By mutual agreement, all but one of the adventuring parties stayed in Newharbor when the first ship departed. A plethora of commodities and potential ones were shipped back for review and more ships bearing new settlers arrived regularly.
Aiko was surprised to see Yonna and the orphans from Highvalley arrive on the second ship full of settlers. Yonna explained that to an orphan, a town that was in the process of being built was a golden opportunity. There would be work and there would be a lot of construction of new homes and the land wasn’t all claimed. Because of that, Aiko and Brass cached in their titles of ownership on a large plot of land in Newharbor.
They figured that if they were the landowners, then nobody could complain if they settled most of the orphans on that land. Obviously, nobody did.
Zenya also cached in and settled on the island and founded her colony which took her out of the fighting immediately. Aiko and Brass went by to see how the colony was progressing regularly and all the new girls of her nest grew up knowing the pair.
Unfortunately, owning the land and having people on the land that they cared about obligated them to respond to threats and protect the land. That was the reason that Aiko, Brass, Merrill, and Shumai found themselves on a distant hilltop in the middle of the night a few months later. The seasons were all rather mellow there but that was a relative term. It had been raining for days and that was the only thing that saved the town.
All at once, the sky lit up with the glow of fire and a distant roar came through the rain. Few people were awake the first time and fewer still were outside in the rain. Mostly, the only ones who saw the first signs were the guards. By the third bellowing cry, almost everyone in the town was awake and looking outside to see what was going on. If only they hadn’t been then the giant, fire-breathing, flying lizard wouldn’t have caught any of them when it flew through.
Fortunately, the rain made sure the fire didn’t take hold but the adventurers were called on to try to find the creature and maybe rescue the townsfolk. Thus why Aiko found herself slogging through the rain towards a distant hilltop where gouts of fire could be seen from time to time.
Brass wanted to wait for more people before going but Merrill pointed out that the likelihood of survivors went down the longer it took. They went.
The flashes hadn’t been seen in the distance for a few minutes when Brass called a halt to their trek and began scanning furiously in all directions. Aiko heard it a moment later, a sound like the tarps on the ship going taut over and over again and getting louder. Aiko and Brass locked onto the direction at almost the same time and called out a warning to the others.
The monster dove at the group but with the early warning didn’t catch any of them. Merrill managed to get a swing on the creature but barely grazed it. It was gone, winging off back into the rain and gloom.
They heard it bellow once in the distance and then nothing for a time. Suddenly, Merrill tackled Shumai and Brass tackled Aiko to the ground just as the massive lizard swooped by almost silently. Catching nothing, it roared in frustration and came to a running landing on the downward slope of the hill.
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It immediately turned and spat a gout of flame at the party while they were still recovering from its last attack. Fortunately, it was a little too far away to roast any of them but it certainly left them panicking for a moment.
When the beast wheeled around to face them and was just about to start sprinting towards them, Shumai hit it with a Wind Gale and flipped the stupid thing over onto its back. Merrill and Brass were racing towards it before Shumai had finished the last syllable.
Aiko saw Merrill tear a bloody rent in the side of the thing as it tried to right itself. It then jumped away from the hulking orcish warrior and Brass was suddenly on its head and stabbing for its eye. The panicked monster began thrashing its head from side to side and then decided to fly away with him still on it.
Aiko had a sudden vision of the creature bucking Brass off in the middle of the sky. As the agitated creature built up speed to try taking flight, Aiko spoke the words of her spell, determined to keep it grounded where it was less dangerous to everyone.
With a final downturned finger gesture, Aiko skewered the monstrous lizard with a Chaos Spear. The faintly purple haze of the spell was nigh invisible in the dark rainy night but its effects were not. The monster slammed to a halt and there was a sound of tearing flesh from somewhere amidst its body.
Brass, who had been holding on till that point and jabbing at its closed right eye, was sent sailing through the air as the lizard beneath him instantly lost almost all momentum. The momentum that it did retain wrenched its direction to the left.
Suddenly feeling its life in mortal danger, the creature’s one good eye locked onto the only being in its vicinity. In a desperate bid at life, it did the one thing it could think of to the only being it could see. It doused the whole area in front of it in fire.
Consequently, that act was what ensured that even had it escaped, it would have been hunted to the very ends of the world and beyond.
In the deific domain of Fujiwara Kaori
Aiko awoke with a start and shot to her feet. She looked around in a blind panic for the monster that had… The memory of the event flooded through her and she realized that she shouldn’t have survived the maelstrom of flame at barely a dozen paces from the wyvern. Wyvern?
‘You didn’t survive. I’m sorry.’
Aiko noted that the soothing and somehow familiar voice really did sound sorry. Then slowly, she noted the room around her. She was sitting on a massive bed of red sheets in a room with green walls and gold trim in a style she had never seen nor even imagined existed! The opulence of the room was beyond anything she had ever imagined.
As she swept her gaze around the room she noted a number of figures of numerous different races looking worriedly at her. Amongst them she saw a tall woman with bird-like wings ‘that’s an angel and her name is Rocell’, Two of what looked to be bipedal wolves in silver and gold ‘werewolves and their names are Yaju, the shorter one and Einoro, his wife’, a woman that looks like she’s made of plants ‘Dryads are plants and her name is Tozenna’, and finally a human and an elf ‘They’re married too. That’s Gelor and his wife Cenest.’.
The dryad moved up to the side of the bed worriedly while Aiko began a curious internal conversation. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m you… Or more accurately, you’re me. My name is Fujiwara Kaori and I had intended to simply absorb all of your memories on your death. I created you as a body to experience the world I created.’
‘Wh-What do you mean? You created… Who are you?’
‘It would probably be easier if I just showed you.’