The crack of Annalise’s rifle rang in Troias’ ears, followed by a high-pitched scream as the woman charging forward, brandishing a gleaming, metal baseball bat, dropped to the ground, clutching her shattered knee. The rifle spoke again, and a large, bald man tumbled to the earth, his hands gripping the spurting wound in his stomach. Before the woman could fire again, the rushing attackers closed with Troias and Max, their makeshift weapons glittering with Facet energy in the early morning light.
Troias watched the trio of attackers rush forward, his eyes carefully analyzing their movements. There was one woman and two men left standing in the group, not that it mattered; in the post-Shift world, things like size and gender weren’t any indicator of how dangerous a person was. The first attacker, a well-muscled man a couple inches shorter than Troias’ 6’2” height, was obviously a Force adept and charged in brandishing a pair of brass knuckles on each hand. The other man held a crude spear, really just a broomstick with a kitchen knife attached to the end of it, while the woman hung back a bit, carrying a pair of dagger-like hunting knives in a fairly competent manner.
Troias hefted his glaive, lifting the blade to intercept the first attacker’s rush, sending a trickle of icy Death energy swirling from just below his heart to fill the blade. The 7’ long polearm was essentially an oversized, mithril butcher knife blade attached to an oval-shaped pole of unbreakable lignum vitae, and the gleaming point took the attacker in the stomach. The Force Facet granted its wielders extra strength, speed, and durability, and the adept had obviously counted on that durability to protect him from Troias’ blade. The Spirit Warrior’s Death energy cut through that defense with ease, though, and the glaive punched into the man’s stomach, impaling him up to the smaller, crescent-shaped blade on the back of the glaive and shredding his internal organs.
Troias twisted the glaive and shoved the horribly wounded man to the left, tumbling him into the path of the second attacker. That one fell but rolled swiftly to his feet in a motion that was almost inhumanly fluid. Water adept, Troias thought grimly, activating his Spiritual Speed ability. Water adepts were quick and flexible in combat, if not particularly fast on the ground, and that speed would make the man’s crude spear a lot more dangerous. Spiritual Speed enhanced Troias’ own Water Facet, though, drawing on both Water and Spirit to give Troias a 50% boost to his attack speed. The butt end of Troias’ glaive swept up, far too quickly for the Water adept to react, and slammed into the side of the man’s head.
The adept fell to the ground, stunned, but before he could rise, Max charged forward. The large malamute’s teeth flashed as it grabbed the adept by the throat, squeezing hard enough to sink in and draw blood but not hard enough to kill the man. The adept flailed for a moment, but his blows fell harmlessly on Max’ thick, mottled gray fur; the dog had a particularly strong connection to the Force Facet and was uncommonly fast, strong, and tough for an animal that wasn’t an Omega. Max growled and tightened his grip, and the pinned adept froze, dropping his spear as the pungent smell of urine suddenly filled the air.
The final attacker stepped back, dropping her knives and holding her hands out to the sides. “I surrender,” she spoke quickly, shaking her head and making her short, brown hair wave in front of her eyes. “Don’t kill me, okay?”
“That depends entirely on you and your friends, here,” Troias replied calmly, taking out a rag and wiping down his bloodstained glaive. “You seem to know how to fight, so I’m guessing you understand that we deliberately kept you all alive, right?” The woman nodded her head, her expression hopeful.
“You want information?” she guessed. “I can give you that in exchange for my life. Deal?”
“Deal?” Annalise snorted. “We don’t have to make deals, girl. You’ll do as you’re told, or all of you die. It’s as simple as that. Got it?”
The woman gulped but nodded again. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Good,” Troias smiled, his face open and friendly as he rested the glaive over his shoulder in a relaxed pose. At the same time, though, he pulled a strand of Death energy and projected it through into his eyes, focusing on the woman in front of him. As he did, his Aura of Menace kicked in, sending an unmistakable sense of danger and threat at the woman. She swallowed hard and visibly paled as the wave of menace struck her, and she took another step back almost instinctively.
