I was full blown fighting with myself in that moment, so much so that I couldn’t even hear Kraken yelling advice through our mental link. The largest part of me wanted to dive into that little nugget of information and parse through every bit of knowledge for myself. I could feel the compacted swirl of different lives’ worth of memories tucked away in that tempting little marble, begging to be learned and experienced just one more time. The other, somewhat more sensible part of me, understood that real life does not wait for anyone, let alone almost immortal sorcerers. Figuring out that I at least owed it to the people that I’d saved thus far, I managed to secrete the orb full of knowledge away into Gungnir as I stepped out of my stone dome to manage the rabble, barely able to handle ignoring the greenish-blue strands of memories calling out to me, fragments of memories such as a skeletal hand peeling a young girl’s skin off in the shape of a page or a condensed series of images of a young boy growing trees and pulping them in liquid mana.
My entire next week was spent holding everyone’s hand, irritatingly enough since I had plenty of shit that I actually wanted to do. First, I had my elemental sergeants continue the effort of combing through wrecked suburbia and returning the area to its peaceful, pre-human era by getting rid of any and all buildings that I hadn’t specifically said were exempt from magical bulldozing. Part two consisted of using those same elementals to set up the basics of shelter complete with pre-carved runes for me to empower that allowed for basic air conditioning and water conjuration so people could actually live in this bum ass part of Arizona. The Luneks plus the meager amount of humans from Remy and Fernando’s group ended up settling by the nearby river that nobody could remember the name of and I made a few solar panels for them to experiment with even though the Luneks would probably lose their shit over it. Several large columns of transmuted crystal were planted into the earth so that only about three feet of them were sticking out of the ground, each covered with molded granite and connected to the solar panels so they could be the inhabitants emergency mana batteries for whatever the hell they wanted.
Part three was me making and following through on the offer to transport any person that didn’t want the desert life to join the group at New Richmond, which pretty much all of the humans did. I left Kraken in Sunstone Castle to repair the sixty or so golems that had been damaged and also to boost production until I was sitting on five thousand golems. The caveat is that after the repairs to the original army, the main priority was to have the underground batteries charged up to full first, just in case I had to deploy to Greenland early.
Phoenix, Arizona had taken on a very different, more natural look than it sported in the past hundred years. Gone were the metal mountains giving the sky the middle finger in the wretched desert heat and in their places were stone longhouses and a few large barns by the river. As Severak and his group of unstable Luneks wanted to stay in the inhospitable desert, I figured I might as well let them, but giving them the basics of shelter and magic A.C. let my conscience be free and clear.
By the time I had shaken out ever last straggler and shuttled them to where they needed to be, I finally noticed that Acantha, Remy, Fernando, Versonae, and Arglyn were tiptoeing around like I was some magical giant on a rampage. “What?” I cursed, whipping around as I returned to Phoenix from my last trip to New Richmond. “What is it? Is it something I did or said? Did I suddenly get really ugly?”
All five stared at me as if I actually had grown another head. Acantha’s hair glowed with a warm fire’s glow as Remy and Fernando looked at each other, Remy’s dark skin glistening already with sweat even as Fernando’s tanned complexion welcomed the sun. Versonae’s light feline coloring served to deflect the sun’s rays even as the heat was just starting to ramp up which was causing Arglyn to pant.
“Here.” Acantha reached forward a fist, turning it over and opening it to reveal several clumps of fur. “I figured you forgot this for your DNA bank. It’s a chunk of fur from every Lunek here.”
“It’s kinda creepy that you let people experiment on themselves, hombre.” Fernando cut in, fingering his magical bats. “I mean, I know it’s voluntary but damn, that’s some freaky shit right there.”
