“At risk of ruining a good thing by bringing attention to it, why are we even here?” Though his words were met with groans, Morris knew it was only because they had no answer. There was surely no point to having people sitting on the walls of Londimin when they had a weird forcefield river doing all the work for them. Monsters could even spawn inside the bubble anymore, so why were they here?
Obviously, the answer for themselves was that it paid very well given the general safety of Londimin these days. Sure, he wasn’t gaining levels but that was a job for the actual protectors and scouts, not people like Morris. Morris would much rather have pretended that the world as he knew it hadn’t ended, but such things weren’t generally possible. Especially when a literal wave of monsters poured out of the shadows beyond sight to tear through the town.
Even if the world had ended, people still had to eat. It had been rough in the beginning, but food wasn’t so hard to get a hold of now. With the increased additions of System stores for most goods, the economy was becoming more and more understood. Some people were still willing to pay more, or barter for less, depending on the quality of the man made goods, but for the most part everyone just bought what they needed straight from the System. Being a wall guard meant you were paid ten gold an hour by the “government” of Londimin.
Maybe it was just to stimulate the economy even more, Morris decided. He thought that might make sense and any larger thought would be too much. “I’ll throw you off the wall if it’s bothering you so much.” With a tap on the back of the head, Morris’s brother, Larry joined him at their post. A breezy huff of air puffed out from his thick coat as he sat down heavily on the east-facing bench. “Do you not want to earn an easy wage?”
Morris didn’t bother responding to the question. Of course he did, he’d been doing that for years even before all this started. Technically he had been a data analyst, but a few weeks of coding practice had automated that paycheck right into his pocket. Laziness was simply in his blood. “It’s the middle of Summer, why are you wearing that heavy thing?”
“Well, I bought it earlier and it was comfy…” Larry frowned and looked down at himself before rolling his eyes and hanging the coat over the wall. His eye lingered on it warily, seemingly scared that it would launch itself from the stone. There wasn’t much worry of that with the night as calm as it was. The sky was clear and the moon was bright, illuminating the quiet lands under their watch.
It was an uneventful night, until Larry spotted some movement in the darkness below. He wasn’t as high a level as Morris’s eight, but he had put a few points into Will and Mental which made his senses sharper. Morris had, of course, opted for Fortitude, like most of Londimin’s inhabitants. Not only did it make you stronger, but it meant you needed to eat and sleep less. For Morris, it meant more time in the day to earn money, and less need to spend it just on surviving.
Thoughts of survival were prime on his mind as they both hurried to the side of the wall to get a better look. “What is it?” Morris hissed in a whisper. Whatever it was, it couldn’t hear him all the way up here, surely, but it was better safe than sorry.
“It looked like a person,” Larry responded, sounding unsure. “I… think I saw a person over there.” Larry pointed his spear down in a way which caught the light, and Morris wanted to strangle him. Instead, he followed the direction of the point.
“On their own? Are you sure? It’s not safe out there.” Morris bit his lip and kept looking. The world was dangerous. Morris himself had been forced to fight enough time in the few months since the System descended, but he didn’t love it. He was saving up to buy an Aspect, but they were massively expensive. If it wasn’t for the high pay of the guard position, he wouldn’t even be this close to danger.
“Maybe it was just your imagination?” He asked Larry hopefully. His brother just gave him a look which said ‘I’m not an idiot’ and ‘you’re an idiot’ at the same time, a practised fraternal expression. Rather than argue, Morris grunted and nodded, continuing to watch. The grounds around the walls had been the last outskirts of some London suburb, but once the walls were established, most of the homes were torn down to clear the view.
Morris was pretty desperate for his brother to be wrong, so he tried once more. “It was probably a fox or something, you’re just jumping at shadows, Lar.” Morris’s hopeful explanation was ignored as Larry kept his eyes looking into the dark below. Unconsciously moving past denial, Morris took to bargaining. “Shall we go and tell someone?”
“Uh, we are that someone, dumbass.” Larry was serious enough that Morris didn’t even rankle at the insult. Of the pair, it was rare for Larry to be the careful one, so it made the situation feel even more surreal. “Look, there it is. It was moving the other way last time.” Morris’s knees were shaking as he followed the point again and this time he saw it, too. Whatever it was, it was moving fast.
“There’s no fucking way that’s a person, right?” The creature, whatever it was, circled the wall. The shadows of the moon were cast long and anything within them was hidden by the pitch-black night. “What do we do?” If he and Larry were meant to be the first line of defence, did that mean…
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Whoever is out there!” Larry shouted, causing Morris to wither like a leaf. “Show yourself!” Morris didn’t even have time to be impressed at how intimidating his idiot brother managed to sound before he added an awkward “...Please?”
“Please?” Morris half-mocked, though he was mostly repeating the word in horror. “Well, at least you were polite when you got us killed you fu-”
“I’ve been looking for the front door!” A completely normal, human voice called up from below. To Morris, in his panicky and addled state, this only made things worse. He would rather be anywhere than with this awful creature that could mimic human speech. When he was too young, the slightly older Larry had put a horror movie on their television and Morris found himself traumatised for years. So when the monster below spoke again, all of those memories and emotions came back to him at once. “Can I just come up there?”