“You guys have been attacking my people,” Troias said almost congenially, the smile still plastered to his face. He’d found that most people were prepared for him to growl, threaten, and even rage at them, but when he was calm and friendly, they didn’t know what to think. On one hand, it was obvious he could kill them whenever he liked; on the other, he didn’t seem to be too interested in doing it, so long as they cooperated. That hope kept them cooperating when fear might push them into panic.
“I want to know why, where you’re operating out of, and your numbers…” He broke off as a series of ice shards flew from behind the woman and smashed into his chest. At the same instant, Annalise’s rifle barked, and Troias glanced past the short-haired woman to see the man Annalise had wounded in the stomach earlier sitting on his knees, a clean hole in the middle of his forehead. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head and he convulsed once before collapsing to the ground, dead.
“Good shot,” Troias said simply, his face carefully expressionless. They hadn’t wanted to kill anyone if they didn’t have to, but the man’s attack had given them no choice.
“Pretty simple,” Annalise shrugged, her rifle trained on the other figure she’d dropped earlier. Those two were obviously mages, capable of casting spells from some distance – like the ice spell the deceased water mage had cast – which was why Annalise had taken them out first. “I can do the same to that one, if you’d like.”
“Let’s see if it’s necessary,” Troias chuckled, turning back to the unwounded woman. The girl had dropped to her knees, tears streaming freely from her face. “Shit, don’t kill us. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, I swear!”
Ten minutes later, Troias and Annalise stood outside a huge church, their focus on the simple, steel door that the young woman had directed them to. Apparently, the group’s leader had only turned the church dormitories into a fortification, rather than claiming the whole building. The rest was overrun by hodags, porcine creatures with frog-like faces, spines running along their back and down to their tail, and four tusks jutting out of their wide mouths. They weren’t particularly dangerous to someone with decent control of their Facets, but they tended to charge in numbers and were fairly resistant to damage. Even so, the group he and Annalise had just dispatched – the survivors had been given the choice of swearing a Vassal Vow to Troias, making them his servants, or dying, so now he had four more vassals – could have handled a significant number of hodags if they worked together. Troias wasn’t sure what purpose that served, though.
As usual, Ren’s insight amazed Troias. Most totem spirits, he knew, resembled mundane animals and represented a single Facet; they were very knowledgeable about that Facet but utterly ignorant of anything outside of it. Ren had taken the form of a kirin, a legendary Asian creature that was supposed to be the guardian of Heaven, and he had unlocked all nine of Troias’ Facets, a feat that was supposed to be impossible. That also seemed to give the spirit a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the Shift, a fact for which Troias was endlessly grateful.
He took a deep breath and channeled a mixture of Death and Force energies into his glaive, pushing the power into the tip and holding it there as tightly as he could. He could feel the glaive in his mind, sense the blade all the way to the razor edge, but beyond that was…nothing. His adept senses could only feel things he was touching directly; that was called the Barrier of Body, and it meant that unlike mages, adepts couldn’t project force beyond themselves.
At least, that was the theory. Troias had managed to do just that, in a moment of desperation. He’d projected a slash of spiritual energy from the Ulfberht sword that currently hung from his hip, preventing the wendigo that controlled the city of Green Bay from killing Annalise. He had no idea how he did it, and Ren was equally clueless. The spirit knew it was possible but not how to make it happen, and Troias had been totally unable to replicate the feat since.
He readied the glaive and nodded at Annalise, who stood behind him with her rifle in a ready position. The last time he’d taken down a fortification, he’d done so slowly by using gradually increased pressure to shatter it. He’d learned since then, and he knew now that a single, incredibly precise strike would be more effective, just as a perfectly controlled punch would do more damage than a wild, uncontrolled kick. The Death energy in the blade would help grant that necessary precision; the Death Facet was all about controlled violence and the triumph of skill over raw power.
His glaive flashed forward, encountering a thin shell of resistance an inch or so from the door. The barrier flashed from transparent to opaque in an instant as Troias pushed the surge of Death and Force energy out in the tiniest, most controlled burst he could. The barrier held for only a moment before shattering with a sound of broken glass, allowing Troias’ glaive to slice into the steel door like it was paper. The Spirit Warrior followed the strike with a Force-powered kick that blew the steel door inward, and the trip charged into what looked like a communal room or lounge area.