Not willing to argue the morals of self-medication or experimentation, I gave a quick thanks and snatched the clumps, feeding them to my little golem as I muttered my thanks. I watched the surreptitious glances they all gave each other, clearly they had more than enough time to talk and get each other up to speed. I wasn’t privy to the details but this group right here was already on the fast track to becoming friends. Irritating, but probably inevitable. I had my own plans that took priority. Arglyn and Versonae were two powerful Luneks, the best of their tribe according to what Severak claimed as well as what Kraken’s and my own magical senses said. These two were going to be bodyguards for Johnny and Reeanth, they just didn’t know it yet.
Two days later . . .
“Yo! Quit droppin’ off your damn strays, man!” Scott half-hearted growled as he pulled on a beer as Mark downed his own. Night falls very differently in the forest of the Eastern United States. The deciduous landscape heralds its own darkening as the trees do their best to shade the forest floor well before the sun has truly fallen. The desert comes alive at night, but simply can’t compare to the sheer amount of life in the forest. And humanity seems to be dead set on adding to the cacophony.
“Keep’em comin!” Mark countered loudly, glaring at Scott as he slammed his own mug into the tree stump table we were sitting at, wiping off the humidity induced sweat. New Richmond had really come along in the time that I’d been gone, so much so that they easily had more than enough space to accommodate the refugees I’d dumped on their doorstep. Remy and Fernando took to the people here as if it had been home all along for them and Versonae and Arglyn weren’t looked at twice. Johnny and Reeanth were still shooting glares at me as I had told them the night before about my plan for the two Luneks to be their bodyguards but it didn’t faze me at all. Mostly they were pissed that I left them behind to conquer a city without them.
“Look! Just because you found a way to make ‘the world’s best magical wood’ from pumping saplings full of mana and trade it to the Conglomerate for alcohol doesn’t mean you should drink it all!” Both Cassandra and Lovera were standing in front of the fire as they chewed out the men, the background of flames giving them the ‘Hell-derived-authority’ look.
“What?” That made my head spin. Just how far into multi-dimensional commerce did this group of idiots get while I was gone? “Who? Didn’t they fuckin’ take a chunk of humanity for all kinds of shit? I have so many questions about this!”
Mark and Scott both let out competing burps as Jamal popped out of the woodline, his dark green and black scales almost making look like an avenging shadow. “Yup! Until the Centauri put the screws to’em to put chunks of us back!” Reaching over, he snatched a beer and cracked it as he looked towards the treeline. “Hey! Come on out Lyra!”
As the slinky form of my forest’s secondary guardian unfurled from the shadow, her approach was far more hesitant than the overbearing dragonized man.
“Something about a witch coven asking politely for the seed humans to be put back for later?” Scott mused aloud, not even noticing the womanly figure coming towards the group. “The cyborgs don’t notice how much they talk when you drink with’em.”
“Yes, darling?” Lyra asked, flowing through the shadows as if made for them. Time with Jamal had done her good apparently. The squinted line to her brow was completely gone giving her face the much needed softness that served as a dryad’s natural lure. As the moment of hesitation fell away, Lyra willingly sauntered to her nook underneath Jamal’s outstretched arm, planting a wet kiss on his lips as she smoldered in the evening light.
“Who are you and what have you done with Leafy?” I joked, chucking a little acorn at her. “Did he pull that giant stick out of your ass or is that a different process with dryads? Maybe stickin’ one in?”
The little smile let me know that I was most likely on the right track. Good thing I could magically control my sex drive, otherwise I’d never have gotten anything done. The night fell away as I found myself partying as hard as the refugees here, anything to relieve the stress of the past months and I even saw some of the human refugees from Arizona throwin em back. It was weird though, the way I saw myself as different than human. It’s not just about having an upgraded body with magical reptilian vitality, but the mindset itself was different. No longer would my lifespan be limited to the average eighty years. No longer would a bone break set me back in life by a few months, laid up to heal. No longer would I have to deal with the concept of running out of time, because that simply wasn’t the case anymore. My magic, my sorcery, my very course of life altered the little stream that is me. And so for tonight, I partied.
