knew. Of the matriculated he knew to be like Getsome and Impervious, companies of freelancers, there were only about half of the Adventurers he would have expected. Their armor and arms told stories of dire struggle, though the children of Gaia bore no scars on their flesh, thanks to her gifts. A gentle shove from behind and a muttered, ‘March on Feathers, time’s a wastin’ from Ben got his feet moving again.
Without discussion, the dungeon raiders continued along suddenly busy streets to the only place where business of this gravity could be conducted: The Survivor’s Well.
Lucy Durnham, absent her customary cloak that covered angelic owl wings that rose high behind her head now for her neglect to keep them low profile, met them at the door.
“Welcome home folks!” She shouted, a warm smile for the returning townsfolk, ignoring by force of will the obvious elephant in the room.
Eyes from the crowd, not quite used to the modified anatomy of the tier three humans, were drawn to the tavern keeper. Lucy had a magnetic personality and a radiant beauty before the angelic cloak, so Alexander couldn’t blame them their stares.
She ushered the lot of them inside, taking cloaks, coats, insisting everybody scrape their boots off before entering, and declaring no charge on beer and food, which running joke drew laughs. Alexander appreciated her seemingly effortless way of establishing a calming influence on everyone. He knew he could use some settling down.
Impervious broke off, finding a table and reuniting its members. Getsome similarly claimed a table.
Alexander found himself sliding away, standing to one side, hugging a table near a wall, cataloguing the changes in his people since they’d left. For those who had entered the dungeon, a tremendous spurt of growth. For those who hadn’t, but who had joined, minor, yet significant improvements, if only thanks to gaining experience with life in the Green. For the town, he couldn’t even start to put that animal in a cage. The sight of his town, so drastically changed in these last few months now bursting at the seams with semi familiar faces had his thoughts all a whirl. He was left alone, as reunions were taking place, friends and more than that finding each other for the kind of intensely personal whispered exchanges that needed communal privacy. The problem was all the new faces, the unfamiliar voices, many with an edge of trauma marking their features, they were setting him on edge. Gods there were so many. And not enough. What was the toll on Safe Harbor? The butcher’s bill?
Bustling thoughts verging on panic were interrupted by a swift and technically perfect hip throw that bounced him with intentional gentleness off the hardwood of the onetime church floor.
*Thwack*
Annita Nguyen grabbed fistfuls of his “hair” and delivered an imperious accusation “You didn’t come find me, Alexander.” With a low and level tone.
He swallowed against the golden irises that peered into his soul.
“I! We! There was a lot going on!” he yelped in defense.
“Yes. There was. And you let that distract you from coming to find me Alexander.” She agreed, threateningly.
He looked around briefly for aid and saw no succor in the eyes of his neighbors. Traitors! Cowards! He moaned internally at the passive bystanders. Brig saluted, a hand to her eyebrow grinning widely to seal his doom.
“Look at me, not them Alexander.” Instructed Granny, and he did.
Wearing her gathering ensemble, weeds and leaves still stuck to it in places from the rapidity of her return to town when word of their return came, she had directly homed in on him somehow.
“But how was I supposed to even know where you were!? You don’t even stay in town half the time!” He objected, in a futile hope of reason having some bearing on the situation.
She looked at him with disappointment and released his head, standing tall, all five feet and a little change of her.
“That’s not the point, Alexander.” He was told.
Ben was the one whose knife struck truest into his back. The warrior said, “You take him and do whatever needs doing Annita, we’ll fill everybody in tomorrow morning over breakfast.”
That man was himself being shuffled off away from his table, the beer in his hand clutched against the dragging of Dame Sanchez, who had a determined set to her.
With strength that belied her tiny frame, Annita lifted him and determinedly hauled him out of the tavern, leaving behind its doubtless portentous discussions, with implications both great and dire for the futures of Falcon’s Rest, and humanity at large. She did not let him go until he was locked inside their shared bedroom. She convinced him to stay a while.
There would be tomorrow to learn of events. One disaster had been averted. One had been completed. Gaia spun on not indifferent to the struggle of her children, but neither able nor willing to spare them the trials that were upon them. It was up to the survivors to blaze a trail toward a future that included humanity, but that would be for tomorrow.
Tonight, Alexander Gerifalte would hold a woman who cared for him close and show her he cared back. No tomorrows were required for that. Sometime deep into the evening, Brig wandered in from her debrief and joined them, with Annita patting a spot on the bed like it was the most natural thing in the world. Alexander opened his mouth to demand “What gives?!” before the wise lizard in his limbic system punched the override button and he shut up.
Somehow, the tall woman’s presence wasn’t weird. More like a puzzle piece sliding into its proper place. With the picture complete, they passed the witching hours playing games youngsters who glimpsed a Reaper’s cloaked form play when reunited. Once, he tried to crawl away, for water he claimed, and Annita warned him of Consequences before leaving herself to return with a bucket drawn fresh from the creek outside, no clothes ever being donned in the process. Ms. O’Connor was left instructions to “keep the bird busy”, which she did with enthusiasm.
On the morrow, Granny glued to his hip with Brig offering carnal advice that would be illegal in some states and highly frowned on in several others, Alexander learned of the calamity that had claimed Safe Harbor. It was an odd thing to learn of great and terrible events standing over a cast iron stove cooking breakfast for two naked women just previously trading notes on profound fucking, while you yourself wore only an apron to keep the popping bacon off your tenders, but life had gotten sideways on Alexander Gerifalte.
Orders of business first, the long prepared for revenge against the Guilds would never be, it seemed. Fate had dealt them a different hand. Survivors told the tale of sorrow: the Guilds had reaped what they’d sown, and the riches of the Belfast dungeon had poured forth in a tsunami. Very simply, the hyper dungeon broke.
Just as the vampire guardian of the dungeon Alexander and company had battled intended for its own domain, the hybrid dungeon cores had reached a critical density of mana and “detonated”, expending their gathered, stolen mana, claiming a circle consisting of more than three hundred square miles of coastal Maine. Because it was a hyper dungeon, with several cores involved, the result was a collage of territories. When the Belfast dungeon “broke” or permanently transfigured a portion of Gaia’s surface, about a radius from Belfast to Prospect in the north, or to Lincolnville in the south, the Guilds had fought for the survival of the town. They’d lost.
Three thousand something people in Safe Harbor, ten great Guilds, a few dozen minor ones, nearly all of it was shattered inside of a day. The third of the populace that was able ran, their flight covered by the Adventurers who took the blame for the happening on their shoulders and paid for it with their lives, to save what they could. In a way, the debt to Falcon’s Rest was somewhat squared by that valor, though hard feelings remained in the settlement from those who had lost friends and family to the cowardly ambush.
Alexander, by his own admission, wasn’t so certain he was entirely ready to move on, something nagged at him over the entire affair. Had it not been that the person who coordinated the hit job was not classed, would not have participated in the defense directly? He waited until the story was told, holding his peace while he was dribbled the details from the coppery haired Oread, in her usual earthy style.
Brig concluded “So, with the Guilds finding the footlocker that held their balls,” –
“And their brains with them, too late all.” Annita growled over her empty plate.
