Jamie awoke early, after sleeping late. While most of Thistledon was smashed to pieces with the arrival of the System, the university building had been mostly intact. That first night, Jamie and Kylie had warmed themselves with a fire which cleared one of the larger buildings but the clocktower remained, standing firm against whatever destroyed the city. With a deep ringing, the automatic bells within rang out five times. Before another five minutes had passed, Jamie was walking in the early morning mists and thinking. Intentionally, she walked around the clocktower a few times, enjoying the ticking from within.
Some of the newer arrivals had actually tried to dismantle the machinery before Kylie found them doing so and ran them away from it. The noises from the place, even the ticking if you were close enough, were a little harsh on those with higher Perception. However, it was a holdover, a literal timepiece from before all of this began. Even if Jamie hadn’t specifically enjoyed the rhythm and routine it enforced, she would have done anything she could to protect it.
The world from before couldn’t be completely lost. It would be too much of a tragedy. Despite humanity’s propensity for self-mutilation, together we had created and performed wonders.
They stood on the brink of losing everything which had made them special as humans. People were scared. Desperation and hopelessness were a potent team when it came to assaulting the human psyche. Things were dangerous. Without guidance, what had been lost would never be reclaimed, even in the small ways. Brutality was becoming the norm, and Jamie was at least partially at fault. Even in the dim light prior to true sunrise, she could see the red stains on her hands.
Without amenities like reliable hot water, it was nearly impossible to get the filth all the way off.
Without the simple things…
Jamie fired a few different trains of thought back and forth, forcing herself to push past the frozen instincts which fought back against compassion. With each passing day, the ice became more solidified and yet easier to live with, too. Jamie supposed that was just the truth of grief and shock. Neither lasted with intensity forever, but the person they leave behind can be permanently changed by their presence.
Jamie would never be the woman she had been turning into when the System arrived and ruined everything. What she would become was no longer at the sole discretion of the chaos of those first days, and the question of where her path would take her was being asked loudly in her mind. What did she want? Maybe it wasn’t that simple.
There were things she needed to do, because she had decided they mattered. It was just a case of committing to those things. Easier said than done for Jamie, though. The last thing she had committed to for the long-term was a university degree in ancient literature. Beyond the culmination crumbling before her very eyes, the knowledge she had gained from her time at St. Gerrard’s university had failed to come in handy even once since the world started to burn.
So, she asked herself, what matters?
Survival. The answer came easily, and she didn’t fight it. Jamie hadn’t even considered giving up, and she never would. First and foremost for every living being, survival was paramount. No more so than now, as the world tried to rid itself of them and replace them with monsters. However, survival is a need, not a want.
Returning Kylie’s baby to her was a driving force for Jamie, but if Jamie herself had become desensitised to the violence everywhere then Kylie had embraced it. It was getting harder to be around her as the System continued to deny any progress towards her child. At the same time, any defence the town needed would be handled by Kylie and her growing group of glassy-eyed warriors. In a lot of ways, the issue of survival was mostly handled by the expanding group of willing fighters at their command.
Survival and victory against the System were both things Jamie wanted but… then what? She would never return to London, even as the thought of unfinished business there made her feel sick. She barely knew what drew her back to Thistledon as she hadn’t been expecting to find anything of worth here, either.
Except that wasn’t completely true. She winced even as his sad face came to mind. Dark red hair in a short and stylish cut on the top of his head. His eyes, arresting with the vibrancy of golden brown and the green which circled it, creased into a frown. His long arms reached for her slightly, only to pull back and let her go. She had been expecting to find him, hadn’t she? The fact he wasn’t here had been the final shattering her heart could take before becoming a true thing of cold.
Or so she thought.
While the emotion wasn’t necessarily a driving force, indignation could get things done, too. For whatever reason, it was Grant’s disappointed face which pushed her steps over to Val’s tent. The girl was sleeping, which made sense, but Jamie stayed in the area as the rest of the camp woke up. They had scouts and watchers, but no one slept so soundly as to truly need them. A single sound of combat would cause the whole camp to descend upon the aggressor.
Which was an interesting thought all of its own.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
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“Help!” That single word sparked so many processes in Val’s body and mind that she had to remind herself to breathe in amongst them. She had bolted straight up, drew the knife Jamie had given her and begun to mix that strange dust inside of herself all before taking a gasp of air herself. As she slowed down enough to put more clothes on, she heard more shouting which made her pause.
“Help me! She’s gone mad!”
That’s… Huckle? Val’s blood ran cold as she realised what she had done, and could only imagine the horrific mess Jamie would leave the man’s body in. Last night, the camp had felt a little more like home as she was looked upon with more respect. If Jamie killed Huckle in the middle of the tents, that homely feeling would likely be banished forever and it would be all Val’s fault for opening her mouth.