As the captured woman had suggested, there were about ten people in the room, all in the middle of what looked like sparring sessions. They all froze as Troias entered, spiking his Aura of Menace and charging forward, his glaive flashing. His strikes were aimed low, designed to wound and cripple rather than kill, and he’d taken out three of the closest inhabitants before the remainder could even react.
Two people in the back of the room reacted first, both raising their hands and firing streams of energy at Troias. One was a stream of fire, while the other was a barely visible line of wind. Both blasts splashed over his Spiritual Barrier, the ability turning aside most of the energy, allowing his admittedly weak Air and Fire Facets to deal with the remainder. The pair didn’t get a second chance to strike; Annalise’s rifle coughed twice, and both of the mages dropped, one with a shattered shoulder and the other with a cracked femur.
The rest of the room flinched at the roar of Annalise’s HK 416, but the sound seemed to jar them out of their stasis, and they rushed to the attack. The woman fired three more times, shattering knees and wounding legs before the remaining two assailants reached Troias. His glaive slashed across one’s thigh, severing the man’s quadriceps and crippling him instantly, and on the backswing, he buried the crescent blade in the final woman’s hip. She screamed and clutched the wound as she tumbled to the ground, her right leg totally useless.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Troias caught a glimpse of movement in his peripheral vision and spun just as a white-clad figure crashed into him. The man attacking Troias was small, only a few inches over five feet, with a wiry frame and tightly corded muscles. He was wearing a karate-style uniform, or gi, with the sleeves cut off to expose the tattoos winding around his upper arm. The black belt around his waist didn’t mean much – for all Troias knew, the kid had found the uniform and belt somewhere after the Shift – but the expert punch the young man threw at Troias was a different matter.
Troias blocked the punch and stepped in close to the young man. His attacker launched a knee toward Troias’ midsection, but Troias caught the rising limb, trapped the man’s right arm under his left armpit, and hooked his right leg behind the man’s stiff right knee. The kid dropped instantly, landing hard on his back, but he shrugged off the impact of the floor and Troias landing on top of him and hurled an elbow at Troias’ face. The blow was fast and hit hard, and although Troias caught it on top of his head instead of on his cheek, it had just enough impact to rock his head back, allowing the young man to roll out from under Troias and scramble to his feet.
“You must be Lord Drakos, huh?” the kid said, dropping into a traditional guarding stance. He had light brown skin, long, lank, black hair, and dark brown eyes. The hilt of a katana protruded over his right shoulder, which Troias thought was dumb – there was no good reason to wear a long sword like that on your back, and a lot of good reasons to wear it at your hip instead – but he made no move to reach for it. “You can call me Prince Overkill. I’ve been looking…”
The young man’s words cut off as Troias pumped Force energy into his legs, drawing the power from behind his navel and sending it down pathways he hadn’t fully opened, yet. The burst of power propelled him forward at dizzying speeds, and the Death energy he trickled into his elbow slammed into Overkill’s chest with a sickening crack. The kid flew backward and slammed into the wall, but to Troias’ surprise, he shook off the double impacts and sprang to his feet, rubbing his chest and wincing.
Overkill dropped back into his stance, but Troias was already moving. He had the kid’s measure, now: Overkill was undoubtedly a point fighter. He had a lot of technical skill, but he focused on landing blows, not on taking out an opponent. As Troias rushed forward, the kid’s front foot snapped up in a lightning-fast snap kick aimed at Troias’ chest, trying to back the man off; that was a classic karate counter for a charging opponent. That meant, though, that Troias was ready for the movement. The bigger man slipped to his left, snaking his arm under Overkill’s extended right leg and pinning it up under his armpit. Overkill tensed his support leg, about to leap in the air and try to dislodge his foot with a flying kick, but Troias gave him no chance. Instead, the big man stepped forward and twisted to his left, turning the trapped leg and spinning Overkill to face backwards. Off-balance, the young man crashed to his chest on the floor. He tried to roll free, but Troias leaned backward, twisting the kid’s foot and hyperextending his ankle and hip. Overkill cried out and slapped the floor, trying to tap out, but Troias applied more Force energy to the move and yanked upward. Overkill screamed as his ankle broke with a loud crunch, and Troias released the leg and let the young man roll around on the floor, cradling the shattered foot.