“Word.” The Lancer said, offering a fist for the Forager to pound as she continued, “They put together enough resistance to turn the route into a retreat, with the non Guildies running the escort. There’re survivors trickling in, most of them pretty chewed up and still being chased, but our scouts are dealing with the pests that try to follow the runners. It’s been three or four at a time, a dozen at most for the last couple days, and none at all yesterday. Bonny’s right straight out keeping tabs on the survivors and Major is in a semi coma from keeping himself split up with shadows to run interference with the critters.”
And that was that. Alexander stared sightless taking it in. He reached only one solid conclusion throughout Brig’s report.
“I’m not cut out for this leader stuff.” He announced with certainty, “I quit. I retire. Let Lucy take over. Or Scott, I know he can’t fight, but he knows how to put things together so they work, and that’s people too. I’m not the guy to keep a thousand of us headed in the right direction.”
Granny and Brig nodded, both in agreement and having anticipated his revolt. He’d never wanted to sit in the hot seat in the first place.
“Ayuh, that’s what we all figured last night in Survivor’s Well. We’re going to let Lucy be mayor, everybody loves her and the boys, and we have ideas for a city council to help make decisions. Impervious and Getsome, we figured we’re better off letting you creep around the woods being a scary bastard than couped up inside tinkering twenty-four seven under guard.” Brig answered, accepting his resignation on behalf of the town.
“Firstly, I am not a scary bastard.” Alexander protested.
He was completely a scary bastard, with soulless looking black sclera glittering green and brown hawk’s irises staring, a nack for getting behind people without being spotted, despite his height, and a mind that skewed toward lawful evil when it came right down to it. A flash of four dead humans crossed his mind’s eye and he grimaced unconsciously at those killings. He’d have done it again, too, and was going to do more up until finding out there was nobody left who needed killing for the crime. But he didn’t like to admit it, so he would deny deny deny.
“Are so.” The women chorused, not playing along with his bullshit, and he hushed them, waving a porridge ladle threateningly.
“And secondly, good luck to them, they’re going to need all the help all the gods above, below, and in between can dredge up for them.” He said, closing the book on that matter.
He had questions. So many questions. Most of them more like worries that he wanted to turn into problems to solve, but that meant getting more information, which meant even more questions. Where had that hypothesized shadow guild of nonmatriculated gotten to, for starters.
Brig, familiar enough with the chewing lip and distant look to know he was pondering hard enough to blow a gasket, anticipated one of the issues he’d fixate on. She gave him his answers, spooning more oats into her twice emptied bowl.
“We found a Law Binder in the refugees and she’s working with some guys to close the loopholes in the Contract. We’re also going to find a wild dungeon and matriculate everybody in the next week, even if we gotta cart their asses in on a stretcher. Nobody gets to be above the law anymore, and nobody gets to sit on the sidelines, that came from a unanimous vote of the old sixty. We assumed your vote, you and Ben were saying that all the way back in Safe Harbor.” Brig told him from around her third helping of honied oats.
A weight fell from his shoulders. What to do about taking care of what amounted to hundreds of invalids was, not precisely solved, but a solution was in the works. It also started to chip away at the problem of what to do about folk not beholden to the Contract, people who could commit murder, if they were smart enough to figure out how to kill tier three humans through their Soak and abilities.
“Bonny left yesterday with her crew to find us a nice bunny dungeon or three. We figure the mana flow from the dungeon break probably caused more of them to spawn around it. Best anyone can figure, the dungeon cores are kind of like seeds of the other planes, they need to feed on magic to grow, and, when they’ve got enough –” Granny informed him, cut off at the end
Spreading hands with fingers dazzling in a pantomimed explosion followed, Brig’s freckled face screwed up in a goofy puffing whistle.
“Yeah, that.” Granny ended, smirking at the taller woman’s antics.
Breakfast was good, if he were allowed to brag, and they finished it chatting about less heavy topics. The harvests coming in, townsfolk upgrading their classes as they polished their skills, the weather, of course. He was informed that he was off duty, and Brig as well.
The raid team was taking R&R, under the advisement of Nathan and Mark, the two most senior party leaders. Even the folk who’d stood guard outside had had to keep sharp, and maintaining that kind of focus for too long led to lapses that could get a guy or gal, even an experienced Adventurer, killed.
After a slow morning in the now somewhat fuller Lab, as two of its rooms were now occupied by the gear of his…girlfriends? No that felt wrong, juvenile. Companions? Too shallow. Conquests! He crowed within the safety of his mind, chuckling a bit as he did.
Absolutely not. Very clearly in his mind, he knew he had not been the architect of this design.
In fact, as he sat there poring over an idea brewing since the dire bees had first been ensconced in town, the production of super candles from their incredibly fire-retardant wax, he was starting to think that his circumstances bore the hallmarks of coordination betwixt his lovers. The wax burned brilliantly, shedding copious yellow light, but only under the heat of a torch, a normal wick wouldn’t work.
Hadn’t it been Brig’s influence that made him aware of Granny romantically in the first place? No, that was Georgia. But, maybe, there’d been some hints dropped, Georgia and Brig were tight. Granny too, now he thought on it. Maybe they’d set this up, strategized out their efforts to nudge his admittedly not socially adept nor particularly difficult to seduce self into a favorable arrangement.
“Now you’re being paranoid, Little Falcon.” He told himself aloud in his study.
“And a little conceited, if I might add.” He noted a second later.
“Yes, to both.” Annita Nguyen confirmed from the doorway, dressed for work in her deceitfully ratty coat and breeches.
The ragged nature of her pants and coat helped break up her outline in the brush and she tied off local foliage like a form of rapidly improvised Ghillie suit. Alexander’s Broken Silhouette skill did that through aetheric means. Granny said the knowledge of how to do it so cleanly was part of her class’s gift. His skill took a massive amount of concentration, but required no equipment or finagling with his clothing, hers was passive but needed active preparation. Their classes approached the same problem along two very divergent avenues. Verdant Forager was ill-equipped for any kind of combat, but well tooled in avoiding it, using the flora of its surroundings, in theme with its connection to all that grew green. The big titanium kukri she’d conned him into making for her hung easily from her belt, long as her forearm. Alexander knew it was well oiled and razor sharp within its sheathe. Granny Nguyen wouldn’t settle for rough cuts on her stems. Or her monsters, when that became necessary.
Clearly, she was on her way to either explore outside town for new goodies or to head to her green houses.
Reading the pages backward from her place, the almond eyes, irises gilded by her dryad blood line, looked up and met his.
“Dire bee lanterns? What gives, I thought they made wax that was fireproof.” She said, confused.
An odd quirk of the semi magical stuff. It melted. Easily. Just like normal wax. It just didn’t want to become volatile or burn. Once it did though, it was like slow-release thermite, putting off a, to use the technical term, fuck-load of energy, mostly in the form of a bright orange flame larger in proportion to the wick used to light it than a guy with whole eyebrows might suspect. But not a guy with singed ones, that guy knew better. From experience.
Leaned back in his chair, Alexander frowned and stared at the ceiling, just as he had done half a dozen times since coming up here after breakfast.
