The morning came with its own abominable cost that flesh sorcery so graciously took care of while everyone else hung around the flesh golem to cure their ills whilst I magically sweat out the horrific toxins of dwarven alcohol. Shit, most of last night was fuzzy, in the ‘did that shit really happen’ kinda way. Wow, what a thought. Figuring that I might as well take advantage of the time that nobody wanted to bother me, I headed off for a self-guided tour around New Richmond. In the few months that I’d been gone, an eclectic blend of buildings had sprung up. A bastardized dreamland of a suburb took up several square miles with some houses being a clear attempt at bringing modern style housing back while others were a clear stylistic welcoming of what magic could do. Large trees had been grown and shaped to be bulbous houses both high up in the trees and others bulbously close together like a mystical nature commune. The largest building dominating another clearing in the deciduous landscape was a stone and tree fortress with overbearing oaks serving as the inner security towers with a high wall of slick, polished stone that almost covered up the treetops.
Not actually entering any of the buildings, I skipped around towards the east where I remembered the greenhouses were starting to be constructed somewhat close to the river. “Achoo!” A loud sneeze proceeded the exodus of a woman in a silver, skintight getup that could have passed for a sci-fi spacesuit. Ripping her helmet off and gasping for breath while slamming the door to a translucent dome, Cassandra didn’t even acknowledge me as she hacked out a lung.
Conjuring an ice bucket full of water for her to drink even as I childishly imagined blasting her in the face with water, I put it at her feet and waited until she got a hold of herself. “You ok?” I asked with an eyebrow cocked. “Guessing that ain’t a normal greenhouse, huh?”
“It used to be!” She sputtered, guzzling down the offered water before dumping it over her head, her long black hair glistening as she wrung it out. “Damn building was fine until we added in the extra mana pipeline-”
“Come again?!” I interrupted, reaching out with my senses, feeling that pulsing golden threads of power that came from several directions.
“Well the channel from the sunstone nest in the center of town that you made provides any and all UV light and heat for the greenhouse plus some mana, then we have the other one that pipes in water from the river as well as converted mana from the kinetic flow, and THEN we have the one that connects via crystal tether to the solar panels out near the river. That one gave us more than we expected and BAM! Freaking portal to faerieland in the middle of our garden!”
I barely even noticed the rest of the still in progress city over the dense white fog of almost solidified mana that tapered off as the door sealed shut, the outer lining blending in with the rest of the building. “Faerie what now?”
“Fae! Not Aelves, Fae!” she yelled, as if she were talking to herself in a fit of madness as opposed to the actual conversation I was hoping for. “Two different kinds of pointy eared bastards that are freaking night and day! Sprites, firbolgs, brownies, ballybogs, nookles!”
Going with what I wanted to do originally, I blasted her in the face with water, lightly like a kid’s squirtgun level, bringing her back to the here and now instead of ranting at me. “Get a grip! No mam! Not today! This is your fuckin’ problem! Seal the bastards in or get some freaking iron! I hope that works.” That last part I muttered to myself, turning on a heel, I cut my way around the nonsense that did not apply directly to me right until I walked a bit too fast straight into the Karens. A blast of lightning at my feet pulled me up short. Cassandra ran into my back, surprising me as I didn’t know she had been right on my heels yelling something about needing silver, iron, and sugar. This unfortunate meeting at the fork in the dirt road was also witnessed by my assorted posse of Acantha, Reeanth, Johnny and the Luneks who were a less disturbing shade of green than they were earlier this morning.
I couldn’t believe my own lying eyes as I lay there sprawled in the dirt, Cassandra behind me saying some unintelligible apology even as my gaze promised all kinds of torture to the posse of women in front of me. Their smug looks and haughty faces were just begging to be cut down a peg or two. Unluckily for them, mercy was in short supply today as my own evil imagination poked my two struggling brain cells with a wicked idea. I figured I might as well bring them down to my level. Shaking the ground, I violently heaved all the earth within twenty yards of me, a veritable ripple blasting everyone off their feet even as it flung me to my own.
