The settlement was a mix of wooden shacks on stilts sitting just above the creek bed and a few more permanent structures made of scavenged tin siding and stone. The little homes crawled up the uneven slope of the banks like mushrooms growing from a downed tree. Dirty faces peered out at Finn from rotted out holes in walls, shadowy doorways, and from the corners of partially shuttered windows. Every once in a while a door would slam shut or a shutter would creak closed in an unseen building, its occupant not wanting strangers’ eyes wandering their way.

  Cap ordered the column to stop in what could be called a town square if you ignored the requirement that it be a square or that it should be in a town. A wooden platform the size of a semi trailer stood here equidistant between the two banks. A high wooden beam ran over the top supported by two thick logs, giving the setup the appearance of a gallows, but Finn couldn’t see a trap door to really complete the picture. No one seemed to go in for the details in post-apocalypse architecture.

  A heavy-set bald man with a braided graying beard dangling down to his chest stomped out from a doorway to Finn’s right. He wore old world jeans stained and shredded along with a leather vest festooned with bits of wolf fur, agir feathers, scales, metal chains, and plastic ribbons that dangled and jangled. The big guy spit a long, brown rope of tobacco juice in the rangers’ direction. It didn’t land anywhere close to Finn, but he swore he could feel a couple micro-droplets impact his forehead. Probably psychosomatic, but gross anyway.

  “Raymond,” Cap called, bringing his horse around to approach. His tone was neutral, fishing.

  The man stood there in silence, leaning against the door jamb of the shack, working the tobacco around in his mouth. When he spoke, his pitch was higher than Finn would have guessed.

  “What brings you out this way, Cap?” Raymond asked, spitting again. His distance was impressive, nearly clearing the span to Cap this time. “Trade?” He gestured to the trailers with his chin.

  “Not this time, Raymond. We’re just passing through, and we thought we’d check in on y'all.”

  Raymond stood up straight and leapt down from the porch, landing surprisingly nimbly for a guy of his proportions. Now that he was out in the light, Finn could see the man’s thick arms, legs and feet were carpeted in thick, wiry hair. Finn didn’t want to make any assumptions, but he filed Raymond’s face away in the “possible shifters” section of his mind. Benign, predictable mutations were everywhere outside of Hope, but shifters were generally strong, tough, and vicious if you gave them reason to be. Also, their other forms tended to have capabilities no one wanted to deal with other than through the scope of a long gun.

  The men that stalked the rangers from the woods took Raymond’s dismount as their queue to show up again, all stepping off the bank or from behind cover to slowly walk closer to the column. The rangers kept their guns at the low ready but didn't do more than acknowledge the men's presences.

  Raymond strode up to Cap until he was right next to his horse’s head, which she did not enjoy one bit. When she got a whiff of the hairy brute, she took a step back and let out a nervous whinny, stamping her front hooves. Cap simply stared down at the Raymond as if he were just item number 45 on today’s to-do list.

  “Would be a lot friendlier if you came to trade, Cap. Pickings are slim out here as far as scrap goes. Forage too.”

  “Everything all right?” Cap looked around for a moment as if assessing the place. “The place’s got a different feel to it than what I remember.”

  “We’re fine, city man. You just ain't been around. Just a rough patch. You and I need to talk though,” Raymond growled. He stepped to the side and gave Cap’s horse some space as a tiny concession. “Inside.” Raymond's words rode the line between request and demand, a practice Finn recognized well. His dad was a master at straddling that line.

  “Are we Guests here, Raymond?” The two traded a significant look, neither flinching until Raymond broke the silence, his face and body language relaxing significantly.

  “These people are our guests,” he shouted loudly enough to be heard by everyone in the village. He paused, maybe for dramatic effect, maybe so he could spit once more. “Be good.”

  Cap dismounted and followed Raymond up a ladder, onto the porch then into the man’s home. Finn admired the way the Cap could walk like a boss even after all day in the saddle. Before Cap disappeared inside he met each of the rangers’ eyes in turn, communicating everything he needed to with a hard look. “Don’t let your guard down. Don’t do anything stupid.” Message received.

  People slowly started to come out of their respective homes, hollow faces covered in dirt with hungry eyes that stared at Finn and his trailer full of valuable old world junk, but everyone kept their distance, seeming to be busy calculating exactly where they all stood with each other.

  That is until a greenskin child of maybe three or four scrambled out from under a house and bounded up to Carl. Carl stopped his meticulous, arrhythmic scan of the village to look down at at the kid, giving him his best Carl smile that looked more like a sneer or a badger baring its teeth than anything resembling friendly.

  From behind his back, the boy produced a tiny loaded crossbow fired with surprising speed. The bolt went wide, but, rattlesnake fast, Carl plucked the missile from the air, spun it and jammed it into his armpit. If Finn didn’t know about the man’s gift, he’d probably have a hard time figuring out what had happened at all.

  “Auuuugh! I’ve been shot! A mortal wound, comrades!” He fell to his knees dramatically. “Go on without me! Tell my wife I love her! Also, my other wife. Tell Brandi down at the bar I think she’s cuuuuute.” Sighing, Carl dropped to the dirt and let out a slow gurgle. “Bleoaauugghlglg” Then his final breath escaped his lips.

  The boy giggled hysterically, his little porcine nose forcing him to snort on the inhale. He danced back and forth, caught between jumping in excitement and the nervous desire to make sure he didn’t really kill a man. When he finally got up the courage to roll Carl over, the boy found the Ranger scout holding the toy arrow in his teeth.

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  More giggles issued forth.