“Yeah. Not really fireproof, an oxy torch lights it just fine. Problem is getting it to stay lit without running the torch or it burning its way through your candle stand. The wick’s gotta burn wicked hot to keep it going, but too much and it takes off, you gotta balance it. Somehow. Candle technology is harder than it looks.” Alexander admitted, turning it over again distantly in his head.
She looked at him and asked, slightly hesitantly, not wanting to sound foolish at mentioning something so obvious, “You tried blending the wax with an accelerant, petroleum jelly or something?”
He flapped a hand pitifully in confirmation answering, “Yup. No dice, the wick either burns up too fast and snuffs itself or there isn’t enough accelerant and the wax won’t reach volatility. I haven’t hit the right balance, if there even is one. And petroleum jelly doesn’t even work that well, its oily, so it blends, but it doesn’t have the firepower to serve the purpose. Really, it’s the wick that’s the issue.” He said, keying in on the root of the problem with Direbee candles.
A small fist popped into her palm and Granny grinned at him, crying “Hey!” in sharp short call that echoed in the library.
The sudden volume and movement caused Alexander to flinch, overbalance backward, and tip himself out of his chair. When he stood next to the desk, dusting himself off and muttering imprecations about Asian hedge witches he found himself greeted by the two fingers in a “V” Granny’s superman pose.
“Oh, no.” He moaned.
She only did this when she was about to take the piss out of him.
“Come with me, Alexander. I think we’re due a date in my greenhouse. And you’re about to need to start figuring out even more refined ways to worship my greatness.” Granny ordered.
“Yes, Great Master! Of course!” Alexander acquiesced with false enthusiasm.
Putting it off was only going to cause him trouble later. Besides, he was done drumming his head against the wall with the damned beeswax. For all her oddness, Annita Nguyen was sharp. She probably knew something about his problem he didn’t. That victory pose was reserved for when she had a sure thing. And she was going to milk it for all it was worth, he was certain.
Outside, clear strong sunlight bathed Falcon’s Rest and it teemed with peoples, most hard at work repairing or rebuilding a dwelling under the supervision of the original colonists of the town. Potter and his apprentices were working their asses off, flitting around like humming birds to poke around making certain things were getting done right. He would take it personally if a house had to burn much more than a wheel barrow load of wood in deepest winter for failure of the place to hold heat.
Faces set in labor, sweat dripping, took their orders and put their backs into it. Many of them slightly familiar, like faces recognized at the grocery store, even if you’d never swapped names or held a single conversation. Shared amongst some of the refugees was the same slightly wide-eyed gaze of those who’d been through a terrible trauma. Again. They’d just had a taste of what the wilds offered and weren’t keen on any more nights outside with monsters on their asses.
Most of the people who’d escaped Safe Harbor either hadn’t matriculated, or, if they had, they hadn’t participated in the dungeon runs and Adventurer life. They’d lived as noncombatants, protected behind the walls of the city. That was fine, Alexander knew not everybody was cut out for the bloody stuff. But they were in for a rude awakening if they thought they were going to be treated like kids up here.
Time to grow up and get your hands dirty, he thought, staccatos of hammers working, shouts, grunts, and the general din of hard work underscoring his assertion. Dirty hands…the nagging whisper in his head was silenced by their arrival at the greenhouse Granny had commissioned for the Muspelheim flora she’d gathered before their close call with the dragon. Stepping into the glass building was like walking into an oven.
“Whew!” He huffed, not liking at all the heavy heat.
“You bet! Now you know why I got to take a bath after doing my rotation in here. Like a sauna, my knickers are soaked if I’m here even five minutes.” Granny replied.
One of the reasons for the heat was quite obvious: a woody vined plant like a rose, black, almost charred looking stems woven through a metal wire trellis. Flowers bloomed, but where they should have had petals there were living flames, blue with heat. Flowers made of azure fire, like burning sulfur. How appropriate for a realm of volcanism. And how utterly alien to see here on Gaia.
Granny went to the furnace rose and grabbed a pair of light tongs and a set of heavy shears. With practiced ease, she held a blossom with the tongs and cut the flower from the stem. Over the course of a minute the fire’s flicker slowed, dimmed, and it congealed into petals, still vaguely shaped like tongues of flame. Wild. Magical.
“They bloomed a few days ago.” He was informed by a still gloating Granny.
“I’m the only chick on this whole great big rock awesome enough to be cultivating torch flowers.” She swaggered.
Alexander found no way to disagree with her. She must have used her class’s abilities to get the plants from a different realm to take root. It was pretty impressive. Not that he was going to let on, whatever the tiny harvester had cooked up, she was already going to be lording it over him.
When the last of the heat shimmer disappeared from the blossom in her tongs, she took it and handed it to him for the honors.
Without a word he took the smallest bite of the petal and nearly gagged from molten spiciness that assaulted the back of his throat, a burn that made a chocolate primotali jealous. After a few choking coughs, he pulled up the relevant information from its mystical scroll of Gaian nonsense.
Prometheus Rose Blossom: petals of congealed flame, grown from the rich thermal magic of a Muspelheim dungeon core bear their native plane’s properties in flavor and property. Extracts from these petals will slowly increase in temperature unless properly insulated before spontaneously combusting in a violent burn. Syrupy extract oil acts as a vicious oxidizer at combustion temperature.
Caution! Volatile at room temperature and prone to autoignition.
“Wonderful! It’ll just set itself on fire and burn the whole goddamn place down with it!” He remarked, mostly to himself.
How did Granny know it’d be useful to his problem? Unless…
“Granny Nguyen, you sneaky witch! You got an analysis skill, didn’t you?!” He accused, both overjoyed and put out.
Having the ability to decipher the properties and uses of the metaphysical and sometimes not obvious properties of this new world was a god send. Greater Analyze was surpassingly rare and Alexander would be infinitely grateful to be done having to sample and compile notes about every last goddamned thing.
Smugness radiated from the tiny woman and she brushed her shoulders, flicking away the dust of the undeserving masses.
“I’m now fully capable to start brewing alchemical wonders that will make you and Saki green with envy. Granted, only with the plants, mosses, roots, fruits, or herbs with which I am familiar, or their derivatives. But yes. Verdant Forager is expanding. I think it might be close to changing, I feel…pressure, like my skin’s too tight sometimes.”
That was terribly exciting. They knew class abilities expanded through practice, Alexanders had done so on a couple of occasions, but it looked like Annita’s industrious application of her skills was pushing the boundaries.
“Okay, the Promethius Roses here might help our wax burn, but that doesn’t do anything about the wicks.” Alexander reminded the preening harvester, trying not to smile along with her.
He had walked right into her trap.
“Behold!” She crowed in a rich tone, pulling a strip of woven bark rope from a counter top and flailing it at him.
“Ahuh, it’s a very nice piece of black string. Very stringy. Just look at it, in all its burlapy glory.” Alexander sassed drily, unknowing of what was special about a fuzzy bark string.
“And you wouldn’t have possibly conspired with Brigitte O’Connor to pass me between you like some kind of sex bong right?” He inquired as a follow up, because he had no intellectual reason not to just ask and not social grace to know he shouldn’t.