Before my friends could react, a crack tore up through the greenhouse, a fact that I tucked away till later as I pulled my rifle out and began calmly and carefully firing basic crystal rounds into each discombobulated bitch as I softly sang the fucked up Baby Seal Army cadence to myself. It gave me great pleasure muttering with a crazed smile, “You can hit’em with a bat!” Boom! “You can hit’em with a brick!” Boom boom! “You can poke’em in the eye with an eye-pokin stick!”
As they screamed from me blowing holes in them, specifically aiming for non-vital parts while plugging up the wounds with conjured mud, I kicked a few of them in the head to shut up the whining. “And that’s how we make our livin’, clubbin’ some baby seals!”
“This is fucked up man!” Johnny said, turning a bit green even as Reeanth creepily smiled, nodding in her fanatical approval.
“They started it,” I fake whined, pointing my rifle at the lead bitch’s head. “And I’m finishing it,” I growled, firing as another song struck me. “I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell . .”
“More like messed up in the head dude!”
“Well done my lord. Vengeance is greater than justice, but the meeting of the two is so sweet.”
Morality. The last dregs of pre-apocalypse virtues were loosening their hold on me spurred on by the infantile behaviour of these grown as women, the lifetime of modern American conditioning, the imprinting of family forced values, the almost thirty years of indoctrination reared their dying instinctive cries as I smashed them. The five wounded, crying, magically empowered women at my feet were completely at my mercy, and it was a shame. It wasn’t like I was executing a child, because a child doesn’t know, a child doesn’t understand, a child possesses the quality of innocence. These women didn’t have that, they had haughtiness in spades, idiocy by the barrel, and decided to swing their non-existent dick at the wrong man in the wrong time of history. God, I didn’t like it, but a little teeny tiny part of me loved it.
My flesh sorcery is an incredible power, part of what makes it so great is the fact that it brings my instincts closer to the fore, more under my conscious control, and what it was telling me right now as their blood splashed across my skin is that it was delicious. My own altered body thirsted for power, for mana, and the blood bags in front of me were full of it. My mind sorcery was clearly laying out the pros and cons of it too in that timeless moment as this was a side of my flesh sorcery that I never really indulged. From what I could tell, I could have been the magical version of a vampire, draining living things with my blood magic instead of fangs. Combine that with the upgraded reptilian DNA and some things that used to not be palatable now seemed to be a bit more in the realm of possibly delicious.
On the one hand, I didn’t need the mana. In fact, I had access to more power than I knew to do with, but it’s like the fat guy at a buffet. He ain’t actually hungry, he just wants more. And in those moments, I wanted more, I wanted to shower in their blood, the embodiment of their lifeforce, their mana made real. I could drain them of everything that makes them living beings if I wanted to, and I almost did. Instill fear into the masses, let them know that this wolf isn’t gelded, that my fangs were long and sharp and hungry. And I deserved it too. I made this town, I made it half a step away from the standards of modernity, and most of the people were decent human beings that were grateful. And let’s not kid ourselves, I mainly did that for the children.
But the other half of this rotten deal is that the savage cunning that I carefully stowed away acknowledged the simple fact that there is even more strength in numbers, in powerful allies, in having the backing of a group behind you, just in case. I guess, some of those numbers though needed just a bit of pruning. In the half second of mulling over both sides of the issue, I acted.
Forcing a wave of calm over the five bedraggled women with mind sorcery, I had them all focus on the lead bitch, Kathicka, as I pulled the trigger, completely removing any trace of her face. Grabbing her corpse by the shoulder and lifting it one handed, I shook it in front of the rest of them. “DO NOT FUCK WITH ME!” I snarled, placing my gun at my feet as I easily ripped off each limb and threw it at the others, clocking them each in the head with a severed limb, spiking the torso at my own feet. Johnny stepped forward, about to yell and interfere, but Reeanth yanked him back with a glare.