During the party, I took the opportunity to force my new crew together under the influence of potent alcohol, pouring mugs of the dark brown stuff at a table and dragging people over. Arglyn sat heavily down across from Johnny as Versonae gracefully took her seat across from Reeanth. Acantha delicately sipped at her own mug across from me while Remy and Fernando watched from the other table, curious as to why they weren’t there with us.
“Everyone,” I started, looking at the five sitting around me. “Look at the person across from you. That’s your new partner. Arglyn, meet Johnny. Johnny is a kick-ass cultivator and Arglyn is a giant meat shield. Reeanth, meet Versonae. I’m pretty sure you both will have a good time together. And last but certainly not least, Acantha is the flaming witch over there, my vassal? Partner? Not really sure where you stand other than the fact that you’re the replacement for my brother till he gets back. Anyways, the general idea is that we’ll be in teams in the near future as we are literally almost ready to assault the North fucking Pole. Questions?”
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To be fair, the drunken stupor was to be expected as we were at least three hours into slamming back the alien liquor, or at least I was. “The only one who can say ‘no’ here is Johnny, just a reminder,” I clarified, conjuring ice cups and filling them up with water for the table. “Johnny is my friend but the rest of ya are my ‘vassals’, voluntarily except for the furries.”
“My lord, I don’t believe a drunken planning session is the best idea,” Reeanth cautioned, pulling my mug out of my hand. “Maybe when the sun rises we’ll have fresh minds for planning.”
“Bullshit!” Johnny yelled, standing up so fast he knocked over all the cups. “It’s the best time! I always wrote my papers drunk in school! Get’s that creativity goin’!”
“Damn right!” I agreed, waving my hand and covering the table in ice, shaping it to form what I remembered of Acantha’s rendition of the Hungry One’s fortress. The simulated ground was mostly flat in stark contrast to the gigantic, zombie and skeleton covered fortress complete with little ice sculptures of dragons, wyverns, dinosaurs, freaky things-BOOM! Reeanth slammed her maul into my sculpture, pulping it without destroying the table.
“Hell no!” Seems like I’m not the only one having a good time. “Have you even tried talking to them?” The entire table went silent as Reeanth’s words stumbled out the way my legs were doing.
“To the who?” Johnny asked, his eyes focusing in and out.
Taking a deep breath and gathering herself, Reeanth sat back down. “If they can build a castle then they can probably listen to reason. They are undead, not unthinking.”
Flames shot up into the sky as Acantha took a swig and melted the ice on the table. “You can’t reason with the undead! They already know what they want . . . you! They want your life, your blood, your soul, they want to drain you dry.”
It wasn’t funny because it was true, it was funny because Reeanth was plastered. Falling down, slur I mean shlurring her words all over the places as Johnny and Versonae did their best to hold her back and sometimes hold her up. Arglyn sat there glumly pounding his own drink as Versonae sipped at hers with wild eyes as she couldn’t help but watch these savage, uncouth humans drink themselves into the ground. We didn’t even notice the Karen-esque group as they moved closer to us with their arms crossed and faces pinched.
I could tell from their faces that they didn’t learn a goddamn thing from our last conversation, although from last time I distinctly remember three blondes, not four plus a brunette. Burping loudly as I rounded with a full mug, I squinted as their outlines sort of blurred together. “And you fine ladies think we should deal with the Hungry Ones how?” My question caught them off guard as their rant, I assumed, was of a different vein.
“Ignore them!” Jamal called out from the side, his hands mysteriously busy below the table as Lyra furiously blushed. “They’re just a little pent up is all . . .”
Two of the five faces went from pinched to livid and the other three simply incorporated the high-browed kind of sneering that you just want to smack it off, as in backwoods Alabama-beat-your-wife kind of smack, the almost comical horrific kind on crime shows.