“I was playing with the sap, it’s basically the same as the petals, but thicker and won’t evaporate, so I don’t think it’s as good as the petals. And we did, Brig caught feels and I couldn’t watch her do the unrequited lover dance, you’re mine, and also hers, it’s cool for us if it’s cool for you.” Granny narrated, savoring this moment, “But! Smoking hot banging and cuddles most affectionate aside, just look at this little beauty! The dried stems have these long, fine fibers so I tinkered around with making them into strings for hanging this other Muspelheim cactus fruit that has, like, lava inside it or something. And, what do you think I found, eh, Alexander von Bismark?”
“I’m not the president, or mayor, or whatever anymore, remember?” He rebutted, hoping to at least put those jokes behind him.
With flamboyant yet graceful gestures, Granny positioned the crudely woven short length of rope, its charcoal black fibers fraying, over one of the flowers of radiant blue flame. Nothing happened for several seconds. At the point of giving her a taste of some more sarcasm, Annita Nguyen’s glory was at hand, the fine filaments of bark rope lit with magnesium intensity white incandescence, throwing harsh relief shadows against the walls of the greenhouse.
Alexander had to turn his head aside, the painful spikes of light digging at his eyes.
“Damn! Warn a guy!” He groused, and rubbed his orbs, the sunspots dancing in his vision.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Just like the menage a trois, Granny liked springing surprises on him to watch him jump. Well, joke’s on her! He was down to clown with two most awesome specimens of tier three humanity, and he didn’t give a damn who knew it.
She pulled the fibrous rope from the heat source and the piercing glow faded, faint whisps of smoke coming from the burned white tips of the string.
“Accelerant? Check. Wick? Double check. I’m the solution to all your problems, pretty boy!” Granny said.
Chest thrown back, legs spread apart with one hand on hip, Granny pushed a victory sign toward him again and declared “Granny Nguyen wins again!”
He bowed his head in defeat and endured the princess laugh, “Hoh! Hoh! Hoh! Now walk your goddess back to her rooms and give her a back rub! With feeling, my towering worshipper!”
Brig came in later that afternoon and together, with Granny napping on the couch, they made a set of molds to pour wax/fire petal extract candles with their dried rose stem fiber wicks. When the wax cooled it locked the extract into itself, no autoignition. They were seemingly made to be used together, Alexander thought. Or, maybe, candle technology was just vaster than he had given it credit for.
“I heard I’m property now,” Alexander said while they worked, “Some kind of matriarch cabal involved in keeping me tied to the town forever.”
Brigitte O’Connor side eyed the dark-haired man a few years her junior and wondered how much he was fishing and how much he’d weedled out of Granny. That twisty brain, less surprisingly tied to the unfathomable Outsiders than he ever admitted, probably was putting two and two together to make five, but he surprised folk all the time seeing shit they really thought they’d hidden. Soon enough she decided that there wasn’t any reason to hold back. Clearly, he was on board, their late-night romps and a fandamntastic breakfast were proof enough of that.
“Eh,” She wagged a hand back and forth, “More like I caught feels and realized it when you lot piled out of the dungeon looking like you tried to fuck a wood chipper. Heart seized like I don’t remember happening before, and my guts got all tight. Decided there wasn’t any point beating around the bush, got Bonny to pass a message to Annita and she said we’d give it a try. She’s a big’ol softie is that witch.”
“Shotgun meat in the sandwich.” Was Alexander’s reply, already thinking ahead.
He’d never suffer blanket exile that way. Brig scowled at him when she realized his intent but yielded to the rite of Shotgun and they continued crafting in companionable silence.
A big paper lantern made from stiff steel wire and cardstock enshrouded the smooth cylinder of composite wax. A fluffy tuft of hastily braided string that had surely absorbed some of the wax and extract while it was in liquid phase stood proud. Alexander lit the wick with an oxytorch and turned his head aside in anticipation of the flare of light. A white flash behind his eyelids was replaced by a soft, yet insistent, orange glow.
“Well, I’ll be!” praised the Amazon red head, a wide smile at the substantial glow casting shadows in the kitchen of his, now their, Lab, which was he supposed, just a home, rather than a laboratory.
He’d hesitated to call the place home, given that the place he’d grown up was just a little ways away, not a quarter mile. That hesitation was born from attachment to the past, and to the two statues of beloved people who had, until recently, occupied the upstairs where he’d left them so long ago. No point holding back now, though. This was the now. His parents lie somewhere in the future, if ever, and he had to keep moving himself or miss out on what this wild life had to offer.
Four days after that, on into the evening, Alexander piddled around his workshop, laying plans. Sketching out ideas for how to make use of the new Direbee candles, the pyromaniac flowers, and more. He had all kinds of things laying around from hunting dungeons and dealing with Gaia’s own brand of fun. Now seemed a good time to get around to making himself a new set of weapons, his spear was Ben’s now, and his knife was shattered. He was out of Golem High Steel too, and most of the silver. But there were still things available. Dragon bone. The Reaper’s scythe, stashed away all those years ago. Skin Peeler knives. All sorts of things…
Bonny exploded through his door, arms full of a slime covered scaled thing that looked like a bat had sexed up an alligator and she hollered “I hatched a dragon from the core! It’s bonded, I’m a Chimeral Sovran! She’s adorable!” and fled giggling madly with a chirping hatchling clutched in her arms. He blinked rapidly a few times, trying to force the ebullient tirade to register and then laid down his pencil and compass, the schematic abandoned. Then he helped empty some ale kegs with the lads and ladies at Survivor’s Well, which was over capacity, and whose patrons included a good many newcomers who learned quickly by observing that it was good and proper to pat the bar top and say “thanks” before you ordered. Thanks to the ones who’d gone before. Thanks to those who were still there at your side, working to make a life in this transformed world.
image [https://imgur.com/3D1kmaW.png]Another week gone by in a flash, Bonny Richards, along with the scouts, had found a couple of field dungeons up toward Millinocket, by the lakes. Farther south, back near the hyper break, they found even more dungeon cores about twenty miles outside of Safe Harbor, damned near the first ones they’d cleared on leaving the city. The dragon pulse flowed strongly in those places, it would seem. Muspelheim had not formed a new core on Verona island, unfortunately, but there was reason to believe it would, in time. Still, two other cores were located within the week. With her hawk, the dragon hatchling too young to fly and therefore following her like a reptilian German shepherd puppy, the Chimeric Sovran led trains of heavily guarded Normals to be matriculated into Gaia’s struggle.
Things happened quickly after that. Mostly taken care of without his need to make decisions, just jobs for the last Garifalte to complete. Thank all the gods above, below, and in between for that. By the time Alexander had figured out, mostly thanks to aid from a wonderful lady who used to make candles for a side hustle, how to get enough lanterns to light up the streets of Falcon’s Rest and shed the dark of night, the refugees now filling the walls of the town had been run through the dungeons to matriculate.