“Damn it, dude!” the kid screamed. “I tapped out! What the hell?”
“There’s no tapping out anymore,” Troias replied evenly. “This isn’t a game, kid. It’s not about points. This world is life and death, and right now, I’m deciding if I let you and your people live or not. So, stop whining and start explaining.”
An hour or so later, Troias, Annalise, and Max were walking back to the Humvee. “That kid was stupid,” Annalise observed tiredly, limping slightly as she walked. “He seriously thought this was all a game.”
“Yeah, we’re going to run into more of those people, I think,” Troias shook his head. “It’s almost inevitable: people who were hardcore gamers pre-Shift probably adapted faster to this new world, so at first, they thrived. However, if they didn’t have any practical experience to go with that gaming background, they might have trouble realizing that there’s a huge difference between playing a game and real life. Kind of like that Sean kid.”
Sean was Overkill’s real name; Overkill was just a gamer handle. The kid was 18, had been a competitive gamer and, as Troias guessed, a karate point fighter before the Shift. He’d done some good for his people: he’d helped them organize into teams that could work together and take down more powerful enemies; he’d arranged for them to train by fighting against one another in mock PvP, or player versus player combats; he’d even figured out that the hodags infesting the church were edible, keeping the group well fed.
However, he’d thought that his followers needed better training, and he’d decided that Troias’ people were perfect targets for this. In a sense, he was right; in the week and more since Troias had taken the city of Green Bay, Annalise and he had traveled about, adding more area to his safe zone and locating bands of survivors who wanted to take advantage of the safety of the walls and defensive towers Troias raised to protect his holdings. Of course, they had to become his followers to do this, and that meant that they took an oath to better themselves and their community. The walls had to be patrolled, there was fishing and hunting to be done, the farms needed tending, and of course there was daily training everyone had to undertake. While guns were still effective in the Shift, thanks mostly to the efforts of the handful of savants who labored daily to upgrade the city’s weapons and vehicles, the humans’ Facets were more powerful in the long run. Training those was vital, since they grew stronger the more they were used. Most of the humans were a bit resistant to the idea at first – many of them had hoped to go back to a more normal life at some point, but using their Facets was a constant reminder that there was no such thing as a normal life anymore – but they all came around after a day or two.
This meant that Troias’ followers were, on average, better armed, fed, and trained than most people in the Shift, so Sean had been right. Attacking them was a step up from the training they’d been undertaking, and they hadn’t managed to seriously injure any of Troias’ people. Even so, they’d crossed a line, one that Sean hadn’t considered a very serious one – he’d apparently assumed that he was setting himself up as some sort of nemesis to Troias, sort of a friendly rivalry between the two groups. Troias didn’t see it that way. People were the most precious and valuable resource he had and the one most difficult to accumulate or replace. Humanity had ruled this world, once, and they could do so again, but there were so few of them left that every life became invaluable.
Sean and his followers were a great example of that. Troias had assumed that Sean was an adept, probably one with his Force, Air, or Water Facets unlocked. He was wrong; Sean was a savant, sort of like a magical crafter. He’d empowered his uniform, headband, and belt to give him abilities similar to a weak adept. That was a valuable skill, and it was one Troias wanted to take advantage of. He’d forced the kid to take a Vassal Vow, making Sean a sort of second-class follower who had to help Troias’ community, follow his orders, and avoid letting any of his followers come to harm but didn’t get all the benefits that regular Oathbound or Devoted followers got. In return, Troias turned the church into a full stronghold for the kids, giving them more room to spread out, and gave them permission to hunt and fish in the nearby woods under his protection.
Troias gained, Sean and his followers gained, and everyone but Annalise was happy. The red-headed woman was a Life and Earth adept, and she’d taken a path called Sacrificial Healer that let her heal others’ wounds by taking them on herself. She healed extremely quickly compared to most humans thanks to her Life Facet, and her Earth Facet reduced the damage she actually took from absorbing injuries. It still hurt, though, and she’d had to heal Sean and his followers once they were bound to Troias to make sure none of them bled out or were permanently crippled from their wounds. That was why she was still limping; she’d healed Sean last, and her ankle was still sore and healing from his injury.
