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+ Reid +

Sanctuary's wooden battlement was alive with shouts and violence. Three dozen defenders shot bows, threw spears, and fired magic projectiles out of their hands at the wave's salamanders. One was even using some sort of sonic skill by shouting down at the beasts. Their hail of attacks kept a handful of the salamanders at bay, and were distracting more from seriously damaging the walls.

But even with their numbers and the high ground, the defenders had only killed three of the beasts. Six were alive - and causing trouble. The wall - rebuilt completely after the fire, was littered with splintered holes. In some sections, the damage was so great that a second wall was erected behind the first to keep the enemy from breaking through. Reid's eyes lingered on a spot where a dead salamander's head was halfway through the wall. The entire section around the hole was stained with blood - and not all of it was the salamander's. That must be the one that got Lowell's arm.

Mark was soaked in sweat, and had someone holding him up while he repeatedly used his skill to craft a mix of replacement wall pikes and wooden spears. The helper holding him squirted a pale grey water bottle into his mouth. Mark gulped greedily, but liquid still poured out the corners of his mouth and down to join the dampness on his shirt. All the while, he hadn't stopped crafting.

Reid was surprised - and a bit disappointed. He had been inside for at least an hour, between Susan testing her skill and his less-than-stellar attempt to talk to her and Sara. In that hour, three dozen people had only killed three salamanders. They'd even suffered defensive injuries. Reid had hoped the last wave was just a poor showing because everyone was caught out. He'd assumed the fire started, broke their defensive line, and that they would've eventually regrouped and handled things themselves if he hadn't stepped in. Reid had also assumed there were people in Sanctuary strong enough to deal with the threat. Marlene had told Reid something about him being stronger than anyone they had at Sanctuary, but he'd written that off to her trying to secure his help by bending the truth.

On the battlement, surrounded by raucous but ineffective defenders, he had to admit that Marlene was right. No one on the wall was strong enough to fight the salamanders properly. No one was nearly as strong or effective as he was. They just defended long enough to get lucky. Reid watched some of the luck happen. A rock-like magic projectile slammed into a thrown spear, which kicked it off course - and sent it spiraling into a salamander's eye socket. The beast fell dead, and an entire section of defenders cheered at their sheer dumb luck. It was awful.

James seemed to sense what Reid was thinking.

"We don't usually have this much trouble. This wave is stronger by multiple levels, and harder to pin down. The kills we're gotten so far put them above level seven. They've done more damage to the walls than the threes and fours were capable of, and they seem to be a bit smarter, too."

Reid tensed his hand around the handle of his bone sword and looked down at the closest beast. He could get down there and make short work of the five remaining attackers. James's hand on his shoulder stopped him from jumping off the wall.

"Don't do that. Stay up here and fight from range. Going down there would just give the salamanders more opportunities to hurt you - and you might take fire from our defenders. You do have a way to fight at range, right?"

Reid looked at his sword, down at the salamanders, then back to James.

"Do you have any rocks?"

#

Reid held a stone the size of a basketball between his hands. A few more good-sized rocks sat at his feet, but he wouldn't need them. He'd taken out four salamanders with well placed throws already, and the final beast was an easy target. Twenty feet away, it was stuck on a trio of wooden spears that had embedded themselves in the ground just right to halt its movement and prevent it from clawing itself free.

The defenders had long since stopped firing off their own attacks. Reid's first kill had turned the top half of a salamander into pink mist - which caused a good portion of the defenders to stare at him, slack-jawed. Now, they seemed to be betting on whether Reid would need two throws to end things. He still disliked that they stopped their own attempts just to cheer him on - but he could understand why they were doing it. Salamanders were assholes, and Reid was putting on a bit of a show.

In a smooth single motion, Reid spun the rock on a finger, popped it up, caught it in his right hand, and threw. The rock obliterated the top half of the salamander's head, and it slumped against the wooden spears still caging it. What was left of a tongue lolled out the side of its neck.