Each was brought to Alexander Gerifalte for a Greater Analyze, and their Scroll recorded for posterity in the book of citizens kept by Lucy, who was the leader of a council of twelve rotating citizens of the town to make decisions that would then go up for a referendum. Not a perfect system of governance, by any stretch, but that, just like the new steel coins minted by Jules Reynolds to take the place of a common currency, was also progress.
Each was then put under sway of the Contract, revised with a couple of new rules
Bring no harm to one who has rendered you aid and comfort under their roof, or from whom you have taken food or drink, under pain of death or exile.
Very fae language, but, since everyone in the town had accepted the aid and comfort from the initial townsfolk, and traditional bean suppahs were prepared as potluck affairs to which nearly everyone contributed, the new law was damned near inviolable for bringing harm against your neighbor. The final law would have made an economist proud.
No man may intentionally destroy, modify, or counterfeit currency under pain of death or exile nor aid or abet one who does.
Thusly shielded from the most obvious forms of chicanery, should some unworthy be tempted, the town economy of shared labor, barter, traded favors, and general community service yielded way to a more traditional environment. It was good, Alexander knew, but he had liked living in a world where money had no value, only people. At least nobody had thought to try to resurrect credit cards, he was going to be forced to arrange for a monster to find its way to the person’s bedroom who tried that.
It took time, most of the summer, but the refugees stopped being refugees and started being accepted as citizens of the town. Soon enough they became neighbors. Friends. One of Us. Before the first frost that autumn, the only real separation between the original sixty odd settlers who had joined Alexander’s pilgrimage and or banishment, depending on how you wanted to look at it, was that the original settlers of Falcon’s Rest were all tier three humans, while the newcomers were tier two.
There was not enough of the catalytic Red Wyrmling’s blood to push everyone through to the blood line awakening. At about three ounces per person, the volume of a double shot, and three quart or thirty-two ounce mason jars left, they could only boost eleven people per jar. Soon, twenty-two additional tier threes joined the awoken, split evenly across genders, with one jar in reserve in case they needed its alchemically potent powers.
Just as well, it had taken nearly one complete Calander year following the advance to tier three, but on the winter solstice the female members of the original crew experienced their first ovulation since the pulse. They had gotten an unbidden blue scroll indicator.
He was at home when it happened cooking for Brig and Granny. The both of them were upstairs in a copper wash tub steaming after some particularly grungy field work, Annita with her magic gardens, Brigitte driving off some marauding werewolves trying to pick off gatherers in the nearby woods. It would be nice to see children again, Alexander thought, when the announcement from the ladies went up.
“Alexander, you get up here and give me a baby, and I mean right this instant Mister!” Granny Nguyen shouted at him from upstairs, just a few short seconds after the fortuitous announcement.
Clangor of the utensil dropped from numb fingers went unnoticed and a sensation not entirely unalike mortal terror shot through Alexander, climbing his spinal cord.
“I’m sorry, but what did you say?!” He asked, his voice slightly higher pitched than hers had been.
A slop of water sounded, followed by the heavy thud of rapid footsteps, and Granny appeared in the stairwell dripping water from her nude figure, her finger unerringly aimed center mass at him, and Vietnamese maternal femininity commanded greater obedience than a Roman Emperor when she yelled, “Here! Baby! Now!”
Thus compelled, he ascended the stairs like a man going to the gallows. When he arrived in the bedroom, Annita was splayed out on the bed with a heated stare, a grin, and both hands pointing to her nethers.
“It’s nakey time Alexander.” She told him, and he complied woodenly, shedding his clothes.
From the side, Brig opted out of parenthood with the grace and tact that he had come to expect and love from the towering Amazon.
“Give her my share too, I got beasties to reap, and miles of asses to kick before I sleep. But I’m gonna watch, to make sure you do it right, and if we dance, it’s birth control hole!” the coppery haired beauty called, and she swatted him on the rump on his way to do his duty.
Time vanished.
General consensus was that tier three humans now had a seventy-two hour mating season characterized by intense lust that ramped on the first day into the second. Pheromones got so thick even the tier two humans experienced the wildness, even though, by the rules of the new pseudo biology of Gaia, they were too immature to breed. It was the womenfolk of Falcon’s Rest who called the shots for that rampant period.
Half got themselves knocked up, deciding that they wanted to start families. Nobody knew what gestation was going to be like, but Alexander figured it wouldn’t be shorter than before. He had almost a year until the dadhood bomb went off, it was fine. Problems for future Alexander.
The other half of the lady folk decided to wait, not being specifically ready to bring new humans into the world. Or those like Brig, who refused to come off the front lines long enough to welp a babe. Someday. Just not yet.
Just as well, the loss of so many experienced matriculated had put the people of the far north with their backs to the wall. Dungeon hunts were ongoing, but, by the first snows, most of the nearby cores were gone, conquered, and consigned to the aether by Gaia’s WORTHY. Alexander abstained from these, it was important to speed up the advancement of the others. Not everyone was willing or able to fight. Some, like Scott, while technically able, just didn’t have it in them. Others, like Annita, didn’t have a class suited for it, combat wasn’t their nature, even if they could force themselves to it. Alexander was made to destroy monsters, it was what he’d asked for all those months ago, when he’d christened himself on a dungeon core’s death. Monster hunting came natural to him, even more than tinkering in his workshop. Which made it his responsibility to see the folk in Falcon’s Rest protected from things that would prey on them. Annita’s conception of a child, his child, their child, made that an imperative. Alexander was a serious young man, and took seriously his responsibilities.
That is why he was, at this current moment, stalking the streets at night, around ten thirty by his best reckoning, a time not by accident. He had an appointment, so to speak. One last thing, a loose end to singe to close up the stitches perfectly.
Cold winds blew and a Nor’easter’s trailing edges left flakes sporadically falling sometime just past the new year, the third winter since the Pulse. Alexander’s coat shed the wind, as did the wool underthings, clothing in layers that anybody who’d experienced real winter learned to adopt to stay warm when it got frigid. His boots left footprints in the fresh snow on the streets, but made no sound. He’d just last week pushed Stalk to Greater Stalk, by studious application of his abilities against a dangerous prey. He moved like a ghost now, when he wanted to.
Tonight, he wanted to.
Warm lights from lit lanterns, kept trimmed and replaced as necessary by a duty as Lantern Keeper of Falcon’s Rest, currently the title held by Kevin “Major” Meijer, who could send duplicated shadows running through the town to check the status of the candles while his body sat in the warmth of his house, or a nice chair next to one of the fireplaces in the new tavern recently opened by competitors to Alvin and Thomas’ devil juice manufacture. The new place was run by a Vintner class. More specialized than the men, she was only capable of the synthesis of fruit fermented beverages. They were potent and potable however, and she was cranking out barrels of the stuff. In the interest of fairness, Thomas aged her a few barrels to get her started. Then they competed as diligently as possible to keep the townsfolk well sauced.
Not for him though the ciders of Alice’s Wonderland nor the heady ales of Survivor’s Well. Tonight he had some business. Not business, he supposed, letting his eyes inscribe the image of the town he knew so well now into the back of his mind, all the details clicked into place against the mental map that lived there. More like a debt to repay. Somebody owed for Kim Summers. For Hilde Baumgartner. For David Grosse and Dan Price, and all the folk who’d loved them, somebody owed. It had taken him a long time to work it out. Probably too long, but he wasn’t a naturally vindictive person, although he was catching on fast.