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An example. That’s what Kathicka was. Make an example out of a deserving person and the rest are far more likely to fall in line, especially if that one individual was the instigating factor, and if my instincts were correct, she was definitely the head bitch. “Acantha, burn them clean,” I ordered, sending over a series of mental images to make my meaning clear. Shrugging her shoulders, my ward carefully burned the dismembered body to ash while oh so exquisitely burning off the top layers of grime and skin off the other four, slowly torturing them, branding them with the lesson I had in mind. Even though they could go and get completely new, perfectly healed bodies over at the flesh golem, no amount of flesh magic would be able to heal them of the trauma of the kind of torture Acantha was begrudgingly bestowing upon them at my command. The body, in many cases, can heal much better than the mind can.
As the green flames licked away every bit of grime and epidermis off the four remaining women, Acantha stepped back and vomited as Johnny and Reeanth carried them away, Reeanth looking strangely proud even as Johnny right beside her looked sickened. “He’s right,” Scott remarked. “That was fucked up. I mean, I get it. No law and they could have killed you if you weren’t prepared or way overpowered but shit man.”
Scott and Mark both rubbed at the Glyph Blade tattoos curling up their arms, shaking away the scene they’d just witnessed as I banished the flecks of Kathicka’s blood. Ignoring them, I turned and walked away, fully intent on finishing my self-guided tour of New Richmond even as I grappled with my newly established moral foundations or lack thereof. I wasn’t sickened by the sight of what I’d commanded be done even though I had voluntarily set myself against being the leader of this settlement. I wasn’t even bothered by it, in fact, I was still angry, perturbed, pissed off that they were so ignorant to the fact that I could have squashed them with my eyes closed. It wasn’t even a near thing, it was a short Jewish accountant with his shoes tied together trying to dunk on Lebron.
My own thoughts kept rolling around in my head like pins in a bowling alley with a gorilla chucking the fucking bowling ball at them. War changes people. Apocalypses change people. Violence changes you. But what does that even mean when strength, when law, are ultimately backed by violence? Does it make it inherently good or bad, or is it simply a fact, and undeniable foundation of existence, like gravity? It exists in the state of ‘being’ or ‘is’, as in it will be there long after I’m gone because it’s been there long before I ever was. Or I could simply be way too into my own head and this is all bullshit, probably, maybe, most likely.
Another thought screamed its annoying opinion even as I pushed it into the recesses of my mind, maybe I went a bit far. But then I mulled over that thought a bit more. What if those bitches had done this to the Centauri diplomatic party down the road, or to some other kind of visitor whose sensibilities were far more delicate than our own? Interstellar war? Dimensional conflict? The consequences of their idiotic actions could have been mind-blowingly worse than me taking one of them out and teaching the rest a lesson. I mean, the other four can be fixed right up thanks to my golem . . . wait . . .
Sprinting back to the main part of town where my golem sat in its own little house, I got there just in time to see Scott, Mark, Johnny, and Reeanth set the witches down as Acantha reached for the golem to get it going. “Wait!” I yelled, running up and slapping the golem with my hand. Quickly locating the four ladies’ DNA sequences in there, I put a set of conditional locks on their access. “All right, now you can heal’em.”
The shivering, moaning burn victims were gently laid on top of the flesh golem, its grey folds enveloping them with ease as its girth could have fit a van. Within five minutes, it spit them all out onto the ground, technically healthy. “What the-” Johnny gasped as I snickered.
Pointing at the discolored red, grey, and purple burn marks covering each of them, I shook my finger as each of them came to. “Yup, punishment part 2! No outer healing, beauty treatments, none of that shit. Since each of you suck as a human being, you can stay looking like this for the next year. No golem enhancements of any kind for any of you. Welcome to looking like a nasty ass swamp hag!” Turning to Mark and Scott, I gave a bit more clarification. “Look, I’m not completely heartless. I’ve put a key in the system for both of you. If both of you agree, Mark and Scott, then y’all can commute their sentence to six months of looking like this, but I’ve also made it so that it can be lengthened as well if they don’t learn their lesson. Up to you guys at this point. Pretty sure I ain’t coming back here after this.”