“Kathicka, seriously, what now?” Mark gasped through his laughter, barely able to handle the ridiculousness of the womens’ faces. “Nobody’s doing anything ‘odd’ or ‘weird’ around here.” The head blonde lady, so I assume, glared down her pert little nose at him even as Mark made finger quotes. “Don’t tell me you’re here for our big bad sorcerer?” He turned to make eyes and kissy faces at me.
I muttered a quick ‘fuck off’ and shoved Mark into Scott as Jamal snickered while poking a finger in and out of his other hand.
“So you show up, drink our booze, laugh with the men, and dump refugees on our doorstep?” That voice once was irritating, nasal, but now it was smooth and melodious, perfectly wrapped in the kind of scorn that queens would pay good money for. “And then you all have sex with those things!”
Elaine, Kathicka’s seeming number two brunette, cut in. “It isn’t right, it isn’t natural! They’re not even real women! They’re monsters!”
“Thought we discussed this already?” I slurred, my eyes half open. “I do whatever the fuck I want, pretty much whenever I want.” With a small exertion of will, I rippled the dirt beneath her feet and moved her away from me. “There, that’s much better. The stank of pettiness is beneath me!” I laughed, poking my finger onto the tip of my nose as I perked it up, poking fun at her highbrow manner. “And until you can kick my ass or even give it the good old Southern try, then stay over there.”
Petty, yes, I know, so what. Ever met someone who’s face screamed something along the lines of ‘inherently predisposed to be a bitch due to genetics?’ It’s like the worst kind of bitch face. I don’t know how these freaking apocalypse survivors did it but fuck me man, they’re actually alive! How?! At what point do the attitudes shift, as in, ‘maybe I shouldn’t be a cunt today?’ Nope. They didn’t learn. The snap-hiss combined with a horrible crackle sound was nothing compared to the long whip of liquid lightning that extended from each of their palms. Oddly hot.
“Put’em down gals,” Mark ordered, his voice light as if ordering another drink. “We’ve been through this already, or have you forgotten your new leg already, Elaine?”
“Huh?” I asked, turning to Scott.
“Yup, they did a coup thing like a month ago but Mark shot Elaine in the leg! Blew the damn thing right off!” Scott chortled. “Guns still beat whips even when magic’s in play!”
Jamal laughed, wiping a tear from his eye. “If it weren’t for the flesh golem, we would’ve called her Stumpy!”
The whip lashed out to the side, cutting a sapling neatly in two. “We’ve all learned a trick or two.” Kathicka’s grin was nothing short of boiling maliciousness as blue wisps of mana linked together she and her group, her own whips gaining an unnatural solidity as the left one speared forward, slicing the table in half. Drinks and shards of ice were flung everywhere as everyone drunkenly jumped and stumbled back as the table was sliced apart.
Through the midst of everyone yelling a mix of ‘what the hell’ and ‘hey, fuck you’, Jamal didn’t play around. Kicking the largest chunk of shattered table at the whipping witches, he grabbed the next biggest piece and hurled it right right after the first one. Elaine and Blondies One and Two behind Kathicka lashed the projectiles apart as I stood up and yelled.
“Hold the fucking phone! Ain’t this over the top?” Conjuring a swimming pool’s worth of water, I blasted the women and froze them to the ground. “What gives? Am I missing something here?”
It surprised me to find that Kathicka and them weren’t actually glaring at me, but at Jamal. If looks could kill he’d be the cheese grater version of himself plus or minus a dick. “Jamal?” I asked, turning to look at him, his sheepish face telling most of the story.
“They don’t seem to be as open about sharing like me,” Lyra tittered from behind Jamal. “Once they had a taste of him they couldn’t seem to get enough.”
“This is a sex problem?! Jealousy?” More red faces than I care to believe tell me this is true. I guess my flesh golem really did get rid of one thing, the fact that any violence short of death is pretty much acceptable. If you can just toss your severed arm into a magical healing blob and put your wounded stump on it and it goes away, then what’s the actual cost of violence? They seemed to have figured that one out faster than I did. Kathicka’s group took a step back at my outburst, the sheer incredulousness of the underpinning reason. “Seriously? Use the golem to freaking turn down your sex drives or something . . . sheesh!”