Somebody gave the orders. Somebody who hadn’t been limited by the Contract had been running the clandestine organization that sat behind the Guilds, somebody who had been able to hide a small number of matriculated from the Law, to make those murders happen. The more people knew a secret the less likely it was kept.
Alexander sat down with Ben and Dr. Patel, one who’d known and dealt with killers, some of them his own comrades, and the other a professional mind reader, even before her supernatural abilities manifested. There was a temptation to simply have the good doctor read all the people in town, but that was a line nobody wanted to cross, Dr. Patel herself leading that charge. For one thing, she told him it was a good way to get hanged by a mob when he asked her what she thought about the idea. She had a point there. So, they talked. And he learned.
It came down to ego. The one thing all psychopaths had in common was they were incredibly self-interested, and, mostly, with egos that reflected that self-interest. The smart ones, the effective ones, they figured out how to blend in.
Alexander had done some reading. Criminal psychology. Not from his Old Man’s library, but from the stuff brought from Safe Harbor by an Archivist class, middle aged man named John Ellington that everybody called The Giver, after that sad old story. Blessed by his class, he now had a perfect memory, did The Giver, for anything he read. So, he read everything he could and wrote it down so that as little could be lost as he could manage. A scribe classed lady was helping him now with the project, she could write four different texts simultaneously with telekinetically controlled fountain pens, somehow. Must have four brains or something. Whatever the case, he’d had a treatise or two on what drove criminality and had provided Alexander the copies he’d asked for.
It took almost two months of diligence to narrow the field. To follow the trail of his quarry to its den. At the turn of the year, the Entropic Venator had as close to definitive proof as a man was going to get in this world and decided on his target’s name: Gary Lee Harvard.
Mr. Harvard ticked all the boxes. Jovial, but not known for having a good sense of humor. Always smiling was Gary, but somehow never laughing. Frequently in the company of others, but, mostly, only people Alexander had categorized as weak willed or tame. The kind of folk Brig liked to prod for laughs and who he made very nervous when he was around, for reasons he didn’t understand. It was fine, it takes a village, but he preferred now the Bens and Brigs of the world for his company. Gary had lovers, men and women both, but no one steady. The men had been Guildies, and had perished in defense of Safe Harbor. None of the women he’d interviewed had anything particularly warm to say about him, they suggested he was either a completely selfish lover or going through the motions. Nothing proof positive, but moving in the right direction.
Other signs that had been suggestive was that, when he’d matriculated, he'd drawn a class called Bloodless Butcher. It was sort of like the opposite of Shiv. Instead of weaving things back together, Mr. Harvard’s magic unwove them. Very nasty stuff. And the guy had taken to it like a duck to water. In fact, he was one of the more promising prospects for an Adventure party.
A shame that, and Alexander shook his head, turning a corner instinctively, sort of like driving a commute done hundreds of times and not remembering the trip.
The class, while not directly itself anything remarkable, was telling for what it said about the man. Your class, bequeathed by Gaia, the will of the awakened planet itself, knew you better than you ever would yourself. Your soul was laid bare to the consciousness of the Earth and when it integrated your core with its mana flow and made you WORTHY there were some things an observant person might learn about your nature. Alexander had seen everybody in the city. A man who killed without blood, butchering them like so much meat, spoke volumes to a man with a class that decreed them Venator. A hunter. His prey ran. It fought. And, when it died, you and it shared something intimate, never to be shared again. A transfer of life force. A butcher only dealt with dead meat, without passion, without feeling. Not conclusive. Just veeeeery suggestive.
Which had led to another check box.
When the dungeon break that killed Safe Harbor occurred, some folk had panicked. Completely come undone, had to be herded like sheep to get out of there alive. A few had responded with total calm, most of them non-Guild Adventurer’s or the pros who’d earned their tenures with the Guilds through competence and had the experience. But there was an outlier in that data.
Alexander was a regular in the bar this month past. Part of that was because he was growing more comfortable in his skin as he got older. Part of it was to conduct interviews with the refugees while their memories were still reliable on the events of that awful day when the city fell. Casual chats over beer or wine or card games or some such social lubricants, harmless conversations he managed to eventually turn to getting their personal story of the dungeon break, assisted sometimes with the brews Alvin toyed with that were spiked with the pure stuff, not his watered-down liquor. He’d gotten the okay on that from Lucy first, the old crew knew what potential for anarchy came from indulging her boys’ experiments.
Tier three bodies intaking the unadulterated stuff Alvin and Thomas made wound up black out drunk. Tier two’s would tell you anything you wanted to know for fifteen minutes until they passed out, remembering nothing, but waking with a two day hangover. It was like administering barbituates, the stuff just ran over central nervous systems in lower tier humans. He wasn’t going to make Dr. Patel do mind bending, but he wasn’t above letting folk make bad decisions, especially when he was reciprocating them. Alvin and Thomas wore shit eating grins every time some brave fool ordered a shot of Goodnight, neat, and he had to join them because he’d sort of goaded them into it so he could extract their tales, with as few filters or inhibitions as possible.
The hangovers were worth it.
Everybody he spoke to who recalled seeing Gary Lee Harvard cool as a cucumber on the day of the fall. No, he wasn’t an Adventurer, but, yes, he did always seem to be around them. No, he didn’t leave the city, he was a messenger for the Guilds, always coming and going. He was a hell of a gambler, was Gary, not afraid to bluff on the all in, no nerves at all to call the pot. Come to think of it, didn’t he manage to get out of the city with a huge mess of supplies? Pretty lucky eh? And not a drop of sweat on the guy, very calm, very composed. Hell, you might even say he’d been enjoying himself when most folk were shitting themselves with terror. Fear don’t touch old Gary Lee, no sir. It was too much to be coincidence.
Psychopaths don’t feel the way normal people do. Like a big velvet blanket covered over their emotions. Fear turned into excitement for most of them, they enjoyed the risk taking, relished it. Danger was one of the only things that actually let them feel something. The more Alexander learned about Gary Lee Harvard, the more certain he was. And, tonight he’d made his decision.
One more turn of a corner, down a narrow alley between a leather working shop, and a bakery, the ovens cold now at this time of night. Alexander didn’t need the high gibbous moon to see but he did appreciate its silver sheen aesthetic.
Right on time. Very punctual guy was Mr. Harvard. The outline of the man that had become familiar to him as he’d kept increasingly close watch on his prey appeared at the other end of the alley. This was the cut through he liked to take on his way home from a Wednesday night poker game. Grey-blue eyes looked past Alexander, they were just two semi strangers come passing in the night.
“What a night, huh?” the last Gerifalte called in greeting, nearly cheerful.
He was glad to get this over with. Some wounds had to be lanced to heal correctly.
“Yeah, sure. Nice night. Barely even cold, but I hear that’s coming.” Rejoined Mr. Harvard, not slowing on his way home.
