It turned out that they had passed the area Tetra had marked for their landing by a half day. After discussions on their mapping methods, done on paper currently, utilizing Rat’s scouting rodents, and deploying an imp that drew the short straw on a glider, they managed to circle the convoy of Cloud Ships back around and located the plateau in question. When they arrived, ever Grim was blown away.
The mostly flat area was a dozen miles wide, carved into the midpoint of a mountain nearly two miles tall. It had multiple features, of which the least were the twin rivers cascading off the sides of the area and into the air to rain into the forest and jungle far below. In addition to the river was a large lake nestled into the back portion of the plateau. Glinting clear waters were visible even as the began to land. Between these two water features was the deep, dark blackwood forest that covered the far third of the entire clearing. That made for readily available building material.
Outside of these natural features was the rocky terrain. It cupped the clearing as if a giant had brought an ice-cream scoop out and simply removed a semispherical portion of the mountain itself where the plateau was located. The sheer rock walls on either side, as well as above, ensured that this area was potentially reachable only by air. If that turned out to be the case, that would make defending their new home both much easier and more difficult.
Grim and Tetra made the decision to lade the Cloud Ships much further back than they had initially planned on. The lake was far too much of a temptation, and the curving mountain wall provided shelter and a defensive location that was too good to pass up. With the lake between them and any threats, the mountain wall to their rear, it was easy enough to circle the Cloud Ships and land.
The near army that disgorged from the six, now admittedly somewhat ragged, airships stunned Grim. He knew that his three lieutenants had been hard at work, but he hadn’t realized just how much they had gotten accomplished. Granted he had been a bit removed from everything but the overview of the budding Syndicate, concerned with higher level issues and a pending war, but regardless he should have been more aware of the sheer volume of people and materials they had gathered.
The first airship disgorged what looked to be thousands of mice, rats, and flying rodents. They immediately spread out across the clearing and vanished into the tall grass, scouting out the vicinity. What followed them really took Grim aback. Two dozen Anubians walked out, discussing their tasks. Each was dressed in workers coveralls, as their inverse legs didn’t lend to wearing pants. They lowered a ramp and began removing crates with pictograms on them of food and materials.
Turning, he saw the Cloud Ship he was on had disgorged imps by the hundred. He hadn’t realized he had made so many, then remembering he had passed off the process to Tetra some weeks ago. She must have created some kind of manufacturing process for the demonic workers.
The imps, as with their Anubian counter parts, were wearing pants. Purple pants of course, as nothing sane would have possible worked for Tetra. The imps were rapidly unloading vehicles and machinery. The most valuable materials must have been stored on his airship, the women knowing that he would have protected his own before any others.
Smart of them.
The remaining four vessels disgorged supers, normal unpowered humans, and small imp contingents. They immediately set to work removing and staging materials, machinery, and crates. Others began reconnoitering the area in groups. Supers that he knew in passing formed groups and took to the air, or assembled off road vehicles in rapid order before driving off. Every human was armed with whatever weapons Tetra had managed to buy, scavenge, steal, or trade for before they had left. An assortment of rifles, handguns, and melee weapons.
They were roughing it, and Grim couldn’t help but notice that once again there was a massive discrepancy in the level of technology that was being deployed. Something that he would work towards correcting. Quickly.
He watched as Stella and the ever present assistant Jim worked at directing workers, supers, and imps alike. They were already rapidly assembling pop up housing, three room rectangular houses that could sleep six people. They were pre-manufactured for some past project to clean up the slums, so when Rat found a massive stockpile of them Tetra didn’t hesitate in stealing as many as she could. Which was apparently all of them.
The work was fast, furious, and well-orchestrated. Between the two teams of Stella and Jim, and Rat and Tetra, houses, warehouses, defensive emplacements, and even a field cafeteria were already taking shape. There had to be nearly four thousand people here overall, not including the imps.
Grim watched as Tetra directed several imps and supers over to the cliff face. They were carrying large, prefabricated structures in a box, a dozen crates the size of a tank, and hundreds of smaller boxes. They stacked each in a respective order that he couldn’t begin to guess at, then they began assembling what looked to be a massive two-story building. Curious, he headed that way.
“Oh hey Boss!” Tetra said, turning to him. “I bet you want to know what we are up to right? Perks of a hyper brain, I can figure out a lot at a glance. We are setting up the lab, mine entrance, and administrative building. Also, the quarters for leadership. Nothing fancy, but it will get the job up until we have more materials to work with.”
That sounded like a lot to pack into one building, but Grim was sure Tetra could handle it. She had already, single handedly, built anti-gravity engines. Putting together a building that wouldn’t burn downed seemed simple by comparison. Regardless, he didn’t have much to do at the moment except watch. There may be things in the area that would interest him, but he wasn’t willing to go stirring up any beehives that may endanger his people. Not yet at least.
A sudden spike of energy flowed across the open plains.
Turning Grim looked towards the forested region not too far away. The area was mostly flat with some hillocks here and there. But it wasn’t hilly enough to disguise the oddly humanoid like figure that was clearly standing on a nearby one, observing them.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Tetra, get a group of people armed and ready. We seem to have visitors,” grim said absent mindedly before blurring across the open field. His speed was immense, his fight with Death having brought his strength and agility to new heights. It took him moments to travel the half mile distance before stopping in front of the startled spear holding being.
It certainly wasn’t human, and it made him think of Fenrir. He wondered what the beast had gotten up to.
Shaking the thoughts from his mind, Grim sped across the ground in a blur. He arrived on top of the hill to see a very odd creature sitting in front of him. With a large chitinous body having six legs attached, which were folded neatly up below it, the creature only got odder from there. Attached to the front of the black shell of a body was the torso of a man, but there is where all similarities to a human being ended.