Mark’s queasy expression lightened up at my explanation but Scott was full on frowning. “I don’t want this responsibility either! The hell are we supposed to do with this shit?” Scott complained. “I got enough work keeping the damn forest creatures away and keeping the stinkin’ wizards from experimenting us off the face of the earth! Not to mention Jamal screwin’ everything that moves!”
Mark jumped in too. “We’re not saying that we’re ungrateful, dude, but this ain’t no city. We don’t have a government, a police force, a set of laws, nuttin’.”
“Then get rid of them for all I care!” I snapped, grabbing the four womens with gigantic hands of conjured ice. “Would you like me to kill them for you? Would that soothe your conscience? It’s that easy, trust me, or I could have Reeanth do it. Maybe Versonae or Arglyn are a bit peckish, let them have a snack. Hell, do what the Amish do and just shun them, kick’em out to deal with life in the New World on their own.”
“That’s not what I meant-”
“But it is what you meant,” I argued, poking Mark in the chest. “You want me to come in and fix your problems, but haven’t I done enough? Haven’t I fixed enough? Who let Kathicka and Elaine get this way? Who let them gather up three other like-minded individuals and create a group of power-hungry freaks that were willing to attack someone just to make a statement? Shit man, what if the children got in their way? You know what? Screw it.”
Turning to Versonae and Arglyn, I gestured at the squealing women who were begging for any semblance of mercy. “And what would the Luneks do with traitors, or attempted murderers?”
“Death,” they both growled in unison.
“And the Centauri would do what?” I pointedly asked Reeanth.
She grimaced. “Tossed out an airlock with no suit or sold to the Witches as slaves.”
I couldn’t help the evil grin. “And what would the Aelves, dwarves, minotaurs, or Fae do in my position.”
Nobody answered but everybody gulped just thinking about it. “So I’m assuming they’d do the same but worse?” Silence heralded a grudging assent. “And nobody wants to give me a valid suggestion in apocalyptic justice that doesn’t include kickin’ the bucket?” More potent silence.
The crack in the greenhouse grew even locker, the popping sounds of solid rock snapping under the stress of growing pressure grabbed our attention. “Shit, shit, shit!” Cassandra cursed. Rolling my eyes, I walked calmly over to the slowly growing crack and cast my senses past it. It wasn’t just an overpacked area of dense mana, something on the other side was actively pounding away at it like old school miners with picks. Not wanting to meet whatever kind of creature came from a spontaneous portal in a mana-dense greenhouse, I filled in the cracks with conjured granite and patched it up.
“There, problem solved for the immediate future,” I groaned. “But this ones’ on y’all. There are actually things or people or something sentient-ish in there, but I’m getting the fuck outta dodge.” I kept complaining/yelling as I walked away, fully intent on leaving this ungoverned batch of crazy.
******
My ability to tolerate people as a general whole was filled up. I desperately needed some time to myself, which is why I left my retinue in New Richmond as I flew back to my glade and then tree-portaled to Sunstone Castle. It also felt weird to be physically separate from Gungnir and Lord knows it’s been too long since I’ve been with Spot. My list of things to do needed tending to as well, I still had to learn about and make a Grimoire, oversee/maintain/upgrade my sunstone golem army, upgrade or redo my own personal armor and armory, and then set up a forward operating base in Greenland.
[About time you pulled your head out of your ass to get some real work done!]