It was a common thing to fill conversational space, speaking of the weather around Mainers. They’d go on for hours about it, fill out a farmer’s almanac from the last five years from memory if you let them. Also, an incredibly vital cover to learn for a serial killer wanting to blend in and completely unable to appreciate the sublime beauty of a January night lit by a near full moon.
“Hey, Gary, what were you doing this night last year?” Alexander asked, his disturbing gaze used deliberately now, sinister eyes locked onto the face of the man who had not a single real friend, and who did not love a single thing outside himself, perhaps did not even recognize that there were actual people outside of himself.
The question had come from left field and, in that brief moment of surprise, the face revealed everything Alexander needed to know. Because, this night last year, Gary Lee Harvard, to maintain a grip on the seat of power built on a radical plan to farm dungeons that grew more and more dangerous as they were left unchecked, and proportionally more prosperous, ordered humans to murder other humans. A week from that day, the assassins he’d sent would come through an open gate and kill Alexander’s friends and neighbors. Within that same year, the dungeon cores, ripe with Gaia’s mana and completely unimpeded by regular cullings of their spawn, would burst and pour the spawn of eldritch worlds over the walls of Safe Harbor, killing two thousand and change of the last remnants of humanity. All because of Gary, and men who’d followed his lead.
Alexander saw. And Mr. Harvard saw that he saw.
“Why did you do it? There are so few of us left, but we had the Contract, we had civilization. Me and my friends did what the Guilds should have. So why did you fuck it all up letting the dungeons break?” Alexander asked, voice pitched low, needing to know.
“It was mine, all of it. You took from me, so you had to pay.” Came the answer, detached from emotion, “I was going to be rich. I could have had it all, and I could have had even more. I gambled on the dungeons, and the turn burned me. Too bad, it cost me the Guilds to buy time to get out. But I have new deck, so why not play another hand?”
Gary jerked a broad razor-edged chopper of a cleaver from his belt and summoned the powers that Gaia gifted her children to survive in this awakened land, the strength to walk the path, quick stepping to eliminate the one that had pierced his veil of subterfuge. But Gary was only matriculated twelve weeks ago, and had faced no real test of skill or developed his talents, outside those of the manipulator, the murderer by proxy. Alexander was in the fullness of his gifts and had faced down worse monsters than Gary, if none as revolting.
Without pulling his knife, he batted aside the slow chop for his jugular, flashed his Greater Entropic Aura to destroy the man’s Soak, as well as unraveling the strands of magic meant to vivisect him, and only then, faster than Gary Lee Harvard could follow, casually put a Fairborn Sykes style dagger into Gary’s chest, its metal infused with chaos magic.
Blindside
Baleful Smite
Gary Lee Harvard, Bloodless Butcher, and oh how ironic that class was for the deeds he’d done, never saw the blow that killed him and died essentially instantly, with very little pain. It was not in Alexander’s nature to cause unnecessary hurt. Not even to monsters. All that mattered was that they didn’t live to hurt anybody else. Not even after what this poor broken souled creature did to his people.
By the laws of the Contract, Gary Lee Harvard was a threat to humanity, and so were any who had aided him or those of the Guilds who had embarked on their misguided effort to farm the dungeons. Alexander was obligated to slay this man, by the laws he'd sworn to obey, under pain of death or exile. The satisfaction of seeing the man who’d given the orders that resulted in Kim’s murder dead at his feet had nothing to do with the law.
Whoever said revenge wouldn’t make you feel better was a spineless fuck, Alexander decided, as he hauled the corpse by its pant leg to hang from the lamp post in the town square, that same square he’d once firebombed the Goblin King.
Using the dead man’s belt, he tied him off and left him for the dawn. He’d told Mayor Durnham and his closest confidantes what he intended two months ago, when his suspicions that the man responsible for the shadow Guild had not died when Safe Harbor fell. A nagging suspicion, more a hunch, had increasingly led to the belief that whoever had exerted so much influence they could arrange the attack would almost certainly have made arrangements for their Normal self to blend with the evacuees. Getsome and Impervious, Scott Kaczynski, Dr. Patel, and his Engineers party, all agreed that it was possible. Nathan and Mark, backed by the two Adventurer parties, and the rest of the two dozen or so that led most aspects of Falcon’s Rest declared that Alexander was best suited for the job, by class and inclination, of rooting them out.
The last Gerifalte did not disagree, or even pretend to be bothered by that assessment. He was what he was, and he would have felt compelled to search for answers regardless of who they chose, or never know peace again. Not with a child on the way, certainly. That had roused all sorts of hidden instincts towards ridding his environment of whackos, creepers, and potential horrors from the contested zones.
Had he found no substantial evidence, the matter would be put to rest. Alexander could sleep full nights again, knowing that he’d done what he could to honor his murdered comrades and to keep his people safe. But the evidence was there to be found. Justice was done. Frontier justice, absent a court of law, but that was about the best you were going to get for now.
Question was, could he do it again? Another Gary Lee might crop up, and what if they weren’t so confident in their megalomania that they didn’t own up to it? Alexander paused on a lamp lit street with the cold on his cheeks to think on that.
No, he’d have killed Gary tonight, even if the sonofabitch hadn’t confessed. He wouldn’t have struck if he hadn’t been certain. How certain?
Another time, maybe he would be wrong. It was possible. Unlikely, Alexander was nothing if not thorough in his research, but it was not impossible he would make a mistake. That was a thing that hurt him to contemplate, killing an innocent. So don’t make mistakes. If he killed an innocent, he’d turn himself in to face execution. He could live with that. But he couldn’t do nothing. His children’s lives would hang in the balance if a creature like Mr. Harvard were allowed to live to rebuild his den, to fester like a diseased sore in Falcon’s Rest. Mama and Papa Gerifalte had raised him better than that: those who served paid the toll on their souls to do their duty.
That last hardened the foundation under his decision. All the Mr. Harvard’s had to go, as quickly as he could find them, just like the too ambitious men who had taken hold of the Guilds of the past and let themselves be suckered by a lunatic in their greed. The new Guilds were wiser, led by more pragmatic minds, people who truly understood the stakes: everything. And Alexander would be keeping an eye on them, just in case they forgot. Ben told him, when he reported the killing later, that nothing keeps powerful people in check like knowing there’s a knife between their shoulder blades. In his gruff words, “Kiddo, you get to be the knife. Congrats. If it makes you feel better, you’ll do it better than anybody else I can think of.”
It didn’t make him feel better. He hated the idea that it took a sword of Damocles and a set of magically binding laws to make people do the right thing. But Kim Summers and three friends, along with about two thousand folk in Safe Harbor took Alexander’s naiveté with him to the other side, so he nodded and accepted that role. Not that anyone was likely to follow in Mr. Harvard’s footsteps with the reminder of the consequences still swinging in the wind. Still, people had short memories.
It was a matter of time until someone came along that got ideas about feeding on their fellow man, those for whom that was their nature. And, because it was his nature, Alexander would kill monsters. All the monsters. Even the ones that wore human skins. Maybe especially those, their camouflage makes them particularly dangerous to mankind. Alexander shook his head in frustration at the waste of it and walked home to his reminder that most people were worth loving.
image [https://imgur.com/3D1kmaW.png]
One miserably cold, cloudy day in February, before the snows had even thought of melting, a quartet of strangers came to the gates of the town.