The main body was green and black, mottled with browns and slashes of other dark shades. Natural camouflage for either a predator or prey. The creature had two long, thin arms with four equally long and tin fingers. Moving his eyes up the body Grim could see a nearly featurelessly flat and pale face, with no hair where it would be on a human.
The creature was holding a bottle of some kind, having been removed from the leather backpack like container sitting on the ground next to it. Grim was quick to identify a long, seven-foot spear with a fabricated metal tip next to the container. These details old him nearly everything he needed to know.
“You have questions?” said the creature, startling Grim out of his analysis of the creature. It ws both amazing and horrifying that it could speak English.
“I do. Many. Not quite sure how to word them yet,” he admitted, taking a seat on a large rock not to far away from the resting creature.
It nodded and took another sip of whatever liquid was in the wooden bottle. “This is makes sense,” it said in oddly. “I will speak. You will question later. I come as a changer of items, a giver and taker in equal measure. A trader I believe many calls it. Yes. This word. Trader. Many places I have been, many peoples and beasts I have spoken with. I am old. I did once come across your people in the dense jungle below. Lost, I guided them back. They were weak. They died.”
Grim nodded, waiting for it to continue. “I am called Axil. I have come to see why you have come to see.”
He blinked at that, thinking over the words for a moment before they made sense. “You want to know why we came here? To start new.”
The creature turned to him and blinked its pale, milky white eyes. “The Spirits will not allow this. Never have they before,” it said, sending chills down Grim’s spine.
“These Spirits, I think when I say Custodians we are talking about the same beings?” Grim asked carefully. Axil nodded. “I have spoken with them, in person. They left this world, left it to live or die on its own. There is no reason for them to come back and deny anyone anything ever again,” he said, speaking calmly but with confidence.
Axil examined his face for several minutes before nodding. “The case. Yes. This is the case. Interesting. Many things will change now. Will more of your people come? If so, many races living within the world will push back. Mankind is not… unwelcome. Their tendency to conquer is.”
“Hell, if I know. I plan on uniting the planet before it burns like so many others I’ve seen,” Grim admitted.
That caught Axil’s attention. “Other worlds? Ah. You are not from this one. Interesting and strange. More strange, I think. Very well. I will join you for now. Show me if you are worthy, if you have the right. If so, I will support you.”
With that the odd creature stood quickly, picked up its spear and pack, and ambled slowly down the hill. Grim could already hear the screams from others as Axil got closer to the camp. Those screams rapidly silence as he watched the already distant figure begin speaking with others who had confronted him.
He saw Stella step forward and exchange words rapidly with Axil before directing the strange creature over to a newly fabricated warehouse. Grim had met many creatures, but none like Axil. The thing was both curious and terrifying. Curious because it was a race of creature he had never met before. Terrifying because it was utterly unconcerned and unafraid of him.
That didn’t happen often.
The only people Grim had ever met who weren’t afraid of him were Gods, the insane, or those who thought they held all the power in a given situation. That category was mostly taken up by politicians and generals. Then never seemed to operate off common sense.
The point remained stuck in Grim’s mind, only being dislodged as he arrived at their newly establisher perimeter and Stella accosted him.
“We’ve been here for less than a day and already you’ve picked up another… I don’t even know what to call him,” Stella said, annoyed. “I would say you work fast, but that’s a tad absurd.”
Grim shrugged, “To be honest, I have no idea what happened. Our conversation was short, our agreement shorter. Then Axil headed this way. I have no idea what it is,” he paused. “You said he. Is it a he?”
“Digitately. When I asked what kind of house he needed, he said a large open one would be fine as he was not an egg layer. If that’s not something a man would say, nothing is,” Stella quipped. “Afterall, us egg layers apparently need far more restricted caverns. I am choosing to interpret that as safer lodgings.”
Another shrug answered the succubus’s ramblings, “Fair enough point I suppose. How is the set up and the scouting looking?”
“So far so good. The main building is up, and the housing went up far more quickly than I thought,” she admitted. “You keep telling me those imps are dumb meat shields and laborers, but they have exhibited a surprising amount of independent thinking and intelligence.”
Grim wasn’t surprised she thought this way. Something about this world, this universe, was altering the way his abilities were working and growing. It was, apparently, also affecting how his demons grew and developed. His armor was a perfect example of the oddities that had continued to occur as he experimented. While he had narrowed down and discovered many different parts of his so called ‘powers’ that had begun appearing since he had shown up here, he was far from understanding why things worked the way they did.
It seemed that figuring that out was going to be more important, and more prevalent, than he initially thought.
“Good. Try and get the walls up tonight. I have this very, very odd feeling we may need them,” Grim said.
Stella stepped back and stared at him intently, “You think there are threats out there? That something may come after us?”
Grim nodded. “I don’t think, I know. I can feel them a little bit. They may be telepathic or may have some rudimentary kind of power or abilities. But they are watching us, and by they I mean that there are at least three or four distinct groups. Counting Axil.”
“Wonderful. I will get the imps in their armor and stage patrols tonight. Maybe we can catch some of them off guard and take prisoners. Having someone we can interrogate would be ideal,” she said, wandering off to issue orders and organize defenses.
Grim wasn’t so sure. Communication was built around several aspects for a human being. Writing. Speaking. Body language. If you got too far away from those concepts, communication broke down and became nearly impossible. However with the advent of powers and abilities on this world, there were other options… but none that Grim could rely on.
He sighed and looked at the forest in the distance. There were more life forms there than anywhere else in this region. He wasn’t sure why, but it made him a bit nervous. It made him even more nervous that he had felt, but hadn’t seen, whatever was out there watching them. If you meet new people, the first thing you should do is reach out to them and establish communications and boundaries. The only things that never did that were slavers and predators.
And villains.