  And with that the dam was broken. At least half a dozen exuberant children with wooden swords, stick guns, and bows joined the fray, mostly going after Carl but Saul got in a couple firefights too. Any projectiles that missed Carl were caught and given back to the little bushwackers with pointers on how to loose their arrows properly. Giant Everett had the attention of three of the stalkers from the woods, comparing the thickness of his arms and neck to the largest among the men. One of them had a beefy third arm for a mutation, and he insisted that it be added to the thickness calculations since it was roughly on the same side of his body.

  After a while, Saul retreated to quietly stroke his horse and fed him some dried fruit from one of his pockets, but a couple of the dried apples made their way into little humanoid hands as well.

  Finn leaned against the hollow steel frame of the trailer piled high with salvage, drinking from his canteen and trying to look just the right amount of at ease yet unapproachable. Of course, that worked all of five minutes.

  “Do you hate us?” came a question from well within his personal space.

  Finn jumped, choking on the water he’d been drinking, sputtering and coughing in a way unbecoming a stoic, tough-guy Ranger.

  A short, stocky, young woman in a gray, buttoned blouse and long skirt stood there just to his left, her feet set like she was ready for a fight. She was pretty if you went in for that sort of thing, which Finn kind of did. Her jet black hair was cut short, framing a freckled, round face with a strong jawline. Finn’s dad would probably call her “handsome.”

  “Say what now?” he asked when he finally got his coughing under control.

  “I asked if you hated us?”

  “Uh. I don’t? Why do you ask?”

  “You won’t let people like me into your city. No reason for that other than hate for what’s different.”

  Finn understood a bit better now. ‘No mutants’ as the goddess decreed. He did his best to hide his giving the woman a once over. There were no visible signs of mutation on her. She was short, curvy, and pretty… maybe a little direct, but he couldn’t put that down to altered genetics. When he got to her eyes though, there was something off about them, a shifting discoloration like oil running over water. One moment her eyes were pale blue then they would melt into another color like a gift shop oil lamp. He cast his gaze down into his canteen to appear less bothered than he was.

  “People in charge say we can’t.” he said, hoping to end this particular line of conversation by shifting the blame to an authority miles far away.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. A lie but hopefully a believable one.

  “You’ve got two canteens.”

  “Uh. Yeah, I do.”

  “One’s got your goddess’ potion in it, doesn’t it?”

  "Now, how did you come to know about that?” Finn asked, a hand drifting down to the other canteen on his belt.

  “People talk," she replied, tilting her head but never looking away from Finn's eyes. "Does it?”

  The colors in the girl's eyes did hypnotic things that made Finn want to lean in, but he resisted. Instead, he adjusted one of the straps on his armor. “Does it have the potion inside? Yes. You sure ask a lot of questions. What’s your name?”

  “Helen. Why do you have to drink the potion?”

  “So I don’t…uh… change while I’m out here.”

  “So you stay human.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s what you meant though.”

  “I think that’s what you meant,” Finn retorted, but he knew she was spot on. “Some people back home say that, yeah.”

  “What does it feel like when you drink it?”

  He reached up and scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Feels different for everyone, but the general consensus is that it’s unpleasant,” he said, patting the little canteen on his right hip.

  “Will it make me more human?”

  “You are human.”

  “Will it make me more… like you?”

  “I hope not.” He laughed nervously. The joke did not land.

  “Why?”

  “You’re… uh… well… “ Did he just come out and compliment her? Would she take that well? “I don’t know if it would do anything for you.”

  She frowned and raised her chin slightly. “I”ll trade you for what you’ve got in your canteen.”

  Well, that was out of the question, but he had to let her down easy. “What do you want this stuff for?”

  “That’s my business,” she said, leaving nowhere to go with that line of conversation.

  Finn knew his potion canteen was pretty full compared to what the others probably consumed. The truth was that the stuff gave him hideous migraines that lasted for hours, and he used the stuff sparingly. He was ‘playing with fire’ as Cap put it, but that was easy for him to say when the potion didn’t seem to hurt him in the slightest. However, Finn couldn’t just give the stuff away.

  “It’s a controlled substance. I can’t just trade it away or I’ll have to answer to the goddess' Church.”

  Helen’s expression went through a healthy spectrum of emotions from anger to desperation until it finally landed on something like deep deep loneliness.

  Finn could see it in her eyes. She was alone here, trapped here with whatever it was she was dealing with. Whatever mutation she had, tormented her, it kept her from living like she wanted to.

  “Please. I need to try it.” A tear made its way down her cheek. Her eyes, blue as the sky above with menacing bands of gold, were locked on Finn’s, and he couldn’t look away.

  All the hair on Finn’s body stood on end. The sour taste of tainted magic crept onto his tongue, and blood seeped from his nose only to bubble away into steam. The world wavered and sound faded, and his head felt stuffed with cotton.

  Then the feeling was gone like a soap bubble popping in the grass. Sound came back to Finn in a rush, too loud now. Too clear. The world was back as it should be, except heightened.

  Helen was suddenly bent at the waist with her hands on her knees, looking down at the ground. Her breathing was ragged like she’d just been running for her life. She’d gotten herself back under control, and the remaining deadly potential in the air was slowly dissipating like fog in the sun.

  Finn shut his eyes for a moment to think, but it didn’t take long to come to a decision. Helen needed help, and, though the potion’s chaos blocking effect was temporary, it might provide her with some relief for… whatever she had going on. Uncontrolled magical expression maybe? He opened his eyes, his hand unfastening the strap to his canteen even as the words spilled from his lips. “Okay, just keep it to your–” But Helen was gone. A search of the faces around the Rangers gave Finn nothing. He slowly slipped the goddess’ potion back into his belt feeling like he’d failed a test somehow.

  Cap and Raymond exited the rotting shack together, Raymond dismounting with a jump and Cap climbing down the ladder. Once he was down on the ground, Cap called out over the crowd. “Alright, Rangers, mount up. One last thing before we head home.”