They were from Downeast. Way Downeast, a tiny burg just outside Philadelphia. Not much between Falcon’s Rest and their settlement, which they dubbed Liberty Bell. They bragged that they actually had the bell, pulled from the ruins of the massacred city. A dungeon had spawned there, but long since destroyed. These folks took care of business, no fooling around. The news they shared in a town hall meeting would have been shocking, if the townspeople of Falcon’s Rest had not already been hardened by multiple catastrophes.
News traveled faster farther south, there were more settlements, the travelers had stories to tell that spanned much of the North American continent, with some of it even coming first hand. Towns, cities, a few of them had done quite well for themselves, the lower mana densities in the south produced fewer dungeons, less virulent monsters spawned by Gaia herself, and less Enshrining of those with weaker mana constitutions. The settlers rejoiced at that, knowing that things had not gone so terribly everywhere. Even so, no kids or elderly survived the Pulse, north or south, and tier two humans could not bear children. The pregnancies of Falcon’s Rest’s citizens, birthed hope in the Flatlanders and they vowed to spread word that the future of man was in achieving tier three. That word would travel as swiftly as they could manage, the Flatlanders swore. That travel would be far and wide, settlements were springing up across the world, and they were passing communications between themselves, if slowly, as Adventurers scouted deep into the hinterlands between concentrations of humanity.
It had taken almost three years to stabilize enough to try to find survivors or colonists in the far north. But folk had found a foothold, and were growing hardier as Gaia pruned the dead wood from her children with the gentleness of a flensing knife. Unfortunately, there wouldn’t be any neighbors anytime soon. The hard men of the explorers had been astonished at the dangers abounding from the Belfast hyperdungeon break, and their advice was to give it wide berth, unless you be mighty warriors. Settlements down south, that wasn’t the big news.
Globally, some of the dungeons that had sat along particularly dense mana veins leeched enough power to achieve permanency at about the same time Safe Harbor did. That the dungeon break phenomenon wasn’t limited to New England, although none within the far north Maine country could have known with certainty, had been generally accepted conjecture. Over many a winter night of board games, booze, and friendly wagers, they’d philosophized as much. No, the generality of the dungeon breaks was but confirmation of fears held by the citizens of Falcon’s Rest. Not all had gone critical. Many even, did not, when the people living there showed more grit and wisdom than had the Guilds of Safe Harbor and they had followed Alexander’s course in parallel. Those that did, however, transformed regions aligned with the realm that spawned them.
The transfigured domains pocked the landscape of Gaia.
Forests once manicured by the logging industry or clear cut for agriculture transformed into fairy forests of towering trees never seen on Earth, their limbs forming a web of branches that permitted only a dim half light beneath them, territory of the beings of Tirnanog. There were goblins in those woods and hobgoblins to lead them, with a few ogres that had begun to vie for ascendancy to the vacant title of a goblin king in the region. There were Hags who took daughters from wombs to raise as witches. And unicorns, which hunted children who strayed too close to the wood line.
Along the coast, a tribe of merfolk took hold, claiming Islesboro as their domain and the waters around it. The sirens that sang on that island put chills into any sentient creature that heard their song. Hulking cephalopidic creatures patrolled the waters off shore, things with tentacles that made giant squid seem harmless. Others, built along the same general theme as a blue whale, if it had graboid jaws, armored scales fit for battleships, preyed on anything large enough or mana rich enough to draw their attention.
The great plains was a hodgepodge of varied territories, diverse in the domains that had claimed them. Yellowstone had become a vast domain of Muspelheim, to no one’s surprise. Massive floating crystals like sky scrapers hovering a mile above the earth, surrounded by myriad city sized islands covered by jungles were but one of the sights to be seen over Kansas. There was a region where night never ended, a full moon high taking the place of the sun across the horizon. Las Vegas was an enormous necropolis, ruled by a Lich. Keening banshees, gargoyles flitting between toppled ruins of the casinos, it was an inhospitable place to hear the travelers tell of it. They had not gone far inside the domain to learn more.
More locally, Muspelheim’s volcano, rendered dormant, was rekindled, and joined by two others, one rearing up from Sears Island to shadow the remnants of Safe Harbor, now overtaken by Nemeta, a verdant grassland, bog, and dense, almost tropical cedar rainforest that spanned Belfast to Swanville, such as might be found along the pacific north west. Dragons circled the volcanos, small ones, for now. There were other, more sinister, nightmares. Other realms and their denizens, bringing weary travelers across the planes of existence or predators, touches of the hundred and eight worlds that connected to Gaia, and mankind’s empire was reduced to shattered remnants, all confirmed by the belabored Adventurers who had risked their lives to seek out sign of civilization in the north.
That left Falcon’s Rest the bastion of humanity in the North, alone, to stand against the hordes nearby. In due time, fed on Gaia’s lifeblood, new dungeon crystals would emerge. New contested zones that had to be defended, or lost. There was opportunity there, in addition to danger.
But that wasn’t the big news either, however.
Upon Gaia’s surface now strode denizens of myth. Different from the spawn of the dungeons, these had agency beyond expansion, beyond winning the contested zones, spreading dominion of their worlds in the name of a conquest the survivors of Gaia knew nothing about, beyond the need to stop them. Many of these entities were refugees, fleeing terrible demons or fallen gods. Closed dungeons didn’t always expand, some of them opened paths that could be traversed two ways, if only for short windows of time. Those dungeon cores called gateways had been consumed to provide an ark of sorts, a safe haven from the ravages of horrors in those other realms, and closed swiftly behind them.
So it was that a world fresh off the shock of one apocalypse experienced another, more profound one: the advent of the otherkin. Sentient creatures that had dwelled in realms mostly separate, shadow worlds similar to Gaia but with their own histories, ecologies, magics, and passions traveled through the portals and found a land nearly emptied of those humans who had once proliferated.
When pockets of humanity encountered strange beings, obviously intelligent, and just as obviously not human, the expected outcomes were observed. Conflicts sprung anew. But not always, and not even for very long, humanity had not the strength to spare chasing gnomes into the mountains, elves into the forests or dwarves beneath the earth, or hunting phoenix in volcanic nests. No, the native folk of Gaia had greater concerns than the otherkin. Soon, mostly along the boundaries of the remnants of the old contested zones would come the second generation dungeons, new magical hotspots that drifted as Gaia’s dragon pulse shifted from the first wave of dungeon breaks.
Gaia was in desperate need of her children now, she could not sustain many waves of her energies being siphoned off and survive. Eventually the consciousness of the planet would fade with its aether and it would become merely a vessel for the inhabiting creatures. Perhaps one of those worlds would consume her entirely, creating a shattered mirror of their realities to take her place in the cosmos. Who knew?
But those were happenings in distant places and not so distant times for the survivors of Falcon’s Rest, and those stories would unfold as they must. Whatever the future held, these people did not fear, for they were dragon slayers in a land that now teemed with dragons.