Almost missed high - but at least I got it. Reid turned to James and gave a thumbs up. The man barked out an order to reset the wave timers, and smiled at Reid. It was, Reid realized, the first time he'd seen the man show any sort of happiness. He almost didn't look like a dick. Reid decided to give him a chance.

"When we get back, you're going to apologize to Susan. And Sara."

James looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "With Marlene hurt, I... wasn't at my best. I was just angry and reactive. I'm still worried about her, but at least I'm not as reactive and raw as I was with your wife. So, yeah. Sorry for that. I'll make sure I say it to them, too. I promise I'm not an asshole - most of the time."

Silence stretched between the two of them for a long while. Reid rotated responses in his head - angry, superior, dismissive. He decided to go with simple.

"Thanks for getting me some good rocks," Reid said. "Usually, I'd be a cut up, bleeding mess after taking on that many."

James snorted, then his face twisted in confusion. Then he let out a real laugh. "You know, Reid, I was a bit scared of you earlier. You were this hulking stranger smashing monsters with your bare hands - all fury, no finesse. I figured you were fatigued or injured and you were just trying to power your way through the end of the enemies, but you really do take that much damage all the time, don't you?" He wiped his eyes and gave Reid an eager look. "You're shit at fighting, Reid. Like really, really bad."

Reid started to protest.

"Yes, you are - and I bet it's why you get injured. But - you still fight like a monster. And... I could work with that." James's grin was almost predatory. "Marlene will probably ask me to do it anyway once she's up. As soon as we have some breathing room, I'm going to teach you how to fight."

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James gave Reid a bit more information on the walk back to the Rec Hall. The man had been a combat instructor for nearly a decade - though he wouldn't tell Reid where exactly that was. He kept saying he'd build Reid a solid foundation first, so that any real instruction would be easier to understand after that. Reid wasn't sure to make of the man's enthusiasm at the prospect of training, but he let it slide. James was offering help, and he wasn't going to refuse. The man was rapidly moving from 'dick' to 'okay' in Reid's mind.

At the Rec Hall's entrance, James gave Walt orders to allow Reid to come and go as he pleased, and the two stepped inside. Screams echoed out from the hallway, and a dozen people sat in the great room's waiting area. A tired-looking aide, probably in her early 30s, was blocking the hall. She informed James that Marlene was still unconscious, and told Reid that both Sara and Susan would be tending to patients at least another hour before he could see them.

The aide then went through stages of surprise, shock, and relief as James told her the wave was over, and there would be no more wounded to treat this time around. She sighed and leaned against the wall, looking like a weight had been taken off her shoulders. None of the team had taken real breaks in a long while, but with fewer wounded this time around, they would have enough space to get rested before the action started up again. Reid took some pride in that. No matter what else had happened so far today, he'd improved at least one person's life.

Now it was time to see if he could do more. He could've waited for Sara and Susan - sat in the great room accompanied by self-pity and doubt. But that wasn't going to solve any problems. No matter what the evidence said, Reid had options. Even if he didn't have options, he'd fight like hell. He could try to find a stronger healer or have Sara level herself up and try again. He could see if someone had a special, 'cure-cancer' specific skill. He could test whether increasing his level would help him live longer - or see if magical brain surgery was a thing.

But right now, an option was waiting for him right in Sanctuary. He could try touching the beacon.

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-{///} Finola {///}-

Finola shook with rage. Her fingers tightened on the arms of her chair, and the C grade metal groaned under the strain.

She was supposed to be the left hand of Loz'ar. Where he had problems, she found solutions. She was enterprising, resolute, and calculated - which is why the current oversight was causing her so much distress.

Sanctuary had gone through too many quests, too quickly. The fledgling settlement was outperforming expectations by an incredibly wide margin, and that had prompted Finola to investigate. She'd invested the energy required to get detailed updates from each beacon that was calculated to have the potential to produce the first lord of 'Earth'. Most beacon settlements were normal, but Sanctuary was both an oddity and mystery.

Sanctuary's first defense quests were all above standard, but well within expectations. It was the kind of performance you would see out of an early settlement with a reasonably competent leader. Then, the first salamander hunt had resulted in a poor performance evaluation. Not surprising, given that they were going after such a dangerous species.