A month ago, Troias would have been aghast at what he’d just done. Sean had surrendered, after all, and Troias wasn’t only a talented MMA fighter, he was an honorable one. Some fighters would keep a hold a bit longer than they had to or would put an ounce more pressure than necessary, just because they could get away with that. Troias wasn’t like that; he was good at violence, but he didn’t take pleasure in inflicting it on others. The Shift had changed all that, just as it had changed the entire world. In this reality, hesitation could mean death, and mercy was a rare commodity. If he’d let Sean up after the kid had tapped out, Sean would have seen the match as a friendly competition between the two of them. By breaking the man’s ankle, Troias had driven home a lesson: this was not a game, and Troias was not playing. There just wasn’t any room for games in the new reality.
Before the Shift, humanity stood firmly atop this world. Now, they were an endangered species. Almost 98% of animal life had died in a matter of minutes, and the few survivors found their world a hostile and dangerous place. In the past two days, Troias and Annalise had fought off several packs of 7’-long wolves, a couple of giant mountain lions whose roars caused a fear effect very similar to Troias’, a 10’ tall monster of a black bear that almost ran them off the road, and even a giant bald eagle with a 14’ wingspan that swooped down on Max and tried to attack him. That eagle had gotten a bit more than it could handle. Weighing in at about 150 pounds, not only was Max far too large to be carried off, his connection to the Force Facet made him tough, fast, and extremely strong. The Air-linked bird wasn’t a match for the dog’s reflexes and teeth, and Max had already broken one of the eagle’s wings and was savaging its throat, ignoring the bird’s wildly raking talons and beak, by the time Annalise had unholstered her pistol and put the eagle out of its misery.
Troias and Annalise had both felt a little bad about that, in all honesty. The bald eagle was America’s mascot, after all, and while Troias wasn’t sure there was such a thing as America anymore, it still felt wrong having to kill the majestic creature. Still, in the world after the Phase Shift, sentimentality was a luxury that people generally couldn’t afford. Almost 98% of animal life had been killed in the Shift, and what remained could and happily would kill a person simply to do so. The eagle was a good example; despite stories that Troias had seen on the Internet every so often, he knew that eagles generally didn’t attack dogs and cats very often. The birds were looking for food, not a fight, and their vision was plenty sharp enough to pick out a harmless squirrel or rabbit rather than a dangerous cat or dog. This eagle hadn’t been looking to eat, though; it was driven to kill, and if Annalise hadn’t shot it, it would have kept fighting until Max finally tore its throat out.
That was simply the reality of the Shift. Before the Shift, Troias had been teaching mixed martial arts, or MMA to kids and teens in Edison Park, on the north side of Chicago. He’d had a simple life but a happy one: training, teaching, and occasionally fighting in mock weapons tournaments with friends. Then, one night while he was on vacation in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Shift turned the planet into a magically enhanced world with rules that seemed drawn directly from video games. The few survivors had to band together, because not only were the remaining animals empowered by the magical Facets that now ruled the world, legendary creatures like werewolves and lake monsters spawned randomly around the near-empty ruins of human cities and towns.
Of course, humanity also had access to the Facets, but unlike the legendary monsters and natural creatures, humans didn’t have an instinctive connection to those fundamental energy sources. They had to work to improve their connection, develop abilities that allowed them to use the energies within them, and train their bodies and minds to handle that energy. That was a big part of what Troias was offering those who chose to follow him: a safe place to train, learn, and grow as a community.
They hopped into the Humvee, Annalise sliding open the rooftop port and taking her station at the M2 machine gun mounted on top of the vehicle. The church was now in the middle of a 1000’-radius safe zone – Ren had finally taught Troias how to create a larger safe zone than a single building – but outside that, the road leading back to Highway 41 was still unclaimed for a couple of miles, and it ran through a forested area for almost all of that. Unless an area had been claimed and made safe, creatures could and would spawn in it; Troias could clear a stretch of road one day and come back the next to find it teeming with hostile creatures.
The trip back to the city was uneventful, and soon enough, Troias slowed down before the massive, steel gate that stretched across the highway just before Duck Creek, blocking passage south into the city. It opened at his thought, and he and Annalise drove back into the city to a host of notifications.