When Val managed to find the courage to leave her tent, the sight which greeted her wasn’t what she expected. A part of her was certain that there would be destroyed tents from Jamie’s weapon. The fantastical appearance had drawn Val’s eye the day prior, even before Jamie showed how lethal a simple weight and chain could be. The sickle was honestly overkill. Looking at the excited crowd, Val chastised herself for the gruesome imagination she had let run wild. It wasn’t entirely her fault, but she felt guilty for assuming Jamie had lost her mind, even if the sights of her ability with the chain and sickle she used were shocking.
The previous day with Jamie was so different to the terrified nights of survival before she had found this group. Like most, she had been in one of the neighbouring towns and wandered in this direction. There was nothing left behind her, another common story these days. Some of the people who came said they all must have been drawn by the weird dome at the edge of their area but Val wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like the pink, glassy thing was doing anything.
Jamie and Kylie were, though.
Unlike the monstrously strong Kylie and her squad of meatheads, Jamie didn’t have a team of people she went hunting with. As the two most powerful people in the area, Val had watched them both to try and understand what made them different. After a few days, she had given up and gone to ask Jamie outright. Easier said than done, Jamie found. The woman was unapproachable through no fault of her own.
Jamie likely didn’t even know it herself, but the anger which rolled off of her at all time was palpable. Even when she forced a smile, the rage behind her eyes was almost painful in its intensity. It took those days of watching for Val to realise the truth. Jamie wasn’t disgusted with the people around her, or even with herself. Jamie, like Val, hated the System with every fibre of her being.
In fact, that seemed to be the subject of the lesson she was currently giving to Huckle. Seeing that there was no real fighting happening, Val forced herself to calm down. The tumbling dust within herself collected into a pile and became tranquil once more. When she first placed her attribute points in Power, Regeneration and Command, Val had been disappointed. After watching Jamie tear apart a pack of dangerous wolves with ease, most of them at level seven with a level eight leader, “wasting” three valuable points on a useless attribute stung.
Only later, in the silence of nighttime in camp, did Val feel it. Like the finest of hourglasses, a light sprinkling of particulate was moving within her chest. She didn’t panic on sensing this change, as her instincts told her what she was seeing. Mana. For the rest of the night, she had experimented with the feeling. She didn’t make much progress, promising herself to put more levels of growth towards the feeling. As she fell asleep, Val had finally learned the trick to making the mana move. It didn’t do anything, but it was a level of control which gave her confidence in the future.
Which was a good start. “What’s happening?” She finally asked the nearest person. The older man, who Val thought was named Connor, shrugged at her. He was one of Kylie’s fighters, and it showed. The System didn’t differentiate when it came to attribute power as far as people could tell. If you had ten Strength, you had the same pushing and lifting power as another ten Strength person, regardless of size. However, if you were huge like Connor was before the System, you started with more physical attributes.
“I’m not sure, but I heard Huckle was in trouble and came to see what the idiot had done now.” He laughed and Val couldn’t stop herself from giggling, too. Despite his massive size, Connor’s attitude made him friendly at base. Unlike some. It seemed like Huckle hadn’t been able to ingratiate himself with many people in the camp. Unsurprising, if his treatment of allies was anything to go by. “Actually, you want a lift?”
Val accepted the outstretched arm and did her best to contain a small shriek as she was easily brought into the air on Connor’s shoulder. She was glad that she wore so many layers, as the proximity was a bit overly casual for Val generally. She was trying to expand her horizons, and the new vantage point was as much a metaphor for that as anything. It also allowed her a better view of Jamie’s dressing down of Huckle.
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As soon as the man had woken up, Jamie had begun to hound Huckle. The man was only level six, and had put nearly every loose attribute point into Strength like most of the men in the camp. Jamie could only roll her eyes as she pushed him over. Even someone with a Perception of four or five would have heard her coming. She had been loud on purpose. “What’s your problem? You want a fight?”
Within the time it took Huckle to turn around, he had gone from worried to cocky, and Jamie knew why. He was strong. He saw a woman and thought the issue would be easy to solve. Sure, he might not have immediately turned to violence, but that was his final answer to the problem of Jamie. She had to stop herself from going into full battle mode as she pushed the man over again when he was half-standing.
He swiped at the air where Jamie had been a second before. With an Agility approaching twenty, it would take a lot more than what Huckle had to catch her. She could do this all day, though each time she shoved Huckle over was like pushing down a brick wall. Another few levels and he would be more threatening, but if he wanted to bully people with his level then he should have thought about what happens when someone’s level was higher than his. Jamie waited for the crowd to gather before she started voicing these thoughts.
Once everyone was ready, Jamie began her seminar.