But that's where things started to go sideways. The second and subsequent hunts were rated so highly, the overall difficulty of quests given to Sanctuary had increased. An overall difficulty increase occurring pre-tutorial happened once every few dozen millennia. Two overall difficulty increases, pre-tutorial? It had occurred twice in the last eon. There were no records of three difficulty increases ever taking place.

Those high ratings did not come easily. One had to outperform the system's interpretation of 'excellent' quest completion by three standard deviations. So, any difficulty increase usually heralded the rise of a new powerhouse. In rare cases, it could even signal the emergence of a Progenitor. Both would be incredibly lucrative outcomes for their fledgling planet Earth.

Except, when Finola had tried to query the main contributor to the quest, she had received an error. The secondary contributor query came back fine - a woman by the name of Marlene who was apparently somewhat competent. Finola ran the main contributor query five more times to ensure she wasn't doing something wrong. Each time, she received the same result - the main contributor was not available to her query.

There was only one way the data would not be available to her - it meant the person had not accepted the Blasdej beacon contract.

The contract was essentially unavoidable. Unawakened, by design, were nearly helpless creatures. They could not use skills, see their status, or distribute points. When those people accepted the contract, Blasdej gave them tools they could use to call up their status, unlock skills, and distribute stat and skill points. All Blasdej took in return was a percentage of the xp, skill upgrade energy, and stat upgrade energy those people would earn at each level. She looked at Earth's contracts again. 40% skill point fees, and 25% xp commissions. It was a fair structure, and one intended to maximize future profit over immediate gain.

After signing the contract, the awakened was linked and bound to it. No matter where they went or what they did, their XP, Skill Points, and data belonged to Blasdej. It was why queries worked - without the contract, the system wouldn't give them information on an awakened, no matter how much energy they sent it.

That only left two possibilities. Either someone was self-affixing without a contract, or there was an outside actor trying to mess with her fledgling world. Self-affixation was essentially impossible, which only left the possibility of an outside actor.

All newly awakened worlds had one, extremely lucrative event - the tutorial. System-hosted, it wasn't something any conglomerate had ever been able to control, influence, or change. The accolades and titles and bonuses could set individuals on a straight path to future power.

Tutorials were automatically available to all existing residents of the newly awakened planet. They just had to touch any beacon and they would get automatically transported when the tutorial began. But there was another way in. Newly awakened worlds didn't have tutorials start immediately. Sometimes there would be weeks between system descent and the tutorial start - other times, there had been multiple years from awakening to tutorial. The phenomenon wasn't well understood, but the outcome was always that there was time for opportunists to try and worm their way in.

If someone wasn't from the newly awakened planet, they could get into the tutorial. All they had to do was be less than level 5, and touch a beacon prior to the tutorial start. The theory for this backdoor into tutorials was that the system wanted to be fair to established planets. The reality was that it was used as a way to power-boost young scions from powerful families. They would travel to a newly awakened planet with guards and secure a beacon for their little spoiled rat to use.

Finola wanted to kill the rat, and their guards. Someone was on her planet. She wanted to slag the continent and kill them all. It would be a foolproof solution.

But it would also likely kill the future lord of Earth.

In her queries, Finola had found more and more data that supported a simple conclusion. A person in or very near Sanctuary was going to be Earth's first lord, and they should be powerful. They were already flexing and growing their skill, in ways that excited and frightened Finola. She wanted to see that power realized. She needed the tutorial for the future lord to set themselves apart.

And she needed to remove the scion to ensure that happened. If she couldn't slag the problem, a finer touch was necessary. A bit of research led her to the solution. She would set the beacons in the area to overload. It was impressively illegal, but that only ever mattered to the sloppy and ineffective. By changing a few values, she could make it so anyone that tried to use the beacons in the area would have two things happen to them. First, they would be forcibly removed from beacon interaction before they could accept the tutorial. Second, they would be shot full of enough energy to burn out a level 5. It was prevention, through denial and death.

She slammed the execute button and sent the updates to the beacons. This rat was going to burn.