His blood froze. “Don’t you dare invite the vampire into the sanctuary,” Morris choked out. Larry had been keeping his cool, but their fraternal energies had always been infectious. Unfortunately for Morris, they were also English through and through. He could visibly see the fear on his brother’s face battling with an inability to be perceived as rude. “I swear to god.”
Before Morris was able to finish his oath, Larry betrayed him. His eyes were shut in a wince as he did so. “Yeah, come on up.” Morris just tilted his head, his mouth open in a wide gape. Not for nothing, the walls weren’t only tall, they were enchanted by the System to be slick at all times. “Maybe it can’t get up…” Larry whispered pathetically.
Such hopes were for a world which hadn’t filled with monsters. A blur of movement in Morris’s peripheral vision had him squawking and swinging. He had used the basic longsword to decent effect against the lower level creatures he had been forced to defend himself from, but panicked slashes were all he had learned to throw. Except, a single flail was all he managed before the sword got stuck in a brick wall. A weight appeared at the tip. “Whoa there, Sparky,” a voice laced with laughter said. “Don’t let go now.”
Morris realised his eyes were closed and opened them slowly. The blade of his sword was held calmly by the point. Undamaged were tight on the end of the weapon, the man gripping it leaning back flexibly to avoid the blade’s initial trajectory. “We’re all cool here,” the stranger said in a calming voice, like he was talking to a spooked horse. “Aren’t we?”
Asking his question, the man let go of his sword. Scared of him a moment before, Morris shouted and grabbed for him before he fell to his death. However, he was too slow. His fingers met open air. The man had fallen. The moon was west-facing right now, so the shadows must have swallowed him immediately. “What the hell?!” Morris asked, spinning around for reassurance.
He found more confusion instead. There was the stranger again. Larry had seen the whole thing, while Morris’s panic forced his eyes to only see what he expected. The wind itself seemed to pick the red haired man instead of letting him fall, a graceful flip over the lunging Morris bringing him onto the walls. Though doubtful before, the vampire suggestion gained merit.
The man standing between them was tall, with a shock of ginger hair that was growing messy on his head. There were a few wisps of facial hair on his chin and jaw, just enough to place him specifically as a young man. His clothes looked comfortable, but there was something about them that seemed off. Neither brother was a fashionista, so they couldn’t articulate that the stitching wasn’t a style they had seen before, nor that the materials seemed almost imperceptibly alien. A baggy pair of dark blue trousers were tucked into some dark black boots, the clean metal buckles on them flashing with an interesting yellow sheen in the moonlight. The trousers were cinched with a simple piece of black fabric, but just looking at that strange belt made their eyes water. His shirt was buttoned to above the chest, and the sleeves were pulled up.
He looked like he had been out for a casual jog after a day in the office, more than wandering through the dangerous wilderness beyond Londimin. “Where… where did you come from?” Larry asked. Morris had still not found his voice at all, mouthing randomly at the air like a fish out of water as he struggled for words. They’d never seen anything like what this man's existence casually suggested. His hands, held up in a submissive gesture, were the clear calloused evidence of the hard work which forged him.
Power, unburdened and free.
The brothers had not experienced the effects of Dao before. And while the man had been practising his control, it was impossible to be around him without sensing that almost divine understanding he held. Simply looking at this stranger had a profound effect on them. Of course, none of the three men actually knew this was happening, so none of them thought to comment on it.
The young man looked slightly pained for a moment. “I’m sorry guys, but I think I’m a little above your paygrade to be honest. Would you be able to point me to someone a bit more in charge than yourselves?” The wave of disappointment which ebbed between the brothers was palpable, but they nodded to each other. Both had made a decision in the moment to do whatever they could to help this person, for reasons they couldn’t hope to explain. Brothers didn’t always need to explain things to each other, though. Something was changing in the pair, but now wasn’t the time. The source of that change was waiting for their answer.
Swallowing his discontent at the dismissal, Morris pointed. “The old police station became the main office for important decisions, you should start there.” As he finished speaking, the man nodded before jumping away into the night, shouting a thank you over his shoulder. Morris gasped, realising he had been holding his breath, even after talking. For a short while he and Larry sat on the bench in silence, just finding their calm again.
When they finally did speak, it was at the same time.
“We need to be doing more-”
“This isn’t enough-”
Another few seconds of quiet passed before they both erupted into laughter. It was quite a long time before they could stop, but that was okay. They had just decided to actually try and live in this new world, rather than survive, and the pressure was massive. Yet, at the same time they both felt like. If that man could do it, so could they. Larry stood, gathering his coat but Morris scoffed and stopped him. “Sit down, idiot, we’ve still got to finish the shift.”
The rest of the dull hours passed like kindling in a bonfire as the pair discussed the man they had just met in detail. When the sun rose, neither brother felt the inclination to spend their money at one of the taverns on their way home, ignoring also the currently timid cries of hunger from their stomachs. They passed food vendors but the spices in the air were nowhere near as alluring as the aura that man had carried. The two men turned their noses up at the peddled meals and hurried on to their shared apartment.
Though neither man knew it, with their “benefactor” even more unaware of his “assistance”, they had finally found their path.