[Screw you too!] I happily yelled back at Kraken as I strode up to Gungnir, checking the progress of my projects and yanking it out of its pedestal. The solar panel ritual circles around Sunstone Castle were doing incredible work in filling up the underground siege mana batteries and the river-flow kinetic converter pipeline was also constantly doing its thing. Kraken had partitioned out the flows separately so that the solar panels were filling the batteries only and the river pipeline was dedicated to fixing and charging the golem army. At this rate, in another month, basically everything would be good to go on this side of the house. Five thousand fully charged sunstone golems with a fully charged Sunstone Castle armed with dozens of humongous siege batteries and the eight magitech machine gun emplacements with fitted crystal grenade launchers, but it was pretty much automated, which meant that I didn’t actually have much to do personally.
So I did what I could, which was mucking around with my armor and my body, doing my best to eke out any kind of extra capability or durability without changing the overall schema. The rune schematics that Kraken helped me with were over my head, but that didn’t stop me from studying them. It also helped me out to study the runic tattoos on my skin and the ones etched into my bones that made me a veritable tank. Combine those concepts together with my armor and I figured that I was close to the idyllic version invincible, at least as much as a human-ish sorcerer could aspire to.
Also, to ease my mind, I retrieved my secured trunk of Artifacts from the Hole and brought it to Sunstone Castle. The Dagger of Rending, Poseidon’s Trident, the Granite Gauntlets, and Yggdrasil’s Wrath were just as I left them, which was a huge relief. I mean, I knew the glade area was pretty much the most secure place on the planet right now, but just having them closer to me was comforting. There was no way that I wasn’t going into battle with the Hungry Ones anything less than fully prepared. At Kraken’s suggestion, I had SAW scan and attempt to integrate the weapons’ magical signatures with my armor.
Scanning . . . Dagger of Rending . . . properly identified as Setan Kober . . . inimical to all forms of life . . . borne from the soul of the Wielder . . . optimal use projection: targeting and rendering enemy magical combatants as secondary sources of nutrients/energy. Partially successful in merging with armor substrate . . . relegated to a separate physical entity . . . dagger sheath created alongside the right calf.
Scanning . . . Poseidon’s Trident . . . properly identified as Neptune’s Shame . . . increased affinity with water-based environments . . . borne from the soul of the Wielder . . . optimal use projection: water-based escape routes . . . confusion generation via fog dispersal . . . crowd control. Unsuccessful in merging with armor substrate . . . relegated to separate entity . . . partially successful in merging with runic substrate . . . tattoo form designated for optimal efficiency . . . target location: left wrist.
Scanning . . . Granite Gauntlets . . . identified as unique in creation . . . designation accepted . . . borne from the soul of the Wielder . . . optimal use projection: singular target incapacitation . . . single target capture . . . single target destruction . . . successful in merging with armor substrate . . . successful in merging with runic substrate . . . modified to serve as a base layer for Svalinn . . . protective layer generated for optimal heat dispersal from Svalinn’s prime directive.
Scanning . . . Yggdrasil’s Wrath . . . identified as unique in creation . . . designation accepted . . . borne from the soul of the Wielder . . . optimal use projection: blunt kinetic damage . . . mass destruction in the following area types: deciduous, coniferous, evergreen . . . complete destruction in high density plant growth areas: rainforest. Unsuccessful in merging with armor substrate . . . partially successful in merging with runic substrate . . . . error . . . unsuccessful in merging with runic substrate. Overridden by Source Tree protocol . . . absorbed by Soul Tree as accepted doomsday protocol.
A lot of painful shit happened at one. The Granite Gauntlets simultaneously turned white hot and melted into Svalinn, only to reform below it and burning my hands to the bone in the process as I screamed, desperately turning off nerves and healing. Poseidon’s Trident melted into ice water and carved itself into the skin of my left wrist even as my freaking soul tree grew an ethereal branch out of my mouth that grabbed Yggdrasil’s Wrath, dragging it into my soul and bonding with it. Ten minutes of shivering on the ground and puking my guts out as my body adjusted to the changes, I took off all of my gear and set it front of me, spraying it down with conjured water as I took the time to get clean, cursing every second as the pain I felt somehow forced its way past the nerve block I put in place.