My attempts at drunken reasoning went right over their heads as each of them crackled with lightning that bonded them all together like a web, levitating until they were about six feet off the ground. Each one had a golden necklace inset with a purple stone that hovered just above their chests. A quick look in the magical spectrum showed that there was another stone that the purple one was set into, the purple one linking their minds as the clear one functioned as some kind of elemental transmutation lens. The purplish energy seemed to flow around the crackling strands of lightning connecting them.
“Well that’s new!” I cursed, backing up and reaching for a ton of power, pointedly missing Kraken and Gungnir all the way in Arizona as I scrambled for my rifle.
“Not really!” Mark yelled as he and Scott took cover behind the trees at the edge of the clearing. “We fought them to a standstill last time they tried a coup but the floating shit is new!
As one, the mini-coven spoke. “Kneel sorcerer! We have borne your derision long enough!” The invisible lines of mana connecting their heads with the white sparks of mental energy showed me that they weren’t simply sharing their mana. At this point, they were one entity, jointly compounding their very selves, lifeforce, and brainpower to be a five-part conjunction of power.
For once, I didn’t have Kraken to basically narrate for me in my own mind at the speed of thought, but it was pretty obvious to me what the hell was right in front of my face. Jamal had basically screwed around on the Karens and they got their panties in a twist. The monkey wrench though was that this society was actually revolving around the concept of ‘the strong rule’, BUT the huge caveat here is that my flesh golems removed the physical consequences of violence. This means that they can literally fight up and to the point of death because of my gift allowing them to regrow anything that got blown off. As long as they kept the golem full of meat then magic will allow this weird ass society to grow in all kinds of unforeseen ways. I had taken some of the fundamental underpinnings of a community and removed them, accidentally.
Several bolts of lightning flickered out right as SAW intervened, channeling the energy into the runes of my armor as Svalinn ate most of it.
Shifting Rune protocol engaged.
“Not prey, weak.” Svalinn grumbled.
[I’m really glad no one hears what goes on inside my head.]
But it was funny, truly. For all their power, all of their foresight, planning and whatnot, they had well and truly fucked up. In taking a look at the Karens in the magical spectrum, I noticed a very key fact that their magically uneducated asses had overlooked. Their focus stones were completely unguarded. With a flex of power, I reached forward with my earth sorcery and shattered the cores of their amulets, robbing them of their flowing web of power. As one, they crashed back into the mud at my feet as I laughed, still swaying from the liquor.
“No wards? No runes?” I giggled, kicking up mud with a flick of power and getting them all good and dirty as well as grounding out any and all electrical power. “No brick wall for the big bad wolf? Kneel?” Laughing as I pounded them with streams of even more mud. “What kind of medieval bullshit is that? Who the fuck do you think are? Fuck! I made you fucking toilets for Pete’s sake!” I would have fallen on my own face in that moment if not for Jamal snatching me by the back of my armor.
“What in the Sam Hell is goin’ on round’ heya? Can’t a good ole country boy get drunk and pass out without you magic freaks blowin’ shit up every time Jamal fucks a tree?”
I hadn’t heard that voice in months. Turning around, I saw a much slimmer Billy stumble down the dimly lit path between two buildings, his three hick friends behind him. Sally was joining in the scolding as Jimmy and Tommy were holding their heads and moaning. “Someone get these two hair of the dog right quick!”
“How the fuck, where the fuck? For fuck’s sake!” I hadn’t seen these four in months or maybe even a year by now, frankly, I’d been so damn busy with everything else that I had completely forgotten to check up on them after I gave them each their own weapons and wished’em luck. I’d been through so much that I’d shoved in the back of my mind: the Ripples were still coming through, a childish deity almost blew me away, Gungnir had a piece of my soul, and Reeanth was a real dick. Thank God for small changes huh?